The Legacy of the Spanish Conquest

The legacy of the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire is the political, economic, social, and cultural transformation of the Andean region that resulted from the conquest and from the colonial regime that the conquest established. The legacy is conventionally divided into four overlapping areas. The first is the demographic transformation, in which the indigenous population of the Andes fell from perhaps ten or twelve million in 1520 to perhaps 600,000 in 1620 as a result of epidemic disease, war, and forced labor. The second is the economic transformation, in which the colonial mita, the silver mines of Potosí and Cerro de Pasco, the encomienda and repartimiento systems, and the latifundia of the Spanish and creole landowners reorganized the Andean economy around the production of precious metal and agricultural exports for the Spanish market. The third is the religious transformation, in which the indigenous religion was suppressed and replaced, over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, by a syncretic form of Catholicism, and in which the Catholic Church became the principal institutional form through which the Andean population was integrated into the colonial system. The fourth is the survival of the Inca heritage in the modern Andean world, in which the Quechua and Aymara languages, the surviving architecture of the Inca, and the memory of the Inca state have continued to be active elements of Andean political and cultural identity.

Background

The colonial regime in the Andes

The colonial regime that took shape in the Andes in the decades after the conquest of Cusco in 1533 was a complex hybrid of Spanish and Andean institutions. The Spanish crown, through the viceroy and the Audiencia of Lima, exercised direct political authority. The economy was reorganized around the silver mines of Potosí and Cerro de Pasco, the mercury mines of Huancavelica, and the highland estates of Spanish and creole landowners. The indigenous population was concentrated into formal reductions, or planned towns, and was required to attend mass and to pay tribute to the Spanish crown and to the local encomendero. The mit’a, the Inca system of labor extraction, was adapted to Spanish purposes: the colonial mita was a rotating labor draft that supplied the silver mines of Potosí with some 13,000 workers a year, at a mortality rate that has been estimated at between a quarter and a half over the period of service.

The colonial regime, in other words, was an extractive system that used indigenous labor to produce precious metals and agricultural exports for the Spanish market. The system lasted, in its essential features, for three hundred years, until the wars of independence of the early nineteenth century. The inequalities of the colonial period, in particular the concentration of land in the hands of a small Spanish and creole elite, were inherited by the post-independence states, and the marginalization of the indigenous population in the new republics has deep roots in the colonial period. The legacy of the Spanish conquest is, in this sense, a continuing condition of Andean political and economic life.

The demographic transformation

The most obvious legacy of the conquest is the demographic transformation of the Andes. The catastrophic population loss of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had consequences for almost every aspect of Andean life. The collapse of the labor force meant that the state-organizing capacity of the Inca state was gone, and the colonial economy was forced to reorganize itself around a much smaller population. The collapse also had consequences for the indigenous languages: the disappearance of many of the smaller languages of the central Andes has been attributed to the population collapse, and the spread of Quechua and Aymara over a much larger area was, in part, a consequence of that disappearance.

The demographic collapse, in other words, was the most fundamental feature of the legacy of the Spanish conquest. The collapse began with the first smallpox epidemic of 1524–1527, which killed the Sapa Inca Huayna Capac and a substantial portion of the highland population, and it continued with a series of further epidemics — of measles, influenza, typhus, diphtheria, and other diseases — over the next century. The cumulative effect was a population decline on the order of 85 to 95 percent, and the population of the central Andes in 1620 was perhaps 5 to 15 percent of the population in 1520.

The colonial mita and the silver economy

The mines of Potosí

The colonial mita was the most important institution of the colonial economy. The mita was a rotating labor draft, in which a quota of male Indians aged eighteen to fifty was drafted annually from a designated set of highland provinces and sent to work in the silver mines of Potosí, in modern Bolivia, or the mercury mines of Huancavelica, in the central highlands of Peru. The mita sent some 13,000 workers a year to Potosí, the largest single source of silver in the world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The mortality rate among the mitayos — the workers drafted for the mita — has been estimated at between a quarter and a half over the period of service, and the mortality was a major cause of the demographic collapse of the Andean population.

