Rebellion of Túpac Amaru II (1780–1781): Andean Uprising in Peru

The rebellion of Túpac Amaru II was a mass uprising of Indigenous and mixed-race people in the southern Andes of the Viceroyalty of Peru, launched on 4 November 1780 when José Gabriel Condorcanqui seized a hated Spanish official. Spreading from the region around Cusco into Upper Peru, modern Bolivia, it became the largest revolt against Spanish rule in the Americas before the wars of independence. Its suppression was brutal, but it changed how Spain governed the Andes and created one of Latin America’s most enduring symbols of resistance.

Background: grievances in the colonial Andes

Two and a half centuries after the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire, Andean society rested on heavy demands on Indigenous communities. Adult men owed tribute, and many provinces had to send workers under the mita, a rotating system of forced labour, to the silver mines of Potosí, where conditions were notoriously dangerous.

The most resented burden was the reparto de mercancías. Local governors, called corregidores, bought their posts and recovered the cost by forcing Indigenous households to buy mules, cloth and other goods at inflated prices. Formally legalised by the Crown in the 1750s, the reparto drove many communities into debt.

In the 1770s the Bourbon reforms, an effort by the Spanish Crown to raise revenue and tighten control, added new pressure. The alcabala, a sales tax, was raised from 2 to 4 and then 6 percent, and customs houses were set up across the region. A royal inspector, José Antonio de Areche, arrived in Lima in 1777 to enforce the changes. Small riots broke out in many towns, and in 1780 an Aymara leader, Tomás Katari, was already challenging officials in Chayanta in Upper Peru.

José Gabriel Condorcanqui

José Gabriel Condorcanqui was born in 1738 in Surimana, in the province of Tinta (now Canas and Canchis) south-east of Cusco. Educated by Jesuits in Cusco, he became kuraka, or hereditary Indigenous chief, of several villages and ran a business with hundreds of mules carrying goods along the trade routes to Potosí and Lima.

He claimed descent through his mother from Túpac Amaru, the last Inca ruler of Vilcabamba, whom the Spanish executed in 1572. For years he pursued lawsuits to have his noble lineage recognised and petitioned against the mita, without success. His wife, Micaela Bastidas, a capable organiser in her own right, became one of the rebellion’s leading figures.

The execution of Antonio de Arriaga

On 4 November 1780, after a dinner held to celebrate the king’s name day in the town of Yanaoca, Condorcanqui and his followers seized Antonio de Arriaga, the corregidor of Tinta, who was notorious for abusing the reparto. Arriaga was forced to write letters summoning money, weapons and people to Tungasuca.

On 10 November, before a large crowd at Tungasuca, Arriaga was hanged. Condorcanqui, now calling himself Túpac Amaru, declared that he acted on royal orders to punish corrupt officials, and announced the abolition of the reparto, the mita and the customs houses. In mid-November he also issued a decree promising freedom to enslaved Black people who joined him.

Course of the uprising

The revolt spread with great speed. On 18 November 1780 the rebels defeated a hastily raised Spanish and loyalist force at Sangarará; several hundred defenders died, many when the church in which they sheltered caught fire. The bloodshed alarmed Creole (American-born Spanish) landowners and clergy whose support Túpac Amaru had hoped to win, and the Bishop of Cusco excommunicated him.

Túpac Amaru gathered tens of thousands of followers, but he hesitated before marching on Cusco, the old Inca capital. By the time his forces reached the hills above the city in late December, the colonial authorities had reinforced it, partly with loyal Indigenous troops led by rival kurakas. After failed attacks he withdrew in early January 1781.

In the following months a large army sent from Lima under José del Valle pushed into the rebel heartland. Defeated near Tinta, Túpac Amaru was betrayed by his own officers and captured on 6 April 1781 together with Micaela Bastidas and much of his family.

Trial, execution and the wider war

Areche oversaw the trial in Cusco and sought an execution that would terrify the population. On 18 May 1781, in the main square of Cusco, Túpac Amaru was made to watch the deaths of his wife, his eldest son Hipólito and other relatives and associates. Four horses were then used in an attempt to tear him apart; when this failed he was beheaded and his body dismembered, with parts displayed in towns that had supported the revolt.

The war did not end with his death. His cousin Diego Cristóbal Túpac Amaru continued fighting in the south, while in Upper Peru the Aymara leader Túpac Katari (Julián Apaza) besieged La Paz twice in 1781, for a total of around six months. Thousands of inhabitants died of hunger before relief forces arrived. Túpac Katari was captured and executed in November 1781.

Diego Cristóbal accepted a royal pardon in early 1782, but the authorities later accused him of plotting again and executed him in 1783. Violence on both sides was severe, with massacres of Spanish residents and harsh reprisals against Indigenous communities.

By the numbers

Consequences

The Spanish Crown responded with both repression and reform. The reparto was abolished, and in 1784 the system of corregidores was replaced with intendancies, a new layer of administration designed to reduce abuses. A royal court, the Audiencia of Cusco, was established in 1787.

At the same time officials tried to erase the memory of the Incas. Inca-style dress and symbols were banned, the hereditary power of kurakas was curtailed, and the Royal Commentaries of Garcilaso de la Vega, a history of the Incas, were prohibited. The revolt also left Creole elites fearful of Indigenous mobilisation, which made many of them cautious when independence movements emerged a generation later.

Legacy

Historians debate whether Túpac Amaru sought independence or reform within the Spanish monarchy; his early proclamations professed loyalty to the king, while later documents attributed to him used more radical language. What is clear is that the uprising drew on deep Andean grievances and on memories of the Inca past.

In Peru he became a national hero, especially after the military government of Juan Velasco Alvarado adopted his image from 1968. His name inspired the Tupamaros in Uruguay and the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement in Peru, and Micaela Bastidas is honoured as a leader of the revolt. Comparable uprisings of the period include the Pugachev Rebellion in Russia.

Timeline

• 1738, 19 March: José Gabriel Condorcanqui is born in Surimana, province of Tinta.
• 1780, 4 November: Condorcanqui seizes the corregidor Antonio de Arriaga near Yanaoca.
• 1780, 10 November: Arriaga is publicly hanged at Tungasuca.
• 1780, 18 November: Rebels defeat a loyalist force at Sangarará.
• 1780, late December – 1781, early January: Rebel attack on Cusco fails.
• 1781, 6 April: Túpac Amaru and his family are captured.
• 1781, 18 May: Túpac Amaru, Micaela Bastidas and relatives are executed in Cusco.
• 1781, November: Túpac Katari is executed after the sieges of La Paz.
• 1782, January: Diego Cristóbal Túpac Amaru accepts a pardon.

Why it matters

The rebellion of Túpac Amaru II was the greatest challenge to Spanish rule in South America before independence. It exposed the abuses of colonial government, forced significant reforms and made its leader a lasting emblem of Indigenous resistance across the Andes and beyond.