Chinchero lies just north of Cuzco in the Peruvian Andes. When rain struck during our visit, vendors found refuge in trapezoidal niches in the enormous wall left by their ancestors. These women - a grandmother and granddaughter? - offered a study in contrasts. The older one, wearing native dress, sat squarely in the middle of the tight space. She smiled at the wet tourist with the camera and ceaselessly worked her red wool. The younger one, squeezed to the side by her older companion, leaned awkwardly against the wall. In appearance she was a westernized teen, unwilling to smile. Two women, different, both embedded for the moment in their common Inca past.
UPDATE. The thing to read is John Hemming, The Conquest of the Incas (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., New York 1970).
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