Cummins-Andean Festivals and Reciprocity

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Andean Abstraction

AND Colonial

Images

ON

Quero Vessels

Ai\JNE-INNI F'Ec,

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1

Toasts with the Inca

SERIES EDITOR

Sabine MacCormack, University of Michigan

SERIES BOARD

J. N. Hillgarth, emeritus, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies

Peggy K. Liss, Independent Scholar

David Nirenberg, Rice University

Adeline Rucquoi, cole des Hautes tudes en Sciences Sociales

TITLES IN THE SERIES

The Mirror of Spain, 1500-1700: The Formation of a Myth

J. N. Hillgarth

Bishops, Councils, and Consensus in the V isigothic Kingdom, 589-633

Rachel L. Stocking

Toasts with the Inca: Andean A bstraction and Colonial Im ages

on Quero Vessels

Thomas B. E Cummins

THOMAS B. F. CUMMINS

History, Languages, and Cultures of the

Spanish and Portuguese Worlds

This interdisciplinary series promotes scholarship

in studies on Iberian cultures and contacts from the premodern

and early modern periods.

Ann A rbor

THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS


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CHAPTER TWO

3 8

itu

s a part

of this dis

roduction

moves to c

orent f

first intera

ish role of

written tex

act.

7 3

One

must try tc

...Lulli. w locate tne quero/aquilla

in Andean and Inca imperial myths and rituals. How and why was the

quero/aquilla used by the Inca? Why was the vessel accepted by

Andeans as a legitimate form to materialize the intersection between

Inca mythological claims and the reality of Inca rule?

73. See P. Seed,

Ceremonies of Possession in Europe's Conquest of the New W orld,

1492-1640

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1995)

69-99.

Andean Festivals and Re ciprocity

The status of the quero and aquilla in Inca production allied with the

Inca's heightened emphasis on the production of corn as Tahuan-

tinsuyu's quintessential religious and social crop.I Not only was there

massive, state-organized corn production in areas like the Cochabamba

Valley, but entire populations were permanently resettled from higher

elevations, where tuber crops were grown, to the valley floors, where

corn could be intensively cultiVated.z More important, even though

maize was eaten as a food during the meal, its symbolic importance was

recognized in drink. The distinction was clearly marked by the tempo-

ral and categorical organization of Inca ceremonial feasts. Only after

the meal had been eaten would the second part of the feast, the drink-

ing, begin.3

The preeminence of drink over food in Inca feasts is a comm on fea-

ture in all Andean celebrations, as is attested by almost every Spanish

chronicler who mentions the subject. For example, an anonymous

Jesuit writes, they began their feasts and banquets, in which eating was

very little . . . but drinking was extreme. 4 This statement might be

t . J. Murra, Rite and Crop in the Inca State, in

Culture in History: Essays in Honor

of Paul Radin (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960),

398

-

401

z. Such resettlement took place, for example, in the Janamarca Valley; see T. D'Al-

troy, Empire Growth and Consolidation: The Xauxa Region of Peru under the Incas

(Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1981), r t;

Provincial Power in the Inka

Empire (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992).

3.

Bartolom de las Casas writes, Nunca jams beban sin que de comer hobiesen

acabado (De las antiguas gentes del

Per [ca. 1557],

CLDRHP, zd ser. , II [1939]: tz8). See

also J. de Betanzos,

Sum a y narracin de los Incas Capacruna que f ueron seores de la ciu-

dad de Cuzco y de todo lo a ella subjetado [1551[ (Madrid: A tlas,

1987),

chap. 13, p. 158;

Garcilaso de la Vega,

Comentarios Reales de los Incas

[1609-17] (Buenos Aires: Emec Edi-

tores SA,

1943),

bk. 6, chap. zz, p. 5z. This organ ization is still basically followed in Andean

feasts, although the introduction of

trago,

hard grain alcohol, has altered the pattern some-

what (Gary U rton, personal communication with the author, 1982).

4.

..

comenzaban los convites y banquetes en que el comer era muy poco. . . . Pero

el beber era extremado (Anonymous, Relacin de los costumbres antiguas de los natu-


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40

oasts with the nca

interpreted as the hyperbole of a priest trying to combat native drink-

ing. Nonetheless, this anonymous Jesuit was judicious and balanced

about what constituted custom in a society. He prefaces his remarks by

saying:

the customs and manne rs of a nation and the people of its republic

ought to be measured not by that which a few individuals or

addicts do but rather by what the whole community keeps or what

they feel they ought to keep and by the laws that they have and

carry out. . . . In the first place, drunkenness and intemperance in

drinking was like a characteristic passion of these people.

5

In this light, the Jesuit's statement is more than just hyperboleAqha

Lcorn beed was the important element in these feasts, and it was drunk

using queros and aquillas. The feast existed only through its perfor-

mance, so that whatever elle the quero and a quilla might be or express

must be read through their participation in the feast. The Andean feast

must be the focus and a point of departure for understanding these ves-

sels as social objects, things that participate in the life of a

community.

But

what was an Andean community? In the terms in which the

quero or aquilla participated, it is sufficient to call it an

ayllu,

a collectiv-

ity of a number of lineage groups, each also called an

ayllu. Each lineage

group reckoned itself through desceni from a specific ancestbf. The ayllu

as a collectivity in turn recognized itself through the descent from a com-

mon, oftentimes mythological ancestor.

6

As a totality, the ayllu

was orga-

nized into moieties

,

called Hanan and Hurin in the southern sierras._

The lineage groups of both Hanan and Hurin were ranked in order of age

according to an originary genealogy. Each moiety had a curaca, or leader,

such that there was a Hanan curaca and a Hurin curaca.

rales del Per [ca. 1550], in

Tres Relaciones de antigedades peruanas,

ed. M. Jimnez de

la Espada (Asuncin, Paraguay: Editorial Guarania, 195o), 177.

5.

Los costumbres y usos de una nacin y gente de su repblica, no se han de medir

por lo que algunos particulares viciosos hacen, sino por lo que toda la comunidad guarda

siente que se debe guardar, y por las leyes que tienen y ejectuan. . . . Primeramente, la

embriaguez y la destemplanza en el beber fu como una propia pasion desta gente (Anony-

mous, Relacin de las costumbres,

175).

6.

The li terature on the Andean conc ept of ayllu is vast. My condensation is from F.

Salomon, introduction to

The Huarochir Manuscript: A Testament of A ncient and Colo-

nial Andean Religion,

comp. Francisco de Avila, trans. F. Salomon and G. Urioste (Austin:

University of Texas Press, 1991), 21-23; J. Ossio,

Parentesco, Reciprocidad y Jerarqua en

Los Andes: Una Aproximacin a la organizacin social de la com unidad de A ndamarca

(Lima: Pontificia Universidad Catlica del Per,

2992), 214

-

301.

