Acomayo is a mountainous province near Calca in the Cusco region of Peru, inhabited by Quechua-speaking descendants of the Incas. Although the two provinces share important geographic and cultural features and grow the same crops, Acomayo is poorer: its inhabitants consume about one-third less than people in Calca. The book presents this contrast as a lasting local imprint of colonial institutions. Acomayo lay within the catchment area of the Potosí mita, the forced-labor system imposed by Spanish colonial authorities; Calca did not.

Setting and Comparison with Calca

The contrast is visible in the everyday economy and in the routes connecting the provinces to Cusco, the former Inca capital and regional center. Calca has a surfaced road, while the road to Acomayo is in severe disrepair; travel beyond Acomayo requires a horse or mule. The difference in access accompanies a difference in how residents use their harvests: people in both provinces grow the same crops, but in Calca they sell them in the market for money, while in Acomayo they largely produce food for their own subsistence.

The book emphasizes that the comparison is not between places with wholly different populations or crops. Both are high in the mountains, and their residents share Quechua language and descent from the Incas. Acomayo’s greater poverty is therefore framed not as a consequence of some intrinsic difference in its people, but as a divergence with historical roots.

The Mita and Acomayo’s Historical Position

In the sixteenth century, Spanish viceroy Francisco de Toledo reorganized indigenous labor to supply the mines. He concentrated much of the indigenous population in reducciones, or newly established settlements, and adapted the Inca mita into a far larger colonial labor draft. Its catchment area covered about 200,000 square miles, from central Peru across much of modern Bolivia, and included the heartland of the former Inca Empire, including Cusco. One-seventh of the male inhabitants of this area were required to work in the mines at Potosí. The system endured through the colonial period and was abolished only in 1825.

Acomayo’s defining historical distinction in the comparison is that it fell inside the Potosí mita’s catchment area; Calca fell outside it. The book connects that distinction to the provinces’ later institutional differences and economic disparity. The colonial labor system did not simply extract workers for a distant mine: in the argument presented, its historical reach helps explain why two neighboring, otherwise comparable communities followed different paths.

A Living Legacy

The difference remains apparent to residents themselves. People in Acomayo tell visitors that their province is poorer than Calca and question why anyone would make the more difficult journey there. That local recognition gives the comparison a human scale: the legacy is visible not only in historical boundaries or economic measures, but also in the deteriorated road, dependence on pack animals for further travel, and an economy more oriented toward subsistence than market sales.

Acomayo thus serves as a case study in how institutional history can persist in neighboring places with shared geography, crops, language, and ancestry. Its contrast with Calca supports the book’s broader account of historical institutions shaping present economic outcomes, while the provincial comparison identifies the Potosí mita’s catchment boundary as the specific colonial difference relevant to this case.