Inkarri by Sandro Francisco Piedrahita

They say in silence “Tupac,”
and Tupac gestates in the earth.
“Tupac Amaru 1781”
Pablo Neruda

Do not celebrate yet, my Spanish brothers, do not kill the fatted calf. The Inkarri is not dead. All you care about is gold and silver, the mita¹ and the encomienda². You excuse yourselves by saying you seek to convert the Indians to Catholicism, yet there is nothing Christian in the way you treat the natives of Peru. A week ago, I witnessed from the steps leading to my church on Cusco’s Plaza Mayor how you murdered the Indian kuraka³ Tupac Amaru II and his entire family in front of thousands of Indians. That has driven me to begin this humble testimonio⁴, to leave a record of what happened and, in the name of God, to persuade you to cease all such activities. You didn’t have the decency to simply shoot them in the head. Instead you tortured them before they died, killing the kuraka last, in order to inflict as much pain as possible on the detested man. You forced him to see how you cut out the tongue of his wife Micaela Bastidas before you strangled her with a rope. You forced him to watch as his firstborn Hipolito was hanged. And in the end, you tied Tupac Amaru II to four horses whipping them so they would run in four different directions hoping that the kuraka’s limbs might be torn apart. When that failed – the Indians were not surprised – you beheaded him after having cut off his tongue as well. You forced his ten-year-old son Fernando to witness everything, in an act of implacable hostility with no purpose other than to terrify the boy. Don’t you see what you’ve done is a great crime, a violation everything our Roman Catholic Church holds dear? And don’t you realize that Tupac Amaru II will return as the Inkarri? Through your actions, you’ve made it certain that he will come back to fulfill his quest and oust the Spaniards from these lands.

But your macabre cruelty did not end there. After Tupac Amaru II died, you dismembered him and placed his head and limbs on five metal pikes with the intention of displaying them to the public in Cusco and other towns where the kuraka had once fought. You did the same with the head, arms and legs of his wife Micaela Bastidas. The only part of Tupac Amaru’s body that was incinerated was his torso, since you knew of the myth of the Inkarri but did not understand it. You thought that by burning his torso the Indians would no longer believe that Tupac Amaru II would return as the Inkarri ready to defeat the Españarri⁵. Had you known more about the Indians you enslave and kill, you would have realized that the myth of the Inkarri tells us that after his limbs and head are buried in different parts, they will grow together underground and a torso will appear. You should have burnt the entire body to quash the Indians’ expectations of a messianic return of the Inkarri, but of course you know nothing about quechua myths. As it was, your actions only helped to keep the legend alive. You sent Tupac Amaru II’s head to be displayed at Tinta at the principal entrance to the city; you sent Tupac Amaru II’s right arm to Carabana; you sent Tupac Amaru II’s left arm to Tungasuca; you sent Tupac Amaru II’s legs to Livitica and Santa Rosa. You did it to terrorize the Indians so that they would never even think of another rebellion, but your actions had the opposite effect. Since the Indians had heard that some of Tupac Amaru II’s soldiers were resurrected three days after they were killed, they had no doubt that their leader, too, could come back to life. They had always thought that Tupac Amaru II was himself the resurrection of two prior Inkarris, the Sapa Inca Atahualpa killed by garrote under the orders of Francisco Pizarro two centuries earlier and the last Sapa Inca,⁶ Tupac Amaru I, killed by hanging in that same century by the successors of the Spanish conquistador.

I know you will defend your actions by arguing that Bishop Juan Manuel Moscoso y Peralta excommunicated Tupac Amaru II for his role in inciting the rebellion and that the bishop considered Indians to be unruly “savages.” In light of how you Spaniards fought the war, and your fierce punishment of the rebels afterward, I wonder who the “savages” really were. I for one think Confession should not have been denied to the Indians but to those Spaniards who through centuries of oppression caused the Indians to act with a desperate barbarity, a cruelty which was more than matched by that of the so-called Catholic men from Spain. Father Bartolome de las Casas, author of A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, fought tirelessly to abolish the repressive encomienda system in the sixteenth century – a system that made the natives work for virtually no remuneration – but the system was largely intact two centuries later in the viceroyalty of Peru. What were the quechua peoples to do then, other than revolt? I believe that in the insurrection led by Tupac Amaru II, God was on the side of the rebellious Indians, not that of the so-called Christians who tried to crush them in the name of the Spanish Crown and Christ Himself. I’m sure that if Father Bartolome were alive today, he would agree. Didn’t the priest refuse absolution to encomenderos⁷ on their death beds unless all Indian slaves had been set free and their lands returned to them? Didn’t he threaten that anyone who mistreated Indians within his jurisdiction would be excommunicated? Don’t forget the priest and Protector of the Indians once wrote that “what we committed in the Indies stands out among the most unpardonable offenses against God and mankind and the treatment of Indians was one of the most unjust, evil and cruel among them.” And what the white man did to the Indians of Peru as a response to the great rebellion led by Tupac Amaru II was so much worse than the atrocities witnessed by Father Bartolome.

Before I begin my research for this testimonio, let me state out front that my inclination is to believe in the legend of the Inkarri, the mythical man growing underground with a slow and millenarian patience. I am a Catholic and a priest at that, but I don’t see any inconsistency between believing in the One True God while also lending credence to certain ancestral myths taught to me by my quechua mother. If that makes me a heretic and an apostate, you can disregard everything I say. But do realize that the Catholic Church teaches us to believe in miracles as well as in God’s retributive justice.

The cyclical return of the Inkarri is an example of both.

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As far as I can tell, there are no public records of Jose Gabriel Condorcanqui, later known as Tupac Amaru II, at any time before his thirty-fifth year. At that point Tupac Amaru II makes his appearance at Tungasuca, in the province of Cusco, as a wealthy muleteer and a kuraka – a tribal chieftain – involved in collecting taxes from the Indians for the Spaniards. There are no baptismal records for anyone named Jose Gabriel Condorcanqui in the whole province of Cusco and nobody seems to have known him as a younger man in Tungasuca. Of course, there are rumors that he attended the San Francisco de Borja academy, a Jesuit high school for the descendants of Inca royalty in Cusco, but by then he was already sixteen, which is not inconsistent with his being the Inkarri. What everyone seems to agree on is that after his thirty-fifth year – approximately the year 1777 – he became virtually ubiquitous in his defense of the Indians under his protection. He initiated multiple lawsuits in Lima and Cusco seeking redress for the quechua people’s grievances, mostly about the encomienda system and the mita labor drafts.

Saturnina Huaman is an ancient curandera⁸ who has lived in Tungasuca for all of her eighty years. When I arrive to her small thatched home, I immediately tell her that I am researching the past of the recently executed Jose Gabriel Condorcanqui, also known as Tupac Amaru II. Did she know him as a child? Does she remember him playing with the other kids? The old woman talks to me at length through her toothless mouth.

“Nobody remembers Tupac Amaru II as a boy. That is something the Spaniards don’t want you to know. We all knew his parents, Miguel Condorcanqui Usquionsa and María Rosa Noguera, but the news that they had a son who would replace Miguel as kuraka came as a surprise to all of us. His mother always claimed that he had been raised by relatives in Lima, but that he had returned to Tungasuca to work as a muleteer as his father had once done.”

