An Inca Girl’s Petitions to Revindicate Atahualpa’s Lineage: Bárbara de Atahualpa’s Letters to the Spanish Monarch, 1610–1613

In 1610, nine-year-old Bárbara de Atahualpa, granddaughter of the Inca Atahualpa, sent a letter to the Council of the Indies requesting a substantial lifetime economic pension of 2,000 gold pesos by virtue of her royal blood. Bárbara sent a total of five letters to King Philip III claiming redress and rewards. She soundly defended her rights as a legitimate descendant of the Natural Lords of Peru while providing sharp criticism of Spanish colonialism over the Andes. This article analyzes the five letters that Bárbara Atahualpa sent to the Spanish monarch between 1610 and 1613. It proposes that while these petitions were signed by Bárbara, they were mediated by her uncle, Don Carlos Atahualpa, who served as her legal guardian following her parents’ deaths. After decades of unsuccessful petitions, Don Carlos played a pivotal role in shaping these letters to express his unfair situation and economic vulnerability. While for Don Carlos Bárbara’s letters symbolized an avenue to achieve redress, they also demonstrated the central role of Inca children as intermediaries between their lineage and the royal administration. Her epistolary remains as documentary proof of the multifaceted strategies of social reproduction employed by Inca royals to preserve and expand their lineage’s memory, reputation and socio-political standing within colonialism.