Ayllus

Ayllu is the traditional form of a community in the Andes, especially among Quechuas and Aymaras. They are an indigenous local government model across the Andes region of South America, particularly in Bolivia and Peru. Ayllus functioned prior to Inca conquest, during the Inca and Spanish colonial period, and continue to exist to the present day.

Ayllus were essentially extended family groups but they could adopt non-related members, giving individual families more variation and security of the land that they farmed. The head of an ayllu is called a mallku which means, literally, condor, but is a title which can be roughly translated as "prince". They would often have their own wak'a, or minor god, usually embodied in a physical object such as a mountain or rock.

Ayllu were self-sustaining units and would educate their own offspring and farm or trade for all the food they ate, except in cases of disaster such as El Niño years when they relied on the Inca storehouse system. Their primary function was to solve subsistence issues, and issues of how to get along in family, and larger, units.

Each ayllu owned a parcel of land, and the members had reciprocal obligations to each other.

In marriages, the woman would generally join the class and ayllu of her partner as would her children, but would inherit her land from her parents and retain her membership in her birth ayllu. This is how most movements of people between ayllu occurred. But a person could also join an ayllu by assuming the responsibility of membership. This included mink'a, communal work for common purposes, ayni, or work in kind for other members of the ayllu, and mit'a, a form of taxation levied by the Inca government.

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