Currently Aymara people is seen as virtuous and rightful people who were corrupted by the Spaniards. Clearly this is the worst kind of revisionism, during a lecture with a teacher he mentioned that: "they were actually violent people, in fact so violent that they were ostracized by other groups thus they became merchants because were unwelcome in any other trade". He did not mention his source because it was just an example for certain topic.
But I don't know how accurate that portray may be, I think it has some true, one of the reasons I have for that is the fact that there is no Aymara word for "embassy". Instead, they say "Jacha Uta " which translates to "Large house" or they simply use the Spanish word "Embajada". As I see it this shows they were not really keen to diplomacy unlike the Incas who did had a word in qichua for such institution.
So, I wonder what were Aymaras like before the colonization, I know they were rebel and unwilling to be subjugated by the Incas, but were they as violent as my that teacher suggested?
He escrito esta contesta en ingles asi personas en AskHistorians pueden leer. Si yo puedo explicar algo en español para clarificarlo, dime por favor.
Let's break this down point by point.
they were actually violent people, in fact so violent that they were ostracized by other groups
Yes, the period before Inca conquest in the Andes was a violent one. It followed the breakdown of centralized political control in the form of Wari or Tiwanaku. For this reason, its known as the Late Intermediate Period (LIP) in english, or the Período de Desarrollos Regionales o Intermedio Tardío (PDR) en español. Communities became smaller and more isolated, and thus, more vulnerable. In many parts of the Andes - communities built hillforts known as pukaras as a place of refuge to fall back to in case of attack. In the Titicaca area, this practice became truly widespread only about 1300 CE. However, I'm not sure about the Aymara population being any more or less violent than other indigenous Andeans during this period. For one, the Aymara weren't really unified as a people beyond the fact that they spoke the same language. Instead they were divided into various kingdoms and chiefdoms of different sizes and different levels of political complexity, that were themselves divided into ayllu. The Inca named the Collasuyu region of their empire, for example, for one of the largest polities in the region. As a result, its hard to talk about them as if they were one unified group. Secondly, this pattern of violence and fortification isn't restricted to the central Andean highlands. The north coast of Peru, for example, follows a similar pattern (though perhaps one under more unified political control) around the same time.
Some resources in English:
Arkush, Elizabeth. "War, chronology, and causality in the Titicaca Basin." Latin American Antiquity 19, no. 4 (2008): 339-373.
Arkush, Elizabeth N. Hillforts of the ancient Andes: Colla warfare, society, and landscape. University Press of Florida, 2011.
Mullins, Patrick. "Webs of defense: Structure and meaning of defensive visibility networks in Prehispanic Peru." Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 8 (2016): 346-355.
En Español:
Axel E. Nielsen, «El estudio de la guerra en la arqueología sur-andina», Corpus [En línea], Vol 5, No 1 | 2015, Publicado el 30 junio 2015, consultado el 26 mayo 2022. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/corpusarchivos/1393; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/corpusarchivos.1393
they became merchants because were unwelcome in any other trade
When did your professor say this was supposed to have happened? I'm not sure exactly what this means. "Merchant" as an occupation doesn't really seem to exist in the Andes before the Spanish conquest. There was certainly exchange between communities, but "merchant" usually implies someone whose full time job was buying low and selling high.
I think it has some true, one of the reasons I have for that is the fact that there is no Aymara word for "embassy". Instead, they say "Jacha Uta " which translates to "Large house" or they simply use the Spanish word "Embajada". As I see it this shows they were not really keen to diplomacy unlike the Incas who did had a word in qichua for such institution.
Embarrassingly, I'm not familiar enough with Quechua to comment intelligently on this. What word are you referring to? I'd love to look into it.