“So he didn’t live in poverty?” I ask.

“Not at all,” responded the toothless curandera. “Tupac Amaru II inherited more than three-hundred mules from his father as well as the position as kuraka of Tungasuca, Surimana and Pampamarca. He also owned several properties and an interest in a mine. He appeared with a wife, Micaela Bastidas, by the year 1760, when he looked to be around eighteen. Of course, even if he had been in Tungasuca since childhood, it wouldn’t mean he wasn’t the Inkarri. I think you’re looking up a blind alley. The Spaniards are desperately trying to create a false history for Tupac Amaru II, since they fear him even in death knowing that the people know he was the Inkarri and still expect he will restore the Inca empire of Tahuantinsuyo. Don’t be surprised if a baptismal record suddenly shows up. It would be one of the Spaniards’ many fabrications meant to diminish the fervor of the masses. What proves Tupac Amaru II was the Inkarri is not anything that happened in his childhood; it’s what happened once he was an adult. If I were doing the investigation, I would focus on that. You should research what he did to combat the unjust colonial system through the courts before he realized only war could save the Runa⁹ people.”

“What did he do?” I ask.

“Through the encomiendas,” Saturnina responds, “the Indians had to work for the encomenderos for a pittance and then forced to pay taxes even on those scant earnings. Through the mita labor drafts, they had to spend a full year working at the distant silver mines of Potosi and often lost their lives in the process. Tupac Amaru II filed various lawsuits against both the encomienda and the mita labor drafts. When that failed, after years of litigation, he realized the lot of the Indians could not be improved by the legal system and decided to take up arms.”

“Who do you think would have the most information about whether or not Tupac Amaru II was the Inkarri?

“I suggest you speak directly to his mother, María Rosa Noguera. She might be somewhat reluctant to speak to you, since her entire family has been killed and she fears execution herself, but she might open up seeing that you’re a priest interested in preserving her dead son’s legacy.”

Maria Rosa Noguera is not dressed as a native, but like a white woman from the coast. She is a descendant of Inca nobility and was used to being treated respectfully by the Spaniards until her son Tupac Amaru II initiated his implacable war against them. I tell her that I’m preparing a testimonio to defend his cause and needed certain questions answered. The gray-haired woman is wary and tells me she has nothing to say.

“I won’t mention your name in the report,” I tell her. “But I’m interested in rumors your son was the Inkarri and that some day he shall return.”

“The Inkarri?” she echoes. “I have nothing to say on that subject. The war is virtually over ever since Tupac was defeated and decapitated. There is nothing left to say.”

“Some say Tupac Amaru II wasn’t born of a woman, that he was gestated in the earth like a child in his mother’s womb, that he was Atahualpa coming back to avenge the quechua peoples.”

“As I told you, I have nothing to tell you on that subject. Whether or not he was the Inkarri is of no importance now. If he was the Inkarri, then the Inkarri was drawn and quartered once again.”

“If he was the Inkarri, then that means he will come back,” I answer. “The Inkarri will not so easily be defeated. Tell me, Señora Condorcanqui, was your son the Inkarri? I believe the Inkarri has appeared before, two centuries ago. He did so in the body of Tupac Amaru I, who was beheaded by the Spaniards in 1572 and was himself the reincarnation of the strangled Sapa Inca Atahualpa. Given the Incas’ cyclical view of history, it would make sense for the Inkarri to return two-hundred years later.”

“Do your research elsewhere. Assuming that my son was the notorious Inkarri, there would be multiple sources for you to prepare your testimonio. I’m sure you know it’s a secreto a voces¹⁰ that some of my son’s soldiers came back to life after having been dead for three days. Talk to them and leave me alone. Frankly, I don’t know why the Spaniards have spared me so far. As you know, they decimated my entire family. I don’t want to give them an excuse to kill me on the charge I am encouraging sedition. They will say I am fanning the flames of insurrection by claiming that my son will come back from the grave to finish his war against the peninsulares.¹¹ Don’t forget that after such a grueling conflict the white man is still terrified by the Inkarri. They may say they don’t believe in him, but they know his very name inflames the hearts of the quechua masses and that is enough to fill the Spaniards with fear.”

“Can I come back after I’ve prepared the testimonio? I would like you to confirm certain facts and perhaps negate others.”

“You can come back all the times you wish. I’ve already told you I have nothing else to tell you.”

---

I next decided to speak with Bishop Moscoso, the man who had excommunicated Tupac Amaru II and his followers and in the process had helped turn the tide of war in the Spaniards’ favor. I obviously didn’t tell him I was most interested in the question of whether Tupac Amaru II was the reincarnation of the Inkarri, since the bishop would have considered me a heretic or worse. Still, there were many questions he could answer. During the ensuing months, I visited him regularly to discuss sundry topics, but in our first meeting what interested me most were his impressions about how the war had started. Bishop Moscoso kept me waiting a long time before he finally appeared. He would have been considered a handsome man but for a disfiguring mole on his olive-skinned face.

“Don’t believe all those who claim that from the outset Tupac Amaru II’s complaints in the courts were about how the cholos¹² were treated. Sure, he eventually objected to the alcabala taxes imposed on the natives and the reparto, the forced purchase of goods from the Spaniards at what he perceived to be inflated prices. But what initially drove Tupac Amaru II to rebellion was a very personal grievance.”

“What would that be, your holiness?”

“He brought suit in the courts of Cusco and eventually in the appellate courts of Lima because of a private dispute with a man named Don Diego Felipe de Betancur, who challenged Tupac Amaru II’s claims to the marquisate of Oropesa. According to Betancur, Tupac Amaru’s claims of royal Inca blood were spurious and in the end the courts sided with Betancur. So don’t tell me Tupac Amaru II was a fierce defender of the Indians, He held a private grudge which morphed into a great war, probably due to circumstances which were beyond his control. One more thing I will note. He hated the white man whom he called the puka kunka, a pejorative quechua term for one with a red neck. That explains all the massacres at his orders, all the beheadings, everything that would follow. Tupac Amaru II was a sanguinary man with an ancestral and deep-seated enmity against the peninsulares.”

“Are you denying he was indefatigable in his defense of the peasants even before he launched the war?”

“I would say he was litigious,” scoffs the bishop indignantly. “He must have spent a fortune with his little pleitos¹³ in the courts. You should know he wasn’t a poor man. In fact, he was wealthier than most white men in the viceroyalty of Peru. But like every Indian with a little wealth or a little education he was a resentido social – a resentful malcontent – and given his purported Inca lineage he raged at the fact that as an Indian he could never achieve the social status of the poorest peninsular. As you know, their great Atahualpa was defeated by a Spanish swineherd.”

“So you think Tupac Amaru II was embittered by the fact he could never be seen as an equal – or as a superior – to the Spaniard?”

“Absolutely. My experience with Tupac Amaru II has confirmed something I have always thought. The Indians, no matter their purported lineage, should never be educated by the white man. A humble Indian remains humble. An educated Indian shall slash your throat. And never ever let them read Garcilaso de la Vega’s Royal Commentaries of the Incas¹⁴. It will only fill their minds with thoughts of an impossible indigenous utopia. If it wasn’t for the white man, the Indians would live in hunger and anarchy.”

