The renowned historian José Bengoa presented his recent memoir “Journey to Caral: Chronicles about the long history of America and the resistance of indigenous peoples” (Catalonia).
The text invites a geographical and literary journey around the experience of the continent’s original civilizations, shedding light on notions such as good living and the search for a world in balance based on the experiences of Bengoa at the archaeological site. of the Caral civilization, located near the Peruvian capital and considered one of the first cities in America and one of the oldest in the world.
Bengoa made this personal journey that he took with his partner and colleague, Professor Ximena Valdés, in a text that aims to be a call to review history and recognize the indigenous emergency as a fundamental part of Latin American identity.
The journey begins in Caral, the oldest city in South America, where the author, together with Valdés, find the utopian origin of the continent. This trip transforms the interpretation of history, moving the beginning of the narrative beyond the Port of Palos.
“It all started with a trip we took to the oldest city in America. It was a pending issue that we had, and we left for Peru, Lima and Caral. It is an archaeological site that we found recently, 10, 15 years ago, and it is nothing more nor less than a city that is approximately 5,000 years old. This is how old Ur of Chaldea, Mesopotamia, Egypt, the oldest, is,” says Bengoa in this interview.
“We are saying that in America, and in South America, there was a civilization, at the same time as the civilizations that we were always told in school, which were the first civilizations that had existed in the history of humanity. So, we traveled there and we were extraordinarily impressed with everything we were seeing, and a reflection began, which is quite evident when you are faced with something like that, right? The New World was not so New World. It has as much as the Old World, the truth is that Europe is much more New World than America, than Mesopotamia, than Egypt, than China, etc.,” he explains.
Thus, “a philosophical discussion began, about the philosophy of history, what is history about? Why is what comes before the Spanish called prehistory? Like the history of America began in Puerto de Palos, with Christopher Columbus. So, one says, no, it didn’t start in Puerto de Palos, it started in any case in Caral.”
“This is a book of chronicles, isn’t it? From the chronicles of the Lady of Cao, an incredible place, where there is a queen, a woman, who is all tattooed, and there are many archaeologists from different countries who are trying to capture who says those tattoos. I have said somewhere that perhaps it will be the rosette stone of a language that we do not know, a written language that we do not know in this part of the world.”
