Fall of the Inca
Episode 168: How the Inca Actually Conquered Themselves, Pizarro Just Got Lucky
Inca brothers Huascar and Atahualpa whose battle over control of the empire led to civil wars
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By the year 1532, the largest empire in the world was not found in Asia or in Europe. It was spread across the mountains of South America. The Inca Empire - the largest empire ever in the Americas and the largest in the world at the time, had risen very quickly and to a staggering size. In fact, it was still in its infancy when 16th century Spanish explorers arrived to plunder its riches. When Francisco Pizarro, a man of humble beginnings, an illegitimate son and poverty stricken swineherd from a poor area of Spain, arrived in Inca territory with just 180 men in 1526, he was shocked to discover an advanced and sophisticated society. The Inca had a well built road system spanning 25,000 miles across mountains, through deserts and jungles. It put the old ancient Roman roads still being used in Spain to shame. This empire, Pizarro wouldn’t have known at first glance, but this empire was home to as many as 12 million people, roughly twice as much as Spain could boast at the time, who spoke as many as 30 different languages. But what interested Pizarro most about them was not their sophisticated earthquake-proof roads, their rapid communication across the empire through relays of trained runners who could deliver messages 170 miles away in less than 24 hours, or their equivalent of a written language, though unwritten - the somewhat mystical quipus, bundles of knotted, colored strings that seemed to record information. What interested Pizarro most was the gold and silver this great empire seemed to possess. He wanted it and he was going to take it. But how? How did a no name Spaniard with less than 200 men manage to take down the largest empire in the world? Let’s fix that.
Hello, I’m Shea LaFountaine and you’re listening to History Fix where I tell surprising true stories from history you won’t be able to stop thinking about. I have a confession to make. I put up a poll on Instagram as promised to see which episode topic you guys thought I should cover this week, either Pizarro’s conquest of the Inca or the execution of England’s King Charles I and temporary dissolution of the monarchy. Well, Charles won by a small margin and yet, here I am talking about Pizarro anyway. I totally get why Charles won though. I realized as I was posting that it’s like, do I want to hear a story where the bad guy wins and completely destroys an entire civilization? Or do I want to hear a story where the bad guy gets taken down by his own people. I’ll take the story where the bad guy loses please. Unfortunately this is not that story. But to be honest, that story isn’t really that story either, so. Unfortunately, bad guys won a lot throughout history, if you haven’t picked up on that yet. You kind of have to be bad to win. Unless you're Dolly Parton, that unicorn woman. So anyway, I am going against popular opinion here and covering Pizarro instead of Charles because it’s Hispanic Heritage Month. I know, I know I could just do Pizarro next week, but no. Because next week starts Spooktober, my favorite time of year on History Fix and so it is reserved for spooky history stories. I guess in a way the poll still helped me decide on a topic, just not in the way you’d expect. I tend to do that a lot. I’ll flip a coin to decide something and then do the complete opposite thing than what the coin toss suggested. Am I the only one who does that? I mean it still helps me decide, so whatever. Anyway, I promise to circle back around to poor Charles when the time is right.
Today I’m telling you the story of when Spain, led by Francisco Pizarro, conquered the vast and mighty Inca Empire. This story is insane. Like, it’s straight out of a fantasy book. We have rags to riches characters, we have mighty kings, we have brothers fighting amongst themselves, partners backstabbing each other. We have lies and deceit and secret ambushes. We have murder, lots and lots of murder, and we have the rise of a new world order, for better, or for worse. But, like with Cortes conquer of the mighty Aztec empire about a decade before, episode 22 if you want to learn more about that, we’re left with a lot of questions here. How did such a small rag tag group of Spaniards, in both of these stories, manage to take down these massive and sophisticated American empires? And what lessons can we learn from mistakes made by the Inca? Yes the Inca. You thought I was gonna say Spanish.
So who were the Inca? Let’s start there. The Inca empire had not been around for very long at all when the Spanish arrived in the early 1500s, just a few hundred years at most. And it had only very recently reached this status of largest empire in the world. The roots of the Inca empire go back to the 11 or 1200s when a small group of Inca people settled in Cusco, modern day Peru. That area was called Biru by the Inca. That eventually transforms into Peru, kind of like Bacata turning into Bogota. I swear I feel like these came down to spelling errors when Spaniards were recording this stuff. I think a lot of names, honestly, of places of people, have come about because of spelling errors. But whatever. So 1200s, the Inca settle in Cusco. According to oral tradition, Inca storytelling, their first leader was Manco Capac and he was the one who led the people to the Cusco valley. For the first hundred years or so, the Inca remained there and were just one of many different regional groups in the Mountains of South America competing for territory and resources and whatnot.
