On some final thoughts on Peru

My trip to Peru was well-organized, well-planned, well-thought out. Obviously, Peru is a country of contrasts, rich/poor, European/Quechua, English/Spanish, urban/rural, modern/ancient. I have encountered these contrasts before, but never to this extent. I have a new appreciation for all of the wonderful things and people that populate my life because I saw how limited life might be when you don’t have certain advantage, I saw a lot of people going off to work crammed into tiny buses, three-wheeled tricycles taxis, traveling on foot. Cars were a luxury. I gained a new found admiration for people who can live at or above 13,000 feet where the air is thin, the temperatures are cold, and making a living is very hard–little heat, no air conditioning, few creature comforts, Llamas are not the easiest animals to live with, and roads that I would take for granted are narrow, curvy, and rough, which is totally normal in rural Peru. I think that the hardest thing to navigate is that poverty, You can buy a piece of weaving, you can pay tips to visit a local home, you can employ a few of the locals for sharing their day with you, but the poverty these local indigenous peoples is real and you really can’t solve that. For some really simple reasons (and a couple which are rather complicated) these high mountain people are isolated from the horn of plenty which some people in urban Lima and other large cities enjoy. There are issues of literacy, of even speaking the language of power and influence–Spanish. The legacy left by colonial Spain is far reaching and powerful. The Spanish have been gone for more than a century and a half, but the political and social mess that they created still hangs on, and the shadow of Pizarro hangs long over a city like Cuzco. I also realize now that there is very little that the Peruvians might do to resolve many of their rural social problems. Since transportation is such a huge issue in a country that is as mountainous as Peru, many people never travel more than a few miles from the place where they were born. The rural indigenous Quechua are a small portion of the entire population, so the federal government cannot rationalize spending large amounts of money to connect those people to better systems of health and education. I also realized that American culture consumes enormous amounts of resources–water, food, housing, education, health, space, energy. We are a culture of hyper-consumerism. Nevertheless, I have a new appreciation for the industry and exuberance of my own country and its ability to generate wealth and power. Peru struggles with a political corruption that paralyzes its ability to solve social problems or to control the exploitation of its natural resources. In some ways, Peru is an emerging nation and economy. Mining, agriculture, fishing, tourism, and manufacturing are all growing parts of burgeoning economy in which many Peruvians might participate, but then again, many rural people find themselves isolated, marginalized, and left out. The paradoxes between the have’s and the have-not’s is breathtaking as ancient forces and beliefs collide with post-modern hyper-consumerism in a post-colonial meltdown of European values, languages, and conventions.

On some final thoughts on Peru

My trip to Peru was well-organized, well-planned, well-thought out. Obviously, Peru is a country of contrasts, rich/poor, European/Quechua, English/Spanish, urban/rural, modern/ancient. I have encountered these contrasts before, but never to this extent. I have a new appreciation for all of the wonderful things and people that populate my life because I saw how limited life might be when you don’t have certain advantage, I saw a lot of people going off to work crammed into tiny buses, three-wheeled tricycles taxis, traveling on foot. Cars were a luxury. I gained a new found admiration for people who can live at or above 13,000 feet where the air is thin, the temperatures are cold, and making a living is very hard–little heat, no air conditioning, few creature comforts, Llamas are not the easiest animals to live with, and roads that I would take for granted are narrow, curvy, and rough, which is totally normal in rural Peru. I think that the hardest thing to navigate is that poverty, You can buy a piece of weaving, you can pay tips to visit a local home, you can employ a few of the locals for sharing their day with you, but the poverty these local indigenous peoples is real and you really can’t solve that. For some really simple reasons (and a couple which are rather complicated) these high mountain people are isolated from the horn of plenty which some people in urban Lima and other large cities enjoy. There are issues of literacy, of even speaking the language of power and influence–Spanish. The legacy left by colonial Spain is far reaching and powerful. The Spanish have been gone for more than a century and a half, but the political and social mess that they created still hangs on, and the shadow of Pizarro hangs long over a city like Cuzco. I also realize now that there is very little that the Peruvians might do to resolve many of their rural social problems. Since transportation is such a huge issue in a country that is as mountainous as Peru, many people never travel more than a few miles from the place where they were born. The rural indigenous Quechua are a small portion of the entire population, so the federal government cannot rationalize spending large amounts of money to connect those people to better systems of health and education. I also realized that American culture consumes enormous amounts of resources–water, food, housing, education, health, space, energy. We are a culture of hyper-consumerism. Nevertheless, I have a new appreciation for the industry and exuberance of my own country and its ability to generate wealth and power. Peru struggles with a political corruption that paralyzes its ability to solve social problems or to control the exploitation of its natural resources. In some ways, Peru is an emerging nation and economy. Mining, agriculture, fishing, tourism, and manufacturing are all growing parts of burgeoning economy in which many Peruvians might participate, but then again, many rural people find themselves isolated, marginalized, and left out. The paradoxes between the have’s and the have-not’s is breathtaking as ancient forces and beliefs collide with post-modern hyper-consumerism in a post-colonial meltdown of European values, languages, and conventions.

