The Tupac Amaru Rebellion 9780674416376

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The Tupac Amaru Rebellion

THE

TUPAC AMARU REBELLION Charles F. Walker

TH E BE L K N A P PR E S S

OF

H A R VA R D U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S

Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England 2014

Copyright © 2014 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Walker, Charles F., 1959– The Tupac Amaru rebellion / Charles F. Walker. pages cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-674-05825-5 (alk. paper) 1. Peru—History—Insurrection of Tupac Amaru, 1780–1781. 2. Tupac-Amaru, José Gabriel, –1781. I. Title. F3444.W35 2014 985' .033—dc23 2013037830

To four wonderful historians, with whom I so very much wish I could share this book: Alberto Flores Galindo Friedrich Katz Enrique Tandeter Eduardo Mendoza Meléndez

It is unlikely that in the history of revolutions, another will appear that is more justified or more unfortunate. Spanish America had become in those times the theater of the most extensive tyranny, but the yoke lay most heavily on the necks of Peruvian Indians. —Gregorio Funes

There is a general belief that the declaration of Peru’s independence, proclaimed by Gabriel Tupac Amaru, was suffocated by his capture and death in May 1781, in Cuzco’s main plaza; this is a historical error that needs to be overturned, and only a few people have scoured the archives, collecting the precise sources and rebuilding the real and true facts. —Modesto Basadre

Contents

List of Maps Introduction: The Execution of Antonio de Arriaga 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

xi 1

The Andes in the Atlantic World From Pampamarca to Sangarará A World without the Catholic Church? The Rebellion Goes South The Siege of Cuzco In Pursuit of Tupac Amaru Torment The Other Side of the Lake Southern Campaigns The Pardon and the Cease-Fire The Rebellion in Limbo Ordered by the Catholic King

18 40 65 86 109 130 152 168 180 202 219 243

Conclusion: The Legacy of Tupac Amaru

267

Chronology of the Rebellion Notes Acknowledg ments Index

281 283 339 341

Illustrations follow page 108

Maps

Western South America Colonial Lima The Rebellion’s Core Area The Southern Campaigns The Siege of Cuzco The Royalist Advance, 1781 Katarista Violence Battle Areas near Lake Titicaca The Distribution of Rebel Body Parts The Prisoners’ Journey: Cuzco-Lima and Callao-Europe

8 28 42 90 114 134 170 225 248 252

The Tupac Amaru Rebellion

Introduction The Execution of Antonio de Arriaga

O

N NOV EM BER 4, 1780, José Gabriel Condorcanqui Noguera, who increasingly used the Inca royal name Tupac Amaru, had lunch with Antonio de Arriaga at the house of Carlos Rodríguez, the priest of Yanaoca. If a Hollywood producer had asked central casting for colorful individuals who personified political relations in the colonial Andes, he would have been delighted with this trio. Tupac Amaru was the kuraka or cacique, the ethnic authority in charge of collecting the head tax (“tribute” was the colonial euphemism) and keeping order in Yanaoca and two other small towns, Pampamarca and Tungasuca, fi fty miles southeast of the ancient Inca capital Cuzco. The Incas still loomed large in this area. Quechua-speaking Indians constituted the vast majority of the population, and they venerated their ancestors, defeated by the Spanish in the sixteenth century, and those like José Gabriel Tupac Amaru who claimed bloodlines from the Inca royalty. Well-educated and bilingual, the forty-two-year-old José Gabriel moved easily between the Spanish and Indian worlds. In fact, this was his role as kuraka.1 Arriaga was the corregidor, the Spanish authority who collected taxes, arranged the despised labor draft for the massive Potosí mines six hundred miles to the south (today Bolivia), and oversaw regional affairs. Arriaga was a nobleman born in 1740 in the Basque country in northern Spain whose family had strong connections to Spain’s American empire, as members of the all-important Council of the Indies in Madrid and as merchants.2 Originally from Panama, Father Rodríguez was Yanaoca’s parish priest. He, along with another priest, Antonio

2

The Tupac Amaru Rebellion

López de Sosa, had been Tupac Amaru’s first teachers. Impressed by the young boy’s intelligence, they had remained close to him. These priests’ nurturing took hold: José Gabriel would remain pious and intellectually curious throughout his life. Thus, as was usually the case, Tupac Amaru the kuraka was indigenous or mestizo, Arriaga the corregidor a Spaniard, and Rodríguez a creole, the term used for people of European descent born in the Americas. These three authorities, kuraka, corregidor, and priest, formed the triumvirate that maintained order throughout the Andes under Spanish rule. Two other priests, Arriaga’s scribe and assistant, and numerous servants also accompanied them at the meal. José Gabriel’s wife, Micaela Bastidas, did not join them. Arriaga and Tupac Amaru knew each other well. Arriaga had a web of economic activities and, as tax collector and foremost authority, he enjoyed capital and power and had even lent Tupac Amaru money. Although the two had previously bickered over the labor draft or mita to Potosí, they shared an amicable meal that day, celebrating the day of Saint Charles (San Carlos), Father Rodríguez and the King of Spain’s saint day. After Arriaga enjoyed a short siesta, Tupac Amaru invited him to spend the evening at his house in Tungasuca. Arriaga insisted that he had to be back in Tinta, his home and the largest town in the area, about seven miles from Yanaoca, and began the four-hour journey by foot and horse over several precipitous hills. The imminent arrival of tribute money, the Indian head tax that fi lled colonial coffers, encouraged him to return. Tupac Amaru and a few young men accompanied the corregidor for a bit and then feigned that they were returning to Tungasuca. Instead, they rushed ahead to a hiding place on a peak, shocking Arriaga and his entourage when they leapt into their path. Arriaga fled into a canyon, hiding behind an apacheta, an indigenous sanctuary or sacred place made of stones. An Indian, however, spotted him and Tupac Amaru tied him up. They waited several hours until late that evening and then they took their prisoners in chains to Tungasuca. They forced Arriaga, his scribe Felipe Bermúdez, and two black slaves into a cell in the basement of Tupac Amaru’s house.3 Tupac Amaru compelled the stunned Arriaga to write letters to his treasurer in Tinta requesting money and arms, with the peculiar pretext that he was planning an expedition against pirates on the coast. Tupac Amaru himself then went to Tinta and used Arriaga’s key to

Introduction

3

take seventy-five fusils or light fl intlock muskets, a small number of standard muskets, gunpowder, bullets, some militia uniforms, mules, silver, 22,000 pesos of tribute money, gold, and other goods.4 He also wrote messages in the name of Arriaga to mayors and powerful individuals demanding that they convene in Tungasuca. Numerous military figures and entrepreneurs such as the Spaniards Juan Antonio Figueroa and Bernardo La Madrid fell into the trap. Kurakas also received instructions to send their Indians; thousands assembled in Tungasuca, streaming in for days. The rebels posted sentinels on the road to Cuzco to keep the news from authorities there. They also kept Arriaga’s whereabouts a secret. The masses congregating in Tungasuca did not know the corregidor was a prisoner in Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas’ basement.5 When Tupac Amaru placed a painting of the Crowning with Thorns in Arriaga’s cell and sent father López de Sosa to take confession, Arriaga knew that he was in deep trouble. Flabbergasted by the events and conscious that his life was in danger, Arriaga offered his entire fortune to the Pampamarca parish in exchange for freedom, but to no avail. López de Sosa and three other clerics accompanied the corregidor in his cell on November 9.6 Tupac Amaru explained to those assembled on the nearby plain that he had orders from the powerful Visitor General, José Antonio de Areche, that were approved by the High Court (the Audiencia) of Lima. In the coming months, Tupac Amaru often referred to orders or permission that he had from Madrid authorities, including even the King. He did not, of course, but many of his followers believed him or at least felt that Tupac Amaru was fulfi lling the King’s wishes: that if “His Majesty” only knew about the situation in the Andes, he would understand. Rumors spread that Arriaga was to be punished; the astonished crowds wondered why. Many believed that it was God’s will.7 On November 9, moving on horseback, Tupac Amaru ordered Europeans, mestizos, and Indians to line up in military columns. He was elegantly dressed: black velvet coat and knee-breeches, a ruffled shirt, a vest, linen, silk stockings, gold buckles at his knees and shoes, and a Spanish beaver hat. His attire often included more indigenous flourishes such as the uncu or tunic and a gold chain with the Inca sun. His hair cascaded down his back.8 Tupac Amaru repeated these maneuvers on the tenth, instructing the thousands present to follow him to a nearby

4

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knoll where a gallows had been set up. Some of his followers waved a white flag with a red cross.9 A mestizo read a proclamation in Spanish and Quechua: “Through the King it has been ordered that there no longer be alcabala [sales tax], customs houses, or the Potosí mita and that Don Antonio de Arriaga lose his life because of his destructive behavior.” One witness claimed that Tupac Amaru called Arriaga “harmful and tyrannical” and pledged to raze “obrajes [textile mills], halt the mita to Potosí, the alcabala, customs tax, and the reparto de mercancias [the forced sales of goods], and free Indians so as to live in union and harmony with the creoles.”10 Another witness quoted him as saying that he had “superior orders” to abolish taxes and customs houses, to expel corregidors and textile mill owners, and that his actions were not against God or the King; he wanted “Indians and Spaniards” to live as brothers.11 The crowd understood that it was witnessing a momentous event. Indians heard, in their own language, about the abolition of the forced sales of goods and the hated labor and sales taxes, and witnessed the condemnation of the maximum Spanish authority in the region. Mestizos and creoles ner vously wondered whether these seemingly welcome changes might lead to turmoil and dangerously independent Indians. Spaniards did not fully understand what they were seeing but feared for their lives. A town crier led the procession to the gallows, announcing that they were fulfi lling the King’s wishes and repeating the pledge that customs houses, alcabalas, and the mita would henceforth be abolished. Tupac Amaru ordered the town crier to speak in Quechua, a language never used in official events or in documents.12 The three priests accompanied Arriaga, surrounded by soldiers. Once at the gallows, the soldiers took Arriaga’s staff from him and forced him to replace his military uniform with the simple, penitentiary habit of the Franciscan order. Arriaga’s black slave, Antonio Oblitas, was forced into ser vice as the executioner. On the fi rst try, as he heaved to elevate Arriaga, the rope snapped and slave and master fell to the ground. Oblitas received several ropes to carry out his task and people close to the gallows, some of them Arriaga’s allies, tugged to strangle him. All commentators noted the tomblike silence. One witness claimed that some Indians passed by Arriaga’s cadaver and sneered in Quechua, “Jew, didn’t you used to do this? [Judio manachu caita rurahux canqui?]13 As would be the case throughout the uprising, Micaela had an active role. One account men-

Introduction

5

tioned that she “surpasses her husband in spirit and malevolence: she knew all about the execution of Arriaga and despite the weakness of her sex, she carried out that unjust hom icide, transporting bullets used by the guards in her shawl.”14 Speculation on why Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas had executed Corregidor Arriaga circulated like an Andean thunderstorm through the crowd that fateful November 10 and people have not stopped asking the question since. Then and today, people gave reasons that range from the personal (a grudge) to the macropolitical (the weakening of Spanish rule). The biography of Tupac Amaru is, of course, central to the explanation. He had witnessed the worst forms of Spanish exploitation of indigenous people and found himself increasingly hard pressed to fulfi ll his duties as intermediary between the Quechua and Spanish world. José Gabriel’s work as a merchant and muleteer took him throughout the Andes, while his legal battles to regain a marquisate (a noble title) had forced him to spend eight months in the viceregal capital of Lima in 1777, where he made important contacts and gained a deeper understanding of Peru. He had the respect of Cuzco’s Indians, reasons to loathe the Spanish, and the experience and worldliness to organize an uprising. In broader terms, in 1780 colonial authorities continued to escalate the Bourbon Reforms, a series of measures that increased taxes and labor demands on indigenous people while reducing their autonomy. Spanish reformers sought to restrict the pact created in the sixteenth century that granted Indians certain rights, including a high degree of cultural and political autonomy and the control of communal land, in exchange for subordination and a slate of taxes. They increased labor and tax demands and debated about how (or whether) to assimilate the native population and convert Indians, a category that implied political and cultural independence, into Spanish subjects. In practice, this meant that Indians throughout the southern Andes faced higher and new taxes, the revival of older and despised practices such as the Potosí mita, and an assault on their ethnic authorities, the kurakas. The reforms also sought to reduce the power of the church. Tensions between secular and religious authorities escalated in the 1770s and came to the surface throughout the rebellion. Arriaga himself had battled priests over protocol and fi nances. The fact that Tupac Amaru had been involved in these events helps explain the rebellion itself and the

6

The Tupac Amaru Rebellion

sympathy of some priests for the rebellion. Not surprisingly, many parish priests opposed the colonial government’s efforts to control and tax their parishes. At the same time, dozens of priests remained in their parishes and fought the rebels “behind the lines,” casting them as apostates and heathens, bolstering royalists’ spirits. The “Catholic Church,” a term that should not be conceived of in the singular, provided supporters and opponents. The uprising emerged from and brought into view these and other deep tensions in the southern Andes of Peru.15 By late 1780, Tupac Amaru’s forces had defeated the Spanish in several confrontations. He and his followers entered small towns and Indian villages to gain recruits and provisions. They sought to kill all corregidors (most, however, fled before the rebels arrived) and to imprison landowners despised by local Indians. The rebels razed the small textile mills present throughout the area, which served as virtual prisons for the Indian workers, distributing the cloth to shocked locals. Tupac Amaru and other leaders spoke Quechua to the indigenous masses and rumors spread that he embodied the return of the Incas, as indicated in his name, a link to one of the last Inca rulers, Tupac Amaru I (1545–1572). A widespread belief in the possible return to Inca rule nourished the uprising. These assaults were just the beginning; the uprising rapidly spread across the Andes. The colonial state collapsed in much of the area that stretched from Cuzco to Puno, near Lake Titicaca in the south, as authorities dared not attempt to collect taxes or enforce the mita. With the adjoining Upper Peru or Charcas under fire from a coalition of uprisings often called the Kataristas, and revolts inspired by the events around Cuzco springing up to the north and south, the Spanish faced the greatest military challenge since the sixteenth century, with what became the largest rebellion in colonial history. Although authorities initially underestimated the uprising, they realized by the end of 1780 that their control of Peru and beyond was in danger.

The Experience of Rebellion The Tupac Amaru rebellion is not an untold story. Generations of historians have written on it, ranging from epic tales in the nineteenth century to social-scientific works of the late twentieth.16 This book builds on the torrent of studies in the last forty years or so, including two major multivolume document collections as well as works on specific

Introduction

7

topics such as prior uprisings in the 1770s, confl ict in towns and cities far from the Tupac Amaru base in Cuzco, and the history of the textile mills.17 Two phenomena coincided around 1970 to prompt fascination with Tupac Amaru and boost the number of studies: the interest in rural revolts because of the Vietnam War and other anticolonial struggles and, in Peru, the unique Juan Velasco Alvarado “revolutionary military regime” (1968–1975), which cast José Gabriel Tupac Amaru as the forefather of its revolution and of Peruvian independence from Spain. It was during those years that the 86-volume Colección documental de la independencia peruana (1971–1976, originally projected to have 106 volumes) was released and Colección del bicentenario de la revolución de Tupac Amaru undertaken (the seven tomes were published in 1980–1982). These provided thousands of pages of transcribed and indexed documentation on the uprising.18 Nonetheless, despite this outpouring of studies, no accessible account of the Tupac Amaru rebellion exists in English, while those in Spanish are outdated and out of print.19 Yet the book is not simply a revised overview, a retelling of a wellknown story with some new citations and documents. It seeks to make several novel arguments regarding the uprising and to contribute to broader debates about violence and geography. The first contribution is seemingly mundane, a question of chronological scope or time frame, but important. Virtually every study focuses on the period from Arriaga’s execution in November 1780 to mid-1781, when the Spanish captured and executed important rebel leaders. The executions are fascinating and ghastly events that nonetheless serve poorly as bookends or starting and stopping points for an analysis of the uprising. Many of the most intriguing and influential moments of the rebellion occurred after April 1781, when Tupac Amaru’s cousin Diego Cristóbal and others took over the leadership of the rebellion. The uprising became increasingly bloody as it shifted to the south in the area near Lake Titicaca. It was here that the full force of the rebels emerged as they swept through the altiplano and linked with insurgents in Upper Peru. Their control of South America in danger, the Spanish divided between soft- and hardliners, with the latter ultimately winning. They imposed draconian measures against indigenous people that marked the region for decades, until the wars of independence (1808–1825) and beyond. Only through an examination of the overlooked events of 1782 and 1783 can the uprising and its legacy be understood.20

8

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Equator

COLOMBIA

Quito ECUADOR

Manaus a

P

E

R

U

Jaén Chachapoyas B R A Z I L

A

Cajamarca

N D

Trujillo

E

Huánuco

S

Huaraz 10°

M

Cerro de Pasco

Tarma

Callao Lima

T S

Jauja

Huanta Huancavelica Anta Paucartambo Cañete Pampamarca Huamanga Cuzco Tinta (Ayacucho) Surimana Sicuani Tungasuca Yanaoca Lake Yauri Juliaca Titicaca Sorata B O L I V I A Achacachi Puno La Paz Arequipa Sica Sica Cochabamba Santa Cruz

N

P

A O

C C

I

F

I

E

A

N

Oruro

C

Lake Poopó

0 0

La Plata Potosí

Tarija

modern borders

20°°

Chayanta

PARAGUAY

250 miles 250 km

corn Tropic of Capri 80°

CH I L E

A RG E N T I NA

70°

Western South America

I also provide the first full portrait of Micaela Bastidas. Authors have always cast her as an important secondary player, in part because of the lack of sources to flesh out her character. I have found rich material on her and place her, as was the case then, in the limelight. Prior to the uprising, Bastidas was an active partner in Tupac Amaru’s work as a merchant-muleteer. She collected debts, hired field hands and muleskinners, planned the long journeys to northern Argentina, and represented

60°

Introduction

9

José Gabriel in his frequent absences. As is common today in the Andes, the woman, Micaela, oversaw the family’s fi nances. All of these skills prepared her well for her role as a rebel leader, particularly to manage logistics. More than accompanying or backing her husband, she led the uprising alongside him. The book also rethinks the role of the Catholic Church in the uprising. Most studies on this theme have focused on priests who supported the rebels. This reflects, I believe, the massive documentation generated by the trials against priests such as López de Sosa and Bejarano who stayed with Tupac Amaru, as well as the inclination of historians (particularly in the 1970s and 1980s) to search for rebel heroes, including men of the cloth.21 I argue that the Catholic Church, particularly Cuzco’s Bishop, Juan Manuel Moscoso y Peralta, was fundamental in the repression of the rebellion. He excommunicated Tupac Amaru and demanded not only that parish priests remain in the areas controlled by the rebels but that they proselytize against the uprising. Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas did not know what to do. Highly religious, the two rebel leaders could not conceive of a world without the Church and could not come up with an effective plan to silence these royalists. The stories of the priests who remained behind enemy lines will shake up studies of late colonial Spanish America and add to the rich storyline. I attempt to tell the entire story of the uprising, from its onset to its legacy. I return to the events themselves, probing why people supported the royalists or rebels, why some sought to remain neutral. I aim to give the reader a feel for the lived experience of the uprising.22 The idea is not only to extend the analysis chronologically but also to explore how people understood and participated in the uprising. The flurry of studies published in recent decades has overlooked the fascinating events of the rebellion in their totality. I want to immerse the reader in the terrifying guerrilla campaigns, the relentless propaganda war, the gruesome repression of the revolt, and the rebellion’s long aftermath, revealing the fear and indecision on both sides and the ever-narrowing room for neutrality and negotiation. I shed new light on Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas, while also addressing the role of common people who fought for or against the uprising or sought to remain on the sidelines. I hope to help answer the vital questions about this and other rebellions: Why did they fight? What did they seek? Why did they succeed so brilliantly at fi rst but ultimately fail?

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Gore and Gorges Two topics or phenomena form the backbone of this study: violence and geography. Violence is at the center of any mass uprising and this book probes why and how people kill. The Tupac Amaru rebellion provides rich, grim material. Not only did the death count reportedly reach 100,000 (the Viceroyalty of Peru had about 1.8 million people) but the stories are gruesome. Colonial forces exterminated hundreds of indigenous fighters at a time, displaying heads on pikes, while rebels reportedly committed atrocities including raping dead women, drinking the blood of the recently killed out of skulls, and throwing children in Lake Titicaca to drown. The analysis builds from the argument by Stathis Kalyvas, in his work on Greek civil wars, that “clearly, the relation between political actors and underlying populations must be problematized rather than assumed away.”23 Leaders and followers constantly negotiate the terms of their relationship and the ways of war. Too many studies of Andean uprisings have assumed that rebel and royalist fighters followed their leaders without question; their loyalty is taken for granted or overlooked rather than scrutinized. I pay par tic ular attention to why and how violence intensified over time. The initial efforts on both sides to respect those remaining neutral fell by the wayside and atrocities mounted. The fighting moved toward a “total war,” in which the limitations on who was to be attacked and who was to be mobilized disappear.24 Prior to the twentieth century, people followed largely unwritten rules while conducting war. The understanding of how women and children should be treated, whether enemy combatants deserved Christian burial, and whether soldiers merited the right to ransack varied greatly according to local or imperial military culture and the particularities of the war itself.25 Rules applied, but could change dramatically in the course of a struggle. This was the case in Peru, where the rebellion quickly pushed its followers and enemies into uncharted territory. This book sheds light on this new terrain, where restraints or limitations on violence eased or even disappeared. Colonial authorities had little experience in repressing such a massive uprising, which eventually stretched across the Andean core of South America. They did not count on a standing army in Lima or Cuzco and relied, at least initially, on militias. These had proven adequate in putting

Introduction

11

down local revolts. In riots or upheavals prior to 1780, militias took advantage of their arms advantage (Indians and blacks were not allowed to own fi rearms), moved into a town, captured and executed the leaders, and returned to Lima once order had been restored. The Tupac Amaru rebellion demanded a much greater effort than this.26 In the eighteenth century, indigenous people of Cuzco and the Lake Titicaca area had sued authorities, run them out of town, mutinied, and even taken over towns. Submission did not characterize Indianstate relations. The Tupac Amaru rebellion, however, was a much larger enterprise. With no precedent (the fighting occurring at the same time in what became the United States was, from the perspective of Peru, a poorly reported, distant phenomenon), rebels invented the rules as the uprising grew. In fact, debates about violence—who was to be killed and how— proved to be a major point of contention among both the rebels and the royalists. This book traces the changing nature of violence in the uprising. While a mass uprising fought over a vast terrain was unprecedented, violence was not. It formed part of an indigenous person’s daily life, part of the fabric of colonial society. Authorities ranging from corregidors to kurakas arrested, detained, whipped, struck, and threatened in order to ensure that Indians paid their taxes and worked for the state, the church, and others. But the colonial state did not have a monopoly on violence. Estate owners counted on jails and gallows to ensure order and compliance; textile mills had become privately run jails, as the owners locked up Indians to make them work in abysmal conditions. Rebels destroyed the gallows and jails, or turned the world upside down by placing the powerful in them. Nor was violence unidirectional. Local people, Indians and others, proved highly capable of hitting, whipping, raping, and coercing one another, as the bulging trial records in Cuzco’s historical archive demonstrate.27 Drinking often played a part. Yet this does not mean Andean society was uniquely violent. Europe in this period also was the site of countless forms of aggression, both from the state and the upper classes and within the lower classes.28 One tendency in the rebellion stands out: aggression on both sides increased and became more ghastly as the uprising moved away from its base in Cuzco and the months passed. In the initial weeks after the execution of Arriaga, Tupac Amaru made sure that rebels only attacked Spanish authorities. He shielded rich creoles or others whom the indigenous

12

The Tupac Amaru Rebellion

fighters might have understood as the enemy. Across time and space, this changed. Both sides began to slaughter their opponents and neutrality became impossible. By mid-1781, neither took prisoners— they killed those they captured. In fact, the atrocities began to mirror one another. Royalists would hang rebels and display their body parts; rebels would humiliate and brutalize captives. By late 1781, rebels near Lake Titicaca reportedly pierced eyes and drank blood out of skulls. Each side increasingly saw the other as barbarians, as bad Christians, which justified greater violence. Violence spiraled out of control because of three overlapping factors: leadership, chronology, and geography. First, Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas sought to control their combatants’ aggression. Stressing that the fight was against evil Spaniards, they protected creoles, mestizos, and even affluent Indians from rebel wrath. They managed to do this quite effectively in the core area where they were in charge. When the rebellion expanded (and, of course, when José Gabriel and Micaela were no longer the leaders) this proved more difficult, and rebels attacked nonEuropeans. In fact, this aggression broadened from Europeans to all nonIndians, in some cases. Whereas Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas protected mestizos and creoles, some rebels in the second phase attacked people for simply wearing European dress or speaking Spanish. This also proved true of the royalist commanders—they were less and less capable of controlling the fury of their followers (or willing to). Second, as the uprising spread each side abandoned the restraints that had kept them from killing “civilians,” victimizing women, or ransacking stores and estates. Violence begets violence, and as each side ramped up the aggression the other acted in kind. The transformation was not just tactical or a byproduct of the search for revenge. Each side increasingly envisioned and cast the other as heretics, as fallen Christians who deserved to die. This ideological transformation justified greater violence, which in turn reinforced the interpretation of the opponent as a heathen or barbarian. What began as an uprising developed into a guerrilla war and then deteriorated into a vicious bloodbath. Geography or space was the third factor: important changes can be seen depending on where the fighting took place. As the rebellion’s center shifted from Cuzco toward Lake Titicaca, the violence worsened. This has much to do with the time frame outlined above—Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas could not control their forces and, over time, aggres-

Introduction

13

sion accelerated— but also with different populations and their relation to the colonial state and each other. In Cuzco, the state and the Catholic Church had a stronger presence than in the Titicaca area. Tupac Amaru himself had pleaded his case in the courts, lobbied corregidors, bishops, and patriarchs, and used his power as a kuraka to improve his lot and that of the Indians he represented. He had gone to school at the prestigious “School for Kurakas” in Cuzco’s center and rubbed elbows with people ranging from common Indians to Cuzco patricians. Demographics (more intermediate groups such as mestizos) and the economy (more active trade networks) meant that different ethnic groups knew each other and coincided in daily life more in Cuzco than in the Titicaca region. This contact or exchange could, arguably, build bonds and fortify empathy that decreased the likelihood of violence. The towns Tupac Amaru represented as a kuraka and which served as rebel centers—Tungasuca, Surimana, and Pampamarca— stood just fifty miles from Cuzco. Even the more humble residents took the much-traveled valley route to conduct business or to visit acquaintances in the former Inca capital. In contrast, the Spanish state and even the Church had a lesser presence in the south, around Titicaca. These institutions existed to oversee Spanish rule and the exploitation of Indians. Yet they also could shield Indians from behavior considered abusive or abhorrent. These “safety valves” were not as heavy on the ground away from Cuzco, and Indians and Spaniards had less contact or interaction, helping to explain why violence was cruder. Indians had fewer qualms about attacking all Europeans, particularly after more than a year of warfare, a point when the Spanish took no prisoners and assumed all Indians were bloodthirsty rebels. The Spanish falsely framed this in terms of civilization—the Indians of the South were more “savage” or “barbaric.” Instead, southern Indians had less attachment to the colonial system than their brethren in Cuzco, yet suffered brutal exploitation. The war itself had erased any empathy— a key impediment to the use of coercion—the Indian insurgents might have had with the Spanish.29 This spatial or cultural argument should not be exaggerated or oversimplified. The opposite argument may be equally true— a strong (colonial) state presence meant greater exploitation and thus a stronger likelihood for tension and violence. The city of Cuzco and the surrounding area were certainly violent before the uprising. Eminent scholars

14

The Tupac Amaru Rebellion

continue to debate whether modernity and the “civilizing process” reduce, increase, or modify violence.30 Nonetheless, Tupac Amaru and Micaela sought to limit aggression against Europeans and envisioned a postinsurrection utopia free of European exploiters. Rebels farther to the south attacked a far wider group and showed partic ular cruelty in the towns that they seized along Lake Titicaca. This contrast reflects the other two factors outlined here— the leadership and changes over time— but also a different social reality to the south. Geography, or topography, marked the uprising; not only the battles but also the animosity between the two sides. In fact, ideas about nature, the Andes, shaped how each side viewed and fought against the other. This study stresses these ideas’ centrality for understanding the bloodshed and more generally, colonialism.31 The Spanish incessantly complained about the towering mountains and craggy passes that the rebels used to their great advantage. They wondered how people could live at over twelve thousand feet above sea level and related this harsh environment to Indians’ supposed maladaptation to Spanish ways. Just as the rebels frequently retreated to the hills, a classic guerrilla (a term that had not yet been invented) tactic, the Europeans believed that the Inca descendants had also turned their back on or retreated from the Spanish language and Christianity over the centuries. Indians, in turn, saw the soldiers, at least those from the coast, as outsiders who deserved to be pushed back to the sea. They also questioned their Christianity. Over the last 150 million years or so, plate tectonics created the Andes. The Nazca Plate below the Pacific Ocean has slipped ever so slowly under the South American Plate, the grinding impact prompting earthquakes and pushing the earth up and to the side (many writers use the image of a car hood after a collision). Two main ranges, the eastern and the western (or, in Spanish, the black and the white, as the mountains closer to the Pacific have considerably less snow), run down much of South America, their highest peaks rising over twenty thousand feet above sea level. In several places, mountains running east-west bridge the two ranges, separating the sierra valleys. Plate tectonics also formed gorges and lakes, most notably Lake Titicaca, which straddles what is today the Peru-Bolivia border and is often called “the highest navigable lake in the world” (by large ships). In Cuzco, the Vilcamayu and Paucartambo rivers run to the northeast, into the Ucayali and from there the Amazon. The warm valleys to the north and northeast of Cuzco

Introduction

15

(including the tourist mecca Machu Picchu) were barely touched by the Tupac Amaru rebellion. Instead, the rebellion stretched from Cuzco to Lake Titicaca. Towns such as Tungasuca and Pampamarca stand at about eleven thousand five hundred feet above sea level, ensconced in broad bluffs above the Vilcanota Valley. These towns benefited from prime agricultural land, particularly in comparison to the surrounding sheer highlands or punas that soar well above the tree line. The correctly named “high provinces” or provincias altas just fi fty miles southeast of Pampamarca tower above fourteen thousand feet. Europeans could not believe that humans lived there; the area became a rebel hotbed. As the rebels and the pursuing colonial armies moved from Cuzco toward the Titicaca basin to the southeast, altitudes became higher, the air thinner, the valleys narrower, and the hills steeper and more barren. In the midpoint between Puno and Cuzco, the two Andean ranges come together in a snowy crag, the La Raya pass. Train riders today, often dizzied by altitude sickness, crane their neck to peer upwards to the glacier peaks and typically deem the terrain lunar. From this gateway south, into the Titicaca basin, more than thirteen thousand feet above sea level becomes the norm. Corn does not grow at this altitude and livestock (cattle, sheep, goats, llamas, and alpaca) rather than agriculture drove the economy. In linguistic terms, Quechua, the lingua franca of the Incas— and today the most widely spoken indigenous language of the Americas with over ten million speakers— predominated in the Cuzco region. Around and to the south and east of the Lake Titicaca basin, what is known as the Collao and today is part of Bolivia, much of the population spoke and speaks Aymara.32 Throughout the uprising, royalists complained bitterly about the altitude, the precipitous hills and mountains, and Indians’ rejection of the Spanish and their language. Rebels used all of these to their advantage. This dichotomy between a European coast (Lima) and Indian highlands (Cuzco) should not be exaggerated. The Spanish had a strong presence in Cuzco (and Indians typically constituted 10 percent of Lima’s population of about 50,000 at this time). With its population of 30,000 in 1780, Cuzco was Peru’s second city, the key administrative center between Potosí in Upper Peru and Lima.33 The viceregal state maintained important institutions and authorities there, and over the centuries thousands of Europeans settled in Cuzco to work as merchants

16

The Tupac Amaru Rebellion

or to purchase haciendas. This Spanish presence weakened as one moved toward Titicaca: fewer Europeans owned estates or mines or worked as merchants and the state relied more on indigenous authorities, kurakas, than Eu ropean bureaucrats. Mestizos, those of mixed Eu ropean and Indian blood, made up a major part of the city of Cuzco’s population, about 50 percent according to the imprecise censuses of the era. Although important, they had less of a demographic weight in the rural areas toward the south where, in the eighteenth century, the dividing line between Europeans and Indians remained stark. As the Spanish army would learn in the course of the uprising, the Collao was more indigenous and even more mountainous than Cuzco. Throughout the Peruvian Andes, Indian towns and communities in the lower levels specialized in agriculture while those in the higher areas focused on livestock, both European animals such as cows and goats and the American cameloids—llamas, vicuñas, guanacos, and alpacas. But this contrast was not as great as it might seem. The genius of the Incas, the remarkable empire that ruled the Andes in the three centuries prior to the arrival of the Spanish, was their ability to grow a vast variety of foodstuffs in different ecological niches (potatoes being the most famous, quinoa the trendiest) and to exchange and distribute goods among the Andes, the Amazon lowlands, and the coast. These “vertical archipelagos” did not crumble with the Conquest. In the eighteenth century, indigenous communities in the valleys often maintained pastureland in the higher reaches and traded actively with producers of coca leaves and chili peppers in the warmer areas toward the Amazon.34 Tupac Amaru himself was a muleteer, specializing in the route between Cuzco and Jujuy in what became northern Argentina. In general, communities at lower altitudes and closer to the cities such as Cuzco or, in the Titicaca basin, Puno were more affluent than those in the more remote areas. However, they also faced greater oversight by authorities such as corregidor Arriaga. This study highlights some key differences in how these diverse regions reacted to and participated in the uprising. In geographical terms, the Tupac Amaru Rebellion encompassed a larger area than the contemporaneous struggle in North America, the American Revolutionary War. On a darker note, the level of violence approached that of the ghastly Haitian Revolution a decade later, with up to 100,000 dead.35 The mass rebellion greatly altered Peru and Spanish presence in

Introduction

17

the Americas, casting a large shadow on the wars of independence that would emerge in the early nineteenth century. On the one hand, repression was brutal and anti-Indian sentiments flourished (or resurfaced) throughout the Andes in the following decades. The rebellion deepened the coast-Andes divide. On the other hand, Indians looked back at the uprising with pride and earned certain rights, as the Spanish dreaded another uprising. It certainly has not been forgotten in subsequent centuries. In recent decades, José Gabriel Condorcanqui, Tupac Amaru II, provided the name for two guerrilla groups (the Tupamaros in Uruguay and the Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru in Peru) and one rap singer, Tupac Shakur. The name Tupac Amaru is everywhere in Peru. I hope to show why it continues to resonate in Peru, Bolivia, and beyond.

1 The Andes in the Atlantic World

J

OSÉ GA BR I EL CON DORCA NQU I ,

born on March 10, 1738 in Surimana, was the son of Miguel Condorcanqui Usquionsa Tupac Amaru and María Rosa Noguera. Miguel, who died in 1750, was the kuraka of three towns in the Tinta district, Surimana, Pampamarca, and Tungasuca, a position José Gabriel inherited. José Gabriel would throughout his life use multiple last names. Condorcanqui—you are a condor in Quechua— was his patronym associated with the rights to the kuraka position but like his father, he also employed the last name Tupac Amaru to underline his royal Inca blood. Amarus are mythological winged serpents while Tupa (as his name was usually spelled) denotes royalty or proximity to the Inca.1 José Gabriel claimed to be a direct descendent of Tupac Amaru, the fi nal Inca ruler, beheaded by Viceroy Toledo in 1572. These bloodlines gave him considerable prestige among Quechua Indians, many of whom believed, two centuries after the Conquest, that the Tawantinsuyo or Inca rule would return. In addition, José Gabriel occasionally added his mother’s last name, Noguera, which some scholars believe indicated Catalan roots.2 José Gabriel spent his childhood in Surimana, but accompanied his father on trips throughout the district and beyond as he fulfi lled his duties as kuraka and plied his trade as merchant. These expeditions continued when José Gabriel came of age and assumed his father’s position and profession. After initial classes by Fathers López de Sosa and Rodríguez, he studied in the prestigious San Francisco de Borja School in Cuzco, run by the Jesuits for the sons of kurakas. The Jesuits provided him a strong education that also impressed on him his social standing as future kuraka and someone of royal Inca blood. At school just up the

The Andes in the Atlantic World

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hill from Cuzco’s imposing cathedral, he learned Latin and deepened his Spanish.3 As a kuraka, José Gabriel held rights to land. He also had small mining interests and coca fields in Carabaya, to the south, and owned several houses and a small hacienda. His wealth, however, should not be exaggerated: he owed and was owed a great deal of money and had liens and mortgages on his property.4 He inherited 350 mules from his father, which he used to work the Cuzco-to-Upper-Peru circuit, the trade route that linked Lima and Cuzco with the all-important Potosí mines. He carried textiles from local mills as well as sugar, coca leaves, and dried chili peppers on his mules and llamas to sell or trade in the Lake Titicaca region and Upper Peru. He returned with more mules and other goods as well as posts and packages. As a muleteer, he gained important contacts throughout the region and had a privileged viewpoint on the ebb and flow of the colonial economy and the increasing strains it put on the indigenous population. Over campfires at night or when negotiating a deal, people told him about the local situation and asked him for news from Cuzco and beyond. Throughout the colonial period and until the emergence of four-wheeled vehicles and the diffusion of radios in the twentieth century, Andean muleteers such as Tupac Amaru served as the main conduit between rural life and the outside world. People revered him for his Inca heritage and, according to many, his kind manner and willingness to defend the rural poor. The late 1770s were difficult years for the Andean economy. The opening of Buenos Aires to Upper Peruvian trade (Lima had previously held a monopoly) meant that producers in Cuzco selling their wares in Potosí had to compete with products from Buenos Aires and even from Spain. Moreover, widespread overproduction throughout the Andes prompted prices to drop. The coarse wool fabric from Cuzco’s mills, for example, confronted unprecedented competition from European textiles. Moreover, the years 1778 and 1779 brought extremely cold weather to Andean Peru, damaging crops and making travel more difficult.5 Tupac Amaru himself experienced this crisis. By 1780, he had considerable means but mounting debts as well. He also witnessed and heard about widespread economic malaise, ranging from merchants verging on bankruptcy to Indian communities that could not pay the increasing tax load.6 Writers have long asked whether Tupac Amaru was an Indian or a mestizo, a question that would not have been posed in the same way in

20

The Tupac Amaru Rebellion

his time. His contemporaries made clear that he was both and that he took full advantage of his ability to move among the different social groups of the period. His economic interests and education made him a member of the colonial middle class, with ties to the upper and lower classes. He had close connections with distinguished Spanish and creole residents of Cuzco such as his friend Gabriel Ugarte, but also was comfortable with the region’s masses, Quechua-speaking Indians. He spoke both Spanish and Quechua well, wrote graceful Spanish, and thanks to the Jesuits knew some Latin. The upper classes in Lima saw him as a well-educated Indian; some understood this as an acceptable case of social mobility while others saw it as an aberration and threat to the flexible but ultimately real barriers between caste groups in colonial Peru. Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas were able to carry out the rebellion because of this ability to move among, gain acceptance from, and recruit different social groups. They attracted, at least initially, Spanish, creole, mestizo, black and, above all, indigenous followers. In the midst of the uprising, however, this balancing act became increasingly difficult. Europeans quickly became concerned about the use of violence and the ransacking of estates. Some groups never supported the rebels. For example, some kurakas, particularly those of the Sacred Valley, saw him as an arriviste with an unimpressive lineage. They questioned both his claims to royal Inca blood as well as his economic standing, believing themselves superior on both fronts.7 Many Spaniards and Creoles scoffed at the notion of a “noble Indian,” and despite business dealings and even friendship with him, wanted nothing to do with his political project. They rejected his requests for support. On the other hand, while Indians venerated the couple, some abandoned the movement or pushed for more radical (violent) actions. Doubts about the leaders’ revolutionary credentials and opposition to the multiclass alliance they sought nourished these desertions and insubordination. In a society as hierarchical as colonial Peru, coalitions that united racial and class groups strained from the beginning. As for Micaela Bastidas, she was born in 1744 in Pampamarca. Some writers have contended that she was from Abancay, west of Cuzco, but the archival records confi rm Pampamarca, part of the Tupac Amaru’s family kurakazgo. When I visited this town in 2007, locals proudly claimed her as their own and showed where she had lived about a mile outside of town. They maintained that parts of her house had stood

The Andes in the Atlantic World

21

until recent decades. Her mother was Josepha Puyucahua (look at the clouds in Quechua) Sisa and her father Don Manuel de Bastidas; they never married. He died in 1746 and his identity remains unclear. Some contend that he was a local man with black heritage, inasmuch as a few documents refer to her as a zamba or one with cinnamon-colored skin, implying that she had black blood. Others claim that he was a priest, assigned to nearby Yanaoca.8 Being an illegitimate daughter of either a partially black father or a priest placed her in an unusual social category, particularly in the overwhelmingly indigenous highlands, and closed doors to her. It certainly excluded her from elite circles. Yet her wedding certificate listed both her parents as “Spaniards,” a sign of respectability more than birthplace. Racial and class categories in Spanish America were quite fluid and someone like Micaela could move among different sectors comfortably and gain their respect. She had three brothers, Antonio, Pedro, and Miguel. Micaela was a devout Catholic throughout her life. She had little schooling and her Quechua was far superior to her Spanish. In Pampamarca, oral history claims that she was forced to work in an obraje, the oppressive textile mills. Father Antonio de Sosa married her and José Gabriel in Surimana on May 25, 1760. They had three children, Hipólito (born 1761), Mariano (born 1762), and Fernando (born 1768), all baptized by Father Sosa in Pampamarca.9 The nineteenth-century English geographer Clements Markham, who knew the Cuzco area well and wrote widely on the Incas, Quechua, and Andean geography, called her a “beautiful Indian girl.” He knew this because Dominga Bastidas, Micaela’s cousin, had survived the uprising and, fi fty years later, described her beauty to General John Miller, who was in Cuzco in 1835. Miller then relayed the description to Markham.10 Micaela was a full partner in José Gabriel’s enterprises. While he was away in Lima or elsewhere, she managed his business and kuraka affairs, overseeing tax collection and the labor draft and supervising the men who stepped in for him in his work as a merchant. This helps explain how she proved to be such an exceptionally able leader of the rebellion. She excelled at paying the troops, managing supplies, keeping discipline, posting sentinels, and watching for spies— all of the intricate logistics that make up military campaigns. Her proficiency brings to mind the military axiom, “amateurs talk about strategy, professionals talk about logistics.” Even before the uprising, she displayed her strong

22

The Tupac Amaru Rebellion

nature. One tithe collector claimed that in front of the corregidor Micaela had threatened to “punch him” if he did not relent.11 Her work as Tupac Amaru’s partner in his political and economic endeavors prepared her well for the uprising. Micaela’s prominence in the uprising was not a shocking reversal of gender roles in the Andes. Women participated actively in the cash economy, particularly in the sale of produce, livestock, and other goods in markets and fairs. They frequently managed the household economy. Men believed themselves the representative of the family and saw themselves in charge. Domestic violence, frequently fueled by alcohol, was rampant. Nonetheless, women were usually significant partners in the large, extended families that characterized the period, and led the household if males weren’t present. In the case of the Condorcanqui-Bastidas household, Tupac Amaru no doubt spoke for the family and believed that he had the final say. But, as would occur in the rebellion, Micaela Bastidas helped make decisions and run the household economy.12 Although Spaniards burnt the portraits of Tupac Amaru that he commissioned during the rebellion, we have several descriptions and one painting. Markham reproduced one royalist’s recollection: Tupac Amaru was five feet eight inches in height, well proportioned, sinewy, and fi rmly knit. He had a handsome Indian face, a slightly aquiline nose, full black eyes, and altogether a countenance intelligent, benign, and expressive. His address, remarkable for gentlemanlike ease, was dignified and courteous toward superiors and equals; but in in his intercourse with the aborigines, by whom he was profoundly venerated, there was sedateness not inconsistent with his legallyadmitted claims (de jure) to the diadem of the Incas. In mind he was enterprising, cool, and persevering. He lived in a style becoming his rank, and, when residing at Cuzco, usually wore a black velvet coat and small-clothes in the fashion of the day, a waistcoat of gold tissue, embroidered linen, a Spanish beaver dress hat, silk stocking, and gold knee and shoe-buckles, and he allowed his glossy black hair to flow in ringlets which extended down nearly to his waist.13

An anonymous Spaniard stressed his seriousness and deemed Tupac Amaru “very white for an Indian, although not so very much for a Spaniard.”14 Descriptions from the rebellion cast him as an elegant figure on a white horse, dressed in European style with a few Andean touches such as the uncu or overshirt and the mascapaicha or royal band. Royalists emphasized his cold, calculating bearing, which in their eyes

The Andes in the Atlantic World

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enabled him to oversee the slaughter of innocent Europeans, while subsequent generations of admirers have presented him as an elegant and handsome mestizo. Portrayals from the mid-twentieth century gave him the impossibly large muscles of the Soviet Social Realism school and, in the 1960s, features that made him a sort of darker-skinned Che Guevara. Twentieth-century depictions of Micaela cast her as a longnecked, thin beauty, with European features. Many have whitened her skin considerably.

The Atlantic World Reaches the Andes Tupac Amaru moved throughout the Peruvian viceroyalty, from the legendary silver mines of Potosí to the regal colonial capital of Lima, where he found himself entangled in new policies and ideas emanating from Europe. While the rebellion cannot be understood without taking into account the lives of Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas as well as those of the indigenous masses of the southern Andes, it also requires examining changes in Spain and its treatment of its American holdings. Tupac Amaru, Micaela Bastidas, and their followers lived and suffered the Bourbon Reforms. Their lives provide excellent entryways into local Andean society as well as global changes. In the eighteenth century, warfare and commercial competition with France and England plus a palpable sense of decline prompted Spain to change its relations with and demands on its American holdings. Its alliance with France against Great Britain in the Seven Years’ War (1756– 1763) proved disastrous. The English occupied strategic Havana and Manila in 1762, a “devastating blow to Spanish prestige and morale.”15 King Charles III, who ruled from 1759 until 1788, understood that he had to revamp the military and modernize the administration in Spain and its colonies in order to keep pace with France and Great Britain. In 1765, he commissioned the lawyer José de Gálvez to conduct an inspection or “general visit” to New Spain (Mexico), where he remained for six years. Gálvez then became Secretary of the Indies in 1775 and dominated the Madrid court on all overseas issues until his death in 1787. Rival factions among the Spanish in Peru maneuvered to gain his favor. It was Gálvez who received the voluminous information arriving from Peru about the Tupac Amaru uprising and oversaw the royalist response.

24

The Tupac Amaru Rebellion

Spain closely followed events in Europe and the Americas. Anticolonial movements in North America in the 1770s and 1780s troubled authorities. The Madrid court believed that if victorious, the patriots would set a bad example for their colonial brethren in Spanish America; worse yet, if the British maintained control, they might launch new attacks to the south.16 Some authorities even worried that the English secretly supported Tupac Amaru.17 In reality, the British focused their attention and resources on keeping as large a claim as possible in Canada and the newly emergent United States. While the English press printed information about “revolution in Peru” with a certain satisfaction, the Spanish had little reason to worry about British support for the Andean rebels. Intent on improving its defenses and extracting more revenue from the American colonies, the Spanish state centralized its colonial administration and increased the demands on the population. Dismantling the Habsburg system (the dynasty that ruled Spain from 1506–1700, which relied on negotiation and the diffusion of power), it reduced the number of American-born individuals in the administration, replacing them with Europeans. The Bourbons, the royal house of French origin that ruled Spain after 1700, also tightened control of the administrative units through “visits” and other mechanisms. Visitador Generals such as Gálvez in Mexico and Antonio de Areche in Peru, who would play a vital role in the Tupac Amaru drama and appears prominently here, clashed with viceroys and other authorities, whom they believed too lax and cozy with local society. The viceregal state increased taxes and extended them to previously exempt groups, improved collection methods, and imposed new monopolies. Kurakas such as Tupac Amaru found it increasingly difficult to meet the growing demands of the state without jeopardizing their own legitimacy in local society. They pleaded with corregidors and in the courts for leniency (tax reductions, extensions, or exemptions) and for recognition, stressing their heritage and the local stability they maintained. The reformers, however, had little sympathy with kurakas such as Tupac Amaru and saw them as an unfortunate vestige of the Inca and Habsburg past. Tupac Amaru’s frustration grew as his efforts to contest the tax and labor demands failed. Yet even if unsuccessful, this work brought him increasing appreciation and even veneration by the Indians in his kurakazgo and beyond whom he defended.

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The military reforms had initially concentrated on improving Spanish America’s coastal defenses (authorities understood the British Navy and seaborne pirates as the primary threats). In 1780, military authorities were in the midst of shifting imperial defense from militias (local “volunteers”) to a standing army. These reforms reflected the Bourbons’ distrust of those born in the Americas and their preference for professionals. The events in Cuzco accelerated this process.18 Jurisdictional changes in the 1770s weakened Cuzco’s role in Upper Peru and the Atlantic trade via Buenos Aires, angering bureaucrats, merchants, estate owners, and peasants throughout Peru. In 1776, the Viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata was created, separating Cuzco from Potosí and the Titicaca basin. The 1778 “Free Trade” policy opened Buenos Aires to trade with Spain, reducing Cuzco’s role in the vast Potosí network by directing trade that had flowed through Cuzco via the Pacific to the Atlantic instead. Authorities also raised fiscal demands. The alcabala, a sales tax paid on most goods traded by non-Indians, rose from 2 to 4 percent in 1772 and to 6 percent in 1776. Visitador General Areche arrived in 1777, implementing the construction of customs houses throughout the Andes and endeavoring to enforce the tax’s collection. He also broadened the tax to include products, such as coca leaves, and social groups, such as artisans, previously exempt from the alcabala. People in Cuzco despised these changes. Indigenous people suffered the most from these tax increases. The colonial state had long relied on the Indian head tax as a main source of revenue, and the amount collected in Cuzco multiplied by a factor of sixteen between 1750 and 1820. In addition to increased tribute and sales tax, Indians continued to confront the odious forced purchase of goods, the reparto de mercancías or repartimiento. Corregidors, usually aligned with powerful merchants and producers, required Indians to buy products, often at inflated prices.19 José Gabriel witnessed and bore the brunt of these reforms from an early age. He struggled against one of the hallmark reforms in the Andes, the transfer of the kuraka office from locals, usually families that had held the office for centuries and often had claims of Inca royal blood, to outsiders, who in many cases did not even speak Quechua. Corregidors were unable to implement the changes until the 1790s, and even then with delays and exceptions, but in previous decades they obstructed every transfer from father to son and occasionally placed

26

The Tupac Amaru Rebellion

outsiders in the position. José Gabriel had fought to assume the kurakazgo that his father had held, succeeding in 1766. Yet in 1769, authorities in Cuzco took the position away from him, only to return it in 1771. Confl icts with successive corregidors of the Tinta province, Gregorio de Viana and Pedro Muñoz de Arjona, prompted these setbacks. In 1768, Tupac Amaru took Geronimo Cano, a tax collector, to court for his abusive behavior in the forced sale of goods to Indians. This very well might have hurt his efforts to reclaim the kuraka position.20 Tupac Amaru heard complaints and pleas for help from Indians forced to buy overpriced goods under the reparto who then scrambled to pay the head tax and other obligations with the scarce cash that circulated in indigenous society. He witnessed groups of men and their grieving families, who generally accompanied the men, leaving for mita work at the Potosí mines, no one sure that they would return due to the cost of the journey and the danger in the mines. The new trade policies, which facilitated the arrival of goods from Buenos Aires and Spain to Upper Peru, made his work as a merchant-muleteer in the Potosí circuit less profitable. Like many, he despised the new customs houses installed under Visitador Areche’s watch. Tupac Amaru had witnessed the erosion of creoles’ power, the decrease in Indians’ autonomy, and the weakened position of the Church. He butted heads with Spanish authorities, particularly the autocratic corregidors and their henchmen who were in charge of implementing these new policies. Tupac Amaru had objected to the exploitation and abuse of Indians and, of course, despised the efforts to replace ethnic kurakas with Spaniards or creoles.21 The Bourbon Reforms, as they would later be known, were not an abstraction for Tupac Amaru and the indigenous people of southern Cuzco; they were a daily grievance, corroding their social, political, and economic standing. Tupac Amaru had an extended battle in the Cuzco courts and then Lima’s Real Audiencia or high court with don Diego Felipe de Betancur over which of them was the legitimate descendent of the last Inca, Tupac Amaru I, and thus entitled to the marquisate of Oropesa, a rich fief dating from the seventeenth century. Tupac Amaru I had led the final stages of Inca resistance in Vilcabamba, the lush area toward the Amazon basin. The Spanish captured him in 1571 and beheaded him the following year. Tupac Amaru claimed that he descended from Juana Pilcohuaca Coya, the illegitimate daughter of Tupac Amaru I, who married Diego Felipe

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Condorcanqui, the kuraka of Surimana, Tungasuca, and Pampamarca. José Gabriel’s father would in this case be the great grandson of this couple. Betancur contended that Tupac Amaru had fabricated important elements of the supporting evidence and consequently was not a direct descendent. Betancur presented ample material showing his lineage, which was itself of dubious origin. Each side accused the other of fraud. The Spanish prolonged the trial, preferring not to fi ll the marquisate.22 In April 1777 Tupac Amaru traveled to Lima to plead his case in the Audiencia. This long trial, which was not over when he hanged Arriaga in November 1780, clearly troubled him. The colonial courts had denied what he believed to be his ancestral rights.23

The Last Inca in the City of Kings In the 1530s, the Spanish created Lima or “The City of Kings,” as it was also known, to anchor and represent Spanish power in the still Incadominated Peru. The city and its nearby port, Callao, served as the political and economic center of the Viceroyalty. Home to the viceroy, the archbishop, the principal religious orders such as the Jesuits, Franciscans, and Dominicans, and the aristocracy, in 1780 it had a population of about 50,000. Indians made up about 10 percent of the city, ranging from workers in the eastern “Indian district” to kurakas such as Tupac Amaru conducting business in the capital. Spaniards, blacks, and multiracial groups constituted the bulk of the city’s population. The city’s architecture and active court life impressed Europeans; eighteenth-century travelers also commented, usually with disdain or even fear, about the city’s multihued population and its disobedient ways.24 During his year in Lima, José Gabriel stayed in a second-story room on Concepción Street, in front of the Concepción Monastery, three blocks from the Plaza Mayor, the city’s center. His room became the meeting place of malcontents, mostly from Cuzco, such as Father Vicente Centeno and the mestizo Miguel Montiel y Surco from Oropesa, a town between Cuzco and José Gabriel’s home base. Montiel had traveled throughout Peru, visited England, France, and Spain in the 1760s and 1770s, and greatly admired the English. As a merchant in Lima, he had a small stand in the “Street of the Jews” next to the Plaza and according to one testimony in his trial for sedition, Montiel maintained that the Spanish occupation of Peru was illegal, that Tupac Amaru should replace

28

The Tupac Amaru Rebellion

N

iver

Rimac R

Cabildo

The Viceregal Palace

PLAZA MAYOR

EL CERCADO

Cathedral CO

NC

Andrés and Mariano’s lodging in 1782

Tupac Amaru’s lodging in 1777

EPC

IÓN

city wall 0 0

1/4 mile 1/4 km

Colonial Lima

the king and take the throne, and that “if Indians weren’t enough to expel the Spanish, the English, who have a superior government, will help.” He was a fervent reader of Garcilaso de la Vega’s Royal Commentaries of the Incas, the fundamental text for the rebels.25 Born in Cuzco in 1539, the offspring of a conquistador, Sebastián Garcilaso de la Vega y Vargas, and an Inca noblewoman, Palla Chimpu Ocllo, Garcilaso de la Vega became a leading figure in Spain’s golden era of literature. He lived with his mother in Cuzco in his early years, learning Spanish and Quechua and imbibing vivid stories of the Incas and the still unfolding Conquest. His was not a story, however, of mestizo

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29

bliss. His father married a noble Spanish woman and passed on Chimpu Ocllo to a Spanish foot soldier. Garcilaso decided to use a 4,000-peso inheritance upon his father’s death in 1560 to travel to Spain. Living in Montilla and Córdoba until his death in 1616, Garcilaso fi nally published his epic Royal Commentaries (Comentarios Reales de los Incas) in 1609 (part 2, General History of Peru, was published posthumously, in 1617). Garcilaso presented the Incas as dignified, accomplished rulers who had conquered and even civilized a vast territory. While historians question many of his arguments, readers appreciated his lively prose and bold depiction of the Incas and the Conquest.26 Published in numerous editions, the book circulated widely in eighteenth-century Peru, nurturing Neo-Inca nationalism.27 José Gabriel had the education to capture all the nuances of this literary work. He no doubt appreciated the romantic depiction of the Incas and read with horror about the betrayal and execution of his ancestor, Tupac Amaru: “So ended the Inka, the legitimate heir to the empire by the direct male line from the fi rst Inka Manco Capac to himself.”28 One source claimed that during the uprising, José Gabriel “nourished himself with daily readings of the historian, Garcilaso.”29 Garcilaso de la Vega (often called “El Inca” to differentiate him from another writer) provided José Gabriel and others readers a rousing portrait of the grandiose Incas, casting them as worthy rivals, respectable monarchs who perhaps deserved a renewed opportunity to lead the benighted Andean people. “El Inca” Garcilaso tells particularly moving stories of how different Incas such as “Maita Cápac, the fourth Inca, conquers Tiahuanaco” (book 3, chapter 1) and about other successful campaigns to the south. As will be seen, these stories of southern expansion would inspire and influence Tupac Amaru. José Gabriel met with many dissidents in Lima. Francisco Pineda, a tamale and pastry vendor identified as a young black man, recalled hearing spirited conversations about “how the reparto oppressed Indians” when he made his deliveries to Concepción Street, and that corregidors and their tribute or head tax demands “didn’t leave the poor enough to maintain their wives and children.”30 Pineda noticed that Tupac Amaru was ill with tertian fever, malaria, and understood that doctors told him he would die if he did not get out of Lima. Prosecutors later claimed that Tupac Amaru met with dignitaries in Lima, including “men of letters,” who encouraged him “to get on with the uprising.”31 According to

30

The Tupac Amaru Rebellion

Father López y Sosa, Indians from an adjoining province— probably Huarochirí—visited him in Lima. Concerned about his illness, they kneeled and expressed their veneration. They had told a judge in Lima that he was their “king.” Indians believed him to be a messiah, the last Inca.32 Micaela Bastidas claimed that the experience in Lima “opened his eyes.”33 In Lima in July 1777, Tupac Amaru presented an impassioned defense of the Indians of the districts of Canas y Canchis and Quispicanchi, emphasizing the heavy burden of the mita labor draft. This was not that unusual an act. Throughout the colonial period, authors wrote careful yet pointed critiques of aspects of colonial rule. The court channeled Tupac Amaru’s petition to Visitador General Areche, whose power by this time perhaps surpassed that of the Viceroy. Areche responded on September 23, 1777 that Tupac Amaru’s petition against the mita was insufficient and unconvincing. Moreover, he instructed Tupac Amaru to return to “his towns” and wait for an answer from the superintendent of the mita, who held office in distant Potosí. Tupac Amaru responded to Viceroy Manuel de Guirior in December 1777, with a biting critique of the mita. Tupac Amaru stressed the “unbearable” burden the labor draft placed on families, as wives, children, and other dependents almost always accompanied the man forced to work in Potosí and they received no compensation for the six-hundred-mile journey. The expenses often forced them to sell their huts and furniture to finance the trip, making their return unlikely. Because of the decreasing population of the region— caused, he claimed, in large part by the mita—men were enlisted more frequently than every seventh year as the law stipulated, and were forced to stay for longer periods. Tupac Amaru stressed that Potosí already had a sufficiently large resident labor population and cited at length the Crown’s Laws of the Indies (the body of laws that oversaw Spanish control of the Americans and the Philippines) to show how the system had been perverted since its origin in the late sixteenth century. He suggested that the mine owners rely instead on blacks, presumably slaves, and wage laborers. On May 20, 1778, the “Protector of Indians,” don Francisco Ruiz Cano, who apparently had been friendly with Tupac Amaru, confi rmed Areche’s earlier rejection of the petition. Tupac Amaru lost this case at the same time that his legal battle with Betancur stagnated. He left Lima in mid-1778 dejected, convinced

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that the legal system offered little hope for improving the lot of the Indians he represented. The long trip to Cuzco gave him plenty of time to mull over his frustrating defeat. He met with disgruntled Indians in Huarochirí, just outside of Lima, a region that had risen up in arms before and would do so again.34 His anger with the Spanish and his willingness to be seen as an indigenous leader and even the savior of his people were on the rise.

Foreshadowings In the months and years after the uprising, prosecutors scrutinized all of Tupac Amaru’s activities from 1777 until his death, seeking to discover how long he had planned the uprising and with whom. They recognized that as kuraka Tupac Amaru had defended his Indians with growing passion and had met with a variety of people. The image of him as an Inca royal destined to represent his people began to take root throughout Cuzco, in other Andean areas, and even in Lima. Conspiracies and revolts in Cuzco as well as Tupac Amaru’s actions foreshadowed the violence of the 1780s. In hindsight, investigators wondered how they could not have seen the rebellion coming and why they had tolerated Tupac Amaru’s increasing belligerence. Visitador General Areche arrived in Peru in 1777. Born in 1731 near Santander, Spain, Areche had studied law and received his fi rst appointment overseas in the Philippines in 1765. He worked closely with José de Gálvez, Mexico’s first Visitador General. Both clashed with viceroys, who saw them as uncouth interlopers with no sense of local reality. The viceroys, up until this point the maximum representatives of the king in the Americas, disliked the visitadors’ heavy-handed implementation of the administrative changes, which they knew sought to undermine their own power. The visitadors, in turn, saw the viceroys as secondrate bureaucrats who were too corrupt or too lazy to implement changes that sought to wrest power away from creoles. Gálvez and Areche shared a great impatience and even disdain for the residents of Spanish America. They worried that Spaniards who resided in the Americas had been corrupted by local society, and they mistrusted creoles, whose loyalties were not necessarily aligned with Spain. They doubted that a fi fth-generation creole, say, appreciated and understood Spain. The visitadors also disliked the multiethnic lower classes, questioning their

32

The Tupac Amaru Rebellion

assimilation and loyalty. Areche almost immediately fought with Viceroy Manuel de Guirior, seemingly over issues of protocol but ultimately about who was in charge of the viceroyalty, the visitador or the viceroy. Areche’s arrival actually surprised Viceroy Guirior, who departed Lima soon after, in 1780. Areche did not get along any better with the replacement, Viceroy Agustín de Jáuregui, and their sparring marked the period of the uprising. Jáuregui (1711–1784) had been Governor of Chile until he reached Lima in July 1780 to assume the office of viceroy. His arrival took his predecessor, Guirior, by surprise—he did not know he was being replaced. Some believed that Visitador Areche had maneuvered to have Guirior removed.35 Nonetheless, the visitador also battled with the new viceroy. Jáuregui was one of the older, cautious, bureaucratic viceroys that Bourbon reformers such as José Gálvez and Areche targeted. Gálvez and Areche believed that authorities such as Jáuregui were too old and too tied to tradition to implement the changes that the Bourbons under the reign of Charles III (1759–1788) sought. They held that he and his brethren aligned too easily with the American-born and did not have the will to implement real change. One historian deemed it a battle between “complacent conservatives and zealous reformers.”36 Some of the precedents were almost comical. In 1776 in the city of Cuzco, an Indian named Juan de Dios Tupa Orcoguaranca told everyone he met that they should fear the year 1777 with its numerical or eschatological implications (the number seven having an important biblical presence) and that Indians should “rise up against Spaniards, beginning with corregidors, mayors and other white-skinned and blonde people, and kill them.”37 He declared himself an Indian noble and claimed that in the San Cristóbal parish in the city of Cuzco, Indians were busy employing the quipu, the Inca knotted cords used to register information. Imprudent drinking and boasting got him into trouble. One evening, he and several other Indians had been drinking heavily and among discussions about rising up against the Spanish, had fought over a woman as well as the bill for chicha or corn beer. They became so drunk that when dancing, one of them fell on top of a guinea pig, ubiquitous in Cuzco households and a key source of protein, and squashed it. The next day they ate it. Judicial officers in Cuzco learned about Tupa Orcoguaranca’s subversive rants and arrested him. What seemed like a drunken party and loose tongues was, from the perspective of

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1781, proof of “formal machination since 1776 of an uprising.” The Spanish later recriminated one another for not having followed this lead.38 The trial of Joseph Gran Quispe Tupa Inga confirmed rumors circulated widely in Cuzco that 1777 would be a tumultuous year, that Santa Rosa of Lima’s prophecy about the end of Spanish rule might well come true, and that an Inca King might be crowned. Throughout the eighteenth century, the apocryphal story that Santa Rosa (1586–1617), the fi rst American-born saint, had predicted the fall of the Spanish, inspired renegades.39 Quispe, a sixty-year-old illiterate peasant from the Sacred Valley, had commissioned letters that called for Indians to prepare an uprising and to kill puka kunkas, rednecks, the derogatory Quechua term for Spaniards used frequently during the rebellion. He defended himself, rather poorly, by claiming that he was merely trying to raise money for his sick daughter; yet he also noted that rumors had spread in chicha bars, chicherias, that the prophecy would begin with “commotion and sedition by Indians and mestizos rising up against corregidors, killing some and expelling others.” 40 The trial against Quipse Tupa Inga dragged on until the events of 1780 gave it new significance. Quispe died in Cuzco’s Royal Jail in December 1780. His lawyer claimed that he and other prisoners were starving, barely surviving on scraps of barley bread. At that point, however, it became clear that Cuzco’s authorities had greater concerns.41 The trials of Tupa Orcoguaranca and Quispe Tupa Inga as well as other rumors from the period indicate that the ingredients for an uprising were developing, expanding, and feeding off one another: the widespread and growing hatred for the Spanish, the belief that they were divided and vulnerable, the notion that the Incas would return, and the pursuit of unity and strategies. Tupac Amaru would imbibe and promote all of these, raising hopes among many. Some observers claimed that Tupac Amaru himself changed in the late 1770s. In the two years prior to the uprising, a few residents in Tupac Amaru’s hometowns complained that he had become dictatorial and presumptuous. No one paid attention to these charges—until after the rebellion. In 1779, several Spaniards accused Tupac Amaru of authoritarian and violent behavior and alleged that he deemed himself “the last Inca.” After the rebellion, authorities reviewing the case believed that Tupac Amaru had given clear signs of his violent nature and subversive intentions and that an opportunity to prevent the uprising

34

The Tupac Amaru Rebellion

had been lost. The Justicia Mayor or local judge of Tinta accused José Gabriel of detaining and whipping prisoners in his house and calling for all Spaniards to get out of town. One witness warned, a year before the uprising, that “it’s not good to have Tupac Amaru around here as the Indians are very restless due to the news he’s spreading.”42 Someone else accused him of meeting with a group of unhappy Indians from Sicuani in his role as “the last Inca of Peru” to hear their complaints. In the late 1770s, José Gabriel increasingly stressed his Inca lineage and the term “the last Inca” surfaced. Others charged him with whipping “Spaniards with white faces” and demanding that mestizos not from the region—that is, mestizos forasteros— leave the province. Esteban Zuñiga, the tithe collector of the Azángaro province and a resident of Pampamarca, complained that Tupac Amaru always had disliked and mistreated him. They had once bickered over some land and had come to blows when Tupac Amaru brought Micaela Bastidas’s aunt to town for some type of punishment, kicking her and pulling her hair. When Zuñiga intervened, Tupac Amaru hit and kicked him. Zuñiga claimed that Tupac Amaru consistently behaved as though he were the sole authority in town, whipping and imprisoning people at his whim, and acting with hostility toward mestizos and Spaniards. The local judge subsequently called Tupac Amaru in for a meeting. The kuraka, however, brought a letter of support from Pampamarca’s priest, Antonio López de Sosa, and no punishment followed. Years later, 1785, when the newly named president of the Cuzco Intendancy, Mata Linares, reviewed this case, he seethed over how officials had missed so many signs of serious trouble brewing: “this inattention caused so much misfortune, set the state so far back that we can’t even calculate it.” 43 Mata Linares ranted for paragraphs about this lost opportunity to stop the rebellion before it began. These small conspiracies in Cuzco and Tupac Amaru’s truculent behavior were not the only antecedents. In the late 1770s people organized and rioted in different Andean cities and towns such as Cochabamba, La Paz, and, closer to Cuzco, Maras, over the implementation of the tax reforms imposed by Visitador Areche. The turmoil did not begin with Arriaga’s execution. In 1780, Arequipa and Cuzco witnessed anti-Spanish disturbances. On January 1, 1780, satirical posters appeared on the cathedral door in Arequipa that ridiculed the Spanish and threatened the administrator of the new customs house. On January 5, another one

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targeted Arequipa’s corregidor, Baltasar de Sematnat. It ended on a familiar note: “Long Live the Great Charles III/Death to his evil henchmen/ and bad government.”44 Eighteenth-century rebels frequently claimed to be fulfilling the king’s wishes by targeting his wayward and corrupt representatives. Tupac Amaru himself held that he had the support of the king. In the following weeks, the posters in Arequipa became more pointed, complimenting England at a time when Spain was allied with France and raising the prospect of replacing Charles III with an Inca king.45 On January 13 and 14, 1780, rioters stormed the customs house, a symbol of the increasing tax demands, and troops were only able to control the rebels, described as a motley group of Indians, mestizos, and whites, after a week of fighting.46 The Spanish had initially believed that Indians were too cowardly and mestizos too “unfortunate” (desdichada suerte) to lead an uprising; they would soon learn they were wrong.47 News of the Arequipa disturbances reached Cuzco quickly, just when officials were inaugurating a customs house. Dissidents surreptitiously placed lampoons that objected to new taxes and the stepped-up collection. In March, the Cuzco police rounded up conspirators who planned to attack the new building, the so-called Silversmiths’ Conspiracy. Eleven of the twelve arrested were creoles or mestizos and in their confessions they conceded that the movement sought to incorporate everyone in the region other than Spaniards. Tupac Amaru’s brother-in-law, Antonio Bastidas, claimed that when the rebel leader learned that one leader, the kuraka of Pisac, Bernardo Tambohuacso Pumayala, had been hanged, “he said that he couldn’t understand how the Indians had let this happen.”48 Authorities kept a close eye on potential conspirators and an “ambience of impending civil war” took hold in the city.49 Corregidor Arriaga accused Bishop Moscoso of abetting the rebels, deepening the animosity between these two, representatives of the State and Church. This confl ict flared up just months before the Tupac Amaru uprising.

The Church Events in early 1780 in the towns that rose above Tinta and Tupac Amaru’s base brought to the fore the explosive tensions that marked relations among civil authorities, members of the church, kurakas, and the Indian masses. In livestock towns such as Yauri and Coporaque,

36

The Tupac Amaru Rebellion

where sheep, llamas, alpacas, and cows grazed in the narrow valleys and steep hills and where Indians worked primarily as shepherds, the joint church-state governance system shattered, disrupting the fragile alliances and understandings that held society together and mitigated violence. The classic eighteenth-century clash between state and church lay behind the confrontation. Nonetheless, the battle over the state’s effort to control the church, and the bishop’s maneuvers to manage his heterogeneous and distant flock, can only be understood in the context of the local culture and economy. The story is not simple. In 1779, Cuzco’s Bishop, Juan Manuel Moscoso y Peralta, asked all priests along the Royal Highway to present detailed summaries of the state of their parishes. Bishop Moscoso would become a leading figure in the Tupac Amaru rebellion and its long aftermath. Born in the southern Peruvian city of Arequipa in 1723 to aristocratic parents, he studied in Lima and Cuzco and was married in 1748. His wife died three years later in childbirth, their newborn son days afterwards, causing Moscoso to rethink his plans to take his place alongside his father as an Arequipa patriarch. Instead, he petitioned to become a priest. He worked his way up the clerical hierarchy, in Moquegua and then Córdoba (in what became Argentina), and in 1779 became the bishop of Cuzco. Several characteristics stand out in his long career: the use of his considerable wealth for the social work and art of the church; his frequent spats with authorities; and his taste, according to salacious accusations, for women, married and single, young and old.50 He and Corregidor Arriaga had taken a dislike to each other before Moscoso’s arrival in Cuzco and his nomination had irritated some Spaniards, who expected a peninsular rather than a creole for the prestigious position.51 His 1779 request for reports from the parishes along the Royal Highway sought to monitor the priests’ actions and to gain a share of the revenue they earned from the ser vices they offered to parishioners and the rental of church land. The bishop’s defenders claimed that he sought to protect Indians from excessive fees and duties while watching over the moral activities of his flock, while critics argued that he was simply trying to extract more revenue from an impoverished area. Parish priests responded slowly or not at all to his requests and so, in mid-1780, Moscoso sent father Vicente de la Puente, the priest of Coporaque, to investigate father Justo Martínez of Yauri, accused of improperly controlling vast amounts of land. After weeks of recriminations, tussles, and riots,

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the sides were set. On one side stood Moscoso and Puente, who saw the locals as uncooperative at best and corrupt and belligerent at worst, and on the other side were Corregidor Arriaga and his allies, the kuraka Eugenio Sinayuca, the disobedient Martínez, and other powerful locals, who saw Moscoso as a meddling outsider who sought money from their poor district. The church, as always, was divided; priests can be found on both sides. In July 1780, Moscoso excommunicated Arriaga. Arriaga’s nephew and assistant, Eusebio Balza de Verganza, who for years accused Moscoso of supporting Tupac Amaru and wreaking havoc, called this “the most famously scandalous case this Kingdom has ever seen” and deemed it proof of “the lack of respect priests have for authorities and their continual insults.”52 Arriaga himself retaliated by sending a secret report to Viceroy Guirior that implicated Bishop Moscoso in the Silversmiths’ Conspiracy (also called the Farfán de los Godos uprising) in early 1780, a reaction to the newly established customs house in Cuzco.53 The all-powerful Visitador General Areche seemed to support Moscoso and Puente at one point, sharing their disdain for corregidors and kurakas. Puente accused Arriaga of numerous illicit profiteering schemes, while the corregidor countered that Father Puente was not only living sinfully with Maria Josefa Alarcón and their children but that he also tyrannized and exploited local Indians. Arriaga charged that, “Puente and other ecclesiastics have shaken up local Indians,” and blamed them and above all their superiors (namely Bishop Moscoso) for disturbances in Cuzco and Arequipa along with the uproar over taxes.54 As was so often the case, accusations about money quickly turned to those involving sex and scandalous lifestyles.55 Moscoso was forced to rescind Arriaga’s excommunication in September. The conflict simmered until November when the execution of Arriaga galvanized Europeans and put on hold this and other local struggles. Throughout these disputes, both sides worried that the conflict could lead to broader indigenous uprisings, but blamed the other side and refused to relent. In witnessing this infighting among Europeans, the indigenous population gained an anticlerical and anticorregidor vocabulary. If all revolutions require a prior partition of the upper classes, this was it, although in a microregional context. Pushed to the side with Arriaga’s execution in November, the confl ict smoldered for years. Arriaga’s nephew, don Eusebio, relentlessly accused Puente and Moscoso

38

The Tupac Amaru Rebellion

of supporting Tupac Amaru. Years later, a former prisoner in Tungasuca stated that these events as well as the long, frustrating trial over the marquisate had sparked the rebellion.56

Preconditions In the 1770s, Tupac Amaru made important contacts throughout the massive Peruvian viceroyalty, from the Potosí silver mines, where dragooned Indians moved from the bitter cold down into the dangerous and infernally hot shafts, to coastal Lima, where Tupac Amaru heard antiSpanish ideas and received a cold shoulder from the powers that be. He and other indigenous people bore the brunt of the efforts by the Spanish to squeeze more revenue out of the colonies and to tighten control. Disgruntlement spread beyond the Indians, however, including hardpressed mestizos, dissatisfied creoles, and a small number of Spaniards. Opposition to Spanish rule blossomed and alternative visions and utopias emerged, most incorporating some form of the return of the Incas. In 1780, at the ages of forty-two and thirty-six, Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas seemed to have the connections, abilities, and grievances to lead a revolution. José Gabriel, in particular, rubbed elbows with Spaniards, creoles, mestizos, and Indians, and both were comfortable in Spanish and Quechua. Work and legal troubles had taken José Gabriel throughout the viceroyalty of Peru, and he and Micaela counted on valuable networks of family, friends, and business partners in the Cuzco region and beyond. José Gabriel had confronted all of the ramifications of the Bourbon Reforms: he despised the new tax and labor demands, suffered from the limitations put on ethnic kurakas, and distrusted the State’s incipient effort to rein in the Church. He also disliked older forms of exploitation and domination, such as the corregidors’ omnipotence and Lima’s deaf ear to Andean demands, phenomena that predated the Bourbons. At a broader level, beyond the personal, southern Peru also exhibited the necessary conditions for revolt: increasingly oppressed Indian masses, disaffected “middle sectors,” and elites divided over changes emanating from Spain. Divisions within the ruling class are an indispensable precondition for revolution and Peru had several schisms: Spanish-creole distrust, the church-state confl ict, and tensions between Lima and Cuzco. All worsened in the 1770s with the arrival of Visitador Areche

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and the jurisdictional changes understood, particularly in Cuzco, as the “loss” of Upper Peru to Buenos Aires. In addition, the zealous (some would say fanatical) Bourbon reformers arriving from Iberia had no qualms about challenging other Europeans: Visitador Areche fought with Viceroys Guirior and Jáuregui almost from his arrival. The launching of a revolution requires more than a strong leadership, economic grievances, and elite political divisions; it requires a platform, an ideology. Various sets of ideas or notions of change buoyed the rebels. Chief among them was the belief that the Incas would return or that some sort of fairer, more just system with its roots going back to the Inca period would be put into place. Since the Conquest, different groups, including non-Indians, had kept alive a belief that the Incas constituted an alternative to Spanish colonialism. Tupac Amaru’s descent from “the last Inca” greatly augmented his prestige; it is no coincidence that he increasingly adopted that as his last name in the late 1770s. Bolstering the messianic nature of the uprising, followers believed that Tupac Amaru could not be killed, or had numerous lives, and that his martyred followers would be resurrected. The belief in resurrection emboldened his indigenous soldiers.57 The rebels also built on the idea of “bad government,” that people could take direct action against corrupt or disruptive authorities. Colonial Spanish America had a long tradition of negotiated relations between the state and the indigenous peasantry. Eighteenth-century insurgents often claimed that wayward authorities had broken the pact which they, the insurgents, sought to rebuild. Tupac Amaru and other leaders never deviated from their proclamation that they acted on behalf of King Charles III.58 It is more difficult to discern whether elements of the Enlightenment, the radical and heterogeneous set of ideas that marked eighteenth-century politics in Europe and the Americas, can be found in their program. The rebels never presented a platform. In fact, the ideological nature of the uprising can only be understood by examining the events of the rebellion, the words and actions of the leaders and followers.

2 From Pampamarca to Sangarará

T

following Arriaga’s hanging on November 10, 1780 proved that the execution had not been spontaneous. Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas set up camp in Tungasuca, sent emissaries to gain support in nearby towns, wrote notes to potential allies, particularly kurakas, and supervised their prisoners, who trembled in their basement cells aware of the corregidor’s fate. They also posted spies and sentinels on the roads into Cuzco, hoping to keep the uprising secret as long as possible and to be well prepared for a counterattack. Tupac Amaru almost immediately left the base in Tungasuca while Micaela Bastidas stayed behind, an arrangement that continued throughout the uprising. Tupac Amaru’s forays into nearby towns in November 1780 reveal his objectives, social base, economic program, and military strategy. In light of the absence of a “program,” the activities and correspondence of Micaela Bastidas and Tupac Amaru are the best entryway into understanding what they sought and how they intended to carry out their objectives. Tupac Amaru and his increasingly large entourage burst into towns and congregated people by the church, the cemetery, or in the plaza. The rebel leader then explained to the startled crowds what he planned to do. Most Indians, apparently, quickly warmed to the ideas he presented, his promise of a new world or perhaps an ancient one harking back to the Inca past. Members of the middle groups who stood just above Indians in Peru’s social pyramid—merchants, shop owners, small landowners, primarily mestizos but also creoles and even Indians—vacillated. Some welcomed the prospect of reduced taxes and less corregidor intrusion, while others agonized about the consequences, concerned that the IndiH E DAYS A N D W EEKS

From Pampamarca to Sangarará

41

ans around were becoming less subservient or about the ensuing punishment and repression from the colonial state. With a few exceptions, Spaniards not singled out by the rebels paid little attention to Tupac Amaru’s assurances, and understanding the danger, made plans to flee. In the early weeks and months of the uprising, November 1780, the organization, unity, and rapid growth of the movement shocked the southern Andes. At the same time, the obstacles Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas faced in maintaining a united front and creating a cohesive anticolonial program came to the surface. Continuing with the questions of rebel support and how they organized themselves, I examine the rebel camp in the town of Tungasuca. Par tic ular attention is paid to the mystery surrounding a group of European prisoners who passed over to the rebels. Their “captivating stories” demonstrate the challenge in constructing a multiethnic movement. Sources used to interpret the uprising include correspondence, extensive trials against major participants, accounts written in the aftermath, and documentation that, while not focused on the uprising per se, sheds light on the context or specific individuals. All of this is in Spanish and the majority comes from the Spanish perspective. In some cases, multiple sources on a key moment can be contrasted in order to present the most plausible course of events and to highlight how different people or groups understand them. In many other cases, however, a single letter or brief testimony is all there is, forcing speculative interpretations. In terms of the quantity of available material, the archives reproduce the social pyramid—much more is written about educated Europeans and the rebel leaders than about the mostly illiterate indigenous followers and the black royalist soldiers. In fact, the sources almost never name common fighters. Even if deemed heroic or blamed for an atrocity, they remain anonymous. This book uses the tidbits or fragments about Quechua-speaking rebels, the female camp aides, and the foot soldiers to tell a broad, social history.

Stream of Followers Tupac Amaru headed for Quiquijana, the capital of the Quispicanchi province, on November 11, the day after Arriaga’s execution. A few thousand Indians as well as a small number of mestizos accompanied him. One observer noted that the Indians followed Tupac Amaru

N

Urubamba Urubamba Vi l c a b a m b a

Calca

Paucartambo

Pisac Cuzco Caicay

Ocongate

Urcos Ausangate Rondocán Quiquijana Acos Acomayo Pitumarca Accha Sangarará Checacupe Pampamarca Combapata Surimana Tinta Tungasuca Colquemarca Sicuani Yanaoca Livitaca Paruro

Cotabambas Tambobamba

iver urim a c R Ap

Santo Tomás Velille

La Raya 4,312 m

Yauri

Coporaque

Azángaro

Ayaviri Pucará

Pupuja

Cailloma Lampa Juliaca

Lake Titicaca

Condesuyos Chuquibamba

Puno

over 6,000m 4,000–6,000m 500–4,000m 0–500m

Arequipa

lake 0 0

Pacific Ocean

4,500 m Cailloma

3,750 m

Yauri

Yanaoca Sangarará

3,000 m 2,250 m

Cuzco Calca

Urubamba

Arequipa

1,500 m 750 m 0m

150 km

The Rebellion’s Core Area

300 km

450 km

600 km

25 miles 25 km

From Pampamarca to Sangarará

43

“willingly” while many of the mestizos and Spaniards were coerced.1 The elegantly dressed Tupac Amaru and other leaders rode horses while most of the Indian fighters walked. Women accompanied them as camp aides, but almost no document or description mentions them in any phase of the uprising. One exception describes a battle in Oruro, in Upper Peru, where the women aided the rock-slinging Indian soldiers: “the women dedicated themselves to continually collecting rocks, particularly big, sturdy ones they brought from the mines.”2 The only women subsequently prosecuted were rebel leaders such as Micaela Bastidas and Tomasa Titu Condemaytu or family members.3 Mules carried provisions and weapons, although the rebels traveled light in these initial excursions to nearby towns and communities. The term “troops” might be an exaggeration, since they had little military training and most relied on lances, pikes, and slings for weapons. They had a few rustic cannons, or pedreros, made by local artisans, and muskets that they seized from the enemy. The rebel soldiers struggled to learn how to use the muskets.4 The closest thing they had to a uniform were hay or palm crosses such as those distributed on Palm Sunday that many of them wore in their hats. One prisoner admitted that he wore both the cross and a red embroidery, “the insignias of the rebels.”5 In December 1780, Micaela Bastidas ordered that they display the crosses in their hats “as a sign that they are good and true Christians.”6 A small-town mayor reported that when a group of royalist troops switched over to Tupac Amaru, they “put on Indian shirts,” presumably coarse wool with rustic buttons, and placed white crosses in their hats.7 Nonetheless, these Indian combatants knew the area well, venerated Tupac Amaru, and proved to be brave and resourceful. They also hated Spanish authorities and the status quo. On November 12, the rebels destroyed the textile mills of Pomacanchi and Parapujio. Tupac Amaru opened up the jail in the Pomacanchi mill and, after asking if the owner owed anyone money, distributed some of the cloth and thousands of pounds of wool to his Indian followers, his half-brother, Juan Bautista Tupac Amaru, and a priest. One report noted that “the resentful Indians were about to burn the mill, cheered on by the prisoners.”8 Indians despised the mills because of the dreadful working conditions and their use as jails. Also, the obrajes played a central role in the forced purchase of goods, the reparto, because their owners acquired wool at artificially low prices and sold cloth for substantial profit. Tupac Amaru used the confiscated funds to pay his soldiers,

44

The Tupac Amaru Rebellion

two reales (one-fourth of a peso) per day for Indians and four reales (half a peso) for Europeans.9 In the coming weeks he used the mill’s jail for his prisoners. One astonished observer, Isidro de Montecinos, a salesman from Cuzco, could not believe the size of Tupac Amaru’s following. He claimed that the rebel leader left Pomacanchi at three or four p.m. and that “a rope-like stream of followers” continued well into the night. He calculated that the columns stretched over seven miles, and included Indians, mestizos, and Spaniards. Montecinos reported that the Indians had slings, lances, and sabers and that they were hugging one another in joy, proclaiming that forced labor and their suffering had ended.10 Tupac Amaru’s main objective, the corregidor Fernando Cabrera, evaded the fi rst wave of rebels by hiding in a chapel and fled Quiquijana two hours before Tupac Amaru arrived, indicating the rapid spread of news or rumors. The rebels destroyed another mill, distributing the cloth and wool among themselves. They would ransack at least two more in the following days.11 Don Joseph Alvarez y Nava, a post-office administrator en route to Lima with satchels of mail from Cuzco, stumbled upon the rebel forces in Quiquijana. He noted that the “hills were teeming with Indians” and in town “armed men, mestizos and Spaniards, were taking orders from their cacique don Joseph Tupac Amaro . . . who was distributing Cabrera’s goods to the sound of drums. The Corregidor had fled to Cuzco.”12 Alvarez y Nava rushed to the priest’s house, where he met a Franciscan friar and four other priests. They were in shock, even more so when Tupac Amaru walked into the room. The rebel leader treated them courteously and granted Alvarez y Nava permission to continue with his parcels because the rebellion “did not seek to harm anyone or anything, including royal paperwork and fi nances.” It’s surprising that Tupac Amaru did not confiscate the bundles, to prevent information about his uprising from reaching Lima and to fi nd administrative secrets.13 When Tupac Amaru left, another priest came out of hiding. The diligent postman asked the priests what he should do and they gave him different opinions—leave the bags and return to Cuzco or continue to Lima with Tupac Amaru’s permission. Alvarez y Nava started toward Lima and witnessed Indians ransacking obrajes in Checacupe, where about twenty-five Indians detained him. They sent a query to Tupac Amaru who instructed that he be freed. At this point

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Alvarez y Nava took fl ight to Puno, where he wrote to the viceroy about his adventure.14 His story captures the initial uncertainty about the uprising as well as Tupac Amaru’s efforts to gain the support of or at least mollify members of the Church. On his return to Tungasuca, Tupac Amaru continued to recruit allies, intimidate enemies, and gather supplies. In the small town of Guaro, after services in the town church with the two priests who accompanied him (those of the town had fled), Tupac Amaru gathered local Indians and his entourage in the cemetery. He declared that they “didn’t even know who God was, that they were following false Gods, those of the thieving corregidors and priests.” This argument, that incessant exploitation by Spaniards impeded Indians from developing true faith, became a leitmotif of the uprising. The rebel leader promised to remedy this situation and to do away with repartos, the sales tax, the Potosí mita, payments to priests, and customs houses. He pledged that Indians would be free and only have to pay the head tax to him.15 With this speech, Tupac Amaru cast his uprising as a defense or liberation of indigenous Catholicism. Nonetheless, although he, Micaela Bastidas, and other leaders as well as the bulk of his followers proved to be devout Christians who venerated the Church, the uprising’s opponents cast them as church-burning heathens, a label that proved difficult to shake. In this journey back to the base, Tupac Amaru sent his son Hipólito and his much trusted brother-in-law Antonio Bastidas ahead to make sure that the route was clear of soldiers and that his Indian supporters did not pillage. They also obtained or expropriated supplies. Although the uprising had spread quickly, without a hitch, they understood that an encounter with a small group of well-armed enemies could be the end.16 In Andahuaylillas, priests met him on the stairs that lead up to the town’s spectacular church. After he kissed the cross and prayed at the main altar, Tupac Amaru descended to the adjoining cemetery where he made a rousing speech that again called for the elimination of the reparto, mills, and corregidors and called on the town’s people to support him.17 One priest, however, Martínez Sánchez, wrote him a letter questioning whether the Crown had actually sanctioned his activities. Tupac Amaru answered sharply, ending his letter on this ominous note: “I can see that you have a great deal of affection for the thieving corregidores, who, with no fear of God, imposed unbearable work on the Indians with the reparto, robbing them with their long fi ngers.

