7. Demand

7 Demand Capitalism can be seriously threatened only by a great ascetic move ment that will permeate the masses and divorce them from the vices and luxuries to which they have been accustomed for a century. -Ferrero, Discours aux sourds However perfect statistical tables may be, they are not enough, in a socialist society, to compensate for the mechanism of the pricing process unless demand is simplified to the utmost. This was precisely the case in Peru, where the needs of the population were very limited, and the Incas contrived to prevent them from increasing. 1 Not only were the Incas' subjects satisfied with very little food, but their manner of preparing and cooking it remained primitive, and they were forbidden to introduce any changes in their cuisine. Maize was eaten roasted or boiled, sometimes with a seasoning of herbs or red pepper; on exceptional occasions it served to make the bread and cakes for festivals and sacrifices.2 To grind the grain, the women would place it on a broad slab and crush it with a heavy stone muller, long, narrow, and semicircular in shape, which they would hold at each end and rock back and forth over the kernels. The leaves of the maize plant were used as vegetables, and the unripened seeds yielded a sort of oil.

Fresh meat was hardly ever eaten except on special holidays. Generally the flesh of animals was cut into thin strips that would be salted and allowed to dry in the sun for preservation; it was then known as charqui. * * [This is the origin of the English term "jerked meat."-EDITOR.} 95 96 A Socialist Empire: The Incas of Peru Potatoes were sometimes boiled or baked, but most often they too were prepared for preservation by a process still in use today. The Indians sprinkle them with water, expose them alternately to the night frost and the midday sun, and pound them into a meal, called chuno) which can be kept for a very long time. 3 The leaves of the quinoa plant were used in making soups, and its seeds 'were likewise ground into meal. Oca tubers were dried in the sun and boiled. Other vegetables were eaten with a seasoning of pimento. There were several varieties of this condiment, of which the people used a great deal. The Indians rarely added salt to their food, preferring to lick this seasoning from time to time from a slab that they kept beside them as they ate. 4 One of the most common dishes, however, called tsupe) consisted of water, salt, pimento, and sometimes potatoes.,5 The Indians also made vegetable preserves by cooking bitter herbs in two or three 'waters and then drying them in the sun. 6 Thus, the greater part of their food-charqui, chufio) and vege tables-could be kept in storage, and the demand could easily be made uniform over any period of time so as to avoid seasonal varia tions.

The food was prepared in each house on a little clay stove, the upper part of which was perforated to admit the insertion of two or three earthenware vessels.7 Fire was obtained by the friction of two small sticks. The Peruvian never went on a journey without taking along several of these primitive matches. The Indians made use of spoons, but forks were unknown to them. Their household utensils were little more than stone mortars, pots and dishes cut from gourds, earthenware vessels, jugs, and jars. Meals were taken twice a day, once in .the morning and once again at sunset; never at any other time. The Spaniards them selves were surprised at such moderation. "It is unbelievable that these people can manage to nourish themselves on so little," 'writes Ondegardo. "A dozen badly cooked potatoes, a little half-roasted maize with nothing more to season it, is enough to feed a whole family for a day." 8 Moreover, a severely restricted diet, which might last from a few days to an entire year, was in many circum stances obligatory. It was imposed, for example, upon the careDemand 97 takers of the maize fields, parents who had given birth to twins, and the families of the candidates who were undergoing the tests of the huaracu.

The national drink was identical with the present-day chicha. Kernels of maize, after being chewed by the women and the old men, were thrown into water, taken preferably from stagnant pools, and the mixture poured into vessels that were then buried to keep them warm. 9 The chicha had to be prepared every week because it turned sour at the end of eight days.lo Unfortunately, the Indians drank this beverage to excess. Drunkenness has always been their chief vice. All the chroniclers speak of it,ll and conditions have only become worse since the establishment of the republic. The Incas themselves, in spite of all their efforts, could not succeed in ridding the country of this plague; but at least they checked its advance by allowing the Indians only the least harmful brews, such as the one 'we have just described or those made of quinoa seeds or maguey leaves.12 They prohibited dangerous drinks, such as sora or vifiapu J and they used to punish those who became so drunk as to lose rational control of themselves. 1s The use of coca was likewise forbidden in principle-a wise measure, for it is excessive indulgence in the use of this weed that has done much to reduce the Aymaras to their present state of brutish besottedness. Only the Inca might distribute coca leaves by way of reward. The dried leaves would be stacked in baskets, and the Indians would mix them with llypta and chew them. The mouth of the Indian, it has been said, was the first laboratory to produce cocaine. 14 As for tobacco, it was used only as a medicinal plant.

