People of the Volcano: Andean Counterpoint in the Colca Valley of Peru - Softcover

Cook, Noble David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822339714 ISBN 13: 9780822339717

Publisher: Duke University Press, 2007

Synopsis

While it now attracts many tourists, the Colca Valley of Peru’s southern Andes was largely isolated from the outside world until the 1970s, when a passable road was built linking the valley—and its colonial churches, terraced hillsides, and deep canyon—to the city of Arequipa and its airport, eight hours away. Noble David Cook and his co-researcher Alexandra Parma Cook have been studying the Colca Valley since 1974, and this detailed ethnohistory reflects their decades-long engagement with the valley, its history, and its people. Drawing on unusually rich surviving documentary evidence, they explore the cultural transformations experienced by the first three generations of Indians and Europeans in the region following the Spanish conquest of the Incas.

Social structures, the domestic export and economies, and spiritual spheres within native Andean communities are key elements of analysis. Also highlighted is the persistence of duality in the Andean world: perceived dichotomies such as those between the coast and the highlands, Europeans and Indo-Peruvians. Even before the conquest, the Cabana and Collagua communities sharing the Colca Valley were divided according to kinship and location. The Incas, and then the Spanish, capitalized on these divisions, incorporating them into their state structure in order to administer the area more effectively, but Colca Valley peoples resisted total assimilation into either. Colca Valley communities have shown a remarkable tenacity in retaining their social, economic, and cultural practices while accommodating various assimilationist efforts over the centuries. Today’s population maintains similarities with their ancestors of more than five hundred years ago—in language, agricultural practices, daily rituals, familial relationships, and practices of reciprocity. They also retain links to ecological phenomena, including the volcanoes from which they believe they emerged and continue to venerate.

About this title

About the Author

Noble David Cook is Professor of History at Florida International University. He is the author of Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492–1650; The People of the Colca Valley: A Population Study; and Demographic Collapse: Indian Peru, 1520–1620.

Alexandra Parma Cook is an independent scholar. They are the coauthors of Good Faith and Truthful Ignorance: A Case of Transatlantic Bigamy and the coeditors and translators of The Discovery and Conquest of Peru, by Pedro de Cieza de León, both also published by Duke University Press.

From the Back Cover

"Noble David Cook's "People of the Volcano" is a masterpiece of history writing. The story is set in one of the most rugged and dramatic landscapes in the Andes--the Colca Valley, in the southern highlands of Peru, near the city of Arequipa. From his close reading of the Spanish chronicles and administrative documents, Cook fashions a virtual ethnography--the closest approximation we are likely ever to have of a "thick description"--of everyday life in the Colca Valley during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This was the period when the inhabitants of this remote valley were incorporated into the Inca empire, the last great state of the pre-Columbian Andean world, and then, following the Spanish conquest, when they became the unwilling and troublesome provincial subjects of the first global empire of the modern world, that of the Hapsburg kings of Spain. Cook's account of the imposition of the sixteenth-century Toledan reforms in the Colca Valley will stand for many years to come as the most informative and readable account of this critical, transformative process in colonial Andean history."--Gary Urton, Dumbarton Oaks Professor of Pre-Columbian Studies, Harvard University

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

PEOPLE OF THE VOLCANO

ANDEAN COUNTERPOINT IN THE COLCA VALLEY OF PERUBy NOBLE DAVID COOK Alexandra Parma Cook

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2007 Duke University Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8223-3971-7

Contents

Illustrations and Tables............................................................ixPreface.............................................................................xiONE. Beneath the Soaring Condor.....................................................3TWO. Return of the Viracocha........................................................29THREE. Crisis of the New Order......................................................51FOUR. Constructing an "Andean Utopia"...............................................79FIVE. "Repblica de los Indios": Social and Political Structure.....................105SIX. Tribute and the Domestic Economy...............................................131SEVEN. Extractive Economy...........................................................155EIGHT. Indoctrination and Resistance................................................181NINE. Crisis in the "Repblica de los Espaoles"....................................215Epilogue: Andean Counterpoint.......................................................243Notes...............................................................................261Bibliography........................................................................285Index...............................................................................311

Chapter One

BENEATH THE SOARING CONDOR

They have come from a huaca or ancient shrine that is situated within the confines of the neighboring province of Vellilli, which is a snowcapped peak in the shape of a volcano, set out from the other peaks of the area, and which they call Collaguata. They say that from this mountain or from within it many people departed, and they descended to this province and its valley, and that they have settled in this riverbed. They conquered those who were the natives, ousted them by force, and then remained.... Because the volcano from which they have come is called Collaguata, they are called the Collaguas. -Testimony of valley residents, 20 January 1586, from Juan de Ulloa Mogolln, "Relacin de la provincia de los Collaguas."

