Devotional Practices of Aymara Prophets and their Cofradías in 17th-Century Charcas (Peru)

• In Event: Cofradías in Colonial Latin America

Abstract

Drawing on a pair of trial records from Oruro, Peru dating from 1680, the paper treats two unusual cofradías organized by indigenous purchasers of small images of the Virgin (retablos) after visiting miraculous pilgrimage shrines. The documents, each titled Proceso de Jilsa, treat a kind of cofradía leader that secular judges labeled embustero (con-man), but indigenous followers called prophet. Founding chapels and leading highly-unorthodox devotions, the jilsas led followers through lengthy prayer sessions, including penitential scourging, that led to mystical states. Testimony depicts what followed: direct intercession via the descent of the holy spirit, ventriloquized possession of the jilsas by heavenly beings, and their conversion into living oracles through which their followers could consult those beings to answer their questions about about the status of their interests in this and other worlds. Finding comparable acts in the devotions of Santa Rosa de Lima, the paper ends by also comparing such 17th-C events to 21st century shamanic activities, in which Aymara ch'iar yatiri, "knowers of darkness" invoke mountains and condors, in the context of living pilgrimage shrines in the Andean region.

Author

• Thomas A Abercrombie, New York University