Imperial Dilemmas, the Politics of

Kinship, and Inca Reconstructions of

History
IRENE SILVERBLATT
College of Charleston

Yet all historians, whatever else their objectives, are engaged in this process [the
invention of tradition] in as much as they contribute, consciously or not, to the
creation, dismantling and restructuring of images of the past which belong not only to
the world of specialist investigation but to the public sphere of man as political being.
Eric Hobsbawn, 19841

And this was the method they had so as not to forget what happened in the king-
dom. . . . If the late Inca had been so successful that he left behind laudable fame and
deserved to live forever in their memory because of his bravery and good government,
they would send for the great quipu camayoc, who kept the accounts and could tell the
things that had taken place in the kingdom . . . and if any of the kings turned out to be
a coward, given to vices, and a braggart without having expanded the empire's
dominion, they would order that little or no memory of him be kept. . . .
Pedro de Cieza de Leon, 15532

The laws and ordinances of this kingdom of Peru are dispositions that originally existed
since ancient [pre-Inca] times . . . , and afterwards these were amplified by the Incas so
they could . . . celebrate their festivals, . . . perform other ceremonies, . . . choose

I am extremely fortunate to have discussed issues of hegemony, consciousness, and class trans-
formations with Nan E. Woodruff, who brought Southern and European perspectives to my own
Peru-centered understandings. Julie Saville, a scholar of emancipation and reconstruction in the
United States, made me aware of the fine points of cultural resistance and taught me not to
underestimate its strengths. Jane Collier also taught me much about chiefdoms and their internal
tensions. And thanks to the anonymous reviewer for interesting and helpful suggestions. This
article was presented in various incarnations at several professional gatherings. I am grateful to
have benefited from the insights and criticisms of co-panel members and audience. "Contradic-
tions in Inca Ideologies" was presented at the Sixteenth Annual Meeting of the Canadian
Ethnology Society (Montreal, 1984); "Politics of Reproduction and Inca Expansion" was pre-
sented at the Annual Meeting of the American Ethnological Society (Wrightsville Beach, 1986);
and "Politics of Reproduction and the Inca Construction of History" was presented at the
Symposium on Andean and Lowland South American Cosmologies, organized by the University
of Chicago (Chicago, 1986). Generous grants from the Doherty Foundation, Wenner Gren
Foundation, and Organization of American States allowed me to conduct research on the Incas in
Peru from June 1975 to December 1978.1 will always be grateful to them for affording me that
special opportunity.
1
Eric Hobsbawm, "Introduction: Inventing Traditions," in The Invention of Tradition, Eric
Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds. (Cambridge, 1984), 13.
2
Pedro de Cieza de Le6n, Del Senorio de los Incas [1553] (Madrid, 1880), 35-37.

0010-4175/88/1414-4144 $5.00 © 1988 Society for Comparative Study of Society and History

83
84 IRENE SILVERBLATT

virgins . . . and institute . . . other traditions and rites . . . which they, the Incas,
observed and then made [others] follow.
Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, 16133

STATE MAKING'S DILEMMAS AND THE HISTORICAL

RECONSTRUCTION OF KINSHIP
When the extirpators of idolatry combed the Peruvian countryside for hereti-
cal practices in the mid-seventeenth century, they recorded beliefs in ancestral
minglings between local gods and Cusquenan goddesses and in provincial
adorations of prized Inca deities. Searching out and destroying Andean im-
ages over one hundred years after they began the conquest of the Inca empire,
the Spanish were still engaged in a battle to win the natives' hearts, minds,
and souls. What these priests unearthed in their inquisitionlike trials, howev-
er, is evidence of a kindred struggle to shape reason, will, and sentiment—
only this time Inca state making was at issue.
Like the Spanish, the Incas too were locked in a contest over souls. As the
Incas strove to dominate the Andes, to transform kin-structured communities4
into tribute-bearing enclaves, they were also struggling to transfigure these
communities' visions and expectations of living. Battles were fought over
evaluations of Cusco's rule, over the superiority of Cusco's gods and god-
desses, over the universality of Inca interests, over the sanctity of Cusco's
lords, over the moral preeminence of the Inca way.5 Inca empire building
3
Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, La nueva crdnica y buen gobierno [1613?], Luis Bustfos
GaTvez, trans, [into modern Spanish] (Lima, 1956-1966), I, 129.
4
At the time of the Inca conquest communities that dotted the Andean landscape demonstrated
considerable diversity in their socio-political organization. Kinship relations seemed to have
organized the majority, including groups where stratification was emerging. (Of course, state
building itself could have precipitated the emergence of stratification.) Nevertheless, at the time
of conquest other state-level systems existed in the Andes, like the Chimu on the North Coast of
Peru and perhaps the Lupaka on the shores of Lake Titicaca. For descriptions and analyses of
some of the different cultures that inhabited the Andes see Pierre Duviols, "Huari y Llacuaz:
Agricultores y pas tores. Un dualismo pre-hispanico de oposicion y complementaridad," Revista
del Museo National, 39 (1973), 153-93; Lorenzo Huertas, "La religibn de una sociedad rural
andina: Cajatambo en el siglo XVII" (B.A. thesis, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos,
Lima, 1969); Danielle Lavallee, "Estructura y organizaci6n del habitat en los Andes centrales
durante el periodo Intermedio Tardfo," Revista del Museo Nacional, 39 (1973), 91-116; John
Victor Murra, "Una aprecion etnoldgica de la visita," in G. Dfez de San Miguel, Visita hecha a
la provincia de Chucuito . . . en el ano 1567 (Lima, 1964), 421-44; idem, "La visita de los
Chupachu como fuente etnolbgica," in I. Ortiz de Zuniga, Visita de la provincia de Le6n de
Hudnuco (Huanuco, 1967), 383-406; idem, "An Aymara Kingdom in 1567," Ethnohistory,
14:1 (1968), 115-51; John H. Rowe, "The Kingdom of Chimor," Acta Americana, 6:1-2
(1948), 26-59; Maria Rostworowski de Diez Canseco, Etnia y sociedad: Ensayos sobre la costa
central prehispdnica (Lima, 1977); idem, Senores indigenas de Lima y Canta (Lima, 1978);
Frank Salomon, Los senores etnicos de Quito en la epoca de los Incas (Otavalo, 1980); Irene
Silverblatt and John Earls, "Apuntes sobre unas unidades politico-economicas precolombinas de
Victor Fajardo," Revista del Archivo Histdrico de Ayacucho, 1 (1977), 16-21.
5
During the last fifteen years, students of Western state building have been scrutinizing the
intricacies of cultural practice and class formation that shaped the roads to capitalist development.
Nourished by Gramsci, they haverepudiatedconcepts of culture that either reduce it to a ghost of
 INCA IMPERIAL DILEMMAS, KINSHIP, AND HISTORY 85

swarmed with cultural politics. Thus battles over bodies also became battles
over histories. And since struggles in the Andes had kinship at their core, it is
not surprising that struggles over histories were played out in clashes over
descent.
The Incas spoke the language of kin—kin terms, kin idioms, and kin
expectations—in the complex processes of creating the largest empire known
in the Andes before the coming of the Spanish.6 One prospect of their kin-
phrased cultural acrobatics was to refashion Andean histories: Lords would
project a shared past with the tribute-bearing enclaves under their dominion.
The Incas would attempt to accomplish such historical reconstructions by
capturing their subordinates' ideologies of descent, the ideologies that voiced
social time and gave human significance to the past. Selecting and reworking
those histories—along with the widespread custom of deifying ancestors—
Cusco was intent on transforming the familiar into a flattering, novel, imperi-
al fantasy in which kings became kin of those they ruled.7

