Transforming Gender Roles in the Colonial Andes: Native Andean Female Resistance to Colonial Spanish Constructs of Gender Hierarchy
Ashley Reeves
Although past scholars have conducted No aspect of the native Andean woman’s life, extensive historical research regarding the status or role in society went untouched by colonial period in Latin America, the woman’s Spanish colonizers. While in the pre-conquest experience under colonial rule is a topic that is period Andean women enjoyed higher often neglected in major historical privileges than their European counterparts, interpretations. Though scholars have recently the imposition of colonialism and the Spanish begun devoting more attention towards the constructs of gender hierarchies sought to roles and experiences of women in colonial eradicate traditional Andean gender roles and Latin America, the colonial experience of norms by any means necessary. Under colonial native women in the Americas has only just Spanish rule, Andean women could no longer begun to be seriously studied by historians in own land independently of their husbands, the past few decades. hold important religious offices, access This research is intended as a gendered community resources or enjoy the myriad of investigation into the native Andean woman’s social, political and economic rights that they 1 experience under Spanish colonialism. This had held for centuries. Instead, Andean gendered colonial perspective is aimed at women, through the Spanish imposition of analyzing the ways in which resistance efforts foreign gender roles, were systematically undertaken by native Andean women in disenfranchised and subordinated in colonial response to colonial gender hierarchies society. contributed to the greater cultural preservation This study will explore the various efforts of the Andean people. While this region methods of female resistance to these newly certainly includes native women of the imposed Spanish gender roles undertaken by conquered Inca Empire, particularly those in Andean women throughout the colonial Peru and Bolivia, it is by no means exclusive period. The majority of these resistance efforts to this civilization. Native women of diverse by native women of the Andes can be ethnic and cultural groups in the Andes, some classified as “passive” resistance efforts, and of which remained unincorporated by the Inca constitute actions by which native women at the time of the Spanish conquest, will also managed to undermine, subvert or manipulate be included, as their colonial experiences are the colonial system and gender roles to better equally valuable to a cohesive understanding protect their fading status and power. Though of women’s roles under the Spanish empire. passive resistance was the method most widely An investigation into the drastic decline in used by native women during the colonial social and economic status that native Andean period, there are notable instances of female women experienced during the colonial period involvement in military rebellions by native is the central focus of this research endeavor. populations, like the Tupac Amaru rebellion of
1 Silverblatt, Irene. Moon, Sun, and Witches: Gender Ideologies and Class in Colonial Peru. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1987. 122. the late eighteenth-century. Another powerful Andean people were equipped to evade indicator of female resistance efforts is the domination through their pre-Columbian incredible resurgence, and at times revival, of experiences with conquest; just as the native Andean religious traditions that geography of the Andes made struggle occurred throughout the colonial period. inescapable, it also helped to foster resistance Native women were often the leaders of these to domination. It was quite common for traditional cults, and their religious resistance Andean groups that did not wish to be efforts are perhaps the most long-lasting and incorporated into a larger empire to seek refuge successful efforts to subvert the exclusionary in the mountains, and during the expansion of Catholic religion and its ruling patriarchy. the Inca Empire in the fifteenth century, a These measures of female resistance to the number of semi-sedentary groups fled to the colonial institution of gender hierarchies can mountains to protect their autonomy. Upon the be interpreted not only as attempts to salvage arrival of the Spanish in 1532, smaller semi- pre-conquest female rights, economic sedentary Andean groups once again practiced privileges and social standing, but also as part this resistance method, seeking to evade the of a struggle to preserve greater native cultural Spanish in the harsh terrains and high altitudes and religious institutions in the face of the of the Andes mountain range.2 But while the Spanish suppression and destruction of geography of the Andes fostered resistance Andean culture. measures towards the Spanish, geography The Pre-Columbian