Ancestor veneration is a deeply rooted practice in pre-Colombian Andean America, as is the Renaissance Spanish desire for remembrance. The contact between the two worlds in the early sixteenth century had wide-ranging consequences, from demographic catastrophe to the drive on the part of the Europeans to make them good Christians. Gabriela Ramos takes on the difficult subject of death and dying before the Spanish, during the chaotic era of Conquest, and after, as the efforts of Christian doctrineros at conversion of indigenous peoples was underway. A clear course takes the reader from pre-Hispanic concepts of death, to the impact of the Conquest, then to the more formal, and easier to document, process of indoctrination, and next to Christianity's institutionalization. The author subsequently probes the nature and impact of wills, burial practices, and funeral rituals, and closes with the issue of remembrance.
Ramos asserts that within several decades after the contact, Christianity was so effective that it “transformed [the indigenous people] completely” (1). She succeeds in proving her point insofar as her concentration is on Lima and Cuzco, and she is able to point to the differences in the native response to the church in both urban centers. Of course the choice of location is based on the relative abundance of sources. The majority of the Amerindians were scattered over a vast terrain. And the Indian population of the European capital of the great viceroyalty of Peru was not as large as the Spanish or African populations; hence it was under the close supervision of secular and ecclesiastical authorities.
Although Ramos's principal contribution lies in her close attention to the religious transformation of the indigenous populations of the two urban centers, she first enters the broader landscape of Andean South America. Her study of the nature and significance of the cult of the ancestors begins long before the arrival of the Europeans, as she concentrates on places of burial, the positioning of the body, and mourning rituals. Here the author works as an ethnohistorian, using archaeological evidence as well as colonial chronicles. The result is a solid survey of recent scholarship. Her insights are valuable for both specialists and the general public.
In the Conquest period the traditional rituals were cut short, a consequence of war, violence, and death that were central aspects of the formation of the new colonial regime. In careful detail the author devotes half the chapter to the execution of the Inca ruler Atahualpa and its various depictions. Two principal sources are the chronicles composed by Pedro de Cieza de León and Juan Betanzos. Written almost two decades after the event, both queried the remaining quipucamayos (record keepers). But Betanzos had the advantage of his wife's voice; she was a member of the Inca royal lineage. The chroniclers’ informants represented two factions: the Inca Atahualpa's Quito and, in the case of Betanzos's wife, the Huascar Cuzco faction. The fratricidal warfare between the half-brothers Atahualpa and Huascar had provided the perfect opportunity for the small group of Europeans and their indigenous allies to seize control of the empire. Ramos ends her discussion of the Conquest period in 1572, following the 1537 great uprising, the civil wars of the conquerors of the 1540s, and the defeat of the neo-Inca state on the edge of the jungle by Viceroy Francisco de Toledo. The execution of the leader of the resistance in Cuzco's square in 1572 provided an excellent but missed opportunity for further analysis.
In the subsequent chapter on the “conquest of death” the author analyzes the way in which the Spanish replaced Andean beliefs with Christian concepts of death, burial rituals, and interment. She meticulously mines the Church Council records of Lima and Cuzco, and the various texts used in conversion prepared by the early religious as they worked among the Quechua and Aymara speakers. At times Ramos also consulted the texts and ordinances of bureaucrats Polo Ondegardo, Juan de Matienzo, and Viceroy Francisco de Toledo. She notes the irony in the Spanish attempt to eliminate the Andean custom of displaying the mummies of ancestors by burying them, preferably within the colonial churches, whereas the Spanish often publicly displayed the mummified bodies of Christian saints.
The author next deals with the spaces and institutions for the missionary project: cities, parishes, confraternities, and hospitals. The endeavor required concentration of often dispersed population settlement into urban centers where the eyes and hands of the clergy were present. Parishes are the foundation of church administration in Europe, and they became so throughout the Spanish Empire. Although the European parish is based on clear geographic boundaries, in the Andes, especially in the countryside, boundaries are much more complex, just as the boundaries of Indian encomiendas granted to the Spanish (not “owned” [90] as Ramos notes) could be overlapping. She views the Indian hospitals as operating largely out of charity, missing the point that each Indian tributary paid one tomin for the Indian hospitals in their district. The section on the confraternities is thin, and the topic remains one for further investigation. The problem is the paucity of documentation for the period she studies, even for Spanish confraternities.
Ramos exploited the difficult to access and use notarial records in Lima and Cuzco to amass a corpus of some 500 Indian testaments for her section on wills, graves, and funerary rites. This is a major effort and her analysis of them is exceptional. The result compares favorably to well-known studies of Spanish wills of the period, and provides for the possibility of comparison with the attitudes of the outsiders.
Wills continue to be the evidentiary basis for chapter 6 on ancestors, successors, and memory. Here the author probes the extent to which native practice was replaced by European concepts. The caciques were particularly pressed to conform to Christian rules in order to perpetuate their own positions within a colonial regime in a period when their traditional ability to fulfill their responsibilities of reciprocity was severely limited. I would question the use of the word military where she states “the military provided opportunities for these emerging groups” (171), since there was no true military at the time, although the title alférez (standard bearer) was regularly used, especially in colonial administration.
The numerous tables in the appendix provide systematic display of the results of comparative study of the wills that date from 1571 to 1670. We see the results by urban parishes compared in the cities of Lima and Cuzco, by preference of burial parish. We note the similar data for confraternity membership, the comparative numbers of people requesting high-cross as opposed to low-cross funeral processions, the persons chosen as universal heirs and as executors. Over fifty pages of notes, plus more than thirty of bibliography, complete this fine piece of scholarship. The author's masterful conclusion is as succinct and balanced as the chapters, and brings to a successful close an important book. Certainly not all questions are addressed; in fact, the book raises more questions for students of Andean history. Although I have pointed out some issues of detail, these do not detract from what is a significant work on the religious transformation that takes place in colonial Peru. This is a book that I will use, one that will surely stimulate interest and continued research in the field.