significant material relations or that deny the ways in which power drenches the process of living
in a class-fractured world. Cf. E. P. Thompson, "Eighteenth-Century English Society: Class
Struggle without Class?," Social History 3:1 (1978), 133-65; The Invention of Tradition, Eric
Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, ed.; Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford,
1978), 75-144; Eugene D. Genovese, Roll Jordan Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York,
1974); Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Eugene D. Genovese, "The Political Crisis of Social Histo-
ry: A Marxian Perspective," Journal of Social History 10:2 (1976), 205-20; T. J. Jackson Lears,
"The Concept of Cultural Hegemony: Problems and Possibilities," The American Historical
Review, 90:3 (1985), 567-93; Michael T. Taussig, The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South
America (Chapel Hill, 1980); idem, "Folk Healing and the Structure of Conquest in the South-
west Colombian Andes," Journal of Latin American Lore, 6:2 (1980), 217-78; idem, "Culture
of Terror—Space of Death. Roger Casement's Putumayo Report and the Explanation of Tor-
ture," Comparative Studies in Society and History, 26:3 (1984), 467-97. While Gramsci pri-
marily queried the complexities of acquiescence and resistance to class rule in Western nations,
his insights into the various problems, possibilities, and roads to nation-state making make
interesting reading in light of the cultural politics that shaped Inca empire building.
6
Cf. John Victor Murra. La organizacidn econdmica del estado Inca (Mexico, 1978), 176-
97; Martin de Murua, Historia del origen y geneologia real de los Incas [1590] (Madrid, 1946),
182.
7
This paper presents only one cultural dimension entailed in the process of Inca state forma-
tion. For other examples of pan-Andean institutions and movements promoted by the Incas, the
following sources are useful. On the setting up of schools for the sons of provincial chiefs, in
which the Inca way was instilled to future generations of local leaders, see "El Inca" Garcilaso
de la Vega, Comentarios reales de los Incas [1609] (Lima, 1959), I, 49-50, 236-39; and Pedro
de Cieza de Leon, La crdnica delPeru [1553] (Lima, 1984), 215. On the diffusion of Quechua as
a pan-Andean language, see Cieza, Del senorio de los Incas, 59-63; Cristobal Albornoz, "In-
struccion para descubrir todas las guacas del Peru y sus camayos y haciendas" [1580?], Journal
de la Socie'te' des Americanistes, 56:1 (1967), 17. On the apprenticeship of young women from
the provinces to Inca noblewomen, see Bernard Cobo, Historia del Nuevo Mundo [1653]
(Madrid, 1964), II, 141; Guaman Poma, La nueva crdnica y buen gobierno, I, 94; Murua,
Historia del origen y geneologia real de los Incas, 81, 85, 93, 181. Elaborate state rituals and
pageants are discussed by Juan de Polo de Ondegardo, "Relaci6n de los fundamentos acerca del
notable dano que resulta de no guardar a los indios sus fueros . . ." [1571], in Coleccidn de
libros y documentos referentes a la historia del Peri, Horacio Urteaga and Carlos Romero, eds.
1st ser., no. 3 (Lima, 1917), 96; Cobo, Historia del Nuevo Mundo, II, 110.
Because of the character of Inca social formation and its concomitant means of cultural
86 IRENE SILVERBLATT

Contending with conquered communities over history's image, the Incas

were engaging a cultural battle of existence. Cusco was trapped in the con-
traries spawned by a mode of domination dependent on its antithesis, kinship,
for survival. While the Incas used the kin organization of the peoples they
conquered as the basis for revenue gathering, the ethos of kinship was a
constant threat to their dominance. The Incas counted on kin ties and expecta-
tions to buttress peasant production, and in doing so they reinforced kinship's
communitarian ethic. Further, they froze the distinctiveness of what had been
culturally autonomous groups into administrative units fit for imperial bureau-
cracy. And while transformed communities witnessed their cultural sov-
ereignty hollowed by imperial demands, these same exigencies of state en-
shrined glimmering memories of what autonomy had been.8
The Incas took advantage of the familiar language of kinship in their design
to master their subordinates' historical and ancestral sensibilities. The imperi-
al use of kinship might have been beguiling, but it was also desperate. It
harbored an impossible ambition: namely, to create a totalizing, false-kinship
that could undermine the threat constantly posed by autonomous kin units—
and the memories of them. The cultural practice of state making was an
attempt at neutralizing the contradictions bred by Cusco's own acts of domi-

production, we would never expect to find in the Andes the depth of cultural hegemony found in
modem states. Although limited, Cusco's attempts to diffuse an Inca culture were, nevertheless,
part of the process of building an Andean empire, and should be analyzed as such. If not, we fall
into the trap of viewing the past as a reified product, which ignores the processes and poten-
tialities that girth sociocultural reproduction. Cusco's essays—and failures—at instituting some
sort of hegemony present fascinating windows into the historically specific processes that gener-
ate class and state formation. For different perspectives than the one presented here see John H.
Rowe, "Inca Policies and Institutions Relating to the Cultural Unification of the Empire," In The
Inca and Aztec States, 1400-1800: Anthropology and History, George A. Collier, Renato I.
Rosaldo, and John T. Wirth, eds. (New York, 1982), 93-118; and Thomas C. Patterson,
"Ideology, Class Formation, and Resistance in the Inca State," Critique of Anthropology, 6:1
(1986), 75-85.
8
See Christine Ward Gailey's articles for compelling theoretical elaborations of the kin-based
contradictions with which precapitalist state formation had to contend. Also see her studies of the
ethnocide inherent in state formation, which reifies culturally autonomous groups as units in state
bureaucracy: "Our History is Written in our Mats: State Formation and the Status of Women in
Tonga" (Ph.D. diss., New School for Social Research, 1981); "Categories without Culture:
Structuralism, Ethnohistory, and Ethnocide," Dialectical Anthropology, 8:3 (1983), 241-50;
' 'The Kindness of Strangers: Transformations of Kinship in Pre-Capitalist Class and State Forma-
tion" (paper presented at Annual Meeting of the Canadian Ethnology Society, Hamilton, 1983);
"The State of the State in Anthropology," Dialectical Anthropology, 9:1-4 (1985), 65-90.
Other contributions to the understanding of the state-making process that emphasize kin/state
contradictions include the granddaddies of them all, Frederick Engels, The Origin of the Family,
Private Property and the State, Eleanor Leacock, ed. (New York, 1972), and Karl Marx, Pre-
capitalist Economic Formations, E. Hobsbawm, ed. (New York, 1964); as well as Stanley
Diamond, "Dahomey: A Proto-State in West Africa" (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1951);
Lawrence Krader, The Formation of the State (Englewood Cliffs, 1968); The Early State, H. J.
M. Claessen and P. Skalnik, eds. (The Hague, 1979); The Study of the State, H. J. M. Claessen
and P. Skalnik, eds. (The Hague, 1981); H. J. M. Claessen, "The Internal Dynamics of the Early
State," Current Anthropology, 25:4 (1984), 365-80.
 INCA IMPERIAL DILEMMAS, KINSHIP, AND HISTORY 87

nation. This paper probes the Empire's ensuing contests over meanings of the
past and the rightful history of kin.9

ON IMPERIAL POLITICAL THEOLOGY

The Incas' experience as rulers of an empire was brief. One hundred years is
not long to coordinate or consolidate structures of class. 10 This is not much
time for an expanding elite to create the institutions that coerce some to
produce goods so that others have the luxury not to. While the Incas appar-
ently were able to convince some Andean groups of the advantage of joining
Cusco without struggle (making offers that could not be refused?), rebellion
and internecine turmoil point to brittleness.1' As other weak rulers have done

