Conjuring With Coca and the Inca. the Andeanization of Lima's Afro-Peruvian Ritual

Conjuring with Coca and the Inca: The Andeanization of Lima's Afro-Peruvian RitualSpecialists, 1580-1690Author(s): Leo J. GarofaloSource: The Americas, Vol. 63, No. 1, The African Diaspora in the Colonial Andes (Jul., 2006),pp. 53-80Published by: Catholic University of America Press on behalf of Academy of AmericanFranciscan HistoryStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4491178Accessed: 15/06/2010 22:29

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The Americas 63:1 July 2006, 53-80

Copyright by the Academy of American Franciscan History

CONJURING WITH COCA AND THE INCA: THE ANDEANIZATION OF LIMA'S AFRO-PERUVIAN

RITUAL SPECIALISTS, 1580-16901

African diasporic communities throughout the Americas played important roles in creating colonial societies, providing both a population base and ways to organize everyday life as evidenced in sub-

sistence activities, housing, language, religion, and artistic expression.2 In the Andes, Afro-Peruvian ritual specialists provide an example of black participation in forging a place in colonial society during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They earned both respect and fear, status and stigma, for their ability to solve a variety of problems and illnesses believed to be caused by the malice of other people or by supernatural forces. These ritualists also show how people of African descent helped invent widely- employed strategies to bridge cultures and link heterogeneous colonial populations in Andean cities.

The cases collected here reveal a gradual and progressive shift in the

emphasis of ritual practice among the colony's non-indigenous ritual specialists, particularly in urban areas. First, Native Andean practices served as

Archival research in 1995 and 1996-1998 for this article was supported by Tinker and Vilas travel

grants, a Social Sciences Research Council Grant, and a Fulbright Dissertation Fellowship. A University of Wisconsin Fellowship for Dissertators supported the original writing. Comments from Kelvin A. Yelv-

ington on my American Historical Association paper delivered at the Annual Meeting in Boston, 2001 and from the participants in the 2003 Workshop on Marking Difference in Colonial Latin America helped me improve the analysis. Ben Vinson, III, helped me present my ideas more clearly. I owe a special thanks to the archivists in Peru and Spain who helped me locate the documents used in this article.

2 New works are appearing to document the diversity of the African experience in colonial Spanish America. Among the collections offering an overview are a special issue edited by Matthew Restall and Jane Landers, The Americas 57:2 (October 2000), and Matthew Restall, ed., Beyond Black and Red:

African-Native Relations in Colonial Latin America (Albuquerque: New Mexico, 2005). The participation of blacks in the militias of Mexico and coastal Peru show one way that members of this population carved out a place and limited privileges in a colonial order that defined them at the racial and social bottom of society. For examples see Ben Vinson, III, Bearing arms for his majesty: the free-colored mili- tia in colonial Mexico (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001) and the special issue on African dias-

poric military history in Latin America edited by Ben Vinson, III and Stewart King, The Journal of Colo- nialism and Colonial History 5:2 (Fall 2004).

53

54 CONJURING WITH COCA AND THE INCA

a key source of special powers; then a more hybridized, "colonial Andean practice" emerged that drew upon Iberian, indigenous, and African knowledge and eventually resulted in the invention of unique "colonial" ritual concepts. For instance, rites included a newly imagined Inca protector that over- saw the well-being and desires of his supplicants, as well as coca leaf ceremonies that showcased the plant's curative and divinatory powers. As these practices developed, particularly over the course of the 17th century, Lima's Afro-Peruvian ritual specialists often led the way in creating a new collection of ritual practices and ideas about the supernatural, rooted in established, but still dynamic, traditions.

From the 1580s to the 1690s, many Africans and their children and grand- children figured prominently in establishing common practices of witchcraft and amatory magic in Peru's cities. In an initial phase (1580s and 1590s), Afro-Peruvians helped adapt Iberian and Catholic traditions to the Andes.3 Early Afro-Peruvian and Spanish involvement in Native Andean ritual remained limited to hiring indigenous practitioners under special circum- stances. In the 1620s and 1630s, a second phase began as Afro-Peruvian specialists took the lead in tentative experimentation with Andean products and techniques. By the 1650s, tentative exploration of indigenous knowledge gave way to urban specialists' desire to more directly control and revise indigenous methods of exposing the occult and activating supernatural power. Afro-Peruvian specialists, therefore, incorporated and then reinter- preted Native Andean concepts in urban witchcraft. Black specialists coupled these colonial versions of indigenous ideas with their own magical inventions utilizing colonial drinks and pre-Hispanic remains. From the 1660s to the 1690s, Afro-Peruvian ritual specialists helped blend together Catholic prayers, Native Andean coca leaves, invocations of a re-imagined Inca ruler, grape brandy and other colonial drinks, into a unique and coher- ent body of urban witchcraft that the Catholic Church failed to effectively suppress, even when using ecclesiastical investigations and the Inquisition.

Lima's skilled ritualists worked to serve clients and developed their body of specialized knowledge during a period of intense Church interest in the

3 The analysis offered here focuses primarily on Iberian and Andean ritual elements and notions, leaving a more extensive examination of possible African continuities and sensibilities to another study. The degree, nature, and shape of this African influence in both the Americas and Iberia need to be fully explored for this period. Juan Carlos Estenssoro Fuchs follows Jean-Pierre Tardieu and Fernando Romero (see below) in asserting that African magic did not appear in an identifiable form in the Inqui- sition trials. Juan Carlos Estenssoro Fuchs, "La construcci6n de un mis alli colonial: Hechiceros en Lima

(1630-1710)," Entre mundos. Fronteras culturales y agents mediadores, eds. B. Ares Queija and Serge Gruuzinski (Seville: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos, 1997), p. 431, n. 30.

LEO J. GAROFALO 55

colonial population's religious beliefs and ritual activities. The campaigns to extirpate idolatries launched by Lima's archbishops (1609-1622, 1649-1670, 1720s), and the Inquisition established in Lima in 1570, constituted the two principal institutional means used to expose, document, and control the populace's religious beliefs and ritual practices in Lima and its surrounding hin- terland. 4 These sporadic efforts were designed to re-direct or suppress beliefs in specific ways, and they created the documents that historians rely upon to reconstruct those beliefs.5 Idolatry investigations in Lima's archbishopric began in 1609, following the denunciation by the rural priest Francisco de Avila that his indigenous parishioners were continuing to worship their former deities during Christian celebrations. Over the years, the idolatry investigators burned ancestor mummies and other sacred items (sometimes in Lima), ordered floggings, and exiled Andean religious teachers, often to a school in Lima's Jesuit-run, El Cercado parish. Designed to correct backslid- ing among indigenous converts, the extirpation campaigns suffered from a lack of consistent institutional support and funds. The intrusive and harsh measures adopted to impose standard Christian worship, and the economic burden of supporting the investigating judges and their retinues, often alien- ated communities from Church personnel and Christianity. Together, the idolatry trials reveal that local religious life-including devotion to ancestors and-huacas (regional or local divinity occupying a sacred place or object regularly nourished by offerings), along with the use of conopas (personal divinity guaranteeing fecundity and often represented by a small figurine) and a variety of rites/offerings to guarantee fertility, harvests, and water- continued at the local level in the Andes, and in many cases blended with Catholic elements and Christian concepts. Saints, for instance, became pro- tectors and intercessors alongside native deities, local celebrations merged with official Church celebrations, offerings were made simultaneously to saints and huacas.6 The documentation also reveals that the campaigns'

4 A similar campaign had been carried out by Crist6bal de Albornoz to root out the 1560s Taqui Onqoy nativist revival movement in the central highlands. Luis Millones, ed., El retorno de la huacas (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1990); Gabriela Ramos, "Politica eclesiaistica y extirpaci6n de idolatrias: discursos y silencios en torno al Taqui Onqoy," Catolicismo y extirpacidn de idolatrias, siglos XVI-XVIII, eds. Gabriela Ramos and Henrique Urbano (Cuzco: Centro de Estudios Regionales Andinos

"Bartolom6 de Las Casas," 1993), pp. 137-168. 5 For examples of the manuals used to expose and eradicate indigenous practices see; Pablo Joseph

de Arriaga, La extirpacidn de la idolatria en el Peru (1621), ed. Henrique Urbano (Cuzco: CBC, 1999); and Pedro de Villag6mez, Carta pastoral de exortacidn e instruccidn contra las idolatrias (Lima: Jorge L6pez de Herrera, 1649).

6 Pierre Duviols, Cultura andina y represi6n. Procesos y visitas de idolatrias y hechicerias, Cajatambo siglo XVII (Cuzco: Centro de Estudios Rurales Andinos "Bartolom6 de Las Casas," 1986); Kenneth Mills, Idolatry and Its Enemies: Colonial Andean Religion and Extirpation, 1640-1750 (Prince- ton: Princeton University Press, 1997); Nicholas Griffiths, The Cross and the Serpent: Religious Repres-


investigating judges questioned and sanctioned non-Indians, too. They carried out investigations in and around the city of Lima, where similar ritual combinations were taking place. An examination by Alejandra B. Osorio of the women accused by the campaigns of witchcraft in the city of Lima showed "complex combinations of 'dominant' (i.e. Counter-Reformation Catholic) and 'subaltern' (i.e. Andean, African and Spanish 'popular' practices) elements, revealing that processes of transculturation were at work in colonial Peru" and that marginal women's roles could be pivotal in such processes.' In Lima and on the coast in general, Afro-Peruvians appear among those involved in the communities and activities investigated.8 There- fore, the Afro-Peruvian role within these communities and activities needs to be more fully studied, particularly for Lima with its black majority. When combined with documents from the Inquisition and secular courts, these trials open a rare window into the beliefs and ritual activities of people of African- descent during the first century and a half of Spanish rule in the Andes.

