CONQUER, DOMINATE AND GOVERN. ACQUISITION, EXERCISE AND JUSTIFICATION OF POLITICAL POWER IN THE COLONIAL INDIGENOUS HISTORIES AND COSMOLOGIES OF THE CENTRAL ANDESAbstract
This article analyses colonial indigenous historical sources from the Central Andes to highlight, articulate, and interpret actions linked to the production, exercise, and justification of political power. Specifically, it analyses what are the pre-incaic and incaic actions related to conquering, dominating, and governing present in the writings of two indigenous people of the beginning of the beginning of the colonial period: Joan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamaygua, author of the Relación de antigüedades deste reino del Pirú, and Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala, author of the Nueva corónica y buen gobierno. The analyses resulted in a set of actions-verbs that shows the repertoire that these texts present as closely linked to the production and exercise of political power. It is argued that a significant portion of these verb-actions is incompatible with the prevailing theoretical framework in studies of Inca and pre-Inca sociopolitical organizations, which has recently been termed the sacrificial sociocosmic regime. Conversely, this same set of action-verbs would be compatible with the theoretical framework that has been termed animistic or shamanic sociocosmic regime, employed in recent decades to analyse the sociopolitical organizations and thought of the indigenous peoples of the South American Lowlands.
Keywords
colonial indigenous history; political power in the Central Andes; indigenous sociocosmic regimes; Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamaygua; Guamán Poma de Ayala
Resumo
O artigo analisa fontes históricas indígenas coloniais para destacar, articular e interpretar ações vinculadas à produção, ao exercício e à fundamentação do poder político nos Andes Centrais. Especificamente, analisa quais são as ações pré-incaicas e incaicas relacionadas ao conquistar, dominar e governar descritas ou mencionadas nos escritos de dois indígenas quéchuas-cristãos do início do período colonial: Joan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamaygua, autor da Relación de antigüedades deste reino del Pirú, e Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala, autor da Nueva corónica y buen gobierno. As análises resultaram em um quadro de verbos-ações que compõem o repertório apresentado por esses textos como estreitamente vinculados à produção e ao exercício do poder político. Argumenta-se que uma parte significativa desses verbos-ações é incompatível com o quadro teórico predominante nos estudos sobre as organizações sociopolíticas incas e pré-incas, o qual tem sido recentemente nomeado como regime sociocósmico sacrificial. Em contrapartida, esse mesmo conjunto de verbos-ações seria compatível com o quadro teórico que tem sido nomeado regime sociocósmico animista ou xamânico, empregado nas últimas décadas para analisar as organizações sociopolíticas e o pensamento dos povos indígenas das Terras Baixas da América do Sul.
Palavras-chave
história indígena colonial; poder político nos Andes Centrais; regimes sociocósmicos indígenas; Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamaygua; Guamán Poma de Ayala
Introduction
Since the end of the 19th century, Archaeological, Historical, and Anthropological studies have equated the form of certain pre-colonial societies of Indigenous America to the form of the ancient state-level civilizations of Africa, Asia, and Europe. These comparisons were made primarily on the basis of the common existence of monumental buildings and cities, hierarchized social stratification, centralization and institutionalization of political power, extensive tributary networks of domination, and writing systems and other modalities of notation. In the earliest synthetic works of Archaeological, Historical and Ethnological knowledge concerning Indigenous America, produced in the first half of the 20th century, it’s possible to observe the crucial role that the presence of these characteristics played in the classification of certain pre-colonial Indigenous societies as part of what were conventionally called the cultural super-areas of Mesoamerica and the Central Andes. On the other hand, the absence of these characteristics encouraged the classification of the remaining Indigenous societies of America into cultural super-areas much vaster in territorial terms and/or much looser in terms of internal cultural similarities. That’s the case of the so-called South American Lowlands, North America, and the Circum-Caribbean.5
Since then, because they belong to the select group of the so-called civilizations or state-level societies, the history and culture of the Indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica and the Central Andes have become among the most studied of the entire continent. They are the objects of a notable volume of research and publications. An expressive portion of these studies and publications, since the end of the 19th century to nowadays, has been dedicated to explaining sociopolitical structures and institutions, mechanisms for transmitting different duties and authority offices, and written and iconographical representations of political power.6 In general, despite the variety of theoretical and historiographic approaches and political biases, the majority of these studies and publications have explained the acquisition, the exercise, and the justification of political power in the Indigenous societies of Mesoamerica and Central Andes based on the same concepts and sociopolitical models that were employed in the initial studies we mentioned, which derived from analyses and models mostly dedicated to the ancient state-level societies of the Old World.
The formal approximation and the use of comparative approaches between the pre-colonial Indigenous societies of Mesoamerica and the Central Andes and the ancient civilizations of the Old World were grounded in two vast and related ideas. The first one: the material and formal similarities between societies with monumentality, urbanism, social stratification, tribute, specialized governmental institutions, writing etc., constitute sufficient evidence to classify them all, regardless of their temporal and spatial distances, as belonging to the last, higher and most complex stage of sociopolitical development in the trajectory of human history, i.e. the stage of state-level civilizations. The second idea: the comparative studies of state-level civilizations, even when separated by vast temporal and spatial distances, like the Sumerian and Mayan civilizations, are more productive for understanding the necessary factors for sociopolitical evolution, particularly to the state-level stage, than comparative studies of the relations between state-level societies and stateless societies, even if they are geographically and historically proximate, like the Amazonian and Andean societies. To reach the most advanced historical stage, it was thought necessary to go through all the previous stages, that is, to progress from the initial and common stage of the homogeneous tribes and pass through the stage of the segmented tribes and chiefdoms (CARNEIRO, 1981) before getting to the state-level stage. Therefore, the historical trajectory of the state-level civilizations and of the areas occupied by them would be whole by itself, and little benefit would be gained from its study if it were directed to the comprehension of their relations with the neighboring stateless societies and super-areas, where supposedly simpler sociopolitical organizations were presumed to predominate.
Moreover, it was believed that these different stages of sociopolitical evolution corresponded to distinct and hierarchized ordered levels of complexity of human thought. The terms magical thought, mythical thought, religion, and science are some of the most common expressions used to designate — without the same rigor as the concepts that refer to the modes of sociopolitical organization — these distinct and hierarchized modes of human understanding of the world. Thus, the presumably more advanced and evolved human communities would be those that combined the state-level sociopolitical organization with the institutionalization of one religion or, more rarely, with the development of a logical and empirical science. This latter combination, that was foreshadowed in Greco-Roman antiquity, would be reserved, in its full consummation, only to modern or contemporary Western societies, in other words, to the societies that created this model of historical explanation with universal aspirations.
This general model of historical interpretation also advocated the universal applicability of the modern notion of religion (DURKHEIM, 2001). The indiscriminate use of this term is based on the hypothetical universal validity of the ontogenetic and ontological separation between sacred ambit-beings, such as gods and their dwellings, and profane ambit-beings, like humans and their cities, combined with the submission and existential dependence of the latter in relation to the former. The application of this notion in studies of pre-modern and pre-scientific societies, of the Old World or New World, state-level or stateless, would demonstrate the insurmountable human-profane dependence on communication with sacred ambit-beings, more potent than humans and also responsible for their existence.7
In the case of state-level societies — or chiefdoms approaching state formation —, this essential task of communication would be executed by priests. They performed institutionalized offerings and rituals based on a common and consistent body of beliefs in specific places and moments dedicated to a well-defined pantheon of superior non-human beings upon whom human existence depend on. In short, from this perspective, ancient state-level societies counted on a religion for their sociopolitical functioning. In the case of societies socio-politically organized as homogeneous tribes, segmented tribes, or incipient chiefdoms, this office would be in the hands of the shamans, who pursue the same aims as the priests in a world with the same operating rules. But their practices, which don’t make up an institutionalized state religion, would be only modes of religiosity.