Andes alone cannot account for the centuries of resistance by Andean populations, or the Long before the conquest of the Inca remarkably high rate of cultural preservation Empire and surrounding territories by the that exists in the region today even after Spanish conquistadors in 1532, Andean centuries of intense colonialism. The colonial peoples were already well acquainted with resistance efforts of native Andean women in patterns of conquest and domination by rival particular are directly responsible for the groups. The very geography of the Andes cultural preservation of larger Andean society region promoted domination, as competition and traditions. for prime resources and agricultural land in such a mountainous region was fierce, so that Andean Gender and Cosmology even before the Spanish conquest, Andean Prior to the development of the Inca history was littered with a pattern of conquest Empire in the fifteenth century, Andean and domination. However, it was not the culture, cosmology, and gender constructions conquest of 1532 that threatened the survival were quite egalitarian as compared to others in of Andean society, as Andeans had a great deal the Americas. The invasion of a warrior of experience with such events; the difference society like the Inca, however, hampered the lay in the fact that Andeans were not gender equality inherent in Andean society, so conquered by a neighboring group with similar that native women gradually lost previously values, cosmology, and gender constructions held powers and rights. While women did like the Inca, but instead by a foreign power experience a marked curtailment of their status with alien values that were diametrically under the Inca Empire, the Inca understood opposed to their own. that they could not push women out of powerful positions entirely, lest they upset the very structure of Andean society.3 In the
2 Ibid., 197. 3 Ibid., 7. Andean world, women were acknowledged as incited female resistance efforts that lasted the integral figures to society, which afforded entire duration of the colonial period. women an important degree of protection Passive Resistance under the Inca; the vastly different role of women in Iberian society, however, allowed The installation of the Spanish colonial the Spanish to disenfranchise native women system in the Andes brought with it a legal entirely in the colonial period. system heavily influenced by Iberian gender conceptions, wherein Andean women lost The fundamental gender differences valued rights and legal protections that they between Andean and Spanish society led to the had held for centuries. The Spanish colonial total erasure of female power and status after system devalued the labor of native women, the conquest, and provided Andean women both sexual and economic, so that native with plenty of motivation for resistance in the Andean women were heavily exploited by the colonial period. In the pre-Columbian era, colonial patriarchy. Native women undertook Andean women were considered to be partners various measures of resistance to the misuse of of men in “the business of life”, and the very their labor by the colonial authority, the foundation of Andean society, parallel descent, majority of which consisted of passive protected and upheld the power of women in 4 resistance efforts, as it allowed women to Andean cultures. Parallel descent claimed that subvert and manipulate the colonial system men and women inhabited separate, but while still minimizing the risk of detection. In equally powerful spheres of influence and the pre-Columbian period, Andeans practiced power in society, including religion, politics, limited gender division of labor, allowing for economics, and labor: Andean women were the development of a more egalitarian labor high priestesses, curacas, who owned land and system.6 The labor of Andean women was fortunes independent from men, and were 5 equally as respected as that of men, and tribute highly respected members of society. In requirements to the Inca Empire demanded contrast to the rights and privileges enjoyed by equal participation in the quota system.7 This Andean women in the pre-Columbian period, system ensured that the Inca received their the ruling Spanish patriarchy of the sixteenth- tribute, and that the labor of native women was century had disenfranchised Iberian women recognized and respected in the system. During centuries before. With the institution of the the colonial period, the Spanish revised the colonial system in the Andes, the Spanish Inca tribute system to reflect the economic usurped Andean gender conceptions with their model of a colony. The Spanish colonial Iberian conception of gender hierarchies, system was required by the Crown to extract as seriously demoting Andean women in the much wealth and resources from the Andes as process. These demotions imposed upon native possible, which necessitated the imposition of Andean women by the Spanish conquerors harsher tribute and labor quotas. Andean natives were universally overtaxed under this