“Do you think the liberation of the Indians was a mere pretext for Tupac Amaru II to begin his war?”

“Tupac Amaru II owned a mine,” gesticulates the bishop, his eyes locking with my own. “Did you know that? And yet he made his opposition to the mita labor draft the linchpin of his argument for war. What hypocrisy! He didn’t steep this country in a fratricidal war to help the peasants and the miners. He did so because in his deluded mind he wanted to govern all Peru as a modern-day Sapa Inca. He was convinced that he was the direct heir of Atahualpa and even encouraged his followers to believe he was the reincarnation of the dead Inca. I think the quechuas have a term for that. They said Tupac Amaru II was the Inkarri who could never die. Many still believe it despite the man’s public execution and dismemberment. It’s just a little more evidence of the man’s millenarian ambitions and unbridled pride. Simply put, the presumptuous cholo wanted to be crowned King of all Peru and Upper Peru. Not surprising that he called his wife “La Coya,” quechua for “the Inca queen.” If his insurrection cost a hundred-thousand lives throughout the length and breadth of South America, as it ultimately did, the man said so be it. After all, he had long-held ambitions to fulfill.”

“How do you interpret the Arriaga affair? That was the first killing of the entire war, What led Tupac Amaru II from litigation to insurrection? Was it a sudden conversion in your opinion?”

“Well, you know, I never got along with Governor Antonio de Arriaga,” the prelate responds. “He disliked me from the outset, since he believed a peninsular rather than a mestizo should have been named bishop of Cusco. And he didn’t like that as soon as I became bishop I sought to protect Indians from exorbitant taxes. After he publicly denounced me as a rabble-rouser and raised unfounded rumors about my vow of chastity, I decided to excommunicate the man. I tell you all this just so you know we were never friends and will take what I say about the Arriaga affair as a fair and unbiased recollection of events.”

“What is your recollection?” I ask.

“Well, that’s tricky,” responds the bishop.” You have to understand all I’m reporting to you is hearsay. I wasn’t a direct witness to what happened. And there are two different theories as to what occurred with Governor Arriaga, neither of which is entirely convincing.”

“Two theories?”

“Yes, the first theory is that everything happened suddenly. The other is that the murder of Governor Arriaga had been planned long before it happened.”

“Tell me about the first theory,” I ask.

“The story is that initially Tupac Amaru II and Arriaga were on good terms, to such an extent that the Indian asked the Governor to be the Godfather of his son Mariano. But in May of 1780, the relationship between the two men soured. Arriaga was a greedy man and proposed a plan to Tupac Amaru II with regard to the repartos¹⁵ which would swindle the Indians. Arriaga could only sell his items for 112,000 pesos, but he wanted to sell his wares at a much higher price. You have to understand the reparto forced the Indians to buy the products from Governor Arriaga at whatever price he set and he wanted to charge them much more than was permitted under applicable law. Arriaga sought Tupac Amaru II’s complicity in the scheme, but the kuraka refused. Thereafter, their relationship became worse and worse until it exploded in November 1780. But at that point, the reported history ceases to make any sense.”

“Why doesn’t it make sense?” I ask.

“Because the definitive rupture between the two men, according to this theory, only happened in late October 1780, a mere two weeks before Tupac Amaru II ordered the execution of Arriaga and immediately thereafter launched his millenarian war.”

The bishop pauses briefly to clean his sweaty face with a handkerchief.

“As I understand the theory,” he continues, “Arriaga and Tupac Amaru II both appeared at a banquet where the Governor demanded that the Indian kuraka turn over a great amount of money which the Governor claimed was owed to him by the Indians under Tupac Amaru II’s supervision. The Governor accused the kuraka of being too slow in collecting reparto debts from the Indians subject to his kuracazgo.¹⁶ When the kuraka protested that the Governor was asking for an exorbitant sum, Arriaga furiously threatened to hang Tupac Amaru II and his entire family unless the kuraka paid the demanded money within a day.”

“Why do you find that theory difficult to believe?”

“Because under that theory,” responds the prelate, “everything happens too fast. Within two weeks of that altercation with Tupac Amaru II, Arriaga is killed at the orders of the kuraka.”

“That makes perfect sense to me,” I answer. “After all, under this theory, Arriaga had already threatened Tupac Amaru II’s life.”

“What doesn’t make sense is how swiftly Tupac Amaru II began the great rebellion,” responds the bishop. “You can’t mobilize thousands of soldiers overnight, but you have to believe that Tupac Amaru II did just that if you accept the theory that the kuraka only acted after the Governor threatened him with death in October 1780. The great battle of Sangarara, where the kuraka led an army of thousands and which killed five-hundred Spanish soldiers, happened within a week of Arriaga’s death. By the time of the siege of Cusco, less than two months after Arriaga’s execution, Tupac Amaru II had an army of sixty-thousand men.”

“What is the alternative theory?” I ask.

“Well, under the second theory Tupac Amaru II would have been planning and organizing his insurrection long before the execution of Arriaga. But that doesn’t make any sense either. If thousands of Indians knew of the plan, it would have reached the ears of the authorities, but it never did. And madmen seldom reveal their plans ahead of time. Their delusional ideas gestate slowly in their minds until they decide to act. I’ve read the records pertaining to the trial of Tupac Amaru II and his acolytes, and there is absolutely no evidence of any planning of the insurrection before Arriaga’s murder. Once again, you have to accept that the multitudinous rebellion came out of the blue. There is, of course, the Indians’ own theory of events but it is fantastic and should be dismissed out of hand.”

“What do the Indians say?”

“They have the demented idea that Tupac Amaru II was the Inkarri and that he came with special God-given powers, including the ability to raise an army of thousands within weeks. You have to understand that our Indians are a little bit confused. They accept the Catholic faith and their pagan beliefs all in the same breath.”

Perhaps as the son of a Runa mother and a Spanish man, I suffer from the same confusion. I believe in the Holy Trinity but also the pachacuti.¹⁷

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I desperately need to find a rebel who fought with Tupac Amaru II at all times during the insurrection, from the time Arriaga was hanged to the time when the kuraka was beheaded. Only someone who was with him continually during his great gesta¹⁸ can give me the information I need. Everything else is hearsay within hearsay, stories embellished at each telling. Take the legend of Tupac Amaru II reviving dead soldiers like our lord Jesus brought Lazarus back to life. The story is vox populi now, at least in certain quarters, but it has changed at each iteration. The first time I heard the tale it merely referred to Tupac Amaru II’s healing of a desperately wounded rebel. The second time I heard it, the rebel was revived but it was done by God. By now, many people swear that prior to his death Tupac Amaru II was resurrecting dead rebels left and right. However, I have never heard the tale from someone who actually saw the deed. What I need to find in order to write an accurate testimonio is an eyewitness to the miracles.

