Juan Santos Atahualpa
Juan Santos Atahualpa , also Atahualpa Apu-Inca (* around 1710 ; † 1755 or 1756 ) was the leader of an indigenous uprising in the rainforest areas of the provinces of Tarma and Jauja against the Spaniards , who from 1742 for an expulsion of the Spaniards and their Peruvian successors for provided for over a century.
Juan Santos Atahualpa succeeded in uniting the Amuesha , Piro , Simirinche , Conibo , Shipibo and Mochobo with the Asháninka - then known as Campa .
origin
There is much to suggest that Juan Santos Atahualpa was born as Asháninka in the rainforest on the eastern edge of the Andes. He received a Christian education from the Jesuits in Cusco in the Andean highlands, where he also learned Spanish, Latin and Quechua . Accompanied by a Jesuit brother, he is said to have traveled to Spain , England , France , Italy and Angola and learned Italian and some French there. In addition to his native Asháninka , he apparently spoke a number of other indigenous languages of the Amazon lowlands.
He claimed to be a descendant of the Inca kings . He gave himself the name Atahualpa after the last king before the arrival of the Spaniards in 1532 .
personality
Juan Santos is described as a level-headed leader who wanted to avoid a bloody armed conflict. His motives were not the social revolution, but the liberation of the indigenous people through religious renewal.
Life
The verifiable history of Juan Santos Atahualpa begins in May 1742 in the village of Quisopango on the Shimaqui (Shimá) river in the Gran Pajonal area between today's departments of Ucayali , Pasco and Junín . A number of people who had been forcibly relocated by the missionaries lived in this Asháninka town, which was hardly inoperable by the military. The closest missions, Perené and Chanchamayo, were far away. Juan Santos came from Cusco , where he left three brothers, dressed in a red sleeveless shirt (Quechua: kushma ) with a boat accompanied by a piro named Bisabequí.
Juan Santos was familiar with the Asháninka culture. He drank Masato and regarded coca as "the plant of the gods and not of the witches". The Asháninka myth of Kesha tells of a savior who comes down the river from the mountains.
A few days after Juan Santos' arrival, all the Indians left the missions of Cerro de la Sal , Perené, Chanchamayo and Ene. Juan Santos sent messengers to the villages for a meeting in Gran Pajonal, which was attended not only by Asháninka, but also by Amuesha , Piro , Simirinche , Conibo , Shipibo and Mochobo , indigenous people from all over the central rainforest area of Peru.
In June the Jesuit Father Santiago Vásquez de Caicedo visited Juan Santos in Quisopango. He informed the Father that he wanted to build a kingdom "with the help of his children": with the indigenous peoples and mestizos. He sent a warning to the viceroy about trying to stop him "with four Spaniards". Vásquez soon afterwards sent the Alcalden of Sonomoro with two converted Asháninka to Juan Santos, but they returned with the news from Santos that Santos had the right to his kingdom and that as a Christian, like the priests, he prayed every day and taught the indigenous people Christianity . Santos, who wore a silver crucifix on his chest, urged the Wiraquchas (Spaniards) and blacks to leave his country. Blacks left the area in fear for the mission. In Sabirosqui near Quisopango, however, Santos saved several blacks from being killed by his followers.
Two black refugees, Francisco and El Congo, brought the demands of Santos to the Jesuits. In this, the new "Inca" demanded his kingdom, which had been stolen from him by Pizarro and the rest of the Spaniards. The time of the Spaniards was over and he had come. He also doesn't want black people in his kingdom, since they, like the Spaniards, are thieves and have their kingdom in Africa, Congo and Angola, where he himself has already been and seen them holding mass. He ordered that priests could only come without Spaniards or blacks and that otherwise he would get the bishop of Cusco to make his children, the Indians , priests.
In September 1742, the governor of the border region of Tarma, Benito Troncoso, assembled an army of almost a hundred men with whom he penetrated the Gran Pajonal without encountering the expected indigenous forces. Only in the old Quisopango mission was there a battle with a few Asháninka warriors. Troncoso withdrew and another Spanish unit advanced into Quimirí, which was deserted. Since the Spaniards held Santos and his Asháninka responsible for the death of Father Domingo García, who had previously flogged an Asháninka from his mission, and two other priests on the Perené, Troncoso's troops pushed into Eneno and Nijandaris on the Cerro in October and November 1742 de la Sal before, but again without success.
In June 1743, the rebels advanced to Quimirí and asked Father Lorenzo Núñez to disappear into the highlands. In August, Núñez fled from a force of Asháninka, Piro, Amuesha and Mochobo on the Chanchamayo. In 1743 the uprising already had the support of indigenous people in the neighboring highland regions after Santos had released two Quechuas , a Franciscan and the Alcalden of Quimirí, who had previously been captured as spies . An increasing number of Quechua Indians left their homeland for the rainforest to join the rebels or simply to avoid exploitation by the Spaniards.
Two companies with four cannons and four mortars were brought from Lima to Tarma and marched with 200 men on to Quimirí, which was deserted again. Here the Spaniards built another fortress. When the greater part of the crew had withdrawn to Tarma, Santos' warriors surrounded the fort. Santos offered the commandant, Captain Fabricio Bártoli, a truce and safe withdrawal into the Andes. Hoping for reinforcements, Bártoli declined. When the eighty Spaniards finally tried to flee one night, they were killed by the warriors. In January 1744, Troncoso and 300 men reached the fort, which was held by Asháninka, and then withdrew.
