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Trappings of Modern Life Bring an Early Death to Valley of the Immortals
VILCABAMBA, Ecuador - For centuries Vilcabamba was a South American idyll. The valley boasted a lush and tranquil setting in remotest Ecuador, a year-round balmy climate, pristine mountain water, abundant fruits and grains. The inhabitants lived long and healthy lives.
So long and so healthy that from the 1950s scientists have flocked here to study the hardy mountain farmers as astonishing specimens of longevity. The publicity gave Vilcabamba a nickname, the Valley of the Immortals, and put it on the map. Backpackers visited and so tourism wound its way into the valley, bringing paved roads, vehicles, hotels, restaurants and internet cafes.
And then something else happened. The famed elders, the longevos whose vitality defied the ravages of time and inspired scientific papers and dreams of eternal youth, began to drop dead. All of those who were said to be over 110 have succumbed and there are few making it past 100. "We're dying younger," said Maria Cabrera, 91. "It's not like before. We feel we're getting weaker."
A census is expected to confirm the widespread impression that there are far fewer centenarians. Levin Perez, said to be 105, died five months ago. "They're disappearing," said Franklin Carrion, the district coordinator. "The new generation isn't lasting as long."
A melancholy entourage at the cemetery, a silent hillside where stone crosses vanish under weeds, bolstered that view. It was the family of Vicente Pilco, who at 107 is probably the oldest inhabitant, laying flowers on the grave of his daughter, Soyla Pilco, who died from a blood clot two months ago, at 72.
Exaggeration
"I don't think any of us will live as long as my great-granduncle," said Jorge Carpio, 22, of Vicente. "He is still fit but he is the last of that generation."
The cause of the longevity was never pinned down. Some scientists credited genes, others the hard labour and vegetable and fruit diet. Sceptics said the elders exaggerated their age.
There is wide agreement, however, on why the phenomenon seems to be ending: modernity and its sins - noise, chemicals, pollution and stress. Nelson Jurado, a gerontologist in the capital, Quito, said a "tsunami of development" had damaged Vilcabamba's fragile ecosystem. "Now these people live at a faster pace and that has affected their quality of life and longevity."
What was a sleepy hamlet has in less than a generation become a tourist centre. Just a 45-minute drive from an airport, the permanent population has almost doubled to 4,200 and is swollen by hundreds of tourists who pack the more than 30 hotels and hostels.
Mules wander the streets but they are outnumbered by 4x4s, taxis and young people drinking beer. There are dozens of restaurants and bars, two nightclubs, and a shopping centre is due to be built. Few places serve guarapo, sugar cane juice, but most serve Coca-Cola.
Nestor Carpio, 89, sits on the porch of his adobe home wincing from the rumble and dust of the lorry delivering cement and bricks to the house opposite, just one of dozens being rebuilt with modern materials. "Not so quiet any more," he sighs.
Outsiders have long been drawn by the valley's natural splendour - it was known as the "playground of the Inca" for hosting royalty of the former empire.
The Moon travel guide has a plaintive plea for visitors: "You have a beautiful place balanced on the edge. It's one of those places travel writers hesitate to describe too lovingly, lest it become loved to death. By all means come, inhale the air, ride a horse, leave a little healthier - just please, tread lightly."
Signs in English for spas, yoga, treks, massages and colonic irrigation testify to visitors' health quests but their very presence puts strain on the ecosystem, said Mr Carrion. "When there is more people there is more contamination."
He stressed that outsiders were appreciated for bringing money, jobs and opportunities. But in making life easier they had also made it shorter.
To meet growing demand farmers are now using pesticides and other chemicals, and some of the mineral-rich streams have become so polluted that the longevos hesitate to bathe in them, let alone drink the water. There are no studies to verify it but locals cite food "contaminated" by chemicals as causing deaths earlier. "Everything used to be fresh but now children are eating and drinking badly," said Augustin Jaramillo, 98. By keeping to an organic diet he hoped to make it to 150, he added.
Another concern is that foreigners are pricing locals out of the housing market, with even the Cerro Mandando, a sacred Inca mountain, being snapped up for holiday homes. It also has a mobile telephone mast. "Some people call this development, I call it destruction," said Carol Rosin, president of the Association for the Defence of Vilcabamba's Elderly. A 63-year-old American aerospace executive, she is a passionate if unlikely protector since she runs a 30-room hotel, one of the biggest developments. Using mules to build it and serving only organic food, among other measures, puts her on the locals side, she believes.
