Reconstructing Afro-Andean Histories from Parish Records in Cuzco and Surrounding Towns, 1580s–1640s

Working with fragmentary notarial records and limited parish records for the city and rural parishes of Cuzco, this paper rebuilds an understanding of Afro-Andean lives and livelihoods in the 1500s and 1600s. Although hundreds of documents have been cut out of the bound volumes royal notaries sewed each year’s documents into and whole decades of sixteenth-century birth, marriage, and burial records are now lost, many months of archival research have turned up enough sources to allow a reconstruction of this important, but often overlooked, highland population’s economic roles, social activities, and cultural impact. In particular, the paper explains the emergence of a Quechua-speaking Afro-Andean sector of indigenous communities surrounding the city that also paralleled the appearance of specifically Afro-Andean jobs such as rural town crier and the keepers of dry-goods stores and wineshops. Multi-lingual confessional manuals and sermonaries in Quechua, Aymara, and Pukina developed by Cuzco’s priests were directed at both indigenous and Afro-Andean parishioners. In a similar fashion, the Mutcapuquio neighborhood became a space free Afro-Andean people carved out for themselves in Cuzco’s most Hispanic parish. In this context, women identifying as mulataplayed a role in reproducing their form of Cuzco society by serving as godmothers for many of the city’s foundlings (in some decades, foundlings accounted for a third of baptisms). In this activity, they drew in local Jesuits as godfathers or the baptizing priests. These examples highlight the rich Afro-Andean history embedded within a highly indigenous city and region.