The peddler assembled a pyramid of small, red envelopes on the grass at his feet. He was hawking a nostrum, which he declared would cure everything from impotence to corns to alcoholism. His curly black hair glistened in the milky Peruvian sun. His assistant, a young boy, was transfixed by an iguana, as the crowd was transfixed by the voluble huckster. Figuratively he held them in the palm of his hand while the boy literally held the iguana in his. He stared at it, as if waiting for it to change into something other than a lizard.

It was Saturday afternoon. In the center of town foreigners picked over Indian blankets and dickered inexpertly for ceramics, copper masks of Inca deities, and the handbags woven in bright colors that are all the rage these days in Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires.