Rites and sorceries in the mirror: the flaws of colonial Andean power

Abstract

This text aims to search for those colonial societies’ aspects that worked as a distorting mirror of the metropolitan reality, rather than to analyse mythical episodes or characters in the prehispanic, Andean or colonial worlds. The myth that we aim to expose is that of a colonial system that apparently works as a homogeneous group of political, religious and administrative powers. As it is evident that there were many flaws in the colonial system, we will focus in searching where these flaws laid and which were their causes. The unequal distribution of the political power, the wish of reproducing the metropolitan system in the colonies, the way rites and festivities were arranged, the mixture of races and the repression of idolatry and sorcery will lead as to review the functioning of a colonial system as a failed staging of the metropolitan wills.