The Cult of Killing and the Symbolic Order of Western Barbarism: How the Media Worships Violence

[Magda Hassan]

The Cult of Killing and the Symbolic Order of Western Barbarism: How the Media Worships Violence and "Ritualized Atrocities"

The Lynching of Mouamar Gaddafi

By Jean-Claude Paye and Tülay Umay
Global Research, April 13, 2013

Region: Middle East & North Africa
Theme: Culture, Society & History, US NATO War Agenda
In-depth Report: NATO'S WAR ON LIBYA



The display of the lynching of Mouamar Gaddafi exposes our societies for what they are. It mesmerizes and dsmantles our capacity to think and critically assess a historical process.

By focusing public attention on what constitutes a "ritualized atrocity" these gruesome images confirm that the US Empire actually represents an unprecedented regression, a step backwards in the history of humanity.
They show that the objective of the war on Libya was not only conquest, leading to the plundering of oil or of Libyan assets, but also, just as was the case in the Crusades, the destruction of a symbolic order, leaving room for the sheer enjoyment of an act of killing, as displayed by the media, in a capitalist World Order run amok.
When watching the broadcast images of the lynching of Mouammar Gaddafi, our political leaders manifested a strange pleasure. "Strange Fruit"[1],these images remind us of the images of the hanging of Saddam Hussein organized on the day of the Eid al-Adha, the feast of the sacrifice.
These two instances inscribe us into a religious structure which, through the substitution of the human sacrifice to the one of the ram[2], restores the primitive image of the Mother goddess. It turns the Old Testament upside down. Such book-free religion is reduced to a fetish[3]. It has neither Other, nor Law. It merely bids public opinion to enjoy the spectacle of death.
Through images, the will to power becomes unlimited. Transgression is no longer bounded as in the sacrificial rite, neither in space, nor in time, it is everywhere. It echoes the continuous violation of the order of Law that can be observed since the 9/11 attacks.

Confinement within tragedy
The way Gaddafi's body was treated is a token of the tragedy the Libyan people went through. The treatment of his remains was the object of a double exception, a double violation of the symbolic order that rules society. Instead of being buried on the same day as required by Muslim rites, his corpse was displayed for four days in a cold room, before being buried in a secret location in spite of his wife's request to the UN that she may retrieve the body.
This double decision by the new Libyan authorities places the Libyan people in a situation that the Greek tragedy explored long ago. As they deny the family the right to bury the body, the new political leaders do away with the symbolic order. As it deletes any connection between human and divine law, the National Transitional Council merges the two and grants itself the monopoly of the sacred, thus placing itself above the political level.
The NTC's decision to deny the family the right to funerals and to display the corpse aimed at suppressing the signifier of the body and retaining only the image of death. The order to derive orgasmic pleasure from the image of the murder suffers no boundary. The fetish perpetuates compulsive repetition. The urge feeds itself and moves from one image to the next, from the image of death to the image of killing without any distinction. Its function is to increase the will to power.

