The Inca Model of Statecraft
by Michael Mosley - The Incas and Their Ancestors
pages 49-53
Thames and Hudson Publishing 1992
In certain respects Inca statecraft differs from that of other ancient nations because institutions of rule were adapted to an unusual, multifaceted environment. The Inca and their political predecessors elaborated upon basic principles of organization that evolved first among local communities. Therefore, it is useful to review the organization of indigenous communities...
The ayllu
Mountain agropastoralism, farming, and herding often require executing several
tasks at the same time, but in different places. A married couple is the
minimal unit of economic production, but working unaided, newlyweds lack
the labor resources to erect adequate housing or convert unowned barren
land into productive holdings. Nor can they efficiently cope with the agricultural
cycle during critical toil-intensive times of plowing, planting, and harvesting.
Thus, a couple - a nuclear family, a household - is a basic economic entity,
but not an autonomous one. In the Andes the autonomous unit of production
and reproduction is a group of related individuals and couples who exchange
labor and cooperate in the management of land and herds. These kin collectives
are called ayllus, and the well-being of a couple is proportional to the size and holdings of their collective.
An ayllu has a founding ancestor and contains a number of lineages divided among two "moieties". Membership is determined by kinship that men tend to trace through male lines and women trace through female lines. Marriage partners are generally exchanged between sets of moiety lineages. This makes the ayllu an endogamous corporation that is reproductively autonomous. At birth a person inherits a set of relationships - responsibilities to others and claims upon them - that determine access to labor, land, water, and other resources. In selecting marriage partners individuals held in high esteem are those with the most kin, because relatives bring with them commitments to share work, resources, and their returns.
In addition to labor, pastureland and farmland are subject to ayllu management. Farmland must often be irrigated, and ayllus are commonly water-management corporations. They hold rights to lakes, springs, or rivers, and they maintain the canals. Although outlying land holdings are ideally scattered from high to low elevations, there is a spatial focus, or home territory for the ayllu. Generally this home territory is in potato and tuber growing elevations around 3,500 m. This is a strategic setting because puna pasturage lies slightly higher, allowing pastoralism to be readily combined with cultivation. Below the home territory irrigated land for growing maize and other important crops may lie within one or two days walk, depending upon topography.
The home territory of the ayllu often comprises a single community, usually of widely- scattered households because poorly developed highland soils require frequent crop rotation and fallowing. Today, most traditional villages of Quechua and Aymara communities are divided into two residential sections, an upper one and a lower one, corresponding to what were called the hanan and hurin duality in ancient Cuzco. Households in one section belong to a group of lineages that form one moiety, and a complementary moiety is formed by people in the other section. Women from one moiety marry men of the other and generally move to their husband's section of the community. However, women inherit land from their parents, and they retain full membership in their moiety of birth. This gives social and economic autonomy to married females, and it keeps labor and land exchange within the ayllu.
Rights and responsibilities
People sometimes marry into or are adopted into other ayllus if they are
willing to meet the responsibilities of membership. Obligations are nested
in the most precious of Andean essentials, labor and work, and responsibilities
are based on the notion of reciprocity - the concept that when something
is rendered, something of equal kind or value will be returned. The Aymara
word ayni designates a service rendered with obligatory repayment
of equal kind. The Quechua word mit'a designates a 'turn' of labor
and the equal exchange of work. Ayni and mit'a allow a household to temporarily
mobilize more labor than that for which it has workers, and this is essential
for mountain agropastoralism. An individual's brothers, sisters, their offspring, nieces and nephews, comprise the nucleus of kin with which mit'a and ayni are exchanged for agricultural tasks, for house building, and for other jobs that a couple cannot do alone.
Ideally, the type of labor rendered is the same type of labor that will be returned. Strict accounting is involved. When male and female kin assemble to execute a job, such as plowing a relative's field, they do not work as a gang. Instead each couple works a different field row and then another. By clearly segmenting work the tasks that kindred render are clearly defined. Subdividing jobs into repetitive, modular tasks also characterizes large undertakings. When a number of ayllu are concerned with common endeavors, such as building churchyard or cemetery walls, each constructs and maintains a specified section.
