History of the Inca Empire

Bernabe Cobo's History of the Inca Empire, translated by Roland Hamilton, includes an introduction by Rowe praising the author. According to Rowe and Hamilton, the Jesuit Cobo, though writing in the 17th century and mainly relying on older chronicles, exhibited greater discernment and judgment in his interpretation of the sources. In addition, Cobo also lived for several years in Peru and was able to personally witness the ruins of Inca buildings and discuss related matters with Cuzco informants, such as Alonso, a grandson of Guayna Capac. The longevity of his stay in Peru and his access to several earlier chronicles, including some which have not survived, make Cobo one of the great synthesizers of the Spanish chronicle historiography on the Incas. However, he seems to have especially relied on Polo de Ondegardo, so we will have to consult his works later. 

However, the first part of the text is mainly about the indigenous peoples of the Americas, including lengthy sections on why Peru was not Ophir and why the ancient Hebrews were not the populators of the Americas. Furthermore, Cobo spent several pages describing the allegedly barbaric and backwards customs of the Indians, clearly reflecting a colonialist and Catholic perspective on the Indians. To his credit, despite the alleged similarities across the entirety of the Americas in terms of barbaric customs and similar features, Cobo at least acknowledged 3 different types of Indian communities or polities. Those of the behetrias lived without caciques, those of an intermediate level who did possess caciques and some degree of political centralization beyond a community level (like our Indians of Hispaniola and the nearby Antilles), and then the third stage, achieved by the Aztecs, Incas, and the Muiscas. However, these last three, despite their superior stage of civilization, remained barbarians. 

Part of Cobo's colonialist and anti-Indian bias also appears near the end of his description of the Inca rulers, portraying their reign as one of pure tyranny and unceasing exploitation of their subjects. The Inca ruling class, according to Cobo, prevented their subjects from owning their own land or possessions, imposed heavy labor tribute obligations, imposed heavier punishments for commoners, seized children for sacrifices to the huacas, and otherwise oppressed their subjects to be even more oppressive than the colonial regime. Of course, Cobo's also admitted that the Inca rulers did try to ensure their subjects were able to live at least at a subsistence level and that their practice of relocating communities to new provinces usually aimed at resettling them in areas with similar environments. Nonetheless, Cobo's colonial and Christian biases perhaps forced him to portray the Incas as despots and cruel pagans. Fortunately, did not prevent him from occasionally expressing admiration for their achievements in other fields. Architecture, textiles, mining, the accuracy of khipu records, the effectiveness of Inca postal services and roads, and the rulers' successes in creating an orderly system across a huge swath of South America warranted praise from the biased Cobo.

What is particularly useful in Cobo's relatively scientific or rationalist approach to the study of Inca history is his judicious judgment of Inca history. According to him, the history of the Incas (and most Indians) probably reached back no further than around 400 years. In addition, unlike El Inca Garcilaso, Cobo did not claim that all Inca rulers married their sisters, a custom which more likely arose among later kings, beginning with Tupa Inca Yupanqui. Moreover, Cobo's account includes references to several moments of rebellions and conflict within the Inca aristocracy. For example, conflict between the ruler and "bastard" brothers over the throne occurred more often than El Inca Garcilaso indicated. The greater ruler Pachacutic, for instance, had to have a brother, Inca Urco, murdered for trying to rebel. Guayana Capac also had to defeat a usurper supported by his uncle, Gualpaya. Even more disastrous, the conflict between Atahualpa and Huascar for the throne involved military leaders who had participated in the conquest of the Quito provinces aligning themselves with the former. They believed Huascar, ruling from Cuzco, would have favored others over them and therefore offered their greater military experience to Atahualpa. In other words, conflict over the throne and internal discord were present among the Inca elites. Unsurprisingly, the Inca empire's instability was therefore a consistent problem. Imposing the worship of the Sun, Cuzco huacas and the incorporation of the huacas of other regions into the Cuzco-centered pantheon must have consolidated this sociopolitical system in which the administration was based on the labor tribute, or mita, of commoners while using curacas and others appointed to office or recognized by the Inca. Unfortunately, the intricate details of moments of threat to this order are not always clear, besides pivotal moments like the Chanca rebellion that nearly took Cuzco. 

