Empire: Inca and Spanish- Two sides of the same coin?

Steve Stern’s book “Peru Indian Peoples and the Challenge of Spanish Conquest” mirrors that of “Ambivalent Conquests,” showing how difficult conquest was for the Spanish, and how fierce the resistance by the indigenous population to European control could be. In Ambivalent Conquests, Clendinnen notes that the Spanish found the area in the Yucatan peninsula very difficult to conquer. The dense jungles, coupled with the extreme heat and humidity were completely foreign to these would-be conquerors. This was very similar to the situation in Andes, in which the mountainous geography of the area itself proved to be quite challenging for the Europeans. Stern also considers many other factors, juxtaposing the difference between the way in which Pre-Inca Andean society was organized, which was communal and based around the Ayllu, or extended family, and the “modern” European one that conquered them, one based on the concept of individualism and private property. The one thing that is interesting, is that Stern seems to imply that there are similarities between the way in which the Inca conquerors and the Spanish conquistadors overcame various groups of native people. There are also similarities between Spanish and Inca, (though not pre-Inca Andean) culture, in that both are much more hierarchical, more inherently unequal, with class, and wealth distinctions that were not present prior to the Inca Empire’s existence.