The Incas of Peru
Cecil Carroll Tucker
[Reprinted from Land and Freedom, July-August
1940]
There is a happy tendency among modern historical researchers to
subject ancient systems of government to emotional analysis. This is
perhaps caused by the pressure of our need for accurate knowledge of
the past to assist us in determining present courses of action. The
sighing for the "glories that were Greece" is no longer in
vogue. The attitude has become, "Let us read history to learn
lessons." With a sympathy of treatment that is truly touching,
Clenent Roberts Markham, a historian of the old school, relates the
saga of the Incas. He tells of their music, poetry, and drama, of
their beautiful religious mysteries, of their arts and architecture,
and of their government. Their system of government inspired Markham's
intense admiration. It was a Utopian socialism, he said, in actual
working order. It was a benevolent despotism under rulers whose genius
for government "far surpassed that of the Spaniards who conquered
them."
Guiness, a later writer, is less sanguine. He realized the
socio-economic implications of a totalitarian regime. The Inca rulers
extirpated poverty "but at what a cost!" The people were
treated like children and children they repained. They were the
property, body and soul, of the state. Their labor and persons were
conscripted by the slate at the discretion and whim of the rulers.
Personal initiative did not flourish under such a system. The great
body of the population was conditioned to be satisfied with full
stomach, the worship of idols, and reasonable protection from physical
violence.
If a book could be written containing, on one side of the age, Max
Hirsch's "Socialism, the Slave State," and on the other
side, the history of the development of the Inca civilization, the
deductions of Hirsch and the facts of the story would exhibit a
striking parallel. Certainly there remained no virility in a people
who, themselves numbering more than eight millions, could be
subjugated by a band of one hundred eighty Spaniards.
There were extenuating circumstances, of course. The Spaniards rode
the first horses the Incas had ever seen. And it must have been
terrifying to the Incas to see a cannon a blast that could come apart
into two pieces, and was, moreover, "apparently able to control
thunder and lightning." Yet the North American Indians were
introduced to firearms the awkward way by their invaders, but through
the stubbornness of their resistance, they acquired firearms and
became proficient in their use. Only internal decay could explain so
easy a conquest as that of the Incas of Peru. The facts substantiate
the deduction. The Inca civilization was rotten to the core. At the
time of the Spanish conquest, the Benevolent Despot was directing,
from his luxurious quarters in the nation's capital, the resistance
against armed insurrection promoted by the Inca version of the Crown
Prince. Revolutions can be inspired by hatred of oppression, or desire
to enjoy the fruits of privilege. In this case it was probably both.
To the Inca rulers were not only the power and the glory, but also
two-thirds of the produce of the nation's industry.
A "system of land-tenure" might more exactly be called a "system
for distributing the products of labor." The one involves the
other. In Peru, under the Incas, the State was the absolute owner of
the land. All cultivated land (the extent of which was vastly
increased by elaborate systems of terracing and irrigation) was
divided into three parts. The produce of one-third went to the support
of the royal line. Another third supported the religious system. To
the producers was returned the remaining third.
The State was also the absolute owner of the people. It decided what
production should be carried on, and selected the producing personnel.
The State undertook the education and training of the producers. It
carried out large-scale colonization of loyal subjects in provinces of
doubtful party regularity, for purposes of espionage and
consolidation. The State directed scientific research, and designated
the scientists. It is true that a remarkable degree of knowledge had
been acquired. The surgical operation of trepanning was practised.
Silver and gold were extracted from the ore. Ruins of public buildings
contain blocks of stone weighing up to 150 tons, which had been moved
several miles from, and raised hundreds of feet above, the quarries
from which they were hewn. But a great portion of the labor was wasted
in preparations for defense against internal and external aggression,
and in the carrying on of empirical conquests.
Unless its foundations be laid in justice, the social structure
cannot stand. The monuments remain, but the Empire has crumbled.
According to Sarmiento de Gamboa, mouthpiece of the Spanish viceroy
Don Francisco de Toledo, the tyranny exercised by the Incas over their
people provided the justification for the seizing of those lands by
the Spanish Crown. Whether the three gentlemen who sat around a table
in Panama and planned the conquest of Peru were motivated by pity for
the natives, by a pious desire to substitute monotheism for idolatry,
by a lust for gold, or by mixed feelings, cannot be stated with
certainty. At any rate, the despoilers of that remarkable civilization
found conditions badly in need of mending. And so the cycle completes
another turn.
Five hundred years before the Spaniards came, the rich Peruvian
plateau was the seat of another highly-cultured race, the Yuncas. The
Incas, then in the vigor of their barbarism, overran this
civilization. The size of the Yunca capital city of Chan Chan gives an
index both to the character of the conquered civilization and to the
power of the conquerors. It was larger than Manhattan, being over
fourteen miles long and over five miles wide.
The Spanish conquest of Peru was yet a step in advance, despite its
attendant evils. The Catholic Church, through its Spanish military
arm, planted, in the ruins of a rotting civilization, the seeds of
progress.
|