ANDEAN FESTIVALS AND RECIPROCITY

1

These elements of Andean social organization, well known to

Andean scholars, are important to the discussion in this book, for sev-

eral reasons. First , the Inca themselves were divided into Hanan and

Hurin as was every province of Tah uantinsuyu.7 Second, the social and

symbolic categories of Hanan and Hurin continued into the colonial

period and are important elements for understanding colonial quero

imagery. Third, Andean feasts were spatially organized according to

Hanan and Hurin affiliation and the age ranking of each lineage group.

Finally, the production and use o f queros in pairs is inextricably con- f

nected to the symbolic categories that represent this social organization.

The Ayllu Feast: Reciprocity and Authority

Andean feasts were usually held to honor a deity, to mark some aspect

of the agricultural calendar, or to celebrate a special event, such as the

first haircutting of an

ata,

a child born with a reverse w horl in his or her

hair. 8

Whatever the specific focus of a feast, it was normally organized

in a fashion similar to other feasts, to express the various relations

among the constituent elements of the ayllu community. The feasts

were ritual acts of reciprocity, reaffirming that the cosmic and social

order of the comm unity was inexorably rooted in the

Social

relations of

production. First, the feasts provided a communa l means of venerating

and propitiating the people's deities and/or progenitors. Secon d, they

conveyed comm unal solidarity. Third, when the entire community par-

ticipated, the feasts indicated the curaca's elevated status and marked

his obligation to the com munity by his responsibility to hold fea sts. In

all three cases, the relations were forged by som e form of kinship and

were ritually consummated by the mutual exchange of food and drink.

The intent of the exchange of food and drink was to signify that

one gave and received back that which was needed to maintain the

vitality of the community's subsistence economy. In the metaphysical

sphere, deities (huacas) were actual ancestors or mythical progenitors,

w-

6

-

7

-7-

ere fed and give drink in return for the -health; propitious

7.

For a fuller discussion that takes into account regional differences and the impor-

tance of

a dual and quaternary structure, see M. Prssinen,

Tawantinsuyu: The Inca State

qd

Its Political Organization,

Studia Historica

43

(Helsinki: SHS, 2992) , 304-71.

8.

See F. de Avila, comp.,

The Huarochir Manuscript: A Testament of Ancient

and

Colonial

And ean Religion

[ca. 1608], trans. F. Salomon and G. Urioste (Austin: University

of Texas Press, 1991), 151-53.


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4

oasts with the nca

.

At the ayllu and

moi-

ety levels, members, by exch anging toasts, were reminded of their oblig-

ation to aid one another in personal and communal work, to sustain

their shared livelihood. The curacas and the ayllu/moiety members also

exchanzed toasts, which, along with the curacas' obligation to host the

feasts, signified that the curacas acknowledged the services they had

received from the com munity. In return, the community recognized the

curacas' authority to oversee ritual ceremonies, coordinate communal

tasks, and redistribute land and resources.9

The last exchange in the feast represented the most tenuous aspect

of social relations. Here, the relationship between curaca and ayllu

entailed the willingness of the community to render to the curaca more

labor value than they received from him. It marked their agreement to

forgo the real reciprocity conducted between themselves in exchange

for periodic symbolic reciprocity with the curaca in the feasts, for the

sake of a stable social and political structure. At the village level, this act

also signified the fact that the curaca's position was not absolute.

Although the curaca's economic role was in fact redistributive in func-

tion rather than truly reciprocal, he had to perform his end of the bar-

gain if he wished to continue receiving the goods and services of his

community. At this stage of social and political organization, the curaca

had no power base for his authority other than the community itself, of

which he was a kin member. The differentiation between reciprocity

and redistribution was therefore not acknowledged. They were seen as

one and the same: the condition of all social and econom ic relations on

which the community's survival rested depended on the fulfillment of

all obligations, and this condition was always couched in terms of reci-

procity.

The precariousness of this relationship only became apparent in the

early colonial period, when the norms of Andean behavior were

forcibly disrupted. For example, during his 1566 visita to the north

coast, Gregorio Gonzlez de Cuenca outlawed the curacas' right to dis-

pense aqha. He almost immediately rescinded the order, after receiving

a barrage of complaints from the local curacas, who outlined the law's

disastrous effects. The curaca Don Juan Puenape, the

segunda persona

of Jequetepeque, carefully explained, [the prohibition] will be cause

not to obey, and we will not be able to work the community field and

house service, bring the Indians together for

mita [corporate labor

within the ayllu], or anything else necessary to govern this

repar-

9. See K. Spalding,

Huarochir: A n An dean Society und er Inca and Spanish Rule

(Palo

Alto: Stanford University Press,

g 0-

71.

9-4


3

timiento

a distribution of Andean labor because through

food and drink to the Indians, they obey their curacas and leaders. I In

a similar petition, Don Cristbal Lloco, the curaca of San Pedro de

Lloco, underscored the paramount importance of aqha in the feasts:

through aqha, the Indians obey us, which they will not do if it is not

given to them. II It is evident from these statements and similar ones

from the sierrasIl that the obligations of the curaca were necessary and

that if they were not carried out, the curaca became ineffectual.

The apparent fragility of the curaca's authority, however, was

revealed only after the Spanish arrival, when the integrity of the feasts

was violated. Prior to this disruption, the feasts acted as an integrative

force, conflating all relationships into one celebration that conceded as

natural the interdependence and alliance between all entitieshuacas,

curacas, and ayllu members.

The same mode used to express the internal alliances of a commu-

nity was used to express the external alliances between different com-

munities. Feasts were used to signify the interdependent relations needed

for common defense, trade, and large projects involving corporate

labor. However, as long as these alliances were conducted among

roughly equal communities who shared whatever benefits derived from

the alliances, a permanent political hierarchy between the communities

was not formed.13 In this sense, the relationship between allied commu-

nities was distinct from that between the curaca and his community,

where unequal hieratic relations permanently existed. Between the

curaca and_ the ayllu, the symbolic reciprocity conducted in feasts subli-

lo. ... ser causa que (no) obedescan ny podremos hazer la sementera de comunidad

y obras de la casa della ny juntar los indios que se dan mita ny otras cosas necesarias al

gouierno deste rrepartimiento porque mediante dar de comer y beber a los yndios obedes-

can a sus caciques y principales (Archivo General de Indias, Justicia 458, fol. 1941v, cited

in P. Netherly, Local Level Lords on the North Coast of Peru [Ph.D. diss., Cornell Uni-

versity, 1977], 216).

u.

...

mediante la chicha nos obedescen los yndios lo qual no haran si les faltase

(Archivo General

de Indias, Justicia 458, fols. 194ov-1941r, cited in Netherly, Local Level

Lords, zi6).

I2. For example, the highland curaca Cristbal Xulca Condor explained que le

hagan los indios alguna casa, junta los indios y les habla y ellos se la hacen y les da de comer

y beber en todo el tiempo que en ello trabajan y no les da otra paga y es lo que se usa entre

los caciques y la misma orden tienen en el labrar de las chacaras (I. Ortiz de Zga, Visita

de la Provinicia de Len de H unuco

[1561] [Hunuco: Universidad Nacional Hermilio

Valdizn, 1967-72], 1:44).

13.

See, for example, the description of the political organization of the Chincha Val-

ley in C. de Castro and D. Ortega Morejn, Relacin y declaracin del modo que este valle

de Chincha y sus comarcanos se governavan antes que oviese yngas y despus q los hobo

hasta q los (christian)os entraron en esta tierra [1558], in Quellen zur Kulturgeschichte des

priikolumb ischen A rnerika,

ed. H. Trimborn (Stuttgart,4)

236-3 8

.9.3-


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44

oasts with the nca

mated the inherent hierarchy of age rank among lineage groups as well

as the curaca's authority and redistribution of go ods, so long as all oblig-

ations were fulfilled. Among allied communities, each group retained its

relative autonomy, and a feast by one group for another did not auto-

matically signify the fulfillment of anticipated obligations.

This relationship is recounted in mythic tercos in a Huarochir

manuscript written in Quechua at the beginning of the seventeenth cen-

tury. In this telling, the Inca sovereign has difficuity subduing some par-

ticularly obstinate rebels and calls all the huacas of Tahuantinsuyu to

Cuzco. They assemble in Cuzco's main plaza, H uaycapata Plaza, where

the Sapa Inca a sks for their aid. He beseeches them , asking rhetorically

why they thought he had given them food, drink, and other gifts.

Almost all of the huacas remain constant and rebuff his request for

help. Only Maca U isa, the son of the all-powerful huaca of Huarochir,

acknowledges the Sapa Inca's plea, but in exchange for Maca Uisa's

help, the Sapa Inca enters into an alliance by which he m ust worship

Pariacaca, Macah U isa's father, and give fi fty men to serve him.'4

The mythic narrative transforms and inverts the real sociopolitical

relations between the people of Hua rochir and the Inca. It nonetheless

demonstrates that the feasts in the plaza were the m ain forum where

ideal social and political contracts were forged, according to willful rec-

iproca) behavior.I

5

More importantly, the myth, although recounting

relations in Tahuantinsuyu as an already well-coalesced state system,

provides testimony concerning the incipient development of the empire

and the role that feasts and drinking had in it as a mea ns of signifying

sociopolitical relations. Here, it occurs in a myth recorded in a commu-

nity subjugated by the Inca. Spanish accounts gathered in and around

Cuzco also privilege the feast as major n arrative element in the telling of

Inca history. Although these Spanish texts are filtered through language

and cultural barriers, their consistency in relation to the Huarochir

mythic account allows for a study of the feast as it was used to narrate

Tahuantinsuyu's coming into being.

The Inca Feast The Rise of Tahuantinsuyu

In their beginning, the Inca were only one of a number of small ayllu

communities in the southern sierras. There is no reason, archaeological

14. Avila,

Huarochir Manuscript,

1146.

15.

For a detailed analysis of this process, see M. Rostworowski de Diez Canseco,

Reflexiones sobre la reciprocidad andina,

RMN

41 (1976): 34

1-54.


5

or otherwise, to suppose that they possessed any distinct advantage

over their neighbors. Their rise to power cannot be credited to Inca

innovation; rather, it is itiributable to theirability to exploit an already

existing

situatiOn, theoretically open to all Andean communities.

Inca growth was contingent on fulfilling mutual obligations with

other communities and then m anipulating those comm unities to Inca

advantage. This aspect of Inca development was neither disguised nor

purged from Inca history. Rather, Inca history is divided into two

periods or stages. The distinction between the two is m ost often marked

by the exploits of the Inca's principal cultural hero, Pachacuti, the

eighth rulerin particular, by his defeat of the Chanca. After this vic-

tory, Pachacuti is attributed with renovating Cuzco (especially the Cor-

icancha, the temple of the sun), establishing a uniform code of law, and

initiating the wo rship of his predecessors. More precisely, he is credited

with devising the p olitical, social, religious, and econom ic structure of

Tahuantinsuyu as it was when the Spanish arrived.i7 What is significant

about these mythohistoric exploits is the role the Andean feast had as

Tahuantinsuyu shifted from being a small ayllu community to an

expansionist imperial entity.

Whether Pachacuti was a mythical figure or a historical one is

therefore unimportant. What we know of Inca historical recollection is

a conflation of real events and mythohistorical interpretation filtered

through Spanish genres. What is important for understanding how the

Inca interpreted their development is that Pachacuti's reign personifies

the conceptual transition of Cuzco from a small ayllu community based

on alliances to a political organization with absolute power.

Juan Polo de O ndegardo articulated the em pirical aspects of this

shift when he tried to reckon the development and length of Inca his-

tory. He gives a span of no more than four hundred years, up to the

reign of Pachacuti, when the Inca were a small ayllu community

behetra) whose sphere of influence did not extend past the Yucay v al-

ley (just to the north of Cuzco) and Urcos (even closer, to the south).

Pachacuti 's defeat of the Chancasaccomplished with the aid of the

Canas and Canches, who, Polo says, went with Inca to the war

r6. See M. Rostworowski de Diez Canseco, Una Hiptesis Sobre el Surgimiento del

Estado Inca, in

El Hombre y la C ultura Andina, Acta y Trabajos,

vol. r (Lima: Editora

Lasontay, 1978) , 89-roo. See also R. Schaedel, Early State of the Incas, in

The Early State,

ed. J. Claessen and P. Skalnik (The Hague: Mouton, 1978), 189-91.

17.

Bernab Cobo writes, [Pachacuti] orden la repblica con el concierto, leyes y

estatutos que guard todo el tiempo que dur de entonces hasta la venida de los espaoles

(Historia del Nuevo Mundo

116531,

BAE 91-91 [1956]: hk. 12 ,

chap. 12 ,

p. -7-78.


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4 6

oasts with the Inca

because dierwerc] paid-and not-as-subjectsformed

the base

of all

other Inca victories. Polo goes on to say that because each province

defended itself without the aid of any other, the major challenge was

to subjugate the neighboring areas of Cuzco, because all those con-

quered joined with the Inca, and they [the Inca] were then always much

-stronger. 1 9

Prior to defeating the Chanca, the Inca dealt with their neighbors

not on the basis of force but through allianCe. This is suggested by

Polo's remark that the Cana

s and Canchs-

were paid, not forced, into

Inca service.

Paid

is not the correct term, however. Miguel Cabello Bal-

boa records how the Inca formally contracted their early alliances.

