Mita (Inca)

Mit'a (Quechua pronunciation: [ˈmɪˌtʼa]) was mandatory public service in the society of the Inca Empire. Historians use the hispanicized term mita to differentiate the system as it was modified and intensified by the Spanish colonial government, creating the encomienda system.

Mit'a was effectively a form of tribute to the Inca government in the form of labor, i.e. a corvée. In the Incan Empire, public service was required in community-driven projects such as the building of their extensive road network. Military service was also mandatory.

All citizens who could perform labor were required to do so for a set number of days out of a year (the basic meaning of the word mit'a is a regular turn or a season). Due to the Inca Empire's wealth, a family would often only require sixty-five days to farm; the rest of the year was devoted entirely to the mit'a.

The Incas elaborated creatively on a preexisting system of not only the mit'a exchange of labor but also the exchange of the objects of religious veneration of the peoples whom they took into their empire. This exchange ensured proper compliance among conquered peoples. In this instance wak'as and paqarinas became significant centers of shared worship and a point of unification of their ethnically and linguistically diverse empire, bringing unity and citizenship to often geographically disparate peoples. This led eventually to a system of pilgrimages throughout all of these various shrines by the indigenous people of the empire prior to the introduction of Catholicism. Enormous construction of highways and structures were only possible in part by the use of the mit'a system by the Inca. In this system all the people worked for the government for a certain period of time. This labor was free for the Inca Rule. During the Inca period, men were required to work 65 days in the field to provide food for his family. When someone's turn came he joined the various works that used the mit'a system. A communal type of elemental provisions and needs was set up in order to care for the families of those who were absent in their Mita turn. In the mit'a people worked in building highways, the construction of Emperor and noble's houses, monuments, bridges, temple fields, Emperor fields and also in mines.

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