Ayacucho

Civilization in Peru began in the valleys around Ayacucho about 20,000 years ago. Dating back this far are the oldest human remains in the country—and perhaps in the Americas—found in a cave network at Piquimachay, 24 km (15 mi) west of the city. Over the centuries, the region was home to many pre-Hispanic cultures, including the Huari (Wari), who set up their capital of Huari 22 km (14 mi) from Ayacucho some 13,000 years ago. When the Inca arrived in the 15th century, they ruled the lands from their provincial capital at Vilcashuamán.

The Spanish came and conquered the reigning Inca, and Francisco Pizarro founded Ayacucho in 1540. First named Huamanga for the local huamanga (alabaster) used in handicrafts, Ayacucho grew from a small village into a broad city known for its many colonial-style churches. Nearly 300 years later it was the center of Peru's rebellion for independence from the Spanish, when the Peruvian army led by Antonio José de Sucre defeated the last Spanish at nearby Quinua on December 9, 1824. The first bells of Peru's independence were sounded at the Iglesia Santo Domingo in Ayacucho.

It took a century more before the city built its first road links west to the coast, and the road to Lima went unpaved through the 1960s. Ayacucho might have opened to tourism then, but for the influence of Abimael Guzmán, a philosophy teacher at the University of Huamanga who set up the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) here. From March 1982, when bombs and gunfire first sounded through the cobbled streets, thousands of Ayacuchanos fled or were killed during fighting between the Shining Path and the government. The city was nearly cut off from the rest of Peru during the early 1990s. Guzmán was finally arrested in 1992 and the Sendero Luminoso dismantled, but even with stability tourism has been slow to establish itself outside of Semana Santa and the city receives only about a thousand visitors a month.

Ayacucho's resulting isolation from the modern world means that to visit is to step back into colonial days. Elegant white huamanga buildings glow in the sunlight, bright flowers spilling out of boxes lining high, narrow, wooden balconies. Beyond the slim, straight roads and terra-cotta roofs, cultivated fields climb the Andes foothills up to the snow. Electricity, running water, and phones are unreliable, if even available. Banks and businesses are hidden in 16th-century casonas (colonial mansions). Women in traditional Quechua shawls draped over white blouses, their black hair braided neatly, stroll through markets packed with small fruit, vegetable, and craft stalls.