Situating the Andean Colonial Experience: Ayllu Tales of History and Hagiography in the Time of the Spanish 9781641894050

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SITUATING THE ANDEAN COLONIAL EXPERIENCE

MESOAMERICA,THE CARIBBEAN, AND SOUTH AMERICA, 700–​1700 Editorial Board Ryan Kashanipour (chair of board) José Carlos de la Puente (Texas State University) Anne Scott (Northern Arizona University) Mark Z. Christensen (Assumption College, Mass., and Boston College) Danna Messer (acquisitions editor, Arc Humanities Press) Further Information and Publications arc-humanities.org/our-series/arc/macsa/

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SITUATING THE ANDEAN COLONIAL EXPERIENCE AYLLU TALES OF HISTORY AND HAGIOGRAPHY IN THE TIME OF THE SPANISH

by

DENISE Y.  ARNOLD

To the memory of the title-​bearer Don Franco Quispe Maraza, and other local historians from Qaqachaka

Original edition in Spanish: La Paz: Plural editores and Instituto de Lengua y Cultura Aymara, ILCA, 2018. (ILCA series: Etnografías No. 7). First edition in English. Copyright © Denise Y. Arnold, 2018. All rights reserved. First edition: March 2018 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. © 2020, Arc Humanities Press, Leeds

The author asserts their moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Permission to use brief excerpts from this work in scholarly and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is an exception or limitation covered by Article 5 of the European Union’s Copyright Directive (2001/​29/​EC) or would be determined to be “fair use” under Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act September 2010 Page 2 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Act (17 USC §108, as revised by P.L.94–​553) does not require the Publisher’s permission. ISBN: 9781641894043 e-​ISBN: 9781641894050

www.arc-​humanities.com

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

Note About the Spelling of Toponyms and Proper Names. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi

Acknowledgements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii

Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

PART ONE: THE ORAL HISTORY OF QAQACHAKA

Chapter 1. Genesis in Qaqachaka. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Chapter 2. The First Ancestors of the Place. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Chapter 3. The Mit’a, the Mines, and Slavery. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Chapter 4. A Gentleman’s Agreement Between Literate Caciques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Chapter 5. Settling the New Place of Qaqachaka and its Ayllus. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

Chapter 6. Some Clarifications about Juana Doña Ana and her Kinsfolk . . . . . . . . . . . 103

PART TWO: THE COLONIAL CACIQUES IN ORAL AND WRITTEN HISTORY

Chapter 7. The Caciques of Qharaqhara and Quillacas-​Asanaque. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

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Contents

PART THREE: QAQACHAKA MARKA

Chapter 8. From the History to the Hagiography of Qaqachaka . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161

PART FOUR: THE SAINTS APPEAR

Chapter 9. Tata Quri, “Father Gold”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 Chapter 10. The Construction of Qaqachaka’s Church. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203 Chapter 11. Tata Quri wants a Family. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217

PART FIVE: THE RELIGIOUS PRACTICES OF QAQACHAKA MARKA

Chapter 12. The Origins of the Ritual Practices Around the Church . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249 Chapter 13. Let’s Sing to the Gods. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275 Chapter 14. Converting the Saints into Persons. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295 Some Conclusions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323 Glossary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331 Appendix A Document C of Don Franco Quispe Maraza. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337 Appendix B Document K of Don Franco Quispe Maraza. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339 Bibliography. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341 Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Maps Map 1. The site of Qaqachaka. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvi

Map 2. The Quillacas-​Asanaque and Charkas-​Qharaqhara Federations. . . . . . . . . . . . xvii

Graphics Graphic 1. Adam and Eve, drawn by Guaman Poma de Ayala. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Graphic 2. The emergence of Qaqachaka’s minor ayllus from the Quillacas-​Asanque Federation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

Graphic 3. The Condo parish and its annexes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

Graphic 4. Summary of the immediate Ayra Chinche lineage. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 Graphic 5. Señor Ayra de Ariutu’s genealogy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 Graphic 6. The Choquecallati genealogy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 Graphic 7. The parental interweaving among Asanaque caciques. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 Graphic 8. The Taquimallco lineage showing Don Bartolomé Astete. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144

Graphic 9. The Llanquepacha genealogy showing their supposed relations to the present-day Espejo family of Qaqachaka. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 Graphic 10. The Llaquepacha genealogy with the interweaving of their matrimonial alliances in the Llanquepacha-Guarache families. . . . . . . . 149 Graphic 11. Scheme of Tata Quri’s route on his descent from Phiriphiri Mountain to Qaqachaka pueblo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190 Graphic 12. Scheme of the journey of the danzantes’ clothes, accepted by Tata Quri . . . . 196

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List of Illustrations

Graphic 13. One of the ancient routes along which the clothes of Tata Quri’s danzantes were taken. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199

Graphic 14. Scheme of the route taken by Mamita Kanti Layra (Candelaria), from Choquecayara towards Qaqachaka pueblo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 Graphic 15. The routes taken by the Mamitas Ch’uri and Kapitana. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224 Graphic 16. The escape route (in red) taken after the theft of the two virgins from the Jukumanis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229

Graphic 17. The ties of kinship and affinity between the saint-​gods. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244 Graphic 18. The wheel of ceques created by each of the saint-​gods going in turn to the central church of Qaqachaka marka. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299

Charts

Chart 1. Qaqachaka’s annual cycle of religious feasts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261

Figures

Figures 1a. and b. a. Doña Lucía Quispe Choque; b. her brother-​in-​law Don Enrique Espejo Sepera. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Figure 2. The storyteller, Doña Bernaldita Quispe Colque. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Figure 3. Don Tiburcio Maraza Mamani, descendant of the Inca Maraza title-​bearer family of Livichuco. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 Figure 4. A troupe of musicians from Condo, playing the flutes called ayaguayas and snare drums, play ayaguaya music at Carnival in 2016 in Qaqachaka pueblo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86

Figure 5. Qaqachaka marka in 2005. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 Figure 6. The place called Qhusmi Uma near Tata Quri’s “Wardrobe”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 Figure 7. Doña María Ayca Llanque, wife of Don Franco Quispe Maraza . . . . . . . . . . . 112 Figure 8. Tata Quri as a wooden cross, during the Feast of the Holy Cross, in 1989. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167

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List of Illustrations

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Figure 9. The rocky heights of Mount Phiriphiri where Tata Quri was found. . . . . . . 187 Figure 10. D  on Alberto Choque chews coca and directs the libations during Tata Quri’s feast, accompanied by Don Gerónimo Colque Lupinta (mayordomo of Mama Kapitana) and the invited guest Juan de Dios Yapita . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 Figure 11. T  he danzantes and the ayllu mayordomos enter the church to hear the mass during the Feast of the Holy Cross, in 1989. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 Figure 12. O  ne of Tata Quri’s danzantes plays a flute made out of a condor’s wing-bone. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 Figures 13a. and b. One of Tata Quri’s danzantes, with its wings “like butterflies”. . 200

Figure 14. T  he plaza of Qaqachaka in the 1990s, with the colonial church of Santa Vera Cruz and its two towers in the background. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 Figure 15. T  atala turri with its stone arch to the right, and a julajula troupe during the Feast of San Francisco. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 Figure 16. Detail of the bells in tatala turri. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212

Figure 17. Mamala turri, with its stone and adobe alminar.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 Figures 18a., b., and c. The procession of the goddess-​saints Mama Candelaria, followed by Mama Kapitana and Mama Ch’uri, at the Feast of the Immaculate Conception in December 1989. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227

Figure 19. O  ne of the child-saints is celebrated in the procession at the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237 Figure 20. Q  aqachaka’s church, now modernized, at the Feast of the Immaculate Conception in 2017, with the niches containing some of the saint-​gods behind the altar, and the three Mamitas in front of it. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243

Figure 21. R  eliquary with relics of minerals held in the Monastery of San Isidoro del Campo, in Santiponce, Seville, Spain. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258

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List of Illustrations

Figure 22. T  he tata kura, Father Coca, baptizing a baby held by its godfather, Juan de Dios Yapita, in Qaqachaka’s church (1989) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265 Figure 23. D  oña María Ayca Colque, wife in this life of Don Alberto Choque and, in the other life, of the saint-god Tata Quri . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272 Figure 24. T  wo mayordomos: Mama Candelaria (Don Zacarías Maraza Castillo, left) and the Fiscal (Don Felipe Choque Chambi, right), wrap Tata Quri’s box in a bundle of textiles, with a man’s poncho as the outer layer. . . . . . . . . . 303 Figure 25. M  ama Kapitana seen from behind, with her wig made of cow-​tail hair. . 304 Figures 26a., b., and c. A comparison between the costumes of a. Mamita Candelaria; b. Mama Kapitana, and c. Mama Ch’uri, at the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, in 2017. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305

NOTE ABOUT THE  SPELLING OF TOPONYMS AND PROPER NAMES

It is a nightmare knowing how to write the toponyms of the study region, the names of the great Aymara federations of the past or the ayllus of the region, or indeed those of the social actors in the book, as proper names in the Andes have been written in so many ways. To facilitate reading, I opted to write many of the regional toponyms in Aymara, followed by their English translations in parenthesis. However, in the case of the great Aymara federations, because of their frequent mention in the text, I changed the Aymara written form of “Killakas-​Asanaqi” to the Hispanized “Quillacas-​Asanaque,” and its population to the “Quillacas-​Asanaques.” However, I  write Charkas-​Qharaqhara, instead of Charcas-​Qaraqara, and refer to their people as the Charkas or the Qharaqharas. The writing of regional ayllu names is more difficult to solve, given that I cite many colonial documents in which the orthography of these terms varies. There, we are faced with the local ayllu names of “Cagualli” or “Caballi,” which is the same as the present day ayllu of Qhawalli, in its Aymara written form, or “Collana,” which is the same as the Qullana ayllu in the recent memory of Aymara speakers, or “Sullcaiana,” which is the same as Sullkayana in Aymara, and “Callapa,” which is the same as Qallapa. The very name of Qaqachaka (in present day Aymara) was written in the colonial period and in the recent past as “Santa Vera Cruz de Cacachaca” or simply “Cacachaca,” although in certain tales about its origins it is called Qaqachika based on its topographical features. I call its people the Qaqachakas. Similarly, the name of the colonial reduction town of Condo or Condocondo derives from the Aymara Quntu or Quntuquntu (meaning undulating), and the neighbouring ayllu of Pocoata (or Copoata), as written in Spanish, probably derived from the Aymara Phukhuwata (producers of pots), although this is usually written as Pukuwata. Other neighbouring ayllus include Culta (written in Aymara as K’ulta) and Caguayo (in Aymara K’awayu, but written as Caguaio in the colonial documents). The same problem occurs with proper names, whether surnames or patronymics, and with honorifics as the nobiliary titles of persons. In colonial documents, the patronymic of certain regional caciques are written as Llanquepacha (which in Aymara would be Llanqipacha) and in another case Ayra Chinche (which in Aymara would be Ayra Chinchi). Other cases are those of the Takimallku lineage, as written in Aymara, which have become Hispanicized as Taquimallco or Taquimalco. An important Christian name in this lineage is given as Fernando, in Spanish, and Jirnantu, in Aymara. Other patronymics that later became honorifics include Fernandes or Fernandez, written in the present day as Fernández. I prefer to respect the Aymara proper names of the god-​saints of the place, among them Tata Quri and Mama Kanti Layra (Candelaria), Mama Kapitana (Capitán) and Mama Ch’uri, although I sometimes give their Spanish or English equivalents. Apart from these decisions about orthography, I had to take into account the oral plays of meanings between Aymara and Spanish (such as in Jisu Kiristu), and the stylistic

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aspects when these occur, for example in cases of metathesis (in the change of position of the principal consonants in a word, such as Pocoata or Copoata). I write unusual Andean and Spanish terms in italics the first times they appear in the book, then leave them in a normal font, once I think the reader is used to them.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My first visits to Qaqachaka from 1985 to 1986, working with my husband, the

Bolivian linguist Juan de Dios Yapita, provided the first oral and documentary accounts of the history of the place. I studied Qaqachaka history more seriously in 1989, followed by several months in 1991 and 1992. In later visits, in the 1990s and the year 2000, more details about this history emerged, although we were working by then on other matters. So our thanks to our colleagues for those former periods of work come with a great deal of hindsight. For their genteel reception in our first visits to Qaqachaka, we thank the ayllu authorities of 1989, especially the couples who served the church as mayordomos and as alcalde mayor. Each of these couples of religious authorities took the time to explain their obligations to us, and permitted us to participate in their ceremonies with such good humour that besides learning a great deal from them, we enjoyed ourselves immensely in the process. The mayordomos were Marka: Don Alberto Choque Mamanillo and Doña María Ayca Colque; Fiscal: Don Felipe Choque Chambi and Doña Margarita; Mama Ch’uri: Don Andrés Copacondo Choque and his wife (I’m afraid I can’t remember her name); Mama Candelaria: Don Zacarías Maraza Castillo and his wife, and Mama Kapitana: Don Gerónimo Colque Lupinta and Doña Andrea Mamani. The alcalde mayor couple were Don Silvestre Mamani Maraza and Doña Dionisia Chiri Tarque. We also thank the other authorities of the main pueblo of Qaqachaka in that year: the Corregidor: Don Emilio Lupinta and his family; the Agente Cantonal: Don Marcos Choque and his wife; the Registro Civil: Don Silverio Quispe and his wife; the Juez Mínimo: Don Ángel Alanoca, and the many Postillones including Don Evaristo and Doña Dominga. In the central school in the main pueblo, we thank the director in those years, Don Isaac Huayllani, and the teacher Nemesio Rodríguez for his descriptions of the changes he witnessed in his many years of service there. For their hospitality in our visits to the minor ayllu and estancia of Livichuco, we thank all the authorities there, especially those interested in their own history who invited us to give talks to their members, accompanied by delicious food. In the neighbouring pueblo of Condo, where a great deal of the ecclesiastical materials were kept until their removal to the archbishop’s residence in the city of Oruro, our thanks go to the many authorities for their help during our stays in 1986, including Don Valeriano Wanka Cardozo, Don Carlos Rivero and Don Joaquín Romero Troya, and importantly the French anthropologist Dr. George Pratlong and his family. So many people in Qaqachaka helped us over those years that it is impossible to name them all, so I name here only the families who made a special point of helping us study the history of the place. The title-​bearer Don Franco Quispe Maraza and his wife Doña María Ayca Llanque described to us with a great deal of patience the issues in play, and allowed us to consult their personal archives. Their daughter Doña Santusa Quispe

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Ayca and son-​in-​law Don Severino Antachoque Porco gave additional commentaries. The Choque family, including Don Alberto Choque Mamanillo and his wife Doña María Ayca Colque, his son Pedro and daughter-​in-​law Doña Asunta Arias Tarque, offered commentaries and clarifications. Doña Asunta’s parents shared their ceremonies with us and gave us the place of honour in their house patio. Don David Choque, with his ties to the Arias family, helped us understand the origins of the Mamitas Kapitana and Ch’uri. Doña Bernaldita Quispe Colque and her husband Don Cristóbal Jacinto Choque Choque visited us often to share their memories about the Time Before. The Maraza family of Livichuco shared with us a document they had written about their own history. Don Domingo Inca Maraza and Don Tiburcio Maraza Mamani remembered details of their ancestors in another lineage of title-​bearers. We thank with great affection Don Enrique Espejo Sepera for his immense patience telling us many aspects of Qaqachaka history over the years, together with his sister-​in-​law, Doña Lucía Quispe Choque, whose own thoughtful memories about this history presented a female point of view. The Espejo family always made us welcome in the pueblo, and it is sad that we never interviewed Don Daniel Espejo about his own expert knowledge concerning the history of the place. We thank Father Antonio Coca, priest of the parish of Challapata in those years, for his ever warm reception and animated conversations about the culture and history of Qaqachaka. Many thanks to Vidal Espejo who photographed some of the images used in the book, and Roberto Espejo for being a go-​between in these requests. In the Archivo Nacional de Sucre, Bolivia, Don Gunnar Mendoza patiently helped me in my first incursions into the historical archives of the region, as did Dr. Roberto Choque, then director of the Archivo de La Paz. I thank the library staff at the Universidad Católica de Bolivia, and in the Archivos del Arzobispado in Oruro and Sucre. In the Archivo de Indias in Seville, my thanks go to the staff of the Sala de Investigaciones. Some time ago, while I was attached to King’s College London and doing the original years of fieldwork between 1991 and 1993, William Rowe offered me his wise reflections about work in progress. Among other colleagues who helped me understand better the history of the region, I thank Tom Abercrombie for sharing some archival documents from Condo; Burckhart Schwarz for comparative material from the pueblo of Corque, on the other side of Oruro; Robert Kruszinski for sending me bundles of reference papers with his characteristic efficiency, promptness, and good humour; Lucy Therina Briggs for having transcribed quickly the contents of some archival documents lent to us for a short period; Ramiro Molina Rivera and Rossana Barragán for the comparisons they made with Quillacas; Cassandra Torrico for her comparisons with Macha; and especially Don Domingo Jiménez Aruquipa for his innumerable commentaries about Qaqachaka from the comparative perspective of the valleys of Mitma (Aymaya). Work in progress benefited from the comments of Donato Amado, Penelope Dransart, Vincent Nicolás, Stephen Nugent, Paulina Numhauser, Alber Quispe, Pablo Sendón, Alison Spedding and Paula Zagalsky, and my students at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés in La Paz. Collaborations with Francisco Pazzarelli inspired some ideas developed here, as did the observations by Lucila Bugallo and Mario Vilca on an essay about the history of the Qaqachaka saints. For seeking out difficult to find bibliographic references, I thank Lola

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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Paredes of the Fundación Albó, and my colleagues Carlos Abreu Mendoza and Carolina A. Garriott. A special thanks to Hugo Montes for his critical reading of the manuscript. I recognize the support of research grants from the Social Science Research Council (SSRC Pool award No. G00428324093) for 1984–​1986, a Radcliffe-​Brown Memorial Award from the Royal Anthropological Institute, and a Thomas Witherden Batt prize from University College London for the preparation from 1986 to 1988 of my doctoral thesis with its first explorations of Qaqachaka history. These were followed by a grant from the Wenner Gren Foundation (No. Gr. 5074) to visit Qaqachaka in 1989, and another from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC Post-​doctoral Research Award No. R 00023 2682)  for visits from 1991 to 1993. Finally, a small project grant at the Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas y Arqueológicas (IIAA), at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés, in La Paz, in 2017, allowed me to complete this book, and thanks to the director there, Dr. José Teijeiro, and the secretaries Wendy Zeballos and Virginia Vaca Portillo. My heartfelt thanks go to the Instituto de Lengua y Cultura Aymara, ILCA, in La Paz, for modest funds to visit the Archivo y Biblioteca Nacionales de Bolivia, in Sucre, and the Archivo de Indias, in Seville, Spain, during 2017. Dany Mena helped me as always with everyday office chores, and last but not least, Juan de Dios Yapita corrected my Aymara language, with constant commentaries in a long voyage in common. Denise Y. Arnold Madrid, January 2020

Map 1. The site of Qaqachaka.

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Map 2. The Quillacas-​Asanaque and Charkas-​Qharaqhara Federations.

1

INTRODUCTION

… the question is how to reconfigure people as theoretical agents instead of “passive subjects.” Viveiros de Castro (2004, 4)

It has taken me many years to complete just a part of the history of Qaqachaka, nowadays a major ayllu situated in Avaroa province (in the Department of Oruro, Bolivia) (see Maps 1 and 2), concentrating here on the colonial period. One excuse is that I had been waiting for several other studies on the history of the region, in a comparative sense. Apart from the seminal study on Qaraqara-​Charka by Platt, BouysseCassagne, and Harris, published in 2006, I wanted to consult the histories of Qaqachaka’s neighbouring ayllus, among them the study on K’ulta by Tom Abercrombie (1986, 1998) and that on Tinguipaya by Vincent Nicolás (2015). In addition, I  was keenly aware of the need to dedicate time to rethink historiography and historical method from the perspective of Anthropology and Andean Studies, in the light of recent changes in these disciplines. In the 1980s, when we carried out our original fieldwork, the Black Legend in vogue, with its anti-​Spanish bias, tended to skew any interpretation of the historical processes of the colonial period in overly dichotomic terms: “lo andino” versus anything Western, goodies (the Indians) versus baddies (the conquerors), and so on. However, my early examinations of local narratives already revealed a greater complexity in play. The current paradigm shift in the Social Sciences, above all the “ontological turn” in Andean Studies with its recognition of a more dynamic and transformational world, offered me the opening I was waiting for. Alternative theories in the region, and emerging interpretations of the elements of the world, and the relations between them, contributed to my alternative approach to the history of the place (Arnold 2016a and Arnold 2016b). The challenge ahead was how to articulate my sense of déjà vu with these new ideas in the making. Towards a Philosophy of Andean History

These recent paradigmatic changes in the Social Sciences and the Humanities make us aware that notions such as “history” and “memory” are neither singular nor monolithic. In the Andes, given its colonial setting, the practices of history and memory are even more complex, having been forged first in the interrelations between Andean populations themselves (Aymara, Quechua, and Uru speakers), and since the Conquest, in relation to Spanish society. New notions have been coined to understand this gamut of relational possibilities, whether “identities in common” (in a new “imagined” community, in the terms of Benedict Anderson 1991/​1983), “relational identities” (in the sense

2 Introduction

developed by Fredrik Barth) or “alterities” (applied to an Andean context by George Lau 2013). These relational possibilities can also be skewed by questions of status (from the point of view of the common folk or comunarios as opposed to the chiefly class), or race, combined with caste or rank (in approaches directed at whites, mestizos, indigenous people or blacks), social class (seen from the position of elites, miners or campesinos), ethnicity (seen from whatever regional group), sex and gender (from the perspective of men or women), and age and generation (see Canessa 2012, on the dynamic interplay of these). In a historical context, differences in age and generation exert influences on knowledge about, and approaches to the past, and the distinct modalities of how to transmit history from one generation to another. I sensed the additional challenge of using critically terms such as “indigenous,” which had been introduced into the region in a discourse of Simón Bolívar only in 1826, once the Republic of Bolivia had already been established, and to seek more pertinent alternatives for the previous period. Above all, I  wanted to avoid the hard and fast division made in historiography, in general, and ethnohistory, in particular, between written and oral history, which tends to separate out sets of practices and interpretations mediated through written documents or oral narratives respectively. In real situations, as we shall see, each set of practices is defined mutually with respect to the other. Faced with these insistent binarisms, the new paradigmatic changes helped me switch my attention from essentially “epistemological” questions, of what is known about the world (in terms of data and knowledge) and how the world is known, to “ontological” ones, of how to be in and of the world. In the Andes, as in the Amazonian region, all the distinct elements of life (human, animal, plants and things) conform part of a world in common (Cavalcanti 2007; Arnold 2019). In these changes in approach, tales about the history and memory concerning each one of these elements (ancestral personages, saints, ritual objects) treat these as “beings,” usually “living beings,” in a world in common. An ontological interest seeks to understand these relations between the different elements of the world in a more symmetrical way (as equal to equal), closer to that held in the perceptions of local populations. This challenge to understand the ontological relations between the things of the world often demands returning to the principles of “animism,” not in the former sense of an evolutionary stage on a path towards monotheism, but in appreciation of the interrelations between the vital and material processes taking place in the world. I adopt this approach here in relation to Andean terms such as animu (spirit, from the Spanish ánimo), surti (luck, from the Spanish suerte) and ch’ama (energy, force, or strength). In this rethinking, the ontological relations between the elements of the world become more fundamental than the elements in and of themselves (cf. Bird-​Davis 1999; Barcelos 2008). In adopting this ontological approach to study the history of an Andean community such as Qaqachaka, I had to rethink the colonial interrelations between the populations in contact, with their respective levels of power, no longer as two fixed axes (whether “colonized” and “colonizer” or “the Andean” versus the “Western”) in a permanent struggle, as they used to be portrayed, but as a series of interrelations within their respective hierarchies. Instead of giving exclusive attention to the struggle between each

3

Introduction

3

part, in which Spanish impositions were counterposed by Andean struggles of “resistance,” I  perceive a series of constant negotiations and counter-​negotiations in juridical, religious, and economic ambits, where legal pluralism vies with local history. Here I derive my inspiration from Steve Stern’s multi-​faceted critique of resistance (ed. 1987, 1994), Gonzalo Lamana’s idea of colonial domination but without an overtly dominated population ([2008] 2016), Coronil’s insistence on understanding the world from the point of view of a specific locality (1998), and Mignolo’s call for a new locus of enunciation in postcolonial studies (2003). I interpret the spirit of these negotiations according to the “Andean textual-​ ontological theory” we identified some time ago, with its proposition that the creative practices of the region derived from the appropriation of certain aspects of the Other and their transformation into one’s own (Arnold 2000; Arnold with Yapita 2006, 8). In previous works, I examined these ideas as an Andean variant of “ontological depredation,” a lowland practice concerned with head-​taking explored by the Brazilian anthropologists Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (1992) and Carlos Fausto (1999), among others. Our theory proposes that in the past, as in the descriptions of the taking of the tsantsa shrunken heads among the Shuar of the Ecuadorian lowlands,1 a young man was obliged to capture an enemy head, and with it the spirit that dwelled within, and to pass this on to his partner, who was then charged with caring for the head, offering it incense, songs and libations, first to dominate it, and then to transform it into a baby of the head-​taker’s household (Arnold and Hastorf 2008, 65). In capturing the enemy head, and caring for it in this way, the couple achieved three years of luck and plenty for their household, in which they would produce several harvests of babies (human, animal, and vegetable) in their domestic economy. In these previous works, I analyzed the ontological equivalence of the male head-​taking followed by weaving activities by the women, as the vital processes through which a head was converted into a new being of the head-​taker’s household (Arnold 2000). In a historical context, I  propose that the symbolic power of trophy heads, and of weavings made from these, was transposed to alphabetic writing and the bureaucratic processes introduced by the Spanish with the Conquest (Arnold with Yapita et al., 2000, 73–​75; Arnold and Hastorf 2008, 139–​40). Given these precursors in the thought and writing practices of the region, I was first interested in the nature of these appropriations by the inhabitants of Qaqachaka, especially those concerning the colonial Spanish demands written into the body of colonizing laws known as Derecho Indiano (Indian law). These legal dispositions, promulgated by the Spanish monarchs and their delegated authorities in Spain and hence into the New World, applied to all the territories of the “West Indies,” later called the “Americas,” during 300 years. Despite their basis in Castilian law, these dispositions were to undergo severe critiques and a certain degree of negotiation during this period, which I put under scrutiny here. Second, I was interested in how these appropriations of Spanish law had been reconfigured by Andeans themselves, not as the basis of colonial oppression, but as a creative impulse to found, in the Time of the Spanish, the new pueblo-​marka in its territory, and the 1 See for example Descola (1993) and Taylor (1993).

4 Introduction

everyday ritual practices concerning them, inspired in their own previous experiences. The basis of some of these appropriations in the former practices of head-​taking (and weaving), permitted me to re-​read the Andean colonial experience from a more situated perspective. An ontological approach here posited a challenge to historical methods, ethnohistory and even ethnography as autonomous disciplines. It permitted me to focus more on the social processes that occurred in certain conjunctures, instead of the rigid periodizations of a universalized history, with its presumed characteristics. For us, “time” defines such periodizations, but this concept does not exist in the Andean languages. At least, in Aymara, the term timpu has been borrowed since the early Colony to define the temporal division that accompanies the forces of modernity. Added to which there is ample evidence that Andean peoples live simultaneously in multiple periods of time. This is expressed in narratives in which Chullpas (or Awichas) and even Inkas live contemporaneously with us in certain moments and in certain places. So, in any rethinking about historical time, I leave to one side the temporal ruptures formerly established between past, present, and future, together with the tendencies of modernity to live in a fleeting present, which diminishes its importance and directs us unceasingly towards the future (Santos 2006, 21), to immerse myself in the alternative of living multitemporality (Bergson [1896] 1990; Hamilakis 2017).

Towards a History of Qaqachaka

These multiple conceptions are already evident in the existing attempts to describe the history of Qaqachaka, albeit from different positions. In academic studies, fragments of this history appear in the written accounts of the wider region of which it once formed part, including the great Aymara federations of Charkas-​Qharaqhara (Platt, BouysseCassagne, and Harris 2006) and Quillacas-​Asanaque (Abercrombie 1998). However, the disadvantage of these works, written from the openly structuralist stance in Andean Studies of those decades, is that they tend to present the historical developments of each region as if they were part of a process in common (Ángelo 2005). The study by the Belgian ethnohistorian Vincent Nicolás (2015) on the neighbouring ayllu of Tinguipaya is distinct, as it applies the indiciary paradigm proposed by the Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg to produce a more nitidly local account. Exceptionally, Alfredo Ayca Chambi, born and raised in Qaqachaka, wrote a short Historia de Cacachaka (2003), based on oral accounts and his enquiries into some early written documents, but without paying attention to the local modalities of historical processes practiced there. A key work on the archival history of the great Federation of Quillacas-​Asanaque in the early decades after the Conquest appears in a long essay by the Peruvian historian Waldemar Espinoza Soriano (1981a). On the basis of that work, Thomas Abercrombie (1986, 1998) developed the historical context of his doctoral thesis on Condo, another integral part of Asanaque, and within it of K’ulta, like Qaqachaka a former ecclesiastical annex of Condo as a reduction town. Nathan Wachtel (1971) refers to the history of the same Federation in his studies on the Urus, Gilles Rivière (1982) alludes to that history in his studies of Carangas to the west, and this larger Federation is mentioned in passing

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Introduction

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in some studies by Terry West on the region of Pampa Aullagas (1981a, 1981b). For their part, Barragán and Molina (1987) traced the historical transitions of those great Aymara señoríos to become finally modern communities, with special reference to the pueblo of Quillacas, where they had the opportunity to consult the local archives (see also Molina 2006). Fernando Cajías studied the populations of Paria and Oruro (in 1978 and 1987a, respectively). Each of these studies differs in its interpretations of the archival documents, but the principal studies of Espinoza Soriano, Abercrombie, and Barragán and Molina do mention in passing the early history of Qaqachaka, which relieves me of the task of repeating it in detail in this book. In his classic study, Espinoza Soriano emphasizes that the Quillaca-​Asanaque nation was “one of the seven most notable nations and kingdoms in the southern Altiplano” being “as important as the nations of Charca, Caracara, Sora, Carangas, Chuy and Chicha” (Espinoza Soriano 1981a, 179).2 It was known for its pastures and herds, and salt production from the salt flats of Garci Mendoza, Uyuni, and Coipasa. A  sixteenth-​century account cited by that author describes the habitat of the Quillacas-​Asanaques as being “composed of frozen punas, sterile and poor for agricultural activities; however, its inhabitants were rich for being ‘people with herds’ and, similarly, in possession of land or fields and herding hamlets (estancias) in ‘many local parts’ in template climates pertaining to other territories and kingdoms” (Ayavire y Velazco [1582] 1969, 140, cited in Espinoza Soriano 1981a, 182).3 Here is an early reference to the ongoing ties between the cold high puna and the warmer valley lands of the Quillacas-​Asanaques. I had already outlined the history of Qaqachaka in my doctoral thesis, based on the documentation available in those years (Arnold 1988). Later on, I tried to understand the region with less academic pressure, “from within” and not “from without,” and following a properly Andean “order of things.” We applied this alternative approach first in the book Hacia un orden andino de las cosas (Arnold, Jiménez, and Yapita 1992) where we located the history of the place within local tales and songs, and then in El rincón de las cabezas (Arnold with Yapita et al. 2000, translated into English in 2006 as The Metamorphosis of Heads), in which we related Qaqachaka history more closely still to the more authentically Andean textual practices and textual forms managed by local populations to record the past (songs, textiles, quipus). I returned to the same issue in a

2 The original Spanish says “una de las siete naciones y reinos más notables del sur del Altiplano,” and “tan importante como las naciones Charca, Caracara, Sora, Caranga, Chuy y Chicha.”

3 The original Spanish says “compuesto de punas heladas, estériles y pobres para la actividad agraria; no obstante, sus habitantes eran ricos por ser ‘gente de ganado’ y de poseer, asimismo, tierras o chacras y estancias en ‘muchas partes’ localizadas en climas templados pertenecientes a territorios y reinos extranjeros.” These peripheral lands located in the territories of other chiefdoms, often several days walk away with a caravan of llamas from the original ayllu, were called kapana, and they allowed communities located at the higher ecological levels to cultivate at the same time a wider range of cultigens in the temperate climates of the lower levels. These lands formed parts of archipelagos in the so-​called “vertical ecology” that characterized Andean civilizations (Murra 1972). By contrast, the lands sited in ayllus of the same nation or province were called aynuqa.

6 Introduction

recent essay exploring local educational memories about ushnus, and their association with the Inka occupation of the region (Arnold 2014). I sought other approaches into the history of Qaqachaka from evidence in regional textiles, where an alternative history, managed this time by the local women, becomes visible, and ontological attention becomes redirected towards the transformation of a captured trophy head into a new being (a baby) of your own group (Arnold 1992, 1994, 2000, 2018a, 2018b, 2019; Arnold and Yapita 1998a). I traced this gendered interrelation in the practices concerned with trophy heads and weavings in the book Heads of State: Icons of Power and Politics in the Ancient and Modern Andes (Arnold and Hastorf 2008). In this alternative history, key affirmations of identity are signalled in local dress and in special textiles woven to serve as historical cartographies (Arnold and Espejo 2005, 2010, 2013). In other studies, I presented the religious history of Qaqachaka on the basis of a regional version of the biblical tale of Adam and Eve (Arnold 1996), and in an ecclesiastical history of the zone (Arnold 2008a) based on some tales about the local saints and how they had arrived there along their respective “pathways of the gods” to settle finally in the central church in the main pueblo of Qaqachaka (Arnold 1996, 2007b; Arnold with Yapita and Espejo 2016). In our stays in Qaqachaka, we heard similar tales about how the first ancestors had arrived at the place (Arnold with Yapita et al. 2000; Arnold 2007a, 2007b) and a pending task was to explore the similarities and differences between the two blocks of narratives focused on these “model personages,” whether saints or ancestors. In my innocence, I first tried to compare the degree of “veracity” in these local oral histories to that of the written history we found in the local ayllu archives, or in the Archivo Nacional de Bolivia, in Sucre, and other historical archives in the region (Arnold 2007b). Understanding the textual formations of religious interpretations was another axis we explored in relation to Easter, and the significance of Christ, his death and resurrection, for the people of the place, a theme I take up again in this book (Arnold and Yapita 1999, 2007). Over the past few years, a renewed interest in the religiosity of the region and in the cults around the popular saints in particular (see Gil 2010, 2015) fed into the analysis of the saints I present here, even though the accent in these is often from the perspective of Northwest Argentina or Spain. With a greater awareness of the problems of historiography, I  began to study ways of recording the past using the methods of history as a discipline as compared to the methods of ethnohistory (Arnold 2008b). But I was still at a loss to understand the ties between the sources, methods, and practices of historiography. Studies over the last decade have gone a step further in this direction, by paying attention not only to material recorded as fact (or not) but to the political questions of who had documented that which had been recorded, with what aim and what specific terminology (Zagalsky 2012). In these studies, a strong call to attention signals the dangers in a literal use of many terms formerly taken for granted, amongst them señorío, ethnic group, community, pueblo, ayllu, chiefdom, capital (cabecera), and settlements (asentamiento), according to the modalities of the day in distinct disciplines, with their advantages and disadvantages (Morrone 2005). One alternative option is to

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appeal to their Andean equivalents in the precolonial period. Another is to be more conscious of the internal struggles in play in the redaction of history. These struggles can be perceived in many colonial documents charged with political and administrative preconceptions, managed from the point of view of the Spanish and their notaries or scribes (escribanos), or in the strategic use of the same terms by the social actors of the day, even Andean leaders trying to better their positioning in negotiations with the Spanish Crown. Another new field of study I take advantage of here is concerned with construing Andean ritualized landscapes and the pathways that interlace between, and connect them throughout the whole region. Following the seminal work by Abercrombie (1998) on “pathways of memory” in nearby K’ulta, we explored similar pathways in Qaqachaka, together with the places named along these mnemonic routes, which resound constantly in the memories of the local population (Arnold and Yapita 1998a; Arnold 2009a, 2016a; Arnold with Yapita and Espejo 2016b). Here the multitemporality lived by local people is experienced in those extraordinary places that figure in the great narratives of the region. Yet another vital aspect of Qaqachaka history that called our attention was the notorious warfaring reputation of the place and its inhabitants, and its relation to the historical past and even to its very origins. This came to light a generation ago in the context of the so-​called “war of the ayllus” in the year 2000, which we experienced first hand (Arnold and Yapita 1996; Arnold and Hastorf 2008; Arnold 2015a). However, in this book I give more attention to the conflicts that emerged in the 1980s between the minor ayllus that make up Qaqachaka, as a reaction to changes in the system of turns in the authorities of the place. Given these differences in approach, a central challenge in this book is how to respect these distinct validations of sources, methods and practices, as well as the distinct voices of the social actors immersed in the history of Qaqachaka and the wider region, in a coherent but not a singular narrative.

Revisiting History as a Discipline and the Methods of History in the Andes About the Sources

Apart from the present-​day paradigmatic changes in the Social Sciences, many aspects in our rethinking of Andean notions of history and memory derive from new perspectives towards the past in the disciplines of Anthropology, Archaeology, and History. It is now practically taken for granted that the history of the past is really a “history of the present,” forged by the interests and preoccupations of living generations (John and Jean Comaroff 1992). But it is equally important to be conscious of the connections and associations applied in the construction of a certain history of the past as if it were more “authentic” than other versions. One entry into this problem, developed from within History as a discipline, is that of analyzing the supposedly “universal” forms for constructing history, as compared to their regional variants. The Haitian historian Michel-​Rolph Trouillot, in his book Silencing the

8 Introduction

Past. Power and the Production of History ([1995] 2017), does just that, in his proposal that written history is constituted on the basis of certain key moments: • • • •

The moment of creating the “facts” or “data” (making the sources); The moment of assembling the “facts” or “data” (making the archives); The moment of recuperating the “data” (making the narratives); The moment of giving meaning to the “data” retrospectively (making history).

Trouillot gave particular attention in the production of history to the “power of narrative.” In dealing with this issue, Trouillot debated the positions taken up by the positivists, who perceived a difference between history “as it really happened,” and “that which was said to have happened,” but hiding the real relations of power at play, and the constructivists, who assumed that this distinction is nothing more than a super-​positioning, thus denying the autonomy of social and historical processes. Even so, Trouillot’s approach is still too singular, not giving enough credit to the complex interweaving of practices that occur in colonized societies. The question remains of how these steps in history-​making were carried out by Andean and Amazonian populations, where orality too played an important part and where these peoples were in constant negotiation with the colonizing powers that be. A clue is found in Aymara language, in the more corporeal and sensorial notion of “grasping” a memory in the heart (chuymar katuqaña), where there is no attempt to accumulate “data,” just to “personalize” it. In the lengthy debate about the similarities and differences between written and oral history, as distinct historical practices, a key aspect has questioned which of these leads to a greater degree of veracity concerning what “really happened” in the past. We face a variant of the debate about a supposedly “scientific and objective” history, versus a “non scientific and quite subjective” regional version of history. For the Austrian philosopher Paul Feyerabend (2003/​1970), this kind of debate does not take into account the range of options in play in scientific practice, in whatever conjuncture, and it must be the same in the practice of history. On one side are the more official practices, backed by academic institutions and their ways of disseminating the results, and on the other, a series of less hegemonic alternative practices, in which many of the same scientific methods are applied, but to arrive at different conclusions. For instance, some time ago, the Belgian anthropologist Jan Vansina proposed that oral history in Africa also had its own methods of interpretation, which included reflections about the sources used, with estimations of the probabilities of their veracity (Vansina 1965, 1985; Vansina and Udina 2007). Vansina took up the idea, first proposed in the seventeenth century by the Italian philosopher of history, Giambattista Vico, that the history of memory has to locate its materials in the former oral practices that had already been ignored for some time (cf. Ramos 2011, 139). In the same debate, it was argued that the social distribution of access to historical sources and to knowledge in general should be taken into account, as these constituted the real range of sources and practices in each case under consideration. Additionally, in order to understand the forms of intergenerational transmission, it was necessary to consider the practices and

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Introduction

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contexts of the learning and transmission of historical notions in each group. Only in this way could the modalities in each group for judging the degree of veracity of the history produced by distinct sources and types of knowledge really be understood. In the Andean context of the early colonial period, regional criteria about managing the knowledge of the past were quite distinct from those of the Spanish courts. With contact, rural communities such as Qaqachaka were forced to intermingle these criteria in order to sustain any kind of dialogue in the emerging juridical negotiations. Many aspects of the oral traditions of the region still existed, such as the great myths about the origins of the world which tended to organize such narratives, and in which the primary sources still used were weavings and knotted quipus, songs and tales, and importantly, the long sessions of libation-​making. The traditions of certain experts who could “read” these properly Andean sources and communicate their content to others was also quite distinct from the Spanish traditions of reading and writing. At the same time, in the early Colony, another vital part of regional archives were written documents (called the “grandparents’ papers,” awil achach papila in Aymara) or copies of these. These documents were usually related to the possession of land, and any services and material goods assigned to the Church, noted in the local registers of communal participation in tasks, building works, and other labour obligations in each region. This phenomenon of mutual negotiations is captured in this insistent duality of sources, as in the discursive styles of many historical documents. Or was it that, with the Colony, the medieval peninsular idea of “mutual obligations” just became transposed to a new setting (Jurado 2014)? From a communal perspective, it is often possible to hear in these discourses a moralizing voice about injustice in the unfolding historical processes, similar to that in the pages of the early seventeenth century Nueva Corónica by Guaman Poma de Ayala. Besides, as Steve Stern points out (1987, 1994), with the Colony we are immersed in a period of intense debate, in which differences of opinion, even among the Spanish administrators, often favoured the indigenous claims of those times. These new attempts to enter into debate with non-​Andean interlocutors, involved a semiosis between “writing” practices. The regional populations adopted alphabetic writing and Spanish forms of literacy, with its written conventions and often visual styles, together with the juridical and theological arguments in vogue. In parallel, the Spanish learned about Andean sources, partly in order to appropriate them, for even the Spanish courts permitted evidence to be read from quipus long into the colonial period, given that the data expressed therein was often more precise than that contained in written documents (Loza 1998, 2000, 2001). These debates are present in many of the notarial practices examined in this book. So, to return to my previous question, is there a uniquely “Andean” or “Amazonian” way of thinking about the past? Or are there rather distinct ways of thinking about the past, which intermix and feed off each other? The Regional Historians as Interpreters of the Past

The last two decades of Andean Studies have already supplied some replies to these questions, given the deepening knowledge about the interrelations between oral and

10 Introduction

written history, to the point of perceiving a series of articulations between these two facets of history. In essence, it has been argued that oral history is not a uniform discourse, but a multiple one. On the one hand it is possible to distinguish a kind of oral history backed and constantly fed into by written documentation. This kind of oral history is managed by the regional experts in history, the so-​called “title-​bearers” (cargatítulos), “empowered ones” (apoderados), mallkus, or segundas, and their family members. The term “title-​ bearer” derives from the custom among these men of wandering around bearing bundles of land titles, or of guarding these documents in their personal archives at home, shut away in leather or wooden chests (petacas). These men were “empowered” by the members of their ayllus to present claims for land in the regional courts, and they were called apoderados, mallku, or segunda as terms of respect for carrying out these tasks. We already know a great deal about the empowered ones of the central Altiplano through the valiant work of the Taller de Historia Oral Andina (THOA) (1984, 1991; see also Condori Chura and Ticona 1992). However, these studies tend to focus on affairs of interest to the La Paz region, especially the Republican struggle between haciendas and communal lands as a result of the Ley de Exvinculación de Tierras of 1874, and the role of the empowered ones in defending the regional populations against the usurping of their lands. The empowered ones of the La Paz region must have emerged (or re-​ emerged) during this period. In Oruro, the historical interests are quite distinct. Places such as Qaqachaka, situated far from any city and with lands difficult to cultivate, were never haciendas, but rather free communities, and their own historians trace the consolidation of this condition in the land compositions of the colonial period. Therefore, the range of memory of these regional historians included details of colonial history and sometimes of the precolonial period too, which the studies by THOA have tended to pass over. Some time ago, Joanne Rappaport (1990, 1992) called this group of Andean experts, with reference to the situation much further north among the Páez of Colombia, the local “textual community.” She pointed out that these counterparts to the title-​bearers further south tended to be illiterate, having learned the contents of local historical documents from the intergenerational experiences of lineages specialized in the modalities of a regional “reading” of these written sources, in which the rhythm of speaking and associated bodily gestures communicated their contents to their listeners. We do not know the precise history of this kind of discourse, although the French historian Bouysse-​Cassagne (1998) cites the memories of some past caciques who on special occasions demonstrated these practices in front of their subjects. The alternative name for the title-​bearers of segunda or segunda persona (second person), remembered by Doña Bernaldita Quispe of Qaqachaka, could be relevant here, as it refers to the authority obliged in former periods to handle quipus, and later on to manage the accounting registers of the populations (and lands) under their charge, and to send mitayos to the mines of Potosí (Jurado 2008, 207). The title-​bearers we knew used to compare their written documents, guarded in leather chests and wrapped in rawhide or more recently in plastic, with the quipus of the

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past, guarded in similar chests, together with ropes and a llama foetus. They were placed there with the pendant cords wrapped in a spiral, like the hair of a captured trophy head (p’iqi) (Arnold with Yapita 2006, 242–​43). Consulting quipus in the past was an extremely ritualized activity. Before depositing them within the leather chest, they had to be offered the herb bittermint (q’uwa, Lat. Minthostachys mollis Epl.) and be lubricated with llama fat. If they were not, it was in vain, as there would be no production, neither of animals nor food produce. The treatment of the colonial written documents followed a similar logic, demanding a blood offering of a sacrificed sheep and a toast to the ancestors. This is why the opening pages tend to be speckled with liquids (Yapita 2006, 286). Quite different from this kind of oral history, fed constantly by written sources, is another type, much more mythical in content and less based in writing. Jacques Le Goff (1992, 55) calls this “ethnic memory” and proposes that it deals in the absence of writing with the oral myths concerning the origins of “ethnic groups.” We find examples of this second kind of memory in Qaqachaka and they tend to be managed by comunarios with less knowledge about written historical sources, having more distant ties to the families and specialized knowledge of the title-​bearers themselves (Rappaport 1992; Arnold 2007a, 2008a, Arnold 2008b). The mythical history they present tends to have less historical precision about events, and is often focused on the deeds of personages that are more mythical than historical. As we shall see, this more mythical history and memory also describes a certain genre of discourse about origins. Nonetheless, in this book my main attention is directed towards the historical narratives of Qaqachaka according to some of the last historians or “title-​bearers” of the place. One of these was Don Franco Quispe, descendant on his mother’s side from the Inca Maraza lineage, well-​known empowered ones since centuries ago, whose ascendants included Don Feliciano Inca Maraza, active in the 1920s, and his son Robustiano. Don Franco had his own archive of written documents, a part of which he shared with us, together with his formidable memory of the oral history of the region. Doña Bernaldita Quispe Colque, daughter of Mallku Mariano Quispe, and hence another person endowed with a great deal of knowledge about the local documentary history, shared many commentaries and tales with us. We heard about other regional lineages of such mallkus, including Mallku Martín Choque Inca Maraza of Irunsata, and Mallku Nicolás Colque of the hamlet of Qhatüma, but did not have the opportunity of conversing with them. Doña Bernaldita stressed the status of these mallkus in the community, and how, given the demands of their work travelling from place to place, the people left in Qaqachaka used to work for them, cultivated and harvesting their lands. The narratives of these local historians form the documentary basis of this book. Even so, I  am conscious that these narratives are incomplete, and that we are still faced with the question of how to deal with the existing silences in them, in oral sources as well as written ones. I could only experiment in the book with certain historiographic operations, by developing in the text a series of explicative hypotheses, always leaving open the possibility that these could be improved with access to more data in the future.

12 Introduction

Gendered Differences in Ways of Thinking about the Past, and the Practices of Remembering and Relating it Other differences in the practices in Qaqachaka of remembering and relating the past derive from the gendered questions we observed throughout our stay there. Some of these differences have to do with access to the sources of historical data. In the recent past, few women attended school long enough to learn to read and write, and so it was left to the men to manage the historical documents about land titles. Other gendered differences concern approaches towards the performativity of the oral history of the place, in the kinds of discourse and performance in which the past was usually expressed. Here, the men tended to “narrate” this history, in some cases in allusion to written documents and in others to more mythical tales, and always in relation to their travels outside the immediate ayllu, criss-​crossing the regional landscape, which served as the territorial basis for their present-​day memories and points of historical reference. For their part, the women tended to “sing” this history, wrapping the historical personages they named in layers of sound, and their background sources included, instead of written documents, the textiles they wove. In these textiles, they expressed, according to their own criteria, the elements of the regional landscape, although in those years they did not use to travel much outside the ayllu as the men did. In exceptional cases, young weavers par excellence were charged with expressing in a specially woven documentary the historical cartography of Qaqachaka territory within the wider region. In the book, I include narratives by both men and women, the songs to the saint-​gods, mostly by the women, and some references in passing to the textiles. The book notes how it was the men who recorded the great deeds of the male ancestors of the place, emphasizing as they did so their physical strength and their political achievements, whereas the women gave pride of place to the deeds of the great female ancestors, emphasizing their reproductive powers and their achievements in founding and defending the ayllu lands. So, instead of simply distinguishing between the oral and written modalities of history, we can now distinguish between the “forms” of orality (narratives, songs, dances) and the “textual supports” for memory (written documents, textiles, landscapes), each of these in turn being skewed by the kinds of membership of the ayllu members, as well as their sex. The Narrative Forms of History and Memory

To understand the narrative forms practiced in the history and memory of Qaqachaka, I had to take into account other factors based on a series of question. How was I to characterize the representations of the philosophy of history and the forms of historiography found there? And, associated with these, how could I characterize the kinds of memory privileged in each case? As Carlo Ginzburg shows, history as a discipline tends to speak about other things but not of itself, its methods, its epistemological positionings, or its ways of writing to convince. One result, as in the case of textual criticism, has been a progressive dematerialization of the text under scrutiny, which ignores the processes of its creation to become focused exclusively on the final text (Ginzburg [1986] 1992, 107). So, another challenge

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in this book was how to recover the events, and with them the performances of the social actors of Qaqachaka and the wider region, which still lie in the background of the “texts” that remain, whether these are oral or written. In examining such problems, the North American historian Hayden White gives attention to the construction of historical discourse, as a vital part of a representation that mediates between the past to be represented and a type of written narrative (White 2003, 141; Barnett 2017). For White, philosophies of history at a universal level take their data from a specific past, to order it in hierarchies of congruent relations within a particular vision of a past reality, but it does this through a specific narrative structure (White [1978] 2003, 148). Here we are not dealing with the validity of the data presented by philosophers of history, but rather the function and place that each element of data occupies in the construction of historiography, and the sense of each narrative structure in this wider setting. White’s approach designates two ways of understanding philosophies of history: by correspondence with reality and by congruence with the data organized in hierarchies. As a result, White assumes the historical text as a system of judgments in which none has validity in isolation, only as an integral part of the discursive structure. For him, each historical narrative is a “verbal artifact that pretends to be a model of very ancient structures and processes and, consequently, is not subject to experimental or observational controls” (White [1978] 2003, 109). And since historical narratives are not subject to the controls related to scientific methods, they are more similar to literary constructions—​White uses the term “tropology”—​in a combination of fictional elements invented by the historian, and elements found in historical documents. So, for White, historical narratives must be understood as “texts with discursive qualities,” generated in their own moment by the social actors involved in the original events, or by the researcher identifying and describing the relations between the elements revealed in the historical field (White [1978] 2003, 168). To this end, White defines four tropes to understand the structure of universal historical narratives: metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony. White’s conclusions make me think that, in the context of historical narratives in the Andes, instead of dealing with “universal” tropes in the construction of history, we face more “regional” ones, derived from distinct historical traditions and, from the Conquest onward, their points of encounter and articulation. Even if the narratives of written history do appeal to the four tropes identified by White, the narratives of oral history in places such as Qaqachaka appeal to quite different tropes: the generic and specific motifs that structure discourse, analogies between elements, formulaic phrases, images of the landscape, verbal readings of quipus and textiles, the rhythms and verbal content of songs, the recitations of the long series of libations of the “pathways of memory,” to name just a few (Arnold and Yapita, 1998, 2004). It is equally necessary to consider in each case the supports that served as material points of reference for generating these distinct tropes, and the forms of articulation between those supports and the tropes in discursive practices. Taking into account this combination of support, trope, and discourse shows that the distinct kinds of history in play are really the result of inscriptional practices of one form or another, in a broader

14 Introduction

sense. Likewise, the “texts” that remain with us long after a performance (whether in oral memories, or else textiles, quipus and written documents), permit us a later reflection on these events, by means of these fresh external supports, to contemplate the ideas in the making. The linguist Roy Harris (1989, 2000) and the philosopher Richard Menary (2007) call the cultural process of fashioning such cognitive supports a creation of “autoglottic spaces” (Arnold 2015b). In the inscriptional practices of these commemorative acts, whether through the supports of written documents, textiles, quipus, songs, narratives or the verbal sequences of libation-​making in the pathways of memory, each distinct support provides an autoglottic space for reflection, linked to specific practices of memorizing history through the specific tropes of practical performances. These reflections helped me analyze another key aspect of Qaqachaka’s oral history, this time in relation to the very detailed descriptions of the travels of the saints that occupy the colonial church, from their place of origin to arrive finally in the main pueblo. In practice, these “pathways of the gods” (yusa thakhi) throughout the landscape serve as autoglottic supports for their recitation in the paths of memory during libation-​ making. In an Amazonian context, the Spanish anthropologist Fernando Santos-​Granero (1998) explores in such commemorative practices the corporeal aspects for these performances, especially those in which the local landscape becomes transformed into the principal support for history and memory. He is interested in how certain Amazonian groups have inhabited their territory in precolonial times, through such acts of consecration of this territory, identifying the sites of creation and veneration. He is similarly interested in how these territories were lost in colonial, republican, and modern times, and how their inhabitants perceived these losses (in terms of the pishtacos, a kind of vampire, profanation, and destruction) (Fernando Santos-​Granero 1998, 131). Santos-​ Granero explores these tendencies as “practices of inscription,” although he goes a step further to perceive the mnemonic practices enacted in the landscape as “topographic writing.” He proposes that, with the landscape as a support for these practices, we face a “proto-​writing” in the sense of a “semiotic system” of topographical references (cf. Goody 1993, 8). This landscape-​as-​support approach allows us to trace the development of the relation between landscape and the mythical-​mnemonic, given that, as these practices evolve, the spatial episodes that occur within the landscape are combined and recombined as “mythemes.” For Santos-​Granero, these practices must have been closely tied to social institutions of the past, while these same practices quite probably conformed the reference point upon which these institutions were developed historically. From there emerge the key mythemes of historical inscription, such as that of “sowing history” among the Páez of Colombia (Rappaport 1989, 87). Within these landscapes, instead of tropes in and of themselves, Santos-​Granero prefers to speak about “topograms,” and identifies in the Amazonian region where he works three kinds of topograms: personal reminiscences, collective oral traditions, and mythic narratives. Through these topograms, some memoristic traces become permanent in the history of the group (Santos-​Granero 1998, 141), preserving memory as would a proper system of writing. Santos-​Granero’s approach helps me go a step further than simply identifying the material supports for the narratives in question, or the

15

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externalization of an autoglottic space that permits reflection upon them, to understand better the nature of the ties between these conceptual supports and the narratives generated around them, whether in the system of ceques, the pathways of memory or the ancestral pathways taken by the saints of the place. The Indiciary Methods of History As a whole, the observations about historical practices made by White, Harris, Menary, and Santos-​Granero make us even more aware of the research processes involved in the historiographic operations we carry out, as we decide which are the most pertinent data to use from the past, how to identify these, follow them, and then order in a viable historiography. And we must do so not only from the perspective of the present, but in a way that makes sense in relation to the past and for the people of the locality. One of the most useful methods for identifying and then ordering historical data has been the indiciary paradigm, where priority is given to examining the details of a specific case, instead of becoming preoccupied by the broader historical tendencies. We are dealing here with methods directed at the predominantly qualitative data of specific cases, although the methods themselves could be applied to other cases. Best known is the application of this method in Carlo Ginzburg’s historical case study, described in his book The Cheese and the Worms (1976). It deals with the detection of evidence or clues (as in a crime) by examining the details, material and non material, in order to follow the events of a past we did not witness, decipher them, infer their causes and effects, to then reorder these details and the interpretations about them to reconstruct a comprehensible totality (Ginzburg [1986] 1992). Similar methods had been applied already by historians of art, such as Aby Warburg (who coined the phrase “God is in the details”), in his ethnographic studies of the American Southwest, and his iconographic studies of the Florentine Renaissance. Carlo Ginzburg took from the Warburgian method his way of linking figurative representations to the experiences, pleasures, and mentality of a specific society (Ardila 2016, 24). In his own studies of Italian Renaissance art, Ginzburg examines the circulation of knowledge and images between the subaltern and dominant classes by considering the relative access of each group to reproductions of these images. Previous historians had not taken into account this circulation of the symbolic among social strata, and this cultural circulation between classes inspired Ginzburg to develop his masterwork, The Cheese and the Worms. I appeal to the same idea in this book, as a way of explaining the similar influences and tendencies in Europe and the Andes, say in the juridical negotiations between each side during the colonial period. However, we are still facing a method that is selective of the data under examination in an indirect, conjectural, and abstract way. And although the mentalities of societies are now under the microscope of historians, we are still a long way from the performative, gestural, sensorial, and emotive context of the commemorative acts and practices that record the past.

16 Introduction

The Practices of Memory In order to recover the “practices of memory” in Andean societies, such as Qaqachaka, I first scrutinized previous studies on the theme. The classic study by the British anthropologist Paul Connerton (1989) on how societies remember the past is focused on the ways in which memory might legitimize the social order through similar processes of ordering certain expectations in common. In that approach, the social aspects of history and memory are recognized (Connerton uses the term “social memory”), but even so, history and memory are treated as “things” rather than as “practices.” I went on to examine the nature of memory, especially social memory, and the social trajectory of memory (in the work of the French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs, of 1925), together with the locus if memory and the systems of memory in distinct societies and at different times. In this concern over the “social” uses of the past, memory is perceived as a documentary source and a framework of interpretation or field of interlocution in common (Halbwachs 1925, in Ramos 2011, 132). Later on, even Halbwachs (in later work published in 1950) started to examine the characteristics of a more “collective memory,” and its ways of creating a social consciousness about history through the use of common temporal and spatial frameworks, as compared to the trajectory of individual lives. Even so, Halbwachs’s approach, while allowing us to identify subaltern histories within other hegemonic histories, does not offer us the instruments to understand the distinct histories that emerge in the even more complex situation of multiple influences and plurality that we face in the Andes (Ramos 2011). Turning our attention to more Andean socio-​cultural practices of memory, as a societal modality for remembering the past, I already mentioned how these practices constantly interact with diverse autoglottic supports (archival documents, quipus, songs, narratives, libations) to generate their respective discursive tropes. Here it is not so useful to distinguish insistently between written and oral history, or their points of intersection with the Conquest, and much more advantageous to examine the relations between these material autoglottic supports and the practices that emerge in their use, in transmitting the memory of the historical past from one generation to another. For these reasons, there is no hard and fixed differentiation in the Andes between “history” and “memory” as in the West (cf. Lambek 1998, 2006; Ramos 2011, 139). Neither do Andeans perceive history as “one thing” and memory as “another thing,” in a Western sense. From the point of view of the Canadian anthropologist Michael Lambek, the Westernized materialization of history and memory has been the result of the Romantic objectivizing of memory, in which the proliferation of conceptual divisions follows the logic of possessive individualism. In Andean languages, there is no appeal to different nouns to describe history or memory. You could force definitions of oral history as “talk of the past” (layra parla in Aymara) and written history as “the grandparents’ papers” (awil achach papila), but in practice as in discourse there is a constant articulation between both kinds of history. In the practices of memory we found in the Andes, neither is it an individual who “possesses memory”; rather each person is immersed in a complex set of relational practices shared between subjects. And although there are Aymara verbs, such as amtaña, for “commemorating” and “remembering,” it is

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more common to refer to the practices of following the “pathways of memory” (amtaña thakhi), while reciting in an ordered way the series of libations. Thus memory and history have much more to do with practices constructed socially than those concerned with the subjectivity of individuals. In practice, it seems to me that history is constructed socially in relation to the processes through which things happen. It is the comunarios of places such as Qaqachaka who act as the social actors and agents who construct the local archives of written history and the verbal narratives of oral history. That is why the approach of regional populations towards memorizing and commemorating the past are not singular nor static, but constantly changing along with the influences and tendencies at a local, regional, national, or international level, and the hegemonic struggles for power between individuals, families, ayllus, regions, or nations. Memory, History, and Interpretations of the Past

If indeed ideas about the past are really contemplated from the present (according to the proposal by the Comaroffs, in 1992), then what are the cultural practices through which the present can organize and interpret the past? In the Andes, there are the interests, modalities, and indices of connections and associations that present generations tend to apply to notions of the past. But, in addition to these, we cannot underestimate the power of social movements, indigenous movements, and political movements in general—​whether from the left or the right—​to mould notions of the past from the present for whole generations. In countries such as Bolivia, certain groups of intellectuals (in THOA for example), and some leaders of opinion in social movements, from Nina Quispe to Fausto Reinaga and Felipe Quispe, have been key figures in these political influences. Likewise, certain well disseminated texts about the past have been fundamental in this politicization, whether from the more generalized influence of Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, by Eduardo Galeano (1971), to the specific influence in the South-​Central Andes of La identidad aymara, by Thérèse Bouysse-​Cassagne (1987) (cf. Arnold 2009b, 53 and ­5; 2016c). At a more conceptual level, the universal academic practices of analyzing history through chronological configurations of the past, derived from the structured organization of time imposed in the processes of modernity to divide it into identifiable blocks, has been taken for granted. These blocks of time tend to derive in turn from the temporal organization according to certain periods of reference. Studies on the Andes refer to the moments of expansion (the Horizons) and contraction (the Intermediate Periods) of civilizations or empires, or to the major events of official history (the Spanish Conquest, the Wars of Independence, the formation of the republics). But for the ayllu comunarios of the South-​ Central Andes, neither these conventional chronologies, nor the great events of official history, influence their own notions of history. For the Qaqachakas, the Conquest is neither mentioned not felt as a key event of the past. And as I have already mentioned, the experience of time, evident in the regional languages of Aymara and Quechua, is multiple rather than singular. This book includes an episode

18 Introduction

about the regional rebellions of the 1770s, given their importance in the wider history of the region. Likewise, in his history of the neighbouring ayllu of K’ulta, Abercrombie compares the memories of the K’ulteños of the time before and after the rebellions of the 1780s. But again, I insist, in the oral history of the place these events are totally absent. In order to free the history of Qaqachaka from the Western preoccupation about identifiable and separate temporal units, I resorted to the paradigmatic shifts explored by some philosophers (Bergson, Heidegger, Deleuze and Guattari), which allowed me to appreciate the overlapping of time periods, of past and present, in a multitemporal framework instead of a unitemporal one. The recent work of certain archaeologists (for example Hamilakis 2015) also helped me rethink the nature of temporality in archaeological sites, not simply as instances of a distant past relegated to the universal chronical concepts of Archaeology as a discipline, but as places just as recognized in the present by local populations. Other researchers, especially those that belong to these regional populations, seek to obviate the lineal conventional time frames of official history, in favour of alternative approaches. Some reject the ontological separation established between nature and culture, the notion of progress, and the insistent tensions between the universal and the particular. They privilege instead the social processes that occur and reoccur in the repeating cycles of returning, the pachacuti of regional history, lived in common by these populations (Uturunco 2017). Here the Andean concept of pacha captures the ambiguity in regional notions between a more specific time, whether of a lineal or cyclical nature, and a longer epoch or chronology, or between a more generalized space or a well defined locality. In these regional perceptions of history, priority is given to the cyclical character of agricultural and pastoral periods, and of astronomical cycles, instead of the stratigraphic notions of Archaeology or the chronological divisions of official history. Another factor worth taking into account in these Andean designations of time is that, in the original oral narratives in Aymara that we recorded in Qaqachaka, it is the ontological significance of distinct verbal tenses that come to dominate discourses about the past. In these narratives, a key distinction is made between a verbal tense that indicates something the narrator has seen with his or her own eyes (using the verbal termination of the near remote tense to express direct knowledge and applying the –​ta suffix), or another verbal tense that indicates that the narrator has not seen that event (using the verbal termination of the far remote to express indirect knowledge, in this case applying the -​tawi suffix in Qaqachaka, equivalent to -​tayna in La Paz). In the case of direct knowledge, it is common in historical tales for the narrator to confirm the veracity of a fact or of an event of a specific practice, by adding the expression “I’ve really opened my eyes to this” (ukarupiniw uñattata). In the case of indirect knowledge, the narrator marks his or her distance from those events by adding the comment “he or she said,” siwa in Aymara, although this often demands a whole chain of verbal transmission through the use of the verb saña, “to say,” ukham sasaw satayna, “so saying they’d said.” Over the last centuries, Andean Spanish has adapted to these Andean perceptions of the witnessing of time, and, in comparison with Peninsular Spanish, appeals to the past perfect auxiliary había, “had,” to refer to something not actually seen (either in the past or the present), whereas the auxiliary of the perfect tense ha, “has,” is used to refer to something actually

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seen personally. I acknowledge these fundamental differences in some translations into English of the original Aymara oral narratives we made. Concerning Methods of Work

Taking these factors into account as a method of work, in coordination with the linguist Juan de Dios Yapita, we first taped episodes of oral history in the narratives of the distinct local historians with whom we worked. Then we transcribed the texts of these narratives in our notebooks, where we went on to translate the Aymara original into Spanish (and here in this book into English), giving special attention to the use of certain verbal tenses already indicated. The next step was to order and contextualize these narratives. Although this phase of work involved many challenges, without any doubt the greater task was that of contextualizing these episodes narrated orally over several years, when we sought out and then analyzed any pertinent written documents. In these searches in the historical archives at local, regional, national, and international levels, we gradually traced and contextualized the personages and events we had already found in the oral narratives. The final steps were to contextualize the corresponding historical events “from the region” and not “from outside it,” and even more difficult, interpret these events from the way of thinking of the local people. In these stages of work, it was essential to appreciate regional notions of time in the historical processes of the place. In the absence of a term in Aymara (or Quechua) for “time” as such, it has become commonplace to affirm that in Andean languages pacha signifies both “time” and “space,” although this is not certain. This perspective is far too Cartesian for my point of view, and I prefer to translate pacha simply as “epoch” or “era.” Besides, any attempt to rescue a precolonial purism through such concepts of the past seems to me to be equally mistaken. In reality, we are talking about long-​term negotiations over the meanings of these concepts, where appropriations and re-​appropriations took place during centuries by both the Andean populations and the Spanish or Creole administration. The solutions to these challenges are more pragmatic. Faced with the Spanish concepts of time written into the colonial documents handled by local historians such as Don Franco Quispe, it became usual to borrow into Andean languages the original Spanish term, now as timpu, in combination with the different historical periods (translated as pacha). This tendency is not directed at dividing time into fixed and unidirectional periodizations such as the pre-​and post-​Conquest periods, but into distinctive epochs, although these were often superimposed upon each other in the multitemporality at play. So, in oral narratives there is often a certain doubt in the minds of the people of the region about which period precedes another. And frequently these time periods become mixed up, making it difficult to separate them out, as do historians (and archaeologists) formed in the West. On this basis, the historical concepts managed by Don Franco in his narratives include the Time of the Gentiles (Jintil Timpu), populated by the Gentiles (pre-​Christian people), the Time of the Chullpas (Chullpa Timpu) when the Chullpa people lived (chullpa jaqi),

20 Introduction

followed by the Time of the Inka (Inka Timpu) when the Chullpa people were wiped out, and then by the Time of the Spanish (Ispañul Timpu). Even though the Conquest is never mentioned as such, this transcendental event comes to define the limits to the history of the place, given that the emergence of Qaqachaka originates when the Spanish arrive. The Institutional Forms for Transmitting the Past

In the retrospective application of present interests and worries back to the past, the fluidity of these current regional practices, combined with any cultural acts concerned with the transference of memory, are vital. There is also the possibility that these practices do in fact derive from that distant past. Thomas Abercrombie (1998) identified one Andean way of expressing temporal and spatial divisions through the “pathways of memory” (amtaña thakhi) recited in K’ulta, not far from Qaqachaka, and Tom Zuidema (1964) identified the pathways called “ceque” (siqi in Aymara) radiating out from Cusco (Peru) into the surrounding landscape, associated with the ancestors and managed ritually by ayllu kin groups (see also Arnold 2007b). Through enactments of such institutionalized, ritualized, and metonymically intrinsic practices, in a present context, contacts between the present and the past were established, permitting the continual re-​vindication of the past according to today’s politics. We are dealing here with frameworks of inherited intergenerational interpretations. In ethnographic contexts, many of these institutionalized practices have been examined not so much from a historical standpoint as from oral theory and oral tradition, ethnopoetics, and the ethnography of performance. From this literary perspective, as I mentioned in relation to the ideas of Hayden White, history constitutes a performative genre, a certain kind of narrative with certain peculiarities, and from this perspective, we can recognize the proper literary genres of Andean history (thakhi, ch’alla, layra parla, awil achach papila etc.). However, the phenomenon of alternative histories struggling for hegemony can also result in the coexistence of contradictory comprehensions of identity and history. Gerd Bauman (1996) recognizes this kind of coexistence in the present-​day multiethnic situations of London, which produce dual discursive competitions. In Qaqachaka too, distinct versions of history, whether that of the local historians as individuals, or that of certain families or gendered groups, produce not so much contradictory as incomplete versions of events. But we do encounter the dual discursive competitions at another level, in the colonial negotiations between the Qaqachakas and the Spanish, or in the present struggles between the official history of the Bolivian nation and these local versions of history, grounded in more regional experiences of the past. From these more literary perspectives on the performative aspects of the Andean past, Cornejo Polar observes, in Escribir en el aire (2003), that Andeans, instead of writing or inscribing their history, tend to “dance” it. I have not examined this idea much here in the case of Qaqachaka, although I do consider the ritual and sung practices to commemorate the past.

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The understanding of these ways of acting out or representing history has tended until now to differentiate between predominantly oral practices, whether verbal or corporeal, directed at places (the landscape), physical objects (wak’as or saints) or sequences of actions (the series of libations, the recitation of litanies, dance choreography, song verses), characterized by the use of certain ritual costumes and instruments, and other more inscribed practices, determined on the basis of a written text. But, in fact, all these practices facilitate interaction and social action by objectifying memory according to certain organizing principles, in the oral practices of repetition, the ch’allas of the local authorities, the rounds by foot of the boundaries of a place, the system of turns in the cargos of the authorities, the reading of documents written by the local historians, and the practices of the ecclesiastical authorities, just to name a few. As I explained before, I do not think this conceptual division between the oral and the written is so hard and fast, there being common principles occurring in both cases, so the alternative focus on the material supports for these processes of acting out certain practices is much more fructiferous. Likewise, resorting to a theoretical model based on this idea of supports for these practices, helps us obviate the distinction between “collective memory” and “genealogical memory.” This is because we are facing two systems of registering the past, whose juxtaposition, comparison and contrast can lead to better analytic results than their mutual exclusion (cf. Abercrombie 1998; Rappaport 1990, 78–​94, 1992). More recently, the Portuguese historian Joël Candau ([1998] 2008, 140) has proposed a distinction between these two forms of memory in the following way. For Candau, “genealogical memory” is concerned with an innovative creation, based on tales of the founding ancestors and epopeyas, in which that which he calls prosopopeya is always present, since every individual death can become converted into an object of memory and identity, with greater ease the more distant it is in time (cf. Morrone 2010, 215). By contrast, “collective memory” only exists differentially, “in the heart of a relation always dynamically dependent on an other” (Candau [1998] 2008, 45, my translation). This point underlines yet again the binary antagonisms between the concepts of ­history and memory which underlie these notions. We are in the domain of alternative histories, in which certain groups, ethnias, lineages, or ayllus—​or indeed the struggles of sex and gender—​idealize certain “model personages,” by selecting some characteristics worthy of imitation, or on the contrary, negate other reprehensible characteristics, in the politicized processes of managing and reconfiguring their identities. As Rappaport observes in her studies in Colombia, these would be some of the operations that make the historical construction of genealogical memories more viable, for example those by which a lineage could seek in the past a way of protecting its legitimacy, challenged in the present (Rappaport 1990, 79–​84). Passing on now to ritual contexts oriented towards the past, I explore in this book Hocart’s proposal (of 1935) that ritual is a kind of technique directed at the continuation of life, that necessarily invokes communication not just between humans but with all non human beings too. I also examine the idea of the philosophers Deleuze and Guattari (1988), explored by the archaeologist Hamilakis (2015) that, in the application of these techniques, an “assemblage” of instruments and ritual paraphernalia of one kind or

22 Introduction

another is used. And that it is around these assemblages that the narratives, gestures, and other goings on of ritual practice are developed, in bundles of relations (Arnold 2018b). At the same time, the practices to objectify the components of memory resort to processes that subjectify the participants in their setting. There exists an abundant literature about the ties between memory and the sense of place in other parts of the world (Bachelard, Feld, Basso, De Certeau, Casey). In the Andes, the practices directed towards “spatializing” memory, according to the patterns (or chronotopes, sensu Bakhtin 1989) of pathways in the landscape, the ritual organization of landscape, the typical verses of songs to the gods, or the bodily practices of making processions, marches, and parades, especially in the case of Qaqachaka, usually resort to webs of associations related to the territorial strategies of the present (cf. Rappaport 1985). The association between memory and the ritual practices of serving certain dishes or drinks, in specific contexts, is another modality which situates the participants in the present, to contemplate the past, in regional equivalents to Marcel Proust’s remembrance of the past, the moment he tasted his madeleine. In other mnemonic practices of the Andes, the effort of “materializing” memory predominates, say in the customs of giving the gifts, called ayni, which demands a return in some future moment, as part of habitual socio-​cultural obligations. In this book, the ritual obligation that demands that the comunarios of Qaqachaka pass a feast for a local saint and, at the same time, pass a web of obligations and rights towards both the past and the future, facilitates the reproduction of social memory. To appreciate how present perspectives can reconstruct the past, it is equally important to understand the practices of forgetting, or, at least, of choosing selectively the episodes worth remembering and silencing the rest. The tendencies to remember only the episodes of a selected history form part of the ideological constructions of a specific history. Part of the same ideological constructions are the collective ways of telescoping time, so that certain events or vital personages predominate in the memory of certain groups, to the detriment of others (Candau [1998] 2008; Morrone 2010, 215, 2015b; Quispe 2016). Silencing is another powerful practice of memory. My impression based on the oral history of Qaqachaka is that the traumas that skew history or produce its silences, occur not so much in relation to the colonial period, as to the republican period. For the comunarios of the place, the Colony was a creative period in which they set out to negotiate and renegotiate their identity, according to the norms imposed from the outside (the Spanish laws, Catholicism, the territorial reorganization of the doctrines, the imposition of a Republic of Indians), reconfiguring their replies on the basis of their own values in order to achieve the ethnogenesis of the locality, not as a new postcolonial phenomenon, but as a suitable framework for them to preserve their own continuity. By contrast, the Republic announces a long period of state withdrawal, beginning with the deliberate destruction by the Bolivian State of the regional economy of wheat production, in order to take advantage of these fiscal entries to import Chilean flour, simply to finance the previous Wars of Independence (Platt 1982, chapter 2). This made me appreciate how this ayllu region in the South-​Central Andes is equivalent to the extensive high territorial mass in eastern Asia, characterized by the Dutch

23

Introduction

23

geographer Wilhelm van Schendel as “Zomia” (see also Scott 2009) or, in the New World, to the “Territorial Autonomous Zones” (TAZ) as described by Hakim Bey (1999). These are regions usually characterized by “tribalism” (Rosen 2016) that seek in a specific historical moment to escape from state control and the demands of state administration. This self exclusion includes refusing the conventional use of alphabetic writing to manage bureaucratic documentation. The history of Qaqachaka reveals certain elements of this kind of self exclusion, above all in the Republican period. Hence the unwillingness in this part of Bolivia to teach reading and writing well in schooling, according to state modalities, or to really agree on an official alphabet with which to write regional languages, until today. Instead, custom there perceives their own way of understanding reading and writing as part of the tradition of taking trophy heads or reading from quipus, and proscribes the use of such generative elements outside of common everyday usage.

Relational Ontologies, Ideas about the Past and Notions of the Person

Returning to the recent paradigm shifts in the Social Sciences and Humanities, and the role that relational ontologies play in these, another aspect concerning the past that I examine is the configuration of the person and ideas of oneself. Conventional history tends to elevate the life of cultural heroes into memorable personages, and present their deeds during their lifetimes in exemplary lives. Michael Lambek’s argument (1998, 2006) is that this perception of history derives from existing ontologies in the West that privilege the life of the individual over and above that of the group. But, in societies such as the islands of Madagascar, where Lambek works, and in societies such as Qaqachaka in the Andes, a much more relational sense of the person predominates. The study of group practices in societies with relational ontologies began in India, in Nurit Bird-​Davis’s work on the Nayaka (1999), on the heels of Marilyn Strathern’s earlier work on the Hagen of Papua New Guinea in Melanesia, where she coined the term “dividual” to indicate the multirelationality of persons in that society, in comparison to the atomized “individuals” of the West (Strathern 1989). Incipient studies of the same phenomenon in the Andes (Harvey 1998; De Munter 2016) and among the Mapuches of Chile (Course 2010) show how, in these similarly multirelational societies, notions of the past privilege practices shared between people. So, historical narratives, as in Qaqachaka, concern the constitution of the person in the context of their relations with others, just as practices tied to memories of the past concern the socio-​corporeal aspects of memory (Lambek 2006; Course 2010). In my analysis of the historical narratives of Qaqachaka within the framework of relational ontologies, although the ancestors of the place are treated as cultural heroes at an individual level, I note the focus in these narratives on ways of acting in wider socio-​ cultural formations, from which the ayllu-​annex slowly emerges. In other words we are dealing with an accumulating series of singular lives—​whether of the ancestors, gods or saints—​but focused on the relational identities between historical groups of social actors, and directed towards the emergence of the group and its reproduction through history. This phenomenon is reiterated throughout the book, in the narratives on the

24 Introduction

origins of the ayllu, in the struggles to make it independent as an administrative and political unit, and in the tales of how the local school came into being. Beside this, in the narrative process of constructing the historical interrelations between people, attention is always given to those practices which help “make a person” (jaqïña) in an Andean setting. “To be a person” does not necessarily deal exclusively with human beings, but with a variety of other non-​human beings in the world (gods, saints, textiles). So, another challenge in the book was that of finding out how people “are made” historically, in the case of Qaqachaka, where I analyze the rites of “feeding” and “clothing” the saints as examples of these practices. To understand the high value attributed to these practices in the history of Qaqachaka, I resort again to the observations of Hocart (1935) about the nature of ritual as a set of techniques to assure the continuity of life. And I appeal to an essay by Lema and Pazzarelli (2015) about the particular valuation given, in Andean local histories, to the things, personages, and events that have encouraged the continuity of life in a specific place, to the exclusion of the rest. In the local practices of arriving at these values, those who looked after the place are remembered, and this act of looking after the place determines the presences and absences in local history over time. So the comunarios commemorate that which “looks after,” in practices directed towards a memory that is fertile. Within this domain of relational ontologies, whether in quotidian or ritual practices, the comunarios often resort to this language of “mutually looking after” each other, as persons, both human and non-​human. Men plant the seeds and women nourish them. The mountains are “fed” with offerings to their ritual sites, and the ritual ingredients are their “food.” The mountain beings approach these offerings to feed on them. Humans eat and drink to accompany them. Those places receive the offerings, and in exchange, in their condition as the owners of the fertility of the place, they respond by maintaining and caring for the communities within their domain. In describing these interrelations, agency is attributed to humans and to those sites that respond by attending to them. Ritual language in turn is directed to those places through practices of caring and kinship, in face-​to-​face interactions and in the etiquette of offering k’intus of coca leaves to the hills before chewing them. In these rites, you seek to renew the meat of a sacrificed animal through actions directed towards renovating the regional waters and pastures. And you feel keenly the obligation to renew these relations periodically. In a community close to Cusco, Catherine Allen (2002) suggests that all places with names are “persons.” Besides, there is a fractalic quality to these places, given that they contain one place inside another. These are not “sacred” places, but very “powerful” ones, that receive more attention and greater tributation in offerings. The level of power is associated with their altitude, the highest mountains having the greatest territories under their dominion. But these places are also capricious; they can protect their domain or destroy it, hence the ritualized attention to maintain good relations with them. Behind these ideas lies the knowledge that human bodies are produced through the consumption of “food” which the locality offers up to the beings that dwell within its territory. In languages from outside the region, there is no terminology appropriate for this series of transactions. But in Aymara, the term uywasiña encapsulates these reciprocal attentions. Its literal significance is “to mutually care for,” between humans

25

Introduction

25

and non-​humans, and implicit in this term is the idea that, by being involved in these transactions, you are continually converted into “persons.” In the present day, a renewed interest is exploring this key idea (Haber 2007; Lema 2013, 2014; Arnold 2016a).

Resituating the Colonial Period

Attending to these many methodologies questions has demanded throughout the book not just a re-​reading of the Colony, but a resituating of the Andean colonial experience (sensu Haraway). It is no longer viable to do this in the dualistic terms of “lo andino” versus “Western,” or “the indigenous” versus “the Spanish.” This binary mode of thought has been the subject of harsh critiques from intellectuals such as Orin Starn (1992) and more recently William W. Stein (2010). Both authors compared this recent construction of “lo andino” with the Western construct of “Orientalism” examined some time ago by Edward Said (1978). In the Andean colonial experience, the affairs in play are definitely not binary. A cursory glance at the etymology of some of the terms in play—​marca, cantón, cabildo, panteón, gentiles, alcalde, alférez, alminar—​show the multiple influences at work: Roman, North European, Arab, Jewish, Spanish. From Spain, the most familiar model for interpreting the encounter between the Spanish and the Inka Empire makes reference to the Roman Empire. This is the point of reference for chroniclers such as Cieza de León and for the theological debates of Bartolomé de las Casas, who also counterposed in the spiritual aspects of the Colony differences between Islamic and Christian ideas (Lamana 2008, 125). In these manifold and multitemporal experiences, texts such as the Theodosian Code, which compiled the laws of Rome (Derecho Romano), were points of reference for administrative and religious affairs, and the Justinian Corpus for juridical affairs, including approaches towards the new Indian Laws (Leyes de Indias) (MacCormack 2006, 625). Methodologically this more complex reality demanded a more nuanced approach towards the equally complex interpretations of the regional replies to colonizing forces (Mayorga 2002a, 2002b, 2002c). We can no longer present these replies in terms of covert “resistances,” given that this plays down the agency of regional actions, which besides are multiple and multitemporal. In relation to these creative processes of contact, my proposal is that, on the side of the pueblos de indios, rather we should recognize the persistence of their own civilizational foundations in their modality of living, and ways of interpreting the colonial unknown always in terms of the familiar, the proven, and that which had already been negotiated. In the Qaqachaka region, this process resorts habitually to the memory of the Inka occupation, a short time before the Spanish invasion. Perhaps that is why the songs of oral tradition perceive the establishment of the colonial marka of Qaqachaka as a pueblo de indios in terms of an Inka settlement. Likewise, a discursive trope reiterated throughout this oral history is the comparison between the new Spanish time and the sunrise, which was evidently applied in relation to the former Inka occupation, and now re-​applied in the Colony to the pattern of settlement of the marka as an echo of Cusco, with its wheel of ceques in the pathways of the saint-​gods towards the central place.

26 Introduction

In this re-​reading, the evidence suggests that local populations were not passive victims of Spanish impositions, but regional actors with their own agency and sense of cultural continuity. Even in relation to the imposed processes of Catholic indoctrination, regional populations could contribute the vital elements and the liturgy which characterizes an Aymarization of Andean Catholicism (cf. Marzal 1988). While ceremonies occupy a central place in the modalities of catechesis of the Dominicans, Franciscans, and Augustinians that worked in the region, we shall see that the new ceremonies that emerged in the Colony contributed a fundamental part of the rituals of the Church. This is particularly clear in the declaration by the local historians that their ancestors “gained” the lands of Qaqachaka by working as mitayos in the mines of Potosí. Far from perceiving these colonial forms of negotiated indentured manual labour in tribute, called mit’a, in terms of the grumbling suffering, symptomatic of a positioning from “lo andino,” the narratives of these historians stress the ritual aspects of this communal service. The voyage towards Potosí consisted of a series of libations to places already ritualized in the landscape, where they had traversed previously to arrive at Porco or Potosí in the Inka period (cf. Morrone 2015a). It is quite probable that the very system of colonial authorities emerged as a way of rethinking the Pre-​hispanic system within the framework of the religious mit’a (Quispe 2016). These commentaries by the local historians challenge conventional history about the terrors of the mit’a and of the mitayos within the mines. Although Peter Bakewell’s book The Miners of the Red Mountain ([1984] 2009) is an antidote to these preconceptions, in countries such as Bolivia the perspective of this historical phenomenon perceived from the Black Legend is still very much in vogue. The same goes in relation to the striking absence in regional memory of the great rebellions in the region towards the end of the eighteenth century, in contraposition to intellectuals of the Left, fascinated by the local traces of this generalized conflict throughout the Southern Andes (cf. Abercrombie 1998; Cajías 2004). Some researchers posit that this rebellious spirit in the region of the present study emerges late, in the eighteenth century, as part of a more general juridical conflict between the previous colonial consensus and the emerging modes of imperial control. In practice, this conflict consisted of an incipient opposition between the machinations of a regional patrimonial system and the previous theory of the “two republics,” and the Toledan model of how to achieve state exactions in a rationalized way (Serulnikov 1996). For those researchers, at the heart of this conflict, Aymara communities became key political actors who could contest the earlier claims to power of regional elites, so subverting the forms of identity and hierarchy which authorized colonial domination. However, the evidence presented in the oral history of Qaqachaka implies that these claims were already in circulation many centuries before, and that, instead of rebellion, the preference had always been the active negotiation of more viable conditions. The methodological challenges of resituating the Colony forced me to explore many issues not yet analyzed, and in doing so to develop a language with which to rethink the insistent dualisms of Cartesian thinking we often take for granted: between sacred and profane, work and ritual, culture and nature, universal and particular. The greater challenge was to develop more complex forms of analysis. The present paradigmatic changes helped me identify the ontological contexts in which this new language of analysis could emerge.

Chapter 1

GENESIS IN QAQACHAKA

We are Adam and Eve, dammit, we are the Red-​Trousered Ant …

Don Enrique Espejo, from Qaqachaka pueblo

When we attempted to persuade the older people of Qaqachaka to record the

“talk of before” (layra parla in Aymara), even before the origins of the place, when there were still no people there, they used to tell us Andean versions of biblical tales. We heard tell of Adam and Eve, the Ascent of Jesus to Heaven, and the Great Flood, the recitation of each tale providing an oral support for the more mythic history of the place. This general knowledge of biblical tales is the result of centuries of Catholic indoctrination in the region. However, some episodes in these tales referred to the regional memory of the “Chullpa” people who used to live in Qaqachaka in the non-​Christian (or pre-​Christian) past. In these cases, it was common to have a pause between the narratives to comment on places in the landscape associated with the livelihood of those Chullpa people, their burials also called “chullpas” found on hill tops, and their “chullpa churches” (chullpa injlisa), ancient constructions that would shine at night during the month of August. If people saw these places glow in the twilight, they would immediately throw a knife in that direction, knowing they would find gold.

The Chullpas and the Lord of the Clouds

The local historian and title-​bearer Don Franco Quispe Maraza related to us on one occasion his own version of the biblical tale of the Great Flood, a tale told in the whole world, perhaps because it was already known before the Palaeolithic diaspora of diverse migrants from Africa to other continents.1 In his version, Don Franco recognizes the Evangelical influence of the predicators who visit the region in the present day, although he personally identifies himself in the tale with the Catholic locals. This influence is expressed in the way Don Franco creates in the narrative an opposition between the Catholic sinner and Lord Noah, the cultural hero of the tale and a part of the Chullpas, with his Aymara nickname of Tata Nuwi, allied to the Evangelists and thus saved from the Flood. Don Franco gives attention in the tale to the languages spoken by the distinct personages. Tata Nuwi speaks Quechua, 1 See for example Van Binsbergen (2009–​2010, 72–​74).

30 The Oral History of Qaqachaka

like the Evangelical pastors who visit Qaqachaka to convert people to “Christianism,” while the Catholic sinner speaks Aymara, as do the Qaqachakas. Another play of ideas and meanings in the tale designates Noah as “Tata Nuwi,” where nuwi derives from the Spanish nube, “cloud,” making of his name a vital link between the biblical Noah and the Andean god of the rains: That time was really evangelical. Señor Nuwi (Noah) lived in that epoch. I  don’t know who the rest were, but there were three of them. They were exterminated at the Time of Judgment. He appeared in this way. I don’t know if the Evangelist spoke with God … We Catholics don’t give much importance to the Evangelists, although they speak well. We don’t give much importance to the Evangelist brothers … Anyway, this Evangelist said, “Well, Catholics,” he said, “you’ll build a house really well, but out of planks. The world is coming to an end.” The Evangelist said that Tata Nuwi had told them that. But the other one thought, “This Evangelist doesn’t know anything. What can he know?”

Then the rains came, truly, for thirty days and thirty nights. The place was turned into a sea (lamara) and the world sank. Everything had been turned into rainwater.

However, one of the Evangelists had built a house of wooden planks and he’d locked himself in there with all his things, including his doves. So (the house of planks) was floating, floating in the water. Then one of the Catholics said, “Señor Nuwi …,” as Señor Nuwi spoke in Quechua … and the other one replied, “Waxarillaway punku llaykip,” which in Aymara is “Jawst’itay utmaru, punkullarukisa,” “Call me to your house, even though it’s only to the door?”

But the other one replied, “There’s no order to do that, sonny. I  told you before. You should have worked and then you’d have been saved. There’s no order given,” he said, “even though you might begin to laugh and shout.” And come what may, the Catholic had fallen onto the floor of planks. And he died there.

Well … the Evangelist was waiting there and slowly the sea dried up. And he set free a dove, and the dove flew off, his wings flapping “Parr r …” Then this dove returned, but it had not brought back anything. And they say he killed it with a single blow. Then he’d set another dove free. But this one brought back in his beak some leafy twigs from a shrub.

“Mm, leaves on the twigs of a shrub,” he said to himself, “so this shrub has grown big.” He’d gone outside, but the house had come to rest in a river. And only then did we began to procreate. So they say.

Adam and Eve

Another tale told when we asked the older comunarios of Qaqachaka about the Time Before was Iwana Arana, Andeanized names of the biblical Adam and Eve. Only gradually did we realize there was more here than a simple borrowing of these biblical names through a re-​phonemization of the sounds. Iwana, the Andean Eve, plays with several Quechua terms concerned with weaving: first the term for a “loom,” awana,2 second the 2 See Lara (1978, 54).

31

Genesis in Qaqachaka

31

Graphic 1. Adam and Eve, drawn by Guaman Poma de Ayala.

term for the warp threads, awa, and third the verb “to weave,” away. Complementing these, Arana, the Andean Adam, plays with the Spanish verb “to plough.” This biblical pair, now Andeanized and at work, coincides with the illustrations of these personages attributed to Guaman Poma de Ayala, from the early seventeenth century, when Adam “worked the land” and Eve “span” (graphic 1). Another surprise for us was the level of detail with which the Qaqachaka grandfathers recorded past events. Doña Lucía Quispe Choque (­figure 1a), daughter of a yatiri (wise one) and an experienced midwife in her own right, in reply to our insistent questions about this couple, tried to remember what she had heard about Iwana Arana. She reflected pensively, “This would have been in the Time Before, it’s not after then, but before.” As a first reaction, she suggested that the reply could be found in the “grandparents’ papers” (awil achach papila). On another occasion, Doña Lucía related the tremendous depth of time that the names Adam and Eve evoked with reference to the changing forms of greeting people, as one did every day in the annex called Qaqachaka. (Her use of the term “annex” here refers to Qaqachaka’s ecclesiatical origins). For Doña Lucía, these forms of greeting had changed three times during the course of history she knew:

32 The Oral History of Qaqachaka (a)

(b)

Figure 1a. Doña Lucía Quispe Choque; b. her brother-​in-​law Don Enrique Espejo Sepera.

The greeting nowadays is “Winus tiyas,” but before it was “Mamalay, tatalay.” I woke up (was born) to this. Only recently was it “Winus tiyas.”

Before then there was a great deal of respect; you’d raise your hat and say “Yus ayllum p’uychay,” as the proper way of speaking. Even before then, it was “Qansina tatay, qansina mamay,” “Thank you tatay, thank you, mamay.” They’d say it was so, they say. “In that epoch, there was Adam (Arana),” they say. I  used to hear that said, but I  don’t know how it was. It’s surely in the papers. It would be in the papers.

Another common idea among some of the local comunarios, and in the region as a whole, is that Adam and Eve were made from clay. That is why many tales told about Adam and Eve are concerned with the origins of the Virgin Earth and of the very soil, or with things found in the soil. An example. When we asked Don Enrique Espejo Sepera (­figure  1b), Doña Lucía’s brother-​in-​law, what he had heard about Adam and Eve, he replied with a curious phrase, “the Red-​Trousered Ant,” which associated Adam and Eve this time with the wild beasts roaming the place. His exact expression was Iwana Aranan, Sik’imira Wila Kalsuna, “Adam and Eve and the Red-​Trousered Ant.” Don Enrique was not at all sure about the meaning of this phrase, although he had heard it on many occasions. He had certainly heard that Adam and Eve made the world appear, and that they did this “when the Red-​Trousered Ant existed.” For him, it was the

33

Genesis in Qaqachaka

33

time “when the Virgin Earth was born” and “when Taqimallku Astiti gained the lands” of Qaqachaka. With a little persuasion, he tried to remember the exact words he had heard the grandfathers of the place say on these occasions: Adam and Eve, they always talked about them, those who’d made everything first appear. They used to say that while the Red-​Trousered Ant existed, this Virgin first appeared in the world, when Adam and Eve … “Taqimallku Astiti,” they’d say, when the ant used red-​ coloured trousers. This whole world appeared, and this territory came to exist, when those ones were there, “That’s what they gained for us,” they’d say.3

Don Enrique continued:

Whenever they mentioned Adam and Eve, they’d always say that the ant was red. That’s why they’d gained the world for us; Taqimallku Astiti had gained it. What does it mean? I didn’t ask my grandparents properly. But they said it had been gained by an immense effort.

We noted in these commentaries that those comunarios, such as Don Enrique and Doña Lucía, who were not direct descendants of the families of title-​bearers, had a certain amnesia about the founding ancestors. They knew some loose details in the oral tradition of the grandparents they had heard, but although they knew about the “grandparents’ papers,” they had not been permitted access to the written knowledge documented there.

The Red-​Trousered  Ant

Many other older people in those years, both men and women, remembered the mysterious figure of the “Red-​Trousered Ant” and some of its characteristics in common, often skewed in the descriptions depending on the sex of the speaker. From their comments, we understood that the Red-​Trousered Ant referred to the very same comunarios as campesinos or peasants that worked the land. One of the local terms for a campesino, which we heard many times in the libations being made by the ayllu authorities, was ch’uta, which, according to them, described their “red legs,” coloured by working the land. The term ch’uta in Quechua refers more generally to a native of the Altiplano, but its wider semantic range includes a reference to the ancient measurement of longitude equivalent to an “open arm’s width,” used to measure parcels of land in the past (Lara 1978, 78–​79). It is just as plausible that the ant’s legs could have turned red from having worked in the mines (Arnold 1996, 254). Tristan Platt calls our attention to a contemporary ceremony in the neighbouring ayllu of Pukuwata, which commemorates the departure of the mitayos at the feast of San Bartolomé in August, in their voyage to accomplish their 3 The original Aymara says: Iwana Arana, uka parlapinïnwa, ukaw iñstay, Sik’imira Wila Kalsunakipäna, aka Wirjinax asta muntu parisi, siriw, Iwana Aranakipan asta, bay. Sik’imira Wila Kalsunakipan “Taqimallk Astiti,” si, ast ukakipan aka muntu parisi, aka uraqi utji, “ukan ganatpaxay,” sika.

34 The Oral History of Qaqachaka

mit’a service inside the Red Mountain (Wila Qullu) of Potosí, known for the colour of the earth there. One of the participating authorities wears a short ceremonial poncho, called ch’utilla, and Platt refers us to the Vocabulario de la lengua aymara by Ludovico Bertonio from the early seventeenth century, in which chuta and mit’a are synonyms (Bertonio [1612] 1984, 94, cited in Platt 1983, 69, n10). In another associated ceremony, ch’utillu is the name for the diabolic spirits of the mines (Platt 1983, 69, n13). In the Potosí region, a festive dance associated with miners is called “chutillo.”4 Present-​day libations in the same region, made when the miners take possession of a mine, confirm this analogy between the mining workers and ants, by comparing the miners with “ants that go into their houses” (Platt 1983, 59–​61). Another allusion to peasant life is heard in the description of the ant heroine in a cycle of tales to the wild beasts, called sallqa (Arnold, Jiménez, and Yapita 1992, 240–​ 41). The ant in these tales is feminine and very delicate, with a wasp waist (sintur p’ilätapiña), and she grumbles in a constant refrain that she has not eaten well. In Doña Lucía Quispe’s version of the Tale of the Ant, her name is Doña Casimira, another play on words re-​phonemizing into Spanish the Aymara for ant, sik’imira. Doña Casimira works non stop and has the bad habit of stinging men to feed herself. A  gigantic ant known in the region is called Mamita Sik’imira, the name of a salient mountain in the Aiquile valleys in Cochabamba, which the Qaqachakas used to visit in the recent past on their journeys with llama caravans in search of maize. In our conversations with Doña Lucía about the meanings of the “Red-​Trousered Ant,” she was emphatic about the density and quantity of red ants capable of swarming together. Other comparisons related red ants to the dense red fibre of alpaca wool, and an equally concentrated population of the dead souls within the Eternal Pueblo called Wiñay Marka. They say that, from a distance, the pueblo of the dead appears like a swarm of red ants, because of the density of souls packed inside. Like other women from the ayllu, Doña Lucía remembered the Aymara term for ant, sik’imira, not only in spoken narratives but in a song to the female alpaca, in which the ant appears. Alpacas, or alpachu as they are called in Qaqachaka, are considered ladies of leisure, spoiled señoritas who prefer the fertile, juicy pastures of the place. One of their epithets is Siñura Wiraqhucha, Señora Viracocha, in another word play, this time between the presumed Inka high god and the humid lands called qhuchi. Besides, alpacas prefer to stay near home and do not travel long distances as do the llamas. Another of the alpaca’s epithets is Siñura ch’aska, “Tousle-​haired Señora” (on account of her abundant yet tangled hair). Doña Lucía sang us a song to the alpaca in the 1980s, whose verses associate the alpaca’s long, fibrous hair with abundant ants (Arnold and Yapita 1998a, 308–​22). It was Doña Asunta Arias, in a commentary on this song, who suggested that the last line, Mamala, Sik’imirita Mamala, “Señora, Señora Little Ant,” refers to her long and dense wool: 4 On the chutillos, see also Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela ([1735] 1965), Chacón ([1982] 1990), Curso Cruz (1988) and Toro M. (1992).

35

Genesis in Qaqachaka

Panti wallqipun jaquntata, Mamala pullirita, Mamala, Panti wallqipun jaquntata, Mamala Pullirit Imilla, Mamala Siñurit Imilla, Panti wistallan jaquntata, Mamala pullirita, Mamala, Mamala, Sik’imirita Mamala…

35

Slung with a crimson coca bag, Lady broad-​skirts, Lady,

Slung with a crimson coca bag,

Lady broad-​skirts, young lady, Lady Señorita, young lady,

Slung with a crimson coca bag,

Lady broad-​skirts,

Lady, Little ant Lady…

In these many allusions, instead of the emphasis given by the local men to the “Red-​ Trousered Ant” as someone who gained the lands of Qaqachaka, the women stress the ties between ants and a world of tales and songs, linked to the female management of the regional herds. The Ascension to Heaven

Among the most experienced narrators of the oral tradition, it is frequent to hear reference to the idea that Adam and Eve, and therefore the Red-​Trousered Ant, are related to the appearance of the Sun, after the eternal darkness of the Time of the Chullpas. This idea is implicit in a tale told to us by Doña Bernaldita Quispe Colque (­figure 2), when we elicited the origins of the Virgin Earth. Her tale proposes a tentative reply to the question of why the Red-​Trousered Ant would be related to the origins of Qaqachaka. Doña Bernaldita’s narrative thread relates the Red-​Trousered Ant to the red place of birth, which she called paqu lugara. Paqu is an undyed natural tan or dun-​coloured tone, while lugara re-​phonemizes the Spanish for “place”, lugar. The tale tells of a time when the Sun, which she calls Tata Nostramo, and the Virgin Earth were born from this red place. The name she uses for the Sun, Tata Mustramu in Aymara, derives from the medieval Italian “nostre i amo,” passing into Spanish as “nuestramo” or “nuestro amo,” and into English as “our Master or Lord.” The term is known from ecclesiastical contexts from the fifteenth century, with the sense of “our Patron” and, fundamentally, with reference to the “sacraments” of Christ: Holy Baptism, Confirmation, and the Eucharist. In the past, the faithful in Qaqachaka must have heard this term during the Catholic mass, in the Latin monstrare for the monstrance housing the host. Even now the Qaqachakas associate the monstrance with a golden sun and its multiple rays (the sunburst) with the Sun God, Tata Inti, named in the same tale by Doña Bernaldita. Doña Bernaldita continued her narrative concerning Tata Nostramo and the Virgin Earth with a tale about the wild beasts, from the same genre called sallqa, in the Journey to a Feast in Heaven. However, in her version, instead of the journey by the usual protagonists, the Fox and the Condor, it is God himself (Señor Nostramo) who pulls the humans up to Heaven by means of a golden chain. Doña Bernaldita commented how, if everything had gone to plan, humans could have continued to live in Heaven. However, a cheeky parrot passed by, snipping the golden chain in two with its beak, and the people,

36 The Oral History of Qaqachaka

Figure 2. The storyteller Doña Bernaldita Quispe Colque.

now turned into foxes, fell to Earth where their bodies exploded, giving rise to all the different crops: maize, wheat, potatoes, beans, quinua …: Señor Nostramo (the Sun God) would have appeared there, they say. In those times, the Virgin Earth would have been born from the red place, they say. They’d agreed to take them to that place above (in Heaven), even the Christians, they say. Only when we are born in this way are we Christians. Anyway, they were feasting in Heaven, when “Dammit, let’s go there,” they say he’d said.

Then, the other one agreed, “Well, let’s go then. Are they having a feast? Let’s go, let’s go. But, how can I go up there too? Heck. I’m here on Earth, and I’m not very good at going up. But, I’ll go, I’ll go, I’ll … um …” “I’ll take you, dammit … I will … I’ll pull you up with a golden chain, I’ll pull you up with a golden chain, just so, dammit …” “Heck, so now we can go.”

Well, they were ascending, ascending quite well, they say, they went up and up until … (a parrot …)

But if they’d been able to go up there, we wouldn’t have lived here below, just so, or perhaps we wouldn’t have lived at all. How would it have been up there in those times? They say he cut it just once, now, the parrot had cut it, they say, and the people would have fallen down from there.

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37

They’d arrived turned into foxes. That’s why maize, whatever, even wheat, even potatoes, whatever, even beans and quinoa, all of them exploded [into food seeds], they say.”5

Doña Bernaldita concluded her tale with the precept that we must continue cultivating the earth as the grandparents had done, and offering libations to accompany the principal stages of the agricultural processes, to ensure the success of the annual productive cycle: In that epoch there were just one or two people. Those people already cultivated maize, potatoes, quinua. Afterwards they began to divide up the parcels of land. They divided up the Virgin Earth (Tira Wirjina), “See, see, see …,” but there were only a few people. “Let’s cultivate,” saying, “Now the potatoes are flowering.” After that time, they’d always drunk hard liquor, saying (in their toasts):  “Bellflowers in white and red,” and saying “Let’s make some good luck for ourselves.” Little by little, they’d have continued doing this. And after they’d have had children and grandchildren: Janq’u putuputu, wila putuputu, Ch’unqha pullira, bay Celeste pullira, caraj, pullirt’as, carajo, ukanti carajo jaqiskañani … Little white bellflower, little red bellflower, well … Green broad skirt, well …

Sky-​blue broad skirt, dammit, put on a broad skirt, dammit, With this, dammit, we’ll be human.

Janq’u wantira, wila wantira, ukantiwa Janq’u putuputu, wila putuputu, caraj Tani tan imilla, caraj, ukatak umt’asiñani …

5 The original Aymara says:

Tata Mustramu paris sha ukan. Uka timput Tila Wirjina kuna paqu lugarat nasis utj si. Uka kiristiyanus jay ukan aka araxpacharu irpsuñ amtatäw si. Jiwas akham nasit kirisitiyanuki. Aka patxan phist lurji, “Karä sarañani,” satäw si.

Ukat “Bay saratnasay. Phistat utjiri phistat utjiri. Saratna, saratnaw,” siw. “Ay kunämrak pir nä irsust, karaj. Nä akapach jan kusäma pero sarañataki. Nä pir sarañatakisti, nä irsün nä inchiru …” “Nä irpsum, karä, nä asta… Katin purur waysuma, katinar waysuma, bay yasta karä, yasta irsutnay, karä …” “Bay jaqkatxiw. bay jaqkatxiw,” si, jaqkati jaqkati asta …

Ukan irsuspan ukar, jiwasa janiw aka akhaman utjawisanti, janich utjasana. Kunakispan ukana, uka timpuna. Maya t’ururpanitan si, luru t’ururpanitan si, ya, luru t’uruqanitäw si, jaqi ukat iraqtanitaw si. Atuxar tukusan puritäwi. Ukat tunqus, kunas, tirijus, ch’uqis, kunas jawasas, jupas, taqikun phallatäw siw.

38 The Oral History of Qaqachaka White flag, red flag, with those,

With a white bellflower, a red bellflower, dammit, Young gentian girl, dammit, let’s drink for that …

That’s why we never forget those things. We drink in this way until now. We don’t forget and we drink like this. So saying, we drink. I drink in this way …

In these citations from the language of libation-​making, Doña Bernaldita offers us more clues about the nature of the red place of birth. Broadly, Doña Bernaldita attempts to persuade the personified earth to turn green by wearing a wide green skirt, and orders the rains (and the Moon) to put on wide sky-​blue skirts, the colour of water. She also directs her toasts to flowers of two colours, the white and red bellflowers (janq’u putuputu, wila putuputu), and two kinds of flag, white ones and red ones, “so that we become persons.” She refers in each case to the flowers of the potato plant, which guide then upwards in the growing season. These are actually the flowers of the white, red, and black potatoes produced in the ayllu. But these distinctions in colour, omnipresent in the language of libations, can also allude to the sexual potency of masculine and female substances par excellence: red blood and white semen. Thus, Doña Bernaldita associates the red place of birth with the imminent productive fertility of the ayllu, and the ritual importance in this of human intervention. The Red-​Trousered Ant Against the Colonial State

Despite his distance from the more detailed knowledge guarded in the written archives of certain ayllu families, Don Enrique Espejo was quite conscious of the political importance of the Red-​Trousered Ant in Qaqachaka’s history. This was because he had been present in many events of a political character, such as the rituals of the cabildo ceremony, at which the annual tax payment was paid to the State, when the ayllu grandfathers remembered the Red-​Trousered Ant. On those occasions, the Red-​Trousered Ant was a symbol of ayllu autonomy in the face of the Colonial State, remembered as a form of resistance through participating in an independent educational modality, on the margin of the habitual attendance at state schools: They used to talk in this way, the tatas from before. They used to say “Let’s receive the Red-​Trousered Ant (Sik’imira Wila Kalsuna), the ones from before, since we are people now because of them. There’s no need to [learn to] read with the State, where you must learn with lots of money,” they said. “You hold a hoe (lijwana), so we are farmers, we are campesinos. Those who go into the State [schools] to read, well they can eat with their money … they can eat from the plaza,” they say the tatas used to say.

I used to hear that. I’d ask myself, “Whatever are they talking about? What talk about the Gentiles (Jintil parla) are they muttering? What’s that about Sik’imira Wila Kalsuna? It’s not as if they’ve seen it with their own eyes …”

Likewise, juchantin is talk of before, it is. Juchachas tasa (paying tax), they say, tasant juchanti (tax and obligation), they say. They always used to speak in this way … And Astiti Taqimallku. I’m hearing this talk, just like that. But, whatever is it?, I’d ask myself. I should have understood it much better. They were talking so, the grandfathers from before. They talked in this way even in the cabildos. They’re saying:

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Genesis in Qaqachaka

39

J iwasa Iwana Arana, carajo, Iwana Arana, carajo, Sik’imira Wila Kalsunaptanwa. Uka timp jiwasa janiw jaqi uttant.

 e are Adam and Eve, dammit, Adam and Eve, dammit, we are the Red-​Trousered W Ant. In those times, we had no people.

In a later conversation, Don Enrique remembered an old man from the herding hamlet (or estancia) called Uritaqa who told him he was “the last descendant of the Red-​ Trousered Ant.” The contemporaries of that man actually called him “Red-​Trousered Ant” (Sik’imira Wila Kalsuna), as he was someone who knew about the title documents and the ayllus’ origins. On yet another occasion when we were speaking about the origins of Qaqachaka and the role of the first title-​bearers in its foundation, Don Enrique remembered how the ancient mallkus considered Qaqachaka the “navel of the world,” an umbilical cord that stood out from its setting on all sides. He contextualized this image, at once feminine and maternal, within his description of some early title-​bearers of the place, such as Inca Maraza, who had traipsed from one extreme to the other of the annex limits. He related these mallkus to the condor mallkus, whose movements were “like that of the Sun”: I used to hear that a mallku was a person with power who walked around. Each ayllu had its mallku. Each one of them was called “empowered-​one” (empoderado) or “title-​bearer” (titul q’ipi), because they wandered around from boundary to boundary carrying the title deeds of the lands. They looked after the historical documents of the place, even the inventories of the church’s assets. They were written with a hen’s feather pen (wallpa phuru) and in red letters (wila litranaka). Throughout their lives, these men used to walk from pueblo to pueblo, advising the people of the place, saying “That’s so, it’s like that … concerning the land, it’s so.” In this way they gained the boundaries and hence this whole annex (añiju)… the circuit around all the boundaries completes the annex.

When Don Enrique was a boy (in the opening decade of the twentieth century), the empowered ones (apoderados) still managed the local history: They used to say “Your paper is here, take it out.” And the older people responded to them by saying, “Well, you’d better take it out.” And the empowered ones answered them, “Bring a measure for the libations, your paper is here, how it was settled, so …” Those were called “mallkus,” and they were the greatest men of all. There are no longer such mallkus. But they existed when I was a boy of some fifteen years old. There were three empowered ones in Qaqachaka: one was Inca Maraza, from ayllu Arriba, another was Mallku Martín Choque, from Irunsata, and another from Qhatüma ranch was called Nicolás Colque. It was journeying in this way that Inca Maraza died in Sucre, and his papers must have been lost, all of them.

