Notes on The Rebellion of Juan Santos Atahuallpa

Historiographical Conceptions

Idealistic conceptions in historiography and anthropology have attempted to explain Juan Santos Atahualpa's rebellion (1742-1756) by attributing it to Inca and other myths supposedly embraced by the indigenous rebels as their ideological foundation.
These conceptions emphasize "utopia," "myth," "millenarianism," or "messianism."
Vittorio Lanternari's book (1960) redefined many political movements as religious movements of freedom.
Authors like Curátola (1977, 1987) and Zarzar (1989) support this view, drawing from symbolic anthropology and ethnographic surveys (Varese, 1968; Santos, 1980).

Problems with Idealistic Approaches

Idealistic approaches that assign a mythical-religious character to political movements are often ahistorical.
These approaches may impose an ethnological apologetic view, transferring ethnographic surveys to the past to create an idealized vision partly derived from Latin American Catholicism.
They reject scientific advancements of modernity and instead seek theoretical patterns in the European Middle Ages and the Inca past.
Social and economic history, a legacy of positivism, is dismissed for being seen as a boring linear reconstruction of facts.

Alternative Approach

The document suggests a non-apologetic approach, scrutinizing both Franciscan accounts and claims based on myth and messianism.
The aim is to rescue the rationality and logic of the movement, despite the language attributed to the rebel in chronicles.

The Leadership of Juan Santos Atahuallpa

Zarzar's description portrays Juan as a man who strategically chose the central jungle as the ideal location for his rebellion (1989: 33).
He used his knowledge of the geographical environment and social context to make a personal and solitary decision after prolonged evaluation.
He is depicted as a convinced, audacious man, ready to triumph who goes to the jungle with an old aborigine, where he talks with ethnic leaders, convinces everyone, builds an army, and fights against the viceroyalty.
The document suggests that Juan merely participated in a regional rebellion that had begun twenty years earlier.
San José mentions repeated uprisings by "protervos pagans" and "diabolical sectarians" against Franciscan presence between 1709 and 1720.
These expressions suggest an organized movement of apostasy, possibly driven by apostates, white or mestizo outlaws, and aborigines.
This chronic state of rebellion predates Juan's arrival.
Juan's political and military skills and his persuasive discourse allowed him to become the leader of a broader and more profound insurrection.
The Franciscan Vázquez de Caicedo contacted Juan in Simaqui-Quisopango as early as June 2, 1742 (Mateos, 1992: 47), suggesting the rebellion may have been underway for some time.

Juan Santos Atahuallpa: Background

Juan Santos Atahuallpa was a mestizo born around 1712, possibly in Cusco, Huamanga, or Cajamarca.
According to the Franciscans, he was from Cuzco and worked for a Jesuit.
Diego Esquivel y Navia said that in Quito, Don Ventura was crowned five days after meeting with the religious figures in June 1742.
He possibly studied or worked at the Colegio de San Borja del Cusco, a Jesuit school for curacas and their descendants, where he learned Spanish and Latin.
Jesuits Pastoriza and Eyzaguirre, who visited him in 1745, only heard him speaking Quechua (Velasco, 1981: 531).
He may have claimed royal lineage and direct descent from Inca Atahualpa, whose name he adopted, and proclaimed himself the legitimate ruler of Peru.
He allegedly committed a homicide in Cusco or Huamanga and traveled through the highlands between Cusco and Cajamarca between 1729 and 1730, declaring his intention to restore his kingdom (Loayza, 1942: 50).
Fray José said he was an attendee in the Cusco mission 1739 (three years before the rebellion).
He was captured and exiled to La Piedra by Viceroy Castelfuerte but soon escaped and entered the jungle.
He reached Gran Pajonal, an Asháninka territory, guided by Bisabeki, a Piro Indian, and settled in Simaqui-Quisopango.
His message reached Chanchamayo, Perené, Ene, Pangoa, and the high Ucayali, where Franciscan missions were located.

