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chaPTer Two civil versUs ecclesiasTical aUThoriTies The JesuiTs, more ThaN aNy oTher order, were to determine the fate of thousands of indigenous religious specialists in Lima, the southern Andes, and beyond. Their three-pronged strategy of confession , incarceration of religious specialists, and reeducation spread westward from Lake Titicaca to the archdiocese of Lima.1 There it was transformed into a unique political program charged with exceptional ecclesiastical power. From 1583, 1609, and especially from 1621 onward, Jesuit preoccupations turned into an ideology of a new and, in the seventeenth century, radical persecution politics with the Jesuits continuing in the role of ideologues until the late 1640s.With their increasingly systematic search for indigenous idolatry and their precise means of identifying situational acts of evil sorcery, Jesuits successfully shaped the perspective of many visitators as they searched for practices and instruments viewed as idolatrous, superstitious, or hechizero/a.2 But before this rise of the Jesuits as shapers of a program that determined the fate of religious specialists, one that gripped the entire archdiocese of Lima and was implemented in their missions as well, even in the absence of such a close collaboration with bishops as in the archdiocese of Lima, Peruvian religious specialists were not originally placed under primary surveillance by ecclesiastical supervision. In 1572, Viceroy Francisco de Toledo (1569–81) insisted on established lines of the joint procedure of civil and ecclesiastical authorities in matters of indigenous hechi­ zería and in their punishment, but made determined efforts to subject indigenous teachers of hechizería to capital punishment because he disapproved of exempting indigenous people from the Inquisition.3 To sixteenth-century religious specialists, this play of political forces might have seemed a distant storm, but instead it posed a serious threat. A close look at the decisive year 1572 shows that in a time of heightened 48 The power of huacas tensions, increased Inca threat in the Vilcabamba, and vibrant rumors of attacks on the viceroy by hechizeros, Toledo strove to find a solution to the problem of hechizería—according to him, a final one. a year of faTefUl decisions The year 1572, crucial in the history of colonial Peru, was equally momentous for the history of hechizería. On March 4, 1572, Sarmiento de Gamboa (1532–92) finished the last pages of his briskly produced History of the Incas.4 Within the space of two years, Sarmiento had concluded his investigations into the Inca past and put them in persuasive written form.5 The frontispiece adorning the manuscript sent to Philip II—obviously designed by Sarmiento himself—played on Charles V’s motto, “plus ultra.”6 Two columns framed the coat of arms of Castilla and León. One column contained a sign depicting a man with an armillary sphere in his right hand, his left hand pointing to the sun. The man was set directly on the Atlantic—a somewhat clumsy allegory of Atlas as that ocean.7 The maritime theme also alluded to the author, a successful navy officer who crossed the seas as easily as the wind. But Sarmiento de Gamboa had interests beyond those displayed in this self-representation fashioned for official consumption. He was an avid talismanic astrologer who exhibited sympathy toward Andean necromancers even as he provided a plethora of evidence on the Incas’ tyrannical regime. Six months later, on September 24, 1572, Viceroy Toledo gave the order to execute Tupac Amaru, the Incas’ last official heir.8 Despite verbal protests by several church authorities, Spanish soldiers brutally beheaded the king on Cuzco’s former main square, the Haucaypata. Now,Toledo thought, he had put the final touch to the last chapter of Inca history. He rushed to Potosí and to a new battlefield. In the name of the Crown, he fought the Chiriguanos in the lowlands of Bolivia. These Indians, also known as the Guaranís, would ultimately become members of the Audiencia of Charcas, based in Chuquisaca. As Toledo’s military commander, Sarmiento de Gamboa was deeply involved in this endeavor. Yet his luck was soon to run out: Toledo’s expedition failed. Like the Incas in the Vilcabamba, the Chiriguanos offered serious resistance.9 Around the same time, an indigenous rebellion threatened the Spanish viceroyalty. Beginning in 1565, indigenous religious specialists in the so-called Taki Onkoy rebellion pledged to resurrect their huacas. And while Viceroy Toledo was trying to organize the state from his residence in the high Andes, a new era began for [3.22...

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