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Some priests collaborated with them and they will be expelled from their jobs as thieves, and then they will know my power.”18

His Program in Action This initial foray to nearby Quiquijana set the tone for Tupac Amaru’s military activities in late 1780. He and a large group of followers— the vague but imposing figure thousands is often used—would enter a small town and assemble the population. Tupac Amaru would demand that everyone gather—not difficult due to the excitement of most people as well as the inability of most Spaniards and other prominent people to hide— and explain his enterprise in Spanish and Quechua. Indians from adjoining communities and villages would participate and, if convinced, join the uprising. November is the early part of the rainy season; agricultural tasks were at a minimum, making it easier for peasants to leave their fields. He opened jails, burned gallows, ransacked textile mills, and declared the abolition of the sales tax, reparto, and the mita, and the end of corregidors. This was his stump speech. For Indians, these were wildly popu lar and deeply symbolic actions. In the Andes under Spanish colonialism, powerful individuals used jails, gallows, and mills to exert their seemingly inescapable power over Indians while authorities, in cahoots with locals, took advantage of forced sales and the head and labor taxes to exploit and control the indigenous population and to make money. Coercion and colonialism went hand in hand. In these initial weeks, Tupac Amaru repeated in his speeches and memos the essence of his economic program: the abolition of the mita, the reparto, sales taxes, and customs houses. He stated that he would maintain the head tax and rarely mentioned fees destined to the church. To the great satisfaction of the Indian masses, he spoke to them in Quechua. He allowed his troops to ransack the property of corregidors and unpopular Spaniards but sought to limit the damage on other estates. He did not consider all haciendas and hacendados evil, worthy of rebel wrath; some of his more radical followers did. Beyond these negative measures— the banning of unpopular colonial impositions that had become increasingly intolerable in the prior decade or so and the confiscation of Spanishowned estates—he never set out a clear economic plan. These measures delighted his indigenous followers, intrigued mestizos and creoles, in-

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timidated landowners and prosperous merchants, and infuriated Spanish authorities. Tupac Amaru was a man of action. One of his prisoners, José Esteban Escarcena, provided a telling anecdote on the rebel leader’s worldview and strategy. In Tinta, Escarcena found some bound law books. When he showed them to the rebel leader, Tupac Amaru responded “these books are worthless other than to make empanadas or pastries; I’ll just impose strong laws.” He explained that once in power they would place one official in every town, who would collect the head tax and send it to the city of Cuzco. This program would begin in Cuzco but expand to Arequipa, Lima and Upper Peru. Escarcena also noted that Tupac Amaru told many people that he would get rid of lawyers and jails and simplify punishment. Major criminals would be hanged on the spot while smaller transgressions would be punished by hanging the perpetrator by one foot from the gallows, placed in every town. This streamlined system would not only reduce crime but also “get rid of lawsuits and notaries.”19 These comments and his speeches made his platform clear, at least in administrative terms: tough laws and the abolition of all taxes, income and labor, other than the head tax.20 This same passage also clarified who was in charge: “the rebel and his wife made the decisions, and he [Tupac Amaru] said several times that he didn’t need advice, he knew well what needed to be done.”21 Tupac Amaru expropriated food, livestock, and other goods from corregidors and landowners. For his supporters, the sacking and looting were necessary tactics justified by the level of exploitation that the Indian majority suffered on a daily basis. In their eyes, these actions paled next to the quotidian abuse of Indians, and ultimately sought to right an out-of-sync system that did not even allow Indians to be practicing Christians. For critics, however, looting constituted the lone motivation for naïve Indians and mestizos to participate in the uprising—they were greedy, low-end ruffians and criminals, not politically motivated rebels. Royalist supporters cast the rebel masses as ignorant followers who did not understand or even care about debates concerning the legitimacy of Spanish rule. Of course, in virtually any uprising opponents disagree about whether rebel actions are expropriation for a larger cause or mere theft. It is clear that the rebel leaders understood the importance of provisions. From the beginning they accumulated and kept track of supplies. While they distributed wool to their followers in some

48

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of the fi rst rebel actions, they sought to store sufficient food, coca, and alcohol for what they understood would be a long struggle ahead. Tupac Amaru insisted that he was obeying royal orders. A perplexed Spaniard wrote in the early days “there are still subjects who think he’s following His Majesty’s orders, which would make him a faithful subject, but this seems unbelievable as Indians aren’t granted these rights.”22 Even the letter writer wondered whether Tupac Amaru might actually have permission from Madrid. In a letter to Cuzco’s bishop, Diego Cristóbal Tupac Amaru, Tupac Amaru’s cousin and successor, contended that “Our King [Charles III] had taken repeated and wise measures” against the “unbearable” abuse inflicted on Indians by misguided colonial authorities, but to no avail. Frustrated, His Majesty thus gave José Gabriel a “royal decree” permitting his actions against corregidor Arriaga.23 In other words, the king had grown tired of his underlings not following his orders and had supposedly granted Tupac Amaru permission to act. Tupac Amaru believed, it seems, that he would have the king’s support to rid Peru of wayward authorities if the monarch were to know the level of exploitation in the Andes. Tupac Amaru converted this faith in the king’s hypothetical support into the argument that he had written proof of it, a contention that many people accepted. Violence did not mark these initial excursions. The Spanish did not have troops in any of the towns between Cuzco and Arequipa and local militias, if they existed, did not have arms or esprit de corps and crumpled before the fight began. Royalists could not confront these quick entries into towns and villages. On the other hand, Tupac Amaru imprisoned corregidors and abusive Spaniards but rarely executed them on the spot. In fact, from the beginning, late 1780, he tried to keep rebel violence in check. This would change. Tupac Amaru returned to Tungasuca late on November 14. He spent the next few days organizing his forces and drafting numerous letters and decrees. He wrote these on paper but the rebels also wrote on canvas and even on animal skins. They often hid their messages under saddles and mule bags.24 On the fi fteenth alone, he penned at least six edicts, five letters, and three orders or commissions. That day he wrote the kuraka Diego Choquehuanca, ordering him to arrest the corregidor of Azángaro (in the district just north of Lake Titicaca). He announced that corregidors would no longer exist and declared the abolition of “the mita, alcabalas, customs houses, and other pernicious novelties.”

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He included a decree justifying his actions.25 Diego Choquehuanca and his son José immediately reported the letter to the corregidor and assured him of their good intentions. His family remained loyal until its bloody demise.26 In fact, Tupac Amaru largely failed in his efforts to recruit the kurakas of the Titicaca basin. Tupac Amaru wrote to the kuraka of Lampa (also to the south, near Lake Titicaca), Bernardino Sucaragua, in similar terms. The accompanying document began “In as much as the King has ordered me to proceed in an extraordinary manner against several corregidores and their lieutenants, based on legitimate reasons that cannot be disclosed at this moment. . . . I authorize Governor D. Bernardo Sucaragua to do it in my place.”27 In another letter to Sucaragua Tupac Amaru insisted that he would respect all Spanish people and members of the Church “who have become friends of the Peruvian people,” yet would pursue abusive “Europeans.” He instructed Sucaragua to capture the corregidor of Lampa.28 Sucaragua disobeyed his orders and, like Choquehuanca, joined the royalists. Tupac Amaru wrote numerous kurakas throughout the region with instructions to capture the corregidor and to implement the abolition of colonial institutions such as the mita and the reparto. He insisted that he had the support of King Charles III and sought to allow Indians to become good Christians. His uprising, which began with the execution of Corregidor Arriaga and stormed though the Vilcanota Valley in its initial weeks, was fought, he claimed, in the name of the king and the Catholic Church. On November 16th, “Don José Gabriel Tupac Amaru Indian of nobleblood of the Incas and royal family” wrote one of the most intriguing documents of the uprising: the emancipation of African and AfroPeruvian slaves. The document’s title indicated its dual goal to free slaves and weaken Spaniards: “Proclamation to the people of Cuzco so that they desert the Spaniards and free the slaves.” It called for all people of Spanish descent, clergy, and other distinguished people who had befriended the Peruvian people to join his struggle against the hostilities and abuses of European people, and for everyone including slaves who had been mistreated by chapetones (the derogatory name for Spaniards) to abandon them. They would be granted freedom from their servitude and slavery. It employed a common rhetorical maneuver by the rebels, inviting all of those who didn’t partake in the more egregious aspects of colonial rule and exploitation to join the rebellion, thus

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The Tupac Amaru Rebellion

narrowing the enemy to abusive Spaniards and their representatives. Tupac Amaru sought a broad anticolonial alliance and did not want to scare away all Europeans and priests. He underplayed the incendiary activities of his movement, his attacks on estates and textile mills. Critics would discount these statements by contrasting them with his violent actions. One account labeled his seeming moderation “a mask,” a strategy that sought to hide his true intentions and ferocious tactics.29 In many ways, both supporters and critics are correct: he did seek a multiracial movement yet also understood the advantages in the early days of keeping his military movements and broader plans under wrap. Why emancipate African slaves? The vast majority of the slave population was on the coast, working in sugar and other plantations or in the city of Lima. The Andes, in contrast, counted on Indians for laborers and its products did not merit relatively expensive slaves. In 1790, the intendancy of Lima had 75 percent of Peru’s slaves, roughly thirty thousand out of a total of forty thousand. Cuzco only had 284.30 Mining, focused in the Andes and the backbone of the colonial economy, relied on indigenous workers, coerced (mita) workers, or wage earners. This pattern was found throughout the Americas: Africans and Afro-Americans concentrated near the coast and the plantation or export economy. Moreover, in Peru people commonly believed that people of African descent suffered and, more importantly in the calculating eye of the slave-owner, could not perform well in high altitudes.31 It does not appear that Tupac Amaru and his retinue had links with the burgeoning abolitionist movements or sentiments then present in North America and Europe.32 Tupac Amaru’s decision was defi nitely strategic and arguably heartfelt or sincere. The tactical advantage was clear. If slaves started fleeing their masters, the colonial export economy would crumble and rebel forces would grow. If the proclamation reached the coast— and we know nothing about its diffusion— it could tempt plantation and urban slaves, already defying their masters by running away and other forms of resistance. In August 1781, one account noted that with the rebels’ promise of freedom, “hacienda slaves are somewhat restless.”33 In Lima, the upper classes worried more about defiant slaves and truculent free blacks and mulattoes than they did about highland Indians.34 As an acute observer who had spent time in Lima, Tupac Amaru presumably understood the psychological and economic effect of slaves massively fleeing their owners. Although he did not count any blacks in his inner circle, perhaps he

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had made friends with blacks in Lima. Forty years later, in 1820, the Argentine Liberator and leader of the War of Independence, General José San Martín, employed the same tactic on Peruvian shores, promising slaves their freedom if they joined him. San Martín hoped to weaken royalists and to gain soldiers.35 The freedom offer might have also sought to gain the sympathy of the vast mixed-blood population, those with some African lineage who although free despised slavery.36 Yet the motivation was not merely practical. The freedom of slaves, cast here as victims of the Spanish, resonated with Tupac Amaru’s emphasis on justice and the struggle against widespread and systemic abuses by Europeans. Tupac Amaru had witnessed the horrors of slavery in Lima, and abolition fit well with his call for freedom from European abuse.

Cuzco and the Battle of Sangarará Despite Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas’s efforts to control rumors and the flow of information, news of Arriaga’s execution reached the city of Cuzco quickly. On November 12, 1780, the Quispicanchi corregidor, Fernando Cabrera, who had barely escaped the rebels, reported to the Cuzco town council about the “horrible excess” in Tungasuca.37 The corregidor of Cuzco, Fernando Inclán Valdéz, established a war council or junta that included some of Cuzco’s leading citizens. They raised money, established barracks in what had been the Jesuit monastery until the order’s expulsion in 1767, and on November 13 sent an emissary to Lima to request aid. In a November 14 note to Bishop Moscoso, the junta members requested the Church’s aid in the fight against Tupac Amaru, who “with a fake decree from His Majesty, has published numerous edicts that call for his followers to kill corregidors, free Indians from the head tax, and ruin textile mills.”38 Internal divisions and perhaps fear and incompetence, however, impeded the junta’s efforts, and it failed to put together an organized front.39 Instead Bishop Moscoso took over military organization and fundraising. He and other clergy helped rouse the city against the threat of the rebels. They organized incessant religious processions, bringing out Cuzco’s traditional saint, The Lord of the Earthquakes (El Señor de los Temblores), who had protected the city during the 1650 earthquake, and—more traditional, for the Spanish—the Archangel Michael.40 Moscoso himself donated 12,000 pesos and other monasteries and religious orders an additional

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18,000. He lent 14,000 pesos of the Church’s money while the San Jerónimo priest, Ignacio de Castro, lent an additional 40,000 pesos.41 The Bishop organized the city’s clergy into a militia, divided into four companies.42 He held a meeting with religious leaders on November 13 to devise a plan. The Bishop stressed that the rebel was only ten leagues or about twenty-six miles away, counted on ten thousand armed Indians and six hundred mestizos and Spaniards, and thus posed a great danger to “religion, our king, and the republic.” 43 They discussed the possibility of confronting Tupac Amaru in the area between Cuzco and Tungasuca, to persuade him “by any means possible” to abandon his “depraved project.” The church leaders decided to remain in Cuzco— presumably to the great relief of the majority of the religious men— because of the lack of weapons. Instead, they agreed to use the pulpit to chastise the rebels, to collect information from priests in the rebel area, and to lobby father Don Antonio López de Sosa, the Tungasuca priest and intimate of Tupac Amaru. They recognized that the rebel leader himself was a devout subject of the king who could perhaps be convinced to give up his uprising.44 Don Tiburcio Landa created a company composed of local militia members, volunteers from Cuzco, and approximately eight hundred Indians and mestizos procured by the kurakas of Oropesa, Pedro Sahuaraura and Ambrosio Chillitupa. In the ensuing two years of insurgency, Indians would almost invariably constitute the majority of combatants on both sides. This hastily assembled group of counterinsurgents intended to defeat the rebels and claim a reward. On November 17, they reached Sangarará, a small, frigid town north of Tinta, twelve thousand five hundred feet above sea level. Indian militias organized by the kurakas of six small towns joined them. When the sentinels reported no sign of the enemy, Landa’s company camped in town rather than on a less vulnerable hillside. They were more concerned about an impending snowstorm than the enemy. Tupac Amaru had hidden his forces in order to dupe the royalists into believing that the rebels had fled or were simply not that numerous.45 At four in the morning, Landa’s troops found themselves surrounded. One observer said that the approaching troops sounded like “an earthquake.” 46 Landa and his troops took refuge in the church. Tupac Amaru demanded they capitulate and instructed the priest and his aides to leave. When the royalists disobeyed these instructions, Tupac Amaru

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ordered creoles and women to abandon the church, indicating that an attack was imminent. Landa and his forces prevented anyone from leaving, and several died in the chaos. Their gunpowder caught fi re, burning much of the church’s ceiling, and causing one wall to cave in. Desperate, they fi red their cannon and charged. Greatly outnumbered and outpositioned, hundreds of Landa’s troops were killed. One report calculated 576 dead, including more than 20 Europeans. Rebels treated and freed twenty-eight wounded creoles.47 The survivors who fought for the Spanish gave a detailed account, blaming Tupac Amaru for the damage to the church and for the bloodshed. Bartolomé Castañeda contended that upon arrival, Landa secured the support of Indians from Sangarará. He also claimed that, contrary to other accounts, the commander realized that the enemy was near and debated about whether to set up camp on one of the surrounding hills or in or near the well-fortified church. They chose the church to take refuge from the cold night, which proved to be a fatal mistake. Tupac Amaru’s troops slipped into the adjoining cemetery and bombarded the enemy camped outside the church with rocks from their slings. Landa’s artillery was useless because of the walls separating them from the cemetery.48 One soldier was killed in the stampede into the church. Desperate, many of the soldiers confessed to the harried chaplain, Juan de Mollinedo. He could not offer Communion because they could not find the key to the cabinet with the ciborium. Once the roof was on fire, burning beams began to fall and the tejas or roof tiles exploded from the heat. Rebels used stones and spears to kill the troops fleeing the church. Castañeda saved himself by hiding in a small chapel. He calculated that at least three hundred of his comrades died, most of them subsequently stripped of their clothes and weapons by the Tupac Amaru troops. He guessed that there were six thousand Indians in the surrounding hills and farreaching support for the rebels in much of the region.49 Another report contended that Tupac Amaru kicked the cadaver of Fernando Cabrera, the corregidor of Quispicanchi who had evaded him days earlier, muttering, “[T]his guy ended up like this because he was so hardheaded.” (Este por caveza dura se ve de este modo.) The account also claimed that the exuberant rebels beat a royalist kuraka to death in front his family.50 The chaplain, Juan de Mollinedo, provides more details about the Sangarará battle. In his report, he notes that authorities in Cuzco offered a reward for Tupac Amaru, dead or alive, which spurred Landa’s company

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The Tupac Amaru Rebellion

to hasten their expedition. Their rush doomed them. They camped the first night in Huaro and then made the long trek to Sangarará. After Landa had won the debate about whether to set up base in the church or outside of town, false alarms woke up the troops several times. Mollinedo describes the frustration when the Indians took the adjoining cemetery and reports that one soldier was blinded by a rock propelled from a sling. He details the heroics of Landa and other leaders, who fought on after they were shot. Landa sought to hide royalist cadavers so his troops wouldn’t lose faith. The fire in the church, blamed in this account on Tupac Amaru, killed many men, and those fleeing “the voracious flames fell into the hands of the no less voracious rebels. The universal slaughter, the pitiful groans of the dying, the bloodthirstiness of the enemy, the flames—in short, everything that occurred that unfortunate day provoked horror and commiseration, sentiments never felt by the rebels; blinded by fury and thirsty for blood, they only thought of stabbing all the whites.”51 Mollinedo tabulates 395 dead in combat, plus an incalculable number incinerated in the church. He puts Tupac Amaru’s forces at twenty thousand Indians and four hundred mestizos, as well as a sizeable contingent guarding Tungasuca.52 Rebels captured Mollinedo, the presbitero of Oropesa, fleeing the church with the holy sacraments. Tupac Amaru ordered that the cleric be given alcohol (aguardiente) for his wounds and be taken prisoner to Tungasuca. There, Mollinedo oversaw the burial of some royalists, and Tupac Amaru released him because of his status as a priest. Mollinedo still had to get past sentinels and rebel troops and describes escaping half naked, without even a hat on his head. He was detained, coincidentally, just outside of Sangarará but released again and reached Cuzco. Other royalist prisoners kept in the Pomacanchi textile mill for a longer period confirmed his story.53 In the small town of Papres, he witnessed Indians and rebel sympathizers kill the kuraka of nearby Rondocan just because of his “white face,” despite the fact that he had fought for the rebels in Sangarará.54 Mollinedo’s story and all of the other reports from Sangarará prompted panic in Cuzco about the prospect of a caste war.

The Tungasuca Camp Base The rebels kept Tungasuca as their base. Not only was Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas’s house there, but the town loomed above the Vilcanota

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Valley, the logical route for enemy soldiers from Cuzco, Puno, or Arequipa. Several prisoners describe Tungasuca in the frenetic first weeks of the uprising. Friar Juan de Rios Pacheco, a Mercederian, was on his way from Arequipa to Cuzco with two children in the middle of November when “mestizos with lances and slings” detained him and took him to Tungasuca. He mentioned four thousand Indians, more mestizos with lances and some muskets, three simple cannons, and the gallows. Indians called him a “puka kunka” or “redneck” in Quechua, which he explained, “is how they refer to Europeans.” When Micaela Bastidas learned that he was a priest, she invited him into the house.55 He was surprised to pass by a mestizo doorman dressed in red and blue with a saber in hand, an uncommon formality in this rustic setting. He described Tungasuca as full of “thousands of people of every caste,” mentioning Europeans, blacks, mulattoes, and Indians. Micaela explained to him their opposition to “bad government” but not the Church and expressed her confidence that Arequipa and the Upper Peruvian towns of La Paz and La Plata supported them. At this time they only controlled nearby Tinta, Quispicanchi, and Chumbivilcas. She claimed to have letters of adhesion from kurakas from these areas.56 Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas shared power, cajoling yet trusting and confiding in one another. While Tupac Amaru was the leader who made speeches and signed the bulk of the rebel documents, Micaela Bastidas ran the rebel camp and oversaw provisions. Both rebels and loyalists feared her wrath. According to one royalist document, her duties included aiding Tupac Amaru in every way possible: mobilizing soldiers through stern orders; punishing and even executing anyone who resisted; recruiting and encouraging the Indians (providing honors for those who stood out and telling them terrible stories about the Spanish to kindle their hatred); promising followers no taxes other than the tribute and a return to the freedom “of their idolatrous times” (that is, the time of the Incas); letting everyone know that Tupac Amaru and she meant to reign; gaining even more obedience than that offered her husband; tearing down decrees from Church doors and replacing them with her own; closing churches; providing passports; writing letters to publicize the uprising; and demanding recruits from local leaders, with the threat of death for any who disobeyed.57 These were not the activities of a behind-the-scenes underling or obedient wife, but instead those of a full-blown partner in planning and executing the mass uprising.

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Their inner circle consisted of an extensive list of family members and friends and colleagues from Cuzco, including Indians, mestizos, and even a handful of Spaniards. Family supporters included their three sons, as well as aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews, nieces, in-laws, and more distant relations. Kurakas, men and some women, from the region that ran from Cuzco south to La Raya pass, also proved important.58 So who supported the rebels? The rebel documents and those of colonial authorities agree, although from absolutely opposing viewpoints, that Tupac Amaru initially sought to create a multiethnic, multiclass movement. He spoke about “living as brothers” with creoles in one decree while Micaela wrote “Europeans treat us like dogs.”59 He sought the support of creoles, mestizos and blacks and must have looked with satisfaction at the bustling headquarters in Tungasuca. The Spanish, in turn, complained that creoles had lost their respect for Spain. Many blamed these “Europeans born in the Americas” and priests, usually creoles themselves, with the type of venomous hatred saved for those considered class traitors.60 Yet both sides understood that as the months passed, it became an increasingly indigenous uprising, one that often targeted, to Micaela Bastidas and Tupac Amaru’s dismay, creoles and mestizos. Tupac Amaru sought to impede a war of extermination, understanding that he could not win without a broad base of support and believing that he was destined to lead not only Indians but others as well. The Spanish realized that over time, they did not have to worry as much about creoles but rather Indians, who were increasingly prone to attack and kill anyone they deemed European. This was not reassuring— Indians made up 90 percent of the population in the southern Andes. Indians supported Tupac Amaru for a number of reasons. He understood them, lived in their world, and spoke their language. Many runa or common Indians had met Tupac Amaru in his work as a kuraka or in his journeys as a muleteer. Others had heard about him, his battles in Lima to reclaim his Inca legacy and to defend Indians from the odious mita and other exactions. His speeches and initial actions made clear that he would abolish taxes, the labor draft, and other exactions, would eradicate corregidors, and would rule with Indians’ well-being in mind. His Inca ties gave him prestige as well as a platform— the return in some new form of Inca rule, a more just society than that of Spanish colonialism. Supporters understood that he would create a new society, one rooted in their language and traditions.

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Many supporters believed that Tupac Amaru could resurrect them, bring them back from the dead if they died in battle. He instructed them to enter battle “without fear, that on the third day after their death he would resurrect them.” Spanish observers complained bitterly about these promises, which obviously increased the troops’ courage, their willingness to die in battle.61 The promise connected to broader messianic and millenarian elements of the uprising, to Andean beliefs about the circularity of time and thus a return to an era free of exploitation by Europeans. Tupac Amaru presented himself as the messiah (a term he did not use) whose bloodlines and project could bring about the return of the Incas, or at least a more just system. He built on neoInca currents as well as Andean millenarian ideas of radical upheaval, such as a cataclysmic Pachacuti.62 More mundane factors explained why some supported him and others did not. Many Indians followed the lead of their kurakas while others, particularly the more mobile such as shepherds, stumbled upon the rebellion and simply decided to join it. Similar explanations can be used for those who opposed the rebellion. Many presumably did not agree with his platform; others were forced to fight it by their royalist kuraka. As will be seen, the fighting could pit one Indian community versus another. The question of who formed his inner circle obsessed colonial authorities. They posed it to seemingly every witness in the subsequent trials. In an effort to isolate and capture Tupac Amaru, in March 1781 Visitador Areche offered rebels a pardon, excluding those individuals deemed part of the rebel leadership. These included all kurakas “allied with the movement”; family members (Tupac Amaru, Micaela and her brother Antonio, three sons, and five cousins); two of the “European scribes” discussed below, Manuel Galleguillos and Diego Ortigoza as well as Felipe Bermúdez; and a number of Indian and mestizo supporters in the area around Tinta.63 The list points out the obvious— the centrality of his family in the rebellion. Later Spanish measures would target a much broader selection of his family, essentially anyone related to him, no matter what they had done in the uprising. A group of about a dozen “European” (Spanish or creole) prisoners also found themselves in Tungasuca. Although initially locked in a cellar alongside Corregidor Arriaga, watched over constantly and kept in chains, they eventually aided the rebels as scribes, advisors, accountants,

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and even weapon makers. The debate over whether they did this out of coercion or rebel sympathies has still not been settled. Both rebels and royalists treated them warily. Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas imprisoned them and then granted them increasing freedom and duties, although never losing their doubts about their loyalty. Colonial authorities scrutinized them in long trials, tapping them for information about the origin and social base of the rebellion and verifying whether the bewildering prospect of men from Spanish side of society aiding an Indian uprising could possibly be true. Fascinating and enigmatic figures, these prisoners shine light on both sides of the struggle. They personify Tupac Amaru’s search for a multiclass and multirace movement, his perhaps foolish belief that landowning, Spanish-speaking professionals would join his cause. This strategy arguably reflected a deeply colonial view on his part that an uprising could only succeed with Europeans. Once the prisoners turned themselves over to the colonial authorities, they were treated as sources of useful knowledge but also dangerous mavericks who broke well-rooted and venerable hierarchies. The court system showed that colonial Peru had an arsenal of nouns and adjectives to explain Indians’ misdeeds (many dating from the Reconquest or Crusades)—“heathens,” “apostates,” “childlike,” and “hateful” stand out—but struggled to explain or even describe European treachery. Authorities’ shock at their possible treason was tinged with fear. Their stories take us deep into the rebellion. Most of them had worked with Corregidor Arriaga and were captured when they followed his instructions (written under coercion) for people to assemble in Tungasuca. Juan Antonio “el Gallego” Figueroa, a forty-year-old from Galicia, had been in Tinta building a bridge. Arriaga owed him money. Mariano Banda from Cuzco and José Esteban Escarcena from Arequipa both worked as scribes or secretaries for Arriaga. Diego Ortigoza, in contrast, had been in Tungasuca for a decade, for the last few years teaching Tupac Amaru’s children. He was fi fty-two and claimed no profession, proving the venerable dictum that underemployed scholars are dangerous. Manuel Galleguillos arrived in Tungasuca after the other captives, when Indians captured him after Sangarará. Francisco Molina initially resisted the call by Arriaga to go to Tungasuca but heeded threats by Tupac Amaru to appear. Francisco Cisneros followed Arriaga’s false order and was imprisoned in Tungasuca upon arrival on November 7.

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Don Bernardo de la Madrid, the owner of the Pomacanchi textile mill, received a letter on November 5 from his friend Corregidor Arriaga requesting that he come to Tungasuca. He left that morning, after Mass, and was greeted by Tupac Amaru himself, who suggested that he join him at the table for a meal. De la Madrid said that he had already eaten and became impatient when he was told repeatedly that the corregidor would soon arrive. Tupac Amaru eventually led him to a room where he said Arriaga was dressing some wounds. Twenty-five “servants” jumped the mill owner but he claimed that they could not get him in chains. Taken to the basement, de la Madrid refused to write a letter inviting his friend, Don Fernando Cabrera, to come to Tungasuca. The request infuriated de la Madrid, who “blinded by rage at seeing myself the prisoner of a servant of mine who served me as a muleteer taking my cargo to Potosí [i.e. Tupac Amaru], [I] answered that once I was freed from this oppression, he would suffer worse consequences than those inflicted on me. After a while the Rebel ordered them to put me in shackles.”64 In the following weeks, rebel guards threatened to kill de la Madrid several times and he did his best to gain the trust of the rebel leaders. He remained scared and indignant, complaining that Tupac Amaru refused to give him blankets, even though “he owed me 1,500 pesos, money that I had supplied him on various occasions for his expenses.”65 Once unshackled, “I accommodated myself to serve the Rebel and his wife with humility and zeal, behaving as the most humble of blacks. When the Indian [Micaela Bastidas] would go to Mass I would take her by the hand, holding the umbrella in the other.”66 The rebels kept the prisoners in locked rooms with guards. At one point in late November, Tupac Amaru wanted to hang them. Micaela Bastidas defended the prisoners, stressing their useful knowledge of weapons. On November 26, he wrote her “Be very careful with the prisoners in our house, and tell Figueroa to make sure that he has all the weapons there ready soon.”67 When Micaela learned that royalists had killed her cousin, Simón Noguera, she cried with rage and threatened to hang all of the prisoners.68 The rebel leaders’ concern eased, however, and they increasingly relied on them to write letters and memos, to take care of and make weapons, and in some cases to participate in decisions and key tasks such as paying soldiers. Banda, Cisneros, Escarcena, Galleguillos, and Ortigoza served as scribes. They subsequently claimed that they did this to save their lives— they had witnessed the fate of

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Arriaga— and that they merely followed orders. The prosecution contended that they participated willfully, influencing what was being communicated and even dictating letters and orders. Tupac Amaru was a capable writer but required help because he was so busy and often out of Tungasuca. Whether Micaela Bastidas could write adequately in Spanish is unclear. She did not have the schooling that her husband did and was less likely to pick up the rudimentary training that men of her intermediate social status often gained in small towns such as Pampamarca. Although bilingual, she frequently spoke in Quechua in discussions, forcing the Europeans and creoles to rely on a translator.69 In her testimony, Micaela Bastidas deemed Mariano Banda “a major confidante.” Other prisoners also incriminated him, although their testimonies need to be taken critically— they were trying to save their own lives and sought to present themselves as secondary figures forced to help the rebels in minor roles. Ortigoza and Galleguillos maintained that Banda had paid rebel soldiers. In fact, one historian argues that perhaps his imprisonment was a ruse and that his participation had been planned before the capture of Arriaga.70 While they no doubt fudged the truth when defending themselves by blaming others, they provide a clear portrait of camp in Tungasuca. They describe their shock at the execution of Arriaga, their mistreatment (guards and chains), and their eventual duties. They indicate that Tupac Amaru was in charge yet always consulted with Micaela. After Sangarará, they were allowed out of the locked rooms and even shared meals with Tupac Amaru and family. Micaela ran the camp in Tungasuca. She kept a close watch on provisions, cajoled Indians and kurakas to support them, threatened those who wavered, kept tabs on her husband as he expanded his zone of action toward the south in late 1780, and to the extent possible scrutinized events in Cuzco, which she knew would counterattack. People spoke Quechua and Spanish and an air of ner vous elation can be detected. The leadership knew that they had taken irreversible steps that could radically change their world or lead to their gruesome deaths. Although they did not understand this at the time, both outcomes proved to occur. Followers had experienced an unbelievable turn of events— the death of exploiters, the abolition of hated institutions, the return of an Inca leader—yet they also knew that defeat would come at a fantastically high price.

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Tupac Amaru was not the only one concerned about the loyalty of these puka kunkas or rednecks. Escarcena noted that the Indians sought to exterminate Europeans and then do the same to creoles and mestizos. He argued that they ultimately wanted to “be alone among themselves . . . living happily with their king (the treatment they gave Tupac Amaru).”71 Francisco Cisneros, one of the detained Spaniards, contended that the Indians despised him and planned to kill him. Manuel Castelo, a Spanish authority imprisoned alongside Cisneros, described Indians breaking the walls and roof of their prison, Tupac Amaru’s house, in an attempt to get their hands on Cisneros, Arriaga’s tax collector. The assistant priest of Coporaque and Tungasuca, Ildefonso Bejarano, maintained that he convinced the Indians to stop the attack.72 While Cisneros used these claims in his defense, no one countered them.73 Their testimonies mention some unusual events and conspiracies, not found in accounts of the uprising. Francisco Molina asserted that Banda had been aware of a plan to poison Europeans in Cuzco city. Banda contended that a man named José de Palacios had written to Micaela Bastidas claiming to have a strong potion that would kill the city’s elite, gamonales, and thus facilitate seizing the city. He had even tried it out on some unfortunate dogs, with success. Although rebels did not poison city residents, the threat or rumor played on city dwellers’ fears of insurrection from the countryside and from within the city.74 Cisneros mentioned that he and some others had tried to kill Tupac Amaru in November, but could not shake their captors. He also claimed an attempt to capture him in April 1781, when Spanish forces pushed into Tupac Amaru territory.75

Why Support an Indian Rebel? In an effort to make the charges against him seem ludicrous, Manuel Galleguillos posed the question: “Why would a subject of the Spanish Catholic King support an Indian rebel who had a mortal hatred of Europeans?”76 This is the question that authorities in the trials and scholars ever since have been asking. Although we probably will never know the exact proportions of coercion, desperation, or free will (were they forced, were they trying to gain favor, or did they support the rebels?) that motivated their actions, the Europeans and creoles did write memos, give advice, and even took up arms or spied for the rebels. Their defense that

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they actually did these things solely because of coercion seems implausible. Scarlett O’Phelan Godoy posits three explanations: solidarity with Tupac Amaru, the belief in his decrees that he had royal support, and the defense of their property. She also stresses that they came from the intermediate European or creole social groups, not the most powerful but not the weakest.77 The trials indicate a good measure of opportunism on their part. They were imprisoned and no doubt did whatever they could to save their lives. But their testimony supports authorities’ suspicions that they did not flee when they had the opportunity and fulfi lled their duties with a certain level of enthusiasm. While they claimed they did not have an alternative, they might have been swept up a bit in the heady times of late 1780. Creoles— and even some Spaniards—had many reasons to dislike the taxes and other measures imposed by corregidors such as Arriaga. They could have supported Tupac Amaru’s call for the abolition of despised Spanish institutions and even the execution of some of the more hated authorities and believed in his emphasis on a multiethnic, multiclass movement. Almost all Andean social movements included support from wayward mestizos and creoles.78 They lived in Tupac Amaru’s house— fi rst as prisoners but increasingly, it seems, as guests— and shared food and decision making with the rebel leaders. Was this a case of Stockholm syndrome, in which hostages increasingly sympathize with their captors? Probably, although the metamorphosis is not that shocking. The prisoners came from a social group that Tupac Amaru rubbed shoulders with in his work as a muleteer and kuraka and hoped to recruit for his movement, thus explaining his patience with them and rejection of his initial inclinations to execute them. Before the uprising, Tupac Amaru was likely to socialize with people such as Banda, Cisneros, and Galleguillos. Ortigoza taught his children and in a small town such as Pampamarca (population of less than 5,000), the two literate men must have shared many conversations. In fact, the relationship might also reflect what has coincidentally been called the Lima syndrome, in which abductors feel growing sympathy for their hostages. The name derives from the 1996 seizure of the Japanese embassy in Lima by the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA, another coincidence) guerrilla group, when the rebels treated the hostages well, releasing most of them and befriending some.

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This laxness facilitated the storming of the embassy and the death of the guerrillas. Perhaps Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas grew increasingly fond of the captives, appreciative of their adulation and cognizant of their value to the movement. Ethnic kurakas and those who claimed royal Inca blood, such as Tupac Amaru, sought throughout the eighteenth century to gain the respect of creole society.79 Their deference might have given Tupac Amaru a similar satisfaction to that which he derived when he redistributed cloth from an obraje or announced the abolition of the Indian head tax. Tupac Amaru believed that their respect for him was as correct and necessary a societal change as the improvement of conditions for Indians. For Spanish authorities, it was also an equally subversive and troubling change. The rebels counted on creole supporters. Felipe Bermúdez also worked for Arriaga in Tinta but once in Tungasuca, his time in rebel prison did not last long. Whether his capture was a ruse or not is uncertain. He was rapidly named “capitan general” and wrote important letters for Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas. He did not stay behind in Tungasuca but accompanied the rebel leader in his forays to the south in the fi nal months of 1780. Tupac Amaru clearly trusted him, instructing Micaela at one point that a decision should be made “by only you and Bermúdez.”80 Antonio Castelo, a mestizo or creole from Sicuani who had lived in Tungasuca for several years, was the other mestizo or creole leader. Hesitant at fi rst over the execution of Arriaga, he quickly gained authority within rebel ranks and by the end of the year led one of the three major fronts. He was in heady company: Tupac Amaru himself and his cousin, Diego Cristóbal, who would soon become the absolute leader, led the other two. In an important reassessment of creole participation, David Cahill argues that “rather than the leadership having consisted of a charismatic Inca leader and a small nucleus of lieutenants, the rebellion was rather the creation of a ruling Inca-Creole Junta with Túpac Amaru allocated the starring role—in effect, a joint venture of the Túpac Amaru and Castelo families— given that his stature as Inca made him a lodestar for Indian recruitment.”81 Cahill shows how the Castelo clan’s patriarch, Melchor, had ingratiated himself with José Gabriel well before the uprising and highlights the important military role that the multiple members of the family, not only Antonio, played.82 While correctly describing the role of creoles in this early phase, Cahill overstates his

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argument when discussing a “joint adventure.” All of the documentation (correspondence, the trials, contemporary accounts, and the rest) demonstrate that Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas planned and oversaw the uprising. Although eager to gain creole support, Tupac Amaru was fi rmly in control. Within weeks of the shocking execution of corregidor Arriaga, Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas had set up camp in Tungasuca and prepared well for a long battle. Tupac Amaru crushed the royalists in the first confrontation, Sangarará, and recruited supporters in nearby towns and communities. He unsuccessfully attempted to capture corregidors, but in doing so prompted a mass exodus of authorities from the region. His platform of abolishing hated taxes and labor demands, his seizure and redistribution of goods found in haciendas and mills, and his presentation of himself as an Inca descendant, loyal subject of the king, and devout Catholic resonated well with the indigenous population. Weeks after the execution, indigenous support and Spanish fear accelerated. From Tungasuca, Micaela Bastidas oversaw provisions and logistics and kept discipline. Indigenous men and women joined him en masse, the men as soldiers or guerrillas and the women usually as camp followers. The intriguing stories of the creoles and Spaniards captured in early November, who transformed from prisoners to supporters, shed light on the rebellion. They demonstrated that the rebellion could gain supporters from regional “middle sectors” but also showed the challenges in recruiting and maintaining them. Creoles and Spaniards shared Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas’s dislike for heavy-handed Spanish policies. Nonetheless, they hesitated to support a mass movement that sought the expulsion if not death of Europeans. This tension between a multiclass and an indigenous uprising only increased over time. Yet it was not the only contentious and disruptive dividing line among rebel supporters. The Church proved to be an equally vexing problem for the rebel leaders.

3 A World without the Catholic Church?

A

in Sangarará and Tupac Amaru’s triumphant return to Tungasuca in mid-November 1780, he and Micaela Bastidas worried about attacks from two fronts. They knew that they had only defeated the fi rst wave sent by the hastily organized junta in the city of Cuzco, and apprehensively awaited a stronger royalist offensive from Peru’s second city. They also fretted that colonial troops would attack from the south, either from the Lake Titicaca area or from the city of Arequipa to the southwest. Therefore, instead of immediately attacking Cuzco, the administrative center of the Andes, the rebel leaders decided to take advantage of their strength and expand to the south. Tupac Amaru, the apparent architect of the plan, would lead the combatants while Micaela Bastidas would oversee camp headquarters in Tungasuca. Other rebel commanders, Diego Cristóbal Tupac Amaru and Antonio Castelo, would continue to attack and recruit in the core area of the Vilcanota Valley and the upper provinces and extend their forays into the coca-growing lowlands of Paucartambo. On November 25, Tupac Amaru entered the town of Livitaca in the provincias altas near Chumbivilcas. This largely monolingual Quechua area was and is known for its unruly, violent population. Most towns perch around two and a half miles above sea level and their inhabitants, long associated with livestock, excelled at trekking and riding long distances. Many supplemented their meager incomes with cattle, sheep, goat, llama, and alpaca rustling. Outsiders always feared the upper provinces’ people and severe topography; the area rapidly became a rebel hotspot. The small population of Spaniards in Livitaca fled when Tupac Amaru appeared, whereas, according to one breathless account, F T ER T H E ST U N N I NG V ICTORY

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“even boulders turned into Indians who kneeled and bowed to him.” The assembled Indians pledged that “you are our God and our Lord; we ask that there no longer be priests who disturb us.” Tupac Amaru answered that this could not happen: “who would absolve us in the time of death?”1 This exchange highlights perhaps the greatest, or at least most unexpected, challenge faced by the rebel leaders: how to reconcile their religiosity, with widespread indigenous dissatisfaction with the Church on the one hand and extensive counterrevolutionary efforts by priests and other members of the Church on the other. This conundrum would dog the rebels until the end. The indigenous masses had a worldview different from that of the rebellion’s leadership. As will be seen, Indians understood the uprising as a messianic movement and believed that Tupac Amaru would unleash a radical change in the Andean world, turn things upside down, invert power relations. Indigenous rebels had little patience with efforts to keep creoles and mestizos in the rebel fold and to temper rebel violence. These differences or tensions escalated over time, but did not come to the fore in the initial months. Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas succeeded in keeping peace among the insurgents, as the euphoria of these early months satisfied the more radical vision of much of the indigenous masses. However, the confl ict between the rebel leaders’ respect for priests and the bishop’s implacable efforts to depict the rebels as heathen apostates and to use the clergy to defeat them proved to be a virtually insurmountable obstacle for the rebels. The stories rapidly spreading throughout the region about the execution of Arriaga and the rebel victory in Sangarará terrified lowly tax collectors, petty officers, and corregidors. In fact, Tupac Amaru complained that authorities fled so quickly that he could not capture them. The Church was a different matter. While the rebellion counted on the support of a handful of clerics, others remained in their parishes and campaigned bravely and effectively for the royalists. Tupac Amaru could not convince these clerics to join or leave; nor could he bear executing them. Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas confronted a formidable adversary— the Catholic Church had a deep presence in colonial Cuzco. The city itself, with a population of about thirty thousand, had nine convents, three monasteries, eight houses for religious women or beaterios, and seven Church-run colleges and schools. All of the major male orders could be found. From the Cuzco cathedral, the bishop presided

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over a sprawling diocese divided into over one hundred thirty parishes or curatos, the number varying due to frequent territorial realignments. One calculation put the total number of secular and regular priests (that is, members of religious orders) at about one thousand. In the sixteenth century, the Jesuits built an imposing church on the Plaza de Armas equal in grandeur to the cathedral, while the Dominicans, Mercedarians, and Franciscans also constructed magnificent churches.2 Although strongest in larger cities, the Church extended deep into the countryside, maintaining a greater presence in most cases than the colonial state. Every town mentioned in this book had at least a small chapel while many, including towns with less than five thousand people such as Pampamarca and Checacupe, had splendid churches laden with spectacular artwork. Beginning in the sixteenth century, Spain had sent European masters to train indigenous artists in Cuzco, part of its efforts to indoctrinate the descendants of the Inca Empire. Their work, the “Cuzco School,” featured vibrant, didactic paintings of religious scenes. These works of art, which graced the churches and temples throughout the region and today are victims of thieves and the thriving international market for stolen colonial treasures, sought to convert and instruct through the eye, the essence of baroque religiosity.3 Since the sixteenth century, the colonial state had delegated much administrative work in the Andean hinterland to kurakas such as Tupac Amaru. Priests and their numerous aides and underlings, however, took charge of the spiritual realm, and consequently had an important presence in daily life. The fees for masses, burials, baptisms, and other services kept them afloat and, when considered excessive, angered many local people. They also counted on free labor from local Indians and profits from church property, rural and urban. These different forms of income made some local parishes quite profitable.4 The indigenous people could very well venerate their priest, but they were also willing to sue, harass, and even run him out of town if they disagreed with him.5 The Catholic Church was an all-encompassing institution and must be conceived of in the plural. Hierarchies and divisions characterized its internal structure, while over the centuries members of the Church fought over its administration and direction and confronted external foes. The stratification took many forms. Secular and regular priests understood their missions in markedly different ways, while priests and nuns operated in distinct realms, with the former enjoying far greater

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rights. In the uprising, the secular clergy played a particularly important role. In economic terms, Bishop Moscoso presided over a vast and profitable domain from the majestic cathedral in Cuzco while a doctrinero in his distant parish hustled to make ends meet. Masses held in and around Cuzco resembled those of Rome while religious rituals in the countryside were less orthodox and incorporated native elements. Nonetheless, over two centuries after the conquest of the Incas, Catholicism had put down deep roots in Cuzco. Tensions brewed in the late eighteenth century. Not only was the Crown attempting to rein in the autonomy of the Church but in Peru and beyond, some members of the Church demanded that Indians be granted the right to become priests.6 Bishop Moscoso worried about these and other strains but also recognized the profound religious devotion that characterized Cuzco, the city and its largely indigenous countryside.

Excommunicated Bishop Moscoso excommunicated Tupac Amaru on November 17. The bishop proved to be a formidable enemy. The confrontation with the church devastated Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas. It surprised, pained, and angered them and ultimately weakened their control of their core area, the Vilcanota Valley. They could not conceive of a world without the Catholic Church fi rmly rooted in the Andes. They sought a radical uprising that left the church intact, which proved to be a difficult if not impossible objective in the colonial Andes. They could not convince followers, enemies, and most of those in between that the excommunication was a mistake or illegitimate and thus inapplicable. In turn, the opposition never tired of casting them as church-burning excomulgados. Bishop Moscoso excommunicated Tupac Amaru and his followers for “having set fi re to pubic chapels and the church of Sangarará; for being a bandit and rebellious traitor to the King; for seditiously working against peace; and being an usurper of Royal Rights.” The excommunication also threatened anyone who aided him or who removed the announcement from church walls, where it had been posted throughout the region.7 Moscoso also ordered priests to spread the news by posting the decree and verbally chastising the rebels in Mass. At this point, late 1780, Moscoso led the efforts in Cuzco to defeat Tupac Amaru. He lent

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12,000 pesos of his own money and even more from the bishopric itself; organized four militia companies that included over four hundred ecclesiastics; and ordered priests outside the city to send information about the rebels and to conduct Masses in Quechua in order to separate Indians from “the pernicious superstitions that the rebel has planted all over the place.”8 Although the bishop’s confl ict with Corregidor Arriaga had earned him some enemies, and became even more controversial after the corregidor’s execution on November 10, authorities in Cuzco in late 1780 knew that they needed the bishop’s leadership and resources. Those who subsequently criticized Moscoso for purported links with the rebels presented his efforts in late 1780 as a smokescreen to conceal his initial lack of activity against the uprising and even rebel sympathies. This seems exaggerated— Bishop Moscoso energetically and effectively took command of royalist efforts in Cuzco.9 With the excommunication, Moscoso sought to exclude Tupac Amaru from the Christian community. The rebel leader was not permitted to partake of Church rituals, nor could Christians (as the term “excommunication” indicates) “communicate” with him. The horror expressed by Tupac Amaru indicated how unexpected the measure was, and he contested the decision passionately in the coming months. He argued that Moscoso’s decision was illegitimate for three reasons: Indians like himself were exempt from excommunication; he was not against or an enemy of “the faith”; and the royalists, not he, had burnt down the church in Sangarará. Tupac Amaru had a strong case on all three points but he had no forum in which he might rebut Moscoso— he could only attempt to minimize the excommunication’s impact.10 Moscoso had justified the excommunication in a closed assembly with regular and secular priests. Recognizing that Indians could not be excommunicated, he contended that the rebellion required extraordinary measures and that Tupac Amaru and his main followers were more enlightened (más luces) and more rational (actually, less irrational) than most Indians. He called them ladinos, people of Indian descent who spoke Spanish.11 With one decree, he converted Tupac Amaru in the eyes of many from a rebel hero into a heathen. The excommunication stung. Tupac Amaru believed himself to be a model Christian and also understood that Moscoso’s decree would be the single most efficient weapon against him in the propaganda war that was beginning to rage. To defend himself, he repeated the argument that as

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an Indian he was not subject to excommunication and moreover that he was innocent of Church burning. As for Micaela Bastidas, she declared in her trial that Tupac Amaru always held that “they were not subject to excommunication and that God knew their intentions.”12 His actions throughout his life substantiated the sincerity of his devotion and he demonstrated his religious fervor and respect for the Church during the uprising. He sought to have a priest with him at all times and attended Mass and offered ser vices for the deceased, both supporters and enemies, whenever possible. He insisted that corregidors and the many corrupt and misguided representatives of the king, but not men of the cloth, were his enemies. The rebellion never sought to break with the Church; in fact, the leadership went out of its way to protect priests. In November, Tupac Amaru claimed that he was defending the “holy faith.”13 Micaela also demonstrated her faith and her understanding of the consequences of the excommunication. In order to impress a Mercedarian friar who happened to be in Tungasuca just after the rebellion began, she had the people of Tungasuca pray at her house and attend church. She sought to show him that “she was a very good Christian, telling him that God supported her cause in benefit to the people.”14 In a December 13, 1780 decree, Micaela noted that “Our Holy Faith is carried with the greatest respect and veneration, which we have to take forward, and, if possible, die with; respecting in the same way the ministers of Jesus Christ, the señores priests, so that God supports us in our Christian goals.” She then instructed followers to display the cross in their caps and hats.15 Nonetheless, Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas could not contest the excommunication edict or contain the damage. They tried. Anguished by Moscoso’s actions, Tupac Amaru sought to lessen the excommunication’s impact in his core area, the valleys and peaks south of Cuzco, in late 1780. He and Micaela ordered their followers to rip the decree from church doors. Authorities in Cuzco fumed when they learned that the decree had not been posted in rebel towns such as Pirque and Rondocan.16 Indians in the rebel-controlled town of Acos did not allow priests and Europeans to confer, in an attempt to prevent news of the excommunication from spreading.17 When Tupac Amaru found out that a priest in Chumbivilcas had preached against him, stressing to his parishioners Tupac Amaru’s religious limbo, he sent two trusted comrades, Felipe Bermúdez and Ramón Ponce, to arrest the

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priest. They tore down Moscoso’s decree from the church door, replacing it with one that explained that the priest had been arrested, that Tupac Amaru knew how to repay his loyal followers, and that they should not believe anything that the cleric had told them.18 The evidence in the trial against Tupac Amaru included the bando (decree) that the rebels posted in Chumbivilcas. It stated, “He who removes this will be given the death sentence.” It came from “don José Gabriel Tupa Amaro Inca, descendent of the natural king of this kingdom of Peru,” and was intended for “all types of people, Spaniards as well as common Indians” in the province of Chumbivilcas. After declaring the rebellion’s intention of liberating people from corregidors’ abuses and from “ ‘European’ threats,” it continues: some ecclesiastics, taking advantage of the excommunication imposed maliciously and fraudulently by some Europeans, attempt to introduce countless abuses against Christians, trying to perturb their faith . . . we demand that everyone in this kingdom, Spaniards as well as Indians, completely disregard their preaching, because they are not only against God’s law and that of Christianity which we must defend, but the objective of their advice is to protect the unjust demands they place on us and the great damage they infl ict. To liberate ourselves from them, we request that the citizens capture and bring us these clerics, following the necessary procedure, and those who don’t follow these orders will be hanged. Those priests who don’t abstain from their lying abuses and sermons will be committed in a school for the rest of their life, or they will serve the sentence wherever we end up. Tupa Amaro.19

It is striking that the decree threatened disobedient followers with the death sentence whereas the wayward priests would merely be committed to a school. One witness claimed that Tupac Amaru himself ripped the decree from the church in Yaurisque, replacing it with one of his own. He searched for the priest who had posted it and when he didn’t fi nd him, “ransacked his belongings.” He threatened to send priests who didn’t obey “wherever he felt like.”20 The battle over the excommunication decree heightened rebel sentinels’ efforts to control how information, letters, posters, and lampoons circulated. In a note to authorities in Cuzco, a priest complained that “the Indians are so malicious that if they fi nd out that priests on this side of the river are communicating with those of the Paruro province they say we are opposing the rebels; we can’t even write one another. The letter that I’m including is from the Acomayo priest who got it to

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me through his assistant, who is very ill [and thus was allowed through by sentinels]. Otherwise, it’s very dangerous.”21 In another case, the unfortunate Francisco Lasarte carried letters to Cuzco in his shoe. On a return trip, the rebels found them and executed him on the spot. 22 Despite these efforts, Tupac Amaru fell short in his efforts to impede the spread of the news about his excommunication. People reacted to the news in different ways. One royalist account said that the excommunication made people lose their “fear of the rebellion.”23 The priest of Lluzco and Quinota raved about its impact. He claimed the excommunication had “brought peace to Quinota,” a rebel hotbed. He described how kurakas and other people listened carefully when he translated the document into Quechua for them. He followed up in Mass by promising that even those who had participated in some rebel activity would be absolved by the bishop’s special measure as long as they did not recur. He claimed that the decree had also turned the tide in Colquemarca and Santo Tomás, important towns of the high provinces.24 The priest contended that excommunication had punctured Tupac Amaru’s mystique and driven fear into pious Indians. The letter exaggerates. Calm did not suddenly return to these two towns. Nonetheless, the excommunication gave many people second thoughts, slowing recruiting into rebel ranks, decreasing enthusiasm, and increasing desertions.25 It particularly weakened the rebels’ efforts to cast themselves as judicious reformers who were forced to do what the king would have done himself had he been aware of the situation, that is, expel abusive authorities. It also countered the argument made frequently by Tupac Amaru in late 1780 that the rebellion sought to fortify Indian religiosity by ridding Peru of the exploitation that kept Indians from becoming good Christians. The excommunication weakened the movement. It prompted doubt among supporters and drove away potential rebels. The decree aided the royalist propaganda campaign. Yet its impact should not be exaggerated. The rebellion continued to grow after the November 1780 excommunication. Thousands of insurgents cared more about the uprising’s anticolonial efforts than about the bishop’s maneuver. How indigenous people felt about the Church and Catholicism varied greatly. It was a personal question, one that reflected circumstances and context. Popular, emphatic priests held great sway over their communities; the more abusive earned parishioners’ wrath (as might have been the

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case in Livitaca, where Tupac Amaru was questioned about what he was going to do with exploitative priests). The rebel masses shared Tupac Amaru’s ideal of rising against the Spanish without breaking with the Church. Nonetheless, they proved themselves much more willing to attack Church property and even priests themselves.26 Moscoso’s measure was the centerpiece of the propaganda against Tupac Amaru after Sangarará, presenting him and his followers as church-burning heathens, backward and dangerous Indians. One dejected rebel in Calca, in the royalist stronghold of the Sacred Valley, described how royalists jeered him as an “excommunicated Indian,” telling him that “he couldn’t go to church to hear mass and that the insurgents were all sorcerers.”27 Some feared that the excommunication of Tupac Amaru presented a danger of contagion. When thirty Indians surrendered to the royalist kuraka commander, Mateo Pumacahua, in early January 1781, he executed them, claiming they “were separated from the church and they would infect his people with their wretchedness and guilty sins.”28 In January 1781, loyalist Indians would not touch rebel cadavers or their belongings due to the excommunication.29 Excommunication had prompted Indians and others to question Tupac Amaru’s faith and his uprising. Moscoso coupled the excommunication with a decisive strategy that historians have largely overlooked: he demanded that priests remain in their parishes, doing whatever they could to weaken the rebels and, if possible, reporting the situation to Cuzco. In light of the virtual absence of the state after the rebellion— corregidors fled almost immediately and the bulk of administrative work fell to kurakas anyway— parish priests formed a virtual shadow government behind enemy lines. They maintained the morale of Europeans and others who distrusted and feared the rebels, insisting on the leaders’ excommunication and the sinful and doomed nature of the uprising. Although Tupac Amaru dominated the Vilcanota Valley, the priests and their supporters never allowed him to have free rein in his own base. Frustrated and even desperate, Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas themselves cajoled and threatened the priests, yet ultimately found themselves forced to ask for their permission to hold masses for the dead or to bury them. In several cases, the priests refused. The rebel leaders could tear down posters and threaten those who propagated news of the excommunication; they would not, however, attack royalist

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priests. This strategy proved decisive, maintaining royalist figures in an area overrun by the rebels.

Faith behind Enemy Lines In a December 21, 1780 letter to Viceroy Jáuregui, Moscoso wrote, “I have instructed my priests to harass, reprimand, and to preach continually against the rebels.” He continued that they were thereby preventing “much malevolence” and that he had ordered them to stay in their parishes, even if they were under threat and wanted to flee.30 The war junta in Cuzco underlined the importance of this strategy.31 One document mentions that Moscoso selected “strong and spiritual” priests from the city’s monasteries to send to the war zone to preach to the people about their errors.32 Moscoso had no patience with priests who disregarded his instructions. One writer said the bishop “breathed fi re” when dealing with them.33 Father Antonio Areta, the priest of Velille in the center of rebel territory, despaired to the bishop in a letter that his flock despised him for his efforts to dissuade them from supporting the rebels and for the fact that he was European. Areta told him that he was leaving for Lima or Buenos Aires because of the great danger. Moscoso showed no sympathy and ordered him to stay in Velille and continue his antirebel endeavors. He wrote, “I cannot believe in such a metamorphosis in your flock, just because you spoke with them with Christian liberty and attempted to separate them from the rebel.”34 While he acknowledged Areta’s courage, Moscoso described others who had faced greater risks. The priest of Quiquijana had removed the gallows that Tupac Amaru had placed in the public square, cut down a bridge to impede a rebel advance, and posted the excommunication decree. Fearful for his life, Fernández de Córdoba had fled to Cuzco but Moscoso sent him back to Quiquijana, “to calm the situation in a town openly in favor of the rebel.”35 The Bishop recognized that while some priests had very few parishioners left because all the Indians had left (presumably to join the rebels), people in Sicuani, Omacha, and other towns begged their priests to stay. He ended by pointing out that Tupac Amaru did not seem intent on slaughtering Europeans, as Father Areta argued. To prove his point, Moscoso mentioned the Spaniards who moved around Tungasuca freely as well as the absence of executions after Sangarará. He

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insisted that he himself was staying in Cuzco to avoid disorder and confusion, reiterating his command that the priest remain in Velille.36 The priests in the war zone were not clear-cut heroes who selflessly held the line by standing up to the rebels. The situation was more ambiguous and fluid as clerics and other residents of the small and mediumsized towns south of Cuzco attempted to figure out the meaning of the uprising, specifically the danger to them and the best way to save their lives and those of others. Many individuals sought to be neutral, while partisanship remained quite open in this early phase of the uprising. In fact, we know about the priests’ activities because eighteen of them were tried after the rebellion for having written obsequious letters to Tupac Amaru or Micaela Bastidas. They had the misfortune that loyalist commanders found their correspondence when they captured the two leaders. While some of the priests convincingly argued in lengthy trials that the notes and letters were ploys to gain time and to save lives, others seemed to sympathize with the insurgents. This correspondence and the detailed trials about them, which featured elaborate discussions of the language used by the priests, provide unusual glimpses into daily life during the uprising.

In the Heart of the Fire Moscoso prosecuted eighteen priests or other religious men (sacristans, aides, and others) for having written to Tupac Amaru or Micaela Bastidas. The letters complimented these two leaders and requested favors, from protection to sugar. The archbishop tried them in Cuzco’s ecclesiastic court, the curia eclesiástica, for pledging their support to the rebels and for consorting with someone who had been excommunicated. The sycophantic salutations usually got the writer in trouble. Juan de Luna, a priest in Chamaca, near Velille in the center of rebel territory, wrote to Micaela Bastidas on February 10, 1781 “to clear up some false accusations by don Juan de Dios Valencia, the comisionado or representative of Sr. Don José Gabriel, your majesty’s husband,” which led to his imprisonment by two hundred Indians in the town of Livitaca. Luna explained to Bastidas that his captors misinterpreted his sermons as critiques of the rebels. He argued that he had spoken out against wretched vices and the horrors of sin and that the rebels’ efforts were actually addressing these issues, thus carry ing out divine will.

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Father Luna insisted that the prevalence of vice in the area greatly offended God. In this letter, Luna also disputed the rebels’ claim that he had organized royalist soldiers, contending that he had only brought them together so that they could confess and take communion. He requested that he not be harassed and signed off by calling himself “her most reliable server and fond chaplain.”37 Luna testified in 1782. He argued that the letter was part of his efforts to get out of rebel prison, where he was held along with other priests and religious people. He asserted that the rebels controlled the paths and roads that led to Cuzco and he thus stayed behind to defend his people, helping many Spaniards escape the area. He had been forced to “feign surrender and submission.” Apparently confident, Luna chided the judge for writing from “the tranquillity of his office,” while he had been surrounded by “barbarians.” Witnesses supported Luna’s claims, insisting that Velille and Chumbivilcas in general were firmly rebel territory, that some priests had been killed in areas such as Paucartambo and the area near Lake Titicaca, and that he helped Spaniards escape. In his case, the letter was not particularly damning and he was absolved.38 The prosecution accused the clerics of negotiating with the rebels rather than fleeing and of communicating with an excomulgado. The defendants relied on three explanations. When asked why they did not leave rather than plead with the rebels, they claimed it was impossible. Rebels had fi lled the roads and paths to Lima with sentinels and spies and people could not circulate easily. They used a similar line of argument when accused of dealing with an excomulgado. They argued that they were unaware of the decree, as it had not reached their town. With these two justifications, they portray a curious scenario in which rebels controlled a massive region extending hundred miles south of Cuzco but could not thwart royalist priests. In the region around Tungasuca, rebels would not break into the sanctuary of the churches or, even after direct and heated confrontations, attack priests.39 Their third line of defense, alongside the impossibility of fleeing and their ignorance of the excommunication decree, was fear. The prospect of death at the hands of the rebels forced them to negotiate and even fawn but also led them to act in irrational and unusual ways. One defendant wrote, “it would have been different if I had found myself free of the worries prompted by such unexpected and scandalous events [the uprising]; but when fear rather than reason dominates . . . an overwhelming

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fantasy takes hold that makes you think about the most wretched events and get overexcited.” 40 In canon law, the rules of conduct that guided investigations and trials of church members, grave fear is understood as diminishing actions and thus can be used to justify unacceptable actions.41 And despite Bishop Moscoso’s reassurances in late 1780, the clerics had reason to tremble. Don Antonio Chaves, the auxiliary priest of Sicuani, gave a chilling anecdote. Chaves had written Tupac Amaru to ask that he send a judge to prevent “extortions” by Indians. The town’s dignitaries and wealthier merchants had taken refuge inside the Sicuani church. Rebels frequently pounded on the church door and did not tire of threatening those inside. One day they intimidated Chaves by shaking burlap bags with objects inside that made a loud noise. He was horrified to learn that inside the bags were the heads of royalists killed by the rebels. He was acquitted.42 Don Carlos Rodríguez, the priest of Yanaoca, wrote Micaela Bastidas to request fi fty pounds of sugar, for which he sent ten pesos. In this December 26, 1780 note, he promised to make up the difference if the ten pesos weren’t enough and that he would like even more sugar if possible. His justification for the one-sentence letter was, in contrast, elaborate. Tupac Amaru had threatened the people of Yanaoca if they did not join him. Locals begged Rodríguez to impede the “rebel, and even more so his wife, the stronger one.” 43 He said the letter was to trick the rebels into believing that he and the town supported them, a ruse he came up with “in the midst of so much confusion, in the very heart of the fi re, surrounded by barbarians.” He emphasized that he helped three Spaniards escape and that his town had captured Micaela’s brother, Antonio Bastidas. The prosecutors recognized the difficult situation that Rodriguez y Avila faced but persevered because of his signoff in the letter to Bastidas, “I pray to our Lord and the Virgin for your success and that they take care of you for many years.” Witnesses testified that Rodríguez had acquired much-needed sugar for Yanaoca and gained time to allow Spaniards to escape. They described his face-to-face confrontations with rebels and how he had kept Yanaoca out of the hands of the insurgents. Every night he had his parishioners join together in a procession in honor of the Holy Virgin, clearly a counterrevolutionary ritual. On November 30, Micaela Bastidas arrived in Yanaoca with two thousand six hundred soldiers. He would not receive her in royal fashion or allow the rebels to ring the church

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bell. She ordered three artillerymen to shell his house but, according to his testimony, he didn’t budge. Rodríguez took an even greater risk when he did not allow the rebels to bury Andrés Noguera (Tupac Amaru’s cousin) and Hermenegildo Roxas in the Yanaoca church. The rebels offered 300 pesos, he claimed, but he refused. He also raised the rebels’ ire by allowing local Spanish authorities threatened by rebels to take refuge in the church. Despite their fury, the rebels did not break down the door or even demand that he give up the key. Rodríguez also confronted Tupac Amaru himself, audaciously asking him whether he didn’t fear God and Hell in light of all the turmoil, deaths, and theft he had prompted. Tupac Amaru responded that in taking action against the “thieving corregidors,” he was doing God’s work. On another occasion, the priest criticized Tupac Amaru for having ransacked the church’s fields. The rebel leader responded that the damage would be repaid. Witnesses did not corroborate these encounters—they were not asked— and the priests might have exaggerated. Nonetheless, the stories indicate the respect that rebels had for the sanctity of the church. If a Spanish landowner had made such comments, the rebels would very likely have killed him. Other priests also told stories of rebels ransacking, burning, and threatening but stopping at the church door. Backed by Spanish witnesses, Rodríguez was acquitted. Domingo de Escalante had been the assistant to the priest in Marcoconga, an annex of Sangarará, but after the events there returned to his family house in Acos, Quispicanchi, aiding the priest of Pirque. On February 12, 1781, he sent Micaela Bastidas peaches, prickly pears, and bread in the name of his mother. In a poorly written letter, Escalante described how the Indians of Pomacanchi, where rebels had burned a textile mill and entered repeatedly, had threatened his brother and damaged his house. He asked her for protection. In his defense, Escalante claimed that caution and just fear (“recelo y temor justo”) drove him to write the letter. He noted that while he never believed the decree published by Tupac Amaru that declared his prerogative as a viceroy and visitador general to punish corregidors, he did not know about the rebel leader’s excommunication. He explained, “Indians didn’t allow us to meet or talk about anything or to put up signs.” He described how rebels controlled all of the roads in the area and how they targeted all Spaniards, with no respect for gender, age, or status. They punished them “for no other crime than having a white

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face or for not wanting to join the vile insurgent troops.” He insisted that “even priests” were arrested and subject to execution. He employed the widely circulated anti-insurgent litany—Tupac Amaru was a violent tyrant who murdered, burned churches, and killed his enemies on a whim— and stressed his own anguished and even irrational emotional state. Several witnesses confi rmed that the rebels had blocked all roads and threatened priests and Spaniards. He was acquitted.44 Luna, Chaves, and several other priests prosecuted by Moscoso appear to have been faithful and courageous followers of the bishop’s command to stay put and preach against the insurgents. They wrote the letters and notes that got them into trouble but their testimonies and the many witnesses that backed their stories indicate their loyalty and unflagging efforts to boost the morale of local people and to disparage the rebels. Other defendants leave a more ambiguous impression. They wrote obsequious letters to Tupac Amaru or Micaela Bastidas but their actions went beyond desperate maneuvers to save their lives or those of European parishioners. They might have simply felt obliged to show their support for the insurgents in tangible ways, beyond a mere letter. It should not be forgotten that they were in the midst of rebel territory, terrified by dreadful stories or scenes of insurgent violence. But their seeming ambivalence might have been more than just a tactic used in a dire time. Some seem to have supported certain measures taken by the rebels, or at least believed that Tupac Amaru and his followers were going to control the region for a long period. They certainly did not enthusiastically follow Moscoso’s command to harass the rebels implacably. In late December 1780, don Buenaventura Tapia, an ordained priest based in San Pablo de Cacha, sent Tupac Amaru the town’s tax rolls along with his assurances that he would quickly dispatch Indian soldiers, “even single men and choir members.” Rebel leaders could use the tax rolls to keep track of recruits and to make sure that the town was sending its share. Tapia told the recruits that the rebellion fought for the “common good.” He thanked Tupac Amaru for “cutting from the root” the corregidors’ bad customs and monopoly of resources that caused such “great poverty,” but excused himself from leaving town to meet in person due to his “choleric tumors.” In the trial, Tapia blamed panic for this highly incriminating letter and the remission of the tax rolls, bluntly stating that he wrote it due to “his fear of Tupac Amaru’s recklessness and rigor.”

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He elaborated, “fear impelled and moved me to write the letter . . . the extraordinary effects that this class of fear prompts in men, not just unprepared, pusillanimous, uninformed ones like myself but even those strong, informed individuals who had perhaps experienced such serious conflicts.” He deemed the letter “a pretext or ruse that only the most confused, fearful, or uninformed men could create.” Witnesses acknowledged that he had protected Spaniards and preached against the rebels. The prosecution rebuked him for the letter but absolved him, noting that it was written in a context of “coercion, force, and fear.”45 Nonetheless, it seems clear that he took concrete steps to help the rebels. The priests frustrated Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas. They could not force them to follow their commands, particularly when they were in the sanctuary of the church, nor could they easily contest the anti-insurgent messages in masses and processions. In fact, Tupac Amaru had to prevent his troops from taking actions into their own hands. Another defendant, Don Justo Gallegos, the priest of Layo, had sent Tupac Amaru some fish and requested that Indians stop harassing him and his parishioners. On January 20, 1781, Tupac Amaru wrote him that there was little he could do “as the Indians are out taking revenge for the Spanish affronts and iniquities and from what I see they are destroying the church haciendas, who aren’t the guilty ones but rather the priests who are preaching against us and hoping to obscure our righteous orders.” 46 This might have been disingenuous on the part of Tupac Amaru— by claiming that he couldn’t control his Indian followers he tried to shield himself from some of the blame— but in effect he did struggle to limit violence and ransacking by his own followers. However, his anger and disappointment with the priests and their sermons are clear.

Rebel Priests? The best-known priests in the Tupac Amaru rebellion are those who apparently supported the rebels from the beginning. Father Antonio López de Sosa, the parish priest of Pampamarca, had married Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas and baptized their children. Some maintained that he had virtually raised Tupac Amaru and that they were compadres.47 In his testimony, López de Sosa did not deny their closeness and admitted that he had lent Tupac Amaru money at times. Born

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in Panama, López de Sosa was a long-time resident of the area and his jurisdiction also included Tungasuca and Surimana. He had been at the dinner at Father Rodríguez’s house that preceded Arriaga’s capture and remained in Tungasuca after his execution. One witness claimed that he went in and out of Tupac Amaru’s house, rebel headquarters, at will and some contended that he had even helped gather wood to build the gallows.48 The assistant priest, Ildefonso Bejarano, lived in Tupac Amaru’s house and to the disgust of European prisoners, moved about freely in the rebel camp. He and López Sosa participated in the preparations for Arriaga’s execution. López de Sosa gave last rites while Bejarano lectured from the gallows to the thousands present, “see what has happened to this bad man for having lost respect for priests and the bishop.” 49 They both had paid lip ser vice to the excommunication but reiterated their support to Tupac Amaru. Micaela Bastidas had reservations about their loyalty to the rebel cause. On November 26, 1780, she wrote Tupac Amaru about how Bejarano and Ramón Moscoso, the kuraka of Yanaoca and Bishop Moscoso’s cousin, reported to the bishop and others in Cuzco on troop numbers. She pointed out that the fact that Bejarano and López de Sosa closed the church and wouldn’t give Mass could indicate loyalist leanings. She closed this letter, “all of this has me worried as we are in the midst of enemies and we could become victims of a sudden act of treachery.”50 This exchange prompted Bejarano to reassure Tupac Amaru in a highly incriminating letter dated December 1, the centerpiece of the decadeslong trials against him. He explained to the rebel leaders that city council members in Cuzco had deemed them accomplices of the rebel. López de Sosa thus closed the church and posted the excommunication decree to counter these charges, to appear to be working for the royalists, “but it was well known how much he [López de Sosa] cares about Your Majesty [Tupac Amaru].” Bejarano stressed that López de Sosa and he understood that the rebellion was not “against the faith” and recognized that “young and old knew that this type of men [abusive Spaniards] has been very harmful in this kingdom.”51 The letter explains their actions and confi rms their admiration for Tupac Amaru but does not explicitly say that they support the rebel. It strikes a middle ground, in which these priests continue to work with their parish in the midst of rebel headquarters but do not pledge support. When they later defended themselves

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in court by asserting that they were only doing their jobs as men of the cloth and had no alternative but to perform some duties in the elaborate execution of Arriaga, they were stretching the truth but not blatantly lying. The priests had sided with Bishop Moscoso in his previous battles with Corregidor Arriaga and believed in greater clerical autonomy from the viceroy and the Crown. They opposed the regalist efforts of the Bourbons to hem in the power of the Church. Other than that, the explanations of why they supported the rebels are not that different than those for other middle-sector individuals. They knew Tupac Amaru well and understood that he was a devout Christian. In fact, they trusted and even venerated him. These priests witnessed on a daily basis the ceaseless exploitation of Indians and understood the toll that the mita, the reparto, and other taxes took on Indians; they also knew that these demands reduced the money available for the Church. In addition, they believed that corregidors and authorities in Cuzco and Lima served towns such as Tungasuca and Pampamarca poorly. They presumably understood and welcomed the importance they would have and the longed-for changes that would take place if the rebellion were successful; they also must have had a strong inkling of the consequences if it failed. The trials against López de Sosa and Bejarano lasted for more than a decade—the Spanish did not know what to do with them. It’s safe to say that their robes saved them. It is difficult to imagine a layperson getting away with such open support for the rebels. In their defense, several of the European prisoners noted the priests’ kindness and deemed them “good men.” For example, Juan Antonio Figueroa observed López de Sosa pleading with Tupac Amaru just half an hour before the execution. However, they also expressed their shock at how López de Sosa and Bejarano moved about camp freely and rubbed elbows with the rebel leadership.52 The two priests insisted that circumstances did not allow them to prevent the execution or alert authorities. In 1787, López de Sosa was still captive in a Capuchin monastery in Madrid. He presented medical testimony that he suffered from hypochondria (depression) and from the region’s bad weather. Bejarano had spent time in Cádiz, Madrid, and Sigüenza (in the center of Spain), restricted to monastic life. In 1790 the King granted him a small daily pension yet in 1794 Bejarano demanded his freedom, bitterly complaining

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about Sigüenza’s climate, “a land of misery and tears.” He missed his homeland, “the delicious valley of Paucartambo.”53 Neither returned to Peru. Scholars have long debated whether the Catholic Church supported the Tupac Amaru rebellion. The key is how the question is framed. If it is asked whether some members of the Church aided the rebels, the answer is yes. As seen here, the clergy from the center of the rebellion met with Tupac Amaru on a daily basis before and after the uprising began and did almost nothing to impede the rebels. López de Sosa and Bejarano continued their clerical duties in the midst of Arriaga’s execution and its aftermath. While not weapon-carrying soldiers or radical ideologues, they were close to Tupac Amaru and disregarded the bishop’s command to condemn the rebellion from the pulpit and to spy on the rebels. But no one contests that some clerics were on the rebels’ side.54 The trials against the priests and the long-running campaign against Bishop Moscoso led people past and present to focus on the bishop and to exaggerate the subversive role of the Church. In part, this reflects the ageless maxim that the victors write history. Spanish hard-liners, who took over the royalist side at the very end of the demise of the rebellion and then oversaw the trials (the major source for scholars) and subsequent repression, contended that defiant priests had played an important role in the formation and development of the uprising. Visitador Areche and his replacement, Benito Mata Linares, mistrusted and disliked Bishop Moscoso. They belittled him in correspondence and tried with great energy and even anger to prosecute him for rebel sympathies. These trials dragged on for almost a decade and the archive records are literally voluminous.55 A critic of Moscoso, Arriaga’s nephew Eusebio Balza de Verganza, published a detailed indictment loaded with documents, La verdad desnuda o las dos fases de un Obispo, “The Naked Truth or the Two Sides of a Bishop.”56 In 1784, José Raphael Sahuaraura Titu Atauchi published Estado del Perú (1784), a defense of Moscoso, while in 1790 Moscoso released a long summary of his refutation of the charges in Inocencia justificada contra los artificios de la calumnia, “Justified Innocence Against Slanderous Tricks.”57 Subsequent chapters examine his long struggle, from Cuzco to Lima to Spain, to defend himself against the accusations of supporting the rebels. Readers are led to believe that whether Moscoso supported Tupac Amaru or

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not is the fundamental question, and his accusers made a convincing or at least spirited argument. This chapter instead stresses the impact of his measures in late 1780 and early 1781 and their importance for slowing the rebels in their own base. This battle between the hard-liners and the bishop was based on both Areche and Mata Linares’s growing disdain and even hatred for the creole Moscoso, as well as on broader ideological battles in Spain and the Americas. As we will see, Moscoso’s relatively conciliatory approach to the second stage of the rebellion dismayed hard-liners. They gladly channeled the accusation and rumors about Moscoso (not only regarding rebel inclinations but also scandalous relations with women) to the king’s inner circle in Madrid. It was personal. But the battle also reflected the battle over the role of the Church in Spain and SpanishAmerican society. Although devout Catholics, hard-liners and royalists such as Areche and Mata Linares believed that the Church and other institutions should be firmly under the control of the Crown.58 They thought that priests had too much autonomy and wealth in Peru and had lost their monastic discipline. Stories linking priests and nuns with lovers, often of the lower orders or occasionally even of the same sex, abounded in eighteenth-century Peru, a virtual trope.59 Moscoso’s enemies shared the view that ecclesiastics were too independent and unruly, particularly creoles, and could even go so far as to raise arms against the Crown. The story of Moscoso and Arriaga as well as that of the hardliners moves from the personal to the structural, Spanish royalists versus the creole clergy. In a June 1781 letter, Areche vented that in Peru, Clerics—secular and regular clergy as well as many creoles— are weak at heart in terms of Spain’s ownership and possession of these dominions: Your Excellency, there are many Voltaires, many Rousseaus, many Raynalds and many others who have sacrilegiously opposed in their writing the authority of Kings, as these clerics are not properly watched over by the Inquisition, Prelates, or the government, who must be zealous that such doctrines despised by everyone educated, rational and Christian— don’t enter, aren’t disseminated or read.

Near the end of the letter he added that in the trial against Tupac Amaru, they had found “a great deal of correspondence to him from priests and friars that scandalizes and hurts the ears of even the most robust and pacific. There you see how they treated him as Your Majesty and the

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submission and respect with which they treated him, calling him Redeemer and the New Messiah.”60 Followers of the trial after the rebellion and readers of the transcripts over two hundred years later can be easily led to believe that defiant priests subverted the Cuzco countryside along with Tupac Amaru. Despite the cases of López de Sosa, Bejarano and a few others, however, this view is excessive if not erroneous. While Bishop Moscoso knew Tupac Amaru, sympathized with some of his battles prior to November 1780, despised Arriaga, and had tangled with other Spaniards, he threw all his weight against the uprising upon news of the corregidor’s execution and the battle of Sangarará.61 What is key is the impact of the excommunication and the decisive aid that priests, following the bishop’s orders, gave to royalists. If they had not stayed, the rebels would have had free rein in the massive triangle between Cuzco and its amorphous borders with Arequipa and Puno. Recruiting and gathering provisions would have been much easier and church land would have been there for the taking. Royalists would have not had anyone in the region to contest rebel ideology. Instead, priests rallied intermediate groups and planted doubts with the Indian masses about Tupac Amaru’s religious status, his all-important soul, and the fate of the rebellion. The question of whether a group or an individual supported the uprising is not so black and white. Partisanship was fluid— often due to opportunism or desperation— and many of the priests were neither committed rebels nor effective counterinsurgents. As the letters to Bastidas and Tupac Amaru showed, they cowered in fear and shock and sought to save their lives and those of their parishioners. Many probably saw good things about both sides or despised them both. Some presumably did not understand what was happening—few people did in the confusing fi nal months of 1780. Nonetheless, the work of priests backed by the bishop in the Tupac Amaru zone vexed and weakened the rebels. Without them, Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas would have had a much easier time spreading their message and gaining resources. They could not imagine a world without the Catholic Church; their struggle to create a new world had to contend with its fervent and effective opposition.

4 The Rebellion Goes South

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F T ER T H E NOV EM BER 18 victory in Sangarará, many in the rebel camp believed that they would bolster their forces in their base, the Vilcanota Valley, and then quickly proceed north, to the city of Cuzco. Instead, Tupac Amaru had his eyes set on the south, the overwhelmingly indigenous area toward Lake Titicaca. As is often the case with military commanders, an uneasy mix of confidence and fear sparked his thinking. He knew that his message would be well received in a region that bore a particularly high mita burden for the Potosí silver mines. At the same time, he understood that he had not yet faced the main thrust of the colonial military and that much more challenging battles lay ahead. In the following weeks and months, both rebels and royalists boasted about their numbers and flaunted their confidence while privately fretting that a debacle was close at hand. Tupac Amaru believed that he could control the arid plateau that stretched from Cuzco to Lake Titicaca and perhaps even expand into Upper Peru, or Charcas as it was more commonly called. He worried, however, that the corregidors of five districts in the Lake Titicaca region would soon receive money, arms, and troops from Arequipa and attack him from the south, or at least thwart his expansion in that direction. He thus decided to push toward Lake Titicaca, leaving Micaela Bastidas to manage the Tungasuca base. Many of his supporters wondered why the rebel didn’t take Cuzco immediately, before Spanish reinforcements arrived. Commentators and historians would continue to debate this strategy for centuries. Micaela stayed behind and took care of provisions, discipline, correspondence, and the countless other tasks that military campaigns

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require. During her husband’s foray to the south, she increasingly worried that a swift royalist attack from Cuzco would crush their camp in Tungasuca. In numerous letters to Tupac Amaru, she expressed her impatience with his extended sojourn to and urged him to hurry, stressing that his family was in danger. In Cuzco, fi fty-five miles away, Bishop Moscoso directed royalist efforts. His situation and activities displayed a curious symmetry with those of Micaela. He raised money and morale, orchestrated religious processions, and communicated with authorities in Lima, his priests throughout rebel territory, and militia leaders. With only vague and distorted news about events south of the city, he and much of the city population feared that a siege of the city was imminent. Europeans began to think that their worst nightmare was possible: the bizarre hanging of a corregidor and the unfortunate turn of events in Sangarará could develop into a full-blown war. While Bastidas looked to the south, anxiously waiting for her husband and the bulk of their troops to return, royalists in Cuzco impatiently waited for reinforcements from the north. Both sides sought to win the information and propaganda battles, placing spies and messengers, inflating their strength, and masking their intentions and anxieties.

Contentious Preparations Panic spread in Cuzco because of alarming reports about rebel actions to the south and complacency, even incompetence, among the city’s leaders. Bishop Moscoso chided the junta in Cuzco for its delays and divisions but worked closely with its members to prepare the city’s defenses and to respond to Tupac Amaru. Sangarará had convinced them to forgo any sort of attack and instead wait for troops from Lima and prepare for rebel incursions or even a siege of the city. The bishop persuaded district mayors, kurakas, and the city’s well-to-do to donate to a defense fund while mayors and kurakas from nearby areas arrived with militias, usually about two hundred strong. The corregidor of Abancay, Manuel Villalta, became the city’s military commander. Moscoso enlisted all of the city’s students as well as priests in militia companies. Villalta reportedly “shed tears of joy and edification” when he witnessed the priests marching in Cuzco’s streets.1 In late December, the city council exonerated Indians who joined the royalists from the reparto and the sales tax (alcabala), two of the rebels’ major grievances.2

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The city council and Bishop Moscoso did not limit their preparations to fundraising, military training, and last-minute reforms. One account described how the entire population of the city, led by Bishop Moscoso and Franciscan friars, united “to wash away their sins in the fountain of penance and to take strength from the Holy Eucharist.” The author declared that “undoubtedly a spectacle has been offered to God that is capable of disarming his wrath, while the solemn fasting on November 28–30 has placed this town in the humility that God demands, whereas before its immoderate haughtiness and excesses prompted his just indignation.” Panic had reached the point where city dwellers viewed the uprising not as an unprecedented expression of Indian fury or of Tupac Amaru’s bloodthirsty quest for retribution, but as divine wrath.3 News of Arriaga’s execution reached Lima on November 24. Viceroy Jáuregui called for an immediate emergency meeting with the General Inspector of the Army, Commander José del Valle, Visitador General José Antonio de Areche, and members of the high court or Audiencia. On the 28th, commander Gabriel de Avilés left the city with two hundred members of the free black (“pardos libres”) militia, with instructions to recruit soldiers along the long march to Cuzco. Peru did not have a standing army and relied instead on militias. Avilés’s troops had four hundred muskets, twelve thousand cartridges, and five hundred sabers. At this point, the viceroy believed that the rebels counted on twenty thousand men.4 Days later, when the viceroy learned about the Sangarará debacle, he sent an additional 400 soldiers as well as 6 cannons, 1,525 16-caliber muskets, 75 pistols, spears, lances, and other weapons. Mules and foot soldiers carried the load down the desert coast in the hottest days of the summer. They turned inland around Pisco and climbed the precipitous Andes. Summer in the Andes means warmer temperatures, a welcome respite for people used to the temperate coast, but also rain. The showers and mud made the marching miserable, particularly the climbing. Del Valle left Lima on December 20 with an additional two hundred soldiers. These and other soldiers from the coast suffered terribly from soroche, or altitude sickness. Over millennia, Andean people have adapted, with enlarged chests and increased lung capacities.5 However, people from lower elevations begin to feel the flulike symptoms at about eight thousand feet. The thinner (scientists prefer the term “less dense”) air

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contains less oxygen, causing people to tire quickly, run out of breath, and become nauseous. Many dehydrate as the altitude consumes more water vapor in the lungs. Some people can develop potentially fatal pulmonary or cerebral edemas. Rest relieves the symptoms but these soldiers continued to march up and down steep mountains, the grim reports from Cuzco adding to their haste. The route to Cuzco includes passes that tower fourteen thousand feet above sea level. Cuzco itself is at ten thousand five hundred feet but most of the fighting took place in the south, much of it well over twelve thousand feet above sea level. Bus drivers in the Andes routinely hand out coca leaves or medications that can alleviate the aches and nausea. Anyone who has flown to an Andean or other city over ten thousand feet above sea level knows that after an initial exhilaration, the traveler feels sluggish and has a pounding headache. Hydration and rest help greatly— the royalist soldiers did not have this option. Soroche would add to their miseries and impede their fighting in the coming battles. Well-armed battalions advance slowly in the Andes. The sheer western face that rises sharply only a few miles inland presented just the initial challenge. Horizontal ranges that run east-west saddle the interrange valleys, rapidly breaking up any respite from climbing and descending. Even today, the roads between Nazca and Cuzco feature almost nonstop hills and unnervingly steep turns. The Avilés expedition did not reach Cuzco until January 1, where they waited for the others.6 The three expeditions had orders to recruit among the largely indigenous population between Lima and Cuzco. No commander provided numbers but they had to rely on coercion and apparently had only middling success— hundreds rather than thousands joined them. On December 11, 1780, Areche wrote to one corregidor demanding that he pay suppliers the full amount and on time. He confidently predicted that “many would volunteer and thus require supplies.”7 His optimism proved unfounded. Indians did not volunteer massively and many of these indigenous soldiers deserted when the fighting began and conditions worsened. On December 7, Lima’s city council abolished the reparto, believing it the major cause of the uprising, and ordered that corregidors receive a fi xed salary, hoping that this would discourage them from exploiting locals. They criticized Cuzco for the divisions and indecisiveness that Bishop Moscoso reported, contending that the Andean city had been “pusillanimous.” At the same time, in Lima divisions emerged that would

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The Southern Campaigns

mark the royalist reaction to the uprising and policies well into the nineteenth century. Incensed that he had not been named to lead the expedition, Visitador Areche wrote fiery diatribes against the viceroy and del Valle to his ally in Madrid, the powerful José Gálvez. He decried their incompetence and what he deemed the cowardice of the Lima population. To Areche’s chagrin, few people in Lima volunteered to join the expedition to fight the rebels in Cuzco. This should not have been surprising: it was a five-week journey over mountain passes that

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stretched fourteen thousand feet above sea level. Moreover, people understood that the pay would be minimal, conditions rugged, the combat brutal, the Andean population hostile, and the enemy relentless. In late December, Areche himself headed to Cuzco, intending to take over operations in this early stage. He failed and had to share responsibilities. Yet Areche never gave up in his attempt to undermine Viceroy Jáuregui and Commander del Valle and to implement his preferred hard-line policies against the rebels and the Andean people. Areche teamed with Benito Mata Linares in this struggle. Born in Madrid in 1752, Mata Linares had been named to Lima’s high court in 1778 and was also Auditor of War.8 He and Areche belittled the viceroy’s efforts, demanding a greater reliance on fixed units and professional soldiers rather than local militias and volunteers. They presented the creoles and corregidors who oversaw the militias as lazy and corrupt and the lower classes who manned them as untrustworthy cowards. In the fi nal months of 1780 and early 1781, Mata Linares and Areche won this battle, at least on paper, as Madrid recognized the drawbacks of the militias. Nonetheless, royalists did not have the time or resources to make this transition quickly. Mata Linares joined Areche in peppering Madrid with letters and memos about the viceroy’s errors and the need for radical change in Peru. In the coming two years they succeeded in wresting decision making from the viceroy and his allies.9

Going South On November 22, 1780, Tupac Amaru left Tungasuca to shore up his support in the nearby towns of Pichigua, Yauri, and Coporaque, where the kuraka Eugenio Sinayuca had been proselytizing against him. He followed what was becoming standard procedure: his scouts searched for enemies and provisions and he gave an impassioned speech from the church steps about his movement, announcing in Quechua to flabbergasted locals that a new day had arrived. Many listeners joined his movement. On the 25th, Tupac Amaru wrote a proclamation to the population of Lampa, a large town to the south near Lake Titicaca, announcing his campaign against “bad government” and abusive Spaniards and his commitment to creoles. He boasted that he counted on sixty thousand Indian supporters as well as creoles and people from outside the area.10

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In this initial foray to the south, Tupac Amaru failed to capture José Campino, the corregidor of Chumbivilcas, and also saw the royalist kuraka Eugenio Sinayuca slip out of his hands. On November 27, he heard disturbing news about an alliance among the corregidors of Azángaro, Chucuito, Carabaya, Lampa, and Puno, who were awaiting arms and soldiers from either Arequipa or La Paz. He worried that if the corregidors received this help and royalists attacked from Cuzco, he could be trapped. This motivated him to continue his push south. He asked kurakas in his core area to stall any troops mobilizing from Cuzco while he was away and instructed Micaela to disseminate an exaggerated image of their followers’ numbers and resources in order to discourage such a royalist charge. He also told Micaela on November 26 that he would be back in “five or six days”—he was off by almost a month.11 Tupac Amaru headed toward an area he knew well because of his trips to Potosí. He counted on important contacts and allies. His favorite author, Garcilaso de la Vega, perhaps inspired him. Book 2 (“which describes the idolatry of the Incas and the way in which they glimpsed our true God”) chapters 19 and 20 of the Comentarios Reales (Royal Commentaries) describes in characteristically epic style how Lloque Yupanqui, the third Inca ruler, conquered the Collao in the thirteenth century. Garcilaso portrays how Lloque Yupanqui tamed their “wicked” women and instructed them to follow a single God, the Sun. We can imagine José Gabriel reading these lines from chapter 20 with glee, perhaps understanding them as a premonition: “the people of Chucuito [near Lake Titicaca], though they were powerful and their ancestors had subjected some neighboring tribes, did not wish to resist the Inca. They replied on the contrary that they would obey him with love and goodwill as a child of the Sun, to whose clemency and mercy they were attached and whose benefits they desired to enjoy by becoming his subjects.”12 It should be remembered that José Gabriel considered himself “El Inca.” The Royal Commentaries tells multiple tales of Incas based in Cuzco triumphantly imposing order in the Collao.13 José Gabriel looked to the Collao with the confident enthusiasm of someone who knew the region well. In contrast, when pursuing rebel forces there half a year later, the Spanish would view the region with dread and even disgust. In reality, Tupac Amaru’s objective, the five corregidors, did not pose a serious threat to Tupac Amaru and were themselves vulnerable. The reinforcements and funds they expected from Arequipa, La Paz, or

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Lima never arrived, while much of the Spanish-speaking and more affluent local population in the Titicaca area fled. Moreover, as rumors of hordes attacking from the north circulated, the Indian masses increasingly abandoned their customary deference and flaunted their rebel sympathies. The corregidors felt besieged; they knew their lives were in danger. In late 1780, they strove to hold out against the rebels and save their own lives. Although recriminations about the corregidors’ inability to hold the south continued for months and years, they tried. Desperation seems the best term to describe their efforts. When he learned about the uprising, don Miguel de Urbiola, the Carabaya corregidor, instructed parish priests to prepare with “penance and public processions” and had his assistants organize the defense of towns such as Crucero and Sandia. He himself supposedly walked twenty-two leagues (about sixty miles; a league was often measured by how far a person could walk in an hour) in a single day “to provide Spaniards and Indians with guns and spears” that he paid for himself. Nonetheless, rebels eventually burned down much of Carabaya.14 On November 14, the Azángaro corregidor instructed his counterpart in Lampa to organize troops and to hold the line, because other provinces were “bereft of weapons.”15 Puno’s corregidor, Joaquín de Orellana, left a detailed account of his frantic efforts to defend the Collao. In November 1780, reacting to the call by another corregidor to “drown out this fire before it spreads and resist with everything,” he proceeded to Lampa with his minuscule militia of 166 men. Orellana was then ordered to Ayaviri, where rebels almost trapped him and he lost his guns and gunpowder. To his dismay, he then was called on to help much of Puno’s population evacuate; he had hoped Lake Titicaca’s largest city would be a royalist stronghold. He had no confidence in the local militias and labeled authorities in Cuzco, La Paz, and Arequipa “indolent” for not sending aid of any kind. Orellana remained active throughout 1781.16 Authorities in Cuzco, in turn, criticized the corregidors for having fled so quickly from the rebels.17 After attacking the mining town of Cailloma in late November, where officials managed to flee with large quantities of money and silver just before the rebels arrived, the Tupac Amaru forces crossed the glacier-covered mountains of La Raya, over fourteen thousand feet above sea level, the towering dividing line between Cuzco and Puno. Reports of his troop size ranged from ten thousand to sixty thousand.18

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The rebels understood that ahead of them, in the Titicaca basin and into the Collao, Indians vastly outnumbered Europeans, creoles, and mestizos, and that desertions and fear had already crippled the colonial militias. They also knew that the area’s sheep and cattle ranches provided easy prey for meals— the ranchers could flee to Arequipa or elsewhere but could not take their livestock with them. The insurgents entered the town of Santa Rosa, where Corregidor Urbiola had patched together a militia with up to two thousand troops. It quickly folded, however, its members fleeing or passing over to the rebels, and Urbiola himself barely escaped. On December 4, the rebels passed into the Viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata, entering the small town of Macara. That same day, the corregidors of Chucuito, Lampa, Azángaro, Puno, and Carabaya met in Vicente Oré Davila’s house in Lampa. Colonel Pedro de la Vallina brought frightening news. He had been imprisoned in Tungasuca but had convinced the rebels that he was a Lima creole, not a Spaniard, married to the granddaughter of don Diego Choquehuanca, the kuraka of Azángaro whom the rebels hoped to enlist. All of this was false. Before releasing him, Tupac Amaru had told Vallina that he had upwards of thirty thousand Indians and that “Cuzco would be his.”19 Vallina demanded that the corregidors prepare what could be a fi nal defense of the Titicaca area. Tupac Amaru had fueled the corregidors’ fear by writing letters that he made sure they intercepted, which greatly inflated his troop numbers.20 This group of corregidors proved unable to defeat the rebels in battle. They lamented the absence of help from La Paz or Arequipa and recognized that they lacked sufficient weapons and soldiers (and critics would contend courage) to hold the line. The corregidors probably regretted their one deed that December day. Weeks before, royalists had captured Tupac Amaru’s nephew, Simón Noguera, in the Qqueque hacienda near Santa Rosa and taken him to Lampa on November 24. The twenty-year-old had been sent ahead of Tupac Amaru’s troops to scout the area. The corregidors oversaw his execution after their junta on December 4.21 Micaela Bastidas reportedly burst into tears when she learned of his death; Tupac Amaru vowed revenge. Tupac Amaru sent troops to the hacienda where Noguera had been captured while another group set out for Lampa. The corregidors fled and deserters bolstered the rebel forces. At this point, people massively

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abandoned the towns in the plateau northeast of Lake Titicaca, many heading for Arequipa. Tupac Amaru and his troops entered Ayaviri on December 6 to great fanfare. Priests met them formally, with the customary canopy and ceremony, and Tupac Amaru gave a speech, seeking recruits and reassuring creoles and mestizos. He was upset to learn that the priests of Santa Rosa, Miguel Martínez, and Orurillo, Juan Bautista Morán, had offered an award for him, “dead or alive.”22 One petrified and anonymous observer of Tupac Amaru’s triumphant entrance into Ayaviri declaimed: “the enemy is on top of us, having taken the towns of Macari, Santa Rosa, Ayaviri, and Pucará. . . . We don’t have the people, arms, or ammunition to challenge them.”23 People fled “with only the clothes on their back” and the chaos and fear disrupted the harvest and distribution of food. Hunger began to take its toll, particularly on older people and children.24 Confident and motivated by the quest for revenge, the rebels nearly captured the five corregidors. They burned jails, named new local judges and kurakas, and confi rmed the abolition of the mita, the reparto, and customs houses. Requiring a massive amount of food, the rebels relied on the region’s livestock, sheep, cattle, and alpaca. Royalists presented these expropriations as the main incentive for the Indian masses: not only were they “fooled” by the leadership but “their propensity toward theft helped seduce them, as they found it easy pickings to ransack ranches (estancias) and estates. They’ve ruined many. In the Collao, some days they consumed over four thousand sheep.”25 One official from Lampa calculated that the rebels slaughtered sixty-three thousand sheep and one thousand six hundred cows, and consumed the entire harvest of corn, potatoes, and other produce.26 Tens of thousands of soldiers on the move almost every day ate massive amounts of stew. The rebels could do as much damage with their stomachs as with their weapons. At this point, early December 1780, Tupac Amaru had a good idea of his strengths. He understood that unless discouraged or even coerced by their kurakas, most Indians supported his call for an end to Spanish mistreatment. Tupac Amaru promised a new, more just world and he and his tens of thousands of followers easily toppled colonial forces. Indians in the Titicaca basin supported the project and believed that he, or they, could succeed. Although Tupac Amaru did not know what to expect from the Spanish—he knew they would attack but not from where or when—he understood that his growing mass of soldiers represented a

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serious threat in open battle. He recognized that they had the advantage in mobility, and could employ hit and run or guerrilla tactics (a term that would not be invented until the Napoleonic invasion of Iberia in 1807) with great success. Diego Choquehuanca, a kuraka from Azángaro who came from a distinguished family, initially provided the royalists a bit of good news amidst the gloom of the rebels’ seemingly unstoppable advance in the Titicaca area. In November 1780, Tupac Amaru had written this elderly patriarch (estimates of his age range from seventy to ninety) several letters, explaining his efforts and requesting his support. Choquehuanca immediately informed the Lampa and Carabaya corregidors and within days had written several more corregidors as well as the city council and bishop of La Paz, pledging his opposition to the rebellion. He instructed his sons— Joseph, a colonel in the militia, and Gregorio, a priest— to shore up Azángaro´s defenses.27 Furious about Choquehuanca’s rejection and believing that he had participated in the execution of Simón Noguera, Tupac Amaru went after the Choquehuanca family and their numerous estates with unusual vehemence. Although Diego Choquehuanca managed to flee to Arequipa, his family paid a heavy toll: rebels killed another son, a daughter, three cousins, and one grandson, and razed their estates.28 Choquehuanca was not alone—the southern kurakas spurned Tupac Amaru. In the words of David Garrett, “the cacical elite of the Titicaca basin remained resolutely loyal. As news of Sangarará reached Lampa, the province’s kurakas arrived in its capital with armies of tributaries to defend the crown.”29 In the midst of the royalist nightmare of late November and early December, when Arequipa and La Paz failed to send reinforcements and corregidors fled alongside thousands of desperate people, kurakas provided promising bits of good news. They remained loyal, particularly those with aristocratic pretensions, rejecting Tupac Amaru’s calls for an Inca utopia. This decision would prove fundamental for royalist success not only in the south but also in the Sacred Valley north of Cuzco. In fact, as we will see, another kuraka, Mateo Pumacahua, was at this very time halting rebel advances in Paucartambo and the Sacred Valley. Tupac Amaru reached Lampa on December 9, greeted by Indians and “a few vecinos [non-Indians].” According to the nineteenth-century English geographer Clements Markham, “The Inca entered Azángaro in

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triumph. He rode a white horse with splendidly embroidered trappings, armed with sword and pistols, and dressed in blue velvet, richly embroidered with gold. He had on a three-cornered hat, and an uncu or mantle in the shape of a bishop’s rochet, with a gold chain around his neck, from which a large golden sun was suspended.”30 His speech interrupted by celebratory musket blasts, Tupac Amaru insisted that he sought to end the reparto and “other impositions suffered by Indians.”31 His troops burned the jail and city hall, ransacked other buildings, and rummaged through the haciendas, textile mills, and mines of the affluent.32 Tupac Amaru wanted to sleep—they had trekked over night from Ayaviri to Lampa—but his aides warned him, “he who has enemies can’t sleep.” They set up their tents in a safe position outside of town, where he rested.33 Throughout the uprising, Tupac Amaru accompanied his soldiers, although surrounded by his entourage. Unlike the majority of the rebels, however, he moved on horseback and slept in a tent. One priest, while acknowledging the deep fear that the rebel leader prompted, noted that he was “dressed like a gentleman,” with elegant clothing.34 The priest testified that the rebels ransacked the church and took everything they could find from the homes of the town’s Spaniards, with the pretext of a search for weapons. Lampa had a considerable population of affluent merchants, who before fleeing had left some of their valuables in the church. The rebels expropriated these goods.35 They committed “unthinkable damage” in haciendas and stole all the livestock they could. The priest lamented that Indians insulted vecinos and refused to pay the fees on which clerics relied. He deemed this abandonment of the status quo, in which Indians had to show deference to priests, mestizos, and Europeans, “the eve of the end of the universe.”36 The testimony of two Indians captured in December provides insight into the rebel followers. The loyalist mayor of Carabuco (on the northern side of Lake Titicaca, today part of Bolivia) had found them with straw crosses in their hats, the rebel emblem. Diego Choquehuanca took their testimony in Quechua. Pascual Gutiérrez Sonco, described as an Indian from the town of Nuñoa, Lampa, told Choquehuanca that Indian and Spanish rebels wore the cross and were instructed to kill all chapetones, a derogatory term for Spaniard. The rebels understood that there were two types of Spaniards, those who could be recruited and the enemy, chapetones. Gutiérrez Sonco explained that non-Indian rebels used paper crosses in their hats while Indians employed straw.

