PERU, 1971, series to honor the Heroes of Independence, Scott C317

Juan Pablo Viscardo y Guzmán was born in Pampacolca, Arequipa, Peru in 1748 and entered the Jesuit novitiate in Cusco 1761, at the age of 14. When Charles III expelled the Jesuits from Spanish-controlled lands in 1767, Viscardo, who had received minor orders but was not yet a priest, left Peru with his brother José Anselmo, who studied studies with him, and went to Europe. He lived first in Modena in Italy, where he would be secularized, then in France and London where he died in 1798. A plaque marks the site of his house at the intersection of Baker Street and Marylebone Road, and another in St. Patrick's Church in Soho Square honors his life. While his desires and efforts to join an active revolution in Peru against Spanish rule were frustrated, one of the most important documents of the time was his Carta a los Españoles Americanos, the first political document which clearly summoned Spanish Americans to strive for independence from a colonial rule that he characterized as "ingratitude, injustice, servants and desolation."

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