Charles F. Walker’s book is a vivid narrative history of the Tupac Amaru Rebellion (1780–82), which profoundly shook, but did not ultimately topple, the foundations of Spanish rule in the Andes. In its ability to make sense of an extremely complex, multifaceted movement without losing the thread of the larger story, The Tupac Amaru Rebellion can be compared with Laurent Dubois’s narrative history of the Haitian Revolution, Avengers of the New World (2004). Like Dubois, Walker skillfully analyzes the perspectives and motivations—as well as the shortcomings—of the movement’s principal leaders, while also considering what led indigenous people to join en masse.
Although common Indians rarely were treated as individuals in the colonial documents, Walker shows how their ideas about justice and violence underlay many of their actions in war. As he explores throughout the book, these ideas were often at odds with those of the original leaders and masterminds of the rebellion. The movement began as a fragile coalition of lower- and middle-sector groups that resented the impositions of the late eighteenth-century Spanish state and the corrupt tactics of its representatives. As the movement evolved into (or forged alliances with) various subrebellions, violence engulfed not just the core area of Peru in the vicinity of the old Inca capital of Cuzco, but also spread south into what is now Bolivia. On the colonial margins, it took on different, more extreme characteristics that evoked fears of a caste war of Indians against non-Indians. These developments would have dismayed José Gabriel Condorcanqui, or Tupac Amaru, and his wife, Micaela Bastidas, had they lived long enough to witness the full course of the movement that they started. (Both were captured, tortured, and executed by Spanish royalist forces in 1781, several months after their failed siege of Cuzco.) Also similar to Dubois’s approach is Walker’s nuanced treatment of Spanish officialdom. Like their French counterparts in Saint-Domingue, Spanish colonial authorities were divided between the hard-liners who favored the extermination of the rebels and the imposition of extreme forms of cultural repression in the Andes, and more moderate officials who advocated negotiation with the rebels and measures to reform some of the worst abuses of colonial power in the region. Although Walker’s study is first and foremost a work of synthesis, he clearly has done some original archival research on the rebellion. In his analysis of both rebels and royalists, he draws from an impressive range of primary sources, including both readily available published documents as well as little-known archival evidence that he collected in Peru and Spain. The text is peppered with choice quotes from rebel correspondence, giving the reader glimpses of the rhetoric and, intriguingly, the emotional states of the leaders. We feel the frustration of Tomasa Condemaita, an important female leader, when she lamented to Micaela Bastidas that “I am so unfortunate [desfavorecida] for being a woman,” as some within the rebel camp disputed her abilities on the basis of her gender (102). We hear Diego Cristóbal, the cousin of Tupac Amaru who assumed leadership of the revolt in 1781, telling the Spanish bishop that he felt “desperate,” his heart “like a shipwreck,” as he tried to make up his mind about whether to trust the Spanish amnesty offer (211).
In his effort to “explore how people understood and participated in the rebellion” (9), Walker is careful not to make assumptions about indigenous unity and consensus. Official documents tended to portray every Indian as a rebel or an anti-Spanish sympathizer, but Walker frequently reminds his readers that Andean society was divided along ethnic, religious, class, and linguistic lines. In the siege of Cuzco, for example, most local Indians did not join the side of the rebels, thus depriving Tupac Amaru’s forces of crucial reinforcements. Walker reveals that Indians faced strong pressure from Spanish and indigenous authorities not to join, and many probably felt ambivalent about the rebellion and its leadership. Other tensions were felt within rebel ranks. Tupac Amaru, who traced his lineage back to the last Inca ruler, was wealthier, better connected, and more devoutly Catholic than many of his followers. This both helped and hindered his movement, as Walker shows. On the one hand, he came to be seen as a kind of Inca messiah figure, venerated by common Indians throughout the region; he also garnered the respect and support of those Spaniards who had formed personal or business relationships with him. On the other hand, Walker argues that Tupac Amaru’s strategies in the war “reflected a deeply colonial view on his part that an uprising could only succeed” with the collaboration of Europeans (58). Tupac Amaru went to great lengths to cultivate the support of both Spanish creoles and people of mixed race, sometimes losing crucial time in doing so. Many of his indigenous followers would ultimately reject such collaboration, as the war-torn region became increasingly polarized between Indians and non-Indians. This polarization grew even more stark in the decades of repression that followed the defeat of the rebellion, and it would make many nonindigenous Peruvians reluctant to break with Spain when independence movements swept across the continent in the early 1800s.
This is a lengthy book that would be difficult to excerpt, but it certainly deserves a place in undergraduate syllabi. Its relevance extends beyond Latin American history, to courses on comparative empires and the Americas in the age of revolution. Specialists will appreciate Walker’s ability to synthesize the large scholarly literature on the rebellion, his fresh take on familiar sources, and his excavation of new archival gems, while the general public will gain entry into the lived experiences of those who participated in one of the largest, albeit unsuccessful, revolutions in the Americas.
Heather Roller
Colgate University
http://www.colgate.edu/facultysearch/facultydirectory/hroller
* The review appeared in Eighteenth-Century Studies 48.4 (2015): 539-40.