The first Europeans to view the Colca Valley in the 1530s surely marveled at its natural beauty. Either descending from the desolate high-elevation grasslands or climbing from the desert Pacific strip, one is impressed by the massive patchwork of irrigated terraces blanketing the river's slopes. The dense multicolored crops testify to the fecundity of the volcanic soil, and stand in stark contrast to the frigid glaciated peaks towering above the valley and the canyon's rocky riverbed below. High in the crystal sky a solitary condor soars, spreading its wings, catching the rays of the brilliant sun. Fields, hamlets, and cottages with wisps of smoke wafting upward complete the picture.

The source of water and life for the Colca Valley's people is the moisture absorbed by the air as it flows over the Pacific Ocean. The prevailing southwesterly winds push humid sea air upward against the barrier of the Andean cordillera. As the elevation increases the temperature plummets, and humidity is squeezed from the atmosphere to create rain or, in the lofty mountains, sleet and snow. During the wet season, from late November to March, heavy afternoon showers regularly drench the valley, while on the puna violent thunderstorms assault pastoralists and occasional travelers. The force of the elements, especially thunder and lightning, which the Quechua called Llapta, was feared and propitiated by Andeans long after foreigners introduced Christianity.

In the dry season the snowcapped peaks above the puna bestow life-giving water. The sun, venerated as a spiritual force, has ample power midday to melt snow and ice at the edge of stone and rock, creating trickles, then rivulets. And groundwater emerges from springs, which are also venerated. From melting snow at the edges of the region's volcanic cones and the Patacapuquio, or hundred springs of water found toward nearby Lampa, the Colca River is born. After meandering in the puna behind the peaks of Chachani and Misti the river cuts a valley through the highland mass and flows westerly, falling from 3,300 to 2,700 meters before cascading downward, creating a precipitous gorge, deeper than North America's Grand Canyon. Near the end of the profound canyon the Colca joins a river originating in Condesuyos, creating the Majes, before emptying at Caman into the Pacific. It is not just the Colca that provides life-giving water. Upper irrigation channels bring water from other glaciated peaks. Water for Achoma is taken from both melting ice near the base of Hualca Hualca from where it is channeled into the upper Sepina, and from nearby springs. On the south side of the Colca, water is channeled from the summits of Huarancante, Ampato, and Sabancaya; while on the north side, Quehuisha, Mismi, and Huillcaya are the main sources. The longest of the irrigation canals reaches thirty kilometers!

It is in the middle valley, stretching east to west for fifty kilometers, that the bulk of the population is concentrated. The volcanic soil provides a rich foundation for a variety of crops. As early as 2400 BC, inhabitants terraced accessible valley slopes, creating andenes, and they constructed irrigation channels to provide water from mountain streams and springs during the long dry season. At higher valley elevations, they grew the grain quinua (quinoa) and tubers, especially potatoes and olluco; while prized maize was cultivated in intermediate elevations, and squash, beans, gourds, aj (chili peppers), fruits, and nuts were produced at lower levels. Autochthonous farmers planted dozens of varieties of grains and vegetables, a diversity lost by contemporary agriculturalists. On the puna vast flocks of llamas and alpacas grazed. They provided wool, meat, and other products; the larger of the camelids transported goods. On the high flat plateaus native straw, called ichu, was cut for thatching cottage roofs. Game and fowl as well as fish were abundant.

