Constructing History: the Inka and Spanish Empires through the Archaeology of the Huarochirí Manuscript (circa 1608)
by Carla Hernandez (Anthropology, UC Riverside)
 

 

January 30, 2020 | 4:00 PM-5:30 PM Event Location: HIB 135
 

About the Speaker

Dr. Carla Hernandez is Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow at University of California, Riverside.
   
About the Talk

    Between the 15th and 16th centuries, Andean communities experienced
    successive waves of colonialism, first by the Inka and then by the
    Spanish Empires. In both cases, many indigenous communities attempted to
    offset colonial rule by building bridges through legibility with their
    conquerors. While only some of these attempts were fruitful, these
    communities were able to accommodate and negotiate their identities in
    order to reclaim a measure of political agency through the constraints
    of empire. In this presentation, I build upon a large body of
    archaeological and historical research to question how a local community
    voiced their experience of colonialism and how did they incorporate this
    experience within their own understandings of collective history.
   
    In this presentation, she discusses the case of the people of Huarochirí
    in the Peruvian highlands. Huarochirí is the home of an outstanding
    colonial-period document known as the Huarochirí Manuscript. Compiled by
    indigenous assistants of a mestizo curate by 1608, the Manuscript was
    intended as a tool for the extirpation of idolatries. However, the
    Manuscript also embodies the unexpected consequences of colonialism,
    where a tool for oppression becomes a space for local agency.