Sei sulla pagina 1di 10

The Depiction of Self and Other in Colonial Peru Author(s): Rolena Adorno Source: Art Journal, Vol.

49, No. 2, Depictions of the Dispossessed (Summer, 1990), pp. 110118 Published by: College Art Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/777190 . Accessed: 12/06/2013 08:43
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

College Art Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Art Journal.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 200.45.170.30 on Wed, 12 Jun 2013 08:43:12 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The and

Depiction of Self in Colonial Peru Other

By Rolena Adorno the European colonization of made about the conceptualization of self During the New World, the depiction of and Other across cultural boundaries in self and Other (European and Amerin- the early Spanish colonial period. Cieza's work is appropriate for this dian, or Amerindian and European) implied complex processes of observa- excursion because, along with the Suma tion, mediation, and projection. Often y narracion de los Incas of Juan de the image created and communicated by Betanzos (1551), it presents the earliest the observer had little or nothing to do European interpretationsof the Andean with what had been seen. To consider world and its past.2 The first edition of the depiction, therefore, is to reflect on Cieza's Chrbnica del Peru is richly the observing subject. Whether the illustrated, and, at least some of the observing subject was the colonizer or woodcuts were executed according to the colonized, the relationship between the author's own directions.3Two subsethem suggests that the best way to study quent editions, appearing in Antwerp in either is to take into account both 1554, copy these illustrations and repeat simultaneously. A case in point involves their exact location throughout.4 the earliest European images of the Incas of Andean South America, and, in turn, Andean images of indigenous culture and the foreign, Spanish invader. For the purpose of this discussion, I shall take as exemplary of the stated principles two textual cases: one, the 1553 publication of the Parte primera de la chronica del Peru (First part of the chronicle of Peru) by Pedro de Cieza de Leon, represents one of the earliest series of European images of Andean South Americans disseminated after the invasion of Peru by Francisco Pizarro and his company; the other, the 1615 Nueva corbnica y buen gobierno (New chronicle and good government) of Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, is an Andean response to eighty or ninety I Pedro de Cieza de Le6n, Pagan years of Europeanwriting on the Andes.' Fig. Amerindian priests speak with the The mediations that come into play from Parte primera de woodcut, devil, require more ample explanation than M. de can be provided here. Thus, although I la chronica del Peru (Seville: of the Montesdoca, 1553). Courtesy direct my attention to two concrete John Carter Brown Library, Brown examples, the discussion as a whole University. synthesizes several arguments I have 110 Art Journal Apart from the depictions of buildings and building construction, repeated some twenty-five times throughout Cieza's work to highlight the recurring theme of Native American and colonial Spanish foundations, there is another image of interest to us here: a woodcut of a group of Indians conversingwith the devil, repeated a total of eight times (fig. 1). On this illustration'sfirst appearance (chap. 15), the accompanying prose text tells of current practices of divination and sorcery that "the devil commands those who are in communication with him to undertake."5 Another image, appearing but once, depicts a scene of human sacrifice (chap. 19); here Cieza made a correction, in his fe de erratas, indicating that the Indian should be portrayed naked instead of clothed.6 Again we see the devil in attendance; the themes of affiliation with the devil and human sacrifice are combined in the pictorial text as they are in the prose text.7 As Cieza described the devouring of the sacrificial victims, cannibalism was added to his picture of the Amerindian natives. The depictions of the natives in conversationwith the devil are related to two others that complete the series: natives worshiping an emerald globe at Manta (chap. 50) and the heavenly punishment of ancient giants engaged in sodomy (chap. 52). Thus, apart from two elegant representations of the princely Inca (chaps. 38 and 92), every other pictorial image shows individuals identified as Andeans as communicating directly with Satan, engaging in acts of human sacrifice, sodomy, or pagan worship.

This content downloaded from 200.45.170.30 on Wed, 12 Jun 2013 08:43:12 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

My argument here is that these depictions of sensational and sensationalizing topics were designed to produce certain effects of interest and fascination on the part of their readers. I support this contention by examining a related textual feature: the tabla alphabetica, or alphabetical table of contents, found in the 1554 Antwerp edition of Cieza by Bellero.8These schemata of the contents of early modern imprints tell us what topics publishers and printers considered useful in piquing potential reader interest. Under "C," for example, we find, "Marriage [casamiento] of Indian slaves so that they have children which their lords will eat." Dozens of similar examples could be cited to suggest how accessory textual elements were created and manipulated to attract readers and simultaneously create and confirm their expectations. In the case of the Chrbnica del Peru, the author was intent on presenting a balanced, possibly sympathetic, view of Amerindian societies.9 The tone of Cieza's work is set by his admiration for the Incas and his confidence about bringing all Indians into the Christian fold, despite the devil's dominion over them. He cautioned that the accounts of sodomy and cannibalism he presented regarding some groups-obviously considered the most grave among all Amerindian shortcomings-were not to be generalized to all. Cieza's apprehension that certain aspects of his work were likely to be sensationalized and generalized was well taken. He understood that despite his attempt to present a balanced picture of native Andean culture, he could not control its reception by readers.Through his warning, he acknowledged having created an account that, in spite of his own intentions, could be used by anti-indigenist polemicists in debates on the rights of conquest. In addition to the explicit features of his depictions of Andeans, other seemingly unrelated factors came into play in the creation of the first figuration of the AmerindianOther. most famous and controversial context for the discussion of the Amerindian in the sixteenth centuryaccording to the scholarship of the past forty years-is the debate on the rights of conquest and the Aristotelian theory of natural slavery."1 This scholarship has argued that the theory of natural slavery, appropriated from Aristotle, was a concept subsequently translated into a descriptionof New World inhabitants. Apart from the very troublesome problem of ascertaining precisely what the sixteenth-century theoreticians meant by the term "natural slavery,"12 The