The Colca Valley's idyllic rural setting has its darker side. Earthquakes pose a constant threat. Two-story stone residences often collapsed and killed during earthquakes. Infants and the elderly were especially vulnerable. Landslides buried or swept away entire villages. Furthermore, the quaking earth often devastated agricultural terraces and irrigation channels. More dangerous were volcanic eruptions. Although such events were rare they caused massive destruction, as on 19 February 1600, when Huaynaputina, in nearby Ubinas province, exploded. A dense cloud of volcanic ash drifted northward, sweeping beyond Cuzco into the Amazon basin. Valley crops were covered and destroyed; the only compensation following such tragedies is soil enrichment. A more gradual tectonic upward shift over several generations likely disrupted the natural flow of water, ruining irrigation systems. Floods do major damage during periods of excessive rainfall; mudslides are as destructive as earthquakes, erasing irrigation channels, even hamlets. And there is the gradual impact of longer-term climatic variations.

In Inca times the territory was the home of two ethnic groups: the Collaguas lived in the upper valley, the Cabanas the lower. Smaller ethnicities shared the valley. The Spanish conquerors created a single administrative unit, calling it the province or the corregimiento of Los Collaguas. The confines of the colonial province were supposedly precise; European boundaries were expected to be. But peoples of the valley had kin and, via kin, access to resources in distant locales, even on the desert coastal strip. Andeans viewed basic socioeconomic units as "people," not "place." Controversies between conquerors and colonized erupted throughout the colonial era, the result of fundamentally different views of the relationship between people and land. After conquest, the Spanish toiled to make native practice conform to their own preconception that Collaguas could be defined as inhabiting a land with fixed boundaries; they were only partially successful. Colonial bureaucrats delimited the province of the Collaguas on the south by Caman and Arequipa, on the west by Condesuyos, on the north by Canas y Canchis, and on the east by Urcosuyo. By the Bourbon reforms of the late colonial period, the name was changed to the intendancy of Caylloma, celebrating the silver mines discovered in the northern part of the district in the early 1600s.

The homeland of the Collaguas and Cabanas is vast: the post-Independence district of Caylloma, roughly equivalent in size to the colonial province of Los Collaguas, contains 14,780 square kilometers. Although half the size of Belgium, or three-quarters that of El Salvador, most land is useless for agriculture. Glaciated peaks and rugged mountains constitute much of the province. The relatively level puna, although too frigid for most forms of agriculture, is ideal for herding alpacas and llamas. Exact estimations of the amount of land useful for agriculture is virtually impossible. A 1961 Peruvian agricultural census provides a figure of 25.95 percent, a little less than 4,000 square kilometers. By careful analysis of aerial photographs in the 1980s, the Denevan and Treacy interdisciplinary team calculated that the cultivated area in fields in the twelve communities of the middle valley, including both abandoned and terraces, was approximately 14,356 hectares. Of those about 42 percent were abandoned; their estimate does not include the extensive grazing lands of the puna.

Descent from the Volcano

We are unsure if the first people entering the Colca Valley ascended from the coast, clambering into the intermountain valley, or if they descended from the puna, where they might have been hunting. In either case what lay before them was vastly different from the valley's present scenery, and from what the Europeans saw in the sixteenth century. Climatic variations are imperfectly delineated, but specialists believe that the area was then warmer and more humid, with a denser natural vegetation. The agricultural terraces, the distinctive feature of the recent landscape, were absent. The cultural sequence in the Colca parallels that of nearby highland valleys. Groups evolved from simple hunters, fishers, and gatherers, to sophisticated agriculturalists over the millennia. Two to three millennia before our era, the domestication of plants and animals in Andean America occurred. Centuries before the Inca conquered the region, the basic elements-the irrigation channels, agricultural terraces, and richly varied domesticated crops-were part of the cultural landscape. The advanced socioeconomic organization permitted surplus production of diverse crops, supporting a dense native population.

A reconnaissance of the major archaeological sites in the Colca Valley reveals several important ruins that merit careful excavation. Some of the sites consist of large storage facilities for excess agricultural production. The very name by which the valley is now known, q'olqa, means "deposit" in Quechua. There were storehouses at Huacallua, near Chivay, and Uscallacta, between Chivay and Yanque. There were extensive storage deposits at Achoma, and others have been catalogued in lower zones at Alto de Betancur (between Lluta and Siguas) and the Pampa de Timiran. Furthermore, traces of fortresslike structures on some of the hilltops overlooking the valley floor remain, including two above Achoma. Burial chambers abound, usually in niches in agricultural terraces or in the more inaccessible parts of the canyon wall and the rocky cliffs above the valley.