In short, according to this traditional interpretative paradigm, widely employed in Mesoamerican and Central Andean studies, in ancient state-level civilizations, political power would always be exercised and justified based on the validity of what has recently come to be termed a sacrificial sociocosmic regime in Indigenous Ethnology studies (DESCOLA, 1999; VIVEIROS DE CASTRO, 2002). This would constitute a particular mode of constructing, conceiving and articulating what we call the natural and social world. In this case, it is characterized by insurmountable and hierarchized discontinuity between gods (superior beings), humans (intermediate beings), and animals, plants, and minerals (inferior beings) and by the central presence of priests that perform ceremonies with offerings of inferior or equal beings to petition and acknowledge the superior beings.
In the case of the Central Andes, the studies of Luis Millones, María Rostworowski, Luis Guillermo Lumbreras and John Murra are very representative of the foundational employment of the explanatory model outlined above, despite diverging on certain aspects and conclusions. For instance, Millones (1987) and Rostworowski (1988a) advocate that the main bases for the exercise of political power on the earliest curacazgos or Andean chiefdoms, like Chavín, were the Andean mythico-religious foundations. Moreover, for them, this mythico-religious foundation had given way to a military-civil foundation in the later Andean cities and states, like those of the times of Wari and Inca political dominion. On the other hand, to Lumbreras (1981) and Murra (1987), this military-civil foundation, in other words, the accumulation of riches and military coercion, had always been the main source or background of political power in the Andean Indigenous world, from the most ancient chiefdoms to the Inca period. Still, in concordance with Rostworowski and Millones, Lumbreras and Murra also subordinate the priestly office of the Andean religion to the interests of the governing elites. This way, these authors attribute to them the supporting functions of maintaining political power that would rest in the hands of the warrior elites. The studies conducted by these four authors have made significant contributions to understanding specific aspects of the modes of acquisition, exercise, justification, and representation of political power in the macro-region of the Central Andes. However, like most of the Archaeological and Historical studies of this historical-cultural area, their proposals are characterized by the separation of the Central Andes and the rest of Indigenous America, including neighboring areas. That separation is justified by the supposedly complete and peculiar sociopolitical evolution of the Central Andes in relation to the rest of South America, as the former would have reached the level of an expansionist state and constituted a religion.
In disagreement with the universal application of the notion of religion and other foundations of the sacrificial sociocosmic regime, the studies on Indigenous politics of the South American Lowlands, especially those carried out in the last three decades about the Amazon area, have demonstrated the existence of a sociocosmic regime based on Indigenous conceptions that are very distinct of those that would justify the sacrificial regime. This recently outlined sociocosmic regime has been called animist and/or shamanic. Some of its propositions have challenged the supposed universal validity of the essential, insurmountable and hierarchized discontinuity between profane and sacred ambit-beings. Such discontinuity also encompasses, for the defenders of the universality of this proposition, the stateless societies of all the planet, with the difference that, in those, in the place of an institutionalized religion with coherent doctrines, there are various forms of religiosity, catalyzed by shamanic and pajelança practices.
The fundamental propositions of this other sociocosmic regime of animist or shamanic type establish ontogenic and ontological continuity between the diverse species of beings in the world. Those would be distributed contiguously in a single and not clearly hierarchized series of beings, that is, with relatively more symmetrical and horizontal interrelations than those proposed by the sacrificial sociocosmic regime. This relative symmetry among beings would exist because a significant proportion of them — felines, humans, ants, fish, certain insects, and plants, in addition to mountains, rivers, forests etc. — would also be composed of persons, just like human persons, with language, intelligence, will, and consistent action, that is, they would possess mind, soul, or spirit. To complete this theoretical framework, another fundamental proposition of shamanic or animist sociocosmic regimes is the possibility of reversible interspecific transformations. Although shared by all the beings of certain species as a potency, this capacity for reversible interspecific transformation would be managed only by some individuals of each species, through certain procedures and risks. These individuals would be, precisely, the shamans (DESCOLA, 1999; VIVEIROS DE CASTRO, 2002).
Recently employed in studies of the Indigenous peoples of the South American Lowlands, the field in which it was first conceived, the interpretative model of the animist or shamanic sociocosmic regime has been tested in research on other cultural super-areas of Indigenous America or even of other regions of the world. In principle, Mesoamerica and the Central Andes or any other cultural super-area of the planet in which state-level societies have been formed and where the sacrificial sociocosmic regime would be in effect were excluded. For most scholars who proposed and employed the shamanic or animist sociocosmic regime in their analyses, it is typical and characteristic only of stateless societies.8 This means that, for these researchers, material and formal similarities, in terms of sociopolitical organization, continue to be more relevant for establishing possibilities of comparisons and combined approaches than regional and historically concrete proximities and relations between neighboring societies or cultural super-areas, just like for the History, Archaeology and Anthropology scholars from the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century.9
However, challenging the recommendations of the proposers of the shamanic or animist sociocosmic regime themselves, some scholars have employed this interpretative model to analyze the history and culture of Indigenous peoples belonging to macro-regions of America that are marked by the existence of states. In the case of Mesoamerica, a few studies have demonstrated the great potential of this model to renew analyses and readings of historical sources and, thus, the understanding we have of the culture and history of these Indigenous peoples.10
Assuming that these new theoretical milestones have the potential to also renew the studies on the culture and history of the Indigenous peoples of the Central Andes, this article will analyze Indigenous historical sources with the aim of highlighting, listing, articulating, and interpreting the main actions and verbs that they link to the acquisition, exercise, and justification of political power in Pre-Inca and Inca times. These analyses resulted in a detailed survey of the action-verbs that these Indigenous texts repeatedly link to the production and exercise of political power among Pre-Inca and Inca societies, which, we argue, indicate actions considered fundamental to acquire and exercise political power by the Indigenous political traditions of the Central Andes.11 We propose that many of these action-verbs are strongly dissonant or incompatible with a sacrificial sociocosmic regime in the terms that we’ve described above. On the other hand, we suggest that these same actions seem harmonizable and compatible with the so-called shamanic or animist sociocosmic regime.
More specifically, we will analyze how the Pre-Inca and Inca acts of conquest, domination, and governance, that are manners of acquiring, exercising and justifying political power, are described by two Christian-Quechua Indigenous authors from the beginning of the colonial period: Joan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamaygua, author of the Relación de antigüedades deste reino del Pirú (SANTA CRUZ PACHACUTI, 1993), and Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala, author of the Nueva corónica y buen gobierno (GUAMÁN POMA DE AYALA, 1993).
