La producción de poder en el entorno construido a través de la invasión española, valle del Colca (Perú)

Abstract

The built environment played a central role in policies intended to build a new colonial Andean society. The Spanish approached urbanism as a precondition and generator of the civic community. From precedents in the Mediterranean world, the staging of spectacle was integral to the design and construction of Spanish urban space, especially through the forms of the plaza and the church. Such associations and forms have analogies in the late prehispanic Andes, and in the colonial policies of Tawantinsuyu in particular. This paper traces out how these spatial forms, ideologies, and practices articulated through the Spanish invasion, with a focus on the (re)construction and (re)use of ritual spaces in the context of the Colca Valley (southwestern highlands of Peru). Specifically, analysis of how the configuration of kallanka/pata translated to church/plaza since the first evangelization in Franciscan doctrinal settlements, through the general resettlement of Indians (reduccion general de indios) under the Viceroy Francisco de Toledo. This exploration reveals a long and punctuated trajectory of centripetal processes and events from the Inka era through the reduccion, and the centrality of these ritual spaces in them. What emerges is a picture of mutual appropriation more than domination through compulsory urbanism.