The Last Days of the Incas (28 page)

Not long after his arrival, Villac Umu and other high-ranking Incas began to organize secret meetings—making sure that they were not noticed by the Spaniards or by the Spaniards’ native spies. Privately and together they began urging Manco to put an end to such abuses and to revolt. The bearded foreigners were not liberators, they argued, but occupiers. The Spaniards in Cuzco, in fact, had merely replaced the occupation of Atahualpa’s army with an occupation of their own—and both occupations were intolerable. “We cannot spend our entire lives in such great misery and subjection [while being] treated even worse than the Spaniards’ black slaves,” they told Manco. “Let us rebel once and for all and die for our liberty, and for our children and wives, who every day they take from us and abuse.”

By November 1535, a little over a year after the Spaniards had occupied Cuzco, Manco had reached a turning point. In the beginning, Manco had hoped to rule independently alongside the bearded
viracochas
and, being few in number, that they could easily be satisfied by giving them whatever they wanted. The problem was that the Spaniards’ needs had no limits—up to and including Manco’s own
coya
, or queen. With each passing day, in fact, it was more and more obvious who was really in control, not just of Cuzco but also of the rest of Tawantinsuyu. In the south, Almagro and his men were currently ravaging and pillaging the countryside,
while on the coast, Manco was undoubtedly told, Francisco Pizarro was busy drawing lines on the sand where he expected new cities teeming with Spaniards to arise from the earth. In the far north, Pizarro’s captain, Sebastián de Benalcázar, had conquered and was ravaging the area that Manco’s brother Atahualpa had once controlled. Even in Cuzco, at the very heart of the empire, the
encomenderos
were clamoring each day for more and more produce to be delivered to them by way of tribute—yet they gave nothing to the natives in return.

The more Manco thought about it, the more he undoubtedly realized that he had been incredibly naive. All the words of Pizarro, Almagro, and Soto about restoring the Incas’ liberty and about their brotherhood and friendship had obviously been lies. The
viracochas
had not come to restore Manco and Huascar’s faction back to the throne—they had instead come to rule Tawantinsuyu. They had simply duped Manco into helping them do so.

Experiencing an epiphany that was no doubt magnified by the unforget-table image of Gonzalo Pizarro dragging away his tearful wife, Manco’s situation had finally become as clear as the chilly waters that ran through the stone channels in the city, as clear as the view from the heights of the glistening, snow-covered mountains. At some point Manco must have also realized that if he chose to fight the Spaniards, he would essentially be resuming the war recently fought by Atahualpa’s generals, Quisquis and Rumiñavi—at least one of whom he himself had helped to destroy. It was a grand awakening for the young emperor, and no doubt an unpleasant one. Along with his newfound perception, however, came a gradual decision that never again would he take the Spaniards at their word. The Christians’ words were clearly designed only to distract and to deceive.

In early November of 1535, Manco Inca took his first concrete step in the direction of rebellion, calling for a secret meeting of his chiefs and governors from the four quarters of the empire—the Cuntisuyo, Antisuyu, Collasuyu, and Chinchasuyu. With his generals and the high priest, Villac Umu, in attendance, twenty-year-old Manco delivered a speech to what was essentially the cream of the Inca elite. It was a major turning point in the young emperor’s career.

“I have sent for you in order to tell you in the presence of our relatives and attendants how I feel about what these foreigners intend to do with us,” Manco said, no doubt wearing large golden ear
spools, a soft vicuña tunic, and with the royal fringe hanging across his forehead,

Armed native guards peered from the doorways as Manco continued, the Inca leaders occasionally looking at one another, then back at the young emperor. None had presumably ever heard Manco speak with such intensity and clarity of purpose before. Manco continued:

The
yanaconas
of which Manco spoke were a separate class of natives who were lifelong servants of the Inca elite.
Yanaconas
tilled no land and in a sense were a rootless class, a kind of Inca proletariat; many were quick to attach themselves to the Spaniards, working for them as servants, auxiliary fighters, and spies. The
mitmaes
(or
mitmaqkuna
) that Manco was so bitter about were rebellious natives that the Incas had removed from their own provinces and had resettled in areas where they were surrounded by peasants loyal to the emperor. Not surprisingly, they, too, were quick to become collaborators of the Spaniards. Manco went on:

Instead of collaborators, they would become resistance leaders, Manco said. No longer would they obey the bearded foreigners from across the seas. Either they retook control of the realm their ancestors had built—or else they would all die fighting.

