Hatun Killaka

Hatun Killaka was the principal place of the Killaka political grouping south of Lake Poopó in the Bolivian highlands. Killaka authority belonged to a federation that also included Asanaqi and other neighboring peoples. Its leaders exercised influence through communities and territories spread across the plateau and beyond it, rather than through a compact town alone. Relations with the Inca state incorporated these local hierarchies into a larger imperial order.

Under Spanish government, the settlement was reorganized as a reducción, a town intended to concentrate a previously dispersed population, and received the name Oropesa de Quillacas. During much of the colonial period it was nevertheless known as Hatun Quillacas. The wider Repartimiento de Quillacas y Asanaques included Condo, the Asanaqi centre, illustrating the continued layering of local and colonial jurisdictions. Rule depended on relations between hereditary authorities and their subjects, and these relations could break down violently. In 1774 subjects killed Asanaqi leaders of the Llanquipacha family; the weakened institution declined afterward. Hatun Killaka's history was thus intertwined with neighboring communities whose political ties were reshaped under successive empires.