As for the Incas and our ongoing obsession with the Taino, one sees more possible commonalities. The Taino cacicazos perhaps shared the similar revenue system, one in which subjects were expected to provide labor for caciques. Like the Peruvian example, the Spanish likely adopted or adapted aspects of this precolonial structure into the colonial encomienda system. The two also shared the similar practice of the rulers exchanging or gifting women, since the Inca was said to have gifted maidens to favorites or those who performed wondrous feats. Human sacrifice among the Taino has not been incontrovertibly proven, but both Tainos and Incas shared a similar veneration of the bones of ancestors. For the Taino, human bones and cranium could become cemis. Cobo also wrote of mummies of Inca rulers which had eyes made of thin golden cloth, such as that of Pachacutic. One wonders if this may have a similar connection with gold-encrusted eyes in duhos of Hispaniola. Last, but certainly not least, the use of duhos, a word not used by Peruvians, was an important symbol of chiefly authority. Indeed, the Inca gave duhos to caciques appointed by him. Just as duhos were symbols of chiefly power among the Taino, the Inca and caciques or curacas in Peru also used similar stools. 

Rambling Thoughts on Mixtecs of Colonial Oaxaca

         The goal of Terraciano’s monograph is to examine history of the Ñudzahui primarily through the native-language documents written by members of the Ñudzahui nobility and then study the impact of the Spanish and colonialism. Terraciano combines these sources with linguistic, textual, and visual techniques and Spanish colonial sources to analyze change and continuity in the region’s sociopolitical structure, religious practices, gender dynamics, land tenure, and self-ascription as Ñudzahui.

        Like Farriss and Spalding, Terraciano illustrates how colonial control of the Ñudzahui, who were divided into multiple kingdoms united by interdynastic marriages to connect yuhuitayu, came to rely on local patterns of sociopolitical system that gradually changed. The Ñudzahui nobility acted on behalf of their own interests while also representing their communities through reciprocal obligations or religious festivals. Their religious traditions persisted in the veneration of Catholic saints, their images, and All Saints’ Day. In addition to change and continuity in religion, gender roles also shifted from the preconquest patterns of acceptance of women rulers to the colonial practice of privileging males in these interdynastic marriages in cabildos instituted by the colonial state. Systems of land tenure also changed as Ñudzahui elites leased it to Spaniards, increasingly bought and sold land, donated it to religious institutions, or corporate landholding in the form of Catholic confraternities developed.

            While explaining all the aforementioned processes, the significance of and level of detail Terraciano uncovers from Ñudzahui testaments, inventories, letters, and church-related sources provides, as the author asserts, a new lens with view to view the construction of Ñudzahui identity in light of similar studies of the Yucatec Maya or Nahua. Native-language sources as used by the author are by nature limited by their origins with the nobility of the ethnolinguistic group, but it raises important questions on ethnogenesis within colonial Mexican indigenous populations, particularly in ways that may differ from the Nahua and Yucatec Maya examples Terraciano alludes to for comparable examples in Mesoamerica.

            A particularly effective aspect of Terraciano’s history lies in the innovative methods employed to interpret visual sources, particularly codices and lienzos. Admitting that the visual sources examined were not intended to explain the entirety of Ñudzahui cosmology to outsiders, he nonetheless interprets visual evidence through religious symbolism and stylistic patterns to detect social values and the impact of colonialism. For instance, the importance of the reed mat with two seated figures, male and female, with multiple pairs arranged vertically to represent genealogical ties, becomes part of the author’s argument about the role of these earlier pictorial writings in recording origins of dynasties, as well as the importance of women. Gestures of the hand, size and dressing styles of depicted forms, and even the appearance of European-style doors in images of palaces also pertain to social relations.

Styles of dress, like the adoption by men of the Ñudzahui to European clothes instead of the previous loincloth, likewise assist in the monograph’s chronology of Spanish and European influences. By the end of the 16^th century, when writing in the Roman alphabet became the dominant method, pictorial writing motifs recur in church-related documents that probably demonstrate continuity and change in Ñudzahui Christianity. The best example of this is depiction of Christ and the Virgin Mary across from each other in heaven with gestures and gender pairing reminiscent of pictorial drawings of noble married couples as mother or father.

       On the other hand, one potential limitation or conceptual problem arose for the end of the colonial period. Terraciano situates his conclusions in opposition to Farriss’s, arguing that the late colonial period did not assert itself as a “second conquest” for Ñudzahui communities. One cannot help but wonder if non-native language records could have shed light on the ways Bourbon reforms or the increase in Spanish leasing of land and non-native dominance of trade and merchant activity undermined Ñudzahui nobility or economic autonomy in other ways, even if the region did not attract a significant number of Spaniards or obrajes. Was inequality within Ñudzahui communities exacerbated by 18^th century changes of non-native control of trade and the subordinate incorporation of the group into a money economy? Were relations with mestizos or people of African descent similar for both Ñudzahui nobility and commoners by the late colonial period? Native-language sources may not answer these questions or will leave lacunae.

