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chaPTer six glimpses of The proTecTive powers of andean riTUals in The highlands eveN as visiTaTors systematically destroyed the physical bodies of Andean huacas and imprisoned hechizeros, and despite the many assimilations and outward changes in their world, Andean religious specialists continued to carry the sacred geography of huacas in their minds or physical manifestations of huacas in their bags. As customs in the Andean worlds were deeply rooted in a logic that had developed over centuries, the attempted Spanish colonization of the Andean imagination , to a large extent, could only scratch the surface. Throughout the seventeenth century, religious specialists and Andean commoners often continued to perform their inherited customs in the prescribed manner—as glimpses into their seventeenth-century world suggest. The need to promote fertility was one of the great constants, present during colonial times no less than under Inca rule, nourishing a steadfast belief in the embodied superhuman powers of yllas and huacas, whether mountains, lakes, or stones.1 Always, Andeans hoped for a sufficient supply of water, livestock, crops, and salt. In Huamantanga in 1650, Andeans offered in the highland areas of the central and southern Andes two sets of powders, poco and llacsa, to their huaca Pomaguato, hoping that doing so would bring a good harvest.2 Pomaguato was a male huaca who had earlier lost his female counterpart to the fires of a visitator. But Pomaguato was still active, provided that he was given sufficient offerings—and from the perspective of a huaca, colored powders were a welcome food. But Andeans knew that huacas also liked llamas, llama blood, fat, chicha, coca leaves, feathers, textiles, and maize.3 In Ondores in 1668, a couple venerated a mummy that had been wrapped in colored textiles and buried with a kernel of maize between its teeth. This mummy was a valued member of the Ondorean community , and widely believed to provide water. In February, after the festivi- 176 The power of huacas ties for San Blas and before the annual cleaning of the irrigation ditches, Ondoreans sacrificed a llama in its honor.4 As late as 1730, in Carampona in the Huarochirí district (a region that had seen over the last one hundred years many diligent visitators, among them Francisco de Ávila and Juan Sarmiento de Vivero), stones in the environs that were still venerated were sprinkled with blood.5 All their idols got burnt.6 According to sacred geography and the rhythm of the seasons, natives of the central and southern highlands continued to sprinkle chicha onto sacred stones; to toast sacred mountains with chicha; to bury conopas; to sacrifice llamas, coca, and guinea pigs; and to approach their mall­ quis with prayers. Sometimes an entire ayllu gathered to perform an elaborate collective ritual for fertility, under the leadership of a religious specialist. But while commoners and religious specialists continued to perform fertility rituals, an even greater motivation for Andeans’ reliance on the expertise of religious specialists was the quest for health.7 Indeed, the primary reason for performing these secret, elaborate, and individually tailored rituals was to improve the health of individuals and their loved ones. Andeans approached religious specialists in their own and neighboring villages, knowing that in those hands lay knowledge about how to meet the demands of a huaca, how to heal, and how to find hidden things.8 Sometimes the specialist succeeded in finding a husband who had cheated on his spouse, or helped find lost textiles and animals that had gone astray.9 But finding animals, textiles, and husbands was merely a sideline, derived from a more important matrix of knowledge: the ability to divine the causes of a sickness and how to cure it. María Guanico, a woman from the village of Quinti, was one such knowledgeable healer. One day, Guanico was called on by her fellow Indians and asked to divine whether a sick person would die or regain health by examining the spittle on chewed coca leaves.10 In another instance, María was asked to heal another María. In order to heal her, she took the woman’s manta and said to her white idol: “Mighty deceased Inca, take it away.”11 Afterward, she threw the manta into the river, “and with it, the sick woman was healed.” When María asked the huaca for fertility , she lined up several items on a stone that she had brought from the surrounding fields. In one line she arranged coca leaves. The second line consisted...

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