The Relación de antigüedades deste reino del Pirú is a text written in Spanish with plenty of terms and excerpts in Quechua, completed around 1613 by Joan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamaygua, a native speaker of Quechua. The author was, supposedly, a curaca of average schooling, born in the Santiago de Hananguaygua e Huringuaygua community, between Canas and Canchis, in the region of Collasuyu, where his parents and ancestors were principal curacas. His Relación is centered on the history of the Incas, introduced as Pre-Hispanic Christianizers of the Central Andes. They would have carried out the mission left by Thonapa or Tarapaca, a character of the Andean cosmologies which the author identified with the apostle Thomas: to the detriment of the reverence to the huacas and local gods, the Incas would have disseminated the cult of Viracocha, identified by Santa Cruz Pachacuti with the Supremo Fazedor, that is, a kind of Pre-Hispanic announcement of the Judeo-Christian god.
The Nueva corónica y buen gobierno is a long text in Spanish which contains numerous terms and excerpts in Quechua, like the Relación, in addition to 397 pages of glossed drawings interspersed with the main text. This huge 1180-page testimony was made between 1590 and 1613–15, when it was finished and sent to Spain. Its author was the Christian-Quechua Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala, born in San Cristóbal de Suntuntu, region of Huamanga, and also a descendant of local Indigenous elites and a native speaker of Quechua. The first of the two big parts of his narrative, called Nueva corónica, on which we will focus because of its dedication to Pre-Inca and Inca history, introduces a conciliatory arrangement between the cosmological and historical explanations of Andean and Christian backgrounds, with some degree of political subordination of the Andean ideas and logics in relation to the Christian ones. In the first part of the narrative, the history of the world and human beings starts with a long summary of the biblical events related to the creation of the world and of men, to the universal flood, to the time of the prophets, to the life of Jesus Christ, and to the time of Christianity. However, it soon starts to focus on the history of the Indias del Peru, from its most ancient settlers until the time of Inca rule. The events and processes of this long Christian-Quechua cosmology and history are organized chronologically and separated into pachas or world-ages: Wari Viracocha Runa (First viracocha people), Wari Runa (First people), Purun Runa (Primordial or abandoned, interrupted people), Auca Pacha Runa (World-age of the people of conflicts), and Inca Pacha Runa (World-age of the Inca people).
Together with the Huarochirí Manuscript12, these two texts are among the historical sources that were most extensively analyzed by the studies dedicated to understanding the pre-colonial Indigenous cosmologies and histories of the Central Andes. The scholarly preference for these three texts is explained by the combination of their precocity and their robust links to Andean thought traditions with Pre-Hispanic roots, as they were created by members of Indigenous elites and still during the early colonial period13 (SANTOS, 2020). However, when these members of Andean elites with Pre-Hispanic roots produced these works, at least six decades of contact with Christians had passed. Moreover, in the regions in which these texts were produced, these contacts had been characterized by the gradual and increasing sociopolitical subordination of the Indigenous elites to the Christian ecclesiastical and political institutions. Thus, these cosmologies and histories introduce both categories and conceptions related to Andean thought of Pre-Hispanic background and to Christian thought from the beginning of the Modern Age, besides some new ideas and conceptions concerning the Christian-Quechua elites of this specific historical period. Therefore, one of the principal challenges in analyzing these texts is, by contrast and dissonance in relation to Christian political ideas, to notice the recording of actions and political concepts typical of the Indigenous traditions of the Central Andes. This doesn’t mean, as we will see, that the Andean political traditions didn’t manage ideas and actions that coincided, roughly, with those which we know are also present among the Christian political traditions from the beginning of the colonial period. We are also going to deal with these ideas and actions. However, our analytical attention and arguments lie preferably within the domain of actions and ideas which clash with the Christian framework of the beginning of the Modern Age — which, we assume, would be marked by the validity of the sacrificial sociocosmic regime — and which, on the other hand, harmonize with the component principles of what has been called the animist or shamanic sociocosmic regime.
1 – Battling, conquering and presenting warriors
Among Michel Foucault’s proposals for historical analyses of political power is the orientation to seek its production and exercise primarily in concrete and effective social practices, in the external aspect of the actions carried out by all the historical subjects involved. From this, among other things, one would seek to understand the direct and immediate relationships between these practices and actions, their objectives and targets, and the regimes of truth of each society or historical period in question. The systematic realization of practices of domination and subjection, which commonly employs force and coercion, would endow certain individuals or social groups with a considerable degree of power. Power not in the sense of property or riches, but of recognizable potencies or energies within the chain of social relations. These potencies in exercise would function like tacit or implicit threats that aim at obedience and sovereignty, excusing the continuous use of force and coercion (FOUCAULT, 1999; 2015). To achieve this, among other methods, the exercise of political power would draw upon individual and collective memories of practices of domination and subjugation, and the connections between these practices and memories and regimes of truth, and, we might add, with the historical-cosmological explanations of the societies in question.
Judging from Guamán Poma de Ayala’s and Santa Cruz Pachacuti’s narratives, battling, conquering and presenting warriors are among the most constant and abundant actions in the range of practices associated with the acquisition and exercise of political power. They are millenary practices in Andean politics and have occurred both in the Inca Period and in preceding Pre-Inca periods.
In the Relación, the first and most accentuated information about the two most ancient world-ages, called Purumpacha and Tutayacpacha, concerns the existence of groupings of warriors and a process in which peopling and taking places are indistinguishable acts: “Dicen que en tiempo de purumpacha todas las naciones de Tahuantinsuyo vinieron de hacia arriva de Potosí 3 o 4 ejércitos en forma de guerra. Así vinieron poblando, tomando los lugares, quedandose cada una de las companías en los lugares baldíos.” (SANTA CRUZ PACHACUTI, 1993, f. 3r.) Even if the places to be populated were vacant in terms of human population, it is noticeable that the modes of human occupation, division, and settlement would be characterized by the taking and settling according to the divisions of the warrior companies. These images set the stage for a central unfolding of the narrative of the Relación: the success of these conquest-settlement processes, certified by the multiplication of the population, would provoke, later, disputes over land, discord and, finally, constant warfare. Thus, the third world age, not named by Santa Cruz Pachacuti, would have been characterized by crescent conflicts and the uninterrupted construction of fortresses.
These same actions of battling, conquering and presenting warriors are also overwhelmingly present in the Nueva corónica, whether discussing the four pre-Inca world-ages or addressing the Inca world-age. In characterizing the first world-age, Wari Viracocha Runa, Guamán Poma associates the acts of conquering and taking possession of a piece of land to some kind of war against its non-human inhabitants, like serpents, jaguars, cougars, foxes, deer, and monkeys, besides beings similar to humans, such as duendes, and descendants of earlier humanities, like the hapiñuños. These wars of conquest would have established the human government, the señorear, over these other species:
Que en esta tierra primero uiuían serpientes amaro; saluages, zacha runa, uchuc ullco; ticres, otorongo; duendes, hapi nuno; poma, león; atoc, sorra; hozos, ucumari; luychoy, venados. Estos dichos primeros yndios Uari Uira Cocha los mataron y conquistaron la tierra y señoriaron ellos y se entraron en este rreyno de las Yndias por mandado de Dios.
(GUAMÁN POMA DE AYALA, 1993, f. 50)
This same type of conflict, between newer and earlier forms of humanity, is also present in the Relación, which characterizes the latter as infernal tyrants or demons, visible in Purumpacha, or as the beings he calls zacha runa or wild people. We may observe that, describing the most common actions related to the acquisition and exercise of political dominion, that is, the conquering and battling, the group of beings involved in these actions, both in the case of Santa Cruz Pachacuti and of Guamán Poma de Ayala, encompasses not only the human ancestors of the narrators, but also animals and other, older forms of humans, like the hapiñuños and the sacha runa, besides extraordinary or superhuman beings, like the viracocha runa. We will see that the presence of these other kinds of beings as targets of war, conquest, and government by humans, that is, as beings with whom social relationships are established, is very consonant with the notions proposed by the shamanic or animist sociocosmic regime.
