Even if you don't have the time
or the inclination to search out and savour the delights and
agonies of Lima, it is possible to get a good feel for the place
in only a few days. Out at Ancón, now a popular beach resort
just north of Lima, an important pre-Inca burial site shows
signs of occupation - including pottery, textiles, and the
oldest-known archer's bow in the entire Americas - from at least
three thousand years ago. Although certainly one of the most
populous valleys, the Rimac area first showed indications of
true urbanization around 1200 AD with the appearance of a
strong, independent culture - the Cuismancu State - in many ways
parallel to, though not as large as, the contemporary Chimu
Empire which bordered it to the north. Cajamarquilla, a huge,
somewhat crowded, adobe city-complex associated with the
Cuismancu, now rests peacefully under the desert sun only a few
kilometres beyond Lima's outer suburbs. Dating from the same
era, but some 30km south of the modern city, is the Temple of
Pachacamac. For hundreds of years, until ransacked by the
conquistadores, this shrine attracted thousands of pilgrims from
all over Peru, the Incas being the last in a series of groups to
adopt Pachacamac as one of their own major huacas.
When the Spanish first arrived here the valley
was dominated by three important Inca -controlled urban
complexes: Carabayllo to the north near Chillón; Maranga, now
partly destroyed by the Avenida La Marina, between the modern
city and the Port of Callao; and Surco, now a suburb within the
confines of greater Lima but where, until the mid-seventeenth
century, the adobe houses of ancient chiefs lay empty yet
painted in a variety of colourful images.
Francisco Pizarro founded Spanish
Lima , "City
of the Kings", in 1535, only two years after the invasion.
Evidently recommended by mountain Indians as a site for a
potential capital, it proved essentially a good choice, offering
a natural harbour nearby, a large well-watered river valley, and
relatively easy access up into the Andes. By the 1550s the town
had grown up around a large plaza with wide streets leading
through a fine collection of mansions, all elegantly adorned by
wooden terraces, and well-stocked shops run by wealthy
merchants. Since the very beginning, Spanish Lima has been
different from the more popular image of Peru: it looks out,
away from the Andes and the past, towards the Pacific for
contact with the world beyond.
Lima rapidly developed into the capital of a
Spanish viceroyalty which encompassed not only Peru but also
Ecuador, Bolivia and Chile. The University of San Marcos,
founded in 1551, is the oldest on the continent, and Lima housed
the headquarters of the Inquisition from 1570 until 1813. It
remained the most important, the richest, and - hardly credible
today - the most alluring city in South America, until the early
nineteenth century.
Perhaps the most prosperous era for Lima was
the seventeenth century . By 1610 its population had reached a
manageable 26,000, made up of 40 percent blacks (mostly slaves),
38 percent Spanish, no more than 8 percent pure Indian, another
8 percent (of unspecified ethnic origin) living under religious
orders, and less than 6 percent of mixed blood - now probably
the largest proportion of inhabitants. The centre of Lima was
crowded with shops and stalls selling silks and fancy furniture
from as far afield as China. Even these days it's not hard to
imagine what Lima must have been like, as a substantial section
of the colonial city is still preserved - many of its streets,
set in large regular blocks, are overhung by ornate wooden
balconies, and elaborate Baroque facades bring some of the older
churches to life, regardless of the din and hassle of modern
city living. Rimac, a suburb just over the river from the Plaza
Mayor, and the port area of Callao, grew up as satellite
settlements - initially catering for the very rich, though they
are now predominantly "slum" sectors.
The eighteenth century , a period of relative
stagnation for Lima, was dramatically punctuated by the
tremendous earthquake of 1746, which left only twenty houses
standing in the whole city and killed some five thousand
residents - nearly ten percent of the population. From 1761 to
1776 Lima and Peru were governed by Viceroy Amat, who, although
more renowned for his relationship with the famous Peruvian
actress La Perricholi, is also remembered as the instigator of
Lima's rebirth. Under him the city lost its cloistered
atmosphere, opening out with broad avenues, striking gardens,
rococo mansions and palatial salons. Influenced by the Bourbons,
Amat's designs for the city's architecture arrived hand in hand
with other transatlantic reverberations of the Enlightenment.
In the nineteenth century Lima expanded still
further to the east and south. The suburbs of Barrios Altos and
La Victoria were poor from the start; above the beaches at
Magdalena,
Miraflores and
Barranco, the wealthy developed new
enclaves of their own. These were originally separated from the
centre by several kilometres of farmland, at that time still
studded with fabulous pre-Inca huacas and other adobe ruins.
It was President Leguia who, in 1919-30 ,
revitalized Lima by renovating the central areas. Plaza San
Martin's attractive colonnades and the Gran Hotel Bolivar were
erected, the Palacio de Gobierno was rebuilt, and the city was
supplied with its first drinking-water and sewage systems. This
was the signal for Lima's explosion into the modern era of
ridiculously rapid growth. The three hundred thousand
inhabitants of 1930 had become over three and a half million by
the mid-1970s , and the population has more than doubled again
in the last thirty years or so. Standing at more than eight
million today, most of the recent growth is accounted for by
massive immigration of peasants from the provinces into the
barriadas or pueblos jovenes (young towns) now pressing in on
the city along all of its landbound edges. Many of these
migrants escaped from the theatre of civil war that raked many
highland regions between the early 1980s and 1993.
Today the city is as cosmopolitan as any other
in the developing world, with a thriving middle class enjoying
living standards comparable to those of the West or better, and
an elite riding around in chauffeur-driven cadillacs and heading
to Miami for their monthly shopping. The vast majority of Lima's
inhabitants, however - who form the very core and essence of the
city - scrape together meagre incomes and live in poor
conditions.
|