Key Tenets

Juan believed that only Indians, except for the Jesuits, should be clerics in Peru, considering the Jesuits "very beneficial to the republic" (Amich, 1988: 167-168).
He claimed to have seen an indigenous clergy in Angolan missions, where he said he traveled with the Jesuits.
Viceroy Superunda believed Jesuit diplomacy could end the rebellion.
The government sent Jesuits Carlos Pastoriza and Miguel Eyzaguirre to meet with Juan, instructing them to present themselves as envoys of the Pope rather than the viceroy (Velasco, 1981: 531).
Juan expressed satisfaction at meeting them and acknowledged their work in the missions for the benefit of the Indians.
He respected and venerated the Pope, but was surprised that the Pope sent them as he never had any war with him.
Juan agreed to lay down arms, not invade other territories, and peacefully retain his governance, provided he was not disturbed; otherwise, he would reclaim the domains inherited from his ancestors.
The Jesuits expressed admiration for Juan's "power and majesty" and the "grandeur of his court."
They stated that there was no military way to subdue him, but that the Inca "would not think of going out against Lima, especially if no cause or motive was given to him as he had offered in homage to the Pope” (Velasco, 1981: 530).
The Jesuit account is different from the Franciscan one and suggests that peace is possible if Juan's rights are respected.

Franciscan Counter-Arguments

The Franciscan argument was that, six months after the meeting, the viceroy commissioned General Llamas to capture the Inca according to the Jesuit project, attributing the idea of attacking the rebels to the Company.
The second argument, attributed to Governor Benito Troncoso, claimed that Juan sent messengers asking the friars to come and teach, asserting that both he and the Chunchos were happy with the Franciscan missionaries and that the uprising was due to Juan's desire to be crowned (Loayza, 1942: 108).
This paints the anti-Franciscan character of the uprising.

Reconstructing Juan's Thoughts

Reconstructing the thoughts of Juan is difficult because he left nothing written.
Reliance is on accounts from his enemies (Franciscans) or those who met him briefly (Jesuit ambassadors).
Both reactionary Catholic apologetics and "progressive" idealist apologetics have accepted that the chroniclers describe Juan's true thoughts.
There is no certainty about his political ideas, as everything known comes from Franciscan or official testimonies or associates of the leader collected by Franciscans.
This documentary silence has led many to reconstruct his ideology somewhat equivocally.
Zarzar suggests that Juan's ideology evolved and was conceptually redefined as he became fully integrated into the Andean tradition (1989: 39, 56).
However, it is possible that there was an aggravation of Franciscan invective rather than an evolution of the leader's ideology.
The mythical-religious elements included by the Franciscans to support the heretical nature of the rebellion might undermine the messianism, millenarianism, and utopia theses.

Juan's Ascetic Lifestyle

Juan lived as an ascetic, eating frugally, chewing small clumps of coca, and avoiding women.
He stated that his success was inevitable because he had the support of "the Lord Jesus Christ and his Most Holy Mother, because it is time for them to restore the empire of our Inca" (Loayza, 1942: 34).
Juan knew Christian doctrine: credo in unum Deum
Despite its nuances, Juan's discourse aimed to spread Christianity, but it is uncertain whether his followers wanted to adopt that faith.
The rebel army consisted of both faithful and infidels, and adopting Christianity was not a prerequisite for joining.
Juan chose to settle among the converts of the missions, who were capable of understanding a Christian message, even with its apocalyptic and redemptive traits.
The ethnic complexity of the rebel army (Asháninka, Piro, Amuesha, Conibo, and Shipibo) and their respective mythologies were irrelevant.
The political message of rebellion was spread in Christian terms among the neophytes, and all adopted the anti-Franciscan and anti-colonial imprint of the movement.
The revolutionary preaching of Juan was then directed to the "infidels."
Quechua, like Spanish, was a common language in the mountains, and an interpreter could always be found.
A leader of multiethnic masses did not need to know all the religious particularities of each of his etnogroups in depth.

