Transcript:Filmstrip/The Green Light Expedition Part 4
The darkest green part of this map of South America is Peru, on the left.
Next to it is Bolivia.
From Lima, the capital of Peru, we went to La Paz, the capital of Bolivia, passing through
Puno on famous Lake Titicaca.
From La Paz, we drove to Sacaca to attend a conference of Bolivian Bahais.
Returning to Lima, we later went to Cuzco and Machu Picchu for the first all Quechua Bahais
conference.
Our arrival at Lima Airport from the Amazon tour was greeted by a large number of enthusiastic
friends, many of whom I already knew from previous visits.
One of the first things the National Assembly had arranged was a press conference.
On my left is a board member.
On my right, the counselor Mr. Masood Hampsey, a member of the Green Light Expedition from
the beginning.
Representatives of various television stations and newspapers were very interested to hear
of our experiences, particularly in the Amazon area of Peru.
A national teaching conference was arranged to coincide with our arrival, and Bahais
from all over Peru attended.
This picture was taken in the public gardens adjoining the Bahais headquarters.
An all day picnic and meeting was held at the home of Mr. Hampsey, attended by a large
number of the very active Bahais youth from Lima and other cities.
A special event was a visit to one of the barrios of Lima to attend a Bahais children's
class.
The class is held weekly in the home of this Quechua Indian Bahais.
He is a widower, and these are his five children whom he has brought up in the faith.
In my previous visit to Peru, I had been to his home, and it was good to see them all
again.
The lady on my left is Ms. Eve Nicklin, one of the earliest pioneers to South America,
who has been there for 37 years.
She is the spiritual mother of the Bahais of Peru.
I was fortunate to meet the Continental Board of Councillors for South America for the second
time on my journey.
Mr. Aziz Yazdi, my fellow member of the International Teaching Center in Haifa, was
also present.
Standing from left to right are Peter McLaren, Atus Costas, Donald Vitzo, Massoud Hampsey,
and Aziz Yazdi.
Seated next to me is Mrs. Lea Nora Armstrong, the first pioneer to Latin America, who went
to Brazil in 1922.
Under this blanket of perpetual fog, flows the icy humble current up the Pacific coast
of South America from Antarctica.
It affects the climate of the Andes Mountains, which are extremely arid along this western
coast of the continent.
This scenery is typical of the mountains of Peru and Bolivia.
On our way to La Paz, we arrived at Puno, on the shore of famous Lake Titicaca, the highest
navigable lake in the world, over 4,000 meters above sea level.
These are the famous Totora boats, entirely made of bundles of special reeds.
They are not only used on this lake all the time, but also on the sea coast, and strangely
enough, similar boats are used on a lake in Ethiopia in Africa.
Truly, man is universal, and there is nothing new under the sun.
As we motored across the Altiplano on our way to La Paz, majestic Ilimani, the second
highest mountain in Bolivia, forever snow-capped, seemed near enough in the thin air of that
high altitude to stretch out and touch.
At Paz, the capital of Bolivia is mostly built of adobe or mud, a very solid universal building
material.
It lies cut in the hills, watched over by Mount Ilimani.
The president of Bolivia, General Ugo Banzer, on the right, kindly received us.
To his left is Andres Kachokolo, the first Bolivian Indian Baha'i, now a board member.
Next to me is Mr. Hamsey.
The president was obviously impressed when I told him Andres had been one of the Bolivian
delegates who came to Haifa to elect the first universal House of Justice in 1963.
And met with the National Spiritual Assembly, which is responsible for the largest number
of Baha'is in the western hemisphere after the United States.
Five of its members are pure Indian.
The population of Bolivia itself is more than two-thirds Indian.
We drove over the Altiplano dirt roads on our way to attend the conference, passing these
typical mud houses.
In the high Andres, this wild grass covers the hills, like a golden fur.
Sakaaka was chosen as the most convenient meeting point for many of the Baha'i farmers,
whose villages are in this part of Bolivia.
Vuses and trucks are the main means of transport.
The first day of our conference took place way up in the mountains overlooking Sakaaka,
which is that town in the distance.
It has absolutely no plumbing, although over 2,000 people live there.
Many of the Baha'is had already gone ahead, but over 100 of them came along with me, in
including a number of the pioneers and many children.
We arrived at the top on this plain typical of the vast scale of the Bolivian Andes.
We looked like a little group of ants coming along in the distance.
Hour after hour, the Cabell Cade crossed this upland.
