Men and women provided their labor to the empire
by tilling fields and sowing seeds. Guaman Poma
de Ayala, Felipe. El primer nueva corónica y buen
gobierno. Edited by John V. Murra and Rolena
Adorno, 1050/1153. Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno,
1980 [1615].The general taxpaying populace owed about two to three months of service
annually. The range of services required was broad, but can be grouped as
follows: agropastoral production, extraction of raw materials, manufacture of
material goods, construction or maintenance of the physical infrastructure, and
labor that yielded a service, like military and guard duty or portage. Agriculture
and military duty appear to have been the most heavily applied taxes. In some
instances, military service took people away from their homes for years or even
permanently. The proportion of individual societies thus affected could be a third
or more of the populace (such as occurred among the Colla of the altiplano on
the shores of Lake Titicaca, for instance), while other societies claimed
wholesale commitment to military duty (e.g., the Charkas of Bolivia or the
Chachapoya of the cloud forest of northern Peru). The Incas also favored certain
groups because of their special talents—Rucanas as litter-bearers and
Chumbivilcas as dancers, for example. The chroniclers Falcón, Martín de
Murúa, and Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala provided general lists of 30–40
duties, sometimes distinguishing between coastal and highland peoples. Spanish
inspections of the early Colonial era also recorded the labors owed by particular
ethnic groups. The table lists both Falcón’s highland categories and the
obligations owed by the Chupachu people of Peru’s north-central highlands.
State personnel determined the amount of labor service to be provided on an
annual basis. According to the chronicler Bernabé Cobo, the nature and kind of
service was assigned according to the anticipated needs of the state, without a
fixed amount having been set. That approach required a systematic, periodically
updated census; knowledge about regional resources, both human and natural;
and regular communications between provincial and central officials. Typically,
provincial governors oversaw application of the labor tax, but lower-tier
officials, generally from subject societies, seem to have had the discretion to
select the taxpayers who were assigned to specific duties. While scant, the
available evidence for mobilizations from particular provinces suggests that