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ackNowledgmeNTs To wriTe The Book was an odyssey, and my travels opened up a great many possibilities. I am deeply indebted to the many scholars whom I met. How can I thank them all? Let me try. Chance brought me ashore on the beaches of Peru and then led me further into the Andes. What began as an adventure transformed into an intellectual voyage, which could not have been more felicitous. The Bavarian state, in granting me the Bayerische Habilitationsförderpreis, made it possible. I am particularly grateful to Walter Ziegerer, who trusted that my ship would not drift apart on the seemingly endless ocean of transatlantic history. Trust humbles any scholar during his or her research. It serves like an anchor dropped in the dark sea, more necessary to a scholar than to a captain. Without Anthony Grafton, of Princeton; Winfried Schulze and Wulf Oesterreicher, both from Munich, who knew me from my previous endeavors and kindly served as referees; Paula Findlen, at Stanford, and Tamar Herzog, now at Harvard; and finally the referees from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, my journey would have ended on the river Rhine. Almost miraculously they all trusted that the archival material and the immense scholarship in the various seas through which I would sail would smooth the rough ideas I had in my mind. Special thanks goes again to Anthony Grafton, who was willing to read and comment on earlier drafts of this book, giving generous help when questions arose. I am grateful to the above-mentioned scholars, who live the wonderful practice of scholarly give-and-take, for enabling me to see from the northern Pacific in Stanford what was distinctive about the southern shores of the same ocean. Stanford provided the tranquility I needed to reflect on what I had collected on my many trips to the Andes. It was particularly during these voyages to South America that I collected much more than flotsam. When I arrived there, especially in Peru, the various archives, libraries, and convents of Cuzco, Lima, Arequipa, Trujillo, Cajamarca, Chiclayo, Piura, Quito, Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Santiago de Chile, and La Paz all made available their treasures . They welcomed a total stranger who was searching for information on so suspicious a matter as hechizería, sorcery, in colonial Peru. Though these collections provided deep insights into colonial as well viii The power of huacas as modern South America, they did not contain what I was looking for. As I traveled back and forth to the Andes, on stays both long and brief, I was able to make the acquaintance of many people who helped me in my investigations. In Peru, I must name in particular Ramón Mujica Pinilla; Manuel Marzal († 2005); Julian Heras, OCD; Armando Nieto; Jeffrey Kleiber; Jorge Flores Ochoa; Marcos Cueto; Luis Millones; Cesar Quiroanga, OBVM; Padre Armando, OP; Jean Jacques Decoster; and the staff of the Centro Bartolomé de las Casas. In Lima, Ramón Mujica Pinilla shared his abundant knowledge about colonial art with me, while Marcos Cueto familiarized me with the world of the colonial scientists. In Cuzco, Jorge Flores Ochoa introduced me into the world of Andean ethnographers. I thank them all. I also thank the members of the Jesuit, Dominican, Franciscan, and Mercedarian orders in Lima and Cuzco. The Mercedarians in Cuzco and the Dominicans in Lima decided to lock me into their rich colonial libraries, and my days there determined the paths I would take. Laura Gutiérrez Arbulú from the Archivo Arzobispal in Lima and the ever-helpful staff of the National Library of Lima allowed a gringa to dive into Peruvian documents while keeping her from drowning. Without the personnel of the various archives , museums, and libraries in South America, Mexico City, Spain, and Rome, I would not have fished out any information. Special thanks go to Monseñor the Archbishop Héctor Miguel Cabrejos Vidarte of Trujillo and Antonio Vasco of the national library of Quito. I am grateful for the wonderful conversations I had with the Jesuits in Santiago de Chile and the help of the director of the library in Cuzco. I am particularly indebted to Nasario Turpe Condori, the altomisayuq from the Auzangate region, who showed me what trust in the powers of stones truly means. Unfortunately, he can no longer share his visions with us. My insights gained from archival material from New Spain and modern-day Mexico provided the yardstick necessary to measure differences between the various colonial...

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