The Last Days of the Incas [Format Kindle]

Starred Review. With vivid and energetic prose, Emmy Award–winner and author MacQuarrie (From the Andes to the Amazon) re-creates the 16th-century struggle for what would become modern-day Peru. The Incas ruled a 2,500–mile-long empire, but Spanish explorers, keen to enrich the crown and spread the Catholic Church, eventually destroyed Inca society. MacQuarrie, who writes with just the right amount of drama ("After the interpreter finished delivering the speech, silence once again gripped the square"), is to be commended for giving a balanced account of those events. This long and stylish book doesn't end with the final 1572 collapse of the Incas. Fast-forwarding to the 20th century, MacQuarrie tells the surprisingly fascinating story of scholars' evolving interpretations of Inca remains. In 1911, a young Yale professor of Latin American history named Hiram Bingham identified Machu Picchu as the nerve center of the empire. Few questioned Bingham's theory until after his death in 1956; in the 1960s Gene Savoy discovered the real Inca center of civilization, Vilcabamba. Although MacQuarrie dedicates just a few chapters to modern research, the archeologists who made the key discoveries emerge as well-developed characters, and the tale of digging up the empire is as riveting as the more familiar history of Spanish conquest. B&w illus., maps. (May 29)
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Reviewed by Jonathan Yardley

The Spanish conquest of South and Central America during the 16th century is an almost unmatchable story of human courage and cruelty, resourcefulness and duplicity, profit and exploitation. It has been celebrated and deplored in histories, novels and poems, and to this day -- five centries later -- it remains a subject of endless debate. Like the American Civil War, it has the power to provoke passionate emotions long after the deaths of those who fought in it.

The most famous campaign in the conquest is Hernando Cortés's invasion and subjugation of Mexico in 1519-21. It was carried out by a force of a few hundred men, who by dint of superior arms and armor managed to overcome the seemingly invulnerable Aztec Empire. This astonishing and supremely bloody accomplishment is the subject of one of the early classics of American literature, William H. Prescott's History of the Conquest of Mexico (1843), a monumental three-volume epic that treats Cortés and Montezuma, the emperor whom he overthrew, as heroic, larger-than-life figures.

Four years later Prescott published his History of the Conquest of Peru, a somewhat shorter (two volumes) and less successful study of Francisco Pizarro's eradication of the Inca Empire of western South America, a campaign that began in the early 1530s and continued for another three decades, well past Pizarro's assassination in 1541. Whatever its shortcomings, Prescott's remained the dominant history (in English, that is) for more than a century, until the publication of the magisterial The Conquest of the Incas by the British scholar John Hemming (1970, revised 1993). This is likely to remain the definitive account for many years to come, but The Last Days of the Incas, by filmmaker and writer Kim MacQuarrie, is a welcome addition to the literature. Lively and dramatic, it should appeal to a popular readership, but there is no evidence that -- apart from a certain amount of forgivable invention -- MacQuarrie has sacrificed historical accuracy in order to hype the story!

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Pizarro was in his early 50s when he landed in the place Spaniards knew as "Viru" or "Biru," after a fabulously wealthy tribe they believed lived there; "eventually, the name of this tribe would be transmogrified and would come to refer to . . . Peru -- home to the largest native empire the New World would ever know." Pizarro was a seasoned explorer, but also the son of a respected soldier and a "common maid" who was "stigmatized by the fact that his father had never married his mother." He "had received little if any schooling and thus remained illiterate for his entire life," but he was smart, ambitious, and he "instinctively understood both power and politics." He was the oldest of five brothers who came to Latin America -- the others were Hernando, Juan, Francisco Martín and Gonzalo -- and his family's stamp on Peru remains almost as visible now as it was five centuries ago.

This is because the Spanish conquest of Peru, like that of Mexico and all the other places Spain invaded during this time of its greatest strength, involved the subjugation of native peoples and the ascendancy of the Spanish. The shape of Peru today was determined by what Pizarro and his henchmen did, and thus their legacy can only be regarded as exceedingly dubious. On the one hand they brought Western inventions, institutions and religion to a part of the world that seemed (though it certainly wasn't) backward and underdeveloped, and a case can be made that in the long run this was to Latin America's benefit. On the other hand the conquistadors slaughtered innocent citizens and poorly armed soldiers in numbers too vast to count; pillaged the treasures of the Inca Empire, murdered its leaders and destroyed many of its monuments; established a system of autocratic Spanish political, cultural and economic control that still retains its grip, maintaining most indigenous inhabitants as second-class citizens at best.

