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Colonization
Barely a week later, in 1531, the Spanish conquistadors, under Francisco
Pizarro, arrived in an Inca empire torn by civil war. Atahualpa wanted
to defeat Huascar and reign over a re-unified Incan empire.
The Spanish, however, had conquest intentions and established themselves
in a fort in Cajamarca, captured Atahualpa during the Battle of
Cajamarca and held him for ransom. A room was filled with gold and two
with silver to secure his release. During his capture, Atahualpa
arranged for the murder of his half-brother Huascar in Cusco. The stage
was set for the Spaniards to take over the Inca empire. Despite being
surrounded and vastly outnumbered, the Spanish executed Atahualpa. To
escape the confines of the fort, the Spaniards fired all their cannons
and broke through the lines of the bewildered Incans. In subsequent
years the Spanish colonists became the new elite centering their power
in the Vice-Royalties of Nueva Granada and Lima.
The indigenous population was decimated by disease in the first decades
of Spanish rule — a time when the natives also were forced into the
"encomienda" labor system for Spanish landlords. In 1563, Quito became
the seat of a royal audiencia (administrative district) of Spain and
part of the Vice-Royalty of Lima, and later the Vice-Royalty of Nueva
Granada.
Independence
After nearly three hundred years of Spanish colonization, Quito was a
city of around ten thousand inhabitants. It was there, on August 10,
1809 (the national holiday) that the first call for independence from
Spain was made in Latin America ("Primer Grito de la Independencia"),
under the leadership of the city's criollos like Carlos Montúfar,
Eugenio Espejo and Bishop Cuero y Caicedo. Quito's nickname, "Luz de
América" ("Light of America") comes from the inspiration that this first
attempt produced in the rest of Spanish America, creating a domino
effect that would ultimately lead to the expulsion of Spain from the
continent. It was also near Quito, at the Battle of Pichincha in 1822
that Ecuador, under the leadership of Antonio José de Sucre, joined
Simón Bolívar's Republic of Gran Colombia, only to become a separate
republic in 1830.
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