Making this framework of political subjects and actions even more complex, the Nueva corónica establishes a distinction between the first two world-ages and their people and the later world-ages and people which is very significant for our analyses. From Pacha purun runa or World-age of the primordial people onward, humans would have started to produce social stratification expressed through and manifested by “...pulicías y galanterías y plomages” (GUAMÁN POMA DE AYALA, 1993, f. 58) which took place in villages and cities with monumental edifications. This distinction is clearly pointed out in the description of the second world-age, Pacha huari runa or World-age of the huari people, still marked by the absence of these actions and social configuration:
De cómo los muy antigos yndios que llamaron Pacarimoc Runa [“los de la aurora”, los originarios de la humanidad], Uari Uira Cocha Runa, Uari Runa no tenían oficios ni artificios ni beneficios ni guerra ni casa ni ninguna cosa, cino entendían rronper tierra uirgen y hazer andenes en las quebradas y en peñas.
(GUAMÁN POMA DE AYALA, 1993, f. 55)
The human choice for “...pulicías y galanterías y plomages” would have fostered wars of conquest between human communities and the consequent emergence of captains, lords, and kings who possessed litters and were accompanied by retinues. The emergence of this new mode of sociopolitical organization would have been accompanied by its fast dissemination throughout all the Central Andean region and by significant population growth. This situation caused the beginning of the conflicts and wars over firewood, vegetable fiber, land, water, gold, and silver (GUAMÁN POMA DE AYALA, 1993, f. 62). This structure would have been universalized in the subsequent ages, with the construction of fortresses or pucaras, the growth of organizations of warriors and the establishment of hierarchies between them, the diversification of weapons, the wars against Indigenous peoples of distant regions, the growth of the number of deaths and captives, and the acquisition of great riches by certain lords (GUAMÁN POMA DE AYALA, 1993, f. 64-65).
From the fourth world-age onward, which Guamán Poma de Ayala aptly names Pacha auca runa, or World-age of the people of conflict, the acts of battling, conquering, and presenting warriors would have become central to the acquisition and exercise of political power in the Central Andes. In addition to being legitimized through these actions, more expected and universal, the acquisition and the exercise of political power were also carried out through more particular and unexpected actions, which we will analyze later, like the capacity of transforming into falcons, jaguars, serpents, and condors during battle that some warriors possessed. These transformations, although abundantly depicted in Guamán Poma de Ayala’s narrative and in the Huarochirí Manuscript, have been the object of little or no attention in recent studies that deal with characterizing the Indigenous political traditions of the Central Andes.14
Characterizing the Inca world-age, Guamán Poma de Ayala and Santa Cruz Pachacuti portray it as a continuation of the sociopolitical framework that was formed in the previous world-ages. Nonetheless, it involves a new development or element: the conflicts and wars would have become so constant and widespread since the third world-age that the memory or experience of them would have been universally present among the Indigenous communities and political confederations of the Central Andes. This would make the mere presentation of warriors sufficient, in many cases, to generate or maintain the desired political and tributary subordination.
In this regard, Santa Cruz Pachacuti affirms that one of the sapa incas, Lloque Yupanqui, “No había hecho conquistas como su abuelo aunque al cabo de su vejez, para dar espanto a los enemigos que tenía, habían hecho ejércitos de guerra visitando a sus provincias.” (SANTA CRUZ PACHACUTI, 1993, f. 11v). This procedure of acquisition and exercise of political power would coexist with the actual battling, an activity which, according to both authors, involved increasingly larger groups of warriors at the time of Inca political dominion. The number of warriors presented by Santa Cruz Pachacuti is remarkably high. In the case of Topa Yupanqui, he affirms that he had been sent to Quito by his father, Pachacuti Yupanqui, with one hundred and twenty thousand warriors. The same Topa Yupanqui would have headed to combat in Collasuyu with one hundred and twenty thousand warriors and, sometime later, entered and tried to conquer Antisuyu with three hundred thousand warriors. On another occasion, Topa Yupanqui would have also dispatched two captains with twenty thousand men each to combat enemies in the current region of Chile. In the case of Huayna Capac’s northern expeditions and the disputes between his two sons, Atahualpa and Huáscar, over the position of sapa inca after their father’s death, the figures presented by Santa Cruz Pachacuti are even higher. According to him, Huayna Capac would have arrived in the region of Machu Picchu and Sicchu Puruhuay with a contingent of one and a half million warriors, representing the entirety of his military forces, and the conflicts between his two sons would have involved three million warriors allied with Huáscar and one and a half million allied with Atahualpa.
Even if exaggerated or implausible, these figures build potent and eloquent narrative images, which exalt the acts of battling, conquering, and presenting warriors. To some extent, these verbal images echo the relevance that such acts surely possessed within the Indigenous sociopolitical traditions of the Central Andes for the acquisition, exercise, and justification of political power. This relevance is confirmed by other testimonies, Indigenous or Spanish, and by the general overview provided by Archaeological studies.15
However, this set of acts is far from exhausting the range of sociopolitical actions linked to the acquisition, exercise, and justification of political power in the pre-Inca and Inca Central Andes. As we already know, the actions of battling, conquering, and presenting warriors find parallels in the constitution of political and tributary dominions across ancient state-level societies, whether from the Old or New World. The same would occur with the actions that we will analyze next: negotiating dominion and mediating conflicts. In both cases, we would be in the ambit of phenomena which are amply disseminated in the history of state-level sociopolitical organizations and, which, for this reason, are not capable of fully particularizing or explaining the acquisition, exercise or justification of power among the Indigenous political traditions of the Central Andes. Nevertheless, these bundles of actions have been the main or exclusive objects of the studies that try to characterize the functioning and justification of political power in the Pre-Inca and Inca Indigenous societies. Yet, as we will try to demonstrate in the third and fourth parts of this article, there are two other sets of actions that are more diacritic and particular and, thereby, should not be neglected in the characterization of the sociopolitical traditions of the Central Andes during the pre-colonial period.
2 – Negotiating dominion and mediating conflicts
The actions of negotiating dominion and mediating conflicts are present in the Nueva corónica and in the Relación as much as battling, conquering, and presenting warriors. This suggests that all these actions were, possibly, equally regular and relevant practices in the acquisition, exercise, and justification of political power. In both narratives, the acts of negotiating dominion and mediating conflicts are mainly associated with the period of the formation and consolidation of the Tahuantinsuyu. The temporal proximity between Inca domination and its dissolution in relation to the time of the creation of both works contributes to explaining their narrative emphases on the functioning of the Tahuantinsuyu and, on the other hand, through the more schematic treatment of the previous political macrostructures. For obvious reasons, historical memories are commonly more detailed when dealing with more recent ages and more schematic when dealing with remote times.
