Similar Concepts
There are many concepts globally that show similarly to ayni. While none of them are exactly the same as ayni, they all show mutualism to a certain extent.
Ayni (Quechua and Aymara also spelled Ayniy or Aini) can refer to either the concept of reciprocity or mutualism among people of the Andean mountain communities or the practice of this concept. [1] As a noun, the law of ayni states that everything in the world is connected, and is the only commandment that rules daily life in many communities like the Q'ero. [2] As a verb, this often refers to the cooperation between the members of a community when one member gives to another, he or she is entitled to receive something back. Well-known practitioners of Ayni include the Quechuas and Aymara, as well as numerous other tribes that live in the Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia.
In communities like the Q'ero, five principles define the Andean way of life: munay (to love), yachay (to learn, know, and remember), llan'kay (to work), kawsay (life), and ayni (reciprocity). [3] Among them, ayni is regarded as the most important principle, as it provides the backbone of life. This is because ayni is not limited to being compensated for earlier help; a more broad definition of ayni would be the exchange of energy between humans, nature, and the universe. [4]
An example of this would be ayni between a human and a tree: A tree is watered by a human, and the tree uses this water to convert carbon dioxide into oxygen and glucose. The oxygen is used by humans to perform respiration and survive, and some glucose may eventually find its way into products that humans use such as fruits. In return, humans convert oxygen back to carbon dioxide for use by the tree, as well as plant seeds the tree produced to create more trees. The simple of act of watering a tree can also reap in rewards including by not limited to: creating shade, wind barriers, soil anchors, and more. The relationships that can be defined as ayni thus extend to everything beneficial involving two parties.
In practice, Quechua and Aymara communities apply ayni through human to human interaction. This is thought to have originated from the harsh climate of the Andean mountain region and the mutualism thus demanded for the survival of the people living there. [5]
Members of a community help other members for private purposes when support is needed for activities such as construction and planting. Participants are supplied with food and drink by the hosting party. The party that was helped returns the favor by assisting those who helped them or others in need of aid, completing the reciprocity.
This is not to be confused with Mink'a, also native to the Andean region, in which participants are typically paid for services such as harvesting crops. [6]
There are many concepts globally that show similarly to ayni. While none of them are exactly the same as ayni, they all show mutualism to a certain extent.
The Inca Empire, called Tawantinsuyu by its subjects, was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America. The administrative, political, and military center of the empire was in the city of Cusco. The Inca civilization rose from the Peruvian highlands sometime in the early 13th century. The Spanish began the conquest of the Inca Empire in 1532 and by 1572, the last Inca state was fully conquered.
Quechua, usually called Runasimi in Quechuan languages, is an indigenous language family spoken by the Quechua peoples, primarily living in the Peruvian Andes. Derived from a common ancestral language, it is the most widely spoken pre-Columbian language family of the Americas, with an estimated 8–10 million speakers as of 2004. Approximately 25% of Peruvians speak a Quechuan language.
The Aymara or Aimara people are an indigenous people in the Andes and Altiplano regions of South America; about 2.3 million live in northwest Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, and Peru. Their ancestors lived in the region for many centuries before becoming a subject people of the Inca in the late 15th or early 16th century, and later of the Spanish in the 16th century. With the Spanish American wars of independence (1810–1825), the Aymaras became subjects of the new nations of Bolivia and Peru. After the War of the Pacific (1879–1883), Chile annexed territory with Aymara population.
Aymara is an Aymaran language spoken by the Aymara people of the Bolivian Andes. It is one of only a handful of Native American languages with over one million speakers. Aymara, along with Spanish and Quechua, is an official language in Bolivia and Peru. It is also spoken, to a much lesser extent, by some communities in northern Chile, where it is a recognized minority language.
The ayllu, a family clan, is the traditional form of a community in the Andes, especially among Quechuas and Aymaras. They are an indigenous local government model across the Andes region of South America, particularly in Bolivia and Peru.
Puno is a department and region in southeastern Peru. It is the fifth largest department in Peru, after Cuzco, Madre de Dios, Ucayali, and Loreto. It is bordered by Bolivia on the east, the departments of Madre de Dios on the north, Cusco and Arequipa on the west, Moquegua on the southwest, and Tacna on the south. Its capital is the city of Puno, which is located on Lake Titicaca in the geographical region known as the Altiplano or high sierra.
Communal work is a gathering for mutually accomplishing a task or for communal fundraising. Communal work provided manual labour to others, especially for major projects such as barn raising, "bees" of various kinds, log rolling, and subbotniks. Different words have been used to describe such gatherings.
Quechua people or Quichua people may refer to any of the aboriginal people of South America who speak the Quechua languages, which originated among the Indigenous people of Peru. Although most Quechua speakers are native to Peru, there are some significant populations in Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, and Argentina.
Chuño is a freeze-dried potato product traditionally made by Quechua and Aymara communities of Bolivia and Peru, and is known in various countries of South America, including Bolivia, Peru, Chile and Northwest Argentina. It is a five-day process, obtained by exposing a bitter, frost-resistant variety of potatoes to the very low night temperatures of the Andean Altiplano, freezing them, and subsequently exposing them to the intense sunlight of the day. The word comes from Quechua ch'uñu, meaning 'frozen potato'.
