🌟 Presented by UC Davis Hemispheric Institute on the Americas

 

"Your absence has been the cause of all this," Micaela Bastidas wrote to Túpac Amaru in December 1780, when the leader of the massive rebellion against Spanish rule was interned in the southern heights instead of approaching Cusco to besiege it. These letters between them, and some from their collaborator Tomasa Tito Condemayta, written between the end of 1780 and the beginning of 1781, are letters of frustration due to the dangers they experienced, but also deeply moving documents in which José Gabriel and Micaela display a striking affection, while continuing to worry about the safety of their loved ones and the logistics of the rebel movement.

After a meticulous compilation work, which includes the reproduction of part of the original material for this book, the historian Charles Walker, one of the greatest experts on Túpac Amaru, presents us with a selection of thirty-three fundamental letters to understand, from the epistolary genre, the rebels, their affections, the actors at play, the fears and betrayals, and, also, the fundamental role of Bastidas in the strategic organization of the campaign, a few weeks before his famous captures and executions.