Juan's Religious Deviation

Castro Arenas speculates that Juan, "in his eagerness to spread the religious-social content of his message, departed from orthodoxy, perhaps more for the purpose of popularization than for distorting the sacred texts" (1973: 132).
Fernández and Brown (2001: 43) agree that it is difficult to imagine that the movement did not deviate from Catholic orthodoxy, given the multiethnic and multireligious component of its followers.
A man raised in a Jesuit school knows that the end of the mission is cultural syncretism.
Zarzar (1989:19) writes, "it is important to be clear in distinguishing the ideology of the leader from the perspectives that nurtured the movement, and whose mythical aspects have diverse cultural origins."
This approach assumes that the leader operates based on an ideology, while the movement (indigenous masses) has perspectives with mythical aspects.
According to this, leader and masses use different degrees of rationality.
The postulation of mythology as an explanatory source of indigenous adhesion to the movement seems to start from this premise.

Restoring the Inca Throne

Another theme is Juan's desire to restore the Inca throne and expel the Spaniards.
Mateos (1992: 47) asserts that the rebellion had a clear anticolonial character.
Juan knew that the Franciscans would try to obstruct him, but he had his Indian and mestizo sons and the blacks bought with his silver.
Those who wish to see a combination of Inca myths and rites in the movement, emphasize the decorative elements, troop presentation rituals, and Juan's symbolic clothing.
Indians and mestizos formed the ethnic base of the rebellion.
There were even whites among the rebels, possibly apostates or outlaws.
The enslaved blacks had been bought with money.
Juan planned a world of free and Christian Indians, but without whites or blacks.
He summoned "all the Indians but that no blacks or viracochas go to his presence, that they are all thieves, that they have stolen the crown from him" (Izaguirre, 1922, III: 117).
Indigenous people distrusted Africans because they worked as foremen or soldiers of the colonial order or guardians in the missions.
The movement was openly multiethnic and proposed to destroy the obrajes and bakeries where many Indians served their sentences working almost free, destroy "slavery in general," and not allow "either slaves or the other tyrannies of the Spaniards" (Mateos, 1992: 56).

Stories and Beliefs

Esquivel described that "having thrown several wild beasts at him, such as lions, tigers and others, a nation of Caribs who resisted him, he showed them the crucifix he was wearing on his chest and the wild beasts humbled themselves before him."
Information of Jesuit origin.
Many native followers saw him as a perfect, powerful man, capable of speaking in tongues, dominating natural elements, holding the sun, producing earthquakes, or turning stones into gold.
This is associated with leadership in etnogroups where oral narrative prevails.
These beliefs only partially define local support for the movement but not the movement itself.

Franciscan Ideas on Juan

In 1750, Fray Francisco de San Antonio published his account, De la doctrina, errores y herejías que enseña el fingido rey Juan Santos Atahualpa, Apu Inga, Huayna Cápac, en las misiones del Cerro de la Sal, indio rebelde, enemigo declarado contra la ley de Dios y traidor al rey Nuestro Señor (Castro Arenas, 1973).
This text serves as a compilation of Franciscan ideas about Juan and aims to justify their actions to the government and the Church eight years after the rebellion began.
Juan's intention was to test the Jesuits who raised him, asking to confirm, reject, or ignore him in order to involve them in the issue.
They aimed to present the Franciscans as the greatest and irreplaceable guardians of Christianity in the jungles by proving that Juan was now a traitor to the king, despite the discourse they had attributed to him when the situation was unclear.
San Antonio's text inaugurates a stage in Franciscan apologetics and decisively influences subsequent chronicles, their lexicon, and the supposed ideas that the rest of the friars now attribute to Juan.
Some argue that Juan's Christian side predominated at the beginning of the rebellion, while his Andean counterpart predominated towards the end (Zarzar, 1989: 40).
Mateos (1992: 59) believes that in 1747, Juan took on an apocalyptic discourse, announcing the end of times, and in 1750, he was a heretic who proclaimed himself the son of God and the reincarnation of the Holy Spirit.

Difficulties with Interpretation

The attribution of a messianic character to Juan's movement, and the persuasive power he had over the Amazonian Indians, led many scholars to seek a mythological or ethnological explanation of the phenomenon.
Varese (1973: 299-308) suggests that the leader was familiar with Amazonian shamanism.
It is assumed that Juan was identified with some cultural hero or native deity: Fernández and Brown take it for granted (2001: 43), although these speculations cannot be confirmed in any way.
Santos (1980) mentions that the Amueshas, the etnogroup with the most contact with Juan, have Yonpor Ror as their main god, who also represents the sun, and that the figure of the Inca appears in the myths of the etnogroups involved in Juan's rebellion.

