Panaca

A panaca or panaka was that family formed by all the descendants of a Sapa Inca, excluding from it the son who succeeded in command. The basic social institution of the Incas were the ayllus. An ayllu was a group of families that descended from a common ancestor, united by culture and religion, in addition to the care of agriculture, livestock and fishing in the same territory. These transcended the Inca nobility, so that kinship could establish a lineage, called panaca.

Description of panacas

The family of each Sapa Inca formed a royal ayllu that received the name panaca. The only son of the Inca who was not part of the panaca was the Auqui (his heir) because the latter, when he became sovereign, would form his own panaca. In general, at least from the Hanan dynasty Cuzcobegan with the construction of a new palace in which the new court would be installed, while the previous Inca's palace remained the prerogative of his family.

This new panaca, upon his death, would have been led by one of his sons, generally the most prestigious, obviously excluding the heir to the throne that he would have constituted, but in some cases the leadership of the The family has also been taken over by a brother of the deceased Inca.

Panaca resources

The Sapa Inca, during his life, provided his panaca with all means of sustenance through the allocation of land, servants (yanaconas) and wealth of all kinds. For this reason, special importance is found in the panacas of the last Incas who were able to enjoy the enormous possibilities offered by the Tahuantinsuyo extension.

The panacas should not be considered as a symbolic attribution of individuals to a particular group. These lineages really existed and had concrete and well-documented resources. In the viceregal period following the Spanish conquest, the Inca nobility, now familiar with European procedures, often engaged in legal disputes to claim land and property. In these documents, which are still preserved today, the properties of the different panacas are reconstructed, as indicated by the different witnesses and as verified by the judges. In some cases, these properties reached considerable dimensions.

Function of panacas

The compensation that the panacas owed to their guardian and benefactor was represented by the service to the embalmed body of the deceased Inca, to which divine powers were attributed. For this, a whole series of services were organized. The mummy had to be watched and cared for, usually by a male and female character, and she had to offer it food and drink every day. On particular occasions, the embalmed remains of the deceased Incas, along with those of their wives, were taken out in procession, but it was not unusual for the mummies to be taken to visit those of their relatives.

On the political side, the panacas have often had a great influence in the appointment to the position of Sapa Inca, for example for Huiracocha Inca or Huáscar who were not Auquis.

In addition to these tasks, the panacas had to keep the memory of the deeds of the sovereign of reference, entrusting the memory to the quipu and taking care of its reading and updating through experts called quipucamayoc, literally readers of quipu, who transmitted their knowledge from generation to generation. Considering that the official history of the Tahuantinsuyo was preserved in the same way, this activity may seem superfluous. The official chronicles, however, were reviewed at the beginning of each reign and appropriately "purified" of all the references that could seem inconvenient for the reigning Inca. The panaca memorials, on the other hand, jealously preserved every detail of the life of their founder, regardless of the will of the central power, and were a source that the various lineages would never abandon, even at the cost of resorting to it, as they did. It often happened, in secret.

This is one of the reasons why the chronicles of Spanish writers often present incomprehensible discrepancies. Depending on the source used, the facts investigated were, in fact, reported differently by the different panacas that, evidently, privileged the exploits of its founder.

History of panacas

With the growth of the empire, the panacas acquired increasing importance, eventually becoming, at least the most important, the regulatory center of the political life of Cusco. In this context, it was inevitable that the panacas, or rather the interests they represented, ended up coming into conflict with each other, giving rise to real disputes. The succession of an Inca was often the occasion of confrontations between the most important families who each tried to impose their own candidate, since the criterion of majorascato was not an element of absolute election. The children of an Inca ruler had in fact, at least legitimate, identical chances of being elected to the imperial office, since they all belonged to the panaca of their deceased father. Each of them, however, had a different mother, belonging to a different family and she gathered around her offspring, trying to favor her choice.

Succession struggles, often bloody, weakened state power and the astute Inca sovereigns attempted to avoid the resulting crises by associating their living beings with the designated heir of imperial dignity. However, this file could not prevent the panacas of the mothers of the overthrown princes from trying to achieve their objectives through various conspiracies after their death.

The most important panacas, which fought for power in the last years of Tahuantinsuyo, were those of Hatun Ayllu, a descendant of Pachacutec, and that of Cápac Ayllu, created by Túpac Yupanqui. The other imperial families, incapable of autonomous politics, had aligned themselves with one of the two most important panacas, forging a political alliance that created two opposing camps. Huáscar was the first Inca who tried to limit the power of the panacas. The empire, at the maximum limits of its expansion, did not allow, in fact, to find other resources for its personal imperial family and the last lord of Cuzco observed that at this point the dead, that is, the deceased Incas, possessed more wealth than the alive. His statement was supposed to put him in open contrast to the representatives of the imperial families and help bring about his downfall.

Classification of panacas

The identification of the lineages, as they have been preserved, dates back to the review carried out by Pachacutec at the time of his accession to the throne. It is not known how the sovereign families of Cuzco were divided in the face of this important relocation of the various lineages that also determined an effective territorial redistribution.