Describing the reign of Sinchi Roca, the second Sapa Inca, Cabello Bal-

boa says:

His rule and dominion did not extend six leagues in circumference,

although this area was heavily populated by natives of various lan-

guages and nam es [and] this [Sapa Inca] found the style to attract

these nations without anyone ever be ing annoyed in his court and

house, which was usually to have a table and filled cups for those

who wished to come.z

Cabello Balboa describes in general the style, the form of recom-

pense, by which alliances such as the one needed to defeat the Chanca

were maintained in this early period. The term

style

supposes the notion

of reciprocity expressed by the table and cups kept filled for expected

guests. This is what is meant by pay in an Andean sense. Sinchi Roca

is credited with this institution, but it was a traditional expression of

reciprocity that he was obliged to make as the leader of only one of a

number of small communities.zt The real pay that Polo mentions for

18.

... fueron con los ingas a la guerra pagados y no por via de seora (J. Polo de

Ondegardo, Relacin de los fundamentos acerca del notable dao que resulta de no

guardar a los indios sus fueros [1571],

CLDRHP,

ist ser.,

3 [5956], 46).

19.

Toda la dificultad que ubo fue en conquistar aquellas comarcas del Cuzco

porque todos los conquistados iban con ellos y eran siempre mucho ms fuerza (Polo de

Ondegardo, Relacin de los fundamentos,

47).

zo.

Su mando y seoro no se estenda seys leguas en circuito aun9ue gsta distancia

estaua muy poblada de naturales de varios lenguas y nombres este alo estilo ara atraer

y entretener estos naciones sin que su Corte y casa a nadie jamas enfada's,

ifti-fue tener de

ordinario mesa puesta y vasos llenos para quantos a ellos se quisiesen llegar (M. Cabello

Valboa,

Miscelnea Antrctica: Una historia del Per antiguo

[1586] [Lima: Instituto de

Etnologa, San Marcos, 1951], bk.

3,

chap. II, p. 274)

zi. By saying that Sinchi Roca alo el estilo, Cabello Valboa implies that Sinchi

Roca found the custom of holding such banquets useful, rather than creating the institution.


7

the Canches and Canas carne from the distribution of war booty or

from whatever other material gain carne from the alliance.

The Incas' relatively equal or undifferentiated status with neigh-

boring groups during this first stage of Inca history is confirmed by

another obligatory reciprocal act, Cieza de Len records that during

Sincha Roca's reign, neighboring villages began to see the good

order that the Inca had created in Cuzco and wished to sign treaties

with the Inca. However, these treaties were contracted among

equals and through reciprocal acts that the Inca could not refuse. Len

records, for example, that a curaca of the village that they call Zanu .

implored Sinchi Roca with all the vehemence that he could put into it

that he [Sinchi Roca] take a daughter he had . . . [for] he w ished [Sinchi

Roca] to receiv e her to give her as the wife to his son. 2 2 The request to

have Sinchi Roca's son and heir, Lloque Yupanqui, marry the daughter

of the Sanu curaca went against the wishes of Sinchi Roca's father, the

dynastic founder Manco Capac, who had established marriage

between brother and sister among Inca rulers. Yet Sinchi Roca feared

that if he did not accept, the Sanu curaca and all neighboring curacas

would consider the Inca inhuman or selfish. Sinchi Roca held council

with the other Inca notables and decided that he should accept the

marriage, because until they had more force and power, they ought

not to be guided in that case by what his father [Manco Capac] had

commanded. 2-3

The Inca could not afford to be seen as selfish or inhuman men by

those outside the bounds of Andean society. They were compelled to a

marriage exchange with an outside group just as they were compelled to

hold feasts to form alliances. The Inca acknowledged in their own his-

tory that at this stage, they did not have the fuerza y potencia to

stand alone as a social group unrelated to others through true recipro-

cal acts. As Polo de Ondegardo's observations suggest, the Inca

acquired this force and power through a strategic combination of

alliances and victories, epitomized by P achacuti 's defeat of the Chanca.

Juan de Betanzos, the Spanish husband of Atahualpa's sister,

recor

ded, --pssibly from Members of Pachacuti's

roup

zz. . . . un capitn del pueblo que llaman Zanu . . . rog a Sinchi Roca, con gran

vehemencia que en ello puso, que tuviese por bien que una hija que l tena . . . la quisiese

recibir para darla por mujer a su hijo (P. de Ceza de Len,

El Seoro de los Incas,

ed.

Manuel Ballesteros Gaibrois

[15541

[Madrid: Historia r6, 5985], chap. 31, p. u1).

z3. . . . porque hasta que tuviesen ms fuerza y potencia no se haban de guiar en

aquel caso por lo que su padre [Manco Capad] dej mandado (Cieza de Len, El Seoro

de los Incas,

chap. 35,

p. III).


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4

8

Toasts with the Inca


49

[

(panaca),

4

the earliest and most complete account of Pachacuti's defeat

of the Chanca. His version may therefore be the closest to the Inca form

of historical reckoning. It sheds a different light on w hy the Chanca vic-

tory was ayranscendent event by which the Inca divided their history.

In his account

,

the feast held by the Inca is transformed from being an

act of reciprocity alone to also be ing one of superiority and pow er.--

Betanzos portrays Pacha cuti as an isolated leader of the Inca clan.

He is even abandoned by his nearest kinhis father, Inca Viracocha,

and his brother. Pachacuti asks aid of the neighboring curacas and is

refused unless he can show that he has sufficient forces of his own.

Completely alone, Pachacuti prays to the supreme Inca deity, Viracocha

Pachayachachic, who appears to him in a dream. He consoles Pacha-

cuti, telling him that he will help. On the day of the battle, Pachacuti

goes out with the people of Cuzco to face the Chanca. Suddenly, out of

nowhere, armies of men , never before seen, appea r from all four direc-

tions and join with the Inca to rout their enemy.zS

This account is important because Pachacuti is said to have

reworked Inc a history after this victory. It is probable that certain tra-

ditions of the event were suppressed while others were constructed to

explain Inca growth and sovereignty. Yet Betanzos's narrative reveals

that re-creating history in the Andean sense meant more than the

mere reconstruction of past events for personal or dynastic aggrandize-

ment. The events of Pacha cuti's reign were re-created to convey the

profound sociopolitical transformation of the Inca from a small ayllu

community to an Andean imperial state.

Betanzos's narrative differs profoundly from that of P olo de O nde-

gardo, as Betanzos's emphatically rejects the notion of external aid,

alliance, or reciprocity. Pachacuti's victory is there portrayed as being

gained solely through the Inca's own resource. Encoded into a, perhaps,

historically strategic victory over a chief com petitor is the ontological

distinction between the Inca's prior and subsequent relations to non-

Inca groups. The victory is a transcendent event in Inca history

because it established the Inc a as a social and political entity that was

not predicated on reciprocal relations with other people. And as we

shall see, the feast conducted by the Inca implied hereafter this change.

The collapsing of the transformation into one mythohistoric event

belies the longer historic process, disclosing the Inca's ideological pro-

jection of how they went about constructing Tahuantinsuyu. It is

24.

R. T. Zuidema,

The Ceque System of Cuzco: The Social Organization of the Cap-

ital of the Inca (Leiden: Brill,

1964

)

, 31.

