SYMHC Classics: Tupac Amaru Rebellion

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Speaker 1: Happy Saturday.

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Speaker 2: Coming up next week, we are going to have an episode that mentions the Inca Empire. Kind of the episode is really about somebody who used the term Inca but didn't necessarily have a meaningful connection to that empire. So we thought that for Today's Saturday Classic, we would have an episode that is more directly related, and it's actually won the kind of dovetails with those forthcoming episodes.

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Speaker 1: This episode is about the Tupaca Maru Rebellion. It originally came out March twenty eighth, twenty sixteen. Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracey V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. We have some South American history today.

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Speaker 1: Yay.

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Speaker 2: So, given how many of our listeners are from places that either are or used to be British, I think probably most folks know at least the very basics of the Revolutionary War which went on from seventeen seventy five to seventeen eighty three between the British Empire and its American colonies. So today we are going to talk about another conflict that overlapped this war and was between another empire and its American colonies. This time the war was between Spain and its colonies in South America. In particular, we're talking about the Tupac Amaru Rebellion, which took place from seventeen eighty to seventeen eighty three, so right at the end of the same time as the Revolutionary War. It started in the Andes Mountains in Peru, and in addition to stretching over multiple years, this rebellion actually wound up spanning more territory than the Revolutionary War did, so, as you might imagine, we could really spend a whole series of podcasts on this rebellion, just like you could with the Revolutionary War. The day is really an overview of the basics, and just because I don't want folks to spend this podcast distractedly wondering about it every time we say Tupac Amaru. Yes, the late rapper Tupac Shakor was named after him. His mother actually renamed him after this revolutionary figure while he was still a baby, and our last caveat his apparent teacher heads up. This story contains a couple of particularly horrifying executions. One of them caused me to I am holly while I was doing the research to say, this sounds like it came out of Game of Thrones. So this might be a podcast to listen to yourself before sharing it with little ones, and then use your own discretion about whether it's appropriate for those little ones.

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Speaker 1: All right. So, Spain's colonization of Central and South America, which started in the sixteenth century, had three primary aims. To expand the Spanish Empire, to seek treasure, and to convert the local population to Christianity. Today's story, as Tracy referenced, just a moment ago takes place in the Andes Mountains in Peru in the eighteenth century. Yeah, so Spain had been around for a couple hundred years in Central and South America by this point. The population by now in this part of the Andes Mountains was overwhelmingly made up of indigenous South Americans known as Quechua, and their languages were all part of the Ketchwan language family. The Ketchwan language family goes back to the days of the Inca Empire, and a lot of the indigenous people who were living in the Andes Mountains by the eighteenth century traced their lineage back to the Inca as well. In addition to the region's indigenous population, there were also Spanish Europeans people who had both European and indigenous ancestry, who were referred to as mestizos, and people of European ancestry who had been born in South America who were referred to as creoles. And there were a few, although not very many, enslaved Africans along with their descendants. The population of enslaved Africans was much greater in some other parts of South America, but not so much in the Andes Mountains. We could look at the system of local government that Spain had instituted in Peru in terms of three roles. There were, of course, lots of other roles besides these three, but these are sort of the key figures. On the Spanish side, there was the correodor, who was an official representative of the Spanish government. On the indigenous side, there was the quarraca or the cacique, who was essentially a native liaison between the native population and the Spanish government. Karaka was actually a Catchewin title dating back to the Inca, and Casique was the Spanish term that was applied to the same basic role. And then there was a local clergy, the parish priests, who were responsible for particular towns and settlements. Together, the karaka, the corriodor and the priests saw to the government and the legal and spiritual needs of the community. At least for the Spanish point of view. Although the presence of the karaka may make it seem as though Spain was taking steps to include the indigenous population in the system of government, this wasn't really the case. Many of the indigenous populations spoke only Quechuan languages, but official events and documents were presented only in Spanish. Apart from the karaka, most of the people involved in the government were not only Spanish, but also had been born in Spain and not South America. While it's certainly within the realm of possibility that an individual correodor could be acting with the indigenous population's best interest at heart, this was really a position that was quite prone to greed and mismanagement and abuse. The position itself was immensely powerful. It had grown from one that was mostly judicial to one that combined judicial, administrative, and legislative power all into uncentralized role This meant that one unscrupulous corriador had the power to have an enormous and nearly unchecked impact on the area that he was in charge of. As is a recurring theme in just about all of our podcasts on colonialism, Spain had implemented some policies and practices that were deeply unpopular in its South American colonies. One, unsurprisingly, was taxes, both sales tax on goods that people tried to buy, and another called a head tax, and that's basically like a tribute based on a number of people. There were also involuntary labor drafts to staff mines and mills, some of which were extremely far away from the homes of the people that were drafted into working there. As another way to make money, Spain also forced the sale of European goods to the indigenous population. Basically, a lot of what Spain was expecting from its colonies in terms of both labor and money was either forced or coerced, and in the late eighteenth century, a lot of this was getting a lot worse for indigenous South Americans. Spain had been in the process of implementing a lot of changes to how it ran its empire, These became known as the Bourbon Reforms after the royal house of the same name. These reforms had been going on for a while, but they really peaked during the reign of Charles the Third, who ruled Spain from seventeen fifty nine to seventeen eighty eight. The Bourbon Reforms had wide reaching effects for Spain's military and government, and for how religion affected the government in civic life. But when it came to South America's indigenous population, the reforms led to higher taxes, an increase in forced and coerce labor, and fewer rights, along.

