What was mita in the Inca Empire?

Mit'a (Quechua) was mandatory public service in the society of the Inca Empire. Historians use the hispanicized term mita to distinguish the system as it was modified by the Spanish, under whom it became a form of legal servitude which in practice bordered on slavery.

Contents

• 1 Concept
  • 1.1 Religious worship
  • 1.2 The System
  • 1.3 Lands were categorized
  • 1.4 Mita during Spanish rule
  • 1.5 Working in mines
• 2 Mitma resettlement system
• 3 See also
• 4 Source

  Concept

Mit'a was effectively a form of tribute to the Inca government, in the form of labor, i.e. a corvée. In the Inca 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.

  Religious worship

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 huacas and pacarinas 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.

Mita system was one of the best invention of Inca government[citation needed]. Enormous construction of highways and structures were possible because of their Mita system. In this system all the people worked for government for a certain period. This labor was free to government. During Inca period people were needed to work only 65 days to provide food for his family. So they had ample time afterwards. When someone's turn came (actually Mita means turn) he joined Mita. It was like public service system of modern times. Government took care of the family who was absent in the while working in Mita. In Mita people worked in building highways, construction of Emperor and nobles house, monuments, bridges, temple fields, Emperor fields and also in mines.

  The System

Once a person turned fifteen, it became obligatory to participate in the Mita. It remain mandatory for a person until he became fifty, however Inca government always wisely calculated the amount of time one could share in Mita. Overseers were responsible to make sure that a person after fulfilling his duty in Mita still had enough time to for his own land and family.

  Lands were categorized

During Inca period people were mostly depended on cultivation of their land. All the filed of the Empire were divided into four category, like field of Temple, Curacas, The emperor and fields of the people. Field of the people meant fields that belonged to sick, widows, old persons, wives of the soldiers and that of his own land.

At the beginning of the plowing time people started to work first at the fields of widows, of sick people and of wives of the soldiers under the direction of the village overseers. Then they worked on their own field. Next they worked on the Temples fields and Curaca's field and finally they have to work on Emperor's filed. While they worked on the Emperor's field they usually wore their best dress and men and women chanted songs in praise of the Inca.

Soldiers benefited..

When people were engaged in war, their fields were cultivated by Mita people. So this way soldier went to the wars knowing that their fields would be taken care of and their family would be well fed and clothed. So Inca soldiers could concentrate on what they were doing and with enhanced loyalty.

  Mita during Spanish rule

Colonial administrators instituted the Mita system in 1605, requiring indigenous men to perform two to four months of forced labor in the mines or factories owned by Spanish colonials. The Incas' Mita system of forced labor for the common good was used by the Spanish for mining gold and silver for the Crown. When people were engaged in Mita they were baptized, ultimately Mita system became slavery under the guise of educating and converting the local people to Catholicism.

  Working in mines

During Inca period people had to work four months in mines, then they returned home. During Spanish regimes number of months required to work in mines remained same, but they had to go through other conditions of work, which made it impossible for them to come back home. While they worked in the mines they had to spend money on buying foods and paying taxes. Earning was so low that they were always in debt. Now the rule was that a miner could not leave the mine until he paid his debts. If a man died then his children had to work in mines to pay the debts, so eventually they were in a circle, and rarely came back home.

The Spanish conquistadors also utilized the same labor system to supply the workforce they needed for the silver mines, which was the basis of their economy in the colonial period. Under the leadership of Viceroy Francisco de Toledo, who was dispatched to Peru in 1569, the mit'a system greatly expanded as Toledo sought to increase silver outputs from the Potosi silver mine.

Toledo recognized that without a steady, reliable and inexpensive source of labor, mining would not be able to grow at the speed that the Spanish crown had requested. Under Toledo's leadership, the first mit'a recruits arrived in Potosi in 1573 from the regions directly surrounding the Potosi mine. At its peak recruitment for the Potosi mit'a extended to an area that was nearly 200,000 square miles and included much of southern Peru and present-day Bolivia.

The conquistadors used the concept of mit'a to suit their own needs. Mit'a is considered to as the ancient and original version of mandatory state service. The mit'a system had severe impacts on the Indian population as it drained them of able-bodied workers at a time when their communities were experiencing demographic collapse due to epidemics of old-world diseases. It also resulted in Indians fleeing their communities to evade the mit'a. With fewer workers able to work the fields, farming production fell resulting in famine and malnutrition for many Indian communities in the region.

  Mitma resettlement system

Further information: Mitma

The mit'a labor draft is not to be confused with the related Inca policy of deliberate resettlements referred to by the Quechua word mitma (mitmaq meaning "outsider" or "newcomer"), or its hispanicized forms mitima or mitimaes (plural). This involved transplanting whole groups of people of Inca background as colonists into new lands inhabited by newly conquered peoples. The aim was to distribute loyal Inca subjects throughout their empire to limit the threat of localized rebellions.

  See also

• Repartimiento
• Ayni

  Source

• The Mountain Institute [1]

What did the mita system do?

Why was the mita system important to the Incas?

What was the mita mita system?

What does the term mita refer to?