Then in 1438 that all changed. Inca territory was invaded by another one of these neighboring groups called the Chanka. 1438 so this is less than 100 years before Pizarro arrived. I’m telling you, the Inca Empire as Pizarro found it was very very new. So the Chanka attack Cusco. The reigning Inca ruler fled the city. “He’s like I’m out.” But his son, whose name was Pachacuti, or Earth Shaker, stayed behind and defended the city and won. He defeated these Chanka invaders. His dad comes back, he’s like “hey thanks kid, good work.” Pachacuti is like “you’re done dad, I’m the new emperor.” He overthrows his cowardly father and he took power as the 9th Sapa Inca which is what their rulers, their emperors, were called. This is when the empire starts to expand. Pachacuti, with a little confidence boost after defeating the Chanka, he starts taking over surrounding areas. He gives these neighboring groups a choice. They can surrender peacefully and join the Inca Empire or get annihilated, total military destruction. Your choice. And so, in this way, the empire grows and grows and grows into what the Inca call Tahuantinsuyu which means “land of the four quarters” because it’s organized into these four parts or quarters. We call it the Inca Empire, they called it Tahuantisuyu. Pachacuti made Quechua the official language, although people across the empire spoke as many as 30 different languages. Quechua was the main and preferred language. You know some Quechua words: jerky, llama, poncho, quinoa… these are quechua words. Pachacuti also made Cusco the capital of the empire and he’s the one who started building this vast system of roads to connect all the different parts of the empire together. Because, geographically this was a really difficult empire to rule. Spain will have the same problem later on. These different areas are separated by mountains and jungles and deserts, very hard to pass through geographically. So the road system was super important for uniting the empire. If you can’t easily reach parts of your empire, they aren’t part of your empire, or at least they won’t be for long.
So 1438 that all starts to happen, Pachacuti takes power and he starts growing this small Inca settlement in Cusco into this massive empire, the largest in the world by 1530ish. Meanwhile in Spain, let’s go to Spain now. Spain doesn’t even know the American continents exist in 1438 when that’s all going down. They still won’t know the Americas exist in 1475 when Francisco Pizarro was most likely born. They won’t know until the 1490s when Christopher Columbus starts poking around. But in 1475, well not for sure, 1474 to 1478, somewhere in there Francisco Pizarro is born in Trujillo, Spain, which today is called Extremadura. Pizarro does not have any kind of noble birth. He is born a nobody, the illegitimate son of a military officer named Gonzalo Pizarro and Francisca Gonzalez, a woman of low birth. Pizarro took care of pigs when he was young to earn his keep. He was a swineherd living in an impoverished part of the country. He received no formal education that we know of and was illiterate for his whole life. He never learned to read or write. He had more important things to do I guess, just lying and murdering and whatnot. He couldn’t find the time. Anyway, he joined the Spanish army as a teenager, hoping it would lead him to a better life. He fought in Italy in the late 1400s and quickly earned a reputation for courage. He was very brave in battle. I call that an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex but they called it courage. Tomato tomato.
So he’s fighting in battles and whatnot as a literal child, gaining a reputation for bravery, making connections, and so in 1502 he hops aboard a ship heading for Hispaniola in the Caribbean. This was the center of the baby Spanish colony forming in the Caribbean started by Columbus about a decade earlier. This is the island that is now half Haiti and half Dominican Republic. So Pizarro sets sail for Hispaniola, he’s roughly 27 years old. He’s just a true conquistador. He’s muscles. They sent him there to help conquer the indigenous people. He goes on a voyage to Colombia in 1510, setting foot on a mainland American continent for the first time. In 1513 he joins the expedition of Vasco Nunez de Balboa which finds a passage to the Pacific Ocean through Panama. My source says discovered the Pacific Ocean for Europe but they’d been to like southeast Asia and whatnot so they knew about the Pacific Ocean. Maybe they didn’t realize it was the same one yet, I don’t know. That word discovered is just thrown out so haphazardly. Then, after passing through Panama to the Pacific, Pizarro sets up shop there. He’s like “this is nice,” and he settles down in Panama City for a minute. He’s becoming kind of a big deal in Panama City, building up wealth and therefore influence, power, prestige, all thanks to that crappy prefrontal cortex of his AKA bravery. He climbs his way up to chief lieutenant to the Governor of Panama, Pedro Arias d’Avila. And, in that position, as more and more Spanish explorers, conquistadors start to pass through Panama City, he starts to hear more and more talk about this place farther south they are calling Biru, AKA Peru. They say there is a rich and powerful indigenous culture there, a vast empire. And Pizarro immediately sees dollar signs, or rather gold ingots. He’s interested to say the least.