9
There is a large and fascinating debate on Inca history revolving around the nature of Inca
dynastic structures. R. T. Zuidema has taken the lead in arguing for a structural interpretation of
chronicler accounts of Inca succession. See in particular R. Tom Zuidema, The Ceque System of
Cusco: The Social Organization of the Empire of the Inca (Leiden, 1964); and "Myth and
History in Ancient Peru," in The Logic of Culture, I. Rossi, ed. (South Hadley, 1982), 150-75.
Pierre Duviols supports Zuidema's claims and has argued against those who would uncritically
accept the chroniclers' heavily Europeanized version of Inca dynastic succession. See Pierre
Duviols, "La dinastia de los Incas: Monarqufa o diarquia? Argumentos heuristicos a favor de una
tesis estructuralista," Journal de la Soctfte des AmMcanistes, 66 (1979), 67-73. Also see Ake
Wedin, El concepto de lo incaico y las fuentes (Upsala, 1966) for a critique of standard Inca
chronologies; and Nathan Wachtel, Los Vencidos. Los indios del Peru frente a la conquista
espanola (1530-1570) (Madrid, 1976).
This paper will not address the above debate, except to add that Inca historical reconstruc-
tions—regardless of their constraint by certain structural definitions—should not be confused
with the history-making processes that shaped the Andes. The Incas were not adverse to compos-
ing heroic history themselves, in which they made kings into heroes and vice versa. Cf. Irene
Silverblatt, Moon, Sun, and Witches: Gender Ideologies and Class in Inca and Colonial Peru
(Princeton, 1987).
10
Cf. John H. Rowe, "Absolute Chronology in the Inca Area," American Antiquity, 10:3
(1945), 265-84, for a classic statement of Inca chronology. I should note that one Spanish
commentator on Inca life put their origins at over 1,000 years before the Spanish conquest:
Fernando de Montesinos, "Memorias antiguas historiales y polfticas del Pert" [1644], Revista
del Museo e Institute/ Arqueoldqico de la Universidad Nacional del Cuzco, 16-17 (1957), a
perspective of longue duree seconded by the mestizo chronicler, Guaman Poma, who had his own
historical axes to grind. Cf. Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, El Primer Nueva Cordnica 1 Buen
Gobierno [1613] (Mexico, 1980), 68; and Pierre Duviols' commentary, "Periodizacidn y pol-
ftica: La historia del Pert segun Guaman Poma de Ayala," Bulletin de Vlnstitut Francois
dEtudes Aridities, 9:3-4 (1980), 1-18.
11
For examples of battle-free acquiescence, to Inca rule, cf. Cobo, Historia del Nuevo
Mundo, II, 68, 87; Albornoz, "Instruccidnparadescubrirtodas las guacas . . . , " 17,23;Cieza,
Del Sehorio de los Incas, 44-46, 59-63. Examples of resistance and rebellion seem more
numerous: cf. Cieza, La crdnica del Peru, 111-16; Cristobal de Mena, "La conquista del Pert,
Uamada la Nueva Castilla" [1534], in Biblioteca Peruana, lstser., Vol. I (Lima, 1968), 133-17
passim; Diego de Trujillo, "Relaci6n del descubrimiento del reyno del Peru" [1590], in Bibli-
oteca peruana, 1st ser., Vol. II (Lima, 1968), 9-104passim; and John V. Murra, "La guerre et
les rebellions dans l'expansion de l'etat Inka," Annales: Economies, Sociites, Civilisations,
33:5-6 (1978), 927-35. While these chroniclers present convincing evidence of imperial fragili-
ty, we should not forget that European or Europeanized interpretations of Inca history emphasize
the heroic acts—which are often military acts—of kings. On top of this, Inca myths used kingly
legends as markers for structural reconstructions of history.
88 IRENE SILVERBLATT

before and since, the Incas tried to shore up their fragility with claims of
holiness.
Using a not uncommon ideological ruse to vindicate, palliate, and muffle
power's compulsions, the Incas claimed to be directly descended from the
most sacred beings of their Andean skies, the Sun and Moon. Cusquenans
proclaimed the Moon to be the goddess of all women, while the Sun—the
emblem of the conquering Empire—held sway as the progenitor of all man-
kind. Although worshiped by many Andean peoples, the Sun and Moon had
special ties to Cusco. They were the Incas' divine representatives, and as the
Incas subdued the Andes so did their gods appear increasingly to dominate the
heavens.12
Cusco's assessment of Andean social and cosmological order was present-
ed in the interior layout of its premier Temple of the Sun, Coricancha. A
native commentator of Inca history, Pachacuti Yamqui, has described this
design as parallel hierarchies of gender, which ranked gods and categories of
humans in the language of descent. The androgynous divinity, Viracocha,
occupied the summit. S/he gave rise to four parallel generations of male and
female descendants. Concentrating on the masculine generational hierarchy,
we find the Sun to be Viracocha's first descendant, followed by the planet
Venus in its morning apparition, then Lord Earth, and finally man. The
corresponding female sequence is Moon, Venus of the Evening, Mother Sea,
and Woman. 13
Inside Coricancha, the rulers of the Andes presented their formalized view
of universal order, a view that was pregnant with politics. The Inca was the
son of the Sun, a position of obvious advantage. And it goes without saying
that Cusco's victories could be traced to solar paternity, or so the Inca would
have defeated peoples believe.14
12
Cieza, Del Senorio de los Incas, 118-23; Cobo, Historia del Nuevo Mundo, 70; Guaman
Poma, La nueva crdnica y buen gobiemo, I, 303; Garcilaso, Comentarios reales del los Incas, II,
99-106; Cristobal de Molina, "Relation de las fabulas y ritos de los Incas" [1573], in Los
pequenos grandes libros de historia americana, F. Loayza, ed., 1st ser., Vol. IV (Lima, 1943),
34; Murua, Historia del origen y geneologia real de los Incas, 71; Juan de Polo de Ondegardo,
"Errores y supersticiones . . . " [1554], in Coleccidn de libros y documentos referentes a la
historia del Peru, H. Urteaga and C. Romero, ed., 1st ser., no. 3 (Lima, 1916), 3; Bias Valera,
"Relacidn de las costumbres antiguas de los naturales del Piru" [1590], in Tres relaciones de
antiguedades peruanas, M. Jime'nez de la Espada, ed. (Asuncion, 1950), 136.
13
Joan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui, "Relaci6n de antiguedades deste reyno del Peru"
[1613], in Tres relaciones de antiguedades peruanas, M. Jime'nez de la Espada, ed. (Asuncion,
1950), 226. For pioneering explications of the diagram see R. Tom Zuidema and Ulpiano Quispe,
"A Visit to God: A Religious Experience in the Peruvian Community of Choque Huarcaya,"
Bijdragen Tot de Taal-, Land-en Volkenkunde, 124 (1968), 22-39; and R. Tom Zuidema, "Inca
Kinship," in Andean Kinship and Marriage, R. Bolton and E. Mayer, eds. (Washington, D.C.,
1977), 240-81. Also see John Earls and Irene Silverblatt, "La realidad fi'sica y social en la
cosmologia andina," Proceedings of the XLI International Congress of Americanists (1976,
Paris), IV, 299-335.
14
Cobo, Historia del Nuevo Mundo, II, 70, 146, 156; Cieza, La crdnica del Peril, 119;
Guaman Poma, El primer nueva cordnica i buen gobiemo, I, 68, 99.
 INCA IMPERIAL DILEMMAS, KINSHIP, AND HISTORY 89

Just as the Incas' powers were intertwined with sacred privilege, so the
entire hierarchy over which they ruled was enmeshed in cosmological sanc-
tion. Inca theology reckoned with the new middlemen in imperial politics, the
headmen of kin-based communities, who now served as brokers to Cusco. 15
Local chiefs were intermediaries in Inca government and, accordingly, their
political role was enshrined in official ideology. Following Coricancha's de-
sign, the Inca, as the Sun's son, shared Venus's rank; while local chiefs,
having absorbed Cusco lore, claimed Venus as their divine fathers.16 Thus
imperial descent ideologies contended that the Inca was the "father" of local
chiefs; local chiefs, in corresponding Inca terms, shared the divinity of Lord
Earth, Venus's son. Continuing with Inca arrangements of the universe, local
headmen, immortalized with Lord Earth, became the "fathers" of com-
moners. Allegations of godlikeness would not be foreign to Andean kinsmen,
many of whom already held beliefs in the divine ancestry of their leaders. The
imperial trick was to broaden this familiarity into the acceptance of a divine
Inca order and thus merge Inca and peasant beliefs to create a common sense
of time and ancestral history.17
The Incas' restructuring of genealogical history legitimized their domi-
nance through a deceptive model of social hierarchy, for the equivalencies
that it flaunted were false. The authority of local leaders vis-a-vis their kin-
based communities was not comparable to the power that the Incas could
wield over any conquered peoples (headmen included). Expressing politics in
terms of genealogies belittled the tremendously different experience of An-
deans living in communities as opposed to those who belonged to tribute-
bearing enclaves. It trivialized the difference between relations of class and
kin.
Pachacuti Yamqui has presented us with the Inca view from the top: a
vision that entailed a powerful denial of its undermining conflicts. Yet for this
vision to have force it had to be made flesh. In what contexts was it realized?
What were its institutional expressions? How did this ideology infuse the
social practices of empire?

