Ercilla accuses the Spaniards of cruelty and an excessive hunger for wealth, while he exalts the Mapuche, to whom he attributes qualities of bravery, nobility, chivalry, a spirit of justice, and even tenderness with their women. I believe I know them better than Alonso because I have spent forty years defending what we founded in Chile, and he was here for only a few months. I admire the Mapuche for their courage and their deep love of their land, but I can tell you that they are not models of sweetness and compassion. The romantic love that Alonso so extols is quite rare among them. Every man has several wives, whom he prizes for their labor, and for bearing his children. At least this is what we are told by the Spanish women who have been kidnapped by them. The humiliations they suffered in captivity were so great that these poor, shamed women often choose not to return to the bosom of their families. On the other hand, I must admit that Spaniards do not treat the Indian women who serve them and satisfy their lust any better. The Mapuche do surpass us in some aspects. For example, they do not know greed. Gold, land, titles, honors, none of those things interests them. They have no roof but the sky, no bed other than moss. They roam free through the forest, hair streaming in the wind, galloping the horses they have stolen from us. Another virtue I celebrate is that they keep their word. It is not they who break pacts, but we. In times of war they attack by surprise, but not in betrayal, and in times of peace they honor accords. Before we came they knew nothing of torture, and they respected their prisoners of war. Their worst punishment is exile, banishment from the family and the tribe. That is more feared than death. Serious crimes are paid for with a swift execution. The condemned man digs his own grave, into which he throws small sticks and stones as he names the beings he wants to accompany him to the next world. When he has finished, he is dealt a fatal blow to the skull.
I am amazed by the power of Alonso’s verses, which invent history and defy and conquer oblivion. Words that do not rhyme, like mine, do not have the authority of poetry, but in any case I am obliged to relate my version of events in order to leave an account of the labors we women have contributed in Chile; they tend to be overlooked by the chroniclers, however informed they may be. At least you, Isabel, must know the truth, for though you are not the child of my blood, you are the child of my heart. I suppose that statues of me will be erected in the plazas, and there will be streets and cities that bear my name, as there will be of Pedro de Valdivia and other conquistadors, but the hundreds of brave women who founded the towns while their men fought the wars will be forgotten.
But I have wandered. Let us return to what I was telling, because I do not have very long; my heart is weary.
Diego de Almagro abandoned the conquest of Chile, forced by the invincible resistance of the Mapuche, the pressure of his soldiers—disenchanted by the scarcity of gold—and the bad news of the Indians’ rebellion in Peru. He returned in order to aid Francisco Pizarro and snuff out the insurrection, and then together to achieve the definitive defeat of the enemy hordes. The proud empire of the Incas, devastated by hunger and the violence and chaos of war, was broken. However, far from being grateful for Almagro’s intervention on their behalf, Francisco Pizarro and his brothers turned against him; their sights were on Cuzco, a city granted to Almagro in the territorial division set out by Emperor Charles V. Their own vast holdings, with their incalculable riches, were not enough to satisfy the ambition of the Pizarro brothers. They wanted more. They wanted everything.
Pizarro and Almagro ended by taking up arms and facing off in a brief battle at Abancay that ended in Pizarro’s defeat. Almagro, always magnanimous, treated his prisoners with unusual clemency, even the brothers of Francisco Pizarro, his implacable enemies. Because they admired Almagro’s conduct, many of the defeated soldiers went over to his ranks, while his loyal captains begged him to execute the Pizarros and take advantage of his victory to claim all of Peru. Almagro ignored their counsel and opted for reconciliation with the ungrateful partner who had wronged him.
It was during this period that Pedro de Valdivia arrived in Ciudad de los Reyes and placed himself at the disposal of the person who had summoned him: Francisco Pizarro. Always respectful of the law, he did not question the authority or the intentions of the governor; he was the representative of Charles V, and that was enough. Nevertheless, the last thing Valdivia wanted was to be embroiled in a civil war. He had come to combat insurgent Indians, and it had never crossed his mind that he would have to fight other Spaniards. He tried to act as intermediary between Pizarro and Almagro and reach a peaceful solution, and at one moment believed he was about to achieve it. But he did not know Pizarro, who said one thing but in the shadows was planning another. While the governor was stalling, making declarations of friendship, he was preparing his plan to rid himself of Almagro, always with the single thought of governing alone and gaining Cuzco. He envied Almagro’s virtues: his eternal optimism and especially the loyalty he inspired in his soldiers. He knew that he himself was detested.
