The Inca treasure still hidden in the mountains of Ecuador, 500 years after the Spanish Conquest

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Spanish conquest of Tahuantinsuyo began in 1532 with a memorable milestone. On November 15 of that year, Francisco Pizarro arrived in Cajamarca in present-day Peru to meet the Inca king Atahualpa. After a bloody civil war of succession, the second of two brothers had seized power from the late Inca King Huayna Capac.

As soon as the Castilians arrived at the city, they found abandoned; they hid in a large Inca castle and waited. A few hours later, they marveled at the portentous entrance of King Atahualpa and his entourage of 30,000 men marching unarmed as a symbol of peace with the visitors. It would not be the first time they would be surprised; in their advance through the Inca cities, they found irrigation systems, monumental buildings, and goldwork never seen in Europe.

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Upon entering the square of Cajamarca, the only Spaniard to meet the Inca king was the priest Vicente de Valverde. He, through an interpreter, had asked Atahualpa to accept Christianity as the true religion and submit to the royal authority. The monarch received a holy book and a ring which he stared at and then threw to the ground, probably because they lacked ceremonial value. This infuriated the Spaniards, who immediately broke the silence by firing their guns and rifles. Atahualpa’s bannermen were brutally killed and, although they were immediately replaced, the chariot fell along with the monarch.

As a result, Atahualpa was confined in a palace in Cajamarca. He provided conditions for his release in his confinement: to fill the locked room as far as his hand could reach with gold and silver, several times over. Pizarro accepted the proposal, and the order was immediately sent to the entire Inca Empire to provide as much gold and silver as possible. After doing his part, the Spaniards condemned him to death for idolatry, fratricide, and polygamy.

King Atahualpa was baptized Francisco and subsequently murdered by hanging on July 26, 1533. Shortly after that, on June 18, 1533, Pizarro ordered to melt the proceeds of the ransom for the distribution of the booty that had been valued at 1.3 million Spanish pesos and 51,000 silver marks.

This ransom paid by Atahualpa is considered the most enormous ransom in human history. It is estimated that, in updated figures, it would be equivalent to US$695 billion.

Some versions assure that the Inca General Rumiñahui went to Cajamarca with some 750 tons of additional gold worked for the ransom. Still, when he found out that Atahualpa had been killed, the Inca general returned to Quito, the kingdom’s capital, and on the way, he threw all the treasure in one of the ponds of the Llanganates Mountain Range.

Rumiñahui tried to reorganize the indigenous resistance in Quito but failed in the face of solid alliances between Spaniards and Indians. Although the Spaniards had only a few hundred, their allies numbered thousands. Not only did the Cañaris support the Spaniards and the Cuzco Indians, brought by Diego de Almagro, who took revenge on the Quiteños for their massacre in Cuzco during the Inca civil war.

The Indian allies of the Spaniards believed that the invaders were Viracochas, or gods come to facilitate their liberation and recover the city of Quito, which enabled the conquest of the empire. Finally, Rumiñahui was captured, and some of his commanders and assassinated in Quito in June 1535. Rumiñahui never revealed the location of the treasure.

The treasure is believed to be in the waters of Pisayambo, now Llanganates National Park, a protected area in Ecuador that lies between the provinces of Cotopaxi, Tungurahua, Pastaza, and Napo. The aquifer system of the Llanganates National Park consists of more than a dozen significant lakes and perhaps hundreds of minor lagoons, which combine in a complex water system at elevations in the Ecuadorian Andes that, in the sector, rise to 3,000 and 4,000 meters above sea level.

No one could have hidden a treasure like this better. In its pieces cast in gold could be told the never-revealed history of one of the largest empires in the world, only compared to the Empire of Alexander the Great. Perhaps humanity is not ready to understand these mysteries. Maybe the Inca Rumiñahui understood it this way. The treasures of Atahualpa, the Inca, and Tahuantinsuyo can rest serenely in their hiding place for another half millennium.