That same evening, no doubt realizing that the Spaniards were bound to find out about the meeting, Manco slipped quietly out of
the city. In the penetrating cold of the Andean night, Manco took with him some of his wives, personal servants, nobles, and chiefs. He was determined now to rebel, to wage war against the Spaniards, no matter what the cost. Behind him lay the soft yet increasingly unrewarding life of a puppet emperor; before him lay the far riskier life of an independent Inca lord, fighting to rid his empire of a brutal band of invaders. As Manco hurried out of the city, under the cover of night, he no doubt had already decided that the next time he entered Cuzco it would only be at the head of a conquering army, an army with which he was determined to exterminate the Spaniards.

“Manco Inca … sent messengers to every province, from Quito to Chile,” wrote the Spanish chronicler Martín de Murúa, “commanding the Indians that on a certain day, within four months’ time, everyone would rise up together against the Spaniards and that they would kill them all, pardoning no one, including the black [slaves] and the many Nicaraguan Indian [slaves] who had come to these parts in the company of the Spaniards … because in that way they would be able to achieve liberty from the oppression they were under.”

Despite Manco’s precautions, however, spies
had
been in attendance at the clandestine meeting and afterward had reported to Juan Pizarro the emperor’s rebellious speech. The young lieutenant governor rushed off to search Manco’s house and, not finding him, raised the general alarm. Soon, he and his brother Gonzalo and a group of Spanish horsemen saddled up and raced off into a night that was “wretched, dark, and fearful.”

On the stone-flagged road that headed south toward the Collao—the region south of Cuzco and north of the vast, jewel-like expanse of Lake Titicaca—already miles outside the city, the Spaniards began to overtake some of Manco’s entourage—dark figures standing motionless alongside the road and lit from overhead by the glittering
mayu
, or Milky Way. Although the Spaniards demanded that they tell them where their emperor was, the Inca nobles lied, indicating that Manco had gone in a certain direction when in reality he had gone in another. Racing ahead yet finding no sign of the emperor, Gonzalo soon captured another Inca noble and demanded that he divulge Manco’s whereabouts. When the noble refused, Gonzalo “dismounted from his horse, and with help from the others they tied a rope to his genitals to torture him, which they indeed did so that the poor
orejón
screamed loudly, declaring that the Inca
[emperor] was not traveling on that highway.” The Spaniards quickly corrected their mistake and galloped off in the opposite direction.

Manco had until now been traveling on a royal litter, carried by native porters, but when he and his attendants eventually heard the unmistakable sound of horse hooves galloping in the distance, the young emperor realized that he had been betrayed.

The two Pizarro brothers, relieved to have found the emperor before he could organize an insurrection, didn’t believe Manco’s story for a minute. They quickly escorted him back to Cuzco and locked him in a room—just as they had imprisoned Atahualpa three years earlier. The same man who had stolen Manco’s wife and who openly slept with her now supervised the removal of Manco’s final outward vestiges of power. “Gonzalo Pizarro ordered [his men] to bring irons and a chain,” recalled Titu Cusi, “with which they shackled my father as they pleased … and then all at once they threw a chain around his neck and irons on his feet.”

With Manco now their prisoner, the Spanish inhabitants of Cuzco no longer made a pretense of showing the emperor any respect. Juan and Gonzalo Pizarro, in fact, were especially brutal, threatening Manco with even worse consequences if he didn’t immediately reveal the location of more gold and silver. Manco was later quoted:

Even with Manco’s latest gifts, however, the Spaniards were still not satisfied; with little to restrain them, they became more and more abusive, both to Manco and to the rest of the city’s native inhabitants, whether aristocrats or commoners. No longer did the Spaniards attempt to hide who was in control, nor what kind of future lay in store for the native citizens of Tawantinsuyu. According to Titu Cusi, during his captivity Manco tried to reason with the Spaniards, in an attempt to remind them of everything he had done for them previously.