Witches and the Extirpation of Idolatry in Postconquest Peru
by Mickey (29 Sept 2005)
Following the discovery of riches for the taking in the New World, the Spanish government embarked on a massive campaign to conquer and colonize the Americas, a process that lasted centuries. Historians have long debated Spain’s motives for the conquest of the New World, and the true reason probably falls somewhere among gold, more souls for Catholicism, and political power. However, regardless of Spain’s reasons, the government realized that it had to find a way to deal with the indigenous populations of the Americas. Its solution was to institute a caste system, preserving European society at the top, and forcing the other castes into submission by cultural hegemony, the strategically indirect denial of certain rights, mixed with strong persuasion, that gradually pushed the natives towards their new place in Spanish-dominated, New World society. However, Spain made a significant error in believing that they could enforce a European-style society in a land previously completely remote from anything European. As this paper will demonstrate, this mistake manifested itself, for example, in the attempt by Spanish officials to enforce strict, European Catholic morals on people whose religion was starkly different and became even more complex through the process of transculturation, in which Andean and Catholic religious beliefs became mixed into something completely new. The ineffectiveness of this policy can be seen the well-known Extirpation of Idolatry, in which Spanish priests used strict European interpretations of Christianity and European concepts of demonology to conduct absurdly ineffective campaigns to weed out witches and idolaters.
As previously stated, the Spaniards believed that they could establish in the New World a society exactly the way they wanted it. They establish castes based on race and birthright, with the peninsulares and creoles (whites) at the top, and anyone with at least one black or indigenous parent in castes below them. The Spanish government passed laws outlawing intermarriage of the races, and made very clear the roles in society that each caste was to carry out. Caste mobility was virtually impossible, unless by some virtue, a woman was able to marry into a higher caste. However, despite all of the extensive measures taken to ensure the purity of the white classes, transculturation still took place. The law about interracial marriages was commonly broken, and this gave way to all kinds of influences between the castes. Whites, natives, and blacks shared food, art, ideas, styles, and more. Above all, however, they shared religious views. This paper specifically concerns the influences of Catholicism on indigenous Andean religions and the creation of many new hybrid faiths, unique to the New World. In this way, transculturation made the religions of the native peoples more complex and less orthodox.
The Andean religion as it was in the pre-Columbian era was quite different from any European form of Christianity. Middle-ages-style Catholicism was very much rooted in the concept of the universe as being two interminably warring realms, that of virtue and that of vice, ruled by God and Satan, respectively. Therefore, Europeans were constantly warned by religious figures that the Devil may be anywhere, attempting to tempt weak humans into helping him overthrow God’s kingdom. However, the Andean peoples saw the universe in quite a different light. They had no concept of two realms, one good and one evil, but instead, they believed that evil must not be defeated by good, for good and evil must coexist in order to preserve universal harmony. This idea of harmony is expressed through the native word anyi, which means balance and reciprocity. The natives perceived that this balance must be maintained; otherwise all would not be right in the universe. Natives believed that what caused anyi to be disrupted was disease, but to them, disease was not only relative to the individual, but also relative to society. If ever this societal disease got too out of control, according to native legend, a creature called amaru, a giant snake, would come out of the ground and move all around the world destroying things, and thusly cleansing the world. However, for smaller scale diseases, the Andeans relied on curers, skilled medicine men that were held in high esteem in the native society. Curers were trained in the art of using medicinal herbs, but also led their patients through spiritual cleansing to restore the anyi in their lives. In this way, curers were a sort of multi-talented priest/doctor, working to heal both the physical and the spiritual.
At the same time of the conquest, Europe was undergoing the infamous Inquisition, in which fears of witchcraft and devil-worshipping seized the continent. Women all across Europe were being accused of being witches, and some (either voluntarily or under torture) confessed to actually being witches. From these “witches’” testimonies, an image in the collective consciousness of Europe began to form of the devil and his witches. The devil became a figure (most often a goat or cat) that sought to gain followers (most often women, because they would more easily succumb to his will, supposedly) that he could use to help him overthrow God. The devil’s followers were often initiated into his service through acts of sexual perversion, and were rewarded with promises of worldly gain, as well as the knowledge of how to both cure and cause disease using herbs and such. As mentioned before, the Spanish attempted to transform indigenous culture in the New World by imposing their Catholicism on the natives. The commonly accepted idea was that native religions, such as the Andeans’, were heathen pagan faiths, and therefore idolatry. It followed then, that if idolatry existed in the New World, then the devil must have some hand in it, and if the devil was at work, he must have witches following him. In addition, Andean curers were quite proficient in the use of herbs to heal, so they must be able to use them to harm. Moreover, Andean sexual morals were looser than Catholics’, allowing women to engage in intercourse before marriage, and according to Europeans, all witches were morally deficient. And so began the American version of the European witch hunt, which was not very effective since the Spanish were attempting to apply their definitions of witchery to people who had never even heard of it.
The witch hunts (or the Extirpation of Idolatry), as mentioned above, were an attempt by Catholic priests (called visitadores) to rid the Andean region of all traces of native religion by accusing practitioners of witchcraft and idolatry, accusations based on European thinking, with complete disregard for the fact that natives knew very little about the system behind their accusations or what exactly they were being accused of, even. The Extirpation was a series of campaigns into the wild areas of the Andean region, away from the main Spanish towns with the goal of eradicating “idolatry.” Each time, this was conducted in a very similar way. A group of visitadores would enter some native village, and search it for any sign of native religion: monuments, burial grounds, sacred caves, etc. They would proceed then to desecrate these huacas, as they were called, and afterwards erect a wooden cross about three meters tall in the spot where the huaca was. They would then say a prayer and leave, moving on to the next sight of alleged “idolatry.” This was the purposefully repetitive manner in which the Extirpation was conducted. It was completely absurd to think that such minimal acts would actually have any effect on quelling something as intangible as religion. It has even been argued, however, that the visitadores at times knew of the futility of their quests, but continued them anyway as a means of gracefully withdrawing from a losing battle. The process of transculturation was so widespread that attempting to keep pure Catholicism intact was impossible in the New World.
When the Spanish conquered their portion of the New World, they attempted to keep the people under lasting control by indirectly (through hegemony) forcing them into lives of subservience to the European, Catholic way. Despite efforts to enforce racial segregation and quell practices of native religion, the process of transculturation was too powerful to keep a race of pure Europeans fully intact in the New World forever. Thusly, the witch hunts and the Extirpation of Idolatry that pervaded the Andean region in the postconquest years were futile and only really amounted to imaginary victories for Catholicism.
Works Cited:
Chasteen, John C. Born in Blood and Fire: A Concise History of Latin America. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2001.
Mills, Kenneth. "Extirpation." Idolatry and its Enemies: Colonial Andean Religion and Extirpation, 1640-1750. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1997. 267-285.
Silverblatt, Irene. "Peru: The Colonial Andies." Witchcraft and Sorcery of the American Native Peoples. Ed. Deward E. Walker, Jr. Moscow, Idaho: University of Idaho P, 1989. 311-321.