A number of imposing population clusters attract attention. Ullo Ullo, the original home for many subsequently settled in Yanque under the orders of Viceroy Francisco de Toledo, is a large site with many two-story structures. It is divided into halves by a stream running through the middle, and the sectors are surrounded by walls. Agricultural plots, Yanque Viejo, as the abandoned settlement is called by present villagers, abound with surface potsherds with Inca designs. Ullo Ullo-Ludovico Bertonio in 1612 defined the Aymara word uyu as a livestock corral, and uyu uyu as "when there are many [corrals] together"-was abandoned around 1572. Viceroy Toledo's new Yanque on the canyon's south side was founded on the site of a preexisting hamlet. The Spanish called it La Brota, appropriately meaning "bud" or "sprout." Several preconquest structures at Yanque are easily identified because of their finely worked stone doorways-with serpents, llamas, and circular patterns resembling snails carved on the surface. Some portals sport solidly carved foundation and corner stones. Lower in the valley, Cabanaconde was the home of the Cabanas.

Archaeological evidence for prehistory of the Colca Valley is abundant, and although much remains to be done, substantial investigation has been conducted during recent decades. The dating and study of likely methods of construction of early terraces, the feature that most informs our vision of the Colca Valley, have been completed. The rough outlines of the ceramic and cultural sequence of the valley are in place. Yet much systematic scientific evaluation lies ahead. Unfortunately, many of the questions we wish to ask about the valley's past are not amenable to archaeological probing. When and why did the Inca penetrate the valley? Who were their leaders, and how did the locals respond to their intrusion? How did the Inca incorporate valley peoples into their system? What role did religious belief play in this process? What of economic relationships between the Inca and locals? The written record is absent, for the Andeans lacked writing. Yet records were kept in other ways. Quantities were recorded then manipulated by trained accountants, using colored knotted string memory devices called quipus. Some Spanish chroniclers report that the skilled quipucamayo could "record" chronologies, even recalling numbers of warriors during battles. Also, pictorial "histories" were painted on a variety of surfaces. Such information is difficult to interpret, and much was lost during the shock of Spanish conquest.

Fortuitously through oral history, transferred to writing, the collective memory of the Colca Valley's peoples persists. "From the information that is passed from parents to children," the valley's past was transmitted from one generation to the next. Oral history can be remarkably accurate in preliterate societies for three generations, approximately a century. It can in broad outline if not in exact chronology be valid longer. European administrators made their first systematic attempt to collect information on the valley and its history in the village of Yanque on 20 January 1586, a half century after Spanish penetration. A handful of the respondents were born before the arrival of the outsiders. Most who participated in the inquest belonged to the second generation, the children of the conquered. Their testimony stresses the history of the Collaguas ethnic unit, providing tantalizing glimpses of "Incaization" of the valley preceding European conquest.

The inquiry stemmed from Philip II's desire for detailed information on his realm's resources, both in the Old World and the New. Philip's representatives diligently compiled many geographical reports in the Indies beginning in the 1570s, asking about the people and their products, their history, and the nature of local society and religion. The corregidor (the royal official who governed a district) Juan de Ulloa Mogolln with the scribe Juan Durn oversaw the questioning of Colca Valley residents in the village of Yanque. Over twenty native leaders and outsiders gathered in the plaza to answer thirty-seven questions prepared by officials of the Council of the Indies. It was a short one-day session, and it seems unlikely there were disputes. The questioning was preceded by Mass in the parish church; celebrations with food and drink followed. If there were variations in individual answers, they are imperceptible in the final report. Customarily younger men deferred to community elders. One of the oldest witnesses was Garca Checa, principal kuraka (chieftain, cacique) of Yanque's urinsaya section. Born around 1521 he was old enough to remember life in the valley before the Europeans' arrival, and he provided insight into his people's past. Other principal and secondary kurakas, from both the upper and lower halves of the various communities that composed the valley, also spoke. Kurakas were not the only natives contributing. The interpreter Diego Coro Inga, born in Coporaque, provided important testimony. It is unclear where Diego was educated; Franciscans may have taught him in Coporaque's monastery, established a quarter century earlier. He was both a translator and Coporaque's notary and teacher of reading, writing, and counting. Select Spaniards also contributed their perceptions of the valley.

(Continues...)

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Edition details

• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0822339714
• ISBN 13: 9780822339717
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336