Additionally, the narrative emphasis on the Tahuantinsuyu is justified by the fact that we are dealing with a specific form of political power, found only in certain of the Central Andean regions and historical phases, named horizons in the Archaeological and Historical literature. This kind of political power is acquired and exercised very broadly in regional terms and across dozens of confederations and political networks with more restricted territorial reach. Therefore, it’s only in this kind of political configuration that we can have, for example, the main Inca ruler, called sapa inca, mediating conflicts among the lords of varied Aymara confederations. In short, we are referring to a state-level and expansionist sociopolitical macrostructure, the Tahuantinsuyu, which overlapped dozens of confederations and regional states. It produced a political dominion built not only through battling and conquering, but also through negotiating and mediating.
Neither of these two narratives attributes historical originality or exclusivity to the Incas in the creation and operation of this type of political macrostructure. Both the Relación and the Nueva corónica show the Tahuantinsuyu as the most recent version of a long political tradition, whose existence supposedly dates back at least to the Middle Horizon (550 to 1000/1100), characterized by the dominions of the Tiahuanaco state and the Huari centers. It’s in this sense that Santa Cruz Pachacuti refers to political conflicts between the Central Andean Indigenous nations in world-ages prior to the time of the Tahuantinsuyu and that Guamán Poma de Ayala makes a long list of the great kings and emperors, who would have had dominion over other kings and rulers since the first world-age. To leave no doubt about his awareness of the existence of sociopolitical macrostructures prior and similar to the Tahuantinsuyu, after listing the great kings, Guamán Poma de Ayala states that “Éstos fueron rreys y enperadores sobre los demás rreys y fue señor apsoluto en todo su rreyno de los yndios antigos desde su nación, aunque abía otros muchos reys de cada fortaleza.” (GUAMÁN POMA DE AYALA, 1993, f. 75).
According to the Nueva corónica, among the political practices employed by the Incas for the acquisition of dominion over chiefdoms and regional states, besides maintaining local authorities through political pacts following successful wars of conquest, there was also the simultaneous existence of two supreme Inca rulers. In most of the colonial texts, the second ruling position and supreme authority in the Tahuantinsuyu was called villac umu, vilaoma or segunda persona (ROSTWOROWSKI DE DIEZ CANSECO, 1988a). In spite of the precarious knowledge that we possess about the functions and activities of the vilaoma, surely his existence amplified diplomatic capacity with the various main Incaic lineages — the panacas — and, also, with potential allies of other ethnicities. Guamán Poma de Ayala attributes relevance to segundas personas, listing all of them, from Topa Inca Yupanqui’s to Huáscar’s and Atahualpa’s.
The schematic introduction of the Incas’ segundas personas in the Nueva corónica is combined with the construction of a detailed picture of the actions of all the incas principais or sapa incas. Among these actions, the mediation of conflicts between local lords or between political communities incorporated into the domains of the Tahuantinsuyu, especially through direct interference in political-territorial disputes by means of the settlement of border markers in subjugated regions. These actions were supposedly carried out by Viracocha Inca, Topa Yupanqui, and Huayna Capac (GUAMÁN POMA DE AYALA, 1993, f. 106 e 107). Santa Cruz Pachacuti reiterates the relevance of the establishment of border markers throughout all pueblos by the Incas and adds information about the imposition of punishment for transgressors. These would have been ordered mainly by Maita Capac, sapa inca who would have obtained, thus, a prolonged phase of peace in the Tahuantinsuyu.
The acquition of negociated political and tributary dominions, that is, without conquest wars, also appears in the Relación, especially in the case of the various kingdoms of the Collasuyu, because, although some of them were conquered through warfare, others were supposedly made part of the Tahuantinsuyu through agreements carried out between Pachacuti Yupanqui and the Aymara rulers: “Vueve (Pachacuti Yupanqui) al Cuzco y comienza a conquistar a todos los collasuyos y sujeta a otros por bien de paz...” (SANTA CRUZ PACHACUTI, 1993, f. 19v). Still according to the Relación, the combination of military conquests and negotiations would have permitted that Pachacuti Yupanqui rapidly advanced in the establishment of Tahuantinsuyu’s political dominions over local confederations, some of which, in fact, would have had anticipated this process by seeking him out to propose a negotiated submission. In the Inca campaign against the Huancas, for instance,
Ellos (os huancas) hacen su concierto general y salen para Paucaray llevando mucha bebida y comida, presentes y doncellas, entregándole las armas que tenían, de lo cual el inca queda contento, agradece la obediencia por bien de paz y les promete a todos los curacas de las 3 parcialidades el premio y galardón confirmándoles su curacazgo natural, añadiéndoles nombres de apo.
(SANTA CRUZ PACHACUTI, 1993, f. 20v)
In short, Santa Cruz Pachacuti and Guamán Poma de Ayala construct a vision of Inca dominion that combines military and diplomatic actions, like the mediation of local conflicts and superimposed, negotiated dominion, which would maintain local authorities as apus or lords within the Tahuantinsuyu. In the next item, we will deal in detail with the role of reciprocity in the Pre-Hispanic political traditions of the Central Andes. However, it’s worth pointing out from the outset that the actions of mediating conflicts and negotiating dominions, in conjunction with the practice of reciprocity, have been frequently mentioned by the most recent studies and presented as the main means of the rapid establishment and maintenance of the Tahuantinsuyu. In this regard, these studies have differed from the previous ones, which emphasized military actions and the supposed direct presence of Inca governors, warriors, and fortresses in all the territory encompassed by their dominions.16 Nonetheless, whether they are older or more recent, the studies of Inca and Pre-Inca politics have been mostly focused on the two bundles of actions that we have analyzed until now, supplemented by the practice of reciprocity. We argue that this is due to the easy conciliation of these two sets of actions and of reciprocity with the theoretical framework of the sacrificial sociocosmic regime. From this perspective, the sapa incas and their priests would be humans who were specially designated to carry out the intermediation between common people and powerful huacas, like Inti, Illapa, Viracocha, and Pachacamac, for instance, through offerings that sought to obtain favors or blessings. However, in this world that was relatively stable and hierarchized in layers of essentially distinct beings, how to explain the episodes in which these same sapa incas scold or destroy huacas? Or, yet, the episodes in which human warriors turn into beings of other species and, because of that, supposedly also count as huacas? These other types of action, significantly present in both the narratives analyzed here and also in the Huarochirí Manuscript, harmonize more easily with the propositions of what has been called the animist or shamanic sociocosmic regime, which, until the present moment, has been thought to apply only to stateless Indigenous societies.
3 – Feasting and practicing reciprocity
In this section, we will deal with a set of action-verbs which, although not exclusive to Inca and Pre-Inca political traditions, is extremely relevant to characterize them. Even though they’re also part of the state politics of conquest and domination in other regions of Indigenous America, as in Mesoamerica, the prominence attributed to the acts of feasting and reciprocating seems to be one of the most relevant distinctive characteristics of the Central Andean political traditions, especially when it comes to practicing reciprocity.
This prominence of reciprocating and feasting — which, most of the time, is a collective way of reciprocating — is depicted in the Nueva corónica and in the Relación. It is highly significant that the Nueva corónica locates the tradition of hosting public feasts precisely in the world-age characterized by the emergence of distinguishable and politically asymmetrical social strata, that is, since the Pacha purun runa or World-age of the primordial people. As we have seen, according to Guamán Poma de Ayala, asymmetries and identification with the social stratum of the rulers were expressed by monumental buildings, fine clothing, plumages, and other forms of gallantry enjoyed by captains, lords, and kings, who also had litters and were accompanied by retinues of warriors and servants. In return, these lords regularly promoted huge feasts and drinking sprees for the entire community (GUAMÁN POMA DE AYALA, 1993, f. 59).