15
Cieza, La crdnica del Peru, 114; Inigo Ortiz de Zuniga, Visita de la provincia de Ledn de
Huanuco [1562], Vol. I (Huanuco, 1967), passim; idem, Visita de la provincia de Ledn de
Hudnuco [1562], Vol. II (Huanuco, 1972), passim; Garci Diez de San Miguel, Visita hecha a la
provincia de Chucuito . . . en el aho 1567, passim; Karen Spalding, "Indian Rural Society in
Colonial Peru: The Example of Huarochiri" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, 1967), 178;
Rodrigo Hernandez Principe, "Mitologia andina" [1621], Inca, 1:1 (1923), 24-68.
16
Archivo Arzobispal de Lima (cited hereafter as AAL): Leg. 6, Exp. XI, f. 14.
17
See Hernandez Principe, "Mitologia andina," 50-63. The relationship between Incas and
curacas was an interesting and paradoxical one. Even though Inca ideology legitimized curacas in
imperial hierarchies, the Incas also viewed themselves as "protectors of the people" against the
abuses of local elites. So while legitimizing curacas, the Incas also tried to set them against both
their commoner kinsmen and the Cusco establishment. Part of Inca propaganda to the peasantry
was based on an elaboration of this "protector" image.
9O IRENE SILVERBLATT

INVENTING INCA TRADITION

The Incas, as each one succeeded the other, went about inventing many kinds of
shrines and divinities, . . . and in general, the Inca ordered [everyone living] in the
territory under his rule to adore them.18
Presaging the eminent historian Eric Hobsbawm by four hundred years,
Father Albornoz noted how inventing traditions was part of the imperial
process. 19 Thus the Incas fabricated rituals—many with roots in pre-Inca
customs—that embodied Cusco's partisan reconstruction of descent and his-
tory. Delving into these newly fashioned imperial traditions reveals how the
Incas would insinuate their view of the world.
Surrounded by the lakes, streams, mountains, rocks, and stars that were
their gods and ancestors, Andean peoples lived in a sacred world. This sacred
world, however, was often divided by the conflicts that split social experi-
ence, even as it defined the universe of autonomous communities. Conquest
was not new to the Inca Andes; and community memories often expressed
origins of conquest and battle, even if they were structured by egalitarian or
ranking relations.20 Besides playing on this past and on the ambiguous expec-
tations it embodied, the Incas played on the emerging contradictions that were
of their own making, as they institutionalized imperial religious forms. More-
over, because the Andean world was hallowed, these struggles over ritual
were of consequence.
As one of the first acts following conquest, the Incas ordered subjugated
peoples to pay homage to the Sun as the dominant deity of empire.21 They
demanded that their preeminent god's authority be recognized by those whose
strengths (divine and earthly) could not match Cusco's might. Yet once solar
supremacy was admitted, the Incas insisted that local groups continue to
worship the gods that they had venerated in the past.
[BJecause even if the Peruvian kings compelled everyone they subjugated to receive
theirreligion,it was not as if they made them cast aside all of their previous religious
beliefs, and thus they [subjugated groups] not only kept their ancient gods, but even

18
Albomoz, "Instruccidn para descubrir todas las guacas del Peru . . . , " 18.
19
See Eric Hobsbawn, "Introducion: Inventing Traditions," as well as the entire collection of
essays in The Invention of Tradition, Hobsbawm and Ranger, eds. While the Incas were not on
the road to Western nationalism, Hobsbawm's insights into the invention of tradition—which
were developed in reflecting on the making of the European nation-state—are thought-provoking
for the Andes.
20
Hernandez Principe, Mitologta andina, 26, 34, 37, 51, 58, 66; Father Pablo Jose de
Arriaga, The Extirpation of Idolatry in Peru [1621], L. Clark Keating, trans. (Lexington, 1968),
117; Francisco de Avila, Dioses y hombres de Huarochirl [1598?] (Lima, 1966), 77-84; Spald-
ing, "Indian Rural Society in Colonial Peru," 11-14, 140; Pierre Duviols, "Huari y Llacuaz.
Agricultores y pastores. Un dualismo pre-hispanico de oposicion y complementaridad," Revista
del Museo National, 39(1973), 153-193.
21
Garcilaso. Comentarios reales de los Incas, II, 222; III, 98-117; Cieza, Del senorio de los
Incas, 59-63.
 INCA IMPERIAL DILEMMAS, KINSHIP, AND HISTORY 91

the Incas accepted them, and had them brought to Cuzco where they were placed
among [the Incas'] very own. 22
Indeed, the Incas did insist that the sacred beings defining what had been
autonomous Andean cultures be brought to Cusco. Further, they even paid
them homage. So when conquered "idols," as the Spaniards called them,
arrived in Cusco, they were treated with the respect, generosity, and care that
were the gods' due. The Incas more than met the expectations of Andean
peoples regarding divine etiquette.23 Nevertheless, Inca manners had their
lessons to teach. For once in the imperial capital—having been transported by
a full retinue of local chiefs, priests, and followers—provincial gods were
housed near the monarch or mummy of the Inca who had subjugated them. 24
The Incas did not miss the opportunity to rub the meanings of such celebra-
tions into the minds and hearts of mortals. Headmen swore oaths of imperial
loyalty in Cusco's Coricancha; tribute accompanied local deities during the
yearly treks made in honor of the sun. 25 Imperial religion might have been
generous in the manner of chiefs, but it thrived on delineating class hierarchy
and subordination. Ersatz chiefs, masking and flaunting their class intent,
ritualized subordination through sweeping shows of bounty and deference
toward their sacred and human subjects.26
While Andean peasantries and headmen were participating in social prac-
tices that seasoned them for class relations, they were, at the same time,
accomplices to the jeopardy in which imperial religion had placed their gods.
Local divinities had once been the sacred mainstays of self-defining commu-
nities. Now they were the embodiment of subordinated peoples whose con-
querors, by venerating local gods, ritually compromised local autonomy.
While generosity constrained the nature of subordination in the Andes, it also
signaled obligation and debt; for bounty was an expression of power. In
bountifully honoring subjugated divinities, the Incas captured them. They
took over local religion, just as they demanded tribute of those kin groups that
they encapsulated.
When the Incas, from the first one until the last, conquered all of the provinces which
extend from Chile to Pasto [Colombia], . . . they would try to find out how many
people lived in each province and how they sustained themselves, [in like manner]
they would try to find out about the huacas [guacas, sacred places and beings], and

22
Cobo, Historia del Nuevo Mundo, II, 145.
23
Ibid.; Albornoz, "Instrucci6n para descubrir todas las guacas del Peru . . . ," 17; Cieza,
Del senorio de los Incas, 150-152; Murua, Historia del origen y geneologia real de los Incas,
117.
24
Polo "Relaci6n de los fundamentos acerca . . . ," 96; Cobo, Historia del Nuevo Mundo,
n, 110.
25
Cobo, Historia del Nuevo Mundo, II, 68, 125.
26
Polo, "Relaci6n de los fundamentos . . . , " 9 6 , 114; Cobo, Historia del Nuevo Mundo, II,
110, 145; Murua, Historia del origen y geneologia real de los Incas, 117; Cieza, Del senorio de
los Incas, 59-63, 114-17.
92 IRENE SILVERBLATT

shrines, which they adored and the order which they had in making offerings . . . and
about the possessions and service which they had, and [the Incas] always ordered that
[the shrines] be kept up in the same fashion as before . . . and [the Incas] ennobled
many of these huacas with many services, and lands, and goblets of gold and silver,
even sending them their own images in figures of gold and silver as offerings. . . . 27

