Lima society – I mean the Lima people that are members of Regattas, The Golf Club, take lunch in La Habana, barely 1% of the city, plus those that want to be like that, which is another 30%, are holding onto their privileges or imagined status by their crooked little claws, desperate. But it is like a swamp. These are reptiles climbing over each other to take a breath above the toxic waters. It is a cesspìt. A pool of shit. And for five hundred years they have clambered over each other to get above the shit. They have not yet learnt to work together and clean up the shit. Five hundred years of 50, 60, 70 yer old children throwing their own shit at each other. Martha Chavez. Nobody wins. . In five hundred years no-one has been able to stand up above the swamp and say ” If we work together we can drain this, we can live a better live in clean water.”
Or, if anyone did, they were pelted with shit by the swamp dwellers.
At Cochineros, one of the dominant recent motifs is the tumi, in various forms. They are marked on almost every rock, but are particularly prominent on the southernmost giant boulder, where a defensive ring of more than twenty has been drawn around its flat top. In addition, the same motif is drawn on riverside stones upstream at Minay, as well as amongst the ruined houses and walls several kilometres beyond at Checas Alta, and on a roadside stone downstream towards La Capilla. We might surmise that this motif represents a group of people laying claim to the territory.
Something similar could be the case with the tupus, five pairs of which are drawn on the most northern rock, out of 11 pairs at the site. No pairs are seen on the southernmost, tumi dominated rock. These too could be the symbol of a local group – perhaps from the Yauyos highlands, where today’s tupu wearing Jaqaru still live.
Spiral tailed Birds
Shaman -monkey
When Alla and I first visited the site we saw this small flat rock low down towards the river, and imagined a shaman with tendrils sitting on a stool.
But when Alla pointed out the the serpents were in fact rivers of water, always running downstream, I had to look again. The serpent defined the vertical and horizontal. With the change of perspective…
…I can see it is a monkey holding on to, or possibly tied to a post, a common image in textiles from the Late Intermediate period, the 500 years prior to the Inca influence coming to the central coast. It resembles a Howler monkey, from Central America and northern Peru.
On another panel there is a cute line of similar tailed creatures, probably mice. Such figures are seen on painted Chancay fabrics from 1000 years BP.
The fantastic birds that are draw on three marginal rocks close to the river are similar to Chimu and Chancay imagery. But they also form part of a conceptual conversation, perhaps a metaphor, which is an exciting demonstration of the potential depth of meaning at the site.
On one small rock there is a series of images. The lowest is clearly a sea bird in the textile tradition. Yet the uppermost appears to be more like a llama. The central figure is an intermediate transitional image. And low down to the right the image has been reflected and rotated.
This might seem overanalysed, but on another panel, on another rock, we see something similar (below). A classic textile bird image at the top, a more florid form below, with curling wings, and then to the left a figure that has the same five points -wings, tail, beak – except that now they are legs, tail, ears, and it is a llama.
And once again, the figure is repeated with a rotation.
Rotation, reflection and other transformations appear naturally out of a weaving tradition.
Fantastic spiral tailed birds are drawn in three places at the site. The birds are a similar size.
They are drawn low down on Piedra 12, on Piedra 6b, and on Piedra 6 Eastern face.
Meanwhile the third fantastic bird image again drawn on a rock panel on the eastern, riverside edge of the site, appears to have been part of a pair, the second, which was never completed, being either a reflection or rotation of the first.
The imagery alone suggests the birds were drawn by the same artist at the same time (at the same time here could mean, within his lifetime: contemporary within the thousand years timescales of the site).
The positioning also suggests a link. These three rocks are close to the river, and the images are draw on the easternmost faces of the rock, essentially facing the river. No similar figures are found on the other dozen stones.
The brightnesses of the images are the same …..
Number theory
Foxes
An animal with an upraised curving tail is drawn several times.
The style of the images are similar. Their positioning on the rock suggests
The image is
There are a dozen images that can be described in single english or spanish words, that appear multiple times – llama, tupu/shawl pin, tumi/knife, star, fox, horseshoe, bird, accounting for maybe 300 of the images.
