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■MARCO CURATOLA PETROCCHI
DUALISM
Although not exclusively Inca, as it had existed long before the emergence of
Tahuantinsuyu, dualism was an integral part of Inca conceptions of time, space,
and social relations. The most overt expression of dualism in the Inca state was
at the level of the organization of space—that is, the division of communities
into moieties (halves). An example was the division of the city of Cuzco into a
hanan, or “upper” half, and a hurin, or “lower” half. According to the chronicler
Garcilaso de la Vega, Hanan Cuzco was associated with the King (the Sapa
Inca), while Hurin Cuzco was associated with the Queen (the Coya). Garcilaso
states that the two halves of the city were equal, like brothers; however, the first
was like the eldest brother and the second was like the younger brother.
Garcilaso also likened hanan to the right hand and hurin to the left hand. He
went on to note that divisions of this kind were made “in large and small villages
throughout the Empire” (Garcilaso 1966 [1609]).
Another chronicler, Juan de Betanzos, states that the upper moiety was
inhabited by the closest relatives of the Inca ruler while the Inca’s secondary
relatives lived in the lower moiety. Betanzos’s testimony has been interpreted as
evidence of the endogamous (i.e., marrying inside the social group) nature of
these moieties, and it is thought by anthropologists that this was, in turn, the
basis of the Inca system of political hierarchy. According to this system,
particularly as it was formed through marriage ties, relatives from marriages
inside the group were superior to those made with people outside the group.
Ethnohistorical reports of moieties in Aymara-speaking territories in Bolivia
also display moiety divisions. For instance, in the case of the Lupacas of
Chucuito, on the southwest shore of Lake Titicaca, as mentioned in the
sixteenth-century Visita made by Garci Diez de San Miguel, the upper moiety,
or alasaa, and the lower moiety, massaa, had separate, parallel leaders (Qari was
the headman of the alasaa moiety, while Cusi headed massaa). As in Cuzco,