Although it was not published until 1950, Ena Dargan’s
travel book The Road to Cuzco: A Journey from Argentina to Peru (1950), was set
in the 1930s. The book documents her journey from Buenos Aires (Argentina) to
Cuzco (Peru), the ancestral home of the Incan Empire; an area once known as
‘the navel of the world’. Her aim is to seek out and observe the ways of the
Indians, expressed through their customs, dances, music and architecture, in
order to see how much they have remained unchanged and how much they have been
influenced by Europe. In so doing, she stumbles upon a series of folk plays
performed in Oruro (Bolivia), which recall the events which led to the Spanish
colonisation of Latin America during the sixteenth century. The principal play,
The Death of Atahualpa, long thought lost and sought after by scholars, is told
in the Quechua dramatic tradition and performed by the native Indians during
Carnival. Dargan’s recording and retrieval of the much-coveted manuscript of
the play, ensures her a place in Quechua literary history. Furthermore, her
travel account is an important intervention by an Irish woman writer and
situates Dargan as an intellectual whose life and work requires further study.