After more than a year of skirmishes, broken agreements, and betrayals, the forces of the two rivals met again at Las Salinas, near Cuzco. Francisco Pizarro was not leading his army; he had placed it under the command of Pedro de Valdivia, whose military merits were widely respected. Pizarro had named Valdivia his field marshal because he had fought under the marqués de Pescara in Italy, and was experienced in European tactics. After all, facing badly armed, anarchical Indians was a far different matter from encountering disciplined Spanish soldiers. Also representing Pizarro was his brother Hernando, hated for his cruelty and arrogance. I want to make this part very clear, so that no one can blame Pedro de Valdivia for atrocities committed during those days. Of those I had conclusive proof, for it fell to me to tend the poor wretches whose wounds, months after the battle, still had not healed. Pizarro’s troops had cannons and two hundred more men than Almagro. They were well outfitted with new harquebuses and deadly cannon shot; those iron balls, when fired, burst open and sprayed knife-sharp projectiles. Their morale was good, and they were well rested, while their opponents had just undergone great hardships in Chile as well as the task of putting down the Peruvian Indians’ uprising. Diego de Almagro himself was very ill, and he, like Pizarro, did not personally take part in the battle.
The two armies met one rosy dawn in the valley of Las Salinas, as from the hillsides thousands of Quechua Indians observed the entertaining spectacle of viracochas killing one another like rabid beasts. They did not understand the ceremonies, or the reasons why those bearded warriors were fighting. First they lined up in orderly rows, displaying their polished armor and sleek horses, then they knelt on one knee while other viracochas in black robes performed some magic with crosses and silver vessels. They put a little piece of bread in their mouths, touched their fingers to their foreheads and chests, received blessings, bowed to their fellows across the field of battle, and finally, after about two hours of this dance, prepared to kill one another. And that they did with methodical and terrible cruelty. For hours and hours, they fought hand to hand, yelling the same words: “Long live the king and Spain!” and “Forward in the name of Santiago!” In the confusion and dust raised by the horses’ hooves and the men’s boots, it was impossible to tell one side from another; all their uniforms had turned the same clay color. In the meantime, the Indians whooped, laid bets, enjoyed their roasted corn and salted meat, chewed coca, drank chicha, got too hot, and finally rested because the battle was lasting too long.
At the end of the day, Pizarro’s army emerged victorious, thanks to the military acumen of the field marshal, Pedro de Valdivia, hero of the day, but it was Hernando Pizarro who gave the last order: “Slit their throats!” His soldiers, animated by an enmity that they themselves could not later explain or the chroniclers set right, unleashed a bloodbath against hundreds of their compatriots, many of whom had been their brothers in the adventure of discovering and conquering Peru. They finished off the wounded in Almagro’s forces and blasted their way into Cuzco, where they r
aped the women—Spanish as well as Indian and black—and robbed and pillaged until they had had enough. They were as savage in their treatment of the vanquished as the Incas were, which was saying a lot because the native Peruvians were not known to be merciful. It is enough to recall that among their habitual tortures were hanging a condemned man by his feet, with his guts wrapped around his neck, or flaying him, and then while he was still alive, using his skin to make a drum.
The Spaniards did not go that far because, as some survivors told me, they were in a great rush. Several of Almagro’s soldiers who did not die immediately at the hands of their compatriots were massacred by the Indians who came down from the hills at the end of the battle, howling with jubilation because for once they were not the victims. They celebrated by desecrating the corpses, hacking them to bits with stone knives. For Valdivia, who from the time he was twenty had fought on many fronts and against many enemies, that was one of the most shameful episodes in his military career. He often awakened, screaming, in my arms, tormented by nightmares about his decapitated comrades, just as in dreams following the sacking of Rome he saw mothers with children in their arms leaping into the river to escape the marauding troops.
