Word: incas
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Founded in the early 1970s, Sendero Luminoso claims as many as 1,000 members, most of them peasants and students from the mountains. Their eccentric ideology is mingled with a curious form of messianic tribalism. The Senderistas use Inca slingshots, for example, to fling dynamite sticks at targets. The guerrillas' atavistic tactics have evoked a similar response from the Andean villagers. When eight journalists were killed near Ayacucho in January, a government commission concluded that villagers had perpetrated the crime using Senderista methods. The bodies of the newsmen were carefully stripped, washed and turned face down, while their clothes...
...Inca Irrigation...
...wonderful to read about old Inca canals being put to good use again [Sept. 28]. The Yucatan peninsula and Guatemala also have ancient canals that might be restored, thus helping these poor areas become prosperous again...
...four summers, Kendall and an international team of volunteers, meagerly financed by a grab bag of charitable sources, have been laboring like Inca road gangs, repairing broken stonework, rebuilding terrace walls and clearing canal channels choked with debris. Aside from applying a little cement and plastic sheeting to canal beds, they have stuck to traditional Inca stoneworking techniques. So far they have managed to reirrigate only 30 acres. But even this small step forward-or backward-has begun to change some of the lives of the handful of farmers on the slopes around Patallacta. One peasant has requested and secured...
...aqueducts to working order, she may be inadvertently disturbing other fragile remnants of the ancient culture. The Peruvian government, however, applauds her efforts: earlier this year she became the first foreign woman to receive the country's Order of Merit. Luis Valcarcel, one of the pioneers of Inca archaeology, also approves. "Her project is praiseworthy," he says, "because she is not trying simply to draw up a catalogue of ruins; she is trying to restore them to their original condition." Modern Peru has much to learn from the early natives, says Valcarcel. "The Incas had a deep sense...