Perhaps the richest-and most problematic-source on the beliefs and practices of Lima's African-based population is the Inquisition. Approved by King Philip II in 1569 and beginning operations in Peru in 1570, Lima's Tribunal of the Inquisition held jurisdiction over the viceroyalty's blacks and all other non-Indians. Charged with enforcing religious orthodoxy, the inquisitors punished a variety of crimes in Lima including Judaizing (secretly observing Jewish rites while publicly practicing Christianity), blasphemy, bigamy, solicitation of women in confession, Protestantism, posses- sion of heretical books, witchcraft, and superstition. The most spectacular and terrifying trails and public punishments in Lima's autos de fe involved

sion and Resurgence in Colonial Peru (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995); Antonio Acosta Rodriguez, "Los clerigos doctrineros y la economia colonial 1600-1630," Allpanchis 16:19 (1982), pp. 117-149; Antonio Acosta, "La extirpaci6n de idolatrias en el Perni: Origen y desarrollo de las campafias. A prop6sito de Cultura andina y represi6n," Revista Andina 5:1 (1987), pp. 171-195; Juan Carlos Garcia Cabrera, "Por qu6 mintieron los indios de Cajatambo? La extirpaci6n de la idolatria en Hacas entre 1656- 1665," Revista Andina 14:1 (July, 1996), pp. 7-53.

7 Alejandra B. Osorio, "El callej6n de la soledad: Vectors of Cultural Hybridity in Seventeenth-century Lima," Spiritual Encounters: Interactions Between Christianity and Native Religions in Colonial America, eds. Nicholas Griffiths and Fernando Cervantes, (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), p. 218; Alejandra B. Osorio, "Hechicerias y curanderas en la Lima del siglo XVII. Formas femeninas de control y acci6n social," Mujeres y gdnero en la historia del Peru', ed. Margarita Zegarra F (Lima: CENDOC-Mujer, 1999), pp. 59-75.

8 Ana Sinchez, ed., Amancebados, hechiceros y rebeldes (Chancay, siglo XVII) (Cuzco: Centro Bar-

tolom6 de las Casas, 1991); Juan Carlos Garcia Cabrera, Ofensas a Dios, pleitos e injurias: Causas de idolatria y hechicerias, Cajatambo siglos XVII-XVIII (Cuzco: Centro Bartolom6 de las Casas, 1994). Afro-Peruvians also appear in the coca-distribution networks in seventeenth-century Lima and its envi- rons. See: Archival Arzobispal de Lima (AAL), Hechicherfas, Leg. 6, Exp. 5, 7, 9, 12, 14, 15, 1668-1669; and the analysis of these documents in Leo J. Garofalo, "The Ethno-Economy of Food, Drink, and Stim- ulants: The Making of Race in Colonial Lima and Cuzco," dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 2001.

LEO J. GAROFALO 57

those accused of Judaizing. However, numerous blasphemy, bigamy, and solicitation cases were also tried in Lima, and periodically, interest in pros- ecuting witchcraft and superstition arose as people voluntarily denounced themselves, and as the Holy Office found the time and finances to hear these cases.9 Afro-Peruvians appeared frequently in the investigations into blasphemy, bigamy, witchcraft, and superstition.

Witchcraft and superstition trials provide an unparalleled and complex source for research into gender relations and ethno-cultural change. Maria Emma Mannarelli found that most of the accused witches in Lima and those who consulted them were women. Many female solicitors often crossed ethnic boundaries to meet ritualists and to participate in clandestine ceremonies. In these ceremonies, they frequently sought to control male behavior--especially male sexual behavior-and even discussed their own sexuality.10 Having examined the Inquisition documents in detail, as well as documents from extirpation campaigns, Juan Carlos Estenssoro Fuchs and Javier Flores conclude that professional hechiceros (sorcerers widely known for their talents and possessing the clout to charge for their services) emerged from among the poorest sectors of Spanish, Indian, black, mestizo, and casta society living in and around Lima. The multiple contacts these professional ritualists possessed, and their clients, who sometimes learned to reproduce the rites that they witnessed, ultimately facilitated access to distinct traditions, encouraged some forms of hybridity, and expanded and enriched the knowledge of each practitioner.1 Irene Silverblatt's study of Inquisition cases finds this same "triumvirate of racial cultures" in Lima's witchcraft trials

9 Jose Toribio Medina, Historia del Tribunal de la Inquisici6n de Lima (1569-1820) (Santiago: Fondo Hist6rico y Bibliograifico, 1956), v. 2, pp. 34-40; Ren6 Millar C., Inquisicidn y Sociedad en el Vir- reinato Peruano: Estudios sobre el Tribunal de la Inquisici6n de Lima (Lima. Santiago: Ediciones Uni- versidad Cat6lica de Chile, 1998); Gustav Henningsen, "La evangelizaci6n negra; difusi6n de la magia europea por la America colonial," Revista de la Inquisicidn, 3 (1994), pp. 9-27; Paulino Castafieda Del-

gado and Pilar Hernindez Aparicio, "Los delitos de superstici6n en la Inquisici6n de Lima durante el

siglo XVII," Revista de la Inquisicidn 4 (1995), pp. 9-35; Paulino Castafieda Delgado and Pilar Hernin- dez Aparicio, La Inquisicidn de Lima, v. 1 (Madrid: DEIMOS, 1989); Paulino Castafieda Delgado and Pilar Hernindez Aparicio, La Inquisicidn de Lima, v. 2 (Madrid: DEIMOS, 1995).

10 Maria Emma Mannarelli, "Inquisici6n y mujeres: las hechiceras en el Peri durante el siglo XVII," Revista Andina 3:1 (1985), pp. 141-156; Maria Emma Mannarelli, Hechiceras, beatas y expdsitas: Mujeres y poder inquisitorial en Lima (Lima, Peru: Ediciones del Congreso del Perni, 1999).

" For example, Estenssoro Fuchs identified various seventeenth-century ritual elements including the culturally significant conversion of the Spanish prayer to the anima sola into the invocation of the "three souls" (espafiol-negro-indio). Estenssoro Fuchs, "La construcci6n de un mais allai," pp. 415-439; Juan Carlos Estenssoro Fuchs, Del paganismo a la santidad: La incorporacidn de los indios del Peru' al catolicismo, 1532-1750, trans. Gabriela Ramos, (Lima: PUCP, IFEA, 2003), pp. 373-438; Javier Flores, "Hechiceria e idolatria en Lima colonial (siglo XVII)," Poder y violencia en los Andes, ed. Henrique Urbano (Cuzco: Centro de Estudios Regionales Andinos Bartolom6 de las Casas, 1991), pp. 53-74.


and links it to the Inquisition's promotion throughout the population of the race thinking that categorized people as espafiol, indio, or negro.12

The investigations conducted by the Inquisition, ecclesiastical courts, and royal officials gathered information under potentially very coercive circum- stances and must be used with tremendous care. Researchers can avoid the question of what really occurred or what ideas people really acted on by focusing primarily on what was said, by whom and why. This discourse approach renders rich results and important insights into the creation and maintenance of systems of power and the labeling that goes along with them. Equally important, however, is the effort to reconstruct and understand the actions and ideas that may have really taken place and existed behind the web of accusations, charges, countercharges, denials, and positioning through discourse that is always present in these cases. This article attempts to carefully bring forward these insights about actions and ideology. Whenever possible the analysis uses the first testimony given or testimony not guided by leading questions or responding to accusations. To the best extent possible, the article combines ecclesiastical, criminal, and Inquisition cases to achieve a broad view of social behavior as documented by various colonial institutions. So as to acquire an understanding of routine, ordinary daily conduct, the analysis highlights the activities and actions that were not questioned by the parties involved in the cases, as well as the rites and elements of behavior that nobody disputed. These practices were more likely to have formed the basis of the ritual forms employed by Peru's colonial ritual specialists.

In the body of the court cases, oftentimes the most contentious aspects of the litigation proceedings were not the ritual practices themselves, but rather who was credited with leading the rites, who knew the most about their power, who proved effective or ineffective in executing them, and who received pay- ment but never delivered or never properly performed the rites in question. People also hotly debated whether these actions really contradicted Church teachings, or whether the devil was invoked as a collaborator or not.

The cases analyzed here span several decades, involve various sets of inquisitors and local informants, as well as many groups of women practitioners and their clients. Interestingly, the language of witchcraft found in the cases was also quite unique and distinct from that found in the witchcraft

12 Silverblatt also argues that the Inquisition defended Spanish colonialism's cultural hegemony and hierarchies against a transgressive witchcraft ideology and an enthusiasm for stereotypes of "Indian- ness." Irene Silverblatt, Modemrn Inquisitions: Peru and the Colonial Origins of the Civilized World (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), pp. 162-185.

LEO J. GAROFALO 59

manuals that were circulating in Peru.13 Lastly, it appears that the efforts of Lima's Inquisition to curb witchcraft, no matter how serious and disruptive. of individual people's lives, did not seem to halt or reduce the importance of ritual specialists in Lima. More people were denounced or mentioned than the Inquisition could ever investigate, forcing the Tribunal to concentrate on the most notorious cases. Additionally, the people investigated and even forced to penance by the Holy Office sometimes reappeared in court, charged with having returned to prohibited practices. Despite the real fears officials had about the appeal of indigenous culture to non-Indians in urban centers (as mentioned by Irene Silverbaltt) and the seriousness with which individual cases of witchcraft were viewed by those directly affected, Lima's Tribunal and in its supervisory body (the Suprema in Madrid) generally viewed witchcraft as mere superstition, a much lesser offense than demonic pacts or idolatry-both of which entailed an outright rejection of Christianity. If used carefully, much can be learned about how colonial residents of Lima actually thought and acted from these documents.

The vigor and diversity of Afro-Peruvian religious and ritual participation reflected the size and centrality of Lima's African-descent population.14 A

13 Gustav Henningsen, The Witches'Advocate: Basque Witchcraft and the Spanish Inquisition (1609- 1614) (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1980); Silverblatt, Modern Inquisitions, p. 165; Carlo Ginzburg, Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method, trans. John and Anne C. Tedeschi (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1989).

