Sabine MacCormak "Religion in the Andes"

No one, not raze the handful of Andeans who in the sixteenth and seventeenth century intrust pen to paper, wrote explicitly as adherents of the ancient religious beliefs and practices of the Andes (5).

In other(a) words, the accounts which we turn in all(prenominal) see Christianity as a superior religion and the Andean as an inferior religion, and all take for granted that the invaders from Europe were justified in nerve-racking to convert the native population---by indoctrination and coercion---to Christianity.

Not only do we have bias-ridden accounts and descriptions of Andean religion, we overly have prejudice in the truly selection of activities and data which are used to come to the biased, shape conclusions. The author's efforts are all directed toward correcting these biases, and demonstrating the results which flow from such biases: "I have tried to show that the confrontation between Andeans and invaders touch off for both(prenominal) sides a particular range of religious action and vex through which it is possible to gain a more conversant(p) understanding not only of Andean exactly also of Spanish and Christian religion and culture" (13).

The author sagely and accurately notes that it is perchance not

possible to reconstruct Andean religionb as it actually existed during the metre of the ivasion. She aims to provide as accrate and objective a desription as possible, and perhaps as importantly tries to show as fairly as possible not only the Andean position still also the admittedly biased perspective of the Europeans in this control: "What I have sought to do is construct a poser in which Spanish and Christian ideas on this takings are rendered intelligible and can engage our sympathy, a framework also where the voices of those Andean people of so long ago can be heard speaking about the prophesy powers of their majestic land" (14).

Again, the point the author seeks to make is that both Andean and Spaniard were burdened by religious and cultural perceptions and perspectives which they comprise it difficult or impossible to cast off in order to come to objective conclusions about one another.

moreover if this had been all, the recital of Spanish perceptions of Inca and Andean religion, and the concurrent story of the evolution of Andean religion in colonial times, would be a simple one. There is, however, no sense in which this story is siple. For the criteria that had been evolved in Christian Spain to evaluate and judge religious honor and religious error were ambiguous, seeing that no set of commanding and unshakable distinctions could be drawn between the one and the other (49).

Similarly, those who seek a polemical indictment of the conquering, imperialistic Spaniards ordain not have their expectations fulfilled. However, the book is moving and successful just now because the author accepts, honors and works diligently with the confusions, contradictions and uncertainties of the material at hand.

MacCormack accepts this reality, but at the same time she makes clear the fact that the meeting of the two cultures did not occur on a le
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