On Koricancha

Koricancha, or the Incan Temple of the Sun in Cusco, Peru, or at least what was left of it after the Spanish built the Dominican convent of Santo Domingo on top of it, is a must stop if you have gone to the trouble of going all the way Cusco and Machu Picchu. Cusco was an original Inca city and a major axis within their empire during both the 14th and 15th centuries. Koricancha, or “Courtyard of Gold” was a major shrine within the Incan empire, and its walls were lined with gold, gold that was eventually looted by the Conquistadores, but not enough gold to save the last Incan emperor, Atahualpa. Only a few walls of the original temple are still left, but they do bear witness to the exquisite craftsmanship of the Incan masons whose elegant work far outstrips the clumsy common blocking of the Baroque style convent that rises above the ramparts of the original temple. The temple, or its remnants, is an icon of an empire that totally collapsed under the invasion of the Spanish. The scourge that is colonialism–invade, conquer, occupy as much space as possible, strip out everything of value, redefine language, laws, and religion, isolate the locals outside of the circles of power, redefine all cultural values–is only too obvious in the baroque church built on top of Koricancha, essentially putting it under erasure, shoving it out to the margins of history. I understand how offended my modern post-post-modern post-colonial sensibility is, but I don’t condemn the Spanish for doing any of what they did because they were doing to the Inca what the Inca had been doing to other cultures and societies up and down the Andes. Invade and conquer, it’s an old story in human history. The “Leyenda Negra” of the Spanish has long since been chucked on the ash heap of world history, but their colonial legacy as a fallen empire still echoes within Peruvian society, and the Conquistadores (i.e., white Europeans) are, with a few minor exceptions, still running the government in Peru, and the local indigenous people are marginalized into slums in the urban areas or super-marginalized in the rural highlands where modern social amenities–medicine, schools, housing, utilities–are rare, lacking, or non-existent. Indigenous incomes in the high mountain mesas are almost nothing at all. The role of indigenous people working in the numerous Peruvian mines is particularly troubling, boasting a horrific safety record of numerous deaths and injuries. Koricancha is a kind of synecdoche for the entire Spanish enterprise in the “New World.” Of course, the Spanish did the same thing in Iberia when they kicked the Muslims out of Córdoba, building a Gothic cathedral in the middle of the famous mosque. Carlos V actually built a palace in the middle of the Alhambra. The Visigoths built a church on top of a Roman temple in the same place. Invaders have always felt it necessary to exert their power over the conquered by building their own temple on top of the sacred space of those they have conquered. So when you go to Koricancha you will be assaulted by conflicting images of Incan art and architecture within the context of a Baroque Christian church. The conclusions that you draw about this odd juxtaposition of cultures and technologies will be your own. All of the involved parties have long since turned to dust, and the caretakers of the site today are only the genetic shadows of the movers and shakers of 16th century Cuzco. The important thing about Koricancha is to go there, see it, experience it, and be a witness, albeit four hundred years after the fact.

