The Cross and the Serpent: Religious Repression and Resurgence in Colonial Peru by Nicholas Griffiths

Abstract

538BOOK REVIEWS tions of the impact of the Spanish conquest wUl find this work to be of great value. It is also a handsome volume, virtuaUy error-free with copious Ulustrations ,many ofthem photographs taken by the author. It is highly recommended to a wide class of readers. Stafford Poole, CM. Los Angeles The Cross and the Serpent:Religious Repression and Resurgence in Colonial Peru. By Nicholas Griffiths. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. 1996. Pp. xi, 355. $37.50.) This important revisionist study complements such recent works concerned with issues in the Christianization ofAndean Indigenous populations as Sabine MacCormack's 1991 Religion in the Andes: Vision and Imagination in Early Colonial Peru and Pierre DuvoUs' 1986 Cultura andina y represión:Procesos y visitas de idolatrías y hechicerías. Drawing his careful and thorough analysis from archival records in Peru, Spain, and Rome, Nicholas Griffiths argues convincingly against the standard interpretation in mission histories that repression effectively eradicated native religious practices by 1660 and firmly estabUshed CathoUcism in colonial Peru. His close examination of archival sources indicates that extirpation activities persisted intermittently weU into the eighteenth century. Delineating the cases of many accused hechiceros, he also chaUenges the theorizing of Michael Taussig's 1980 The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America and Irene Silverblatt's 1987 Moon, Sun and Witches that seventeenth-century idolatry trials in Peru represented a New World counterpart of the European witch craze. Griffiths focuses most of his study on the ideological and institutional shortcomings ofwhat he terms the Extirpation Campaign.He emphasizes that Eurocentric perspectives among the clergy hearing idolatry charges against shamans during most of the seventeenth century invalidated the process from its beginnings . Refusing to recognize native religious practitioners as respected and powerful leaders, the extirpators identified them as frauds who deceived their cUents whUe enriching themselves. This mind-set proved counterproductive, for the punished shamans retained and even enhanced their prestige among the Indians as preservers of traditional beliefs. Nor did the destruction of mallquis and huacas obUterate their perceived numinous significance Ln Indian communities . Contrasting the idolatry trials with those ofthe Inquisition, Griffiths contends further that they lacked the institutional support necessary to succeed. He maintains that only the occasional interest of zealous prelates, such as Archbishop Pedro de VUlagómez, who revived the Indian idolatry trials after 1660, provided limited continuity for repressive activities. Griffiths demonstrates that the manipulation of idolatry trials by native religious and political leaders to further their own ambitions, as weU as to protect BOOK REVIEWS539 their communities from Spanish domination and repression, also contributed to the demise of the Extirpation Campaign. Indian resistance strategies and the politicization of idolatry trials became increasingly evident during the 1690's and the early eighteenth century. As Griffiths documents, these cases often were power struggles between the shaman, the Christian priest, and the indigenous poUtical authority, the kuraka, for community control. Unlike Inquisition procedures,defendants were permitted to know the identity ofwitnesses.They frequently used this information to gain dismissal of the charges against them with convincing arguments that the accusations arose solely from the enmity of jealous rivals and community exploiters. In a lengthy conclusion, Griffiths considers the survival of certain native rituals either in a syncretic form or as practices that have been unchanged since before the Spanish conquest as a legacy of the faUed Extirpation Campaign.WhUe some scholars may question the extent of such linkages, Peruvanists wUl especiaUy welcome his insightful contribution to Andean cultural encounters. JosephA. Gagliano Loyola University ofChicago Asian Educating the Women ofHainan:The Career ofMargaretMoninger in China, 1915-1942. By Kathleen L. Lodwick. (Lexington:The University Press of Kentucky. 1995. Pp. xvi, 255.) Crusaders against Opium:Protestant Missionaries in China, 1847-1917. By Kathleen L. Lodwick. (Lexington:The University Press of Kentucky. 1996. Pp. xiii, 232. $29.95.) Known for her pubUcation of The Chinese Recorder Index (1986), Kathleen L. Lodwick exhibits versatUe scholarship in a biography ofMargaret Moninger, a missionary to Hainan, and in a study of missionary, institutional, and governmental events surrounding suppression of opium Ui China at the turn of the century. Moninger (1881-1950) was an Iowa-born, Presbyterian-sponsored missioner to Hainan (1915-1942...