FROM DISCOVERIES TO EMPIRE^111with the farthest reaches of the kingdom and impose his absolute,
uniform rule over a highly diverse society. He was seen as divine. All
land was in principle his, and he in turn graciously lent it to
communal groups in return for tribute in kind and, above all, labor,
the so-called mita. This forced labor did road and water work,
served in the army and in the courier post, hauled goods and built
official structures (palaces to storehouses), collected and gave out the
things owed and bestowed. All garments were Inca issue. The
ordinary commoner, on the occasion of his marriage, would draw
one garment for everyday wear, another for holidays, and a working
cape for inclement weather. When these became worn, he could go
back for more. Aside from corvée labor, people had their own tasks.
Inca society was something like an anthill: everyone worked, even
the litde children, from the age of five on. The women spun thread
while walking, and the story has it that the roads were built smooth
to keep them from tripping; they were too busy to watch their feet.
Except for local barter, trade was reserved to the authorities.
Some scholars have called the system socialist, in that so much of
the social product was delivered to the center for ultimate
redistribution, and that may be a reasonable appellation; but the
system was in form and effect not different from those prevailing in
other aristocratic despotisms, with their "prime divider" separating a
small elite from the large, relatively undifferentiated mass. Like these,
Inca society had its leveling, homogenizing aspects: rough and
humble in subsistence and appearance, just about everyone learned
to eat and wait by squatting on haunches. The rulers were set apart
by dress and furniture and diet—among other things, the right to
"turn on" by chewing coca. Common folk, to be sure, managed to
get hold of this reserved substance; they could not have performed
their toilsome tasks without it. But pure pleasure was something else
again, and informers and inspectors swarmed, ready to follow their
noses into houses and pots at any hour of day or night and enforce
the exclusivity of these privileges. What is a privilege after all, if
everyone can enjoy it?
The eyes of the Inca were everywhere. The word for governor was
tukrikuk, he who sees all.
In the short century of its existence, the Inca empire did much to
unify the peoples under its rule and to establish a common language,
quechua, still spoken by the Andean population—as Che Guevara
learned when he tried to mobilize them in Spanish for the
revolutionary cause. Under this Inca "peace," however, all was not