14 The Inquisition was not the only institution examining or bearing witness to Afro-Peruvian spiritu- ality. The 1619 Archbishop's review of Lima's parishes and churches praised the religious confraternity of Nuestra Sefiora de los Reyes, founded by "negros de diferentes castas," as one of the city's best and most illustrious lay brotherhoods. It was one among at least fourteen Afro-Peruvian confraternities in Lima. The report also mentioned several other brotherhoods in the archbishopric's towns and rural parishes outside of Lima, and it noted the importance given at times in these organizations to African ethnic origins, as opposed to black creole heritage. Archivo General de las Indias (AGI), Lima 301, "Relaci6n de las ciudades, villas, y lugares... parrochias y doctrinas que hay en este Arqobispado de Lima," 20-IV-1619, ff. 1-37r. The cofradia records in the Archbishop's Archive of Lima and in the archive of the Sociedad de Beneficencia

Piblica, as well as bequests and last wills and testaments, help to complete the picture of a vibrant and active African-descent population in Lima that was engaged with multiple forms of religious and ritual life. AAL, Cofradifas, Legajos 10, 20, 21, 42; AAL, Testamentos; Jean-Pierre Tardieu, Los negros y la igle- sia en el Peru', siglos XVI-XVII (Quito: Centro Cultural Afroecuatoriano, 1997). Not all African-descent people active in confraternities belonged to those cofradfas founded by people tracing their origins to Africa. For example, the mulatto actor and soldier Diego Suirez participated in and donated money to various confraternities in Seville and in Peru, none was specifically linked to African-descent. AGI, Contrat- aci6n, 255, N1, R5, "Bienes de difuntos, Diego Suirez," 1590-1600, ft. 1-185r. Perhaps two of the best- documented examples drawn from Church sources include the devotion to the Crucificado in Pachacamilla (later appropriated by the viceroys and the cabildos as the Sefior de los Milagros) and the popular black religious figures-like San Martin de Porras (1579-1639) and Ursula de Jestis (1604-1666)-living as members of prominent religious communities in Lima. Celia Langdeau Cussen, "Fray Martin de Porres and the religious imagination of Creole Lima," diss. University of Pennsylvania, 1996; Maria Rost- worowski de Diez Canseco, Pachacamac y el Sehor de los Milagros. Una trayectoria milenaria (Lima:


growing body of scholarship on Afro-Peruvians in the last two decades has built upon a small set of seminal studies to offer an increasingly complete and complex picture of Lima's population of African-descent. James Lock- hart documented the presence of Africans and Afro-Iberians from the beginning of the Spanish invasion and noted their importance in re-producing a Hispanic society in Peru's colonial cities between 1532 and 1560.15 Freder- ick P. Bowser, along with German Peralta and Fernando Romero, explained how the growing demand for urban and agricultural laborers and slaves as status symbols in Lima, and on the coast more generally, fueled the establishment of the commercial, financial, and governmental networks neces- sary to make Lima a major destination for the slave trade through 1650. The traffic of slaves along the Pacific coast and the growth of the local population made Afro-Peruvians forty percent or more of Lima's population, with significant representation of multiple African ethnic groups. Bowser's in- depth study of the centrality of enslaved and free Africans in the Peruvian economy during the first half of the colonial period also examined daily life, resistance and manumission, social integration, and social control.16 Emilio

Harth-Terr6 showed how Lima's indigenous population interacted exten- sively with Afro-Peruvians, even to the point of owning slaves and involv- ing them in artisan work.17 The agency of slaves and freedmen and the logic behind their decisions to enter into court battles, working with notaries and scribes to write their own documents, cannot be ignored. Jose Ram6n Jouve

Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1992); Susy Sanchez Rodriguez, "Un Cristo Moreno 'conquista' Lima: Los arquitectos de la fama pdblica del Sefior de los Milagros (1651-1771)," Etnicidad y Discriminacidn Racial en la Historia del Peru, Ana Cecilia Carrillo Saravia, Ciro Corilla Melchor, Diego Levano Medina, Roberto Rivas Aliaga, Rosario Rivoldi Nicolini, and Susy Sanchez Rodriguez (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Cat61lica del Pert, Instituto Riva Agtiero, Banco Mundial, 2002), pp. 65-92; Nancy E. van Deusen, The Souls of Purgatory: The Spiritual Diary of a Seventeenth-century Afro-Peruvian Mystic, Ursula de Jesu's (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2004).

15 James Lockhart, Spanish Peru, 1532-1560: A Colonial Society (Madison: University of Wiscon- sin Press, 1968), pp. 171-198.

16 Frederick P. Bowser, The African Slave in Colonial Peru, 1524-1650 (Stanford: Stanford U. Press, 1974); German Peralta, Los mecanismos del comercio negrero (Lima: Kuntur Editores, CONCYTEC, Interbanc, 1990); Fernando Romero, Safari africano y compraventa de esclavos para el Perd: 1412-1818 (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1994); Carlos Aguirre's excellent overview of Peruvian slavery cites these figures and mentions that an estimated 100,000 slaves were brought to Peru during the colonial period, Breve historia de la esclavitud en el Peru'. Una herida que no deja de sangrar (Lima: Fondo Editorial del Congreso del Perti, 2005), pp. 21-22.

17 Emilio Harth-Terre, Negros e indios: un estamento social ignorado en el Perdi colonial (Lima: Editorial Juan Mejia Baca, 1974). Research into the late colonial relations between Indians and Afro- Peruvians in Limas has generated two different views: one of cooperation and coexistence based on mat- rimonial records, and another of conflict and distrust based on court cases. See: Jesuis Cosamal6n Aguilar, Indios detrds de la muralla. Matrimonios indigenas y convivencia inter-racial en Santa Ana (Lima, 1795-1820) (Lima: PUCP, 1999); and Alberto Flores Galindo, La ciudad sumergida. Aristocracia y plebe, Lima (1760-1830) (Lima: Mosca Azul, 1984).

LEO J. GAROFALO 61

Martin demonstrates just how important their interaction with legal and written culture was in Lima between 1650 and 1700.18 Together these studies establish the crucial role Afro-Peruvians played in every aspect of Lima's colonial life and the need to continue the efforts to understand the personal and communal goals that motivated their actions and interactions with other

groups in colonial society.

In this article, considering the place of Afro-Peruvians in Inquisition and

extirpation campaigns in Lima allows us to explore aspects of black agency and interethnic relations in the early African experience in Lima. The prominence and activities of Lima's black ritual specialists lead us to question interpretations of Afro-Peruvians as primarily conduits of Hispanic culture and values. Although typically associated with Spaniards and American- born Spanish colonists, Lima's African immigrants and their descendants also labored with, and learned from individuals of various African and Andean ethnic groups. In order to attract clients and expand their networks in multiethnic neighborhoods, Afro-Peruvian experts in healing, ritual

cleansing, and amatory or love magic selectively combined various magical traditions, inadvertently becoming cultural mediators and helping to establish a unique colonial culture in Andean cities. This urban culture under

Spanish rule both emphasized the crossing of multiple ethnic lines for pur- poses of ritual problem-solving, while at the same time continuing to retain

important ethno-racial distinctions outside of these circles. In the coastal

viceregal capital of Lima and Peru's other colonial centers, Afro-Peruvian magical specialists resembled other groups of cultural mediators, such as those who produced and sold food and drink in marketplaces, taverns, and

dry-goods stores.19 In both forums, each group of mediators developed ways

18 Jose Ram6n Jouve Martin, Esclavos de la ciudad letrada: Esclavitud, escritura y colonialismo en Lima (1650-1700) (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 2005). For individual and collective efforts to secure manumission and abolition in late colonial and early republican Peru see: Christine Hiinefeldt, Paying the Price of Freedom: Family and Labor among Lima 's Slaves, 1800-1854 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); Fernando de Trazegnies Granda, Ciriaco de Urtecho: Litigante por amor

(Lima: Pontificia Universidad Cat61lica del Perni, 1995); and Carlos Aguirre, Agentes de su propia liber- tad. Los esclavos de Lima y la desintegracidn de la esclavitud, 1821-1854 (Lima: Pontificia Universidad

Cat61lica del Peru, 1993). Marcel Velizquez Castro offers an equally innovative study of the construction of the image and discourse about slaves and slavery from the perspective of literary analysis for the

period from 1775 to 1895, Las mdscaras de la representacidn. El sujeto esclavista y las rutas del racismo en el Peru' (1775-1895) (Lima: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, 2005).

19 Leo J. Garofalo, "La sociabilidad plebeya en las pulperfas y tavernas de Lima y Cusco, 1600-

1690," Mds alld de la dominacidn y la resistencia: Ensayos de historia peruana, eds. Paulo Drinot and Leo J. Garofalo (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 2005), pp. 104-135; Leo J. Garofalo, "La bebida del inca en copas colonials: Los curacas del mercado de chicha del Cuzco, 1640-1700," Elites indigenas en los Andes: Nobles, caciques y cabildantes bajo el yugo colonial, eds. David Cahill and Blanca Tovias

(Quito: Ediciones Abya-Yala, 2003), pp. 175-211.


of drawing simultaneously upon the various cultural streams present in urban Andean society to market their product, without necessarily erasing the ability to mark differences in the process.

EARLY AFRO-PERUVIANS AND IBERIAN & INDIGENOUS WITCHCRAFT

TRADITIONS, 1580S-1590s

As the royal administrative presence matured into an effective colonial state and the Holy Office was established in South America in the late sixteenth century, the Inquisition's representatives received reports of people engaged in "superstitious acts" in Peru's major urban centers, particularly in the viceregal capital. In Lima in the 1590's, European- and American-born mulattas and European-born Spanish women admitted to seeking-with broken pieces of altar stone and Catholic-style prayers-sources of power for attracting luck and controlling men. The women questioned agreed on the general properties of altar stone. By carrying the stone with her, a woman would enjoy good luck. If she then touched a man, he would desire her. In order to calm an angry husband or seduce or marry an eligible but reluctant man, a woman could grind this potent material into a powder and

give it to him in food or chocolate. In one case, a freed black woman born in Lima (negra horra) colluded with other poor, free black women to use altar fragments sewn into a sash or in a powdered form to bring material wealth or secure male partners. These friends believed that they could win a man by kissing him with the fragment or powder in their mouths and while

invoking its power by saying "sacred altar fallen from the sky, thrown into the sea and by the virtue God bestowed upon you, may I be desired and loved."20 In addition to the altar stone itself, these women borrowed the

20 These Afro-Peruvian users of the altar stone and those mentioned above employed similar words. Each mentioned the altar material's celestial and watery origins, its sacred quality, and its ability to affect human affections and fortunes. Archivo Historico Nacional (Madrid) (AHN), Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro

1028, "[Relaci6n de causas despachadas de abril 1594 a 14-111-1595]," Lima, 1595, ff. 321-322. The

hechiceria cases against Ana de Castafieda and Joana de Castafieda in the 1580s and 1590s document similar uses of ara and prayers to Saint Martha for similar ends. Both women continued their work after their initial chastisement by the Inquisition: in 1611 and 1612, the two unrelated mulattas again found themselves accused of amatory magic and of mixing the sacred with the profane. AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro 1029, "Relaqion de las personas que salieron al auto publico de la fee que se qelebro por la Inquisi- cion del Piru en 10 de deziembre del afio de 600 y de sus causas y de las que se han despachado fuera de auto desde abril passado hasta fin de Marqo de 1601," Lima, ff. 4v-5v.; AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro

1030, "Relacion de causas despachadas entre 1-V-1613 y 31-111-1614," f. 20; AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro 1028, "[Relacion de personas que salieron en el auto de fe 30-XI-1587]," Lima, ff. 180-180v.; AHN,

Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro 1028, "Relaci6n de causas determinadas en auto publico de fe, domingo de Qua- simodo [5-IV-1592]," Lima, ff. 231v.-233; AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro 1029, "Relaci6n de causas

despachadas... entre 30-IV-1611 hasta 30-IV-1612," Lima, ff. 478v.-479; AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro

1029, "Relaci6n de causas despachadas... [entre 17-VI-1612 hasta 30-IV-1613]," Lima, ff. 499-507.