Fig. 2 Alonso de Ovalle, Virgin and Child with Araucanian Supplicants, engraving, from Histbrica relacion del reyno de Chile y de las missiones (Rome: Francesco Cavalli, 1646), 393. Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library, Brown University. the doctrine seems inadequate to account for all the ways we see Amerindians discussed in the early writings of the colonial period. In my opinion, the Indian as adult-child was given more credence in the discourses of colonialism that was any other view. This theoretical position was developed in the 1530s at the University of Salamanca by Francisco de Vitoria, who abandoned one avenue of Aristotelian-faculty psychology for another and identified Amerindians not as "nature's slaves" but as That is, the Amer"nature'schildren."13 indian was considered to be physically an adult but psychologically a child; with all rational faculties complete but not fully developed, the Amerindian needed instruction and education in order to realize both psychological and mental potential. Vitoria's hypothesis was not novel; "because it was grounded in a theory about the way in which all men come to understand the law of nature, [it] provideda reasonedexplanation for an assumption others had reached intuitively" or by personal
observation.14

The notion that the Indian was to be considered like a child was common in missionary writings15and was reflected in accompanying visual images of the Amerindians. The engravings from an account published in 1646 by the Jesuit Alonso de Ovalle, for example, attach an immature psychological quality to the Chilean natives by the representationof childlike and adolescent physical attributes. Here the newly convertedAraucanians worship a miraculous image of the Virgin Mary that appeared in a cave in Araucania (fig. 2).16 These and other such perceptions produced in the writings on Amerindian culture must be considered in the light of the assumptions, associations, and analogies about other subordinated groups. The typology of relations developed in discourse by the European to deal with the non-Europeanhad more to Summer 1990 111

This content downloaded from 200.45.170.30 on Wed, 12 Jun 2013 08:43:12 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

EtiPP1M

ERMvt/cdO

Fig. 3 Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, Self-Portrait, pen-and-inkdrawing, from Nueva coronica y buen gobierno (1615; Madrid: Historia-16, 1987), 368. do, I would argue, with stances previously taken regarding other subordinated or subjugated groups than with factors pertaining to the conquest and colonial experience. What is involved here is not the direct and immediate observationof reality but rather observations and judgments that originate in, and are mediated by, experience with other discourses. I am thinking especially of those whose referents would be contemplated as a version of alterity, as outsiders removed from an individual's own personal experience by gender, cultural difference, or social class. The theory of the descent of the Amerindian peoples from one of the ten lost tribes of Israel, for example, illustrates the point. Such notions came not from armchair speculators but from missionaries such as the Franciscan friar Toribio de Benavente Motolinia and the Dominican friar Diego Duran, who spent their lives among the new brethren.17 Consciouslyor unconsciously, the chroniclers, missionary writers, and theological-juridical experts put forth 112Art Journal

Fig. 4 Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, Adam and Eve, pen-and-ink drawing, from Nueva corbnica y buen gobierno (1615; Madrid: Historia-16, 1987), 22. Chivalric discourse, in its secular and religious manifestations, was pervasive in the sixteenth century in Europe. In literature, it had two principal manifestations: the epic poems of heroic conquest and the novels of chivalry. The first implies the relationship of the Amerindian to other discourses on infidelity; the second, the relationship to discourse on women and the requisites of moral instruction for weaker beings.19 The epic celebrated the triumph of Christian militancy, and its source was the medieval conception of an aggression that opposed the enemies of Christianity, particularly the Muslims and Turks. From about 1555 on, epic poetry no longer celebrated only ancient deeds but contemporary ones, too. The military feats of Charles V and his captains, those of the Spanish conquests in the Indies, and the victory over Islam in the Mediterranean and in southern Spain now became the topics of heroic poetry. How did this type of discourse portray the Amerindian? Its major themes were the conquest of the infidel barbarian,the

comparative models and frames of reference by which they attempted to recognize, comprehend, and then classify the newfound humanity. In explaining the foregoing European visions of otherness, we need to abstract the composite profile of the observing subject who looked at certain social types as different from himself but similar to each other.'8 This subject is male and Christian, and his values are those of masculine, chivalric, Christian culture; his category of alterity would include moriscos, Jews, Indians, peasants, and women. From the perspective of such an individual, discourses on otherness would be those that deal with infidelity (the writings on Muslims, moriscos, Jews, and conversos) and Christianity imperfectly achieved (the writings of Christian moral instruction for women). Comparable elements are found in the depictions of Amerindians, and our approach to them will parallel the most common pattern followed by the above-mentioned observer: the discourse of chivalry.

