Revolution in the Andes: The Age of Túpac Amaru (Latin America in Translation) - Softcover

Serulnikov, Sergio

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822354985 ISBN 13: 9780822354987

Verlag: Duke University Press, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

Revolution in the Andes is an in-depth history of the TÚpac Amaru insurrection, the largest and most threatening indigenous challenge to Spanish rule in the Andean world after the Conquest. Between 1780 and 1782, insurgent armies were organized throughout the Andean region. Some of the oldest and most populous cities in this region-including Cusco, La Paz, Puno, and Oruro-were besieged, assaulted, or occupied. Huge swaths of the countryside fell under control of the rebel forces. While essentially an indigenous movement, the rebellion sometimes attracted mestizo and Creole support for ousting the Spanish and restoring rule of the Andes to the land's ancestral owners. Sergio Serulnikov chronicles the uprisings and the ensuing war between rebel forces and royalist armies, emphasizing that the insurrection was comprised of several regional movements with varied ideological outlooks, social makeup, leadership structures, and expectations of change.

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Sergio Serulnikov is Professor of History at the University of San Andrés in Buenos Aires and researcher at the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas de la Argentina. His previous books include Subverting Colonial Authority: Challenges to Spanish Rule in Eighteenth-Century Southern Andes, published by Duke University Press.

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Revolution IN THE Andes

The Age of Túpac Amaru

By SERGIO SERULNIKOV

Duke University Press

Copyright © 2013 Duke University Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8223-5498-7

Contents

Foreword...................................................................
xi
1 The Violence of Facts...................................................
1
2 The Violence of Time....................................................
5
3 Indian Communities Do Politics..........................................
17
4 Rituals of Justice, Acts of Subversion..................................
31
5 The Idea of the Inca....................................................
35
6 Cusco under Siege.......................................................
49
7 "Perverted in These Revolutions"........................................
55
8 The Road to Chuquisaca..................................................
65
9 Creole Tupamaristas.....................................................
73
10 Radicalized Violence in Upper Peru.....................................
91
11 The Death of Túpac Amaru...............................................
99
12 The Heirs..............................................................
107
13 "Tomás Túpac-Katari, Inca King"........................................
115
14 War against the Q'aras.................................................
121
15 The Battle for La Paz..................................................
125
16 The End of an Era......................................................
135
17 The Stubbornness of Facts..............................................
139
Glossary...................................................................
143
References.................................................................
147
Index......................................................................
155

CHAPTER 1

The Violence of Facts

No event shook the foundations of the colonial order in Spanish Americamore profoundly than the massive uprising of the Andean peoples inthe early 1780s. Over the course of more than two years, whole insurgentarmies were organized, from Cusco in southern Peru all the way south toterritories that now belong to Chile and Argentina. Some of the oldestand most populous cities in this region—Cusco, Arequipa, and Puno insouthern Peru; La Paz, Oruro, and Chuquisaca (today Sucre) in UpperPeru (modern Bolivia)—were besieged, assaulted, or occupied. Hugeswaths of countryside in the jurisdiction of Charcas, in the highlandssurrounding La Paz, and in southern Peru fell under the full control ofthe rebel forces. At times those forces attracted explicit support, or tacitsympathy, from large numbers of mestizos and creoles living in ruraltowns and urban centers.

The conflagration took place in the very heart of the Spanish empirein South America: an extensive economic zone that stretched along theroute linking Lima to Buenos Aires. At its hub was Potosí, one of theworld's greatest sources of silver, the main export commodity of theAmericas and the engine of regional development. The insurgency alsoencompassed other mining towns, such as Puno and Oruro; fertile agriculturallands, including Cochabamba, Arequipa, Ollantaytambo, theYungas, and Abancay, that supplied the Andean cities with grains, sugar,coca leaves, wine, and brandy; rich cattle-raising areas like Azángaroprovince; and textile mill zones, such as the provinces of Quispicanchisand Canas y Canchis near Cusco. These large territories were mainlyinhabited by Aymara- and Quechua-speaking peoples, the descendantsof the great pre-Columbian polities: the Charka-Karakara confederationsin the southern Andes; the Aymara kingdoms of the Collao, theregion around Lake Titicaca; and, of course, the mighty Inca empire,which by the time of the European invasion had expanded from its corein Cusco to dominate the entire Andean region. Though many of theIndians who joined the uprising worked permanently in the mines, cities,and Spanish haciendas, the vast majority belonged to native communitiesthat owned the land collectively and maintained their own governingstructures, including the caciques (indigenous ruling elites) and otherlesser ethnic authorities. From these rural groups the Spanish treasurydrew its most dependable source of fiscal revenues, the Indian tribute,and the mining industry its most dependable source of labor, the mita—acolonial institution that forced each Andean community in the area tosend each year to Potosí and other mining towns one-seventh of theirpopulation. Members of the indigenous communities were the heart andsoul of the insurrection.

By virtue of their sheer magnitude the uprisings completely overwhelmedlocal militias. Regiments of the regular army had to be sent infrom the distant viceregal capitals, Lima and Buenos Aires. In Cuscoalone, more than seventeen thousand soldiers were mobilized againstthe Túpac Amaru forces. The Crown had not been compelled to mobilizeits armies since the distant days of the conquest, when the Pizarro andAlmagro families tore each other to bits over the right to control thenewly discovered territories and populations. It is difficult to establishthe precise number of casualties. Some sources estimate that about ahundred thousand Indians and some ten thousand persons of Hispanicorigin—Peninsulars (Spaniards from Spain itself ), creoles, and mestizos(people of mixed ancestry)—died over the course of the conflict.Although the numbers are imprecise, it is clear that in a society with apopulation of no more than a million and a half, the death rate wasappalling.

Like any major revolutionary movement, this uprising occasioned therise of charismatic figures whose names reverberated across the continent,and even beyond. They left behind vivid and powerful myths thatpervaded—and still do pervade, with unfaltering intensity—the historicalconsciousness and political imaginaries of the Andean peoples: JoséGabriel Condorcanqui, a cacique from Canas y Canchis province in southernPeru, who took the name Túpac Amaru II to signal his kinship withTúpac Amaru I, the last Inca emperor executed in 1572 in Cusco by ordersof Viceroy Francisco de Toledo; Tomás Katari, an Indian peasant fromnorthern Potosí who became the symbol of resistance to colonial rulersin the Charcas region; and Julián Apaza, a petty merchant from an indigenousvillage in Sicasica province who led the siege of the city of La Pazand called himself Túpac Katari to symbolize the intimate linkages betweenthe events taking place southward and northward of the La Pazregion.

Behind these men and these events one can discern the outlines of anidea—an idea diffuse and malleable enough to harbor disparate and attimes contradictory expectations, but one whose essential message nobodyshould have missed: a demand that the government of the Andes berestored to the land's ancient owners.

CHAPTER 2

The Violence of Time

The French historian and...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Duke University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2013
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0822354985
• ISBN 13: 9780822354987
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 180
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Mare Nostrum Group B.V.; gpsr@mare-nostrum.co.uk; ; Doelen 72; Breda; 4831 GR; Niederlande