Dec 12, 20152 min read

Tupac Amaru Shakur - An Indigenous American Warrior

Tupac's birth name was Lesane Parish Crooks. His mother was a Black nationalist and member of the Black Panther Party. She nationalized her son around the age of one, renaming him after an American aboriginal and Inca emperor TUPAC AMARU SHAKUR. Tupac and his parents fought their own revolution in the United States of America. Tupac himself was the National Chairman Of The New Afrikan Panthers and was dedicated to the liberation of Black Americans.

The name Tupac Amaru embodies the revolutionary spirit of many indigenous warriors who fought aganist oppression from invading Europeans. Was his mother a genius and is there power in names? Lets take a look at the history of the name here in America.

Túpac Amaru or Thupa Amaro (Quechua: Thupaq Amaru) (1545–1572) was the last indigenous monarch (Sapa Inca) of the Neo-Inca State, remnants of the Inca Empire in Vilcabamba, Peru. He was executed by the Spanish.Following the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire in the 1530s, a few members of the royal family established the small independent Neo-Inca State in Vilcabamba, which was located in the relatively inaccessible Upper Amazon to the northeast of Cusco. The founder of this state was Manco Inca Yupanqui, who had initially allied himself with the Spanish, then led an unsuccessful war against them before establishing himself in Vilcabamba in 1540. After a Spanish attack in 1544 in which Manco Inca Yupanqui was killed, his son Sayri Tupac assumed the title of Sapa Inca (emperor, literally "only Inca").

Túpac Amaru II José Gabriel Túpac Amaru (March 19, 1738 – May 18, 1781) — known as Túpac Amaru II — was the leader of an indigenous uprising in 1780 against the Spanish in Peru. Although unsuccessful, he later became a mythical figure in the Peruvian struggle for independence and indigenous rights movement, as well as an inspiration to myriad causes in Hispanophone America and beyond.Túpac Amaru II was born José Gabriel Condorcanqui in Surimana, Tungasuca, in the province of Cusco, and received a Jesuit education at the San Francisco de Borja School, although he maintained a strong identification with the indigenous culture and population. He was a mestizo who claimed to be a direct descendant of the last Inca ruler Túpac Amaru. He had been given the title of Marquis of Oropesa, a position that allowed him some voice and political leverage during Spanish rule. Between 1776 and 1780 Condorcanqui went into litigation with the Betancur family over the right of succession of the Marquisate of Oropesa and lost the case.In 1760, he married Micaela Bastidas Puyucahua of Afro-Peruvian and indigenous descent. Tupac Amaru II inherited the caciqueship, or hereditary chiefdom of Tungasuca and Pampamarca from his older brother, governing on behalf of the Spanish governor.

Amaru- being one of the oldest clan names in America, Tupac has earned the title of The Last Inca King and holds on to the legacy of aboriginal(Black) royalty in the Americas.