P  E  R  U :

CONQUEST  OF  PARADISE

About 1438, the ninth Inca, Pachacuti, set forth to conquer on a scale never before attempted in aboriginal America. By the time Columbus crossed the ocean sea in quest of Indies, Pachacuti and his son, Tupac Inca, tenth Inca, had forged an empire nearly as far reaching and well organized as Caesar's Rome. They Called it Tahuantinsuyu, Quechua for the " Four Quarters of the World ".

    Huayna Capac - Valiant Youth - surely visited Machu Picchu after he succeeded Tupac Inca in 1493, for he devoted years to a grand tour of his inherited Four Quarters of the World. Seeking new worlds to conquer, the eleventh Inca marched north beyond Ecuador to the land of Pasto in Colombia to attack rich goldsmithing cultures. Then, up risings in Ecuador pulled him back in anger and massacred 12,000 Quitus and Cannaris indians (including women and Children), the blood of this people reddened the waters of a beautiful lake. Today, they call this lake Yaguarcocha, Quechua for " bloody lake ".

    Huayna Capac settled down in Ecuador with his hundreds of wives and concubines, occupying a sumptuous palace of which no trace remains. Today natives, reminders of the brief lnca occupation of Ecuador are Quechua-speaking Indian communities of diverse tribal origins-some from distant Bolivia- found along the Pan American Highway.

The emperor's warrior son, Atahuallpa, became a favorite of the battle-tested armies that carried on the northern border campaigns. Meanwhile premonitions of doom haunted Huayna Capac. Chasquis, post runners who carried quipus along the royal roads, delivered many a dire message to Ecuador. One from the oracle at the Apurimac River bridge, 1,000 miles away, warned that bearded beings would subvert the empire. A chasqui from the coast reported that such men had appeared on floating houses but soon sailed out of sight. Then many runners warned that pestilence was sweeping the realm-the first of many mortal blows that weakened the empire on the eve of the holocaust to come.

About 1525 Huayna Capac was stricken possibly by smallpox introduced into the continent by Europeans probing its coastline. Twice he named an heir and twice his priests, hurriedly performing the calpa ceremony divination by examining llama viscera-predicted dire reigns for his choices. Before he could choose again, he died. In Cuzco the high priest conferred the royal fringe on Huascar, a son of Huayna Capac and his sister wife the queen. But Atahuallpa, Huascar's half brother, governor of Quito, reportedly refused to accompany his father's mummy to Cuzco and render homage. His generals, veterans of Ecuadorean wars, backed his insurgency, and civil war flared.

Huascar sent a huge inexperienced army against Atahuallpa, but it perished in battle near Ambato, Ecuador. The chronicler Cieza, who saw the skeleton-strewn battlefield twenty years later, wrote that the body count of 25 or 26 thousand was an underestimate.

Huascar conscripted army after army, including peasants from as far away as Argentina. Thousands who had escaped the plague now fell under the northerner's onslaughts. Perhaps 200,000 men fought in the final battle near Cuzco. The unthinkable occurred: Atahuallpa's generals tumbled Huascar from his golden litter. Cuzco's defenders fled in terror. The Son of the Sun had fallen.

The generals dressed the emperor in women's clothes. They forced him to eat excrement in Cuzco's streets and watch the extermination of his multitudinous family and courtiers.

Bitterness engendered by the war between the brothers persists to this day. "Bad blood between Peru and Ecuador began with Inca politics and culminated in our 1941 border war, a neighbor declared when I visited Cuzco, between Huascar and Atahualpa streets. "Ecuadoreans call Atahuallpa an emperor, but in my history book he was just a bastard usurper".

ATAHUALLPA had left Quito to make triumphal entry into Cuzco when he got word of his generals' victory. But at this moment coastal chiefs warned him of Pizarro's approach. A mere 62 cavalrymen and 106 foot soldiers, armed with Toledo blades and a few guns and crossbows, were winding slowly into the mountains of northern Peru.