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He had heard that “the Inca [Tupac Amaru] was on his way to conquer Buenos Aires to be crowned and that he would extinguish all corregidors.” He claimed that some Indians “joined of their own free will and others because of death threats from their chiefs or mandones.” Gutiérrez Sonco had witnessed Tupac Amaru redistribute goods taken from estates and was awed by the “infi nity” of Indians who were following the rebel leader.37 Manuel Chuquipata, arrested with Gutiérrez Sonco, added that the Indians in the Collao, “and the young and the Spaniards had given Tupac Amaru their full obedience and all are in unison in their support, wearing the cross in their montera, the indigenous headwear; we were instructed to wear this rather than other types of hats as well as uncus or a tunic and a sling across our chests.” Tupac Amaru had requested that his troops use the cross to distinguish themselves and preferred indigenous clothing rather than European. Chuquipata pointed out that the rebel leader had exonerated Indians from the December semester head tax.38 The document does not note the two Indians’ fate but they were presumably executed.

Micaela and Tomasa Tupac Amaru stayed in Lampa for three days, deciding where to continue. He was tempted to push on to Upper Peru and align with rebels there. He also considered attacking Arequipa or sieging nearby Puno. Numerous letters from Micaela, however, persuaded him to return. In fact, throughout the uprising, she proved to be highly persuasive.39 On December 6, she chided him for “moving very slowly, touring around from town to town. . . . I am losing my patience with all of this, and I’m capable of turning myself over to the enemy so that they take my life, because I see that you do not take this grave matter seriously, endangering all of our lives.” 40 One royalist observer described her role with repugnance and amazement, “She fi lled in for her husband in Tungasuca, overseeing the expeditions and even mounting a horse to recruit in Chumbivilcas where she sent repeated orders, with audacity and unique intrepidation, authorizing the edicts with her signature and going so far as to begin a plan of invading Cuzco herself, in charge of the troops, which she would have done if Tupac Amaru hadn’t written about his victorious return from the south. She thus decided to wait for him.” 41

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Their correspondence in December is among the most touching documentation of the rebellion. They expressed great affection, referring to each other with names such as Mica and Chepe (from Micaela and Pepe, the classic nickname for José) and as “my daughter” and “my son.” These letters combine affectionate banter and Micaela’s demands that he stop dilly-dallying and return. On December 10, she chided him for “having paid little attention to my letters” and for putting her life in danger (“placing her on the bull’s horns” is her metaphor).42 Authors have used these to cast her as the henpecking wife who also happened to be a smart, efficient commander. The latter point is true. José Gabriel and Micaela demonstrated how much they loved each other not only through terms of endearment but also with recommendations for the other’s safety. In a brief note on November 23 which came with 600 pesos, some alcohol for the troops, and correspondence, Micaela ordered him to make sure that he only ate food prepared by his most trusted comrades. She worried that he would be poisoned.43 On December 8, he sent a letter (in Spanish, the language of all their correspondence) instructing her what to do if the Spanish troops attacked from Cuzco— this clearly worried both of them. His elaborate plan called for her to go to the town of Langui, where their sons Fernando and Mariano were. If necessary, she could go to the nearby hills of Chacamayo, which they considered impenetrable, but rebel troops could stay in Langui and nearby Layo. While noting that this was unlikely as their forces controlled the mountains and peaks that separated Tungasuca from Cuzco and could use boulders and slings to pick off the enemy, he encouraged her to speak with kurakas of nine towns to be prepared to take to the hills and prepare a counterattack. He instructed her to proceed to Langui if a Spanish attack occurred, under the pretext of recruiting more soldiers, but to make sure to shackle the prisoners well, or to even poison them, “and then we wouldn’t have to worry.” 44 Tupac Amaru closed by reminding her that he had requested some cannons and that she should keep a handful of soldiers in Tungasuca even if she and the bulk of their troops abandoned it. The correspondence to and from Micaela Bastidas highlights her capacity as a commander. She received reports from towns and sent spies to check on others and the roads to Cuzco; instructed her followers to protect livestock, creoles, and priests; trekked to Chumbivilcas to recruit soldiers; watched over the troops to prevent desertions; and tapped

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various sources to make sure that they could feed and pay soldiers. Bishop Moscoso complained that her measures “seduced towns,” citing the “wretched news” from Ccatca, Paucartambo, where Indians had destroyed several estates and plundered all the livestock, and towns near the Sacred Valley where rebels had attacked haciendas and bridges.45 She kept a tight rein in Tungasuca, but also celebrated victories and made plans for the future. According to one account, “when she got news of the king’s troops dying she got very happy and handed out silver or clothes to whoever brought the information. She advised the Indians to get strong, insisting that even if some of them died, the benefits would be for them and their children. She warned them that authorities in Cuzco wanted to trick them with a pardon, while they would really barricade the rebels in the main plaza and slaughter or burn them until no one was left alive. She notified the Indians that if she and her husband were defeated, they should put Spaniards, men and women, and priests in a house and set it on fire.” 46 The last sentence should be read warily—the testimony was from a creole detained in rebel camp, Manuel Galleguillos, who wanted to stress the danger he faced in Tungascua. Yet he closed by noting, “I saw more rebelliousness in Micaela than her husband, more arrogance and haughtiness, to the point that she was to be feared more than her husband.” 47 He had little to gain by underlining her strength and spirit. In fact, no one disagreed and many echoed this description of Micaela as a dedicated and fearsome leader. Her primary concern in late November and early December was that royalists would push through and attack Tungasuca while Tupac Amaru was in the south. She sought information from her informants and received contradictory intelligence. One spy in Quiquijana reported that although a few Indians had betrayed the rebels, Spaniards were not advancing south. Yet Marcos Torre wrote from Acomayo on the following day, December 15, that the towns of Paruro, Accha, and Pilipinto supported the royalists and would soon attack the rebels’ fi rst line of defense, Acos and Acomayo. He suggested she send troops to attack the royalist rear guard in Livitaca and requested arms: “we don’t have a single musket.” 48 That same day Tomás Guaca reported from Pomacanchi, where the rebels had ransacked the textile mill a month earlier, that he couldn’t feed the troops and they were crossing over to the royalists. Antirebel kurakas and mayors were “giving them plenty to eat.” 49

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The ability to feed the troops proved crucial for both sides, aiding recruitment and deterring desertions. Micaela Bastidas wrote that very day to her husband that “there is news that they [royalist troops] have left Cuzco; the vanguard is in Urcos and they also want to attack us from Paruro.”50 This proved to be false but she and others were worried. Her private correspondence took on the schizophrenic nature of any commander—panic about being overrun mixed with confidence that they would soon control the southern part of Peru and the northwest of the Rio de la Plata viceroyalty. On December 15, she instructed her followers to send more troops, while boasting that “everything had gone well [mayor felicidad] so far and we have in our favor the provinces of Urubamba, eight parishes of Cuzco, Paucartambo, Quispicanchi, Paruro, Tinta, Lampa, Azángaro, Carabaya, Pacarcolla, the city of Chucuito, and others.”51 In a December 6 letter, she outlined her efforts to recruit more people and “little by little encircle Cuzco, which is well guarded as I noted in my previous letter.” Here she chided her husband for taking his time— “walking with lead feet”—and fretted that Indians were returning to the hills as they ran out of livestock.52 She exuded confidence and concern. Tomasa Condemaita, the kuraka of Acos, was the other important female rebel leader. She had received the kurakazgo as a birth right in a town not far from Surimana, where Tupac Amaru held his. Born around 1740, she presumably knew Tupac Amaru as a child. In the initial days of the rebellion, rebels threatened to kill her, believing her a royalist due to her creole husband. She sent her husband and three children to Cuzco and committed to the rebellion.53 She watched over Acos, providing troops and provisions and directing skirmishes against the royalists. Early in the uprising, on November 12, noting Indians’ inclination to steal sheep and “commit excesses” with creoles, she requested that Tupac Amaru send someone to impose order.54 She shared with Micaela Bastidas the frustration with Tupac Amaru’s extended sojourn. On November 30, she wrote Tupac Amaru wondering where he was; on December 9, she expressed her concerns to Micaela: royalists “could come [han de venir] and surround us from all over, Quiquijana, and the hills; they know that the Inca is away and if we are not careful, they will ambush us. I have been very pained by Don José’s tardiness; let’s hope God brings him back safely and as soon as possible.”55 In another note probably from the same day, she described the pressures she faced from a possible royalist attack as well as from those within the rebel

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camp who doubted her because of her gender: “I am so unfortunate [desfavorecida] for being a woman.”56 Her fate became entwined with that of the two rebel leaders she followed faithfully. Fifty-five miles separated Micaela and Bishop Moscoso. They both complained about the lack of news due to the turmoil and the great danger messengers faced, and waited for, if not their saviors, at least their military superiors: Tupac Amaru in the case of Micaela, and Visitador Areche and Commander del Valle in that of the bishop. Moscoso lamented that he could not fi nd out anything about Tupac Amaru’s southern campaign due to the “confusing chaos.” He bitterly noted that the rebels controlled the Vilcanota Valley, the “throat of the viceroyalty,” but also boasted of his own work. He planted spies in and around Cuzco and sent troops to counter the rebels in Paucartambo. In letters to Lima, he underlined the effectiveness of the excommunication and the important information he received from priests and their assistants that he had kept in rebel territory.57 The bishop also described royalist efforts and even victories in areas to the north and east of the city, the Sacred Valley and Paucartambo essentially, and recruitment success just southwest of Cuzco and Paruro, thus bordering on the rebel base. These sections of his detailed letters to the viceroy and to the visitador in mid-December were not hyperbolic bits of inflated good news that sought to whitewash the generally miserable situation in the south. The royalists had made important inroads in the north and the dividing line between the rebel south and the royalist north, which ran roughly east to west somewhere in between Tungasuca and Cuzco, would mark the rebellion and its repression until the very end. This helps explain Bastidas’s and Moscoso’s anxiety— each knew that the enemy’s base was a single day’s ride away. Both sides took extraordinary measures to get letters and notes past enemy sentinels and to monitor the other side’s activities. Noting frequent ambushes and “interceptions,” Bishop Moscoso relied on the priest of Ayaviri to carry messages to the south, assuming that a cleric would not be searched as thoroughly.58 A December 7 letter from Micaela Bastidas to two kurakas in the town of Maras never made it to them. Authorities captured Ramón Gutiérrez with the letter.59 He told a rich story at his trial. A thirty-year-old field worker (labrador) from Urubamba in the Sacred Valley, he had been working in Paucartambo but Indians from the

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town of Qero took him to greet Tupac Amaru in Tungasuca. They were disappointed to learn that the Inca was in the south, in Lampa, but Micaela Bastidas thanked them for their support and asked Gutiérrez to take the letter. She hid it, written on coarse cloth by a tall man with an elegant sleeveless coat, presumably one of the European prisoners, in the lining of his bag or chuspa, instructing him to take back roads to Maras and not to go near Cuzco. She told him to tell the Indians not to worry, that her husband sought only to get rid of corregidors and to destroy obrajes. The Qero Indians stayed behind. Guards at the Urcos Bridge searched him superficially and didn’t find the letter. Nonetheless, they made him pay a bribe of four reales to pass the bridge. He couldn’t find the kuraka to whom the letter was addressed, Lucas Nuñez de la Torre (a very Spanish name), and gave it to the authority’s daughter. She found her father and he quickly had Gutiérrez arrested and sent to Cuzco. The prosecutors in Cuzco tried to get more information from him about why Tupac Amaru was in Lampa and who was with the rebels in Tungasuca but he did not have anything valuable. They gave him the death sentence and rejected his appeal. Although the trial ends with the sentence, he was presumably hanged as an “emissary of Tupac Amaru.”60

The Northern Front While greatly concerned about Tupac Amaru’s advances in the south and frustrated by the lack of information, Bishop Moscoso commented with cautious satisfaction about events in Paucartambo and the Sacred Valley in December. José Gabriel’s cousin, Diego Cristóbal Tupac Amaru, led about six thousand followers into the region, Cuzco’s breadbasket (actually corn— and in Paucartambo, coca). They sought to separate the city from this important agricultural area and eventually approach it from the Sacred Valley, creating a pincer movement in tandem with Tupac Amaru entering from the south. The rebels recruited in the high towns of Ocongate, Caicay and Ccatca and then approached Pisac along the Vilcanota River. The royalists understood the significance of a rebel intrusion into a productive region bordering Cuzco. Commanders particularly worried that if the rebels proceeded to Abancay, they could cut Cuzco off from Lima. On December 8, Cuzco sent troops to Paucartambo, led by Lorenzo

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Pérez Lechuga and Francisco Celorio. The former was a veteran of Spain’s wars in Italy.61 On December 20, aided by the kuraka of Chinchero, Mateo Pumacahua, and his soldiers, royalists defeated Diego Cristóbal’s forces near the Pisac Bridge. One priest counted 120 dead rebels as well as many washed away by the Vilcanota River.62 The royalists slaughtered everyone they captured. The rebels took refuge in Calca and, according to several accounts, committed numerous atrocities, “killing everyone who had a shirt. . . . Raping attractive women and then killing them, and even raping the dead.” Witnesses also accused the rebels of murdering children and profaning the Calca church.63 The “killing all with shirts” reference means that the rebels attacked all Europeans, broadly defi ned as those who wore shirts, that is, western dress. Pumacahua (1740–1815) rose to the top of the royalist military command, recruiting thousands of Indians whom he commanded in numerous victories. For generations his family had held the kuraka office in Chinchero, a town built on a prominent Inca site on the peaks that separate Cuzco and the Sacred Valley, renowned today for its dual Incacolonial architecture. While he never clarified the reasons why he opposed Tupac Amaru so vehemently, he presumably saw the Tungasuca rebel leader as a lowly kuraka with less prestige and capital than those of the Sacred Valley and towns such as Chinchero.64 Just like the rebels they confronted, Pumacahua’s indigenous soldiers knew the terrain well, moved great distances quickly, and employed hit-and-run tactics. Pumacahua proved to be an invaluable ally to the royalists. Bishop Moscoso explained, “once this highly faithful [ fidelisimo] Indian knew about the wretched insurrection of Tupac Amaru, he charged through towns, executing with a knife those who wouldn’t join him, burning their houses. . . . He armed his people and after inspiring them” defended all of Chinchero and the Calca y Lares district.65 On December 23, 1780, Pumacahua’s forces attacked the rebels in Calca, killing hundreds and executing almost everyone they captured. Cuzco’s city council labeled this bloody defeat of the insurgents a turning point, a “glorious triumph.” The victory raised morale among troops and civilians and weakened the rebels. The city council’s account claimed that the wretched events in Calca, the rebel atrocities, “showed that Tupac Amaru’s intention was to exterminate all Spanish and mestizo people, and so those people who might have followed him stopped doing so, comforted by our union.”66 The widely reported

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events in Calca allowed royalists to cast the rebels as bloodthirsty savages who would eventually pursue all non-Indians. Royalists used this to drive a wedge into the rebel coalition and to justify their own violence. Battles took place even closer to Cuzco, increasing the anxiety of city residents. On December 21, rebels confronted the royalists on the Chita Pampa about ten miles northeast of the city, toward the Sacred Valley. A battalion led by Francisco Laisequilla defeated them. Laisequilla returned to Cuzco with twenty-five prisoners and four leaders’ heads on pikes, parading them around the main plaza. One account called this “very opportune . . . as the common people had never seen this and it encouraged the entire city.”67 Authorities hanged many of the prisoners.68 At this point, reinforcements from Anta and Abancay aided the royalists, boosting city residents’ spirits. Moscoso underlined the importance of this victory in a town, Chita Pampa, so close to Cuzco that it forms the outskirts today, believing that Indians in the “sub-urban towns” sympathized with the insurgents. He also recognized several other aspects that made the defeat of the rebels so important. Diego Cristóbal had to retrench in the hills above the Sacred Valley, abandoning his plan to encircle the city of Cuzco from the north. Bishop Moscoso stressed the need to protect the Apurimac Bridge, near the town of Mollepata well to the east of Cuzco, and the Calca Bridge and others that crossed the Urubamba River in the Sacred Valley. December is the high point of the rainy season and the gushing Apurímac and Urubamba Rivers pushed through narrow gorges. The bridges, many of them dating from the Inca period, offered the only way across in the rainy season. Bishop Moscoso worried that if the rebels managed to take the bridges, they would proceed to the north, isolating Cuzco. Moreover, troops from Lima would have to take a longer route and their highly awaited arrival would be delayed. As one defender of Bishop Moscoso put it, “if Calca and Yucay were lost, the Rebels would have lots of grain and other food from the haciendas of that area. If they holed up in Huailcabamba, four families could make that narrow passage impenetrable.”69 Moscoso also appreciated the support of northern towns, particularly Anta and Abancay, that provided large, disciplined, battalions led by kurakas. Building on this defeat of Diego Cristóbal Tupac Amaru, royalists impeded any sort of rebel northern front.70

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Violence The events in the Sacred Valley and the hills above it mark a change in the use and understanding of violence by both sides. Although sources are thin and one-sided (we do not have rebel accounts), each side slaughtered the other and desecrated cadavers: the rebels raped cadavers and the royalists paraded heads on pikes. Neither took prisoners. In the initial weeks of the uprising, in contrast, rebels stormed into a town and ransacked estates and mills, but did not pursue all Europeans or kill most prisoners. Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas sought to prevent widespread violence and many people near the rebel center believed they could remain neutral. By the middle of December, however, each side believed that the other sought to exterminate and thus matched brutality with brutality. To use an important term in the study of war and violence, restraints diminished or even disappeared.71 Neutrality was increasingly difficult. The change can be explained partially by the passing of time and the extension of the rebellion. Violence begets violence and Pumacahua’s troops believed they were taking revenge for rebel atrocities; the rebels probably had a similar justification or motivation. Furthermore, rebel violence increased or hardened as the uprising expanded geograph ically. Miles away, Tupac Amaru, Micaela Bastidas, or other commanders had little power to impede the distant rebels from slaying anyone of European descent or culture, often in brutal fashion. As will be seen, the worst rebel atrocities took place when no major rebel commander was present. Yet the cruelty in late 1780 was not just a reflection of deepening hatred and an expanding uprising; it also revealed a broadening ideological divide between the two enemies. Each side defi ned the other as a vile nemesis who needed to be exterminated. As historian Jan Szeminski showed, rebels cast the Spaniards as bad or evil Christians, whose actions placed them outside the church, and who thus deserved a brutal death. At the same time, insurgents broadened the defi nition of puka kunkas, thus unleashing violence against anyone with European dress, the Spanish language, or other western cultural attributes. Whereas Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas differentiated between good and bad Spaniards, more radical insurgents considered everyone of European descent or culture as evil and thus a justifiable victim of violence.72

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Similarly, the burning of the Sangarará church and Tupac Amaru’s excommunication allowed royalists to paint the rebels as non-Christians or heretics. This validated cruel treatment such as that of Pumacahua toward the victims of the Calca massacre. The Chinchero kuraka treated all rebels as heathen excomulgados, and claimed that some of his Indian followers, despite the cold and their hunger, would not touch the rebels’ clothing or food.73 In reality, the broadening of the defi nition of rebels (or the enemy) as virtually any Indian who did not fight under a royalist kuraka came not only from the exclusion of the rebel leaders from the church but from the events of late 1780— the miserable news coming from the Vilcanota Valley, the Collao, and the Sacred Valley. If Indians sought to rid the viceroyalty of people of European descent, royalists responded that they, in turn, needed to attack all Indians. Divisions widened and brutal tactics became the norm; violence escalated in 1780. The following year, 1781, would be worse.

Terror in Cuzco Tupac Amaru terrified Cuzco’s European population. A report from the royalists’ headquarters in Cuzco (cuartel general) to Lima from December 22 complained that the rebels had cut off all communication and that the city knew nothing about events stretching from Tungasuca into the Collao. They had not seen any correspondence from Tupac Amaru in over twenty days and, they correctly noted, Micaela Bastidas seemed to be in charge of the rebel base. The writer worried that Tupac Amaru might be in Chayanta (where the Katari brothers led a violent uprising), “reaching an agreement with the Kataristas or infesting those provinces and lighting the flame of rebellion throughout the kingdom.” The writer noted that Indians were better at trickery than open battle (“devemos temer más sus engaños que sus fuerzas por la guerra”), which can be interpreted as a jab at Indians’ mental capabilities or recognition of their guerrilla tactics. The writer acknowledged that they were so uninformed about the rebel’s whereabouts that he could even be in Cuzco, planning an attack.74 Residents of Cuzco felt surrounded. A few days later, however, just before Christmas, they learned that Tupac Amaru had returned to Tungasuca. City residents prepared for his attack. The usually optimistic Bishop Moscoso gave several reasons

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for additional concern. José Andia, an accountant with the city’s royal treasury, had absconded with a great deal of money and prominent figures such as the archdeacon Ximénez Villalva and another priest had fled the city. The bishop also complained about rebel spies operating in the city.75 In the rebel camp, Tupac Amaru boasted about his successful trip to the south. He had gained supporters and provisions, what the Spanish deemed booty.76 After a month of uncertainty, when only ghastly rumors reached Cuzco and both sides suffered from the near impossibility of getting their messages and spies through the corridor between Cuzco and Puno, the situation became much clearer. Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas were about to lead an attack on the city of Cuzco.

A depiction of Tupac Amaru in 50 sol bill in 1977. (Author’s collection)

Micaela Bastidas. (Augusto Díaz Mori, c. 1980, Pinacoteca Municipal Ignacio Merino, Municipalidad Metropolitana de Lima)

The execution of Topa Amaro, 1572. (Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno, 1615/1616. Copenhagen, Det Kongelige Bibliotek)

Inca Bridge. (From George E. Squier, Incidents of Travel and Exploration in the Land of the Incas [1877])

A letter by the captive Tupac Amaru written in his own blood. (Archivo de Indias, Cuzco, Leg. 33)

Garrote reenactment. (Inquisition Museum, Lima, Peru, photo by José Ragas)

A 1964 painting of Tupac Amaru’s quartering. (Author’s collection)

Sicuani Fort, built in the rebellion’s aftermath. (Archivo de Indias, mapas y planos)

Francisco Goya’s Shipwreck, presumably inspired by the 1786 San Pedro de Alcántara, which killed many prisoners, including Andrés Tupac Amaru. (Album/Art Resource, NY)

Manuela Tupac Amaru. A member of the Betancur family, which claimed descent from Tupac Amaru (I), she was not related to José Gabriel Condorcanqui. The image was covered up by a religious painting after the rebellion and only uncovered when taken in for restoration in the late twentieth century. (MALI-Museo de Arte de Lima)

Juan Velasco Alvarado and Túpac Amaru, c. 1970. (International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam)

Tupac Amaru in a 1957 Mexican comic book. (Author’s collection)

5 The Siege of Cuzco

C

possessed all the signature elements of Spanish urbanism: a majestic cathedral, a spacious municipality, checkerboard design, elegant housing for the powerful, and prominent shops. And this was just the main plaza. The Spanish built their city on top of the Inca capital, believing that Catholic churches put the Incas’ “sites of heresy” to shame and that their palaces outdid those of the Inca rulers. Their masons— almost always Indians— added brick or adobe walls and elaborate roofs to preexisting Inca buildings or built more European-looking structures from the ground up. In the eighteenth century as well as today, astounding monuments from both cultures stood side by side. Inca walls, mass blocks of granite crafted to fit together snugly without any type of caulking, lined streets and alleyways.1 From some perspectives, Inca and Spanish architecture meshed together nicely, highlighting the imperial vision and technical skills of both. For example, both the Inca fortress that towers above the city and the imposing Jesuit Church, La Compañía, receive awed compliments from visitors past and present. From other viewpoints, however, these two styles clashed glaringly, bringing to light opposing aesthetics (simple stone versus intricate Baroque) and the brutal power struggles behind the architecture. This ambiguous duality served as a metaphor for social and political relations. In the colonial period, Cuzco could seem like a flourishing bilingual and bicultural center where people knew and accepted their place and Spanish rule thrived; in other moments or from other points of view, the strains of colonialism and its cornerstone in the Andes, the oppression of the Indian OLON I A L CUZCO

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masses, surged to the surface and tensions spread. December 1780 was such a time. The Incas built Cuzco (or Qosqo) alongside the Huatanay River, in a bowl surrounded on three sides by steep hills and ravines, which opens to the southeast toward the sacred Ausangate glacier and Tupac Amaru’s Vilcanota Valley. In late 1780, Cuzco was both a Spanish and Inca center. It was Peru’s second city, with a population of thirty thousand people compared to Lima’s fi fty thousand. The upper classes consisted of descendants of the conquistadors but also those of different waves of Spanish immigrants. But it was still also an Inca city. Quechua was as common as Spanish— even many members of the upper classes who flaunted their European lineage spoke the Inca language. Quechua-speaking Indians and mestizos constituted three-quarters of the city’s population and at any time Cuzco also hosted thousands of campesinos bringing their wares to sell or seeking short-term employment. Indians throughout Peru venerated Cuzco, seeing it as the Inca capital. Here, in the fi nal days of 1780, the city’s population believed that the long-awaited attack by Tupac Amaru— dreaded by some, anxiously awaited by others—was at hand. Everyone understood the importance of Cuzco.2 Tupac Amaru’s return to Tungasuca in mid-December signaled that such an attack on the city of Cuzco was imminent. Micaela Bastidas and other rebel leaders understood his southern sojourn as a delay, a loss of valuable time. City residents, in contrast, had hoped that he would be defeated in the Collao or that he would extend his campaign into La Paz and Potosí rather than Peru’s second city, less than sixty miles from his base. They wanted him away from the city of Cuzco for as long as possible. While his expedition gave the city’s residents a month to fortify their defenses, it also provided time for rumors and anxiety to spread. Well-to-do city residents despaired that Indian barbarians, as they saw the rebels, would pillage and rape or that the insurgents would siege the city for months, depriving them of food and water. They looked ner vously at the Indians and mestizos who constituted the city’s majority. Would the lower ranks join the rebels, supporting the incursion and perhaps looting and wreaking havoc? They also wondered whether their neighbors would flee the city or surrender quickly. The city’s upper crust, authorities, and many more dreaded the arrival of the insurgents.

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Preparations The war council in Cuzco recognized on December 23 that “he wants to invade this city” and prepared for an attack.3 By this point, “he” or “the rebel” referred to Tupac Amaru. The council could keep track of events in the nearby Vilcanota Valley much more easily than in the distant Collao. On December 24, it informed Viceroy Jáuregui that a cleric who had been in Tinta told them that Tupac Amaru planned to attack around Christmas. He also reported the grim news that the rebel leader had been well received in Lampa and Azángaro, “whose corregidors and white citizens [vecinos blancos] have fled to Chucuito.” 4 The city council and the war council set up headquarters in what had been the Jesuit College on the corner of the Plaza de Armas until this order’s expulsion in 1767. They organized patrols, especially at night, and formed six militia companies. Fearing that the “iniquitous traitor” hoped to recruit its members, they kept a close eye on the company made up of noble Indians. Authorities purchased or requisitioned weapons and ammunition, and commanded people to place rocks on their balconies to hurl at rebels. Priests used church towers as sentinel posts.5 Bishop Moscoso instructed the Dominican priests of Santo Domingo to defend the Santa Catalina convent if he rang the main bell of the cathedral five times. He deemed an attack “certain,” but admitted that he did not know the rebel’s exact intentions.6 City residents shared the bishop’s prognosis—they believed that the rebels would soon attack, but could not predict the specifics. Clerics and students received military training. The sight of priests marching with a purple flag that the bishop had purchased reportedly boosted morale, especially among the city’s “plebes.”7 The bishop also spearheaded efforts to raise funds to buy or make arms and outfit the militias, collecting the considerable quantity of 110,881 pesos in November and December. He leaned especially hard on the cash-rich monasteries.8 In their 1784 report, members of the city council boasted about their efforts to prepare for an attack. Visitador Areche, however, grumbled in a December 22 letter about the city council’s inefficiency and soon departed for Cuzco. Authorities in Lima agreed that the war council in Cuzco was not doing enough and needed commanders, soldiers, and other support to confront the uprising.9 The war council feared internal traitors and forbade anyone from leaving the city in the days before the rebel army’s arrival. They worried

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that the enemy would gain information about the city’s defenses or that a mass exodus might take place and facilitate an invasion.10 Fear even affected the religious calendar. The Bishop held Christmas Mass at sunset rather than the customary midnight because “such a gathering could turn into a riot.”11 At the same time that authorities took measures to make sure that the city’s residents resisted an invasion or siege, they received distressing news from the south. On December 19, Father Ignacio de Santisteban Ruiz Cano wrote from Chamaca, in the upper provinces to the southwest of Tungasuca, that he needed reinforcements, as Indians merely laughed at his exhortations to remain loyal. Those of his town as well as nearby Velille were joining the rebels: “They already consider that damned Indian [Tupac Amaru] sovereign.” In an unusual display of blunt frustration, he closed by noting that if he had twenty-five men on his side, he would burn Chamaca to the ground, “as an example to everyone and to show that the voice of our King was not completely asleep amidst these barbarians.”12 Panic began to take hold among the city’s powerful: a mass rebel army was on the way, royalist priests could no longer control their towns, and a significant number of the city’s residents might very well welcome the rebels. The story of a courageous or foolish team of merchants illuminates events and the mood at rebel base. On November 15, Agustín Herrera and María Santos de Valencia, husband and wife, loaded their mules with over two hundred gallons of wine and left Arequipa to sell their goods in Cuzco.13 For centuries merchants supplied the highlands with Arequipa wine and spirits, much of it produced in the Majes Valley. Today, a popular dance in Cuzco’s countless patron saint festivals commemorates these traders, the majeños.14 The couple had bravely ventured into Tungasuca to request a pass from the rebels and, successful, had reached Cuzco on December 2 or 3. On their return weeks later, insurgent sentinels had taken them again to Tungasuca to fi nd out whether to allow them to continue. The rebel leaders chatted with them amicably and were surprisingly open about their plans. When Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas asked about defense efforts in Cuzco, Herrera and his wife told them that five thousand soldiers as well as weapons had reached the city, an exaggeration, and more were on their way. Tupac Amaru snickered and said, “I wish there were even more people in Cuzco so I could capture all of them and their weapons . . . this only makes me braver.”15 He confided that although he didn’t have the date

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for the attack set, he and his people preferred Saturday, as they had always succeeded on that day of the week and he had great faith in the Virgin Mary, venerated on Saturdays.16 He mentioned that he thought that the viceroy was in Cuzco, which pleased him; it was better “to start with the head.” Viceroy Jáuregui had not left Lima. This bravado might have reflected Tupac Amaru’s confidence or have been intended to boost morale. It very well could have been both: the rebel leader believed that he could take Cuzco but understood that he would need the commitment of his troops and support from the towns in the approach to Cuzco as well as sectors of the city itself.17 Tupac Amaru and Micaela gave the traveling couple a poncho and silk stockings as parting gifts and asked that they place a lampoon about the uprising in a corner of Arequipa’s main plaza. Laughing, Tupac Amaru told them that he didn’t want to kill anyone but just wanted to spare Indians from Spaniards’ demands. He noted that Indians worked so hard to pay for the reparto and taxes that they “don’t even learn how to pray.”18 The rebel leader promised to “take a tour” [dar un paseo] at some point to Arequipa to learn about events there.19 The couple handed over the lampoon to authorities upon arrival in Arequipa. Santos de Valencia reported that Tupac Amaru’s plan was to cut off food and water for eight days if Cuzco didn’t surrender. If that didn’t work, he’d burn the city. Another member of their party pointed out that some people in Tupac Amaru’s camp, including a Bethlemite priest, disclosed that they had been forced to participate. One priest, “don Justo,” [Father Justo Gallegos] told him that once the rebels left, the people of the small town of Layo “would turn their backs on and isolate the rebel.” They had only feigned support because of coercion.20 Their testimonies portray a confident leader facing possible discontent in his ranks.

Rebels in the Hills Hurried by Micaela and by the prospect of troops arriving not only from Lima but also Buenos Aires, Tupac Amaru led the rebels out of Tungasuca on December 20.21 One account calculates that forty thousand followers joined him, a seemingly high estimate.22 These numbers included family members and other supporters— above all women who set up camp, searched for kindling and additional food, and cooked.23 Royalists sent troops to Angostura, the gateway to Cuzco from the

The Siege of Cuzco

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Vilcanota Valley. They knew that Tupac Amaru wanted to proceed to the important towns just outside of Cuzco, San Jerónimo and San Sebastián, and take the Inca fortress of Sacsayhuaman, which looms over Cuzco from the north. Tupac Amaru and most of his troops avoided the enemy by taking a less direct route across the towering mountain peaks to the south of the Vilcanota Valley, from Colcaqui to Ocoruro. Carrying light loads and accustomed to the steep topography of the area, the rebel forces scurried up and down these hills and mountains, so steep that up until today they have resisted the spread of urbanization. The rebels avoided towns such as Andahuaylillas and Oropesa and used gunfire as signals. Despite their numbers, the insurgents moved quickly and silently. Once they reached Cuzco, they turned up their volume by shouting, singing, playing drums, and setting off fireworks and guns. They succeeded in intimidating all who saw or heard them. Antonio Castelo took a smaller group through the valley, ransacking haciendas as he proceeded. Diego Cristóbal Tupac Amaru returned to the Sacred Valley, with the intention of attacking the city from the north. The approach to Cuzco did not go well for the rebels. Tupac Amaru had expected to recruit widely but failed, primarily because he did not come into contact with as many Indians as he expected. Not only did the bulk of his forces skirt the Vilcanota Valley, where the larger towns were found, but authorities had brought kurakas from nearby towns into the city— either as volunteers or conscripts—making it impossible for these ethnic authorities to pass over to the rebels with hundreds of followers.24 Unlike the areas near Tinta and in the Collao, Indians and other locals did not join the rebel side en masse when Tupac Amaru arrived. They did not enlist either because they couldn’t— their kurakas or other authorities prevented them— or didn’t want to. As the following weeks would reveal, most Indians in and around Cuzco remained loyal. The rebels not only had difficulty adding troops but also began to lose some of them. In a December 30 letter from the outskirts of Cuzco, Tupac Amaru instructed Father José de Maruri, a supporter, to tell his commissioners and kurakas in Azángaro to send “Indians, mestizos, and Spaniards” who had been convoked for his newest campaign.25 The next day, December 31, he commanded a rebel authority back at the base to take “the most energetic measures so that the Indians who maliciously stayed behind in Pampamarca and Surimana be brought to me as prisoners for

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disobedience, and please bring a list of them without losing any time.”26 Some Indians from his home base had failed to join him. In the fi nal days of December, Tupac Amaru mystified the royalists by not sending forces to the north, where commander Gabriel de Avilés approached the city. The rebels perhaps could have routed the tired and outnumbered royalists, exhausted from the long journey from Lima. Bishop Moscoso considered this a godsend, or at least a terrible tactical error, and noted how the arrival of the Spanish commander and his mulatto militiamen on January 1 raised the spirits of the city.27 Perhaps Tupac Amaru did not have reliable intelligence about Avilés’s arrival or feared losing a direct confrontation with Avilés’s well-armed and disciplined troops. Above all, it seems that Tupac Amaru envisioned entering the Inca capital triumphantly, with a few skirmishes but no major battles. It would not be so easy. Good news continued for the royalists after Avilés’s arrival. The insurgents had sent Antonio Castelo with a smaller contingent along the Camino Real through the Vilcanota Valley in order to recruit, attack royalist forces, ransack haciendas, and surround the city from the north. He might also have been a diversion, allowing the bulk of the rebels to move quickly through the hills. The priest of Urcos alerted Cuzco of Castelo’s route, however, and on the evening of January 2, the cavalry led by Joaquín de Valcárcel and Francisco Laisequilla demolished Castelo’s forces in the town of Saylla, killing four hundred rebels and taking a flag with Tupac Amaru’s coat of arms. The royalists took advantage of their horses and slaughtered the rebels, who had little place to hide or flee in this wide valley. Bishop Moscoso noted that many of the victims had been important members of the rebellion, so powerful or affluent that they slept in tents.28 He mentioned that some royalist Indians would not touch the dead rebels or their belongings because they were “excomulgados.”29 One partisan gleefully noted that the small number of rebel survivors took to the hills, “possessed of a great fear.”30 Castelo and his extensive family would soon betray the rebels. The fact that he escaped led some historians to believe that his treachery might have begun with this battle.31 More bad news came from the north, where Diego Cristóbal Tupac Amaru failed to open a second front. He proceeded from Catca to Pisac, planning to attack Cuzco from the Sacred Valley. Royalists stopped him in Huayllabamba and, this time led by Pumacahua, in Yucay. Diego

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Cristóbal could not break through royalist forces on the all-important Urubamba Bridge. Tupac Amaru was forced to send him reinforcements but to no avail.32 The battle for Cuzco came down to the tens of thousands of rebels camped south of Cuzco versus the royalist forces, military, religious, and civilian, preparing in the city and arriving from Lima. The approach to Cuzco had not been the triumphant climax of the 1780 fighting that Tupac Amaru had envisioned. His troops had not been able to march into the city unscathed and Indians near the city had not passed over to the rebels en masse.

Rhetoric above the City In the fi nal days of December, residents of the city of Cuzco could see thousands of troops amassing on the hills to the south and west. Some reacted to the troop buildup with terror, others with ner vous anticipation or even delight. People tried to hide their valuables, shelter women and children, and store food and water. Those who attempted to leave the city encountered sentinels barring their way. An epic battle seemed about to begin. Yet Tupac Amaru’s forces did not immediately plunge into the city or push toward the arriving Spaniards in the plains or pampas to the north. Instead, the rebel leader wrote detailed letters to Bishop Moscoso, the people of Cuzco, and the city council, announcing his plans and requesting permission to take the city. He sent the letters to the junta’s general headquarters with three of his distinguished prisoners: Bernardo de la Madrid, Father Ildefonso Bejarano, and the Franciscan friar Domingo Castro, all of whom quickly passed over to the royalists. The bishop received the letters with shock and indignation; the city council deemed the letters pretentious and “ridiculous.”33 Critics maintained that Tupac Amaru lost valuable time with the correspondence, allowing Avilés’s forces to arrive and the city to prepare. The letters themselves are an interesting entryway into his plans and mindset. In a cover letter included with the longer note to the bishop, Tupac Amaru complained that Moscoso had not answered his previous correspondence and requested that he post these new communications in public places. He demanded that the bishop answer him, in coordination with the cathedral chapter, within twelve hours.34 In the letter, Tupac Amaru stressed his religiosity and respect for the Catholic Church and loyalty to the king. He explained that he targeted corregidors,

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customs houses, and other “abuses,” having tired of waiting for someone else to defend his people from “theft, hom icides, and insults.” He labeled the growing wave of exploitation in recent years, “a second Pizarro,” [Francisco Pizarro, 147?–1541, the conquistador of the Incan Empire and founder of Lima], a curious phrase as modern historians have labeled the Bourbon Reforms “the second conquest.”35 Tupac Amaru reassured Moscoso that the bishop— as well as the monasteries, convents, and churches that he oversaw—had no need for concern with the uprising. In fact, once the uprising achieved the abolition of Indians’ taxes, the destruction of customs houses, and a pardon for his actions, Tupac Amaru promised “to retire to a Thebes, requesting compassion.” He closed by asking the bishop to send him the necessary titles and papers for such radical changes, with no apparent sense of irony.36 In his letter to the city council, Tupac Amaru emphasized that in his struggle “against Indian slavery” he sought to avoid “deaths and hostilities” but that they, the city leaders, had been executing people, hanging them without proper confession, and committing other atrocities. He referred to the recent bloody repression in Calca and Chita. He threatened that if they did not allow him to enter the city peacefully, he would have to do so with “fire and blood.” The rebel leader requested that the cabildo turn over their weapons and deemed his struggle a “defensive war.” He also pointed out that the fact that he was the last royal Inca (“la mia es la única que ha quedado de la sangre real de los Incas”) had motivated him. His letter resembled a modern public relations campaign in which he attempted to cast his opponents as the aggressor. As was the case with his efforts to overturn his excommunication, he had little chance to convince others. Authorities, of course, did not disseminate his letters and maintained the upper hand in communications. Tupac Amaru continued: bad authorities so exploited Indians, “suppressing and dismissing the king’s dispositions,” that his people could not even know the true God, and did little more than enrich the corregidor and priests through “their sweat and work.”37 He vaguely noted that once he got rid of the repartimiento and other Spanish institutions, he would place one Indian and someone of “good consciousness” as mayor [alcalde mayor] in each province. This person would be in charge of justice and the Christian training of the Indians and would only receive a modest salary. He ended by underlining that despite these changes, the king of Spain would continue to rule.38

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He began his letter to his “beloved compatriots” by emphasizing his Inca heritage: “Don José Gabriel Tupac Amaro Inca, by the grace of God descendent of the kings and natural lords of the kingdoms of Peru, principal branch.” He pointed out that some people had been misrepresenting his plans, casting him as an enemy of their “conservation and freedom.” He sought, to the contrary, the abolition of unjust taxes imposed by corregidors and others. While he “ought to take extraordinary measures against these people” who had misrepresented his project, as well as those who had hanged and dragged his partisans behind horses, he offered to pardon them if they turned themselves in with their weapons. The rebel leader underlined the brutality of recent battles in the Sacred Valley. He demanded that this letter be posted.39 All three letters were dated January 3, 1781, from the Ocoruro base. Royalists, of course, did not post them for public viewing. In an effort to maintain as broad a coalition as possible, the three letters defi ned his enemies narrowly— Spaniards and corregidors— and stressed his Christian piety and loyalty to the king. He presented himself as an avenger of Spanish abuses and excesses, one who had not expected or sought this role and who planned to slip away once he accomplished his objectives. He also highlighted his Inca bloodlines.40 The letters can be understood several ways. Recipients in Cuzco saw them as outrageously pretentious and ridiculous statements that showed that Tupac Amaru had no sense of reality. Whereas the recipients ridiculed the letters, subsequent analysts believed that they provide insight into his ideas and plans— although Tupac Amaru wrote a great deal, he did not produce a program. They indicate his efforts to maintain or gain the support of middling mestizos and creoles and, perhaps, his confidence that the city would rise up and support him. They can be seen as strategic feelers to evaluate his support, a sign that Tupac Amaru wanted to take the city without bloodshed. Commanders encircling cities traditionally provided authorities a last chance to surrender and to avoid sacking.41 Most analysts, however, have seen them as a curious but significant waste of time. In writing, sending, and waiting for a reply, Tupac Amaru squandered several days, allowing city authorities to prepare and for Avilés’s troops to arrive.

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Quills on the Hills On January 4, Tupac Amaru moved his forces from Ocoruro to Kayra, the ridge south of the city. He expected sympathizers to rush forward from Cuzco and its outlying areas to join him, but this did not happen. Instead, royalists attacked him that very day and he continued to skirt the city, moving toward the western peaks above the city, the Puquín hill.42 Today, the train for Machu Picchu slowly zigzags up these slopes, the steep incline forcing it to amble slower than those who walk next to the tracks. People continue to build on all of the hills surrounding the city. The bowllike ravines that mark the western hills like pockmarks, however, have proven too steep and too prone to landslides for any type of construction, providing a bit of open space. Tens of thousands of rebels converged on these western bluffs. Rebels and royalists clashed in this difficult terrain. On January 6, members of the recently arrived mulatto militia charged up the slippery hill toward Puquín, confident in their firepower and the element of surprise. Rebels repelled them with their muskets and motley collection of arms, rushing down the hill to finish them off with sticks and rocks. Fifteen mulattoes died in the first attempt and twentyfive more in a second, including Captain Francisco Cisneros. The rebels insulted the Lima troops in Quechua, which the troops did not understand. Blood ran in the muddy streets of Cuzco. Bishop Moscoso claimed that these newcomers from Lima did not know the terrain and lacked backup due to the indolence of royalist commanders.43 A ravine separates the steep Puquín hill from the city, making it difficult for either side to charge. The teeming rain worsened conditions and the mood. The sight of the flag-carrying rebels perched on the western bluffs petrified city residents. One person stated that the hills looked like a massive “porcupine back,” with forty thousand rebels serving as the quills.44 If this number was correct, the rebel camp outnumbered the city itself. The viceroy subsequently calculated twenty thousand, primarily Indian volunteers along with eight hundred Spaniards and mestizos, “most of them coerced.” Understanding that desertions had already diminished rebel forces, he thought that the insurgent leaders would have difficulty controlling the undisciplined Indian masses.45 Tupac Amaru wrote that he counted on sixty thousand Indians and six thousand Spanish soldiers.46 Although these calculations never provide de-

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tails, they include women and other camp followers who prepared food and set up camp but only fought in extreme circumstances.47 With the scary spectacle of tens of thousands of rebels just above the city and the failure of the mulatto battalion in the fi rst skirmish, panic and pessimism spread among the city’s royalist population. People prepared for the rebel masses to take the city in the coming days. They ner vously checked their provisions and wondered whether they could flee. Yet this initial victory over the Lima mulattoes was the last for Tupac Amaru. In the coming days, his troops sought to take control of the northern entrances into the city and, above all, to occupy the former Inca capital that stretched below them. They failed on both fronts. While the arrival of the Lima troops boosted royalist morale, desperation also prompted them to defend the city energetically and efficiently. Avilés’s troops guarded the city center and used their artillery to halt rebel advances. Although the muskets and fusils often backfired, they intimidated the rebels, who relied on lances, slings, and knives. In this period, gunshot wounds almost invariably killed, although not immediately. Indian troops from Chinchero led by Pumacahua and from Anta led by kuraka Nicolás Rosas thwarted rebel efforts to take the northern entryways. Small groups of rebels pushed into the city, scrambling to attack isolated royalist soldiers. They tested the defenders’ resolve. Some grabbed supplies, defaced buildings, and even looted. These insurgents had different fates: some returned to rebel camp to describe the situation and their own deeds, while others abandoned the rebels and sought to blend in among the city’s heterogeneous population or turned themselves in to commanders. Others were not so fortunate. Royalists shot them or surrounded them and then executed them. Residents watched these street fights with apprehension, cheering from the safety of their balconies when soldiers captured rebels. One account claimed that everyone in the city, “from the nobility to the plebeians,” collaborated. This writer tabulated that royalists counted on two thousand soldiers, as well as an unspecified number of Indians from Anta, Chinchero, and Maras and the support of civilians and members of the church.48 On January 8, the corregidor of Paruro, Manuel de Castillo, arrived with eight thousand reinforcements, primarily Indians. They attacked the rebels from their flanks and rear.49 If the rebels moved too close to the city, royalists attacked their rearguard. But the city’s

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unity should not be exaggerated. Bishop Moscoso, for example, complained bitterly about people fleeing Cuzco.50 Skirmishes continued in the ravine that separated Puquín from the city, as small rebel groups sought to break the royalist lines. Women threw ash to blind the marauding insurgents and brought food and supplies up hill to soldiers. Priests took up arms and summoned everyone to join in the city’s defense, appealing to numerous saints. One friar recalled how “moved by celestial impulse,” he left his monastery and charged uphill toward the rebels, summoning the Virgin Mary and invoking the king. A mob of children, merchants, men of all stations, and women followed him, armed with sticks, rocks, and any other weapon they could fi nd. He confronted the rebels and attended the wounded.51 Bishop Moscoso surveyed the western front on a mule, coming within two blocks of the rebel forces according to one sympathetic account. Another writer claimed that the bishop, despite believing that the rebels “wanted his head fi rst,” approached the enemy cannons and dared the gunners to blast him.52 The city, including the Quechua-speaking lower classes, put up a greater fight than Tupac Amaru expected. Through coercion and persuasion, royalists managed to prevent the urban masses from joining the rebels. One writer claimed that “the mob, the dregs of the plebes, feeble women, made up the bulk of the antirebel resistance.”53 Authorities had clamped down on Indians in the outskirts of the city and the indigenous and mestizo masses in the city had not risen. Authorities watched them closely and terrified them with stories of the bloodthirsty nature of the rebels and the horrific consequences for those who disobeyed and supported the rebels. The parading of rebel heads on pikes after the recent battles in the Sacred Valley and Chita Pampa had discouraged many. Propaganda efforts that cast Tupac Amaru as a heathen whose movement would kill all non-Indians—a view supported by events in late November and December, at least as understood in Cuzco—helped impede the multracial alliance he sought and the support from the city he needed. To Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas’s great disappointment, Cuzco’s lower classes did not massively pass over to the rebels. Micaela blamed priests. In a letter to her husband from late January, she explained that “the common people were about to pass to our side, but the sermons by several priests dissuaded them.”54 She also claimed that Bishop Moscoso was on his way to negotiate with the rebel leaders

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when priests convinced him that he could be shot and killed. She argued that people had told the bishop “countless falsehoods” about Tupac Amaru, particularly that he was going to burn the city down. These rumors encouraged Moscoso to enlist “all priests to arm themselves” and nuns to leave the monasteries.55 Moscoso’s supporters later contested the view that he had been conciliatory, stressing instead his fervent and effective military measures. What is beyond doubt is that priests led by Bishop Moscoso helped convince the city’s masses to reject the rebels. The royalists benefitted from traitors in the rebel camp. Juan Antonio Figueroa, a Galician taken prisoner in Tungasuca, was in charge of the insurgents’ dozen or so rustic cannons and their artillery. Most of the cannons, pedreros, had been made quickly and poorly in Tinta.56 He aimed the cannons, a brutally effective weapon when fi red from a hillside against a cluster of people, high and off target and also sabotaged their ammunition. He dumped some ammunition into a stream, claiming that the rain had damaged it.57 Another prisoner, Bernardo de la Madrid, had gained the rebel leaders’ trust. They sent him in the midst of the siege of Cuzco to negotiate with the royalists. The city’s authorities met him with great joy—most thought him dead— and de la Madrid had no trouble convincing them that that he had been a captive and had escaped at the fi rst opportunity. In his account, he claimed that a few days later, on January 8, he charged to the front line to take thirty-five shots at the rebels. Prosecutors did not charge him.58 Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas’s misgiving about these European “allies” proved correct. The rebels suffered in the miserable conditions in their camp and dissent grew. The cold rain made for very uncomfortable days and especially nights for the rebels, most of whom did not have any sort of cover besides their ponchos. The two sides clashed in bloody hand-to-hand combat and the guns and cannons added to the carnage. Tupac Amaru and many of his supporters recognized that the mass uprising from within the city that he expected and needed was not going to take place and that taking the former Inca capital might require weeks of fighting. The nebulous group of creole supporters he believed he counted on in the city abandoned him, if they ever supported him. Pessimism spread among the rebels. Many slipped away the night of January 6, exhausted, frightened, and dubious about Tupac Amaru’s leadership or invincibility.

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Confrontations continued after the January 6 desertions, with royalists enjoying the advantage of access to the city center to gather food, ammunition, and reinforcements. Rebel supplies, including food, dwindled. On January 7, the rebels shelled the city with their meager artillery and confronted the royalists on their flanks. One contemporary wrote in his diary that with this strategy the rebel leader hoped to convince the urban plebes, many of whom lived on the western outskirts of town, to join him. They did not.59 Tupac Amaru held his ground around Puquín, pushing toward the higher Picchu peak with little success. Picchu means mountain or peak in Quechua— Machu Picchu is the “old mountain.” The fact that many Indians fought at the front lines for the royalists discouraged Tupac Amaru, refuting his belief that he could count on their support. Instead, he realized that he could only take the city over their dead bodies. He also lacked money to pay his soldiers and to purchase food, if he had found any for sale. The hills and ravine that he controlled did not have any harvestable food and the rebels quickly ran low on supplies. Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas understood the centrality of provisions. On December 29, he demanded that Eugenio Sinanyuca send “cows, sheep, and other products from the Collao as well as any remaining cheese, wine, and other provisions.” He instructed Sinanyuca to send any wine or aguardiente that the majeño merchants brought, as well as food that arrived from Chumbivilcas in the upper provinces.60 Tupac Amaru knew that without provisions, particularly food, they would lose. By early January, his abundant troops had no doubt consumed almost all the supplies they had left camp with more than a week earlier. Although Castelo’s group had ransacked numerous haciendas en route to Cuzco, the entire Tupac Amaru contingent had met more resistance than they expected and plundered less food than they planned. Once in Puquín, the women in charge of collecting food and firewood had to risk their lives and venture farther and farther from camp. Little food grew in the hills and ravines on the outskirts of the city. Potatoes, the Andean staple, were not yet ready for harvest and firewood and brush were always scarce at ten thousand feet above sea level. The rich yellow and purple corn that flourished in the Sacred Valley or the quinoa and kiwicha found in the higher elevation zones lay tantalizingly beyond the rebels’ reach. The rebels could see the city’s markets (merchants continued to enter from the east) but to their great frustration could not reach them.

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On January 8, rebels peppered the city with cannon fi re but failed to gain any ground. The vast majority of rebels remained on or around the Puquín hill, their supplies diminishing, hunger and dissent growing. In contrast, the arrival of the reinforcements from Paruro that day buoyed royalist spirits. A friar from the Dominican order shocked observers and heartened (or at least amused) Spanish commanders by shooting at the rebels from behind a boulder. Volunteers joined the well-disciplined Lima forces in increasing numbers. Bishop Moscoso credited Figueroa’s sabotaging of the cannons for saving the day, lamenting, however, that over sixty royalists were injured and “some dead.”61 On the 9th, Tupac Amaru sent another letter to the city council, with Francisco Bernales, whom he had captured in Sangarará. He claimed that rebel forces were on the offensive and threatened that his Indians were about to take the city at any cost, “ruining it and leaving it in ashes.” He contended that he could not control them and it was up to the city council to surrender and avoid a bloodbath. Tupac Amaru was bluffing, as the royalists had the upper hand at this point. He closed by mentioning that he knew that authorities were considering the abolition of the reparto and the alcabala sales tax. He supported these measures, pointing out that mestizos and Spaniards would “gladly” make up the money lost in tax revenues. The proof lay in the fact that “a high number of them are under my orders, on their own free will.”62 The city council never replied. On January 10, royalist forces pushed into his lines, driving them back. One account claimed five thousand dead rebels, an exaggeration that nonetheless confi rms that this was not the hit-and-run confrontations of the previous days but a full-scale battle, ending in a royalist victory. Two observers describe Tupac Amaru desperately whipping his soldiers, ordering them to fight. Nonetheless, “they rebelled against him, treating him as a fraud, especially the Tinta Indians.”63 Many deserted, believing the struggle lost and hoping to avoid the repression they assumed would ensue. On the foggy morning of January 11, the royalists awoke to see that the rebels had fled the evening before. They charged the rearguard, capturing a few stragglers and seizing some animals and Tupac Amaru’s bed. It had a silk headboard and a golden base, and apparently had belonged to Corregidor Arriaga.64 The incessant rain had bedev iled the Indians but facilitated their fl ight, as royalists could not track them and slipped in the muddy slopes. Prisoners

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who had escaped from Tupac Amaru told one commander that the enemy was “broken” (deshecho).65 Bishop Moscoso described with great satisfaction “the enormous desertions” among rebel troops, but also chided the royalist commanders for not attacking at this point and allowing the rebels to regroup in Yanacocha.66 Nonetheless, the insurgents could not mount another offensive and Tupac Amaru would only return to Cuzco three months later, in a very different context. Scholars and others have long debated why Tupac Amaru did not take Cuzco. Many question his timing, arguing that he should have attacked in November, rather than shore up forces in the south. Others wonder why he did not move more quickly in December. If he had attacked prior to Christmas, he could have taken the city before Avilés and his mulatto militiamen reached it. Perhaps he took his time because he still hoped for Diego Cristóbal to push from the north and distract the royalists. The more relevant question is why he failed to take Cuzco when he surrounded it with tens of thousands of rebels in late 1780. One highly critical review from late January 1781 gave four reasons: the rebel leadership lacked food and money; the city was well supplied with soldiers and supplies and also counted on formidable defensive positions; Tupac Amaru lost confidence and increasingly believed that taking the city “seemed impossible”; and “people are abandoning him since they see he can’t even offer a salary to survive on.”67 Generally sympathetic to Tupac Amaru, most historians have stressed his ultimately naïve belief that the city would capitulate and his refusal to win by slaughtering thousands of Indians. According to these accounts, he delayed and finally decided not to push into the city because he understood that a victory was only possible at the cost of the lives of thousands of Indians, rebels, and royalists.68 Contemporaries found other explanations. One 1781 account, while mentioning rebel desertions, the lack of support from the city’s lower classes, and Diego Cristóbal’s failure to arrive, ultimately credited Our Lady of the Rosary, whom “the people had invoked after every sound of gunfi re with an Ave Maria.” The annual Our Lady of the Rosary feast commemorates the Christian victory, that of the Holy League, against the Ottoman Empire in Lepanto in 1571. Some attributed the victory, which impeded further Muslim excursions into Europe, to persistent praying of the rosary. Many Cuzco residents also felt that, similarly, they had miraculously defeated the heathen hordes.69

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These are important explanations and the timing question continues to prompt fascinating counterfactual questions or what-ifs.70 I would add a new, unpleasant factor related to poor conditions and internal dissent among his forces: dysentery struck the rebel camp. On January 18, 1781, Father José de Maruri, who at this point had abandoned, at least temporarily, his sympathies for the insurgents, wrote to the kuraka Diego Choquehuanca from Asillo. He contended that in the midst of the siege Indians in the south disobeyed Tupac Amaru’s call for fresh recruits because they knew that those in Cuzco “are suffering from hunger, without wages, and sleeping outside, in the midst of turbulent weather, which it has been said has caused many to die of diarrhea [cursos] and malnutrition [ flaqueza, literally “thinness”] and since people coming from Cuzco are bringing news of this, Indians from around here are getting scared.”71 The terms cursos and flaqueza are unusual but mean “illness” and “hunger.”72 Conditions in the rebel camp were horrible and thus ideal for widespread dysentery. Tens of thousands of rebels, soldiers as well as the women in charge of the camp and other accompanying family members, rested, slept, and ate in extremely crowded conditions. Supplies ran low and hunger weakened defenses. The rebels’ spirits fell as they watched their comrades die or suffer from terrible wounds, the realization spreading that the siege would not be quick or perhaps even successful. The constant downpours and chilly nights worsened the situation, making the ground muddy and life wretched. No one had a change of clothes. In the late eighteenth century, people did not understand the relationship between hygiene and infectious disease, and care was not taken to use sterile water for cooking or to defecate and urinate well away from the kitchen. In fact, little was known about the cause and transmission of disease. Although dismissal of indigenous people as fi lthy and unhygienic is a mainstay of racist condemnations past and present, sanitary conditions were undoubtedly appalling in a swarming, dispirited rebel camp. The rain, cold, slippery hills, and constant enemy fi re impeded the insurgents from adventuring out in search of food and brush (they were close to streams and could collect rainwater) and discouraged them from distancing themselves from where they ate and slept when relieving themselves. While I found only one reference to stomach disorders, several accounts mention hunger among the insurgents as a factor for many of them fleeing. The spread of dysentery

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or other ailments thus seems highly likely. Tupac Amaru had not received the support he expected in the city of Cuzco and also witnessed many of his troops fleeing. Widespread illness aggravated this situation, giving the royalists a great psychological and physical advantage.73

Retreat Cuzco residents celebrated their defense of the city with religious processions and festivities. Bishop Moscoso blessed the military barracks, located in the Jesuit college on the corner of the Plaza de Armas, and declared victory with a rousing “vivat Rex in Aeternum.” Circumventing trenches and the other remains of the fighting, the Bishop toured the battle area and visited wounded soldiers. Men and women cheered loudly from balconies, windows, and doors, fanning their hats, shawls, and handkerchiefs.74 Some concerns soured the celebrations, however. Three months of warfare had ruined much of the harvest and authorities worried about impending food shortages. Rebels had stolen food, razed haciendas, expelled property owners and overseers, and blocked trade routes. Castelo’s advance into Cuzco up the valley had been particularly destructive and the rebels still controlled the Vilcanota Valley and the western entrance into the city. Moscoso himself believed that they should have pursued the rebels and fi nished them off. He understood that the uprising was not over and that they had lost an opportunity to capture the leader and decimate his followers.75 Tupac Amaru retreated to Ocoruro and from there to Acomayo, reuniting with Micaela and other family members and allies who had remained behind. According to one unsympathetic account, “he entered Acomayo with far too much arrogance for a defeated and scorned aspirant.” He forced the priest to receive him with honors and then took Mass kneeling, “in pharisaical style.” In what the writer cast as a sign of divine aversion to the rebel leader, the priest and the church assistants could not open the sacrarium, which had been working fi ne before his arrival. Tupac Amaru invited himself to lunch at the priest’s house, where he explained that he had retreated because the royalists had put Indians on the front lines, “as bait,” and because the mestizos who had been in charge of his fusils had lost their courage. This explanation has been repeated by the accounts most sympathetic to Tupac Amaru, placing the blame on his good heart and mestizo treachery

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rather than his tactics or wavering social base. He told the priest that he would recruit more soldiers and would not give up on his “principal idea of taking Cuzco.”76 An anonymous royalist made fun of Tupac Amaru’s leadership, jibing that “an army of mice led by a lion is better than an army of lions led by a mouse.”77 José Rafael Sahuaraura Titu Atauchi, a kuraka whose 1784 Estado del Perú defended Bishop Moscoso from accusations of rebel sympathies, wrote that “many Indians who had been with Tupac Amaru in the siege told me on their return that their Inca had cried a great deal in Yanacocha over not being received as King in Cuzco.”78 In its account, the city council boasted that the “city managed to free itself from the assault and prevent the Rebel’s twisted plan of taking the city. This was his desire, because if he had taken possession of the old kingdom’s capital, the court of his Incas, his perverse ideas would have taken an imaginary triumphal step. Freed from the anguish that had torn at their souls, the city’s inhabitants, especially women and nuns, offered their thanks and praise to God.”79 Yet alongside the celebrations, taunts, and exploration of how or why they had repelled his attack, royalists understood that the uprising was not over. The same writer who described the diarrhea and hunger in the rebel camp mused, “We don’t know what the rebel will do with himself or the route that he will take but it’s a beautiful opportunity to hunt him down as soon as possible and so the Cuzco troops will soon go after him.” This was on the mark: Royalists in Cuzco did not know Tupac Amaru’s next steps but went on the attack.80

6 In Pursuit of Tupac Amaru

T

H E COU RSE OF BAT T L E seemed to turn at the beginning of 1781. Tupac Amaru abandoned his campaign to take the city of Cuzco, and to the glee of the city’s royalists, reinforcements from Lima marched up the Andes destined for Cuzco. After three months of rebel attacks and territorial expansion, the royalists had taken the offensive. In March, their organized, well-armed forces, numbering over fifteen thousand, fanned out from Cuzco toward rebel headquarters down the Vilcanota Valley. These events from March through May seemed to indicate a complete turn of fortune, from unstoppable rebel growth to royalist domination. Nonetheless, they form part of a more complicated story. Even with their intimidating numbers, the royalists still had a challenging struggle ahead, one that would last into 1783 and beyond. The campaign of early 1781 was crucial, even momentous; it was not the end of the story. Royalists suffered greatly as they chased Tupac Amaru into his homeland. The terrain voided many of their advantages: their horses and heavy armament did not work well as the trails became narrower, steeper, and higher. Moreover, the altitude and the shortage of food and other supplies undermined morale, while deaths in battle and, above all, desertion decreased their numerical advantage over the rebels. On the defensive, Tupac Amaru and his major commanders turned to effective and frustrating guerrilla tactics. Reports from the south, the Lake Titicaca area, further disturbed the royalists. There, rebels had the upper hand and the uprising became increasingly violent. Tales of rebels massacring and beheading prisoners terrified the royalists. Commanders and soldiers alike understood that they would need to proceed to the lake, a prospect they dreaded.

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Tupac Amaru also faced new challenges. The Spanish had a mass, united army focused on trapping him. It was one thing to storm into town and topple a small militia; it was another to confront six wellarmed columns. He also faced internal divisions and dissension that had not surfaced prior to the battle of Cuzco. Micaela and he struggled to maintain order, to prevent violence against non-Spaniards and noncombatants, and to make sure that the troops did not sneak home. Discipline and desertion became a problem for both sides. Moreover, while the news from Titicaca was positive, the reports of rebel massacres and bloodletting troubled José Gabriel and Micaela. The insurgents were winning in the south, but not in the way that the Tinta rebels had envisioned. In the midst of the frenzied hunt for José Gabriel and the other leaders, the nature of the struggle was changing.

Fanning Out Led by Visitador General Antonio de Areche and Inspector General José del Valle, approximately fi fteen thousand troops entered Cuzco on February 24. Headquartered in the Bethlemite convent on the city’s outskirts, the soldiers paraded through the town the following day, their leaders celebrated with a mass and a “magnificent banquet.” Areche publicly recognized royalist supporters such as the priests in Cotabambas who had defended the region from the rebels, and conferred the rank of captain on Pumacahua and Nicolás Rosas, the kurakas of Chinchero and Anta. Days later Areche released a widely distributed decree that offered a pardon to those involved in Tupac Amaru’s “robberies, insults, and other grave crimes,” stressing how the rebel leader had used false affection, unfulfi lled promises, and fear to attract followers. He instructed those interested in a pardon to give up their arms and appear in the city of Cuzco. The pardon listed about thirty-five people excluded from the offer: Micaela Bastidas, Tupac Amaru, his immediate family, and their inner circle. Areche offered a reward of eighty pesos a month for life to anyone who turned in a person on the list. He also promised both the pardon and reward to anyone listed who handed over Tupac Amaru, Micaela Bastidas, their children, and other family members.1 The visitador sought to divide the rebels, believing that many would abandon the cause and hoping that some might even turn on their leaders.2

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The army divided its troops into six columns. The first included 310 dragoons (infantrymen), 100 of them mounted infantry, and 2,000 Indians from the Calca highlands. The second column had 950 cavalry drawn from Lima, Cuzco, and surrounding areas, and 2,000 additional Indians from Maca, Abancay, and Chinchero. All six columns followed this pattern; Indians from the Cuzco area greatly outnumbered soldiers from coastal Lima. Put another way, the composition of the royalist troops reflected Peru’s demography; most were Indians, followed in order by mestizos, blacks and black mixed races, creoles, and Spaniards.3 The army also mirrored social hierarchies. Spanish and creoles led and other groups, with the exception of kurakas, served as soldiers. The Indians had been “volunteered” by their kurakas or dragooned by Spanish forces en route to Cuzco. Some, perhaps, had joined on their own volition. In any case, they remained anonymous except when they got into trouble. No Spanish report ever named a common Indian who died fighting for the royalists. Blacks and mulattoes came from Lima. Some fought for pay, others because they had been forced. All of the coastal troops suffered with the altitude. Some rebel deserters joined the royalists because they were disheartened with the uprising, knowing that this would in most cases exempt them from punishment as insurgents. Some who had abandoned the rebel forces found themselves hundreds of miles from home and joined the royalists for food and, eventually, permission to return home. Commanders complained about Indian soldiers’ lack of discipline and commitment. In contrast, the indigenous troops led by kurakas such as Pumacahua had demonstrated their skill and determination in battle. The official account tallied 17,116 soldiers in Cuzco in March, although the actual number may have been over 20,000.4 They had over three thousand fusils, the light fl intlock musket that had replaced the harquebus, as well as numerous cannons. These proved invaluable in scattering the enemy, although their transport through the precipitous Andes required herculean effort. Leaving one thousand soldiers to defend Cuzco, the Army’s six columns fanned out, intending to converge on the rebel base around Tinta. The elaborate military chart and map reveal the increased troop count and precise planning, a vast improvement over the royalist efforts just months earlier.5

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Thousands of uniformed troops, their weapons glistening in the sun, impressed and intimidated the local population, and their arrival changed the nature of the confl ict. Royalists had taken the offensive. They counted on a substantial advantage in weaponry and cavalry (with the rebels, only the leaders traveled on horse) and were no longer outnumbered. Nonetheless, significant obstacles lay ahead. Feeding a larger army as they pushed farther and farther away from Cuzco proved difficult. Scant supplies translated into cold, hungry, and consequently lackluster soldiers. Moreover, the dramatic, mountainous topography of the area bedev iled the royalists. When they marched through the narrow valleys the rebels harassed them from peaks and ambushed them from all sides. They suffered, particularly those from the warmer coast, from the cold and thin air at twelve thousand feet above sea level. Also short on food and air, their horses stubbornly refused to continue and within weeks all but the commanders were on foot. A little over a month after parading their gallant horses through the streets of Cuzco, royalists were forced to abandon or even eat them. Despite organization, arms, and numbers, the royalists proved not to be the invincible force that many believed them to be upon their arrival in Cuzco. On March 1, General del Valle sent José Gálvez, the head of Madrid’s all-important Council of the Indies, a bleak assessment. Del Valle apologized for the delay in leaving Cuzco and blamed corregidors’ sloth in providing provisions and pack animals. Royalists in Cuzco grumbled as the soldiers ate massive amounts and Tupac Amaru slipped away farther and farther south. Del Valle contended that Tupac Amaru had convinced the “barbarous, naïve Indians” that his lineage made him the appropriate person to defend them and that his followers who died in battle would be resurrected once the struggle was over and would then “fi nd happiness and the wealth unduly taken from them.” Numerous authorities lamented in the coming months the widespread belief that Tupac Amaru had the power to save those martyred in his struggle.6 Del Valle described the enemy’s rustic weapons and complained that they preferred to remain in the highest mountains both because of their fear of fi rearms and the availability of rocks and boulders, which they hurled down upon the royalists.7 Del Valle believed that Tupac Amaru wanted to return south, to the Collao and Lake Titicaca, and also take Paucartambo, an important agricultural area and a gateway to the Amazon. For centuries, the jungle had

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N

Urubamba Urubamba

Paucartambo

Calca

Vi l c a b a m b a

Pisac CUZCO Caicay

Ocongate

Urcos Cotabambas

Ausangate

Paruro

Rondocán Quiquijana Acos

Tambobamba

Accha

Acomayo Sangarará

Pitumarca Checacupe

Pampamarca

Combapata Tinta

Tungasuca

Yanaoca Colquemarca

Sicuani

Livitaca

rima c River Apu

Santo Tomás Velille

Royalist campaign routes lake 0

Yauri

20 miles

Coporaque 0

20 km

The Royalist Advance, 1781

constituted a refuge for Cuzco rebels and malcontents. Most notably, in the sixteenth-century Conquest of the Incas, Manco Inca and his son Tupac Amaru, José Gabriel’s supposed ancestor, had taken flight from Cuzco toward Vilcabamba and the Amazon rain forest. This perhaps influenced Tupac Amaru’s own strategy. The Spanish commander thus had the columns fan out, the first and sixth columns approaching Paucartambo, but keeping close in order to help one another if attacked.8 The fifth column pushed to the west, into Cotabambas, while column four moved into Paruro. Columns two and three marched down the valley toward the rebel base. To the dismay of the coastal troops, however,

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del Valle drove his forces over the sheer mountain passes that lead to Tinta rather than through the pleasant valley path. He knew that in the narrow canyonlike valley, the rebels would pick his men off with their favorite weapons, boulders sent careening down hills or rocks from their slingshots. Instead, royalist troops had to climb precipitous and icy slopes, their heads pounding due to the thin air.9 Although disappointed by their failure to take Cuzco and concerned about desertions and the difficulties in supplying their troops, Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas still led a formidable force. While uniformed Spanish troops with cannons, shotguns, and horses intimidated the people of Cuzco, the rebel forces terrified well-to-do locals. The breakdown of discipline among the insurgents after the failed siege of Cuzco, although detrimental in the long run, made them even more fearsome. In the months to come, rebel leaders complained that their troops stopped following orders to limit their violence and looting. Unrestrained rebel hordes, no longer under the control of leaders, constituted a royalist nightmare. Moreover, thousands of rebels still worked in unison and proved to be fearsome adversaries in the rugged terrain south of Cuzco. Bishop Moscoso lamented in a January 21 letter that in their return to Tungasuca, Tupac Amaru and his forces had fought with “blood and fi re,” especially against Spaniards and mestizos. He worried that they would return to attack Cuzco.10 In the ever more intense confl ict, Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas continued their 1780 roles: he the frenetic, mobile commander and she the logistics chief who stayed closer to base. He remained on the move, rarely sleeping in the same place two nights in a row, and prepared to shift the fight from Cuzco to the Titicaca area. On January 14, José Gabriel instructed his commanders in the south, in Carabaya, Lampa, and Azángaro, to prepare “their Indians,” demanding that they shelter people from news about the failed attack on Cuzco.11 Micaela Bastidas managed the building of fortifications, aware that as she had feared since November, the royalists would attack the rebel base. They constructed a defensive wall outside of Combapata and dug trenches in Tinta. She continued to organize the rebels’ provisions, desperately calling on her followers to send soldiers and food and to maintain discipline.12 In early 1781, they rebuilt their forces, recruiting wherever they ventured and encouraging skeptical or frightened supporters. They threatened deserters and other traitors with death.13

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While all of the rebel troops fought in the name of Tupac Amaru, admiring him and Micaela, some battled under other commanders. Micaela did her best to make sure that the troops were paid (from what they expropriated), in coin or goods. She also strove to guarantee sufficient food, knowing that hungry troops would flee. On February 15, 1781, her brother, Antonio Bastidas, asked her for “coca and alcohol, the two things that maintain our soldiers.” He also requested jerky and wheat for his troops and some binoculars “to spot the enemy.” A month later, a priest in Sicuani complained to Micaela about hunger due to “extreme poverty.”14 The rebels’ commitment varied: some had given up everything to fight for the “last Inca” while others saw it as a temporary struggle and planned to be home for the upcoming harvest. Some had been forcibly recruited by their kuraka. Much of the rebel base came from the indigenous towns and hamlets to the south of Cuzco, in the river valley as well as the high peaks, but Tupac Amaru also recruited more mobile people, indigenous and mestizo, who were not tax-paying members of an Indian community.15 Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas worried about desertions and even treachery. Some important supporters had abandoned the rebels, including the Castelo clan, led by the patriarch Melchor and his son Antonio, who staged a mutiny in Sicuani after the failed siege of Cuzco. Antonio had been the rebel leader in the disastrous defeat in Saylla in late December, when royalists had blocked them from entering the Inca capital. Once back in Sicuani, they called for other creoles to rise up against Tupac Amaru and threatened those who remained faithful to the rebels. Their efforts might have been a last-ditch ploy to avoid royalist repression. They understood that the end was near and thus tried to convince authorities that they no longer supported the rebels and could even be valuable in the uprising’s repression. Both the mutiny and the ploy failed. Rebels killed several members of the Castelo family in an ambush. The historian David Cahill contends that the Castelo family’s treachery eased Tupac Amaru’s misgiving about anticreole violence among his supporters and that, after the mutiny, rebels increasingly targeted the American-born elite.16 The sixty-year-old Antonio Castelo turned himself in to del Valle in April but authorities treated him as an insurgent—particularly galling to the colonial courts because of his social background as someone of European descent— and tried him as a rebel commander and insider. Wit-

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nesses deemed him a recruiter and captain. Castelo claimed that he had been coerced, but to no avail—he was found guilty and executed.17 Rebel lieutenants reported cases where the local population resisted participating in or collaborating with the uprising. On January 11, one Francisco Torres wrote Tupac Amaru, “beloved father of all my heart and my lord, father of all the poor and all the miserable and helpless,” that in a small town in Paruro an Indian woman insulted him and refused to hand over mules and wheat. Referring to the requisitioning of supplies, the brave woman stated, “the Inca does these things only because he has nothing to show,” a stinging reference to the failed siege.18 Torres mentioned that in another town, locals were organizing against the rebels, contending that “the Inca had lost all the souls.” This implied that his troop numbers and general support had decreased, and perhaps, with the term alma or soul, underlined his soullessness due to the excommunication.19 Tupac Amaru instructed Torres on January 17 to bring him any troublemakers and to continue to seize goods.20 Indians in even the most prorebel communities no doubt disliked having their goods confiscated. Torres, however, was in Paruro and Acomayo, provinces that had provided many soldiers for the royalists and that were by no means rebel strongholds. His letter indicates that local people spoke up against the uprising even in front of one of the major lieutenants, Torres, and that confidence in the rebels had diminished after the failed siege. In January and February 1781, the rebels fought on numerous fronts. Forces led by Diego Cristóbal sieged Paucartambo, ravaging much of the area. He failed, however, to take Calca in the Sacred Valley, running up repeatedly against the royalist commander Pumacahua. Diego Cristóbal’s troops retreated behind the icy glacier peaks of Ocongate and Lauramarca, the snow-peaked mountains visible from Cuzco’s plaza.21 Tomás Parvina, who like Tupac Amaru claimed royal Inca heritage, was one of the rebellion’s major commanders. He had accompanied Tupac Amaru to the south in November and then in December led the largely unsuccessful forays into the Urubamba Valley, the brutal confrontations in which the royalist kuraka Pumacahua came out on top. On January 25, Parvina’s forces ambushed the royalist commander Isidoro Gutiérrez in Chahuaytiri, a small Indian community that looms above the idyllic town of Pisac.22 Royalists reported that rebel soldiers ate Gutierrez’s heart, drank his blood, and proclaimed, “Spanish blood turned out to be really tasty.”23 The story added fuel to the royalist propaganda that the

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rebels were savages, and no doubt made many soldiers ner vous. Pumacahua counterattacked in the following days and Parvina and Diego Cristóbal lost more than one thousand men.24 Did eating the heart and drinking blood reflect some type of Andean ritual? Scholars have sought to explain the increasing brutality in terms of traditions, both pre- and post-Conquest. Jorge Hidalgo showed that the beheading of one prisoner and the extraction of his heart in Upper Peru was an offering to the Inca deity of pachamama, mother earth.25 Scarlett O’Phelan Godoy underlined the parallels between rebel violence and that depicted by Guaman Poma’s fabulous illustrations in his early-seventeenth-century Corónica Nueva.26 In his important study of rebel violence against Europeans, Szeminski illuminated how Quechua people understood the Spanish, particularly the concepts that could lead to their exclusion from the category of “good Christian.” He also studied how indigenous people employed alternative notions of history and justice.27 In seeking to understand the indigenous perspective on the uprising, these views correct the royalists’ interpretation of the brutality as mere confirmation of the Indians’ savagery and backwardness. Nonetheless, the paucity of sources, particularly rebel accounts, makes this type of interpretation challenging and, beyond these important contributions, even questionable. Andean people varied greatly in 1780 (as they did in 1480 or 1980) and cannot be lumped together. They also changed over time. Szeminski used Mochican iconography (a pre-Inca coastal civilization that flourished from CE 100 to CE 800) to understand eighteenth-century mindsets.28 Studies that combine an understanding of contemporary views of power and violence in the Andes (with fieldwork in Quechua, a language I do not speak) with a reading of historical sources can illuminate the indigenous mindset, past and present. The authors cited above contribute by moving away from Eurocentric interpretations. Yet any interpretation that relates brutality with Andean traditions and mentalities needs a much greater set of sources and a deeper understanding of local society than what we count on. Not all of the battles pitted rebel and royalist soldiers. In some cases, rebel-leaning towns assaulted those believed to be royalist, or vice versa. For example, one document refers to the people of Colquemarca, Santo Tomás, Quillota, and Llusco attacking those of Capi and Collabamba, “with many dead and great damage done to estates, houses, and livestock.” The document noted that the rebels sought to cut down the Hua-

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cachaca Bridge to isolate the region from Cuzco.29 One rebel commander died in this confrontation and rebels forced a local priest to bury him with full honors, paying 100 pesos. Bishop Moscoso subsequently initiated proceedings against the priest, who claimed that he had been coerced and that once the rebels were gone he had dug up the body and dumped it in a field.30 Behind these town-versus-town confrontations lay decades of tensions as well as more ephemeral personal conflicts.31

The Hunt for Tupac Amaru In early 1781, royalist commanders focused on the pursuit of Tupac Amaru. Although fleeing the city of Cuzco, rebels protected their base area aggressively. As the royalists made their way toward Tinta in midMarch, rebels incessantly harassed them from the high peaks. In response, the Spanish charged head-on into these breathtakingly steep mountains, temporarily dislodging the rebels. In these initial confrontations, neither side could claim victory—the rebels made life miserable for the royalists and when necessary fled to even more inaccessible zones to reduce their vulnerability. But by March 18, both sides prepared for combat. A snowstorm, low supplies, and fear of a rebel trap had halted the royalist advance. The lack of provisions proved to be the royalists’ Achilles heel. One account complained that from the outset, the troops “experienced great discomfort, whether from rainstorms, hail, or storms— frequent in that elevation— or the lack of food and fi rewood, caused by the rebels’ ability to sever communication with royalist towns.” This isolation meant that “cold and hunger” threatened the lives of many soldiers.32 Feeding some fi fteen to twenty thousand soldiers in an area where traditional agriculture only flourished in the narrow valleys and where the bulk of the population was reluctant to assist the Spanish bedev iled General del Valle. Rebels and royalists alike had previously ransacked the estates, farms, and small plots at lower elevations and had depleted the herds of llamas, alpacas, sheep, and cows. Indigenous shepherds took the surviving animals to higher elevations. Native crops such as quinoa only grew in narrow niches in out-of-the-way elevations, around thirteen thousand feet above sea level, and in any event constituted an emergency supplement for the Spanish and coastal troops at best, in

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their eyes hardly qualifying as a true meal. The fundamental Andean staple, the ubiquitous potato, presented a challenge to marauding soldiers. Unlike corn or other grains that were stored in silos or stone granaries, potatoes remained underground until ready for the pot. Communities hid their supplies of chuño or freeze-dried potatoes. Furthermore, even if supply lines were open to Cuzco, that city could not offer surplus food to the soldiers. The presence of fifteen thousand troops in the city for a month had already exhausted supplies. Andean seasons also punished the royalist forces. The rainy season (November through April), which made every river crossing life-threatening and the daily march on slippery, muddy trails exhausting, was followed by a brief fall and then the frigid winter months of June through August. In March, for example, commanders complained about the rain; months later they suffered the bitter cold. As they pushed south, into higher and higher altitudes, temperatures dropped. Royalists suffered in the high peaks. Many soldiers had thought that they had passed the worst in the steep climb from Lima to Cuzco. Higher, more desolate summits, however, stretched above them in the journey from Cuzco to Lake Titicaca. Even though they had overcome initial soroche or altitude sickness, pursuing the enemy among peaks that loomed over thirteen thousand feet above sea level was exhausting and terrifying. But oxygen was not the only element in short supply. Just weeks after leaving Cuzco, Lieutenant Colonel Manuel Villalta complained that his column was out of meat, bread, and fi rewood and were hard pressed to get by on biscuits, probably unappetizing hardtack. The severe scarcities resulted not only from the lack of local provisions but also from shabby planning and reluctance to spend on the part of colonial authorities.33 Adding to the soldiers’ misery was sleep deprivation. The fear of rebel attack and the cold kept soldiers up at night, often covered with snow. Illnesses spread.34 On March 18, del Valle led his soldiers onto the Sullumayo peak, seeking to dislodge the rebels from the mountaintops that loomed over the valley. Rebel forces harassed them day and night and a punishing snowstorm and strong wind, along with the alarming lack of food, made conditions miserable. On March 20, the two sides clashed in Pucacasa. Royalists decimated the rebel front line, forcing survivors to “step over cadavers.”35 Bad weather and attacks on their flanks pushed the royalists back. On the twenty-first, a rebel deserter burst into camp, beg-

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ging not to be shot and promising valuable information. This was Yanuario Castro, a kuraka from Pitumarca, who reported to del Valle that Tupac Amaru planned a sneak attack that very evening or at dawn. The rebel leader had ten thousand men, who he had inspired with “many jugs of firewater (aguardiente), so that they would attack with the fury that their malevolent leader desires.”36 Del Valle prepared his troops, who after taking their positions quickly begged to return to their tents rather than die of cold. Although disheartened by his troops’ softness, del Valle admitted that they all prayed for dawn to come, preferring “to fight a million men” than stand knee-deep in the snow. They had no hot meal for three days and survived on biscuits and bits of stale bread.37 One anonymous account described “the days of cruel snow and cold, the soldiers up all night knee-deep in the snow.”38 At dawn the attack began, with shouts in Quechua of “Viva King Tupac Amaru.” Two rebel columns attacked the royalist troops and the third attempted to seize their mules and supplies. Tupac Amaru had the advantage. He had lured the royalists into the hills and concealed the whereabouts and strength of his forces. Nonetheless, the rebels found the troops ready for battle, not sleeping, as they had expected. The battle pitted del Valle’s largely black vanguard, the Lima cavalry and dragoons, against Tupac Amaru’s indigenous fighters. Rebels could not overpower the royalist camp and by 8:00 a.m. most of them had withdrawn. Even with the warning, del Valle’s troops barely repelled the attack, ultimately relying on the fortunate arrival of a column led by Juan Manuel Campero. Disgruntled soldiers complained bitterly to del Valle about their hunger and fatigue. The following night, March 23, del Valle witnessed many of his troops falling exhausted into the snow, unable to remain awake or even seated. Noting that the exhaustion caused by days without sleep and the bitter cold “would have defeated not just my soldiers but the robust warriors of the King of Prussia,” he began a retreat toward the valley.39 Campero brought desperately needed food and alcohol while a priest collected firewood, clothing, and more food for the starving, frostbitten royalists, who retreated to the Vilcanota River basin. The Spanish had learned not to confront the rebels in the higher mountain peaks. Tupac Amaru expressed his frustration over the near miss in Pucacasa, ridiculing the royalists’ cowardice.40 While the Black militia members and Pumacahua’s forces remained loyal to del Valle, Indians who had joined the royalists after the frustrated siege of Cuzco deserted en

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masse. Del Valle also learned that royalist indigenous troops from Anta, Abancay, and Huamanga had returned to their towns. He wanted to track them and execute every tenth man, the diezmado, but realized that the circumstances made it impossible. He bitterly described the desertion of “many Indians from among our auxiliary troops from Chinchero and Anta, who took with them many sacks of coca leaves and wheat and spread the rumor that I had sent them home and suspended the campaign until Easter.” The commander called for severe reprisals, “because of the bad consequences their malicious lies can have and because I now understand that we will get nothing out of this dim, disaffected nation [Indians] by treating them with contemplation and suavity.” 41 Del Valle’s opinion of Indians would become even more acidic in the coming months. After near disaster in Pucacasa, del Valle led his troops down toward the rebel center around Tinta. The rebels had destroyed the Urcos Bridge, so the royalists lost several days crossing the Vilcanota River, at its raging peak at the end of the rainy season. Del Valle knew that the royalists had little chance for success in the remote, high mountain passes, and instead sought something closer to a classic military engagement in the Vilcanota Valley. After days in the snowy mountain peaks, he extolled the valley’s “benign temperature and abundant food.” 42 His account, however, demonstrates a limited knowledge of the region; he named only a few of the larger towns found on colonial maps and described the challenging topography more than political geography. He observed that the rebels didn’t take full advantage of the narrow passes and deep canyons. Although this seemed to surprise him, he generally minimized the rebels’ talent and intelligence, stressing instead, when recognizing their military prowess, Indians’ supposed bloodthirsty nature and blind devotion to Tupac Amaru. Del Valle mentioned that the rebels attacked “from the left and the right” and surrounded them at night, peppering the royalist camp with light cannons and fusils. Del Valle’s troops encircled Quiquijana, a rebel stronghold. He initially calculated that it would take fifteen days and much bloodshed to take the town, but Quiquijana’s parish priest got a note through to him that the rebels had fled to join Tupac Amaru elsewhere. Royalist troops entered the town and found only women and the elderly cowering in the church. They tearfully begged del Valle for a pardon, pleading that he not torch their houses and haciendas. The Spanish commander hanged Luis Pomainga, a distant relative of Tupac Amaru and another sus-

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pected rebel. Del Valle belittled the indigenous population, contending that “in the hands of a more educated nation, conquering the town would have taken two months even with veteran and abundant soldiers,” whereas he marched in unopposed.43 The fighting in late March frustrated Tupac Amaru. In several letters, he sneered that the royalists fled like cowards. Pucacasa also made him overconfident—he had been close to decimating del Valle’s column. Concerned about other areas, the rebel leader sent troops to aid Tomás Parvina and Felipe Miguel Bermúdez in Chumbivilcas, Diego Verdejo in Cailloma, and Diego Cristóbal Tupac Amaru, his cousin, in Urubamba. Ramón Ponce and Vilca Apaza confronted royalists around Puno. The bulk of his forces retreated to Quiquijana and then Combapata, just north of Tinta, where they reinforced a wall and trenches to hold off the Spanish.44 In March, Parvina, one of Tupac Amaru’s most trusted commanders, moved his troops into Chumbivilcas. This towering province had been a rebel stronghold. Tupac Amaru worried about the extreme use of violence by both sides, and also feared losing it. On March 13, he sent a decree to the area, expressing his concern about “many excesses, everyone killing each other, with Spaniards and Indians hurting one another.” 45 He demanded that they live in peace, “as God orders,” threatening death at the gallows for those who didn’t obey. Once there, Parvina warned his followers about the grave consequences of desertion, and allowed them to ransack the property of those he considered deserters. He and Felipe Bermúdez confronted the royalist column led by Francisco Laisequilla. On March 21, Spanish forces pushed the rebels, who were virtually out of guns and ammunition, into a final defense near the town of Santo Tomás. Del Valle described Parvina and Bermúdez’s courage as they died fighting, below their cannon, the only significant weapon they had. Del Valle calculated that the rebels had five thousand to six thousand men and that the royalists executed over one thousand of them. To save ammunition, they stabbed them to death. At this point in the uprising, body counts had jumped from dozens to thousands. We know nothing about the identity of the dead rebels or their remains. On March 31, royalists paraded into Cuzco with Parvina’s and Bermúdez’s heads on pikes, displaying these grisly trophies of victory in the Plaza Mayor and then in the paths that led to Cuzco.46 The royalists had begun to slaughter all captives and to show off severed heads and other body parts. The use and display of violence was changing on both sides.

