Bastidas too had reasons to decry Spanish rule and to push her husband to openly oppose the new reforms. In her earlier years, she had been forced to labor in an obraje, the much-despised textile mills where many Indians were conscripted to work. The experience seems to have had an indelible effect on her attitudes toward imperial authorities. A tithe collector complained that, in the presence of the local corregidor (mayor), Bastidas had refused to pay and even threatened to “punch him” if he continued to press her for payment. From the beginning, Micaela Bastidas and José Gabriel Condorcanqui had been equal partners in all their endeavors, sharing both the management of their business interests and their estates, as was common in Andean culture, and their vociferous advocacy for indigenous rights. It is no surprise that the pair would emerge as the center of a growing movement opposing Spanish imperial policy.9
In Boston and Philadelphia, American revolutionaries had been angered by similar increase in taxation, and for similar reasons. The money taken out of their pockets was bad enough, but the new tax regime also signaled a shift in imperial policy and an upending of the traditional relationship between colony and crown. In the Andes too, many groaned under the weight of new taxation—and Condorcanqui himself sometimes found it difficult to pay his repartimiento obligations—but they also bristled at what they saw as a concerted attack on their traditional autonomy. Creoles were elbowed aside from their former positions as officials and administrators, replaced by peninsular Spaniards, and indigenous peoples saw the bargain they had struck, “a high degree of cultural and political autonomy and the control of communal land, in exchange for subordination and a slate of taxes,” threatened by Bourbon policies that sought to transform colonial peoples into Spanish subjects. As in British North America, this attempt to reorder the empire brought outrage, protests, and even some small-scale violence as colonial peoples resisted the coming world.10
Spanish officials were not blind to the similarities between their brewing imperial crisis and Britain’s sundered empire. News of America’s Declaration of Independence was played down and restricted in Spain and her colonies. Efforts were likewise made to restrict access to any Enlightenment texts that might inspire Spaniards to follow the American path to revolution. Among many others, William Robertson’s history of Spanish America was banned and burnt in Spain, and in December 1779, José de Gálvez went so far as to instruct to colonial officials to prevent Robertson’s work and other books from being imported to or translated in the Americas. Any copies that remained were to be seized and destroyed. As a well-educated member of the colonial elite, it would have been surprising if Condorcanqui was not aware of the more radical currents in European thought, and he was certainly familiar with the independence movement in North America and the conflict between Spain and Britain. Back in 1777, while in Lima to pursue his genealogical claims, Condorcanqui had encountered Creole and mestizo critics of Spanish imperial policy, including a mestizo friend who had direct experience of events and ideas in France and Britain. In the Lima Gazette, he was awakened to the inspiring events in North America and in Inca Garcilasco’s Royal Commentaries found a way to reconcile the spreading revolutionary conflict with his own local, ethnic, and personal history. In a prologue added to this work of Inca history in the early eighteenth century, Condorcanqui found an old Indian prophecy that predicted that the rule of the Inca would be restored with the aid of the British. In the context of increased Spanish exploitation and war between Britain and Spain, the time seemed ripe for the Andes to follow the American example and fulfill the ancient prophecy. The seeds of revolt had thus been planted, both in Condorcanqui’s mind and in the minds of the wider populace, combining age-old grievances and recent abuses, Inca revivalism, and eighteenth-century radicalism to make the Andes fertile ground for insurrection.11
It had all started smoothly, before the Spanish were aware that anything was amiss. The plot was ingenious. On November 4, 1780, Condorcanqui invited the local Corregidor, Antonio Arriaga, to a dinner to celebrate the feast of St. Charles (the king’s patron saint) at his house in Tungasuca. Condorcanqui and Arriaga had had their disagreements in the past, most notably over the mita, and as a tax collector Arriaga was a target of considerable complaint, but the Corregidor knew Condorcanqui well and so accepted the invitation without suspicion. When dinner was over, Condorcanqui and a few of his men offered to accompany Arriaga on his return home. After a short ride, Arriaga’s erstwhile companions excused themselves, claiming to return to Tungasuca. Once Arriaga was out of sight, however, Condorcanqui and his men sped around and ahead of Arriaga and lay in wait. When Arriaga approached the ambush, Condorcanqui and company sprang from their hiding places, seized the shocked Corregidor and his servants, and, after waiting until the dead of night, hauled them back to Tungasuca where they were shackled and imprisoned in Condorcanqui’s house.
