Weaving and the Construction of a Gender Division of Labor in Early Colonial Peru

Abstract

The European conquest and colonization of Peru in the sixteenth century radically transformed that society's regional economies, both in terms of what was to be produced and how production would be organized. While the introduction of new commodities and forms of exchange, and the colonial systems of tribute and mita or forced labor, have been well documented and analyzed, investigations into the lived experience of work have been less abundant. In particular, historians and anthropologists have often taken for granted the gender division of labor within Peru's indigenous populations, particularly with respect to textile production. In this essay, I argue that the Spanish conquest occasioned a radical shift in that division of labor, and that gender identities, both then and now, have affected our abilities to see these labor processes. 1 The sources for my argument are the same as those used by most historians and anthropologists of the early colonial period: chronicles (mainly first-hand reports of conquest and settlement) as well as administrative, notarial, and legal documents written in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Participants in the colonial enterprise wrote these documents in order to achieve specific political objectives in their time; they are neither objective ethnographic records nor unsituated literary texts. By examining them in their historical context, we can locate within them certain dissonances, lacunae, and contradictions, which, when interrogated with a self-consciousness about contemporary assumptions about gender and work, lead to new conclusions about women and the economy in this period. 2 The colonial economy of Peru was constructed in contestation: the relations of production and consumption that developed were the result of innumerable conflicts between and among indigenous and European actors, and not the simple triumph of one system over another. The dissonances that emerge in the written record from this period reveal these struggles as colonizers attempted to restructure society to their own needs while claiming to value continuity and legitimacy, and as indigenous people seized the new opportunities that arose. [End Page 537] European colonizers were, however, successful in naturalizing some of the new relations that arose, such as a division of labor whereby Andean women were said to be the primary weavers for their households, tribute payment, and the market. The success of this representation is demonstrated by the work of many contemporary feminist historians and anthropologists, who, while challenging many other cultural norms in order to illuminate the contributions of women to societies, have failed to interrogate this supposedly quintessential "female" role. 3 Foremost is the foundational work of Irene Silverblatt, who in her 1987 book (which bears the subtitle "Gender Ideologies and Class in Inca and Colonial Peru") offered the following statements: Women were the weavers of Andean society. Never idle, women were always spinning . . . Women made sure that their family was clothed. Once they became subjects of Cuzco, the obligation to weave cloth for the state fell primarily on their shoulders . . . Although Andean gender norms might designate weaving as the quintessential female activity, women's contributions to production were manifold 4 Feminist historians owe a great debt to scholars such as Silverblatt (who is not alone, but makes the boldest statements in this context). But this project must be pressed that much further, and, by so doing, we can provide more substantial evidence for her own thesis that gender roles are socially constructed rather than naturally given. Certainly today, Andean womanhood is characterized and caricatured by weaving and spinning (although Andean men continue to weave professionally up to the present). 5 There is, however, considerable evidence that, whatever they may have been, gender norms did not necessarily dictate this activity in the pre-Hispanic past, nor for the entire heterogeneous conglomeration of regions now referred to as the Inca empire. On the other hand, the productive capacities of Indian women did not escape the notice of Spanish officials and priests, who quickly...