MIT economics student’s study of Peru shows how practices from hundreds of years ago can influence prosperity today. ‘Pathbreaking,’ says a Harvard economist.

To an economist, a map of southern Peru has a peculiar appearance. If you draw a line forming a kind of jagged oval, outlining a chunk of the Andes running from northwest to southeast, you have enclosed a region of relative poverty lying among areas of greater wealth. Yet there is no readily apparent explanation for this disparity; the well-off districts do not appear to have more natural resources than the poor ones, for instance.

But Melissa Dell, a PhD student in MIT’s Department of Economics, thinks this economic riddle has an answer: the invisible hand of history. More specifically, Dell believes a system of labor conscription that the region’s Spanish colonial rulers used from 1573 to 1812 accounts for the pattern of economic development in the region today. The areas where the Spanish forced locals to leave the land and work in mines — a practice called the mita — are precisely the poorest today, while the places where workers were left alone are now wealthier.

Read more at Web.MIT.edu.

Mita (Quechua: mit'a) was mandatory public service in the society of the Inca Empire. It was effectively a form of tribute to the Inca government, in the form of labor, i.e. a corvée. In the Inca Empire, public service was required in community-driven projects such as the building of their extensive road network; military service was also mandatory, and all citizens who could perform labor were required to do so for a set number a days out of a year (the basic meaning of the word mit'a is a regular turn or a season). Incas who were lazy were hung, stoned, or pushed off of a cliff. Due to the Inca Empire's wealth, a family would often only require sixty-five days to farm; the rest of the year was devoted entirely to the mita.

The Spanish conquistadors also utilized the same labor system to supply the workforce they needed for the silver mines, which was the basis of their economy in the colonial period. The conquistadors used the concept of mit'a to suit their own needs. Mita is considered to as the ancient and original version of mandatory state service.

Source: Wikipedia, Mita (Inca).

Explore the interactive map of southern Peru through detailed Google satellite imagery. Click the yellow place mark to view details. To Pan: click and drag the map. Take advantage of the zoom bars.