had to go to cities known as mitas de la plaza, to partake in public works. When the
Incas were away working for the Spanish they could not keep up their own lands
and farms. This also meant that their cattle were neglected and families were taken
advantage of by greedy officials for their own possessions. In 1777 Thirty thousand
Inca workers were bought to the Huancavelic and Potosi mines. Even though law
was that the Indians could not be taken to far away from there home , no more then
two leagues, they were brought thirty to three hundred leagues away. The Indians
were only suppose to work a maximum of eighteen months at a time every seven
years, but because they always had a debt to pay they were sometimes suck
working at their appointed work place for forty years. If they could live that long,
Lillian fisher’s article said that each year twelve thousand natives were taken to
Potosi alone, and it is estimated that during the colonial period eight million eighty
five thousand had perished in the mine. The Spanish were starting to treat the
natives so bad that even the priests, the Incas protectors, were starting to become
their oppressors. It was once said that a priest in Quito had collected two hundred
sheep, four thousand guinea pigs, six thousand chickens and fifty thousand eggs
every year. This had given the priest a salary of seven hundred to a salary of about
five to six thousand pesos. They even charged so much for a burial services that
Pope Paul V had to put a decree against them. With church services and their
debts to the Mita the Incas also had to pay Spanish taxes. If they could not pay their
tax or their debt then they were made into servants. Around Lake Titicaca they
made sixty thousand Indians become domestic servants because they could not pay
the debts.
Lillian Fisher wrote of the execution of a rebellion leader Jose Gabriel Tupac
Ameru. He was first forced “ to watch as the six other male prisoners were hung and
the two females were garroted by iron collars”. He had to watch his wife and son
along with his uncles and other in-laws be killed right in front of his own eyes. He
then had his tongue cut off and was tied up to horses to each of his limbs and was
pulled four different ways by the four horses. His body was so strong that he was not
pulled apart, so he was beheaded then cut up. His body parts where then sent to
various parts of Peru. He was sent as a warning to all potential followers of this
rebellions against the Spanish.
The hardships the Spanish had caused the Incas had made the natives to
dislike how they were being treated. The Spanish were starting to think of the Incas
as their personal servants and almost as slaves. The Incas really only had one thing
to do, and it was to rebel against the Spanish. The Spanish then executed the rebel
leader and most of his family. The Incas also didn’t get any help from the king
because the Corregidors covered it up to gain money for themselves. This is why it
was wrong for the Spanish to come into the natives lands and take over.
