Peru never expected this...

You see here the most ubiquitous feature of the Spanish colonial effort at majestic city construction in the Plaza de Armas...even the smallest of pueblos containing a modest version of the central city square. In a place like Lima, it seems to largely be inhabited by gringos, vendors and pickpockets all eager to reap the benefits sowed by the Spanish when they created such a focal point for congregation and city worship. A powerful diversion from the vital underbelly of a city that lives and breathes far beyond its confines.

Yet another creation
of man on rock
and with cinderblock
he erects his majesty

He soothes his skin
She combats impurities
Where are the pores?
the sores

What lives in shadows
and beneath glares
of presupposed aesthetic stone skeletons
and glossed over grime
makeup upon blemishes
cast as such
and left to fester

hiding bodies under silk
a veneer
a cloaking wall of distraction
on hooks here hang robes of robbery
of vitality cast aside
or power imprisoned by perceptions

where rearing of heads
leads not to glory
but beauty skimmed of the surface
of a deep
turbulent
murky depth
where life courses
sustaining condescension

So, what on earth is a Plains Native Americah headress doing in Lima, Peru?? A long and frustrating conversation ensued with a young woman at the shop that left us both even more confused about its presence...her dumbfounded as to why I was so passionately interested in understanding how it ended up there, and me for the small bits and pieces I could decipher from her explanation which revolved around drawing connections between indigenous people through South, Central and North America...yet I still am left clueless.
The Iglesia de San Francisco, is perhaps the archetypal example (in Lima) of the Spanish piggybacking method of construction I discussed below. Built deep into the ground below the cathedral is a catacomb containing the bodies of some 35000 people, interred in the first 100 or so years of the cathedrals existence. A rather dark and forboding place, a visit to the catacombs was like walking through a conglomerated mass of life discarded in a nexus where trapped souls, continue to be forced to conform to an afterlife which required the annexation of their physical remains.
No, its not what you are thinking. For Lima, Peru the weather was in fact quite amicable, its the caustic cloud of smog hanging over the city that impedes your vision. One of the strangest, most haphazard ramshackle cities I have ever visited, Lima candy coats the foothills of its slums with bright colors to ward off critical eyes. Entirely constructed upon the remnants of the Spanish destruction of the edifices of the Paracas culture, Lima is a strange amalgam of modern and traditional, circa 1654, as most major colonial structures were hoisted upon previous structures. This was meant to be an explicit visual metaphor of domination, control and willfull neglect of the cultural antecedents prior to the introduction of civilization.