Encyclopedia of Religion

(Darren Dugan) #1

Pease, Franklin. El dios creador andino. Lima, 1973.


Reinhard, Johan. “Chavín and Tiahuanaco: A New Look at Two
Andean Ceremonial Centers.” National Geographic Research
1 (1985): 395–422.


Rostworowski de Diez Canseco, María. Estructuras andinas del
poder: Ideología religiosa y política. Lima, 1983.


Rowe, John Howland. “The Origins of Creator Worship among
the Incas.” In Culture in History, edited by Stanley Diamond,
pp. 408–429. New York, 1969.


Tello, Julio C. “Wira-Kocha.” Inca 1 (1923): 93–320, 583–606.


Trimborn, Hermann. “South Central America and the Andean
Civilizations.” In Pre-Columbian American Religions, edited
by Walter Krickeberg et al., pp. 83–146. New York, 1968.


Valcárcel, Luis E. “Símbolos mágico-religiosos en la cultura an-
dina.” Revista del Museo Nacional (Lima) 28 (1959): 3–18.


Wachtel, Nathan. The Vision of the Vanquished: The Spanish Con-
quest of Peru through Indian Eyes, 1530–1570. New York,
1977.


Yacovleff, Eugenio. “Las Falcónidas en el atre y en las creencias
de los antiguos peruanos.” Revista del Museo Nacional (Lima)
1 (1932): 35–101.


New Sources
Burger, Richard L. Chavin and the Origins of Andean Civilization.
London, 1992.


Guinea Bueno, Mercedes. Los Andes antes de los Incas. Madrid,
1991.


Isbell, William H., and Helaine Silverman. Andean Archaeology.
New York, 2002.


Olsen Bruhns, Karen. Ancient South America. New York, 1994.


Stanish, Charles. Ancient Andean Political Economy. Austin, 1992.


Stone-Miller, Rebecca. Art of the Andes: From Chavin to Inca. Lon-
don, 2002.


Von Hagen, Adriana, and Craig Morris. The Cities of the Ancient
Andes. New York, 1998.
FEDERICO KAUFFMANN DOIG (1987)
Translated from Spanish by Mary Nickson
Revised Bibliography


SOUTH AMERICAN INDIANS: INDIANS OF
THE COLONIAL ANDES
A number of promising points of entry beckon the student
of emerging religious systems among people of indigenous
descent in the colonial Andes. These beginnings include
transformations within native ritual specialists’ repertoires,
customs surrounding death and the dead, and the expansion
of elemental Catholic Christian catechization within families
(and of sacramental life in general). But no feature of colonial
religiosity was more vital and dynamic than the emergence
of the cult of the saints as reconfigured and understood by
native Andeans. The acceptance of images of Christ, the Vir-
gin, and the other saints into the Andean religious imagina-
tion in colonial times challenges us to understand why and
how new understandings emerged and developed. The ca-


pacity for mobility, inclusion, and reimagination inherent in
beliefs and practices surrounding images of Christ and the
saints offers up colonial Indian religion’s central trunk and
an analytical space from which other branches of colonial re-
ligiosity and culture can be productively studied.
Consider, first, an Andean system of meaning that ap-
pears to have encouraged native reception and understand-
ings of Christian images: beliefs surrounding, and the inter-
relationships between, Andean divinities known as huacas
(material things that manifested the power of ancestral per-
sonalities, cultural founders, and also wider sacred phenome-
na [Mills, 1997, chap. 2; Salomon, 1991]). There is no es-
caping the fact that one reads postconquest reflections upon
these older phenomena, and that, as with much about the
Andean past, any process of learning involves an appreciation
of the needs of authors in a series of colonial presents (Grau-
bart, 2000; Julien, 2000). Yet the fact that most understand-
ings of huacas became “hybridic”—that is to say, authentical-
ly native Andean and influenced, to one degree or another,
by the thought worlds and vocabularies of Spanish Catholic
Christianity—is integral to the colonial processes and reali-
ties to be explored here. As will become abundantly clear,
ideas about huacas and saints were soon shared not only
among Spanish and Hispanicized Andean commentators,
but among native devotees around sacred images. Two origi-
nally disparate systems ceased only to repeat themselves and
were instead finding shared territories and conjoining to gen-
erate new understandings and religious forms (Sahlins,
1985). It is a case in which even the exceptions suggest the
rule. By midcolonial times in the Andes, steadfast native op-
ponents of the growing presence of Christian images in the
hearts and minds of Indian commoners tellingly incorporat-
ed within their rejections and counterteachings the very char-
acterizations employed against their huacas (Mills, 1994,
pp. 106–107, passim; Cummins, 2002, pp. 159–160).

And one can turn, finally, to the ways in which key
Christian personalities such as Christ, the Virgin Mary, and
other saints were brought inside Andean imaginations and
societies in colonial times. Space does not allow the concrete
exemplification required, but by sampling colonial Andean
transformations, a key to understanding religious change ap-
pears. It lies in doing two things simultaneously: appreciating
the novelty and seriousness of the early modern Catholic
project, namely total and obligatory Christianization, in the
Andes as elsewhere in Spanish America; and allowing the
many consequences of this enterprise of “spiritual conquest”
to slip the noose of official intentions, expectations, and pre-
scriptions. My explorations build upon what has already
been proposed by others and myself about the contest and
compatibility of Andean ways with aspects of Catholic Chris-
tianity; selectively, and in somewhat chronological order,
these include Kubler (1946), Millones (1969, 1979), Du-
viols (1971, 1977), Marzal (1977, 1983] 1988), Barnadas
(1987), Sallnow (1987), Platt (1987); MacCormack (1991),
Dean (1996, 2002); Mills (1997, 1994, 2003), Salles-Reese

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