Idolatry Processes, Native Discourses and Religiosity in the Colonial Andean World

Abstract

In this article we analyse a set of chronicles and documents known in the Andean Ethnohistory as “Processes of Idolatry”, which were carried out especially in the Central Andes (Peru) in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. We begin with a historical context, to expose the environment and the conditions under which these processes were carried out against the religious beliefs and practices of the Indians. We also identify the difficulties presented in the colonial documents on idolatry as sources, and analyse the discourses, structure and problems they present. Likewise, we apply the documentary information content in an exercise as an approach to the pre-Hispanic religion in the Andes. By way of example, we develop three aspects: agricultural rites, machays or ancestor worship and the cave art, such as waka.