This content downloaded from 200.45.170.30 on Wed, 12 Jun 2013 08:43:12 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

triumph of the faith, and the religious conversion of the indigenous American warrior. The Amerindian lord ended up either dead on the battlefield or convertedto Christianitybeforehis execution. What did the novel of chivalry have to do with women and Indians? As a genre that specialized in chivalric feats by noble knights in shining armor who defeated dragons, armies, and enchanters by day and made love to courtly ladies by night, the novel of chivalry was the object of scathing criticism by moralists. Their invective was expressed in two ways and both had to do with the supposed effects on readers. One was that the representation of magic and superstitious practices could lead the reader to heresy and disbelief in Christianity.20The other was that the representation of sexual liberality and relationships outside wedlock could corrupt a vulnerable, gullible, and specifically female readership.21The Amerindian was projected to be a reader of the same type. Royal edicts of 1531 and 1543 declared that "lying histories" should be prohibited from export to the Indies because from them the Indian "and other inhabitants of the afore-mentioned Indies" would learn new vices and evil ways.22The stated argument for prohibiting all but works of religious instruction was that the Indians, not yet well grounded in the faith, would give as much credence and authority to these profane works as they would to works of religious doctrine. This leads me to suggest that expectations set up for the female gender by learned male European society served as one of the filters through which the Amerindian was imagined. Here it is useful to return to the theorizing done by Francisco de Vitoria and the School of Salamanca; the Amerindian was considered psychologically a child and, like that other defective creature, woman, morally weak. In both instances, the woman and the Amerindianwere granted rationalcapacities that were complete and intact but not yet fully developed.23 Indians in America, like women and children in Europe, were considered to rely more on emotion than on reason, and they were considered naturally to be given over more to sensuality than to the sublime; as a result, they needed constant supervision and serious tutelage. The concepts of the natural inferiority of women and children to men, and of Amerindians to Europeans, bring together the domestic and imperial discourses of domination of the period.24 Among these many overlapping discourses another crucial term of conjunc-

tion and comparison for what we might call Indianist discourse is found in the writings on morisco culture. The comparison is appropriate because official policy toward both groups followed a similar path until the beginning of the seventeenth century, when the moriscos were expelled from Spain.25There were systematic attempts at conversion of the moriscos, and the elaboration of policy with respect to one group often took as its model a discipline that was applied to the other. The discourses through which these policies were elaborated were remarkablyalike, and so were the native morisco and Amerindianprotestsagainst them.26 Like the Jews, moriscos and Amerindians were accused of secret dogmatizing in their own traditions after undergoing public conversion to Christianity. Works in Arabic and in Amerindian languages, as in Hebrewas well as works in Castilian describing Jewish, Muslim, or Amerindian customs-were prohibitedor suppressed.In some respects, the Jews, the moriscos, and the Amerindians, as discursive entities, belonged to the same "fixed semantics."27 Let us now examine the terms by which one native Andean writerreordered thosesemanticelements. Guaman Poma de Ayala was an Andean descended from the Yarovilca dynasty that predated the Inca empire in the Andes; he claimed maternal descent from the Incas.28Born shortly after the Spanish conquest of Peru, he was raised in contact with European colonial society and employed by the colonial establishment as an His command of the Spaninterpreter.29 ish language was in part self-taught, but he mastered it well enough to pen a twelve-hundred-page chronicle (including 400 line drawings) to King Philip III of Spain. For Guaman Poma, writing was the only avenue of social participation left when all other traditional means had been closed. He took up the pen to defend himself and his people, to engage in the struggle for the survival of Andean cultures, and, more immediately, to protect and recover the privileges and prerogatives traditionally inherited by the native elite. In Guaman Poma's Nueva coronica y buen gobierno, we have a world of visual images offering Amerindian glimpses of Andeans as self, European as Other. Like many other colonial Amerindian testimonies of Mesoamerica and Peru, he incorporated the European into his world by interpreting the Spanish conquest as the fulfillment of traditional Inca prophecy and the will of God.30 Guaman Poma's representation of the European is conditioned by his aware-

