# South America: from the Inca to independence A continent's history: the Andean civilizations from Caral to the vast Inca empire; the Spanish and Portuguese conquest, Pizarro and the fall of the Inca, and the disease that emptied the land; the colonial engine of Potosi silver and its deadly mita; and the independence wars of Bolivar and San Martin. *This story parallel: The Catholic Church as a world power* *This story part of: Colonization: the making of the modern world* *This story part of: Freedom movements: how the colonized won their independence* *This story parallel: The resource curse: how the South fed the North* *This story parallel: Client dictators: the strongmen the powers kept* *This story part of: Health and medicine* *The Dutch Empire: the VOC and the golden age parallel this story* *The Portuguese Empire: from Sagres to the Carnation Revolution parallel this story* ## c. 2601 BCE — Caral and the Norte Chico civilization In the coastal valleys north of present-day Lima, the Norte Chico or Caral-Supe society builds monumental platform mounds and sunken plazas. It is one of the oldest known civilizations anywhere and the oldest in the Americas, and it appears to have grown without pottery or clear signs of warfare, trading cotton and fish. Dates rest on radiocarbon work at Caral and remain approximate. ## c. 901 BCE — The Chavin cult and its influence The temple complex at Chavin de Huantar becomes the center of a religious tradition whose art and iconography spread across much of the central Andes. Many archaeologists see it as an early unifying cultural horizon that set patterns later Andean states drew on. ## c. 101 BCE — The Nazca and their desert geoglyphs On the arid southern coast the Nazca culture etches enormous lines and figures into the desert floor, the Nazca Lines, and digs underground aqueducts called puquios to survive in a dry land. The exact purpose of the geoglyphs is still debated, with explanations ranging from ritual pathways to water and astronomical markers. ## c. 100 — The Moche of the north coast The Moche build irrigation networks, large adobe pyramids such as the Huacas del Sol y de la Luna, and produce some of the finest ceramics and metalwork of the ancient Americas. Their elite tombs, like the Lord of Sipan, reveal a stratified society and rich ritual life. There was no single Moche state but a shared culture across several river valleys. ## c. 500 — Tiwanaku rises by Lake Titicaca On the high altiplano near Lake Titicaca, Tiwanaku grows into a major ceremonial and political center with monumental stonework such as the Gateway of the Sun. It spread its influence through colonies and trade across the southern Andes before declining around 1000 CE, possibly amid drought. ## c. 600 — The Wari expansion From its capital near modern Ayacucho, the Wari build an expansive state across much of highland Peru, marked by planned administrative centers and terraced farming. Many scholars see Wari roads and provincial administration as forerunners of methods the Inca later scaled up, though the relationship is debated. ## c. 1200 — The Inca establish themselves at Cusco According to Inca oral tradition, a founding lineage settles the valley of Cusco and builds it into a small highland kingdom. For its first centuries it is one of many rival Andean polities rather than a great power. The early chronology rests on later Spanish accounts of Inca oral history and is uncertain. ## c. 1438 — Pachacuti and the imperial expansion After turning back a Chanca attack on Cusco, the ruler Pachacuti launches the conquests that turn the Inca kingdom into an empire. He and his successors, Tupac Inca Yupanqui and Huayna Capac, extend Inca rule along the Andes over roughly the next century. Pachacuti is also credited by tradition with rebuilding Cusco and beginning Machu Picchu. ## 7 June 1494 — Treaty of Tordesillas divides the world Spain and Portugal agreed to split newly encountered lands along a meridian in the Atlantic, giving most of the Americas to Spain and Brazil and Africa's route to Portugal. It set an early precedent for European powers partitioning distant territories by treaty. ## April 1500 — The Portuguese reach Brazil A Portuguese fleet under Pedro Alvares Cabral, bound for India, makes landfall on the coast of what is now Bahia and claims the land for Portugal. The first Portuguese economic interest is brazilwood dye, which gives the colony its name. Sustained settlement follows over the next few decades. ## c. 1500 — Tawantinsuyu at its height By around 1500 the Inca Empire, called Tawantinsuyu, stretches some 4,000 kilometers from Colombia to Chile and holds perhaps ten to twelve million people, though estimates vary. It is bound together by a vast royal road system, the Qhapaq Nan, with waystations and rope bridges, by knotted-cord quipu records, and by a labor tax called the mita, under which communities owed rotating work for the state instead of paying money. ## c. 1524 — Old World disease reaches the Andes Smallpox and other Old World diseases spread ahead of the Spanish and sweep through the Andes, likely killing the Inca ruler Huayna Capac and his heir around 1527. Most historians hold that epidemic disease, against which native peoples had no immunity, was the single largest cause of the demographic collapse that followed across the Americas, with population losses often estimated at well over half and in