He teams up with a business associate of his named Diego de Almagro and also with a priest named Hernando de Luque, cause of course you gotta have a priest with you when you go completely annihilate an entire civilization to steal their gold, WWJD, right? So the plan is, for these three partners, they’re gonna go steal all the gold from this Biru place and split it three ways. That’s literally the plan. The priest kisses his rosary and then rubs his palms together with an evil laugh. That’s what I’m picturing right now. So, Almagro starts gathering men and supplies, he seems like the logistics guy. Meanwhile Pizarro takes a few exploratory trips into South America from Panama in 1524 and then again in 1526. In 1526 he reached Tumbes which was an Inca coastal city near what is now the Peru Ecuador border. And this is really the first time he sees the Inca, and it’s immediately apparent that they are in fact a very advanced civilization. And he sees enough wealth and splendor to convince him that these rumors he’s been hearing about Biru are true and that this is worth pursuing. So, he’s taking this seriously now, he goes to Spain, to Spain’s King Charles V, nephew of Catherine of Aragon who is currently married to England’s King Henry VIII but this is right about the time Henry starts trying to divorce Catherine to marry Anne Boleyn, just for some context, same time, different country, different king. Pizarro goes to Spain’s King Charles V and gets a charter giving him permission to conquer the Inca Empire and also keep most of any rewards they pillage, forget the one third deal even split he made with Almagro and Luque earlier on. Then he goes to talk to Hernan Cortes over in Mexico about how he conquered the Aztec. Similar situation right? He’s like “how’d you pull that off? Few hundred men, vast sophisticated empire? How’d that all go down” And he gets the inside scoop from Cortes. Then he gathers some of his half brothers, a little posse, and he goes back to Panama to begin planning this conquest. Now, Almagro is not happy. He feels like Pizarro cheated him when he went to get that charter from the King that granted him most of the treasure. But he really has no choice but to go along with it for now, plotting his revenge for later. We’ll circle back to that I promise.
So by the 1530s, it’s go time. Pizarro, whose in like his 50s now in case you were still picturing a young man, he sets out for this planned conquest of the Inca. Reports of how many men he had with him are different in literally every source I’ve read. Some say 130, one says 168, another says 180. I don’t know but it appears to be less than 200 men, and also some horses, about 30 horses. He gets back to Tumbes in February of 1532, that same coastal city he had visited back in 1526, but things are very different now. There is obviously some kind of conflict going on, a civil war of sorts. The Inca are fighting each other. Pizarro is like “sweet, this could not be going better for me.” And he’s right. When he returns to conquer the Inca Empire in 1532 the S-H-I-T has hit the fan and he has literally just to walk in and take it.
So what happened? What happened to the Inca between 1526 and 1532? Well we can trace it all back to diseases brought from Europe which traveled to the Inca Empire even faster than the Spaniards themselves could. In 1527, the leader of the Inca Empire, Huayna Capac, Pachacuti’s grandson, had died, probably of smallpox. And, though his empire was large and mighty when he died, it was very, very fragile. This came down to the way the Inca grew their empire by conquering other groups of people and forcing them to assimilate or die. It led to a lot of very unhappy citizens as you might imagine. Also, the Inca were really racist, I guess, I don’t know if that’s the right term. They had this really strict caste system based on ancestry. So people who had descended from the original Inca of 1200s Cusco valley and spoke Quechua were high society. They were the leaders of the empire, they were the aristocracy. People who had assimilated into the empire from other groups of conquered people who spoke other languages were at the bottom of the social hierarchy. They were forced to do hard labor, building that extensive system of roads that crisscrossed the empire. So we have a lot of social inequality based on whether or not you were considered a legit OG Inca or not. And people are falling into line and doing what they are told because the alternative is death. But they certainly aren’t happy about it and they are prepared to seize any opportunity they can to rebel against the empire.