Guests seemed unaware that the famed elders were dying off. New age Americans, Britons and Spaniards attending a workshop on "physical immortality" hailed Vilcabamba's sense of physical and spiritual nourishment. "I can feel the energy," beamed workshop leader Sondra Ray.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007
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15 Comments so far
Show AllGive me the simple life. But with a car, a truck, a boat, a big house, a dog, a cat, a teevee in every room, a nearby Publix, a mall, a movie theatre, restaurants, etc., etc.!?
"Some people call this development, I call it destruction,"
You say tomayto. I say tomahto.
I had the pleasure to visit this special little town a couple of years ago. The locals are correct. Westerners are coming in and building huge houses behind high gated walls. While this does contribute to the local economy, large construction jobs must be outsourced to companies from larger towns. The sites create a huge mess and ultimately new residents hide inside their compounds. Why move to a small mountain village only to cut down large areas of trees, plant grass, pave large driveways, not interact with the locals and ignore the culture?
a town full of old people? Sounds about as appealing as Miami in winter
Now if there was a Valley of the Immorals, I'd be there in a snap.
Another tragic irony among thousands of others, yet the industrial madness continues ad nauseum ad extinctum.
DCNative..you asked:
"Why move to a small mountain village only to cut down large areas of trees, plant grass, pave large driveways, not interact with the locals and ignore the culture?"
My Answer:
Thats not where these people live..it's where they vacation and pretend to be out doorsie and multicultural...
There goes the neighborhood!
It is hard for us "civilized" people to imagine WANTING to live to 110 because as far as we are concerned, once you get past 80 or so, you're consigned to the garbage heap... here, in "civilization". If living to that age is honored and honorable, where the abuses of our bodies aren't rampant, and the monkeys never enter the mind for long, aging can be enjoyable.
Canuckchuck - there is a Valley of the Immorals, it's called Abu Graib!
There are three Vilcabambas. The first is this charming town in southern Ecuador, a town whose population does not identify itself as indigenous. Another is supposed to be in Peru, said to be the refuge of Incas after the fall of their empire to the conquistadores. The third is an imaginary indigenous Vilcabamba in the fictional Republic of Esmeraldas, found in The Mother Earth Inn, a novel that deals with some of the contradictions in the well-meaning idealism of gringos in paradise. Full disclosure: halrivers is the author of The Mother Earth Inn.
"I can feel the energy," beamed workshop leader Sondra Ray
She can feel the energy that she and her ilk are sucking out of the place and it's native inhabitants.
The moment "civilized" white people show up ANYWHERE everything inevitably turns to shit.
The anthropologists are relatively innocuous but are always followed by capitalists of one stripe or another. Pharmaceutical companies come looking for new "wonder drugs" or lumber companies raping ancient forests. Service side investors start slithering around looking to make a killing in real estate and "Luxury Resorts". There's always some sort of predatory "entrepreneur" licking its' chops at the thought of exploiting the uncivilized, backward native population.
They all serve the same master: the insatiable gluttony of capitalism. All must be sacrificed on the alter of profit.
You can also look anywhere that the missionaries went to force their version of christianity, or any other organized religion, down the throats of the savages.
Death and destruction follow as surely as the night follows the day.
I spent a month in Vilcabamba in "68 back when Johnny Love-Wisdom had his place there. Without a doubt he was the first to make the place famous since he was promoting his brand of zany health ideas (some good some bad some merely experimental)since the 50's....anybody else out there remember when the valley was only recently opened to truck traffic?
The key to rapid development has always been transportation and cheap fuel. period. If we are to preserve ANYTHING at all of wilderness, villages,landscapes, wildlife, etc., it will be because we decide to prohibit easy access. Simply refusing to use vehicles isn't enough. One has to convice one's neighbors. Probably have to destroy it all to realize just what we once had...
all of this stuff will end with peak oil.
"she is a passionate if unlikely protector since she runs a 30-room hotel"
I got mine, now everybody else please stay away!
I first visited Vilcabamba in 1993. Getting there was an adventure in itself, catching a ancient bus in a dingy station in Loja. The seats were tiny and the bus was crowded. Along the way, the bus served double duty as a school bus, winding through the mountains and plains toward the Peruvian border. There were only a few cheap hostals to accommodate the visitors. I remember being astonished at how the pace of life slowed down to something apparently natural and rare for our schedule-driven culture up north. I also remember the sinking feeling I got when I heard one well-to-do guest say, "Now Vilcabamba has been discovered." I know that many of these pueblos would like to have tourists or others come to stimulate some economic development, but unfortunately, they rarely have much control over that development, given the enormous differences in class and power both within Ecuador and between Ecuador and the rest of the world. Perhaps Rafael Corea and the new Constitutional Assembly can finally begin to change the balance. We who have enjoyed the hospitality and wisdom of the Ecuadorian people should show our gratitude by supporting their revolutionary changes.