The Last Days of the Incas (70 page)

Toward the end of the 2001 expedition, however, Frost and Ziegler had a falling out. With the lure of a potential
National Geographic
feature article, the pressure of the film crew, the size of the expedition, and the fact that instead of a single leader, there were three
co-leaders
, perhaps that shouldn’t have been surprising. Ziegler decided to depart with a small group in order to do some additional exploring on his own. Ziegler later said:

Less than two miles from the ruins of Qoriwayrachina yet nearly four thousand feet
below
them, on an isolated bench or mesa some one and a half miles long perched above the Yanama River, Muñoz led Ziegler, the English explorer Hugh Thomson, and his team to what was clearly an Inca site. It was an area that had previously been called Cotacoca, a location that they soon discovered was completely cut off from the rest of the world. As Ziegler described it:

The Inca site contained more than thirty structures, among them a seventy-five-foot-long Inca-style meeting hall, or
kallanka
, a large walled compound enclosing a central plaza, and numerous rectangular houses as well as circular-shaped structures similar to those found in abundance at Qoriwayrachina and Vilcabamba. According to Ziegler, Cotacoca possibly served as an Inca administrative center and/or as a supply
tambo.
It is located along the main Inca road that once led from the interior of the Vilcabamba province and then crossed the Apurímac River via an immense hanging bridge before heading into the Apurímac region beyond. Ziegler states that:

The following summer, Peter Frost returned to Qoriwayrachina, still working under the auspices of the National Geographic Society, while Ziegler returned with his own exploration team to Cotacoca. In February 2004,
National Geographic
magazine published a feature article on Qoriwayrachina, authored by Frost, in which Frost mentioned Ziegler just once and only in relation to Ziegler having been led by a “local farmer” to another set of ruins nearby. In the various press releases put out by the National Geographic Society about the expeditions to Qoriwayrachina, Gary Ziegler was not mentioned at all.

The fact that two of the leaders of a highly publicized “lost city” expedition had a falling out, of course, no doubt had as much to do with the potential high stakes of discovery as it had to do with anything else. One has only to look at the scramble to gain credit for the discovery of Machu Picchu and Vilcabamba, however, to understand that Frost and Ziegler are in good company. The need to “strive for magnificence” as Bingham put it, to attach one’s name to something immortal and permanent seems to be a universal human motivation. Such a need presumably drove Pachacuti to build Machu Picchu in the first place; in doing so, the Inca emperor echoed the same craving for immortality as have other ancient cultures and civilizations.

Manco Inca, unlike Pachacuti and his other royal ancestors, however, had little time to make his architectural mark on history. He had no time to build royal retreats, no time to redesign cities, no time to invent new architectural styles. Manco’s capital of Vilcabamba was much like himself—undeveloped in the arts of anything other than as a seat for waging guerrilla warfare and for administering the remnants of a once mighty empire. Although he had been born in a united realm with his father, Huayna Capac, on the throne, Manco was ultimately forced to choose between ruling as a puppet emperor or trying forcibly to eject the Spaniards from his ancestors’ lands. Manco, of course, eventually chose the latter. Yet in the end, he was unable to preserve any more than a vestige of the vast empire he had inherited: his capital was sacked, his physical body was burned and destroyed, while the frontier city he had transformed into a guerrilla capital was
ultimately left to be consumed and nearly obliterated by the jungle.

Had Manco succeeded in retaining his independent kingdom and had his sons arrived at an accommodation with the Spaniards, then the Kingdom of Vilcabamba might even today be represented at the United Nations, with a Quechua-speaking ambassador and an Inca monarch perhaps still presiding over the throne. The same tourists who currently visit Machu Picchu, in fact, would then have been able to proceed on to the Amazonian-based, still inhabited Inca capital, one that no doubt would have displayed bronze statues of its ancient leader, Manco Inca, perhaps sitting astride a Spanish horse with a harquebus in one hand and a Spanish sword in the other. Demonstrations of
quipu
reading, meanwhile, or of the ancient arts of Inca stonecutting might have been taught, or at least might have been made available on DVD. Like the Inca Empire, however, which was prematurely extinguished after an existence of a mere ninety years, Manco’s rebel kingdom, too, was ultimately aborted while he and his followers’ valiant efforts came to naught.

Peruvian history since Manco’s death, of course, has been a rather sordid one. The Incas, although an authoritarian monarchy, had succeeded nevertheless during their short reign not only in creating a massive empire, but perhaps more importantly in guaranteeing all of the empire’s millions of inhabitants the basic necessities of life: adequate food, water, and shelter. It was an achievement that no subsequent government—Spanish or Peruvian—has attained since.

