“Fire not properly extinguished spreads forever”: Tribute and Indigenous Politics after the Revolution of 1780

• In Event: Revisitando las instituciones coloniales

Abstract

In 1781, shortly after the capture and execution of revolutionary leaders Tupac Amaru, Michaela Bastidas, and members of their family, a key colonial official in Peru ordered a year long reprieve on the racial tax on indigenous household known as the tribute. The temporary cessation of such a key part of imperial revenue, racial hierarchy, and labor extraction represented an admission by the colonial government of the gravity of the continued threat posed by the indigenous mobilizations of the southern Andes even after the death of many of its initial leaders. For this presentation to LASA, which is based upon research completed for my doctoral dissertation, I will explain how this and other rearguard actions against the continuing insurgency shaped the political, economic, and social situation in the Andes. In desperately trying to stave off rebellion, officials introduced new instabilities into some of the most important and profitable tools of colonial extraction. With the respite as political precedent, indigenous communities increasingly challenged the tributary regime and the system of exactions and punishments that sustained it. So while some historians claim that the main legacies of the failure of the revolution of Tupac Amaru were repression, demobilization, and fear, I argue that the Tupac Amaru revolution and the political actions that continued beyond its defeat inaugurated a series of escalating crises for the colonial state that coincided with the appearance of movements for formal independence.

Author

• David Klassen