With Arriaga in his grasp, Condorcanqui embarked on the next phase of his plan. Arriaga’s clerk, who had been captured along with his master, was forced to pen a series of letters that Arriaga was then compelled to sign. The letters, now bearing all the signs of authentic, official commands, were well designed to set the stage for a full-scale rebellion. One ordered Arriaga’s treasurer to release 22,000 pesos, ninety muskets, and two boxes of sabers to Condorcanqui, supplies that would be needed in the fight to come. Other letters were sent to local leaders and officials, ordering them to gather their people and converge at Tungasuca. As men arrived at Tungasuca in response to what appeared to be Arriaga’s command, Spanish officials were seized and imprisoned, stripping the area of the local leaders who would have been charged with suppressing the revolt. Others, Indians, mestizos, and even some Creoles and Spaniards, many of whom had reasons to resent the Bourbon reforms, were convinced to join in Condorcanqui’s anti-colonial cause.12
Condorcanqui and Micaela Bastidas’ position between worlds did much to help secure supporters for their revolution. “Europeans,” Bastidas reminded those who would listen, “treat us like dogs”. Condorcanqui used his Inca heritage to appeal to the indigenous and mixed-race people of the Andes, declaring himself to be Tupac Amaru II, heir to the last Inca emperor and “Inca king of Peru, Santa Fe, Quito, Chile, Buenos Aires, and the continents of the seas of the south, highest duke and lord of the Césars and Amazonians.” Echoing the grievances of protesters in Boston and Philadelphia, he charged the Kings of Spain with usurping his throne “and the dominion of my people . . . making them vassals with unbearable services, tributes, money, customs, dues,” and the administrators of the empire with tyranny, injustice, and greed. The Spanish “trample upon the natives of this kingdom as beasts, and take away the lives of all those who [they] do not wish to rob.” Henceforth, Tupac Amaru declared, the tyrannical rule of those who had “pushed to the limit the peace and tranquility of these lands by their ill-treatments and affronts” was at an end. To this end, he published proclamations ending the mita system, the repartimiento, and slavery, and called on the people of Peru to pledge their loyalty to their new Inca king.13
Indigenous peoples would form the backbone of the revolt, but Condorcanqui and Micaela Bastidas also did their best to ensure broad-based support for their movement. In some contexts they continued to insist that the rebellion was against corrupt colonial officials and not against the Spanish as a people or the rule of Carlos III. Likewise, they specifically exempted the Catholic Church from their list of enemies or targets, despite much indigenous anger at Catholic inroads into their religious lives and the many financial abuses of the Church. It was thus a tenuous anti-colonial coalition that gathered at Tungasuca in November 1780, one that reflected the ambiguous, divided background of its leaders and the fractured society that birthed it. Micaela knew that such a movement would be difficult to bind together, and so she urged her husband to take a drastic step, a step that would place the infant revolution beyond the point of no return. A handy symbol of imperial exploitation, Arriaga would have to pay for the sins of the Spanish empir
e with his life.
