A Wonder of the World
A visit to Machu Picchu is an event,
a trip to one of the ‘7 Wonders of the World.’
However it is also mass tourism. Many tickets are required. Hordes wait
on the train platforms. Lines can be
long. Timing is all important, and you only spend about 3 hours at the site,
most with voluble guides. The air is
thin and some steps tricky. Since we
have all seen multiple pictures of the little city on the mountain, backed by
its rounded, pointed peak, it seems unreal.
Am I really here? Was I
there? Is this happening? It is a bit disconcerting. Tourists are snapping selfies and pictures of
themselves endlessly, as if to prove the fact. I would rather sit in one place for a time and
absorb the thing. Do it if you go.
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| Temple of the Sun at Machu Picchu |
What is
funny is that these tourists are from all over Latin
America and the world. Many
have some kind of religion other than that of the Quechua Inca. Some have none. Yet it is a pilgrimage to an important pagan
religious site. The architecture,
agronomy, sun temples, holy rocks and mountains all play a role in that story. People
flock to Notre Dame and the Siena basilica, the
mosques in Casablanca and Mecca,
the shores of the Ganges in India
or temples in Ankor Wat. Machu Picchu represents
grounded paganism, though even paganism has its ridiculous side too. Nevertheless I’ll quote a funny Facebook meme of a native American
replying to a European priest and explorer in the 1700s: “But
dude, the sun is real!”
In the
little mountain town there are dug-out places for offerings to Pacha Mama –
Mother Earth. Llamas and alpacas were sacrificed to her. There is a stone
condor, perhaps as a nod to the air and gods in the sky.
There is a semi-circular Temple of the
Sun, designed like Stonehenge to catch the rays
of sunrise on the summer solstice. There are terraced fields to grow food and also
test varieties at height as a science experiment. Quinoa, potatoes, chilis and corn were some of the foods. There is a grassy central plaza where ceremonies, flute music
and ball games took place. It is the
terminus of the walkable Inca Trail from Cusco,
so it was tightly connected to that city. About 500 lived there other than the
royal family. What is somewhat tragic is
that when the conquistadors and Pizzaro arrived they were still building structures. So Machu
Picchu, like life, went unfinished.
PAGANISM & HISTORY
And now for
something different, but not quite. It is also well known that Marx, in the “Gotha Programme” pointed out that labor
‘and nature’ create all wealth. There
are also many quotes from Marx about the link between human biology and
history. Here is one I easily found by
Engels: "Thus at every
step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a
conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing
outside nature - but that we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong
to nature, and exist in its midst..."
This is not biological ‘essentialism’ or crude empiricism. This is a crucial fact, as we are very
conscious and hard-working animals. Marx
studied ‘production’ and ‘reproduction’ because they are the foundation of
human life. He determined that the
capitalists would figure out the lowest amount they could pay for workers to
survive, gain knowledge and reproduce more workers and consumers. It was and still is an essential calculation for many capitalists. In other words, how much can we get away with?
These processes are the root of history since hunter-gatherer times. We
are born into history, yes, but with a human body that still has ‘needs.’ Do a thought experiment about a ‘being’ that
doesn’t need to eat, never gets hot or cold, never dies, is not bothered by
rain, snow, sleet and the like, and can create others like him with the snap of
a ‘finger.’ That would be a science
fiction or religious ‘thing’ – it would not be human. It would be a product of Silicon Valley corporate ‘transhumanism.’
And where would
literature or film be without the gravitas of mortality? Creativity, work, striving, building are all aspects of this 'human condition.'
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| Agricultural terraces at Machu Picchu |
The ‘sacred
valley’ of Peru leading to Machu Picchu provides
clues as to this notion of human needs.
Why was the valley ‘sacred’ to the Inka?
Because of its agricultural productivity. Terraces on the mountain sides, agricultural
bottom-lands and a consistent rainy season made it a fertile place, along with rivers
like the Urubamba and snow caps above. What
pagan entities did the Inka worship? The
sun, moon, water and “Pacha Mama” – or mother earth. Why? It
seems obvious. This was their grounded,
material “Trinity” unlike the ridiculous and idealist Christian / Catholic one
– Father, Son and Holy Ghost - which has no connection to nature.
Machu Picchu provided a summer refuge from Cusco
for the royal family. Note, every royal
family has a ‘summer palace.’ Now the question arises, who got the surplus that funded the building of Machu
Picchu as a center of learning, astronomy, shamanism,
botany, stonemasonry, textiles, architecture and agronomy? The Inkan ruling class were
the beneficiaries, along with their experts and shamans, while the peasant
farmers and building laborers provided the labor, and the soldiers, protection.
Which might remind one of the Egyptian pharaoh’s and their skilled layers too. Yet
this grew out of the human drive to survive entailing food, clothing, shelter
and community. All these things are only
made possible by the latter, community, which is key. And the lords controlled the community, though egalitarian peasant communes called allyus existed far from the empire's control.
There is a centuries-long tradition of
textiles in Peru,
which needs no explanation. The conquistadores burned indigenous textiles in their destructive religious frenzy, along with melting all the gold and silver into ingots and shipping them to Spain. The Inca did not use gold and silver for money, only in ceremonies to decorate their upper classes. Pre-Incan societies had many artifacts for fertility and those depicting sex, which figures. Why did they need children to know anything, as
they had a very large school in that little mountain town erroneously called Machu Picchu? Why did they need children, period? That answer too is obvious. It's a note to post-modernist liberals.
This is how
pre-colonial human ‘history’ functioned at this point, an archaic society
rooted in the highly-conscious and hard-working human animal’s life-needs and
life-force, which eventually produced a surplus for their holy ruling class. Then Pizzaro’s colonialist
diseases, cavalry and troops arrived and killed or destroyed what they could. Another system began to grow in Peru – extractive
colonialism which turned the Inca into virtual slaves. The Incan allyu of collective farming also began to fall victim. This was a defining moment in Peru’s history from
my contact with the guides here.
History is
determined by systems of production and reproduction, initially based on
survival, that flower into class struggle over the surplus and issues of
exploitation. With better development in
tools, technology and machinery based on surplus accumulation, along with waves of class struggle, capital has moved away from relative scarcity in some cases to plenty, much as Marx predicted. But only with a social revolution would this be possible to spread world-wide. This would bring shortened labor
hours and a happier life. The means
of production and reproduction would become social property and valued, not
private property for the enrichment of an upper class. Simple stuff really, though perhaps too
simple for the academic philosopher, estranged intellectual or reformist Marxist. Sorry!
A link to a
Blogspot book review about how ‘human nature’ was fundamental to Marx and Engels
approach to social life – “Marx and Human
Nature – Refutation of a Legend” by Norman Geras: https://maydaybookstore.blogspot.com/search?q=geras
Prior
blogspot reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to search
our 19 year archive, using these terms: “Peru,” “human nature,” “paganism,”
“Geras,” "tourism."
The
Cultural Marxist / May 23, 2025
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