The Cuzco Rebellion of 1814 was an episode of the Peruvian War of Independence led by the Angulo brothers and Mateo Pumacahua that took place in much of the province of Cuzco, including Huamanga, Arequipa and Puno, as well as part of the province of Charcas. The uprising involved the proclamation of the autonomy and self-government of Cuzco from the Viceroyalty of Peru, governed by Viceroy José Fernando de Abascal y Sousa. The junta was modelled and intended to follow the steps of the Junta of Buenos Aires.
The origin of the rebellion was the claim held by members of the city council of Cuzco to establish a provincial council, also autonomous from the viceregal government of Lima, according to what the Cortes of Cádiz of 1812 anticipated, but that the court of the Real Audiencia of Cuzco resolved to the contrary, ordering the arrest of the claimants. The Angulo brothers, members of the Cabildo of Cuzco, fled on August 3, 1814, and found support in chief Mateo Pumacahua to form a Cuzco Government Junta. Under the command of José Angulo, three expeditions were organized: the first took the city of La Paz; the second, directed to the north, assaulted the city of Huamanga; the third, under Pumacahua's command, occupied Arequipa.
The conflict began on August 3, 1814, with an uprising in Cuzco, with subsequent battles in the viceroyalty's southern areas, and finally ending with the liberation of the city on March 25, 1815, by the royalist forces of the Viceroyalty of Peru.
Background
In the middle of 1813, when the advance of the Argentine patriotic auxiliary army led by Manuel Belgrano spread, a significant number of notables from Cuzco, with the support of officers and soldiers of the Royalist Army coming from the capitulation that followed the Spanish defeat in the battle of Salta, decided to advance in the self-government granted by the Spanish Constitution of 1812 against absolutism. After triumphing in Salta, Belgrano had released the defeated royalist soldiers in exchange for the promise not to take up arms again against the patriots, a promise from which they were released by the Viceroy and the Archbishop of Charcas.
The rebellion had its origins in the political confrontation between the constitutional cabildo, (favorable to Cuzco's autonomy) and the Real Audiencia of Cuzco (favorable to the Viceroy of Lima). In this confrontation, the leadership of the brothers José, Vicente Angulo and Mariano Angulo emerged, accompanied by José Gabriel Béjar, Juan Carbajal and Pedro Tudela. José and Vicente Angulo were officers of the royalist army in Abancay, then a party of the Cuzco administration.
The first revolutionary act was planned for October 9, 1813, with the support of the leaders of the royalist garrison of Cuzco, Matías Lobatón and Marcelino Vargas. The plotters demanded the president of the Cuzco Court, Martín de la Concha y Jara, the application of the liberal constitution. The insurgent plan was revealed by one of the signatories of the revolutionary pact, Mariano Zubizarreta. The Béjar, Carbajal, the Angulo brothers, and others were arrested before the revolution began by order of the Viceroy. The conspirators who were not imprisoned planned a second attempt on November 5, 1813, but another conspirator named Mariano Arriaga, was the cause of another failure. However, a group of patriots did not give up their efforts and tried to take the Plaza de Armas of Cuzco, facing troops loyal to Viceroy Abascal. Due to the confrontation three, young people died.
Angulo brothers
The Angulo brothers were four brothers from Apurímac, a territory that then belonged to Cuzco, which is why they are also considered Cusqueños. They were the legitimate children of Francisco Angulo and Melchora Torres, with the exact date of birth of each one being unknown.
José Angulo
Angulo started as a miner in Tarapacá. He married María Asencia Tapia de Mendoza on January 7, 1790 and chose to dedicate himself to agricultural work in the vicinity of Cuzco. In 1798, he applied his wife's dowry to acquire the Chitabamba cane field located in the Abancay district, but as he did not have the financial resources to make it yield profitably, he transferred it to his brother Vicente on September 30, 1808. Concerned about the exploitation of the indigenous people at the hands of the Spanish, and by the ideological currents linked to the May Revolution, he frequented the meetings that the patriots from Cuzco organized in the city. He was the head of the 1814 revolution.