As a signal of his impending doom, on November 9, a painting of the Crowning with Thorns was placed in Arriaga’s cell. López de Sosa, Condorcanqui’s mentor and the priest who had performed their marriage, was sent to take Arriaga’s last confession. The Corregidor begged for his life, offering de Sosa’s parish his entire estate if he would intervene and save his life. Outside in the courtyard, where the men summoned to Tungasuca by the counterfeit letters had gathered, Condorcanqui told the crowd that he had received instructions from the Audiencia in Lima instructing him to punish Arriaga. This was, of course, untrue, and many must have suspected as much, but it provided a veneer of legitimacy for what was about to happen. The next day, Tupac Amaru, resplendent in a mix of European and indigenous fashion—black velvet coat, knee breeches, silk stockings, gold buckles, and a beaver hat, complemented by an Andean tunic and a gold medallion bearing the Inca sun—led the assembly, now numbering as many as ten thousand Indians, mestizos, and Europeans, in military columns to a nearby hill, where a gallows had been erected. Arriaga was led to the gallows by a procession, including a town crier and three priests, stripped of his staff of office, and forced to exchange his military garb for the clothing of a religious penitent. Before the gallows, a mestizo read a proclamation in both Spanish and Quechua, a symbolic innovation in official ceremonies. The crowd was informed, “Through the king it has been ordered that there no longer be alcabala [sales tax], customs houses, or the Potosí mita and that Don Antonio Arriaga lose his life because of his destructive behavior.” At last, Tupac Amaru himself addressed the onlookers, calling Arriaga “harmful and tyrannical,” pledging to abolish Spanish abuses, and promising to usher in a new world in which “Indians and Spaniards” lived together as equals.14
In a deathlike silence, Arriaga mounted the gallows where he was compelled “to publically declare that he deserved to die in that way.” His African slave was chosen to perform the office of hangman, slipping the noose around his former master’s neck. A first attempt failed when the rope snapped, but a second attempt, aided by a new rope and the assistance of several others, opponents and supporters of Arriaga, proved successful. “Not one voice,” an observer remembered, “was raised that would disturb the operation.” If the men assembled at Tungasuca had doubted Tupac Amaru’s seriousness, the execution of the Corregidor dispelled any notion that half-measures would win the day.15
Micaela Bastida’s role in this most dramatic first bloodletting of the revolution was clear and forceful. Contemporary accounts paint her as an instigator of Arriaga’s execution and an active participant in the ceremony surrounding it. It was even said that she “surpassed her husband in spirit and malevolence: she knew all about the execution of Arriaga and despite the weakness of her sex, she carried out that unjust homicide, transporting bullets used by the guards in her shawl.” Micaela was perhaps the most important catalyzing force in the early stages of the revolt, helping to create the shift from a local protest against taxes and labor service into a violent anti-colonial insurrection.
News of the execution of Arriaga and the outbreak of rebellion had reached Cuzco, the regional capital, by November 17. A council of war was convened, and against strenuous objections, an army of 800 under Fernando Cabrera was sent forth to crush the uprising. Cabrera pushed his army hard, reaching Sangarará, 5 leagues from Tungasuca, the center of the maelstrom, on November 18. There they entrenched themselves in the local church and prepared for battle. It was a foolish choice. The Spanish army became trapped in the church, unable to escape due to the hail of stones and bullets raining down on their vulnerable position. Inside, their superior firepower was useless. Outside, Tupac Amaru ordered the church’s priest to remove the holy sacrament before he burnt it down—and the Spanish army with it. He offered to let any Indians, mestizos, or Creoles in the Spanish force to go free if they renounced their allegiance to Spain. A few weighed their odds and accepted the offer. The rest were burnt alive in the church. Tupac Amaru did not relish the spectacle and seemed genuinely sad to have been forced to such an act. He paid for the bodies to be buried, except for that of Fernando Cabrera, the man who had forced his hand. “Finding Cabrera’s body lying on the ground,” one account reported, “he kicked it in the head expressing that . . . due to his thick-headedness he finds himself here.”16
