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Cusco, ancient capital of the Inca Empire.

Cusco. 500 years ago it was the capital of the Inca Empire and now a pretty city at 3400 meters above sea level, crammed with churches and palaces the conquistadors erected using the walls built by the Incas. Walls that were raised with stones polished to perfection and that fit with enviable harmony and also the exact inclination to absorb the effects of the devastating earthquakes so abundant in this area. If right now this place is visited by hordes of tourists, imagine how many would come if Pizarro and his chaps, instead of melting all the gold in the capital, would have left the temples and palaces the way they were before their arrival…

How spectacular to be able see Koricancha, the Temple of the Sun, with its two symmetric rooms, one devoted to the Sun, the other to the Moon. The first one with a gigantic piece of gold depicting the biggest of the gods and the embalmed mummies of the ancient emperors sitting next to each other, presiding over ceremonies as if they were still alive. And the second room with the walls covered with silver like a lunar landscape, hundreds of virgins praying and saving their purity to honor the Inca. But, those armored beasts took everything they saw fit in the name of their homeland and their one and only god, Greed, destroying a 3,000-year-old civilization in the process without leaving a trace, except for a few incorruptible walls.

We left Cusco to visit the Sacred Valley of the Incas, hoping the savage Spaniards had satiated their thirst by the time got there and left something more than a couple of rocks. The tourist bus cost twelve dollars, the local guagua not even half a euro, so we decided to join the locals since we all speak the same language. A couple of Quechua women took up the whole aisle, with big bundles on their backs and babies across their shoulders. If we didn’t know they keep the cold at bay by wearing multiple layers of clothing, one would think these Peruvian women were calorically challenged.

We sat at the back, next to a comunero. Like everyone else, he was on his way to the Pisac market to exchange his products with other merchants or peasants. Here, money has value, but it’s hardly used. Pleasant, like most Peruvians, he told us he lived in a community of fifty families, no more, where there is no envy, nor a land registration office. The board, chosen every two years, decides on the distribution of the lots as well the incorporation of new families. Taxes are for the rich, because they, the comuneros, pay with their sweat. Every year the board decides the civil works that need to be built and the comuneros execute it with no pay except the right to use the public services. However, most of the time they get help from foreign NGOs in the form of money or materials, or even an engineer borrowed part time.

Essentially, their life is barely differs from life in the times of the Inca Empire. Then the basic needs were sleep, food and clothes, and the Inca, or Emperor, made sure they were all satisfied. Each family received a piece of land to build their home and cultivate food, as well as cotton or leather to make their own clothes. In exchange for this and his protection, they had to contribute to the royal granary with part of their harvest as well as work on the imperial works, which were a lot. The most important were the Inca Ways that stretched across the whole continent, north to south, from today’s Ecuador to Chile. Some say it was pure slavery, others that it was the first form of communism. Too bad that besides the wheel being unknown to them, they didn’t know how to write. Otherwise we would know more about them. Now we only have the memories of their people and what the conquistadors recorded. That’s all that’s left from their heritage: memories, walls and an archaic form of Communism. Oh, and their jewel, Machu Picchu, the Land of Dreams the Spaniards never found.