Page 298 - Perú indígena y virreinal

the Andes wearing the hybrid and cross-cultural vestments of a post-Conquest Inca. In the painting he wears a cape and golden tunic featuring a false collar or vandyke. Under this clothing we can make out the delicate lace trimming of the lower hems and loose sleeves of a kind of alb or inner tunic made of white linen that almost reaches down to his knees and is typical of ecclesiastical dress. In addition, the Baby Jesus wears sandals featuring a puma’s head and a prominent imperial neo-Inca headdress that combines heraldic emblems of pre-Hispanic and European origin. We can identify the tiny kantutas or Inca flowers, the main black-and-white feather of the coriquenque (the royal hawk of the Incas) and the scarlet tassel which hangs over his forehead. These are juxtaposed with a fortified tower or circular castle complete with standards, sceptres and a tiny rainbow at the top. This constitutes a direct reference to the castle of gold or Inca fortress of Saqsaywamán— a key military landmark in relation to the surrender of Cusco to the Spanish in 1536—, also appearing as the main emblem of the coat-of-arms granted to the city by Emperor Charles I of Spain on 19th July 1540 (P.T.L, 1921, 63–66).
By the end of the 17th Century, during the Corpus Christi celebrations and processions in Cusco, the royal standard bearer of the Incas and main chieftains of the eight parishes—who tended to serve as standard bearers for their respective religious brotherhoods—would frequently wear ceremonial vestments corresponding to an “Inca king”. The famous Cusco fortress appeared on many of their high feather headdresses featuring heraldic emblems, as can be observed in a portrait of the chieftain of the parish of Santiago. However, by this time the royal Inca tassel had assumed a new cultural significance and had passed from being an imperial distinction exclusive to the pre-Hispanic Inca to a sign of ethnic and social nobility—featuring tributary privileges—that enabled the native aristocracy to express their cultural otherness and distinct identity whilst also acknowledging their total submission to the Church and the Spanish Crown (Dean, 2002, 57). Thanks to its glorious pre-Hispanic imperial past, Cusco was recognized by Spain during the Viceroyalty as the “head” of the kingdoms and provinces of Peru and, therefore, enjoyed the first vote before the Council of the Indies when the procurators from the cities of “New Castille” decided their destinations.
There is no doubt that it was the Jesuits, upon reaching Peru in 1568, who promoted the worship of an Inca Baby Jesus in Cusco. In the anonymous account dating from 1600 entitled Historia General de la Compañía de Jesús en la Provincia del Peru (“General History of the Society of Jesus in the Province of Peru”) it is mentioned that the chapel located alongside the church that was constructed on the site of the former palace of the Inca Huayna Cápac—the Amarucancha or Palace of the Serpents—served as the main venue for a brotherhood of native Indians devoted to and named after Jesus. This brotherhood had been created by Jerónimo Ruiz de Portillo († 1592), the first Jesuit Provincial of Peru who founded the Church of the Society of Jesus in Cusco in around 1571. Father Gregorio de Cisneros S. J. spread the brotherhood throughout more than one hundred native villages bordering Cusco, Cristóbal Ortiz—a well-known destroyer of native idols—introduced it to fifty villages, whilst other Jesuit missionaries encouraged the cult in Quito, Arequipa and Potosí. The Jesuit chapel from which the brotherhood operated was entirely covered with painted depictions of the punishments of Hell, as well as scenes from the Final Judgement and the Glory. This chapel was used for catechism, spiritual exercises, confession and holy communion among the natives, a controversial practice if we are to take the denunciations made by the Bishop of Charcas, Bartolomé Álvarez, in his Memorial or “Report” to Philip II (1588) against the Jesuits seriously. The Society of Jesus was allegedly the only religious order at that time that permitted native Indians recently converted to Christianity to receive the Eucharist sacraments (Álvarez, 1998, 213 and 225). Whether this was true or not, the chapel belonging to the Brotherhood of Jesus was financed by native donors such as Diego Cucho and had over 500 native members, including women and the one hundred and fifty noble Indians belonging to the group of the “twenty-four”, the direct descendents of the twelve royal ayllus or panacas of the Incas, who were chosen from the two parts of the imperial city, Higher Cusco and Lower Cusco (see Amado González, 2002, 226–227). When these members died, they enjoyed the privilege of being buried in the Chapel of the Baby Jesus, a licence they would not have exchanged for all the primogenitures in the world. The procession in honour of the Baby Jesus that was organized for the Corpus Christi celebrations was “the most magnificent thing in this city”, with the native aristocracy walking out with the
Baby Jesus on their shoulders, headed by a “leading Inca”, richly dressed with a scarlet cape and holding a royal banner on a silver staff in his hands featuring the emblems of the Brotherhood of Jesus. These figures were followed by the singers and minstrels belonging to the brotherhood playing horns, flageolets, trumpets and flutes and carrying lit candles worth some twelve thousand ducats (Mateos, 1944, II, 35–38).
