TUPAJ AMARU

AN UNDOMITABLE WARRIOR WHO WALKS IN THE ANDES

By: Ivan Ignacio                

 Says Tupaj Amaru about the condition of exploited indigenous peoples:“They oppress us in manufactures and in reed plantations, coca plantations, mines, and jails in our villages…They pick us up treating us as brutish and,as if we were animals, they take us to the haciendas  (ranchs) to work… Sometimes with no protection or salaries. The Indians give in their life with vomits of blood.”

Tupaj Amaru or José Gabriel Condorcanqui, a direct descendant through his mother line of the Inca Tupaj Amaru I. Of incan lineage and a descendant of fierce chiefs, orphan at a young age, it is said that he was born on March 19 in the village of Surinama, four thousand meters above sea level, in Peru. Regarding the year of his birth, it is still not clear whether it was in 1738, 1740, or 1741.

With his uprising, considered “the greatest rebellion in the colonial history of the American continent”, he shook the foundations of colonialism and he pointed the horizon to the path of independence. He was an indomitable chief of the village of Tungasuca in the province of Tinta and he is considered today one of the most singular, brave, and courageous heroes that history could have ever recorded.

He was familiar to the deep exploitation to which his brothers were subjugated. The high pay of tributes and the new distributions, the mita (forced labour in the mines), the destruction of culture and identity, the underestimation of their capacities, the mistreatment and violation of their rights, all made him lose his patience and he refused to tolerate the situation any longer.

In 1766, Tupac Amaru claims himself descendant of the Inca Through the line of his coya grandmother Juana Pilcohuaco, daughter of the last Inca Felipe Tupac Amaru (killed by the Viceroy Toledo in 1572), and a year later he becomes cacique of Surimana, Pampamarca, and Tungasuca.

The cruel genocide in America claimed the lives of around 90 millions of indigenous persons, and many millions more of enslaved black people imported from Africa as merchandise. Despite of the plundering and the fanatic and inquisitive evangelization, the indigenous resistance was tenacious, they never gave in before the invaders. The uprising, the rebellion, and the indigenous guerrilla marked permanent and inextinguishable footprints in these lands, whose sons continue to look for their liberation.

To Tupaj Amaru, his wedding at twenty years old, in 1760, with Micaela Bastidas, a sixteen-year old woman at the time, was vital. She decisively accompanied him until the last consequences, playing at his side a determinant role in the insurrection, proving herself capable of taking up arms. Mother of the three children of Tupaj Amaru, she was an efficient deputy and she inspired various decisions of major importance. She is still considered one of the most enthusiastic pioneers of the emancipation of the peoples.

Before engaging to the revolutionary path, Tupaj Amaru initially tried to negotiate, conscious of the great human costs a rebellion would cause. But negotiations were not effective and in November 4, 1780, at Tinta, the natal region of Tupaj Amaru, the rebellion broke out with the imprisonment of the abusive chief magistrate Antonio de Arriaga and his public execution six days later. The insurrection spread everywhere.

The Viceroy in Lima sent a well-prepared army to confront the Indian troops. Tupaj Amaru ordered the liberty of the enslaved indigenous and black peoples surrounding and laying siege to the city of Cusco, and he confronted the army successfully in January 8, 1781. Immediately, the colonial army was reinforced and entrusted to marshal Jose del Valle, with close to 17 thousand armed forces, sent to confront the rebellious Inca.

With this superiority, only a betrayal, that from the allied group led by the chief Pumacahua, would frustrate the plans of Tupaj Amaru who was imprisoned with his wife and other chiefs from the movement.

“It is not possible to remember the rebellion of Tupaj Amaru with tearless eyes, nor to write without the paper reddening with blood.” -Antonio Ferrer del Río

He was subjugated to intense physical tortures during the interrogations, and was finally executed in May 18, 1781, accused of having committed the crime of rebellion and having influenced the general uprising of the Indians, mestizos, and other castes. They first tortured him and then they atrociously executed him and strangled his wife Micaela, his son, his brother-in-law, the chief of Acos, and the other collaborators, eight in total, subjected to cruel methods of hanging, garrotte, and mutilation. Later it was the turn of Tupac Amaru, with his horrible quartering. A witness from Cusco confirms this horrible event saying:

 “The show was closed by Jose Gabriel, who was put in the middle of the plaza: there, the executioner cut his tongue and after taking off his shackles and handcuffs, they put him on the floor; they tied his hands and feet with four laces, and with the laces tied to the girths of four horses, four mestizos pulled towards four different directions: a show that had never been seen in this city before.”

In the sixteenth century, the Viceroy Toledo said that it was necessary to eliminate everyTrace, memory, and image of the last Inca Felipe Túpac Amaru, murdered by the ViceroyToledo in 1572, alleging that this would “come to create a herb of liberty”. This has been True to the extent that, two centuries later, Alexander von Humboldt observed that “Wherever the Quechua Language has penetrated, the hope for the restoration of the Incas Has left footprints in the Memory of the indigenous peoples who keep secret the memory of their national history.”

His remains were hung and exhibited in pillories in different villages, including Tungasuca. They were divided in five parts: the head and his four extremities, as “a lesson for the Indians” said his executioners and the Spanish authorities. After a while, they were burnt and reduced to ashes, scattered to the wind and to the waters of a stream, so that no physical trace would be left from him. A judicial order was sent to destroy the house he lived in.

It is said that the body of Tupaj Amaru is growing back around his head under the earth of the Abya-Yala (the American continent) and that the day in which the body will be complete will come back and “everything that used to be Indian will be so once again”. The colonial government did everything it could to erase the example of Tupaj Amaru from the collective memory but without success. The memory and the veneration that the peoples of the continent offer him today, is more present than ever.

His brother Diego Cristóbal Túpaj Amaru and his son Mariano continued the fight and achieved even more important victories. The aymara brothers Tomas, Dámaso or Tupaj Katari, Bartolina Sisa, Gregoria Apaza, etc., surrounded twice the capital of La Paz, in the high Andean plateau of Upper Peru. This led to the ministers of Charles III to modify the abusive taxes -like the mita- and to suppress the system of distribution. However, they had the same luck as their predecessors. Peace was signed in December 1781, but the emancipation movement in the Andes continued for two more years. In 1783, betrayal was present again and Diego Tupac Amaru and those who were on his side were detained and executed in a much crueller manner.

This heroic indigenous emancipation deed marked one of the most horrible episodes among all the crimes committed in America. The tolerant spirits of this time period must have shook in the presence of so much atrocity, cruelty, and bloody killing carried out by the illustrious Spanish officers.