Ayllu: Tensions in the Literature and Politics of the Andes

Abstract

This essay explores the Andean concept of ayllu, its importance, function and evolution in the fields of literature, culture, politics, anthropology and sociology. The writer Inca Garcilaso de la Vega gives us a clear idea of the meaning of this concept in Comentarios
reales (1609) as a communitarian philosophy and the importance it had in the period of the Conquest. However, this study seeks to broaden the knowledge we so far have of this concept and generate a discussion to expand the concept beyond the field of ethnography or anthropology. The concept of ayllu has touched all spheres of life of Indigenous peoples in the Andes, especially in Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru, and has been represented in indigenist literature, which also prompted the First Inter-American Indigenist Congress in 1940, public policies on education, culture, health, etc., in all the countries involved, and has also been the axis of government policies such as sumak kawsay in Ecuador and sumaq qamaña in Bolivia. Today, the concept of ayllu continues to
generate discussions around culture, politics and education, making it a topic that should be permanently analyzed in academic and cultural spaces.