Rebellion of Túpac Amaru II: A Visual History

The Rebellion of Tupac Amaru II (1780-1783) was the largest indigenous uprising in Spanish America. Jose Gabriel Condorcanqui, a kuraka of Tinta descended from the last Inca, seized and executed the corregidor Antonio de Arriaga on 4 November 1780 in protest at forced sales, tribute and the mita, and marched on Cusco with tens of thousands of Quechua and Aymara followers, winning at Sangarara. Failing to take Cusco, he was betrayed and captured in April 1781, tortured and killed with his wife Micaela Bastidas and family on 18 May 1781. The revolt spread under his cousin Diego Cristobal and, in Upper Peru, Tupac Katari, who besieged La Paz for months; it was crushed by 1783 with mass executions. About 100,000 died, and Spain banned Inca dress, language and titles.

When it was fought: the era ribbon

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Deaths in the Great Andean Rebellion

Timeline of the Rebellion of Tupac Amaru II

1. 1780
   Arriaga executed; SangararaNovember.
2. 1781
   Siege of Cusco failsJanuary.
3. 1781
   Tupac Amaru capturedApril.
4. 1781
   Execution in Cusco18 May.
5. 1781
   Tupac Katari besieges La Paz; executed November
6. 1782
   Diego Cristobal pardoned
7. 1783
   Diego Cristobal executed; rebellion over

The kuraka's revolt

Condorcanqui, a mule-train owner educated by Jesuits who had petitioned Lima in vain against the mita and the repartimiento (forced purchase of goods) and for recognition of his Inca descent, took the name Tupac Amaru after the last Inca executed in 1572. He hanged Arriaga at Tungasuca and proclaimed the abolition of the mita, the corregidores and the sales tax in the name of the king, freeing slaves; his army beat a Spanish force at Sangarara on 18 November, burning them in the church. Micaela Bastidas ran supply and urged him to march on Cusco at once.

Cusco and the executions

Tupac Amaru's delayed siege of Cusco in December 1780-January 1781 failed against loyalist kurakas, creoles and reinforcements from Lima; he retreated south and was defeated at Checacupe and handed over by a follower in April 1781. Areche's sentence of 18 May 1781 in Cusco's main square made him watch his wife, son and lieutenants killed, cut out his tongue and tried to quarter him with four horses; when his body would not part he was beheaded and dismembered, the parts sent to the towns of the revolt.

Katari and the aftermath

Diego Cristobal fought on in the south while in Upper Peru the Aymara leader Tupac Katari (Julian Apaza) and his wife Bartolina Sisa besieged La Paz for 184 days in 1781, starving 10,000 to death, and Tomas Katari's followers rose in Chayanta; all were captured and killed with the same brutality. Diego Cristobal accepted a pardon in 1782 and was executed anyway in 1783. Spain abolished the repartimiento and the corregidores, created intendants, and banned the Comentarios reales of Garcilaso, Inca clothing, quipus and the Inca title. Creoles who had watched Indians rise learned distrust that shaped independence 40 years later.

Tupac Amaru's name was taken by Uruguay's Tupamaros, Peru's MRTA and the rapper Tupac Shakur.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• Spanish Empire (1492 to 1976)
• Inca Empire (1438 to 1533)
• Second Portuguese Empire (1663 to 1822)
• Dutch Empire (1602 to 1975)
• Empire of Brazil (1822 to 1889)

Wars of the same era and region

• Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire (1532 to 1572)
• Colombian War of Independence (1810 to 1825)
• Mexican War of Independence (1810 to 1821)

8 surprising things about the Rebellion of Tupac Amaru II

1. Tupac Amaru II claimed descent from Tupac Amaru I, the last Inca, executed in the same Cusco square in 1572.
2. Micaela Bastidas, his Afro-Andean and Spanish-descended wife, was garrotted after being tortured, and is a Peruvian heroine.
3. The four horses failed to pull him apart; the executioner beheaded him instead.
4. Peru's military government of 1968 made him a national symbol and put his face on the currency.
5. The banning of Garcilaso de la Vega's Royal Commentaries of the Incas after the revolt shows how the Spanish feared Inca memory.
6. Bartolina Sisa, Tupac Katari's wife, commanded troops at La Paz; her death day, 5 September, is Indigenous Women's Day in the Americas.
7. Tupac Shakur was named after Tupac Amaru II by his Black Panther mother.
8. The rebellion killed a larger share of the population than the wars of independence 40 years later.

Sources

• Tupac Amaru II Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Rebellion of Tupac Amaru II Wikipedia
• Tupac Amaru II World History Encyclopedia
• Charles F. Walker, The Tupac Amaru Rebellion (2014) Harvard University Press

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