The Last Days of the Incas (Unabridged)

My last audiobook upload was "Conquistador" (the conquest of the Aztec Empire), so this current upload (the conquest of the Inca Empire) is appropriate. Again, the ULer of the original Audible files deserves many thanks, but I, like many other people I believe, don't like the Audible format. I have split the files into complete, individual chapters for the convenience and ease of the listener. There are two complete & unabridged versions of the audiobook in this torrent. You can choose either the mp3 version (each chapter is a single file, 19 files in total), or you can choose the fully chapterized m4b (iPod, iPhone, or similar device) version (2 chapterized files, already tagged for iTunes). Both versions are at 56 kbps (the same bit rate I got the original files at). Also included in the torrent is a PDF companion eBook (which I made myself) that contains the original Chronology of Events and map from the hardcover edition of the book (thanks to Amazon's "Look Inside" feature) along with several other excellent maps and a good number of illustrations of the major characters & events. I hope you like my torrent and please seed! P.S. If you like my ""Choose mp3 by chapter -or- Chapterized m4b" audiobooks . . . I have ULed several others (all still seeded), and the list is growing. Click on my name, then check my ULed torrents if you want to see the others. The Last Days of the Incas by Kim MacQuarrie; narrated by Norman Dietz Tantor Media (September 17, 2007) Unabridged (Length: 21 hrs., 54 mins.) Orig. Media: Audio Download (Audible) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- TABLE OF CONTENTS . . . PREFACE (16:00) CHAPTER 01. The Discovery (23:19) CHAPTER 02. A Few Hundred Well-Armed Entrepreneurs (1:05:09) CHAPTER 03. Supernova of the Andes (45:26) CHAPTER 04. When Empires Collide (1:25:30) CHAPTER 05. A Roomful of Gold (1:29:16) CHAPTER 06. Requiem for a King (52:26) CHAPTER 07. The Puppet King (1:20:00) CHAPTER 08. Prelude to a Rebellion (1:19:46) CHAPTER 09. The Great Rebellion (1:44:28) CHAPTER 10. Death in the Andes (1:23:34) CHAPTER 11. The Return of the One-Eyed Conqueror (58:16) CHAPTER 12. In the Realm of the Antis (1:14:20) CHAPTER 13. Vilcabamba: Guerrilla Capital of the World (1:16:27) CHAPTER 14. The Last of the Pizarros (1:01:19) CHAPTER 15. The Incas' Last Stand (1:12:33) CHAPTER 16. The Search for the "Lost City" of the Incas (1:35:20) CHAPTER 17. Vilcabamba Rediscovered (1:14:44) EPILOGUE: Machu Picchu, Vilcabamba, and the Search for the Lost Cities of the Andes (1:16:10) PART 1 (Total Length): 10:41:23 PART 2 (Total Length): 11:12:49 GRAND TOTAL: 21:54:12 SUMMARY . . . Pizarro was in his early 50s when he landed in the place Spaniards knew as "Viru" or "Biru," after a fabulously wealthy tribe they believed lived there; "eventually, the name of this tribe would be transmogrified and would come to refer to . . . Peru -- home to the largest native empire the New World would ever know." Pizarro was a seasoned explorer, but also the son of a respected soldier and a "common maid" who was "stigmatized by the fact that his father had never married his mother." He "had received little if any schooling and thus remained illiterate for his entire life," but he was smart, ambitious, and he "instinctively understood both power and politics." He was the oldest of five brothers who came to Latin America -- the others were Hernando, Juan, Francisco Martín and Gonzalo -- and his family's stamp on Peru remains almost as visible now as it was five centuries ago. This is because the Spanish conquest of Peru, like that of Mexico and all the other places Spain invaded during this time of its greatest strength, involved the subjugation of native peoples and the ascendancy of the Spanish. The shape of Peru today was determined by what Pizarro and his henchmen did, and thus their legacy can only be regarded as exceedingly dubious. On the one hand they brought Western inventions, institutions and religion to a part of the world that seemed (though it certainly wasn't) backward and underdeveloped, and a case can be made that in the long run this was to Latin America's benefit. On the other hand the conquistadors slaughtered innocent citizens and poorly armed soldiers