Legitimidad política y organización social en las comunidades indígenas de la provincia de Chayanta (siglo XVIII)

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between the indigenous hierarchies of government, the ethnic organization, and the shifting notions of political legitimacy in the Upper Peruvian province of Chayanta during the eighteenth century. It argues that the crisis of Andean chieftainships resulting in the 1780 insurrection was originated in that the caciques continued to play a central role in the functioning of the rural society —a role that could not be diminished unless drastic changes in the ayllus’ traditional patterns of ecological verticality and distribution of economic resources among their members occurred—, at the same time that that their ideological legitimacy was no longer subjected to somewhat rigid aristocratic principles. Peasant protests affected interim and hereditary caciques alike and tried to bridge the gap between the economic and political rationality of the communities’ authorities. The work seeks to locate these developments within the general context of the Andean area.