Peru

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History

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 The Inca Empire (Tawantinsuyu in Quechua) existed in South America from about 1200 until the death of its last emperor Atahualpa at the hands of Spanish Conquistadores in 1533. The empire stretched as far north as southern Colombia and Ecuador, included all of Peru and Bolivia as well as northwestern Argentina and northern Chile. Its capital was the modern-day city of Cuzco (Quechua for "Navel of the World"), in what is today Peru. This great empire encompassed many nations and over 700 different languages.

Religion

 The Incas built many temples to their deities. Among the best-known Incan temples are the Sun Temple in Cuzco, the temple at Vilcashuaman, the temple at Aconcagua (the highest mountain in South America) and the Temple of the Sun at Titicaca Island. The Sun Temple in Cuzco was built out of exquisitely matched and joined stones. It had a circumference of over 1200 feet. Inside the temple was a great image of the sun. One part of the temple called "the Golden Enclosure" contained models of cornstalks, llamas and lumps of earth. Portions of the Incas' land were allotted to the sun and administered for the priests.

Sacred Sites

 Huacas, or sacred sites, were widespread around Incan empire. Huacas were deific entities that resided in natural objects such as mountains, boulders or streams. Spiritual leaders in a community would use prayer and offerings to communicate with a huaca for advice or assistance.

Priests and Chosen Women

 Priests lived at all of the important shrines and temples. They functioned as the diviners of the lungs and as sorcerers, confessors and healers. The title of the chief priest in Cuzco was Villac umu. Villac umu had power over all the shrines and temples and could appoint and remove priests.

 Only the most skilled could be Chosen Women. They were picked at an early age, and spent their time weaving textiles used by the Inca and its priests.

Divination

 Nothing of importance was done without divination. Divination was used to diagnose illnesses, predict what would happen in battles and to drive out demons. Divination was also used to determine what sacrifices should be made to which god. The Incas believed that life was controlled by unseen powers, and they appealed to these powers in their rites of divination.

 Incan priests practiced divination by watching spiders move, by looking at the arrangement that coca leaves took in a shallow dish and by investigating the lungs of sacrificed white llamas. The lungs of the llama were inflated by blowing into the dissected trachea, and then were removed by priests, who minutely studied the veins. They also drank ayahuasca, a hallucinatory drug that affects the central nervous system. The Inca believed this practice put the imbiber in touch with supernatural powers.

Sacrifice

 Human and animal sacrifices were part of many important occasions. Many sacrifices were made every day for to celebrate the sun's appearance. Others were offered when a new imperial ruler was chosen. For the most important sacrifices, up to two hundred children were sometimes offered. Even the Chosen Women from the Sun Temple were sometimes sacrificed. Pains were taken that human sacrifices were unmarked and in perfect condition. Many sacrificial victims were taken from defeated lands as a form of taxation.

 According to legend, a ten year old girl named Tanta Carhua was picked by her father to be sacrificed to the Incan Emperor. The supposedly physically perfect child was sent to Cuzco to the emperor where feasts and parades were given in honor of her courage. She was buried alive in a tomb in the Andean mountains. Because of the honored legend, child sacrifice victims had to be nearly perfect. Once they were chosen they would meet the emperor and be feted in their honor. It was believed that the child would become a god when they died. Before being buried alive, the child would drink chicha, an alcoholic beverage apparently to dull their senses. To honor them, priests would conduct ceremonies as their spirits left the earth.

Santa Catalina Monastery

From Santa Catalina Web Site

 Santa Catalina was built in Arequipa, the city that was founded in 1540 in a place specially chosen for its natural beauty and good climate, and with a unique construction material: sillar, a porous stone from volcanic lava used to built a nice city with our own architectural designs, with spaces and proportions of great esthetic value, and also to have carvings on imposing fronts with fine decorative details, making of Arequipa a colonial center of marked identity, within the main urban centers of the continent.

 Its architectonic style is mainly colonial, but of a mestizo nature. Different from other colonial heritages in this part of Latin America, in Santa Catalina specially, the fusion of Spanish and native elements can be observed to the point of generating it own creativity.

 The recurrent earthquakes affecting Arequipa since 1582 destroyed the older constructions and also the properties of the relatives of the nuns of Santa Catalina over whom the income that guaranteed the future economy and life of the Monastery was dependent.

 This was the reason and origin for building the citadel whiting the monastery of Saint Catherine of Siena in Arequipa. The relatives of the nuns decided to built private cells for them, because the common dormitory was damaged and was also too small for the increasing number of nuns. For almost two centuries during the viceroyalty, the cloisters and cells of Santa Catalina have underwent modifications, additions and new constructions. All of these have made of it a sample of the colonial architecture of Arequipa.

Book Hostel in Arequipa

Cheap Hostels in Arequipa (Peru)
Hostal Tambo Viejo Socabaya 107, IV Centenario Tel. (54) 288-195 Email: room@tamboviejo.com Web: www.tamboviejo.com Arequipa	Casa La Reyna Zela, 209 Tel. 054-286-578 Arequipa
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