Controlling what must be seen
Thus the profanation of the corpse is only one element in its underlying "fetishism". What matters is to be found in the lynching of Gaddafi as shown, again and again, through images filmed on mobile phones and relayed by the media. They intrude in real time into our daily lives.
We are part of the scene because in the scopic drive, lynching becomes a sacrificial act only because of the onlooker. The pictures show people filming and deriving pleasure from the filmed object. They exhibit the moment of the look. It is not the object which is presented as an offering any more but the meaning which is displayed so as to control what must be seen.
Lynching as an image is a Western tradition. When they photographed their victims, the members of the Ku Klux Klan already produced the human sacrifice as a show. The treatment granted to Gaddafi is part of this "culture." However, it is different in one respect. The staging of the KKK's actions was highly ritualized. It mimicked some underground social order.
Here, the mobile phone pictures are free of any signifier. They become more real than reality. They occupy the real which, de facto, exists only as annihilation. They show the bursting of society and so the power of imperial action. These images show a world which is continuously collapsing. They put us in a state of dread and create psychosis. They destroy whatever relation there was to fewllow human beings. monades whose approval is required.
While language sets us in a collective space, images are intended for single individuals. They prevent any social relation, any symbolization. They are the paradigm of a monadic society. Thus, these images tell less about the conflict itself than about the state of our society and the scheduled future of Libya: permanent war.
The sacrifice of a scapegoat
These pictures show the killing of a scapegoat. They update the notion of mimetic violence as developed by René Girard in his reading of the New Testament.[4] Through the repetition of the sacrifice, they introduce us to a compulsive violence without object. If the scapegoat attracts violence, contrary to what Girard claims, he can't stop it. Peace can only be brief. It is only the preparation of a new war. Each sacrifice leads to another. The destruction of Libya must be followed by the one of Syria, of Iran… Violence becomes infinite and foundational.
As in Christian statements, the commentaries of the media about the pictures of the murder of Gaddafi transform the scapegoat into a victim. If Gaddafi is lynched, it is because he "wanted to die that way". He is not the victim of an exterior attack, he is said to have obeyed an inner law. His execution is not supposed to be the result of his resistance, but the accomplishment of a personal destiny. This Christian procedure has also been highlighted by René Girard. The figure of Christ shifts the notion of scapegoat to the one of victim who gives himself up in order to "redeem" the original sin.
So, free from all this symbolic debt, from any social body, these images and their commentaries contribute to the systematic inversion of the symbolic Law, as well as to the permanent state of emergency, installed after the 9/11 attacks. Political power is sacralized and replaces the symbolic order.
Regression from language to the image of union with the mother goddess
Such images take us back to a time when human sacrifice was an important aspect of social life. They consist of a return to the primordial fantasy of fusion with the mother[5]. Ethnological studies, as well as psychoanalysis, have showed that human sacrifice results in a return into a maternal structure. Love and sacrifice are the attributes of a social life which does not distinguish between political and symbolical orders. They are the paradigms of a matriarchal society which achieves the fusion of the individual and maternal power.
Those images belong to a long Christian tradition of reversal of the basis of the Old Testament. Abraham's story is the moment of establishing the interdiction of human sacrifice. Christ's death, on the other hand, is Isaac's sacrifice in reverse. Instead of the ram taking the place of the offered son, it is the Messiah son who becomes a lamb.[6] In the Old Testamentthe death of the ram is that of the primitive god. It symbolizes a shift from an actual sacrifice to language: "If there is a god, we find him in the words of the covenant (language)"[7]. That shift unveils the existence of a place that produces metaphors and thus transforms the real. The operations of shifting and metaphor, which form the heart of this story, are the essential procedures of the rules of language[8]. The law of language is the inscription of the non-identity of the word and of the object. In the Libyan conflict we are located outside language from the beginning. Gaddafi is a tyrant since this is what is said about him. The massacres committed by his regime do not have to be proven, but simply confirmed. The image of the dictator speaks for itself. It does not include any contradiction or face any reality. It is more real than reality.
The end of any symbolic order
The law of language involves accepting that language is first the language of the other. It signifies our acknowledging that we are incomplete. Such symbolization effected by the inscription of dependence on others makes it possible to enter into a process of mutual recognition and thus to build a human society.[9] It introduces a symbolic debt, a network of relationships in which individuals find where they belong and are not their own fathers. Contrary to the original sin, this debt unifies since it relates people on the basis of a common future and not of an origin, whereas the original sin is confined in the image of the Superego.
Gaddafi was not completely part of the globalized capitalist system. He still functioned according to traditional values such as the gift as an act that creates social bonds. He seemed truly affected by the desertion of his friends' Sarkozy, Berlusconi, Blair…[10] He must have thought that the exchange of gifts had set up a system of mutual recognition that guaranteed he would be granted some protection. He thus showed that he had not understood the nature of capitalism, a system in which all social relationships are abolished. While in former societies the exchange of objects is the basis for mutual relationships, in the capitalist system money and market values have become subjects. Gaddafi's gifts could only be perceived by those who received them as somehow an advance payment on what they were entitled to. The dark gods of this society can only be those of the market.