For the three hours it took us to get to the meeting place, our Indian friends never seemed
to run short of breath, and many of them played their flutes the whole way.
Farmers, like myself, were all breathless when the extremely high altitude.
But the Indian people are loose to it, even their lungs have a greater capacity than
ours.
Over the years, little groups of villages arrived, each playing its own music as it came.
It was a thrilling sight and sound.
We poured over still more hills to a dozen different tombs, each played by its own group.
Manual set the pace.
Without it, I would never have gotten there.
At last, the tiny village of Toto Rocco, in the heart of the high mountains, came into
sight, where we were going to open our week-end conference.
This path does not look very steep, but I was holding onto the saddle both back and
front so as not to fall off.
To the sound of even more drums and flutes, we joined many other bahis who had already
arrived by another path.
My Chinese fisherman's hat looked very peculiar in such surroundings, but it kept the sun off
the back of my neck, which after years in the tropics, I can no longer stand.
Still more village friends arrived to the sound of music.
Even this little boy carries his flute.
Very small children were skilled players.
Everyone mingled, many bahis from distant villages seeing old friends they had met at
other conferences or seminars.
As this was my third visit to Bolivia, I saw many old friends too.
We opened our meeting with prayers in both Spanish and Quechua, the language of the people,
who are deeply spiritual and attach great importance to prayer.
My beloved friends, my talk was translated into Spanish by the young man on my left and
then into Quechua by the board member on my right.
I told them how happy I was to see their faces again, and that as we all came across
the hills together, I had a very vivid feeling that above our heads invisible in the sky
was a great army marching with us, the supreme concourse accompanying us, the souls of holy
people who have passed away but continue to help us in this world.
They listened with great attention.
As I went on to say, I felt sure that their parents and grandparents were watching us
on this joyous occasion and sharing it with us.
This is a feast of love, I told them.
Why have I come?
Why have you come, only because we love each other?
This is the greatest gift Baha'u'llah has brought into the world today, love between
different people.
On the left and right are Indian Baha'is, standing behind is a Persian and an American
pioneer, both for many years serving in South America, both from distinguished Baha'i
families in their own countries.
Like all villagers they are good listeners and their powers of concentration far exceed
those of city people.
Here I am with two old friends.
This beautiful gift was made for me by the man holding it, a Baha'i of Sakaka.
His wife and children are with us.
Every now and then I find a baby named after me.
Here I am holding a little Bolivian Ruhea.
Both her father and her mother on the left are very active Baha'i teachers.
During the prayers and the meeting we had a joyous fiesta, typical of the village celebrations
of these people for centuries, long before the white man came.
This group is mounting its ceremonial hats, made of feathers from the South American ostrich
called 'Aria', which are and have been for hundreds of years imported from Argentina.
I was deeply touched to learn these feather hats are never worn, except on very sacred
religious occasions.
Many Bolivians themselves had never seen them before.
Almost all dances of the Indians go in a circle, first around in one direction and then reverse
and around in the other.
The men beat their drums and play their flutes at the same time.
The women joined hands and danced very gracefully with great animation.
The villages of Totoroko had contracted to feed us lunch.
Here they are peeling the potatoes.
We forget that ending farmers developed 240 varieties of potatoes, a vegetable that comes
from this part of the world.
Every one lined up for his share when it was cooked.
We all sat around on the ground and ate the simple food.
Some people preferred to eat alone, like this man.
Many of the visitors, like this woman, brought their own drinking cup with them.
After lunch the festivities started again.
This beautiful woman is one of the very active bahis.
Nearly everything these villages are wearing was made by themselves from Yama wool, dyed,
spun and woven at home.
Even the felt hats, different in shape from village to village, are a local product.
One can see here the difference in costume.
Note the wonderfully woven waistband on the woman at the right and the fancy universal
mandolin of South America called a chorango.
Each little village group had its own orchestra.
The men are the musicians, the women dance and sing.
First they would start with their tune.
Then a group of them would start off in procession, playing all the time, to march in a circle
and soon the dancing would begin, from village to village the costumes differ.
This man's lovely homespun jacket, his cap under his hat, the felt hat and his trimmings
and the beautiful pipes decorated with gay woolen fringe are all home made.
Except for their shirts, these men are wearing from the skin out, home spun, home made clothes.
The tragedy is that gradually the modern city way of living and dressing may corrupt their
old way of life and rob them of their heritage.