Vicente Angulo
Dedicated to agricultural work, his brother José transferred his Chitabamba cane field to him in 1808, and to develop his crops, he offered it as a guarantee for the loans he contracted with the Convent of Santo Domingo on December 1, 1809, and the Convent of Santa Catalina de Siena del Cusco on June 5, 1811, for 2,000 and 6,000 pesos respectively. At that time he joined the Royalist Army to fight against the Argentine forces that invaded Upper Peru. He was promoted to lieutenant, being commissioned to guard three prisoners in Lima in 1812. Back in Cuzco on April 24, 1813, he actively participated in the revolutionary meetings, along with his brothers, José and Mariano.
Mariano Angulo
He started in public administration as a deputy delegate of the Partido of Abancay, one of the political subdivisions of the Intendancy of Cuzco. He then dedicated himself to commerce in Cuzco proper and took charge of the Simataucca estate, in Chinchero, which Petronila Durán de Quintanilla ceded to him. When the 1814 revolution broke out, he took over the command of the Cuzco headquarters, with the rank of colonel.
Juan Angulo
He studied at the Saint Anthony the Abbot Seminary in Cuzco, and after receiving the diaconate on September 18, 1802, he served in the parishes of Belén and Santiago, and was bursar in the doctrines of Alca and Quiaca. Consecrated as a priest around 1808, he was assigned to the parish of Pampamarca, whose temple he decorated and roofed, out of his own pocket. He was in the parish of Lares, when the revolution broke out in 1814. Aware of this event, he immediately moved to Cuzco to accompany his brothers.
Establishment of a Junta in Cuzco
The leaders of the rebellion were under arrest in the chapel of San Ignacio located on the southern front of the Plaza de Armas. However, due to their ascendancy over the Cuzco garrison, they held political meetings from there. By August 1814, the constitutionalist partisans, called "criollos", politically controlled the city of Cuzco, but the followers of the Angulo, under the demand for the application of the Cadiz Constitution, intended to follow the autonomous actions of Buenos Aires. A board would be formed that would be made up of three notables who were Mateo Pumacahua, Domingo Luis Astete and Juan Tomás Moscoso and that, like other American autonomist boards, recognized the authority of the Spanish courts and the monarch Ferdinand VII. Pumacahua initially promised 4,000 men, but his call was so popular that more than 20,000 Indians joined his cause.
In the early hours of Tuesday, August 3, 1814, a bloodless coup took place in which the Cuzco garrison massively joined the rebels. The president of the audiencia and regent Manuel Pardo Ribadeneira were deposed. José Angulo assumed the position of maximum leader of the revolution, being the president of the self-government board and captain general "of the country's arms of the provinces of Cuzco, Puno, Guamanga and La Paz".
As José Tamayo Herrera (1984) has investigated, the military chiefs and the authorities loyal to the viceroy were confined to the headquarters located in the former Jesuit convent and later, in republican times, the headquarters of the San Antonio Abad National University, being included within the authority of the revolutionary chiefs, the entire territory of the Cuzco Intendancy and, in military matters, five quartered companies, under the command of Commander Andrés Rendón; a regiment of dragoons under the command of Commander Martín Gabino Concha, and groups of troops from the Royal Regiment of Lima. Brigadier Pumacahua, the highest-ranking patriot officer, assumed the revolutionary military leadership. A local government board was formed made up of Pumacahua, royalist colonel Domingo Luis Astete and lieutenant colonel Juan Tomás Moscoso.
The insurrection was previously agreed to break out simultaneously in Cuzco, Lima and in the Royal Army of Upper Peru. In Lima, José Matías Vázquez de Acuña, Count de la Vega del Ren, remained indecisive and failed in the attempt, while in Joaquín de la Pezuela's camp in Tupiza, Colonel Saturnino Castro, one of the sworn in Salta, moved to the cantonment of the "El General" Battalion from Cuzco in Moraya. He had the idea of revolting them on September 1, but he did not get adhesions, he was discovered and shot.
