Trujillo; in the Land of the Conquistadors

Today there is a general strike, which means nothing is open, pretty much everything is closed (except essential services) and that, as they say, is that. This affects me very little, or not at all, since I am pretty self contained, and I have my hotels booked for the next few days. I think four star hotels are pretty much an essential service, at least they are for me. I have discovered another essential activity after a long day's cycle: swimming. The various hotels I stayed at throughout Andalusia all had roof-top terrace pools, and I made good use of these after I had cleaned myself up in my room and showered. After several hours in the saddle, swimming really helps limber things up, and is just the thing before prowling about the narrow streets of towns looking for a place to have a formal sit-down dinner. Dinner here starts late, typically after 8:00, and most places serve until midnight, after which it is customary to have a bit of a walk about, read the paper, etc. then retire for the evening. In any case, there is a general strike today, which means that most places are closed, and I might have to dine at the hotel: worse things could happen.

It does mean I have extra time on my hands which I can dedicate to catching up this blog and regaling one and all with more of my cryptic ramblings. "Oh joy" you are probably thinking, "more tortured and turgid prose with meandering tangents and verbose descriptions." But you would be wrong, my little pumpkins, and that reminds me of the time many years ago when I was at the very first Folkfest at Point Grey, and I left to get a falafel. When I returned, security wouldn't let me bring the falafel back to where I was sitting. Therefore, I was forced to consume the falafel in great haste so as not to miss the plaintive chanting and rhythmic gyrations of the troupe of folk singers from Mongolia accompanied on yak frame drum, or whoever was on stage at the time. However, in so doing, I accidentally consumed my ticket stub along with the falafel (it's easier than you'd think to eat a tahini-soaked ticket stub without noticing it), and it took a great deal of cajoling on my part to convince the security person to authorize my return. The reason I mention this is that today ( which is not today, but let's pretend I have dutifully been keeping this blog up to date for the past week) I find myself in Extremadura.

Extremadura is one of the poorest regions in Spain, though these days that typically means that a farmer has to make do with a 10 year old tractor rather than a new one. As the name suggests, "Extrema", or "edge", and "dura", meaning "hard", is the tough edge of Spain, a hard land that breeds tough men, tough women, and tough little furry dogs. In order to break up my almost continuous and exclusive diet of McDonald's hamburgers (I am kidding) I make it a point to eat native cuisine and try each regional dish at least once, no matter how repulsive and disgusting it is, or how much it reminds me of the taste of a tahini-soaked Folkfest ticket. On today's menu is the regional specialty, "migas."

Migas consists of stale bits of bread (fresh bread won't work) pan fried in pork fat, with a bit of paprika, garlic, bits of chorizo sausage and fried red peppers. Needless to say, there is almost nothing in this dish which could be considered "healthy" or "low carb" or even "low calorie" and I was hard pressed to finish even enough not to insult the waiter, who was probably raised on this and has a tear in his eye every time he remembers how his mother used to prepare it. Fortunately I keep a small Canadian flag pin in my pocket for just such occasions, and thus after discretely installing it on my lapel, politely indicated to the waiter in exaggeratedly broken Spanish that he could bring on the third course, which was a more conventional asparagus and mushroom egg scramble. While eggs and omelets in Canada are typically reserved for breakfast, in Spain they are served typically for lunch, and never at breakfast. Needless to say, I am very much missing the decadent restaurants of Barcelona...

The restaurant itself has a lovely patio overlooking the aforementioned hard land of hard people and hard animals, filled with ridges, hard rocky soil, and stunted sun-baked foliage. While waiting for the next dish, it occurred to me to think of alternative history lines where all the conquistadors had not actually come from Extremadura. Cortés, Pizarro, Orellana, Vasco de Gama, Núñez de Balboa, Hernando de Soto, Alvarado, and Valdivia, a veritable who's who of the Conquistadors, all the major ones in fact, were all from this area, which is the size of Switzerland, but even now has less than a million people. Things were a great deal more desperate then than now, which is to say that they were suffering more than just from old tractors, and leaving this for the New World was an opportunity. What is staggering is that with medieval technology, little education, and an apparent belief in their ability to do almost anything, they conquered a continent of millions of people. Francisco Pizarro, for instance, was indeed an orphaned, poor, illiterate swine herder with no formal education. Yet with 168 men, he took on a battle-hardened army of 80,000 Incas, fresh from having fought a civil war, and won. Before anyone romanticizes on the Rousseauistic idea of the "Noble Savage", let us face the facts. During many days of marching, Pizarro and his men had many times come across pyramids covered in blood, with human remnants scattered about which made his men more than a bit frightened and sick.  They fully realized their fate should they be captured, which seemed inevitable and yet they pressed on. The Inca belief was that the high priest summoned the sun to rise every morning, and to do this required a human sacrifice which was a beating human heart. The reason New World pyramids have such steep steps is that after being "disheartened", the bodies were rolled down the sides and it was important that they didn't get caught up since other priests were at the bottom to interpret the auspices based on how the body eventually landed. There is evidence of ritual cannibalism in both Inca and Aztec religious practice, so the highly idealized, peaceful and agrarian societies so often portrayed as some unspoiled paradise was far from that for the average Inca.

Prince Atahulpa knew full well the Spaniard's intentions, and also knew that they were not gods. Through his network of spies and those who had closely followed the Spanish upon disembarking, he knew that they were a small force and lightly armed. We know this because the meeting between Atahulpa and his generals is one of the few documents from the time period written from the point of view of the Inca which survives. It was his intention to capture all of them, relieve them of their steel swords and armor, and kill them off one by one as sacrifices to the sun. What happened next is something which staggers the mind. The night before the battle, Pizarro's men lay shaking under blankets because they saw the hundreds of camp fires of the enemy lighting up the horizon, and the various journals kept by Spanish soldiers all concur that grown men wet themselves in fear. Yet the next day, the battle was over in a matter of minutes, Pizarro and his men had killed hundreds of Inca and captured the king. The greatest empire of the Americas, the Inca Empire, the Romans of the New World, taken over by a band of illiterates led by a pig farmer.  It is too ridiculous to even consider, yet it actually happened.   How anyone could screw up with 500 to 1 odds is amazing thing number one to consider: all the Inca had to do was divide themselves up into groups of 500, and have each group pick a single target and pelt that one guy with rocks, spears and arrows, nothing more. Having to deal with 500 rocks launched at high speed, never mind arrows, spears, poison darts and everything else they had would have made short work of Pizarro and his men despite their armor. However, the Inca army was highly centralized and by capturing Atahulpa they essentially shut down the chain of command. Second amazing thing, probably more amazing, is why Pizarro thought he could take on a force which outnumbered him 500 to 1. Was he crazy, stupid, or a military genius? Probably a bit of all of the above, but that battle of 1532 must stand out as one of the greatest upsets in history.

Statue of Pizarro in the main square of Trujillo.

"80,000 Inca soldiers? No problem.

Fry me up some migas, lads, as I'll have this Inca Empire thing wrapped up by lunchtime."