On Koricancha

Koricancha, or the Incan Temple of the Sun in Cusco, Peru, or at least what was left of it after the Spanish built the Dominican convent of Santo Domingo on top of it, is a must stop if you have gone to the trouble of going all the way Cusco and Machu Picchu. Cusco was an original Inca city and a major axis within their empire during both the 14th and 15th centuries. Koricancha, or “Courtyard of Gold” was a major shrine within the Incan empire, and its walls were lined with gold, gold that was eventually looted by the Conquistadores, but not enough gold to save the last Incan emperor, Atahualpa. Only a few walls of the original temple are still left, but they do bear witness to the exquisite craftsmanship of the Incan masons whose elegant work far outstrips the clumsy common blocking of the Baroque style convent that rises above the ramparts of the original temple. The temple, or its remnants, is an icon of an empire that totally collapsed under the invasion of the Spanish. The scourge that is colonialism–invade, conquer, occupy as much space as possible, strip out everything of value, redefine language, laws, and religion, isolate the locals outside of the circles of power, redefine all cultural values–is only too obvious in the baroque church built on top of Koricancha, essentially putting it under erasure, shoving it out to the margins of history. I understand how offended my modern post-post-modern post-colonial sensibility is, but I don’t condemn the Spanish for doing any of what they did because they were doing to the Inca what the Inca had been doing to other cultures and societies up and down the Andes. Invade and conquer, it’s an old story in human history. The “Leyenda Negra” of the Spanish has long since been chucked on the ash heap of world history, but their colonial legacy as a fallen empire still echoes within Peruvian society, and the Conquistadores (i.e., white Europeans) are, with a few minor exceptions, still running the government in Peru, and the local indigenous people are marginalized into slums in the urban areas or super-marginalized in the rural highlands where modern social amenities–medicine, schools, housing, utilities–are rare, lacking, or non-existent. Indigenous incomes in the high mountain mesas are almost nothing at all. The role of indigenous people working in the numerous Peruvian mines is particularly troubling, boasting a horrific safety record of numerous deaths and injuries. Koricancha is a kind of synecdoche for the entire Spanish enterprise in the “New World.” Of course, the Spanish did the same thing in Iberia when they kicked the Muslims out of Córdoba, building a Gothic cathedral in the middle of the famous mosque. Carlos V actually built a palace in the middle of the Alhambra. The Visigoths built a church on top of a Roman temple in the same place. Invaders have always felt it necessary to exert their power over the conquered by building their own temple on top of the sacred space of those they have conquered. So when you go to Koricancha you will be assaulted by conflicting images of Incan art and architecture within the context of a Baroque Christian church. The conclusions that you draw about this odd juxtaposition of cultures and technologies will be your own. All of the involved parties have long since turned to dust, and the caretakers of the site today are only the genetic shadows of the movers and shakers of 16th century Cuzco. The important thing about Koricancha is to go there, see it, experience it, and be a witness, albeit four hundred years after the fact.

