Undressing the Coya and Dressing the Indian Woman: Market Economy, Clothing, and Identities in the Colonial Andes, La Plata (Charcas), Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries

Abstract

Abstract This essay addresses the specific indigenous identity of Indian women resettled in colonial La Plata, particularly those associated with mercantile trades and consequently involved in the creation of colonial markets. The search for Indian women’s urban identities rests upon the material culture associated with labor activities and social standing among those recently settled in the Spanish urban milieu. Objects and places, goods and spaces can be manipulated, reappropriated, and reinterpreted by new social actors on their road to history. Things have meaning and are bound to culture and identity. In this way, indigenous women’s dress and adornment are associated with the dramatic changes brought about by the new mercantile economy introduced by the Spaniards. Indian women who resettled in the city and gained economic success pursuing mercantile trades adopted distinctive components of female dress. These styles evoked both the recent Inca past and certain elements of Spanish attire and adornment that forged a specific identity associated with a specific trade, asserting a newly acquired status in the emerging colonial society