Claiming Atahualpa: The Nationalization of the Inca Past in Postcolonial Ecuador

This paper explores how intellectuals and activists in Ecuador have negotiated the Inca past in the context of sustained military tension with Peru.  While early nationalist iconography centered around the Inca heritage, by the mid-19^th century this imagery had been displaced by the concept of the Kingdom of Quito; a largely mythological civilization argued by nationalists to have existed in the north of Ecuador prior to the Spanish conquest, said to have been more advanced politically and culturally than the Inca, and to have resisted their arrival. While scientific historical and archeological evidence which emerged in the early twentieth century entirely discredited the “factual” basis for the Kingdom of Quito, the idea of an alternative pre-Columbian legacy remains inscribed in school textbooks to this day. This paper examines the reason why this “invented past” has been so important to national identity, emphasizing how the idea of the Kingdom of Quito allowed the appropriation of the Inca legacy through the marriage of Paccha, the last Quitu princess to Huayana Capac, the last Sapa Inca, which allegedly resulted in the birth of Atahualpa in Quito. It explores how Atahualpa became “Ecuadorianized” through nineteenth century historical discourse, and then examines how Ruminhaui, Atahualpa’s general, shifted from being characterized as a traitorous marauder who had destroyed Quito in the effort to take it for himself, to an authentic nationalist icon and symbol of indigenous resistance in the twentieth century as the indigenous rights movement developed.