The lost kingdom of Vilcabamba
When the 168 men under Pizarro arrived in Cajamarca, in present-day northern Peru, the Inca empire had just emerged from a bloody civil war: Huáscar and Atahualpa had clashed. When the latter won, the troops who had been loyal to Huáscar saw in the invaders the possibility of saving themselves from Atahualpa, but they did not realize that the true project of the foreigners was to conquer, at any price, all of Peru with its riches.
In this process of conquest, Pizarro and his men found themselves facing innumerable dangers, even after the vile execution of Atahualpa in 1532.
To maintain order and legitimize the presence of foreigners in Peru, Pizarro decided to appoint an Inca sapa, or, a new sovereign, a puppet in the hands of Spanish power. The first Inca sapa appointed was Toparpa, a brother of Atahualpa who, however, died on the march of the Spanish troops towards Cusco. The next Inca sapa chosen by Pizarro was Manco Inca, in 1534.
Although Manco Inca's intentions were probably to reestablish the empire with the help of the Spanish, in reality the Inca sapa became a puppet in the hands of the invaders, who wanted to show the population that they respected ancient traditions, for example, by naming a Cusco king.
At first, Manco Inca fought alongside Diego de Almagro's troops against General Quisquis, who had been loyal to Atahualpa, and emerged victorious. In this way, he had unconsciously participated in the game of the Spanish, whose purpose was to divide the Incas among themselves, from which they would only extract benefits and advantages.
However, already in 1536, the true character of Manco Inca, who never submitted to the Spanish, began to become known. The invaders, eager for riches, continued to demand information from Manco Inca about the location of the Cusco treasure, since they had not been content with the looting of the Coricancha palace. When Manco Inca refused to provide more information to the Spanish, he was imprisoned in his palace; but then he probably realized that it was better to act cunningly. He managed to leave Cusco promising Hernando Pizarro to return with solid gold statues. He headed to Yucay, where he managed to reorganize and assemble an army that would fight to reconquer power.
He organized two punitive expeditions: the first against some Huanca peoples in the valley of the Mantaro River (a tributary of the Urubamba ), and the second against some tribes of the Lima ethnic group (in the vicinity of the current capital), who had helped Pizarro in the conquest of the Peru. He then prepared to return to Cusco to besiege his capital, whose control the Spanish now had. The offensive started from Sacsayhuamánand it lasted many months.
The subsequent battle of Sacsayhuamán, in which the Spanish won, induced Manco Inca to retreat to the remote Urubamba valley, in the fortress known today as Vitcos Rosaspata, from where he organized the resistance until 1544, the year of his death.
Vitcos Rosaspata was for several years the headquarters of the so-called kingdom of Vilcabamba. It is a citadel located halfway between the mountains and the jungle, which probably served for a long time as an exchange center between the Andean peoples and those of the Urubamba Valley. In the following years, the Incas of Vilcabamba transferred their capital to the remote citadel of Hatun Wilca Pampa, located on the Concevidayoc River, known today as Vilcabamba la Vieja or Vilcabamba-Espíritu Pampa.
After the death of Manco Inca, power fell into the hands of his son Sairi Túpac, who began negotiating with the Spanish to obtain properties in the Urubamba Valley. Sairi Túpac accepted to be baptized.
The successor to the throne of Vilcabamba was Titu Cusi Yupanqui, who again assumed a severe position against the Spanish invaders. Anyway, in 1568 he allowed some missionaries to enter the kingdom and it was precisely during a confrontation with some of them that he was injured and later died.
The subsequent retaliation of the Incas against a religious man (Diego de Ortiz) convinced the Spanish to use a strong hand against the rebels, in order to destroy the kingdom of Vilcabamba once and for all. Power at that time had already passed into the hands of a young brother of Titu Cusi Yupanqui, called Túpac Amaru.
Viceroy Toledo sent a military expedition to Vilcabamba, under the command of Martín García Óñez de Loyola. The Spanish won: the weak defenses of the Incas were collapsed once again, the citadel of Vitcos Rosaspata was destroyed and Túpac Amaru was captured, taken to Cusco and beheaded in May 1572.
The last resistance of the Incas had been defeated, but Probably some priests belonging to the Cusco elite managed to reach a remote fortified citadel in the Pantiacolla mountain range, called Paititi, which had already been used by other priests in their escape from Cusco in 1533, after the advance of the invaders.
The kingdom of Vilcabamba and its archaeological remains fell into oblivion for more than 300 years, until the three Cusqueños Manuel Ugarte, Manuel López Torres and Juan Cancio Saavedra arrived at the site of Hatun Wilca Pampa in 1892.
The ruins of Vilcabamba were also studied by Hiram Bingam in 1911, but the one who identified the archaeological site of Espíritu Pampa, associating it with the real Vilcabamba was Antonio Santander Casselli in 1959.
Santander Casselli, who compiled his writings in the monograph “Wanderings of a Dreamer,” returned to Espíritu Pampa in 1964 along with the American explorer Gene Savoy, who contributed to making Vilcabamba known worldwide.
In 1976, Professor Edmundo Guillen and Polish explorers Tony Halik and Elzbieta Dzikowska studied the site in depth, using important historical supports from the prestigious Archivo de Indias in Seville.
The archaeological site was also visited and studied by explorer Gregory Deyermenjian (in 1981) and researcher Vincent Lee (in 2000), both Americans.
The recent discovery (2011) of the tomb of a king in Espíritu Pampa, which dates back to the Wari period, testifies not only that the site was inhabited since ancient times, but also that it was almost certainly used as a center of commercial exchange between the people of the lowland jungle and the inhabitants of the Andean highlands.
YURI LEVERATTO