The Spaniards passed smoldering ruins and corpses swinging from trees, mute evidence of the war between the brothers. In their own words, Pizarro's men wet their pants with fear, but they had lunatic nerve and military expertise honed by centuries of holy war against the Moors. Their intention was to conquer Peru just as Corte's had won Mexico, by exploiting civil strife to gain allies, by surprise attack, and by capture of the king. Curious to see the strangers, their beasts, and their magic staves that commanded the lightning, Atahuallpa broke his journey at Cajamarca, 600 miles northwest of Cuzco. He ordered the town evacuated, sent gifts to Pizarro, and waited at nearby thermal baths, attended by his wives and nobles. Tents of his army blanketed surrounding hills, although his best troops were pillaging Cuzco. He had consulted the oracles, and they had reassured him of his invincibility.

Meanwhile, the citizens of faraway Cuzco had found new hope. They thought Pizarro was coming in answer to their prayers to the supreme being, Viracocha, for deliverance from Atahuallpa. After the creation, Viracocha had set off across the Pacific walking on the waters. People believed he would re appear in times of crises. Surely the bearded saviors were sent by Viracocha!

Ironically, the white man inherited the god's name.

From the heights where Fizarro first sighted Atahuallpa's camp, I looked down one frosty morning on the green fields of Cajamarca, where scalding overflow from the Inca's Bath still wends through lush grass and fills the valley with vapor. As the sun rose, it lifted the mist from the stage of one of the most dramatic confrontations in history.

Pizarro sent an interpreter and 15 riders under Hernando de Soto (who later discovered the Mississippi River) to offer his services in arms and to ask the emperor to dine next day. The seated Inca offered ceremonial chicha, accepted the invitation, and told his guests to occupy the town plaza. Before leaving, De Soto galloped up to Atahuallpa and reared his charger. Nobles flinched. The Inca sat unmoved on the royal stool.

That night Atahuallpa executed the cowardly nobles. The Spaniards prayed till dawn.

Pizarro set the trap that the Inca bad unwittingly provided him. In the great triangular plaza, with an entrance at its apex, he laid an ambush. He hid his forces inside buildings that had doorways, high enough for horse and rider, facing into the walled plaza.

On Saturday, November 16, 1532, the Inca delayed his social call until sundown, sup posing horses to be of no use after dark, and bemused by reports that the bearded men were hiding in fear. Then be capped his spate of bad decisions by going unarmed to sup and spend the night in town.

Preceded by hundreds of sweepers, whose cries of triumph, said one of the conquis tadors, "sounded like the songs of hell," the Inca entered the plaza on his golden litter, at tended by richly dressed nobles and "five or six thousand menials." The only Spaniard in sight, a Dominican friar, came forward with a prayer book and read aloud. Atahuallpa examined the book, but as it failed to talk to him he threw it down.

Suddenly bugles blew, guns belched thun der, and the old Spanish war cry rang out, " Santiago (St. James) ! And at them ! "

Hoofed monsters charged out of trape zoidal doorways and trampled Indian flesh. Toledo blades turned crimson. Panic seized the courtiers; in their surge to escape, they demolished a chunk of the plaza wall.

Then, for the second time that year, a golden litter capsized and a Son of the Sun fell to earth. Within minutes Pizarro had plucked the Inca from the midst of his armies without the loss of a man. Spaniards pursued Indians into the night, killing, they reported, more than 8,000.

Pizarro's dreams came true, the audacity of a handful adventurers brought to a shattering end the glory of the Inca Empire and its immense wealths ever dreamed for a human being. The paradise was his, and It was now in his hands.

To this day the fabled wealth of that lost empire lures latter-day Pizarros--plunderers who for centuries have ravaged pre-Columbian graveyards. Their obsession: to eke a last few ounces of treasure from this golden chapter of South Americas's history.

        INDEX          THE PRIZE: ATAHUALLPA'S RANSOM