Already many of the Indians, like these friends, are wearing cheap manufactured imitations
of the traditional clothes, with amelene dies that run with the first washing, unlike the
old vegetable dies that endure for hundreds of years.
Musical instruments such as this chorango, made from the back of an armadillo, are the
prized possessions of their owners.
All of both his shawl and the child's cap are beautifully made by hand because chemical
dies were used, the colors were run.
Another group of villagers warms up before starting to dance.
The pound pipe of all varieties and any number of reeds seems to be the universal musical
instrument of South American Indians, whether in the mountains or the jungles.
Many times we saw children playing them expertly, like little boy in the middle.
Also the pipes were double rows, like the one on the right, which has over 30 reeds in it
and a wide range of notes.
Sometimes the pipes were thick and long, like these, which produced much deeper notes.
These mountaineers, completely adapted to the high altitudes at which they live, have
a greater lung capacity than we have, and do not know what it is to get short of breath.
They can play and walk uphill for hours at the same time.
Another group goes off to play and dance.
When the sun was getting low, we gathered for our group photograph.
Little races, nations and villages, all brought together by Baha'u'llah, all gathered together
under his protection.
I mounted my mule and set off for the valley with many friends.
She took her baby and her mules and went home too.
The next morning we all met in the school house, which the authorities of Sakaka had
kindly given us for our meeting.
I spoke in English, the young man in the middle translated it into Spanish and the friend
on the left in Duketua.
The counselor, Mr. Hampsi, was more fortunate because he could give his talk in Spanish.
The lady on his right translated in Duketua.
For many years Mr. Hampsi was a pioneer in Bolivia.
The audience listened to the speakers with polite attention, in spite of the constant
translation from a foreign language.
This old man is wearing a fine example of the needlework caps that have been worn in
the Andes since before the white man discovered America.
The ranch got us all out to eat together in an open courtyard.
It was a long queue that formed.
Mr. Hampsi and I enjoyed our meal with everyone else.
It was typical Bolivian food, particularly those black vegetables called chunu, a dehydrated
potato which tastes quite good.
This farmer's wife is preparing chunu.
When the harvest is lifted these small potatoes are dried in the sun by day and left to freeze
at night.
They are skillfully massaged by the women's bare feet to squeeze the water out without
breaking the skin and again left to freeze.
After a few days of this treatment they are dry enough to store for years.
The afternoon session of the conference was given over to consultation on the goals of
the five-year plan in which many of the friends took part.
After making a contribution to the universal house of justice, this Baha'i woman said
she was ready to go on teaching trips.
The largest number of Baha'is in Latin America live in the mountains of Bolivia.
In response to the discussion about the goals of local Baha'i headquarters, these villagers
volunteered to give substantial plots of land.
The hat I am wearing is a gift from the Puno Baha'is worn by the people of that town on
festive occasions.
Generally hats indicate where a person comes from.
Our last evening together in Sakaka we lit a huge bonfire in the street and there was
singing, playing and dancing in spite of the freezing cold.
Fighting from Baha'is is always so hard.
A special all-kips who were speaking conference had been arranged by the Continental Board
of Councillors for South America.
Here I am arriving at Cusco Airport where many of the Bolivian as well as Peruvian friends
were on hand to greet me.
That evening a journalist whom I had met in Cusco eight years ago came to see me.
He is seated beside me.
On his right is my colleague on the International Teaching Center, Mr. Aziz Yazdi, and next to
him is Mr. Atos Costas, a Councillor for South America.
The lady next to me is Mrs. Ruth Pringle, who accompanied the green light expedition
all through the Amazon.
A banquet was given by the Councillors for government officials and other notables of
Cusco in this beautiful room at the government tourist hotel.
The all-kipsuous speaking Baha'i conference was entirely conducted in the Quechua language.
Here the session is opening with a prayer in Quechua, the official language of the old
Inka Empire, still spoken by millions of Indians.
I presented the loving message received from the Universal House of Justice.
A member of the National Spiritual Assembly is translating into Quechua.
The sessions of the conference were held in this large meeting hall.
Many Baha'is had come from both Bolivia and Ecuador, and as usual they brought their
music with them.
One morning almost one hundred primary school children appeared on the scene.
They were no trouble at all, and they and their teachers enjoyed being present for more
than an hour.
These are more of the Baha'is, seated in the balcony of the hall.
The conference was arranged by the Continental Board of Councillors for South America.
