twenty minutes."
But in the cathedral we saw the mummy of Pizarro the Conqueror himself. There he was, in a glass coffin, a little man who could not have been very impressive alive and who must have looked like a child to the giant Inca gods. Yet he and his "thirteen friends" by treachery and deceit and casual murder brought the mighty Inca Empire to ruin.
Now he lies with sunken eyesockets staring sightlessly up, his shriveled, darkened flesh and untidy hair on display, a sight for any tourist with two-bits to tip the attendant monk to let them stare. "Ozymandias, King of Kings-" Was it worth it, pal? Are you happy now? Or are you groaning in hell for your crimes?
Odd though it seems, although his bloody record is well known and although most of the citizens of Peru are descended from the conquered rather than the conquerors, Pizarro seems to be a popular hero.
I asked to be shown slums. This was not morbid curiosity. All countries have the homes of the rich, whether they be commissars, counts, or capitalists; their homes are all beautiful, they look pretty much alike everywhere, allowing for climate and architectural styling, and you learn very little about a country from seeing them. I always look at them for the enjoyment of seeing beautiful things, but you learn more from the slums, which are not enjoyable to see.
Lima had both shanty town slums and formal, tenement slums. The shanty towns were true international architecture, the grim and pathetic structures built by people who have nothing at all and must shelter themselves with scraps and other people's junk. They were indistinguishable from the shacks of Okies in Imperial Valley twenty years ago, from the barrios of Rio, from the shanties of Singapore's waterfront. The formal tenements were mostly one-story buildings built wall to wall in long rows with narrow alleys. They reminded me of dog kennels and were even more depressing than the much less adequate shanties, for here poverty seemed static and hopeless, a permanent way of life.
Almost next door to these warrens was a palace. It had once been a private home but now belonged to the government and was used by the army. Many of the soldiers' families lived in the nearby tenements; the contrast was sharp and bitter for papa worked in (literal) marble halls, then went home when off duty to a house more suitable for pigs than for women and children.
The palace had been built by a marquis for his "beloved"- a polite Latin expression which concedes the permanence of marriage but admits that love is something else and important in its own way. The social custom of the mistress as a formal institution in Latin America is very disconcerting to norteamericanos, reared in a matriarchy. Except for a very few cases, mostly in Hollywood and New York, there is no group or social class in the United States parallel to what is meant by "mistress" in Latin America, and even the exceptions are not truly parallel, for a kept woman does not have the publicly recognized, customary status of a Latin mistress.
When we use the word "mistress"-which is seldom-the reference is often in the past tense and means simply that Mr. and Mrs. Jones had their honeymoon before they held their wedding, a circumstance often factual but usually known publicly only through gossip and conjecture, or known statistically through Dr. Kinsey's tedious tables. Or "mistress" may refer to an informal biological arrangement carefully concealed and usually without any specific financial arrangements for support. Neither of these cases parallels the Latin custom. A Latin American who has a mistress usually has a wife as well and will appear in public with either one of them, but not both. Each woman has a recognized place in his life and their social spheres ordinarily do not overlap.
But a mistress is not something to hide away in a back street. Her status is limited but much more privileged than is easy for a gringo to comprehend. Some years ago in a
But in the cathedral we saw the mummy of Pizarro the Conqueror himself. There he was, in a glass coffin, a little man who could not have been very impressive alive and who must have looked like a child to the giant Inca gods. Yet he and his "thirteen friends" by treachery and deceit and casual murder brought the mighty Inca Empire to ruin.
Now he lies with sunken eyesockets staring sightlessly up, his shriveled, darkened flesh and untidy hair on display, a sight for any tourist with two-bits to tip the attendant monk to let them stare. "Ozymandias, King of Kings-" Was it worth it, pal? Are you happy now? Or are you groaning in hell for your crimes?
Odd though it seems, although his bloody record is well known and although most of the citizens of Peru are descended from the conquered rather than the conquerors, Pizarro seems to be a popular hero.
I asked to be shown slums. This was not morbid curiosity. All countries have the homes of the rich, whether they be commissars, counts, or capitalists; their homes are all beautiful, they look pretty much alike everywhere, allowing for climate and architectural styling, and you learn very little about a country from seeing them. I always look at them for the enjoyment of seeing beautiful things, but you learn more from the slums, which are not enjoyable to see.
Lima had both shanty town slums and formal, tenement slums. The shanty towns were true international architecture, the grim and pathetic structures built by people who have nothing at all and must shelter themselves with scraps and other people's junk. They were indistinguishable from the shacks of Okies in Imperial Valley twenty years ago, from the barrios of Rio, from the shanties of Singapore's waterfront. The formal tenements were mostly one-story buildings built wall to wall in long rows with narrow alleys. They reminded me of dog kennels and were even more depressing than the much less adequate shanties, for here poverty seemed static and hopeless, a permanent way of life.
Almost next door to these warrens was a palace. It had once been a private home but now belonged to the government and was used by the army. Many of the soldiers' families lived in the nearby tenements; the contrast was sharp and bitter for papa worked in (literal) marble halls, then went home when off duty to a house more suitable for pigs than for women and children.
The palace had been built by a marquis for his "beloved"- a polite Latin expression which concedes the permanence of marriage but admits that love is something else and important in its own way. The social custom of the mistress as a formal institution in Latin America is very disconcerting to norteamericanos, reared in a matriarchy. Except for a very few cases, mostly in Hollywood and New York, there is no group or social class in the United States parallel to what is meant by "mistress" in Latin America, and even the exceptions are not truly parallel, for a kept woman does not have the publicly recognized, customary status of a Latin mistress.
When we use the word "mistress"-which is seldom-the reference is often in the past tense and means simply that Mr. and Mrs. Jones had their honeymoon before they held their wedding, a circumstance often factual but usually known publicly only through gossip and conjecture, or known statistically through Dr. Kinsey's tedious tables. Or "mistress" may refer to an informal biological arrangement carefully concealed and usually without any specific financial arrangements for support. Neither of these cases parallels the Latin custom. A Latin American who has a mistress usually has a wife as well and will appear in public with either one of them, but not both. Each woman has a recognized place in his life and their social spheres ordinarily do not overlap.
But a mistress is not something to hide away in a back street. Her status is limited but much more privileged than is easy for a gringo to comprehend. Some years ago in a
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