Tupac Katari

Tupac Katari, born Julian Apaza, was an Aymara leader who led a major indigenous uprising against Spanish colonial rule in the highlands around La Paz, in present-day Bolivia, in 1781. Taking the name Tupac Katari in reference to two earlier indigenous rebel leaders, he assembled a large Aymara force and laid siege to La Paz twice that year, cutting the city off for months and inflicting severe hardship on its Spanish and criollo population, in a rebellion that ran roughly alongside the contemporaneous uprising of Tupac Amaru II further north in Peru. Spanish colonial forces eventually broke the siege and captured Katari, and he was executed in November 1781 by being drawn and quartered, with his body parts displayed in different towns as a warning against further revolt. He is remembered today as a founding figure of Aymara and Bolivian indigenous political identity, and his reported final words, a vow that he would return as many, are still invoked by later indigenous movements in the Andes.