By: Raúl Porras Barrenechea
Defeat in Cajamarca not be explained simply by the courage of the English or by fear of the Indians. Nor is explained by the factors cited by both parties superhuman, or the miracle of St. James helping with his formidable sword on the English, or the prophecy of Huayna Capac Garcilaso speaks about the upcoming completion of the Empire and the coming of white men Bearded, who must obey. Although these hallucinations had power over the minds of two warring peoples were not the driving forces.
Nor were the material elements: weapons and horses of the English. It is true that instilled fear the muskets and cavalry charges, but the superiority of English arms was offset the enormous numerical superiority of the Indians and primitive fear caused by the horses suddenly disappeared. The Indians tried to prevent them avoiding the plains, fighting in the bushes, digging holes in the fields to despernancaran horses. At the site of Cuzco several Indians caught the tails of the horses unable to walk. In the campaign against Rumiñahui Benalcázar heads of dead horses were placed on stakes crowned with flowers.
In fact, the Inca Empire began to collapse alone. Body was outdated and flawed in its enormity had the most active territorial germ of dissolution. The greatness of the empire was essentially linked to the existence in front of him in great spirits as warriors and conquerors of the last Inca, Tupac Yupanqui Pachacutec and, and, above all, the preservation of a military caste, sober and virtuous as of apricots. Huayna Capac began to decline. Huayna Capac was still a great conqueror like his father and grandfather, but have been presented and affirm and symptoms of corruption. Inca victories are more difficult and slow, do not sit and irresistible momentum of the legions Quechua. The conquest of Quito is the loss of Tahuantinsuyo. The tribes rebelled and just under a warning to the winners. Dried apricots, the invincible and austere reigns above caste, educated in abstinence, deprivation and work, had lost its force. I no longer eat corn raw or unsalted meats, abstained from no women in the preparatory exercises of his military career, and hand laborers, nor were the first in the jumping and running. From the classic ceremonies instituted by Tupac Yupanqui to discern orejón title, retained only the love of beer. The more you drink, the more man is, he came to say. Pastures were surprised and decimate them, after a victory, because according to Sarmiento account were "eating and drinking at will." The Cayambis, a harsh and unfamiliar people, resist the Inca army, and they flee for the first time the pears, leaving the country helpless and in danger of death to the Inca. This must be used to refer to methods that contradict Cayambis proverbial race and humanity of peacekeeping traditions of the Empire massacres of prisoners, war without mercy to women and children, burning and looting of villages. The federal bond was the mainstay of the Empire, and thus was not free and voluntary or managed by persuasion, but imposed by force. Inca cohesion was from then threatened by the hatred of the conquered peoples and ashamed. The uprisings were occurring and the enormous changes stocks managed by Huayna Capac, collective deportations true masses, not only increase the discontent of subjects and subject.
His achievements, personal courage, the superstitious awe of his subjects, not enough to hide the vicious and decadent condition of the monarch. Virile yet fulfill the conditions of their ancestors, but relaxed by their invincible tendency to pleasure, pomp and drink. His desire to build palaces Tumibamba exceeded those of Cuzco, apart from releasing the sumptuary is frivolous, having sparked a backlash from Cuzco, one of the causes of the dissolution of the Empire. Fiestas and entertainment fill the final stages of his reign, after based on sensual and enervation of Quito. Dancing and drinking enlivened the passage of the procession of Huayna Capac-shaped sycophants and courtiers around the Tahuantisuyo. The Inca these excesses led light. It was "vicious women," says Cieza, deprived him of sycophants and flatterers and was the first drunk of the kingdom. "I drank more than three Indians together," says Pedro Pizarro, and when asked how the trial had not lost drinking so much, replied the old Bacchus vicious "I drank for the poor that he sustained many." Huayna Capac was
, despite these flaws, serious, brave and righteous. The Indians loved him and respected him. "It was very dear to all vassals "said Pedro Pizarro, Cieza says he" wanted to be so afraid that night I dreamed the Indians. "In his hands there was no danger the unity of the empire. But he created the fatal germ of dissolution, a rival based in Cuzco, in remote areas and just conquered and the cause of creating future division Inca paved the way for the English. If the land had not been divided, "says one of the first conquerors, or if Huayna Capac had lived," we could not enter or win.
The decline started, even wrapped in splendor, in the reign of Huayna Capac's death accentuates it. Huascar, the rightful heir, lacked Don management and firmness of mind to drive so vast and diverse empire. His father had also created a political problem to be solved by the will and ability than his. He lacked the physical courage to confront and disarm his prestige as a son of the Sun, their enemies. The stigma of indiscipline and disobedience took hold of his subjects. The ambitious regional spirit of Quito, irresponsibly encouraged sensual frivolity of Huayna Capac, stood against him challenging his power. Cuzco and Quito had arrived because of rivalry, to hate each other irreconcilably. Huayna Capac
completed remembering error, in the sensual flirtation of her life, to prepare and ensure the normal succession of the Empire. With a proactive action in this regard and the respect he had his subjects, his decision clearly expressed and reaffirmed estate, would have prevented the confusion and discord that followed his death.