The Yungas is a bioregion of a narrow band of forest along the eastern slope of the Andes Mountains from Peru and Bolivia, and extends into Northwest Argentina at the slope of the Andes pre-cordillera. It is a transitional zone between the Andean highlands and the eastern forests. Like the surrounding areas, the Yungas belong to the Neotropical realm; the climate is rainy, humid, and warm.
South Bolivian Quechua, also known as Central Bolivian Quechua, is a dialect of Southern Quechua spoken in Bolivia and adjacent areas of Argentina, where it is also known as Colla. It is not to be confused with North Bolivian Quechua, which is spoken on the northern Andean slopes of Bolivia and is phonologically distinct from the South Bolivian variety. Estimates of the number of speakers of South Bolivian Quechua range from 2.3 to 2.8 million, making it the most spoken indigenous language in Bolivia, just slightly greater than Aymara, with roughly 2 million speakers in Bolivia. In comparison, the North Bolivian dialect has roughly 116,000 speakers.
A pinkillu, pinkuyllu or pinqullu is a flute found throughout the Andes, used primarily in Argentina northwest, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador and Peru. It is usually played with one hand, leaving the other one free to accompany oneself on a drum like the tinya. It is used in a variety of public festivals and other kinds of communal ceremonies.
Q'ero is a Quechua-speaking community or ethnic group dwelling in the province of Paucartambo, in the Cusco Region of Peru.
Quyllurit'i or Qoyllur Rit'i is a syncretic religious festival held annually at the Sinakara Valley in the southern highlands Cusco Region of Peru. Local indigenous people of the Andes know this festival as a native celebration of the stars. In particular they celebrate the reappearance of the Pleiades constellation, known in Quechua as Qullqa, or "storehouse," and associated with the upcoming harvest and New Year. The Pleiades disappears from view in April and reappears in June. The new year is marked by indigenous people of the Southern Hemisphere on the Winter Solstice in June, and it is also a Catholic festival. The people have celebrated this period of time for hundreds if not thousands of years. The pilgrimage and associated festival was inscribed in 2011 on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists.
Pachamama is a goddess revered by the indigenous peoples of the Andes. In Inca mythology she is an "Earth Mother" type goddess, and a fertility goddess who presides over planting and harvesting, embodies the mountains, and causes earthquakes. She is also an ever-present and independent deity who has her own creative power to sustain life on this earth. Her shrines are hallowed rocks, or the boles of legendary trees, and her artists envision her as an adult female bearing harvests of potatoes or coca leaves. The four cosmological Quechua principles – Water, Earth, Sun, and Moon – claim Pachamama as their prime origin. Priests sacrifice offerings of llamas, cuy, children and elaborate, miniature, burned garments to her. Pachamama is the mother of Inti the sun god, and Mama Killa the moon goddess. Mama Killa is said to be the wife of Inti.
The Andean civilizations were South American complex societies of many indigenous people. They stretched down the spine of the Andes for 4,000 km (2,500 mi) from southern Colombia, to Ecuador and Peru, including the deserts of coastal Peru, to north Chile and northwest Argentina. Archaeologists believe that Andean civilizations first developed on the narrow coastal plain of the Pacific Ocean. The Caral or Norte Chico civilization of coastal Peru is the oldest known civilization in the Americas, dating back to 3500 BCE. Andean civilization is one of the six "pristine" civilizations of the world, created independently and without influence by other civilizations.
The vertical archipelago is a term coined by sociologist and anthropologist John Victor Murra under the influence of economist Karl Polanyi to describe the native Andean agricultural economic model of accessing and distributing resources. While some cultures developed market economies, the predominant models were systems of barter and shared labor. These reached their greatest development under the Inca Empire. Scholars have identified four distinct ecozones, at different elevations.
Mink'a, Minka, Minga also mingaco is an Inca tradition of community work/voluntary collective labor for purposes of social utility and community infrastructure projects. It is practiced in several Latin American countries. Mink'a can adopt different ways of expressing community, such as the construction of public buildings and infrastructure, or benefit a person or family, such as needing help when harvesting potatoes or other agricultural products. Usually, the mink'a labor is without salary, such as in the public works projects of Ocra, a campesino community in the Andes. Faenas are seen as a labor tribute to the community or a cash-free form of local taxation. Mink'a is mainly practiced in Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile and Paraguay.
Ocra is a Quechuan Campesino community within the Chinchaypujio District in Peru and about 1.5 hours outside of Cusco; its central village is located at 3,670 m (12,040 ft) altitude.
During the Inca Empire’s comparatively brief reign, from 1438 to 1533, Inca civilization established an economic structure that allowed for substantial agricultural production as well as cross-community exchange of products. Inca society is considered to have had some of the most successful centrally organized economies in history. Its effectiveness was achieved through the successful control of labor and the regulation of tribute resources. In Inca society, collective labor was the cornerstone for economic productivity and the achieving of common prosperity. People in the ayllu worked together to produce that prosperity. This prosperity caused the Spanish to be amazed by what they saw when they first encountered the Incas in 1528. According to each ayllu, labor was divided by region, with agriculture centralized in the most productive areas; ceramic production, road construction, textile production, and other skills were also part of the ayllus. After local needs were satisfied, the government gathered all surplus that is gathered from ayllus and allocated it where it was needed. People of the Inca Empire received free clothes, food, health care, and schooling in exchange for their labor.
