Undressing the Coya and Dressing the Indian Woman

Market Economy, Clothing, and Identities in the Colonial Andes, La Plata (Charcas), Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2800879
AutoresAna María Presta (0000-0002-5514-1949, autor de correspondencia)
Año2010
Volumen90
Número1
Páginas41-74
Fecha de publicación2010-02-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaHispanic American Historical Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0018-2168 • E-ISSN: 1527-1900
EditorialDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/00182168-2009-090
OpenAlexW2092003243
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas12

This essay addresses the specific indigenous identity of Indian women resettled in colonial La Plata, particularly those associated with mercantile trades and consequently involved in the creation of colonial markets. The search for Indian women's urban identities rests upon the material culture associated with labor activities and social standing among those recently settled in the Spanish urban milieu. Objects and places, goods and spaces can be manipulated, reappropriated, and reinterpreted by new social actors on their road to history. Things have meaning and are bound to culture and identity. In this way, indigenous women's dress and adornment are associated with the dramatic changes brought about by the new mercantile economy introduced by the Spaniards. Indian women who resettled in the city and gained economic success pursuing mercantile trades adopted distinctive components of female dress. These styles evoked both the recent Inca past and certain elements of Spanish attire and adornment that forged a specific identity associated with a specific trade, asserting a newly acquired status in the emerging colonial society

Adornment · Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Clothing · Colonialism · Economics · Economy · Ethnology · Geography · Identity (music) · Indigenous · Meaning (existential) · Sociology · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Historical Studies in Latin America · History · Indigenous Cultures and History · Latin American history and culture · Psychology