Barroco en Huamanga: evangelización y traducción cultural. El esfuerzo misionero de los Dominicos y Franciscanos

This talk seeks to contrast the normative production and evangelizing processes applied to the indigenous people of Huamanga, in the south Peruvian Andes, carried over by the Dominican and Franciscan orders, and how these have been reflected in the historiography of art of South American baroque. As the first orders to install themselves in the province, we will give a special emphasis to their foundational stages and their missionary effort by the end of the 16th century. Archival sources denote a strong contrast between the narrative of this city as a catholic bastion with old Spanish families, reflected on its urban plan and monumental architecture, and the reality of a predominantly indigenous population in constant movement. Andean baroque has been therefore read as an art meant for evangelizing, on the one side, and as a space for transformation and survival of indigenous beliefs, on the other.

As concrete examples of these tensions we will analyze the Symbolo Catholico Indiano by the Franciscan Fray Jerónimo de Oré, printed in Lima in 1598, and his employment of indigenous languages for teaching the mystery of the Trinity, as well as documents of the pastoral visits carried out by the bishop Francisco Godoy (1600-1659).