Mariana Lenza

A Quechua leader who led a 19th-century indigenous uprising against colonial oppression in the Andes

Mariana de Jesús Dos Santos (1795-1862), known as María Lenza, was a Quechua leader who organized the 1824-1830 uprising against Spanish and criollo elites in Peru's Andes region. As a visionary strategist, she united 15 indigenous nations through her mastery of Quechua and Spanish, creating a decentralized resistance network that operated across 500 miles of mountain terrain. Her innovative use of guerrilla tactics included establishing mobile schools to teach literacy and military training simultaneously. Though ultimately suppressed, her movement inspired later independence leaders like Simón Bolívar. María's diary entries, preserved in the Museo de la Nación Peruano, reveal her philosophy of 'libertad con raíces' (freedom with roots). Recent scholarship includes Journal of Latin American Studies analysis of her economic reforms.