Afro-Descendants in the Rebellion of Túpac Amaru II: An Interview with Tacuma Peters
In today’s post, Ashley Everson, a managing editor of Global Black Thought (the official journal of AAIHS), interviews Tacuma Peters about his new article, “Beyond ‘A Purely Passive Servitude’: Antonio Oblitas, Casta, and Afro-Descendants in the Rebellion of Túpac Amaru II.” He examines the contributions of Afro-descendants to the Túpac Amaru II rebellion in Peru. It argues that although historians have recognized the importance of race and casta in the rebellion, they have been insufficiently attentive to the complex roles that those of African descent have played. It argues that the most famous Afro-descendant, Antonio Oblitas, has often been ignored, misidentified, and minimized in his aesthetic and visual contributions to the uprising. This problematic historical approach extends to other free and enslaved men because scholars place them within the paradigm of passive (and enslaved) servitude. Furthermore, the article contends that Indigenous and Black relationality during the uprising cannot be reduced to dominant discourses of enmity and conflict in light of the regional networks of kinship, patronage, and labor in which Afro-descendants were enmeshed. Relatedly, it argues that Black and Indigenous relationality during the rebellion needs to be understood within eighteenth century anti-colonial thought and practice which opposed European norms of ethics and morality.
Dr. Peters is an Associate Professor in the Africana, Puerto Rican, and Latino Studies Department at City University of New York, Hunter College. He has a PhD in Political Science from University of California, Berkeley. In his teaching and research he examines a variety of phenomena at the intersections of race, slavery, colonialism, and political thought.
Ashely Everson (AE): You specify that Túpac Amaru II’s rebellion was not an isolated incident but immediately understood as a challenge to Spanish colonialism. How does foregrounding its anticolonial dimensions shift how we situate the uprising in the longer history of precolonial and colonial Peru?
Tacuma Peters (TP): Túpac Amaru II’s rebellion has long been recognized as anticolonial. Whereas many interpret it as a precursor to Peruvian independence, others understand it as concerned with the political and social resistance of Andean Indigenous communities. These are not mutually exclusive positions. However, for the purposes of a larger project on eighteenth-century Indigenous and Black anticolonial thought, I’ve been interested in examining how the rebellion was a response to colonial violences and structures that maintained the Spanish crown’s control over Peru. Scholars such as Scarlett O’Phelan Godoy have often highlighted how Túpac Amaru’s rebellion was not an isolated incident but rather one in a long line of revolts that also included the simultaneous contestations of Thomás Katari.
AE: You draw on Sarah O’Toole’s insight that caste did the work of race in colonial Peru. How does this framework help us make sense of Afro-descendants’ roles in the rebellion, particularly when the archive oscillates between misidentifying or exceptionalizing figures like Antonio Oblitas?
TP: When O’Toole argues that casta did the work of race, she was highlighting how it created legal hierarchies and social identities that benefited those of European descent. Casta can help us make sense of the role of Afro-descendants in the rebellion because it was a part of the background of political action. To the extent that figures like Túpac Amaru distinguished between enslaved and free Afro-descendants and used such distinctions to determine roles (i.e. commander, jailer, domestic laborer) within the rebellion, casta is essential for understanding the rebellion. Moreover, to the extent that observers viewed things through casta-inflected lenses, this shaped the construction of the historical record and archive.
However, although casta provides better explanatory tools for action and reception than ahistorical and reductive understandings of race, the misidentification and exceptionalizing of figures like Antonio Oblitas reveals logics that works in similar ways to later forms of racial thinking including scientific racism. The results are political and social structures that, amongst other things, constrain agency, threaten life, and mandate subordination to Europeans and their descendants.
AE: You argue that framing Afro-descendants’ labor as domestic service has historically silenced their contributions. What methodological shifts are necessary to recover their significance beyond the narrow logics of servitude and exceptionality?
TP: Toward the end of the article, I gesture to the possibilities of future research on Afro-descendants in the Cuzco region during the era of Túpac Amaru’s rebellion. I would hope that scholars interested in recovering the significance of Afro-descendants would be armed with the full range of methodological tools that Black historians have created over the past two centuries. It is likely that scholars encountering archival gaps and presences will continue to generate methodological practices that can deal with the complexities of Black life in the Andes.
Overall, I find that questioning dominant narratives about Blackness is a necessary point of departure, especially given the ideological equation of African descent with slavery and enslaveability. This is how Antonio Oblitas enters the historical record.
In terms of recovering the significance of what has been silenced, I’m reminded of Schomburg’s critique (in “The Negro Digs Up His Past”) of histories of Black success that attach significance to exceptional individuals rather than the greater whole.
AE: Trial records often describe Afro-descendants as coerced into the rebellion under threat of death, preserving their status as enslaved even within a revolutionary context. Can you shed light as to how you interpret this paradox of coerced participation in a struggle for freedom?
TP: It might be best to see coercion and forced participation in armed conflict as unexceptional within territories established and maintained through organized and pervasive violence. Fighting against European imperial armies and within colonial spaces often included both threats and promises for recruitment. However, this happened alongside uncoerced planning and participation in collective resistance. The most interesting questions may be ones that interrogate leadership, vision, cohesion, and strategy in relation to coercion and freedom. These types of questions are examined in the vast historical literature, which includes C. L. R. James’s classic The Black Jacobins and Vincent Brown’s recently published Tacky’s Revolt.
AE: You argue that aesthetics were central, not peripheral, in early Peruvian political space. How might centering visual and performative practices of Afro-descendants reshape our broader understanding of anticolonial struggles in the Andes?
TP: Scholars have long recognized that examining aesthetics, visual arts, and performance is critical for interpreting power, belonging, and politics in colonial Peru. The scholarship on Andean visual arts and performance, including that of Ananda Cohen-Aponte and Natalia Majluf, has ensured that interpretations of rebellion cannot be analyzed without attention to art and performance. In Túpac Amaru’s rebellion, art and performance—including painting—were integral to the circulation and articulation of anticolonialism. In fact, Antonio Oblitas’s role in the rebellion (as a painter and executioner) is just one example of the complex role that art, aesthetics, and performance played in the lives of Afro-descendants during that period. I’m excited that there are scholars like Larissa Brewer-García who have longstanding commitments to highlighting the connections between the visual and performance practices of Afro-descendants and the resistance in the Andes. It is likely that such research will continue to complicate key aspects of the historical narratives of anticolonial struggle.
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