On Machu Picchu II

So yesterday I got my first taste of Machu Picchu in person, and today I had the opportunity to re-traverse with a little more tranquility of spirit the thirteen switchbacks between Aguas Calientes and the high plateau where Machu Picchu is located. Today the climb was less demanding physically, but we started out this morning, for the first twenty minutes or so, in the fog and the mist and the rain, which completely changes the whole feeling of Machu Picchu. After two visits in as many days, I find the place even more stunning than when I first walked in. As I had written in my previous note,the place is strangely three-dimensional, and I am emphasizing this three-dimensionality because most of us live in two-dimensional worlds . You look across the buildings and your eye is immediately drawn upwards toward the heavens and downwards towards the gorge. It would be good to talk to the architects and engineers who built the place because I’m sure they had to throw the book away when they built this place. Did they make drawings? Since many of the buildings are put together with great mathematical precision, and since you just can’t build complex structures flying from the seat of your pants, I know the architects gave instructions to the bosses and engineers, so that they, in turn, could talk to the masons and other craftsmen who were doing the work. Much of the work is too complex to just “dream up” in your head and explain it to the workmen. They must have had drawings with specifications because the work is too precise to be otherwise. Yet, the culture that built Machu Picchu is gone, never to return, leaving no written records (and if they did, the Spaniards destroyed them). I find this sad for a couple of reasons. Obviously, they were skilled builders and engineers who knew their way around a construction site, had mad “heavy block” moving skills, and had an aesthetic eye for beauty, symmetry, and art, all mixed with an appreciation for the rocky mountain upon which the site sits. Today, again, I spent the entire morning climbing up or going down stairs, There is a sense that the people who lived at Machu Picchu lived lives that were as much about horizontal relationships as they were about vertical ones. Many people come to the site expecting to feel the energy, or whatever mystical thing that they expect, but I think if you do that, you miss the beauty and spectacle that is Machu Picchu as the weather changes, the light changes, the rain falls, the clouds rumble in, fog enshrouds the place, and the sun beats down on your head, and that’s the just the first three hours. The paradigm for living in this grand high plateau was different than it was for living in other places, such as Cusco, which is higher than Machu Picchu, because the mountains are so spectacular, rising and falling with incredible drama. This royal palace and religious site was grooved into a dramatic skit of the enormous and powerful Inca empire played out against the majestic mountains tops and deep gorges of this mountain range. The fact that no one lives there now is sad and melancholy as the ghosts of emperors past glide amongst the empty, roofless buildings, aimlessly playing out their last memories, over and over again. The tourists have changed Machu Picchu into something it never was, a public park and spectacle, but then again, this big empty place pays no attention to our comings and goings, blindly watching over the mountain top that was so carelessly abandoned over five hundred years ago. As they left that one last time, did they ever think they would return, or did they know that as they left, an era was ending?

On Machu Picchu II

So yesterday I got my first taste of Machu Picchu in person, and today I had the opportunity to re-traverse with a little more tranquility of spirit the thirteen switchbacks between Aguas Calientes and the high plateau where Machu Picchu is located. Today the climb was less demanding physically, but we started out this morning, for the first twenty minutes or so, in the fog and the mist and the rain, which completely changes the whole feeling of Machu Picchu. After two visits in as many days, I find the place even more stunning than when I first walked in. As I had written in my previous note,the place is strangely three-dimensional, and I am emphasizing this three-dimensionality because most of us live in two-dimensional worlds . You look across the buildings and your eye is immediately drawn upwards toward the heavens and downwards towards the gorge. It would be good to talk to the architects and engineers who built the place because I’m sure they had to throw the book away when they built this place. Did they make drawings? Since many of the buildings are put together with great mathematical precision, and since you just can’t build complex structures flying from the seat of your pants, I know the architects gave instructions to the bosses and engineers, so that they, in turn, could talk to the masons and other craftsmen who were doing the work. Much of the work is too complex to just “dream up” in your head and explain it to the workmen. They must have had drawings with specifications because the work is too precise to be otherwise. Yet, the culture that built Machu Picchu is gone, never to return, leaving no written records (and if they did, the Spaniards destroyed them). I find this sad for a couple of reasons. Obviously, they were skilled builders and engineers who knew their way around a construction site, had mad “heavy block” moving skills, and had an aesthetic eye for beauty, symmetry, and art, all mixed with an appreciation for the rocky mountain upon which the site sits. Today, again, I spent the entire morning climbing up or going down stairs, There is a sense that the people who lived at Machu Picchu lived lives that were as much about horizontal relationships as they were about vertical ones. Many people come to the site expecting to feel the energy, or whatever mystical thing that they expect, but I think if you do that, you miss the beauty and spectacle that is Machu Picchu as the weather changes, the light changes, the rain falls, the clouds rumble in, fog enshrouds the place, and the sun beats down on your head, and that’s the just the first three hours. The paradigm for living in this grand high plateau was different than it was for living in other places, such as Cusco, which is higher than Machu Picchu, because the mountains are so spectacular, rising and falling with incredible drama. This royal palace and religious site was grooved into a dramatic skit of the enormous and powerful Inca empire played out against the majestic mountains tops and deep gorges of this mountain range. The fact that no one lives there now is sad and melancholy as the ghosts of emperors past glide amongst the empty, roofless buildings, aimlessly playing out their last memories, over and over again. The tourists have changed Machu Picchu into something it never was, a public park and spectacle, but then again, this big empty place pays no attention to our comings and goings, blindly watching over the mountain top that was so carelessly abandoned over five hundred years ago. As they left that one last time, did they ever think they would return, or did they know that as they left, an era was ending?

