Curaca

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A curaca was the indigenous authority in the communities quechuas. In time of the Incas the Empire split administratively into four regions or departments, these into provinces, the provinces into peoples and these in ayllus or parcialidades. The curacas were the heads of the above mentioned.

The curacas suffered a transformation during the first years of the colony. Although they kept on being the chiefs of the peoples and ayllus, they were not any more the ethnic traditional chiefs as they were in pre-Hispanic times. The curacas stopped controlling the communal administration and especially, had not again, according to his appreciation, the workforce or human energy necessary for the making of networks of redistribution.

The election of the curaca was already not taking root in his knowledge or in the age (as it was doing in pre-Hispanic times), but it was chosen by the chief magistrate. His function centred principally on the compilation of the tax - they themselves were not paying - inside the people, reduction or ayllu. His charge was problematic since it had to face the fury of the members of his people when the order of the tributary load was bigger than the established thing. Of equal way it was facing the chief magistrate if it is that it had to protest for some abuse and was the manager of going even to the hearing if it is that the mistake of the chief magistrate seemed to him unjust.