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Imperial Dilemmas, the Politics of Kinship, and Inca Reconstructions of History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Irene Silverblatt
Irene Silverblatt
Affiliation:
College of Charleston
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Extract

I am extremely fortunate to have discussed issues of hegemony, consciousness, and class transformations with Nan E. Woodruff, who brought Southern and European perspectives to my own Peru-centered understandings. Julie Saville, a scholar of emancipation and reconstruction in the United States, made me aware of the fine points of cultural resistance and taught me not to underestimate its strengths. Jane Collier also taught me much about chiefdoms and their internal tensions. And thanks to the anonymous reviewer for interesting and helpful suggestions. This article was presented in various incarnations at several professional gatherings. I am grateful to have benefited from the insights and criticisms of co-panel members and audience. “Contradictions in Inca Ideologies" was presented at the Sixteenth Annual Meeting of the Canadian Ethnology Society (Montreal, 1984); ‘Politics of Reproduction and Inca Expansion’ was pre- sented at the Annual Meeting of the American Ethnological Society (Wrightsville Beach, 1986); and ‘Politics of Reproduction and the Inca Construction of History’ was presented at the Symposium on Andean and Lowland South American Cosmologies, organized by the University of Chicago (Chicago, 1986). Generous grants from the Doherty Foundation, Wenner Gren Foundation, and Organization of American States allowed me to conduct research on the Incas in Peru from June 1975 to December 1978. I will always be grateful to them for affording me that special opportunity.

Type
Politics of Kinship
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , January 1988 , pp. 83 - 102
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1988

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References

1 Hobsbawm, Eric, ‘Introduction: Inventing Traditions,’ in The Invention of Tradition, Hobsbawm, Eric and Ranger, Terence, eds. (Cambridge, 1984), 13.Google Scholar

2 de León, Pedro de Cieza, Del Senorio de los Incas [1553] (Madrid, 1880), 35–37.Google Scholar

3 de Ayala, Felipe Guaman Poma, La nueva crónica y buen gobierno [1613?], Gálvez, Luis Bustíos, trans, [into modern Spanish] (Lima, 1956–1966), 1, 129.Google Scholar

4 At the time of the Inca conquest communities that dotted the Andean landscape demonstrated considerable diversity in their socio-political organization. Kinship relations seemed to have organized the majority, including groups where stratification was emerging. (Of course, state building itself could have precipitated the emergence of stratification.) Nevertheless, at the time of conquest other state-level systems existed in the Andes, like the Chimú on the North Coast of Peru and perhaps the Lupaka on the shores of Lake Titicaca. For descriptions and analyses of some of the different cultures that inhabited the Andes see Pierre Duviols, ‘Huari y Llacuaz: Agricultores y pas tores. Un dualismo pre-hispánico de oposición y complementaridad,’ Revista del Museo National, 39 (1973), 153–93;Google ScholarHuertas, Lorenzo, ‘La religibn de una sociedad rural andina: Cajatambo en el siglo XVII’ (B.A. thesis, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Lima, 1969);Google ScholarLavallée, Danielle, ‘Estructura y organización del habitat en los Andes centrales durante el período Intermedio Tardío,’ Revista del Museo Nacional, 39 (1973), 91–116;Google ScholarMurra, John Victor, ‘Una apreción etnológica de la visita,’ in Miguel, G. Díez de San, Visita hecha a la provincia de Chucuito … en el ano 1567 (Lima, 1964), 421–44;Google Scholaridem, ‘La visita de los Chupachu como fuente etnolbgica,’ in de Zuniga, I. Ortiz, Visita de la provincia de León de Huánuco (Huánuco, 1967), 383–406;Google Scholaridem, ‘An Aymara Kingdom in 1567,’ Ethnohistory, 14:1 (1968), 115–51; Rowe, John H., ‘The Kingdom of Chimor,’ Acta Americana, 6:1–2 (1948), 26–59;Google Scholarde Diez Canseco, María Rostworowski, Etnia y sociedad: Ensayos sobre la costa central prehispánica (Lima, 1977);Google Scholaridem, Senores indīgenas de Lima y Canta (Lima, 1978); Salomon, Frank, Los senores étnicos de Quito en la época de los Incas (Otavalo, 1980);Google ScholarSilverblatt, Irene and Earls, John, ‘Apuntes sobre unas unidades politico-económicas precolombinas de Victor Fajardo,’ Revista del Archivo Histórico de Ayacucho, 1 (1977), 16–21.Google Scholar