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Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas lost two important commanders in an area that had been considered a rebel stronghold. Yet the royalists also had reason to worry. On April 6, Visitador Areche complained that Chumbivilcas “is more agitated and rebel than ever.” He lamented that not only had its only judge and some priests fled, but the royalist officials and parish priests who remained had been at odds, “everyone just defending their own interests.” 47 Amid the bloody battles of late March, chaos and uncertainty reigned from Cuzco to Puno and into Upper Peru. Each side stressed the opponent’s weaknesses and confusion. Del Valle wrote, for example, on March 19, that “We hear that this damned man [Tupac Amaru]’s own house is in disarray with grief; that his wife won’t stop crying, that Diego is suffering from extreme melancholy, and that in Tinta, where he’s based and where they’ve built trenches for reinforcements, the twelve hundred soldiers protecting him are eager to turn him over or kill him, as soon as our troops approach.” 48 Violence and retribution caused the situation to deteriorate. One Spanish prisoner claimed that a rebel commander had sent Micaela Bastidas the heads of a woman and a young boy as trophies of his deeds.49 At the same time, reports from the far south, the Collao, maintained that the rebels were “thoroughly defeated”; troubling rumors also spread that Tupac Amaru was headed south to regroup in the Lake Titicaca area.50 Violence escalated. Rebel leaders struggled to control their troops. Antonio Bastidas wrote his sister Micaela in mid-February that after they entered the town of Urcos, his “Indians” destroyed houses and burned down the city hall. Indicative of the shortage of supplies faced by both sides, he requested coca leaves and alcohol, “the two things that keep our army going.” He also asked for charqui, llama jerky—the English term comes from Quechua— and wheat to pay his troops.51 Royalists executed prisoners en masse, dryly noting the deaths of hundreds or thousands of men, or punished them brutally. For example, the troops led by Laisequilla who had defeated Parvina encountered thirty-eight men on a hillside. They sent a local man to convince them to give up but he was received with a volley of rocks. The royalists charged the hill and captured the group. They whipped those “they caught alive” and sliced off pieces of their ears to make a “permanent mark of their iniquity and rebelliousness.”52 This distressing increase in the level of brutality did not reflect the opponents’ supposed traditions (European cruelty or Indian barbarism) as much as the spiral-

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ing of violence and the conversion of the enemy into a wretched “other” seen as deserving abuse and death. As was the case in other rebellions and wars, as casualties and mortalities mounted, combatants on both sides sought revenge (and the upper hand) and employed increasingly brutal tactics not seen in the initial combats. Desperation and hatred deepened and each side killed captives and desecrated cadavers. This fervor fed into and fostered each side’s understanding of the other as nonChristians or savages, interpretations that justified greater violence. In the midst of this violence and chaos, Tupac Amaru and Visitador Areche wrote one another, seeking to explain their plans and, perhaps, negotiate some sort of accord. Their correspondence resembled a chess match, as each side tried to inflate its base and narrow that of the enemy. Tupac Amaru insisted that he was only fighting against evil Spaniards while Areche cast the rebels as a small, aberrant band of violent apostates who would soon be annihilated. Although propaganda pieces, the letters shed light on both sides and the state of affairs in early 1781.

David and Goliath Correspond On January 26, Tupac Amaru wrote Father Josef Paredes. He explained that “European heretics” had been at fault at Sangarará and that he had actually saved lives. In addition, his Christian faith had stopped him from taking Cuzco, thus saving it and its numerous churches, monasteries, and convents from destruction. He insisted that Bishop Moscoso erred in pitting the church against him and reiterated his proposal to abolish the reparto, mita, customs houses, and sales tax, arguing that exploitative corregidors not only mistreated Indians but also prevented them from being good Christians. He ridiculed royalists’ confidence in support from Lima, scoffing “I’ve been in that Audiencia and I’ve seen that the only thing they’re good for is killing Jews and wolfing down corn pudding [mazamorras] . . . they also excel at delaying lawsuits and living off the blood of the poor, which is what happened to me.”53 He insisted that he had only killed Arriaga, no one else, and signed off as “the last descendent of the last King of Peru, his last heir.”54 He would continue this line of argument in his correspondence with the visitador. On March 5, Tupac Amaru sent Areche a long (twenty-eight paragraph) letter with a prisoner, the priest Rafael José Sahuaraura Titu Atauchi. Sahuaraura’s brother, Pedro Sahuaraura Ramos Titu Atauchi,

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a kuraka, had died in Sangarará.55 Tupac Amaru later claimed that his scribe, Francisco Cisneros, a member of his inner circle, Felipe Bermúdez, and Sahuaraura himself had helped him write it.56 José Gabriel began with a respectful, even obsequious, tone and then explained that after Arriaga’s death, he went to Cuzco to fulfi ll “His Majesty’s wishes,” referring to the Spanish king, and withdrew in order to avoid bloodshed. He did not mention his prior foray to the south or his violent actions. José Gabriel claimed that he wanted to avoid the examples of the Roman emperor Vespasian and his son Titus regarding the siege of Jerusalem. With this, the rebel leader made it clear that he did not want Cuzco to be sacked. Turning to the Old Testament, he cited King Saul, whose defeat and death at the hands of the Philistines at Mount Gilboa crippled the kingdom of Israel, and compared his own struggle against the Spanish with that of David and Goliath.57 Tupac Amaru described in great detail how corregidors oversaw a corrupt web of activities that ignored both Spanish law and Indian well-being. After expounding on brutal conditions in haciendas and textile mills and how the scant wages prevented Indians from paying the head tax, he asked who were the true apostates and traitors: Indians or corregidors?58 Building on a much-discussed theme in the eighteenth century, he complained that priests did not maintain churches or their own appearance and focused more on charging exorbitant fees rather than offering Mass itself. Tupac Amaru also grumbled that these priests “as foreigners don’t know the language [Quechua], this means that there are twenty-year-old girls and boys who don’t even know how to cross themselves.” This was an unusual complaint, for rebels rarely referred to the need for Quechua-speaking priests. Throughout the letter, he stressed his deep Catholicism and made almost no reference to the brutal war that he and the recipient, Visitador Areche, were waging.59 On March 5, 1781, Areche published his decree offering a pardon for most insurgents and a reward for those who helped capture the uprising’s leaders. He described the rebellion’s sacrilegious nature and destructive ways, and explained its mass following in terms of the leaders’ “vain, unjust, and damned” promises to naïve followers as well as intimidation through threats and punishment. He demanded that the decree be published in Quechua and Spanish and posted in “every town and place possible.”60

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On March 12, the day he received Tupac Amaru’s letter, Areche sent two priests with his response. One of them, Fernando Ramos Titu Atauchi, Rafael José Sahuaraura’s uncle, read it out loud to José Gabriel, Micaela, their two sons Hipólito and Fernando, and Diego Cristóbal. It angered Tupac Amaru so much that he had the two messengers arrested.61 In contrast to most colonial documents that begin with a paragraph of formulaic salutations, it opens in unusually straightforward fashion: “I have just read the extensive letter that Your Honor sent me on the fi fth of this month that sought to convince me that you would stop hostilities if I were to take certain measures.” He chided Tupac Amaru for casting the rebellion as justifiable.62 Areche argued that Tupac Amaru was disingenuous or naïve not to recognize the gravity of his crimes and then contended that he, the visitador, and the colonial system in general, did all it could to improve the lot of Indians. In fact, he used a classic bureaucratic line in reference to corregidors’ abusive behavior: “it was about to be fi xed” (estava cerca de remediarse). He ridiculed Tupac Amaru’s declaration that he had royal powers to punish corregidors and to take other measures and stressed that the rebel leader had committed murder in the case of Corregidor Arriaga. He pleaded with God to show Tupac Amaru “his great crimes, to feel the blows, the calamities, the assaults, the destruction, and sacrilegious acts that he and his people have committed against the Church (santuario), these destroyed provinces, and obedience to the king.”63 Never losing an amicable yet cold or condescending tone, he demanded that Tupac Amaru turn himself in to avoid more bloodshed and dishonor.64 Tupac Amaru considered the letter “delirious.” Commander del Valle, who found himself increasingly at odds with Areche, also questioned its tone, believing that it voided any possibility of a negotiated solution.65 This correspondence gave little hint of the warfare raging south of Cuzco. Little is known about the circulation of the letters other than the obvious fact that Areche received Tupac Amaru’s, but both writers sought to present their movement in the best light, attract the support of the opposition, and test the resolve of the other. They also fi rmly believed in their prerogatives: Tupac Amaru as the defender of the indigenous masses and heir of the Incas, Areche as the maximum representative of the Spanish, alongside (above, in his eyes) the viceroy. They both prided themselves on their intellect and leadership abilities. Supporters in both camps presumably wondered if writing

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long letters was the best use of their time in light of the almost incessant fighting. Areche’s correspondence also reflected how much Andean people and topography exasperated him. On March 1, before leaving Cuzco, he wrote Gálvez in Madrid that Indians believed that the rebellion “would mean the end of the church, priests, the head tax, corregidors, repartimientos, obrajes, mitas, customs houses, and chapetones and Europeans. They also think that if they die in the action of crowning [the Inca], they will resuscitate on the third day.”66 To Areche, the end of Spanish rule and resurrection were equally absurd beliefs. Although he noted mass desertions on the rebel side and the increasing reliance on coercion—hangings and beheadings—to maintain discipline, clear signs for him of rebel decline, he glumly reported Indians’ primitive Catholicism and deep— but for him, false—memory of the Incas, “forgetting the oppression they suffered under them.” In his mind, Indians’ shallow religiosity and reverence for the Incas would make them difficult to defeat or to assimilate. Areche explained his shock and disappointment with the widespread use of Quechua: “It pains me deeply to walk this land without understanding what is spoken to me, despite the king’s repeated insistence that the natives be taught Spanish.”67 Only a bloody uprising forced a high crown official to visit the Andean hinterland and experience multilingual Peru. Areche not only censured Indians’ elementary Christianity and Spanish, but also blamed lax policies in Lima, specifically the viceroy’s inability to crush “insolent malcontents” as well as those who refused to pay the royal treasury. Areche’s dislike for Viceroy Jáuregui and his fervent opposition to Quechua, linked to the belief that Spanish language and culture had to be imposed in the Andes, marked the struggles within the Spanish camp and disagreements over policy in the coming months and years.

Capture Del Valle’s retreat from Pucacasa frustrated Tupac Amaru— he thought that he had been on the verge of routing the Spanish. It also led him to believe that the royalists were vulnerable, their numbers and organization neutralized by topography, weather, and guerrilla tactics. This led him to send troops to Chumbivilcas, Cailloma, and Urubamba.68 Yet the Spanish were hot on their heels. After delays crossing the river in

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Urcos and waiting for the last columns to approach from Cuzco, in late March royalist forces moved down the valley toward rebel headquarters. Rebel forces led by Tupac Amaru harassed the Spanish with hit-and-run attacks, artillery fire, and their one mobile cannon, from Urcos to Combapata. The fifth royalist column, which had pushed to the southwest, confronted rebels in Paruro, Cotabambas, and the upper provinces, defeating and killing Parvina and Bermúdez. After skirmishes in Paruro, the fourth column joined it. In late March, as snow and hail began to fall in the higher peaks, the royalists pushed closer and closer to the rebel base north of Tinta, in the hills just above the valley where the Salca River feeds into the Vilcanota. They recognized that they were outnumbered but also knew, from deserters, that the insurgents were running low on supplies. Pumacahua’s troops dislodged the rebels from advantageous positions on the mountainside. On April 4, the royalist second column led by Lieutenant Colonel Villalta arrived, converging with del Valle’s column. That night, the rebels attacked Villalta’s column, beheading four sentinels. A fifth fired his gun and the suddenly awakened royalists rushed into battle formation. Del Valle, however, ordered that they lie on the ground to lure the enemy into range. Once the rebel front line was almost on top of the hail-covered soldiers, the royalists shot their muskets in unison, killing many and causing the survivors to flee. The rebels left behind their five cannons.69 In open battle on relatively open, flat ground without the element of surprise working for the rebels, the royalists now had the advantage. Using their superior cavalry and weaponry, the colonial forces attacked, moving quickly to surround the insurgents and force them into the valley. Perhaps a deserter had informed them of the rebels’ strength and exact location.70 A charge by black militia members again broke the rebel lines and gunshots left “an infi nite number of wounded” and hundreds dead.71 The royalists were on the offensive. According to one report, the horrific bloodshed and the loss of cannons, weapons, and other supplies stunned Tupac Amaru, who was in the midst of his troops.72 He raced on horseback and plunged into the Vilcanota/Combapata River to save himself, nearly drowning. Royalists took hours to cross the river— the rebels had destroyed the bridge— and del Valle claimed that Tupac Amaru wrote a frenzied note to Micaela: “Many brave soldiers are coming after us; we have no alternative but to die.”73

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The bulk of the royalist troops came through Combapata, where the rebels had built their fort. Del Valle used five cannons and gunfire to destroy the wall that the rebels had constructed, forcing the insurgents to flee. Other than seven prisoners, del Valle found Tinta deserted. Among the rebel leader’s belongings, they discovered a portrait of Tupac Amaru on horseback in the midst of the Sangarará victory that Tupac Amaru or Micaela had commissioned. To the consternation of authorities in Cuzco and generations of historians, the royalists destroyed the painting,74 Enticed by the promise of a significant reward, royalists rushed south after the rebel leaders. On April 7, soldiers trapped Micaela, two of her sons, Hipólito and Fernando, and other family members as they sought to escape toward La Paz via Livitaca. In hindsight, Micaela had waited too long for Tupac Amaru. Some accounts claim that their decision to take valuable but heavy treasure such as gold and silver delayed their departure from Tinta and slowed down their escape. Micaela admitted having three pairs of earrings, eleven rings, golden buckles, a golden necklace, bits of gold, 600 pesos (en plata sellada), four boxes of gold, “a lot of” silver, and clothing and textiles. The Spanish believed she hid much more.75 Separated from Micaela since the March battles, Tupac Amaru fled to Langui, the area south of rebel headquarters that they had always projected as their escape route. In Langui, Ventura Landaeta, one of Tupac Amaru’s followers, insisted that he rest before continuing his retreat. He also urged Tupac Amaru to stay and resist rather than run. Tupac Amaru realized too late that it was a ruse. Landaeta and another traitor, Francisco Santa Cruz, restrained him with the aid of local women and the local priest, Antonio Martínez, until mulatto militiamen, who had tracked him since his escape in the Vilcanota River, seized him. Tupac Amaru offered 200,000 pesos for his freedom but to no avail. The soldiers quickly tied up the rebel leader.76 Just weeks after having nearly routed the royalists in the snowy peaks, Tupac Amaru was now in shackles. A well-armed battalion transferred Tupac Amaru and about thirty prisoners— the estimates vary— to Tinta. Authorities hanged at least sixty-seven prisoners, lower-level followers, in the following days. Terrified Indians watched these grisly rituals, praying to be incorporated in the general pardon promised by royalist leaders.77 Royalists killed hundreds and perhaps thousands more— the number cannot be verified. The execution of Indians rarely left a paper trail, particularly in

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the towns outside of the Vilcanota Valley. Unlike del Valle and Areche, who had to inform Cuzco, Lima, and Madrid of their actions, lesser commanders did not send formal reports and were disinclined to detail the slaughter of the enemy. Spanish forces seized weapons, ammunition, food, silver, and items reportedly taken from churches in Langui and Tinta. Rumors lingered for years about a hidden treasure of gold and silver.78 Del Valle calculated that he had seized two trunks full of papers, providing Areche “all you need to fi nd out about the origin of this raucous uprising.” One commentator wryly noted that these sources might make his accomplices in the city of Cuzco “lose sleep.”79 On April 8, Tupac Amaru wrote letters from Tinta to his cousin Diego Cristóbal, Andrés Mendigure, and other commanders asking them to turn over their arms and to trust del Valle. Few believed in his sincerity and although common indigenous people turned themselves in, claiming they had nothing to do with the uprising or had been forced to fight, rebel officers did not fall for the trap.80 Rumors arrived that Diego Cristóbal would attempt to rescue his uncle in the road from Urcos to Cuzco and royalists reinforced the substantial and heavily armed troops that watched over their prize captives, all of whom had their arms and legs tied and chained. On April 14, with Visitador Areche in the lead, the convoy reached Cuzco. The city, “crazy with happiness,” had been celebrating for days. Around the clock church bells helped spread the news.81 Behind royalist euphoria, however, lay trouble. Rebels sneaked into Checacupe after it had been taken by the royalists, killing the local priest, Spaniards, and women and children who apparently supported the Spanish.82 The Spanish would greatly regret that Diego Cristóbal, Andrés Mendigure, and Mariano Tupac Amaru had not been captured. The rebellion was not over. Moreover, Areche sought to prevent del Valle from taking credit for the capture and these two rivals increasingly clashed. In the months to come, infighting would develop into a broader split between moderates, who sought negotiations with the rebels, and hardliners, who believed exterminating the enemy and Andean culture was the only solution. This clash would shape not only the outcome of the rebellion but also the nature and fate of Spanish rule in Peru.

7 Torment

T

H E T R I A L A N D EX ECU T ION of Tupac Amaru, Micaela Bastidas, and their inner circle combined the administrative formality that marked Spanish-American justice and the public cruelty that characterized early modern Europe. Overseen by Areche and the newly arrived Visitador Benito Mata Linares, two hard-liners who would cast a long shadow on Cuzco and Peru in the coming years, the trial sought to obtain as much information as possible about the rebellion and to intimidate the rebels’ followers, real or potential. The Spanish also wanted revenge. They executed the prisoners in brutal fashion in front of thousands, intending for the spectacle to discourage the indigenous population from further subversion. In addition, they sought to erase the memory of the uprising, its leaders, and the movement’s ideas, as symbolized in the burning of their bodies and the dumping of the ashes into the Huatanay River. These were formidable and perhaps contradictory objectives. The ritual was ghastly and shocked the region. Yet while it certainly intimidated, it failed to silence or make people forget. For many people in Cuzco, past and present, the May 17 execution converted the rebels into martyrs rather than ignored apostates and criminals. If Areche and Mata Linares believed that the execution and those executed would be forgotten after 1781, they were wrong. Even Peruvians with a foggy notion of national history have heard of the execution. Today plaques from the Rotary Club and from Cuzco’s municipality mark the location of the execution in the bustling Plaza de Armas.

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Seeing My Countrymen and Women Distressed, Mistreated, Persecuted Colonial authorities followed standard legal practice, although taking special steps because of the significance of the rebel leaders and the perceived threat that sympathizers might attempt to free the prisoners. Areche had gone to great lengths to assure the prisoners’ arrival in Cuzco, worried about the rumors that Diego Cristóbal Tupac Amaru and Mariano Tupac Amaru would attack. Areche met the convoy in Urcos, seeking to claim credit for the capture. On April 14, with most of the main streets of Cuzco shut off and closely guarded, the prisoners reached the Plaza Mayor. Tupac Amaru, chained to a mule, his ankles shackled and his arms tied behind his back, wore a velvet gown and a cross, as though part of an auto-da-fé. His family members were instructed to say goodbye to one another—they would not see each other again until the execution, as he and his son Hipólito were kept in isolation.1 Micaela reportedly cried. A realist, she had always understood the danger they faced and knew that the Spanish would treat them harshly.2 Tupac Amaru remained in a cell adjacent to the Plaza Mayor, in what had been part of the Jesuit holdings, while the rest of the prisoners were sent to the former San Francisco de Borja School, which had been converted into a jail, military headquarters, and at this point a courthouse. Areche and Mata Linares relied on ten local scribes and notaries to organize the information and to keep precise records. They called upon Cuzco lawyers to aid them and to serve as defense attorneys. Despite hundreds of testimonies and the review of thousands of documents, as well as complex legal debates about matters such as whether the death penalty could be applied to minors and whether Indians required different legal procedures, they moved quickly. They handed down verdicts for the nine principal defendants in a month and for the sixtynine others in less than three months. More than a hundred prisoners were released without trial.3 Clearly, Tupac Amaru was the centerpiece and Micaela Bastidas an important second. Prosecutors scrutinized the documentation found in Tinta and elsewhere and also brought in dozens of witnesses and forced defendants to testify against one another, the careo. The Spaniards and creoles who served as Tupac Amaru’s scribes, discussed in Chapter 3, played a particularly important role. Royalists trusted the testimony

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of these creoles and Spaniards while these defendants themselves desperately sought to counter accusations that they had willingly aided the rebellion. The trial against Tupac Amaru, found in the famous legajo 33-Cuzco in Seville’s Archivo de Indias and fully transcribed in the Colección documental del bicentenario de la revolución emancipadora Tupac Amaru (Document Collection for the Bicentennial of the Emancipating Revolution of Tupac Amaru), begins with documents announcing his capture and the testimony dating from April 17 of Francisco Molina, Francisco Cisneros, and other scribes and advisors. The trial material includes his correspondence and decrees found on the rebels or elsewhere. Prosecutors added documentation as it came to their attention, breaking the strict chronological organization. Just as historians would do in the following centuries, the prosecuting team pored over all of the correspondence to and from Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas to find out who supported the rebellion as well as its geographical extension and motives. Mata Linares cross-examined Tupac Amaru on April 19. The defendant identified himself as from Surimana, married to Micaela Bastidas, the noble Indian kuraka of Pampamarca in charge of the jurisdiction of Pampamarca, Tungasuca, and Surimana. He immediately denied that “he had gone against the king or his Crown.” Tupac Amaru described his conflicts with several corregidors and admitted his great frustration with them. He had asked several of these authorities what would happen if the reparto were abolished and they answered glibly, “You would all have your head tax, the tribute, doubled.” In other words, even if the Spanish freed Indians from one levy, the reparto, they would compensate by increasing another. He admitted that this exchange had led him to complain to his wife, “What good is it for me to be Tupac Amaro if we can’t do anything for our countrymen [paisanos]?” 4 Mata Linares immediately asked him what he meant by this and Tupac Amaru rambled, “If the kingdom were a hacienda and I had rights to it, and there were Indians on it and I saw them treated badly, it would be necessary, as a descendent of the Incas, to defend them so they are no longer treated badly; as such, seeing my countrymen and women distressed, mistreated, persecuted, I believed it was my obligation to defend them, to see if I could lead them out of this oppression.”5 Mata Linares then asked him why he believed himself a legitimate descendent of the Incas, who gave him this right, to which he responded the Audiencia or high court. Mata Linares rebuked him, charging that

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the Audiencia had made no such declaration. The questions continued on April 20 and, after taking Saturday the 21st off, concluded on the 22nd. Tupac Amaru remained evasive, providing names already known by the Spanish and vague answers about with whom he had planned the uprising and for how long. When Mata Linares accused him of challenging the king’s troops, taking the law into his own hands, killing Spaniards, and committing other crimes, Tupac Amaru insisted that he was simply defending Indians.6 On April 21, Areche received a report from royalist commanders Domingo Guerra and José Acuña in Tinta. Promising “their best efforts in inquiring about the frenetic and audacious caudillo,” they included detailed a list found in Felipe Bermudez’s house of “Spaniards in this Province.” They also included their own list of the dead, captured, and still-atlarge rebel leaders.7 The list of Spaniards indicated that the rebels had done intelligence work, tracking which Spaniards remained near Tinta. The latter list cited twelve dead, four prisoners, and approximately fifty “still to be captured” by the rebels. Prosecutors incorporated documents as they arrived. On the 27th, the face-to-face confrontations with witnesses began. The prosecutor asked them repeatedly how long Tupac Amaru had planned the uprising and with whom, seeking information about his allies in Lima and Cuzco. Tupac Amaru remained vague throughout the one-month trial and while acknowledging his lawsuit in the Lima high court and his acquaintance with people across the viceroyalty, he did not confirm a long-brewing conspiracy or the support of others. He refused to implicate people not already arrested or clearly associated with him and insisted that his struggle sought to aid the King of Spain by correcting injustices that corrupt officials participated in or abetted.8 At midday on April 27, a desperate Tupac Amaru wrote a note in his own blood on a small piece of fabric from the lining of his shirt. He gave it to the guard with instructions to get it to lieutenant José Casildo. The note asked for a fi le to remove his shackles. He believed that once unshackled, if he made it to the yard, the people of Cuzco would come to his rescue. He estimated that he could then take the city in two hours.9 He offered the guards on duty magnificent bribes of gold and silver (nineteen large bags or zurrones of silver and ten arrobas, a total of over two hundred fi fty pounds, of gold), hidden in an estate outside of Tinta that only he could fi nd— the two men who had helped him bury the

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treasure, he claimed, were dead. He asked that they help rouse royalist soldiers from Huamanga (an Andean area between Cuzco and Lima) stationed in Cuzco, who might be convinced to aid his escape. Tupac Amaru tried to sway the guards by insisting that his first targets would be Visitador Areche, their commander, and the other “lying señores” of the barracks.10 The guard, who could not read the note—it was barely legible and he was presumably illiterate—told his commander and the following day Mata Linares interrogated Tupac Amaru about it. The prisoner acknowledged the letter but denied that he had threatened Areche and other Spaniards. That day, Tupac Amaru consistently irritated Mata Linares by rejecting the major charges against him. Frustrated that Tupac Amaru would not incriminate himself and others for subversion, hom icide, theft, and other charges, and perhaps concerned about further escape ploys, Mata Linares ordered on April 28 that he be tortured, el tormento de garrucha. While authorities routinely hit and underfed prisoners, they had never put to use such an elaborate device. In the pulley torture or strappado, victims are suspended from a pulley on the ceiling via a rope attached to their wrists, their arms tied behind their backs. They are dropped and lifted, weights suspended from their legs adding to the agony. Developed by the medieval Inquisition, its victims have included Machiavelli and defendants in the Salem witch trials.11

Garrucha Elaborate forms of torture such as this were uncommon in highland Peru. The Inquisition had been at the vanguard of implementing horrific forms of bodily punishment, but the Holy Office did not have jurisdiction over Indians and did not maintain much of a presence outside of Lima. Its active Lima office focused instead on Jews, Protestants, and witches. Provincial cities and towns had stocks to punish and humiliate, while haciendas and textile mills counted on their own jails, stocks, and other devices to punish. The lack of formal torture in Cuzco’s jails does not mean, of course, that prisoners were not mistreated. Authorities frequently beat prisoners and kept them hungry. Tupac Amaru’s half-brother, Juan Bautista, described his mistreatment. When authorities arrested him, they jammed his pinkies into the trigger guard of a musket and squeezed the

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trigger until his fi ngers bled. They locked him in a fi lthy cell with common prisoners and constantly insulted and threatened him. The warden encouraged the guards to hit him. As a prisoner, Juan Bautista Tupac Amaru was always hungry, surviving on bits of rotten meat that could not be sold at the market.12 Yet even this abusive mistreatment did not approach the sadistic level of suffering infl icted systematically on Tupac Amaru. On April 29, Mata Linares entered Tupac Amaru’s cell. He asked him to reconsider his refusal to name accomplices in Lima and Cuzco and those with whom he had corresponded, and then posed more specific questions: whether it was true that he had been planning the uprising for five years; whether he had mentioned it when he took confession; if he spoke out against repartimientos in Lima, fostering rebellion; and whether Mariano Barrera had written to him about a revolt when he was in Lima, mentioning that “four provinces are with us and we could move on to Cuzco and destroy the Spaniards.” Authorities worried that if the rebellion had roots in Lima—which it did not—it could revive even after the leaders’ execution. Tupac Amaru only acknowledged that he had complained to his confessor about corregidors’ “extortions” and mistreatment of Indians; the priests had instructed him to “leave everything to God.”13 Mata Linares asked him several times to answer the questions, which Tupac Amaru refused to do, and so the judge declared that the defendant’s obstinacy forced him to resort to torture. He declared that if Tupac Amaru had a leg or arm broken or if he died, it was his fault, not Mata Linares’s. The executioner made Tupac Amaru change into a coarse robe and tied his legs together and his arms behind his back. He tightly fastened a thick rope to his wrists and ran it through a pulley on the ceiling. He attached “one hundred pounds of iron or lead” to his legs and lifted him about six feet off the ground.14 This puts all the pressure on the prisoner’s internal shoulder sockets; in most cases, it dislocates them.15 Mata Linares asked Tupac Amaru again about his accomplices, specifically people whom he had written in Cuzco, and when he declined to answer, the executioner hoisted him up near the ceiling and dropped him, catching the slack just before he hit the floor. According to one history of torture, “the shock to the body, of this suddenly terminated fall, was sufficient to jar every bone, joint, and nerve in the system. In most cases it entailed dislocation. The process was repeated again and again until

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the culprit confessed or became unconscious.”16 In the case of Tupac Amaru, it lasted for half an hour, thirty minutes of excruciating pain. A clerk transcribed Tupac Amaru’s gut-wrenching screams and pleas for mercy. Modern torture regimes do not provide such a record. The moans, entreaties, and brief exclamations indicate a man in paralyzing agony who could not complete a sentence. It begins: “ay, ay, ay, mercy Lord, ay, ay, I am lost your lord [vuestra señoría], your lord, ay, ay, no more, no, ay, more, the Indians for Holy Mary, your lord, your lord, ay, ay, there is no more, I haven’t dealt with anyone, in the name of Holy Mary’s rosary, take my life which has to be remedied, for Holy Mary, ay, your lord will have to reckon with God, your lord for Holy Mary, ay, merciful one, take my life which I haven’t had. . . .” This constitutes the first five minutes or so of the torture session. These pitiful moans and pleas for mercy continued, Tupac Amaru hoisted up and dropped down repeatedly, until “the clock on the table signaled that half an hour had passed.”17 Tupac Amaru named no one except the Virgin Mary, Jesus, and Joseph. The brutal, relentless combination of the slow lift, the weight fully on his upper body, abrupt free fall, and sudden stop presumably dislocated both his shoulders and probably broke some bones. One account sympathetic to the rebels written just a few years later stressed how Tupac Amaru resisted giving names or admitting his guilt and snarled at Areche: “You and I are the only ones guilty for the bloodshed. You for oppressing this kingdom with excessive and new taxes, and I for wanting to liberate it from this tyranny and humiliation.”18 This account claimed that in a letter, Spanish witnesses to the torture had stated, “It was a pleasure to hear the Indian Rebel’s bones snap and crunch as the rope twisted.”19

Unimaginable Violence The questioning continued in early May. The Spanish did not torture Tupac Amaru or any of the other defendants again.20 Tupac Amaru conceded knowing people with whom he had corresponded, hardly a shocking admission, and acknowledged in vague fashion his long-festering dislike for corregidors’ exploitation of Indians. He gave prosecutors almost no valuable information. Micaela Bastidas used a different tactic. She claimed that Tupac Amaru told her little about the uprising and that if she had asked him, he would have told her to “go away” [pasear]

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or have hit her. She stated that he had wanted to strike her several times and that she was too scared to run away. Later in the trial she testified that Tupac Amaru abused her verbally and physically, by whipping, kicking, striking, and slapping her and occasionally tying her to a post.21 Tupac Amaru contradicted her (probably without knowing he was doing so), confirming that he consulted with her and admitting that “It’s certain that before the uprising he sometimes whipped, slapped, or beat her with a stick, but not once it began.”22 She also stressed her ignorance and blamed the Spanish and creole scribes for the incriminating communications. Unfortunately for this line of defense, virtually every testimony underlined her vigor and skill as a commander and her leadership of the uprising. Several claimed Bastidas was better or fiercer than her husband. Francisco Molina said “She gives written and verbal orders with more rigor than the Rebel”; Manuel Galleguillos testified that “her orders were stronger than those of her husband and her desire was to kill all the Spaniards with blood and fire”; according to Mariano Banda, “She gave more orders than anyone.”23 The documentation—including dozens of her communications, which she probably dictated to someone else—and the testimonies contradicted her strategy of casting herself as a secondary character who was only following the orders of her violent husband.24 Her defense lawyer requested that she be exempted from the death penalty, and sent instead to a presidio in Africa.25 He was denied. With the exception of Hipólito, Micaela and José Gabriel’s son, other defendants denied the charges or blamed coercion. When asked about whether he sought a rebellion, Hipólito admitted, “It’s true that I have desired it.”26 One piece of evidence prompted additional questioning in the trial and has intrigued analysts for centuries. Upon his arrest royalists found a proclamation in one of Tupac Amaru’s pockets, styling him “Don Joseph the First by the Grace of God, Inca of Peru, Santa Fe, Quito, Buenos Aires and the Continent on these South Seas, Duke of the Superlative, Lord of the Caesars and Amazons, with Dominions in the Great Paititi, Commissary Distributer of the Divine Piety Inheritance”.27 It stated that “our council” had ascertained in multiple meetings that the “kings of Castile have usurped the Crown from me and the dominion of our people for nearly three centuries,” and have “imposed on our subjects unbearable burdens of taxes, ser vice, duties, customs, sales tax, monopolies, land taxes, tithes, and fifths [quintos]. . . . The administration

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of justice always favors those who offer and pay the most.”28 The proclamation called for no taxes to be paid to the “European intruders,” whereas the priesthood should be “honored” with the tithe and other payments. It ended by demanding that it be posted in cities, towns, and villages throughout “his dominion.” The proclamation reached Huarochirí outside of Lima, and New Granada—present-day Colombia. Tupac Amaru, however, denied writing it. He claimed that Micaela had mentioned it to him and thought that it might have come from the mayor of the town of Marcapata.29 For prosecutors, it was a sign that he sought “not only to rise up but also to rule this vast kingdom.”30 They added this charge to the accusations. Tupac Amaru became ill on May 2— probably from the effects of the torture days before— and this, as well as his efforts to write supporters and organize an escape, encouraged prosecutors to hurry. They wanted him alive for the execution. He testified several more times, stressing his work to defend Indians from the brutal and ultimately unChristian ways of corregidors and other authorities.31 José de Saldívar y Saavedra, an additional prosecutor or fi scal, summarized the charges: hom icide, parricide— as Arriaga was the paternal authority of the area— and lèse-majesté, the most heinous form of treason. He noted that these important captures had not stopped the uprising and that nothing else could be gained from interrogating Tupac Amaru, who had not provided useful information “not only in the first interrogation but even during the garrucha torture session, which, even though among the strongest sessions, had no effect on him. Tenacious in his denial, he did not confess to any of the accusations.”32 Authorities instructed Tupac Amaru to hire a lawyer for the sentencing phase but when he said he did not have one, they named Miguel Iturrizarra, a lawyer and priest. The defense attorney requested that Tupac Amaru be absolved or that the punishment be lightened. Yet Iturrizarra recognized the “gravity” of the crimes and did not make a convincing case for leniency. In general, the defense attorneys in all of these cases did not question whether the defendants were guilty—they assumed this— but instead sought to gain leniency in the sentencing.33 On May 9, prosecutors accused Tupac Amaru of propagating the news of his uprising in London and Madrid, via a Jesuit. They referred to an article published in London on October 6, 1780.34 The Jesuits had been expelled in 1767 and many subsequently wrote piercing indict-

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ments of Spanish rule from Europe. On October 6, 1780, the Chester Chronicle and General Advertiser published reports seized from a Spanish vessel about the uprisings in Arequipa, Cuzco, La Paz, and Potosí in the early months of 1780. Articles about Tupac Amaru would only surface in the English press in July 1781.35 The prosecution was correct in pointing out the attention to Peru in the English press, but erred in blaming Tupac Amaru and in contending that the articles were about his rebellion. In the trial, Tupac Amaru continued to deny involvement and failed to satisfy prosecutors’ quest for the names of more accomplices. News that Tupac Amaru had again managed to write people in Cuzco while in jail alarmed Mata Linares and others and set off another inquiry into how he had done it and the nature of these contacts. The prisoner had bribed two sentinels from the Huamanga division, Fermín Luque and Lino Santiago, to give him pen and paper and to deliver his notes. In the hastily written messages, he asked José de Palacios, Micaela Bastidas’ cousin, for twenty-five pesos. He requested the same from Marcos Carrillo, apologizing for his penmanship as he had to write with his left as his right hand “was all broken,” as well as Bernardo Carrillo and Pascual Carvajal. All of them refused to help, no doubt panic-stricken by the arrival of this tangible evidence of possible rebel sympathies in the midst of a highly publicized trial where the threat of a death sentence lingered in the Cuzco air. When confronted with the evidence, Tupac Amaru claimed that he was trying to get back money owed to him to have something for his young son Fernando.36 To these fi nal inquiries Mata Linares added the question of whether Tupac Amaru had promised his Indian followers that they would be resurrected if they fell as martyrs. Francisco Cisneros confi rmed that the rebel leader had insisted that they not fear death—he would resurrect them.37 On May 14, Tupac Amaru again testified, this time declaring who he owed and who owed him money, and how much. His list rambled for several pages and included more than thirty people, indicating how the Andean economy, particularly those in his profession as a muleteer-merchant, relied on credit. He was cash poor but owned numerous properties. He mentioned two houses in Tungasuca as well as single houses in Surimana, Cuzco, and Pampamarca. His rural properties displayed the complexity of the late colonial land tenure system. These included chacritas or small fields in numerous towns and a small hacienda (“haciendita”) in Tinta that he had rented out to several people.

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The small fields were essentially access rights while the hacienda presumably, if it followed the normal pattern for the area, had numerous liens and mortgages. He owned three hundred mules. He did not sign this testimony, his last, because of a “disconcerted” wrist.38 On May 15, 1781 Visitador Areche pronounced his sentence. He underlined that Tupac Amaru had led a “rebellion or general uprising by Indians, mestizos, and other castes” planned for over five years and initiated throughout the Peruvian viceroyalty and that of Buenos Aires, with the intention of crowning himself king and liberator of “that type of inhabitant whom he managed to seduce,” that is, Indians. Areche accused him of Arriaga’s death and of attempted jailbreaks. Areche insisted on the need for a rapid execution since many Indians were “full of superstitions, which lead them to think that the death penalty is impossible for him due to the high nature of his character, believing him a descendent of the main line of the Incas, as he called himself, and thus absolute and natural owner of these dominions.” Areche denounced Indians and other members of the “plebian castes” for having joined the uprising due to their ignorance and naïveté and contended that “their implacable hatred toward Europeans or even all white faces or pukacunkas as they call them” led to “devastation, insults, horrors, robberies, deaths, rapes, unimaginable violence, church desecrations, vilification of Spanish officials, and made a mockery of our most important weapon, excommunication, as they considered themselves immune or outside its reach.”39 Areche firmly blamed Tupac Amaru and the leadership but also berated Indians and other lower-class followers for their foolishness and distance from Spanish ways, which allowed them to be seduced. In the coming years, he would attempt to remedy this supposed gap between the worlds of Europeans and of indigenous people, in brutal fashion. Areche then detailed how Tupac Amaru had usurped power, declared himself Inca, issued orders in the king’s name, interfered in tax collection, claimed falsely to protect the Church, imposed the death penalty, and deceived his followers with the illusion that they would not die because he could resurrect them. The visitador highlighted Tupac Amaru’s commission of a portrait of himself in Inca regalia with Sangarará as the backdrop. He bitterly noted: His pretension of royal descent . . . has made such an impression on the Indians that they believe him, and as simpletons [en medio de su rudeza] they wrote and talked to him with the utmost submission and respect,

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treating him as their Lord, Excellency, Royal Highness or Majesty, coming from various provinces to render him proper obedience and submission, failing to honor the strict obligations of fidelity and religion that he, as well as all subjects, should have toward their natural king. This is clear, painful, and evident proof of the misplaced spirit with which that miserable class is governed, and also how little they understand subordination and compliance according to the legitimate power of our adored sovereign.40

In the eyes of Areche, a dishonest and subversive leader connived to gain the support of the superstitious and backward masses. Areche’s prose became more straightforward when he reached the details of the execution. Executioners would largely follow these precise, macabre orders. After detailing the horrors to be enacted on Tupac Amaru and his inner circle’s bodies and the confiscation or destruction of their property and fields, he ordered that all members of his family be brought to justice. Some participants had not been captured and many distant relatives had not participated, some living far away from the rebel center. However, they would not be freed from punishment. Blood ties to Tupac Amaru made them guilty.41 Areche pledged a number of measures aimed at eradicating the memory of the Incas. In fact, his measures went farther than this: they sought to overturn the mode of government in place in the Andes since the late sixteenth century, the Toledan Reforms. He prohibited people from claiming descent from the Incas and recommended the abolition of the kurakas office, the linchpin of colonial rule, calling instead for elected mayors who knew the Spanish language and customs. He prohibited a long list of items: “pagan clothes,” stressing the images they contain of the Sun, the Inca symbol; plays or acts that commemorate the Incas; pututos or conch trumpets; mourning clothes that mark the passing of “their deceased monarchs”; and the use of Inca in one’s name or signature. To fulfill this cultural project— a de-Incanization of the indigenous Andean masses in order to “free them from the hatred that they have against Spaniards”—he called for schools with strict dress and language codes: “They shall be given a period of four years for the people to speak fluently or at least be able to make themselves understood and to explain themselves in Castilian.” 42 He closed by banning the manufacture of cannons and demanding that those found in haciendas and textile mills be confiscated, with strict punishment for anyone who disobeyed.43

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The following day Areche pronounced measures aimed at keeping order before, during, and after the execution. Tallow lamps had to remain lit outside every house and no groups larger than four men or women were allowed to congregate. He ordered that his decree be posted throughout the city.44 In addition, he ordered that in the midst of the execution, “no talk about a pardon should be heard, or anything else that could rouse the people.” He threatened that anyone who violated this decree would be executed, without trial.45 On May 16, Mata Linares interviewed Tupac Amaru to see if he had anything to add to his “confession.” The prisoner provided no new information and said that he couldn’t sign the document because of his broken hand.46 Ecclesiastical authorities lifted the excommunication, allowing the prisoners to take last rites. It is unclear whether they did.47 Prosecutors also sentenced the creoles and Spaniards accused of having passed over to the rebels, examined in Chapter 2. Banda, de la Madrid, Escarcena, and Figueroa fled to Cuzco in January while Cisneros, Galleguillos, Molina and Ortigoza turned themselves in to the Spanish in late March or April 1781. All faced long trials. Figueroa stressed that he had sabotaged the rebels’ arms, putting in bad screws in the muskets, dampening gunpowder, and impairing the cannons whenever he could. In fact, he took charge of the cannons in the siege of Cuzco and made sure that they fi red off target. He was the only one absolved. Ortigoza was given azotes or lashes and banished to an unnamed foreign presidio, which meant hard labor, for ten years. The others were banished from between two to six years. Cisneros could not come up with the bail money and almost had his sentence increased.48 Areche had used their testimony in the trials against the rebel leaders but wanted them out of Cuzco as soon as possible.

The Death Knell of Spanish Rule? On Friday May 18, executioners led Tupac Amaru and the other prisoners out of their cells adjoining the Plaza Mayor, guarded by heavily armed members of the mulatto and Huamanga militias. One observer noted that the large crowd in the plaza remained quiet and included no Indians, “at least in their typical dress; if there were any they were disguised in capes and ponchos.” 49 Perhaps Indians found the ceremony too excruciating to watch or worried that the crowd could become vio-

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lent and attack them. Workers had erected gallows, at this point guarded by armed mulattoes. Dressed in canvas sacks used to bring yerba mate from Paraguay, their hands and feet tied tight, the prisoners were dragged behind horses, their skin scraping on the cobblestone streets. A town crier declared, “This is the justice that in the name of the King, our Lord, don José Antonio de Areche imposes. . . . He who does it, pays for it [quien tal hace; que tal pague).” Diego Verdejo, Antonio Oblitas (the black servant who had participated in the hanging of Arriaga and possibly drew a portrait of Tupac Amaru), Micaela’s brother Antonio Bastidas, and Antonio Castelo were the fi rst victims. They were hanged, their bodies dumped below the gallows. Francisco Tupac Amaru (José Gabriel’s uncle) and Hipólito (Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas’s elder son) had their tongues severed before they were hanged. Soldiers forced Micaela and José Gabriel to watch. Tomasa Tito Condemayta, at one point called Tupac Amaru’s “favorite,” was taken to a low chair in front of the gallows.50 The executioner attached an iron band to her neck, a garrote, and tightened it with a crank until she asphyxiated in excruciating fashion. The metal garrote was a novelty in Cuzco: “it was made for the occasion and we had never seen one here.”51 She was then hanged, to confi rm her death. Micaela was then led to the gallows. Executioners slashed her tongue— some claim that she would not open her mouth and only after her death was it cut. They then strapped her into the garrote. According to one account, her neck was too thin for the garrote to work so the executioners instead strangled her with a rope and kicked her until her death. While historians disagree about the execution technique, everyone agrees that it was agony.52 José Gabriel was forced to watch. Executioners then led him to the gallows and cut his tongue. They tied his limbs to four horses in order for him to be quartered, “a spectacle never seen before in this city.”53 The horses pushed toward the plaza’s four corners but Tupac Amaru’s arms and legs did not separate from his torso. Frustrated, Areche ordered him beheaded. His youngest son, Fernando, screamed as his witnessed his father’s agony. In the words of the English geographer and traveler Clements Markham, who visited Peru numerous times in the mid-nineteenth century, Fernando “uttered a heart rending shriek, the knell of which continued to ring in the ears of those who heard it to their dying day. It was the death knell of Spanish rule in South America.”54

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Even the most hardened royalist must have shuddered at this scene. The boy was made to pass by the gallows and gaze at the bloody, severed cadaver. His age saved him from the death sentence—he was ten. One witness described a sudden gust of wind and a downpour that made people take cover when Tupac Amaru expired. The observer continued, “this is why Indians say that heaven and the elements felt the death of the Inca whom the inhuman and impious Spaniards were killing with such cruelty.”55 The executioners detached the heads and limbs from all of the dead. They burned José Gabriel and Micaela’s torsos in a bonfi re on the Picchu hill and dumped the ashes into the Huatanay River. Areche had precise plans how to distribute the body parts, using them as a grisly warning about the danger of sedition. Tungasuca received an arm from Tupac Amaru and one from Micaela as well as Hipólito Tupac Amaru’s head; Tinta, Tupac Amaru’s head; Pampamarca an arm from Antonio Bastidas; Surimana, an arm from Castelo, whose other arm was sent to Pampamarca.56

The Second Stage In the bloody spectacle, executioners tortured and annihilated the bodies of the rebel inner circle. They aimed to demonstrate to the thousands present and the multitude of people who would hear about it or see the body parts the high cost of subversion and the extermination of the leadership. Areche’s sentence also promised a vast campaign against the Andean culture rooted in the Quechua language and the memory of the Incas. With the ghoulish executions, Areche sought to disseminate the idea that the rebellion was fi nished, that the royalists had won.57 Yet the authorities knew that not only had they been fortunate in capturing these leaders but that the uprising was far from over. Diego Cristóbal, Mariano Tupac Amaru, and Andrés Mendigure moved their forces to the south, abandoning the more conciliatory tactics of Micaela Bastidas and José Gabriel Tupac Amaru, who consistently sought to gain support of middle sectors and the Church and thus hemmed in violence. This concern did not burden the second wave of leaders. In addition, the rebellion had set an example and broken historic but fragile codes of agreement and repression. Indians in small towns began to resist authorities while others attacked more affluent villas.

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Some presumably understood the executions as proof that they should fight until their death, that they had no possibility of surviving Spanish justice. By May 1781, while the new leaders coordinated attacks and oversaw insurgent strategy, rebel followers took an increasingly independent path, feeling less obliged to follow orders. They often took matters into their own hands; violence surged from below. Despite Areche and Mata Linares’ best efforts, the gruesome ritual on May 18 was not a conclusion but the beginning of a bloodier and even more confusing stage.

8 The Other Side of the Lake

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the gruesome death of the rebellion’s leaders. Many people in the city of Cuzco believed that the bloody executions meant the end of the uprising. They realized that some of Tupac Amaru’s family had escaped, but remained confident that they would be captured or simply slip away into the jungle and abandon the struggle. This would not be the case. And troubling news also arrived from the far south, the Lake Titicaca area and the Collao. There, a series of uprisings had upended Spanish rule. Indigenous rebels threatened much of Charcas (part of present-day Bolivia), and the violence began to spread into Peru through the Titicaca area. While many in Lima and Cuzco rejoiced at the death of the rebel leaders, informed royalists knew that the Upper Peruvian uprisings could extend into Peru. In May 1781, peace was not at hand. Royalists worried that the rebellion could paralyze Charcas, cutting off Peru from the La Plata Viceroyalty, including the Potosí silver mines, and the Pacific from the Atlantic Ocean. Or worse, the rebels in the Collao could unite with the followers of Tupac Amaru, igniting a struggle that would immediately stretch from Cuzco to Potosí, and potentially much farther. But it was not only the extent of the uprisings but also the nature of the aggression that was troubling. News reached Cuzco about beheadings, punctured eyes, abused corpses, and other “butchery” by bloodthirsty insurgents who sought to exterminate all Europeans. Building on centuries of obnoxious interpretations of Indian “depravity,” these reports perhaps exaggerated. Nonetheless, the rebels in Upper Peru and the area around Lake Titicaca showed little of the restraint that José Gabriel and Micaela had managed to impose on OYA L ISTS CEL EBR AT ED

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their followers near Cuzco. The prospect of an increasingly bloody and protracted total war, bolstered by an alliance between the Tupac Amaru forces and the Kataristas, terrified royalists. The astounding, violent events taking place in Upper Peru must be understood in order to comprehend the Tupac Amaru movement.

The Kataristas From late 1780 until well into 1782, the Tupac Amaru and Katarista revolutionaries made intermittent efforts to unite, an alliance that royalists sought to prevent at all costs. The efforts to create a Tupac Amaru– Katarista coalition loom large in most accounts of the Tupac Amaru uprising, including this one.1 While the uprising in Peru can be spoken of in the singular, the Tupac Amaru Rebellion, Charcas was the site of several related but not unified rebellions. In the Chayanta area of northern Potosí, tensions between Indians and authorities escalated in the late 1770s. Indians increasingly questioned their kurakas, corregidors, and priests, underlining their corruption and declining legitimacy in local society. In 1778, Tomás Katari, a humble Aymara from the Chayanta area, argued these points in the name of the Macha village in the Buenos Aires high court. Just like José Gabriel after his bitter experience in Lima, Katari returned home disillusioned with the colonial legal system. The nonviolent struggle stalemated and what had first been a negotiation and then a court battle became an increasingly violent revolt in 1780, just when events near Cuzco were boiling over into a mass uprising.2 On his return from Buenos Aires, Katari was imprisoned, freed by angry villagers, and imprisoned again. On August 26, 1780, Indians from throughout the region stormed the town of Pocoata and seized the corregidor, Joaquín Alós, whom they exchanged for Katari. Late 1780 saw a unique period of indigenous self-rule in Chayanta as Katari and his followers reinvented relations between indigenous communities and the colonial state. It did not last. Against the wishes of Katari, violence broke out. In the community of Moscari, Indians killed their kuraka and exhibited his head in the outskirts of the city of La Plata. In mid-December, a militia chief, Juan Antonio Acuña, arrested Katari. Indians attacked the convoy and Acuña quickly executed Katari. The attackers killed Acuña and his entourage, leaving their bodies unburied and piercing Acuña’s eyes.3

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Asillo

Lake Titicaca Puno Chucuito

PE RU

B O L I V I A

Sorata Achacachi La Paz

Chulumani

Sica Sica Cochabamba Oruro

Santa Cruz

Chayanta Lake Poopó

La Plata

PACIFIC

Potosí

OCEAN

modern borders

CH IL E

0

Tupiza

0

100 miles 100 km

Tarija

Katarista Violence

The uprising transformed from a utopic self-government experiment into a fierce Indian-based struggle against colonial domination. Tomás Katari’s brothers, Dámaso and Nicolás, assumed leadership of the uprising. They formed a mass rebel army that swept through towns and communities. Rebels targeted Spaniards and creoles as well as the symbols and the mechanisms of colonial exploitation: haciendas, textile mills, and mestizo villages. They coordinated with other communities and led the siege of the city of La Plata in February 1781. Dámaso Katari expressed confidence that Tupac Amaru would aid their cause yet neither the Katari brothers nor Tupac Amaru survived long enough to put an alliance into practice.4 Indians loyal to the Spanish captured Dámaso and Nicolás Katari. Authorities executed Dámaso on April 27, 1781 in grisly, public fashion in La Plata, and killed Nicolás on May 7, just weeks before Tupac Amaru’s death.

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Indians were not the only insurgents in Charcas. In the city of Oruro, affluent creoles banded together with the lower classes and the indigenous peasantry to contest the power of Spaniards. While the creoles owned nearby mines, the Europeans held power as merchants and financiers. The Oruro uprising resembled the hierarchical, multiclass sociology of the Tupac Amaru rebellion. In February 1781, the rebels controlled the city and surrounding countryside and frequently mentioned Tupac Amaru. In the words of one historian, “this unprecedented interracial alliance was built upon mutual expectations of Túpac Amaru’s approaching government. Creoles and plebeians, as well as Indians, knew that the Inka had risen up and gone to war in Cuzco. Rumor had it that he was nearing La Paz and before long would arrive in Oruro.”5 Frightened royalists, of course, also had the Tinta rebels on their minds. One document from the period nervously mentioned “the fatalities that occurred in the province of Chayanta and Tinta with an edict issued by the insurrectionary Tupac Amaru in which he ordered all the corregidores and chapetones [killed] because his intention was to leave not one remaining in this nation.”6 In February 1781, however, tensions between the more radical Indians and urban plebs on one side and the creoles on the other tore apart the Oruro coalition. Colonial forces brutally repressed the rebels, including the “class traitor” creoles.7 The rebellion was not over. Beginning in February 1781, Julián Apaza, an Indian from the community of Sicasica who assumed the name Tupac Katari in honor of both Tupac Amaru and the Katari brothers, led an uprising of Aymara communities around the city of La Paz. He was such an obscure figure that the Spanish initially believed Tupac Amaru was behind the violence.8 Once the Spanish understood that Apaza— Tupac Katari— led the uprising, they ridiculed him for his social background. One document deemed him “an Indian of very low condition, who had labored in the lowest occupations, being one of the poorest of people during his life. He was of middling stature, with an ugly face, somewhat deformed in his legs and hands.”9 He spoke Spanish poorly (a feature that royalists derided but the Indian masses empathized with), while childhood polio had made one leg shorter than the other and deformed his hands. Several accounts refer to his drinking habit. Whether this was true or fabricated as part of the Spanish propaganda attack is unverifiable. Royalists cast Apaza as a misfit from the dregs of society and, once his movement gained force, as a murderous barbarian.10

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The Tupac Amaru Rebellion

These characterizations must be treated critically, a reflection of the social hierarchies of the era and colonial paranoia. What is certain is that Tupac Katari and the Tupac Amaru forces collaborated in the Lake Titicaca area in 1781, seeking to forge a broad Aymara-Quechua or Collao-Cuzco rebel coalition. Some important differences between the two rebellions stand out. The Katarista uprising was a constellation of overlapping revolts and movements with different leaders and strategies. The Tupac Amaru rebellion evolved around José Gabriel, as the absolute leader and, upon his death, as a guiding symbol. The different Katarista movements, with the exception of Oruro, did not seek the multiclass coalition that Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas envisioned, but instead persecuted everyone, Europeans and Americans, who they believed to be part of the now illegitimate colonial system. Tupac Amaru lobbied and recruited creoles; the Kataristas did not. Finally, the Tupac Amaru forces believed deeply in the uprising as a return to the Incas, which they saw as a utopian time of self-government and justice. The Incas did not play such an important ideological role in Charcas. While Cuzco had been the Incas’ center of the universe, the Collao and beyond was more of a conquered area during the Inca Empire. The Aymara did not hold the same glorified image of the Incas as did Quechua people.11 So while the Amaristas and Kataristas had much in common, representing the diversity of Andean people, they also had different social bases, tactics, and objectives. These would create tension and encumber the much-feared alliance. In early 1781, Tupac Katari oversaw attacks in Sicasica, between Oruro and La Paz, while his followers stretched the fighting all the way to Lake Titicaca. In March, his forces began the siege of La Paz. Like Tupac Amaru, Tupac Katari relied heavily on his wife, Bartolina Sisa, as well as his sister, Gregoria Apaza. They collaborated in planning as well as the attacks themselves.12 Katari corresponded with Diego Cristóbal, and the two groups, but not the leaders, began to converge in the area east of Lake Titicaca and north of La Paz. In March the Kataristas supported an attack on Puno from the south and also attacked Juli, Acora, Ilave, and Chucuito. The attack on Juli left four hundred dead.13 Andrés Tupac Amaru led the Tupac Amaru forces to the east of Lake Titicaca. The two sides were not actually coordinating these attacks in the fi rst half of 1781. Each side knew of the whereabouts of the other and understood how strikes on multiple fronts enfeebled Spanish defenses,

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but did not plan simultaneous actions. And tensions spread, impeding a coalition. For example, Diego Cristóbal rebuked Katari for assuming the title of “Viceroy” and “Joseph King.” José Gabriel’s cousin believed that the Cuzco rebels necessarily had to lead any coalition. Some sources hint that Diego Cristóbal shared the Spaniards’ derision for Tupac Katari’s social background. Katari resented this meddling and did not always receive the Tupac Amaru emissaries in La Paz.14 These tensions and disagreements about who should lead would continue. Yet the violence around Titicaca in the fi rst half of 1781 highlighted rebel strength in the region and the new, dreadful forms of brutality.

Titicaca In the first months of 1781, Tupac Amaru rebels complained that Indians in the uprising’s core area south of Cuzco had begun to resist their demands for supplies and soldiers and even expressed doubts about Tupac Amaru himself. The failed siege of Cuzco had apparently shaken the resolve of some rebel followers and demystified Tupac Amaru. Royalists impeded attacks, and most importantly, captured the rebel leaders in April. Yet the situation was very different farther to the south, the area around Lake Titicaca extending into Upper Peru. There, insurgents had royalists on the run and violence escalated. According to corregidor Joaquín Orellana, the leader of Spanish forces, Indians ransacked towns, killing all men, women, and children they considered “European.” The Katarista and Amaru rebellions began to overlap. Violence escalated. Quechua and Aymara Indians greatly outnumbered Spaniards in this region, even more so when many Europeans, creoles, and mestizos fled in late 1780. The Spanish could only count on local militias and small battalions led by beleaguered corregidors, the defense that had done so poorly against Tupac Amaru in late 1780. These units fared even worse in 1781. Those fleeing Collao brought stories to Cuzco about Indian rebels beheading people, drowning children, mutilating bodies, and drinking the blood of their victims. In addition to such lurid tales, Orellana passed along accounts of rebels chasing desperate Spaniards on horseback for miles and miles, people plunging into frigid Lake Titicaca to escape the rebels, and groups of frantic Europeans and mestizos fleeing toward Arequipa.

174

The Tupac Amaru Rebellion

There were three types of insurgents fighting in the Titicaca area: those with ties to Tupac Amaru, those aligned with the Kataristas, and those more independent, who recognized one or both of the rebel groups but remained autonomous. These latter groups built on local hatreds and did not necessarily heed Tupac Amaru’s calls to respect those people considered neutral, primarily mestizos, women, and children. In general, these more autonomous rebels sought to exterminate rather than defeat and disarm the enemy. This more vicious form of combat, with less control by leaders, would characterize the uprising in the coming year. From Cuzco and well into Upper Peru, the fear of rebel atrocities and of an alliance between the Tupac Amaru and Tupac Katari camps spread, intensified by the increasingly wretched stories of murder and mayhem. A brief account of some of these battles gives an idea of the new brutality. Orellana won a rare victory on February 16 in the bloody battle of Mananchili, near Puno. The royalists benefitted from disagreements between rebel commanders Andrés Ingaricona and Nicolás Sanca, who had fought for Tupac Amaru in the Titicaca area since November 1780. One account sneered that Sanca “who had transformed from a sacristan and singer in the church choir to a colonel in Tupac Amaru’s army, committed terrible destruction everywhere he went.”15 Both royalists and rebels slaughtered any opponent they could trap, and reports of atrocities followed. Neutrality was just about impossible at this point, at least for men, and, in contrast to the fi rst months of the uprising, each side executed prisoners. Alarmed by these events, in late February 1781 Tupac Amaru sent his trusted commander Ramón Ponce to the Titicaca area, hoping to take Puno, put the insurgents under his mandate, and coordinate with rebels in Upper Peru. José Gabriel himself had misgivings about the autonomy of the rebel groups around Lake Titicaca and the new, more brutal forms of violence. On his way south, Ponce observed that many Indian towns and individuals supported the uprising but did not necessarily follow Tupac Amaru’s orders. Around Cuzco, Tupac Amaru could expect his followers to obey; this was not the case farther south. For example, Ponce complained that in the towns from Santa Rosa to Carabaya, “they [Indians] had been fighting among themselves, without honoring your royal highness and your royal decrees.”16 On March 5, Ponce despaired that insurgents from Carabaya, to the north of Lake Titicaca, showed

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no deference to rebel leaders. He requested a decree from Tupac Amaru confi rming his authority, “so that the Carabaya folks aren’t so extreme in killing, in destroying houses and haciendas, even slaughtering us and other towns, intimidating Indians and Spaniards.”17 Ponce confronted Sanca, whom he deemed a violent thief interested in plunder rather than social justice, and complained that Katarista commanders killed indiscriminately, attacking even Tupac Amaru’s followers.18 In early 1781, Tupac Amaru counted on growing support in the south. Unlike in the Vilcanota Valley, however, the rebels closer to Lake Titicaca and Upper Peru did not express their unwavering devotion to him, expected some autonomy, and proved capable of attacking their allies as well as royalists. Relations with the Katari commanders were particularly tense.19 Based in Puno, corregidor Orellana managed to hold off Ponce on March 11 but then confronted an attack from the south, led by Pascual Alaparita and Isidro Mamani, who identified themselves as supporters of “Andrés Inca Tupac Katari,” from Charcas. Orellana and other royalists understood that they faced multiple insurgencies, as rebels from the north and the south arrived to aid local insurgents. Rebels besieged the town of Juli, nearly destroying it: “Juli’s plaza and streets are flooded with blood, cadavers strewn all over the place.”20 The priest of nearby Zepita provided a long list of “minors and adults,” many of them with Spanish surnames, beheaded by the rebels. The list included one nineyear-old and nine other people who could not be identified because their heads had not been recovered. Rebels threw children into the chilly lake to drown them and did not spare priests or nuns. Orellana sent rafts out later that evening to see if he could rescue anyone who had taken refuge in the totora reed beds that cling to the Titicaca shore.21 According to Orellana, the scene in Chucuito after the March 18 attack was even more appalling, “the worst horror seen since the Conquest.”22 When he entered this town, south of Puno and also on the shores of Lake Titicaca, Orellana encountered at least two hundred cadavers: “No one who had any trace of European background was spared.”23 He saved five cowering, hungry survivors who had hidden for three days. The rebels had reportedly placed all the heads of executed Spanish women on the gallows in the main plaza. Orellana claimed that Isidro Mamani, the leader of the attack, sat next to the gallows in a special chair, declared himself governor, and posted a lampoon that

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The Tupac Amaru Rebellion

proclaimed both Tupac Amaru and Tupac Katari. Mamani forced Spaniards and mestizos out of the San Francisco church in Chucuito and “ferociously” executed them. He burnt down Chucuito (while the adobe bricks resist fi re, the thatched roofs do not) and nearby Desaguadero.24 After Mamani failed in his initial attempt to take Puno, Indians in the town of Acora, “scared about the punishment we were preparing for them,” captured him in early July and handed him over to Orellana.25 Other testimonies provided additional shocking stories of Indian savagery. In the town of Juli, troops found three cadavers on the gallows: one kuraka with his heart removed; another dead kuraka tied upside down, naked; and the latter’s wife left with no blood, inasmuch as “the Indians drank it.” The same writer also claimed that Indians had not only ransacked and burned down the Jesuit church in Juli but that they had fi lled the church’s sacred glasses with their beheaded victims’ blood, passing it around for everyone to drink.26 These stories echoed similar ones from Charcas about how the Kataristas killed Europeans brutally and drank their blood or ate their hearts. One commander in Chuquisaca (modern Sucre, Bolivia) wrote that “the Indians don’t want peace, they want to drink fresh, thick corn beer, chicha, out of skulls.27 Although in precise prose rather than with lurid sensationalism, these writers also mention royalists beheading six captured spies in sight of the rebels and executing ninety rebels they encountered. Just as rebel extremists expanded the definition of European or pukakunka and slaughtered them, royalists saw virtually all Indians as insurgents and, if possible, killed them.28 The factors that increased violence are all present: the Amaru and Katarista leadership was far away, unable to control its followers; the war had lasted for over six months, with the body count mounting; and unlike Cuzco, the Titicaca area counted on less of a Spanish (governmental or religious) presence. In this region, the differences between Spaniards and Indians were starker and the groups who could mediate between them—mestizos and acculturated Indians, primarily— much less present, particularly after thousands fled. These factors, as well as the crushing weight of colonialism in the region, help “explain” the brutality. But why or how could an individual drink blood, eat hearts, behead a captive? The brutal context can only partially clarify. These unverifiable horror stories had numerous effects in Cuzco. They terrified Europeans and royalist soldiers, making recruitment for

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the “southern campaigns” even more difficult. They also reinforced efforts to cast the rebel as heathen apostates or barbarians who deserved excommunication and severe punishment. In this sense, these stories stymied efforts by José Gabriel and Micaela to maintain order, to present their troops as disciplined, multiethnic soldiers fighting for the common good in a fashion permitted within Spanish political practice. Tupac Amaru could rightly contend that these were not his true followers. Yet if he sought to control the area, which he did, he needed their support. Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas could benefit from these rebels’ increasing power but would also lose support because of the revulsion toward their extreme violence. The brutal fighting around Lake Titicaca resembled that of Upper Peru much more than Cuzco. The rebels sought to kill kurakas, whereas Tupac Amaru had understood them as potential allies. The insurgents used their numbers and courage— several writers noted how they did not seem to care about dying— to seize towns, kill, ransack. The widespread belief that those martyred in battle would be resurrected emboldened the insurgents. On the other side, the outnumbered Europeans (Spaniards and creoles) could only survive if they remained united, recruited Indian followers, and used their fi repower to ward off the large number of rebels. Fusils and cannons, after all, were still effective in repelling thousands. Nonetheless, European weapons were not always enough. In towns such as Juli, Chucuito, and others, royalists begged for aid from La Paz, Cuzco, Arequipa, and Lima, and described the region as virtually defeated by April 1781. Even if the sanguinary tales of drinking blood and eating hearts are set aside as exaggerations or propaganda, there was no doubt that the rebels were dominating an increasingly vicious war in the Titicaca area.

The Siege of La Paz The city of La Paz emerged in the eighteenth century as a commercial center, an important stop in the economic circuits that stretched from Buenos Aires on the Atlantic to Lima on the Pacific, with the everimportant Potosí silver mine in the middle. This trans-Andean trade route actually consisted of multiple overlapping circuits, from the interoceanic to the more local production by indigenous people of foodstuffs for cities and towns.29 La Paz had a population of about 25,000 in the

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The Tupac Amaru Rebellion

late eighteenth century, rivaling Cuzco for primacy among Andean cities. Its unique topography makes it ideal for sieges. Built into a bowl, actually a wide canyon that holds the Choqueyapu River, the city center is surrounded by steep hills that lead to plateaus that surpass thirteen thousand feet above sea level. Like many Spanish-American cities, it was surrounded by a large wall, with much of the indigenous population living on the outside or extramuros. In early 1780, royalist commanders had fortified the wall and added trenches. Today, the appropriately named town of “El Alto” or “the Tall One,” which stretches across the western plain above the city and constituted the traditional point of entry for people and goods, serves as the base for frequent strikes that paralyze the city below. In fact, the Neo-Kataristas who have led important and creative social movements in the last two decades take their name and heroes from the 1780s.30 On March 13, 1781, tens of thousands of Indian rebels led by Tupac Katari surrounded the city, impeding supplies from entering or people from leaving, unless they joined the insurgents. After a few weeks, shortages struck even in this well-stocked city. Katari sent representatives to negotiate, requesting that the towns’ people hand over their weapons as well as corregidors, Europeans, and some authorities. The city leaders refused. The indigenous population that lived outside the city’s walls largely joined the rebels. While the siege literally divided the population into royalists on the inside and rebels on the outside, relations between the two sides fluctuated between accommodation and implacable hatred. One diary hints that rebels allowed people they knew to get food, while sentries even greeted acquaintances over the wall. Other entries, however, refer to the rebels as bloodthirsty Indians. And relations worsened as time passed and hunger loomed.31 The two sides battled in April and May but to a bloody stalemate. Royalists could not break the rebel lines, even when they charged and killed hundreds with their artillery, while the insurgents could not take the city center. Rebels entered periodically, destroying parts of the city’s wall and burning sections of the city. They crept to the city’s walls in the dark of night to take prisoners or attack sentinels. Royalists used their fi repower to ward off these nocturnal attacks. Tupac Katari himself ventured to the city’s walls several times. Within a few weeks, the confrontation turned into a siege—the rebels focused on blocking supplies. Hunger spread and by the second half of

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April, the city’s residents had turned to cats, dogs, mules, and even leather for their meals. Hundreds died of hunger or from the illnesses that spread among the famished population.32 As occurred in Tupac Amaru’s attack of Cuzco, a royalist soldier pretended to aid the rebels with their artillery and actually sabotaged it.33 In May the rebels allowed an Indian market to function just outside of the city’s wall. Some citizens braved the possibility of enemy fire and the highly inflated prices to buy desperately needed food. The rebels grabbed a few prisoners but no royalist commander took the bait.34 Desperation, hunger and its soul mate disease took hold throughout the city. By mid-June many residents wanted to capitulate, believing that their fate in the hands of the rebels could not be worse than starving to death. Cadavers littered the streets. On July 1, however, after 109 days, Commander Ignacio Flores arrived with well-armed troops who broke the siege. Rebels did not confront them, but instead moved to a higher peak. Delighted by the arrival of Flores, many in the city worried that the Indian rebels would strike again. They were correct. This was only the first siege of La Paz. By the middle of 1781, royalists in Cusco and Lima looked to the south with anguish. The Tupac Amaru rebellion had not been defeated, and news arrived from the Titicaca area and Charcas about wave after wave of insurgency and increasing violence. The succession of disturbances and uprisings dating from 1778 threatened to isolate Peru from Potosí and the rest of the Rio de la Plata viceroyalty or, far worse, to burst into Peru and unite with the leaders of the second phase of the Tupac Amaru uprising. Del Valle and others understood that the region between Lake Titicaca and the city of La Paz was largely in rebel hands. The terrain proved just as inhospitable for Spanish forces as the Peruvian side of the lake had, while insurgents used violence with greater frequency and kurakas had less sway over their communities. Peruvian authorities and much of the population fretted about a bloody caste war that could stretch from Buenos Aires to Lima. These fears would only worsen in the course of 1781. Royalist commanders understood that they had to confront the Titicaca-area rebels, those led by Diego Cristóbal Tupac Amaru and those linked to the Kataristas. They dreaded this operation. They were right to do so.

9 Southern Campaigns

B

Y L AT E M AY 1781, Tupac Amaru’s and Micaela Bastidas’s heads, limbs, and other body parts hung from posts for public display in Tinta, Tungasuca, Pampamarca, and other rebel hotbeds. Spanish victory seemed assured. The Spanish counted on thousands of soldiers formed into synchronized columns, which rammed through rebel lines and seized the leaders. Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas had not so much directed the rebellion as personified it. They made all major decisions and their followers fought in Tupac Amaru’s name, that of the last Inca. People in Cuzco celebrated victory over the barbaric rebels. Their optimism was understandable. However, defeating Tupac Amaru’s followers after his death proved difficult, costly, and frustrating. In hindsight, royalist optimism was overconfidence. The Spanish forces quickly saw their position as conquering victors on horseback degenerate into that of hungry, ragged soldiers marching on foot up and down the stark Andes, fearful of rebel attacks and aware that indigenous people loathed them. Their numbers diminished as soldiers deserted at every turn, and supplies, problematic from the beginning, dwindled as they moved farther and farther away from Cuzco. Violence escalated as the fighting moved toward the Lake Titicaca area. Moreover, the troubling news about the Katarista rebellion, the siege of La Paz, and the brutality in the towns near Lake Titicaca terrified the royalists. The optimism prompted by the capture and executions faded quickly. The rebels employed guerrilla tactics, harassing royalists at night or in quick hit-and-run attacks. They took advantage of the region’s topography, using the steep, glacier-topped hills to torment the royalists with

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boulders and then to regroup. The Spanish commanders, trained to fight in the open plains of Europe, to wage the type of campaign in which Napoleon would excel (and Tolstoy would portray in War and Peace), complained bitterly about the rebels’ strategy of using the hills. Moreover, the new insurgent leadership struggled to prevent their own fighters from viciously attacking people deemed Spanish, a term often meaning all non-Indians. Violence on both sides intensified. Neither rebels nor royalists took prisoners; massacres, the killing of dozens or hundreds of unarmed people, became more common than military confrontations. Another tactical change also frightened royalists. The young rebel leaders proved willing to starve out the enemy, sieging several towns and cities for months. La Paz would not be the only prolonged siege. Violence spiraled and royalist soldiers understood that they could expect no mercy. Hungry and panic-stricken, they deserted en masse. The southern campaign or second phase that began with the May 1781 executions in Cuzco did not only pit royalists against rebels. Internal struggles emerged in both camps that altered the course of the uprising and in fact shaped Peru for decades. Once the Spanish found themselves mired in the Lake Titicaca area, with rebel numbers and ferocity on the increase, they began to fight among themselves, blaming one another for losses and the inability to fi nish off the insurgents. As is usually the case, these battles combined personal clashes and individuals’ concern over self-advancement (or survival) with broader ideological differences, in this case the nature of Indians and Spanish rule in the Andes. Royalist leaders disagreed about how to end the rebellion, censuring their opponents within the colonial forces for military defeats, while lobbying and underlining their own achievements in long letters and memos to Madrid. The clash between royalist moderates and hardliners helps explain the odd twists and turns taken in the second phase of the uprising. On the rebel side, no such clear division emerged. Instead, the move from Cuzco to Puno signified a transformation from the relatively cohesive movement led by Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas to something more like a coalition overseen by Diego Cristóbal, Andrés, and Mariano. They commanded their own forces but also counted on independent groups fighting in the Titicaca area. Commanders such as Isidro Mamani and Pedro Vilca Apaza emerged from the bloody battles of early 1781. Mamani, for example, had overseen the siege of Chucuito

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The Tupac Amaru Rebellion

in which dozens of Europeans were killed. Although committed to the Tupac Amaru forces, these commanders remained autonomous and could not completely control their “soldiers,” local indigenous men and women. These individuals defined the enemy in much broader terms than Tupac Amaru and Micaela had, and were more prone to violence. Although a direct relative of Tupac Amaru’s, Diego Cristóbal did not have the prestige and experience to demand that they fight under his aegis. Moreover, the name and legacy of José Gabriel Tupac Amaru did not carry the same weight in the Collao as it did for the indigenous people of Cuzco. Rebel soldiers remained loyal but increasingly independent.

Pacification? Diego Cristóbal Tupac Amaru, Mariano Tupac Amaru, and Andrés Mendigure had separated from José Gabriel and Micaela just before their capture and immediately assumed the leadership, with Diego Cristóbal at the head. They were shockingly young: Diego Cristóbal twentysix years old, Mariano eighteen, and Andrés Mendigure seventeen. All three, however, counted on blood ties that bolstered their standing among rebel forces. Diego Cristóbal and Tupac Amaru were cousins, their fathers the brothers Miguel Tupac Amaru and Marcos Tupac Amaru. Documents and historians often refer to him as José Gabriel’s brother, or half-brother, a term Diego Cristóbal himself used in official documents.1 Mariano was José Gabriel and Micaela’s son. Andrés had rebel ties on both sides. He was the son of Cecilia Escalera Castro, frequently called Cecilia Tupac Amaru and considered a cousin by José Gabriel, and Pedro Mendigure, a rebel leader himself and Micaela’s cousin. Andrés increasingly used the last name Tupac Amaru instead of Mendigure. Miguel Bastidas, Micaela’s much younger brother, also accompanied them. One of the rare descriptions depicted Diego Cristóbal as thin with a large nose and mouth and small eyes. It lauded his Spanish and deemed him very serious and capable.2 Other documents from the period stressed the leaders’ youth and surprising ability as commanders. How could such young men take over a massive rebellion at a critical juncture? Like Tupac Amaru himself, their work as muleteers and traders had given them contacts throughout the region and prepared them to live on the move. In addition, the three of them had tagged

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along on trips across the Andes and into towns and small communities when José Gabriel fulfi lled his duties as kuraka. As members of the Tupac Amaru-Bastidas clan, they counted on prestige among Indians, particularly in the rebel hotbed along the Vilcanota basin and toward Lake Titicaca. Diego Cristóbal wrote Spanish well, although not as stylishly as his cousin.3 They were young, but well prepared. There were also no other candidates. No commander emerged alongside José Gabriel and Micaela and most of their inner circle consisted of family members. After the leaders’ capture, the rebels who did not find themselves in chains agreed that these young men had to take over. And as kin to the soon-to-be martyred rebel leaders, Diego Cristóbal, Mariano, and Andrés understood that they had no alternative— the Spanish wanted to capture and kill them. Diego Cristóbal, Mariano, and Andrés moved quickly, initially hoping to free the rebel leaders, their family. A week after the devastating capture of Tupac Amaru, Micaela Bastidas, and their inner circle on April 6, Diego Cristóbal and Andrés led an unsuccessful attack on the town of Layo. Days later, however, on April 18, they routed a royalist division in the town of Langui, where Tupac Amaru had been caught. In a preview of things to come, del Valle reported that Diego Cristóbal called for the assassination of all “whites and mestizos of any age or gender and the punishment of all the priests.” Del Valle contrasted this with José Gabriel, “who had treated them with respect and consideration due to their elevated character.” 4 The Spanish commander also complained that thousands of royalist troops deserted, “because of their extreme love for their families and the desire to return to their houses to gather the harvest.”5 Many royalist soldiers assumed that with the capture of the leaders, their mission was completed. Both bloodshed and desertions would continue. April meant autumn in the southern hemisphere, time for the harvest and to prepare for the cold highland winter. Yet the war did not wane but instead intensified. Despite the desertion of many royalist soldiers, rebels concluded that liberating the heavily guarded captives would be impossible and instead moved their operations south. In his southern excursion in late 1780, José Gabriel Tupac Amaru had found great support in the area north of Lake Titicaca while the Tupac Katari movement had much of the area stretching from the lake to La Paz and beyond in arms. Diego Cristóbal, Mariano, and Miguel Bastidas initially set up rebel headquarters in the

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town of Azángaro, just north of Lake Titicaca, in the abandoned house of Diego Choquehuanca, the affluent kuraka who had spurned Tupac Amaru’s offer and supported the royalists.6 En route, the rebels recruited soldiers and other followers, including a few priests. They continued to fight in the name of Tupac Amaru and to invoke the support of the king of Spain and other elements of their predecessor’s “platform.” Andrés moved to the east of Titicaca to lay siege to the town of Sorata. They knew the region well and counted on all-important contacts, since Diego Cristóbal had accompanied his cousin, Tupac Amaru, in the November 1780 southern campaign while Andrés and Mariano had worked the area in their muleteer trips. This second phase in many ways continued the fi rst southern campaign, but with new leaders. Del Valle, Areche, and other royalist leaders did not have experience in the Titicaca region or the Collao. In November 1780, the early phase of the uprising, they were still in Lima, while Cuzco municipal authorities and religious leaders had not left the city, relying instead on corregidors, with some reinforcements from La Paz and Arequipa, to battle the rebels. The royalist commanders viewed this region, unknown to them, with trepidation. They had spent weeks trekking from Lima up the Andes to Cuzco and they complained bitterly about the sheer peaks, relentless cold, and logistical challenges. The commanders had found the indigenous rural people hostile to their “requests” for food, shelter, and recruits, and to the repression of the uprising. Both del Valle and Areche despaired at the weak presence of the colonial state and of the Spanish language in the Andes and understood that most of the rural population in Cuzco— even those who remained neutral— preferred the rebels to the royalists. On all these fronts, the Collao was significantly more daunting for the colonial army. The Titicaca basin is higher and colder than Cuzco, its food reserves scarcer, and its pasture areas more isolated. The route from Cuzco to Puno moved from the green Vilcanota Valley, the heart of rebel territory, to La Raya, the breathtaking mountain pass over 14,000 feet above sea level that separates Cuzco and Puno, and then into the arid, almost lunar Titicaca basin where rebels could use the towering mountains to ambush and hide. In cultural terms, Spaniards saw the Titicaca inhabitants as even less acculturated and more truculent than Cuzco’s indigenous people. While some Spanish could laud the Incas and maybe

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even their descendants, they saw the Aymara people as backward, devoid of the royal tradition of Cuzco and its “Inca Kings.”7 In practical terms, the coastal troops suffered mightily as the altitudes soared well beyond two miles above sea level. Even if they had become somewhat accustomed and overcome the initial misery of soroche, their hearts would pound, heads ache, and noses sometimes bleed during every hike over a mountain pass. Some soldiers coughed up blood—they had pulmonary edemas. Furthermore, the news arriving from Charcas about multiple uprisings and sieged cities fed their fear. European commanders dreaded the expedition to the Collao.