25. Betanzos,

Sum a y narracin,

part t, chaps. 7 and

8,

pp. 13-30.

important, then, to follow Betanzos's description of the events that fol-

lowed the victory and systematically changed the nature of Cuzco.

The neighboring curacas, who first refused to aid Pachacuti, join

with him after theysee the supernatural armies suTpliffby

-

Vibcocha

Pachayachachic. In the final Inca victory over the Chanca in their home-

land, the supernatural forces are no longer needed, as Pachacuti leads

an allied force. The alliance, however, is formed only because the Inca

have a lready proved themselves supernaturally invincible. After the

final victory, Pachacuti invites the allied curacas to share in the war

booty. He maintins the trditional

standard -

f reciprocity, even

thugh the . relatio

ns. beyween them have implicitly changed,. since

Pachacuti now acts from an uncompromised position of power and

supe

- io-

rity.To place Pachacuti's ascendancy within the norms of ayllu

behavior, Betanzos records that the curacas ask Pachacuti to be their

sovereign: At the time the curacas said goodbye to Pachacuti to return

to their lands, they pledged him what he would wish to receive of their

help and favor and [that they were] his vassals,

and that they wished he

take for himself the crown [tasselj of state and be [Sapo] Inca.

2

Pachacuti refuses the offer to be their leader, saying that it would

not be right to take the tassel

(mascaipacha)

while his father, the Sapa

Inca, still lives. He asks the curacas to do two things for him. First, they

should go to his father, who fled to the Yucay Valley, to pay their

respects and do whatever he comman ds. Second, since the curacas have

said that Pachacuti is their friend and brother, they should come when

he bids and do whatever he asks. The curacas respond that they have no

other leader than Pachacuti and will do whatever he wishes.

The Spanish terms

seor

and vasallo

used by Betanzos accurately

convey, I believe, the changed nature of the relations occurring in the

narrative itself. Whereas the curacas were originally able to choose

whether or not to aid Pachac uti against the Chanca and chose not to,

they now pledge to fulfill whatever request might be forthcom ing; the

traditional right to assess a neighbor's request before co mplying is com-

pletely foreclosed. Moreover, Pachacuti precludes that this relation is

based on his attributes as a single pow erful leader. Instead, he estab-

lishes it as a relation between the office of the Sapa Inca and its subor-

dinates, the curacas. This is seen by P achacuti's determination to receive

the crown from his father lawfully rather than by seizing it. In no

z6. ... al tiempo que del se despedan los tales seores para irse a sus tierras le rog-

aron que los quisiese rescibir debajo de su amparo e merced y por sus tales vasallos,

e que

quisiese tom ar la borla del Estado y ser el Ynga

(emphasis added) (Betanzos,

Suma y nar-

racin,

part 1, chap. ro, p. 46).


8/12

5 0

oasts with the nca

d t e s

_the_ _olitical position of Sapa

Inca, which is

aboye personal attributes, positive or negative. As an individual, Vira-

cocha, Pachacuti's father, is a failed leader, who Pachacuti later humil-

iates. As the Sapa Inca, however, Viracocha, even during his personal

humiliation, does not have to ask a pardon from Pachacuti for having

tried to kill him, as long as Viracocha Inca says he did it in name of the

city of Cuzco and those curacas that were present there.

1 7

Further-

more, Pachacuti binds the curacas to the Inca polity rather than to him-

self, by first comman ding them to go to his father while he is still in the

Yucay Valley. They pledge their allegiance to Viracocha because,

regardless of his personal qua lities, he is the Sapa Inca.

Viracocha Inca receives the curacas in the town of Calca. As the

Sapa Inca, he sits on his

tiana

(throne) and commands that vasos de

chicha be brought out and served to them. Viracocha therefore fulfills

the traditional obligation established by Sinchi Roca. In exchange, he

receives the manpower to build a village for himself. At the same time,

he pledges, albeit deceitfully, to give up his crown to Pachacuti, making

the curacas witness to the beginning of the transfer of power.2

8

Again the action goes beyond the simple narrative, marking a sec-

ond but concomitant ontological distinction between the ayllu commu-

nity and Tahuantinsuyu, this time concerning resources and property.

Pachacuti becomes Sapa Inca after a series of events ending in Vira-

cocha's forced abdication. Nevertheless even after the ab dication, Vira-

cocha still receives a substantial amount of labor from the curacas, and,

more important, the pueblo they build for him is his.

The notion of holding property as a fiefdom is alien to the ayllu

concept in which land and labor were held in common and were peri-

odically redistributed. Viracocha Inca, however, not only personally

possesses property but unconditionally receives labor to sustain it. This

indicates the transformation from ayllu norms of communal property,

including that of a curaca, to the Inca state system of owned and

retained wealth.

While the social and economic relations within the expanding Inca

polity were b eing radically transformed from their ayllu origins, certain

outward signs of ayllu reciprocal relations were formally maintained.

Paramount among these were the feast and the distribution of specific

27.

. . . en nombre de la ciudad de Cuzco e de aquellos seores que all estaban pre-

sentes (Betanzos,

Suma y narracin,

part I, chap. 17, p. 83).

28.

The actual transfer of rule does not occur until after Pachacuti rebuilds Cuzco.

The curacas are again sent to Inca Viracocha to bring him to Cuzco to place the crown on

Pachacuti 's head. See Betanzos,

Suma y narracin, chap. 18,

p. 84.


1

prestige

items. In Betanzos's text, they are the leitmotiv that signals the

transfer of villages' communal resources to the Inca storehouses in

Cuzco. The process is heralded by Viracocha's offer of cups of chicha to

the curacas before they begin to work for him. Under Pachacuti, this

transfer is systematic. With it, Pachacuti transforms Cuzco from an

ordinary village to a powerful city ready to begin conquest.

After Pachacuti arranged the internal organization and renovation

of Inca deities and their shrines, he set into motion a two-step enrich-

ment of Cuzco. He instructed the curacas to plant certain of their lands

for Cuzco's benefit. Then, Pachacuti asked the curacas to provide the

labor to build collcas (warehouses) in Cuzco to be filled with the pro-

duce from these fields. In exchange, Pachacuti gavie to the curacas Inca

women, two sets of clothes, and gold and silver jewels. A year later,

Pachacuti called the curacas to Cuzco, telling them he needed the coll-

cas to be filled with textiles. First, he held for the curacas a great ban-

quet, assembled in Cuzco's main plaza, with enormous quantities of

aqha provided. After a six-day drinking feast, the curacas returned to

their communities, where men and women as quickly as possible wove

the cloth that the Sapa Inca required.2-9

Betanzos's description of Pachacuti's activities is essentially a

miniaturization of the economic foundation of Tahuantinsuyu. The

Inca first accumulated from the subjugated populace the food and tex-

tiles that in turn were used to sustain and reward those who worked on

state projects.3 In exchange, the Inca hosted large communal banquets.

