Knowledge Session: Execution of Tupac Amaru 2

José Gab­ri­el Túpac Amaru (March 19, 1742 – May 18, 1781) — known as Túpac Amaru II hence the ori­gins of  2pac Shak­ur­’s name (Tupac Amaru Shak­ur), — was a lead­er of an indi­gen­ous upris­ing in 1780 against the Span­ish in Peru. Although unsuc­cess­ful, he later became the inspir­a­tion­al fig­ure in the Per­uvi­an struggle for inde­pend­ence and indi­gen­ous rights move­ment and an inspir­a­tion to a myri­ad of causes in South America.

Tupac Amaru 2 was forced to bear wit­ness to the exe­cu­tion of his wife, his eld­est son Hipólito, his uncle Fran­cisco Tupa Amaro, his broth­er-in-law Ant­o­nio Basti­das, and some of his cap­tains before his own death. The fol­low­ing is an extract from the offi­cial judi­cial death issued by the Span­ish author­it­ies which con­demns Túpac Amaru II to tor­ture and death.

“It was ordered in sen­tence that Túpac Amaru II was con­demned to have his tongue cut out, after watch­ing the exe­cu­tions of his fam­ily, and to have his hands and feet tied “to four horses who will then be driv­en at once toward the four corners of the plaza, pulling the arms and legs from his body. The torso will then be taken to the hill over­look­ing the city… where it will be burned in a bon­fire… Tupac Amaru’s head will be sent to Tinta to be dis­played for three days in the place of pub­lic exe­cu­tion and then placed upon a pike at the prin­cip­al entrance to the city. One of his arms will be sent to Tun­gasuca, where he was the cacique, and the oth­er arm to the cap­it­al province of Cara­baya, to be sim­il­arly dis­played in those loc­a­tions. His legs will be sent to Liv­it­ica and Santa Ros­as in the provinces of Chumbivil­cas and Lampa, respectively.”

Upon the dis­mem­ber­ment by quar­ter­ing, he was then beheaded on the main plaza in Cuzco, in the same place his appar­ent great-great-great-grand­fath­er Túpac Amaru I had been beheaded. When the revolt con­tin­ued, the Span­iards executed the remainder of his fam­ily, except his 12-year-old son Fernando, who had been con­demned to die with him, but was instead imprisoned in Spain for the rest of his life. It is not known if any mem­bers of the Inca roy­al fam­ily sur­vived this final purge. Amaru’s body parts were strewn across the towns loy­al to him as ordered, his houses were demol­ished, their sites strewn with salt, his goods con­fis­cated, his rel­at­ives declared infam­ous, and all doc­u­ments relat­ing to his des­cent burnt.At the same time, on May 18, 1781, Incan cloth­ing and cul­tur­al tra­di­tions, and self-iden­ti­fic­a­tion as “Inca” were out­lawed, along with oth­er meas­ures to con­vert the pop­u­la­tion to Span­ish cul­ture and gov­ern­ment until Per­u’s inde­pend­ence as a repub­lic. How­ever, even after the death of Amaru, Indi­an revolt still over­took much of south­ern Peru, Bolivia and Argen­tina, as Indi­an revolu­tion­ar­ies cap­tured Span­ish towns and beheaded many inhab­it­ants. In one instance, an Indi­an army under rebel lead­er Túpac Katari besieged the city of La Paz for 109 days before troops sent from Buenos Aires stepped in to relieve the city.

 Glory to Tupac Amaru 2! Glory to our her­oes! Long live the resistance!

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Gata Malandra

Edit­or / Research­er at No Bounds

Gata is a music and arts lov­er, stud­ied anthro­po­logy, art man­age­ment and media pro­duc­tion ded­ic­at­ing most of her time to cre­at­ive pro­jects pro­duced by No Bounds.

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