Don Enrique assured us that the great advantage of having access to these documents was the written support to defend themselves when there was a conflict over land: We can hold on to it with this paper. They (the mallkus) were teachers. They knew everything, walking around from one side to another. They were strong, tall, and robust. I used to know about this. And they used to make everyone understand. How we are coming to be there, just so …

40 The Oral History of Qaqachaka

The problem, according to Don Enrique, was that the older generation of empowered ones no longer taught their knowledge to their sons (who were now small in stature), because of the introduction into the ayllu of a state school in the 1970s, which imposed quite different challenges from the previous patterns of passing on knowledge: Travelling in this way, Inca Maraza died in Sucre. He had a daughter, who now has her own children, but these are just ordinary, even though they still carry the name of Inca Maraza. Some children of the other empowered ones still live, but now they are stunted. For example, Mallku Manuelo Choque had two sons. This little one, Manuelo Choque, is coming to the school, but he knows nothing.

We call the condors “mallku.” When they fly towards the Sun, we say “Mallku, dammit, good luck, good luck …” but when they fly in the other direction we say “It’s going towards the sunset. It won’t be any good …”

Don Enrique made a point of noting the role of gender in the genealogy of that knowledge, which only changed gradually with the forces of modernity: The empowered ones were purely men. Perhaps their wives knew something about the documents, but they were men who walked around carrying their papers always. They’d walked past the boundary markers of each place, saying “From here, and from here … It says so in the papers, the papers show it well.” And they must have died walking around in this manner …

The mallkus spoke in this way. Like this finger (on his hand) which is longer than the rest, we are at the centre of everything. Qaqachaka is at the very centre (taypi), it’s this outstanding omphalos (kururu) above everything, like the umbilicus of the world (muntu kururu). They knew why they were walking. They were called “title-​bearers.” They walked around the boundaries. “We ourselves are at the centre of the world, in the middle. There are valleys (likina) to all sides,” they say. “We are surrounded by valleys, so this is the Altiplano (suni). It’s the highest part …” They used to talk in this way.

For Don Enrique, the umbilicus of the world that is Qaqachaka was defined by the mallkus as the heart of a circle of salient mountains. In his descriptions of Adam and Eve, of the Red-​Trousered Ant, and of how the territory had been gained by the great ancestor Takimallku Astiti, Don Enrique underscored how the higher mountains, those that characterized the upper ecological levels called suni, surrounded this umbilical cord. At another moment, he explained how these mountains were formed. From his point of view, the highest mountains had been cut down to size by hurling stones from slings at them: In the Time of the Inka, the highest mountains had been cut down to size. For example, Mount Mururata had been cut down to size by stones slung from a sling … all the highest mountains [were], each one with their proper name.

For Don Enrique, slings and the practices of braiding them had existed since distant times. His terminology for the opening in the sling, where the stone to be slung is held, is called in the Aymara of the region, chinqincha, “like a woman’s parts.” This central place of the sling is usually braided with red fibres, so the stones are slung from this “red place of birth” in the sling itself:

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Genesis in Qaqachaka

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Slings must always be braided, in order to control the herd animals and people, and even for cutting down the highest mountains to size … In dances, it’s the man, he puts on a sling (q’urawa), and it’s the woman who puts on a belt fastener (t’isnu), and we wrap ourselves together with these. Some people don’t have a sling, and they take out their scarf and wrap this around the women. I’ve seen this too. They say slings must always be braided. When we make something bloom with a sling, we announce out loud, “I’ve made you bloom with a sling, dammit. It’s good luck, the sling.” It’s good luck, for travelling or pasturing the animals. We can’t take a stick to hit the animals, we just shake a sling. They really respect a sling. And the sling gives us courage (kuraji) and a great deal of spirit (wali animuniwa) in battles … And for good luck we remember the mountains of Tata Kusku, Kuchurata, Tata T’unupa, and Mama T’unupa, over there towards Salinas and Illampu Tata …

Don Enrique’s commentaries give priority to the male world of the title-​bearers and their papers, and although he mentions the red place of birth, with its sexual allusions, he links it to the primordial formation of the landscape, above all to the highest mountains, remembered in the local rituals. Ritual Practices that Allude to Ants

Apart from the spoken and sung memories about the Red-​Trousered Ant, we registered within the living memory of the comunarios in those years two occasions when the “Red ant” was named in relation to the outfits worn in some ritual practices. In one of these practices, Don Enrique, like Don Franco Quispe Maraza, the title-​ bearer, and Doña Bernaldita Quispe Colque, the granddaughter of Mallku Mariano Quispe, compared the ant’s red trousers with the attire of two children selected to dance the “foetus” (sullu) in the Feast of the Christ Child at New Year. In reality, the children’s attire consisted of short skirts that were red above and white below, and headdresses with a crown of flamingo feathers. Until the 1980s, this dance accompanied a long procession across twelve leagues from Qaqachaka to the ecclesiastical doctrinal capital in the reduction town of Condocondo (or Quntuquntu), in commemoration of the historical past that related both locations. The procession was accompanied by the small snare drums, beating “t’iq t’iq t’iq t’iq.” Doña Bernaldita related the ecclesiastical ties with Condocondo to the “birth of Qaqachaka from the Sun Father” (who she associated with the ant of the tale), which demanded the presence henceforth of the regional priest, or tata kura, to celebrate the local mass: Inti Tala was born there. That’s why the curate would have gone there. And that’s why the tata kura arrived here. That’s why the tata kura used to arrive here from the same place … We went to Condo before. Then Challapata and Condo were made into one single parish. And that’s why they celebrate the mass here.

Before then, the little ones dressed in red trousers (wila kalsuna) used to go to Condo. They say it was so. But it’s been lost now. The red trousers were of course God! But we don’t see that any more; it’s been lost. They say that, before, there was a god and he was called “Ant” (Sik’imira). Like you called the people of before “chutillo.” But now that’s been lost too.

42 The Oral History of Qaqachaka How can that be God? It must be the devil (supaya)! But what kind of devil is it? What can it be? Can it be Doña Ana or what can it be? (she laughs …) How can that be God? It’s not as if an ant can be God! If it were God, it could live here. And the people, us in general, would know him. We ourselves could know him …

Those from Condo give another insight in their descriptions of these children dressed as “chunchus” (the feathered inhabitants of the lowlands). They explained how the procession went to Condo to celebrate two of the child-​saints “wrapped like foetuses,” who were the original inhabitants (originarios) of that pueblo: Salwaku (Salvador) and Inaku (Ignacio), but without Jawiku or Javier. A couple of feast sponsors (alféreces) with young children used to pass the feast, when the child Salwaku was always carried by the local girl-​children and even called the “husband” of these girls (imillanakan chachpa satatäwi). When the dancers finally entered Condo pueblo, people used to say “Here come the Children from Charkas.” Referring to another practice that alludes to red ants, Don Enrique compared the ant’s red clothes to the attire of the diabolic danzantes of Tata Quri, patron saint of the central church of Qaqachaka, who dance in his honour at his feast in May, called “Santa Vera Cruz de Qaqachaka,” equivalent to the Lord of the Holy Cross. I shall return to these two occasions in greater detail further on. But first, I  shall refer to some rites in other parts of the Andes that allude to red ants with broad skirts of alpaca fibre, especially those that define the limits of a place. For example, in Qeros, in Peru’s Cusco region, in a ritual that used to occur at Carnival filmed by the American filmmaker John Cohen, the real and classificatory sons-​in-​law of the feast-​sponsor had to dress up in broad skirts of long and abundant alpaca wool in a vibrant red, to mark out the boundaries of the Qeros territory. These sons-​in-​law, wearing other female garments such as tight doublets (jawuna) and a wide-​brimmed hat, moved in an exaggeratedly sexy fashion in these broad red skirts. In Chinchero too, not far from Cusco, the anthropologist Edward Franquemont told me about a group of rather drunken sons-​in-​law, dressed as women in broad red skirts of alpaca wool, who went from boundary to boundary along the whole ayllu perimeter. Franquemont described how, as they went from boundary marker to boundary marker, they acted with lecherous and rather lewd gestures, mounting each other like animals! Again there is a reiterated association between ants, the colour red, an exaggerated female sexuality and the demarcation of boundaries. The Red Place of Birth

By all accounts, the origins of Qaqachaka we seek in the tales of the Time Before, deal, as do most cosmogonic tales, with the sexual acts of creation, whether of gods (in this case of Tata Nostramo and the Virgin Earth), humans (Takimallku Astiti), and animals (ants and alpacas). These tales in no way call attention to the emergence of Qaqachaka from the wider Aymara federations of the region, neither mentioning Asanaque-​Quillacas nor Qharaqhara-​Charkas, as do academic historians. They focus instead on the place of Qaqachaka as the “umbilicus” of the world, surrounded by boundary markers and the highest mountains of the region, and beyond there, “on all sides” by valley lands.

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Complementing these are the tales about the biblical personages of Adam and Eve, and of the Red-​Trousered Ant, with their allusions to a gendered “red place of birth,” but in the context of properly regional interpretations of Catholic doctrine. Is it possible that the red place of birth could refer to the place of birth of Jesus Christ, as the son of God? There are hints of this in the story by Doña Bernaldita about the birth, from this red place, of the Sun, as the son of Tata Mustramu and the Virgin Earth, followed immediately by an Andean version of the Fall of Man from the Heavens, in the episode in which God hauls man up to the same level as Himself, in Heaven. But, because of the parrot’s intervention, the humans fall back to Earth. To all intents and purposes, the red place of birth constitutes in these tales the central place of Qaqachaka (where you find the marka, the plaza and the church) underlying the heart of its identity. Or, could it be that the repeated allusions to the colour red refer to the central church of Santa Wila Kurusa, as the ecclesiastical annex of the historic reduction town of Condo, which houses the patron saint Tata Quri and the rest of the local holy family? In the series of libations, the church itself has some suggestive ritual names, such as sanjrata, an Aymara version of the Spanish sagrada, “sacred.” For the Qaqachakas, the word sanjrata also plays on the meanings of other sounds: sanjri, “blood,” and Santa Ana, the grandmother of Christ and mother of the Virgin Mary. Then there is the frequent reference to Santa Ana and Ana Milchura, as names of salient mountains in the region. Why all this attention to the colour red, when actually the interior of the church is so dark? To answer this question, one of the challenges of this book is to explore the ritual practices carried out inside the darkness of the church to commemorate this primordial moment, when the red place of birth was first illuminated.

Chapter 2

THE FIRST ANCESTORS OF THE PLACE

It’s a rocky place, that’s why it’s called Qaqa …

Don Franco Quispe, from the hamlet of Qañawi

The memories of Qaqachaka’s inhabitants about the first ancestors of the place

and their characteristics are just as fragmentary as their narratives about the origins of the place. In general, their commentaries about them begin with observations about the local people, and the particularities that distinguish them from neighbouring pueblos. These commentaries stress how, to identify the provenance of someone, you observe their face, the intonation of their voice while speaking, and their kind of dress. Differences between the comunarios of the locality are also noted: that some people have round faces (muruq iñnaqani), which they associate with those who used to speak Uru, while others have long faces (sayt’u iñnaqani), which they associate with speakers of Aymara and Quechua. Then Quechua speakers are distinguished from Aymara speakers by the shh sound in their speech. It is common in these commentaries to remark on the origins of some inhabitants in Uru-​speaking pueblos, especially among older people who can still remember their recent interactions with the inhabitants of Lake Poopó, where they went in search of dried fish in exchange for freeze-​dried potatoes (chuñu) and other highland products. Don Tiburcio Maraza, from the Maraza family of Livichuco, offered us a linguistic interpretation about this kind of first ancestor: My grandparents said we used to speak Uru. This pueblo of Qaqachaka used to speak Uru; here in our very pueblo it used to be Uru. They talked Uru. We would have spoken Uru. Then we just forgot it. They say that until now the Chipayas braid their hair. And they speak Chipaya, they say. We didn’t speak it well, they say. We spoke more Aymara and Quechua. And Uru. Now we speak just Aymara and Quechua.

These commentaries accord with the information registered in the census of 1570 by Pedro de Zárate, where it specifies that the province of Paria had 70 percent of Uru speakers and only 30  percent of Aymara speakers. And although Condocondo and its immediate surroundings had a majority of Aymara speakers, the shores to the east and south of Lake Poopó were settled by speakers of Uru-​Chipaya.

The Arrival of the Inkas

Other commentaries by the Qaqachaka grandparents refer to the Inka presence in the region, and the fact that some families who inhabit the “annex” are descendants of the Inkas. In colonial documents, the Qaqachakas are often said to have been the “warriors of the Inka” (Arnold and Hastorf 2008, 41). Moreover, there is talk in some tales about

46 The Oral History of Qaqachaka

the arrival in the region in the distant past of the Inka’s daughters to get married to the original inhabitants. As if to confirm these possibilities, some folks point out the ruins of Inka burials in the rural hamlet of Phari Pampa and the Inka burials that have been found in the very pueblo of Qaqachaka (Arnold with Yapita 2006, 179).

The Original Place Called “Qaqachika” and its Mountains

Local toponyms figure throughout these commentaries. Our first queries to Don Franco Quispe about Qaqachaka’s origins were the following: Where did the first ancestors of Qaqachaka come from? How did they get there? And, how did the place come to be called “Qaqachaka”? In reply, Don Franco explained to us that the place was originally called “Qaqachika,” derived from the Quechua qaqa, “rock” and chika, “a promontory,” because the pueblo was situated on a sandy promontory between two rivers: It’s a rocky place, that’s why it’s called Qaqa. The water comes from both sides; to one side of the pueblo which is a cliff-​face and also on the other. Potosí was always Quechua from before. Chika is like churu in Quechua, in the form of a “V.” It’s because the water comes from both sides. So the rural hamlet was called Qaqa. Now [in 1989] it’s the cantón of Qaqachika.

According to Don Franco, the place of Qaqachika was surrounded by high mountains, which formed its territorial limits. In the Time of the Inka, these mountains were persons, and had sexual relations between themselves. Each mountain had its sexual parts, an idea that the Evangelist preachers began to destroy systematically in the decade of the 1980s: Qaqachika is to this side of Mount Turu, and the other side is Condo. With respect to Mount Jujchu, from the river it’s Qaqa, and lower down it’s Condo. In the Time of the Inka, Jujchu was a woman, they say, and Asanaque was a man. Uritaqa Hill was also a man. And they fought over the woman, they say, over Jujchu. As a result, Asanaque and Uritaqa castrated Turu, they say. That’s why Turu is castrated, and that’s why his balls are (chucked) here and there. One stone is just small, and used to be over towards Japo. The other one is in Lip’ich Pampa. But they (the Evangelists) took them … Where can they be? I’ve seen the one near Japo with my own eyes. I’ve tried to lift it and it was really heavy. When it fell back down to the ground, it used to ring “Chinn …,” like iron. They say they’d castrated each other, the mountains did. In Japo there’s a small place where they make offerings (liwaña). Those who make offerings there are from Arriba; it’s the leader or jilanqu from ayllu Arriba. He goes to put the offerings there … I don’t know if the women still offer libations to Turu’s testicles.

Another important place is Aywir Qala (Stones that Move). Among us peasant farmers there are always inheritances, of sheep, llamas, and cattle, whatever we have. We give this inheritance to the girl children. And the mountain had given an inheritance in just the same, they say. They gave the inheritance to Mount Jujchu, in order to marry Mount Turu. But the light of day found them out, they say. That’s why a part of the animals had been left there in this place called Aywir Qala, they say. So, there are huge stones, like cattle, and donkeys … and some of these had gone further up Mount Turu. That’s why they’re called “Turu’s and Jujchu’s Stones that Move.” So, among the mountains they’d

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given inheritances too. But the day found them out. They’d given the inheritance at night, but the day found them out. And that’s why they’d left a part of it behind there, they say.

Mount Turu used to beat up Jujchu, too, being jealous over his rival Uritaqa, and a lot of blood ran out. That’s why the woman mountain has a lot of blood, and a lot of water flows down from there. Mount Jujchu also used to get angry. She got angry and hit Mount Uritaqa on the back. And then Turu gave Uritaqa a kick, they say. Fighting between themselves over Jujchu. Mount Turu gave a kick to that huge mountain Uritaqa, and that’s why it’s dented (miq’asji). Afterwards, they say that Uritaqa castrated him, Turu, in anger … Between mountains.

The stones called Aywir Qala, as highly important ritual sites or wak’as of the place, gave origin to the local animal herds, and the women remember them in their songs to the animals (Arnold and Yapita 1998a, ­chapter 3).

The First Cycle of Tales: In Which the Place of Qaqachika is Formed in a Sunless Twilight

The most elaborated oral history of Qaqachaka we heard was told to us by Don Franco Quispe Maraza on one long night in November of 1989. Don Franco died a short while afterwards. He was a “wise-​one” (yatiri) and one of the few “empowered-​ones” (apoderado) or “title-​bearers” (titul q’ipi) that still lived in the region in those years. The local people considered him a distinguished narrator of the Tales of Before. But although Don Franco mentioned to us in passing evidence about the presence in the region of the Chullpa people and the Inkas, his interest was focused on the later period, when Qaqachaka emerged as a pueblo in its own right. The tales of Don Franco reveal his capacity to remember the local oral tradition transmitted by other historians from previous generations, and to record the content of the written documents of the ayllu in his possession. Don Franco’s own genealogy, as part of the Quispe family on his father’s side, and from the Maraza family on his mother’s side, contributed to his interest in recording the history of these two families in particular, although he was also a descendant of the Ayca family, which he mentioned in passing. From the way Don Franco structured the episodes of his tales, emerge two canonical cycles that are quite distinct. I shall sketch first what is behind this conceptual division in local oral history as narrated by Don Franco, taking up some of the theoretical threads already laid down in the introduction, before passing on to my commentaries about these. In the first cycle of tales, Don Franco resorts assiduously to the evidence presented in the historical documents of the place to which he had access. At the same time, his interpretation of this documented history must have been influenced by the vicissitudes of his own life there, combined with the external influences that Don Franco lived as an empowered-​one:  in the litigations in which he had struggled against the lawyers of the region, in the political debates of his colleagues with the Aymara and Quechua intellectuals of his generation, whether other empowered-​ones or members of organizations such as the Taller de Historia Oral Andina (THOA), or else in the religious debates he had heard in his wanderings.

48 The Oral History of Qaqachaka

Above all, these cycles of tales by Don Franco focus on the consolidation of the place of Qaqachaka in the Colony (The Time of the Spanish). Through the emphasis he gives, Don Franco interprets this history in terms of the demands of a long colonial process of negotiations for the recognition of Qaqachaka identity. First, there is the struggle to recognize Qaqachaka as a territory, which we examine in the present chapter and the two following chapters of Part I of this book, with some clarifications following in Part II. Then there is the struggle for its recognition as a properly Christian community, which we examine in Part III. These two criteria characterize the juridical aspects of the colonial (and republican) documents in his possession, which the empowered-​ones scrutinized constantly to consider if the decisions with respect to these were just or not. Don Franco does not mention in his narratives the juridical sources behind each step in these administrative struggles, but in our later contextualization of these tales we identified, in many written archives of the period (memoriales, disposiciones, cédulas, legajos, cartas or expedientes), the juridical keys that determined the setting out point of each event narrated by him. These juridical key points called my attention, although they were hidden within the narrative. My interpretation of their importance is that they deal with a common civilizational modality for both the Spanish and Andeans, of privileging the written sources that determine later actions. By understanding written Spanish law as extensions of Inka quipus, and, besides, as the ontological equivalents of wrapped trophy heads, we are dealing with a symbolical juridical corpus, which is, at the same time, generative. It is from this generative source that a set of generic “babies” (wawa) could emerge, this time in the imagination, in those historical personages that figure in the oral narratives derived from the written supports as dramatis personae. In essence, the historical negotiations based on these juridical supports sought the mutual recognition of Qaqachaka as part of a new Spanish colony by both the colonial powers and the local population, and the juridical conditions to accomplish these norms of acceptance, according to a Spanish legal corpus developed to be applied in the “West Indies” (Indias Occidentales), the early name for the Americas. This juridical process must be understood within the wider post-​Conquest problem of the Spanish administration of how to govern a majority Andean population. In practice, the Spanish themselves sought to administer the territories and populations under their dominion in a kind of pax hispánica, validated under the Ordenanzas of Felipe II, emitted in 1573 (although a part of this had already been mandated by the Virrey Toledo in 1568 to incorporate in the later Toledan Reforms). These Ordenanzas stipulated the transition from a bellicose period of “discovery and conquest” for the American territories to a distinct period of pacification and evangelization of the local populations. In order to achieve this transition, the Spanish had to recognize certain aspects of the pre-​Hispanic societies of the region. On their side, the local populations began to fulfil slowly the requirements demanded to achieve the new juridical status, but according to their own ways of understanding their incorporation into the colonial system, taking into account all that had already preceded the Hispanic Colony, including the recent social memories of an Inka presence in the region. At the heart of this round of negotiations we find the declaration of Qaqachaka, in the Toledan Reforms, as an ecclesiastical “annex” of the reduction town and doctrinal

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capital of San Pedro de Condo. That pueblo had been founded on June 29, 1571, by Pedro de Zárate, as an ecclesiastical administrative centre with its respective ecclesiastical jurisdiction, to complement the wider political division of the repartimiento (repartition) of the Quillacas-​Asanaques (Miranda 1583, 139).1 The Aymara toponym for the reduction town was Quntuquntu, a “rocky promontory,” in which the reduplication of the term emphasizes the quantity of rocky undulations. The pueblo of Condocondo (or simply Condo) is situated thirty kilometres south-​east of Qaqachaka. The political organization of the reduction town of Condo regrouped under its dominion several ayllus that had previously belonged to the Quillacas-​ Asanaque Federation. So the names of some of the ayllus left under its jurisdiction were shared with their counterparts in Qaqachaka and other annexes of the period, already divided between the moieties of anansaya (above) and of urinsaya (below). It is still common to hear reference in Qaqachaka to the ecclesiastical term “annex” (as in Doña Lucía’s account), although there is a certain play between the Aymara form of aniju and another term, añiju, from the Spanish añejo, as something ancient. From the indications in the written archives about these events, it is probable that the date of founding the “Vice Parrish of Cacachaca” as a “pueblo de indios” in its own right was the result of the same visit by Pedro de Zárate, around 1571. In his descriptions of the founding of Qaqachaka as a pueblo, Don Franco does not propose an “ethnogenesis” of the place, in the sense of forging something totally new, as Abercrombie would have it (1998) in his history of the neighbouring annex of K’ulta.2 In Abercrombie’s interpretations of the colonial administrative struggles, the result was a series of “postcolonial” socio-​cultural configurations quite different from what had gone before. But, in Don Franco’s narratives about Qaqachaka, we are dealing in those periods of transition with a search, by the regional populations, for continuities with the period immediately before, the Time of the Inka, now transformed into the new setting (cf. Voss 2015). Hence a more appropriate term for the result of these administrative struggles might be “transformations” or even a “metamorphosis” of what had gone before. This predisposition by the regional populations to be concerned with “transformations” rather than an act of creation ex nihilo coincides much better with ethnographic observations about other Amerindian populations in the Continent (Viveiros 1998, 2004a; Santos-​Granero 2009, 4–​5). In our case, the narratives of Don Franco give attention to the ritual and juridical transformations in the early colonial period, not from nothing, but in constant negotiations with the Colonial State. This is why, in the first cycle of oral history by Don Franco Quispe, it is possible to identify in the reaction of the local population to colonial imposition, a certain fear of being dependent on the Spanish as tribute payers, sources of manual labour, and of merchandise (above all agricultural products) by way of force and pillage. Faced with this fear, Don Franco stresses how the ancestors of Qaqachaka began to struggle for the 1 Cited in Espinoza Soriano (1981a, 217).

2 See also Dillon and Abercrombie (1988, 51).

50 The Oral History of Qaqachaka

consolidation of the place as a socio-​territorial entity with well-​defined limits, and relative stability in juridical and political terms, but with its continuities to the former socio-​ political configuration. The problem was that the struggle for this consolidation set them in constant negotiation with the Spanish Crown and Church during centuries. In the Spanish counterpart of these negotiations, the Hispanic administration also sought continuities with its previous experiences. Deriving from the Roman and then the Moorish occupation of the Peninsula, an accumulated history of multiple tendencies, with its origins in Roman and Arab law, already influenced the colonial institutions we know: the marca, municipio, cabildo, cantón, comuna, and a large part of the system of political authorities (alcalde, alférez) and their forms of inheritance or election. In the Colony, these multiple influences were introduced into the ayllus of the Andes, although now we tend to perceive these as singularly “Spanish” in origin. The Spanish juridical framework in these negotiations was likewise the fulfilment of a series of conditions. To guarantee agricultural and herding production in the conquered territories, the Spanish administration formed a political and economic structure of local capitals (cabeceras), through the new pueblos de reducción, surrounded by other lesser pueblos subject to them, designated with the juridical status of pueblo de indios, under the direct control of a cacique or governor (gobernador) of this local capital. In fact, this new political structuring was much more ancient than its application in the Andes, already dating to 1533 in Mexico, in the norms decreed by the Consejo de Indias (Menegus 1992, 83). As in Mexico, these early decrees tended to take the pre-​ established political units, in this case the ayllus of Quillacas-​Asanaque, as their point of reference for the new population nuclei declared as cabeceras or principal pueblos, with their dependent lesser pueblos, a feature that suggests there had been a similar political structuring of chiefdoms dominating their subject groups in the precolonial period (Álvarez 2003, 116; Zagalsky 2012, 27). Under this new regime, the status of the new pueblos de indios already formed part of royal patrimony, but still without certification, only with rights of usufruct to land. However, with the dramatic fall in the regional population in the following decades, the Spanish Crown began to take measures to revise the rights in play. In 1568, the situation was remedied in the badlands (tierras baldías) furthest away (with their rural hamlets or estancias, pastures and small cultivated plots, as in the case of Qaqachaka), which had not already been conceded to particular places or persons (Álvarez 2003, 117–​18), whose smaller settled groupings received the name of rancherías (2003, 126)  or ranchos, the name still used in the region today. Only with the emission decades afterwards, in 1591, of the cédulas de composición, were the royal norms of patrimony over these lands returned (Menegus 1999, 118). So, although Qaqachaka was formalized as a pueblo de indios, and its inhabitants as tributaries of goods and services under certain norms, nevertheless the tributary exactions could not be controlled effectively until much later, in the sixteenth century, in a new juridical context in which the Spanish began to study and modify the previous tributary systems. The scope of these new colonial administrative norms was immense. They were directed at regrouping regional populations and modifying the system of political

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power and of the political authorities in these new groupings, to facilitate administrative processes in general, and agricultural production in particular. In addition, they facilitated access to the manual labour of these populations in the service called mit’a, in the mines of Potosí and, at the same time, access to an adequate provision of grains and other supplies destined for the populations working in the mines, hence the Colonial State’s interest in places, such as Qaqachaka, for sowing wheat throughout the region. As in Mexico, the colonial mit’a as a generalized form of tribute, which Don Franco mentions once and again in his narratives, covered not only the mit’a of manual labour in the mines, but, as the Bolivian sociologist Alber Quispe shows (2016, 8–​9), the religious and political (or ecclesiastical) mit’a managed by the new regional authorities, and, added to this, the agricultural mit’a related to agricultural and herding production in the new repartimientos (cf. Álvarez 2003, 133 ff.). In the Aymara and Quechua colonial vocabularies, mit’a refers to criteria of temporality (when a particular task must be carried out), and to the rotating turns in the organization of these tasks (Quispe 2016, 8n3).

The Second Cycle of Tales, Concerned with the Religious and Political Mit’a

Turning now to the historical significance of Don Franco’s second canonical cycle of tales, this deals more with the regional replies to the conditions stipulated by the Spanish for the religious and political mit’a, rather than the mining mit’a. Here, Don Franco goes on to describe the second stage of the process of colonial transformations, when the pueblo de indios of Qaqachaka, as a properly Christian community, finally achieved its juridical status as a cantón. In order to achieve this status, Don Franco explains how the original ayllu ancestors were obliged to collect in a single place all their gods (the nominally Catholic male and female saints) to then house them in the new colonial church constructed in the plaza of the main pueblo. In his tales about the spiritual ideas and practices of Qaqachaka directed towards justifying their new juridical status, Don Franco introduces us to Tata Quri, Qaqachaka’s patron saint, and to his relations with the other local saints. Moreover, Don Franco gives attention to the ritual transformations of the local landscape, as a way of accenting the fulfilment of the religious practices that would justify Qaqachaka’s new status as a properly Christian community, in an ecclesiastical “annex” of the doctrinal capital of Condocondo. In the first episodes of the second cycle, his narratives are directed at the more general practices of possession of the territory as a whole, then he proceeds to the process of marking the boundary stones at each limit, and finally to taking possession of the land of the central plaza and the principal church with its two towers. In this second cycle of Don Franco’s narratives, as in the first cycle, the religious transformations in the evangelization of Qaqachaka towards Catholicism signal important continuities with the previous period. The colonial plaza is organized ritually around a collection of trophy heads sited strategically (Arnold and Hastorf 2008, 126). The church niches that house the saints have certain similarities to the leather

52 The Oral History of Qaqachaka

chests of the title-​bearers that housed the quipus, and formerly trophy heads, and later on the written archives of colonial documents. Just as notable is the fact that the ecclesial niches have certain resonances with the mountain chests when sacrificial offerings were interred, in the hope that their processes of decomposition would generate a new cycle of rains. In developing later sections of the book, I explore the idea that the new Catholic church doubled as a chullpa tower, a place which housed the ancestral Chullpa-​mummies (Arnold 1996). My argument is that these new generative spaces associated with the colonial church produced their own harvest of generic “babies,” in the local child-​saints and in the imagined oral narratives about the journeys of this collection of saints, from their places of origin to the church of Qaqachaka. In both cycles of tales, another key factor in Don Franco’s exegesis is the cumulative process of constructing in the colonial period the place of Qaqachaka, its buildings and institutions, and of legitimizing them through the work in solidarity between the members of the minor ayllus that composed the locality. Far from conventional official histories about cultural heroes and their great deeds, as the actions of individuals, Don Franco stresses the relationality between the ancestors as personages and their surroundings. Although the lives of these personages might be described individually, their deeds are constantly directed towards the establishment and continuity of the place for a more collective benefit. We are in the sphere of Amerindian relational ontologies, in which the notions of a person and their gender are constructed gradually through their “social acts,” instead of being perceived as “natural facts” (Harvey 1998; Course 2010; De Munter 2016). Faced with these colonial administrative demands, Don Franco organizes his oral history of Qaqachaka according to properly Andean schemes of time, which begin with the transitional period between the former dark times (ch’amak timpu) and the later birth of the Sun. This historiographic operation permits Don Franco to obviate the subordination of the events to the new Spanish concept of time. It also permits him to propose a series of properly Andean replies to the demands of the new Colonial State, founded on a metahistorical scheme of a region directed at the new colonial processes. In these processes, the local populations figure as the primary social actors, who propel with their own agency the key actions of possessing and founding the new pueblo de indios. Don Franco describes how, in this liminal moment between darkness and the birth of solar light, the ancestors paid an immense sum of money to the Colonial State in order to buy the ayllu lands, and how they perceived the “pot of gold and silver” of that section, as the original source of their rights to the Qaqachaka annex and its lands in perpetuity. Don Franco’s narrative underlines the fact that the Qaqachakas of that epoch perceived their rights of usufruct to the pueblo and its lands, and their continuity in time, as part of a binding agreement between themselves and the Colonial State, guaranteed in perpetuity. Tristan Platt (1982, 40–​41) and others have called this kind of agreement an “Andean pact” or “pact of reciprocity,” although the adequacy of this essentially Polanyian vocabulary to the Andes has been debated a great deal. But rather than alluding to any universal norm regarding political pacts, Don Franco draws out in

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his narrative the generative power of gold and silver used for the purchase of the place as characteristic elements found in the earth itself. We are dealing of course with the products of an important mining region of the Andes, in which the local mines of gold and silver, tin and antimony, are understood within the ramifying mineral veins of the much greater mines of the region, of Colquechaca, Llallagua, Uncía, and more importantly still, of the Red Mountain of Potosí, where the colonial extraction of silver began in 1545. An important part of this pact, according to Don Franco, was the service of these ancestors as mitayos in the Red Mountain of Potosí, as their reply to the Spanish demands of the mining mit’a, a point I shall return to later. Here we have a key to interpreting the local meaning of Don Franco’s tales as part of the “myths of civilizational transformation” between the former dark epoch of the Chullpas and the new solar epoch of the Spanish. It is in this liminal space where the Qaqachakas had been able to re-​inscribe their own identity and agency, although other tales suggest it is equally plausible that this civilizational strategy simply replicated what regional populations had done in previous centuries to accommodate themselves to the Inka occupation. So in spite of all the ideological apparatus of the colonial administration, and the forced process of ecclesiastical indoctrination of regional populations, the interpretative voice of Don Franco presents the personages and events of local history from his own perspective and his own interests, to demonstrate the success of these constant negotiations between the local people and the Colonial State.

Various Ancestors, Various Origins

Qaqachaka’s origins, in the narratives of Don Franco, are multiple and not singular. Similarly, each version of these origins alludes to distinct ancestors and their role in these primordial events. As his way of defining these different origins, Don Franco distinguishes between these distinct kinds of ancestors. For Don Franco, some of the original inhabitants of the place date from the Time of the Gentiles, when “Qaqachika” (as he calls it) was still a rural hamlet of Pukuwata and part of the neighbouring province of Chayanta: In the Time of the Inka, Qaqachika was no more than a ranch of Pukuwata, in Potosí. Only the Pukuwatas and Laymis lived there, one or another of them, all mixed up with each other. There was a dearth of people. Indeed, there were chullpa tombs where the houses are now (between the two rivers of Qaqachika). At the entrance to Japo, over to this side, there’s a corner called Axarata. They say this belonged to Pukuwata. It used to be a walled enclosure of Pukuwata, they say … There were no people in Qaqachika, just Laymis and Pukuwatas, one and another. People were scarce even in the Time of the Spanish (Ispañul Timpu).

Don Franco named other ancestors who were natives of the place as “Inkas.” They had come down from the highest mountain of Qaqachika, Turu, to populate the land, giving origin to the predecessors of the maternal family of Don Franco, the Inca Maraza, to this day important mallkus and title bearers of the place: The Inca Marazas had come down from Great Mount Turu, from there, converted into people from Inkas. Three small ones came down from that mountain. They were short,

54 The Oral History of Qaqachaka

wearing almillas (woven dresses) of a yellow colour. They’d come down wearing yellow clothes. Only then did they change into the folks called Inca Maraza. This family exists until today.

It is common among the local people to comment about their overdresses being yellow in the distant past, before becoming a dark blue in later periods, and then black in the present. Apart from these first Chullpa and Inka inhabitants, Don Franco told us how Qaqachika had been founded by seven ancestors, whom he characterizes as “great thinkers” (wali p’iqinaka). Among them was a wise-​one (yatiri), a lawyer (tuktura), a priest (tata kura) and some rich ones (qapaqa), in the three Llanquepacha ancestors, rich from working the local gold mines, in reality people who had come to Qaqachika from different places in the neighbouring ayllu of Condo (Quntu): First of all the seven grandfathers settled themselves here. The first was Llanquepacha. There were three Llanquepacha: one was called Juancito, another was called Lucas, and the other I don’t remember. One was a traditional healer who cured people, another was a lawyer or “doctor,” and the third was a priest. Those had established themselves here.

Then Don Franco described how these forefathers planned the “purchase” of Qaqachika as a hacienda, following the colonial norms of sale for private properties: “Let’s buy a hacienda,” they said. They say that Llanquepacha had a gold mine (uru qhuya) in Asanaque. They say he used to have a gold mine. He was really rich of course, he was qapaqalla: “Dammit, we’ll buy the place called Qaqachika,” they’d said.

It was always called Qaqachika, because it was a rocky place. It was a small ranch with just two houses. It was a ranch of Pukuwata. “Dammit, let’s buy a hacienda,” this Llanquepacha had said. Among the campesinos there are always rich individuals. They have animals, silver, money … and they work hard for the silver.

Yet immediately afterwards, Don Franco introduced another very different version about the origins of the place, that Qaqachaka, instead of becoming a hacienda bought by some rich individuals as part of the colonial system of greed and exploitation, became a free community. This happened when the ancestors of the place opted for the possibility of “purchasing” the lands of the place as a community of Indians: That place was bought by them [the Pukuwatas] with an arroba of gold and an arroba of palana [an ancient form of minted peso], an arroba of white silver and an arroba of white gold. They’d come from Asanaque in the Time of the Inka. And they say that this was a rancho in the Department of Potosí.

There is a certain doubt in Don Franco’s tales about the price paid for the place, as the use of the term palana in this episode is not clear. A palo was a million pesos and an arroba weighed twenty-​five pounds. However, in other versions of the same tale by other narrators, Qaqachaka was bought for an arroba of white silver (janq’u qullqi), and an arroba of white gold and silver (janq’u qullqi quri).

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Qaqachaka is Born from Money, for a Pot of Gold and Silver

These alternative origins, when Qaqachaka is born “from money,” happen in what Don Franco calls the “purchase” of lands by the ancestors of the place. This purchase seems to refer to the colonial “composición” of lands, the immediate result of a royal cédula of 1591, whose value was measured against the manual labour available in these lands (Luque Torres 2002). Under the Inkas, there had already been an administrative link between a territory and the available manual labour. But the new modality of the composición now combined the issues of lands and the available manual labour in them in order to calculate the “value” of the purchase. Here, the financial interests of the Spanish were paramount. The cédula of 1591 was devised under a colonial regime concerned with the economic necessities of the royal exchequer. The Crown had already become financially bankrupt in 1557 and 1575, with continuing problems in the decade immediately before 1591 (Solano 1976, 649; Assadourian 2005–​2006). Despite these financial worries, the body of Indian Law (Derecho Indiano) still recognized the modalities of possession of Andean lands before the arrival of the Spanish, when the Indian nobles had their lands and the comunidades de indios had access to communal property. With the Conquest, following Roman tradition, all lands conquered were considered property of the monarch, and the titles of property, whether of the European settlers or the Indians themselves, should derive from royal concessions (Luque Torres 2002). But regarding the pre-​Conquest period, thanks to the protection that this law conferred, and the resistance that opposed any dispossession, the Crown recognized the legitimacy of property previous to the Conquest, so the pueblos de indios could retain their communal properties.3 As in other legal instances, the juridical origins of these recognitions, by the Spanish Crown, had already been calculated in the first decades of the Conquest, initially with reference to the altepetl of the Aztecs and other Mesoamerican pueblos. In the Andes, the Spanish Crown proceeded according to a series of dispositions that resorted to these antecedents, each one with a distinct emphasis, which it is worth mentioning in order to understand better the issues in play. In the early Colony, there were still various modalities for the distribution of lands. But, by the second half of the sixteenth century, two factors influenced the situation: the valuation of land and the economic necessities of the royal exchequer, which I  have already mentioned. For Fernando Mayorga (2002), this supposed the coexistence of two systems: “sale” (venta) done by public auction, with adjudication in favour of the highest

3 In the instructions imparted to the conquistadores, it was made clear that there should not be a repartition to the peninsulares of Indian land, and that their estancias should be sited far from the pueblos of the naturales, to avoid their cattle damaging the cultivated land. The laws 7, 9, 12, 16, 17, 18 and 19 of title 12, book 4 and the laws 8 and 20 of title 3, book 6 of the Recopilación, refer to the protection of the lands of the naturales whether as individual property (of the caciques) or communal property (of the communities). In parallel, the laws that regulated the regime of encomiendas specified that the rights of the encomendero should be limited to earning tribute, but under no circumstance could he dispose of his land.

56 The Oral History of Qaqachaka

bidder in those zones where there were interested parties, and “mercy” (merced), with its predominant interest in fixing the new centres of population (in frontier zones or else coastal regions menaced by enemy disembarkations). I described how the ordenanzas of population by Felipe II, in 1573, established the politics of Indian settlement, during the transition from the violent period of Conquest to that of pacification and evangelization of the regional populations (which began in practice in 1560), by combining the norms of justice and Christian morality with the political and economic interests of how to administer the Colony.4 These norms applied to constructing buildings, cultivating land (in agrarian production) and the rearing of cattle (in pasturing production). By accomplishing the requirements demanded in these norms, any dominion could remain perfect and its title holder could dispose of the land as its owner, to sell it, rent it out, mortgage it, bequeath it, and so on. In theory, the spirit of administering settlements between 1573 and 1596 was directed at populating the lands of the Andes, with attention to the founding of controllable populations in an ordered and regulated way. However, in practice, the policies of acquisition of lands favoured the dispossession of agricultural properties, in spite of the vigilance of the royal authorities. Faced with this precarious oscillation between possession and dispossession, the royal cédula of Felipe II, in 1578, ordered the devolution of lands taken from the Indians, in virtue of the fact that these were “vassals” and not “serfs.” The later royal cédula, of 1591, expanded the conditions of the purchase or “composición” of lands,5 when dealing with royal concessions of lands in the Andes, whether as individual or collective property. Individual property consisted in the recompense conceded by the Spanish Crown to those individuals who had given military services during the Conquest, to miners, to governmental functionaries and to persons close to them. These Spanish properties were constituted from the donations (or mercedes) made by the Crown to the conquistadores as payment for their services. Collective property referred to that which belonged to the pueblos de indios, including pastures, woods and waters. Perhaps it was the clause in this cédula in favour of “the miners” that encouraged the Qaqachaka ancestors, as individuals, to opt for serving as mitayos in Potosí, and so “gain” the lands of the place, instead of presenting themselves as a community of Indians. Nonetheless, despite the juridical attention to these new norms, in essence the purchase or composition of lands viewed the lands in conquered territories as a kind of “royalty” (regalía) (España 2005, 48). And it presupposed the legalization of royal lands (tierras realengas) on the margin of those determined by laws already in force. So why did the comunidades de indios have to purchase lands that were already theirs? In practice, the norms in play included various categories of land holders: those who had occupied land without any title deed (the comunidades de indios), those who had extended their land further than the limits fixed in their title deeds, those who had received 4 See Milagros (1985).

5 This cédula formed part of a set of 600 dispositions re-​compiled and re-​ordered by Diego de Encinas and presented in 1595, see also the cédula of 1578, vol. 1, 68.

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donations or mercedes from functionaries or institutions not enabled to do so, and those who had not yet confirmed those lands received from the local authorities. In this context, the royal cédula of 1591, in its concern for the proper composición de tierras, ordered that all land holders present the corresponding titles to the authorities, so that procedures could be made against improper occupants, obliging them to return their ill-​gotten gains, or to pay a moderate cost (that is, the composición) (Mayorga 2002d). In practice, the composición was a juridical construct by means of which situations at the margin of the law could be regulated through a payment to the Real Hacienda. In this aspect, it was yet another mechanism of negotiation, pact or representation between the sovereign and his subjects, in which the two parts supposedly benefited as a result, since the vassal corrected his irregular condition and obtained a legal guarantee, while the Crown was favoured by the corresponding monetary contribution. The argument of Carrera Quezada (2015, 31–​32) is that the composición made a de facto situation, produced outside or against the law, into a legal one. In the case of royal lands (tierras realengas), the composición was not an originary title of property, as were the instances of donation (merced) or royal grace (gracia real), but a juridical act through which an illegal situation was converted into a legal one, generating yet another kind of title that protected the right of the possessor, and conceding to them absolute dominion. In addition, this legal construct discharged all the absences, defects, and vices that documents about property could present. From then onwards, the composición became the preferred form of land acquisition. Whoever wanted land could occupy it, denounce the fact to the authorities, pay the costs demanded by Crown property (realengo) and in tax, and after a fixed payment, obtain the title of the property. This was the strategy adopted by the first “boundary markers” (linderos) of Qaqachaka, which we shall examine in the following episodes by Don Franco. From the point of view of the Crown, an important aspect of the composición de tierras was the defence and vigilance over Indian or community lands, combined with the guarantee of sufficient tribute (Campos Harriet 1981, 69). Thus, it was the task of the visiting judges (oidores-​visitadores) of the seventeenth century, in our case the Visiting Judge and Inspector Don José Alvarado de la Vega, not just to adjudicate the lands, but to enquire if the communities now enjoyed sufficient lands for their maintenance (manutención) and for their possibilities to make the tribute payments. The next step was to protect the Indians already reduced onto the lands they possessed (or expand these if it was considered necessary) and then trace with the greatest exactitude possible the limits of these community lands, and so put the naturales into the “quiet and pacific” possession of the same. Overall, these communal lands included three sub parts, all directed at agricultural and herding production: first the reservation (or resguardo properly speaking, a term expanded to cover the totality of common lands) that must be shared between the members of the group; second, the paddocks (or potrero) destined for the rearing of cattle, and third, the community’s arable lands (labranza de comunidad), worked in common through turns of obligatory rotation, whose product should be donated to a hospital, a place to help the poor, widows and orphans, and the maintenance of worship.

58 The Oral History of Qaqachaka

The Indians were to be preferred as occupants “in the first place” in order that their lands should be “together and contiguous” with their pueblo and church, without the presence of the Spanish or other ethnic groups. This wider juridical context dovetails neatly with these episodes of Don Franco, of how the territory of Qaqachaka was purchased from the neighbouring ayllu of Pukuwata, to which it belonged previously, through a “financial risk,” organized by some professionals and their wives from another ayllu, that of Condocondo. In Don Franco’s description these ancestors purchased Qaqachaka with an immense sum of gold and silver, and from that moment, power over Qaqachaka was transferred from one administrative centre to another. Now to the details of these narratives.

Chapter 3

THE MIT’A, THE MINES, AND SLAVERY

… when some mita Captain goes off to Potosí, it’s with the accompaniment of their Indians dressed for war, with their ancient arms and the gallant-​ones with their feathers …

Ramírez del Águila ([1639] 1978, 131)

… put to work, they carry it out with so much pleasure and laughing as if they were making festivities.

([1639] 1978, 116)

For Don Franco,

the change from the purchase of Qaqachaka as a hacienda towards its purchase as part of the composition of lands occurred when the ancestor Llanquepacha and his associates opted to work as mitayos in the mines of Potosí, to guarantee legally their usufruct to the annex lands. The importance of the regional mines, whether of Potosí, Porco, Colquechaca or Uncía, in Qaqachaka’s history cannot be underestimated, as it forms the material basis of its existence as a fundamental part of its mythology.

The Vicuña with a Broken Leg

These mythical dimensions around the history of the mines emerge in another episode of Qaqachaka’s oral history, in which Don Franco described the origins of the mines of Colquechaca and Uncía. In this episode, the mine of Uncía was discovered when a vicuña broke its leg, while carrying a heavy cargo of minerals from Colquechaca in the service of its owner, the Lord of the Mountains. Like many other comunarios of the place, Don Franco affirmed the functioning, in the world inside the mountains under the dominion of this Lord, of a system of relations in parallel with those of this world on the surface of the earth. There, the vicuña serves as the llama of this Lord, the deer as his goat, the vizcacha as his donkey, the rough woven sacks used to carry the minerals as his toads, and the ropes that tied the sacks to the backs of the vicuñas as his snakes. In the tale, the broken leg of the vicuña anticipates this discovery of the new vein of minerals. It is as if these veins were the bone marrow of these animals, and besides, continuous channels of communication between the mountains and these beasts of burden. When the vicuña breaks his leg, this vein rises to the surface, to bestow its riches to those who work the mine. So this accident announces the fact that the vein of minerals in Colquechaca had become dried up, and that a new vein had opened up in Uncía: The mountains bring them loaded up from far away, from the mines to here. These are the vicuñas (wari). They carry them by night. Colquechaca is a wealthy mine. The vicuña

60 The Oral History of Qaqachaka brought them by night, the mountain peaks bring them, to Uncía. Well, as they were going along by night, they proclaimed “Wiw, waa, pasa pasa, wiw, waa …”

But then a vicuña broke its leg, in the place called Luwina.1 The leg of the vicuña had broken, up above Luwina, dammit …

“Bind it up, bind it up, dammit. Heal it, heal it.” All in the night. The mountain spoke like a person, it spoke as people do. In the morning the vicuña was dead. The vicuña was dead with his broken leg. It had been thrown aside there, tied up with a rope made of snake. It had broken its leg bringing (minerals) to Uncía. That’s why the Uncía mine exists, and why they work there. Colquechaca is worked less now. The metal wants to finish up now in that mine. The mountain always brings the minerals loaded up on vicuñas, but to other places. Then the metal appears again and it doesn’t dry up.

These Tíos of the mine wake up at the dark of the moon (jiwa) and the full moon (urt’a), and on those nights some people burn aromatic bittermint, and then the Tíos smell the offering.

Working as Mitayos

It is in this ritualized context of the mining underworld that the seven ancestors of Qaqachaka decided to work as mitayos, carrying out the appropriate rites on their journeys to the mines: Afterwards they just arrived there, Choquecallati and Inka Maraza. The Inca Marazas originated on Grandfather Mount Turu. Mateo Inca Maraza and Lujano Choque are the first (ancestors). Then there was Caricampo, who is from Pukuwata, with them.

So the seven grandfathers were Copacondo, Callacopa, and Choquechambi … and Apaza who is from down below, from Kuchänta (or Cochabamba) … This one appeared afterwards. Then Llanquepacha, with Ayca, Irunsata Choque, Sirqi, and the others who were the seven grandfathers, said:

“Heck, don’t let it be a hacienda. Rather we’ll take it over ourselves. We’ll work as mitayos, let’s serve as mitayos in the mountain of Potosí.” And so, they’d served there.

Don Franco’s tale gives us to understand that, first the professional ancestors and their wives had transferred their place of residence from their rural ranches in Condo to the territory of Qaqachaka, and then they set about obtaining the territory legally. As a personal commentary, it occurs to me that, in this episode by Don Franco, there is an underlying primordial distinction between the “ritual owners of the soil,” typified in the original descendants of the Chullpa-​Gentiles and the Inkas (and perhaps the natives of Condo), and the “invaders,” typified in the later group of outsiders, the Condo ancestors, who lived initially in the neighbouring ayllu. 1 The name might be Lawuna, a toponym in the neighbouring ayllu of Laymi.

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Above all, in this episode, Don Franco explained how a group of quite diverse persons from Condo obtained the territory of Qaqachaka legally, by satisfying the obligation of forced labour called mit’a in the mines of Potosí, working in the mountain entrails as mitayos (sirilu mit’ayus). It is common to present the colonial mining mit’a as if this demanded the manual labour of regional populations at the surface of the veins, working with crowbars as barreteros, when in fact these tasks were quite specialized, and the greater part of the mitayo manual labour was dedicated to the heavy transport of minerals and other secondary labours.2 It is also likely that they worked constructing the mining pits with strong palm wood poles, and lighting the lamps inside there with llama tallow, as we shall hear in other episodes.3 The great advantage of Don Franco’s oral history is that he contextualizes how the mitayos of the region went to Potosí heavily loaded themselves and their llamas, with everything they needed, including their kettles and spoons, and the immense quantities of barley beer (k’usa) they needed to make libations (ch’allas). Don Franco mentions in passing the sequence of actions of the first ancestors of the place, which define the two major cycles of his narratives, first that they are “working” the mines, and only then are they “with the saints and the cultivated plots …”: And that grandfather [Llanquepacha] went. Those seven grandfathers came from Condo, they’d come from the places called Chhullunkiyani [or Chhullunkani], Wisturi, and Tiyunqupa … over to the side of Condo. Those seven grandfathers had gained [Qaqachaka] in Potosí, as sirilu mit’ayu in the Potosí mine. The vein had appeared and the llama herders had seen it. They say the vein was entering at that point. They’d done the mit’a there, using palmwood poles and lighting candles. They’d done the mitayo in those times. Even I myself am handling a paper about this here, in my hamlet. They went with kettles and spoons, and lots of beer. Afterwards, they’d perforated the mine with the palmwood poles called chonta and they’d lit the candle wicks with llama tallow, just so, on small pieces of potsherd, using lighted kindling. They exploited the metal just with these. They served as mitayos, as an obligation.

Those from Pukuwata were there too. Some two of them remained and declared “I’m returning to Qaqachika.” They were working (the mines) and only then were they with the saints and the cultivated plots … “You’ll settle here, you’ll reside here, you’ll take over here.” And they dictated (an order) and ordered it so from Potosí. And they’d been sworn in.

2 Carrying this load was no mean feat, as the mitayos in the mines had to transport forty-​five kilograms in each sack of ore at a quota rate of twenty-​five sacks a day (Gil Montero 2011, 308).

3 In Don Franco’s oral history, there is no mention of the distinction between work in the mines or in the stamping mills (ingenios). Neither does Don Franco mention the number of persons who went, nor the ethnic composition of that group. In terms of the total of mitayos obliged in the first round of ordenanzas of Toledo to work not just in the mines of Potosí but also in supplying a workforce for the site of Porco, the Villa de Oropesa de Cochabamba, Berenguela, and the site of Oruro, this task fell hardest on the Uru population. For example, in the señorío of Don Juan Colque Guarache, although the proportion of tributaries from the Quillacas-​Asanaques was 2,145 Aymaras in relation to 400 Urus, however, of a total of 410 bound mitayos, 137 (or 6.34 percent) were Aymaras while 273 (or 68.25 percent) were Urus (Espinoza Soriano 1981a, 225).

62 The Oral History of Qaqachaka Afterwards, they’d taken over the place. But they (the other ones) nosed those Pukuwatas out of here, just as a pig does with its snout. “Get out,” they ordered them. After doing that, they’d given birth to Qaqachaka in the Department of Oruro … And then they’d confronted the Department of Potosí.

While Don Franco was emphatic about the moral correctness of the juridical aspect of these events, he took pains to describe the terrible conditions in the mines and the horrors of working inside there. He reiterates here the point of view of many other oral narratives we heard in Qaqachaka, that the lands had been gained by “slavery” (isklawismu). These are tales about the material origins of Qaqachaka, through the ancestral sweat and blood that had to flow. To justify the use of the term “slavery,” Don Franco stresses how, in those times, the q’aras (“whites”) killed the older workers considering them to be lazy, illiterate, and stupid, by hanging them from the horizontal beams of houses or by firing at them against the wall of a tower. Don Franco underscores here the problem of illiteracy among the mitayos in their new work place, and the dangers of committing a mistake from not having understood properly the instructions written on the walls of the mines: That’s why they obtained [the place] by law. They’d served as mitayos in Potosí. They brought everything by llama, (including) the groceries (pulpería). They brought whatever was unavailable, taking what they carried to Sucre, and they set up the pulperías (grocery stores) in Potosí with all those things. They’d worked the mines with poles, with instruments made of poles. They’d killed the lazy ones, hanging them by their legs from the horizontal house beams (called delantero), and also the old men … Because in those times some of them didn’t know how to read. I myself don’t know how to read …

And they would have had to work in Potosí, and in this work … Well, there was a tower. There, too, they’d killed people by firing at them, the bad q’aras, because they’d made a mistake while working there. Because in Potosí each one had his place of work, and they’d made a mistake through not having known how to read. Each one had their respective “street” and by mistake they’d entered the work place of someone else, “Crikey, why’ve you come in here? You’re a thief …” And they’d fired at them there, damn them, near the tower. They’d made them stand near the tower and they’d fired at them there … it’s written so in the papers … the q’aras. Because in those times there were really bad ones. And the people gave them the metal, just as they give them metal until today. So they took possession of here in that way. They’d given them a document from Potosí, “This is your paper, that’s how it is.” I myself have those papers I’ve given you of my own volition. Alberto too has a bundle wrapped up in a poncho.

Note the mention in passing in Don Franco’s previous episode that, after the moment of “purchase” of its lands, Qaqachaka was transferred “from the Department of Potosí to the Department of Oruro.” His notion of time here is difficult for us to understand. According to the historical documents in his possession, the purchase of Qaqachaka’s lands dates to the decade of 1640, when the provinces of Chayanta and Charcas already existed. The division of the region into departments occurred centuries later, with the

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founding of Bolivia in 1826, when the territory of the country was divided into its five departments including Potosí. The Department of Oruro was included only in a later process of inclusion, in the same year, through a Supreme Decree made by Marshal Sucre.

The Route to the Red Mountain of Potosí

Another aspect of the mit’a service in Don Franco’s tales is his description of the precise route the mitayos took on their journey to Potosí. He does this by remembering in order the toponyms named by the mitayos in the long series of libations they made before the voyage, according to the pathway of memory they recited to accompany the “guardian of the route” (mallku thakhi):4 The mitayos went to Potosí by their own particular route. They went by Qarach Quyllana (Scaly Hill), they went from there to Ch’isiraya Mit’ayu (Dispatching Place of the Mitayos). They went making libations. From Livichuco they went to Lip’ich Pampa (Leather Meadow), after to Lakut’ani Luma (Hairy Hill) and then to Wichhuta Q’awa (Straw-​ covered River). They always went via K’ulta and then by T’ula Jaraña (Untied Tola). Then they arrived in Potosí. They went to serve as mitayos by that route. They went together with those from Condo, with those from Uncía, Chullpa, Laymi, and Pukuwata too. Many people went from Qaqachaka. With K’ulta, Karankas, Salinas … they all went on service, they went as mitayos. For their part, those from Condo, when they went as mitayos, went via a place called Ch’allan Pampa (Libation Meadow). They met up there and made libations. When one went to Potosí one made libations. Then they’d built a pueblo there in that libating place and they’d announced “This shall be Challapata.” That’s why it’s called Challapata. That’s really why it’s Challapata.

They worked in their fields and then they went, in November. A  part of the commune (parti kumuna) left back here worked their lands for them, for those who went to work as mitayos. That’s how it was before. That’s where we were born as Bolivia. They worked as mitayos in the mines, saying “those who drink sea water” (lamar umt’asiri). Now it’s a proper miner’s life, and they have a pulpería and everything. Now they work for pay too, every day, paid daily. They worked for land before. All of them, from all over, they worked so that Bolivia could be born … in the Red Mountain of Potosí, with Kharikhari Mar Cerrillo Potosí. “Cerrillo mitayo” was when the mines appeared in Potosí.

They went before, in the time of the llama herders. It was still Peru. They went with those from Salinas and Urinuqa. And going with the llama caravans they’d seen a hidden vein (of minerals). “There’s the vein,” they said, and they set to working it. Then they’d asked among themselves, “Dammit, what shall we do now?”

Simón Bolívar and José Antonio Sucre thought about it … And we separated only then from Peru, and were born as Bolivia. They say the mines appeared in Potosí, and only then are we Bolivia. Bolivia was born from Potosí. Coins with the Potosí Mountain circulate until now.

Note the use by Don Franco in this episode of the term comuna, with reference to the “part of the commune” that worked the land of the absent mitayos. The use of comuna here might indicate the insertion of a modern-​day concept into a narrative from the past, 4 See also Abercrombie (1998) and Arnold, Jiménez, and Yapita (1992).

64 The Oral History of Qaqachaka

or it could be that the written documents that Don Franco cites orally had the same problem. But it is equally possible that comuna refers to something more revolutionary, a new modality of organizing the comunarios. In fact the history of the Spanish term comuna derives from the medieval municipality under the authority of a mayor (alcalde), and it is there that we find early data about such institutions. The medieval comuna was a unit of citizenship for the populations included within it. In the Hispanic-​Christian kingdoms, it was necessary to obtain a municipal certificate (called fueros or cartas pueblas) to guarantee basic rights in the municipality, for example that of organizing a market. In addition, membership of the comunas were commitments of mutual defence. So when a comuna was formed, all its participants gathered together and swore an oath in a public ceremony, promising to defend one another in times of calamity and to maintain peace among themselves. In this sense, the medieval comuna is similar to the ecclesiastical doctrine of peace (between clerics, warriors and campesinos) and to the notion of reciprocal obligation that came to form part of the so-​called “Andean pact.”5 In this way, the medieval term comuna or común (introduced into English as the “commons”) foresees the common assets and rights of populations organized collectively, especially of pueblos with a community of shared pastures. Remember that the Conquest of the Americas preceded by very little the “War of the Comunidades” (Guerra de las Comunidades) or the “Revolt of the Comuneros” (Revolución Comunera), of 1520–​ 1521, with their repercussions until 1530, of citizens organized against the control and abuse of royal power, and by the elites of the cities of Spain, notably in the Castile region. For the Spanish soldiers coming to the Andes, especially those from Castile, this was a recent memory. This revolutionary movement irrupted again shortly afterwards in Peru, around 1545, between Carlos I, King of Spain (or Carlos V of the Holy Roman Empire) and the leadership of Gonzalo Pizarro, mediated by the Licenciado Pedro de la Gasca. In that context, the term comunidades appears for the first time in a written protest to Carlos I apropos the deviation of taxes. In those same rebellious times, a comunero was someone who, during 1520 and 1521, participated in the anti-​señorial and anti-​fiscal revolt of the Comunidades of Castile, protesting against tributary pressure and the monopoly of commerce, and in favour of “free” cities. So already in the Siglo de Oro, the words comunero (adopted in the Andes as comunario) and comunidad were synonymous with rebellion (Pérez 1977, 2001). It is quite probable that Andean communities heard news of these revolutionary events, far from their immediate borders, and were inspired by them in their own demands to the Colonial State. Until today in the region, the term comuna is remembered in ritual language as the feminine protective entity kumuna tayka (the madre comuna or “mother commons”), which could herd together all the people of the place, and where the local food and waters could “attend” them, especially in the context of fiestas. 5 See also the analysis of “communitas” by the Italian philosopher Esposito ([1998] 2010).

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These events, considered by Marx as one of the first modern revolutions, had historical repercussions in distinct conjunctures, including those in the Americas. The Revolt of the Comuneros of Paraguay, in 1537, was an important precursor of the Wars of Independence. The Second Comunera Revolution of Paraguay, of 1649, pitting royal forces against the Jesuits and an army from the same region, ended with the expulsion of the Jesuits from the missions in Paraguay, with repercussions in the Audience of Charkas. A century later, in 1781, the Revolt of the Comuneros in Nueva Granada occurred simultaneously with the great revolts in the Andes. These included the rebellion led by Tupaq Amaru II in the region of Cusco, between 1780 and 1782, that led by Tomás Catari in the ayllu region, in 1781, which involved social actors from Condocondo and from Qaqachaka, and that led by Tupaq Catari in his siege of La Paz, in 1781. Mitayos and Llamas

Don Franco presents his own perception about the founding of Bolivia in this wider historical context. In his version, the initiative (or agency) for this founding act no longer derives from the great heroes of official history, but from the labouring bodies of the campesinos of the region in their role as miners serving in the Potosí mit’a, and above all from the muscle-​power of the caravans of llamas, carrying the victuals of the pulpería for the populations that worked the mines, and then the minerals, once extracted, down to the coast where they were embarked off to Europe. Don Franco’s version of this event deals with colonial history not as one more facet of Occidentalism, in which power is ceded to Western thought (Coronil 1998), but from another locus of enunciation (sensu Mignolo 2003), from the Andes and not from Europe: On llamas … iron bars, oil, coca, crow bars and picks were all brought on llamas; they brought everything from over to that side. They brought everything they had in the pulpería. Everything they had in the pulpería was carried by llamas that served the pulperías in this way.

That’s why the llama has land, by serving as mitayo. They brought things from Tacna (now in Peru). The llama is what brought them, coca, iron, oil, cotton, everything. They came by foot to Sucre, with llamas, and with bittermint to burn as offerings (q’uwachar). They brought the things needed in this same way in all the ayllus. They arrived there in a month and then returned in two to four months, first to Sucre, and then to Potosí. The men went with the women as helpers to cook. They went to Potosí for one or two years. They went with their babies, their wife, their sheep, and llamas. They went all complete, with their cooking utensils. The man worked in the mine and the woman cooked and looked after the animals, pasturing the sheep in places with sparse grasses, only what they had. And on finishing their service, they returned. They came back weaving their shawls (awayu). The llama rendered a great deal of service. That’s why it went to the mines of Potosí. In the past, the people from here went making libations, with their sheep, llamas, and even with their weavings, they went like this before. Their family members wrapped up snacks for them, and they went off to Potosí carrying them.

They carried out mitayo for a year, some of them during two years, in order to take over the place, free of charge, without any payment. That’s why they gave them land to cultivate. They’d ordered it to be so.

66 The Oral History of Qaqachaka “You’ll take over the land, you’ll live there, you’ll reside there,” they said. “As original land owners (originarios).” And the Visiting Inspector (Visitador) gave it over to them, “Well, you’ve become original land owners.” And they’d become originarios.

The people used to go from here, the grandfathers, to be mitayos. To work in the mines and all that. They’d gone to serve (as mitayos). The mitayos from Tacna brought the materials with llamas, because in that period there was no motorized transport, nothing. Potosí was maintained with llamas and pulperías.

Those from Qaqachaka lived like that at the birth of Bolivia. I handle a sheet of paper, and there it’s all complete.

The Libations on the Journey

Don Franco makes a special point of mentioning in his tales that the mitayos carried with them vast quantities of barley beer (k’usa) to make libations. We know from other studies that these libations (ch’alla) formed a kind of litany (Abercrombie 1998, 351). We also know that the miners, as they left their respective pueblos, prostrated themselves before the mountains and cairns, and directed their supplications to the mountains they passed during the journey that took them to the mine where they were to work (Bouysse-​Cassagne 2004, 69). These practices confirm the hypothesis of the Argentine historian Ariel Morrone (2015a), that the route followed during of the colonial mining mita had ritual and sacred dimensions. And it confirms the proposal by the French historian Bouysse-​Cassagne (2004, 69) that the mit’a constituted not just an obligatory task, but a kind of pilgrimage (thakhi). This can be perceived in the organization of the landscape, with its key points of reunion, their principal axes radiating ceque-​like towards the pueblos implicated in the mit’a obligation, and in the place-​names where they libated (or, according to the Spanish, had their “drunken binges”).6 Morrone’s proposal is that this ritual dimension dates to the original mit’a, long before the Colony, in the “Time of the Inka.” We are again in the domain of long-​standing Andean practices. In spite of the assertion by many Spaniards that the site of Potosí was found unpopulated at the beginning of the Colony, in fact the mines of the Rich Mountain, or Red Mountain, of Potosí were already known, silver having been worked there by Andean groups long before the Spanish arrived, at least since the Late Intermediate Period (in the aftermath of the civilization of Tiwanaku in the eleventh century) until the Late Horizon, under the Inkas (Cruz, Absi, and Fidel 2005). Even in the early colonial period (around 1572), the Andean technology of specialized furnaces, called wayra, to extract the silver, were much more efficient than any Spanish technology available, so in practice the Inka miners who already worked there with regional populations continued with their use. This fact is supported by evidence in the stratigraphy of minerals used in smelting processes (above all of lead, Pb) found in sites around the Red Mountain (Abbott and Wolfe 2003). That said, it is difficult to explain the long delay between the military defeat, in 1535, by the Spanish of these regional populations allied with the Inkas, closely 6 See Morrone (2015a, 109), citing the Jesuit Torres de Mendoza (1865, VI, 163).

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followed by the Spanish introduction to the mines of Porco, but not to those of Potosí, which the Spanish only discovered in 1545. Platt and Quisbert (2010, 117, 129)  propose that, in the intervening period, the regional populations worked the mines of Potosí secretly, in order to pay, meanwhile, the tribute demanded by the Spanish Crown. They also suggest that the discovery was only finally permitted by the Inkas to force the hand of one of the rival bands in the civil war between Gonzalo Pizarro and the king.7 This possibility, that serving mit’a in the mines of Potosí was established under the Inkas, could explain the ritual intensity of those practices by the mitayos when they set off on their journeys and during their travels, in landscapes already greatly ritualized. Another point of interest in Don Franco’s tales is his mention of the Red Mountain of Potosí, and immediately afterwards that of Kharikhari Mayku, which Don Franco names as “Kharikhari Mar,” probably in reference to the cosmological idea in the Andes that sea water (called lamara) can be found within the mountains. In his tales, it is this water “from the sea” that the ancestors drank while working in the mines. In a regional setting, as seen from the Red Mountain of Potosí, the great massive of Kharikhari Mayku opens the Cordillera de los Frailes (cf. Cruz 2015), of which Qaqachaka with its immediate mountains forms part.8 To summarize, unlike all the conventional histories of Bolivia, Don Franco’s emphasis in this episode is that it was first of all the llamas with their herders, and secondly the mitayos, who had founded Bolivia, and the great heroes Bolívar and Sucre only get a mention in passing.

A Commentary on Mit’a and Mita

Another point worth dwelling on is that although there are numerous studies about the colonial institution of the mining mit’a,9 Qaqachaka’s particular oral history contributes original new data about this institution from the perspective of the populations implicated in the service called mitayo. One new aspect is the challenge to the idea already set out in the early colonial period by Viceroy Toledo’s lawyer, Polo de Ondegardo ([1571] 1916, 99 ff.), about the fundamental difference between the mit’a of the Inka period and the colonial mita. Because of Polo’s comments, it has become customary to write mit’a for this service in

7 It is possible that the delay in informing the Spanish about the mines of Potosí could have been due to the sacrality of the place, associated as it was to the powerful and vital source of light inside the mines, which shone in the minerals there, thought to be generated by the sun (Bouysse-​ Cassagne 2004, 68).

8 Even so, note that Kharikhari Mayku, together with other outstanding mountains of the Cordillera de los Frailes (among them the Mount Kusku which the Qaqachakas also named in their libations), were associated with ancient mining explorations. In addition, these mountains formed part of a series of wak’as or shrines (like “ceques of minerals”) sacralized by the Inkas around the Red Mountain of Potosí and, before that, the mountain of Porco (Cruz, Absi, and Fidel, 2005, 78, 81; Cruz, Crubézy, and Gérard, 2013, 96–​97). 9 See for example Murra (1982), Tandeter (1992), Bakewell ([1984] 2009, 1989) and Zegalsky (2014), among others.

68 The Oral History of Qaqachaka

the precolonial period, mainly under the Inkas, and mita (without the glotalization) for the reformulated service now within the Colony. However, Don Franco, like other people from Qaqachaka, says in Aymara mit’a and mit’ayu for both periods, obviating any differentiation in the terms for this tributary service between the precolonial period and the Colony. So, despite the dramatic differences in the purpose of this manual work, the destiny of the minerals extracted under this modality, and the physical mining conditions and treatment of the workers between each period, Don Franco respects the insistence by the campesinos of the region that the ritual and occupational meaning they attributed to the colonial mit’a was a continuity from the previous period. I adopt their position in this book. For convenience, the Spanish, too, continued with some aspects of the previous mit’a. At the beginning of the Colony and for a couple of decades after the Spanish discovery of the Red Mountain of Potosí, in 1545, there had already been several ways of ensuring the distribution in the mines of the manual labour of Andean populations: through the labour of the yanaconas (with their Inka precursors), the entrusted Indians (indios encomendados), the indios vara (first as individual workers like the yanaconas, then, from 1548–​1549, hiring out other Indians to the Spanish miners), the delegated ones (diputados), distributed ones (repartidos), and others (Bakewell [1984] 2009, 1989). The colonial mining mit’a began in earnest after this initial period, being established formally in 1573 with the Viceroy Toledo’s intervention in mining affairs to assure that the juridical context of the mit’a was already thought through in a standardized manner. A couple of years later, in 1575, Viceroy Toledo established the regional “captaincies” (capitanías) of the mit’a, organized through the upper and lower divisions of the great precolonial federations of the region. Even so, certain tendencies continued between the precolonial and colonial mit’as. As in the times of the Inka, the service was provided by the population responsible for offering tribute, that is to say married men of between 18 and 65 years of age, and married women. And as in previous times, the total number of mitayos between 1578 and 1610 was hardly modified, rounding out at 13,400 mitayos annually, of which, by 1650, a third went to Potosí each year from the region (Zagalsky 2014, 382, 386; Assadourian 1982, 312).10 The regional inhabitants between these ages had the obligation of serving as mitayos during one in every seven years. Among other fundamental differences in these obligatory tasks between the precolonial and colonial periods, the mit’ayuq of the Inka Empire had only to contribute during a certain time with their manual labour, whereas the mit’a of the Colony demanded in addition the surrender of other tributes. The colonial mit’a also introduced major divisions of work, including the differentiation between the ordinary mitayos and those “taking rests” (de huelga). 10 According to Zagalsky (2014, 382), “During these three decades, the fluctuations in the greater mita were really minimal: it was set up in 1578 with 13,454 mitayos, in 1585 included some 13,349, went on in 1599 to a total of 13,385 workers, until the 13,348 of the year 1610” (my translation).

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Peter Bakewell ([1984] 2009, 96–​100) analyzes in detail the official programme of work involving this pattern of labour recruitment. At the beginning, you had to work for a week and then rest during two weeks. But after 1608, you worked a week and rested the following week. In theory no one worked at weekends, but in practice, given the system of pay, you received payment only on the coming Saturday afternoon, and on the following Monday manual labour was organized again for the coming week. For her part, Zagalsky (2014) explains that a turn in the ordinary mit’a should theoretically elapse between Monday to Saturday. She also clarifies that the salaries of the mitayos depended on the task at hand: for those who worked within the mines (as barreteros) the daily salary was three and a half reales, while those who worked in the foundries and beneficios (winnings of ore) received a daily payment of two reales and three cuartillos (2,75 reales), and those who carried out the transport with llamas from the mines to the foundries received three reales (Capoche [1585] 1959, 145; Zavala 1978, I, 103). By the beginning of the seventeenth century, these salaries had ascended to four, three, and three and a half reales, respectively (Zegalsky 2014, 378). Given that the mitayos came from regional populations (such as Qaqachaka) for a short period of time to carry out temporary work, and not the more specialized work in the mining veins, their pay was less. The mitayos distributed (repartidos) in the foundries gained a salary, which from 1600 onwards was four reales for the barreteros (today they would be called perforistas), with three and a half reales for those charged with taking the minerals out of the sinkhole to the mouth of the mine, and three for those who worked in the stamping mills (ingenios). According to Bakewell, the problem about these forms of recompense for the mining work was that it was very limited in relation to the costs of living in the city of Potosí, hence the necessity for the mitayos to labour in other sources of work during their days “of rest” (de huelga). Among these costs there was the payment of taxes, the contribution to the “grain box” (caja de granos), to the hospital, the purchase of basic foods (maize, chuño, meat, and fish, as well as kindling, chili peppers, salt and other “trinkets”), clothing, and candles. There is no mention of the expenditures in the concept of access to housing in the rancherías of the Indians, a cost difficult to verify (Zegalsky 2014, 379). There were also wide differences in the costs of the mit’a between these regional groups. The repartimientos of the capitanía of Quillacas and Asanaque accomplished the costs of the mit’a solely in silver, whereas those from the repartimiento de Quillacas and Asanaques supplied Potosí with salt, carbon, kindling, and “cannons and hoods” (cañones y caperuças), which were the instruments of baked clay used over fire to remove the mercury embedded in the silver during the processing of the mineral (Llanos [1609] 1983, 17, 38 in Zegalsky 2014, 395, n22). For their part, those of the ancient urinsaya (lower) moiety of the Qharaqhara supplied it through the sale of combustibles (kindling, carbon, herbs and straw) (Zegalsky 2014, 386). But again, regardless of the hardships involved in this work, and the minimal recompense in return, other studies on the colonial mit’a come to the same conclusions as Don Franco. For example, in their major work Qaraqara-​Charka, Platt, Bouysse-Cassagne, and Harris (2006, 372) conclude that:

70 The Oral History of Qaqachaka

Despite the disrepute of the mining mit’a, it seems fitting to propose that the Qaraqara and Charka accepted it as an integral part of their history and used to take advantage of it in the colonial context (my translation).

Even apart from the similarities between the precolonial mit’a and the colonial mit’a, and the fact that these were an integral part of regional history, other factors reinforced this point of view. These had to do with the citation at the opening of this section by Ramírez del Águila, in 1639, and some commentaries on it made by Olivia Harris (2010), taking her point of departure from previous studies by John Murra ([1956] 1978, 1982, [1966] 2004). It deals with the way that the men from the region called to serve as mitayos, some only eighteen years of age and anxious to demonstrate their bravery, went dressed in the outfits of warriors. In the case of the men of the Qharaqhara Federation, of which the Qaqachakas formed part in the distant past, they went in their full status as “warriors of the Inka,” something they had insisted on in various lawsuits in the first decades of the Colony (Colque Guarache 1575; Platt, Bouysse-Cassagne, and Harris 2006, 64, 80). The Memorial de Charcas informs us that the Charkas and the Qharaqharas, as well as the Chichas and the Chuwis, were selected to serve as soldiers in the Inka armies.11 The armies of the Qharaqharas and the Chichas used to group themselves first in Macha, and the Charkas and Chuwis in Sakaka (or Sacaca), before meeting up in Paria and then proceeding to Cusco and other points further north (Espinoza Soriano 1969, I; par. 47; Rasnake 1982, 145). In the case of the Quillacas-​Asanaque Federation, Condocondo was part of the upper moiety (aransaya) of Asanaque, so its members turned up as military drafts in the call-​ups made by the Inka.12 Service in the precolonial mit’a, as an aspect of “postwar” tribute in general, recognized both the incorporation of these regional populations under Inka military dominion, and their tributary obligations, and as a result the Inka recognized the rights of possession of these groups to the lands cultivated by their ancestors (Platt 1987b, 114; Arnold with Yapita 2006, 78–​79; Arnold 2012, 65–​66). The evidence in Don Franco’s narratives suggests that the modality of these Andean relations, already established in the “preconquest” period, simply continued in the Colony under the Spanish. These kinds of evidence confirm that the mit’a could be experienced according to a warfaring logic, in which the mining task was confronted with a tonality quite different from that of terror, in which the “miners, under the authority of their ‘capitanes,’ did battle against the very veins of silver” (Platt, Bouysse-Cassagne, and Harris 2006, 372; cf. Zagalsky 2014, 390). These cultural aspects explain why the mitayos of places such as Qaqachaka wore military attire as they set off on the long voyage to the mines of Potosí, and the insistent rituality of their entire service as mitayo, which continues into the Colony. 11 See for example Espinoza Soriano (1969, I, par. 45), AGI Charcas, 56: fol. 9 and Documento 20, cited in Platt, Bouysse-Cassagne, and Harris (2006, 841–​42) as fol. 45 of the original version of the Memorial de los mallku y principales de la provincia de Charcas. 12 Capoche (1585, fol. 55r. Ed. 1959), cited by Platt (1987b, 93).

Chapter 4

A GENTLEMAN’S AGREEMENT BETWEEN LITERATE CACIQUES

Catari: Biuora grande.

Bertonio ([1612] 1984, Pt. II, 38)

Don Franco continued straight away with an episode that related how the mixture of residents in Qaqachaka, with their ethnic and class differences, attempted to overcome these by becoming literate, learning to read and write in a nearby paying school. It is as if Don Franco senses the need to explain that some of the first Qaqachakas were literate men instead of merely campesinos. The episode tells of the acquaintance of two friends who went to this same school together:  Ayra Chinche, from Pukuwata, and Lujano Choquecallati,1 originally from Condo before taking up his residence in Qaqachaka. Don Franco names the teacher in passing as Pedro Coñaque, although he had certain doubts about this. This episode happens in the context of the first ancestors of the ayllu having served as mitayos in the colonial mining mit’a, when they had already sworn oaths of possession of the Qaqachaka lands. Having sworn their oaths, the Qaqachakas began to throw out the previous inhabitants of these lands, who had belonged to other ayllus. Even the important ancestor, Don Ayra, faced this kind of problem in his own path: In the past, in the time of the grandfathers, there’d been a local school in that place. A school was already functioning there, with Ayra and Choquecallati. Ayra Chinche was from Pukuwata and Lujano Choquecallati was from Qaqachika. They’d been taught how to read by a teacher; it could have been Pedro Coñaque … They learned by paying. They’d learned there from a teacher, and made good friends with each other. Ayra and Choquecallati grew up together in that way, then they each took a wife. I don’t know if the place was called Chhala (Maize Leaf) or Risin Phuju (Neighbour’s Well) … But it’s there where they went to school and where they’d learned together. It’s there where they used to go to school, those (two men) of Qaqachika and Pukuwata.

At one point Don Franco remarked on the long occupation that the Choquecallatis descended from this ancestor had in the place, but how they eventually changed their names to Ovando, after a baptismal godfather. Other families of ancestors, for example the Llanquepachas, went off to the valleys, where there are still descendants with this same surname: Now the Choquecallatis are called Ovando. They say he took the name of his godfather at baptism. Then Llanquepacha went off to the valleys and bought [lands] there. There are Llanquepachas in the valleys until now.

1 I’ve written the ancestor’s name in its masculine form of “Lujano,” although in Aymara it is usual to say “Lujana” given there is no generic sense of gender in that language.

72 The Oral History of Qaqachaka

Ayra Chinche and the Red Snake

The reputation of the ancestor called Ayra Chinche became clearer. Don Franco first revealed that his social class was distinct from that of the semi-​mestizos who frequented Qaqachaka. In fact, Ayra Chinche turned out to be the traditional healer or yatiri2 mentioned in the first descriptions by Don Franco of the seven ancestors of the place. Even so, some of his practices in the craft gave fright to the mestizo outsiders who tended to visit the place, especially his predisposition to rear a red snake in a fine ceramic pot: In those times, there were dealers in animals who wandered about the place. There have always been cattle and sheep dealers who bought [the animals]. And of course, in those times, they were afraid of the gentlemen (wirajuchis) [visiting] there. Well, a campesino called out, “There’s a dealer coming. What kind of dealer is he?” They say he was a dealer in animals. Well, Ayra Chinche was there (in the school), and he’d reared a red snake (wila katari) in a fine ceramic pot (ari phuku). And the other one, being a young lad, had looked into the pot and muttered to himself, “Well, what do we have here?” And he’d really insisted, “What thing is in here?”

At that moment the red snake wiggled about, “Ullx.” It had been inside (the pot). And the young lad cried out in fear, “Watx!,” and he’d died there and then of fright, from having uncovered the pot. He’d fallen down, and the young animal dealer had died of fright, on seeing the snake. He was now a cadaver, quite dead, the animal dealer. But where was he from? Would he have been from Condo? And his kinsfolk asked about him, and about the form of death, “When did this one die? Was it from sorcery (layqa)? Or did they poison him …? Was the dead person poisoned?”

Here we are confronted with certain silences in the narrative. But the implication in the following episodes is that, after the dead dealer’s kinsfolk had accused Ayra Chinche of sorcery, they got him imprisoned in the pueblo with the school, given the comments that he could not go personally to Potosí to claim his innocence. According to the narrative, Don Ayra asked that his friend Choquecallati go as a witness in his stead to declare under oath there, before the authorities (the don jiliris). Ayra Chinche adds that, in doing this, Choquecallati would himself “become freed,” supposedly of doing the mitayo service, because, as recompense, Don Ayra promises to give him vast tracts of land in the region, stretching from the place called Paqutanqa all the way to Lima Quta and Axrawayuña (or Axrawayuni). In practice, we seem to be dealing with the initial division of the regional lands between Pukuwata and Qaqachaka. For his part, Don Franco demonstrates throughout the following episode the precision of his memory about 2 The etymology of the name Ayra Chinche might be relevant here. “Ayra” perhaps derives from jayra: “lazy,” whereas Chinche refers to a “dry chili pepper,” although an alternative etymology of chinchi is “black.”

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Agreement Between Literate Caciques

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Qaqachaka’s boundary markers (mujuna) in those times, naming them one by one in reference to this transference of land titles from Pukuwata to Qaqachaka. So, as a result of the friendship that had developed between Ayra Chinche, from Pukuwata, and Lujano Choquecallati, from Condo, they divided up the new territories claimed by Qaqachaka between the first ancestors of the place. With this promise of obtaining lands, Lujano Choquecallati began his journey towards the law court in Potosí in representation of his friend Don Ayra: And so Ayra Chinche gave him the responsibility in front of the people gathered there. But they still insisted, “You’re a sorcerer to rear that thing. Why’ve you reared it?” And Ayra had replied, “He died all by himself. It was simply kept here. That person saw it and then died of fright.” Then he added, “I’m not a sorcerer. And I (don’t) have my family here. I’m learning from the teacher, together with Choquecallati. We’re learning with a schoolteacher. He knows.” Then [Ayra] responded (to his friend), “Choque, serve me as a witness in Potosí. Go and swear on my behalf. You’ll save me. He knows. So, go as witness,” he told him. “Fine,” Choquecallati would have replied.

“Tell the teacher, you’ll be free afterwards,” he said. “This is why. I’ll give you an immense territory, from Paqutanqa to Choquecära, and on to Janq’u Willk’i, to Lima Quta, and from Paqutanqa to Axrawayuni and Ch’irwipunta, where a cow horn has been buried. I’ll give you all those lands. Then we’ll divide up the boundary marker. I’ll give you all of those. You’ll give me over to that side, and I’ll give you over to this side. And we’ll have the boundary stone as the limit.” He’d stated it just like that. And [Choquecallati] swore an oath at the boundary stone, down to the place with the thermal waters (Qinta Wari Jaqhi). That’s how it’s written in the papers. And so Ayra freed him.

Choquecallati went to Potosí. Well, he arrived in Potosí and then the don jiliris (the authorities) questioned him, “Why did this one die? Is it true that this one has no family there?” “Yes (it’s true), he doesn’t have any family there. I’m learning with him, from a schoolteacher. There’s nothing suspicious. He’s not a thief or a sorcerer, nothing. Perhaps something passed with this young animal dealer. He’s dying without any motive. What can it be? Don Ayra doesn’t have any guilt in the matter.” “So, you’ll swear an oath,” they demanded of him.

‘ “Fine,” he replied, “I’ll do it,” replied Choque. And he’d sworn an oath.

In this episode of Qaqachaka’s oral history, we are not dealing with just any couple of friends, given that the names Ayra Chinche and Choquecallati figure in numerous written documents from the seventeenth century. In a document from 1648,3 Don Fernando Ayra Chinche is named, together with Don Pedro Soto (written Zuto) and Don Pablo Cuñaco (the name remembered by Don Franco for the teacher at the paying school where Don Ayra and Don Choquecallati met), as principal caciques and gobernadores of the Pueblo del Espíritu Santo de Chayanta, in the jurisdiction of Charkas province, in the moiety 3 ECN. E. 1648 No 24.

74 The Oral History of Qaqachaka

called Chullpas. The document deals in part with the security of a tambo or waystation in the pueblo of Vila Curi (or Velacrillo), of which Don Fernando Ayra Chinche and Don Juan Francisco Zuto were owners. In the same document, a Tomás Choquecallati is named as a witness of the agreements. In other colonial documentation, for instance a probanza de méritos4 kept in the Archivo de Indias in Seville, Don Fernando Ayra de Ariutu enumerates his own personal qualities during his candidature for Gobernador of Pocoata and, as one aspect of his services to the region, the fact that he had constructed a school. Adding to the narratives of oral history, we learn here that the fee-​paying school had been constructed with money from his own hacienda, not in Qaqachaka but nearby, in the valleys of the neighbouring ayllu of Copoata (or Pocoata, with metathesis): had put in the [Pueblo de Copoata] a school where the boys were taught and indoctrinated, and in government and the policing of their Indians, in which they will be advantaged more than other governors …

(Charcas, 56, AGI Sevilla, La probanza de méritos (or Relación de los servicios y calidad) of Fernando Ayra de Ariutu, document of March 2, 1638)5

So what about the incident with the red snake? On the one hand, this incident seems to be closely related to the composición de tierras taking place, in particular the circumambulation of the limits of the ayllus concerned, and the naming of the persons present at this historical event. On the other, the tale about the red snake appears to allude, in part, to the regional history concerning Tomás Catari, the cacique of Macha, and his brothers, who were leading figures in the great uprising and siege of the city of Sucre, a century later, as a reaction to having taken there the prisoners implicated in the uprising the previous decade in Condo. Such references to the Catari brothers appear again in the following episode by Don Franco.

The Leg in the Stirrup

The second part of this episode narrated by Don Franco about the friendship between Ayra Chinche and Lujano Choquecallati relates the extraordinary death of the ill-​fated Choquecallati, in falling from his horse. Here again there are echoes of the death of both Tomás and Tupaq Catari, given that Choquecallati suffered the same kind of dismemberment: After freeing himself, having sworn an oath (in Potosí), Choquecallati took his horse, and, putting the saddle on, he came mounted on it from Potosí towards Qaqachika. He came mounted on it.

4 On the probanzas de méritos of indigenous leaders as juridical documents, see Jurado (2014).

5 Document signed by the Licenciado Calderón y Contreras in the process, and carried forward by the notary (escribano) Pedro Osario. Transcribed in Platt, Bouysse-Cassagne, and Harris (2006, 721–​63). See fol. 10r, reply to question 15. The original Spanish says “[h]‌a puesto en el [Pueblo de Copoata] escuela donde son enseñados y doctrinados los muchachos en lo qual y en el gobierno y pulicia de sus Ind[io]s sea aventajados más que otros gobernadores…”

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Now, there’s a place called Qarachi Pampa (Scaly Meadow) or Ikikirasi (Sleeping Place). And in that place, a bird suddenly flew out … I  don’t know if it was from a shrub or a cliff-​face … flapping its wings, “Parr …” And the horse was startled, and lifted up its tail, “Wich’…” And it threw him off. And [Choquecallati], falling down, hung there with just his leg in the stirrup. Well, the horse got him to Qaqachika, but just the leg. The person was all finished off. Where was the head? In those times … Where was the body? Where were they?

Apart from the allusions to the death by dismemberment of the rebel Catari leaders a century later, this episode reminds us of the many commentaries by the local comunarios in those years, when we asked them about the territorial configuration of Qaqachaka and its bellicose relationship with its neighbours. Invariably they would comment that Qaqachaka had been thrust “like a leg” (charantata), forming a wedge (pallqa) between the territories that used to form Laymi to one side and Pukuwata to the other, extending right up to the territory of Jukumani.

The Local Caciques Become Boundary Makers

Then, in the following section, Don Franco procedes to narrate how some of the first ancestors served as the boundary makers of Qaqachaka, marking out the territorial limits. The Meeting in Darkness Between Ayra Chinche and Juana Doña Ana

In fact, according to Don Franco, the composition of Qaqachaka’s lands occurred as a direct result of the death of Choquecallati, when Ayra Chinche was obliged to fulfil his promise to his friend, under oath, concerning the gift of some lands to Qaqachaka. Don Franco opens the tale by describing Fernando Choquecallati’s anger over the death of his brother Lujano, followed by his appeasement with the promise by Don Ayra of transferring the lands to him instead. However, Don Ayra quickly rejects this possibility, preferring to hand over the lands not to Don Fernando, but rather to the widow and son of his deceased friend: Then the older people (there were three of them) asked Ayra, “And now with Don Choque dead …?”

His (Lujanos’s) brother was Fernando Choquecallati, and he said to the group, “Give the lands to me. How was it then, concerning my brother, Don Ayra, that you raised this snake thing …? Why did you cause the death of my brother?”

So Don Ayra replied to all four of them, “I’ve given the lands [to Choque] from Paqutanqa.” And now (I say) to his brother, “Now, you and I, let’s stand face to face before a judge, and there we’ll agree on the territorial limits. And we’ll swear on it, you from this side and me on that side. So you’ll not pass beyond my part and I’ll not pass yours. In this way we’ll have the limits set from there …”

[Then Ayra was in doubt.] “But hang on a minute, I’ll not give you so much importance, you are just his brother. I’ll give greater importance to his son and his wife. I’ll give the documents to them instead. Now it’s me who’s solicited this. So make his wife and little

76 The Oral History of Qaqachaka one come here. I’m going to mark the boundary stone from Paqutanqa. I know that they will render it to me once and for all, and we’ll prepare a document. I’ll give the land titles to them.”

Well the wife [of Choquecallati] went from Condo to that place. And [Ayra Chinche] came from over from the side of Pukuwata, from where his cantón was, from that place, from his province. Because his province was Chayanta. “Well,” they said. “We’ll meet up in Paqutanqa.” And so they met up there.

Juana Doña Ana Meets the Seven Ancestors and then the Sun is Born Don Franco went on to develop more details about the widow of Lujano Choquecallati, Juana Doña Ana, and the events that she had the power to initiate. As on other occasions, Don Franco called our attention to the fact that the first women of Qaqachaka came from elsewhere, this time from Pukuwata, to live in the local hamlet of Kututu, and this tale reconfirms this asseveration. Don Franco also comments on the bad treatment that widows used to receive in the ayllus in the recent past. However, the fundamental content of this episode deals with the actions by Juana Doña Ana that initiated the great transformation from the former Time of Darkness (Ch’amak Timpu) to the later period of light, when the Sun was born. The tale begins in the distant past when the ayllus were first formed, still characterized by the eternal darkness of the previous age which Don Franco names as the Time of the Chullpas and the Time of the Gentiles. Then, in the second part, Don Franco announces the coming of the newly illuminated period of time with the almost biblical phrase: “And then there was light.” From this moment onwards, Don Franco describes the coming of the new dawn and the ascent of the Sun in the sky. The tale insinuates that those who hurried to arrive at the place still in darkness received their portion of lands, while those who fell behind did not receive anything. In all of this there are sexual allusions concerning the incipient birth of the place of Qaqachaka. It is as if it was necessary to perform a sexual act in each place before agreeing on the positions of the boundary stones: Meanwhile, the cattle dealers had fun with [i.e. had sex with] the widow. The first of these was in Kastilla Uma (Water of Castile), another of these in Jamach’i Uma (Bird Water), and yet another in Alpakillu (Alpaca Place), which is down below Kututu. One of them made the widow fall behind [in her journey], then another of the cattle dealers molested the widow Juana Doña Ana all over again. She appealed to them, but the other one from Condo didn’t hurry either. Then it became light, because they’d been wandering about by night and the widow also came along by night. That’s why they’d made the boundary from Qiqisana, which is down below Kututu. Only then did they swear the oaths. Then they exchanged the documents: “Take it just from here.”

Then they settled in Qaqachika. He [Don Ayra] gave the title to her [Juana Doña Ana]. And so Qaqachaka came into existence in this way. It had been just a hamlet of Pukuwata before. It was just a hamlet, not a pueblo. The seven grandfathers took possession of it.

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The Role of Juana Doña Ana in the Rites of Possession of Qaqachaka Don Franco’s son-​in-​law, Don Severo Antachoque, had his own ideas about Juana Doña Ana’s role of in the rites of possession of the place, which are worth mentioning. In essence, Don Severo explained how you take possession of land by rolling over with all your body in contact with the ground, as an expression of ownership of the new place. I shall return to this point in more detail in the following chapter, because it deals with a recurring theme in these possession rituals. For Don Severo, the purpose of Juana Doña Ana’s turning over on the ground in the round of the boundary markers of the ayllu was to “gain first the land, those” of Qaqachaka (in Aymara uraq primir ganañatakiw ukax). In this way, Don Severo establishes Juana Doña Ana’s role as one of the key founders of Qaqachaka, expressed first in the rites of taking possession of the church grounds, then in passing all the boundary limits, not just of the immediate ayllu but of all the neighbouring ayllus, and finally when she went with the other ancestors of the place to serve as a mitayo in Potosí. His observations clarify the important role of women and not just of men, whether as the local founding boundary markers (linderos) or in the mitayo service in Potosí. In Don Severo’s narratives, another key “lindero” who walked the boundaries of Qaqachaka was Taquimallco Astete. This name takes us back to the vague memories of Don Enrique Espejo, about the mysterious person whose mention he had overheard when he was a youth sitting in on meetings about the origins of the place: The grandfathers first agreed about the setting for the church, and then about the gods too. Early on in Qaqachaka there were not many as people as there are now … Now, yes, there are many people. But before, it wasn’t so …

Then Juana Doña Ana and Taquimallco Astete, Jernantis (Fernando), and of course this one and that one, they all considered together: “Now, what are we going to do? How can we gain the lands? Well, we’ll carry out the obligations,” they decided, and they went as mitayos. They’d agreed of course, “Now we’ll approach the authorities (the jiliris).” And speaking in this way, they went from boundary marker to marker, those ones, even turning over on the ground.6 Then they’d carried out the mitayo service too, they’d gone as mitayos. The mitayo service was to sweep the alleyways (inside the mines), eating earth. Eating earth they cleaned the alleyways. Only then did they get hold of the place, by accomplishing all of this. Juana Doña Ana, where would she have been from? I don’t know … She was surely from here. I think they say she was a widow, from a place called K’irun Q’awa (Wrapped up River).

Anyway, it happened there, near that river. Being a widow, at night, she’d … because she knew all the boundary markers. … She’d slept in a house there, they say, with a man, they say. She’d slept by the side of a man, they say, that widow. And the people discovered her there. They say that Juana Doña Ana almost occasioned the loss of this land through this: 6 The original Aymara says mujun mujun asta walakis sarapxi, ukanaka.

78 The Oral History of Qaqachaka “How can you wander about like this? Disgusting thing! Because you were walking the territory of this place. How can you wander about so? Dirty thing,” they’d grumbled. They’d found her locked in an embrace with someone and they almost threw Doña Ana out of the place.

And she responded, “Sorry! What came over me? Sorry,” she said, and pleaded with them … And then they’d said to her, “You’ll finish this round of the boundaries once and for all …” So some time later she’d continued the boundary rounds. That man who slept with her, I  don’t know where he was from. She’d gone all around where the Jukumanis and Laymis live, so they say. They’d done the round of the boundaries chewing coca, puffing cigarettes and playing a side drum (tambor) … and playing panpipes (siku) and long ducted flutes (pinkillu), with even Juana Doña Ana chewing coca and making libations. They’d done the whole round, the whole round, in more than a week. They were also having assemblies (sambliya).

They could have done this easily if it were just Qaqachaka. But they began first in Asanaque, then K’ulta, Condo, Macha, Pukuwata, Jukumani and Laymi, until they ended up in Condo in a place called P’isaq Thapa (Partridge’s Nest). It was ayllu by ayllu. Juana Doña Ana went all around each ayllu. Of course now they really like her, that’s why. She’s the person who first gained the lands of Qaqachaka. “That’s how it was before,” they say.

At that time, they’d have carried out a quintal7 of lashes as a fine for crossing any place [for crossing over the boundary limits] … with white silver (palata palanku), with an arroba8 of white silver … They’d have to give that to pay the fine. With five years in prison and a quintal of lashes. Now, whoever passes over the limit would have a quintal of lashes and have to pay an arroba of white silver, right up to today. It was like that before. “You’re an originario land owner …”

Don Tiburcio Maraza Mamani (­figure 3), one of the descendants of the chiefly family called Inca Maraza, title-​bearers of the minor ayllu of Livichuco, remembered other important historical personages of the place, known as the “markers of the boundaries.” For him, one of the persons in recent memory who, by common consensus, had the best head (wali p’iqini) for perambulating the limits of the annex was Mallku Martin(a), who is introduced into his narrative. With his greater access to the title documents, Don Tiburcio could also record in detail the names of the first boundary markers of the Qaqachaka annex. That is why, as compared to the more nebulous memory of Don Enrique about an important but somewhat mysterious ancestor called Taqimallku Astiti, Don Tiburcio could identify in this name not just one but two ancestral figures: Fernando Taquimallco and Bartolomé Astete. However, first of all, Don Tiburcio recorded the mallku of his same village who could remember these ancestral figures and their way of carrying out the circumambulation of the ayllu limits: They say that he who had the best head for walking round the boundary limits was Mallku Martin(a).9 And they say that once he was made alcalde (mayor) for seven years and then cacique for five years. Or perhaps it was the reverse … Anyway, he was a real head case.

7 A quintal is equivalent to 100 pounds or four arrobas, as well as being a measure of 100 lashes. 8 An arroba is equivalent to twenty-​five pounds in weight.

9 Here the masculine name Martín has been transcribed in its Aymara form.

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Figure 3. Don Tiburcio Maraza Mamani, descendant of the Inca Maraza title-​bearer family of Livichuco. That’s why each of six mayordomos (awatiri) gave him a bottle of alcohol (as a way of persuading him to serve as a boundary maker), saying: “You always stand up well to things. You’ll always resist things.” So they’d put the bottles on the ground. And they say that in one single effort all the bottles were downed (by him). And the Mallku had replied, “Here we have a lot of people,’ he said, ‘and yet I alone have downed all the bottles’.” And they’d given him yet more bottles all over again. “You can really do it, Mallku Martin(a),” they said. And once again he’d downed all the bottles. Only then did he accept the office of boundary maker, they say.

It was Mallku Martin(a) who started to remember all the details of the original ritual as if it were just yesterday: Afterwards it was Fernando Taquimallco and I think he was called Bartolomé Astete, it was those (who went) from boundary to boundary, playing ayaguaya flutes on both sides … Then the jilanqu of Macha had come out, they say. And then the one from Pukuwata had come out, they say, and the one from Jukumani had come out, and the one from Laymi, dancing to this music. They’d done the whole round like that, walking, they say, all of Qaqachaka, from boundary to boundary. The ayaguayas were flutes of the tarka type that the grandparents of Condo play, “Tiririririti titiriririti.” They did the round with these; “ayaguaya” they’re called. Then they did the round beating their timbrel (tamboril), “Taq taqi taq taqi taq” and dancing.

80 The Oral History of Qaqachaka The timbrel was formed around a long tin, and covered with hide. They say it was llama hide. Some were very good, and the women played them as well as the men. In those ancient times, they say that even the cow horn or pututu was played more by the women. Because there were not enough people, they say. And there were thieves, who ransacked the houses. But folks climbed up the hills playing pututus, “Turururururu ruru, ‘Watch out, there are thieves about, they’re entering the houses!’ ” They say this warned them.

Apart from his commentaries about the two important historical figures of Taquimallco and Bartolomé Astete, Don Tiburcio mentioned the enigmatic widow Juana Doña Ana. His detailed description sheds more light on these three historical personages, while it tells us more about the present-​day ceremony of marking out the annex boundaries. He describes how the widow Juana Doña Ana went along in the company of Taquimallco and the others, drinking alcohol, chewing coca and invoking the Virgin Earth and the gods of on high (alaxpacha) with offerings of incense, resin (copal) and rosemary. In addition, Don Tiburcio’s tale informs us incidentally about one of the reasons why Qaqachaka’s boundary changed from the side of Pukuwata to that of Condo, creating a source of friction between Pukuwata and Qaqachaka until today. According to Don Tiburcio’s sources, it was because some Pukuwatas (probably the cattle dealers in other tales) had molested the woman who had recently been widowed, Juana Doña Ana, and the boundary changed direction for that reason. It is as if there were two kinds of marking out rituals: the traditional rites for marking out the boundaries with their overt sexual allusions, and the more incidental acts of pestering the boundary marker, Juana Doña Ana, with the motive of redirecting the boundaries to other places. Note that the earth gods, such as the Virgen Earth, receive offerings of resin or copal in these rituals, whereas the gods of the heavens receive incense: Juana Doña Ana was chewing coca, they say. She went along with her coca and alcohol, they say, with Taquimallco and the others. There were several of them, I can’t remember all their names … They went along chewing coca and drinking alcohol, they say, offering incense, sweet resin, and rosemary. “We pray to the Virgen Pachamama,” they said. And another would say, “We pray to God with incense,” they say.

They went along in this way. “Here on Earth, as it is in Heaven (Akapacha, Alaxpacha),” they said. The grandfathers of the past used to talk in this way, they say. I don’t know much about it. But they say they used to pray like this:  “Akapacha, alaxpacha, Pachamama,” they’d say.

They also say that Qaqachaka was Pukuwata before. And then Taquimallco … Bartolomé Astete, and Taquimallco … those were … “It was Pukuwata before,” they say. They speak like this until today. Here and now they’re still saying “It’s Pukuwata.” And they are still fighting here over those lands … They’re fighting. “My place is from Japo over towards this side.” They say it was so before, but I don’t know if it will always be like that …

“We are husbands and wives with the Pukuwatas, aren’t we? Hmm, so I’d like to talk to you … and so he touched up his wife; he’d pestered her,” they say. That’s why the boundary was moved over towards Condo. We from Qaqachaka moved (the boundary) over to there. If we hadn’t, we’d have been from the other side really. Because there’s always something that happens, isn’t there? Those pesky ones … Just for a whim they’d molested a woman who already had a husband. “Why are you pestering her?,” they asked.

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They say that’s why (the boundary) moved over. If not, it would really have been Pukuwata. They’re talking in that way even here and now. They continue talking so even now. We’re talking about it with Pukuwata and Macha. We converse about it … How many times have I made those from Pukuwata talk about it? How many times I’ve got them to talk! “This is our place, we’d just be from that side,” saying. “We’ll just be here.” Even on the map it says “Livichuco”. And in the map of Bolivia it’s over on the side of Potosí. The year before last they brought out a book about Víctor Paz Estenssoro … “There it is,” they say, “the Cordillera de Livichuco, and it’s Potosí!”

Other comunarios remember the name of Juana Doña Ana. For instance, Don Alberto Choque heard talk about the historical boundary markers of the annex, but without much detail: They say they’d done the round of the boundaries. And they’d met up with Rafael Gallejos [which he pronounces as Rapayil Llilliju]. Each one had his name, but I can’t remember them too well. They walked about in darkness. They say there were Chullpas and there were dead-​ones. They lived like Chullpas. Then the Sun appeared, and Qaqachaka became illuminated. I’ve got Chullpa bones even at my place in Pampa Uyu.

Importantly, these events in Qaqachaka’s oral history find written support in some documents in Don Franco’s personal archive, to which we had access. These documents, forming part of the colonial composición of the lands of the place, describe the “immemorial traditions” of marking out the boundaries between the ayllus. The fact that these documents provide written support to the oral history related by the title-​bearers, makes them vital “archives of memory.”10 The rites to which they refer constitute the circumambulation of the boundary stones, a custom from Castile applied later to the Andes. In essence, these circumambulations were occasions when the hierarchy of authorities of each place walked with a land judge (juez de tierras) along the whole perimeter of their lands, naming the boundary markers one by one (whether mountain tops or cairns), which the land judge then confirmed by reading them out aloud, and with reference to any previous demarcation. In the case of Qaqachaka we are dealing with the circumambulation of 1646, and the land judge then, José de la Vega Alvarado, would have referred to the general visita to the region in around 1570. Once the boundary marker was agreed upon, the judge buried a bull’s horn (as Don Franco mentioned), which contained a copy of the demarcation, upside down within the stone at the marker’s base (although in other places a ceramic pot was used). The whole entourage (comitiva) for the demarcation walked in a long ritualized procession, following the direct sightlines between each boundary. At each boundary marker, the judge requested the presence of the authorities from the other side of that marker (which we heard in the calls from their respective ayllus to Ayra Chinche and Juana Doña Ana) and these had to debate and then agree upon its siting.11 10 On the concept of “archives of memory,” see Candau ([1998] 2008, 41–​42, cited in Morrone 2015b, 206, 220); Abercrombie (1998, 9–​10) and Sanhueza Toha (2008).

11 Cf. Abercrombie (1998, 287).

82 The Oral History of Qaqachaka

We are not dealing simply with a bureaucratic process. The act of naming the boundary markers at the limits of each ayllu, in an ordered way and by performing a turn there related to the movement of the Sun, generates “topographic markers.” These outline for any future repercussions the sequences of mnemonic routes that guide the collective memory of the comunarios of the place, recorded in the series of libations by authorities such as Mallku Martin(a), and in oral tradition.12 Importantly, a series of heads (formerly of people but then of animals), looking outwards, used to be buried inside the principal boundary markers (such as Kinsa Mujuna) and in the four principal boundary markers (between Qaqachaka and Laymi, Jukumani, Macha, and Pukuwata). The hair from these skulls hung down towards the earth. The idea was that it would interweave with the roots of the cultigens planted there, irradiating the ayllu’s power outwards towards its neighbours, and at the same time augment the agricultural yield of the place (Arnold and Espejo 2005, 361; Arnold and Hastorf 2008, 125–​26, 132).