4 Powers, Karen Vierra. Women in the Crucible of Hispanic period to the present. New York: Oxford Conquest: The gendered genesis of Spanish-American University Press, 2005. 41. society, 1500-1600. New Mexico: University of Silverblatt, 1987. 5. New Mexico Press, 2005. 17. 6 Silverblatt, 10. 7 Ibid., 132. 5 Kellogg, Susan. Weaving the Past: A history of Latin America’s indigenous women from the pre- system, but Andean women especially were devaluing female labor.10 Labor conditions for targeted, forced to pay exorbitant amounts of peasants were harsh and unreasonable, so that tribute to the Spanish, which sparked female tribute payment meant economic destitution resistance measures accordingly. for native women. The intense supervision by The tribute expectations of the Spanish colonial officials in the tribute collection victimized natives regardless of gender, but process did not allow for grand, overt gestures women were held accountable for their of resistance by Andeans, but native women husband’s tribute in the event that he defaulted, nonetheless resisted these inhumane labor an occurrence that became quite common due conditions, albeit in a more subtle manner. to the inhumane labor demands of the Spanish. The exploitation of female labor by the The Inca system of tribute collection followed Spanish colonial tribute system led to gender equality structures, so that only married increased economic responsibilities for couples were obligated to contribute, as the Andean women during the early colonial quota was impossible for a single person to period. Men and women were both treated as fulfill, and the elderly and unmarried were slave labor by the Spanish and forced to work exempt. The colonial tribute negated the fair in long hours in sweatshops for scant labor laws of the Inca in the interest of mass compensation, but when husbands fled these profit, forcing women of all ages to meet high barbaric conditions, they unwittingly placed tribute demands. 8 The strain of the new tribute even greater labor burdens on their families.11 system was further compounded by the Conditions continued to deteriorate for native Spanish’ seizure of peasant lands that had been women due to the colonial bureaucracy’s previously used to fulfill tribute quotas, so that failure to adjust population statistics to account Andeans were forced to use their family plots for male flight and the decline of native to fulfill the tribute quota, which left many populations, which prompted a response of peasants unable to adequately provide for their female resistance.12 Though native flight was a families.9 To further expedite the process of dangerous method of tribute evasion, Andean tribute collection, the Spanish devised a system women did escape the crippling labor of native reservations, or reducciones, during exploitation of their rural villages by migrating the sixteenth century, which forced large to colonial centers. In a larger town, native native populations to live in cramped women were free of tribute expectations, and compounds under the supervision of the were able to establish themselves as relatively colonial authority. These new reducciones independent market women.13 Other Andean forced Andeans to abandon their tradition of women opted to migrate seasonally between endogamy, or marriage within their villages, a rural villages to evade tribute payment; this practice meant to ease labor requirements. method was so pervasive that sixteenth- Instead, Andeans had to adopt marriage century colonial records documented the exogamy, unions outside their villages, which phenomenon, along with the natives’ fear of made women responsible for double tribute, in returning to their natal villages for fear of their natal and marital villages, further reprisal.14
8 Ibid., 129, 126. 13 Powers, 66. 9 Ibid., 127. 14 Ramirez, Susan Elizabeth. The World Turned 10 Ibid., 131. Upside Down: Cross-cultural contact and conflict in 11 Ibid., 135. sixteenth-century Peru. Stanford: Stanford 12 Ibid., 137. University Press, 1996. 35. The majority of Andean women had rights under colonization. The Andean gender difficulty simply evading their tribute structure allowed for equal and independent expectations, however, and instead sought to female ownership of land and other property, undermine the colonial tribute system through following matrilineal descent, so that elite reproductive resistance efforts. As victims of Andean women often owned parts of entire the unreasonable demands of colonial tribute native communities.18 These elite women lost quotas, Andean women devised various their land rights after the conquest, as Iberian methods to spare their children the same law did not recognize female ownership, physical and economic exploitation. Native relegating women to their colonial status as midwives continued to practice