LEO J. GAROFALO 63

words of the Catholic Credo and the prayers to St. Martha and the Holy Trin- ity. In the 1580s and 1590s, Afro-Peruvian women believed in St. Martha's capacity to intercede on women's behalf and make men "as tame and humble as Christ coming to the cross."21 Strikingly similar activities appeared in highland cities, too, among Afro-Peruvian, Spanish-born, Span- ish creole, and mestiza women. They used these Church-derived words and materials for their amorous ends and in clandestine efforts to placate unfaith- ful or violent spouses for themselves or female clients.22

In this initial period in the sixteenth-century, Afro-Peruvian magical practices in urban areas most resembled southern Iberian beliefs. Not surpris- ingly, many of the women involved as ritualists had grown up in the Span- ish and Portuguese Atlantic slave system. Many had lived in Cape Verde, Lisbon, or Seville, or were born in these cities and their surrounding towns to enslaved or free mothers from Africa, and European or Afro-Iberian fathers. Several witnesses and defendants, including Spaniards, testified to the importance of learning ritual practices in Seville or from women who were raised in that great city. Indeed, for the Catholic Church and the Span- ish Inquisition more specifically, this famous gateway to the Americas represented something of a blot on the religious body of the Peninsula. Located in Andalusia, Seville once sheltered Muslims and Jews. Even after the

expulsions and forced conversions of these groups, many families and communities of uncertain faith remained or moved to Portuguese ports or Por-

tuguese holdings overseas. Furthermore, the concurrence of merchants, sailors, and other foreigners in the port raised fears in the Holy Office about the introduction of Protestantism.23 The Inquisition's suspicions found con-

21 In popular Iberian tradition during the early Catholic Reformation, the faithful considered St. Martha, the sister of Maria Magdalena, the female conqueror of the tyrannical dragon-man-devil. Ana Sanchez, "Mentalidad popular frente a ideologifa oficial," ed. Enrique Urbano, Poder en los Andes

(Cuzco: Centro Bartolom6 de Las Casas, 1991), pp. 50-5 1; Nanda Leonardini and Patricia Borda, Dic-

cionario inconogrdfico religioso peruano (Lima: Rubican Editores, 1996), p. 172. 22 AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro 1028, "Relaci6n de causas determinadas en el auto publico de fe

celebrado domingo de quiasimodo 5-IV-1592-y de otras determinadas fuera de auto hasta 16-V-1592," Lima, 1592, ff. 233-235, 262-262v., 282-282v.

23 Henry Kamen, Inquisition and Society in Spain in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985); Henry Kamen, Spain, 1469-1714: A Society of Conflict (New York: Longman, 1991); Antonio Dominguez Ortiz and Bernard Vincent, Historia de los moriscos. Vida y tragedia de una minoria (Madrid: Biblioteca de la Revista de Occidente, 1978); Luis Garcia Ballester, Los moriscos y la medicina. Un capitulo de la medicina y la ciencia marginadas en la Espaiia del siglo XVI (Barcelona: Labor Universitaria, 1984); Ricardo Garcia Circel, Herejia y sociedad en el

siglo XVI: La Inquisicidn en Valencia, 1530-1609 (Barcelona: Ediciones Peninsula, 1980); Jos6 R. Abas- cal y Sainz, Brujeria y Magia (Evasiones del pueblo andaluz) (Seville: Foundaci6n Blas Infante, 1984); Stephen Haliczer, Inquisition and Society in the Kingdom of Valencia, 1478-1834 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). In the Novelas ejemplares, Miguel de Cervantes incorporated the stories he


firmation in a vibrant community of sophisticated ritual specialists, who, despite Church hostility, continued to flourish in Seville and inspired the

spread of their practices to the Americas.24 Lisbon and Seville-and more

generally southern Iberia-stood out as the source for many Peruvian colonists' beliefs and practices, particularly in the 1580s and 1590s.

Enslaved people's efforts to perform and maintain other ceremonies faced stiff opposition in Peru. In the late sixteenth century, Lima's municipal authorities and ecclesiastical courts cooperated successfully in suppressing drumming, dancing, and virtually every other attempt by people of African descent to gather publicly. Religious confraternities under the supervision of

priests and friars may have provided more leeway for preserving elements of Afro-Peruvian ceremonies, as special efforts were made to understand and evangelize African populations arriving to and living up and down the Andes.25 In the 1580s and 1590s, Afro-Peruvian beliefs regarding the supernatural seemed to experience a better chance of survival and transmission in the context of hidden Iberian and African practices already in the process of

changing and flowing through the Atlantic world and into the Americas.

Indigenous influences on African and European immigrants' urban magical practices, likewise, remained weak in the sixteenth century, except in rural areas. Where colonists lived in greater isolation from the developing urban society, Native Andean diviners and curers found believers among immigrants. Along with amatory magic, divination rapidly brought colonists to consult indigenous practitioners, particularly in heavily indigenous rural areas. However, the non-Indian clients still treated Native Andean specialists as experts in a body of knowledge they deemed separate from their own, and

rarely attempted to learn or copy their craft. For example, a Spanish cleric in a rural Indian parish believing that two pieces of silver plate had been stolen from him, fully assented to the authority of an ethnic chief, consulting an old

heard about a famous and historic witch in the Andalusian countryside, a region where he worked as a

procurer for the Spanish Armada. Alvaro Huerga, "El proceso inquisitorial contra la Camanch," Cer- vantes su obra y su mundo, ed. Manuel Criado de Val (Madrid: EDI S.A., 1981); Miguel de Cervantes, Novelas ejemplares, v. 2, ed. Harry Sieber (Madrid: Ediciones Caitedra, 1985).

24 AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro 1028, "Relaci6n de causas...," Lima, 1592, ff. 233-235. 25 Religious strategies to classify, evangelize, and control Africans in Spanish South America can be

found in Alonso de Sandoval, De Instauranda Aethiopum Salute, ed. Enriqueta Vila Vilar (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1987) and Diego de Avendatio, Thesaurus Indicus, trans. Angel Mufioz Garcia (Pam- plona: Universidad de Navarra, 2001). Many examples of the extraordinary and day-to-day restrictions

appear in the Libros de cabildo de Lima, 14 libros, ed. Juan Bromley (Lima: Torres-Aguirre, 1942-1963) and in the unpublished "Libros de Cedulas y Provisiones de Lima" and "Libros de Cabildo de Lima" in the Archivo Municipal de Lima. Restrictions and their violations and enforcement are analyzed in

Bowser, The African Slave in Colonial Peru, 1524-1650, and Harth-Terr6, Negros e indios.

LEO J. GAROFALO 65

Indian woman about the silver's whereabouts. Meanwhile, in another highland village, an encomendera sought the local priest's aid to find an Indian herbalist who could help her locate missing household items and determine the cause of her illness. Another rural priest boasted of possessing his own

indigenous "witch" for consultations. All of these cases point to sixteenth-

century efforts by colonists who were isolated in the countryside to enlist Native Andean authorities and specialists to help restore good health and

missing property. In moments of personal crisis or need, these immigrant clients even accepted indigenous theories about divination or disease. For

example, they came to believe (at least on the surface) that social disequilib- rium, such as adultery, caused bodily illness.26 Notably, these immigrants avoided attempting to personally replicate the magical services rendered to them. Instead they hired or manipulated these indigenous specialists and eventually counted them among their other household servants and retainers.

Signs of this same phenomenon of seeking indigenous specialists for specific tasks also appeared in Lima among Afro-Peruvians. Born in Chile to an Indian mother (described simply as an "india") and a black father (negro) but living in Lima's port, Callao, at the end of the 1500s, the forty-five-year- old Joana de Castafieda reached out to Lima's indigenous population for

help in solving life's problems, but without trying to master or transmit these

teachings herself. To improve her chicha corn beer sales, for instance, she enlisted the aid of indigenous men whom she called hechiceros (sorcerers). They gave her special herbs to rub on her earthen jugs that were filled with chicha so that the corn beer would sell well.27 Her network of contacts with native hechiceros was facilitated by the settlement patterns of indigenous migrants throughout the city of Lima and its neighboring towns. Despite the efforts of the Spanish government, indigenous people resided amongst peo- ples of African descent, just as in the countryside blacks resided among Andeans in their communities.28 In short, however, during the first phase of

26 AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro 1027, "[Relaci6n de causas que se han sentenciados y determina- dos desde IV-1580 hasta IV-1581]," Lima, f. 149v.; AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro 1027, "[Relaci6n de causas que se han sentenciados desde 10-III-1571 hasta 12-11-1573]," Lima, ff. 6v., 16v., 36; AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Procesos de f6, Leg. 1647, Doc. 19, "Informaci6n contra Dofia Ines de Villalobos y Dofia Francisca de Villalobos, su hermana, sobre sospechas de supersticiones, hechisas," Huamanga, 1588, ff. 38v.-40v.

27 AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro 1029, "Relaqion...[10-XII-1600 to IV-1601]," Lima, f. 5v. 28 Miguel de Contreras, Padrdn de los indios que se hallaron en la ciudad de Los Reyes del Peru'

hecho en virtud de comision del excelentisimo sehior Marques de Montesclaro Virrey de el, ed. Noble

David Cook (Lima: Universidad Nacional Mayor San Marcos, 1968 [1613-1614]); Teresa Vergara

Ormefio, "Migraci6n y trabajo femenino a principios del siglo XVII: El caso de las Indias de Lima," Hist6rica (Lima) 21:1 (July 1997), pp. 135-157; Paul J. Charney, "El indio urbano: un anilisis

econ6mico y social de la poblaci6n india de Lima en 1613," Histdrica (Lima) 12:1 (1988), pp. 5-31.