On Machu Picchu

Even if you have seen it in pictures, you really don’t understand this strange stone village tucked in between staggering mountain peaks and profound valleys. This is a landscape that is truly three dimensional, and it has little or nothing to do with the two-dimensional landscapes we are familiar with on the central plains of the United States. Standing at the top of Machu Picchu and looking out over the entire settlement gives one the feeling of profound vertigo as the mesa drops off in front you, dropping off five or six hundred feet in two or three horizontal meters. The differences between the level areas where the buildings are located and the central grassy plazas are striking, and one spends the entire visit climbing stairs in one direction or other. Just getting to Machu Picchu from Aguas Calientes (the small town at the bottom of the mountain where tourists begin their climb to the top) is a challenge because the road is a series of thirteen switchbacks that take you up to Machu Picchu, so you’re already a little dizzy when you make it up to the central plateau. The pictures do not prepare you for the experience: the depth of the three-dimensional reality of Machu Picchu is not really reproducible in two-dimensional photography. Yes, you can get an idea of the scale of the roughly hewn mountains that jut straight up only to plunge down insanely into a the river gorge below. One should be holding on to something while trying to take it all in. After walking around a bit, you do start to understand the majesty of the place, its grandeur as an emperor’s luxury palace, its bold statement of power and ego. The construction of Machu Picchu is an over-the-top statement by an Incan emperor, Pachacuti, who was so powerful that he could build his palace in this out-of-way high plateau and get away with it. Machu Picchu served many functions, both secular and sacred for a star-gazing emperor of Tahuantinsuyu (the Inca name for the empire) who was at his height of power when he decided to build this odd home in the clouds. One notices almost immediately that many of the clouds surrounding the site are seen from above, not below. Except for the tourists, though, the place is strangely empty. None of buildings have roofs, which have long since fallen in and disintegrated, so in some aspects, we are now looking at the desiccated skeleton of a long-since dead corpse. Abandoned before the arrival of the Spanish, the Incas, whose empire would collapse not long after the arrival of the Spanish, never came back to Machu Picchu, and it fell into disuse forever. One might study the cosmology of this enigmatic town which sits silently at about 8,000 feet, or examine the construction secrets of Incan masons, or we could marvel at their ability to cut giant blocks of stone, move them, and then to lift them into place on a temple wall. Machu Picchu is, however, inscrutable and does not give up its secrets willingly or easily. The mysteries of why this was built, or the function of some of its stranger structures will forever be unknown. One could wander about Machu Picchu for years, going up and down its endless staircases, and never really understand it as a construction. Certainly, its main message is about wealth and power, how to get it, how to keep it, but there seems a little more to it as you ponder its almost endless terraces, it narrow passages, its symbolic geometric iconography. The entire structure seems to be the unification of earth and sky via this intermediary point between two huge mountain peaks, a ridge daring both the mountains and the valleys. My point would probably be this: don’t let anyone tell how interesting Machu Picchu might be, go and experience it for yourself. Tip of the hat to Millennium Tours of Texas for breaking down all of the barriers and making this trip so easy and so possible.

