Ayllu
Ayllu ( Quechua "family, extended family, village community") is the lowest political unit in traditional Andean society . In its basic meaning, the term refers to the extended family ( clan ) as a community of descent and kinship, but in a broader sense the cooperative village community as a local community.
The Ayllu is characterized by joint ownership of land. The fields or pasture areas are either farmed together in the form of the Minka or redistributed every year as a "loan" for individual cultivation. Traditionally, the members of an ayllu worship their own local deity ( wak'a ) alongside the general Andean deities . Every Inca ruler founded a new Ayllu (panaka) .
After the Conquista , with the introduction of the encomienda and later the hacienda , which was in fact a form of serfdom , the organization of the ayllus was broken up. A break with the Andean tradition also meant the distribution of small parcels as individual property in the course of land reforms , for example in Bolivia after the expropriation of the large landowners from 1953. The land reform in Peru under General Juan Velasco Alvarado again aimed at converting the Ayllu into larger ones integrate agricultural cooperatives. In doing so, she also resorted to symbolism from the old Andean tradition and anti-colonial indigenous resistance.
In remote areas, the organization of the ayllu in Quechua and Aymara communities has partly persisted to this day or has even been revived (e.g. on the island community of Taquile , which is organized as a cooperative ).
literature
- Reiner Tom Zuidema: El ayllu peruano . In: 36th Congreso Internacional de Americanistas, España 1964 (published 1966) (in Spanish)
- Joseph Bastien: Mountain of the Condor. Metaphor and ritual in an Andean Ayllu . Monograph No. 55 of the American Ethnological Society. West Publishing Co., St. Paul 1978.
- Ann Marie B. Bahr, Martin E. Marty: Indigenous religions . Infobase Publishing, New York 2005. The Quechuas , pp. 124-141: Ayllu and Ayni , pp. 135f. ISBN 978-0-7910-8095-5 .