We Alone Will Rule: Native Andean Politics in the Age of Insurgency

In the same era as the American, French, and Haitian revolutions, a powerful anticolonial movement swept across the highland Andes in 1780–1781. Initially unified around Túpac Amaru, a descendant of Inka royalty from Cuzco, it reached its most radical and violent phase in the region of La Paz (present-day Bolivia) where Aymara-speaking Indians waged war against Europeans under the peasant commander Túpaj Katari. The great Andean insurrection has received scant attention by historians of the...