At the Crest of the Highest Peaks After turning over his invaluable prisoners in April, the royalist commander del Valle headed south, to chase the new rebel leaders. Diego Cristóbal and company had moved the campaign south, near Lake Titicaca where José Gabriel had been so well received in November 1780. To the great frustration of the Spanish, the rebels would remain mobile. Del Valle knew that contrary to royalist gloating and overconfidence, the expedition would be difficult; his unease proved prophetic. The campaign started poorly and did not improve. After losing thousands of men in Langui—far more to desertion than battle wounds— del Valle returned to Sicuani to recover and recruit and from there moved toward Lake Titicaca. He left Pumacahua’s forces behind to pursue any flare-ups in the former core area.8 En route to the Collao, del Valle came across Indians who shouted from the hills that they were not “cowards like the people of Tinta” and promised to fight until the end.9 Del Valle managed to take some prisoners who told him that the town of Santa Rosa was a rebel hotbed. He entered the town on April 15, 1781 and ordered every adult male to congregate in the plaza. To the horror of those assembled, his deputies executed every fi fth man, the quintado, twenty in all. While del Valle contended that this bloodshed in Santa Rosa had successfully intimidated potential rebel supporters, critics claimed that it had victimized innocent people and discouraged Indians from surrendering.10 The priest of Sicuani wrote that del Valle had taken the lives of a seventyyear-old man and an Indian who had fought for the royalists. Indians “took to the hills,” harassing del Valle’s rearguard.11

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Skirmishes continued as del Valle moved toward Puno. On May 5, royalist troops led by Gabriel de Avilés, the future Viceroy of Peru, killed hundreds of rebels near the town of Nuñoa. As usual, the account of the slaughter was laconic, citing the number of dead and nothing more. Colonial soldiers killed some of the rebels in the midst of battle and subsequently slew all they captured. Avilés did not take prisoners. Victories or massacres such as these, however, did not turn the tide. Rebel numbers increased and, as the struggle pushed south, the terrain became harsher. Even those people they assumed were allies could turn on them. The priest of the town of Asillo, José Maruri, greeted them outside of his deserted town but they arrested him for his support of José Gabriel, finding documentation to prove it.12 Rebel forces led by Pedro Vilca Apaza confronted del Valle outside of Asillo, in Condorcuyo. A ladino (Spanish-speaking Indian) from Muñani, just north of Lake Titicaca, Vilca Apaza had a long history of confronting abusive kurakas. In 1762, for example, he had tangled in the courts with Diego Choquehuanca, the patriarch of the kuraka clan who would subsequently oppose Tupac Amaru. By 1781, Vilca Apaza was a major rebel figure in the area north and west of Titicaca and into Upper Peru.13 Waving flags and playing drums and trumpets, the insurgents “who appeared to count on more than one hundred thousand men,” according to one hyperbolic account, intimidated royalist troops with screams and insults. A Lima squadron attacked the rebels in the open plain but they fought back and killed fifteen soldiers. Royalist Indian troops from Anta and Chinchero, part of Pumacahua’s forces who had rejoined del Valle, shouted a promise of a pardon if they surrendered. The rebels responded that their goal was to take Cuzco “and free their idolized [idolotrado] Inca.”14 The royalists attacked in four groups the next day, May 7, seeking to force the insurgents down the back side of the mountain. Taking advantage of their cannons and fusils, the royalists claimed to have killed over six hundred rebels and wounded many more. The insurgents’ courage shocked del Valle. He provided two examples to show how different they were from the “simple” and “pusillanimous” Indians defeated by the conquistadors in the sixteenth century; del Valle sought to show that his struggle was even more epic than that of the conquistadors. One Indian pulled a spear out of his chest with his own hands and continued to fight until he died. When a royalist pierced a rebel in the eye with a lance, the victim counterattacked with such

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ferocity and determination that only the intervention of another soldier could save the royalist. The account labeled the victory a miracle.15 Although the royalists secured mules, horses, food, and other supplies left behind, their mood did not improve as they moved into Azángaro, the largest town north of Lake Titicaca and the rebel base until just days before. They found it deserted except for the priest’s assistant, who told them that he had been forced to destroy the church’s holy vessels as the rebels repeatedly threatened to profane the church and steal its jewels. The rebel leaders had moved elsewhere and local Indians had escaped to the hills, adding to the rebels’ ranks. Mestizos and whites had fled to Puno or even Cuzco and Arequipa. In addition, on May 11, rebels ambushed del Valle’s troops in the high pass of Puquinacancari. Men and women tricked the troops into believing they were asking for a pardon when in fact insurgents pushed boulders from above and slung rocks at them, the rebels’ weapons of choice. Their courage again shocked del Valle as many of them fought until death or threw themselves over cliffs rather than be captured.16 At this point, early May 1781, Diego Cristóbal was nearby, moving between Carabaya and the region’s most important city, Puno, which rebels had surrounded. They remained mobile in order to recruit followers, gather supplies, and avoid the Spanish. In contrast to the first phase, the insurgents did not have a natural base to compare with José Gabriel and Micaela’s well-protected house. The rebels’ mobility frustrated the Spanish. Some people reported that Diego Cristóbal had slept at a lover’s house, only about five miles from the royalist Paruro column led by Isidro de Guisasola. Del Valle wrote bitterly that, “without a doubt, we would have captured them if the Paruro column had pursued.” He subsequently punished Guisasola. Del Valle believed that followers were massively abandoning the rebels but noted incredulously that “in the towns they pass through the insurgents tell the people that they are in pursuit of lions, tigers, and other ferocious animals to devour the Spanish army; barbarous, out-of-touch fantasies that the idiots of these wretched, unfortunate lands somehow believe.”17 His idea of rebel desertions seemed to be wishful thinking; his concerns about the rebels successfully recruiting with the promise of obliterating the Spanish were not off the mark. Del Valle’s remark about wild animals never seen in the Americas reminds us about the novelty of the bloodshed and the range of understandings of warfare. Sources provide a few glimpses of these unique

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interpretations. The Lampa corregidor, Vicente Oré, expressed his impatience with Indian recruits who did not understand firearms. Some of the recruits refused to hold a musket, worried that it might conceal “a hidden poison.” Oré did not clarify whether the poison endangered the shooter or the target. His impatience expressed both an ethnocentric disdain for Indians as well as the fact that the vast majority of Indians had never seen a firearm, except perhaps in a parade or a painting.18 Pedro Quispe, a Tupac Amaru supporter from an Indian community near Sicuani and renowned as a curandero or healer for livestock, used his skills to ward off the royalists. He burned the bones of about ten Spaniards he and his comrades had killed and mixed the ash with the charred remains of dog, fox, and cat teeth. Quispe then spread it around apachetas or sanctuaries in the upper passes. After blowing it into the air, he chanted a request that it neutralize “hail, frost, and mestizos.” Quispe believed that this potion would turn any royalist who stepped on it into ash.19 Although the accounts of the fighting focus on the clash between the royalists’ ground war and the rebels’ more mobile tactics, they also provide glimpses of how indigenous people understood warfare and employed local forms of knowledge. Del Valle also lamented that he not seen a single man in the trail on his long trek into the Collao, “all are at the crest of the highest peaks, their fields sterile and deserted. The towns burnt down, churches closed with no spiritual activity as the priests, who have destroyed the sacred vessels because of their fear that the barbarous rebels will profane their temples, have joined me, worried that they will suffer the outrages and calamities that others of their class have suffered.” Communications between columns had become difficult. Indians in Santiago de Pupuja had cut off the ears, nose, and hands of one royalist messenger, who carried a letter from Commander Francisco Cuellar.20 Del Valle and his troops had been hungry, cold, and miserable since leaving Sicuani. As the altitudes increased, agricultural land diminished. Troops from both sides had ransacked estates and markets and many peasants and estate owners had not planted or had learned to hide their valuable food, meat, and other supplies. As the Incas had shown, the harsh altiplano requires elaborate storage systems. The war had demolished these. In an August 8, 1781 letter, del Valle complained that the paltry salary he offered his troops was not enough even for food, particularly “in these deserted and sterile parts [paises];

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the towns I passed through were burnt to the ground, the people having fled to the snow-covered peaks with their livestock, horses, grains, and possessions.” He admitted that he had to “become a good thief” to feed his troops. Even then, they survived on boiled or roasted lamb and mutton, with salt the only seasoning. This diet made his troops so ill with bloody dysentery, they could barely walk.21 Many Indians that del Valle and other royalist commanders “recruited” fled back to their towns. Those he had brought from Lima did not have this option— it was too far. These troops, mostly blacks and mulattoes, many dragooned off the streets and from bars, suffered from the altitude, the relentless chill, the terrible and insufficient food, and exhaustion. Those who were professional soldiers could not offer their families in Lima anything. These soldiers, who remained anonymous even in death, faced a relentless guerrilla war waged by highly motivated, mobile fighters. They were miserable. Royalists had run out of “alcohol or balms” and had to rely on urine to treat wounds. They also did not have anyone to fi x their weapons. Del Valle’s troops “couldn’t stand it when they were so close to their homes, family, and fields; others couldn’t bear the lack of uniforms or clothes, the cold, the hunger, and the other chores of warfare, to the point that they hated military ser vice so much that they would prefer to desert and face the risk of being killed by the enemy.”22 Finding fresh recruits was almost impossible. Indians and mestizos who lived near Cuzco “hid in the sheerest, most hidden hills” to avoid military duty.23 Del Valle and his troops were despondent as they moved toward Lake Titicaca, with autumn rapidly becoming winter. Moreover, in late April 1781 Indians in the upper provinces near José Gabriel and Micaela’s core area rose up in support of Diego Cristóbal.24 Reports also arrived of subversive activity in Tucumán in northwest Rio de la Plata (part of present-day Argentina), in Chile, and in New Granada (present-day Colombia). In Tucumán, Jujuy, and Salta, Rio de la Plata’s Andean north, as well as northern Chile, rebels struck Spanish forces, invoking the Katari movement.25 In New Granada, creoles and others took to the streets to criticize tax increases and demand greater political autonomy. They organized in a común or common, and thus took the name comuneros. The events in Cuzco had kindled their rebellion.26 Authorities in distant Mexico, in Izúcar de Matamoros in Puebla, “evoked fear of another Tupac Amaru uprising.”27

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The depleted Spanish columns approaching Lake Titicaca not only faced insurgents all around them and throughout Upper Peru but in the area they had just passed in their “pacification” campaign and to the distant south and north. Panic can be detected in del Valle’s correspondence. He felt surrounded, concerned that the more distant uprisings would impede the arrival of the reinforcements he needed and even mean rebel victory. On May 16, del Valle set out after the young leaders with his own column. At this point, he sought to expel or even capture the leadership, liberate Puno from the siege, and cut off ties with insurgents in Upper Peru. None of these tasks proved easy; in fact, he failed on all fronts.

The Siege of Puno On the northern shores of Lake Titicaca at almost thirteen thousand feet above sea level, Puno constituted the most important city in the area. Residents oversaw the nearby silver mines of Cancharani and Layacayata and participated in the active trade route that connected Lima and Cuzco with Potosí and Rio de la Plata. Estate owners and indigenous communities raised sheep primarily for their valuable wool. In fact, soldiers from both sides subsisted largely on lamb and mutton, crippling wool production for at least a decade.28 Puno also served as an administrative center, linking Peru and Upper Peru. While its corregidor, Joaquín Antonio de Orellana, had abandoned Puno when the uprising erupted in October 1780, he returned to defend the city and the region in January 1781. He proved to be a brave commander who left vivid testimony of his forays throughout the region and his stubborn defense of Puno against several sieges. Orellana moved constantly throughout the Titicaca area, attempting to recruit, raise funds, and defend towns from the rebels. He complained frequently about the lack of support from La Paz, Arequipa, and Cuzco and, in late 1780, was disappointed when Areche went directly to Cuzco rather than taking a long detour to Puno. Coordinating among the corregidors of local provinces such as Azángaro, Carabaya, and Chucuito proved difficult, as rebels blocked communications and intimidated the local population. A corregidor-led war council met several times in December 1780 and seesawed between optimism about the arrival of reinforcements, weapons, and money, and pessimism about what increas-

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ingly seemed like an unwinnable total war. Puno’s mestizo and white population called for an evacuation several times, while Orellana endeavored to make it the royalist refuge in the Titicaca area. Events in Chucuito, the province along the southwest side of Lake Titicaca and today part of Peru’s border with Bolivia, alarmed royalists and others in the area. For contemporaries and historians, these attacks led by Tupac Katari commanders Isidro Mamani and Pascual Alarapita epitomized two chilling changes in the nature of the confl ict: the overlapping of the Katari and Amaru forces and the mass killing of civilians by the rebels. In mid-March the rebels took the town of Pomata. Days later, on March 25, over seven thousand rebels attacked the town of Juli, killing, according to one estimate, four hundred Spaniards, creoles, and mestizos. Commander Orellana found “the plaza and streets flooded in blood, with cadavers strewn everywhere.” Indian rebels ransacked houses and churches.29 The insurgents attacked Chucuito on April 3, trapping its militia leader, Nicolás Mendiolaza. According to several reports, they killed up to one thousand people, burning Mendiolaza alive and beheading hundreds, and destroyed most houses and churches. Chucuito was far bloodier than any other battle since Tupac Amaru had begun the rebellion seven months earlier.30 Accounts mentioned rebels throwing children into frigid Lake Titicaca to drown, chopping women’s heads off and piling them on the gallows, and, in Juli, drinking the blood of dead women. In March, Orellana rushed back to Puno, dodging several ambushes. Royalist spirits tumbled when, en route to Puno, they entered the town of Icho and found that rebels had beheaded indigenous women due to their husbands’ support for the Spanish.31 Rebels surrounded Puno— the Katari forces to the south and those of Diego Cristóbal to the north— in late March and attacked on April 10. Orellana had prepared the city well, building fortresses, digging trenches, and arranging cannons. He stationed militia units outside the city and had his gunners prepared to shoot from the towers. Pascual Alarapita and Isidro Mamani recruited for the rebels to the south and east of Lake Titicaca. Indians of the town of Acora, however, seized Mamani and handed him over to the royalists.32 Nonetheless, rebels from Azángaro, Lampa, and Carabaya— all virtually deserted towns— combined with those of Chucuito to attack Puno. Orellana used his cannons, guns, and cavalry well, and staved off these repeated attacks in April.

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On May 7, Diego Cristóbal appeared on the bluffs to the west of Puno. On the following day he dislodged royalist Indians from the Azogue hill, the source of azogue or mercury that looms over the city, chasing them into the Santa Barbara fortress. The rebels surrounded the city, cutting off supply lines. Orellana described the ensuing attack as “unbelievable for anyone who did not witness it.”33 The corregidor used his fi repower, trenches, and fortresses to ward off the rebels, who greatly outnumbered the royalists, but was shocked to see that they had brought crowbars to pry apart adobe walls. The insurgents set houses on fi re (the roofs had plenty of flammable material) and used the sounds from their weapons and instruments, as well as gut-wrenching screams, to intimidate. Attacks continued for several days; some rebel groups pushed toward the main plaza while others assaulted the weapons depot on the outskirts. Diego Cristóbal tried to lure the royalists out of the relative safety of the city by sending groups just outside of the short line of fi re from fusils and cannons, but Orellana refused to take the bait. On the morning of May 12, royalists happily reported that Diego Cristóbal had departed, leaving behind a parasol he used for the sun. The rebel leader apparently had decided against an extended siege in which his forces would starve out the Puno residents or deprive them of water. Other groups continued the fight but could not take the city. Orellana received a letter from del Valle dated May 19 that reinforcements were on their way.34 Food was running low. Del Valle faced constant ambushes and skirmishes in his approach to Puno from Carabaya. Two of his commanders, corregidors Manuel Castilla and Francisco Laisequilla, returned toward Cuzco to confront disturbances in their provinces of Paruro and Chumbivilcas. Authorities there claimed that the Indians in the upper elevations were taking advantage of the chaos to steal livestock. They also recognized these groups’ opposition to Europeans and their desire “to take advantage of the freedoms offered them by their sacrilegious leader, who they venerate.”35 New reports arrived of rebel activity in the peaks of Urubamba, Calca y Lares, Paucartambo, and Quispicanchi.36 Despite the execution of Tupac Amaru and his entourage, royalists did not control Cuzco and del Valle had to dilute his already stretched forces. Del Valle reached the outskirts of Puno on May 24. To Orellana’s dismay, he refused to enter the city and instead sent Colonel Gabriel de Avilés. Del Valle worried that the rebels had set a trap and would return

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once he entered Puno. Orellana insisted that they attack the enemy in their retreat toward Chucuito, to the south. Del Valle again declined. Uncertain of what to do, and leery that the rebels would attack Puno once again with even greater numbers, Orellana called for a meeting or junta on the twenty-fi fth. Its participants believed that the fate of the Spanish in South America depended on their meeting.37 Del Valle offered Orellana one hundred armed men as reinforcements to defend Puno. The corregidor immediately rejected this as ridiculously insufficient—he had barely survived the previous sieges and his supplies were dangerously low. Moreover, the rebels were getting stronger, and locals’ resolve weaker. Orellana insisted that del Valle recognize Puno’s importance and make it his headquarters.38 Del Valle, however, had little confidence that his troops could hold the city. The freezing weather, gory battles, dwindling supplies—which meant scrimping on meals, uniforms, and pay—had intensified desertion among his troops. He had left Cuzco with 15,000 soldiers yet four months later less than 10 percent remained. On May 25, he wrote, “we are down to eight hundred men, almost all from Lima. Accustomed to that city’s sweet weather, they can no longer bear to suffer from the bitter frosts that get worse every day, a discomfort made much worse by the fact that many are barefoot and their clothes ragged; we are low on bread and they are so used to this staple that this shortage bothers them greatly. In addition, our tents have gaping holes.”39 May is winter in the Collao, meaning cold days and painfully frigid nights, particularly for soldiers in tattered uniforms and tents, accustomed to milder weather. Temperatures drop even more in June, July, and August. The May 25 junta included del Valle’s key commanders: Gabriel de Avilés, Joaquín Valcárcel, Matías Baulen, the Marques de Rocafuerte, Gaspar de Ugarte, José Acuña, Antonio Vivas, and José de Lagos. With the situation in Puno ominous and news arriving from every direction about the latest skirmishes, the royalist leaders argued energetically and bitterly. The participants felt that the fate of the Peruvian viceroyalty relied on their decision; they also knew that outnumbered by increasingly belligerent Indians who by and large supported the rebels, their lives were at risk. Del Valle described the situation and his decision not to make a last stand in Puno in bleak terms: his troops were unhappy, tired, hungry, and undisciplined; the provinces in La Paz and Buenos Aires were up in arms; he did not count on enough troops to

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even make it to La Paz; they faced not only mass desertions but even the disgrace of defeat; that while the siege of La Paz had ended (which was not true), Cuzco confronted a similar threat and, as part of Peru, deserved this group’s par tic u lar attention. He cast the decision as one between retreating to Cuzco or Arequipa in order to obtain supplies and troops and to rest in the middle of winter or pushing on to La Paz, an option he rued. According to Lagos, who was incensed by the proceedings, Avilés voted for Arequipa or Cuzco, Valcárcel insisted on Arequipa, and Vivas, Gaspar de Ugarte, Baulen, and Rocafuerte preferred Cuzco. Baulen presented an expedition to Upper Peru as suicidal: the rebel provinces en route to La Paz contained three hundred thousand men who had the canyons and peaks covered. He contended that “not even a thousand fusils could push through this force.”40 Ugarte and Vivas seconded him. Lagos rebutted. He recognized that the rebels had slaughtered whites, “la gente blanca,” and killed seven hundred people in Chucuito, but argued that with reinforcements, the royalists would have the upper hand. When they had counted on two thousand men, six hundred fusils, four cannons, and sixty thousand cartridges and the Indians had only sticks and slingshots, “they had not feared a thing. WHY NOW?” 41 He maintained that retreating would be a disgrace and that they could hold Puno, as they had done so far, and then move victoriously toward La Paz. Lagos argued that they needed to terminate the “contagion” and that the loss of the region, the “throat” that connected Lima with Charcas, would be catastrophic, crippling tax revenues, mining, and trade. He reminded them that Spain was virtually at war with England and that reinforcements were on their way from Lima and Buenos Aires. Lagos criticized the other members’ “panicky fears” and invoked the “fi rst conquistadors” as models. He contended that if they fled to Cuzco, retaking the Puno area “would cost the king years, millions of pesos, and much bloodshed.” 42 Only Acuña, the corregidor of Cotabambas, backed Lagos. The junta voted to return to Cuzco, granting Puno’s inhabitants three days to prepare. Orellana described the “great pain” he felt from the order to evacuate and the “confusion, disorder, and sobbing” that the news prompted among Puno’s residents. He destroyed his cannons so that the rebels couldn’t seize them.43 On May 27, even sooner than del Valle had stated, approximately 8,000 men, women, and children began the long,

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chilling journey to Cuzco, including about 1,000 royalist soldiers and 1,246 loyal Indian honderos or slingers. A much smaller contingent headed for Arequipa.44 Lagos and Orellana reported that rebels assaulted stragglers and ventured close to steal supplies. They attacked twice, killing “many women, children, and some men” cruelly.45 Conditions could not have been much worse: low on supplies, they faced rebel attacks at every turn. Members of Puno’s middle class, merchants and small landowners primarily, had just abandoned their property; some of the oldest members and the ill did not survive the harrowing journey over snow-covered mountain passes and through narrow canyons. Diego Cristóbal presumably could have stopped the exodus by blocking the passages throughout the mountainous journey, especially around La Raya. He also could have slaughtered them by attacking in unison. He did not. Perhaps he took pity on them; he also might have understood that their trek and arrival in Cuzco would bolster rumors about rebel domination in the south. The exhausted group reached Cuzco forty days later, on July 2. Viceroy Jáuregui himself cited a letter from del Valle that described his soldiers’ wretched conditions: “Most were dressed in rags, their legs uncovered and their feet bare, the majority sick, weakened by three months of surviving on nothing but unseasoned roasted sheep.” 46 They were down to 1,449 officers and soldiers and the wounded “fi lled Cuzco’s hospitals.”47 The civilians were in worse shape. They had withstood the sieges of Puno and had to leave the bulk of their belongings there. They had lost many of their loved ones on the journey. By the time they arrived in Cuzco they suffered from lice and a variety of illnesses, and were taken immediately to the city’s hospitals.48 Viceroy Jáuregui referred to them as “the gimpy, the blind, and the wounded.” 49 Del Valle himself was ill and requested that he be relieved. Nonetheless, he provided a thorough report on what a new offensive in the Collao required. He believed that Diego Cristóbal might return to Tinta and attack Cuzco. Del Valle demanded four thousand fresh troops, arguing that his were exhausted and that mixed-race (pardos) and free blacks from Lima were “worthless” due to their inability to acclimate to the altitude. He stressed how the shortage of food, uniforms, and other supplies had hampered his campaign, and also recognized the escalation of rebel violence. He wrote, “It is not easy to explain the rebels’ mortal hatred, not just toward Spaniards but to all those whose skin

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color makes them look like one, as seen in the cold-blooded cruelty with which they have killed people in the Collao, [targeting] all people with any trace of whiteness in their face, without exceptions for sex or age.”50 The ill and dejected soldiers and the downtrodden Puno residents demonstrated to everyone who saw them on their long trek that del Valle’s expedition south and the subsequent evacuation of the Lake Titicaca area had been a stinging defeat for the Spanish. The situation had changed dramatically in a few months. The battalions that had captured Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas impressed everyone with their manpower, precision, and fi repower. Less than two months after the leaders’ execution, however, the remnants of these troops returned to Cuzco hungry and poorly dressed, with no victory to speak of since the April capture. Cuzco residents heard from the Puno refugees about the royalist officers’ indecision and bickering and, in contrast, the rebels’ strength, courage, and confidence. Stories of sieges, massacres, and escapes across the high plains around Lake Titicaca alarmed locals. The two most prominent Spanish authorities in Cuzco, José del Valle and Antonio Areche, quarreled and exchanged blame, deepening a division among the Spanish that would shape events in the near future.

Fear Rather than Desire On June 29, Areche wrote to Viceroy Jáuregui from Cuzco to explain his despair—“tears pour from my heart about the depopulation of the famous village of Puno”— and to present an alternative. He also sought to lay the blame squarely on del Valle’s shoulders. Areche painted a bleak picture of abandoned churches throughout the Collao and Indians losing the little respect they had for Europeans. Without churches and Indian submission, Spanish colonialism in the Andes was unthinkable and would rapidly disintegrate. From Quito to beyond Potosí, all along the great chain of mountains that served as South America’s backbone, the Church had a much greater presence than the colonial state. Far more indigenous people had met a priest than a bureaucrat. Majestic churches laden with stirring baroque art graced the towns of the Andes, while the local state, the municipalities, had meager offices, if any at all. Although not a great friend of the church—he blamed it for the uprising—Areche recognized its overwhelming importance in the Andes.

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Areche criticized del Valle for not taking control of the areas that he entered, but recognized that rebel supporters fled quickly, taking to the impenetrable hills. However, Areche rejected del Valle’s excuse that he had lacked supplies: “If his troops temporarily did not have food, shoes, and other goods, it is the commanding officer’s fault for not requesting them and planning adequately.”51 Areche called for starving the rebels out, by preventing them from harvesting potatoes, corn, and coca, impeding their incursions into towns in search of food, and isolating them from their supply of salt. Beyond this vague plan, he stressed del Valle’s incompetence, calling for a new military head.52 Del Valle repeatedly justified his actions by stressing the miseries he faced and the impossibility of victory with hungry, cold, and undisciplined troops, in harsh terrain. In a long letter to Viceroy Jáuregui from July 12 that sought to rebut Areche’s criticism, del Valle described the bitter cold and snow that killed many of their mules and limited pastureland for the surviving pack animals. His beasts of burden as well as his troops had been hungry. He also lamented the lack of kindling and fi rewood in an area well above what is usually considered the tree line. Del Valle complained about the growing number of desertions among his soldiers, bemoaning the loss of weapons when they fled, but recognized that it was nearly impossible to retain troops in harsh conditions when they did not have enough food or adequate uniforms and tents. Del Valle also emphasized the rebels’ use of hills as points of refuge, recognizing, in effect, what would subsequently be known as guerrilla warfare (from the Spanish for “small war”): hit-and-run attacks in which insurgents took advantage of their mobility and knowledge of the terrain. Del Valle emphasized here and elsewhere how the rebels retreated into hills, escaping from royalists. He noted bitterly that “there’s not a hill that can cut off these Indians.”53 In another July letter to Viceroy Jáuregui, del Valle underlined the rebels’ tenacity and hatred for the Spanish. He described how “Indians of the upper peaks” [cerros] rejected his offer to pardon them if they gave up their struggle: “they called us the rebelling thieves and said that we should ask them for a pardon; they’ve become so haughty that they think fear rather than desire to enforce the king’s order forces us to offer peace.”54 This anticipated another tenet of what would be known as guerrilla warfare: that insurgents had greater motivation or desire than their repressors. It also expressed the rebels’ continual belief that they

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rather than the royalists represented the king and the defense of justice and order. Areche and del Valle sniped at each other constantly for years, with Areche continuing even after del Valle’s death on September 4, 1782. It was personal—they disliked each other; each wanted to blame the other for the Puno debacle and to claim the honor of seizing Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas. For example, in a letter to Gálvez, Areche complained bitterly that del Valle had received credit for Tupac Amaru’s capture “in Nuestra Gaceta” and “un capítulo de Cádiz.” Areche contended that he had led the charge and Indian troops and had captured the rebel inner circle, not del Valle, who was “too slow.”55 In mid-1781 Areche was lobbying to take over operations, claiming that he could retake Puno with one thousand reinforcements from Arequipa, more troops from the Callao division, and one thousand muskets. The viceroy thanked him for his input but told him that the army commander (del Valle or his unnamed successor) would be in charge of any campaign. Jáuregui also declined to send more troops from the coast, due to the threat of attack by the British. Areche took this as a betrayal and began to deride him in his frequent missives to Gálvez in Spain.56 He refused to meet with the viceroy when he returned to Lima in August 1781 and made it his mission to take over the antiinsurgency campaign, disparaging del Valle and the Viceroy at every possibility. This confl ict remained extremely personal— the accusations become harsher and harsher— but also reflected a deepening divergence over what actions needed to be taken. Areche, despite his criticism of the Santa Rosa executions and his occasional calls to understand the rebels, believed that del Valle had been too soft. He called for stricter policies that would isolate and even starve out the rebels and their supporters. Del Valle, Jáuregui, and other Cuzco leaders such as Bishop Moscoso contended that these tactics would not work, that the rebels controlled the area stretching from Cuzco to La Paz and could resist a new royalist offensive. They sought some type of negotiation. While this feud evolved from personal vitriol to programmatic disagreement about military policy, events around Lake Titicaca became even more disturbing. Not only had the same battalions that had captured Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas failed to defend Puno let alone capture Diego Cristóbal Tupac Amaru, but the rebels had become more violent and fought on multiple fronts. Royalists faced two orga-

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nized groups, those led by Diego Cristóbal and those from the La Paz area led by Tupac Katari, as well as the fierce local uprisings not controlled by the leadership. News about the siege of La Paz terrified city dwellers throughout Peru. At the same time that del Valle, Areche, and Jáuregui sent nasty memos about one another and sought to pull rank, the rebellion threatened to extend well into the Rio de la Plata viceroyalty. Royalists had much more to fear than the loss of Puno.

Each and Every Indian Colonial authorities understood that by mid-1781 insurgents were using greater violence against more and more people. They also realized that the rebel leaders had less control over insurgent fighters. Both changes petrified them. A letter from Arequipa dated May 2, 1781 summarized the situation in the Upper Peru (“Chuquisaca, Sicasica, Carcoto.”) in the following terms: “There is no Tupac Amaru there: furthermore, there is no true Katari, as the fi rst one died and his successor is an insult to his name (‘UN INSULTANTE’); but this doesn’t matter. Each and every Indian declares himself a Tupac Amaru and he who wants to stand out among them for his insolence uses this name.”57 In fact, the writer implied that it did matter— every Indian was potentially a murderous insurgent and even a leader. In contrast to the first phase, rebels attacked priests. Diego Cristóbal and the other leaders sought to prevent their followers from harming clerics, but had little ability to do so as the rebel center moved away from Cuzco. He also reacted harshly to clerics who disobeyed him. In an August 19, 1781 letter, the rebel leader rejected Father Miguel Morán’s explanation why his parish could not support the uprising: “Your Excellency is trying to cover up with frivolous excuses, as if I were not aware of everything that occurred in Indian Peru [indiana del Perú]; you can only give these excuses to the Puka kunka thieves while I, as a noble Inca, am immune to such rhetoric.” He demanded that the priest stop intimidating and obstructing Indians, underlining that he could not be deceived and had thousands of troops to punish royalists.58 In June 1781, on his return to Cuzco, José del Valle sent a list of twenty-three priests who had been victims. He began with the story of don Sagardia, parish priest of San Taraco in Azángaro. Insurgents burned down his parish house and stole his belongings “for having completely

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opposed the rebels’ orders.” Another priest, don Josef Travitaru, had tried to impede the circulation of insurgent orders and decrees “to stop this cancer” and requested the corregidor’s aid. The corregidor (presumably Orellana) led a slaughter of fi fty or sixty rebel “captains, judges, commanders, and colonels” in the town of Samán, near Azángaro. Both priests only survived by fleeing to Puno.59 The list described priests and their aides who had been robbed, beaten, imprisoned, dragged by horses, humiliated in numerous ways, stripped, whipped, and threatened. Several watched as the rebels killed their relatives and others had been taken prisoner to Tinta, presumably in the fi rst months of the uprising. Del Valle listed three priests killed by rebels, all from remote parishes: Juli, in La Paz bishopric, Ocongate in the upper provinces, and Paucartambo, toward the jungle. Rebels dragged a priest’s assistant from Lampa to the gallows, but del Valle could not confirm whether he was hanged. The commander closed his solemn report by describing how rebel procedures had changed. When entering a town, they tied up the priest and his aides, threatening to kill them. In contrast, in late 1780 Tupac Amaru had customarily met with the local cleric, requesting his support and using the church steps for his speeches.60 At the onset of the uprising, Bishop Moscoso had instructed his priests to stay behind in their parishes to proselytize against the rebels, insisting that they would be safe. By mid-1781, this was no longer the case. As del Valle led the humiliating exodus of Puno residents to Cuzco, Diego Cristóbal consolidated his base in Azángaro and sought to move southeast and link with the Tupac Katari uprising. Andrés Tupac Amaru had taken charge of the area east of Lake Titicaca. With Vilca Apaza he oversaw the siege of Sorata, capital of Larecaja and part of the La Paz bishopric (part of modern-day Bolivia), from May through August. Thousands of rebels surrounded the town, which contained two thousand refugees from Lampa, Carabaya, and other nearby towns and cities.61 Although organized into companies and possessing weapons, the population ran low on food within weeks. After delegates met with rebels they were allowed to purchase some products, but Father José Eustaquio Caravedo lamented that the inhabitants relied on “the meat of mules, dogs, cats, mice and other filthy animals.” He labeled the rebels “pirates.”62 Fearing that they would be slaughtered, the besieged residents of Sorata refused to surrender. In early August, Andrés Tupac Amaru devised

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a plan to flood the town into submission. Diverting three rivers, he built a dam on the peaks above the town and opened it on August 5. The flooding water broke the town’s barricades and neutralized its defenses. Rebels, including Andrés and Mariano as well as Gregoria Apaza, the sister of Tupac Katari, poured in. Accounts vary on the bloodshed. Those sympathetic to the Spanish describe rapes and wanton slaughtering of anyone of European descent or appearance. Others contend that rebels killed Europeans but pardoned creoles and mestizos. Andrés Tupac Amaru forced European women to chew coca, wear Indian clothing, go barefoot, and call themselves Collas or Indians.63 From here Andrés took his forces toward La Paz, the site of an even more horrific siege.

10 The Pardon and the Cease-Fire

T

H E SI T UAT ION WAS BL EA K for royalists in late August 1781. Rebels had surrounded the city of La Paz once again and Tupac Amaru and Tupac Katari forces seemed on the verge of a momentous alliance. The Amarista rebels controlled the Lake Titicaca area and counted upon strong pockets of support from Puno to Cuzco as well as in what became northern Chile and Argentina. As seen, rebels also struck New Granada. The insurgents’ guerrilla tactics exasperated royalist commanders while the threat of long sieges and even caste war terrified residents of towns and cities. News about the starvation, dehydration, and slaughter in Sorata and La Paz had spread and more and more Europeans and mestizos fled, taking refuge in Lima, Arequipa, or Buenos Aires. Royalist commanders saw their best battalions collapse, changing from well armed, disciplined columns into ragged, hungry soldiers who sought the fi rst opportunity to desert. These commanders had largely given up recruiting local indigenous people. At the same time that the two rebel movements overlapped in the Lake Titicaca area and joined forces in the second siege of La Paz, divisions among the Spanish worsened. Visitador Areche bombarded Lima and Madrid with hundreds of letters and memos belittling del Valle’s failed campaign. He added Viceroy Agustín Jáuregui to his defamation campaign when Jáuregui refused to accept the visitador’s interpretation of why the royalists had stalled in the months after the capture of Tupac Amaru and declined to name Areche as del Valle’s replacement. This infighting appeared to supply one of the prerequisites, according to generations of theorists, of a successful revolution: the division of the ruling classes.1 In a mountainous area that seemed designed for guer-

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rilla tactics, a unified, multicultural (Quechua and Amaru) movement backed by the majority of Peru’s population confronted the divided, increasingly pessimistic Spaniards. The revolution seemed imminent. Confusion reigned. Royalist commanders and corregidors shared the pessimism that circulated among their followers. In somber letters and memos, they made clear their belief that the events of this period, mid1781, would decide the fate of Peru and perhaps even Spanish control of South America. They were correct—the events were epic and decisive. If the Tupac Amaru and Katarista forces united, the rebels would control the vast Andean area stretching from Cuzco to Potosí. They could redouble their attacks on royalist holdouts (such as Cuzco), engulf the important city of Arequipa, and cripple tax collection and trade routes between Buenos Aires and Lima. The insurgents would perhaps then set their sights on these two cities. Much of the population, particularly Spaniards and creoles, fretted that the starvation and dehydration of the La Paz siege and the butchery of Lake Titicaca would become standard practice. They not only worried about dying, but doing so in brutal fashion. At this point, the fate of the rebellion hung in the balance: could the rebels align, take La Paz, and spread south, north, east, and west, or could the Royalists make a fi nal stand? Royalists did not fight to regain a town or stop an advance; they fought to survive. The struggle or struggles, however, took an absolutely unexpected and decisive turn in September and October 1781. Curiously, this transformation has received far less attention than the story of Tupac Amaru’s capture and the mass executions. These events not only altered the course of the uprising but shaped Spanish policy and ideology in the Andes for decades. In fierce paper battles, Royalists debated about how to reconquer Peru and what to do with the indigenous population. These debates and the implementation of new forms of government and control, casting aside a two-hundred-year-old system, would weigh on Peru well past independence in the 1820s.

La Paz: Every Indian Now a Rebel? In La Paz, royalists managed to break the siege in July only to lose control a month later. The situation was horrific: people in the city were starving and losing hope. Commander Ignacio Flores’s arrival on July 1, 1781 had dislodged the rebels, bringing respite to the tens of thousands

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trapped within the city walls. Residents cheered their liberators and desperately searched for food and medical assistance. They could not venture too far from the city center, however. Rebels moved to the surrounding peaks and bluffs and continued their hit-and-run tactics. Survivors were able to eat, to bury or at least dump the dead outside the city walls, and to restore a bit of order in their residences. But calm did not return. Thousands of Flores’s troops deserted in July. Worried about his vulnerability, Flores fled La Paz on August 4, leaving a company of veteran soldiers behind. On August 7, rebels attacked but could not break royalist lines. The second siege began. One witness, don Juan Bautista de Zavala, estimated more than fourteen thousand dead in the two sieges: most from hunger, some from bullets, and “still others [who] were beheaded by the rebels in the fields that many attempted to cross, even though they knew that the rebels would not show mercy if they looked Spanish in any way.”2 He observed ruefully that “Every Indian is now a rebel, all die happily for their Inca King, all have forgotten God and his holy law.”3 Toward the end of August, Andrés Tupac Amaru, Miguel Bastidas, and other Tupac Amaru commanders arrived in La Paz. The much-feared alliance of the (new) leaders of the Tupac Amaru and Tupac Katari movements seemed imminent. Tensions emerged, however, between the two camps. Andrés and the others set up their base in El Alto while the Tupac Katari forces concentrated in Pampajasi, on the opposite side of the city.4 Andrés and his collaborators were well-educated Spanish and Quechua speakers from Cuzco, 325 miles away. They fought in the name of the Incas, a Cuzco-based civilization and empire that had subjugated the Aymara people. In contrast, Tupac Katari was a humble Aymara speaker who saw La Paz as his base and resented the outsiders. His qualms increased when Andrés became romantically involved with Gregoria Apaza, Tupac Katari’s sister. Moreover, one of Katari’s commanders, Tomás Inga Lipe, passed over to Andrés Tupac Amaru’s side, prompting infighting. In late August, the Tupac Amaru forces temporarily detained Katari. Andrés instructed Tupac Katari to call himself governor rather than viceroy, seeking to limit his power.5 Nonetheless, the two rebel sides managed to organize an effective second siege of La Paz. In early October, Andrés Tupac Amaru tried to repeat his triumph in Sorata and dammed the Choquepayu River in order to flood La Paz.

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He believed that the raging waters would crush the royalist defenses and break the defenders’ spirit. This time, his project failed because a retaining wall broke before the water could be diverted into the bowl of the city. The rebels succeeded, however, in blocking supplies from entering La Paz, so that hunger and illness spread once again throughout the city. Survivors told stories of parents watching their children and spouses watching their spouses crumple over and die of malnutrition “without the strength to even moan.” Alongside the dying and the dead, “walking skeletons” scavenged for food. People ate dogs that had survived feeding on the cadavers; some accounts hint at cannibalism.6 The sounds of the besieged city also tormented those trapped inside, as the screams of rebels threatening to attack the town mixed with the pathetic groans of children and adults begging for food. The stench from rotting bodies and feces as well as the pain from hunger and stomach ailments from the meals of boiled weeds made life even more miserable.7 In early October, rebel representatives met with the city’s leaders, demanding surrender. Fearful of mass slaughter such as that in Sorata, La Paz’s patriarchs refused. On October 15, however, desperate with hunger, the city leaders decided to abandon the city if military reinforcements did not arrive in the next few days.8 At this point, followers of Tupac Katari controlled much of the region from La Paz to Lake Titicaca and, to the south, toward Potosí. On October 17, Commander José de Reseguín reached La Paz with ten thousand troops (virtually every soldier who could be dragooned around Buenos Aires) and food, breaking the siege once again. For many it was too late. Thousands lay dead within the city walls. Andrés Tupac Amaru handed over operations to Miguel Bastidas and fled to Azángaro. He presumably preferred the hit-and-run tactics that had worked so well in recent months to a single confrontation with a well-armed royalist contingent. Tupac Katari resisted initially, taking to the hills above the city, but days later sought to join forces again with Miguel Bastidas. They failed to thwart Reseguin’s offensive and the great alliance and rebel control of La Paz shattered.9 Royalists took the offensive in Upper Peru, retaking the city of Oruro and attacking rebels in Cochabamba and other important towns. The insurgency collapsed where it began, Chayanta.10 Royalist commanders offered an amnesty to rebel supporters who gave up the struggle. Tupac Katari’s followers began to abandon him and a prominent

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Amarista commander, Miguel Sonco, declared his support for the Crown and recruited in Chucuito, a place that had been a rebel hotbed. Tupac Katari rejected the amnesty and the option of turning himself in to the royalists, but learned with horror that thousands of his followers had accepted it in early November. Royalists claimed that Katari and Miguel Bastidas, who remained in the area, had broken the agreement (the amnesty offer that Katari never signed or accepted). Betrayed by one of his own followers, Tupac Katari was captured on November 9. He was drawn and quartered in La Paz on November 15, a method that recalls the brutality against José Gabriel. Triumphant royalists displayed his head and body parts throughout the Titicaca area.11 Royalist commanders executed dozens of his followers, including, a year later, his wife, Bartolina Sisa, and sister, Gregoria Apaza.12 Miguel Bastidas (Micaela’s much younger brother) presented himself for a pardon and after years of trials was sent to prison in Spain.13 Violence and insubordination would continue in Charcas for months and years, even though the royalists had executed the leaders and defeated or disarmed the core rebel groups.

Shipwrecked Heart In his fi nal weeks, Tupac Katari watched some of his most trusted allies and thousands of his followers turn over their arms. Weeks after being on the verge of taking La Paz, his movement was on the run and in disarray. Yet developments on the other side of Lake Titicaca, in Lower Peru, must have been equally shocking and painful for him. At the same time that Katari was desperately trying to preserve the rebel hold on La Paz and rebuild the rebellion, the Tupac Amaru leaders were negotiating with the Spanish. Del Valle had returned to Cuzco in July 1781 convinced that the Spanish would soon lose the war. Indians massively supported the rebels, who took advantage of the mountainous terrain, using guerrilla tactics against the miserable royalist soldiers. The increasing violence against anyone considered a European caused panic and exodus. People who could be labeled European because of their wealth, skin color, or clothing fled the area. The Spanish strained to supply the troops; del Valle’s soldiers had fought much of the campaign with ripped shoes and tents and insufficient food— they were frostbitten and hungry. While

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the seventy-year-old del Valle was no doubt attempting to explain his failure in the south, he correctly believed that the insurgents had the upper hand. Del Valle thus proposed an amnesty for all rebel supporters. Citing as precedent the partial pardon granted in December 1780, del Valle wrote the viceroy on August 8, 1781 to suggest an amnesty for all fighters except the rebel leaders. He later amended the proposal to include leaders if they accepted the armistice. The viceroy consulted with his advisors and added a one-year exemption from the head tax, the tribute, in order to make it more enticing for taxpaying Indians. The fact that no tax collector dared attempt to collect the head tax anywhere in southern Peru made this a painless, symbolic gesture, although it reassured Indians that they would not subsequently be charged for the period’s tribute. In a subsequent justification of his actions, the viceroy argued that the execution of José Gabriel had only strengthened the rebels: “It seemed like they tried even harder to commit atrocities; above all, every day a new leader emerged, making it impossible to exterminate this class of people with weapons, without also destroying the kingdom itself.”14 Jáuregui signed the amnesty or indulto on September 12. Corregidor Francisco Salcedo delivered it to Diego Cristóbal in Azángaro.15 Visitador Areche initially agreed with the amnesty plan, but as his relations with del Valle and Jáuregui worsened he became more and more critical. In fact, he moved from tepid supporter to heated opponent. Since del Valle’s humiliating return to Cuzco in July, Areche had campaigned with hundreds of letters and memos against the commander. He blamed del Valle for the defeat in Puno and tried to take credit for the capture of Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas. Areche believed that as visitador he deserved more power than the viceroy and the right to oversee the military campaign. He took advantage of the amnesty to cast del Valle and Jáuregui as spineless failures who preferred to negotiate rather than defeat or exterminate the rebels. Earlier in 1781, Jáuregui had written letters that supported Areche’s harsh sentence against Tupac Amaru, Micaela, and others but also hinted at differences of opinion. For example, in a June 13, 1781, letter to Areche he insisted on the need to gain the support of kurakas and the benefits of moderation rather than authoritarian measures, lamenting “so much spilling of blood.”16 Jáuregui agreed with Areche that Indians needed to learn Spanish, be evangelized, and indoctrinated into European customs,

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but argued that doing it all at once would be counterproductive. Citing his experience in Chile, Viceroy Jáuregui made it clear that acculturation (which involved learning Spanish, becoming a good Catholic, and abandoning traditional culture) required a deliberate, methodical plan.17 Areche held very different views. In an April 30, 1781 letter to José Gálvez, he contended that “these Americans require just terror rather than sweetness.” In other words, Indians would only change through force.18 Areche believed that the viceroy’s call for moderation was a sign of weakness and would fail if put into practice. His contempt for del Valle and the viceroy gushed from his incessant letters and memos. Areche repeatedly questioned del Valle’s decision to evacuate Puno and his ability as a commander. The viceroy earned his wrath by not naming him to replace del Valle and by not meeting him when he visited Lima in August 1781.19 The amnesty angered Areche but his initial observations focused on procedure: the visitador criticized the viceroy for not consulting with the Real Audiencia, the High Court. The fact that the viceroy had not discussed the proposal with him also greatly frustrated Areche. These initial concerns turned into a much harsher criticism as the months passed. Areche wrote an astonishing number of letters and memos to Gálvez as well as to Jáuregui, del Valle, and Bishop Moscoso to prove his point. One historian labeled his writing at this point “logorrheic,” that is, involving a pathological excess of words.20 Del Valle took his arguments farther, blaming Peru’s problems on the reforms imposed by Areche and other Bourbon Reformers. He pointed out that “the new taxes and the rigorous and irreverent way in which they are exacted have provoked a notorious negative impact throughout America.”21 In the final months of 1781, Viceroy Jáuregui and Commander del Valle were much more concerned with Diego Cristóbal Tupac Amaru’s reaction to the amnesty offer than with Areche’s ranting. The rebels were on the offensive and news from the other side of Lake Titicaca alarmed royalists in Lima and elsewhere. Del Valle wrote Diego Cristóbal on October 10 in a respectful yet threatening tone. He reminded him of what had happened to his cousin José Gabriel, Micaela Bastidas, and others, underlining that Diego Cristóbal and the other young leaders were in danger of a similar fate. Commander del Valle asked that Diego Cristóbal accept the amnesty offer, posted throughout the Andes.22 Diego Cristóbal answered from Azángaro on October 18th, in a momentous letter that del Valle must have opened with great apprehension.

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The rebel leader confirmed that he had received the amnesty offer. He blamed the uprising on abusive authorities in the Americas who disobeyed His Majesty Charles III, particularly “the thieving corregidors.” Diego Cristóbal noted that in previous wars Spanish authorities had offered peace but then broken their promise, making Andean people cynical and wary.23 Nonetheless, while blaming chapetones (a derogatory term for Spaniards, infrequently used in the uprising) who bled the Andean people “in the name of the king, Our Lord” for the violence, Diego Cristóbal agreed to the amnesty. The rebel leader admitted that he accepted to save his family and his own life. However, he questioned del Valle’s role in José Gabriel Tupac Amaru’s execution, arguing that his cousin should have been sent to Lima or to Spain so the viceroy or the king “would have learned the truth about the crimes of the evil Europeans.”24 He added, “I suppose that you all, accomplices in the iniquities of the evil Europeans, did this to hide the truth.” Diego Cristóbal claimed that “the fear of death did not make him hesitate,” but lamented that the offer had not been made earlier.25 Diego Cristóbal accepted the amnesty offer but defended what he and his cousin had done. He never wavered in his belief that he and his cousin upheld justice and the king’s authority. Numerous reasons explain Diego Cristóbal’s stunning decision to accept. He had his doubts about the Amaru-Katarista alliance. Relations between the two rebel camps had always been tense, and the failed siege of La Paz ruptured the coalition. Moreover, Cuzco and his home region of the Vilcanota concerned Diego Cristóbal much more than Charcas; perhaps (this is speculation) he was simply not that interested in a transAndean uprising. Spanish fears that the struggle that had already moved from Potosí to Cuzco would extend until it stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans—from Buenos Aires to Lima—were perhaps unfounded; the second wave of Amarista rebels might not have had such a grandiose vision. Diego Cristóbal was younger than his cousin. He had not traveled to Lima and had not read Garcilaso de la Vega, an important impetus for the widely circulated idea of a return of the Incas under Tupac Amaru’s leadership. Simply put, Diego Cristóbal might very well have taken charge of the uprising, replacing his soon-to-be-martyred cousin, in order to continue a Cuzco-based struggle against unbearable corregidors, abuse, and exploitation. He did not necessarily envision a mass, trans-Andean revolution.

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More mundane reasons also influenced him. The tens of thousands of dead in the sieges of La Paz no doubt weighed on him. His cousin, whom he venerated, had not wanted to take Cuzco violently, over countless dead bodies. Moreover, Diego Cristóbal was exhausted and scared. While he had driven del Valle out of Puno and seemed to have the upper hand, he knew that he was only one effective trap away from imprisonment (and he knew what that meant) or one good musket shot from death. The Spanish victory in La Paz, as well as a large battalion organized by Ramón Arias that was en route from Arequipa to the Lake Titicaca area in October, concerned him. He recognized that his family and inner circle had already paid a high price. Perhaps Diego Cristóbal also feared that his rebel base would slip away once the rainy season ended and the harvest began in early 1782 or that, conversely, his followers would become more radical and irrepressible. After more than a year of fighting and six months as absolute leader, a time when he had always been on the move and had lost much of his family, the offer of peace and a return to Pampamarca must have sounded enticing. The viceroy and Inspector del Valle recruited Bishop Moscoso to convince Diego Cristóbal that the Spanish meant well and that the armistice was in everyone’s interest. They worried that the rebel leader might renege or that his followers would simply reject the offer. They also knew that a minor misunderstanding could prompt a skirmish and renewed fighting; they had to be diplomatic. In a November 3 letter, the bishop called Diego Cristóbal and Mariano “my sons” but also reprimanded them for the rebellion.26 Diego Cristóbal trusted the bishop, and his letters to him are personal and heartfelt. In a November 5, 1781 letter to Moscoso, at a point when he had nominally accepted the amnesty but remained in Azángaro, Diego Cristóbal insisted that the corregidors, bad kurakas, and other misguided authorities had caused the uprising. Diego Cristóbal returned to his cousin’s argument that these authorities’ abusive behavior (forcing their charges to work on Sundays, for example) hindered Indians from becoming good Christians. He insisted that “these inhuman men are the cause of this rebellion” and compared the rebel struggle with that of the “Hebrews.”27 Diego Cristóbal denied that he was the organizer of the rebellion, maintaining that he was simply trying to halt the bloodshed. In letters from late 1781 and early 1782, Diego Cristóbal employed a respectful tone but made it clear that he was still in charge of the Puno

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area and expected involvement in how the amnesty would be implemented. For example, he encouraged the bishop to fi ll any vacant parishes as soon as possible and mentioned that he, as rebel commander, had assigned some priests to parishes, an unprecedented move in the colonial Andes. Kurakas from Azángaro, Orurillo, and Asillo wrote to Moscoso to echo the rebel leader. They decried how their priests had mistreated and then abandoned them, forcing the kurakas and their Indians to turn to “our Governor Don Diego Christoval Tupac Amaro for protection.”28 In these letters, which he signed as Don Diego Christobal Tupac Amaru Inga, the rebel leader admitted his fear to the bishop. In November he pointed out that Spanish soldiers were congregating in Arequipa and that corregidors, particularly Francisco Orellana of Puno, wanted to behead all Indians over seven years old. Diego Cristóbal noted that some Spanish were already living in peace with Indians but begged Moscoso to prevent the Spanish from breaking their promises made to all Indians as well as the rebel leaders.29 On January 3, 1782, he admitted to the bishop that the months of tension over the amnesty and all of the contradictory advice and rumors he received had made him “desperate,” his heart “like a shipwreck.” He thanked the bishop for his support, which had calmed him, and promised to meet with the Spaniards on January 20. Diego Cristóbal asked the bishop to help release his sister, Cecilia Tupac Amaru, from jail in Cuzco, arguing that she should be covered by the amnesty.30 Father don Antonio Valdez wrote to the bishop on January 3 and confi rmed that the swirl of rumors and divergent opinions (“a variety of news, always so melancholic”) had bewildered Diego Cristóbal and given him second thoughts. Valdez insisted that only Moscoso could convince the rebels to meet with the Spanish.31 Diego Cristóbal was terrified that he was putting his life and that of his followers in danger, jeopardizing all that the rebels had won. He was not mistaken. The bloody execution of Tupac Katari on November 15 troubled Diego Cristóbal. In a December 5, 1781 letter to del Valle, he explained that he had “countless reasons to be cautious” (sobrados fundamentos para los recelos). He immediately described Commander Reseguín’s “betrayal” of the peace agreement, citing Tupac Katari’s “destruction from the force of four horses” and the imprisonment of dozens of his followers on trumped-up charges about plans to renew the rebellion. In this letter,

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Diego Cristóbal also demanded that if he were to face charges, that he be tried in the higher courts, under the king’s supervision. The news from La Paz had made Diego Cristóbal and many of his followers skeptical and ner vous.32 Opposition to the cease-fire also came from royalists. Mata Linares, Tupac Amaru’s judge and Areche’s firm ally, disapproved of the correspondence between the bishop and the rebel. As other hard-liners would insist in the coming months and years, Mata Linares contended that the rebel leader did not merit any form of deference and that negotiations with the rebels and the potential recognition of certain rights granted them undue power and distinction. Mata Linares deemed this foolish and dangerous. He emphasized not only that it was a bad precedent but that Diego Cristóbal did not have control over his followers and would not be able to guide them toward disarming. He lamented the rebel leader’s “tyranny and bloody spirit.” (genio sanguinario).33 Mata Linares and Areche had begun their campaign to sabotage the ceasefire. Bishop Moscoso responded to Diego Cristóbal’s concerns about royalist troops by noting outbreaks of rebel violence and indigenous disobedience in both the Lake Titicaca area and Tupac Amaru’s original base in the highlands above Tinta. He insisted that royalists also had reasons to be wary. Reports also arrived about rebel actions in Paucartambo, the coca-producing area between Cuzco and the Amazon basin. The bishop implied that royalists would only disarm when rebels did. Moscoso reassured the rebel leader, however, that he would do everything in his power to protect the lives of Indians and the Tupac Amaru dynasty.34 The next step in the amnesty was a meeting between royalist and rebel leaders. Both sides worried that the other would break the truce and use the meeting to slaughter the enemy and capture weapons. Diego Cristóbal had many reasons for concern. The execution of Tupac Katari on November 15 distressed him, as did reports of brutal royalist repression. The news from Charcas strengthened the argument of his followers who did not trust the Spanish and wanted to reject the amnesty. Diego Cristóbal also worried about the large Arequipa-based royalist force led by Ramón Arias, which by the time it had reached Lampa numbered six thousand soldiers, as well as several of the Lake Titicaca corregidors who had proven to be dogged opponents of the rebels. Their strength made Diego Cristóbal reluctant to meet, since he worried that they would crush his forces quickly if it were a trap.35 De-

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spite these concerns, the two sides agreed to an initial meeting between Diego Cristóbal and Ramón de Arias on December 9. Arias’s soldiers remained ner vous and at midnight on the eighth jumped out of their tents and grabbed their guns when they heard the sound of enemy soldiers. It was a false alarm— just some of their own men moving about. In fact, Diego Cristóbal did not show up and asked for a few more days. Diego Cristóbal sent a Franciscan friar to arrange the meeting for the twelfth. On that day, jittery Spanish troops again became alarmed when the rebels surrounded the hills above the meeting place. Both sides sent representatives, priests, to determine an exact meeting spot. Arias finally met with Diego Cristóbal and requested that he hand over his supporters’ weapons. Dressed elegantly in velvet pants and a lamé coat, with a golden buckle and dress sword and a gold-tipped staff, the rebel leader insisted that he would only do so with Commander del Valle and Bishop Moscoso present. Diego Cristóbal promised to fulfill the terms of the amnesty but made several demands: that the same corregidors not be allowed to return; that Arias’ forces leave the area, in order to protect the little livestock that remained; and that they hand over Indian prisoners. The meeting ended with handshakes, flag waving, and both armies shouting “Long Live the King” and firing their rustic cannons.36 They met again the following day, December 13, in order to exchange prisoners. A royalist commander opened a bottle of alcohol and took the first drink to prove that it was not poison. Diego Cristóbal took a small sip. Arias invited Diego Cristóbal to share a meal the following day, but the rebel leader declined. Andrés Tupac Amaru remained leery, believing that it was a “trap, as they had done with the La Paz commander [Tupac Katari].”37 The royalists left unarmed officers with the rebels as security and the two sides met again to discuss “pacification.” Diego Cristóbal insisted that he would only sign a treaty with creole officers, not Spaniards. Arias rebutted that many of the Spaniards were fi ne men but granted Diego Cristóbal his wish. The meeting became tense when Diego Choquehuanca, the Azángaro kuraka, approached. The rebels had killed two of his sons and forced the remainder of the family to flee to Arequipa. They now used Choquehuanca’s house in Azángaro as their base. Diego Cristóbal demanded that Choquehuanca stop staring and denied any blame for his family’s woes. Choquehuanca’s brother, a priest, demanded that both sides calm down. They managed to sign a paper in which each side promised not to harm Indians or

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Spaniards and to allow everyone to circulate. Once the paper was signed, Diego Cristóbal pledged to bring the royalists some meat if they pledged not to slaughter any of the few milk cows left. The rebel leader demonstrated great concern about the state of the region’s livestock, understanding that local people would starve without cows, sheep, and llamas. After the customary “Long Live the King” and gunshots signaled the end of the meeting, Diego Cristóbal handed over a few prisoners.38 At this point, Viceroy Jáuregui, del Valle, and Moscoso worried that the bloody execution of Tupac Katari would break the rebels’ already weak resolve. They therefore insisted that Arias respect and even show deference for Diego Cristóbal. For example, Arias accepted Diego Cristóbal’s demand that the corregidor of Lampa, Vicente Oré, be excluded from the post. Oré, in turn, had heard from authorities in the Titicaca area that the rebels’ submission was a farce and they would soon slaughter royalists. For Oré as well as Areche and other hard-liners, his termination was a reprehensible slap in the face to a veteran commander, a sign that the viceroy and his followers did not understand the situation and would play into the rebels’ hands. Oré ridiculed the agreement with Diego Cristóbal and exclaimed: “We cannot watch patiently as we become slaves of the Indians. We have lost hope of returning to our houses.”39 Oré was bitter, and eager to unify the opponents to a negotiated peace. While he exaggerated his pessimistic view of the situation, he did capture the fact that relations between Indians and Europeans had changed dramatically. Going back to his house, in both the real and metaphorical sense, would be difficult if not impossible.40 Divisions among the Spanish increased toward the end of 1781; an important faction of officers protested vehemently against negotiations. They believed that the rebels would break the armistice and slaughter them. One royalist, for example, wrote in January 1782 that “the rebellion continues with greater tenacity, particularly in Chucuito and Chulamaní.” He criticized Arias for “fooling himself, just like all the other commanders who have come to the Sierra [offering clemency], all they’ve done is strengthen the rebellion. In the eyes of Indians, our clemency just highlights Spanish weakness or cowardice and while our army is sleeping in Lampa, the rebels are exterminating the few Spaniards who remain in Chucuito.” 41 Diego Cristóbal had followers who told him the same thing about the Spanish. These skeptics pleaded with him to continue the fight.

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Loyalists and insurgents were asked to pardon those who had been attacking them weeks before. Indians were supposed to trust royalists while mestizo, creole, and Spanish townspeople had to put their faith in the rebels. Each side had large, powerful factions that opposed the amnesty. Royalists reported new outbreaks of violence, exaggerating or inventing in some cases, and many believed that Diego Cristóbal himself would break the treaty or would fail to control his more violent followers. On the other side, many rebels believed that the agreement was either a trap or simply a terrible mistake. They could not comprehend handing over their arms when they were dominating the southern Andes. They grieved over the execution of Tupac Katari, hoping that it wasn’t a sign of their fate. Negotiations continued, however, and the two sides agreed to meet in Sicuani, back in José Gabriel Tupac Amaru’s base area, on January 20, 1782, the day of Saint Sebastian, a soldier-saint venerated in Spain and in the Andes. Both sides negotiated the 1782 encounter with elevated demands and great wariness if not outright pessimism, a challenging combination for any act of diplomacy. The royalists demanded that the rebels demonstrate their submission to the Crown and confi rm their disavowal of violence. Rebels expected authorities to exhibit their respect for the Tupac Amaru dynasty and to reform or replace the corregidor system. The context could not have been tenser: tens of thousands of dead, a devastated economy, and large factions, perhaps the majority, on both sides who believed that continued fighting was inevitable and even preferable. It was not just a matter of ironing out details, offering guarantees, handing over weapons, and convincing the skeptical. In eighteenthcentury Peru, politics were highly ritualistic. Protocol needed to be followed about where to meet, what to sign, and how to celebrate or recognize. For example, whether the rebels would eat at the same table as the royalists proved to be an important question. A gaffe could lead to a disagreement that could overturn the cease-fire. Both sides acted cautiously. Bishop Moscoso and Commander del Valle, accompanied by over one thousand five hundred soldiers, reached Sicuani on January 17, 1782. En route, they freed Diego Cristóbal’s sister, Cecilia Tupac Amaru, from the San Jerónimo jail. They bought her expensive clothing, but she refused to wear it, contending that she was in mourning, eight months after the mass executions in Cuzco. This was one of many signs that the

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violence of the previous twelve months would not be quickly forgotten or forgiven and that peace would not be easily attained.42 Their journey began in the towns on the outskirts of Cuzco that had aided the royalists in the siege of Cuzco but then descended into the Vilcanota Valley, to the towns and communities that had been Tupac Amaru’s base and the center of fighting in the first stage. The corregidor of Tinta, Francisco Suárez Salcedo, met them in the new Fort Charles III. This imposing new building loomed over the Vilcanota Valley, an intimidating site in an area where no standing military had existed until the rebellion began less than eighteen months before. They had to wait nervously until January 26 for the rebel leader and his entourage to arrive. Diego Cristóbal explained that he had been forced to delay his departure from Azángaro as his followers begged him not to leave, worried that he would fall prey to an ambush and leave them defenseless. En route, from Azángaro over La Raya to Sicuani, Indians expressed their opposition to the agreement, “as they did not trust the Spanish.” 43 Indians in Santa Rosa, punished brutally by the Spanish for their support of Tupac Amaru, cried and pleaded with him not to go. Others in Calca y Lares as well as Larecaja and Pacages promised him five thousand soldiers and ample food and supplies if he would take up arms again.44 After passing La Raya, Diego Cristóbal sent representatives to the royalist camp with letters demanding proof that it was not a trap and that the Spanish were acting in good faith. Corregidor Salcedo, on good terms with Diego Cristóbal, reassured him that the route was safe and the agreement sincere. He went so far as to order his soldiers to unload their guns. Diego Cristóbal met Bishop Moscoso at his campsite outside of Sicuani on January 26, 1782. They embraced. Bishop Moscoso accompanied him to meet del Valle. Diego Cristóbal handed the commander a note pledging his surrender while del Valle and the bishop stressed the favorable terms of the armistice for the rebels.45 Soldiers from both sides watched nervously, following instructions not to use their weapons under any circumstance. Commanders worried that the act of one panicked soldier could prompt a confrontation and break the truce. The leaders sealed the pact with festive meals and numerous masses, with Diego Cristóbal reiterating his respect for the Crown and acceptance of the armistice, and Spanish authorities guaranteeing his safety and that of his followers. Bishop Moscoso lifted the excommunication that weighed so heavily on Diego Cristóbal and the other leaders. Rebel followers ner-

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vously entered Sicuani and when one royalist soldier, the mestizo Matías Pérez, called some of them alzados or rebels and insulted them, del Valle quickly moved to punish him. In fact, Bishop Moscoso and Diego Cristóbal themselves intervened to prevent Pérez’s execution.46 Royalists grumbled about how well the bishop, del Valle, and other proponents of the amnesty treated the rebels. On January 29, 1782, Bishop Moscoso confi rmed Diego Cristóbal and Manuela Tito Condori’s marriage. They had married in Azángaro, but for the Spanish, the marriage was not valid due to the excommunication and the context. Del Valle was the godfather of the wedding and Corregidor Salcedo paid for an elaborate wedding. Tito Condori was from Pitumarca, near the rebel center, and she and much of her extensive family was with the insurgents from the beginning. They followed Diego Cristóbal and the other second-phase leaders to the south in 1782, the point when she and Diego Cristóbal fell in love. Unlike Micaela, Manuela apparently did not lead troops or oversee logistics.47 Critics saw the wedding and all the attention paid to the couple excessive, an affront to royalists.48 One anonymous but lengthy report from September 1782 also complained that the bishop had allowed Diego Cristóbal to stay in a room adjacent to his and treated him with great affection. The writer also lamented that Areche, Major Joaquín Valcárcel, Corregidor Salcedo, and other authorities had danced a traditional dance, cachua, with the bride and groom in the streets of Sicuani and that the bishop had seated Tupac Amaru’s sister, Cecilia, at the same table as Spanish and Church dignitaries. These and other “insults” or breaches of etiquette constituted “unseemly indulgence with the rebels” with the conclusion that “the government’s excessive humanitarianism with the rebels is why pacification has taken so long.” 49 The agreement and ensuing rituals in Sicuani infuriated many royalists. In the following days and weeks, tens of thousands of Indians reached Sicuani to confirm their acceptance of the amnesty, thirty thousand according to Moscoso.50 On February 20, 1782, Viceroy Jáuregui called for celebratory masses, lanterns, and bell ringing in Lima to celebrate the peace.51 Andrés (Tupac Amaru) Mendigure arrived in Sicuani weeks later to confirm his acceptance of the amnesty. Inspector del Valle, Bishop Moscoso, and Viceroy Jáuregui were ecstatic. On the brink of defeat months before, they had disarmed the rebels and implemented a truce with seeming speed and ease.

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But trouble lurked. Convincing all rebel supporters to abandon the cause would not be easy. Much of the region’s indigenous population believed that they had had the upper hand and that the Spanish could not be trusted. Conversely, landowners and authorities such as corregidors were reluctant to return to the area. They worried that any spark would set off a new uprising and understood that the old economic and political system, even with a seemingly favorable truce, was gone. Moreover, Visitador Areche remained furious about his exclusion from the negotiations in the previous months and stepped up his lobbying campaign. He collaborated with skeptical authorities such as the Lake Titicaca corregidors and others opposed to the amnesty and collected any information he could fi nd about possible rebel treachery and new outbreaks of violence. He flooded his friend José Gálvez in Madrid and the Madrid court with denunciatory letters about the deference and alarming privileges granted to the rebels as well as the troubling signs of violence on the horizon. The fight was not over.

11 The Rebellion in Limbo

P

EOPL E R ECEI V ED N EWS of the cease-fi re with shock, glee, dismay, and disbelief. Many rejoiced with the end or at least suspension of bloodshed and the possibility of a return to normality. The viceroy’s call for bell ringing, masses, and ceremonies in Lima did not go unheeded— people celebrated.1 A war that seemed to have no end suddenly appeared to have one. However, important factions on both sides bitterly opposed the agreement and believed that peace would not or should not hold. Hard-line royalists thought that the rebels needed to be defeated militarily and that negotiations and conferences such as the events in Sicuani foolishly and naively recognized the rebels as equals. They saw the entire process as humiliating and futile, because they expected the rebels to break the agreement. Leading figures in Cuzco and Lima thus sought to sabotage the agreement from the day it was signed. On the other side, many Indians believed that Diego Cristóbal had made a grave error. They did not trust the Spanish and felt that they, the rebels, had the military advantage when Diego Cristóbal accepted the offer. Many lobbied him to return to arms; others simply did not heed the agreement and kept fighting. The situation was unprecedented. Even the rebellion’s fi rst stage and the fighting itself had antecedents, although on a much smaller scale. Andean people had revolted before, attacking customs houses, expelling authorities, and experimenting with alternative political arrangements. Most Indians in the Cuzco and Titicaca areas had participated in or witnessed some form of insubordination. But no one had ever experienced a mass pardon, with rebel leaders and followers abandoning the struggle and Spanish forces disarming. Nobody had a script.

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Diego Cristóbal returned home to Pampamarca but as what— a hero, a villain, or an afterthought? Would he continue as a leader or return to life as a muleteer in the Vilcanota Valley? He and the other rebel leaders had to negotiate basic questions such as their income—would the colonial state grant them a pension and return confiscated land? The treatment Diego Cristóbal received from Indians only deepened the uncertainty: many venerated him while others scorned him. On the other side, many Spaniards rejoiced over the agreement, hoping that violence would cease, that the economy would recover, and that things would go back as much as possible to what they had been. Hard-liners, however, despised the cease-fire and sought to sabotage it. They not only wanted to overturn the agreement, but to imprison the Tupac Amaru leaders and rid the area of them. In reports and memos that moved back and forth between the rebel red zone of the upper provinces, Cuzco, Lima, and Madrid, these opponents lambasted the cease-fire, stressing the rebel leaders’ hypocrisy, their followers’ insolence, and the many dangers the agreement and the tense context posed to Spanish rule in Peru. In doing so they retooled notions about Indians’ purported backwardness, the ideological core of Spanish colonialism. Royalist foes of the amnesty stressed Indians’ blind willingness to follow seditious leaders and the concomitant need for force on the part of the colonial state, ideas that endured and shaped Indian-state relations in the coming decades. Important factions from both sides conspired against the ceasefire, backstabbing their former allies, even before it was signed. The peace agreement did not mean tranquility; it barely meant peace.

The Return Andrés Mendigure and Mariano Tupac Amaru had not attended the Sicuani signings, but soon made their way toward Cuzco. Andrés reached Sicuani on March 1 to present himself to del Valle and to recognize the cease-fi re. Once Andrés took an oath of fidelity, Father José Gallegos absolved him from the excommunication. Andrés promised to hand over the movement’s cannons and other weapons. Different concerns haunted the two sides: the rebel leaders worried about their exclusion from the Catholic Church while royalist officials made sure that the rebels relinquished their fi repower. Mariano presented himself to military officials in La Paz and then returned to Sicuani.2

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Authorities released Juan Bautista Tupac Amaru, José Gabriel’s thirtyfive-year-old half brother, from jail in Cuzco. Imprisoned days after José Gabriel, he suffered in captivity as common prisoners taunted him and authorities limited his food, stole his goods, pocketed the money sent to feed him, kept his cell fi lthy, and beat him on occasion. He complained that one blow left a permanent scar. When he was paraded around Cuzco on a mule shortly after his brother’s execution, soldiers whipped him. Juan Bautista said that “what was most notable to me was that these men felt a type of pleasure in my hardship, my mistreatment, and even found it funny, just like the Conquistadors who hunted down Indians with their dogs for fun.”3 He observed bitterly that when he was as a prisoner even Indians treated him with “unbearable disdain.” Juan Bautista explained that those who believed themselves closer to the Spanish because of their skin color or economic condition were particularly pitiless.4 Sentenced to ten years of exile and hard work at a presidio, his freedom caught him by surprise. He claimed that Visitador Areche wanted him dead, while Colonel Gabriel Avilés (a Spanish commander who later in 1782 would replace José del Valle as General Inspector) defended him; the latter won, at least temporarily. Juan Bautista’s hardships, however, were far from over. Jail had left him in such bad shape that it took him six days to walk the forty-five miles (fourteen leagues) home, much longer than the norm in this era. En route, he and his wife had to confront the taunts of royalists. With his family decimated and their land and other goods expropriated, they barely had enough to eat or clothe themselves. Unlike the rebel leaders, Juan Bautista did not receive a pension, and he complained that his friends abandoned him. His odyssey, as we will see, would continue, taking him to Spain, Africa, and back to South America.5 Nonetheless, he spent most of 1782 in Pampamarca, struggling to adjust and make ends meet. Accompanied by the Tinta corregidor, Francisco Salcedo, Father Antonio Valdés, and twelve dragoons or light cavalry, Diego Cristóbal Tupac Amaru and a small group of intimates returned to his hometown of Tungasuca in late February 1782. Authorities hoped that he would settle his affairs and proceed to Lima, where he would be separated from the rebel base and easier to follow, but he resisted this idea. His family members and acquaintances embraced him, still shocked by the turn of events. They had expected him either to die in battle or to return

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as a victorious hero, not accompanied by colonial authorities proclaiming a truce. His wife, Manuela Tito Condori, mistrusted the Spanish and implored Bishop Moscoso to protect her family, describing her situation as “darkness, confusion, and anguish.” Marcela Castro Puiucahua, Diego Cristóbal’s mother, wrote that the family would not go to Lima, as many authorities encouraged them to do, but rather to the “bishop’s mansion.”6 They put their trust in the bishop. Salcedo convinced Diego Cristóbal to visit some of the more recalcitrant towns of the provincias altas. On March 29, a little more than a month after the Sicuani signing, Diego Cristóbal ventured into José Gabriel Tupac Amaru’s most dependable base, an almost fully monolingual Quechua region of towering snow-covered peaks, where many had not accepted the cease-fi re. For Salcedo and Valdés, this excursion demonstrated that the cease-fi re could succeed; they sent glowing reports about Diego Cristobal’s efforts and Indians’ willingness to abandon the fight. Critics of the cease-fi re, by contrast, believed that these events demonstrated that Indians still dangerously idolized Diego Cristóbal and were waiting for him to signal a return to arms. In Combapata, Diego Cristóbal persuaded Indians to come down from the peaks, las punas, where they had taken refuge during the rebellion. This was significant— Indians taking to the punas was a synonym, for the Spanish, of insurgency, of the guerrilla tactics that had so dogged them in the last eighteen months, and of Indians’ distancing themselves from colonial structures. Descent or bajar de las punas was therefore a metaphor for submission or at least the acceptance of the cease-fi re. With great relief, Salcedo described how when they came into town, Indians attended mass, bowed to the Spanish flag, elected new authorities, and pledged their support for the king.7 In fact, shouts of “Long Live the King” fi lled the air. Diego Cristóbal tried to convince the Combapata Indians to return everything they had expropriated during the uprising, particularly livestock, and to attend Mass. The encounter between recalcitrant Quechua Indians and Diego Cristóbal and his entourage could have taken place in the sixteenth-century Conquest. Some officials in Cuzco remained skeptical, however, as rumors circulated that trouble was brewing in the high peaks and that the day before Diego Cristóbal had visited Combapata, rabble-rousers had recruited more people and committed violent acts. 8

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Diego Cristóbal and the others persuaded Indians from his wife’s hometown of Pitumarca to return to their town, which was abandoned and overgrown with vegetation. Salcedo and Diego Cristóbal assured the local population, which had massively supported the uprising, that they were safe. They gave Indians from other key towns such as Lauramarca, Ocongate, Calca, and Paucartambo similar assurances. The Indians in turn asked Salcedo to accompany them to their towns, to make sure that corregidors and other authorities fulfi lled the promised pardon and cease-fi re. In this highly polarized area, both sides believed that the other was likely to seek bloody revenge. Valdés and Salcedo understood that a small incident could spark new confrontations and even a full-scale rebellion.9 Salcedo and Diego Cristóbal had to confront the delicate issue of naming authorities. They understood the danger of a vacuum of power but also knew that the question of whether to rename the same corregidor or loyal kuraka or to fi nd replacements more acceptable to the Indian majority could polarize the area, resurrecting the divisions that marked the violence of the previous two years. In these early months, they apparently decided on a case-by-case basis. The fi rst was perhaps the greatest challenge: José Gabriel Tupac Amaru’s cacicazgo of Tungasuca, Pampamarca, and Surimana. Salcedo convinced Diego Cristóbal not to assume the position in order to remain “independent of the government.” The rebel leader accepted, although unhappily according to Salcedo, “as he’s used to being in charge.”10 The town of Checacupe presented a par tic ular challenge. Local Indians widely despised their kuraka, Aronis (no first name given in the records), who had remained loyal to the Crown in the midst of the fighting. Diego Cristóbal and Salcedo did not want to anger the majority, but they wanted to recognize Aronis’s efforts. They came up with a diplomatic solution, naming his son as the new kuraka.11 At this point, in late March, Salcedo proposed that they continue to Calca, the Sacred Valley, and then proceed to the Titicaca area to implement the pardon. Inspector General del Valle, however, requested that they return to Cuzco, which they did.12 Salcedo and Valdés presented their mission as a success, an important step toward pacification. Hard-liners had a very different interpretation. Tensions flared in the upper provinces after their departure. In late March, rival kurakas of the towns of Ocongate and Lauramarca, Andrés

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Quispe and Felipe Espinoza, came to blows, bringing hundreds of Indians as backup. Quispe and four hundred Indians killed Espinoza and took refuge in the glacial peaks that soared above Ocongate. Quispe’s faction would not lay down their arms for months, pledging to fight the Spanish. One par tic ular incident gave pause to those who believed that peace had returned. An Indian from the town of Pitura, a Quispe supporter, assaulted and robbed a woman on her way to Cuzco. The anonymous assailant sneered, “You and the rednecks (pukacuncas) believe that just because we accepted the amnesty, that you will end up laughing.”13 Obviously, he did not believe that the insurgency had ended. Del Valle sought the aid of Diego Cristóbal to disarm them. Quispe and his followers, however, did not go away. These initial months reassured Diego Cristóbal and the other leaders that their worst fears had been ungrounded— they had not been deceived, detained, or executed once they left behind their troops and began handing over weapons. Authorities encouraged but did not oblige them to go to Lima. For supporters of the cease-fi re, this initial period had bolstered their optimism. Events outside of the Vilcanota Valley, however, brought disturbing news that enraged and energized the hard-liners who opposed the amnesty. The fighting continued. Diego Cristobal’s commander, Pedro Vilca Apaza, had rejected the cease-fire, insisting that it was a trap. He returned to Azángaro in early 1782 and fought in the area north of Lake Titicaca, Muñani and Putina. Although many of his troops abandoned him to accept the pardon, those who remained ransacked estates and towns and used hit-and-run tactics to confront royalist troops. News about Vilca Apaza confirmed to the already doubtful that the cease-fire was an illusion and that the rebels could not be trusted.14 However, the Arequipa troops led by Ramón Arias arrived in the area in late March and separated Vilca Apaza from the bulk of his fighters. An anonymous Spaniard from Lampa captured him on March 29. Spaniards accused him of stealing silver and gold, which he denied. On April 8, executioners attached his limbs to four horses and when they could not dismember him, they doubled the number. The excruciating dislocation of his legs and arms did not kill him, so his tormenters strangled him with a rope and stabbed him. He has become a folk hero in the Azángaro area, the “indomitable Puma.” His death mortified Indian people yet did not satisfy hard-liners. Intransigent royalists believed that Vilca Apaza proved that the rebel-

The Rebellion in Limbo

Orurillo Asillo Azángaro Santiago de Pupuja Arapa

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lion was not over and that only repression could end it.15 One Spanish commander, Raimundo Necochea, who became the Quispicanchi corregidor, accused Diego Cristóbal of surreptitiously aiding Vilca Apaza by attempting to impede the Arequipa Battalion from reaching the Lake Titicaca area.16 Authorities captured another rebel commander who did not accept the cease-fi re, Melchor Laura, in February. His testimony heightened royalists’ concern about Tupac Amaru’s followers. Laura declared that he had refused the pardon because of his “love for Tupac Amaru” and that he only sought to control the province of Chucuito for Tupac Amaru. They executed him.17 Royalists in La Paz moved to the north to extinguish any remnants of the uprising. Their brutal, effective campaign eased the concerns of

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many of their followers, making many pause to wonder why del Valle could not have used similar tactics and gained similar results in his expedition from Cuzco to Puno in 1781. Some colonial officials, however, worried that commanders used too much force and that the ruthlessness would backfi re. Even the official narrative, usually a laconic list of success after success, victory after victory, captured the brutality and wanton violence. The Arequipa battalion, which had met with Diego Cristóbal and then captured Vilca Apaza, converged with other battalions in La Paz and moved toward the hills above Juli. Sebastián Segurola operated from La Paz to Caracoto, and del Valle and Orellana mobilized in Carabuco and Mocomoco. In his account, Segurola describes meeting some resistance but overcoming it quickly, leaving behind one hundred fi fty dead. Royalists were not taking prisoners; they assumed that all Indians were dangerous rebels. On April 22, near Collana, they killed “five or six hundred enemies, of both sexes” without taking any losses, numbers that indicate mass detentions and fi ring squads rather than a confrontation.18 The pockets of rebels who resisted with whatever weapons they still had infuriated the royalist troops. In the eyes of Segurola, this explained atrocious acts or “excesses,” such as killing a woman about to give birth (seizing the fetus from the womb so it could be baptized before dying) or swinging another pregnant woman against a boulder to kill her. The genocide included infanticide. To Segurola’s surprise, the rebels did not surrender or flee. Royalists burned down the town of Mecapata, sparing only the country homes and estates of prominent La Paz residents.19 Troops entered the town of Coní, and executed “eight Indians and some children before burning most of the town down.” There they freed captives taken by the rebels in the sieges of Sorata and La Paz. Arias and other commanders pardoned some relatives of rebel leaders, although these seem to be exceptions— the campaign relied on brutality as it spread from La Paz toward Lake Titicaca and to the northeast. Bishop Moscoso wrote to Viceroy Jáuregui to express his concern about the bloodshed, but the campaign continued. By May 1782, royalists had defeated the rebels north of La Paz and brutally punished those suspected of aiding the insurgents and Indians.20 They looked to the triangle between La Paz, Lake Titicaca, and the Yungas to the northeast with satisfaction; Tupac Amaru’s core area to the south of Cuzco, however, worried them.

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Weddings, Funerals, Pensions, and Convents The rebel leaders struggled to fi nd their place in post-rebellion Cuzco. They had no precedent or model and their family’s patriarch, José Gabriel, had been executed. They received alarming news from Upper Peru and were treated in confusing fashion in Cuzco, ranging from disdain to veneration. While the scorn from some Indians and hatred from royalists stung, the veneration could get them in trouble. Moreover, in mid1782, each of them became entangled in controversies that demonstrated not only that they were human but very young. Each incident struck a nerve as well with royalists, increasing their angst over the presence of Diego Cristóbal, Andrés, and Mariano in the Cuzco region. Tensions escalated because the rebel leaders expected the colonial state and church to honor their family or at least recognize their royal Inca bloodlines. Rituals such as weddings, baptisms, and funerals sanctioned honor and prestige in colonial Peru. Their opponents understood the Tupac Amaru clan to be common Indians or disgraced subversives rather than distinguished kurakas and fi rmly believed that after the cease-fi re the former rebel leaders did not deserve any type of public recognition or deference. The rebels thought otherwise. Resentment over Diego Cristóbal and Manuela Titu Condori’s wedding and the treatment granted them by corregidor Francisco Salcedo and del Valle smoldered. When they had a son, Salcedo delayed the baptism until November 4, the day of San Carlos, in order to name him in honor of King Charles III as well as Salcedo himself. In fact, they baptized him Carlos Francisco Diego Manuel Mariano del Carmen in the new Sicuani Royal fort, with Salcedo serving as the godfather.21 The infant passed away on November 17. One historian asked whether “the little prince” might have been poisoned.22 Hard-liners criticized Salcedo as well as Bishop Moscoso for permitting a grandiose funeral in the Sicuani church. An honor guard that included not only the parents and the godfather but also dozens of soldiers and priests accompanied the small casket from the fort to the town of Sicuani. Critics led by the tireless Areche saw this as yet another sign of undue respect to the rebels.23 Authorities subsequently accused Salcedo of commissioning a portrait of the infant, found in the possession of the Pampamarca priest and José Gabriel Tupac Amaru intimate, Antonio López de Sosa. They charged Salcedo with “criminal deference” and he lost his position as corregidor in 1783.24

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Diego Cristóbal and Andrés’s aspiration to honor their relatives also irritated authorities. Diego Cristóbal sought to exhume the remains of his cousin, José Gabriel, from the common grounds of the San Francisco church and bury him properly, in a more honorable place. Authorities had incinerated his torso, dumping the ashes in the Huatanay River, but displayed his head and limbs throughout Cuzco. These apparently ended up in the San Francisco Church. On August 27, 1782, with the support of Bishop Moscoso, Diego Cristóbal held a stately funeral for his cousin. Areche condemned this ceremony, “as though it were for a royal person,” censuring the bishop, the viceroy, and Diego Cristóbal.25 Andrés sought to move the remains of his father, Pedro Mendigure, from the section of the cathedral allotted to criminals and lowlifes to a vault. (In the late eighteenth century, most people were buried in churches— cemeteries emerged decades later.) Church officials granted Andrés his request, which other authorities criticized, understanding the request as a disturbing sign of bad faith and dangerous intentions. They did not want to grant any type of honor to the rebel martyrs nor designate a place where they could be mourned.26 Mariano Tupac Amaru got himself in trouble by falling in love. He sought to marry Maria Nieves Paita (or Payta), from Sicuani, who was pregnant, presumably with his child. Authorities, specifically corregidor Salcedo, deemed her a zamba, or part black, and a prostitute, pointing out her two out-of-wedlock children and concubinage with other Cuzco men. Diego Cristóbal also opposed the union, concerned about his family’s lineage. Salcedo invoked the 1776 Real Pragmática or Royal Pragmatic that compelled anyone under the age of twenty-five to have their parents’ approval to marry and restricted interracial marriages. Salcedo also implied that he did not want the Tupac Amaru clan to reproduce.27 Authorities arrested Paita and placed her in Cuzco’s Santa Catalina convent. On September 19, 1782 Mariano and eight accomplices liberated Paita from the convent, dumbfounding witnesses. They threatened the nuns at the doors with their sabers, menacing anyone who tried to intervene, and took her out a side door.28 Authorities rapidly detained her, however, and transferred her to the Santa Clara convent. The stunning news spread quickly. Mariano’s romantic escapades infuriated Bishop Moscoso and proved to those opposed to the cease-fi re that the rebel leaders could not be trusted. The paper trail on María Paita ends here—we know nothing about her fate or her pregnancy.29

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As is so often the case, disputes about money accompanied those regarding sex, love, and marriage. The Spanish chided the rebels for hiding vast amounts of silver and troves of livestock and other stolen property. Royalists wrote among themselves about a hidden treasure secreted away by the Tupac Amaru clan and demanded that Diego Cristóbal return the silver supposedly stolen in Sorata.30 They also complained about the pensions granted to the rebel leaders. Viceroy Jáuregui agreed to 1,000 pesos a year for Diego Cristóbal and 600 each for Andrés and Mariano. The viceroy justified the payments in the following terms: “having selected softness and sweetness to induce them toward obedience to His Majesty, this system [payments] seems justified in order to achieve the provinces’ absolute pacification, showing them the humanity with which they are treated and royal beneficence.”31 Areche disagreed, contending that this was an affront to all royalists and a waste of precious revenue. He included this point in his disparaging letters and memos to Madrid and ultimately gained the attention of the king. Bishop Moscoso, on the other hand, saw the payments as a small investment for peace. And even collecting the money proved problematic. In March, Diego Cristóbal refused to sign a receipt for his pension because it was made out to Diego Cristóbal Condorcanqui—he demanded that it include Tupac Amaru. Royalists wanted to eliminate that royal last name.32 Throughout 1782 and early 1783, they accused rebel leaders of organizing the masses, showing disrespect to the Crown, hiding stolen treasures, and leading disreputable private lives. News of these curious events as well as other incidents reached far beyond Cuzco, even crossing the Atlantic. Supporters and opponents of the cease-fi re lobbied authorities in Cuzco, Lima, and Madrid. Areche incorporated his venomous complaints about the pardon into his incessant letters and memos to Spain, which previously had focused on deriding del Valle and claiming the honor of capturing José Gabriel. In October 1781, before Diego Cristóbal even had agreed to the cease-fi re, Areche labeled the pardon “exorbitant.”33 His opposition hardened as the months passed. In a May 29, 1782 letter to José Gálvez, his ally and pen pal, he labeled Diego Cristóbal “insolent” and argued that the amnesty had reinforced the rebel leader’s belief that he was the “descendent of the emperors or Incas.” Areche ridiculed the rebels’ weapons and strategy and contended that they only responded to threats; conciliation

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would not work. He then returned to his previous obsession: that del Valle received credit for the capture of José Gabriel whereas he had led the charge.34 Jáuregui provided Madrid a much more positive summary of the early 1782 events and the prospects for peace, complimenting the work of Diego Cristóbal in the upper provinces. He explained the pension granted to the rebel leaders as a reasonable expenditure to keep them out of trouble. The Court returned the letter with a telling note in the margin, dated February 10, 1783: “The king read this letter with consternation due to the fact that pensions were granted to these infamous and sacrilegious rebel chiefs without due process, necessity, or a motive that could excuse excess that sets such a bad example. . . . His Majesty deems that in very reserved form the viceroy and Visitador Escobedo be instructed fi rmly, yet without alerting the public and thus discrediting that weak and poorly advised government [Peru], to fi nd the way to amend such a great error, and attempt to have Diego Cristóbal and his two nephews safely in Lima, which should have been the fi rst priority after they surrendered.”35 A note from Madrid dated February 27, 1783 underlines the king’s dismay about the “distinctions” granted the rebel leaders. The king’s anonymous scribe explained that if they, Indians in general, became too proud, “they would become what we were for them in the time of the Conquest.” In the name of the king, the writer complained about the celebrations for the cease-fire, the publication of the decree, the fi reworks, and solemn mass, maintaining that the rebels did not deserve such honors and that these events broke protocol.36 Although soon to be replaced in Peru, Visitador Areche had gained the ear of the court in Madrid in the long paper war that stretched through 1781 and 1782. His ire at this point focused on the deal struck with Diego Cristóbal and company.

As Long as There Are Tupac Amarus in Peru . . . In mid-1782, both supporters and opponents of the amnesty in the royalist camp agreed that Diego Cristóbal, Mariano, and Andrés posed a danger if they remained in Cuzco. The two sides, moderates and hardliners, disagreed fiercely about the solution, however. Moderates such as Bishop Moscoso and Viceroy Jáuregui contended that the young rebels

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needed to go to Lima in order to separate them from the Indian masses, whom they understood as still dangerously subversive at worst and, at a minimum, impressionable. These authorities recognized that it would be easier to monitor the rebel leaders’ activities in the capital. Hardliners, on the other hand, wanted to exterminate the Tupac Amaru lineage. They believed that the rebel leaders were buying time to initiate another bloody uprising and that as long as they were alive they posed a great danger. Hard-liners led by Areche did not, however, seek to deport them to Spain or send them to presidios—they wanted to kill them, to rid the world of the Tupac Amaru bloodline. The paper war over the amnesty escalated as both sides lobbied Lima and Madrid. Why had moderates lost confidence in the prospects of the rebel leaders staying in Cuzco? The death of an important ally, Commander del Valle, on August 26, 1782 weakened them. He passed away in an expedition to the towering hills above Calca. Whereas for his critics del Valle embodied the failures of a supposedly feeble counterinsurgency campaign and was a key culprit in the rebellion’s resurgence, for moderates and rebels alike he had become a trusted commander who believed that negotiations rather than warfare would bring peace. Gabriel Valdés replaced del Valle. But what swayed Moscoso was his belief that a misunderstanding or an inopportune act by a rebel follower or the rebel leaders themselves could escalate into a rupture of the cease-fi re and renewed fighting. Although furious about the Santa Clara convent escapade, he did not believe that the rebel leaders sought to rebuild their movement and begin fighting again. Nor did the bishop think that baptizing Diego Cristóbal’s son, paying the leaders a pension, or showing respect for Andrés or Mariano constituted unacceptable deference that could spark new tensions. What worried him was the possibility that hard-liners could convert these or a different incident into a confrontation that would sabotage the amnesty. A decade later, when he was battling charges that he had aided the rebels, Moscoso wrote that he understood that the departure of Diego Cristóbal and his two cousins would “leave those provinces without caudillos or patrons, whose mere presence could inflame the always ardent spirit of those Indians [Naturales].”37 In this defense, Moscoso stressed that Viceroy Jáuregui was the author of the pardon and that he, Moscoso, oversaw its implementation out of “prudence” rather than “compassion.”38 Although Moscoso downplayed his role in supporting

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the pardon at this point, in 1788, it is indisputable that in 1782 the bishop wanted to remove Diego Cristóbal and company from Cuzco in order to prevent an incident that could shatter the cease-fi re. In July 1782 Moscoso wrote Viceroy Jáuregui that getting the rebel leaders out of the area “is the business of the day.” Nonetheless, he applauded the success of the amnesty (indulto).39 Corregidor Salcedo labeled getting the rebel leaders to Lima “a priority.” 40 Hard-liners, in contrast, had no hesitations about the use of violence to separate the rebel leaders from Cuzco. Commanders such as Orellana, Flores, Segurola, and Necochea saw threats of new outbreaks everywhere and grumbled that rebel leaders still had a mass following and that the indigenous people had showed no contrition. Their numbers were bolstered when Jorge Escobedo y Alarcón replaced Areche as Visitador General in June 1782.41 At every opportunity this group expressed their opposition to the amnesty. In May 1782, Commander Avilés wrote to the viceroy to alert him about disturbing events in the Azángaro area and closer to Cuzco. He claimed that it was absolutely necessary to “get the Tupa Maros out of these provinces due to the incredible affection and passion that Indians hold for them.” 42 Matías Baulen, the corregidor of Cuzco and lieutenant colonel of the militias, explained that Tungasuca was a particularly dangerous home for Diego Cristóbal since it was isolated and difficult to monitor. He asserted that Indians continued to hail the rebel leader and offer him “tributes and adoration,” to the point that a “terrible storm” could be unleashed and Europeans exterminated. Baulen called for the insurgent leaders to be “yanked out of their beloved nest, but without too much noise.” 43 Around the same time, Baulen wrote another letter to the viceroy providing numerous reasons why he believed that the Tupac Amaru family would not “remain quiet” in Tungasuca: the town brought back memories of their perfidious past; its isolation allowed them to ponder; it was several leagues away from Sicuani and thus the corregidor could not follow their actions; it was an unpopulated area; and the people there had abandoned their loyalty to the king.44 The bishop of La Paz, Gregorio Francisco de Campos, wrote in June to express his extreme pessimism: “As long as there are Tupac Amarus in Peru there will be no tranquility (sosiego).” He argued that the entire family should be sent to Spain. The bishop contended that Diego Cristóbal had acted with “iniquity, treachery and bad faith” and called

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Andrés “a cruel monster” for his role in the death of Spaniards in Sorata. Campos maintained that although women and children begged for mercy with tear-fi lled eyes, Andrés slaughtered them anyway due to “this Attila’s implacable hatred, his desire to exterminate everyone, to take over this kingdom, and to allow the Dev il to return to control these dominions.” 45 These writers based their views on their experience in the brutal battles of late 1781, their ensuing hatred for the Tupac Amaru clan, and their belief that rebel fury would soon rekindle in Tungasuca and the Sicuani area. They did not trust the rebels. Other hard-liners highlighted disturbing events in 1782, after the cease-fi re was signed, to support their argument that the Tupac Amaru clan had to be exterminated. They believed that a dangerous conspiracy was brewing in the upper provinces, particularly around Marcapata and Ocongate, which could spark a new phase of insurgency. They also identified other signs of disobedience and potential indigenous subversion. These events, real or invented, changed the course of Peruvian history.

Fire and Barbarous Straw The evidence on the unrest comes primarily from royalists and needs to be read critically. Hard-liners eagerly sought a pretext to sabotage the cease-fi re. Areche and others read reports of Indians gathering and furtive messengers going back and forth from Pampamarca and Tungasuca with a certain glee— the uncovering of a conspiracy could undo the cease-fi re and force the viceroy and Bishop Moscoso to the side. Moreover, after two years of vicious fighting, anxiety ran high, and many Spaniards saw any sign of indigenous resistance (a hint of defiance or even the refusal to show deference) as a portent of an impending revolt. They saw Indian belligerence everywhere. Yet the accounts do not sound like fabrications or ridiculous exaggerations. The uprising had ended abruptly, far too soon for the droves of indigenous people who believed that victory was imminent, that the Spanish were on the ropes, that radical change was at hand. Many followers reproached Diego Cristóbal for having signed the amnesty. Furthermore, many indigenous peasants, even if they did not seek the continuation of the uprising, refused to accept a return to the old ways of Spanish domination, such as Indian submission or abuse by outsiders.