Images of orgasmic pleasure

Through the law of language man steps away from nature, from the mother goddess that has neither inside nor outside. Instead of functioning as a founding moment, murder is abolished to provide access to speech. The human order that emerges is different from the divine order. Individuals are no longer all powerful children, they are cut off from maternal power.
Images of the lynching of Gaddafi, by contrast, take us back to origins and to omnipotence. They inscribe us into a religious structure prior to the separation operated by the prohibition of sacrifice. They reintroduce us to incestuous violence, to the destructive haptic drive.[11] The imperative order to share in orgasmic pleasure overrides any political consideration. The most significant illustration is provided in the interview in which Hillary Clinton receives the images like some offering: she shares her exhilaration in front of the lynching: We came, we saw, he died!' she said on CBS.[12]
The violence inflicted onto the Libyan Leader and Guide' was also the moment other Western leaders chose to express their pleasure at how successful their initiative had been. We are not going to cry on Gaddafi', said Alain Juppé.[13]
Bruised body as an icon of violence
Statements by our political leaders after the broadcast of these images confirm that the elimination of Gaddafi was the true objective of this war, not the protection of people. The text by Barak Obama, Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron, published in The Times, The International Herald Tribune, Al Hayat and Le Figaro on 15 April, mentioned that "[our objective] is not to remove Qaddafi by force. But it is impossible to imagine a future for Libya with Qaddafi in power."[14]. So, his violence would lie essentially in the fact that he did not give up power while it was inconceivable that he should stay. His image is supposed to embody tyranny since he did not meet the Western leaders' love for the Libyan people. "He (Gaddafi) behaved in a very aggressive way. He received good conditions to surrender, he refused them", M. Juppé added.
The media confirm that "dictators always end up like this". The marks of violence expose the invisible. Lynching becomes the very proof that the tortured was a dictator. These stigmata show us what we couldn't see: evidence of the massacres to be perpetrated by Gaddafi. They are a revelation of his intentionality, of that thing in the name of which NATO justified its intervention.
An identity is established between the massacres attributed to the colonel and his blood-drenched body. The marks on the living body, then on the corpse are not perceived as the sign of the "liberators'" violence, but of the blood Gaddafi shed.
The violence of the murder shows us that it is about revenge. It testifies that its authors are victims and that this assassination belongs to a sacred order.
The exhibition of a boundless power
The images of the sacrificial act make it possible for our leaders to exhibit boundless power. The French Minister of Defense, Gérard Longuet, disclosed that on a NATO request the French air force had stopped', i.e. bombed Gaddafi's escaping convoy.[15] He thus acknowledges violating the UN Council Security's resolution.
On the same occasion Alain Juppé also acknowledged that the aim of the invasion was indeed to give power to the National Transitional Council: the operation must come to an end today since our objective, i.e. help the NTC in liberating the territory, is now achieved.'[16] The success of the NATO offensive was accompanied by numerous statements by the winners that they systematically but rightly violated the UN resolution. Bernard Henri Levy, French diplomat, philosopher, writer, film director and strategist, also testified in his book La guerre sans l'aimer that "France directly or indirectly provided significant amounts of weapons to the Libyan rebels fighting to overthrow Mouammar Gaddafi'.[17] Those various statements recall those by Tony Blair, when acknowledging there had been no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq but that nonetheless the war against Saddam Hussein was fully justified since it put an end to a dictator's rule.
Victim and sacrifice: the values of a return to barbarism
The murder of Gadaffi, this enactment of the victims' revenge, results in his not being tried. This death coincides with the interests of oil companies and Western governments. Their close relations with the colonel's government will not be exposed. Substituting such images of lynching to a trial at the International Criminal Court means that instead of being stopped by speech, violence becomes infinite. Libya like Afghanistan and Iraq will become a theatre of permanent war while our political systems slip into a permanent state of exception which accompanies the emergence of an absolute power that acts beyond any Rule of Law.
A military intervention in the name of Western leaders' love for the peoples who are victims of a tyrant'[18], glorified by the display of this tyrant's sacrifice, reveals a relapse into barbarism.
The treatment of the sacrifice of Gadaffi as an icon corroborates the Christian reference of a war waged in the name of love for victims. The destruction of Libya by NATO forces lies in the long tradition of the Crusades, those wars against the symbolic law waged in the name of the God-man.[19] Those wars already resulted from a reorganization of Western Europe under the authority of the Pope.[20] Nowadays, this conflict, even more than the Iraq war, results in a complete subsumption of European countries under the US Empire.
The war for democracy is the postmodern version of the Holy War. The latter was sacred, not because it was waged against infidels' but because it was preached by the Pope, the infallible vicar of the God-man. Today, the sacred nature of the attack results from the naturally democratic nature of the US initiator, whose president received the Nobel Peace Prize at the beginning of his mandate, before any political act. This prize consecrates the president of the United States as a Christian icon, as the embodiment of peace and democracy. In this secularized version, man is no longer sacralised as the image of God, but as his own image, as the image of his peaceful and democratic nature.
Jean-Claude Paye
Tülay Umay
Article in french :