many regions far higher. ## c. 1529 — Civil war splits the Inca Empire The death of Huayna Capac leaves the empire contested between his sons Atahualpa and Huascar. Their war of succession is ending in Atahualpa's favor just as Francisco Pizarro's small Spanish force arrives. Historians widely agree this division weakened Inca resistance to the conquest. ## 16 November 1532 — Pizarro seizes Atahualpa at Cajamarca Francisco Pizarro, leading fewer than two hundred men, ambushes the Inca ruler Atahualpa at Cajamarca, slaughters much of his unarmed retinue, and takes him prisoner. The Spanish then extract an enormous ransom of gold and silver. The event, aided by steel, horses, firearms, and the empire's recent civil war, effectively decapitates the Inca state. ## 26 July 1533 — The execution of Atahualpa After collecting the ransom, the Spanish try Atahualpa on charges that Spanish chroniclers themselves later questioned, and put him to death. His killing removes the last commonly recognized Inca sovereign and lets the Spanish rule for a time through puppet Incas. The Spanish took Cusco later the same year. ## 1542 — The Viceroyalty of Peru is founded The Spanish crown creates the Viceroyalty of Peru, governed from Lima, to bring order to its South American conquests. The same year's New Laws try to curb the worst abuses of the conquerors, provoking a revolt by encomienda holders. For most of the colonial era Peru is Spain's richest and most important American possession. ## 1545 — Silver is found at Potosi The discovery of a mountain of silver at Potosi, the Cerro Rico, in what is now Bolivia sets off one of history's great mining booms. Its silver, later refined using mercury from Huancavelica, floods world markets and helps fund the Spanish empire and global trade. At its peak Potosi is among the largest cities in the world. ## c. 1550 — The encomienda and the casta hierarchy Early colonists were granted encomiendas, rights to the labor and tribute of indigenous communities, which in practice often meant coerced work. Over time colonial society hardened into a casta hierarchy that ranked people by ancestry, with Spaniards on top and enslaved Africans and indigenous people at the bottom. The categories were social and legal as much as biological, and were used to control land, office, and labor. ## 1572 — The fall of Vilcabamba ends Inca resistance After Manco Inca rebelled in 1536, a rump Neo-Inca state held out in the remote Vilcabamba region for a generation. In 1572 Viceroy Francisco de Toledo's forces overrun it and capture the last ruler, Tupac Amaru I, who is executed in Cusco. His death closes forty years of armed Inca resistance to Spanish rule. ## c. 1573 — The colonial mita and the toll of Potosi Viceroy Francisco de Toledo turns the old Inca mita labor tax into a system of forced, rotating labor drafts that send indigenous men to the mines of Potosi and the mercury pits of Huancavelica. Conditions were lethal, especially at Huancavelica, and communities went to great lengths to escape the draft. Historians differ sharply on the death toll, with some older accounts claiming millions of deaths across the colonial centuries and modern scholars urging more careful, lower estimates, but agree the human cost was severe. ## c. 1600 — Brazil becomes the great destination of the slave trade As sugar and later gold and coffee economies grow, Portuguese Brazil imports enslaved Africans on a scale seen nowhere else. According to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, close to five million enslaved Africans were disembarked in Brazil over the whole trade, by far the largest number for any single destination in the Americas. Brazil would also be the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery, in 1888. ## c. 1605 — Quilombo dos Palmares Escaped and freeborn Africans build Palmares, a network of self-governing settlements in the Brazilian interior that survives for most of the seventeenth century and grows to thousands of people. It resists repeated colonial expeditions before being destroyed around 1694, and its leader Zumbi is killed in 1695. Palmares is remembered as a major symbol of resistance to slavery. ## c. 1609 — The Jesuit Guarani reductions Jesuit missionaries gather Guarani people into self-contained mission towns, called reductions, in the borderlands of present-day Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil. Defenders described them as havens that sheltered the Guarani from slave raiders and let their culture and language survive; critics saw a paternalistic order of tight control. The missions collapsed after the Jesuits were expelled. ## 1739 — The Viceroyalty of New Granada Spain carves a new viceroyalty out of the north, governed from Bogota, covering roughly modern Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Panama. The reorganization reflects the crown's effort under the Bourbon reforms to tighten administration and revenue across its sprawling empire. ## 1767 — The Jesuits are expelled from the Americas Portugal expelled the Jesuits from its empire in 1759 and Spain followed in 1767, part of a wider drive by Catholic monarchs to curb the order's wealth and independent power. The expulsion ended the Guarani reductions and reshaped education and mission work across the continent. It also removed a check some historians credit with having limited the enslavement of indigenous people. ## 1776 — The Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata Spain creates a fourth South American viceroyalty centered on Buenos Aires, covering much of the southern cone and the silver district of Potosi. Making Buenos Aires a legal port of entry boosts its trade and helps turn a once-marginal town into a rising commercial city, laying groundwork for later independence movements. ## November 1780 — The rebellion of Tupac Amaru II Jose Gabriel Condorcanqui, taking the name Tupac Amaru II in memory of the last Inca, leads a massive indigenous and mestizo uprising against Spanish taxes, the mita, and colonial abuses. The revolt spreads across the southern Andes before being crushed, and in 1781 the Spanish execute him and his family in Cusco with deliberate brutality. It stands as the largest indigenous rebellion of the colonial era and a later touchstone for Andean identity. ## 1808 — Napoleon's invasion of Iberia sparks a crisis Napoleon's occupation of Spain and forced abdication of its king throws colonial authority into doubt across Spanish America. Local juntas begin governing in the name of the deposed monarch, opening the way to full independence movements. The Portuguese court, meanwhile, flees to Rio de Janeiro, briefly making Brazil the seat of an empire. ## May 1810 — The May Revolution in Buenos Aires A local junta in Buenos Aires ousts the Spanish viceroy, an early step toward independence in the Rio de la Plata. Similar movements break out across the continent from Caracas to Bogota to Santiago. Years of war would follow before independence was secure. ## 1817 — San Martin crosses the Andes Jose de San Martin leads an army over the high Andes to surprise and defeat royalist forces in Chile, securing its independence. He then mounts a seaborne campaign against Peru, the stronghold of Spanish power, and declares its independence in 1821. His southern campaign complements Simon Bolivar's advance from the north. ## 7 August 1819 — Bolivar's northern campaign and Boyaca Simon Bolivar's victory at the Battle of Boyaca breaks Spanish power in New Granada and clears the way for the liberation of the north. Bolivar founds the union of Gran Colombia, joining present-day Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Panama, as a base for further campaigns. He is celebrated across the region as the Liberator. ## July 1822 — The meeting at Guayaquil The two great liberators, Bolivar from the north and San Martin from the south, meet privately at Guayaquil to settle the future of the independence struggle. What passed between them is not recorded, but soon afterward San Martin withdraws from public life and leaves the final campaign to Bolivar's forces. The meeting remains one of the most debated moments of the era. ## 7 September 1822 — Brazil's peaceful independence Rather than break away through war, Brazil becomes independent when Pedro, the heir to the Portuguese throne then resident in Brazil, declares it a separate empire and is crowned its emperor. The result is a relatively bloodless split and, unusually for the Americas, a monarchy that lasts until 1889. Slavery, however, continued for decades after independence. ## 9 December 1824 — The Battle of Ayacucho Forces under Bolivar's general Antonio Jose de Sucre defeat the main royalist army in the highlands of Peru. The victory effectively ends Spanish rule in South America and secures the independence of Peru and the new republic of Bolivia. It closes nearly two decades of continental warfare. ## 1830 — The fragmentation of Gran Colombia Bolivar's union of Gran Colombia breaks apart into Venezuela, Ecuador, and New Granada amid regional rivalries and disputes over central power. A disillusioned Bolivar dies the same year, reportedly remarking that those who serve a revolution plow the sea. The breakup sets a pattern of fractured, quarreling states across the continent. ## c. 1850 — The age of caudillos and export economies Through much of the nineteenth century, strongmen known as caudillos dominate politics while new republics tie their economies to exporting a few commodities, from Peruvian guano and Chilean nitrates to Argentine beef and Brazilian coffee and rubber. Dependence on these exports, and on foreign capital and markets, left many countries vulnerable to price swings, a pattern later discussed in debates over the resource curse and dependency. This thread connects to the wider stories on the resource curse and export dependence. ## c. 1975 — The era of military juntas and Operation Condor During the Cold War a wave of military coups installs juntas across the region, including Brazil in 1964, Chile in 1973, and Argentina, whose Dirty War killed and disappeared thousands. Under Operation Condor, these governments coordinated to hunt and kill opponents across borders, often with United States knowledge and support. The details belong to the client-dictators and banana-republics threads and are only summarized here. ## c. 1990 — Returns to democracy and the pink tide Through the 1980s and 1990s the military governments give way to elected civilian rule across the continent. From the late 1990s a series of left-leaning presidents, dubbed the pink tide, win power on promises to reduce poverty and inequality, followed later by conservative swings. The period is marked by commodity booms and busts and by continuing arguments over how to escape dependence on raw-material exports.