His reply was far from convincing. He was at first serious, but his long abstract statements about taxes and government wastefulness trailed off into vagueness, and he ended in a laughing mood, talking about adventure, the restless spirit of young men, and the rich booty of confiscated lands and property had the rebels won. He admitted that it was a reckless game, but when I called him a mere soldier of fortune he grew serious once more and reverted to the iniquitous taxation system of Peru. Further inquiry made it quite clear that the ill-fated revolution of Abancay was largely the work of idle young men looking for adventure. It seemed a pity that their splendid physical energy could not have been turned into useful channels. The land sorely needs engineers, progressive ranchmen and farmers, upright officials, and a spirit of respect for law and order. Old men talked of the unstable character of the young men of the time, but almost all of them had themselves been active participants in more than one revolution of earlier years.
Every night at dinner the Prefect sent off by government telegraph a long message to the President of the Republic on the state of the Department, and received similar messages from the central government about neighboring departments. These he read to us, and, curiously enough, to the entire party, made up of army officers and townsmen. I was surprised to find later that the company included one government official whose son had been among the imprisoned rebels at Arequipa. We met the young man a week later at a mountain village, a day after a general amnesty had been declared. His escape had been made from the prison a month before. He forcibly substituted the mess-boy’s clothing for his own, and thus passed out unnoticed. After a few days’ hiding in the city, he set out alone across the desert of Vitor, thence across the lofty volcanic country of the Maritime Andes, through some of the most deserted, inhospitable land in Peru, and at the end of three weeks had reached Lambrama, near Abancay, the picture of health!
Later I came to have a better notion of the economic basis of the revolution, for obviously the planters and the reckless young men must have had a mutual understanding. Somewhere the rebels had obtained the sinews of war. The planters did not take an open part in the revolution, but they financed it. When the rebels were crushed, the planters, at least outwardly, welcomed the government forces. Inwardly they cursed them for thwarting their scheme. The reasons have an interesting geographic basis. Abancay is the center of a sugar region. Great irrigated estates are spread out along the valley floor and the enormous alluvial fans built into the main valley at the mouths of the tributary streams. There is a heavy tax on sugar and on aguardiente (brandy) manufactured from cane juice. The hacendados had dreamed of lighter taxes. The rebels offered the means of securing relief. But taxes were not the real reason for the unrest, for many other sugar producers pay the tax without serious complaint. Abancay is cut off from the rest of Peru by great mountains. Toward the west, via Antabamba, Cotahuasi, and Chuquibamba, two hundred miles of trail separate its plantations from the Pacific. Twelve days’ hard riding is required to reach Lima over the old colonial trade route. It is three days to Cuzco at the end of the three-hundred-mile railway from the port of Mollendo. The trails to the Atlantic rivers are impossible for trading purposes. Deep sunk in a subtropical valley, the irrigable alluvial land of Abancay tempts the production of sugar.
But nature offers no easy route out of the valley. For centuries the product has been exported at almost prohibitive cost, as in the eastern valley of Santa Ana. The coastal valleys enjoy easy access to the sea. Each has its own port at the valley mouth, where ocean steamers call for cargo. Many have short railway lines from port to valley head. The eastern valleys and Abancay have been clamoring for railways, better trails, and wagon roads. From the public fund they get what is left. The realization of their hopes has been delayed too long. It would be both economic and military strategy to give them the desired railway. Revolutions in Peru always start in one of two ways: either by a coup at Lima or an unchecked uprising in an interior province. Bolivia has shown the way out of this difficulty. Two of her four large centers—La Paz and Oruro—are connected by rail, and the line to Cochabamba lacks only a few kilometres of construction.[16] To Sucre a line has been long projected. Formerly a revolution at one of the four towns was exceedingly difficult to stamp out. Diaz had the same double motive in encouraging railway building in the remote desert provinces of Northern Mexico, where nine out of ten Mexican revolutions gather headway. Argentina has enjoyed a high degree of political unity since her railway system was extended to Córdoba and Tucumán. The last uprising, that of 1906, took place on her remotest northeastern frontier.
We had ample opportunity to see the hatred of the rebels. At nightfall of September 25th we rode into the courtyard of Hacienda Auquibamba. We had traveled under the worst possible circumstances. Our mules had been enfeebled by hot valley work at Santa Ana and the lower Urubamba and the cold mountain climate of the Cordillera Vilcapampa. The climb out of the Apurimac canyon, even without packs, left them completely exhausted. We were obliged to abandon one and actually to pull another along. It had been a hard day in spite of a prolonged noon rest. Everywhere our letters of introduction had won an outpouring of hospitality among a people to whom hospitality is one of the strongest of the unwritten laws of society. Our soldier escort rode ahead of the pack train.
