Antisuyu — The Eastern Amazonian Region of the Incas
Antisuyu (Quechua for “the region of the antis,” the forest peoples of the Amazon basin) was the northeastern quadrant of Tawantinsuyu and, by virtually every measure, the most peripheral of the four suyus. It encompassed the eastern slopes of the Andes, the ceja de selva (the humid montane forest belt between roughly 1,500 and 3,500 meters), and the upper reaches of the Amazon basin in what is now southeastern Peru and northwestern Bolivia. Within Antisuyu the Inca never achieved the demographic and territorial control that they exercised in the highland core, and the region is best understood as a frontier zone exploited through trading colonies, military garrisons, and the relocation of loyal populations rather than as a fully integrated province of the empire. The term anti — sometimes translated as “east” or “Amazon” — appears in a wide range of Quechua place names on the eastern Andean slopes and in the lowland forests, indicating the long-standing Andean awareness of the forest as a distinct ecological and cultural region.
Geographical Setting
Antisuyu was the most ecologically distinctive of the four suyus. The eastern Andean slopes descend from the high puna grasslands of the Collasuyu and the central highlands of Chinchaysuyu into deeply dissected river valleys, cloud-forested ridges, and eventually the tropical lowlands of the Amazon basin. Rainfall is high throughout the region, ranging from perhaps 2,000 millimeters per year on the upper slopes to more than 5,000 millimeters in the lowland forests. The flora and fauna of the region are correspondingly different from the highlands: coca, ají peppers, cassava, plantains, and a great variety of tropical fruits were cultivated or gathered in the forest; fish from the rivers; feathers, honey, and medicinal plants were the major forest exports. The Inca, in their administration of Antisuyu, drew on the expertise of lowland populations while imposing elements of highland statecraft, in particular the road, the tambo, and the mit’a labor system.
Historical Formation
The incorporation of Antisuyu into the Inca Empire was a long and incomplete process. Unlike the densely populated highland and coastal regions to the west, the eastern forests were inhabited by small-scale, dispersed populations, many of them speakers of Arawakan, Panoan, and other lowland languages unrelated to Quechua. The Inca were aware of these populations — the antis, chuncos, mojos, and others — and the early colonial sources refer to a long series of military campaigns into the eastern forests, but Inca state power in the region was largely confined to a network of outposts, colonies, and trading stations along the eastern Andean slopes.
The principal road into Antisuyu left Cusco by way of the Patacancha pass, descended into the Paucartambo valley, and continued down through the cloud forest to the frontier installations of the Convención and Lares valleys. From there, smaller trails and rivers extended further into the lowland forests. The chronicler Bernabé Cobo, drawing on indigenous informants in the 1650s, reported that the Antisuyu road descended as far as a frontier post in the Paucartambo region, and that beyond this point the Inca had not established permanent garrisons. The Spanish chroniclers, including Pedro Cieza de León and Martín de Murúa, mention various military campaigns into the eastern forests, but the details remain uncertain.
Archaeology of the Antisuyu Frontier
Modern archaeology has substantially revised the picture of the Antisuyu frontier. The work of Frank Meddens, William Isbell, and the Proyecto Arqueológico Llaqtachaqay has documented Inca-style architecture, ceramics, and metalwork at sites such as Espiritu Pampa, the eastern extension of the Vilcabamba valley, and in the cloud-forest fringes of the Cosñipata, Convención, and Lares valleys. The 1997 discovery of the Laguna de los Cóndores site in the Chachapoyas region, on the eastern edge of Chinchaysuyu, included a remarkable collection of quipus that scholars have interpreted as a record of provincial administration. The discovery of Inca-style lomas (open ceremonial structures) and terraced fields in the ceja de selva confirms that the Inca established a network of outposts and trading colonies in the forest, even where they did not exercise continuous administrative control.
Brian Bauer and R. Alan Covey, in their surveys of Inca provincial structure, have argued that Antisuyu was organized as a frontier of mitma (or mitmaq) colonies — populations relocated from the highland core to the eastern forests — rather than as a network of subject provinces. The mitma colonies produced coca, ají, and other tropical products that were considered essential for religious and political life, and they served as garrisons to police the frontier and to mediate relations with the indigenous forest peoples. The most famous of these colonies was the one established at Vilcabamba (modern Espiritu Pampa), which served as the last capital of the Inca resistance under Manco Inca, Sayri Túpac, and Titu Cusi in the decades after the Spanish conquest.
Economy and Tribute
The economy of Antisuyu was based on the extraction of forest products, in particular coca, which was consumed in vast quantities throughout the Inca Empire in religious and social contexts. The colonial sources, particularly the relaciones geográficas of the 1570s, record that the highland communities of the eastern Andes, particularly those in the Paucartambo, Convención, and Lares valleys, produced large quantities of coca leaves for the imperial state and for the temple of the sun at Cusco. The leaves were grown on terraces carved into the steep valley sides, often under the shade of erithryna and other trees, and they were picked three or four times a year by women, who were organized into labor parties under the supervision of local officials. Other forest products, including ají peppers, cotton from the lowlands, feathers, medicinal plants, honey, and hardwoods, were also collected and delivered to the imperial center.
The mit’a labor obligations of the highland core included periods of service in the Antisuyu colonies, and the imperial state established a network of storehouses and religious centers along the road to support the labor parties. The Spanish chronicler Pedro Cieza de León, in the second part of his Crónica del Perú (1553), described the coca plantations of the Convención valley and the highland laborers who tended them. The administration of the Antisuyu frontier, with its dispersed populations and difficult terrain, posed challenges that the Inca addressed through a combination of direct administration by officials sent from Cusco and indirect rule through the local curacas.
Historical Significance
Antisuyu was, in some sense, the limit of the Inca world. Beyond the ceja de selva and the Andean watershed, the Inca encountered peoples and environments that their statecraft was poorly designed to absorb, and they settled for a frontier of colonies, garrisons, and trading stations rather than a fully integrated province. The Spanish conquest of the 1530s, and the long Inca resistance at Vilcabamba into the 1570s, demonstrated the durability of the Antisuyu frontier as a base of Inca political life, and the Neo-Inca State of Vilcabamba is, in many ways, the historical continuation of the Antisuyu frontier of the pre-conquest period. The Antisuyu trade was also one of the principal mechanisms of cultural exchange between highland and lowland Andes, with the mitma colonies serving as intermediaries between the Inca state and the forest peoples.