5 During the last fifteen years, students of Western state building have been scrutinizing the intricacies of cultural practice and class formation that shaped the roads to capitalist development. Nourished by Gramsci, they have repudiated concepts of culture that either reduce it to a ghost of significant material relations or that deny the ways in which power drenches the process of living in a class-fractured world. Cf. Thompson, E. P., ‘Eighteenth-Century English Society: Class Struggle without Class?,’ Social History 3:1 (1978), 133–65;CrossRefGoogle ScholarThe Invention of Tradition, Hobsbawm, Eric and Ranger, Terence, ed.; Williams, Raymond, Marxism and Literature (Oxford, 1978), 75–144;Google ScholarGenovese, Eugene D., Roll Jordan Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York, 1974);Google ScholarFox-Genovese, Elizabeth and Genovese, Eugene D., ‘The Political Crisis of Social History: A Marxian Perspective,’ Journal of Social History 10:2 (1976), 205–20;CrossRefGoogle ScholarLears, T. J. Jackson, ‘The Concept of Cultural Hegemony: Problems and Possibilities,’ The American Historical Review, 90:3 (1985), 567–93;CrossRefGoogle ScholarTaussig, Michael T., The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America (Chapel Hill, 1980);Google Scholaridem, ‘Folk Healing and the Structure of Conquest in the South-west Colombian Andes,’ Journal of Latin American Lore, 6:2 (1980), 217–78;Google Scholaridem, ‘Culture of Terror—Space of Death. Roger Casement's Putumayo Report and the Explanation of Torture,’ Comparative Studies in Society and History, 26:3 (1984), 467–97. While Gramsci pri- marily queried the complexities of acquiescence and resistance to class rule in Western nations, his insights into the various problems, possibilities, and roads to nation-state making make interesting reading in light of the cultural politics that shaped Inca empire building.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Cf. Murra, John Victor. La organización económica del estado Inca (Mexico, 1978), 176–97;Google Scholarde Murúa, Martin, Historia del origen y geneología real de los Incas [1590] (Madrid, 1946), 182.Google Scholar

7 This paper presents only one cultural dimension entailed in the process of Inca state formation. For other examples of pan-Andean institutions and movements promoted by the Incas, the following sources are useful. On the setting up of schools for the sons of provincial chiefs, in which the Inca way was instilled to future generations of local leaders, see ‘El Inca’ de la Vega, Garcilaso, Comentarios reales de los Incas [1609] (Lima, 1959), I, 49–50, 236–39;Google Scholar and de León, Pedro de Cieza, La crónica del Peré [1553] (Lima, 1984), 215.Google Scholar On the diffusion of Quechua as a pan-Andean language, see Cieza, Del senorīo de los Incas, 59–63; Albornoz, Cristóbal, ‘Instrucción para descubrir todas las guacas del Perú y sus camayos y haciendas’ [1580?], Journal de la Société des Américanistes, 56:1 (1967), 17.Google Scholar On the apprenticeship of young women from the provinces to Inca noblewomen, see Cobo, Bernabé, Historia del Nuevo Mundo [1653] (Madrid, 1964), II, 141; Guaman Poma, La nueva crónica y buen gobierno, I, 94; Murúa, Historia del origen y geneología real de los Incas, 81, 85, 93, 181. Elaborate state rituals and pageants are discussed by Juan de Polo de Ondegardo, ‘Relacién de los fundamentos acerca del notable dano que resulta de no guardar a los indios sus fueros …’ [1571], in Colección de libros y documentos referentes a la historia del Perú, Horacio Urteaga and Carlos Romero, eds. 1st ser., no. 3 (Lima, 1917), 96; Cobo, Historia del Nuevo Mundo, II, 110.Google Scholar

