Jacinto Collahuazo (born circa 1670; lived past the age of 80, but exact date of death is unknown) was a

cacique A cacique, sometimes spelled as cazique (; ; feminine form: ), was a tribal chieftain of the Taíno people, who were the Indigenous inhabitants of the Bahamas, the Greater Antilles, and the northern Lesser Antilles at the time of European cont ...

of Otavalo, Ecuador. He was a Quichuan poet and historian. He was imprisoned by the Spanish for writing a book in Quechua about the war between Huascar and

Atahualpa Atahualpa (), also Atawallpa or Ataw Wallpa ( Quechua) ( 150226 July 1533), was the last effective Inca emperor, reigning from April 1532 until his capture and execution in July of the following year, as part of the Spanish conquest of the In ...

titled ''History of the civil wars of Atahualpa and his brother Atoco, known commonly as Huascar Inca''. Collahuazo learned to read and write in Spanish, but his work was written in Quechua. The Spanish magistrate of Ibarra could not accept the notion that a native could read and write, or write knowledgeably about history. He ordered Collahuazo arrested, mandated that he destroy his work in public, and sent him to prison where he would spend his final days. In 1708, Collahuazo fulfilled the mandate and burned all of his work publicly. The existence of his literary work came to light centuries later, when a crew of masons restoring the walls of a colonial church in

Quito Quito (; ), officially San Francisco de Quito, is the capital city, capital and second-largest city of Ecuador, with an estimated population of 2.8 million in its metropolitan area. It is also the capital of the province of Pichincha Province, P ...

found a hidden manuscript. The salvaged fragment is a Spanish translation from Quechua of the "Elegy to the Dead of Atahualpa", a poem written by Collahuazo that describes the sadness and impotence felt by the

Inca The Inca Empire, officially known as the Realm of the Four Parts (, ), was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America. The administrative, political, and military center of the empire was in the city of Cusco. The History of the Incas, Inca ...

people having lost their king Atahualpa.

References

External links

* * Ecuadorian literature 18th-century Ecuadorian people Quechua-language poets Quechua people Year of birth uncertain {{Ecuador-bio-stub