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Hispanic American Historical Review 80.2 (2000) 360-361



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Book Review

The World of Túpac Amaru:
Conflict, Community, and Identity in Colonial Peru

Colonial Period

The World of Túpac Amaru: Conflict, Community, and Identity in Colonial Peru. By Ward Stavig. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999. Photograph. Illustrations. Maps. Tables. Notes. Glossary. Bibliography. Index. xxxiv, 348 pp. Cloth, $60.00. Paper, $25.00.

The title of this book is aptly ambivalent: this is a work much less concerned with the study of Túpac Amaru and the formidable indigenous upheaval he headed than with the history of "his world," broadly understood as the rural area where the leader and most of his followers came from. Focused on Quispicanchis and Canas y Canchis, two provinces of colonial Cuzco that became the core of the Andean insurrection of the early 1780s, this study pursues a very appealing and ambitious goal to present "a close, even intimate, view of the daily life of indigenous villagers" (p. xv). Each chapter, in effect, explores with a great wealth of detail and craftsmanship a particular sphere of the everyday experience of the Andean communities. The mass rebellion itself is only addressed in the last chapter. What the book offers is a painstaking and nuanced portrayal of an Andean society.

After reviewing the historical background of the peoples of Quispicanchis and Canas y Canchis, the book examines two scarcely explored subjects in the field of colonial Andean studies. The first is the sexual and family values of rural communities. Although relying on legal disputes, which naturally tend to stress violence and conflict, Stavig makes a systematic effort to discern indigenous conceptions of "abnormal" and "acceptable" behavior in issues like rape, incest, premarital sexual relations, and divorce. The second subject is the customary set of criminal practices in rural villages, fields, and highways, as well as the attitudes toward crime of both peasant and colonial authorities. The book, then, turns to the development of inter- and intra-ethnic agrarian conflicts; the labor relations in obrajes, haciendas, colonial cities, and silver mines; and the individual and communal responses of Indian peoples to fiscal demands, forced labor, and [End Page 360] mercantile economy. The Túpac Amaru rebellion and a succinct overview of the colonial legacies are presented in the last two chapters. While most of the book is based on judicial documents, the section on the insurrectionary process mostly rests on secondary sources.

In his reading of particular litigation records and, more generally, in his overall interpretation of colonial relations, the author follows three general principles that readers will find interesting to appraise. First, Stavig emphasizes the importance of face-to-face relationships, as supposed to more structural or systemic patterns, in explaining social conflicts between Indians and power figures, even in a context of widespread unrest like the pan-Andean uprising of 1780. The second argument is that "the value systems of the native peoples, while sometimes reflecting their distinctive roots, were not clearly separated from European convictions" (p. 25), which is particularly apparent in the author's treatment of gender relations and disciplinary attitudes toward crime (no social bandits are to be found in the Cuzco region). Finally, it is argued throughout the book that a relatively efficient and protective state apparatus of justice allowed natives to resist colonial exactions within the system, from land disputes and labor grievances to taxes and abuses of power. The dependence on the judicial system, in turn, reinforced the ties between colonizers and colonized.

A critical comment is perhaps in order. In a long-term history of the main social actors in the mass upheaval led by Túpac Amaru, we would expect tighter connections between the analysis of the insurrection, the specific regional history of Canas y Canchis and Quispicanchis, and some of the social and cultural topics pursued earlier in the book. While the author does highlight some continuities between previous local conflicts and the political stance of some Indian communities during the rebellion, he could have carried over more systematically the...

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