covertly in legal minors, incapable of making independent small communities, providing Andean women legal decisions.19 Elite women suffered land with contraceptives, which helped return a theft by both the Spanish and their Andean measure of personal power to women that had husbands, who took advantage of the been usurped by the Spanish.15 Andean women unprecedented opportunity to increase their also committed census fraud to protect their personal land holdings. These Andean women children from tribute demands, claiming their took both their husbands and Spanish colonists children as mestizos on baptismal records, as to court, and though very few cases were ever only natives were required to pay tribute.16 In resolved in their favor, the very act of legal fear of raising the next generation of slave resistance was of momentous import.20 Elite labor for the Spanish, some mothers took women further protested male usurpation of drastic action; in Ecuador, a colonial priest their property in their wills, as an act of final found evidence that Andean women had defiance to the legal ramification of Spanish mutilated their infant sons to render them imposed gender hierarchy. Juana Chimbo, a useless for tribute. Though rare, some Andean wealthy Andean woman, protested her women took still greater precautions towards husband’s theft of her land in her final will; protecting their children from colonial labor Juana demanded that her property be granted exploitation, resorting to abortion or only to her female relatives, because her infanticide. When one Ecuadorian mother was husband had “no rights whatsoever” over her caught burying her newborn son alive by the lands.21 A caveat included in Juana’s will village priest, she claimed that she had killed provides a clear indication that elite women her child so that “…he would not have to see actively sought to subvert the colonial system Christians in his lands.”17 While reproductive that robbed native women of their legal resistance efforts did not directly influence independence and rights. These formal and labor revisions in the colonial system, they did documented instances of female resistance to signify an attempt to reclaim female labor their new position in the colonial system is privileges, both sexual and economic. evidence of a larger resistance by Andean While the colonial legal system was not women throughout the colonial period, and is designed to be accessible to native women, indicative of an attempt to subvert the elite Andean women nonetheless formally patriarchy, both native and Spanish. protested the loss of their legal and economic Violent Resistance
18 Anton, 38. 15 Powers, 178. 19 Silverblatt, 119. 16 Ibid., 178. 20 Silverblatt, 120. 17 Ibid., 178. 21 Ibid., 121. While there were limited instances of high repute in the rebel army. Curaca Tomasa organized resistance by native women during Titu Condemayta was a rural leader that served the colonial period, there are still fewer as a field commander in the uprising, and occurrences of organized violence against the received her orders directly from Tupac Spanish patriarchy with high levels of female Amaru, an indication of her high status in the involvement. Whereas occasions of passive movement.24 resistance were usually conducted by The presence of native women in the high individuals, and were directed at the covert command of the rebel army represented the subversion of the colonial system, instances of survival of dual leadership, an Andean organized violence required mass participation conception of gender parallelism in authority and took decades to foment. The most positions, which managed to outlast the brutal notorious violent uprising in colonial Andean eradication efforts of the colonial gender history was the Tupac Amaru Rebellion of structure. A sizeable proportion of the soldiers 1780-1782, an event that utilized the mass in the movement were also native Andean unrest of huge native populations with military women, and though they did not occupy 22 precision. For two centuries, native Andeans prestigious positions like Micaela Bastides and had suffered extreme losses of social, Curaca Tomasa, they supplied the soldiers with economic, and religious status, and after an weapons and fought alongside the men in extended period of continued abuses, native skirmishes with the Spanish.25 The Spanish groups were prepared to reclaim their lost forces were especially disturbed by the masses rights through violent means. The uprising was of female soldiers in the movement, and the led by Tupac Amaru, a native Andean that gruesome public executions of the high female claimed to be the rightful heir to the fallen Inca command illustrate the gender inversion that Empire, and who pledged to eradicate the these women represented to the Spanish oppressive colonial system through military colonial system. While rare, the high female 23 force. Women not only participated as involvement