Moreover, Guamán Poma de Ayala highlights the drinking sprees, alongside the wars and conquests, as one of the oldest and most significant features of Inca and Pre-Inca political practices: “Ci le faltasen estos dichos tres uicios de enborracharse y guerra y quitarse sus haziendas en guerra no tubiera, fueran sanctícimos hombres en este tienpo ci llegase su apóstol de Jesucristo.” (GUAMÁN POMA DE AYALA, 1993, f. 75). Other excerpts from the Nueva corónica suggest that these drinking sprees were, to a large extent, collective. Dealing with the subsequent world-age, Auca runa or Of the people of conflicts, Guamán Poma reiterates the centrality of feasting, of offering food and beverage within asymmetrical sociopolitical relationships. When mentioning the existence of a ruler of the four suyus or world parts, called pacarimoc capac apo or señor poderoso y primordial, for the first time, he affirms that all the capac apo were simultaneously warlike and benevolent, as they ate and drank in public squares to offer to poor people and travelers (GUAMÁN POMA DE AYALA, 1993, f. 65-67).
Discussing the Incas, the Nueva corónica situates the practice of reciprocity through public feasts and drinking sprees among the sociopolitical acts most often carried out by the sapa incas and, furthermore, severely disapproves of the miser Inca rulers, as was the case of Inca Roca (GUAMÁN POMA DE AYALA, 1993, f. 102-103). But the emphasis of the narrative relies, without a doubt, on the hosting of huge feasts and on the generous stance of the Inca elites and sapa incas towards the kingdoms and lords subjected to the Tahuantinsuyu and in relation to the lower social strata within the Inca ethnic group itself. These were supposedly the dominant stances and practices of Vira Cocha Inca, Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui, and Topa Inca Yupanqui (GUAMÁN POMA DE AYALA, 1993, f. 106-111).
In a similar manner, the Relación frequently attributes generosity and the acts of composing feasts to the sapa incas, beginning with Manco Capac, even before the existence of the Tahuantinsuyu. In constructing this characterization, Santa Cruz Pachacuti creates narrative links between the acts of gifting and feasting, on one hand, and the obligation of retribution, on the other hand, which, articulated, characterize reciprocity. For instance, when dealing with the episode in which Manco Capac offers feasts and gifts to his visitors, he mentions that “...después quedaran obligados a ser sus vasallos y de su hijo Sinchi Roca.” (SANTA CRUZ PACHACUTI, 1993, f. 10r). Addressing the dominions supposedly acquired and exercised by Manco Capac, the Relación provides us with a dense synthesis of the articulation between battling and feasting, which the sapa inca combined in his actions:
Muchas provincias y naciones de los tahuantinsuyos vinieron ellas mismas, de sus bellas gracias, con presentes ricos. La nueva del nuevo inca había corrido con gran fama dándoles en qué entender. Unos estuvieron muy alegres, otros afligidos, porque oyeron que era más poderoso que ninguno de los más valientes, más venturoso en las armas y más amado de los valientes y capitanes y, en general, de los pobres y de la gente común.
(SANTA CRUZ PACHACUTI, 1993, f. 8r)
This same combination, between battling and feasting as ways of establishing asymmetrical links based on reciprocity, appears in the Relación when the sapa inca Yáhuar Huácac is mentioned:
Al fin manda pregonar en toda su provincia guerras, diciendo si querían haber guerras de fuego y sangre. Visto por las provincias desobedientes, con el temor grande que les daba, obedecen y acuden al Cuzco trayéndole presentes. Entonces hace la fiesta del nacimiento de su hijo (...) El inca da una vuelta al rededor del Cuzco con su gente de guerra, sin dar guerra ninguna.
(SANTA CRUZ PACHACUTI, 1993, f. 17v)
This mode of action is, with variations in emphasis, remarkably stable in the various narrative images which the Relación constructs for all the sapa incas and their ways of acquiring, exercising, and justifying their dominion and political power. Some of these images are: 1) Maita Capac’s, who would have ordered great drums to be manufactured for the cápac raimi festival, which lasted an entire month; 2) Yáhuar Huácac’s, who, imposing new taxes to the provinces, would have faced a widespread uprising and remained peaceful until “...los naturales, viendo que el inca estaba tan quieto, acuden a darle obediencia de nuevo trayéndole presentes de todas las clases, acordándose de la mucha franqueza del inca...” (SANTA CRUZ PACHACUTI, 1993, f. 17r); 3) the image of Topa Yupanqui, who would have dispatched visitors and diplomats to visit all the kingdom and drink and eat together with the local curacas; 4) the image of the same Topa Yupanqui, who, finding out rumors about his possible meanness in the capac raimi festival which he had promoted in Cuzco and to which he had invited the elites of all Tahuantinsuyu, would have ordered big plates and qeros to be produced to serve food and drink to his guests three times a day, without allowing them to go out to piss or defecate.
Moreover, the Relación demonstrates that the reciprocities offered by the sapa incas to the curacas and local warriors who had participated in their conquest campaigns didn’t occur solely through the promotion of feasts after the campaigns, but also through anticipated gifting. In this regard, about Huayna Capac, Santa Cruz Pachacuti affirms that:
Estando así reparte las armas, vestidos y comida para la gente que había de ir a la conquista. Entonces los curacas hacen juramento y dan cargos a los oficiales de guerra. Vuelven los curacas cada uno a sus tierras, llevando cajas y unanchas enarboladas, con las armas en las manos. El inca promete grandes cosas a los curacas con juramento solemne de cumprirlas mejor que sus pasados y señala días para juntarse en un día de todas partes con sus gentes de guerra, municiones y cosas necesarias. Al cabo de año y medio acude de todas partes gente lucidísima que no cupo en el Cuzco. El inca despacha con diligencia repartiendo las armas a cada soldado y entregándolas en sus propias manos.
(SANTA CRUZ PACHACUTI, 1993, f. 34r)
As we can observe, feasting and reciprocating constitute extremely important practices to characterize the Central Andean Pre-Hispanic political traditions according to both narratives. As we have mentioned, these actions, especially gifting as a form of reciprocity, have often been highlighted by recent studies dedicated to characterizing Andean sociopolitical traditions. Nevertheless, in most cases, this is done based on the conceptual framework offered by the sacrificial sociocosmic regime. This results in the characterization of the sapa incas, priests, and ruling elites as privileged intermediaries between the common people and the huacas or gods, in a world formed by beings or social strata organized in a vertical, stable, and unquestionably hierarchical manner. Supposedly, in this sociopolitical edification with clearly outlined and vertically disposed layers, there should be submission and obedience of the below in relation to those above. However, some of the narrative images we have evoked seem to point to another manner of conceiving this sociopolitical edification, as they deal with situations that don’t fully harmonize with the framework marked by stabilized hierarchy and the constant submission of humans to huacas. The feasts and drinking sprees in the creation of political links and the obligation of generous retribution by beings with more political potency in their relations with beings with less political potency — which would include the huacas in relations with humans — would be among these narrative images.
Next, we will see that, for the Andean traditions of thought, the set of actions that constitute the sociopolitical relations between the various groups of beings of the world goes far beyond a supposed submission of fragile humans to powerful huacas and presents situations or ways of interacting which exceed the conceptual framework offered by the sacrificial sociocosmic regime. We will see that this argument is grounded in the existence of episodes in which the relationships between huacas and humans are highly symmetrical, horizontal, or even characterized by a bigger potency of certain humans in relation to the huacas. Moreover, both the Relación and the Nueva corónica also contain episodes in which certain humans, animals, or huacas turn into beings of other species and then turn back into their initial condition.