The Incas were blatant in their religious takeovers. After conquest, all local
religious practices were, by fiat, placed under the surveillance and jurisdiction
of the Inca. The Incas claimed to dominate Andean religion; and they ritu-
alized their claims by formally confirming the beliefs and practices of those
they conquered, while assuming official responsibility for meeting the van-
quished gods' material needs. For the most part, Andeans did not experience
significant changes in their religious practice, nor did they abrogate long-
standing obligations to provide for their deities. Nevertheless, the Incas were
insinuating control, by, in the words of an extirpator of idolatry, "rebuild-
ing" the traditional shrines and places of worship customarily celebrated by
Andean peoples. 28
The Incas, in reconstructing customary order, displaced provincial gods
from the local arena and moved them up to the state's pantheon. Such acts
might have lent the prestige of empire to the faith of local communities. But
imperial renown came at a cost: that of sovereignty. The lords of Cuzco (in
some cases along with local abettors), were picking away at cultural autono-
my as they incorporated old customs into the new imperial order.
This cultural battle was part of the larger imperial design and cannot be
divorced from its setting in the exacting political and economic compulsions
of empire building. The Incas, with their superior military and organizational
strengths, corroded community sovereignty through institutional coercion;
and struggles over ritual were thus waged against already weakened commu-
nities. Moreover, given Andean realpolitik, conquered kin groups had little
choice but to yield, formally albeit with cynical resignation, to imperial
theological pretensions. Nevertheless, implanting seeds that challenged the
cultural sovereignty of kin groups was, in its way, a contributing menace to
community processes of self-definition and becoming.29

27
Albomoz, "Instruction para descubrir todas las guacas del Peru . . . , " 17.
28
Ibid, 20, 35; also cf. Molina, "Relation de las fibulas y ritos de los Incas," 77.
29
Although this paper argues for the significance of Andean ritual battles, at the time of the
Spanish conquest Cusco's control over many aspects of local religion seems to have been
primarily theoretical. Local groups went about worshiping their sacred beings as they had done
before. Murra makes a similar point concerning control over economic practices. He notes that
many Inca claims to ensure the well-being of tributed peasants in practice reflected the traditional
norms of reciprocity on which community members could draw. See Murra, La organizacidn
econdmica del estado Inca, 135-97. Nevertheless, I am arguing that these imperial ritual preten-
sions are highly significant—whether or not they were actually put into practice—for understand-
ing processes and potentialities of state formation and reproduction. For a fascinating account of
Inca reconstructions of ideological forms based on archaeological evidence, see Timothy K. Earle
and Catherine Costin, "Inca Imperial Conquest and Changing Patterns of Household Consump-
 INCA IMPERIAL DILEMMAS, KINSHIP, AND HISTORY 93

The appropriation of local religion also meant the appropriation of local

descent ideologies and, with them, of local histories. Andean peoples popu-
lated their supernatural worlds with heroes and heroines who founded the
descent groups that made up community social organization.30 These were the
gods that headmen carried to Cusco and that Cusco rehabilitated. In adopting
the founders of subjugated descent groups, the Incas were ritually taking over
the past of the kin groups that these local heroes parented. The lords of Cusco
were remolding the divine history of local groups into an image dominated by
Cusco. And in reconstructing kin histories to fit Inca specifications, the Incas
were also angling to dominate visions of the future. The rituals surrounding
the aclla, or "chosen women," will serve as a case in point.
Special rituals marked the selection of the aclla, renowned throughout the
Andes as the "wives of the Sun," or "wives of the Inca." 31 The chosen
women, whom the chroniclers matched with nuns, vestal virgins, or a
harem's concubines, were, in Andean terms, the chaste potential spouses of
the Inca. Chroniclers tell us that once a year his male emissary would inspect
the villages brought under the Empire's control. There, in the Inca's name, he
would select virgin girls to fill the acllas' ranks. They had various destinies:
Some did become the Inca's wives or the spouses of men to whom the Inca
gave them; others were attached to the Empire's principal deities; others,
considered the embodiment of physical and moral perfection, were cere-
moniously slaughtered for ends of state. All shared the fate of being separated
from their conquered communities of birth and placed directly under imperial
control.

tion in the Central Andes," paper presented at the Sixth Annual Meeting, Society for Economic
Anthropology, University of Illinois, Urbana-Charapaign, 1986.
30
See Avila, Dioses y hombres de Huarochirt; and Hernandez Principe, "Mitologia andina."
31
For a more detailed analysis of the aclla as an institution through which the Incas forged
control over non-Inca groups, see my "Andean Women in Inca Society," Feminist Studies, 4:3
(1978), 37-61; and Moon, Sun, and Witches. The rich chronicler sources include Cobo, Historia
del Nuevo Mundo, II, 134, 231-32; Guaman Poma, La nueva crdnica y buen gobierno, I, 137,
216-18; Murua, Historia del origen y geneologia real de los Incas, 156, 248-55; Polo, "Rela-
tion de los fundamentos acerca . . . ," 90-91; Valera, "Relaci6n de las costumbres antiguas de
los naturales del Piru," 167-170.
These attempts at imperial redefinitions of kin ideologies should be further explored in light of
other emerging transformations in economic and political relations away from kin-based struc-
tures. The institution of the aclla would be a prime case in point. These women, as Murra
underscored, made important contributions to imperial production. They were weavers in a
society where the exchange of cloth took on political, economic, and ritual functions. Alienated
from their kin groups and placed directly under the command of the state, the labor of these full-
time retainers was directly controlled by the elite, as opposed to the majority of labor, which was
appropriated through the mediation of kin groups. Non-kin-based institutions conflicted with
those rooted in kin, and these contradictions were the source of tensions within the elite and
between the elite and the peasantry. Murra first pointed to the economic contributions of the aclla
and to the accompanying political economic transformations away from kin-based structures in
La organizacidn econdmica, 76-81, 117-30 passim, 215-62. See also his "New Data on
Retainer and Servile Populations in Tawantinsuyu," Adas y Memorias del XXXVI Congreso
Internacional de Americanistas, Espana (Seville, 1966), II, 35-45.
94 IRENE SILVERBLATT