I arrive at the small brick home of Agustin Mayta, a twenty-year-old quechua peasant with coarse black hair and melancholy eyes who lives in Tinta, the town where the head of Tupac Amaru II is on bloody display. I was given his address by someone in Cusco who swore Mayta was with the rebel leader at all times. She assured me Mayta would give me any information I requested in exchange for a bit of money. As predicted, Mayta agrees to speak to me in exchange for a hundred pesos, but he seems hesitant at first. I am dressed in my cassock and I’m sure he knows that the established Church was not on the side of Tupac Amaru II. He is reassured when I tell him his real name will not be reported in my testimonio and that I believe the cacique¹⁹ he served was a man of honor.

More than a thousand people were congregated in the plaza of Tungasuca to witness the hanging of Governor Antonio de Arriaga. Mayta saw it with his own eyes. Tupac Amaru II was dressed elegantly in brilliant garments of gold and precious stones, fitting clothes for someone who was seen as a descendant of the Sun-God Inti by the masses. Tupac Amaru II spoke in a stentorian quechua and an impeccable Spanish. He read a litany of charges against the Governor, beginning with his abuse of the reparto system and ending with his physical abuse of many quechua people, including the reported rape of teenage ñustas. After announcing that he was acting in accordance with the precepts of the Roman Catholic Church and with all due loyalty to King Charles III, the rebel kuraka asked the populace if they agreed with a sentence of death for the perfidious Arriaga. For the first time in his life, Mayta realized there was strength in numbers. Nobody in the crowd could be accused of murdering Arriaga and yet it was ultimately a collective crime.. When he was hanged, the crowds cheered and some began to dance Andean huaynitos, for they felt Arriaga’s fate was well-deserved.

“The bearded viracocha²⁰ landowner shall no longer eat off your poverty,” announced the great kuraka.

“You have to understand,” says Mayta, “that at all times Tupac Amaru II fought as a Catholic and forbade his men from engaging in excesses in battle. The accusation that some rebels ate the hearts of Spanish soldiers, desecrated churches and engaged in the ritual drinking of Spanish blood are all fabrications meant to startle the white man and justify his own barbarity. You should know that at least initially his war was not against all the peninsulares, since he promised a multiethnic society where all men and women would be treated as equals under a great Inca ruler. It was the Spaniards who turned against him, especially after the traitorous Bishop Juan Manuel Moscoso decided to excommunicate the great kuraka and deceived the people by telling them Tupac Amaru II was an enemy of the Church and an ally of the supay.²¹”

“How was he able to recruit so many people so quickly? By the time of his siege of Cusco he had an army of sixty-thousand men. I spoke with Bishop Moscoso and he suggested the kuraka attracted so many followers because people thought he was the Inkarri.”

“We knew that from the very beginning. He was unquestionably an avatar of the Inkarri. It was not just his imperial raiment and oratorical skills which mesmerized the crowds. By killing Arriaga without fear he was doing something previously unimaginable. He was administering justice against someone who had injured the Runa people in the name of the Runa people. He made it clear that thenceforth the Indian would no longer wait for the white man’s justice which never came. It was the Spaniards who imposed terror on the quechua peoples, not the other way around. Tupac Amaru II incarnated and preserved the ancestral values of the quechua peoples who have been exiled in their own land. And then, of course, there were the miracles. They proved beyond any doubt that he was the Inkarri.”

“The miracles?” I echo as my heart begins to palpitate. “What do you mean?”

Tupac Amaru II and his men were being pursued while they were walking on a narrow Andean mule path. The Spaniards greatly outnumbered the rebels and were well-armed with their muskets and cannons while the Indian rebels had only their slingshots, stones, arrows and spears. Only a very few had muskets. In addition, all the Spaniards were on horses while the rebels, with the exception of Tupac Amaru II, were all traveling on foot. Just when it seemed the Spaniards were getting so close to the Indians that they would soon be able to exterminate them, Tupac Amaru II said a prayer to the Virgin of Candelaria, also known as Pachamama by some natives, and there was suddenly such a great rainfall that the muddy mountain roads became impassable and the Spaniards never reached the rebels. The very mountains had come to the rebels’ aid, throwing a veritable huayco²² against the royalists – boulders, trees, dead animals, an avalanche of mud and rock covered in moss. Not too long afterward a marvelous multicolored kkuychi²³ graced the Heavens and a black kuntur²⁴ flew across the sky. The Indians always thought the condor was a messenger from the gods bearing good news.

“Tell me, Mayta, did you ever witness Tupac Amaru II bringing a dead person back to life?”

“On more than one occasion,” responded Mayta as if it went without saying.

There was once a great battle near Lake Titicaca, the only body of water in the world at such an altitude, reportedly the place where Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo had first established the Inca empire. Tupac Amaru II’s men were victorious but by the end of the encounter the Spaniards had killed a great number of the rebels as well as entire aymara and quechua families with no involvement in the war. At one point a frantic aymara woman appeared at the rebel camp and desperately asked if any of Tupac Amaru II’s men had seen her six-year-old son. The Spaniards, given to calling the Indians savages, had drowned a great number of noncombatants in the lake before escaping from the scene. Tupac Amaru II suspected that the forlorn woman’s son was among the drowned. So he took a caballito de totora, a reed watercraft used by the native fishermen, and began to search for the woman’s son in the great lake. Mayta thought it was a fool’s errand. For one thing, even if the boy was found, he would already be dead. For another, it would be impossible to find the cadaver of the boy in a lake larger than eighty-three-hundred square kilometers. But Mayta tells me that he had forgotten that Tupac Amaru II was the Inkarri, with special magic powers. Not only did the kuraka bring back the boy with him but he brought him back alive.

On another occasion, reported Mayta, while the rebels were attacking Cusco during a siege which proved to be unsuccessful, a rebel’s throat was slashed through and through by an Indian at the service of the peninsulares. The man was dead; his head was practically severed from his neck when Mayta saw him. But then the Inkarri acted. Tupac Amaru II used a needle and a thread to stitch the rebel’s head and neck together. Where he found a needle and a thread in the midst of battle is something Mayta would never know. But there was no question he brought the rebel back to life after saying a prayer to the Virgin of Candelaria also known as Pachamama by some Indians.

“That is something I don’t quite understand,” I ask Mayta. “Was Tupac Amaru II a staunch Catholic or did he hate the Church? Why did Bishop Moscoso excommunicate him if the kuraka claimed to be under the aegis of the Christian God?”

“The excommunication was completely political, malicious and fraudulent. Bishop Moscoso used the battle of Sangarara as an excuse, blaming Tupac Amaru’s forces for causing an explosion in a church where thousands of Spanish soldiers had sought refuge. But you have to understand the white men were not in the church to pray but to regroup before returning to battle. I should also point out that Tupac Amaru II made it clear that no one should harm the priest at Sanganara, Father Juan de Mollinedo, and he was soon freed by the rebels. Moscoso ousted the kuraka from the Catholic Church not because of anything Tupac Amaru II had done but because Moscoso knew the kuraka would lose supporters in great numbers if he was excommunicated. You have to remember Moscoso threatened anyone who supported the kuraka with excommunication too. The Spanish soldiers fought their war against the great kuraka with their muskets and cannons. Moscoso’s actions were a way to fight the war against Tupac Amaru II through other means. The bishop is a mestizo after all and he had to prove to the other prelates, most of whom were Spaniards, that he was on the side of the white man despite his humble origins. I think it is fair to say that the decree of excommunication was ultimately a death knell for the rebels and generally increased the brutality of the white chapetones.²⁵ They found it much easier to torture and kill pagan excomulgados²⁶ as opposed to loyal Christians and to put their decapitated heads on pikes as a warning to all natives that they should be wary of suffering the same fate as the excomulgados. The other Indians didn’t even dare to touch the dead bodies of their excommunicated brothers, thinking they were impure according to the Indians’ own traditions.”

