Tùpac Amaru I
He comes dragging his feet on the cobblestones. On the back of a dwarf donkey, a rope about his neck, Túpac Amaru approaches the scaffold. Ahead of him, the town crier proclaims him tyrant and traitor.
In the main square, the clamor swells up.
“Inca, why do they take you to cut off your head?”
The murmurings of the throng of natives become an uproar. Let them have us all killed! shriek the women.
High on the scaffold, Tupac Amaru raises a hand, rests it against his ear and calmly lets it fall back. Then the throng falls silent.
There is nothing but silence when the executioner’s sword cleaves the neck of Huaina Cápac’s grandson.
With Túpac Amaru, four centuries of the Inca dynasty and nearly forty years of resistance in the Wilcabamba Mountains come to an end. Now the storms of war, the harsh rhythm of the conches, will no longer fall on the valley of Cuzco.
(76)
The Vanquished Believe:
He will come back and move about the earth. The highest mountains know. Being the highest, they see the farthest.
He was the son of the sun and a simple woman.
He took the wind prisoner; and tied up the sun, his father, so that time might endure.
With harness and lash, he brought stones to the heights. With those stones he made temples and fortresses.
Wherever he went, the birds went. The birds greeted him and gladdened his steps. From much journeying his feet spilled blood. When the blood of his feet mixed with the soil, we learned to cultivate. We learned to speak when he told us: “Speak.” He was stronger and younger than we.
We have not always had fear in our breasts. Not always bumped along, like the ups and downs of our roads. Our history is long. Our history was born on the day we were hauled from the mouth, the eyes, the armpits, and the vagina of the earth.
Inkarrí’s brother Españarrí cut off Inkarrí’s head. He has been. The head of Inkarrí turned into money. Gold and silver spurted from his shit-filled entrails.
The highest mountains know. Inkarrí’s head is trying to grow toward his feet. The pieces of him will surely come together one day. On that day he will walk the earth followed by the birds.
(15 and 162)
1574: Mexico City The First Auto-da-Fé in Mexico
Ever since the town criers spread the edict of the delations, denunciations have rained down against heretics and bigamists, witches and blasphemers.
The auto-da-fé is celebrated on the first Sunday in Lent. From sunrise until dusk the Holy Office of the Inquisition passes sentences on the scarecrows dragged from its cells and torture chambers. High on the sumptuous scaffold, surrounded by lancers and cheering crowds, work the hangmen. No such multitude can be remembered at a public celebration or at any thing of very great solemnity ever offered on earth, says the viceroy of New Spain, who attends the spectacle on a velvet throne with a cushion under his feet.
The punishments of vela, soga, mordaza, abjuration de levi, and one hundred and two hundred lashes are meted out to a silversmith, a cutler, a goldsmith, a scribe, and a cobbler for having said that simple fornication is not mortal sin. Various bigamists suffer similar inflictions, among them the Augustine friar Juan Sarmiento, who with his back one raw wound marches off to row in the galleys for five years.
The Negro Domingo, born in Mexico, and the mestizo Miguel Franco receive a hundred lashes each, the former for having the custom of denying God, the latter because he made his wife confess to him. A hundred, too, for the Sevillian apothecary Gaspar de los Reyes for having said it was better to cohabit than to be married and that it was licit for the poor and afflicted to perjure themselves for money.
To the galleys, hard prison for the mischievous, go various Lutherans and Jews, who sucked their heresy in their mothers’ milk, a few Englishmen of the pirate John Hawkins’s fleet, and a Frenchman who called the pope and the king poltroons.
An Englishman from the mines of Guanajuato and a French barber from Yucatan end their heretical days in the bonfire.
(139)
1576: Guanajuato The Monks Say:
She came to Mexico twenty years ago. Two doves guided her to Guanajuato. She arrived without a scratch, although she crossed the sea and the desert, and those who carried her lost their way. The king sent her to us in gratitude for the wealth that never stops spurting from the bowels of these mountains.
For more than eight centuries she had lived in Spain. Hidden from the Moors, she survived in a cave in Granada. When Christians discovered and rescued her, they found no wound on her wooden body. She reached Guanajuato intact. She remains intact, performing miracles. Our Lady of Guanajuato consoles both poor and rich for their poverty; and she shields alike from the cold those who sleep outdoors and in a sheltered palace. In her infinite mercy she does not distinguish between servants and lords. No one invokes her and fails to receive divine favor.
By her grace many Indians of Guanajuato who go to her with repentance and faith are now being saved. She has stayed the sword of the Lord, who with just fury castigates the idolatries and sins of the Indians in Mexico. The afflicted who brought their supplications to her and paid due charity have not been touched by the pestilence.
In other areas, the Indian whom typhus does not kill dies of hunger or hardship. There are corpses in the fields and in the plazas, and there are houses filled with them in which all died and no one remained to tell of it. Throughout Mexico the pestilence is raising such a stink of putrefaction and smoke that we Spaniards have to go about holding our noses.
(79 and 131)
1576: Xochimilco The Apostle Santiago versus the Plague
Here even nursing babies have paid tribute, in money and in corn. If the pestilence goes on, who will pay? Local hands have built the cathedral of Mexico. If the plague does not stop, who will sow these fields? Who will spin and weave in the workshops? Who will build cathedrals and pave streets?
The Franciscans discuss the situation in their monastery. Of the thirty thousand Indians in Xochimilco when the Spaniards came, four thousand are left, and that is an exaggeration. Many died fighting with Hernán Cortés, conquering men and lands for him, and more died working for him and for Pedro de Alvarado, and the epidemic is killing more.
Fray Jerónimo de Mendieta, the monastery guardian, comes up with the inspiration that saves the day.
They prepare to draw lots. An acolyte, blindfolded, stirs slips of paper in the silver dish. On each slip is written the name of a saint of proven prestige at the celestial court. The acolyte chooses one, and Father Mendieta unfolds it and reads: “It’s the Apostle Santiago!”
From the balcony it is announced to the Indians of Xochimilco in their language. The apocalyptic monk speaks on his knees, raising his arms. “Santiago will defeat the pestilence!”
He promises him an altar.
(79 and 161)
1577: Xochimilco St. Sebastian versus the Plague