Because of the character of Inca social formation and its concomitant means of cultural production, we would never expect to find in the Andes the depth of cultural hegemony found in modem states. Although limited, Cusco's attempts to diffuse an Inca culture were, nevertheless, part of the process of building an Andean empire, and should be analyzed as such. If not, we fall into the trap of viewing the past as a reified product, which ignores the processes and potentialities that girth sociocultural reproduction. Cusco's essays—and failures—at instituting some sort of hegemony present fascinating windows into the historically specific processes that generate class and state formation. For different perspectives than the one presented here see Rowe, John H., ‘Inca Policies and Institutions Relating to the Cultural Unification of the Empire,’ In The Inca and Aztec States, 1400–1800:Google ScholarAnthropology and History, Collier, George A., Rosaldo, Renato I., and Wirth, John T., eds. (New York, 1982), 93–118;Google Scholar and Patterson, Thomas C., ‘Ideology, Class Formation, and Resistance in the Inca State,’ Critique of Anthropology, 6:1 (1986), 75–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 See Christine Ward Gailey's articles for compelling theoretical elaborations of the kin-based contradictions with which precapitalist state formation had to contend. Also see her studies of the ethnocide inherent in state formation, which reifies culturally autonomous groups as units in state bureaucracy: ‘Our History is Written in our Mats: State Formation and the Status of Women in Tonga’ (Ph.D. diss., New School for Social Research, 1981); ‘Categories without Culture: Structuralism, Ethnohistory, and Ethnocide,’ Dialectical Anthropology, 8:3 (1983), 241–50;CrossRefGoogle Scholar “The Kindness of Strangers: Transformations of Kinship in Pre-Capitalist Class and State Formation‘ (paper presented at Annual Meeting of the Canadian Ethnology Society, Hamilton, 1983); ’The State of the State in Anthropology,‘ Dialectical Anthropology, 9:1–4 (1985), 65–90.Google Scholar Other contributions to the understanding of the state-making process that emphasize kin/state contradictions include the granddaddies of them all, Engels, Frederick, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Leacock, Eleanor, ed. (New York, 1972),Google Scholar and Marx, Karl, Precapitalist Economic Formations, Hobsbawm, E., ed. (New York, 1964);Google Scholar as well as Stanley Diamond, ’Dahomey: A Proto-State in West Africa‘ (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1951); Krader, Lawrence, The Formation of the State (Englewood Cliffs, 1968);Google ScholarThe Early State, Claessen, H. J. M. and Skalnik, P., eds. (The Hague, 1979);Google ScholarThe Study of the State, Claessen, H. J. M. and Skalnik, P., eds. (The Hague, 1981);CrossRefGoogle ScholarClaessen, H. J. M., ’The Internal Dynamics of the Early State,‘ Current Anthropology, 25:4 (1984), 365–80.Google Scholar

9 There is a large and fascinating debate on Inca history revolving around the nature of Inca dynastic structures. R. T. Zuidema has taken the lead in arguing for a structural interpretation of chronicler accounts of Inca succession. See in particular Zuidema, R. Tom, The Ceque System of Cusco: The Social Organization of the Empire of the Inca (Leiden, 1964);Google Scholar and ‘Myth and History in Ancient Peru,” in The Logic of Culture, Rossi, I., ed. (South Hadley, 1982), 150–75.Google Scholar Pierre Duviols supports Zuidema's claims and has argued against those who would uncritically accept the chroniclers' heavily Europeanized version of Inca dynastic succession. See Pierre Duviols, ‘La dinastia de los Incas: Monarqufa o diarquia? Argumentos heuristicos a favor de una tesis estructuralista," Journal de la Sociétée des Amécanistes, 66 (1979), 67–73. Also see Ake Wedin, El concepto de lo incaico y las fuentes (Upsala, 1966) for a critique of standard Inca chronologies; and Nathan Wachtel, Los Vencidos. Los indios del Peru frente a la conquista espanola (1530–1570) (Madrid, 1976).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