in the Tupac Amaru Rebellion followers in the rebellion, they also held illustrated the continued resistance efforts of prestigious military positions in the rebel native Andean women to the colonial gender forces. Tupac Amaru’s wife, Micaela Bastides, hierarchy. served as a military strategist, absentee general and troop commandant in her husband’s Religious Resistance absence. Micaela was reported to have Resistance to the religious changes personally led five thousand native soldiers instituted by the Spanish with the introduction into battle against the Spanish, and was of Catholicism during the colonial period was remembered by a captured Spaniard as being an especially contentious point for Andeans. as “cruel a monster” as her husband in Both the Andean religion and Catholicism obtaining information from captured Spaniards were structured around their respective gender on enemy movements. Female curacas, or structures, so that the high religious status regional leaders, who had been dispossessed of enjoyed by Andean women the prior to the their titles by the colonial patriarchy also conquest was replaced with subservient flocked to the cause, and enjoyed positions of religious role of Iberian Catholicism. The higher status of women in Andean society was
22 Stavig, Ward and Ella Schmidt (eds.). The Tupac 23 Ibid., 19. Amaru and Catarista Rebellions: An anthology of 24 Ibid., 92, 65, 89. sources. Indiana: Hackett Publishing, 2008. 61. 25 Ibid., 98. directly reflected in their religious roles and Inti, which established the superiority of the positions, which the introduction of Inca patriarchy over women in religion. This Catholicism directly challenged. Andean religious control did have its limits, however, religion followed the model of parallel descent, as the aclla system inadvertently established a so that worship and authority positions were female “leadership hierarchy” within a male- divided equally along gender, providing native centric religious order.29 Although Andean women with separate, but equally powerful women had suffered male interference in their religious influence as Andean men. Parallel religious power under the Inca Empire, the descent also influenced Andean cosmology, so institution of Spanish Catholicism in the Andes that female deities were incredibly powerful not only curtailed the religious independence figures in religion. In fact, it has been of Andean women, but attempted to decimate suggested that Andean cultures had “an ancient the female religious sphere entirely. tradition of female supernaturals, perhaps The introduction of Catholicism to the older than in Meso-america.” The strength and Andes resulted in the demotion of native preeminence of Andean goddesses suggests women in nearly every aspect of religious that Andean women were equally as respected practice. Where there existed an entire 26 in religious matters. Female priestesses held pantheon of goddesses in Andean mythology, corresponding high positions of religious the embodiment of powerful creative and authority as their male counterparts, and held sexual forces, Catholicism had limited the total control of religious orders devoted to power of divine female figures. The most female goddesses like the powerful creator significant female figure in Catholicism was mother Pachamama and the corn goddess the Virgin Mary, and while highly revered, 27 Saramama. Mary was a submissive figure, and largely Andean female religious authority was not outranked by male deities. The conversion untested when the Spanish arrived in 1532, as further weakened the power of native women the Inca Empire had similarly targeted by cutting them out of the creation process women’s power and influence in the religious entirely; while Andean religion had a founding sphere. As a male-dominated warrior society, couple, Catholicism had only a founding the Inca had different ideas of gender father, which left newly “converted” Andean authority, which led to their replacement of women religiously adrift and ancient female deities with a supreme male disenfranchised.30 Andean women not only god, the sun god Inti. The Inca further lost religious authority during the conversion interfered in the religious practices of women to Catholicism, they were also persecuted for by demanding that women break the tradition imagined acts of evil solely for their gender. of gender parallelism and worship male gods Though Andean religion was devoid of a devil alongside female.28 The Inca also asserted figure, the Spanish projected their religious control over positions of female religious gender biases onto native women, with their authority with the introduction of the aclla assumptions that they worshipped the devil system. Acllas were young virgins that were because of the supposed disposition to evil of reaped by the Inca from conquered native the female sex.31 Women in positions of groups, and installed as priestesses devoted to religious authority were considered to be an
