In 1532, when Francisco Pizarro arrived and imposed the colonial domination over the Andean world still present today, the political superstructure was definitively destroyed.   The Inka Confederative State was dismantled (I suggest we stop referring to the greatest confederative experience in human history as an 'empire'), hunting down and trying to exterminate our political, religious and scientific leaders, killing over 20 million of our ancestors in just five years. However, despite the ferocity displayed by the Eurocentrics during this war of extermination, they never succeeded in destroying the Inka Confederation's social and economic infrastructure. Never, in the history of humanity, has passive resistance been so exemplary and triumphant, but it is still too early to reclaim and write about the heroic and defiant history of the invincible Ayllus, who make up more than 15,000 of today's Andean Communities throughout Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia.

Neither did this genocidal aggression, as yet historically unprecedented (unresolved duties of the Spanish crown), oblige or "teach" us to behave like them or to adopt their culture of violence. Westerners will never be our masters; the Eurocentrics have nothing to teach us, indigenous Quechua-Inkas, about neither politics nor warfare. Let us ask ourselves: the enormous organized mobilisations seen in Quito and La Paz that brought down four presidents in the last few years, have they caused tens or hundreds of deaths, or paid any other great "social price"?   One must appreciate the difference between our 'methods' and those employed during the conflicts in Iraq, Kosovo, Chechnya, Afghanistan, etc. Has revenge for those seventy million killed during resistance to the invasion and occupation of Latin America ever figured in the collective indigenous consciousness? The demands made today by indigenous peoples are for historical justice and equal rights for all. We do not want more bloodshed, our religion is not Islam, nor is it Christianity.

One example that exposes the way in which colonialism wishes to put a stop to any reproduction of the resilient Inka Confederation's political superstructure, is what happened following the discovery of the rebellion led by José Gabriel Tupac Amaru II, when all of his relatives were hunted down and murdered. The strange castration of Fernando Tupac Amaru (the Inka's adolescent son) in front of his parents, rather than just a Hispanic perversion, is a symbol that stained that afternoon of May 18, 1781, with which they not only wanted to send out a warning, but also destroy Tupac Amaru's bloodline and the Inka royal bloodline.  

Colonialism believed that political extermination could be achieved through the physical extermination of the ruling Tahuantinsuyu families : the Quapaq-Inkas or Quapaq Runas.   Faced with this, we must ask ourselves: How long or how many generations does it take for invaded and suppressed people to regenerate and recompose their structures and their ruling families?   If the resistant base or social infrastructure survive, then surely we can hope that the political and judicial superstructure can be reborn or resurge, conditioned, of course, by the potential and characteristics of the new era.   And we must also hope for the resurgence of its ruling 'elite', the Inka lineage that never sought to trade, negotiate or compare itself to the savage, criminal Spanish crown. In comparison to the long time these people and civilizations have been in existence, 500 years are merely brief moments; but in memory, time does not pass.

Something that the international opinion has already noticed about the Andean indigenous movement is that European -or Western- colonialism disrupted our autonomous development but not our existence: Our people survive despite being in a decidedly "unfavourable" situation.   This fact is very important, because we, the so-called indigenous populations of Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, are just a thread of the tangled web of the Inka civilisation continuation.   We are not 'just the same' as before, but we have learnt many of the lessons taught to us by these 500 years of resistance to physical and cultural extermination.   In short, as expressed by José María Arguedas in his poem 'Canto a nuestro Padre Creador' (Song to our Father, the Creator), Kashkaniracku : Here we are, still the same heirs of our fathers, the Inkas .

It would be ridiculous to maintain that today's Andean countries are the independent, free and sovereign continuation of Tawantinsuyu, just as it would be ridiculous to demand that they should try to be so, as if in 1532 with the Confederación del Sol , because much water has passed under the bridge. However, our countries are well on their way to being at one with the essence of their past, faithful to their present and consistent in their future.   This does not depend solely upon the Andeans but upon all of those who now share the territory and homelands known as the Andean Countries.   To be precise, the 15 th century colonial interruption still has not provided any solutions, despite 'independence' and the Creole Republic. The current political events make us see that in the process of de-colonialising our Andean lands, Independence is a goal yet to be reached. This raises the question of who is talking about separatism :   It seems to be that they are only the neoliberal creoles of Santa Cruz-Bolivia.

We indigenous Andeans know, with growing scientific corroboration, that our technology and knowledge of science was in a much later stage of development than that of the European invaders upon their arrival.   In the ancient Andean world, we Quechua-Inkas eliminated the problem of hunger by domesticating and genetically improving an impressive range of foodstuffs, like the potato, maize, paprika, the runner bean, the lima bean, sweet potato, cassava, the peanut, chilli, avocado, tomato and pumpkin, as well as others, which were less widely known but of a higher nutritious value, such as the quinua , the kiwicha , the olluco , the maca , the kañihua , papaya, aubergine, chestnut ; not to mention the animals, which provided meat, fibres and other derivatives for our Inca population.   During this time, before the Spanish arrived, hunger was not known as a social problem. This confirms that if the Andean productive forces free and restore themselves, we could once again solve the problem of world hunger within a matter of years . These Andean solutions are now imperative. This is why we now talk of an ANDEAN DEVELOPMENT MODEL, and do not doubt that Bolivia's Evo Morales will be the first to apply it in Kollasuyu-Bolivia.   This model is not populist, it is not neo-liberal, and it is certainly not "socialist", because we have nothing to do with western models.

These advances made by the Inkas regarding the problem of famine and that other 'strange' phenomenon of 'Western modernity' known as 'poverty', has given rise to the theory that suggests Europeans viewed the Inka society as a modern-day 'utopia' thanks to their development on putting an end to the scourge of hunger, which at that time, was destroying Europe. According to the distinguished Peruvian economist Virgilio Roel Pineda, the eradication of famine in Tawantinsuyu can be attributed to three great successes in Andean technology, that today are considered as scientific and technological modernity: 1) The biological control of plagues; 2) the biological fertilization of soil; and, 3) the natural genetic manipulation and the consequent creation and rational use of germplasm banks.

Furthermore, the Inkas did not only make these advances in foodstuffs. It would take pages and pages to discuss the advances made also in textiles, metallurgy, medicine, engineering as seen in the mines, trails, mechanics, agriculture and hydraulics, to mention but a few ; advances that were only reached and, in some cases, improved upon by the West at the beginning of the 20 th Century.   But our technology for organizing the workforce (The Ayullu-Panaca and the confederative-political model) has never been bettered.

However, there was one particular area of human knowledge in which Europe was immensely superior to the Inkas and any other civilization or culture: the technology of war. This is the only explanation to the bloody hegemony Europe exercises today over all other cultures.   Europe's science and technologies are inexorably linked to warfare, its culture in general is a predatory one, but it is also its key weakness.   Can one country's level of civilization be judged against that of another solely in terms of their ability to dominate and destroy other civilizations and their depraved and pitiless exploitation of nature?   Surely we should value the development of civilisations by their capacity for bringing well-being and happiness to human beings and by the care or preservation of our Pachamama (Mother Earth).   Today, Western powers seem to stay faithful to their area of expertise, as they spend the largest proportion of their scientific and technological research budgets on inventing physical, chemical and biological lethal weapons, with their relevance to 'life' and environmental preservation technologies considered merely a 'residual effect'.

(To Be Continued...)