“Did you participate in the siege of Cusco?” I ask Mayta.

“Only near the end. During most of the siege I was with the great kuraka in the southern provinces. In fact, many say that is the reason why Tupac Amaru II’s rebels failed to occupy Cusco. His wife bitterly protested that the kuraka should return to Cusco lest the rebels’ siege completely fail, but he wanted his rebellion to span the breadth of what had once been the Inca empire. For information on the siege, you’ll have to speak to someone else perhaps a Spaniard who witnessed the siege from the inside.”

---

“You know those demented Indians think the war isn’t over,” says Captain Onesimo Valdivieso in a sonorous accent from the Canary Islands. “Did you see what happened last night? Some superstitious Indians have absconded with the heads and limbs of Tupac Amaru II and his wife Micaela Bastidas with the intention of burying their kuraka’s head in the ground and waiting for him to return as the Inkarri. Frankly, sometimes I wonder if it would not have been better simply to burn the traitorous Indian at the stake so his followers would not believe in the Inkarri’s imminent return. But as the proverb says, ‘The letter enters the man through blood.’ What we had to do was impose education by terror. If we didn’t behead the worst of the offenders, the other Indians would never learn their lesson. The head of an Indian on a pike is more powerful than a hundred sermons. An unremitting violence – killing all captives – is the only thing those barbaric Indians will understand.”

“What were the conditions in Cusco during the siege? Did the white people of the city expect an imminent defeat?”

“Well, those were frightful days. You must have experienced them yourself. You’re the parroco²⁷ at the Cathedral of the Virgin of the Assumption, aren’t you?”

“I was in Lima at the time. By the time I returned to Cusco, Tupac Amaru II and Micaela Bastidas had already been captured.”

“The siege almost succeeded. But the rebel leader overextended his efforts. Instead of attacking Cusco at the time we were vastly outnumbered, he went south to the area around Lake Titicaca for almost a month. That gave us time to get reinforcements from the capital and allowed us to mount a spirited defense once he arrived. Tupac Amaru II was blinded by his messianic ambitions and could not even contemplate the idea of failure. He thought he was invincible. You know how he signed all of his letters? Don Jose Gabriel Tupac Amaru, by the grace of God descendant of the kings and natural lords of the kingdoms of Peru.’ In his deep-seated arrogance, the lowly Indian expected to be crowned King of all Peru.”

“Do you think he suffered from overconfidence?”

“I think if he had attacked earlier, a lot of Cusco’s Indians would have revolted with him. They already considered that damned cholo²⁸ an Inca king. You know that’s what the word ‘Inkarri’ means, don’t you? It comes from the Spanish words ‘Inca rey,’ though some think it comes from the words ‘Inca rie,’ which means ‘Inca laugh.’ Who’s laughing now?”

“So you think that due to the delay and the arrival of reinforcements from Lima, Tupac Amaru II’s forces never had a chance?”

“It’s easy to say that now, but you must remember the initial skirmish between the kuraka’s rebels and the royalist reinforcements from Lima under the command of Commander Gabriel de Aviles ended in a rout for the royalists. I interpret our ultimate victory as a gift from Our Lady of the Rosary who protected us from the depredations of the bloodthirsty self-proclaimed Inkarri.”

The people of Cusco had already survived a siege of three weeks and were apprehensive that the rebel kuraka’s forces would continue the siege for months, literally starving them into submission. Many hoarded provisions in anticipation of what was to come. Commander Aviles’ troops – most of them mulattoes from the coast – awaited the rebels who were expected to attack Cusco from the south. Captain Onesimo Valdivieso was among them. The night was freezing and many of the newly arrived troops from the capital were experiencing soroche, or altitude sickness, with massive headaches, faintness of breath and the need to vomit. Captain Valdivieso reminds me with a laugh of the old saying, ‘No hay gallinazo en puna,” meaning that the black man cannot withstand the effects of the thin air at high altitudes like the Runa peasants. Finally, Aviles’ troops, including Captain Valdivieso, saw the Indian rebels, multitudinous like ants, descending from the surrounding mountains to attack Commander Aviles’ soldiers. The news of the defeat of the reinforcements from Lima at the hands of the teeming Indians filled the white men from Cusco with terror. By that time, tells me Captain Valdivieso, the battle between Tupac Amaru II’s Indian warriors and the white royalists from Lima was becoming a racial war.

“Why do you think Tupac Amaru II’s rebels were so easily defeated after that initial victory against the soldiers under the command of Commander Aviles?”

“To write about that in your testimonio,” responds Captain Valdivieso, “I think you should speak to one of the surviving rebels. Only they can tell you what was going on from their perspective. Also, maybe speak with the Spaniards who pursued him after his defeat at Cusco. The defeat at Cusco was a sort of Rubicon for Tupac Amaru II. Before his siege of the Inca capital failed and he still thought he would be king of all Peru, he was somewhat restrained in battle and suggested he would not persecute the Spaniards. But after he realized his grand ambitions had come to naught, his forces became increasingly brutal and every white man was fair game. After his grand failure at Cusco, he and his men fought the Spaniard with a genocidal fury. You have to remember the Indians are heathens and have no conscience, that their subhuman cruelty knows no bounds.”

“Let me ask you a final question. At what point do you think the war was lost by the supposed Inkarri? Was it only after he was captured or was his fate sealed long before?”

“I think it happened when his rebels stopped believing in his invincibility, when they began to doubt that dead rebels would come back to life after the war was over. The myth of the Inkarri, at least for a while, was shattered.”

---

“You have to understand the Runa people had been waiting for Tupac Amaru II for almost two-hundred-fifty years, ever since the murder of the Sapa Inca Atahualpa at the hands of Francisco Pizarro in 1533. So when the great kuraka was defeated after the long siege of Cusco many of his followers felt as desperate and unmoored as Jesus’ apostles immediately after the crucifixion. They couldn’t understand how their Inkarri could be defeated and so they began to doubt his powers, deserting him in droves. In their minds, the failure to capture Cusco was nothing less than a catastrophe, a failure of cosmic consequences, a reason to be disconsolate. They considered it the final act in the shame of a conquered people. They concluded it provided ample confirmation of their deep-seated fatalism, the sadness of their quenas.²⁹”

Father Aristeo Espinosa is one of the few members of Tupac Amaru II’s upper echelons who is still alive. He was spared from death because he turned himself in after Bishop Moscoso promised that any rebels who voluntarily surrendered to the authorities would be given prison sentences rather than execution. He is a small, grizzled man with a nervous tic – his left eye twitches continually – who clearly doesn’t like discussing how Tupac Amaru II was bested by the royalists. The stooped unshaven prisoner admits that the reversal at Cusco also made him question the great kuraka’s mighty powers. I press him to explain. I have the impression that learning about Tupac Amaru II’s final months will shed light on whether or not he was the Inkarri, the central question of this humble testimonio.