ness of European notions of the Amerindian. For this reason, we begin with his Andean self-representations, which are already a response to a polemic, in order to better appreciate the polemical nature of his representation of the foreigners. Guaman Poma's self-portraitssummarize his visual argument by communicating Andean values through European symbols. His European-style heraldry materializes the totemic names falcon (guaman) and lion (poma), his European hat always covers an Andean haircut, and his European courtier's costume includes a traditional Andean tunic (uncu) worn over billowed Spanish knee breeches (valones) and under a Spanish cape (fig. 3). Even when dressed in Andean costume, he carries a Roman Catholic rosary to convey the message of Christian civility.31 In each of the five self-portraits he presents,32the figure of the Christian Andean lord corroborates the verbal message of the author's professed acculturated status. The term used by the Spanish to refer to such natives who were acquainted with European culture was indio ladino. Guaman Poma's self-portraits convey the message of his ladinidad. Let us now turn to the messages that his self-portraits contradict. he Cieza de Leon woodcuts reveal that idolatry (that is, living literally in conversation with the devil) and sexual deviation or excess were depictions commonly used to portray Andean society. The literature of religious and moral instruction specifically dedicated to the evangelization of the native populations in their own languages was full of accusations against the Andeans of sexual depravity, dishonesty, thievery, drunkenness, and idolatry. In response, Guaman Poma presented certain characterizations of Andean humanity and denied others. In the first place, he affirmed that the Indians were descended directly from Adam and Eve. His portrayal of the biblical pair as Andean farmers (fig. 4)33 is accompanied by a prose text explaining that the first Indians followed the customs, in dress and occupation, of Adam and Eve.34Here the artist appropriated the figures of Christian art for his own tradition, and in so doing he removed them from the sphere of the European. In this drawing, Adam and Eve are more visibly the progenitors of the Andean race than of the European. Guaman Poma explained further that the Indians are not Jews, referring to the theory of Amerindian origins as one of the ten lost tribes of Israel. Nor are they Muslims or Turks. (Thus he denied Amerindian descent from any nonSummer 1990113 r

Felipe

This content downloaded from 200.45.170.30 on Wed, 12 Jun 2013 08:43:12 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Christian peoples.)35 The Andeans are not savages, but highly civilized.36This point is made by his visual representations of four epochs of the Andean world that preceded the age of the Incas. The first generation wore the leafy "suit of Adam" and cultivated the land; the second constructed houses of stone and adored the "true god"; the third developed weaving and other mechanical arts; the fourth extended its dominion and territoryand engaged in war against its enemies.37 Guaman Poma further negated the European idea of Amerindian savagery for the Andeans by using it to identify only the Anti, the hunters and gatherersof the tropicalrain forest.38 This primitive state is conveyed by the iconographicsign of nakedness,whereas, in contrast, the ancient Andeans, like Guaman Poma's Adam and Eve (fig. 4), are fully and elaborately clothed. Nakedness is a powerful sign associated with Andean "barbarity"from the

first Europeanrepresentations.The frontispiece used in two texts of 1534 depicts the Andean retinue of the Inca Atahualpa as nearly naked warriors (fig. 5). This depiction ignored the literary content, which in both cases explicitly describes the costumes and headgear worn by the royal entourage, with one noting that under their livery these four hundred warriors carried secret weapons.39Indifferent to such guidance, the artist created the scene by reaffirming the European stereotype of the half-naked and barefoot barbarian.Guaman Poma reversed the formula and made nakedness a non-Andean trait. There are two kinds of Andean nakedness in the Nueva corbnica; one is naturalistic;the other, symbolic. Nakedness is stylized in the pictures of symbolic meaning such as the creation of Adam and Eve, in which the figures of both male and female are pictured without genitalia.40 The presence of

icons representing the Christian god confirms the abstract nature of this portrayal. In contrast, the naturalistic depictions of nakedness include explicit illustrations of the genitalia and are found where exploitation and physical abuse of the Indians by the colonizers are documented (fig. 6).41 Although the unclothed Indian figure might suggest the natural condition of the "noble savage" to the modern viewer, that idea is irrelevant in view of the physical vulnerability denoted in Guaman Poma's drawings. Furthermore,it is incongruous with the conception of the development of Andean civil culture as shown in his representations of ancient generations of pre-Incaic civilization. No doubt in reaction to the European stereotype of the autochthonous American as naked barbarian, Guaman Poma constituted the sign of nakedness as an anomaly to the scheme of the development of Andean civilization. In the iconographic narrative of the ancient past, only a couple being executed for adultery is shown unclothed.42Thus, in the context of the foreign invasion of Guaman Poma's time, being stripped bare signifiesan equally deviant phenomenon: the intrusion of the outsider into Andean culture space and the subsequent destruction of Andean cultural and social norms. When Andeans appear naked in Guaman Poma's drawings, they convey not barbaric savagery but rather victimization at the hands of the European invaders. This display occasionally includes the twist that the Andean female has become the lascivious accomplice to her own exploitation.43 By responding to common European visions of alterity, Guaman Poma's drawings confirm for us what those commonplaces were. His visual testimony allows us to glimpse the distorted visions produced by the mediation of various cultural filters. Understanding the straitened conditions of emergence of the first European views of Amerindian humanity, we turn more discerningly to this Andean's creation of the European as Other. he dilemma for Guaman Poma was how to condemn the invaders without offending their king, Philip III, to whom he was writing for help. The petitioner's strategies are subtle and numerous, but in the present case I shall mention only two. First is the use of symbolic values of space, given that Andean cosmology and geography organize space according to values of Guaman Poma utilized them hierarchy.44 in the composition of his own pictorial narrativeby placing only Andeans in the positionsof priorityand privilege, reservT

Fig. 5 Francisco de Xerez, Atahuallpa Inca and his army meet the Spanish conquistadores, woodcut, from Verdaderarelacion de la conquista del Peru (Seville: Bartolome Perez, 1534), frontispiece. Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library, Brown University. 114Art Journal