Rambling Thoughts on the Amazon

Heather Roller’s Amazonian Routes analyzes indigenous mobility and resilience during the second half of the 18th century in northern Brazil. Focusing her study on the period of the Directorate, when mission settlements transitioned to the control of secular authorities, Roller explores the nuances of resistance, resilience, and ethnogenesis. The impact of the transition to secular rule, the importance of expeditions as opportunities for mobility and agency among Indians, the role of Indians in the founding of descimentos, absentees as part of the pattern of mobility, and struggles for autonomy in the aftermath of the Directorate’s abolition are the examples of Roller’s argument of an interplay between mobility and community as part and parcel of Indian resilience and adaptation to colonialism.

The impact of the transition to the Directorate, in addition to the role of expeditions on behalf of the colonial state, marked a shift in which attempts were made to impose Portuguese, establish forms of labor tribute through state-sponsored collecting expeditions around the region for cacao and other profitable material while attempting to control the movement of the population in the various settlements. Instead of seeing the labor requirements on lengthy expeditions as part of a process of colonial domination, Roller presents evidence of Indian agency through expeditions as a means of traveling to other communities, as opportunities to avoid other settlement obligations. In a similar fashion, Indios aldeados, often with the connivance of local administrators, took advantage of absenteeism to avoid obligations in one community by moving to others. New settlements, or descimentos, also became important for communities as gente nova were incorporated into communities. Furthermore, mixed-race people and non-natives joined these flexible settlements, complicating the question of service obligations and vagrancy.

Concluding with the impact of privatization of land and enterprises previously managed by povoações after the Directorate is terminated, Roller alludes to the problem of seeing Amazonian indigenous communities as only victims rather than resilient peoples whose mobility complemented community formation. Indigenous communities took advantage of their environment, as well as the colonial state itself, to retain or form new relationships. Viewing the history of the region solely through the lens of Indian flight from colonial incursions omits the plethora of strategies indigenous communities exploited in their colonial sphere.

Roller’s use of textual sources, perhaps the most intriguing aspect of her monograph, exemplifies how one can write the history of peoples who did not leave written records. Reading between the lines of the testimonies of native crewmen in forest collecting expeditions, for example, the author can give voice, albeit mediated, to Indian men. Although not an unbiased source, these testimonies provide some insight into the ways indigenous men voluntarily joined forays that meant several months away from their families. Moreover, they voice the concerns of native men against cabos (or their complicity with them) directly, buttressing her larger argument of indigenous resilience and mobility as complementary factors.

Equally important to Roller’s argument, the role of environment in unique ecosystem in which mobility is required due to the soil and one in which commercial agriculture is limited in the 18th century, also raises important questions on the nature of colonialism in northern Brazil and social formation among the myriad indigenous communities. Like Spalding in the Andes, who saw the Andean geography as one necessitating reciprocal relations, the riverine geography is indispensable to northern Brazil. Mobility, aided by rivers and streams, facilitated social connections across a large region, creating links across a vast waterway system the Portuguese could not completely control. Though not positing an environmentally determinist explanation, Roller achieves a fine balance between environment shaping social formation as a factor in indigenous resilience. 

Anacaona Cuban Tribute

Enjoy this Cuban tribute to Anacaona by Lecuona Cuban Boys!

Avengers of the Americas

Interesting fact, when Dessalines declared the independence of Saint-Domingue as Haiti, a Taino word referring to the island's mountainous terrain, he also referred to the former slave army as the "Avengers of the Americas." In addition to choosing a name for the new nation reflecting its indigenous past, whose inhabitants were largely eradicated through colonial conquest, enslavement, and Spanish cruelty, some parallels can be seen in the experience of people of African descent in the island under brutal French colonial racial slavery. Indeed, Philippe Girard suggests part of the reason Haiti was named such may have been due to some similarities in both groups' experiences with colonial violence and barbarity, such as the use of war dogs, for example. In addition, David Geggus has researched some trends in the rise of the use of "Haiti" as a name for the island, which he traces back to white creole elites in the colonial period who, upset over French colonial ruling structures, considered secession at one point while open to the idea of using the name Haiti. Furthermore, Geggus demonstrates that many saw the origin of the Incas in South America as derived from Hispaniola, so Dessalines and the newly established nation of Haiti "avenged" the Amerindian or indigenous peoples of the Americas. Perhaps this is part of the inclusion of those of Native American or indigenous descent in the pro-Black and pro-Indian immigration policy in 19th century Haitian constitutions.