26 Kellogg, 41. 29 Kellogg, 50. 27 Silverblatt, 32. 30 Powers, 24. 28 Ibid., 41. 31 Silverblatt, 173. affront to acceptable gender roles in the new of this particular cult, Isabel Yalpay, received colonial order, and not only indecent, but one hundred lashes, was forced to work for the dangerous to the mission of conversion Church for ten years as penance, and was undertaken by the Catholic Church. denounced as a witch and a dogmatist by the 33 In response to the various religious colonial court. Such harsh punishments for demotions and denigrations suffered by pious women reflect the Church’s recognition of the Andean women following the Spanish power that native women had in Andean conquest, native women began to actively communities, as they were able to reverse the commit acts of religious resistance towards the conversion gains of the Church in significant new Catholic religion that was so intent on numbers. Despite these repercussions, native suppressing them. In the immediate wake of women continued to defy the Catholic Church, the conquest, resistant Andean women claimed as the conversion not only dispossessed native to have fully converted to Catholicism, while women of religious authority, but threatened secretly continuing to practice native religious cultural traditions as well. rituals. Former priestesses continued to hold Women of the puna their positions in the community, acting as The most successful case of organized confessors and religious guides to fellow religious resistance during the colonial period native women in direct opposition to the was the development of a sizable female Catholic decree condemning these practices as community in the rural Puna grasslands, where acts of heresy. Andean women resisted these female leaders of “outlawed indigenous cults” religious changes in various ways, the most defied the Spanish en masse.34 Native women powerful of which were the revival of native who had been victimized under the colonial cults, creation of puna society, manipulation of tribute system or persecuted by the Catholic witchcraft, and the Taqi Onqoy movement. Church for heresy slowly began to populate the Native cults rural puna and established a community Through the revival of female-oriented dedicated to the preservation of Andean religious cults, native women successfully culture. During the Church’s extirpation of resisted Catholic conversion and helped to idolatry campaign, devised to eradicate the ensure greater preservation of Andean religion. remnants of native religion that had survived Colonial court records from the seventeenth- colonization, the puna gained even more century attest to the high level of female inhabitants. An elderly native woman that had involvement in religious cults. A female cult fled the Extirpator of Idolatry, Franciso Avila, devoted to the corn goddess, Saramama, was illustrated the larger motivation of native denounced by Bernardo de Noboa, a Spanish women in joining the puna community: colonial official, for teaching other natives the perhaps then the priest is to blame if we “traditions of their ancestors” in “defiance of women adore the mountains, if we flee colonial civil and ecclesiastical courts.”32 The to the hills and the puna, since there is punishment for religious opposition was no justice for us here.35 extremely harsh in colonial Peru, as the leader
32 Silverblatt, 32. Andean women under Spanish rule.” In Women 33 Ibid., 33. and Colonization: Anthropological Perspectives, ed. 34 Ibid., 197. Mona Etienne and Eleanor Leacock. New York: 35. Silverblatt, Irene. “’The Universe has turned J.F. Bergin Publishers, 1980. 180. inside out…there is no justice for us here’: The open religious persecution of Andean denouncement by the Spanish that they were women did not inspire greater native morally evil. This was a huge change in conversion to Catholicism, but instead perception from the pre-Columbian period, renewed the practice of native religious rituals. when priestesses were revered as “virgins of This society of female traditionalists openly the sun”, to the colonial Church’s rejected Spanish customs and authority, in condemnation of these same women as “wives addition to “…vigorously reject[ing] the of the devil.”40 Native women were doubly colonial ideology which reinforced their stigmatized by the colonial Church; as women. oppression, refusing to go to mass…and they were morally susceptible to evil, and as returned to their native religion.”36 Old widows natives, their religious traditions were a were able to separate themselves from the manifestation of devil worship.41 As the perceived impurities of Catholicism by their Spanish expected native women to be witches, refusal to attend catechism, which allowed native women assumed the guise of them to make pure offerings to the Andean sorceresses in order to both resist the colonial gods, as they were considered unsullied