Peru, History

Evidence of settlement in Peru dates back thousands of years but, except for some scattered ruins, little is known of these early peoples. In about 1250 BC groups such as the Chavín, Chimú, Nazca, and Tiahuanaco migrated into the region from the north. The Chimú built the city of Chan Chan about AD 1000, ruins of which remain today.

The Inca, a South American people, built one of the largest and wealthiest empires in the western hemisphere beginning in the mid-1400s. Located on the western coast of South America, the empire extended more than 4000 km (more than 2500 mi) and included regions of present-day Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Bolivia, and Argentina. The city of Cuzco, situated in southern Peru, served as the Inca capital. © Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

A. Inca Empire

The Inca, sometimes called peoples of the sun, were originally a warlike tribe living in a semiarid region of the southern sierra. Advertisement From 1100 to 1300 the Inca moved north into the fertile Cuzco Valley. From there they overran the neighboring lands. By 1500 the Inca Empire stretched from the Pacific Ocean east to the sources of the Paraguay and Amazon rivers and from the region of modern Quito in Ecuador south to the Maule River in Chile. This vast empire was a theocracy, organized along socialistic lines and ruled by an Inca, or emperor, who was worshiped as a divinity. Because the Inca realm contained extensive deposits of gold and silver, it became in the early 16th century a target of Spanish imperial ambitions in the Americas. In November 1995 anthropologists announced the discovery of the 500-year-old remains of two Inca women and one Inca man frozen in the snow on a mountain peak in Peru. Scientists concluded that the trio were part of a human sacrifice ritual on Ampato, a sacred peak in the Andes mountain range. Artifacts from the find unveiled new information about the Inca and indicated the use of poles and tents rather than traditional stone structures. The arrangement of doll-size statuettes dressed in feathers and fine woolens provided clues about Inca religious and sacrificial practices.

B. Spanish Rule

In 1532 Spanish soldier and adventurer Francisco Pizarro landed in Peru with a force of about 180 men. Conditions were favorable to conquest, for the empire was debilitated by a just-concluded civil war between the heirs to the Inca throne, Atahualpa and Huascar, each of whom was seeking to control the empire. This internal dissension, plus the terror inspired by Spanish guns and horses—unknown to the indigenous peoples until then—made it relatively easy for only a handful of Spaniards to conquer this vast empire.

The Spaniards met Atahualpa, the victor in the civil war, and his army at a prearranged conference at Cajamarca in 1532. When Atahualpa arrived, the Spaniards ambushed and seized him, and killed thousands of his followers. Although Atahualpa paid the most fabulous ransom known to history—a room full of gold and another full of silver—for his freedom, the Spaniards murdered him in 1533.

The Spanish destroyed many of the irrigation projects and the north-south roads that had knit the empire together, speeding the disintegration of the empire. By November 1533 Cuzco had fallen with little resistance. In addition, the indigenous population declined rapidly as a result of new diseases brought by the Spaniards, diseases to which the Inca had no immunity. Members of the Inca dynasty took refuge in the mountains and were able to resist the Spaniards for about four decades. However, by 1572 the Spaniards had executed the last Inca ruler, Tupac Amarú, along with his advisers and his family.

In 1535 Pizarro founded on the banks of the Rímac River the Peruvian capital city of Ciudad de los Reyes (Spanish for “City of the Kings”; present-day Lima). Subsequently, disputes over jurisdictional powers broke out among the Spanish conquerors, or conquistadors, and in 1541 a member of one of the conflicting Spanish factions assassinated Pizarro in Lima.

The Inca civilization had unified what are now Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia and created an integrated society. The Spanish, whose main aims were plunder and the conversion of native tribes to Christianity, stopped the development of the indigenous civilization. The Spaniards treated the Inca ruthlessly, using their labor to produce the minerals needed in Spain. The result was the creation of a psychic chasm between the Inca and the Europeanized population, a chasm that has endured for more than 400 years.

The Spanish introduced a system of land tenure consisting of European landlords and indigenous workers. This system succeeded in solidly establishing a privileged and wealthy landed aristocracy early in the colonial period. Little was done to educate the masses of peoples. As a result, colonial Peru was a divided society, consisting of a small class that owned the land and controlled education, political, military, and religious power, and of a large, mostly indigenous class (about 90 percent of the total population) that remained landless, illiterate, and exploited.

In 1542 a Spanish imperial council promulgated statutes called New Laws for the Indies, which were designed to put a stop to cruelties inflicted on the Native Americans. In the same year Spain created the Viceroyalty of Peru, which comprised all Spanish South America and Panama, except what is now Venezuela.

The first Spanish viceroy arrived in Peru in 1544 and attempted to enforce the New Laws, but the conquistadores rebelled and, in 1546, killed the viceroy. Although the Spanish government crushed the rebellion in 1548, the New Laws were never put into effect.

In 1569 Spanish colonial administrator Francisco de Toledo arrived in Peru. During the ensuing 14 years he established a highly effective, although harshly repressive, system of government. Toledo's method of administration consisted of a government of Spanish officials ruling through lower-level officials made up of Native Americans who dealt directly with the indigenous population. This system lasted for almost 200 years.

C. Revolts for Independence

In 1780 a force of 60,000 Native Americans revolted against Spanish rule under the leadership of Peruvian patriot José Gabriel Condorcanqui, who adopted the name of an ancestor, the Inca Tupac Amarú. Although initially successful, the uprising was crushed in 1781. The Spanish tortured and executed Condorcanqui and thousands of his fellow revolutionaries. The Spanish suppressed another revolt in 1814.

Subsequently, however, opposition to imperial rule grew throughout Spanish South America. The opposition was led largely by Creoles, people of Spanish descent born in South America. Creoles grew to resent the fact that the Spanish government awarded all important government positions in the colonies to Spaniards born in Spain, who were called peninsulares.

Freedom from Spanish rule, however, was imported to Peru by outsiders. In September 1820 Argentine soldier and patriot José de San Martín, who had defeated the Spanish forces in Chile, landed an invasion army at the seaport of Pisco, Peru. On July 12, 1821, San Martín's forces entered Lima, which had been abandoned by Spanish troops. Peruvian independence was proclaimed formally on July 28, 1821. The struggle against the Spanish was continued later by Venezuelan revolutionary hero Simón Bolívar, who entered Peru with his armies in 1822. In 1824, in the battles of Junín on August 6 and of Ayacucho on December 9, Bolívar's forces routed the Spanish.

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see also Inca Empire