Indecent Living: Indigenous Women and the Politics of Representation in Early Colonial Peru
The main period of consolidation and reform of the early Peruvian colony—the 1560s through the 1580s—also marked the beginning of the invention of the economic and social character of the colony in the Spanish empire. This new role was constructed and normalized in part via a reimagination of the pre-Hispanic past, of which the colony could be seen as both an outgrowth and a corrective. Within the context of the contemporary political and economic crises in which colonial Viceroys and other functionaries found themselves during these decades—crises of  nancial realization, demographic collapse, civil rebellions and indigenous uprisings—the authors of of cial political narratives envisioned an ef cient state that would have legitimacy among both colonizers and colonized. The narratives and reports that grew out of this legitimating project developed a narrow, Cuscocentric vision as they emphasized pre-Hispanic institutions that indicated the preferred direction of the colonial state, including the Inca legal system and rules for political succession. One of the most interesting institutions thus held up for admiration and consideration was the acllahuasi , a Quechua word used by these Spaniards to refer to what was probably an array of social institutions involving groups of con ned women called acllas or mamaconas. The changing and narrowing representations of the acllas—as a harem, as productive and tradeable commodities, as “vestal virgins” or beatas, and  nally as idealized wives of the state—indicated the shifting agendas of the authors and patrons of these narratives towards a discourse that celebrated centralization, hierarchy and separation between classes and ethnic groups. While the historical narratives that emerged during and from this political debate were not necessarily instrumentalist , I argue here that the construction of this discursive terrain was a by-product that had its own effects upon, at least, our knowledge of colonial Peru. My argument is organized around some key texts written during this central period of constitution of the political economy of colonial Peru, and demonstrates how the development of a more centralized vision of the colony by its administrators and elites contributed to the construction and acceptance of a historical narrative, the terms of which were commonly deployed by those in power as well as their critics. I begin with the chronicles of conquest, written within a few years of contact by the conquistadores themselves. These reveal the spontaneous and indetermi-
The Quest for El Cid
When El Cid died in Valencia in July 1099, he was the most famous person in Spain. This study, set against the background of Spanish political and social life, traces the life story of the fanatical Catholic nationalist who was dedicated to the re-conquest of Spain from the Moors. Richard Fletcher has also written the historical study, "The Life and Time of Diego Gelmirez".
Do Potential People Have Moral Rights?
By a potential person I shall mean an entity which is not now a person but which is capable of developing into a person, given certain biologically and/or technologically possible conditions. This is admittedly a narrower sense than some would attach to the term ‘potential'. After all, people of the twenty-fifth century, if such there will be, are in some sense potential people now, even though the specific biological entities from which they will develop, i.e. the particular gametes or concepti, do not yet exist. For there do exist, in the reproductive capacities of people now living and in the earth's resources, conditions adequate to produce these future people eventually, provided of course that various possible catastrophes are avoided. Indeed, in some sense of ‘potential’ there have been countless billions of potential people from the beginning of time. But I am concerned not with such remote potentialities but with currently existing entities that are capable of developing into people.