Moon, Sun, and Witches

Gender Ideologies and Class in Inca and Colonial Peru

Irene Marsha Silverblatt

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780691022581, 9780691077260
• eBook ISBN: 9781400843343
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

When the Spanish arrived in Peru in 1532, men of the Inca Empire worshipped the Sun as Father and their dead kings as ancestor heroes, while women venerated the Moon and her daughters, the Inca queens, as founders of female dynasties. In the pre-Inca period, such notions of parallel descent were expressions of complementarity between men and women. Examining the interplay between gender ideologies and political hierarchy, Irene Silverblatt shows how Inca rulers used their Sun and Moon traditions as methods of controlling women and the Andean peoples the Incas conquered. She then explores the process by which the Spaniards employed European male and female imageries to establish their own rule in Peru and to make new inroads on the power of native women, particularly poor peasant women.

Harassed economically and abused sexually, Andean women fought back, earning in the process the Spaniards’ condemnation as “witches.” Fresh from the European witch hunts that damned women for susceptibility to heresy and diabolic influence, Spanish clerics were predisposed to charge politically disruptive poor women with witchcraft. Silverblatt shows that these very accusations provided women with an ideology of rebellion and a method for defending their culture.

INDEX

Aca Guarmi, 52

Acas (town), 32, 33, 204

Achaguato, Madalena, 188

Achikee, 178

acllas, 80–108 passim; as capacochas, 94–100; and celibate women in colonial religious organizations, 203; and chastity, 82, 83, 84,85,101–103, 107; and conquest hierarchy, 87, 91, 107; description of, 82–84; distribution of by Incas, 82–84, 87–89, 92; holiness of, 105–106, 107; in Inca economy, 85; in Inca political structures, 85, 87–89, 91–92, 94–95, 107; in Inca religion, 103–105; as priestesses, 103, 104; as punishment for rebellion, 92; reverence for, 103–104; as subjects of Cuzco, 94, 103; as symbol of Inca dominance, 89–101 passim; as tribute, 93

acllawasi, 82, 84, 87, 92, 93, 101, 105,106

Acomayo (province), 123

Acos, 123

Acosta, José de, xxiii; on ayllu sexual customs, 102

atriguasara, 26

Aixa, 97

Allauca, 71

Alvarado, María, 188

amaru, 192,194

Anahuanca, 182

Anas. See Yupanqui Coya, Doña Angelina

Ancash (department), 68, 94, 180

Andahuaylillas (town), 156

Angaraes Indians, 17

Angulo, Domingo, 116

Antisuyo, 97

Apo Ingacha, 71

Apo Parato, 183, 184–87, 189

Apu (mountain god), 182; as Spaniard, 200

Apu Achache, 63

apupanaca, 83, 101

Apurima, 48–49

Apurimac River, 48

Ariguanapampa (plain), 199

Arriaga, Father José de, xxiii; on ayllu divisions, 68–70; on Saramamas, 26; on sexual customs, 102; on Thunder, 77, 80

Asquem (village), 78

Asto Mallao, 203

Atahualpa, 104, 106, 116, 178

Auquilibiac, 20, 37

Avendaño, Hernando de, 199, 200

Ávila, Francisco de: and Huarochirí, xxiii, xxiv, 74; on Inca secondary marriages, 90; and the persecution of native women, 209

Axomama, 25, 28

Ayacucho (department), xxiv

a...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chronology
• I. Producing Andean Existence
• II. Gender Parallelism in Local Communities
• III. Gender Parallelism in the Imperial Order
• IV. Ideologies of Conquest in the Ayllu
• V. Transformations: The Conquest Hierarchy and Imperial rule
• VI. Under the Spanish: Native Noblewomen enter the Market Economy
• VII. Women of the Peasantry
• VIII. Political Disfranchisement
• IX. Cultural Defiance: The Sorcery Weapon
• X. Women of the Puna
• XI. A Proposal
• Appendix: Ayllu, Tributed Ayllu, and Gender
• Glossary
• A Note on Sources
• Bibliography
• Index