More important, the account by Betanzos presents the historical shift

from alliance to domination as a natural shift devoid of conflict. The

curacas willingly submitted themselves and their communities to Inca

authority and turned over a portion of their resources to Cuzco. The

story omits the process by which the curacas make their decision,

thereby presenting a peaceful transition that acknowledges only harmo-

nious relations. Harmony was accomplished because the nature of the

sociopolitical relations between the curacas and the Inca were now

posed in the form of curaca/ayllu relations rather than relations

between two autonomous ayllu comm unities. The curacas asked Pacha-

cuti to be their leader and rendered to him their communities' labor,

produce, and goods. In return, they received his authority as son of the

29.

See Betanzos,

Suma y narracin,

part r, chap. 12, pp.

56-57;

chap. 13, pp. 6o-63.

30. . . .

mediante la comida que ans tuviese, quera edificar la ciudad del Cuzco de

cantera . . . y tena en si, que teniendo bastimientos en tanta cantidad que no le faltasen,

que poda le dar la gente que l quisese hacer y edificar los edificios y casas que ans

reedificar quera (Betanzos,

Suma y narracin,

part r

,

chap. 1z, p. 57) .


9/12

Toasts with the nca

sun and his ability to organize labor projects, lead an army, and redis-

tribute stored goods. This transformation of relations was codified by

the drinking feasts.

Propriety, Feats, and Power

As a forum for symbolic reciprocity, the feasts expressed the varying

nature of the so cial and political relations in an ayllu community. Under

Pachacuti, the feast was used to signify that relations between the Inca

and curacas w ere similar to the curaca's relations to his community. The

rough parity of allied communities became a politically hieratic and eco-

nomically unequal relationship. There is, however, a profound

tion between _the_nature.,pf. the curaca/ayllu and the Inca/curaca rela-

tions._The _curaca ..authority within his community was coriditional,

and he hallperform obligatory_feasts to maintain his authority. The

ritual exchange of toasts in these feasts asserted that the community was

first of all sustained by the reciprocity conducted by k in groups of w hich

the curaca was member and from which he derived his authority. In con-

trast, the Inca's authority was absolute, deriving from a corporate base

(the imperial control of various peoples and resources) that the individ-_,

ual community could not effect, The Inca's efforts to maintain ethnic

conquered groups, even when m oved about, ensured

that this remained the case. In this sense, the Inca conducted their feasts

_

from a position of absolute, rather ti

6n conditional, authority.

The mythic 'fOrm

of authority within the drinking feast is suggested

in an account about the ninth king, Tupac Inca Yupanqui, recorded by

the native author Joan Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui. The Sapa Inca is

said to have overheard complaints that he had not provided sufficient

food or drink for his guests during an an nual feast. In response, the Inca

monarch ordered that the guests at the following year's feast be plied

with a great quantity of aqha, served three times a day in enormous

queros. As punishment for the previous year's complaints, however, no

one was allowed to leave the plaza to urinate.

3

i

This story is unique to Santa Cruz P achacuti Yamqui, but like most

of his text, the story is based on Andean mythic structure, in which

social practices are personified through the actions of an individual. In

this case, standard social practice is twice violated by the Inca emperor,

3 1 . J .

de Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yam qui,

Relacin de antigedades deste reyno del Pir

[ca. 1615], ed. P. Duviols and C. Itier (Cuzco: Centro de Estudios Regionales Andinos Bar-

tolom de las Casas and Institut Franois D'Etudes Andines, 1993), z39 .


3

who does not provide sufficient food or drink and then punishes those

who complain. Normally, such a fault would break the fictive bonds of

reciprocity existing between a curaca and his people, a point discussed

earlier. However, the Inca is portrayed here as aboye such constraints.

Not only is there no fallout from his lack of generosity during the first

feast (except for whispered complaints unfortunately overheard by the

sovereign), but he is able in the following year to punish those who have

complained, even though, under traditional rules, they had the right to

do so. The punishment comes only in the form of forced drinking from

oversized queros and the discomfort from being unab le to relieve one-

self. It points to the primacy that drinking had in these feasts. More

important, the story illustrates that although the Inca held the obliga-

tory feast, he is able to control and m anipulate this fundamental act of

reciprocity to assert political and metaphysical authority.32

The Sapa Inca held the obligatory feast, but at his own pleasure.

Those who com plained were punished within the feast itself. The Inca

were thus able to finely tune the venerable notions of reciprocity

encoded in the feasts. Both the curaca's traditional obligation to hold

the feast and the feasts conducted between two allied communities

became opportunities to display Inca authority and to demand sub-

f

The Inca's ability to do this stemmed in p art from the fact that the

differentiation between reciprocity and redistribution was already sup-

' pressed in the feasts hosted by the curaca for the community. The Inca

could mediate the disjunction between state redistribution and ayllu

32.. The form of the Inca's punishment, not allowing his guests to urinate, suggests

ore than mere physical discomfort. The Sapa Inca threatens the subsistence of his guests

i

breaking the chain of acts required for a bountiful agricultural year. Urine is equated

h

sufficient water supply, as is recorded in a prayer to irrigation sources: madre fuente,

na, o manantial , dame agua sin cessar, orina sin parar (J. Prez de Bocanegra,

Ritual

ularto e institucin de curas para administrar a los naturales de este reyno los Santos

dnsentos

[Lima: Gernym o de Contreras, 1631], 1 33). Human urine conceptually is part

w

ater cycle and fecundity, especially during drinking feasts. An e yewitness details that

g such a feast in Cuzco's main plaza, there were dos vertedores . . . que deban ser

QS

para la limpieza y desaguade ro de agua de las lluvias que caa n en la plaza ... [que]

todo el da orines, de los que en ellos orinaban (M. de Estete,

Noticias del Per

CLDRHP

zd ser., 8 [

1

924]: 55).

The relation between drinking chicha, urinating,

ater is also depicted in a small silver bowl now in Cuzco's archaeological museum.

lip is a small urpu that empties into the bowl. The liquid passes into a small male

Standing in the center, who urinates into a jar that forms the earth's opening. Such a

t t i ion

represents the process, so graphically described by Estete, by which the cultural

ta n ce

chicha, is transformed back into its natural state, thereby completing the cycle

ensuring sufficient ralo for the next h arvest. The Sapa Inca's punishment is therefore

t with greater reprisal than just temporary discomfort; he metaphorically threatens

ery livelihood of those who complained.


10/12

54

oasts with the nca


5

reciprocity y ren ering ft equiv

employing the symb olic system of the ayllu. There is, then, a real differ-

ence in the sociopolitical significance of the feasts held by Pachacuti as

described in Betanzos's text and the significance of the feast held by

Sinchi Roca as mentioned by Ca bello Balboa. The feast held by the Sapa

Inca as the leader of an imperial state was a demonstration of the state's

power.