As the clatter of his mules’ hoofs echoed through the dark buildings the manager rushed out, struck a light and demanded “Who’s there?” To the soldier’s cheerful “Buena noche, Señor,” he sneeringly replied “Halto! Guardia de la República, aqui hay nada para un soldado del gobierno.” Whereupon the soldier turned back to me and said we should not be able to stop here, and coming nearer me he whispered “He is a revolutionary.” I dismounted and approached the haughty manager, who was in a really terrible mood. Almost before I could begin to ask him for accommodations he rattled off that there was no pasture for our beasts, no food for us, and that we had better go on to the next hacienda. “Absolutamente nada!” he repeated over and over again, and at first I thought him drunk. Since it was then quite dark, with no moon, but instead heavy black clouds over the southern half of the sky and a brisk valley wind threatening rain, I mildly protested that we needed nothing more than shelter. Our food boxes would supply our wants, and our mules, even without fodder, could reach Abancay the next day. Still he stormed at the government and would have none of us. I reminded him that his fields were filled with sugar cane and that it was the staple forage for beasts during the part of the year when pasture was scarce. The cane was too valuable, he said. It was impossible to supply us. I was on the point of pitching camp beside the trail, for it was impossible to reach the next hacienda with an exhausted outfit.
Just then an older man stepped into the circle of light and amiably inquired the purpose of our journey. When it was explained, he turned to the other and said it was unthinkable that men should be treated so inhospitably in a strange land. Though he himself was a guest he urged that the host should remember the laws of hospitality, whereupon the latter at last grudgingly asked us to join him at his table and to turn our beasts over to his servants. It was an hour or more before he would exhibit any interest in us. When he had learned of our object in visiting Abancay he became somewhat more friendly, though his hostility still manifested itself. Nowhere else in South America have I seen exhibited such boorish conduct. Nevertheless the next morning I noticed that our mules had been well fed. He said good-by to us as if he were glad to be rid of any one in any way connected with the hostile government. Likewise the manager at Hacienda Pasaje held out almost until the last before he would consent to aid us with fresh beasts. Finally, after a day of courting I gave him a camp chair. He was so pleased that he not only gave us beasts, but also a letter of introduction to one of his caretakers on a farm at the top of the cuesta. Here on a cold, stormy night we found food and fuel and the shelter of a friendly roof.
A by-product of the revolution, as of all revolutions in thinly settled frontier regions, was the organization of small bands of outlaws who infested the lonely trails, stole beasts, and left their owners robbed and helpless far from settlements. We were cautioned to beware of them, both by Señor Gonzales, the Prefect at Abancay, and by the Subprefect of Antabamba. Since some of the bandits had been jailed, I could not doubt the accuracy of the reports, but I did doubt stories of murder and of raids by large companies of mountain bandits. As a matter of fact we were robbed by the Governor of Antabamba, but in a way that did not enable us to find redress in either law or lead. The story is worth telling because it illustrates two important facts: first, the vile so-called government that exists in some places in the really remote sections of South America, and second, the character of the mountain Indians.
The urgent letter from the Prefect of Abancay to the Subprefect of Antabamba quickly brought the latter from his distant home. When we arrived we found him drinking with the Governor. The Subprefect was most courteous. The Governor was good-natured, but his face exhibited a rare combination of cruelty and vice. We were offered quarters in the municipal building for the day or two that we were obliged to stop in the town. The delay enabled us to study the valley to which particular interest attaches because of its situation in the mountain zone between the lofty pastures of the Alpine country and the irrigated fields of the valley farmers.
Antabamba itself lies on a smooth, high-level shoulder of the youthful Antabamba Valley. The valley floor is narrow and rocky, and affords little cultivable land. On the valley sides are steep descents and narrow benches, chiefly structural in origin, over which there is scattered a growth of scrub, sufficient to screen the deer and the bear, and, more rarely, vagrant bands of vicuña that stray down from their accustomed haunts in the lofty Cordillera. Three thousand feet above the valley floor a broad shoulder begins ([Fig. 60]) and slopes gently up to the bases of the true mountains that surmount the broad rolling summit platform. Here are the great pasture lands of the Andes and their semi-nomadic shepherds. The highest habitation in the world is located here at 17,100 feet (5,210 m.), near a secondary pass only a few miles from the main axis of the western chain, and but 300 feet (91 m.) below it.