This paper will not address the above debate, except to add that Inca historical reconstructions—regardless of their constraint by certain structural definitions—should not be confused with the history-making processes that shaped the Andes. The Incas were not adverse to composing heroic history themselves, in which they made kings into heroes and vice versa. Cf. Silverblatt, Irene, Moon, Sun, and Witches: Gender Ideologies and Class in Inca and Colonial Peru (Princeton, 1987).Google Scholar

10 Cf. Rowe, John H., ‘Absolute Chronology in the Inca Area,’ American Antiquity, 10:3 (1945), 265–84,CrossRefGoogle Scholar for a classic statement of Inca chronology. I should note that one Spanish commentator on Inca life put their origins at over 1,000 years before the Spanish conquest: Fernando de Montesinos, ‘Memorias antiguas historiales y polfticas del Pert’ [1644], Revista del Museo e Instituto Arqueolóqico de la Universidad Nacional del Cuzco, 16–17 (1957), a perspective of longue durée seconded by the mestizo chronicler, Guaman Poma, who had his own historical axes to grind. Cf. de Ayala, Felipe Guaman Poma, El Primer Nueva Corónica i Buen Gobierno [1613] (Mexico, 1980), 68;Google Scholar and Duviols, Pierre' commentary, ‘Periodizacidn y polftica: La historia del Pert segun Guaman Poma de Ayala,’ Bulletin de l'lnstitut Francais d'Etudes Ardinies, 9:3–4 (1980), 1–18.Google Scholar

11 For examples of battle-free acquiescence, to Inca rule, cf. Cobo, Historia del Nuevo Mundo, II, 68, 87; Albornoz, ‘Instruccidnparadescubrirtodas las guacas …,’ 17,23;Cieza, Del Senorio de los Incas, 44–46, 59–63. Examples of resistance and rebellion seem more numerous: cf. Cieza, La crónica del Peru, 111–16; Cristóbal de Mena, ‘La conquista del Perú, Ilamada la Nueva Castilla’ [1534], in Biblioteca Peruana, 1st ser., Vol. I (Lima, 1968), 133–17 passim; Diego de Trujillo, ‘Relación del descubrimiento del reyno del Peru’ [1590], in Biblioteca peruana, 1st ser., Vol. II (Lima, 1968), 9–104 passim; and John V. Murra, ‘La guerre et les rebellions dans l'expansion de l'etat Inka,’ Annales: Economies, Sociétes, Civilisations, 33:5–6 (1978), 927–35. While these chroniclers present convincing evidence of imperial fragility, we should not forget that European or Europeanized interpretations of Inca history emphasize the heroic acts—which are often military acts—of kings. On top of this, Inca myths used kingly legends as markers for structural reconstructions of history.

12 Cieza, Del Senorío de los Incas, 118–23; Cobo, Historia del Nuevo Mundo, 70; Guaman Poma, La nueva crónica y buen gobierno, I, 303; Garcilaso, Comentarios reales del los Incas, II, 99–106; Cristóbal de Molina, ‘Relatión de las fábulas y ritos de los Incas’ [1573], in Los pequeńos grandes libros de historia americana, F. Loayza, ed., 1st ser., Vol. IV (Lima, 1943), 34; Murúa, Historia del origen y geneologia real de los Incas, 71; Juan de Polo de Ondegardo, ‘Errores y supersticiones …’ [1554], in Colección de libros y documentos referentes a la historia del Perú, H. Urteaga and C. Romero, ed., 1st ser., no. 3 (Lima, 1916), 3; Bias Valera, ‘Relación de las costumbres antiguas de los naturales del Pirú’ [1590], in Tres relaciones de antigüedades peruanas, M. Jiménez de la Espada, ed. (Asunci´n, 1950), 136.

