ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the Andean concept of pachacuti, which describes the termination and reversal of an established order whether past, present, or future, with the Christian concept of the Last Judgment, a definitive day of reckoning at the end of time. Colonial sources often refer to the upheavals as pachacuti, and it is likely that the term was also before the invasion, even though the particular upheaval endowed the concept of pachacutiwith much greater prominence in Andean awareness. Pachacuti in Guarnan Poma's text is a synonym for disaster. It was thus with good reason that Andeans used the concept of pachacutiwhen confronted with the Spanish invasion, for the invasion marked the end of an epoch more radically than any preceding upheaval had done. The Quechua term, mita, describing the unique turning point when the Spanish invaders would be driven from the land, originally referred to certain annual festivals of the Andean calendar.