That opportunity is the death of Huayna Capac and the power vacuum he left behind in 1527. After the death of this emperor, Huayna Capac, his two sons fought over who would be the next Sapa Inca, the 13th Sapa Inca to rule the empire. His sons' names were Huascar and Atahualpa. Huascar was older but that didn’t matter. The Inca didn’t do succession like that. It didn’t automatically go to the oldest son. The previous Sapa Inca got to pick which of his sons to rule next, the most fit one, not necessarily the oldest. Had to be a son, no daughters, nephews, nothing like that, strictly sons. But that wasn’t really a problem because the Sapa Inca had hundreds of children with his various concubines so he always had sons. He was supposed to pick a son of his principal or main wife, but he could technically pick a concubine son too, that was iffy though so they didn’t usually do that. Anyway, Huayna Capac had picked his successor, he picked the son that was going to rule next. Unfortunately, that son died around the same time as Huayna Capac likely of the same disease and so there was no successor, he apparently didn’t pick a back up. So Huascar and Atahualpa both step up for the position and they’re fighting over who should get to be the next Sapa Inca. Civil wars break out all over the country, Huascar supporters pitted against Atahualpa supporters, random disgruntled conquered people taking advantage of the chaos to rebel against the whole empire, meanwhile more and more people are dying of disease. It was a very scary time in the Inca Empire. It seemed to be collapsing from within. And that is when Pizarro arrived. So, he may have acquired the reputation of brave conquistador who conquered the mighty Inca Empire, but really dude just got lucky.
So Atahualpa managed to take charge in 1532, defeating his older brother Huascar in battle and claiming the empire, becoming the 13th Sapa Inca. He didn’t kill Huascar though, he just took him captive. That’s important. Pizarro, realizing what is going down, takes some advice he probably got from Cortes, and he starts gathering Huascar supporters on the side of the Spanish. He’s like “hey guys, do you hate Atahualpa? We’re going to take him down. Join us.” And they do. Same thing Cortes did, gathered Aztec haters to help him defeat them. So Pizarro has his small group of Spanish dudes and he’s gathered some Indigenous supporters and he goes to find Atahualpa who is camped out in the mountains near the city of Cajamarca in Peru. Atahualpa allows them to approach. He knows they’re there. He’s not worried about it. He has 80,000 armed soldiers with him. They’ve got like 200 bearded dudes and some rebels. He ain’t worried. Pizarro sends one of his half brothers with some Indigenous translators into Atahualpa’s camp and they convince Atahualpa to come meet with Pizarro in Cajamarca. They actually tell him they’re going to throw a feast in his honor, to recognize his ascendence to power as Sapa Inca. Atahualpa agrees to go the next day. Once again, he’s not worried about this tiny ragtag group of outsiders. He is the mighty Sapa Inca of the largest empire on Earth and he does deserve a feast after all.
So the next day Atahualpa descends from his mountain camp and goes to enjoy this feast he’s been promised in Cajamarca. He had 80,000 armed soldiers but he doesn’t bring them with him. Instead he comes to the feast with 5,000 unarmed men. This will turn out to be a huge mistake. As he approaches the town square where the feast is supposed to take place, he is met by Vicente de Valverde, a friar who is traveling with Pizarro. Valverde tells Atahualpa that he has to convert to Christianity and recognize Spain’s King Charles V as the new ruler of his empire. He, understandably, is like absolutely not. What are you even talking about? One source reports he even throws the bible Valverde handed him in the dirt, and that’s the signal Pizarro and his men were waiting for. They are hidden amongst the buildings and in the narrow alleyways of Cajamarca, taking advantage of the maze-like design of Inca cities. They jump out and attack Atahualpa and his 5,000 unarmed men with their guns. According to reports, they slaughter all 5,000 men in just one hour. They are basically trapped in this city square. They are surrounded and the Spanish just take them down one after another until a very large pile of bodies remains. Not Atahualpa, though. Pizarro realizes very last second that Atahualpa is worth more alive than he is dead and he stops someone from killing him. According to History.com, Pizarro himself sustained the only Spanish injury, cutting his hand as he saved Atahualpa’s life.