Complex ritual surrounded the "chosen women"—from their selection,

seclusion in state-run "convents," and ultimate distribution as Inca or solar
wives, to their role in imperial religion and the reverential postures which they
commanded from anyone in their presence. Elaborate ritual thus infused their
participation in the politics of conquest. That these ceremonies could end in
death points to themes of domination that they inscribed. And during these
ceremonies the Incas succeeded in stripping the autonomy from founders of
Andean descent groups as well as creating new descent groups—and conse-
quently new imperial histories and new imperial power relations.
The select "wives of the Inca'7 "wives of the Sun," embodying relations
of conquest along with imperially reformulated kinship, were powerful ele-
ments in rites that engaged the Empire's political ties with the provinces.
Governing through indirect rule, the Incas used local chiefs as intermediaries
between tribute-bearing communities and Cusco. Headmen's daughters,
chosen as aclla, ritually validated the status of their fathers who were to
become middlemen in imperial power structures. The dramatic history of one
aclla, whose sacrifice to the Inca solar cult cemented imperial politics in the
highland region of her birth, serves as an example. Through her death, Tanta
Carhua both consecrated the bond between her father and the Cusco regime
and ritually affirmed that subsequent headmen-intermediaries would be her
father's descendants.32
During the ceremony of the capacocha (the sacrificed), youth from all over
the Empire, like Tanta Carhua, converged in Cusco. Not surprisingly, this
festival was observed during Inti Raymi, the principal celebration of the
Inca's victorious solar god. Accompanied by their homeland's foremost di-
vinities and headmen, the aclla-capacochas led the political and divine repre-
sentatives of conquered provinces in a pilgrimage of homage to Cusco. The
acllas would reverence the major gods of the Incas—the Sun and Lightning—
as well as the mummies of the royal dynasty, while the Inca, in turn, honored
them. Some of the capacocha were sacrificed in Cusco; those who remained
were sent back to their provinces of origin. Once in their homelands they, too,
would be sacrificed to the Sun, following the ritual established in Cusco.
The Inca mandated communities to worship the aclla ritually killed in their
midst. By imperial fiat, land and priests were assigned to their cults. The Inca
designated these capacocha to be the sacred-guardians, the divine custodians,
of their provincial homelands—now under Cusco's rule. Turning to the words
of the chroniclers:
It was the custom, in their paganism, to celebrate the festival of the capacocha every
four years. And these aclla, who are the chosen, were privileged, they were sent to
32
Hernandez Principe, "Mitologia andina," 52, 60-63. R. Tom Zuidema has also discussed
the rites of the capacocha in analyses of Hernandez Principe's manuscript. Cf. his "Kinship and
Ancestor Cult in Three Peruvian Communities: Hernandez Principe's Account of 1622," Bulletin
de I'lnstitut Francais d'Etudes Andines, 2:1 (1973); and "Shaft Tombs and the Inca Empire,"
Journal of the Steward Anthropological Society, 9:1-2 (1977).
 INCA IMPERIAL DILEMMAS, KINSHIP, AND HISTORY 95

Cusco from the four parts of Peru. . . . All left in good time, traveling on all the roads;
it was a sight to behold, how they were greeted, walking in procession with their
gods. . . . [T]he capacocha would arrive in Cusco accompanied by the principal
divinity of their homeland and by their headmen and other Indians. They would enter
Cusco together, just around the time of the festival of Inti Raymi. Everyone from
Cusco who anticipated their arrival would go out to receive them. The aclla would
enter by the main square, where the Inca was already seated in his golden throne; and
the statues of the Sun, Lightning-Thunder, and the embalmed Incas, [all of] whom
were attended by their priests, were [positioned] in order.
. . . They would march around the principal square twice, reverencing the statues
and the Inca who, with a joyful countenance, greeted them and when they approached
him, the Inca spoke with secret words to the Sun, saying . . . "receive these chosen
ones for your service." . . . The Incas feted the chosen; and this festival lasted for
days, and they slaughtered one hundred thousand llamas.
When this festival was over, they took the capacochas who were to remain in Cusco
to the . . . House of the Sun [Coricancha], and putting her [sic] to sleep, they would
lower her into a cistern without water, and underneath, to one side, they made a small
space; they walled her in alive, asleep. . . . The Inca ordered that the rest be taken
back to their homeland, and they did the same with them, privileging their fathers and
making them governors; and he ordered that there be priests to attend [them], [to take
charge of] the devotion that would be made each year to the capacochas who served as
guardians and custodians of the entire province.33

Tanta Carhua lead a procession of the principal shrines of her province to

Cusco, accompanied by her father and other chiefs from her homeland. Once
in the imperial capital, she was celebrated as an aclla-capacocha. Then, upon
returning from the festivities made in her honor, Tanta Carhua was buried
alive in a hill top in Aixa, which were royal lands that bordered her communi-
ty. Overwhelmed, ecstatic, exhilarated by her experience in the capital of the
Empire, Tanta Carhua must have consumed the divinity which the Sun's son
claimed to bestow upon her. Village elders spoke to Hernandez Principe about
Tanta Carhua's last words and final acts:
the young girl said, "finish now with me, for the celebrations which were made in my
honor in Cusco were more than enough"; they then took her from the site of Aixa, to a
high mountain, the crest and last outreach of the lands of the Inca, and having made
her resting place, they lowered her into it and walled her in alive.34

Tanta Carhua's death embodied the new relations of living that shaped her
kin group's future under the Incas. Through celebrations of the aclla ca-
pacocha, communities ritually grasped their place in the imperial scheme of
things, while local practice was situated within the wider context of state
demands.35 No longer sovereign, not only headmen but deities, ancestors,
and descendants had to attend Cusco's approval. The Incas rearranged local
ancestors to suit their purposes; they remade heroes. Tanta Carhua's father,
now the confirmed headman of his region, was also confirmed as the pro-

33
Hernandez Principe, "Mitologia andina," 60-61.
34
Ibid., 62.
35
Ibid., 2 9 , 4 1 .
96 IRENE SILVERBLATT

genitor of chiefs—imperialized chiefs, who would owe a schizophrenic alle-

giance to Urcon and to the heart of empire.
Heroic transformations were tied to the creation of new imperial practices
defining new imperial categories: the "wives of the Sun/wives of the Inca."
The Incas made these women relinquish their place of birth to become sub-
jects of Cusco; and their identities—no longer tied to provincial homelands—
would encompass the Empire whose sacred wives they had become. If the
aclla were crucial in the reconstruction of descent, they were just as crucial for
the contouring of imperial futures. These women belonged to the lords of
Cusco, not to their communities; their presence was another omen of a strug-
gling and emerging imperial potential to control all destinies, all social
reproduction.36
Imperial holidays were constant reminders of imperial politics of descent.
At least twelve times a year the Incas gave homage to the gods they con-
quered. Chiefs, standing for their vanquished peoples, were among the main
participants in these periodic celebrations of Cusco's superiority. Twelve
times a year Cusco's rulers ritually transformed local gods and their officiants
from proud representatives of autonomous communities into Cusco's provin-
cial underlings.37 These newly defined provincial gods and men were joining
in the Empire's attempt to refashion political genealogies so that headmen—
along with divine-ancestors—would link the Inca and his Sun-father to An-
dean peasantries.

CUSCO IN THE PROVINCES

The Incas did not just move the ancestors and gods of conquered communities
to Cusco. They moved their gods to the provinces. As Father Albornoz
recognized, Inca tradition making included inventing huacas who would trav-
el to the hinterlands to do imperial bidding, to insinuate themselves into local
religion, their presence compromising peasant deities.
Look at the aclla-capacochas, like Tanta Carhua. As conquered groups

36
In support of this contention, we should note that all local marriages held in conquered
communities were ritually confirmed by the state's representative. Even though most local
marriages were held according to local customs, nevertheless, the Incas claimed to regulate them
all. Guaman Poma, La nueva cronica y buen gobierno, I, 179; Ortiz de Zuniga, Visita de la
provincia de Ledn de Hudnuco, I, 53; Murua, Historia del origen y geneologla real de los Incas,
418. Also see my "Andean Women in Inca Society," and Moon, Sun, and Witches, for a fuller
discussion of the Inca's manipulation of the institution for symbolical control of local social
reproduction.
37
Molina, "Relation de las fabulas y ritos de los Incas," 29-45; Guaman Poma, El primer
nueva cordnicay buen gobierno, I, 210-234; Cobo, La Historia del NuevoMundo, 218; Murua,
Historia del origen y geneologia real de los Incas, 350. See particularly Murua, 350, and Cobo,
281, for descriptions of the purification festival of Situa, during which the "wives of the Sun"
gave sanco, a consecrated bread, to all the foreign huacas and headmen in Cusco. This commu-
nion was considered a sign of loyalty to and confederation with Cusco.
 INCA IMPERIAL DILEMMAS, KINSHIP, AND HISTORY 97

