Túpac Amaru II Rebellion in Peru
José Gabriel Condorcanqui seized the local Spanish governor in November 1780, executed him publicly, and raised the largest rebellion in the history of colonial Spanish America. He was a provincial kuraka — an indigenous noble and hereditary local authority — educated by Jesuits, wealthy from a mule-train business, and a documented descendant of Túpac Amaru, the last Inca of Vilcabamba executed in 1572. He took the name Túpac Amaru II. He had spent years petitioning through the courts against the mita, the forced labour draft for the Potosí mines, and against the repartimiento, under which corregidores compelled indigenous communities to buy goods at prices they set. The Bourbon Reforms had made all of it worse: new taxes, higher sales duties, new customs posts, and officials sent from Spain who had bought their offices and intended to profit. The rebellion drew perhaps 100,000 people across southern Peru and Upper Peru and besieged Cuzco in early 1781. Its aims were argued about at the time and since. He proclaimed loyalty to the king and the Church while denouncing bad government, abolished the mita and slavery in the territory he held, and initially sought creole support — which mostly did not come, because the killing of Spaniards frightened it away. He was betrayed, captured in April 1781, forced to watch his wife and son executed, had his tongue cut out, and was pulled apart by horses in the square at Cuzco. The reprisals banned Inca dress, titles, portraits and the reading of Garcilaso. Perhaps 100,000 people died. His name was taken by a Uruguayan guerrilla movement in the 1960s and by a Peruvian one in the 1980s.
- Year: 1780 CE
- Category: Military