13 Joan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui, ‘Relación de antigüedades deste reyno del Peru’ [1613], in Tres relaciones de antigüedades peruanas, M. Jiménez de la Espada, ed. (Asunción, 1950), 226. For pioneering explications of the diagram see Zuidema, R. Tom and Quispe, Ulpiano, ‘A Visit to God: A Religious Experience in the Peruvian Community of Choque Huarcaya,’ Bijdragen Tot de Taal-, Land-en Volkenkunde, 124 (1968), 22–39;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Zuidema, R. Tom, ‘Inca Kinship,’ in Andean Kinship and Marriage, Bolton, R. and Mayer, E., eds. (Washington, D.C., 1977), 240–81.Google Scholar Also see Earls, John and Silverblatt, Irene, ‘La realidad física y social en la cosmologia andina,’ Proceedings of the XLI International Congress of Americanists (1976, Paris), IV, 299–335.Google Scholar

14 Cobo, , Historia del Nuevo Mundo, II, 70, 146, 156;Google ScholarCieza, , La crónica del Perú, 119;Google ScholarPoma, Guaman, El primer nueva corónica i buen gobiemo, I, 68, 99.Google Scholar

15 Cieza, , La crónica del Peru, 114;Google Scholarde Zúniga, ínigo Ortiz, Visita de la provincia de León de Huánuco [1562], Vol. I (Hu´nuco, 1967)Google Scholar, passim; idem, Visita de la provincia de León de Huánuco [1562], Vol. II (Huánuco, 1972), passim; Garci Díez de San Miguel, Visita hecha a la provincia de Chucuito … en el aōo 1567, passim; Karen Spalding, ‘Indian Rural Society in Colonial Peru: The Example of Huarochiri’ (Ph.D. diss., University of California, 1967), 178; Rodrigo Hernández Prícipe, ‘Mitología andina’ [1621], Inca, 1:1 (1923), 24–68.

16 Archivo Arzobispal de Lima (cited hereafter as AAL): Leg. 6, Exp. XI, f. 14.

17 See Príncipe, Hern´ndez, ‘Mitologia andina,‘ 50–63. The relationship between Incas and curacas was an interesting and paradoxical one. Even though Inca ideology legitimized curacas in imperial hierarchies, the Incas also viewed themselves as ‘protectors of the people‘ against the abuses of local elites. So while legitimizing curacas, the Incas also tried to set them against both their commoner kinsmen and the Cusco establishment. Part of Inca propaganda to the peasantry was based on an elaboration of this ‘protector’ image.Google Scholar

18 Albomoz, ‘Instrucción para descubrir todas las guacas del Perú …,’ 18.

19 See Eric Hobsbawn, ‘Introducion: Inventing Traditions,’ as well as the entire collection of essays in The Invention of Tradition, Hobsbawm and Ranger, eds. While the Incas were not on the road to Western nationalism, Hobsbawm's insights into the invention of tradition—which were developed in reflecting on the making of the European nation-state—are thought-provoking for the Andes.

20 Principe, Hernández, Mitología andina, 26, 34, 37, 51, 58, 66;Google Scholar Father de Arriaga, Pablo José, The Extirpation of Idolatry in Peru [1621], Keating, L. Clark, trans. (Lexington, 1968), 117;Google Scholarde Avila, Francisco, Dioses y hombres de Huarochirí [1598?] (Lima, 1966), 77–84;Google Scholar Spalding, ‘Indian Rural Society in Colonial Peru,’ 11–14, 140; Duviols, Pierre, ‘Huari y Llacuaz. Agricultores y pastores. Un dualismo pre-hispánico de oposición y complementaridad,’ Revista del Museo National, 39 (1973), 153–193.Google Scholar

21 Garcilaso, . Comentarios reales de los Incas, II, 222;Google Scholar III, 98–117; Cieza, , Del senorio de los Incas, 59–63.Google Scholar

22 Cobo, , Historia del Nuevo Mundo, II, 145.Google Scholar

23 Ibid.; Albornoz, ‘Instrucción para descubrir todas las guacas del Perú …,’ 17; Cieza, , Del senorio de los Incas, 150–152;Google ScholarMurúa, , Historia del origen y geneología real de los Incas, 117.Google Scholar

24 Polo ‘Relación de los fundamentos acerca …,’ 96; Cobo, , Historia del Nuevo Mundo, II, 110.Google Scholar

25 Cobo, , Historia del Nuevo Mundo, II, 68, 125.Google Scholar

26 Polo, ‘Relación de los fundamentos …,’ 96, 114; Cobo, , Historia del Nuevo Mundo, II, 110, 145;Google ScholarMurúa, , Historia del origen y geneologia real de los Incas, 117;Google ScholarCieza, , Del senorio de los Incas, 59–63, 114–17.Google Scholar

