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 Rebellion  R. Douglas Cope On 10 November 1780 a large crowd in the town of Tungasuca, Peru, witnessed an extraordinary execution: the local indigenous leader ordered the hanging of district magistrate Antonio de Arriaga. This rebel cacique, José Gabriel Condorcanqui, was a mestizo, bilingual in Quechua and Castilian, whose business and legal affairs had brought him into the Hispanic world. Yet he also claimed descent from the last Inca emperor—­ Tupac Amaru—and took his name. His unmistakable assault on Spanish authority launched a massive rebellion which lasted for more than two years and cost perhaps 100,000 lives. Although the colonial state eventually reasserted its control, the insurrection had been a surprise , a shock, and a fearful ordeal. Of course, Indian uprisings had disrupted the empire’s peace before. A century earlier the Pueblos of New Mexico had driven Spaniards out of the territory for a dozen years; on South American frontiers, the Mapuches and the Chiriguanos tenaciously resisted full colonization. But in their scale, intensity, and revolutionary implications, the Andean events of 1780–1783 lacked any real precedent. What is perhaps most puzzling from a modern viewpoint , however, is why large-­ scale rebellions occurred so rarely in the colonial era. Spanish domination, after all, had been founded in violence—most notably, the military defeat of the Mexica and Incas—and depended on the exploitation of indigenous peoples. Early on, the conquerors enslaved large numbers of Indians (over 200,000 in Central America alone).While this practice soon became outlawed in colonial centers—where imported Africans became the slave labor force—it continued in frontier regions for centuries . The government instituted systems of forced labor: the notorious mita drewover 10,000 workers a year to labor in Potosí and other mines and cities. Spanish employers and taskmasters created a regimeof “generalized abuse and particular atrocities.”1 Catholic missionaries attempted to stem the worst mistreatment, yet they themselves sought to dominate both native bodies and souls. Finally, diseases introduced by the invaders—combined with overwork, migration, and resettlement policies—triggered a demographic catastrophe: in most places, the indigenous population declined some ninety percent over a century. One might expect such an inequitable and oppressive system to generate massive resistance.Yet the Spanish Empire endured for three centuries, weathering urban riots, village tumultos, and elite conspiracies but seldom facing an open, organized challenge. As Hispanic rule became institutionalized , the worst excesses diminished. Violence— or the threat of violence—remained a permanent part of the environment but tended to serve as a last resort against subaltern misbehavior. The image of Spanish America as the realm of military strongmen does not fit the colonial period: the bureaucrat, not the caudillo, ruled. Spanish America had no standing armies until the mid-­ eighteenth century; nor was its criminal justice system particularly savage by contemporary standards, seldom employing the death penalty.The regime, in short, counted on the submission , or at least the acquiescence, of its subjects. How did a conquest state gain such apparent legitimacy among the very people who bore the heaviest burden of colonization? As noted, Spanish acquisitiveness did sometimes foment rebellion, especiallyon frontiers. But in the colonial heartland—Mesoamerica and the Andes—a complex balanceof forces emerged.The conquistadores (and later government officials) forged alliances with indigenous nobles. In return for facilitating tribute payments and labor drafts, these nobles retained much of their local power. But colonization also disrupted existing hierarchies and created new identities (including the very concept of “Indian”). As native communities shrank in size, Spanish authorities reorganized them into more compact reducciones, complete with a town council (cabildo) and a church. These pueblos adopted the name of a Catholic saint (or virgin), and the Christian ritual calendar came to shape public life. The Crown guaranteed them certain rights (perhaps most importantly, community land sufficient for subsistence); and the Indians soon discovered that they could use colonial courts to defend themselves. In many cases, they succeeded in reducing their labor quotas. The residents who remained often worked part-­ time on Hispanic estates but still identified with and gave their primary loyalty to their towns. By the mid-­ colonial period, then, indigenous communities had worked out a stable modus vivendi with the Spanish world; indeed, they had become deeply enmeshed in the colonial system, defining themselves as good Christians and loyal subjects of the king. They looked to the rebellion (Spanish America) 279 Habsburg monarch and his representatives to protect them and provide “justice”; and colonial courts sided with them often...

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