Peru - Lonely Planet Publications [14]
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Pizarro quickly made his way back to Spain to court royal support for his impending conquest and returned to the area in September of 1532 with a shipload of arms, horses and slaves – as well as a battalion of 168 men. Tumbes, the rich town he had visited just four years earlier had been devastated by epidemics, as well as the recent Inca civil war. Atahualpa, in the meantime, was in the process of making his way down from Quito to Cuzco to claim his hard-won throne. When the Spanish arrived, he was in the northern Peruvian highland settlement of Cajamarca, enjoying some rest at the area’s mineral baths.
Pizarro quickly deduced that the empire was in a fractious state. He and his men charted a course to Cajamarca and approached Atahualpa with promises of brotherhood and offering greetings from distant kings. But soon enough, the Spaniards had launched a surprise attack that left thousands of indigenous people dead and Atahualpa as a prisoner of war. (Between their horses, their protective armor and the steel of their blades, the vastly outnumbered Spanish were practically invincible against Inca warriors armed only with clubs, slings and wicker helmets.) In an attempt to regain his freedom, Atahualpa offered the Spanish gold and silver – and thus began one of the most famous ransoms in history, with the Incas attempting to fill an entire room with the precious stuff in order to placate the unrelenting appetites of the Spanish. (During this time, the conquistadors also stripped bare the walls of Cuzco’s Qorikancha, Click here.) But a roomful of gold was not enough, and the Spanish held Atahualpa prisoner for eight months before sentencing him to death. He died of strangulation at the garrote at the age of 31.
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Guns, Germs & Steel, the Pulitzer Prize–winning book by Jared Diamond, is a thoughtful biological examination of why some European societies triumphed over so many others; Latin America figures prominently.
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Despite sporadic rebellions led by his followers and children – some of which would even lay siege to the Spanish capital of Lima – the Inca empire would never recover from this fateful encounter.
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THE TUMULTUOUS COLONY
Following the death of Atahualpa, the Spanish quickly got to work organizing their new colony. The Inca capital of Cuzco was of little use to them, since they would need a port from which to ship the spoils of their conquest back to Spain. So, on January 6, 1535, Pizarro sketched out his new administrative center in the sands that bordered the Río Rímac on the central coast. This would be Lima, the so-called ‘City of Kings’ (named in honor of the Feast of the Epiphany or Three Kings’ Day), the new capital of the viceroyalty of Peru, an empire that for more than 200 years would cover much of South America and serve as the crown jewel in the Spanish colonial system.
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EL INCA GARCILASO DE LA VEGA: THE FIRST MESTIZO INTELLECTUAL
Of all the chronicles documenting the particulars of Inca culture and its subjugation by the Spanish, none has received as much widespread literary acclaim as the seminal work produced by El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (1539–1616), the illegitimate son of a Spanish conquistador and an Inca princess. His book Comentarios Reales de los Incas (Royal Commentaries of the Incas) records the ways and history of the Inca people prior to the conquest – and to this day remains required reading for all students of Latin American colonial history.
As with all first-person narratives, Comentarios is not without political expediency. Garcilaso portrays the Incas as a great people who brought civilization to the Andes – avoiding any reference to other well-established cultures. He also describes the empire as a kingdom where every citizen was well cared for and contented (not the case for the many regional ethnicities who had been brutally conquered by the Incas). Most significantly, he was gratefully admiring of the Christian religion – which had spent its early