1667: Pedro Bohorquez, Inca Hualpa

Spanish adventurer Pedro Bohorquez — better known as Inca Hualpa, a title he asserted for himself based on his final racket pretending to be an Incan prince — was garroted in Lima on this date in 1667 after a

[A]t once simple and astute, timid and audacious, quick to form plans, but slow in their execution, without principles, but effective in persuasion, and particularly fortunate in making his wild talk pleasing to many persons of discretion,” Bohorquez hailed from Andalusia but made his mark in the New World with his want of gold and scruple.

“Bohorquez’s deeds are clouded by the contradictions of colonial documents,” write Michael Brown and Eduardo Fernandez in War of Shadows: The Struggle for Utopia in the Peruvian Amazon, a volume whose concern is laying the historical backstory of the Ashaninka people prior to a 1965 rebellion.

Around 1620, the eighteen-year-old Bohorquez left the poverty of Andalucia to seek his fortune in Peru. He lived in relative obscurity until his arrival in Lima in 1637 with a group of highland Indians who claimed to know the location of the fabulously wealthy kingdom of Paititi. The viceroy authorized an expedition in search of the city but excluded Bohorquez from the expedition’s ranks. The venture met with disaster and Bohorquez was held responsible …

A temporary setback only, for our picaro. Later, from 1645 to 1651,

Bohorquez apparently exploited the competition between the Franciscan and Dominican orders to obtain Dominican support for his expedition to Salt Mountain. During the months he and his band of freebooters controlled the settlement of Quimiri, they rustled cattle from nearby highland communities, murdered a native headman, abused the wives of Ashaninka converts, and abducted Indian children for use as servants. Eventually Bohorquez’s men soured on their fruitless search for gold and came within a hair’s-breadth of killing their leader. He was taken to Valdivia and imprisoned, but it was too late for the Dominicans: the Bohorquez reign of terror had undone four years of Dominican missionary work among the Ashaninka, all of whom fled Quimiri.

… escaping from prison yet again in 1656, he crossed the Andes to the Calchaqui Valley, where he persuaded 25,000 Indians that he had come to restore the Inca Empire. His tenure as the Son of the Sun lasted until 1659, when the Spanish arrested him because of their unhappiness with the rebellious behaviour of his Calchaqui vassals. Bohorquez languished in prison until January 3, 1667, when the authorities garroted him in his cell at midnight.

On this day..