The silver mines of Potosí were discovered in 1545, and the mines of Cerro de Pasco, in the central highlands of Peru, were discovered in 1630. The mines were the principal source of silver for the Spanish Empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the silver was the basis of the global silver trade that linked the Americas with Europe and Asia. The silver was used to finance the wars of the Spanish crown, to pay for the imports of European manufactured goods, and to purchase the Asian goods — silk, porcelain, spices — that were traded through the Philippines. The silver economy, in other words, was a global economy, and the Andes were a central node in the global trade of the early modern period.

The adaptation of Inca institutions

The colonial mita was, in many respects, an adaptation of the Inca mit’a, the system of rotating labor obligation that the Inca had used to construct the royal estates, the Qhapaq Ñan road network, the fortresses and temples of the empire, and the agricultural terraces. The Spanish, who needed a large labor force for the silver mines, adapted the Inca system to their own purposes. The adaptation was, in effect, a colonial appropriation of an Andean institution, and the appropriation was one of the most important features of the colonial regime.

The Spanish also adapted other Inca institutions. The decimal system of administration, in which groups of households were overseen by officials appointed by the colonial state, was preserved in modified form, and the curacas — the indigenous lords — were incorporated into the colonial administration as intermediaries between the Spanish and the indigenous population. The system of state granaries and storehouses was also preserved in modified form, and the Spanish used the system to extract tribute in kind from the indigenous population. The colonial regime, in other words, was a hybrid system that combined Spanish and Andean institutions.

The change in religion

The suppression of the Inca state religion

The change in religion after the conquest was the most lasting institutional change brought about by the conquest, and it remains a fundamental feature of the Andean cultural landscape. The Inca state religion, which was centered on the cult of the Inti, the sun, and the cult of the royal mummies of the deceased Sapa Incas, was suppressed by the Spanish in the decades after 1533. The temples of the Inti cult were destroyed or converted to Christian use, the priests of the Inti cult were defrocked, and the major ritual practices of the Inti cult — including the Inti Raymi, the festival of the sun — were prohibited.

The suppression of the Inca state religion was carried out by the regular orders, especially the Dominicans, the Franciscans, and the Jesuits, in the half-century after 1533. The extirpation of idolatry campaigns of the 1560s and 1570s, conducted by the extirpation tribunals of the colonial church, attempted to suppress the indigenous religion and to replace it with Christianity, with mixed success. The campaigns identified and prosecuted the priests of the indigenous religion, destroyed the huacas — the local sacred sites — and punished the practice of the indigenous ritual.

The survival of the indigenous religion

The indigenous religion was suppressed but not destroyed. The religion survived in the rural areas, in the huacas that were not discovered by the extirpation tribunals, and in the syncretic forms of religious practice that combined elements of the indigenous religion with elements of Christianity. The survival of the indigenous religion was particularly notable in the highlands, where the Spanish presence was less dense and where the indigenous population was able to maintain a measure of religious autonomy. The Taki Onqoy movement of the 1560s, in which the indigenous priests attempted to expel the Spanish by a campaign of ritual dance, was a striking example of the survival of the indigenous religion.

The syncretic form of Andean Catholicism that emerged in the colonial period is, in effect, a hybrid religion in which the saints of the Catholic calendar are assimilated to local sacred figures, in which the Catholic ritual is combined with elements of the indigenous ritual, and in which the huacas continue to be venerated alongside the Catholic saints. The religion is, in this sense, a new religion, neither purely Catholic nor purely indigenous, and it is the religion of the majority of the indigenous population of the Andes to the present day. The change in religion is, in this sense, not a simple replacement of the indigenous religion by Christianity, but a transformation of the indigenous religion into a new syncretic form.

