Mita (Inca)

From Freepedia

For other uses of the term Mita, see Mita

Mita was mandatory public service by society in ancient South America. During the Inca Empire, public service was required in public works projects such as the building of roads, and military service. The Spanish also utilized the same form labor system in supplying the needed work force for the silver mines, which was the basis of their economy in this time period.

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. The Incas also transplanted and colonized whole groups of persons of Inca background with newly adopted peoples to arrange a better distribution of Inca persons throughout all of their empire in order to avoid widespread resistance. In this instance huacas and pacarinas became significant centers of shared worship and a point of unification of 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.

This tactic is used within the modern Chinese state in its various substates through the transplant of Han Chinese people into contested regions. The same practice was used traditionally in pre-Islamic times at Mecca to unite the often religiously diverse tribes of the Arabian peninsula in their religious pilgrimages.