Pizarro yells and pounces. At the signal, the trap is sprung. From the ambush trumpets blare, arquebuses roar, and the cavalry charges the stunned and unarmed crowd.
(76, 96, and 221)
1533: Cajamarca The Ransom
To buy the life of Atahualpa, silver and gold pour in. Like a swarm of ants down the empire’s four highways come long lines of llamas, and people with shoulders bent under their loads. The most splendid booty comes from Cuzco: an entire garden, trees and flowers of solid gold, and uncut precious stones, and birds and animals of pure silver and turquoise and lapis lazuli.
The oven receives gods and adornments and vomits bars of gold and silver. Officers and soldiers shout to have it divided. For six years they have had no pay.
Of each five ingots, Francisco Pizarro sets one apart for the king. Then he crosses himself. He asks the help of God, who knows all, to see justice done and asks the help of Hernando de Soto, who knows how to read, to keep an eye on the scribe.
He assigns one part to the church and another to the military vicar. He handsomely rewards his brothers and the other captains. Each soldier of the line gets more than Prince Philip makes in a year, and Pizarro becomes the richest man in the world. The hunter of Atahualpa assigns to himself twice as much as the court of Charles V, with its six hundred servants, spends in a year — without counting the Incas’ litter, eighty-three kilos of solid gold, which is his trophy as general.
(76 and 184)
1533: Cajamarca Atahualpa
A black rainbow crossed the sky. The Inca Atahualpa didn’t want to believe it.
In the days of the fiesta of the sun, a condor fell lifeless in the Plaza of Happiness. Atahualpa didn’t want to believe it.
He put to death messengers who brought bad news and with one ax blow decapitated the old prophet who announced misfortune. He had the oracle’s house burned down and witnesses of the prophecy cut to pieces.
Atahualpa had the eighty sons of his brother Huáscar bound to posts on the roads, and the vultures gorged themselves with that meat. Huáscar’s wives tinted the waters of the Adamarca River with blood. Huáscar, Atahualpa’s prisoner, ate human shit and sheep’s piss and had a dressed-up stone for a wife. Later Huáscar said and was the last to say: Soon they will kill him as he kills me. And Atahualpa didn’t want to believe it.
When his palace turned into his jail, he didn’t want to believe it. Atahualpa, Pizarro’s prisoner, said: I am the greatest of all princes on earth. The ransom filled one room with gold and two rooms with silver. The invaders melted down even the golden cradle in which Atahualpa heard his first song.
Seated on Atahualpa’s throne, Pizarro told him he had decided to confirm his death sentence. Atahualpa replied: “Don’t tell me those jokes.” Nor does he want to believe it now, as step by step he mounts the stairs, dragging his chains, in the milky light of dawn.
Soon the news will be spread among the countless children of the earth who owe obedience and tribute to the son of the sun. In Quito they will mourn the death of the Shadow That Protects: puzzled, lost, memory denied, alone. In Cuzco there will be joy and drunken sprees.
Atahualpa is bound by the hands, feet, and neck, but still thinks: What did I do to deserve death?
At the foot of the gallows, he refuses to believe that he has been defeated by man. Only gods could have done it. His father, the sun, has betrayed him.
Before the iron tourniquet breaks his neck, he weeps, kisses the cross, and accepts baptism with another name. Giving his name as Francisco, which is his conqueror’s name, he beats on the doors of the Paradise of the Europeans, where no place is reserved for him.
(57, 76, and 221)
1533: Xaquixaguana The Secret
Pizarro marches on Cuzco. Now he heads a great army. Manco Cápac, the Incas’ new king, has added thousands of Indians to the side of the handful of conquistadors. But Atahualpa’s generals harry the advance. In the valley of Xaquixaguana, Pizarro captures a messenger of his enemies.
Fire licks the soles of the prisoner’s feet.
“What does this message say?”
The Chasqui is a man experienced in endless trottings through the icy winds of the plain and the scorching heat of the desert. The job has accustomed him to pain and fatigue. He moans but won’t talk.
After very long torment his tongue loosens: “That the horses won’t be able to climb the mountains.”
“What else?”
“That there’s nothing to fear. That horses are scary but do no harm.”
“And what else?”
They make him tread on the fire.
“And what else?”
He has lost his feet. Before losing his life, he says: “That you people die, too.”
(81 and 185)
1533: Cuzco The Conquerors Enter the Sacred City
In the noon radiance, the soldiers make their way through the cloud of smoke. A whiff of damp leather mixes with the smell of burning, while the clatter of horses’ hooves and cannon wheels is heard.
An altar rises in the plaza. Silk banners embroidered with eagles escort the new god, who has his arms open and wears a beard like his sons. Isn’t the new god seeing his sons, battle-axes in hand, pounce upon the gold of the temples and tombs?
Amid the stones of Cuzco, blackened by fire, the old and the paralytic dumbly await the days to come.
(50 and 76)
1533: Riobamba Alvarado
Half a year before, the ships anchored in Puerto Viejo. Inspired by promises of a virgin kingdom, Pedro de Alvarado had sailed from Guatemala. With him went five hundred Spaniards and two thousand Indian and Negro slaves. Messengers had reported to him: “The power that awaits you makes what you have seem like dirt. To the north of Tumbes you will multiply your fame and wealth. To the south, Pizarro and Almagro have now become the masters, but the fabulous kingdom of Quito belongs to no one.”
In the coastal villages they found gold, silver, and emeralds. Loaded with quick fortunes, they set off for the mountains. They faced jungles, swamps, fevers that kill in a day or leave one mad, and terrifying rains of volcanic ash. In the Andean foothills, snow-storms and winds that cut like knives broke the bodies of the slaves, who had never known cold, and many Spaniards left their bones in the mountains. Soldiers dismounting to tighten their horses’ girths remained permanently frozen. The booty was thrown to the bottom of ravines: Alvarado offered gold, and the soldiers clamored for food and shelter. His eyes burned by the blinding snow, Alvarado kept charging up the trail to cut off with one sword-blow the heads of slaves who fell and of soldiers who wished they hadn’t come.
More dead than alive, with muscles iced and blood frozen, the toughest ones managed to reach the plateau. Finally today they have hit the royal highway of the Incas, the one that leads to Quito, to paradise. No sooner do they arrive than they find in the mud fresh hoofprints. Captain Benalcázar has beaten them to it.
(81 and 97)