Qariwarmi: The Lost Gender of the Inca Empire

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]Hey there, this is Ivan Leon and under the influence of Vinna, let's get into it.

[00:00:11]Did you know of the existence of Quariwarmi? This is a pre-Columbian South American identity from the Inca Empire. Quariwarmi are one of the most misunderstood erased and debated gender expressions in pre-Columbian America.

[00:00:24]And trust me, this is going to be complicated. To understand Quariwarmi, we need to understand where they exist.

[00:00:30]The Inca Empire was the largest in pre-Columbian America. At its peak, around the late 15th century, it stretched across modern-day Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, the north of Chile, and the north of Argentina. The capital was Cusco, a city considered the center of the world in Inca cosmology. Here is something very important. Inca worldview was based on duality. Male and female were not opposites in conflict. They were forces in balance. They had this understanding for gender, like for sun and moon, earth and sky, life and death.

[00:01:05]Like everything existed in relationship.

[00:01:08]The word Quariwarmi comes from the Quechua. Quari means man, and warmi means woman. So, it literally means man-woman. So, now that might sound an equivalent of non-binary or gender fluid or trans person. But, if you're been seeing my videos, you already know that's not how it works. Quariwarmi wasn't necessarily a self-declared identity. It wasn't a community level or even a fixed category. Instead, it appears to have described people who embodied both masculine and feminine roles, traits, or symbolisms. But, here is where things get tricky. Everything we know about Quariwarmi people comes from colonial era chroniclers. Two of the most important ones are Pedro Cieza de León and Huaman Poma de Ayala. They were writers after the Spanish conquest, and that matters a lot. Because they were Catholic Europeans. They were observing a culture that they didn't fully understand. So, of course, when they framed gender diverse people, they said quariwarmi were unnatural, sinful, strange. Which means we're not hearing the quariwarmi directly. We are hearing a concept they basically have of the trans community today. Some colonial chronicles and later interpretations also connect gender variant ritual figures to the worship of a sacred being known as Chuquichinchay, a powerful feline spirit associated with the night sky, duality, mystery, and transformation. In Andean cultures, felines were not seen as ordinary animals. They represented spiritual power, protection, and connection between worlds. The puma in particular was deeply important in Inca cosmology.

[00:02:44]Strength, balance, and sacred authority were often symbolized through feline imagery. And according to some accounts, individuals who lived outside traditional gender expectations were believed to hold a unique spiritual connection to these sacred forces. Some chronicles described ritual specialists assigned male at birth who dressed and behaved in a feminine way during ceremonies. And while many Spanish accounts were clearly biased or hostile, their writings still reveal something important, that gender variants existed visibly enough to be documented inside the spiritual life of the Andes. And there are also references, especially in early Spanish accounts, that describe quariwarmi appearing in militar contexts. Some interpretations claim that they were a part of the Inca army, possibly even specialized groups, but historians still debate this heavily.

[00:03:35]What we can say is that quariwarmi individuals were described as wearing clothing associated with both genders, performing roles that crossed traditional boundaries, and existing outside the strict male and female expectation. So, why would talk about quariwarmi now? Okay, I think it's very important to talk about them because as we've seen a lot of identities have survived the Christian ideology, but some others were erased. The little knowledge we have about Quari Warmi is a reflection of that. This is another example of how atrocious Christian ideology has been in imposing itself on another cultures. If you made it this far in the video, thank you so much.

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[00:04:32]Thank you all so much for watching. This was I billion and I'll be reading you in the comment section. Bye.

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