Periplos europeos tempranos y fiestas andinas: Un encuentro en hatun xauxa y sus implicancias respecto de la tesis de la alianza hispano-huanca

Abstract

This article provides a critical review about the Hispanic-Huanca alliance theory postulated by Waldemar Espinoza, according to which the inhabitants of the Mantaro Valley in Peru's central highlands joined Francisco Pizarro's soldiery during the Spanish conquest of the Andes, in order to recover their freedom and destroy the Inca state. For this purpose, a reinterpretation about the descriptions of the first European incursions into the region is developed, based on some contributions of the New Conquest History revisionist school. This approach emphasizes on the festive activities that Hernando Pizarro and his men observed at the Inca site of Hatun Xauxa in 1533, in contrast to the role played by that settlement as a ceremonial center and as a setting for feasting and ritual competitive encounters. Finally, I put into question Espinoza's assumptions that the "feasts" witnessed by the Spaniards were organized exclusively in their honor, but rather met the logical functioning of Andean principles of creation and representation of religious-based forms of power, whose complexities urge to be better investigated to overtake the superficial perspectives that dominate the addressed period.