The Invention of Colonial Andean Worlds

The Spanish invasion of the Andes in 1532 led to the creation of the New World, which was not entirely indigenous, European, or (later) African. Scholarly interest in the emergence of this hybrid colonial society has produced an impressive outpouring of publications over the past thirty years that represent an array of different perspectives. Historians, anthropologists, archaeologists, linguists, and specialists in literary and cultural studies have all brought to bear the methods and theories of their respective disciplines. Nevertheless, many Andeanists disagree about the very nature of this colonial order, and consensus has often proved illusive, even about appropriate methods of study. This is perhaps not too surprising, as colonial Andean society looked very different from cosmopolitan capital cities such as Lima, from provincial indigenous centers such as Cusco, from frontier cities such as Concepción de Chile, and from rural zones. Certainly it looked very different from the perspectives of colonial elites, castas, indigenous peasants, and African slaves. Nevertheless, several scholars have recently presented multiple and often contested viewpoints on this diverse colonial Andean past, particularly for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, for which empirical data are often thinnest.

A main reason for the conflicting interpretations of colonial Andean history and culture are the fragmentary and often hard-to-interpret primary sources extant today. The most difficult problem is a lack of written indigenous sources. The Inca never employed alphabetic writing and instead relied on arrangements of knotted cords, called quipu, to record data such as censuses, tribute lists, or the contents of storage facilities. Some scholars have postulated that quipu may also have related complex narratives or poetry, but research in this area is still inconclusive.¹ Even after the arrival of the Spanish, indigenous scribes failed to produce documents in the principal Andean languages using European alphabetic script, as they did in Mesoamerica.² Art historians and anthropologists have compensated for the resultant lack of pre-Columbian and indigenous colonial written records by examining Inca textiles, ceramics, jewelry, and carvings, whereas archaeologists have studied thousands of pre-Columbian and colonial buildings, tombs, skeletal remains, and waste materials, which have yielded rich data on indigenous cultural, artistic, and technological achievements, as well as diet. Historians and specialists in literary and cultural studies have also relied on the chronicles of Europeans written after the Spanish invasion. These accounts by conquistadors, Spanish settlers, priests, and bureaucrats provide much information on the first two centuries of the colonial order. The few works produced by indigenous authors such as Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala and Juan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui did not appear until early in the seventeenth century, arriving along with the history of the Incas and the early colonial order by the mestizo Inca Garcilaso de la Vega. Another major source of information is the immense variety of sources—laws, treasury accounts, government and church documents, workbooks, trade records, policy proposals, judicial texts, censuses, notary records—generated by Spanish civil and religious authorities and scattered in archives in Spain and throughout the Andean nations. Each of these sources has its limitations, however, reflecting the biases, misperceptions, and changing religious and administrative priorities of metropolitan, colonial, and local officials. All too few of these written materials directly register the voices of indigenous peoples.

The books reviewed in this essay exemplify the variety of disciplinary methods Andeanists use and the division among scholars over how to interpret sources dealing with the complex colonial order that emerged in the...