Some Key Documents Held by the Title-​Bearers

One of the key documents in Don Franco’s possession characteristically alludes to the details of this circumambulation in the composición de tierras of 1646. It is appended to an inventory of assets of the Qaqachaka church, dated to the year 1933, but as a “consecrated copy of a tariff”13 of a document from centuries before. It cites at the end the name of the most important title-​bearer in the history of Qaqachaka, Don Feliciano Inca Maraza, from the minor ayllu of Livichuco, charged with affairs concerning land in those years. This document is of great interest to Don Franco and other local historians: … legitimate owners, grandchildren by blood, who swearing [to say] the truth, and nothing but the truth, the ancient couple Adam and Eve, cédula mitayo Potosí, buy and sell, boundary marker and limit, the composición of all of us, from God the Holy Spirit. We are recognized as the sole proprietor with titles extended from the Crown of Spain in favour of all the indigenous Christian proprietors, contributors of tribute we who belong to all the provinces and cantons of the departments. They are twelve pages (about how) we shall raise the loan from as long ago as 1400 and following that 1500 and 1600, and it is because of this that we reclaim our rights as sole owners with maps and plans and the seal of Lima extended in our ancient titles from the Crown of Spain, and the ancient and legitimate laws of the indigenous race of landowners (originarios), and that besides we have God and the predecessors of our grandfathers as vassals in the mines of Potosí, cédula and mitayo, our grandfathers who had worked and Don Bartolomé Astete Fernandez Taquimallco, Mariano Ataguallpa, Cristobal Choque, Santiago Choque, and Gervacio de la Cruz of our grandparent vassals, that we have received from our lands and for ourselves, with all the services in the sense of our inheritances from the Holy Earth, and sites and patios of our lands, and for us to live in God, the Kings, serve the State and the Fatherland, serve and give account to God the Holy Spirit of the proprietors of Aransaya and Urinsaya, Puna, and Valleys, communities of owners, the legitimate grandchildren by blood of Angel de la Guardia de Castayo (Cahuayo) and San Salvador

12 Cf. Morrone (2015b, 218).

13 The Spanish says “copia arancel consagrada.”

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de Lagunillas, Santiago de Huari, San Juan de Dios de Challapata, San Agustin Angustura, San Miguel de Pampa Aullagas and Exaltación de Quillacas, Salinas de Garci Mendoza, eleven cantons of the Puna and the Parcialidad of Valleys (Vallares), Cantón San Pedro de Copavillque, Águila Arco, Punanasa, San Juan de Dios de Cacachaca, San Pedro de Macha, San Pedro de Milluhuma, San Juan de Guayrohuma, San Pedro de Llanqueri, San Miguel de Sauce, San Juan de Dios de Orkaka, San Miguel de Palca, San Salvador Paypo, Santa Barbara de Caynakka, Oroquilla belongs to the Province of Sanparais, fourteen Valley Pueblos in this Departament of Chuquisaca and Oruro, the other Pueblo San Juan de Dios de Misque, Valley of Cochabamba, and all the Provinces and Cantons Aransaya and Urinsaya, Punas and Valleys, buy and sell and composición San Marcos de Lima … (Document C, dated February 23, 1933, 3r and 3v, in Don Franco Quispe Maraza’s personal archives. The Spanish original is in Appendix A)

The practice of the notaries or scribes (escribanos), working for Spanish interests or under the comunarios of the place, of copying out numerous times the documents from “time immemorial,” tended to introduce into these copies elements from the present, but as if they were part of the original document. In the aforementioned case, the document begins with a reference to all the lands that “made up” Alto Perú, but with their terminology dating to the foundation of the Republic. For example, the document mentions the “Departments of La Paz, Oruro, Potosí, Chuquisaca, Cochabamba, Tarija, Santa Cruz, Trinidad, Antofagasta, Tacna and Arica and all the villas that form Alto Perú, all the villas that form Aransaya and Urinsaya …,” before referring to the huge range of territories belonging to the ancestors of the province of Paria de Poopó, granted by the original composición de tierra from San Marcos de Lima: … all your departments and we have received from our grandparents and from whom we have accordingly our ancient titles from the Crown of Spain, and of our titles raised, consecrated, sworn upon, and consecrated, and conformed in our fine and general titles by tariff … (Document C in Don Franco’s possession, 3v and 4r. See appendix A)14

It is worth pointing out that the document alludes to a financial transaction made around the time of the composición de tierras of 1646, which underlines the obligations of the interested parties not only towards the Spanish State and Crown, but with a contribution to the Santa Bula of the Church, of “our legitimate titles given by Don Felipe de la Vega de León in Los Reyes (Lima) and the department of the Villa of Potosí and Villa Chuquisaca, and in the Royal Chancery that they granted in the city of La Plata …”15 with a payment to His Majesty of: … the quantity of $85‒35 897 (illegible) and eight reales, five and a half in silver and the other tested, and given or brought (to) San Marcos de Lima, here the summary of

14 The original Spanish says “… todos sus Departamentos y hemos resibido de nuestros abuelos y de que tenemos según nuestros títulos antiguos de la Corona de España y de nuestros títulos levantados consangrados juramentados y consagrados y conformados de nuestros títulos fino y General en arancel …” 15 The original Spanish says “nuestros títulos legitimos dados por don Felipe de la Vega de León en los Reyes y el Departamento de la Villa de Potosí y Villa Chuquisaca y en la cancellería Real que entregaron en la ciudad de La Plata …”

84 The Oral History of Qaqachaka the list of mitayos and tenant farmers who pay to the Holy Church and contribute to the Holy Bull … (Document C in Don Franco’s possession, 4r. See appendix A)16

The issuing of a Holy Bull (Santa Bula), such as that applied from 1574 to 1660, began as part of the war against the infidels (Muslims) in the Reconquest of Spain, but was then directed towards maintaining the cult of Catholicism and works of charity. Its administration functioned through the alms of the faithful and the obligations of the religious mit’a. Don Franco’s document refers to the conditions stipulated in a later Bull of around 1774. The same document in the hands of Don Franco takes pains to point out the mixed composition of the regional population in those years and hence that of the groups sent as mitayos, although all of them are “brothers of one blood, and we believe in the religion.” In this context the “three brothers” recognized by God the Holy Spirit are described: the first are a black brother and sister that live in the woodlands, the second are the Indian brothers and sisters who live in the puna and valleys of the Altiplano, and the third are the white and mestizo brothers and sisters who came from Spain: In view of all this we claim and request reasons to this Señor Justice who attends us for all the communities, for all, because we are brothers of one blood and we believe in God, and besides, these three brothers and three sisters recognized (by) God the Holy Spirit, the first of the brothers a black man and woman, the first brothers being widespread in the woodlands, and the second the Indian brothers and sisters, the second brothers being widespread in the altiplanos of Punas and Valleys, and the third the white and mestizo brothers, the third being brothers of mestizo and white races widespread in the good place of Spain. (Document C in Don Franco’s possession, 4v. See appendix A)17

The mention in the document of the black brothers and sisters seems to refer to the descendants of black slaves, who worked in woodland regions such as Tacna, which the Qaqachakas used to visit in their tasks as llama herders as part of their service in the mit’a to obtain construction materials (mainly timber) and goods of one kind or another (oil, wine) destined for the mines of Potosí. Various oral narratives from the ayllu record the (highly racialized) appearance of these black men in the Tacna region, with their “members like hosepipes,” and the black women, who “wrapped their long breasts around their necks as they worked.” The interesting thing about these episodes of oral history narrated by persons closely associated with title-​bearer families, whether Don Feliciano Maraza, Don Tiburcio, or Don

16 The original Spanish says “… la cantidad de $85-​35897 [illegible] y ocho reales cinco media en plata y otro enzayados y entregado o comprados (a) San Marcos de Lima aqui el resumen de la lista de mitayos y arrenderos que pagan a la Santa Iglecia y contribuyeron a la Santa Bula …” 17 The original Spanish says “En vista de todo esto reclamamos y razones pedimos a ese Señor Justicia que nos atienda para todos los comunidades a todos porque somos hermanos de una sangre y creemos en Dios y ademas de estos tres hermanos y tres hermanas reconosidos Dios Esperito Santo el primero de hermanos un negro y negra y primero de hermano extendido en las montañas y el segundo hermano indios de indias segundo de hermanas extendido en los altiplanos de Punas y Valles y el tercero de hermanos blancos mestizos y tercero hermanas raza mestizos blancos extendidos a buen lugar de España.”

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Agreement Between Literate Caciques

85

Franco, or even the more fragmented memory of this narrated history by Don Franco’s son-​in-​law, is that they derive simultaneously from the written archival documents and the original oral testimonies of the period, still evident in those documents, probably expressed in Aymara. Evidence of this underlying orality in the written documents can be perceived in the numerous formulaic repetitions throughout the text, which express a certain ritual ordering of these events. In my transcription of another of Don Franco’s documents (Document K, see later), which concerns the rites of circumambulation in the composición de tierras of 1646, I indicate these formulaic phrases by separations in the text, and the use of underlining to mark each epithet or ritual sequence. By visualizing this “oralized” transcription, it becomes evident how the elements are ordered in a particular way. There are the named visiting inspectors and other authorities (which I have written in bold), including the caciques of each ayllu (or annex) with their respective titles and places of representation, followed by their musical instruments—​ayaguaya, tambor and timbrel (tamboreta), quena, snare drum (cajita), charango, large pinquillo, large guitar, cigura (or sikuri)—​ which they used to play as “solace” while defining the limits, and finally the toponyms of the boundary stones they are documenting. Musical instruments served as yet other epithets for these caciques, given that they were characteristic of each place. For example, the ayaguaya is a kind of small wooden flute or tarka with a single register, on which the music, also called “ayaguaya,” is played in the neighbouring ayllu of Condo at Carnival and the Feast of the Dead, accompanied by a snare drum (cajita). So ayaguaya music tends to be associated with the history of the Asanaques.18 At the same time, “ayaguaya” refers to the type of dress used by the Condo musicians who play ayaguaya, with their multi-​coloured outfits (called culebra or “snake”), hats flowing with streamers and hanging coca bags (called ch’uspa) (­figure 4). Some entries in the text about the process of marking the boundaries define the moments for chewing coca (in a “pijchada”) and “drinking their alcohol,” as a way of rest, but also to assure that the territory so defined will be beneficial in the future. Finally, when they reach the furthest limits that should not be crossed, the group is threatened by fire, and the enumeration of the fines and punishments they will suffer if they dare pass the boundary markers. Although the immediate date of this document is August 22, 1967, it refers to a document of April 5, 1754, which in turn derives from a more fundamental document based on the Visita of the Visiting Judge José de la Vega Alvarado in 1646, and in the actions of the visiting entourage concerned with this event. We are dealing with the repetitive historical task, in the hands of the local scribes (escribanos), of transcribing and re-​transcribing these events from one document to another (in the process called waraña in Aymara), and sometimes of introducing involuntary errors into these transcriptions as they lost contact with the original sources. For instance, Taquimallco, Governor of Asanaque, tends to have the epithet of “paco poncho, paco cholo” (tan poncho, tan ch’ulu, referring to a knitted hat), which it must have said in the original testimony, but in the 18 See also Verstraerte (2010, 250).

86 The Oral History of Qaqachaka

Figure 4. A troupe of musicians from Condo, playing the flutes called ayaguayas and snare drums, play ayaguaya music at Carnival in 2016 in Qaqachaka pueblo.

present version it is written “paso pondro y paco cholo,” without much sense. Another error of this kind occurs with the ritual phrase “juchantin tasantin” (written in the document as huchantin tazantin), “he that is obliged to pay the tax (tasa),” but written here as huarantin, which again lacks sense. This same kind of error occurs in the redaction of names, so instead of saying Ayra Chinche, for the Governor of Pocoata, it is written “Ayra Chinca.” In this 1754 document, we find, as the brother of the unfortunate Lujano, the name Fernando Choque Callata (and not the Choquecallati of the oral narratives), with that of his widow Juana Doña Ana, as part of the entourage of the original event in the decade of 1640, although perhaps these names have been added to the original event given their importance in local oral tradition. There is a certain ambiguity here, because in Don Severo’s account of these boundary makers he implies that the same brother Fernando (Jirnantis in Aymara) had adopted the honorific title of the chiefly lineage called “Taquimallco”: That negotiates the underwritten Secretary of the Courts of Instruction (Juzgado de Partido) of the Province of Poopó Paria, and of the Department of Oruro, Bolivia, with its permanent head office in the neighbourhood of Poopó, within the ordinary proceedings of necessary and partial demarcation followed by the comunarios (of) cantón Cacachaca [From] the [regional] centre of San Pedro de Condo, Governor [of] Asanaque, Fernando Taquimallco, paco poncho, paco cholo [knitted hat], solace with ayaguayo flute, timbrel and quena flute [Province of] Bustillo, Bartolomé Astete, postilion, Pichiscollo Three Mojones

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Agreement Between Literate Caciques

Culta and Macha, Mariano Choque cacique of Macha and his solace the large guitar [and] his coca chew, to Condo ten leagues and a half, [from] Condo ten leagues to the mojón Choquecära church the other side of Condo, from Macha Palos and another five leagues [to] Cacachaca and mojón Pichaca and Ichuarapi Tola, mojón Pujyun Jalla Cruzada, the final mojón Chiara Kaima Mariano Choque Cacique with his obligation (juchantin), Three Mojones [From] Pocoata, Pedro Khoñaque, with his obligation (juchantin), Cacique Fernando Taquimallco, [Province] Bustillo, Bartolomé Astete, five leagues to Cacachaca and ten leagues [to] Condo, Governor [of] Azanaque, mojón Caballo Khala

[From] Pocoata, Pedro Khoñaque, ayllu Chacaya, Amarala Quispe, ayllu Sullcaya, estancia Cañawi, Quispe, in the mojón to chew coca, and Huari Umana Pozo and Huari Zepita Pozo, mojón Joco Kaquiri Vilatacama, mojón Otawi, mojón Kekasana Sworn oath by Fernando Choque Callata, Juana Doña Ana, Pocoata, Aira Chinche

and Juan [Alvarado], Inspector from Potosí, Inspecting Judge (Juez Visitador) [from] Paria Poopó Pedro Koñaque Cacique, with solace [in the music of] charango, Pocoata

Fernando Taquimallco, with solace [in the music of] ayaguayo flute, [Province] Bustillo, Bartolomé Astete, [with a] snare drum (cajita) and ayaguayo flute, mojón Pucara Chaquere Kasa, high mountain Quiburi, estancia Jiquiruma, ayllu Cahualli, estancia Pampuyo, ayllu Pisaca, mojón Quiburi Irupampa Chorikasa, Three Mojones Chiaracollo

Governor [of] Azanaque Fernando Taquimallco, [with his] obligation (juchantin) [Province] Bustillo, Bartolomé Astete, Pocoata, Pedro Konoña, cacique with his obligation (juchantin), Jukumani, Rafael Gallego, cacique, with solace [in the music of] the large duct flute (grande pinquillo) and the Pocoata charango

Fernando Taquimallco, with solace [in the music of] the ayaguayo and timbrel (tamborette), Three Mojones Chiarcollo, to chew coca, mojón Quillamani Kasa, the high mountain, Huaca Plaza, mojón Karahuilque, Apacheta Loketa, Suni Urjaña, four leagues to Cacachaca, three leagues to Condo, mojón Chillca Cahua Tola, mojón Jarca Cagua Challuma Witness Kenda Aimaya, witness Azurero Condo, Three Mojones, Bugitana Petra, Three Mojones

Rafael Gallego, ayllu Jukumani, with solace [in the music of] the large duct flute (grande pinquillo), jilanqu Pedro Soto ayllo Laime, with solace [in the music of] charango, Fernando Taquimallco [Province] Bustillo, Bartolomé Astete, paco poncho, paco cholo, with solace [in the music of] the ayaguayo and tamboreta, and chewing coca and drinking their alcohol, the Three Cacachacas five leagues and a half, Condo fourteen leagues, Governor [of] Azanaque, Inspector from Potosí, Inspecting Judge (Juez Visitador) Poopó Paria, mojón Tomatomene, mojón Quijata Chinchoma, Witnessed by Pedro Soto, mojón Kaima Pampa, oath sworn by Fernando Taquimallco

Witnessed by the Inspector of Poopó, estancia Huancaraní, ayllu Sullcayana, estancia Patapata, ayllu Laime, mojón Sacapatilla, mojón Anas Judge of the commune (comuna Jueza)

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88 The Oral History of Qaqachaka

Take along the Inspector (Visitador) [to] mojón Lahua Apacheta, [by] Fernando Taquimallco, take along the Inspector Judge (Juez Visitador), Soravere Pozo, [to] mojón Tarucahumana [by]) Pedro Soto Take along the Inspector [by] Pedro Soto, cacique, [to] mojón Suaraviri Pozo Take along the Inspector (and) Inspecting Judge [by] Pedro Soto, [to] mojón Taipichiurana, mojón Sausauni, take along the Inspecting Judge [by] Pedro Soto [to] mojón Taca Changara, Take along the Inspecting Judge [by] Fernando Taquimallco [to] mojón Churichaca

Take along the Inspector [by] Fernando Taquimallco [to] mojón Challacasa, take along the Inspecting Judge [by] Pedro Soto [to] mojón Guanacotaviri, Take along the Inspecting Judge [by] Pedro Soto [to] mojón Huichumakasa Yargüijaque, [by] Fernando Taquimallco, (and the) Inspecting Judge (Juez Visitador) Bartolomé Astete [to] estancia Calluuchu, Tunto Quispe, su hermano Amarala Quispe, ayllo Sullcaya, Pedro Soto, chew coca, mojón Jancovinto Kello Apacheta, Take along the Inspector [by] Fernando Taquimallco [to] mojón Chico Llallagua and Grande llallagua, take along the Inspector [by] Pedro Soto [to] mojón Laurani, Charca Laurani, Paria Laurani.

Take along the Inspecting Judge (Juez Visitador) [by] Pedro Soto [to] mojón Tres Chojlla Kasa, Pedro Soto, Laime, Fernando Taquimallco, [Province] Bustillo Bartolomé Astete, Challapata, Andrés Chungara, cacique, with his solace [in the music of] cigura, [and] Laime charango. Fernando Taquimallco, Condo, with his solace [in the music of] ayaguaya and tamborete, and paco poncho paco cholo, Laime Sacollani Cacchaca, Condo ten leagues, Take along the Inspecting Judge (Juez visitador) [of] Poopó Potosí, with tambores, where they are intercepted by fire, Fernando, San Pedro Azanaque de Condo, permarato[?]‌, scribe, mitayo, mountain, departament [of] Potosí, orders the General of Potosí Juan Prada.

Grandparents or children shall not pass from this mojón, or that will be punished with five years of prison and a punishment of five quintales [of lashes] and a fine of 500 Bs., but from that past mojón it will be punished and with obligation and tax (jucha tasa), the postilion of Chayanta, jilanqu Pedro Soto, Potosí, Fernando Taquimallco, with obligation and taxes, and the origin for attracting the land [of] Cacachaca, and that Amarala Quispe … and measured with Laime, Condo, Challapata, it was finished with salud mitayo, Potosí Conservador three, witness the Father, Juez José Alvarado, and Sucre, capital Oropeza, [with] the order of Santa Rosa Lima, and costs two arrobas of white silver, capital Mizque and Chayanta, Potosí, and capital Puna, capital Cochabamba, capital Poopó, April 5, year 1754 … Potosí falcon, Poopó Paria falcon. This title was born when the Sun was born and when the condor flew and the vicuña ran, in the time of Adam and Eve.

(Document K, August 22, 1967, 1r‒2v, in Don Franco Quispe Maraza’s personal archives. See appendix B)

Note that the last more poetic phrase cited might refer to the Aymara custom (with its Inka roots) of identifying the upper and lower moieties of a confederation, in this case Potosí and Paria Poopó, as the two halves of a falcon (Platt 1987b, 100–​1). If we summarize the entries in this foundational historic document, in the sense that interests Hayden White in the proper construction of historiography, then the order follows this pattern:

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Agreement Between Literate Caciques

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The pueblo of reference—​the governor or representative, with his name—​his epithet or sobriquet, if it exists—​the modality of solace (by playing a certain musical instrument)—​ the inspector charged with verifying the boundary marker—​the name of the boundary marker, then it proceeds to its adjoining boundary …

Something of this original pattern is reiterated in the present ordering of the limits of Qaqachaka, remembered by Don Franco, this time as an experienced authority of the place, although in a much more simplified form. Now nothing more than the place-​name is remembered, the representative of the place in the person of the comunario responsible for it, and the adjoining territory. We seem to be dealing with a communal appropriation of these boundaries: The limit is Maraza. Then there’s Kututu, belonging to Taraqani Bautista. Tarpata Atanasio adjoins Macheño and Macheño adjoins Choquecära. Afterwards Laq’a Qullu is Mamani’s, from Wallas Cruz. Then Qawalli Qala is Quispe’s, from before … they’ve forgotten that. After Jukuqaqiri is Qawalli, up to Qiqis(ani), Wila Taqana is Qawalli. This adjoins Tumüyu. And, in Pukuwata, Tumüyu is co-​boundary with Aqxat Uma. Now, Qiqisani adjoins Kututu, and Pukuwata adjoins Pampüyu. Now Suk’i, Phariya Suk’i from Kiwuri adjoins Jiq’ir Uma, belonging to Arias. And Kuntur Pujyu adjoins Jukumani and Pariya Suk’i. The three of them are co-​boundaries with each other, and they’re called Kinsa Kulinta (Three Limits).

Afterwards comes T’ula Mujuna, Suni Utjaña, and from there Chiruya and Jilawi are co-​ boundaries. Then, from Ch’allüma and Chullpa Loma … Chullpa Loma is Qaqachaka’s and Luluni is Jukumani’s; these are co-​boundaries from Ch’allüma. After comes Q’uwach’api  … No … First of all, in Turum Pallqa, there are three boundary markers (kinsa mujuna), this time belonging to Laymi, Jukumani, and Qaqachaka. And Jukumani ends there. Then in Qayma Pampa, further up above Laymi (Laymi patapata) is Q’uwach’api. They are co-​boundaries from Qayma Pampa. Then, from Chullpa, there’s Sura Sura. Janq’u Chullpa with Sora Sora and with Ch’alla Kunka are co-​boundaries … Then there are Uritaqa and Kututu. They are co-​boundaries from T’aqata Qala (Exploded Rock). Afterwards comes Taqawa and Payrumani. From Ch’alla Q’asa to Waña Quta is now co-​boundary with Laymi. But Taqawa is Qaqachaka. Then, in Janq’u Wintu, which is Quispe’s, its co-​boundary with Sinqüma. Quispe is from Qaqachaka and Sinqüma from Laymi. Then comes Quntu, in P’isaq Tapa and Q’asiri. Q’asiri is Laymi and P’isaq Tapa is Quntu. Then Chuxlla and Tumüyu are co-​boundaries with Chaxlla Q’asa. Chuxlla Q’asa is Quntu and Tumüyu is Laymi. From there it’s Challapata, and then I don’t know …

Don Franco ended his narration about the boundaries with the following commentaries that once again contextualize the history, not only of Qaqachaka, but of all Bolivia, according to the events he had related: (To get hold of) this place … the mitayos and llamas brought them. That’s why they took hold of the place.

Afterwards they’d raised the communal fields called mantas, ten mantas in all, requesting an authorization from the General of Potosí. The alcaldes and the mallkus went to request an order from Potosí for the whole of Qaqachaka. First they’d visited there and then Potosí visited here, in the person of the Visiting Judge. Because it was him who gave birth

90 The Oral History of Qaqachaka

to Bolivia, wasn’t it? After that, Poopó was born, and then there were visitas to Poopó Paria. And they’d marked the co-​boundaries between Paria Poopó, and Potosí. They’d separated each of them.

That is to say the new place of Qaqachaka was founded by the physical force of the ancestors, above all in their service as mitayos in the mines of Potosí, and by the caravans of llamas that carried the materials necessary for the mines. There was only the lack of manpower to manage the agriculture and herding in the place, and of adequate lands in the distinct ecological zones of this mountainous region, to provide all their necessities. We shall examine this search for inhabitants in the following chapter.

Chapter 5

SETTLING THE NEW PLACE OF QAQACHAKA AND ITS AYLLUS

Cantones are certain free cities in Germany that do not recognize a Lord: they say there are twenty-​two (such) republics.1

Covarrubias, Tesoro de la Lengua Castellana o Española (1611, 100)

At this point, Don Franco left his main narrative about the composición of land, to explain how Qaqachaka, now a viable place to live situated on the route between Condo and Potosí, came to be populated. Yet again he underlines the importance of the mit’a service as a modality of contract between the new originario landowners and the Colonial State to guarantee the possession of their lands in perpetuity. How the New Place was Populated

Apart from serving in the mit’a, another juridical aspect demanded by the colonial dispositions concerning the pueblos de indios was that of assuring sufficient population to accomplish the ongoing demands for manual labour and agricultural production. Hence the preoccupation of the few inhabitants to settle the territory of Qaqachaka with whatever passer-​by they could find. This possibility was made easier by the situation in the region at the end of the seventeenth century, with devastating epidemics in the urban centres and a massive flight, even of mestizos and creoles, towards the rural areas, to escape a premature death:2 Then they arrived from other parts, they arrived here. And they (from here) beseeched those who passed by on the road, “Why don’t you stay here? We don’t have enough people. Help me.” There were also visits (from folks) with llamas: “Stay here. We don’t have enough inhabitants,” they said. And so the population grew. Because at that time there were things (to do); there were services and obligations (to accomplish). “Fine,” they replied.

Then the grandparents from Condo become greater in number, with persons who knew how to think (wali piq’inaka) and with rich-​ones (qapaqa). Because we grew in number together with those from Condo and other parts. Qaqachaka was formed in this way, by 1 The original Spanish says “Cantones, son ciertas ciudades libres de Alemania, que no reconocen Señor, dizen ser ventidos Republicas.”

2 In 1695 there was a measles epidemic, which originated in Quito, and from 1718 to 1720 a series of epidemics at a pan-​Andean level that impacted Potosí and its surroundings. However, after its impact in another phase of demographic decrease, there was a gradual demographic recuperation, from the third decade of the eighteenth century onward (Contreras 1999, 89–​90).

92 The Oral History of Qaqachaka swearing oaths of allegiance. They procreated in this way too. And so they were able to form a cantón in Qaqachaka.

At first glance, the repeated reference in Don Franco’s episodes to Qaqachaka as a “cantón,” already in the seventeenth century, around 1646, seems quite strange. However, other documents of the period refer to the transformation of Condo itself into an independent “cantón,” in about 1670. This term is better known in the political and ecclesiastical divisions in the making from 1826, after the founding of the Bolivian Republic, given the influence of Napoleonic laws in the previous decades. But in fact the use of “cantón” dates from much earlier, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, being a term derived from the French, but via the medieval Latin cantu, derived from the Roman dominion of the Frankish nations in Northern Europe (in Germania). Covarrubias’s Tesoro of 1611 gives a definition of this term already in use in the Spanish of that period as a “free city,” tied to notions of the medieval municipality under the authority of a mayor (alcalde),3 quite distinct from its later significance as an “electoral circumscription” in eighteenth-​ century France.4

The Sons-​In-​Law who Married into Women from Qaqachaka

In the same context of Qaqachaka’s population scarcity, as well as the lack of people to work the lands, Don Franco remembered the names of some “sons-​in-​law” (tullqas) who had married women of the place as outsider husbands, to form families there. Many of these changed their surnames as a way of accommodating themselves to the new location, tending also to highlight their ties to existing chiefly families: There’s Porco from Qhuchini, for example. He was from Lawuna in Laymi. There are always grandparents who were poor. Well he wandered about with a bed made up of pieces of rag. He wandered about like that.

Then he’d sired a baby with a young girl (palachu) from Taqawa, and that’s why they said “Let him stay.” Because in that period there were not enough people. That’s why they told him to stay. And that’s why they began to live here, those from that part of Lawuna. That old man, I can’t remember his name. Then there’s Caricampo; they say he’s from Pukuwata. He lives in Qhata Uma. I  don’t know his name. He’d stayed here after coming from Pukuwata. And he’d married a young girl from here. The older folks talk about this. Now the one with the surname Almendra is from Belén, but they say he’s also from Pukuwata.

The Ovandos in ayllu Kinsa Cruz are really the Choquecallatis. Their grandfather was Choquecallati. But now they just take the name Ovando. Some time ago they were the 3 Cantons are certain free cities in Germany that do not recognize a Lord; they say they are twenty two Republics (Covarrubias 1611, 100, my translation).

4 In the Asamblea Nacional Constituyente of 1789, France was divided into departments, districts, cantons, and communes, under the idea that the former provinces were places of privilege for the aristocracy.

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Choquecallatis who’d made the church stand up. But they became Ovandos from the time they were baptized.

I’ve not found out much about the Espejos. It’s in the time of the Llanquepachas that they became settled here. It’s where they’ve become settled. Then Llanquepacha went to the valleys. At this very moment they have a hacienda there in the valleys, the Llanquepachas. They (the Espejos) were received into these foundations, this house which is now a shop, and the Espejos are settled right there. They might be from Potosí originally, from a place called Axtara, from Chayrapata. That’s what they say. Now there are lots of them, but they procreated in this way from just two people. Some say that the Marazas are from Condo, but I  don’t know much about that. Only Marazas live in Livichuco now.

The Mamanis are from here. And the Navarros are from Condo. The Quispes are also from Condo, from the place called Wishruri. It’s near Q’athawi Qullu Crucero, a little bit further on. They came from that rancho. Others are from Aullagas. Now there are lots of them. The Aycas are a family from the past. The Arias are the people of Kapitana; Kapitana is their saint.

Etymologies of the Names of Qaqachaka’s Minor Ayllus

Together with his descriptions of the population of the new place, Don Franco expounded upon the origins of Qaqachaka’s minor ayllus and their names: Kinsa Cruz existed from the time when there was still no church here. From before then. Kinsa Cruz is on the co-​boundary with Jukumani, and it’s also on a co-​boundary with Pukuwata and with Macha. That’s why there are three co-​boundaries, and that’s why it’s called Kinsa Cruz, “The Three Crosses.” There was a separate cabildo where Jilawi is, down there below, always called Kinsa Cruz, the place was always called Kinsa Cruz. It was a rancho before. It belonged to Qaqachaka. And afterwards all (the ranchos around it) took the name of ayllu Kinsa Cruz. The ranchos are Belén, Jilawi, Cóndor Pujyu, and Qachusani, they are Kinsa Cruz. Now the whole group is Kinsa Cruz. Jujchu is called that because it’s situated at the foot of the great mountain of that name. Afterwards everyone from there became Jujchu cabildo. Now it’s just ayllu Jujchu. But before it was ayllu Qawalli, Maja Qawalli (Qawalli Mayor); only afterwards did they say “Jujchu.”

In passing, Don Franco mentioned how the history of the minor ayllu called Arriba, Araya, or Livichuco was closely tied to the history of the tambo or waystation there: Now “Livichuco” is where the tambo is. It was in Wila Wintilla, where Willka Puju is. We used to have to serve there as postilions. Even earlier on we had to go to serve in Pupüyu (or Paria Poopó), on the way to La Paz. We had to go there to serve as alcalde (mayor) too. Even the tax contribution from Qaqachaka went there. We went to lend service with three mules. Two died and we’d come back with just one. Then there were other postilions, those under the command of the haciendas with their loads of paperwork. How they went, where they went … that’s to say through the visits here. The postilion for the post went to Wila Wintilla and then on to Potosí. There was one called Manuel Maraza; he was an old man. And he insisted, “I can no longer go to serve there. This postal service wants to make me serve seven tambos, from the tambo of Livichuco,” he said, and he’d demanded this in Sucre.

94 The Oral History of Qaqachaka Then someone from the Post Office, I can’t remember his name, said “No! This Qaqa is too lazy to go. It’s just around the corner. It’s just around the corner from Mount Turu. So let him swear an oath.” And they’d sworn an oath in Sucre.

And Manuel Maraza said “It’s seven leagues from Livichuco to Wila Wintilla, and I can’t go to serve there,” he’d insisted. “I’ll only lend my service in Livichuco,” he said, and he’d sworn an oath. “No, no … it’s just beyond Mount Turu,” said the other one. The Post Office man too had sworn an oath. Then they came out of the lodgings after swearing their oaths, the Post Office man and Maraza. And someone said to him, “Don Maraza, beware of swearing a false oath, damn you,” he’d said. But Maraza prayed, “It’s quite clear,” and he began to pray. I can’t remember if he’d sworn an oath for one or two hours.

Anyway, after an hour someone came and said to him, “Don Maraza, they say you should come.” The Post Office worker had died. Because the Post Office man had sworn a false oath. So from that moment on the tambo exists just in Livichuco. Then it became ayllu Livichuco or ayllu Arriba or Araya.

In other cases, depending on the demographic development of a certain ayllu, its history stops there. This occurred in the case of Qullana, left without inhabitants, so the ayllu disappeared from the place. But in the cases of Sullkayana and Qallapa, these ayllus continue until today: Ayllu Qullana is scattered about, that one is. Arriba, where the Pukara is, is also called Qullana. Pata Kunka is Qullana too, but all the people are gone. There are no longer any of them. Parqu is also Qullana. And Cóndor Pujyu, up in the corner called Qhusmiri, is Qullana. But the people are wiped out there too. Only Ch’aqiri is Qullana now. This Qullana comes from Condo, I  don’t know how. It “trickled down” from there. Now Qhuchini is Qawalli, and Qullana has been lost.

Sullkayana ayllu is divided into two. It’s found in the valleys too, from long ago. We were one single cabildo with P’isaq Thapa, in Condo. Now the co-​boundary from Quispe’s rancho is with Kawal Qala, and then Q’uwach’api is similarly a co-​boundary with Laymi. We’ve always been born to that fact. One of them is far away and the other one is just as far. But we are one single jilanqu (ayllu leader). At present P’isaq Thapa is another jilanqu. But here in Qaqachaka these two ranchos are one single jilanqu, that of Sullkayana. We feast as one and we drink as one. Qallapa is another ayllu …

In these descriptions, Don Franco uses the term “cabildo” to designate the political units or “councils” of each minor ayllu. As in the case of comuna and cantón, this term has a long history. The institution of cabildo, with its ancient Spanish roots, was an integral part of municipal life, according to the Leyes de Indias, with civil and criminal powers in the first instance in a body of laws and norms with a certain unity and coherence that reigned from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Therefore the origin of the municipal cabildos is long before the Toledan reforms, the earliest norms with respect to these dating to 1549 (Flores and Cañedo-​Argüelles Fabrega 2005). Private and

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communal spaces were assigned and designated by this term with a view to providing sufficient cattle pastures and cultivation plots, despite any later population expansion. These included the ejidos, common lands on the outskirts of a population destined for communal services, such as gardens or pastures, and also the lands of the municipal cabildo. The cabildos were also fundamental in protecting the rights of the originario populations faced with tributary and other demands (Luque Torres 2002). Historically, the institution of the cabildo emerged in the middle of the sixteenth century to establish the proper functioning of the cities in Spanish America, according to a regime of co-​optation in the naming of the town councillors (cabildantes). These were elected annually on January 1 by the members of the town council (ayuntamiento) (Mayorga 2002c), together with the first ordinary mayors (alcaldes), aldermen (regidores), and the principal bailiff (alguacil mayor, a delegate of the governor), authorized in turn to elect their replacements (remplazantes). But again, these offices derive from Spain’s historical past, such that “alcalde” derives directly from the Arabic el Cadí or al-​qaḍi (‫)يضاق لا‬, “judge.” In order to serve in these offices, the person had to be a “neighbour” of the pueblo, father of a family, and preferably know how to read and write. Faced with the need for new sources of income, Felipe II of Spain introduced the practice of selling these offices (except that of “alcalde,” which had a judicial function) to the highest bidder, who then obtained a perpetual title that could be made transmissible to future generations by repaying a part of the original value (Mayorga 2002c). Here we have the Spanish juridical conditions that promoted the practices of “rotating” and “bought” offices. The cabildo could also elect the “mayordomos,” the “alcaldes de barrio,” the “alcaldes de aguas” charged with the irrigation systems, and the rural judges (alcaldes de la Santa Hermandad) to control crimes. In other conjunctures, the cabildo designated the schoolteachers, and the scribes (escribanos, another saleable office) to manage the Books of Minutes (Libros de Acuerdos). Within their attributions, the cabildo had electoral functions, those of registering title deeds, and the government of their districts, including the organization of civic and religious fiestas, providing primary education, constructing the prison and municipal council building (casa del cabildo), and of controlling public irrigation, as well as financing functions to do with the administration of their assets. Let us examine now the documentary support for the history of the minor ayllus of the Qaqachaka annex. One of the earliest registers of baptism in Condo, of 1579, includes three names of ayllus still found in Qaqachaka: “callapa, cavalle y sulcaiana,” in a much longer list than that of the post Toledan reduction town.5 However, oral history recorded by the Qaqachakas of a generation ago, such as Doña Lucía Quispe Choque, hold that Qaqachaka was constituted by the upper ayllus (of arriba or alaxsaya) of Condocondo, and documentary evidence corroborates this memory. 5 Archivo parroquial de San Pedro de Condocondo, Bautismos, Libro I, 1579. Tabla de los Aillos, prepared by Father Peñalosa.

96 The Oral History of Qaqachaka

The padrón de revisita of 1787, from the jurisdiction of Paria (or Pariya), of which Condo formed part, indicates that in that period Condo’s upper moiety (the parcialidad of hanansaya) was constituted by Qallapa (or Kallapa) and Qawalli (also written as Kawalle or Caballi), each of which was itself divided into upper and lower moieties, together with Sullkayana, while Condo’s lower moiety (urinsaya) consisted in Yanaqi and Chiraja (Chiraga, or Changara).6 Qullana (or Collana) seems to have been part of the upper moiety of Sullkayana. The same revisita of 1787 states that Qaqachaka in its totality belonged to the upper moiety (hanansaya), and consisted of the ayllus of Qallapa arriba, Qawalli arriba and abajo, Sullkayana and Qullana. Condo’s book of baptisms No 12 for the period from 1763 to 1776 mentions the same configuration of ayllus in Qaqachaka:  Sullcaiana, Caballi, Callapa, and Collana, but with a rather curious final entry saying “many from Pocoata.” So, in spite of the commentaries by Don Franco and others, it seems that some Pukuwatas did actually stay on to live in the annex after all. Already in the nineteenth century, the revisita of 1817 implies that Qaqachaka was composed of the minor ayllus of Callapa arriba, Sullkayana and Caballi arriba and abajo. However, the later revisitas of 1863 and 1877 also included Collana abajo (divided into a first and second part) among Qaqachaka’s minor ayllus, although it belonged in that period to Cagualli abajo. This changing affiliation of Collana (also written Qollana or Qullana) is puzzling. The earlier revisitas for the years 1817, 1828 and 18347 mention that Qullana, in its two parts (1 and 2), belonged to the upper division (araya) of ayllu Sullkayana of Condo, and in 1838 Qullana was still affiliated to Condo.8 There is still not a detailed study of Condo’s minor ayllus at the end of the nineteenth and beginnings of the twentieth century. We know that in around 1989 these too were reorganized. In those years, Condo consisted of the minor ayllus of Sullkayana, Qollana, and Kawalli (or Caballi) forming the upper moiety, with Qallapa and Chiraga (or Changara) forming the lower moiety (graphic 2). It is not clear when Qallapa (or Callapa) changed its affiliation from the upper to the lower moiety. Yanaqi was separated from Condo in 1964 because of the frequent rivalries and confrontations with the other ayllus, and possibly also because of its precocious demographic growth. In those years, according to the French anthropologist Georges Pratlong, Sullkayana was the “head” (p’iqi) of all the minor ayllus of Condo (Pratlong 1989, 48). Even so, the early importance in Qaqachaka of the minor ayllus of Sullkayana and Qullana are evident in a commentary by Espinoza Soriano (1981a, 218), that these were considered the “original landowners” or originarios of Qaqachaka, and this is 6 The padrón of 1787 (Archivo de la Nación Argentina, sala XIII, cuerpo XVIII/​5‒3/​Leg. 62 Libro 3)  was analyzed by Fernando Cajías (1978). This essay and the padrón are also mentioned in Pratlong (1989, 47–​48).

7 1834, Padrón General, Provincia de Paria, Agustín Pío Ramos, T.  E. Lizárraga, A.  N. B., TNC, Padrones de revisitas para el pago de la contribución indígena, Archivo Nacional, Sucre. 8 In the nineteenth century revisitas, there is another curious mention of the “anexo de Caguayo,” this time as part of the “vice-​parroquia de Cacachaka,” together with Callapa arriba, Cagualli arriba and abajo, and Sullcayana.

Graphic 2. The emergence of Qaqachaka’s minor ayllus from the Quillacas-​Asanaque Federation.

newgenrtpdf

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The New Place of Qaqachaka and Its Ayllus

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98 The Oral History of Qaqachaka

corroborated in the early nineteenth century revisitas.9 In that period, the membership of these two minor ayllus was made up exclusively of this particular fiscal category, while other ayllus included both “original landowners” (originarios) and “outsiders with no land” (forasteros sin tierras). Don Franco’s comments about the meanings of the names of these minor ayllus suggest how the long history of Qaqachaka played its part in these etymologies. For example, the earliest names of the minor ayllus in Condo as well as Qaqachaka seem to make reference to the role of Quillacas-​Asanaque in the extensive commercial routes from the imperial Inka centres towards its peripheries, and from the coast and coastal yungas to the highlands and beyond. The name Callapa (the modern Qallapa) could be derived from the Aymara verb kallaña, which refers to carrying something long and heavy (such as a cadaver). An alternative etymology in the verb qallaña means “to begin.” In the case of Qullana, this term is commonly said to mean the first, the tallest, and most prominent (Zuidema 1964, 64), although another possible etymology derives from the generic Aymara term for medicinal herbs, qulla. Sullkayana means “minor” in a comparative sense, while Cavalle (or Guawalli, now written Qhawalli), might have signified hot chili peppers (ají), and hence the role of this group in the commerce of these peppers between the Pacific coast or yungas towards highland communities. We heard from Don Franco that Kinsa Cruz or “Three Crosses” made reference to the meeting place of three mojones, whereas Jujchu is the moist sound made by a watery flat near the top of the mountain of this name. It is important to understand that the actual structure of Condo’s annexes, such as Qaqachaka, emerges from the reconfigurations of Condo’s minor ayllus, nuanced by the demographic processes in play, although their component ayllus derive ultimately from the much older ayllus of the great Aymara Federation of Quillacas-​Asanaque (graphic 3). Through these dynamic historical processes, first the peripheral ayllus that were formerly part of the Quillacas-​Asanaque Federation became subordinated politically and ecclesiastically to the late sixteenth century reduction town of Condocondo, and then these reformed identities crystalized into new social formations, characterized by tensions between their constituent parts. Accompanying these political and religious transformations, the emerging patronal feast cycles organized around these new principal pueblos (in feasts held previously in recognition of the authority of the higher mallkus of the chiefdom in its integrity) became integrated into the system of rotating offices of the cabildos, responsible to the cabildo of governmental authorities in Condo pueblo. Then, through the gradual fragmentation of Condocondo into its annexes and vice-​parishes, emerged the integrated civic-​ritual system we know today (see graphic 3).

9 Espinoza Soriano (1981a, 218) suggests that, at that time, anansaya of Condocondo consisted in Callapa arriba and Callapa abajo, and Caballi arriba and Caballi abajo, and “belonging to the vice-​parish of Cacachaka,” the ayllus of Sullcayana and Collana. The same author (Espinosa Soriano 1981a) proposes that urinsaya of Condocondo was composed of the ayllus of Yanaque and Chungara.

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The New Place of Qaqachaka and Its Ayllus Qaqachaka

Qaqachaka

Lagunillas

Lagunillas

K’ulta

K’ulta

Caguaya or K’awayu

K’awayu

K’awayu

Vice-parish of Sanago de Huari

Huari, Guari or Wari

Wari

Wari

Doctrinal capital of Condo, Condocondo or Quntuquntu

Condo or Quntu

Quntu

Guadelupe Kasll Uma Quntukä Quntu

Reduction town of 1571

Annexes of 1646

Vice-parish of Santa Vera Cruz de Cacachaka (Church built ca. 1612)

Cacachaca or Qaqachaka Culta or K’ulta

Annexes of 1743

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Cantones of 1986

Graphic 3. The Condo parish and its annexes.

New Ties to the Valley Lands Another aspect of these episodes narrated by Don Franco concerns Qaqachaka’s valley lands. In order to live in the high Altiplano, with its unpredictable climate, it was always necessary to have access to lands at other ecological levels, especially the warmer valley lands lying eastwards, through a series of exchanges of products from each distinct zone, usually with established exchange partners (in client interchange between “caseros”). Politically, these interrelations had been controlled for centuries through established systems of mutual obligations, through serving political offices and in the working relations in each zone. So, “since time immemorial,” this pattern of interrelations had characterized the so-​called “Andean verticality” (sensu Murra) of the region, in the relations between ecological zones, and, in particular, the practice of “double domicile,” where family members resided in both places during a part of the year. Historically, evidence shows how highland populations of the region had depended for survival, since the Archaic period, on their valley counterparts, highland herders managing these relations by trekking each way through established caravan routes with their llama trains. However, the administrative destructuring of territories, which took place from the early colonial period onwards, gradually severed these ties. With the foundation of the new marka of Qaqachaka during the composiciones de tierras of the seventeenth century, it was necessary to restore these links and recreate the modalities of mutual survival in each zone. In many cases, the Qaqachakas took advantage of the ties already established with the valley lands set in motion by the wider political and ecclesiastical units, first those of Asanaque and then through the pueblo de reducción of Condo. But these ties could also be reestablished by purchasing valleys lands for money, in a custom that continued for centuries afterwards. Don Franco told us how his own Quispe family took advantage of these new arrangements, to obtain their valley lands through purchase, followed by serving their obligations as authorities in the puna as well as in the valleys: The Quispes have valley lands in Tïpampa. Martín Phachaqa from Qharaqhara is there; he’s from Jalq’a. Then Martín Chocamani, from Qallapa, and Felipe Mamani, from the

100 The Oral History of Qaqachaka same ayllu, bought the plots called “Tïpampa” from Martín Phachaqa. They bought them like a hacienda. Here among the comunarios there are certain families in the ranchos … Well, he (Chocomani) was all of a show with his hacienda, where he ate moist toasted corn meal (mut’i phiri) and toasted red maize grains (wila jamp’i). So we brought him up here to serve his obligations. He’d carried out the office of ayllu leader in Livichuco, and he’d done this service in the valleys as well as here. The land had already been bought. But he’d helped in this office and then he became an originario of here. So the valley hacienda disappeared, and with it the land bought by Chocamani. Nowadays, there’s (land in) Sawilani and another place called Qullpamayu. It’s a bifurcating place along the river. In Aymara it would be Qullpa Q’awa, but we call it Qullpamayu. They’d measured from Sawil Loma to Iluni, and they’d divided it between Felipe Mamani and Martín Chocamani.

And one of them asked the other, “Are you going to take hold of the upper or the lower part?” So the other one replied, “I’ll take the upper one.”

“Then I’ll take the lower one.” And they’d divided the lands in this way.

Quispe was from Illpa. He’d gone there just on a visit. And he’d gone to serve as mitayo in Potosí. That’s why there are two Quispes. Now he’s an originario. I am that person. Me. That’s why I’m also originario in the valleys.

Then there was Choque from Irunsata. That one had land in another place. In those times the Spanish destined the land. That’s why Choque approached Quispe and Chocamani. With this Choque we are three. Since the grandfathers we’ve been three. There’s another one called Pérez. Pérez also bought land. Pérez is from Condo. Now they are together with the Quispes; it’s one single cabildo now. We put down a contribution as one single unit. Now we go on paying and paying. We pay Oruro, going there together. We woke up to this, and we go on paying in this way. Perhaps we separated from Potosí … That’s all.

Although Don Franco mentions in passing here the mitayo obligations in Potosí as the primordial legal modality behind the access of the Qaqachakas to their valley lands, he overlooks mention of the corresponding ecclesiastical obligations. The problem is that we could not find much evidence about this service in the history of Qaqachaka. However, in an essay about the confraternities (cofradías) of the neighbouring ayllu of Macha, Platt gives us an idea of the importance, for other Condo annexes, of the ecclesiastical practice of the valleys, in which the term “valley annexes” comes into play. Platt describes how one of Condo’s valley annexes belonging to K’ulta still participated in two confraternities of the parish of Macha in 1779, in the place called San Pedro de Llanquiri, an enclave of maize cultivators occupied by foresteros from K’ulta’s minor ayllu of Qullana. In the same conjuncture, the Governor of Condo had the obligation of naming the alcalde of that valley annex during three consecutive years, as well as of other officials of the confraternities.10 One fiesta organized by a confraternity of the valley annex of K’ulta was dedicated to Condocondo’s patron saint, San Pedro, falling on June 29, while the visitors from K’ulta were still present in the valleys during the maize harvest. The other fiesta was that of February 1, dedicated to the Virgin of Candelaria. 10 Platt (1987a, 152 and 184 fol. 11a).

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Some details of the document in Don Franco’s possession, which I cited previously, are relevant here. In that document, eleven puna cantones and fourteen valley pueblos in the valley moieties belonging to San Para province are mentioned, sited in the modern departments of Oruro and Chuquisaca respectively (and therefore from dates later than the founding of the Republic). These provide other ways of understanding the ties between the puna and valley annexes towards the end of the colonial period and beginning of the Republic, whereby the puna and valley cantones are separated into two groups with their respective fiestas according to an overtly ecclesiastical terminology: Puna cantones

Valley cantones

San Pedro de Condocondo

San Pedro de Copavillque

Santa Bárbara de Culta

Puna nasa

Azanaque Santa Vila Cruz Cacachaca Ángel de la Guardia de Caguayo San Salbador de Lagunillas Santiago de Huari

San Juan de Dios de Challapata San Agustín Angustura

San Miguel de Pampa Aullagas Exaltación de Quillacas

Salinas de Garci Mendoza

Aguila arco

San Juan de Dios de Cacachaca San Pedro de Macha

San Pedro de Millahuma

San Juan de Guayrohuma San Pedro de Llanqueri San Miguel de Sauce

San Juan de Dios de Orkaka San Miguel de Palca San Salvador Paypo

Santa Bárbara de Caynakka Oroquilla

(Document C from February 23, 1933, Testimonio como copia arancel consagrado, 3v, held in Don Franco Quispe Maraza’s personal archives)

The lists is completed with the addition of the pueblo of “San Juan de Dios de Misque,” in the valley of Cochabamba. This list reveals the ecclesiastical parishes divided between the high puna and the valleys, in which we can deduce the spheres under their jurisdiction and the demands owed to the Church. Still, a generation ago, there was mention of valley lands in use by the Qaqachakas, especially those in Copavilque and Guañuma, and of the curious name of the valley cantón of San Juan de Dios de Cacachaca, a name no longer known by the majority of Qaqachakas today. In our inquiries into these matters, the comunarios we spoke to could only remember the name in this cantón of the presbyter of Potosí’s Archbishop, Don Juan de Dios Castelo, and of the place as a former valley parish that had fallen into disuse when the church burned down. The local saint, San Juan de Dios, is patron of the parish church of Challapata, whose feast day falls on March 8. So if the Qaqachakas participated once in the organization of this valley feast of the same name, it is more probable that they did so through ecclesiastical ties to Challapata rather than to Condo.

Chapter 6

SOME CLARIFICATIONS ABOUT JUANA DOÑA ANA AND HER KINSFOLK

Doña Ana was tall, because women from those times were tall … And in her footsteps the high mountains settled themselves down …

Doña Bernaldita Quispe, from the hamlet of Qañawi

A good contrast with the tales by Don Franco and the members of his imme-

diate family is the following sequence of narratives about Qaqachaka history told by Doña Bernaldita Quispe, which we recorded in 1993. I  already mentioned that Doña Bernaldita Quispe was the granddaughter of another important title-​bearer, Mallku Mariano Quispe from ayllu Sullkayana. So, during her early childhood, she must have had the opportunity to hear her grandfather’s recitations by memory about the contents of the historical documents in his charge. However, there are some aspects to her narratives I wish to underline. The first is that her grasp of the oral history of the place is not the same as the more detailed knowledge of the title-​bearers themselves. As part of the local “textual community” (Rappaport 1990), they recorded from memory impressively long extracts from the contents of the historical documents in their possession in order to recite these aloud. By contrast, Doña Bernaldita’s own memories combine certain aspects derived from written documents and the tradition of the title-​bearers with other more mythical and interpretative aspects drawn from oral history. In regard to this first aspect, some of her interpretations make me think that Doña Bernaldita had a certain influence from the Evangelists of the place, or perhaps a period of formal teaching in Catholic doctrine, possibly when she carried out the customary service with her husband of living in the residence of the curate from Condo during the month prior to their marriage. The second aspect is that, as compared to the narratives by the title-​bearers themselves, all men, Doña Bernaldita’s tales privilege the agency of the female actors in Qaqachaka history. Because of this feminine bent, our conversation with her could concentrate on two of the first key female ancestors of Qaqachaka and their many feats, which other narrators mention just in passing, namely Juana Doña Ana and her sister, Inka Mariya. We learn from Doña Bernaldita that Juana Doña Ana was a woman from Qaqachaka itself, a widow and daughter of a title-​bearer, who herself had “great ideas.” For that reason, she always carried with her the title documents of land, so that she could carry out constantly her claims to the lands that belonged to her. In one commentary by Doña Bernaldita (BQC) to a remark by Juan de Dios Yapita (JDY), we heard how, like Juana Doña Ana, she constantly sought access to her grandfather’s title documents, in order to defend her own lands in those years:

104 The Oral History of Qaqachaka JDY. We

went to Chuquisaca, there where the grandparents’ papers lie sleeping. That’s why we’re talking to you, Doña Bernaldita … BQC. Even I want to go there. My grandfather is in La Paz, but his papers must be there in Sucre. I would like to read them with someone who knows a lot about this. And afterwards I’d have them copy them out. I want to go and copy them for myself. My husband doesn’t want to go because he doesn’t know about these things. I don’t know (this world of) letters either. But I have a very large piece of land here, and people are invading it. And I’d like to free myself from this land …

Yet another aspect of Doña Bernaldita’s narratives is that certain ambiguities in them seem to derive from her position as a woman of the place, of being able to hear the contents of the documents about lands, but without being able to consult them personally, nor read them because of the lack of educational opportunities for her generation. For example, Doña Bernaldita’s perception about the period of history when Juana Doña Ana wandered across the land is of a remote time she could not name nor imagine. She perceives it as a liminal period between the Time of the Inka and the Time of the Chullpas, when it was still dark and only the moon existed, and when the first ancestors still wandered about on the face of the earth. In her account, the new and very distinct epoch that followed this, when the Sun appeared for the first time, drew from the Inka a loud shout of surprise. Nevertheless, Doña Bernaldita does not distinguish generically in these historical episodes between the Inkas and the Chullpas. She seems to suggest rather that at some time very long ago the two groups became fused together. Neither does she contrast these two groups with the Christian people of today, who populated the region after the Sun’s appearance. Through her first episodes, we learn that Juana Doña Ana herself was an Inka who lived in the dark and shadowy times before sunlight, when the Inkas became settled in the Qaqachaka region, and when the Inka himself was Lord Mallku of all. Another factor worth stressing is that in all the narratives told by Doña Bernaldita, despite our questions directed towards the origins of Qaqachaka as a place and its people, her replies always revealed a sequence of transformations between one epoch and another. There are the transitions between the Time of the Chullpas and the Time of the Inkas (which sometimes overlap), or between the Time of the Inka and the new “Christian” period announced by the rising of the Sun, with the creation of the miraculous sites of the region. Her predisposition to perceive “transformations” instead of “origins” calls our attention once again to the way in which the Qaqachakas perceive the colonial period, and the organizational, administrative, and religious changes introduced at that time. As other studies have observed, there is no sense of origins ex nihilo, rather of transformations from one state of being to another (cf. Santos-​Granero 2009). First of all, Doña Bernaldita told us an episode in which Juana Doña Ana was taking a walk on the edge of the boundaries of Qaqachaka (that which she denominates as “Charka”), taking possession of the lands of the place (­figure  5). Right from the start, Doña Bernaldita treats Juana Doña Ana as a heroic personage, capable of snatching away some land titles from a man from neighbouring Pukuwata, and returning them to

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Juana Doña Ana and Her Kinsfolk

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Figure 5. Qaqachaka marka in 2005.

Qaqachaka. So, faced with the imminent danger of losing them in favour of Pukuwata, or of Jukumani or Laymi, Juana Doña Ana managed to concede to the Qaqachakas the lands that belonged to them. In passing, Doña Bernaldita reinforces the idea that the founding ancestors of the place were persons of a very high stature: Doña Ana was tall, because the women of those times were tall. For example her footprints are imprinted into the great mountains. They say these are hers … Juana Doña Ana went around Charkas. She’d gone as a title-​bearer, and she’d gained us (the lands) by going around in this way. That’s why people settled here in Qaqachaka.

This is so. I don’t know in which place they’d made nightfall, but they say that the Sun had to rise, and the people of that epoch hadn’t ever known about seeing the Sun. In what time would it have been? Because the Inka was settled here, and hearing that the Sun was going to rise, they (the Inkas) had disappeared.

In this way … we become settled here, we Christians. The Christians are settled here from thence, from the time when the Inka was settled here. The Jukumanis are others. For example, Jukumani is in the Department of Potosí (Phutus tipartimintu) and then there was the Department of La Paz, and to this side it’s the Department of Oruro.

For Doña Bernaldita, the mysterious Taqimallku Astiti was nothing more than another name for the Inka, who was the Lord Mallku of all:

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He was called Taqimallku Astiti of course! He’d become settled here in the Time of the Inka, and the Inka had been Mallku. What time would this have been? Chullpa-​Inka …? When the Chullpas and the Inkas became merged together? That could be it.

Juana Doña Ana and her Predisposition for Scandalous Entanglements

In her narratives, Doña Bernaldita does not seem to distinguish between Juana Doña Ana and someone whom we learn only later is her sister, Inka Mariya, probably the same person whom other comunarios called “Mariya Doña Ana.” Doña Bernaldita was equally reluctant to put a date or a historical time period to the events she describes, although we know from written sources that she refers to the ceremony of marking the boundaries of Qaqachaka, as part of the composición de las tierras overseen by José de la Vega Alvarado, in 1646: Juana Doña Ana is a woman from this side, from Qaqachaka. She’s a woman from Qaqachaka. She was a widow. And being a widow, she’d gone around carrying her land titles with her. “I’ll go to gain these lands,” she thought to herself. It had become nightfall and she’d got together with a man from Pukuwata who was an Inka too, with someone from Pukuwata, with a person from Pukuwata, with another Inka person from Pukuwata. But that man had resisted and poked fun at her. That’s why (Qaqachaka) is separated from there (Pukuwata), because of the Inka … By meeting up with that man from Pukuwata, she’d taken advantage of him (yanantatawi). Pukuwata is won over now. Of course the woman won it over for us. She’d snatched away his land title. She’d made the title return to this side. If Pukuwata had been able to take it, then Pukuwata would have won us over. Wherever would the Pukuwata (territory) have been? Inka Mariya was coming, and being an Inka she’d said imperiously, “Your house will be here … I’ll sit down here, here in Qaqachaka, this shall be Qaqachaka.” And she’d settled down here in Qaqachaka. Of course, that’s why it’s called Qaqachaka marka. It was because the Sun had come out that she’d settled here. They say it is so.

Inka Mariya and the Red Snake

In the context of the composición de tierras of 1646, it is quite probable that the “Inka” from Pukuwata, whom Juana Doña Ana seduced to obtain the land titles of Qaqachaka, would have been no less than Lord Ayra Chinche, the great cacique of Pukuwata and the whole of Qharaqhara, who claimed Inka ascendancy. But when we asked her, Doña Bernaldita rejected this possibility. She likewise rejected the possibility of a link between Ayra Chinche and the red snake, introducing instead her own tale in which the said snake belonged to Inka Mariya! Here, Doña Bernaldita developed more details about the personage of Inka Mariya, to the point of amplifying her sobriquet to Inka Mariya Qhuya, thus converting her into the Inka empress herself. It is also possible that Doña Bernaldita had broadened the epithet of Inka Mariya to Qhuya, which means “mine,” to infer her patronage of mining practice in the region. Many tales in Qaqachaka related how the Inkas exploited gold in the

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mines around the main pueblo, and they generally mention an Inka mine in a rock face to one side of river Chiruchiru, a little below the main village. For Doña Bernaldita, these tales refer to the “golden period” (quri timpu) of the Inkas before the appearance of the Sun, when they knew how to cultivate gold from the ground quite easily, “just like potatoes.” Hence her association of the red snake episode with this dark and diabolic domain in the entrails of the earth, when the Inka mines produced a great quantity of gold. At the end of the episode, Doña Bernaldita compares the Inka people from this murky past with the later Christian folk, like herself, who live in Qaqachaka today. She differentiated between these two groups by the way the Inkas “used to talk to the stones, shrubs and plants, and all kinds of thing,” while modern people “are no longer bothered with doing these things.” In brief, “The Inkas spoke to the stones and the shrubs; the Christians did not.” But first, let us hear her commentaries on the episode of Inka Mariya and the red snake: I didn’t hear much about Ayra Chinche. They say he was from Pukuwata and the ones from over that side must be different. We over this side are different too. It’s so.

But if (that person) had a red snake (wila katari), then they must have been an Inka. That must have been the Inka called Inka Mariya. She used to have a red snake.

What could it have been? They say she used to live in the Golden Time (Quri Timpu). And in that golden epoch, gold was produced like potatoes… They say they used to cultivate it just like potatoes. That was before Father Sun (Inti Tala) appeared. It was produced just like that, here … How’s that? But it was that woman called Inka Mariya who had a red snake. That’s her of course. Inka Mariya Qhuya (Inka María the Coya). They say she had a red snake. Iwana Arana is the same. It’s the same with Iwana Arana. That’s why they settled here, for the land. More people came because the Inka settled here. It’s the same of course. That’s why we are the offspring (of the land), because of the Inka having settled here … Because of the Sun having risen.

We are no longer (the people) from before … Because the Inkas spoke with stones or plants, whatsoever. If we were Inkas we could speak to these things. As if we talk to those things? From when Tata Mustramu appeared … as if we still talk to those things …? But in those times, those ones spoke to them.

Juana Doña Ana Snatches the Title Deeds from an Unknown Man

In the next episode, Doña Bernaldita reveals the real reason why Juana Doña Ana had the reputation of being such a merry widow. It was in order to snatch away the land titles of Qaqachaka from the men she slept with, and return them to Qaqachaka, winning over the lands of the annex for all the people of the annex: They say that Juana Doña Ana used to meet up with men in order to snatch their lands. Well, that was in her role as a woman … The Inka was going along with some documents, and on his way back she divested him of all of them. That’s how the woman would have won them over. Returning (from there), she took away all of the (documents). That woman won them by having snatched them away. Because she would have had good ideas (wali amtani) … That’s why, from that moment, Qaqachaka would have been separated from Pukuwata.

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Then Doña Bernaldita reiterates the idea that Qaqachaka is “like a leg,” pushed with force into the lands of other territories, to the point that the Qaqachakas still defend their lands today to avoid them falling into the hands of the inhabitants of the surrounding ayllus, notably Jukumani: They say Qaqachaka’s like a leg. That’s why Jukumani is fighting over the land. We are fighting until now with the Jukumanis. If it wasn’t so, uw …! Qaqachaka would have been just tiny, because they say that both Pukuwata and Laymi had to settle here. They say that Inka Mariya turned all of this upside down, because she’d herded them (the people) all together. She announced “I have the land title, I’ve got the titles. What will they do with me? I have to settle here. I have to make my stand here.”

Charka and Chayanta exist until now. Charka is to this side and the other side is Chayanta. They’re always called by those names. It’s always like that. Qharaqhara is on the other side too. Qharaqhara is the main pueblo or marka. It’s always been like that. We’re separated. Surasura (Sorasora) too is a great pueblo.

The First Caciques of the Place, According to Doña Bernaldita Quispe

Straight away, Doña Bernaldita began to describe some of the first caciques of Qaqachaka. For her, Llanquepacha, cacique of Condocondo, was the husband of Inka Mariya, the Inka Señora. We also find out that Inka Mariya, as well as her husband, were descendants of the Sun Father, and that both of them, as boy and girl, were the first people in the whole world, those who originally “engendered” Qaqachaka’s future population. Then, Doña Bernaldita told us how this first couple were converted into gods, just like their father, the Sun, when they became transformed into some of the miraculous sites of the region: I used to hear about Llanquepacha. He was the cacique of Condocondo, called Llanquepacha. Well, there’s Llanquepacha (from there), and how was he called? Kiristiyalu Wasila (Cristialo Vasila) …! He’d have been on this side. And the woman … mm … his wife was Kunturi. The Llanquepachas were caciques of Qawalli and Qallapa, and the Taquimallcos of Sullkayana … This has always been so. That’s why they say, from long ago, “Inka Mariya, Inka Mariya …” One of them was called Inka Mariya and the other was Walinti Qala (Valentín Cala). The wife was Inka Mariya and the husband was Walinti Qala. These Qalas, they’d settled here from before, when the Sun Father (Inti Tala) came down. From that time. The people, well, we’ve spread out from then. The people spread out from just those two.

Inka Mariya Kicks Away the Thermal Waters

Doña Bernaldita’s following tale is about the founding act of establishing the site of Qaqachaka marka. This occurred when Inka Mariya (with the help of her sister Juana Doña Ana) kicked away the thermal waters that bubbled up from a spring where the plaza is now, sending them way down to the other end of the ayllu, going by the main river, where the thermal waters called Phutina exist now, in Jukumani territory. The date of this event seems to be at the end of the rainy season: The Inka shouted out suddenly and then the Sun appeared. And Inka Mariya came down from there, and, coming down from there, she’d settled here.

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There was water flowing about here, a lot of water … And Inka Mariya kicked away this rivulet of water, because they say that the thermal waters called Phutina used to flow around here. Well, they say she’d kicked it away, this Phutina water flow. And only then did she settle here, they say. Afterwards those people returned, they say, Inka Mariya and Walinti Qala. She’d kicked away the hot waters, they say.

Doña Bernaldita reveals the mythical and heroic value of these ancestral sisters by the way the place they decided to settle was converted into salient mountains, and how they themselves helped increase the height of these powerful mountains by chewing an enormous quantity of coca leaves, while relaxing in their various resting places during the ayllu circumambulation. We learn finally that Juana Doña Ana and her sister Inka Mariya were not just “Inkas,” but also “Chullpas,” having come out of the small houses known by this name in local sites such as Phari Pampa (Dry Meadow) to participate in taking possession of the lands of the new annex in the twilight before the birth of the Sun: They say that Juana Doña Ana went about chewing coca and playing her tambor. They say it was so, it was so. She went from the boundary (linti) of Charka, holding on to the others and she beat her side drum. She went along beating her tambor. That’s why she gave birth to us as the children of here, in those distant times. That’s why, woman and man, “Chewing coca,” we say, “so be it,” we say … “Yes. Let’s go round the boundaries, damn them, we’ll defeat them,” saying, around and around they went. They say these grandparents were tall in stature. Doña Ana was tall because the women of those times were tall. For example, they’ve found their footprints of her settling down, where they were seated. The great mountains became settled down where their footprints were. They say they are her (footprints). Then they chewed coca, they say. They’d consumed a lot of coca, they say. They chewed (the coca) in each place until the mountain grew higher and higher. They’d won Qaqachaka in this way: “That it be Qaqachaka from here to there, they said, and from there to the other side, that it be Jukumani, and to the other side Laymi. And here, that there be purely Qaqachakas, and that they are settled. We shall see to that.” Of course they’d won the place. That’s why we are resisting (until now) …

Firstly she’d visited the boundaries and then she’d come here. But they say that the thermal waters of Phutina came churning out of (the ground). They say it was like a lake here. Seeing this, she’d kicked away the hot waters with her foot. And then, the hot waters went much further way, all by themselves. Uw! The waters flowed away all by themselves … And they’d said “Let’s prepare this river (to receive the flow),” saying. So they’d prepared it and that’s why the water is flowing along the river now. That’s why there are thermal waters down below. They are no longer here. The thermal waters of Phutina (Phutuphutun Uma) are boiling away down below … They’re evaporating, aren’t they? They say that those were here, but she’d kicked them away. Then they settled down here. And afterwards, they’d built a wall. The people of that epoch say that only six people made the wall of the church stand up, just a small one. Only then had the people procreated, saying, “Let God make them plentiful.” Then the people grew in number, and then they made the church size bigger. Uw! In what epoch would it have been? I myself don’t know.

They say that Juana Doña Ana was the daughter of a title-​bearer. What was her father called? That I don’t know well … But that’s why she had so much energy. And that’s why she’d done it in this way. Uw … it would have been long ago! In what period would it have been?

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And she had a sister. Of course she is María Tuña Ana. Of course she is. It’s her who’d kicked away the hot waters: María Tuña Ana. They say there were two of them. Isn’t it so? Anyway, the sister kicked away the waters. And so the two sisters had equalled each other (in deeds).

Doña Bernaldita’s narratives suggest distinct ways of interpreting Inka Mariya’s act of kicking away the thermal waters way beyond the site of the new pueblo de indios with its colonial church. In the first place, the superhuman force of Inka Mariya and her very role in the origins of Qaqachaka have resonances with the foundational myth of Cusco. In that myth, Mama Ocllo and Manco Capac, the first couple of Inkas (although brother and sister), just like Inka Mariya and her husband Valentín Cala of Qaqachaka, are direct descendants of the Sun. The original pair of Inkas travelled from Lake Titicaca towards Cusco, and after several adventures founded the pueblo of Cusco. But first, they ascertained the condition and suitability of the soil in each place by pushing a staff of office (wara) into the ground, until they found a sufficiently humid site where it could penetrate easily. Comparatively, in the founding myth of Qaqachaka, the site was already far too humid, due to the presence of the thermal waters bubbling up from the very foundations of the world. To solve this problem, the ancestress Inka Mariya kicked away the hot waters, sending them way below Qaqachaka, into Jukumani territory, where the Phutina hot springs are today. Once the land had dried out, the two sisters and their group began to found the pueblo of Qaqachaka by marking out, and then taking possession first of the mojones around the boundary and then of the plaza and the church. There are other facets of this tale. Until now, Phutina’s thermal waters are identified with the inner world (manqhapacha), considered diabolical (saxra). Comments insist that the most powerful sirens of the region dwell there, those that inspire each year the new melodies of the wayñu verses for the Jukumanis, and indirectly for those Qaqachakas disposed to make the appropriate offerings (Arnold 1992, 22–​25). Another tale, narrated by younger members of the locality, describe a shop in these entrails of the earth, where they sell the latest models of tape recorders and radios that play these new melodies each year, as long as they can acquire them paying cash at market prices. The inner world of Qaqachaka is generally thought to consist of places such as steaming Phutina, or the exploitative factory hidden behind a steep rock face on the course of Qhusmi Uma (Water with Multiple Colours), near the cavern known as “Tata Quri’s wardrobe,” these two sites being interconnected by passages within the earth (­figure  6). There is talk of small devils that work in these subterranean passages, sending the hot waters bubbling up in different locations. These allusions to subterranean passages evoke the world of the mines—​hence Doña Bernaldita’s comments that the Inkas were able to exploit gold there, this mineral growing as easily “as potatoes,” to such a point that the Inkas ate it. This might explain Doña Bernaldita’s insistence that Inka Mariya was an incarnation of the Inka Coya (Qhuya), the meaning of this term being a very fertile mine. The Qaqachakas themselves associate this netherworld of gold mines and thermal waters, and the very harsh working conditions inside the ground, with their own principal god Tata Quri or Father Gold. So, in some variants of Doña Bernaldita’s tales, it is Tata Quri, instead of Inka Mariya, who kicked away the thermal waters from the principal

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Figure 6. The place of Qhusmi Uma near Tata Quri’s “Wardrobe.”

plaza. Don Alberto Choque, whose family had “owned” Tata Quri for many years, insisted it was this particular god who had kicked away the hot waters, and not just any mamita: They say it was Tata Quri who’d kicked away the waters. It wasn’t a mamita, it was Tata Quri! I know the water used to come out of Pampa Kurusa (Cross in the Pampa), and Tata Quri kicked it away. If he hadn’t kicked it away, the water would still be there today.

The Two Sisters and the Tan Señora of Notes of Money

Another great contemporary woman who had ties with a family of title-​bearers through marriage is Doña María Ayca Llanque, the wife of Don Franco Quispe (figure 7). Like Doña Bernaldita, Doña María was proud of the fact that she herself possessed her own titles to the lands that belonged to her. In reply to our questions about the origins of Qaqachaka, Doña María immediately remembered Juana Doña Ana from the grandparents’ papers of the annex (awil achach papila) and from her own title deeds. She could record details about the family of Juana Doña Ana and she mentioned her sister Mariya Doña Ana. Like Doña Bernaldita, she associated Mariya Doña Ana with mineral wealth, silver in particular. She remembered how her great uncle used to make libations at Carnival, naming Juana Doña Ana and her sister Mariya Ana, with the toast: “For Tuña Ana, for Tuña María Ana.” For Doña María, the names of Juana Doña Ana and María Doña Ana always go together because they were

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Figure 7. Doña María Ayca Llanque, wife of Don Franco Quispe Maraza.

“two sisters”; she assumed the two were from Condo, on the side of Asanaque. Doña María explained that the libations made for the two sisters formed part of a much larger sequence of toasts “for money,” in which toponyms from the mining areas of Llallagua were named, and they ended with a toast “for the Tan Señora of notes of money (Paqupaq Siñurataki),” a term of endearment given that “the notes of money used to be of this natural tan (paqu) colour”: “Qullqitaki, mulli k’uch anachu, Qantuy pamp maliskitu,” sas, “Qantuy Pamp Maliskitu, Munaypat Anachu, Kharikhar Mayku, qullqitak,” sas, “Paqupaq Siñurataki.”

“For silver, for Mulli K’uchi Anachu, Qantuy Pampa Maliskitu,” saying, “Qantuy Pampa Maliskitu, Munaypata Anachu, Lord Kharikhari, for silver,” saying, “for the Tan Señora of notes of money.”

On other occasions, Doña María explained how money had the power of “giving birth,” which is why the names of Juana Doña Ana and her sister are invoked in those ritual practices that ensure the continuity in memory of their role in the birth of Qaqachaka, given their close relation to the payment of an immense sum of money by the ancestors of the annex to the colonial authorities. The curious name of Juana Tuña Ana (pronounced phonetically in this way) plays on these ideas. “Tuña” is the re-​phonemization into

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Aymara of the Spanish doña, a term of respect directed at a married woman or a widow. But it plays on another Spanish term dueña, which historically had the same meanings, as well as referring to someone with dominion over something. Juana Tuña Ana as a merry widow was one of the original landowners of Qaqachaka territory.

The Chullpa Sister and the Death of the Chullpas

Doña Bernaldita completed her description of the two founding sisters of Qaqachaka by declaring that one of them was called “Chullpa,” as she narrated her own version of the well-​known myth about the “Death of the Chullpas.” In this tale, the Chullpa people heard that the Sun was going to rise up to destroy them. So they constructed their houses with the entrances oriented towards where they thought was the opposing direction to the coming sunrise. But they were mistaken and the Sun rose to the east, the brilliant light flooding through their doors and burning all the people crowded inside: One of them was called “Chullpa.” Perhaps you don’t know there are Chullpa houses becoming ruins here, on the way out of Phari Pampa …? She’d have wandered about, coming out of there. But afterwards Father Sun appeared and they were lost. Then God settled here too. And we don’t know if the people procreated or not …

“Father Sun is going to rise on this side,” they commented among themselves … But Father Sun rose on the other side. And they’d said “Let’s build (our doors) towards this direction.” But the Sun had risen on this other side, “P’aq p’aq.” Then they died. Uw … How would they have known? How would they have known? “Let’s see, it will rise on this side,” they’d said. But the Sun had risen on the other side. And so the Sun had killed them, they say.

The Birth of the Sun and the Origins of Weaving

In reply to our final question about the kind of clothes worn by Juana Doña Ana and her sister, Doña Bernaldita mentioned the common idea in Qaqachaka that the activity of weaving and the confection of clothing was unknown until the birth of the Sun. So we learn that Juana Doña Ana and her sister Inka Mariya wandered about totally nude, just like Adam and Eve! For Doña Bernaldita, only the birth of the Sun gave rise to the activity of weaving; the shine of the new Sun, in turn, gave birth to all the colours with which the women weavers of Qaqachaka make their textiles today. Moreover, according to Doña Bernaldita, only with the birth of the Sun could the central plaza be formed, with an altar in each of its corners, in a similar scheme to that of the four stakes of a horizontal loom, in the process of weaving the unique textile that is the territory of Qaqachaka. Doña Bernaldita commented that this foundational art, which brought Qaqachaka into existence, is remembered in the festive dances during the course of the year, when the young people of the place, dressed up in their finest and most elegant clothes, dance in patterns that imitate the figures and multiple colours of a giant coca cloth or inkuña, where they keep their coca leaves:

114 The Oral History of Qaqachaka I don’t know what their clothes were like … But in those times I don’t think they knew how to weave. They say not. So there wouldn’t have been any clothes. Weaving exists only from when the Sun appeared. That’s why they say “In that time, there was no sense of seeing the sunlight… there would only have been the Moon. And they’d have lived with just that.” So of course they were naked. Naked people! Isn’t it so? They had no clothes at all. When they began to feel the warmth of the Sun, only then did weaving begin. But before then, no … They went about like animals. So they say.

And with the Sun came the colours of the weavings … they shone like sunlight … And they danced in the plaza as if it were a giant loom with a weaving in the making, as an inkuña (a cloth to keep coca leaves in). And the loom of the plaza was weaving the cloth that is Qaqachaka. The people of the place still dance in the plaza dressed elegantly, dancing the woven figures (salta), dancing out of a gigantic coca cloth.

This last commentary by Doña Bernaldita about the origins of Qaqachaka is pertinent in terms of gender relations, given the ties she establishes between the rising of the Sun and weaving practice with its vibrant colours. She offers us the counterpart identity of Qaqachaka as a pueblo, in the hands of women, as opposed to the warfaring and territorially expansive affairs, in the hands of men.

Chapter 7

THE CACIQUES OF QHARAQHARA AND QUILLACAS-​ASANAQUE

The three Llanquepacha brothers were rich in gold, so rich that even their urine flowed like a gush of gold.

Doña Lucía Quispe, from Qaqachaka pueblo

It is already evident that the memories of oral history, dating back to the Time

of the Spanish, highlight the importance of certain colonial caciques and not others. Why, then, this silence about those other caciques who do not appear in the oral history? This situation is complicated further because the ways some of these caciques are remembered in these tales do not always coincide with the written history about these personages. This occurs in the case of Ayra Chinche, presented in the narratives as a cultural hero of Qaqachaka, although he was a person vilified in official written history. This also happens with respect to the lineage of the Llanquepachas, recorded in the tales as caciques and governors of high status and prestige, but who in practice were hated by their people. So, why this lapsus between oral history and official written history? I propose in this chapter that Qaqachaka comunarios tend to remember, and this with a certain nostalgia, those caciques who struggled in favour of the populations under their dominion, notably as intermediaries in the negotiations between their own sphere of power and authority, and that of the Colonial State, including the Spanish Crown and Church, regardless of their real implications in the lives of these people. This is the emphasis we have heard until now in the tales told about Ayra Chinche, Takimallku Astiti, Lujano and Fernando Choquecallati, and the first ancestors called Llanquepacha, that they struggled in the conflicts over lands between the Spanish State and the ayllus, to establish juridically the boundaries of Qaqachaka, serving themselves in many instances as mitayos to assure their legal rights to these territories, as defined by the colonial regime. This has also been the emphasis in the tales about the important ancestress Juana Doña Ana, in her role as a boundary maker, and about her sister Inka Mariya, who made the lands of the ayllu fertile by kicking far away the overly hot waters bubbling initially in the central plaza. In comparison with these highly esteemed historical figures, there is not so much as a mention of those other caciques totally alienated from the populations under their command, notably the Llanquepacha “brothers,” Gregorio and Andrés, from the late eighteenth century, characterized by their alliances of convenience with the Spanish State and Church against the interests of the ayllus, and their tendencies to reclaim for themselves benefits from the ayllu lands and the material assets forthcoming from the religious practices of the faithful. My wider argument is that the decision to opt for memorizing or forgetting these historical personages has to do with the part they played in the underlying ontological relations of the place. That is, whether they had been able to develop ongoing relations with others that would

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reproduce over time a “fertile” history of the place, as a distant echo of that initial generation of a fertile period through the action of capturing trophy heads, long before. These memories of oral history reiterate the evidence that Qaqachaka history had dual origins, having belonged in the more distant past to the Aymara Federation of Qharaqhara-​Charkas, located to the east, but of belonging more recently to that of Quillacas-​Asanaque, to the west. Both the colonial documents and the tales of oral history name caciques of both federations. But to understand better their spheres of power and rights of command, it is necessary to first ascertain more about the political organization of each federation, and the rights of succession to these offices in the Andean region, during that early period.

The Caciques of the Qharaqhara Federation

First let us consider the Qharaqhara Federation. As we have heard until now, Qaqachaka from the comunarios’ perspective was originally nothing more than two extensions of pasturing lands (ranchos) of the neighbouring ayllu of Pukuwata, and hence a former part of the Qharaqhara Federation. Evidence of this nexus were the remains of two chullpa tombs on the route out of the main pueblo towards the north, where the two rivers join. Apart from this historical memory, for the majority of the comunarios today the name Qharaqhara signifies no more than a toponym towards the east, and a salient mountain of the same name. Only the title-​bearers remember more details about the history of that Federation. Many academic studies about the history of the Qharaqhara Federation, based on colonial documentation, help us contextualize these assertions by the Qaqachaka comunarios (see Platt 1987b; Río 1995 and Platt, Bouysse-Cassagne, and Harris 2006, to name a few). Nonetheless, the Chilean historian Paula Zagalsky (2012) has recently questioned the ethnic and political structuring attributed canonically to the Qharaqhara Federation, by offering new queries, and I shall take into account her concerns, before examining the written material about the caciques themselves. Emerging from institutions of the early Colony, such as the repartimientos de indios and the corregimientos, the Qharaqhara Federation was constituted from an alliance between different chiefdoms structured by the principle of bipartition, which imposed divisions and hierarchies between them. The upper moiety or parcialidad (anansaya), denominated “Macha,” included the Machas, Aymaras, and Puqutas (or Pocoatas), whilst the lower moiety (urinsaya) called “Chaqui” brought together the Chaquis, the Visasas, Colos, Caquinas, Picachuris, Tacobambas and Caracaras (and also possibly the Moromoros). Regarding the history of Qaqachaka, we are more interested in the conformation of the upper moiety of Qharaqhara, and, within this, the role of the Pukuwatas (also written as the Puqutas, Pocoatas, or Copoatas), with whom the Qaqachakas themselves propose they had historical ties. In a following phase of the Colony, the early destructuring of the Qharaqhara Federation included a new destiny for the Indians of Pocoata, now divided up into encomiendas. Evidence of these processes can be found in the cédulas de encomienda prepared on the basis of evidence about the political composition of the region derived from quipus (or chinu) and the various early visitas to the region, carried out before the

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reference visita of Viceroy Toledo, in 1572 (Zagalsky 2009). During this early period in the Colony, Francisco Pizarro granted as encomienda to his brother Gonzalo Pizarro (in 1540)  groups from the repartimiento of Qharaqhara, “in the province of the Charkas subject to the Cacique Moroco, Lord of 20,000 Indians,”1 according to evidence from 1538.2 So, it is probable that the upper moiety called in its entirety “Macha,” including Pocoata, as part of the wider Federation, would have had a population at about half of this figure, at some 10,000 tributaries.3 The history of the encomiendas is highly volatile and after various additional assignations of short duration, in 1549 the Indians under the charge of Gonzalo Pizarro ended up being assigned to three encomenderos: General Pedro de Hinojosa, Capitán Pablo de Meneses, and Don Alonso de Montemayor, whose names figure from time to time in the history of the region. On the other hand, in 1548 Don Pedro de la Gasca had entrusted to Capitán Pedro de Hinojosa the groups from the repartimientos of Macha and Chaqui, including Charkas Indians from Chayanta, and others from Macha, Pocoata, Chaqui, Caracara, Picachuri, Visisa, Tacobamba, and a part of the Caquina. Again there were some later transferences of these groups until the assassination of General Hinojosa on March 6, 1553, when the Indians from his encomienda came to depend on the Crown and their payments in tribute were diverted to the Cajas de la Real Hacienda. From 1572, the rest of the groups of encomendados from that which was formerly the Qharaqhara Federation suffered the same destiny. In the terms of the times, they “passed over to the head of His Majesty.”4 In terms of the scale of the precolonial chiefdoms, and thus the relative degree of power of their caciques, Zagalsky (2012, 18)  questions the population figure under the command of Cacique Moroco at 20,000 Indians, given that in other documents this figure diminishes to some 3,300. As an explanation for these differences, she offers the following possibilities: first, that we are dealing with approximations, second, that these figures deal with population sizes that refer exclusively to men as heads of households, and third, that they deal with evidence from Andean leaders that is biased, in their attempt to magnify their domain of power in the former period, during their negotiations with the Spanish colonial administration. As a corollary, the data in the cédulas de encomienda could be equally biased towards the interests of the Spanish. Apart from Cacique Moroco, there is mention of other caciques who were originarios of that region. In the cédula of Gonzalo Pizarro’s encomienda appears the name of cacique Caricari (under the dominion of Moroco), as a resident of Moromoro pueblo, his own “headquarters” (cabecera), with “90 Charkas Indians under Moroco with the principal Yachatoma [Ochatoma],”5 another cacique of the period. We also have the example 1 The original Spanish says “en la provincia de los Charcas en lo sujeto al cacique Moroco, señor de 20.000 indios.” 2 AGI, Charcas 56, fol. 42v. “Los indios de Qaraqara encomendados por Francisco Pizarro en Gonzalo Pizarro.” Documento No 3 edited in Platt, Bouysse-Cassagne, and Harris (2006, 289–​301). 3 Platt, Bouysse-Cassagne, and Harris (2006, 289–​301).

4 The original expression in Spanish is “pasaron a estar en cabeza de Su Majestad.”

5 The original in Spanish says “90 indios Charcas de Moroco con el principal Yachatoma [Ochatoma].”

120 The Colonial Caciques in ORAL AND WRITTEN History

of Tataparia (or Tata Pariya), “universal lord” and great mallku of the Qharaqharas, father of Moroco and Gualca, all curacas (or caciques) of Macha, who in different moments had authority over the other chiefdoms of the Qharaqhara Federation.6 Documentary evidence from 1550 concerning Qaqachaka’s valley lands mentions the pueblos of Curi and Colpabilque (later renamed Villaverde de la Fuente), whose lands were distributed among several groups of the Qharaqhara Federation. We heard from Don Franco Quispe that the lands of Copabilque have been associated with the Qaqachakas until today.7

Who was Ayra Chinche?

Now let us turn to the caciques named in Qaqachaka’s oral history. Both the title-​bearers and the comunarios more distant from their tradition remember one of the caciques of Qharaqara, Don Ayra Chinche, with a great deal of affection So what do we know about Ayra Chinche, apart from his inclination to rear red snakes in pots? In the spoken narratives, Don Ayra Chinche from Pocoata figures as a cultural hero of Qaqachaka with ties to the Inkas, allied very closely to the territorial interests of the annex population, mediated through the many obligations he developed with his close friend, now deceased, Lujano Choquecallati (or Choquecallata). Only Doña Bernaldita Quispe’s tales gave a different twist, focused on an incident in which Juana Doña Ana from Qaqachaka had to snatch the title documents to lands belonging to Qaqachaka from a Pocoata man (the implication being that this was Ayra Chinche), in order to prevent the transfer of these lands to Pocoata, Jukumani, and Laymi (and so to Chayanta). In other words, in Doña Bernaldita’s version of events, Ayra Chinche did not always have the territorial interests of the Qaqachakas at heart. In fact, Doña Bernaldita’s version is closer to the written history of the region, which equally presents this distinct reading of Ayra Chinche’s life, accentuating rather his manipulation of the colonial situation to his own advantage. I shall examine some of this literature to compare the two points of view. Ayra Chinche’s family lineage is known to have served as the principal authorities of Qharaqhara during the seventeenth century, in the office of “Alcalde Mayor de Indios.” The problem is finding which of the Ayra Chinche family members figures in Qaqachaka oral history. A  clue is that the historical figure we seek was already a mature person around 1646, when he played an important role in the composición de tierras overseen by the Visiting Inspector José de la Vega Alvarado. The first mention of a Señor Ayra de Ariutu I  have been able to find was in the encomienda granted originally by Francisco Pizarro to his brother Gonzalo in 1540. The pertinent document names a “pueblo that is called Pocoata and the principal Ariutu

6 Río (1995, 9), cited in Zagalsky (2012, 28). This information about Tataparia is included in the testimonies of a probanza de méritos presented in a conflict over the office of the cacicazgo of ayllu Sulcavi of Macha, contained in AGN, XIII, 18-​7-​2. 7 Platt, Bouysse-Cassagne, and Harris (2006, 264), cited in Zagalsky (2012, 20–​21).

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with 156 Indians subject to Moroco …”8 As I have mentioned, Inka Moroco was the principal cacique of all Qharaqhara, with his headquarters in Macha. In these ancient historical ties we find some details about Ayra Chinche’s genealogy and its Inka ties, those remembered in the oral tales about the Inka daughters granted in marriage alliances into the Qaqachaka region. This kind of evidence already suggests that the lineages of the Alcaldes Mayores of Charkas, Qharaqhara, and later of Chayanta had ancestral rights of succession to this office, and that this important office was not simply an invention of the Toledan period of the Colony. In his petition for this office in the seventeenth century, Lord Ayra de Ariutu claimed that his ancestor was the “kuraka and absolute lord … of 20,000 Indians.”9 The petition also names a Don Francisco Ayra de Macha, governor and capitán of the province, as someone who could be seated on the Andean ceremonial throne called a “dúho” (or tiyana), having belonged to a lineage that had governed since Inka times: … and that Don Juan Bautista Chuquivilca and Don Francisco Ayra and Don Carlos Seco, principal caciques, governors, and capitanes of this province, gave me the said duo … persons to whom, since the time of the Inka, according to their customs of government could grant the said chieftainships (cited in Río 1995, 14–​15).10

So, despite the fact that the new colonial office of Alcalde Mayor de Indios might be granted as recompense for services given, tied in turn to rights over territorial señoríos by persons of confidence to the Spanish regime, we are not dealing with a system of nobiliary titles under royal power, but something more regional. The Peruvian historian Waldemar Espinoza Soriano explains, in his study of the Memorial de Charcas, that the new office was actually the colonial equivalent of the former Inka leader of each one of the four suyus, called in Quechua the Tocricuc (Espinoza Soriano 1969). He insists that this office embodied the most important features of the “Republic of Indians” (República de Indios), as one of the key administrative institutions of Andean societies to have survived into the colonial period, in parallel with the “Republic of the Spanish” (República de Españoles). He focuses from this perspective on the role of the Alcalde Mayor Indígena, as someone who: presided over the municipality with civil and criminal jurisdictions, and was the authority immediately superior to the alcaldes ordinarios (ordinary mayors), and, at the same time, immediately inferior to the Spanish corregidor. (Espinoza Soriano 1960, 4)11

8 AGI, Charcas, 56, in Platt (1978b, 102 and 115 n9). The original Spanish says “pueblo que se llama Pocoata y el principal Ariutu con 156 yndios sugetos a Moroco …” 9 AGI, Charcas, 56: fol. 3r. The original Spanish says “kuraka y señor absoluto … de 20.000 Indios.”

10 The original Spanish says …”y que don juan bautista chuquivilvaa y don francisco ayra y don carlos seco caciques principales y governadores y capitanes desta provincia me dieron el dicho duo”… “personas a quien desde el tiempo del ynga segun sus costumbres del govierno para dar los dichos cacicazgos.” 11 The original Spanish says “presidió el municipio con jurisdicción civil y criminal y era la autoridad inmediatamente superior a los alcaldes ordinarios, y al mismo tiempo, inmediatamente inferior al corregidor español” (Espinoza Soriano 1960, 4).

122 The Colonial Caciques in ORAL AND WRITTEN History

The documents of the period, as well as the oral history of Qaqachaka, cite repeatedly the ongoing ties between the Ayra Chinche lineage and their Inka and even pre-​ Inka roots. Neither does the genealogy of Lord Ayra suffer an interruption when it is incorporated into the Inka State, continuing in the same way before and after this transition. Mention of the office of Alcalde Mayor appears in lawsuits concerning this lineage seeking to assume this position in negotiations that combine the rights to this office by inheritance and the new Spanish norms of succession by election. By mutual convenience, the lineage of the Ayra Chinche (now an honorific title and not an individual person) embodies the genealogical conditions to serve as Alcalde Mayor de Indios. In turn, the lineage was favoured with this office by the Crown, since from an early date they knew how to manage the tributary economy of the region. For his part, Don Fernando Ayra Chinche (the father or grandfather of the person we seek) began to reorganize politically the Qharaqhara Federation in order to promote his own pueblo of Pocoata (or Copoata), in detriment to the ancient capital of Macha, achieving a degree of success in obtaining the independence of Pocoata with respect to this former tie. At the same time, his struggle seems to have been directed at recuperating the political organization of the Qharaqhara Federation from before the imposition of the Toledan reduction towns, in which Pocoata’s scope of power was reduced to little more than a subunit of Macha.12 Again, we are dealing with negotiations to reconfigure the power of the precolonial political entities. This situation should be contextualized by the fact that Toledo had sought, through the figure of the reduction towns, to redefine the authority of the traditional elites, precisely by reconstructing the new territorial and administrative units over which they had dominion, and creating forcibly a set of new officials for whom he issued detailed instructions in 1575 (Toledo [1575] 1925, 304–​82; Montesclaros [1614] 1859, 20). Given these wider circumstances, it is even more pertinent to note how, by his own initiative, Don Fernando could rectify the new political configuration to his own liking, and simultaneously present himself for one of the new offices. As a result, although Don Fernando was originally cacique of just the lower moiety (urinsaya or abajo) of Pocoata, now, in an auto of September 1 and 21, 1611, he was nominated by the Spanish as Alcalde Mayor of the Pueblos of San Juan de Copoata (or Pocoata) and of Macha, as the “Cacique Principal” and “Gobernador” of the upper moiety (hurinsaya or arriba) of both pueblos, and as the first Andean authority of the province.13 Don Fernando was renominated to this office on various occasions, exercising in addition the office of Capitán de la mit’a, until he was succeeded by his son (Espinoza Soriano 1960, 286–​97, cited in Saignes 1985, 27). Evidently Don Fernando Chinche, the

12 AHP Cajas Reales 18, fol. 217v.

13 Expediente sobre el pueblo de Copoata, 1639. See also the titles of don Fernando Chinche, in AGI, Charcas, 56, el Expediente de don Fernando Ayra, 1639, in AGI, Charcas, 56, and the papers about don Fernando Ayra Chinche, Alcalde Mayor de Chayanta, 1632, in AGI, Charcas, 56. These documents are presented in Espinoza Soriano (1960, 241 fol. 157, 244 fol. 167 and 245 fol. 170).

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father, died around 1627, having had the reputation of being rather sickly, although the documentation about this is confusing in many details. His successor was Don Fernando García Ayra Chinche, probably one of two sons, said to be “a man capable and of intelligence for whatever office with which he is charged.”14 In a document of January 3, 1627, Don Fernando García is named this time as Cacique Principal and Gobernador of the pueblo of Copoata of the Province of Caracara, and in addition as “Capitán de la Mita” of the pueblos of Copoata, Macha, Aymara (also known as Aymaya). and Caracara, for which he was denominated as “Alcalde Mayor in this province of the Charcas and Caracaras.”15 On January 12, 1632, as a result of an acto in the Rivera de Maragua, another document associates the same offices with a Don Fernando Ayra Chinche, who was also denominated as Alcalde Mayor “of Chayanta.”16 It is not clear if this refers to the same Don Fernando García or perhaps his brother. There is not sufficient generational distance for it to be his “son.”17 Finally, in a document of May 18, 1637, the same offices now belong to Don Fernando Ayra de Arioto (or Ariutu), who could be another brother of Don Fernando García Ayra Chinche or else the very same person, but with the additional honorific of “de Arioto.”18 Before taking on the governance, Don Fernando Ayra de Ariutu had been honoured by the Factor and Corregidor of the Villa de Potosí, Don Bartolomé Astete, with the title of Capitán de la nación of the Qharaqharas (in this case of the settlement of Porco), despite being of a younger age, this still within the lifetime of his father Don Fernando Chinche.19 14 The original Spanish says “hombre capaz y de inteligencia para cualquier oficio que se le encargue.” In AGI, Charcas, 56, cited in Espinoza Soriano (1960, 293).

15 The original Spanish says “Alcalde Mayor en esta provincia de los Charcas y Caracaras.” See: Títulos de Alcalde Mayor de los pueblos de Macha y Copoata a don Fernando Chinche, La Puna de la Quina. 1o y 21 de septiembre de 1611; Título de Alcalde Mayor de Copoata a don Fernando Chinche—​Macha, 20 de septiembre de 1615; Título de Alcalde Mayor de Copoata al mismo—​Copoata, 24 de mayo de 1621; Título de Alcalde Mayor de Copoata al mismo—​Copoata, 21 de agosto de 1621; Título de Capitán de la Mita y Alcalde Mayor de los Indios Marcanies de las Provincias de Los Charcas y Caracaras—​Potosí, 3 de enero de 1627; Título de Alcalde Mayor y Governador a la Provincia de Chayanta a don Fernando García Chinchi—​San Pedro de Macha, 29 de agosto de 1630; Título de Alcalde Mayor de Chayanta a don Fernando Ayra Chinche—​La Rivera de Maragua, 12 de enero de 1632; Título de Alcalde Mayor de la Provincia de Chayanta a don Fernando Ayre Chiche. Copoata, 8 de abril de 1634; Título de Alcalde Mayor de la Provincia de Chayanta a don Fernando Ayra de Arioto—​Macha, 18 de mayo de 1637, all of which are included in AGI Charcas, 56, and in Espinoza Soriano (1960, 286–​88). 16 AGI, Charcas, 56, in Espinoza Soriano (1960, 294).

17 This pattern of succession between brothers (the so-​called adélfico or colateral) was not unusual and occurred in other places at the beginning of the seventeenth century, for example in the case of the Guarachi of Jesús de Machaca and the Cari of Chucuito, as was that between nephews and uncles (Bouysse-​Cassagne 1987, 307; Morrone 2015b, 227).

18 AGI, Charcas, 56, in Espinoza Soriano (1960, 296–​97).

19 AGI, Charcas, 56, La probanza de méritos y servicios de Fernando Ayra de Ariutu (or Relación de los servicios y calidad de don Fernando Ayra Ariutu), respuesta a la pregunta 14, documento de 2 de marzo de 1638, fol. 10a.

124 The Colonial Caciques in ORAL AND WRITTEN History

In part, the confusion in these historical documents about the multiple names of Ayra Chinche turns on the system of nobiliary titles. In fact, we are dealing with a lineage characterized by the continuity between the generations of the native patronymic “Chinche,” later expanded to create the compound surname “Ayra Chinche,” preceded by the name “Fernando,” used for generations without being converted into “Fernández,” according to the Spanish usage (Fernández in this context would mean “son of Fernando”). Nevertheless, we have at least traced the pertinent generation of the Ayra Chinche which figures in the oral history of Qaqachaka, confirmed by his crucial tie to Don Bartolomé Astete. In these genealogical affairs, the influence of the ties between Lord Ayra, the Inkas, and the politics of the Inka State emerge once and again during this whole period. For example, in his presentation for the office of Alcalde Mayor, Don Fernando Ayra de Ariutu offers his genealogy in terms of parallel descent, referring to both his masculine and feminine lines. He certainly does not censure his genealogy, as we might expect, according to the later Spanish norms that trace patrilineal descent exclusively. Rather, on the paternal side, he claims descent from the Lords of Pukuwata, while on the maternal side he claims descent from the “Absolute Lord of the people of Macha and Chaqui” (in the Qharaqhara nation). The genealogy Don Fernando Ayra describes here covers five generations, being of sufficient depth to avoid accusations of including incestuous marriages. In the details of this genealogy, on the paternal side “he was the legitimate son of Don Fernando Capax, descendant in the direct male line of the house of Capax Localarama”20 (hence his right to use the Inka title of “Capac”), while on the maternal side he names his mother as Úrsula Anco Tutumpi Ayra Canchi (the White Flower that Blooms), a direct descendant of Inka Moroco (cacique of the Qharaqharas) and, in more distant generations, of Inka Yupanqi and Wayna Capac.21 With respect to these ties, Rasnake (1982, 144) stresses that Ariutu descended on the maternal side from the “highest” and greatest leaders of Qharaqhara (the leaders of Macha, the principal group of the upper moiety of the Qharaqharas). In addition, the specific destiny in Ariutu’s “pathway of memory” in relation to his maternal genealogy is directed towards his mother’s grandmother (specifically his mother’s father’s father’s mother, MFFM), who was not only an Inka but the very son of Wayna Qhapaq,22 a fact that might have inspired the oral tales about the daughters of the Inka who married into the region. Rasnake makes another pertinent observation, that the marriage of the Lord of Qharaqhara with the Inka’s daughter demonstrates that, at this stage of the Colony, you could still gain great privilege through ties with the Inka elite, and that in 1582, the kurakas of Charkas were just as fascinated with certain aspects of the Inka 20 The original Spanish says “fue hijo legitimo de don Fernando Capax, descendiente por línea directa de varón de la casa de Capax Localarama.” 21 See also Jurado (2014, 403). On Don Fernando Ayra’s probanza de méritos, see Platt, BouysseCassagne, and Harris (2006, 728).

22 Río (1995, 17)  and see also Rasnake (1982, 146). Other women who entered the region to marry are mentioned in relation to other Qharaqhara lords, for example Orito, an ancestor of the Picachuris.

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State as the Spanish (Rasnake 1982, 145–​46). He describes how this matrimonial alliance came about, when Lord Ayra de Ariutu of the Qharaqharas related that one ancestor of Pukuwata went to Cusco as a prudent emissary of the Qharaqhara chief and that he established friendly relations there. The son and successor of this Lord of Qharaqhara visited the Inka Wayna Qhapaq himself and was married to the Inka “princess” who figures in the genealogy of Ayra de Ariutu.23 Note also that, through this marriage with the Inka’s daughter, Ayra de Ariutu could claim his descendance from “noble blood” (sangre noble). More details about Lord Ayra’s genealogy are available in the figure of Qharaqhara genealogy sketched by Thérèse Bouysse-​Cassagne in La identidad aymara (1987, 306, diagram 23). Her sources are the Memorial de Charcas and Murúa’s account of the gifts granted by the Inka to the chiefs of provinces of more than 20,000 warriors,24 although Bouysse-​Cassagne agrees that the Qharaqharas actually totalled just 10,000. She clarifies the name of the ascendant son in the lineage of the caciques of Pukuwata as “Ochatoma,” who visited Cusco, and that of the Inka princess (ñusta) as “Paicochimbo,” to whom he married, giving us another historical source for the tales about an Inka daughter who entered into the region on marriage: Ochatoma … went to visit the said Inka Guaina Capac and offer him obedience as his king and native lord, and the said Inka honoured him greatly and gave him a tunic with roundels of gold, and married him to one of his daughters called Paicochimbo.25 (Bouysse-​ Cassagne 1987, 308 fol. 2, my translation)

Graphic 4 presents a summary of the immediate lineage of the Ayra Chinche, according to data in Espinoza Soriano (1960), and graphic 5 combines data from Rasnake (1982) with that of Bouysse-​Cassagne (1987), and adds details from Guaman Poma about the immediate family of Wayna Qhapaq, and about the Ayra Chinche genealogy developed by Platt, Bouysse-Cassagne, and Harris (2006, 699, ­figure 5.7). This tendency to resort to Inka modalities of succession is still evident in a much later genealogy, presented in a document of 180226 by Doña Carmena Ayra Coñaca, the widow of Don Patricio Ayra Chinche, “the noble governor of Urinsaya” and “the noble governess of Anansaya” in her own right. Doña Carmena claims there that her elder son, Don Vizente de Ayra, had a greater right of succession to be governor, given that he was the last descendant of the Ayra lineage, being a “noble Indian” (indio noble) and for having “rights by blood” (derechos por sangre), where she alludes to the tie in the maternal line with Wayna Qapaq’s daughter. In her petition, Doña Carmena Ayra insists that her son was a direct descendant of her ancestral grandfather, Don Fernando Arituyo 23 Data from AGI Charcas, 56, fol. 2r, 3r, 7v, 9r, cited in Rasnake (1982, 144).

24 Murúa, Manuscrito Wellington: 64, cited in Bouysse-​Cassagne (1987, 308 fol. 1).

25 The original Spanish says “Ochatoma… fue a visitar al dicho ynga Guaina Capac y darle la obediencia como a su rey y señor natural y el dicho ynga le honró mucho y le dio una camiseta de rroeles de oro y le caso con una de sus hijas llamada Paicochimbo” (Bouysse-​Cassagne 1987, 308 fol. 2).

26 T.I. AN. E.  Año 1802 No 93. The original Spanish says “gobernador noble de Urinsaya”, y “gobernadora noble de Anansaya.”

126 The Colonial Caciques in ORAL AND WRITTEN History

Don Fernando Chinche Alcalde Mayor of San Juan de Copoata y Macha (Urinsaya) 1611, 1615, 1621

Don Fernando García Ayra Chinche Alcalde Mayor de Indios of Charcas and Caracara (Urinsaya) 1627, 1630

Don Fernando Ayra Chinche Alcalde Mayor of Chayanta 1632, 1634

Don Fernando de Ariuto (or Arituyo Chinche) Alcalde Mayor of Chayanta 1637

Graphic 4. Summary of the immediate Ayra Chinche lineage. The ‘white’ Charkas, becoming later the ‘Qaraqara’ according to Platt et al. (2006)

Inka Yupanki Ayra Canchi Lord of Macha and Chaqui ( prob. urinsaya)

Huayna Capac Anco Tutumpi Lamarati who named the ‘White flower Qharaqharas to mean Huayna Capac that blooms’ ‘the dawn’ because they were warriors

Capac Lukalarama Lord of Pukuwata, urinsaya

Don Fernando Capac

Paicochimbo (daughter of Huayna Capac)

Ochotoma 1500 Suceeded in government

Inka Moroco Inka Moroco whose son was don Fernando Ayra de Ariutu Baptized as Juan, supporter of who suceeded him as governor Huascar Inka (1532) d. 1548

Grandfather of Ursula Anco Tutumpi, of 1565

Don Francisco Ayra de Ariutu Don Fernando (Ayra) Chinche I Alcalde Mayor of San Juan de Copoata y Macha (Urinsaya) 1611, 1615, 1621 (served as governor for more than 30 years)

b.ca. 1530

Ursula Anco Tutumpi Ayra Canchi ‘White flower that blooms’ in 1600

Don Fernando (Capac) Chinche II (sickly)

Don Fernando García Ayra Chinche Alcalde Mayor de Indios of Charcas and Caracara (Urinsaya) 1627, 1630, the elder son of two

Don Fernando Ayra Chinche Don Fernando Ayra de Ariutu (or Arituyo Chinche) Alcalde Mayor of Chayanta Alcalde Mayor of Chayanta, 1637 1632, 1634 b.ca. 1640

Don Patricio Ayra Chinche noble Governor of Urinsaya (1802)

Doña Carmena Ayra Coñaca Noble Governess of Aransaya (granddaughter of Don Fernando Arituyo Chinche) (1802)

Don Vizente de Ayra

b.ca. born approximately in d. died in

Graphic 5. Señor Ayra de Ariutu’s genealogy.

Chinche, he who had granted the royal coat of arms in a royal letter from the King of Spain himself “for his grand services and performance in the chieftainship of Pocoata.”27 Here, Doña Carmena changes her grandfather’s name from “Ariyuto” to “Arituyo,” by introducing a transposition in the order of sounds within a word, called “metathesis,” which is very common in Andean languages, and which has been so puzzling in the variations on names in these colonial genealogies. 27 The original Spanish says “por grandes servicios y desempeño del casicasgo de Pocoata.”

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The Deeds of Don Ayra Chinche

Qharaqhara and Quillacas-Asanaque

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The written documentation about Don Ayra Chinche’s deeds deal more with the financial aspects of his life, in his negotiations with the Spanish administration and in his strategies to achieve economic success. In these, we can review the dramatic clashes of interests with his subjects. Don Ayra Chinche’s deeds occur in the changing economic situation of caciques and their subjects in the colonial period. The fact that the two principal mines of the region, Porco and Potosí, are situated in Qharaqhara territory signifies that this particular Federation had to pay an exorbitant sum in tribute payments to the Crown in relation to other groups. The Spanish authorities had to ensure the Qharaqhara leaders had sufficient power to extract this sum in tribute from the Indians under their charge. So it was the task of caciques such as Ayra Chinche to make the tributation system function well. In the case of the neighbouring Charkas Federation, it is important to note that the lower moiety of Charkas responded to its tributary obligations in manual labour, while the moiety of Qharaqhara (that of Ayra Chinche) responded in money (Saignes 1985, 5). In Platt’s interpretation of this situation, these huge sums owed in tribute, and the administrative arrangements necessary to mobilize such sums, are indications that hardly fifteen years (ca. 1553) after the military defeat of Charkas (in 1538) by the Spanish, the Lords of Charkas, especially the lineage of the great lords of Qharaqhara, were already implicated as intermediaries in the incipient market economy of the whole region (cited in Rasnake, 1982 147–​48). To make matters even worse, in 1553 a new tax was established in the region. The leader of Pocoata, Don Fernando Chinche (probably the grandfather of Don Ayra, although it is difficult to know) still grumbled about the excessive burden of tribute,28 but he soon began to develop effective strategies to pay it, even though this went against the interests of his subjects. Like many cacique-​governors of the region, an efficient strategy for achieving such payments was that of installing additional inhabitants of “forastero” (outsider) status in the lands belonging to the pueblos under his charge, despite the constant complaints by the “natives” of the place. The Ayra Chinche lineage adopted this strategy, and by 1645, they had augmented these outsiders to a third of the overall population, and forty years afterwards, to a half, producing a major social differentiation in the ayllus with the emergence of the “colquehaques” (qullqin jaqi) or “people with money” (Saignes 1985, 20). In the seventeenth century, the Indians of Pocoata, opposed to this rise in the numbers of outsiders, denounced their Governor Don Fernando Ayra Chinche, for having “accepted more than twenty, hiding them from their caciques” in their own land and “without demanding the royal tribute from them” (Ramírez de Águila [1639] 1978, 126, cited in Saignes 1985, 20).29 Other complaints already in the making insist that Don Ayra Chinche had sought various ways of achieving wealth at the cost 28 CR 1, fol. 11 r. 1553–​57, AHP, in Platt (1978a, 34).

29 The original Spanish says “aceptado más de veinte ocultándolo de sus caciques” en su propia tierra, y “sin demandar el tributo real de ellos.”

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of his own people. Given the dates implied for these events, these deal with the Ayra Chinche that we seek in the history of Qaqachaka. The personal ambition of our particular Ayra Chinche, and its clashes with the interests of his subjects, can be illustrated in another legal case, described by Tristan Platt (1978b). This case concerns a mining impresario, Jacinto de Carbajal, and his actions, confronted by the mining crisis in Potosí during the seventeenth century. In 1651, De Carbajal wanted to construct a new refining mill, to reduce the costs of transporting minerals to the mill in Managua. However, the Tax Protector (Protector Fiscal), representing the deputy of Pocoata, rejects permission for starting the works. The problem is that the Indians of Pocoata did not want their agricultural fields to be replaced by pastures destined for the llama herds shortly to be introduced as beasts of burden from the mines to the stamping mills (ingenios), and they also wanted to avoid the menace of serving in the local obligations of the mit’a. De Carbajal again insists on the necessity of the work, saying this time that he had been given verbal permission for it from none other than Don Fernando Ayra de Ariutu, “principal cacique and governor from the said pueblo and Alcalde Mayor from the said province of Chayanta.”30 As the case unfolds, the Pocoata Indians accused their cacique of having had a relation of compadrazgo (spiritual kinship) with the impresario, motivated by his own personal interests, and there were complaints that his sights on the expected commercial benefits of having the mill in his district went against the interests of the inhabitants of the place: … for when he does not contradict it (the construction of the mill), being his compadre the said Jacinto de Carbajal, the community and ayllus of Indians populated there do not consent … (ANB Minas t. 63, 1651 No 459 fol. 7v, cited in Platt 1978c, 108, my translation)31

The Pocoata Indians, already in confrontation with their cacique, formed an alternative alliance by taking the side of their priest, as in the case against the two governors Llanquepacha of Condo that we shall examine later. Summing up the evidence, among all the members of this lineage it is Don Fernando Ayra de Ariutu, Alcalde Mayor of Chayanta in 1637, who is the most criticized figure for his abuse of power and his own profit. The most detailed denouncement of his excesses by the Pocoata Indians fills the thirty chapters of the Noticias políticas de Indias ([1639] 1978) compiled by Ramírez de Águila, in the words of Thierry Saignes, “a catalogue of the chicanery of the cacique in search of profit”: … the monopoly of communal lands and the demand for other duties in kind (chuño and maize) and in labour (shepherds for his 100 mules, 400 cattle, between 100 and 300 llamas, 4,000 sheep, 100 goats): he “misappropriated” ten mitayos of the quota for Potosí and sent them to cultivate maize, as also twenty others to collect honey; and he employed

30 The original Spanish says “cacique principal y governador desde dho pueblo y alcalde mayor de la dicha provincia de Chayanta.” 31 The original in Spanish says “… pues quando el no lo contradiga (la construcción del ingenio) por ser su compadre el dicho Jacinto de Carbajal no lo consiente la comunidad i aillos de indios que allí están poblados …”

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twenty outsiders (foresteros) whom he had installed in lands belonging to the natives. As a result of these abuses, 100 Indians became absent—​a fifth part of the tributaries registered in 1575.