Regardless of the specificity of how some conceived of Incas originating in the Caribbean, the parallels in the experiences of African slaves and indigenous peoples of the Americas were obvious and of some meaning to many of African descent. Thus, the naming of Haiti and the declaration of Dessalines as the "Avenger of the Americas" indicates interracial solidarity and an interesting case study for African-Native relations in the hemisphere. Moreover, since a few decades before the 1791 slave revolt initiated the Haitian Revolution, Tupac Amaru and other indigenes led rebellions against colonial rule in South America. It would be interesting to see the intersections of indigenous anti-colonial resistance and that of enslaved peoples of African descent in the Caribbean. For instance, we know of the alliances between runaway slave communities and Seminoles in Florida, or the Garifuna communities' links to African slaves and Caribs, but what about ideological solidarity, something that appears to be the case in early Haiti. Moreover, we know that by the time Haiti became a French colony in the 1600s, very few indigenous people were left, and many people of Indian backgrounds were likely captives and slaves from other parts of the circum-Caribbean region. What I would like to know is if the news of indigenous rebellions in Peru or Bolivia somehow reached back into the French Caribbean's Afro-descendants, or, if perhaps the general knowledge of European colonial genocide and racism against indigenous peoples was the main motive for the naming of Haiti and the self-proclaimed "Avenger of the Americas" Dessalines.

Indigenous Identities in 20th Century Mexican Political Parties

The Uses of Indigenous Peoples in Mexican Political Groups

            Indigenous peoples of Mexico have been appropriated and exploited in multiple ways by different revolutionary organizations and political groups during the 20^th century. The Partido Revolucionario Institucional, the Jaramillistas, and the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional used the image and exploited Indian identity, culture, and history in different ways that reveals a paternalistic attitude toward indigenous groups. Though varying in levels of paternalism or exploitation, each of the aforementioned political groups and revolutionary organizations, with the only exception of the Jaramillistas, has contributed to the postcolonial legacy of paternalism and racist exploitation of the Indians.

            The PRI has been the most explicit oppressor and manipulator of Indians in Mexican history. Even under Lázaro Cárdenas, the great PRI president in the 1930s who brought some agrarian reform continued the exploitation of indigenous communities. Although Cárdenas remained incredibly popular with campesinos across Mexico, some of the reforms instituted under his administration actually subverted indigenous communities by infiltrating Indian communities with new government officials who centralized political and economic power among bilingual young men, especially in the Chiapas highland communities of Tzeltal and Tzotzil Maya.[1] The new government program, the Departamento de Protección Indígena, under the leadership of Erasto Urbina, recruited bilingual young men to be the escribanos, or scribes and eventually only working with bilingual municipal presidents within the indigenous communities, thereby weakening the control of elders in their own communities.[2] These Chiapas indigenous groups had created a system of power in their communities that relied on elder monolingual males to act as municipal intermediaries between the community and the ladino state in order to ensure a smaller chance of betrayal by their representatives.[3] Prior to the establishment of DPI and the infiltration of indigenous communities, elders had to have completed a career in the religious and civil offices of the community before he could represent his village.[4] However, the DPI did do some positive things for indigenous communities by creating a government union for Indian laborers. The union, Sindicato de Trabajadores Indígenas, unfortunately controlled by the increasingly conservative government after 1946, did required landowners to hire unionized Indians, improved labor conditions, and negotiated on their behalf.[5] Of course this also demonstrated government paternalism and exploitation of Indian populations, who did not have any control of the union and were only used by DPI to subordinate the landowners of Chiapas to the national party. Thus, the rather weak agrarian reform and paternalistic approach to the Indian land problem in Chiapas was a repeat of colonial legacies, despite initially good intentions. After Cárdenas left office in 1940, the national party leaned more and more to the right, completely turning its back on agrarian reform and supporting private agriculture more than the communal ejidos.

                        In addition to PRI paternalism in Chiapas, the party generalized indigenous history and ignored the present to export it for the tourist industry in the 1960s. Indians were promoted as authentic Mexico and sold abroad as exotic culture for the mostly American tourist industry.[6] PRI appropriated elements of various indigenous and mestizo dances for the Ballet Folklórico, which was marketed as national culture for tourists, and promoted murals using romanticized Indian imagery to sell indigenous culture.[7] The Museum of Anthropology also appropriated the ancient past of indigenous groups, ignored the enormous differences between these ancient cultures, and promoted that as authentic Mexican history while completely ignoring the indigenous present.[8] Thus, Indians were appropriate for selling Mexico to tourists, but only through a generalized ancient past and exotic dance and dress. Instead, Indian demands of cultural and political autonomy and reforms in agriculture and class oppression were overlooked or actively resisted by the now conservative PRI of the 1960s.

