The Quechua are the largest indigenous ethnolinguistic group of the Andes, descended in significant part from peoples incorporated into and, before that, predating the Inca Empire, whose administrative language, Quechua, spread widely across the empire's territory and remains the most widely spoken indigenous language family in the Americas today. Quechua communities historically organized agricultural and pastoral land through the ayllu, a kin-based communal landholding and mutual-labor-obligation system (including the reciprocal labor practice of minka and ayni) that persists in modified form in many contemporary highland communities. Quechua-speaking communities across Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador have documented histories of both colonial-era forced labor (the mita system) and, in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, land reform and indigenous political mobilization, notably in Bolivia and Ecuador. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Facts
Group TypeSourced to the subject's own accountIndigenous ethnic group 1 Typical RegionSourced to the subject's own accountAndes (Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, with communities in Colombia, Argentina and Chile) 1 Primary LanguageSourced to the subject's own accountQuechua (a language family with multiple mutually distinct varieties) 1 Subsistence ModeSourced to the subject's own accountHistorically high-altitude Andean agriculture (potatoes, quinoa and maize depending on elevation) combined with camelid (llama and alpaca) pastoralism, organized historically through the ayllu communal land-tenure system. 1 Disputed
Population Estimateestimated 8 to 10 million 1 Sourced to the subject's own accountQuechua identity spans numerous distinct regional communities across five Andean countries with differing census methods, so cited totals vary by source. Connections
Associated With
Quechua-speaking populations of the former Inca heartland were the core subjects of the Inca mita rotational labor-tribute system and its Spanish colonial continuation.
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Quechua
WikipediaIntroductionQuote, Introduction
The Quechua people, Quichua people or Kichwa people are indigenous peoples of South America who speak the Quechuan languages, which originated among the Indigenous people of Peru.
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