The spectacular collapse of the Inca state was produced for a series of reasons which can be divided into two types, the visible causes and the deep causes. The visible foundations are well known, the fratricidal war which kept the power and the command divided, the surprise factor taken advantage of in the Cajamarca ambush, the European technological superiority in reference to arms, that is, the harquebus and the cannon, the steel sword and the presence of the horses.

All these reasons weigh in the occurrences but they were not the only things that determined the triumph of the Hispanics. There were other elements that acted in a decisive manner on the Inca defeat, knowing the lack of national integration because of the indigenous people not having any consciousness of a united front against foreign danger and the lack of cohesion between ethnic groups.

The Inca state was not considered by the indigenous people with any concept of nationality. Moreover Inca hegemony did not try to annul the existence of the great ethnic lords because their socioeconomic structures were supported by them and did not suppress their peculiarities. For the Inca it was enough for him to receive the recognition of his absolute power that gave him access to the work force needed for his government works and the designation of state lands and lands for religion in the whole territory.

The only centralizing measure ordered by the sovereign was the implantation of the same language in the whole country. The intention was to facilitate negotiations and administration in view of the plurality of languages and dialects.

An examination of Andean society at the end of the sixteenth century stands out as a hierarchized society, composed of macroethnicities governed by hatun Curacas or great lords who in turn had a series of lesser lords under their authority. Nevertheless, for the great lords the coming of the Incas meant a loss of power and a good part of their former riches. Their best lands passed to the power of the State with the local people working their fields and the usufruct filling the government warehouses.

In spite of the grand gifts perceived by the curacas through reciprocity, it did not compensate for the loss of liberty and the imposition of the Cuzco yoke. The situation of the hatun runa or common man was not more satisfactory with the creation of the warrior mita and the massive moving of mitimae populations. Thus the Inca state at the death of Huayna Capac was not the utopian state painted by some chroniclers. On the contrary, discontent animated a good part of the population and it is for that reason that with the Hispanic arrival and the civil war it seemed to the curacas to be the right moment to lay reciprocity with the Inca aside and take advantage of the foreigners to exchange loyalties with them. .

An undeniable discontent must have reigned among the lords and among the popular classes, a dissatisfaction that gave way to a desire to shake off Inca influence. These feelings explain the good welcome offered any the native people to the followers of Pizarro. It is for these reasons that the Spanish were massively helped by the indigenous lords with armies and porters for food, weapons and goods of all sorts. It was not a handful of Spanish who broke the Inca but the Andean people themselves, unhappy with the dominant situation, who believed they had encountered a favorable occasion to regain their liberty. If their calculations failed it was due to the natural ignorance of future events since they did not know the imperialistic desires of the Spanish crown nor of their extensive conquest in Mexico and the Caribbean.