This content downloaded from 200.45.170.30 on Wed, 12 Jun 2013 08:43:12 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

contradict those professed Christian ideals. Because the representation of this theme is self-evident in his drawings and verbal diatribes, I would like to outline one of the more subtle strategies of representationcontained in the iconographic codes of the pictorial text.50 he pictorial backgrounds Guaman Poma created appear to collapse the anecdotal data of diverse cultural phenomena into a single, uninterrupted continuum. In general, the indoor setting is the same for such wide-ranging subjects as the author's family home in Cuzco, the papal palace in Rome, the palatial quarters of the Incas' queenconsorts, and the administrative headquarters of the colonial province. Similarly, the outdoor landscapes, from the depiction of Adam and Abraham through that of the ancient Incas and the contemporarycolonial Andeans, are regularly composed of mountain peaks whose natural connotation is the Andean sierra. The temporal and spatial suggestion of this pictorial strategy is, on the surface, to unify the entire spread of human experience from its mythical beginnings to daily life in the Peruvian viceroyalty. Nevertheless, the oppositions between indoor and outdoor settings constitute evaluative statements about the importation of European Fig. 6 Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, Executioner, culture to the Andes. priest, punishes the naked Indian without considering The indoor setting becomes the stanwhether he is a lord or commoner, pen-and-ink drawing, dard iconographic framework to reprefrom Nueva coronica y buen gobierno (1615; Madrid: sent the scenes of non-Andean, Western Historia-16, 1987), 596. social order, while Andean civilization is consistently placed in the outdoor seting for Europeans the lesser hierarchical ary motif of the "world-upside-down" ting. In the original five ages of the and negatively valued sections of the (mundo-al-reves), and it refers to the world that Guaman Poma presented, the pictorial field. This secret spatial symbol- domination of colonial society by the spaces of Adam (identified as rural, ism, invisible and undecipherable to the common-born and greedy invaders who moral, and good) and King David European reader, nevertheless provided have replaced the native Andean elite.47 (urban and ordered but also corrupt) the means by which the Andean artist Guaman Poma adopted in his writing articulate a mutual exclusivity of the could order and interpret his pictorial the values that European Christian two models: the space of moral, ethical universe in consonance with indigenous culture represented.The degree to which action is signified by the out-of-doors; he did so is evident in his portrayal of the space of social, corrupt dealings is values.45 The second use of pictorial space Andean society as currently Christian indoors.51In Guaman Poma's model of concerns Guaman Poma's articulation and part of the biblical spiritual tradi- Andean culture space, the domains of of his model of culture. Here we invoke tion in ancient times.48 Therefore, the moral virtue and society are one, as both the theory that cultural modeling is way he identified the Europeans as are depicted consistently against an Other was to separate them from the outdoor setting. conceived spatially; the category "culture" is represented by whatever is religious beliefs professed by their sociThe problem of the erection of the enclosed within a certain spatial do- ety and culture. The European, Guaman palace of King David on the soil tilled by main, and "nonculture" is all that is Poma made clear, is an outsider to the Adam-that is, the replacement of one located outside it.46Guaman Poma's is a Andes and alien to his own values. model of Western culture by anotherTo make the point that the European is that it is inadequate to express the many-leveled discourse in which he identified the Spanish king with himself is an unlawful interloper in the Andes, exact nature and significance of the on a high moral plane; both are removed Guaman Poma followed the argumenta- event that Guaman Poma portrayed,not from, and superior to, the corruption of tion of Las Casas, based on Scholastic surprisingly, as the seminal occurrence the colonialists and their indigenous and concepts of natural law and the natural in the history of Western civilization: mestizo collaborators. As Other, the right of a people to sovereignty over its the birth of Jesus Christ and the advent European is associated exclusively with own territories.49To make the second of Christianity. He solved the dilemma social disorder and chaos. The epithet point about the abandonment of their iconographically by placing the birth of that Guaman Poma applied to the own values, he depicted the colonists, Christ spatially at the juncture of the colonial situation is the European liter- verbally and in pictures, in actions that natural and socialized worlds, at the Summer 1990115 r

This content downloaded from 200.45.170.30 on Wed, 12 Jun 2013 08:43:12 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Fig. 7 Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, The birth of Jesus Christ, pen-and-ink drawing, from Nueva corbnica y buen gobierno (1615; Madrid: Historia-16, 1987), 30. seam that connects the spaces of natural virtue and innocence and the structured social order (fig. 7).52 The curious feature of the setting is the tiled floor (representingindoorspace) on which the Holy Family is located. Although there are surely European artistic precedents for this depiction, Guaman Poma's use of it is meaningful in the context of an iconographic system that assigns distinct values to the contrast between indoor and outdoor settings. In relation to his drawings of the ages of Adam and David, the integration of outdoor and quasi-indoor pictorial space here suggests that the theology and ideology of Christian salvation is to become the mediator between European (depicted as indoors) and Andean (outdoors) spheres. This notion is borne out in another significant and curious drawing in which a colonial Andean functionary is posed in an indoor/outdoor setting and holds a Christian rosaryas well as the characteristic Andean coca pouch (fig. 8).53 The figure is placed indoors insofar as the 116Art Journal

