The original plan had been for Aguirre to begin at high altitude on a glacier with distant ribbons of men and beasts, Spanish conquerors and Indigenous enslaved laborers chained together, alpacas and a herd of black swine, muskets, cannons, and litters. The pigs were supposed to fall victim to altitude sickness and reel about on the zigzag path, and for that, I needed a vet to make some tests.
