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which, naturally, hit indigenous people the hardest. In 1780, José Gabriel Condorcanqui – a descendant of Túpac Amaru who resided in the southern region of Tinta – arrested and executed a Spanish administrator on charges of cruelty. His act unleashed an indigenous rebellion that spread throughout southern Peru and into Bolivia and Argentina. Condorcanqui, regarded as Inca royalty by many peasants, adopted the name Túpac Amaru II, in honor of his slain great-grandfather, and traveled the region fomenting revolution. The Spanish reprisal was swift – and brutal. In 1781, the captured indigenous leader was dragged to the main plaza in Cuzco, where he would watch his followers, his wife and his sons killed in a day-long orgy of violence, before being drawn and quartered himself. Pieces of his remains were displayed in towns around the Andes as a way of discouraging further insurrection.

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David Noble Cook’s authoritative book Demographic Collapse: Indian Peru 1520–1620 carefully examines the loss of more than 90% of the area’s indigenous population after the arrival of the Spanish.

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INDEPENDENCE

By the early 19th century, criollos in many of Spain’s Latin American colonies had grown increasingly dissatisfied with their lack of administrative power and the crown’s heavy taxes. In many colonies, the time was ripe for revolt and independence. Yet, in Peru, this wasn’t so much the case. For one, the area was South America’s oldest viceroyalty and its society was dominated, to an overwhelming degree, by the Spanish. Moreover, Lima’s powerful elite were continually nervous about any sort of political shift that might lead to another rebellion.

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THE MAKING OF PERU’S SAINTS

The first century of the Peruvian colony produced an unusual number of Catholic saints – five in all. There was the highly venerated Santa Rosa of Lima (1556–1617), a devout criolla (Spaniard born in Peru) who, though never a nun, nonetheless took a vow of chastity before withdrawing into a secluded life of prayer and mortification, wearing a cilice and sleeping on a bed of broken glass and pottery. (She was particularly renowned for having all manner of visions.) In addition, there was San Juan Macías (1585–1645), who counseled the needy, and San Martín de Porres (1579–1639), the New World’s first black saint, who reportedly cured illness with the touch of his hand. (You can view relics from all these saints at the Iglesia de Santo Domingo in Lima, Click here.) Other lesser-known figures from this period have also been canonized.

Why so many? Miracles aside, a lot of it had to do with the Spanish program to systematically replace the old indigenous order with its own traditions. Catholic authorities, through a process known as the Extirpation, worked to exterminate indigenous religious beliefs by prohibiting idolatry and ancestor worship – and by producing catechisms in Aymara and Quechua. To get this message across, the Church held ceremonies in which pre-Columbian religious idols were burned and natives were whipped. The most famous of these took place in December of 1609, in Lima’s main plaza, when Church officials immolated a pile of figurines confiscated from indigenous parishes and then administered 200 lashes to an indigenous man accused of having ties to the devil.

The whole process, ultimately, gave rise to a crop of local holy figures that Catholic officials could hold up as praiseworthy examples of religious piousness. Priests preached the wonders of everyday people (especially those of mixed race) who helped care for the sick, rejected worldly possessions, practiced chastity and displayed extreme humility – qualities that the Church was eager to cultivate in its flock of newfound converts. A lot of the figures touted during these times would never attain full sainthood – but those that did have remained an integral part of Peruvian spiritual culture to this day.

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The winds of change, however, arrived – inevitably – from two directions. Argentine revolutionary