The Tupac Amaru Rebellion

The Tupac Amaru movement, strictly understood as the rebellion led by José Gabriel Condorcanqui, who went by the Inca royal name Tupac Amaru, and his relatives in southern Peru between Cuzco and Lake Titicaca from 1780 to 1783, was one of the best-kept secrets in Latin American history. The largest uprising of native peoples against European rule since the conquest era, it is an obligatory reference in any survey of Spanish colonialism, Peruvian history, and peasant or indigenous unrest. It has been also the object of intense historiographical scrutiny since at least the 1970s onward, following the impulses of consecutive waves of socioeconomic history, history of mentalities, structural anthropology, collective action theories, and the like. Tupac Amaru has become in due time a transnational political and cultural icon as well. His name figured prominently in late twentieth-century Latin American guerrilla groups, folk songs, and even the American rap scene. Even...