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
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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

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.

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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
"nature'schildren."13That is, the Amerindian 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 reasonedexplana-

tion 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

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111

EtiPP1M

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.17Consciouslyor unconsciously,
the chroniclers, missionary writers, and
theological-juridical experts put forth
112Art

ERMvt/cdO

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.

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.

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

Journal

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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
writerreorderedthosesemanticelements.
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
interpreter.29His command of the Spanish 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-

Felipe

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 representationof 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.
r

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

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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
hierarchy.44Guaman Poma utilized them
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

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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
r

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

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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

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.

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

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

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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.

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,

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,

Summer 1990

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117

1951),chap.1.
18 See Rolena Adorno,"El sujeto colonialy la
construcci6nculturalde la alteridad,"Revista

30 Ibid., 107, 114, 380. GuamanPoma,however,

Lore5, no. 1 (1979):83-116.
did not findthis Christianinterpretation
fully 46 Juri M. Lotman,"On the Metalanguageof a
satisfactoryin explainingAndeanhistory.See
TypologicalDescriptionof Culture,"Semiotde Critica Literaria Latinoamericana, no. 28
of the Impossible:
FrankSalomon,"Chronicles
ica 14,no.2 (1975):97-123.
Notes on Three Peruvian Indigenous 47 See RolenaAdorno,GuamanPoma: Writing
(1988), 55-68.
19 On bothtopics,see RolenaAdorno,"Literary
and Resistance in Colonial Peru (Austin:
Historians,"in FromOralto WrittenExpresProductionand Suppression:Reading and
sion: Native Andean Chronicles of the Early
Universityof Texas,1986),84, 106, 164.
ColonialPeriod,ed. RolenaAdorno(Syracuse, 48 GuamanPoma(cited in n. 1 above),86, 246,
WritingaboutAmerindiansin ColonialSpanish America,"Dispositio9, nos.28-29 (1986):
N.Y.: Foreignand ComparativeStudiesPro277, 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 FrayBartolom6de Las Casas, Tratadode las
Christo(1591), in ObrascompletascastellaThe 'Talking'Bookof FelipeGuamanPoma,"
docedudas(1564), in Obrasescogidas,V, ed.
nas de Fray Luis de Lebn, I, Bibliotecade
Juan P6rezde Tudela,Bibliotecade Autores
History of EuropeanIdeas 6, no. 4 (1985):
AutoresCristianos,vol. 3 (Madrid:Editorial
447-64.
Espafioles,vol. 110 (Madrid:Atlas, 1958).For
31 Ibid.,1105.
an analysis of Guaman Poma's use of Las
Cat6lica,1957),406.
21 Ibid.,407. See also Ida RodriguezPrampolini, 32 Ibid.,1, 17, 368,755, 1105.
Casas'sargumentation,
see Adorno(citedin n.
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 argumentsummarizesone that I have
JuntaMexicanade Investigaciones
Hist6ricas, 35 Ibid.,60.
madepreviouslyaboutGuamanPoma'srepresentationof culturaltypology,as basedon his
1948), 12-15. It is knowntoday,however,that 36 Ibid.
the readersof chivalricfictionin its time were 37 Ibid.,48, 53, 57, 63.
useof pictorialcodesof background
representamale and aristocratic.See Daniel Eisenberg, 38 Ibid.,177,293, 324.
tion and Christianiconography.See Rolena
"Who Read the Novels of Chivalry?"Ken- 39 Mena in Porras Barrenechea(cited in n. 4
Adorno, "On Pictorial Language and the
tucky RomanceQuarterly20, no. 2 (1973):
above),84-85; Franciscode Xerez(citedin n. 4
Typology of Culture in a New World
above),66-68.
209-33; and Maxime Chevalier,Lecturay
Chronicle,"Semiotica 36, nos. 1-2 (1981):
lectores en la Espaha del siglo XVI y XVII
40 GuamanPoma(citedin n. 1 above),12.
51-106.
41 Ibid.,596.
51 GuamanPoma(citedin n. 1 above),22, 28.
(Madrid:Turner,1976).
22 Citedby RodriguezPrampolini(citedin n. 21 42 Ibid.,310.
52 Ibid.,30.
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 TheIncastonestructurewitha pitchedroofis a
24 See Juan Gines de Sepuflveda,Dembcrates
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
shamefulparts,showsa nakedAndeanwoman 55 Ibid.,478, 482.
56 Ibid.,279, 281.
(Madrid:ConsejoSuperiorde Investigaciones
strikingan eroticposeforhervisitors.
Cientificas,1951),20-22.
44 Nathan Wachtel, Sociedad e ideologia:en- 57 Ibid.,90-91.
25 On moriscohistory,see AntonioDominguez
58 Ibid.,942. Thisdrawingshowsan Andeanin a
sayos de historia y antropologia andinas
Ortiz and BernardVincent,Historia de los
(Lima:Institutode EstudiosPeruanos,1973),
gaudy Europeancostume with an Andean
Moriscos: vida y tragedia de una minoria
165-232.
mantlewrappedaroundhim. He leadsa horse
45 For a full discussionof this topic, see Rolena
anda llamaby theirhaltersandholdsa bag of
(Madrid:Alianza,1985).
26 See RolenaAdorno,"La Ciudadletraday los
Adorno,"Iconand Idea:A SymbolicReading
silver, which is being handed to him by a
of Picturesin a PeruvianIndianChronicle,"
discursos coloniales,"Hispamerica, no. 48
delightfullyexaggerateddemonicfigureas tall
Indian Historian 12, no. 3 (1979): 27-50;
as he is. This Christian devil speaks in
(1987), 3-24.
27 Angel Rama, La ciudad letrada (Hanover,
idem, "ParadigmsLost: A PeruvianIndian
Quechua:"You are going to rob well. I will
N.H.: Edicionesdel Norte, 1984),55.
SurveysSpanishColonialSociety,"Studies in
helpyou.Herearea hundredcoinsof silver."
the Anthropology of Visual Communication 5,
59 Michel de Certeau,Heterologies:Discourses
28 GuamanPoma(cited in n. 1 above),75, 991;
no. 2 (1979): 78-96; and MercedesL6pezon the Other,trans.BrianMassumi,foreword
see Jos6 Varallanos,Historia de Huanuco
Baralt, "La persistenciade las estructuras
by WladGodzich(Minneapolis:Universityof
(BuenosAires:ImprentaL6pez,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.

118

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