Word: atahuallpa
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...dramatic chronicle of the encounter of the aging conquistador Francisco Pizarro and the young Inca emperor Atahuallpa, however, the play is mechanical, preachy, largely unaffecting and sometimes silly. Ancient Mariner style, Shaffer supplies his own albatross in the form of a narrator, always an ill omen that the drama will be becalmed. He harangues the listener on the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church and the evils of war and plunder. His ultimate theme is that God is dead and life lacks meaning. Royal Hunt is a sort of Tiny Alice shorn of obscurantism and sent to Inca land...
...existence, Pizarro is haunted by the emptiness of being. Both are horrified by the blank, impersonal face that the universe turns to them. Played with stormy authority by Actor Christopher Plummer, Pizarro lashes his men through an ordeal of fire, ice and fear into the serene court of Atahuallpa. They are greeted as gods, and prove the bloodiest of devils. In a slow-motion ballet of contained fury, the actors mime the slaughter of 3,000 Peruvians within an hour by 167 Spaniards...
...with a taste for monuments, General Miguel Molina, prefect of Cuzco, decided one day a century ago to dress up the city's main plaza. He thereupon put up a bronze fountain, embellished by four Tritons and topped by a 5-ft. bronze statue identified as Atahuallpa, last of the Inca emperors, who was executed by the Spanish in 1533. But over the years the suspicion has grown in Cuzco that the lofty figure is not Atahuallpa at all. It seems, instead, to be the North American redskin Powhatan, chief of the Algonquins and father of Pocahontas...
...matters: a typhoid epidemic that reduced the population from 60,000 to 11,000. All records of the transaction with the foundry were lost around 1880 when a government building caved in, and Cuzco preferred not to listen to the skeptics. Says Cuzco Historian Enrique Gamarra Hernández: "Atahuallpa was never very popular among Cuzqueños. His father divided the overextended empire between his sons, Atahuallpa and Huascar. Atahuallpa defeated Huascar, took Cuzco, and eliminated the old Cuzco nobility. The Cuzqueños have never quite forgiven...
...American-Grace Airways, which transports most of the tourists who visit Cuzco, has started a search to find the missing statue. Panagra reasons that if the foundry sent Powhatan to Peru, it may have sent Atahuallpa to some U.S. town square. He should be easy to spot. He is robust, with short-cropped hair, grave manner, handsome face, fierce eyes. He wears an elaborate band around his forehead, and a collar of large emeralds...