On Machu Picchu

Even if you have seen it in pictures, you really don’t understand this strange stone village tucked in between staggering mountain peaks and profound valleys. This is a landscape that is truly three dimensional, and it has little or nothing to do with the two-dimensional landscapes we are familiar with on the central plains of the United States. Standing at the top of Machu Picchu and looking out over the entire settlement gives one the feeling of profound vertigo as the mesa drops off in front you, dropping off five or six hundred feet in two or three horizontal meters. The differences between the level areas where the buildings are located and the central grassy plazas are striking, and one spends the entire visit climbing stairs in one direction or other. Just getting to Machu Picchu from Aguas Calientes (the small town at the bottom of the mountain where tourists begin their climb to the top) is a challenge because the road is a series of thirteen switchbacks that take you up to Machu Picchu, so you’re already a little dizzy when you make it up to the central plateau. The pictures do not prepare you for the experience: the depth of the three-dimensional reality of Machu Picchu is not really reproducible in two-dimensional photography. Yes, you can get an idea of the scale of the roughly hewn mountains that jut straight up only to plunge down insanely into a the river gorge below. One should be holding on to something while trying to take it all in. After walking around a bit, you do start to understand the majesty of the place, its grandeur as an emperor’s luxury palace, its bold statement of power and ego. The construction of Machu Picchu is an over-the-top statement by an Incan emperor, Pachacuti, who was so powerful that he could build his palace in this out-of-way high plateau and get away with it. Machu Picchu served many functions, both secular and sacred for a star-gazing emperor of Tahuantinsuyu (the Inca name for the empire) who was at his height of power when he decided to build this odd home in the clouds. One notices almost immediately that many of the clouds surrounding the site are seen from above, not below. Except for the tourists, though, the place is strangely empty. None of buildings have roofs, which have long since fallen in and disintegrated, so in some aspects, we are now looking at the desiccated skeleton of a long-since dead corpse. Abandoned before the arrival of the Spanish, the Incas, whose empire would collapse not long after the arrival of the Spanish, never came back to Machu Picchu, and it fell into disuse forever. One might study the cosmology of this enigmatic town which sits silently at about 8,000 feet, or examine the construction secrets of Incan masons, or we could marvel at their ability to cut giant blocks of stone, move them, and then to lift them into place on a temple wall. Machu Picchu is, however, inscrutable and does not give up its secrets willingly or easily. The mysteries of why this was built, or the function of some of its stranger structures will forever be unknown. One could wander about Machu Picchu for years, going up and down its endless staircases, and never really understand it as a construction. Certainly, its main message is about wealth and power, how to get it, how to keep it, but there seems a little more to it as you ponder its almost endless terraces, it narrow passages, its symbolic geometric iconography. The entire structure seems to be the unification of earth and sky via this intermediary point between two huge mountain peaks, a ridge daring both the mountains and the valleys. My point would probably be this: don’t let anyone tell how interesting Machu Picchu might be, go and experience it for yourself. Tip of the hat to Millennium Tours of Texas for breaking down all of the barriers and making this trip so easy and so possible.

On weaving

While in Peru, I got a chance to see what hand spinning and weaving is really all about. Spinning and weaving are ancient arts which have been practiced for multiple millennia by multiple civilizations who were faced with the limitations of making their clothing out of animal skins. Though leathers and hides were our first natural “clothing” (ignoring the metaphorical fig leaf, that is), those materials are cumbersome and difficult to manage and bettered suited to more rugged applications such as footwear, belts, and hats. Weaving, whether it be cotton, wool, or silk, allows greater flexibility for shaping garments to the strange forms of human beings, a collection of odd curves and straight lines. From a practical standpoint, you don’t have to kill an animal to get its skin, which is an enormous break for hunters who might have to face dangerous animals and risk serious injury or even death. Cotton and silk hold no such risks, and cutting the wool off a sheep is not nearly as dangerous as fighting a full-grown bear for his skin. The spinners and weavers I saw in Peru were using techniques for spinning yarn that were adopted by their ancestors multiple millennia ago, using their hands, a wooden spool, and gravity to get the right spin and tension on their new yarns. It looks simple, but I am sure only the most skilled spinners (Arachne et al.) are enlisted to make the yarns that will go into the new textiles that the weavers will create. The weavers set up their looms of varying sizes according to the actual work at hand–nothing like stating the totally obvious. The bigger the loom, the bigger the piece they are making. The secret to good weaving probably depends on three things: good yarns, a good project plan, focus, especially if the weaving involves a design. Though designs are not mandatory for making a good blanket or coat, designs are a big part of human existence, enhancing the aesthetic experience and making life just a little more fun. Humans wouldn’t be human if they did not want to beautify their work, individualizing the weaving experience and personalizing their work. The designs are not particularly difficult to do, but the work requires care and concentration. It is a skill that must be learned. Weaving by hand, on a manual loom, is not a project that might be approached either lightly or superficially, requiring patience, a steady eye, a calm nerve, and a certain dedication that is not found in every person. Good weavers are probably made, not born. In Peru I found that great care was taken in the preparation of yarns, and that these weavers were also great dyers in the sense that they were experimenting with colors and traditional dyes that could be made out of natural materials which they had on hand, not industrial dyes made out of harsh chemicals. I could tell that “weaver” was both a profession and an identity, and that these women, because all were women, took great pride in their profession which gave them both a purpose in life and an identity as a worker, giving them a bit of an income. Some might say that this is just so much circus or theater for gringo traveler who looking for an exotic or quaint indigenous show or exhibit at which he might take some pictures to take back to the family, and, at the same time, buy a few souvenirs for the wife and family, which is, I think, a little cynical and whiny. All tourism provides those opportunities at some point. These native Peruvian women can spin and weave and make some beautiful things. They have talent as artists, as creators, as contributors. To say anything less would be to sadly undermine a vast pool of very talented people. Spinning and weaving, two ancient talents still practiced today in rural Peru.