Perhaps partly due to the fact that they lived in a land beset by periodic earthquakes and destructive El Niños, the ancient Incas once believed that history unfurled itself in a succession of ages that were separated from one another by violent upheavals called
pachacutis
, or “overturnings of the world.” Each upheaval was believed to completely reverse the natural order of things: what had once been upper became lower; what had once been strong became weak, soft became hard, and so on. A
pachacuti
was believed to have ushered in the creation of the Inca Empire; it was not a coincidence, therefore, that the emperor responsible for creating the Inca Empire adopted that word as his name. Similarly, the Spanish invasion and conquest were believed to have been the manifestations of another
pachacuti
, ushering in the “upside-down” world that continues to this day. According to Inca beliefs, however, previous epochs do not recede into the past;
rather they remain dormant in the Inca underworld, awaiting a new
pachacuti
that may one day cause their return. Many inhabitants of the Andes still believe that the next
pachacuti
may as yet usher in the return of the previous Inca world.

Some fourteen million people, meanwhile, still speak the ancient Inca language, Quechua, while many peasants in the Andes still make offerings of
chicba
(corn beer) and coca leaves to the same snow-capped
apus
that their ancient ancestors once worshipped and adored. Tales are still told of the exploits of that small group of people who once possessed a small kingdom in the area of Cuzco and then conquered the entire civilized world, before a
pachacuti
occurred and the immense empire they had wrought suddenly collapsed. Sandal-footed peasants chewing coca leaves, meanwhile, still use many of the roads the Incas built down the eastern side of the Andes into the jungle, some of those roads perhaps linking up with as yet undiscovered and forgotten ruins, as clouds continue to build and dissolve, hummingbirds feed, and the roads, finely laid with so much cut stone, lead off to—well, who knows exactly where?

INEVITABLY, IN A WORK OF THIS SORT, I OWE MANY PEOPLE A
great deal of thanks. Years ago, when I worked for a stint as
a writer
for the
Lima Times
, I met and interviewed the explorer and architect Vincent Lee, who with his wife, Nancy, happened to be passing through Lima after one of their many trips to Vilcabamba. I was relatively new in Peru at the time, was doing graduate work in anthropology, and had only just visited Machu Picchu. It was on a bookshelf in a small
hostal
far below the Inca citadel that I discovered Lee’s first book,
Sixpac Manco.
It was my initial glimpse into the world of Vilcabamba, and I was shocked to learn that people were still exploring for and discovering new Inca ruins in the area. Many years later, Vince was kind enough to supply drawings of his detailed reconstructions of Vilcabamba and some of the other nearby ruins for this book. I am proud to call Vince and Nancy friends.

My UK agent, Julian Alexander, never swerved from his initial enthusiasm when I suggested writing an account of the story of Manco Inca and Vilcabamba; it was through his indefatigable efforts and those of my US agent, Sarah Lazin, that this book became a reality. To both of them, I owe a strong debt of gratitude.

I owe many thanks to my editor at Simon & Schuster, Bob Bender, who was also enthusiastic from the very beginning and who always offered great advice and encouragement. During the years that it took to write this book, he was as solid an editor as one could hope for. Thanks also to Ariana Dingman for designing a great book cover, to Fred Chase, the meticulous copy editor, and to Johanna Li, the editorial assistant. To Alan Brooke at Piatkus Books, UK, I am also grateful for his assistance.

During the writing of the book, I relied upon a wide variety of sources and collections. I found the UCLA library system and its excellent Latin American collection to be first rate. I want to thank the staff there, the staff of the map room collection, and also the staffs at libraries
in such disparate locations as London; NYC; Washington, DC; and Lima.

A number of specialists were kind enough to take the time from their busy schedules in order to read portions of this book and to offer their insightful comments. Many thanks to Vincent Lee, Dr. Terrence D’Altroy, Dr. Johan Reinhard, Dr. Noble David Savage, Dr. Brian S. Bauer, Dr. Matthew Restall, Dr. Jeremy Mumford, and Dr. Kris Lane. If any errors have remained in the manuscript, I am solely to blame.

I would also like to thank Bart Lewis, who was a great help in many ways, as well as Gary Ziegler, James Gierman, Adriana von Hagen, Sean Savoy, Gene Savoy, Nick Asheshov, Paul Goldrick, Layne MacQuarrie, and Dr. Douglas Sharon, of the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology. Sadhbh Walshe was one of the first to read the entire manuscript at an early stage and made many helpful comments. Finally, I would like to express my love and gratitude to Ciara Byrne, who, more than anyone else, helped to make this book a reality.

PREFACE

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1.
THE DISCOVERY

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