(Saignes 1985, 27)32

Saignes concludes that these extortion were “a flagrant exaggeration of the traditional services that the subjects owed to their cacique” and he observes how the economic success of Don Fernando Ayra Chinche was reinforced by his extravagant lifestyle: … he eats all his soups and (foods) with ostentation (on) golden plates, and he maintains a trained painter for this purpose … When they travel to the valleys, he takes eight young women to sleep with him, and others to sing to him. (Evidence from the Pocoata Indians in Ramírez de Águila [1639] 1978, 126, cited in Saignes 1985, 28 and 36n129)33

But in the end, Saignes himself cedes before the evidence, having contrasted the economic and political lineage of the Ayra Chinche of the Qharaqharas with the financial collapse of the lineage of the Colque Guarachi, caciques of the Quillacas, who during the decade of the 1660s could not satisfy the tributary obligations or those of the mit’a, with the respective decrease in importance of this dominant family of the period (Saignes 1985, 27).34 Saignes’s admission is that the “new” caciques, such as Don Ayra, could manage much better the economic and fiscal negotiations of the colonial context with his Spanish counterparts than with the former traditional authorities. His positioning seeks to understand the reactions of these different caciques to the colonial system, as compared to their own ayllus, in moral terms, to do with the nature of their economic management, their access to distinct ecological resources, their degree of defence of their community, their political alliances, the percentage of “natives” (naturales) and outsiders (forasteros) in their jurisdictions, etc. Under this scale of measurement, Ayra Chinche would be way down on the list. Even in this lifestyle and dress, Ayra Chinche identifies himself more with the Spanish than with his own people. However, in spite of these criticisms of Ayra Chinche in his own lifetime and centuries afterwards by modern historians, I suspect that, even knowing all these facts from the written record, the Qaqachaka comunarios would have judged Ayra Chinche from a very different perspective, as someone who knew how to negotiate with the Spanish and obtain what he wanted. This is the line they follow in their oral history, in which the 32 The original Spanish says “… monopolio de las tierras comunales y la demanda por otros deberes en especie (chuño y maíz) y labor (pastores para sus 100 mulas, 400 ganado vacuno, entre 100 y 300 llamas, 4.000 ovejas, 100 cabras): él ‘malversaba’ 10 mitayos de la cuota para Potosí y les mandó a cultivar maíz, como también a 20 otros para recoger miel; y empleaba a 20 foresteros a quienes se había instalado en tierras pertenecientes a los naturales. Como resultado de estos abusos, 100 indios se volvían ausentes—​una quinta parte de los tributarios registrados en 1575.” 33 The original in Spanish says “… con ostentación come todas sus sopas y (comidas en) platos dorados, y mantiene un pintor adiestrado para este propósito … Cuando viajan a los valles, lleva consigo ocho jóvenes para dormir con él, y otras para cantar a él.” 34 See also the evidence presented by Colque Guarachi, in AGI, Quito, 30.

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participation of Don Ayra Chinche as a “boundary maker” (lindero) was vital in marking the limits of the province of Charkas, and so gain these lands from the Spanish. The issue at stake for them is not to judge someone’s morality, but to welcome the contribution they made in negotiations with the Spanish during the Colony, especially those that assured continuity in the possibilities of life in their own locality.

Interlude: The Andean Rules of Succession

Before proceding further in the study of the genealogies of the colonial caciques of the Charkas-​Qharaqhara and Quillacas-​Asanaque Federations, given the confusion in finding so many similar names in the colonial documents, it is worth taking a moment to revise the rules of succession in play. Among historians, there is a long debate about the specific moments of historical transition after the Conquest between one system of succession and another. The most common position taken is that of assuming that, before the rebellions of the eighteenth century, there was a hereditary system and, after these conflicts, a transition to a rotating system of office. However, the facts tend to be more complex, as we saw in the case of Don Ayra Chinche. Even in Inka times, according to Flores and Cañedo-​Argüelles Fábrega (2005), the hereditary system and the elective system went hand in hand. Hereditary succession was only applied when the candidates to offices had sufficient knowledge and experience to exercise the function, and importantly, when their administrative abilities coincided with Inka politics. If not, the Inka himself elected the candidate of his preference. For the Bolivian historian María Luisa Soux (2010), both systems of succession, the hereditary and the elective by rotation, continued in parallel after the Conquest. The differences between them, established in the Ordenanzas of the Toledan Reforms of the decade of 1570, were imbricated in the respective powers and areas of jurisdiction in the municipal councils within the República de Españoles as compared to the República de Indios.35 In both spheres, the alcaldes (mayors) and regidores (aldermen) were elected for one year from January 6 (at the fiesta de Reyes). However, within the rural ayllus (such as Pukuwata, Condo, or Qaqachaka), where matters of jurisdiction over agricultural and pasturing land predominated, the hereditary system of the regional señores with their segundas, organized through the lineages of the caciques, continued, and, in parallel, a system of rotation of offices with respect to the alcaldes and regidores. Likewise, in relation to ecclesiastical offices, there was not any immediate change but instead the gradual substitution of the hereditary system by the system of rotation favoured by the Spanish (Quispe 2016, 22). In the example of the Ayra Chinche lineage, we can perceive the struggle between both systems in the lawsuits for access to the office of Alcalde Mayor, around 1611, and also in the later lawsuits of the nineteenth century. Thus the decision about when a 35 The Royal Cédula of February 2, 1603, maintained the obligation to respect the custom of hereditary succession of the Andean caciques, a decision confirmed by the Royal Cédula of July 19, 1614 (cited in Jurado 2014, 391).

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particular place changed from a hereditary system to an elective one, in regard to its own jurisdictional powers over agricultural and herding land, depended on its degree of submission to Spanish power, and, related to this, when the Bourbonic Reforms of the eighteenth century were finally applied there, after the wide-​ranging rebellions of the previous period. In that new conjuncture, the Ordenanza de Intendentes declared that the administration of territories should be passed from the Audiencia de Charcas to the Virreinato of the Río de la Plata, and one result was the eclipse of many of the former laws of succession (Thompson 2007). In the practice of succession, it is also important to take into account other factors little studied before now. In the early Colony, and even at the time of the Ayra Chinche, apart from practicing the two systems of succession in parallel, other distinct modalities of hereditary succession were still practiced, whether in relation to the ayllu, the panaka (the descendants of a brother-​sister couple among the Inkas), or the precolonial equivalents to the “castas” (or castes), and whether by patrilineal, patrilateral, matrilineal, or matrilateral ties. Even within the patrilineal system favoured by the Spanish, there were important differences in the definition of succession, given that Andean systems of kinship do not differentiate between cousins and siblings, while the Spanish system opts for the primogeniture of sons (Morrone 2015b, 209; Sendón 2012). Another emerging conflict between the previous systems of succession and the new patrilineal system was the change that favoured an elder son over the most able candidate. In practice, although a particular cacique was elected to govern for life, his son or successor could also serve as acting governor during a part of this time, when the older man could no longer actively govern. This occurred in the case of the Ayra Chinche, when the father was weak in health. In practice too, the distinct criteria of succession in play provoked disagreements between the Viceroy Toledo and the Spanish Crown. It seems that Toledo privileged the capacities and abilities of the candidates themselves, according to the established Andean customs (which besides transferred to the Spanish King the former power of the Inka to elect them), while the Crown advocated the establishing of a hereditary guide-​line associated with notions of legitimacy and primogeniture (Morrone 2015b, 210). To all intents and purposes, during the first part of the Colony the more flexible Andean hereditary systems were to cede to the Spanish patrilineal system by primogeniture. Meanwhile, there was a variety of other options. For these reasons, the historical documents mention the different ways by which a particular person could claim for themselves the right of succession to cacicazgo for each chiefdom, whether directly, collaterally, or by some other means. And, as in the precolonial period, these claims to cacicazgo also alluded to the greater aptitude of one candidate or another. Another aspect of these claims, which we can perceive in the case of the Ayra Chinche lineage, was whether the candidate could trace their genealogy in a more or less direct line to the time of the Inkas, and to a particular noble Inka. The second preference in these claims was when a candidate could trace their lineage to the transition between the time of the Inkas and the administrative changes introduced by the Viceroy Toledo. Another question was whether or not the candidate could prove their pretension to possess “noble blood” (sangre noble) and thus their belonging to a “noble” line. Alternatively,

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this petition could be directed to the direct descendant of an Inka predecessor, this time following the “bloodline” (línea de sangre) via an ancestor on the maternal side. Here the maternal tie is key in the denomination of descendance “by blood” (por sangre) (Arnold 1998, 46–​49; cf. Ellefsen 1989, 61). My argument is that the “direct blood tie,” as a point of reference for authority and inheritance already valid in the Colony, really dates from previous Inka systems of hypergamy and dual organization. In the colonial struggle between practices of descent, what was sought was an Andean reinterpretation of the colonial models of Spanish kinship, for Andean ends and, in parallel, a Spanish interpretation of Andean kinship for Spanish ends.36 These variations on a theme reveal the importance of matrimonial alliances forged in Inka times between the noble Inka elite in Cusco and the regional caciques under their dominion, in the Inka system of “indirect rule.” I have already mentioned the evidence, both in oral tales and in written documentation by the Spanish chroniclers, of the giving of Inka princesses in marriage to regional caciques, and we find the same in the history of the great Aymara Federations of Qharaqhara-​Charkas and Quillacas-​Asanaque. Another phenomenon in all of this is the attention to the nobiliary title instead of to surnames as such for the great lords of the past, in which the same name (for example Ayra Chinche) passes for generations between distinct members of the lineage. In revising the colonial documents, the emergence of nobiliary titles can be noted in the names of the lineages of succession of the regional caciques, accompanied sometimes by additional honorific titles. It is common to affirm that these honorifics became the norm after the rebellion of Tupac Amaru II in 1781. But again, this is not the case, given that this norm was already in operation at least a century earlier, as we saw in the case of the Ayra Chinches.37 I suspect that, in the play between these alternatives, is a search to re-​accomodate within the new colonial norms many of the practices of Andean kinship, some with their roots in the precolonial period. For example, the modalities of transmission of patronymics in the historical documents draws my attention, for the resonances between this process and the present customs of naming children (in Aymara sutiyaña, literally “putting a name on”) by the godparents of the boy or girl, closely related to the rite of 36 In relation to this, note that the idea of the “pureness” (pureza) or “cleanliness” (limpieza) of the blood in Andean lineages prior to the Conquest continues in the idea of pureness demanded of a pretender to a royal lineage (or estirpe) during the Colony. These ideas then served as the basis for the colonial categories of the “castas” (castes).

37 Another early example is the Condo lineage of Don Diego Gabriel Fernández Achu (or Acho), mentioned from 1630. The same honorific title is applied to another governor in 1685, and again to a governor born in 1706, who governed until 1776. This lineage of titles continues during a total period of 146 years, so it cannot refer to the same person. There are certain changes to this tradition throughout the Colony. For example, from the beginning of the eighteenth century only the last part of this title, Fernandes Achu, is used for the governors of other generations. In 1753, this tradition was changed again, by augmenting this honorific title to Fernandes Achu y Pacheco. (The aggregation of “y Pacheco” seems to express a matrilateral tie.) Apart from this principal lineage of caciques, there is no another subsidiary genealogical line with the same titles of Fernandes Achu and Fernandes Achu y Pacheco, not in an organization of the dual type, nor as segundas or interinos. However, we lack sufficient documentary evidence to really clarify the situation.

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first haircutting. Spedding (1997, 116), among others, proposes that this custom had its origins in the precolonial period, citing Andean terms for this custom mentioned at the beginning of the seventeenth century in the Nueva corónica by Guaman Poma de Ayala. It is worth mentioning that until now suti (“the name”) is considered as one of the spirits (almas) of a person. Anyway, a couple of generations ago in Qaqachaka it was still custom for parents to let a matrilateral compadre (a maternal uncle) give a name to a son, and a patrilateral comadre (a paternal aunt) give a name to a daughter. It also seems likely that patrilineal transmission, passed through the intergenerational transfer of genealogical substance through semen, might be closely related to the transmission of patronymics, whereas matrilateral transmission, passed through the intergenerational transfer of genealogical substance through female blood, might be related to rights by blood and even the inheritance of nobiliary titles. This is what we find in the various claims by colonial caciques to their rights to assume a certain office. With these points in mind, let us return to the genealogies of some pertinent regional caciques.

The Caciques of the Quillacas-​Asanaque Federation

The ties between Qaqachaka and the former Aymara Federation of Quillacas-​Asanaque, are distinct from those to the Qharaqhara Federation, as are the caciques named in oral and written history, to which I turn now. Once again, in order to understand the modalities of classification and the divisions of the territories that we have already mentioned, and of their respective authorities, it is necessary to examine the political organization of these former regional chiefdoms, especially their segmentary nature, so as to compare the previous system of Andean authorities with the new system of authorities introduced in the early colonial period. As in the case of the Ayra Chinche lineage, these authorities as a whole combined the characteristics of the precolonial Andean offices with those of the new colonial ones. And as in many other aspects of life in the Colony, the new colonial offices derived, in turn, from the complex history of Spain under the Romans, the Franks, and in particular their dominion by the Moors from the Arab Maghreb. Only with the period of the Reconquest (from the early eighth century to 1492, when a freed Granada became part of Castile) were the Spanish able to re-​establish many of the Catholic ecclesiastical offices. At the beginning of the colonial period, Espinoza Soriano (1981a, 175–​77) holds that the Quillacas-​Asanaque Federation consisted of two distinct chiefdoms or señoríos: the Quillacas and the Asanaques. In general terms, the Asanaques had greater authority than the Quillacas, and in each of these greater saya divisions, the upper moieties or parcialidades (in Quechua anansaya), at least since the Toledan Reforms, had more authority that the lower moieties (called in Quechua urinsaya). In this way, the aransaya moiety of Asanaque had authority over aransaya of Quillacas, and Asanaque’s aransaya moiety also had greater authority over Asanaque’s urinsaya and Quillacas’s urinsaya combined (Espinoza Soriano 1981a, 186). In turn, each moiety was divided into various minor ayllus, each one under the respective authority of each greater saya division. In this way, the lower or urinsaya

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moiety of Asanaque was composed of the minor ayllus of Yanaqi and Chunkara, while the upper or aransaya moiety of Asanaque consisted of the minor ayllus of Qallapa, Qawalli (in its upper or arriba division) and Sullkayana. It is the caciques of these three ayllus of Asanaque’s upper moiety that figure most in the oral and written history of Qaqachaka. In spite of a series of later fragmentations in these larger moiety divisions during the colonial period, we can begin to understand the classification of their respective authorities. At the superior levels, in their condition as leaders of the moieties of the main chiefdoms, are the “governors” (gobernadores), sometimes called the “gobernadores principales” or “caciques principales.” Then, under their command at an inferior level, as leaders of the ayllus under these same governors, were the “indios principales” (principal Indians), with their local names of jilaqata or jilanqu. Another colonial category of local leaders were the “alcaldes” (or mayors), who governed the major ecclesiastical units, as in the example of the “annex” of Qaqachaka, and who in turn controlled the leaders of each minor ayllu under their charge. For their part, the moieties and the minor ayllus under their authority were classified into the smaller saya divisions of “above” and “below,” with the leaders assigned to each of these subdivisions. So, if we take the urinsaya subdivision of Asanaque (with its minor ayllus of Yanaque and Chungara), we can identify the lineage of gobernadores principales or caciques principales during various generations, from 1630 onward, each one with his respective “second person” (segunda persona). Likewise, if we take the aransaya subdivision of Asanaque, with its minor ayllus of Qallapa, Qawalli (arriba), and Sullkayana, we can identify their respective lineage of gobernadores principales or caciques principales. With these clarifications, we can now examine the caciques of the Asanaques mentioned in the oral and written history of Qaqachaka.

Who Was Takimallku Astiti and, Besides, the Choquecallatis?

One of the lineages of lords of Asanaque’s anansaya division, mentioned throughout Qaqachaka’s oral history, had the patronymic of Taquimallco (or Taquimalco), sometimes elaborated into “Fernandes Taquimallco” or into the combination of various names as “Bartolomé Astete Fernandes Taquimallco.” The consensus among the present-​ day inhabitants of the region is that the Taquimallco were caciques of the minor ayllus of Sullkayana (although the historical documentation in one case mentioned their affiliation to Callapa and Qawalli, called in the present-​day Jujchu).38 This indicates that there were two lines of caciques:  the Llanquepachas who governed the minor ayllus of Qallapa and Qawalli (nowadays Jujchu), and the Taquimallcos who governed the minor ayllu of Sullkayana. The fact that the name Taquimallco is mentioned repeatedly in the colonial documents from 1591 to 1757 confirms that we are dealing with an honorific or nobiliary title of a whole lineage of governors. 38 For his part, Abercrombie (1998, 295) proposed that the Taquimalco lineage came from another Condo annex, that of Cahuayo.

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At the same time, the early date of the origin of this title, in 1591, suggests that it was brought into being around the time of the foundation of the ayllus of the region. This implies that it was perhaps Fernando Choquecallati himself, as brother of the deceased friend of Ayra Chinche, Don Lujano Choquecallati, who could have adopted the title for this purpose, as oral history narrates (graphic 6). In terms of the evidence, there are pertinent details in a document examined by Thomas Abercrombie (1998, 284–​85), held in the possession of a member of ayllu K’ulta, Don Pedro Choquecallata. Remember that K’ulta was another ecclesiastical annex of Condocondo. Don Pedro was a descendant of the lineage of caciques of Asanaque called Choquecallata (as a variant of Choquecallati), to which the ill-​fated Don Lujano Choquecallati and his brother Fernando must have belonged. The document in the hands of Don Pedro, like those of Don Franco Quispe, had been copied by scribes from many previous documents, whose earliest date is 1593. In that year, the Archbishop of Quito, Fray Luis López, put into effect the appropriation of lands supposedly “empty” in favour of the Spanish Crown. In the following execution of his order, a large part of the lands of Asanaque had been declared “free” of occupation and use. In a later auction of these lands, “Taquimalco,” the governor-​cacique of the repartimiento of the Asanaques, made an offer of 7,000 pesos, with which the lands were bought. This would date the first purchase of the lands of Asanaque, including those of Qaqachaka, to the first round of land composiciones in 1593. Another mention of the Choquecallata lineage cites a Don Domingo Choquecallata in the seventeenth century, who claimed to the Spanish authorities that the first boundary markers (mojones) of Asanaque had been established by the Inka Huayna Capac (Abercrombie 1998, 287). Abercrombie suspects that in reality the mojones were traced or re-​traced in the decade of 1570 by the Viceroy Toledo’s inspector, Don Pedro de Zárate, again in the years around 1590 by the Archbishop of Quito, and then in the 1640s by Don José de la Vega Alvarado. According to the same document in the hands of Don Pedro from K’ulta, two generations afterwards, in 1647, one of the grandchildren of the cacique Taquimalco, an unordained priest, had documented a part of this property as a “private hacienda.” This event calls my attention as it possibly leads us to the “tata kura” amongst the first ancestors of Qaqachaka mentioned by Don Franco Quispe, and likewise to the social memory of the moment when a part of the Asanaque lands had been bought as a “hacienda.” In practice, as a reaction to this type of personal intervention in land affairs, the Taquimalco caciques petitioned for a defence (amparo), on the part of the Crown representatives, against such claims, seeking once and for all a demarcation (deslinde) and boundary marking (amojonamiento) of all the repartimiento’s lands (Abercrombie 1998). The same document goes on to describe the ritualized circumambulation around the boundaries of each ayllu of Asanaque by the retinue (comitiva) of caciques and other officials, as in the example we examined in relation to Qaqachaka. And what of the widow of Lujano Choquecallati, called Juana Doña Ana, and her sister Inka Mariya? The documents concerning the composición de tierras of 1646 do not offer us any more details, apart from referring to the presence of Juana Doña Ana together with Taquimallco in these events. The only mention I could find in the archival

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Graphic 6. The Choquecallati genealogy.

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documents I  examined of a Doña Juana and a Doña María, in this case mother and daughter, occurs with reference to Doña Juana de los Ríos, wife of Martín de Robles, the encomendero of some Indians of Chayanta (in Charkas) around 1556 (when there was the first round of composiciones de tierras). Doña Juana’s daughter was María de Robles, widow of Capitán Pablo de Meneses, who died in 1556, whom she had married when she was hardly seven years old, carrying with her a sizable encomienda as her wedding dowry. It is pertinent to note that Capitán Pablo de Meneses had received in 1549 an encomienda and a merced (an adjudication in his favour) of Indians from the Chaqui moiety of the Qharaqhara Federation (formerly in the possession of Gonzalo Pizarro), which included among them some Gualparoca Inkas. Might Doña Juana and her daughter Doña María have belonged to this group of Inkas, before being given over in marriage to encomenderos of the region? After Pablo de Meneses’s death, Doña María married again, this time to the nephew of her deceased husband, who was about her own age, and they both enjoyed living from their encomiendas until approximately 1565 (Zagalsky 2012, 12; see also Presta 1997). Apart from these persons having the same names, the resounding silence about the two particular ancestresses of Qaqachaka could indicate that they are perhaps mythical rather than real names, as occurs elsewhere in this region.39 These series of alliances between encomenderos or caciques with Inka women, or else with their counterparts in other moieties of the region, reveals a conscious pattern of marriages that weave certain lineages with others. Apart from the immediate purpose of gaining access to land of different kinds (whether for agriculture or pasturing), evidently this pattern of alliances of convenience served as elite strategies in the period to preserve their privileges, and in addition help circulate their social, symbolic and economic capital, faced with the dramatic changes and destructuring of these practices imposed by the Spanish administration (Morrone 2018). So here we are dealing with yet another kind of negotiations between Andeans and Spanish players in a colonial context. We can trace such alliances among caciques with ties to Condo and Qaqachaka. In the same set of documents that mention Fernando Taquimallco, another lineage of caciques of the upper (aransaya) moiety of Asanaque, with the title of Fernández (or Fernandes) Choque Callapa, is mentioned implicitly, although the details of this example concern much later dates. The name of this other lineage suggests there was a separate line of governors of ayllu Callapa, although the documents actually present his affiliation to the minor ayllu of Mana Cagualli (Qawalli’s lower moiety or Qawalli abajo). A certain Don Juan Fernandes Choque Callapa claimed succession there in 1776. Don Juan was the brother-​in-​law of Don Gregorio Llanquepacha, the cacique of Condo with such a bad reputation. So it seems that in this case the two brothers-​in-​law, through their marital ties, were able to share between themselves the political control over the two divisions 39 This also occurred in relation to the founded ancestresses, María Titiqhawa and Juana Palla, from the pueblo of San Francisco de Coroma, another Toledan reduction town of the Quillacas-​ Asanaque Federation, who have similar Inka ties, although there is historical evidence of feast ­sponsors or prestes from the sixteenth century with these names (Bubba 1997).

138 The Colonial Caciques in ORAL AND WRITTEN History

of ayllu Qawalli.40 Another cacique, Cruz Fernandes Choque Callapa, served as an interim governor in 1776, after the assassination of the two cousins (primos hermanos), Gregorio and Andrés Llanquepacha, by a group of enraged peasants. In turn, Cruz Fernandes Choque Callapa was related by matrilateral ties to the Taquimallco lineage through his wife María Hilaria Taquimallco (another “María”). Evidently the lineage of the Choque family counted with a “noble” status, given that the alcalde (mayor) in 1755, Pascual Gonzáles Choque, is addressed as “noble” and “principal” in the documents. See graphic 7. If we turn our attention to the local leaders of the Qaqachaka annex during the colonial period, who are named in the written documents, we can identify the local alcaldes, often with the same name of Taquimallco. For example, Fernando Taquimallco was the alcalde of Qaqachaka in 1792, although in this same year there is mention of another governor with the name of Don José Taquimallco (who was perhaps his son).

The Deeds of Taqimallku Astiti

I already mentioned that, for the comunarios of today, the “genesis” of Qaqachaka as a territorial unit is thought about through the efforts of one particular cacique of Asanaque in the colonial period, with the mysterious name of Taqimallku Astiti. The tales we heard say that, in exchange for the concession of the annex lands in perpetuity by the Royal Crown to the people of the place, this cacique agreed that his subjects, the comunarios of Qaqachaka, must serve in the system of negotiated manual labour in the royal mit’a, whether in the mines of Potosí or as postilions in the tambo service. (The ecclesiastical services of the religious mit’a are not mentioned here). The present-​day Qaqachakas still remember their service as manual labour in the mining mit’a as the fundamental basis for their claim to the lands of the annex. The evidence for this is best known through the practices of the title-​bearers, with their access to the written titles of the annex lands. As I mentioned too, we can find references to the name of the cacique Taquimallco in many title documents concerning ownership of the lands managed by the originarios of Qaqachaka. I already examined the content of a document of 1754 in the possession of the title-​bearer Don Franco Quispe Maraza, transcribed from a still earlier document. That document described a petition made in 1646 by the Asanaque cacique Don Bartolomé Astete Fernandes Taquimallco, in the name of the communities of Indians under his jurisdiction, before the Visiting Inspector (Juez Visitador), to protect the rights of these “indios de Cacachaca” to buy the lands with 1,000 pesos from the Spanish Crown, and to maintain their rights to these lands through their participation in the mit’a, and through their service in the tambo of “Viscachas Viscachas”: In the Villa de Oropeza of Cochabamba. on the fifth day of October of one thousand six hundred and forty-​six, José de la Vega Alvarado, Visiting Inspector for the said sales unit of measure and composition of lands and other haciendas in this Province of the Charkas, making certain these processes; of Don Bartolomé Astete Fernandes Taquimallco who requested leave of the kings for his communities; of the Indian who does not have lands to sow, it is protected at the price of 1,000 pesos covered by the service (the said tambo)

40 T.I. AN. E. 1776 No 84.

Fernandes Choque Callapa from Callapa, and Anansaya or upper Asanaques

Fernando Choque Callapa from Callapa, and Anansaya or upper Asanaques

Upper Asanaque Lower Qawalli

Father of Gregorio

Upper Asanaque Qawalli and Qallapa

Uncle of Gregorio

Upper Quillacas

José Llanquepacha b.ca. 1820

direction of sucession

Lower Asanaque

Brother-in-law / Claimant to sucession to married to sister Condo Urinsaya (lower), perhaps Fernández Acho

man from Pukuwata

Another Llanquepacha

Now descendants of the Espejo family, from ca. 1860

Daughter of the Llanquepachas b.ca. 1840

Guillermo Llanquepacha b.ca. 1810

b.ca. 1780

Lucas Feliz LlanquepachaPaula Llanquepacha Governor 1781 Elder daughter b.ca 1750



Graphic 7. The parental interweaving among the Asanaque caciques.

Brother-in-law

María Gregorio Llanquepacha Andrés Antonio Choqueticlla Luis María María Hilaria Cruz Fernandez Juan Fernandes Sister of Sister of Governor and Cacique Bargas Gregorio Taquimallco Choque Callapa Choque Callapa Gregorio Guarachi Lupercia Governor of Condo Llanquepacha Governor Chungara Llanquepacha general of Upper Quillacas 1776 b.ca. 1720, Colque 1776 interim Llanquepacha 1777 de Condo d.1774 Guarachi

Upper Asanaque Sullakayana

newgenrtpdf

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Qharaqhara and Quillacas-Asanaque

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140 The Colonial Caciques in ORAL AND WRITTEN History

of the Royal mita and the service (at) the said tambo of Las Viscachas Viscachas, which with their canton41 lands are taken away from us the said Indians by the said … Jukumanis … for their communities of Indians, the said lands and estancias and declared pastures, curates in the last chapter of my said process of Visita to the said lands, by the Cacachaca Indians … (Document B, March 7, 1971, 4r, 4v, in Don Franco Quispe’s personal archive, copied from a document of April 1, 1754. My translation)42

Even in that period, there is mention of the constant problem that these lands “are taken away from us” by the Jukumanis, Qaqachaka’s long-​standing enemies.

Takimallku Astiti and the Composición de Tierras by José de la Vega Alvarado

In their claims for lands, other communities of the region appeal to similar documents that mention the names of Taquimallco and José de la Vega Alvarado, although the processes of copying and recopying the original papers have generated differences in dates, names, and other details. For example, members of Qhurqhi marka in Carangas allude to the (re)visitas by José de la Vega Alvarado in the repartition of this instance. But although they cite the years 1543 and 1545, respectively, in the archival documents in their possession (perhaps with reference to the previous visitas), historically the dates we are dealing with are 100 years later, between 1643 and 1645. In those years, each marka should have bought their lands with 1,000  “strong” pesos of the Spanish Crown, referring to the pesos “fuertes” or “duros” with a value of twenty reales. The revisitas of the later period, for example that of 1662 by Governor Pedro de Valencia (again a date of 1562 is given in the documents, which is too early), permitted the population of Qhurqhi marka to maintain these rights to their lands through their participation in the Potosí mit’a (Ayllu sartañani 1992, 81–​82). In a similar manner, Don Severo Antachoque, son-​in-​law of the title-​bearer Don Franco Quispe Maraza, remembers through oral tradition (derived in turn from the archival documents at hand) that after constructing Qaqachaka’s church, the “land inspector” 41 “Cantón” is a term from the beginning of the sixteenth century, derived from ancient French, which means literally a “corner” of a province, based in turn on a Romance word related to the medieval cantus (or cant). Accessed March 13, 2017. https://​en.oxforddictionaries.com/​definition/​ canton. 42 The original Spanish says “En la Villa de Oropeza de Cochabamba a cinco dias del mes de octubre de mil siescento cuarenta y seis años, José de la Viga Alborado Juez Vicetador para la dicha venta medida y composición de tierras y otras hacientas en esta Provincia de los Charcas, haciendo cierto estos autos; de Don Bartolomé Astete Fernandes Taquimallco que pidio llicencia de los señores Reyes para sus comunidades; de indio que no tenian tierras donde sembrar, se amparó en precio de un mil pesos amparados para el servicio (El dicho tambo) de la real Mita y el sirvecio el dicho tambo de las Viscachas Viscachas, que con sus tierras del canton nos queta por de los dichos indio(s) con las dichas … Hucumanes … para sus cumunidades de indios las dichas tierras y estancias y pastos declarados, curatos en el ultimo capitulo del dicho mi(n) (a)uto de la Viseta de las dicha tierras, por de los indios Cacachaca …”

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Qharaqhara and Quillacas-Asanaque

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(visitador de tierras) was sent there by the Viceroyalty (Virreinato). Here Don Severo seems to confuse the actual name of this inspector through a mishearing, because he named him as José de la Vega “Nabarro” instead of “Alvarado.” Another highly copied document in Don Franco Quispe Maraza’s personal archives transcribes in detail the original composition of lands of 1646 by José de la Vega Alvarado. This document was re-​transcribed in 1919 under the incentive of a certain Martín Choque, then in 1920 by various caciques and comunarios of San Pedro de Condo and Qaqachaka (under the charge of the title-​bearer Feliciano Inca Maraza), and then again by Don Franco Quispe himself in 1965, in the circumstances of a dispute about the external boundaries of Qaqachaka annex. Many entries in the local archival documents that refer to these key colonial caciques are commemorated in the ritual practices of certain ceremonies, although the participants no longer understand the meaning of these names, nor the historical terms used in the rituals. The document dated to 1967 in the possession of Don Franco Quispe Maraza (document K), copied from the older documents from 1754 and before, name the musical instruments played in the original ceremony of marking out the annex boundaries: the wooden flutes called ayawaya and the flat ones called phalt’a pinkillu. The document also names a “tan-​coloured poncho” (poncho pardo) used by one of the authorities while they circumambulated the mojones, in the ritual use of weavings of vicuña fibre or at least of the colour of vicuña fibre. The document includes the following lines, characteristic of the time yet somewhat cryptic. These deal with song verses repeated ritually until a generation ago in Qaqachaka in the ceremony called “cabildo,” when the tax payment by the originarios of the place was collected. The verses name Fernando Taquimallco and the Visiting Inspector Bartolomé Astete: pinquillo gilenco -​

Pinquillo, jilanqu (ayllu leader)

Fernando Taquimallco

Fernando Taquimallco

ayaguaya—​palta pinquillo

Juez visitador Bartolomé Astete paco poncho paco cholo juchantin tasantin …

Ayaguaya, flat pinquillo

Visiting Inspector Bartolomé Astete Tan poncho, tan chulu knitted hat Obliged to pay the tax …

The document continues with a reference to the historical demand for money for the purchase of the annex lands, this time for two arrobas of white silver (plata blanca) from ayllu Qawalli (nowadays part of minor ayllu Jujchu), referring once again to “father” Fernando Taquimallco and the “postilion” Bartolomé Astete: Qawalli, sworn on (by) father Fernando Taquimallco and postilion Bartolomé Astete, Governor of Azanaque, (which) belongs to San Pedro Santa Rosa of Lima, President Atahuallpa, ayllu Yucas Huari, the order, hear it, of two arrobas of white silver. (Document K, August 22, 1967, 1v, from Don Franco Quispe’s personal archive. My translation)43

43 The original Spanish says “Cahualli, juramentado padre Fernando Taquimallco y postillón Bartolomé Astete, Governador Azanaque, pertenece San Pedro Santa Rosa de Lima Presidente Atahuallpahuiri ayllo Yucas Huari de orden oidelo dos arrobas de plata blanca.”

142 The Colonial Caciques in ORAL AND WRITTEN History

Who was Bartolomé Astete?

Fernando Taquimallco’s identity is now clear, as a historical cacique who belonged to the cacical lineage of Asanaque, in particular of Condo, which ruled from 1591 to 1757. But what do we know about Bartolomé Astete? Some archival documents located in the Casa de Moneda, in Potosí, and in the Archivo Nacional de Bolivia, in Sucre, reveal that the “cacique,” “postilion,” and “visiting inspector” Bartolomé Astete, named in Qaqachaka’s local archives, refers to the historical personage of Bartolomé Astete de Ulloa. This person was an important colonial bureaucrat who carried out the high office of Treasurer of the Royal Coffers and Hacienda (Tesorero de las Arcas Reales y Hacienda) in the Villa de Potosí from about 1607. During his life, he held many other high offices, holding the titles in later years of Factor, Juez Oficial de las Arcas Reales, Corregidor and Justicia Mayor de la Villa de Potosí, and Teniente del Capitán General of the district of the Royal Court (Audiencia Real) of Charkas between 1618 and 1629.44 The fiscal dimension of many of these offices suggests that Astete might have been the person responsible for supervising the payment for lands in the composición de tierras of 1646, and as such his role would have been keenly observed and indeed remembered for centuries afterwards by the Indians benefiting from these transactions. In addition, the documents reveal some of the more personal aspects of the man Bartolomé Astete. Evidently he was promoted from Factor to Corregidor of Potosí on the death, in 1625 of a certain Don Antonio de Figueroa, by the unanimous decision of the Cabildo, Justicia, and Regimiento of Potosí. He is praised in colonial documents of the period as “a person highly capable, of understanding, and of great importance for the said office obliged by the Republic and cabildo of the said Villa.”45 He also had the reputation of being interested in the just elaboration of censuses of the Indian populations, probably for affairs concerning the mit’a.46 In his role as Corregidor and Justicia of Potosí, Bartolomé Astete would have supervised the general management of the system of “obliged lending of work” (prestación obligada) in the mit’a service in the Potosí mines. In these offices, Astete was responsible for organizing the Indian populations of all the provinces in the region under his charge, especially those obliged to provide manual labour for the mit’a, as well as others working in the mines and in the refining mills. These offices also involved him in negotiations with the lord caciques of the regional ayllus, for example of Copoata (or Pocoata), concerning the division of the said repartimiento in the period between 1624 and 1629.47 In a document of 1627,48 Bartolomé Astete de Ulloa, in 44 See CR 72, 1600; CR 105, 1607; CR 213, 1625–​1626; CR 201, 1624–​1629, fol. 68 and 68v. See also AGI, Charcas, 56.

45 CR 210:  178. The original Spanish says “una persona muy capaz, entendimiento y de mucha importancia por el dicho officio obligado por la República y cabildo de la dicha Villa.” 46 AGI, Charcas 56.

47 CR 201: 1624–​1629.

48 Título de Capitán de la Mita y Alcalde Mayor de los Indios Marcanies de las Provincias de los Charcas y Caracaras. Potosí, 3 de enero de 1627, AGI Charcas, 56. In Espinoza Soriano (1960, 291–​92).

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his role as Factor of Potosí, named Don Fernando García Ayra Chinche “Principal Cacique and governor of the pueblos of Copoata, Macha, Aymara, and Caracara of the Province of Caracara, as Capitán of the Mit’a,”49 so that he could report his Indians to the mit’a services in the mines of Potosí and Porco in that same year. Bartolomé Astete was also given the final word in the naming of the priests in the local doctrina. So whereas Qaqachaka’s oral narratives name and praise a single mythical personage called Takimallku Astiti, the scrutiny of several written documents has permitted us to identify this personage as the colonial title of a lineage of caciques called Taquimallco Astete. One step further has been the realization that, within this compound name, is a mnemonic reference to two distinct facilitators of the land compositions of 1646 in favour of the Qaqachakas: Fernando Taquimallco and Bartolomé Astete, whose intense cooperation in this task, and hence whose importance in regional life, had led to their becoming conflated historically into one single, almost immortal person (see also Arnold 2007a, and graphic 8). After about 1757, mention of this combined title disappears from the records. According to Abercrombie (1998, 295), after the assassination of the two Llanquepacha cousins in Condo in 1774, the descendants of the Taquimalco lineage, known by then under the name of Fernández Acho, began a litigation to recuperate the cacicazgo of the lower moiety (urinsaya) of Condo, but they lost to a man who declared himself descendant of the great colonial cacique Colque Guarache.50 However, a modern document from 1921 in the hands of Don Franco Quispe names the governor of Condo at that time as Gaspar Astete Fernández Taquimallco, which could signal the recuperation of this hereditary title.51 This fact demonstrates how the compound title of Astete Fernández Taquimallco, construed originally in the Colony, was gradually converted into a transmissible surname directed towards self-​legitimating a line of hereditary descent, through the commemoration of this compound title. We are dealing with a relatively recent period, when Qaqachaka’s well-​known title-​bearer, Don Feliciano Inca Maraza, was doing his rounds. So the reappearance of this historical title in the region could very well have been at the instigation of this particular person and his contacts, and their reading of the historical documents under their charge (cf. Nicolás 2012).

Who was the Ancestor Llanquepacha?

Another lineage of lords who governed with their respective “second persons” (segundas), associated with Asanaque’s upper moiety (anansaya), were the Llanquepachas. In the memory of the modern day inhabitants of Qaqachaka, the name Llanquepacha occurs in their oral history as a primordial ancestor, originally from Condo, who was rich in mines, 49 The original Spanish says “Cacique Principal y Gobernador de los pueblos de Copoata, Macha, Aymara y Caracara de la Provincia de Caracara, como Capitán de la Mit’a.”

50 ANB, EC 1775, No 165.

51 In Don Franco Quispe Maraza’s personal archive, Documento A, August 3, 1921.

144 The Colonial Caciques in ORAL AND WRITTEN History

Fernando Taquimallco Lineage from 1591 to 1695 of Sullkayana, Anansaya (upper), Asanaque

b.ca. 1590

b.ca. 1590 His grandson, the priest who bought lands from Asanaque as a hacienda

b.ca. 1620

Bartolomé Astete Fernandes Taquimallco from Sullkayana (or Callapa or Qawalli) (c. 1646) cacique of Asanaque 1692-1757 Fernando Taquimallco Cacique of Asanaque 1714

Fernando Taquimallco Cacique of Anansaya (upper) Asanaque 1646

Bartolomé Astete Visiting Inspector in 1646, other posts from 1618-1629

Fernando Choquecallati brother of Lujano becomes Astete Fernandes Taquimallco in ca. 1646?

Sebastián Fernando Taquimallco 1732

Pascual Gonzales Choque, noble Alcalde in 1755

b.ca. 1745 María Fernando Cruz Fernandes María Lupercia Gregorio Marselo Fernandes Taquimallco, José Taquimallco, Hilaria Taquimallco Choque Callapa Colque Llanquepacha principal Indian of Governor in 1792 Alcalde in 1792 Taquimallco Interim in 1776 Warachi ayllu Sullkayana of Qawayu (Caguaio) b.ca. 1820 Ambrocio Miguel de la Crus Condori, principal Cacique of Challapata b.ca 1850 b.ca. 1885 Gaspar Astete Fernandez Taquimallco, 1921, Governor of Condo

b.ca. born approximately in.

Graphic 8. The Taquimallco lineage showing Don Bartolomé Astete.

and who initially wanted to purchase the lands of Qaqachaka with his own money as a hacienda. He finally changed his mind, through the persuasion of his contemporaries, and decided to participate in the composición de tierras, and the rites of circumambulation around the limits of the new territory. However, in the case of the title-​bearers and their families, the tendency is to associate this name with the colonial governors of the annex’s minor ayllus Qallapa and Qawalli (now Jujchu). In other present-​ day commentaries, the Llanquepacha family had various descendants in the border area between Qaqachaka and Pukuwata, during the period after the original founding of these places. It is also common to hear mention that the Llanquepacha family had gone to live in Qaqachaka’s valley lands to the east, leaving behind in the annex some few descendants now carrying the name Ovando. Other present-​day rumours suggest that the Espejo family, now important residents (vecinos) in the main pueblo, and members of the minor ayllu of Qallapa (in the lower moiety), are, in fact, descendants of the ancestral family of the Llanquepachas. Although the precise

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genealogy of the Llanquepacha family is not clear, there are many tales about these supposed ties, based on an event that happened at least four generations ago, around 1820 (see graphic 9). But to all intents and purposes, the references to the Llanquepacha family from Condo are from a much later period than in the case of the other ancestral caciques of Qaqachaka, which puts into some doubt their association with the original founding of the place, and even with the circumambulation of the boundaries in the land composition rites of 1646. Three Llanquepacha brothers of these later times, like their tremendous wealth, are notorious. It is common to hear tales about a cliff-​face, now in a state of collapse, on the banks of River Chiruchiru a little above Qaqachaka’s main pueblo, which houses the ruins of the Llanquepacha goldmine, with their house nearby. Some say that the openings in the rocky cliff-​face above the river are yet more of their mines. In these tales, the three Llanquepacha brothers were so rich in gold that even their urine flowed like a “gush of gold.” Doña Lucía Quispe, whilst telling us about her mother’s times, mentioned how her mother could remember the libations made personally by the Llanquepacha

Gregorio Llanquepacha Governor of Condo b.ca. 1720, d. 1774

Lucas Feliz Llanquepacha Governor 1781 b.ca. 1750

Andrés Llanquepacha Governor of Condo b.ca. 1720, d. 1774

Paula Llanquepacha Elder daughter

b.ca. 1780

José Llanquepacha

Guillermo Llanquepacha

b.ca 1820

b.ca. 1810

Daughter of the Llanquepachas b.ca. 1840

b.ca. born approximately in

X Llanquepacha

Man from Pukuwata

Now descendants of the Espejo family, from ca. 1860

Graphic 9. The Llanquepacha genealogy showing their supposed relations to the present-​day Espejo family of Qaqachaka.

146 The Colonial Caciques in ORAL AND WRITTEN History

brothers in their house, because as a child she’d watched them through the window. The brothers had the reputation of being arrogant and lazy, of staying in bed all day, and of urinating the gushes of gold from out of their beds. Instead of going to work in the fields or the mines, they stayed at home, making libations from cups directly onto the floor inside, and boasting how women would swarm in their dozens to convert them into husbands. Doña Lucía’s mother used to observe their goings-​on inside the room. “Talking like this they used to pee right there…” she said, “that Guillermo Llanquepacha and José Llanquepacha.” They made libations for their pens of animals, their lands and their ancestors, and then the final line of the toast (in a mixture of Quechua and Aymara) was the following: “Nuqa qur khuyir qhuya kani, allikuna munawanqha nuqati … Allint warmi munawanqha …,” siriw siw. “Nuqata nuqa quriy qhuya jaqkani,” siri, “nuqa quri qhuya jaqkani …”

“I’m the one who breathes gold in the mine, the landslides wanted to get at me … A good woman will want me,” they used to say, they say, “All mine, I’m the goldmine,” they used to say, “I’m the goldmine …”

Their boasts did not come to fruition as the three died without leaving a single male heir, only daughters from passing women. Doña Lucía continued: They expanded from those, then those grandfathers died, they say. That José Llanquepacha and Guillermo Llanquepacha … But a certain grandmother had a sister, they say. And that one, her sister (who’d slept with one of them), gave birth to a baby, they say. Those are us. She’d had a baby, even though she was single …

Now those grandfathers have been finished off, they say. But after that, her sister gave birth to a baby, they say. A little son. Those are us … We are Espejos now, but long ago we were Llanquepachas.

The name Llanquepacha can be heard, above all, in the libations made by the members of the Espejo family, when they name the Llankipacha awila achachi, “The Llanquepacha grandfathers and grandmothers.” This same family makes a point of naming the Llanquepacha ancestors during the cabildo ceremony, which takes place in the ceremonial “corner shrine” called Llanquepacha iskina, “Llanquepacha corner,” located near the Espejo’s extended family patio. It was here in the past that each of the minor ayllus of the Qaqachaka annex had to present their annual tax payment called tasa. But in order to avoid the endless fights between these minor ayllus, each of them gradually opted to organize their own cabildo ceremony in its own enclave within the main pueblo. So, a generation ago, it was only the Espejo family who still met in that ritual corner. The only other time we heard mention of the name Llanquepacha was in the “ceremony of carrying the keys,” celebrated at Pentecost (Ispiritu) in May, when the

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procession of authorities first grouped together in Llankipacha iskina, where they placed the retablo-​like wooden box containing Tata Quri, “seated” on a colonial carved wooden chair (perhaps to replace the dúho or tiyana stool of the distant past). At that moment, an alms collection is made in a round of those present “to provide for Tata Quri,” although that same collection could be just as reminiscent of the centuries-​old tax collections made by the ayllu comunarios to the Llanquepacha caciques (Arnold and Espejo 2010, 243). The Deeds of the Llanquepachas

What evidence is there in the historical documents to support these oral memories and practices closely related to the Llanquepachas? As I have already mentioned, the written documents that name the Llanquepacha family are dated to the middle rather than the early colonial period, so we are dealing with a different set of criteria. One of these is the strategy of these later colonial lords to consolidate and expand their political and economic influences through webs of marital alliances throughout the region and beyond. We are also dealing with a new kind of cacique, moulded by the Spanish administration in the period post Toledo. For example, a demand of 1747 informs us that the man who aspired to the succession of the cacique Don Gregorio Llanquepacha (about whom we shall hear more afterwards) claimed descent from a former lord of Asanaque, Don Martín Pacha, one of the “new” colonial caciques called by many honorific titles, which included those of the Viceroy Toledo himself: “the Lord Marquis of Macera, Don Pedro de Toledo, Viceroy, Governor and Capitán General of these kingdoms.” The ancestor named Pacha governed in 1572, the precise year when the Toledan Reforms were first announced.52 This same claim to succession mentions Gregorio Llanquepacha’s own genealogy. There is no clarification of the origins of his name, but it is probable that Llanquepacha derives from adding to “Pacha” the family name of Francisco Lucas Canqui, who governed the region in 1685. Then there is perhaps a later switch of consonants from “Canqui-​pacha” to “Llanque-​pacha.” The name “Lucas” continued as an integral part of the name of certain family members of the Llanquepacha family, until the time of Lucas Félix Llanquepacha who governed the Asanaques from approximately 1781 to 1796. However, it is also possible that there was at some moment a matrimonial alliance in the region with the family of the Colque Guarachi of Quillacas, who counted with the name Llanque in their ascendance. Llanquera was also a common surname in the past in the minor ayllu of lower Qawalli, in neighbouring Condocondo. In graphic 10, I have sketched the Llanquepacha genealogy, from the relatively scarce evidence available in these sources. Once again, we can note in this genealogy that the 52 T.I. AN. E. 1747, No 12. The original Spanish says “el Señor Marquez de Mancera Don Pedro de Toledo Virrey Governador y Capitan General de estos Reynos.”

148 The Colonial Caciques in ORAL AND WRITTEN History

Llanquepacha lords of Asanaque’s upper moiety (anansaya, which included the minor ayllus of Qawalli or Jujchu, and Qallapa) were related by marriage and by matrilateral ties to other moieties in both Asanaque and Quillacas. For instance, the Llanquepacha family is related to Asanaque’s lower moiety (urinsaya) through Gregorio Félix Llanquepacha’s elder daughter, Paula, who was married to a claimant to succession in Asanaque’s lower moiety (urinsaya). The Llanquepachas could also take political and economic advantage of ties between Asanaque’s lower and upper moieties through the marriage of Manuela Pacheco to Lucas Félix Llanquepacha, Gregorio Llanquepacha’s son. The two divisions of Asanaque were also related to the lower division of Quillacas through María Lupercia Colque Guarache, Gregorio Félix Llanquepacha’s wife. At the same time, María Lupercia had ties with two other important families of Quillacas. On the one hand, she was related to the ancestral lord of Quillacas, Don Juan Colque Guarache, who died in 1588, and who had been honoured by the Inkas in his life for his military role in the conquest of the “Chiriguanos” (or Ava-​guaranies). On the other, María Lupercia was related to the important lineage of the Choqueticlla, who still governed upper Quillacas in the 1760s. In many instances in the written documents, the Llanquepachas refer to their “brother-​in-​law Choqueticlla,” and to proyects they had in common. These ancestral ties linked the Llanquepacha-​ Guarache family, governors of Condocondo, into a web of matrimonial alliances that interrelated the cacical families of different regions of the Altiplano (see again graphic 10). Concurrently the Guaraches of Quillacas were related to the line of caciques of the same name in Jesús de Machaca, much further north. It was said that the great ancestor Apu Guarachi, who “was absolute lord of all these independent provinces and before the dominion of the great Inkas,”53 originally had his “palace” in upper Quillacas (Urioste de Aguirre 1978, 132–​33).54 The Llanquepacha Cousins and the Rebellion of Condo in 1774

Despite these diverse sources of written evidence, we face a resounding silence when it comes to the oral history about the Llanquepachas in the late colonial period. Certainly no mention is made of the two first cousins (known as “brothers” in the Andean kinship system) Gregorio Félix and Andrés Llanquepacha, governor and second person respectively of Condocondo, from about 1747 to 1774, when the Llanquepacha lineage had already replaced that of the Taquimalcos (Abercrombie 1998, 294). The present-​day 53 The original Spanish says “Fue señor absoluto de todas estas provincias independientes y antecedente al dominio de los incas grandes.”

54 Teresa Gisbert uses this idea to develop her theory about the original migrations of Aymara-​ speaking groups from further south, by way of settlements such as Quillacas on the shores of Lake Poopó, in order to arrive in the area around Lake Titicaca and Tiwanaku, in what is now Jesús de Machaqa (Gisbert, 1987). We might also note that the son of this ancestor Guarache (or Warachi), called Llanquetiti, another person favoured by the Inka, was chief of the Guarache lineage of Jesús de Machaca, who traced their genealogies in the last instance to Manco Qhapaq and Wayna Qhapaq.

line of succession

Lucas Felis Llanquepacha Governor 1781-1796 b.ca. 1750

Gregorio Llanquepacha Gobernador de Condo Aransaya (upper) n.c. 1720, m. 1774

Father of Gregorio b.ca. 1740

María Bargas Chungara

Paula Llanquepacha Claimant to succession to Condo Urinsaya (below) Elder daughter

Andrés Llanquepacha Governor of Condo

Uncle of Gregorio

Qharaqhara and Quillacas-Asanaque

Graphic 10. The Llaquepacha genealogy with the interweaving of their matrimonial alliances in the Llanquepacha-​Guarache families.

Manuela Pacheco Condo Urinsaya (below)

Lower Asanaque

Sister of Luis María Lupercia Gregorio Guarachi Colque Guarachi Llanquepacha 1777 Condo Urinsaya (lower)

Mother of Gregorio

Grandfather of Gregorio b.ca. 1700

Grandfather of Gregorio b.ca. 1660

Great grandfather of Gregorio Inka Mariya b.ca. 1620



(brother-in-law) Choqueticlla from Hatun (upper)Quillacas Governed in 1760

Francisco Lucas Canqui Governed in 1685

Martín Pacha Governed in 1572

Upper Asanaque

Colque Guarachi/Llanque from Quillacas

Juan Colque Guarache Apu Guarachi of Quillacas of Hatun (upper) Quillacas d. 1588

Upper Quillacas

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150 The Colonial Caciques in ORAL AND WRITTEN History

Qaqachakas also fail to mention the notorious events that happened in 1774. Here, oral memory becomes highly selective, even though these events are of vital significance in the regional history as a whole, as they announce a whole cycle of regional rebellions in the following period. In the genealogy of the Llanquepacha family, the so-​called “brothers” were in fact “classificatory brothers,” or more specifically “cousins,” instead of siblings by blood. The primary source for the history of the Llanquepacha “brothers” is found in the extensive case-​file (expediente) on the Rebellion of Condo of 1774 held in the Archivo and Biblioteca Nacional of Bolivia, in Sucre, and in the historical documents that examine the precursors of this event. Secondary descriptions are found in Fernando Cajías de la Vega’s doctoral thesis (1987b), published much later as Oruro 1781: Sublevación de indios y rebelión criolla. Dos tomos. Cuarto centenario, Fundación de Oruro (2004), and mention is made of these events in studies by O’Phelan (1988), Abercrombie (1998, 294–​96), and Serulnikov (1996, 2006), among others. In the years prior to the main event of 1774, there had already been a series of formal complaints presented by members of the regional ayllus and their leaders about the Llanquepachas’s corrupt administration, which we can identify in retrospect as precursors to this incident. It seems that these complaints led directly to the rebellion, as they were not attended to in time by State officials. Already in 1735, and again in 1736 and 1737, there were protests by the Condocondo Indians for the increase in tribute payments demanded by their governor, Don Fernando Callapa, through the corregidor and tax collectors, from three pesos and four reales in each of three annual payments (tercios) to four pesos and four reales, in a grievance supported by the Audiencia de Charcas and by King Felipe of Spain himself.55 On account of these excesses, the former governor was replaced by Don Juan Rudolfo. Then, in 1755, Pasqual Gonzáles Choque, “Noble and Principal Indian of the Pueblo of Cacachaca,” presented a complaint before the fiscal on the part of his own “cousins” against Don Gregorio Llanquepacha for having taken control of part of the lands, and in addition for having covered up a sexual offence against a woman of that pueblo.56 This complaint already alleges the necessity of changing the Gobernador or of intimidating him under the penalty of severe punishment against harming them with his tyranny. As a result, Royal provision was approved so that the Corregidor of Paria Province could administer justice but without giving rise to any claim whatsoever. This complaint was followed immediately by another one by the Condocondo Indians against other damages, including the demand for excessive payment of tribute combined with the supposed lack of compliance by the priest of his doctrinal obligations.57 Possibly in relation to these multiple accusations, already in 1748 the cacique Gregorio Llanquepacha solicited permission “to use arms,” in a plea that was granted to him.58 55 T.I. AN. E. 1736 No 52 and AN. E. 1737 No 56.

56 T.I. AN. E. 1755 No 85.

57 T.I. AN. E. 1755 No 117. 58 T.I. AN. E. 1748 No 109.

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Again in 1772, another Indian, Ambrosio Estanislao Copacondo from the lower moiety (urinsaya) of Condocondo, presented yet another formal complaint arguing that his four-​month incarceration in the pueblo of Poopó, accused of being a “rogue of a thief” (ladrón fasineroso), was the direct result of the actions of the interim governor, Gregorio Llanquepacha, because of his fear that Don Ambrosio would denounce in that same pueblo his own usurpation of funds from the Royal Tribute (Tributo Real). In his denouncement, Don Estanislao also accused Llanquepacha of taking lands that belonged to the common (al común) “for his mother and for all his kin …”59 It should not surprise us that the members of ayllu Sullkayana of Asanaque’s upper moiety were accused later on of having assassinated the Llanquepacha “brothers.” One of the principal persons incarcerated after the event was Marselo Taquimallco, principal Indian of ayllu Sullkayana, but this time of Qawayu (Caguaio), another of the ecclesiastical annexes of Condocondo. In 1779, as part of the defence of the main accused, from ayllu Sullkayana’s lower moiety, that ayllu’s members repeated the many accusations against the Llanquepacha brothers, that their tyrannies, violences, and extortions have left us so oppressed and intimidated that we have not been capable of breathing in so many years, nor of making present in the tribunals the wickednesses that are executed with royal privilege and, with them, the interests and their own haciendas of the Indians of our community … (T.I. AN. E. 1779 No 135)60

Among these accusations, those of Sullkayana mention the act of defrauding “his Majesty” with the usurpation of a considerable portion of the Royal Tribute by amending the census lists, by disguising the rich people of the ayllu (the colque haque) as “shepherds” in order to free them from the obligation of serving in the mit’a, and then pocketing his bribe, and besides, carrying out the “forced distribution” (reparto forzado) of liquor each year “it becoming the obligation of a cacique to hinder and prohibit this liquor as is ordered in the Royal Ordenanzas.”61 They grumble in the same document about the “bad consequences of intoxicants: brawls, fatal deaths and others, and infinite damage …” There are also insinuations there that the caciques maintained concubines, and in general maltreated the members of service in their residence. Then, “if one of these wanted to be free of this service,” they exacted bribes of five pesos to free them. In addition, the comunarios complain about the continued possession by the Llanquepacha brothers of lands that do not belong to them, of the theft of barley that had been left to 59 T.I. AN. E. 1772 No 115. The original Spanish says “para su madre y para todos sus parientes …”

60 The original Spanish says “sus tiranías biolencias, y estorciones nos atenido tan oprimidos, y amedrentados que no emos sido Capaces de respirar en tanttos años ni aser presentes en los tribunales las maldades que Executa con el Real Haver y con los, intereses, y haciendas propias de los Indios de Nuestra comunidad …” 61 This forced “repartition” of liquor was illegal until 1756. The original Spanish says “deviendo por la Obigación de Cacique embarasar, y prohivir este Licor como esta mandado por Reales Ordenansas.”

152 The Colonial Caciques in ORAL AND WRITTEN History

one side to pay tribute, and of their manner of taking advantage of the income from the mills that belonged to the communities of Sullkayana.62 Faced with these accusations, the Llanquepacha brothers responded with frequent complaints against the Indians under their charge, with claims that they did not comply in time with the royal tributary demands, so they were forced to supplement an “increasing quantity in each half yearly payment (tercio)”63 to such a point that they were suffering problems in the “maintenance of their own persons and families.” The cousins proposed various alternative solutions to this situation, for example by entering into business (with their brother-​in-​law Antonio Choqueticlla, Governor and Cacique general of upper Quillacas), doing commerce with wine, liquors, and coca, and “some woven clothes (ropa de la tierra) and other petty items” in the Villas of Oruro and Potosí. However, these activities were insufficient to collect the necessary sums. So the cousins also put their hands to religious functions (funciones de Altares) and fights in the bullring, in which contributions (derramas) from the Indians were demanded, as well as the flow of reparticiones, which provoked still more complaints from the Indians.64 During this whole period, there is no doubt that the problems of satisfying the excessive tributary demands continued, in particular those due in the tercio (part-​year) from San Juan in June. In 1777, the acting governor, Don Luis Guarachi, complained that, above all, the Indians of “all the annexes of Culta, Cacachaca, and Caguaio” had resisted this tribute payment.”65 The facts of the immediate case of 1774, according to the case-​file (expediente) presented by the Indians Damián Lenis, Ignacio Rudolfo Choque, and others, was that the Llanquepacha cousins had dispatched, supposedly because of his old age, the priest of Condocondo, Don Joseph Gutiérrez Espejo, who in the opinion of the Indians was a “just man.” This man had served as parish priest for “more than thirty-​six years,” and was particularly liked because “he never put a hand to any Indian” (“no pusso las manos a ningún Indio …”). In addition, “in matters of law, he proceeded with great equity and piety, (in) circumstances that move us to attribute to him the greatest respect and veneration.”66 On the day of his parting, the priest had begun his voyage via the annex of Guari, “a league from the pueblo” of Condocondo, towards his new ecclesiastical office in the pueblo of Toledo, on the opposite shore of Lake Poopó. He was accompanied by the local people, men and women, in the main “from ayllu Yanaqi of the lower division of Asanaque, and from Caguaio and Culta,” to the place called Siwinqa Uma (Waters of Seguenca) near Guari. They carried with them to Guari “a little chicha” (local beer) in large ceramic pots loaded on the backs of two mules, to drown their sorrows “with cries and lamentations.” 62 T.I. AN. E. 1779 No 135.

63 “Tercio” (literally a “third”) is the term for the, by then, half-​yearly tributary and later tax payments in the colonial period made on dates that varied between ayllus, depending on their annual cycle of feast days when the payments could be collected. 64 T.I. AN. E. 1760 No 133.

65 T.I. AN. E. 1777 No 139.

66 T.I. AN. E.  1781 No 83:  101v. The original Spanish says “en materia de derechos procedio con muchissima equidad y piedad, circunstancias que nos movieron atributandole el mayor respeto y veneracion.”

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This multitude returned to their hamlets by way of the main pueblo of Condocondo. They arrived there at sunset, where they gathered together the women and children of the main pueblo to make a final request to their governors “at five o’clock in the afternoon” that “they reconcile themselves with the priest and persuade him to return” and to express to them their general disconformity about the dispatch. According to the members of their family, the caciques were not at home, and would return at ten at night. The multitude returned to the house of the caciques at this hour and finding the door open, they entered, and being bedded down and without any light, they said “Cacique here is all your community to request that you get up, and pass over to Guari to return Monsegnor Cura, and if you don’t want to for hatred or bad ends, well, we’ll make you go tied up.” (T.I. AN. E. 1781 No 83. My translation)67

On hearing this threat, the governors must have panicked, seeing such a large multitude of persons waiting in the dark, all the worse for having consumed chicha during the whole afternoon and part of the night. According to the expediente: The reply was to force on them a shotgun loaded with two bullets that, although it took light in the chamber did not fire from the barrel, which if it had, no doubt would have killed many Indians. Seeing that it had no effect, he put his hand on his sable, and let fly at everyone, and to defend themselves from the sable-​strikes they gave him a blow from which he fell groaning, and as they did not have the remotest intention of killing him after he fell, 100 persons left leaving him alive, and on arriving in the street the Segunda, his brother, went out to the encounter with two pistols to hand, and without saying anything at all to the Indians he forced all of them and having let just one of these give fire, he killed an Indian … without having been able to fire the other because of the many rachets (rastrillasos) it gave him. With such goings-​on in this way to defend himself he saw death executed as do the resentful, (for) they killed the said Segunda with blows and by hurling stones. Who having been executed, collecting the arms that they’d taken away from the said caciques, they went to the city of La Plata to present these to the Royal Court, explaining everything that had happened … (T.I. ANB EC 1779 No 135. My translation)68

The immediate result of informing the Corregidor of the Province of the facts was that the wives of the caciques imputed that the Indians had sought to “rob them of their husbands” and that “their sheer volume had been to execute the deaths … which is totally false” and

67 The original Spanish says “y hallando las puertas abiertas entraron estando acostado, y sin luz le dijeron Casique esta toda su comunidad apedirte te lebanten, y passen al Guari a rebolber a mñor Cura, y si por odio o malos fines no lo quieren buenamente hasser te llevaremos amarrado.” 68 The original Spanish says “La respuesta fué deserrajarles una Escopeta cargada con dos Balas que aunque prendió en la Cassoleta no dio fuego al cañon que a darlo sin duda hubieran muerto muchos Indios. Visto que no ubo efecto hecho mano de su Sable, y partio contodos, y para defenderse de los Sablassos le dieron un golpe del que cayó roncando, y como no habían llevado ni remota intención de matarlo luego que cayó se fueron sien personas dejándolo vivo, y al llegar a la calle les salió al encuentro el Segunda su hermano con dos Pistolas en mano, y sin decirles cossa alguna a los Indios les desserrajó a todos y haviendo dado solo la una sueltan fuego mató un Indio … sin haber podido disparar la otra por muchos Rastrillasos que dio: Con cuyo sussesso assi para defenderse como resentidos ve la muerte executado la mataron a dicho Segunda agolpes y pedrazos. Lo qual executado recogiendo las Armas que quitaron a dichos Cassiques passaron a la Ciudad de La Plata a presentarse con ellos en la Real Audiencia exponiendo todo lo acaecido …”

154 The Colonial Caciques in ORAL AND WRITTEN History

“without any documentation nor proof this (authority) arrested thirty and more natives …” On receiving this indictment, the Corregidor “dispatched soldiers to the pueblo of Condo against all the Indians …”69 For their part, the Indians began to document all the crimes of the two caciques they had suffered. The great Rebellion of Sucre began to take form. Of course the account of the following events, according to the official version, is quite distinct: The day October 14, in the night, Don Gregorio Llanquepacha and his brother and second person Andrés Llanquepacha, armed with pistols … had killed a tributary Indian with blunderbusses presented as proof before the Court (Audiencia) and that, as a result, a tumult of Indians had formed and, taking sticks and stones, caused the death of the Llanquepachas, without knowing who the executioners were, being a tumult and by night. (ANB. Sublevación de Indios. Vol. 2. Expediente de Condo Condo. BO ABNB, ALP, SGI-​3, p. 7, 7v and 8. My translation)70

This was countered by the account made by Marselo Fernandes Taquimallco, principal Indian of Condocondo’s ayllu Sullkayana, and one of the main accused, declared on October 27, 1774, that a certain Cruz Yana, from K’ulta, on arriving at the residence of Andrés Llanquepacha: … whose door opened with a kick … at which noise the said Don Andrés came out with a pistol, to whom the Comuna asked him how he had permitted such a good priest to leave the place, to which he did not reply, and only fired the pistol, with which he killed Joseph Guanaco, and so the declarant gave him a shove to which others joined in, grasping him, and others killed him with sticks and with blows from stones. That he heard publicly that the governor killed the other people who went to his house, because he picked up a sable against them. And that all of this happened at the same time on the night of the fourteenth day of the current (month):  that he knows that it is a crime to take justice into his own hands, and to reprehend his cacique or governor to whom it is well known that he should obey if he is good, but not if he is bad and carries out injustices, as did the deceased … (Archivo de sublevación BO ABNB, ALP, SGI-​3, p. 7, 7v and 8, previously T.I. AN. E. 1781 No 83 p. 8v. My translation)71

69 T.I. ANB EC 1779 No 135.

70 Previously T.I. AN. E. 1781 No 83 p. 8v. The original Spanish says “El día 14 de octubre en la noche, Don Gregorio Llanquepacha y su hermano y segunda Andrés Llanquepacha armados de pistolas … habían matado a un indio tributario con los trabucos que presentan ante la Audiencia como prueba y que a raíz de ello se había formado un tumulto de indio que tomando palos y piedras dieron muerte a los Llanquepacha sin saberse, por ser tumulto y de noche, quienes fueron los ejecutores.” 71 The original Spanish says “… cuia Puerta abrió de una Patada… a cuio Ruido salió dicho Don Andres con una Pistola, a quien le dijo el Comun que como havia permitido que un Cura tan bueno saliese del lugar, a lo que, no contesto: y solo disparó la Pistola, con la que mató a Joseph Guanaco, y entonses el declarante le dio un Rempujon a que concurrieron otros agarrándole, y otros le mataron a Palos y Pedradas. Que oió públicamente que al Governador lo mató la otra Gente que fue a su Casa, por que cojió un Sable contra ellos: Y que todo esto sucedió a un mesmo tiempo en la noche del Dia Catorze del corriente: Que sabe es delito tomar la Justicia por su mano, y reprehenden a su Casique o Governador a quien bien conoce debe obedecer si es bueno, pero no si es malo y obra injusticias, como lo hacia el Difunto …”

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Marselo Fernandes Taquimallco also mentioned in his declaration that the Corregidor and other authorities of the place (who at that moment were imprisoned in the same Royal Prison) were absent from Condocondo pueblo on that night, and so the people were not in conditions to obey them. Other accounts mention how Don Gregorio came out armed with a sable, and when the multitude asked him the same question, attacked several of them with that instrument. The assertion in many accounts that the multitude was carrying “sticks, stones and other arms,” suggests that the comunarios had the premeditated aim of killing the caciques, an endemic fear among the dominant classes in those years. However, when we scrutinize the documents more thoroughly, it is obvious that many of these “other arms” were quite improvised. For instance, the documents inform us that “the sticks were brought by the women” and that they gave the first blows (garrotasos) to the victims, while both men and women hurled the “stones” that they picked up from the same yard (Archivo de sublevación BO ABNB, ALP, SGI-​3, pp. 9v‒10v). These sticks were most probably the stakes and cross poles of the looms carried with them by women weavers, to take advantage of their free afternoon. Other accounts confirm that some of the women had loom sets and how they participated in the slaughter by poking the ears of the governors with their wich’uñas, sharp weaving picks used to select intricate designs, made from a llama’s leg bone and then smoked to toughen them. After all, it should be taken into account that the multitude was confronted by the two caciques armed with pistols, sables, and open-​barrelled blunderbusses. Yet another account mentions that Cruz Yana, in snatching away the sable from the cacique, “cut his hand a little” and that “the Comuna, noticing this, killed the Governor.” Contrary to this version of events, Cajías informs us that, according to the official account presented by the Corregidor of Paria, the Indians of ayllu Sullkayana of Condocondo’s upper moiety:  “finding themselves at midnight in the houses of the mentioned caciques, killed them without permitting the help of Christians” (Cajías 1987b, II, 315).72 The High Court (Audiencia) ordered the arrest of the Condocondo Indians, especially those identified as their leaders, although these same men were already in La Plata beginning a petition to explain that the death of the Llanquepachas had been “caused by a mutinous tumult.” The eventual legal case presented by the Fiscal, the Corregidor, and the widows of the Llanquepachas:  María Lupercia Colque Guarachi (widow of Gregorio) and María Bargas Chungara (widow of Andrés), against forty prisoners of Condocondo lasted many years and came to an end only in 1780. During this time, some of the imprisoned died in their cells, while others gradually proved their innocence with adequate alibis and were finally released. The nine remaining prisoners were liberated only when the regional leader Tomás Catari invaded La Plata at the start of the Great Rebellion of Chayanta, in September of 1780. 72 The original Spanish says “encontrándose a media noche a las casas de los mencionados caciques les dieron muerte sin permitirles auxilio de cristianos.”

156 The Colonial Caciques in ORAL AND WRITTEN History

In his analysis of the Rebellion, Cajías like Abercrombie (1998, 294) highlights the farewell occasion of the local priest as the principal cause of the immediate tumult, although both of them demonstrate the wider alliances that often emerged in the late eighteenth century between the local Indians and their priest against the caciques gobernadores. Cajías (1987b, II, 316) points out other underlying causes of this immediate tension, among these the coverage of tribute and the sending of the fifty-​seven mitayos from the repartimiento of Condocondo, both under the direct charge of Lord Llanquepacha. Cajías (1987b) also underlines the continuous rivalry between the two component moieties of Asanaque, concluding that in the Rebellion, the majority of the rebels were from the lower moiety, against the Llanquepacha caciques who were from the upper moiety. However, the case is not so easily defined, given that many of the accused claimed their innocence by affirming that they were, in fact, from the moiety opposed to that of the caciques. The parish priest in La Plata, Josep Suero González y Andrade, charged with the care of the souls of the Condocondo parishioners who went to La Plata with their mit’a obligations, makes precisely this claim on their part against the two caciques.73 In addition to these inconsistences in the account, the complaints against the two caciques came from a much broader front than a stark case of rivalry between moieties. Dámaso Lenis, another of the main accused, declared that the abuses of the governor (both in tribute and the mit’a) were against both moieties, and against the “comuna” of the whole province. The ramifications of the Rebellion of Condo were amply disseminated, and influenced Condocondo’s valley possessions, for example that of Yamparáez. Many residents of the valleys were imprisoned for their contacts with their counterparts in the Altiplano, although they did not have any direct participation in the tumult. This happened in the case of Don Juan de la Cruz Fernández Choque, resident of San Pedro de Milloma and segunda (second person) of the valley parish of Pocpo in Yamparáez, who was not in Condocondo in October when the conflict occurred, but who was arrested simply because he accompanied others in his delegation to the Audiencia de La Plata while he was occupied there in other affairs.74 As Cajías indicates, the Rebellion of Condo is, however, important for its extensive influence mainly for two reasons. The first is that Condo participated in the general discontent in the wider province of Paria to the north, on the road to Oruro, and the second that the later consequences of the local rebellion in Condo became disseminated towards the east, influencing the great Rebellion of Chayanta, led by Tomás Catari (Cajías 1987b, II, 315). By 1780, only nine of the imprisoned were still in La Plata. The siege of the city on September 10 in that year by the Chayanta rebels, under the command of Tomás Catari, had the specific purpose of liberating the rest of these Condo prisoners, considered “brothers” in rebellion. Among the rebels were at least the valley residents 73 See Cajías (1987b, II, 316).

74 ANB. Sublevación de Indios, vol. 2. Expediente de Condo Condo. BO ABNB, ALP, SGI-​3, p. 7, 7v and 8, previously T.I. AN. E. 1781 No 83 p. 3.

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of Condo. The high-​court judge (juez-​oidor) of the city, called Rueda, claimed afterwards that he released the said prisoners simply “to save the city,” and he was energetically criticized for having done this, especially by the city fiscal. The fear of similar events continued in the region around Condo and its annexes. By the end of 1780, confrontations between those who supported the Spanish and the followers of Tomás Catari, in Pukuwata, led to the death of 300 campesinos and thirty Spanish (Rasnake 1982, 208). In 1781, Lucas Féliz (or Félis) Llanquepacha, the new governor, warned the Alcalde Mayor of Macha in a letter that one of the prisoners in his prison, a certain Sebastián Ayra of K’ulta, “is the second Catari,” and that he had caused various deaths in Condocondo pueblo, and “because he had gone about publishing the orders of the perverse Catari and giving sentences of death to the Governors,” and in addition for having frightened his immediate family. Even worse, Ayra was not alone, given that “all his kin group … are of the same faction.” The new Governor Llanquepacha’s recommendation was that Ayra should be judged immediately for treason.75 The authorities were quite right to fear more events of this kind, because, as we know now, this event in Condo was but the start of the whole cycle of rebellions in the region during the eighteenth century.

75 T.I. AN. 1781 No 145.

Chapter 8

FROM THE  HISTORY TO THE HAGIOGRAPHY OF QAQACHAKA

We order that there be another Cusco in Quito and another in Tumi (Pampa) and another in Guanaco (Pampa) and another in Hatun Colla and another in Charcas, and that the head shall be Cusco, and that those from the provinces be joined to the heads of the council and that it be law …

Hordenansas del Inga, in Guaman Poma (ca. [1612] 1988, fol. 185 (187). My translation

After establishing the origins of the territories of Qaqachaka, and those of

the first ancestors of the place, with their papers about the mining mit’a and the agricultural mit’a of the region, Don Franco continued his oral history with tales about the foundation of the main pueblo called Qaqachaka marka, in which he gave relatively more attention to the religious mit’a. The etymology of the term marka in this context is not clear. In some precolonial toponyms, which are combined with the term marka, the use of this term seems to be Andean, for example in the well-​known settlement of Caxamarka (or Cajamarca), derived from the Quechua Qasha marka, meaning “frozen pueblo” (marka is “pueblo” and qasha means “frozen”). However, the name Caxamarka is first mentioned by Spanish chroniclers, which suggests that the name might already have been changed from its original toponym. Further evidence of the Spanish origins of this term is given in Covarrubias’s Tesoro of 1611, which locates the etymology of marca in the Roman occupation of Northern Europe, passing through Latin to medieval Spanish, to mean a new territory, distinct from those surrounding it.1 Even so, there are still insistent arguments that the territory defined (or re-​defined in the Colony) by this term had particular meanings for regional populations. With reference to the Inka period, the Polish linguist Jan Szemiński (1987b) proposes that marka was the territorial unit controlled by a specific wak’a, surrounded by agricultural and herding lands whose production was directed towards the ceremonial cycles focused upon the wak’a. The Chilean archaeologist Juan Chacama (2003) confirms this kind of ceremonial organization in Andean territories in general.2 So here we do have 1 MARCA, territorio ampl[i]‌o que se distingue de los demas cercanos, que por esta razon se llamaron comarcanos. Viene de la palabra F[r]ancesa marquer, que sinifica distinguir, por estar distinta de las demas, como la Marca de Ancona, y otras. De donde se dixo Marques, señor desde territorio. De que este vocablo sea estrangero, y Setentrional, consta por los nombres de algunas provincias, como Dinamarca (Covarrubias 1611, 539–​40). 2 See also the key works on wak’as by Astvaldsson (2000), and more recently by Bray (2015).

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confirmation of certain meanings of marka from the perspective of local populations. Talking of the same period, another Polish scholar of the Andes, Mariusz Ziołkowski (1996), proposes that the Inka military hierarchy controlled these sites for economic ends, through the cycles of offerings and tribute made to the regional wak’as, and in the interrelations controlled from there by the Inka elite towards regional populations in marriage arrangements, military service, and other affairs of state. If indeed the colonial use of “marca” derives from its prior application in the frontier territories of the northern Roman Empire (in “Denmark” or “Dinamarca”), its use in the Toledan reforms for the new pueblos de reducción, or for the more remote pueblos de indios such as Qaqachaka, would seem to derive from this European source. Or perhaps, in the colonial situation, the use of the term marka might combine two distinct origins. In the specific case of Qaqachaka marka, the Spanish administration mentioned in the colonial documents refers to the new pueblo as an “ecclesiastical annex” of the doctrine of Condocondo, namely the vice-​parish of “Santa Vera Cruz de Cacachaca” (expressed in the local Aymara as Santa Wila Kurusa). So markas had their former wak’as and yet accomodated their new colonial Catholic churches. What consequences resulted from these differences in perception?

The Colonial History of Qaqachaka Marka

I order to articulate these two perceptions, I shall explore the relation between the history and hagiography of Qaqachaka. Then we can proceed to the following narratives by Don Franco, which go on to interweave three themes: the construction of the plaza and church of the new marka, or vice-​parish, the origins of the god-​saints of the place, and finally the gathering together of these god-​saints in order to house them in the new colonial church situated right in the plaza of the pueblo-​marka. As in the narratives about the demarcation of Qaqachaka territory, and the gradual process of settlement by its population, examined in the first part of the book, the nature of this tie between history and hagiography demands an understanding of the juridical stipulations emitted by the Spanish Crown in relation to the religious mit’a. We must deal with the Crown’s legal dispositions for founding these new pueblos, and then, in coordination with the Church, the establishment of the ecclesiastical bases for initiating the religious practices directed at controlling the religious behaviour of the new parishioners grouped together there. Once these dispositions were established, it is still necessary to examine how the regional populations accomplished the new norms, according to their own understanding of these affairs, derived in turn from the immediate historical antecedents in their recent memory and experience.

Re-​visiting the History of the “Pueblos de Reducción”

We already examined the foundational process in the emerging colonial control of the new pueblos under their administration through the creation of the new doctrinal

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capitals (cabeceras) or pueblos de reducción, as part of the mit’a directed at assuring adequate agricultural production in the conquered territories, mainly to supply the mines. The term reducción comes from the Latin reducti, which means “taken.” In terms of the religious mit’a, the reducciones de indios, also called “misiones” (missions), referred to settlements for the native populations of Spanish America with an eminently evangelizing aim, quite separate from the cities where the Spanish themselves lived. These native populations, once settled, could be hence “led” towards Catholicism. Less known are the juridical dispositions on whose basis the Spanish construed the norms that designated the pueblos de reducción, and the pueblos de indios subjected to them in this evangelizing sense. We find details of these norms at the heart of the narratives by Don Franco and other comunarios of Qaqachaka in the second cycle of tales we identified. The first juridical norms to establish the conditions that would lead to the formation of the pueblos de reducción in this second evangelizing sense were stipulated in the Leyes de Burgos, of 1512–​1513, in the first Spanish legal code applied to the Indias.3 These laws charged the encomenderos of the region with the religious indoctrination of the native populations entrusted to them. In the “Prólogo,” they were ordered to live near to Spanish settlements, “because with the continuous conversation that they could have with them, as with going to the church on feast days to hear mass, and the divine offices, and to see how the Spanish did this” they would learn that much sooner.4 Besides this, in order that the Crown could offer to the natives of the place protection and services, it was necessary that the collection of tribute (both ecclesiastical and the six-​monthly tax payments) imposed on these populations was effective, and this was not possible if the population lived dispersed. So the system of reducciones had missionary and evangelizing aims, but also ends of a demographic, economic, and political character. A more effective organization of the reducciones dates to 1531, according to the instructions communicated to the Second Audiencia of New Spain. In each reducción de indios there was to be a church, attended by a doctrinal priest, to indoctrinate the regional populations in the Catholic religion. The upkeep of the priest ran on account of the tribute that the natives were obliged to pay (here were the political and tributary purposes of the same instruction). The regime for living in the reducciones was declared to be “communal” (comunitario) and the assets of the reducciones (including lands and ecclesiastical possessions) were to belong to the reducción, and could not be alienated. In these stipulations we find the origins of the pueblos de reducción as doctrinal “capitals” (cabeceras), as in the case of Condocondo, founded in 1571, and the organization of their ecclesiastical annexes, as in the case of the “vice-​parish” (viceparroquia) of Qaqachaka, now tied closely to Condocondo through the cycle of patronal feasts and the administrative activities of the new colonial religious groupings called confraternities 3 See for example Monje Santillana (2006).

4 The original Spanish says “porque con la conversación continua que con ellos tendrán, como con ir a la iglesia los días de fiesta a oír misa y los oficios divinos, y ver cómo los españoles lo hacen …”

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(cofradías), charged with organizing these religious events and collecting the costs implicated from the participants (cf. Saignes 1995, and Marzal 1991, 240, cited in Harris 2006). It is logical that these forms of organization, with their predominantly ecclesiastical and indoctrinating purposes, would play an integral part in the obligations of the colonial mit’a, as Alber Quispe (2016) explains in his study of such activities in Tapacarí, in Cochabamba. The Religious History of the “Pueblos de Indios”

But finally, now that idolatry was extirpated from the best and the noblest part of the world, (and) (the Devil) retired to the most secluded part, and reigned in this other part of the world, which although of very inferior nobility, in greatness and extent it is not … (José de Acosta, Historia Natural y Moral de las Indias [(1590) 1940, 348]. My translation)

In mountainous locations such as Qaqachaka, far from the main roads, and outside the control of the encomenderos and other immediate Crown representatives, another juridical category was applied, that of the “pueblo de indios,” under the ecclesiastical authority of the “doctrinal capital.” In little more than a decade after the disposition by the Spanish authorities of the norms for organizing the pueblos de reducción, beginning with the royal cédula of 1545, similar norms were applied to the pueblos de indios. These were devised to carry out in distant places a more efficient tribute collection directed towards increasing the control over, and indoctrination of the subject population, through Christian preaching, and to assure adequate concentrations of readily available manual labour. The pueblo de indios was recognized in law as the basic administrative organization of the so-​called “República de indios,” in a kind of regional municipality. Although Don Franco does not distinguish in the terminology of his narratives between these two colonial administrative levels, his descriptions of the fulfilment of the pertinent norms by the first inhabitants of Qaqachaka territory trace out these new demands and their accomplishment. The Spanish policy with regard to the pueblos de indios recognized the dual conception of the colonial social world. The Spanish monarch himself governed both the “República de españoles,” which referred to the social community of whites, and the “República de indios,” which referred to native Andean society. From the point of view of then valid legal theory, both communities should exist in a separate manner, but in relation through the detailed frameworks and instances described. Within this socio-​ political conception, the cities recently founded by the Spanish were not destined to be massive dwelling-​places for the natives. Instead, the Andean populations were to be concentrated on the periphery of the new cities, in pueblos that were satellite suburbs, or in places that permitted “aboriginal” (Andean) day labourers (in practice tributary vassals) to gather at productive tasks that would enrich the Spanish conquerors, or else (in the case of populations such as Qaqachaka) in places whose own administrative adaptations provided manual labour for the Potosí mines in service as mitayos in

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the mining mit’a.5 The Spanish State hoped that evangelization, through a sparse contact with these pueblos de indios, would be assumed by clerics responsible for evangelizing its inhabitants. Therefore, the civil laws dictated by the Crown in the decades that followed their installation, were oriented to assure, even in the smallest pueblos (such as Qaqachaka), the permanent performance of Christian ritual activities. The Church was to participate in this same process through the Lima Councils (the concilios limenses), from 1552 onwards. Their dispositions stipulated the conditions for facilitating the evangelization of these smaller pueblos, situated on the periphery of the doctrinal capitals, demanding the construction to this effect of a “small house, in the manner of a hermitage,” or in the still smaller villages, nothing more that a “decent place with a cross”: … it is reasonable that there are temples and churches where God our Lord be honoured, and that the divine offices are celebrated and the sacraments administered, and that Indians gather to hear the predication and doctrine; His Holinesses apart order that the priests that were in the doctrine of the natives in the pueblos de indios give order and procure with diligence, as in each repartamiento, in the principal pueblo where the principal cacique is, commonly where the main concourse is, construct a church suitable for the quantity of people of … And the priest will try to decorate it with art that the dignity of the place understands … And in the rest of the small pueblos that do not have the possibility of having a church, that they build a small house, in the manner of a hermitage, to this effect, where they put an altar adorned with an image or images, in the best manner that they can; and where there is not enough land, at least designate a decent place with a cross, where they are told doctrine and talk of things of the faith … (Primer Concilio Limense de 1951a /​1552, 8; Constitución 2. My translation)6

The replies by the regional populations to these formal dispositions, moulded through decades of legal negotiations and re-​negotiations, demonstrate a mutual creativity throughout the colonial period. So I do not believe that we are faced with furtive attempts to construct chapels in order to undermine the ecclesiastical authority of the heads of doctrine, as Abercrombie proposes in the case of the neighbouring annex of 5 The initiative to concentrate the regional population in villages can be traced back to the first colonies on the Antillas. There, the conquistadores quickly came to the conclusion that the dispersion of mountain peoples, and the custom of these to live practically hidden from the Europeans in ravines and crags apart, conspired against the European objective of counting with abundant manual labour (Accessed April 3, 2017. https://​es.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Pueblo_​de_​indios).

6 The original Spanish says “(…) es razón que haya templos e iglesias donde Dios nuestro señor sea honrado, y se celebre los oficios divinos e administren los sacramentos, e los indios concurran a oír la predicación y doctrina; S.S. ap. mandamos que los sacerdotes que estuvieran en la doctrina de los naturales en los pueblos de indios den orden y procuren con diligencia como en cada repartimiento, en el pueblo principal donde está el principal cacique, que comúnmente es el mayor concurso del pueblo, se haga una iglesia, conforme a la cantidad de gente dél (…) Y procurará el tal sacerdote de adornarla de arte que entienda la dignidad del lugar (…) Y en los demás pueblos pequeños que no hubiere posibilidad para hacer iglesia, hagan una casa pequeña, a manera de hermita, para este efecto, donde pongan un altar adornado con una imagen o imágenes, en la mejor manera que pudiere; y donde fuere tan pequeño que para esto no haya posibilidad, a lo menos señalen un lugar decente con una cruz, donde se les diga la doctrina y platique cosas de la fée …”

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K’ulta (1998, 272–​76). Neither do these (authentically) Andean replies follow the norms of the doctrinal sphere of the Church. Rather, we are faced with the emerging conditions of a new cultic activism, but with its roots in the distant past (cf. Marzal 2002, 361). In many ways, the pueblo de indios became an Andeanized reflection of the Spanish city. According to the royal ordenanzas, the pueblo de indios should be sited on flat and accessible land. The urbanization of these pueblos was in a checkerboard form, whenever possible, with its heart in the central plaza surrounded by a portal, destined for the exchange of products, with a chapel (capilla) named with the patronymics of a patron saint or protector of the place, managed and visited by the doctrinal priest; a prison cell (calabozo); the house of the cacique or noble (in the case of the ancient empires of Mexico and Peru) and, finally, the dependencies of a cabildo, seconded to the priest in his struggle against the pre-​existing cults and in the ongoing organization of processions and ritual activities. Given the necessity of reinforcing the triumph of the new religion, the chapel was accompanied by the presence of an atrial cross with another on the peak of a nearby tutelary mountain. The crucifix was an effigy or tridimensional image of the crucified Christ. In Qaqachaka, according to Don Franco’s narratives, these norms were accomplished with the discovery by some of the first ancestors of the place, of the saint-​god Tata Quri, on the side of Mount Phiriphiri, not far from the main pueblo, engraved on a white rock, and his later metamorphosis into a wooden cross decorated with the face of a “bearded” god (­figure 8). But again, these practices undergoing urgent reconsideration drew on the region’s religious past, already familiar to its inhabitants. Thérèse Bouysse-​Cassagne dates to the early Colony evidence of Andean wak’as of this kind, cast in stone, with images engraved on the surface (in the so-​called “stamps” or estampitas) that had to be picked in order to liberate the imagen therein. She cites the Jesuit Juan Vázquez, rector of Santiago del Cercado in Lima, on two wak’as of this type in his domain. In the first, “a body was stamped there” and in the other “a footprint” with “some letters” (Bouysse-​Cassagne 1998, 189).7 The figure of Tata Quri complied with other ecclesiastical norms, in his similarity to Jesus Christ, to the rays of the sunburst emerging from the monstrance in the context of the Eucharist, and above all to the resplendent Sun God, with his Inka echoes of the figure of Punchao in the Inka cult of Quricancha, who wore a tunic and sandals of gold. The Policy of “Congregación”

The process of installation of the pueblos de indios is denominated by some authors, rescuing the language used by the Spanish administrators, as that of “Congregation” (Congregación). The series of royal dispositions that consecrated the policy of congregación included the royal cédulas of 1545 and the following years (the greater part 7 According to Bouysse-​Cassagne (1998, 189), the use of engraved stones (of granite, andesite, basalt, lake stone, alabaster or Huamanga stone) with natural markings also coincides with that period when marble and porcelain began to get scarce in the colonies.

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Figure 8. Tata Quri as a wooden cross, during the Feast of the Holy Cross, in 1989.

of the congregations were formed between 1550 and 1564), which boosted this relocation with instructions about the kind of regime that should prevail in the new settlements. Around the pueblos de indios existed parcels of land called ejidos, destined for communal work aimed at self-​sufficiency, differentiated from the lands of more consolidated properties. An example of these latter plots are the “haciendas,” the conformation of one of which was the ambition of the cacique Llanquepacha and his colleagues, before being persuaded to opt for the juridical condition of possessing Qaqachaka as “free” lands, by participating in the colonial mining mit’a. Among the norms of the congregaciones were the dispositions about the nature of the place (preferably concave, set away in a “corner” with access to water) and rights to the “maintenance” of the populations through the local resources, in terms of wood, stone, and earth for constructions, vegetables for nutrition and the possibility of hunting, flat areas (llanuras) to sow, kindling for cooking, medicinal herbs and hallucinogens (Fernández and Urquijo 2006, 149). In Mesoamerica as in the Andes, the name of each locality frequently describes some particular feature of the landscape in which it was embedded, so the flora, fauna, hydrography or orography were constantly evoked in drawing up these toponyms (Fernández and Urquijo 2006, 151). The borrowing of the Spanish juridical term “manutención” as mantinsyuna in Aymara, referring to the resources that supported the lived experience of the

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local inhabitants, and which is used until today, probably enters into the lexicon of Qaqachaka from this very period. It deals with an Andean counterpart to the term “affordances,” coined by the geographer and psychologist J. J. Gibson (1966), to conceptualize the resources granted by a place to the populations (human, animal, plant) that dwell there. The practice of this policy of congregation was a complex and lengthy process that varied from one geographic zone to another, depending on the will and efficiency of its diverse local viceroys and governors. From the moment of the Spanish invasion of Cusco, in 1532, there had been demands that they erect a church in each pueblo, although the formal instructions ordering their fulfilment in the repúblicas de indios was delayed until 1549, the formal ordenanzas until 1550, and the accomplishment of these dispositions in the whole Viceroyalty until 1578. The previous experiments directed at fulfilling these norms simply served as models for the inspectors (visitadores) commissioned by Viceroy Toledo, in 1572, in order to achieve their aims in all the provinces of the Viceroyalty, including their application in remote places such as the vice-​parish of Qaqachaka, and its counterparts. Even so, the church in Qaqachaka seems to have been built much later, around 1612.

The Hagiography of Qaqachaka

When I look at the gods inside the darkness of the church, I think we are still in the Time of the Chullpas. Doña Lucía Quispe, de Qaqachaka. My translation

There is nothing if not fire, there is nothing if not the hatred of the serpent against the demons, our masters. José María Arguedas, Tupac Amaru Kamaq Taytanchisman. Haylli-​Taki. A Nuestro Padre Creador Tupac Amaru. Himno-​Canción (1962, 10–​11). My translation

The set of colonial juridical dispositions for the new developments in regional hagiography focused on the practices around the new Catholic saints and the celebrations in their honour. The manner by which the Qaqachakas responded to these leads us to the heart of the colonial ecclesiastical debate about the nature of this kind of devotion in the spiritual conquest of the Americas. Is this devotion directed towards the material images of the saints, to the wak’as of the precolonial past, or towards the leading personage, as an invocation of the Virgin or of Jesus Christ? After describing the setting out of the plaza and church of the new marka of Qaqachaka, Don Franco spelled out the origins of the various saints of the place, shaped by the norms of the place and by the new Spanish norms for an emerging local hagiography. As in the other colonial situations we have examined until now, the origins of the saints responds to the new colonial demands applied to the pueblos de reducción and the pueblos de indios. But from the point of view of the local populations, these changes had to do with more discrete ways of renovating their own regional gods.

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Hagiography as Tradition

Within the Catholic framework of European tradition, brought to the Andes by the Spanish, hagiography refers to a literary genre or chronicle, in written form, about the life of a particular saint. As in historiography, hagiography too has it own literary form. It proceeds biographically through episodes that relate the spiritual battles of that real person in their intent to mould their life around the example of Christ. Given its powerful pedagogical value, these canonical texts were adopted in the colonial programmes of catechesis as modalities for teaching the spiritual life to which the parishioners could aspire, being used in ecclesial sermons in the newly built churches. In its more popular aspect, the cult to the saints responded to other norms. It included those saints already canonized by the Catholic Church, and popular personages in the process of beatification or canonization, who received veneration for being considered effective workers of miracles or benefactors (Gil 2015, 517). These likewise included a multiplicity of invocations of the Virgin or of Jesus Christ, each of these individualized and particularized in the matter of devotion and cult (Gil 2015, 517–​18). Nevertheless, in this part of the South-​Central Andes, we are faced with a very distinct hagiographic tradition. Here the texts that describe the lives of the local saints are eminently oral. In some cases, the saints to which they refer serve as local avatars of real saints (San Antonio, San Juan, San Sebastián), in the sense of material manifestations of these divine guides. In others, we are dealing with properly local deities, often associated with the highest mountains or some other feature of the landscape, and of their imagined lives. The local deities emerge in the descriptions of the founding of the place, and given the emphasis in the descriptions by Don Franco and other comunarios, their material existence as saint-​gods was vital for accomplishing the religious aspects of this foundational process demanded by the Spanish. Besides, it is only this ensemble of god-​saints and their divine characteristics that made possible the performance of the annual cycle of patronal fiestas (another Spanish demand) of popular religiosity that characterized the Qaqachaka annex, with its ecclesiastical ties to the regional doctrinal capital in the reduction town of Condocondo. Confraternities and Ayllus

In studies on the colonial development of these annual cycles of patronal feasts in other parts of the Andes, prominence has been given to the role of the ecclesial confraternities (or brotherhoods) and their gradual articulation with the local ayllus in spheres of power, both religious and political (Celestino and Meyers 1981; Hünefeldt 1983; Celestino 1997; Quispe 2016). In these examples, the confraternities, in their role as voluntary associations concerned with the devotion to a particular saint, derive from their Castilian counterparts. The history of their development in the reduction town of Condocondo gives us details about their importance in the colonial administration of the feast cycles, but also of their common abuse of power, in alliance with the priests of the moment, in overspending the meagre resources of the comunarios. So an examination of the development of the confraternities helps us understand the close ties between the administration of the faith and the collection of tribute, in its various forms.

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In urban contexts, and in the doctrinal capitals of the reduction towns, the membership of these confraternities paid the ecclesiastical costs of the masses, processions, and other activities in honour of their patron saint. A later stage was the development of the “fiestacargos,” in the practice of serving offices in the religious mit’a, in which many colonial caciques or governors acted as mayordomos, stewards (priostes), or standard bearers (alféreces) of the brotherhoods.8 Here we should record the origins of this system of religious offices, in which the office or “cargo” in itself alludes to the former condition of “carrying a head” (p’iqi q’ipiña) or later of “carrying a saint,” and of feasting it collectively during its period of fertility. In these tributary responsibilities towards the Church, the obligation of “carrying a debt” (jucha q’ipiña) reiterates the obligatory sense of mit’a (Arnold and Hastorf 2008, 120–​21). The post of mayordomo was the most important office from this period of the religious brotherhoods (hermandades religiosas) or confraternities, being responsible for collecting the quotas according to the stipulated tariffs (aranceles) introduced first in 1538, and updated intermittently from 1628 onwards, administering the assets of the confraternities, organizing the masses and the fiestas of the patron saints, and conserving their image and ornaments on special occasions.9 At the beginning of the Colony, the post of mayordomo was an inherited office, but from the sixteenth century (around 1571) the now rotative election was carried out according to the recommendation of the priest of the doctrinal capital. Later on, in the eighteenth century, the principal Indians and governors supervised the election of these authorities (De Luca 2016, 108).10 By comparison, the post of alférez (from the Arab ‫ سرافلا‬al-​fāris:  “the knight,” “chevalier,” or “horse rider”) was originally derived from a flag-​bearing official in the Iberian armies of the Reconquista of Spain. The colonial post of alférez in the Andes was constituted later, by petition of the members of the confraternities who solicited its designation before the priest of the place (De Luca 2014, 100). In the regional doctrinal capital of Condocondo, the Books of Baptism and Marriage (Libros de Bautismo y Matrimonio) begin from 1571, and were guarded in the church after the founding of the reduction town. However, the custom of formal nomination of the mayordomos by the priest (“as a person of confidence”) seems to begin around 1575, as a consequence of the visit by the priest Don Alonso López in a circuit made by the bishops of Charkas, which included the inventory of each church’s assets. Mentioned in that context are the activities of the Cofradía del Santísimo Sacramento, founded in the pueblo and parish of Condocondo, and their obligations to receive the set amount of alms together with income from the mit’a.11 The small colonial church (capilla) of Santa Vera Cruz of Qaqachaka is named in this series of books only in 1645. 8 See Chance and Taylor (1985) on the history of the confraternities and religious posts in Mesoamerica. 9 On the ecclesiastical tariffs or aranceles, see Acevedo (1986).

10 See also Platt (1987a, 184) on the Fiesta de la Cruz and Corpus Christi.

11 The original in Spanish says “Entre las otras cofradías con sus priostes y mayordomos y haciendas de chacras en el Pueblo de Condocondo mencionadas en los documentos coloniales, se hallan: la cofradía de Santa Bárbara y permiso para una capilla a esa santa en “Uma Huntu” (Juntüma)” (in a document of 1626, in the Museo del Archivo Arzobispal, in Sucre).

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Incidentally, the Church’s interest in the affairs of the wider mit’a is directed at the income proportioned by this institution to its coffers, as well as the demands for the control of the populations who went as mitayos to the Villa de Potosí, in a process often under the immediate vigilance of a priest. Added to this, the very organization of the mit’a created many social problems in which the Church intervened. For instance, by leaving their wives and families for months at a time in their place of origin, many men were tempted to abandon these and take other wives in their work-​place in Potosí, and the priests began to scrutinize such problems. From 1626 onwards, the colonial documents of the doctrinal capital of Condocondo name thirty confraternities. Among these are included the Apostles San Pedro and San Pablo, the Santísimo Sacramento, the Cofradía of the Santa Vera Cruz, the Animas Benditas, the Archangel San Miguel, the Señor de la Resurrección, the Señor de la Exaltación, San Francisco Javier, Santa Rosa, the Virgen de Dolores, and Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria la Patrona (sometimes called “la Cochabambina”).12 Besides these, an accounting book (libro de fábrica) written centuries afterwards, at the end of the nineteenth century, mentions among the assets of the Condocondo church the names of several other saints who might have had their own confraternity following in the previous period: the Dulce Nombre de María, Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, San Juan Evangelio, the Niños de Jesús, San Pedro Nolasco, Santa Bárbara, San Antonio, the Señor del Sepulcro, the Señor Jesús, the Virgen de la Inmaculata Concepción, and a replica of the True Cross (the Santa Vera Cruz) made especially for the masses held in the Qaqachaka annex.13 Not surprisingly, the requirements of the religious mit’a promptly led to problems of accomplishing the tributes demanded of the faithful concerning Christian practices in general and the confraternities in particular. In a book of baptisms dated to 1802, but begun long before, an entry for June 19, 1680, mentions a certain Don Andrés Laime as the founder of the Cofradía del Santísimo Sacramento del Altar.14 But instead of being directed at the spirituality of these practices, the document simply analyzes their costs. For instance, it documents the obligation of the church mayordomos to present each year to the sacristan, in kind or in its equivalent value in money, a substantial quantity of provisions destined for the church. In an entry for 1863, a certain Bartolomé Guallpa was obliged to leave his post as mayordomo, given that this was reserved for the contingent of that year in service to the mining mit’a in Potosí. To absolve himself from the post, Guallpa had to pay the equivalent of seventy current pesos in candlewax and incense, rockets, and gunpowder for the announcements of the fiestas and activities of the mayordomos, and another such amount for the mass at New Year. And even these 12 ABAS-​SUC 12. Cofradías: Legajo No 1-​A, Caja No 1 (documento de Condo de 1626, relativo a la Cofradía de Santa Bárbara); Legajo No 1-​B, Caja No 1 (Libro de la Cofradía del Santisimo Sacramento 1626–​1710); Legajo No 2, Caja No 1. 13 ABAS-​SUC 26. Fábrica: Legajo No 5, Condo, Caja No 3. Copia legalizada del Inventario de los útiles y enseres de la Iglesia de Condo y sus dos anexos (las Iglesias viceparroquias de Huari y Cacachaca), Formado en el año 1877 y revisado últimamente en 1910 (Condo 15-​XII-​1890).

14 Libro No 13 de Bautismos, Condo (anexos 1776–​1802), after fol. 211. I thank Tom Abercrombie for calling my attention to this document.

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sums were considered insufficient for the church coffers. These exaggerated financial demands were common in this period. The Archbishop of La Plata complained in an auto about the quantity of alms collections in the hands of the church, and requested that the mayordomos themselves manage better the accounts of their transactions. By the middle of the eighteenth century, documentary evidence corroborates the fact that in the patronal feasts being passed in reduction towns such as San Pedro de Condocondo and its annexes, the exaction of resources from the local populations was being forced far too much. In 1732, Condocondo’s priest, Don Andrés de Orihuela, mentions that thirty confraternities still existed in the parish.15 A dossier of complaints against this same priest, compiled by the principal cacique, Don Pedro Guarachi, together with other principales and the Indios del Común (including Pedro Pablo Cruz, Don Ambrosio Condori, and Don Pedro Matheo Maraza), all in the name of Don Sebastián Fernández Taquimalco, identified the sum of resources demanded to maintain the priest and the confraternities in their entirety. They complained about the personal care they had to lavish on the priest and the advantage taken by the priest himself of their services. They inform us that the priest’s household in those times was made up of seven persons: a doorkeeper (pongo), two mit’anis (cooks), a goatkeeper, a shepherd, a henkeeper, and a mule-​keeper, as well as those who gave candles to the priest and his cooks, and those who gave him poultry and pigs to eat, without any pay, because “with the title of priest he wishes to assume and does assume that he has the privilege to pay less than a private person for the work of an Indian when there is a Royal Law, that as far as these and other satisfactions are concerned, orders the initials (of the order) to be quoted equally as it is not prohibited …”16 The same priest is accused of “cruelty” with comments of how “scandalous, harmful and noxious” he is, and what he would get up to in that Jurisdiction, which included two deaths, one from a cruel blow he gave to the chest of Gregoria Araca, who was the wife of Pasqual Benito … Besides these many accusations, the priest was accused of rearing children with many married women, only because of the patience of their husbands, of covering excessive prices for burials, and so on. In another dossier of complaints, this time from 1756,17 Don Joseph Guarcaia (or perhaps his name is Ibarcaia or Barcaya), principal Indian of the pueblo of San Pedro de Condocondo (and of ayllu Sullkayana), in the name of all the comuna, grumbled about the excessive expenditure it was forced to pay in the fiestas (and in burials and baptisms) and requested that they be subject to the stipulated tariff. It mentions the ten fiestas in the feast cycle started in the main pueblo many years before, and the many reasons why it was now impossible to accomplish them. Don Joseph mentions first the list of feasts celebrated in the main pueblo of Condocondo: “the Nombre Santo de María, San Miguel, 15 T.I. AN E 1732, No 48.

16 T.I. AN E 1732 No 48. In a note to the text, it mentions that Don Joseph Condori is “godchild [in Spanish aluarca/​ahiado] of Don Diego Cruz Taquimalco, Casique.” The original Spanish says “con el título de Cura quiere suponer y supone que tiene privilegio para pagar menos que un particular el trabajo de un Indio cuando ay Ley Real que por lo que toca a estas y otras satisfacciones ordena corra por igual la sigla que se citara al no estar prohibida …” 17 T.I. AN E 1756 No 41.

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San Francisco Xavier, San Salbador, Nuestra Señora de Candelaria, the Resurrección de Nuestro Señor, Corpus Christi, San Pedro, Sta. Rosa de la Natividad de Nuestra Señora ….” His main complaint was that, in the organization of each feast three Indians were elected, two mayordomos and one alférez, and together they contributed an alms payment of 114 pesos. Don Joseph emphasized that, in the whole feast cycle, thirty Indians had to contribute with other expenditures “from which they remain poor and indebted, so that they survive by owing and selling what they have and they do not have anything with which to pay their tributes.” Don Joseph continued his complaints by documenting another ten fiestas, which must have included those of Qaqachaka: that in the five annexes held by the said pueblo they have to give alms in some annexes that is forty-​four and in others thirty-​three with still other expenditures they have in the said fiestas, so that many people from the said pueblo start being absent and drinking because of not having enough to pass the said feasts … owing and selling what they have … as well as the costs of burials, marriages (baptisms), and others … (T.I. AN E 1756 No 41. My translation)18

The root of the problem was that the priests charged for their expenditures, above all the tithes (diezmos), “without paying attention to the Royal Tariff (Real Arancel), set by the Synods of this Archbishopric and in the Royal Cédulas” of 1628 and 1653. As a result, Don Joseph now appealed to “the Catholic and Royal person of your Majesty” to remedy this situation. Again, on June 29, 1752, the feast day of San Pedro, patron saint of Condo, then once more on March 24, 1754, he complained that “we do not know the tithes to pay for not having the Tariff (Arancel)” and “even though we have it, it has been suppressed and hidden maliciously, for which we suffer many extortions.” Sometimes the Indians of the comuna took the law into their own hands. In 1756 there was a criminal judgment administered by General Pablo de Aoíz, Corregidor of the Province of the Charcas of Chayanta, against the Indians Pedro Flores and Sebastián Cruz for the theft of sacred objects from Condocondo parish church “at Shrovetide” (Carnivtolendas) at the beginning of Lent. The objects included the lamp, two crowns of the Child Jesus, and the silver aspersorium.19 He called Don Gregorio Llanquepacha, “Casique and Gobernador of that repartimiento of the Parcialidad of Annansaia,” a ladino “and learned in Castilian,” to make a declaration and sworn oath, given that there were no interpreters at that moment “in Aymara language.” For his part, Llanquepacha took advantage of the situation to blame not only the accused but various persons, including Pedro Flores and others, for the accusations of sexual harassment that they had made 18 The original Spanish says “que tienen en los cinco anexos que tiene el dicho Pueblo que dan limosna en unos anexos que es quarenta y quatro y en otros a treinta y tres con más otros gastos que tienen en las dichas fiestas por lo que a mucha gente del dicho Pueblo se ban ausentando y consumiendo por no tener con que pasar las dichas fiestas … deviendo y vendiendo quanto tienen … además de los costos de los entierros, casamientos (bautismos) y otros …” 19 A small cauldron where holy water was kept, and from which aspersions were made.

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to the Governor on a previous occasion. (They accused him of having wandered around hidden at night looking for the guilty.) The struggle among the parishioners of the doctrinal capital of Condocondo, and of the vice-​parish of Qaqachaka, to practice their religion before empathic and often corrupt clergymen is recounted in other documents. There is mention of a priest called Don Pascual Barriga, in the year 1797, who had taken advantage of the occasion of the preparation of the church inventory in the same year, to take with him to Condo various treasures that belonged to the chapel of Qaqachaka: the Lord Crucified with his veil of golden taffeta (better known among the parishioners as Tata Quri), the wooden box (or retablo) to carry the saints, and a silver hood (capilla).20 There is no mention of the specific practices of the confraternities This is because in the rural communities such as Qaqachaka that served as ecclesiastical annexes of the reduction towns, as Abercrombie points out in the case of K’ulta (1998, 292) as another annex of Condocondo, the confraternities did not take this urban form, rather the tasks under their charge were shared among the members of the whole community. But, as in the urban centres, the system of annual sponsorship of the local saints was gradually articulated with the former hereditary system of political posts, adapting this to the same conditions of annual turns (Quispe 2016, 140–​41). And although the main political offices of the ayllus and moieties were scrutinized annually from the political centre of Paria, the religious offices were left under the vigilance of the priest of the regional doctrinal capital in Condocondo pueblo. In everyday practice, it seems that the role of the priest in the administration of both systems became more consolidated after the Toledan Reforms (cf. Abercrombie 1998, 293), and it seems plausible that two kinds of rotating system (in the political and religious offices) were constructed according to the same principles. We shall see later how these principles functioned in the recent past in the system of turns for the religious attendants of the saint-​gods among the minor ayllus of the Qaqachaka annex, as for the election of local political authorities. The Religious Authorities of the Place

In the absence of confraternities, the historical evidence in the case of K’ulta, according to Abercrombie (1998, 292), suggests that for each one of the annual feasts, three kinds of sponsorship posts were elected. The first of these was the office of alférez, which in practice fell to the principal couple of feast sponsors who carried the standard (estandarte) of the saint in the processions. The second was the mayordomo, which in practice fell to the couple who looked after the image of the saint during the whole year, who carried this image in procession, and who were charged with paying the associated costs of the cult to the saint, in the purchase of candles, incense, and so on. The third kind of sponsorship in K’ulta was that of the “mayordomo from outside” (mayordomo de afuera), which in practice fell to the couple charged with the cult to the saint, the care of the image “in 20 Copia del inventario del vice-​cantón de Cacachaca, 7 de mayo de 1796, in the personal archives of Don Franco Quispe Maraza.