Fig. 8 Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, Administrator of five Indians, pen-and-ink drawing, from Nueva cor6nica y buen gobierno (1615; Madrid: Historia-16, 1987), 769. plary comportmentof a Christian friar.55 At the same time, the mountainous landscape that formed part of the Golden Age of the ancient Andeans becomes the universal emblem of Andean experience,right throughthe depictions of colonial times. Overall, Guaman Poma's iconographic text conveys a message about the integration of social organization, moral conduct, and religious piety in Andean experience, in contrast to the absence of such integration in the Europeanculture space. ow we come to the use Guaman Poma made of the Christian iconographic code. The introduction of religious symbolism raises questions about the relationshipof the models of Andean and European culture, which I have interpreted as being separate and distinct. Symbolic icons like the devil and the dove are metalinguistic signs insofar as they stand alongside icons in the naturalistic register of representation and effectively comment upon them. The icon of the dove representing the

backgroundis the characteristic interior wall and window of the European culture space (see fig. 6). At the same time, the Andean mandoncillo stands before an Inca stone house as seen from the outside.54Like its prototype in the nativity scene, this depiction is an instance of the mediation of the two cultural spheres through the agency of Christianity: the Andean figure holds a rosary as his key to negotiating across the boundary that separates Andean and Europeancultures. Articulated by the background settings that identify the European almost exclusively with the indoors, we see two theses elaborated about the foreign culture. First, it is the site of the creation of a hierarchical colonial administration, civil and ecclesiastic; and, second, it is the locus of moral depravity and the criminal exploitation of the Andean people. The space of virtue in the European orb is so limited that it requires the imposition of a linguistic marker-the word "obedience," for indicate the exemexample-to

This content downloaded from 200.45.170.30 on Wed, 12 Jun 2013 08:43:12 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Holy Spirit appears frequently in the depiction of Andeans, portraying them as devout Christians. This signification of Andean piety is predictable in the context of an arduous defense of the Andeans as Christians and as part of the author's effort to argue for their legal rights as members of a Christian state. Why, then, did he make Satan a member of the Andean pictorial cast of characters in settings of both ancient and modern times? For the depictions of ancient times, Guaman Poma's employment of the devil motif is the negative sign of an affirmativegesture; by placing the Christian devil among the Inca's diviners, Guaman Poma reminded his readers that Christianity was contemporaneous with the ancient Andean world.56(Guaman Poma had dated the birth of Jesus Christ as having taken place during the reign of the second Inca, Sinchi Roca.)57 The demon with the Andean thief in modern times is the exception that proves the rule that thievery is not a characteristically Andean crime.58 In the context of their employment in Andean depictions, the omission of such signs from drawings of the European colonialists merits comment. Given Guaman Poma's critique of Spanish behavior, the absence of the dove of the Holy Spirit from drawings featuring Europe-

ans is predictable. Because of this attitude, however, we might expect him to condemn them pictorially through the use of a grotesque horned beast. It is possible that the artist refrained from such visual condemnation of the Spaniards in order not to offend his intended royal reader. Yet his strident, antiSpanish diatribes throughout eight hundred pages of prose would not have spared him the royal wrath. There is more subtlety in his strategy and it pertains to a fundamental description of the two cultural entities. The importationof Christian religious ideology into the representation of Andean culture space would seem to require the full utilization of both its positive and negative symbols. At the same time, the absence of the signs of the devil and the dove from the Europeans' arena of action deprives that culture space of the values that such icons impart. In effect, Guaman Poma's final step in arguing for the fusion of Christian values and Andean culture is to pull away those very values from any identification with the European. To echo an analysis of Montaigne's "On Cannibals," in which "barbarism comes over here" (to the European side),59 we might say that Guaman Poma gave us "barbarism going over there," also to the European side. This

Andean view of the European as uncivil being and outsider is a subtle but calculated construction. In pictures and in prose, the Amerindian's view of the European as Other is one that places the latter outside everything the subject represents, even as this colonial subject has had to rely on the expressed values of the European in order to do so. These examples make clear, I hope, the double and redoubling perspectives that go into the formation of images of the Other. Although incomplete as an account of the depiction process, the examples herein illuminate certain principles-namely, (1) the requirement of looking beyond (and behind) the obvious, stereotypical features of crosscultural portraits in order to grasp their fuller resonances; and (2) the recognition that imperfect superimpositionsand partial renderings are characteristic of the complex, often contradictory processes of representation and self-representation undertaken by the colonial subject. Rolena Adorno is professor of Romance languages and literatures at Princeton University and a 1989-90 Guggenheim Fellow. She is currently working on the historiography of the conquest of Mexico.