Although work is carefully accounted for, among kindred it is often repaid with another type of service, or with goods resulting from other labor. Goods traditionally include textiles, and the time devoted to producing fabrics of a particular quality and size is well understood, but food is the commodity most frequently exchanged. When people render mit'a, they expect to be fed, and it is the obligation of those who are receiving labor to feed those who are rendering service. Beyond this, certain types of service are regularly repaid with staples. The exchange of food and other commodities ensures the redistribution of staples and dietary elements, and redistribution is vital to the autonomy of the ayllu.
Because ayllu rights and responsibilities form the indigenous basis of corporate organization, Andean society has often been characterized as a communal one. However, although ayllu members share kin and community ties, everyone is by no means equal. Some individuals inherit, marry into, or garner far more resources than others. There are wealthy couples, families, and lineages, and many very poor ones. Ayllu-like communal organization extends far back in the archaeological record, but even among simple societies of great antiquity some people were better off than others.
Cargo systems
Among ayllus the nature of decision making and authority has undergone great 
transformations since the Spaniards' arrival. Today communities may operate under governors and authorities who are outside appointees, but beneath this overlay two more traditional hierarchies of offices often survive. One chain of command comprises civil offices. Each moiety often has a series of posts, some of which roughly translate as clerk, constable, vice-mayor, and mayor. The other hierarchy entails posts of a religious nature. The responsibilities here are for the observance of a series of annual ceremonies relating to patron saints and major church holidays.
The offices of both civil and religious hierarchies are rotational, and ideally, during the life of an individual he moves through both hierarchies and then retires as a respected community elder. A hierarchy of rotational offices is called a 'cargo system' by anthropologists, and they are widespread among native peoples of Latin America. Today Andean females do not generally hold civil offices, but they may hold religious posts. It is noteworthy that cargo offices are not revenue generating, but posts of public service. Holding an office entails substantial outlays of time and resources, as well as serving prodigious quantities of food and drink on formal occasions. Therefore, only the well-to-do, who can draw services and resources from many kindred, can assume a post and move through the office hierarchy to achieve respected retirement. As prosperous men and women move through the cargo system their expenditures serve to redistribute wealth and resources from the more fortunate to the less fortunate.
Governance based upon formal offices through which people rotated, but did not inherit, may go back to the very foundations of Andean civilization. One of the distinguishing features of traditional Andean cargo systems is that each hierarchical post is associated with a distinct ceremonial staff. Beautifully made, and often ornamented with precious metal, the office holder parades these hallmarks of position and authority on all formal occasions. Staff-bearing individuals are frequently depicted in ancient iconography and it seems reasonable to interpret these individuals as office holders. However, they need not have been cargo posts because offices could also be inherited in the past.
Karakas
When Pizarro's forces arrived ayllus were governed by hereditary rulers
known as karakas. There were generally two, one for each moiety. The karaka of the dominant or more 
powerful moiety was called the
principale by the Spanish, and his counterpart the segunda persona.
Often moieties were subdivided into two, four, or more sections, and there was a hierarchy of four or more lords. These lords were generally males, but there were also female karakas. Karakas claimed closer descent from the ayllu's founding ancestor than the subjects they oversaw, and local lords and those of larger polities formed a separate class of people who married among themselves.
Karakas and kings ruled as intermediaries between heaven and earth, interceding with the cosmic forces on behalf of their subjects' well-being. When disaster struck, they were accountable. Fempellec, a powerful potentate in Lambayeque, was put to death when a great El Nino devastated his homeland. Karakas were managers of ayllu resources. They mediated quarrels over land and water and made sure individual households had field and pasture allotments sufficient for their needs. The lords supervised the agricultural and herding calendar and made sure plowing, planting, and harvesting were initiated at the proper times. In return, ayllu members tilled the fields, tended the herds of their leaders, wove cloth for them, and rendered other mit'a. In a symbiotic manner, karakas were expected to be generous and hospitable, and on formal occasions this meant feeding people and providing great quantities of maize beer for purposes of ritual intoxication. At a more basic level, leaders were expected to reciprocate with gifts, food, drink, and coca for labor and service received from their followers. Although reciprocity was expected, more was extracted than returned. The Andean archaeological record indicates that the evolution of leadership saw the crystallization of formal offices and hierarchical posts long before such positions were co-opted by the emergence of an hereditary elite. Whereas cargo-like systems of governance seem to have great antiquity, karaka-like rule did not become prevalent until shortly before the beginning of the Christian era.