No less severely limited than the dietary needs of the Peruvian Indians were their housing requirements. Their dwellings have remained today essentially what they were in ages past: simple windowless huts of stone, adobe brick, or beaten earth. The roofs were thatched with straw. Sometimes an inner partition of brick or reeds separated the main room from a corner meant to serve as a storeroom or as a pen for the guinea-pigs. 15 In certain regions the Indians lived in round huts covered 'with branches and earth. 16 Then as now, all these dwellings were small, dark, and dirty.

98 A Socialist Empire: The Incas of Peru Guinea-pigs and human beings lived together in crowded dis order. 17 The furniture in these houses was extremely scanty.18 Clothing was hung on pegs projecting from the wall or thrown over ropes stretched across the room or even kept in large earthenware jars.19 Woolen blankets or skins-or, in the curacas' households, straw thrown on the ground, served as beds. On the coast the hammock was used. Only the homes of important personages were furnished with chairs; the common people squatted on the ground with legs folded, feet together, and knees raised level with the mouth. 20 Among their toilet articles we may mention pyrite or obsidian mirrors for the women,21 metal pins, flint razors, and wooden combs. A few pendants of stone, metal, seeds, or tufts of wool, and a number of religious figurines, notably the encas) or little llamas of hollowed-out stone, in which an offering of coca or alcohol was placed, and which were characteristic of Inca civilization,22 com plete the brief catalogue of the Indian's personal possessions.

On his wedding day each Indian received two garments of cotton or wool, taken from the national stores,23 one for everyday wear and the other for festivals, in addition to a large cloak to be worn at work when carrying materials. These garments had to be kept and cared for until they were entirely worn out. The Indians "thus avoided the tedious vexations of a well-stocked wardrobe," remarks Ondegardo. 24 The poncho, today so widely used that it is almost impossible to imagine a denizen of the plateau without one, began to be worn only after the Spanish conquest. 25 The Indian of ages past wore the huara (a pair of trousers) and the cushma) "a piece of cloth doubled and sewn together along the edges up to four or six inches from the fold so as to leave two armholes; in the upper portion a perpendicular slit at the top edge was cut through the two thicknesses of the wool to permit the passage of the head." 26 The cushma) then, was a sort of sleeveless shirt. Over it was thrown the yacolla) which served as a cape.27 While the Indian was at work, the two corners of this cape would be fastened to gether over the left shoulder.

The Indian 'women wore the anacu) a tunic reaching to the ankles and bound at the waist by a broad sash of cloth (chumpi), Demand 99 and the licla) a mantle or shawl thrown over the shoulders, crossed over the bosom, and held in place by a large-headed pin (tuPU).28 All the common people, men and women, went barefoot. Person ages of importance wore sandals (usuta), the sales of which, made of braided leather or maguey (Agave) fiber, were held by two straps. When they slept, the men removed only the yacolla~ and the women, the licla.29 These garments were generally dirty and malo dorous. so In short, the Indians were easy to satisfy. "The sun warms them, the river quenches their thirst, the earth serves as their bed," says Morua. 3! In preventing, by their sumptuary laws, the multiplica tion of these requirements, few as they were, the Incas made their own task very much easier and rendered it possible for a system of production that threatened to prove inadequate to adjust itself to a strictly limited consumption.,32 8 Supply If one of the objectives of socialism is to organize human labor as in a "single factory" and to "suppress all national and inter national competition," 1 then the regime of the Incas was, in this respect at least, socialist indeed. Everything was regulated by authority, whether the introduction of an innovation or the sanc tion accorded to some custom already well established.