in numbers too vast to count; pillaged the treasures of the Inca Empire, murdered its leaders and destroyed many of its monuments; established a system of autocratic Spanish political, cultural and economic control that still retains its grip, maintaining most indigenous inhabitants as second-class citizens at best. MacQuarrie writes from a vantage point from which these deleterious aspects of the conquest can be seen more clearly. As he says, Prescott's "tale of Pizarro and a handful of Spanish heroes defying the odds against hordes of barbaric native savages not coincidentally mirrored the ideas and conceits of the Victorian Age and of American Manifest Destiny. No doubt this volume also reflects the prevailing attitudes of our time." Among those attitudes are not merely a deeper sympathy for the indigenes of Latin America but also greater respect for the accomplishments of the Incas and for the intelligence of their leaders. A problem for anyone writing about the conquest of Peru is that documentation is limited and frequently unreliable. As MacQuarrie says, many of the accounts of the conflict were written years after the fact by people who either were not there or whose memories had become suspect. One of these was Garcilaso de la Vega, whose famous two-part Royal Commentaries of the Incas (1609) describes the conquest from the Incan point of view but at times seems closer to fiction than fact. Occasionally, MacQuarrie falls back on his own imagination -- "Hernando Pizarro, his horse snorting, presumably looked down his lines, then directly at Orgóñez across the plain from him. Not taking his eyes from him, he then raised his sword on high, held it aloft for a moment, then quickly brought it down" -- but though there's quite a lot of this, it adds color to the tale without undermining its essential credibility. Chalk it up to something like poetic license and leave it at that. The basic elements of the story are not in dispute. After establishing a beachhead on the Peruvian coast, Francisco Pizarro struck out for the center of the Inca Empire with a force -- a force! -- of 167 conquistadors, to do battle against "an Inca army of perhaps eighty thousand warriors." Amazingly, not merely did Pizarro meet the enemy, he destroyed it. First he captured Atahualpa, the venerated Inca emperor, then he marched on Cuzco, the Inca capital, "the royal hub of the empire, a city that was purposely meant to display the ostentation of state power," and captured it. He held onto Atahualpa as hostage but finally executed him -- a decision he seems to have ever thereafter regretted -- when some of his subordinates persuaded themselves, without foundation, that the emperor had somehow ordered an attack on the Spanish. The execution of Atahualpa, by all the evidence a good man who was, in the eyes of his people, "the equivalent of the king, the pope, and Jesus Christ all rolled into one," established the pattern that the Spanish subsequently followed. No Inca emperor was safe, nor was anyone in his family or retinue. Gonzalo Pizarro seized the beloved wife of Atahualpa's successor, Manco Inca, and took her for his own. Eventually Manco himself was murdered by Spaniards, and Tupac Amaru -- the last of the emperors -- was captured and executed. Though some in the Spanish community pleaded with the Pizarros and with the royal family in Spain for better treatment of the natives, the slaughter continued unabated. Whether it was genocide as the term is now understood is open to debate, but "the marauding Spaniards made no distinction between men, women, and children" as the people of Peru were systematically slaughtered. The Incas did not go down without a fight. In the spring of 1536, Manco Inca organized "a force of between 100,000 and 200,000 warriors -- a stupendous feat of logistical organization" -- and almost certainly would have vanquished the invaders had he not been at an insuperable technological advantage. The Spanish had at their disposal all the equipment and tactics of 16th-century European warfare, chief among them horses -- "animals that could carry a fully armored Spaniard and still outrun the fastest native" -- "steel helmets, armor, and chain mail," and "they could communicate much more efficiently through