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Speaker 2: With the range of other cultural and religious issues. All this dissatisfaction with taxes and forced sale of goods and forced labor ultimately led to more than one rebellion in Central and South America, and the one we're talking about today was started by and at least at first led by, a man named Jose Gabriel Konderconki, and we will talk about him after a brief sponsor rank. Jose Gabrielle Kondorkanki was born around seventeen forty two, and he claimed that he could trace his lineage back to the last ruler of the Inca Empire. Tupac Amaru, the first Tupaca Maru, ruled the empire from fifteen seventy one to fifteen seventy two before being executed by the Spanish at the age of twenty five or twenty six. This was at the end of Spain's conquest of the Inca Empire, and with Tupaca Maru's death, the throne was essentially abolished. Kandorkanki had a formal Catholic education. He spoke both Spanish and Quetchuwa fluently, and as an adult he worked as a merchant and a muleteer. His education, his Inca heritage, and his family's place in the community really uniquely positioned him to be able to interact with every class in Peruvian life, from the Spanish ruling class to the most impoverished working class. In seventeen fifty, kan Conki inherited the role of kuraka of three towns in the Tinta district known as Surimana, Papa Marca and Tungasuka, following the death of his father. He had actually grown up in Suramana, but as an adult he made his home in Tungasuka. Ten years after his father's death, he'd married Mikaela Battista, who became an equal partner in his work as a merchant. In seventeen seventy seven, Kondra Conki traveled to Lima for eight months with the hope of regaining a noble title. While he was there, he met a lot of Spanish nobility, and he gained a sense of how the Spanish colonial government worked in Peru and more at a bigger, more general scale for the region as a whole. At this point, tensions had already been rising in South America for several years, and as a result, there had been rebellions and uprisings that had broken out within Spanish territory in several places. The corridor in the area where kondo Conki lived was Antonio di Ariaga, and as you might go guests from our discussion of the role of Corriodor before the break, he was not a beloved figure. Among other things, he was responsible for arranging an enormously unpopular labor draft to staff a silver mine. Mining was of course dangerous work, and the mine itself was about six hundred miles away. Also, in the face of the ongoing changes that came along with the Bourbon Reforms, condra Conki was having an increasingly difficult time in his role as karaka. More and more of the Corridor's demands were unreasonable and exploitive of the local indigenous population, and a lot of them were really despised by the people that the Corriodor was governing. On November fourth of seventeen eighty, Ariaga and kondra Conki had dinner at the home of Father Carlos Rodriguez, condra Conki's old tutor. It was overall a friendly meal which celebrated the feast day of Saint Charles known in Spanish as Saint Carlos, and later in the afternoon, kondra Conki invited Ariaga to spend the evening at his home. Ariagar refused, saying that he needed to get back to his own residence, probably motivated at least in part by the fact the tax payments were due to him.

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Speaker 1: Soon.

