The Andes of Southern Peru / Geographical Reconnaissance along the Seventy-Third Meridian

by Isaiah Bowman

The lofty towns of the plateau have a really wretched climate. White men cannot live comfortably at Antabamba and Salamanca. Further, they are so isolated that the modest comforts and the smallest luxuries of civilization are very expensive. To pay for them requires a profitable industry managed on a large scale and there is no such industry in the higher valleys. The white who goes there must be satisfied to live like an Indian. The result is easy to forecast. Outside of government officers, only the dissolute or unsuccessful whites live in the worst towns, like Salamanca and Antabamba. A larger valley with a slightly milder climate and more accessible situation, like Chuquibamba, will draw a still better grade of white citizen and in the largest of all—Cuzco and the Titicaca basin—we find normal whites in larger numbers, though they nowhere live in such high ratios to the Indian as on the coast and in the lower valleys near the coast. With few exceptions the white population of Peru is distributed in response to favorable combinations of climate, soil, accessibility, and general opportunities to secure a living without extreme sacrifice.

These facts are stated in a simple way, for I wish to emphasize the statement that the Indian population responds to quite other stimuli. Most of the luxuries and comforts of the whites mean nothing to the Indian. The machine-made woolens of the importers will probably never displace his homespun llama-wool clothing. His implements are few in number and simple in form. His tastes in food are satisfied by the few products of his fields and his mountain flocks. Thus he has lived for centuries and is quite content to live today. Only coca and brandy tempt him to engage in commerce, to toil now and then in the hot valleys, and to strive for more than the bare necessities of life. Therefore it matters very little to him if his home town is isolated, or the resources support but a small group of people. He is so accustomed to a solitary existence in his ramblings with his flocks that a village of fifty houses offers social enjoyments of a high order. Where a white perishes for lack of society the Indian finds himself contented. Finally, he is not subject to the white man’s exploitation when he lives in remote places. The pastures are extensive and free. The high valley lands are apportioned by the alcalde according to ancient custom. His life is unrestricted by anything but the common law and he need have no care for the morrow, for the seasons here are almost as fixed as the stars.

Thus we have a sort of segregation of whites in the lower places where a modern type of life is maintained and of Indians in the higher places where they enjoy advantages that do not appeal to the whites. Above 8,000 feet the density of the white population bears a close inverse proportion to the altitude, excepting in the case of the largest valleys whose size brings together such numbers as to tempt the commercial and exploiting whites to live in them. Furthermore, we should find that high altitude, limited size, and greater isolation are everywhere closely related to increasing immorality or decreasing character among the whites. So to the low Indian population there is thus added the lowest of the white population. Moreover, because it yields the largest returns, the chief business of these whites is the sale of coca and brandy and the downright active debauchery of the Indian. This is all the easier for them because the isolated Indian, like the average isolated white, has only a low and provincial standard of morality and gets no help from such stimulation as numbers usually excite.

For example, the Anta basin at harvest time is one of the fairest sights in Peru. Sturdy laborers are working diligently. Their faces are bright and happy, their skin clear, their manner eager and animated. They sing at their work or gather about their mild chicha and drink to the patron saints of the harvest. The huts are filled with robust children; all the yards are turned into threshing floors; and from the stubbly hillslopes the shepherd blows shrill notes upon his barley reeds and bamboo flute. There is drinking but there is little disorder and there is always a sober remnant that exercises a restraining influence upon the group.

In the most remote places of all one may find mountain groups of a high order of morality unaffected by the white man or actually shunning him. Clear-eyed, thick-limbed, independent, a fine, sturdy type of man this highland shepherd may be. But in the town he succumbs to the temptation of drink. Some writers have tried to make him out a superior to the plains and low valley type. He is not that. The well-regulated groups of the lower elevations are far superior intellectually and morally in spite of the fact that the poorly regulated groups may fall below the highland dweller in morality. The coca-chewing highlander is a clod. Surely, as a whole, the mixed breed of the coastal valleys is a far worthier type, save in a few cases where a Chinese or negroid element or both have led to local inferiority. And surely, also, that is the worst combination which results in adding the viciousness of the inferior or debased white to the stupidity of the highland Indian. It is here that the effects of geography are most apparent. If the white is tempted in large numbers because of exceptional position or resources, as at La Paz, the rule of altitude may have an exception. And other exceptions there are not due to physical causes, for character is practically never a question of geography alone. There is the spiritual factor that may illumine a strong character and through his agency turn a weak community into a powerful one, or hold a weakened group steadfast against the forces of disintegration. Exceptions arise from this and other causes and yet with them all in mind the geographic factor seems predominant in the types illustrated herewith.[17]

CHAPTER VIII
THE COASTAL DESERT

TO the wayfarer from the bleak mountains the warm green valleys of the coastal desert of Peru seem like the climax of scenic beauty. The streams are intrenched from 2,000 to 4,000 feet, and the valley walls in some places drop 500 feet by sheer descents from one level to another. The cultivated fields on the valley floors look like sunken gardens and now and then one may catch the distant glint of sunlight on water. The broad white path that winds through vineyards and cotton-fields, follows the foot of a cliff, or fills the whole breadth of a gorge is the waste-strewn, half-dry channel of the river. In some places almost the whole floor is cultivated from one valley wall to the other. In other places the fields are restricted to narrow bands between the river and the impending cliffs of a narrow canyon. Where tributaries enter from the desert there may be huge banks of mud or broad triangular fans covered with raw, infertile earth. The picture is generally touched with color—a yellow, haze-covered horizon on the bare desert above, brown lava flows suspended on the brink of the valley, gray-brown cliffs, and greens ranging from the dull shade of algarrobo, olive and fig trees, to the bright shade of freshly irrigated alfalfa pastures.

After several months’ work on the cold highlands, where we rode almost daily into hailstorms or wearisome gales, we came at length to the border of the valley country. It will always seem to me that the weather and the sky conspired that afternoon to reward us for the months of toil that lay behind. And certainly there could be no happier place to receive the reward than on the brink of the lava plateau above Chuquibamba. There was promise of an extraordinary view in the growing beauty of the sky, and we hurried our tired beasts forward so that the valley below might also be included in the picture. The head of the Majes Valley is a vast hollow bordered by cliffs hundreds of feet high, and we reached the rim of it only a few minutes before sunset.