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8 A Utopia for the Indians: Indians in Revolt Tupac Amaru II of Peru The deep-seated unrest in the provinces of Santa Fe, Velez, Sogamoso, and Tunja in the New Kingdom of Granada finds both a parallel and a foil in what happened in Peru. There, in November of 1780, the sierra burst into rebellion under the leadership of Jose Gabriel Condorcanqui Noguera Tupac Amaru.1 He claimed to be and was regarded as the direct descendant of dona Juana Pilcorvaco, daughter of the last Inca monarch, Tupac Amaru I, who was executed in the main square of Cuzco in 1572. He is better known in history as Tupac Amaru II. The rebellion of Tupac Amaru was actually the second of two unconnected revolts in Peru in 1780. Beginning in January, the creoles and mestizos of the cities of Peru expressed their bitter dissatisfaction with the fiscal innovations introduced by Charles Ill's visitor general, Jose Antonio Areche; these were, of course, part of the same grand design that Gutierrez de Piiieres was to implement in New Granada. Disorders erupted in Arequipa, Tarma, La Paz, Cochabamba, and Cuzco. Although some Indians participated, these disturbances were essentially antitax protests led by the creole noblesse de la robe, who rallied around the procreole viceroy, Manuel de Guirior. Establishment of aduanas (customs houses), increases in some sales taxes, imposition of a head tax on the mestizos-a tax identified with the Indians whom they scorned as their inferiors-provoked riots and vigorous protests, but no real bloodshed. The movement, in fact, was a war of words. A whole series of vulgar lampoons, many more than appeared in New Granada, was read aloud in the squares. A few even insulted the person of Charles III of Spain and had 95 96 I II. Juan Francisco Berbeo kindly words for Spain's enemy, George III of Great Britain. But the spirit of a majority of the lampoons was that of the traditional slogan, "Long live the king and death to bad government." The lampoons assailed with lusty wrath the new taxes and the tax collectors, who were denounced as public thieves, yet still expressed a deep-rooted, if primitive faith, that the king would redress the just grievances of his suffering subjects. The revolt that broke out in November, 1780, had in actual fact very little connection with the protests of the creoles. But the coincidence in timing had disastrous consequences for its instigator, Tupac Amaru. By birth a mestizo, Tupac Amaru lived in two worlds, the Hispano-Indian and the creole-Spanish. Well educated in the Spanish manner, married to a criolla, living a life of ostentation in the creole style, he had sought during the 1770's to act as a spokesman for the Indian community inside the norms of the colonial power structure in Lima. Hereditary cacique of Pampamarca, Tungasuca, and Surimana, he had sought relief for his people from some of the more vexatious burdens placed upon them-an end to the authority of the corrupt and arbitrary corregidores de Indios, relief from the forced labor of the mita system. He was rebuffed by the visitor general and ordered home to his estates. Here in November, 1780, he raised the standard of revolt. A term that has been used in the context of Europeanized Africans in the twentieth century might apply also to Tupac Amaru. He was a marginal man caught between two cultures, a victim of "mutilated legacies." The tension between these two heritages exploded as a consequence of the disdainful treatment of the visitor general. He felt rejected by the Spanish creole worJd to which he felt he belonged, and he returned to the Indian world which was also his legacy. Pledging his loyalty to the king and to the church, Tupac Amaru sought to form a coalition of Indians, mestizos, creoles, and blacks against the hated chapetones. But he made two tragic miscalculations. The Indian plebeians, embittered by centuries of exploitation, were not responsive to the highly hispanized Tupac Amaru's integrationist program. Furthermore, by November, 1780, a good deal of the dissatisfaction of the creoles and mestizos had been appeased by timely concessions made by the Spanish authorities in Lima, and Tupac Amaru's appeals fell on deaf ears. In that multi-ethnic and plural society, it was improbable that large numbers of creoles and mestizos would join an Indian-led movement, in any event. Whiteness of skin was a major determinant of social prestige, and...

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