Summary
“tarata, the new world”
The road climbs and the backpacks are heavy. Guevara and Alberto pass a pyramid built to honor Peruvians who died in the war with Chile. Their destination of Tacna seems far ahead, but a driver stops to take them onboard. They think it is free, but the driver tells them it costs money. Annoyed, the men start to walk. Darkness falls and the night is unbearably cold. They cannot sleep, and making a fire does not help. Each minute seems like an hour, and no one will stop for them as they continue their walk.
Finally, as dawn breaks, they notice two small huts near the road. The food and mate they have there is revivifying. To the people, they also seem like demigods; they answer many questions about their country, their way of life, and their experience being doctors.
Their spirits lifted, Guevara and Alberto continue on and forget about the previous night’s suffering. A truck stops finally and members of the Tacna National Guard wave to them. Inside the truck, Alberto and Guevara try to talk to the Aymara Indians, who are reluctant to respond.
The valley creates an emotional response in the travelers, who feel fortunate to see the legendary place. Guevara writes of the Inca-built irrigation channels, the crops, people dressed in old-fashioned Indian clothes, the narrow streets of the town, and how nearly everything “evokes the time before Spanish colonization” (93). The people, though, are clearly a defeated race and their stares are tame, fearful, and indifferent.
“in the dominions of pachamama”
Guevara and Alberto get passage in a truck going to Illave. The vehicle begins to ascend and it is stunningly cold as it climbs. When the sun finally starts to come out, the psychological effect is notable. The truck has to stop and the men go on foot, which they begin to do wearily.
Guevara and Alberto observe the Indians spitting and crossing themselves as they pass a pyramid made of irregular-sized stones and crowned with a cross, but they do not know what it means and no one will tell them.
The sun warms the landscape and its people. One Indian asks about Argentina, and they extol its virtues.
In the afternoon, back on the truck, they pass a place where erosion turned huge boulders into feudal castles. The driver invites them into his cabin and they make friends with a schoolteacher from Puno, recently sacked by the government for being a member of the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance. He speaks gaily of Indian customs and culture. He also explains the strange ritual they’d seen on the road. Indians used to gift their sadness symbolically with stones, which formed the pyramids, but the Spanish tried to halt the ritual by putting crosses atop them. The Indians continued, though, spitting out coca leaves instead of stones.
The teacher also speaks generally of the Indians’ brutalized present condition, but he grows quiet after an impassioned speech about education.
“lake of the sun”
The travelers cross a stream that leads to a beautiful lake. Unfortunately, the men are not allowed to stay there because the commanding officer at the local barracks tells them foreigners are not able to stay overnight. Guevara and Alberto decide they must see the lake, though, and get someone to take them there. A guide points out small islands in the distance where the inhabitants have barely seen a white man.
Thankfully, the Civil Guard post offers them lodging in an infirmary. The next day, they find a truck heading for Cuzco and they carry with them a letter of introduction for Dr. Hermosa, an ex-leprologist living there.
“toward the navel of the world”
The truck leaves them in Juliaca, where they befriend a very drunk sergeant at the police station while waiting for new transport. The sergeant brags of his marksmanship and asks Alberto if he’d take money to let the sergeant shoot at him. Alberto is loath to do so, and the sergeant shoots off anyway. The bar owner is irate, but the men cover for the sergeant.
The new truck is secured, and Guevara and Alberto are on their way with a few young men from Lima and a silent group of Indians. The young men constantly try to show how superior they think they are to the Indians.
The traveling continues through a village called Sicuani. In the marketplace, Guevara and Alberto observe a group of notables in black carrying a coffin and speaking solemnly of the dead, while masses of townspeople press in and say what they really think of the deceased.
Finally, the two arrive at Cuzco.
“the navel”
Guevara writes that Cuzco can best be described with the word “evocative.” He also adds that there are really two or three Cuzcos. The first is historical, deriving from when Mama Oclio dropped her golden wedge in the sand and the Incas knew this was where they needed to build their city. This was the home for Viracocha’s chosen ones, and the nomads began to expand Tahuantinsuyo, the Inca world with Cuzco at the center. They built Sacsahuaman, a fortress. This vision of Cuzco asks one to think of the conquering Spanish and the resulting ruined temples and sacked palace. It asks one to be a warrior for the Incans.
The second Cuzco displaces the first with inhabitants in bright clothes, Spanish cupolas, and narrow streets. It invites you to be a tourist, to be superficially interested in what you see.
The third Cuzco is vibrant and its monuments bear witness to the Spanish warriors. In the church facades, museums, and libraries, it makes you feel proud that the Spanish conquerors cleaved a path “through the defenseless flesh of a naked Indian flock whose human wall collapses and disappears beneath the four hooves of the galloping beast” (104).