clarify for it does not matter if issued at the last minute and want some chroniclers, through painted stripes on a pole dynastic decision. Had ordered in his will as sole ruler of the empire indivisible Huascar, Ninan Cuyochi or Manco Inca, or arranged for the division of the empire between Huascar and Atahualpa, leaving one Cuzco and is removed, the separation of North and South had been irreparably produced. Atahualpa was not the name of a regional insurgency raging against takeovers and overbearing spirit of the capital, Cuzco. Atahualpa
perhaps most audacious and clever Huascar, he could, it was the rightful heir, not a bastard, contain the dissolution of the Empire based on cunning and political savvy of strong violence case, but is not be assumed to obtain the agreement reached sincere and loyal side of Cuzco. The insurrection had broken out sooner or later, or instead of Atahualpa would have had to impose a bloody despotism as they opened in Cuzco, his generals and Calcuchima Quisquis following the defeat and capture of Huascar.
Cuzco and Quito were no longer a single nation, they were strangers and enemies. Born in Cuzco and Quito, a Quechua ñusta or a princess of Quito, Atahualpa raised away from Cuzco, its institutions and customs, was a stranger who did not deserve the confidence of the imperial city and its ancient ayllu.
Another sign of the dissolution was the abandonment of the strongest tenets of its own social cohesion. The strength and stability of the empire came from healthy agricultural standards of the ayllu, forced labor and collective community land, equality and proportion in the distribution of the benefits, parental supervision of the chiefs. All that had created the Inca joy in "the good time of Tupac Yupanqui, was left with improvident folly. The Inca and their relatives, the privileged nobility, under the pretext of war, had formed a separate caste, excluded from work, parasitic and lazy. Around her were breaking all the old principles. The people working for them rudely, had not only to till the lands of the Inca and the Sun and the community, but these new masters. The Inca, breaking the economic unity of the Empire, regaled the nobles land and curacas, who got them to rent Indians who grow, with obligation to surrender some part of the fruit. These individual properties within a people accustomed to collectivism, hurt the very spirit of the race and presaged the solution or a new cycle under different rules. The favored nobles tried to perpetuate the favor received, transmitting the individual property. The regular distribution of land became increasingly formal and symbolic. The Inca or camayoc llacta confirmed each year to the occupants in their own plots of land, existing owners actually almost a lifetime. What year did the sharing out of additional lots for the children who were born or the land called off. The best land in all cases were of nobles and curacas and they did not work. There began to destroy the great Inca Empire workers. At the time the English arrived, the ancient Incan unit was corroded by such germs of division-one economic, class discontent of the people against the ruling military aristocracy, another politician, the hatred between Cuzco and Quito. All first witnesses of the conquest, to establish the existence of the latter. But the social and economic malaise in the chronicler collecting more intuition and legal yeast early times. Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo, after questioning them critically to the first conquistadores returning to Spain after the capture of Atahualpa, immediately entered the printing and smart "people of war is very subdued those who are farmers or rural people who understand agriculture."
The fight between the two brothers Huascar and Atahualpa, reveals intimate of all evil empire. Betrayal and cowardice, incapacity, weave the fabric of civil war. In every Indian general auca or encouraged a traitor. In Cuzco, suspected of loyalty Auqui Huang, the head of the troops of Huascar, inexplicably defeated in successive battles by Atahualpa's generals, and Calcuchima Quisquis. Here, arrogant conquerors, bear no respect for the imperial lineage Huascar, verbally insult the widow of Huayna Capac Coya and the wife of Huascar and exterminate all their relatives to pregnant women.
"Where you been, old presumptuous pride that motivates you?" Mama says Rahua Quisquis Ocllo revered former Empress. Forgetfulness or contempt for the Inca traditions comes, in the process of dissolution, to the desecration. Atahualpa paves the Huaca of Huamachuco that presage bad end, knock down the idol and beheaded the priest. Huáscar disdained the mummies of their ancestors, as Pedro Pizarro, and Santa Cruz Pachacuti accused of having authorized the rape of virgins of the Sun Quisquis and Calcuchima made even the largest conceivable insult to the majesty of the Incas, the Inca Tupac Yupanqui mummy was taken from his palace, where he was revered, and publicly burned. But the most noticeable feature of this derangement, which outlines and the discrediting of the authority and the overflow sacrilegious, is the accentuation of cruelty. Atahualpa chastens Canaris fiercely, making the belly open to women in film, and to kill their children. Sarmiento de Gamboa, said that Atahualpa was the greatest cruelty, theft, abuse, tyranny, "that there never had been done on this earth." The story of the atrocities carried out by Atahualpa's generals in the field and relatives Yahuarpampa against Huascar,-women, children, elderly-, hanged, drowned, killed by starvation, is a grim truth. The end of the Inca Empire was enacted not by the empty office of the oracles, but by the abandonment of the essential rules of humanity and moral severity, and the traditional forces that had made the greatness of the Inca culture. ________________________________________
* Published in: Journal of the Universidad Catolica del Peru, Lima, May 1935, Year III, No. 13, p. 142-148. Reprinted in the journal Sollertia, Year V, No. VIII, Oct.-Dec. 1990, where it is taken.
