The lenguas and the quipocamayocs: communication mediators in spaces of colonial legality (Peru, sixteenth century)

Abstract

Abstract: In the early American colonial years the legal system had used instruments for the consolidation of power through practices that, in the case of Peru in the sixteenth century, required the intervention of lenguas or interpreters, and quipocamayocs or experts in the reading of quipus. These social actors gradually established their own spaces of legality, supported by strategic mechanisms that would guarantee loyalty, efficiency, and, above all, credibility in their practices, to thereby legitimate their craft.