writing, thus being able to send and receive complex information between their often divided forces." The Incas' weapons by contrast "were designed for hand-to-hand combat with other similarly armed foot soldiers and consisted of an assortment of clubs" as well as the occasional bow and arrow. In time the Incas developed strategies for neutralizing horses and Spanish weaponry, but these came too late; whenever armed Spaniards on horseback waded into crowds of Inca soldiers, the results wee foreordained and ghastly. The Spanish secured their hold on Peru after the execution of Tupac Amaru, in great measure because of the smart, stern regime of Francisco de Toledo, who later became viceroy. It is no small irony that the first indigenous Peruvian to hold the country's presidency -- Alejandro Toledo -- bears the same surname as the man who insured its subordination to Spanish leadership for more than four centuries. Elected in 2001, the later Toledo held office for five years and, in spite of numerous missteps, some of them spectacular, may have helped steer his country along the first steps away from oligarchy and toward genuine self-government. But make no mistake about it: The stamp of the conquistadors is everywhere evident in Peru, and the country still wrestles with their ambiguous legacy. THE LAST DAYS OF THE INCAS: A TIMELINE . . . 1532 Fifty-four-year-old Francisco Pizarro, four of his brothers, and 163 Spanish conquistadors land in Peru and capture the Inca emperor, Atahualpa. 1533 Atahualpa fills a room full of gold as a ransom but the Spaniards execute him anyway. Pizarro captures the Incas’ capital of Cuzco and installs Atahualpa’s 17-year-old brother, Manco Inca, as the new Inca emperor– a "puppet king." 1536 Twenty-two-year-old Gonzalo Pizarro steals Manco Inca’s wife, Cura Ocllo. Manco Inca rebels, gathers 200,000 warriors, and surrounds Cuzco. Francisco Pizarro’s youngest brother, Juan, is killed. The Inca general Quizo Yupanqui wipes out five Spanish relief forces and then attacks the Spanish coastal city of Lima. Quizo’s attack fails and the Inca general is killed. 1537 Manco Inca suspends the siege of Cuzco and abandons the Andes. He and his followers found in the Amazon jungle a new capital named Vilcabamba. Manco begins a classic guerrilla war and renders entire portions of the Andes too dangerous for the Spaniards to enter. 1541 Francisco Pizarro is murdered by his own men. He has ruled the Inca Empire for a mere nine years. 1572 The fall of the Inca empire: After 37 years of guerrilla warfare, the Spaniards mount a large expedition, head down the eastern side of the Andes, and sack Vilcabamba. The final Inca emperor–Tupac Amaru–is captured and is taken to Cuzco in chains where he is beheaded. Thus ends ninety years of Inca rule over the largest empire the New World has ever known. 1572-1911 The Incas’ guerrilla capital of Vilcabamba becomes lost to history. Gradually, it becomes a myth, a legend–similar to the Greek legend of Troy. Had Vilcabamba really ever existed? No one really knows. 1911 A 35-year-old American Yale history professor named Hiram Bingham begins to search for the lost Inca capital of Vilcabamba. One week into his expedition, he stumbles upon the ruins of Machu Picchu. Bingham declares that he has discovered Vilcabamba--Manco Incas’ lost rebel capital. 1914-1915 Bingham’s third and final trip to Machu Picchu. Bingham ships more than 5000 artifacts he and his team discovered at Machu Picchu to Yale University’s Peabody Museum. Bingham signs a contract with the Peruvian government stating that the artifacts are to be returned upon Peru’s request. Bingham goes on to become a Governor and U.S. Senator. 1956 Hiram Bingham dies, still claiming that Machu Picchu is Vilcabamba–the lost rebel capital of the Incas. But Bingham is wrong. 1964-1965 The American explorer, Gene Savoy, discovers the real location of Vilcabamba, buried in thick Amazonian jungle. Machu Picchu, it turns out, was really a royal retreat for the founding Inca emperor. 2002 Yale University sponsors a large traveling exhibit in the United States of Hiram Bingham’s Machu Picchu artifacts. The exhibit is visited by more than two million Americans and makes millions of dollars. 