OUR HOMMAGE TO COMMANDANT BARTOLINA SISA, INCORRUPTIBLE AYMARA LEADER

By Iván Ignacio

Today her example of untiring and determined fighting is engraved in the heart of each indigenous inhabitant of the Andean world and immortalized for the perpetual memory of the indigenous world in general. .

There are two versions regarding her date of birth not yet clarified: the first one affirms that it was on August 24, 1753, in the community of Sullkawi of the Ayllu with the same name, the second one mentions August 12, 1750 in the community of Q’ara Qhatu, located in the current province Loayza in the department of La Paz, Bolivia. Her parents Jose Sisa and Josefa Vargas saw their daughter come to life under an era of the most virulent and cruel Spanish colonialist oppression and plunder against the indigenous peoples of the Andes.

From a young age Bartolina Sisa, together with her parents, and after a few years together with her husband, the great aymara caudillo Tupaj Katari (Julian Apaza), dedicated herself to the commerce of the coca leaf and of native fabrics, traveling in this manner to numerous places between Ayllus (political, social, economical and territorial organization uniting various communities) , villages, communities, and cities of the immense and arid andean high plateau and of the yunguean valleys of the department of La Paz.

This feverish activity permitted Bartolina Sisa to free herself from the condition of serfdom and slavery to which the colonialists and feudal men of European origin had subjected her nation. She observed with wisdom the terrible subjugation to which her brothers where objects. They were not only suffering the humiliation and outrage of the white European who acted as authorities, priests, military, etc. but also that of the Creoles and mestizos who served the colonialists.

In this manner, Bartolina Sisa became increasingly conscious and assumed a deep conviction to liberate her people from the chains of oppression and to fight for the definitive emancipation of the aboriginal Andean communities. During that period both Bartolina Sisa and her husband Tupaj Katari, had the opportunity to coincide with the libertarian itineraries of the muleteer Jose Gabriel Condorcanqui (Tupaj Amaru) and that of the brothers Damaso and Tomas Katari of Chayanta, with whom they united their goals of emancipation based on a solid convergence of criteria, tactics, and strategies of struggle.

In this way they decided to elaborate a plan of action properly systematized that began the war with more than 150 thousand natives in all of the most conflictive region of Peru, La Paz, Oruro, and the valleys of Chayanta, Bolivia. The army of Katari-Sisa that at the beginning of the surrounding of La Paz (March 13, 1781) counted with 20 thousand combatants, in only a few days became an army of 40 thousand, and after 5 months, it reached 80 thousand.

Bartolina Sisa, always carrying the sacred Whipala, is considered a rare occurrence not only because of her natural beauty, that characterized her as a very attractive woman, dark skin, with uniform and seducing facial features, beautiful black eyes, young and smart; but also because of the uniqueness and innate talent that characterize a Military-politician: her vision, her sense of responsibility, her discipline, her strength, her capacity to make the most appropriate decisions in the right moment, and the confidence and security she inspired on her followers. It is for this reason that when the insurgency Aymara-Quishwa of 1781 broke out, while her husband was proclaimed Viceroy of the Inca, she was proclaimed vicequeen, but not because she was the wife of Tupaj Katari, but because of her own merit.

During the Siege of La Paz, the hierarchical level of management was shared between Tupaj Katari and Bartolina Sisa in equal conditions. In this way Bartolina was widely accepted and recognized by the immediate, intermediate, and superior leadership levels. The respect, affection, and appreciation towards the virtue of indisputable leadership that these indigenous warrior- chiefs had were doubtless.

In June 29 of 1781, the army of Tupaj Katari suffered a hard blow from the part of the realists provoking an inevitable disbanding of the forces. In this same moment took place a circumstantial breaking of the Siege of La Paz followed by rumours saying that the uprising had been defeated, reason by which the colonial authorities offered pardon to the rebels if they would hand their head chiefs over, inciting them to the most shameless treason.

In July 2, when the great Vicequeen Bartolina Sisa, while she was on her way from the camp of El Alto to that of Pampajasi, she was surprised by the attitude of her own followers, who in an act of coward treason and confabulation with the Spaniards captured her and immediately, after an arranged ambush, handed Bartolina Sisa over as a prisoner of war.

At the dawn of September 5 of 1782, the heroic aymara warrior-commandant suffers a sentence of the oppressors that in its original text copied from old Spanish says:

 “To Bartolina Sisa wife of the ferocious Julián Apaza or Tupa Catari, in an ordinary punishment of torture, and that taken out from the barrack to the main Plaza in its circumference tied to the tail of a horse, with a rope of esparto on her neck, and feathers, and a spool secured on a wooden staff on her hand and at the voice of an announcer who will publicize the fact that she will be taken to the gallows, and she will be hung until she will naturally die; and later her head will be nailed and her hands put in pillories with the corresponding labels, and as a public lesson will be placed at Cruzpata, Alto of San Pedro, and Pampaxasi where she was accompanied and she presided her seditious meetings; and after days the head will be taken to the villages of Ayohayo and Sapahagui from her address and origin in the Province of Sicasica, with the order for it to be burnt after some time and that her ashes be thrown to the air, where it is estimated to be convenient.”

And the sentence was served. The great Bartolina Sisa, incorruptible commandant in chief of the forces emancipation of the Andean aboriginal nations, was dying hung but not without first having to suffer horrendous physical and moral tortures, flagellated, raped, flogged, dragged while being kicked in an immense pool composed by her own blood. Afterwards, she was taken naked for a ride on a donkey, in the colonial plaza of La Paz, today “Plaza Murillo”. From then on this plaza remains stained in its four corners with the blood of Bartolina Sisa, Gregoria Apaza, and many others who gave their lives for the restitution of freedom to the aboriginal nations.

Bartolina Sisa dead, her executioners, who were not yet satisfied, quartered her body and exhibited her head and members in different places of the ayllus and pathways where she resisted with her fight. Her head was nailed in the tip of a pillory, “to frighten the Indians”, said her executioners, and they placed her in Jayujayu-Marka, today province of Aroma in the department of La Paz. Her members where sent to Tinta-Marka, a community located in the now republic of Peru, where they where also exhibited in the mentioned pillories.

This scary facts of brutality, barbarism, and nameless savagery, have left deep footprints and scars in us, the children of the aboriginal nations. Those scars marked by the heroism not only of Bartolina Sisa, but also of Micaela Bastidas, Gregoria Apaza, Kurusa Llawi, etc., are the genuine reflex of the true story of the ayllus of the ancestral homeland of Tawantinsuyu and of the indigenous world of Abya-Yala.

More than 220 years have passed by, and the example of fight survives today engraved in the memory and heart of her children and her image, tattooed on the majestic and everlasting Andes wanders in the memory of the ancient indigenous nations. We remember her with deep pain and sadness but not with the spirit of the subjugated and defeated, but with a fortified spirit, with head up high and with the heart filled with enthusiasm convinced that with measured reflection, a day no that far will permit us to follow the path of emancipation in front of the current neoliberal system of plundering and indiscriminate usufruct.

¡¡¡¡ JALLALLA KULLAKA BARTOLINA SISA !!!!

Note from the author:Special thanks to our brothers Juyphi, Pedro Ricardo Tambo, and to the editors of the magazine Wiñayqhana for the realization of this work.