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About the disoccupation when discovered |
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The colonial occupation |
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In Machu Picchu no clear traces of a Spanish occupation were found, save one or two casual, not very firm finds, although it would not be surprising to find objects from the colonial or republican period since the site was always linked to properties attributed to the Spanish after the invasion of 1534. The citadel, then, was abandoned in that time and not before, perhaps between 1534 and 1570, the period of Inca resistance. Moreover, the area of Vilcabamba, in proximity to Machu Picchu, was a point of attraction to the Spanish because there the Inca rebels took refuge. No one knows what happened, although perhaps one day we will find the account of how the sanctuary was burned and destroyed as part of the fundamentalist movement of extirpation of idolatry which was unleashed in that time and that, according to Raul Porras Barrenechea "seem to have arisen under the |
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auspices of the priests of the redoubt of Vilcabamba and have been secretly propagated all over Peru during the period of the governor Lope Garcia de Castro, around 1565".
If this is true, Machu Picchu, as a notable place close to the zone of Vilcabamba, was the most appropriate point for unleashing the evangelizing furies of the fanatic soldier friars who at that time supported the war against the Incas who had risen up against the invaders. The war against the Incas of Vilcabamba was ended by the viceroy Francisco de Toledo in 1572. And so notable was the place, that Hiram Bingham and his contemporaries from Cuzco thought Machu Picchu was the "lost city" where the power was installed for the almost 40 years that the war lasted.
The evidence of severe fires recurrently appears in the majority of the chambers excavated in Machu Picchu by archaeologists in our time. Subjecting the unfaithful and their paraphernalia to fire was one of the most notorious practices of the friars, extirpators of idolatry. Some of those remains could have belonged to the burning of plants which Bingham found on his explorations between 1911 and 1915. He takes it upon himself to say he had encountered traces of old fires in several parts.
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pag. 1 - 2
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