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They believed that the uprising, no matter how it concluded, had earned them increased rights. People understood the peace treaty in different ways, and after its signing local struggles erupted or reignited— about the naming of local authorities, land, taxes, the role of the Church, and the other grievances that had sparked the Tupac Amaru and other uprisings. In an area torn by a brutal guerrilla war for over a year, which had ended on terms not accepted by all sides, multiple tensions and misunderstandings remained. These could spiral into confrontations; the cease-fire and amnesty disliked by many remained fragile. One other feature suggests that these conspiracies were not just royalist fabrications or delusions. They had an odd, quixotic nature that reproduced one of the characteristics of late eighteenth-century indigenous uprisings in the Andes: the creative search for a model or a platform. The instigators claimed to fight in the name of Diego Cristóbal and saw him as their leader. His critics claimed that Diego Cristóbal was the mastermind; defenders said that he had not participated and in fact did not know about the conspiracies. The instigators expressed broad veneration for “the Inca” and incorporated material elements from the uprising such as flags, banners, and velvet sashes. The conspiracy described by local officials in the upper provinces and relayed by anxious yet pleased authorities to Lima and Madrid was just unique enough and contained enough verisimilitude that it was probably true. Throughout 1782 and early 1783, authorities reported numerous signs that the rebel leaders and followers had not accepted the ceasefi re and were planning to resume the fight. They pointed to Indians’ veneration for Diego Cristóbal, proof not only that Indians remained hopeful about renewed fighting but also that the Tupac Amaru leaders, by accepting and even fostering this respect, had acted in bad faith and ultimately planned to strike again. In September 1782 a local judge in Pomacanchi, the textile town just to the north of Pampamarca that José Gabriel Tupac Amaru had ransacked in the fi rst days of the uprising, complained that “birds, lambs, and eggs” could not be found in the market because people were stockpiling them to give to Diego Cristóbal and his mother: “We can just about say they idolize them.” This authority warned that “the idolatry will not stop until the idol, Diego Cristóbal, is separated from these brutes; the fi re will remain lit and even spread because of the barbarous straw [pajas bárbaras] that surrounds him.” 46

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In the coming months and years, royalists would develop this metaphor of smoldering ashes in a perilously combustible situation, explaining the danger as due to Indians’ rusticity and veneration for the Inca past as well as the rebel leaders’ treachery and haughtiness. In September 1782, Commander Avilés glumly noted that in the upper provinces, despite the leaders’ seeming submission, “the Indians still venerate them.” 47 In the same month, a royalist commander observed with disapproval that when a poor Indian saw Andrés Tupac Amaru [Mendigure], he kneeled down in honor.48 The loquacious corregidor Baulen denounced Indians who “see Diego Cristóbal as a superior man and offer him homages suitable only for a deity.” Baulen argued that this respect had fi lled the young rebel leader with vanity, haughtiness, and pride and heightened his hypocrisy.49 For royalists, these signs of reverence confi rmed that the danger of the rebellion had not faded. They also found evidence that Indians of the upper provinces collaborated with Diego Cristóbal in a plan to renew fighting. In June 1782 corregidor Necochea accused Andrés Mendigure of building a house with a chapel, a refuge, in a “secret place” called Coñamuro above Ocongate. Necochea believed that Andrés and his followers were biding time before striking again.50 An Indian, Alejo Quispe, had told one of Necochea’s trusted friends that Andrés had instructed Indians of the Pampamarca and Labramarca area to disobey Necochea’s commands and requested that they build him a house. Someone else told Necochea that a defiant Indian woman named Buenaventura Antequera had shouted that the pukakunkas who came from the town of Urcos to sell their goods needed to be told that the land was not theirs but the Indians’, as they had “defeated them in war.” She instructed Indians not to give up their weapons to any authority, because they had struggled so hard to gain them.51 Necochea explained that these rumors worried him because the Tupac Amaru family frequented the area and because dangerous former rebels remained active. Alejo Quispe testified through a translator that when in Ocongate and Lauramarca to buy sheep, he had heard an Indian council member, a regidor, tell the Coñamuro mayor that Andrés Mendigure and Diego Cristóbal Tupac Amaru, “our little father [nuestro Padre chiquito],” had ordered local Indians not to recognize Necochea as the corregidor of Quispicanchi and to disobey his representatives. The rebel leaders explained that they, “Inca Diego Tupa Amaro” and Andrés Mendigure,

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were lying low until the Spanish dropped their guard. The rebel leaders needed the house built for them in a secure place such as Coñamuro to “commit their treachery.” Quispe continued that the Indians of the area had faith in their “Inca” or “king.” Diego Cristóbal would aid them and, in return, had instructed them not to obey priests and corregidors. The local Indians declared that with “our king” [Diego Cristóbal], the pukakunkas would never defeat them. Quispe, an illiterate fortysix-year-old man, claimed that he reported this as soon as he arrived in Ocongate. The Indian mayor of Ocongate, Manuel Caguana, testified on July 23 that Andrés Mendigure had been in his town ten days earlier to obtain wood for the building. The mayor confi rmed that the regidor, Esteban Mamani, had told him about “Inga Chiquito [the little Inca] Andrés Mendiguri Tupa Amaro” and that Andrés had ordered them not to obey Necochea. Mamani then stated that Andrés had gathered two hundred Indians in the kuraka’s house in Lauramarca and given a speech in which he ordered them not to obey Necochea. The rebel leader requested their patience until Inspector del Valle returned to Lima “and then all the pukakunkas and mestizos will pay with their lives, we will possess everything, all of the wealth that is found everywhere.” Mamani claimed that Andrés did this in the name of Diego Cristóbal, who had determined that Coñamuro was the best place for the house and chapel. Andrés told the gathered Indians that Diego Cristóbal would send written instructions, including orders that priests not overcharge for burials. The Indians “threw their hats [monteras] in the air, yelled ‘Long Live our Inca, Long Live our King,’ ” and pledged to defend him with their lives. Mamani closed by claiming that the rebel followers had hidden their fusils, daggers, sabers, and other weapons in nearby valleys “with the intention of rising up again once Inspector del Valle leaves for Lima.”52 Necochea led a group to Coñamuro in early September and razed the building that Indian workers had begun.53 The accusations need to be read carefully. One feature makes Quispe’s testimony dubious—he repeats almost line by line the summary that Necochea gave of the conspiracy. It seems that the illiterate Quispe was told to confirm what Necochea had reported and did not present his own version. In trials, testimonies almost invariably differ in details and focus; in this case, they were virtual duplicates. Necochea presumably could have asked Quispe to recite what the corregidor had already writ-

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ten the day before. Not surprisingly, the humble indigenous man followed orders. However, the accusations could be true. The Indians of Ocongate and Lauramarca had actively supported the rebels and would have rejoiced at the presence of Andrés Mendigure. The rebel leader, in turn, would have probably appreciated the veneration and have stoked the insurgent dreams of those around him with his mere presence. On the other hand, he might simply have been building a second home and have been falsely accused due to specious rumors or the fabrications of the corregidor, who aimed to strengthen his grasp on the rebellious Quispicanchi province. Hard-liners in Cuzco and Lima eagerly sought such news in order to bolster their argument that Diego Cristóbal and the other leaders needed to be detained in order to prevent a new uprising. Officials subsequently accused Diego Cristóbal of instigating the problems in the upper provinces during his pacification visit in March 1782. Fernando Iguilus, an illiterate Spaniard from Ocongate, claimed that the Indians “from Ocongate to Marcapata have not accepted the pardon with good faith.” He contended that during this March visit Diego Cristóbal had surreptitiously told a large group of Indians to gather their weapons and wait for him in Lauramarca, ready for battle. Diego Cristóbal promised them that they would become “owners of the haciendas and Spaniards’ land,” redistributed to the ayllus, the traditional units of Andean political and social life. He also vowed the abolition of the corregidor office, to be replaced by a local judge in every town, one of José Gabriel’s promises. Diego Cristóbal requested that they remain vigilant and defend him if he were in trouble.54 Iguilus added that in the conversations he overheard, Indians expressed great hatred toward Spaniards and love toward Tupac Amaru. Other Spaniards testified in late 1782 that in March Diego Cristóbal had instructed Indians to have their weapons ready to defend him. He reminded them what he had done for them and promised to abolish corregidors and redistribute land. Felipe Mendoza, a Spaniard from Ocongate, stated that Diego Cristóbal told a group of Indians not to work on haciendas as the Spanish owners could get “blacks or other castas” to do the work.55 Esteban Grados, also a Spaniard from Ocongate, declared that Diego Cristóbal demanded that the Indians not do free ser vice labor, pongo, for anyone, including priests.56 In September, Inspector General Avilés wrote the viceroy that the Tupac Amaru clan had active supporters in the upper provinces and

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that even though the Tupac Amaru leaders had accepted the pardon, the Indians there “still venerate them.” He answered the question of how Diego Cristóbal had proselytized and rabble-roused in his March pacification campaign when in the company of Salcedo and, for a time, del Valle. Avilés clamed that the sneaky rebel leader took advantage of Francisco Salcedo’s monolingualism, exhorting his Indian followers in Quechua in front of the uncomprehending corregidor.57 Avilés insisted that they needed to get Mariano, Andrés, and Diego Cristóbal out of Cuzco but that they had limited options. The three rebel leaders rejected Bishop Moscoso and Salcedo’s pressure to go to Lima and insisted on remaining in the Vilcanota Valley, where they had family and an income. If removed by force, however, Indians would rise up in a mutiny. Furthermore, Avilés worried that the young rebel leaders could simply disappear, escape from surveillance, and perhaps resurrect the uprising in the south or elsewhere.58 It is unclear whether Diego Cristóbal told his supporters in the upper provinces to prepare for a new uprising. Perhaps he simply acknowledged their support and his frustration with the cease-fi re. Indians might have understood this as a suggestion that the rebellion was not over. Or the Spaniards who testified might have interpreted indigenous restlessness and renewed tension as a sign that Diego Cristóbal had encouraged the Indians. This would have reflected the widespread belief among Spaniards that Indians could not act, let alone organize, on their own, but would follow loyally. The testimonies are second- or thirdhand and the people who testified about Diego Cristobal’s supposed invocations or the Spaniards who overhead Indians talk about it could have misunderstood, exaggerated, and even fabricated. What is true without a doubt is that the Indians of the upper provinces around Ocongate and Lauramarca remained mobilized throughout 1782. The rebellion had not ended for them, or at least was not going to end on terms that returned Indian-Spanish relations to the status quo. One of the Spaniards who testified about Diego Cristobal’s supposed rabble-rousing explained that in mid-1782 “the Indians of that area [the upper provinces] are as arrogant and dangerous as they were in the time of the rebellion, and they don’t let any Spaniard go by. The only difference with the pardon is that they aren’t killing people any more, although they are willing to continue their excesses.” He also noted that they were still armed.59 Authorities did not invent these rebels in

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the upper provinces— they were there, waiting for their Inca. One account described Andrés Quispe leading Indians from Ocongate, Cañamuro, and Andamayo, insisting that they not be fooled by the pukakunkas and that they keep their weapons.60 In the hills above Catca, Quispe’s followers detained an Indian councilman from the Muñacpata ayllu. They told him that only Tupac Amaru, who they held for their “true Inca,” could give orders and name authorities. They mentioned that Mariano Tupac Amaru was in Marcapata and that they awaited orders from Diego Cristóbal. These rebels concerned authorities even though controlling the upper provinces, an indigenous area that was not central to the regional economy, was not their top priority. What the colonial officials sought, however, was proof of ties to the Tupac Amaru leadership.61

Rebels in the City of the Kings Colonial authorities agreed by the latter part of 1782 that it would be easier to monitor the rebels and prevent ties with Indian rebels if they could be induced to relocate in Lima.62 Viceroy Jáuregui sent passports (a medieval term referring to permission to pass through city gates or portes) in June and spent the fi nal months of 1782 attempting to convince them to come down to Lima. He believed that compelling them could spark a new uprising; his uncompromising opponents believed that it was just one more case of weakness on his part. Finding themselves adrift in Cuzco, young Mariano and Andrés fi nally decided to go in December. Diego Cristóbal delayed his decision. Inspector General Avilés wrote that Mariano and Andrés requested 500 pesos each for expenses in the trip as well as 500 to pay for mules. He complained that they both liked to spend money and, on a more ominous note, described the arrival of “an incredible gathering of people” to see them off. Avilés explained that this proved the “control their family still had in this city [Cuzco], which is presumably even greater in the provinces.” Avilés was convinced that “these individuals can’t remain in Peru.”63 Indians conveyed their adoration for the two young rebels throughout the long journey to Lima, observed closely by authorities. The night before their departure, a crowd gathered in Cuzco to wish them well; in the village of Caicai, Indians showed their respect by taking off their

240

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hats and kneeling, despite the presence of Avilés; admirers pressed to meet them in every town and city. For ner vous authorities, these were signs that the rebels continued to conspire and that Indians remained seditious. These encounters also indicated that the danger had spread far beyond Cuzco, from the Inca capital to the viceregal capital.64 Mariano and Andrés met Viceroy Jáuregui in Lima on January 4, 1783. While demanding that they be supervised carefully, the Viceroy believed that their arrival confirmed that peace would continue. In contrast, hard-liners such as Avilés and Mata Linares worried instead that the viceroy and others treated the young rebel leaders too well. They thought that this treatment not only raised their confidence but increased their status in the eyes of others, and that conspiracies would soon spread. These officials also fretted that in Lima they would meet with other malcontents. Testimonies about Mariano and Andrés’s time in Lima provide a portrait of young men enjoying themselves, meeting a variety of people, and trying to fi nd a place in this city of fi fty thousand. This would be a typical experience for provincial youth in any new city, yet each encounter took on great significance, or multiple meanings, because of the context: authorities watched the former rebel leaders’ every move. Viceroy Jáuregui himself noted the dangers: “This city is loaded with Indians within its walls as well as in the surrounding provinces,” and worried that they could hatch a new conspiracy.65 The young rebels stayed at the School for Kurakas, (el Colegio del Príncipe), located in the Indian quarter in the eastern part of the city. One witness described going to the roof of the school to play around and drink a traditional nonalcoholic beverage—horchata—and other refreshments in the midst of the Lima summer. But authorities reported more suspicious meetings such as that with a mirror maker, Felipe Tupa Inga, who told the young men that they had made a mistake coming to Lima and that new uprisings were on the horizon. Another visitor told Andrés and Mariano that they had been “foolish [zonzos] for not proving capable of defending José Gabriel.” The son of a prestigious Indian family from nearby Yauyos, don Vicente Ninavilca, was in their room to pick up a guitar when he declared that he would defend Indians with his life if new abuses emerged. Authorities accused the young men of receiving and sending documents and letters, describing a cloak-and-dagger atmosphere. Ninavilca himself denied writing “important things” and

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claimed that he was just jotting down some verbs when witnesses saw him.66 The courts scrutinized their activities in Lima. Their lives in the City of the Kings seem to reflect the same pattern as in Cuzco: some people venerated them and others chided them for having given up the struggle. While struggling to find a place in the postrebellion society, they also enjoyed themselves a bit. At one point Andrés asked Vicente Ninavilca to write a letter to his mother, as the post was leaving soon for Cuzco. He instructed Ninavilca to write her: “Don’t be upset, the viceroy has treated us well, offering to help us establish ourselves. It’s best that Diego Cristóbal come soon to fi nish all of these matters.” Andrés would soon learn that his optimism was misplaced.67 In February 1783, while Andrés and Mariano were still learning their way around Lima, Corregidor Necochea uncovered another revolt or conspiracy around Marcapata in highland Cuzco. He had arrested Santos Guaygua, a rebel and kuraka who had never recognized the cease-fire, and learned that rebels from Azángaro were approaching the upper provinces. Necochea beheaded Guaygua and exhibited his head throughout the area.68 According to numerous, confusing accounts, rebels from Azángaro led by Andrés Condorpuse and Guaygua, reached Marcapata in late January 1783. Condorpuse and his son, who took the names Simón and Lorenzo Condori, wore a black felt sash with silver embroidery and a cross in the middle that they claimed had been given to them by Inga Tupac Amaru, presumably Diego Cristóbal. Although they maintained that their forces came from Azángaro to the south, in the trial Simón Condori identified himself as a tailor from Chilca, Pitumarca, in Tupac Amaru’s home base. In Marcapata, the Condoris declared to the assembled Indians that more troops were waiting at the Ausangate glacier, a sacred place or huaca for Andean people, and that Mariano would arrive from Lima. The town’s priest tried to intervene but the crowd overlooked his entreaties to reject the rebels. Officials reported that “Indians” had threatened market women and stolen livestock.69 Condori reportedly told people in Marcapata that even more troops were waiting in the towns above Paucartambo and that Diego Cristóbal would join them in the time of Carnival. They were arrested days after their fiery speech in Marcapata. The Spanish found letters and documents from Diego Cristóbal and Mariano recognizing Simón Condori as their representative and granting

242

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him power. For the Spanish, this was proof of an alarming conspiracy. The rebel leaders, however, denied having produced the documents and implied that the Spanish had planted them.70 In his trial, Simón Condori declared that he had received the sash from Mariano Tupac Amaru’s servant, Diego Quero, who in turn claimed that he received the papers and other materials he handed over to Condori from someone named Juan Laya. These accounts frustrated the investigators’ efforts to uncover a direct link with the Tupac Amaru leaders. Lorenzo Condori, however, maintained that his father had met Mariano Tupac Amaru, who had told the elder Condori “I’m off to Lima with little Andrés. Pray day and night that we return safely; if I die, Andrés will return, if he dies, I will return.” Lorenzo Condori contended that Mariano instructed Simón Condori to be the commander of the new uprising.71 Mariano denied knowing Lorenzo but remembered Simón Condori for his role in the earlier phase of the uprising in Azángaro.72 The flare-up in Marcapata seems believable. Lake Titicaca and the upper provinces were the last hotbeds of rebel support. Insurgents from the south would have found comrades in the peaks about the Vilcanota Valley. Whether the Condoris had the support of Diego Cristóbal, Andrés, and Mariano is unclear. The evidence seems tenuous. Nonetheless, it did not matter. In the eyes of the hard-liners, they had sufficient evidence to show that trouble was brewing throughout Peru: the conspiring cousins in Lima, the defiant Diego Cristóbal still in Cuzco, armed rebels in the upper provinces, and Indian followers throughout the viceroyalty. Authorities acted swiftly.

12 Ordered by the Catholic King

B

Y EA R LY 1783, authorities wrote each other with growing frequency and urgency about the rebels. They had succeeded in luring two of the three leaders to Lima and now carefully monitored their activities as well as any sign of violence or subversion in southern Peru. Viceroy Jáuregui demanded more information from Visitador Escobedo, who came down from Cuzco to Lima on February 15 with documentation about the rebels’ bad faith and the imminent danger of more insubordination. The hard-liners had taken charge. Escobedo’s documents typified the two-faced language characteristic of trumped-up charges or a dubious official story: certainty tinged with doubts in a clear attempt to preempt accusations of wrongdoing. Escobedo reiterated the necessity of imprisoning the rebels, listing a number of charges and outlining the benefits that their incarceration would bring. Yet he also pointed out the need to have a trial, in order to justify the arrests and to thwart accusations that the royalists had broken a signed agreement.1 Escobedo called for the arrest of the three leaders and many others; the focus was on the leadership. On February 25, 1783, Viceroy Jáuregui instructed Inspector General Gabriel de Avilés to bring Diego Cristóbal to Cuzco for questioning and, unless something went wrong, to arrest him. Writing from Lima, Viceroy Jáuregui explained: “To dispel right away suspicions that could arise about our breaking the terms of the pardon, it would be most convenient to conduct a trial against the prisoners.”2 Hard-liners and even the vacillating Viceroy Jáuregui wanted to arrest and execute the leaders, but they understood that a trial, no matter how dubious, was necessary in order to lessen condemnation in Peru and Spain. Yet the following

244

The Tupac Amaru Rebellion

day a letter from Corregidor Necochea arrived, providing details about the Marcapata uprising. The corregidor relayed the information about the simmering upheaval in the upper provinces provided—under duress or even torture— by Santos Guaygua before he was quartered and by Andrés Condorpuse (Simón Condori), who Necochea had captured but not executed. This news was the icing on the cake, or to use Mata Linares’s phrase, “came from Divine Providence,” and the viceroy lost no time in ordering the arrest of Andrés and Mariano in Lima and Diego Cristóbal in Cuzco.3 Authorities detained Andrés and Mariano in Lima on the night of February 26. Hours later, a messenger left Lima for Cuzco with instructions to make the 725-mile trip, which crossed peaks of over thirteen thousand feet above sea level, in six days. Even with horses and multiple messengers (using what had been the Inca chasqui system), it was an arduous journey.4 In Cuzco, worried that Diego Cristóbal would resist or flee, authorities devised a ruse. They presented the military contingent that moved from Cuzco toward Sicuani as an honor guard that would accompany the newly named bishop of Arequipa, Friar Miguel de Pamplona, who was arriving from Tucumán in Rio de la Plata. Necochea arrested Diego Cristóbal, his wife Manuela Tito Condori, and mother in Tungasuca on March 14, apparently without incident. Hours later, authorities detained Cecilia Tupac Amaru, Diego’s sister and Andrés’s mother, in Sicuani. On March 16, 1783 heavily armed troops brought the chained prisoners into Cuzco, in a somber ritual that must have reminded the city’s population of the arrival of José Gabriel and others in April 1781. Some of the population celebrated; others silently mourned and wondered what had happened, how events could have taken such a turn for the worse.5 Corregidor Salcedo, perhaps trying to overcome his image as a defender of the rebels, arrested seventy-five suspected accomplices. The list reads like a convoluted kinship chart: sons, daughters, grandchildren, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncle, cousin, daughters-in-law, and so on. Salcedo also captured Diego Ortigoza, accused of being Diego Cristóbal’s confidante, as well as other nonrelatives believed to have held military positions in the uprising.6 Corregidors continued to arrest people in the following weeks, including any member of the extended Tupac Amaru clan they could fi nd. Inmates overcrowded the jails of Cuzco and authorities decided to hold the trial there rather than in

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Lima, concerned about the transfer of hundreds of prisoners to the coast. Escobedo deemed the leaders’ arrest “our most important victory to date. Thanks to it, the king ensures his realm, which otherwise, as many loyal and wise men have told the viceroy, would be forever vulnerable.”7 Royalists believed that they had defeated the rebellion— they were correct. They also thought that they could implement far-reaching policies that would prevent any further subversion, convert Indians via coercion into Spanish-speaking, loyal citizens, and shatter their ties to the Inca past and the insurgent present. This proved much more difficult.

Mata Linares and the Trial Viceroy Jáuregui placed Mata Linares in charge of the trial. Unlike the 1781 prosecution of José Gabriel and his inner circle, this time they arraigned hundreds of defendants. Mata Linares himself recognized that in the month he was granted to conclude the trials, he could not “in terms of the principal case against Diego and his family, get a fi rm grip [ fijar pie] on anything substantial.”8 The accusation repeated the litany of dubious claims made by royalists throughout 1782: the three rebel leaders had received suspicious visitors and had been treated as Incas; they had sought to build a refuge in Marcapata and reignite the uprising; they had honored their convicted and executed family members and led sordid private lives; they had not returned stolen goods and had gold, silver, and weapons hidden somewhere; and they had supported Condorpuse and other rebels in the upper provinces.9 The trial reiterated these charges ad nauseam, stressing that Diego Cristóbal had not respected the pardon and had acted in bad faith. The prosecution called in witnesses and had the accused testify against one another. They did not allow extended testimonies or rebuttals. With the trial, the prosecutors sought to confi rm and disseminate the reports or rumors about the rebel leaders’ misdeeds and the subversive spirit still brewing in the area. and to dampen potential accusations that they, the colonial authorities, had broken the terms of the pardon. Although Mata Linares and others followed basic protocol, the sentences were foregone conclusions and the rushed trials a farce.10 On May 31, 1783, prosecutors sentenced Diego Cristóbal, his mother Marcela Castro, his wife Manuela Tito Condori, and Lorenzo and Simón Condori to death, although ultimately they did not execute Tito

246

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Condori. Bishop Moscoso and Corregidor Salcedo lobbied to lighten the sentence but to no avail.11 Mata Linares and the rest of the prosecution team managed to make Diego Cristóbal’s death even more gruesome than that of his cousin, José Gabriel. Around 10:00 a.m. on July 19, 1783, he, his mother, and the Condoris were dragged behind pack animals, their arms and legs bound, from the jail to the Regocijo Plaza while a town crier called out their crimes. Crowds jeered them and the cobblestone streets tore at their skin. Soldiers lined the plaza to prevent any disturbance and to witness the death of the rebel leader. All of the military force headquartered in Cuzco was present: the city’s infantry, cavalry, and light cavalry regiments made up primarily of militia members, as well as the Callao regiment. Their commanders and local authorities also observed.12 Executioners Felipe Quinco and Pascual Orcoguaranca fi rst hanged Lucas Jacinto and Ramón Jacinto, tried separately for their participation in the Marcapata events.13 They then dropped the Condoris from the gallows. Quinco and Orcoguaranca cut Marcela Castro’s tongue off before hanging her. Diego Cristóbal was forced to watch the bloody spectacle of his mother’s death. Just before he was dragged to the gallows the town crier, one Lorenzo Quispe, bellowed “This is the justice ordered by the Catholic King, our Lord (may God protect Him)” and then repeated the charges. The executioners had built a fire next to the gallows and used burning hot pincers to rip the flesh off Diego Cristóbal’s chest. The atenaceado or scorching pincers had been one of the mainstays of the Inquisition. The executioners then dragged Diego Cristóbal— bleeding profusely and in utter agony—to the gallows and hanged him. The town crier dared anyone to remove the dangling rebels from the gallows—no one took the challenge. Around 4:00 p.m. the executioners quartered the bodies. Diego Cristóbal’s sentence ordered that his “body will be quartered and his head taken to the town of Tungasuca, one arm to Lauramarca, the other to the town of Carabaya, one leg to Paucartambo, the other to Calca, and the rest of his body shall be put on a pillory on the road to this city’s water tank. All his property shall be confiscated . . . and his houses destroyed and his fields salted.”14 Authorities displayed the Condori heads and limbs in Marcapata, distant Azángaro, the Ausangate glacier, and other towns. Ausangate had been a refuge for rebels; it also constituted a revered, symbolic place for Andean people, a site for pilgrimage.15 Marcela Castro’s head was exhibited on a pike in San Sebastián, just

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outside of Cuzco toward the Vilcanota Valley, and her other body parts were displayed in Sicuani, Urcos Bridge, Pampamarca, Ocongate. Executioners incinerated her torso in a fire in the main plaza and “threw her ashes into the air.”16 Avilés and Mata Linares explained: “Monuments to their excesses will remain in the areas where Diego Cristóbal and his accomplices displayed their bloodthirsty nature, as fragments of their cadavers will be distributed there.”17 A week after the execution, with the news perhaps having reached Lima but certainly not Madrid, the King signed a royal order decreeing that Diego Cristóbal and his cousins be sent to Spain alive. To the satisfaction of Avilés and Mata Linares, it was too late.18 Authorities decided to try Mariano and Andrés in Lima, perhaps fearing a return trip to Cuzco. In their March 1783 testimonies, Mariano and Andrés recognized Felipe Velasco Tupa Inca Yupanqui’s (often shortened to Felipe Tupa Inca) visits to their room in Lima and his disappointment that they had disarmed. He had chastised them for accepting the royalists’ offer, assuring them that “now is the time to rise up because the province of Huarochirí, those around Lima, and that of Cajamarca [to the north] will be ours soon.”19 Prosecutors ordered Tupa Inca’s arrest but he snuck out of Lima and made it to the Andean area of Huarochirí, just to the east. Tupa Inca called for locals to rise up against the Spanish. He claimed to be following “his cousin” José Gabriel Tupac Amaru, whom he believed either alive, presumably in the jungle, or alive in spirit in Diego Cristóbal. A Spanish commander, with three other Spaniards and a black slave, reached Huarochirí and imprisoned Tupa Inca on June 2. On their return, they stumbled upon fi fteen hundred rebels, and barely escaped. They continued to Lima and a larger group left the viceregal capital to confront the nearby rebels. They arrested Tupa Inca’s commander, Ciriaco Flores, and eight accomplices. The rapid investigation confi rmed that Tupa Inca, a Lima mirror maker with no real blood ties to the Tupac Amaru family, had met with Mariano and Andrés and boasted of grandiose plans to resurrect the uprising in Lima’s Andean backyard. Tupa Inca personified widespread discontent over the breakdown of the pardon and anger at both the royalists for their treachery and the second wave of rebel leaders for being duped. In their testimonies, Tupa Inca and Flores also noted their belief that José Gabriel Tupac Amaru was alive— his execution was a

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Places where body parts were exhibited:

Acobamba

1781

Urubamba 1783

Vi l c a b a m b a

outskirts of Cuzco (water tank) N

Cuzco

Paucartambo

Calca

San Sebastián Ocongate Urcos

Chilques y Marques (Paruro)

Quiquijana

Lauramarca Ausangate

Pitumarca

over 6,000m 4,000–6,000m 500–4,000m 0–500m

Carabaya

lake 0 0

25 miles 25 km

Carabaya

Pampamarca Tinta

Tungasuca

Sicuani iver urim a c R Ap

Chumbivilcas

Azángaro

Lampa

Lake Titicaca

Condesuyos Puno

Chuquibamba

Arequipa

Pacific Ocean

The Distribution of Rebel Body Parts

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royalist fabrication. Scores of supporters trusted that José Gabriel and perhaps Diego Cristóbal continued the struggle in the “Gran Paititi,” a mythical place in the Amazon jungle.20 On July 7 executioners hanged Tupa Inca and Flores in Lima’s Plaza Mayor (today’s Plaza de Armas), displaying their heads and limbs in this walled city’s gates. Their subordinates were forced to watch the execution, many of them receiving lashes, and sent to presidios in Africa, Valdivia, Chile, and Callao. Tupa Inca’s “concubine” and another woman involved were sentenced to ten years in a convent and banned from Lima.21 The Huarochirí events confi rmed to hard-liners the dangers of further Tupac Amaru–inspired violence and the need to take drastic action. Even in Andean towns hundreds of miles from Cuzco, local indigenous people knew that authorities had broken the ceasefi re agreement, an action they saw as royalist treachery. In March 1783 Mata Linares and Avilés wrote to Jáuregui and Gálvez to explain how the events in Huarochirí had justified a harsh, swift sentence against Diego Cristóbal: “In Huarochirí, they made the Indians believe that the late José Gabriel had been crowned in the Gran Paititi. [With our sentencing], they have irrefutable proof that this perverse subject [Diego Cristóbal] is dead and they will fi nally abandon the crazy hope that they had for this family, seeing them as their liberators.”22 Mata Linares and Avilés insisted that Diego Cristóbal’s death be publicized throughout Peru and beyond.

To Lima and Beyond Unlike 1781 Cuzco authorities tried dozens of supporters and family members in 1783— they moved far beyond those executed on July 19. In the midst of the trials, Mata Linares put aside his normally intransigent rhetoric about the dangerous laxity of Peru and his tireless efforts to eradicate subversion, and admitted that he could not keep track of the prisoners arriving in Cuzco. He acknowledged that many were innocent, or simply guilty of having blood ties to Tupac Amaru, and that he did not have enough proof to try them. On May 12 Mata Linares wrote to Necochea and Salcedo to demand a better accounting system to “avoid confusion, which prevents us from imposing the proper punishment and might lead to mistaking the prisoners with the innocent.”23 He mentioned a total of 133 prisoners and divided them into two groups, 57 “Indians, Spaniards, and mestizos” for whom he had

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little documentation regarding their role in the uprising and he believed mostly innocent, and 73 members of the extended Tupac Amaru family. (The discrepancy in the numbers, 133 and 130, might have been caused by deaths, escapes, or counting the Condori father and son separately, as guilty but not family.) Mata Linares called for leniency with those he believed innocent (or at least he could not prove guilty) in order to demonstrate “the king’s pity,” and recommended that the members of the Tupac Amaru family other than those executed in July be taken to Lima, to rid the region of their dangerous presence. He suggested that they could be escorted to Lima without too much cost, bringing peace to Cuzco and resurrecting its economy, and from there shipped to Europe when the war with England ended and the seas were safe.24 At this point, in mid-1783, Spanish authorities correctly believed that the confl ict with England, part of the American Revolutionary War, would soon end. Mata Linares freed dozens of prisoners who he considered innocent, including a couple of Spaniards who shouted “Long Live the King” when released.25 In September, Escobedo provided a list of the sentences: seven people executed, twelve immediately banished or exiled from Peru (including Diego’s wife, who gained a last-minute reprieve from her death sentence), and sixty-one family members sent to Lima.26 On October 6 seventy-eight prisoners, including sixteen nonfamily members, left for Lima, guarded by 100 soldiers. The contingent included seventeen children (four months to nine years old); thirty-five women, most elderly; and twenty-six adult men, including one man in his eighties and, according to Juan Bautista Tupac Amaru, his 125-year-old uncle. The journey to Lima was always grueling, but for people of all ages weakened by months of incarceration and mistreatment, forced to travel in chains and without sufficient food, water, and shelter, it was a death march.27 Juan Bautista, José Gabriel’s half brother, provided a detailed account of the trip’s horrors. The Urcos corregidor had tricked him over a meal at some point in March and taken him prisoner to Cuzco, his second stint in jail. Surprised that he was not included in the July 19, 1783 executions, Juan Bautista spent seven months imprisoned, hungry, and fi lthy. Before departing, guards chained the prisoners’ hands and feet and paraded them around the main plaza to jeers of “rascals, traitors, you should pay for it.”28 Among a crowd Juan Bautista calculated at six thousand, one individual displayed remarkable kindness.

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The anonymous man somehow gave Juan Bautista a horse, which provided for a better journey. The other prisoners were on beaten-down mules. Each time they fell, their chains chafed their skin and the guards’ bayonets forced them back up. Juan Bautista described relentless hunger, thirst, and cruelty. His mother, Ventura Monjarras, died of dehydration, the guards spurning her pleas for water. They arrived in Lima after forty days, but their fate did not improve. Guards jammed them into a dungeon in the Callao fort, “the most melancholy place imaginable,” and kept them tied to a chain that ran through it. The guards continued to torment them in numerous ways. Their via crucis, particularly that of Juan Bautista, was not over.29 The official documentation also portrays a miserable trip, due not to Spanish cruelty but rather to the challenging terrain between Cuzco and Lima and the lack of cooperation by both local authorities and the prisoners. The convoy took the Cuzco-Abancay-Huamanga-Ica route, and misfortune and desperation struck in the latter half, once they passed Huamanga. On November 5 Commander Jacinto Iriarte sent a desperate note to his commanding officer, “I am on the Royal Highway with troops and the prisoners, and I don’t know exactly where we are, our cargo has been lost, and the prisoners are sick. We don’t have water, food, or mules.”30 The group had been stuck for four days near Castrovirreyna, in the breathtaking mountain passes that tower between the desert coast and Huamanga. Several mules had died (an indication of the route’s severity) and indigenous muleteers had fled with many others. The group ran out of water and had to break through the rocky soil to unearth a small, putrid puddle. A priest of the nearby town of Tambillo arranged for a tobacco trader, Pedro Villanueva, to rescue the lost and hungry contingent from the high peaks called San Martín. Villanueva tracked the lost group with his 100 mules. The priest underlined their desperation, noting that the coastal troops simply could not withstand the arid, two-mile-high mountain passes.31 He brought them horses and meat and arranged for the group to recover in Tambillo. Two prisoners died in the frigid weather and one, Bernardo Castro, escaped, causing further delays and harsh punishment for several guards. Commander Iriarte noted that Castro was married and had children in Tinta and missed them greatly. Iriarte blamed the fiasco on the fact that the corregidor of Castrovirreyna was

252

The Tupac Amaru Rebellion London Paris

BRAZIL PERU

Callao Lima Pisco

PORTUGAL

Huamanga (Ayacucho) Washington DC Castrovirreyna

Madrid SPAIN Getafe Seville Lisbon Cádiz Ceuta Algiers Tunis

Peniche

Cuzco Abancay BOLIVIA

journey Cuzco-Lima by Juan Bautista and other prisoners

Havana

La Paz

modern borders

CHILE San Juan

SENEGAL

Dakar

Cartagena Lagos

Quito

PERU

BRAZIL

Callao Lima

Salvador

Cuzco La Paz A

BOLIVIA

Rio de Janeiro

T

L O

A C

N E

T A

I

C

N

São Paulo CHILE ARGENTINA

Santiago Buenos Aires Talcahuano/ Concepción

Montevideo

El Peruano San Pedro Alcántara Juan Bautista Tupac Amaru’s return to Buenos Aires, 1822

The Prisoners’ Journey: Cuzco-Lima and Callao-Europe

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ill and his substitute had not arranged for fresh mules and supplies along the route. Even after their rescue and arrival at Ica, the group had to confront the summer sun as they moved north up the desert coast. After delays and the death of six prisoners, they reached Lima around November 22.32 Viceroy Jáuregui confi rmed the July 26, 1783 royal order to send the surviving rebel leaders to Spain. He wanted neither leniency nor more executions, and after the Huarochirí scare he agreed with the hard-liners about the need to remove the entire family. In March 1784 the Lima Audiencia or High Court sentenced Mariano, Andrés, Juan Bautista, and Fernando to ten years of hard labor in a Spanish presidio to be selected by the king. The viceroy insisted that they not be sent to Africa or any other presidio outside of Spain, because they might escape and spread their subversive message.33 The war with England had limited the number of ships leaving Callao for Europe, however, causing a huge backup of cargo, above all precious metals. In desperate need of revenue, authorities in Spain demanded that their counterparts in Peru send as much gold and silver as quickly as possible once it was feasible. After numerous delays, two warships, El Peruano and the San Pedro de Alcántara, left Callao on April 13, 1784. Dockworkers overloaded both ships. The San Pedro de Alcántara carried almost double its normal load, including 600 tons of copper, 153 tons of silver, and 4 tons of gold.34 Tito Condori, Diego Cristóbal’s widow, could not board because of an illness, perhaps tuberculosis, and died in Peru in March 1785.35 Juan Bautista, Mariano, and twenty-seven other prisoners as well as the renowned French botanist Joseph Dombey traveled on the Peruano.36 Juan Bautista provided a graphic description of the dreadful journey. The prisoners were chained together on deck, with nothing but “an old poncho” and a sheep hide to protect them from the sun, rain, and cold. They were so hungry that they scrambled to grab the bones that their shipmates threw at their feet. Illnesses spread, particularly scurvy, due to malnutrition and the lack of vitamin C, and one evening the two men tied to Juan Bautista died. The sadistic crew took hours to remove them. When prisoners complained to the commander, he threatened to tie them to the cannons. They gained a temporary reprieve when two French prisoners, who were enlisted to fi x the broken rudder, demanded that the chains be removed from all of the prisoners;

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the mates clamped them back on as soon as the repair was fi nished. Juan Bautista noted that when “one of my little nephews” died in agony of colic, the Spanish only laughed or remained indifferent.37 Juan Bautista was not exaggerating. By the time the ship had reached Rio de Janeiro, Mariano Tupac Amaru had died, along with fifteen others, including four minors. Crewmen presumably dumped Mariano, José Gabriel and Micaela’s son and one of the leaders of the rebellion’s second stage, into the Atlantic Ocean. Two others passed away in Brazil, before the ship left for Spain.38 In four months in Rio the crew tied the prisoners to the mainmast (palo mayor) during the day and left them chained to the foremast at night. They continued to do this on the voyage across the Atlantic. Their commander worried that a British ship might board and free the prisoners, which made the crew even more abusive. A guard offered the hungry Juan Bautista some crackers and when he returned with his treasure hidden in his ragged hat, he fell from his old spot that the guard had booby-trapped, breaking two ribs. His chest ached the rest of his life. Juan Bautista also pointed out the Spanish hypocrisy about religion. The crew prohibited the prisoners from praying, which Juan Bautista interpreted as a way to reinforce the notion that they were inferior, not true Catholics. They reached Cádiz on March 1, 1785. Of the twenty-nine prisoners that left Lima in 1784 on the Peruano, only four were alive in 1788.39 Juan Bautista was so weak that soldiers had to carry him to his cell in the San Sebastián castle. His troubles were far from over.40 Shockingly, the San Pedro de Alcántara expedition was worse. Chilean naval officials would not let the man-of-war anchor in the port of Talcahuano because they worried that Fernando Tupac Amaru (José Gabriel and Micaela’s youngest son) would subvert Indians and mestizos. Commander Manuel Fernando de Montoya decided to return to Callao. While still on the Pacific side of South America, sixteen of the forty-one prisoners had died due to vile conditions. Departing for the second time on December 21, 1784, the overloaded ship made it across the Atlantic, after stops in Concepción, Chile and Rio de Janeiro. The ship had numerous leaks and the crew had to use the pumps around the clock. Disaster struck on February 2, 1786. The man-of-war shipwrecked near Peniche, Portugal, north of Lisbon. Andrés Tupac Amaru and seventeen other prisoners died while up to six prisoners survived,

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including Fernando. The Spanish claimed to have lost over 7.5 million pesos in gold and silver. Forty divers paid by the Spanish government worked around the clock for four years after the shipwreck to recover the gold, silver, and copper, the largest diving enterprise up to that point in European history.41 Documents about the prisoners on both ships tumbled overboard in the wreck and authorities in Cádiz scrambled to identify the prisoners already held there and those arriving from Portugal.42 In recent decades archeologists discovered the graves of the dead who either washed up on shore or were retrieved from the ship. Europeans had individual graves; the political prisoners were dumped in a pile, their chains still on many of them.43 Authorities sent the surviving prisoners to jails and presidios in Spain. Fernando, who at the age of ten had witnessed the brutal execution of his parents Micaela and José Gabriel, reached shore after the shipwreck and wandered around for three days before turning himself in. He spent three years in a miserable, humid cell in Cádiz. In 1787, at the age of sixteen, he petitioned the king for his release. He or his lawyer noted that his only crime was being the son of his father, and that as a child, “he had no broader knowledge of the world other than what he learned from chasing butterfl ies, imbibed in this and other childhood activities.” 44 The following year he was interned at a school in Getafe and made clear that he did not want to become a priest. Not surprisingly in light of his years of imprisonment, the terrible journey to Spain, and the traumas he endured, he suffered various ailments and died in Madrid on August 19, 1798. Even the innocuous documents about his education and possible employment reminded the reader, “This subject is the son of the principal author of the past revolutions of Peru, Josef Gabriel Tupacamaro. He was sent to Spain to remove from Peru the memory of those events as well as the only inheritor of his father’s rights.” 45 Juan Bautista’s woes continued, although he ultimately had the satisfaction of frustrating the royalists’ vow to rid the Americas of all Tupac Amaru family members. His memoirs, written in the 1820s in Argentina just after independence, cast the Spaniards as relentlessly brutal. During his thirty-nine months in the San Sebastián castle, “I have no memory of a single Spaniard showing any human sign.” 46 He was then sent to Ceuta, Spain’s northern African outpost. He lived in this presidio just across the Strait of Gibraltar from Spain with an exploitative

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silversmith and survived on a small pension. His memoirs only provide bits of information about these years, particularly his efforts to educate himself and the abuse he received, from Spaniards and even an indigenous person. In one passage, he notes his difficulties with the Spanish language.47 In 1813 he met his guardian angel, Marcos Durán Martel, an Augustinian priest imprisoned for his participation in an uprising in Huánuco, Peru in 1812. In 1820, after the Liberal Revolution, the Spanish courts freed many prisoners from las américas. After a fall that left him with more broken ribs and prompted numerous delays, the eighty-year-old Juan Bautista embarked for Argentina on July 3, 1822, aided by Durán Martel and the Maltese-Argentine naval hero Juan Bautista Azopardo.48 The Argentine government, independent since 1816, granted him a pension and supported his efforts to write his memoirs. One of Argentina’s founding fathers, Manuel Belgrano, considered him as a possible Inca king under his 1816 Inca Plan to install an Inca monarchy. For some, the Incas and the Tupac Amaru rebels constituted alluring historical symbols that countered colonial or Hispanocentric visions of the past. In 1821, a five-act play, Tupac Amarú [sic], had opened in Buenos Aires, portraying Juan Bautista’s half brother as a heroic victim of Spanish brutality. However, opponents ridiculed efforts to link the nascent Argentina with the ancient Inca past and the Tupac Amaru uprising. Journalists dismissed Belgrano’s plan as “a monarchy in Indian sandals” and “a monarch with dirty shoes.” 49 Juan Bautista died in Argentina on September 2, 1827, at the age of eighty-five. He never made it back to Peru.50

Machines By the time the prisoners had been forced onto the warships in April 1784, Cuzco found itself with new authorities. Mata Linares remained as Cuzco’s fi rst intendant in a new administrative system inaugurated in 1784 and Escobedo y Alarcón had replaced Areche as visitador. Eight intendancies were created, with that of Puno transferred to Rio de la Plata. The idea was to count on authorities closer to local society than the viceroy and his court in Lima yet less abusive and corrupt than the corregidors, who were replaced by subdelegates. In order to discourage shady pacts between officials and locals, the intendancy program pledged adequate salaries for the intendants and subdelegates.51

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In a region devastated by two years of vicious guerrilla warfare and counterinsurgency, in which hard-liners had fi nally defeated moderates within the royalist campaign as well as the rebels, mass trials and executions might seem the logical modus operandi in the mid-1780s. The Spanish had proven themselves capable of using extraordinary means— legal and not so legal— against subversives, while authorities such as Bishop Moscoso who preferred more conciliatory methods had lost power. The savagery of the war and the vitriolic language of the victors would suggest mass repression, a bloodbath of thousands of Indians. Nonetheless, authorities did not stage mass trials against Indian suspects, nor did they condone extrajudicial executions. Violence reignited now and again in the Vilcanota Valley and indigenous fighters returned to their communities defeated, facing the jeers of royalists and the disfavor of the courts, but they were not jailed or killed en masse. Numerous explanations can be found. Spanish authorities were relieved and even ecstatic but also apprehensive— they knew they had just barely won and that tensions simmered. While officials in Cuzco and Lima could bluster about the victory and a supposed return of indigenous subordination, they understood that local power relations remained fragile. Pushing too hard could prompt a dangerous reaction by the defeated but bitter and defiant Indian masses. Authorities used any association with Tupac Amaru to weaken Indians’ lawsuits but indigenous people also employed carefully presented threats of renewed violence to bolster their demands. Colonial officials did not hold all the power.52 After the initial thrill of convincing the rebel leaders to accept the ceasefi re and then capturing them after sabotaging it, authorities understood that mass trials were not feasible or desirable. But another explanation has to be considered for the absence of mass trials or even executions— Spanish disdain for Indians. Mata Linares, whose writing rarely had any ambiguity or subtlety, believed that with the leadership dead or exiled, the rebel followers, real or potential, would not act. He wrote on May 31, 1783, “Since the imprisonment of Diego Cristóbal Tupac Amaru and his family, Indians are more submissive, which is natural since Indians do not have heads and are incapable of independent thoughts and can be said without exaggeration to be machines.”53 Despite a massive uprising that had led to tens of thousands of dead, Mata Linares was not deeply concerned about another indigenous uprising. In his view, without leaders, the indigenous people were

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not a threat. Mata Linares presumably thought that Indians deserved brutal punishment for their insubordination, but that it was not an indispensable preventive measure.54 Mata Linares believed, however, that Spanish administration or control of Peru had deteriorated greatly, and he found many culprits; above all, lax authorities, wayward priests, and conniving creoles. In his mind, they had mismanaged Peru to such an extreme that Spanish rule was in danger. Moreover, tax revenues continued to plummet, greatly concerning Madrid in this time of almost incessant European warfare. For Mata Linares and his allies, this mismanagement had fostered Indians’ autonomy and minimal assimilation, which lay at the heart of their disobedience. Mata Linares had plans to punish creoles and to force Indians to assimilate. These would greatly alter Peru and even the Americas, but not in the ways he expected. The Spanish implemented a fierce campaign against Andean culture, the memory of the Incas, and the uprising itself. In his May 15, 1781 sentence against José Gabriel, Micaela Bastidas, and other members of the inner circle, Areche not only designed the brutal execution in Cuzco’s main plaza but also, in the words of Clements Markham, ordered that Tupac Amaru’s “houses were to be demolished, all his goods to be confiscated, his relations to be declared infamous, all documents relating to his descent to be burned by the common hangman, all dresses used by the Incas to be prohibited, all pictures of them to be seized and burned, the representation of Quichua dramas was forbidden, all musical instruments of the Indians to be destroyed, all Indians to give up their national costumes and to dress henceforth in the Spanish fashion, the use of the Quichua language was prohibited, and the reading of the history of the Incas by Garcilaso de la Vega was forbidden.”55 The sentiments expressed in these harsh measures, the hatred and the desire to exterminate the Tupac Amaru clan, only deepened in the coming months, as the Spanish counterinsurgency campaigns to the south stalled or even failed. A royal decree (real cédula) dated April 27, 1782 confi rmed the measures against Inca music and culture and also stipulated that the position of kuraka would no longer be hereditary.56 Areche began a campaign to eradicate Andean culture and the pact between indigenous people and the colonial state that dated from the late sixteenth century. Mata Linares attempted to implement the campaign.

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These policies sought to dislodge any trace of the Incas in the Cuzco region and to assimilate the Quechua people into Spanish customs and language by force. Simply put, this was cultural genocide, and they failed. The Spanish did not have the resources to force Indians to switch languages, to abandon Quechua. Areche and others could blame priests for allowing Quechua to slip into Mass and other rituals and could devise plans to punish non-Indians who did not impose Spanish on indigenous people, but they could not compel the majority of Cuzco’s population to give up their mother tongue and shift to Spanish monolingualism.57 In fact, Areche and others presented no plan to indoctrinate or assimilate other than the abolition of Quechua, Inca customs, Garcilaso de la Vega, and so on. The fact that Areche was called back to Spain in 1782 (departing Peru in 1783) and eventually prosecuted for his heavy-handed policies, which some in Madrid believed sparked the uprising, certainly weakened the anti-Indian crusade.58 Nonetheless, Mata Linares remained in Cuzco until 1787 and shared Areche’s passion for extirpating all things Inca from the Andes. Mata Linares could not implement Areche’s draconian vision. The explanation can be found not in administrative shifts (the replacement of a particular authority), but instead in the lack of resources committed by the Spanish to such a radical transformation, and to Indians’ resistance. The extirpation of all things Inca, including the Quechua language, would have required massive resources and a fundamental restructuring of Andean society. It was probably doomed from the beginning— eliminating a major linguistic group, an entire culture with deep roots that preceded the majestic Incan Empire (1250–1550), would daunt even the most ambitious imperialist— but especially if the metropolis showed little interest. Despite the alarmist reports about how Indians’ autonomy had nearly cost Spain its South American holdings, Madrid expressed lukewarm support for the project. Two decades later, in 1805, a Cuzco authority sought to understand a recent uprising in Cuzco, that of Aguilar and Ubalde. He cited Mata Linares, who had been in Spain since 1803, and reiterated what Mata Linares considered the four principal causes for Andean subordination: “the superstitious obedience and blind love” that all Indians hold for anyone who claims to descend from the Incas; tensions between creoles and Spaniards; “the excessive hold that the Church had on those dupes [incautos]”; and abuses by priests as well as corregidors. The writer

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called for a number of reforms that echoed those of Areche and Mata Linares.59 The letter showed that the radical cultural reforms proposed by Areche and Mata Linares in the early 1780s had floundered and were not in place in 1805. The late 1782 and early 1783 repression of the Kataristas in Upper Peru, who remained armed and defiant, had been brutal, with thousands dead. Yet in Cuzco commanders had not embarked on any kind of mass slaughter, in part because the fighting there had largely stopped. To torpedo the amnesty, they had uncovered looming conspiracies rather than true uprisings. In the trials Cuzco authorities targeted the entire Tupac Amaru family, executing or expatriating them. They had also unleashed an unremitting campaign against the Quechua language and the memory of the Incas. On this front, they failed. But one other group remained, besides the rebel leadership and the mass supporters: the middling creoles, mestizos, and even Spaniards who had reportedly aided the rebellion. Authorities prosecuted them with passion and patience. Some of the trials lingered for more than a decade.

Supporters The question of how Tupac Amaru did it, how a small-town kuraka and his wife masterminded an uprising that spread throughout Peru, bedeviled the Spanish. The prospect of traitors in their midst particularly worried them. After the initial wave of rushed prosecutions in 1783 that led to the grisly executions in Cuzco and mass deportations to Spain, Mata Linares scrutinized alleged creole supporters of the rebellions. On the one hand, this reflected the royalists’ belief that Indians were incapable of organizing such a mass movement. Authorities such as Mata Linares could not conceive of indigenous people, including kurakas such as Tupac Amaru and his wife, planning, recruiting, and unifying—they assumed there had to be other masterminds. On the other hand, the trials against creoles evolved from the tensions in 1782 when hard-liners and moderates fought over who was at fault for the rebel expansion. Now firmly in power, the revenge-seeking hard-liners persecuted those who had lobbied for more conciliatory tactics, which they interpreted as an indication of rebel sympathies.

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Mata Linares was an obstinate reformer who believed that the Americas needed urgent reorganization. The rebellion’s aftermath offered an ideal opportunity. In 1781, after the capture of José Gabriel, he wrote that many factors contributed to the disloyalty of Spanish subjects in the Americas, but chief among them were “corregidors and priests’ extortions, the division between creoles and Europeans, the lack of education among the youth, and the fact that this America is so ecclesiastical.”60 He was a regalist who believed that the Church should be firmly under the control of the Crown. In this informative letter to José de Gálvez, Mata Linares described how corregidors and priests teamed up to exploit Indians, with little supervision from other authorities. Although critical of corregidors— an office in the midst of being abolished—he was harsher toward priests: “The corregidor might initiate the destruction of the Indian but the priest finishes him off.”61 After describing how corregidors and others exploited Indians, Mata Linares blamed priests for the uprising, contending that if all priests had been good subjects, the rebellion would have never happened. Moreover, he argued that priests were to blame for Indians’ adhesion to pre-Hispanic or Andean religion and their weak grasp of Catholicism. For Mata Linares and other hardline reformists, this lack of acculturation, a task handed over to priests in the sixteenth century, explained Indians’ ignorance and thus mistrust of Spanish ways. While he and other Bourbon Reformers sought to remedy these broad structural problems through a series of administrative changes, in the trials that he oversaw from 1781 until 1787 he focused on unmasking and punishing prominent people who he believed had supported Tupac Amaru. They were, by and large, creoles and priests. With the support of Commander Avilés, the new visitador general Jorge Escobedo, and, from the side of the Church, the archdeacon Simón Ximénez Villalva, Mata Linares investigated and tried the notary José de Palacios, the lawyer Julián Capetillo, Bishop Moscoso, and the three brothers Antonio, Gabriel and Gaspar Ugarte. As seen earlier, he also oversaw the prosecution of Fathers Puente, López de Sosa, and Maruri. No one could accuse Mata Linares of being lax in his prosecution efforts. For example, he had the penmanship of the letters to and from Tupac Amaru during the siege of Cuzco evaluated to see if it matched with any well-known Cuzco notaries, whether Palacios or others.62 Prosecutors accused Capetillo and Palacios, who

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was a cousin of Micaela Bastidas, of corresponding with the rebel in the midst of the uprising. The trial reflected royalists’ concern about enemies within the upper ranks of the city of Cuzco and their belief that Indians led by a kuraka family could not have undertaken such a bold and successful enterprise. While confi rming that Palacios and Tupac Amaru had long been friends, the prosecution did not prove that Palacios and Capetillo had supported the rebellion and absolved both.63 The trial against the Ugarte clan lasted for years, both displaying and accentuating the divide between the uncompromising reformers and prominent Cuzco creoles. Wealthy landowners and holders of the prestigious alfarez real, the position of chief ensign, the Ugarte clan had intermarried with other important families and also had blood ties with Inca royalty dating from the sixteenth century. They sat at the top of Cuzco society. The accusations initially centered on a letter that Tupac Amaru had sent Antonio Ugarte at the beginning of the uprising, dated November 22, 1780. He referred to the Ugarte brothers as “cousins” and city leaders (principales) in a tone that was both welcoming and threatening. The Ugartes’ blood ties with Inca nobility no doubt fortified José Gabriel’s view of them as family. Gabriel Ugarte’s older daughter was known as the “Coya” or “Inca Queen” and a pasquinade posted just before the uprising declared, “Prepare yourself, Ugarte, because we want to crown you.”64 The Tupac Amaru letter never reached the Ugartes; nonetheless, it caused them nearly a decade of legal problems.65 In testimony under duress, Tupac Amaru claimed not to remember the letter and hinted that perhaps his scribes had written it without telling him. The text perturbed authorities during the rebellion and for years afterwards. It suggested that insurgents could be found not only in the hills— in Indian ayllus and communities— but also in the better residences of the city of Cuzco. Rivalries also played a role. Cuzco’s corregidor, Matías Baulen, author of the most alarmist memos regarding Diego Cristóbal and the supposed rupture of the indulto, sought the alfarez real position for his brother Antonio. Gaspar Ugarte had held it since 1780.66 Moreover, Ugarte’s sister-in-law, María de la Concepción Rivadeneyra, the prioress of the Santa Catalina convent, was accused of having an affair with the prior of Santo Domingo. Bishop Moscoso intervened, only to be accused of also having romantic ties to the nun.67 The trial in Lima’s Audiencia

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dragged on from 1783 to 1786, with the Ugarte brothers the recipients of venomous anticreole insults. The evidence was minimal, other than the letter that they never received, and the prosecution appeared to persecute them simply for being prestigious creoles who had ties to the rebels (they admitted meeting Tupac Amaru before the rebellion), great prestige among a broad section of Cuzco society, and a distaste for some of the reforms imposed by Areche, Escobedo, and company. Although they were not found guilty, the court banished them to Spain. The trial’s cost and the departure of the three brothers broke the family econom ical ly.68 Bishop Moscoso already had enemies when he arrived in Cuzco in 1779 to become bishop. Prominent Spaniards had disliked the decision to name a creole rather than a European to the prestigious position. His confl ict with corregidor Arriaga in early 1780, just months before Arriaga’s hanging would launch the rebellion, earned him more adversaries. Arriaga’s nephew, Eusebio Balza y Verganza, presented a booklength accusation against the Bishop in 1782, La verdad desnuda or The Naked Truth, alleging that the bishop supported the Tupac Amaru rebels and led a dissolute private life, specifically alleging a taste for young women and nuns. As this book has shown, Moscoso was an implacable and effective opponent of the rebels. They could not overcome his strategy of maintaining priests in rebel-controlled areas and excommunicating the leadership, which neutralized the insurgents’ claims of working within the system and their expectation of support from Madrid and even God. Nonetheless, his support for the pardon and his proximity to Diego Cristóbal earned him the wrath of Areche and, even more so, Mata Linares.69 In 1783, echoing the accusations of La verdad desnuda, Mata Linares initiated a trial in Lima’s high court, to evaluate whether the bishop “had any influence in the recent commotion.”70 Bishop Moscoso fought the charges for almost a decade. In 1784, he left Cuzco to plead his case in Lima and two years later he departed for Spain to lobby in Madrid. This Arequipeño would never return to Peru. His case was aided by the death of Charles III on December 14, 1788, and his replacement by King Charles IV, who sought to terminate the countless lingering trials that bloated Spain’s legal and political systems. The retirement of José de Gálvez from the Council of the Indies also apparently helped him.71 In March 1789 Moscoso presented a 248-page

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defense, focused on the twenty-two accusations against him, specifically his participation in conspiracies before the outbreak of the Tupac Amaru rebellion and his purported hand in the death of corregidor Arriaga (nine accusations), his role in the Tupac Amaru uprising (eleven), and his treatment of and possible “illegitimate friendships” with members of the Santa Catalina convent (two). The paper trail is astonishing. A 1980 document collection that published part of the proceedings against him found primarily in Seville’s Archivo de Indias ran to 736 pages.72 In his defense, Moscoso counters each accusation and insists that all of them were based on insinuations and gossip rather than hard proof. He underlines his role in the repression of the first stage, adding the testimony of prominent people who seconded him, and justifies his support for the pardon. He stresses Peru’s terrible situation in late 1781, the danger that the rebels would exterminate all Europeans and capture churches, and cites an axiom—“Pardon the multitude to save the nation.” Months after handing in his long defense, Moscoso received the prestigious position of Archbishop of Granada and was granted the Gran Cruz de Charles III (Great Cross of Charles III) for his work defending the Crown in the Tupac Amaru rebellion. He remained in Granada until his death in 1811, embroiling himself in controversies about women’s decency, supporting the French over the English in Spain’s persistent wars, and building an estate in the town of Víznar adorned with art alluding to Cervantes and the Andes.73 The trials of the Ugarte brothers and Bishop Moscoso damaged their reputations, nearly bankrupted them, and forced them to leave Peru for Spain. Even if they outlasted their accusers, they paid an enormous cost. There are multiple ironies in these long, bitter disputes. In these trials as well as those against Diego Cristóbal and company, Mata Linares, having already taken care of the rebel leadership, pounced upon the two social groups he believed responsible for Peru’s maladies: insubordinate creoles and priests. He believed these individuals supported the rebellion and that the social groups they represented allowed it to spread. Yet this book has shown the opposite: that creoles by and large did not accept José Gabriel and Micaela Bastidas’s invitation to join in a proto–national uprising and that Cuzco’s gentry—fearful of the radical consequences of a rebel victory and conscious that royalist

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repression would be brutal—fought against the rebels in the siege in early 1781. Moreover, the Church led the opposition against the rebels, and Moscoso’s tactics—relying on priests as in for mants and as a fi fth column, and weakening the rebels’ claim of legitimacy through excommunications—worked brilliantly. In his self-defense, Bishop Moscoso stressed that people had called him “the reconquistador of Peru”; he was not exaggerating.74 While the Ugartes did not have as strong credentials, their trial cast them as symbols or proxies of Cuzco’s creole elites. Despite Areche and Mata Linares’s rhetoric, these groups had remained loyal to the Crown with minor exceptions. The ironies do not end there. The defendants went to great lengths to defend their reputations, to challenge the notion emerging from the lengthy trials and spreading among gossipy local society in Cuzco and Lima that they had supported the insurgents and hindered their repression. They ultimately won (or at least were not found guilty), although at a great cost. Yet the accusations that they found so distasteful and so damaging in the 1780s were transformed, decades and even centuries later, into an accomplishment or a badge of honor. While in the 1780s members of the Ugarte family rued Mata Linares’s obstinacy and despised the trials, their descendants in independent Peru might have seen their ancestors as early heroes of Peruvian independence. Readers of the voluminous trial transcripts— the fundamental source for scholars of the rebellion—rapidly get the impression that important creoles and members of the church hierarchy aided the rebels, or would have if they had been able. Mata Linares and Areche’s paranoid interpretation of the rebellion, based on their profound misgivings about creoles and priests, oozes from the archival record. José Gabriel’s invocations for a multiethnic coalition also support this view: he very much sought respectable allies. Therefore Moscoso and to a lesser extent the Ugartes could become heroes in postcolonial Peru. Because a few priests did support Tupac Amaru and because La verdad desnuda and the long trial harangued Moscoso for his rebel inclinations, many interpretations deemed the role of the church in the rebellion ambiguous or unclear and highlighted patriotic heroes such as father López de Sosa. The trials that extend beyond a thousand pages, the astonishing paper trail, seem to confi rm that the role of creoles and the Church in the uprising are open questions, subject to debate, which in

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fact are resurrected periodically in scholarly discussions and remain at the core of the Tupac Amaru historiography. By ruining the reputations of Moscoso, the Ugarte family, and others in the gloomy years after the uprising, Mata Linares provided the prime material for their conversion into patriotic heroes after the independence of Peru in the 1820s.

Conclusion The Legacy of Tupac Amaru

C

uprisings, the Tupac Amaru rebellion stretched from Cuzco to Potosí, with copycat revolts occurring elsewhere in South America. Like all revolutions, it swept people into its vortex: as rebels or royalist fighters, as victims or targets of repression, as refugees. After the initial months, it became nearly impossible to remain neutral. People in southern Peru had to choose a side or flee and tens of thousands, including those who did not sympathize with either the rebels or the royalists, lost their lives. Tupac Amaru demanded that his followers limit their attacks to exploitative Spaniards, corregidors, and their defenders. Royalists, in turn, pursued those deemed rebels, indigenous fighters. Both sides, however, abandoned these restrictions in the course of the rebellion, widening the defi nition of the enemy, and thus who should be killed. Rebels attacked anyone considered part of the Spanish colonial world— including those who only spoke Spanish or wore European clothing—while royalists targeted all indigenous people. Not only did violence intensify but the brutality became increasingly horrific: beheadings, ritual killings, rapes, and public executions. The Tupac Amaru rebellion changed Peru indelibly and had important repercussions in South America and across the Atlantic. In the aftermath of the uprising, authorities imposed stern measures that aimed to punish and assimilate the indigenous population and to erase ties with the Inca past. They also sought to silence discussion about the rebellion, to cover up what had happened, and to impede collective OU PL ED W I T H T H E K ATA R ISTA

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memory. Both the administrative/cultural reforms and the silencing of the 1780–1783 events initially succeeded. Reformers shattered the colonial system in place since the 1570s, in their eyes restoring Spanish control in the Andes. They also prevented public discussions and commemoration of the uprising. This success, however, proved fleeting. The radical administrative changes buckled under their own weight and the core issue these reforms targeted— the role of indigenous people in Peru—remains contentious today. They did not solve this “problem” in the short- or the long term. Nor did they succeed in silencing discussions or impeding the memory of the uprising. People began to remember the uprising in different ways, and José Gabriel and Micaela Bastidas resurfaced in curious places and moments, in Peru and far beyond, as martyrs, heroes, and paradigms. The struggles over forgetting and remembering the uprising— the ultimate phase of any war, the battles over memory— continue today.

The Embers Remain The royalists in charge of Cuzco after the rebellion did not prosecute the thousands of Indians suspected of rebel sympathies, but instead initiated a wide-ranging campaign against Andean culture and the collective memory of the Incas. They understood that mass trials would prove complicated, costly, and very likely counterproductive. They also believed that Indians were “machines” in the words of Mata Linares, mere followers with no initiative of their own. So instead of prosecution, officials sought to extirpate the memory of the Incas and to force Indians to abandon the Quechua language, a cornerstone of their indigenous culture. The campaign built on brisk reformist winds from Spain, particularly efforts to control the Catholic Church and to homogenize religious practices. It also reflected the impression that authorities’ vitriolic tirades about the sorry state of the Andes had made in Madrid. In searching for a cause for the uprising, Areche, Mata Linares and even Bishop Moscoso blamed Indians for being insufficiently European (or too Indian), ultimately blaming wayward authorities, especially creoles and priests, for allowing Peru’s indigenous people to remain autonomous. Although the visitador and the judge on the one side and the bishop on the other clashed during the uprising, and Moscoso faced a decade-

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long legal struggle over his alleged support for the rebels, they agreed that Indians were too attached to the Incas and too detached from the Spanish. They rued the persistence of Inca dress, songs, and dramas as well as the predominance of Quechua, taking priests to task for their failure to convert and assimilate. In their correspondence as well as reports to Lima and Madrid, these authorities underlined the sorry state of Spanish rule in the Andes. Moscoso called Cuzco “a Babylon.”1 Mata Linares ranted incessantly about Cuzco and its inhabitants. He considered the Andes “rough and disagreeable” and claimed that people in Cuzco were either “traitors or cowards.”2 These complaints about Indians’ stubborn hold on the past and refusal to learn Spanish developed, improbably, into a broad-reaching policy. The paper war between hard-liners and moderates not only shaped royalist tactics during the war but also molded programs and policies after the massive rebellion. The postrebellion assimilationist campaign or cultural genocide failed. Reforms could not eradicate Quechua or Andean culture, nor could they assimilate the Andean masses into the Spanish-Catholic world. Nonetheless, Areche’s measures changed relations between Spain and the Andes. The draconian measures terminated the two-republics system imposed by Viceroy Toledo in the 1570s. This system granted Indians a degree of cultural, political, and economic autonomy in return for their designation as separate and inferior subjects and the obligation of heavy head and labor taxes. Under the Toledan system Indians were allowed to speak Quechua, remember the Incas, maintain ethnic kurakas, control communal land, and enjoy other rights as long as they paid the head tax, worked in the mines under the dreadful mita, and pledged obedience to the king and the Church. Dating from the middle of the eighteenth century, the Bourbon Reforms had chipped away at this “colonial pact,” replacing indigenous authorities with Europeans and raising taxes and labor demands. These changes prompted the ire of Indians as well as mestizos, Europeans, and the multiracial castas, fostering the riots, revolts, and smaller uprisings that preceded Tupac Amaru. Nonetheless, the administrative reforms prior to 1780 had only destabilized the deep structures of Indian-colonial state relations. The rebellion and its aftermath smashed them. Even as the former system, the two republics, disintegrated under the pressure of the post–Tupac Amaru repression and policy changes, no clear replacement or alternative emerged. In other words, the reforms

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The Tupac Amaru Rebellion

were more destructive than constructive; they obliterated the system implemented by Toledo in the late sixteenth century but did not create a coherent successor. Venomous postrebellion fury and extreme antiIndian notions rather than careful planning guided the changes, dooming them. Eliminating a language spoken by millions and assimilating the indigenous population almost overnight were unattainable fantasies, particularly if Madrid did not intend to invest in Peru and if the Catholic Church lacked bilingual priests. This failure meant that many questions regarding the place of Indians in the colonial Andes remained unclear; uncertainty and disagreement reigned. From 1780 until independence in the 1820s and beyond, Andean people— authorities, the indigenous, and those in between— debated and struggled about the legitimacy of noble Indians, the role and succession of kurakas, the continuation of the mita, and the weight of taxes on indigenous people. The unfeasible or inapplicable post–Tupac Amaru policies, along with the winds of change arriving from distant France, Iberia, and— by 1800— other parts of Spanish America, converted these local disputes into raging struggles about Spanish rule.3 The failure of the post–Tupac Amaru cultural project, which, if successful, would have been a virtual cultural revolution, should not be exaggerated. Anti-Quechua diatribes and plans continued to emerge. For example, in 1798 Father José Fernando Baeza lobbied to “extinguish” the Quechua language and to prevent Indians from gaining Spanish literacy. He explained, “Anyone who has carefully and attentively observed Indians’ character and temperament knows that education [la ilustración] makes them haughty. Just them knowing how to read and write is enough to disturb the peace. José Gabriel Condorcanqui, alias Tupac Amaro, would still live with tranquility in his hut and he would not have caused irreparable damage, if it weren’t for the School for Indians in this city [Cuzco], where the Indians who deem themselves noble are educated, and thus would not have drunk from the poison that is Garcilaso de la Vega.” 4 Father Baeza proposed forcing mestizos who spoke Quechua to pay the Indian head tax and contended that Spanish women fostered Quechua by not imposing Spanish on their maids and other domestic servants. Spiteful anti-Indian sentiments persisted. The harsh Areche reforms might have collapsed rapidly, but anti-Indian attitudes did not. Mata Linares and others largely succeeded in ridding the area of representations of the Incas and of Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas

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themselves, as well as limiting other forms of remembering and celebrating the Incan Empire. The battles over paintings are particularly revealing. In April 1781 Bishop Moscoso oversaw the removal of The Incas of Peru from the San Francisco school for the children of noble Indians, where Tupac Amaru had studied, and in the church of Curahuasi in Abancay. He deemed it a “prudent precaution” because “these gentiles [the Incas] have made such an impression on the Indians, always prone to such a memory.”5 Authorities destroyed the portraits of Tupac Amaru and many other paintings, although a few survived, above all those in houses or estates that escaped the vigilant eye of the state.6 Moreover, officials often did not destroy the paintings but simply allowed artists to paint over them. Modern specialists have uncovered, literally, several colonial paintings with allusions to noble Indians, the Incas, or even Tupac Amaru himself, which in the decades after the uprising had been covered by religious themes. Authorities failed to rid the area of all pictorial references to the Incas and their descendants, but destroyed the vast majority.7 The measures succeeded in making references to Tupac Amaru, Micaela Bastidas, and the uprising taboo in Cuzco in the following decades. The public executions, the decade-long trials against Bishop Moscoso and others, and the antisubversive hubris of Mata Linares meant that for years afterward, Indians, mestizos, and creoles worried about accusations of harboring rebel sympathies. In the legal system, these insinuations— no proof was necessary— could damage a case; people hid their support for the uprising.8 It was not only fear, of course, that discouraged people from discussing the uprising. No group looked back at it with pride and satisfaction. For the Spanish, it had been a terrible shock, a costly one in terms of human lives, expenditures, cohesion, and legitimacy. They knew that they had barely held on and did not gloat. For Indians, the brutal executions symbolized a painful defeat. In the heady days of late 1780, when Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas led tens of thousands of troops in the siege of Cuzco, or in late 1781, when Diego Cristóbal, Andrés, and Mariano seemed unstoppable in the high plateau around Lake Titicaca, Indians felt that the rebels had been on the verge of victory. (Some realized this with dread or disappointment— it should not be forgotten that not all Indians supported the uprising.) Both episodes ended with their leaders’ severed body parts displayed on pikes or hung

272

The Tupac Amaru Rebellion

from trees as macabre warnings; estate and textile mill owners as well as unpopular officials soon returned. At best, Indian supporters saw the rebellion as a tragic near miss. Mestizos and others caught in the middle recalled the threat of violence from both the rebels and the royalists and the high toll the uprising took on the regional economy and daily life. Officials often grumbled that the prospect of more violence or even the return of some member of the Tupac Amaru family had not disappeared. For example, in July 1783 Cuzco’s corregidor, Matías Baulen, wrote, “The embers remain from the recent fi re and it’s not impossible that they heat up again, even among those people who seem to have the best temperament. This riffraff [chusma] works on fi rst impressions.”9 For some people, such as Baulen, the lingering impression that another uprising was possible, perhaps just around the corner, indicated that repression had not gone far enough; for others, the Spanish hard-liners had been excessive, imperiling Spanish control of the Andes. Yet these were rumors or private musings. Repression managed to silence public discussion and expressions of nostalgia or veneration for Tupac Amaru for decades. This would change. Despite the effort to construct “official silence,” the voices of Tupac Amaru’s supporters rose to praise him, to construct an alternative path from his memory.10 What did Tupac Amaru mean for broader political alignments in Peru? In a landmark publication in 1972 that burst the bubble of the flag-waving 150th anniversary celebrations of Peruvian independence (independence was declared in 1821 but the Spanish were not defeated until 1824), Heraclio Bonilla and Karen Spalding underlined that Tupac Amaru had intimidated creoles and other non-Indians and discouraged them from supporting Andean-based uprisings. These historians suggested that the events of the 1780s widened the coast-Andes breach and gave Lima-based creoles, already much more conservative than their brethren in “peripheral areas” such as Buenos Aires or Caracas, more reason to vacillate over the struggle against the Spanish that erupted in the early 1800s.11 The irony stands out— Bonilla and Spalding argued that a mass uprising that was at that time, the 1970s, being portrayed as the precursor of Peruvian independence had actually weakened or delayed the rupture with Spain. Decades of subsequent research on the lower classes and politics in the independence period have amended or fi ne-tuned this uncompromising interpretation,

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highlighting the role that the lower classes played in regional movements and stressing different types of popular politics. Nonetheless, the gap between coastal independence movements and Andean people was im mense, fortified by the coastal elite’s terror of marauding Indian guerrillas.12 The rebellion demonstrated the high cost of an uprising to creoles and mestizos: insubordination and violence by the lower orders, on the one hand, and brutal repression by authorities, on the other. It alarmed the nonindigenous population and increased the already considerable rift between the coast and the highlands. The uprising culminated in the annihilation of the Tupac Amaru clan, other kurakas, and tens of thousands of Indians. The repression thus exterminated or at least intimidated future rebel leaders and followers, dampening the prospect of future Cuzco-based insurgencies.13 However, the violence also ruptured the historic pact between Indians and the colonial state and proved to thousands of survivors that the Spanish should not be tolerated. Incanism did not perish, and during the wars of independence and beyond intellectuals and others expressed an appreciation for the Inca Empire and timidly proposed it as a possible national symbol.14 The Tupac Amaru rebellion both delayed and hastened independence from Spain: it widened the Andean-coastal gap and underscored to the upper classes and others the high cost of insurgency, but also ruptured the Toledan system that had been the bedrock of colonial rule for 200 years. Tupac Amaru and his movement did not become heroes, models, icons, or points of reference for the leaders of the wars of independence in Peru from 1808 to 1824. Tupac’s name surfaced from time to time, as both a hero and a villain, but not, until many years later, as a constant refrain. In 1814, the creole intellectual José Baquíjano y Carrillo wrote, “Indians are tenacious in preserving resentment . . . they lament the atrocious execution of Diego Tupac Amaru in 1780 [sic], after he had handed over his weapons, accepted the pardon, sworn to it inside a Church.”15 Yet the rebels in Peru in 1814, based in Cuzco and led by, among others, Tupac Amaru’s nemesis Pumacahua, did not fight in José Gabriel or Micaela’s name.16 Tupac Amaru became a national symbol— but only decades or even centuries later. We can assume Tupac Amaru and Micaela remained larger-than-life heroes to vast numbers of indigenous people in Cuzco and beyond. But we will probably never know for certain. If indigenous voices are normally rare in the

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written record, in the bleak post–Tupac Amaru decades, Indian peoples retreated into stony silence in the extant archives.17 In 1783 a junta of three distinguished authorities in Madrid reviewed the 1781 cases against José Gabriel and others to evaluate whether the procedures, sentences, and punishments were acceptable. They chided the judges (without naming Mata Linares or Areche) for cutting José Gabriel’s tongue while he was alive: this was not permitted according to the laws of Castile or of the Indies. They also questioned the burning of the bodies and the spreading of their ashes as well as some of the actions taken against minors. The three judges called for “prudence” in the banning of kurakas and Inca clothing and theater, noting that it was preferable to get rid of “everything that makes the Indians remember their antiquity and gentile past, but with political caution and in such a way that the intentions and ends of these policies are not easily seen.”18 They understood that the war was now being fought in the realm of memory, in how Tupac Amaru was remembered and how effectively they could silence indigenous supporters. In a marginal note in a copy of the junta’s fi ndings, which questioned some of the tactics and procedures but generally supported the sentences and cultural repression, a Madrid court scribe scribbled, “In light of the enormity of these crimes and the other circumstances that intervened in this case, the king approves what was done with the cadavers, for public terror and as a lesson.” [para terror y escarmiento público].19 In arguably the first historical account of the uprising, in 1816 the Argentine priest, Gregorio Funes, wrote in his multivolume Essay on the Civil History of Buenos Aires, Tucumán, and Paraguay, “Through the force of terror, the Ancien Régime treated the writing and even the discussion [discurso] about the rebellion as a conspiracy against the state. They wanted these events to be erased from memory, even that of the oppressed, or at least that they only remain in the oppressors’ conscience.”20 It would be decades until Spanish writers overcame official silencing and began to criticize Spanish brutality and cast Tupac Amaru in a new light.21 Depicting the uprising as an isolated conspiracy, the Spanish had done a remarkable job in silencing discussion about it. But Tupac Amaru resurfaced in curious, unexpected places. In 1802, in the waning moments of the Haitian Revolution, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the commanding general of the Haitian Revolutionary Army and at this point the governor-general, deemed his forces “the Army of

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the Incas” and “Sons of the Sun.” The invocation of Tupac Amaru and Peru made sense. Just two decades earlier, the overwhelmingly indigenous rebel army had nearly dislodged Spain from its South American hub, inventing a new revolutionary framework. Events in the Caribbean were equally shocking and momentous. Haitian slaves were in the midst of toppling French colonialism and Atlantic slavery, on an island at the center of the sugar economy.22 Around 1810, gaucho rebels fighting the Spanish in the area north of Buenos Aires, in present-day Uruguay, assumed the name Tupamaros.23 And the prospect of a Tupac Amaru leading another uprising outside of Peru concerned authorities for decades. In 1790, a Madrid court official requested that the governors of Guyana and Venezuela investigate whether two nephews of Tupac Amaru had sneaked into the Dutch territory of Surinam. The official asked them to fi nd out if the two men were hiding among the fugitive population “and whether they had contact with Indians, and whether these natives look at the nephews with consideration.” They were not found.24 For decades, perhaps even centuries, authorities in Cuzco, Lima, and beyond worried about the resurgence of Tupac Amaru or his followers.

Memory and Legacy In 1965, Peruvian poet Antonio Cisneros wrote in “Tupac Amaru Relegated”: There are liberators with long sideburns who saw the dead and wounded brought back after the battles. Soon their names became history, and the sideburns growing into their old uniforms proclaimed them founders of the nation. Others with less luck have taken up two pages of text with four horses and their death.25

Written almost fi fty years ago, the poem contrasts the well-known military heroes of the wars of independence, all of European descent, lauded and pictured in museums and textbooks, with the overlooked (or “less lucky”) martyr of Pampamarca.

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Tupac Amaru, however, is no longer the forgotten figure he once was. Young Peruvians can identify him as well (or as poorly) as they can the major figures of the Wars of Independence (1808–1824) or the martyrs of the War of the Pacific (1879–1882), Cisneros’s liberators with sideburns. Historians have turned their attention to the events of 1780–1783, and Tupac Amaru has become an international symbol of resistance and even a dark-skinned, pony-tailed icon. Two guerrilla groups named their movements after him: the Tupamaros in Uruguay (1960–1974) and the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement in Peru (1980–1997).26 My students gasp when they learn that the rapper Tupac Amaru Shakur was named after the Cuzco rebel. In 1972, Afeni Shakur (formerly Alice Faye Williams), a member of the Black Panther Party in the United States, was acquitted on conspiracy charges (as part of what is known as the Panther 21). She changed her infant’s name from Lesane Parish Crooks to Tupac Amaru Shakur. He was less than a year old, born on June 16, 1971. The last name honored her husband and Tupac’s stepfather, Mutulu Shakur, himself a prominent black nationalist. “Tupac Amaru” referred to the Peruvian revolutionary. 27 Tupac wore the name proudly, emblazing it as “2-Pac” on his chest, in one of his many tattoos. Handsome, gifted, and shot down in his prime, Tupac Shakur became an international symbol of resistance, “a global barometer of youth malaise.”28 Both Tupacs, José Gabriel and Shakur, died martyrs, with their popularity or fan base growing postmortem. The increased prominence of Tupac Amaru, his transformation from just another rebel to an international symbol, can be traced to one curious and momentous period in modern Peruvian history, the left-leaning military regime of Juan Velasco Alvarado (1968–1975). The Velasco government converted the Andean insurgent into its major symbol, emblazoning his image on banners, posters, coins, bills, and publications. Tupac Amaru became the face of the extensive agrarian reform that the Velasco regime enacted. A supposed Tupac Amaru quote, “campesino, el patrón ya no comerá tu pobreza” (“Peasant, the master will no longer feed from your hunger”) became the government’s leading slogan for land reform; Velasco’s speechwriter invented it.29 Tupac Amaru meshed well with how the Velasco government sought to present itself: as a defender of Andean indigenous peasants (the beneficiaries of the agrarian reform) and as nationalists confronting foreign imperialists (gringo oil companies rather than Spaniards).

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The Velasco government published multivolume document collections on the Tupac Amaru uprising and sponsored works of poetry and music and art competitions. Building on nationalist scholarship, Velasco ideologues cast Tupac Amaru as the precursor to the Peruvian War of Independence.30 As Cisneros’s poem underlines, until this acclamation of Tupac Amaru, Peru’s national heroes had either been foreign liberators (the Argentine San Martín and the Venezuelan Bolívar) or coastal men of European descent. The iconography and diverse political uses of Tupac Amaru have a long history. Such an account would have to move from newly founded Argentina—which seriously debated the crowning of an Inca King in 1816, staged a five-act play, Tupac Amarú, in 1821, and received Juan Bautista Tupac Amaru in 1822— through different political and ideological movements and schools of thought in Peru in the last two centuries. Various political groups—not just guerrillas— have claimed him, and the city of Cuzco celebrates Tupac Amaru as a heroic native son. In 1950, Cuzco’s City Council, the San Antonio Abad University, and the Rotary Club installed a plaque in Tupac Amaru’s honor in the Plaza de Armas, near where he and his intimates were kept captive and executed. Several other plaques and small monuments in the plaza commemorate Tupac Amaru and the uprising while, after decades of debate, in 1980 workers installed a massive statue of José Gabriel on horseback in a large, somewhat barren plaza less than a mile from the city center.31 In Cuzco and beyond, Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas have inspired artists, sculptors, playwrights, poets, and novelists, with varying results.32 Despite the appropriation of his image and the outpouring of studies, Tupac Amaru, Micaela Bastidas, and their movement have not entered the pantheon of North Atlantic revolutions. Scholars and the textbooks they write have long focused on the creation of the United States and the French Revolution, more recently incorporating the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) into a grand narrative of the Era of Revolutions. There are reasons to consider the Andean insurgency alongside these better-known revolutions. The territorial expansion of the Tupac Amaru and Katarista rebellions surpassed that of the American Revolution, while the death toll—100,000—approximated Haiti’s 150,000. The rebels rethought and tried to reinvent the colonial, Andean world, putting Spanish control of the Andes on the brink. They patched together

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a variety of ideologies, particularly Incan revivalism, Christian egalitarianism, and Spanish “buen gobierno,” though largely excluding elements of the Enlightenment. One obvious reason that historians do not consider the Tupac Amaru Rebellion in the same breath as these more famous revolutions is that it lost—Tupac Amaru and his comrades in arms did not topple the Spanish. Moreover, while the Haitian revolutionaries confronted slavery and the transatlantic sugar economy, thus mobilizing a multinational reactionary coalition that fought the revolution and independent Haiti for decades, the Andean rebels attracted far less international attention.33 Nonetheless, the Tupac Amaru rebels fashioned a fascinating and complex movement with novel guerrilla tactics that, although ultimately defeated, changed the Andean and Atlantic world indelibly. The allure of the memory of Tupac Amaru is not limited to scholars and well-read leftists. In 1980, an eleven-year-old Quechua-speaking boy, whose family had been forced to flee Ayacucho because of the Shining Path violence, told an anthropologist, “Tupac Amaru fought for us because they worked the Indians too hard. He fought, struggled, killed many Spaniards. This is how Indians fight today. They have told me that he hasn’t died. He’s alive and will never get old. They say he rides around on horseback. He lives in the high peaks, but we never see him. He rides hidden, like the wind. That’s what they say.”34 For this boy and many, many others, Tupac Amaru continues present.

C H RO N O L O G Y

OF T H E

R E BE L L ION

NOT ES A C K N OW L E D G M E N T S I N DE X

Chronology of the Rebellion

1738

José Gabriel Condorcanqui, Tupac Amaru II, born in Surimana

1744

Micaela Bastidas Puyucahua born in Pampamarca

1759–1788 Reign of Charles III, King of Spain, oversees Bourbon Reforms 1760

Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas marry

1760s & 1770s Period of increasing number of revolts in Andean communities 1772

The alcabala (sales tax) increases from 2 percent to 4 percent

1774 Customs Houses (aduana) are established in Cochabamba; revolts ensue 1775–1783 American Revolutionary War 1776 José Antonio de Areche is named inspector (Visitador General) by the Spanish Crown, arrives in 1777 1776 The alcabala is again increased, from 4 percent to 6 percent 1776 Upper Peru becomes part of the new Viceroyalty of Rio de La Plata 1777 The fi rst revolt against the La Paz Customs House, in late October 1777

Tupac Amaru litigates in Lima

1778

Tomás Katari goes to Buenos Aires seeking justice for his people

1778

Crown orders corregidors to collect the 6 percent alcabala

1779 Tomás Katari is arrested, leading to widespread protests 1779

Coca, previously exempt, becomes subject to the 6 percent alcabala

282

Chronology of the Rebellion 1780 January 1, riots in Arequipa over Customs House 1780 Lampoons appear in Cuzco shortly after Arequipa riot warning against Customs House 1780 In March, riot attacking the La Paz Customs House 1780 Katari rebellion begins in late August 1780

1780–1781

In November, José Gabriel Tupac Amaru’s rebellion erupts with the capture (November 4) and execution (November 10) of Corregidor Antonio de Arriaga Late December/early January, Tupac Amaru forces surround Cuzco but never enter it

1781 Tomás Katari killed; his brothers Nicolás and Dámaso continue the struggle until they too are killed 1781 April 7, Tupac Amaru captured in Langui; Micaela Bastidas, their two sons Hipólito and Fernando, and Tomasa Tito Condemayta captured en route to Livitaca 1781

May 18, Tupac Amaru, his wife, and others are executed in the main plaza of Cuzco; Diego Tupac Amaru has assumed leadership of the rebellion

1781

Tupac Katari (Julián Apaza) puts La Paz under extensive siege

1781

In November, Tupac Katari is captured and executed

1782 Bartolina Sisa and Gregoria Apaza, the wife and sister of Tupac Katari, are executed 1783

July 19, Diego Tupac Amaru is brutally executed along with his mother and others

1784 Fernando, son of Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas, is sent into exile in Spain 1789–1799 French Revolution 1791–1804 Haitian Revolution 1811–1824 War of Independence in Peru (independence proclaimed in 1821, Spanish defeated in 1824) 1820–1822 Juan Bautista Tupac Amaru freed from Spanish jail (Ceuta), settles in Argentina until his death in 1827

Notes

Abbreviations ADC AGI CBC CDBRETA

Archivo Departamental del Cuzco Archivo General de Indias Centro Bartolomé de Las Casas Colección Documental del Bicentenario de la Revolución Emancipadora de Túpac Amaru CDIP Colección Documental de la Independencia del Perú CEMHAL Centro de Estudios la Mujer en la Historia de América Latina CNDBRETA Comisión Nacional del Bicentenario de la Rebelión de Túpac Amaru CNDSIP Comisión Nacional del Sesquicentenario de la Independencia del Perú HAHR Hispanic American Historical Review IEP Instituto de Estudios Peruanos Leg. Legajo PUC Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú RAH Real Academia de la Historia (Madrid) UNMSM Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos

Introduction Epigraphs: Gregorio Funes, Ensayo de la historia civil de Buenos Aires, Tucumán y Paraguay, 2nd ed., vol. 2 (Buenos Aires: n.p., 1856), 229–230; Modesto Basadre, Riquezas peruanas (Lima: Imprenta de la Tribuna, 1884), 96. 1. Because this story involves many members of the Tupac Amaru family, I will rely on fi rst names. I follow the colonial form and do not put an accent on Tupac (Túpac). 2. His uncle Julián de Arriaga was a member of the Council of Indies and his brother owned ships. See Antonio de Arriaga, “Relación de méritos,” 1771, AGI, Lima, Leg. 1041.