The Cuzco proclamation is dated August 3, 1814 and the project of the Cuzco governing board was to support the autonomous actions of Buenos Aires. On September 8, 1814, in the cathedral of Cuzco, with the blessing of Bishop José Pérez y Armendáriz, solemn worship was paid to a new flag, with transverse blue and white stripes. On its date, September 27, the Virgen de las Mercedes was taken in procession from Cuzco, along with a flag with blue and white colors, colors of the followers of the country's system. On September 17, José Angulo, after seeing his constitutional claims rejected by Viceroy Abascal, who threatened to use force, warned him of the support that the patriot cause would have and of the futility of confronting it with arms:
See viceroy (...) if (...) according to your public faith, you put yourselves in the sad situation of treating us as enemies, then you and your accomplices will experience our just rigor. Yes, dispatch troops to the pasture of our revenge, we warned you that they will not exceed four thousand hardened brave soldiers (...), who will counteract with ten thousand who come.
— Reply from José Angulo to Viceroy José Fernando de Abascal y Sousa
On December 30, 1814, Viceroy Abascal annulled the Constitution of Cádiz in Peru, in application of the order received from the Iberian Peninsula from Ferdinand VII, who had restored absolutism in Spain.
Rebellion expands
The new government of Captain General Angulo appointed plenipotentiaries before the independent government of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata, received congratulations from General Belgrano and proceeded to form their institutions. He also sent three military expeditions to Huamanga, Arequipa, and Puno and La Paz.
The Viceregal authority of Lima, still weakened by the war against the revolution of José Gabriel Condorcanqui, only took energetic measures in October.
Puno and Upper Peru Division
The division headed for Puno was commanded by Juan Manuel Pinelo from Ica (one of the sworn in Salta), seconded by the parish priest of the Cusco cathedral, Ildefonso de las Munecas, from Tucumán. They left Cuzco in mid-August and received the support of thousands of indigenous people in the districts of Azángaro and Carabaya. They took the city of Puno without resistance on August 26, after Governor Manuel Químper abandoned it. There 18 Spaniards were captured and executed with clubs and stones. Then they headed towards the garrison that protected the Desaguadero river crossing, where the royalist Joaquín Revuelta was located with 13 artillery pieces and 160 men, who deserted when the Cusqueños arrived on September 11. From there, Pinelo tried to coordinate actions with the head of the republicans of Upper Peru, Juan Antonio Álvarez de Arenales, writing him a letter on September 15 and issuing a proclamation in favor of the government of Buenos Aires:
Oh happy and memorable revolution (...) that of the inhabitants of the Río de la Plata, which, although at such a cost, has shown the paths by which we must guide ourselves to the state of our happiness!
The rebel army, made up of 500 riflemen, 37 cannons, called viborones, and 5,000 Indians armed with spears, slings, clubs, and batons headed for La Paz, a city protected by the governor, the Marquis of Valdehoyos, with 300 men and 4 pieces of artillery. On September 24, La Paz was occupied by Pinelo after two days of siege, committing excesses with the population. He was followed by 20,000 men, mainly Indians armed with spears, slings and batons, only 500 with rifles, and 8 cannons. Because of an explosion in which rebel soldiers died, 52 Spaniards and 16 Creoles from the city were killed. Among those killed was the governor Marquis of Valdehoyos and the parents of future Bolivian presidents Andrés de Santa Cruz and José Ballivián.
Pinelo and Muñecas organized a government meeting in La Paz, made up of José Astete, Eugenio Medina and José Agustín Arze. They then set up camp at Laja, from where they again tried to contact Álvarez de Arenales. On November 24, he sent them congratulations from Buenos Aires, promising to march with them to liberate the entire American continent.
Huamanga Division
The second division occupied Huamanga on September 20, under the command of the Argentine Manuel Hurtado de Mendoza, who had as lieutenants the cleric José Gabriel Béjar and Mariano Angulo. Hurtado de Mendoza ordered a march towards Huancayo, which was taken peacefully.