On weaving

While in Peru, I got a chance to see what hand spinning and weaving is really all about. Spinning and weaving are ancient arts which have been practiced for multiple millennia by multiple civilizations who were faced with the limitations of making their clothing out of animal skins. Though leathers and hides were our first natural “clothing” (ignoring the metaphorical fig leaf, that is), those materials are cumbersome and difficult to manage and bettered suited to more rugged applications such as footwear, belts, and hats. Weaving, whether it be cotton, wool, or silk, allows greater flexibility for shaping garments to the strange forms of human beings, a collection of odd curves and straight lines. From a practical standpoint, you don’t have to kill an animal to get its skin, which is an enormous break for hunters who might have to face dangerous animals and risk serious injury or even death. Cotton and silk hold no such risks, and cutting the wool off a sheep is not nearly as dangerous as fighting a full-grown bear for his skin. The spinners and weavers I saw in Peru were using techniques for spinning yarn that were adopted by their ancestors multiple millennia ago, using their hands, a wooden spool, and gravity to get the right spin and tension on their new yarns. It looks simple, but I am sure only the most skilled spinners (Arachne et al.) are enlisted to make the yarns that will go into the new textiles that the weavers will create. The weavers set up their looms of varying sizes according to the actual work at hand–nothing like stating the totally obvious. The bigger the loom, the bigger the piece they are making. The secret to good weaving probably depends on three things: good yarns, a good project plan, focus, especially if the weaving involves a design. Though designs are not mandatory for making a good blanket or coat, designs are a big part of human existence, enhancing the aesthetic experience and making life just a little more fun. Humans wouldn’t be human if they did not want to beautify their work, individualizing the weaving experience and personalizing their work. The designs are not particularly difficult to do, but the work requires care and concentration. It is a skill that must be learned. Weaving by hand, on a manual loom, is not a project that might be approached either lightly or superficially, requiring patience, a steady eye, a calm nerve, and a certain dedication that is not found in every person. Good weavers are probably made, not born. In Peru I found that great care was taken in the preparation of yarns, and that these weavers were also great dyers in the sense that they were experimenting with colors and traditional dyes that could be made out of natural materials which they had on hand, not industrial dyes made out of harsh chemicals. I could tell that “weaver” was both a profession and an identity, and that these women, because all were women, took great pride in their profession which gave them both a purpose in life and an identity as a worker, giving them a bit of an income. Some might say that this is just so much circus or theater for gringo traveler who looking for an exotic or quaint indigenous show or exhibit at which he might take some pictures to take back to the family, and, at the same time, buy a few souvenirs for the wife and family, which is, I think, a little cynical and whiny. All tourism provides those opportunities at some point. These native Peruvian women can spin and weave and make some beautiful things. They have talent as artists, as creators, as contributors. To say anything less would be to sadly undermine a vast pool of very talented people. Spinning and weaving, two ancient talents still practiced today in rural Peru.