This book examines how people in the Andean region have invoked the Incas to question and rethink colonialism and injustice.

Alberto Flores Galindo was an acclaimed historian and social critic who died in 1989 at age 40. In Search of an Inca won the prestigious Cuban Casa de las Américas Prize in 1986 and the Clarence Haring Prize from the American Historical Association in 1991. It is now in its fifth edition in Peru and has been published in Cuba, Mexico, and Italy. Flores Galindo was the author or editor of numerous other books, director of various scholarly journals, and recipient of many fellowships and honors. He received his doctoral degree from L'Ecole des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris) and taught at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú in Lima.

Editors' introduction; Acknowledgments; Introduction; 1. Europe and the land of the Incas: the Andean utopia; 2. Communities and doctrines: the struggle for souls (central Andes, 1608-66); 3. The spark and the fire: Juan Santos Atahualpa; 4. The Tupac Amaru Revolution and the Andean people; 5. Govern the world, disrupt the world; 6. Soldiers and montoneros; 7. A republic without citizens; 8. The utopian horizon; 9. The boiling point; 10. The silent war; 11. Epilogue: dreams and nightmares.