27 Albomoz, ‘Instruction para descubrir todas las guacas del Peru …,’ 17.

28 Ibid, 20, 35; also cf. Molina, ‘Relatión de las fábulas y ritos de los Incas,’ 77.

29 Although this paper argues for the significance of Andean ritual battles, at the time of the Spanish conquest Cusco's control over many aspects of local religion seems to have been primarily theoretical. Local groups went about worshiping their sacred beings as they had done before. Murra makes a similar point concerning control over economic practices. He notes that many Inca claims to ensure the well-being of tributed peasants in practice reflected the traditional norms of reciprocity on which community members could draw. See Murra, , La organización económica del estado Inca, 135–97. Nevertheless, I am arguing that these imperial ritual pretensions are highly significant—whether or not they were actually put into practice—for understanding processes and potentialities of state formation and reproduction. For a fascinating account of Inca reconstructions of ideological forms based on archaeological evidence, see Timothy K. Earle and Catherine Costin, ‘Inca Imperial Conquest and Changing Patterns of Household Consumption in the Central Andes,’ paper presented at the Sixth Annual Meeting, Society for Economic Anthropology, University of Illinois, Urbana-Charapaign, 1986.Google Scholar

30 See Ávila, , Dioses y hombres de Huarochirí; and Hernández Príncipe, ‘Mitologia andina.’Google Scholar

31 For a more detailed analysis of the aclla as an institution through which the Incas forged control over non-Inca groups, see my ‘Andean Women in Inca Society,‘ Feminist Studies, 4:3 (1978), 37–61;Google Scholar and Moon, Sun, and Witches. The rich chronicler sources include Cobo, , Historia del Nuevo Mundo, II, 134, 231–32;Google ScholarPoma, Guaman, La nueva crónica y buen gobierno, I, 137, 216–18;Google ScholarMurúa, , Historia del origen y geneología real de los Incas, 156, 248–55; Polo, ‘Relation de los fundamentos acerca …,’ 90–91; Valera, ‘Relaci6n de las costumbres antiguas de los naturales del Pirú,’ 167–170.Google Scholar

These attempts at imperial redefinitions of kin ideologies should be further explored in light of other emerging transformations in economic and political relations away from kin-based structures. The institution of the aclla would be a prime case in point. These women, as Murra underscored, made important contributions to imperial production. They were weavers in a society where the exchange of cloth took on political, economic, and ritual functions. Alienated from their kin groups and placed directly under the command of the state, the labor of these fulltime retainers was directly controlled by the elite, as opposed to the majority of labor, which was appropriated through the mediation of kin groups. Non-kin-based institutions conflicted with those rooted in kin, and these contradictions were the source of tensions within the elite and between the elite and the peasantry. Murra first pointed to the economic contributions of the aclla and to the accompanying political economic transformations away from kin-based structures in La organizacidn econdmica, 76–81, 117–30 passim, 215–62. See also his ‘New Data on Retainer and Servile Populations in Tawantinsuyu,’ Actas Memorias del XXXVI Congreso Internacional de Americanistas, Espana (Seville, 1966), II, 35–45.Google Scholar

32 Hernández Príncipe, ‘Mitología andina,’ 52, 60–63. R. Tom Zuidema has also discussed the rites of the capacocha in analyses of Hernández Principe's manuscript. Cf. his ‘Kinship and Ancestor Cult in Three Peruvian Communities: Hernández Principe's Account of 1622,’ Bulletin de I'lnstitut Francais d'Etudes Andines, 2:1 (1973);Google Scholar and ‘Shaft Tombs and the Inca Empire,’ Journal of the Steward Anthropological Society, 9:1–2 (1977).Google Scholar