Peru's urban witchcraft from 1580 to 1600, Afro-Peruvians and other city residents' tentative use of indigenous techniques for bringing good fortune and divining remained indirect-in Native Andean hands-and coexisted with ritual practices of Iberian origin.

Cases tried before secular authorities in the sixteenth century confirm this general pattern, or at least a pattern of accusations claiming that indigenous people were the practitioners of sorcery contracted by others, especially by Afro-Peruvians. In Lima, for example, the slave Sim6n (labeled negro in the documents) was accused by his owner and others of going to an Indian healer called Poma with soil collected from the places his master had stepped and wool from his pillow, in order to change in his master's angry behavior toward him.29 In another case, a priest estranged from the favor of the new Viceroy Francisco de Toledo followed the court to Cuzco. Here, he either tried to affect a reconciliation, according to some witnesses, or to harm the Viceroy, according to others. Either way, he allegedly consulted a woman identified as a free black (morena horra) pastry maker who had lived in Cuzco for thirty years to put him into contact with an indigenous woman that could either magically win back the Viceroy's favor, or poison him.30

Catholicism provided another source of supernatural power for colonial ritualists. By incorporating altar stone and appealing to St. Martha in their ceremonies, Afro-Peruvians and other immigrants embraced Catholicism; but they did so in ways that blended the sacred with the profane. Afro-Peru- vians turned to both altar stone and St. Martha as important sources of Chris- tian supernatural aid when addressing concerns such as marriage, pregnancy, economic support, and respectful treatment. Women of African heritage relied upon the altar stone's association with Catholic mass and its central location in the church to bring them beneficial relationships.31 They also

29 Also included in this residencia is the testimony of dofia Ines, wife of Francisco de Ampuero, who

sought help from an indigenous women, Ylonga Yanque, to stop her husband's beatings. AGI, Justicia, 451, "La querella de Francisco Sanchez cirujano ante el licenciado Cepeda sobre que dice que un negro suyo le quiso matar con hechizos con induzimiento de unas indias," in "Residencia tomada de los licen- ciados Diego Vizquez Cepeda,... [1549]," 1547, ff. 623r.-623v., 877-889r.

30 AGI, Lima, 300, "Informaci6n contra el Padre Luna sobre haber querido dar hechizos a su Exce-

lencia," 1571, ff. 2r.-20v. 31 AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro 1028, "[Relaci6n de causas despachadas de abril 1594 a 14-111-

1595]," Lima, 1595, ff. 321-322; AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro 1029, "Relaqion de las personas que salieron al auto publico de la fee que se gelebro por la Inquisicion del Piru en 10 de deziembre del afio de 600 y de sus causas y de las que se han despachado fuera de auto desde abril passado hasta fin de

Marqo de 1601," Lima, ff. 4v-5v.; AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro 1030, "Relacion de causas

despachadas entre I-V-1613 y 31-111-1614," f. 20; AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro 1028, "[Relacion de

personas que salieron en el auto de fe 30-XI-1587]," Lima, ff. 180-180v.; AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro

LEO J. GAROFALO 67

believed in utilizing and channeling the sacred power of Catholic prayers and Church items to empower their own lives. The Church, of course, objected to Afro-Peruvians' claims of holding privileged Christian power, and the

mixing of Catholic icons and sacred materials with ordinary food, drink, and

bodily fluids. The Inquisition used fines, whippings, public shaming, and exile to punish magical practitioners, but scarcely discouraged the spread of

popular faith in the efficacy of these remedies.32 Indeed, Afro-Peruvian remedies combining the sacred with the profane endured throughout the seventeenth century and existed in a milieu of numerous female intercessors, both inside and outside of the Church, as highlighted by the case of one of Lima's famous mystics-the Afro-Peruvian and former slave, Ursula de Jesus.33

African traditions and understandings also influenced Peruvian beliefs and

practices. Many of Lima's Afro-Peruvian specialists or their parents passed through the Portuguese and Spanish slave trading systems and Iberian ports and Atlantic Islands before reaching the Andes, making it difficult to determine the exact origins of their contributions to the colonial culture of ritual

practice and healing. Nevertheless, a fundamental epistemological belief in the supernatural's role in causing and combating illness no doubt informed African-descent ritualists' understandings of how to recognize and eliminate the causes of sickness and adversity. Ancestors, deities, and spirits were ambivalent forces that could either help or harm a person or a whole com-

munity. Trained ritualists helped manage the relations with these supernatural forces and their impact on the living. Furthermore, specific techniques for

protection and divining existed in west and central Africa and may have been combined with Iberian and Andean techniques. In many cases, specific colonial Andean ritual practices resembled both African and Native Andean or

European ritual practices. Divining by interpreting the arrangement of sticks, beans, or leaves tossed onto the ground or into a liquid, for instance, found

parallels on all three continents.34 African traditions, therefore, quite possibly

1028, "Relaci6n de causas determinadas en auto publico de fe, domingo de Quasimodo [5-IV-1592]," Lima, ff. 231 lv.-233; AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro 1029, "Relaci6n de causas despachadas... entre 30-

IV-1611 hasta 30-IV-1612," Lima, ff. 478v.-479; AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro 1029, "Relaci6n de causas despachadas... [entre 17-VI-1612 hasta 30-IV-1613]," Lima, ff. 499-507.

32 Silverblatt argues that the rationalization of the Inquisition's violence and the bureaucratic defin-

ing of these practices helped create Spanish imperialism and the modus operandi of the modern state in Modern Inquisitions, pp. 163-185.

33 van Deusen, Souls of Purgatory, pp. 14-19.

34 These influences are the subject of on-going research in Spain, Portugal, and Mexico. For African influences in Mexico see Joan C. Bristol, "Negotiating Authority: Africans and their Descendants in Sev-

enteenth-Century New Spain," dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 2001; Frank T. Proctor, III, "Slavery, Identity, and Culture: An Afro-Mexican Counterpoint, 1640-1763," dissertation, Emory Uni-

versity, 2003; and the classic study by Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrin, Medicina y magia: El proceso de acul- turacidn en la estructura colonial (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Econ6mica, 1963).


contributed both at an epistemological level and with specific ritual forms in many cases in colonial Andean cities, and west and central African traditions undoubtedly found important resonances and parallels in Iberian and Native Andean traditions in the sixteenth century.

In the 1580s and 1590s, what the Inquisition called incidents of witchcraft and superstition in the viceroyalty's major cities involved mainly Hispanic or African women and men. Their practices most obviously drew heavily upon a rich store of Iberian folk knowledge transported to the Americas by immigrants and colonists' European predecessors. Among these Iberian traditions, southern Spanish influences stood out. By the late sixteenth-century, amatory magic and divination became mainstays of urban Andean people's magical and ritual methods of meeting pressing needs and allaying uncer- tainty. In this first period, colonists and African immigrants and their descendants consulted indigenous practitioners of divination and amatory magic; but they treated the Native Andeans as the possessors of specialized knowledge that non-indigenous people neither presumed to understand nor tried to replicate.35

RITUALISTS IN EARLY SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY LIMA, 1620S AND 1630s

In the early seventeenth century, however, a partial Andeanization of select rites and rituals occurred. Individuals within Lima's Afro-Peruvian population experimented more confidently with Native Andean methods of

predicting the future, discovering the unknown, and returning harmony to relations between men and women. Longer, more sustained associations between Native Andeans and blacks in the city's neighborhoods and households seem partially to account for the skilled specialists' new confidence with indigenous knowledge. In this second period, the fundamental charac- teristics of Lima's witchcraft universe from the first period-a focus on amatory magic and divination and the favoring of southern Spain's magical traditions--did not disappear. Of course along with city officials, Lima's Church feared negative spiritual consequences from the increasing cultural and racial proximity of the indigenous and non-Indian populations in the city and, therefore, the Archbishop and the Inquisitors felt compelled to launch anti-idolatry campaigns in the countryside and an anti-superstition campaign in Lima.

35 For sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Mexico, Laura Lewis argues that blacks mediated the

power of witchcraft between Indians and the Spanish, Hall of Mirrors: Power Witchcraft, and Caste in Colonial Mexico (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), pp. 132-166.

LEO J. GAROFALO 69

In the Peruvian viceroyalty's major cities, men and women-although primarily women--employed special baths, fetishes, and potions to be con- sumed by the object of affection. While these activities incorporated Iberian

magical elements, in seventeenth-century Lima they also took on increas-

ingly strong Andean attributes. This partial Andeanization of select rites and ritual aids took place as the casta or "mixed-race" and plebeian populations under the purview of the Santo Oficio grew, and as Afro-Peruvian ritual specialists experimented more boldly.

In the early seventeenth century, ritual specialists begin to identify multi-

ple sources of inspiration for their acts. The mulatta Maria de Bribiescas in Lima's port of Callao provides a useful example. Born in Panama, Bribi- escas grew up in Lima where a multi-ethnic group of women taught her different ways of influencing people's desires and of predicting the future. For instance, when Bribiescas sought help at moments of crisis in her own life, a certain dofia Petronilla de Saldafia instructed a jealous Bribiescas on how to predict in a glass of water, her future with a lover who absconded steal-

ing her clothes. Meanwhile, her mulatta friend Marqela showed her how to use a rosary to accurately determine a lover's return and a mestiza named Juana Diaz, along with a Galician woman, explained the "suerte de las habas." Through this process, broad beans (habas), charcoal, salt, and a lodestone were randomly tossed onto a floor and their scattered arrangement carefully interpreted. Finally, an Indian woman instructed her in further rituals and spells. By 1628, Bribiescas had mastered these techniques and became a resource to other women seeking similar aid.36

In the 1620s and 1630s, ritual cleansing proved to be a point in which common pan-Andean traditions influenced a multi-ethnic group of urban

practitioners of amatory magic. In one case, a woman asked for Bribiescas's

help in taming (amansar) her husband who was mistreating her. Bribiescas

gave the aggrieved wife baths with different herbs and maize while reciting certain words to herself and rubbing a guinea pig over the supplicant's body. Both the baths and the use of a guinea pig to ritually clean and re-empower a body figured prominently in the accounts of pre-Columbian and post-Con- quest indigenous rituals. The practice assumed that the guinea pig absorbed the illness or impurity that afflicted a person or brought on their affliction.

