The mita was a labor draft to which Indian peasants were subjected; its primary purpose was mobilizing labor for the mining industry.  Since it formed the basis of the colonial economy, mining’s requirements were indeed demanding.  The perilous conditions of mass mining using forced labor, which characterized the industry in those days, resulted in hundreds of deaths each year.  Also, overwork and callous treatment caused many injuries and deaths among Indian laborers conscripted to textile factories.

Emancipation from Spain did not relieve the Indian peasant’s basic plight.  As the deteriorating colonial economy collapsed after independence, and as the state degenerated into capricious rule by caudillos (strongmen), new elites arose to seize the peasant’s land and exploit his labor.  This was done by fraud, manipulation of political power, and outright violence.  One of the most engrained realities of Andean peasant experience throughout history, therefore, has been rigid social stratification, political domination, and frequent grinding economic exploitation.  These themes are revealed in one way or another in much of the folklore of the native Andean peoples.

Legend

A legend current in the Andes today reflects in sharp, symbolic form the exploitative pattern that has characterized so much of Indian history.  This is the legend of the nak’aq, known in central Peru as the pishtako.  In Quechua (the Inca language still spoken by the peasants of southern Peru) the word nak’ay means, “to kill,” or “to slaughter.”  Its derivative nak’aq means “killer” or, more precisely, “slaughterer.”  The content of the legend was disclosed as follows:

The Nak’aq

There are believed to be men with green eyes and red hair who prowl the countryside in secret with the intent of murdering unwary Indians and selling the fat of their corpses to merchants in town. 

In some parts of the country, it is said that Indian fat is used to grease the machinery that produces electric power, and elsewhere it is believed that the fat of murdered Indians is used in the manufacture of medicines.   Peasants do not enjoy the benefit of electric power, and their poverty prevents them from purchasing the medicines so readily available to mestizos in the many drugstores found in every town throughout the Andes.