4 – Horizontally relating to the huacas and turning into beings of other species
The following analyses will focus on sociopolitical actions which, traditionally, have received limited scholarly attention: horizontally relating to the huacas and turning into beings of other species. In the conclusions, we will explore the reasons for this lack of attention to actions which, judging by the narratives of Santa Cruz Pachacuti, Guamán Poma de Ayala, and the Huarochirí Manuscript, constitute themselves as highly relevant to the acquisition, exercise, and justification of political power during the Pre-Inca and Inca periods.
We have mentioned, in the first part, that the Relación and the Nueva corónica depict episodes in which the historical agents are not limited to the human ancestors of the narrators, but also include the animals and other species of humans, different and older, such as the sacha runa and the hapiñuños, besides extraordinary or superhuman beings, such as the viracocha runa. In these narratives, all species of beings, not only humans and huacas, possess subjectivity, intelligence, consciousness, and language, through which they carry out their own objectives and establish interspecific person-to-person relationships — as occurs in the vast majority of Amerindian histories and cosmologies. Among these other species of beings, bearers of what we call anima, mind, or spirit, are especially other species of animals, but also certain categories of plants, besides mallquis and pururaucas, respectively, mummified or petrified ancestors. Human beings would establish varied and complex social relationships with these other species of persons, which were marked by the same protocols that characterized interactions among humans. Moreover, to make this environment even more complex and incompatible with the assumptions of the theoretical framework offered by the sacrificial sociocosmic regime, some beings of these various species that bear anima would have had or developed the ability to turn into beings of other species during a certain period of time or in certain circumstances. When it comes to humans, this ability would manifest mainly through their transformations, especially among warriors, into certain animals, but also into huacas, especially in the case of the sapa incas, considered living huacas. In this brief overview, there are two characteristics which studies of Amazonian Indigenous cosmologies have identified as central to the animist or shamanic sociocosmic regime: the dissemination of anima beyond human and superhuman beings and the possibility of interspecific and reversible transformation.
Both of the narratives analyzed here depict episodes that demonstrate horizontal relationships between humans and huacas and also transformations of humans into certain animals, presenting both types of episodes as effective manners of acquisition and exercise of political power.
The Nueva corónica mentions at least three episodes in which warriors or rulers turn into animals. The first mention occurs in the Pacha auca runa or World-age of the people of conflict, characterized by the massive presence of pucaras or fortresses, various types of weapons, and numerous captives and warriors. Some of these warriors “...se tornauan en la batalla leones y tigres y sorras y buitres, gabilanes y gatos de monte.” (GUAMÁN POMA DE AYALA, 1993, f. 65). The second and third mentions occur in relation to the sapa incas Manco Capac, whose name meant amaru or serpent, and Inca Roca, who transformed himself into “...otorongo, él y su hijo, y así conquistó todo chuncho.” (GUAMÁN POMA DE AYALA, 1993, f. 103). The three mentions establish a direct connection between some humans’ capacities to turn into animals and turn back into their human state and the matrix of acquisition of their military and political forces.
With regard to the symmetrical relationships between humans and huacas, both narratives are remarkably prolific in describing them. According to the Nueva corónica, the relationship between the huacas and the humans who exercised political power appears to be inscribed into some kind of progeny or kinship, that is, many of the rulers were considered descendants of the primordial beings of Pacha Vira Cocha, the first World-age of the Viracochas: “Destos yndios de Uari Uira Cocha, los dichos legítimos y los mayores, que llamaron pacarimoc capac apo [señor poderoso y primordial], salieron señores grandes. Y los uastardos y menores salieron gente baja. Multipricaron y fueron llamados Uari Runa y Purun Runa; salieron muy mucha gente.” (GUAMÁN POMA DE AYALA, 1993, f. 51). This would be the case of the sapa incas and other powerful lords before them, as all of these capac apo or great lords would descend from the ancient beings of Wari Viracocha and, because of that, would have been considered huacas in posterior world-ages. Certainly, this link through descent helps to establish relatively horizontal and symmetrical relationships between these great political lords and other categories of huacas, as they would also be living huacas, whose ancestors date back to previous world-ages.
In the Nueva corónica, the relationships of the incas with the huacas and their mallquis — and also with the pacarinas or places of origin — are regularly guided by reverence and offerings, aspects that have often been highlighted in studies about the exercise of power in the Tahuantinsuyu, especially when it comes to Inca demands that politically subjugated groups should revere and make offerings to huacas linked to the history and ancestors of the Incas themselves (HERNÁNDEZ ASTETE, 2015; CURATOLA PETROCCHI & SZEMINSKI, 2016). In the Nueva corónica, this aspect is depicted, for instance, in the actions of Manco Capac and Capac Yupanqui (GUAMÁN POMA DE AYALA, 1993, f. 86, 100-101). Nonetheless, the same narrative contemplates actions and relationships between certain humans and huacas that don’t harmonize with the notion of human submission through offerings that would help to obtain favors or blessings from beings that are always more powerful. For instance, the eighth sapa inca, Vira Cocha, would have threatened to burn huacas and the tenth sapa inca, Topa Inca Yupanqui, would reportedly converse casually with huacas every year (GUAMÁN POMA DE AYALA, 1993, f. 106-107, f. 110-111). Moreover, in the case of the eleventh sapa inca, Huayna Capac, the destruction of huacas wouldn’t have remained merely an intention, because
Quiso hablar con todos sus ídolos y uacas del reino, dicen que ninguno de ellos no le quiso responder a la pregunta y así les mandó matar y quebrar a todos los ídolos, dió por libre a los ídolos mayores Pariacaca y a Caruancho, Uallallo, Paucarcolla, Puquina, Quichicaya Coropuna, Sauasiray, Pitosiray, Caruaraso, Ayzabilca, y el sol y la luna...
(GUAMÁN POMA DE AYALA, 1993, f. 113)
The destruction of huacas carried out by Huayna Capac would have had precedents among his predecessors. According to the Relación, Mayta Capac, whose existence had supposedly been marked by prodigies since he was in his mother’s womb17, summoned all the huacas to Cuzco to honor and celebrate them, but this was a trap to use them as the foundation and basis of a new edification. Given this situation, “Dicen que muchos ídolos y huacas huyeron como fuegos y vientos, otros en figura de pájaros, como Aisahuilca, Chinchaicocha, el huaca de los cañares, Vilcanota, Putina, Coropuna, Chiquihuacra, Choquepillo. Por esta burla del inca dicen que toda la tierra tembló, más que en otro tiempo de sus pasados.” (SANTA CRUZ PACHACUTI, 1993, f. 12v).