By slaughtering and then examining the internal organs of the guinea pig, a Native Andean healer might even succeed in pinpointing the cause of sickness or social imbalance. There is no indication that Bribiescas killed the

36 AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro 1030, "[Relaci6n de causas de 1631]," Lima, 1631, ff. 383v.-386; AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro 1028, Lima, ff. 522-523v.


guinea pig or aspired to be able to read its entrails; nonetheless, it is note- worthy that she had learned and employed this rite along with her ample store of European-style divination practices (interpreting glasses of water, rosaries, and invoking various saints and a heavenly choir). The baths on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday with select herbs and other additives constituted a practice of shared Andean and Iberian ancestry. Both cultures placed importance on this form of cleansing and divining to improve a person's lot in life. Bribiescas sought to secure a spouse's affability, love, and economic support for her clients.37 The presence of maize in particular baths points to an Andean inspiration for Bribiescas's version of this ceremony or at least her willingness to incorporate highly valued Andean elements. In short, European and indigenous traditions coexisted and were carefully juxtaposed in Bribiescas's repertoire, and in the kinds of services specialists in the 1620s and 1630s were typically expected to provide.

When elaborating her testimony before the Holy Office's commissioner in Callao, and later before the Inquisition judges in their tribunal hall, Bri- biescas often referred to both indigenous and Catholic sources of her power. The indigenous sources included the knowledge she culled from her female teachers and the Andean sacrificial items featured so prominently in her rituals: she used guinea pigs to dispel evil and rejuvenate her subjects; she offered chicha to a desiccated bird; and she even called upon the strength of the sun. Perhaps, like her fellow specialists in Lima, she began to replace powdered altar stone with ground seashells in her rituals, a sacred item in Andean ceremonies. Yet, Bribiescas and her clients also believed her to be able to mobilize specific saints and even Christ himself with special prayers and invocations. Conjuring with broad beans, for instance, derived efficacy from calling upon them in the name of Christ. Meanwhile, Bribiescas also was known to repeat prayers to St. Peter and St. John three times over glasses of water, egg, and wine covered with a handkerchief; she also rec- ommended that her clients employ a rosary and pray the Credo. Despite her deviant Christian practices, her being the mother of illegitimate children, and the blatant disapproval she incurred from the Inquisition, Bribiescas faithfully identified herself as a baptized Christian woman who dutifully confessed each year.38 For Bribiescas and other urban specialists of this era, tentative experimentation with Andean products did not entail an automatic

37 AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro 1030, "[Relaci6n...]," Lima, 1631, ff. 383v.-386; AHN, Inquisi- ci6n, Lima, Libro 1030, "[Relaci6n de las causas despachadas en el auto publico que se celebro en al capilla de la Inquisici6n de Lima en 27-11-1631]," Lima, 1631, ff. 373v.-377v., 380-383v.

38 AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro 1030, "[Relaci6n de las causas... 27-11-1631]," Lima, 1631, ff. 373v.-381v.

LEO J. GAROFALO 71

rejection of Christianity or even foregoing participation in the rites of the Catholic community.39

Bribiescas typified many of the other Afro-Peruvian women brought before the Inquisition under the suspicion of witchcraft in the 1620s and the 1630s. She found multiple sources of inspiration in Andean and Hispanic traditions, practices she made stronger by her fervent Catholic conviction in the willingness of her God and the saints to intervene-when properly requested-to change events on Earth, or to at least help her predict the course and outcome of those events.40 She disagreed with the Inquisition over the propriety of her

requests and her association of sacred prayers and personages with profane everyday objects such as eggs, handkerchiefs, and broad beans.

Fearful of the popularity of these practices and the prominence of Afro- Peruvian and other ritualists, Lima's Inquisition issued a particularly threat-

ening edict of faith in 1629. It warned of the city's dire spiritual situation and called upon all Limefios to confess attacks on the faith, or to denounce the attacks made by others. The overwhelming response stymied the Holy Office's capacity to effectively investigate, prosecute, and punish the tremendous number of recently identified plebeian-class ritualists and participants. Therefore, Lima's Inquisition declared the majority of these acts

"superstition" (i.e. requiring less vigorous prosecution) and limited itself to

catching the most renowned magical specialists that came to its notice.41

The flowering of religious and ritual activity paralleled and intersected with an expansion in the opportunities and forms of petty commerce and

daily consumption. Both small-scale production and marketing, as well as

religion and ritual, opened up creative cultural spaces in urban life. In the first half of the seventeenth century, blacks' engagement with Native Andeans and their economic activities deepened. Afro-Peruvians mastered and transmitted Native Andean practices and technologies (such as chicha

brewing). They also appropriated certain professions that brought them into

permanent contact with indigenous producers-fish mongering for instance.

39 By contrast, Ruth Behar found in seventeenth- and eighteen-century Mexican Inquisitional trails

that women more frequently agreed with judges and denounced their ritual and magical acts as unchris-

tian and illegitimate uses of power. Ruth Behar, "Sexual Witchcraft, Colonialism, and Women's Powers:

Views from the Mexican Inquisition," Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America, ed. Asunci6n

Lavrin, 2nd ed. (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), pp. 178-206.

40 AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro 1030, "[Relaci6n de las causas... 27-11-1631]," Lima, 1631, ff.

377v.-380v.

41 Jose Toribio Medina, Historia del Tribunal de la Inquisicidn de Lima (1569-1820), v. 2 (Santiago: Fondo Hist6rico y Bibliogrifico, 1956), pp. 34-40; Castafieda and Hernandez, La Inquisicidn de Lima, v. 1, pp. 369-374.


In addition, blacks came to run many commercial establishments of Iberian

origin (such as pulperias) as sites for socializing, granting loans, offering mutual aid, and even engaging in prohibited ceremonies. Even under Church

auspices, Afro-Peruvians found places to congregate that shielded them from the municipal constables. They formed confraternities and organized elaborate funeral processions that provided them with opportunities to com- bine and reinvent distinct cultural traditions.42 It is important to stress that Afro-Peruvian economic and ritual activities/associations not only helped ensure their own survival in the colonial system, but also helped to better unite the Andean city's various populations in common enterprises. The Crown's efforts to normalize unsanctioned economic activity through various composiciones, and the Church's efforts to normalize unsanctioned ritual activity by dismissing it as "superstition" or channeling it through confraternities, allowed a degree of flexibility in city life for all populations. In the following decades, Afro-Peruvian ritualists exploited this flexibility to move themselves and others in the city to create new colonial symbols, con-

cepts, and ritual practices.

THE COLONIAL RECREATION OF NATIVE ANDEAN COCA AND THE INCA,

1650s-l1690s

From the 1650s until the end of the century, Afro-Peruvian ritual specialists helped colonial urban magic blossom by incorporating Native Andean coca, Inca symbolism, newly introduced alcoholic drinks, and pre-Hispanic remains into their practices. For non-Indians, embracing coca and a defeated Indian leader in their cultural practices was a surprising development. In the sixteenth century, the colonial state had designated the stimulant coca as fit

only for sustaining Indians' grueling manual labor in the mines. By the

beginning of the 1600s, most missionaries-especially those in Lima--den-

igrated coca as "dirty" and "vice-ridden" whenever the leaf was used

socially, or as a ritual item. Consequently, the incorporation of coca chew-

ing, divination, and medicine into the daily social routine and magical practices of Lima's diverse, non-Indian population was unexpected. Not only did

many Afro-Peruvians and other non-Indians accused of witchcraft in the late seventeenth century personally employ Native Andean techniques to unleash supernatural or personal power, but they also attributed the efficacy of these ritual aids to the items' Andean origins and their indigenous or Inca associations. Stripping away the cultural validity of Native Andeans, remov-

42 Bowser, African Slave, pp. 247-251: Jean-Pierre Tardieu. L'Eglise et les noir aul Pdrou (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1993).

LEO J. GAROFALO 73

ing their leaders' legitimacy, and segregating the indigenous population from other groups had been cornerstones of the colonial model of Spanish administration in the Andes since the 1500s. Yet by the 1650s and 1660s, Afro-Peruvians guided other city residents precisely to the indigenous cultural connections that colonial rulers had hoped they would shun.

However, during this third period of Afro-Peruvian ritual genesis the strategies used to comprehend the occult and surreptitiously influence human relations and fortunes shifted away from more clearly defined "indigenous" or "Peninsular" origins, to more hybridized styles and colonial sources of inspiration. This shift included employing the power of new colonial drinks and tobacco to transform behavior and a person's state. From the 1650s to the 1690s, Afro-Peruvian ritual specialists found effective ways to appeal to a wider range of clients and to intervene in their lives by conjuring with colonial versions of coca, invoking the reinvented figure of the Inca, and utilizing brandy or cane alcohol.

Over the course of the seventeenth century, coca rituals and Inca invocations evolved to form the core of strategies employed by Lima's ritual specialists for resolving specific kinds of personal problems. The popularization of coca from the 1650s until an ecclesiastical campaign to suppress the leaf's urban use in1666 focused on three interrelated ritual activities. First, many specialists and non-specialist groups masticated coca in intimate social settings comprising small groups or pairs. Second, when chewing the leaf, users focused on sensing changes in the taste or texture of the coca in their mouths. Third, when revealing the unknown or predicting the future, coca ritualists attempted to decipher figures and motion in the masticated leaf once it was spit into a basin of water or wine. For example, Ana de Ulloa, a daughter of a Spaniard and a mulatta, converted coca into a focal point of her social interactions with a group of friends. In the evenings, de Ulloa and her daughter regularly met with a Spanish woman and her acquaintances to socialize and chew coca. Using coca and tobacco, together the friends divined the resolu- tion of personal affairs.43 Over time, Spanish creole women followed Afro- Peruvian women into taking leading roles in coca circles and in promoting the use of the leaf for divination. Their groups included Afro-Peruvian women and other Spanish creoles; and they employed masticated coca to summon men to love them, to improve their fortunes, and to ferret out sickness. In group settings, coca use facilitated personal connections with the supernatural in order to allay everyday dilemmas.

43 AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro 1031, "Relaci6n de causas de Fe," Lima, 1666, ff. 508-509v., 527- 531.


The specialists in coca divinations elaborated upon European and Andean methods of prediction. The practices described above included the use of liquid-filled basins and glasses or vials of water hailing from Iberian traditions. Lima's specialists also followed more indigenous patterns, such as reading masticated coca juice that they spit on their hands or into a pot of boiling liquid. Or they simply burned coca leaves and other items in a candle or other flame.44 Both forms of techniques centered upon activating the power of Andean coca and deciphering its messages for the purpose of solving men and women's personal problems.