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Speaker 2: When Ariaga left with his entourage of staff and servants, Kondra Konki and some other young men. Kondrakonki was about forty at this point, walked with him for a while and then they said that they were going to head back to kondra Conky's home in Tungasuka, and that wasn't really where they were going though. Instead, they stealthily got ahead of Ariaga and they ambushed him. Ariaga tried to flee, but kndra Conky's men captured him and some of his entourage. They took them all back to Tungasuka and they confined him in a cell in kondra Conky's basement. Then kondra Conky forced Ariaga to write letters to his treasurer in which he claimed he was going to plan an expedition to the coast to deal with a pirate problem. He asked the treasurer to send money and weapons. Then kondra Conki took Ariaga's key and went to his home, where he armed himself with muskets, gunpowder, and bullets, as well as taking money, mules, and silver from Adiaga's home. Kondra Conki also wrote letters to a lot of other local leaders, military figures, and entrepreneurs asking them all to meet up in Tungasuka. He signed Adiaga's name to these letters, so he was basically writing them as though he were Ariyaga. He also wrote to the other Kurrakas in the area, asking them to send troops to Tungasuka as well, and he started stationing centuries along the road to Cuzco to try to keep the Spanish government from hearing about this massive gathering that was starting to form in Tungusuka. Over the next few days, all of these people that kondra Conki had written letters to started arriving in Tungusuka. Thousands of people arrived and had no idea that the Corriodor was imprisoned in a basement not far from where they were congregating. Spanish leaders who answered that call were also in prison. On November ninth, kondra Conki sent a priest to adiagas cell to take his confession, and at this point Adiaga knew that he was probably going to die. He started trying to bargain with his fortune. He basically offered kondra Conki everything he had in exchange for his freedom, but condra Conki refused. Meanwhile, kondra Conki started telling people who had assembled in Toungasuka that he was acting under the authority of the King, the High Court and Visitor General Jose Antonio di Areque. He set them to practicing military maneuvers, and he increasingly did something that he had already been prone to doing, referring to himself by the name of the Inca Empire's last ruler and his ancestor, tupac Amaru. He also conducted reviews of these maneuvers on horseback, and he wore clothing that combined elements of traditional indigenous attire as well as the fine silks and furs and gold that were a lot more common among the Spanish aristocracy. He's reported to have cut a very fine figure doing this. On the tenth tupac Amaru kondra Conki, going by that name, once again, had the assembled crowd, which numbered thousands of people, line up in a military formation, and then he had them march to a nearby set of gallows. There he had a proclamation read in both Spanish and Quetchwan. According to this proclamation, the king had abolished the sales tax, the custom houses, and the forced labor draft the silver mine, and this proclamation went on the king's wish was for the indigenous South Americans and the Creoles to live in harmony with one another, because that's the name that he adopted as he led this rebellion. We're basically just going to call him Tupakamaru for the rest of the episode. And of course none of these things that he was proclaiming were actually true. He had written all of these proclamations himself, but they were of course extremely well received. And then another important point was that all of this information was delivered to the indigenous people of the area in the language that they actually spoke, rather than in Spanish.

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Speaker 1: Then the event moved on to something else purportedly authorized by the king, and that was the execution of Antonio di Ariaga. Soldiers took Ariaga to the gallows and they forced him to change out of his military uniform and into a Franciscan habit. Then Antonio Oblitas, who was an enslaved African that Ariaga owned, was forced to act as his executioner. In the first of this episode's horrifying executions, the rope broke and both Ariaga and Oblitas fell. Instead of being hanged, Ariaga was strangled with several ropes. People screamed epithets at him, with some of the loudest being hurled by Mikayla Battista. While Tupaca Maru had taken steps to keep word of what was going on from reaching Cusco, where it would then get to the rest of the Spanish Empire. The news that he had executed the corriodor just could not be contained, and we will talk about what happened after that news spread after another brief word from a sponsor. To get back to the story, After the execution of Antonio de Ariaga, tupac Amadu and his wife set off almost immediately to try to raise more support from nearby towns. They'd already used their duplicity and strategy to a mass of really large following in Tungasuka, and the two of them then started using the extensive connections that they had developed to recruit more people to their cause. Tupac Amadu himself used his new name and the connections to the Inca Empire that existed from his lineage to spread the idea that the Inca were returning. With this thought inspiring the rebels, they tried to take the fight to the Spanish. Initially, the targets of the rebellion were very narrow. He didn't want the priests, the mestizos, or the Creoles to be harmed. Only Spanish leaders from Europe and especially the corridors. Local landowners and others whose behavior had been exploitative were to be imprisoned, but not killed. Since Spain hadn't yet raised an army to resist them, these first few excursions were relatively bloodless.

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Speaker 2: In every town that they visited, Tupacamaru would speak in both Spanish and Quetchua, and he would recruit as many people as he could to join the rebellion. He still was insisting that he was actually acting under orders from the king. The rebels would also abolish any taxes and force labor drafts in the towns that they went to. They would burn down the textile mills where people had been forced to work, and they would free anyone who was being held in the jail. Then they would also burn down the gallows. They'd get as many provisions as they could from the stores of the local corridor and other landowners in the area, and they would move on to the next town.

