Túpac Amaru II

José Gabriel Condorcanqui, an Andean chief and mule-train trader who claimed descent from the last Inca rulers, led the largest indigenous uprising in Spanish South America in 1780–1781 under the name Túpac Amaru II. His revolt was crushed and he was executed with great cruelty in Cusco, but he became a lasting symbol of resistance in Peru and far beyond.

He was born around 1742 at Surimana, in the province of Cusco in the Viceroyalty of Peru, the son of a kuraka, a hereditary indigenous chief recognised by the Spanish. He lost his parents at about twelve and was later educated by Jesuits at a Cusco school for the sons of chiefs, learning Spanish and Latin as well as his native Quechua. He married Micaela Bastidas and inherited the chiefdoms of Tungasuca and Pampamarca, and some 350 mules from his father's estate. As a carrier of goods across the southern Andes he grew prosperous and came to know conditions in many communities. He traced his ancestry to Túpac Amaru, the last Inca ruler of Vilcabamba, whom the Spanish had beheaded in Cusco, and took his name.

As a chief he stood between the colonial officials and his people, and he saw the weight they bore. Andean communities owed tribute and labour drafts, above all the mita that sent men to the silver mines of Potosí. Local governors, the corregidores, forced people to buy goods at inflated prices. The reforms of the Bourbon monarchy under Charles III raised sales taxes, set up new customs posts and tightened control, while bad harvests and falling prices hurt traders such as Condorcanqui. His petitions to the authorities in Tinta, Cusco and Lima for relief brought no results.

On 4 November 1780, after a banquet, he and his allies seized the corregidor of Tinta, Antonio de Arriaga, and some days later hanged him before a crowd. Túpac Amaru at first claimed to act in the king's name against corrupt officials, and appealed to Indians, mestizos, Creoles and Black people alike; on 16 November he decreed the freeing of enslaved Black people. Many of his followers, however, hoped for a restored Inca order without forced labour or colonial castes. On 18 November his forces destroyed a royalist column at Sangarará, but the killing of Spaniards there and elsewhere frightened Creoles who might otherwise have sympathised.

Micaela Bastidas, a capable commander, urged a quick strike on Cusco. Instead he lost valuable time gathering more recruits, and when his army, by some estimates 40,000 to 60,000 strong, finally attacked the city, loyalist troops and reinforcements from Lima drove it back. Retreating, he was betrayed by two of his own officers and captured.

On 18 May 1781, in the main square of Cusco, he was forced to watch the execution of his wife, his eldest son Hipólito and other relatives and captains. His tongue was cut out, and an attempt was made to tear his body apart with horses; when that failed he was quartered and beheaded, in the square where his ancestor had died. His remains were sent to towns that had supported him, and the authorities banned Inca dress and the use of the title Inca. His youngest son, Fernando, was spared and later imprisoned in Spain.

The rebellion went on under his cousin Diego Cristóbal and spread into Upper Peru, today's Bolivia, where the Aymara leader Túpac Katari besieged La Paz for 109 days. Spanish forces put down the last risings by early 1782. In the twentieth century the left-wing military government of Juan Velasco Alvarado made him a national hero of Peru, and rebel movements in Uruguay and Peru took their names from him.

Our 1783 map shows the Spanish Empire in South America just after the revolt, including the Viceroyalty of Peru and the new Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, whose lands the revolt also reached.