Notes
INTRODUCTION 1. John Lynch affirms that “[p]opular rebellion anticipated the revolutions for independence in many parts of Spanish America, and continued throughout that revolutionary period and beyond without limitation by political chronology” (Lynch 1994, 26). 2. The uprising of Túpac Amaru II is the most outstanding event among a chain of indigenous disturbances which sprang up in the colonies during the eighteenth century and bore witness to a general discontent that finally overflowed in the independence wars. The rebel cry of Túpac Amaru II took up that of his predecessor Túpac Amaru I who in 1572 was murdered for organizing one of the largest indigenous revolts and whose echoes reverberate in the Tupamaro guerrillas. The rising of Túpac Amaru II had an immediate effect in the form of similar revolts in which indigenous people, mestizos, mulattos, and free Africans united—basically in protest against taxes—in Argentina (Córdoba, La Rioja, Tucumán), Bolivia and Paraguay (Alto Perú, La Paz), Peru (Arequipa, Jujuy, Salta, Huanca, Huancavelica, Tungasuca, Tinta, etc.), Ecuador (Quito), and Nueva Granada (Socorro, San Gil, Vélez, Zipaquira). 3. The documents written by Túpac Amaru and his wife should be read in relation to other texts such as those of El Inca Garcilaso and Guamán Poma de Ayala which were constructed as palimpsests in which Spanish and Inca cultures are superimposed at various levels. In this paragraph alone, one can observe the mixture of lineages , geographic concepts, and languages, as well as the way the Inca derives his authority to govern his own ethnic group from an appeal to a divine design, “by the grace of God,” thus employing the classic style of territorial justification imposed by the Spaniards in the Americas. 4. As is analyzed by Rolena Adorno in her book Guamán Poma: Writing and Resistance in Colonial Peru (1986), in Guamán Poma’s mapamundi Cuzco is situated as the center of the universe and the territories are divided according to the coordinates of Tawantinsuyo. Guamán Poma thus transforms the conventional European model of geographical symbolism into a four-faceted image of the Andean universe. 5. Benedict Anderson, in his book Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, analyzes how censuses and maps are indispensable 125 Notes weapons for any government, the basis for real control of tax collection and thus of political control. Joseph Pérez (1977) relates the taxation to indigenous uprisings: “Túpac Amaru explicitly protested against the forced buying of merchandise and against the abuses of the corregidores, against the mita. He requested that the Indians of Tinta be exempted from service and insisted that the Laws of the Indies be observed. . . . By years 1779–1780, Túpac Amaru had decided to move on to armed rebellion against the abuses to which the Indians were subject. In those same years José Antonio de Areche, visitador general of the vice-royalty of Perú, arrived in Lima with orders to put into practice the new economic policy determined by the Minister of the Indies, José de Gálvez. As is well known, this policy aimed to increase the profits of the state in the colonies and, in conformity with that goal, to reinforce the existing treasuries and create new forms of taxation.” It was this visitador José Antonio de Areche who, in dictating Túpac Amaru’s death sentence, accused him specifically of inciting the various castes and of protesting against taxes. 6. Denise Albanese, in her book New Science, New World (1996), establishes the connection between the New World and the configuration of a new concept of science generated by the Enlightenment. She analyzes the mechanisms through which the Enlightenment generated a science of geography based on the observations of travelers, classification, and the consequent establishment of power based on scientific knowledge. 7. Latin American historiography has traditionally seen the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century travelers as producers of scientific and ethnographic knowledge that informed the creation of local history and geography. “Andres Bello, from London where he had resided since 1810, was ahead of the Hispano-Americans in seeing the value which travel books would offer as a source of information” (Medina 1962, xviii). 8. The word geography is used here in its etymological sense of “writing of territory ” and includes the many ways of representing a territory and its people: maps, illustrations, and travel narratives. 9. Edward Said explains it this way: “By the beginning of the nineteenth century , Europe...
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