Le lynchage de Kadhafi: L'image du sacrifice humain et le retour à la barbarie., November 11, 2011
Translated by Christine Pagnoulle

Notes
[1] Song composed in 1946 by Abel Meeropol to denounce the Necktie Parties' (lynching) that took place in the south of the USA and to which white people took part while wearing their most beautiful outfits. This song was sung by Billie Holiday, and has known a huge success on its release.
[2] When lifting a knife to strike his son, Abraham found a ram instead of the child for the sacrifice. It is the ram that must die, the father-animal, the primitive father, that is to say a fantasy line of ancestors, but also an archaic divinity, a ferocious image of God restlessly claiming sacrifices. See Jean-Daniel Causse, « Le christianisme et la violence des dieux obscurs, liens et écarts », AIEMPR, 17th international congress Religions et violences, Strasbourg, 10-14 July 2006.

[3] Paul Laurent Assoun, Le fétichisme, Que sais-je ?, PUF, 1994. « Le fétiche ou l'objet au pied de la lettre », in Éclat du fétiche, Revue du Littoral 42.

[4] Réné Girard, La Violence et le sacré, Le Seuil 1972.

[5] The primordial significant of the desire for one's mother is normally pushed back through the substitution of the Name-of-the-Father introduced in the symbolic order. Sacrifice is a return to the natural state of unification with the mother. In Catherine Alcouloumbré, « La métaphore paternelle », Espaces Lacan, Séminaire 1998-1999.

[6] Bible chrétienne, II, Commentaires, Èditions Anne Sigier, 1990, p. 318, in Nicolas Buttet, L'Eucharistie à l'école des saints, Éditions de l'Emmanuel, Paris 2000, p. 38.

[7] Jean-Daniel Causse, « Le christianisme et la violence des dieux obscurs, liens et écarts », AIEMPR, 17e congrès international Religions et violence ?, Strasbourg 2006, p. 4.

[8] They are the mirror of two fundamental linguistic operations, that of substitution and that of combination, i.e. the paradigmatic and the syntagmatic axis. See Vincent Calais, La théorie du langage dans l'enseignement de Jacques Lacan, L'Harmattan, Paris 2008, p. 59.

[9] Hervé Linard de Guertechin, « A partir d'une lecture du sacrifice d'Isaac (Genèse 22), Lumen Vitoe 38 51987), pp. 302-322.

[10] « Kadhafi préférait mourir en Libye qu'être jugé', La Libre Belgique et AFP, 31 November 2011.

[11] « Le sacrifice se centre sur le noyau sacrificiel originel : l'endocannibalisme » in Pierre Solié, Le sacrifice fondateur de civilisation et d'individuation, résumé adhes.net, http://www.adhes.net/Documents/Extraitsdelivres/PierreSoli%C3%A9/LESACRIFICE.aspx

[12] http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xlvs6g_...ourut_news

[13] « La mort de Kadhafi marque la fin de l'engagement de l'OTAN en Libye », LeMonde.fr avec AFP, le 21/10/2011.
http://www.lemonde.fr/libye/article/2011...96980.html

[14] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/15/opinio...bya15.html

[15] « L'aviation française a stoppé le convoi de Kadhafi, affirme Longuet », TF1,
http://videos.tf1.fr/infos/2011/l-aviati...78966.html

[16] « La mort de Kadhafi marque la fin de l'engagement de l'OTAN en Libye », LeMonde.fr, Op. Cit.

[17] « Les coulisses de la guerre selon BHL », La Libre Belgique, le 7/11/2011,
http://www.lalibre.be/culture/livres/art...n-bhl.html

[18] Jean-Claude Paye, Tülay Umay, « Faire la guerre au nom des victimes », Réseau Voltaire, le 9 mai 2011, http://www.voltairenet.org/Faire-la-guerre-au-nom-des

[19] Maurice Bellet, Le Dieu pervers, Desclée de Brouwer, Paris 1979, pp 16-17.

[20] Paul Rousset, « Les origines et les caractères de la première Croisade », La Baconnière, Neuchâtel 1945.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Here's an account of the ritual slaughter of the last Inka Emperor, Tupac Amaru, whose last words are in my signature.