An Imperial Inca Feast and the Gift of Queros

Thus far, I have discussed the Inca feast primarily in terms of its

appearance in imperial historical accounts. The meaning of the feast

as revealed by these accounts is equally apparent, however, in the

descriptions of specific Inca rituals, such as the Citua ceremony. M ore-

over, the aquilla/quero there appears as an element of the Inca's manip-

ulation of the ayllu concept of reciprocity as manifested in their feasts.

The Citua ceremony wa s a purification rite related to the advent of

the rains and first plowing, both portents of certain metaphysical dan-

gers to agricultural production.

3 3

Under the Inca, however, this ritual

not only rid the empire of all metaphysical ills but also manifested the

harmonious but hieratic political and religious relations between the

Inca and their subjects. For this ceremony, all the provincial huacas or

their images were brought to Cuzco by their curacas and priests. They,

along with all other foreigners and lame or deformed people, were then

expelled from Cuzco for a distance of two leagues. During their

absence, Cuzco was ritually cleansed of all illnesses, which were sym-

bolically carried out of the city by four groups of one hundred warriors.

Beginning in the center of the plaza, each group exited in one of the four

directions of Tahuantinsuyu. Carrying torches and chanting, they ran

to where they m et non-Inca groups who took up the torches and chants,

carrying them to rivers where they bathed and deposited the torches.

This was done so that all disease and bad fortune w ould flow out of the

empire into the ocean.

The Inca in Cuzco then celebrated by themselves in Huaycapata

Plaza, where they sat in two groups facing each other, divided accord-

ing to their Hanan and Hurin affiliations. At a prescribed time, they all

were given

sancu,

a maize dough cake mixed with the blood of

33.

See R. T. Zuidema, El Ushnu,

Revista de la Universidad Complutense

(Madrid)

18 (

1

979): 335.

llamas which they ate, swearing their allegiance to their prin-

cipal deities and to the Sapa Inca. This, as well as traditional feasting

and drinking, transpired in the first four days of the festival. On the

morning of the fifth day, the representatives of all the conquered

nations reentered Cuzco dressed in their very finest regional clothes and

with their priests carrying their huacas. They carne to the central plaza,

Huaycapata Plaza, where they found the Sapa Inca surrounded by his

relatives, forming a single social unit [bereft of] Hanan/Hurin distinc-

tion. The foreigners then took their place in the plaza according to their

suyu

affiliation within Tahuantinsuyu, or place of four

suyus :

Chuchasuyu, Continsuyu, Collusuyu, and Antisuyu. First, they paid

respects to the Inca deities. Then, the sun god's principal priest gave

them sancu to eat as a sign of their submission and loyalty to the Inca

and the sun.

A two-day drinking feast followed, after which those who were to

return to their provinces asked permission of the sun, the thunder, and

the emperor to leave. This was granted on condition that the huacas

that had been brought that year were to remain in Cuzco, while those

left the previous year could return. The curacas, in recognition of their

coming (i.e., their loyalty), were given gifts and granted privileges-

privileges that they had enjoyed previously under their own right, such

as

being carried in litters. The huacas were also given fields and servants

to till them, which supplied the produce for their sacrifices. At the same

time, sancu was sent back to those provincial huacas and curacas who

had not come to Cuzco, so that their loyalty could also be pledged.

Finally, to ensure that its message penetrated all parts of the empire, the

ritual was carried out simultaneously by all Inca governors in provincial

capitals.34

Several points about the relation between the Inca and their sub-

ects are revealed in the feast. First, the Inca represented themselves as

esponsible for the care and prosperity of the entire empire. Second, the

ca conflated within a single purification ceremony the possible dan-

els created by the oncoming agricultural season and the political dan-

ers of chsloyalty. By first bringing to Cuzco and then expelling the

rovincial elite and their huacas and by placing the primary purification

tes

under the tutelage of Inca deities, the Inca emphasized the preemi-

34. See

C.

de Molina,

Relacin de las fbulas y ritos de los Incas

[1573],

CLDRHP, asa

a 1916):

35

7;

J. Polo de Ondegardo, Los errores y supersticiones de los indios

cdas

del

tratado y averiguacin que hizo el Licenciado

P o l o E 1 5 5

4

1

CLDRHP,

ist ser.,

41916): z3;

J.

de Acosta,

Historia natural y moral de las Indias [159o]

(Mxico: Fondo de

t u r a

Econmica, 194o) , bk.

5,

chap.

1

3, pp. 411-1z.


11/12

56

oasts with the nca

nence of their spiritual authority. 3 5

The only task performed by the non-

Incas was that of being dron es. By running to the rivers, they completed

the ritual process initiated in Cuzco by the Inca. Then, when the provin-

cials were allowed to reenter Cuzco, the Inca presented themselves as a

single, united group in which the social divisions of Hanan/Hu rin were

combined to form an indivisible sociopolitical body surrounding the

emperor.3 6

The provincials, however, had a dual identity that marked their

individual origins and their common relationship created by the state.

First, they were required to display their ethnic distinctions by being

obliged to wear their native dress.

3 7

Second, they were made to stand in

the plaza according to their suyu a ffiliationa sociogeographic distinc-

t ion dependent only on a com mon relation to Cuzco. The provincials '

political and religious submission to the Inca was then codified by the

ingestion of the sancu and the oath that they swore. Finally, to show

that the authority of the Inca was equally present wherever they might

be, the Citua ceremony was ca rried out under the auspices of the

tocric-

ocs (Inca governo rs) in the prov incial capitals.

The non-Inca elite who attended this festival did not go away

empty-handed. Not only were they given food and drink during the

feast, but in exchange for the labor that it took to come so far a dis-

tance,3 8

they were given g old, silver, and textiles. This act of compensa-

tion is important. It formed a crucial part of the com plex of interaction

between the Inca and n on-Inca that took place in the feast and by wh ich

35 .

For a description of the hieratic relationship beginning with household deities and

culminating with the paramount Inca deities in Cuzco, see F. de Avila, Relacin que yo .. .

hice ... acerca de los pueblos de indios de este arzobispado donde se ha descubierto la idol-

atra y hallado grande cantidad de dolos, que los dichos indios adoran y tenan por sus

dioses, in La Imprenta en Lima (1584-1824),

ed. J. Medina (Santiago: Casa del Autor,

1904), 1:386-88.

36 .

The image of a united and invincible force formed by the union of Hanan and

Hurin Cuzco dates mythologically to the origins of these moieties. According to one chron-

icler, Inca Pachacuti Yupanqui (the Sapa Inca to whom most Inca institutions are attrib-

uted), when attacked by A yamarcos, assembled his troops. First , he divided them into two

groups, which were later called Hanan and Hurin Cuzco. Then, he formed them into a sin-

gle body, so that when united, no one could defeat them. See P. Sarmiento de Gamboa, His-

toria de los Incas

[1571] (Madrid: Miraguano Ediciones, 1988), 105.

37 .

