Fall of Vilcabamba (1572): Execution of Túpac Amaru

The fall of Vilcabamba in 1572 ended the last independent Inca state. Troops sent by the Spanish viceroy of Peru, Francisco de Toledo, occupied the jungle capital of Vilcabamba in June, captured the young Sapa Inca Túpac Amaru as he fled, and on 24 September 1572 had him beheaded in the main square of Cusco. The execution closed four decades of Inca resistance and became a lasting symbol of the conquest.

Background: the Neo-Inca State

The Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire began in 1532 with the capture of Atahualpa. The Spaniards then placed his half-brother Manco Inca on the throne as a puppet ruler. Humiliated and abused, Manco escaped in 1536 and led a massive rising, laying siege to Cusco for months.

When the siege failed, Manco withdrew in 1537 into the rugged, forested region of Vilcabamba, north-west of Cusco. There he founded what historians call the Neo-Inca State, with a new capital at Vilcabamba and a fortified site at Vitcos. From these bases Inca forces raided Spanish roads and settlements.

Manco was murdered in about 1544 by Spanish fugitives he had sheltered. His son Sayri Túpac succeeded him, but in 1558 he accepted a Spanish offer of estates and left Vilcabamba, dying a few years later. Another son, Titu Cusi Yupanqui, took power and pursued a careful mix of resistance and negotiation.

Diplomacy under Titu Cusi

Titu Cusi negotiated with Spanish officials through the 1560s. Under the Treaty of Acobamba of 1566 he accepted nominal Spanish sovereignty and missionaries, and he was baptised in 1568. In 1570 he dictated an account of the conquest from the Inca point of view to a Spanish friar, one of the few such documents to survive.

Titu Cusi died in 1571 after a sudden illness. His followers suspected poisoning and blamed an Augustinian missionary, Diego Ortiz, who was tortured and killed. Power passed to Túpac Amaru, a younger son of Manco who had lived as a guardian of religious traditions, and the Inca leadership became more hostile to the Spanish.

Viceroy Toledo’s decision

Francisco de Toledo arrived as viceroy of Peru in 1569 with instructions to reorganise the colony. He regarded the independent Inca state as a dangerous rallying point and an obstacle to Spanish control. In early 1572 his envoy, Atilano de Anaya, was killed near the Chuquichaca bridge on the way into Vilcabamba.

Toledo used the killing as grounds for war, which he declared on 14 April 1572. Toledo had other reasons too. He was conducting a large inspection of the viceroyalty and commissioned writers, notably Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, to compose histories presenting the Incas as recent tyrants whose rule had no legitimacy. Eliminating the independent Inca line fitted this political programme. He organised an expedition under Martín Hurtado de Arbieto, made up of a few hundred Spanish soldiers and a much larger number of Andean auxiliaries, including Cañari and other groups hostile to the Incas.

The campaign

The expedition entered the Vilcabamba region in late May and early June 1572. Inca forces resisted at several points, but the Spanish had firearms and the advantage of numbers. On 24 June 1572 the Spaniards marched into Vilcabamba itself. They found it abandoned and partly burned by its inhabitants, who had fled into the forest.

Túpac Amaru had escaped towards the lowland jungle with his family and a few followers. A party led by Captain Martín García Óñez de Loyola pursued him downriver and captured him, according to Spanish accounts, as he travelled by the Masahuay river. Other members of the Inca family and leading commanders were taken prisoner with him.

Trial and execution

Túpac Amaru was brought to Cusco in September 1572. He was tried hastily on charges including the killing of Spanish priests and envoys and rebellion, and sentenced to death. Clergy and prominent residents, including the bishop, asked Toledo to show mercy, but he refused.

On 24 September 1572 Túpac Amaru was beheaded in the main square of Cusco before a large crowd. Spanish sources say he had been baptised shortly before and that he told the crowd from the scaffold that Inca religion was false. These reports come from Spanish witnesses and cannot be confirmed independently. Several of his generals were hanged, and his relatives were exiled to Lima.

Consequences

With Vilcabamba destroyed and its ruler dead, organised Inca resistance ended. Toledo went on to carry out sweeping reforms: forcing Andean people into new planned towns called reducciones, reorganising tribute, and expanding the mita labour draft that sent tens of thousands of men to the silver mines of Potosí.

Martín García Óñez de Loyola was rewarded with marriage to Beatriz Clara Coya, a daughter of Sayri Túpac. In Spain, Philip II later recalled Toledo, and a tradition holds that the king rebuked him for killing a king, but this story is not well documented.

Legacy and rediscovery

Vilcabamba itself was forgotten by the outside world for centuries. The American explorer Hiram Bingham reached the ruins at Espíritu Pampa in 1911 but believed that Machu Picchu was the lost city. In the 1960s Gene Savoy argued that Espíritu Pampa was Vilcabamba, and most scholars now agree.

Excavations at Espíritu Pampa have revealed the remains of hundreds of buildings, Inca-style stonework, plazas and roof tiles of Spanish type, a sign that the Neo-Inca rulers adopted some European techniques while living in isolation. The site lies at a much lower altitude than Cusco, in warm and humid forest, which helps explain why it was so hard for Spanish forces to reach.

Túpac Amaru’s name lived on. In 1780 José Gabriel Condorcanqui took the name Túpac Amaru II and led the largest rebellion against Spanish rule in the Andes. The last Inca remains a powerful symbol of Indigenous resistance in Peru and beyond.

Myths and facts

Myth: Machu Picchu was the last refuge of the Incas. Hiram Bingham popularised this idea after 1911, but there is no evidence that Machu Picchu played any part in the Neo-Inca State. It was a royal estate built for the emperor Pachacuti in the 15th century and apparently abandoned around the time of the conquest. The real last capital was Vilcabamba, at Espíritu Pampa.

Myth: the Spaniards stormed Vilcabamba in a great battle. The decisive fighting took place on the approaches, at forts and river crossings. When the expedition reached the town itself, its inhabitants had already left and set fire to buildings and stores.

Fact: an Inca account of the conquest survives from Vilcabamba. The narrative that Titu Cusi Yupanqui dictated in 1570 is one of the very few accounts of the Spanish conquest told from the Inca side, although it was written to support his own claims in negotiations with Spain.

Timeline

• 1537: Manco Inca withdraws to Vilcabamba after the failed siege of Cusco.
• c. 1544: Manco Inca is killed by Spanish fugitives at Vitcos.
• 1566: Titu Cusi Yupanqui agrees the Treaty of Acobamba with Spanish officials.
• 1569: Francisco de Toledo arrives in Peru as viceroy.
• 1571: Titu Cusi dies and Túpac Amaru becomes Sapa Inca.
• 1572, 14 April: Toledo declares war on Vilcabamba.
• 1572, 24 June: Spanish forces enter the abandoned town of Vilcabamba.
• 1572, 24 September: Túpac Amaru is beheaded in the main square of Cusco.

Why it matters

The fall of Vilcabamba marked the true end of the Inca state, four decades after the Spanish first arrived. It opened the way for Toledo’s reorganisation of colonial Peru, with long-lasting effects on Andean society, and created a martyr whose memory inspired later resistance.