It would take two more years to completely defeat the rebels but for all intents and purposes the great rebellion was over in early 1781. By then, tells me Father Espinosa, the Spaniards and their allies – many of them quechua peasants – effectively ended the siege of Cusco, once the capital of the Inca empire. The tormented Tupac Amaru II pulled out his hair in despair and disbelief and methodically rent his royal garments as if he were in a brew-induced trance or a drunken stupor. He felt an irresistible urge to punch the trees until his fists were bloodied. How could such a thing have happened to his multitudinous army? Why did the One True God and the Inca spirits cease to protect him and allow his people to go through an endless cycle of mourning and destruction? His wife Micaela Bastidas told him not to give up, that the rebel forces were still powerful and could strike again. But Tupac Amaru II gave little credence to her words. The rebel kuraka offered a lamb as a sacrifice to the Virgin of Candelaria and begged her for success in battle. But he was already a pessimistic and defeated man after the loss at Cusco. Tupac Amaru II no longer thought he was destined for greatness. On the contrary, he was sure that his forces were doomed to fail. They had endured near starvation for so long that they were no longer effective soldiers. And although Micaela tried, she found it impossible to obtain food for the remaining rebels. Many of the troops in Tupac Amaru’s hungry army – thousands of them – joined the royalist forces in a last ditch effort to preserve their lives and prevent retaliation.

“Why did so many troops desert him?” I ask the grizzled priest. “Didn’t they still believe the Inkarri was invincible?”

“They did not believe the true Inkarri would lose in a battle with the Españarri. They had heard the myth a hundred times, imbibed it with their mother’s milk. Never did they think that once the Inkarri returned, he would suffer a great defeat at the hands of the hated Spaniards. But that is what ultimately happened in the battle for Cusco. It was a tipping point in the life not only of Tupac Amaru II but also that of his people, the moment when the past and the present are forever riven asunder. Like the original Inkarri – the Sapa Inca Atahualpa – the Peruvian people had been decapitated and dismembered.”

Father Aristeo Espinosa remembers the final battle for Cusco well. The Spaniards managed to surround Tupac Amaru II’s revolutionaries with a twenty-thousand army made up mostly of indigenous soldiers. Ever since the Conquest, the white man had benefited from the fragmentation of the quechua tribes, pitting one Indian group against another, making them fight one another as if they didn’t have a common tradition at odds with that of the pugnacious white man from the coast. Those rebels remaining with the great kuraka were fiercely loyal to the end, but they were besieged not only by the royalist army but also by hunger and widespread dysentery. Soroche was no longer an ally of the rebels as it was during the battle with Commander Aviles’ army of mulattoes, as the quechua soldiers at the command of the royalists were unaffected by altitude sickness. When the rebels fought their final battle for Cusco, all of them appeared with straw crosses on their white hats while Tupac Amaru II had both a cross of straw on his hat and a golden medallion of the Incan sun-god Inti about his neck. After all, for a long time Tupac Amaru II had believed that as the last Sapa Inca he was a direct descendant of the sun-god Inti himself. For a long time, Tupac Amaru II had also been sure he was the invincible Inkarri, that he was not born of woman but had been gestated within the earth.

Tupac Amaru II could not understand how the royalist forces had managed to surround his army but they had. Some of the royalist troops attacked Tupac Amaru II from inside Cusco while an army of Spaniards arrived to besiege the rebel forces from the North and West. In the process, Tupac Amaru II lost thousands of his men to the royalists’ muskets and cannons. The only means to escape was through the southern corridor that led to Tupac Amaru II’s stronghold in Lake Titicaca, but the kuraka soon discovered that the royalist armies had also blocked off his path to the South. As more and more of his starving men deserted, believing that the successful siege of Cusco was impossible, Tupac Amaru II was left with a minuscule army of a few thousand men compared with the growing numbers of the royalist army which opposed him and had recently received reinforcements from Lima and Buenos Aires. Tupac Amaru II continued to pray and pray and pray – his complex faith allowed him to pray to Catholic saints and Inca spirits alike – but he soon concluded he was not in the good graces of either. He had been abandoned by the spirits who had decided to aid the peninsulares. Faced with insurmountable odds, Tupac Amaru II ordered his remaining rebels to end the siege of Cusco and escape to the town of Tinta in the night. A great number disappeared to other places along the way and irrevocably decided to abandon battle. Only twelve-hundred desolate men protected him in the heavily fortified Tinta, united in their sense of perplexity and despair. The battle for Cusco had been lost!

And the great kuraka wept and wept and wept.

It was in Tinta that Tupac Amaru II first confessed that he was contemplating suicide just like the Inca Tuti Cusi Huallpa who jumped to his death from the Inca fortress of Sacsayhuaman in an effort to avoid capture by the Spaniards in the sixteenth century. The truth is that the great kuraka suffered from a deep melancholy. He had been sure the Indians of Cusco would rally to his cause, but that had never happened. He had envisioned an egalitarian society where all the races could thrive together in peace under the rule of an Inca king. That proved to be an empty dream. So the great kuraka remembered that suicide is not a rare event for the Runa people, including the most primitive. He recalled that Father Bartolome de las Casas had written that at the beginning of the Conquest, many natives had died by suicide and even murdered their own children in an effort to escape the wrath of the white man. I wonder whether Tupac Amaru II’s projected self- immolation means that he was never the Inkarri to begin with. How could I write in my testimonio that Tupac Amaru II was the Inkarri if by the end he was given to a suicidal hopelessness? Wouldn’t the real Inkarri know that he could never be killed? And yet I remember the words of the Christ on His cross. When he was abandoned by all and was facing death, He too sought to be spared from the chalice of despair.

Father Espinosa told him, “You cannot die by your own hand. That would demoralize all your soldiers and convince them that they will forever be vassals of the white man. Your infamy will know no end.”

“Don’t you see,” replied Tupac Amaru II, “that I am already as good as dead? The Spaniards have promised that any man who turns me in shall be paid eighty pesos a month for the rest of his life. I am sure that there is more than one Judas among my cadres who would willingly betray me for such a sum.”

“So you die at the hands of the Spaniards,” riposted the rebel priest. “Is that such a terrible end? Suicide is a worse fate, not only for your eternal soul, but also for the ultimate success of your mission. If you kill yourself, your followers shall no longer believe you were the Inkarri. If the royalists behead you, the Indians shall expect you to return. You shall incite rebellion from beyond the grave and the Latin American masses will continue to venerate you throughout the centuries for your gallantry and valor.”

“Do you really think so? Do you think I shall be remembered even after I have suffered such a terrible rout?”

“I’m sure about it. Your example shall be emulated throughout the length and breadth of South America and every time there is a revolution seeking justice the people will think of you. Already Tupac Katari is fighting in Alto Peru under your banner and using your name.”

“I must tell you that I love my followers as if they were my children. Don’t you know that the sacred traditions of our people tell us that all the quechuas are descendants of the Inkarri? And I can assure you there is nothing I want more than glory. I value it more than life itself. Can there be glory even in defeat?”

“Of course there can," responded Father Espinosa gravely. “Don’t abandon your children now.”

