VERSION OF JESÚS LARA (BOLIVIA, SIXTEENTH CENTURY/1957) TRANSLATED BY MARGARET CARSON
This conquest drama reenacts the fateful confrontation between the Inca Atahualpa and the Spanish conqueror Francisco Pizarro. Indigenous and mestizo communities throughout the Andean region have performed variations of this story for centuries; the version included inStages of Conflict, however, comes from a scholar who claims to have transcribed the text from a manuscript in Quechua dated 1871. Some contest his claim and argue that Lara wrote it himself. The End of Atau Wallpa takes debates about the ‘authenticity’ of popular performance to a new level: are we looking at a performance with roots in the sixteenth century or at a single-authored text from the mid-twentieth century?