EXCERPT FROM BULLETIN AND ELEGY OF INDIAN ENSLAVEMENT

I am Juan Atampam, Blas Llaguarcos, Bernabé Ladna,
Andrés Chabla, Isidro Guamancela, Pablo Pumacuri,
Marcos Lema, Gaspar Tomayco, Sebastián Caxicondor.
I was born and suffered in Chorlavi, Chamanl, Tanlagua,
Niebli. Yes, I suffered unto death in Chisingue,
Naxiche, Guambayna, Paolo, Cotopilaló.
I sweated blood in Caxaji, in Quinchirana;
in Cicalpa, Licto, and Conrogal.
I endured the Christ of my people in Tixán, in Saucay,
in Molleturo, in Cojibambo, in Tovavela and Zhoray.
That's how I added more whiteness and pain to the Cross that my executioners brought.
To myself as well. To José Vacancela as well.
To Lucas Chaca as well. To Roque Caxicondor as well.
In Plaza de Pomasqui in a circle of other natives,
they sheared our heads till we felt the cold.
Oh, Pachacámac, Lord of the Universe,
your smile never felt more frigid to us,
and we went up on the high mountain plateau, heads bare,
to crown ourselves, weeping, with your Sun.

Melchor Pumaluisa, son of Guapulo:
they cut off his testicles in the middle of the hacienda's patio with a hog-butchering knife.
And, kicking him, they paraded him
in front of our tear-filled eyes.
He was spurting out great intermittent streams of blood.
He fell face down in the flower of his body
Oh, Pachacamac, Lord of the Infinite,
You who stain the sun as you walk among the dead...

And your Lieutenant and Chief Justice,
José de Uribe:"I order you". And I,
with the other Indians, carried him wherever he ordererd
from house to house, on his visits, in a hammock.
While our women, with our daughters, slaves,
were sweeping, carding, weaving, weeding,
spinning, licking mud dishes—of our making.
And laying with Viracochas,
our flowers with two thighs,
to bring forth the mestizo and future executioner.

Without pay, without corn, without home,
without even hunger, from not eating anything,
only squash; weeping, old hail streaming down my cheeks,
I arrived carrying fruits from the valley
after four weeks of fasting.
They received me: My daughter split in two by Alférez Quintanilla.
Wife, his cohabitant. Two sons dead by the whip.
And I, by Life, on Pachacámac. That's how I died.

And, from such suffering, to seven skies,
by seventy suns, oh Pachacámac,
wife giving birth to my son, I wrenched his arms.
Still soft after so much disaster, she said:
"Break the baby's hands; I don't want
him to be Viracochas' slave". I broke.

And among the priests, too, there were some who seemed like devils, vultures.
No different. Worse than the other two-legged ones.
Other would say: "Son, Love, Christ".
Weaving inside the church, lamp oil,
wax of monuments, eggs of ash,
doctrine and blind teachers of doctrine.
Vihuela, Indian for the kitchen, girl for the house.
So they said. I obeyed.

And then: Sebastián, Manuel, Roque, Selva,
Miguel, Antonio, Matiyos, of grass, wood, charcoal,
straw, fish, stones, corn, women, daughters. Every service.
Of the llama-herders too, you ate
two thousand llama hearts in three months.
Of the women you ate too,
near the ear of her husband and son,
night after night.

Arms led to evil.
Eyes to weeping and lament.
Men to the whistle of their whips.
Cheeks to the hardness of their boots.
Heart that they crushed, treading bodies of mothers, women, daughters
in front of the enslaved Indian.
Only we have suffered
the horrible world of their hearts.

In the workshop of cloth, tapestries, cloaks, ponchos,
I, the naked one, buried in dungeons, worked
a year and forty days,
with hardly a handful of corn for the effort
and was thinner than the thread I wove.
Shut up from dawn until the other brightness,
without eating, I wove, I wove.
I made the cloth in which the Masters dressed themselves,
who gave the solitude of whiteness to my skeleton,
and on Good Friday I dawned shut up,
face down, on the loom,
with vomited blood among the threads and shuttle.
Thus I dyed with my soul, nothing but ribs,
the cloth of those who stripped me.