While her husband was in the field against the Spanish, Micaela Bastidas came into her own as a revolutionary leader. From her headquarters at Tungasuca she emerged as the focal point of the movement. She oversaw the provisioning of the army, directed logistical operations, and ensured discipline among the rebellion’s supporters. In her own name she instructed rebel towns in the building of fortifications, secured supplies, recruited reinforcements, and issued orders that rebel troops wear palm crosses in their hats as a rudimentary uniform. As a leader she brooked no dissent and inspired both obedience and fear. She tore official decrees down from church doors and tacked up her own commands. She rallied people to the cause and motivated soldiers with stories of “bad government” and instances of Spanish cruelty. She promised her followers they would pay no taxes other than the traditional tribute owed to Inca kings and held out the hope that they would be able to return to a golden age, “their idolatrous times,” before the arrival of the Spanish. Those who resisted the rebellion or refused to join were punished, arrested, and even executed by her order. Letters flew from her pen to a wide range of contacts, organizing the rebellion and bringing its goals to the attention of the wider public. In return, letters poured into Tungasuca, asking her for advice and instructions. It was said that both loyalists and rebels feared her, and that she inspired more loyalty, more obedience, more respect, than Tupac Amaru himself. Her husband was the public symbol of the revolution, but Micaela Bastidas was its heart, its soul, its guts, and its brain.17
Bastidas’ tactical and organizational insight convinced her that if the revolution were to succeed, Cuzco had to be taken, and communications with and supplies from Lima cut off. She sent letters to her husband urging him to focus his energies on Cuzco, and issued edicts directing her supporters to cut the Apurímac bridge, a vital link between Lima and Cuzco. But, as she feared, it was too late. She had told her husband “many times to go immediately to Cuzco, but you have not paid any attention. This has given them time to prepare themselves, as they have done . . . so you no longer hold the advantage.” When Tupac Amaru and his army at last approached Cuzco, at the end of December 1780, it was indeed too late. Without the guns to reduce Cuzco’s defenses and capture the city, the rebels were forced to settle for a siege. On January 10, 1781, with fresh Spanish troops approaching, Tupac Amaru was forced to break off the siege and focus his efforts elsewhere.18
As the rebel army retreated from Cuzco, fractures in the revolutionary coalition began to appear. Micaela Bastidas and Tupac Amaru had done their best to restrain the violence of their followers, and to couch their rebellion in terms that would appeal to Indians, mestizos, Creoles, and even Europeans. They had been careful not to directly attack the Catholic Church or the Spanish monarchy in action or rhetoric, and had attempted to prevent and condemn attacks on neutral Europeans. As the revolt spread, this restraint became more difficult to enforce, and instances of anti-European violence only served to bolster loyalism. The attempts were further undermined when the Bishop of Cuzco condemned the rebels and excommunicated Micaela Bastidas and Tupac Amaru, for being “rebellious traitors of the King . . . for seditiously working against peace and being usurpers of Royal Rights.” This was a worrying development for the highly religious leaders, who had hoped the Church, long the defenders of indigenous peoples against the abuses of the colonial regime, would prove sympathetic. For their followers, many of them committed Catholics, the price of following excommunicated leaders would be excommunication as well.19
Bastidas and Tupac Amaru had hoped the old Inca nobility would join the Inca revivalist cause, but they were equally dismissive and critical. They had establish
ed themselves at the pinnacle of colonial society, intermarried with Spanish and Creole elites, and accepted positions of authority. They were too invested in the imperial system to welcome Tupac Amaru’s rebellion and considered him to be an upstart and a fraud with no real claim to noble or royal Inca heritage. In the wake of the defeat at Cuzco, the fracturing of allegiances within the rebellion caused Tupac Amaru to lash out against all those Spaniards, mestizos, and indigenous elites who refused to join his movement, ordering them to be summarily executed and transforming a broad-based anti-colonial revolution into a race war of Indians against Spaniards.20
With his army defeated, and allies melting away, alienated by the new anti-European violence, the end was not long in coming. In the wake of the siege, Spanish forces were bolstered by soldiers sent from Lima and as far away as Cartagena in modern Colombia. Loyalist ranks swelled as first the Creole elite and then mestizos and Indians abandoned what now seemed a doomed cause. The surge became a flood after a series of Spanish victories and an offer of amnesty inspired a mass defection. By late March Tupac Amaru was on the run, Micaela Bastidas and their children now at his side as they fled across the countryside, harried by loyalist forces nipping at their heels. In recent weeks there had been a series of crushing blows as the Spanish closed in around them. They lost two of the rebels’ most important commanders and, days later, Tupac Amaru’s uncle was captured. They had nowhere left to run, surrounded in a bitter twist of fate by a Spanish army composed almost entirely of native Andeans, the very people the couple had hoped to inspire and lead to freedom. In early April, one last attempt was made to break free from the encircling enemy, but was repulsed.
To Begin the World Over Again Page 21