Reconstructs the history of the Virgin of Cuzco who, as a fusion of indigenous Andean and Spanish Christian beliefs and practices, represents both the Virgin Mary and Pachamama. Includes background chapters on Andean and Spanish beliefs and art. Major, mostly original work illuminates multiple aspe

A story of change in the Inca capital told through its artefacts, architecture, and historical documents Through objects, buildings, and colonial texts, this book tells the story of how Cuzco, the capital of the Inca Empire, was transformed into a Spanish colonial city. When Spaniards invaded and conquered Peru in the 16th century, they installed in Cuzco not only a government of their own but also a distinctly European architectural style. Layered atop the characteristic stone walls, plazas, and trapezoidal portals of the former Inca town were columns, arcades, and even a cathedral. This fascinating book charts the history of Cuzco through its architecture, revealing traces of colonial encounters still visible in the modern city. A remarkable collection of primary sources reconstructs this narrative: writings by secretaries to colonial administrators, histories conveyed to Spanish translators by native Andeans, and legal documents and reports. Cuzco's infrastructure reveals how the city, wracked by devastating siege and insurrection, was reborn as an ethnically and stylistically diverse community.

Analysis of how a religious festival dramatized the subaltern status of indigenous converts and how these converts used this to construct positive colonial identities.

Examining the vivid, often apocalyptic church murals of Peru from the early colonial period through the nineteenth century, Heaven, Hell, and Everything in Between explores the sociopolitical situation represented by the artists who generated these murals for rural parishes. Arguing that the murals were embedded in complex networks of trade, commerce, and the exchange of ideas between the Andes and Europe, Ananda Cohen-Aponte also considers the ways in which artists and viewers worked through difficult questions of envisioning sacredness. This study brings to light the fact that, unlike the murals of New Spain, the murals of the Andes possess few direct visual connections to a pre-Columbian painting tradition; the Incas’ preference for abstracted motifs created a problem for visually translating Catholic doctrine to indigenous congregations, as the Spaniards were unable to read Inca visual culture. Nevertheless, as Cohen Suarez demonstrates, colonial murals of the Andes can be seen as a reformulation of a long-standing artistic practice of adorning architectural spaces with images that command power and contemplation. Drawing on extensive secondary and archival sources, including account books from the churches, as well as on colonial Spanish texts, Cohen Suarez urges us to see the murals not merely as decoration or as tools of missionaries but as visual archives of the complex negotiations among empire, communities, and individuals.