Chucuito

Chucuito, on the western shore of Lake Titicaca, was the chief town of the Lupaca, an Aymara kingdom that rose after Tiwanaku declined. Pedro de Cieza de León was told by its people that Chucuito was the oldest site in the region, and the Inca kept it sacred. The Lupaca held seven centres, among them Acora, Ilave, Juli, Pomata, Yunguyo and Zepita, and were divided into two halves, an upper one under the lord Cari and a lower one under Cusi. Pachacuti brought them into the Inca realm, and under Topa Inca the Inca crushed a revolt by the Lupaca and Colla. The Inca counted 20,080 households in the province of Chucuito, some 100,000 people, most of them Aymara and the rest Uru.

Lupaca households kept colonies in valleys on the Pacific slope, and the Spanish inspection of Garci Díez de San Miguel recorded that their leaders sent men with llamas to Moquegua, Sama and Cuzco for maize and coca. In 1538 Hernando Pizarro defeated the Lupaca at the Desaguadero, where the river leaves the lake. Chucuito stayed rich, with sixteen Dominican priests among its people in 1567, and was said to have had 30,000 people early in the eighteenth century. In the great rebellion of 1780–1782 the insurgents took the town in 1781, after the Spanish inhabitants withdrew.

The later city of Puno lies here.