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

Journal of Social History, Spring, 2002 by Kathryn Burns

One of the book's many strengths is the detail it provides about the inner workings--the fractious internal politics, charitable endeavors and artistic patronage--of this indigenous elite. Dean presents intriguing evidence that wealth was by the 1600s a significant criterion of eliteness: in the jostling over ceremonial privileges, relatively poor but aristocratic Inkas lodged complaints against Inkas of lesser rank but more money (108-109).

The fine-grained focus of this study shouldn't put off readers interested in social history and social theory. For it's precisely Dean's capacity for fresh, detailed analysis that makes this book such an important contribution to the study of colonial relations and the construction of hegemony. The book does much to move the study of the colonial Andes past old commonplaces and toward nuanced interpretations. Dean homes in on the relatively neglected midcolonial period to depict Inka elites who weren't simply "selling out" or resisting, but doing something much more complex and creative. They were both loyal Christian vassals and powerful Andean ethnic lords. They did not syncretize or collapse their Andean-Europeanness, Dean argues; rather, "by keeping the Andean distinct from the European," they "bolstered their place in between" (168), as powerful cultural mediators. Recognition of Andean chiefs as "linchpin" figures of Spanish colonial rule has long been a featured part of the historiography of the colon ial Andes (with the work of John Rowe, Karen Spalding, and many others), yet we still have much to do to understand the cultural dimensions of their long-lived, resilient authority. This fine study opens up many new pathways, sources and possibilities.