Diego de Almagro, sixty-one years old and greatly weakened by illness and the Chile campaign, was taken prisoner, humiliated, and subjected to a trial that lasted two months. He was not given an opportunity to defend himself. When he learned that he had been sentenced to death, he asked that the enemy field marshal, Pedro de Valdivia, be witness to his last requests; he knew no one more worthy of his trust. Diego de Almagro was still a fine-looking man despite the ravages of syphilis and his many battles. He wore a black patch over the eye he had lost in an encounter with savages before he discovered Peru. On that occasion he himself had pulled out the arrow with one tug—with the eye impaled on it—then continued fighting. When he lost the three fingers of his right hand, chopped off by a sharp stone hatchet, he shifted his sword to the left hand, and in that condition, blinded and dripping with blood, he fought until comrades came to help him. The wound was cauterized with a red-hot iron and boiling oil, which had scarred his face but not destroyed the charm of his generous laughter and amiable expression.
“I want him subjected to torture in the plaza, in front of everyone. He deserves special punishment,” Hernando Pizarro ordered.
“I will not be a party to that, Excellency. The soldiers will not permit it. This fight between brothers has been difficult, let us not throw salt in the wound. We might have a revolt on our hands,” Valdivia counseled.
“Almagro was born a peasant, let him die like a peasant,” was Hernando Pizarro’s retort.
Pedro de Valdivia refrained from reminding him that the Pizarros were of no higher birth than Diego de Almagro. Francisco Pizarro had been a bastard child himself; he had no education and had been abandoned by his mother. Both men had been dirt poor before a change of fortune had sent them to Peru and made them richer than King Solomon.
“Don Diego de Almagro bears the titles of adelantado and gobernador de Nueva Toledo. What explanation will you give our emperor?” Valdivia persisted. “I repeat, Excellency, with all respect, that it is not a good idea to stir up the soldiers. They are already on edge, and Diego de Almagro is an honorable military man.”
“He returned from Chile trounced by a band of naked savages!” Hernando Pizarro exclaimed.
“No, Excellency. He returned from Chile to aid your brother, the honorable marqués gobernador.”
Hernando Pizarro realized that the field marshal was right, but it was not in his nature to take back his words, and, even less, to forgive an enemy. His order was to behead Almagro in the main plaza of Cuzco.
In the days prior to the execution, Valdivia was often alone with Almagro in his dismal, filthy cell, his last dwelling place. He admired the adelantado for his heroic feats as a soldier and his reputation for generosity, although he was aware that he had weaknesses and had made mistakes. While a prisoner, Almagro told him what he had experienced during the eighteen months of that expedition to Chile, planting in Valdivia’s imagination the prospect of conquest that Almagro himself would not be able to carry out to the end. He described the terrifying march across the high sierras, watched by condors circling slowly above their heads and waiting for them to drop so they could pick their bones. The cold killed more than two thousand auxiliary Indians—the ones they call Yanaconas—two hundred blacks, nearly fifty Spaniards, and quantities of horses and dogs. Even the lice and fleas could not endure the cold, but fell from the men’s clothing like showers of little seeds. Though nothing grew there, not even lichen; everything was rock, wind, ice, and solitude.
“So great was our plight, Don Pedro, that we chewed the raw flesh of animals that had died from the cold, and drank the horses’ urine. By day we marched at our quickest pace, to keep from being coated with snow, and by night we slept curled up with the horses. At dawn every day we counted the dead Indians and quickly muttered an Our Father for their souls, for there was no time for anything further. Bodies stayed where they fell, like ice monoliths pointing the way for future lost travelers.”
He added that the Spaniard’s armor froze, imprisoning them, and when they took off their boots or gloves, fingers and toes fell off without pain. Not even a madman would have attempted that route on the return, he explained, which was why they had chosen the desert, never imagining how horrible it, too, would be. What effort and suffering it costs men to conquer these lands, Valdivia thought.
