Deconstructing colonial mirrors. An initial approach to situational analysis of indigenous leadership in the Tawantinsuyu, XV-XVI centuries.

Abstract

The present article splits of a de-construction of the “mirror” with which the officials of the Spanish Crown and the different religious orders conceived the ancient native organisations of Andean authority (kurakas, mallkus, inkas), as these organisations were assimilated to the systems of proper authority of the European dynasties that were more centralized and hierarchical in general terms. This de-construction tries to enrol the strategies and practices of indigenous leadership in a new “mirror” of explanation and understanding, looking not only the cultural determinations but also the agency of the actors, showing that the access to the headquarters and its exercise depended, besides the subject’s personal virtues, of the constitution of a relationship net, reciprocity and of extended alliances. The objective of this work is to investigate the particular social and political practices of the Andean societies in the conformation of the structures of power and authority under the State order of the Tawantinsuyu, the inka empire. We intend to identify, through the ethnohistorical interpretation of a documental corpus, the mechanisms of legitimation and exercise of the power assumed by the kurakas and the ruling inkas.

Key words: leadership; kurakas; inkas; Tawantinsuyu; XV-XVI centuries.