Description
Titu Cusi tells of his father’s maltreatment by the hands of the conquerors; his father’s ensuing military campaigns, withdrawal, and murder; and his own succession as ruler. Even though he continued to withstand Spanish attempts at “pacification,” Titu Cusi entertained Spanish missionaries, converted to Christianity, after which, most importantly, narrated his story of the conquest to enlighten Emperor Phillip II in regards to the behavior of the emperor’s subjects in Peru. This vivid narrative illuminates the Incan view of the Spanish invaders and offers the most important account of indigenous resistance, accommodation, change, and survival within the face of the European conquest.
Informed by literary, historical, and anthropological scholarship, Bauer’s introduction points out the hybrid elements of Titu Cusi’s account, revealing the way it merges native Andean and Spanish rhetorical and cultural practices. Supported in part by the Colorado Endowment for the Humanities.