Juan Santos Atahualpa ( – 18th-century) was the messianic leader of a successful indigenous rebellion in the Amazon Basin and Andean foothills against the Viceroyalty of Peru in the Spanish Empire. The Juan Santos Rebellion began in 1742 in the Gran Pajonal among the Asháninka people. The indigenous people expelled Catholic missionaries and destroyed or forced the evacuation of 23 missions, many of them defended, in the central jungle area of Peru. Several Spanish military expeditions tried to suppress the rebellion but failed or were defeated. In 1752, Santos attempted to expand his rebellion into the Andes and gain the support of the highland people. He captured the town of Andamarca and held it for three days before withdrawing to the jungle. Santos disappeared from the historical record after 1752.
Santos, Jesuit-educated with both Christian and millenarian ideas, claimed to be the reincarnation of Atahualpa, the Inca emperor at the time of the Spanish conquest of Peru. His objective seems to have been the expulsion of the Spanish from Peru and the restoration of the Inca Empire. He failed in that ambitious goal, but he and his followers succeeded in expelling Catholic missionaries and preventing Spanish and Peruvian settlement in a large area of the Peruvian Yungas (high jungle or montaña) for more than one hundred years. "Santos' rebellion had given the Indigenous people of the jungle a previously unknown unity and had awakened in them an ancient taste for freedom and independence."
Early life Little that can be said with certainty about the early life of Juan Santos. He was an indigenous person, born about 1710, probably in Cuzco, although several other birthplaces have been proposed. He had three brothers. He was educated by the Jesuits in Cuzco. He said that he had visited Europe and Angola, presumably as a servant to the Jesuits. Quechua was his native language and he also spoke Spanish, Latin, and Asháninka. Santos apparently had contemplated revolution for a long time. He was said by the Spanish to have traveled widely in Peru as a young man to preach his message and sow the seeds of rebellion. Those travels apparently included the Gran Pajonal where Santos learned to speak Asháninka. The Franciscans later claimed that he fled Cuzco for the Amazon jungles as a fugitive because he murdered his master, a Jesuit priest, although no contemporary evidence backs up that story.
The name Atahualpa comes from the Inca ruler Atahualpa, ruler of the Inca Empire (Tawantinsuyu) at the time of the Spanish conquest in the 16th century. Santos appropriated the names Atahualpa and Huayna Capac as he claimed to be the reincarnation of the former Incan emperors.
The indigenous people The Asháninka people were the most populous of the indigenous people of the Peruvian Amazon, occupying a territory of about from 10 to 14° south latitude in the foothills of the Andes and in the lowlands of the Amazon Basin. They numbered about 52,000. Not all the widely dispersed Asháninka and other groups participated in the rebellion. Juan Santos' rebellion began on the Gran Pajonal (Great Grassland), an elevated plateau, and his area of influence extended into the regions of the Cerro de la Sal (Mountain of Salt) and the Chanchamayo. Other indigenous groups supporting the rebellion were the Amuesha and Nomatsiguenga peoples.
The missions The area of the rebellion was the nearest and most accessible part of the Amazon Basin to Lima, the capital and largest city of Peru, and thus the happenings there were of special interest and concern to the Spanish.
Missionary activities by the Franciscans began in 1635. From the beginning there was opposition from the Asháninka and others. The Asháninka killed several priests and missions were often abandoned due to the hostility of the local people. A determined and extensive attempt to make Christians of the indigenous people began in 1709 as many missions were founded. Franciscan efforts reached the isolated Gran Pajonal in 1733. In 1736, from a base at Santa Rosa de Ocopa, the missionaries reported that they had established 24 mission stations with 4,835 inhabitants. The Franciscans maintained discipline in their missions with armed men, often African slaves. Several of the missions had military garrisons armed with muskets and cannons. The Franciscans also encouraged settlement by imported farmers and artisans who used indigenous slave labor in their work places.. Downloaded from JSTOR.
The indigenous people were attracted to the missions for three reasons. First may have been interest in the Christian religion. Secondly, the missionaries distributed steel tools such as axes and shovels which made the life of a slash-and-burn Asháninka farmer easier and which also made it possible for steel tools to be turned into weapons giving the possessor an advantage over his enemies in war. Thirdly, the indigenous people needed salt as a seasoning and to preserve food and the missionaries attempted to control access to the salt vein at the Cerro de la Sal. Balancing these incentives were the undesirable features of life at the missions. The missionaries attempted to make the semi-nomadic indigenous people sedentary and strictly regiment their lives. This created problems with food production as jungle soils were infertile and easily exhausted and a sedentary people had difficulty growing sufficient food. However, the most serious problem of the reductions, as the Spanish called the policy of encouraging or forcing indigenous people to live in permanent settlements, was the pandemics of European diseases which ravaged the populations of indigenous peoples throughout the Americas, especially those living in close proximity to each other in settlements. For example, an epidemic at the mission of Eneno in 1722-1723 resulted in a decrease in population at the mission from 800 to 220 as most of the inhabitants died of the disease or fled the settlement.