worshiped these imperial creations, they were honoring the very symbols of
their subordination. Bonds with Cusco became sacrosanct and thus beyond
question. Likewise, other imperial gods who vigilantly watched over local
religion won a place in the hearts and minds of Andean peasants. Armed with
the authority to ensure loyalty to Cusco—which included the mandate that
customary practices be carried out according to Inca-built "tradition"—they
were bent on subverting the powers of community sacred beings.38 However,
in terms of Cusco's empire making, the most thoroughgoing ideological coup
would be for these distinctive, non-Inca, subordinate cultures to claim Incas
as their ancestors. Cultural victory here would mean that conquered peoples
envisaged a common ancestry with those who conquered them. The van-
quished would conceive their material and spiritual well-being as contingent
on shared pasts—shared histories—with their masters.
The Incas used various tactics to achieve this goal, including sending
imperial goddesses to the peasantry. Villagers of San Geronimo de Copa in
the northern Lima highlands worshiped one such goddess, Coya Guarmi
(Quechua, Woman Queen). Coya Guarmi was affectionately called "Mama
de Cusco," or Mother from Cusco, by her Copa adherents; and her names,
nicknames, and achievements clearly pointed to imperial origins. As a Cusco
creation bent on undermining the powers of local deities, Coya Guarmi took
on the neighborhood goddesses: she claimed to be the sacred source of agri-
cultural and household productivity. Further, Mama de Cusco carried two
sacred images of aji, or hot pepper, with her from the imperial capital, and
these were duly reverenced by Copenans for their powers to increase this
prized food's productivity. Coya Guarmi made family in Copa. Her "sister"
was the local patron of chicha, or corn beer, named Aca Guarmi (Woman
Chicha). In the words of an accused idol-worshiper, when these two were
"made sisters" or brought together during house-roofing ceremonies, house-
hold fertility and welfare were ensured. Most significantly, Coya Guarmi
found a husband in Copa. She married a god who had been renowned as a
local hero. Moreover, according to village lore, Coya Guarmi was the sacred
ancestor of the entire community, whose members considered themselves the
descendants of her union with their native hero. 39 Copenans owed their very
existence to Cusco.
Gender roles could reverse. The Incas sent gods to the provinces to court
local heroines. Apo Ingacha, "powerful little Inca," married a goddess born
in the hills of Ancash, north of the Lima sierra. Huari Carhua and Apo

38
See Avila, Dioses y hombres de Huarochiri, 113; as well as Albornoz, "Instruccibn para
descubrir todas las guacas del Peru," 18, who describes how Incas established huacas among the
local divinities as they went about conquering provinces. These huacas were emblems of loyalty
to Cusco.
39
AAL: Leg. 4 , Exp., s.n.; cf. f. 39 for reference to house-roofing ceremonies.
98 IRENE SILVERBLATT

Ingacha created the pueblo's populace;40 so, as in Copa, life itself, along with
material well-being, were locked into Inca ancestry.

QUESTIONS OF SUCCESS AND THE INCA PARADOX

The Incas would be the ancestors of all the Andes' peoples. This was their
ruse: to stretch kinship to its limit, as if they could ideologically hammer out
the twists and distortions wreaked on kinship in the process of empire
building.
The process of creating new kin histories joined the broader forces of Inca
political dominion. And as the Incas attempted to insinuate their mirage of the
past into the histories of the communities they conquered, many recognized
this attack for what it was. Cusquenans had greater success coercing obe-
dience to imperial institutions than in converting deeply felt ancestral under-
standings. Uprisings against Cusco rule—in defiance not only of Inca politi-
cal dominion but its purported moral ascendancy—attest to popular rejection
of the Incas and their revisionist histories of legitimation.41 They also demon-
strate the degree to which Inca control over provincial practice was rooted in
compulsion.
Yet, on the other hand, as we have seen, Inca theological and genealogical
projects were not complete failures. To present an example of extreme cos-
mological consent: Villagers in the Lima highlands, almost one hundred years
40
Hernandez Principe, "Mitologia andina," 37. Reconstructions of Inca society based on
colonial sources always run the risk of attributing to the Incas what were actually colonial
creations. Marriages of Inca gods to local deities might have been a colonial product that
developed as natives sought to legitimize resistance to Spanish rule—a suggestion made by the
thoughtful anonymous reviewer. However, I think this unlikely, since a turn to the Incas as a
form of "neo-nationalism" apparently did not emerge until after the period under question.
While messianic and nativistic strains can be discovered in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
documents consulted here, they do not use an Inca phraseology.
41
Pockets of native support of the Spanish conquest also bear witness to Inca unpopularity.
See Mena, "La conquista del Peru," passim; Pedro Sancho de la Hoz, "Relacidn para SM de lo
sucedido en la conquista y pacificacion de estas provincias de la Nueva Castilla y de la calidad de
la tierra" [1543], inBibliotecaperuana, 1st ser., Vol. I (Lima, 1968), 275-344passim; Heraan-
do Pizarro, "Carta de Hernando Pizarro a la Audiencia del Santo Domingo" [1533], in Bibli-
oteca peruana, 1st ser., Vol. I (Lima, 1968), 117-32 passim; Pedro Pizarro, "Relaci6n del
descubrimiento y conquista de los reinos del Peru" [1571], in Biblioteca peruana, 1st ser., Vol. I
(Lima, 1968), 439-586 passim. See also Murra, "La Guerre et les Rebellions dans 1'Expansion
de l'Etat Inca," as well as note 8.
Another telling condemnation of an Inca frame to construe the world and interpret the past was
revealed during the Taki Onqoy movement, a messianic revolt that shook the Ayacucho and
Apurimac highlands, just west of Cusco, thirty years after the Spanish conquest. All of the major
mountain gods of the Andes—the great dynastic founders from Ecuador to Northwest Argen-
tina—were going to engage the Spanish in battle for control over the Andes. According to the
movement's adherents, who gave testimony to their prophesy of battle, the Andean gods were
going to align themselves along two axes: one centered at Lake Titicaca and the other centered at
Pachacamac. Not once were any of Cusco's mountain gods or any imperial deities listed on the
rolls of Andean warriors. Cristobal Albornoz, Las informaciones de Cristdbal de Albornoz.
Documentos para el estudio del Taki Ongoy (158?], Luis Millones, ed. (Cuernavaca, 1971),
1/66-67.
 INCA IMPERIAL DILEMMAS, KINSHIP, AND HISTORY 99

after the Spanish conquest, espoused versions of their gods' ancestries that
jibed with Inca design. Echoing the interior plan of Coricancha, they not only
affirmed Venus' paternity but claimed that the divine ancestors of their com-
munities' kin groups were lineal descendants of the Sun. 42
Why did some Andean peoples so enmesh their pasts with the Incas' that
they even believed their ancestors had Cusco origins? Why did others deny,
challenge, or reject any tinge of Cusquenan alliance? Detailed examinations
of the specific and varied histories of Inca conquests and colonization prac-
tices would be necessary steps to such an understanding.43 But we must also
ask better questions, be more sensitive to—and not trivialize—the complex-
ities surrounding the construction of consciousness under conditions set by
class formation and conflict.
To understand the process of Inca state building, evidence of rebellion and
consent must be examined in relation to the dynamics of cultural politics. The
Incas were continuously sparring to impose their economic and cultural ways,
just as those ways were unevenly resisted, distorted, resigned to, or accepted
by Andean kin groups. These unresolved, unsteady, mutually piercing clashes
between class and kin infused Andean conditions of life; so not surprisingly
they infused awareness, feelings, expectations, and ambitions. In their di-
verse ways and with varying degrees of commitment and resignation, Andean
peoples could harbor conflicting sentiments about Inca efforts at empire build-
ing, as well as their efforts at muffling it under wads of kin. 44
Both in spite of and because of Inca incursions, the cultures of non-Inca
enclaves were vigorous and resistant. The Inca dilemma of dependence on
kinship for imperial state making generated these merry-go-rounds of de-
fiance in consent, subversion in rule. Inca provocations spurred on the robust
countercultures that tamed and even contoured imperial demands, even while
42
Pierre Duviols, La lutte contre les religions autochtones dans le Perou colonial: L'extirpa-
tion de Vidoldtrie entre 1532 et 1660 (Lima and Paris, 1971), 382; see also Cobo, Historia del
Nuevo Mundo, II, 70; Wachtel, Los Vencidos, 269-74; Cieza, La crdnica del Peru, 197; Cieza,
Del senorto de los Incas, 71-73; Garcilaso, Comentarios reales de los Incas, II, 179-81, among
others, for additional evidence of local support for the Incas.
43
Unfortunately, it is often very difficult to reconstruct, with much precision, the specific
histories of Inca conquests and colonization practices. New provincial studies, however, are
beginning to round out our picture. For an outstanding example, see Frank Salomon's study of the
Northern provinces, Los senores itnicos de Quito en la epoca de los Incas (Ecuador, 1980). Also
see Karen Spalding, Huarochiri: An Andean Society Under Inca and Spanish Rule (Stanford,
1984), 72-105; Maria Rostworowski de Diez Canseco's contributions for the coast, Etnla y
sociedad: Ensayos sobre la costa central prehispdnica, Senores indigenas de Lima y Cant a, and
Estructuras andinas delpoder (Lima, 1983); Craig Morris and Donald E. Thompson, Huanuco
Pampa (London, 1985); and Catherine J. Julien, Hatunqolla: A View of Inca Rule from the Lake
Titicaca Region (Berkeley, 1983).
44
This section builds on the work of Antonio Gramsci and his suggestive concept of contra-
dictory consciousness. See his Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, Q.
Hoare and G. N. Smith, eds. and trans. (New York, 1973), 333-34. See also Joseph V. Femia,
Gramsci's Political Thought: Hegemony, Consciousness, and the Revolutionary Process (Ox-
ford, 1981) for a helpful explication of Gramsci's work.
IOO IRENE SILVERBLATT

