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A RELIGION OF THE PEOPLE: ANDEAN TRADITION AND CATHOLICISM IN THE

16TH CENTURY

By the end of the 16th century, a small tribal village high in the Andes was able to unite a massive swathe

of land all across the Andes through a clever use of religion and politics. The Inca Religion was in fact a wide

combination of many local traditions which were all adapted to the Inca Religious view, helping to unite the Inca

state through the idea of one unified religion, government, and culture. At the same time, in Christian Europe,

almost the exact opposite was true. In the aftermath of the Reformation there was no longer just one church, or

one government, or one culture. The Era of the Romans was long gone, and unlike the Inca, where religion and

politics were inextricably united, church and state in Europe were not only divided, but were often in competition.

This conflict between church and state, and among their own dissident factions, shattered Europe into dozens of

warring nations, cultures, and peoples; while in the Andes, hundreds of unique ethnic groups, speaking different

languages and worshipping different gods, were nevertheless able to unite under the banner of Cusco to form one

mighty Empire with a longstanding practice of adopting new ideas and views into a religion as fluid and changing

as the Urubamba river it was founded on the banks of.

This essay will explore the general tenants and philosophies of the Andean Religion and of Spanish Roman

Catholicism as they existed in the 16th Century. It will explore how both religions stood at the moment of first

contact and of the events which transpired afterwards, along with the various conditions which allowed Andean

Religious practices to survive within the confines of Roman Catholic dogma, and the interchange between these

two traditions that continue to involve even in the modern day. The apus of the Andes mountains and the saints of

the Roman Catholic church have been both in conflict and in fellowship throughout history, as testament not to

their separate religions, but to the world view that both were only able to create together.

Religion has always been an essential part of the Andean life style. Many of these religious traditions can be

traced back more that 12,000 years to the ancient urban culture of Caral located on the pacific coast of modern day

Peru. This society is the first to have been historically recorded to have used the mind altering substances such as

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