Born in Blood and Fire

We have few firsthand accounts of what being human cargo was like, although around twelve million people over four centuries had the experience.

Today one speaks of “the Incas,” but the name Inca actually referred only to the emperor and his empire. Ethnically, the people of Cuzco were Quechua speakers, and they, too, drew on a long history of previous cultural evolution in the Andes.

Europeans no longer ride on the backs of indigenous porters, as they once did in Colombia, or in sedan chairs carried by African slaves, as in Brazil. But everywhere in Latin America, wealthier people still have lighter skin and poorer people still have darker skin. The descendants of the Spanish, the Portuguese, and later European immigrants to La