these vibrant, oppositional cultures could be ultimately bounded by Cusco's

terms for living.45
Huarochirinos, living in Peru's central highlands, exposed these paradoxes
of imperial existence. Huarochiri myth, recorded in the late sixteenth century,
radiates a social self-confidence that attests to cultural vigor. For example,
several legends observed how Inca kings, not strong enough to keep a lid on
provincial discontent, had to turn to Huarochiri's gods for help. Moreover,
Pachacamac, their preeminent god, was so awesome that the Incas absolved
the Huarochirinos from giving the Sun its customary place of superiority in
the cosmos. 46 Huarochiri's gods were powerful, reflecting, no doubt, the
powers of Huarochiri's populace. And these must have been quite impressive
to be able to demand such a weighty concession from Cusco.47
So Huarochiri's gods had some good laughs at Inca expense, though the
Incas had the last one. Indeed, for all their bravado, these local deities ended
up doing the Incas' bidding. Huarochiri's powerful gods helped the Inca keep
conquered peoples in check by adding their muscle to Cusco's lineup of
divine warriors. In the cosmological battles over empire Huarochiri's biggest
and brightest helped keep the Incas in power.48
Moreover, although Huarochirinos were not bound to solar worship, they
recognized imperial authority in sacred matters. Villagers claimed that the
Incas instructed them to worship Pachacamac, just as he mandated peoples
living around the Highlands of Lake Titicaca to adore the Sun.49 Further, not
only did Huarochirinos defer to Inca authority in setting standards of local
worship, but their mighty heroes could be outwitted by Cusco's gods: Cate-
quilla, who was sent by the Incas to the region, could make any huaca talk in
spite of him/herself—even the son of Pachacamac.50 So in myth, as in life,
the Inca, in significant ways, defined the terms and set the tone for Huarochiri

45
Eugene Genovese, in Roll Jordan Roll, eloquently presents this dialectic of accommodation
in resistance and resistance in accommodation for the antebellum U.S. South. Regarding the
debate over the powers of hegemony versus institutional means to compel acquiescent behavior,
my own study questions some of the writers opposed to concepts of hegemony, such as James C.
Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, 1985); and
Nicolas Abercrombie, Stephen Hill, and Bryan S. Turner, The Dominant Ideology Thesis (Lon-
don, 1980).
46
Avila, Dioses y hombres de Huarochiri, 39, 109, 127, 131-33.
47
See Spalding, Huarochiri, 72-105, for an insightful discussion of Huarochiri under the
Incas, which points out the economically and politically favored position that this society held.
See also Thomas C. Patterson, "Pachacamac—An Andean Oracle under Inca Rule," in Recent
Investigations in Andean Prehistory and Protohistory, D. Peter Kvietok and Daniel H. Sand-
weiss, eds. (Ithaca, 1985), 159-76.
48
Spalding (Huarochiri, 82) suggests that the Incas made good use of at least some of the
regions's more earthly powers: i.e., the special abilities of the lower Yauyos in warfare.
49
Avila, Dioses y hombres de Huarochiri, 127; for additional examples of deference to Inca
jurisdiction over local religious matters, see 105, 113.
50
Avila, Dioses y Hombres de Huarochiri, 113.
 INCA IMPERIAL DILEMMAS, KINSHIP, AND HISTORY 101

practice and understandings. Huarochirinos did not have to believe in every-

thing the Inca believed—they did not even have to believe in his gods—for
their thought to be reigned in by Inca intentions. Imperial penetration of
provincial world view could be subtle, contouring local perceptions and senti-
ments so as not to impugn Inca sovereignty.51
Could Inca understandings of kinship and history ever have mastered the
ways in which conquered groups grasped their lives' experience? The Spanish
conquest stopped Inca development, so history cannot provide an answer,
although historical understandings can. Like other precapitalist states, the
Inca project, as set forth in its scant hundred years of rule, seemed condemned
by the contradictions of its own making: building an empire on its antimony,
relations of kin.
So the Incas would tear away at kin autonomy through their self-authorized
surveillance of provincial religion and provincial women. They proclaimed
their sovereignty over matters of the social heart and soul, while refashioning
traditions to substantiate an imperial body. And while imperial proclamations
might at times have been no more than hopeful brags; nonetheless, the lords
of Cusco were trying to lay the groundwork for further incursions into com-
munity integrity. They were portentously enacting new regulations for social
existence and practice that would define away kin ideologies of living (or
remembered) non-Inca peoples.52
Yet even as they bracketed cultures for imperial use, the Incas were abet-
ting the very cultural forms that would threaten their survival. By reifying
cultural groups, they fanned cultural memories of sovereignty and conse-
quently whetted cultural appetites for resistance. Even while it menaced kin
group autonomy, Cusco was authorizing (albeit for ends of state) those same
powerful institutions of kin that thread customary life-ways. In the Andes
battles over essential definitions of self, social process, and social legitimacy
were waged in the language of kin. Armed with their new histories of descent
and kinship and with their new "amplified customs," the Incas were seeking
to neutralize the inescapable contradictions created by their empire building.
Inca historical reconstructions were thus contoured by imperial dilemmas;

51
It would be shortsighted to judge the existence of an "Inca culture" by its success; for to
establish the fragility of certain Inca institutions and then equate that fragility with insignificance
overlooks the potentialities which contour social reproduction. Even if they are not embodied in
institutions, potentialities are no less real contributors to social process. They too labor in the
complex, dynamic, push-and-shove of state making. Blindness to possibilities also repudiates
what the empire might have become. The chroniclers and other documentary sources let us
glimpse only an unfinished process, which the Spanish conquest froze and then transformed into
another contest for political dominion.
52
Again, it should be remembered that these transformations were taking place in the context
of change in political and economic relations: an emerging transformation away from kin-based
structures as the source of surplus appropriation. See note 31.
IO2 IRENE SILVERBLATT

so were those of conquered peoples, but from the disadvantage of relative

powerlessness. Provincial retorts to Inca expansion teach us to be sensitive to
the contradictory ways in which peoples, having lost their autonomy to those
whose power enables them to camouflage dominion, construe their past and
their present. This is a charge that we, who are presently reconstructing the
histories of others, must take seriously for ourselves.