MacQuarrie writes from a vantage point from which these deleterious aspects of the conquest can be seen more clearly. As he says, Prescott's "tale of Pizarro and a handful of Spanish heroes defying the odds against hordes of barbaric native savages not coincidentally mirrored the ideas and conceits of the Victorian Age and of American Manifest Destiny. No doubt this volume also reflects the prevailing attitudes of our time." Among those attitudes are not merely a deeper sympathy for the indigenes of Latin America but also greater respect for the accomplishments of the Incas and for the intelligence of their leaders.

A problem for anyone writing about the conquest of Peru is that documentation is limited and frequently unreliable. As MacQuarrie says, many of the accounts of the conflict were written years after the fact by people who either were not there or whose memories had become suspect. One of these was Garcilaso de la Vega, whose famous two-part Royal Commentaries of the Incas (1609) describes the conquest from the Incan point of view but at times seems closer to fiction than fact. Occasionally, MacQuarrie falls back on his own imagination -- "Hernando Pizarro, his horse snorting, presumably looked down his lines, then directly at Orgóñez across the plain from him. Not taking his eyes from him, he then raised his sword on high, held it aloft for a moment, then quickly brought it down" -- but though there's quite a lot of this, it adds color to the tale without undermining its essential credibility. Chalk it up to something like poetic license and leave it at that.

The basic elements of the story are not in dispute. After establishing a beachhead on the Peruvian coast, Francisco Pizarro struck out for the center of the Inca Empire with a force -- a force! -- of 167 conquistadors, to do battle against "an Inca army of perhaps eighty thousand warriors." Amazingly, not merely did Pizarro meet the enemy, he destroyed it. First he captured Atahualpa, the venerated Inca emperor, then he marched on Cuzco, the Inca capital, "the royal hub of the empire, a city that was purposely meant to display the ostentation of state power," and captured it. He held onto Atahualpa as hostage but finally executed him -- a decision he seems to have ever thereafter regretted -- when some of his subordinates persuaded themselves, without foundation, that the emperor had somehow ordered an attack on the Spanish.

The execution of Atahualpa, by all the evidence a good man who was, in the eyes of his people, "the equivalent of the king, the pope, and Jesus Christ all rolled into one," established the pattern that the Spanish subsequently followed. No Inca emperor was safe, nor was anyone in his family or retinue. Gonzalo Pizarro seized the beloved wife of Atahualpa's successor, Manco Inca, and took her for his own. Eventually Manco himself was murdered by Spaniards, and Tupac Amaru -- the last of the emperors -- was captured and executed. Though some in the Spanish community pleaded with the Pizarros and with the royal family in Spain for better treatment of the natives, the slaughter continued unabated. Whether it was genocide as the term is now understood is open to debate, but "the marauding Spaniards made no distinction between men, women, and children" as the people of Peru were systematically slaughtered.

The Incas did not go down without a fight. In the spring of 1536, Manco Inca organized "a force of between 100,000 and 200,000 warriors -- a stupendous feat of logistical organization" -- and almost certainly would have vanquished the invaders had he not been at an insuperable technological advantage. The Spanish had at their disposal all the equipment and tactics of 16th-century European warfare, chief among them horses -- "animals that could carry a fully armored Spaniard and still outrun the fastest native" -- "steel helmets, armor, and chain mail," and "they could communicate much more efficiently through writing, thus being able to send and receive complex information between their often divided forces." The Incas' weapons by contrast "were designed for hand-to-hand combat with other similarly armed foot soldiers and consisted of an assortment of clubs" as well as the occasional bow and arrow. In time the Incas developed strategies for neutralizing horses and Spanish weaponry, but these came too late; whenever armed Spaniards on horseback waded into crowds of Inca soldiers, the results wee foreordained and ghastly.

The Spanish secured their hold on Peru after the execution of Tupac Amaru, in great measure because of the smart, stern regime of Francisco de Toledo, who later became viceroy. It is no small irony that the first indigenous Peruvian to hold the country's presidency -- Alejandro Toledo -- bears the same surname as the man who insured its subordination to Spanish leadership for more than four centuries. Elected in 2001, the later Toledo held office for five years and, in spite of numerous missteps, some of them spectacular, may have helped steer his country along the first steps away from oligarchy and toward genuine self-government. But make no mistake about it: The stamp of the conquistadors is everywhere evident in Peru, and the country still wrestles with their ambiguous legacy.