Three of whom are shown here, Mr. Raul Pavan of Ecuador standing at the left, Mr. Donald
Witzo, a pioneer in Venezuela, giving a talk on the Baha'i front.
At the extreme right, Mr. Masud Kamsi, now a pioneer to Peru.
I was telling the friends, size, race and nationality make no difference.
It is service that is important.
Small Rufino, an Indian board member in Ecuador, in Big Ralph, an American pioneer there and
also a board member, provided me with an excellent example.
Ralph now speaks fluent Quechua.
In the evening, many of the gifted friends provided music, as well as songs composed
by the Baha'is themselves in Quechua.
Durham, over the historic and beautiful main square of Cusco, shows how the city lies nestled
in the hills.
Legend says, God guided the first Inca king to build his capital here.
The Quechua speaking Baha'is spent many sessions discussing how we can publish Baha'i literature
in a written Quechua understood in Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador, where the language is the same
but the dialect is different.
The name of this hall, Cusicancha, means the golden enclosure.
While the Quechua Baha'is were consulting, many of the Spanish speaking Baha'is throughout
the town were telling the people who we were and what we believe.
Everyone was interested in us because we were obviously such an international group
of friendly people, and the much publicized all Quechua conference that astonished the
citizens of Cusco.
This sign says Baha'u'llah is the return of Veraculture, a divine being according to
Indian traditions.
Obviously, the statements about the Baha'i faith were of observing interest to this man.
The population of Cusco is mainly Indian.
The girl wearing glasses, a South American of Latin descent, is addressing the bystanders.
Here is another young Baha'i teacher in another square of the city during the same
thing.
She is an American pioneer speaking fluent Spanish.
Cusco is an historic city with the most pleasing atmosphere.
These typically Spanish buildings were introduced by the conquistadors.
If you look carefully, you will see the lower part of the walls of this building are a different
kind of stonework.
Like the lower part of these walls, this is Inca masonry on which the Spaniards over and
over again built their own buildings, partly because it was so excellent, and partly to
demonstrate the complete subjugation of the native culture.
A typical street in Cusco, very narrow with often Inca masonry at the sides.
It is not unusual to see yamas like these in the town.
There are camels first cousin and have been domesticated by the Indians for over a thousand
years.
Their wall provides his clothes, punctures and rugs.
Their backs can carry loads at altitudes of 5,000 meters.
The stones on the right are part of an Inca building built before Pissaro conquered Peru
in 1532.
Our Indian behind friends also went sightseeing.
Here are three of them discussing the achievements of their ancestors.
The man on the left in the blue poncho is from Ecuador, the man in the middle from Bolivia
and the one on the right from Peru.
This is the famous 12 sided stone, which is so perfectly cut that one cannot slip the
blade of a knife into any crack between the stones.
Yet this wall is only rough masonry to face on the street.
This stone, on the other hand, is from the temple of the sun, the most sacred Inca building
in Cusco.
Look how marvellously the grooves have been cut, so the next stone would lie firmly on
it and never move.
Inca work never used any cement.
Here is part of the original inside wall of the temple.
Below the Incas made bronze, they never used it to cut their stones, preferring the old
technique used for centuries of stone implements.
Massive, pure gold decorations originally covered these walls.
That black hump of rock sticking out of the back of the church is all the Spaniards left
to show where the Incas temple of the sun stood, a symbol of their total triumph over the
great native civilization.
We held our first meeting here in Saxo Amman, a mighty fortress built by the Incas on the
approach to Cusco to protect it from its enemies.
It took 30,000 men, 80 years to build it.
This is one of the many entrance doors that could be completely defended from the walls
above.
Some stones at Saxo Amman are 5 by 4 meters in size.
The only masonry comparable to it in scale are the Pyramids in Egypt.
The Baha'is were thrilled to visit Saxo Amman.
Group after group arrived, playing music as they came.
Everyone was wearing his most beautiful and valuable clothes for this great occasion.
People are all the same.
These Bolivian friends were delighted to have their picture taken in front of these giant
stones.
I got tired and sat down and someone took my picture too.
Gradually the Baha'is arrived and began to converge on the path leading to the top of
the huge fortress.
So many of them I already knew from meetings in different places and different countries.
It was a long climb to the top and those who were not used to the altitude like myself
found their heart racing and could barely breathe.
Tradition says that the sun is tied in very special sacred places.
This circle of stones at the top of the mountain Saxo Amman is built on is one of them and
it had been chosen for our meeting.
The friends gathered in this auditorium as their ancestors may have done over 500 years
earlier on some solemn religious occasion.
