Knowledge Session: Who Was Manco Inca?

MAY 6, 1536: START OF NATION­AL LIB­ER­A­TION WAR LEADED BY MANCO INCA

Manco Inca Yupan­qui (1516–1544) (Man­qu Inka Yupanki in Quechua) was one of the Incas of Vil­cabamba. He was also known as “Manco II” and “Manco Cápac II” (“Man­qu Qhapaq II”). Born in 1516, he was one of the sons of Huayna Cápac.

Túpac Huallpa was a pup­pet ruler crowned by the con­quista­dor Fran­cisco Pizarro. Manco Inca then approached Fran­cisco Pizarro and Diego de Almagro in Cajamarca to nego­ti­ate a pact to rule the Inca peoples and Peru since all of the roy­al nobles were killed. The con­quista­dors agreed, and in 1534 Manco was crowned the ruler of the Inca in Cuzco by Fran­cisco Pizarro, and allowed to rule his people. He did not real­ize that he too was being used by Pizarro as a pup­pet ruler for the Span­ish con­quista­dors, who planned to con­quer his coun­try and its people.

At first, Manco cooper­ated with the Span­ish. How­ever, when Pizarro and de Almagro left Cuzco to explore the north­ern and south­ern parts of Peru, he left his young­er broth­ers Gonzalo Pizarro, Juan Pizarro and Hernando Pizarro as gar­ris­ons in the city of Cuzco.

The Pizarro broth­ers so mis­treated Manco Inca that he ulti­mately tried to escape in Decem­ber 1535. He failed, was cap­tured and imprisoned but released two months later by the Span­iards, to please their Inca sub­jects, dis­mayed by the fact that their de jure lead­er was imprisoned. Under the pre­tense of per­form­ing reli­gious cere­mon­ies in the nearby Yucay val­ley and recov­er­ing golden arti­facts for the Span­ish occu­pants, Manco was able to escape from Cuzco on April 18, this time with success.

To retake the Empire from the Span­ish, Manco gathered an army of 200,000 Inca war­ri­ors. Attempt­ing to take advant­age of a dis­agree­ment between Diego de Almagro and Fran­cisco Pizarro, he marched on the city of Cuzco in 1536 in an attempt to throw the Span­iards out. Although it las­ted ten months, the siege was ulti­mately unsuc­cess­ful – even though Man­co’s forces were able to reclaim the city for a few days. Many of Manco Inca’s war­ri­ors suc­cumbed to small­pox and died (see the siege of Cuzco).

Glory to Manko Inka, one of our greatest guides!
Lib­er­at­ing Tawantinsuyu!

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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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