Perhaps 20% of the images can be grouped into identifiable and repeated images “eg concentric circles”, or “llama”. Amongst these, there are some images that are repeated so that their addition to the site can be considered an “event”.
There are many assemblies of images that share a common design, age or brightness, position and direction: they can be considered to form a group and constitute an event. They would appear to have been drawn with a common aim.
A line or a group of llamas is likely to be an event, but lines draw in different styles whould be different events, drawn by different people and/or at different times. To constitute an event, images should be drawn in the same style and manner (technique ie scratched, pounded, deeply, lightly, cursive, open) and at the same time, as judged by image brightness, where possible, as well as having the same or similar subject.
Though the aim or meaning may have continuity, it does not mean the images were made one time or by one hand. For example, they could have been drawn one at a time, at annual festivals, over a period of several years, or drawn by successive generations of a family group, or drawn by one ritual manager over a lifetime.
Part of the line of dots down the face of P11 can be considered an event. However the line of dots continues further down, and these dots are smaller and less bright. This would be another event. Several horizontal lines of dots go to left and right, and these also would be considered different events.
And so we can see that one panel of Piedra 11 records 30 different image-making events, across a period of over one thousand years.
Across the whole site, with five or six major stones which could be individual ritual centres, and a total of 20 engraved stones, there may be five hundred events.
If the lifetime of the site is one thousand years, this would be consistent, for example, with a priest figure adding a figure occasionally, every few years, but not with a festival where everybody adds their own images.
The fast moving PanAmerican offers a three lane racetrack for the mad and bad, leaving the urban sprawl of Lima to head along the coast, with a grey sea on the right, behind low concrete block houses and dusty lanes. Thirty minutes later we reach an area of green lawns, an irrigated desert of death, an exclusive and expensive cemetery run by Lima’s Catholic Taliban, the Sodalicio, whose sexual abstinents live in private communities with maids, cleaners, gardeners and wide screen TVs. The organisation, set up by a former Nazi youth leader, runs a network of Catholic colleges and universities throughout Latin America, seeks to return to a medieval world of church run hierarchical control, and is intimately entwined with the FujiAprista political corruption network. They are the Borgia reborn, but without the culture.
There were three great festivals
There are few signs of human hierarchy in the Manuscript. On the contrary, there are several round table meetings described, where people come together to discuss things, to compete in games, to express their views. The organisers or managers of these festivals, the Huascas, end their term of office with the close of the festival. In the Inca world, as we see at Pachacamac, there are outer courtyards and inner sanctuaries, raised platforms and low courtyards. But not it would seem, in the Huarochiri world.
With only two exceptions, the artists have chosen to draw their image on one particular shiny black rock type. The fifteen boulders at Cochineros, the two at Retama, and the five or six other marked stones I have found in the valley are the same dark diorite. The Lunahuana stone is similar – the tour guide Martin called it a blue stone – and the Calango stone has an unearthly shine, according to Calancha.
Arguedas dedicates an entire chapter of his book Aguas Profundas (“Deep Waters”) to the concepts embodied in the word illa. He explains it as a kind of light, or a mark in stone, or a scar, or a particular sound. He makes reference to a shiny beetle, the mirrors on the costume for the Tijeras or scissor dancers, a children’s toy. The toy, and the sound it makes, and its powers, are central to the novel.
Perhaps the rocks themselves are illa. Without growing up as Arguedas did in a Quechua-speaking village in the highlands, it is unlikely I will ever know. But I would like to take some Huarochiri natives to see the stones and ask them what they sense there.
Similarly, it would be interesting to know what the tupu-wearing people upriver make of the tupus on the stones, mostly marked in pairs, with the pins pointing upwards and the round circles downwards, like water flowing into reservoirs, just as the Jaquaru wear them today.
There are many unanswered questions and lines for further investigation here. What dark images are there on hidden on the brightly lit upper surfaces of the rocks? If these images could be revealed, would there be any patterns evident across the site?
Star and sun type images appear to be concentrated on sky facing surfaces or the peaks of the rocks. There are twenty such images on the flat upper surface of Piedra 1. Could these represent any known stars or star groups of Andean importance, or align with the night sky?
