Page 280 - Perú indígena y virreinal

rise to one of the foundations of Andean ideology: worship of their ancestors, who sanctioned the permanent settlement of communities within bounded territories and their control of the resources found within those territories.
These basic foundations were altered by the development of a complex social structure, and this was expressed through a naturalistic iconography that employed concepts of integration and substitution of elements in order to create a series of more powerful beings with supernatural qualities that went beyond those found in the natural world. Thus, they chose three basic animals, the jaguar, the snake and a bird of prey—the condor or an eagle—as an essential iconographic package for Andean thought. One example of this early iconography can be observed in the stuccoed bas-reliefs in the inner courtyard of the Temple of Garagay, dating from the Early Ceramic period.
The appearance of centres of socio-political, economic and religious integration marked the origin of a long-term strategy of manipulating the essential convictions of this society, through the centralization of ideology and ritual. Chavin de Huantar (1300–200 BC) is an example of this strategy’s success throughout this long process. It is true that even before the founding of this centre, other large religious buildings associated with rich offerings—either on the coast or in the mountains—emerged which varied according to the territory in which they were raised. However, it was in Chavin that a complex symbology was developed that expressed the success of the agricultural system referred to above. The iconography of El Lanzón, the Raimondi Stela, the Tello Obelisk, and a wide range of ceramic objects and textiles, bring together in what is known as the “Chavin style” the basic ideas of the élitist Andean tradition which arose from the manipulation and adaptation of popular ideology to certain political objectives.
The result was a hybrid religion consisting of coastal, mountain and Amazonian animals, to whom plants and landscape elements were linked that presented a clear agricultural and fertility-based function: here we not only find representations of jaguars, snakes, birds of prey and other birds, caymans, plants such as the groundnut and the manioc, but also shells and fish. Chavin is a melting-pot in which ancient strains of thought from the various Andean regions converged in order to give rise to a universalized religion that extended from Lake Titicaca to Colombia, and that coexisted alongside other regional and local cults. A motif that appears on the Raimondi Stela was extremely popular throughout the Andes: the Staff God, an anthropozoomorphic figure endowed with fangs and cat’s claws who holds a number of snake-like staffs in his hands. Many settlements subsequently adapted this cult and iconography to their own ideological and aesthetic criteria: one example would be Aiapaec, a Moche deity whose name survived up until the Inca period, or the central character depicted on the Gate of the Sun at Tiwanako, but also represented in Nasca and other cultural developments. This tradition played an essential role in Huari, and lasted right up to the Inca period, when this deity’s qualities and essential characteristics were represented in the figure of Viracocha, one of the main divinities.
The centralization of politics and of human and natural resources that began during this period generally gave rise to wars and conflicts, which made human sacrifices of captured enemies rather more frequent; Cerro Sechín is a clear example on the north coast of the importance and widespread nature of this ritual, which can be detected throughout this region 5,000 years before Christ. It is also highly probable that the cult of trophy heads, which was so widespread throughout the Andes, was linked to sacrificial rituals of decapitation.
A PAN-ANDEAN RELIGIOUS IDEOLOGY: THE ANDEAN CLASSIC PERIOD
AND PROCESSES OF POLITICAL CENTRALIZATION
From this moment onwards, the religious tradition ran its course without any great interruptions, featuring a number of regional and temporal variations, but based on a shared origin created by an historical tradition in which communication among the various peoples was ongoing. Andean religion continued to be associated with agricultural fertility and the prosperity of communities. This concept included deities relating to both the Earth and the sun and the rain, as well as the various agricultural products on which each settlement founded its economy. Calendar time existed within the
Andean natural realm, whilst unchanging time encompassed the realm of the gods. Gods and supernatural forces circulated throughout both realms and were capable of embodying themselves into a series of special beings, including human beings. That is why certain powerful animals were frequently represented, featuring a strong dose of divinity, such as the jaguar, the condor or the snake. However, above all, they took the form of rulers and shamans.
Andean religion presented a decisive animistic element, based as it was on the transformation of one element into another through time and space. It would be ingenuous to believe that this ideology remained unchanged over thousands of years of cultural development, although it survived in its essential aspects throughout the region, adapting to subsequent processes of ideological formation as the developmental process became more complicated. These supernatural forces inhabited the world and constituted the essence that moved time. They were the protagonists of the various cycle of creation until they reached the world inhabited by the Andeans.
The handling of the supernatural fell to a number of specialists: in rural areas, to the heads of lineage or to individuals endowed with special qualities, at centres of integration to local lords, and in political capitals to the ruler, who acted as the Supreme Authority. He was responsible for controlling the forces of nature, for curing illness, for divining the future and guiding the community or political dominion. This system of beliefs was based on a ritual practice of shamanistic character whose roots resided in the earliest stages of territorial occupation. In shamanism, the material world existed side by side with another supernatural world in which gods, spirits and ancestors and religious specialists were capable of passing from one world to the other and acting on both levels of reality. In the Andean case this ideology was politically manipulated and served to sanction and organize an unequal and stratified society.
In addition to these essential divinities, who attest to the existence of a pan-Andean religion, each of the cultures—Tiwanako, Moche, Nasca...—included depictions of marine mammals, shells, fish, deer, foxes, llamas and birds of prey in their iconography, as well as plants such as Lima beans, corn and pumpkins and essential products for their economy, very often combined with anthropomorphic or monster-like features, that represented beings associated with their daily sustenance, guardians of fertility and the success of communities. These figures included important deities of local and regional worship: Huari in the Region of Ayacucho, Tunupa and Viracocha on Lake Titicaca and Collao, Ichma and Pachacamac on the Central Coast, Chiapaec, Aiapaec and Con on the North Coast during the Moche period, and Shi (the Moon) and Ni (the Sea) on the North Coast during the Chimu period.
Political success was linked with the favour of the supernatural forces, which led to ongoing attempts to manipulate the community ideology. An essential part of this success was based on the adaptation of an ancient practice, the veneration of ancestors, the growing politicization of society, which culminated with the great royal cults to ancestors. This cult developed through a social practice relating to the ceremony of burial and the commemoration of specific members of descendent generations within kinship groups. With this cult the Andean rulers ensured that the resources, the privileges and political power that they possessed were conveyed through the generations and, consequently, served as a means of distinguishing them from the rest of the community. This practice found its expression in the building of large temples and elaborate tombs replete with rich offerings and, of course, was extended to iconographic depictions, as reflected on the Moche tomb of the Lord of Sipan.
An important facet of Andean spirituality was linked with the world beyond the grave, with the cultural context being extremely extensive in this respect. This was influenced by the climatic conditions along the coast, that permitted the preservation of organic materials. Within such an extensive and plural territory, it is natural that we should find a varied range of funeral traditions, in which individual or collective burial of the corpse or corpses was generally the case. We have sufficient examples of this dating from the Palaeolithic Period (Paiján, La Libertad), although perhaps the most complete examples are found at the two ancient burial places located in Paracas, dating from the 7th Century BC onwards. This burial practice included the creation of simple holes in the ground,
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