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the andean virgin     TheAndeanVirgin chapter six    The Virgin Mary came to the Andes with the conquerors. From the Spanish excuses for the massacre of  at Cajamarca—involving the supposed unwillingness of Atahualpa to accept the story of theVirgin birth—to the Virgin’s decisive appearance in battles, she soon made her mark on the victories in that region as well. After he and his men took Atahualpa prisoner at Cajamarca, Pizarro headed almost immediately for Cuzco, the center of Inka power. Entering the city on November , , he took possession in the name of the Spanish crown but appointed Manco Inka as emperor in order to maintain authority over the indigenous peoples. Just over a year later, he founded the city of Lima on the coastal plains in the valley of the Rimac River, effectively separating the indigenous and American highlands from the more European-settled coast. At the same time, grave differences among the Spanish led them to fight among themselves and eventually to resist the imposition of imperial control. Francisco and his brothers Juan and Gonzalo would die in these struggles—Juan in battle against Manco Inka’s forces after Spanish mistreatment forced the Inka leader to rebel in ; Francisco in Lima in , assassinated by his former allies; and Gonzalo in , beheaded for treason after his forces were defeated by armies supporting the establishment of Spanish imperial power. Despite the disorder, the reverence for the Virgin—who was seen as the protector of the Spanish (on whatever side) during these struggles—began to spread, particularly in the latter half of the sixteenth century. Churches were dedicated to her in native sacred spaces, and she began to be substituted for, blended with, and understood as formerly Andean representatives of the pow-  ,       erful and the holy. Images of her were created by Andean artists as well as Spanish ones and proliferated throughout the region.They began to be used in the ceremonies of the conquerors, ceremonies designed to illustrate and celebrate European hegemony. But these images and rituals had an edge: they could be used to perpetuate or at least remember pre-Conquest ideas and hierarchies . In the Andes, as in Mexico, the results in art, spiritual and ceremonial life, and political power were hybrid. Just as a native Christianity developed in Mexico, so it would happen in the Andes as well, although the pre-Columbian roots remained closer to the surface in the Andes than they did in Mexico.The highly sacred region of the Andes, the extraordinary highland Lake Titicaca, became her place, as she was revered as theVirgin of Copacabana. Andean artists were perhaps even more successful in retaining elements of the old spirituality and power structures in Christian art than the Mexicans had been.The Peruvian Conquest had been marked by strife among the conquerors themselves and with Spanish royal authority. This intra-European struggle permitted the Inka to continue to resist, and Spanish control was not securely established for more than thirty years. One result was that the immediate post-Conquest period did not see the same kind of rapid adoption of Spanish forms by the native elites as in Mexico. Still, toward the end of the sixteenth century and into the seventeenth, the adoption of at least externally Christian ways proceeded rapidly. Saint Mary was an important part of this process. The Andean sources for the veneration of Mary were principally two. First and very important, the pan-Andean earth goddess Pachamama influenced and became integrated into many of the local and regional cults to the Virgin. In addition, Inka forms of worship had been spread throughout the Andean region in the fourteenth and into the fifteenth centuries during their conquest of the region. These forms not only included a moon goddess, Mama Quilla, who was envisioned as the consort of the sun god, but also the Coya, the living personification of the feminine sacred. She was the queen, the consort of her brother the Sapa Inka, the human embodiment of the sun. Further, the ChosenWomen, a group selected for their beauty and virginity who lived in the service of the Inka king, had symbols and attributes resonant with the European symbols of theVirgin Mary. The strong associations that Andean peoples brought to the worship of Mary are made clear in the work of Garcilaso de la Vega (–), the mestizo son of a Spanish conqueror and an Inka noblewoman: [N]ot satisfied with learning from the priests the titles given to the...

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