On a Sunday afternoon in August 1989 I sat on the lawn in the courtyard of a restaurant in Cajamarca in the Peruvian Andes talking to two young historians from Lima. Their research had brought them to the city where agents of the Christian Spanish Empire deceived and betrayed Atahualpa, the last Inca. We discussed the latest crisis facing their homeland and they, like most of the Peruvians to whom I had spoken, believed that a large scale civil war was almost inevitable. I asked if nothing