the Great Potato

Ironically enough, it may very well have been the tragedy of the Great Potato Blight that cemented in the corporate Mind of America the comforting (and completely erroneous) idea that potato cultivation originated in Ireland. The mass emigration that resulted from this catastrophe brought the Irish (and their potatoes) in droves to the crowded halls of Ellis Island and the historical psyche of North America.

This misunderstanding might be laughable, if not for the fact that it directly diminishes the rich cultural heritage of Peru, the country where for seventeen of my most formative years I made my home.

Peru, in point of fact, is the country of origin for the cultivation of the starchy tubers, and boasts a panoply of no less than thirty-four varieties, which are prepared in numerous delectable ways in a variety of dishes by Peruvian chefs, cooks and housewives - perhaps the most highly esteemed preparers of potatoes in all of Latin America - if not the world.

This potato diversification and specialization traces its roots (pardon the pun) to one distinct and very nearly forgotten pre-Incan societal grouping known as the Cotahutecs, who first harnessed the nitrogen-fixating properties of the plant and created a staple that would not be discovered in Europe for over two thousand years.

Dr. Hiram Bingham, discoverer of the long-lost Incan holy city of Macchu Picchu, devoted the latter years of his life to the study of the Cotahutecs, and while he was often quoted as saying that he felt that these people were his greatest discovery, the spectacularity of the hilltop city has overshadowed his work and doomed the highly developed culture to anthropological obscurity. Such is the tragedy of modern-day pop history.

I write, therefore, in the hope that this article might shed some light on this fascinating people and their most spectacular discovery, the "cotahuatexsacsayhuaman" which, loosely translated, is the legendary "Great Potato". Most of the information we have on the Great Potato is derived from conjecture, inference and legend, but this we know for certain: the Great Potato was like no potato the world has available to it today.

It has been demonstrated that the Incas, descendants of the Cotahutecs, where an extremely developed society, with stonemasonry unmatched in the modern world and an impressive list of accomplishments in science and medicine that we struggle to comprehend, including successful brain surgery and a highly efficient postal system.

What, then, is so great about the Great Potato? Well, this particular variety, from which all Peruvian potatoes are derived, allegedly had properties as a hallucinogen unparalleled in the modern world. Not only did it allow those privileged to eat it the ability to transcend both space and time, but it also had virtually no side effects. Furthermore, the Potato was said to impart, on consumption, a euphoria similar in nature to a mildly orgasmic experience - a sensation that lasted not seconds or minutes - but weeks. This euphoria, hieroglyphic evidence seems to indicate, removed from the Cotahutecs the normal human attributes of strife and bitterness that prompt the aggressions that so often lead to war and allowed them, instead, through a careful diplomacy of culture, to subsume the cultures around them and to usher in an era of great peace and prosperity in which the advancements so often attributed to the Incas were free to develop.

It is for this reason, Dr. Bingham said, that his "earlier Incan discoveries were not, as has been supposed, the work of the historical giants the Incas, but rather the patient, methodical labour of giants upon whose shoulders the Incans were barely fit to rest."

The Incan civilization, in fact, represents the decline of a once great culture. The horticulturally exact techniques for the cultivation of the Great Potato had been lost, you see, in the excesses that resulted (perhaps inevitably) from the wild successes of their forbears. Gradually greed and fear, those most universal of human attributes, crept back into the minds and hearts of the Incas. They became a brutally violent , superstitious people, with the result that when the Spanish Conquistador Diego Velazquez Hidalgo arrived in 1380 A.D., he needed little more than a flash of shiny armor and a show of modern weaponry to bring the Incan empire crashing down into ignominious subjugation. The Fall of the Incan Empire is thus understood in a historically plausible manner that still, somehow, does not fit well with traditional theories more appealing to our modern sensibilities - like, for instance, the idea of the subjugation of a peaceful, highly developed society by the grinding Imperialism of Western colonial expansion.

But is this, in fact, the case? In true postmodern form, this author cannot help but meander haphazardly towards the bottomless pit of historical deconstructionism. There is something in this story that does not sit just right. Could it be, rather, that the Cotahutecs were not, in fact, the superiors of Dr. Bingham's reckoning?

One minor Peruvian scholar, a Senor Alberto Guzman, has suggested (in, we must admit, true Marxist fashion) that "the Cult of the Great Potato", as he calls it, was "yet another religious mythology foisted upon the proletariat by a bourgeoisie elite intent on gathering under their fat jowls as much power and influence as possible." He goes on to argue that it was the Cotahutec Priests of the Great Potato who invented the mythology of the Potato's properties in order to control the people and manipulate them in the direction that they (that is, the priests) wished them to go. There is no direct archaeological evidence, he argues, "to indicate that a single non-priest ever tasted the smallest bite of the Great Potato, the secrets for the cultivation of which were as closely guarded as was once the Chinese method for the production of silk."

Guzman suggests that even though the early priests seem to have had the best interests of the people in mind (as evidenced by their many positive advancements), the inevitable corruption of the power they thus attained through such unscrupulous methods inevitably contributed to - or caused - their degeneration.

This theory, as well, deserves credence - if only for the fact that a staunch Marxist such as Guzman would admit that dialectical progression, in this case, had resulted in a downward (rather than upwards) slide, and that political ends do not always justify their means.

Another, perhaps more acceptable theory emerges. Could this all: the Cotahutecs, the Great Potato - everything, be the product of a deranged and yet highly creative mind, writing fact and fabrication into a tapestry so tightly interwoven that the undiscerning Internet patron is unable to distinguish between the two?

Could the Conquistador Diego Velazquez Hidalgo be a court painter in the Spanish Baroque era? Could Alberto Guzman be the man who led the Peruvian, Marxist terrorist group the Sendero Luminoso through the Eighties and early Nineties? Could the very Cotahutecs themselves be gibberish, distilled in the mind of a writer with far to little verisimilitudinal integrity? And finally, could the concept of the religion of "the Great Potato" be an idea formulated in 1997 by a couple of high school kids plotting a path to the wealth inherent in the founding of new religions?

These are intriguing questions that even this author is unwilling to dismiss lightly. As insane and paradigm-shattering as they may seem, the fact remains that the Internet is a huge, unregulated frontier, where the possibilities for the dissemination of information both true and false is endless - the perfect vehicle for the expression of the postmodern disconnect.

What, then, can our response be to a situation where truth is so easily manipulated? There are no easy answers, but I'm sure they Cotahutecs (if they even existed) wouldn't want us to worry about it.

The End.