Copyright 2007, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Incas were members of the group of Quechuan peoples of Peru, who established an empire from northern Ecuador to central Chile before the Spanish conquest. MacQuarrie reminds his readers that nearly 500 years ago, 168 Spaniards arrived in what is now Peru and collided with an Incan empire of 10 million people. The author, who lived in Peru for five years, chronicles the adventures of Hiram Bingham, who, in 1911, discovered Machu Picchu and believed it was the Incan capital. MacQuarrie also recounts the search by Gene Savoy, the American explorer who found Vicabamba, the true capital. He describes the adventures of other conquistadors and puppet kings, the rebellion of 1535, and other military attempts to conquer the Indians. MacQuarrie, a four-time Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, researched Spanish and Incan chronicles. The result is a first-rate reference work of ambitious scope that will most likely stand as the definitive account of these people. George Cohen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

In 1532, the fifty-four-year-old Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro led a force of 167 men, including his four brothers, to the shores of Peru. Unbeknownst to the Spaniards, the Inca rulers of Peru had just fought a bloody civil war in which the emperor Atahualpa had defeated his brother Huascar. Pizarro and his men soon clashed with Atahualpa and a huge force of Inca warriors at the Battle of Cajamarca. Despite being outnumbered by more than two hundred to one, the Spaniards prevailed -- due largely to their horses, their steel armor and swords, and their tactic of surprise. They captured and imprisoned Atahualpa. Although the Inca emperor paid an enormous ransom in gold, the Spaniards executed him anyway. The following year, the Spaniards seized the Inca capital of Cuzco, completing their conquest of the largest native empire the New World has ever known. Peru was now a Spanish colony, and the conquistadors were wealthy beyond their wildest dreams.

But the Incas did not submit willingly. A young Inca emperor, the brother of Atahualpa, soon led a massive rebellion against the Spaniards, inflicting heavy casualties and nearly wiping out the conquerors. Eventually, however, Pizarro and his men forced the emperor to abandon the Andes and flee to the Amazon. There, he established a hidden capital, called Vilcabamba. Although the Incas fought a deadly, thirty-six-year-long guerrilla war, the Spanish ultimately captured the last Inca emperor and vanquished the native resistance.

Kim MacQuarrie lived in Peru for five years and became fascinated by the Incas and the history of the Spanish conquest. Drawing on both native and Spanish chronicles, he vividly describes the dramatic story of the conquest, with all its savagery and suspense. MacQuarrie also relates the story of the modern search for Vilcabamba, of how Machu Picchu was discovered, and of how a trio of colorful American explorers only recently discovered the lost Inca capital of Vilcabamba, hidden for centuries in the Amazon.

This authoritative, exciting history is among the most powerful and important accounts of the culture of the South American Indians and the Spanish Conquest.

In 1532, the fifty-four-year-old Spanish conquistador
Francisco Pizarro led a force of 167 men, including his four brothers, to
the shores of Peru. Unbeknownst to the Spaniards, the Inca rulers of Peru
had just fought a bloody civil war in which the emperor Atahualpa had
defeated his brother Huascar. Pizarro and his men soon clashed with
Atahualpa and a huge force of Inca warriors at the Battle of Cajamarca.
Despite being outnumbered by more than two hundred to one, the Spaniards
prevailed -- due largely to their horses, their steel armor and swords, and
their tactic of surprise. They captured and imprisoned Atahualpa. Although
the Inca emperor paid an enormous ransom in gold, the Spaniards executed
him anyway. The following year, the Spaniards seized the Inca capital of
Cuzco, completing their conquest of the largest native empire the New World
has ever known. Peru was now a Spanish colony, and the conquistadors were
wealthy beyond their wildest dreams.

But the Incas did not submit willingly. A young Inca emperor, the brother
of Atahualpa, soon led a massive rebellion against the Spaniards,
inflicting heavy casualties and nearly wiping out the conquerors.
Eventually, however, Pizarro and his men forced the emperor to abandon the
Andes and flee to the Amazon. There, he established a hidden capital,
called Vilcabamba. Although the Incas fought a deadly, thirty-six-year-long
guerrilla war, the Spanish ultimately captured the last Inca emperor and
vanquished the native resistance.

Kim MacQuarrie lived in Peru for five years and became fascinated by the
Incas and the history of the Spanish conquest. Drawing on both native and
Spanish chronicles, he vividly describes the dramatic story of the
conquest, with all its savagery and suspense. MacQuarrie also relates the
story of the modern search for Vilcabamba, of how Machu Picchu was
discovered, and of how a trio of colorful American explorers only recently
discovered the lost Inca capital of Vilcabamba, hidden for centuries in the
Amazon.