In fornt of the Inka people in the royal city of Cuzco, Catholic priests converted Tupac Amaru to Catholicism.

Then the Conquistadors cut Tupac Amaru's head off, stuck it on a lance and displayed it to his people.

Ritual killing often involves submission, dismemberment, the act of impalation and a display of humiliation of the once mighty before his people.

Now feels an appropriate time to recount some of the tales of the ritual public slaughter of the last Inka, Tupac Amaru.

In 1571:

Tupac Amaru, a legitimate son of Manco Capac, emerged as the next ruler. Tupac Amaru had grown up in the Incan convent of Vilcabamba, the so-called religious university of the Incas. He was favored by the native religious and military leaders. Unlike Quispe Titu, Tupac Amaru was an adult. And he opposed Christianity and the Spanish occupation. In Vilcabamba all signs of Christianity were quickly destroyed and churches were leveled. The few Spaniards were killed and the borders closed to further incursions.

The Spaniards in Cuzco knew nothing of what had transpired. Two envoys sent were each in turn not allowed to enter the province and failed to contact the Inca. Also, the Spaniards had failed to send the tributes promised to the Inca in the treaty of Acobamba. A third envoy was killed by an Indian captain at the border, and this incident became known in Cuzco.

King Charles, in 1549, had decreed that conquest expeditions were to engage in fighting only in self-defense because, in good conscience, their underlying authority stemmed from a papal edict to convert the pagans. Using the justification that the Incas had "broken the inviolate law observed by all nations of the world regarding ambassadors" (Murua 1, 246) the new Viceroy, Francisco de Toledo, decided to attack and conquer Vilcabamba. His proclamation of war was published on April 14, 1572. Two weeks later ten soldiers with artillery and firearms took possession of the bridge of Chuquichaca, the entrance to Vilcabamba province on the Urubamba River. By late May Toledo had assembled 250 Spanish soldiers and 2,000 Indian warriors.

On June 1, the first engagement of the war commenced in the Vilcabamba valley. The natives "advanced with their lances, maces, and arrows with as much spirit, brio and determination as the most experienced, valiant and disciplined soldiers of Flanders" (Salazar 4, 832) against the firearms and artillery for hours, then retreated. On the 23rd of June the fort of Huayna Pucará surrendered to Spanish artillery fire. Tupac Amaru had left for Vilcabamba the previous day. On June 24, 1572 the invaders occupied Vilcabamba, the last free Inca city. The city was found deserted and sacked. The houses of the Inca had been burned. All food stores had been destroyed and were still smoldering. Inca Tupac and a party of about 100 had escaped into the jungle in various directions the day before.

Three groups of pursuing Spanish soldiers returned. One group had captured Tuti Cusi's son and pregnant wife. A second returned with prisoners and a million in gold, silver and emeralds, which was divided between the soldiers and priests. The third group returned with Tupac Amaru's two brothers, other relatives and several of his generals. The Inca and his commander remained at large. A group of forty hand-picked soldiers set out to pursue them. They followed the Masahuay river for 170 miles, where they found an Inca warehouse with quantities of gold and the Inca's tableware. Captured Chunco Indians reported that Tupac was down river in Momorí. Expedition leader García de Loyola ordered the building of five rafts and pursued the Inca, surviving turbulent rapids en route.

At Momorí they discovered that Tupac had escaped by land. They followed with the help of the Mamarí Indians, who advised which path the Inca had followed and reported that Tupac was slowed by his wife, who was about to give birth. After a fifty mile march they saw a campfire around nine o'clock at night. They found Tupac Amaru and his wife warming themselves. They assured them that no harm would come to them and secured their surrender. Tupac Amaru was arrested.

The captured were marched into Cuzco on Sept. 21. Tupac Amaru was "held by a chain of gold round his neck" (Salazar 30, 278). The victors also brought the mummified remains of Manco Capac and Titu Cusi and a gold statue of Punchao, a representation of the Incan lineage containing the mortal remains of the hearts of the deceased Incas. The final stage of the conquest began in the prison where the attempt to indoctrinate and convert Tupac and his fellow captives to Christianity was undertaken. In a mere two days and nights they were instructed by a small army of proselytizers in all that was necessary for their baptism. At the same time they were tried and convicted. The five Native generals received a summary trial at which nothing was said in their defense. They were sentenced to hang. Several who died of the severe torture they received were nonetheless hung.

