The rule of empires : those who built them, those who endured them, and why they always fall (32 page)

of Inkan symbolism, they also recruited Africans and black Peruvians by promising to abolish slavery. The Lima authorities put down

the rebellion with wholesale torture and executions, but the rebel

leader Francisco Inka fl ed to his home province, where he continued

the uprising by attacking the
mit’a
system and abusive
corregidors
.

Declaring a revival of Inkan rule in Huarochiri, he swore allegiance

to Juan Santos Atawallpa and promised his followers that military

162 THE RULE OF EMPIRES

aid was on the way. In the end, however, armed Spanish miners and

troops brought the insurrection to a swift and bloody conclusion.

Francisco Inka’s uprising was a signifi cant threat because Huarochiri

controlled the main communication routes between Lima and the

highlands, but it was only a prelude to the most serious outbreak

of organized unrest. In 1780, a mestizo
kuraka
named José Gabriel

Condorcanqui touched off a chain reaction of popular violence in

a vast swath of the highlands stretching from Cuzco southward to

Lake Titicaca. Claiming to be a prince of the Inka royal line, he drew

approximately fi fty thousand followers as Tupac Amaru II. This enormous army handed the Spanish their worst defeat in Peru since the

conquistador era and followed Manqu Inka’s example by laying siege

to Cuzco.

Although he claimed the Inkan throne, Tupac was actually a

wealthy but common mule train owner angered by the Peruvian

government’s imposition of higher sales taxes and increased tariffs.

Many of his followers were poor mestizos and marginal creoles, and

his primary demands were for free trade and a more representative

and responsible government. Far from being an anti-imperial revolutionary, Tupac declared his loyalty to the Spanish Crown and claimed

to be acting under royal orders to stamp out corruption and protect

the true Christian faith in the highlands. Ultimately, he was more

interested in supplanting the entrenched
principales
in the highlands

than in bringing about real social change. The full-blooded Inkan

aristocracy in Cuzco considered him an upstart, and he drew little

support from commoners living around the city.51

The size of Tupac’s army creates a false impression that he had a

popular Andean following. In reality, his insurgency was an umbrella

rebellion that swept up smaller local revolts by communities that

were suffering under the burden of imperial tribute and knew little

of the self-proclaimed Sapa Inka’s true agenda. Indeed, the rebellion

took on a life of its own after the Peruvian authorities captured Tupac

and tortured him to death in 1781. For a time his cousins, who took

the names Diego and Andrés Tupac Amaru, continued the revolt. In

time, creole offi cers leading militia units of conscripted Andeans and

lower-class
castas
hunted them down as well.

The issues driving the Tupac Amaru rebellion also resonated with

people in the Aymara-speaking regions around Lake Titicaca, which

were now part of the Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata. As in Peru, a

Spanish

Peru 163

minor
kuraka
family attracted followers by tapping into widespread

anger over excessive tax and tribute demands. Their leader, Tomás

Katari, followed Tupac Amaru’s lead in affi rming his allegiance to the

Crown and appealed to the
audiencia
of Buenos Aires for redress,

but Bolivian offi cials put him to death. His brothers continued the

revolt at the head of a large army that unsuccessfully besieged La

Paz. Seeking help against a common enemy, they swore allegiance to

Tupac Amaru as the returned Sapa Inka even though their Aymaraspeaking followers had no emotional ties to the Inkas. The alliance

proved fruitless, and Spanish forces eventually defeated and executed

the would-be Inkan viceroys.

Upon closer analysis, neither Tupac Amaru nor the Kataris were

particularly central to the mass unrest in the southern Andes. Most

of the common people who fl ocked to their call were actually rebelling against the
mit’a
system and, indirectly, the burden of the

Bourbon extractive demands. Tupac Amaru aimed to supplant the

principales
in the highlands, but his followers interjected a far more

populist element into the revolt as it spread south into Bolivia. In

addition to rejecting imperial demands for tribute, they assaulted the

privileged, ignored church sanctuary, and rejected the right to private property. Essentially, these were as much civil wars between the

victims and benefi ciaries of Spanish imperial rule in the highlands

as they were revolts against Bourbon absolutism. Underlying all the

uprisings was opposition to the institutions of imperial exploitation that drove the emerging capitalist economy in the Andes. This

radical agenda provided a powerful incentive for
principales
, creole

aristocrats, Inkan nobles, and imperial administrators to cooperate

in stamping out the revolts. The Peruvian authorities dismissed the

rebellions as an atavistic reversion to Indian barbarism, but it took

them almost two years and more than one million lives to regain

control of the highlands.

This enormous loss of life was a prime consideration in the Spanish government’s decision to reform the rural administration. Peruvian offi cials also took steps to defuse the tensions that had brought

on the unrest by relaxing
mit’a
obligations and giving Cuzco a representative municipal government. But no imperial power can afford

to appear soft to its subjects, and vindictive and paranoid offi cials

executed every fi fth man in rebel Andean villages and tortured and

beheaded their leaders. Sporadic outbursts of local unrest continued,

164 THE RULE OF EMPIRES

but the Peruvian government’s draconian tactics held popular resistance at a manageable level.

Ultimately, it was the privileged creoles, not the subject majority,

that brought the Spanish Empire in the Americas to an end in the

early nineteenth century. The
peninsulares
insinuated that creole

conspirators provoked the Tupac Amaru revolt in a plot to follow

the English colonists’ lead in declaring their independence. This was

nonsense, for the mass rebellion demonstrated that the Peruvian creoles still needed metropolitan help in controlling the Andean majority.

