Peru- setting a tone

What I wrote below was initially jotted down in my notebook, while taking a train from Cusco to Aguas Calientes...

I wanted to share it with you first among the many emotions I have felt while being in Peru....

I saw Inka temples and sacred places that had been demolished by the Spaniards in order to build their churches and institutions on top of. To solidify their hegemony. It was heartbreaking...

We saw

Qorikancha the temple of the sun in Cusco.. it had been made by civil engineers hundreds of years ago to pay tribute to the gods, the sun, to keep track of the days and constilations. The temple had been excavated while archeologists started looking at the structures of a colonial cathedral and found that they built the cathedral directly on top of the Inka temple in order to deligitimize their way of life, their amazing advancements in science, astrology, engineering etc...

We (The developed World) are like the Spaniards, we are a society that has decided to build on top of what is sacred in order for profit and commerce. We are a culture of destruction. We are a society built on death.

We are the disjuncture of civilizations before us that praised the sun, and everything living from it that would sustain their lives.

We are a people that worship what dies

not for us to sustain ourselves..

but with the arrogant notion that everything here (on earth) is for us... and IT IS NOT!

Why are we the first to not get it??

Looking up at the mountains, on the way to Aguas Calientes, I saw amazing lush but jagged Mountains , lush green vegetation decorating it´s sides. I saw a violent river below the train with crashing waves carrying sulfur and minerals to the rest of the region..

I wanted to cry..

Wanted to fly into the low clouds.

Wanted to pay tribute to all that was greater than my own meager life.

Humanity, ecology, life, history of life... as a whole.


Wanted to cry because there were civilizations before mine that had understood this, and cry for the introduction of commerce , typhoid and the greed and interests of colonials and clergy that sought to exploit the very people that praised life and not money.

I wanted to cry for all those that didn´t know this beauty that didn´t feel the urgency to fight to keep our livelyhoods and future generations from seeing the same destruction. Those that didn´t know what was at stake to fight for. Those of us that forgot how to plant our feet in the ground and realize we too are a part of the earth and all of life.


Wanted to cry for those that did not see this current space and time as the fragile state that still had amazing new narratives that needed to be written by us.


People that forgot we make history.... even by being silent.



Seeing, feeling and knowing this... surely they too would not go on with¨business as usual¨.


This is the most rewarding thing to me right now.. to realize my life will never be the same, to know that I would never be comfortable with the same kind of comfort in my bubble. I have a responsibility to consider how I play into this .. how my actions are in twine with all of this.
I have a responsibility to change it... with all I have seen... observed.. digested

I must never see new things without thinking , never just see for escapism purposes, I must consider every social, economic, global, political implication I can that comes to mind.. or else how can I grow? How will I really learn?