33 Príncipe, Hernández, ‘Mitologia andina,’ 60–61.Google Scholar

34 Ibid., 62.

35 Ibid., 29, 41

36 In support of this contention, we should note that all local marriages held in conquered communities were ritually confirmed by the state's representative. Even though most local marriages were held according to local customs, nevertheless, the Incas claimed to regulate them all. Poma, Guaman, La nueva crónica y buen gobierno, I, 179;Google Scholarde Zúniga, Ortiz, Visita de la provincia de León de Huánuco, I, 53;Google ScholarMurua, , Historia del origen y geneologla real de los Incas, 418. Also see my ‘Andean Women in Inca Society,’ and Moon, Sun, and Witches, for a fuller discussion of the Inca's manipulation of the institution for symbolical control of local social reproduction.Google Scholar

37 Molina, , ‘Relation de las fábulas y ritos de los Incas,’ 29–45;Google ScholarPoma, Guaman, El primer nueva corónica buen gobierno, I, 210–234;Google ScholarCobo, , La Historia del NuevoMundo, 218;Google ScholarMurua, , Historia del origen y geneologia real de los Incas, 350. See particularly Murúa, 350, and Cobo, 281, for descriptions of the purification festival of Situa, during which the ‘wives of the Sun’ gave sanco, a consecrated bread, to all the foreign huacas and headmen in Cusco. This communion was considered a sign of loyalty to and confederation with Cusco.Google Scholar

38 See Ávila, , Dioses y hombres de Huarochirí, 113; as well as Albornoz, ‘Instrucción para descubrir todas las guacas del Perú,’ 18, who describes how Incas established huacas among the local divinities as they went about conquering provinces. These huacas were emblems of loyalty to Cusco.Google Scholar

39 AAL: Leg. 4, Exp., s.n.; cf. f. 39 for reference to house-roofing ceremonies.

40 Hernández Príncipe, ‘Mitologia andina,’ 37. Reconstructions of Inca society based on colonial sources always run the risk of attributing to the Incas what were actually colonial creations. Marriages of Inca gods to local deities might have been a colonial product that developed as natives sought to legitimize resistance to Spanish rule—a suggestion made by the thoughtful anonymous reviewer. However, I think this unlikely, since a turn to the Incas as a form of ‘neo-nationalism’ apparently did not emerge until after the period under question. While messianic and nativistic strains can be discovered in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century documents consulted here, they do not use an Inca phraseology.

41 Pockets of native support of the Spanish conquest also bear witness to Inca unpopularity. See Mena, ‘La conquista del Peru,’ passim; de la Hoz, Pedro Sancho, ‘Relación para SM de lo sucedido en la conquista y pacificación de estas provincias de la Nueva Castilla y de la calidad de la tierra’ [1543], in Biblioteca peruana, 1st ser., Vol. I (Lima, 1968), 275–344Google Scholarpassim; Pizarro, Heraando, ‘Carta de Hernando Pizarro a la Audiencia del Santo Domingo’ [1533], in Biblioteca peruana, 1st ser., Vol. I (Lima, 1968), 117–32 passim;Google ScholarPizarro, Pedro, ‘Relación del descubrimiento y conquista de los reinos del Peru’ [1571], in Biblioteca peruana, 1st ser., Vol. I (Lima, 1968), 439–586passim. See also Murra, ‘La Guerre et les Rebellions dans l'Expansion de l'Etat Inca,’ as well as note 8.Google Scholar

Another telling condemnation of an Inca frame to construe the world and interpret the past was revealed during the Taki Onqoy movement, a messianic revolt that shook the Ayacucho and Apurimac highlands, just west of Cusco, thirty years after the Spanish conquest. All of the major mountain gods of the Andes—the great dynastic founders from Ecuador to Northwest Argentina—were going to engage the Spanish in battle for control over the Andes. According to the movement's adherents, who gave testimony to their prophesy of battle, the Andean gods were going to align themselves along two axes: one centered at Lake Titicaca and the other centered at Pachacamac. Not once were any of Cusco's mountain gods or any imperial deities listed on the rolls of Andean warriors. Albornoz, Cristóbal, Las informaciones de Cristóbal de Albornoz. Documentos para el estudio del Taki Ongoy (158?], Millones, Luis, ed. (Cuernavaca, 1971), 1/66–67.Google Scholar

