Word: atahualpa
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...forced fusion of cultures can sometimes produce brilliant offspring. A case in point is colonial Peru. After King Atahualpa was garroted by Francisco Pizarro in 1533, the Spanish conquistadors turned the Inca kingdom into a viceroyalty; some 16 million Indians were enslaved and converted at gunpoint. Indian artisans were appalled by the viceroy's cruelty, but they were thankful for the priests' ministrations. They embraced the conquerors' faith with fervor. They reared churches of baroque magnificence, carved passion figures of harrowing pathos. Delicately they embellished icons and chamber pots alike with the gold once sacred...
...avaricious Spaniards, gold was simply rare and therefore of monetary value; when a nation had enough, it became rich. The Indians were astonished at this attitude, and surmised that the white men had some physical disease that could only be cured by gold. The Inca Emperor Atahualpa had to ransom himself from the swinish Spanish Adventurer Pizarro with a roomful of the stuff-13,000 lbs., all told. (For his pains, Atahualpa was strangled.) Indifferently, the Spaniards melted art into bullion; their pillage increased Europe's gold supply by 20%, part of which went to finance the ill-fated...