Tomás Katari

Tomás Katari , also Tomás Catari († January 15, 1781 ) was the leader of an indigenous uprising in Upper Peru (Alto Perú) , today's Bolivia , against the Spaniards in 1780.

Life

Tomás Katari was the mayor of Macha Municipality in Chayanta Province . In 1772 the sales tax ( alcabala ) was raised from 2 to 4% and in 1776 again to 6%. In addition, Upper Peru became part of the new viceroyalty Río de la Plata . All of this increased tensions between the colonial administration and the indigenous communities. In 1778 Tomás Katari traveled to the capital of Río de la Plata, Buenos Aires, to stand up for the rights of his community under Spanish law. He also argued that he had received an order from the King of Spain to act on behalf of the Indians. At this point he was against any violent resistance. In the same year, however, the crown ordered the corregidores to collect sales tax of the full 6 percent.

In 1779 Tomás Katari was imprisoned in Chuquisaca . Meanwhile, a representative of Qatar in Macha announced that the Viceroy in Buenos Aires had halved the tribute payments. The local governor had him detained, but he was freed by local indigenous peoples because he had finally acted on royal orders. Tomás Katari's brothers demanded that the supposed royal orders be carried out and that power of government be handed over to José Gabriel Condorcanqui , who had assumed the name Tupaq Amaru II after the last Inca king. On August 26, 1780, farmers gathered for the uprising in Pocoata , in the course of which the Corregidor was expelled from Chayanta and Tomás Katari was freed from prison. In September 1780 Tomás Katari returned to Chayanta and was appointed Kaziken there. The uprising spread to surrounding communities, including Moscari, San Pedro de Buena Vista, and Sacaca. Tomás Katari, as the Kazike of Chayanta, nevertheless tried to normalize relations with the colonial authorities. However, he could not stop the violence of his supporters.

Death and succession

In December 1780 Tomás Katari was imprisoned by the mine operator Alvares on the orders of the Spanish Justicia Mayor Juan Antonio Acuña. When Qatar's followers went into pursuit to rescue him, he was murdered by the Spanish on January 15, 1781. However, the indigenous peoples caught up with the murderers and killed them all - Acuña, Alvares, and five Spanish soldiers - poking out Acuña's body and leaving all bodies unburied.

The rebels hung a number of caciques and corregidores and cut out their hearts. They acted partly in the conviction that the king of Spain had ordered the corregidores and the criollos ( puka kunka , "red-necked") to be executed . The killed Spaniards were not allowed to be buried so that no new plants (mallki) could grow out of them and so they should not be reborn.

After Tomás Katari's death, the rebellion intensified. The goal was no longer reform, but rather the expulsion or death of the Spaniards. Tomás Katari's cousins ​​Nicolás and Dámaso Katari took over the leadership of the uprising, which extended to other areas of Upper Peru, and strove to unite their forces with those of José Gabriel Condorcanqui in Cusco . However, Damaso and Nicolas fell into the hands of the Spaniards and were executed in La Plata, and José Gabriel Condorcanqui suffered the same fate in Cusco. As a result, Julián Apaza sat at the head of the insurgents and took the name Tupaq Katari from the dead leaders Tupaq Amaru II and Tomás Katari .

literature

• Jan Szeminski: Why Kill the Spaniard? New Perspectives on Andean Insurrectionary Ideology in the 18th Century , in: Steve J. Stern (Ed.): Resistance, Rebellion and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World, 18th to 20th Centuries . University of Wisconsin Press, Madison 1987. pp. 166-192.
• Sergio Serulnikov: Subverting Colonial Authority. Challenges to Spanish Rule in Eighteenth-century Southern Andes . Duke UP, Durham 2003.
• Ward Stavig, Ella Schmidt: The Tupac Amaru and Catarista Rebellions - an Anthology of Sources . Indianapolis: Hackett Pub., 2008.
• Nicholas A. Robins: Native Insurances and the Genocidal Impulse in the Americas . Indiana UP, Bloomington 2005.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jan Szeminski, p. 172.