Notes 1 Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, El primer nueva corbnica y buen gobierno (1615), ed. John V. Murra and Rolena Adorno, Quechua translations by Jorge Urioste (Madrid: Historia-16, 1987). This edition is cited throughout; its pagination corrects Guaman Poma's original numbering. 2 Franklin Pease G. Y., "Introducci6n,"in Pedro de Cieza de Le6n, Crbnica del Peru: Primera parte (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Cat6olica del Per6 y Academia Nacional de la Historia, 1984), xi. 3 Carmelo Saenz de Santa Maria, "Los manuscritos de Pedro Cieza de Le6n," Revista de Indias (Madrid), nos. 145-46 (1976), 188. 4 Pedro de Cieza de Le6n, Parte primera de la chrbnica del Peru (Seville: M. de Montesdoca, 1553); idem, Parte primera de la chrbnica del Peru (Antwerp: Juan Bellero, 1554); and idem, La chrbnica del Peru, nuevamente escrita (Antwerp: Martin Nucio, 1554). The only earlier Andean image in a European imprint was the frontispiece (a woodcut) to Crist6bal de Mena's account of the conquest of Peru, published anonymously in Seville in 1534; it was used again during the same year in Francisco de Xerez's Historia del descubrimiento del Peru, also published in Seville. See Crist6bal de Mena, La conquista del Periu, llamada la Nueva Castilla, in Rafil Porras Barrenechea, Las relaciones primitivas de la conquista del Peru (Lima: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, 1967), 45-66, 79-101; and Francisco de Xerez, Verdadera relacibn de la conquista del Periu, in Crbnicas de la conquista del Periu,ed. Julio Le Riverend (Mexico City: Editorial Nueva de Espafia, n.d.), 29-124. 5 Pedro de Cieza de Leon, La crbnica del Pertu, ed. Manuel Ballesteros Gaibrois (Madrid: Historia-16, 1984), 113. 6 Saenz de Santa Maria (cited in n. 3 above), 184. 7 Cieza de Le6n (cited in n. 5 above), 124. 8 Cited in n. 4 above. 9 Politically, Cieza was indigenist in his outlook. He hoped to leave his papers to Fray Bartolom6 de Las Casas, the principal Spanish defender of the Indians, and he shared Las Casas's convictions about the cruelty of the conquests and the dignity and worth of Amerindian peoples. One of the Andeanist scholars consulted both by him and by Las Casas was the great Quechua grammarian Domingo de Santo Tomas, who was also a Dominican friar and bishop of Charcas. See Pease in Cieza de Le6n (cited in n. 2 above), xiii, xix. 10 Cieza de Le6n (cited in n. 5 above), 389-90. 11 See Lewis Hanke, The Spanish Struggle for Justice in the Conquest of America (Philadelphia: American Historical Association, 1949); and idem, Aristotle and the American Indians (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1971). 12 See Lino G6mez Canedo, "^Hombres o bestias? (Nuevo examen critico de un viejo t6pico)," Estudios de Historia Novohispana 1 (1966): 29-51; and Rolena Adorno, "La discusi6n sobre la naturaleza del indio," Historia de la Literatura Latinoamericana, ed. Ana Pizarro (Paris: UNESCO and Association Internacionalede Litt6rature Compar6e, forthcoming). 13 See Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1982), 42-44. 14 Ibid., 106. 15 Ibid., 106, 222. 16 Alonso de Ovalle, Histbrica relacibn del reino de Chile (Rome: Francesco Cavalli, 1646), 393; see also pp. 91, 93, 104. 17 Toribio de Benavente Motolinia, Historia de los Indios de la Nueva Espaha, ed. Claudio Esteva (Madrid: Historia-16, 1985); Diego Duran, Historia de las Indias de Nueva Espaha y Islas de Tierra Firme, ed. Jos6 F. Ramirez (Mexico City: Editora Nacional,

Summer 1990

117

This content downloaded from 200.45.170.30 on Wed, 12 Jun 2013 08:43:12 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

