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

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

Culture matérielle, histoire du genre et des sexualités. L’exemple du vêtement et des textiles

“…34 Regimes governed by universal manhood suffrage (and the exclusion of all women from governance) did not, in fact, as Christopher Breward has documented, see the erasure of class differences in men's clothing. 35 And, in the twentieth century when, along with the vote, women gained access to far less restrictive clothing than in most earlier periods, the modern practice of 29 Akou 2011;Presta 2010;Waghorne 1994. 30 Fair 1998White 2003;Miller 2009.…”

Culture matérielle, histoire du genre et des sexualités

“…Voir le compte rendu de lecture dans ce volume. 30 Akou 2011 ;Presta 2010 ;Waghorne 1994. 31 Fair 1998White 2003 ;Miller 2009.…”

The Andean Visual Poetics of José María Arguedas

“…Guided by their 'social and humanitarian outlook', they momentarily gain economic and political power by disturbing 'the traditional distribution of wealth'(Lambright 2000: 16, 24-5n11).23 Clothing and identity have historically been closely associated in the Andes. See, for example,Beaule 2018, Phipps 2004and Presta 2009 This detail of their accessories evokes Inca customs of dress. Nobles wore large round golden earrings, because of which they were referred to by the Spanish as orejones(Classen 1990: 724, Cobo 1979.…”

“…Other significant elements that comprise the complex Inca visual tradition (some of which have been mentioned in previous chapters) include forms of dress, architecture, idols and effigies, sight lines, the Cusco ceque system and an array of rules and regulations regarding the act of looking upon Inca kings and other revered beings. SeeHerring 2014, Phipps 2004, Presta 2009, Beaule 2018, Gasparini and Margolies 1980, Dearborn and White 1983and Bauer 1998 But as Garcilaso de la Vega writes, the arrival of the Spanish impeded oral communication with the wak'as: 'as soon as the sacraments (…) entered Peru (…) the idols lost their power of public speech and could only speak in secret and then only rarely with great wizards who were their perpetual familiars. And though at first the partisans of Huáscar Inca (…) said that the Sun was angry at the tyranny and cruelty of Atahuallpa and had forbidden them to speak, they soon after discovered that the affliction was a general one.…”