Cuzco, Peru History

In the early twentieth century, Peruvian intellectuals, like their European counterparts, rejected biological categories of race as a basis for discrimination. But this antiracist ideology did not eliminate social hierarchies; instead, it redefined racial categories as cultural differences, such as differences in education or manners. In Indigenous Mestizos Marisol de la Cadena traces the history of the notion of race from this turn-of-the-century definition to a current denial of the definition's scientific validity.

De la Cadena's ethnographically and historically rich study examines how indigenous citizens of the city of Cuzco have been conceived by others as well as how they have viewed themselves and places these conceptions within the struggle for political identity and representation. Demonstrating that the terms Indian and mestizo are complex, ambivalent, and influenced by social, legal, and political changes, she provides close readings of everyday concepts such as marketplace identity, religious,ritual, grassroots dance, and popular culture, as well as of such common terms as respect, decency, and education. She shows how Indian has come to mean an indigenous person without economic and educational means -- one who is illiterate, impoverished, and rural. Mestizo, on the other hand, has come to refer to an urban, usually literate, and economically successful person claiming indigenous heritage and participating in indigenous cultural practices. De la Cadena argues that this version of de-Indianization -- which, rather than assimilation, is a complex political negotiation for a dignified identity -- does not cancel the economic and political equalities of racism in Peru,although it has made room for some people to reclaim a decolonized Andean cultural heritage.

This highly original synthesis of diverse theoretical arguments brought to bear on a series of case studies will be of interest to sch

In Smoldering Ashes Charles F. Walker interprets the end of Spanish domination in Peru & that country's shaky transition to an autonomous republican state. Placing the indigenous population at the center of his analysis, Walker shows how the Indian peasants played a crucial & previously unacknowledged role in the battle against colonialism & in the political clashes of the early republican period. With its focus on Cuzco, the former capital of the Inca Empire, Smoldering Ashes highlights the promises & frustrations of a critical period whose long shadow remains cast on modern Peru. Peru's Indian majority & non-Indian elite were both opposed to Spanish rule, & both groups participated in uprisings during the late colonial period. But, at the same time, seething tensions between the two groups were evident, & non-Indians feared a mass uprising. As Walker shows, this internal conflict shaped the many struggles to come, including the Tupac Amaru uprising & other Indian-based rebellions, the long War of Independence, the caudillo civil wars, & the Peru-Bolivian Confederation. Smoldering Ashes not only reinterprets these conflicts but also examines the debates that took place-in the courts, in the press, in taverns, & even during public festivities-over the place of Indians in the republic. In clear & elegant prose, Walker explores why the fate of the indigenous population, despite its participation in decades of anticolonial battles, was little improved by republican rule, as Indians were denied citizenship in the new nation-an unhappy legacy with which Peru still grapples. Informed by the notion of political culture & grounded in Walker's archival research & knowledge of Peruvian & Latin American history, Smoldering Ashes will be essential reading for experts in Andean history, as well as scholars & students in the fields of nationalism, peasant & Native American studies, colonialism & postcolonialism, & state formation.

In Colonial Habits Kathryn Burns transforms our view of nuns as marginal recluses, making them central actors on the colonial stage. Beginning with the 1558 founding of South America's first convent, Burns shows that nuns in Cuzco played a vital part in subjugating Incas, creating a creole elite, & reproducing an Andean colonial order in which economic & spiritual interests were inextricably fused. Based on unprecedented archival research, Colonial Habits demonstrates how nuns became leading guarantors of their city's social order by making loans, managing property, containing "unruly" women, & raising girls. Coining the phrase "spiritual economy" to analyze the intricate investments & relationships that enabled Cuzco's convents & their backers to thrive, Burns explains how, by the late 1700s, this economy had faltered badly, making convents an emblem of decay & a focal point for intense criticism of a failing colonial regime. By the nineteenth century, the nuns had retreated from their previous roles, marginalized in the construction of a new republican order. Providing insight that can be extended well outside the Andes to the relationships articulated by convents across much of Europe, the Americas, & beyond, Colonial Habits will engage those interested in early modern economics, Latin American studies, women in religion, & the history of gender, class, & race.

The reception of the "discovery", conquest and colonization of Spanish America spawned a rich imaginative literature. The case studies presented in this book represent two distinct types of imagining by two diametrically different groups: literate, and in some cases erudite Europeans, and a vanquished native nobility. The former endeavored to make sense of Spain�2s (and Portugal�2s) "marvellous possessions" in the New World with the limited conceptual tools at their disposal, the latter to construct a colonial identity based on their shared ancestral memory while incorporating elements from the even more wondrous Hispanic culture that had overwhelmed them.