Aware that the second decade of the nineteenth century witnessed the beginning of the collapse of Iberian imperialism on the mainland of Latin America, historians of the independence period have searched assiduously in the late-eighteenth century for manifestations of resistance to colonialism in the hope of discovering the seeds of the desire for national self-determination. In the case of Peru this process has even led to some attempts to incorporate resistance in the 1730s in Cochabamba and Cotabambas to Castelfuerte's revisitas of the Indian and mestizo population (for the purposes of revising tribute lists and reorganizing mita quotas) into a ‘first conjuncture’ of rebellions that also includes in its litany an abortive rebellion in Oruro in 1739, and further conspiracies and protest movements in Oruro, Lima and Huarochirí in 1750. Typical themes in these protests – as, indeed, in many of those of a similar nature which occurred in the second half of the eighteenth century – included straightforward Indian protests against a variety of abuses, the resistance of mestizos to the perceived threat of being reclassified as Indians (and thereby losing both status and exemption from the tribute), and the contradictory tendency for both mestizos and some provincial creoles to emphasize their Indian ancestry as well as their European origins in an attempt to secure indigenous support for their opposition to officialdom and fiscal exactions. Normally, a show of strength from the regional and/or viceregal authorities – such as the hanging and quartering in 1731 of ten Cotabambas rebels for murdering their corregidor (Juan Josef Fandiño), and the display for several months of their corpses in various villages – was sufficient to restore order. Similarly, the rebellion at Huarochirí in 1750 which began with the killing by armed Indians of the corregidor (Juan Joseph de Orrantia), his teniente and fourteen other españoles, was promptly nipped in the bud by exemplary executions of the ringleaders and the exile of others to the Juan Fernández islands.