“That is why I have decided not to launch a final suicidal battle to try to take Cusco,” replied Tupac Amaru II. “Thousands of my men would be killed in a mission with no chance of success and I would have to slaughter thousands of Indians conscripted in Cusco to fight with the royalists. I refuse to have the blood of so many Runa people on my hands. So I have decided to hide from the Spaniards in Tinta instead and then make my way farther and farther south. Once they figure out where I am, they shall send a massive army to pursue me. I have thought of disbanding my Indian forces altogether, for I see no benefit in having them share in my grim fate. But I have decided against it. As you know the so-called God-fearing Spaniards have recently hanged sixty-seven of my men after sham trials and have even sentenced a woman commander, Tomasa Tito Condemayta, to the worst kind of death. I’m sure that in the end my wife will also be executed, for Micaela is my most important cadre and Bishop Moscoso has announced she won’t receive clemency no matter what she does. The good bishop has said she will be killed even if she surrenders.”

After the defeat at Cusco, the priest tells me, the next phase of the war consisted of the persecution of Tupac Amaru II’s forces by the royalist army led by Commander del Valle. Since most of the hunt took place in the high mountains along the Andean cordillera,³⁰ the great kuraka’s soldiers had a natural advantage. For one thing, they were more familiar with the terrain which allowed them to hide in the mountain peaks waiting to ambush del Valle’s soldiers. Many times the great kuraka’s rebels waited for the Spaniards to walk through a narrow mountain pass and then hurled huge stones from the mountain tops to crush them. Del Valle had experience in standard European battle – one army pitted against another on level ground – but he knew nothing about asymmetrical war or hit-and-run tactics. Also, the majority of del Valle’s soldiers came from the coast and could not deal with the thin air. They felt their hearts pound due to soroche, suffered massive headaches and even their horses died as a result of altitude sickness. That diminished their capacity as soldiers. The Spaniards complain about the unusual practices of the rebel army in battle, Father Espinosa tells me, but given how well-armed the Spaniards were in comparison to the Indians, there was no other way for Tupac Amaru II’s men to counter the royalists in battle.

“What about the brutality of the war?” I ask Father Espinosa. “While I was doing my research, I interviewed a Captain from the Canary Islands who told me Tupac Amaru II’s troops were genocidal and massacred the Spaniards when they could. He also told me the Indians delighted in slashing Spanish throats and even ate the hearts of captured peninsulares.”

“There was bloodshed on both sides as in all other wars. But I would say the Spaniards were more brutal in their efforts to slaughter the enemy en masse. It was the Iberians who routinely put the heads of dead rebels on metal spikes to terrorize the Indians. It was those who pretend to be Christians who ripped women’s bellies wide open with their swords and hacked off the Indians’ noses and hands. At one point, three Spanish soldiers strung up seventy hands on a pole as a warning to the rebels. When the royalists took control of Quiquijana, previously a rebel stronghold, they torched all the homes even though all of the great kuraka’s men had left. Then they killed the remaining women, children and old men who pleaded for their lives. In the battle for Santo Tomas, the Spaniards killed a thousand Indian captives who had raised the white flag and slit their throats in order to save ammunition, then took some of their heads and limbs to be displayed in Cusco as macabre trophies. It was the peninsulares who incinerated entire villages with Indians still inside their huts and used wild dogs to attack the natives. Tupac Amaru II, by contrast, sent a decree to his men expressing his concern about ‘many excesses, everyone killing each other, with Spaniards and Indians hurting one another’ and ordered his own men to act in accordance with God’s orders and threatening the gallows for those who didn’t. Contrary to the Spanish caricature of the man, Tupac Amaru II was always a man of a great nobility.”

“But the Spaniards say he changed after his loss at Cusco,” I protest, “that thereafter he was merciless with the white man. I’ve even heard the rumor that a rebel commander had sent the head of a decapitated boy to Tupac Amaru’s wife as evidence of victory in battle.”

“That is a wretched lie,” exclaims the flustered priest. “If anything, Micaela, a devout Christian, has made great efforts to ensure that the rebels not engage in brutal acts. You should investigate such spurious claims and debunk them where you can. After all, what you are doing is preserving history. Your testimonio will remain long after all the protagonists are dead. The Spaniards will rewrite the history since they have prevailed. Your testimonio should point out the falsehood of their claims, while not ignoring that the Runa peoples have a different sense of history than the Europeans. For the Westerners, history is linear and progressive. For the Indians, history is always cyclical, an endless revolution in the original sense of the word, the time taken by a celestial body to make a complete round in its orbit. In the Andean view of history, one ‘cataclysm’ follows another – sometimes for good, sometimes for ill – every few hundred years.”

“Who turned in Tupac Amaru II to the Spaniards?” I ask the grizzled priest. “Who sealed the messianic kuraka’s future with a kiss? How was the great Inkarri caught?”

“It was Ventura Landaeta and Francisco Santa Cruz who betrayed him. They deceived him into staying at Ventura’s home while they prepared for the arrival of several mulatto soldiers who would apprehend him. Afterward, they obtained a reward of thirty pieces of gold and silver from Bishop Moscoso. They are now protected by armed guards, out of an abundance of caution, in fear of retaliation. Near the end, Tupac Amaru II offered to give the mulattoes five ears of corn, all turned into gold, if they would let him flee, but they would not accept it. He offered to take them to the golden town of Paititi in the Amazon jungle, abandoned by the Incas centuries earlier, but they would not believe him. ”

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Father Miguel Iturrizarra is both a priest and a lawyer, now in his seventies, always wearing thick spectacles and with thick white sideburns and a bald head. I knew him long before my investigation of Tupac Amaru II’s rebellion and execution as I know all the priests in Cusco, but had never known him well. He was the court-appointed defense lawyer for the rebel kuraka and gladly agreed to share with me his experiences of the trial. He said the verdict of guilt was probably preordained, as well as the sentence of death, but he worked diligently nonetheless, mounting the best defense possible given his thirty years as a practicing attorney. He tells me that it was the first time he had ever been threatened with death for defending a client, but he was not a man to cower in the face of threats so he plowed on despite realizing he was the most unpopular man in the whole of white Peru.

One of the main objectives of the prosecutor in the case, tells me Iturrizarra, was to obtain an admission from Tupac Amaru II that he was neither the legitimate Inca king of Peru nor the long-awaited Inkarri. They felt that in the absence of such a public admission the besotted Indians would continue to fight to the death expecting the Inkarri would come to their aid. To the priests in charge of the prosecution, it was not enough to kill Tupac Amaru II. It was necessary to quash the subversive notion that he was the Inkarri. The guards at the prison had found a note in one of his pockets stating he was the legitimate king not only of Peru, but of all the zones that were once part of the Tahuantinsuyo. Tupac Amaru II steadfastly maintained that he was the resurrected Inkarri as well as the rightful Sapa Inca with the right to govern most of the South American continent. When offered an opportunity to recant under threat of torture, he refused.