They were far more royalist and conservative than their counterparts

in the other viceroyalties because they worried that a revolutionary

war would give the lower orders of Peruvian society another chance

to revolt. In 1791, the bloody slave uprising in Haiti, resulting from

the breakdown in authority during the French Revolution, deepened

their insecurity.

Although Peruvian creoles disliked the Bourbon mercantilism

that hindered trade with the rest of the Americas and resented the

condescension of the
peninsulares
, it took events in Europe to fi nally

force a break with Spain. In 1808, central authority in the empire

collapsed after Napoleon placed his brother Joseph on the Spanish

throne. Warfare and disorder in metropolitan Spain, coupled with the

British blockade of continental Europe, gave New World Spaniards

an opportunity to take more direct control of their economic and

political affairs. The Bourbon government in exile refused to sanction these steps but was powerless to enforce its will on the imperial periphery. Creole leaders such as Simón Bolívar in Venezuela and

Bernardo O’Higgins in Chile took advantage by founding provincial

councils (
juntas
) that challenged royal authority.

While Peruvian creole leaders were not sure what to make of their

newfound autonomy, in 1811 Bolívar and his fellow Venezuelan creoles took the radical step of declaring their independence. This touched

off revolutionary wars between rebels and royalists throughout the

continent. Ferdinand VII tried to reassert control over the colonies

upon returning to power in 1814, but his troops, who sympathized

with the opponents of Bourbon absolutism, mutinied. This gave creole armies led by Bolívar in the north and José de San Martín in

the south the opportunity to roll up steady victories as they brought

three centuries of Spanish imperial rule in almost all of South America to an end.

Spanish

Peru 165

In Peru, however, the threat of popular revolt dressed up in neoInkan garb made the creole elite far less ready to break with the Crown

than were their counterparts in the rest of the continent. The viceregal

authorities continued to uncover small plots to restore self-proclaimed

Sapa Inkas, and another Cuzco-based mass rebellion erupted in 1814

that once again shook the foundations of creole privilege. Viceregal

troops restored order, but the Lima establishment, which retained

relatively strong economic ties to Spain, was in no mood to leave the

safety of the empire at such a precarious moment. Alarmed by the

royalists’ encouragement of slaves and Indians to rise up against Bolívar in Venezuela, they decided not to form a
junta
. Lima thus became

a royalist redoubt sandwiched between the revolutionary regime in

Venezuela and its southern allies in Argentina and Chile.

Spanish rule in Peru survived until San Martín’s Army of the

Andes captured Lima in 1821 and Bolívar defeated the royalist forces

in the highlands three years later. Peru and Bolivia split into independent nations in 1839. Tellingly, the subject population of Peru was

largely disinterested in the outcome of the independence struggle

because, despite San Martín’s promises to reform the tribute system

and end slavery, they recognized that a revolutionary victory would

not change their status. Conscripted Peruvians fought on both sides

of the confl ict, but Indians,
castas
, and slaves remained a subordinate

majority under the new national constitution that based the franchise

on property and occupation. Viceregal offi cials abolished the
mit’a
in

1812, but economic necessity forced the postcolonial Peruvian government to retain the head tax. Debt peonage replaced labor tribute,

and slavery remained legal until the 1850s. The promise of constitutional liberalism also faded as powerful regional warlords known as

caudillos
used patronage and clientage to seize power. The Spanish

Empire in South America was no more, but the descendants of the

Andeans remained exploitable subjects.

Although it shared many common features with imperial Rome

and the Umayyad Caliphate, Spain’s three-hundred-year New World

empire was the product of a revolutionary change in the systems of

imperial rule. Advances in maritime technology gave Spanish empire

builders the means to conquer and hold new lands beyond the once

confi ning shores of continental Europe. Although there would still

be great land empires, the defi ning empires of the early modern era

were sprawling global entities.

166 THE RULE OF EMPIRES

The ability to bridge the oceanic barriers that had formerly kept

the Americas isolated from the Old World Eurasian land mass gave

the conquistadors a distinct advantage over the seemingly invincible

Aztec and Inkan empires. While they were equipped with horses,

superior weapons, and an aggressive Christian zealotry nurtured

by the wars of the Reconquista, Spanish empire builders triumphed

by exploiting the Americans’ vulnerability to Old World diseases. It

would take Europeans several more centuries to understand the biological nature of infection, but the explorers and settlers who followed

in Columbus’s footsteps unintentionally but inevitably touched off

devastating virgin-soil epidemics simply by interacting with epidemiologically vulnerable New World peoples. The ensuing deaths of

millions left the Inkans and Aztecs dangerously vulnerable before

they even set eyes on the fi rst conquistador. Were it not for these

diseases, the Pizarrists most likely would have encountered Wayna

Qhapaq at the height of his power when they blundered into the

highlands. Instead, the conquistadors found a broken empire wracked

by civil war between the Sapa Inka’s fratricidal sons.

A healthy Wayna Qhapaq might have been able to hold off the

conquistadors, but the Pizarrists’ ability to hijack the Inkan state,

which seems a remarkable accomplishment at face value, actually

illustrated another reality common to all empires. Although imperial states appeared virtually omnipotent at the height of their

dominance, they were in fact extremely fragile. Recently conquered

Andeans had little reason to defend Inkan despots and largely stood

by as the Pizarrists became the new lords of the highlands. Lacking

popular legitimacy, the bureaucratic and extractive institutions that

made the Inkan Empire possible and profi table were easily captured

by outsiders with the military means to displace them.

In one sense, Pizarro and the conquistadors do not seem particularly

different from earlier generations of imperialists. They were driven

by self-interest and greed, but they depicted themselves as loyal servants of the Crown. Conveniently, the ships that brought them across