The Relación also depicts confrontations between other sapa incas and huacas in which the former win. It is the case of Manco Capac and his encounter with Sáñuc, an enemy huaca, still during Inca migration prior to the founding of Cuzco. This huaca appeared in human form, but was made of stone, and stunned the two brothers of Manco Capac, who struck it, won, and continued on their way. An event with a similar outcome would also have happened with the sapa inca Pachacuti Yupanqui, who, in his conquest campaigns, found “...7 huacas y demonios en figura de curacas muy grandes (...) eran llamados Aisahuica, Pariacaca, Chinchaicocha, Huallallo, Chiquihuacra y otras dos de los cañaris...” (SANTA CRUZ PACHACUTI, 1993, f. 20r). Pachacuti beat them and sent them to work in Cuzco and then along the coast, by the sea of Pachacamac and Chincha. As he progressed in his conquests, Pachacuti Yupanqui was received and gifted by curacas and huacas of various localities, from which he “...sale sin pedir tributos como en las demás provincias.” (SANTA CRUZ PACHACUTI, 1993, f. 21r).
We can observe, in this last episode, that the relationships between the sapa incas and the huacas are not always described as grounded in destruction and conflict, but also as cooperative. Both cases appear to point to highly efficient modes of acquisition and exercise of political power or to ways of justifying it. These cooperative relationships between humans and huacas are abundantly present in the Nueva corónica and in the Relación. Santa Cruz Pachacuti’s text, for instance, reports that Huayna Capac, during the capac raimi festival, received messengers from the huaca Pachacámac, who spoke inside the Coricancha, saying that he would like to see the sapa inca and promise great things to him. After this episode, Huayna Capac visited him in person and agreed to make more buildings for him and give him more riches (SANTA CRUZ PACHACUTI, 1993, f. 34r-35v). Still in the Relación, the partnership between sapa incas and huacas is also reported in the episode in which Huáscar sent messengers to consult various huacas, who foretold victories to him; but, as the predictions didn’t happen, Huáscar uttered words of contempt to them.
All of these episodes demonstrate that the sapa incas and the so-called apo capac or great lords, would establish very horizontal sociopolitical and personal relationships with the huacas, whether through cooperation or dispute. In some senses, these political lords were also huacas or, putting it another anyway, were political lords because they were or had turned into huacas, whether they were dynamically alive or in a latent state of life in the form of mallquis or pururaucas.
Final considerations
We’ve seen that the Nueva corónica and the Relación depict a fairly broad and varied range of action-verbs, which characterize the acts of figures who stand out in the acquisition and exercise of political power in the Pre-Inca and Inca states. The four sets of most relevant action-verbs detected by our analyses, due to their simple narrative reiteration, were, in this order of magnitude: 1) battling, conquering, and presenting warriors; 2) negotiating dominion and mediating conflicts; 3) feasting and practicing reciprocity; 4) horizontally relating to the huacas and turning into beings of other species.
By assessing the presence of these groups of action-verbs in studies about the acquisition and the exercise of political power in Central Andean pre-colonial Indigenous societies, we’ve noticed that such studies have focused only on the first two bundles of actions, made limited use of the third, that is, more focused on reciprocating than on feasting, and fully neglecting the fourth bundle of action, which appears in Indigenous colonial testimonies just like the other three. Predominantly, studies consider the first two bundles of actions — battling, conquering, and presenting warriors; negotiating dominion and mediating conflicts — as the practical and material bases for the acquisition and exercise of political power, interpret the third — feasting and practicing reciprocity — in order to construct fixed and hierarchical relationships between beings of various species — and say little or nothing about the last bundle of actions — horizontally relating to the huacas and turning into beings of other species. Moreover, using the theoretical framework of the sacrificial sociocosmic regime as an interpretative basis, these studies present the Inca and Pre-Inca rulers and authorities as agents that act in a world or order marked: 1) by the existence of an essential and hierarchical separation between the huacas, at the top of the chain, humans, in the middle, and animals and plants, at the base and serving as the most common and numerous offerings made by humans to huacas; 2) by the indispensable partnership with priests in the intermediation of the relationships between these types of beings, which carried out incessant offerings and sacrifices to please the huacas and obtain favorable favors for humans.
Distinctly, the analyses and considerations that we’ve carried out in the third part of this article demonstrate that feasting and reciprocating can be interpreted by means of another framework of theoretical references, which highlights the celebration as a significant way of establishing a constant, close, and relatively horizontal relationship between humans with distinct levels of political power. In turn, the examinations and inferences that we’ve developed in the fourth part demonstrate that the sociopolitical actions of horizontally relating to the huacas and turning into beings of other species, although ignored by most studies, play a central role in the two analyzed historical sources and, we suggest, to some extent, also in the practices of acquiring, exercising, and justifying political power in the Central Andean Pre-Hispanic Indigenous societies themselves. This argument is supported by the potentiality of Santa Cruz Pachacuti’s and Guamán Poma de Ayala’s texts to depict practices and conceptions characteristic of the Central Andean Indigenous world, despite the presence of general arguments from a Christian background, as such practices and conceptions are also found in texts which are even more grounded in Indigenous traditions when it comes to their production, like the Huarochirí Manuscript.
Therefore, we argue that the recurrent neglect which studies of Inca and Pre-Inca politics pay to this fourth bundle of action is due, forcibly, to the inertial application of the analytical model that framed the Central Andean state-level Indigenous societies as part of the sacrificial sociocosmic regime. In our understanding and research approach, as relevant actions described in Indigenous historical sources don’t find a place in this theoretical framework, it’s necessary to value the information given by the sources and test other theoretical frameworks or interpretation models to, thus, achieve an understanding that valorizes the specific functioning of the Central Andean Indigenous political traditions.18
What is more, the recurrent presence of horizontally relating to the huacas and turning into beings of other species in these historical sources approximates the Indigenous political traditions of the Central Andes to those of the South American Lowlands. If we invest in this approach and in the possibility that the Indigenous peoples of the Central Andes and of the Amazon shared, for instance, the foundations of what’s been called animist or shamanic sociocosmic regime, what happens with the four sets of actions that we’ve analyzed? In the first place, the resignification of many aspects of the first three. For instance, battling could involve the momentary transformation of certain humans into predator animals, and this capacity could contribute to these humans acquiring the condition of huaca. But the main result would be harmonizing the actions that we’ve analyzed in the fourth part of this article — relating to the huacas in a relatively horizontal manner and turning into beings of other species —, as they are widely compatible with the theoretical framework offered by the notion of an animist or shamanic sociocosmic regime.
Other relevant consequences of this (re)inclusion of the Central Andes in Indigenous America — marked, maybe, by the widespread presence of the animist or shamanic sociocosmic regime — may include less dichotomous manners of understanding the relationship between this macro-region and the other areas of the South American Lowlands.19 Besides that, this (re)inclusion could demonstrate that the Central Andes no longer lends itself to the role of a state-level and sacrificial counter-model to characterize, by contrast, the stateless political traditions of the Amazon or of the South American Lowlands, as it’s still very common in studies of Amazonian Indigenous politics.20 Embracing these possibilities doesn’t mean disregarding the existing differences between the Central Andean and Amazonian Indigenous societies, but only not automatically assigning them to the supposed existence of two distinct and somewhat incompatible regimes: one of them, typical of all state-level societies on the planet; the other, typical only of the stateless Amerindian societies. This involves investing in research aimed at understanding the actual historical relationship between contiguous cultural super-areas as potential factors in the generation of similar and shared conceptions, ideas, and ways of constructing and understanding the natural and social world, as in the case of the Central Andes and the Amazon. It’s about questioning theoretical frameworks that valorize formal or theoretical determinations — such as those which supposedly approximate all the state-level societies of the Old World and the New World — at the expense of empirical information from historical sources, especially when such evidence is abundant.
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Data availability
All available data is in the text
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