All foreigners had to wear n ative costume emphasizing their difference from and

subservience to the Inca in Cuzco. This is especially true for the curacas, who were given

clothing gifts of Inca design que los indios [hunu curacas] suelen traer para que las

tuviesen por insignias del dicho cargo (F. de Toledo, Informaciones que mando levantar

el virrey Toledo sobre los Incas [1570-72], in

Don Francisco de Toledo supremo organi-

zador del Per, ed. R. Levillier [Buenas Aires: Espasa Calpe, 194 0], 2:97-98) .

38 .

Cristbal de Molina

(Relacin de las f bulas y ritos, 57)

writes, en recompensa

del trabajo que habia de

venir de tan

lejanas partes.


7

traditional village norms were transformed and encoded with imperial

signs of authority and hierarchy. The transformation was accom plished

not only by the exchan ge itself but by the contents as well.

Almost all sixteenth- and seventeenth-century chroniclers write

that the Inca distributed such items at major festivals and important

ceremonies. The exchange value of textiles is well known. At one level,

they served as symbols of personal status within the political hierarchy

for Inca and non-Inca alike. At another level, the gifts symbolized the

entrance of the local elite into the new political hierarchy at a sub-

servient position. This act of generosity toward the local lords was

meant in either case to fulfill the Inca's obligation to them as regulated

by Andean social codes structured by the notion of reciprocity as con-

ducted within feasts. In return, the Inca received the non-Incas' obedi-

ente and the rendering of the goods and services under their curacas'

control.39

While the Inca followed the norm s of Andean social codes, the act

of exchange, like the fea st itself, was controlled by them . They deter-

mined, within the cultural boundaries of Andean society, the appropri-

ate content of the exchange. What the Inca gained was what they

needed most: the labor to construct and maintain Tahuantinsuyu. Such

labor was the quintessential part of communal reciprocity, which was

in theory returned in kind. The Inca, however, did not return in kind.

To the curacas, the Inca returned the curacas' services in the form of

imperial gifts: textiles, gold, and silver.

Damin de la Bandera equates this exchange with a European

mode of recompen se, writing, the Inca paid such curacas, just as the

king [of Spain] pays his corregidores, and the pay was some of his

clothes or some cup of g old or silver when the curacas w ent to see him,

as way of payment. 4 These items were not payment in a monetary

sense, but in addition to the obligation to hold the feast, they were

given, as Bandera says, por va de merced. The phrase implies not

39 .

See J. Murra, La Funcin del Tejido en varios

contextos sociales y polticos, in

Formaciones econmicas y polticas del m undo andino (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peru-

anos, 1975), 165-70.

40 .

El inga pagaba los tales caciques ans com o el rey paga a sus corregidores, y la

paga era alguna ropa de su vestir, o algn v aso de oro o plata, cuando le iban a ver, por v a

de merced (D. de la Bandera, Relacin general de la disposicin y calidad de la Provincia

de Guamanga [1557],

RGI r [1965]: 178). The same passage appears in Anonymous,

Relacin del origen e gobierno que los Incas tuvieron y del que haba antes que ellos

seoreasen a los indios deste reino y de que tiempo y otras cosas que a l convena declar-

adas por seores que sirvieron al Inga Yupanqui y a Topainga Yupanqui a Guainacapac y

a Huascar Inga [ca. 1580],

CLDRHP,

zd

ser . , 3 (1920): 72.


12/12

58

Toasts with the nca

CHAPTER THREE

Mythical Origins and Inca Queros

4rze

Queros and aquillas provided, among other things, a physical manifes-

tation of Tahuantinsuyu's legitimacy. Although that legitimacy may

have been an internal expression for the Inca themselves, it is no less

important because of that. Inca beliefs about their development cannot

be cynically disengaged from the material aspects used to achieve it.

Neither Inca mythology nor their reworking of it, no matter how

recent, was simply disingenuous imperial propaganda. The Inca needed

to project for themselves a legitimate identity in relation to the Andean

past. The Andean past didnpt _howgv_ er, mean history in the sens_e_pf a

linear seq

-

e

s

nce of events. Rather, it meant a foundation in shared cos-

m

-

ological origins. Witholdsuch a history, the Inca could not explain

' their existence to themselves or anyone else, and their rise to an A ndean

power would have been outside any common understanding and

impossible_to sustain.

z?:'Oralit rovided the primar

y forum for such historical recounting.

Myth conveyed the cosialgical time and space of Tahuantinsuyu's

sociopolitical development and territorial growth. These oral narratives

were not without material referents. In fact, such

-eferents viere all

around to be experienced and seen. The landscape as well as objects and

ruins were all recognized as both evidence of the past and protagonists

in

-

the

oral

accounts. More important

,

objects and their forms take on

tri metonymical function of representing and relaying the abstract rela-

tion

between-present social organization and past as expressed in

myth. Together, oral mythandphysical object create a coherent whole,

by which the meaning of my th is tangibly conveyed in the sense that the

object is both past and present simultaneously. The immediacy of

speech is given authenticity to narrate the past through objects that are

either truly ancient or replicas of suggestive forms that evoke the

past. Such is the Inca's relation to Tiahuanacoan ancient and large

Andean megalithi

c ce nter near the silther'n . sh o-

rs of Lake Titicaca (ca.

zoo-i000 A.D.) and in particular to Tiahuanaco-style queros.

59

on1Y payment

-

but gi

t s given y

-

a

alized the Inca's reciprocity as expressed through the feast.

Two properties had to be fulfilled by the objects that the Inca gave.

First, they had to be something that the curacas would accept as suit-

able. Second, for the Inca, they had to be something that could be used

to express the changed nature of the exchange act without altering its

form. The notion of reciprocity still needed to be maintained while the

implementation of Inca sociopolitical hieratic order of the redistributive

economy w as put into play. This determined the appropriateness of the

objects that the Inca dispensed. This act of reciprocity introduces the

importance of the quero as an object of imperial production and a

means to understanding it. Whereas Molina simply says that gold and

silver were given, Dam in de la Bandera qualifies this, saying that they

were in the form

of cups (vasos). Moreover, from other reports and

archaeological evidence, w knw that wooden cups, queros, were

given in addition to their gold and silver counterparts (aquillas). Queros

and aquillas were important in Inca feasts be yond their utilitarian func-

tion. Like textiles, which are perhaps most often mentioned in Spanish

texts, the metal and wooden queros played an essential role in Inca

political and social strategies.

To understand how and w hy the quero could be used in the feasts as

an imperial gift expressing the nature of Inca sociopolitical strategy, the

object must be studied beyond the context of when it was given and used.

It already comes to that context charged with certain properties. Some

have already bee n discussed in terms of their production and use, but the

object also participates variously as a discursive element in Inca myth

and political reality. The aquilla and quero bring this myth and reality to

the Andean table each time they are presented in Tahuantinsuyu.

41. S. de Covarrubias Orozco,

Tesoro de la Lengua Castellana o Espaola

[r6r r], ed.

F. Maldonado and M. Camero, zd ed. (Madrid: Editorial Castalia,

1995), 749.

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Cummins-Andean Festivals and Reciprocity

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