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| Ronald Wright |
Ronald
Wright’s 2015 novel, The Gold Eaters,
is an epic tale of a civilization confronted with inevitable change wrought by
a foreign power. It is the story of a young Inca boy, Wayman (his name means "hawk”
in the Quechua language), born in a small fishing village along the Peruvian
coast who, in 1527, is kidnapped by Spanish sailors led by Francisco Pizarro and
eventually taken to Spain. He lives some years with his captors, who are soldiers of
fortune seeking royal assent to return to Peru and conquer the Inca Empire.
Eventually Pizarro is given funding from the king and returns with Wayman, who
will be his official interpreter. Wright then details the next two decades, as
Spanish forces and Pizarro’s band of rough-cut mercenaries gradually wrest the lands and
wealth from the native peoples.
Wayman
provides the reader with a fascinating glimpse of power struggles within
the Spanish ranks, as well as those of Incan royalty. He helps us understand the native culture—its heritage, traditions, and beliefs; how
people lived their lives and what mattered to them. Previously, I had
little understanding of Incas, and had the standard, bare-bones history of "The
Conquest" that we all know. Wright gives us insight into how the Inca Empire
functioned and where its strengths and weaknesses lay. In his introduction, he
says:
Far to the south, beyond the jungle, where the
trees gave way to dunes and snow-capped mountains, lay the realm of the Incas. Running
more than three thousand miles from southern Colombia to central Chile and
western Argentina, the Inca Empire was then the second largest on Earth (after
China) and the last great civilization unknown to the outside world.
In 1526, Francisco Pizarro, a founder and mayor
of Panama, formed a company to find and conquer this golden land. (xiii)
One
of the reasons the Incas were vulnerable to the small Spanish forces was because Atawallpa,
the last Incan ruler, was in the midst of a dynastic struggle, with competing elites
vying for his throne. Of course, the host of “conquistadors” also brought with
them European diseases, especially small pox, which killed over three-quarters
of the native population. Wright describes how villages and towns up and down
the empire had been ravaged by the disease. Wayman himself barely survives
after contracting small pox in Spain, leaving his faced “pocked”, as were so
many in his land.
Disease
and civil war left the Incas weakened and unprepared for the foreign invaders,
but it was by no means a sure bet that Pizarro would succeed—his own small band
of marauders was disorderly, ill-equipped and poorly supplied. Having guns and horses certainly aided the Spanish, but their advanced military technology by no means was the only factor in Atawallpa's defeat. Ruthless determination
and a mad obsession to acquire gold at
any cost (one member of Atawallpa’s court asked Wayman if the foreigners ate gold), and a good deal of luck made their desperate gamble pay off. During
his first meeting with the Incan ruler in the capital Cusco, Pizarro observes
his fellow countrymen:
“On battered helmets and rusting mail, on ragged
clothes—half Spanish, half Peruvian—on the footwear of man and horse worn down
by granite roads. On the crazed, truculent eyes that meet his stare. What a
band of rogues! They may not frighten Atawallpa, but at times, by Christ, they
frighten him.” (189)
After
several years, Pizarro and waves of other Spanish eventually took control of the northern half
of the empire, while the southern half stood in rebellion for some decades. And
we see all this through the eyes of Wayman, kept prisoner by his Spanish overlords as he grows into manhood, his only desire to be reunited with
his family and to find his childhood love, Tika.
Wright’s
portrayal of the brutal and thuggish behaviour of the Spanish as they took from
the Incas all they had is difficult to read. His book is a corrective for the ‘air-brushed’ images we have of Spanish conquistadors, and the shine quickly comes off their gleaming armour as it becomes tarnished in the mud and blood of Peru. The Inca
Empire seemed a remarkably peaceful, organized and civil society, with its wealth distributed
equitably and having few instances of poverty or need. As well, its native
ethos or religiosity seemed in contrast to the contemporary civilization to the
north, the Aztecs. In Wright’s description, the Incas have a life-affirming
world view, with the sun as their principal deity. I’ve often felt the Aztecs had
a more ‘death-oriented’ culture (notably involving human sacrifice) and a world view more akin to the ancient Egyptians. This contrast is exemplified, for example, in how Incas gently greet the "four corners" of the sky each day. (Though, there is a scene with Atawallpa caressing the mummified head of a rival war-lord, while he contemplates making
the skin of another rival into a table-top! So there’s that.)
How
Wayman’s personal life story concludes and the status of the Incan Empire after
two decades of invasion leaves the reader satisfied with the former and saddened, and sickened, by the latter.
One wonders what kind of society would have grown in the Peruvian
highlands had the Spanish never arrived. Arguably, it would have been better than the one that took its place.
A good, fun read!
Cheers,
Jake.
Ronald Wright, The Gold Eaters. Penguin Canada Books
Inc., Toronto, 2015.