However, when dealing with members of the opposite sex, women generally tended to gather more frequently to chew coca in a man's name. Typ- ically they sought to bring back an errant and stray husband or lover, seeking to keep him dedicated to treating his wife and children with love and providing for their material support.45 For example, dofia Luisa de Vargas, an Afro-Peruvian innkeeper and native of Lima, masticated coca to return a man to her with amatory magic. She spoke to her coca, "Mama mia, coca mia, I chew not you, but the heart of fulano as many turns as I give you in my mouth, you give his heart, as ground, as I grind you in my mouth, bring him to me without sleep, without eating unrested, Inca." Women might also ask the chewed coca to lift the curse of a husband's jealousy.46 Men knew about and often feared the coca magic that was mobilized against them by women and Afro-Peruvian specialists; their awareness made the practitioners' acts all the more effective.

Coca consumption provided a forum for colonial women to consult with each other and, in this sense, offered a degree of social solidarity among city residents. In one case, a mestiza and a black slave met in a Callao corn-beer tavern to chew coca and consider the prospects of the younger woman reuniting with her beau. In another instance, an Afro-Peruvian pulpera (operator of dry-goods and wine shop) hosted a group of three Spanish creoles and another black woman in her fish-market street pulperfa to chew coca together.47 Such groups customarily focused their attention on the

44 Guaman Poma de Ayala, El primer nueva crdnica y buen gobierno, v. 1, eds. John Murra, Rolena Adorno, and Jorge Urioste (Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno, 1980), pp. 247 (274)[276], 251 (278)[280]; Arriaga, La extirpacidn, pp. 97, 135, 137.

45 AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro 1032, "[Relaci6n de las causas de fe pendientes en el Santo Oficio de la Inquisici6n del Peru en 1655]," Lima, 1655, f. 389v.

46 AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro 1032, "Relaci6n... de 1692- 1696," Lima, 1696, [case begins 1689, auto in 1693], ff. 383.

47 AAL, Hechicerfas, Leg. 7, Exp. 1, "Proceso de ser hechicera y supersticiosa contra Juana Bernarda, mestiza tuerta, que vive en la casa que era del regidor Figueroa," Lima, 1669, f. 6; AAL, Hechicerfas, Leg. 6, Exp. 13, "Causa contra Clara de Ledesma, mulata, por bruja," Lima, 1668, ff. 1-7.

LEO J. GAROFALO 75

person with greatest ritual knowledge, but among gatherings of non-specialists, the woman with the greatest charisma or imagination for using coca to entertain the group might hold sway. Coca consumption served to bring women together within a distinctive hierarchy that was based upon a woman's ability to manipulate and read the leaves.48

Coca consumption may have also facilitated bridging social divides. A poor, Afro-Peruvian widow in Lima, not even a specialist, gathered people in her home to chew coca. The gatherings also included nuns, but sometimes proxies masticated the coca on behalf of more "respectable" women. The proxy and two other women formed a separate coca circle that even included an unnamed man who worked for the Holy Office of the Inquisition!49 Like sharing a meal or drink, or as in the coca exchange (hallpay) between kin or equals among Native Andeans today, Lima's colonial coca sessions often fostered a medium of cooperation and conviviality.

By masticating coca in a group, social coca chewers retrieved loved ones, bestowed wealth and esteem, and harmed enemies or rivals. Lone specialists and women's coca circles respectfully conjured the force in the herb itself and of the Inca whose empire they imagined had revered the stimulant. With careful propriety, specialists and their apprentices stroked and caressed the leaves, lovingly murmuring "coca mia, madre mia" and invoked both the leaf and the Inca in deferential tones. For the coca's help in bringing a man to her clients, an Afro-Peruvian woman (quarterona) from the city of Pisco south of Lima reportedly chanted:

My coca, my master, my darling, my beloved, I conjure you in the name of (and refers to the said man) although I conjure coca mine, I do not conjure for the said (here the said name) I conjure with the lame devil, being lighter, to bring him in a flight to wherever I might be: I conjure you with the earth in which they planted you with the water with which they watered you, with the mattock with which they dug you, with the sun that dried you, with the moon and star that illuminated you my Coca I conjure you with the Inca, with all his vassals and followers ....50

48 ANH, Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro 1031, Lima, 1664, ff. 487-487v.; AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Proce- sos de F6, Leg. 1648, Doc. 18, "Relaci6n de Causas despachadas entre 16-II-1659 y 8-VII-1660 y auto

publico de 23-1-1664," ff. 51v.-56. 49 ANH, Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro 1031, "Relaci6n de las causas... VII-1660 hasta X-1662," Lima,

1662, 487-487v., 494-501v.; AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Procesos de F6, Leg. 1648, Doc. 18, "Relaci6n...," Lima, 1664, ff. 31v.-53v., 56-58v.

50 "Coca mia, iaia mia, querida mia, amada mia, io te conjuro en nombre de (i refierie a el dicho hombre) aunque te conjuro coca mia, no te conjuro a el dicho (aqui el dicho nombre) conjuro con el diablo cojuelo, por ser mas lijero, que lo traiga en un vuelo donde io estubiere: io te conjuro con la tierra


Variations on invoking the Inca abounded. One included toasting him with wine and calling upon him in Quechua to be beloved as he was by men and women, and to be wealthy as he was after discovering gold and silver. Other verbal petitions in the 1650s offered to baptize him with wine to replace the holy water he had never received. Some specialists called him "Inca don Melchor Sara." When peering into a basin filled with coca and wine, they even claimed to see the Inca astride a horse and accompanied by his wife dofia Isabel.51 Prais-

ing the coca leaf and its inherent power (talking about its growing, harvest, drying, and packing), and invoking the Inca and his official consort as being rep- resentative of indigenous nobility and power, constituted important features of ritual ceremony during this period and continued into the 1690s.52

The production of unique colonial drinks and the looting of Andean tombs offered additional opportunities for ritual innovation and for better

en que te sembraron con el agua con que te regaron, con la lampa con que te cabaron, con el sol que te

seco, con la luna y estrella que te alumbro Coca mia io te conjuro con el inga, con todos sus basallos y sequaqes...." AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro 1032, "[Relaci6n de las causas de fe pendientes en el Santo

Oficio de la Inquisici6n del Peru en 1655]," Lima, 1655, f. 383; AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro 1031, "Relaci6n de un auto particular de Fe que se qelebro en la yglesia de el hospital y del Collegio de la Charidad que esta en la Plaza de la Inquisici6n en 16-11-1666," Lima, 1666, f. 531; AAL, Hechicerifas y Idolatrias, Leg. 6, Exp. 10, "Proceso contra hecha de oficio contra Alonso Carillo, negro, verdugo," Lima, 1669, f. 6; AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro 1032, "Relaci6n de las causas de fe, que se han sen- tenciado en el Santo Oficio de la Inquisici6n del Peru desde... VI-1672 que la haze el Senor Inquisidor Doctor Don Juan de Averta Guttieres...VI-1675," Lima, 1673, f. 181.

51 Don Melchor Inca and some of the other Incas mentioned by name were actual Inca nobility in colonial Cuzco and apparently known elsewhere. For Don Melchor Inga, for example, see AGI, Lima

300, "Relaci6n del pleito criminal," 1600; AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro 1031, "Relaci6n de las causas

que estan pendientes...," ff. 375, 389v., 390-390v.; AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro 1031, "Relaci6n de las causas que estan pendientes...," ff. 382-383v.; AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro 1032, "Relaci6n de las causas de fee despachadas en el santo officio de la

Inquisition de Lima desde el afio de 1692 asta [enero]

1696," Lima , 1696, ff. 427v.-427v.; AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro 1031, Lima, 1666, ff. 508-509v., 527-531. AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro 1032, Lima, 1693, ff. 380-384v.; AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro 1032, Lima, 1696, ff. 458-465v.; John Hemming, The Conquest of the Incas (London: Abacus, 1972), pp. 451-473; Guillermo Lohmann Villena, Los americanos en las drdenes nobiliarios (1529- 1900), v. 1 (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, 1947), pp. 199-200; Teresa Gis-

bert, Iconograffa y mitos indigenas en el arte (La Paz: Talleres Escuela de Artes Graificas del Colegio "Don Bosco," 1980), pp. 153-157; Ella Dunbar Temple, "Don Carlos Inca," Revista Hist6rica del Insti- tuto Histdrico del Peru, 17 (1948), pp. 134-179; Ella Dunbar Temple, "El testamento in6dito de Dofia Beatriz Clara Coya de Loyola, hija del Inca Sayri T6pac," Fenix 7 (1950), pp. 109-122; Carolyn Dean, Inca Bodies and the Body of Christ: Corpus Christis in Colonial Cuzco, Peru (Durham: Duke Univer-

sity Press, 1999), pp. 102, 112-113. 52 AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro 1031, "Relaci6n de las causas... VII-1660 hasta X-1662," Lima,

1662, ff. 383-383v.; AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro 1031, "Relaci6n de las causas que estan pendientes...," Lima, 1656, 389v.-391; AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro 1031, "Relaci6n de un auto particular... 16-II-1666," Lima, 1666, ff. 531-531v.; ANH, Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro 1031, "Relaci6n de las causas...

VII-1660 hasta X-1662," Lima, 1662, ff. 496v.-499; AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro 1032, "Relaci6n de las causas de fe despachadas en el Santo Officio de la

Inquisition de Lima desde el ahio de 1692 asta

1696," Lima, 1696, ff. 458-465v.

LEO J. GAROFALO 77

harnessing pre-Hispanic supernatural power. Lima's Afro-Peruvian ritualists incorporated new colonial products into their practices by following the new

products' inherent properties and logical associations. Afro-Peruvian specialists in Lima adapted to their rites the various colonial versions of chicha

they brewed and dispensed in Lima's households and markets, including the chicha blanca supposedly preferred by Spanish colonists.53 As sugar cane production expanded, Afro-Peruvian brewers specialized in a drink of fer- mented cane juice called guarapo. Black specialists taught Lima's indigenous residents to include guarapo in foul potions dumped at an enemy's door to harm the inhabitant. The advent of Peruvian grape brandy in the mid- 1600s and the popularization of cane alcohol by the end of the century led to their incorporation as offerings to the coca leaf, as mediums in which to dissolve the small wad of chewed leaves for examination, and for boiling masticated coca leaves.54 As Afro-Peruvians realized the superior alcoholic potency of the cane drinks, they revered the intoxicant's power and combined it with their coca rituals.55 In a like manner, urban ritual specialists began to use Native Andean bones, figurines, as well as other human remains and offerings taken from pre-Hispanic burial and ceremonial sites.