Zarzar's Interpretation

Zarzar (1989: 22) conceives Juan's movement as a meeting place of the "three great areas of political and religious thought of his time: Christian millenarianism, Andean utopia, and Amazonian mythology."
- Christian millenarianism came from Franciscans
The eternal gospel by Gioacchino da Fiore, was characterized by a tripartition of human time into three ages: the ages of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The teachings of poverty as a framework of spiritual life influenced many.
Fernández and Brown (2001: 44) follow John Leddy Phelan's (1970) hypothesis that the primitive Franciscan millenarianism of the 16th century was at the base of Juan's movement.
Union of the Franciscans of the 16th century with the apocalyptic millenarianism of Fiore four centuries earlier, is considered an anachronism.
Neither the Franciscans who request and support the military expeditions, nor the Indian, mestizo, white, and black followers of Juan, and probably not even Juan himself, retained anything of Gioacchino's egalitarian spiritualism.
Juan's assertion of the power of the Holy Spirit appeared to be a simple rhetorical negation of the Christic cult among the Spaniards, and especially of the Marian cult, much denser and more significant than the Christic one in Latin America, and a true symbol of the definitive cultural submission of the American to the European.
According to Curátola (1977), returning to the time of the Inca is not necessarily returning to the historical time of the Tawantinsuyu, but to an ideal time.
In 1742, Juan stated that his objective was "to collect the crown that Pizarro and the other Spaniards took from his father [i.e., Inca Atahualpa], sending his head to Spain" (Loayza, 1942).

Mitos

Curátola (1987) notes that "during the 17th and 18th centuries, the messianic figure of the Inca was one of the main motives and a constant in the numerous indigenous rebellions that marked colonial history."
However, though related it seems to have little Millenarist or Messianic. The name "father" attributed to the Inca, relates to leader of a lineage not biological fatherhood.
The myth of Inkarrí: the creator god who, before being beheaded by the Spanish, hid his treasures in the jungles and is to return triumphant when his head is returned to his body.
the pachacuti, is the formidable cyclical cataclysm that marks the eras of human history.
Each anticolonial rebellion can be considered a fraction of a new pachacuti, which inaugurates an era of independence.
Zarzar also mentions tales reminiscent of the Inkarrí but is thought lived not only in the mythos but was performed like a historic play.

Rebellion Classification

A movement of vindication pursues the reformulation of the local hierarchy or of systematic elements of the etnogroup in the face of global fragmentations or weaknesses, due to different internal or external causes.
Movements usually carry some level of colonial influence or values, this is the same with Juan's claim to replace the friars and install his own priests.
Nativistic/revivalist restore origin values to a group, especially the the group is attempting new links or exchanges with the colonial nation
However, a full return is rare.
But for this there isnt really enough information, had he tried to stop any other local cults?
Often, movements are about a struggle due to various issue form poor jobs etc
Resistance is organized via attacks, often if the person is suspected of sorcery
*Burridge defined them as transition rituals in an exceptional way. While La Barre defined messianism as an issue of crisis due to a inapt. Juan had a very good fit in here.

A Political Insurrectional Movement

Beyond the limited sources on Juan, he has to be rebuilt, as the move revolves around political elements. Also though given a clothing of religion, etc.
It could be seen as a complex mass poltical insurrection.
The jungle held wealth that was seen and useful by some, they had also the opportunity to leave or change coca. THis can lead to a mesitzaje.

Integration

The movement was an attempt to try a new way to integrate into society even with fighting
Que the leader was a mestizo seems to go along with this thought.
However the story of turbulence does predate this. The end story with Juan seems to be of seeking power etc
The goal seems to be that he was seeking a return to the Tawantisuyu- but with other elements. He wasn't trying to make some utopia however he knew who here enemies were the Franciscans who brought a darkness