What clues might there be in the terraces of burial chambers, the rectangular building with its bright white stone doorway, and the platforms on the hillside above, all scattered with rough ceramic fragments, to the age and use of the site?
The T-shaped image is repeated not only on rocks by the roadside on the walk up from La Capilla, but also higher up the valley at Minay, on a tall pointed boulder a little upstream from where the road bridges the river. At Checas, on a low flat stone by the river, these T-shapes as well as llamas and patterns of dots are repeated. This is a symbol that appears along the valley for at least sixteen kilometres.
As we have seen, Cochineros also has bird images similar to those at Lunahuana, and horseshoe shapes similar to Huancor. Perhaps a more systematic search would make it possible to identify a network of related shrines by such shared symbols.
Other boulders have one large, anthropomorph dominating the main panel. We have a braided haired figure at the peak of the hidden face, a mask head with tendrils, a metre long bicephalic serpent, a giant parrot drawn as lacy tracery. These dominant images vary in age, with the hidden face presenting nearly all dark images, whilst the bicephalic serpent is one of the brightest images at the site. Some stones may have maintained their focus over time, whereas others received new affiliations.
“El segundo dia fueron los P.es con otro tanto numero de yndios, y con el Doctor Auila su juez en esta causa mucho mas lejos q. el primero, y por vnos caminos muy peligrosos a deshazer el famoso ydolo Xamuna q. dizen fue vn hombre muy valeroso q. ayudo los yndios de estas tierras en ciertas guerras, despues de las quales vino a este Cerro, y se conuirtio en vn gran risco; llamanle tambien Huaranca Xamuna porq. dizen q. era tan valeroso q. con ser vno, quando era necessario se hazia mill, de tal manera q. pareqia una gran bandada de paxaros con lo qual venqia a sus contraries. desbaratose aquel adoratorio; y baxados de alli otros muchos ydolos, y Huacas, y tantos q. apenas se daua mano el Doctor a mandar las desbaratar, y poner Cruzes en su lugar.”
“Sacaronse tambien de sepulcros muy celebrados mas de dozientos cuerpos muertos, y todos se quemaron, solo se guardo vn cuerpo de vn yndio llamado Tutayquin’ P o q. con auer mas de ochocientos años que passo esta tan entero q. admira por q. no le falta diente, ni muela, ni dedo en pies, y manos, guardole el doctor Auila para traerle a Lima, y q. le vean los Principes…”
Loosely translated, the Jesuit writes, “on the second day the Priests went out again with many Indians and with Avila and his judge a much further distance, and on dangerous roads, to bring down the famous idol Xamuna, who they said was a great warrior who helped the Indians of these lands in some wars, after which he came to this mountain and became a great cliff.”
“They called him also Huaranca Xamuna (Xamuna the Thousand) because he was so brave, that although being one, when it was necessary he became like a thousand, so that he seemed like a giant flock of birds to vanquish the enemy.”
“The shrine was destroyed, and we took down from there many idols and sacred objects, so many that the Doctor barely gave a hand to send them to be destroyed, and erect crucifixes in their place.”
“Taken from these famous tombs were also more than two hundred corpses, and all were burnt, save the body of an Indian called TutayQuiri, who had been buried here more than eight hundred years yet kept all his teeth, his molars, his fingers and his toes.”
“The Doctor Avila kept him to take to Lima and show the superiors…”
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“We know people schedule Chaupi Ñumca’s rites during the month of June, in such a way that they almost coincide with Corpus Christi. When the yanca had made calculations from his solar observatory, people said “They’ll take place in so many days.”
The Manuscript explains that the expansion from the highlands reached deep into the Lurin and Rimac valleys, but did no penetrate the Mala valley, This is reflected in the present day boundaries or Huarangias.
But this Huaca was not destroyed by Senor Avila. Was this because it was outside the Huarochiri territory, so that his informers did not know of it? Perhaps it was this Huaca that stopped the Huarochiri expansion.
Perhaps the cultural influence in the Mala valley came rather from the south, or the Mala valley itself had its own strong identity and power to defend itself from the Huarochiri.
Sites such as Checas have broad walls protecting them from upriver. This may be where the highland invasion reached its low tide mark.