Peru - Lonely Planet Publications [23]
1532 Atahualpa wins a protracted struggle for control over Inca territories; at virtually the same time, the Spanish land in Peru – in less than a year, Atahualpa is dead.
1569 Spaniard Francisco de Toledo, one of the more able administrators in the history of the colony, assumes the position of viceroy.
1572 Túpac Amaru, the last reigning leader of the Incas, is beheaded in Cuzco’s town square.
1609 Mestizo writer and thinker El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega publishes Los Comentarios Reales (The Royal Commentaries), a celebrated narrative of Inca life before and after the conquest.
1613 Indigenous noble Guamán Poma de Ayala pens a 1200-page missive to the Spanish king detailing the poor treatment of natives; it lies forgotten until 1908, when it’s discovered in a Danish archive.
1671 Santa Rosa de Lima, the patron saint of Peru and the Americas, is canonized by Pope Clement X.
1781 Inca noble Túpac Amaru II is brutally executed by the Spanish after leading an unsuccessful indigenous rebellion.
1810 Painter Pancho Fierro, a watercolorist known for recording daily life, is born in Lima.
1821 José de San Martín rides into Lima and declares Peru independent; true sovereignty, however, doesn’t come for another three years, when Simón Bolivar’s forces vanquish the Spanish in battles at Junín and Ayacucho.
1826 The last of the Spanish military forces depart from Callao, after which the country descends into a period of anarchy.
1845 Ramón Castilla begins the first of four nonconsecutive presidential terms and brings some degree of stability to Peru.
1854 Peru abolishes slavery.
1872 Scholar Ricardo Palma publishes the first of a series of books – known as the Tradiciones Peruanas – that chronicle criollo folklore.
1879–83 Chile wages war against Peru and Bolivia over nitrate-rich lands in the Atacama Desert; Peru loses the conflict – in addition to its southernmost region of Tarapacá.
1892 Poet César Vallejo is born in a highland town; he lived for only 46 years, but nonetheless became one of the continent’s finest literary figures.
1895 Nicolás de Piérola is elected president, beginning a period of relative stability buoyed by a booming world economy.
1911 US historian Hiram Bingham arrives at the ruins of Machu Picchu.
1924 Northern political leader Victor Raúl Haya de la Torre founds APRA, a populist, anti-imperialist political party that is immediately declared illegal.
1928 Journalist and thinker José Carlos Mariátegui publishes the Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality, which heavily critiques the feudal nature of Peruvian society.
1932 More than a thousand APRA party followers are killed by the military at the ancient ruins of Chan Chan following an uprising in Trujillo.
1936 Acclaimed novelist, journalist and future presidential candidate Mario Vargas Llosa is born in Arequipa.
1948 General Manuel Odría assumes power for eight years, encouraging a high degree of foreign investment.
1968 Juan Velasco Alvarado takes power; in his seven years in office, he promulgates a populist agenda that involves ‘Peruvianization’ of all industry.
1970 A 7.7-magnitude earthquake in northern Peru kills almost 80,000 people, leaves 140,000 injured and another 500,000 homeless.
1980 Fernando Belaúnde Terry becomes the first democratically elected president after a 12-year military dictatorship, but his term is plagued by economic instability and a growing highland guerrilla war.
1983 In one of the more high-profile massacres of the Internal Conflict, eight journalists are murdered in the Andean town of Uchuraccay under suspicious circumstances.
1985 APRA leader Alan García becomes president, but his term is marked by hyperinflation and increased attacks by terrorist groups; he flees the country in 1992, clouded by allegations of embezzlement.
1987 Archaeologists working near Lambayeque uncover a rare, undisturbed tomb of a Moche warrior-priest known as El Señor de