Asteroid 4721 Atahualpa was discovered on September 29, 1973, by Dutch astronomers C.J. Van Houten and Ingrid Van Houten-Groeneveld and American astronomer Tom Gehrens at Palomar Observatory near Pauma Valley, California, USA. It has a period of 3 years, 140 days. Its discoverers named it for the last emperor of the Incas, Atahualpa(1502-1533) who seized power from his brother and viciously murdered him and his sons in a brutally executed coup following a civil war, and ended up deposed himself by Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro, who took advantage of the power struggle to conquer the Inca Empire for Spain. Atahualpa filled a room with gold and two rooms with silver to buy his freedom from Pizarro, who took the gold and had Atahualpa executed anyway, at Cajamarca, Peru on August 29, 1533, after the Emperor was tried for and convicted of the murder of his brother, "crimes against the Spanish king" and everything else Pizarro could think of, and then baptized a Catholic in order to be garroted rather than burned alive.
Atahualpa, last king of the Incas.
Atahualpa, despite his attempts to appease the Spaniards, reportedly cursed the Spanish with his dying breath, saying: "Coca shall fortify the Indian and destroy the white man." This is the so-called Curse of Atahualpa. Although the indigenous peoples of the Andes have long chewed coca leaves, they do not usually abuse cocaine, which was isolated by a German scientist and is widely abused in predominantly white North America and Europe.
One of Atahualpa's generals, Rumiñahui, successfully resisted the Spanish invaders until the volcano Tungurahua erupted in July 1534, almost a year after Atahualpa's death; many of Rumiñahui's followers saw an omen of divine wrath and impending doom in this and ran off. Rumiñahui burned all the houses he could in order to deny the Spaniards shelter, made a vast treasure in gems and precious metal estimated at roughly $2 billion in 2001 dollars disappear into some remote area, never to be found to this day, and when captured, steadfastly refused even under torture to tell the Spaniards where the treasure was hidden, telling them one lie after another until they finally got tired of being mocked and executed him.
Asteroid Atahualpa seems to relate to brutality and cruelty, and attitudes toward surrender and compromise, especially where one resists it.
For instance, Charlton Heston, a longtime supporter of conservative causes and formerly president of the National Rifle Association. ("You may take my gun...from my cold dead fingers!!!) He has Atahualpa out of bounds, square the Sun, Athanasia(immortality), Christabel(letting bad things in), Cosicosi(indifference), Sassi, and SURF(superficial attention); sesquiquadrate Mars(guns); conjunct Pluto(mass movements) and Don Quixote(flying in the face of reality); opposite Pallas(intelligence), Pavlov(knee-jerk response) and Persephone(choosing to be a victim); biseptile Saturn(conservatism), nonile Neptune and the Part of Fortune(unfoldment of the life), trine Vesta(commitment, focus) and Wurm(being contemptible), undecimal Chariklo(glamor), quincunx Vibilia(travel), and sextile/trine the Nodal axis.
Jimi Hendrix, who successfully resisted pressure from his fellow African-Americans to play music that was less "white" and more "black" and died as a result of substance abuse, had Atahualpa in the first house, cusping the second, sextile the Sun and Mercury; trine Uranus, Neptune, Taguacipa(unpopularity), and Thule(racial prejudice); square Flammario(pyrotechnics, as on the guitar), Rhiannon(escape, unpopularity), Nessus(to be perceived as a threat), and SURF(going through something quickly); opposite Pluto(to be unforgettable, seminal works) and Vertex(idealized relationship); triseptile Chiron(ingenuity) and Juno(relating); contraparallel Athanasia(immortality); and semisextile Casanova(destructive pleasures).
Marlene Dietrich, the legendary German actress who refused to cooperate with her country's Nazi regime, also had Atahualpa out of bounds, parallel Mercury and Varuna(being a giant); square Venus, Abanderada(political causes), Munchhausen(legends, big lies), Quetzalcoatl(teaching, heroism), and Thule(bigotry); conjunct Saturn(work, rewards), Nabokov, and Rhiannon(escape, condemnation); triseptile Pluto(immortality); sextile Pallas(fighting for one's rights), Nessus(predators), Madhatter(crazy people), Vicia(viciousness), and Yeti(things hard to believe in); semisextile Glo; undecimal Antenor(being seen as subversive); trine SURF(superficial knowledge); and opposite Tezcatlipoca(criminals).
Bill Clinton, whose willingness to compromise and tack when necessary to get his work done somewhat obscured his basic left-of-center philosophical core and who paid dearly for yielding to sexual temptation or whenever he couldn't follow through on his promises, has Atahualpa in the seventh house, trine the Sun, Pallas(intelligence, fighting for beliefs), and Cuitlahuac(having to surrender), biseptile Mercury(the media), quadnonagon Mars(the military, weapons), opposite Jupiter(the law, religion, relations with foreign people and things), Juno(relationships, marriage), Glo and Christabel(letting bad things in), square Hidalgo(self-defense, self-promotion), Pholus(following one's heart, need to follow ceremony where appropriate), and Tezcatlipoca(criminal behavior), sesquiquadrate the Black Moon(having people turn on you), quincunx Antigone(belief in one's own principles or rightness), contraparallel Vesta(commitment), and conjunct Varuna(hugeness, judgment, justice).
The glyph for Atahualpa is my own conception and was inspired by the method Pizarro used to kill Emperor Atahualpa: garroting, by two soldiers.