Government

Beliefs

The Sapa Inca was conceptualized as divine and was effectively head of the state religion. Only the Willaq-Umu (or Chief Priest) was second to the emperor. Local religious traditions were allowed to continue, and in some cases such as the Oracle at Pachacamac on the Peruvian coast, were officially venerated. Following Pachacuti, the Sapa Inca claimed descent from Inti, which placed a high value on imperial blood; by the end of the empire, it was common to wed brother and sister. He was “son of the sun,” and his people the intip churin, or “children of the sun,” and both his right to rule and mission to conquer derived from his holy ancestor. The Sapa Inca also presided over ideologically important festivals, notably during the Inti Raymi, or “warriors’ cultivation,” attended by soldiers, mummified rulers, nobles, clerics, and the general population of Cusco beginning on the auspicious June solstice and culminating nine days later with the ritual breaking of the earth using a foot plow by the Inca himself. Moreover, Cusco itself was considered cosmologically central, loaded as it was with huacas and radiating ceque lines, and geographic center of the Four Quarters; Inca Garcilaso de la Vega himself called it “the navel of the universe.

Organization of the empire

The Inca Empire was a federalist system which consisted of a central government with the Inca at its head and four quarters, or suyu:Chinchay Suyu (NW), Anti Suyu (NE), Kunti Suyu (SW), and Qulla Suyu (SE). The four corners of these quarters met at the center, Cusco. These suyu were likely created around 1460 during the reign of Pachacuti before the empire assumed it largest territorial extent. It is probably the case that at the time the suyu were established they were roughly of equal size and only later changing their proportions as the empire expanded north and south along the Andes.

The capital area, Cusco, was likely not organized as a wamani, or province. Rather, it was probably somewhat akin to a modern federal district, like Washington, D.C. or Mexico City. The city sat at the center of the four suyu and served as the preeminent center of politics and religion. While Cusco was essentially governed by the Sapa Inca, his relatives, and the royal panaqa lineages, each suyu was governed by an Apu, a term of great esteem used for men of very high status and for venerated mountains. Just as with so much of Andean society and Inca administration, both Cusco as a district and the four suyu as administrative regions were grouped into upper hanan and lower hurindivisions. As the Inca did not have written records, it is impossible to exhaustively list the constituent wamani. However, records created during the Spanish colonial period allow us to reconstruct a partial list. There were likely more than 86 wamani, with more than 48 in the highlands and more than 38 on the coast.

The most populous suyu, Chinchaysuyu encompassed the former lands of the Chimu empire and much of the northern Andes. At its largest extent, the suyu extended through much of modern Ecuador and just into modern Colombia. The second smallest of the suyu, Antisuyu was located northwest of Cusco in high Andes. Indeed, it is the root of the word “Andes.” Collasuyu or Qollasuyu was named after theAymara-speaking Qolla people and was the largest of the quarters in terms of area. This suyu encompassed the Bolivian Altiplano and much of the southern Andes, running down into Argentina and as far south as the Maule river near modern Santiago, Chile. Cuntisuyu or Kuntisuyu was the smallest suyu of all was located along the southern coast of modern Peru, extending into the highlands towards Cusco.

Laws

The Inca state had no separate judiciary or codified set of laws. While customs, expectations, and traditional local power holders did much in the way of governing behavior, the state, too, had legal force, such as through tokoyrikoq (lit. "he who sees all"), or inspectors. The highest such inspector, typically a blood relation to the Sapa Inca, acted independently of the conventional hierarchy, providing a point of view for the Sapa Inca free of bureaucratic influence.

Administration

The colonial-era sources are not entirely clear or in agreement about the nature of the structure of the Inca government. However, its basic structure can be spoken of broadly, even if the exact duties and functions of government positions cannot be told. At the top of the chain of administration sat the Sapa Inca. Next to the Sapa Inca in terms of power may have been the Willaq Umu, literally the "priest who recounts", who was the High Priest of the Sun. However, it has been noted that beneath the Sapa Inca also sat the Inkap rantin, who was at the very least a confidant and assistant to the Sapa Inca, perhaps along the lines of a Prime Minister. From the time of Topa Inca Yupanqui on, there existed a "Council of the Realm" composed of sixteen nobles: two from hanan Cusco; two from hurin Cusco; four from Chinchaysuyu; two from Cuntisuyu; four from Collasuyu; and two from Antisuyu. This weighting of representation balanced the hanan and hurin divisions of the empire, both within Cusco and within the Quarters (hanan suyukuna and hurin suyukuna).

While there was a great deal of variation in the form that Inca bureaucracy and government took at the provincial level, the basic form of organization was decimal. In this system of organization, taxpayers—male heads of household of a certain age range—were organized into corvée labor units (which often doubled as military units) that formed the muscle of the state as part of mit'a service. Each level of jurisdiction above one hundred tax-payers was headed by a kuraka, while those heading smaller units were kamayuq, a lower, non-hereditary status. However, while kuraka status was hereditary, one's actual position within the hierarchy (which was typically served for life) was subject to change based upon the privileges of those above them in the hierarchy; a pachaka kuraka (see below) could be appointed to their position by a waranqa kuraka. Furthermore, it has been suggested that one kuraka in each decimal level also served as the head of one of the nine groups at a lower level, so that one pachaka kuraka might also be a waranqa kuraka, in effect directly responsible for one unit of 100 tax-payers and less directly responsible for nine other such units.