“During the day the desert is blazing hot, and the light is so strong that it drives both men and horses mad, causing them to see visions of trees and pools of fresh water,” the Adelantado told him. “As soon as the sun sets, the temperature plummets and the camanchaca falls, a dew as icy as the deep snows that tormented us in the peaks of the sierra. We were carrying a good supply of water in barrels and wineskins, but soon it was nearly gone. Thirst killed many Indians and made beasts of the Spaniards.”
“In truth, Don Diego, it sounds like a journey to hell,” Valdivia commented.
“It was, Don Pedro, but I assure you that if I were to live, I would try it again.”
“But why, if the obstacles are so harrowing and the reward so meager?”
“Because once the cordillera and the desert that separate Chile from the rest of the known world have been crossed, you find gentle hills, fragrant forests, fertile valleys, bounteous rivers, and a climate more pleasant than any in Spain or anywhere else I know. Chile is a paradise, Don Pedro. It is there we must found our cities and prosper.”
“And what is your opinion of the Indians in Chile?” Valdivia asked.
“At first we encountered friendly savages, the ones they call Promaucae. They are related to the Mapuche, but a different tribe. Then they turned against us. They have mixed with Indians from Peru and Ecuador, and are subjects of the Inca, whose domain reaches as far as the Bío-Bío. We got along with a few curacas, that is, Inca chiefs, but we could not go any farther south because that is the land of the Mapuche, who are very warlike. I must tell you, Don Pedro, that nowhere in any of my dangerous expeditions and battles did I encounter enemies as formidable as those savages armed with clubs and stones.”
“That must be true, Adelantado, if they could stop you and your highly regarded soldiers.”
“The Mapuche know only war and freedom. They have no king and they have no notion of hierarchies; they obey their toquis only during battles. Freedom, freedom—only freedom. It is the most important thing in their lives, and that is why we could not subdue them, and why the Incas failed in their attempt. The women do all the work while the men do nothing but prepare to fight.”
Diego de Almagro’s punishment was carried out one winter morning in 1538. At the last minute Pizarro reduced the sentence, fearing the reaction of the soldiers if Almagro were beheaded in public, as he had ordered. Instead they killed him in his cell. The executioner garroted him, slowly tightening a rope around his neck,
and then his body was carried to the main plaza of Cuzco, where it was decapitated, though again the order was modified because they did not dare display the head on a meat hook as had been planned. By then Hernando Pizarro had begun to realize the magnitude of what he had done, and was worried about what the emperor’s reaction would be. He decided to give Diego de Almagro a dignified burial, and he himself, dressed in severe mourning, led the funeral cortège. Years later, all the Pizarro brothers would pay for their crimes, but that is another story.
I have taken time to narrate these episodes in order to explain Pedro de Valdivia’s determination to leave Peru, which was torn by intrigue and corruption, and conquer the still innocent territory of Chile, an undertaking in which I shared.
The battle of Las Salinas and the death of Diego de Almagro occurred a few months before my voyage to Cuzco. At that time I was awaiting news of Juan de Málaga in Panamá, where several persons told me they had seen him. People coming and going between the New World and Spain used that port as a meeting place. Many travelers passed through there—soldiers, employees of the Crown, chroniclers, priests, scholars, adventurers, and bandits—all sweltering in the humid breath of the tropics. I sent messages with them to the four cardinal points, but time was dragging by without any answer.
In the meantime, I was earning my livelihood with the trades I know best: sewing, cooking, setting bones, and treating wounds. I could do nothing to help those suffering from plague, fevers that turn blood to molasses, the French illness, and the incurable bites of the poisonous insects that abounded there. Like my mother and my grandmother, I am as strong as an oak, and I was able to live in the tropics without falling ill. Later, in Chile, I survived the desert, which I learned personally could be hot as fire itself, as well as the winter rains and the grippe that killed men more robust than I. All through the epidemics of typhus and smallpox, it was I who cared for and buried victims of those diseases.