Negociando el imperio: el Estado inca como culto

Abstract

This paper makes a connection between the Inca belief system and the construction of a multi-ethnic state structure to reassess the motivating factors for Inca expansion. It documents the fact that the so-called Inca empire was less an empire in the Roman sense than a congregation of believers in a state cult, characterized by a central personage, the manifestation of a divine founder, who traveled to different pilgrimage centers, where he or his representatives negotiated the terms of cult participation. This is not a picture of a highly-centralized, omnipotent organization, but one where flexibility and compromise triumph and where ethnic groups adhere to central dictates to various degrees. The tie between religious belief or cosmology and the on-going transformation of a kin-based curacazgo into an unfinished state, unified by real or fictional kinship ties and a supernaturally-linked ancestor cult, is explained as a means of gaining access to the additional labor resources necessary for the ultimate preservation of the ruling ethnicity.

Keywords

• Inca
• empire
• cult
• cosmology
• labor
• pilgrimage centres