42 Duviols, Pierre, La lutte contre les réligions autochtones dans le Pérou colonial: L'extirpation de l'idoldtrie entre 1532 et 1660 (Lima and Paris, 1971), 382;Google Scholar see also Cobo, , Historia del Nuevo Mundo, II, 70;Google ScholarWachtel, , Los Vencidos, 269–74;Google ScholarCieza, , La crónica del Perú, 197;Google ScholarCieza, , Del senorío de los Incas, 71–73;Google ScholarGarcilaso, , Comentarios reales de los Incas, II, 179–81, among others, for additional evidence of local support for the Incas.Google Scholar

43 Unfortunately, it is often very difficult to reconstruct, with much precision, the specific histories of Inca conquests and colonization practices. New provincial studies, however, are beginning to round out our picture. For an outstanding example, see Frank Salomon's study of the Northern provinces, Los senores étnicos de Quito en la epoca de los Incas (Ecuador, 1980).Google Scholar Also see Spalding, Karen, Huarochirí: An Andean Society Under Inca and Spanish Rule (Stanford, 1984), 72–105;Google Scholar María Rostworowski de Diez Canseco's contributions for the coast, Etnía y sociedad: Ensayos sobre la costa central prehispánica, Senores indigenas de Lima y Canta, and Estructuras andinas delpoder (Lima, 1983); Morris, Craig and Thompson, Donald E., Huánuco Pampa (London, 1985);Google Scholar and Julien, Catherine J., Hatunqolla: A View of Inca Rule from the Lake Titicaca Region (Berkeley, 1983).Google Scholar

44 This section builds on the work of Antonio Gramsci and his suggestive concept of contradictory consciousness. See his Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, Hoare, Q. and Smith, G. N., eds. and trans. (New York, 1973), 333–34.Google Scholar See also Femia, Joseph V., Gramsci's Political Thought: Hegemony, Consciousness, and the Revolutionary Process (Oxford, 1981) for a helpful explication of Gramsci's work.Google Scholar

45 Eugene Genovese, in Roll Jordan Roll, eloquently presents this dialectic of accommodation in resistance and resistance in accommodation for the antebellum U.S. South. Regarding the debate over the powers of hegemony versus institutional means to compel acquiescent behavior, my own study questions some of the writers opposed to concepts of hegemony, such as Scott, James C., Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, 1985);Google Scholar and Abercrombie, Nicolas, Hill, Stephen, and Turner, Bryan S., The Dominant Ideology Thesis (London, 1980).Google Scholar

46 Ávila, , Dioses y hombres de Huarochirí, 39, 109, 127, 131–33.Google Scholar

47 See Spalding, Huarochirí, 72–105, for an insightful discussion of Huarochirí under the Incas, which points out the economically and politically favored position that this society held. See also Patterson, Thomas C., ‘Pachacamac—An Andean Oracle under Inca Rule,’ in Recent Investigations in Andean Prehistory and Protohistory, Kvietok, D. Peter and Sandweiss, Daniel H., eds. (Ithaca, 1985), 159–76.Google Scholar

48 Spalding (Huarochiri, 82) suggests that the Incas made good use of at least some of the regions's more earthly powers: i.e., the special abilities of the lower Yauyos in warfare.

49 Ávila, , Dioses y hombres de Huarochiri, 127; for additional examples of deference to Inca jurisdiction over local religious matters, see 105, 113.Google Scholar

50 Ávila, , Dioses y Hombres de Huarochirí, 113.Google Scholar

51 It would be shortsighted to judge the existence of an ‘Inca culture’ by its success; for to establish the fragility of certain Inca institutions and then equate that fragility with insignificance overlooks the potentialities which contour social reproduction. Even if they are not embodied in institutions, potentialities are no less real contributors to social process. They too labor in the complex, dynamic, push-and-shove of state making. Blindness to possibilities also repudiates what the empire might have become. The chroniclers and other documentary sources let us glimpse only an unfinished process, which the Spanish conquest froze and then transformed into another contest for political dominion.

52 Again, it should be remembered that these transformations were taking place in the context of change in political and economic relations: an emerging transformation away from kin-based structures as the source of surplus appropriation. See note 31.