Túpac Amaru II (born José Gabriel Condorcanqui Noguera or José Gabriel Túpac Amaru, c. 1742 – May 18, 1781) was an Indigenous cacique who led a large Andean rebellion against the Spanish in Peru as self-proclaimed Sapa Inca of the new Inca Empire. He was later elevated to a mythical status in the Peruvian struggle for independence and indigenous rights movement, as well as an inspiration to myriad causes in Spanish America and beyond.
An Andean leader in a colonial society
Túpac Amaru II was born José Gabriel Condorcanqui Noguera in around 1742 in Surimana, Tungasuca, in the province of Cusco, to Miguel Condorcanqui Usquionsa Túpac Amaru, kuraka of three towns in the Tinta district, and María Rosa Noguera. On May 1, 1742, Túpac Amaru II was baptized by Santiago José Lopez in a church in Tungasuca. Prior to his father's death, Amaru II spent his childhood in the Vilcamayu Valley; he accompanied his father to community functions, such as the temple, the market, and processions. Túpac's parents died when he was twelve years old and he was raised by his aunt and uncle. When he was 16, he received a Jesuit education at the San Francisco de Borja School, founded to educate the sons of kurakas.
Although the Spanish trusteeship labor system, or encomienda, had been abolished in 1720, a seventh of the population living in native communities (pueblos de indios) as well as permanent indigenous workers at the time living in the Andean region of what is now Ecuador and Bolivia, who made up nine tenths of the population, were still pushed into forced labor for what were legally labeled as public work projects. This shift from the encomienda to the state sponsored and controlled draft labor system consolidated the indigenous labor force in the hands of the local government and not in the individual encomenderos. Most natives worked under the supervision of a master either tilling soil, mining or working in textile mills.
Rebellion against colonial rule
The Rebellion of Túpac Amaru II began with the capture of the Tinta corregidor Antonio de Arriaga on 4 November 1780, after a banquet attended by both Túpac Amaru II and Arriaga. Arriaga was executed six days later, on 10 November 1780. The immediate cause of the rebellion lay in grievances caused by a series of modernising reforms of the colonial administration implemented by the Bourbon monarchy in Spain under Charles III of Spain (1759–1788), centralising administrative and economic control and placing heavier taxes and labour burdens on both the Native Peruvian and Creole populations. The focus of discontent was the main representative of the crown in Peru, the visitador general José Antonio Areche. Ideologically, the rebellion was complex.
At one level, it expressed simply a demand on the Spanish authorities for changes and reforms within the structure of colonial rule, often speaking in the name of the king himself, for example. At another, it envisioned an overthrow of European rule and something like a restoration of the pre-conquest Inca empire, the Tahuantinsuyo. Túpac Amaru's claim to be the legitimate descendant of the Inca suggested the possibility of an aristocratic state similar to the one envisioned in the sixteenth century by the mestizo writer, Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, who saw the Incas as sharing rule with the Spanish aristocracy. But there were also strong millenarian, proto-Jacobin and even proto-communist elements in the rebellion.
Punishment and aftermath
Amaru II was sentenced to be executed. He was forced to watch the deaths of his wife Micaela Bastidas, his eldest son Hipólito, his uncle Francisco Tupa Amaro, his brother-in-law Antonio Bastidas, and some of his captains before his own death. On May 18, 1781, they were taken to the Plaza de Armas in Cuzco to be executed one by one. His son Hipólito first had his tongue cut out for having spoken against the Spanish, and then he was hanged. When the revolt continued, the Spaniards executed the remainder of his family, except Fernando. Amaru's body parts were strewn across the towns loyal to him as ordered, his houses were demolished, their sites strewn with salt, his goods confiscated, his relatives declared infamous, and all documents relating to his descent burnt.
At the same time, on May 18, 1781, Incan clothing and cultural traditions, and self-identification as "Inca" were outlawed, along with other measures to convert the population to Western European Spanish culture and government until Peru's independence as a republic. However, even after the death of Amaru, Native revolts still seized much of what is today southern Peru, Bolivia and Argentina, as Native revolutionaries captured Spanish towns and beheaded many inhabitants. Although Túpac Amaru II's rebellion was not a success, it became a major episode in Andean resistance to colonial rule and inspired the revolt of many Natives and Peruvians in the surrounding area.