I knew they would receive from many sources spiritual inspiration.
So I told them about themselves as they know very little of their own history.
Cuzcole lay beneath us in the valley, Cuzcole whose temple of the sun was faced with sheets
of gold.
Where the Inca built Cusicancha the golden enclosure, a garden made of solid gold, gold
yamos with life-sized gold shepherds surrounded by plants of pure gold, Cuzcole the golden
city, where even the such roofs of some of the houses were sprinkled with gold dust
to make them glitter in the sun.
No wonder the Spaniards lost their minds and betrayed their promises to the Inca so they
could carry off the fabulous wealth of Peru.
The head of the Quechua Academy of Cuzcole came with other officials to express appreciation
for the step the Baha'is had taken in holding the first international Quechua conference.
Peru has recently made Quechua the second official language of the country, a most just
and courageous step forward.
We all listened attentively although only the Quechua Baha'is could understand him.
Quechua is both a powerful and musical language and lends itself to brilliant archery.
Many of these illiterate farmers could express their thoughts with great ease and fluency.
Note the musical instrument, a chalango, made from the back of an armadillo.
This Bolivian woman had a most beautiful voice and sang for her songs in Quechua composed
by the Baha'is.
We all had a picnic lunch at the foot of Saxua Man sitting on the grass in a great circle.
Although it was winter time, the direct sum at this altitude is always hot.
The nights however are freezing cold.
The head of the Quechua Academy joined us for lunch.
Before him stuck in the ground is his silver mounted staff, carried from immemorial times
by head men as a sign of their rank and office.
The predominantly red ponchos are typical of the Cuzco area.
Farmers wives constantly spin the wool as they walk about like this woman.
And it is hand woven like the poncho being made on this simple, traditional loom.
The famous Urubamba River wangs down through the hills and valleys near Cuzco.
The farmers work by hand as they always have done.
Here they are threshing with horses.
But before the conquistadores came, the horse was unknown.
Some of the famous terracing in the world was done by the Incas and is still used exactly
as it was six or seven hundred years ago.
Tops of mountains often receive more sunlight than deep valleys and this led to such extraordinary
engineering feats as this.
Urubba highs got themselves into two specially reserved railway cars at dawn and with much
singing and music traveled two hours to Machu Picchu.
I have seen the Himalayas, the Alps and the Andes but the Andes are my favorite mountains.
Way down there is the gorge of the Urubamba River where we got off at the railway station
for Machu Picchu.
That room city in the foreground is famous Machu Picchu.
On the left the white zigzag line is the automobile road leading up the 500 meters from the valley.
The Picchu was one of a series of hanging cities.
Fortresses built by the Incas all through these valleys to protect their empire from
enemy tribes living in the jungles to the northeast.
The Bahais are coming along the path from the entrance to visit this carefully preserved
national monument.
Food was once grown on these terraces.
For our Indian Baha'i brothers and sisters this was a unique experience carefully planned
for them by the Continental Board of Councillors.
All of us were thrilled to share it with them.
Here are a couple of board members.
On the left an American pioneer to Bolivia on the right a native Peruvian.
Yamas have a way of looking at you with keen curiosity.
It was mutual we stared back at them.
They also are very aristocratic looking animals with a lot of dignity.
One has to be careful however because if they do not like you they spit at you.
These are some of the Bolivian friends.
And these are some of the friends from Ecuador.
The dark blue and white costume is typical of the Otavalo area.
Here in Machu Picchu was another of those sacred spots where the sun is tied.
An unusual carved rock on a high hill overlooking the city.
Instinctively the Ecuadorian friends took possession of it and began to play their music.
Their ancestors had been subjects of the Incas.
One of whose roads stretched over 2,000 kilometres from Cusco to their country.
The empire of the Incas was comparable in road building and in greatness to that of the Romans.
It was here at this sacred spot we held our prayers and our meeting in the very heart of
the Andes.
I remembered what happiness it had brought to Shoghi Effendi when news reached him of
the first mass conversion among the Bolivian Indians and how eagerly he had shared this
news with the Baha'is of the world.
And now here was a Bolivian believer speaking in Quechua and encouraging his fellow believers
on the top of historic Machu Picchu to go forth and serve Baha'u'llah.
But as the glory of the sun rises above Lake Titicaca even so will the glory of his message
be spread by his faithful Indian followers among their own people, the descendants of
the Incas.
the Lord.
[Music]
