The vertical and totalitarian structure of the Tawantinsuyu was without doubt more harmful to its survival than all of the conquistadores' firearms and iron weapons. As soon as the Inca, that figure who was the vortex toward which all the wills converged searching for inspiration and vitality, the axis around which the entire society was organized and upon which depended the life and death of every person, from the richest to the poorest, was captured, no one knew how to act. . . .

The individual had no importance and virtually no existence in that pyramidal and theocratic society whose achievements had always been collective and anonymous---carrying the gigantic stones of the Machu Picchu citadel of the Ollantay fortress up the steepest of peaks, directing water to all the slopes. . . .

A state religion that took away the individual's free will and crowned the authority's decision with the aura of a divine mandate turned the Tawantinsuyu into a beehive---laborious, efficient, stoic. But its immense power was, in fact, very fragile. It rested completely on the sovereign god's shoulders, the man whom the Indian had to serve and to whom he owed a total and selfless obedience. It was religion rather than force that preserved the people's metaphysical docility towards the Inca. . . .

---Mario Vargas Llosa, "Questions of Conquest," Harpers (December 1990) p. 49.