Wakas and shaking: indigenous terror in the great Andean revolt (1780-1783) Carlos Guillermo Páramo. Lima-Bogotá: National University of San Marcos - National University of Colombia. 2023, 412 Pages.

Abstract

Another dazzling book by Carlos Páramo. After his work on Lope de Aguirre, published in 2009, comes this one on the Andean revolt led in the Andes of southern Peru by José Gabriel Condorcanqui, better known as Túpac Amaru II, and in the Bolivian highlands by Julián Apaza, better known as Túpac Katari. Fourteen years between one book and another would seem like a world, but that lapse shows that his books are slow-cooked: far from the bureaucratic writing that prevails in academia (the desire to publish more for the points than for the desire for communion) this book is a beautiful example that we academics can also write well, slowly, choosing each word carefully, lovingly —there is something of courtship in that choice, of course, something of seduction, something of dedication and hospitality—, unraveling (and relating) their meanings. Writing, a leisurely act of solitary love (the sublimation of what is loved in the meanders that form on the page), ends in this case in the collective destiny of publication, a destiny for which we, its amazed readers, are grateful.