Allies at Odds: The Andean Church and Its Indigenous Agents, 1583-1671 (review)

RELIGION & RELIGIOUS PRACTICES Allies at Odds: The Andean Church and Its Indigenous Agents, 1583–1671. By John Charles. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2010. Pp. xi. 293. Map. Index. Bibliography. Allies at Odds examines the conflictive relationship between the priests of Indian parishes in colonial Peru and their indigenous assistants, with an emphasis on how the latter negotiated the legal system and mediated ecclesiastical policies. The book deals primarily with the archdiocese of Lima, making excellent use of the court records held at the Archivo Arzobispal de Lima, particularly the causas de capítulos in which parishioners sued their priests. In addition to their key role in determining how Christianity was actually practiced in the Andes, parish assistants were the main cadre within a broader class of indios ladinos, Spanish-speaking and often literate Indians who mediated between what the authorities imagined as two separate republics. Literate Indians were generally the product of parish schooling, and many had acted at one point or another as assistants to priests. Also, it is in the ecclesiastical archives that we most often find their writings , and the Spanish legal literacy of Indians is a central theme of the book. After an introductory chapter on the routes of acquisition of Spanish literacy, Charles examines four key sites of conflict in parish administration. The first of these is Quechualanguage religious instruction. Here Charles focuses on the church’s policy of using a single standardized form of Quechua in official catechetical materials, suggesting that native assistants, along with an important segment of the clergy, attempted to circumvent a linguistic one-size-fits-all policy and even that they were hostile to the standard. While this was surely often the case, indios ladinos thrived in (and were defined by) diglossic situations such as the one that developed between ecclesiastical or pastoral Quechua and local vernaculars. Arguably ladino-ness, and much of the power of the parish assistants, resided not just in their knowledge of Spanish but also of the form of written Quechua favored by the Church, in which they wrote letters and legal petitions. The following chapter discusses conflicts over khipus (knotted cord records). For a time Indians were encouraged to use khipus to record sins for confession as well as catechetical materials. Some priests felt, logically enough, that this facilitated doctrinal error and gave indigenous intermediaries too much power. Khipus were also used by parish assistants to keep track of parishioners on behalf of priests, and as evidence when priests were sued for economic exploitation. Charles suggests that the way Indians were initially encouraged to use khipus to record their own sins for confession also made them more inclined to record the “sins” of their priests on khipus and present the information to church officials. This pertains to a key argument present throughout the book: that only a “porous boundary . . . divided sacramental practices from legal action” (p. 99). Charles suggests that we should not view “religion proper” (whether it be Christian liturgy or Andean “idolatry”) in abstraction from the messy politics and power plays that, judging from the causas de capítulos, characterized parish life. The fourth chapter develops this theme, examining clerical violence and the punitive 304 REVIEWS dimensions of religious power. It also develops another key argument of the book: that the conflicts of parish life did not uniformly pit domineering priests against resistant Indians. Priests and parishioners had their own divisions and rivalries and were often allied with one another. Chapter 5 develops a novel perspective on the much-discussed extirpation of idolatry trials by focusing on the Indians who were appointed to assist the extirpating judges. Charles argues that where one positioned oneself on the “Christian-idolater” divide had much to do with local politics, as opposed to fundamentals of faith. For instance, extirpation could serve ladino Indians who were commoners to challenge the power of nobles and also of parish priests who aided and abetted them. A final chapter, “The Polemics of Practical Literacy,” considers the petitions that initiated causas de capítulos as a genre that influenced and was influenced by high-level debates over clerical abuse and also as a form of political action that while not...