284

Notes to Pages 2–6

3. The two main accounts vary in their details. Melchor de Paz publishes an account that says that Arriaga grabbed a gun, while López de Sosa states that he tried to escape in a ravine. Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista: Rebeliones de Indios en Sur América, la sublevación de Tupac Amaru: Crónica de Melchor de Paz, ed. Luis Antonio Eguiguren, 2 vols. (Lima: n.p., 1952), 1:231–236; López de Sosa’s testimony appears in AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 80. 4. Eulogio Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui (II) virrey interino del Perú (Pamplona, Spain: Diputación Foral de Navarra, Institución Príncipe de Viana, 1979), 51. 5. Ward Stavig and Ella Schmidt, eds., The Tupac Amaru and Catarista Rebellions: An Anthology of Sources (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett Publishing, 2008), 62– 63. 6. For López de Sosa’s explanation of why he gave him confession, see CDBRETA, I, 108–109 (Lima: CNDBRETA, 1980). 7. See AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 31; another copy of this source is found in AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 80. 8. Lillian E. Fisher summarizes the few descriptions of his attire. L. E. Fisher, The Last Inca Revolt, 1780–1783 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1966), 30–31. 9. AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 80, testimony by doña Ignacia Sotomayor. 10. CDBRETA, I, 508, document from don Miguel Martínez, priest and vicar of Nuñoa and Santa Rosa. 11. AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 80, testimony by doña Ignacia Sotomayor. 12. Zudaire, Don Agustín, 53. 13. AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 80, testimony by Antonio López de Sosa. The translation of this rare Quechua phrase in the archival documentation was an international enterprise. In Seville, Luis Miguel Glave double-checked my transcription, and Janett Vengoa, Rosalia Puma Escalante, and Zoila Mendoza offered their Quechua skills. 14. “Informe de un clérigo sobre Tupac Amaru,” 1781, Lilly Library, Indiana University. An almost identical quote can be found in Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista, 1:259–260. 15. Divisions in the church included those between regulars (the mendicant orders such as the Dominicans and Franciscans) and seculars as well as those between the episcopal bureaucracy and the parish priests. 16. Lillian Fisher wrote the competent The Last Inca Revolt in 1966; I prefer the English geographer Clements Markham’s vivid overviews from the 1850s and 1860s. The Polish-Argentine Boleslao Lewin published several deeply researched works in Spanish in the 1950s that have stood the test of time well. A Jewish refugee from Hitler’s Europe, Lewin makes implicit parallels between antifascist resistance in Europe and the mass indigenous uprising in the late eighteenth century. Yet his La rebelión de Tupac Amaru is now fi fty years old, more than six hundred pages long, and out of print. When people

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ask for a recommendation, I would mention these as well as the works of Peruvian authors but usually stress the need to consult a number of books and articles. Fisher, The Last Inca Revolt; Clements R. Markham, Travels in Peru and India (London: John Murray, 1862), 134–180; Boleslao Lewin, La rebelión de Túpac Amaru, 3rd ed. (Buenos Aires: SELA, 1967), 276–285. 17. Two examples that helped greatly in this book: Scarlett O’Phelan Godoy, Un siglo de rebeliones anticoloniales: Perú y Bolivia 1700–1783 (Cuzco: CBC, 1988) (also available in English: Rebellions and Revolts in Eighteenth Century Peru and Upper Peru [Cologne: Bohlau Verlag Köln Wien, 1985]); Neus Escandell-Tur, Producción y comercio de tejidos coloniales: Los obrajes y chorrillos del Cuzco 1570–1820 (Cuzco: CBC, 1997). 18. The Colección Documental de la Independencia Peruana (CDIP) originally was to have 106 volumes but ended up with 86 (confusingly divided into tomos and each of these subdivided into volúmenes). CDIP (Lima: Comisión Nacional del Sesquicentenario de la Independencia del Perú, 1971–1976); see tomo II, La Rebelión de Túpac Amaru, 4 vols. (1971–1972). The Colección Documental del Bicentenario de la Revolución Emancipadora de Túpac Amaru (CDBRETA) published five document collections (I, II, III-I, IV-II, V-III), one “anthology,” and one collection of articles from a conference (Lima: CNDBRETA, 1981– 1982). On Velasco, see Leopoldo Lituma Agüero, El verdadero rostro de Túpac Amaru (Perú, 1969–1975) (Lima: UNMSM, 2011); on the rising interest in social movements in the Vietnam era, see two influential edited volumes: Steve Stern, ed., Resistance, Rebellion, Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World, 18th to 20th Centuries (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), particularly Stern’s introductory essay, “New Approaches to the Study of Peasant Rebellion and Consciousness: Implications of the Andean Experiment,” 3–28; Friedrich Katz, ed., Riot, Rebellion, and Revolution: Rural Social Conflict in Mexico (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988). The Colección Documental and the Colección del Bicenenterio are not the only document collections. For example, Pedro de Angelis published an important set in 1836 in Buenos Aires. Pedro de Angelis, Documentos para la historia de la sublevación de José Gabriel de Tupac Amaru, cacique de la provincia de Tinta, en el Perú (Buenos Aires: Imprenta del Estado, 1836), most of which was reproduced by Manuel de Odriozola without citing Angelis. Odriozola, Documentos históricos del Perú en las epocas del coloniaje despues de la Conquista y de la independencia hasta la presente, vol. 1 (Lima: Tipografía de Aurelio Alfaro, 1863). Others have followed. No guide exists that indicates what is published where and so I often spent days on a document in Seville that I later learned was already reproduced. I’ve followed a simple rule: I cite what I read, whether from an archive or from a document collection. 19. Juan José Vega and Daniel Valcárcel wrote multiple books on the uprising. See Juan José Vega, José Gabriel Túpac Amaru (Lima: n.p., 1969); among the dozens of books by Valcárcel, many of them repetitive, see Carlos Daniel

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20.

21.

22.

23. 24.

25.

Notes to Pages 7–10 Valcárcel, Túpac Amaru, el revolucionario (Lima: Moncloa- Campodónico, 1970). The Spanish preoccupation and indeed obsession with José Gabriel Tupac Amaru and Micaela Bastidas left a rich trove of information that permits detailed studies such as this one to be written. Authorities in Madrid, Lima, and Cuzco closely examined their activities prior to the uprising to comprehend how and why they rebelled, who supported them, and for how long they had planned an uprising. These obsessed authorities were correct, of course, in that the lives of José Gabriel and Micaela Bastidas up until 1780 enable us to begin to understand the course of the rebellion, its ideology, followers, strengths, and weaknesses. The biographies not only illuminate the nature of urban and rural Cuzco, but also that of Peru and the politics of Spain itself. I have benefited greatly from the document collection Túpac Amaru y la Iglesia: Antología (Cuzco: Comité Arquidiocesano del Bicentenario Túpac Amaru, 1983). While a list of good narrative histories could go on for pages, I’ve been inspired by UC Davis colleagues who believe that good history and good writing are the same thing: Arnie Bauer, Ari Kelman, Andrés Reséndez, and Alan Taylor in par tic u lar. Stathis N. Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 10. The term is usually applied to a more modern era, ranging from the U.S. Civil War to the two world wars, when the nation-state could use the products of industrialization to mobilize and slaughter. Nonetheless, some have used the concept for the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815), and I have found it germane. I only use the more common term in Latin America, “caste war,” to refer to royalist or civilian panic that the rebellion was turning into an Indian-based war of extermination. The literature is massive. I found particularly useful David Silvey, “Total War,” in Encyclopedia of Warfare, ed. Gordon Martel (London: Blackwell Publishing, 2011); David A. Bell, The First Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of Modern Warfare as We Know It (Boston: Houghton Miffl in Harcourt, 2008). On caste war, see Terry Rugeley, Rebellion Now and Forever: Mayas, Hispanics, and Caste War Violence in Yucatán, 1800–1880 (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2009); Michael T. Ducey, A Nation of Villages: Riots and Rebellions in the Mexican Huasteca, 1750– 1850 (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2004), chapter 6. Wayne Lee, Barbarians & Brothers: Anglo-American Warfare, 1500–1865 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); Peter Silver, Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America (New York: W. W. Norton, 2008). On violence and daily life in Latin America, see William Taylor, Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion in Colonial Mexican Villages (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1979); Sonya Lipsett-Rivera, Gender and the Negotiation of Daily Life in Mexico, 1750–1850 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012).

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26. O’Phelan Godoy, Un siglo. 27. On violence in Cuzco, see Ward Stavig, The World of Tupac Amaru: Conflict, Community, and Identity in Colonial Peru (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999); Charles F. Walker, Smoldering Ashes: Cuzco and the Creation of Republican Peru, 1780–1835 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999). 28. For comparing and contextualizing the violence of the uprising, I have benefitted from Ben Kiernan, Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2007); Christian Gerlach, Extremely Violent Societies: Mass Violence in the Twentieth- Century World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (New York: Penguin Books, 2012). Specifically on the Andean uprisings, see Nicholas Robins, “Genocide and the Great Rebellion of 1780–1782 in Peru and Upper Peru,” Journal of Genocide Research 7, 3 (2005): 251–375. 29. On empathy, see Pinker, The Better Angels, 59–128. 30. The debate about whether modernity or the “civilizing project” hinders or fosters violence continues. To take two prominent examples, Pinker argues that it hinders violence, while Jared Diamond contends that it fosters it. Pinker, The Better Angels; Jared Diamond, The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies (New York: Viking, 2012). 31. Mark Fiege, The Republic of Nature: An Environmental History of the United States (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2012), 10–11, is excellent on the formative role of ideas of nature. 32. Markham, even with his Victorian-era blinders, presents stirring summaries of Andean geography. Markham, Travels, as well as Clements R. Markham, A History of Peru (Chicago: Charles H. Sergel 1892); on economy and era in the Titicaca region, see Nils Jacobsen, Mirages of Transition: The Peruvian Altiplano, 1780–1930 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). 33. A nice analysis can be found in Thomas Cummins, “A Tale of Two Cities: Cuzco, Lima and the Construction of Colonial Representation,” in Converging Cultures: Art and Identity in Spanish America, ed. Diane Fane (New York: Brooklyn Museum, Harry N. Abrams, 1996), 157–170. On late colonial Cuzco, see Magnus Mörner, Perfil de la sociedad rural del Cuzco a fines de la colonia (Lima: Universidad del Pacífico, 1978); Walker, Smoldering Ashes. 34. John Murra developed the term “vertical archipelagos.” John Murra, Formaciones económicas y políticas del mundo andino (Lima: IEP, 1975). 35. For calculations on genocide, see Kiernan, Blood and Soil.

1. The Andes in the Atlantic World 1. See José Antonio del Busto Duthurburu, José Gabriel Túpac Amaru antes de su rebelión (Lima: PUC, 1981), 34; John Rowe, “El movimiento nacional inca del siglo XVIII,” in Tupac Amaru II-1780, ed. Alberto Flores Galindo (Lima: Retablo de Papel, 1976), 13– 66, esp. 27–30 (pointing out that it was Garcilaso

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2. 3. 4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

Notes to Pages 18–21 de la Vega who transformed “Thupa” or “Tupa” to “Tupac”); Carlos Daniel Valcárcel, La familia del cacique Túpac Amaru (Documentos existentes en la iglesa de Pampamarca), 2nd ed. (Lima: UNMSM, 1979). I thank Zoila Mendoza for help with Quechua. Héctor Oliva, Pasajes a América: La vida desmesurada de cinco catalanes (Barcelona: RBA Libros, 2007), 246–248. Del Busto Duthurburu, José Gabriel Túpac Amaru, is excellent on his childhood. Juan José Vega, Túpac Amaru y sus compañeros, 2 vols. (Cuzco: Municipalidad del Qosqo, 1995), is very good on his fi nances; see also John H. Rowe, “La fecha del nacimiento de José Gabriel Thupa Amaro,” Historia y Cultura 5 (1971): 187–191. Enrique Tandeter and Nathan Wachtel, “Prices and Agricultural Production: Potosí and Charcas in the Eighteenth Century,” in Essays on the Price History of Eighteenth- Century Latin America, ed. Lyman Johnson and Enrique Tandeter (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989), 201–275, esp. 241; Luis Miguel Glave and María Isabel Remy, Estructura agraria y vida rural en una región andina: Ollantaytambo entre los siglos XVI y XIX (Cuzco: CBC, 1983). The climate study on Upper Peru by Prieto and Herrera indicates that the years around 1780 were cold and dry. María del Rosario Prieto and Roberto G. Herrera, “Clima y economía en el área andino: El Alto Perú y el espacio económico regional a fi nes del siglo XVIII,” in Estudios sobre historia y ambiente en América, ed. Bernardo García Moreno and María del Rosario Prieto, vol. 2 (Mexico City: El Colegio de México/Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia, 2002), 55– 80. On muleteers and trans-Andean traders, the key work is Luis Miguel Glave, Trajinantes: Caminos indígenas en la sociedad colonial, siglos XVI/XVII (Lima: Instituto de Apoyo Agrario, 1989). On Tupac Amaru’s debts, see David Cahill, “Crown, Clergy, and Revolution in Bourbon Peru: The Diocese of Cuzco, 1780–1814” (PhD diss. University of Liverpool, 1984), 213. Scarlett O’Phelan Godoy has long worked on this subject. See her Kurakas sin sucesiones: Del cacique al alcalde de indios, Perú y Bolivia 1750–1835 (Cuzco: CBC, 1997); see also David T. Garrett, Shadows of Empire: The Indian Nobility of Cusco, 1750–1825 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 183–210. Del Busto Duthurburu, José Gabriel Túpac Amaru, 54–56; Jorge Cornejo Bouroncle, Sangre andina: Diez mujeres Cuzqueñas (Cuzco: H.G. Rozas Sucesores, 1949), 29–108; Jorge Cornejo Bouroncle, Tupac Amaru, la revolución precursora de la emancipación continental (Cuzco: Universidad Nacional del Cuzco, 1949), 599– 601. Esquivel y Navia refers to this priest, noting his death on June 5, 1746, an argument that Del Busto discounts. Diego de Esquivel y Navia, Noticias cronológicas de la Gran Ciudad del Cuzco, 2 vols. (Lima: Biblioteca Peruana de Cultura, 1980), 2:348. See also Vega, Túpac Amaru y sus compañeros, 2:284.

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9. The documentation on Micaela Bastidas is scarce, particularly when compared to her husband. This might be partially explained by the Spanish burning her belongings after her trial but is also due to the fact that an illegitimate daughter received less official attention than a litigious kuraka. Renata Fernández Dominguez, “Micaela Bastidas en la Historia, Literatura, y Cultura Peruana: Análisis de sus Reconfiguraciones Discursivas” (PhD diss., University of Kentucky, 2005); Mariselle Meléndez, Deviant and Useful Citizens: The Cultural Production of the Female Body in Eighteenth- Century Peru (Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press, 2011), 11– 40; Sara Beatriz Guardia, “Reconociendo las huellas: Micaela Bastidas y las heroinas de la Independencia del Perú,” in Las mujeres en la independencia de América Latina, ed. Sara Beatriz Guardia (Lima: CEMHAL, 2010), 31– 47; Vega, Túpac Amaru y sus compañeros; Víctor Angles Vargas, José Gabriel Túpac Amaru (Cuzco: n.p., 2004), 115–133. For the marriage certificate, CDIP, II, 2, 19. 10. Clements R. Markham, Travels in Peru and India (London: John Murray, 1862), 135–136. 11. Vega, Túpac Amaru y sus compañeros, 2:288. 12. The literature on gender in colonial Peru has improved greatly in the last decade. Standout works in English include Jane Mangan, Trading Roles: Gender, Ethnicity, and the Urban Economy in Colonial Potosí (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2005); Karen Graubart, With Our Labor and Sweat: Indigenous Women and the Formation of Colonial Society in Peru, 1550–1700 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2007); Kimberly Gauderman, Women’s Lives in Colonial Quito: Gender, Law, and Economy in Spanish America (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2009); Ward Stavig, The World of Tupac Amaru: Conflict, Community, and Identity in Colonial Peru (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999). I have also drawn from my own observations and the reading of criminal trials. 13. Markham, Travels in Peru and India, 136. Don Pablo Astete, Tupac Amaru’s contemporary, gave this description to General William Miller in the 1830s, who passed it along to Markham. The quotation has been frequently used in Spanish-language works, although many fail to cite Markham. In his 1890 diccionario biográfico, Manuel de Mendiburu does not cite the English geographer (but mentions Astete) and reproduces this quote with some significant omissions and additions. Manuel de Mendiburu, Diccionario históricobiográfico del Perú, bk. 8 (Lima: Imp. De Torres Aguirre, 1890), 109–110. 14. “Relación de los acontecimientos de Tinta y Lampa, en el reino del Perú, con motivo de las sublevaciones de los indios en el año de 1780,” Boletín de Historia y Antigüedades, órgano de la Academia Nacional de Historia, Bogotá, 11 (1917), 657– 673. I worked from a transcription by John Rowe, kindly provided by Pat Lyon. 15. J. H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492– 1830 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2006), 294.

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Notes to Pages 24–27

16. Elliott, Empires, 303–305; surprisingly, we do not have a modern biography of Gálvez. See H. I. Priestley, José de Gálvez, Visitor- General of New Spain, 1765–1771 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1916). 17. Boleslao Lewin, La rebelión de Túpac Amaru, 3rd ed. (Buenos Aires: SELA, 1967). One Peruvian Jesuit requested that the English aid the rebels, to no avail. Juan Pablo Viscardo y Guzmán, “Propuesta al cónsul inglés en Livorno para que ayude a Túpac Amaru,” in Raúl Ferrero, El liberalismo peruano (Lima, Tipografía Peruana, 1958), 74–75. 18. On the role of the Bourbon Reforms in the uprising, see Scarlett O’Phelan Godoy, Un siglo de rebeliones anticoloniales: Perú y Bolivia 1700–1783 (Cuzco: CBC, 1988); John Fisher, “La rebelión de Tupac Amaru y el programa imperial de Carlos III,” in Túpac Amaru II, ed. Alberto Flores Galindo (Lima: Retablo de Papel Ediciones, 1976), 107–128; Alberto Flores Galindo, In Search of an Inca: Identity and Utopia in the Andes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), chap. 5. 19. For an overview, see John R. Fisher, Bourbon Peru, 1750–1824 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2003). 20. John Rowe, “Genealogía y rebelión en el siglo XVIII,” Histórica 6, no. 1 (1982): 74–75. On the reparto, see the documents in Ward Stavig and Ella Schmidt, eds., The Tupac Amaru and Catarista Rebellions: An Anthology of Sources (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett Publishing, 2008), 30–32. 21. See O’Phelan Godoy, Kurakas sin sucesiones; Brooke Larson, “Caciques, Class Structure and the Colonial State in Bolivia,” Nova Americana 2 (1979): 197–235; and Núria Sala i Vila, Y se armó el tole tole: Tributo indígena y movimientos sociales en el virreinato del Perú, 1780–1814 (Lima: IER José María Arguedas, 1996), among many others. 22. Francisco A. Loayza, Genealogia de Tupac Amaru (Lima: Librería e Imprenta D. Miranda, 1946). For an important recasting of these trials, see Cahill, who overcomes generations of hagiographic and nationalist views that always sided with Tupac Amaru. David Cahill, “Looking for an Inca: The Marquesado de Oropesa Litigation (1741–1780) and the Roots of Rebellion,” Jahrbuch fur Geschichte Lateinamerikas 41 (2004): 137–166. 23. The anonymous “Relación histórica” argues the opposite— that the case gave him an inflated idea of his social standing. “Relación histórica del principio, progresos y estado de la sublevación de José Gabriel TupacAmaru. En cuatro décadas,” in Documentos para la historia antigua de Bolivia sacados de la biblioteca de J. R. Gutiérrez: sitios de la Paz y el Cuzco 1780–1781, ed. J. R. Gutiérrez (La Paz: Imprenta de la Unión Americana, 1879), 117–151, esp. 119. Gutiérrez believes the author might have been Tadeo Medina, a Cuzco official. 24. Charles F. Walker, Shaky Colonialism: The 1746 Earthquake-Tsunami in Lima, Peru, and Its Long Aftermath (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2008).

Notes to Pages 28–33

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25. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1049. This contains the trial against Montiel and rich information on Tupac Amaru’s ties in Lima. 26. The literature is vast. See Harold Livermore’s introduction to Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries of the Incas and General History of Peru (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1966), xv–xxxi; José Durand, “El influjo de Garcilaso Inca en Tupac Amaru,” COPE 2, no. 5 (1971): 2–7, an argument he developed in many other publications. 27. John Rowe, “El movimiento nacional Inca en el siglo XVIII,” in Tupac Amaru II, 11– 66. 28. Cited in Kenneth Mills, William B. Taylor, and Sandra Lauderdale Graham, Colonial Latin America: A Documentary History (Wilmington, Del.: SR Books, 2002), 394, which examines an eighteenth-century portrait of the Inca martyr. The authors provide an excellent summary of the memory of Tupac Amaru I, 390–394. On prophecies about the return of the Incas propagated by Sir Walter Raleigh and cited in certain editions of the Royal Commentaries, see Rowe, “El movimiento nacional,” 25–32. See also David Brading, “Inca Humanist,” The First America: The Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots, and the Liberal State, 1492–1867 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 255–272. 29. AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 77. A Cuzco authority called the Royal Commentaries the backbone of “the rebel Josef Tupac Amaru’s entire education and reading.” AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 29, Moscoso to Areche, 13 April 1781. 30. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1042. 31. Quoted in Del Busto Duthurburu, José Gabriel Túpac Amaru, 95. See also AGI, Lima, Leg. 1044, about people suspected of having been hosts of Tupac Amaru in the City of Kings. AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 32, also has information. 32. AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 80, testimony by López y Sosa. 33. AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 32; this is repeated by Mariano de la Banda, CDBRETA, V, 157. 34. Del Busto Duthurburu, José Gabriel Túpac Amaru, 109–115. His December petition to Viceroy Guerior is found in Stavig and Schmidt, The Tupac Amaru and Catarista Rebellions, 20–24. The testimonies found in AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 32, have many references to Huarochirí. 35. Fisher, Bourbon Peru 1750–1824, 162. 36. Ibid., 162–163; see also O’Phelan Godoy, Un siglo, chap. 4. 37. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1044. On 1777 see Flores Galindo, In Search of an Inca, 102–103. 38. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1044. 39. On Santa Rosa, the prophecies, and much more see Ramón Mujica Pinilla, Rosa limensis: Mística, política e iconografía en torno a la patrona de América (Lima: IFEA, Fondo de Culture Económica, Banco Central de la Reserva, 2001). 40. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1044.

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Notes to Pages 33–37

41. Ibid. 42. ADC, Colección Vega Centeno, bolsa 3, “Expediente relativo a las representaciones hechas en el año de 1779 a Don Ildefonso Mendieta Justicia Mayor de Tinta quejándose del Rebelde José Gabriel Tupac Amaro.” 43. Ibid. Here Mata Linares noted the need to “suffocate [dissidence] in the root.” He put into place severe repressive measures aimed at preventing any further uprisings. See also David Cahill, “Genocide from Below: The Great Rebellion of 1780– 82 in the Southern Andes,” in Empire, Colony, Genocide: Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern Resistance in World History, ed. A. Dirk Moses (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008), 403– 423, esp. 411–12. 44. Charles F. Walker, Smoldering Ashes: Cuzco and the Creation of Republican Peru, 1780–1835 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999), 29–30. 45. Lewin, La rebelión de Túpac Amaru, 158. 46. David Cahill, “Taxonomy of a Colonial Riot: The Arequipa Disturbances of 1780,” in Reform and Insurrection in Bourbon New Granada and Peru, ed. John R. Fisher, Allan J. Kuethe, and Anthony McFarlane (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1991), 255–291. 47. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1039, letter from April 20, 1780. 48. O’Phelan Godoy, Un siglo, 214. 49. Cahill, “Crown, Clergy, and Revolution,” 223; his summary of the Farfán de los Godos Conspiracy (also called the Plateros) is found at 216–224. See also Walker, Smoldering Ashes, 30–33. 50. Charles Walker, “Prólogo,” in Juan Manuel Moscoso y Peralta, Inocencia justificada contra los artificios de la calumnia (Lima: Biblioteca Nacional, in press). 51. On Moscoso, see Gustavo Bacacorzo, Don Juan Manuel de Moscoso y Peralta, ubicación en el proceso de la independencia Americana (Lima: UNMSM, 1982); Leon J. Campbell, “Rebel or Royalist? Bishop Juan Manuel Moscoso y Peralta and the Tupac Amaru Revolt in Peru, 1780–1784,” Revista de Historia de América 86 (1978): 139; Luis Durand Florez, “El caso Moscoso,” Actas del Coloquio Internacional ‘Túpac Amaru y su tiempo’ (Lima: CNDBRETA, 1982), 491– 493; Walker, “Prólogo.” 52. Cited by Durand Florez, “El Caso Moscoso,” 495. For the accusations against Moscoso, see Francisco Loayza, ed., La verdad desnuda o las dos faces de un obispo: Escrita en 1780 por un imparcial religioso (Lima: Los pequeños grandes libros de Historia Americana, 1943). Moscoso published his own defense in Inocencia justifacada. 53. Loayza, La verdad desnuda, 240–246. 54. The best summary of the confrontation is Luis Miguel Glave, “Canas 1780: El año de la rebelión,” in Desde afuera y desde adentro: ensayos de etnografía e historia del Cuzco y Apurímac, ed. Luis Millones, Hiroyasu Tomoeda, and Tatsuhiko Fujii (Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology, 2000), 61–93; the quote is from 79. 55. AGI, Leg. 80. For Arriaga’s accusation, see ADC, Colección Vega Centeno, bolsa 3 (Coporaque October 1780, inventory of Father Puente’s goods). See also Luis Miguel Glave, Vida, símbolos y batallas: Creación y recreación de la co-

Notes to Pages 38–44

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munidad indígena, Cuzco, siglo xvi–xx (Lima: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2002), 117–152; Stavig, The World of Tupac Amaru, 250–254; Túpac Amaru y la Iglesia: antología (Cuzco: Comité Arquidiocesano del Bicentenario Túpac Amaru, 1983), 165–200. 56. CDBRETA, V, III, 132, testimony of José Esteban Escarcena. 57. Flores Galindo, In Search of an Inca, develops this extensively. 58. John Leddy Phelan, The People and the King: The Comunero Revolution in Colombia, 1781 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978); Walker, Smoldering Ashes, 21–23.

2. From Pampamarca to Sangarará 1. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1041, testimony of Father Ildefonso Bejarano, January 1781. 2. Cited in Boleslao Lewin, La rebelión de Túpac Amaru, 3d ed. (Buenos Aires: SELA, 1967), 545. 3. The lack of evidence does not mean that the women camp aides (called soldaderas in other instances) did not exist. It probably reflects blindness to women’s role and all domestic ser vice, even in the midst of a bloody rebellion. 4. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1041, testimony of Father Ildefonso Bejarano, January 1781. On weapons, see Juan José Vega, Historia general del ejército, El ejército durante la dominación española del Perú, tomo III, vol. 1 (Lima: Comisión Permanente de Historia del Ejército del Perú, 1981), 499–507. 5. AGI, Charcas, Leg. 596, refers to the cross as obligatory; for the cross and embroidery, see CDBRETA, V, III, 89– 90, testimony of José Coyo and Pascual Sirena. 6. CDBRETA, IV, II, 15, testimony of Micaela Bastidas, December 13, 1780. See also CDBRETA, IV, II, 39, December 15, 1780, where she again refers to the cross. 7. AGI, Charcas, Leg. 596, testimony of don Thadeo Fisona. They also frequently carried red flags. See Vega, Historia general, 481– 483. 8. Juan José Vega, José Gabriel Túpac Amaru (Lima: Editorial Universal, 1969), 48–55; see also Jorge Cornejo Bouroncle, Tupac Amaru, la revolución precursora de la emancipación continental (Cuzco: Universidad Nacional del Cuzco, 1949), 156; J. R. Gutiérrez, ed., Documentos para la historia antigua de Bolivia sacados de la biblioteca de J. R. Gutiérrez: sitios de Paz y el Cuzco 1780–1781 (La Paz: Imprenta de la Unión Americana, 1879), 122. 9. Bishop Moscoso mentions this salary. He calculated that Tupac Amaru counted on ten thousand Indian combatants and six hundred mestizos. CDIP, II, 2, 277, Moscoso, November 17, 1780. 10. CDBRETA, III, I, 84– 85, testimony by Montecinos. 11. Víctor Angles Vargas, José Gabriel Túpac Amaru (Cuzco: n.p., 2004), 83– 84; Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista: Rebeliones de Indios en Sur América, la sublevación de Tupac Amaru: Crónica de Melchor de Paz, ed. Luis Antonio Eguiguren,

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12. 13.

14. 15.

16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22.

23. 24.

25. 26. 27.

28. 29.

Notes to Pages 44–50 2 vols. (Lima: n.p, 1952), 1: 247–248, “Carta del Coronel de las Milicia de Azángaro,” mentions Cabrera’s narrow escape. On the region’s obrajes, the key work is Neus Escandell-Tur, Producción y comercio de tejidos coloniales: Los obrajes y chorrillos del Cuzco 1570–1820 (Cuzco: CBC, 1997). AGI, Lima, Leg. 1041, letter from don Joseph Albares y Nava, n.d. This is reminiscent of the 1536–1537 siege of Cuzco, when the Incas misunderstood the importance of writing and allowed Spanish messages to reach Lima. See John Hemming, The Conquest of the Incas (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970), 215–216. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1041, letter from don Joseph Albares y Nava, n.d. CDBRETA, V, III, 126, testimony of José Esteban Escarcena. For another example in which Tupac Amaru called for the abolition of all taxes and exactions other than the head tax, see his January 17, 1781, decree in CDBRETA, III, 1, 110, from Tinta. CDBRETA, V, III, 126, testimony of Escarcena. From Escarcena’s testimony, CDBRETA, V, III, 126–127; also in Lewin, La rebelión de Túpac Amaru, 445. CDIP, II, 2, 258–259, letter from Tupac Amaru, November 12, 1780. CDBRETA, V, III, 140–141, testimony of Escarcena. This might have been an echo of Garcilaso de la Vega, who stressed the Inca’s fi rm treatment of offenders. Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries of the Incas and General History of Peru (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1966), 96– 99. CDBRETA, V, III, 140–141, testimony of Escarcena. AGI, Charcas, Leg. 537, letter from Miguel Martínez, Santa Rosa, November 14, 1780. See also CDBRETA, V, III, 123–124, testimony of Escarcena, who before reaching Tungasuca had heard that Tupac Amaru had received a “royal decree” from Madrid allowing him to kill abusive corregidors and carry out radical reforms. CDIP, II, 3, 149–154, letter from Diego Cristóbal Tupac Amaru to Bishop Moscoso, November 5, 1781, quote from 151. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1042, testimony of Friar Juan de Rios Pacheco, Mercedarian. He claimed that Tupac Amaru wrote on pieces of canvas to sneak messages into Cuzco. CDIP, II, 2, 270–271, letter of November 15, 1780. CDIP, II, 2, 272–273, document from Diego Chuguihuanca [sic], November 16, 1780. Ward Stavig and Ella Schmidt, eds., The Tupac Amaru and Catarista Rebellions: An Anthology of Sources (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett Publishing, 2008), 69–70; original document in CDIP, II, 2, 274. CDIP, II, 2, 271, letter from Tupac Amaru, and 274, “Edicto,” November 15, 1780. Gutiérrez, “Relación histórica del principio, progresos y estado de la sublevación de José Gabriel Tupac-Amaru. En cuatro décadas,” in Documentos

Notes to Pages 50–52

30.

31.

32.

33. 34.

35.

36.

37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

295

para la historia antigua de Bolivia sacados de la biblioteca de J. R. Gutiérrez: sitios de la Paz y el Cuzco 1780–1781, ed. J. R. Gutiérrez (La Paz: Imprenta de la Unión Americana, 1879), 122. Carlos Aguirre provides an excellent overview of slavery in Peru in Breve historia de la esclavitud en el Perú: Una herida que no deja de sangrar (Lima: Editorial del Congreso del Perú, 2005), 22. The percentages come from Alberto Flores Galindo, Aristocracia y plebe: Lima 1760–1830 (Lima: Mosca Azul, 1984), 100. See Jean-Pierre Tardieu, El negro en el Cuzco: los caminos de la alienación en la segunda mitad del siglo XVII (Lima: PUC, 1998); Frederick Bowser, The African Slave in Colonial Peru, 1524–1650 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1974). I use “it does not appear” because perhaps such a link can be uncovered— I did not fi nd it. The literature is vast. For an incisive overview, see David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista, 2:93. Flores Galindo, Aristocracia y plebe; Charles F. Walker, Shaky Colonialism: The 1746 Earthquake-Tsunami in Lima, Peru and Its Long Aftermath (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2008). Aguirre, Breve historia de la esclavitud; Christine Hünefeldt, “Los negros de Lima 1800–1830,” Histórica 3 (1979): 17–51. The liberation of slaves became standard practice in the Wars of Independence. Peter Guardino makes this point for nineteenth-century Mexico. “La identidad nacional y los afromexicanos en el siglo XIX,” in Prácticas Populares, Cultura Política y Poder en México, Siglo XIX, ed. Brian Connaughton (Mexico City: Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Iztapalapa/Juan Pablos, 2008), 259–301. CDBRETA, III, 1, the record of an emergency city council meeting on November 12, 1780, 69–72, quote from 69. CDBRETA, I, 96– 97, junta to Moscoso, November 14, 1780. See the scathing letter by Bishop Moscoso about the junta’s internal disputes, July 20, 1782, in CDIP, II, 3, 329–346, esp. 337. He made similar charges in a November 29, 1780, letter, CDBRETA, 1, 173–177. David Cahill, “Crown, Clergy, and Revolution in Bourbon Peru: The Diocese of Cuzco, 1780–1814” (PhD diss., University of Liverpool, 1984), 258–259. CDIP, II, 3, 337, letter from Moscoso, July 20, 1782. Cahill, “Crown, Clergy, and Revolution,” 256; for documentation, see CDBRETA, 1, 95– 96. CDBRETA, 1, 81– 87, document from November 13, 1780, quotes from 83. CDBRETA, 1, 81– 87, document from November 13, 1780. Moscoso wrote López de Sosa that same day, requesting that he persuade Tupac Amaru to “halt his efforts, which are desolating all the towns where he passes.” AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 80, letter dated November 13, 1780.

296

Notes to Pages 52–56

45. Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista, 1: 246. 46. Ibid.; also Gutiérrez, Relación histórica, 120. 47. Lewin, La rebelión de Túpac Amaru, 447–553; Túpac Amaru y la Iglesia: antología (Cuzco: Comité Arquidiocesano del Bicentenario Túpac Amaru, 1983), 212–215; Alejandro Seraylán Leiva, Historia general del Ejército Peruano, III, 2, “Campañas militares durante la dominación española” (Lima: Comisión Permanente de Historia del Ejército del Perú, 1981), 609– 612; Walker, Smoldering Ashes, 36–39. 48. CDBRETA, 1, 421– 424, testimony of Bartolomé Castañeda, November 20, 1780. 49. CDBRETA, I, 424, testimony of Bartolomé Castañeda; on the key and communion, see Gutiérrez, Relación histórica, 119–121. 50. Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista, 1:246–247. 51. CDBRETA, I, testimony of Juan de Mollinedo, 429– 434, quote from 432. 52. CDBRETA, I, testimony of Juan de Mollinedo, 433. 53. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1586. These documents come from Mollinedo almost a decade later to gain recognition for his aid to the royalists. 54. CDBRETA, I, 433– 434. 55. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1042, testimony of Friar Juan de Rios Pacheco, Mercedarian. 56. Ibid. 57. These actions are taken from the sentence against her. CDBRETA, IV, II, 73–75, May 15, 1781, from Visitador General Areche. 58. Of course, many scholars have examined their inner circle. See Scarlett O’Phelan Godoy, Un siglo de rebeliones anticoloniales: Perú y Bolivia 1700– 1783 (Cuzco: CBC, 1985); David Cahill, “Genocide from Below: The Great Rebellion of 1780– 82 in the Southern Andes,” in Empire, Colony, Genocide: Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern Resistance in World History, ed. A. Dirk Moses (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008), 403– 423; Magnus Mörner and Efraín Trelles, “A Test of Causal Interpretations of the Túpac Amaru Rebellion,” in Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World, 18th to 20th Centuries, ed. Steve J. Stern (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), 94–109. CDBRETA III, 1, 3– 6, a decree by Areche dated March 8, 1781, has a list of rebel supporters excluded from a pardon. 59. The fi rst quote is in AGI, Lima, Leg. 1042, from November 20, 1780, published in CDBRETA, III, I, 4; the Micaela quote is in AGI, Lima, Leg. 1042, letter from Micaela Bastidas to Señores gobernadores don Agustin y don Lucas Nuñez de la Torre y don Mathías Canal, Tungasuca, December 7, 1780. 60. For a good example, see the letters from Villalba to Areche blaming both creoles and priests, claiming that the Church “was the only culprit of all the damage.” AGI, Lima, Leg. 1041.

Notes to Pages 57–63

297

61. CDBRETA, III, 1, 259–261; several other testimonies confi rm this. For example, CDBRETA, III, 1, 261–262, court testimony by Isidro Toera and Domingo Pérez León. 62. On Inca revivalism, messianism, and millenarianism, see, among many, Flores Galindo, In Search of an Inca; Jorge Hidalgo Lehuede, “Amarus y cataris: Aspectos mesiánicos de la rebelión indígena de 1781 en Cuzco, Chayanta, La Paz y Arica,” Chungará 10 (1983): 117–138; Jan Szeminski, La utopía tupamarista (Lima: PUC, 1983). 63. CDBRETA, III, I, 4–5. 64. In Stavig and Schmidt, The Tupac Amaru and Catarista Rebellions, 84– 89, dated January 9, 1781; also in CDIP, II, 2, 395– 401. Tupac Amaru owed de la Madrid money from his 1777 trip to Lima. See testimony of Juan Antonio Figueroa, April 27, 1781 (who also mentions Micaela Bastidas’s reliance on Quechua). CDBRETA, IV, II, 53–54; also Eulogio Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui (II) virrey interino del Perú (Pamplona, Spain: Diputación Foral de Navarra, Institución Príncipe de Viana, 1979), 77–78. 65. In Stavig and Schmidt, The Tupac Amaru and Catarista Rebellions, 85. 66. Ibid., 88. I have altered the translation slightly. 67. CDBRETA, III, I, 284, letter from Tupac Amaru to Micaela Bastidas, November 26, 1780. 68. CDBRETA, V, III, 137–138, testimony of Escarcena. 69. For example see the testimony by Bernardo de la Madrid, who mentions translators when discussing with her as she spoke the “Indian language.” CDBRETA, IV, 2, 51, April 27, 1781. 70. Juan José Vega, Túpac Amaru y sus compañeros (Cuzco: Municipalidad del Qosqo, 1995), 1:78; see also O’Phelan Godoy, Un siglo, 229. 71. CDBRETA, V, III, 147, testimony of Escarcena, January 19, 1781. 72. AGI, Lima, Leg. 80, trial of Father Ildefonso Bejarano. 73. CDBRETA, IV, II, 324. 74. See CDBRETA, V, III, 151, Banda’s testimony; also mentioned by Francisco Molina, CDBRETA, III, 1, 10. Banda mentions that Palacios encouraged Micaela to go fi rst to Lampa, to confront the Arequipa forces, and to then return to Cuzco, where taking the city would be “easy,” 153. This is an early use of the term gamonal, which in the nineteenth century became a synonym of omnipotent landowners who exploited the Andean peasantry. 75. CDBRETA, V, III, 315–320. I have not seen more on these attempts. 76. CDBRETA, V, III, 374, testimony by Galleguillos, n.d. 77. O’Phelan Godoy, Un siglo, 243–257. 78. In their classic works on eighteenth-century social movements, both Flores Galindo and O’Phelan Godoy provide numerous examples. Flores Galindo, In Search of an Inca; O’Phelan Godoy, Un siglo. 79. David Garrett, Shadows of Empire: The Indian Nobility of Cuzco, 1750–1825 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 80. Cited by Luis Durand Florez, Introduction, CDBRETA, IV, II, XII.

298

Notes to Pages 63–68

81. Cahill, “Genocide from Below,” 413. 82. Like other creoles, they defected after the failed siege of Cuzco and the catastrophic battle outside of the city, in Saylla, where royalists demolished the troops lead by Antonio Castelo. Despite his insistence that he and his family had turned on the rebel, Antonio Castelo was executed alongside José Gabriel. Cahill, “Genocide from Below,” 414– 416; Vega, Túpac Amaru y sus compañeros, 37–72. For Andrés Castelo’s trial, see CDBRETA, III, 1, 519–550. For that of Vicente Castelo, who was absolved, see CDBRETA, V, III, 501–545.

3. A World without the Catholic Church? 1. Eulogio Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui (II) Virrey Interino del Perú (Pamplona, Spain: Diputación Foral de Navarra, Institución Príncipe de Viana, 1979), 126. Parts of this chapter were included in Charles Walker, “ ‘When Fear Rather than Reason Dominates’: Priests Behind the Lines in the Tupac Amaru Rebellion (1780–1783),” in Facing Fear: The History of an Emotion in Global Perspective, ed. Michael Laffan and Max Weiss (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2012), 54–73. 2. David Cahill, “Crown, Clergy, and Revolution in Bourbon Peru: The Diocese of Cuzco, 1780–1814” (PhD diss., University of Liverpool, 1984), 42– 46. 3. For a recent overview, see Gauvin Alexander Bailey, The Andean Hybrid Baroque: Convergent Cultures in the Churches of Colonial Peru (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010). For a wonderful set of essays, see Ramón Mujica Pinilla, ed., El Barroco Peruano, 2 vols. (Lima: Banco de Crédito, 2002–2003). 4. For a sample of the fees, see Ward Stavig and Ella Schmidt, eds., The Tupac Amaru and Catarista Rebellions: An Anthology of Sources (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett Publishing, 2008), 15–16. On the church and economy, see Kathryn Burns, Colonial Habits: Convents and the Spiritual Economy of Cuzco Peru (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999). 5. Nicolas A. Robins, Priests-Indian Conflicts in Upper Peru: The Generation of Rebellion, 1750–1780 (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2007); Ward Stavig, The World of Tupac Amaru: Conflict, Community, and Identity in Colonial Peru (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999). The archives are loaded with relevant documents; see Tupac Amaru y la Iglesia for some rich examples. 6. Scarlett O’Phelan Godoy, “‘Ascender el estado ecclesiástico’: la ordenación de indios en Lima a mediados del siglo XVIII,” in Incas e indios cristianos: Elites indígenas e identidades cristanas en los andes coloniales, ed. Jean-Jacques Decoster (Cuzco: CBC-IFEA, 2002), 311–329; Charles F. Walker, Shaky Colonialism: The 1746 Earthquake-Tsunami in Lima, Peru and Its Long Aftermath (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2008), 156–185.

Notes to Pages 68–72

299

7. Stavig and Schmidt, The Tupac Amaru and Catarista Rebellions, 74–75; original in CDIP, II, 2, 275. My translation incorporates a few words excluded by Stavig and Schmidt. 8. Summarized in Carlos Daniel Valcárcel, Túpac Amaru, el revolucionario (Lima: Moncloa-Campodónico, 1970), 157, where the quote is found; Cahill deems the junta “fissiparous” and convincingly shows that the bishop took over. Cahill, “Crown, Clergy, and Revolution,” 254–256. 9. Boleslao Lewin argued vehemently in the 1950s and 1960s about the essential role of the Church, particularly Bishop Moscoso, in the defeat of the rebellion. See Boleslao Lewin, La rebelión de Túpac Amaru, 3rd ed. (Buenos Aires: SELA, 1967), 248, for a summary of his views. Peruvian authors such as Carlos Daniel Valcárcel and Jorge Cornejo Bouroncle were more circumspect about Moscoso. Cahill, “Crown, Clergy, and Revolution,” chapter 5, smartly discounts the interpretation of Moscoso as a rebel supporter. 10. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1041, letter from the town of Yauri, December 2, 1780. 11. Testificación del R. P. M. Fr. Pedro de la Sota, Provincial en el Real Convento de la Merced del Cuzco, in Juan Manuel Moscoso y Peralta, Inocencia justificada contra los artificios de la calumnia (Lima: Biblioteca Nacional, in press), 98–105, esp. 99. See also Rolena Adorno, “Images of Indian Ladinos,” in Transatlantic Encounters: Europeans and Andeans in the Sixteenth Century, ed. Kenneth Andrien and Rolena Adorno (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 232–270. 12. CDIP, II, 2, 716, testimony of Micaela Bastidas, April 22, 1781. 13. Quoted in Cahill, “Crown, Clergy, and Revolution,” 203, who provides much evidence about his religiosity and even traditionalist views. For examples of how the rebels were not opposed to the Church, see AGI, Lima, Leg. 1041; CDBRETA, III, 16–17. 14. Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista: Rebeliones de Indios en Sur América, la sublevación de Tupac Amaru: Crónica de Melchor de Paz, ed. Luis Antonio Eguiguren, 2 vols. (Lima: n.p, 1952), 1:292. Letter from January 10, 1781. 15. CDIP, II, 3, 352–353, edicto of December 13, 1780, Tungasuca. Also in CDBRETA, IV, II, 14–15. 16. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1030. See also AGI, Lima, Leg. 1041, about Acomayo, Rondocan, and Pirque. 17. AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 80, testimony of don Domingo de Escalante. It was to his advantage to claim that he did not know about the excommunication, and prosecutors seemed to believe him. 18. CDBRETA, III, I, 17–18, summarizes key points of Juan Esteben Escarcena’s testimony. 19. CDBRETA, III, 1, 111. 20. CDBRETA, III, 1, 19. 21. Cited in Emilio Garzón Heredia, “1780: Clero, elite local y rebelión,” in Entre la retórica y la insurgencia: Las ideas y los movimientos sociales en los Andes, siglo XVIII, ed. Charles Walker (Cuzco: CBC, 1996), 245–271, quote from 249.

300

Notes to Pages 72–77

22. Garzón Heredia, “1780,” 250. Cited in AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 66. 23. “Informe Relacionado del Cabildo del Cuzco,” (1784), in CDIP, II, 1, 97– 148, quote from 114–115. I fi rst consulted this in the Mata Linares Collection, Academia de Historia, Madrid. 24. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1041, anonymous letter to Don Joseph Domingo de Frías, secretario Señor Don Francisco Xavier Delgado, December 10, 1780. 25. Several of the testimonies collected in the wake of the rebellion supporting Moscoso stressed how his decree had prompted desertions among the enemy. For example, see the testimony of Manuel de Mendieta, Dean of the Cathedral, in Moscoso y Peralta, Inocencia justificada, 89– 90. 26. Key here are Robins, Priests-Indian Conflicts in Upper Peru, and Stavig, The World of Tupac Amaru. 27. CDBRETA, III, I, 38–39, anonymous letter to Tupac Amaru, Calca, December 16, 1780. 28. Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista, 1:280. Pumacahua was chastised for these actions but not punished. This account highlights the impact of the excommunication. 29. Moscoso y Peralta, Inocencia justificada, 99, testimony by Friar Pedro de la Sota. 30. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1041, letter from Bishop Moscoso to Viceroy Jáuregui, December 21, 1780. 31. Ibid. On November 14, 1780, the junta in Cuzco wrote to the bishop to request that he maintain priests in Tinta and Quispicanchi, to provide information about the rebels. They also asked that he censure the rebel in order to discourage his followers. CDBRETA, I, 96. 32. “Informe Relacionado del Cabildo del Cuzco,” (1784), in CDIP, II, 1, 97– 148, quote from 114. See also testimonies in Moscoso y Peralta, Inocencia justificada. 33. Moscoso y Peralta, Inocencia justificada, 90. 34. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1041, letter from Moscoso to Antonio Areta, December 9, 1780. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid. 37. AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 80, “Causas contra varios curas por las rebeliones del Perú, 1785–1795,” is the key source for this section, including the trial against Juan de Luna and the February 10, 1781, letter from Juan de Luna to Micaela Bastidas. 38. Ibid. 39. Yet as will be seen, this would change and rebels targeted priests, quite violently, particularly in the south. 40. AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 80, testimony of Domingo Escalante. 41. Grave fear constituted a valid excuse from censure “if the law is ecclesiastical and if it’s nonobservance will not militate against the public good, the Faith, or the authority of the Church.” See Canons 125, 2, 1324, 1325, and

Notes to Pages 77–83

42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54.

55.

56.

57.

301

1620, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06020b.htm, accessed July 9. 2012. For an overview, see James A. Coriden, An Introduction to Canon Law, rev. ed. (New York: Paulist Press, 2004), 3–32; John P. Beal, James A. Coriden, and Thomas J. Green, eds., New Commentary on the Code of Canon Law (New York: Paulist Press, 2000), 179–180, 1542–1544, 1727–1730. Revised in 1917 and 1983, the Code emerged from the late medieval period and was the guiding framework of the 1780 trials. AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 80, trial of don Antonio Chaves. The letter to Tupac Amaru is from Sicuani, January 20, 1781. AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 80, letter from Yanaoca, December 26, 1780. AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 80. Escalante was absolved in June 1782. AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 80, no date specified in sentence, 1782. AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 80. For a letter from Gallegos to Bastidas, see CDIP, II, 2, 324, December 9, 1780. AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 80, letter from Bishop Moscoso, November 25, 1780. Ibid. Their activities are nicely summarized by David Cahill, “Crown, Clergy, and Revolution,” 241–245, quote from 241. CDIP, II, 2, 304, letter from November 26, 1780. AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 80, letter from Bejarano to Tupac Amaru, December 1, 1780. These trials are found in AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 80. AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 80. Sources mention that Tupac Amaru usually had a priest alongside in his military campaigns, but these priests are not named. López de Sosa and Bejarano did not venture far from Pampamarca in late 1780 and 1781. Volume 2 of the Colección documental del bicentenario de la revolución emancipadora de Tupac Amaru (CDBRETA) focuses on the Moscoso trials. Most of this is from AGI, Lima, Leg. 74–79, a stunningly large paper trail. Francisco Loayza, ed., La verdad desnuda o las dos faces de un Obispo: Escrita en 1780 por un imparcial religioso (Lima: Los pequeños grandes libros de Historia Americana, 1943). Miguel de Arriaga and Don Eusebio Balza de Berganza claimed that Arriaga was owed 170,000 pesos upon his death, a debt they hoped to recover. They suggested that in compensation they be allowed to import slaves to Peru through Buenos Aires. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1041. Moscoso y Peralta, Inocencia justificada (Madrid: L.M. Vendero de Valero, 1790?); thanks to the generosity of Patricia Lyon, who gave me access to the late John Rowe’s excellent library. Also Raphael José Sahuaraura Titu Atauchi, Estado del Perú. Códice escrito en 1780 y que contiene datos importantes sobre la Revolución de José Gabriel Túpac Amaru por Raphael José Sahuaraura Titu Atauchi, ed. Francisco Loayza (Lima: Los pequeños grandes libros de Historia Americana, 1944); Estado del Perú in CDIP, II, 1, 331– 415. On the Sahuaraura family, see Javier Flores Espinoza, “Estudio,” and Teresa Gisbert, “Texto Explicativo,” in Don Justo Apu Sahuaraura Inca, Recuerdos de

302

58.

59.

60. 61.

Notes to Pages 84–89 la Monarquía Peruana o Bosquejo de la Historia de los Incas (Lima: Fundación Telefónica del Perú, 2001). On the Church in late colonial Spanish America, see David Brading, Church and State in Bourbon Mexico: The Diocese of Michoacán 1749–1810 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Pamela Voekel, Alone Before God: The Religious Origins of Modernity (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2002); Gabriel Paquette, Enlightenment, Governance, and Reform in Spain and Its Empire 1759–1808 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). I discuss the impact of regalism in Walker, Shaky Colonialism. The report by the Spanish military officers, Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa, prompted much debate about the “decadent” nature of the Church. Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa, Discourse and Political Reflections on the Kingdom of Peru, ed. John TePaske (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978), 280–316. First published in Spanish with the tantalizing title “Noticias secretas . . .” AGI, Lima, Leg. 187, letter from Areche to José Gálvez, June 23, 1781. This is David Cahill’s line of argument in his important dissertation. Cahill, “Crown, Clergy, and Revolution.”

4. The Rebellion Goes South 1. Eulogio Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui (II) virrey interino del Perú (Pamplona, Spain: Diputación Foral de Navarra, Institución Príncipe de Viana, 1979), 144–146. See also AGI, Cuzco, Legs. 75 and 76, for documents. Juan Manuel Moscoso y Peralta, Inocencia justificada contra los artificios de la calumnia (Lima: Biblioteca Nacional, in press), testimony by Soto, 99–100. For the city’s preparations, see Carlos Daniel Valcárcel, Túpac Amaru el revolucionario (Lima: Moncloa– Campodónica, 1970), 172–175. 2. Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 145. 3. J. R. Gutiérrez, ed., Documentos para la historia antigua de Bolivia sacados de la biblioteca de J. R. Gutiérrez, sitios de la Paz y el Cuzco 1780–1781 (La Paz: Imprenta de la Unión Americana, 1879), 123. 4. Agustín de Jáuregui, Relación de gobierno, Perú (1780–1784), ed. Remedios Contreras (Madrid: CSIC, 1982), 170; Leon Campbell, The Military and Society in Colonial Peru, 1750–1810 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1978), 113–115. 5. I have helped hundreds of students with soroche upon arrival in Cuzco—I tell them to rest. The soldiers did not have this luxury. I learned from John West, High Life: A History of High-Altitude Physiology and Medicine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); on Peru, see an excellent recent study, Jorge Lossio, El peruano y su entorno: aclimatándose a las alturas andinas (Lima: IEP, 2012). 6. Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 147–149, 158–161; Boleslao Lewin, La rebelión de Túpac Amaru, 3rd ed. (Buenos Aires: SELA, 1967), 454– 455; Jáu-

Notes to Pages 89–93

7. 8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15. 16.

303

regui, Relación de gobierno, 170–174. At one point they considered a more southerly route through Arequipa. Areche to corregidor de Abancay, December 11, 1780, Peru-1780, Lilly Library, Indiana University. John R. Fisher, Bourbon Peru, 1750–1824 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2003), 168–169; Víctor Peralta Ruiz, “From Indiano Bureaucrats to Afrancesado Politicians in the Spanish Bonapartist State: The Cases of Azanza and Mata Linares,” in Napoleon’s Atlantic: The Impact of Napoleonic Empire in the Atlantic World, ed. Christophe Belaubre, Jordana Dym, and John Savage (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 177–197. Mata Linares’s extensive papers are found in the Real Academia de la Historia, “Colección Mata Linares,” which proved very illuminating for this study. For a cata logue, see Remedios Contreras, Catálogo de la Colección Mata Linares (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 1970). Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 147–151; Campbell, Military and Society, 113–117; these letters are featured prominently in the ensuing chapters. Although Areche and Mata Linares would subsequently be implacable hard-liners in the repression of the revolt (and, in general, the Andean people), Areche did not initially believe that it amounted to much. He claimed, “Indians don’t have the spirit or resolve [constancia].” Cited in Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 151. CDIP, II, 2, November 25, 1780, “Edicto a los moradores de Lampa.” It is datelined “Tungasuca,” but this was often done with documents written on the trail. For the “five or six days quote,” see CDIP, II, 2, 305, November 26, 1780. On his concerns about the five corregidors, see CDIP, II, 2, 322, December 1, 1780; see CDBRETA, V, III, 290, about kurakas. For a summary, see Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 127. Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries of the Incas and General History of Peru (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1966), 109–114, quote from 111. Other chapters describe the Inca’s glorious subjugation of the Collao as well. Augusto Ramos Zambrano, Puno en la rebelión de Túpac Amaru (Puno: Universidad Nacional Técnica del Altiplano, 1982), 78– 87. For example, see book 3, chapter 6, which describes how the Collas (people of the Collao) fought with “great pertinacity and blindness” against the fourth Inca Maita Capac, whose reign began around 1290. Royal Commentaries, 145–147, quote from 147. AGI, Charcas, Leg. 537, from Provincia de la Plata, Audiencia de Charcas, “Méritos y servicos del Corregidor que fue de Carabaya Don Miguel de Urbiola.” AGI, Charcas, Leg. 537. “Relación del cacique de Puno, de sus expediciones, sitios, defensa y varios . . . (Joaquín de Orellana),” in Pedro de Angelis, Documentos para la historia de la

304

17.

18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

28.

29.

30.

31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

Notes to Pages 93–97 sublevación de José Gabriel de Tupac-Amaru, cacique de la provincia de Tinta, en el Perú (Buenos Aires: Imprenta del Estado, 1836), 60–103, esp. 60– 65. “Relación histórica del principio, progresos y estado de la sublevación de José Gabriel Tupac-Amaru. En cuatro décadas,” in Gutiérrez, Documentos, 117– 151, see 126. This account contends that the “precipitated” flight of the corregidors who faced “only Tupac Amaru and his 3,000 troops” had been “criticized in this city [Cuzco].” Clearly, Orellana and the other corregidors had a very different view of Tupac Amaru’s strength and troop numbers. Ramos Zambrano, Puno en la rebelión de Túpac Amaru, 77–78. AGI, Charcas, Leg. 537. Alejandro Seraylán Leiva, Historia general del Ejército Peruano, III, 2, “Campañas militares durante la dominación española” (Lima: Comisión Permanente de Historia del Ejército del Perú, 1981), 614. Ramos Zambrano, Puno en la rebelión de Túpac Amaru, 65– 67. Ibid., 81– 99, quote from 82; see also Gutiérrez, Documentos, 124–126. AGI, Charcas, Leg. 596, testimony about observer by don Pedro de la Vallina, coronel del regimiento. Gutiérrez, Documentos, 126, describes children dying of hunger in their mothers’ arms. Gutiérrez, Documentos, 124–126. Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 172–173; document from AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 33. AGI, Charcas, Leg. 537, “Méritos y servicios de Don Diego Choquehuanca, coronel del Regimiento de Infanteria de los Naturales de esta provincia de Azángaro y cazique del pueblo de este nombre.” AGI, Charcas, Leg. 537, “Méritos y servicios de Don Diego Choquehuanca.” See also Gutiérrez, Documentos, 126–128. On the Choquehuanca family, see David T. Garrett, Shadows of Empire: The Indian Nobility of Cusco, 1750– 1825 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Garrett, Shadows of Empire, 191. Scarlett O’Phelan Godoy, Kurakas sin sucesiones: Del cacique al alcalde de indios, Perú y Bolivia 1750–1835 (Cuzco: CBC, 1997). Clements R. Markham, A History of Peru (Chicago: Charles H. Sergel and Co., 1892), 200–201. Markham mistakenly says Azángaro, where Tupac Amaru did not reach. See Augusto Ramos Zambrano, Tupamarus, Vilcapazas, Cataris, Ingariconas (Arequipa: Instituto de Estudios Pukara, 2009), 48–50. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1041, December 11, 1780. Ramos Zambrano, Puno en la rebelión de Túpac Amaru, 89– 90. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1041. AGI, Charcas, Leg. 596. The letter is unsigned but apparently from Father Joseph Eustaquio de Canavedo, of Vilque. Ramos Zambrano, Puno en la rebelión de Túpac Amaru, 89– 90. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1041, Capellan Santiago de Ortega (?), Lampa, December 13, 1780.

Notes to Pages 98–102 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

42. 43. 44. 45.

46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

54. 55.

56. 57.

58. 59.

305

AGI, Charcas, Leg. 596, Gutiérrez Sonco’s undated testimony. Ibid., Manuel Chuquipata’s undated testimony. On his itinerary, see Ramos Zambrano, Tupamarus, 117. CDIP, II, 2, 329–330, December 6, 1780. “Informe de un clérigo sobre Tupac Amaru,” 1781, Lilly Library, Indiana University. Renata Fernández Dominguez cites a different version of this quote in her dissertation, “Micaela Bastidas en la histora, literatura y cultura peruana” (PhD diss., University of Kentucky, 2005), 89. Fernández Dominguez also analyzes the discourse about Micaela. CDIP, II, 2, 343, December 10, 1780. More of Micaela’s letters can be found in CDBRETA, IV, 2, 78– 88 CDIP, II, 2, 302, November 23, 1780. CDIP, II, 2, December 8, 1780, 337–338. CDIP, II, 2, 361–364, December 20, 1780; also in AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 76. The information about Micaela comes from a series of letters found in CDIP, II, 2. For a selection of letters to her, see Francisco Loayza, Mártires y heroinas (documentos inéditos del año de 1780 a 1782) (Lima: Imprenta D. Miranda, 1945), 18– 42. CDBRETA, IV, II, 11, testimony of Manuel Galleguillos. Ibid. CDIP, II, 2, 355–356, December 16, 1780. He claimed that the people of Acomayo were uncontrollable, acting “like wild beasts.” CDIP, II, 2, 355, December 16, 1780. CDIP, II, 2, 357, December 16, 1780. CDIP, II, 2, 357, Micaela Bastidas to Señores Gobernadores, December 15, 1780. CDIP, II, 2, 329–331, December 6, 1780, Micaela Bastidas to Tupac Amaru. Jorge Cornejo Bouroncle, Sangre andina: Diez mujeres Cuzqueñas (Cuzco: H.G. Rozas Sucesores, 1949), 109–136; Juan José Vega, Túpac Amaru y sus compañeros, 2 vols. (Cuzco: Municipalidad del Qosqo, 1995), 2:409– 412. CDBRETA, III, 1, 493– 494, Tomasa Tita Condemayta to Tupac Amaru, November 12, 1780. CDIP, II, 2, Tomasa Tito Condemayta to Tupac Amaru, November 30, 1780, 321; ibid., 340–341 (letter from Tomasa Tito Condemayta to Micaela Bastidas, December 9, 1780), also in CDBRETA, III, 1, 491. CDIP, II, 2, Tomasa Tito Condemayta to Micaela Bastidas, n.d., 341. CDIP II, 2, December 20, 1780, Moscoso to Areche, 361–364; December 21, 1780, Moscoso to Viceroy Jáuregui, 365–368. The “throat of the viceroyalty” quote is from 363. CDIP, II, 2, 327. The copies of this letter found in Seville, the AGI, and published in the CDIP do not include the confession. AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 32; CDIP, II, 2, 332–333; ADC, Vega Centeno, No. 11, 1780. A guide to the Vega Centeno collection has been published. Imelda Vega Centeno, Costumbres indígenas, administración

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60. 61. 62. 63. 64.

65.

66. 67.

68. 69. 70.

71.

72.

73.

74.

Notes to Pages 103–107 de bienes y normas eclesiásticas (s. XVI–XIX) (Cuzco: CBC, 2004), see 283 for this document. ADC, Vega Centeno, No. 11, 1780. Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 146. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1041, number provided by the Guayllabamba priest. See also CDBRETA, I, 184–186, Moscoso to Jáuregui, December 22, 1780. “Relación histórica,” Documentos, 128–129. Scarlett O’Phelan Godoy, Un siglo de rebeliones anticoloniales: Perú y Bolivia, 1700–1783 (Cuzco: CBC, 1988), 235–237; Scarlett O’Phelan Godoy, La gran rebelión en los andes: De Túpac Amaru a Túpac Catari (Cuzco: CBC, 1995), 47– 68. CDIP, III, 8, 408– 416, “Relación de los Méritos y Servicios del Coronel Don Mateo Pumachahua, cacique y gobernador del pueblo de Chinchero,” quote from 411. CDIP II, 1, 117, “Informe Relacionado del Cabildo del Cuzco, 1784.” “Relación histórica,” Documentos, 127; “Informe Relacionado,” 117–119; see also Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista: Rebeliones de Indios en Sur América, la sublevación de Tupac Amaru: Crónica de Melchor de Paz, ed. Luis Antonio Eguiguren, 2 vols. (Lima: n.p, 1952), 1:277; CDBRETA, I, 237–240, letter from Moscoso to Areche, December 22, 1780. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1041; also “Informe Relacionado,” 120. I thank Donato Amado for his geograph ical help. The quote is from Moscoso y Peralta, Inocencia justificada, 102. On the importance of the Apurimac bridge, see various documents in AGI, Lima, Leg. 1041; also ADC, Vega Centeno, No. 11, 1780, “copia de una carta de la mujer del rebelde Tupamaro,” December 1780; CDIP, II, 2, 328; see also CDIP, II, 2, 350. Scarlett O’Phelan Godoy stressed the importance of royalist kurakas from the Sacred Valley. De Túpac Amaru a Túpac Catari, 47– 68. Silver, Our Savage Neighbors, is particularly important on this. Peter Silver, Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America (New York: W. W. Norton, 2009). Although Szeminski erred, in my mind, in framing this in terms of a somewhat ahistoric Andean mentality, he shows how the rebels both expanded the defi nition of the enemy and justified violence against them. Jan Szeminski, La utopía tupamarista (Lima: PUC, 1983); see also Szeminski, “Why Kill Spaniards? New Perspectives on Andean Insurrectionary Ideology in the 18th Century,” in Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World, 18th to 20th Centuries, ed. Steve J. Stern (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), 166–192. “Relación histórica,” 128–129. Vega stresses how this rebel violence hurt their prestige and recruiting elements. Vega, Túpac Amaru y sus compañeros, 1:129–132. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1041, Cuartel Gral. del Cuzco, December 22, 1780 (received in Lima January 14, 1781).

Notes to Pages 108–112

307

75. CDIP, II, 2, 316 and 317. 76. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1041, letter from Tupac Amaru, Tungasuca, December 23, 1780.

5. The Siege of Cuzco 1. In fact, the main path to Sacsayhuaman is called Cuesta Amargura, or Bitter Slope, because so many Indians were hurt when rolling the massive stones down to build the cathedral. 2. Charles F. Walker, Smoldering Ashes: Cuzco and the Creation of Republican Peru, 1780–1835 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999), 10–13; Paul Gootenberg, “Population and Ethnicity in Early Republican Peru: Some Revisions,” Latin American Research Review 26, no. 3 (1991): 109–157; Víctor Peralta Ruiz, En pos del tributo: Burocracia estatal, elite regional y comunidades indígenas en el Cuzco rural (1826–1854) (Cuzco: CBC, 1991). On “thousands” of Indians supplying the city, see Concolorcorvo, El Lazarillo. A Guide for Inexperienced Travelers between Buenos Aires and Lima, tr. Walter D. Kline (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1965), 204. 3. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1041. 4. Clerics again proved to be key in for mants. For example, AGI, Lima, Leg. 1041, begins, “Acaba de informarnos . . .” 5. CDIP, II, 1, 120–123, “Informe Relacionado del Cabildo del Cuzco, 1784.” 6. CDBRETA, 1, 301, Moscoso to Reverendo Padre, Santo Domingo, December 31, 1780. He pointed out that “precautions are always favorable.” 7. Juan Manuel Moscoso y Peralta, Inocencia justificada contra los artificios de la calumnia (Lima: Biblioteca Nacional, in press), 99–101 (testimony of Mercedarian Pedro de la Sota). 8. Leon G. Campbell, The Military and Society in Colonial Peru, 1750–1810 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1978), 112. Moscoso continued to demand money from convents in January; see his command on January 7, 1781, CDBRETA, I, 316–317; see also Moscoso y Peralta, Inocencia justificada. 9. Campbell, The Military and Society in Colonial Peru, 111–112; Eulogio Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui (II) virrey interino del Perú (Pamplona, Spain: Diputación Foral de Navarra, Institución Príncipe de Viana, 1979), 150– 151. The city council also boasted that their measures in mid- to late November had forced Tupac Amaru to “extend himself” and proceed south before attacking the city. Nothing else indicates, however, that this factored into his decision. “Informe relacionado,” 104–113. 10. Boleslao Lewin, La rebelión de Túpac Amaru, 3rd ed. (Buenos Aires: SELA, 1967), 455; L. E. Fisher, The Last Inca Revolt, 1780–1783 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1966), 120. 11. J. R. Gutiérrez, ed., Documentos para la historia antigua de Bolivia sacados de la biblioteca de J. R. Gutiérrez: Sitios de la Paz y el Cuzco 1780–1781 (La Paz: Imprenta de la Unión Americana, 1879), 126–127.

308

Notes to Pages 112–116

12. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1041, letter from Ignacio de Santiesteban Ruiz Cano to Junta de Guerra, December 19, 1780. 13. A carga or load is usually estimated at 120 liters. The challenging Andean terrain might have reduced each load, or at least what each mule carried. I thank Ramiro Flores Guzmán for help on this question. 14. On the majeños, see Zoila Mendoza, “Performing Decency: Ethnicity and Race in Andean ‘Mestizo’ Ritual Dance,” in Music and the Racial Imagination, ed. Ronald Radano and Philip Bohlman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 231–270. 15. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1041, testimony of Agustín Herrera. 16. Perhaps the intended date was Saturday, December 30. On the devotion to the Virgin Mary on Saturdays, see “Saturdays and the Immaculate Heart of Mary,” www.mariancatechist.com/formation/mary/saturdays/index. html (accessed 2/18/11). 17. AGI, Lima, 1041, testimony of Agustín Herrera. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid. 20. AGI, Lima, 1041, testimony of Jorge Masías. 21. The historian Juan José Vega argues that Micaela Bastidas lost patience with Tupac Amaru and began the march on Cuzco days before his return to Tungasuca. However, she quickly lost control of the Quechua masses that had urged her to depart and did not get far before they stopped and waited to rejoin the troops led by Tupac Amaru. His argument, based on scant documentation and relying heavily on assumptions about her “impulsive” nature, possible depression, and misunderstanding of the rebellion’s “continental extension,” is not persuasive, but it highlights differences between the two leaders and within the camp. Juan José Vega, Túpac Amaru y sus compañeros, 2 vols. (Cuzco: Municipalidad del Qosqo, 1995), 1:127–139; 2:306–320. 22. Gutiérrez, Documentos, 130. Padre de Sota also uses this number. Moscoso y Peralta, Inocencia justificada, 101. 23. The sources do not discuss these “rabonas,” the women who accompanied the rebels. In general, all of the troops were simply deemed “Indians” and thus not discussed. 24. CDIP, II, 1, 113–115, “Informe Relacionado.” 25. CDIP, II, 2, 376, 377 (two documents). He had written a similar note on December 21, 1780, about “Indians and Spaniards, who had stayed behind in Sicuani.” CDBRETA, III, 1, 293, December 1, 1780, Tupac Amaru to Don Basilio Morales and Eugenio Figueroa. On Maruri, see Vega, Túpac Amaru y sus compañeros, 2:375–377. 26. CDBRETA, III, I, 296, December 30, 1780. 27. CDIP, II, 2, 380. 28. CDIP, II, 2, 383. 29. Ibid.

Notes to Pages 116–120

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30. AGI, Charcas, Leg. 596, “quaderno 3, Testimonio formado sobre el alzamiento de la provincia de Tinta.” 31. Vega, Túpac Amaru y sus compañeros, 1:147; for more on Castelo see David Cahill, “Genocide from Below: The Great Rebellion of 1780– 82 in the Southern Andes,” in Empire, Colony, Genocide: Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern Resistance in World History, ed. A. Dirk Moses (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008), 403– 423. 32. Alejandro Seraylán Leiva, Historia general del ejército Peruano, tomo III, vol. 2, “Campañas militares durante la dominación española” (Lima: Comisión Permanente de Historia del Ejército del Perú, 1981), 615– 617. 33. For de la Madrid’s version, see CDIP, II, 2, 395– 401, which sheds light also on how the letters were received by Moscoso. For the letters, see Pedro de Angelis, Documentos para la historia de la sublevación de José Gabriel de Tupac Amaru, cacique de la provincia de Tinta, en el Perú (Buenos Aires: Imprenta del Estado, 1836), 18–24. 34. This is found in CDBRETA, 1, 327–328. The publishing history of these letters is complicated. Those to Bishop Moscoso and the city council have been reprinted numerous times, with errors. Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 163–166, especially footnote 6, clarifies this. The letters can be found in CDIP, II, 2, 377–378 and 378–380; a subsequent letter to the city council is found on 394–395. This same volume mistakenly prints another copy of the letter to the bishop with the date of December 12, 1780, a mistake fi rst made by Angelis, Documentos para la historia, 18–24. Zudaire also refers to the letter to Tupac Amaru’s “beloved compatriots” but apparently read this in AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 77. I found it in CDBRETA, 1, 330–331. Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 345–346. 35. John Lynch, Spanish Colonial Administration, 1782–1810 (London: University of London Press, 1958), 4. 36. CDIP, II, 2, January 3, 1781, 377–378. “Thebes” refers to the decision by the Theban commander Epaminondas not to take the weakened city of Sparta but rather return to Thebes in 371 BC . 37. CDIP, II, 2, 378, January 3, 1781. 38. Ibid. He also called for the establishment of a Real Audiencia in Cuzco, a high court, a demand met in 1784. 39. CDBRETA, 1, 330–331. 40. Zudaire notes his efforts to calm criollos. Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 164–166. 41. Lewin, La rebelión de Túpac Amaru, 455. From the perspective of the city council, this was absurd: he was not a legitimate authority and he was not about to take the city. See “Informe relacionado,” 123, in which they called the letters “soberbia arrogancia.” 42. “Informe Relacionado,” 123–124. Tupac Amaru hoped to control the Caja de Agua, the entryway to Anta Pampa and Lima.

310

Notes to Pages 120–125

43. CDIP, II, 2, 440. The account in Melchor de Paz repeats the bishop’s line that this charge was “imprudent.” 44. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1041, letter from José Casorla Tristán to Visitador Areche, January 14, 1781. 45. Letter from Jáuregui to King, February 15, 1781, cited in Eulogio Zudaire, “Análisis de la rebelión de Tupac Amaru en su Bicentenario (1780–1980),” Revista de Indias 40 (1980), 13–70, quote from 48. The viceroy had more than a year of hindsight at this point. 46. “Informe relacionado,” 120, uses the figure 60,000 rebels. 47. The sources never mention them. As it had done since it was coined in the sixteenth century, the term “Indian,” used to describe Tupac Amaru’s mass followers, lumped together and homogenized different social groups, in this case fighters and followers. The mention about the more important rebels attacked in Saylla who slept in tents is a rare reference to differences among the rebel followers. 48. Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista: Rebeliones de Indios en Sur América, la sublevación de Tupac Amaru. Crónica de Melchor de Paz, ed. Luis Antonio Eguiguren, 2 vols. (Lima: n.p, 1952), 1:283. 49. “Informe Relacionado,” 125. 50. CDBRETA, 1, 187, Moscoso, January 4, 1781. 51. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1586, “Secularización de los curatos y doctrinas,” testimony by Father Juan Hurtado, 1790. 52. CDIP, II, 1, 331– 415, 356, Rafael José Sahuaraura Titu Atauchi, Estado del Perú; Moscoso y Peralta Inocencia justificada, 102–104, account of Padre de Sota. 53. CDIP, II, 1, 149–330, 217, Ignacio de Castro, Relación del Cuzco. 54. CDIP, II, 2, 459– 460, Micaela Bastidas to Tupac Amaru, January 24, 1781. 55. Ibid. 56. Vega makes this point in Túpac Amaru y sus compañeros, 1:156. 57. AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 32, trial of Figueroa. In CDBRETA, V, III, esp. 440– 442. 58. AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 32. 59. Mateo Urbicaín, “Sintético ‘diario’ de la Revolución,” in Preliminares del incendio: Documentos del año de 1776 a 1780, en su mayoría inéditos, anteriores y sobre la Revolución Libertadora que engendró y dió vida José Gabriel Túpak Amaru, en 1780, ed. Francisco Loayza (Lima: Imprenta D. Miranda, 1947), 147. 60. CDBRETA, III, 1, 293–294, Tupac Amaru to Eugenio Canatupa Sinanyuca, December 29, 1780. 61. CDIP, II, 2, 441, Moscoso to Areche, January 14, 1781. See also the account in Lewin, La rebelión de Túpac Amaru, 457– 449, which mentions Friar Ramón Salazar. 62. CDIP, II, 2, 394–395, January 9, 1781. 63. AGI, Charcas, Leg. 596, “quaderno 3, Testimonio formado sobre el alzamiento de la provincia de Tinta.”

Notes to Pages 125–131

311

64. Gutiérrez, Documentos, 133; see also AGI, Lima, Leg. 1041, José Casorla Tristán to Areche, January 11, 1781. 65. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1041, José Casorla Tristán to Areche, January 11, 1781. 66. CDIP, II, 2, 442. 67. AGI, Charcas, Leg. 596, letter from Gregorio Mariano Sánchez to Señor Gobernador Diego Choquiguanca, January 17, 1781. 68. Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista, 1:283. 69. “Historieta instructiva aunque concisa de la rebelión de José Gabriel Tupac Amaru que fue executado . . .” 1781. I read this rare document in the Mata Linares Collection, Real Academia de Historia, Madrid. 70. I play with this conjecture in a book on counterfactual Peruvian history. Charles F. Walker, “Un Inca en Sacsayhuamán: Si Túpac Amaru hubiese tomado el Cuzco (1780–1781),” in Contra-historia del Perú. Ensayos de Historia Política Peruana, ed. Eduardo Dargent and José Ragas (Lima: MITIN, 2012), 33– 47. 71. AGI, Charcas, Leg. 596, “quaderno 3, Testimonio formado sobre el alzamiento de la provincia de Tinta.” 72. The idea comes from a single citation, but sources are so thin with regard to many facets of the uprising, particularly the background and conditions of rebel fighters, that ideas emerging from single citations have been repeated by generations of historians. 73. The best work on disease, medicine, and society in colonial Peru has focused on Lima. For an important recent study, see Adam Warren, Medicine and Politics in Colonial Peru: Population Growth and the Bourbon Reforms (Pittsburgh, Penn.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010). 74. Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista, 1:283–284. 75. CDIP, II, 2, 441, Moscoso to Jáuregui. On the threat of food shortages, see Gutiérrez, Documentos, 135–136; Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista, 1:284, which mentions “hunger” spreading in January. 76. Gutiérrez, Documentos, 134–135. 77. AGI, Charcas, Leg. 596, “quaderno 3, Testimonio formado sobre el alzamiento de la provincia de Tinta.” 78. CDIP, II, 1, 359–360, Sahuaraura, Estado del Perú. 79. CDIP, II, 1, 127, “Informe relacionado.” 80. AGI, Charcas, Leg. 596, “quaderno 3, Testimonio formado sobre el alzamiento de la provincia de Tinta.”

6. In Pursuit of Tupac Amaru 1. Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista: Rebeliones de Indios en Sur América, la sublevación de Tupac Amaru. Crónica de Melchor de Paz, ed. Luis Antonio Eguiguren, 2 vols. (Lima: n.p, 1952), 1:333–335, March 20, 1781. 2. CDIP, II, 2, 590–592, “Auto que se publicó en esta ciudad del Cuzco,” March 20, 1781.

312

Notes to Pages 132–136

3. CDIP, II, 2, 518–520, has the list of troops. Juan José Vega, “Túpac Amaru y su tiempo,” in Historia general del ejército Peruano tomo II, vol. 1, ed. Juan José Vega (Lima: Comisión Permanente de Historia del Ejército del Perú, 1981), 421, notes the racial composition. Leon Campbell, The Military and Society in Colonial Peru, 1750–1810 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1978), 129–131. 4. Vega, “Túpac Amaru y su tiempo,” 418; Carlos Daniel Valcárcel, Túpac Amaru (Lima: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, 1977), 116–121. 5. The tally of troops itself in CDIP, II, 2, 518–520; for an English summary, see Campbell, The Military and Society in Colonial Peru, 130–131. 6. AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 63, March 1, 1781; his abilities to resurrect were also covered in his trial: see CDBRETA, III, I, 261, testimony of Diego Ortigoza, May 14, 1781, 7. AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 63, March 1, 1781. 8. Ibid. 9. Areche used the term cañada. CDIP, II, 2, 620, April 8, 1781. 10. CDIP, II, 2, 457– 458, Moscoso to Areche, January 21, 1781. He warned that the control of the Apurimac Bridge was fundamental to success. 11. CDBRETA, III, 1, 296–297, Comisiones to Felipe Cano and Tomás Quispe and to Lucas Champi Tito Quecaño, January 14, 1781. Tupac Amaru oversaw the building of a defensive wall outside of Combapata and trenches in Tinta. He apparently moved headquarters to Tinta, where he had property. Later in the month, he visited Langui and perhaps made a quick visit to the south. Eulogio Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui (II) virrey interino del Perú (Pamplona, Spain: Diputación Foral de Navarra, Institución Príncipe de Viana, 1979), 175. See also AGI, Cuzco, Legs. 75 and 76, for extensive documentation; Juan Manuel Moscoso y Peralta, Inocencia justificada contra los artificios de la calumnia (Lima: Biblioteca Nacional, in press), testimony of Soto, 99–100; Carlos Daniel Valcárcel, Túpac Amaru el revolucionario (Lima: Moncloa– Campodónica, 1970), 172–175, for the city’s preparations. 12. Micaela Bastidas’s trial provides extensive documentation on this. See CDBRETA, IV, II. 13. For example, see the January 10, 1781, ultimatum by Juan de Dios Valencia. CDBRETA, III, 1, 95– 96, “pena de vida.” Other hints of disciplinary problems among the rebels can be seen in CDBRETA, III, 1, 95– 96, Santo Tomás, January 10, 1781; also CDBRETA, III, 1, 109–110, Chumbivilcas, March 1781. Antonio Bastidas describes the difficulties in controlling rebel troops in CDIP, II, 2, 501–502. Bastidas also worried that with the proximity of Carnival, rebel troops would focus more on drinking than fighting. Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 179. 14. Both letters found in Francisco Loayza, Mártires y heroinas (documentos inéditos del año de 1780 a 1782) (Lima: Imprenta D. Miranda, 1945), 40, 41. Other letters here from early 1781 mention the prospect of Indians abandoning the struggle to tend to their fields and families.

Notes to Pages 136–139

313

15. On this point, see Magnus Mörner and Efraín Trelles, “A Test of Causal Interpretations of the Túpac Amaru Rebellion,” in Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World, 18th to 20th Centuries, ed. Steve J. Stern (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), 94–109. 16. David Cahill, “Genocide from Below: The Great Rebellion of 1780– 82 in the Southern Andes,” in Empire, Colony, Genocide: Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern Resistance in World History, ed. A. Dirk Moses (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008), 403– 423. Cahill overstates his argument— Castelo was important but he and others never challenged José Gabriel and Micaela for the leadership. 17. CDBRETA, III, 1, 519–550. 18. CDBRETA, III, I, 611– 612. 19. Ibid. 20. CDBRETA, III, I, 612– 613, from Tupac Amaru to Francisco Torres, January 17, 1781. 21. See Alejandro Seraylán Leiva, Historia general del ejército Peruano, III, 2, “Campañas militares durante la dominación española” (Lima: Comisión Permanente de Historia del Ejército del Perú, 1981), 624– 625, for a map of these maneuvers. 22. See CDIP, II, 2, 512–517, for a detailed description of the attack. 23. J. R. Gutiérrez, ed., Documentos para la Historia Antigua de Bolivia sacados de la Biblioteca de J. R. Gutiérrez. Sitios de la Paz y el Cuzco 1780–1781 (La Paz: Imprenta de la Unión Americana, 1879), 138; Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista, 1:328–329; Jan Szeminski, “Why Kill the Spaniard? New Perspectives on Andean Insurrectionary Ideology in the 18th Century,” in Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness, 166–192. 24. Juan José Vega, Túpac Amaru y sus compañeros, 2 vols. (Cuzco: Municipalidad del Qosqo, 1995), 2:395; CDIP, II, 1, “Informe relacionado,” 129–131. At this point, the rebels failed to connect forces; Ramón Ponce and Parvina then attacked to the northeast, in Paruro, Cotabambas, and the provincias altas. Paruro had provided troops to the royalists in the siege of Cuzco. They attempted to cut the Pachachaca and Apurímac bridges to slow del Valle’s forces, but to no avail. 25. Jorge Hidalgo Lehuede, “Amarus y cataris: Aspectos mesiánicos de la rebelión indígena de 1781 en Cuzco, Chayanta, La Paz y Arica,” Chungará 10 (1983): 117–138. 26. As noted elsewhere, she also demonstrates the influence of Garcilaso de la Vega. O’Phelan Godoy, “El ‘castigo ejemplar del traidor’: La radicalización de la violencia en el Bajo y el Alto Perú,” in La gran rebelión en los andes: De Túpac Amaru a Túpac Catari (Cuzco: CBC, 1995), 105–137. 27. Szeminski, “Why Kill the Spaniard?” 28. A critique well made by O’Phelan Godoy. “El castigo ejemplar,” 109. 29. Cited in Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 176. From Mata Linares regarding Paruro. 30. Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 176–177.

314

Notes to Pages 139–145

31. For masterful applications of longer timeframes to understand Katarista violence in Upper Peru, see Sergio Serulnikov, Subverting Colonial Authority: Challenges to Spanish Rule in Eighteenth- Century Southern Andes (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2003), and Sinclair Thomson, We Alone Will Rule: Native Andean Politics in the Age of Insurgency (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002). Steve Stern stresses the need for multiple timeframes in his “New Approaches to the Study of Peasant Rebellion and Consciousness: Implications of the Andean Experience,” in Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness, 3–29, esp. 11–15. 32. CDIP, II, 2, 619– 623, “Relación de los sucesos”; also in Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista, 1:356–359. 33. Campbell, The Military and Society in Colonial Peru, 126–153. 34. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1040, Manuel Villalta to Señor Comandante General Avilés, Campo de Sullumayo, March 26, 1781. 35. Vega, “Túpac Amaru y su tiempo,” 422. 36. CDBRETA, 1, documentos varios, 535–543, del Valle to Viceroy Jáuregui, April 20, 1781. I also consulted this in AGI, Lima, Leg. 1040. 37. CDBRETA, 1, 538–359. 38. “Sobre la supresión de la rebelión,” April 8, 1781, Lilly Library, Indiana University. 39. CDBRETA, 1, 541. 40. CDIP, II, 1, 582, Eusebio Balza de Berganza, “La Verdad desnuda.” 41. CDBRETA, 1, 542. 42. CDIP, II, 2, 620, letter from April 8, 1781. 43. Ibid. Antonio Bastidas explains the rebel retreat in CDBRETA, III, 1, 448– 449, April 2, 1781. 44. Vega, “Túpac Amaru y su tiempo,” 422– 427. 45. CDBRETA, III, I, 109–110, “Bando de Túpac Amaru sobre la conducta de los pobladores de Chumbivilcas,” March 13, 1781. 46. CDIP, II, 2, 587–588. On the heads, see Luis Durand Florez, Introducción, CDBRETA, IV, II, 13. 47. CDBRETA, III, I, Areche to Mata Linares, April 7, 1781, 314–315. 48. CDIP, II, 2, 587, del Valle diary, March 19, 1781. 49. CDBRETA, III, 1, 324, testimony by Francisco Cisneros. This is the only mention of rebels cutting off and keeping heads as trophies, so it must be read skeptically. 50. Numerous documents refer to this. AGI, Charcas, Leg. 596, “quad. 3 Testimonio formado sobre el alzamiento de la prov. de Tinta.” 51. CDIP, II, 2, 501–502, letter from Antonio Bastidas to Micaela Bastidas, February 15, 1781. 52. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1040. This is an account to Areche, by Domingo Marnara and José Acuña. Santo Tomás (Chumbivilcas), March 23, 1781. 53. CDIP, II, 2, 462. 54. Ibid.

Notes to Pages 146–150

315

55. Javier Flores Espinoza, “Justo Sahuaraura Inca y sus Recuerdos de la monarquía peruana,” in Don Justo Apu Sahuaraura Inca, Recuerdos de la Monarquía Peruana o bosquejo de la historia de los Incas (Lima: Fundación Telefónica, 2001), 23–25. The letter is in CDIP, II, 2, 521–531. 56. Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 187. 57. CDIP, II, 2, 521–531. 58. CDIP, II, 2, 528–529. He sent similar letters to Bishop Moscoso. Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 186. 59. CDIP, II, 2, 521–531; CDBRETA, III, 1, 204–222. For an overview about Quechua in the eighteenth century, see Kenneth J. Andrien, “The Bourbon Reforms, Independence, and the Spread of Quechua and Aymara,” in History and Language in the Andes, ed. Paul Heggarty and Adrian J. Pearce (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 113–133. Andrien discusses the relationship of the Church and Quechua at 116–123. 60. CDIP, II, 2, 534–535. 61. AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 77, Fernando Ramos Titu Atauchi to Moscoso. 62. CDIP, II, 2, 556–564, quote from 556. Also found in AGI, Lima, Leg. 1040. 63. CDIP, II, 2, 550, 556–564. 64. Ibid. 65. Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 189. 66. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1040, Areche to Gálvez, March 1, 1781. 67. Ibid. 68. Vega, “Túpac Amaru y su tiempo,” 425. I did not fi nd more information about the movement of troops, but if Tupac Amaru did make this decision, he erred. 69. “Sobre la supresión de la rebelión,” April 8, 1781, Lilly Library, Indiana University. 70. On the deserter, see Carlos Daniel Valcárcel, La rebelión de Túpac Amaru (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1947), 116–117; see also L. E. Fisher, The Last Inca Revolt, 1780–1783 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1966), 217–220; Boleslao Lewin, La rebelión de Túpac Amaru, 3rd ed. (Buenos Aires: SELA, 1967), 468– 472. 71. Vega, “Túpac Amaru y sus compañeros,” 206. 72. CDIP, II, 2, 588. 73. AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 63, letter from del Valle, April 8, 1781; CDIP, II, 2, 610– 623; also key is Avilés, April 12, 1781, in Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista, 1:353–56 and 356–59. Del Valle describes Tupac Amaru’s letter— I have never seen a copy and thus have doubts about its existence. 74. Markham provides a strong narrative of the Spanish offensive. Clements R. Markham, A History of Peru (Chicago: Charles H. Sergel 1892), 202–205; Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 202. 75. CDBRETA, IV, 2, 43– 45, Micaela Bastidas’s testimony from April 22, 1781. On the accusations, see “Relación histórica del principio, progresos y estado de la sublevación de José Gabriel Tupac-Amaru. En cuatro décadas,”

316

76. 77.

78. 79. 80.

81.

82.

Notes to Pages 150–153 in Gutiérrez, Documentos, 147. Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista, 1:356–359 refers to a mule with their “stolen goods” slowing them down. Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista, 1:356–359. Landaeta’s testimony about the bribe offer is at CDBRETA, III, 1, 180, April 26, 1781. CDIP, II, 2, 637– 640, lists a few of the rebels executed but admits that it omits many. Del Valle cites sixty-seven executed. Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista, 1:356–359. According to Bishop Moscoso, Tupac Amaru himself spread this rumor in his testimony. CDIP, II, 2, letter from Bishop Moscoso, April 13, 1781, 642– 646. CDBRETA, III, 1, del Valle to Areche, April 6, 1781, 7– 9, quote from 8. The remark about losing sleep is at CDIP, II, 2, 588. For one example, see AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 63, José Gabriel Tupac Amaru to his son, Mariano April 7, 1781; CDBRETA, 303–304, to Diego Cristóbal, April 8, 1781. Others are found in AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 33. The day before his capture, Tupac Amaru commissioned Andrés, his nephew, to lead rebel forces in the south, in Lampa, Azángaro, and Carabaya, instructing him to punish any disobedient follower and to impose “the death sentence” for anyone who deserted. Andrés and others who had received these orders or heard of them certainly would not have believed the letter. The commission for Andrés is in CDBRETA, III, 1, 113, Tupac Amaru, April 4, 1781. “Sobre la supresión de la rebelión,” April 8, 1781, Lilly Library, Indiana University. The quote and the account of bellringing are from this document, which also includes a list of prisoners. See Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 204–205, for a good summary of this. CDBRETA, III, 1, 8, del Valle to Areche, April 6, 1781.

7. Torment 1. J. R. Gutiérrez, ed., Documentos para la Historia Antigua de Bolivia sacados de la Biblioteca de J. R. Gutiérrez. Sitios de Paz y el Cuzco 1780–1781 (La Paz: Imprenta de la Unión Americana, 1879), 149; CDIP, II, 1, 134–135, “Informe Relacionado del Cabildo del Cuzco, 1784.” 2. CDBRETA, IV, II, 47, testimony of Francisco Tupac Amaru on Micaela Bastidas’s tears; CDBRETA, IV, II, 11, testimony of Manuel Galleguillos on her understanding of the dangers, in which he discusses her contingency plans if they were captured. 3. The best summary of the trials is Bohumir Roedl, “Causa Tupa Amaro: El proceso a los tupamaros en Cuzco, abril– julio de 1781,” Revista Andina 34 (2002): 99–119. See also Mariselle Meléndez, Deviant and Useful Citizens: The Cultural Production of the Female Body in Eighteenth- Century Peru (Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press, 2011), 11– 40; Scarlett O’Phelan Godoy, Un siglo de rebeliones anticoloniales: Perú y Bolivia 1700–1783 (Cuzco: CBC, 1988), a pioneer in using the data from the trials. The trials, Legajos 32 and 33, are republished in CDBRETA.

Notes to Pages 154–159 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

19.

20.

21. 22.

23. 24. 25. 26.