Rebellions against the Franciscans and the missions were frequent. The most recent of the revolts before the rise of Juan Santos was in 1737. An Asháninka headman named Ignacio Torote destroyed two missions killing 13 people, including five priests. A survivor reported that Torote gave his reasons to a priest for the rebellion, "you and yours are killing us every day with your sermons and doctrines, taking our freedom away." Torote's twenty followers were captured and executed by the Spanish and he disappeared into the jungle.
Around 1740 Juan Santos became an assistant to the Franciscan missionaries of the Chanchamayo province, in the central jungle. These missions had facilitated the arrival of Spaniards interested in exploiting the salt from the Cerro de la Sal. They used the Asháninka natives as labor, which led to a number of cruelties.
At this time, Juan Santos was 30 to 40 years old. He wore a cushma or nightgown typical of the jungle Indians and always wore a chonta wood cross with silver corners on his chest. He chewed copious amounts of coca leaf, which he called "God's herb." His features were mestizo. One of the Franciscan friars who visited him described him as tall and with tanned skin, adding: "He has some hair on his arms, he has a very little face, he looks well shaved… he has a good face; pale; hair cut from the forehead to the eyebrows, and the rest from the jawbone around the tail", that is, gathered in a ponytail, according to the western fashion of the eighteenth century.
Rebellion Juan Santos Atahualpa's plan In May 1742, Juan Santos along with a Yine (Piro) named Bisabequi appeared at the Franciscan mission called Quisopango at the southern edge of the Gran Pajonal a few kilometers north of the 21st century town of Puerto Ocopa. What he did or said is unknown but he gained support among the Amuesha and other indigenous people in addition to the Asháninka. Within a few days half a dozen missions in the Cerro de la Sal and Chanchamayo region had been abandoned by the indigenous people.
The extent of movement His knowledge of the Quechua language and several Amazonian languages allowed Juan Santos to be readily understood by the indigenous people of the central jungle, who joined his struggle with great enthusiasm. The rebellion managed to bring together the peoples of the central jungle: Ashaninka, Yanesha and even Shipibo, that is, the populations that inhabited the basins of the Tambo, Perené and Pichis rivers. This entire area was known by the name of the Gran Pajonal and was the territory of the Franciscan missions.
Juan Santos had more than 2000 men, with whom he managed to control the central jungle, a territory that, otherwise, was not effectively regulated by the viceregal power.
Development of the rebellion The first objective of the rebels was the reduction of Eneno, to later continue with Matranza, Quispango, Pichana and Nijandaris. They destroyed a total of 27 missionaries' bases and threatened to attack the sierra.
The viceroy Marquis de Villagarcía ordered the governors of the border of Jauja and Tarma, Benito Troncoso and Pedro de Milla Campo, to enter the troubled region, to encircle the rebel. This was done and Troncoso reached Quisopango, where he encountered some resistance but managed to drive away the Indians. Juan Santos, who shunned the encounter, headed for the town of Huancabamba. Colonial forces left Tarma to search for him, but the mestizo leader managed to escape.
In June, a priest, Santiago Vásquez de Calcedo, journeyed to Quisopango to meet Juan Santos. From that contact and others reported by indigenous leaders, some of Santos's personality and aims became clearer. Santos said that he was a Christian and recited the creed in Latin. He had come to the Pajonal to reclaim "his kingdom." He claimed to be a reincarnation of Atahualpa, the last Inca emperor. He was going to effect that reclamation with the help of indigenous people. Santos said he opposed violence, but he was going to expel the Spanish and their African slaves from Peru with the help of the British. (There is no evidence Santos was in contact with the British, but his claim of help from them was disturbing to the Spaniards.) The scholar Stefano Varese says the Santos's "attitudes were those of a moderate man" full of "mystical inspiration". He based his rebellion, typical of Millenarianism in colonial societies, on religion. Juan Santos promised that the rebellion would bring peace and prosperity to all the Andes, beginning in the jungle and spreading to the highlands and the coast. Juan Santos said that the culmination of his rebellion would be his coronation as Sapa Inca (supreme ruler of Tawantinsuyu).
Santos's aims seemed more directed at the highland peoples who had been subjects of the Inca Empire rather than the Asháninka and other jungle peoples who had not been subjects and probably did not share his ambitious goals. As told to two African captives, their motivation in supporting Santos was that "they wanted no priests and they did not wish to be Christians". Santos's initial hostility to Africans changed quickly and several former African slaves of the Franciscans became important supporters of the rebellion. The Africans were valued for their knowledge of European weapons and battle tactics. Many indigenous people and mestizos from the Andes also joined the rebellion.