BOOKINGBOX - Social San Martín History

::: History.

Little is known of the history of the region comprising present-day Peru before the rise of the Incas. The earlier settlers were people unrelated to the Incas. Possibly they began to migrate from Central America. Some aspects of the history and culture of the pre-Inca Indian people have been determined from the surviving examples of their art and architecture.

Pre-Inca irrigation system near Nazca.
Image © SergeMees

What goes for Peru goes for all of the Americas: it has never been proven where the original inhabitants, known as Indians, originate from. Although the most common theory is that they migrated from Siberia to Alaska, and from there spreaded across the continent, there are recent excavations in Brazil which are much older then the migration was supposed to have happened.

Peru is best known as the heart of the Inca empire, but it was home to many diverse indigenous cultures long before the Incas arrived. Although there is evidence of human habitation in Peru as long ago as the eighth millennium BC, there is little evidence of organised village life until about 2500 BC. It was at about this time that climatic changes in the coastal regions prompted Peru's early inhabitants to move toward the more fertile interior river valleys. For the next 1500 years, Peruvian civilisation developed into a number of organised cultures, including the Chavín and the Sechín. The Chavín are best known for their stylised religious iconography, which included striking figurative depictions of various animals (the jaguar in particular) and which exercised considerable influence over the entire coastal region. The Sechín are remembered more for their military hegemony than for their cultural achievement.

The decline of the Chavín and Sechín cultures around the5th century BC gave rise to a number of distinctive regional cultures. Some of these, including the Saliner and the Paracas, are celebrated for artistic and technological advances such as kiln-fired ceramics and sophisticated weaving techniques. From the Paracas arose the Nazca, whose legacy includes the immense and cryptic Nazca Lines. However, the accomplishments of these and other early Peruvian civilizations seem today to pale in comparison to the robust pre-Columbian civilisation of the Inca.

Inca Empire

The Incas, sometimes called "peoples of the sun," were originally a warlike tribe living in a semiarid region of the southern sierra. From 1100 to 1300 the Incas moved north into the fertile Cuzco Valley. From this base they subsequently overran the neighbouring lands. By 1500 the empire of the Incas 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, organised 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 becamein the early 16th century a natural target of Spanish imperial ambitions in the New World.

Spanish Rule

In 1532 the Spanish soldier and adventurer Francisco Pizarro landed in Peru with a force of about 180 men. By guile and by force of arms Pizarro made the Inca Empire a Spanish possession. In 1535 Pizarro founded on the banks of the Rimac River the Peruvian capital city of Ciudad de Los Reyes (Spanish, 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.

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 Indians. In the same year Spain created the viceroyalty of Peru, which comprised all Spanish South America and Panama, except what is now Venezuela.

The cathedral of Cuzco

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 rebellion was crushed by Spanish government forces in 1548, the New Laws were never put into effect.

In 1569 the Spanish colonial administrator Francisco de Toledo (1515?-84) 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 major government of Spanish officials ruling through a minor government made up of Indians who dealt directly with the native population. This system lasted for almost 200 years.

Revolts for Independence.

In 1780 a force of 60,000 Indians revolted against Spanish rule under the leadership of the Peruvian patriot José Gabriel Condorcanqui (1742?-81), who adopted the name of an ancestor, the Inca Tupac Amaru (died 1572). Although initially successful, the up rising was crushed in 1781, and Condorcanqui was tortured and executed, as were thousands of his fellow revolutionaries. Another revolt was similarly put down in 1814. Subsequently, however, opposition to imperial rule grew throughout Spanish South America. The opposition was led largely by persons of Spanish descent born in South America, who long resented having a status inferior to that of the ruling minorities.

Freedom from Spanish rule, however, was imported to Peru by outsiders. In September 1820 the 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. 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 the Venezuelan revolutionary hero Simón Bolívar, who entered Peru with his armies in 1822. In the battles of Junín on August 6, 1824, and Ayacucho on December 9, 1824, Bolívar's forces routed the Spanish.