Witness to the Age of Revolution: The Odyssey of Juan Bautista Tupac Amaru (Graphic History Series)

Product Description

The Tupac Amaru rebellion of 1780-1783 began as a local revolt against colonial authorities and grew into the largest rebellion in the history of Spain’s American empire-more widespread and deadlier than the American Revolution. An official collector of tribute for the imperial crown, José
Gabriel Condorcanqui had seen firsthand what oppressive Spanish rule meant for Peru’s Indian population and, under the Inca royal name Tupac Amaru, he set events in motion that would transform him into one of Latin America’s most iconic revolutionary figures. While he and the rebellion’s leaders
were put to death, his half-brother, Juan Bautista Tupac Amaru, survived but paid a high price for his participation in the uprising.

This work in the Graphic History series is based on the memoir written by Juan Bautista about his odyssey as a prisoner of Spain. He endured forty years in jails, dungeons, and presidios on both sides of the Atlantic. Juan Bautista spent two years in jail in Cusco, was freed, rearrested, and then
marched 700 miles in chains over the Andes to Lima. He spent two years aboard a ship travelling around Cape Horn to Spain. Subsequently, he endured over thirty years imprisoned in Ceuta, Spain’s much-feared garrison city on the northern tip of Africa. In 1822, priest Marcos Durán Martel and
Maltese-Argentine naval hero Juan Bautista Azopardo arranged to have him freed and sent to the newly independent Argentina, where he became a symbol of Argentina’s short-lived romance with the Incan Empire. There he penned his memoirs, but died without fulfilling his dream of returning to Peru.

This stunning graphic history relates the life and legacy of Juan Bautista Tupac Amaru, enhanced by a selection of primary sources, and chronicles the harrowing and extraordinary life of a firsthand witness to the Age of Revolution.
.

Review

“This book manages to rescue one of the most elusive figures in Peruvian history and is a persuasive invitation to take his sources as a starting point to relocate his historical legacy in the debates about the past, present and future of the Peruvian republican project in its bicentennial…. The
appearance of
Witness to the Age of Revolution contributes to revitalizing the subgenre of graphic adaptations of central documents of Peruvian historiography, which in Peru has very little precedent.” — Fernando Aguirre Perez,
La Vaca Multicolor

“Part action comic, part historical biography: an attempt to correct the record and give a pivotal figure the prominence he deserves… [
Witness to the Age of Revolution is] an educational hybrid, with vivid illustrations backed by scholarly context.” — Kirkus

“Some stories, like the incredible odyssey of Juan Bautista Tupac Amaru, have to be seen to be believed. From his youth in the heart of the Incan Andes, where his half-brother led the massive indigenous struggle that nearly dislodged the Spanish Empire, to his decades-long exile in Spain and
Morocco, where he befriended veterans of late-eighteenth and early nineteenth-century revolutions and wars of independence, and, finally, to his liberation in Argentina, where he was cast as a hero and encouraged to write his memoirs, this beautifully rendered graphic account of Juan Bautista’s
amazing journey is a vivid reminder that history offers epic dramas as riveting as any we might imagine.” — Vincent Brown, author of
Tacky’s Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War

“From unlikely protagonists, off-center pathways, and the most forgotten corners of the late colonial Spanish world, Walker and Clarke draw a vivid and compelling story.” — Kenneth Mills, University of Michigan

“The life and times of an Inca ‘Papillon,’ witness to, and participant in the Age of Revolutions and the creation of modern Latin America. This beautifully illustrated and historically accurate graphic history of Tupac Amaru’s brother and his controversial book makes this tragic history come alive.”
— Stuart B. Schwart