We do not know precisely when the Baby Jesus was dressed as an Inca king for the first time. Already by 1610, during the celebrations to mark the beatification of St. Ignatius of Loyola which took place in Cusco over a period of 25 days—between 2nd and 26th May— the Brotherhood of Jesus active within the Society paraded the Baby Jesus “dressed as an Inca, richly adorned and with many lights”. That was not all, for on this occasion all of the Cusco parishes expressed their joy by organizing processions and inventions with cross- cultural messages in which they praised the Jesuits using songs, lyrics and dances formerly created for the Incas. Even the emblematic black plumage of the corequenque (the royal hawk of the Inca) was associated with the religious vestments worn by the Jesuits (Romero, 1923, 447–454). During the celebrations that took place on 29th September 1613 in the imperial town of Potosí to mark the laying of relics in the Church of St. Ignatius, over one thousand native Indians belonging to the Brotherhood of Jesus bore a solid silver platform with a bejewelled Baby Jesus dressed as an Inca (Vargas Ugarte, 1963, 95 and 96). It is difficult to determine whether the Jesuits deliberately used the cult of the Inca Baby Jesus to replace the former worship of the golden idol at the centre of Coricancha or the Temple of the Sun in Cusco: the Punchao—“the Lord of the day and creator of light and maker of the sun and of the stars and of all things”—, the same idol that Túpac Amaru, after being christened and before his public execution in Cusco, confessed was not an oracle but a mere statue where the hearts of all his Inca antecedents were stored (Cobo, 1964, 105–107). According to some accounts, this idol assumed the form of a human figure and was dressed as an Inca child, with sunbeams shining from his head and a cat on each side (Mateos, 1944 II, 8–10; Duviols, 1976, 156–183). A small unku or neo-Inca formal tunic for the sculpture of the Baby Jesus preserved at the Inca Museum in Cusco shows that by the end of the 17th Century—and even during the 18th Century—these paraliturgical vestments combined the Christian symbols of the Heart of Jesus and the Christian imperial orb with the two cats of the Inca Punchao and with the tocapus or geometric designs of pre-Hispanic genealogical, dynastic and heraldic significance.
In short, the methods of evangelization and acculturation employed by the Jesuits in order to convert the natives were not shared by all the religious orders. During the Ecclesiastical Inspection that the Bishop of Madrid, Manuel de Mollinedo y Angulo, made to his Cusco diocese between 1687 and 1689, he ordered all the images of the Inca Baby Jesus he discovered on the altars of the Churches of San Jerónimo, Andahuaylillas and Caycay (Bradley and Cahill, 2000, 118) to be removed and forever banned. This would explain why, in the Cusco Corpus Christi series painted between 1674 and 1680 under the sponsorship of Mollinedo, it was the original statue of the Baby Jesus that formed the highlight of the processional altar borne by the natives, as depicted at the entrance to the Church of the Society of Jesus. The figure no longer reveals any ethnic distinction or sign of native nobility. On the contrary, it wears the European imperial crown recommended by the Madrid bishop during his Inspection. It is probable that these prohibitions in the Andes gave rise to a devotional shift from the Baby Jesus to his Mother, as reflected in the Indianized devotions to Our Lady of the Rosary or Our Lady of Pomata and the Virgin of Copacabana, modelled in 1582 by the native Indian Francisco Tito Yupanqui, all depicted carrying the crowned Baby Jesus in their arms. However, if we refer to the Annual Letters of the Jesuits and the reports produced by Esquivel and Navia, at least in relation to the most popular sections of society, we can see that Mollinedo’s prohibitions must have brought about a more radical indianization of Catholic worship during the 18th Century. It was during the celebrations in honour of St. James the Apostle and St. Ignatius of Loyola—patron saints of the city of Cusco—that the rural churches of the Southern Andes dressed the Baby Jesus as an Inca. Even more dangerously, it was around this time that the Andean witchdoctors evoked the Apostle St. James Illapa (Thunder) as if he were one of their pre-Conquest divinities. This figure appeared on his white horse and instructed the native Indians to use coca leaves for prophetic purposes and recommended them not to go to mass, or pray with the rosary or
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