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Hispanic American Historical Review 80.2 (2000) 359-360



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Book Review

Colonial Habits:
Convents and the Spiritual Economy of Cuzco, Peru

Colonial Period

Colonial Habits: Convents and the Spiritual Economy of Cuzco, Peru. By Kathryn Burns. Durham: Duke University Press, 1999. Photographs. Illustrations. Maps. Tables. Appendixes. Notes. Glossary. Bibliography. Index. xi, 307 pp. Cloth, $49.95. Paper, $17.95.

Nuns were at the center of city life in colonial Peru. They had a fundamental role in the production and reproduction of power and privilege in colonial society. Admitting this at the beginning of this innovative book may be hard to imagine, but Kathryn Burns takes us on a journey to observe the making of colonial society in Cuzco, the most important city in the southern Peruvian Andes, from within the world of cloistered women. Life in a convent did not mean isolation from the outside world. Nuns and convents were involved in a complex weave of exchanges with the rest of society that involved not only prayers but also negotiations of loans, inter-elite alliances, and the education of predominantly but not exclusively young elite women, a dense network which the author terms the "spiritual economy."

In this study of Cuzco's convents over a time span of three centuries, the author's endeavor is to explain the formation of a regional elite and the central role nuns played in its dynamics. Using gender as an analytical tool, Kathryn Burns scrutinizes the politics involved in the foundation of convents in colonial Cuzco and in the administration of their patrimony. This approach yields very interesting results. Her account of the foundation of Cuzco's first convent leads to an illuminating interpretation of mestizaje and the changing ways in which ethnic differences were understood and constructed in the early years of Spanish rule. Another significant finding is that convents were not mere destination places for unmarried elite women; in fact, a woman's profession amounted to a convenient 'marriage' to the convent. Elite families made use of this alliance to their advantage, which went beyond the economic. Thus this book contributes to enhance existing notions of marriage, family, and even motherhood.

How did these negotiations, calculated professions, and careful acquisition and administration of property fit into religious views and vows of poverty? Weren't they contradictory? The historiography of the Andean church and of church-related institutions, long dominated by the clergy, has systematically evaded this essential question, as it was usually and wrongly understood in moral terms. Burns adequately demonstrates how, within the colonial setting, they were perfectly coherent and backed by authority. Readers will find a most helpful elucidation of the complex mechanisms by which credit was structured in colonial society. During the colonial period convents became paramount among institutions involved in granting credit to a variety of petitioners. Tightly connected to Cuzco's economy, local convents were vulnerable to its oscillations. When social turmoil and general economic and political crisis struck the region in the eighteenth [End Page 359] century, debtors were unable to pay their loans. Convents were dragged into a crisis from which they could not recover. The end of colonial rule and the establishment of the republican state undermined not only their finances but also their prestige and authority in local society. The Peruvian state undertook key tasks once the domain of church-related institutions, such as education and charity. Convents were charged with corruption in Cuzco's papers. The state tried to intervene in the appointment of their administrators. The author's explanation for the convents' decline points at a growing secularization of society. However, in view of the city's past and recent history, this issue deserves further examination.

Thoroughly researched in Peruvian and Spanish archives, artfully written, Colonial Habits opens up a number of fresh insights into colonial Andean history. This book should be of interest to students and specialists in the fields of colonial history, early modern history, comparative cultural history, women's studies, and religion.

Gabriela P. Ramos
University of Pennsylvania

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