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Image of
a Quechua woman wearing a
traditional hat walking towards the Plaza de Armas on Calle Loreto (Loreto
Street) in Cusco, Peru. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this
photograph is not how much things have changed over the past forty-five years,
rather how similar they are to the present Cusco. Despite onslaughts of
tourists from every part of the globe, Cusco remains more or less the same with
its original inca stonework and traditional people who visit from nearby rural
areas. One thing to keep in mind is that this street was not built by the
Peruvian, nor the Spanish, but rather by the Incas. Like Rome, Cusco is
one of the great eternal cities of the world. The ancient Incas called the
city Qosqo which means "navel of the world" in Quechua, the native
language of the Incas. Cusco was designed in the form of a mountain lion (Puma
concolor) with the teeth of the great cat represented by Sacsayhuaman and
the heart being Coricancha (the Temple of the Sun).
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