BY THE ROUTES OF QHAPAQ ÑAN: THE ROLE OF THE ROADS IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE PERUVIAN HISTORY AND TERRITORY

According to official Peruvian history, the change from the Prehispanic to the colonial period was so profound that it restructured the Andean space; nevertheless, experience shows that the roads have continued to be used by the various actors that make use of and/or inhabit the Peruvian territory. In this article, we question how it is possible that the roads have survived and continued to be used after the collapse of the Inca administrative system, and therefore their road system as well, and how much of the geopolitical and social organization of colonial Peru, and then of contemporary Peru, can be explained from the Prehispanic road. We have approached these questions from a perspective of territory, landscape, and movement, which provides a greater temporal vision and a wider spatial scale. Furthermore, observation of variations in some routes and traces has allowed us to carry out a diachronic analysis to understand the relationship between change and continuity present throughout the history of the Peruvian territory, and to discuss the impacts of the construction of a Peruvian history that has focused more on changes than continuities.