317

CDBRETA, III, 1, 140–141. Ibid. CDBRETA, III, 1; the trial is on 138–155. CDBRETA, III, 1, 155–171, quote from 155. CDBRETA, III, 1; see the “careos” from 190–196. CDBRETA, III, 1, 184–186; Eulogio Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui (II) virrey interino del Perú (Pamplona, Spain: Diputación Foral de Navarra, Institución Príncipe de Viana, 1979), 218. The sheet is in AGI, Lima, Leg. 1050. CDBRETA, III, 1, 184–186. “Strappado,” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strappado (accessed 7/7/12). Juan Bautista Tupac Amaru, Cuarenta años de cautiverio (memorias del inka Juan Bautista Túpac Amaru), ed. Francisco A. Loayza (Lima: D. Miranda, 1945), 28–32. CDBRETA, III, 1, 197. CDBRETA, III, I, 196, “Auto de Tormento.” “Strappado,” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strappado (accessed 7/7/12). George Ryley Scott, History of Torture through the Ages (London: Luxor Press, 1939), 168. CDBRETA, III, I, 197–199. This is the diligenica del tormento. Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista: Rebeliones de Indios en Sur América, la sublevación de Tupac Amaru. Crónica de Melchor de Paz, ed. Luis Antonio Eguiguren, 2 vols. (Lima: n.p, 1952), 1:405. In his memoirs, Tupac Amaru’s half-brother, Juan Bautista, claims that the defendant declared, “Here, there are only two accomplices: you as the oppressor and I as the liberator.” Túpac Amaru, Cuarenta años de cautiverio, 20–21. Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista, 1:405. Even if these quotes are fabricated, they show how people understood Tupac Amaru as a courageous victim of Spanish brutality, a compelling interpretation. This does not mean that they weren’t badly treated. One prisoner, Isidro Mamani, tried to hang himself, almost succeeding. He gave as his reasons the mistreatment he received when taken to Cuzco, his utter lack of money (“no tener medio real”), and threats of other prisoners. CDBRETA, III, 1, 682– 683. He was executed. AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 32, f. 66. CDBRETA, IV, II, 71–72. Testimony from May 9, 1781. This was taken under duress and Micaela and José Gabriel had not seen each other since their capture. It’s curious, however, that scholars have not discussed this physical abuse, perhaps deeming it “normal” for the period. It deserves more attention. AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 32, found in CDBRETA, IV, 11. Meléndez, Deviant and Useful Citizens, 15–23, develops this. AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 32, f. 66. Quoted in Roedl, “Causa Tupa Amaro,” 104.

318

Notes to Pages 159–165

27. CDIP, II, 2, 578–579, and for the English translation stored in the Public Record Office, 579–581; for a different English translation, see Ward Stavig and Ella Schmidt, eds., The Tupac Amaru and Catarista Rebellions: An Anthology of Sources (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett Publishing, 2008), 121–122. I have consulted both but made some changes. 28. CDIP, II, 2, 581; I have maintained the rustic English translation. 29. Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 213–214. 30. Quoted in Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 222. 31. CDBRETA, III, I, 222–226, May 5, 1781. 32. CDBRETA, III, I, 234. José de Saldívar y Saavedra, May 5, 1781. 33. Roedl makes this point. Roedl, “Causa Tupa Amaro,” 109–111. 34. CDBRETA, III, I, 245–247. I reviewed the London Gazette Extraordinary and did not fi nd any mention of Tupac Amaru. The Chester Chronicle and General Advertiser published an article on October 6, 1780, that refers to an English privateer who overtook a Spanish ship and came across letters from Arequipa, Cuzco, La Paz, and Potosí. On October 10, the same periodical provides further details, based on the letters written by a Jesuit priest. 35. I thank Griselda Jarquin for her diligent work on British newspapers. 36. CDBRETA, III, 1, 250–259. 37. CDBRETA, III, 1, 259–261; several other witnesses confi rm this. Ibid., 261–262, testimony of Isidro Toera and Domingo Pérez León. 38. CDBRETA, III, 1, 267–268; for his property, see 224–226. 39. CDBRETA, III, I, 268–277. I have also used the English translation in Stavig and Schmidt, The Tupac Amaru and Catarista Rebellions, 130–135. 40. Stavig and Schmidt, The Tupac Amaru and Catarista Rebellions, 132. I have added a passage that they omitted from their translation, CDBRETA, III, I, 271. 41. Stavig and Schmidt, The Tupac Amaru and Catarista Rebellions, 133. 42. Stavig and Schmidt, The Tupac Amaru and Catarista Rebellions, 135; I have made a minor change in the translation. 43. Stavig and Schmidt, The Tupac Amaru and Catarista Rebellions, 133. For the Spanish original, see CDBRETA, III, I, 268–277. 44. CDBRETA, III, I, 278–279, Areche, May 16, 1781. 45. CDBRETA, III, I, 280–281, Areche, May 17, 1781. 46. CDBRETA, III, I, 279–288. 47. Daniel Valcárcel, La rebelión de Túpac Amaru (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1965), 121–122. 48. CDBRETA, V, III, has these trials, including the sentences. 49. CDIP, II, 2, 776. 50. Zudaire, Don Augstín de Jáuregui, 173. 51. Pedro de Angelis, “Castigos ejecutados en la ciudad del Cuzco con TupacAmaru, su muger, hijos y confidentes,” in Documentos para la historia de la sublevación de José Gabriel de Tupac-Amaru cacique de la provincia de Tinta, en el Perú (Buenos Aires: Imprenta del Estado, 1836), 52–54, quote from 53. Also in CDIP, II, 2, 774–776.

Notes to Pages 165–171

319

52. CDIP, II, 2, 775. Zudaire vehemently disagrees with this, arguing that the garrote worked on any size neck. It is a bizarre passage, since he passionately ridicules those who accept this view but passively describes this ritualized torture. A meticulous historian, he is nevertheless the rare apologist for the Spanish. Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 228. On Micaela Bastidis’s tongue, see Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista, 1:40; Durand Florez, Introducción, CDBRETA, IV, 2, summarizes these arguments well; see pp. x–xii. 53. CDIP, II, 2, 775. 54. Clements R. Markham, A History of Peru (Chicago: Charles H. Sergel and Company 1892), 207. 55. CDIP, II, 2, 776. 56. CDIP, II, 2, 790–793. 57. Analysts, myself included, have too easily accepted the royalist intent of using the ritual as a symbolic termination of the uprising.

8. The Other Side of the Lake 1. Scarlett O’Phelan Godoy, Un siglo de rebeliones anticoloniales: Perú y Bolivia 1700–1783 (Cuzco: CBC, 1988); see also María Eugenia del Valle de Siles, Historia de la rebelión de Tupac Catari, 1781–1782 (La Paz: Don Bosco, 1990). For a recent comparative work, see Sergio Serulnikov, Revolution in the Andes: The Age of Túpac Amaru (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2013). 2. For this summary, I draw heavily from del Valle de Siles, Historia de la rebelión de Tupac Catari; Sergio Serulnikov, Subverting Colonial Authority: Challenges to Spanish Rule in Eighteenth- Century Southern Andes (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2003); and Sinclair Thomson, We Alone Will Rule: Native Andean Politics in the Age of Insurgency (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002). I also build on ideas presented in Charles Walker, “Prologue,” Serulnikov, Revolution in the Andes, xi–xvi. 3. Serulnikov, Subverting Colonial Authority, 171–185; see the documents in Ward Stavig and Ella Schmidt, eds., The Tupac Amaru and Catarista Rebellions: An Anthology of Sources (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett Publishing, 2008), 182–214. 4. Stavig and Schmidt, The Tupac Amaru and Catarista Rebellions, 208; Serulnikov, Subverting Colonial Authority, 187. 5. Thomson, We Alone Will Rule, 172. 6. Cited in Oscar Cornblit, Power and Violence in the Colonial City: Oruro from the Mining Renaissance to the Rebellion of Tupac Amaru 1740–1782 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 139. 7. Serulnikov, Subverting Colonial Authority, 103–133; Cornblit, Power and Violence in the Colonial City, 167–172. 8. Del Valle de Siles, Historia de la rebelión de Tupac Catari, 3. This book provides an excellent overview of Julián Apaza, 1–30 and throughout. 9. Stavig and Schmidt, The Tupac Amaru and Catarista Rebellions, 216, from Thomson, We Alone Will Rule, 184.

320

Notes to Pages 171–177

10. Del Valle de Siles, Historia de la rebelión de Tupac Catari, 8–10. For a smart analysis of how historians have not fully overcome contemporaries’ snide assessment of Katari as a barbarian, see Thomson, We Alone Will Rule, 180–186. 11. Serulnikov develops the comparison in Revolution in the Andes; O’Phelan Godoy has long linked the analysis of the two social movements; see O’Phelan Godoy, Un siglo de rebeliones anticoloniales. On more contemporary tensions between Inca and Aymara identities, see E. Gabrielle Kuenzli, Acting Inca: National Belonging in Twentieth- Century Bolivia (Pittsburgh, Penn.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013). 12. Del Valle de Siles, Historia de la rebelión de Tupac Catari, esp. 241–258. 13. Ibid., 45– 60. 14. Ibid., 1–30. 15. CDIP, II, 2, “Relación del éxito,” 407. 16. CDBRETA, III, I, Ponce to Tupac Amaru, February 1781, 589. 17. CDBRETA, III, I, Ponce to Tupac Amaru, March 5, 1781, 590–591. 18. Juan José Vega, Túpac Amaru y sus compañeros, 2 vols. (Cuzco: Municipalidad del Qosqo, 1995), 2:401. Ponce was referring to Isidro Mamani and Andrés Guara. 19. Del Valle de Siles is excellent on this. Historia de la rebelión de Tupac Catari, 31–52. 20. “Relaciones de las operaciones militares del General Dn. Joaquín de Orellana,” in Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista: Rebeliones de Indios en Sur América, la sublevación de Tupac Amaru: Crónica de Melchor de Paz, ed. Luis Antonio Eguiguren, 2 vols. (Lima: n.p., 1952), 1:389– 403, quote from 395. 21. Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista, 1:375. 22. Ibid., 376. 23. Ibid. 24. Augusto Ramos Zambrano, Puno en la rebelión de Túpac Amaru (Puno: Universidad Nacional Técnica del Altiplano, 1982), 236–237; Mamani’s trial is in CDBRETA, III, I, 665– 687. See also Orellana in Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista, 1:375–377. 25. On his capture and the quote, CDBRETA, III, I, 672, Orellana, July 10, 1781. 26. Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista, 1:382, 386, report from Don Celedonio Bermejo, April 21, 1781. 27. Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista, 1:373, “Capitulo de carta que refiere la derrota de los Yndios rebeldes por el Comandante Don Ygnacio Flores en las inmediaciones de Chuquisaca.” 28. Ibid., 376, 378–379. 29. Alberto Flores Galindo, In Search of an Inca: Identity and Utopia in the Andes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 106–120; Carlos Sempat Assadourian, Sistema de la economía colonial: mercado interno, regiones y espacio económico (Lima: IEP, 1982); Enrique Tandeter, Coacción y mercado: La minería de la plata en el Potosí colonial, 1692–1826 (Cuzco: CBC, 1992).

Notes to Pages 178–185

321

30. For an incisive account on contemporary Bolivia, including the legacy of the eighteenth-century rebellions, see Sinclair Thomson and Forrest Hylton, Revolutionary Horizons: Past and Present in Bolivian Politics (New York: Verso, 2007). 31. Primary accounts include “Diario de los Sucesos del Cerco de la Ciudad de La Paz en 1781, por el Brigadier Don Sebastián de Segurola,” in Archivo Boliviano: Colección de documentos relativos a la historia de Bolivia, ed. Vicente de Ballivián y Rojas, 2nd ed. (La Paz: Casa Municipal de la Cultura Franz Tamayo, 1977), 1–183; Francisco Tadeo Diez de Medina, Diario del alzamiento de indios conjurados contra la ciudad de Nuestra Señora de La Paz 1781, ed. Maria Eugenia del Valle de Siles (La Paz: Don Bosco, 1981). For analysis, see Mark Thurner, “Guerra andina y política campesina en el sitio de La Paz, 1781,” in Poder y violencia en los andes, ed. Henrique Urbano (Cuzco: CBC, 1991), 93–121. See also letters in Stavig and Schmidt, The Tupac Amaru and Catarista Rebellions, 227–239. 32. Del Valle de Siles, Historia de la rebelión de Tupac Catari, 179. 33. Boleslao Lewin, La rebelión de Túpac Amaru, 3rd ed. (Buenos Aires: SELA, 1967), 515–517. 34. Del Valle de Siles, Historia de la rebelión de Tupac Catari, 175–180.

9. Southern Campaigns 1. For example, on October 17, 1781, Diego Cristóbal deemed himself the “legitimate brother” of “Governador Don Joseph Gavriel Tupa Amaru.” See Eulogio Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui (II) virrey interino del Perú (Pamplona, Spain: Diputación Foral de Navarra, Institución Príncipe de Viana, 1979), 332. 2. Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista: Rebeliones de Indios en Sur América, la sublevación de Tupac Amaru. Crónica de Melchor de Paz, ed. Luis Antonio Eguiguren, 2 vols. (Lima: n.p, 1952), 2:159. 3. Diego Cristóbal made more spelling mistakes and did not have the flourish of José Gabriel. For example, see his August 19, 1781, letter to Fray Miguel Morán. Lilly Library, Indiana University. 4. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1040, del Valle to Francisco Cuellar, June 22, 1781. Cuellar was governor of Castrovirreina, part of Huancavelica. Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 192. 5. Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 255. 6. Sergio Serulnikov, Revolution in the Andes: The Age of Túpac Amaru (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2013), 56–59. On the Choquehuanca clan, see Nils Jacobsen, Mirages of Transition: The Peruvian Altiplano, 1780–1930 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 82– 84. 7. Jacobsen, Mirages of Transition, describes and examines the altiplano well. 8. Lillian Fisher summarizes who was where. L. E. Fisher, The Last Inca Revolt, 1780–1783 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1966), 252. 9. AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 63, letter from del Valle, to Josef de Gálvez, June 26, 1781.

322

Notes to Pages 185–189

10. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1040, which has considerable information about this period and violence; also AGI, Lima, Leg. 600; for del Valle’s account, AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 63, June 26, 1781; Pedro de Angelis, Colección de obras y documentos relativos a la historia antigua y moderna de las provincias del Río de la Plata (Buenos Aires: J. Lajouane and CIA, 1910), tomo IV (5 vols.), 316. On this journey and other events examined here, see Boleslao Lewin, La rebelión de Túpac Amaru (Buenos Aires: SELA, 1967), 484–527; Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 255–268; L. E. Fisher, The Last Inca Revolt, 242–280. 11. AGI, Lima, Leg. 660, Martínez to Areche, June 22, 1781. See also AGI, Lima, Leg. 1040, for Areche’s critique. 12. Almost all accounts of del Valle’s campaign rely on the “Relación histórica de los sucesos de la rebelión de José Gabriel Tupac-Amaru, en las provincias del Perú, el año de 1780,” found in the second edition of Angelis’s document collection. Angelis, Colección de obras, IV, 316; see also Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 257, and Gauvin Alexander Bailey, The Andean Hybrid: Baroque Convergent Cultures in the Churches of Colonial Peru (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010), 282–284, who calls Maruri a “Robin Hood priest.” Maruri was deported to Spain but freed in 1787. CDIP, II, 4, 372–373. 13. Augusto Ramos Zambrano, Tupamarus, Vilcapazas, Cataris, Ingariconas (Arequipa: Instituto de Estudios Pukara, 2009), 27–50. 14. “Relación histórica de los sucesos,” 317. 15. Ibid.; Ramos Zambrano, Tupamarus, Vilcapazas, 53–55. 16. AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 63, del Valle to Gálvez, June 26, 1781. 17. Ibid. 18. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1039, January 2, 1781, from don Vicente Oré, corregidor de Lampa. 19. ADC, Vega Centeno Collection, bolsa 3, number 35, 1783, “Criminal Pedro Quispe Indio de Paucartambo.” 20. AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 63, del Valle to Gálvez, June 26, 1781. See AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 63, from June 6, 1781, Cuellar to del Valle. Also in August 8, 1781, letter in Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista, 2:92. 21. Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista, 2:91; see also AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 63, letter from del Valle to Gálvez, July 18, 1781. 22. AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 63. This letter is dated September 28, 1781, when del Valle is attempting to justify his failure, but the details ring true. 23. Ibid. 24. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1041, Manuel de Castilla to Areche, April 28, 1781. 25. Alicia Poderti, Palabra e historia en los Andes: La rebelión del Inca Túpac Amaru y el noroeste argentino (Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 1997), 41– 67; Boleslao Lewin, La rebelión de Túpac Amaru, 3rd ed. (Buenos Aires: SELA, 1967), 573– 611 on Argentina and 538– 687 for the rebellion’s repercussions in other areas in Spanish America. 26. John Phelan, The People and the King: The Comunero Revolution in Colombia, 1781 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978); Horacio Rodríguez

Notes to Pages 189–195

27. 28. 29.

30.

31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43.

44. 45. 46. 47.

323

Plata, “Tupac Amaru y los comuneros de Socorro,” Correo de los andes 2, 5 (Bogotá, 1980): 25–32; on the spread to what became Venezuela, see Jorge Guillermo Llosa, “Bicentenario de la rebelión de Túpac Amaru,” Academia Nacional de la Historia 64 (1981): 303–308. William B. Taylor, Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion in Colonial Mexican Villages (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1979), 120. Jacobsen, Mirage, 107–148, on the multiple challenges to the wool economy in the altiplano. Orellana, “Relación del cacique de Puno,” in Documentos para la historia de la sublevación de José Gabriel de Tupac-Amaru, Cacique de la provincia de Tinta en el Perú, ed. Pedro de Angelis (Buenos Aires: Imprenta del Estado, 1836), 80– 81; Augusto Ramos Zambrano, Puno en la rebelión de Túpac Amaru (Puno: Universidad Nacional Técnica del Altiplano, 1982), 213–214. Orellana, “Relación del cacique,” 80– 85; Ramos Zambrano, Puno, 152–162; María Eugenia del Valle de Siles, Historia de la rebelión de Túpac Catari, 1781– 1782 (La Paz: Don Bosco, 1990), 46–51. Orellana, “Relación del cacique,” 86– 87. Ibid., 87. Ibid., 92; parts of this account, by Orellana, are also found in Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista, 1:423– 426. Orellana, “Relación del cacique,” 91– 98. Letter from Jáuregui to King Charles III, May 20, 1781, quoted in Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 259. Ibid. Orellana, “Relación del cacique,” 99–100. Ibid., 100. Del Valle, May 25, 1781, in Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista, 2:458– 460. I build from the detailed account in AGI, Lima, Leg. 1040, José Lagos to Areche, Santa Rosa, May 25, 1781. Ibid. Ibid. Orellana, “Relación del cacique,” 100. Lagos himself continued to criticize the junta’s decision. In a June letter to Areche, he claimed that the kingdom was in worse shape than before the capture of Tupac Amaru. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1040, Lagos to Areche, June 18, 1781. Orellana, “Relación del cacique,” 101. Ibid., 102. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1041, Jáuregui to Gálvez, August 4, 1781, citing del Valle’s July 4 letter. Alejandro Seraylán Leiva, Historia general del ejército Peruano, III, 2, “Campañas militares durante la dominación española” (Lima: Comisión Permanente de Historia del Ejército del Perú, 1981), 736; the quote is from a September 28, 1781, letter from del Valle to José de Gálvez, also in AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 63.

324

Notes to Pages 195–204

48. Carlos Daniel Valcárcel, Túpac Amaru el revolucionario (Lima: Moncloa– Campodónico, 1970), 138–139. 49. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1041, Jáuregui to Gálvez, August 4, 1781, citing del Valle’s July 4 letter. 50. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1040, del Valle to Jáuregui, dated July 12, 1781; for another version of the same quote, see AGI, Lima, Leg. 1041, Jáuregui to Gálvez, August 4, 1781, citing del Valle’s July 4 letter. 51. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1040, Areche to Jáuregui, June 29, 1781. 52. Ibid. 53. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1040, letter from del Valle to Jáuregui, July 12, 1781. On the term, see Walter Laqueur, “The Origins of Guerrilla Doctrine,” Journal of Contemporary History 10 (July 1975): 341–382. 54. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1040, del Valle to Viceroy Jáuregui, July 12, 1781. 55. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1041, letter from May 29, 1782. On del Valle’s death, Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 467. I assume that Gaceta refers to the Gaceta de Madrid; I am not sure about the Cádiz periodical. 56. These letters are found in several legajos in Seville. For a summary, see Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 262–267, who lists the Areche correspondence, brimming with conspiratorial excess. 57. Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista, 1:386–388, anonymous quote from 386. 58. Diego Cristóbal to Fray Miguel Morán, Azángaro, August 19, 1781. Lilly Library, Indiana University. 59. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1044, “Relación de los sucesos,” June 25, 1781. Also found in AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 63. 60. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1044, “Relación de los sucesos.” 61. Letter from the priest José Eustaquio Caravedo, quoted in Lewin, La rebelión de Túpac Amaru, 290. 62. Ibid. 63. Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 329–330, highlights the more critical versions; Lewin the less critical; see La rebelión de Túpac Amaru, 491– 492.

10. The Pardon and the Cease-Fire 1. For one version, see Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Study of France, Russia, and China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). 2. Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista: Rebeliones de Indios en Sur América, la sublevación de Tupac Amaru. Crónica de Melchor de Paz, ed. Luis Antonio Eguguren, 2 vols. (Lima: n.p, 1952), 2:164, letter from don Juan Bautista de Zavala, November 3, 1781. English translation in Ward Stavig and Ella Schmidt, eds., The Tupac Amaru and Catarista Rebellions: An Anthology of Sources (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett Publishing, 2008), 231–234. 3. Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista, 2:165.

Notes to Pages 204–207

325

4. María Eugenia del Valle de Siles, Historia de la rebelión de Tupac Catari, 1781– 1782 (La Paz: Don Bosco, 1990), 5–7. 5. Del Valle de Siles documents these tensions well. See del Valle de Siles, Historia de la rebelión de Tupac Catari, 24–31. See also Sergio Serulnikov, Revolution in the Andes: The Age of Túpac Amaru (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2013), 154–158. On Andrés Tupac Amaru and Gregoria Apaza, including some love letters, see Teodosio Imaña Castro, “De lo pasional en la vida de los caudillos indígenas de 1780,” Historia y Cultura 1 (1973, La Paz): 125–142. 6. Serulnikov, Revolution in the Andes, 156; the quotes are from an anonymous account translated in Stavig and Schmidt, The Tupac Amaru and Catarista Rebellions, 235–237 (with slight modification). 7. Stavig and Schmidt, The Tupac Amaru and Catarista Rebellions, 235–237. See also del Valle de Siles, Historia de la rebelión de Tupac Catari, 267–280. Other accounts include Sebastián Segurola’s diary, “Diario de los sucesos del cerco de la ciudad de La Paz en 1781,” in Colección de documentos relativos a la historia de Bolivia, 2nd ed., ed. Vicente Ballivián y Rojas (La Paz: Municipalidad de la Paz, 1977). 8. Boleslao Lewin, La rebelión de Túpac Amaru (Buenos Aires: SELA, 1967), 521. 9. Lewin, La rebelión de Túpac Amaru, 515–526; del Valle de Siles, Historia de la rebelión de Túpac Catari, 305–333; Serulnikov, Revolution in the Andes, 157–159. 10. Serulnikov, Revolution in the Andes, 158, uses the term “collapse.” 11. Serulnikov, Revolution in the Andes, 157–159; del Valle de Siles, Historia de la rebelión de Tupac Catari, 317–329. 12. Death sentence against Tupac Katari in Stavig and Schmidt, The Tupac Amaru and Catarista Rebellions, 241–242. Sisa had been captured months before her husband, in July 1781. 13. “Tratado Celebrado con Miguel Tupac-Amaru,” November 3, 1781, in Documentos para la historia de la sublevación de José Gabriel de Tupac-Amaru, Cacique de la provincia de Tinta en el Perú, ed. Pedro de Angelis (Buenos Aires: Imprenta del Estado, 1836), 130–132; Eulogio Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui (II) virrey interino del Perú (Pamplona, Spain: Diputación Foral de Navarra, Institución Príncipe de Viana, 1979), 344–349; Juan José Vega, Túpac Amaru y sus compañeros, 2 vols. (Cuzco: Municipalidad del Qosqo, 1995), 2:447– 449. The fact that Miguel was tried in Buenos Aires rather than Lima probably saved him from the death penalty. Doubts remain about whether he was Micaela’s half- or full brother. 14. Jáuregui to Gálvez, December 16, 1782. Cited to AGI, Lima, Leg. 1044, by Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 339; I found this document in Leg. 1041. 15. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1085; Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, offers a timeline, 309–311. 16. Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 236.

326

Notes to Pages 208–214

17. Ibid. 18. Ibid., 237, 379–380. 19. See Areche’s sharp letter against del Valle. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1041, Areche to Gálvez, October 16, 1781. Other important documents are found here as well. 20. See his detailed letter, Areche to Gálvez, October 3, 1781, in which he called the pardon “exorbitant.” AGI, Lima, Leg. 1040. On this correspondence, see Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 317. 21. CDIP, II, 3, 104–120, “Manifiesto que hace, José del Valle,” September 30, 1781, quote from 119–120. 22. José del Valle to Diego Cristóbal Tupac Amaru, Cuzco, October 10, 1781. Transcription found in John Rowe Archive, Spanish American Mss. Box 5, Yale University Library (Bingham Collection, from F. Pérez de Velasco). 23. Azángaro to del Valle, October 18, 1781, in Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista, 2:153–154. 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid. 26. AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 75, letter from Moscoso to Diego Cristóbal, November 3, 1781. 27. Diego Cristóbal Tupac Amaru to Bishop Moscoso, November 5, 1781, in Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista, 2:167–171, quote on 168. 28. Ibid.; for kuraka letter, see Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 341–342. 29. Diego Cristóbal Tupac Amaru to Bishop Moscoso, November 5, 1781, in Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista, 2:167–171. 30. Diego Cristóbal Tupac Amaru to Moscoso, Azángaro, January 3, 1782, in Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista, 2:171–172. 31. Valdez declared that the bishop was the rebel leader’s “life, shadow, asylum, compass, guide, anchor, and pastor.” Letter from don Antonio Valdez to Bishop Moscoso, Azángaro, January 3, 1781, in Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista, 2:172–174, quote from 173. 32. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1041, letter from Diego Cristóbal to del Valle, December 5, 1781. He complained about the abuses of the Choquehuanca clan. 33. RAH, Colección Mata Linares, Mata Linares to Gálvez, December 1, 1782, Lima, 75V. 34. See letter from Moscoso to Diego Cristobal, November 17, 1781, Cuzco, in Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista, 2:154–155. 35. Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 348–350. 36. Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista, 2:155–160, account by Ramón de Arias, December 11, 1781. 37. Ibid., 157. 38. Ibid. See also Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 355. 39. Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 359. 40. Zudaire summarizes a variety of documents, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 350–355.

Notes to Pages 214–222

327

41. Letter from don Juan Bautista Zavala, La Paz, January 15, 1782, in Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista, 2:186. He states that Arias was “fooling himself” in believing that clemency would pacify Indians. 42. Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista, 2:174–175. 43. Ibid. 44. For the offer of support if he returned to arms, see Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 362. 45. “Relación de lo acaecido en el rendimiento de Diego Cristóbal Tupac Amaro, el que se efectuó a diez del dia 26 de enero de 1782” (Sicuani, January 29, 1782). This document was published in Monumentos literarios del Perú, colectados por Don Guillermo del Rio, ed. Guillermo del Rio (Lima: Imprenta de los Huérfanos, 1812). I am using the much-improved transcription by John Rowe, kindly granted to me by his widow, Pat Lyon. 46. “Relación de lo acaecido.” 47. Jorge Cornejo Bouroncle, Sangre andina: Diez mujeres Cuzqueñas (Cuzco: H. G. Rozas, 1949), 174–192; Vega, Túpac Amaru y sus compañeros, 2: 413– 416 provides brief biographical sketches. 48. See Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 366. We know little about Condori. 49. “De un vecino del Cuzco a un Ministro de Madrid,” September 1, 1782, in La verdad desnuda o las dos faces de un obispo, ed. Francisco Loayza (Lima: D. Miranda, 1943), 152–186, quote from 184. See also Leon Campbell, “Rebel or Royalist? Bishop Juan Manuel de Moscoso y Peralta and the Tupac Amaru Revolt in Peru, 1780–1784,” Revista de Historia de América 86 (1978): 135–167, for the context—these were part of a campaign against Bishop Moscoso. Cachuas or Kashwas is the name of a common group dance in Carnival. 50. Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 368. 51. Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista, 2:206–207, Bando (edict), February 20, 1782.

11. The Rebellion in Limbo 1. CDIP, II, 3, 240–242, “Bando Publicado en Lima a 20 de febrero.” 2. L. E. Fisher, The Last Inca Revolt, 1780–1783 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1966), 370; Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista: Rebeliones de Indios en Sur América, la sublevación de Tupac Amaru: Crónica de Melchor de Paz, ed. Luis Antonio Eguiguren, 2 vols. (Lima: n.p, 1952), 2:187–190, “Carta que refiere.” 3. Juan Bautista Tupac Amaru, Cuarenta años de cautiverio (memorias del inka Juan Bautista Túpac Amaru), ed. Francisco A. Loayza (Lima: D. Miranda, 1945), 29. 4. Ibid., 29–30. 5. Tupac Amaru, Cuarenta años. 6. Quoted in Eulogio Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui (II) virrey interino del Perú (Pamplona, Spain: Diputación Foral de Navarra, Institución Príncipe de Viana, 1979), 403, 405.

328

Notes to Pages 222–228

7. These activities, however, did not indicate that rebels were abandoning the fight, one that they undertook in the name of the king and Church. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1041, letters from Salcedo to Moscoso, March 20, 1782, and February 26, 1782. 8. Ibid. 9. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1041, Salcedo to Moscoso, February 26, 1782. 10. Ibid. It is not clear who took the position. 11. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1041, Valdés to Moscoso, February 26, 1782, Checacupe. Markham includes Aronis in a list of kurakas loyal to the Crown in the uprising. Clements R. Markham, Travels in India and Peru (London: John Murray, 1862), 147. 12. The “Informe Relacionado del Cabildo” incorrectly contends that Diego Cristóbal accompanied del Valle in his campaign to La Paz. CDIP, II, I, 141–142. 13. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1041, letter from del Valle, March 6, 1782, Sicuani. 14. For example, see AGI, Lima, Leg. 1041, letter by Francisco de Cuellar, June 22, 1782, Sicuani. 15. Augusto Ramos Zambrano, Tupamaros, Vilcapazas, Catarias, Ingariconas (Arequipa: Instituto de Estudios Pukara, 2009), 79– 88; Lizandro Luna, El Puma Indomable: la sublevación indígena de 1780 en Azángaro (Puno: Editorial Samuel Frisancho Pineda, 1982). 16. Zudaire, Don Agustín Jáuregui, 406. 17. Cited in Boleslao Lewin, La rebelión de Túpac Amaru (Buenos Aires: SELA, 1967), 701–702. More information in AGI, Lima, Leg. 661, esp. letter from Jáuregui to King Charles III, February 23, 1782. 18. Sebastián Segurola, “Diario de operaciones,” in Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista, 2:241–255, quote from 243. 19. Ibid., 244. 20. Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 374–376, summarizes this well. For the Moscoso letter, see 375, from AGI, Lima, Leg. 661. Resistance continued in the Yungas to the north until August 1782. See Lewin, La rebelión de Túpac Amaru, 702. 21. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1045, letter from Diego Cristóbal to Salcedo, November 5, 1782. 22. Juan José Vega, Túpac Amaru y sus compañeros, 2 vols. (Cuzco: Municipalidad del Qosqo, 1995), 2:414. He provides no proof. 23. Fisher, The Last Inca Revolt, 373–374; documentation can be found in AGI, Lima, Leg. 1045. 24. Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 411. 25. Carlos Daniel Valcárcel, Túpac Amaru, precursor de la independencia (Lima: UNMSM, 1977), 143–144. 26. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1045, del Valle to Jáuregui, August 8, 1782; Fisher, The Last Inca Revolt, 373–374. 27. See Kathryn Burns’s wonderful article on this, “Amor y rebelión en 1782: El caso de Mariano Tupac Amaru y Mariana Mejia,” Histórica 16 (1992):

Notes to Pages 228–232

28. 29.

30. 31. 32.

33. 34. 35.

36. 37. 38. 39.

40. 41.

42. 43.

329

131–176. The 1776 law had been modified in the late 1770s. On Salcedo’s views, see AGI, Lima, Leg. 1045, letter from Moscoso to Jáuregui, September 30, 1782; also AGI, Lima, Leg. 1045, letter from Avilés to “Exc. Señor,” October 1, 1782. Burns, “Amor y rebelión,” 152–176, esp. 168–170. Ibid., 144–145. More documentation can be found in AGI, Lima, Leg. 1045, particularly a letter from Bishop Moscoso to Viceroy Jáuregui, September 30, 1782. Examples includes AGI, Lima, Leg. 1045, Avilés to “Ex. Señor,” October 1, 1782. The letters refer to zurrón de plata or leather satchels. Letter from Jáuregui to Areche, March 2, 1781, Lilly Library, Indiana University. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1091, “Duplicado de los autos,” has extensive documentation. Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 408– 409. In a May 8, 1782, letter to Bishop Moscoso, Diego Cristóbal refers to the accusations about his hidden wealth and excessive income. Melchor de Paz, Guerra separatista, 2:237–240. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1040, Areche to Gálvez, October 3, 1781. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1041, Areche to Gálvez, May 29, 1782. Ibid., marginal note dated February 10, 1783. On documents such as these and how people have read (and scribbled on) them, see Kathryn Burns, Into the Archive: Writing and Power in Colonial Peru (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2010). AGI, Lima, Leg. 1041. These are marginal comments to a letter from Jáuregui to Gálvez, March 23, 1782, the comments dated February 27, 1783. Juan Manuel Moscoso y Peralta, Inocencia justificada contra los artificios de la calumnia (Lima: Biblioteca Nacional, in press), 67. Ibid., 60– 67. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1045, Moscoso to Jáuregui, July 16, 1782, Urubamba. Here Moscoso mentions the complaints by Andrés about Franciscan friars who were overcharging Indians. The Franciscans discounted the complaints, contending that their work was more necessary than ever. Del Valle chimed in that he thought “separation by force” would be counterproductive because it might lead people, that is, Indians, to believe that the amnesty and thus the cease-fi re was over. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1045, letter from Moscoso to Jáuregui, July 16, 1782; del Valle to Jáuregui, August 20, 1782. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1045, Salcedo to Jáuregui, July 28, 1782. Although Areche learned of the change in a February 1782 letter and handed over the position to Escobedo in June 1782, he remained in Peru until March 1783. For short biographies of Areche and Escobedo, see John R. Fisher, Bourbon Peru 1750–1824 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2003), 162–166. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1045, letter from Avilés to Jáuregui, May 23, 1782. Tupac was often spelled Tupa and Amaru alternated with Amaro. Ibid., letter from Baulen to Jáuregui, October 20, 1782.

330

Notes to Pages 232–242

44. Ibid., letter from Baulen to Jáuregui, October 1, 1782. 45. Ibid., letter from Bishop de Campos to Jáuregui, June 11, 1782, La Paz. 46. Ibid., letter from Luis Orós to General don Raimundo Necochea, September 27, 1782. 47. Ibid., letter from Gabriel Avilés to Viceroy Jáuregui, September 8, 1782. 48. Ibid., letter from Avilés to Jáuregui, December 28, 1782. The incident occurred earlier. 49. Cited in Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 406– 407, from August 31, 1782. 50. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1045, testimony by Necochea, July 22, 1782, Catca. 51. Ibid. This report came from Necochea’s assistant Dr. Don Feliciano Masías. 52. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1045, Necochea, July 22, 1782, Catca. For more, see Mata Linares, “Informe de Mata Linares a Gálvez sobre los delitos de Diego y Mariano Tupac Amaru, Andrés Mendigure y algunos de sus secuaces,” May 31, 1783, Cuzco. RAH, Colección Mata Linares, #1585. 53. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1045, document from September 6, 1782, apparently from Necochea. 54. Ibid., testimony of Fernando Iguilus, Urcos, 1782, n.d. 55. Ibid., testimony of Felipe Mendoza. Mendoza could not sign his name, a sign that he was certainly among the lower ranks of Spaniards. 56. Ibid., testimony of Esteban Grados. 57. Ibid., letter from Avilés to Viceroy Jáuregui, Cuzco, September 8, 1782. 58. Ibid. 59. Ibid., testimony of Esteban Torres. 60. Ibid., testimony of Miguel de Zegarra, who had been Quispe’s secretary. 61. Ibid., testimony of Francisco Laime, indio regidor of Muñacpata, June 15, 1782. 62. For example, the new Visitador and Superintendent of the Royal Treasury, Jorge Escobedo y Alarcón, questioned Diego Cristóbal’s sincerity in early September 1782. Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 408. 63. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1045, Avilés to Jáuregui, December 20, 1782. 64. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1045, testimony of Don Andrés Navarro. 65. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1041, Jáuregui to Gálvez, December 16, 1783. 66. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1041, “Expediente sobre las asignaciones.” 67. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1045, testimony of Vicente Ninavilca. 68. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1045, testimony of Lorenzo Condori, who saw Guaygua’s head exhibited on a pike in Ocongate. 69. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1045, testimony of Necochea, January 30, 1783; Matías Arce, a Spaniard from Marcapata; and Felipe Monsón, a Spaniard, who mentions the sash. 70. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1045. In the trial they reviewed the papers found in Simón Condori’s pockets. One document was dated May 3, 1781; this seemed legitimate. The others were from 1782, after the cease-fi re.

Notes to Pages 242–246

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71. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1045, testimony of Lorenzo Condori, Ocongate, February 15, 1783. 72. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1045, testimony of Mariano Tupac Amaru.

12. Ordered by the Catholic King 1. These documents are reviewed in Eulogio Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui (II), virrey interino del Perú (Pamplona, Spain: Diputación Foral de Navarra, Institución Príncipe de Viana, 1979), 413– 416. 2. Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 416. For a summary of the viceroy’s actions, see his May 5, 1783, letter to Gálvez, in Juan Bautista Tupac Amaru, Cuarenta años de cautiverio (memorias del inka Juan Bautista Túpac Amaru), ed. Francisco A. Loayza (Lima: Imp. D. Miranda, 1945), 112–115. 3. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1045, Mata Linares to José de Gálvez, May 31, 1783. He summarizes the different charges and the benefits of ridding Peru of the Tupac Amaru. 4. Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 417. 5. See CDIP, II, 1, “Informe Relacionado del Cabildo,” esp. 144–147. 6. For the list, see Ward Stavig and Ella Schmidt, eds., The Tupac Amaru and Catarista Rebellions: An Anthology of Sources (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett Publishing, 2008), 136–138; Pedro de Angelis, ed., Documentos para la historia de la sublevación de José Gabriel de Tupac-Amaru Cacique de la Provincia de Tinta, en el Perú (Buenos Aires: Imprenta del Estado, 1836), 176–178. 7. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1096, letter from Escobedo to Gálvez, April 16, 1783. 8. Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 424. See also Boleslao Lewin, La rebelión de Túpac Amaru (Buenos Aires: SELA, 1967), 708, who condemns the trial as a charade. 9. CDIP, II, 1, 142–144, “Informe Relacionado del Cabildo,” is one summary. 10. Eulogio Zudaire provides the most detailed account of this period and he passionately defends Mata Linares and others. Most historians censure them. 11. Sentence in Stavig and Schmidt, The Tupac Amaru and Catarista Rebellions, 161–164. Trial in AGI, Lima, Leg. 1046. The appeal by Diego Cristóbal’s lawyer is found in CDIP, II, IV, 222–224. Sebastián Medina y Arenas, Protector de Naturales, argued that the punishment was too cruel and that Diego Cristóbal was not of sound mind. He also requested that Marcela Castro have her tongue cut after her death, not before. His appeal was rejected and he was fi ned 100 pesos. On Moscoso and Salcedo, see Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 436– 437. 12. De Angelis, Documentos, 188. 13. Their trial can be found in ADC, Colección Vega Centeno, bolsa 4, July 17, 1783. See also de Angelis, Documentos, 184–187 and 188–191. 14. I have used the sentence as well as the summary of the execution by Agustín Chacón y Becerra. De Angelis, Documentos, 184–187, 188–191. The

332

15. 16. 17. 18.

19.

20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

26.

27.

28. 29. 30. 31.

Notes to Pages 246–251 sentence in English can be found in Stavig and Schmidt, The Tupac Amaru and Catarista Rebellions, 161–164. Stavig and Schmidt, The Tupac Amaru and Catarista Rebellions, 162–164. De Angelis, Documentos, 184–187, 188–191. AGI, Charcas, Leg. 598, letter from Avilés and Mata Linares to Jáuregui, August 1, 1783. Zudaire summarizes these events and the flurry of orders and reports that crossed the Andes and the Atlantic Ocean in Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 439– 441. The real orden can be found in AGI, Lima, Leg. 666. Cited in Núria Sala i Vila, “La rebelión de Huarochirí de 1783,” Entre la retórica y la insurgencia, ed. Charles Walker (Cuzco: CBC, 1995), 273–308, quote from 281. Sala i Vila, “La rebelión,” 295. On the Paititi, see Alberto Flores Galindo, In Search of an Inca: Utopia and Identity in the Andes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 32–36, 49–52. Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 430– 434. Sentence in CDIP, II, 3, 402. RAH, Mata Linares Collection, documents collected March 4, 1784, letter from March 1783. CDIP, II, 3, 385, Mata Linares to Necochea, May 14, 1783. Necochea answered two days later from Urcos, showing the speed of communications. CDIP, II, 3, 386–389, Mata Linares to Jáuregui, May 31, 1783. Zudaire presents this as a sign of his humanity. Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 428. Mata Linares and other authorities knew that imprisoning hundreds of indigenous people and others accused of being accomplices would be impractical and unproductive. I do not believe that this makes it a humane decision. Six people had been executed on July 19; the seventh person sentenced, Isidro Aguirre, had died in jail. Philippe Seiler, “Response to Rebellion in Bourbon Spain: Colonial Revolt and Imperial Reactions, 1763–1783” (PhD diss., Tulane University, 1995), 246–248. Seiler builds on data provided by Scarlett O’Phelan Godoy in Un siglo de rebeliones anticoloniales: Perú y Bolivia 1700–1783 (Cuzco: CBC, 1988), 308–320. See CDIP, II, 3, 393, for a list of those sent to Lima. Loayza provides the breakdown of the ages; Zudaire differs and also argues that only six were chained. See Tupac Amaru, Cuarenta años, 128–130; Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 444– 445. Tupac Amaru, Cuarenta años, 36. Tupac Amaru, Cuarenta años, 32–37. Loayza uses the expression “via crucis” in his summary of the trip, 111–140. CDIP, II, 3, 396, Commander Jacinto Iriarte, November 5, 1783, Camino Real. Tupac Amaru, Cuarenta años, 131–132, letter from Capellán Pablo Lopes to Viceroy Jáuregui, November 4, 1783.

Notes to Pages 253–258

333

32. CDIP, II, 3, 398– 401, letters from Jacinto Iriarte to Viceroy Jáuregui, November 12, 1783, Ica, and November 28, 1783, Lima. 33. CDIP, II, 3, 425– 427, letter from Viceroy Jáuregui to Gálvez, April 1, 1784, Lima. For the sentence see AGI, Lima, Leg. 1046, Testimonio del Cuaderno, 9. 34. “San Pedro de Alcantara,” www.abc.se/~pa/mar/spa.htm (accessed 5/10/11). 35. Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 466. For a list of passengers, see CDIP, II, 3, 427– 428. 36. For two lists, see CDIP, II, 3, 464– 467. 37. Tupac Amaru, Cuarenta años, 40– 43. 38. CDIP, II, 3, 464– 466, “Relación de los Pasageros,” February 25, 1785; Tupac Amaru, Cuarenta años, 148–149. 39. Lewin, La rebelión de Túpac Amaru, 712. His figures are from Juan Bautista Tupac Amaru. 40. Tupac Amaru, Cuarenta años, 43– 49. 41. “El hundimiento de San Pedro Alcántara,” www.todoababor.es/datos_docum/hundimiento-sanpedro.htm (accessed 1/6/12). 42. CDIP, II, 3, 460– 466, has a variety of documents about the chaotic arrival in Spain and the confusion after the shipwreck. 43. “San Pedro de Alcantara,” www.abc.se/~pa/mar/spa.htm. 44. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1049, September 7, 1787, petition from Castillo de Santa Catalina. Reprinted in Tupac Amaru, Cuarenta años, 78–79. 45. CDIP, II, 3, 495, document from July 29, 1792, Madrid. See also documents in AGI, Charcas, Leg. 597, request from Miguel Tupac Amaru, Cádiz. Unfairly and even viciously, Zudaire claims that he died of hypochondria. Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 449. 46. Tupac Amaru, Cuarenta años, 50. 47. Ibid., 50–56. 48. Ibid., 56– 60. 49. Bartolomé Mitre, Historia de Belgrano y de la Independencia Argentina, 3 vols. (Buenos Aires: F. Lajouane, 1887), 2:420– 424. 50. More needs to be known about Juan Bautista’s long life. See Eduardo Astesano, Juan Bautista de América: El Rey Inca de Manuel Belgrano (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Castañeda, 1979); Alfredo Varela, Memorias del hermano de Túpac Amaru escritas en Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires: Editorial Boeda, 1976). 51. Charles F. Walker, Smoldering Ashes: Cuzco and the Creation of Republican Peru, 1780–1835 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999), 59– 61. 52. Ibid. 53. RAH, Colección Mata Linares, #1593, May 31, 1783. 54. On late colonial ideologues and their views on Indians, see Pablo Macera, Trabajos de historia, 4 vols. (Lima: Instituto Nacional de Historia, 1977). Also

334

55. 56.

57.

58.

59. 60. 61. 62. 63.

64.

65.

66. 67.

Notes to Pages 258–262 important are David T. Garrett, Shadows of Empire: The Indian Nobility of Cuzco, 1750–1825 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Alcira Dueñas, Indians and Mestizo in the “Lettered City:” Reshaping Justice, Social Hierarchy, and Political Culture in Colonial Peru (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2010). Clements R. Markham, A History of Peru (Chicago: Charles H. Sergel and Company, 1892), 205. Quechua can be spelled different ways. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1041, letter from Jáuregui to Gálvez, June 20, 1781; more is found in AGI Lima, Leg. 1046. For a good overview, see David Cahill, “El visitador general Areche y su campaña iconoclasta contra la cultura andina,” in Visión y símbolos: Del Virreinato criollo a la república peruana, ed. Ramón Mujica Pinilla (Lima: Banco de Crédito, 2006), 85–111. For the history of Quechua debates in eighteenth century, see Bruce Mannheim, The Language of the Inka since the European Invasion (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991); Kenneth Andrien, “The Bourbon Reforms,” and Adrian J. Pearce, “Reindigenization and Native Languages,” in History and Language in the Andes, ed. Paul Heggarty and Adrian J. Pearce (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 113–133, 135–162, as well as other essays in this important collection. Eunice Joiner Gates, “Don José Antonio de Areche: His Own Defense,” HAHR 8, 1 (1928): 14– 42; for a biographical synopsis see John R. Fisher, Bourbon Peru, 1750–1824 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2003), 162–163. AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 29, Antonio Samper to Sr. Marqués Caballero, 1807. RAH, Mata Linares, #1606, informe de Mata Linares, June 30, 1781. Ibid. AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 29, Mata Linares to Jáuregui, June 30, 1783. AGI, Lima, Legs. 1055 and 1056; Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 453– 455. There is one mention of the friendship with Palacios in CDBRETA, I, 526, testimony from don Esteban Zuñiga. David Cahill, “A Liminal Nobility: The Incas in the Middle Ground of Late Colonial Peru,” in New World, First Nations, ed. David Cahill and Blanca Tovías (Brighton, United Kingdom: Sussex Academic Press, 2006), 169– 195, quote from 181. I am relying on the excellent article by Cora Bunster and Ana María Lorandi, “El fantasma del criollismo después de la rebelión de Túpac Amaru,” Histórica 30, 1 (2006): 99–135. The key information can be found in AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 29. See also Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 450– 457; David Cahill, “Repartos ilícitos, y familias principales en el sur andino: 1780– 1824,” Revista de Indias 182– 83 (1988): 453– 455, and Cahill, “A Liminal Nobility,” 179–182, for information on the family itself. Lorandi and Bunster, “El fantasma del criollismo,” 113. Summarized nicely in Ana María Lorandi, “Sospechas de sospechas, de sospechas: memorial de un militar ilustrado a fi nales del siglo XVIII,” Fronteras de la historia 14, 1 (2009): 128–148, which analyzes the document

Notes to Pages 263–272

68. 69. 70.

71.

72. 73. 74.

335

produced by Juan Manuel Fernández Campero, a Ugarte brother-in-law, about their case. Lorandi and Bunster, “El fantasma del criollismo.” See also Lorandi, “Sospechas de sospechas”; Cahill, “A Liminal Nobility.” Juan Manuel Moscoso y Peralta, Inocencia justificada contra los artificios de la calumnia (Lima: Biblioteca Nacional, in press). CDBRETA, 1, 545–569, quote from 545. This includes key sections from AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 74. The verdad desnuda was not published until 1943 but could be found in Spanish archives. CDIP, II, 1, 459– 650; Francisco Loayza, La verdad desnuda o dos faces de un obispo (Lima: D. Miranda, 1943). Here the author appears as “Un imparcial religioso,” but it was clearly by Eusebio Balsa de Berganza. Gustavo Bacacorzo, Don Juan Manuel de Moscoso y Peralta (Lima: UNMSM, 1982), 72–77; Zudaire has a different view on Moscoso and the Madrid court. Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui, 489– 490; Charles Walker, “Prólogo,” in Mosoco y Peralta, Inocencia justificada. CDBRETA, II, “Descargos del Obispo del Cuzco Juan Manuel Moscoso y Peralta,” which is from AGI, Cuzco, Legs. 77 and 78. For more on Moscoso, see Walker, “Prólogo.” Spanish fascists executed the poet Federico García Lorca in Viznar in 1936. Moscoso y Peralta, Inocencia justificada, 89. This is testimony from Dr. D. Manuel de Mendieta, Déan de la Santa Iglesia del Cuzco.

Conclusion 1. AGI, Lima, Leg. 1088, letter from Moscoso to Jáuregui, June 8, 1782. 2. RAH, Mata Linares Collection, #1571, Carta de Mata Linares a Gálvez, sobre la expedición al Cuzco para someter a Tupac Amaru, January 18, 1781, Huamanga. 3. The literature on change in the late eighteenth century is vast. For a sharp overview, see Gabriel Paquette, Enlightenment, Governance, and Reform in Spain and its Empire, 1759–1808 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 4. AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 65, letter to Sr. Intendente Conde Ruiz de Castilla, June 28, 1798. 5. AGI, Cuzco, Leg. 29, Moscoso to Areche, April 13, 1781. 6. See the detailed explanation by Juan Carlos Estenssoro, “La plástica colonial y sus relaciones con la gran rebelión,” Revista Andina, 9, 2 (1991): 415– 439. 7. I thank Professor Tom Cummins for alerting me to this and sharing images. 8. Charles F. Walker, Smoldering Ashes: Cuzco and the Creation of Republican Peru, 1780–1835 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999), 72–77. 9. Cited in Eulogio Zudaire, Don Agustín de Jáuregui (II) virrey interino del Perú (Pamplona, Spain: Diputación Foral de Navarra, Institución Príncipe de Viana, 1979), 441.

336

Notes to Pages 272–273

10. This is based on Walker, Smoldering Ashes. 11. Heraclio Bonilla and Karen Spalding, “La independencia en el Perú: las palabras y los hechos,” in La independencia en el Perú (Lima: IEP, 1981) (originally published 1972), 70–114. 12. This has been a leading issue in Andean studies in recent years. Among numerous monographs in English, see Florencia Mallon, Peasant and Nation: The Making of Postcolonial Mexico and Peru (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Cecilia Méndez Gastelumendi, The Plebeian Republic: The Huanta Rebellion and the Making of the Peruvian State, 1820–1850 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2005); Mark Thurner, From Two Republics to One Divided: Contradictions of Postcolonial Nation-making in Andean Peru (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1996). Creoles did not turn their back completely on the Andean past. In an important survey of the image of the Inca, 1780–1900, Natalia Majluf underlines creoles’ appropriation of Incanism. She shows the fascination with Inca music and history in the fi nal colonial decades in Lima and beyond, thus demonstrating the short shelf life of Areche and Mata Linares’s anti-Andean measures. At least in symbolic or historic terms, the gap between the Andes and the coast was not insurmountable. Natalia Majluf, “De la rebelión al museo: Genealogías y retratos de los incas, 1781–1900,” in Los incas, reyes del Perú, ed. Natalia Majluf (Lima: Banco de Crédito, 2005), 252–319. See also Núria Sala i Vila, “De Inca a indígena: Cambio en la simbología del sol a principios del siglo XIX,” Allpanchis 35–36, no. 2 (1991); Rebecca Earle, The Return of the Native: Indians and Myth-Making in Spanish America, 1810–1930 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2007). 13. A point made and probably exaggerated by Bonilla and Spalding, “La independencia en el Perú,” 97. 14. Curiously, Incanism was much stronger in Rio de la Plata-Argentina, where some independence leaders sought to name an Inca as monarch and, as seen, received Juan Bautista Tupac Amaru. This is curious because the Inca Empire barely spilled into what became northwestern Argentina. Late colonial Incanism in Peru was comparatively muted, even subterranean. Majluf, “De la rebelión al museo”; Jesús Díaz Caballero, “Incaismo as the First Guiding Fiction in the Emergence of the Creole Nation in the United Provinces of Río de la Plata,” Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 17, 1 (2008): 1–22. 15. José Baquíjano y Carrillo, “Plan del estado de las provincias de América,” La causa de la emancipación del Perú (Lima: Instituto Riva-Agüero, 1960), 174–206. 16. On the all-important 1814 rebellion, see Luis Miguel Glave, “A Historical and Cultural Perspective on the 1814 Revolution in Cuzco,” in New Worlds, New Nations: Native Peoples of Mesoamerica and the Andes Under Colonial Rule, ed. David Cahill and Blanca Tovías (Brighton, United Kingdom: Sussex Academic Press, 2006), 196–217.

Notes to Pages 274–276

337

17. By this I mean they tempered their criticism and demands, but certainly did not recede into an apolitical cave. As recent waves of historiography have shown, indigenous voices ripple through the archives— but as errant taxpayers, troublemakers, or victims and rarely as three-dimensional subjects. 18. CDBRETA, V, III, “Informe,” November 3, 1783, Madrid, 613– 614. 19. CDBRETA, V, III, “Conclusiones a las que llegó en Madrid la Junta de Ministros sobre sentencias por la rebelión y otras,” 635. 20. Gregorio Funes, Ensayo de la historia civil de Buenos Aires, Tucumán y Paraguay, 2nd ed. (Buenos Aires, Calle del Perú 171, 1856), 2:229–230. 21. Antonio Ferrer del Rio, Historia del reinado de Carlos III en España (Madrid: Imprenta Matute, 1856), vol. 3, chap. 5; Miguel Lobo, Historia general de las antiguas colonias hispano-americanas desde su descubrimiento hasta el año mil ochocientos ocho (Madrid: M. Guijarro, 1875), vol. 3. See also Jean P. Clement, “La opinión de la corona española sobre la rebelión de Túpac Amaru,” Acta Litteraria Academiae Scientarum Hungaricae 23 (1981): 325–335. 22. Scholars disagree about whether the leader of this massive slave revolution was referring to the Incan Empire (some thought that the indigenous people of Hispaniola, the Taino, descended from the Incas) or the Cuzco rebels. Jean Fouchard, “Pourquoi Haiti? Ou quand et par qui fut choisi de redonner a notre patrie le nom Indien d’Haiti?” Revue de la Societe Haitienne D’Histoire et de Geographie 42, 145 (1984): 13–17 (the link to Peru is discussed at 14); Laurent Dubois, “Avenging America: The Politics of Violence in the Haitian Revolution,” in The World of the Haitian Revolution, ed. David Geggus and Norman Fiering (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 2009), 122. David Geggus is skeptical; see his Haitian Revolutionary Studies (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002), 214. 23. Luis Camnitzer, On Art, Artists, Latin America, and Other Utopias, ed. Rachel Weiss (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2009), 73. 24. AGI, Estado, Leg. 65, no. 1, letter of June 4, 1790, to Governador de Guyana. 25. Antonio Cisneros, Postales para Lima (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Colihue, 2001), 35 (my translation). 26. The Tupamaros had three sources for the name: Tupac Amaru II; Uruguayan gauchos who fought the Spanish in the early nineteenth century and assumed the name Tupamaros; and a popu lar song by a 1960s Uruguayan folk group, the Olimareños. Camnitzer, On Art, 73. 27. Tayannah Lee McQillar and Fred Johnson III, Tupac Shakur: The Life and Times of an American Icon (Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2010), 33–34; Jasmine Guy, Afeni Skakur: Evolution of a Revolutionary (New York: Atria Books, 2005). 28. Jeremy Prestholdt, “The Afterlives of 2Pac: Imagery and alienation in Sierra Leone and Beyond,” Journal of African Cultural Studies 21, 2 (2007): 197–218; the quote is from 197, fi rst paragraph. I also learned from Lindon Barrett, “Dead Men Printed: Tupac Shakur, Biggie Small, and Hip-Hop

338

29.

30.

31.

32.

33.

34.

Notes to Pages 276–278 Eulogy,” Callaloo 22, 2 (Spring, 1999): 306–332. The literature on Tupac Shakur is massive; I found these two particularly insightful on his legacy. For a strong overview of Velasco’s use of Tupac Amaru, see Leopoldo Lituma Agüero, El verdadero rostro de Túpac Amaru (Perú, 1969–1975) (Lima: UNMSM, 2011); see 54–55 for the invented slogan. Lituma Agüero, El verdadero rostro, and Anna Cant, “ ‘Land for Those Who Work It’: A Visual Analysis of Agrarian Reform Posters in Velasco’s Peru,” Journal of Latin American Studies 44, 1 (2012): 1–37. Reflecting the interest in the 1960s and 1970s in peasant insurgencies and anticolonialism, historians used these newly available sources and began to publish widely on the uprising. They debated whether Tupac Amaru was truly a precursor of independence or had a vastly different project, and also inserted him into the leftist debates of the era, asking whether he was a “reformist” or “revolutionary.” This book has highlighted this irony: while the city’s energetic defense against his siege preceded his downfall, Tupac Amaru has become a favorite son of the city of Cuzco, one of its preferred symbols. For a fascinating history of the monuments and the incessant debate, see Helaine Silverman, “The Space of Heroism in the Historic Center of Cuzco,” in On Location: Heritage Cities and Sites, ed. D. Fairchild Ruggles (New York: Springer, 2012), 89–112. See also José Tamayo Herrera, “La historia del monumento a Túpac Amaru” (Lima: CNBRETA, 1980). The poetry is far superior to the prose. See poems by José María Arguedas, Pablo Neruda, Alejandro Romualdo, and Antonio Cisneros, to name a few; I have not fi nished any of the several novels about the uprising. The 1984 Cuban-Peruvian fi lm Tupac Amaru is entertaining. Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004); Geggus and Fiering, The World of the Haitian Revolution; Ada Ferrer, “Haiti, Free Soil, and Antislavery in the Revolutionary Atlantic,” American Historical Review 117, 1 (2012): 40– 66. Cited in Alberto Gálvez Olaechea, Desde el país de las sombras: Escrito en la prisión (SUR, Casa de Estudios del Socialismo, 2009), 62– 63. Originally from Juan Granda, Los pequeños zorros: relatos de niños ayacuchanos (Lima: Radda Barnen, 1990).

Acknowledgments

Arnie Bauer and Andrés Reséndez read this book chapter by chapter, improving my arguments and writing. Carlos Aguirre, Kathryn Burns, Mark Carey, Peter Guardino, Ari Kelman, and Kathy Olmsted provided thoughtful feedback. Antonio Acosta, María José Fitz, and Luis Miguel Glave brightened research in Seville, while Marta Irurozqui and Víctor Peralta guided me in Madrid. In Peru, I always count on Iván Hinojosa, and I also want to mention the support of Donato Amado, Ruth Borja, Marco Curatola, Javier Flores Espinoza, Pedro Guibovich, Margareth Najarro, Lucho Nieto, Ramón Mujica, Scarlett O’Phelan Godoy, Aldo Panfichi, and Claudia Rosas. I want to extend a special note of gratitude to Patricia Lyon. Just after I embarked on the project, she called to invite me to review the late John Rowe’s library. I found treasures there and also learned a great deal in my conversations with Pat. I have presented sections of this book in numerous places. Special thanks for their suggestions to John Coatsworth, Jeremy Adelman, Michael Laffan, Margaret Chowning, Víctor Maqque, Karen Graubart, Shane Greene, Tom Cummins, Gary Urton, Christian Fernández Palacios, Michael Gonzales, Kristin Huffi ne, Dain Borges, Emilio Kouri, Fernando Purcell, Pablo Whipple, Cristian Castro, Paulo Drinot, Anne More, Ivonne del Valle, and Barbara Fuchs. Bruce Castleman, Carolyn Dean, Ramiro Flores, Stella Nair, Margaret Sankey, David Silbey, Stefano Varese, Janett Vengoa, and Adam Warren answered random questions on topics ranging from Ceuta to total war. I’ve had wonderful students in Davis, including my summer class in Cuzco. I particularly want to thank Mark Dries, Griselda Jarquin, Jeremy Mikecz, Elizabeth Montañez Sanabria, and José Ragas for their research assistance. In Davis, my pelotón keeps me sane— thanks Ari, Pablo, Simon, and Tim for the rides and much more. Zoila Mendoza is my in-house Cuzco consultant and daily inspiration. She and my children, María and Sammy, joined me in Sevilla for six months in 2007 and have followed this book with patience and even love. They are my world. My mother passed away while I was writing the book. I think she would have liked it. John, Mary, and Maggie are always supportive and helped in

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Acknowledgments

numerous ways. While in Lima I count on the Mendoza clan. Abrazos to doña Zoila, Miguel, Chachi, Martha, Pocha, Chicho, Uba, Kelly, and my wonderful nieces and nephews. I also want to mention the late Lucrecia Moeremans, mi mamá tucumana, who meant so much to me. Kathleen McDermott and Andrew Kinney gracefully guided me through the editing process at Harvard University Press while Pamela Nelson oversaw production and James Cappio did a masterful job at copyediting. I want to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their thorough reports. It was a pleasure working with Isabelle Lewis on the maps; Christina Acosta did another fi ne job on the index. In my search for images, numerous people came to my aid, including Carlos Aguirre, Nino Bariola, Tom Cummins, Luis Miguel Glave, Natalia Majluf, José Ragas, Pilar Ríos and TJ Rushing. Antonio Cisneros’s poem “Tupac Amaru Relegated” is from Postales para Lima (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Colihue, 2001), p. 35. The translation is my own. Finally, I want to acknowledge the four late historians to whom I am dedicating this book, all wonderful people and inspiring scholars: Alberto Flores Galindo, Friedrich Katz, Enrique Tandeter, and my beloved suegro, don Eduardo Mendoza Meléndez (1911–2013).

Index

Abancay, 20, 87, 103, 105, 132, 271 Acomayo, 71, 100, 128, 137 Acora, 102, 172, 176, 191 Acos, 70, 78, 100, 101 Acuña, José, 155, 193, 194 Afro-Peruvian slaves, 49–51 alcabala, 4, 25, 48, 87, 125 Alvarez y Nava, don Joseph, 44– 45 Amaru-Katarista alliance, 169, 209 American Revolutionary War, 16, 250, 277 Andes, 3– 6, 9, 14, 16–17, 18–39, 65, 88– 89, 109, 130, 132, 138, 148, 163, 180, 183–184, 208, 259, 264; Catholic church in, 68; colonial, 1, 68, 211, 270; southern, 5, 6, 23, 41, 56, 215; under Spanish rule, 2, 46, 181, 196, 203, 268–269, 272, 277; uprising in, 10, 209, 234 Anta, 105, 121, 131, 142, 186 Apaza, Gregoria, 172, 201, 204, 206 Apaza, Julián. See Tupac Katari, Andrés Inca Apurímac Bridge, 105, 313n24 Areche, José Antonio de, 3, 24–26, 30–32, 34, 57, 83– 84, 88– 91, 102, 111, 162–167, 184, 190, 202, 207–208, 214, 217–218, 221, 227–233, 265, 268–269, 274; and abolition of Quechua, 258–260; correspondence with del Valle, 196–199; correspondence with Tupac Amaru, 144–148; decree of, 131; efforts with Mata Linares, 91, 151–153, 155–156, 158, 167, 212; and Madrid court, 229–231, 259; petition to, 30; reforms of, 34, 208, 260, 263, 270;

replacement of, 232, 256; sentencing of Tupac Amaru, 162, 166, 207 Areta, Antonio, 74 Arias, Ramón, 210, 212–214, 224, 226 Arriaga, Antonio de, 1–5, 16, 34–37, 48, 57– 64, 69, 82– 85, 125, 160, 165; capture of, 60, 81; excommunication of, 37; execution of, 1–17, 27, 34–37, 40, 41, 49, 51, 60, 63, 64, 66, 81– 83, 88, 145–147, 160, 162, 263–264 Asillo, 127, 186, 211 Ausangate, 110, 241, 246 Avilés, Gabriel de, 88– 89, 192–194, 221, 232, 235, 237–240, 243, 247, 249; arrival of, 116; forces of, 88 117, 119, 121, 126, 186; support for, 261 Ayaviri, 93, 95, 97, 102 Aymara, 169, 171–173, 185, 204; language of, 15 Azángaro, 34, 48, 92, 93, 101, 111, 135, 184, 187, 190, 199, 200, 205, 207, 208, 210, 216–217, 224, 232, 241, 246; kurakas from, 94, 96, 115, 211, 213; rebels from, 191; uprising in, 242 Banda, Mariano, 58– 62, 159, 164 Bastidas, Antonio, 35, 45, 136, 144, 165, 166 Bastidas, Micaela, 2, 3, 14, 20–23, 30, 34, 54– 61, 63– 64, 77, 78– 81, 94, 98–103, 106–108, 110, 112–113, 122–124, 128, 131, 135–136, 144, 147, 149, 152–154, 158–161, 165–166, 168, 172, 177, 187, 189, 196, 198, 206–208, 217, 254, 262, 264, 268, 273; background of, 20–21; capture of, 150, 182–183, 196, 198, 207;

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Index

Bastidas, Micaela (continued) correspondence of, 40, 70, 73, 75, 77, 79, 87, 98, 99–102, 122; excommunication of, 68–74; letters to, 75, 77, 79, 99, 144, 149; portrait of, 8; as rebel leader, 21, 38, 43, 45, 51, 55–57, 60, 65, 66, 85, 86– 87, 92, 100, 107–108, 110, 135–136, 144; representations of, 270–271, 277; role in uprising, 4–5, 9, 12, 20, 22, 40– 41, 64, 135, 181–182; trial and execution of, 68, 70, 152–154, 158–159, 165–166, 180, 207, 255, 258; twentiethcentury depiction of, 23 Bastidas, Miguel, 182, 183, 204, 205–206 Battle of Sangarará, 51–54, 85 Baulen, Matías, 193, 194, 232, 235, 236, 272 Bejarano, Ildefonso, 9, 61, 81– 83, 85, 117 Bermúdez, Felipe Miguel, 2, 57, 63, 70, 143, 146, 149, 155 Betancur, don Diego Felipe de, 26–27, 30 Bourbon Reforms, 5, 23, 26, 32, 38, 39, 118, 208, 261, 269 Cabrera, Fernando, 44, 51, 53, 59 Cailloma, 93, 143, 148 Calca, 73, 104–105, 118, 137, 223, 231, 246; bridge of, 105; highlands, 132; massacre, 107 Calca y Lares, 192, 216 Callao, 27, 198, 247, 249, 251, 253, 254 Campos, Gregorio Francisco de, 232–233 Capetillo, Julián, 261–262 Carabaya, 19, 92, 93– 94, 101, 135, 174–175, 187, 190, 191–192, 200, 246; corregidors of, 92– 94, 96 Carabuco, 226; mayor of, 97 Castelo, Antonio, 115, 116, 124, 128, 136–137, 165, 166 Castro Puiucahua, Marcela, 222, 245–246 Catholic Church, 6, 9, 13, 21, 26, 35–38, 49, 65– 85, 109, 117, 147, 162–166, 196, 220, 234, 259, 261, 265, 268–270 Chamaca, 75, 112 chapetones, 49, 97, 148, 171, 209 Charcas, 6, 86, 168, 169, 172, 175, 176, 179, 185, 194, 206, 209, 212; insurgents in, 171 Charles III (King of Spain), 23, 32, 35, 39, 48, 49, 118, 155, 184, 209, 227, 230, 247, 250, 253, 255, 269, 274; death of, 263; Great Cross of, 264; saint day of, 2

Charles IV, 263 Chaves, Antonio, 77, 79 Chayanta, 107, 169, 171, 205 Choquehuanca, Diego, 48– 49, 94, 96, 97, 127, 184, 186, 213 Chucuito, 94, 101, 111, 172, 175–177, 214, 225; siege of, 181, 190–191, 193–194 Chumbivilcas, 55, 65, 70, 76, 98, 99, 124, 143–144, 148; corregidor of, 92; province of, 71, 192 Cisneros, Antonio, 275 Cisneros, Francisco, 58, 59, 61– 62, 120, 146, 154, 161, 164 Cochabamba, 34, 205 Collao, the, 15, 16, 92– 95, 107, 110–111, 115, 124, 133, 144, 172–173, 182, 184–185, 188, 193, 195–196; Indians in, 98; rebels in, 168 Combapata, 135, 143, 149–150, 222 Condorcanqui, Diego Felipe, 229 Condori, Manuela Tito, 217, 222, 227, 244 Condori, Simón, 241–242, 244 Condorpuse, Andrés, 241, 244–245 Coporaque, 35, 36, 91 corregidor, 1– 6, 11, 13, 16, 22, 24–26, 29, 32, 35–38, 45– 49, 51, 53, 56–59, 62, 64, 66, 69–73, 78–79, 82, 85, 86, 89, 91, 92– 96, 98, 103, 111, 117–119, 121, 125, 133, 148, 154, 160, 169, 171, 173, 175, 178, 184, 190, 192–194, 200, 203–207, 210–214, 216–218, 223, 225, 227, 228, 232, 235–238, 241, 244, 246, 250, 251, 256, 259, 261–264, 267, 272; intrusion of, 40; mistreatment of Indians, 145–147, 157–158, 211, 261; office of, 237; property of, 44; system of, 215; “thieving,” 45, 78, 209 Cotabambas, 131, 134, 149 Council of the Indies, 1, 133, 163 Creole, 2, 4, 11–12, 20, 31, 35–36, 38, 40, 46, 53, 56–57, 60– 64, 66, 84, 91, 94, 95, 100, 101, 119, 123, 132, 136, 159, 170, 171–173, 177, 189, 191, 203, 215, 258–265, 271–273; as “class traitor,” 171; as clergy, 84; of Cuzco, 20, 262, 265; followers of Tupac Amaru, 20, 56, 63– 64, 153–154, 159, 172, 213, 215, 261; of Lima, 272; pardoned by rebels, 201; power of, 26, 31, 262; and priests, 99, 261, 264–265, 268; sentencing of, 164; as society, 62– 63; supporters of rebels, 63, 123, 260–261

Index Cuzco, 1, 3, 6, 10–22, 25–28, 31–38, 40, 44, 47–58, 60– 61, 65–76, 81– 83, 86– 94, 96, 98–105, 130–151, 152–157, 161, 164, 165, 168–169, 172–179, 180–182, 184–186, 189, 190, 192–200, 202–204, 206–207, 209–212, 238–244, 246–247, 249–251, 256, 259–265, 267–273, 275–277; authorities in, 26, 53, 69, 70–71, 82, 93, 100, 150, 196, 229, 249, 256, 260, 275; as “a Babylon,” 269; bishop of, 9, 36, 48; cathedral of, 19, 66, 68, 109, 111; Catholic Church in, 66; city council of, 81, 87– 88, 104, 111, 117, 125, 129, 188, 277; conspiracies in, 34–35; corregidor of, 51, 232; countryside of, 68, 85; execution in, 181; hard-liners in, 237, 243; as Inca center, 110; indigenous people of, 5, 11, 26, 182; officials in, 257; plaza of, 100, 109, 137, 143, 153, 164–165, 258; population of, 16, 184, 244, 259; royalists in, 87, 129, 133, 268; siege of, 109–129, 135, 136–137, 141, 164, 173, 216, 261, 271; terror in, 107–108, 117; Tupac Amaru base in, 7, 11; uprising in, 259; war council of, 51, 111 de la Puente, Vicente, 36–37 del Valle, José, 88, 90– 91, 102, 131, 133, 135, 136, 139–144, 147, 148–151, 179, 183–190, 192–200, 202, 206–211, 213–217, 220–221, 223–224, 226, 227, 229–231, 236, 238; commanders of, 193; correspondence of, 190; death of, 198; failed campaign of, 202; role in Tupac Amaru’s execution, 209; troops of, 141–143, 187–189 Dominicans, 27, 67 Escarcena, José Esteban, 47, 58, 59, 61, 164 Escobedo y Alarcón, Jorge, 230, 232, 243, 245, 250, 256, 261, 263 Figueroa, Juan Antonio “el Gallego,” 3, 58, 59, 82, 123, 125, 164 Flores, Ciriaco, 247, 249 Flores, Ignacio, 179, 203, 204, 232 Franciscans, 27, 67 Gallegos, don Justo, 80, 113, 220 Galleguillos, Manuel, 57– 60, 62, 100, 159, 164

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Gálvez, José de, 23–24, 31, 32, 90, 133, 148, 198, 208, 218, 229, 249, 261, 263 Garcilaso de la Vega y Vargas, Sebastián (“El Inca”), 28–29, 92, 209, 258–259, 270; Royal Commentaries of the Incas (Comentarios Reales), 28, 29, 92 Guaygua, Santos, 241, 244 Guirior, Manuel de, 30, 32, 37, 39 Gutiérrez, Ramón, 102–103 Gutiérrez Sonco, Pascual, 97, 98 Haitian Revolution, 16, 274, 277, 278 Huamanga, 142, 156, 161, 164, 251 Huarochirí, 30, 31, 160, 247, 249, 253 Huatanay River, 110, 152, 166, 228 Inca(s), 1, 6, 15–16, 21–22, 29, 109–110, 129, 184, 188, 245, 256, 269, 271, 275; blood of, 49; conquest of, 68, 134; descendants of, 14, 64, 67, 154, 162, 185, 229, 259, 271; empire of, 67, 118, 172, 259, 271, 273; genius of, 16; heir of, 147; heritage of, 19, 119, 137, 258–259; idolatry of, 92; image of, 31, 172, 270–271, 336n12; king of, 33, 35, 185, 204, 236, 256, 277; language of, 15, 110; last of, 27–31, 33–34; memory of, 148, 163, 258, 260, 268–269, 271; name of, 204; period of, 55; return of, 6, 33, 38–39, 57, 172, 209; romantic depiction of, 29; royalty, 1, 18, 25, 33, 49, 118, 262; ruler, 6, 18, 92, 109, 277; stories of, 28, 92 Incanism, 273, 336n12, 336n14 Jáuregui, Agustín de, 32, 39, 74, 88, 91, 111, 113, 148, 195, 196–199, 202, 214, 217, 226, 229–232, 239–240, 243, 245, 249; signing of amnesty, 207–208 Jesuits, 18, 20, 27, 67, 160; church in Juli, 176; college of, 111, 128; holdings of, 153; monastery of, 51 Jujuy, 16, 189 Juli, 172, 175, 176, 177, 191, 200, 226 Katari, Dámaso, 170 Katari, Nicolás, 170 Katari, Tomás, 169–170 Katari Rebellion, 180, 277 Katarista(s), 6, 107, 169–176, 178–179, 203, 260, 270; leadership of, 175–176; movement of, 172; rebellion of, 180,

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Katarista(s) (continued) 277; revolutionaries of, 169; uprising of, 172, 267 kuraka, 1–3, 5, 11, 13, 16, 18–21, 24, 26–27, 31, 34, 35, 37, 40, 44, 48– 49, 52–54, 55–57, 60, 62, 67, 72, 73, 87, 91, 92, 95, 99–105, 115, 121, 127, 129, 132, 136, 137, 146, 169, 176, 177, 179, 183, 184, 186, 210, 211, 213, 223, 227, 236, 241, 258, 260, 262, 273; abolition of, 163; as abusive, 186; of Acos, 101; of Anta, 131; as antirebel, 100; of Azángaro, 94, 96, 213; banning of, 274; of Chinchero, 104, 107, 131; as ethnic, 38, 63, 269; of Lampa, 49; office of, 25, 104; of Pampamarca, 18, 27, 154; of Pisac, 35; of Pitumarca, 141; role of, 270; school for, 13, 240; southern, 96; support of, 207; of Surimana, 18, 27; of Tungasuca, 18, 27; of Yanaoca, 81 kurakazgo, 24, 26, 101 Lagos, José de, 193–195 Laisequilla, Francisco, 105, 116, 143–144, 192 Lampa, 92, 93– 97, 98, 101, 103, 111, 135, 188, 191, 200, 212, 214, 224; kuraka of, 49; population of, 91 Landa, don Tiburcio, 52–54 Langui, 99, 150–151, 183, 185 La Paz, 34, 55, 92– 94, 110, 150, 161, 171–173, 177, 183, 184–190, 201, 202, 212, 220; bishop of, 96, 232; as bishopric, 200; royalists in, 225–226; sieges of, 177–179, 180–181, 193–194, 198–199, 202–210, 226 Lauramarca, 137, 223, 235, 236, 237, 238, 246 Layo, 80, 99, 113, 183 Lima, 239–242, 243–245, 247, 250–251, 253, 254, 256, 262–263, 265, 269; authorities in, 275; creoles in, 272; high court of, 263; Plaza Mayor of, 249 Livitaca, 65, 73, 75, 100, 150 López de Sosa, Antonio, 1, 2, 3, 9, 18, 34, 52, 80– 83, 85, 227, 261, 265 Luna, Juan de, 75–76, 79 Machu Picchu, 15, 120, 124 Madrid, 1, 48, 82, 90– 91, 148, 151, 160, 220, 230, 259, 263, 268–270, 274; authorities in, 3; court in, 23–24, 218,

230–231, 234, 247, 258, 274; inner circle of, 84; memos to, 181, 202, 229 Madrid, Bernardo de la, 3, 59, 117, 123, 164 Mamani, Isidro, 175–176, 181–182, 191 Maras, 34, 102, 103, 121 Marcapata, 152–157, 160, 233, 237, 239, 241–242, 244–246 Maruri, José de, 115, 127, 186, 261 Mata Linares, Benito, 34, 83– 84, 91, 161, 164, 167, 212, 240, 244, 263–266, 268–271, 274; as prosecutor, 245–247, 249–250, 256–258; as reformer, 259–261 Mendigure, Andrés (Tupac Amaru), 151, 166, 182, 217, 220, 228, 235–237 Mendigure, Pedro, 182, 228 mita, 2, 4– 6, 26, 30, 45– 46, 48–50, 56, 82, 86, 148, 269–270; abolition of, 95, 145 Molina, Francisco, 58, 61, 159, 164 Mollinedo, Juan de, 53–54 Morán, Juan Bautista, 95, 199 Moscoso y Peralta, Manuel, 9, 36–37, 51, 73, 74, 77, 81– 85, 87– 89, 100, 102–105, 107, 111, 116–118, 120, 122–123, 125–126, 128–129, 135, 139, 145, 198, 200, 208, 210, 211–217, 222, 226, 227–233, 238, 246, 257, 261, 263–266, 268–269; excommunication of Tupac Amaru, 68–71; as prosecutor; 75, 79; supporters of, 123; trials against, 271 Necochea, Raimundo, 225, 232, 235–236, 241, 244, 249 neo-Inca, 29, 57 Ninavilca, Vicente, 240–241 Noguera, Andrés, 78, 94, 96 Noguera, María Rosa, 18 Noguera, Simón, 59 Oblitas, Antonio, 4, 165 obrajes, 4, 43, 44, 103, 148 Ocongate, 103, 137, 200, 223–224, 233, 235–239, 247 Ocoruro, 115, 119, 120, 128 Orcoguaranca, Juan de Dios Tupa, 32, 33 Orellana, Joaquín de, 93, 173–176, 190–195, 200, 232, 246 Oropesa, 26, 27, 52, 54, 115 Ortigoza, Diego, 57, 58, 59, 62, 164, 244 Oruro, 43; uprising in, 171–172, 205

Index Palacios, José de, 61, 161, 261–262 Pampamarca, 1, 13, 15, 18, 20, 21, 27, 34, 40– 64, 67, 82, 115, 154, 161, 166, 180, 210, 220, 221, 223, 233–235, 247; martyr of, 275; parish of, 3, 80; priest of, 80, 227 Paruro, 71, 100–101, 102, 121, 125, 134, 137, 149, 187 Parvina, Tomás, 137–138, 143–144, 149 Paucartambo, 76, 83, 96, 100, 101–103, 133–134, 137, 192, 200, 212, 246; lowlands of, 65; river of, 14 Peru, 5– 6, 10–11, 16–17, 23, 27, 29, 31, 40, 48–51, 68, 71–72, 83, 88, 91, 110, 152, 156, 161, 165, 168, 179, 181, 194, 199, 208, 215, 230–233, 243, 249, 250, 253; Andes of, 6, 16; border with Bolivia, 14, 191; colonial, 20, 58, 227; demography of, 132; fate of, 203; history of, 233; Inca-dominated, 27; independent, 265–266; Lower, 206; multilingual, 148; population of, 203; postcolonial, 265; revolution in, 24, 255; southern, 101, 207, 243; Spanish rule in, 151, 220, 258; Upper, 6, 15, 19, 25, 26, 39, 43, 47, 55, 86, 98, 138, 144, 168–169, 173–175, 177, 186, 190, 194, 199, 205, 227, 260; uprising in, 168–169, 264; Viceroyalty of, 10, 23, 38, 162, 193; wealth in, 84 Peruano, 253–254 Pisac, 35, 88, 103, 116, 137; bridge of, 104 Pitumarca, 141, 217, 223, 241 Plaza Mayor, 27, 143, 153, 164, 249 Pomacanchi, 43– 44, 54, 59, 234; Indians of, 78 Ponce, Ramón, 70, 143, 174–175 Potosí, 15, 25, 30, 59, 92, 110, 161, 169, 179, 190, 196, 203, 205, 209, 267; mita to, 2, 4–5, 45; silver mines of, 1, 19, 23, 26, 38, 86, 168, 177 provincias altas, 15, 65, 222 Pucacasa, 140, 141–143, 148 puka kunka, 33, 55, 61, 106, 176, 199, 235, 236, 239 Pumacahua, Mateo, 73, 96, 104, 107, 116, 121, 131, 132, 137–138; forces of, 141, 185, 186; troops of, 106, 149 Puno, 6, 15, 16, 45, 55, 85, 92– 93, 94, 98, 108, 143, 144, 174–176, 181, 184, 186, 187, 202, 207–208, 210–211, 226, 256; attack on, 172; population of, 193; siege

345

of, 190–199; refugees of, 196; residents of, 192, 194, 196, 200 Puquín, 120, 122, 124, 125, 187 Qosqo. See Cuzco Quechua, 4– 6, 15, 18, 20–21, 25, 28, 33, 38, 46, 55, 60, 72, 91, 97, 110, 120, 122, 138, 141, 144, 146, 148, 166, 238, 259–260, 268–270; abolition of, 259; as area, 65; as culture, 269; Indians in, 20, 110, 173, 222; Masses in, 69, 269; movement, 203; people of, 138, 172, 259; as region, 222; speakers of, 1, 20, 41, 110, 122, 146, 204 Quiquijana, 41, 44, 46, 74, 100, 101 142–143 Quispe, Alejo, 235–236 Quispe, Andrés, 223–224, 239 Quispe Tupa Inga, Joseph Gran, 33 Quispicanchi, 41, 51, 53, 55, 78, 101, 192, 225, 235, 237 Rio de la Plata, 25, 94, 101, 179, 189, 190, 199, 244, 256 Rodríguez, Carlos, 1, 18, 77–78, 81 Rosas, Nicolás, 121, 131 Sahuaraura Titu Atauchi, José Raphael, 83, 129, 145, 147; Estado del Perú, 83 Sahuaraura Titu Atauchi, Pedro Ramos, 52, 145–146 Salcedo, Francisco, 207, 216–217, 221–223, 227–228, 232, 238, 244, 246, 249 San Francisco de Borja School, 18, 153 Sangarará, 40, 51–54, 58, 60, 64, 68, 73, 74, 78, 85, 86– 88, 96, 125, 145–146, 150, 162; church of, 69, 107; rebels in, 54; victory in, 65– 66, 86 San Pedro de Alcántara, 253–254 Santa Rosa (town), 94, 95, 174, 185, 198, 216 Santo Tomás, 72, 138, 143 Saylla, 116, 136 Segurola, Sebastián, 226, 232 Sicasica, 171, 172, 199 Sicuani, 34, 63, 74, 77, 136, 185, 188, 215, 216–217, 228, 232–233, 244, 247; church in, 227; events in, 219; fort of, 227; signings in, 220, 222 Sinayuca, 37, 91, 92 Sisa, Bartolina, 172, 206

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Index

Sorata, 184, 202, 204–205, 229, 233; siege of, 200, 226 soroche, 88, 89, 140, 185 Spain, 19, 23–29, 31, 35, 38, 56, 67, 82– 84, 198, 206, 209, 215, 221, 229, 231, 232, 243, 247, 253–255, 259, 263–264, 268–269, 272–273, 275; deportations to, 260; empire of, 1; golden era of literature, 28; northern African outpost of, 255; Peruvian independence from, 7; role of the Church in Spain, 84; trade with, 25; wars in Italy, 104; war with England, 194 Spanish rule, 2, 5, 13, 33, 38, 47, 109, 148, 151, 161, 164–167, 168, 181, 220, 258, 270 Surimana, 13, 18, 21, 27, 81, 101, 115, 154, 161, 166 Tapia, don Buenaventura, 79 Tinta, 2, 26, 34, 35, 47, 52, 55, 57, 58, 63, 101, 111, 123, 125, 132, 135, 139, 142, 143, 144, 149–151, 153, 155, 161, 166, 180, 195, 200, 212, 251; corregidor of, 216, 221; district of, 18; people of, 185; rebels of, 131, 171 Titicaca, Lake, 6, 7, 8, 10–12, 14–15, 19, 48, 49, 76, 86, 91– 92, 95, 97, 140, 168–169, 171–181, 183–191, 196, 198, 200, 202–203, 205, 206, 208, 218, 220, 224–226, 242, 271; area, 11, 13, 65, 93– 94, 96, 130, 135, 144, 168, 172–174, 176, 177, 179–181, 190–191, 196, 202, 206, 210, 212, 214, 219, 223, 225; corregidors of, 212, 218; inhabitants of, 184; largest city of, 93 Tito Condori, Manuela, 217, 222, 244, 245, 253 Toledan Reforms, 163 Toledo, Viceroy, 18, 269–270 Tucumán, 189, 244, 274 Tungasuca, 1–3, 13, 15, 18, 27, 38, 41, 45, 48, 51, 63, 70, 74, 76, 81, 82, 87, 91, 94, 98, 99, 100, 102–103, 107, 110, 112, 123, 135, 154, 166, 180, 221, 223, 232–233, 244, 246; base in, 40, 54– 61, 64, 65, 86, 87; priest of, 52, 61; rebels in, 103, 104, 113 Tupac Amaru I, 6 Tupac Amaru II, José Gabriel, 1–17, 18–19, 21–22, 25–27, 29, 30–39, 40– 64,

65– 85, 86– 88, 91–108, 110–129, 130–151, 169–170, 168–179, 180–192, 198–200, 209, 212, 221, 229, 231–244, 246–247, 249, 260–266, 267–278; biography of, 5; capture of, 154, 183, 198, 202–203, 207, 230, 261; clan of, 227–229, 233, 237, 244, 258, 273; death of, 166, 170, 172, 180; duties as kuraka, 1, 18, 183; excommunication of, 9, 68–74; 75– 85, 86– 88, 102, 107, 118, 137, 162, 164, 177, 180–192; followers of, 150, 168, 175, 180, 205, 225; inner circle of, 50, 56–57, 131, 146, 152, 163, 166, 183, 198, 245, 258; legacy of, 182, 267–278; movement of, 35, 41, 50, 56–58, 62– 64, 66, 72, 91, 122, 147, 169, 181, 203; rebel base of, 27, 35, 45, 54– 61, 73, 86, 102, 107, 110, 112, 116, 215–216, 222–223, 227, 234, 241, 247–248; rebels of, 173, 256, 263, 278; trial and execution of, 152–167, 181, 192, 196, 203, 207, 209, 247; troops of, 53, 94, 95, 97, 98, 99, 113, 115, 116–117, 121, 124, 126, 128, 131, 135–136, 143–144, 149, 177; uprising of, 4–17, 20–23, 29, 31–35, 39, 40– 49, 52, 55–58, 61– 64, 66, 68–70, 72–75, 83, 85, 88– 90, 93, 97, 98, 101, 106–107, 111, 113, 118, 123, 128, 130, 132, 136–138, 143, 146, 151–152, 155, 157–162, 166, 168–170, 172–174, 179, 181, 184–185, 189, 256, 264, 277 Tupac Amaru, Andrés, 182–184, 200–205, 213, 217, 220, 223, 227–231, 233, 235–242, 244, 247, 253–254, 271 Tupac Amaru, Cecilia, 182, 211, 215, 244 Tupac Amaru, Diego Cristóbal, 7, 48, 115–117, 126, 143, 147, 151, 220–230, 257, 262–264, 271; correspondence of, 172–173, 210–211; death of, 199–200, 207–209, 246–247, 249; defeat of, 105; forces of, 104, 137–138, 166, 191–192, 199; as leader of rebellion, 7, 63, 65, 103, 105, 153, 179, 181–185, 187, 189, 195, 198; offer of amnesty to, 208–217, 219, 230–234; sentencing of, 245, 249; widow of, 253 Tupac Amaru, Fernando, 254 Tupac Amaru, Francisco, 165 Tupac Amaru, Hipólito, 166 Tupac Amaru, Juan Bautista, 43, 156, 157, 221, 250–251, 253–256

Index Tupac Amaru, Marcos, 182 Tupac Amaru, Mariano, 21, 99, 151, 153, 166, 182–184, 201, 210, 220, 227–229, 230–231, 238–242; arrest of, 244; death of, 254; sentencing of, 253; trial of, 247 Tupac Amaru, Miguel Condorcanqui Usquionsa, 18 Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), 62, 276 Tupac Katari, Andrés Inca, 171–173, 175–176, 178, 199, 204–206, 211; background of, 171, 173; camps of, 174; commanders of, 191, 204; execution of, 211–215; followers of, 205; forces of, 191, 202–204; movement of, 183, 189, 204; name of, 171; uprising of, 200 Tupa Inca (Felipe Velasco Tupa Inca Yupanqui), 247, 249 Tupamaros, 17, 275, 276 Tupa Orcoguaranca, Juan de Dios, 32–33

Valcárcel, Joaquín de, 116, 193–194, 217 Velasco Alvarado, Juan, 7, 276 Velille, 74, 75, 112 Verdad desnuda o las dos fases de un Obispo, La, 83, 263, 265 Verdejo, Diego, 143, 165 Verganza, Eusebio Balza de, 37, 83, 263 Vilca Apaza, Pedro, 143, 181, 186, 200, 224–226 Vilcabamba, 26, 134 Vilcanota River, 103, 104, 141, 142, 149, 150 Vilcanota Valley, 15, 49, 65, 68, 73, 86, 102, 107, 110, 111, 115, 116, 130, 151, 175, 184, 216, 220, 224, 238, 242, 247, 257; control of, 128; military engagement in, 142 Villalta, Manuel, 87, 140, 149 Villalva, Simón Ximénez, 108, 261 Vivas, Antonio, 193, 194 War of Independence, Peru, 7, 51, 277

Ugarte, Gaspar de, 193–194, 261–266 Urbiola, don Miguel de, 93– 94 Urcos, 101, 116, 144, 149, 151, 153, 235 Urcos Bridge, 103, 142, 247 Urubamba, 101, 102, 143, 148, 192; bridge of, 117; river of, 105; valley of, 137

347

Yanaoca, 1–2, 21, 77; church of, 78; kuraka of, 81 Yauri, 35, 36, 91 Zuñiga, Esteban, 34