So, bloodbath, terrible. But, honestly, the Spanish kind of did the same thing to the Inca that the Inca had done to all the other groups of people in South America. They gave them a choice - assimilate or be destroyed. And when Atahualpa refused to assimilate, the Spanish destroyed them. I think that’s really interesting and important to remember. We often think of these indigenous groups that got conquered as being very innocent. They were just innocent, kind hearted souls minding their own business. That’s not really the case with the Inca and it wasn’t the case with the Aztec either. Both of those empires rose to the heights they were at in the 1500s by brutally conquering other groups, the very same thing the Spanish were now doing to them. Does that make the atrocities of the Spanish somehow better, no. This is what I talked about in the mini fix I put out last Wednesday about the Leyenda Negra, you can find that over on Patreon.com/historyfixpodcast, always linked in the description. We’d love to have you join us there. But it’s a really difficult moral conundrum that arises. It’s much easier to feel a certain way when it’s good versus evil. We understand how we’re supposed to feel about that: the good Inca against the evil Spanish. It wasn’t really like that. History is rarely ever like that. That’s fairytales, not reality. So, you know, not to say that anything the Spanish did was right or somehow warranted, but I do want to point out that the Spanish were merely doing to the Inca, what the Inca had already done to all of their neighbors.
Pizarro has taken Atahualpa alive, taken him captive, and with Atahualpa as his prisoner, Pizarro has a lot of power throughout the Inca Empire. Atahualpa’s supporters do whatever Pizarro says. They are worried for Atahualpa’s safety. They are worried Pizarro will kill him if they don’t obey. And this comes down to Inca religion really. Atahualpa was not just the emperor to them, he was divine. He was the living son and earthly representative of Inti, the sun god. The Christian equivalent would be Jesus, right. So Atahualpa was a really big deal and they didn’t want anything bad to happen to him.
Now, while in captivity, Atahualpa worries that his brother, who he has captive somewhere, will get out and join forces with the Spanish. He’s worried that his two enemies will unite against him. So he secretly orders that Huascar be killed. We’re pretty sure that he was executed by drowning. Atahualpa has Huascar killed. But this kind of backfires because now Huascar supporters all flock to the Spanish. They are eager to help the Spanish now to avenge Huascar’s death. Atahualpa is being kept prisoner in a room in Cajamarca. He needs to get out. He needs to get out and reclaim his empire. So he tries to make a deal with the Spanish. He tells them that, if they let him out, he will fill the room he’s in, known as the Ransom Room, this room is still there, it still exists. I’m showing you a picture of it if you’re watching the video version on either YouTube or Patreon. But Atahualpa tells them he will fill it first with gold and then with silver for them. Pizarro is like “gold you say? Silver?” He is all for it. That’s the whole reason they wanted to conquer the Inca to begin with. They wanted their gold and their silver. So he’s like “okay, bud. You got yourself a deal.” After that, llama after llama arrived in Cajamarca carrying gold and silver to figuratively fill the room with, an estimated $387 million dollars worth today. Pizarro collects it all - gold and silver pots, jewelry, figurines - he melts it all down which kills me. So many cool artifacts, so many cool works of art the world never got to see. Pizarro melts it all down and he splits it between his men, keeping the most for himself of course.
Then, he refuses to free Atahualpa. He reneges on the deal. He accuses Atahualpa of murdering Huascar and organizing a rebellion, which he kind of did but whatever, and he condemns Atahualpa to death by burning at the stake. This would have been an execution for heresy in 16th century Spain, those who went against Christianity. So I find that kind of interesting. They are accusing him of, essentially treason, right, organizing a rebellion which would have meant beheading. But, instead they are going to burn him like a heretic. But they don’t end up doing that either. At the 11th hour, Atahualpa air quotes “converted to Catholicism,” wink wink, and was baptised. So instead of burning him, they strangled him to death. Sorry, I should have had a disclaimer at the beginning of this episode that it would be very violent. This is a very violent episode guys. And it doesn’t stop there. Turn back now if it’s too much for you, otherwise, we press on.
Pizarro has Atahualpa killed, he goes back to Spain to bring King Charles one fifth of the treasure as was agreed upon in his charter and to tell him that the Inca Empire has fallen. While Pizarro is gone, his men, including Almagro who secretly hates Pizarro but is playing along, are leading exploits throughout the empire, taking over city after city. They are still terribly outnumbered, although they have amassed quite a few indigenous supporters. They also have far superior weapons and horses which helps a lot. Plus the Inca are still being decimated by disease. When Pizarro returns in late 1533, he puts a puppet leader in charge, Manco Inca who was another brother of Atahualpa and Huascar. With their success, more and more Spanish conquistadors start flocking in and conquering more and more Inca territory.
