Kim MacQuarrie

The Last Days of the Incas

"Kim MacQuarrie tells great stories of South America's history, from Butch Cassidy to Che Guevara to cocaine king Pablo Escobar to the last survivor of an Indian tribe, all of these stories set in the Andes Mountains"--

On the Trail of Bandits, Heroes, and Revolutionaries

Life and Death in the Andes

The epic story of the fall of the Inca Empire to Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro in the aftermath of a bloody civil war, and the recent discovery of the lost guerrilla capital of the Incas, Vilcabamba, by three American explorers. 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 armour 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-only recently rediscovered by a trio of colorful American explorers. 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.

The Last Days Of The Incas

Documents the epic conquest of the Inca Empire as well as the decades-long insurgency waged by the Incas against the Conquistadors, in a narrative history that is partially drawn from the storytelling traditions of the Peruvian Amazon Yora people. Reprint. 20,000 first printing.

Kim MacQuarrie ha escrito un inolvidable relato sobre la resistencia y caída del Imperio inca y sobre la búsqueda de la mítica ciudad de Vilcabamba ―perdida durante cuatro siglos―, donde, según las crónicas, se refugió el joven rey Manco Inca y desafió durante treinta y seis años a los españoles, protegido en las profundidades de la selva amazónica. «Los últimos días de los incas sorprende, enseña y se lee como una extraordinaria novela que nos transporta a un mundo perdido». Keith Bellows, editor de National Geographic Traveller «Un libro magnífico sobre una de las luchas más épicas de la historia». Wade Davies, antropólogo y explorador de la National Geographic Society «Además de ofrecer relatos estremecedores de batallas y describir la organización de las primeras guerrillas incas, MacQuarrie consigue convertir la historia del descubrimiento de Machu Picchu en una joya narrativa». Entertainment Weekly

Kim MacQuarrie

About

Books

Join the club