2002-2007 The Peruvian government urges Yale to return Bingham’s Machu Picchu artifacts to Peru. The government threatens to sue Yale in order to secure the artifacts’ return before the 100th anniversary of the discovery of Machu Picchu. 2011 2011 will be the one hundredth anniversary of Hiram Bingham’s discovery of Machu Picchu. Peru hopes that all of Hiram Bingham’s Machu Picchu artifacts will be returned to Peru by this time. ATAHUALPA . . . Atahualpa, Atahuallpa, Atabalipa, or Atawallpa (March 20, 1497 Cuzco – Cajamarca, July 25, 1533), was the last Sapa Inca or sovereign emperor of the Tahuantinsuyu, or the Inca Empire. He became emperor upon defeating his older half-brother Huáscar in a civil war sparked by the death of their father, Inca Huayna Capac, from an infectious disease thought to be smallpox. During the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire, the Spaniard Francisco Pizarro crossed his path, captured Atahualpa, and used him to control the Inca empire. Eventually, the Spanish executed Atahualpa by garrote, ending the Inca Empire (although several successors claimed the title of Sapa Inca ("unique Inca") and led a resistance against the invading Spaniards). After Atahualpa died, the Incan Empire began to fall apart. FRANCISCO PIZARRO . . . Francisco Pizarro González, 1st Marqués de los Atabillos (c. 1471 or 1476 – 26 June 1541) was a Spanish conquistador, conqueror of the Incan Empire and founder of Lima, the modern-day capital of Peru. Pizarro was born in Trujillo, Extremadura, modern Spain. Sources differ in the birth year they assign to him: 1471, 1475–1478, or unknown. He was an illegitimate son of Gonzalo Pizarro Rodríguez de Aguilar (senior) (1446-1522) who as colonel of infantry served in the Italian campaigns under Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, and in Navarre, with some distinction. His mother was Francisca González Mateos, a woman of slender means from Trujillo, daughter of Juan Mateos, of the family called Los Roperos, and wife María Alonso, labradores pecheros from Trujillo. His mother married late in life and had a son Francisco Martín de Alcántara, married to Inés Muñoz, who from the beginning was at the Conquest of Perú, where he then lived, always at his brother's side, who held him always as one of his most trusted men. Through his father, Francisco was second cousin to Hernán Cortés, the famed conquistador of Mexico. ABOUT THE AUTHOR . . . Kim MacQuarrie is a four time Emmy Award-winnng documentary filmmaker, a writer, and an anthropologist who has made films in such disparate regions as Siberia, Papua New Guinea, and Peru. MacQuarrie is the author of three previous books on Peru and lived in that country for five years, exploring many of the locations and hidden regions he chronicles in The Last Days of the Incas. During that time, MacQuarrie lived with a recently contacted tribe of indigenous Amazonians called the Yora. It was MacQuarrie’s experience filming a nearby tribe, whose ancestors still remembered their contacts with the Inca Empire, that ultimately led him to investigate and then to write The Last Days of the Incas. ABOUT THE READER . . . Norman Dietz is a writer, voice-over artist, and audiobook narrator who was named one of the fifty “Best Voices of the Century” -AudioFile Norman Dietz just loves to fool with words. While telling me about his fictionalized memoir, NAILING IT, which he recorded for Blackstone Audio in 2005, he mentions “knots” and “knotholes,” and I begin to get a little lost. Then Norman says, “I’m really a well-spoken acrobat. I like to stir up laughter.” As the author and performer of dozens of short theatrical productions, Norman has delighted audiences with vaudevillian sketches such as “a tiny satiric tale about . . . and a fast-moving rethinking of biblical narrative from . . . and a fable about . . .” As a narrator, Norman has spent more than 20 years bringing listeners the works of some of the great American humorists. Norman was one of the first narrators for Recorded Books. Norman has remarkable narrative gifts and style, seasoned by many years as an audiobook narrator, but his new venture is taking him back to his theatrical roots. He’s touring his one-man performance of NAILING IT.

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