“the land of the incas”
Cuzco is both a city and a fortress, and Guevara sees it as the product of the pre-Inca stage of their civilization—from the time before they pursued material comfort and cultural splendor. It was not until they’d already achieved success that they invented reasons for their superiority and built temples and the priest caste.
Though the Inca caste is gone, the stone blocks remain and seem impervious to time. They remain after white troops greedily sacked the city and razed the Incan temples to build the Church of Santo Domingo. However, there are still often earthquakes that assault the surface of the land and the cupola of Santo Domingo has collapsed three times while the foundations of the Temple of the Sun remain intact.
The stones seem exhausted, though, and all that civilization seems to have been in vain in the face of white conquering. The Indians never witnessed a reckoning—only more and more Christian churches rising.
Thankfully, some remnants of the Inca past remain high in the mountains.
Guevara writes of the noble troops who stood up to Hernando Pizarro but who were eventually defeated, and the fascinating ritual bathing places of the Inca emperors. Then he turns to Machu Picchu, which means “Old Mountain.” It was originally a place of refuge and settlement of the Quechua race and a hideout for the defeated army. It became well known in the West due to the work of the archeologist Bingham, who wrote of the virgins of the Temple of the Sun and its famous carvings. There is evidence of how different social classes lived and how physical punishment was carried out.
There is also Huayna Picchu, or “Young Mountain,” from which one can see Machu Picchu’s impregnable and vulnerable sides.
Guevara concludes that they find here the “pure expression of the most powerful indigenous race in America—untouched by a conquering civilization and full of immensely evocative treasures between its walls” (111).
“our lord of the earthquakes”
The bell of Maria Angola rings out. This bell had been damaged during the earthquake but fixed by funds from General Franco of Spain. It was ordered for the Spanish national anthem to ring, but it accidentally played the Spanish Republican anthem.
The bishop leaves his place and is paraded through the city; he is disturbed that everything seems to be like a pagan festival.
“homeland for the victor”
The capital of the Inca empire retained its wealth after being conquered. All the same, soon Cuzco was no longer the “navel of the world” but rather on the periphery, and its treasures emigrated east. The Inca capital vanished into its current state and Lima rose as a new power.
The cathedral remains, solid like a fortress. The gold on its walls has aged poorly and seems like an old woman wearing too much makeup. The city is really like an immense gallery with its church and balconies and streets evoking the past. All parts of it come together to suggest a disquieting sense of a civilization long passed.
“cuzco straight”
During these two weeks, Guevara sees their life as hobo-esque, but Dr. Hermosa is kind to them and gets them train tickets to Machu Picchu.
At the ruins, they explore and play a bit of soccer. A man—the owner of the ball—notices them and invites them to the hotel that he manages.
Not long after it is time to depart, and they take the train for its twelve-hour trip back to Cuzco. On these trains, there are always third-class carriages reserved for local Indians; they are similar to cattle transport ones in Argentina.
Guevara writes of the archeological museum in Cuzco and how poor it is because foreign archeologists had looted the region and they were only able to display what remained, which was poor. The curator there tells Guevara and Alberto fervently of the need to educate Indians and fostering a fuller and richer understanding of the Quechua people so they could feel pride in their culture and their past. He excoriates those who make money off of selling them cocoa and getting them addicted.
“huambo”
The travelers head north, but times are tough in terms of food. Guevara has an intense asthma attack.
Once Guevara is feeling better, they ask the lieutenant governor (a mayor of sorts) for horses. Two are procured as well as a guide, and the journey begins. About two-thirds of the way, though, an old woman and boy come up to them and seem distressed, but they cannot understand them. Finally, they realize that the horses were theirs, so they dismount and go on foot.
At the clinic, Senor Montejo receives them and sets them up with a landowner for food and rest. They visit the small hospital and deplore the poor conditions, as well as the ignorance surrounding the affliction of leprosy and how people are treated as outcasts.
Guevara and Alberto go to see the new hospital. Though the people are proud of it, the men notice that it still has some of the same detriments as the old.
They leave the city on a truck and arrive in Andahuaylas, where Guevara goes to a hospital to recover from asthma.
“ever northward”
After resting a few days and experiencing more succor from the Civil Guard, the travelers decide to move on. They are short of food but are wary of taking work until Lima.
Their time in Andahuaylas does not end well, for Alberto reacts strongly to seeing Civil Guard soldiers insulting an Indian woman. Guevara notes that his reaction must have seemed strange to those used to regarding Indians as little more than objects.
A truck takes them out of the city and winds its freezing way up a mountain. The travelers are so cold that they almost forget that they are pariahs without money.
Finally, they arrive in Ayacucho, explore some of the churches, and then head to Lima.