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miniature” (de bulto) that was placed each year in the chapel of each minor ayllu, and the visit by this image to the mother church in Condocondo during the feast day of the patron saint (Abercrombie, 1998). In the historical documents related to Qaqachaka annex, although the first two kinds of post, alférez and mayordomo, appear, there does not seem to be any evidence of the mayordomo de afuera. Even so, the presence of this office in the past could explain the fact that, among the group of mayordomos carrying out ecclesial practices, apart from the principal mayordomo couple called “marka,” there is the presence of two other authorities: the fiscal and the alcalde mayor. In Qaqachaka, the authority of the mayordomo was absolute in all the religious practices that took place in the church of the main pueblo, and in the transposition of these practices into something authentic to the place. With respect to the fiscal, it is pertinent to mention that, from 1526, according to the Spanish Instrucciones applied in New Spain (in Michoacán), in the first experiments with municipalities (or repúblicas) with their basis in the pueblos de indios, it was the fiscal who was charged with teaching the Indians Christian doctrine (Chevalier 1944, cited in Espinoza Soriano 1960, 11–​12). In terms of hierarchy, the alcalde mayor (jach’a alkalti) is still considered the “elder” (jilïri) of all the authorities of the annex and the whole annex must elect the couple for this post. The couple is nominated by each of the six minor ayllus to watch after the interests of each family, and each minor ayllu takes a turn to occupy this post. From its Arab roots in el cadí, “the judge,” an alcalde in the Andes became a juridical office that watches over the justice of the place, but who does so in the role of a “herder” (awatiri) that herds all the comunarios and all the saints under their charge, as if they were their herd animals. In the whole region, the alcalde is associated with the distant past, the Inka, the lands, and the original owners of the lands of the annex. It is the alcalde, too, who is charged on ceremonial occasions with the staffs of office (varas de mando), with their ritual name of “Santo Roma.” I  mention elsewhere the significance of this staff (wara in Aymara), not only as an instrument that “decides and punishes,” but as having its origins in the fertile stem that grew out of a captured trophy head, with additional ties to the four stakes of a horizontal weaving loom. Even today, the staff is made from the extremely hard palm wood called chonta, and it is usually finished with its upper part engraved with ancestral heads or a condor (Arnold and Hastorf 2008, 121–​24). The ritual power of the alcalde is expressed in his title of alkalti pusi waxrani, “alcalde with four horns,” in reference to a ram considered highly macho for sporting this number of horns, although this term might also refer to the ancient four-​cornered hats worn by regional authorities in the civilizations of Tiwanaku and Wari. Each religious authority has under their charge one of the saints of the place. The saint-​god of the alcalde mayor is San Miguel (San Mijil), associated with the mining regions of Uncía and Potosí. In the rounds of toasts during a ritual, the alcalde must name San Mijil Tata and San Mijil Uncía Cholita, as well as making libations for the two San Miguels of the region: San Miguel Awllaka (of Aullagas) and San Miguel Potosí. These many facets of San Miguel deal in fact with aspects of the Arcángel Miguel, considered “Chief of the Armies of God,” both in Islam and in Christianity and the highest Judge with

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his balance for measuring justice in the Final Judgment. Ambiguous here is the fact that, as the tale is usually told, God expelled the Arcángel Miguel from Heaven for his arrogance, making him fall from grace into a Hell filled with devils. This implies that although San Miguel has the task of controlling (or frustrating) the devils (and in other contexts the non-​Christian Moors), in practice San Miguel is here considered “part of the world of the devils.” Consequently this office presents certain ambiguities in the emerging colonial development of a properly Andean Christianity, given the former Arabic roots of the post of alcalde. On the one hand, the alcalde should act as judge in the colonial system of justice, and on the other, as judge in the local Andean system of justice. At the same time, the alcalde must act as the supervisor of Catholic religious practices, while also supervising the local Andean religious practices of the place. This equally ambiguous task of supervision must include watching over the saint-​gods of the church, associated with God in Heaven, and also the ritualized sites and the local gods of the place, associated this time with the devil, that is to say the mountain guardians called uywiris and the earth in general. I would suggest that it has been the performance of these highly liminal tasks that has led to the alcalde having his very own saint-​god in San Miguel of the mines. These theological questions often arise in relation to the daily tasks of the authorities of the place around ritual obligations and in debates among the comunarios themselves. There is general agreement that religious practices and beliefs in the Andes are distinct from the Catholicism imposed after the Conquest. But the way the comunarios manage both systems simultaneously is more pragmatic than a positioning based on tangles of binary arguments, which has of late become imposed on all things Andean. For example, among the comunarios we knew, their reflections on differences between the Christianity of the church and their own religion included observations about the ritual practices of the local wise-​ones or yatiris as compared to those of the visiting priests. From the point of view of Don Franco Quispe, there is a clear difference between the way in which the yatiris of Qaqachaka dedicate themselves to “reordering” the elements of the universe in order to cure someone, and that of the priest, who simply initiates a struggle between the Christian God on the one side and the local devils of the other, in a Manichean battle of oppositions. In practice, Don Franco compares this local capacity to reorder things to the way in which yatiris work with someone who must repair a wall that has become damaged and unequal along its length. The yatiri begins to “repair” the wall: Sometimes, the gods of the heavens, the mountains or the winds could have pushed against these walls, even mice could have chewed a piece of the wall. But the yatiri repairs it all, “sewing together” all the elements again before making an offering of smoke to the Sun. And with this, the yatiri achieves the new reordering of the universe.

Herein lies the fundamental difference between the two kinds of religious practitioner, the yatiri and the priest. For Don Franco, the yatiri feeds and makes offerings to both aspects, the world of above (alaxpacha) and the inner world (manqhapacha), and to the gods of the heavens and those of the earth, considered diabolical (saxra). The yatiri puts both spheres into order. The actions of the priest are distinct. The tata

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kura only gives a mass for the gods of the heavens, while he “fights” with the gods of below. In order to achieve a cure, the yatiri also prays to the gods of the heavens, he prays to the Lord of Above (Alaxpach Siñur), to Jesus Christ (Jisu Kiristu), and the Father Sun (Tata Inti), to “help Christians and the children of Christians.” But in another moment the yatiri asks the mountains why they are jostling about. In this way, the yatiri directs his practices towards the distinct levels of the universe, addressing the elements that tend to move between each level. He might address Tata Santiago, in his role as a saint and as “part of the church” (Injlis parti), the condors that move between the earth and the heavens, and among the peaks as “part of the mountains” (qullu parti), and the animals that move on the surface of the earth, whether the different eagles (pakali and anka), falcons (mamani), or toads (jamp’atu).21 The priest only talks with the God in Heaven. In the more general practice of the comunarios themselves in serving in their posts, there is a certain order of offices that should be followed, which has to do with the gradual learning of how to articulate the political and religious bodies of knowledge in the place. According to Don Franco, in the past the people of the place used to serve first as postilions, in the system of postal tambos, then as leader or jilaqata of the minor ayllu to which they belonged, and finally as feast sponsors (alféreces), although at the present time it is common to serve first as a feast sponsor and then as an ayllu leader or jilaqata: First it was postilion, then jilaqata, then mayordomo, and then alférez grande. Afterwards, those who wish to can pass the office of alcalde. And there it ends.

The important point was that those who served as officers were “older people” (awki or jach’a awki), who could orient the young (those who come later, the qhipa qallu) in any meeting, in particular when they make libations (ch’alla). They oriented the young and educated them. They used to say, “It’s not like this; it’s like that.” But for Don Franco, as for many older people in the place, today's problem is that young people go to school, where some of them learn how to read, but others just become capricious.

The Wak’as and Their Territories: Their Colonial Administration by the Confraternities

The colonial programme of rearticulating these religious and political offices, with their implications in the territories of the ayllus and for the regional populations, had ever increasing demands. However, the regional populations accomplished these to the letter, because from their own perspective they had other precedents and quite different ends. As in their former response to the territorial reorganization of the pueblos de reducción and the pueblos de indios, their perspective was that the religious transformations in the processes of evangelizing Qaqachaka towards Catholicism again demanded continuities with the former period, in ancestral practices directed at their own religious sites and their own ancestors. 21 These cosmological divisions have resonances with the pre-​Columbian tripartite universe, expressed by the bird (of the world above), the serpent, and the fish (of the inner world). The present day gods of the heavens, the church saints and the devils of below fall into this same logic.

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I propose that these differences in focus dealt in part with the continuity of the relational ontologies of the region, such as those concerning notions of personhood. First of all, from the point of view of the comunarios, the process of accumulating the ensemble of saints in one single place provided a continuation of the idea that these personages made of Qaqachaka territory a “fertile” place. Second, the narratives about the ensemble of saints stress not only their personal characteristics but also the interrelations between these personages. So these narratives deal with Andean notions about the relationality between “persons,” and not just with their individual aspects. Another key factor in these continuities, from the point of view of the regional populations, was the ongoing celebration of the precolonial wak’as in a specific territory, through its relation to the ancestral mummies of the place, now in the hands of the colonial confraternities in Condocondo, or else (in rural areas like Qaqachaka) the comunarios themselves. During the pre-​Hispanic period, the wak’as, in their guise as deities, held assigned portions of lands (Quispe 2016, 124). A document of 1571 details the interrogations made to a group of older men of the valley of Yucay, part of the Sacred Valley near Cusco, in which they record … that the bodies of the dead Inkas had the services of Indians, fields, and herds for the service and food for the said dead Inkas as if they were living, and that in the same way that they were offered it in life. They had it guarded after death and it was offered (to them) and there were deposits for this before the Spaniards ever entered this land … (AHN, Madrid, Diversas colecciones, 25, No 10. My translation)22

Guaman Poma de Ayala himself indicates, a half century later, “that in pueblos large and small, the guacas had lands” ([ca. 1612] 1988, fol. 100). In other places in the Andes, such as the valley of Mantaro (in southern Peru), still in the colonial period, the confraternities maintained large properties of lands, which seems to indicate a certain continuity with respect to the pre-​Hispanic past (Celestino and Meyers 1981, chaps. IV and V). In the specific example of Tapacarí (in Cochabamba Department, Bolivia), Quispe states that, among all the functions, the agricultural faenas carried out annually with the title of ostiachacra dealt with an “ancient custom” based on the granting of land and Indian labour force in benefit to the cloistered church, as if this had taken over the role of the wak’as (Quispe 2016, 124). I have not been able to find data of this kind for Qaqachaka. But the evidence from these regional practices behind the historical development of local hagiographies suggests we are facing a phenomenon that is just as Andean as it is Catholic. We are dealing with processes of transformation, after a death, of the founders of certain lineages and specific places, into ancestral mummies (and regional wak’as), whose deeds are preserved in local memory (Hernández Astete 2016, 13). And we are dealing with competition between rival groups to access the assets of these deceased. 22 Interrogatorio a los indios del Perú sobre sus costumbres, del 2 al 19 de junio de 1571. Respuesta a la pregunta 2: 14 verso—​Imagen Núm: 28/​116. The original Spanish says “… que los cuerpos de los ingas muertos tenyan servicios de indios chacaras y ganados para servicio y comida de los dichos ingas muertos como si fueron vivos y que de la mesma manera que les offrecian en vida se lo tenia guardado despues de muerto y se lo offrecian y avia depósitos para esto antes que los españoles entrasen en esta tierra …”

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Practices Directed at the Inka Mummies and the Current Rituals to Qaqachaka’s Saints Most of the historical evidence for these ties between ancestors and mummies can be found in accounts of the Inka practices for prolonging the memory of their foundational ancestors, in funerary rites and the rituals that followed. Juan de Betanzos associates with the Inka Pachacútec the organization of a sumptuous funerary ritual in which the Inka orejones (the “long-​eared” nobles who wore ear-​spools) intervened actively, and which included the “telling of deeds” and public lamentations for the deceased. In Betanzos’s account, we can also perceive an apparent “concern,” by the Inka, to acquire after death a protagonic role in the rituals destined towards the ongoing construction of his memory. This theme would preoccupy the Cusco ayllus, concerned that their founder acquire prestige through the memory of his achievements (Betanzos [ca. 1551] 1987, 142–​45).23 From their accounts, the ceremonial phase (called “Purucaya”), directed at the transformation of the deceased Inka into an ancestor, closed the cycle of funerary rites, although this phase often unleashed a war of succession in struggles between the factions of the lineage of the deceased and of other lineages in competition with these (Hernández Astete 2016, 14). This struggle happened, in part, because the assets of the deceased Inka, including the lands he had accumulated in his lifetime, passed not to a named successor but to all his lineage, in the practice called “divided inheritance” (Cobo [1653] 1979, 111, 248). For Conrad and Demarest (1984), this custom was the ideological motor behind the extensive territorial expansion of the Inka Empire, given that each new Inka had the obligation of conquering new territories for his lineage. My argument in the following chapters is that it was this kind of unleashing of violence that we witnessed in Qaqachaka in the 1980s, during the succession of turns between one minor ayllu and another struggling for the right to care for a particular saint-​god. The enmity unleashed in that moment reached such an extreme that the minor ayllu that had captured the saint-​god wanted to wipe out the ancestral memories of the enemy ayllu that had been the previous owner of that saint, and even to take away the saint from that ayllu completely and forever (cf. Hernández Astete 2006, 22). From the early Colony onwards, there have been many commentaries about these processes of transformation of the ancestral mummies into Catholic saints (Gose 1995), so this comparison is not original. But the details of these funerary practices and their comparison with current practices in Qaqachaka shed new light on Andean religions. Again, citing Betanzos, Hernández Astete comments that once the Inka funerary rite ended, the new lord would make of his body a mummy-​bundle and would keep this in his house so that all could revere and adore him, because with the ceremonies and idolatries that you have already heard he was canonized and they held him to be a saint … (Betanzos [ca. 1551] 1987, 147–​48. My translation)24

23 See also the detailed account of the Purucaya ritual in Barraza Lescano’s Master’s thesis (2012). 24 The original Spanish says “el nuevo señor hiciese de su cuerpo un bulto y lo tuviera en su casa do todos le reverenciasen y adorasen porque con las ceremonias e idolatrías que ya habéis oido era canonizado y tenían que era santo …”

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It is worth underlining three points of interest, with reference to this historical contextualization, that recur in the present rites to the saint-​gods of Qaqachaka. The first is that the tasks of caring for the deceased, under the charge of the new entering Inka (entrante), suggest something similar to the division of work between the outgoing feast sponsor and the new entering sponsor (the machaqa) in the present rites concerned with the turns of the saints. The second point is that the practice of carrying the Inka mummy “to the house of his lineage” is again reiterated in various descriptions of the present saint-​gods of Qaqachaka, in their guise as ancestral mummies, who are reared during the year in the house of the sponsor of that saint, and so of the lineage that claims possession of that god-​saint. The third point is that the care for the ancestral mummies did not cease with the immediate funerary rites of the Inka, but continued at a daily level under the charge of certain persons, which is similar to what we see at a weekly level in the rites to the saint-​mummies in Qaqachaka, in the attention to washing their clothes, and of the practices involved in the rites of feeding and offering drink to these among the mayordomos. This means that the evidence about the rites of “feeding” the dead did not end with the military defeat of the Inkas, but continued into the Colony (Hernández Astete 2016, 16 and 16n19) and well into the present, in the practices around the saint-​gods. In addition, in the past as today, the justification that the social actors themselves tend to give for practicing this continuity of rites of feeding the dead, is to avoid the vengeance of the dead themselves, in suffering hunger and thirst, in their own lives, a notion that various chroniclers had already documented some time ago (Hernández Astete 2016, 17).

Wak’as, Mummies, and Mayordomos

As we shall see, these historical descriptions of the cult to the deceased Inkas allude to other pertinent aspects in the treatment of the present-​day saint-​gods in Qaqachaka. For instance, that cult included the mummification of the Inka’s body, the construction of a golden idol (placed on top of a supposed funerary structure) and the fabrication of bundles (made of the clothes, nails, and hair of the deceased), as well as the efforts to obtain coca leaves and hot chili peppers for the organization of the feast (Betanzos [ca. 1551] 1987​, 189, in Hernández Estete 2016, 14 and 14n12). The rituality around the present-​day saint-​gods replicate many of these former rituals to the ancestral mummies. The ensemble of these saint-​god in the 1980s was under the charge of the mayordomos (husband and wife) of the place, who cared for these figures in their everyday sojourn in the colonial church, and who supervised their appearance in processions in the cycle of feasts during the course of the year. To understand the meanings of these handling practices, we should first understand the complex processes of Catholic evangelization in the South-​Central Andes, its comprehension by regional populations and the incorporation of these into their pre-​existing Andean liturgical practices. Instead of resorting to ideas of “syncretism,” “the hybrid,” “mutation,” or “mestizaje,” my approach focuses on the interpretation by regional populations of the new religious ideas in their midst, and the appropriations of some of these ideas in their own religious

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practices, according to the evidence in the narratives of local oral history, and in our own fieldwork there during more than ten years. Of course, in the Colony the forced introduction of many new currents (religious, political, economic) generated new combinations of practices and their understandings (Abercrombie 1998; Gil 2015). The problem is that this generalizing perspective in many existing historical studies of the period, perceived as they are “from nowhere” (sensu Haraway 1988), that is to say without situating the knowledge in play in its proper context, cannot provide the answers we are looking for. It does not tell us much about the appropriations adopted by regional populations during centuries, nor about their own interpretations of the readjustments in play nor their strategies for going forwards. The challenge is to understand the territorial and temporal reorganization, in distinct moments, by the colonial ecclesiastical administration and the Crown, in terms of the system of power of the regional authorities in these spheres of activity, and how regional populations incorporated the new norms into their own practices. Needless to say, in a colonial context, the tactics of appropriation of some religious practices did not necessarily imply their full acceptance by these regional populations, and could have included concurrently certain elements of rejection. We are faced with a phenomenon of multiple and complex transformations produced simultaneously, which conventional terms such as “syncretism” overly simplify. My guides for understanding this multiple approach, in which both sides, the Catholic Church and the local religious practitioners, acted under their own volition and with their own interpretations, have been the work of Marzal on mutual appropriations (1988), of Bouysse-​Cassagne on compatibilities through similarities of ideas (2004, 60), and more recently of Silliman (2015) on the problem of creating cultural “mules,” and the need for alternative ways of thinking this through.

Chapter 9

TATA QURI, “FATHER GOLD”

Tata Quri is very demanding …

Don Enrique Espejo, from Qaqachaka pueblo

In our general enquiries about the religious practices of the past, the consensus

of opinion among the Qaqachakas was that, before adoring the ayllu saints as they do now, people used to adore the celestial bodies. Don Domingo Inca Maraza records that his grandfather Bonifacio explained to him, when he was a boy, how people adored the stars in a similar way, observing them from the mountains. The saints came afterwards and were not considered with such seriousness because they were made by human hands, and from crude materials: My grandfather advised me about this. I don’t think he advised me falsely; it must be true. They made libations to the stars. They made blood offerings (wilancha). They say they made the blood offerings while they were watching them (the stars) … For example, they made the blood offerings to the Southern Cross (Kurusir warawara) in Cruz (May) and in Candlemas (in early February). They mentioned the stars and the mountain, and the apacheta (a cairn on a mountain pass) where I live. Apacheta Pillarasi is nearby. You can both go up there. It’s quite messy, covered in stones. Well, they drank a lot on that hillside. You go up to that hillside from my house, from there. They say “Pillarasi, Pillarasi.” They talk this way even in the valleys, “Pillarasi, Pillarasi, Quliwasa, Anris Tawayu, Pillarasi Turitu …” They name a bull “Andrés Tamayo Torito.” Only afterwards came those they called “feast sponsors,” and they got those people called “artists” and some others who knew how to make things out of clay, to mould (the saints) … Those saints were made from clay:

“You’ve made them by looking at them, so now address them. Ask things of God. This is Santiago, this is San Juan …” They say they made those long afterwards. By pasting clay over cactuses wrapped up in old foodsacks … They were covered in clay. “That’s all it is,” they say. My grandfather used to tell me, “Those are just different. One or another of them are just that, those saints,” he said.

The Qaqachaka’s curiosity about the precise material from which anything is made, and indeed how each particular saint of the place had been formed from these materials, is part of a wider theological debate among them about the power and relative legitimacy of each saint-​god in the whole ensemble. If the saint-​god is founded from metal, it is considered stronger and thought to have much more power, but if it is simply made from a cactus wrapped in a foodsack and then smeared over with plaster, it is considered less legitimate and less powerful. For his part, Don Franco Quispe, before telling us his tales about the arrival of the saints in the pueblo of Qaqachaka, told us first his own reasoning why there was just one

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God of the Heavens (Alaxpach Yusa), long before the appearance of all these saint-​gods. In essence, there was a judgement in which the God of the Heavens (whom he identified with the Spanish and their devils), abandoned the earth to his son, Jesus Christ, and from then on Catholic priests began to control the religious practices, directed now at the saints and not at the former Andean gods. Once again his narrative seems to be influenced by both Andean and Evangelical ideas: Because before there was just one god. One single person, isn’t it so? And in those times there was a judgment … There were no Thursdays or Saturdays … The people didn’t have names either. Those Spanish, those devils (yawlu) had thrown aside Jesus Christ just so, all alone. They’d thrown him aside at that time, true? There was this judgment, in the morning and at night. And the Spanish had abandoned Jesus Christ … So the God of the Heavens (Alaxpach Yusa) said “Now, you shall live here, you shall pass the feast with my weeping. So you shall live and remain here with my shadow, you with sorrows, you shall pass the feast with this, my weeping,” he said, and he left him (Jesus) here below.

Afterwards there were the padres (priests) and those put names to the days. These saints also have names now. It was surely so … That’s why those gods of the heavens left their replacements here: “You shall pass (the feast) …” he said, “you shall pass it with your sorrow.”

For Don Franco, it is from then onward that the saint-​gods of the church must be fed with incense, and the people of the place must fulfil practices such as burning candles in the church each Thursday and Saturday, and addressing the saints with the expression Amur rispisktana, “We respect you with love.” He explained how, in order to fulfil these new religious practices, Catholic priests had to brought from Wari, then later Condocondo, and more recently from Challapata, to celebrate the masses that “fed” these new saint-​gods.

Tata Quri Appears

Then Don Franco began to relate, in the second canonical cycle of his tales, the origins of the saints of the place, beginning with the appearance of Tata Quri, the patron saint of Qaqachaka, on Mount Phiriphiri (Mount Toasted Barley Flour), the imposing guardian mountain (uywiri) towering over the main pueblo. His first tale related how the figurine of Tata Quri, engraved on a white boulder in the rocky heights of Mount Phiriphiri (or in the cave along Qhusmi Uma, in some versions), was found by ancestors of the Llanquepacha, Choque(callati) and Ayca families of the minor ayllu Jujchu (­figure  9). In the tale, the ancestors made many attempts to bring down Tata Quri’s figurine from the mountain, given his trickster nature and tendency to escape at any instant. He was only appeased after these manifold efforts to grant him ritual offerings, and his approval of the kind of dance and music that accompanied them. The Choque[callati], Llanquepacha, and Ayca grandfathers had seen Tata Quri, but just a glimpse, on the mountain called Phiriphiri, there. He appeared there, where Alberto’s house is now …

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Figure 9. The rocky heights of Mount Phiriphiri where Tata Quri was found. Afterwards, they attempted to take him down [the mountain, returning many times] and they’d struck [where he was] with stones, but could not remove him. Neither could they get him down with a crowbar, “Titin titintata,” because he was well set into the rock, set right into a white stone … Then they asked among themselves, “This miracle, what kind of thing does it want?,” they questioned.

They say that at first there was [the music of] quenas (wooden flutes, also called wawqu) and the dances of the jungle natives (chunchus) with feathers, and they tried to persuade him to come down with these. But they couldn’t. So, they asked among themselves again, “What does this-​one want? What can we bring him down with?”

There was another dance called “danzante,” all covered with shiny tin. They say they went with this dance. And then they’d struck (at the rock) again with the crowbar, “Challannn …!” And at last they’d brought him down here, accompanied by the danzante.

Only then did they construct the church here. But Tata Quri went off again. This would have been in the Time of the Gentiles. Tata Quri went off to Qalawani, off to one side of down below. There, too, [they’d consulted] a yatiri who knew how to read the coca leaves. And looking at the coca, the yatiri exclaimed “There he is.” They’d gone off to look for him once more. But after this Tata Quri went off again and got lost. Then he appeared in the rancho of Yanamani. Then the yatiri read the coca again and

188 The Saints Appear pronounced “He’s there.” And they found him there, they entered that place. But then Tata Quri disappeared yet again and reappeared in Arkusayaña … Finally they made him appear in the fiestas, the chapels, and churches. They’d made Tata Quri reappear at last.

Don Franco makes the point in this tale that the founding of Qaqachaka as a pueblo de indios cannot be separated from the appearance of the miraculous Tata Quri, patron saint of the place, who gave his name to the whole vice-​parish. From the evidence in the earliest archives, this vice-​parish, like the colonial parochial church at its very centre in the main pueblo, was called “Santa Vera Cruz de Cacachaca.” So Tata Quri contributed to the legitimacy of the place, and to its social and religious cohesion. As a native god of the annex par excellence, Tata Quri appeared miraculously on top of one of its major mountains, Phiriphiri, later to become the principal calvario of Qaqachaka marka.1 Among the many terms of endearment for Tata Quri is Phiriphiri Tatala (Father Phiriphiri) or Phiriphiri Mayku (Lord Phiriphiri). A more common name for Tata Quri is Marka, the name used for the pueblo de indios of Qaqachaka itself, as if this particular god incarnated its very essence. The name marka also refers to the main mayordomo of the pueblo, constituted by the couple Mayür Tala and Mayür Mala, whose main task is to serve Tata Quri. Mount Phiriphiri, where Tata Quri was found, is considered the “son” of the two major mountains of the zone: Turu, the Grandfather, and Jujchu, the Grandmother, through their marriage in the time of darkness before the Sun rose. Other toponyms of the place appear in the narratives about Tata Quri. For instance, they say that a cave in the cliff-​face as it descends from Mount Phiriphiri is his “wardrobe” (isi rupiru). Apart from Don Franco, many other comunarios used to tell us the history of Tata Quri and of his qualities as a trickster figure, while being a powerful god-​saint. His power is recognized not only in the minor ayllu of Jujchu, which claims this god for itself, but in the whole annex of Qaqachaka and much further afield in the entire region, given his power of intercession in processes directed towards the collective good, in which the benefits of his miraculous power are shared amongst all. The efficacy of Tata Quri as a generalized benefactor in these processes is directed above all towards the fructification of the harvests, the multiplication of the herds, and the care of the animals and of the “herds” of people under his dominion (cf. Gil 2015, 519). His repeated associations with a cross and with the herds (both human and animal) under his charge allude to Jesus Christ as the Divine Shepherd, while they also insist on the close tie between Tata Quri and the local tutelary mountain of Phiriphiri. In another variant of Don Franco’s tale about Tata Quri, the same three ancestors, Llanquepacha, Bartolomé Ayca and Choque (or Choquecallati), brought him down from Mount Phiriphiri in the same way. But this time the tale describes with more precision the “resting places” (samaña), rather than the “escape routes,” of Tata Quri, on his descent to the main pueblo. These toponyms are still invoked in the series of toasts to Tata 1 A calvario (or “calvary”) is a Catholic pilgrimage route, usually on a hill whose pathway to the summit passes in sequence through the twelve Stations of the Cross.

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Quri during his feast and in the weekly rites in his honour. Don Franco also mentioned Tata Quri’s diabolic danzantes and their own place of origin, which he names in different moments as Maragua, Maraguata or Maraguaya, a spectacular crater formed by a falling meteorite, located near the mining town of Colquechaca in North Potosí. Another older person from Qaqachaka, Doña Mauricia Mamani, questioned such a distant origin place for these danzantes, and proposed that their origins were much more local. She cited the unusual “diabolic” rock in the river bed along the course of the river (q’awa) that flows past the main pueblo, with a natural marking on its surface like a danzante, which shines red when the water flows over it. Doña Mauricia’s tale ends with an episode about the construction of the main church: Llanquepacha, Bartolomé Ayca, and Choque must have brought Tata Quri down from Mount Phiriphiri. They’d seen him there. Tata Quri was upright on a white stone. They’d seen him there.

And they attempted to bring him down with that dance called wawqu,2 they’d attempted to bring him down with that, but he didn’t want it. They’d wanted to bring him down with the feathered jungle dance called chunchu, but he didn’t want that either … He didn’t want to come down from the stone at all. “Dammit, what kind of thing does this-​one want? What can we bring him down with? What shall we do?,’ they asked among themselves. “Heck, whatever does this-​one want?”

“Well,” they said, “there’s a dance called danzante, the one from Maragua and Chayrapata, the one from Siwar Q’asa.” They’ve brought the danzantes’ clothes of from there until now. And they brought him down with that dance, and with a small framework of metal wings. Tata Quri practically fell off the rock with these, making it ring out “Clang …” He came down, “clang!” Just like that.

Well, they brought him down with these, and then they’d placed him seated in Qaqachaka. But suddenly they thought among themselves, “Perhaps he’s a fake?” And they doubted him.

Then Tata Quri went off again to the rocky place called P’iqin Q’ara (Bald Head), then to that place called Q’asa (Crevice). Well there was a good yatiri there nearby. And the yatiri read the coca and said “He must be there …” They searched for him and once again they’d taken him back and set him seated anew (in the pueblo). But at some other moment Tata Quri disappeared again. “Hell, where is he this time?” They searched around and the yatiri read the coca again. “Heck. He’s in Yanamani this time.” And they brought him back from Yanamani. So they searched for him all over again and brought him down to Qaqachaka pueblo. They’d made him arrive there, and once more they danced with the danzante. But Tata Quri disappeared yet again. There’s a place called Arku Sayaña. Well they got him down from there and then they built the small church in the pueblo. Tata Quri belongs to a certain Choque. What Choque can it be? I don’t know, but he’s from Qhuchini, that Choque. Now.

2 Doña Mauricia, like other narrators, mentions that Tata Quri rejected the music of the wawqu, an aerophone instrument without a mouthpiece, played in the dry season and associated with the Asanaques and the Quillacas (Verstaerte 2010, 222n12).

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Graphic 11. Scheme of Tata Quri’s route on his descent from Mount Phiriphiri to Qaqachaka pueblo.

Other comunarios from Qaqachaka, especially those who have passed the feast of Tata Quri, remember with still greater clarity the order of the resting places of this god as he came down finally from Phiriphiri to the main pueblo. Doña Mauricia Mamani named as resting places the Santu Kalwaryu (Santo Calvario) up above Yanamani, and mentioned the ancient rocky platform called Niñu Samaña (Child’s Resting place), but there are many more (graphic 11) (Arnold 2007b). In these narratives, the comunarios agree that the capricious nature of Tata Quri has been transmitted to the Qaqachakas themselves. During the fiesta of the Holy Cross (Cruz), in early May, Tata Quri’s danzantes, with their tattered costumes of red and green patchwork, carrying on their shoulders wings decorated with mirrors, dance to the evocative sound of a small flute (jisk’a pinkillu) made originally from a condor wing-​ bone, although nowadays they use a flute made out of wood, accompanied by a military snare drum (tambor). Two of the four danzantes dance for Wayna (Young Man), considered to be the son of this god, and the other two for Tata Quri himself. There is a devilish air to the dance, and the danzantes, like Tata Quri himself, are perceived as “saxra” (diabolical). They say that the dust high up on Mount Phiriphiri is Tata Quri’s “bread” of ground barley flour (phiri), which can feed you in a moment of need, but turn back into dust once it is taken away from this mountainside.

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Tata Quri is considered above all a god of war, and according to the Qaqachakas, it is Tata Quri who made them “real men” (chacha), giving them energy in the battles over land when they fight for their territory. These notable characteristics are evident in Tata Quri’s attributes as “the very strict one” (wali k’ari) and “the devilish one” (saxra), given his eagerness to punish anyone and chastise anything.

Don Alberto’s Time as Mayordomo and the Rites to Tata Quri

Don Alberto Choque, the principal mayordomo of Qaqachaka’s main pueblo (Marka mayura) and master of the dance (wayli apsuri) in honour of Tata Quri, in the year 1989, was considered the co-​“owner” of this saint-​god, but through the intermediation of his wife, Doña María Ayca Colque. Don Alberto, the most important yatiri of the pueblo in those years, and a specialist in children’s ailments, was a highly devoted person engaged in the general ritual practices to local saint-​gods. He told us how “being a mayordomo” was a most demanding experience (­figure 10). Apart from being obliged to braid a whip from llama hide and then control the population with that implement, neither he not his wife could spin nor ply fiber during his year-​long period of office. And although they could wash themselves, he could not take off his poncho, nor his wife her mantle, during the whole year. Neither could he bring home kindling, nor could they have a good laugh! This year I shan’t make libations for the animals, only for the people. I’ll do this for the men and my wife will do it for the women. I shall do it for the rural hamlets. She will do it for the young women (palachu) and I shall do it for the young men (maxt’a). Only once

Figure 10. Don Alberto Choque (right) chews coca and directs the libations during Tata Quri’s feast, accompanied by Don Gerónimo Colque Lupinta (mayordomo of Mama Kapitana, centre) and the invited guest, Don Juan de Dios Yapita (left).

192 The Saints Appear I leave (the post) will I do it for the animals. Then the women will sing songs and the men will make toasts for the oxen in the plough-​teams. The men don’t sing …

I shall use the lasso, and the people will look at me with respect. That’s why I shan’t spin nor rough ply ropes (mismiña), nor bring kindling of tola shrubs, and my señora the same … I’ll just go around like that. I have to go around like that for the whole year. I shall wash myself but I shan’t take off my poncho.

After six months I shall raise myself up again. If I were to do these things, my neighbours would speak badly of me. “We could die,” they’d say to me. It’s as if we were caring for our sheep … Neither should we laugh. Yesterday I just cried! But in a state of drunkenness …

Don Alberto’s intense care about fulfilling these norms, and his way of ordering them, demonstrate how the post of mayordomo is directed towards renovating the presence of all the elements, human, animal and plant, in each official’s minor ayllu as well as in the annex as a whole. However, this renovation has efficacy only if the mayordomos themselves make the sacrifice of holding back these renovating aspects in their own lives, by not spinning or plying, nor taking off their woven coverings. These norms have their own logic, because the woven covering that each authority must wear in office holds a close mimetic interrelation with these other elemental coverings, whereby the poncho serves as a woolly covering of animal fleece, and simultaneously as a vegetative covering of tola for kindling. This is why any attempt to dispatch with these mimetic coverings during the course of a year in service, by taking off clothes, taking away kindling, or ignoring the norms of spinning and plying, or indeed by demonstrating a lack of seriousness by laughing too much, carry in themselves the danger of diminishing the efficacy of the mayordomos’s ritual practices. Don Alberto had his own narratives about Tata Quri as a god, his origins and his journey to the pueblo: Tata Quri is our god. He appeared in the past on Mount Phiriphiri, in the place called Paqu Luma (Tan Hill). He appeared there some time ago, in the dry season (waña pacha), that’s why his fiesta happens in the month of May. If he’d appeared in the rainy season, then his fiesta would have occurred at the time of the rains. That’s also why he’s called Santa Wila Kurusa Awksa (Our Father, the True and Saintly Cross). At that time, my grandfather Salvador Choque passed the fiesta, it was him in person, here. We were united with Condo as “the parish of Condo” (Quntu kuratu). We’d separated from them later with nine legal orders. Then they made him appear here, on a Friday, in Qaqachaka. He appeared on that occasion. My grandfather made him appear. I can’t remember how many grandfathers have passed (the feast) by now. It must be in the papers you’ve seen.

The thing is that he hadn’t accepted any old dance, not the one with panpipes (siku), nor the one with a band. He’d only wanted the dance of the danzantes. It was called “devil” (yawlu). He didn’t even like panpipes. He didn’t accept any of those dances. He’d only come down with a large drum (bombollo) and a flute (pinquillulla), and with the danzantes’ costumes. He’d come down with the two danzantes, but with one of them playing. And (while coming down) Tata Quri had rested in certain places (samaña), in Qhusmiru Qayma, which is a cave. Then he got up from there and went to Ch’alla Q’asa, where he rested again. Then to Wila Q’awa, and after that to Tatal Kurusa, on the road above the

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Tata Quri, “Father Gold”

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main pueblo. From there, he went to Arku Sayaña, then to Pampa Kurusa and after that to Lawra Kalli, and from there he entered the church.

From then on, Tata Quri is wrapped in a fine decorated shawl (riwusu), with twelve mantles (awayu) and a woven belt called yapisa. Then he has his sling (q’urawa), which is what they call the dynamite that explodes before the fiesta. It was just a powder chamber before. They added gunpowder and a little clay, and it exploded “Puuww …!” Now it’s dynamite of course, but it was gunpowder they used before. Now they do it with jumping crackers; I  know how to buy them. I’ve passed Wayna Mila (Young Miguel), too … My señora knows how to hit it with a mallet. When you tighten it too much (the powder chamber) it won’t explode. But when you tighten it properly, it explodes. You have to know how.

The Clothes of Tata Quri’s Danzantes, According to Don Alberto

Don Alberto continued with his tales about the origins of the clothes of Tata Quri’s danzantes: Those clothes of that “devil” (the danzante) came originally from Quntumiri. That narrow gorge is called Quntumiri. He (Tata Quri) had become enamoured with that … with that “devil.” So the danzante’s costume came originally from Quntumiri, then it came to Pikaltiryu, then it went to Purta, then to Iwis Uyu. After then to Qarqa Lliyaku and Iwis Uyu Rikucha (or Riki Uychu). Then it arrived at Urqu Pata, which is a small calvario in Chanchari meadow. It arrived precisely there.

Then the danzante took the wayli thuquña, which is his dance. It’s usually with two troupes; they are usually four in all. It’s been forgotten for some years now. Anyway, he’d come from there. Then he’d come along Sawusawu Kalli, he’d come from there with all those clothes. That’s why he seems like a winged devil, with ankle bells and all.

Before that, they’d had (a danzante) in Maragua … they’d brought the dance from there. After Maragua, it arrived at the place for making libations, which is really a resting place, then to Sinta Siwara Q’asa, then to Kayñi Muqu, after that to Laq’a Qullu, then to Pillarasi, to Qhilla Jaraña and then to Jinchu Palla, which is that ravine near Irunsata. And finally it arrived here.

Don Alberto described to us the libations made to all these elements, as he pointed out the importance of washing and cleaning Tata Quri, as if he were an ancestral mummy of his lineage. Washing the clothes of a deceased person is an integral part of funerary rites until now in the region (Murra 1962, 713; Arnold and Espejo 2013, 332–​37). However, in the rites to Tata Quri even more attention is given to the details of this process. For example, the “fleas” of the god should be cleaned off, by eating them. In reality these are the pink and white round sweets called “confites,” guarded in the wooden box together with the saint. This action reminded us of the custom in relation to the Inka mummies, of what Alicia Alonso (1989, 114) calls “protection from insects,” referring to the flies that bothered the mummified bodies, and which the mummy carers warded off by waving long wooden staffs topped by long coloured feathers, in the way of large fans. The clothes are washed and then the wrappings of Tata Quri’s bundle are reordered, including the little poncho of cotton in the innermost part. Apart from the similarities between these rites of dressing Tata Quri and the ancestral rites to the Inka mummies, the meticulous descriptions by

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persons such as Don Alberto demonstrate how these acts of dressing and then undressing the saint are a form of bestowing on him subjectivity and “making him into a person”: You have to drink for all of this. Yesterday [Thursday July 23, 1989] I drank for all of this … These (customs) should never be outside (our rules of) the “law” (liyi): “for the mantles, the ribbons, the twelve ribbons, for his placements (or blessings, which are the sweets called confite), for his aggregates, for kachina, which is the white stone, and for palamo, which is the ancient peso.” Tata Quri is Santa Jayra Quri (Saintly Golden and Lazy One). We remove his fleas, which are his “confites,” and we eat these little sweets. They get into the animals like ticks, don’t they? And we remove them just the same. It’s like that. The colours of the twelve ribbon are pink, blood red, crimson, orange, purple, sky-​blue, dark violet, parrot green, yellow, and white. I  think they begin with the orange one, then the purple one, the sky-​blue, the pink, crimson, parrot green, white, all the twelve colours … Each person who enters as a feast sponsor adds them. I too will buy a dozen. I’ll put them there with my name and that of my señora. I’ll buy a dozen ribbons and put them there. Another person will pass the feast and look and say “It was him who put them.” It’s so that your heart opens and becomes enlightened. They say of these ribbons “Quri Sintakam Quri” (Father Gold of purely ribbons).

The people even change the clothes of Tata Quri lending special attention to them. For such and such occasion it’s that ribbon, because each Thursday one ribbon is placed there, and for another Thursday it’s another. And they are tied together there. The only thing is that the ribbons are washed. We’ll wash them at (the feast of the Immaculate) Conception, and then we’ll wash them at Candlemas, and after the whole year we’ll wash them again in May. We’ll wash them the whole year through. Only the ribbons. We’ll wash them, organize them, and iron them really well. I still don’t know how to do all of this, because it’s the obligation of the mayordomo of Candelaria (Tata Kantilayra) to change the clothes of each god. As Marka, it’s as if I’m the father. He’ll ask me for a drink, nothing more, and I’ll watch over everything. I’ll give drinks to the man and the woman too.

You shouldn’t annoy Tata Quri either. Once someone put him in my house, and me and my señora, we went really mad. You have to leave him where he is, and he has to stay put there always during the rainy season.

He’s in his box. There inside, Tata Quri has his little poncho of cotton, his jacket (chakutilla), his soft packing (kuña), and pillow (ch’ixni). First you put the ponchillo in the box, then Tata Quri, then he is packed around with cotton yet again, with a piece on either side (piñuqa), and the third piece over him is the headpiece. Then you shut him inside, and wrap him around with the belt fastener (called t’isnu or sinjiru).

But you make a libation before then, like this:

“Awksataki, Tata Quritaki, Quritaki, Sintakam Quritaki, Tata Quri,” sas, “Phiriphiritaki, Santu Kalwaryutaki, Paqu Lumataki,” sas … “For Our Father, for Tata Quri, for Quri, for the purely golden ribbons, Tata Quri,” saying, “For Mount Phiriphiri, for the Santo Calvario, for Paqu Loma (Tan Hill),” saying …

Then you begin to wrap him up. “He moved, he’s breathing,” they utter. At the end you put him on his wooden board and you continue drinking, because there’s a little bottle just for those who change the clothes:

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Tata Quri, “Father Gold”

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“Tata Quritaki, tunkapan awayutaki, punchutaki, riwusutaki, alwurunataki, pawilataki, ch’ixmataki y kuñataki … sum pistitupataki, suma isintasitapataki … kantutataki … chuxllu pirwa …”

“For Tata Quri, for the twelve mantles, for the poncho, for the fine shawl (riwusu), for the cotton, for the candle wick (pawilu) [which is also of cotton], for the headpiece and the packing … for his successful fiesta, for a good stay here … for the cantuta flower … and the maize store …”3

I’m keeping it apart (that deposit). It’s like maize. You shouldn’t lose it or else you can get into debt, and nothing can satisfy my outgoings …

There’s another thing called the “three crowns” (kinsa kuruna), they’re very small. They’re also of gold. I’m guarding them. I don’t take them outside. All of this goes into the book of acts (akta liwru). And you have to record the wings (ch’iqalla). You have both seen the danzantes dance. These are of gold, the two of them. You drink like this, above all the mayordomos of Kapitana, Fiscal, and Ch’uri, and of Candelaria …

Afterwards you eat the broth and crushed meat (chupi juchha). Two dishes are served, to me first of all, then to Kapitana and then to Candelaria, and after to Fiscal and finally Ch’uri. It’s as if Tata Quri were eating. You give (the food) to Tata Quri’s stomach, and we say “Janiw chuqhuktti, janiw impiryasktti …”: “I’ve no resentment, I’ve no envy …” There inside (the box) is the “cheese” (kisu), which is gold. I’ve still not seen this. Will it be gold …? I’ve still not seen it. What elements will there be inside?, I ask myself … “No! No! You’ll see it the next time,” they told me.

It has great value, so it’s guarded to the right of a special room, under lock and key. He (Tata Quri) only enters the church in Conception, in Candelaria and Cruz in May, when he sleeps there one or two nights. We go in to see him in the morning. He enters there three times a year, wrapped in the fine shawl (p’anthalla). Then he leaves in a procession in the plaza. There are saleswomen out there and they put at his reach whatever they desire, whatever they have, whether it’s money or whatever, as “rent” (sentaje). There’s none of this in Conception nor in Candelaria, but in Cruz in May, yes. And I as Marka shall collect it, then I’ll share it out with the mayordomos.

Tata Quri’s Danzantes, According to Don Alberto

On another occasion, Don Alberto described to us yet again the route of Tata Quri’s danzantes, from the pueblo of Maragua, near Sucre, towards Qaqachaka, with even more detail about their outfits (see graphic 12): The danzantes came from Maragua, via Potosí. I don’t know the place, just its name. In the songs, they sing to the gods “Papa Marawa, Mama Marawa …,” these are expressions. Then they pass on to Sinta Siwar Q’asa, then Kayñi Muqu, after Laq’a Qullu, Pillarasi, Qhilla Jaraña, then Jinchu Palla, after Pampa Kurusa … that’s how you drink (the toasts). Then (they go) to Lawra Kalli and they enter the plaza with its four corners and its altars, where there were once illas of llamas (qarwa illa) and you did the rounds (but pausing in the four posas). Still now they are doing the rounds of the four corners, dancing. This is called “golden beetle, silver beetle” (chuqi pankataya, quri pankataya). Finally they enter the church …

3 Cantuta, the “flower of the Inca” (Lat. Cantua buxofolia Juss. s.p.).

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Graphic 12. Scheme of the journey of the danzantes’ clothes, accepted by Tata Quri. There are usually dancers in each ayllu, but when there aren’t, you have to go to plead for them from another place, and you have to pay. Because the dance makes them quite swollen up, as they dance for four or five days: on the eve, the main day, the day afterwards, and the farewell. And they drink a lot too. They carry sables and wield them to stop the children approaching, because they make them afraid. It’s as if someone whipped the children. It’s for that, to ward them off.

The Death of Tata Quri

In spite of the miraculous quality of Tata Quri and the greater part of the attention given in the tales to his capricious nature and energy, some narratives allude to his death, but referring to only one of his aspects. They say that there are two aspects to Tata Quri. There is the god called Jisk’a Quri, “Lesser Gold,” which is the small and heavy “yellow cross” guarded in a wooden box wrapped in twelve mantles. The other variant, Jach’a Patrona Quri, “Greater Gold Patron,” is considered his replacement or stand-​in (lanti). This other aspect has its own miraculous version, characterized this time by a figure with a bearded face (ch’api), his crown of thorns (pillu) and hat, all mounted onto the upper part of a wooden cross, much larger in size than Jisk’a Quri. These two aspects of this god can be observed at the Fiesta de la Cruz, when these are carried by the feast sponsors to the main church in the pueblo to hear the mass (­figure 11).

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Tata Quri, “Father Gold”

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Figure 11. The danzantes and the ayllu mayordomos enter the church to hear mass during the feast of the Holy Cross, in 1989. Note the box which contains the Lesser Quri (carried to the left) and the Greater Gold Patron (carried to the right), as a wooden cross.

Nevertheless, many comments in Qaqachaka assert that the original Tata Quri, the Greater Patron, disappeared, and that he had “died” in a place with which Qaqachaka had ancient ties as part of the Quillacas-​Asanaque Federation. Don Alberto Choque remembered that Jach’a Patrona Quri went off “to that side, accompanied by his danzantes,” and “died” in a place called Uta Kalla (Divided House), on the outskirts of Yocalla in Potosí, known for its salt mines: So died Tata Quri. He went from here, his replacement, that one. For example, even we ourselves have our spirit (animu), well it was the same with him, it was his “shadow soul” (ch’iwu) that went there. That’s what went. I don’t know if he died exactly, but it was there. It’s a place where the water comes out of a rock. We went once to see it with my father. It’s not exactly in Yuqalla pueblo, but in Uta Kalla. It’s further in than Yuqalla. Even further below they celebrate the fiesta of Espíritu (Pentecost). That’s where we went. And going on from there, by foot, we arrived at the place where Tata Quri had died. Or so they say.

Note that Don Alberto added some points to the original tale by Don Franco, clarifying that Tata Quri appeared first in the place called Paqu Luma (Tan Hill), on the descent from the peak of Mount Phiriphiri, that he appeared in the dry season, hence the date for his fiesta, at Cruz in May, and hence his name of Santa Wila Kurus Awksa, “Our Father, the True and Saintly Cross.”

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The Role of the Danzantes at the Feast of the Holy Cross Another commentary about Tata Quri that we heard during the first months of our stay in Qaqachaka was the fact that the persons selected to dance the danzantes had to do this during their whole lifetimes. Then, when those persons died, “they were buried with the face and body turned down towards the earth below.” We could not corroborate this tale in the following months there. For his part, Don Enrique Espejo too recorded the origins of the clothes worn by Tata Quri’s danzantes (graphic 13), as well as details about the small flute (pinkillu) made of a condor wingbone, played by one of the danzantes (­figure 12). And like Don Alberto, Don Enrique had heard about the death of one of Tata Quri’s aspects: Now Tata Quri is also from the time before. (The clothes worn by) Tata Quri’s danzantes came from Maragua, which is far away. It’s near, mm … Jukhuri, it’s on that side. Tata Quri’s danzantes’ clothes come from Maragua. Now they say that the Tata Quri that is a cross came from Quntumir Q’awa, from along that river. The grandfathers of the past, with all their effort, made it become seated here. They say it went off at each moment. Do you two know the large cavern in Taqawa (called “Tata Quri’s wardrobe”)? Well, they took it out of that hole … Now the danzantes’ clothes that have wings, that’s what came from Maragua.4

And so Tata Quri … they say that god appeared when the church already existed. And the tatalas had wanted to bring him down with panpipes or julajula, but he hadn’t wanted to; he didn’t like it. Not with music either, nor with duct flutes, nothing … And so they just brought him down. First they went with panpipes, but Tata Quri went off again. They’d found him in Yanamani. And from Yanamani they’d brought him down again to the place called Ch’api Ch’api Luma. You always drink for that. They say, “Let’s remember to make libations with beer … (K’usayañ amsta).” But they say that Tata Quri really didn’t like it, not with the panpipes, nothing. He always wanted to escape. Then, on another occasion, they agreed again (on a new way) …

“And now with what?,” they asked, and they went to Maragua and brought the danzantes’ costumes from there, from Maragua. Then they passed by Q’illu Q’asa, Macha Thakhisa, then Jayuma, K’ara Uma, Qaymi Pallqa, Wayllara, Wari Sipita, until Wila Qullu, the grandfathers came like that, making libations. Then to Janq’u Q’asa and then they arrived at the place for making libations (called ch’isiraya) and they finally entered here. You drink (the whole sequence) properly, saying “For this, for that.”

“Well, can we make him accept it now, this time with the danzante, having gone all that way?,” they asked. They even sacrificed a sheep. How can we make him accept? Because he (the danzante) is devilish (supaya), he’s part of the devil (yawlu parti). Probably that’s why he accepted (the danzante). And they got dressed (in those clothes), and were drinking here along the river, and they’d gone crazy with the booze. They’d gone to dance along the river as danzantes,

4 Don Enrique Espejo informed us that in Maragua they celebrate the danzantes at the feast of Rosario, and that the Jallq’as from the pueblo of Ravelo, located in the valleys (likina), and the Tarabuqueños too dance on this occasion. The Qaqachakas simply imitate other versions of this dance. He also described how he’d heard there were danzantes “in each street.” But when he went there personally to rent out the costumes for the danzantes in Qaqachaka, he found it wasn’t true, or if it was, “they were well guarded within the shops!”

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Tata Quri, “Father Gold”

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Graphic 13. One of the ancient routes along which the clothes of Tata Quri’s danzantes were taken.

Figure 12. One of Tata Quri’s danzantes plays the small flute made of a condor’s wing-​bone.

200 The Saints Appear but there was no drum. And then, however they did it, they’d obtained a drum. Manuel Choque, that grandfather, he had a drum.

Then they got hold of a flute (pinkillu), “Ch’us, ch’us, ch’us, ch’us … tiñ, tiñ, tiñ, tiñ …” And similarly with this chhullu chhullu flute, they’d made him accept it, with that instrument. The flute is made from a condor’s wing. Right now there are a few around. They have three finger holes.

And yes, of course, they say that Tata Quri went to Yuqalla in Potosí to die. Now the Tatal Quri who is here is his replacement, it’s instead of him, on his own account. They made this one specially to pass the feast with. They say the other one went to Yuqalla. He went to Yuqalla. That one is Tata Quri … This one is “Patrona,” they say. The replacement for Patrón would be in Potosí. He died in Yuqalla. He died there in Yuqalla. And still they continue drinking, “Grandmother and grandfather of Potosí,” they say, to wherever the god came to. They never forget which church he came out of, how he came, who brought him.

Don Enrique Espejo added that danzantes’ clothes were made from a patchwork of red, green and yellow, the “colours of the devilish part, like the god himself.” The danzantes’ wings are “like butterflies” (­figures  13a and b). The sponsors of the feast

(a)

(b)

Figure 13a. and b. One of Tata Quri’s danzantes, with its wings “like butterflies.”

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even name these wings in their songs at the Fiesta de la Cruz as “butterflies of white gold, butterflies of yellow gold” (quri pilpintu, chuqi pilpintu). Although Don Enrique expressed a certain cynicism about the ayllu gods made of “nothing more that plaster, and with their long costumes,” like Don Alberto he had served once as the dance master of Tata Quri and so knew something about the dance origins: The dance master used to go to Maragua, to Siwar Q’asa. It was far away. They went by donkey travelling for three days, and Maragua is further still, so you went for four or five days altogether. Now they just address these places with their drinking cups, in the toasts, “Marawataki, Siwar Q’asataki”: “For Maragua, for the Crevice of Barley,” they say, and they drink for the pathways. In the last days of the fiesta’s farewell (kacharapaya) they say “Let’s dispatch them now, for Siwar Q’asa,” and they drink, naming all the other resting places from there to here, until they reach the place for making libations at the entrance (to the pueblo). It used to be a huge fiesta before, with many feast sponsors and a lot of booze. They even had fierce fights (nuwasi). Now it’s all lost. Now they make the clothes here. Now each sojourn of Tata Quri counts with a complete outfit of all the clothes. There’s an outfit in Tarpata, up above here, and another in Jalaqiri, in Qarach Qullana, above Qañawi. It’s only a small patio up above here. Then there’s another set of outfits in Kinsa Cruz, in Kulchutana. Then there’s another down below, by way of the river. Because you gain money from this, from renting out the clothes. That’s why they do this now. Mm … however much do they rent them out for?

To return the outfit, you have to take a leg of llama (qarwa chara) and a litre of spirits, 40 percent proof. The feast sponsor has to return them in this way. The dance master is the one who has to hand it over. He gives it to the mayordomo Marka, and the Marka is the person obliged to return them. You always have to save a leg of llama, because you always have to rent the outfits. They must rent them out for money nowadays. A lot of times you lose those ankle bells, and then the sponsor has to go to look for others, from wheresoever. From some flea market of used clothes (thantha qhatu). You have to go to buy them. And when you return you have to toast the owner, “For the ankle sleigh bells, for the flute, for the drum, for his wings, and so on.” You have to drink all night long, for everything. This is because the clothes are so worn out now.

Now with the saint-​god Tata Quri and his danzantes present in the annex, the next step was to build the church.

Chapter 10

THE CONSTRUCTION OF QAQACHAKA’S CHURCH

They’d taken possession of the place by giving three turns (on the ground), this to take possession of the territory.

Don Franco Quispe, from the hamlet of Qañawi

Let us return to the main thread of the second cycle of narratives by Don Franco

Quispe, in order to understand the subsequent events in the history and hagiography of Qaqachaka in terms of the colonial juridical dispositions that the ancestors of the place were set on fulfilling. Don Franco continued this second cycle with an episode about the moment of founding the new pueblo de indios of Qaqachaka. Now with the miraculous saint-​god Tata Quri in their possession, the next step for the ancestors was to construct the church in the central plaza of the marka, in order to worship him inside there. Don Franco told us first about the ritual in which Juana Doña Ana of Qaqachaka, the widow of Lujano Choquecallati (whose leg arrived in Qaqachaka, still in the stirrup of the startled horse), together with the brother of the deceased, Fernando Choquecallati of Condo, take possession of the plot of land for the plaza and then the church. Don Franco narrated the most concise version of this event in the following way: Afterwards, Juana Doña Ana and Fernando Choquecallati, Lujano Choquecallati’s brother … well Fernando Choquecallati with the widowed woman constructed the church, but first of all by doing three turns on the earth (kins walakisiñ pirqatawi). They’d possessed it in this way.

First they measured out the plaza and only then did they measure out the church. They’d made the four corner altars where they used to light candles, which no longer exist. They’d finished it on a Tuesday. Then they’d said “Now we’ve made the church,” saying.

We can immediately note certain features in common between various rites, those here of taking possession of the plaza of Qaqachaka marka, then the plot of land for the church, and those rites described by Don Franco in a previous section about taking possession of the territory of the whole annex. Basically, each of these rites deals with the acts of the founding ancestors of doing three turns, by rolling over on their bodies on the earth, as a way of taking possession of it. As in Doña Bernaldita’s tales of the origins of the red place from which the whole annex emerged, there are hints of a sexual act taking place in this foundational act. The owners of a piece of land still celebrate this ritual in the region until now when they take possession, and one might think that this ritual is authentically local. However, according to various historical sources, this ritual of taking possession was actually brought to the Andes by the Spanish, having been practiced in the very first act of disembarkation by Christopher Columbus and his captains when they jumped on to the land of the first Caribbean island (namely Guanahaní) that they reached in 1492 (Morales

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1955). In that very action, Columbus acted out his source of empowerment, set out in the juridical terms of the Capitulación granted by the Catholic monarchs, which supported the unobjectionable right to occupy lands evoked in a written royal “title” (Leinhard 1992, 26). Note that this particular act of taking possession was already made within the framework of the later evangelization of the “barbarous populations” of the place. From the perspective of Martin Leinhard (1992), this is the very first use in a practical performance of the “fetishism of writing” in the New World. It was evoked later on in the Requerimiento, another key document authorizing the conquest of all the lands of the Continent, from 1513 onwards, when appeal was made in its juridical genealogy to an even higher authority than the kings, namely the will of God as the maximum authority that could patronize this act of taking possession. The Requerimiento actually had Arab origins, being based originally on the notion of yihad as the “just war” against the infidels (Seed 1995). The importance of the Reconquest as the ecclesiastical background to such acts cannot be overly exaggerated. The Reconquest is generally known as the expulsion of the “Moors” from Spain. But its wider consequences were the re-​moulding of the political and religious structure of medieval Spain, and hence the form that colonial expansion assumed from the sixteenth century onwards, especially the tremendous power granted in this venture to Spanish Catholicism (Vilar [1947] 2008, 34 ff.).1 And although it is commonly known that Columbus’s arrival in the Caribbean islands was part of a search for the continent of Asia (for India and China in particular), it was in fact to provision himself with sufficient recruits from the Mongol leader, the Gran Khan, to be able to retake Jerusalem from the Arabs (Frankopan 2015, 200–​1). So like the rite of possession of the first lands of the New World by Columbus and company in 1492, the rite of possession of the lands of Qaqachaka’s church by the ancestors of the place foreshadowed the later process of Catholic evangelization of the population living in its territory. Even so, given Don Franco’s and other storytellers’ emphasis in their oral histories, with their basis in local collective memory, in part, certain aspects of this rite were appropriated by the comunarios themselves. At the very least, this emphasis asserts that the re-​appropriation of this rite by the colonial caciques of the period was a way of legitimizing, before the Spanish authorities, that which properly belonged to them with respect to the lands of the place, as well as any subsequent process of evangelization (Gareis 2008). Note again the mention in passing of the four altars in the plaza, which no longer exist, constructed of adobe cells containing llama-​like illas (the “breathing” stones denominated samiri), where formerly processions paused (at each posa) to light candles (cf. Van den Berg 2005, 189). These altars served in the past as resting places for the saint-​ gods in these processions around the plaza. However, these religious observances also acknowledge that heads used to be buried in these four corners of the plaza (although nowadays they use those of rams) in the ritual sites called iskina, and on feast days a staff of office (vara de mando) was placed in each corner, guarded by the respective “head” (p’iqi, the authority also called jilanqu) of a minor ayllu (Arnold and Hastorf 2008, 127). 1 Thanks to Hugo Montes for drawing my attention to this reference.

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The Construction of the Two Church Towers

In other versions of this founding narrative, Don Franco identifies Fernando Choquecallati, the brother of the deceased cacique, with the alternative name of Astete Fernando Taquimallco, which links him to the lineage of colonial caciques of the reduction town of Condocondo, and in certain historical periods with Qaqachaka itself. His new title, Taquimallco, “Lord of all,” seems to refer to his office of title-​bearer and empowered-​one, charged with defining the law and the supervision of all the territorial boundaries of the Qaqachaka annex. Even so, Don Franco comments how it was the whole ayllu that helped with the construction of the central church, especially the elders with pertinent posts in those times, and, he insists, with the help of the inhabitants of nearby Condo. The few lines of his following episode give more detail about the ritual of taking possession of the plot of land for the church, when the new owners had to turn over physically on the ground, in contact with the earth. It should not surprise us that the construction of the new church was completed on a Tuesday, considered a devilish day (saxra uru): This time Llanquepacha, Fernando (Jirantus) Taquimallco, and Juana Doña Ana took possession of the plaza and then they’d taken possession of the altars [sited in the four corners]. First the altars where they lit candles were measured out, then they measured out the church. They’d taken possession of the place by doing three turns, to take possession of the territory. And they’d made the church stand up in this way.

By doing this (same act), those of Condo and of Q’athawi Qullu also constructed the church. All the Condeños helped. They constructed the church in this way, and Tata Quri was there. They’d finished the work on a Tuesday; then they concluded “Now we’ve finished.” So then they celebrated with a fiesta. But afterwards they asked themselves “Well, what shall we do now?”

In some conversations we held with Don Franco, he questioned the frequent tales told about how the church of Qaqachaka had been constructed by the Laymis and the Pukuwatas, arguing instead, as he does here, that it had been constructed by the whole ayllu (ayllu intiru) of Qaqachaka, but with the help of the people of Condo, given that there were so few people in Qaqachaka itself. He described how the Condeños arrived from the hamlets of Q’athawi Qullu, Janq’u Niñu and P’isaq Tapa to help with the construction. As in other tales, Don Franco stressed the importance of the colonial service as mitayos by the inhabitants of the annex. This time the service was as postilions in the postal tambo, called by the comunarios wusta, from the Spanish posta, but in an additional play of words with bosta, meaning “dung,” which filled the mule pens to overflowing. In fact there were sufficient mules to bring the church bells from the copper-​mining centre of Corocoro (in Pacajes, La Paz), together with additional labour for constructing the church towers. Don Franco also related how a builder skilled in working stone arrived from the neighbouring ayllu of Macha to help construct the ecclesial towers. However, he had hardly finished the work when he fell from the top of one of these towers, and was buried there on the spot. This part of the tale insinuates that, during the construction,

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the locals had practiced the custom (called kuchu) of burying a human sacrifice in the new foundations, in order to make the two towers stand upright, against any odds: This time the pusta (as they called the postal tambo) had mules, the pusta in Livichuco. They brought eight tower timbers and seven bells loaded (on the mules), from Corocoro … I don’t know where it is. It’s not that a tower “belonged” to someone. Those from Condo made the church stand up. Perhaps they (the Laymis and the Pukuwatas) helped them a little. But it was really those of Qaqachaka-​Condo … we were “minor Condo” (jisk’a Quntu) and now we are Qaqachaka.

Later, they’d suggested between the mitayos and the others, “Let’s build the tower.” And that one from Irunsata, Lujano Choque, that one had asked “Well. Where can we find a builder?” And someone replied “There might be a builder in Macha.” There’d been a certain Caysina in Qallampani, in that rancho. Those ones. There’s still one of them now, Domingo Caysina, he’s living there still. Afterwards he was considered legitimately from here. We paid him, we begged him. “Let’s collect a quota,” they suggested, and we paid him with that. “Let’s build the tower,” we said to him.

So they constructed the tower. But, just as he was finishing the work, old grandfather Caysina fell down from the very top, and he died there on the spot. After then, Choque paid for (Caysina’s) place called Millun K’uchu (Saltpetre Corner), that’s why his land is so extensive now. “Oh that Caysina could live here, then he’d be a Qaqachaka,” they thought. That’s why there are Caysinas here now. But he was originally from Macha.

In his following commentaries, Don Franco told us how they had brought the straw for Qaqachaka’s church roof from Qhusmi Q’awa, along River Chiruchiru, and further upstream, from Patxa Sinqa and Pukara. However, the roof timbers were taken from Condo, supposedly with the approval of the priest, as they also took the carriage that served as a coffin carrier to take cadavers to the cemetery, “although now it’s broken.” The largest church bell (jach’a kampana) was brought to the church via the hamlet of Uwis Uyu (by a certain Roque or Alfonso), and the small bell (jisk’a kampana) via Qunchiri, this time by a certain Colque. Don Franco explained that the bell of the present school in the pueblo actually came from the large church tower, “where they left nothing more than a gaping hole.” Now that bell belongs to the Yana family of Taqawa hamlet. In the 1980s, the church’s longstanding straw roof was replaced finally with sheets of corrugated aluminium (with the enthusiasm in those years for anything modern) and the plaza itself dominated by a massive sculpture of tin sheets in the form of a war helmet (montera), fashioned by a local NGO to commemorate the warrior spirit of the Qaqachakas (­figure 14).

The Construction of the Cemetery

Don Franco passed on to another tale about the construction of the cemetery, in the 1920s. He explained how the dead used to be buried opposite the church portal, to both sides of the building. However, the very first grandfathers (awkis), as the leaders and headmen (p’iqinaka) of the place, were more privileged, and buried inside the church; the skulls of some of these ancestors are still handled before a mass, or in rituals where

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Figure 14. The plaza of Qaqachaka in the 1990s, with the colonial church of Santa Vera Cruz and its two towers in the background.

they are all-​powerful. Two such ancestral crania are guarded in a niche just inside the church: The dead were buried outside the door of the church, there to both sides. But the first grandfathers, the leaders and great headmen of the place, were buried inside the church. They are there. As you enter the church, there are Tiburcio Quispe and Martinita Choque. She’s inside the church door too. She is his wife. They say they are the “great people” of the place. Some say that it was Laymi and Pukuwata who’d constructed the church, but it’s not so. We from Qaqachaka and from Condo are as one.

Well, given that the dead were buried there, clearly in the fiestas they emitted a foul smell, and there were bumps all across the ground. So when Víctor Sánchez was the tata kura, he ordered them to make a cemetery elsewhere. “Make it here,” he announced and he made the people take over another place, way over there.

I don’t remember who the alcalde was (at the time). The jilanqu from ayllu Kinsa Cruz was from Pampajasi and his surname was Mamanillo. I  don’t know if it was Mariano, but in any case he was a Mamanillo. From ayllu Qallapa there was Jalanuqa, he was also jilanqu. From ayllu Qawalli there was Manuel Choque, and from ayllu Araya there was Honorato Bautista. From ayllu Sullkayana it was Cristóbal Quispe. It was those (people) who’d made the cemetery.

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Don Severo’s Commentaries About Qaqachaka’s Ecclesial Constructions Don Severo Antachoque, Don Franco Quispe’s son-​in-​law, complemented his father-​ in-​law’s descriptions with other details concerning the origins of some of the ritual practices directed towards the church, the saints in its dark interior, and its two towers. His account helps us perceive with even greater clarity how the construction of the church, with the other associated ecclesiastical elements, was directed towards fulfilling colonial demands and, by this means, of achieving Qaqachaka’s recognition as a pueblo de indios. In practice, as Don Severo reveals, the comunarios of the place simply replicated the organization of their own former Andean ritual spaces, but now under the Spanish gaze. These continuities in their own practices were to serve as the ceremonial basis of the nascent Andean Christianity in the region. In this new configuration of ceremonial space, the church itself served primarily as a massive chullpa (or chullperío) that harboured in the darkness of its interior the saint-​ gods, now transformed into chullpas, waiting to see the new sunrise through the oriental window of the nave. Throughout his account, Don Severo refers to the church’s “alminar” as the original burial place for Qaqachaka’s first ancestors, those who had been buried to each side of the church portal, at the foot of the new towers. “Alminar” is yet another Arab word, which designated the minaret of a mosque where the names of Allah were recited and from where the faithful were called to prayer. As in the Andean reworking of Christian meanings during the early Colony, the Islamic alminar had already been transformed, with the Spanish Reconquest, into the bell-​tower of Catholic churches. In its stance as a massive chullpa, the church is considered a protective wrapping for the community, whether for the ancestral saints sheltered in its interior, the religious activities celebrated there, or the processions that depart from thence. In these instances it is a predominantly feminine force. That fact that the church still shelters the crania of Qaqachaka’s most important ancestors, in places easy of access, is convenient for whatever rite that invokes their powers, such as those to supplicate rains or detain excessive ones (cf. Arnold and Hastorf 2008, 157–​61). By contrast, the two church towers, through their greater scale and height, replicate the tutelary guardian mountains, or uywiri, of the marka, which protect the humans, animals, and plants under their domain, as a more masculine force (cf. Platt 1978b, 1091; Van den Berg 2005, 188–​89). At the foot of one of the two towers is a ritual site which receives periodic offerings of sacrificed animals and other ingredients. As in the “mountain chests” located on top of the guardian mountains, similar sacrifices are rendered there (Arnold and Hastorf 2008, 73–​74). And as in the case of the mountain chests, rites to this ecclesial chest, in which the sacrificial offerings likewise decompose gradually, are directed towards guaranteeing the continuity of the cycles of rain, and so of life itself. However, in this case, the rains are associated with the goddesses charged with the circulation of the waters of the place, namely Mamita Candelaria and her two daughters, the Mamitas Kapitana and Ch’uri), housed inside the church. Faced with the inconvenience of having an ever increasing number of burials in the colonial churchyard, and an inordinate number of rituals directed towards the deceased

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practiced there, the ecclesiastical authorities sanctioned the cemetery with its pantheon as the new site for comunario burials. Its scheme of organization replicates Qaqachaka’s territory as a whole, with spatial divisions for receiving the deceased of each of the six minor ayllus of the annex. And we learn shortly that the cemetery serves as the iskina shrine counterpart to an uywiri guardian mountain. The Construction of the Church and Cemetery, According to Don Severo

As Don Severo’s accounts unfold, concerning the urgency of these new constructions in the main pueblo, and some of the ritual practices associated with them, he provides us with certain clues to the earlier pre-​Hispanic practices that might have taken place in the chullpas of the region. First the church and cemetery: Now, I’ll speak about the Time Before. I don’t know how the grandfathers actually built the church, the ones from the six ayllus: Kinsa Cruz, Sullkayana, Arriba, 2 Jujchu, 1 Jujchu, and ayllu Qallapa … all of them, in ancient times. They had all thought about the construction of the church, then they all constructed the church.

The cemetery was there (before), within the tower (alminar), the cemetery was there, and so was the pantheon with the dead souls of the past. They say it used to frighten people a lot. There didn’t used to be the pantheon of now. The six ayllus built it there (in the church). They say that the one who decided all of this, that soul was Pedro Colque. He decided this, as headman. After, he grew old there, and his sons said he was a good thinker (wali p’iqi). His sons buried him as the very first one in the church. They say he was highly respected. He is buried there until now.

Bringing The Timbers for the Church Roof and the Stocks for the Criminals Don Severo, too, explained how they brought the roof timbers for the church and the wooden stocks for the criminals from Condocondo, the doctrinal capital and principal reduction town of the Asanaques. Again he alludes to fulfilling the pertinent colonial ordenanzas for the successful development of a pueblo de indios, by way of accomplishing the norms of justice, supervised by the corregidor, with the threat of prison and the stocks to punish any criminals, or at least dissuade them from doing wrong: They say that Don Pedro Colque, the one who brought brought the timbers for the church ... How many did he bring? Well, he brought the roof timbers first.

Asanaque and Condo were just one before, and in the past there was just one parish with one single priest. Those ones brought the timber from Condo. And they say that this headman, the principal person who brought the timbers, had blood running down one shoulder. They say he was badly injured. They wrapped a saddlecloth around it, and sewed a small pillow around it too, they say. Uw!, he suffered so much! Because in the past the timbers were huge! Later they fitted much smaller timbers up there, for the corrugated aluminium. But, long before, the roof was of straw and under the straw were these huge timbers. After that, there was a wooden stocks for pinioning the feet, and folks were commenting, “for the prison, for the thieves …” It had keys. In the past the guilty one was sat there with a wooden apparatus where they put their feet. It was like that. That wooden apparatus

210 The Saints Appear had a hole where you put the key. They put the guilty person there until they admitted the crime. It was made up of two pieces of wood so that the feet were separated and then encased by those two pieces of wood. They say they’d be ready to scream out (with frustration). They tied them there with the strong cord from a food sack. And there was a piece of iron below the knee, again fastened to the pieces of wood. This was in the time before. They’d position all of this apparatus in place and make him (the criminal) talk while he was squatting there. The stocks for punishing the criminals were still there right up until we put corrugated metal on the roof. We had to remove them to lay the corrugated metal there. The authorities of that period know … Now, there’s the prison, and there are soldiers and corregidores. Now they alone make the guilty one speak (about their crimes). But it wasn’t so before. Before it was much more severe for the guilty ones. It was that Pedro Colque who decided to do all that. He was a real man. He was from Ch’alla Kunka. Afterwards he had children, and they too lived in Ch’alla Kunka. Now, his children (are gone), and only the grandchildren survive. They say that Pedro Colque used to have the knack of how to agree with others. A certain Choque from here, Don Alberto’s grandfather, is the other one (who did this). They say these were the ones who’d agree to these things. They say that they’d brought all the elements, even though it was a real pain. So saying, they’d prepared the papers.

What year would it have been? Well … they agreed from each ayllu. Until now they toast all of these things, really thoroughly, in the changes (turka) of the authorities. In the church they say, “For the folks who founded the place, for the person who decided things.” They are toasting them that way until now. I’ve served as mayordomo here. You were both here when I did this. As mayordomos we continue drinking for these events. They decided to do it like that.

Mamala Turri, Tatala Turri, and the Ecclesiastical Ties to Condo

Don Severo continued by describing the construction of the two towers of the central church, together with their bells. He thought that the origin of the bells was in the doctrinal capital of Condo, “where the priest was, the registrar, and the corregidor” who watched over the everyday goings-​on in its annex of Qaqachaka, and where the Qaqachakas had to go to fulfil their various obligations during the colonial period. These included sending the troupe of dancers called foetuses to Condo at each fiesta of Niño (in reality the feast of the Circumcision of Christ), eight days after Christmas (Arnold 2007b, 212). In two episodes of this narrative, Don Severo puts special weight on the use of dressed stone, first in the construction of the church towers and then in the construction of the pantheon in the cemetery. This emphasis might reiterate the importance, in the Colony, of placing “three stones arranged in a triangle” to announce a place of religious cult, including the Triune cults of both Catholicism and of the Andes, as well as the mining wak’as, according to the commentaries by the Jesuits Ramos Gavilán and Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui in different historical moments (cited in Bouysse-​Cassagne 1998, 183). Afterwards the grandfathers constructed the tower. We were one with Condo before, and Challapata was also (with) Condo, true? Condo was over towards Huari, wasn’t it? Well,

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we were just one, one single parish with one single priest. One tata kura, and one single corregidor, with one single register book, just so. That’s how it was before. And they made an effort with this construction, altogether, all of them.

In the past, they travelled from here to the fiesta in Condo; at Niño (New Year). They went there to “grasp” the mass. I  used to be one of the foetus dancers, and I  used to watch the fiesta intently. My grandfather, my mother’s father, is of course Mariano Porco of Qhuchini. I  was a kid of eight or ten years old, more or less, and I  went as a foetus before. We don’t forget the grandfathers of Condo. They would call our attention if we didn’t go to the feast. They used to lecture us, “I knew how to go, and I’d learn things in these situations.”

Subsequently they built the tower or alminar, of stone. They constructed the part, which is the arch, of stone. They’d built the stones up (on both side) and then they’d curved the stones around to form the arch. They’d constructed the arch in this way. They made it stand up. First they’d finished one church tower and then the other. Then they’d made the minaret at the very top (the alminar). There’s a dressed stone on top of the alminar. The grandfathers made this too. They’d made it, and they commented among themselves, “They’ll record us grandfathers for doing that.” They made it of course, “but over some time,” as they insisted. Of course, they’d had to dress the stones. There was also a dressed stone on top of the tower, but this has fallen down. There were three dressed stones. One in each of the towers, and one in the arch. One is on the alminar, another is on top of “mother tower” (mamala turri), and the other on top of “father tower” (tatala turri). That’s the one ringing the bell, that’s tatala turri, that’s the father, tatala, and over to this side is the mother, mamala (­figures 15, 16, and 17).

Figure 15. Tatala turri (above) and its stone arch to the right, with a troupe of julajula.

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Figure 16. Detail of the bells of tatala turri (below left).

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Figure 17. Mamala turri (below right), with its stone and adobe alminar.

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Bringing the Church Bells Although the act of bringing the church bells from Condo was a colonial obligation directed at evangelizing the local population, nevertheless it served as an authentically local form of communication for the people of Qaqachaka, through the distinct chimes as they rung out. Don Severo explained: Consequently they requested a bell from Condo, and they brought it from Condo marka, that’s to say Condo parish. I don’t know who they requested it from. Probably the priest who attended in Condo. A  certain Caysina brought them (the bells), Mariano Caysina from ayllu Jujchu 2. There are still Caysinas even now. They must be his grandchildren’s grandchildren. Even now one of the Caysinas is corregidor here. If we take that one, then it must be his grandfather who brought it. His grandfather was a great man (chacha jaqi), that’s why he brought it.

Uww, he brought seven bells in all, and the bells had names, “low tone,” “first,” “second,” “third,” “fourth,” “fifth,” and I don’t know what else. That’s what they say. Tatala turri has three bells. One of them is an equalizer, because it must equal the others in the music. Even now it rings out, “callang, callang.” One was at the top, at the top of tatala turri. Now it’s that one that’s sounding at twelve o’clock and in the recesses. It’s really clear. That’s the one.

Others are hanging in mamala turri too. It might be some four bells, because there were seven in all. But tatala turri has only two now. They say that mamala turri used to “cry out” in this way, too, it rang out really loudly, and you used to hear it from far away, from far away you’d hear it. The bells made you listen all the way from here to Ch’alla Q’asa (Crevice for Libations), in the place called Qarqari. It’s a narrow ravine that passes from one side of the mountain to the other. You’d hear it really well from there.

The grandfathers brought the bells. However, they didn’t toast them properly, only in parts, because they were so tired out. So then they just went off … Well, some six years afterwards, I don’t know if it was six or seven years. The bells were just left there. But one time a thunderbolt struck, “Q’ilin, q’ilin!” That one that sounds out “Q’aw q’aw.” Well that one damaged the bells and now they are totally out of tune. It struck mamala turri, the thunderbolt struck the very top of mamala turri, that q’aw q’aw siri. And the two bells were split apart and rendered out of tune. Even the iron is split up in them there. So now they are quite out of tune. It’s because of that, of course. Totally out of tune (luxt’u). If not, they’d ring “Callang callang” like tatala turri. It should be like that. That’s all there is to it.

The Construction of the Pantheon Finally, Don Severo described how the Qaqachaka grandfathers agreed to construct the  pantheon in the cemetery, away from the original church where they had buried the dead before. The distant etymology of the term “pantheon” refers to a temple to all the gods of a place, however its usage here refers generically to a funerary edification or mausoleum to house the dead. In the immediate narrative it refers even more explicitly to a storeroom in the cemetery where the tools belonging to the mayordomos, to prepare the tombs, are kept. The nexus between these distinct meanings of “pantheon” seems to derive from Roman religious practices, in which the spirits of the ancestors

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were considered “domestic gods.” In the Andes too, they are invoked in the cult to the ancestors, as if they were the gods of the ayllus and of the distinct family lineages within the ayllus. In Don Severo’s narrative about this, the most interesting points are the reference to a devilish Tuesday when they finished constructing the pantheon, and the sacrifice of a black sheep on the same day, to celebrate the event. Don Severo also refers constantly to the dead as a vital source of reference for the continuity of life in the place: In the past, the grandfathers agreed in this way, that the cemetery would be in the alminar of the church, isn’t it so? But they say it frightened the people too much, because they had to tread there, on the dead souls. They trod on them. That’s why the caciques of the place agreed. For example, Feliciano Alanoca had agreed from my own ayllu, and from Sullkayana there was Plasi Quispe. It was so before. And there was another alcalde-​mayordomo from down below, Feliciano Antachoque, from the rancho of Q’uwach’api. They’d agreed on a Tuesday and then they’d begun to construct the pantheon. On that day they’d eaten a black sheep. All of those who’d agreed ate a black sheep. “Now, this will be the pantheon. When we die, we’ll enter here.”

So saying, they’d all agreed on a Tuesday. And they’d put stones in three or four of the corners. And they’d made libations, so, and only then had they constructed the pantheon. They’d made it stand up with the help of the six minor ayllus.

Now the pantheons have increased in number. For example, there’s one in Livichuco. I don’t know all the places where they are now … There’s one in Kinsa Cruz and another in Parqu. There’s one in Q’uwach’api, in Ch’alla Kunka, in Uritaqa and one in Qhuchini. Taqawa is another. So there are now all different pantheons. It’s because they used to fight, that’s why they decided to make them like that. It was so.

Before there was just one pantheon. Now you can see just a wall with no roof, nothing more. That was prepared to guard the tools for the burials, with a shovel, pick, and crowbar for each of the six mayordomos. Six shovels, six pickaxes, and six crowbars. That’s how it was, to guard those things. Now there’s nothing to guard, and it’s just there with no roof. But that’s how they prepared the campo santo of the cemetery (simintiryu) originally.

Before, even the dead souls entered the church, with a ladder (el tumpulu) for the cadavers … The six ayllus entered the church, face to face. The candles were lit and the people cried. Now it’s directly to the pantheon, but it wasn’t so in the past. And when a little angel dies [referring to a small child, known as angelito], that one sleeps the night in the church; it sleeps there, mmm … it’s sleeping in the church. But not now, no, now it’s directly to the pantheon. Now the six ayllus have divided up the cemetery … and they each have boundary markers. This corner is Qallapa, then there’s Kinsa Cruz, Sullkayana, and then Arriba or Araya, and Jujchu 2 and Jujchu 1. The cemetery has turns in this way. They’ve divided the place up like this. “You, mayordomo, will be buried here,” they say.

Those Alanocas entered into agreement over this. They divided it up in this way. They divided it up like that, and now each one has to enter separately, and we are being buried like that.

216 The Saints Appear A Brief Epilogue

This “colonial” manner of organizing Qaqachaka marka with its plaza, its church with its two bell towers, and its pantheon, continued during centuries, with changes to these religious edifications only in the last few decades, with modern developments in the zone. There was just an attempt, a couple of generations ago, to update this pattern, influenced directly by the corregidor of the pueblo, in 1973, in the person of the policeman, constable Tomás Mejía, who had come from elsewhere. According to hearsay, the pueblo used to be nothing more than flat pieces of land, house patios, and animal pens. First Mejía sold off a number of plots of land and then made the people work hard dividing the pueblo into “lots” of a regular size, even around the house patios (canchones). But in spite of his ability to order the people about, Mejía was not all that organized as a person himself. Don Enrique Espejo commented how Mejía had a drinking companion called Casimiro Mamani, and how the two of them used to wander round the pueblo completely drunk. This custom of his did not go down well with his wife, and, from what they say, Mejía was killed when she fired two bullets at him, point blank. Even so, some comunarios, like Don Enrique, do admit that constable Mejía was good for the place “because he knew how to organize people and make them work.”

Chapter 11

TATA QURI WANTS A FAMILY

Tata Quri was all alone …

Don Alberto Choque, from Qaqachaka pueblo

The next juridical precondition to be fulfilled, so that a pueblo de indios like Qaqachaka could become transformed into a colonial cantón (in the medieval sense of this term as a “free city”), was that of accumulating enough Catholic saints in the central church to be able to celebrate a complete annual cycle of feasts. This juridical precondition frames the following narratives of Qaqachaka’s oral history, about the journeys of other saint-​gods to the pueblo de indios, to become grouped together in the new church in the principal plaza of the marka. Each one of this ensemble of saints is identified with certain ancestors and lineages of the place, as their own gods and ancestors in common, precisely in order to fulfil the demands of the colonial laws. Once the ancestors had united sufficient gods to represent all the minor ayllus of the annex, they set out to accommodate them all in the new church.

First his Wife, Mama Candelaria

Although these ancestors sought to fulfil the terms of the colonial dispositions, their reasoning did not derive from a subservient attitude. The very first priority for them was that Tata Quri, in his protecting role towards them as “Our Father” (Awksa), was alone, and in need of a wife. For Don Alberto Choque, the first option they considered was that of procuring other gods from the doctrinal capital of Condocondo, where they had already obtained materials for the church construction. The problem was that the priest there did not want to lose these other saints: Tata Quri was all alone … And the people inquired around asking among themselves, “We could make a god here or we could bring them from other pueblos.” Then they proposed an option, “First of all we could bring those from Condo marka.”

However, they say that the priest didn’t want to release them. “They’re mine,” said the priest. “If you want a god, then make one somewhere else,” he said. “Mine belong to others too. I can’t just give them away; the community could eat me,” they say the priest said. “I’ve helped you with material and all, that’s enough. In what concerns God, no, because those from Condo have also obtained these things with a great deal of effort. So, if I were to give them to you, the people here can eat me,” he said. “They could complain to the bishop or wherever. And I’d be left outside the church,” he went on. “So no, I can’t. It will have to be as you’ve all agreed,” he concluded.

So they reflected again among themselves, “Now this goddess is still missing. Wherever shall we bring her from?”

218 The Saints Appear

The second cycle of tales by Don Franco Quispe reveals how, in order to comply with these requirements, three ancestors of the Maraza family of Livichuco took it upon themselves to bring Mama Candelaria to Qaqachaka, as Tata Quri’s wife, from her place of origin in the church at Choquecära (or Choquecarita), located on the boundary with the neighbouring ayllu of Macha. Choquecära (with a vocal lengthening on the penultimate syllable) is the local way of pronouncing the toponym “Choquecayara,” the name of a site with a silver mine on the border between Macha and Condo, not far from the great mine of Colquechaca. This locality figures in Qaqachaka’s ecclesiastical history as the origin site of some of the local virgins, together with their ritual paraphernalia. Don Franco’s mention here of the three Maraza ancestors in search of a saint-​goddess reiterates his description of three Marazas transformed from tiny Inkas into humans as they descended into the ayllu from their own place of origin, on top of grandfather Mount Turu. Don Franco explained that Choquecära (or Choquecayara) was sited right on the limit Macha-​Condo, where these two ayllus had constructed a church together in the past. One of the walls and one side of the roof of this church belonged to each of these ayllus. When he told us his tale, another former annex of the doctrinal capital of Condo, K’ulta, continued to use the Choquecära church. The actual voyage of Mama Candelaria from Choquecära to Qaqachaka names her various resting places (samaña) on the way, in toponyms still invoked in the fiesta in her honour, at Candelaria (Candlemas) in early February. Don Franco narrates how the final resting place of Mama Candelaria, called Pampa Kurusa (Cross in the Pampa), was constructed as part of her encounter with her new husband Tata Quri, whose image had been taken out of the church in order to meet her there. Then the two gods proceeded as a couple towards the church and entered there together. As in his narratives about the origins of Qaqachaka’s territory and population, Don Franco differentiates between the saint-​gods of the immediate territory, as in the case of Tata Quri—​those that descended from the salient mountains of Qaqachaka itself—​and the other outsider saint-​gods, appropriated from other territories outside the limits of the annex. This distinction is part of the talk of the place, in which the Qaqachakas boast about their own “legitimate” (lijitimu) god, its patron saint Tata Quri, as compared to the gods they have stolen (suwata) from neighbouring ayllus. This distinction is an aspect of the established scheme in the whole region of differentiating between the original natives (originarios) of a place, tied more closely to the rites of the land, and the invaders who brought with them other kinds of rituals: “Well, we’ve built the church. Now let’s transform ourselves into a canton. So now let’s collect together our gods.”

In ancient times, Mama Candelaria belonged to the Machas, to the place called Choquecära [on its border]. In Choquecära there’s a church. One side of the wall belongs to Macha and the other wall belongs to Condo and Qaqachika. That’s to say the forking roof beams, the timbers and straw covering of one side belong to Condo and Qaqachika, and those of the other side belong to Macha. K’ulta, Condo, and Qaqachaka are one, because their common parish is Condo. In K’ulta they are still passing the fiesta until now, right there in Choquecära. Mama Candelaria was there. And the (three) Marazas of Kututu brought her from there, the middle Maraza being from Jalaqiri and the other one from Qachüyu. These three

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grandfathers brought the goddess, saint Candelaria. They brought her from Choquecära. They brought her from there to Qhispi Qayma and they’d slept a night there. What would it have been like? They must have made a watch … Then from there they brought her to Pawunilla and made her arrive there. Off again, they brought her then to T’ulüma …, no, to the cairn, the Anu Apachita (Dog Cairn). And from there, only then, they’d made her go up to T’ulüma and then on up to Qalapatiya and Wila Salla. They’d made her cross over the high hill, called Wila Salla, and they’d made her arrive at Pächata. Those three grandfathers made her arrive there. Well they commented among themselves, “There’s a church in Qaqachaka. Let’s carry her there,” they’d said. So they carried her to Yaqa Yaqiri, and they’d rested there. From there, they brought her to Ch’illkha K’ullk’u. And from there they carried her down to Qaqachaka, to a place called Pampa Kurusa, where the school is, right there. At that same moment, they took Tata Quri out (of the church) and brought him to the same place. And from there they placed them both back in the church, the two of them (payapacha), as if they were a couple.1 That’s why a cross was constructed in Pampa Kurusa. From there, they placed them in the church. Well, it happened so. And the two of them are there, with their boy-​child too.

Mamita Candelaria’s route of travel is sketched in graphic 14.

Graphic 14. Scheme of the route taken by Mamita Kanti Layra (Candelaria), from Choquecayara towards Qaqachaka pueblo.

1 Don Enrique gave us another sequence of the resting places on this route, which he had known personally from his travels in the region, given that he had never personally passed the fiesta of Candelaria. These toponyms are the following: “One is Kayñi Muqu. I don’t know if she came by the wide path or the other one lower down. Anyway, she came out in Wayllara, then she went to Jallq’a Wira Pampa, then she came out from there as if she’d come by the wide path. If she’d gone by the path lower down, then she went by way of Waylla Sipita. Then she arrived at Titaja and Ch’aqu Pampa, then it’s really near, so it’s the place called ch’isiraya.”

220 The Saints Appear

In Qaqachaka’s religious practices, Mama Candelaria is considered both the wife of Tata Quri and an Immaculate Virgin. With no hint of an inconsistency in this situation, this fundamental couple are considered to have given birth to their large family of children. The question arises: How might this situation have arisen, within the ecclesiastical norms of the colonial period, when these ideas emerged for the first time? There were probably multiple tendencies in play, including the transformation of the Andean gods (the Moon, the Earth) into the virgins of Catholicism. This nascent Marian cult is characteristic of the region as a whole, especially in the cases of the Virgins of Carmen, Rosario, Dolorosa, and the Immaculate Conception. Under ecclesiastical vigilance, there was evidently more liberty of cultic expression in relation to these Marian aspects than for the principal deities of the region. As the French historian Serge Gruzinski observes, there was a minimum of repression and coercion in relation to other aspects of the faith, and so more space for a complex articulation and overlapping of images and meanings (Gruzinski 1994, 152). The effort to substitute Candelaria in lieu of the former Andean gods counted with its own hagiographic genealogy. At an official level (with Inka influences), the origins of these transpositions begin with the Virgin of Copacabana as an ideal fusion between Christian and Andean images, in a symbol capable of harbouring a complex and multiple web of meanings (Gisbert 1980). Incipient models for these transformations were the image of the Virgin of Copacabana sculpted by Tito Yupanqui, in 1581, now as the Virgin of the Candelaria, which became miraculous shortly afterwards, in 1582 (Gutiérrez De Angelis 2010, 72), together with an entire South Andean corpus of iconography revitalized by the Inka elite (Pérez Gollán 1986). In the more popular practices, the Candelaria known in Latin America actually derived from her counterpart in the Canary Islands, and her place of origin in the Island of Tenerife, as the Morenita, patron saint of the Canarias. Her image had been brought originally to the Americas (to México) by Hernán Cortés, and then from Mesoamerica she journeyed south as a highly powerful Marian advocacy, arriving in the Cusco region at the beginning of the seventeenth century (Pintado 2012). Among the institutions in whose power these transformations gradually occurred were the confraternities, who had played an increasingly important role during the course of the seventeenth century. Images of this Virgin were also disseminated in the Andes through painters’ workshops, inspired in part by the iconography of the European gods of the Greco-​Latin world, and of Christian and Andean theology (for example in the school of Pérez de Holguín in Cusco) (Gilbert 1980, 266). There quickly emerged a regional demand to produce virgins for churches and chapels, and their counterparts in family devotions and popular retablos (Sánchez 2015). These saint-​gods were made of stucco on the outer surface, but in their interior was wood, maguey, and cactus, covered by a layer of potato pulp. Alber Quispe (2016) proposes that this hagiographic differentiation between Marian and other deities marking the cycles of fiesta-​cargos was to conform certain aspects of an “Andean Christianity” in the making. These fiesta-​cargo cycles were made up of the domestic feasts (fiestas de tabla), the devocional feasts (fiestas de devoción), the feast of blessing (fiestas de bendición) and the patronal fiestas. It was primarily the dates of the fiestas de tabla and the fiestas de devoción (those often dedicated to Marian advocacies)

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celebrated throughout the year, whose clearly differentiated distribution between the concentrated periods of fiestas and the periods of absence or few fiestas, that marked the seasonal rhythms of the underlying agricultural and pasturing year (Quispe 2017, 66–​88, 98–​109). Quispe asserts that the fiestas de tablas constituted a ritual cycle of much longer duration, characterized by pre-​Hispanic references. The fiesta of Candelaria in February marked the period of first sprouting of the crops sown, and hence its feminine connotation to do with the earth, associated in turn with the cult of the Virgin Mary that would equally express the earth’s fecundity. The fiestas de tabla were the most important symbolic spaces in the whole doctrinal cycle. In comparison, the fiestas de devoción were a set of more auxiliary celebrations, to complement the ritual calendar. And while the obligatory fiestas de tablas were contemplated in the ecclesiastical tariffs (aranceles), with an almost autonomous religious administration in the hands of the doctrinal priests (or the archbishoprics), the celebrations of the fiestas de devoción were instead subject to the “volition” of the faithful. In the case of the fiestas de tablas, their obligatory fulfilment determined their organizational format, whilst the fiestas de devoción were apparently subject to their election by the ayllus or even by individual election, with some exceptions (Quispe 2016, 96). For Quispe, the fiestas de tablas were “complemented” during the year by the Marian advocacies. In practice, the religious orders present in the zone, through their missions, must have influenced, through their programmes, the norms of application of evangelization and catechization. In the region of Condo, these programmes were dominated during the sixteenth century by the Augustinians, who also built churches and convents in urban centres, followed by the Franciscans, from 1606 onwards, and the Jesuits, from 1611. Later on, the Mercedarians and Dominicans arrived there (Arnold 2008a, 57–​58). With these influences, the geographical area dominated by the Cordillera Oriental would be renamed the Cordillera de los Frailes. A certain Don fray Gerónimo de Loayssa, lay preacher of God (laycacia de Dios) and of the Holy Seat in Rome (la Santa Sede de Roma) is mentioned in association with the name of Paria in 1555, and by 1576 there is mention of a programme building Augustinian monasteries based in the repartimiento of Paria and, associated with this, a trade in wine and oil.2 Around 1586 there were Augustinian monasteries in Callacollo and Capinota. Later documents mention the hospitals for the poor of Paria administered by the Franciscans. A document of 1624 now mentions the “doctrine” of Paria. In this struggle between religious orders for a greater impact in their programmes, Candelaria was the preferred saint among the Augustinians (Escobedo 1990). In addition, the Augustinians (as well as the Jesuits) specifically adopted a catechizing strategy directed at the use of local gods. In any case, the Colony must have been characterized by a period of alternative programmes of evangelization, catechizing, and construction, intercalated with the religious normativity in play, but where the key social actors were in fact the comunarios themselves, in places such as Qaqachaka. 2 CR 30, 1576, 69, 57.

222 The Saints Appear

Mama Kapitana and Mama Ch’uri Come to the Church in Ch’allüma Don Franco continued his second cycle of tales with narratives about the arrival of the other gods in Qaqachaka pueblo. He began these with a tale about the arrival of the two maiden goddesses, Mama Kapitana and Mama Ch’uri, who belong to the minor ayllu of Kinsa Cruz. This oral history presents a much more mythical bias than Don Franco’s earlier tale about Mama Candelaria. It also expresses a strong geographical sense. In the tale, the two virgins of Kinsa Cruz: Kapitana (from the Spanish “Capitán”) and Ch’uri (the “Lesser or Younger One”), were associated (at least in the year of its telling, 1989), with the upper and lower divisions (katu) of that ayllu, respectively. However, the tale evokes many aspects of a wider ritualized landscape around Qaqachaka. Mama Kapitana (like Mama Candelaria) came from the east, from Choquecarita on the boundary with ayllu Macha, whereas Mama Ch’uri came from the west, from Turuka Marka (Deer Pueblo), over to the side of Asanaque. The narrative implies that both saint-​goddesses were “purchased,” but from distinct places. Then it situates their first encounter in Lip’ichi Pampa (Leather Meadow, an immense plain of pastureland up above Livichuco), before telling of their descent from there together towards the place called Luluni, where they celebrated their first fiesta in common. Luluni is situated right on the border with Qaqachaka’s neighbouring ayllu of Jukumani, and the Jukumanis, perpetual rivals of the Qaqachakas, figure throughout the tale. Characteristically, Don Franco details the journey of the two goddesses by naming all their resting places from their sites of origin to their first encounter, and then in the later journey together in stages, until they arrive at the churches of Ch’allüma and Luluni for their respective feasts. This narrative scheme, which alternates between the journeys and the resting places, is a common trope in all the tales of the god’s travels before they arrive at Qaqachaka pueblo, providing the structuring of the “pathways of memory” in the series of toasts to commemorate these goddesses, at the feast of the Immaculate Conception in December each year. In his tale, Don Franco takes pains to describe the custom (which we hear in other sources) of how the Qaqachakas once shared the feast of the Mamitas Ch’uri and Kapitana with the Jukumanis, whereby each of these ayllus celebrated the feast in alternate years. The Jukumanis celebrated their fiesta in the small church of Luluni, just below the thermal waters of Junt’üma in Jukumani territory (which Inka Mariya had kicked away from Qaqachaka marka), whereas the Qaqachakas celebrated their own feast in the small chapel of Ch’allüma, on the river bank in the lower part of Kinsa Cruz.3 In these alternating feasts, the members of each ayllu visited their counterparts, to share with them food and alcohol. Don Franco remembers how, when the turn of the

3 According to Alberto Choque, the Ch’allüma chapel was originally nothing more than a straw hut (chuxlla), then located in the place called Wañuma (Dried Water) where the mass was celebrated.

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Qaqachakas came to celebrate the feast, they offered the Jukumanis the gift of an entire leg of llama (qarwa chara) in recognition of this honour: Mama Kapitana was from Jukumani. But Mama Ch’uri was from Asanaque. She’d been taken from Taruka Marka (Deer Pueblo) at the time of Llanquepacha … Grandfather Llanquepacha had taken her [Ch’uri was his saint].

Then Juana Choque [the wife of ancestor Choque], with uncle Arias, bought Mama Kapitana from Potosí, from over to that side, from Choquecarita, where there are mines and wheat flour in quantity. They’d gone with potatoes to sell. But there was nothing to buy with them, so they (the Jukumanis) gave them that goddess. Then they’d taken her from Qarachi Pampa (Scaly Pampa) to Llatunka Jaraña (Nine Untyings), then to … I can’t remember … and after to T’ula Jaraña (Untied Tola). They’d brought her all day long by llama.

The other one (Ch’uri), (they brought her) from Taruka Marka to Asanaque and from Asanaque to Laq’a Qullu (Earth Hill). Llanquepacha brought Mama Ch’uri from Asanaque in the same way. He took her from Taruka Marka, in Asanaque,4 by way of Japo, towards the side of Macha. And then from Asanaque to Laq’a Qullu. That’s where the two goddesses met each other. Then they took them both to Alpaqa Illa (Illa of Alpaca) and then on to Kiwuri (Dog Tooth), after to Waka Plaza (Cow Plaza) and then to Suni Utjaña (High Lands). Then they took them both to T’ula Mujuna (Mojón of Tola) and to Anu Warkuña (Hang a Dog). Then they carried them both down to Jarqa Q’awa (Blocked River) and on to Urqu Pata (Platform for the Males).

They’d only just built a church in Ch’allüma (Libating Water). The church had been constructed by Qaqachaka and Jukumani …, they’d constructed it in Ch’allüma. So now they passed the feast, they passed it there, because Ch’allüma is a place with flowing water. The river is called Uma Patxa Q’awa (River over the Water). The strong current even carries away the drunks, in the rainy season. Jukumani had constructed a church in Luluni, which is just a rancho. There, too, they made feasts. But they only went to hear the mass in Luluni [with the presence of the two goddesses]. Then they came back to Ch’allüma to celebrate the fiesta. The real fiesta was celebrated in Ch’allüma. The ruins of the church are still visible in Ch’allüma until now, but you can see only the walls (taqana).

Graphic 15 presents a scheme of the routes taken by the Mamitas Kapitana and Ch’uri. This tale elicits a series of commentaries and some questions. First, as in the case of Qaqachaka’s other gods and goddesses, Kapitana and Ch’uri are related to distinct families in the ayllu, mainly through the different ancestors who brought them to the pueblo. It seems that Mama Kapitana, whose episode opens the narrative, was handed over to the Qaqachakas in exchange for some potatoes in a moment of economic necessity in the local mining pueblo of Choquecayara, near Colquechaca, “where there are mines and wheat flour in quantity.” In comparison, they say that Mama Ch’uri was “bought for gold” from Asanaque, by the ancestor Llanquepacha, and that she is his goddess.5 These two 4 Don Enrique gives as the name of this place Tarqu Marka, saying that Ch’uri had performed a miracle there.

5 In other versions of this tale, Don Franco names a certain Morales as the person who brought Mama Ch’uri from Jukumani, and who recently reclaimed that this goddess was his, although he added that, ultimately, the two goddesses belonged to the ancestor Llanquepacha.

224 The Saints Appear Luluni Procession of the goddesses to the mass Lak’a Qullu Alpaq Illa Kiwuri Waka Plaza

Wañu Q’asa Kuntur Samaña

Suni Utjaña T’ula Mujuna Anu Warkuña

Kinsa Mujuna

Tula Jaraña

Jarqa Q’awa

Ch’allüma

The route according to Don Alberto Choque

Wila Taqana Qawall Qala

Qaqachaka marka

Llatunk Jaraña

Turuma Q’asa

Qarach Pampa Janq’u Qala

Japo Asanaque

The route according to doña Bernaldita Quispe

Chuqicayara

Taruka Marka

Mama Kapitana

Mama Ch’uri

Graphic 15. The routes taken by the Mamitas Ch’uri and Kapitana.

exchanges are possibly interrelated, given that tubers growing under the earth, such as potatoes, are associated with gold. Also I mentioned already that in other places in the Andes the figures of saints are actually finished with potato pulp.6 The origin of these goddesses in mining centres, combined with their relation to these underground tubers, gives an additional chthonic twist to the tales. The same tale of the two goddesses introduces many elements from the wider territory of the region. Their oral history deals with the former ecclesiastical ties to the neighbouring ayllu of Jukumani, in the North of Potosí, and hence to the Qharaqhara Federation, but also to that part of ayllu Macha (the mining site of Choquecayara) from where they had already brought Mama Candelaria, before they brought Mama Kapitana. The small pueblo of Choquecayara, with its silver mine, figures in the reorganization of the Qharaqhara Federation at the end of the sixteenth and beginnings of the seventeenth centuries, as one of its four parochial divisions, that of San Pedro de Macha.7 The second 6 Emma Sordo of the University of Miami, personal communication.

7 “San Pedro de Macha in the highlands, stretching from the mining town of Aullagas/​Colquechaca to the saltmines of Salinas, embracing the smaller silver mines of Titiri and Choquecayara with their refineries, and reaching up—​alongside the neighbouring and rival parish of San Juan Bautista de Pocoata —​to the high Puna borders of Oruro” (Platt 1987a, 175n9).

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parochial division, Santiago de Chayrapata to the east and towards Chuquisaca, included the mining settlements of Ocurí and Maragua. As we have seen, Maragua is another toponym that figures in many tales about the origins of the saint-​gods of Qaqachaka, notably those of Tata Quri’s danzantes. Qharaqhara’s third ecclesiastical division was San Marcos de Miraflores in the upper valleys where maize is cultivated; and the fourth was San Pedro de Uruy Carasi in the lower valleys. For her part, Mama Ch’uri, brought from Asanaque (from Taruka Marka), poses alternative ecclesiastical ties, this time to the Quillacas-​Asanaque Federation. These ties are confirmed by references to the ancestor Llanquepacha, who “bought” her, and consequently with the pueblo of Condo in the more recent history of the place. In the course of his tale, Don Franco interweaves the two threads of the distinct origins of Qaqachaka itself: from the east, from Potosí and the Qharaqhara Federation, and from the west, and the Quillacas-​Asanaque Federation. This indicates that the narrative is structured by topographic markers already conscious in the collective memory of the local population, which reproduce this geographical-​mnemonic scheme and direct it towards the future. This wider geographical context helps explain how Don Franco’s narrative introduces another feminine element into the local and global ties of Qaqachaka, through the flow of water. The two virgins are celebrated at the Feast of the Immaculate Conception in early December, in an event that combines the religious aspects of the Purest Conception of Our Lady (Purísima Concepción de Nuestra Señora) with the Expectation of Birth (Expectación del Parto). This date used to occur (before the dramatic climate change in the south-​central Andes of the last decade) at the very start of the heavy rains. This nexus between the two saint-​goddesses and water is reiterated once and again. The place name Ch’allüma (Libations of Water), from where the two goddesses journeyed together instead of alone, has many resonances for the Qaqachakas, with its ties to water, libation making, and enchantments (inkantu). Don Pedro Choque (Don Alberto’s son-​in-​ law) observed at one moment, “it clearly had the Señora,” and “there are always places of enchantment like this.” Unsurprisingly, at the Feast of Conception, the two virgins are invoked to request the rains, when the woman feast sponsor and her guests sing Uma Mark Siñura, “Señora of the pueblo’s waters.” If we combine the attributes of these two young virgin goddesses with those of Mama Candelaria, a wider ritual field emerges. Mama Candelaria, as the older virgin saint, is associated with the Moon and with sea water, considered the source of all the waters (including the rains), thought to be interconnected below the earth, and through the water cycling in the clouds (cf. Gose 2019). However, her two daughters (or sisters) are associated with more specific sources of water in the immediate locality (rivers, lakes, springs), those that bubble to the surface from within, or splash down from the mountains, to inundate and fertilize the earth (cf. Farfán 2002). Another nexus between the two saint-​goddesses and water is the fact that the mayordomos of the two divisions (katu) of the minor ayllu of Kinsa Cruz, called Kapitana and Ch’uri respectively, are responsible for the supply of holy water in the church throughout the year. The fiesta of the Immaculate Conception in December, coinciding with the heavy rains, is called “sprouting time” (alinuq timpu). When there is a serious

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shortage of rainwater at this time of year, then all kinds of rituals are carried out to encourage the rains to arrive in force (including that of “changing the waters,” uma turkaña, which we have described elsewhere) just before this feast (Arnold with Yapita 2006, chap. 8). One such rite is the procession of the two saint-​goddesses through the pueblo, in the morning, accompanied by the priest or tata-​cura (the “Inka-​cura” as they call him) on one of his visits there. For this ritual, the first act is that of “preparing the bier” to receive the saints, followed by making ready the bier bearers and cortege to conduct them through the pueblo. Then the two saint-​goddesses are taken down from their niches in the church to go in procession around the plaza, and, importantly, along the two principal rivers that join at Qaqachaka marka. It is worth recording that, in the case of the Inka mummies, the initial preparations of the bier were likewise prior to the entrance of the mummies into the plaza of Cusco, accompanied by the main priest, the capitán and the royal panakas (Alonso 1989, 115–​16). Another of the epithets of these two saints is Desaguadero Mamala, literally “the Mamala who empties or drains,” understood by the comunarios as the Mamala that “pees” the rains. This denomination, and the close association between the rites to these saint-​goddesses and a petition for rains, again impel us to compare these figures with the ancestral mummies. In the Inka rituals, the relation between the mummies was also fundamental, as was the division by the River Saphi of the great plaza of Cusco into two well-​differentiated sectors, which distinguished certain aspects of this rite (Alonso 1989, 116‒17 and 131; Cobo [1653] 1956, vol. 92, 73). The present day fiesta of the Immaculate Conception in December, in Qaqachaka, might in fact rescue some of those elements of the Inka feast of the Citua (or Sitwa), during the month of coyaraymi (the fiesta of the Coya in September). That celebration involved a ritual of expulsion of illnesses from the pueblo and the participation of the mummified bodies in a ritual bathing, under the charge of their families (Hernández Astete 2016, 18). Two further commentaries about the ties between these two goddesses and the waters of the place seem to confirm this conjecture. In one, the two virgins, Kapitana and Ch’uri, seem to embody elements of the watersheds of the two regions (to the east and the west), and their conjuncture at the confluence in the two main rivers (Large River or Jach’a Jawira from the east and River Chiruchiru from the west), right at the exit from Qaqachaka pueblo towards the north. In the hydrography of the wider region, Lake Poopó is linked to Lake Titicaca via River Desaguadero that serves as a “drain off” of water from the greater lake. This is clear in the periodic inundations of Lake Titicaca, when the water of Lake Poopó and its tributaries continue to rise for a long time after the subsiding of the waters in Lake Titicaca. The episodes about the two young virgins follow this regional flow of waters according to the cosmography of a wider hydrographic model, first in their independent journeys through the landscape, and then in their encounter in a site with strong associations with water, before arriving in Qaqachaka. Another commentary based on the attributes of the two virgins switches the nexus between the two saint-​goddesses, Kapitana and Ch’uri, to that occurring at a celestial level rather than an earthly one. Here, our attention is drawn to the celestial Great Mother

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(b)

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(c)

Figure 18a., b., and c. The procession of the saint-​goddesses Mama Candelaria (a. left), followed by Mama Kapitana (b. above centre) and Mama Ch’uri (c. above right), at the feast of the Immaculate Conception in December 1989.

Llama (Jach’a Tayka), a dark cloud constellation with this form, as observed against the bright stars of the Milky Way. The older women of Qaqachaka comment that this celestial phenomenon “comes down to the horizon” in the month of December to “give birth” to a new generation of young camelids in the ayllu. Hence the start of the heavy rains in the year is compared to the breaking of her amniotic waters before the birth itself. The epithet of the two goddesses as “the Mamala that discharges or drains” implies that this celestial phenomenon can also be understood as the unleashing of the “pee” of the celestial Mother Llama (Arnold and Yapita 1998a, 242–​43). The fiesta of Conception therefore deals with a complex fusion between the emergent Andean Christianity, related to the Marian notions of the Purest Conception and the Expectation of Birth, and the Andean practices of celebrating on the same date the “breaking of the waters” of the celestial Mother Llama, followed by the “birth” of the next generation of baby camelids (­figures 18a, b, and c). Both sets of ideas, the Marian and the Andean, coincide timewise at the beginning of December with the start of the heavy rains. Returning to the modality of exchange made to obtain the two goddesses in the first place, Don Alberto Choque narrated his version of their tale, which clarifies some of these details. Here, Mama Kapitana was bought from the Jukumanis at the church of Ch’allüma for the cost of a quintal (100 lbs) of wheat flour, whereas Mama Ch’uri was bought for her value in wheat flour, although in practice this was paid in kind with animals, a llama and a sheep. As in the version by Don Franco, Don Alberto reinforces the relation between each saint and the agricultural and pasturing year: Then someone exclaimed, “In Jukumani there’s a goddess,” saying. And they’d gone to Jukumani and bought her with a quintal of flour. So Kapitana and Ch’uri were bought from the Jukumanis. The goddess Kapitana cost a quintal of flour, they say. She was bought from the church of Ch’allüma for a quintal of flour, by Andrés Choque from Cóndor Phuju.

