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"The Heights of Machu Picchu” by Pablo Neruda,
illustrated in a Cubist poster of Neruda and Picasso
C
A
N
T
O
XII
A
L
T
U
R
A
S de
MACHU
PICCHU
Neruda with lightning bolts: a spiritual figure who receives the voices of the dead. His presence symbolizes the poetic resurrection of indigenous peoples. Machu Picchu: a temple of memory. A space where indigenous voices can speak through the poet. Chains: they link the poet to indigenous laborers. They symbolize the continuity of memory and the commitment to speak on behalf of the dead. Stones: the sacred architecture built by anonymous hands.
The Heights of Machu Picchu
The poem “The Heights of Machu Picchu” by Pablo Neruda, illustrated in a Cubist poster by Neruda and Picasso.
Pablo Neruda and Pablo Picasso maintained a friendship spanning decades. Both supported humanitarian causes and used their art to denounce injustices and contribute to the betterment of society.
The Cubist artistic style merges naturally with Neruda’s surrealist poems, historical narratives, and political ideology.
The geometric fragmentation and multiple perspectives of Cubism give form to superimposed indigenous faces, symbolic voices, and flashes of memory.
The poem consists of twelve sections that represent the experience of the oppressed masses, evoking the Cubist technique of superimposed fragments to construct distinct points of view.
In Canto XII, the poet finds the man he has been seeking throughout the preceding cantos: the indigenous laborer, the anonymous worker—the people who built Latin America and who were exploited throughout its history.
The Composition of the Poster
The lower half of the poster—the “deep zone,” the subterranean level—displays the faces of the workers: the farmer, the weaver, the shepherd, the mason, the water carrier, the builder. All direct their gaze upward, toward Neruda, who stands tall atop the stones of Machu Picchu and invokes the dead:
“I come to speak through your dead mouths.”
He will represent them.
He will grant them a voice.
Through him, their creations will not fall into oblivion.
Chains link Neruda to the indigenous workers; their collective memories will converge within him and become part of his own voice. The architectural walls, stone blocks, construction tools, textiles, and agricultural furrows represent the enduring legacy created by these nameless people. The very stones and axes that erected the structures were also those that inflicted torment and punishment.
The presence of Neruda—spiritual and enveloped in symbolic rays upon the sacred grounds of Machu Picchu—offers a symbolic resurrection of the collective memory: the buried history of the true architects of Latin America.
Canto XII
Rise to be born with me, brother.
Give me your hand from the deep zone of your scattered pain. You will not return from the depths of the rocks.
You will not return from the subterranean time. Your hardened voice will not return. Your pierced eyes will not return. Look at me from the depths of the earth, plowman, weaver, silent shepherd: tamer of guardian guanacos: mason of the challenged scaffold: water-carrier of Andean tears: jeweler of crushed fingers: farmer trembling in the seed: potter spilled into your clay: bring to the cup of this new life your old, buried sorrows.
Show me your blood and your furrow; tell me: "Here I was punished, because the jewel did not shine, or the earth did not yield the stone or the grain in time."
Point out to me the stone on which you fell, and the wood on which you were crucified; light for me the old flints, the old lamps, the whips stuck fast—through the centuries—in your wounds, and the axes with their bloody gleam.
I come to speak through your dead mouths. Across the earth, gather all the silent, scattered lips, and from the depths, speak to me throughout this long night, as if I were anchored there with you.
Tell me everything—chain by chain, link by link, and step by step. Sharpen the knives you have kept; place them against my chest and in my hand—like a river of yellow rays, like a river of buried tigers—and let me weep: for hours, for days, for years, for blind ages, for stellar centuries.
Give me silence, water, hope. Give me the struggle, iron, volcanoes. Cling to me—bodies like magnets. Flow into my veins and into my mouth. Speak through my words and through my blood.