“The day will come when the white man will be the one to bend double and collect the maize and potato harvests instead of the quechua natives.. The time will arrive when the Spaniards will have to work the deep mines of Potosi under the orders of the Inkarri. In a great pachacuti – a massive reversal of the cosmic order – the time of the Spanish misti³¹ will end irrevocably and the trauma of the Conquest shall be healed. The Inkarri can return in many forms, even as the wind. Don’t forget after Atahualpa was decapitated, his blood turned into gold. Don’t forget the word ‘Inkarri’ means ‘Redeemer’ and is a synonym for patience.”

“Did he really believe he was the Inkarri,” I ask Iturrizarra, “or was that only a means to rally the quechua masses behind him? Did he really lend credence to the utopic vision and the messianic stuff?”

“I asked myself that question many times, and I am convinced he meant it when he said it. He believed the Inkarri would end the colonization of Peru and that he was the Inkarri. Given how deluded the idea is, I came to the conclusion that he was probably demented. I should tell you that I thought of making use of the insanity defense, which is available to defendants before the Peruvian Inquisition, but Tupac Amaru II would have nothing of it. ‘Don’t tell them I am insane,’ he commanded. ‘Tell them that I am the Inkarri.’”

Tupac Amaru II was asked one last time to take back the claim he was the Inkarri if he wanted to avoid torture. Broken as he was, almost defeated by the lack of sleep or food, the fierce kuraka stated he would never recant the truth. Then the fiscal ordered that he be subject to the garrote. They put an iron collar about his neck and began to tighten it to give the effect of strangulation. Most persons subjected to such torture immediately say whatever they have to say to avoid impending death, but not so Tupac Amaru II. His torturers had to cease the barbaric act since they didn’t want him dead. They wanted to kill him in gory fashion in front of the Indian multitudes to send a message to the supposed barbarians. Then the fiscales³² subjected him to the rack, a bedlike open frame suspended above the ground used as a torture device. The great kuraka’s ankles and wrists were secured by ropes that passed around axles near the head and the foot of the rack. Then the axles were turned slowly by poles inserted into sockets, until Tupac Amaru’s hip, knee, shoulder and elbow joints were dislocated. Still, the great suraka refused to budge. If he was to show his people not to succumb to Spanish evil, he had to make an example of himself. Finally one of the fiscales offered Tupac Amaru II to spare the life of his wife and children if he signed a public decree stating his claim of being the Inkarri was a bold-faced lie and abjuring the contention he was the rightful king of all Peru. In the most excruciating decision of his thirty-nine years, Tupac Amaru II refused again, repeating that the kings of Spain have usurped the Crown from him and had taken away his subjects’ right to self-government.

“Did he really use those words?” I ask.

“Yes, he did,” responded Iturrizarra. “He called all the Indians of Peru his ‘subjects.’ And that’s the way many Indians saw themselves as well. Even when testifying before the Inquisition, they continued to address him as ‘Lord, Excellency, Creator, Father, Royal Highness and Majesty.’ They also mentioned that among the peasants theatrical wankas³³ about the kuraka’s quest had already been put on stage during the local fiestas and that there were popular dances in his honor. They reported also that even prior to the appearance of Tupac Amaru II, the natives were given to organizing festivals celebrating the slow but unrelenting work of the Inkarri. That infuriated Visitador Jose Antonio de Areche, the Spanish-born judge who presided over the trial and wanted to quash everything Indian in Peru – the natives’ beliefs, their language, their myths, their history, and even their style of dress. Had Areche not wanted to make a spectacle of the kuraka’s death, he would have tortured him for hours until he died in the torture chambers of the Peruvian Inquisition still subscribing to his atavistic faith.”

In the end, Tupac Amaru II heard the death sentence for treason against the Crown with aplomb while Iturrizarra put his arms about his shoulders. Areche announced Tupac Amary II would be dismembered and beheaded. The agonized kuraka had never expected anything different, given the way the Spaniards had acted during the war and the way the ‘savage’ Indians were always treated by the Spanish ‘justice’ system.’ At the time Areche issued his sentence, he also dictated that the Indians should speak Spanish, dress like the peninsulares, and avoid reading Garcilaso de la Vegas’ Royal Commentaries of the Incas under pain of death.

“I shall be back to end the long colonial night,” Tupac Amaru II shouted at Areche in a barely contained rage. “My father is the sun who provided the seed, my mother is the earth in whose womb I grew. You can do whatever you want with my body – dismember me, strangle me, behead me – but you cannot prevail for long over the Inkarri nor can you subjugate his Indian people into perpetuity. The Inkarri is not immortal but eternal so my death shall not be definitive. My children shall not be orphans for too long. My blood and their tears shall form one continuous river. At the moment when God wills it, I shall return and we shall be millions.”

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¹The “mita” was a system whereby quechua Indians were forced to work in the silver mines of Potosi, work which often resulted in the loss of life.

²The “encomienda” was a system whereby a Spanish overlord was given a tract of land and a number of Indians to work for him as quasi-slaves.

³“Kuracas” were quechua leaders, often descendants of Inca royalty, who were in charge of collecting the taxes owed to the Spanish crown by their communities. Tupac Amaru II was a kuraka.

⁴During the time when the Spaniards ruled Peru, they often wrote “testimonios” about the customs, myths and practices of the Indians.

⁵The “Españarri” refers to the men from Spain.

⁶ The “Sapa Inca” is the king of the Incas.

⁷An “encomendero” is one who had an encomienda, a parcel of land with hundreds of Indians allotted to him.

A “quena” is a quechua instrument similar to a flute.

⁸ A “curandera” is a healing woman who would administer healing herbs for sundry illnesses and work as a midwife.

⁹The Indians of Peru called themselves “Runas.”

¹⁰A “secreto a voces” is an open secret.

¹¹A “peninsular” is someone from the Iberian peninsula, i.e., a Spaniard.

¹²“Cholo” is a pejorative term for an indigenous person.

¹³A “pleito,” literally a “fight” is a term for a lawsuit.

¹⁴Garcilaso de la Vega was the son of an Inca woman and a Spaniard who wrote a very positive and comprehensive history of the Inca empire and eventually died in Spain.

¹⁵ The “reparto” was a system whereby the Indians were forced to buy goods at grossly inflated prices.

¹⁶A “kurakazgo” is the position of a kuraca.

¹⁷ The “pachacuti” is a quechua term for a cosmic reversal of the world which happens every five-hundred years.

¹⁸A “gesta” is a military quest.

¹⁹ A “cacique” is a tribal lord.

²⁰“Viracocha” is a quechua term for white man.

²¹A “supay” is a powerful and evil god in the quechua pantheon, a sort of devil.

²²A “huayco” is a landslide of mud and rock.

²³“Kkuychi” is the quechua word for rainbow.

²⁴“Kuntur” is the quechua term for condor.

²⁵A “chapeton” is a pejorative quechua term for a white man.

²⁶An “excomulagado” is someone who has been excommunicated from the Catholic Church.

²⁷A “parroco” is a parish priest.

²⁸A “cholo” is a pejorative term for a Peruvian native.

²⁹A “quena” is a quechua instrument similar to a flute.

³⁰A “cordillera” is a mountain range.

³¹ “Misti” is quechua for white man.

³²A “fiscal” is a prosecutor in the Peruvian Inquisition.

³³A “wanka” is an Indian play, a theatrical production.