228 The Saints Appear That’s why Kapitana is the goddess of Kinsa Cruz, and (her feast is) passed in Conception (Kunsyuna). They are its goddesses, those ones. They were taken from the Ch’allüma church like that. Now the Ch’allüma church has no roof, and there are no longer any houses there, not the church either. Before then there was a good church and there used to be a great fiesta with flute music. They (the Jukumanis) fought with Qaqachaka, and Qaqachaka burned the place down. That’s so. Once the goddess had been taken out. Now there’s nothing. The Jukumani’s (place) had been burned up by then and they could no longer pass the feast. The Jukumanis had lost. So why should they spend money on booze and all the rest? Isn’t it so?

“What shall we do,” they asked among themselves. “Let’s sell this,” they agreed. “We shall no longer pass the feast, nor spend anything on it. So let’s sell her wheresoever, whether they pass her feast or not. It’s nothing to us, no … She could punish us too. That person who wants to take her, that person will be punished instead.” That’s why they sold that goddess. And then they (the Jukumanis) built a new church somewhere else. So Andrés Choque, having bought her with a quintal of flour, brought her back to his house. The community said “Let’s make a quota (rama) from all six minor ayllus, of what corresponds to each one of us. A half arroba (12.5 lbs), or if not fifteen pounds.” “Now if you make a quota,” he said, “I’ll put her in the church. But if you don’t do that, then I’ll take her home.”

So Andrés Choque purchased the Mamita and brought her to the church. And here the caciques made the dough, and weighed the flour and left it to rest. It was a quintal of wheat flour (tirij jak’u), flour for making bread. Now that one, Kapitana, is his goddess. Now she is “Our Mother” (Tayksa). Now we shall pass our fiesta, in a round or in turns … We have to pass (the fiesta) whether we are small ayllus or large ones. And we drink toasts recording the name of Andrés Choque …

Then Ch’uri … Ch’uri was taken away afterwards. First they took away Kapitan Señora and then Ch’uri Señora. They’d taken her afterwards. And now there are two of them. It was Gregorio Almendra, from Jamach’i Uma, from that ayllu. He’d bought her this time with a llama and a sheep. For the llama, they’d collected together chuño (freeze-​dried potatoes), a cuartilla or a half arroba of it … I’ve forgotten exactly [how much] … And for the sheep too. In that case, the [original] owner spent that amount of flour as well as the llama and the sheep. Collecting the amount together, he handed it over. And they just returned (the goddess) to him after that.

“Now, let’s put them in there [the church], the two of them. ‘Let’s guard them,’ they’d said. They were all of just one ayllu. And he [Don Gregorio] said finally ‘I’ve put them in the church, but you, why didn’t you put them in there? It was the force of my people that made me put them in there …” It was another matter to make the libations. They made a quota (rama) for the alcohol and all the rest.

Stealing the Two Mamitas from Jukumani

The next step in the tales of the two maiden goddesses occurs when the Qaqachakas decided to steal them from the Jukumanis, possess them both, and keep them in their own church. This time, the maiden goddesses had to be brought from Jukumani to the

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new colonial church in Qaqachaka’s main pueblo, to be able to initiate their own round of fiestas.8 Don Franco describes the circumstances of that theft, how the two goddesses with their retinue escaped cautiously from the church of Luluni (where they had gone to “hear” the mass), and of the imminent dangers when the Jukumanis put chase to the thieves. The tale ends when the two virgin saints were about to arrive at Qaqachaka marka (graphic 16 shows the actual escape route). Again, Tata Quri was taken down from his niche in the central church and taken to meet and accompany them safely back towards the recently constructed colonial building, with a view to sheltering them all there together.

Graphic 16. The escape route (in red) taken after the theft of the two virgins from the Jukumanis. 8 In Don Enrique Espejo’s version of the tale, there are two small statues of Mamita Kapitana in Luluni, and one of them did not want to be separated from the side of Ch’uri. This is why the Qaqachakas decided to bring the two goddesses to the pueblo together.

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The tale praises the bravura of the Qaqachakas in stealing the goddesses from under the very noses of the Jukumanis, their “eternal enemy clients or caseros.” Suwatapï, “Of course she was stolen,” Don Franco confirmed, as it was his own classificatory uncle, an ancestor of the Arias family, with his wife Juana, who stole the virgins by night from Luluni’s small church in Jukumani territory. While returning to Qaqachaka, these two people, together with the goddesses, were protected from the pursuing Jukumanis by an unexpected sound of lightning “Q’aw q’aw,” like loud firecrackers. Other versions tell how, as soon as the Jukumanis discovered their loss, they pursued the Qaqachakas to take their revenge. But, as they approached the boundary of Qaqachaka, a regiment of soldiers appeared to defend the annex, and the Jukumanis found themselves forced to retreat. According to the Qaqachakas, those soldiers were not real but “phantoms.” Reading between the lines in the last part of the tale, the Jukumanis burned Qaqachaka’s church in Ch’allüma in vengeance for the theft: Then the Qaqachakas wanted to unite all their gods in the church in Qaqachaka marka, so they decided to steal the two mamitas from Jukumani. They planned this [from Qaqachaka pueblo]. The grandfathers hatched the plot at night, “Now we’ve constructed the small church for Tata Quri. And now Mama Candelaria is there too. So now let’s go to bring Kapitan Mama and Ch’uri Mama.” In Jukumani there was a guard of people. It was Roque … who was it? I can’t remember the name. Anyway, in those times you used to address each other saying, “Ay, tatito …” And to reply the other one responded, “Ay, tatay.”

So, saying a mutual “Ay, tatito,” they’d gone in where the Mamita was, there in Luluni. There were several of them. And one of them appealed to the sentry, “Jilata, open the church for me. I’m going to watch over the Mama,” saying, because sometimes there are chastisements (that you have to pray for). Then the other person replied, “Go in then and do the watch. I’m going home to rest.”

Well, he made the watch, and the Jukumani went home to sleep. And while the sentry was sleeping, they schemed, “Let’s take [the goddess].” So they brought the goddess to Qaqachaka. It was via Pampajasi and then Q’araq’ara Luma, they took her out (of Jukumani) right there. Only then did the Jukumanis realize. “Where is she? She’s lost, dammit …” And they set off in pursuit. “Hell … we’ll take her back,” said those others. The Jukumanis came with axes, with clubs, and wearing helmets … But the Mamita … in fact there were two of them, Mama Kapitana and Mama Ch’uri … Because they’re saints, aren’t they? But for the eyes of the Jukumanis they were soldiers.

Anyway, ayllu Sullkayana went there with a dance [to collect them]. They went saying, “Well, let’s go to bring them with a dance.” And then … I don’t know where they met up … in the middle of the pathway. But for the eyes of the Jukumanis, they saw soldiers, many people all gathered together. And they’d (been able to) take them away just like this. Well, (they came) over more to this side where Ch’allüma is, then Parqu, and after Qarqari, and then they took them down to Chanchari [Qaqachaka’s huge cultivated plot in the main pampa]. And there they’d made a calvario. This is just opposite Qaqachaka.

Then they took Tata Quri out there. And they commented, “Let’s gather the saints all together here.” And they’d taken Tata Quri down to Urqu Pata to meet up with the two

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saints. Then (they proceeded) together from Urqu Pata to Pallqa Marka. And then on from Pallqa Marka. Only then did they bring them to the church. And they gathered together all the saints in this way, including the child-​gods. They came here with danzantes and the wayli dance. Then the grandfathers from Sullkayana discovered that wayli played with very long panpipes (suqusu). Sullkayana found this wayli. No-​one knows where from. And the grandfathers made something with firecrackers, “Q’aw q’aw.” And the Jukumanis who were following them said “Dammit, the santa isn’t here. Let’s leave them be.” They’d exploded just anything they had at hand. And so the people brought the Mamita here with the wayli and they left her here. Only at that moment did they bring the two mamitas to the church.

The phantom soldiers who defended the Qaqachakas from the Jukumanis are remembered at the fiesta of Concepción each year, when a couple of men carrying standards (yiyuna) and five men murmuring “Qhax qhax” like the sound of lightning (or of rifles) stand in as “soldiers” in honour of these two goddesses. They are called the “batallón” of Señora Kapitana (Kapitan Siñuran watallunpaw). From their characteristics, this military guard of honour in defence of the virgins has many of the attributes of Santiago as the God of Lightning, sometimes called “Capitán del Rayo.” However, in the context of this fiesta falling in December, these same characteristics are associated more closely with his feminine counterpart, Santa Bárbara (Santa Warawara), the saint of lightning and of the miraculous creative rebirth of the natural world as a consequence of the rains. Santa Bárbara is considered to be related to Mama Concepción. She is also linked particularly closely to the alpacas amongst the camelids. The fiesta of Santa Bárbara, patron saint of the neighbouring ayllu of K’ulta, is celebrated on December 4, close to the fiesta of Concepción, and equally at the start of the heavy rains. In Qaqachaka, because of this tie to lightning, Kapitana is associated with the yatiris of the place.9 So overall, the tale of the theft of Mamita Kapitana from the church of Luluni in Jukumani confirms other ties between the two saint-​goddesses, the rains and the regional waters. Is this tale of theft simply a myth or is it based, at least in part, in real events? Perhaps both. In practice, the continual re-​creation of this event at Concepción reinforces Qaqachaka’s two diverse histories: as part of Quillacas-​Asanaque on the one hand, and of Potosí, on the other, together with the water flows in both domains. As in the tale of Tata Quri, this narrative also makes a point of tracing the origins of the forms of dance and music played at the fiesta in honour of these two saints to give them pleasure. This happens at the last stage of the journey of the goddesses, when Qaqachaka’s minor ayllu, Sullkayana, discovered a kind of music played on long panpipes, to accompany their final grand entry into Qaqachaka pueblo.

9 Tomás Huanca also encounters an association between Santa Warawara and the Capitán of lightning in the discourse of a yatiri from Santiago de Huata in the lakeside region of La Paz (1989: 114–​15), where she is contrasted as the “little one” or “lesser one” (jisk’a) in relation to Tata Santiago as the “greater one” (jach’a).

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More About the two Mamitas, Kapitana and Ch’uri Many other comunarios of Qaqachaka told us their versions of the tale of the theft of the two mamitas from Jukumani. Don David Choque Arias has close kin in the Arias family, on his mother’s side. In his version of the tale he named the “grandfather Arias” (who figures just in passing in Don Franco’s version), as Paulito Arias, his own “grandfather” or generic predecessor, and stressed that the saint is a goddess of Arias family (Ariyas yusa). Paulito’s brother, Don Martín, who still lived in those years (around 1989), was the permanent guardian of Mama Kapitana’s standard, which never left the minor ayllu of Kinsa Cruz. Those standards (or “guides,” yiyuna) played a very important part in the rituals to the saint-​goddesses. They were possibly expressions of the colonial confraternities who cared for these saints in the past, and perhaps long before, of the Inka family lines (panaka) charged with the care of certain ancestral mummies. In descriptions from the colonial period (1692), these particular Inka characteristics are still valid (Cahill 2005, 4–​5, 7–​8). Don David also explained that Mama Kapitana’s lunar crown had been left accidentally in the church at Luluni, in Jukumani territory, and that the Jukumanis continued the custom of rendering cult to nothing more than the crown and the woven mantle of the lost goddess. The Jukumanis celebrate her fiesta at the same date as Concepción, on December 8, whereas the Qaqachakas celebrate their own fiesta on the octave (utt’awi), a week later (on December 15), so that they can coordinate better the date of the visit to Qaqachaka by the priest from Challapata (who has to attend the faithful in K’ulta, Condo, and there in Qaqachaka). One of the characteristics in these different versions of the tale of theft is that when the men tell it, they record a male ancestor of ayllu Kinsa Cruz as the key person who brought the two goddesses from Jukumani to Qaqachaka, whereas when a woman narrates the tale, they record a female ancestress, the grandmother Arias (awilita Ariasa), as the key person who stole the goddesses. This became clear when Doña Bernaldita Quispe Colque (BQC), from the hamlet of Qañawi, and her husband Don Crisóstomo Choque (CC), told us their own version of this tale. We also noted that each new narrative presents yet another shifting perspective about its contents, while completing emerging aspects about other facets of the tale. It is as if each family of Qaqachaka knew and recited only a part of a much greater whole, presenting only the details or the toponyms in the local landscape they knew better, so that it is only when we bring together all of these versions that we arrive at a much greater macro-​version of the travels of the goddesses in their totality. This phenomenon makes me recall the “songlines” of the distinct groups of aborigines in Australia, as described by Bruce Chatwin (1987), in which only a partial aspect of these regional mythic cycles are known and perceived by each group. These songs are sung in their totality only in the great periodic reunions when the clans of the whole region come together to celebrate this wider event. In her version, Doña Bernaldita insisted that Mama Kapitana came to Qaqachaka pueblo originally from Choquecarita (just like Mamita Candelaria), although she stressed that this place was located in Potosí valleys. She and her husband debated between themselves the precise order of the resting places (samaña) on the journey by the two

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goddesses, but with the additional toponyms she introduces here, we can develop an alternative sequence of place names (see again graphic 15). A new factor in her version is how Ch’allüma becomes a place with a sirena, or mermaid, which inspires the faithful followers of this goddess to compose wayñus, the songs of the rainy season: BQC. She

began from Choquecära, in Potosí, and then had her rest. From there she went to Janq’u Qala, to Wila Taqana, from boundary to boundary, she passed along the boundary of Pukuwata, by way of Pukuwata Loma. Then from Wila Taqana to Qawalli Qala. CC. She’d rested in Turuma Q’asa. And then she came to Qawall Qala, then to Wila Taqana and Kinsa Mujuna. BQC. Then to Waka Palasa (Cow Plaza) and after to Kuntur Samaña. Then she’d entered (Qaqachaka territory), but then returned to Jukumani (territory), to Wila Taqana. CC. But she’d gone down to Chhallüma Q’awa. (To Bernaldita) But end it properly! She was in Wañu Q’asa … BQC. Let me talk then! From Wila Taqana she’d gone to Chhallüma Q’awa. Then, passing by Chhallüma Q’awa, they’d put a wayñu together. In that time there were wayñus. But then, as you know, they used to get illnesses in those times, and so she’d gotten ill. “Ah, dammit, let’s carry out a vigil (wilt’asiñani).” Then the person who’d carried out the vigil came back. And from Wila Taqana they’d continued the journey with its rests. They’d come out after doing the vigil. And they’d entered (here, to the main pueblo) through the crevice in the rock (q’ajllu) [probably in Ch’alla Q’asa] playing wayñus. CC. Making wayñus. BQC. They’d gone up there, of course. CC. That’s why. It needed lots of people.

Now, with the arrival of the two saint-​goddesses, they Qaqachakas had completed their holy family with its distinct generations, all in the darkness of the Time of the Chullpas. Then finally the Sun came out, announcing the new Hispano-​Christian time: BQC. Afterwards, the Jukumanis pursued them, “Why did they come, those ones, damn

them. That person who was placing candles, damn them … We’ll kill them,” they’d said. “That one who was placing the candles took them. Let’s kill them,” saying, and they pursued them.

And that person who was placing the candles, likewise had come out. But they’d followed them from behind, they say, from behind Kapitana Señora and Ch’uri Señora.

Then the two goddesses came firing, “Q’aw, q’aw, q’aw q’aw.” And the other ones went back to Jukumani (and returned) with their rifles. They’d not thought to bring them, so they brought them.

Well (the goddesses) arrived here just like that. No-​one in particular had brought them. And the people of that epoch made the goddesses become settled down here, with incense and all. Then there was the Sun (inti). Otherwise there would have been no Sun.

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Doña Mauricia Mamani, who had passed the fiesta of Mama Ch’uri and had an excellent memory in those years, told the tale in yet another way. Her version confirms that of Doña Bernaldita, that Mama Ch’uri, like Mama Candelaria, came from Choquecayara in Macha, and Doña Mauricia named the precise route taken by the goddesses, with their resting places, in the whole trajectory from Macha to Qaqachaka. So this inconsistency about the origin of the goddesses also has its distinct groups of adherents. Interestingly, Doña Bernaldita concluded her own tale with a shrewd observation in the interpretations of these events. According to her, when the ayllu ancestors had finally brought the whole ensemble of saints to the central church in the plaza of Qaqachaka marka, “They made them be seated, with incense, with everything, and then the Sun appeared for the very first time.” Then she added, “They made them be seated as Chullpas.” For her, if the ancestors had not completed this ensemble, “the Sun would not have appeared.” With this clue, we discover the true identity of the saints in the church, as expressions, under the new socio-​Hispanic order announced by the birth of the Sun, of the former Chullpas, now seated “sleeping” in their niches in the eternal darkness of the colonial church-​chullperío, waiting for the new sunrise through the eastern window of the nave.

The Child-​Saints of Tata Quri and Mama Candelaria

Now to their children. Most comunarios from Qaqachaka agree that Tata Quri and Mama Candelaria had many children, as a consequence of their very fertile relationship. However, there was a certain debate about the precise identity of, and interrelations between the other members of their family. In this debate, there are three outstanding factors in play, which if we resort to the teachings of Catholic doctrine, also derive from the specific history of the place. The first factor deals with the symbolic ties concerning the degrees of kinship identified between the various saint-​gods. The second factor concerns the immaculate virginity of the goddess-​saints and what this implies in relation to their offspring. And the third factor, which is more exceptional, pertains to the possible relations of “spiritual kinship” or compadrazgo between the god-​saints, especially the idea that the parent-​gods were “godfather” (padrino) or “godmother” (madrina), respectively, and that the child-​saints were their “godchildren” (ahijados) instead of being their “children” (niños). This emphasis in spiritual kinship is applied exclusively to the child-​saints who originated from the reduction town of Condocondo, and therefore takes into account the nature of the ecclesiastical relationship between Qaqachaka, as an annex and pueblo de indios, and the doctrinal capital of Condo. To all accounts and purposes the direct daughters of the parent couple are Mama Kapitana and Mama Ch’uri, being themselves sultira (Sp. solteras, single women) or tunsila (Sp. doncellas, maidens). Thus, for Don Alberto Choque and many other comunarios, given their condition as virgins, these two goddesses do not have their own children, and Kapitana only has an “her friend,” an “adopted” or “reared child” (amigpa or munkatasita), who is Jurinuq Niñu, the Niño of Orinoca, a place on the other side of Lake Poopó. Because neither of these two goddesses has her own children, their other epithet

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is Wawa K’iru, “With Babies all Wrapped up,” a reference to the widespread idea that infertile women or female animals carry their babies “wrapped up” within the womb, instead of giving birth to them. This possibility that the two goddesses guard their children inside themselves instead of giving birth to them also impels some local people to consider these virgins as “diabolical” (saxrarana), and they have become the saints of the single women of the ayllu, those who have never married (quylluri). The goddesses too are considered palachu (young maidens), who have never known a man (tunsil palachu, jani kuna chachpin iñt’iti). Even so, another epithet for both goddesses is “Mamita of the Conception” (Mamita Kunsyuna) or “Conceived Mama” (Mama Concebida), with reference to their fiesta on December 8, with the start of the heavy rains, when they are both addressed as Uma Mark Siñura, “Señora of the Pueblo’s Waters.” Yet another epithet for both goddesses is Q’apha Siñura, “Dynamic Señora,” which refers to their being feisty, like their father Tata Quri. And because of their whimsical nature, Mama Kapitana is sometimes called K’ari Mala, again an epithet used on occasion for Tata Quri. However, as both goddesses have a special relationship with the natural world and with climate in particular, the name K’ari Mala alludes specifically to the reputation of Mama Kapitana for bringing, on occasion, hailstorms to the fields under cultivation. Similarly, her sister Mama Ch’uri (or Ch’uli) is sometimes called “Niña María,” and has the reputation of being “ugly” (ñaxu), as she has brought snow to the cultivated fields. By comparison, the mother of them both, Mama Kantilayra, is called Tipa til Llantu, “Tipa plant of weeping.” As a mother, she is thought to have “patience” (pasyinsya), whereas the two lesser goddesses, without the experience of having children, lack patience and quickly become annoyed. Another difference between the goddesses is that Mama Kantilayra, like her partner Tata Quri, is considered “rich” (qapaqa), whereas the two maidens, “as virgin goddesses,” are not. Some of these ideas apply to the male saints too. For Don Enrique Espejo, Tata Quri’s quality as “miraculous” signifies that he, too, has an “adopted” son (wajcha wawa), usually called just Wayna (Youth), but with his other epithets of Wayna Mila (Young Miguel) and Wilay Niñu, “Blood Child.” Apart from the debates about the immaculate character of the virgin goddesses, most comunarios acknowledge that the real children of Tata Quri and Mama Candelaria, as a couple, are the three child-​gods of the place, with their proper birth order. Jawiku (Javier), also called Qhusi Niñu, “Boy-​child with the Light-​coloured Eyes,” is considered the youngest child. The oldest child is Salwaku (Salvador), with his epithets of Q’ala Kay Salwaku, “Bare-​footed Salvador,” given that he treads on his bier “with bare feet,” or alternatively Niñu q’urawini, “Child with a sling,” as he carries a sling in one hand. And the middle child (taypi) is Inaku (Ignacio), sometimes called Saraqay Niñu, “Child who Descends, or becomes Detached.” The only girl-​child of the couple is Qarwiri Imilla, “Llama Herding Girl,” another maiden god also called “Copacabana” after the miraculous shrine of the Virgin of Copacabana on the shore of Lake Titicaca, a regional variant of the Divine Shepherdess. “Llama Herding Girl” is considered to be the “love child” (wajcha) of Mamita Candelaria, with whom she has a very close tie, the two being related as “Small Candelaria” (Jisk’a Kantilayra) to “Large Candelaria” (Jach’a Kantilayra). Another epithet of Llama Herding

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Girl is Tuwitinsay wutuna, “Painted Button,” in reference to her costume. They say that she brings good luck to the camelid and sheep herds in the annex and this goddess-​ saint is charged with “moving herself about” so that she can pasture these animals. The other two maiden goddesses, Kapitana and Ch’uri, just stay in the same place and “do not move.” The interest here in this ability to move about freely, as in the case of Tata Quri, is considered evidence for the people of the place of a certain kind of divinity with their own agency. Notwithstanding these general ideas among the comunarios, some, like Don Alberto Choque, dispute the genealogy of the gods as presented by Don Franco. Don Alberto himself considers that the virgins Kapitana and Ch’uri are in fact the “sisters” of Mama Candelaria, instead of being the daughters of Tata Quri and Candelaria: Tata Quri’s wife is Mama Candelaria and she has two sisters, Kapitana and Ch’uri. Then Qhusi Niñu is the child of Tata Quri and Mama Candelaria, and the other one, Jurinuq Niñu, is the adopted child (wajcha wawa) of Kapitana.

These alternative kinship relations occur in the songs to the gods, as well as in the ritual practices of the place, and I shall return to them later.

The Arrival of the Child-​Gods

In the sequence of tales by Don Franco, the arrival of Tata Quri and Mama Candelaria’s children-​god offspring marks the moment when the main ensemble of ayllu gods as a large extended family within the church of the main pueblo is completed (­figure 19). From that moment onwards, the whole annex of Qaqachaka could celebrate its gods collectively at the fiesta of Carnival. Even the Jukumanis would come there to celebrate these fiestas together with the Qaqachakas, once they had accepted that their own virgin goddess had been captured by their rivals, leaving just her replacement in the church at Luluni: So they gathered all the gods into the church, even the child-​gods including the one called Wayna Mila (Young Miguel) and there was Copacabana or Qarwiri (Llama Herding Girl) … They gathered all of them together. They were in prayer.

Then they said, “Well, we shall pass (the fiestas) fine here. We’ll make fine fiestas,” they said. “We’ll do it well here at Carnaval-​Anata. We’ll celebrate the church and the chapels. And we’ll celebrate these saints.” With the ensemble all complete, the whole annex of Qaqachaka was going to come together at Carnival. That’s why everyone gathers together at Carnival until now. And up till now, all of them sing wayñus at Carnival. We don’t forget that until now. It’s so. And the Jukumanis replied, “Well, you brought her here and only her replacement is back there. But we Jukumanis will continue to come here, with bread, with spiced chuño (ch’uñu wayk’itu), and boiled peas (alwirij mut’i). We’ll continue coming with all of this, loaded up with all of this, saying. You’ll eat this …” And Qaqachaka gave them things too, a fore leg and also a hind leg of llama. And so they, the Jukumanis, went off (to their own feast). And they prepared things and ate (their food) in Luluni. And they lived in this way. That’s that.

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Figure 19. One of the child-​saints is celebrated in the procession at the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.

Bringing Wayna Mila from the Pueblo of Condo Some of the child-​gods came from the church in Condo. Don Alberto told us how they brought the adopted son of Tata Quri, Wayna Mila, the Young Miguel, from there, some four generations previously, when the priest was distracted while celebrating the mass: They’d taken Wayna from Condo. They brought him while they were passing the fiesta. They were passing the fiesta and they had a mass. And Wayna was there, all forgotten. They say that they brought him here with a great deal of effort. That Manuelo (now they’ve killed him), well, that Manuelo, his grandfather is Manuel Caricampo, but it was his other grandfather, Sirio Caricampo, that grandfather who brought him from Condo, when they had a fiesta. He brought him when they were just passing the fiesta. They say that the priest didn’t notice. While he was repeating “Dios, Dios …” he’d forgotten to look. He goes into the mass for an instant, that’s all. He enters for a moment, and his worry is just about getting money, isn’t it so? And the priest had scolded the people, “You must have sold him, or you’ve taken him some place …”

And some-​one answered, “I wasn’t involved in this. You lot have the key … I just entered the church to celebrate the mass.”

That’s how it was. They brought him here in that way. He’s Arriba ayllu’s god (Alay yusa).

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However, as in the tales about the god-​saints, there are conflicting versions about the places of origin of the child-​gods, too. So for Doña Bernaldita Quispe Colque, the Niñu Wayna, considered as the son of Tata Quri, came from the city of Potosí (Putusi marka), although her husband, Don Crisóstomo, agreed with Don Franco how that particular Niñu had actually come from Choquecarita, as part of the Potosí region but not the city. In Don Franco’s own version of these tales, two of the child-​gods came from Condo, and the third from the place called Choquecayara: They say that the Niños came from Condo, although I  don’t know this tale very well. They say it was so. That El Salvador (Salwaku), also called the Bare-​footed Niño (Q’ara Kay Niñu), and Javier (Tuniku or Jawiku) came from Condo, both of them. One of them was from Quntu Jalsuri (Undulating Spring). However, the little one called the Niño from Orinoca (Jurinuq Niñu), the one Mama Candelaria carries in her arms, came from Choquecära. Now they say that the Niños belong to Mama Candelaria.

The Niños go out to a hamlet in the countryside (of Qaqachaka). The Niño goes with Llama Herding Girl (Niña Qarwiri). That one called Wayna also goes with them. Wayna belong to Maraza, from ayllu Arriba. I don’t know where exactly they brought him from, but he belongs to Maraza. Just these ones go. They all have their resting places, called Niñu Samaña [in the entrance to, and exit from the pueblo]. The Young-​one, Wayna, will enter at Cruz into the fiesta in the pueblo, he enters afterwards. First he’ll pass the fiesta in the hamlet. They fête him there and then he enters the pueblo for the fiesta of Cruz. And Copacabana will enter for Candelaria. They also have this (stone platform), called the “Resting places of the Niños” (Niñu Samaña). That’s why Niñu Salwaku used to go to Condo, with the dance of the foetuses (sullitu), the little boys. They went beating their snare drums, “T’iq, t’iq, t’iq, t’iq.” They were dressed with little red skirts like young jungle Indians (chunchitos). They also had white skirts. And they wore feathers. There are flamingos around, and they had flamingo feathers in their little hats. Even their trousers were red, their little skirt also red. Above it was red and below it was white, and with red trousers. Then, having gathered together all the child-​gods, they asked themselves, “What shall we do now?”

The Child-​gods, According to Don Alberto

By the 1980s, this complex rituality towards the saint-​gods was already waning. Although the people of Qaqachaka still made a point of remembering Tata Quri, Don Alberto Choque was already worried that a generalized apathy meant they were forgetting the child-​gods, and this was provoking unpredictable changes in the climate of the region. Here, he relates the child-​gods to the level of produce: Niño Miguel (Wayna Mila) is forgotten now, and the Niño is forgotten too. Now frosts take the harvest of the crops. It wasn’t so before. They are no longer taking Sarakay Niñu out of the church; he’s always there inside. Now the climate is different, and there’s no produce.

Before there were the devotions of each originario, but they don’t pass those either. They used to pass them on the Monday and Tuesday of Carnival (Anata). Now they don’t and now there’s nothing. There are no grains and the potatoes are small. In the past there was a great deal of production. The people have forgotten, and besides, passing a fiesta is costly. I too am finishing up my supply of liquor …

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Don Alberto also worried that the people of Qaqachaka were forgetting certain other gods, such as Tata Ispiritu and Tata Saj Wan.

The Arrival of San Juan and the Other Gods

These present worries illustrate the contrast in attitudes of the faithful with those of the early Colony. In Don Franco’s following tales from his second cycle, he describes the origins of Qaqachaka’s other gods, and which individuals were considered their owners, in a past when when there was still enthusiasm for accumulating more gods. He related first the origins of San Juan (Saj Wan): San Juan is from Taqawa. He is an Ayca. He belongs to the Ayca who has Jurnu Q’awa (River Oven). It’s a small house in the rancho. Its owner is Ayca, and San Juan belongs to Ayca.

In other commentaries we heard, San Juan, whose fiesta falls on June 24, is the god of sheep and potatoes, and the libations on this occasion should name his attributes, including the harvest of the strange-​shaped large products called llallawa. People say “For the Mother of prized products, for the sheep, for the potatoes (Llallaw mamalataki, uwijataki, ch’uqitaki …).” Given that this fiesta celebrates the winter solstice in the Southern Hemisphere, when the Sun is at its weakest, another of San Juan’s epithets is Ch’uri Mustramu, with the sense of “Our Lesser Lord” (in Spanish Nuestro Amo Menor or Nuestro Señor Menor), referring to the “Minor Fire” in comparison with the “Great Fire” (Tata Mustramu), which is the Sun of the summer solstice. Although we are dealing with the gods of Qaqachaka’s church, it is in relation to the power of the Sun at certain moments of the year. So here the June fiesta of Saj Wan celebrates the waning Sun, whilst Jisu Kiristu is celebrated as the waxing Sun in December and in the early mornings. Tata Animasa

Tata Animasa, in Don Franco’s accounts, was the god of Qañawi hamlet in the minor ayllu of Sullkayana, before arriving in Qaqachaka: Tata Animasa is from ayllu Qañawi, [he belongs to Quispe …]. Ayllu Sullkayana went wandering far way to get him, in those distant places.

In those times there were always great and powerful personages. But some devotions renege on their promises, don’t they? Well, they say that the Niño became a bit feisty, there at the fiesta of Copacabana, and insisted, “Go with this one, go begging alms.” And they say that Animasa gave him some alms, and he’d entered Qaqachaka with these, that Animasa. That one was in Qañawi before, but the Quispes said, “Let’s put them (the Niño and Animasa) together in the church.” He’s the saint of Qañawi, and belongs to Amarala Quispe. It’s his. He was brought to Qaqachaka via the river. He sent him to Qaqachaka. He made him arrive in Qaqachaka. Now they are together with the rest of the saints. He’s the saint of Sullkäna, Animasa is. He belongs to Quispe.

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Like Tata Quri, saint Animasa has several epithets, among them “Father of the Passion” (Pasyun Tala), “Father of the Resurrection” (Risyu Risyu Tatala or Risuriksyun Tala), “Jesus Christ” (Jisu Kiristu) and “Paceño Father” or “Father from La Paz” (Pasiñu Tala). For the comunarios, this saint is associated with the dead souls of the place. But yet again, these different epithets indicate other underlying ties between saint Animasa and the former Andean gods. For example, for the Qaqachakas the name Jisu Kiristu signals a double allusion, on the one hand to Jesus Christ, and on the other to the crow of a cock, replete with its “crest” (kiristu), in the early morning to announce the sunrise, in another tie between Christ and the celestial Sun god in his emerging phase. Here Animasa serves as the substitute (lantpa) for Jisu Kiristu. For Don Franco, the god Jisu Kiristu was brought by a certain Quispe from “Mama Copacabana,” supposedly in a reference to the miraculous site on the shores of Lake Titicaca, although I am not sure of this. Doña Bernaldita’s Commentaries About These God-​Saints

As in other contexts, these tales about Qaqachaka’s male and female saints tend to value more those that are native to the place, in comparison with the saints brought from elsewhere, as yet another facet of the ongoing differentiation between originarios (natives) and forasteros (outsiders). A case in point was the way that Doña Bernaldita Quispe Colque and her husband Don Cristóbal Jacinto Choque Choque, valued certain saints over others. They agreed with Don Franco that Tata Animasa was from Qaqachaka itself, as was the young goddess called Llama Herding Girl (Qarwiri Imilla). They also conceded that although Wayna came from Siwar Q’asa, near Maragua (specifically the place called Pankataya in Choquecayara), the site enjoyed a certain prestige in Qaqachaka’s ecclesiastical history, so this god was still valued. As a result, the gods of the fiesta de la Cruz in May, namely Tata Quri and Wayna, had much more prestige in Qaqachaka than, say, the gods of the fiesta de la Concepción (Kapitana and Ch’uri) in December, brought from far away, who for them were “little more than cows, with nothing but the dances, called wayli.” The Arrival of the Mamita of Copacabana

Another factor in play in these tales concerns the relative antiquity of each god and its rituals. Don Franco tells of the unforeseen finding of the miraculous goddess “Copacabana” (Llama Herding Girl, Qarwiri Imilla), to whom cult is rendered at the fiesta of the Virgin of Guadalupe, in September, in the small church in Belén, close to the border between Qaqachaka and Jukumani. The tale suggests that this goddess was found in a heap of rubbish. For some Qaqachakas this event is relatively recent, although for Don Franco it was quite ancient: Copacabana is really ancient. Grandfather Soto, I don’t know his name …, he was asking, “What’s that?” and lifted up this little thing, asking emphatically, “What’s this? Is it a set of something?”

He’d handled her contemptuously like that, that’s why he was punished. Then he went again to look with the yatiris and they said it was a saint. “It’s Copacabana,” they told him.

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That’s why Copacabana exists now. She’s a doctor (miriku) as she knows how to cure people, she’s a real doctor (suti miriku). And hers is a good feast.

And of Santo Cristo

Finally we arrive at the tremendous debate within Qaqachaka, whether the Father of the Passion or Father Jesus Christ (Tata Jisu Kiristu) is another distinct god of the annex (apart from his avatar as Tata Animasa), and the question of who actually brought him to the church in the main pueblo. Other specific appellatives or invocations addressed to Jisu Kiristu are “Santo Roma” and “El Salvador” (whose statue is just sheltered in the church). There is also the bearded saint on a wooden cross known as “Father San Exaltation” (Tata San Exaltasyuna). In general terms, Father of the Passion (Tata Pasuyna) is considered by the comunarios to be a god, but without much popularity. “That god is no good,” was a common remark we heard in those years. The suggestion by Don Franco, as of many other comunarios, was that this god had been brought to Qaqachaka, not by the Qaqachakas themselves but “by the priest,” motivated by what he perceived as the despicable local customs of adoring Tata Quri: There’s another one, which is Father Santo Cristo. I don’t know much about that one. It could be that the tata kura put it in the church, perhaps for the people who had some sin or culpability. They usually make them swear an oath. I  don’t know which of the gods he is, but they say they themselves know. That one doesn’t move from the church. They swear oaths with that one.

It could be that the priest put him there, Víctor Sánchez, the tata kura [who served in Qaqachaka from 1919 to 1927].10 They tell how that one (the priest) climbed up to Mount Phiriphiri grumbling, “Dammit, they celebrate these feasts so horribly (referring to the fiesta of Tata Quri) … those danzantes made of tin with those red clothes dance appallingly,” saying. And then, “I’ll go to invoke that hill,” saying, he’d climbed up and it made his head go dizzy, so arriving up there he’d almost died. And when he got back to the pueblo his horse was dead, too.

That Tata Quri is very powerful (k’arijaya). His horse died there, too. Perhaps it was him who put it there, so.

We shall return to other meanings of Tata Santu Kiristu in the following chapters. Tata Ispiritu

To complete the ensemble of Qaqachaka’s minor gods, Don Franco described in passing “Father Spirit” or Tata Ispiritu, with his other names of “Golden Fly” (Quri Chhichhillanka) and “Our Lord Señor” (Tata Mustramu, or Señor Nuestro Amo). Tata Ispiritu takes the form of a cross, although, for the Qaqachakas, this god is distinct from the other crosses 10 A document (with seal No 1673406) in Don Franco Maraza’s possession, dated June 20, 1927, in the place of Challapata, mentions the year 1919, when the parochial priest Don Víctor Sánchez served as witness in a registration book (libro de empadronamiento) of the local church, whose contents were under revision.

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associated with the church, as he wears a miniature leather helmet made from cowhide (muntirulla): Now there’s another one called Ispiritu. That one belongs to Alejandro. The one called “Golden Fly” (Quri Chhichhillankha) belongs to Alejandro. He brought him from Wisk’achiri. Then there’s another one called Mustramu. He’s also from Wisk’achiri, and he also belongs to Alejandro. That’s all there are. That’s all the gods, Tata Quri, Mama Kantilayra … all of them.

Tata Ispiritu in the Commentaries by Don Severo

Regarding this whole ensemble of gods, another common debate among the comunarios concerns their relative degree of power, and whether they are really gods or just crosses. Don Severo’s proposal was that Qaqachaka’s minor gods, such as San Juan and Tata Ispiritu, were not really “gods” but just “incarnations” of god in the form of crosses. And these crosses are in fact nothing more than family “devotions” (riwusyuna) of the place, so they are not considered miraculous as are the major gods: The alférez of San Juan is another (cross). He’s from Taqawa. And Ispiritu is another. But they say that San Juan is just a devotion (riwusyuna).11 They brought him as a “devotion” and put him in here (the church). That one belongs to the Fiscal. And Ispiritu is from Taqawa. He’s also just a devotion. It’s another saint that these persons have as “devotions,” and they light candles so that the incense burns. They say it was so. Afterwards, they could no longer burn incense (at home) so they decided to put him in the church. Well, it will be the alférez of San Juan (Saj Wan), and that one will pass to the Fiscal. They gathered together these devotions in this way.

The crosses that come to the church in Cruz, (the one called) Ispiritu, those that come from Taqawa, and the other one from Laymi. Bartolomé Ayca, that one brought the cross of Ispiritu. He’s from Chhaqiri, the part that separated from Condo. Now it’s Qaqachaka’s, because they used to go to serve as cacique there in Condo, and they kept on doing the service of cacique there, such as the tax gathering cabildo ceremony.12

With these views, Don Severo confirms the point made by the sociologist Alber Quispe (2017) about the lesser importance in the annual feast cycle of the fiestas de devoción as compared to the fiestas de tablas.

The Whole Ensemble of Saints

Once all the saints were assembled within the church, the Qaqachakas began to care for them in there and to render them cult. Each one of the gods had its own niche in the eastern wall of the nave, behind the principal altar (altara mayura), where they rested 11 Riwusyuna is an Aymarization of “devoción,” and refers to a household saint.

12 For Don Enrique Espejo, there were three crosses:  one in Taqawa, another in Qhuchini, and the third in Chhaqiri, each one with its leather helmet (montera). In the past, these crosses used to have their own feast sponsors, and their feast was celebrated at Carnival (Anata). The crosses were also named Santa Wila Kurusa. Another cross used to be brought from Laymi, specifically from the hamlet of Kututu. These crosses were considered to be family “devotions” (riwusyna).

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(qamasiski) between the main fiestas of the year. As an incentive, these niches must be “well painted” to attract them and persuade them to stay there in their proper places (­figure 20). Finally, it merits mentioning that, in these narratives about origins, apart from the relations of kinship and affinity between the god-​saints (graphic 17), the Qaqachakas have developed other ways of categorizing these groupings. The most common way is to differentiate between the “major” gods and the “minor” or “lesser” gods of the annex, considered diminutives of the major gods, and to have lesser power (pisi ch’amani). The “major” gods include the four principal god-​saints of the place: Tata Quri, the patron saint, Mamita Kantilayra (Candelaria), Mama Kapitana (Capitán), and Mama Ch’uri, each of whom has a feast celebrated in their honour. Other major gods of the place once had their feast sponsors and their own fiestas in the distant past, but no longer. These include Animasa or Pasyuna Tatala (Señor de la Pasión), sometimes called Jisu Kiristu (Jesucristo), Tata Jisu Kiristu, or Risyu Risyu Tatala (Señor de la Resurrección), with his partner Mama Tulurisa (Doloresa, Nuestra Señora de los Dolores or Our Lady of Sorrows). And after him comes Saj Wan (San Juan) with his partner Santa Ilina (Santa María Magdalena). Tata Ispiritu (or Espíritu) is considered another minor god of the church. Finally, the small god on a cross kept within the church is called Chullunkhiya, “Icy One.” The “minor” gods (jisk’a yusa), who are the children of the major gods, include Jawiku (Javier), Inaku (Ignacio), and Salwaku (Salvador), then Wayna (Young-​one) and Qarwiri Imilla (Llama Herding Girl). Among these, as we have mentioned, Wayna has a special tie

Figure 20. Qaqachaka’s church, now-​modernized, at the Feast of the Immaculate Conception in 2017, with the niches containing some of the saint-​gods behind the altar, and the three Mamitas in front.

newgenrtpdf

Ayllu Araya or Liwichuku

Ayllu Kimsa Cruz

Sullkiri Jisk’a Animasa Saj Santa Tata Tata Quri Tulurisa (Jisu Kiristu) Wan llina Mustramu Ispiritu

Tata Quri

Elder Younger

Mamita Kantilayra

Mama Mama Kapitana Ch’uri

Younger Middle

Ayllu Sullkayana

Jawiku Wayna Qarwir Mila Imilla (Qhusi (Wajcha (Copacabana) Niñu) wawa)

Inaku

Ayllu 1st Jujchu Graphic 17. The ties of kinship and affinity between the saint-​gods.

Elder

Salwaku (Q’ara Kay Salwaku)

Jurinuq Niñu

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Ayllu 2nd Jujchu

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to his father Tata Quri, and the two are related as “Lesser Gold” (Jisk’a Quri) and “Greater Gold” (Jach’a Quri). Even more pertinent in the context of Qaqachaka’s colonial history and hagiography is how the people of the place were able to re-​accommodate the new god-​saints into their own already established hierarchy. The first “part of the gods” (yusa parti) they recognize are those of the “upper world,” alaxpacha, which they call the “sky gods” (alaxpach yusa) and consider as their “parents.” “Our Father,” “Our Señor,” or Awksa is the Sun, Inti Tala, whereas “Our Mother,” “Our Señora,” or Tayksa is the Moon, Phaxsi Mala. The Qaqachakas consider themselves the offspring of these sky gods, as their “babies” (wawa), their “grandchildren” (allchhi), or “love children” (wajcha), depending on the context. Immediately below these celestial gods in importance are the gods considered “part of the church” (injlis parti). These include all the church saints (injlis santunaka) sheltered in Qaqachaka’s central colonial church. These saints are also their “gods” (yusa), but as the “replacements” (lanti) for the celestial gods. Here we find the close association between Tata Quri and the “Father Sun,” especially with reference to his golden crown that was a fundamental part of his attire before its theft from the church in the 1990s. Likewise, the virgins Mamita Kantilayra, and the Mamitas Kapitana and Ch’uri, are considered the “replacements” of the “Mother Moon,” again with reference to their lunar-​shaped crowns (phaxsinaka) and their standards of “pure silver,” before the same theft. The comunarios themselves recognize the elevated value of these elements in the attire of the gods, and murmur that the thieves bought “many Volvos” with the money from the sale of these objects of gold and silver. At a third level, distinct from the sky gods and from the church gods are the “earth gods.” These include the Virgin Earth (“Tierra Virgen” or Tira Wirjina), called “Pachamama” in more urban centres, associated with the soil (uraqi) and considered an “earth goddess” (uraq yusa) or “goddess of the pampa” (pampa yusa). Her consort, the “god of the guardian mountains” called uywiri, is considered “part of the mountains” (qullu parti). Now let us consider the differences in the ritual practices directed at each category of gods.

Chapter 12

THE ORIGINS OF THE RITUAL PRACTICES AROUND THE CHURCH

And in this space sprouts a very small herb …

Ruiz de Montoya (1639, 3 and 31), talking about the traces left by Saint Thomas in the West Indies (that is to say the Americas)

Once the church and its two towers were built, and now with the whole ensemble

of saint-​gods safely inside, “like Chullpas seated there,” the Qaqachaka ancestors felt the need to practice rites there to guarantee their wellbeing. In the case of the two towers, there was the danger that they could “fall down,” with a lightning strike or something similar. Here again, the purpose of the ancestors was to reinvoke what they could of their own former customs in this new colonial setting. The descriptions by Don Severo Antachoque of the weekly rituals to ensure that two towers “stand continuously” reveal this parallelism between the rites made to the new ritual sites opened up below the church towers, and the rites made formerly to other local sites, such as the “chests” on top of the guardian mountains (called uywiri) of the Qaqachaka territory. Both of these sites for burying offerings are called liwaña, “to offer or to feed.” The difference is that the offering rites at the foot of the church towers were under the charge of the mayordomos grouped in the main pueblo, whereas those to the guardian mountains were conducted by yatiris: As a consequence (of constructing the church towers), the grandfathers asked among themselves, saying, “How shall we make them stand up? So now, what shall we do with them?”

Then the grandfathers opted for certain agreements. First they prepared an offering to feed the tower. The offering place to “father tower” is tatala turri liwaña and to “mother tower” is mamala turri liwaña, quite separately. They made their offerings there, in those places, to “make them stand” (sayjatas), because the towers could fall down, couldn’t they?

That’s why they just pronounced the sound “q’aw.” They’d gone to consult the yatiris, and from yatiri to yatiri. “What shall we do, how will we make them stand up? If we don’t, then lightning, q’aw, will strike tatala turri … And then it will strike the church too, q’aw. It won’t be any good,” they said.

Well, speaking in this way, they’d done the following. They say they’d made libations. Then they’d made mamala turri eat a “white turu” (in reality a white ram). They’d known how to give it to the tower in this way to give it health. And things continued on like that …

Then (they did the same) again the next year, for the years pass quickly, they quickly come around … And so it was. And once more they agreed to make the towers stand up in the same way. Then there were fights between Pukuwata, Jukumani, and Laymi. And (this time) they said, “Let’s make offerings to the tower in order to fight.” And then they placed the offering (liwaña) once more (in the same place). Well, finally they placed the offering there each year, right up until now.

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The Rites to Make the Two Church Towers “Stand Up,” According to Don Severo Many studies of the Andes analyze these kinds of colonial ritual in a binary fashion, differentiating between the “authentically Andean” practices, and the new “Christian” order of things. However, the episodes narrated by Don Severo about the construction of the church and its towers, followed by the rites conducted by the pueblo’s mayordomos and alcalde mayor in the church precinct to make the two towers “stand firm” and defend them from lightning, present a much more nuanced, complex, and integrated ritual context. In addition, the tales insist that these rites served to make the men of the annex “stand firm,” like the towers, in their fights against their enemies. In essence, the accounts by Don Severo reveal how the new ritual sites at the foot of the church towers really fit within the already established hierarchy of ritual sites in a wider territory. In the annual rites directed by the yatiris to the guardian mountains, with the purpose of assuring a productive year ahead with abundant rains for each family under their charge, their animals, and fields, the yatiris act as if they themselves were the guardian mountains called uywiri. Comparatively, in the “ecclesiastical” rituals directed by the six mayordomos and other authorities of the main pueblo, carried out annually each Thursday of Temptation, with their weekly reiterations every Thursday of the year, the mayordomos act as the lesser mountains of the territory, called awatiri. But, in each case, the purpose of these specialists in enacting the rite is the same, to ensure in the year ahead the timely arrival of the rains and, with these, the coming of the new generations of animals and new vegetative covering of pastures and crops for each minor ayllu under their respective charges. Here we encounter yet another act of negotiation, in the prayers and orations made by the ritual specialists to the mountains. However, these negotiations are part of the tasks of a wider relational ontology of “rearing each other mutually,” in Aymara uywasiña. Each group of specialists places their offerings and the mountains respond by caring for the beings under their charge. This purpose is achieved through the same ritual techniques. The yatiris or the mayordomos first perform an animal sacrifice. Then the meat of the sacrificed animal is eaten cooked and without salt. Then the remaining bones of this animal are taken by the ritual specialists to the indicated place to bury them there in a reconstructed bone carcass (osamenta) together with other ritual ingredients, where they undergo a gradual process of putrefaction. This releases fetid vapours which become transformed over time into rain clouds. In their case, the mayordomos as a group conduct the sacrifice and bury the animal remains with the other ritual ingredients in the offering places at the foot of the church towers. Then each mayordomo repeats this act, now with the remains of a mixture of ground white and yellow maize, with llama tallow shaped into llamas in miniature, but in his own ritual circle (sirku), located outside the main pueblo along the pathways towards their minor ayllus. There, they bury first of all the other ingredients and then form a “rodeo” (or circle) around these with the offerings of the miniature animals, according to the number of hamlets under their charge. Don Severo added that, as a result of the constant offerings, a straight green stem would grow there as evidence of the efficacy of

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the ritual act of “making stand” the distinct elements of the place (the towers, church, animals, plants, and humans). In this context, each mayordomo couple is in charge of the health of all the people in each minor ayllu under their care, so they drink a series of toasts for the people (jaqi) of the place, the mayordomo remembering the men and youth (maxt’a) of his ayllu, and the mayordoma remembering the women and young girls (palachu). These rituals to the lesser mountains, called awatiris, are reinforced with libations made to the stones called samiri and khuyiri that send their breath, and, through it, aid the putrefying process of the sacrificial offering by transforming its foul odours into rainclouds: Right now they are making offerings each year, since some time ago. They are making offerings to the two towers each Temptation, the mayordomos. It is they who offer these things. At Temptation, the Fiscal is there too, isn’t he? It’s him who places the white turu (in reality a white ram). The Fiscal is in charge of the tower, to play it (the bells), by day and by night, and in the fiestas. Right now he’s ringing (the bells) in the mornings. I too have been Fiscal, in charge of the tower. But the offerings (waxt’a) are different. It’s the Alcalde mayor who places another white turu (a ram), the Alcalde. The mayordomo has to choke it (to death). Not just anybody can do it. Even I cannot do it. You do that each Temptation; if not, the towers would not be standing up. You have to prepare dishes (of offerings) each Temptation, unerringly … It should not be missing even for one year.

Then they eat the two white turus among themselves (the mayordomos), but without salt, cooked just so in the pot without adding anything. They make libations. Then they grind up white maize (janq’u tunqu) on a plate, and on another plate they put yellow maize (q’illu tunqu), with the llama fat on a dish apart. Then they put there (in the offering place) various herbs: sanu sanu, then wayna wayna, and then saphirara and urqu urqu, this last one you have to pull up with its root intact.1 Then they put in there two cobs of maize (chhuxllu), standing upright and perfect, without letting a single grain of maize fall off. You put all of this there (in the offering place). In this way, you “tie it up.” Then they place in there the head of the white ram (turu), its legs (chhuchhulli) and its testicles (q’uruta). They are called “red testicles” (q’urut panti); you don’t have to cut anything. All these ingredients are buried at a depth of one meter, with white and yellow maize, then with toasted barley flour (phiri), and the baby llamas made with llama tallow (untu qallu). They prepare all of this on a large flat plate. You put the llama babies made of tallow on one large plate, the purely white ones. And on another large plate you put more llama babies, this time purely yellow ones. After this, you put those things we call “banderillas” or little flags, made of paper. You buy these too, and hang them in there like clouds. You glue them in there with the fatty llama babies. It’s made really beautifully in this way. And then it’s covered with three stones. It’s covered over really nicely. Nothing can get in there, not even a mouse. It’s just the same for mamala tower as for tatala tower. That’s how it is. It’s covered over.

You have to dig it out first, in order to put (the offering) in there again (the following year). So you take off the stones. Only then do you look inside. You shouldn’t disturb these things. The tower could eat you! You shouldn’t sleep there either. If we slept there, it could eat us too.

1 Sanu sanu is Lat. Ephedra americana K. B. H.; wayna wayna is Chenopodium ambrosioides L.; and urqu urqu is Sysyrinchium pusillum H. B. K. s.p.

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You have to place a foetus of a male llama there too. For tatala turri as for mamala turri. And the llama foetus (qarwa sullu) should be standing up, and looking towards the sunrise. It’s put there with bittermint, and wrapped around with red fibre threads (wila ch’ankha). Right now it’s like that, and it will last until next year. It endures for a year. And the following year another person enters (the post) to make the offering.

According to Don Severo, the llama foetus is put there to generate the new offspring of the herd animals the following year. He continued: You place these ingredients there the Thursday of Temptation, in the early morning, always on a Thursday. You can’t put it there on any old day, only on a Thursday at sunrise (juwisa alwa). But you prepare them the Wednesday night and the next morning you put them there. You don’t sleep for the whole night. The Thursday you place them there at the (foot of the) tower. You prepare all the medicines (qulla), the ground up things, and you put them there. In the past, the mayordomos were six in number, but now they’ve lost one of them and there are just five. They are called Kapitan mayordomo, Ch’uri mayordomo, then Kantilayra mayordomo. They are the “people of the gods” (yusa jaqi). They prepare these things and then they eat the meat, but without salt. They eat this the same day. The broth without salt is called asxata. You can’t eat it with salt. The meat is also without salt (qama) and you eat it with potatoes, with chuño and boiled broad beans (mut’i), all without salt. You can’t eat anything with salt.

The ground elements are numerous. Afterwards you give the ground ingredients to the six mayordomos. First it’s given to the Marka, the mayordomo of the whole pueblo. It’s for his “circle” of offerings (which Don Severo calls a sirku, or “circus”). Then you give (the rest) to the other mayordomos and they go off to place it in their offering sites. Sirku is the site where you place each one of these ingredients, on the pathways (thakhi) to their ayllus. A green stem grows there as a result. White maize is one; yellow maize is another. Afterwards the baby llamas (go in), in white and yellow. These are also shared out (kumparti). “This is for Marka,” saying. “It’s Marka’s,” saying, they share it, counted out (in portions).

“And how much is there for you?” they ask. And they share out the llama babies made of tallow according to the number of ranchos under their charge. For some it’s four, three or maybe six. Even their small rancho are counted in. For example, for the mayordomo of Qhuchini how many ranchos are there? They are Chhaqiri, Qhuchini, Ch’ita, Taqawa, Qalawani, K’uytamaya … there are six. He has six ranchos, hasn’t he? So they give him (enough) for six ranchos. The white and yellow baby llamas, the same. And then a green stem grows (chunqha lawa alxi) in that place. Because they surely know where to place these ingredients, the mayordomo knows. Each one knows. A  mayordomo has to go grasping a bottle of alcohol. They go there with fine liquor.

And so they go. Then a stem is growing on the upper surface of the offering place. And you put the babies made of tallow there. You place these elements (there). The place is encircled by the tallow llama offspring, just like llamas going in file, so. They say “This is this rancho; that is that rancho …” It’s counted out in this way, beginning at the right (kupi), and in this way they make a round of the place. A little of these ground up ingredients is left over. Then they say: “Qallun ch’ukus, samir khuyiris …”

“For the seams of offspring, for the stones that blow their breath …”

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And so you throw in the rest for these. You must go in pairs. So an alcalde has to take a companion and throw these ingredients in, so. This is done with bittermint and a little alcohol. This is thrown into the place. And then you make an offering of bittermint, and make libations. And only then, when you arrive back in the pueblo, do you eat the meat of the sacrifice. It’s so.

First the Marka mayuruma will place the offering, then Kapitan mayuruma will place it, then Ch’uri mayuruma, then Kantilayra mayuruma, followed by Animasa mayuruma, and finally Phiskali (Fiscal). There are six of them. Fiscal is the last. I used to be the last. And then: “Qallun ch’uku, suma tilantiru qarwataki …”

“For the seams of offspring, for good leading llamas …”

So saying they drink. When they arrive they drink until they get drunk. They drink like this, “For the dead souls,” then “for the amtiris, meaning those who remember to do these things in the past,” you drink for all of this. The mamalas drink and the tatalas too, each one with their alcohol. That’s what they drink always. That’s how they drink always, on Thursdays.

Don Severo’s following episode makes the point of describing the ritual of changing Tata Quri’s clothes each Thursday, which happens precisely after the sacrifice of the white rams, and the consequent offerings to the church towers by the mayordomos and other authorities of the place. In this context, the god-​saint Tata Quri becomes absorbed into this wider ritual cycle. In his person, Tata Quri incarnates Qaqachaka’s entire territory, and here, as an active part of the rituals of sacrifice and offerings, it is through his person that his followers seek the renovation of the vegetation and the animals of the place under his charge, again through the coming rains. And likewise, this renovation of the vegetative covering with the rains is expressed through the changing of the clothes of the god-​saint, there in his wooden box: On Thursdays, too, you have to change the clothes of Tata Quri. And you drink for all that in the same way. You two have seen it, haven’t you? And then one just retires (from the event).

Those same ingredients which cured the offering place of the towers are now carried to the fortress called pukara, there. It’s taken there. The maize is now nothing more than the bare core of a corn cob, because it’s putrefied of course, and because the rain has penetrated there (in the hole). Over the whole year, everything putrefies. The llama tallow (untu) and the ground maize and toasted barley flour (phirilla) is converted into earth, and becomes putrefied into white powder (janq’uki qurwarxi), into just whiteness. The bone and “that which the old one grasps,” is taken to the place called pukara, and is placed in the pukara. That will be handed over the Thursday following Temptation. And it will be left like this. Then, the next year, it’s placed there in the same way, just as it had been placed the year before. Then everything in that place is flattened over, and people are walking there and yet nobody realizes anything. You can’t notice anything. No-​one knows about those persons who put it there. Each one has their own site and doesn’t put it in any other place. Those things have been prepared by the grandfathers and grandmothers since the time before (Layrapacha). And the mayordomos make toasts to those ingredients:

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“Turritaki, turri sayiritaki, injlis sayayiri, ast yusataki …”

“For the tower, to make the tower stand up straight, to that which make the church stand up, and including for the gods …”

They make libations like this so that they stand up … Many toasts are made, and the bottles are doing the rounds there, for each one of the authorities.

The remains of the ritual ingredients are taken to the offering site called pukara on the Thursday of Temptation, in an act that coincides with other rites in the annex to dispatch the beings called jira mayku (the “war mallkus” or “turning mallkus”), as incarnations of the annual rains. In their totality, these rites close the cycle of rains in any one particular year.

The Priest’s Attitude Faced with all These Rites, According to Don Severo

When we asked Don Severo what the local priest would say about all of this, he explained that although the tata kura had his own interest in the construction of the church, he was not so concerned with what happened inside. So the Qaqachakas had a certain liberty with the rites practiced there: The priest has nothing to do with that. No …! He entered into agreement with the people here, because he didn’t care much about anything. The priest was just there [in Condo]. Rather the people here agreed on those things among themselves. The priest, no … Of course there are the church bells, but the grandfathers brought those with a great deal of effort. The priest didn’t care much. They say that the priest just accepted that they were here, the bells. And the priest just asked “Why did you put them here?” I used to answer him, “Because we are real men (chacha) with these things. In Qaqachika we have two towers, and those towers are only standing up with this food we offer them. They stand up with those things and, besides that, not one lightning strike had done anything (perverse) to us. We are real men with these things, we Qaqachikas. If there weren’t these things, Qaqachika could come to an end,” I told him.

It’s in vain for Qaqachika to have another cemetery, because we are all as one. And that (cemetery) is like the great corner shrine (iskina) of the guardian mountain (uywiri). It’s so. It’s defending Qaqachika, defending it well. (Qaqachika) has won with all of this from long ago, over Jukumani, Laymi, and Pukuwata. Because it gives us energy (ch’ama), it gives energy to the people. It gives us energy right up till now, and Qaqachika doesn’t let them do anything (perverse) because of that. If not, on the contrary, something could happen to the people here. The mayordomos never forget this until now.

The Turns  Begin

Many of Qaqachaka’s storytellers concluded their narratives about “having become a canton” through gathering together all the god-​saints in the central church, by announcing another key moment in the colonial religious and administrative processes taking place. This was the start of the practice of “doing turns” (in the primordial sense of mit’a, as part of the colonial religious mit’a) between the members of the six minor ayllus of the annex, in order to celebrate their respective gods in the annual cycle of fiestas. Here we

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note the specific ties between each mayordomo in the service of the central church and the god-​saint under their charge. Characteristically, Don Franco Quispe concluded his own cycle of tales about the god-​ saints with this explanation: Of course there are six ayllus in Qaqachaka. And they’d done turns … they’d done the turns of passing the fiestas in rotation, that’s how. They passed the fiesta of Tata Quri at Cruz. Candelaria in the same way. All of them, the whole ayllu. And then came Mama Concebida (Concepción), with Kapitana and Ch’uri … Those two never separate, so it was the same with the feast. One minor ayllu (passing it), then another, in this same way, in rotation. There are six minor ayllus in Qaqachaka, so they did the turns like this. But those gods don’t move anywhere; they stay put (in the church).

For his part, Don Alberto Choque described the same process in relation to Tata Quri: “And Tata Quri had accepted with this (music) …,” saying, and they brought him down. “Now, who’s going to pass the fiesta?” they asked among themselves, the tatas. “We are ayllus, so it will begin with one ayllu, and it will rotate in turns.”

And then, concerning Mama Candelaria:

Now (Mamita Candelaria) is Our Mother (Tayksa). Now we shall pass our fiesta, in rotation or in turns … It will be our turn whether we are small ayllus or big ones. We’ll pass the fiestas with all its accompaniments (kumpañamintu), with alms collections, then tallow (sira), the customs from before (layra), then with [the feathers] of ostriches (suri or rhea) (worn in dances), afterwards the wit’u rimata (the person responsible for serving food to the outsiders or foresteros), he who dispatches the butchered llama meat (tispachiri) … God’s accompaniments are numerous. They say that they made them (the god-​saints) enter and be seated (utt’ayaña) in the church. Now it’s fulfilled.

As in other stages of the new colonial order, the effort of accumulating saints in the church, and then passing the system of turns to celebrate them, was necessary in order to transform Qaqachaka juridically into a canton, in the sense of a free pueblo. As in other instances, this process demanded the fulfilment of the new colonial juridical norms, while at the same time the comunarios re-​worked these norms according to the already familiar precedents carried out in the former practices of the place. The challenges for the colonial administration to impose these norms were also demanding. It was imperative to reorganize time, by intercalating the existing cycles of agricultural work with the development of annual ritual calendars, now directed towards the feast days of the new saints. In the Andes, the spiritual lives of persons as individuals became redirected towards the ideal models of life of the Catholic saints, although the new religious feasts were also made to coincide with the former rites of curing (by the yatiris of each place) (De Luca 2016, 105). The new terminology of the fiestas de tabla (the majority between Christmas and Lent, during the period of growth and the harvest), the fiestas de devoción (in August and September after the sowing), and the days of rest (días de guardar) on Sundays and feast days, date from this same period. Forced into the background were the so-​called “uses and customs,” in reality a colonial juridical term coined by the licenciado Polo de Ondegardo, the Viceroy Toledo’s lawyer, to refer to the previous Andean religious and administrative practices, as opposed to the new Spanish ones.

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In spite of these new challenges for the comunarios of each locality, the origin and sustenance of these new feast cycles had its former trajectory in similar cycles. In those former feast cycles, the successful accumulation of goods by the regional leadership of caciques, associated in those times with their luck and prestige, were followed by the subsequent redistribution of these accumulated products to their subjects in ritual actions involving the sacrifice of animals obtained in this same way, together with the redistribution of annual production in food and drink for all the participants (cf. Pease 1995). A vital aspect of the new system of fiestacargos and the turns that made these possible, was the concern of the parishioners to “hear” the mass in the new colonial churches during the course of a particular feast. The solution was to continue the tradition of offering food and drink (now bread and wine) to God, and to the saints and the faithful, as they had done to the mountain guardians through the banquets of the precolonial fiestas, while those faithful attended the mass. A commentary by Doña Mauricia Mamani establishes this link. She used to say to those who had passed a feast, “You’ve seen this,” but to those who had never passed the feast “You’ve seen nothing, you are sleeping in a corner of shadow.” What is more, “your animals are eating all the grass,” a pointed hint that their human owners were not making the necessary sacrifices and offerings to renew the pastures each year. This act of “hearing” the Catholic mass was at the very heart of the cycle of new feasts, as it was there that the power of the new god to transform death again into life through the transubstantiation of bread and wine was apprehended. In practice, all the ritual elements of importance had to go to “hear” the mass periodically, “in order to regenerate their power.” These elements included the domestic devotions (riwusyna), the staffs of office (wara) with their ritual appellative of “Santo Roma,” under the charge of the Alcalde Mayor, the standards (istantarti) as former emblems of the confraternities, and clothing including the woven clothing of the saints, which helped distribute this power. The crosses from the central church and from the chapels around the minor ayllus also had to go to “hear” the mass, now dressed as warriors, in the wake of Jesus himself in his guise as warrior (cf. Harris 2006). There was a subsequent movement to carry out the same ritual sequences in the great miracle sites (jach’a milajru) of the region, whose power to transform things was considered even greater. That whole period of evangelization in the Andes was focused on the cult of the saints, and during the mass, the saints, considered to be the children or babies of God, could make intercession between humans and God, in a similar way to the intercession of Christ. Under their new guise, the cycle of colonial feasts was promoted by the Church as the ideal site for the veneration and glorification of the saints (only God could be “adored”), their miracles and their relics (usually bones), as well as the exchange of merchandise (Celestino 1997; Harris 2006). Nonetheless, at a deeper level, things proceeded according to the same logic as in the previous practices. As Harris asserts (2006), it was simply the question of what language you were to use to address each category of god. You addressed the sky gods in Aymara and Quechua, in Latin and Spanish, the church saints in Latin and Spanish, and the gods of the underworld (or inner world) in Aymara and Quechua.

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The former accumulation of riches by regional elites (the caciques and before them the Inka himself), redistributed in the context of the feast, together with food and drink, included the income from minerals extracted from the mines of the region. Against this backdrop, the colonial cult to the saints, still in the hands of the regional elites, recovered many aspects of the former pre-​Columbian mining cults. There is a striking affinity between many of Qaqachaka’s god-​saints and certain minerals, especially Tata Quri, “Father Gold” or “Little Father of (Gold) dust.” It is common until now to say that many of the god-​saints are founded in metal, and the stronger the metal, the stronger the god-​ saint. And in popular tales, the places of origin of many of the god-​saints are regional mines, whether the silver mine of Choquicayara near Colquechaca in the case of Mama Candelaria, and in some versions of the tale of Mamita Kapitana. Other tales of origin allude constantly to these mines, for example the gold mines of Asanaque in the case of the ancestor Llanquepacha, and the mines of silver, tin, and other minerals in Uncía, Llallagua, and Potosí, in a more general sense. It is worth noting that the salient mines in Qaqachaka’s oral history are usually found in strategic and liminal frontier sites between the ayllus and the annexes. The use of these minerals characterizes the devotional practices to the god-​saints. It is custom until now to include portions of these minerals in offerings to the god-​saints, notably when reference is made to them as wak’as of the place, and when the rituals around the church are directed towards the mountain guardians called uywiri. Another nexus between the god-​saints and minerals is the fact that the colonial portraits of these saints, hung in the new churches, include portions of these minerals in the pigments of their execution, in the continuing use of minerals of particular colours in their cult, but now in a disguised form (Siracusano, n.d.). Here, we are possibly dealing with something more universal, in the relation between minerals, mines, and the most powerful sites of the planet replete with these resources, those that tend to generate the adoration of similar figures. Another striking fact is that, even in Spain, it was common to include minerals as relics within the reliquaries of the saints (­figure 21). In view of these many ties between the god-​saints, certain minerals and the mines, I suggest that the underlying idea was that the images of the saints had to be founded in metal in order to embody in themselves the same power of autonomous growth as that of the veins of minerals. Through the intercession of the saints, it would be possible to apply this mining power to the reproduction and growth of the food products and the animals of the place under their care. Thus the cult of the saints does not deal simply with an adoration of images, but the material power of these images. In the Colony, the articulation of the new cycles of feasts with these wider regional economies meant that the new doctrinal capitals could easily serve as centres of cult for the former wak’as, but now with the flows of tithes (diezmos) and tariffs (aranceles), the service in the mining and religious mit’as, and other forms of tribute circulating in the hands of the regional priests and bishops (Arnold 2008a). The building logs (libros de fábrica) of the parishes of Indians conserved in the Archive of the Archdiocese of Potosí demonstrate how the Church as an institution now controlled access to land, the payment of tribute, and the distribution of the more generalized services of the mit’a (Celestino 1998; Serulnikov 2006). In addition, they controlled regional politics, as it

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Figure 21. Reliquary with relics of minerals held in the Monastery of San Isidoro del Campo, in Santiponce, Seville, Spain.

was within this new framework that the designation of the local authorities took place, under the stern vigilance of the priests. The colonial cycles of feasts were paramount in this process of articulation. In this wider sense, the colonial feast, rather than being divisive, actually became a unifying event, a space for forming identities, new forms of relationality, and the exteriorization of new shared values, and besides, a vital nexus for the negotiations and re-​negotiations for power. Access to colonial forms of citizenship by fulfilling the mit’a service in the mines of Potosí (or Porco, or Oruro) continued the long tradition of participation in the patterns of accumulation of these wider economic circuits, in the hands of the regional caciques, and also that of the ancestral cults to the regional wak’as. I already mentioned the proposal by Alber Quispe (2016) that, apart from service in the mines, the obligations of the colonial mit’a included those in the new religious posts or cargos. This proposal helps us to understand the patterns of the new regional economies from both points of view, that of the colonial administration and that of the ayllus and annexes themselves. For the colonial administration, the creation of a new system of political and religious power was now devoted to the new Catholic saints. But, for the people of the place, the worship

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of the mummy-​saints in the dark interior of the church-​chullperío was just one instance of their participation in these wider regional circuits of sacrifice, offerings, and gifts. The colonial re-​organization of the territory of the South-​Central Andes is equally complex, and not simply a concealment of a former diabolic substrate with another Catholic overlay. The predominant idea in the literature of a passive sacred space should cede here in favour of comprehending the strategic use of a territory already mapped in the memory of the regional populations, through their ecology-​centred practices directed at the continuity of life, in a relational landscape already ritualized and tecnified by them (Rappaport 1989; Santos-​Granero 1998; Arnold 2009a; Morrone 2015a). A landscape of this type could easily lend itself to define and then re-​define the relations of authority and cosmogony.

The New Cycles of Feasts

In the colonial re-​organization of the feast cycles, the divisions of the ritual calendar served various purposes. A distinct scheme of divisions in each doctrinal locality allowed the rituality to the gods already established in the place to be accommodated. The pattern of this division during the course of the year also permitted the priests to visit rural areas under their charge intermittently (Marzal 1991, 262, 275; Harris 2006). The norms for developing the patterns of these new cycles of feasts began soon after the Conquest. The bishop of Lima, Jerónimo de Loayza, already determined in his Instrucción of 1545 the principal fiestas that should be included within these cycles: We declare other things about the fiestas that they have to keep: that for now they keep the following: all the Sundays of the year and the days of the Nativity and Circumcision of Our Lord, Epiphany, the Resurrection, Ascension, Easter of the Holy Spirit, the Day of Corpus Christi, the Nativity of Our Lady, the Annunciation, Purification and the Assumption (of the Virgin), and the fiesta of the Apostles San Pedro and San Pablo. ([1545] 1952, 145, cited in Van den Berg 2005, 185)2

The Second Lima Council, in 1561, attempted to erase from these feast cycles the agricultural celebrations, notably the celebration of the deceased or Todos los Santos (originally the parentalia of ancient Rome, celebrated in February), but including the celebrations of the rains and of the harvest (Van den Berg 2005, 201). However, the number of feasts that the Spanish should have kept were in fact many more, and the Third Lima Council (1582–​1583) opted to permit the regional populations of Indians to celebrate this increased number of feasts (Van den Berg 2005, 198–​99). 2 The original Spanish says “Otrosí cuanto a las fiestas que han de guardar, declaramos: que por agora guarden las siguientes: todos los domingos del año y días de Natividad de Nuestro Señor e Circuncisión, Epifanía, Resurrección, Ascensión, Pascua de Espíritu Santo, el Día de Corpus Christi, la Natividad de Nuestra Señora, Anunciación, Purificación, Asunción y la fiesta de los Apóstoles San Pedro y San Pablo.”

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In the doctrinal capital of Condocondo, beginning in 1571, the feast cycles developed there gave preference to the celebration of its patron saint, San Pedro de Condo, on June 29, near the winter solstice. In the two vice-​parishes of Qaqachaka and Huari this process was comparatively slower. Although there is local talk of a former capilla or chapel constructed in Qaqachaka around 1612,3 in practice the cycle of feasts in the ecclesiastical annex of Santa Vera Cruz does not appear in written documents until around 1646, after the composición de tierras supervised by José de la Vega Alvarado (table 1). So although Qaqachaka was established as a pueblo around 1571, it was only from about 1664 that the “Pueblo de Santa Cruz de Cacachaca” is named as an annex (or anejo) of the “doctrina” of Condocondo, under the jurisdiction of the greater archdiocese of Chuquisaca. The complete ecclesiastical name of the chapel of Santa Vera Cruz is registered in the Condo archives from 1665. A century later, in 1743, according to a document in the possession of Don Franco Quispe, Condocondo already had various annexes, vice-​ parishes, or vice-​ cantons “Cacachaka, Culta, Caguaya, Lagunillas, and Guari,”4 whose cycles of feasts must have been intercalated. The vice-​parish of Cacachaca was constituted by “parishioners, estancias and ayllus.” A later document, of 1779, mentions the division of the wider diocese under the orders of the archbishop of those years (a señor Don Ramón Hervoso), who granted a new benefit and the segregation of Condo from its former annex of K’ulta. Consequently, from 1779 onwards, the only annexes that remained tied to Condo were Qaqachaka and Guari,5 and from then on the feast cycles in the repartimiento as a whole must have been segregated. Even so, in the regional interpretations of these feasts there was another set of meanings around the saints under their invocation, to do with other cycles already established in the region: astronomical, climatological productive, political, and ritual. The narratives of Don Enrique Espejo, like those of other older people from Qaqachaka in those years, show that the local feast cycle with its own gods simply formed a part of the wider cycles in the whole region. Therefore, it is important to contextualize Qaqachaka’s ritual cycle within these wider ceremonial rhythms (chart 1).

3 Don Gregorio Mamani, who had access to some ecclesiastical documents, gave us this date, but we never had the chance to consult these personally.

4 A document copied from the archives that used to belong to Don Franco Quispe Maraza, the “Copia testimonio” taken from the book of the “Padrón de los feligreses y estancias que forman la Vice Parroquia de Cacachaka,” which existed in this archive, says that Qaqachaka was “Parroquia de Condocondo desde el año 1748.” The original Spanish says the new vice-​parish of Cacachaca was composed of: “feligreses, por estancias y ayllus.”

5 “Libro de empadronamiento de todos los feligreses por estancias y ayllus que formen la parroquia de Condo que data del año de 1779,” of which a copy was in the possession of Don Franco Quispe Maraza.

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Chart 1. Qaqachaka’s annual cycle of religious feasts. Saint-​god

Date

Niño (Feast of the Circumcision of Christ)

January 1

San Sebastián (the former date for paying taxes)

January 20

Change of authorities

Mama Candelaria (the Purification of the Virgin) Lent

Holy Week

Annunciation of the Virgin Jesus Christ

Reyes or Epiphany, January 6 February 2

Period of forty days. Variable date. Variable date March 25

Easter (variable date)

Pentecost or Ispiritu

May, fifty days after Easter (variable date)

Tata Quri and the Child Wayna

Feast of the Holy Cross, May 3

San Roque (Day of the Dogs) San Antonio San Juan

San Pedro (in Condocondo) Plowing of the fields

The Virgen of Asunta (in Quillacas) San Bartolomew (in the region)

Copacabana, the Virgin of Guadalupe, and the Nativity of Our Lady (the most recent date for the Cabildo ceremony for paying tax) San Miguel [Archangel]

August 16

June 13/​20

June 24 (close to the Winter Solstice) June 29

Beginning of August August 15 August 24

September 8 September 29

Tata San Francisco and Mama Rosario

October 4/​7

Tata Animasa

All Souls, November 2

Mamitas Kapitana and Ch’uri

Christmas (the Nativity of Jesus Christ)

Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin, December 8 (celebrated on the octave, December 16) December 25 (near the Summer Solstice)

The Miracle Sites: The Wider Cycle of Feasts in Other Places of the Region The colonial re-​structuring of the feasts of Qaqachaka, now as a vice-​parish of Condocondo, recognized the hierarchy of principal feasts of the doctrinal capital, but included other criteria at a regional level. For example, in this wider context, there was

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the same attention to Qaqachaka’s dual origins as we find in the narratives of oral history. This is most evident in the greater emphasis given to the ritual and festive ties between Qaqachaka and sites in the North of Potosí, and so with the historical Aymara Federations of Charkas and Qharaqhara, over those more recent relations with the colonial doctrinal capital of Condocondo, and consequently to the Quillacas-​Asanaque Federation. However, by the 1980s, the ritual ties to Condocondo were barely remembered as the colonial obligations of a very distant past. There was only the ongoing obligation for the Qaqachakas to take the dance troupes of young children dressed as “foetuses” there to perform for the Niños (Sarakayu Niñu and Salvador or Salwaku), when Condo’s patron saint was celebrated, on June 29 each year. But compared to these ongoing obligations to Condo, it was “something else” to participate in the ritual activities of the wider region, The older people of those years used to tell us the details of their journeys to visit different religious sites in the region, and they made a special point of describing in minute details the attributes of the small god-​ saints they had seen. They described their images, their clothing, the objects they carried in their hands, and, in the case of the virgins, which of the many children they held in their arms. We could talk to them for hours on this theme. In the narratives we registered a couple of generations ago, these personal experiences tended to be embedded in the pilgrimages of a large troupe of dancers and musicians from Qaqachaka, of between thirty and more than fifty participants, to those regional sites considered the most miraculous, headed by a dance master or mayura, in the annual round of regional religious fiestas. This was almost obligatory when a couple had been feast sponsors at one of the principal feasts in Qaqachaka, for example of Tata Quri, and needed to complete the regional cycle of “three miracles” of which Tata Quri was only a part. The custom of going in such large groups responded, in the first place, to the need for personal defence against any attack, given the frequent conflicts between rival neighbouring ayllus in those years. A large group could also share the tasks of carrying, between humans and llamas, the enormous quantities of food and drink, mainly barley beer, for the libations on the journey and the festivities on arrival, and all the paraphernalia of the musicians (in instruments) and dance troupes (the wayli). And of course the organizers of the dance troupe had to carry Qaqachaka’s standards “to hear the mass” at their destination. As in the attributes of the god-​saints, tripartition plays a key part in the organization of these regional miracle sites, although it is their order of kinship rather than a trinitarian god that is at play. In this wider ritual landscape, the three principal regional “miracles” or adoratorios of the male gods are Tata Killakas (the elder or jiliri), Tata Panakachi (the middle one or taypiri) and finally Tata Jisk’a Quri (the youngest or sullkiri). The fiesta of Tata Killakas (the Lord of Quillacas), considered the Señor of muleteers and hauliers, is passed on September 14, in the nearby pueblo of Quillacas, and that of Tata Panakachi (also known as Tata Exaltation) is passed on the same date, but in ayllu Panakachi in the North of Potosí. Only the fiesta of Tata Quri falls outside the time of miracles, at the fiesta de la Cruz, in early May, to announce the harvest, now matured by the strong Sun at this time of year.

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The counterparts of these three miraculous gods are the three miraculous goddesses: Mamita Copacabana, whose feast is celebrated on September 8 in the pueblo of Copacabana on the shores of Lake Titicaca (considered the elder of the three, or jiliri), then Mamita Guadalupe (the middle one, or taypi), whose feast falls on the same date, and finally the feast of Mamita Rosario on October 4, or her counterparts the Mamitas Concepción (Kapitana and Ch’uri, accompanied by Candelaria, considered the youngest, or sullkiri), whose feast falls on December 8. The Custom of Marrying the Saint-​Gods

These regional visits to the miracle sites, like the forms of worship of the god-​saints gathered together in Qaqachaka’s central church during centuries by its comunarios, were to suffer great changes in the twentieth century. The processes of friction between Qaqachaka’s minor ayllus began in the 1980s, in part because of the economic crisis in the region with the fall of the international price of tin coming from the mines, and the serious drought of those same years. In that conjuncture, the ways of passing the feasts by taking turns between the minor ayllus changed dramatically. Some of the minor ayllus of the annex, or individuals within these, attempted to take possession of the god-​saints for themselves, and then refused to release them when the time came to begin a new cycle of turns. I propose that, behind these frictions, underlie ancient customs from the times when the ancestral gods were still the wak’a-​mummies, which belonged to specific lineages and were guarded by members of this group. I already examined the frictions between rival groups in Inka times to obtain the privileges of the ancestral mummies, and this makes me think that we are dealing with the same kind of rivalry in the present. To complicate this issue further, during the 1980s there prevailed in Qaqachaka the idea that the person who had passed the feast of a particular god was the “partner” of that god or goddess, in a “spiritual” relationship, which began in this life and continued after death. In essence, the local men and women became related to the god-​saints through “spiritual marriage alliances.” In the practice of the feast cycle, the men passed feasts to a female goddess-​saint and the women to a male god-​saint. The ideal was that during this life, a couple passed two principal feasts, one for the wife and the other for the husband. Then they, as a couple, passed an additional feast for their children, this time dedicated to one of the children-​saints of the church. These characteristics of the system of feasts offered to Qaqachaka’s god-​saints were to underlie the friction between the minor ayllus and the eventual collapse of the former scheme of taking turns to celebrate these feasts. Let us explore in the rest of this chapter these local ideas about spiritual marriages, and then, in the next chapter, the songs sung to the god-​saints at their feasts as expressions of these matrimonial relations. Spiritual Marriages with the Saint-​Gods

The origins of these practices of spiritual marriage are a mystery. A literature on some of the saints of medieval Europe describes the spiritual marriage these held with their spouse, although these usually dealt with marriages that were unconsummated (see

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for example Glasser 1981). Another mystical tradition within Catholicism, derived from the life and writings of St John of the Cross (1542–​1591), is concerned with spiritual marriages, but with Christ or with God, and we find there some of the same practices and ideas as in Qaqachaka. It might also be possible that the processes of Christian indoctrination during the early Colony disseminated ideas about spiritual marriages with the saints or else around the norms of spiritual cognation through the relations of godfathership (padrinazgo) or shared spiritual parenthood (compadrazgo) in general. In Catholicism, these spiritual relations are developed through the Christian sacraments. These begin with the baptism of a child (perceived as a second spiritual birth), followed by their confirmation (at adolescence). From a canonical and theological point of view, spiritual parenthood can only be generated (and in consequence the impediments) through the ties of godfathership and godparenthood acquired at baptism and confirmation, although in practice the godparents of marriage are also assimilated to this category (Imolesi 2012, 185). So we may add to this sequence the sacrament of marriage. However, these Catholic ideas concerning spiritual marriage might have replaced pre-​existing precolonial relations of this kind, according to the arguments put forward by Spedding (1997, 116), based on commentaries from the early Colony by Guaman Poma de Ayala. I have not found much data in an Andean context about a generalized practice of marriage with the deceased. Data does exist for the Inka period, mentioned by Pedro Pizarro and Murúa, which refers to cases of women married to royal mummies, as well as examples of petitions to the royal mummies for permission to carry out a marriage with one of the women charged with their care.6 This practice is not that unusual and it is known from other parts of the world. Under the name of “spiritual” or “ghost” marriage, this practice is known in China, Sudan, and even in France, as a way of ensuring the transmission of goods and property, as well as descendants, between the deceased and the lineage of the spiritual wife.7 These examples suggest that, in an Andean context, the practice could have had its roots in the transmission of goods from the Inka royal mummies to the lineage of the partner adopted through this custom. In view of the absences around the custom in existing studies of the Andes, my intuition is that this spiritual marriage with a god-​saint, in its role as an ancestral mummy of the place, could form part of a wider and much older sequence of spiritual relations, reinterpreted at some point through Catholic norms. The older people of Qaqachaka refer to these spiritual relations as a vital aspect of the unfolding of what they call the “clear life” (qhana wira) in which they participated gradually through the various sacramental rites. The first, as I mentioned, is the baptism (sutiyaña) of a baby (­figure 22), followed by the rite of “first haircutting” (rutuchi) of a small child. The selection of the godmother (madrina) and godfather (padrino) to offer a “mass for health” (misa de salud) for an adolescent was still practiced in the years we were in Qaqachaka, although 6 Pizarro ([1571] 1965, vol. 168, 182, 183) and Fray Martín de Murúa ([1613] 1964, 122, 123), cited in Alonso (1989, 130). 7 https://​en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Posthumous_​marriage (Accessed April 3, 2017).

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Figure 22. The tata kura, Father Coca, baptizes a baby, held by its godfather, Juan de Dios Yapita, in Qaqachaka’s church (1989).

it is becoming subsumed by the Catholic rite of confirmation, which would be the next rite in the sequence. Following this is the rite of marriage, when the man and woman of the couple, through this ritual and the supporting actions by the godparents (padrinos) of the wedding ceremony, now “become persons” (jaqichasiña) in society, in terms of their new responsibilities, although the members of the couple are still considered in that rite to be “babies” (wawa) in spiritual terms (Arnold, with Yapita 2006, 135–​37). The married couple finally reach the condition of being “adults” at a spiritual level when they establish marital relations with one of the god-​saints of the place. Note here the slippage in the stages of these rites, between those of the “physical” life of persons and those of their “spiritual” life. I have suggested in other publications that this “spiritual” cycle, lived in parallel with a life of “flesh and blood,” has its roots in the former demand on a young husband to capture the trophy head of an enemy, and to pass this over to the care of his partner as the ontological basis with which to conform the creative potency of his new matrimonial home (Arnold 2000, 11–​12; Arnold, with Yapita 2006, 129–​30; Arnold and Hastorf 2008, 48). From this moment onwards, the female of the household had the responsibility of taming the spirit residing in the enemy head, and of transforming this, through her weaving activities, into a new baby of her household. During this highly propitious period for the head-​taker’s household, the wife attempts to appropriate the forces (ch’ama) that dwell in the taken head as the creative potency of the household during

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the next three years, in which these foreign energies help her give birth to the human babies in the family dwelling, and to rear the offspring of the herd animals, and the new generation of cultigens in the family fields. It seems to me that, through these activities surrounding the captured trophy head, the young married couple identify themselves with the spiritual babies of the family dwelling generated by the previous bellicose period, in the new “clear life” they will live, in parallel with their “mortal” life of flesh and blood. This change in ontological status is evident in the customs of marriage, when the couple become transformed into “babies” of the other life (mä wira), now of their spiritual godparents of marriage. In relation to this complex, it is pertinent that, in the past, these godparents were by custom the couple formed with the father’s sister or ipala (FZ) or else the mother’s brother or larita (MB) of the married pair. From this moment, the pair (also compared to lepidopterans) received gifts of clothing from their godparents, which were compared in this case to the “wings” (ch’iqha) that the matrimonial nymphs were to wrap around themselves in order to transform again into their new lives as married people. These comparisons with lepidopterans, nymphs, and ultimately butterflies might refer, not so much to the processes of decomposition of a cadaver or trophy head, as to the entomological transformations of the soul after death. Such transformations have been described by the archaeologist Steve Bourget (2001, 104–​16) in relation to Moche burials in the distant past, and there are other mentions of this kind in archaeological and colonial contexts. In all of these, the soul after death is considered to pass through such stages in the life of an insect, before being fully able to fly, and become converted into a new person (Frame 2001). In their new stage as “social persons” (jaqi), the married couple should assume their new responsibilities, with respect to both household tasks, and those of the communal posts or “cargos,” which they must now serve in the interests of the minor ayllu of which they are part, and the annex of Qaqachaka in its totality. As a second step, the members of the couple—​recently born babies, transformed through the marriage—​are converted into “adults” (jaqi chuymani) of the community, mainly through the custom of passing turns in the posts of the authorities, on the pathway (thakhi) that defines their tradition, and of having passed the feasts to the god-​saints, this time on their pathways of the gods (yusa thakhi). Only at the age of becoming “married spiritually” are they converted into “partners” of the gods whose feasts they have passed. In all this process, it is as if, in parallel, the spirit of the enemy head captured by the young couple, has first become transformed into a “baby” of their own group (materialized in the married couple itself), then into the spiritual “partner” of the god-​ wak’a of the place, and at the end of its spiritual cycle into a manifestation of the god-​ wak’a itself, now in its role as an ancestral mummy of the group. The System of Turns Before 1984

In order to explain the great changes to the system of turns that occurred in 1985, Don Franco Quispe contextualized the situation for us by describing how the god-​saints used to rotate in a system of turns during the feasts of former years.

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Initially the god-​saints alternated between the minor ayllus of the upper moiety (patxasaya) and the lower moiety (manqhasaya), categories applied according to their geographic and ecological locations, as was the case in neighbouring K’ulta until the 1990s (Abercrombie 1998, 364–​65). There had always been a certain degree of competition, including fights, between these two moieties over the gods, in part because the older people insisted in taking Tata Quri with violence, claimed that the god himself was of this nature, and wanted it like this. Nuwasiñantiw mun(i) six, they used to say, “They say he wants them to fight.” They thought that if there were no flights, then Tata Quri “could go off anywhere,” as he had done when they first found him. By custom the fights between the two moieties lasted throughout the green period of the year, beginning at the Feast of the Dead (Todos Santos), shortly after sowing the lands of the annex, to break out again with a vengeance at the feast of Cruz with harvest time. Those who fought were dressed as warriors, but by custom they then had to beg pardon on their knees after a fight between rival combatants: Nuwasisin qunqurt’asiñarakïn, sixay, “Jilata jichha nuwt’astanwa,” sas.

They say that after fighting, they went down on their knees, saying, “Brother, now we’ve fought for a while.”

In later years, the fights became more intense and widespread, and at Carnival, Easter, the Feast of the Dead, the minor ayllus began to fight among themselves in the house of the alférez for the right to pass the feast of Tata Quri (jikxata o urucht’ayapxiya), then they drank rounds of beer to celebrate the fact that they had “got hold of” the god. Even so, the system of turns to pass the feasts for each god-​saint still functioned according to the established norms. The most important posts to pass, from the comunarios’ point of view, corresponded to Tata Quri and Mama Candelaria, in their feasts at Cruz in May and Candelaria in February, respectively, when all the minor ayllus came together. Likewise, in the fiesta de la Concepción in December, all the minor ayllus participated in the celebration of “Mama Concebida,” the name for the inseparable sisters Kapitana and Ch’uri. The cycle of turns for the feasts of these different god-​saints began in the minor ayllu considered the “owner” of that god, and then passed through the other minor ayllus in a predetermined order in accordance with “ancestral custom” (awil achachit kustumrataxa). The turn came again after five years, when there would again be enormous competition amongst the comunarios to pass the respective feast. According to Don Franco Quispe, the turns for the cycle of feasts for Tata Quri began in ayllu Jujchu, its “owner,” then it went to the left “in the direction of the Sun,” giving a whole turn (turnu muyu) of the principal minor ayllus of the annex. The following year, the cycle of Tata Quri began again in the next minor ayllu in this round, always going in the Sun’s direction. In contrast, the female saints Mama Candelaria, Mama Kapitana and Mama Ch’uri, and the Llama Herding Girl, in their role as goddesses, participated in this system of turns passing always towards the right, “in the direction of the Moon.” Here again is evidence of the nexus between the god-​saints of the place and the former Andean gods they replaced. Like Tata Quri, each of the other god-​saints had its “owner” ayllu of origin, which included the family or lineage of “owners” to which the original persons who had found these gods historically belonged, and whom Don Franco and other comunarios named in

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their respective tales about these origins. Mama Candelaria belonged to ayllu Araya (also called Arriba or Livichuco), where her small chapel can still be seen on the slope to one side of the hamlet of Livichuco, and to the Maraza family. As I already mentioned, Mama Kapitana belonged to the lower division of ayllu Kinsa Cruz and to the Arias family, and Mama Ch’uri to the upper division of the same ayllu. San Juan (or Ch’uri Mustramu) and his partner Mama Elena belonged to ayllu Qallapa. In the past, San Juan was accompanied by Wayna, but over the last decades he travelled alone in his turns. Tata Ispiritu belonged originally to ayllu Jujchu, but then passed to ayllu Qallapa. Similarly, Animasa belonged in the past to ayllu Sullkayana (in the upper moiety called patxasaya) and was accompanied on his travels by his wife Mama Tulurisa (Mama Dolores). When there was no longer a feast in his honour, Animasa passed on to ayllu Arriba, and then to the care of the Alcalde Mayor in the main pueblo. This system of turns starting from the original ayllu and personal owners of the gods continued until the fights that broke out at each new round to trap the god, or else release it, became uncontrollable battles between rival ayllus. Don Franco narrated his own experience of this: Regarding Tata Quri, in the past ayllu Jujchu used to begin the round of turns. Then came ayllu Kinsa Cruz, and after Qallapa, then Arriba and then Sullkayana. Then it all began anew. Before there were five ayllus, but now there are six … Likewise with Mama Candelaria, she used to begin with the Marazas of Arriba, and then Kinsa Cruz, then Qallapa, Jujchu, and Sullkayana … Kapitana went in the same fashion, and Ch’uri too. She began with Kinsa Cruz, then on to Jujchu and then Livichuco or Arriba, after Sullkayana and then Qallapa. She did the round in this way, and then began over again.

So, if Tata Quri was with ayllu Jujchu, Mama Candelaria was with Arriba. And the rest of the gods were with Jujchu (and therefore with Taqawa and with the Ayca family) although they just say “with Jujchu.” Tata Quri passed around in this way. And Ch’uri and Kapitana were with Kinsa Cruz at (the feast of) Concepción. And if Tata Quri was with Kinsa Cruz, then Mama Candelaria was with the Marazas of Arriba, and Ch’uri and Kapitana with Kinsa Cruz.

A single ayllu could even pass the three (gods): Tata Quri (or Jach’a Quri), Candelaria, and the Niño (Wayna). With Jisk’a Quri as well, because Tata Quri and he would do the rounds together always. The three gods passed one single feast, that of Cruz. Likewise in Candelaria, Mama Candelaria, Mama Copacabana, and the one called Qarwiri (Llama Herding Girl) were celebrated, and these were passed together. Arriba passed Candelaria and the others passed Jach’a Quri with Jisk’a Quri. Those of Jujchu did this.

Before, those of the upper moiety (patxasaya) passed the feast and the next year those of the lower moiety (manqhasaya), as in K’ulta. It was like that before: urinsaya-​aransaya (in Quechua) or else patxasaya-​manqhasaya (in Aymara). But now the ayllus are different. Before it was patxasaya-​manqhasaya, but now it isn’t like this.

Those of patxasaya were from Taqawa, up above Parqu, from Qhachusani, from Qhuchini. Down below it’s manqhasaya. Q’uwach’api in Sullkayana is manqhasaya. And Qañawi in Sullkayana is patxasaya, so it was. But then there were fights between patxasaya and manqhasaya. And because of this, the older people of each moiety wanted to have Tata Quri (for themselves), because they say that Tata Quri always wants fights. In manqhasaya, Qallapa was the strongest and it’s so until now. And in patxasaya, Kututu, Qañawi, and Yanamani were strong. Tata Quri wants fights (nuwasi) like this.

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They fought at Cruz, at Easter and then at Todos Santos, for having lost Tata Quri. And then they’d grasp hold of Tata Quri and celebrate him on his feast day, just for these fights. The alféreces drank alcohol and made barley beer, and they made them (the fighters) accept the saints with this. But afterwards they still fought. That’s how it was … Even Condo fought with Qaqachaka, and they won. Qala Qala won over Q’athawi Qullu, and Qallapa. I was present there, and they continued to fight with leather helmets and all. They fought with Qaqachaka. They fought wearing helmets, and then they excused themselves on their knees, saying “Brother, now we’ve fought enough …” It’s custom since the grandparents. It’s just custom. Nowadays the young men become macho machos at school. Once they know how to read they just want to show off. Then they destroy the gods and make people lose the gods.

Animasa didn’t do the round. He’s ours (belonging to Sullkayana), that’s how it is. He was just there from before. Perhaps he did the rounds in the past, but since he was left with us, not any more … And we don’t put on a fiesta, nothing. It’s only in Qaqachaka. It’s because the rest (of the ayllus) said “I’m not going to pass it either …”

The mayordomos are in charge, the awatiris as we say. And there’s the commission from each ayllu. We just say Marka. Right now (in 1989) it’s Choque, Alberto, he’s the awatiri … That one used to herd us in the past, but now he no longer does the round. With regard to Animasa, we say, “Well, this one wants to rest.” That’s why we no longer pass him, besides, the people don’t like him very much. They say, “He’s the god of the dead souls (almas).” But he’s also Tata Jisu Kiristu. He’s just the replacement for that one.

So what happened in the years 1984 and 1985 that incited such dramatic changes in the organization of the cycle of turns for the fiestas of the god-​saints? The year 1985 was the very first year we visited Qaqachaka, and it was difficult then to understand the depth of the changes taking place. We were just conscious of the high level of violence in the annex as a whole, and among the minor ayllus in particular. It appeared to us that the fights started each time one of the god-​saints was passed from one minor ayllu to another. And it seemed to us that the problem had begun at the fiesta de la Cruz in 1985, when they celebrated Tata Quri, given that on this occasion there were fierce fights between the young men of two minor ayllus. In the following months, many people began to murmur that these major changes in the system of turns occurred when Don Alberto Choque assumed the post of jilanqu (ayllu leader) in the minor ayllu of Jujchu 2.  From their comments, the problem was that Don Alberto had “divided the gods for ever,” and that these no longer followed the original order of possession to their respective minor ayllus. We wondered if we were dealing with a kind of pachakuti or “return to their origins.” Don Alberto’s ancestor, Silvestre Choque of ayllu Jujchu, had been the first “owner” of Tata Quri, and so the cycle used to begin with him, but now it was to stay with him perpetually. The members of ayllu Qallapa were particularly angry at this proposal as they no longer had access to any god-​saint. As one of the comunarios of Qallapa remarked:  “Alberto committed an error and lost the gods. It’s he who’s lost everything.” Another person described how the comunarios were scolding Don Alberto: “You’ve done this, damn you. You’ve lost the gods.” In that new conjuncture, one comunario explained that, as there were no longer feast sponsors to pass the feasts, “Don Alberto himself entered and took for himself the

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greatest god,” meaning Tata Quri. Characteristically, Don Enrique Espejo of ayllu Qallapa explained to us: It was him, when he was jilanqu. It’s him who made us lose everything. He ordered it to be so, “That Arriba has their god, and that Kinsa Cruz has Kapitana and Ch’uri, and that Jujchu has Tata Quri, and San Juan likewise … Wayna the same … and Jisk’a Quri too … Tata Quri is the god of Second Jujchu,” he’d said. And they’d divided the gods in this way. Now they can no longer pass the fiestas. And Wayna has been put away inside the church and there is no longer a feast sponsor.

According to other commentaries, Don Alberto Choque himself had to take control so that the fiesta of Tata Quri was constantly passed each year within his own family and his own ayllu, “if not, the people would comment that it was his fault that the god was no longer celebrated.” In addition, Don Alberto had to wait for a new sponsor to “get hold of” the feast while the god was still in his own family patio, which created an extremely tense situation for all his family. Don Alberto feared that if the god was in the pueblo church then any ayllu or estancia could get hold of him, and this would not be to his satisfaction. Besides, new rivalries or fights could break out at any moment. Other comunarios did at least concede that the change in the practices of taking turns was the decision of the authorities of all the minor ayllus in their totality. Don Franco Quispe recorded some of the names of those involved,8 and admitted that they had indeed arrived at an agreement between all of them, although the general gossip insisted that Don Alberto Choque had the greatest degree of influence in these changes. Don Alberto Choque himself confirmed that the fights for the gods began in approximately 1984, basically between the upper and lower moieties. As a result, by 1989, only the three minor ayllus of Kinsa Cruz, Second Jujchu, and Arriba still passed the feasts, whereas the other three minor ayllus of Qallapa, First Jujchu and Sullkayana, no longer did so. A Marriage with Tata Quri: Corporeal and Spiritual Kinship

Other commentaries gradually clarified the background of this highly conflictive affair. Don Franco told us that, with respect to Tata Quri, a spiritual marriage had occurred, when Doña María Ayca Colque, the wife of Don Alberto Choque, became converted into the “spiritual wife” of that god. Given that situation, her husband Don Alberto had the obligation in that conflictive period of “grasping” for her that god-​wak’a in an almost permanent way: That was before. It went in turns. Even in Carnival it went in turns. But now the god has been grasped in a certain place. Maraza is grasping Candelaria, and Tata Quri is in the hamlet of Taqawa now. Kinsa Cruz is grasping Kunsyuna (Concepción). And Ch’uri Mama belongs to Llanquepacha. Morales had taken her, taking her with the Niñu too. Only afterwards he’d said, “She’s mine!” They began to struggle between the

8 In Don Franco’s memory, the jilanqu of Sullkäna was Ambrosio Qupa. The Corregidor was called Santiago. Lorenzo Ayca of Taqawa was the Juez Mínimo. The Agente was Francisco Choque of Chullpa Loma. And the Alcalde was possibly Cesario Tarque.

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two of them, in Kinsa Cruz, because Ch’uri really belongs to another. Now only those are celebrating her. Kinsa Cruz has hold of her.

What happened is this. Now they are fighting in the fiestas until they kill each other, so whoever gets hold of a god makes us fight over it. They said, “Well, whoever wants to can pass (the feast). So we shall have our own personal feasts.” That’s why some of us didn’t support that option. So they pass (the feasts) as the “owners” (of a particular god), and any individual begins to pass (the feast they want). I can’t remember too well when all this began. I don’t know who was alcalde … but our own jilanqu was Ambrosio Copa. I don’t know who the alcalde was. The corregidor was Santiago (Santuyu), his surname was Santiago. I can’t remember his name, but I believe he was from Macha. Lorenzo Ayca from Taqawa was Juez Mínimo. And the Agente was Francisco Choque of Chullpa Loma. I  can’t remember properly the alcalde … Anyway those were the ones who had accorded, “Let it be so.” They made agreements among themselves.

And finally the crux of the problem:

That’s why they distributed the god … the gods. That’s why they no longer do the rounds. Each one passes their own feast now. And Ayca is grasping Tata Quri. She is grasping him together with Choque. But the one who grasps him more is Ayca. And Choque just helps her. That’s how it is.

With that explanation, Don Franco Quispe had clarified for us that the person who had taken power over Tata Quri was not actually Don Alberto, but his wife, Doña María Ayca, given that she was the “spiritual wife” of the god. Doña María Ayca Colque (­figure 23) herself took pains to explain to us the religious context in which these ideas were framed, in the differences between corporeal and spiritual kinship. She held that our human parents, both mother (person mamala) and father (person tatala), are not our “true” parents; we just have in common their skin and flesh. Neither is a human mother a true mother, “we only come from her body.” Rather we are the true babies of our godfather (padrino) and godmother (madrina), those “who give us our names,” mainly our godfather of baptism (pärinu or suti tala) and our godmother of baptism (märina or suti mala), and then our compadres of marriage. Doña María Ayca also stressed that these people themselves “do not give birth,” only their “money gives birth.” Within this wider context, Doña María thinks that once she has passed the fiesta of Tata Quri at Cruz, she will become his wife when she dies: “Uka chachanixa,” siw, “uka.”

“I’d have that one as husband,” she said.

She told us that when she dies, Father Sun (Inti Tala) will hand her the god Tata Quri. Doña María was very proud for this reason, as Tata Quri is considered the most important and powerful male god whose feast a woman could pass in her whole lifetime. His female equivalent would be Mamita Candelaria, the wife of Tata Quri, considered the most important female goddess whose feast a man could pass, followed by Kapitana and Ch’uri. In their life as a couple, she and her husband had passed the feast of Tata Quri, then that of Mama Kapitana and of Wayna. So, as a corollary, her husband in this life, Don

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Figure 23. Doña María Ayca Colque, wife in this life of Don Alberto Choque and, in the other life, of the saint-​god Tata Quri.

Alberto, would become the husband of Mamita Kapitana, whose fiesta he had passed in February of that same year (1989). Apart from the great sacrifice of the costs passing these two feasts, the couple of feast sponsors are denominated as “Señor and Señora Viracocha” (Siñur and Siñura Wirajucha) in allusion to the great god of the Inka past, Viracocha. The idea is that this couple pass the feast not only in representation of this high god, but they “pass it as gods” (yusat pasi) in their own right. Numerous dances and offerings are made in their honour, and from this moment onward they themselves are recognized as very special persons in the annex. This situation has two notable characteristics that merit commenting: First is the fact that Don Alberto Choque, in himself a powerful person and the principal yatiri of the annex, retained for his own lineage the principal god of the place, with the result that he increased his own position in Qaqachaka society. This reflects the situation in the Inka period, when the pretenders to power would begin to develop a close relationship with a certain ancestral mummy, together with its oral history according to the social memory of the place, so as to identify themselves with the deeds of this lineage, and in this way, augment their own prestige. Remember that the assets of the Inka ancestral mummies (including lands and their yields as sacred property) fell upon their whole lineage in the pattern called “divided inheritance,” and not only upon the

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immediate successor (Cobo [1653] 1979, 111, 248). Thus the successor (or here the entering feast sponsor of Tata Quri) had his own struggle during his lifetime to accumulate his own assets and assemble his own space of power. Second, we are faced with the custom focused on the “spiritual” relations between the living and the dead, as married couples. My argument has been that these spiritual relations reiterate the historical ties with the Inka mummies, transferred in the Colony to the new Catholic saints of the place. The evidence therefore suggests that the rites dedicated to the Inka mummies did not cease with the Conquest, but continued in later forms. Examples are the great stagings and processions, such as those of the city of Potosí registered in the eighteenth century by Bartolomé Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela ([1735] 1965, t.1, 98), followed by other witnesses in the later Republican period (Pease 1995; Beyersdorff 1997). The dissemination to rural pueblos of the characteristics of these urban events must have been a key process in learning rituals during centuries, and besides, a process through which the members of the minor ayllus of ecclesiastical annexes such as Qaqachaka could learn to revive the memory of their ancestors, as the more restricted groups of elites had done earlier. Here we encounter another pathway of transmission of the oral history of the place, no longer through the recitative practices of the specialized title-​bearers, but now according to the more mythical narratives of those who lived further away from the local documentary archives, in combination with the songs to the gods, under the charge of the women, which we shall examine in the next chapter.

Chapter 13

LET’S SING TO THE  GODS

Tata Quri, Lord, Purely Golden Lord …

Doña María Ayca Colque, from the hamlet of K’uytumiri

The songs to the god-​saints, sung mainly by the women of the annex, are in many

ways the female counterpart to the men’s bellicose “grasping” of these gods in the round of turns. In their songs, the women “wrap up” the god-​saints in a layer of sound, so these actions are also the female equivalent of the men’s wrapping of the saints, such as Tata Quri, first in a wooden box and then in layers of cloth. We heard in some commentaries that the actual content of the song verses has to do with the idea of marriage with these god-​saints, so the songs confirm this custom too. As a genre these songs are called yusa kirki, “songs to the gods,” or alternatively yusa wirsu, “verses to the gods.” The sponsor couple, man and wife, of the feast to a certain god, perform these songs as part of their obligations in the event, announcing “Let’s sing to the gods,” Yusar kirkiñani. The man of the couple has the obligation to sing to the goddess which he celebrates as his “spiritual” wife, whereas the woman sings to the god she celebrates as her “spiritual husband.” Note that only the gods who are assigned their own feast days have songs dedicated to them. The lesser gods who no longer have feasts assigned to them, such as Tata Animasa and Mama Dolores, are no longer honoured with songs. The songs to the gods are grouped into three classes or categories. The goddess-​ saints are all considered to be generic “mothers” (tayka) and are honoured with the same sung melody. So Mamita Candelaria (Siñura Kantilayra), the Mamitas Kapitana and Ch’uri (with their shared appellative of Kunsyuna, Conception), and Llama Herding Girl (Qarwiri Imilla) all have the same song dedicated to them, called “Little Lady, Little Dove” (Siñurita Palumita). The only difference between their songs is in the lyrics, which might make reference to the relations of kinship between them, naming the true “mother” in the case of Mama Candelaria, or the sisters of the family “from younger to elder” (kullak jisk’a) in the cases of Kapitana and Ch’uri. Similarly all the male gods are considered to be generic “fathers” (awki), including Tata Quri, and all of these have the same sung melody, but distinct from the songs to the goddesses. The same happens with the god-​saints considered “children” (niños). These all have the same sung melody, although it is different from that of the mother and father gods, and again the sung lyrics are differentiated by references to the position of these children in the kinship relations of the wider family, in terms of “younger to elder” siblings (jilat jisk’a).

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I have not been able to trace the history of these songs. They probably derive from the “songs of devotion” of medieval Europe, but reinterpreted in an Andean context. In some examples, the dialogues within the songs seem to be inspired by the texts for indoctrination produced by the Third Lima Council, from 1582 to 1583 (Arnold and Yapita 1999, 2007), but instead of dialoguing between the priest and the parishioner (as the person being indoctrinated), the dialogue shifts to that between the god-​saint and the supplicant. These songs are still vehicles of devotion, with the use of supplications or orisons addressed to the comuna, exaltations to the god-​saint and dialogues with him or her in the form of prayers.

