An Inca Account of the Conquest of Peru (review)

Happily Inca ruler Titu Cusi Yupanqui's account of the European invasion and his resistance to colonial rule in the Andes is enjoying renewed interest with the publication of three English translations (University Press of Colorado, Hackett, and David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies). Ralph Bauer's annotated translation of the account provided by Titu Cusi (1538-1570) to defend his claim to royal Inca descent and to justify his opposition to the Spanish invaders makes available for the first time in English a full-length and highly accessible version of this important document. The account will help students and teachers of Latin American history and historians in general better understand the complex and incomplete process of the Spanish Conquest in Peru. Titu Cusi's text and Bauer's ample introduction confront readers with the significant divisions, competing factions, and surprising alliances that appeared among both Inca nobles and Spanish invaders as they battled for power and wealth in the Andes.

Bauer's introduction to the account opens with a brief summary of Inca dynastic history and the principal battles, alliances, and other events of the invasion and resistance until the final defeat of armed Inca forces in 1572. Titu Cusi's account is rooted in Manco Inca's decision to withdraw to the tropical lowlands of the eastern foothills in 1537. Once supportive of Spanish power, Manco Inca created a neo-Inca state in Vitcos and Vilcabamba. From this stronghold, Inca opponents to Spanish rule waged guerilla warfare on colonial trade routes and towns for thirty years. In 1545, Spanish fugitives involved in Francisco Pizarro's assassination took refuge with the neo-Incas but then murdered their Inca host. Manco Inca left his son Saire Topa to rule. When Saire Topa abandoned Vilcabamba to live under Spanish rule in 1556, Inca nobles chose his half brother Titu Cusi to lead the Vilcabamba resistance. Titu Cusi had been born in Cuzco around 1530. When he was about seven, a Spanish raid on Vilcabamba captured him, and he lived in a Spaniard's household (1537-1542) until his father's messengers managed to spirit him away to his father's territory. Titu Cusi died in 1571 leaving his younger brother Tupac Amaru to rule until 1572 when this last Inca ruler was captured in Vilcabamba and executed in Cuzco by the new viceroy Francisco Toledo.

Bauer describes Titu Cusi's narrative directed to King Philip II and his court as a "hybrid account" that combines native Andean and Spanish cultural and rhetorical practices. Titu Cusi conveys a sense of the violence of the European invasion and the adaptability of Inca resistance to Castilian-domination as the fighters copied the European use of swords, firearms, horses, and the written word (including this account). In 1570, Titu Cusi dictated his story in Quechua to the Agustinian missionary, Fray Marcos García, who ordered it and translated it into Spanish. Titu Cusi's mestizo secretary and interpreter, Martín de Pando, then transcribed the manuscript. Titu Cusi's reign (1556-1571) corresponded with Spanish attempts at diplomacy and Spanish concerns about the Taqui Onqoy resitance movement among non-Inca commoners. Titu Cusi exchanged letters with colonial authorities, and this text was part of those exchanges in which both sides explored the possibility for Titu Cusi's integration into colonial society. Bauer explains that Titu Cusi "walked a fine line between resistance and accommodation in his attempt to preserve his refuge" (p. 17).

The account includes a map of Tahuantinsuyu, a short glossary of the Quechua and Spanish terms appearing in the text, and a chronology of Inca history and sixteenth-century events. Drawings from Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala and the frontispiece from fray Domingo Santo Tomás's 1560 Lexicon illustrate the Introduction. Endnotes and a bibliography accompany both the Introduction and the text of the account. These are adequate for the generalist. Specialists would want to...