Then Manco Inca gets fed up. He’s tired of Spanish abuse and exploitation. He rebels, slipping out of Cusco and organizing a massive army. In 1536 he attacked both Cusco and the newly established city of Lima but was ultimately defeated by the Spanish and driven into hiding. There were a few reasons why Manco Inca’s massive army couldn’t take down a few hundred Spaniards. As I already mentioned they had inferior weapons and were besieged by disease. But also, most of the army was farmers and they had to go home at harvest time or their whole towns would literally starve. So they had to like pause the siege when it was time to go harvest their crops, “like, hang on be right back guys, gotta go pick corn.” For real, but also, there was a lot of unrest amongst the Inca themselves still. There were still a lot of ethnic rivalries. We have Manco Inca, great grandson of Pachacuti who had formed the mighty Inca Empire. Manco Inca was Inca through and through. And then we have these farmer soldier dudes in his army who, a lot of them weren’t considered Inca. They were from other groups who had been conquered. They spoke other languages. They were bottom of the social hierarchy. And so, they weren’t truly loyal to Manco Inca whose ancestors had conquered theirs and treated them poorly ever since. They weren’t anymore loyal to Manco Inca than they were to the Spanish. And so Manco Inca’s Rebellion, this attempt to take back the empire ultimately failed.
It wasn’t smooth sailing for the Spanish after that either though. They had a really hard time managing the empire because it was so spread out and separated by such intense geography to traverse. And Almagro, remember him? Diego de Almagro, Pizarro’s business partner in this whole plot to take down the Inca. He’s still not happy that Pizarro negotiated that charter with the King and cheated him out of his third of the loot. Almagro strikes back in 1537 and tries to take over Cusco. But, just like Manco Inca, he fails and is executed in 1538. But then, in retaliation, Almagro’s supporters murder Pizarro in 1541. Yeah, about 20 armed Almagro supporters burst into Pizarro’s palace in Lima and attacked him, stabbing him to death.
So Almagro is dead, Pizarro is dead, King Charles sends a viceroy to Peru, Blasco Nunez de Vela, to try to take control of the absolute chaos in 1544. Charles has actually given Vela orders to limit the conquistador’s abuse of Indigenous people. He’s like “tell them to stop torturing and killing everyone.” Vela gets there and he’s like “the king says to stop killing and torturing everyone.” And they’re like “we don’t wanna” and they rebel against the King and actually kill this viceroy that was sent, they kill Vela. He died in that rebellion. It wasn’t until the mid 1550s that Spain actually got it together and secured their colonies in South America under some kind of sanity and order as opposed to murder and chaos.
So, wow, I mean I told you it would be violent. I told you it would have murder and intrigue, backstabbing, and double crossing, but holy moly guys. It’s hard to believe this is even real, that people could behave so badly. What is wrong with us? But when you really look at what was happening in South America, in the Inca Empire, in Tahuantinsuyu when Pizarro arrived in the 1500s, it’s really no surprise the Spanish were able to halfway come out on top. They were vastly outnumbered, ridiculously outnumbered, but they were able to take advantage of a great weakness in the empire, deep cracks that formed before they even got there. Cracks that formed because of the way the empire had come together to begin with, the conquest of other groups and forced assimilation, a disgruntled population. But also cracks that formed because of a power vacuum, the warring of two brothers over the throne. Now that throne was left empty because of Spanish diseases. So in a lot of ways the Spanish inadvertently caused that, those civil wars between Atahualpa and Huascar. But not really. And this is what I really want us all to take away from this story. The Inca Empire had hit a rough patch. They’d made questionable choices. They’d treated their people badly. Their leader had just died. They hit a rough patch. But instead of unite, band together, and come up with ways to solve the problems they were having, to the fix the empire, to satisfy their disgruntled oppressed citizens, they split into factions. They split apart, Atahualpa’s supporters vs. Huascar’s supporters. The Spanish didn’t defeat the Inca. The Inca defeated the Inca. There’s such an important lesson there because we see it in modern politics all the time. I see it in modern politics in the United States right now, these factions, two factions. Are you team Atahualpa or team Huascar? No, neither. I’m team Tahuantinsuyu. I’m team United States of America. Because if we don’t stay united no matter what, we lay ourselves bare, ripe for the taking. United we stand, divided we fall. The Inca divided themselves and they fell hard. Now, we know history likes to repeat itself. But, not if we learn from the mistakes of the past, not if we learn and choose a different path.
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