The Songs to Tata Quri

The songs to Tata Quri stress his place in the local cosmology, his precolonial counterpart of the Sun God, and his married status and patronage of the marriages in the whole annex of Qaqachaka. In those years most marriages in the annex took place at Tata Quri’s fiesta of Cruz. I mentioned before that the church gods are considered the counterparts of the sky gods (above all the Sun and the Moon), and moreover of the gods of the guardian mountains (uywiri) and the earth (Tira Wirjina). According to this same logic, the gods of the mountains and the earth care for the humans, animals, and vegetation under their dominion, in the spheres of the mountains and the earth in general, whereas the god-​ saints of the church care for them in the sphere of the church. I also mentioned that, within this same logic, the patron saint of the whole annex of Qaqachaka, Tata Quri, is considered the replacement for the waning Sun God of the year, which ripens the crops in the fields and then cares for their harvest at the beginning of May, when his fiesta is celebrated. During this fiesta, the classificatory paternal aunts of the feast sponsors (those equivalent to the husband’s sister, HZ, or father’s sister FZ), who usually name their child at baptism, perform the songs addressed to Tata Quri. In the context of ideas about the spiritual marriages with the gods, the songs to Tata Quri are nuptial or bridal songs, and complement those sung at the wedding feast of a human couple. In the wedding feast, these songs are again sung by an elder paternal aunt to the groom, who is himself considered to be an Inka. However, the songs to Tata Quri imply a marriage between this god and the woman who passes his feast, while Tata Quri himself is considered to be an Inka). We describe elsewhere how the wedding songs are directed towards the new sapling (the bride), and her growth and development (compared in the songs to that of a plant) in the patio of the new couple’s matrimonial home (Arnold and Yapita 1998b, 540–​41). But here, the songs to Tata Quri are focused on the later stage of a crop already planted, now in the process of maturing, with the possibility of eating and drinking those products from the earth that have been recently harvested. Remember that Tata Quri is god of the harvest. For these reasons, according to Doña María Ayca Colque, Don Alberto Choque’s wife, a couple should always remember two songs. Her husband (who she denominates as her Wirajucha or “god of the fiesta”) records the following song to Mamita Candelaria or Kantilayra Siñura:

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Let’s Sing to the Gods

Siñuritay Palumitay, Mamala kullak jisk’atay …

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Little Lady, Little Dove,

Lady, with sisters from elder to younger …

while she herself records the following song to Tata Quri : Tata Quri, Tatalay,

Qurikama, Tatalayj, Sintakamay, Tatalayj “Tiñ, tiñ tiñ tiñ” Kachikachin Santa Wila Kurusa Tatal Quri, Tatalayj Sintakama, Tatalayj Quri tirinsilla, Tatalayj Quri tirinsilla, Tatalayj “Piña” sanmalla, Tatalayj “Qultun” sanmay, Tatalayj Ay ispusita, Tatalayj …

Tata Quri, Lord

Purely Golden, Lord

Purely ribbons, Lord “Ding-​a-​ling-​a-​ling”

Holy Saintly Cross of Qaqachaka Tata Quri, Lord Purely ribbons, Lord

With little golden braids, Lord With little golden braids, Lord Say “silver pineapple,” Lord Stamp “Pum pum,” Lord

Ay, little wife, Lord …

In their construction, these songs tend to have a structure of two couplets grouped into a stanza or verse, with connective lines between the stanzas which refer to the key appellatives of Tata Quri, or else to the tinkle of the sleigh bells worn on the ankles of Tata Quri’s danzantes, as a background pulse and rhythm. Characteristically, the lyrics of this version by Doña María, apart from their allusions to the spiritual marriage with her god, are replete with the names of endearment (q’ayata) of that saint as if he were a real person, and to the forms of his material manifestations. She characteristically introduces into the song the onomatopoeic sounds made by the danzantes and other elements in Tata Quri’s cult, which she herself knew so well. These two aspects are combined when Doña María Ayca appeals in her song to Tata Quri’s name of endearment as “tañ tiñ,” or “ding-​a-​ling,” which echoes the dancing in his honour. All these references are polyvalent, inspiring the singers to pass in their performance from one idea to another, from a simple phrase to a bundle of relations, stimulating participative thought, as they did in their exegesis of the songs to us. In the fourth line of the first stanza, Doña María again refers to the danzantes’ tinkling sleigh bells, which she reiterates in the third stanza, but this time with the clomping “Qultun” of the dancers’ feet. The reference in the second verse to Kachikachin Santa Wila Kurusa takes up the drinking name of Qaqachaka pueblo as “Kachikachi.” This term, apart from being a sound play, refers to white salt (kachi) or a shiny white stone, in reference to white stones such as these found on the slopes of Mount Phiriphiri, where Tata Quri was found engraved for the very first time. Other lyrics describe Tata Quri’s appearance, with his small golden braids. Yet others reiterate his ties with gold mines, or in one case, the white “pineapples” (piña) of pure silver, left in the colonial processing of

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this mineral after the mercury was extracted. At the culmination of her song, Doña María refers to her spiritual status as Tata Quri’s wife, “Ispusita, Tatalayj,” as her most intense desire while she passed his feast. Another version by Doña María Ayca Colque of her song to Tata Quri names the many gifts he bestows on his faithful: Tatal Quri waxt’itu

Kantilayr Siñura waxt’itu Phaqar wawirs waxt’itu, Tatalay Wakan saltirpach waxt’itu, Tatalay … Sintakama, Tatala, Phaqarpiñay waxt’ista, Yuntirpacha, Tatalay, Tilantir khumt’irpacha, Tatalay, Uwij awatirpach, Tatalayj “Tiñ” sanmay, Tatalay, “Phut phut” sanmay, Tatalay, Tatala Quri, Tatalay, Amtasipinsmaway, Tatalay Ay katinita, Tatalay …

He gave me Tata Quri

He gave me Lady Candelaria

He gave me flowers for my children, Lord

He gave me oxen for a yoked team, Lord … Purely ribbons, Lord

Thou really gavest me flowers Ready to yoke oxen, Lord

Ready to load the lead llama, Lord Ready to pasture sheep, Lord

Ring “Ding-​a-​ling,” Lord Stomp “Put put,” Lord Father Gold, Lord

I remember you always, Lord Ay, little chain, Lord …

Again, the tintinnabulation made by the danzantes, with their ankle bells and clomping steps, opens the third stanza, “Tiñ” sanmay, Tatalay, “Phut phut” sanmay, Tatalay. But this version of the song has other allusions. In the first stanza, Doña María praises Tata Quri for having granted certain plants (flowers) and animals (oxen and llamas) to the ayllu that possessed him for the feast, and for having cared for them there. The selection of animals chosen by the singer includes those from the agricultural and herding production of both the high puna (the llamas and sheep) and the valleys (oxen). With the mention in line eight of “loading the lead llama (or tilantiru)” that guides the troupe, the singer records the interchange of products still made in the 1980s between each ecological zone, when the llama herders with their caravanserai carried highland products such as chuño and grains, in woven sacks loaded onto their llamas, to exchange for valley products, above all maize. The final line of the song, Ay katinita, Tatalay, “Ay little chain, Lord,” refers in the first instance to the golden chain placed over the shoulders of the new couple in the church marriage ceremony. In the context of the lyrics of the rest of the song, this also refers to the woven chain placed around the neck of the lead llama in its journey to the warm valleys. From this chain hangs a small bell (sinsiru), which rings “tiñ tiñ” like the sleigh bells of Tata Quri’s danzantes. On the return journey, this sound “calls the spirit (animu) of the maize,” perceived as the “wife” of the llama, which he carries with him to live in the puna (Arnold 2000, 11). The same allusion to this small bell evokes a similar bell carried by yatiris to call the lost souls of the living or the dead. Yet another allusion here is to the

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chain with which the celestial god, in the tale told by Doña Bernaldita, pulled the humans up from the earth to heaven to live with him there, but who, because of the untimely intervention of a parrot with a sharp beak flying past, came falling down to earth again. A variant of this song was performed by Doña Santusa Quispe, the daughter of Don Franco Quispe and his wife, Doña María Ayca Llanque (T’ulani María, “the María from T’ulani”), and the wife of Don Severo Antachoque, this time in 1986. Although this couple were still young, they had already passed a sequence of fiestas to the god-​saints. This song was sung on the main feastday at the fiesta de la Cruz to accompany Tata Quri’s danzantes: Ay katinita, Tatalayj

Ay, esposita, Tatalayj “Taninim” sanmay, Tatala Sinta qunquri, Tatalay Sinta Siwar Q’asa, Tatala Quntumir Maykitu, Tatala Ay, ay, katinita, Tatalayj Papa maraway, Tatala Quri maraway, Tatala “Taninim” sanmay, Tatala “Quntumir” sanmay, Tatala Ay, ay, katinita, Tatalay Ay, esposita, Tatalay …

Ay, little chain, Lord Ay, little wife, Lord

Tell him “Come,” Lord

With knees of ribbons, Lord

Ribbons from Barley Crevice, Lord Mallku from Quntumiri, Lord Ay, ay, little chain, Lord

It’s the year of the potato, Lord It’s the year of gold, Lord Tell him “Come,” Lord

Tell him “Quntumiri,” Lord Ay, ay, little chain, Lord Ay, little wife, Lord…

In her own song to Tata Quri, Doña Santusa begins with a couplet referring to the little wedding chain, and to Tata Quri and his spiritual wife. Opening the first stanza, “Taninim” alludes ambiguously to the tinkle of the danzantes’ ankle bells, or it could be a request to Tata Quri to become present. The following line, “Sinta qunquri” refers to Tata Quri’s wrapping within his painted wooden box, within a tangle of coloured ribbons, or else to the ritual name of the barley, recently harvested, as suxta qunquri, “that of six knees.” This seems to be confirmed in the third line of the opening stanza, when the singer names Siwar Q’asa (Barley Crevice), a toponym near the small pueblo of Chayrapata, located in the valleys of Macha to this side of Tomaycuri, where the Qaqachakas used to go from centuries past to rent out the costumes for Tata Quri’s danzantes. This place name is recorded until now in toasts at the feast of Cruz, as are the resting places (samara) visited by those who carried these costumes back to Qaqachaka pueblo. The allusion to barley in the song has other resonances with the theme of marriage. In the marriage ceremony, in the recent past, the couple’s godparents gave them a head of barley in which they had removed alternate rows of grains. In the Charazani region north of La Paz, where something similar was practiced, the North American anthropologist Joseph Bastien proposes that the maize, in his case, signifies the fields, and each

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row of grains was a furrow (wajchu) there. The row of grains stand for the man and the empty rows are the woman, and just as the furrow and row were necessary for raising maize, so too the man and woman were necessary to bring children (Bastien 1978, 125). This felt necessity of complementing the activities of two people in marriage is extended to the beneficial interchange of resources between two ecological zones. The highest zones render more animals while the lower zones render more cultigens. Just as the interchange between each level is necessary for material survival, so an interchange is sought between these zones in the ideal couple destined for marriage, in an example of zonal exogamy, but of endogamy within the wider Qaqachaka annex. Earlier I described this same kind of practice of interzonal interchange of wives in the marriages of the caciques of the region in the historical past, in examples of exogamy between political zones, but endogamy within the larger federations as a whole, as a strategy to interweave political ties to both zones, while at the same time granting access to the products from both zones for the married pair. To close the first stanza Doña Santusa names Quntumir Mayku or Quntumir Maykitu, another important toponym located on the pathway of descent of Tata Quri from Mount Phiriphiri to Qaqachaka pueblo. In the couplet of the second stanza Papa maraway, Quri maraway, she compares potatoes growing in the earth to gold, although this allusion also refers to the fertilizer called “guano” (originally from seabirds) nowadays provided by a man from the dung of his own herds as a contribution to the joint resources of the couple, to fertilize the crops, in this case the potatoes provided by his wife. Gold and guano are interchangeable in the ritual language of the place. Yet another version of this song was performed in April 1989 by Doña Mauricia Mamani, another older person who had served with her husband once as sponsors of Tata Quri’s feast, for her spiritual benefit, while her husband had passed the fiesta of Mamita Ch’uri for his own spiritual benefit: Ay ispusita, Tatala

Ay katinita, Tatalay … “Tinim” samay, Tatala “Punum” samay, Tatalay “Tijray” samay, Tatalayj Ay katinita, Tatalay … Rusas t’ikha, Tatalay Pantis t’ikha, Tatalay “Ay chhiñ” samay, Tatalay “Tijra” samay, Tatalay … Quntumir Maykitu, Tatala Kupi pilpintu, Tatalayj Ch’iqa pilpintu, Tatalayj …

Ay, little wife, Lord

Ay, little chain, Lord …

Ring “Ding-​a-​ling,” Lord

Stomp “Pum pum,” Lord Sound all haughty, Lord Ay, little chain, Lord …

Pink flower (of male meat), Lord

Carmine flower (of female meat), Lord Sound “Ay, silence,” Lord

Sound all haughty, Lord …

Little Mallku from Quntumiri, Lord Butterfly to the right, Lord

Butterfly to the left, Lord …

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To open her version, Doña Mauricia sings “Ay, ispusita, Tatala,” as her own reference to the custom of spiritual marriage in the annex. She explained how a man of the annex becomes the husband of the goddess-​saint whose feast he passes, and in recompense for passing the feasts he benefits from “good luck” (surti); likewise a woman become the wife of a male god-​saint, and, in passing the feast, benefits in this same way. So in her song, she makes a point of singing that he is the husband of the ayllu women: Yananti ispusji satapï: Say that we are really the wives of God.

For Doña Mauricia, implicitly when a husband passes the feast of Mama Ch’uri, his wife is considered the “wife” of Tata Quri: Uka Ch’uri Siñuraki chachanti ispusji satapï.

Ukat Tata Quri ukasti warminti ispusji satapï. That Lady Ch’uri becomes the wife of the man, they say.

Then Tata Quri, this one becomes the husband of the woman, they say.

Doña Mauricia added to her commentary that if one member of the couple should die, their children would never have to worry for their souls (alma), as the remaining member would always have their “other couple” in the god whose feast they had passed. On the contrary, if a married couple had never passed a feast for a god, and so never sealed these marriage ties with a god, then if one of them dies, their children would be worried and have to pray “novenas” (devotional practices lasting nine days) in their memory. Her song lyrics name the same common appellatives of Tata Quri and the sounds made by his dancers. However, the couplet opening the second stanza, in naming two kinds of flower of distinct tonalities of red, refer specifically to the distinctly coloured meat of male and female animals reared under Tata Quri’s care (Arnold and Yapita 1998a, 254–​55). Doña Mauricia’s final couplet Kupi pilpintu, ch’iqa pilpintu, “Butterfly to the right, butterfly to the left,” also leads us to a bundle of relations. At one level this refers to the engraved butterflies on the silver wings of Tata Quri’s danzantes. At another level, these butterflies are manifestations of the spirits of the dead. In addition, they are associated with money “that grows in the ground,” given that pilpintu is another name for notes of money that flutter in the wind. These allusions to money take us back to Tata Quri as “Father Gold.” Doña Lucía Quispe sang another version of the song to Tata Quri on August 19, 1989: Tatal Quri, mayj, iyayayayayayay Tatal Quri, Tatalay Katinita, Tatalay Ispusita, Tatalay “Qurït” samay, Tatalay tix Quntumir iskina, Tatalayj Quntumir uywiri, Tatalay

Thou, Tata Quri, iyayayayayay Father Gold, Lord Litte chain, Lord Little wife, Lord

Say “I’m all gold,” Lord

Quntumiri corner shrine, Lord

Quntumiri guardian mountain, Lord

282 Religious Practices in Qaqachaka Marka “Qullqin” sakmay, Tatalayj Tatala sintakamak, Tatalay Tatal mayj Phiriphiri Maykitu, Tatalay Asiriru, Tatalayj, tix … Kinsa kuyranti, Tatalayj Kinsa wiyajani, Tatalayj Tatal Quri, Tatalayj Ay wiwulita, Tatalayj Ay asusita, Tatalayj Miraycha(ra)nmay, ayj Quri maraway, ayj Katukamaktati, Tatalayj, Phiriphiri Maykitu, Tatalayj, Achal saphi markitu, Tatalayj “Tiniñ” sanmay, Tatalayj “Kunan” sanman, Tatalayj …

Say “I’m all silver,” Lord

Lord of purely ribbons, Lord Lord Phiriphiri Mallku, Lord From Snake River, Lord …

Three wings that care for you, Lord Three ways, Lord Tata Quri, Lord

Ay, violets, Lord Ay, lilies, Lord

Make them grow, ay A year of gold, ay

You grasp purely what?, Lord Phiriphiri Mallku, Lord

You make the marka’s roots bloom, Lord Ring out “Ding-​a-​ling,” Lord Ring out whatever, Lord …

In her version, Doña Lucía names various toponyms. In the second line of the second stanza, she names River Quntumiri that flows down from Mount Phiriphiri. In the final lines of the same stanza Asiru Tatalayj refers to Asiriru or Snake River, a resting place where the water cascades down “like a snake.” The opening of the third stanza Kinsa kuyranti Tatalayj refers once again to elements of the danzantes’ costumes, which look like three “crowns.” Doña Lucía also makes a point of naming some of the ayllu flowers (violets and lilies) under Tata Quri’s protection, and, in an invocation to this miraculous god, she asks for a “year of gold” with plentiful production. Finally, in a stanza of Tata Quri’s song remembered by Doña Bernaldita Quispe Colque, in May 1989, she develops a dialogue between the feast sponsor and their god: Quri tatalay, sintakam Qurikay, “Apsurpayxäm” sakistapiya “T’irin” sha “put’uñapiñay” “Maran mä apstxam” sakista …

The Songs to the Child-​Gods

Golden Lord, Gold of purely ribbons, “I’ll take you out,” you tell me,

Sound out always “Ding-​a-​ling, put put,”

“I’ll take you out once a year,” you tell me …

The three child-​ saints considered to be the children of Tata Quri and Mama Candelaria: Ignacio (Inaku), Salvador (Salwaku), and the “Child with clear eyes” (Qhusi Niñu), sometimes called “Young man” (Wayna), all have their own songs. These tend to record the former ties between these gods and the neighbouring ayllu of Condo, their place of origin, and the rituals that recorded these ties.

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The first song to Salvador Niño (Salwaku), sung by Doña Lucía Quispe in June 1989, remembers the journey made annually to Qala Condo to celebrate the feast of that god. The melody of these songs to the child-​gods takes up those to Tata Quri.

Song to the Niño Salvador, Salwaku Niñu Inakituj, ay, Tatalay Salwakitu ja wayj, Tatala, Kinsa wikitu kayj, Tatalay, Vamos, vamosa Qala Quntuka, Vamos, vamosa Qala Quntukawayj, Wikituy Kinsa jila sullka, ayj Tatalay Vamos, vamosa Qala Quntukay Ququ q’ipñasay apachitanjiw Mula sillñasa taypi thakhinjiw ayj Sikitay Kinsa yuqall waway, Tatalayj Kinsa imill waway, Tatalayj Salwakitukawayj, Tatalayj Inakitujawayj, Tatala …

Little Ignacio, oh Lord

Little Salvador, oh Lord

Three horns of cloth, Lord

Let’s go, let’s go to Qala Condo Let’s go, let’s go to Qala Condo Three horns

Three brothers from elder to younger, oh Lord Let’s go, let’s go to Qala Condo Load our lunch for the cairn

The mule’s saddle is half way there, ay Clippety clop

Three boys, Lord Three girls, Lord

It’s little Salvador, Lord

It’s little Ignacio, Lord …

The song lyrics open by naming Salvador or Salwaku and his brother Ignacio. Instead of the sound of Tata Quri’s danzantes, the song rhythm follows the onomatopoeic sound of the mule’s hoofs on the road, sikitay, or clippety clop. But, as in the song to Tata Quri, attention is given to the attributes of Child Salvador. In the opening of the first stanza, Kinsa wikitu refers to the three horns of cloth in the headdress on this god’s statue in the church in Qaqachaka. In the second and third lines of the first stanza, Qala Quntu (Undulating Stones) is the term of endearment for the neighbouring ayllu of Quntuquntu, called now just Condo. In the second couplet of the second stanza Ququ q’ipñasay apachitanjiw again refers to the journeys of the child-​saints, not only to Condo but also from the central church in Qaqachaka marka to the hamlets at the very boundaries of the annex, when the entering feast sponsor couple take their saint with them to dwell in their house during the coming year. During this journey, they pass the special resting place for the child-​gods on a stone platform in the hills, called Niñu Samaña. This cairn is unique in the whole annex, as it gives a perfect view of the two salient mountains of the territory:  Mounts Turu and Jujchu, as well as of Mount Phiriphiri, up above the hamlet of Uritaqa, the origin place of Tata Quri.

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Another fragment of the song to Niño Salwaku, remembered by Doña Lucía in June 1989, reiterates the rhythm of the child-​gods’ dance in the former procession from Qaqachaka to Condo: Qulita, qut qut qut

T’akalli, tak tak tak tä Inaku, in in in in in in in …

How pretty, “clop, clop, clop”

With braided hair, clippety clop Ignacio, pom pom, pom pom …

The second line refers to ayllu children dressed as T’akalli wawa, “Baby with braided hair,” their hair being braided in this manner for the foetus dance. Doña Bernaldita Quispe Colque remembered another extract of this song in May 1989, where she stresses the important notion of “pair” to do with luck and completion, instead of something single (ch’ulla), by naming two of the child-​gods, and adding the pair of “boy-​child” and “girl-​child.” In the rest of the extract she develops some of their epithets, with one reference to the child-​gods’ faces as “speckled,” due to centuries of use: Salwakitukawayj, Tatalay Inakitukawayj, Tatalay Maranmay imillay, Tatalay Maranmay yuqallay, Tatalay Qhiqha Niñu qalluy, Tatalay Qhiqha Salwakituyj, Tatalay Qhiqha Salwakitu, Tatalay …

Song to Llama Herding Girl

Just little Salvador, Lord Just little Ignacio, Lord

Little girl, it’s your year, Lord

Little boy, it’s your year, Lord

Little boy with a speckled face, Lord

Little Salvador with a speckled face, Lord

Little Salvador with a speckled face, Lord …

The song to Llama Herding Girl (Qarwiri Imilla) is the same as that to Mama Candelaria, her “mother,” with the same melody, and many allusions to her mother’s own song and her own long skirt of sky blue: Mamala, jach’a pulliran taykani,

Mamala, celeste pulliray …

Lady, whose mother wears a wide skirt Lady, sky-​blue wide skirt …

The song Mamita Kunsyuna, which refers just as much to Mama Kapitana as to Mama Ch’uri, is of this same genre, called “Little Lady, Little Dove,” an epithet that recurs in many stanzas to Llama Herding Girl. Doña Lucía Quispe Choque sang the following version of Llama Herding Girl’s song in June 1989, its opening line referring to the same “Little Lady, Little Dove”: Siñuritay Palumitay

Mamala, kullak jisk’ata, Mamala, Qarwiri Imillay,

Little Lady, Little Dove

Lady, with sisters from younger to elder Lady, Llama Herding Girl

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Mamala, parwayur imillay, Mamala, q’asq’ay imillay, Mamala pasa pas imillay, Pasarp t’aqtaw jichha iñjsmaw Mamala, kullak jisk’atay, Siñuritay Palumitay …

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Lady, girl who collects flowering grasses Lady, who passes from one to another Lady, girl who passes and passes

Now you’ve passed, now I’ve seen you

Lady, with sisters from younger to elder Little Lady, Little Dove …

In the third line of the first stanza, Doña Lucía uses another epithet for Herding Girl as Parwayur Imilla, in reference to the flowering grasses, parwayu, which the llamas under her charge graze on daily. In the last line of the same stanza, the term q’asq’a refers to something that goes from hand to hand, often meaning a “loose” woman. But these song lyrics refer to the ancient custom of passing the feast of Herding Girl in turns, going from feast sponsor to feast sponsor from one year to the next, the statue of the goddess-​saint passing from hand to hand between them.1

Song to San Pedro of Condocondo

The song to San Pedro (San Piru), patron saint of Condocondo, is the same as that to the leader called jilanqu of one of Qaqachaka’s minor ayllus, and the song genre is called jilanq kirki, “song to the jilanqu.” The following version by Doña Lucía is from June 1989: San Piru Tatala, Tulsin Siñuray, Asta wiyayay Kunatakisa, kawkitakisa, Tilantir qallu, piñam qalluk(a), Asta ay maraw tukusi, Asta wayuchaw tukusi Tatal San Piru …

San Pedro Lord, Sweet Lady For their travels

For what? To where?

Young male lead llamas and mothers only To finish the year,

To finish the drinking pots Lord San Pedro …

Doña Lucía opens the song this time naming San Pedro Señor and his partner Dulce Señora or “Sweet Lady,” followed by the onomatopoeic sound of their travels, Wiyayay. The second couplet of the main stanza, Asta ay maraw tukusi, refers to the fact that the jilanqu passes a whole year of office in San Pedro’s service: Mara normal lurapxcha:

You do it a whole normal year.

This year of service culminates in the ceremony called “cabildo” to collect taxes (the colonial tasa), that used to be held twice a year (but in the so-​called “thirds” or tercios), first at the fiesta of San Sebastián, on January 20, and then at the fiesta of Guadalupe, on 1 In this verse, there might be an underlying social memory of a goddess who had various husbands, as the equivalent of a god with many wives.

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September 8. In the 1980s and 1990s, the cabildo ceremony in Qaqachaka, with its own songs, was held only once a year, at the fiesta of Guadalupe (Arnold and Yapita 1998a, ­10). In essence, the members of each minor ayllu had to present themselves at this event to pay what used to be the old colonial tax (tasa), and receive in exchange their settlement of account in a chitty called finiquito, which they stuck in their hats like a feather. The last verse of the song, “To finish the drinking pots,” refers to the custom at this ceremony of sharing out food and drink (barley beer served in the huge pots mentioned here) for all the participants, as evidence of the former pact of reciprocity between the state and the ayllus.

Songs to the Two Saint-​Goddesses at the Feast of the Immaculate Conception

The feast of the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady, on December 4, celebrates the two maiden goddess-​saints Mamita Kapitana and Mamita Ch’uri as the daughters of Mamita Candelaria. On this occasion, the statues of the two Mamitas are led in procession around the plaza and then the pueblo, accompanied by their “mother,” Mama Candelaria. The songs to these goddesses are performed by the men who pass the feast. The verses express the ambiguity of their relations, as two virgins, to their parents, Mama Candelaria and Tata Quri. I mentioned how some comunarios view these two maidens as “daughters of their parents,” although others, such as Don Alberto Choque, assured us they were the “sisters” of Mama Candelaria, and therefore the “sisters-​in-​law” of Tata Quri. These relations are clarified in their songs. For example, in the second song to Mama Ch’uri we examined, it was clear that both goddesses are considered to be Tata Quri’s “wives in common.” However, the very name Mama Ch’uri presents another clue to the supposed relation between herself and the other gods of the ayllu, given that ch’uri commonly means a “younger aunt,” on the father’s side. In this case, Mama Ch’uri would be Tata Quri’s “younger sister,” and Mama Kapitana the “elder sister.” So, from the point of view of the descendants of Tata Quri (which includes all the people of the annex), both goddesses would be categorically his ipalas, or “father’s sisters” (FZ). The songs at the feast of Conception generally tend to address both goddesses with their epithet in common as Mamita Kunsyuna, Mama Conception, with other epithets more pertinent to Candelaria, their mother or sister, notably she with “sky-​blue broad skirts.” Another epithet shared by the two of them is Uma Mark Señora, “Lady of the Village Waters,” given their close ties to the rains and waterways of the region. And yet another appellative in common is Q’apha Siñura, the “Dynamic ladies.” Song to Mama Kapitana

One song in praise of Mama Kapitana, who belongs to the lower division (or katu) of ayllu Kinsa Cruz, alludes to the recent past when her feast was shared between the two neighbouring ayllus, Qaqachaka and Jukumani. This was so until the valiant grandmother of the Arias family (Arias awicha) brought Mama Kapitana on the sly from Jukumani to Qaqachaka. Doña Lucía Quispe sang us a few lines in March 1989.

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Celeste pollera Señora Ñiw wiritay palomita Mama celeste pollera Uma Mark Señora Sawusawuta Sawusawut juthaniri …

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Lady with sky-​blue broad skirts

Little dove of life

Mother with sky-​blue broad skirts

Lady of the Village Waters From Sawusawu

Who comes from Sawusawu …

In her version, apart from the usual epithets for this goddess-​saint, Doña Lucía names the toponym Sawusawu. Sawu, in the singular, means “a weaving” or “a loom,” but as a toponym refers to Qaqachaka pueblo’s main street, which stretches from the last resting place of the two goddesses in their escape from Jukumani, towards the principal plaza, and from there to the church. Doña Bernaldita Quispe with her husband Don Crisóstomo were sponsors of the feast of Conception in Qaqachaka in May 1989, and they remembered some lines to Mama Kapitana from that occasion: Kapitan Siñuray

Maran mayaway jutanxi Jap’surpayktway, ayj Mamalay Juchantasasnit purktaway …

Song to Mama Ch’uri

Capitán Lady

Who comes once a year

I’m taking you out, oh Lady

Because I have sins, and you are arriving …

The songs in praise of Mama Ch’uri, younger sister of Mama Kapitana, and from the upper division (katu) of ayllu Kinsa Cruz, reiterate the same themes. Doña Bernaldita Quispe sang a short extract to us in March 1989: Ch’uri Mamalay, Siñuray

Maran may apsurpayktana Janiw inatakiti “Tatay, Mamay,” (s)iskañataki …

Younger Mother, Lady

We take you out just once a year It’s not in vain

To say “Lord, Lady”…

Doña Mauricia Mamani, who had also passed the feast of Conception, remembered another extract of Mama Ch’uri’s song to in April 1989. Interestingly, her lyrics imply that the singer herself is Mama Ch’uri’s elder sister, equivalent to Mama Kapitana, and names their husband in common, Tata Quri: Mamala, Ch’uri Siñuray, Mamala, kullak jisk’itay Jumant nayanti, Mamalay, May ispusanitanway

Mother, Younger Lady

Mother, younger sister Both you and I, Lady

Have just one spouse

288 Religious Practices in Qaqachaka Marka Patxarapis amtkasmakay Altupiniway amtantay Mamala Ch’uri, Siñuray …

I’ll remember you on high

I’ll always remember you on high Younger Mother, Lady …

Song to Mama Candelaria at the Feast of Candlemas The song in praise of Mama Candelaria (or Kantilayra) is sung by the sponsors or alféreces of her feast in the first days of February. Since it is the men that sing this song, the women we spoke to knew few details of the verses, as compared to the songs in praise to Mama Kapitana and Mama Ch’uri. We heard in the tales of oral history that Mama Kantilayra came to Qaqachaka from Choquecayara, on the border with neighbouring Macha, and this place is named in her song. The following fragment, sung by Doña María Ayca Llanque, in 1989, refers to Mama Candelaria with her sky-​blue broad skirts, as the mother of Llama Herding Girl (Qarwiri Imilla), here with her other epithet of “Girl from Macha” (Machay Imilla), while her “Little Father of dust” (Laq’a awkita) is Tata Quri: Chuqirqarit Señora

Mäla celeste pollera Mäla, Machay Imilla Chuqirqarit Imilla Mäla celeste pollera Laq’a awkita Pasa pasa Imilla …

Lady from Choquecayarita

Mother wearing sky-​blue broad skirts

Mother of the Girl from Macha Virgin from Choquecayarita

Mother wearing sky-​blue broad skirts

Little father of dust

Pass, pass (the fiesta), young girl …

Doña Lucía Quispe’s extract in praise of Mama Candelaria, sung on April 19, 1989, again names her place of origin as Choquecayara: Mamala Chuqiqaritä, Kullaka Chuqiqaritä, Palum, Macha imilläy, Mä putunitay …

Lady from Choquecayarita

Sister from Choquecayarita,

Dove, Young girl from Macha, With a little button …

For her part, Doña María Ayca Colque, the wife of Don Alberto Choque, recorded the following extract of the song to Candelaria on October 18, 1989, as she clarified that the men actually “narrated” the lines of this song rather than singing them, while the rest of the participants danced to them: Siñurita Palumitay,

Mamala kullak jisk’atay, Mamala kullakitallay, Mamala ispusitaxay …

Little lady, Little Dove,

Lady with younger to elder sisters Lady with little sisters Lady little wife …

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Dance Songs, Wayli kirkis

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The wayli kirkis, literally “dance songs,” are sung by the women making pilgrimages to the miraculous sites of neighbouring ayllus, as they carry their own household “devotions” to receive blessings at the mass during the feasts of these miraculous saints. The household “devotions” (riwusyna) carried on these pilgrimages are now the saints possessed by the original owners of the place, called originarios, and not the church saints. These devotional saints are usually guarded in niches in the inner walls of a house, as the ancestral heads were previously, and they protect the family herds and the family members, as a kind of “guardian angel.” Although the devotion belongs to the house, their celebrations are passed down from father to son. As a result, men tend to have just one devotion whereas women will have two, one from their natal home and the other from their married home (in their husband’s house). Apart from the celebrations to the devotions on these pilgrimages, each week a married couple will record the man’s house corner shrine (iskina), on a Thursday afternoon, and the women’s counterpart corner shrine on a Saturday afternoon, when they both offer aromatic bittermint in a burned offering (q’uwacha). Taking the devotions on pilgrimages to miraculous shrines used to occur in alternate years, when the family members carried them to hear mass, singing wayli kirkis on the journey. The Andean meanings of “miracle” with reference to these regional shrines relate these dance songs to those to the virgin goddesses. In conventional Catholicism, “miracle” refers to an event attributed to divine intervention, with prodigious results that exceeded any reasonable limits of the usual natural events (Costilla 2007). “Prodigious,” in this popular sense, includes both the efficacy of the god-​saints considered miraculous, and their very proliferation in the region, including the proliferation of their images (Gil 2015, 520). The pilgrimages to these shrines tend to occur in the months of August, September, and October, considered the “time of miracles” (milajr timpu). In essence, these events are grouped around the fiestas “of devotion” in the Church, in the months outside the principal religious cycle from the Nativity of Christ to Easter. It is not a coincidence that these fiestas occur in the months after the harvest followed by the demanding preparations (in the barbecho of the land), but before the actual sowing, when there are few urgent agricultural tasks left to attend in the rural areas. So people have time to participate in these long pilgrimages, directed towards the fiestas in the region as a whole. As in the annual cycle of the principal fiestas, participants seek an exchange between the compulsory acts of the faith (hearing mass, making offerings to the gods, and taking on the sacrifice of making the journey) and the wellbeing that results from having accomplished the pilgrimage. Many comunarios commented to us that such a sacrifice is “for the health and life” of the members of the family, and the ayllu in its totality. But the most devout members of the annex revealed to us their faith in the idea that, if you celebrate these fiestas of devotion, “everything will be put at our reach,” and that they pass the fiestas “so that the land produces and the animals procreate.” Don Enrique Espejo clarified this idea: “Milajru sarañapiniw,

‘milajru taqikun luxtanstani,’ sas.

“You should always go to the miracles,

‘The miracle will make everything to satisfy us,’ saying.

290 Religious Practices in Qaqachaka Marka Ukat uka pasasiña, kuns kuna manq’ puquñapataki, uywas mirañapataki.”

That’s why you pass the feast, So that the crops grow,

So that the animals multiply.”

These ideas are still close to Catholicism is spirit, but other regional meanings of “miracle” are related to the movement of certain constellations that the comunarios make a point of observing during those particular months. They explained that this Andean notion of miracle has to do with the months of the year when the “dark cloud constellations” in the Milky Way, of the Mother Llama (Jach’a Tayka) and her offspring, and of the Male Llamas which follow her in the precession of the constellations, “start descending towards the horizon.” The women of Qaqachaka observe this celestial movement in anticipation of the moment when the Mother Llama will give birth to a new generation of young camelids around the feast of Concepción in December, near the fiesta of Niño which falls at the opening of the New Year on January 1 (Arnold and Yapita 1998a, 243–​44). Hence the nexus between the “time of the miracles” and the regional fiesta of the Virgen Asunta, in nearby Quillacas, on August 22, this fiesta is perceived in Catholicism as the Assumption to the Heavens of the body and spirit of the Virgin Mary, as the mother of Jesus Christ, after ending her days on Earth, although the Qaqachakas give more attention to the Mother Llama in the sky. Hence its links with the fiesta of Concepción at the very end of this period, which announces the arrival of the young herd animals, and to Qaqachaka’s two goddesses, Kapitana and Ch’uri. Another aspect of these ritual obligations is that of ensuring that all the members of a family had been able to complete their ritual tasks in relation to the god-​saints of the annex, whether in this life, or if necessary after the death of one of them. In the family cycle of feasts, first preference is given to passing the pertinent feast for the woman of the household, then another feast for the man of the household, and finally parents will pass other fiestas directed at the ritual necessities of their children. It also used to be custom for a widow or widower to make a pilgrimage to the key site of the god associated with a deceased husband or wife who had died during the previous year. To actually accomplish the pilgrimage to all these sites in the wider cycle of devotional feasts is extremely hard, and older people no longer have sufficient bodily energy to consider such a sacrifice. Many commented that the lakeside region was too far for them to visit with frequency, and it was more usual to visit Mamita Copacabana just once or twice in a lifetime, when you are still young. Much more viable was a visit to Mamita Guadalupe, for September 8, in Qampaya in ayllu Aymaya to the north of Potosí, and her counterpart in the pueblo of Surumi (near Colquechaca), or else Mamita Awra (whose image is engraved on a stone), in the small pueblo of Wila Q’awa (Red River), near Sucre (and San Pedro de Buenavista), whose fiesta is celebrated on the same date. The fiesta of Mamita Awra lasts just a day, but is highly esteemed by the Qaqachakas who are delighted to see the Jallq’a people of the zone dance as chunchus using monkey masks, and to see in addition the dances of the mit’anis (in memory of the young women who guided the mitayos in their journeys of the past) carrying white flags, that can also be seen at the fiesta of Qampaya.

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The actual round of the miraculous circuit begins with the fiesta of Tata San Antonio, on June 13, given its ties to the movements of the black constellations. San Antonio’s dancer, in the feast in Qaqachaka, wears a black mask to express this tie to the black male llama constellations. However, the Qaqachakas would often make the pilgrimage on this date to the pueblo of Qala Qala in Aymaya (near Chayanta), opposite the mining pueblo of Uncía. The real beginning of “miracle time” was when the Qaqachakas gave respect to the Virgin of Guadalupe and her regional counterparts on September 8. The cycle continued with the fiesta of Tata San Francisco, on October 4. A young couple, or an older couple, still with the will to travel, go after this to the fiesta of Tura Kari (a local variant of San Francisco) in the valleys. But if the flesh is weak or resources lacking, the pilgrimage is limited to a visit to Listi Pampa in Macha, not far away. Some people commented how Tata San Francisco was very similar to Tata Quri, given that both were nailed to a cross, sandwiched there between some tiny mirrors.2 At each one of these sites, the pilgrims take advantage of its particular miraculous powers. Couples tend to go to the nearby sites of the Mamita of Aymaya to pray for the birth of a girl child, or to the Mamita of Panakachi to pray for a boy. Women tend to visit Surumi because the Mamita there will give them “a good hand for weaving.” These same goddess-​ saints are remembered as virgins by the women in their cycles of libations, for their power to cure in this way, and they are also evoked by the local yatiris in their prayers directed at the sexes of the children desired by couples. Older women who can no longer visit these sites simply name these saints and their characteristics in their libations, remembering the resting places along the pilgrimage routes they had taken to arrive there. Apart from the great cycle of pilgrimages to the miraculous shrines of the region that take place in this Time of Miracles each year, in Qaqachaka itself, Tata Quri is considered a miraculous god-​saint and visiting pilgrims sing these dance songs in his honour. Don Alberto Choque remembered the following libations, which record his resting places on his descent from Mount Phiriphiri: Sinta Maykutaki Anjilawartataki Samañataki Ch’alla Q’asa samañataki Turum Pallqataki Sak’am Pampataki Anjilawartataki Phaqarataki …

For the Mallku of ribbons (of the pathway) For the Guardian Angel (of the house) For the resting places

For the resting place of Toasting Crevice For the resting place of Turum Pallqa

For the resting place of Sak’am Pampa For the Guardian Angel

For the (animal) flowers …

Once the pilgrims reach the church and adoratorio of the miraculous saint they are celebrating, they light candles and begin their own series of libations. They continue 2 See Sallnow (1987) for descriptions of the extensive network of similar ecclesiastical ties in Peru’s Cusco region.

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drinking and making toasts, first of all “for a good mass” (misa kusawitaki) until they have heard it, then they continue making other toasts all night until the following morning. During this period they sacrifice a sheep and eat the meat, or, alternatively, they prepare the spicy broth called qalaphiri, served from two large ceramic bowls. After eating the meat in either case, they drink barley beer and liquor, and make a new series of toasts: Pasyinsyataki Awksataki

And then:

Misa kusawitaki Iskin uywiritaki, Salurataki.

For patience (so that no-​one drinks too much)

For Our Father

For a good mass

For the corner shrine and guardian mountain For good health.

As in the case of Qaqachaka’s god-​saints, each miraculous god is thought to have its respective offspring (human and animal), denominated as “flowers” (phaqara) in ritual language. The faithful make toasts for these “flowers,” for the food in general (chayi), considered as “blessings” (wintisyuna) and then, in another series of toasts, they name the miraculous god-​saints of the whole region: Phaqarataki, Chayitaki, Milajrutaki, San Antuñutaki, Aymay Mamita Tura Qari Taykita Wara Lupi Tayka, etc.

For the flowers, For the food,

For the miracles, For San Antonio,

For the Little Lady of Aymaya

For the Little Mother Tura Qari (in the valleys) For Mother Guadalupe, etc.

After eating, they make further toasts for the following elements: Jallpa ch’iwutaki

Misa kusawitaki Suma misa kusawitaki Iskin uywiritaki Iskinmataki Iskinñataki.

For liver meat

For a good mass

For a really good mass

For the corner shrine and guardian mountain For your corner shrine For my corner shrine.

These include the raw liver they consume, which incarnates the spirit of the animal, and the ritual sites of their own corner shrines and guardian mountains, as equivalents to the church and towers of the miraculous adoratorio. Finally they set off on the homeward journey, but without making any more libations.

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Song to San Antonio

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Doña Asunta Arias sang one of the dance songs, on August 23, 1989, while remembering the “devotion” (riwusyna) of her natal home, San Antonio (Tata San Antuñu), god of the male llamas. The feast of San Antonio, on April 20, usually falls within the period of Lent, and Doña Asunta names this period of sacrifice in her song. She mentioned how the song was particularly long, and that it had to be sung as a lament or threnody (q’asaña). The song lyrics, with their orisons, petitions, exaltations, blessings, orations and prayers, probably deriving from the colonial prayers learned by the young women of Qaqachaka during Lent, cite these catechisms quite literally, now transposed into Aymara, for example in the line Sin manchay ujinali, “Without original sin” (Arnold and Yapita 1999, 2007): Kunjamay Tatitu, ay Tatitu

Jumay Awkñay, jumaw Taykñay, Ay Tatitu uy Kawkitsay Tatitu, Milajrunikitay Tatituy, Kuna juchñas pampachitay, Kawki juchñas pampachitay Juma Awkñar awisasïm, Juma Taykñar awisasïm Tatituy … Alawatu sil santisimu, De la Kurismay, Sin manchay ujinali Jisus, Jisusay, amin Jisusanay, ay Jusiway Mä phaqar luqtanïtay, Mä wintisyunay luqtanïtay, Mä phaqar layku chilqtasinkta, Salur layku chilqasinkta, Wasuntikis kuñamäway Lap’intikis kuñamäway Ay, Tatitu Iñakitay ay Tatituy, Kunar tukusans iñakita

How is Little Father? Ay Little Father,

You are my Father, you are my Mother Ay Little Father, uy

Wherever, Little Father

Make me a miracle, Little Father

Whatever my offence, wipe it out

Wherever my offence is, wipe it out I shall inform you, my Father,

I shall inform you, my Mother Little Father …

Praise the most Holy Heaven In Lent,

No stain of original sin, Jesus, Jesus, Amen, Of Jesus, ay José Get me a flower

Get me a blessing

I take this step for a flower

I take this step for good health With a glass I’ll praise you

With coca leaves I’ll praise you Ay, Little Father

Watch me well, ay Little Father,

Even though I’m turned into something else, watch over me

294 Religious Practices in Qaqachaka Marka Pilpinturu tukusansay iñjakitay, Aramay uruw Lumat q’awats jachasinjaw Ay, Tatit u…

Turning into a butterfly, watch over me By night and by day

I shall cry from the hills and from the rivers Ay, Little Father …

By contrast, the sense of the final couplet in the third verse, Wasuntikis kuñamäway, Lap’intikis kuñamäway, is that people will always praise a miraculous saint with their drinking glasses, small and large, and by chewing coca leaves, in acts of feeding their gods and rearing them mutually, much closer to their own religious customs.

Divesting the Saints from the Church

These songs to the god-​saints illustrate particularly well the modalities of appropriation of those Catholic practices, introduced in the early Colony, into the sphere of properly Andean practices. This must have happened as part of a wider development of religious experiences with regional identity, without falling into the trap of anomy on the one hand, or a passive absorption into globalizing influences on the other. At the same time, the new ensemble of miraculous virgins and saints began to assume personalities and conducts closer to regional experience, and more distant from canonical hagiography and dogma (cf. Gil 2015, 522). As Nico Tassi would have it (2012, 286–​87), the cult of images and the feasts of the popular saints increasingly became the “property” of their devotees, and, as a corollary, the official Church lost control over them, to the point of initiating a conflict of interests over their domain. Through these processes, the fiestas of the different saints of the community became key elements in a new calendrical ordering. These saints themselves—​or rather their images—​assumed the identity of their own pueblos, where their own local and regional histories became composed, as ways of legitimizing their power and permitting their recognition by their faithful. Converted thus into sacred objects, in and of themselves (and not so much for what they represented), the cult of the images of these saints quickly became functional within the parameters of local cultures, and the comunarios began to behave towards them as they had done formerly to their local wak’as and their traditional tutelary entities. These behavioural practices are characterized by two principal features: the notion of “mutually caring for,” and related to this, the notion of “feeding mutually,” in reciprocal ritual actions, both notions being understood in terms of a moral behaviour within its own juridical-​deontological sphere. This key ontological idea concerned with mutuality helps explain local Andean religious practices, as we shall see.

Chapter 14

CONVERTING THE SAINTS INTO PERSONS

You wrap him in a bundle. It’s as if we were wrapping a stone, all rounded off so, until it becomes transformed into something rounded …

Don Enrique Espejo, from Qaqachaka pueblo

Returning to some of the main themes of this book, I shall now flesh out two

ontological notions that have become evident in the treatment of the god-​saints of Qaqachaka annex, and their counterparts in rites to the guardian mountains and the earth: that of “making a person,” in Aymara jaqichaña, and that of “rearing mutually,” in Aymara uywasiña, which I have already commented on in part. Many studies of the Andes have already demonstrated that the actions of dressing someone and giving them food are two key activities in forming “persons” (jaqi), which usually imply cohabiting with them, and through this, making them kin members of your group.1 Krista Van Vleet (2008) reiterates the same idea: that it is not sufficient to give birth to offspring; you must care for them and sustain them constantly. In the recent paradigm changes in the Social Sciences and Humanities, these practices have often been situated within the “relational ontologies” that characterize many Amerindian pueblos in South America, including those from the Andes (De Munter 2016). In the first place, I have noted that the notion of “person” within these relational ontologies is ample, including humans, animals and plants, places and even some material elements of the world, such as textiles, mountains, and the figures of saints of a certain locality. So I have examined in this book many examples of practices in which “persons” are being made of humans, non-​humans, and material things. In the second place, the human actions of dressing and feeding someone or something to convert them into a “person” transforms them from objects into subjects, accompanied by other changes in the manner of addressing them to incorporate them within the range of kin or affines, whether as mothers, fathers, sisters, sisters-​in-​law or children. This change in patterns of behaviour is particularly evident in the song contents we examined in the last chapter. These two activities, of giving food and of dressing, were highlighted once and again in the narratives of Qaqachaka’s oral history concerning the human obligations to care for their gods, whether the gods of the mountains and the earth (the uywiri and Virgin Earth), or the god-​saints of the church, perceived by the local inhabitants as the replacements for their former sky gods (the Sun, Moon, and stars). 1 See for example Harvey (1998), Weismantel (1998), Ramírez (2005), and Mannheim and Salas (2015), among others.

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I examined in more detail the practice of feeding these beings with reference to the practice of sacrifice, both in relation to the guardian mountains (uywiri) and the ritual sites at the foot of the two church towers. My suggestion now is that the very act of “feeding” these beings is transformed during these ritual actions into one of “dressing them.” In each example of a sacrifice, I have described how the participants in the ritual think that the accumulated bones of the sacrificed animal, subsequently reconstituted into a complete skeleton (osamenta), and then covered by coca leaves, flowers, and other elements, combined with the smell of the smoky vapours from the burned offerings of copal, become transformed through the rains into the new vegetative covering of the earth in the coming year. In the distant past, evidence suggests that similar rituals were carried out to the great regional wak’as, together with offerings of food and drink, the burning of aromatic herbs, and a covering with fine textiles of those wak’as that took the form of rocks, as a way of “dressing” them. My argument is that similar rituals of feeding and dressing took place, post-​Conquest, to the god-​saints of the place, considered as lesser wak’as, accompanied by the burning of incense and candles, but now within the colonial church that sheltered them. Now I  shall analyze further these practices of feeding and dressing the local god-​ saints, in Qaqachaka’s weekly and annual rituals, as equivalent ways of “rearing them mutually” and of “making them persons.” I  shall reiterate the equivalencies between these practices to the god-​saints and the former rituals directed towards the ancestral mummies, notably in the Inka period.

Resonances of the Inka Feasts

The Inka dates when the ancestral mummies were present in certain rituals are quite similar to those when the god-​saints of the Qaqachaka annex are celebrated. I do not intend to be dogmatic in these comparisons; simply to point them out. The Inka year began with the winter solstice, in late June, in the great fiesta of Inti Raymi, the waning Sun god, which seems to be equivalent today to the festivities during the month of May and the fiesta of Cruz dedicated to Tata Quri. Later in the Inka year, the month of September was dedicated to the Moon, with the fiesta of Coya Raymi and, in the same month, the spring equinox with the fiesta called Sitwa, the moment for cleaning the wrongdoings and illnesses from Cusco. During September in Qaqachaka, in the recent past, the feast of Guadalupe (or Copacabana) was celebrated, accompanied by the obligation (jucha) to pay collectively the annual tax (or tasa) at the cabildo ceremony. November for the Inkas was the month of feasting the dead (at Ayamarka Raymi), which is celebrated nowadays on November 1 as All Saints or All Hallows Day (called Todos los Santos in the region), followed by All Souls Day on November 2 (commonly called the Día de los Fieles Difuntos or “Day of the Dead”). In the recent past, these celebrations were dedicated to the saint of the dead, Tata Animasa. For the Inkas, the December solstice was again dedicated to the Sun, at the great fiesta of Capac Raymi, this time dedicated to the waxing Sun god. Here there are noticeable differences from Qaqachaka, where the beginning of December, with the arrival of the heavy rains, was marked by the fiesta of the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady, dedicated to the two Mamitas:  Kapitana and

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Ch’uri, called as a pair Kunsyuna. On December 25 there is the fiesta of the Nativity of Jesus (Navidad) and then, on January 1, the fiesta of the Christ child or Niño, really the fiesta of the Circumcision of Our Lord. It is here that the saint-​god related to the new waxing Sun god is celebrated, together with the new generation of herd animals born at that time of year. Finally, for the Inkas, the month of February was the fiesta of Flowering, called Pawkar Raymi, associated with knowledge about cultivation, and celebrated near to the autumn equinox. Nowadays in Qaqachaka this falls at Candlemas, on February 2, and the fiesta of Mama Candelaria, associated with the Moon and the first sprouting of the crops. The articulations between these two cycles of feasts involve three major themes: the state of the Sun, the state of the Moon and, related to the rains, the state of the crops. However, the current ritual practices which commemorate these stages of the year celebrate the god-​saints rather than these celestial elements.

Wak’as, Chullpas, or Inkas?

Qaqachaka’s comunarios perceive the god-​saints within these wider ritual contexts. There, the god-​saints of today serve not only as replacements for the gods of the heavens, but for the ancestral wak’as, the Chullpa ancient inhabitants of the place, and the memories of former Inka traditions towards their mummies. The older people of Qaqachaka often recorded these other manifestations of the saints. As manifestations of the ancestral wak’as, the saints replaced those ritualized places in the landscape where the ancient wak’as used to be celebrated: stones, rocks, cascades of water, caverns, and so on. And as expressions of the ancestral Chullpas, the pre-​Christian inhabitants of the place, together with their burial sites, the saints took over their guise once they occupied the colonial church. For Don Enrique Espejo, other evidence for the first possibility, that the saints replaced the ancestral wak’as, is acknowledged in the importance attributed to “wrapping” the saints in bundles of textiles, when he used the Aymara verb k’iruña, which tends to describe the action of wrapping something in cloth. He clarified this rather mysterious aspect of wrapping by saying that a bundle (q’ipi) wrapped so tightly that it assumed a rounded form “appears as if it were a stone” (qala): You wrap it in a bundle. It’s as if we were wrapping up a stone, rounded like that … until it’s converted into something quite rounded and becomes like that. “Where do you have something wrapped up like that, carried in your arms? Whatever can it be?” we ask ourselves.2 2 The original Aymara says:

Q’ipichatapini. Mä qalar akham muruq’u q’iptchsna asta muruq’u asta ukch’ar puriyapxi. “Kawkins ukham k’iruña utjkiti, ukham ichutast. Kunarakispasti,” sasipxtay.

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At other times, Don Enrique related these wrapped up stone-​like elements to pieces of metal, when he interprets a link between Tata Quri, all bundled up, and the rounded “potatoes” of metals in the mines, considered to be wak’as (cf. Bouysse-​Cassagne 2004, 68–​69). His comments at least reveal a nexus between the bundled saints and the ancestral mummy bundles, coaxing us to remember that the Inka mummy bundles were also considered to be wak’as (Alonso 1989, 114, 128). The second of these alternatives, that the saints are manifestations of the ancestral Chullpas, was mentioned by Doña Asunta Arias, with reference to the practices of changing their clothes: The people speak about this, but I didn’t listen too well.

“It’s like a Chullpa, like that. And they (the saints) used to have (their clothes) changed,” they say, “because they’d be persons, and now we are changing them so,” saying, they used to say.

Other characteristics of the saints associated with the layering of textiles in their wrappings allude to their living quality. When the action of wrapping them up is complete, a candle is lit, “in honour of the saint.” The comunarios comment that the saint-​ gods are wrapped in this way “in order to rear them in the house of the feast sponsor,” as if they were things alive that must be reared and fed like a “person.” Another commentary we heard was that the saints are wrapped in this fashion “so that they do not go far.” When we asked where they might go, the replies referred to the long voyages of the saints along their respective pathways (thakhi), those remembered in the pathways of memory (amtaña thakhi) of each saint-​god in the long libation-​making sessions. In one reply, a comunario told us yet again the tale of how Tata Quri had gone to the place called Qalawan P’iqin Q’ara, “just like that,” then off to Yanamani, and only then had the yatiris of the place seen where he was by reading the coca leaves, and had gone to bring him back to the main pueblo … However, his conclusion was distinct: “That’s why Tata Quri is wrapped up in twelve awayus in this way!” It is as if the twelve awayus of Tata Quri’s wrapping expressed certain aspects of his long journey, or at least where he rested in the places named in the tale. Could it be that the twelve awayus of his wrapping serve as territorial maps of these resting places? Or was the process of wrapping Tata Quri in the twelve awayus necessary in order to “grasp him” (katuña) in one single place, as in the action of tying rounded knots in a modern khipu? (Arnold with Yapita 2006, 220–​21). Another interesting aspect in that commentary is that the narratives about the god-​saints, especially Tata Quri, always stress their travels outside the pueblo and then back to the pueblo. In this respect, they resemble the oral narratives about the warring conquests of the Inkas, which began in the city of Cusco, to develop in bellicose episodes outside the city, and finally describe the triumphant voyages back to the city, in a set itinerary which seemed to move sunwise, like the hands of a clock (Hernández Astete 2016, 21). Here we can appreciate that his pattern of movement serves as a conventional structuring of narrative (sensu White), while this same pattern expresses the modality in which the new Inka—​or in our case Tata Quri (or another saint-​god of the place)—​should construct his “own Tahuantinsuyo” or, more modestly, his “own Cusco,”

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with its solar centre surrounded by the rayed pathways coming and going, like ceques (cf. Hernández Astete 2016, 21; Arnold 2007b). Until now, this gigantic wheel of ceques-​like routes of the different saint-​gods towards the central pueblo of Qaqachaka marka, commemorated in libation-​making, conforms another Cusco in Qaqachaka, as it signals how the construction of the pueblo-​ marka accompanied the birth of the new Sun (graphic 18).

The Authorities Charged with the Rite of Dressing the Saints

It is the Alcalde Mayor and the six mayordomos responsible for the church in the main pueblo who are charged with dressing certain god-​saints in their care. In this context, it is the medieval (and Islamic) origins of the “alcalde” as a “judge,” privileged with his own sphere of jurisdiction where he must ensure the accomplishment of the “law” (liyi or thakhi) that ensures the fulfilment of this duty. For their part, the church mayordomos act as guardians of the lesser mountains of the place (bestowing upon them their ritual name of awatiri). Luluni

Lak’a Qullu Alpaq Illa Kiwuri

Tata Quri

Pikalryu

Waka Plaza Suni Utjaña

Phiriphiri

Purta

T’ula Mujuna

Iwis Uyu

Anu Warkuña

Qhusmir Qayma

Qarqa Llikayu

Jarqa Q’awa

Ch’alla Q’asa Wila Q’awa

Wayli Tuquña

Ch’allüma Parqu

Yanamani

Qarqari Tatal Kurusa Arku Sayaña

Qaqachaka marka

Mama Kapitana

Riki Uychu Urqu Pampa (Chanchari)

Tula Jaraña

Pampa Kurusa Sawusaw Kalli

The danzantes’ clothes

Quntumiri

Qhilla Jaraña Jinchu Palla

Phillarasi Laq’a Qullu

Ch’ilkha K’ullk’u

Yaqa Yaqiri

Pächata

Wila Salla Luma Qalapaya T’ulüma

Kayñi Muqu Sinta Siwar Q’asa Llatunk Jaraña

Ch’isiraya

Anu Apacheta Pawunilla

Japo

Asanaque

Marawa Qarach Pampa

Qhispi Qayma

Chuqicayara Taruka Marka Mama Ch’uri

Mama Candelaria

Graphic 18. The wheel of ceques created by each of the saint-gods going in turn to the central church of Qaqachaka marka.

300 Religious Practices in Qaqachaka Marka

San Miguel (San Mila) is the main responsibility of the Alcalde Mayor, represented by the child-​saint-​god Niñu Wayna Mila, who expresses that aspect of his office as “he who balances justice” among the minor ayllus of the annex. Another god-​saint in his care is San Kiristu (Jesus Christ), also called Santo Roma, Paceño Awkpa (Father from La Paz) and, in certain contexts, Tata Animasa, with his partner Mama Tulurisa Tayksa (Mama Dolores, Our Mother).3 Each of the mayordomos in Qaqachaka looks after one of the saint-​gods, and in practice the hierarchical order of the mayordomos reflects the order of entrance of the god-​ saints into the church in Qaqachaka marka, in the early colonial period. Marka, a post which since 1985 has passed permanently to the original land holders (originarios) of ayllu Jujchu 2, cares for Tata Quri and Wayna (his son). Tata Candelaria, the mayordomo of ayllu Livichuco, cares for the Virgin of the Candelaria, and the two mayordomos of the katu subdivisions of ayllu Kinsa Cruz (called the katu awatiri) care for the maiden goddess-​saints Kapitana and Ch’uri, as well as being responsible for the supply of holy water for the church throughout the year. Finally the Fiscal cares for San Juan and his partner Mama Elena, and for Tata Ispiritu (Padre Espíritu or Father Spirit) and Tata Mustramu (Padre Nuestro Amo or Our Lord Father). Each week throughout the year, on specific days, these authorities as a group commemorate particular saint-​gods. Each Thursday they feed and make libations for Tata Quri, Mama Candelaria, and their elder son, Qhusi Niñu (the Child with Clear Eyes), also called Jawiku (or Javier), who takes part in the rite. And each Saturday they feed and make libations for Kapitan Señora, Ch’uri Señora, and the adopted child of Kapitana, called amigpa (“her reared one”), who is Jurinuq Niñu (the Child from Orinoca).

Changing the Clothes of the Saints: Isi Turki or Isi Kampiyaña

During their year of office, one of the most important ritual tasks under the charge of the mayordomos is that of regularly changing the clothes of the principal saints of the church.4 As I mentioned earlier, this rite of changing the saints’ clothes has many resonances with the former care of the ancestral mummies, according to the colonial descriptions at our disposal. The most pertinent historical descriptions concerning these customs are from the Inka period. Alicia Alonso (1989, 112), citing Pedro Pizarro and documents in the Archivo Nacional Histórico de Madrid,5 names three categories of persons from that

3 The Alcalde’s care for Tata Animasa might express the possibility that historically the Alcalde Mayor assumed the former office of the alférez (aljirisa) responsible for the saint Animasa, which originally belonged to Sullkayana minor ayllu, but whose post was lost in the changes in the system of turns between the minor ayllus between 1984 and 1985. 4 Cf. Abercrombie (1998, 394–​95).

5 Originally in the Colección Documentos Inéditos… 1864, vol. 17, serie primera, 96, 97. Presently in AECID: Colección de documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y colonización de las posesiones españolas en América y Oceanía … [1ª Serie] [3GR-​7649] 1872, vol. 17. On the basis of the “Interrogatorio a los indios del Perú sobre sus costumbres, del 2 al 19 de junio de 1571.” Diversas colecciones, 25, No 10.

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period charged with the care of the ancestral bundles: a) the one known by the name of “capitán”; b) “a couple” constituted always by a man and a woman;6 and c) a group of women charged with conserving the mummy. The office of “capitán” seems to have enjoyed great prestige, since all the people destined to care for the body of the Inka lord were under their responsibility, and the capitán had certain rights in relation to the care of the body of the mummy itself. For their part, the couple responsible for the care of the bundles had the obligation of accompanying the mummy in its processions and entrances into the plaza of Cusco, and of acting as the mummy’s “voice” at moments when it was necessary to express the will of the mallki or mummy bundle, in situations in which the mummy acted as a mediator, such as in marriage alliances within the lineage or panaka. The other group of women carers, those who belonged to the royal panakas (usually drawn from the selected women, called aqlla), had the obligation to wash and clean the mummy, and keep it hydrated with oils and other medicinal elements (cf. Sarmiento de Gamboa [1572] 1988, 149). This historical contextualization sheds light on the ritual practices of a generation ago, directed at the care of the most important saints of Qaqachaka annex, in their guise as ancestral mummies. In first place, the Inka office of “capitán” has certain resonances with the role of its present equivalent, Mamita Kapitana, and of the mayordomo couple responsible for her care. In second place, the role of the Inka couple in charge of the more public aspect of the mummies seems to be taken nowadays by the couple of feast sponsors (or alféreces) passing the fiestas of the principal god-​saints of the place, and, similarly, the mayordomo couple charged with their regular care. And in third place, the former group of selected Inka women cedes in the present context to the women of the annex in general, especially those who have passed the feast of Tata Quri, and so become related intimately with this god, in their role as his “spiritual wives.” I hasten to add that this close nexus between the god-​saints and the ancestral mummies is not simply my interpretation, as an outside observer. I have already mentioned Doña Bernaldita’s earlier comment about the saints in the church seated in the dark “like Chullpa mummies,” and Doña Asunta Arias’s remark that changing the clothes of the saints is like “wrapping the mummy bundles of the ancient Chullpas.” Doña Asunta also commented that, in the recent past, cadavers of the annex population were treated as “mummy bundles,” as they used to bury people “with much more clothing,” something they do now only at the Feast of the Dead. When we elicited more details about her comparison between changing the clothes of the saints of today and the Chullpa mummies of the past, she told us the tale of the Mouse and the Woman, which deals with the ability of both personages to care for the household food, and which she contrasts with the bird-​like men of the house with their common tendency to be wasteful: In the past, even the condor wore a hat. Even the fox was a person. And the birds were people too, they were men … A  bird never stores much food. That’s why they’re men. They don’t even remember their offspring! The mouse is a woman. She stores lots of food;

6 This data about the couple derives from the observations by Pedro Pizarro ([1571] 1965, vol. 168, 182, 183).

302 Religious Practices in Qaqachaka Marka that’s why she’s a woman. She’s like us women. The birds go around like men, and know how to make the mouse cry.

“You don’t look after the food,” she’d say, “you should keep the food. You don’t even keep it,” saying, “you must keep it, you haven’t even stored it properly,” saying, she’d scold them, the birds, they say, as if they were people. “I myself look after it so. Go on, look at it,” she said. She made him look right in, grasping him by the scruff of the neck. She really looks after it (the food); like the mouse does.

In my view, Doña Asunta told us this tale because she perceived the two principal obligations of humans towards the god-​saints, those of dressing them and feeding them, as one single practice within the relational ontologies of the place. Her comments deal with the due care expected towards the beings considered ontologically “persons” (whether humans, animals, birds, or saints), which in her opinion functions better under the direction of women. In other general comments by the comunarios about the practice of changing the clothes of the god-​saints, they highlight the fact that formerly there were many more god-​saints whose clothes had to be changed regularly. For example, in the recent past the alférez (aljirisa) was responsible for changing the woven mantles (manta) of that saint “with thorns on his head,” called Patrón or Animasa, but only in the church and only at the fiesta when he was taken down from his niche and placed on his bier, which Marka does nowadays. By the 1980s, only two remaining saints of the place, Tata Quri and Llama Herding Girl, still had their clothes changed weekly. Tata Quri, as Qaqachaka’s patron saint, in his manifestation as “Small Quri” (Jisk’a Quri), had his clothes changed every Thursday in the main pueblo, supervised by the mayordomo called Marka, in the patio of his house. For her part, Llama Herding Girl (Qarwiri imilla), as the daughter of Mama Candelaria, had her clothes changed every Saturday in the hamlet of Tarpata, in ayllu Livichuco, supervised this time by the mayordomo called Tata Candelaria or Candelaria awatiri. The other principal god-​saints have their clothes changed only at the annual feasts, and in a more generalized activity, when the feast sponsors entered the church to take possession of their gods, Candelaria in February and the two maiden goddesses, Kapitana and Ch’uri, in December. The division of ritual tasks on these occasions is organized by gender, following the rule that the male god-​saints are celebrated on a Thursday, while the miraculous goddess-​saints are celebrated on a Saturday. In all these rituals, the existing clothing is replaced by a different set of clothes that are clean and smell “sweetly.” When changing the clothes, the woven wrappings of Tata Quri, as of Llama Herding Girl, still in their wooden boxes, begin with an inner layer of a finely woven shawl or mantilla of soft Castilian wool, called either riwusu (from “rebozo”) or kastilla (from “Castilla”). Then outer layers are added one by one, until, in Tata Quri’s case, he becomes wrapped in twelve layers of woven mantles (awayus), and a final outer covering of a man’s woven poncho (figure 24). Following this procedure, the ritual participants gradually come to form a rounded bundle similar to a mummy bundle, an ancestral Chullpa, or indeed a stone wak’a. It seems pertinent that many wak’as were wrapped in the finest weavings of the past

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Figure 24. Two mayordomos: Mama Candelaria (Don Zacarías Maraza Castillo, left) and the Fiscal (Don Felipe Choque Chambi, right), wrap Tata Quri’s box in a bundle of textiles, with a man’s poncho as the outer layer.

(called qumpi), and the continuing preference of an inner layer of the finest cloth available, until the present, seems to be a reminder of this. The bundle formed in this way also has resonances with the bundled image of the Sun which the Inkas took from out periodically from the temple of Coricancha, in Cusco, together with the ancestral royal mummies. Again the commentaries about wrapping the god-​saints like this “so that they can be reared in the house of the feast sponsor” as members of their family, and so that they “can go far” in their travels, are particularly relevant. Similarly, the custom of having a soft layer placed near the “body” of these god-​saints echoes comments about the Inka mummies, whose faces were covered with a thick layer of cotton, only removed in public ceremonies (Cobo [1653] 1956, vol. 92, 275). This cotton protected the features of the Inka, isolating them from external climatic variations, dust, and whatever inclemency of time, prolonging the pleasant appearance of the face (Alonso 1989, 113). As in the Inka rites of the past, the condition of the mummy bundle is examined from time to time. This occurs in the present when the pair of outgoing feast sponsors hand over their charge to the couple of entering sponsors. There is a reckoning of accounts with reference to the condition of the clothes and the general ritual paraphernalia, and the names of the persons who lent out each element are noted, particular attention being given to the woven mantles, the whole process of evaluation being accompanied by a series of toasts with alcohol.

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When the clothes of the god-​saints are changed at the major feasts, they are restored afterwards to their niches in the nave wall of the church, again resting on a soft shawl (kastilla), duly doubled up, and then on a woman’s mantle (awayu) placed in turn on top of a llama hide (lip’ichi). It occurs to me that the way of folding the mantilla and mantle of the god-​saints here reproduces the custom of tributing textiles to the Inka State and subsequently to the Spanish Crown in the early Colony (Arnold 2012, 203–​5). If this way of folding the textiles does have to do with these tributary practices of the past, and if the god-​saints are considered replacements for the historical wak’as, then the present practices of handling the god-​saints in the church derive from these former ways of making tribute to the regional wak’as. We have personally been present at the changing of the clothes of the saints in Qaqachaka’s central church in many fiestas, which gave us the opportunity to observe from close up the ritual paraphernalia and completed outfits used by each god. When one of the saints lost a finger or some other body part, I was able to repair them using a combination of Superglue and plasters from my First Aid kit. I  could ponder while attending to these repairs on the nature of the wigs used by the virgin saints, made from cow-​tail hair (­figure  25). I could also see that the virgins carried small baskets and flowers, and that the child-​gods carried distinct objects in their hands. The other local participants in these events used to chatter among themselves at these moments about the characteristics of each god, the details of their costumes and paraphernalia,

Figure 25. Mama Kapitana seen from behind, with her wig made of cow-​tail hair.

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and compare them with the miraculous saints they had seen on their pilgrimages, or with other saints of Qaqachaka they were familiar with (­figures 26a, b, and c). Changing the Clothes of Tata Quri

We saw with the greatest frequency the ritual of changing the clothes of Tata Quri, so I shall describe this practice in more detail. As the main person charged with the care of Tata Quri, the mayordomo called Marka began his turn at the fiesta of Cruz in May, and from this moment on had to supervise the changing of this god-​saint’s clothes at the main feast, and each Thursday weekly during six months of the year, until the half year point (chika mara) of his annual office. Then the regularity of the practice was reduced to every fortnight until the end of the year. Marka was accompanied in this practice by the other mayordomos, whom he considered his “babies” (wawanakapa), although he was uniquely responsible for uniting all the mayordomos (men and women) to toast the saint. In the recent past, the mayordomos called Animasa and Candelaria were those charged with changing the clothes, under the supervision of Marka. But with the disappearance of the mayordomo Animasa in the 1980s, Candelaria now assumed this responsibility, helped by the mayordomo of Mama Ch’uri. If for any reason one of these was absent, then the Alcalde Mayor intervened, in his role as San Mijila (San Miguel), and the task of changing the clothes fell to him as the highest authority of the six minor ayllus of the annex. In the absence of the Alcalde Mayor, this task fell upon the mayordomo Fiscal (see again ­figure 23). As mentioned, there are two “avatars” of Tata Quri: “Lesser Gold” (Jisk’a Quri) and “Greater Gold” (Jach’a Quri). In the clothes changing ceremony, it is “Lesser Gold” that is (a)

(b)

(c)

Figure 26a., b., and c. A comparison between the costumes of a. Mamita Candelaria; b. Mama Kapitana, and c. Mama Ch’uri, at the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, in 2017.

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taken out of Marka’s room, where he is guarded, to have his clothes changed weekly and then fortnightly during the year, whereas it is “Greater Gold,” on his cross, who is taken down from his niche in the church to have his clothes changed just once a year, at the fiesta of Cruz in May. The rite of changing the clothes of Tata Quri is a very serious affair, announced each Thursday by a detonation of dynamite, although the women have already been preparing and cooking the food long before then. The ritual opens when Marka collects Tata Quri from inside his room and places him in the house patio. Then food is offered to all the mayordomos present, men, and women. Immediately after this, the changing of the clothes begins. Then the participants proceed with the blessings and offerings of incense, and only afterwards do they begin the long cycles of toasts. Finally, at sunset, Tata Quri is replaced in his room, although the group of participants remain in their allocated places in the patio to continue making libations until well into the night. In the division of labour by gender during the rite, it is the women who prepare, cook, and serve the food, while the men make the opening libations. Then the men change the clothes of the adult saints, assisted by the women (although the women do change the clothes of the child-​saints). The women also provide the new set of clothes which they have previously washed in a sweet-​smelling soap (in those years they tended to use Ace, a biological detergent powder), as the gods “like to dress in clothes with a sweet smell.” Once again, we are reminded that the washing of the Inka mummies was under the care of the women, as a fundamental part of the processes of conservation (Alonso 1989, 113–​14). After returning the saints to their resting places, the men and women organize themselves in gendered groups, the men seated on a raised platform around the altar (misa) of the house patio, in the ritual site called iskina, and the women on the ground (pampa), and each group makes different libations for the god-​saint and his journey to the pueblo. In these cycles of toasts, the men invoke the salient mountains of the region (the Mayku), and the women their respective female partners (the T’alla). Likewise, the men name the clothes and ribbons of the saint, now within his wooden box, while the women name the twelve mantles the box is wrapped in. It is as if these woven wrapping were also defined by gender, where female external wrappings envelop male ones in their interior. The task assigned to the women of feeding the mayordomos with food and drink (consisting of barley beer and spirits of 40 percent proof) is considered a fundamental part of the rite, because it is “as if they were feeding the stomach of Tata Quri.” Don Alberto, as feast sponsor of Tata Quri in 1989, described to us the rite in its totality as Yus kapaña. Kapaña (from the Spanish capar) means “to cover,” in the sense of “covering the food of God,” although in Aymara the same verb designates the action of “walking slowly,” as in a procession. For Don Alberto, the action of giving food and drink to Tata Quri is the most important part of the rite. In the past practices of “feeding” the Inka mummies, the persons who cared for the mummy always offered a part of the food they were presenting to be consumed by a fire nearby. While eating they drank their chicha and then, after finishing eating, they continued drinking in a ritual form (Alonso 1989, 114, 127). However, in the contemporary rite there is no fire near the group of participants and they just eat and drink “in place of Tata Quri,” as if he were an ancestral

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mummy. For Don Alberto, other important activities in this event are “placing the altar (misa)” and “serving alcohol to the six men and women as authorities.” The Aymara verb used by Don Alberto for tending the altar is ananuqaña, the specific meaning of which is “to make seated in a place.” During the whole sequence of changing the clothes of Tata Quri there is silence in the group, in a noticeable difference with respect to, say, the rites to the mountains or to the earth. Neither do the participants direct their voices towards Tata Quri, in his guise as a dead ancestor or ancestral mummy, given that “he can’t reply.” The mayordomos just talk among themselves, offering advice on what they are doing or instructing a new feast sponsor what to do. If they should accidentally brush the god-​saint with a finger, “Tata Quri takes no notice.” At the same time, they fear a moment when Tata Quri could express his changeable temperament and his capacity to influence events. They fear especially those moments when Tata Quri does not want his clothes to be changed, and offers resistance (qayqasi). The sequence of actions in changing the clothes of the saints is governed by certain principles, namely that the clothes in the interior (wit’u) of the bundle, closest to the saint’s body, must be transferred to the outside surface, as if they were organic layers in a process of growth. A similar principle was in operation in the case of the mummy wrappings in the Paracas culture of Peru,7 and could have been much more generalized. Similarly, the ribbon Tata Quri wears crossed over on his chest must be changed from one side to the other. Such small details proliferate, as the costume of the god-​saint is complex with manifold layers, consisting of the many gifts granted to the god by previous feast sponsors as good works (uwra), in clothes, mantles, ribbons, and other ritual paraphernalia. The final bundle of the god-​saint is composed first of all of the wooden box (kaja) in which the saint dwells in his various wrappings. This box has two painted doors, decorated like the retablos of other parts of the Andes. The box and doors are secured with a tightly woven belt (t’isnu), then the whole box is wrapped in the fine shawl (phant’a) of Castilian wool of a bright crimson-​coloured background (panti), “to wrap it well,” and so that the bundle appears “compact, rounded and small.” Then the bundle is wrapped in the twelve female mantles (awayus). Only when it has been wrapped like this can it be called in drinking language the “Lesser Gold” (Jisk’a Quri). Again, the preferred colours of the twelve mantles are those with a mono-​coloured plainweave area, or pampa, of a predominant tan (paqu), red (wila) or chestnut brown (ch’umpi), but never in black (see again ­figure 24, on p. 303). The majority of the mantles we saw on those occasions had been borrowed by the feast sponsor, Don Alberto, from family members, including his daughters, and from neighbours. It is not expected that one single person should provide all the mantles, but those who provide two or three are highly honoured and called from then onwards “person awayu,” as a term of respect. When we were there, several mantles had been 7 Ann Peters, personal communication.

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lent by Doña Asunta Arias, Don Alberto’s daughter-​in-​law, the final poncho by Don Alberto himself, and two of the mantles by his nephew Juan Choque, from the hamlet of T’ulan Wanka. Those had been woven by Don Juan’s wife, from neighbouring Macha, and presented the characteristic designs of that ayllu. The first fine shawl in the bundle had been borrowed by Don Alberto from the rancho of Qhuchini at the foot of Mount Phiriphiri, so there was an element in the bundle of wrappings to record the original journey of Tata Quri down from there. If one of the mantles is lost during the course of the year, then the Marka has the responsibility to replace them. At the end of the year, the mantles are returned to their owners, and from then onwards are treated in their daily use like any other weaving, and not in any special way.

Changing the Clothes of Llama Herding Girl

The practice of changing the clothes of Llama Herding Girl (Qarwiri Imilla), as the daughter of Tata Quri and Mama Candelaria, follows the same steps as those changing Tata Quri. Don Tiburcio Maraza Mamani, from ayllu Livichuco, who served as mayordomo of Candelaria, explained to us that the alférez of that saint must change her clothes each Saturday, and then later in the year each alternate Saturday (or exceptionally on alternate Thursdays). Like Tata Quri, Llama Herding Girl is wrapped in twelve mantles of the same preferred colours: tan (paqu), chestnut (ch’umpi), crimson (panti), and sausage red (wursila), but never black. And again, as they change the clothes, the authorities chew coca leaves and make libations addressed to the saint with her three nicknames: Qarwa Awatiri, “Llama Keeper,” Copacabana Aljirisa, “Alferesa of Copacabana,” and Qarwiri, “Llama herder.”

Caring Mutually for the Saints

As a vital part of the relational ontologies of the region, these practices of changing the clothes of the saints demonstrate many facets of the actions of “mutually caring for” or “rearing mutually.” These actions do not just “make persons” of the god-​saints. They transform them from “objects” into “subjects” with their own powers of agency, but under the condition that this agency is expressed for the mutual benefit of the people of the place, and not, as they feared in the case of Tata Quri, to satisfy his own whims. To fulfil these ontological conditions, apart from dressing the saint, close attention is paid to the action of “wrapping” them (k’iruña). In the first place, they are wrapped in layers of weavings, which in themselves embody this same sense of “being persons,” and consequently have own agency in these transformative processes (Arnold 2000, 2018a). In the second place, the wrapped layers are ordered in a way that replicates the process of organic growth, but in a botanical sense. So although the people of the place are conscious that the saints “do not respond” to their actions in a human way, nevertheless they take pains to “make them live,” by “making them move” from place to place (from the church to the feast sponsor’s house, or in processions around the pueblo), and by commemorating in their toasts the movements of the saints in their travels from their places of origin to Qaqachaka.

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These vital capacities attributed to the saints are part of a generalized consciousness that they are replacements for the former gods of the heavens, and like them possess generative powers, in addition to protective powers over the people of the place. Simultaneously, the saints in their various guises express ancestral powers, whether of the wak’as in the landscape, the Chullpa pre-​Christian people or the Inkas that lived previously in the region. Finally, the human treatment of the saints presents features of the former practices of offering tribute in textiles to the church and its saints, as part of the religious mit’a during the Colony, with perhaps a memory of the more ancient Andean system of tribute before then, when gifts of textiles were directed towards the regional wak’as. This is evident in the great affection expressed to those who loan the textiles conceded to the saints at the opening of the year of office of a particular mayordomo, in keeping them folded in a certain way in the church, tucked under the images of the saints, and in the practices of returning them to their owners after this year of office with thanks, a round of toasts, and the use of terms of great respect.

Feeding the Gods

The same notion of “making a person” (jaqichaña) occurs in the actions of feeding certain beings in the world, including Qaqachaka’s saints. Taking up some still loose threads in this book, I shall expand now on the notion of feeding as part of this complex of “caring for mutually,” and of the even more underlying complex of “sacrifice.” This allows me to return to a key question, still pending in the whole book. According to the evidence, how did regional populations, in the colonial period, attempt to integrate the Catholic figure of Christ into their own existing pantheon of gods? Here, we are not dealing with negotiations by these populations with the colonial powers about administrative or even religious affairs, but their own interpretations of the teachings of Christian doctrine during the early Colony, and its application to their own pre-​existing ritual practices. Once again, I wish to avoid a focus on the results of this colonial reconfiguration in terms of syncretism, hybridity, or mutation, and seek rather to understand this conjuncture from the perspective of the regional populations. Neither do I wish to limit myself to questions of faith, of whether or not the inhabitants of Qaqachaka are really “Christians.” I have no doubt about their religious devotion, their seriousness in these devotional practices, and the sentiment with which they used to confirm to us in those years the phrase “we are Christians.” What interests me more are the modalities of learning Christian doctrine they experienced at first hand, and the kinds of incentive they felt when having to accomplish the new doctrinal norms and instructions imposed by the Church. If these questions were to deal with negotiations, they would be concerned with their faith in relation to the new catechizing demands introduced into their sphere of activity, and their ways of judging the efficacy of their own ritual practices, before and then during the Time of the Spanish. A clue to how the former religious practices of the region had been integrated, in the Colony, through an emerging Andean Catholicism, has already been illustrated in

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the close articulation between the architectonic complex of the colonial church and the former sites of Andean rituality. I explained how the colonial church in Qaqachaka marka with its two towers (or alminares), together with the ritual sites excavated at the foot of these towers, are perceived as corollaries of a Chullpa construction (with the main church as a chullperío) to shelter the ancestral mummies, while the towers themselves become the counterparts of the guardian or tutelary mountains (uywiri) who watch over their territory and the populations under their dominion, in coordination with the Virgin Earth. I have commented on the correspondences between the “chests” on the guardian mountains, which contain sacrificial offerings, and the way that the god-​saint Tata Quri is kept in his own wooden box within a bundle of woven wrappings. And I have drawn attention to the further correspondences between these box-​like containers and the way the annex saints “sleep” in their niches in the church, or the household saints (called “devotions”) sleep in similar niches inside the house walls. In each case, the ritual elements, with their spiritual attributes, are constrained in such receptors, to concentrate their power, and thus ensure the success of later ritual processes directed at irradiating their yields. Each of these ritual complexes—​church towers, mountain-​earth, god-​saint—​is fed regularly by the people of the place, in retribution for the mutual caring and protection that these elements bestow on the populations (human, animal, and plant) under their dominion. Importantly, these ritual complexes, as I  have postulated elsewhere, derive from the efficacy of the practices of sacrifice (Arnold and Hastorf 2008, 73). It is this close articulation between associated ritual practices that offers me an entry point to the local interpretations of the new Catholic god Jesus Christ in the early colonial period. The Sacrifice of Christ

I shall lay out these ideas gradually. In the Catholic rites practiced in church, the notion of sacrifice is focused on the death followed by the Resurrection of Christ. In our previous studies of the rites of Easter in Qaqachaka, we examined the local meanings of this death and resurrection in the recent past, contextualized by the local practices of indoctrination learned during Lent, and these offer a good point of departure (Arnold and Yapita 1999, 2007). Within the main church of Qaqachaka marka, during the six weeks of Lent, a programme of indoctrination, supervised by lay persons charged with this mission called doctrineros (indoctrinators), was directed at the young girls of the annex, who had the task of learning collectively to sing a set of prayers, including the Ten Commandments. While doing so, they were to pay attention to specific saints in the church, namely Tata Animasa, the God of the Dead (Señor de las Almas), with his other epithets of Paskun Animasa (Soul of Easter), Jisu Kiristu (Jesus Christ), and Risurist Tatala (Father of the Resurrection), together with his consort Mama Tulurisa (Mama Dolores). In these former studies, we concluded that the prayers the girls sang during Lent and then during Good Friday and Easter Saturday derived directly from the texts of colonial leaflets of catechism, which included the recitation of certain parts of these prayers

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in Latin (Arnold and Yapita 1999, 2007). For the parishioners, there were many ambiguities of interpretation in their efforts to learn these new elements of Christian doctrine, and a solution was to relocate the new ideas within their existing ones. The same occurred in the efforts of these young girls to learn to sing the prayers, in a formal process of learning, which they understood at one level in terms of helping Christ to be reborn. At the same time, for them, the lyrics of the sung prayers included petitions for rains and, most of all, the salvation of their menfolk. The collective effort of singing these prayers drew on the fact that the textual construction of the prayers formed a braiding of voices of the distinct groups of young girls from the annex, each from a different ecological zone. From the commentaries by the comunarios about this phenomenon, the idea was that this braiding of voices in song would help braid into a whole the different resources of the annex. For example, the verses that addressed Dios Tatito (Little Father God) named the varieties of flower that grew in each zone. More importantly still, the comunarios suggested that the web of girls’ voices generated a web of sound, which they directed at helping Christ’s beard (sunqa) to grow. Christ was perceived in this context as the waning Sun God, before his descent into the inner world and his later Resurrection as the new waxing Sun. They commented to us how they perceived this same solar god in the sunburst of the monstrance on the church altar (which they knew locally as timunsya or “demonstra”). In the sacrament of the Eucharist, the monstrance guards the consecrated host. Yet other verses of the prayers suggested a play of words between the term “Santísima,” Most Holy, and the Aymarized term silsalsismu, an allusion to the custom of making offerings “without salt” (sinsal) to the mountains and the Virgin Earth, unlike the rituals and offerings in church that had to include salt. This particular play of words called our attention. While salt in the Andes has a significant relation to Catholic rites (notably baptism), this verse, which seemed to deal with ideas at the very heart of the Catholic faith (concerned with the body and blood of Christ, incarnate in the host guarded on the altar), was instead associated by the young girls, and the comunarios alike, with the absence of salt (sinsala), and thus with the vital powers of the mountains and the earth. As in the verses of the prayers sung at the miraculous sites, many terms in the Easter prayers are not properly understood by the women of Qaqachaka. At least they do not understand them in their original sense, having learned them through techniques of oral memory. Let us take the term atamita (or jatamita), which is apparently derived from the list of questions about the sacraments in colonial books of catechism, where atamita means “give it to me (in the sense of ‘what is such a thing?’),” while jattamita means “believe me.”8 For her part, Doña Asunta Arias understood the meaning of this word in the sense of jach’a mit’a (the great mining mit’a) because, as she explained to us, “We 8 This kind of usage is evident in the Vocabulario de la lengua aymara compiled by the Italian Jesuit Ludovico Bertonio, at the beginning of the seventeenth century: Atamatha. Dezir, referir; Atamasiña; Informar, o dar querrella (Bertonio [1612] 1984, 1, 27). See also Arnold and Yapita (2007, 364).

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pray on our knees,” like the miners inside the Red Mountain of Potosí, as they worked during the colonial mit’a in order to legalize the purchase of Qaqachaka territory. Other commentaries from older people suggested that the essence of the Easter rite was that, on the dark days of that feast (Spy Wednesday, Maundy Thursday, and Good Friday), Jesus had to descend to the inner world of the devils who trapped him there. The explanation that Don Enrique Espejo gave us was that, on those days, Christ was “ill” (usutaji) or, as others would say, “dead” (jiwi), and therefore “you should not eat meat or anything toasted.” If they were to eat meat on those days, they would be eating “snakes, toads, and lizards” (the animals from the devilish inner world), and so committing a great sin. Nevertheless, for the Saturday of Glory, Jesus Christ “resuscitates from the flesh” (aychat jakatati), or in Don Enrique’s own words: Jichha aychan jakatataña ...

asta ukas Yusapini aychan jakatatchi.

Now he revives in the flesh …

even God himself would revive in the flesh.

From that moment on you can eat the meat of any animal, including chicken, although on this occasion it is more usual to kill a male animal, “given that the women tend to protect the females for reproduction.” Christ’s Resurrection on Easter Sunday is called in Aymara qhantatxi, meaning literally “he has revived or become re-​illuminated,” and Don Enrique commented that “Glory and other things are open …” (Sit’artxiw Luriyas kunas …), by which he referred to a generalized flow of light and energy between the worlds of above, of here on Earth and below in the inner world. His idea was that “Heaven is open” so that Christ can ascend there. This is the reason why, by singing prayers on this days, the young girls help Christ to “escape” from the devils and then to be “reborn.” Even more curious, to my way of thinking, was the way the comunarios thought of Christ’s Resurrection in terms of warfare. As one of them commented, “First is the fight, and then, in the procession between the Stations of the Cross, you make the people come alive again.” (The reference here is to the row of mounds of bones of past warriors of the place located to the side of the church, which have a certain similarity to the another large mound of bones called taqawa, just outside the pueblo, where they used to place the enemy trophy heads in the recent past.) At the basis of these ideas is a regional interpretation of the notion of “salvation,” but with reference to “saving yourself” in warfare (and in “this life”), in order to live eternally. In the practices for “saving oneself,” you must proceed on your knees through these Stations of the Cross, or their counterparts on the calvario mountain of Phiriphiri or at the taqawa site outside the pueblo, and pray for the coming rains. On other occasions (during the day), again to save yourself, the women pray to the mother tower of the church (mamala turri) and the men to the father tower (tatala turri), insomuch as these “care for the lives” of the people of the place. Remember that in the distant past the Qaqachakas used to bury the bones of their ancestors at the foot of these towers, until they received the ecclesial demand to construct a pantheon and cemetery apart. Another complex of ideas among the local comunarios is that the prayers sung by the young girls at Easter not only help Christ (or Tatito) to be reborn; they “also make

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possible the beginning of the harvest.” Here Christ is related to the maturing crops to be harvested from the earth, and at Easter people go out to collect medicinal plants from the hills. Tatitu qhantatxiw, “Tatito has been born,” they say, “that’s why you must take the plants that surround us to burn in the animal pens, and thus protect the animals and fields” (although nowadays they only take aromatic bittermint for this purpose). Once again, I suspect that the nexus from the early Colony between Christ and the mountains must have been learned directly from the phrase Apu qullana in the prayers of the books of catechism, in which the Catholic translation is “Christ,” although the Aymara-​ speakers of Qaqachaka understand this to mean “medicinal herbs” (qullanaka) from the hills (apu). In other Easter prayers, when the girls sing “Ay, Mamita, Ay, Tatito,” other commentaries held that they referred to Mother Moon and Father Sun, and when they sang “Away, Tatitu,” they were petitioning to these gods so that “they irrigated with water” (away qarpaniru) to make the crops mature well (juyranakas suma phuqharaki), and so that there was pasture, “because the animals must live with pasture. …” Sacrifices to the Mountains

I propose that, underlying these Easter rites, and hence the local interpretations of Christ’s Resurrection, are the same series of transformations of an original sacrifice as we noted in the rites to the guardian mountains (uywiri) and at the foot of the church towers. Moreover, the local incentives to carry out these rites are directed towards the same objectives, initially to achieve the next season of rains, and thence the new sprouting of the vegetation and, in the following months, a new harvest of crops, that will in turn sustain the new generations of baby herd animals, and human offspring (viewed here as new generations of flesh and blood). In the rites to the mountains, these ideas form the ritual complex called in Aymara ch’iwu. Up to here, I mentioned in passing two meanings of ch’iwu as “shadow” and “meat,” and described in some detail the rites to the offering sites at the foot of the church towers. However, the semantic field of this term is much more complex, as we have shown in other publications (Arnold and Yapita 1998a, 136; Arnold 2016a, 2018b).9 Here I will just summarize the most pertinent aspects in the context of my current argument. The term ch’iwu is polysemic, referring to the dynamic and transformative cycles that result from a sacrifice, and the offerings to the mountain “chests” of the remains of this sacrifice (the skeleton with the testicles and penis). On the one hand, ch’iwu signifies in general the meat of a sacrifice, eaten by the ritual’s participants at the festive banquet after the event. But in the same context, ch’iwu refers to the coca leaves shared out with these participants and chewed by them, after having eaten, to commemorate the meat consumed. In a more everyday sense ch’iwu signifies “shadow,” specifically that cast by heavy rain clouds. 9 The Quechua equivalent is llanthu, which has the same meaning of “shadow” and “clouds” (Goudsmit 2016, 25 ff.).

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These three meanings of ch’iwu become tightly intermeshed into a significant bundle of relations converging on the ritual practices around an animal sacrifice. At the banquet at which the animal meat is consumed, the participants must take care not to break any bone, and after the feast, a yatiri (or a mayordomo in the ecclesial rites at the foot of the towers) has the task of gathering together and later reconstituting all of these bones into the original skeleton (osamenta) in preparation for the offering in the mountain chest. Note that this care not to break any bone was an important aspect of the processes of mummification of the Inkas, according to the chronicler Juan de Betanzos ([ca. 1551] 1987, 201). The offerings to the guardian mountain are made the night after the banquet, when the male members of the family and the yatiri climb to the ritual site. The hole there is opened and the reconstructed skeleton is placed inside, then covered with coca leaves (ch’iwu) and flowers, among other ritual ingredients, as a new wrapping of “meat” (equally called ch’iwu) around the bones, the intention being to trigger a new covering of flesh on the earth, in more generic terms. The hole is then covered with a large flat stone, and the idea, as in the rites at the foot of the towers, is that in the following months the remains of the animal sacrifice will putrefy, liberating from the hole fetid emanations that transform gradually into dark rain clouds (again called ch’iwu). When these heavy clouds finally shed the rains onto the territory under the dominion of the guardian mountain, there will be a new vegetative covering upon the earth, and the fresh green pastures will serve as sustenance for the young of the herd animals, which in turn will grow a healthy covering of meat and fat to feed the populations that rear them. I have demonstrated in this book that these regional practices of sacrifice, and the subsequent interment of the remains of the sacrificed animal to the offering site, together with the ideas about the later transformations that will take place there (in emanations, cloud formation, and finally rainfall and the generation of new pastures and animal young well sustained with new meaty flesh), are just as present in the rites at the foot of the church towers. I would go one step further to argue that these same practices share a certain parallelism to the Easter rites, in which the local populations had responded to the demands in the Catholic books of catechism that date from the sixteenth century, but with reference to their own former practices. It is as if, in the early Colony, in reply to the demands of the religious mit’a, the rites of Easter were the result of an effort by the regional populations to integrate Christ within their own pantheon of gods and the religious practices associated with these. They simply related the Resurrection of Jesus Christ to that of the meat of sacrifice, whose regeneration is sought in the rites to the guardian mountains and at the foot of the church towers, through the transformative cycles known as ch’iwu. The obvious difference is that, within the church, this relation is experienced through the Sacrament of Holy Communion, in the bread and wine perceived as the Corporeal Presence of the body and blood of the sacrificed Christ, through the rite of transubstantiation, which has caused so many problems of comprehension for Andean populations until today. Comments by the comunarios suggest it was much easier to understand that the sacrifice made by God at Easter, with respect to his Son, was to “make him die” and then “make him live again in the flesh.” So, for Andean populations, the power of Christ

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was understood in terms of the materialization and personalization of the meat of sacrifice, as a corollary of their more familiar notion of ch’iwu. Within this regional re-​interpretation of the sacrament of the Eucharist, I am struck by the similitude between the Catholic monstrance as the receptor of the consecrated host (the Holy Sacrament), or indeed the reliquaries where the bone relics of past saints were kept, and Qaqachaka’s “mountain chests,” where the reconstituted skeleton (osamenta) of the sacrificed animal is kept. Other names for the monstrance are ostensorium or ostensory, and although church texts tend to give more emphasis to the etymology of these terms from the Latin ostendere, “to demonstrate,” the corresponding etymology in Greek derives precisely from osteon, or “bone.” We are dealing with a “receptacle of bones”! In practice, as the mayordomos pointed out, on re-​opening these receptacles each year, you see that the sacrificial bones have been converted into dust, although the flesh has been revived in the cycle called ch’iwu. At the same time, it is possible to understand the difficulty for Andean populations of “eating” the flesh of Christ through the sacrament of the host, because it can so easily be confused with an act of cannibalism. The Pathway of Blood

A step further in these comparisons between religious ideas and practices entails a more detailed examination of the act of sacrifice. One of the purposes of the ritual practices directed towards the mountains (or the sites at the foot of the church towers) is that of achieving a certain control over the flow of animal blood, whether in the act of sacrifice itself or in the repercussions derived from this primordial act. The same logic seems to apply in the case of the blood offerings demanded before consulting colonial archival documents, or formerly, the knotted quipus. We are faced with ontological acts directed towards the control of, and appropriation of the spirit, or animu, of a sacrificed animal, expressed in the flow of fresh blood out of the animal’s body as a consequence of the sacrifice, that which, besides, closes this part of the ritual act. Similarly, the ritual act of sacrificing an animal is directed at controlling, and in a certain sense appropriating, after its death, the flow of forces associated with the animu of the live animal, as well as its “good luck,” or surti. In other ethnographies of the region, “luck” or surti is considered a generalized vital force (Bugallo and Tomasi 2012). For his part, the Argentine anthropologist Francisco Pazzarelli, clarifies that “luck” in Northwest Argentina is associated, in this ritual context, as much with the animal recently sacrificed as with the herder, male or female, who cared for this animal (Pazzarelli 2017a, 2017b). And while the flow of animu from the animal is linked to the moment of death, its “luck” is associated with the fresh and bloodied meat of the animal so killed (Pazzarelli 2017a, 130), before it becomes transformed into edible meat. Pazzarelli takes pains to describe the culinary processes necessary to prepare the meat for human consumption, which are directed towards “removing the luck” from the fresh meat of sacrifice by “turning it inside out,” and by separating out the bones and drying them (Pazzarelli 2017a, 136).

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In Qaqachaka, similar ideas about “luck,” or surti, tend to stress its relation to the soft grey brain matter (lixwi) in the cranium, as the seat of spirit (ispiritu), soul (animu) and courage, with the ribs as the seat of breath (samaña). This becomes evident is those rites directed at “luck,” focused on the cranium and ribs to generate the rains (Arnold and Hastorf 2008, 78, 109, 160–​61). Summarizing the evidence, I would say that the Andean notion of “luck” has to do with the same nexus of “rains-​pastures-​meat” inherent in the ch’iwu complex. It seems pertinent that another aspect of the “luck” of an animal resides in the bones of sacrifice, so the later ritual act of burying the sacrificial remains, directed towards the reconfiguration of these “bones” and their new covering of ritual elements in order to “revive” the meat, also regenerates the “luck” of the animal to stimulate new vegetative and fleshy coverings in the whole region. These rites, from the moment of sacrifice to the burial of its remains, are always directed in practice towards the rising Sun, which will bestow the necessary power and authority for the efficacy of these actions. It is as if, in rites to do with rain, through the preparation of cooked meat and the subsequent burial of the sacrificial bone offerings, the participants seek the continuing “luck” inherent in the bones of the sacrificed animal, and in its fresh and bloodied meat, for the benefit of the families of the herders as for their herds. This implies that the techniques applied in these rituals are directed specifically towards making the animu of an animal re-​live, in particular its “luck” (surti) incarnate in the body and blood, in the later metamorphoses of the ch’iwu complex. This process of metamorphosis, as a ritual complex, is similar to the metamorphosis of trophy heads I  mentioned in passing in the introduction. But while the metamorphosis of the trophy heads concerns the transformation of the enemy spirit (animu), thought to reside there, into a new generation of generic “babies” (human, animal, plant) for the warrior’s household, during a limited three-​year period, in an animal sacrifice the metamorphosis concerns the perpetual transformations of the animal’s animu and surti, incarnate in its bones, flesh, and blood flow. We are dealing ritually with a “pathway of blood.” The Blood of the Church

Similar concepts to those involved in the rites in the church occur at other moments in the year. These can be identified in the sequence of toasts in the weekly rites of the mayordomos, when certain aural plays on words help us understand these regional interpretations of religious practices introduced in the early Colony. For example, the men’s libations directed to Qaqachaka’s Alcalde Mayor name his three epithets: Santo Roma, San Miguel, and Paceño Awkpa (Our Father from La Paz), whereas the women in their libations name Mama Encarnación, Mama Moquegua, and Mamita Dulce. Doña Asunta Arias explained that they name Mamita Dulce in the libations because of her close relationship to the church in the main pueblo. Remember that Mamita Dulce was the partner of San Pedro Tatala, the patron saint of the reduction town of Condocondo, from 1571. When Qaqachaka separated from Condo to form its own annex or vice-​parish, it is as if this breaking apart was perceived as the wife of the patron saint of Condo becoming separated from him.

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Doña Asunta then explained another word play that I  announced in the introduction to this book: that another name for the church in drinking language is sanjrata, an Aymarized version of the Spanish sagrada, “sacred,” with a play on another word, sanjri, an Aymarized version of the Spanish sangre, “blood.” For her, these terms allude to “all the things guarded in the church,” including all the saints, and even the two towers and their bells. The ritual practice that Doña Asunta associates most with these terms is that of lighting the candles in the dark church interior, linked to another word play, this time between the Spanish vela for “candle,” and the Aymara wila, which means both “blood” and “the colour red.” In this same context, Doña Asunta mentioned how the flame from a candle (wila) is compared to sunlight, and invokes Tata Mustramu (Our Lord Father or Señor Nuestro Amo) as an expression of Father Sun. These two word plays designate a semantic domain in regional religious practices in which the action of lighting and burning candles for the god-​saints has to do with sunlight and blood, and where an offering to God of the volatile essence of candle wax is an equivalent of incense. Once again we are faced with a ritual sequence associated with blood flow, directed here to Father Sun, or as Doña Asunta explains: The way of toasting the gods is like this … It’s the same as drinking blood; “it’s the blood (sanjri) of the church,” saying. We toast it. You toast for it. There are all kinds of things in the church and we toast them all. We toast for everything in the church, for example for the bells, for the towers. It’s called “sanjri.” Sanjri is the church, and in the libations it’s called sanjri … It’s blood (wila) of course. “We are ‘closing’ the blood/​candle,” that which burns, “it’s blood,” saying. You close it (sit’antañaw). They’re making it burn. Closing the blood/​candle (wil sit’antxi) is what makes the candle burn for each god. “You ‘close it’ with the candle,” they say. Each mayordomo places six candles to their god each week. It’s for their god, and each one makes them burn. Each one makes them burn each Thursday … “They’re closing them” with that.

In other ritual contexts the act of “closing” finalizes a flow of communication between worlds, as in “closing” a flow of offerings to the earth, perceived as the ritual equivalent of “locking it” with a “key” (llawi), although in practice the “key” may be a plant or another ritual element. But lighting the candles in the church seems, on the contrary, to open the flow of communication between the mayordomos and their gods, whilst perhaps “closing” the flow of blood associated with the church and its immediate surroundings. Some clues for understanding the underlying ideas in these practices are found in the symbolism of lighting candles in Catholic practices. Sometimes the symbolism of the fire and light from candles is related to the Trinity. In other explanations, the pure wax extracted from flowers by bees is related to the pure flesh of Christ received from his Virgin Mother. The candle wick symbolizes the spirit (alma) of Christ, and the flame itself his divinity. This doctrinal relation between wax and the pure flesh of Christ could explain the re-​interpretation, by the Qaqachakas, of this curious nexus between wax and blood.

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Doña Asunta Arias herself perceived a key reference for this blood flow when the priest says during the mass, “This is My blood, this is My body …” Her observation reiterates how, in the church rites carried out by a priest, the blood and flesh of Christ are associated with the eternal source of life, through ideas related to his death and the sacrifice of his body, followed by his revivification with the “rains” of the resurrection of the body. Here Christ is identified not only through the flesh that survives death, but through the “eternal rain” that nourishes the continuity of life. This re-​interpretation by an Andean population of ideas at the very heart of Christian doctrine, around the Eucharist, also seems to evoke the medieval notion of radiance, when the redness of Christ’s blood led directly to the divine light of the Resurrection. Redness in the Andes too is held to contain all light and colour within it. Moreover, both trends of thought share elements with the sacrificial ceremonies to mountains that have long been a part of Andean ritual, as well as the later colonial sacrificial rituals taking place at the foot of the church towers. Doña Asunta mentioned another sequence of libations that established yet another relationship between the lighting of church candles and their comparisons, this time, with ice and llama tallow. This round of toasts begins with an invocation “for the church” (using its ritual name sanjritaki), then “for the angels” (anjilataki) who help in the organization of a fiesta, followed by a toast for the god known as “ice” (chullunkhiyataki), an appellative for a church candle in the process of burning, with a trickle of wax down its sides looking like “icicles” or melted animal fat. The process of burning a single candle is considered “a pathway of ice” (chhullunkir thakhi). In a gendered aspect of these ideas, as in herding practices the nutritive blood of female animals is differentiated from the prized fat of males. Finally the sequence of libations ends with toasts for the god-​saints in the church, including the Cross of God (Yusa Kurusa), Our Mother San Juan (San Wan Tayksa) and Our Father San Juan (San Wan Awksa). In practice, the persons charged with lighting the candles inside the church for a fiesta are the so-​called “accompaniments” (kumpanmintu) of the feast sponsor or alférez, who request their help by offering them a bottle of spirits and a toast. The accompaniments in turn must buy the candles, place them in position, and then light and burn them, carrying on one of the obligations of the religious mit’a since the Colony. When the wine and bread are transformed into the body and flesh of Christ during the mass, according to the Catholic belief in transubstantiation, again the people of Qaqachaka stress the material aspects of this as a vital part of sacrifice. According to Doña Asunta, this material aspect is also closely observed by the children of the place, who try to imitate the priest when he is drinking the wine as the “blood of Christ” and eating the bread as the “body of Christ.” They think that the bread of the mass is “pan de San Nicolás,” a kind of biscuit believed to have curative powers, and want to try it for themselves: “Tata kura kunrä umiristi, ukham umxapxiritäwi,” wawanakas kikpa umiritäwi.

“What can it be that the priest is drinking? I’d like to drink some too,”

And the children used to drink in the same way.

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Another worry of the people of Qaqachaka regarding their ritual activities is how to coordinate these diverse acts into one single effort in common. They look earnestly for ways to concentrate all the distinct “pathways of blood” unfolding through their different ritual actions into one single pathway. Their effort to achieve this summarizing action is often expressed by the comunarios in terms of the “rooting” necessary before new sprouts come forth (Arnold and Yapita 1998a, 125). It is as if they seek to concentrate all the different roots of their actions into a broader rooting process, as a way of interconnecting the different spheres of the world (above, below, this world) into these unfolding generative possibilities. This seems to be why, in the rites to the iskina sites and the uywiri guardian mountains, and in their counterparts at the foot of the church towers or at the mayordomos’ local circles (sirku), it is common to hear someone say that the offerings of the sacrificed animals “should be combined,” so that new growth can come about. Father Lamp and Mother Lamp

It is not only the blood flow from the animals that receives their ritual attention; animal fat also has a vital role to play. Even the action of bringing incense in the church is associated with the domain of the mountains and the herd animals. This is confirmed in the comments by the comunarios about the church lamps. Incense is burned inside the church in the metal censers called “Tata Lampara” and “Mama Lampara,” combined with llama tallow. Don Alberto explained to that there is a small receptacle for this tallow in each lamp, called lik’illay (lik’i is fat). It is the mayordomos’ task to bring this tallow to burn there. Each of them brings their own Tata Lampara and Mama Lampara to the church during the year they are in office, and then take it with them when it ends. In the years around 1989, when we were in Qaqachaka constantly, I was able to participate in this round of obligations to the church, contributing some tallow. One year, at the midwinter fiesta of San Juan, on June 24, I could observe from close up the practices around these lamps. An elderly lady, her woven black dress (almilla) totally drenched with icy water from the river she had passed to reach the pueblo, brought with her several animal figurines formed out of llama tallow, which she placed on the two lamps, then she began to pray, not at all conscious of her physical discomfort. Her primary aim was to contribute to the ritual effort to guarantee the return of the waxing Sun after the winter solstice (equivalent to Inti Raymi in the Inka calendar), but her other aim was to help renew the animal herds. Licking the Prayers and the Transubstantiation of the Holy Eucharist

Another aspect of this bodily and sensorial language of the church rituals has to do with the chiming of the church bells in one of the towers. Don Enrique Espejo explained how, when he was Fiscal, he had played the bells at Easter of the Resurrection, the idea being that when you rang them the god-​saints “moved,” and when they stopped ringing, then the god-​saints went back to sleep:

320 Religious Practices in Qaqachaka Marka “Yus amjasyas saltayañani,” sas. Urasyuna jallq’añapiniw Tatal Mamal ikinuqayarapit sha “Yus ikinuqayam,” si. Ukaxaya. “Let’s raise god’s memory,” saying.

You always lick the oration (with the tongue).

Please make the Tatalas and Mamalas go back to sleep,

(Mamala Fiscal requested this of Don Enrique when the real Fiscal was absent). “Make the gods go back to sleep,” she said. That’s it.

Don Enrique’s comments clarify another underlying idea, that you always “lick” (jallq’añapiniwa) the oral words of Christian doctrine in the orations of Catholic cult, as if with the tongue. I propose that this commentary by Don Enrique conforms part of the same perception of the sacrificial world of the church in parallel with, but separated from, the sacrificial world of the mountains (Arnold with Yapita 2006, ­8). In essence, for the populations of the region, the heart of the mass is focused on the sacrament of feeding God and the church saints with the bread and wine of the Eucharist. The efficacious part of the mass is the “food” offered to satisfy the hunger of God and his helpers. In the contemplation of these facts in the neighbouring ayllu of Laymi, the English anthropologist Olivia Harris added that even the “payment” (pago) by the local people to the priest for celebrating the mass, normally in money but often in local agricultural or herding produce (egg, chickens, sheep, potatoes, chuño), is part of this material transaction directed at “feeding” God’s celestial domain (Harris 2006). At the same time, at least in Qaqachaka, there is the historical consciousness that many elements of the Christian world are their “enemies,” and that you must “struggle” against these enemies in order to achieve salvation, understood here as a due protection against the enemies of the world. In a schooling context, we described elsewhere how you must “struggle against” the letters of school texts, just as you must again those of the Bible, swallowing them as if they were the body of God (Arnold with Yapita 2006, 142–​43). In prayers and orations, you must “swallow” the sounds of the letters (litra), because in their role as “enemies” they are also considered to be fertile, as if they were the “seeds” of Christ to sow in the lands of the place. Don Enrique’s commentary confirms this point of view, that the orations are experienced as sounds you must first “hear” and then absorb by “licking” them. This is why you always say in Aymara that you are going to “hear the mass” (mis isapaña). The mass is understood as a closed form of communication, managed through the intercession between the priest and God, and not as a participative action experienced through the replies of the congregation to the orations and prayers recited by the priest (cf. Harris 2006). In those years, the people of the place did not participate in the communion of bread and wine. Instead, by hearing the mass, and no less important, by receiving the holy water sprinkled by the priest, the people received in recompense God’s “blessing.”

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We are in fact dealing with two worlds of transubstantiation. Andean populations, through the centuries, re-​interpreted Christian doctrine through their own experiences. In this reformulation, the notions of the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ were incorporated within the properly Andean processes of revivifying the body (or flesh) of the Other, through sacrifice and the complex called ch’iwu. So, by participating orally in the Catholic mass, and by ingesting the “letter” incarnate of his Word, you have “swallowed” within your own flesh the body of God, according to a properly Andean re-​interpretation of the Eucharist and of Salvation. Of course, it is only by appropriating certain aspects of the enemy Other in this way, that Andeans could be truly creative.

