This splendid book examines the conversion of José Gabriel Condorcanqui, Tupac Amaru II, into a heroic icon during the leftist regime of Juan Velasco Alvarado (1968–75) in Peru. Tupac Amaru was a perfect candidate: writers in the previous decades had cast him as an overlooked Andean martyr, Peruvians knew and appreciated Tupac Amaru and his rebellion, and people in Cusco – the focus of this book – embraced him as their rebel. Velasco and his ideologues, including a notable team of artists, crafted a persuasive message with rich imagery that depicted Tupac Amaru as the supreme symbol of the regime. They underlined that Velasco was completing what Tupac Amaru's eighteenth-century uprising had begun. Raúl Asensio convincingly shows that this developed into a cult, with the name Tupac Amaru associated with all types of Velasco initiatives (from governmental programmes to countless streets and buildings) and people in Cusco debating the correct Tupac Amarista line of action or thought. Much of the book examines the enthusiasm over and controversies about the creation of monuments, art work and festivals honouring the rebel leader, his wife Micaela Bastidas and other followers. It's a fascinating story – or stories – delightfully told, with broad implications for contemporary Peru.

Cusco's Municipal Library and Archive provided Asensio with his key sources, particularly the city's then excellent (or at least informative) newspapers, which covered every inauguration of a Tupac Amaru monument as well as the debates surrounding this veneration. In the hands of a lesser scholar, this might have become an archival report, a presentation of the often peculiar anecdotes about the Tupac Amaru boom. (My favourite was the late-night destruction of a statue to Mateo Pumacahua, Tupac Amaru's nemesis and subsequently a hero of the war of independence.) Instead, the author uses the cult to explore the rise and fall of General Velasco and the fervent rhetoric that linked him with Tupac Amaru, a mass phenomenon that for at least a few years unified Cusco, urban and rural, elite and indigenous. Asensio's knowledge of intellectual currents, Peruvian and international, guides his interpretation, ensuring his production not only of a rich chronicle of the era but also of an important and novel contribution to the history of ideas and political culture. Readers interested in the history of indigenismo, the Cornell–Peru Vicos Project, colonial art and Andean anthropology have much to learn here.

El apóstol de los andes analyses the zenith of the veneration of Tupac Amaru in the early 1970s (which has faded but certainly still exists) as well as the rise and decline of the Velasco government. These two phenomena go hand in hand. While focusing on Cusco, city and countryside, the book provides an important rethinking of the mass support for the reformist military government during its first two or three years and its demise. Analysts of the fall of the Velasco government (those more critical prefer the term ‘regime’) have focused more on economic questions (the slowdown in agricultural production following the agrarian reform; the budget deficits of a populist government; and the global crisis of 1973), while Asensio, although paying attention to economics, highlights the rapid emergence of broad support for Velasco and, after a few years of adoration, its decline. To do this he discusses how the Tupac Amaru cult unified Cusco, from the city's leaders to indigenous peasants in rural areas, an alliance that could not endure. He shows that, at least initially, there was a Tupac Amaru for everyone: moderate and leftist, localist and internationalist, rural and urban. Debates about public art, however, brought to the surface significant divisions within the Velasco–Tupac Amaru movement in Cusco. For example, the design and placement of a statue to Tupac Amaru prompted more than a decade of controversy, dividing the Tupac Amaristas and ending Velasco's honeymoon with Cusco. The battles over what the statue should look like, who should design it and where it should stand is a surprising but enlightening entryway into the rise and fall of Velasco in Cusco and of the consensus behind Tupac Amaru as the unifying Cusco icon. Asensio has an excellent eye for the telling anecdote as well as an ear for language. Through his examination of newspapers and speeches, he captures the military's characteristic ‘grandiloquence’ as well as the fervent, often anti-Lima rhetoric of the Cusco press.

The only section that failed to convince me was the argument that the cult became religious or took on religious overtones. It's an intriguing contention and certainly any movement that venerates or exalts in Cusco (and beyond) assumes religious language, references and practices. The treatment of Tupac Amaru certainly took on the reverence of a saint. But I wanted more development of this argument. This is a minor point. Instead, I want to stress the originality and importance of Asensio's work. It stands out for its adroit use of newspapers and the ability to move far beyond the intriguing anecdote to show how controversies over statues or music festivals not only symbolised new coalitions and discourses during Velasco but also shaped these changes. Asensio ably links his Cusco-centred analysis with discussions about cultural patrimony, the place of anthropology and the tourism economy, all the while maintaining the interest of the reader. A new wave of studies on Velasco have appeared in recent years, with examinations ranging from economic policy to pop art. El apóstol de los Andes stands out among these and deserves a broad readership.