Micaela Bastidasthe BridgeENTJ

In early December 1780, at 36, Micaela Bastidas sat in her house at Tungasuca, in the highlands south of Cusco, and sent her husband one urgent letter after another.

Her husband was José Gabriel Condorcanqui, known to history as Túpac Amaru II. On 4 November he had risen against the abuses of Spanish rule in the viceroyalty of Peru, and on 18 November the rebels won a victory at Sangarará. Cusco, the great city of the south, lay weak in front of them. He did not march on it. He turned south to raise more provinces.

Micaela thought every week of delay gave the Spanish time to bring in cannon and soldiers. She had been born in Pampamarca in 1744, and Quechua was her stronger language. By one account she could barely write, so her letters went through scribes. She had married Condorcanqui young, and running a muleteer's household had taught her how to keep people and animals fed on the move.

Now she ran the rebellion's rear. She organized supplies, set up a system of mounted messengers, recruited fighters and hunted for Spanish spies. It was the work Bridges are built for, and she did it in her husband's name. Her authority was borrowed, and she knew it.

Her letters to him were practical and fierce. Don't forget the cannons, she told him. Bring silver, because soldiers who go unpaid will walk away and leave the rest of us to pay with our lives.

Then her patience ran out. She had warned him often enough to go straight to Cusco, she wrote, and he had thrown the warnings away and given the enemy time to prepare.

It can sound harsh, and he had reasons she could not see from Tungasuca. It is also what love sounds like in someone who can see the clock. Bridges in her seat, responsible for everything and in charge of nothing, often end up writing exactly this letter.

The next day she stopped asking. She wrote to say she was raising a column of her own to march on Paruro. In a single day she had gone from begging him to take the road to taking it herself. Through it all, by one account, she still signed herself his most loving Micaela.

Late in December the rebel army finally turned toward Cusco. The siege began on 4 January 1781. By then the city was ready, and within a week the rebels pulled back. What she had warned of had come true.

She was captured on 7 April 1781. The king's visitor-general, José Antonio de Areche, kept her out of any pardon. In his eyes she had a man's resolve, too dangerous to spare.

On 18 May 1781, in the main square of Cusco, she was made to watch the executions of her son Hipólito and of Tomasa Tito Condemayta, a woman chief of the rising. Then her tongue was cut out. The garrotte failed on her slender neck, and her executioners killed her by other means. She was 36.

Peru now honors her as a heroine of its long road to independence. She was right about the road to Cusco. She had no command to take it, and by the time she raised her own column, it was closed.