After my short South American trip I’ve become very interested on the continent. I’ve been reading a lot about South America and I’m thinking about going for a trip from South to North following the shadow of Ernesto Guevara.
Why this sudden interest in South America?
It’s difficult to say. In South America I could feel my Spanish roots more powerfully than on Spain. South America people is closer to the XV century Spaniard adventurer that current Spanish people are. We have become too influenced by other cultures while South America is still faithful to the old spirit. The people is street smart, some of them are dreamers, most of them just live on the present and none of them seem to think too much on the future.
In South America happened one of the few moments in history when a developed civilization contacted a less advanced one. South American people had never contacted Greek and Roman civilization and in consequence they developed by they own at lower pace. By the time Francisco Pizarro discovered them, they were 10 centuries behind in technical development. The Inca civilization was as military, social and economically complex as the Roman Empire had been in Europe.
At that time we didn’t have the same high moral and ethics we have now and we didn’t care about the social or scientific possibilities of such contact. Ten centuries of technical development between the too civilizations was simply too much. Spanish powder and Inca naivety were enough to subdue them on the wink of an eye. After the conquest, we took possession of a huge part of the continent and we made them a colonial province of the Spanish Empire . They become the main source of gold and silver to finance the Spanish expansion all around the world.
They become the magic key of the Spanish Empire. South America changed the course of the history five centuries ago.
In a few centuries South America was linked to the Spanish culture. We mix our races and we force them to forget their old natural gods and tribal languages and convert to Catholicism and a common language.
I spoke with lots of people about all of this. They consider us their roots and they blame us about how we invaded their country and took advantage of the local wealth instead of invest it there. Basically we place them on the modern world in exchange of several centuries of domination and exploitation.
The next posts will deal with what I discover in Lima, Cuzco and Machu Picchu. Stay tuned!