Colonial women chieftains: cacicas or kurakas, and capullanas

Early colonial testimonies record the existence of capullanas, females who were sole rulers of large polities in northern Peru; the conquest put paid to the custom and titles. In the southern Andes, however, hereditary female chieftains of towns and lineage groups often presided over small or large populations settled in valleys, towns and hamlets, kurakazgos or cacicazgos.

Scholars attribute the longevity of cacicazgos to Spanish succession practices, which emphasised family inheritance and possession across generations. Moreover, after the conquest, the Spanish Crown administered Mexico and Peru through indirect rule; for example, unsuccessfully seeking to retain a puppet Inca (Manco Inca, 1533—1544) to add legitimacy to its rule.

In her study of power in the Andean world, Maria Rostworowski has argued that in northern Peru matrilineal descent allowed women to inherit the kurakazgos, and that this custom lasted ‘until the beginning of the Republic [1826], with the difference that during the viceroyalty the husband exercised effective command’. Capullanas also ruled throughout the colonial era, although their husbands ‘governed in their name’.²⁴ The pre-contact authority of capullanas among the Yunga of northern Peru was acknowledged in 1542 by four quipucamayoq (those entrusted with keeping records using a cord system known as quipus). The women chieftains of the coast and plains were highly respected, the witnesses claimed, and although they were married to kurakas, the women were the commanders.²⁵ In practice, however, authority was vested in the couple: either one could rule in the absence of the other. Women also occupied the cacicazgos temporarily on behalf of their young sons. Ample evidence exists of cacicas ruling in the erstwhile Inca capital of Cuzco and its neighbouring provinces in the late colonial era (1750—1800), as well as in other Peruvian rural provinces.²⁶

In 1780 Peru was shaken by the rebellion led by Jose Gabriel Tupac Amaru, the interim cacique of three towns in the province of Canas y Canchis. The rebel leader sought a return to a pre-colonial world, claiming to be the rightful Inca heir. In the wake of the uprising, in which several cacicas played leading roles, the Crown sought to eliminate the cacicazgos. The attempt failed—although some cacicazgos were awarded to Americans of Spanish descent (creoles) and mestizos—and cacicas continued to succeed to office until the end of colonial rule in the nineteenth century.