by the system and defend “pre-Columbian life “the world of the conquerors.”37 In the puna, ways.”42 This method of resistance is well native women were able to avoid the described by the historian Irene Silverblatt: interferences of colonial priests that demanded Rejection of the Spanish world entailed, their subservience to the Catholic patriarchy, in some measure, the use of ideological and were able to create an “underground forms imported by the Spanish: thus, 38 culture of resistance.” The legacy of religious Iberian gender ideologies made women resistance started by colonial native women in witches, and Andean women turned the puna is so strong that in modern Andean witchcraft into a means of resistance.43 culture, the puna is still considered as “the center of women’s society”, and these native The resistant native population assisted these women are universally acknowledged as mock Andean witches in their efforts, to the defenders of the Andean culture.39 extent that colonial chroniclers recalled the refusal of natives to provide the names of Witchcraft witches to the Spanish, so that an underground The utilization of the Catholic fear of resistance movement was created purely out of witchcraft by native women to manipulate the the natives’ manipulation of their conquerors’ colonial system was an extremely innovative fear of witchcraft.44 method of religious resistance to Spanish The Taqi Onqoy Movement gender hierarchy. Though Andean religion was devoid of any reference to the devil, native The Taqi Onqoy movement was the most women understood the power of witchcraft in famous religious resistance movement that asserting female influence in the religious swept the native population of the Andes sphere. Though native women did not believe throughout the mid-sixteenth century. Of the themselves to be practitioners of witchcraft, thousands of native followers, or Taquiongos, they adopted the guise in response to repeated women made up more than half of the ranks.
36 Silverblatt, Moon, Sun, and Witches, 197. 40 Anton, 69. 37 Ibid., 205. 41 Ibid., 170. 38 Silverblatt, The Universe, 180 42 Ibid., 195. 43 Ibid., 213. 39 Silverblatt, Moon, Sun, and Witches, 209. 44 Ibid., 195. The movement was borne out of the natives’ society resulted in a serious status demotion for desire to return to ancient Andean religious Andean women after the conquest. The pre- traditions and banish both the Spanish and the Columbian period had allowed for a oppressive Catholic religion from the Andes, harmonious, parallel relationship between which Andeans envisioned as the result of a Andean men and women, so that native women clash between the Andean and Catholic gods.45 were able to hold equally powerful positions in The fact that the majority of Taquiongos were society. The introduction of Iberian gender women served as an indication as to the hierarchies, however, wherein women held survival of Andean religious authority subordinate places in all aspects of society, parallels, even decades after the conquest.46 reduced Andean women to their colonial status Female Taquiongos had significant influence as second-class citizens. The resistance within the movement; they were able to measures undertaken by native women in simultaneously recruit fellow natives to join retaliation to these changes, passive, violent, the movement, and bring Catholicized natives and religious, constituted active efforts to back to Andean religion.47 The female regain previously held rights. Furthermore, members of the Taqi Onqoy movement not such resistance efforts by Andean women only encouraged native resistance to their during the colonial period represented a larger oppressive colonial masters and the Spanish effort to preserve Andean culture from the world, but also tried to foster significant destructive influences of both the Catholic solidarity within the Andean world, as an effort Church and colonial system. to better salvage pre-conquest religious independence and freedoms.48 Although the movement was ultimately unsuccessful in its goal of expelling the Spanish from the Andes, native women did manage to reverse the conversion gains of the Catholic Church, and inspire further acts of resistance amongst native Andean women. Conclusion The Spanish conquest of the Americas has been referred to by historians as a “gendered collision.”49 This portrayal has certainly proven accurate in regard to the Spanish conquest of the Andes in 1532, when Spanish conquerors attempted to impose the Iberian conception of gender hierarchies on a largely egalitarian-native population. This radically fundamental disparity between the gender conceptions operating in Spanish and Andean
45 Powers, 180. Wisconsin, University of Wisconsin Press, 1982. 46 Kellogg, 83. 55. 47 Stern, Steve J. Peru’s Indian Peoples and the Challenge of Spanish Conquest: Huamanga to 1640. 48 Ibid., 56. 49 Powers, 39.
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