They treated these remains as if they were endowed with supernatural force, almost like Catholic relics. Lima's ritualists called them "Inca" and made offerings to them. During the second half of the seventeenth century, the

53 AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro 1032, "Relaci6n de las causas... VI-1675," Lima, 1673, f. 181; AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro 1032, "Relaci6n de las causas de Fee despachadas en esta Inquisici6n de Los Reyes del Peru desde 10-VI-1678 [hasta 21-VIII-1678]," Lima, 1678, ff. 225-225v.; Jose de Acosta, Historia natural y moral de Indias (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Econ6mica, 1962), pp. 170-171; Bernab6 Cobo, "Historia del Nuevo Mundo," Obras del Padre BernabW Cobo, v. 1 (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores

Espafioles, 1956 [1653]), p. 162; Pedro Le6n de Portocarrero, Descripci6n del virreinato del Peru', ed. Boleslao Lewin (Rosario: Universidad del Litoral, 1958 [composed ca. 1615]), pp. 49-50.

54 With the leaves, the spell-caster symbolically boiled the person they hoped to attract. AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Procesos de F6, Leg. 1648, Doc. 19, "Relaci6n de causas de fe despachadas entre 1696 hasta 1707," Lima, 1707 [1690, 1692], ff. 87-94, 103-110; AAL, Hechicerias y Idolatrias, Leg. 6, Exp. 10, "Proceso hecha de oficio contra Alonso Carillo, negro, verdugo," Lima, 1669, ff. 3-4v.; AAL, Hechicerfas y Idolatrifas, Leg. 6, Exp. 6, "Causa criminal contra Juana de Mayo," Lima 1668, ff. 17-17v.; AAL, Hechicerfas y Idolatrifas, Leg. 6, Exp. 6, "Causa criminal contra Juana de Mayo," Lima 1668, f.

37; AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro 1032, "Relaci6n de las causas... VI-1675," Lima, 1673, f. 181; AHN,

Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro 1032, "Relaci6n de las causas... [hasta 21-VIII-1678]," Lima, 1678, ff. 221- 221v.; AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Procesos de F6, Leg. 1648, Doc. 19, "Relaci6n de causas de fe

despachadas entre 1696 hasta 1707," Lima, 1707 [1696, 1698]. ff. 113, 119. 55 AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Libro 1032, "Relaci6n de las causas... desde el ahio de 1692 hasta

1696," Lima, 1696, f. 426; AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Procesos de F6, Leg. 1648, Doc. 19, "Relaci6n de causas de fe despachadas entre 1696 hasta 1707," Lima, 1707 [1690], ff. 106v.- 110; AHN, Inquisi- ci6n, Lima, Procesos de F6, Leg. 1648, Doc. 19, "Relaci6n de causas de fe despachadas entre 1696 hasta 1707," Lima, 1707 [1705], ff. 179v.-180. Limefios also offered aguardiente to coca when

mochandola. AHN, Inquisici6n, Lima, Procesos de F6. Leg. 1648, Doc. 19, "Relaci6n...," Lima, 1707

[1692], ff. 97-98v.


ritual complex of coca and its incorporation of colonial alcohols and pre- Hispanic remains exemplify the ritual specialists' willingness and ability to bridge cultural traditions for their clients without fully erasing the ethnic distinctions of the concepts and items in use. In fact, these distinctions bestowed much of the power that ritualists tapped in order to solve their peti- tioners' problems.

The proliferation of magical items, coupled with the colonial recreation of Native Andean coca that Afro-Peruvians promoted by the 1660s, forced the Archbishops' campaigns to extirpate Indian idolatries and Lima's Inqui- sition to reach ever more frequently into Lima's city parishes. They targeted coca distribution and the expanding ceremonial use of the leaf among all ethno-racial sectors of the city. Witnesses and judges fully believed a specialist's knowledge of herbs and magic could be used to harm or control another person. Despite the rationalist orientation of the Spanish Inquisi- tion's highest authorities (the Suprema) who reviewed Lima's decisions, the majority of the functionaries of Lima's Inquisition lived immersed in the society they watched over; these functionaries were not indifferent to superstition and the threat of witchcraft.56 In seventeenth-century Lima and its surrounding towns, threats and fear of magical attack arising over sexual rivalry, conflicts over male and female obligations, and economic disagree- ment became a central part of a common conceptual universe.57 Investiga- tors and prosecutors also feared that coca magic and Inca invocations could lead beyond witchcraft to idolatry and a wholesale rejection of Church authority. Therefore, the groups that the inquisitors, and later the Arch- bishop's investigators, most vigorously sought to find and discourage were the coca suppliers, sellers, and conjurers. Ironically, despite their best efforts, in 1664, the Inquisition conceded that prohibited ritual practice and divination appeared so prevalent in Lima so as to make the elimination of its practitioners-much less their clients-impossible. As a result, Church courts again retreated to a plan of selective persecution of the most famous offenders of the faith.58

56 AAL, Hechicerfas, Leg. 9, Exp. 2, Lima, 1691. Conflicts over property and theft when com- pounded by illness or sudden death sparked battles over sorcery. AAL, Hechicerfas, Leg. 2, Exp. 9, Huacho, 1646, ff. 1-9; AAL, Hechicerfas, Leg. 9, Exp. 4, "Querella contra Matias de la Rosa y su mujer Francisca por hechiceros," Lima, 1694; AAL, Hechicerfas, Leg. 7, Exp. 3, Lima, 1670; AAL, Hechicerfas, Leg. 7, Exp. 10A, Lima, 1674.

57 AAL, Hechicerfas, Leg. 7, Exp. 3, Lima, 1670; AAL, Hechicerfas, Leg. 9, Exp. 2, Lima, 1691; AAL, Hechicerfas, Leg. 7, Exp. O1A, Lima, 1674.

58 Castafieda and Hernandez, La Inquisicidn de Lima, v. 2, pp. 336-337.

LEO J. GAROFALO 79

CONCLUSIONS

Peru's population of African descent actively participated in creating the traditions of cooperation and argument that constituted urban colonial culture. Only between the years 1580 and 1600, did Afro-Peruvians' ritual practices seem to partially confirm the theory that Africans and their descendants in Peru served to increase the number of Spaniards, thereby magnifying the colonizers' cultural impact. However, even during this period, many practices considered to be Iberian may have already been changed by Sub-Saha- ran Africans living in Portugal and Castile. Afro-Iberians probably contributed to shaping southern Iberia's heterogeneous witchcraft and other popular traditions before helping carry them to the Americas. In the 1620s- 1630s, a period of limited cultural experimentation and borrowing, Afro- Peruvians began leading other urban colonists away from a primarily His- panic ritual model into learning Native Andean ritual practices and skills. Interestingly, in addition to teaching non-Indians, Afro-Peruvians then helped transmit these native Andean skills, as well as their knowledge of Hispanic and African ceremonial practices, to new indigenous arrivals to the city. In the 1660s to 1690s, when magic specialists began giving new emphasis to pre-Hispanic materials and symbols, Afro-Peruvian ritualists helped society overcome the stigma of the coca leaf as an Indian idolatrous item. During the late seventeenth century, Afro-Peruvian ritualists scram- bled to take direct control over Native Andean ritual knowledge, products, and icons, often to reinvent them with new colonial significance. In the process, the Afro-Peruvians' own cultural creativity and contributions to magical elements and ritual knowledge became clear.

Afro-Peruvian ritualists' reworking of Andean and Hispanic magic and witchcraft also marked the Church's changing definitions of religious cul- pability in seventeenth-century Lima. The 1629 Edict of Faith had called upon all Lime-ios to examine their consciences and memories for any thoughts or acts against Catholicism; however, the inquisitors and ecclesiastical authorities found themselves unable to investigate and prosecute the numerous cases of religious infractions brought before them. Mixing the sacred with the profane, therefore, remained central to what could be termed a popular Catholicism and evidenced a degree of reconciliation among varied cultural streams emanating from the Iberian Peninsula, the Andes, and perhaps West Africa. Between the 1660s-1690s, the effervescence of local magic once again outstripped Church mechanisms to suppress what churchmen considered harmful to the faith (idolatry, witchcraft, and superstition). Forced to accept a colonial culture of breaches between stricture and practice, Lima's Catholic establishment prosecuted only the most notorious


practitioners of the arts of amatory magic and divination. The Church chose to distinguish between genuine heresy, to be combated vigorously, and mere superstition and magic, to be grudgingly tolerated or lightly punished. Despite its repressive power, the Peruvian Church could not derail the long- term, cultural legitimacy won by popular magical beliefs and coca use in the capital. This cultural legitimacy sprang from a firm conviction in the use- fulness of magical intervention in relations between men and women, coca's religiously inoffensive function in revealing the unknown, the re-invented Inca's magical benevolence, and the camaraderie and mutual support that often took place during magic rituals and gatherings of coca chewers. Such practices, fostered by Afro-Peruvians, served an essential role in Limefios' lives by the mid-to-late seventeenth century.

In this process, magical specialists brought together and conjured powers that were considered to exist in the diverse ethnocultural traditions of magic and supernatural power present in colonial Peru. The wider populace's belief in the existence of such powers in each tradition, even hidden ones, made them particularly useful resources in the hands of skilled ritualists as they solved problems and sought clients. To convey a mystique of success and attract new clients into their network, specialists by necessity recognized and drew upon different kinds of cultural knowledge. By drawing together different kinds of powers, the specialist built a reputation and drew together different sorts of people. In their coca ceremonies for example, the ritualist bound diverse people together, even though outside the ritual circle ethnic distinctions and social hierarchies remained relevant. In this practical way, magical specialists mediated contradictory tendencies in the society. They worked with people who might not normally associate with them or with each other. The specialist's mediation created the paradox of a society with few specialists and no social consensus, but with many users of magical practice and many circles of sociability that ran contrary to official and unof- ficial norms without necessarily overturning them.

Connecticut College New London, Connecticut

LEO J. GAROFALO

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Conjuring With Coca and the Inca. the Andeanization of Lima's Afro-Peruvian Ritual

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