Smoldering Ashes: Cuzco and the Creation of Republican Peru, 1780-1840

Charles F. Walker's, Smoldering ashes: Cuzco and the creation of Republican Peru, 1780-1840, primarily revolves around two individuals Tupac Amaru and Agustin Gamarra. The book is one in the Duke University Press series "Latin American Otherwise." Walker relies on research in many archives including the Archivo Departamental del Cuzco. The Tupac Amaru rebellion, Walker argues, has to be viewed in the context of local, regional, and national struggles. This took place before nationalist European movements and thus Walker uses the term proto-nationalist to describe events that occurred in the old Inca center of Cuzco. Tupac Amaru tried to unite a base of all the masses against the Spaniards. When the rebellion did not succeed, the division between indigenous and others hardened, which limited future possibilities for Indian expression in a republican state. Cuzco caudillo, Agustin Gamarra, also appealed to the people to build a strong coalition, but in a post independence civil war, Indians failed to join with him. "His failure to recruit Indians for his military campaigns, as evident in the Battle of Yanacocha (1836), led to his demise and epitomized the enduring gulf between the republic of the Indians and the republic of Peru."(15)