Immense wealth and power, so the story tells, is a sterile thing, as seen in the inability of the parents to produce a normal child as their heir, and the fact that even the brave, resourceful girl, once accepted as the daughter of the rich parents, never produced offspring of her own.  Wealth, the story implies, produces greedy monsters that make predatory demands.  Also, the great power that goes with wealth corrupts those who wield it, as well as those who let themselves be influenced by wealthy people.

Myth

Legends purport to relate facts about the real world.  Even legends of ghosts and other supernatural figures are stories told about ordinary people in everyday situations who happen to brush against the other world.  Myths, on the other hand, deal with greater issues; the character of nations, the justification of human institutions, the rise and fall of civilizations, and such cosmic problems as the nature of time and the beginning and end of all things.

Since social stratification and economic inequality are so deeply rooted in Andean rural life, it is not surprising that they, too, fall into the explanatory realm of myth.  This is seen in the story of Incariy, a narrative that has been recorded in several parts of Peru over the past few decades.  The version given below was collected by the author in 1970 in the remote, high-altitude province of Chumbivilcas in the Department of Cuzco.  The word riy, in the name Incariy, is the Quechua version of the Spanish word rey, which means “king.”  Incariy thus means “King Inca.”  The story goes like this.

Incariy

When the Spaniards arrived in Peru, they killed King Inca and cut off his head.  They buried the severed head in one place and the headless body elsewhere.  As time goes by, the two parts of the Inca’s corpse are slowly growing together.  No one knows the day when the head and the body will join.  When that happens, the Inca will once again rise up and the world will turn upside down.  Those who are now on top will be on the bottom, and those who are on the bottom will be on top.

When asked why the Inca was defeated and executed in the first place, the informant, an old man who everybody agreed was wise, said that the Inca’s time had come.