00:17:45
Speaker 1: He also wrote lots of letters and proclamations, issuing orders to neighboring towns to turn away from the Spanish and granting local leaders the authority to act in his stead. On November sixteenth, Tupacamaru wrote a proclamation for the emancipation of enslaved Africans and Afro Peruvians on the seventeenth and the aftermath of a battle that had played out in a church and had accidentally destroyed part of the structure of the church in a fire, the bishop excommunicated tupac Amaru and his followers. Tupac Amaru and his wife were both extremely devout Catholics, and they really had not intended any harm to come to this church at all. As we said earlier, they had been trying to protect the clergy the whole time, so this was both devastating to them personally and it was a strike against them in terms of public opinion. Just as a side note and the end, there were priests and others associated with the Church on both sides of this conflict. Soon though, this rebellion spread beyond the Andes Mountains, and the bigger it got, and the farther away from tupac Amaru's base at his home in Tungusuka, the bloodier and more violent it became. Spanish and Royalist forces started calling in reinforcements and gathering militia, meaning that the rebels had to fight their way through, rather than basically walking into towns and declaring that the Spanish government was no longer in charge. By the end of the year, Spain's control on colonial Peru had started to really crumble. As the rebellion got bigger and bigger, more and more people got swept up in it, and the original instructions to harm only the Spanish ruling class started to fall away. A lot of people really just got caught in the crossfire. More and more innocent people were harmed by both sides as the conflict got bigger and bloodier. At the start of seventeen eighty one, Spain, having raised an army of thousands of soldiers, started actively trying to find and capture tupac Amaru. On April seventh, they trapped Mikayla and two of her sons. Mikayla and tupac Amaru had gotten separated from one another about a month before this, and they had always planned that should something happen, they would flee through the south. When he heard that his wife had been captured, Tupacamato did just that, and along the way one of his followers, a man named Vin Shua Landietta, insisted that he stop and take arrest. It turned out that this was a trap. Tupacamadu was taken into Spanish custody along with his wife and children, along with other prisoners. Tupacamaru and Mikaela Bastidas were put on trial that April, and when Tupacamaru refused to incriminate himself or name any of his accomplices, he was tortured by stretching. His wife, on the other hand, claimed this she knew very little about the rebellion and had in fact been coerced into participating. After days of being questioned and sometimes tortured, on May eighteenth, seventeen eighty one, Tupacamadu and Mikayla Bastitas were taken to the gallows for the other horrifying execution in this episode. First, they were made to watch the executions of other prisoners. Some of them were family members, one of them was actually their eldest son. These other prisoners were dragged behind horses and had their tongues cut out before they were hanged. One was placed in a chair and slowly strangled with an iron bar before being hanged to confirm that she was dead. Sources actually disagree on exactly how Mikayla Bastidas was executed, However, universally, she is described as being tortured to death while her husband Tupakamaru was made to watch. And then and the thing that caused me to I am holly and tell her this sounded like it was out of Game of Thrones. Tupacamadu's tongue was cut out, his limbs were tied to four horses in order to be quartered. They didn't actually quarter him, though, His limbs were dislocated but not severed from his body. Then he was beheaded. This time his youngest son, who was ten years old, was made to watch. After the executions, Tupacamadu and Mikayla's bodies were dismembered and the parts were sent to surrounding cities to serve as a warning, while their torsos were burned on a bonfire. Their executions didn't stop the rebellion, though other leaders moved into Tupacamayo's place, some of them also taking a similar name, including his successor, Diego Tupacamadu. He would also be executed on July nineteenth, eighteen seventy three. Eventually, after numerous gory executions. The rebellion failed. About one hundred thousand people were killed, most of them indigenous South Americans. Spain put increasing restrictions on South America's indigenous people in the hope of preventing another uprising, including forbidding the Tupaca Maru Rebellion from being discussed or written about at all.

00:22:33
Speaker 2: Tupaca Maadu is still a really well known figure in South America today, although mikaeleb Bastidas has largely been written out of a lot of accounts in spite of the fact that she was a leader of this rebellion. Also, Tupaca Maadu's name and image have also been used as part of other revolutionary movements. And if you're interested in hearing more about the story, there is a pretty recent book which is actually how I heard about this in the first place, was reviewing a catalog recently published books. It is by Charles F. Walker, and it is called The Tupac Mighti Rebellion, and it is from the Bell Knappe Press of Harvard University Press. It actually came out in twenty fourteen, but I think there's a paperback of it that is coming out soon, and it goes into a lot more detail than what we have talked about today. It especially gets into a lot of the more specifics about the individual actions between or the individual actions between the rebels and the Spanish, and specifics on where all of this fighting took place and how it all played out, and then also some more about how it later affected the colonial government in South America. Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of the archive, if you heard an email address or a Facebook RL or something similar over the course of the show, that could be obsolete now. Our current email address is History podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can find us all over social media at missed Inhistory, and you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.