February 4, 2015
Week 5 Question Response Túpac Amaru II, born José Gabriel Condorcanqui, was a highly educated kuraka who claimed to be a direct descendant of the Inca people. Túpac Amaru II sought to create an “Andean utopia through a restoration of Inca rule”, but at the same time he “professed loyalty to Christianity and the Spanish king” (Galindo, 146). As the Indian leader surrounding the city of Cuzco, Túpac Amaru II gathered the leaders of the surrounding regions to “come up with a plan not only to end exorbitant taxation by the Spaniards, but also to drive out the Europeans and restore an Inca monarchy” (Galindo, 146). While Amaru II claimed to be an Inca, his proclamations in the city of Cuzco “call for respect for the property and lives of mixed-bloods (mestizos) and creoles (criollos)”, but other partisan leaders believed that “all non-Indians should be put to death in a kind of ethnic cleansing” (Galindo, 148/149). When the rebellion ended, word of “the massacres of Spanish immigrants, especially those who had lived amongst the Indians, further widened the gap between the colonizers and the colonized” (Galindo, 155) After “Túpac Amaru’s death, the colonial authorities prohibited Inca nobility from using titles, ordered the destruction of paintings of the Incas, and forced the Indians to dress in Western clothes” (Galindo, 155). Despite the efforts put forth during the rebellion to ensure the survival of Andean society, “the rebellion had destabilized hopes for a return to the integration of the Andean population under Spanish rule” (Galindo, 155).