Inka Bodies and the Body of Christ: Corpus Christi in Colonial Cuzco, Peru. . - Reviews - book review

Journal of Social History, Winter, 2001 by Robert H. Jackson

Inka Bodies and the Body of Christ: Corpus Christi in Colonial Cuzco, Peru. By Carolyn Dean (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1999. xiv plus 288 pp.).

From Subjects to Citizens: Honor, Gender, and Politics in Arequipa, Peru 1780-1854. By Sarah Chambers (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999.x plus 286 pp.).

The two books reviewed here are among the latest entries in the recent surge of publications dealing with the social history of the Andean region. While overall the growth in the literature on this fascinating region is positive, the quality of the recent monographs has been uneven both in conceptual and methodological terms. Many recent studies have attempted to be trendy by using the proper terminology, even when not necessarily offering new insights. Another trend has been to claim a privilege to suspend generally accepted scholarly norms regarding the use and interpretation of evidence.

The two studies considered here focus on Cuzco and Arequipa in Peru during the colonial period, and in the case of the book by Chambers the first three decades following Peruvian independence. While the authors of the two books concentrate on different aspects of social life, their studies also share common elements. Unfortunately, the quality of scholarship is uneven.

Art historian Carolyn Deans analyzes a group of seventeenth-century paintings depicting the Corpus Christi procession in Cuzco, but from the perspective of the use of symbols of legitimacy by the Inka nobility of the city and particularly the descendants of the rulers of Tawantinsuyu. At first glance the book might appear to be an esoteric exercise in a subject of limited interest, but Deans quite successfully goes beyond the content analysis of the Corpus Christi and other paintings to explain the social dynamic of status among the Inka nobility of Cuzco. Moreover, Deans explains the ways in which the Inka nobility defended their status through the monopolization of certain symbols derived from the Inka past such as elements of headdress, while at the same time making use of newly introduced European symbols. The author's analysis of the Corpus Christi paintings provides interesting and provocative insights to what motivated the Inka nobility and also non-Inka groups and individuals that challenged the speci al status of the Inka nobility. The illustrations nicely supplement the text.

One of the most interesting insights that comes from Deans's book is the length to which the Inka nobility of Cuzco defended their status against pretenders, and ethnic rivalry. Although Deans does not explore the implication of this conclusion for other events in late colonial Peru, it does provide the context for the failed attempt by a Tinta muleteer to assert his royal ancestry. In recent years some advocates of the so-called subaltern studies have provided different explanations for the actions of the man who assumed the name Tupac Amaru ll and initiated the bloodiest colonial revolt in South America. Deans's discussion of efforts made by pretenders to claim Inka noble status certainly would include Tupac Amaru ll.

Deans ends the book with a discussion of the resurrection of Inti Raymi in 1944. Inti Raymi was an important Inka religious festival in Cuzco that the recently arrived Catholic Church attempted to replace with Corpus Christi. However, the new ritual has become something quite different from the original Inka ritual. Non-indigenous Peruvians have expropriated Inti Raymi to reaffirm their nationalistic notions of Peru's Inka past. Interestingly, though, indigenous peasantry living in the Cuzco region does not participate in the new festival. I observed a similar phenomenon while living in Cochabamba, Bolivia in the late 1980s. I attended a number of performances of traditional dance and music generally presented by urban-folk. I recall attending one such performance in the Teatro Acha, the converted colonial-era Augustinian monastery church, and not seeing any indigenous faces in the audience or the cast of performers. The same people who loudly applauded a sanitized version of Bolivia's indigenous past also sc orned the rural poor who could be seen in the city.

The second book considered here attempts to explain in broad strokes the workings of the society of Arequipa at the end of the colonial period and in the turmoil of the post-independence period. Arequipa, located in an important agricultural region, was the most important urban center in southern Peru, and has attracted considerable scholarly attention. Given the extensive previous scholarship on Arequipa, what new insights does Chambers have to offer? The author frames her study within the context of the so-called subaltern studies, which attempts to explain the historical experiences of people who generally do not play an important role as historical actors in the older style of history that emphasized a top-down perspective. This perspective certainly is not new. Moreover, much of the new subaltern orthodoxy uses and in my mind abuses esoteric and pedantic terminology that does little or nothing to explain or illuminate historical events and the varied motivations of historical actors. One colleague approp riately referred to the post-modernist subalternist terminology as "verbaje."