Del paganismo a la santidad

This book proposes — as its author makes clear in the preface — to answer questions that have not been asked. In six chapters, grouped into three parts, Estenssoro offers an interpretation of the history of evangelization in the Andes that will undoubtedly provoke controversy and debate. The book’s overall topic is the incorporation of the Indians of Peru into the Catholic religion and its church. The first, and longest, part treats what the author calls the “first evangelization,” or the period from 1532 to the final definition of the content of Christian doctrine in 1582. Part 2 focuses on the well-studied idolatry campaigns in the archbishopric of Lima between 1610 and 1649. The last, shortest, part focuses on popular witchcraft and magic in Lima in the second half of the seventeenth century, the campaign to canonize an Indian saint, Nicolás de Ayllón, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and the Indian cultural revival and the turn to political rebellion in the 1750s.Estenssoro examines a wide variety of themes within his broad subject — so many that it is impossible to mention them all. I will confine myself to what is perhaps his most controversial argument, which challenges the standard version of the history of evangelization in the Andes. In contrast to the conversion of natives in Mesoamerica, scholars argued that conversion efforts were neglected in the Andes before the 1550s while Spaniards, churchmen included, scrambled to assure their fortunes. And the histories of the church do not contradict the portrayal of the Andes as a place where the church fought throughout the colonial period against the unyielding paganism of the native societies. Estenssoro offers an entirely different picture, arguing that the conversion process was long and agonizing primarily because it was not so much a struggle to convert Indians as it was to erase the evidence of earlier missionary activity and replace it with the Tridentine orthodoxy of the Counter-Reformation. The government of Francisco de Toledo (1569 – 82) and the third Conciliar Council of 1582 – 83 marked a definitive break with the past, not only in the imposition of the colonial system that would remain in place for the next century and a half, but also in the reorganization of the church and its evangelization project in line with the decrees of Trent. Estenssoro argues that the third Conciliar Council created a new history for both church and Indians, defining all local practices that did not conform to its decrees as pre-Hispanic and the work of the devil, who was presumed to have introduced practices and rituals that copied the true faith in order to lead the Indians astray. To ensure the orthodoxy of its new converts, the role of Indian parishioners was to be strictly passive. No questions about or interpretations of doctrine were permitted, and the faith was to be taught — and learned — by rote. A line was drawn between Spaniards and Indians: the former defined as Christian, if occasionally sinful, and the latter as unconverted and susceptible to the influence of the devil. Christianity was defined as Spanish, and the church threw its efforts into eliminating any element of Indian culture from Christian ritual.For the next century, the church struggled to eliminate any evidence of pre-Triden-tine evangelization. Estenssoro argues that the recurring campaigns against idolatry in the archbishopric of Lima between 1612 and 1660 were not evidence of the persistence of pre-Hispanic beliefs or resistance to Christianity but rather efforts to erase the evidence of the first evangelization campaigns in the Andes by denying their existence and presenting local practices that could be traced to them as survivals of pre-Hispanic beliefs. Archbishopric Villagómez, who revived the idolatry campaigns in 1649, explained the “survival” of what the church designated as idolatry as proof of the necessity of ongoing Spanish control of the Indians in order to prevent their relapse into idolatry. The campaigns against idolatry, Estenssoro argues, defined the Indians as generically incapable of true conversion to Christianity, and therefore incapable of full incorporation into a political system in which membership depended on an identity as Christian.Estenssoro thus stands apart from the scholars who focus on interrogating the sources that describe Andean religion for the evidence they provide on Andean culture before the Europeans entered the region. He argues that, because all of the sources were produced after that invasion, and for the most part by Europeans intent on changing, rather than preserving, that culture, we must understand the context as well as the objectives of those sources in order to use them effectively, without necessarily accepting their premises or their conclusions. He concludes that the post-Tridentine efforts to reshape the Andes in the mold of the Counter-Reformation led to the rewriting of the history of both Andean societies and of the church itself, imposing on the colony the rigid dogmas of a divided Christendom at war with itself and ending the illusion of the humanists that a true “New World” might be built in the Andes. While his argument that the colonial church erased and rewrote its own history is sure to provoke controversy, this is a valuable contribution to both church history and the history of the transformation of Andean culture under Spanish rule

Art history · Ethnology · Humanities · Idolatry · Interpretation (philosophy) · MAGIC (telescope) · Political science · Politics · SAINT · Subject (documents) · Early Modern Women Writers · Historical Studies in Latin America · History · Latin American history and culture · Law · Philosophy · Religious studies