Death and Conversion in the Andes: Lima and Cuzco, 1532-1670

2. Death during the Conquest

chapter two | Death during the Conquest The years between the Spaniards’ arrival in the Andes in 1532 and the execution of the last rebel Inca in 1572 were dominated by war and violence. The wars of conquest were followed by civil wars between the Spaniards, caused by disputes over the sharing of the booty and control of the former Inca empire, the Tahuantinsuyo, and by the rebellions of the conquistadors against the crown. For four decades, Peru was the scene of continual armed confrontations and public punishments of crimes, not only between the Spanish and Andean populations but also within each faction. The series of cruel episodes that took place during this period made manifest the different ways in which the participants conceived of the body and exteriorized physical and emotional suffering as well as the sense of honor or humiliation that was expressed through the body. This chapter seeks to study these populations’ attitudes toward death and to understand both their meaning and their impact on religious , cultural, and political behavior during this intense phase, which has been diversely and polemically documented. The wars made it necessary to carry out hasty actions, cutting short or omitting the appropriate rituals. This was a transition stage in which there was no system of justice or any established Church recognized by the rival populations; in short, no common codes of any kind existed. We may say that this period represented a mutual learning process. All things considered, it was a seminal epoch in colonial society. Death, war, and violence were central aspects in the founding of colonial society because of their communicative power, the force they 34 | exerted to generate hegemony, and the key role they played in forming the system of authority together with its judicial and religious institutions. These forces went hand in hand, and they are crucial for understanding the history of conversion to Christianity in the Andes. Their effects were manifold: they sustained the creation of the political order and its normativity; they were behind the definition of ethnic, social, and gender categories; and, even more important, they provided the basis on which a common sacred space was constructed, making it possible for the new order to become gradually intelligible and even bearable. The following discussion is based on the chronicles of the conquest, which date for the most part from the sixteenth century, and on other historical accounts written some years later by Spanish, Indian, and mestizo authors. I also use information taken from correspondence and administrative reports. I focus on the accounts of war, deaths, and executions of both Andean and Spanish victims. My analysis is partially based on Foucault ’s work (1991) on the political significance of torture and executions before these practices were replaced by more subtle, complex, and sophisticated forms of discipline. There are many parallels between episodes from the conquest of Peru and several of the examples that Foucault analyzes. There are, however, two important differences. First, the episodes of the conquest do not develop over a common cultural and political substrate. Whereas the use of physical violence studied by Foucault is directed at the criminal and confirms the power of a monarch that everyone recognizes, the violence of the conquest— expressed in extremely summary trials, torture, and executions— begins with the execution of the Inca sovereign. The violence of this episode casts a shadow over all the acts that follow and appears as the only language possible, which, at the same time that it destroys, lays the foundation for a new order. Second, the sacred is the force that gives coherence to this new order. In his analysis, Foucault does not ignore the realm of the sacred, but neither does he grant it a special status. For Foucault, the brutality with which the bodies of the executed are treated is ultimately aimed at strengthening and elevating the figure of the sovereign. In the context of the conquest, a more ambitious project is at work: the religious conversion of those invaded. Consequently, my analysis of violence during the conquest borrows Death during the Conquest | 35 many ideas from Girard (2005),1 who argues for identity between violence and the sacred.2 There is no doubt that during the period of conquest and civil war, the link between the two is particularly noticeable. Studies on the introduction of justice systems and corporal punishment in the colonial world have...