Virtuosas o corruptas: Las mujeres indígenas en las obras de Guamán Poma de Ayala y el Inca Garcilaso de la Vega

What is it about?

The article examines the prescriptive discourses and the sermon rhetoric used by the Inca Garcilaso and Guaman Poma to make an analogy between Andean and European women in the history of Christianity. Through the biblical antithesis of Eve and the Virgin Mary (Eva / Ave), these two authors classify indigenous women into two categories: good and evil. The first category is made up of their pre-Columbian female ancestors, their mothers, and the women of the colonial Andean elite. In the second category are the commoners and those from Gentile nations. Although the Eva / Ave dichotomy has little to do with the complexity of gender relations in the Andean context, both authors used it to question the colonial hierarchies of their time that dominated knowledge and power.

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