Mita (Inca)

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For other uses of the term Mita, see Mita

Mita (in correct Quechua spelling mit'a) was mandatory public service by society in ancient South America. It was effectively a form of tribute to the Inca government, in the form of labor. During the Inca Empire, public service was required in public works projects such as the building of roads, and military service, and all citizens who could perform this type of labor were required to do so for a number a days out of a year (the basic meaning of the word mit'a is a regular turn or a season). The Spanish also utilized the same form labor system in supplying the workforce they needed for the silver mines, the basis of their economy in the colonial period, abusing the concept of mit'a into what was effectively a form of slavery.

The Incas elaborated creatively on a preexisting system of not only the mita 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.

The mit'a labor draft is not to be confused with the related 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.