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SOME CONCLUSIONS

In this book, I have tried to escape from the neutral language of a history “from

nowhere” (sensu Haraway), in which an authorized voice insists that the colonial period in the Andes was a syncretic and hybrid reconfiguration, a mestizo mutation in which a medley of all the elements resulted in a new postcolonial configuration, whether in the new religion or the new institutions and ideas circulating around this. My argument has been that the experience of history always has its point of view and is situated in a specific locality, in this case, Qaqachaka. And from that specific locality with its specific group of inhabitants, as Ariel Morrone observes, this “dynamic back and forth between the old and the new is not limited to a mere juxtaposition of cultural elements” (2010, 229).1 With this concern, I  sought to remedy the frequent absence in studies about the Colony of the point of view of the populations from the region, and, besides, in their own languages. We have the accounts by the conquistadores and the chroniclers, the observations of religious men and travelling men, and some exceptional voices in Quechua from the beginning of the Colony captured incidentally, as part of the programme of extirpation of idolatries, in the Ritos y Tradiciones de Huarochirí. We also have the great work of the Nueva corónica y buen gobierno attributed to Guaman Poma de Ayala (but probably linked to a neo-​Inka Jesuit movement of the times), in which his moralizing voice (with fragments in Aymara) criticizes relentlessly the nefarious aspects of the New World he was experiencing. And we have more that a century of academic studies on many facets of colonial life (Pease, Assadourian, Bethell, Brading, Bakewell, Barnadas, Duviols, Thurner, Querejazu, Platt, Bouysse-Cassagne, and Harris, Tandeter, Presta, Medinacelli, Barragán, to name a few), even though many of these works tend to present their case from another point of view. More recently, the locally focused studies of Taller de Historia Andina (THOA) in the 1980s, Thomas Abercrombie in the 1990s, followed by Gonzalo Lamana, Sinclaire Thompson, and others, have opened the way to a the new generation of scholars (Alber Quispe, Vincent Nicolás, Paula Zagalsky, Ariel Morrone, and others), who take up this challenge with new questions and answers. In this ongoing flow of works, I wanted to position myself (in spite of being a foreigner to the region) to present, as far as I could, and with the invaluable participation of Juan de Dios Yapita, an Andean colonial history from the regional voices I knew best, in the ecclesiastical annex of Qaqachaka in southern Oruro. I sought to express the experience of the Colony from a new place of enunciation (sensu Mignolo and Coronil), but whose expression goes much further than the place itself. I did not want to express this experience in the whining terms of a positioning “a lo andino,” as this does not reflect what we heard there during a couple of decades. That positioning perceives in the Colony the “point zero” for the ongoing submission of the regional populations during the following centuries, by 1 Cf. Bouysse-​Cassagne (2004, 60), Bastide (1970), and Candau ([1998] 2008).

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the Europeans, and with it the introduction of overt racism and sexism, channelled later into the generalized xenophobia and resentment felt towards the past in countries such as Bolivia. Neither did we hear this whine in the historical accounts about Qaqachaka. Of course there is mention in passing about the severe abuse and slavery in the mines of Potosí, and about the corruption of some of the priests and caciques of the region. But this is mentioned as part of a juridical struggle with the hope of correcting these errors. Instead, faced with the colonial situation, what we heard was a resounding sense of resilience.

In Fact

As a result, the present book is but a “local history” of the colonial ecclesiastical annex of Qaqachaka, organized into minor ayllus, enunciated in an ethnographic present of around 1989, about its origins and the emergence of its identity, as forged in its colonial past. (I still have to document the dramatic changes in the annex after this date.) This local history consists mainly of oral narratives, intercalated with allusions to written documentation found in the local archives of certain families, interspersed with songs and reminiscences. In this local history, the voices of the title-​bearers, in their role as local historians, have most authority, precisely because of their greater access to the written documents dating from the colonial period. These title-​bearers structure their accounts by following the processes of constructing notions of citizenship for Qaqachaka comunarios, in the colonial period, through a series of creative adaptations, emerging resistances, and primarily a juridical struggle. They do this discursively with reference to the negotiations around the key juridical documents of the period relating to Derecho Indiano, redacted by the Spanish administration under the authority of the Crown and the Church. By analyzing these negotiations, the title-​bearers describe the foundation of the regional reduction town of Condocondo with its annexes and vice-​parishes, in around 1571. Then they proceed to describe the establishing of Qaqachaka marka as a pueblo de indios or Congregación. And there, they stress how the establishing of this marka was legitimated by the service of their ancestors in the mining mit’a, working as mitayos in the Red Mountain of Potosí, permitting their purchase of the lands of the place through the composición de tierras supervised by the Visiting Inspector José de la Vega Alvarado, in 1646. Although one could argue about the underlying problem of “lands and territories” in these colonial transactions, this aspect is not privileged in these canonical versions of local history. Another facet of these negotiations is the constant allusion by the title-​bearers and other comunarios to the immediate precolonial past, above all the Time of the Inkas, as the point of reference to which they orient the new challenges of the colonial present. This happens in the case of the mining mit’a, which they relate directly to the previous Inka mit’a, persuading me to adopt the same form of writing for both periods instead of distinguishing between them as did Polo de Ondegardo and his followers. This also happens in the emerging practices in the colonial church, constructed in Qaqachaka marka as part of the religious mit’a, and in the negotiations concerning the faith learned from the books of catechism introduced into the place after the late sixteenth century Lima Councils. Again, the Qaqachakas were adept at re-​interpreting these new practices

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in terms of their former rites to the mountains and the land. They acknowledge a general awareness here of the obligations of the agricultural mit’a, but give less weight to it, just a mention of the division of the annex lands into pastures and commons (ejidos). Closer attention is given to the vigilance over climatic and productive conditions by the new god-​saints of the place, now with Catholic identities, having been transformed from the precolonial wak’as, chullpas, mummies, and gods of the past. We know that these same allusions still figured in the early eighteenth century, in the Wars of Independence, notably in the representations of Simón Bolívar as the Sun God, at the dawn of the Bolivian Republic in 1825 (Platt 1993), although a detailed analysis of that later period demands another book. I  think this is why regional ethnographies so often leap from Inkas to moderns, appealing to unfashionable models of “cultural continuities,” not so much because of the historical ignorance of the ethnographers, as of the pervasive underlying strategies for preserving ayllu territorial integrity voiced by the comunarios themselves. Taking some definitions from the work of Abercrombie, Candau and others, the book deals with the “social memories” of the Qaqachaka comunarios, forged through the communal and institutional practices of the past. A closer definition has been the “genealogical memory” of the place, given the high-​profile attention directed towards the ancestral personages that figure in the narratives. The book does not really deal with the “collective memory” of the place, because it does not present the local history in opposition to some well-​defined Other. In fact, I have shied away from applying binary oppositions of this kind, in favour of describing more dialogic and inclusive processes. Although there are differences of focus and emphasis in the narratives, these tend to deal with differences between the knowledge of the title-​bearers as compared to the non-​title bearers, between men and women, regarding differential access to the colonial documents, and differences between families in the ways they prioritize their own experiences and the relative importance of their own saints. This narrative unfolding of the historical conditions that facilitated the construction of the colonial norms of citizenship for the Qaqachaka comunarios offers us clues to the incipient characteristics of a regional way of thinking, even a national way, from the perspective of the voices of the place. This is because not only the construction of the marka of Qaqachaka had been facilitated by the annex ancestors in their service as mitayos in the mines of Potosí. The title-​bearers propose that the very nation of Bolivia had been forged by the efforts of these mitayos, and the troupes of llamas at their service. This observation is at odds with the official histories of Bolivia, with their exclusive attention on the great cultural heroes and liberators from Spanish rule of Simón Bolívar and Antonio José de Sucre. Instead, we are faced with a view of the Colony as an intensely creative period of forming new institutions, new authorities, new languages, and new inscriptional forms, where local oral history stresses that the greater part of the initiative in these constructional processes was in the hands of the comunarios, and their means of fulfilment of their juridical and ritual obligations. Similarly, local history insists on the key role of the comunarios in forging the practices of an incipient Andean Catholicism. In terms of the characteristics of the “historiography” developed here, as in the work of Fernando Santos-​Granero, I distinguish between personal reminiscences, family

326 Some Conclusions

narratives, and mythical narratives, with their distinct sources of data, and, in these, the modes of structuring of oral tradition, oral history, and written history in the region. In a wider context, I hold that it is useless to focus debates around these historical discursive practices in terms of “orality” or “writing” as inscriptional forms. My suggestion has been that it is more advantageous to study the methods, sources, data, and texts available, with attention to their respective forms of support (whether oral, written, or something else). The insistent “externalization” of the social practices of the past, through the production of texts of one kind or another (document, textile, quipu) or even through the oral memories of texts, all of which serve as these externalizing “autoglottic spaces” of reflection, permits us to understand better the ongoing articulations between texts, rites, costumes and other material elements of the regional practices. This said, I am conscious that there is much more work to do on the linguistic and discursive practices of places such as Qaqachaka, and in the original Aymara, with its constant differentiation in personal testimonies between “that seen” and “that not seen” (in the so-​called “source of data”), and so of the nature of time and experience, as expressed through distinct verbal tenses. With these additional insights, we might begin to identify and analyze the particularly Andean practices of historiography, in terms like those used by Michel de Trouillot for the regional history of the Island of Haiti. In terms of the methods used in this research, I combine here ethnographic and linguistic methods, with some additional insights from Ginsburg’s indiciary paradigm in historiography, as an ongoing process of detection of the evident as well as underlying data, in order to predetermine its dynamics. According to this paradigm, the application of ethnographic methods permits me to pursue this process of detection as a search for the real meanings of things, so that I can then amplify this range of meanings with ever more details, until I arrive at an understanding of the mentality of a society like that of Qaqachaka.

Towards a Philosophy of History in the Andes

In terms of the philosophy underlying this local history, I would say that it deals in essence with an attention to life, privileging the relations between the elements of the world that ensure the continuity of life in the Qaqachaka annex, and of its possibilities of reproduction (sensu Hocart). I believe the evidence for this is the close attention throughout the narratives I examined of the key actions of “caring mutually” (uywasiña) for these elements, specifically of “wrapping” (k’iruña), “feeding” (liwaña), and “dressing” (isiyaña) the distinct beings of the place, mainly the local saints, to “make them into persons” (jaqichaña). For me, a similar attention in the narratives to the constant negotiation with the Spanish powers, by Qaqachaka’s ancestors, reiterates this action of “rearing mutually,” illustrated in the local rituals to the mountains in which this act of mutual caring for is negotiated with the very mountains in recompense for the offerings granted to them. I think of María Rostworowski’s book of 1976 on this kind of negotiation in the ongoing interactions between ayllus and Andean states, or the medieval Peninsular idea of “mutual obligations” (explored by Jurado 2014).

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In my analysis of the two main cycles of narratives by Don Franco Quispe Maraza, my approach to the organization of these narratives (although Don Franco seemed to be unconscious of this) was the differentiation between the factors implicated in the mining mit’a, in the first cycle, and in the religious mit’a, in the second. In both cycles, I perceive the ontological importance of the colonial documents concerning Derecho Indiano as part of something creative and generative, but as an aspect of a scriptural modality already known in the region, through the former practices of the knotted quipus kept in leather chests, and before then of the trophy heads, whether of the enemies or ancestors of the place, which served as similar sources of inspiration to generate new cycles of production and new harvests of generic babies. In the first cycle, to my mind, the narrative practices around these colonial juridical sources have the power to give rise to the historical personages who leave their traces in these documents (Takimallku Astiti, Juana Doña Ana, Ayra Chinche), but amply adorned in the collective imagination of the locality. In the second cycle, I propose that the narrative practices, this time around the colonial ecclesiastical written sources, give rise to the personages of a regional hagiography, and to the oral elaboration of the lives and deeds of the god-​saints, notably of Tata Quri and his extended family. In both cases, we are faced with mutual obligations directed towards the flow of life of the place, and its continuity in the following generations. We are not dealing with epic tales of cultural heroes, as in Western historical narrative, but with the interventions of certain beings in this flow of life to transform things dynamically, while transforming themselves and those persons in their surroundings. Tata Quri, for all his capriciousness, makes an effort to persuade his parishioners to adapt themselves to his pleasures and to educate their attention (sensu Ingold and De Munter), in order to create a shared rituality. Similarly, this flow of life, and hence of time, is experienced in the philosophical attention in the narratives concerning the origins of the place, its people, their buildings, and their god-​saints (not from nothing but through the ongoing transformations of instances from the past), and in the debates among the comunarios about their material forms and respective capacities of movement and action. Other philosophical aspects of this history emerge in the attention to the transformations of “spirit or soul” (animu) and “luck” (surti) between life and death, mainly in the rituality of what I have called the ch’iwu complex, consolidated through sacrifice, bodily burial, and revivification, through which local populations had been able to absorb the introduced colonial narratives of sacrifice, bodily death, and the resurrection of Christ, in the new Catholic religion. Yet other philosophical aspects are evident in the attention directed towards the spheres of organic creation, to interior wrappings replacing the exterior ones, in the morphological changes of botanical growth, which are then applied to the ideas surrounding the changes of clothing of Tata Quri, and to the ritual ways of concentrating flows of energy and power that facilitate these forms of growth, equally to promote the continuity of life in the place. With reference to the construction of historical discourse (the point of departure in the historical analysis of Hayden White), although the oral narratives describe the

328 Some Conclusions

individual lives of the great historical personages of the place (Taqimallku Astiti, Ayra Chinche, Juana Doña Ana …), the attention is always towards summing their separate agencies into a greater effort in common, for example of serving together as mitayos or as boundary makers (linderos), or of accumulating all the different god-​saints into one single location. On the other hand, these narratives are structured by broader underlying metanarratives (or mythemes), with some difference of interpretation according to gender. Among these metanarratives is the greater emphasis given in the tales to the former Inka presence in the region, especially by women storytellers in close contact with the families of the title-​bearers, such as Doña Bernaldita Colque Quispe and Doña María Ayca Llanque. Their proposal is that Qaqachaka’s female founders, Juana Doña Ana and her sister Inka Mariya, were themselves Inkas, who married the first ancestors of the place, even though these were “invading” men from neighbouring Condo: Lujano Choquecallati and the ancestor Llanquepacha, respectively, giving a matrilocal tint to the local history. Oral history confirms the importance of Inka women in the zone, as it supports the primordial “mytheme” of Qaqachaka, that in its founding, it replicated the Inka pattern of ceques in Cusco. The new marka (with its central plaza and colonial church) thus serves as the “red place of birth” in the confluence of the topogram of “pathways” (siqi or thakhi) of the various god-​saints, as re-​interpreted ancestral mummies, going towards the ecclesial chullpa (now the “house of the bearded Sun”), in the first light of the new sunrise. Hence the allusions to sexual procreation in the rites of possession of the plaza and the church, and then of the territorial boundaries of the annex of a whole, in the episodes about Juana Doña Ana. And hence the primordial importance of these pathways of the saint-​gods (and of the mitayos) in the landscape, as topograms commemorated until now in the “pathways of memory” of local drinking language. The discursive practices of the narrative ordering of the past, and these rites to commemorate it, trace the order of arrival of the saints at the marka, and the ordering of the system of turns of the authorities who care for those saints, following the direction of the Sun, in the case of masculine gods, and of the Moon, in the case of female gods. There are the more mythical sequences, structured by the literary genre of layra parla (the talk of before) about the Chullpas and the Inkas. And there are the more historical sequences, structured by the genre called awil achach papila, “the grandmothers’ and grandfathers’ papers,” which serve as “chronotopes,” in the terms of Bakhtin. Most striking is the discursive structuration of the two major cycles of tales by Don Franco Quispe Maraza. The first is directed towards the political and territorial history of Qaqachaka marka as an ecclesiastical annex of the reduction town of Condo and a pueblo de indios in its own right, through the fulfilment of the mitayo service by which the ancestors achieved state recognition of the purchase of territory in the colonial composición de tierras. And the second is directed at the construction of the church and the arrival of the saints, as replies to the demands of the religious mit’a. This second cycle describes the settlement of Qaqachaka with new inhabitants, and the formation of the system of authorities, with their administrative, economic, political, and religious practices, which characterized the place until the recent past.

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In terms of the relational ontologies that characterize the place, I perceive a constant attention in the narratives of local history to notions of the “person,” not as individuals, but as an integral part of the social relations of the place, which have permitted its emergence as a collectivity, comuna, and marka. This happens in all the allusions to rites to “convert into people” the non-​human elements, whether saints, textiles, or animals. In terms of the model personages with exemplary lives, to which the rest of the comunarios must refer, these allusions reiterate once and again the names of the salient ancestors (Taqimallku Astiti, Juana Doña Ana), and the god-​saints with their distinctive attributes. However, these individuals are always contextualized within the wider historical construction of the marka and its citizens. It is the insistent dynamics in forging these interrelations that convinces me to reject the application of terms such as “cosmovision” to these processes of configuring and reconfiguring the place, in favour of, perhaps, “cosmopraxis” (sensu De Munter), although more thought is needed about this. To understand the opposite, that is to say the silences in the narratives, not only because we forgot to ask about this or that, but in the deliberately constructed absences in local history about certain ancestors or certain historical events, I appeal again to the observation made by Lema and Pazzarelli (2015) that history must be “fertile.” I just add my own observation that historical processes are indeed fertile because of the underlying ontologies around their scriptural practices and their powers of regeneration. That is why the Qaqachakas remember the personages and elements that contributed to constructing their local world and its continuity through time. And they forget the rest.

GLOSSARY

Achachi Male ancestor. Akapacha This world. Alaxpacha The world above. Heaven. Alaxpach Yusa God of the heavens. Refers to the Father Sun or Mother Moon. Alaya Term for an upper moiety. The sky or heavens. Alay Yusa God of the heavens. Refers to the Father Sun or Mother Moon. Aljirisa Alférez. Name for a feast sponsor. Amtaña thakhi Pathway of memory. And ordered series of toasts, according to custom. Animu From Sp. ánimo. A particular spirit. Aniju From Sp. anexo. Annex, referring to the ecclesiastical annexes of the colonial reduction towns. Añiju From Sp. añejo. Something old or ancient. A word play between añiju and aniju which refers to the Qaqachaka annex. Aransaya Term for an upper moiety. Equivalent to araya, hanansaya, and patxasaya. Araya Term for an upper moiety. Equivalent to aransaya, hanansaya, and patxasaya. Awatiri Lit. guardian. The lesser guardian mountains. Ritual name for mayordomos. Awicha Grandmother. Awil achach papila Lit. the grandmothers’ and grandfather’s papers. Colonial and republican archival written documents, usually land titles, guarded in the ayllu archives. Awksa Our Father. Refers to Father Sun. Ayawaya Kind of wooden flute, and the music played with this, associated with the pueblo of Condo. Ayllu An Andean community with descendants in common, a territory in common, and gods in common. Chika mara Half year. Division of the annual period of office for the religious and political authorities of an ayllu. Chinu Knot. A turn of a thread on a loom according to the counting pick to be developed in the weaving. The system of counting and narrating based on knotted cords. Aymara term equivalent to khipu in Quechua or quipu in Spanish. Chullpa Pre-​Christian and pre-​Inka inhabitants of the region. A mummy. The sepulchre where the ancestral mummies are buried. Chullpa injlisa Lit. Chullpa church. Place where mummified Chullpa people are buried. Chullpa jaqi Chullpa people. Chullpa Timpu Time of the Chullpas. Ch’alla Libation, toast.

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glossary

Ch’ama Force, energy. Ch’amak Timpu Time of Darkness, when there was still no sun. Ch’iwu Shadow. Ritual name for the meat of a sacrifice, coca leaves, and dark clouds laden with rain. The cycle of transformations between all of these elements. Ch’uta Native of the Altiplano. Miner. Kaja From Sp. caja. The wooden box or “retablo” housing a saint. Kinsa mujuna Lit. three mojones. Three boundary markers. A mound of stones or cairn where a single limit marks three distinct ayllus. Kirki Song sung in the dry season. Khipu Knot. The system of counting and narrating based on knotted cords. Quechua term equivalent to chinu in Aymara and quipu in Spanish. K’iruña To wrap, usually in layers of weavings. Illa Miniature image of an animal or other element, commonly made of stone, used in rituals directed at this element, where a change in scale is at play. Inaku Ignacio. Inti Tala Father Sun. Inka Timpu Time of the Inka. Insinsyu From Sp. incienso. Incense. Iskina From Sp. esquina. Corner shrine as a ritual site in the house patio, paired with the local guardian mountain or uywiri. Isklawismu From Sp. esclavismo. Slavery. Ispañul Timpu Time of the Spanish. Ispiritu From Sp. espíritu. Refers to the feast of Pentecost called Espíritu in Spanish, and to the ayllu saint Tata Ispiritu. Iwana Arana Adam and Eve. Jach’a Tayka Lit. the Great Mother. It refers to the figure of the Mother Llama in the Milky Way. Jaqi Person. Jaqichasiña Lit. “make yourself a person.” To get married. Marriage. Jaqichaña To make into a person, through feeding or dressing someone or something. Jawiku Javier, one of the child-​saints whose origins derive from the church in Condo. Jilanqu An ayllu leader. Equivalent to jilaqata. Jilaqata An ayllu leader. Equivalent to jilanqu. Jintil parla Talk of the Gentiles or pre-​Christian inhabitants of the region. Jintil Timpu Time of the Gentiles. Jiliri Lit. elder. Elder sibling. Local name for lawyers. Julajula Troupe of musicians who play religious music, usually derived from European Gregorian chant. Kantilayra Candelaria. Mama Candelaria, Qaqachaka’s goddess-​saint. Katu The additional division of a minor ayllu into upper and lower parts. Kisa walakisa Lit. three turnings over. Refers to the custom of turning over three times on the ground in order to take possession of some land or a whole territory. Kuchu The practice of human sacrifice in a building construction, made to ensure the building “stands up firmly.”

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glossary

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Kumuna From Sp. comuna. Kuraka From curaca. Term for a governor or cacique. Kuratu From Sp. curato. Parish. Ecclesiastical territorial division under the spiritual jurisdiction of a priest or pastor. Khuyiri A breath spirit. Particular stones found in the hills with this quality. K’usa Aymara term for beer made from barley or maize, equivalent to chicha in Quechua-​speaking areas. Lamara From Sp. la mar (the sea), now usually written el mar. In Andean cosmology, sea water is held to flow inside the mountains. Lanti Replacement or stand-​in (lantpa: his or her replacement). Layra Before. Eye. Spring of water. Layrapacha A previous epoch. Layra parla Talk of before. The mythical tales of the place. Likina The temperate valley lands to the east of Qaqachaka. Linti From Sp. linde. The limits, boundary markers, or mojones of the ayllu. Liwaña Offering place, especially in the mountain “chests” located on the guardian mountains of a place. Verb for to offer, reach, or feed. Liyi From Sp. ley. Ayllu traditions, especially the system of justice. Machaqa The entering feast sponsors in charge of passing a feast, usually to celebrate one of the ayllu saints. Mallku The senior leader of an ayllu. Name of respect for an empowered one or title bearer. A male condor, leader of a flock of these birds. Mamala Mother. Señora. Female saint. Mama Ch’uri Goddess-​saint of Qaqachaka, considered to be the younger sister of Mama Kapitana. Both sisters share the feast of the Immaculate Conception in December. Mama Kapitana Goddess-​saint of Qaqachaka, considered to be the elder sister of Mama Ch’uri. Both sisters share the feast of the Immaculate Conception in December. Manqhapacha Term for a lower moiety. Marka Principal pueblo of a specific territory. Probably a European term introduced into the Andes with the Conquest. Milajru From Sp. milagro. Miracle. Milajru timpu The Time of Miracles in the months of September and Octuber each year when pilgrimages are made to the miraculous sites and saints in the region. Mita Literally a periodic service. Term for the system of forced but negotiated labour, in the Colony. Mit’a Literally a cycle of time when a specific task is carried out. The system of rotating turns for the religious and administrative posts of an ayllu. This term is applied to the system of forced but negotiated labour under the Inkas and then in the Colony, whether in the mining mit’a, the religious mit’a, or the agricultural mit’a. Mit’ani Young woman who guides a troupe of musicians, waving a white flag, in memory of those who guided the mitayos to the mines of Potosí in the colonial past. Mit’ayu Mitayo. Person who serves in the mit’a. Mojón Sp. Boundary marker.

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glossary

Mujuna From Sp. mojón. Boundary marker. Pacha Epoch. Pachakuti A return, in the sense of a return to origins. Pampa Yusa Lit. Pampa God. Earth God. The Virgin Earth. Panaka An Inka grouping of the descendants of a brother and sister pair. Paqu lugara Lit. Tan-​coloured place. Ritual name for the “red place of birth.” Paqu punchu Lit. Tan-​coloured poncho. Ritual name for the poncho of this colour, traditionally made from vicuña fibre, used by the most senior ayllu authorities. Name for the feline guardian or Lord of the animals. Patxasaya Term for an upper moiety. Pilpintu Butterfly. Ritual name for bank notes. Figures of butterflies engraved on the metal wings of Tata Quri’s danzantes. Pinkillu From Sp. pinquillo. Large ducted flute made of wood and played in the rainy season. Pukara Fortress. Ritual site usually on a mountainside, where offerings are made, and where astronomical observations are carried out. Pusta From Sp. bosta. Term of endearment for the tambo waystation. Pututu Musical instrument made from a cow horn or calabash, used in the valleys, and in highland rituals that record the valleys. Phaxsi Mala Mother Moon. P’iqinaka Outstanding ancestors for the quality of their intelligence. Qalaphiri Spicy thick broth, made from pieces of meat spiced with the aromatic herb chachacoma (Lat. Escallonia bridgessi Rusby), served to the authorities of the place in ceremonial settings. Qapaqa Rich, wealthy. Qullu Mountain. Qullu parti Lit. part of the mountains. Refers to the gods of the mountains, above all the guardian mountains or uywiri. Quntuquntu Undulated place. The territory of Condocondo. Qhuya Mine. The Inka empress. Q’ara White person. Creole. Derogatory term. Q’ipi Bundle, usually of elements wrapped in a cloth, such as a saint wrapped in layers of weavings. Q’uwa Bittermint, an aromatic herd used in offerings to the mountains and the earth. Riwusyuna From Sp. devoción. A household saint. Rutuchi The rite of first hair-​cutting of a small child. Sallqa Wild, timid. A wild and timid animal. A genre of tales of the wild beasts. Salwaku Salvador, one of Qaqachaka’s child-​saints who came from the church in Condo. Samaña Resting place of the saints on their journeys from their places of origin to Qaqachaka’s central church. Samiri Breath spirit. Special stone with this quality found in the hills, Sanjrata From Sp. sagrada. A ritual name for the central church in Qaqachaka’s main pueblo. Sanjri From Sp. sangre. Ritual name for the church in the main pueblo or marka of Qaqachaka.

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glossary

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Santa  Wila Kurusa Aymarized name of the colonial vice-​parish of Qaqachaka and its central church, Santa Vera Cruz. Saxra Diabolic. A whirlwind. Saya A moiety division of a major ayllu, which may also have its own sub-​ divisions into upper and lower sections. Siqi Ceque. Ritualized pathway in the landscape interspersed periodically with wak’a shrines. Sirilu mit’ayu Lit. mitayo del cerrillo. A mitayo working in the Red Mountain of Potosí. Sirka A vein. A mineral vein. Sirku The ritual site of each mayordomo. Sullu Foetus. Suni The highlands. The Altiplano. Supaya Diabolic. Surti From Sp. suerte. Good luck, considered one of the spirits of a person or animal. Suti Name, considered one of the souls. Sutiyaña Lit. to make a name. Baptism. Tambo Waystation or resting place along the system of pre-​Columbian Andean roads, and later of the postal routes. Taqimallku Astiti Ritual name that commemorates the ancestral lineage of the Taquimallco caciques of the region, one of whom was a key boundary maker in the Composición de tierras of 1646, whose name is combined with that of the supervisor of this process, Bartolomé Astete de Ulloa, Factor of Potosí. Tata Mustramu From Sp. nuestro amo or nostramo. A name for one of the ayllu saints. Tata Nuwi Lord Noah in the biblical tale. Tata Kura From Sp. cura. Catholic priest. Tata Quri Lit. Father Gold. Qaqachaka’s patron saint. Tayksa Our Mother, ritual name for the Moon. Timunsya From Sp. demonstra (and Lat. ostentāre, “show”). The monstrance where the consecrated host is kept. Tira Wirjina The Virgin Earth, also called Pachamama. Titul q’ipi Lit. title-​bearer. Name for local historians as the empowered ones who guard and read the written archival documents of the place, from the colonial and republican periods. Tiyana Andean term for the wooden seat used by the maximum authorities of the region, called in Spanish a “dúho.” Turnu From Sp. turno. The system of annual rotation for religious and administrative posts through the minor ayllus of a major ayllu, and also for the privilege of passing the feast of an ayllu saint. Urinsaya Term for a lower moiety. Ushnu Andean construction in a pyramidal form, as a place of encounter and for making astronomical observations. Uywaña To rear or care for. Uywasiña To rear or care for mutually. Uywiri Guardian mountain.

336

glossary

Wajcha Orphan. Wak’a Ritualized place in the landscape, whether a rock, lake, river or other natural element. Term applied to a miraculous saint when wrapped in a bundle of textiles. Wayli From Sp. baile. The genre of dances in honour of the miraculous gods of the region. Wayra Wind. Name for the Andean wind furnaces used to extract silver from ore, working on the sides of the Red Mountain of Potosí. Wila Blood. Candle. The colour blood red. Wilancha A blood offering, through sacrifice. Wiñay marka Lit. an eternal pueblo. The place of the dead. Yatiri Wise-​one. A wise person, with skill in curing. Yihad A concept from Islam that describes a religious obligation of Muslims, but which tends now to refer to the act of opposing actively other religions. Yusa God or goddess. Yusa thakhi The pathway of God.

Appendix A

DOCUMENT C OF DON FRANCO QUISPE MARAZA

… propietarios legítimos, nietos de sangre, quienes jurando [decir] la verdad nada más que la verdad esposos antiguos Adán y Eva, cedula mitayo Potosi compra y venta, mojón y límite composición de todos nosotros desde Dios Esperito y Santo somos reconocidos como único propietario con títulos extendidos desde la Corona de España en favur de todos los cristianos indígenas propietarios contribuyentes tributarios que pertenesemos de todas las Provincias y cantones de los Departamentos son dose de páginas levantaremos que presta desde los años antiguos mil cuatrocientos siguientes mil quinientos, mis seiscientos y mil setecientos y es por ello que como únicos dueños reclamamos nuestros derechos con mapas y planos y el cello de Lima extendidos en nuestros títulos antiguos de la Corona de España de antiguas leyes legitimos de la raza indigina originarios y además que tenemos Dios nuestro(s) antepasados de nuestros abuelos servidores en las minas de Potosí cedula y mitayo nos ha(y) trabajado de nuestros abuelos y Don Bartolomé Astete Fernandez Taquimallco, Mariano Ataguallpa, Cristobal Choque, Santiago Choque, Gervacio de la Cruz de nuestros abuelos cervidores que hemos resibido de nuestras tierras y para nosotros con todos servicios sentidos de nuestras herencias de la Santa Tierra y sitios y patios de nuestras tierras y para nosotros y para vivir a Dios Reyes servir al Estado de la Patria servir y para dar cuenta a Dios Esperito Santo de los propietarios de Aranzaya y Urinzara Punas y Valles comunidades de dueños nietos de sangre y legitimos de la raza indigina de la Provincia de Paria de Poopo y de los cantones de San Pedro de Condocondo, y Azanaque Santa Vela Cruz Cacachaca y Santa Barbara de Culta, Angel de la Guardia de Castayo (Cahuayo) y San Salbador de Lagunillas, Santiago de Huari, San Juan de Dios de Challapata, San Agustin Angustura, San Miguel de Pampa Aullagas y Exaltacion de Quillacas, Salinas de Garci Mendoza, once cantones de Puna y Parcialidad de Vallares, Canton San Pedro de Copavillque, Aguila arco, Punanasa, San Juan de Dios de Cacachaca, San Pedro de Macha, San Pedro de Milluhuma, San Juan de Guayrohuma, San Pedro de Llanqueri, San Miguel de Sauce, San Juan de Dios de Orkaka, San Miguel de Palca, San Salvador Paypo, Santa Barbara de Caynakka, Oroquilla pertenecen de la Provincia de Sanparais, catorce Pueblos de Vallares de este Departamento Chuquisaca y Oruro el otro Pueblo San Juan de Dios de Misque, Valle de Cochabamba, y todas las Provincias y Cantones Aranzaya y Urinzaya, Punas y Valles, compra y venta y composición San Marcos de Lima …

Appendix B

DOCUMENT K OF DON FRANCO QUISPE MARAZA

Que franquea el suscrito Secretaria del Juzgado de Partido de la Provincia Poopó Paria y del Departamento de Oruro, Bolivia, con sede fija en la vecindad de Poopó dentro de juicio ordinario deslinde necesario parcial seguido por los comunarios cantón Cacachaca

centro San Pedro de Condo Gobernado(r) Asanaque, Fernando Taquimallco, paso pondro [paco poncho] y paco cholo, con/​suelo Ayaguayo y Tamboreta y Quena Bustillo Bartolomé Astete Postillón Pichiscollo tres mojón Culta y Macha Mariano Choque Cacique de Macha y su consuelo Jatun Guitarra su coca pijcha á Condo 10 leguas y media Condo 10 lenguas mojón Choquecara Iglesia otro lado de Condo de Macha palos y otras 5 leguas. Cacachaca y Mojón Pichaca y Ichuarapi tola mojón Pujyun jalla cruzada, último mojón Chiara kaima Mariano Choque Cacique Hu(ch)antín tres mojón

Pocoata Pedro Khoñaque Hu(ch)antín Cacique Fernando Taquimallco Bustillo Bartolomé Astete 5 leguas á Cacachaca y 10 leguas Condo Gobernado Azanaque mojón Caballo Khala Pocoata Pedro Khoñaque Ayllo Chacaya, Amarala Quispe Ayllo Sullcaya Estancia Cañawi Quispe en mojón pijchear coca y Huari humana pozo y Huari zepita pozo mojón Joco Kaquiri Vilatacama mojón Otawi mojón Kekasana juramento Fernando Choque Callata Juana Doña Ana Pocoata Aira Chinca

y Juan [Alvarado] Visitador Potosí Juez Visitador Paria Poopó Pedro Koñaque Cacique consuelo Charango Pocoata

Fernando Taquimallco consuelo Ayaguayo Bustillo Bartolomé Astete u cajita y Ayaguaya mojón Pucara Chaquere kasa cerro grande Quiburi Estancia Jiquiruma Ayllo Cahualli Estancia Pampuyo Ayllo Pisaca mojón Quiburi Irupampa Chorikasa tres mojón Chiaracollo Gobernado(r) Azanaque Fernando Taquimallco Hu(ch)antin Bustillo Bartolomé Astete Pedro Pocoata Konoña que Cacique Hu(ch)antin Jucuman(i) Rafael Gallego Cacique consuelo grande pinquillo y Pocoata charango

Fernando Taquimallco consuelo Ayaguayo y Tamborette tres mojón Chiarcollo coca pijchear mojón Quillamani kasa grande ce(r)ro Huaca plaza mojón Karahuilque Apacheta Loketa Suni Urjaña 4 lenguas Cac(a)chaca tres lenguas Condo mojón Chillca cahua Tola mojón Jarca cagua Challuma testigo Kenda Aimaya testigo Azurero Condo tres mojón Bugitana petra tres mojón

Rafael Gallego Ayllo Jucumani consuelo grande pinquillo Gilenco Pedro Soto Ayllo Laime consuelo charango Fernando Taquimallco Bustillo Bartolomé Astete Paco Poncho Paco cholo consuelo ayaguayo y tamboreta y pijchear coca y toma sus alcoholes los tres cacachacas 5 leguas y media Condo 14 leguas Gobernado Azanaque Visitador Potosí Juez Poopó Paria visitador mojón Tomatomene mojón Quijata Chinchoma,

340 Appendix B

lleva Pedro Soto visto mojón Kaima pampa juramentado Fernando Taquimallco

llevado Poopó Visitador Estancia Huancaraní Ayllo Sullcayana Estancia Patapata Ayllo Laime mojón Sacapatilla mojón Anascomuna Jueza

Llevar visita mojón Lahua apacheta Fernando Taquimallco Pedro Soto llevar Juez visitador Soravere pozo mojón Tarucahumana

llevar visitador Pedro Soto Cacique mojón Suaraviri pozo llevar visitador Pedro Soto Juez Visitador mojón Taipichiurana, mojón Sausauni llevar Pedro Soto visitador Juez mojón Taca changara llevar Juez visitador Fernando Taquimallco mojón Churichaca

llevar Fernando Taquimallco visitador mojón Challacasa llevar visitador Juez Pedro Soto mojón Guanacotaviri llevar Juez visitador Pedro Soto mojón Huichumakasa Yargüijaque Fernando Taquimallco Juez Visitador Bartolomé Astete Estancia Calluuchu Tunto Quispe su hermano Amarala Quispe Ayllo Sullcaya, Pedro Soto pijchear coca mojón Jancovinto Kello apacheta llevar visitador Fernando Taquimallco mojón chico Llallagua y grande Llallagua llevar visitador Pedro Soto, mojón Laurani charca Laurani Paria laurani.

Llevar Pedro Soto Juez visitador, mojón tres Chojlla kasa Pedro Soto Laime Fernando Taquimallco, Bustillo[n]‌ Bartolomé Astete Challapata Andrés Chungara Cacique consuelo cigura laime charango. Fernando Taquimallco Condo consuelo Ayabaya tamborete y Pacoponcho pacocholo Laime Sacollani Cacchaca Condo 10 leguas lleva Juez visitador Poopó Potosí y tambores se atajan con fuego Fernando San Pedro Azanaque de Condo permarato Escribano mitayo ce(r)ro (de)partamento Potosí ordena Potosí General Juan Prada.

De ese mojón no pasarán abuelos hasta hijos y eso será castigado 5 años cárcel 5 quintal castigo y multa 500 Bs. pero de ese mojón pasado ser castigado y jucha taza postillón Chayanta Gilanco Pedro Soto Potosí, Fernando Taquimallco juchantin tazantin y origen atreya terreno Cacachaca y que Amarala Quispe y abrazado y Laime Condo Challapata se terminó s(a)lud mitayo Potosí Conservador tres padre testimonio Juez José Alvarado y Sucre Capital Oropeza orden Santa Rosa Lima y cuest(a) dos arrobas de plata blanca capital Mizque y Chayanta Potosí y capital Puna capital Cochabamba capital Poopó, Abril 5 año 1754 … Maman Potosí, Maman Poopó Paria. Este titulo nació cuando nació el Sol y cuando el condor voló y huari correo Gueguana Arana tiempo.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ABBREVIATIONS ABAS-​SUC Archivo Arzobispal de Sucre AGI Archivo General de Indias AGN Archivo General de la Nación de Argentina. AHP Archivo Histórico de Potosí ANB Archivo Nacional de Bolivia AHN Archivo Nacional de Historia, de Madrid AOO Archivo Obispal de Oruro APC Archivo Parroquial de San Pedro de Condocondo CNM Casa Nacional de Moneda, Potosí CBDH Centro Bibliográfico Documental Histórico de la Universidad San Francisco Xavier (Sucre), Fondo Prefectura, Correspondencia CR Caja Real, Archivo Histórico de Potosí PD Prefectura Departamental (Correspondencia)

ARCHIVE OF THE ARCDIOCESE OF SUCRE (ABAS-​SUC) ABAS-​SUC 12. (Brotherhoods, Cofradías) Legajo No 1-​A, Caja No 1. (Documento de Condo de 1626, en relación a la Cofradía de Santa Bárbara.) Legajo No 1-​B, Caja No 1. (Libro de la Cofradía del Santísimo Sacramento 1626–​1710.) Legajo No 2, Caja No 1.

ABAS-​SUC 26. (Church furnishings, Fábrica)

Legajo No 5, Condo, Caja No 3.  Copia legalizado del Inventario de los útiles y enseres de la Iglesia de Condo y sus dos anexos: las Iglesias vice-​parroquias de Huari y Cacachaca, Formado en el año 1877 y Revisado últimamente en 1910 (Condo 15-​XII-​1890).

GENERAL ARCHIVE OF THE ARGENTINE NATION (AGNA)

AGNA 9.17.2.5. Retasa de Francisco de Toledo (1575). Copia anónima de 1785. fol. 120v.

GENERAL ARCHIVE OF THE INDIES, SEVILLE, SPAIN (AGI)

Colque Guarache, Juan. 1575. Primera información hecha por don Juan Colque Guarache, cerca de sus predecesores y sucesión en el cacicazgo mayor de los Quillacas, Asanaques, Sivaroyos, Uruquillas y Haracapis, y de sus servicios a favor de su magestad en la conquista, allanamiento y pacificación desde reino del Pirú. Año 1575. AGI, Sevilla. Ed. por W. Espinoza Soriano, Revista del Museo Nacional, vol. 45: 237–​51, Lima. —​—​. 1567–​1577. Segunda información hecha por don Juan Coíque Guarache, cacique principal de los Quillacas, Asanaques, Haracapís, Puna, Yucosa y Guare, sobre su linaje y seruicios a

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NATIONAL HISTORIC ARCHIVE, MADRID

“Interrogatorio a los indios del Perú sobre sus costumbres”, del 2 al 19 de junio de 1571. Originally in:  Diversas colecciones, 25, No 10. Now in:  1872. Colección de documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y colonización de las posesiones españolas en América y Oceanía sacados de los archivos del Reino y muy especialmente de lo de Indias competentemente autorizada, vol. 27. Madrid:  Imprenta del hospicio. Digitalizado: AECID. Colección de documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y colonización de las posesiones españolas en América y Oceanía… [1ª Serie] [3GR-​7649] vol. 17. Accessed March 22, 2020. http://​bibliotecadigital.aecid.es/​bibliodig/​ es/​consulta/​registro.cmd?id=1118.

HISTORIC ARCHIVE OF POTOSÍ (AHP)

CR 1, fol. 11r, 1553–​1557; CR 18: fol. 217v.; CR 72, 1600; CR 105, 1607; CR 174, 1618; CR 201, 1624–​1629; and CR 213, 1625–​1626.

ARCHIVE AND NATIONAL LIBRARY OF BOLIVIA, SUCRE (ABNB) LAND AND INDIANS

ANB. E. 1648 No 24. Chullpas. Copia del testimonio de los títulos de propiedad de los Chullpas, Laimes, situados entre Chayanta, Sorasora i Oruro. Septiembre 23 de 1648. ANB EC 1714 No 4. Taki Mallco sobre derecho de tierras en Paria. T.I. ANE 1732, No 48. Varios indios de Condocondo se querellan sobre varios capítulos, contra su cura. Fs.4. ANB E 1736 No 52. Los indios de Condo-​condo sobre el aumento de tributo por el Corregidor (y) el cacique de Condocondo. Fs.6. ANB E 1737 No 56. Reclamo de los indios de Condocondo por el aumento que les quiere hacer de los tributos. Fs.6. ANB EC 1740 No 6115810. Recurso del indio tributario Andres Choquechambi, del pueblo de Condocondo para que se le declare reservado por su edad: pobreza. ANB EC 1747 No 12. Reclamo de Don Gregorio Feliz Llanquipacha, para la posición de Casique …, fol. 6r. T.I. AN. E.  1748 No 109. Solicitud del cacique Gregorio Llanquepacha para usar armas. Fs.2. ANB E 1755 No 85. Reclamación por Pascual Gonzáles, indios originarios del pueblo de Condocondo en la provincia de Paria, ante el Fiscal, alegando la necesidad que ha de cambiarlo al gobernador o de intimidarlo bajo pena de severo castigo a que no les perjudica con su tiranía. Fs.4. ANB E 1755 No 117. Queja entre indios de Condocondo contra daños.

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MINES

ANB Minas t. 63, 1651 No 459 fol. 7v.

ANB. SUBLEVACIÓN DE INDIOS Vol. 2. Expediente de Condo Condo. BO ABNB, ALP, SGI-​3, p. 7, 7v y 8, previously T.I. AN. E. 1781 No 83 p. 8v. de Fs.412.

DIOCESAN ARCHIVE OF ORURO (AOO) Libro I de Bautismos, San Pedro de Condo, 1571. Libro I de Bautismos, San Juan del Pedroso de Challapata, 1575. Bautismo No 12 “Lybbro de Baptismos de los annejos pertenecientes a esta doctrina del San Pedro de Condo Condo.” Libro No 13 de Bautismos, Condo (anexos—​1776–​1802), after fol. 211.

PARISH ARCHIVE OF SAN PEDRO DE CONDOCONDO 1571–​1606 Libro No 1 de Bautismos. Archivo parroquial de San Pedro de Condocondo, 1571–​1606. 1671–​1698 Libro No 3 de Matrimonios de Condo. 1743–​1755 Libro de Vicaria de informaciones de los casamientos de San Pedro de Condocondo, de 26 de septiembre, 1743 a 1755. 1805–​1836 Libro No 5. Defunciones de Kakachaka, Condo. Libro Parroquia de Entierros de Cacachaka, anexo de la Doctrina de Señor San Pedro de Condocondo, 26 de abril, 1836.

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PERSONAL ARCHIVES OF DON FRANCO QUISPE MARAZA, IN QAQACHAKA Documento A: 3 de agosto de 1921, sobre la venta ilegal de tierras en Copavilque, pertenecientes a la comunidad de Condocondo. Copia sellado por el Ministerio de Gobierno, Correo y Telegrafos. Documento B:  del 27 de marzo de 1971, firmado por el Corregidor del Cantón Cacachaca (firma no legible), copiado de documentos anteriores y juicios legales de los años 1646, 1652, 1754, 1919, 1920 y 1965 (firmado por el Alcalde Mayor Martín Condori), que alude a la composición de tierras de 1646. Documento C:  Copias del Inventario (de la iglesia) del Vice Cantón de Cacachaca. “Copia Aranzel Conzagrado Perteneciente al contribuyente Francisco Quispe, Cacachaca”, del 20 de Septiembre de 1952, en pos de las cosas llevados por un Dr.  Barriga. Sigue un Testimonio sobre la composición de tierras de 1646, una declaración de autenticidad por Feliciano Maraza y Andrés Choque del 23 de febrero de 1933, y firmas al final del documento del 12 de febrero de 1955, por M. Choquechambi y Bralijo Espejo. Documento D: Del 20 de junio de 1927, solicitando una copia del libro del empadronimiento de todos los feligreses de la Parroquia de Condo de 1779. Adjuntado es el listado del Libro de Padrón de los feligreses y estancias que forman la Vice-​Parroquia de Cacachaca desde el año 1748, firmado por Víctor Sánchez el párroco, el 30 de junio de 1927. Documento G:  Con sellos de 1792 y 1793. Sobre tierras de las haciendas de Alcachata Colpacasa y otros nombres en la Doctrina de Poroma, Partido de Yamparaes, según los intereses de Condo-​Condo. Documento K: Del 22 de agosto de 1967, en base a un documento del 5 de abril de 1754, que refiere a los ritos de circunambulación de la composición de tierras de 1646.

GENERAL LEGAL DOCUMENTS OF THE COLONY

Documento (con nombres escritos de Luis Ayca y Andrés Ayca), del 20 de enero de 1965, firmado por Toribio de la Cruz, Juez Parroquial No 4 de Challapata, que refiere a los lindes en la composición de tierras de 12 de octubre de 1646. Ordenanzas de descubrimiento, nueva población y pacificación de las Indias, dadas por Felipe II, el 13 de junio de 1573, en el bosque de Segovia.

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THEMATIC INDEX

n = note gr = graphic

Abbott, M. B., and A. P. Wolfe, 66 Abercrombie, Thomas A., xiv, 1, 4, 5, 7, 18, 20, 21, 26, 49 and n2, 63n4, 66, 81n10 and 11, 134n38, 135, 143, 148, 150, 156, 165, 171n14, 174–75, 181, 267, 300n4, 323, 325 Acevedo, Edberto Óscar, 170n9 Acosta, José de, 14 Adam and Eve, 6, 29–35, 39–40, 43, 82, 89, 113 Alcaldes de la Santa Hermandad: as rural judges, 95 Alférez: post of, 42, 177, 301; origins of, 50, 170 Alminar, 25, 213 construction of, 211 definition, 25 and the towers of the church in Qaqachaka, 208–209, 215, 310 Alonso Sagaseta, Alicia, 193, 226, 264n6, 298, 300, 303, 306 Álvarez, Salvador, 50 Amaru, Tupaq II, 65, 132, 168 ancestors, 11 and boundary makers, 75–77 and ceques, 20 crania of, in the church, 206, 208, 312 as cultural heroes, 23 first ancestors of the place, 6, 12, 45–58, 71–73, 103–105, 143, 161, 166, 188, 203–204, 249, 328–29 as founders, 21, 33, 40, 112 as Incas, 125, 132, 179 and mitayos, 26, 53, 56, 59–70, 77, 117, 324–25, 328 as model personages, 6 as mummies, 179, 307 and saints, 217–45 Anco Tutumpi Ayra Canchi, Ürsula descendant of Inca Moroco, 124, 126gr5

Andean pact, 52, 64 Anderson, Benedict, 1 Ángelo, D., 4 animu (soul, spirit), 2, 41, 197, 278, 315–16, 327 annexes, 4, 23, 31, 39, 43, 45, 48–49, 51–52, 59, 78, 80–81, 95, 98–99gr3, 151–52, 157, 165, 173 annex boundaries 141, 257, 283 ecclesiastical annexes, 162–63, 169, 260, 316 valley annexes, 100–101, 134–35 Antachoque, Severo, 77, 140 commentaries on Qaqachaka’s ecclesial constructions, 208–15 Apoderado (empowered one), 10, 39, 47 and title-bearers, 10, 47 Ardila G., Federico, 15 Arias family and Mama Kapitana, 89, 93, 223, 230, 232, 268, 286 Arias Tarque, Asunta, 34, 293, 298, 301, 308, 311–12, 316, 318 amtaña (to commemorate), 16–17 amtaña thakhi (pathway of memory), 20, 298 Arab law, 50, 95, 133, 170, 175–76, 204, 208 Archivo de Indias, de Sevilla, 74 Archives of memory, 81 and n10 Arnold, D. Y., 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 11, 14, 17, 20, 22, 25, 33, 52, 70, 110, 132, 143, 190, 210, 221, 257, 259, 265, 278, 299, 304, 308, 313 and E. Espejo, 6, 82, 147, 193 and C. A. Hastorf, 3, 6, 7, 45, 51, 82, 170, 175, 204, 208, 265, 310, 316 D. Jiménez A., and Juan de Dios Yapita, 5, 34, 63n4

364

Index

and Juan de Dios Yapita, 3, 6, 7, 11, 13, 34, 46–47, 70, 226–27, 265, 276, 281, 286, 290, 293, 298, 310–11 and n8, 313, 319–20 with Juan de Dios Yapita, and E. Espejo, 6, 7 with Juan de Dios Yapita et al., 3, 5–6 Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela, Bartolomé, 34n4, 273 Ascension to Heaven: tale, 35–38 Assadourian, Carlos Sempat, 55, 68, 323 Astete, Bartolomé, 78–80, 82, 87–88, 123–24, 134, 138, 140n42, 141 and n43, 142–43, 144gr8 and Takimallku Astiti, 33n3, 38, 40, 42, 77–78, 105–6, 117, 134–40 offices held by, 142–43 relation to Taquimallco, 78, 80, 82, 143 Astete Fernandez Taquimallco, Gaspar, 143–44 and gr8 Astiti, Takimallku, 138–41; see also Astete, Bartolomé Astvaldsson, A., 161n2 Ayaguaya in the boundary making rites, 79–80, 85, 88, 141, 339 music of, 85 troupe from Condo, 85–86 type of flute, 85 Ayavire y Velazco, Fernando et al., 5 Ayca, Bartolomé, local ancestor, 60, 188–89, 242 Ayca Chambi, Alfredo, 4 Ayca Colque, María, 191, 275, 288 marriage to Tata Quri, 270–72 and fig. 23, 276–78. Ayca family, 47, 93, 186 and San Juan, 239 Ayca Llanque, María, 111–12 and fig. 7, 279, 288, 328 Ayllu Sartañani, 140 Ayllus emergence from the Federación Quillacas-Asanaque Federation, 97gr2 Jujchu (1 and 2), 93 Kinsa Cruz, 93, 98 Livichuco (Arriba or Araya), 93–94 minor ayllus of Qaqachaka, 93–99

Qallapa, 94, 96, 98 Qawalli (or Caballe, now Jujchu), 96, 98 Qullana (or Collana), 94, 96–98 Sullkayana, 94, 96 Aymara, xi, 1 data source, 326 notions of time, 4, 17, 19 notions of remembering, 16–17 personalise data, 8 talk of before, 29 testimoniality, 85, 326 that seen and not seen, 18–19 ayni (reciprocity), 22 pact of reciprocity with the state, 52–53, 57, 64, 286 Ayra Chinche, Fernando, 73–74, 122 and n13, 123 and n15, 127, 129 as Alcalde Mayor de Indios, 120–22 and Bartolomé Astete, 123–24, 143 and Incas, 125 and Juana Doña Ana, 75, 81, 327 deeds of, 127–30 friendship with Lujano Choquecallati, 71–75, 120 genealogy, 125, 126 and gr4 and 5 gobernador of Pukuwata, 106, 124 historical personage, 327–28 life of, 122–34 meaning of name, 72n2 probanza de méritos, 124n21 and the school of Pukuwata, 71–74 tale of the red snake, 72–74 as yatiri, 72 Ayra Chinche, Patricio, 125, 345 Ayra Coñaca, Carmena, 125–26 Ayra de Ariutu, Fernando, 74, 123 and n15 and n19, 124, 128 genealogy, 124 probanza de méritos, 74, 123n19, 124 and n21, 344 Ayra, Francisco, from Macha, 121 and n10 Ayra, Sebastián, in the Rebellion of Condo, 144gr8 Ayra, Vizente de, 125 Bakhtin, M., 22, 328 chronotope, 22, 328 Bakewell, Peter, 26, 67n9, 68–69, 323 Barcelos, A., 2



Bargas Chungara, María, widow of Andrés Llanquepacha, of Condo, 149gr10, 155 Barnett, Sergio, 13 Barragán, R., and R. Molina, xiv, 5, 323 Barth, Fredrik, 2 Bastide, Roger, 323n1 Bastien, Joseph, 279–80 Bauman, Gerd, 20 Bergson, Henri, 4, 18 Bertonio, Ludovico, 34, 71, 311n8 Betanzos, Juan de, 179–80, 314 Bey, Hakim, 23 Beyersdorff, Margot, 273 Biblical tales Adam and Eve, 6, 29, 30–33 Ascension to Heaven, 29, 35–38 The Great Flood, 29–30 Binsbergen, Wim Van, 29n1 Bird-Davis, N., 2, 23 Black Llama constellation, 227, 290–91 blood blood offerings, 185 of Christ, 311, 314 and the church, 316–21 of mountains, 47 offerings to ancestors, 11 offerings to documents, 11 offerings to stars, 185 pathway of, 315–16, 319 blood and descent noble blood, 125, 131–32 rights through, 125, 132 and n36, 133 Bolívar, Simón, 2, 63, 67, 325 discourse on indigenous peoples, 2 Bolivia, foundation, 63, 65–66, 83 boundary maker (lindero), 75–82, 130, 328 local caciques as the first linderos, 75–82, 86 serve as, 117 Bourget, Steve: transformations after death, 266 Bouysse-Cassagne, Thérèse, 10, 17, 66, 67n7, 123n17, 125 and n24, 166 and n7, 181, 210, 298, 323n1 Box, for saints, 174, 310 of Tata Quri, 147, 174, 193–96, 197 fig. 11, 253, 275, 279, 302, 303 fig. 24, 306–307, 310

Index

braiding and gender, 40, 311 of slings, 40 Bray, Tamara, 161n2 Bubba, Cristina, 137n39

365

cabildo (municipal office), 25, 38, 50, 94–95, 98 ceremony of, 38, 141, 146, 242, 261 chart 1, 285–86, 296 in the colonial period, 94 origins of, in 1549, 94–95 Cajías de la Vega, Fernando, 5, 26, 96n6, 150, 155–56 and n73 Callapa, Fernando, Gobernador of Condo in around 1774, 150 Campos Harriet, Fernando, 57 Candau, Joël, 21 and archive of memory, 81 and genealogical memory, 21 prosopopeya, 21 Candelaria see Mama Candelaria Canessa, Andrew, 2 Cantón, 3, 50 Condo as, 92 definition, 92 origins, 92 Qaqachaka as, 46, 51, 86, 92 Capax Localarama, 124 and n20 and his descendant Fernando Capax, 124 and n20 Capoche, Luis, 69, 70n12 Carbajal, Jacinto de, impresario miner, 128 and n31 Caricari, cacique, 119 Caring for mutually, 24–25, 250 for the saints, 294, 295–310 Carrera Quezada, Sergio E., 57 cartas pueblas, 64 Catari, Tomás, cacique of Macha, 65, 74–75, 155–57 Catari, Tupaq, 65, 74–75 Cavalcanti, Ricardo, 200 cédula see Royal cédula cédula de encomienda, 118–19 Celestino, Olinda, 169, 256–57 Celestino, Olinda, and Alberto Mayers, 169, 178 cemetery of Qaqachaka, 206 construction of, 206–209, 214–15

366

Index

ceques, 15, 20, 66 as in Cusco, 20, 25, 328 mineral ceques, 67 and n8 wheel of ceques around Qaqachaka marka, 298–99 and gr18 see also routes Cerro Rico see Red Mountain of Potosí Chacama, Juan, 161 Challapata, 83, 101, 144gr8, 210, 241 church of, 101, 186 and Condo, 41 and mitayos, 63 and priest of, 186, 232 toponym history, 63 Chance, John K. and William B. Taylor, 170n8 Chaqui, moiety of the Qharaqhara Federation, 118–19, 124, 137 Ch’allüma, 89, 222 and n3, 223, 227, 230, 233 as a boundary, 88–90 as the meeting place of the Mamitas Kapitana and Ch’uri, 222–28 ch’ama (energy, strength, force), 2, 243, 254, 265 child-gods of Qaqachaka, 244gr17 child from Orinoca (Jurinuq Niñu), 234, 238, 300 of colonial Condo, 171–73 Inaku (Ignacio), 42, 235, 243, 282, 284 Jawiku (Javier), 32, 235, 238, 243, 300 journey from Condo to Qaqachaka, 236–38 Llama Herding Girl (Qarwiri Imilla), 235, 240, 243, 275, 284, 288, 302, 308 resting places, 190, 238, 283 Salwaku (Salvador), 42, 235, 238, 243, 262, 282–84 Wayna Mila (Young Miguel), 193, 235–38, 300 ch’iwu and Christ, 321 and coca, 313–14 cycle or complex of meat-coca-pastures, 313–16 definition, 313–14 and meat, 292, 313–15 and sacrifice, 313–15, 327

and shadow, 197, 313–14 rite of, 314–16 Choque, Andrés, and the purchase of Mama Kapitana, 228–29 Choque Arias, David, 232 Choque Inca Maraza, Martín, Mallku of Irunsata, 11 Choque, Manuel, 200, 207 Choque, Salvador, 192 Choque Mamanillo, Alberto, 81, 111, 197, 210, 217, 227, 234, 236–37, 238–39, 255, 269–72 as mayordomo of Tata Quri, 111, 191 and fig10, 192–94 Choque Callapa, Cruz Fernandez, 138, 144gr8 Choque Callapa, Juan Fernandez, 137 Choquecallata, Domingo, 135 Choquecallata, Pedro, from K’ulta, 135 Choquecallati, Lujano, 71 and n1, 72–76, 120, 134–38, 328 friendship with Ayra Chinche, 71–75 genealogy, 134–38, 136gr6 and Juana Doña Ana, 203 and the leg in the stirrup, 74–75 and name change to Ovando, 71, 92–93, 144 and Qaqachaka church, 93 and Qaqachaka lands, 206 and Tata Quri, 189 Choquecallati, Fernando, son of Lujano, 75, 86, 117, 135, 144gr8, 203, 205 Choquecallati, Tomás, 74 Choquecayara: limit of Qaqachaka’s colonial territory, 218 origin place of some saints, 219gr14, 234, 238, 240 silver mine of, 218, 223–24 and n7 site of colonial church, 218 and songs, 288 Choque Choque, Cristóbal Jacinto, husband of Bernaldita Quispe Colque, 240 Choqueticlla, Antonio brother-in-law of the Llanquepachas, 148, 149gr10, 152 Gobernador and cacique of Hatun Quillacas, 148 Chullpas, 4, 19, 35, 53, 76 Chullpa sister, 113



definition of, 29 as first inhabitants of the place, 19, 29, 60 and Incas, 4, 54 and the Lord of the Clouds, 29–30 and mummies, 52, 301 in Qaqachaka pueblo, 118 saints as, 52 tale of the end of, 53, 113 church dispositions of, 162–63, 203, 217 Lima Councils, 165, 259, 276, 324 church in Qaqachaka as blood, 43 as Chullpa, 52, 234, 249 construction of, 162, 189 as Santa Ana, 43 and ties to Condo, 162, 203–15 Ch’utillu, dance, 34 and a kind of poncho, 34 and mining, 34 as people from before, 33–34 as spirits of the mines, 34 Cieza de León, Pedro de, 25 circumambulation of the ayllu boundaries: rites of, 74, 78, 81–85, 109, 135, 141, 144–45 Cobo, Padre Bernabé, 179, 226, 272, 303 coca and 0s and mummies 180 and boundary making rites, 78, 80, 87–88, 109 commerce of, by colonial caciques, 152 in the mines, 65 offerings to miraculous sites, 294 offerings to mountains, 24 reading coca, 187–89 ritual use in sacrifice, 296, 313–14 ritual use of, 85, 191, 293–94, 298, 308 and wayñu in the plaza, 113–14 Cohen, John, 42 Columbus, Christopher: and rites of possession of land, 203–4 colonial powers, 2, 3, 8, 17, 48, 50–51, 64, 94, 117–19, 121–22, 127, 130–31, 169, 181, 220, 309 colony: rethinking, 25–26 Colque, Nicolás, Mallku of Qhatüma, 11, 39

Index

367

Colque Guarache, Juan, 61n3, 70, 143, 148, 149gr10 Colque Guarache, lineage of caciques of Quillacas, 143 Colque Guarache, María Lupercia, 148 Comaroff, John, and Jean, 7, 17 Composición de Tierras, 140–41 composición of 1646, 81–83, 85, 106, 135, 141–43, 145, 260, 324 and José de la Vega Alvarado, 81, 85, 106, 120, 135, 138, 140–41, 260, 324 and musical instruments, 85, 89 comuna, 50, 63–64, 88, 94–95, 154–56, 172–73, 276 as kumuna tayka, 64 history of concept, 63–64, 94–95 Condo (or Condocondo), xi annexes of, 99gr3, 98, 100, 135, 162 ayllus, 49, 70, 94–96, 98 and n9 as cantón in 1646 or 1670, 92 as colonial doctrinal capital, 48–49, 51, 163, 170–74, 209–14, 260 as parish or curato, 41, 103, 175, 192 as pueblo de reducción, 4, 41, 43, 98–99 as Qala Quntu, 283 rebellion of, in 1774, 65, 74, 148–57 Condori Chura, Leandro, and E. Ticona, 10 confraternities, 100 and ayllus, 169–74 of Condo, 100, 163, 169–70 emblems, 256 in K’ulta, 100 in Macha, 100 in Mesoamerica, 170n8 and wak’as, 177–78 Connerton, Paul, 16 and social memory, 16 conquest, 3, 4, 13, 16, 17, 19–20, 48, 55, 64, 168, 176 and feast cycles, 259 and individual property, 57 and pre-Conquest rules of succession, 130, 132n36 and properties of land, 55–58 and n3 and purchase in the composición de tierras, 56–57 and Qaqachaka history, 16–19 and the Requerimiento, 204 from warfaring to pacification, 48, 56

368

Index

conquest of the chiriguanos, 148. Conrad, Geoffrey W., and Arthur Demarest, 179 Contreras, Carlos, 91n2 Coñaque (or Coñaco), Pedro, 71 as teacher in the school of Pukuwata, 71, 87 Copacabana, or Herding Girl, 235–36, 238 arrival of, 240–41 fiesta of, 240 origins, 240–41 Virgin of, 240 Cornejo Polar, Antonio, 20 Coronil, Fernando, 3, 65, 323 corporeal kinship, 270–73 Course, Magnus, 23 chronotopes, 22, 328; see also Bakhtin Cruz, Pablo, Pascale Absi, and Sergio Fidel, 66 cycles of narratives, 47–48, 327 first cycle, 47–51 second cycle, 51–53, 203 and ff

dance of the foetus (sullu), 41–42, 210–11, 238, 262, 284 Danzantes of Tata Quri, 42, 187, 192, 197 fig. 11, 198–201 butterflies on their wings, 200 figs. 13a and b, 201, 280–81, 294 fiesta, 42 flute of, 190, 199 fig. 12 music, 190 origins of the clothes of, 189, 193–96 sleigh bells, 201, 277–78 Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari, 18, 21 De Luca, Ma. Candela, 170, 255 De Munter, Kohn, 23, 52, 295, 327, 329 Derecho Indiano (Indian law), 3, 55, 324, 327 Descola, Philippe, 3n1 dividual, 23 and Marilyn Strathern, 23 dossier of complaints against the Church, 172 dressing the saints see rites of dressing the saints dúho (or tiyana), 121, 147 Duviols, Pierre, 323

Easter (Fiesta de Pascua de la Resurrección), 6, 259, 261 chart 1, 289, 310–15 and fights, 267, 269 Lent (Cuaresma), 173, 255, 261 chart 1, 293, 310 Ellefsen, Bernard, 132 España O., Paola, 56 Espejo Sepera, Enrique, 32 fig. 1b, 33, 38–42, 77–78, 198 and n4, 200–201, 216, 219n1, 223n4, 229n8, 235, 242n12, 260, 270, 289–90, 297–98, 312, 319–20 Espejo family, 93 and Llanquepacha caciques, 145gr9, 146–47 Espejo, Joseph Gutierrez, priest of Condo in 1774, 152, 154 Espinoza Soriano, W., 4–5, 49n1, 61n3, 70 and n11, 96, 98n9, 121 and n11, 122n13, 123n14, 15, 16 and 18, 125, 133, 142n48, 175 Esposito, Roberto, 64n5 ethnogenesis, 22, 49 Farfán L., Carlos, 225 Father Sun see Inti Tala Fausto, C., 3 federations see Quillacas-Asanaque Federation, Charkas-Qharaqahara Federation feeding rituals, 180, 249, 294, 296, 326 and making persons, 295 rite of feeding Tata Quri, 300, 306–307 rites of feeding the dead, 180, 306 rites of feeding the god-saints, 294, 302, 309–10 Fernandez Achu (y Pacheco), Gabriel, lineage of Condo, 132n37 Feyerabend, Paul, 8 fiestas, cycles of, 98, 242, 261 chart 1, 262–63 coincidence between Inka feasts and present day feasts, 296–97 coincidence between Marian feasts and Andean feasts, 220–21, 227 colonial cycles of, 172–73, 256, 259–60 of Condo, 98, 169, 172 of Qaqachaka, 259–60



Fiesta of Candelaria, 100, 195, 218, 219n1, 221, 255, 261 chart 1, 267–68, 288, 297, 302 Fiesta of Devotion, 22–21, 255 Fiesta of the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady, 220, 222, 225–28 and figure 18, 235, 237 fig. 19, 243 fig. 20, 261 chart 1, 275, 286–88, 296–97, 305 fig. 26 and the Expectación del Parto, 225, 227 Fiesta of the Holy Cross (Fiesta de la Cruz), 42, 170n10, 190, 196, 198–201, 240, 261 chart 1, 262, 269, 279 Fiesta del Niño (Feast of the Circumcision of Our Lord), 210–11, 259, 261 chart 1, 290, 297 fiestas de tabla, 220–21, 242, 255 fiestacargos, 220 cycles of feasts stipulated in the Colony, 259 Flores, J. G., and Teresa Cañedo-Argüelles Fabrega, 94, 130 Frame, M., 266 Frankopan, Peter, 204 Franquemont, Edward, 42

Galeano, Eduardo, 17 Gallegos (or Gallejos), Rafael, 81, 87, 339–40 Gareis, Iris, 2040 Gasca, Pedro de la, 64, 119 gender differences in relation to history, 2, 12, 20–21, 40, 43, 52, 114, 318, 328; gendered wrappings, 306; in rituals, 302, 306 genealogy blood rights, 82, 125, 132–33, 150 gender and, 40 matrilineal descent, 125, 131–33 noble blood, 125, 131 norms of, 47, 122, 130–33 parallel descent, 124, 131 patrilineal descent, 124, 131, 133 see also succession Genesis in Qaqachaka, 29 and sig., 138 Giambattista, Vico, 8 Gibson, J. J., 168 and affordances, 168 Gil García, Francisco M., 6, 169, 181, 188, 289, 294

Index

369

Gil Montero, 61 and n2 Ginzburg, Carlo, 4, 12, 15; and indiciary method, 4 Gisbert, Teresa, 148n54, 220 Glasser, Marc, 264 gods of the church, 176, 186 Gods of the Heavens, 80, 176–77 and n21, 186, 297, 309. gods: languages of, 256 Gods of the Mountains and the Earth, 276, 295. Goff, Jacques Le, 11 Gonzáles Choque, Pascual, alcalde of Condo in 1755, 138, 144gr8 Goody, Jack, 14 Goudsmit, Into, llanthu as the Quechua equivalent of ch’iwu, 313n9 grandparents’ papers (awil achach papila), 9, 16, 20, 31, 111, 328 and title-bearers, 52 forms of keeping them, 10–11, 52 Gruzinski, Serge, 220 Gualca, cacique of the Charcas, 120 Gualparocas as Incas, 137 Guaman Poma de Ayala, Felipe de, 9, 31 and gr1, 125, 133, 161, 178, 264, 323 Guardian Mountain, 186, 208, 245, 276, 295–96, 310 and corner shrine or iskina, 209, 254, 292 comparison with church towers, 249–50, 313 rites of feeding, 208, 249, 314–19 see also Uywiri. Guari (or Huari or Wari) as annex of Condo, 152 as vice-parish of Condo, 260 Gutiérrez De Angelis, Marina, 220 Haber, Alejandro, 25 hagiography as tradition, 169 canonical, 294 definition, 169 of Qaqachaka, 168 regional, 327 relation history-hagiography, 162, 203, 245 Halbwachs, Maurice, 16

370

Index

Hamilakis, Yannis, 4, 18, 21 Haraway, Donna, 25, 181, 323 Harris, Olivia, 70, 164, 256, 259, 320 Harris, Roy, 14, 15 Harvey, Penelope, 23, 52, 295n1 head: trophy head, 3, 6 and ayllus, 96, 206–207, 209–10 and cargo posts, 170, 175 of the domestic unit, 265–66, 316 in the mojones, 82 in the plaza, 51–52 quipus wrapped as, 11, 23, 48, 327 and sacrifice, 251–53 tsantsa heads, 3 and weaving, 6, 175, 265–66 Heidegger, Martín, 18 Hernández Astete, Francisco, 178–80, 226, 298–99 Hinojosa, Pedro de, 119 historical method, 1, 4, 6, 7–9, 12, 15 history chronological times in, 17–18 and gender, 2, 6, 12, 20–21, 40, 43, 52, 114, 302, 306, 318, 328 historical discourse, 13, 327 ideas about the past, 17, 23–25 institutional forms of transmitting, 20–23 inscriptional practices, 13–14, 325–26 mythemes, 14, 328 mythic history, 29 narrative forms of, 12–15 oral history, 175, 188, 201, 252–53, 269, 300, 302, 305–306 sowing history, 14 sung, 20, 41, 232, 263, 275 tropes, 13–14, 16, 25, 222 historians from the region, 9–11 Hocart, A. M., 21, 24, 326 honorific titles, xi, 121, 124, 132–34 Huanca, Tomás, 231n9

illa, 195, 204, 223 Imolesi, Ma. Elena, 264 Inca: Mama Ocllo and Manco Capac, 110 shout with the new sunrise, 104 Inca Maraza, Domingo, 185 Inca Maraza, Feliciano, 11, 82, 84, 141, 143, 346

Inca Maraza, Mateo, ancestor of the place, 60 Inca Maraza, Robustiano, 11 Inka Mariya (or Mariya Doña Ana), 103, 106 and land titles, 108 and mines, 106 as the Qhuya or Coya, 106 relation with Juana Doña Ana, 103, 106 tale of kicking away the thermal waters, 108–11 tale of the red snake, 106–107 as the wife of Llanquepacha, 108 Inka Pachacutec, 179 Inka Wayna Capac (or Qhapaq), 124 Inka Yupanqui, 124 Inkas, 4, 6, 20, 25–26, 40, 45–49, 53–54, 55, 60, 66–67 and n8, 68, 70, 89, 98, 105–107, 109–10 inscriptional practices, 13–14, 325–26 Inti Tala (Father Sun), 41, 107–8, 113, 177, 245, 271, 313, 317 Islamic Law, 25, 175, 208, 299 Jesus Christ, 43, 166, 168–69, 177, 186, 188, 240–41, 261 chart 1, 300; and ch’iwu complex, 310–15 Journey to the Red Mountain of Potosí, 63–65 Juana Doña Ana and Ayra Chinche, 75–76 as Inca, 104, 109 molested by drivers, 76, 80 relation with Inka Mariya, 103, 106 and rites of possession of land, 77–82 and the sunrise, 75–76 snatching land titles from Pukuwata, 104–108 and the Tan Señora of Notes of Money, 111–13 as title-bearer and boundary maker, 77–82 julajula, 198, 211 fig. 15. Jurado, Ma. Carolina, 9, 10, 74n4, 124n21, 130n35, 326 khuyiri (stones that breathe), 251–52 kinship see corporeal kinship, spiritual kinship



Kinsa Mujuna (Three Mojones), 82, 89, 233 K’ulta, 1 annex of Condo, 4, 49, 260 authorities, 165–66, 174–75 ayllus, 100, 267 and boundaries, 78 and Choquecayara church, 218 confraternities, 174 and mitayos, 77–78 and the Rebellion of Condo of 1774, 18, 154–57 and Santa Bárbara, 231 and valley lands, 100

Lamana, Gonzalo, 3, 25, 323 Lambek, Michael, 16, 23 lamps Father Lamp and Mother Lamp, 319 the church, 173 in the mines, 61 landscape, 7, 12–14, 20–22, 26, 29, 41, 51, 66–67, 167, 169 and mythemes, 14, 328 and the mythic-mnemonic, 14 pathways in, 22 relational landscape, 259 ritualized landscape, 7, 26, 67, 222, 226, 232 as a semiotic system, 14 as supports, 15 topograms, 14, 328 and topographic writing, 14 Lara, Jesús, 30n2, 33 Las Casas, Fray Bartolomé de, 25 Lau, George, 2 Law of Expropriation of lands (Ley de Exvinculación de Tierras) of 1874, 10 Laws of Burgos, of 1512–13, 163 Leinhard, Martín, 204 Lema, Verónica, 25 Lema, Verónica, and Francisco Pazzarelli, 24, 329 Leg in the stirrup and Choquecallati, 74–75 tale about, 74–75 Leyes de Indias, 25, 94 Lima Councils (Concilios limenses) and changes in the feast cycles, 259

Index

371

and construction of temples, 165 and influences in catechisms, 324 from 1552 onwards, 165 Livichuco: minor ayllu of Qaqachaka, 78, 82 tambo, 93–94, 206 Llanquepacha, lineage of caciques, 108, 117, 128, 143–47 changing name to Ovando, 71, 92–93, 144 deeds of, 147–48 genealogy of, 144gr8, 145gr9, 149gr10 and gold mines, 54, 145, 257 Guillermo Llanquepacha, 145gr9, 146 and Inka Mariya, 108 and Mama Ch’uri, 223 and n5, 224–25, 270 José Llanquepacha, 145gr9, 146 as one of Qaqachaka’s first ancestors, 108 parental interweaving with the Guaraches, 149gr10 purchase of Qaqachaka as a hacienda, 54, 59–60 purchase of valley lands as a hacienda, 93 replace the Taquimallcos, 134, 148 and rites of possession of the pueblo, 205 and Tata Quri, 186–91 three brothers as Qaqachaka’s original ancestors, 54, 145 Llanquepacha, Gregorio Félix, and Andrés, caciques in the eighteenth century, 117, 138, 144gr8, 145gr9, 149gr10 and the Rebellion of Condo, of 1774, 148–57 Llanquepacha, Lucas Félix, cacique of the Asanaques from 1781–1796, 147–48 Llanquepacha iskina, ritual corner shrine, 146 lo andino, 1, 25–26, 323 López, Fray Luis, archbishop of Quito, in 1593, 135 Lord of the Mountains (Señor de los Cerros), 59 Loza, Carmen Beatriz, use of quipus in the colonial period, 9

372

Index

luck (surti), 2–3, 37, 40, 256, 284 and caciques, 256 and condors, 40 and mountains, 316 and rites of sacrifice, 315, 327 and rites with crania, 316 and saints, 236, 281 and slings, 41 Luque Torres, Santiago, 55, 95

MacCormack, Sabine, 25 Macha, as a moiety of the Qharaqhara Federation, 118–19 Maintenance (Manutención), 57, 167 definition, 167–68 Mallku and condors, 39–40 name for title-bearer, 10–11, 39–41, 53, 78–79, 82, 103 the Inca as, 104 Mama Candelaria colonial saint of Condo, 171, 173 fiesta of, 100, 221, 227 fig. 17, 243, 255, 261 chart 1, 267, 288, 297 journey to Qaqachaka, 218–19 and Mamitas Kapitana and Ch’uri, 275 and the moon, 225, 267, 297 origins in Canary Islands, 220 origins in Choquecayara, 218, 257 songs to, 288 and Tata Quri, 217–18, 234–36 and water, 225 Mama Ch’uri, 227 fig. 17 bought for gold, 223 bought for wheat flour, 227 and the celestial Black Llama, 227–28 journey to Qaqachaka, 222–28 and lightning, 230–31 meeting Mama Kapitana in Ch’allüma, 222–28 and the moon, 245, 267 origins in Taruka Marka, 222–23, 225 song to, 286–88 stolen from the Jukumanis, 228–31 and water, 225 Mama Kapitana and the celestial Black Llama, 227–28 bought in exchange for potatoes, 223

in exchange for wheat flour, 227 journey to Qaqachaka, 222–28 and lightning, 230–31 meeting Mama Ch’uri in Ch’allüma, 222–28 and the moon, 245, 267 origins in Choqueqayara, 222–23 song to, 286–87 stolen from the Jukumanis, 228–31 and water, 225 wig of, 304 fig. 25 Mamani, Mauricia, 189 and n2, 190, 234, 256, 280–81, 287 Mamita Copacabana see Copacabana Maragua, 189 and origins of Wayna Mila, 240 mill, 128 mining settlement, 225 origin of clothes of Tata Quri’s Danzantes, 193, 195, 198 and n4, 201 Maraza Mamani, Tiburcio, 45, 78–79 and fig. 3, 80, 84, 308 marka: mayordomo, 175, 188, 201, 252–53, 269, 300, 302, 305–306 origins of the term, 161–62 Tata Quri as, 188 Marzal, Manuel, 26, 164, 166, 181, 259. mass (misa) colonial organisation of, 163, 171, 177, 186, 196 costs of, 170 misa de salud, 264 need to hear the mass, 163, 289 and transubstantiation, 256, 314, 318–21 mayordomos, 79, 95, 170 and n11, 171–74, 180–81 as awatiris, 79, 175, 250, 269, 299 obligations of, 194–95, 194–95, 302–303, 305–309 rites in the church, 171, 175 rites of, 177 rites to the saints, 174 Mayordomo marka, 175, 188, 201, 252–53, 269, 300, 302, 305–306 mayordomía of Alberto Choque, 191–92, 201



in rites, 201, 305–307 Mayorga, Fernando, 25, 55, 57, 95 Mejía, Tomás, notorious policeman in Qaqachaka marka, 216 memory archives of memory, 81 and n10 collective memory, 16, 21, 82, 204, 225, 325 ethnic memory, 11 fertile memory, 24, 329 genealogical memory, 21, 325 and history, 1–2, 7, 11, 16–17, 21 materializing of, 22 narrative forms of, 12–15 practices of memory, 16–17 social memory, 16, 272, 285 spatializing of, 22 supports for, 12–15 Memorial de Charcas, of 1582, 70, 121, 125 Menegus B., Margarita, 50 Menary, Richard, and autoglottic space, 14–15 Meneses, Capitán Pablo de, 119, 137 Mignolo, Walter, 3, 65, 323 Milagros, del Van Mingo, Ma., 56n4 miracles, 169, 187, 223n4, 256 and dark constellations, 290 and the sun, 104, 108 candelaria as, 220 ch’uri as, 223n4 concepción as, 231 Copacabana as, 240 fiestas of, 289–91 meaning of, 289–90 pilgrimages to miraculous sites, 289 San Antonio as, 293 sites, 261–63 Tata Quri as, 188, 196, 203, 235 time of, 289–91 mit’a, 26, 34, 68–70 agricultural mit’a, 51–53 as postilions, 93, 138 as tribute, 129 as warfare, 70 definition, 51, 67–70 difference from mita, 67–70 freedom from service of, 151 mining mit’a, 53, 59 and ff

Index

373

mit’ani (dance), 290 religious mit’a, 26, 51, 66 repartimientos of, 51, 69, 156 see also tribute mitayo, 10, 26, 33–34, 53, 56, 59 capitanías of, 68–70, 121 and n10 conditions of work, 51, 62, 68, 110 libations on the journey, 26, 66–67 and llamas, 65–66 sirilu mit’ayu, 61 work as, 60–63 see also Journey to the Red Mountain of Potosí Molina, R., xiv, 5 Monje Santillana, Juan Cruz, 163n3 Montemayor, Alonso de, 119 Montesclaros, Juan de Mendoza y Luna, Marqués, 122 Morales Padrón, F., 203–204 Moroco, Inca cacique of the Charcas, 119 and n1 and n5, 120–21 and n8, 124 Morrone, Ariel, 6, 21, 22, 26, 66 and n6, 81n10, 82n12, 123n17, 131, 137, 259, 323 mountains Mount Jujchu, 46–47 Mount Kharikhari, 63, 67 and n8, 112 Mount Kusku, 67n8 Mount Mururata, 40 Mount Turu, 46–47, 53, 60, 94, 218 Red Mountain of Potosí, 34, 53, 63–65, 66, 68, 312, 324 see also Guardian mountains, Red Mountain of Potosí, Uywiri mountain chest, 52, 208, 314–15 mummies ancestral, 178, 193, 232, 272, 296, 300 Chullpas, 52, 259 Inca, 179–80, 193, 226, 264, 273, 297–98 rites of dressing mummies, 179–80 ritual practices centred in, 180–81, 300–308 and wak’as, 263, 266, 298 Murra, J. V., 5n3, 67, 70, 193 and Andean verticality, 5n3, 99 Murúa, Fray Martín de, 125 and n24, 264 and n6. music during the Composición de Tierras of 1646, 79–80, 85, 87–89, 141

374

Index

music of Tata Quri, 186–87, 189n2, 198, 255 mutual obligations, colonial concept of, 9, 99, 326–27

Nayaka (of India), 23 Nicolás, Vincent, 1, 4, 323

Ochatoma (or Yachatoma), cacique of Pukuwata, 119 and n5, 125 and n25 ontological depredation, 3 ontology ontological turn, 1 relational ontologies, 23–25, 52, 178, 250, 295, 302, 308, 329 O’Phelan, Scarlett, 150 oral history, 2, 11, 14, 16–17 and title-bearers, 10–11 and silences, 11, 22, 72, 117, 137, 148, 329 degree of veracity of, 8 methods of collecting, 8 performativity of, 12 relation to written history, 2, 8–9 tropes of, 13 orality vs. writing debate, 12, 85, 326 autoglottic space, 14 forms of orality, 12 oral tradition, 9, 14, 20, 35, 47, 82, 86 and oral theory, 20 and songs, 25 and writing, 33 Ordenanza de Intendentes, 131 Ordenanzas of Felipe II, in 1573, 48

Pacha, 18–19 Pachacuti, 18 Pacha, Martín, cacique of Asanaque, 147 Pacheco, Manuela, wife of Lucas Féliz Llanquepacha, 148, 149gr10 Páez, of Colombia, 10, 14 Pantheon in Qaqachaka, 209 construction of, 210, 214–15 parental interweaving among the caciques, 139gr7, 149gr10 Paria (Poopó), 5, 45, 70, 83, 86, 87–90, 93, 96 and n7, 120 and n6, 150, 155–56, 337 and Augustines, 221

and colonial hospitals, 221 doctrine of, 174 pathway of blood, 315–16 blood in the church, 316–19 blood in the ecclesial lamps, 319 blood in the Eucharist, 319–21 pathway of the gods (yusa thakhi), 6, 14, 266 pathway of memory (amtaña thakhi), 17, 20, 298 Pazzarelli, Francisco, 24, 315, 329 and animu of sacrificed animals, 315 and luck of sacrificed animals, 315 Pease, Franklin, 256, 273, 323 person ancestral persons, 2, 325 becoming a person at marriage (jaqichasiña), 265 being a person (jaqïña), 24 making a person (jaqichaña), 295, 309, 326 model personages, 6, 21, 329 notions of personhood, 178 older persons, 29–30, 33, 39–40, 45, 189, 280 personalize data, 8 social person, 266 Pérez, Joseph, 64 Pérez Gollán, José Antonio, 220 Pintado, Cynthia, 220 Pizarro, Francisco, 119 and n2, 120 Pizarro, Gonzalo, 64, 67, 119 and n2, 137 Pizarro, Pedro, 264 and n6, 300, 301n6 Platt, Tristan, 22, 33–34, 52, 70 and n12, 89, 100 and n10, 118, 121n8, 127 and n28, 128, 170n10, 208, 224n7, 323, 325, 344, 345 Platt, Tristan, and P. Quisbert, 67 Platt, Tristan et al., 1, 4, 69, 70 and n11, 74n5, 118, 119n2 and n3, 120n7, 124n21, 125 power abuse of, 64, 128, 169 concentrate power by containment, 257, 310, 327 generative power of ancestors, 12, 39, 76, 207, 239 irradiating power, 82, 257



of miracles, 256, 291 of money and minerals, 53, 58, 67n7, 112 of mallkus, 10, 39 of narrative, 8 of ritual sites, 24, 109, 110, 257 of the saints, 169, 185, 188, 220, 241–42, 256, 258, 309 of the sun, 239, 67n7 and trophy heads, 3 of writing, 3 policy of congregación, of 1545 onwards, 166–68 Polo de Ondegardo, Juan, 67, 255, 324 Pratlong, Georges, 96 and n6 prayers for children, 291 and Islam, 208 hear and lick prayers, 320 hear the mass, 292, 320 to the mountains, 250 and song, 276 Presta, Ana María, 137, 323 prosopopeya, 21 Proust, Marcel, 22 pueblos de indios, 25, 52 origins in Mexico, 50 Qaqachaka marka as, 25, 49–51, 110 religious history of, 50–51, 164–66 see also reduction towns pueblo (town); principal pueblos (cabeceras), 6, 50, 119, 163 Condo as, 163–64 pueblos de reducción see reduction towns Pukuwata (or Pocoata or Copoata) ayllu of, 118 border with, 72–73, 75, 80–82, 89, 93, 144, 233 and church, 205–207 and Composición de tierras, de 1646, 78–79, 87, 106–108 fights with, 75, 249, 254 first ancestors, 60, 76, 92, 96 relations with Qaqachaka, 53–54, 58, 61–62, 76, 80 relations with Qharaqhara, 118, 125 rites of mitayos, 33–34, 63 school of, 71, 73 territory bought from, 54, 58

Index

375

qalaphiri, ceremonial broth, 292 Qaqachaka as annnex of Condo, 4, 49, 51 born from money, 52, 55–58 and composición de tierras of 1646, 81–83, 85, 106, 135, 141–43, 145, 260, 324 founding the marka of, 3, 25, 43, 99, 161 as a hacienda, 54, 59–60, 135, 144 and gr8, 167 and Incas, 45–46 as Kachikachi, 277 as Qaqachika, 46–47, 53–54, 61 meaning of toponym, 46 and mountains, 46–47 as ranch of Pukuwata, 53, 118 as Santa Vera Cruz, 42, 162, 170–71, 188, 260 as vice-parish of Condo, 98 and n9, 162–63, 168, 174, 188, 260 and n4, 261, 316 and Urus, 45 valley lands as hacienda, 93, 100 Qaqachaka marka, 106, 108, 161–62, 203, 230, 234, 299 as navel of the world, 39–40, 42 Qawalli (or Caballi), former name of ayllu Jujchu, 93 minor ayllu of Condo, 96, 108, 134, 137–38, 144, 147–48 minor ayllu of Qaqachaka, 93–94, 134, 141 Qharaqhara Federation, 4, 42, 69–70, 118, 127 caciques of, 106, 117–25 parochial divisions, 224 Quillacas-Asanaque Federation, 4, 5, 49–50, 70, 97gr2, 98 caciques of, 117–18, 133–48 quipus, 5, 9–11, 13–14, 16, 23, 48, 52, 118, 315, 326–27 Quispe, Alber, 164, 169, 174, 178, 220–21, 242, 258, 323 Quispe Colque, Bernaldita, 10–11, 35–36 and fig. 2, 37–43, 103–14, 120, 203, 232–34, 238, 240, 328 and songs to the god-saints, 282–84, 287 Quispe Colque, Lucía, 31–34, 49, 95, 145–46, 281–88

376

Index

Quispe Maraza, Franco, as title-bearer, 11, 19, 29, 47 life of, 47 Quispe, Mariano, Mallku of ayllu Sullkayana, 11, 41, 103

Ramírez, Susan, E. 295n1 Ramírez de Águila, P., 70, 127 Noticias políticas de Indias, 128–29 Ramos, Ana, 8, 16 Ramos Gavilán, fray Alonso, 210 Rappaport, Joanne, 10, 11, 14, 21, 22, 103, 259 Rasnake, Roger, 70, 124 and n22, 125 and n23, 127, 157 rearing mutually (uywasiña), 24–25, 250, 295, 326 definition of, 24–25 see also caring for mutually Rebellion of Chayanta, of 1780s, 65, 155–56 Rebellion of Condo, of 1774, 65, 148–57 rebellions of seventeenth century, 2, 6, 18, 130–32 reciprocity see ayni Reconquest (Reconquista) of Spain, 84, 133, 170, 204, 208 Red Mountain of Potosí, 34, 53, 63–65, 66, 68, 312, 324 and seawater, 67 and n7 and sunlight, 67n7 precolonial mining, 66–67 Red Place of Birth, 35, 38, 40–41, 42–43, 328 Red-Trousered Ant, 29, 32–35, 43 against the Colonial State, 38–41 and m’ita, 33–34 definitions of, 33–35 ritual practices that allude to ants, 34–35, 41–2 reduction town (pueblos de reducción), 4, 95, 122, 162–64 and territory of wak’as, 177–78 Condo as, 4, 41, 43, 48–49, 98, 169–70, 172 see also Policy of Congregation Reinaga, Fausto, 17 relational ontologies, 23–25, 52, 178, 250, 295, 302, 308, 329

and history, 1–2, 329 multirelacionality, 23 relational identities, 1–2, 23 relics, 256 of bones, 256 of minerals, 257, 258 fig. 21 religious authorities of the place see Alférez, Mayordomo Republic of Bolivia: origins, 63, 67, 92, 101, 325 Republic of the Spanish (República de Españoles), 26, 121, 130, 164 Republic of Indians (República de Indios), 22, 26, 121, 130, 164, 168 Resistance to the Colony, 38, 324 Revolución Comunera of Paraguay, of 1567 and 1649, 65; see also Second Revolución Comunera of Paraguay Revolt of the Comuneros of Paraguay, of 1537, 65 Río, María de las Mercedes del, 118, 120n6, 121, 124n22 Ríos, Juana de los, wife of Martín de Meneses, 137 rite of possession of lands, 77, 203–204 Juana Doña Ana and, 77–82, 328 rites of dressing changing the clothes of Llama Herding Girl, 379 changing the clothes of Tata Quri, 193, 305–306 dressing the mummies, 179–81, 193, 296, 300–308 dressing the saints, 300–308 and making persons, 194, 308 ritual practices and ants, 33–35, 38–42 Rivière, Gilles, 4 Robles, María de, daughter Juana de los Ríos, 137 Robles, Martín de, encomendero of the Indios of Chayanta, 137 Roman Law, 25, 50, 55, 92, 133, 161, 162 Roman religious practices, 214–15 Rosen, Lawrence, 23 Rostworowski, María, and relations between ayllus and the state, 326 routes commercial routes, 98 and libations, 82



of llama caravans, 34, 63, 65, 99 of memory, 7 of the mining mit’a, 66 to the Red Mountain of Potosí, 63–65 of the saint-gods, 188, 190 and gr11, 219 and gr14, 224 and gr15, 229 and gr16 of Tata Quri’s Danzantes, 195–96 and gr12, 199 and gr13 see also Ceques Royal Cédula of 1545, 164, 166–67 of 1591, 50, 55–57 of 1603, 130n35 of 1614, 130n35 appellation to, against abuses, 173

sacrifice, 11, 198, 253, 256, 259, 292, 309, 315–16, 320 of Christ, 310–13, 318–19, 321 to the church towers, 208, 249–54, 296 human sacrifice, 205–206 kuchu, 205–206 reconstruction of skeleton, 296, 313–16 to the mountains, 24, 52, 251, 296, 310, 313–15 to the pantheon, 215 see also Ch’iwu Said, Edward, 25 Saignes, Thierry, 122, 127–29, 164 saints as ancestral mummies, 179–80, 193, 226, 232, 264, 272, 296, 298, 300 appearance of, 186 and ff., 217 and ff box where housed, 147, 174, 220, 307 as bundles, 193, 295, 297–98, 301 custom of marrying with, 263–67 devotions, 238–39, 242 and n12, 256–57, 276, 289, 293, 310 divesting the Church of, 294 ensemble of, 242–45 fabrication of, 185, 220 kinship relations between, 236, 242–45, 275 niches of, 51–2, 207, 226, 229, 234, 242 procession of, 22, 41–42, 81, 147, 174, 195, 204, 208, 226–27 and fig. 18, 237 and fig. 19, 286 rites directed to, 179–81, 300–310

Index

377

Sallnow, Michael, 291n2 Samaña (resting place of the saints), 188, 190, 192, 218, 232–33, 238, 283, 291, 316 Samiri (stones that breathe), 204, 251 Sánchez, Víctor, priest of Qaqachaka, 207, 241 and n10, 346 Sánchez, Walter, 220 Sanhueza Toha, Cecilia, 81n10 San Juan, 243, 300, 318–19 arrival in Qaqachaka, 239 as Ch’uri Mustramu, 239, 268 as cross, 242 fiesta of, 101, 152, 239, 261 chart 1 as saint of Condo, 101 Saint John of the Cross, 264 San Pedro de Condo, 49, 101, 141 fiesta of, 260, 261 chart 1 reduction town, 172 song to, 285–86 Santa Bárbara de K’ulta, 101, 231 Santa Bula (Papal Bulls), of 1774, 83–84 and n160 Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamaygua, Juan de, 210 Santo Cristo, 241 as god of the priest, 241 Santos-Granero, Fernando, 14–15, 49, 104, 259, 325 and topograms, 14 Sarmiento de Gamboa, Pedro, 301 school colonial school in Pukuwata, 71–74 present day school, 12, 23–24, 38, 40 Scott, James C., 23 Second Revolución Comunera of Paraguay, of 1649, 64–65; see also Revolución Comunera of Paraguay Seed, Patricia, 204 Segunda, 10 posts of cacique and segunda between brothers, 130, 132n37, 134, 143, 153 and n68, 154 and n70 and title-bearers, 10 Sendón, Pablo, 131 Serulnikov, Sergio, 26, 150, 257 settling the place of Qaqachaka, 91–93 Silliman, Stephen W., 181 Solano, Francisco de, 55

378

Index

songs to the animals, 47 to the child-gods, 282–83 dance songs, 289–92 of devotion, 276 to Llama Herding Girl, 284–85 to Mama Candelaria, 288 to Mama Ch’uri, 286–88 to Mama Kapitana, 286–87 to Niño Salvador, 283–84 to San Antonio, 293–94 to San Pedro de Condocondo, 285–86 to Tata Quri, 276–82 song-dances (wayli kirki), 289–92 sons-in-law (tullqa) as new settlers in Qaqachaka, 92–93 rites wearing pollera, 42 Soto (or Zoto or Zuto), Pedro, 73, 87–88, 340 Soto (or Zuto), Juan Francisco, 74 Soux, María Luisa, 130 Spanish Conquest see conquest Spedding P, Alison, 133, 264 spiritual kinship, 128 between humans and saints, 270–71 between the saints, 234 compadrazgo, 128 godparenthood, 264 godparents of baptism, 132–33 godparents of health, 264–65 godparents of marriage, 264–66, 279 spiritual marriage with the god-saints, 263–66 in the songs, 276–77, 281 with Tata Quri, 270–73 Starn, Orin, 25 Stein, William, 25 Stern, Steve, 3, 9 Strathern, Marilyn, 23 dividual, 23 succession, 118, 121, 123n17 Andean and colonial rules of, 121–22, 130–33 conflict between paternal and Inka succession, 125 maternal ties, 125, 132–33 Sucre, José Antonio, 63 and birth of Bolivia, 63, 67, 325

sun, 25, 35–36, 39–41, 47, 52, 104–107, 177, 239–40, 245, 262, 271, 297 and church, 166, 233 and Coricancha, 303 descendants of, 108, 110 and direction of turns, 82, 267, 298 and mines, 67n7 and Punchao, 166 and Red Place of Birth, 35, 38, 40–43, 328 and Tata Quri, 43, 276, 296 sunrise and origins of weaving, 113–14 tales of birth of, 52, 76, 81, 104–106, 108–10, 113–14, 188, 208, 233–34, 299 syncretism: critique of, ii, 180–81, 309, 323 Szemiński, Jan, 161 Takimallku Astiti, 40, 42, 117, 134–38 and Composición de Tierras of 1646, 140–42 deeds of, 138–40 Tales of Before (layra parla), 16, 20, 29, 328 the Mouse and the Woman, 301–302 the Vicuña with the Broken Leg, 59–60 Tales to the wild beasts (sallqa), 34–35 Fox and the Condor, 35–37 Journey to the Feast in Heaven, 35–37 Tan Señora of Notes of Money (Señora Parda de Billetes), 111–13 Taquimallco, lineage of caciques, 77, 85–86 and Bartolomé Astete, 78–80, 82, 141–43, 205 deeds of, 138–40 Fernando Taquimallco, 86–88, 137–38, 141, 144gr8 Gaspar Astete Fernandez Taquimallco, 143 genealogy of, 144gr8 José Taquimallco, 138, 144gr8 María Hilaria Taquimallco, 138, 144gr8 Tassi, Nico, 294 Tata Animasa, 239–41, 261, 275, 296, 300 and n3 origins, 239 saint of the dead, 310 Tata Ispiritu, 241–42 as cross, 241–42 as devotion, 242



Tata Mustramu 241, 244gr17, 300 and fire, 317 name of Sun God, 35, 43, 107, 239, 317 tale about, 317 Tata Kura, 41, 211 among the ancestors of the place, 54, 135 attitude faced with church rituals, 254 and Christ (Santo Cristo), 241 as Inka cura, 226 Víctor Sánchez, priest in 1919, 207, 241, 346 Tata Paria, cacique of the Qharaqhara, 120 and n6 Tata Quri (Father Gold) appearance of, 186–91 avatars of, 305–306 box of, 147, 174, 193–96 Danzantes of, 42, 187, 189–96 death of, 196–98 descent route from Mount Phiriphiri, 186–191 and gr11 fiesta, 42, 190, 197–201, 261 chart 1 and harvest, 262, 267, 276, 279 Lesser Quri, 197 fig. 11 and Mount Phiriphiri, 166, 186–90, 192, 197, 280, 282, 283, 291 patron saint of Qaqachaka, 42–43, 51, 186–88, 218, 243, 276, 302 Quri the Patron, 186, 243 rites of dressing, 302–308 and Sun God, 43, 276, 296 and Wayna Mila, 193, 235–38, 244gr17, 300 wardrobe of, 110–11 and fig. 6, 188, 198 wife of, 220, 271, 281 as wooden cross, 42, 166, 167 fig. 8, 171, 188 Taylor, C. A., 3n1 Territorially Autonomous Zone see TZA textile folding as tribute, 304 as implements of rebellion, 155 as part of orality, 5, 9, 12–14 as a person, 24, 295, 329 for the saints, 12, 298 and sunrise, 113–14 as support and textual externalisation, 12, 326

Index

379

and tribute, 304, 309 and trophy heads, 3–4, 6 and wak’as, 296 wrapping with, 297–98, 303 fig. 24 Textual community, 10, 103 THOA (Taller de Historia Oral Andina), 10, 17, 47, 323 time, 4, 17–20, 62 Dark Times (Ch’amak Timpu), 52 Golden Time, 107 telescoping of, 22 Time Before, 30–31, 42, 209 Time of Judgment, 13, 30 Time of Miracles, 262, 289, 291 Time of the Chullpas, 19, 35, 76, 104, 233 Time of the Gentiles, 19, 53, 76, 187 Time of the Inka, 20, 40, 46, 49, 53–54, 66, 104, 106, 121, 131, 324 Time of the Spanish, 3, 20, 48, 53, 117, 309 see also Aymara, history Thompson, Sinclaire, 131, 323 title bearer (titul q’ipi), 10–11, 33, 39, 47, 51–53, 78, 81 meaning of, 10, 39–41 tiyana see Dúho toasts see libations Tocricuc, as an Inca and later colonial post, 121 Toledo, Virrey, 48, 67, 131, 147n52, 255 and mining, 61n3, 68 and mojones, 135 and reference Visita, 119, 168 and reforms, 48 and rules of succession, 131 and pueblos de reducción, 122 ordenanzas, 48, 61n3 Towers of Qaqachaka church, 51, 210–13 and alminar, 25, 208, 213, 215, 310 bells of, 214 comparison with guardian mountain, 249–50, 313 construction of, 205–206 offerings to, 296, 310, 313–15 rites of making stand, 249–54 and ties with Condo, 205 transformations, 1, 3, 6, 49, 51, 53, 76, 92, 98, 104, 177–81, 220, 266, 327 and ch’iwu complex, 313–16

380

Index

transubstantiation, 256, 314 and Eucharist, 314, 318–21 tribute, 26, 49, 55, 57, 67, 82, 119, 127, 173 abuses of, 150–52, 156 in textiles, 309 mining mit’a as, 26, 51, 68, 70, 171, 257 religious mit’a as, 163–64, 169, 257, 262 to wak’as, 162, 257, 304 Trouillot, Michel-Rolph, 7, 326 and key moments of history, 8 turns, 21, 51, 57, 180, 228 and colonial feast cycles, 174 fights while changing the gods, 179 system after 1984, 7, 263, 269–73 system before 1984, 7, 254–59, 266–69 Two Republics, 52; see also Republic of Spanish, Republic of Indians TAZ (Territorial Autonomous Zones), 23 Uturunco, Ireneo, 18 Uywiri (guardian mountain), 186, 208, 245, 276, 295–96, 310 and corner shrine or iskina, 209, 254, 292 comparison with church towers, 249–50, 313 rites of feeding, 208, 249, 314–19 see also Guardian Mountain valley lands, 5 and n3, 40, 42, 83–84, 99 of Condo, 100–101 purchase as hacienda, 93, 99–100 of Qaqachaka, 34, 71, 93, 100 Van den Berg, Hans, 204, 208, 259 Van Schendel, Wilhelm, 23 Van Vleet, Krista, 295 Vansina, Jan, 8 veracity of oral history, 8 Vansina, Jan and Dolors Udina, 8 Vega Alvarado, José de la and composición de tierras, 120, 140–41, 260 as Visiting Inspector of the composición de tierras of 1646, 81, 85, 106, 120, 135, 138, 324 Verstaerte, Isabelle, 189n2 Vicuña and mines, 59

and tan poncho, 141 as llama of the Lord of the Mountains, 59 tale of the broken leg of, 59–60 Vilar, Pierre, 204 Viracocha as humid land, 34 as name of feast sponsor, 272 Siñura Wiraqucha as name of alpaca, 34 Virgin Earth (Tierra Virgen), 32–33, 35–37, 42–43, 80, 245 counterpart of guardian mountain, 245, 295, 310–11 origins of, 32–33, 42–43 Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo, 1, 3, 49 Voss, Barbara, 49

Wachtel, Nathan, 4 Wak’a as the Aywir Qala stones, 46–47 colonial administration of stone, 166, 297, 302 and colonial ecclesiastical territories, 162, 166, 177 and confraternities, 178 and Incas, 162 and land, 178 and minerals, 210, 257, 298 and mountains, 67n8 and mummies, 178, 180–81, 263, 297–98 and precolonial territories, 161 and saints, 266, 270, 294, 297, 304 rites of dressing and feeding, 296, 309–10 tribute to, 304, 309 wrapping in textiles, 297–98, 309 Wars of Independence, 17, 22, 65, 325 war of the ayllus, 7 War of the Communities (Guerra de las Comunidades), 1520–21, 64 Warburg, Aby, 15 Wayna Mila, 193, 235–38, 244gr17, 300 and Alcalde Mayor, 300 journey from Condo to Qaqachaka, 237–38 and Tata Quri, 235 West, Terry L., 5 White, Hayden, 13, 20, 89, 327 and historical discourse, 13



Index

and history as performance, 13, 20 and tropology, 13

yatiri (wise person), 31, 176 among the ancestors, 47, 54 Ayra Chinche as, 72 and church rites, 24, 90 comparison with priests, 176–77 consulting about Tata Quri, 187 and curing rites, 255 and Mama Copacabana, 240–41 and Mama Kapitana, 231 and miracle sites, 291

381

and reading coca leaves to find saints, 187, 189, 240, 298 and rites to guardian mountains, 249–50, 314–15 Yupanqui, Tito, 220

Zagalsky, Paula, 6, 50, 68 and n10, 69–70, 118–19, 120n6 and n7, 137, 323 Zárate, Pedro de, 45, 49, 135 Zavala, S. A., 69 Ziołkowski, Mariusz, 162 Zomia, 23 Zuidema, R. T., 20, 98

INDEX OF TOPONYMS

Arku Sayaña, resting place of the saints from Asanaque Aymaya, major ayllu Aywir Qala (Stones that Move), illas Axarata, place near Japo Axrawayuni, colonial boundary of Qaqachaka

Carangas Cerro Rico (Rich Mountain), Potosí Challapata, nearby city Charazani Chaxlla Q’asa Chayanta, Pueblo of Espíritu Santo Chirwipunta, colonial boundary of Qaqachaka Choqueqayara, place on the boundary with Macha Chullunkani, place in Condo Chullpas, major ayllu Chuxlla Chiraja, minor ayllu of Condo Chungara, minor ayllu of Condo Coipasa, Lake Colquechaca, a mine Condo, pueblo and major ayllu Copavilque (or Colpabilque, later called Villaverde de la Fuente), Qaqachaka valley lands in Chuquisaca Cordillera de Livichuco Cordillera de los Frailes Corocoro, copper mining centre Cusco, city Chhala (Pukuwata), possible site of the colonial school Ch’alla Q’asa, ayllu boundary Ch’allüma, previous site of a church Ch’api Ch’api Luma (Prickly Hill) Guañüma (or Wañüma), Qaqachaka valley lands in Chuquisaca

Irunsata, estancia Iwis Uyu, estancia

Jalaqiri, estancia Janq’u Q’asa, estancia Jamach’i Uma, estancia Janq’u Willk’i, colonial boundary of Qaqachaka Janq’u Wintu, ayllu boundary Japo, estancia Jayüma, estancia Jinchu Palla, ravine Jukumani, major ayllu

Kastilla Uma, estancia Kawal Qala, co-boundary Kayñi Muqu, estancia Kinsa Mujuna (Tres Mojones), important boundary between three ayllus Kulchutana, estancia Kuntur Pujyu, estancia Kututu, estancia K’ara Uma, estancia K’irun Q’awa (Wrapped River) K’ulta, pueblo and major ayllu, former annex of Condo Lake Poopó Lake Titicaca Laq’a Qullu (Earth Hill) Lawra Kalli, resting place of the saints Laymi, major ayllu Lima Quta, colonial boundary of Qaqachaka Listi Pampa, feasting place in ayllu Macha Lip’ich Pampa (Leather Meadow) Livichuco, estancia and tambo Llallagua, mine Luluni, place in Jukumani ayllu Luwina, place in Laymi ayllu

384

Index

Macha, major ayllu Macha Thakhisa Madagascar Maragua Mount Andrés Tamayo (Anris Tawayu) Mount Illampu Tata Mount Jujchu Mount Kharikhari Mount Mama T’unupa Mount Phiriphiri (Toasted Barley Flour) Mount Pillarasi Mount Quliwasa Mount Tata Kucharata Mount Tata Kusku Mount Tata T’unupa Mount Turu Mulli K’uch Anachu, place in Sucre Munaypat Anachu, place in Sucre Oruro, department

Pampa Aullagas, regional town Pampa Kurusa, resting place of the saints Panakachi, major ayllu Papua New Guinea Paqu Luma (Tan Hill), origin place of Tata Quri Paqutanqa, mojón and colonial boundary of Qaqachaka Paria (or Paria Poopó) Parqu, estancia Patxa Sinqa, estancia Phari Pampa (Dry Pampa) Phutina (or Phutin Uma), thermal waters with a siren Pikaltiryu, estancia P’isaq Tapa (Partridge Nest) Porco, mine Potosí, city Potosí, department Pukara Pukuwata, major ayllu Purta, estancia Qalaqala, miraculous site in Laymi ayllu Qalawan P’iqin Q’ara, estancia Qampaya, miraculous site in Pukuwata ayllu

Qantuy Pamp Maliskitu, place in Sucre Qarach Qullama, estancia Qarqa Lliyaku Q’asiri, place in Laymi Qaymi Pallqa Qeros, in the Cusco region of Peru Qharaqhara, Federation, and an estancia Qhilla Jaraña, estancia Qhatüma, estancia Qhuchini, estancia Qhusmi Uma (Many-colored Waters) Qhusmiri, estancia that previously belonging to Qullana ayllu Q’illu Q’asa Qinta Wari Jaqhi, mojón, and place with thermal waters Qullpamayu, Qaqachaka valley lands in Chuquisaca Quntumiri, origin place of the danzantes’ costumes Qupawillk’i (or Copavillque), Qaqachaka valley lands in Chuquisaca Q’uwach’api, co-boundary with Laymi

Red Mountain of Potosí (the Cerro Rico) Riku Uychu River Asiriru River Chiruchiru River Desaguadero Risin Phuju, in Pukuwata, possible site of the colonial school

Salinas de Garci Mendoza San Isidro del Campo, Santiponce, Seville, Spain San Juan de Dios de Cacachaca, valley cantón San Pedro de Llanqiri, Macha valley enclave San Juan de Dios de Misque, place in the Cochabamba valleys Santo Calvario, on Mount Phiriphiri Sawilani, Qaqachaka valley lands in Chuquisaca Sawusawu Kalli, resting place of the saints Sinqüma, place on the border with Laymi Sita Siwar Q’asa Siwar Q’asa



Siwinqa Uma (Siquenca Waters) Surasura (or Sorasora)

Tacna, town in Peru Taqawa, estancia Tarpata, estancia in Livichuco Tatala Kurusa, resting place of the saints Tïpampa, Qaqachaka valley lands in Chuquisaca Tiyunqupa, place in Condo Tumüyu, estancia Tura Qari, pilgrimage site in the valleys Turuka Marka, place in Asanaque

Uncía, mine Urqu Pata, calvario in Chanchari Uta Kalla, in Yocalla, Potosí, precise place of Tata Quri’s death

Index

385

Uyuni, regional city

Vila Curi (or Velacrillo), place with a tambo Vizcachas, tambo Waña Quta, co-boundary between Qaqachaka and Laymi Wari Sipita Wayllara Wila Q’awa (Red River) Wila Qullu (Red Mountain of Potosí) Wila Wintilla, tambo Willka Puju, tambo Wisturi, place in Condo

Yanamani, estancia Yanaqi, minor ayllu of Condo Yocalla, in Potosí, place of Tata Quri’s death