Ritualised Violence in Amerindian Rebellions
Amerindian rebellions against colonial rule were generally not just secular affairs. Religious rituals and millenarianist thinking activated by prophetic leaders often played a key role.
Various movements aimed at eradicating European influences and domination, something which was particularly important in the early rebellions. During the so-called Great Maya Revolt in Yucatan in 1546-7, for example, the insurgents not only killed Spanish men, women and children; some were tortured by crucifixion or roasted in copal, and others were sacrificed by opening up their chests and removing their hearts. They also slew natives who had willingly served the colonisers as well as all the animals owned by the Spaniards, including horses, cattle, chicken and even dogs and cats.While certain Christian elements, such as the idea of crucifixion, were already present in the earlier native rebellions, the syncretic character of beliefs and practices is even more obvious in later insurgencies. Thus, Jacinto Canek, the prophetic Maya leader of an uprising in the Yucatecan town of Quisteil in 1761, told his supporters that Spanish bullets would not harm them if they refrained from moving their lips in combat. He also ordered his followers ‘to kill all their pigs because, he said, swine had Spanish souls and the slaughter of the pigs would enable Mayas to kill Spaniards'.[176] However, he ordained native priests who, among other things, donned the vestments of the Catholic clergy, administered the sacraments and recited rosaries.
The Central Andean region was the scene of numerous Amerindian uprisings. Leaders proclaimed themselves native kings, exploiting widespread ideas of the Inca empire's rebirth. Similar to the pattern seen in Yucatan, the rebels' ideology and practice combined native and Christian elements. In fact, they often considered themselves the ‘true Christians'.
This was the case in the uprisings of Tupac Amaru II and Tupac Katari in 1780-2, the greatest revolt of Indians, mestizos and other mixed bloods (castas) in the history of Latin America, during which an estimated 100,000 people or approximately 8 per cent of the population in the Andean area lost their lives.[177] There are reports that, in a number of cases, slain Spaniards were not only beheaded but their eyes were pierced, their tongues cut out and their hearts extracted. Their corpses remained unburied. All this was done to prevent resurrection in the future, according to Andean ideas. Rebel leaders suggested to their followers that they would revive after a couple of days if they died in battle. Several chiefs also forbade Spanish dress and promoted the return to a happier native life.[178]Revivalist ideas about turning away from European ways and goods, including alcohol, merged with Christian elements, such as the idea of an allpowerful creator god or the rejection of polygamy and shamanism, were also evident in several Amerindian reform movements in mid-eighteenth-century North America, among them the one inspired by the Delaware prophet Neolin. His ideas influenced what is known as ‘Pontiac's War' (after the name of an Ottawa leader), the campaign of a coalition of Amerindians from several language groups against the British presence in North America between 1763 and 1764.[179]
Millenarist and revivalist thinking and the idea of eradicating the European evil by ritual as well as physical violence, provided ideologies and practices with the potential to integrate hard-pressed and fragmented Amerindian populations into anti-colonial movements. Fighting was considered a religious duty by many participants. While European domination was rejected, Christian ideas and practices were not, but rather often played an important role in the indigenous movements. The colonial encounter had proved that the new religion offered access to potent spiritual forces that should be tapped for resistance to be successful.