30 Ibid., 107, 114, 380. GuamanPoma,however, Lore5, no. 1 (1979):83-116. did not findthis Christian of a interpretation fully 46 Juri M. Lotman,"On the Metalanguage in explaining Andeanhistory.See of Culture," Semiotsatisfactory Description Typological de Critica Literaria Latinoamericana, no. 28 of the Impossible: Frank "Chronicles ica 14,no.2 (1975):97-123. Salomon, Notes on Three Peruvian Indigenous 47 See RolenaAdorno,GuamanPoma: Writing (1988), 55-68. 19 On bothtopics,see RolenaAdorno,"Literary in FromOralto Written and Resistance in Colonial Peru (Austin: Historians," ExpresProductionand Suppression:Reading and sion: Native Andean Chronicles of the Early of Texas,1986),84, 106, 164. University in ColonialSpanColonial WritingaboutAmerindians Period,ed. RolenaAdorno (Syracuse, 48 GuamanPoma(cited in n. 1 above),86, 246, ish America," N.Y.: Foreignand Comparative StudiesProDispositio9, nos.28-29 (1986): 277, 279, 306, 308, 340, 358, 565, 755, 770, 1-25. 776,862,928. gram, SyracuseUniversity,1982), 9-39; and 20 See Fray Luis de Le6n, De los nombresde RolenaAdorno,"TheRhetoricof Resistance: 49 FrayBartolom6 de Las Casas, Tratadode las Christo(1591), in ObrascompletascastellaThe 'Talking' Bookof FelipeGuaman docedudas(1564), in Obrasescogidas,V, ed. Poma," nas de Fray Luis de Lebn, I, Bibliotecade Juan P6rezde Tudela,Bibliotecade Autores History of EuropeanIdeas 6, no. 4 (1985): vol. 3 (Madrid:Editorial AutoresCristianos, 447-64. vol. 110 (Madrid: Atlas, 1958).For Espafioles, 31 Ibid.,1105. an analysis of Guaman Poma's use of Las Cat6lica,1957),406. 21 Ibid.,407. See also Ida Rodriguez Casas'sargumentation, see Adorno(citedin n. Prampolini, 32 Ibid.,1, 17, 368,755, 1105. Amadises de America: la hazaha de Indias 33 Ibid.,22, 48. 47 above),21-32. como empresa caballeresca (Mexico City: 34 Ibid.,51, 60. 50 This argumentsummarizes one that I have JuntaMexicana de Investigaciones Hist6ricas, 35 Ibid.,60. madepreviously aboutGuaman Poma'sreprethat 36 Ibid. sentation 1948), 12-15. It is known of culturaltypology, as basedon his today,however, the readers of chivalric fictionin its time were 37 Ibid.,48, 53, 57, 63. useof pictorial codesof background representaSee Daniel Eisenberg, 38 Ibid.,177,293, 324. male and aristocratic. tion and Christianiconography. See Rolena Ken- 39 Mena in Porras Barrenechea "Who Read the Novels of Chivalry?" (cited in n. 4 Adorno, "On Pictorial Language and the de Xerez(citedin n. 4 tucky RomanceQuarterly20, no. 2 (1973): above),84-85; Francisco Typology of Culture in a New World Semiotica 36, nos. 1-2 (1981): above),66-68. 209-33; and Maxime Chevalier,Lecturay Chronicle," lectores en la Espaha del siglo XVI y XVII 40 Guaman Poma(citedin n. 1 above),12. 51-106. 41 Ibid.,596. 51 Guaman Turner, Poma(citedin n. 1 above),22, 28. 1976). (Madrid: 22 Citedby Rodriguez 52 Ibid.,30. (citedin n. 21 42 Ibid.,310. Prampolini 43 Ibid., 503, 529, 596, 599, 684, 885. One rare 53 Ibid.,769. above),18. 23 Pagden(citedin n. 13 above),104-5. but revealing picture (p. 507), titled The 54 TheIncastonestructure witha pitched roofis a Dembcrates 24 See Juan Gines de Sepuflveda, commonfeatureof GuamanPoma'sportrayal corregidor and the priest and the lieutenant make their rounds, looking at the women's of the Andeanworld(ibid.,57, 300, 306, 331). Segundo o de las justas causas de la guerra contralos indios,ed. and trans.AngelLosada woman 55 Ibid.,478, 482. shameful parts,showsa nakedAndean de Investigaciones an eroticposeforhervisitors. 56 Ibid.,279, 281. (Madrid: striking ConsejoSuperior Cientificas, 44 Nathan Wachtel, Sociedad e ideologia:en- 57 Ibid.,90-91. 1951),20-22. 25 On moriscohistory,see AntonioDominguez 58 Ibid.,942. Thisdrawing showsan Andeanin a sayos de historia y antropologia andinas Ortiz and BernardVincent,Historia de los de Estudios Peruanos, 1973), (Lima:Instituto gaudy Europeancostume with an Andean Moriscos: vida y tragedia de una minoria 165-232. around him. He leadsa horse mantlewrapped of this topic, see Rolena 45 For a full discussion anda llamaby theirhaltersandholdsa bag of Alianza,1985). (Madrid: "Iconand Idea:A SymbolicReading 26 See RolenaAdorno,"La Ciudadletraday los Adorno, silver, which is being handed to him by a of Picturesin a PeruvianIndianChronicle," demonic discursos coloniales,"Hispamerica, no. 48 exaggerated figureas tall delightfully Indian Historian 12, no. 3 (1979): 27-50; as he is. This Christian devil speaks in (1987), 3-24. Lost: A PeruvianIndian "You are going to rob well. I will 27 Angel Rama, La ciudad letrada (Hanover, idem, "Paradigms Quechua: coinsof silver." N.H.: Ediciones del Norte, 1984),55. Surveys SpanishColonialSociety,"Studies in helpyou.Herearea hundred the Anthropology of Visual Communication 5, Discourses 59 Michel de Certeau,Heterologies: 28 GuamanPoma(cited in n. 1 above),75, 991; foreword no. 2 (1979): 78-96; and MercedesL6pezon the Other,trans.BrianMassumi, see Jos6 Varallanos,Historia de Huanuco of Baralt, "La persistenciade las estructuras University by WladGodzich(Minneapolis: (BuenosAires:Imprenta L6pez,1959),79-82. andinasen los dibujosde Guaman simb6olicas Minnesota, 1986),73. 29 GuamanPoma (cited in n. 1 above),715-16, Pomade Ayala,"Journalof LatinAmerican 860.

1951),chap.1. 18 See Rolena Adorno,"El sujeto colonialy la Revista culturalde la alteridad," construcci6n

118

Art Journal

This content downloaded from 200.45.170.30 on Wed, 12 Jun 2013 08:43:12 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Potrebbero piacerti anche