Colonial Habits. Convents and the Spiritual Economy of Cuzco, Peru by Kathryn Burns (review)

BOOK REVIEWS151 of failure that developed up to that point. Consequently, how to ascertain the continuity or discontinuity between the prewar and the postwar conditions in Japan deserves further investigation. Unfortunately many history books leave the impression that changes occurred at sharp static intervals when in fact gradual transitions existed. Furthermore, Ion emphasizes that the Canadian missionaries are generally more egalitarian and democratic and less identified with imperial political and cultural expansion than their British colleagues, and additionally, more tolerant and less patronizing than the American. I am sure that, in time, he would not only trace the legacy of the missionary connection between Canada andJapan, but bridge the gap between the end of Canada's Victorian missionary age and the postwar survival of its legacy. So, it is to be expected that Ion's next study should investigate the Canadian-Japanese international and personal relations from the postwar period. Hiroaki Shiozaki NagasakiJunshin Catholic University Nagasaki, Japan Latin American Colonial Habits. Convents and the Spiritual Economy of Cuzco, Peru. By Kathryn Burns. (Durham: University of North Carolina Press. 1999. Pp. xi, 307. $49.95 clothbound; $17.95 paperback.) After the Inca capital of Cuzco became Spanish in the early 1530's, it lost its paramount political place in the Andean world, but it remained an important urban center in which the ancient traditions mixed with the cultural, economic , and social imports from the "Old World." In this setting, the three nunneries founded in that city stand as institutions in which the two peoples, Spaniards and indigenous,negotiated their worldly interests and their beliefs, and created a new space for women. This space was multilayered, including the redefinition of worship, the creation of a new understanding of economic transactions sustaining the spiritual world, and the dilemma of assimilating native women into institutions that reluctantly acknowledged their presence but could not embrace a philosophy of multiculturalism. Burns begins with the foundation of the convent of Santa Clara, which had a unique mission: the acceptance of the mestizo daughters of Spanish men and indigenous women. Spanish male relatives hoped that the convent would educate them in Spanish ways, making them links between the two peoples and conveyors of the European culture.This goal was achieved only in part,as the history of the convents proved that while Christianity offered a port of security for the first generation, those in charge held back complete endorsement of mestizas as the brides of Christ, relegating them to second-class citizenship as nuns. 152BOOK REVIEWS In the secular world, Indians and Spaniards continued to influence the fate of the three convents. The complex web of pious deeds, credit, and property holding that sustained the spiritual worship in the nunneries involved them in economic and social negotiations which affected the convents, their patrons, and the interests of the indigenous communities. Economic and social obligations forged networks of mutual interests carefully delineated in this work. The symbiosis between rural and urban, Spanish and indigenous, forms a central core of the history of Cuzco, here "engendered" for the new social history. Women emerge forcefully in the history of these convents, as founders and as religious. True, the main actors of this story remained encloistered or were secular widows. In neither case did their physical lack of visibility or their "unprotected " female condition lessen their ability to become a vital and dynamic part of the city. As creditors the nunneries reached a zenith of economic influence in the seventeenth century, while holding important properties and benefiting from the patronage of powerful families. Inside the cloisters, there was a fascinating world in which Indians, mestizas, whites, and Africans rubbed elbows as mistresses and servants, as seculars and religious, as first- and second-class nuns. Mestizas as well as full-blooded Indians in the two key convents of Santa Clara and Santa Catarina were relegated to wearing the white veil, a sign of social "minority " that vitiated the intent of equality envisioned by the first Spanish father who interned his mestiza daughter in the first foundation. In engaging prose, Burns leads the reader through the internal rituals of convent life, the relations of local families with the social and economic politics of the...