Career
Collahuazo learned to read and write in Spanish, but his work was written in Quechua
The Spanish magistrate of Ibarra could not accept the notion that a native could read and write, or write knowledgeably about history. He ordered Collahuazo arrested, mandated that he destroy his work in public, and sent him to prison where he would spend his final days. In 1708 Collahuazo fulfilled the mandate and burned all of his work publicly.
The existence of his literary work came to light many centuries later, when a crew of masons was restoring the walls of a colonial church in Quito, and found a hidden manuscript.
The salvaged fragment is a Spanish translation from Quechua of the "Elegy to the Dead of Atahualpa", a poem written by Collahuazo, which describes the sadness and impotence of the Inca people of having lost their king Atahualpa.
