From the historian's notes

Cusco, 1553

Peru · South America · May 1553 · autumn (austral; start of the dry season)

What it was high

a functioning double city — Inca masonry ground floors with Spanish upper stories going up; thousands of Andean residents, a few hundred Spanish householdsInca imperial capital (rebuilt in stone under Pachacuti in the 1400s); Spanish municipality founded on top of it in March 1534

That year

• aftermath of the Gonzalo Pizarro civil war — confiscations, resentments, one-armed veterans 1548 onward highthe city's whole Spanish society
• encomendero conspiracy that becomes the Hernandez Giron revolt breaks open November 1553 highcity-born rebellion that will take a year to put down
• Cieza de Leon's chronicle of Peru is published in Seville this same year — the world is reading about this city while she stands in it 1553 higha book

Who held it high

Viceroyalty of Peru, crown of Castile (Charles V)royal Audiencia governing between viceroys; corregidor in the cityGonzalo Pizarro's rebellion was crushed only five years ago (1548) — men in this city fought on both sides and everyone remembers who; encomenderos are again furious over laws limiting their use of Andean labor, and before this year ends (November 1553) Francisco Hernandez Giron will raise the next revolt at a Cusco wedding feast. In May the city is a pot not yet boiling

Its name high

Qusqu (Quechua; an oral name — Quechua has no script)Written in none native — quipu knot-records keep accounts but are not writing in the ordinary sense; Spanish documents use Latin script

The date, there high

1553Spanish Anno Domini on the JULIAN calendar (Gregorian reform is 1582); Andeans keep the agricultural-ritual year — May is harvest time, with Inti Raymi's old June date suppressed but rememberedChurch bells are new and few — the Angelus is learning to structure the day; Andean time runs on sun, agricultural season and the remembered ritual calendar. Chroniclers describe sun-pillars on the horizon once used to mark solstice sunrises; how many still stand in 1553 is uncertain — usable as absence, not presence.

Money medium

silver by weight — pesos of assayed silver; coin is scarcetomines and granos as accounting fractions; much of daily life is barter, coca and clothunknown — Cusco retail prices in 1553 are not something to invent; the mint at Lima (1568) and Potosi (1573) do not exist yet, so no struck coin is local

Weather medium

May: dry season beginning; brilliant clear days near 18-20 C, nights dropping toward frost; harvest weathernight frosts on the valley floor in the dry months are routine — this is chuño-making cold, used deliberately to freeze-dry potatoes

Things

Objectsquipu — still in daily use by Andean record-keepers for tribute counts under Spanish administration; wooden keros (lacquered drinking beakers); Spanish horseshoes and iron tools, still precious; spindles — women spin constantly, walking; rosaries alongside huaca offeringsFoodmaize and chicha (maize beer, sold by women); potatoes and chuño (freeze-dried in exactly this season's frosts); coca leaf, sold openly; llama charki (jerky); Castilian imports: wheat bread, wine and pork for the Spanish tableClothcumbi — fine tapestry-weave cloth, still the Andean currency of prestige; abasca (everyday alpaca-wool weave); Spanish broadcloth and velvet on the encomendero classGetting aboutllama trains; mule trains and horses (Spaniards only, in practice); everything else walksIn the airwoodsmoke and eucalyptus-free mountain air (eucalyptus comes centuries later); chicha fermentation; wet wool; tallow candles in new churches

What she'd hear

Quechua everywhere, with Aymara pockets; Spanish is the thin administrative layer. She would hear evangelization Quechua from friars' pulpits. She can pass in careful Spanish as a servant of Spaniards; market Quechua would take her further and mark her stranger at once.

Where she could stand

• Hatunrumiyoc lane — the wall of an Inca palace with its famous twelve-angled stone, now the base of a Spanish house
• Coricancha under Santo Domingo — the Sun temple's curved masonry serving as foundation for the Dominican priory
• Sacsayhuaman terraces above the city — the megalithic complex — actively being quarried by Spaniards for building stone
• the plaza (Haucaypata) — the old ceremonial square, now with arcaded Spanish shopfronts rising on its edges and Andean market women selling in its middle
• a tambo courtyard — roadside lodging yard where llama trains and mule trains load together

Researched for this card · confidence high