The "trial of the Inca was hurried and was manifestly unjust." (Hemming 445) Tupac Amaru was convicted of the murder of Friar Diego Ortiz and others, of which he was certainly innocent. Tupac Amaru was sentenced to be beheaded. Numerous clerics, convinced of Tupac Amaru's innocence, pleaded to no avail, on their knees before the Viceroy Toledo, that the Inca be sent to Spain for a trial instead of being executed.

An eyewitness report from the day recalls that Tupac Amaru was led through the streets of Cuzco between Father Alonso de Baranza and Father Molina, who instructed him for the benefit of his soul. Vega Laoiza has him riding a mule with hands tied behind his back and a rope around his neck. Gabriel Oviedo and Baltasar de Ocampo report great crowds and the Inca surrounded by 400 guards with lances. In front of the main cathedral in the central square of Cuzco a black-draped scaffold had been erected. The plaza was so densely crowded for the spectacle that the chief officer of the court rode down many people to clear a path. Reportedly 10,000 to 15,000 witnesses were present.

Tupac Amaru mounted the scaffold with Bishop Agustín de la Corunna. The "multitude of Indians, who completely filled the square, saw that lamentable spectacle [and knew] that their lord and Inca was to die, they deafened the skies, making them reverberate with their cries and wailing." (Murúa 271)

Murúa, writing in Spanish reported:

"Fue cosa notable, y de admiracíon, lo que refieren: que como la magnitud de yndios en la placa estauan, y toda la enchían, biendo aquel espectáculo triste y lamentable, que auía de morir allí su Ynga y señor, atronasen los cielos y los hicciesen retumbar con gritos, bocería y los parientes suios, que cerca estauab, con lágrimas y sollozos selebrasen aquella triste trajedia, los que en el tablado estauan a la execucíon mandase callar aquella jente a lo cual el pobre Tupa Amaro alcando la mano dío una palmada con la cual toda la gente callámás llanto ni boz ninguna, que fue yndicio y señal manifiesta de la obedencia, temor y respeto que los indios tenía a sus incas y señores. Pues aquel que jamás los más auían visto, pues siempre se estuuiere en Vilcabamba, retirado desde niño, a una palmada reprimieron los llantos y lágrimas salidas del coraón que tan dificultosas son de ocultar y esconder..."

Tupac Amaru calmly raised his hands and silence and motionlessness fell upon the densely packed crowd. Several versions survive of the Inca's speech. In one report Tupac spoke and implored the crowd to never curse their children for bad behavior, but only to punish them, for once he had annoyed his mother and she cursed him with an unnatural death. The priests convinced him that his death was the wish of God. He asked forgiveness of everyone and told the Viceroy he would pray to God for him. Bishop Popoyán and some priest implored the Viceroy to send Tupac Amaru to Spain to be tried by the king. The viceroy, Francisco de Toledo ordered Juan de Soto, his servant and law officer of the court through the crowd to the center of the spectacle. He galloped furiously to the gallows with the Viceroy's order that the Inca's head be cut off at once, crushing many people in the crowd.

In another report, based on Salazar, the Inca is reported to have renounced Incan religion and admitted to the crowd that he had become a Christian. He reportedly stated that everything the Incas had said about their relationship to the Sun was false. It is likelier that a priest delivered this message from the gallows.

Another eyewitness, Juan Quispe Kuro, reports that Tupac Amaru's last request was that he be allowed to say good-bye to his young children, who ascended the gallows with dignity and hugged their father.

As reported by Baltasar de Ocampa and Friar Gabriel de Oviedo, Prior of the Dominicans at Cuzco, both eyewitnesses, the Incas last words were, "Ccollanan Pachacamac ricuy auccacunac yahuarniy hichascancuta."

"Mother Earth, witness how my enemies shed my blood."

By one account Tupac Amaru placed his head on the block. The executioner took Tupac's hair in one hand and severed his head in a single blow. He raised his head in the air for the crowd to view. At the same time all the bells of the many churches and monasteries of the city were rung. A great sorrow and tears were brought to all the native peoples present.

The military leader of the Incan army, Wallpa Yupanki was also decapitated, two generals were hung and the hands of three other resistors were chopped off, according to Guillon's recounting. Toledo also ordered the burning of the mummies of the Incas.

Baltasar Ocampo reports that Tupac Amaru's severed head was impaled on a lance near the gallows.