The mitma displacement was one of the main characteristics of the Inca policy of control and management of the ethnic groups incorporated into the Tahuantinsuyo. This document seeks to compare the ways taken by the ethnic identities of the mitmas Cañaris between the 16th and 18th centuries, analysing four cases: the region of origin of this group (Cañar, Ecuador) and three areas of displacement: Porcón and Chiara (Peru); and Copacabana (Bolivia). The contrast between these cases, and a brief review of other studies about mitma Cañaris, highlight mechanisms of resistance, adaptation, collective strategies, as well as the permanent negotiation of the ethnic status acquired during the Colonization. The variability of responses to the Hispanic political structure confirms the dynamism of ethnic constructions. This analysis also shows that the colonial times constitutes a period of ethnog...

Andean historiographies are impregnated with an extended idea of territorial mutilation, which tends to affect the nation’s image. As well as evoking a social imagery of real and symbolic loss of its original greatness. This kind of “myth of origin” hides the absence of inclusive national projects in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. The notion of loss seems to constitute an attribute, since far from debilitating the imaginary of the nation, tends to reinforce it and to lend it legitimacy. In pre-Hispanic times, the societies of these three countries were historically articulated. Their logics differed from that of the colonial cartography, of the nineteenth-century States affairs, and of the Creole elites. At present, the territorial factor does not play a pivotal role in the representations of legitimacy of the countries of the central Andean region. However, the stamp of the territoria...

Andean historiographies are impregnated with an extended idea of territorial mutilation, which tends to affect the nation’s image. As well as evoking a social imagery of real and symbolic loss of its original greatness. This kind of “myth of origin” hides the absence of inclusive national projects in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. The notion of loss seems to constitute an attribute, since far from debilitating the imaginary of the nation, tends to reinforce it and to lend it legitimacy. In pre-Hispanic times, the societies of these three countries were historically articulated. Their logics differed from that of the colonial cartography, of the nineteenth-century States affairs, and of the Creole elites. At present, the territorial factor does not play a pivotal role in the representations of legitimacy of the countries of the central Andean region. However, the stamp of the territoria...