interpreter for the Spanish Crown. He qualified the accuracy of the information
he accumulated in interviews, but put the data he considered the most reliable
into a form that Spaniards could readily understand—a European-style dynasty
of kings, starting with Manco Capac, the legendary founder (see Myths,
Origin). This, with some variations from writer to writer, became the standard
list of kings (see table). There may have been other rulers, because Andean
informants stated that a do-nothing or discredited king did not found a panaca,
was not memorialized, and dropped from collective memory. One mid-
seventeenth-century chronicler lists over a hundred kings, naming five Manco
Capacs and multiple Pachacutis. Ongoing research on naming practices suggests
that this topic and the history of Andean memory require further research.
The Incas had no universally accepted law of succession. Therefore, transition
from one ruler to the next could be fraught with rancorous negotiations, political
intrigues, ousters, and assassinations. War became the ultimate solution when
politics and diplomacy failed, because war was believed to test the strength of
each contender and his favor with the gods. Images of the gods were carried into
active combat zones as a source of strength and inspiration. In the civil war
between Huascar and Atahualpa, victories on the battlefields were interpreted as
indicating the Sun god’s choice for the Sapa Inca (see Wars, Dynastic). The
necessity of choosing sides and supporting one candidate or another and the
inevitable reprisals that awaited those who backed the losing faction meant that
the empire was inherently unstable and that each Sapa Inca had to negotiate and
reestablish his relationships with ethnic groups in each generation or in the wake
of each transition.
Further Reading
D’Altroy, Terence N. The Incas. 2nd ed. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2014.
Julien, Catherine J. Reading Inca History. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2000.
McEwan, Gordon F. The Incas. New York: W. W. Norton, 2006.
Pärssinen, Martti. Tawantinsuyu: The Inca State and Its Political Organization. Studia Historica 43.
Helsinki: Finnish Historical Society, 1992.
Pease, Franklin. Los últimos Incas del Cusco. Madrid: Alianza América, 1991.
Ramírez, Susan Elizabeth. To Feed and Be Fed: The Cosmological Bases of Authority and Identity in the
Andes. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005.
———. “Bajo el nombre de los antepasados: La memoria viva en los Andes, siglos XVI-XVII.” In Un
juego de engaños. Nombres, apellidos y movilidad en los siglos XV al XVIII, edited by G. Salinero and I.
Testón Núñez, 163–86. Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2010.
■SUSAN ELIZABETH RAMÍREZ