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Reconstructing the past |
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Inca society |
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Whoever lived in Machu Picchu must have been close to the Inca. Inca society had a rigid social structure in its ethnic relations and as a function of where power originated but not as a function derived from wealth. Class structure did not respond so much to the position of persons within a scale of economic power, as much as to individuals' belonging to lineages and specific communities or to the functions that they had to fulfill within these collectives, which were hierarchized according to the sphere of their domain and the character of their competencies.
Power was obtained through ethnic membership and from performance. Ethnic chiefs were the curaca, hierarchized according to the territorial and social magnitude of their chiefly functions from local curaca to curaca who had |
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authority over several communities. The Incas had power over many of these curaca and these over a chain of other chiefs of lesser territorial levels. In this way the Inca had available to him the tribute and services of a large number of people, but always through the various intermediary levels which the curaca represented.
When the Inca managed to conquer Tawantinsuyu, his transition from king to emperor was that of a curaca who had power over a sphere which encompassed communities from the Cuzco watershed, to one which was progressively incorporating under its control the labor and obedience of many ethnic groups that inhabited other territories. To be king of Cuzco meant, in its moment, that local curaca passed to the condition of sinchi owing to the warrior dominion over the valleys of Cuzco. The condition of Yupanqui ("he who adds or unites") and of Sapan ("only") Pachacutec Inca acquired on dominating other ethnic groups outside of Cuzco.
And the descendants of this Inga Yupangue were called from then on till now Capac aillo Inga Yupanque Haguaynin which says the lineage of descending kings and grandchildren of Inga Yupangue and these are the most exalted and have the most among those of Cuzco that no one from another lineage and these are the ones who were commanded to wear two feathers on the head.
To be of the lineage of the Incas conceded a lot of prestige and privileges. Those of the lineage of Pachacutec, for this reason, were distinguished from the rest. The other Cuzco lineages were their "peers" but maintained only the dignities of their ancestry, without acquiring any other privilege except status. The wife of Pachakutec is described by Juan de Betanzos in Chapter 17:
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pag. 1 - 2
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