            Unlike PRI, the Jaramillistas, under the leadership of Rubén Jaramillo, embraced campesino identity that was inclusive of indigenous peoples. Centered in Morelos, a state where Indian groups were often not visibly present due to the close and early integration of the state to the Mexican national capital, indigenous groups still actively supported Jaramillo.[9] Moreover, many Jaramillistas were of indigenous descent, although Indian cultures may not have been as obvious with the campesinos of Morelos. Although Jaramillo focused on class and campesino as a class rather than racial group, he acknowledged the racist hierarchy that existed throughout Mexico that placed Indians or indios at the bottom as peasants and lighter criollos or Spanish as elite landowners.[10] The Jaramillista values expressed in the Plan de Cerro Prieto also embraced campesino communal values, which indigenous groups shared, such as respecting elders, supporting agrarian reform, and reinforcing rural patriarchy.[11] The Jaramillistas consequently drew from and included indigenous groups because of the cultural similarities and in many cases, biological descent that made their relationship with indigenous peoples less paternalistic. Indeed, during their period of armed uprising in the 1950s, the Mexican state press attacked them for their supposedly savage Indian background to delegitimize the Jaramillista guerrillas as savage bandits.[12] Their support for political and economic autonomy of campesinos and workers through cooperatives and participatory democracy must have appealed to indigenous groups as well, who were gaining class-consciousness as a result of entering wage labor during this period.

            The ideological successors of the Zapatista and Jaramillista legacy, the EZLN, on the other hand have a more problematic relationship with the descendants of the very same aforementioned indigenous communities in Chiapas. Though ostensibly an Indian group, their leading spokesman is Subcomandante Marcos, who is not indigenous. Also, according to claims about the beginning of the seizure of San Cristobal, Chamula Indians within the city feared the EZLN because their municipal president had expelled Protestants who presumably joined the Zapatista uprising.[13] In fact, many of the Indians within the EZLN were Protestants, influenced by liberation theology, or members of peasant organizations that emerged in the late 1970s and 1980s that were expelled from their original indigenous communities.[14] Some of these kicked out members of Chiapas Indian groups actually went to the city and jungle, and were not traditional at all.[15] These newer groups that constituted the EZLN claimed their movement was based on indigenous culture, but they are Protestants, urban workers, and youths who challenged Catholic rituals and the elders of the same communities, which was the reason they were expelled in the first place. Since the EZLN did not begin within the traditional indigenous groups of Chiapas, the organization has limited potential to truly become a broad social movement, despite their claims to represent Indians. Their lists of demands, however, have more inclusive potential for embracing the Jaramillista tradition of demanding industrialization, education, and regional autonomy, while their specific list of demands for women reinforces rural patriarchy as well for its focus on childcare, cooking, and food.[16] Ultimately, the EZLN shares paternalistic tendencies toward indigenous peoples it claims to serve. Assuming to save Indians by raising consciousness and then stepping aside, the organization falsely claims to have sprung from within the communities but actually approaches them from the same perspective of the PRI as outsiders trying to change Indian cultures.

            Both the PRI and EZLN pursue a paternalistic approach to addressing the problem of indigenous rights. Alternatively, the Jaramillistas reached out to indigenous peoples based on campesino and working class identity that did not endeavor to change the culture or subvert the cultural practices of indigenous peoples in Morelos. In Chiapas, however, PRI undermined the power structures within the Tzeltal and Tzotzil peoples of the highlands, and those societies had to deal with EZLN ever since. Indigenous communities can and did benefit from some of the changes brought by both organizations, but each one show a mutual, negative and stereotypical depiction of Indians that concealed the class differentiation and internal conflicts which made it impossible for the EZLN to truly build a broader movement and end their current stalemate with the Mexican government. The inability of these groups to transcend postcolonial legacies will continue to prevent opportunities for real political change in Mexico with regional autonomy.

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[1] Jan Rus, The Comunidad Revolucionara Institucional: The Subversion of Native Government in Highland Chiapas, 1936 1968: 267, 275.

[2] Ibid; 275, 277.

[3] Ibid; 270

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid 277

[6] Discovering a Land, 237.

[7] Ibid 242, 244.

[8] Ibid 244.

[9] Tanalis Padilla, Rural Resistance in the Land of Zapata, 21.

[10] Ibid. 96

[11] Ibid, 98, 164.

[12] Ibid. 151.

[13] A Tzotzil Chronicle of the Zapatista Uprising, 657.

[14] Reconfiguring ethnicity, identity and citizenship, 3.

[15] Lecture 10/6/2011

[16] EZLN Demands at the Dialogue Table, 640, 643.