“through the center of Peru”
The journey continues. They are halted on a road where there is a landslide up ahead and workers have to set off explosives among the boulders. Night closes in and rainstorms flood the road. The trucks are finally able to move forward, but they do so at a slow pace.
They hop on another truck that will take them further, but it is a terrifying journey on a steep cliff road that has barely enough room for one vehicle, let alone two. Both Guevara and Alberto are prepared to leap out if necessary, knowing of the frequent, deadly accidents, but they survive.
They reach the small village of Merced and hear an interesting story about a man reporting a murder.
“shattered hopes”
Guevara and Alberto stay with a brother-in-law of someone who was supposed to house them, but they feel awkward about taking advantage of this hospitality. They are excited, then, to learn that they have a ride to Lima. Sadly, though, it only makes it halfway.
The two try their “anniversary” routine of making people feel sympathetic towards them and give them drink and food, which is usually successful.
In San Ramon, they are able to eat, but the oranges hurt their stomachs. They go to beg rest and food at a local hospital, which is somewhat shameful to them—but they have to do it.
Finally, they are back in a truck but the high mountain road is terrifying. The driver’s eyesight is not good, but his boss never cared how he got somewhere—only that he did get there.
They pass the city of Oroya, in which they get a glimpse of the hardships of the miners’ lifestyle.
The next day, they reach Lima.
Analysis
The entries regarding Guevara and Alberto’s time in Peru are arguably some of the most fascinating in the entire work. They are faced with the various strictures of their itinerant existence but still fully immerse themselves in the history and culture of the places they visit, particularly Cuzco. Guevara perspicaciously comments on the different types of Cuzcos, offering eloquent but searing commentary on colonial conquest and rule.
To begin, Guevara notes the poor conditions of the indigenous peoples. "Indians" are the indigenous people of South America, contrasted with the Spanish and Portuguese who conquered many parts of the continent in the 15th and 16th centuries (and did not cease their rule until the early 19th century). As in Africa and southeast Asia, colonial rule in South America was marked by brutality, indifference to indigenous traditions and ways of life, and, in the wake of colonialism, political chaos and economic turmoil. The Indians are “a defeated race. Their stares are tame, almost fearful, and completely indifferent to the outside world” (93). A schoolteacher the men befriend tells them of the Indians’ present condition, which is “brutalized by modern civilization and by their companeros, his bitter enemies the mestizos, who revenge themselves on the Aymaras for their own position halfway between two worlds” (97). The man claims that education is the key, though that is easier said than done. Guevara also includes a scene of a public funeral in which the coffin is “pursued by the hatred of his fellow villagers who on every street corner unburdened themselves of him in flooding words” (102); this further elucidates the class conflicts present in South America, and why Communism was becoming more and more viable at the time.
Guevara’s ruminations on the different versions of Cuzco is a subtle rebuke to anyone inclined to see the ruins in an un-nuanced, merely archeological light. It is a place that means something different to different people: a place asking a South American to take up arms on behalf of the Incan, a tourist to scramble over the ruins thinking only of their beauty, and, most incisively written, a Spanish warrior to “cleave a path through the defenseless flesh of a naked Indian flock whose human wall collapses and disappears beneath the four hooves of the galloping beast” (104). Guevara’s ironic tone here is unmistakable as he excoriates the conquistadores of history.
Guevara’s commentary on Catholicism and the cathedral of Cuzco are a microcosm of colonial conquest on the continent (and pretty much everywhere else, for that matter). He explains how the Spanish built the Church of Santo Domingo over the ruins of the Temple of the Sun, “both lesson and punishment from the proud conqueror” (106). Though the Indians were “waiting for the terrible vengeance of his gods, saw instead a cloud of churches rise, erasing even the possibility of a proud past” (107). But the Indians and their civilization were not completely erased, for “the signs of the Inca past are scattered” (107) throughout the region and, more important, while earthquakes ravage the land and topple Santo Domingo’s cupola, the stone blocks of the Temple of the Sun “stand enigmatically, impervious to the ravages of time” (106) and “however colossal the disaster befalling its oppressor, not one of its huge rocks shifts from its place” (107).
The final amusing irony is in Guevara’s account of the parade the bishop undertakes to celebrate General Franco’s paying to repair the broken bell. The bell accidentally rings out the Spanish Republican anthem, and the parade gives the impression of being a pagan festival, not a Catholic one.
Guevara clearly glories in the past of South America, which is also his past because he considers all of South America one big race. He writes of the Incas, “here we found the pure expression of the most powerful indigenous race in the Americas –untouched by a conquering civilization and full of immensely evocative treasures between its walls” (111). Even though those treasures have since been looted and the region pushed under the yoke of a tyrannical foreign power, nothing can change the fact that this civilization existed and was one of the greatest in human history. Guevara’s passion shines through here, which helps readers understand why he became such an influential and beloved revolutionary figure.