This authoritative, exciting history is among the most powerful and
important accounts of the Spanish Conquest of the Inca Empire, the modern
search for the Incas' lost Amazonian capital of Vilcabamba, and the
discovery of Machu Picchu.

"A skillful mix of extensive research, insightful analysis, and masterful storytelling."

"A first-rate...work of ambitious scope that will most likely stand as the definitive account of these people."

"A welcome addition to the literature...lively and dramatic."

"A first-rate...work of ambitious scope that will most likely stand as the definitive account of these people."

"Thoroughly and entertainingly recounted...MacQuarrie excels."

"A wonderful history of the Spanish conquest of the Incan empire...a great read about fascinating human events."

In 1532 the fifty-four-year-old Spanish conquistador Francisco
Pizarro led a force of 167 men, including his four brothers, to the shores
of Peru. Unbeknownst to the Spaniards, the Inca rulers of Peru had just
fought a bloody civil war in which the emperor Atahualpa had defeated his
brother Huascar. Pizarro and his men soon clashed with Atahualpa and a huge
force of Inca warriors at the Battle of Cajamarca. Despite being
outnumbered by more than two hundred to one, the Spaniards prevailed--due
largely to their horses, their steel armor and swords, and their tactic of
surprise. They captured and imprisoned Atahualpa. Although the Inca
emperor paid an enormous ransom in gold, the Spaniards executed him anyway.
The following year, the Spaniards seized the Inca capital of Cuzco,
completing their conquest of the largest native empire the New World has
ever known. Peru was now a Spanish colony, and the conquistadors were
wealthy beyond their wildest dreams.

But the Incas did not submit willingly. A young Inca emperor, the brother
of Atahualpa, soon led a massive rebellion against the Spaniards,
inflicting heavy casualties and nearly wiping out the conquistadors.
Eventually, however, Pizarro and his men forced the emperor to abandon the
Andes and flee to the Amazon. There, he established a hidden capital,
called Vilcabamba. Although the Incas fought a deadly, 36-year-long
guerrilla war, the Spanish ultimately captured the last Inca emperor and
vanquished the native resistance.

Kim MacQuarrie lived in Peru for five years and became fascinated by the
Incas and the history of the Spanish conquest. Drawing on both native and
Spanish chronicles, he vividly describes the dramatic story of the
conquest, with all its savagery and suspense. MacQuarrie also relates the
story of the modern search for Vilcabamba, of how Machu Picchu was
discovered, and of how a trio of colorful American explorers only recently
discovered the lost Inca capital of Vilcabamba, hidden for centuries in the
Amazon.

The Last days of the Incas is among the most powerful and important
accounts of the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire, the modern search for
the Incas' lost Amazonian capital of Vilcabamba, and the discovery of Machu
Picchu.

"This is a wonderful book about one of the most epic struggles of history, a conquest that transformed a continent."

--Wade Davis, Anthropologist and Explorer-in-Residence, National GeographicSociety, and author of "One River."....................................................

"A colorful, superbly crafted historical narrative that masterfully demonstrates that when cultures collide, unforeseen and tragic consequences follow...also a memorable adventure story, revealing the modern Indiana Jones-type characters that unearthed, and continue to discover, lost partsof the Inca Empire. "The Last Days of the Incas" is historical writing at its best."

--Broughton Coburn, author of "Everest: Mountain Without Mercy".................................................

"'The Last Days of the Incas'" surprises, delivers history, and reads like a great yarn. I've read yards of books on the Incas, but this one took me out of the classroom and into that long-lost world."

--Keith Bellows, Editor in Chief, National Geographic Traveler................................................

"The story of the European conquest of the fascinating and fabulously rich empire of the Incas is one of history's most engaging and tragic episodes...Thanks to "The Last Days of the Incas," Kim MacQuarrie's superbly written new treatment of the subject, it is now accessible to the much broader audience it deserves."

--Vincent Lee, author of "Forgotten Vilcabamba."

Kim MacQuarrie is a writer, a 4-time Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker, and an anthropologist who has made films in such disparate regions as Siberia, Papua New Guinea, and Peru. MacQuarrie is the author of three previous books on Peru and lived in that country for five years, exploring many of the locations and hidden regions he chronicled in "The Last Days of the Incas." During that time, MacQuarrie lived with a recently-contacted tribe of Amazonian Indians, called the Yora. It was MacQuarrie's experience filming a nearby group of Indians, whoses ancestors still remembered their contacts with the Inca Empire, that ultimately led him to investigate and then to write "The Last Days of the Incas."