THE REVOLT OF THE MASSES 155
fi cialdom, seriously believed that he could obtain
sweeping reforms from the crown by negotiation,
especially after his execution of the corregidor Ar-
riaga. His protestations of loyalty were soon con-
tradicted by certain documents in which he styled
himself king of Peru, by the war of fi re and blood
that he urged against peninsular Spaniards (ex-
cepting only the clergy), and by the government
he established for the territory under his control.
No doubt, his professions of loyalty to Spain rep-
resented a mask by which he could utilize the still
strong belief of many in the mythical benevolence
of the Spanish king, attract creole supporters of re-
form to his cause, and perhaps soften his punish-
ment in case of defeat.
For Tupac Amaru, who had been educated in
a Spanish colegio and had thoroughly absorbed
the values of Spanish culture, the objective of the
revolt was the establishment of an independent
Peruvian state that would be essentially European
in its political and social organization. His program
called for complete independence from Spain, ex-
pulsion of peninsular Spaniards, and the abolition
of the offi ces of viceroy, audiencia, and corregidor.
The Inca Empire would be restored, with himself as
king and assisted by a nobility formed from other
descendants of the Cuzco noble clans. Caste dis-
tinctions would disappear, and creoles, on whose
support Tupac Amaru heavily counted, would
live in harmony with native peoples, blacks, and
mestizos. The Catholic Church would remain the
state church and be supported by tithes. Tupac
Amaru’s economic program called for suppres-
sion of the mita, the repartimiento de mercancías,
customhouses, and sales taxes, and for the elimi-
nation of great estates and servitude, but it would
permit small and medium-sized landholdings and
encourage trade. Tupac Amaru’s plan, in short,
called for an anticolonial, national revolution that
would create a unifi ed people and a modern state
of European type that could promote economic
development.
But the native peasantry who responded to
his call for revolt had a different conception of its
meaning and goal. In an atmosphere of messianic
excitement, they came to view it as a pachacuti, a
great cataclysm or “overthrow” that would bring
a total inversion of the existing social order and a
return to an idealized Inca Empire where the hum-
bleruna or peasant would not be last but fi rst. In
their desire to avenge the cruelties of the Conquest
and two and a half centuries of brutal exploitation,
they sacked haciendas and killed their owners
without troubling to ascertain whether they were
creoles or Europeans; a Spaniard was one who had
a white skin and wore European dress. As the re-
volt spread, the old pagan religion emerged from
the underground where it had hidden and fl our-
ished for centuries. Tupac Amaru, who sought to
maintain good relations with the Catholic Church,
always went about accompanied by two priests
and hoped for support by Bishop Moscoso of Cuzco.
But his peasant followers sacked the vestments and
ornaments of churches and attacked and killed
priests, hanging a number of friars during the siege
of Cuzco. In December 1780, Tupac Amaru en-
tered one village and summoned its inhabitants,
who greeted him with the words “You are our God
and we ask that there be no priests to pester us.”
He replied that he could not allow this, for it would
mean that there would be no one to attend them
“in the moment of death.”
These opposed conceptions of the meaning
and objectives of the revolt held by Tupac Amaru
and his peasant followers spelled defeat for Tupac
Amaru’s strategy of forming a common pro-
independence front of all social and racial groups
except the peninsular Spaniards. The spontaneous,
uncontrollable violence of the peasant rebels ended
what little chance existed of attracting the support
of the creoles, reformist clergy like Bishop Moscoso,
and many indigenous nobles. At least twenty of
these caciques, jealous of Tupac Amaru or fearful
of losing their privileged status, led their subjects
into the Spanish camp. A prominent loyalist fi g-
ure was Diego Choquehanca, head of the wealthi-
est and most powerful kuraka family in Peru. His
sixteenth-century ancestor of the same name had
been declared a hidalgo and granted the title of mar-
quis de Salinas by the Spanish crown; by 1780 the
Choquehancas owned eleven estancias (estates) in
the province of Azangaro. “Not surprisingly,” says