The Túpac Amaru II rebellion

The late colonial rebellions

The late colonial period saw a series of indigenous rebellions against Spanish rule, the most important of which was the rebellion of José Gabriel Condorcanqui, who took the name Túpac Amaru II and led a major uprising in 1780–1781. Túpac Amaru II was a descendant of the Inca royal line, and the rebellion was, in effect, an attempt to reconstitute the Inca state. The rebellion began in November 1780 with the seizure and execution of the Spanish corregidor of Tinta, Antonio de Arriaga, and it spread rapidly across the southern highlands of Peru. Túpac Amaru II raised an army of perhaps 40,000 to 60,000 indigenous warriors and controlled much of the highland province for several months.

The rebellion was eventually defeated by the Spanish, who assembled a much larger force of Spanish and creole soldiers and indigenous auxiliaries. Túpac Amaru II was captured in April 1781 and was executed in Cusco on 18 May 1781. The execution, which was carried out in the main square of Cusco in front of a large crowd, was one of the most spectacular public executions in the history of the Spanish Empire, and it became a powerful symbol of the indigenous resistance to Spanish rule. The rebellion was followed by a series of smaller uprisings in the 1780s and 1790s, including the rebellion of Túpac Katari in Bolivia in 1781, and the indigenous resistance to Spanish rule continued until the wars of independence of the early nineteenth century.

The legacy of Túpac Amaru II

The figure of Túpac Amaru II has been claimed as a national hero in modern Peru, and the memory of the rebellion is an active element of modern Andean political culture. The rebellion is conventionally taken as the first major expression of the indigenous political consciousness that would later become a central feature of the modern political life of Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador. The rebellion is also important for the history of the Inca heritage in the modern Andean world, and the figure of Túpac Amaru II is the principal symbol of the survival of the Inca political tradition in the modern period.

The Túpac Amaru rebellion was also important for the Spanish Empire as a whole. The rebellion, together with the Haitian Revolution of 1791, was one of the principal crises of the Spanish Empire in the late eighteenth century, and the suppression of the rebellion required a substantial military commitment on the part of the Spanish crown. The rebellion is, in this sense, a turning point in the history of the Spanish Empire.

The survival of Inca heritage in the modern Andean world

Language and architecture

The Inca heritage in the modern Andean world is most visible in the surviving architecture of the Inca and in the survival of Quechua and Aymara as major languages. The Inca built a remarkable system of roads, bridges, terraces, and irrigation works, and many of these structures are still in use. The Qhapaq Ñan, the royal road network, has been inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, and the road network is still used in many highland areas. The fortress of Sacsayhuamán, the citadel of Machu Picchu, the temple of the sun at Coricancha, the fortress of Ollantaytambo, and the many thousands of terraces and irrigation works that are still in use are tangible reminders of the Inca past.

Quechua and Aymara, the two major indigenous languages of the Andes, are spoken by perhaps eight to ten million people in modern Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador. Quechua, in particular, is one of the major indigenous languages of the Americas, and it is the official language of Peru alongside Spanish. The survival of Quechua and Aymara, in the face of the demographic collapse of the colonial period and the spread of Spanish, is a remarkable fact, and it is one of the principal features of the Inca heritage in the modern Andean world.

Modern political identity

The Inca past is also an active element of modern political identity in Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador. The names of the Inca kings, the Inca capital, and the Andean landscape are constantly invoked in modern political and cultural debates, and the figure of the Sapa Inca is a powerful symbol of indigenous political authority. The political movements of the modern period — the indigenismo of the 1920s and 1930s, the Sendero Luminoso insurgency of the 1980s and 1990s, the political movements of the 2000s and 2010s in Bolivia and Ecuador — have all drawn on the Inca past in various ways.

The legacy of the Spanish conquest is, in short, not just a matter of past events but a continuing condition of Andean political and economic life. The inequalities of the colonial period have been inherited by the post-independence states, and the marginalization of the indigenous population in the modern republics has deep roots in the colonial period. The memory of the conquest has been contested since the sixteenth century, and the contest continues to the present day. The conquest is, in this sense, a founding event of the modern Andean world.