After the fall of Quimirí, the Franciscans began to negotiate with Santos. Father Núñez and Manuel Albarrán were already in contact with Santos, but the Spanish crown was betting on war. In 1745 the aged Viceroy José Antonio de Mendoza Caamaño y Sotomayor , Marqués de Villagarcía de Arosa, was replaced by the chairman of the High Court of Chile, Lieutenant General José Antonio Manso de Velasco . General Don José de Llamas , Marqués de Mena Hermosa, was appointed to direct the operations.
In January 1746 an army of about a thousand men was assembled, and in March José de Llamas marched with 500 men, despite heavy rains, to Huancabamba and on to Cerro de la Sal , without meeting a single enemy warrior. After losing 14 men due to exhaustion, de Llamas withdrew. Under Troncoso, almost 400 men marched via Quimirí and Oxapampa with the aim of meeting de Llamas. In Nijandaris on the Chanchamayo River , they were attacked by Asháninka and fled in a panic towards the highlands.
In 1746 the Spaniards built two fortresses, one in Chanchamayo and one in Oxapampa. However, no further attacks were made in the rebel territory.
In 1751 the rebels carried out attacks on the Río Sonomoro and in 1752 they had the entire traditional area of the Asháninka, Piro and Yanesha under their control. In the pursuit of Spanish soldiers from Sonomoro, the indigenous warriors, led by Juan Santos, penetrated the Andean highlands in August 1752, took the towns of Ata and Runatullo and gathered on the outskirts of Andamarca in Junín. They sent a parliamentarian named Domingo Guatay to submit an offer for a peaceful surrender. Not only was the offer refused, but Guatay was only able to save his life at the last minute by avoiding the fire of a musket. Now the rebel army invaded the city with an estimated 700 to 2000 men. However, the city's defenders, led by Juan Campos, threw away their weapons and defected to the rebels. Quechua townspeople of Andamarca kissed the hands of Juan Santos Atahualpa, their Apu Inka (Lord Inka), who had been welcomed as liberators and who they recognized by his two shirts, one red and one black, his headband and his sandals.
The city of Andamarca remained in the hands of Juan Santos and his warriors for only three days. The two local priests were arrested. The rebels eventually left town and took whatever food they could with them. The reinforcements of the Spanish marched back into the city and arrested two alleged spies who were hanged in the city of Jauja . As a result, the viceroy placed the cities of Tarma and Jauja under military governors and had more fortresses built on the eastern edge of the Andes.
The occupation of the city of Andamarca was the last meeting of the Spaniards with Juan Santos, whose trace is now lost again.
During an expedition to Quimirí under Pablo Sáez in 1756, the Spaniards found an abandoned village, the main square of which, however, was decorated with a cross on a rock. The local church, which was destroyed by the Spanish general José de Llamas in 1750, had not been rebuilt.
death
How, when and where Juan Santos Atahualpa died is not documented. In 1766 the Franciscan Father Salcedo came to the old Conibo Mission San Miguel on the upper Ucayali, where he met two Asháninka followers of Juan Santos. They informed him that Juan Santos Atahualpa had disappeared in Metraro in a cloud of smoke. Juan Santos' disappearance should not prevent the Ucayali indigenous groups from starting a new rebellion that same year.
legacy
The result of the uprising and thus the legacy of Juan Santos Atahualpa was the provisional liberation of the indigenous peoples of the central Amazon region in today's Peru from the colonial rule of the Spaniards and whites. The subjugation of the Asháninka, Piro, Amuesha, Mochobo and partly the Conibo by the Spaniards or Peruvians had become impossible for almost a hundred years. It was not until the rubber boom in the 19th century that there was a renewed wave of colonization.
reception
Juan Santos is described in the only available contemporary sources, which came from Franciscans, as well as in the historiography of the early Republic of Peru as a liar and power-hungry fugitive criminal, who, however, faces a large following of the most diverse indigenous peoples of Eastern Peru, which could hardly be based on fraud and crime . This makes it very difficult to reconstruct his résumé.
Juan Santos was and is still venerated by the Asháninka as savior.
literature
- Stefano Varese 1968: La Sal de los Cerros. Notas etnográficas e históricas sobre los Campa de la Selva del Perú . Universidad Peruana de Ciencias y Tecnología, Lima 1968. Chapter Juan Santos el Mesías , pp. 64-84.
English translation: Salt of the Mountain: Campa Asháninka History and Resistance in the Peruvian . University of Oklahoma Press. Pp. 87-109. - Michael Fobes Brown, Eduardo Fernández: War of shadows: the struggle for utopia in the Peruvian Amazon. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles (California) 1991. Return of Lord Inca , pp. 34-60.
- Lawrence E. Sullivan: The World and its end: Cosmologies and eschatologies of South American Indians . In: Lawrence Sullivan (Ed.): Native Religions and Cultures of Central and South America. Anthropology of the Sacred . Continuum, New York 2002. Chapter 5, pp. 179ff. Juan Santos Atahualpa , pp. 180-183.
- Kenneth J. Andrien: Andean Worlds. Indigenous History, Culture, and Consciousness Under Spanish Rule, 1532-1825 . University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque (New Mexico) 2001. ISBN 0-8263-2359-6
- Mario Castro Arenas: La rebelión de Juan Santos . Editor Carlos Milla Batres, Lima 1973.
Web links
- Arturo Gómez Alarcón: Rebelión de Juan Santos Atahualpa (Spanish)
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Santos Atahualpa, Juan |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Atahualpa Apu-Inca |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Leader of an Indian uprising in Peru (1742 to 1755) |
| DATE OF BIRTH | around 1710 |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1755 or 1756 |