Ritual and Remembrance in the Ecuadorian Andes

by Corr, Rachel

• ISBN13: 9780816528301
• ISBN10: 0816528306
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-01-01
• Publisher: UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

Summary

Not every world culture that has battled colonization has suffered or died. In the Ecuadorian Andean parish of Salasaca, the indigenous culture has stayed true to itself and its surroundings for centuries while adapting to each new situation hand. Today, indigenous Salascans continue to devote a large part of their lives to their distinctive practices—both community rituals and individual behaviors—while living side by side with white-mestizo culture. In this book Rachel Corr provides a knowledgeable account of the Salascan religion and rituals and their respective histories. Based on eighteen years of fieldwork in Salasaca, as well as extensive research in Church archives—including never-before-published documents—Corr’s book illuminates how Salasacan culture adapted to Catholic traditions and recentered, reinterpreted, and even reshaped them to serve similarly motivated Salasacan practices, demonstrating the link between formal and folk Catholicism and pre-Columbian beliefs and practices. Corr also explores the intense connection between the local Salasacan rituals and the mountain landscapes around them, from peak to valley. Ritual and Remembrance in the Ecuadorian Andesis, in its portrayal of Salasacan religious culture, both thorough and all-encompassing. Sections of the book cover everything from death rituals to stories about Amazonia and Quichua prayers told to outsiders—conquistadors and camera-toting tourists alike. Corr also investigates the role of shamanism in modern Salasacan culture, including shamanic powers and mountain spirits, and the use of reshaped, Andeanized Catholicism to sustain collective memory. Through its unique insider’s perspective of Salasacan spirituality, Ritual and Remembrance in the Ecuadorian Andes is a valuable anthropological work that honestly represents this people’s great ability to adapt.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. vii
Preface	p. ix
The Salasaca Runa	p. 1
Collective Rituals and Memory
The Catechist and the Quishuar Tree: Religious Transculturation in the Andean Contact Zone	p. 25
Textual Strategies and Ritual Control in Early Twentieth-Century Salasaca	p. 40
Prayer and Placemaking in the Andes: Staffholders and Cultural Memory	p. 54
Life Lessons at a Time of Death	p. 79
Individual Acts and Personal Narratives
Tales of Amazonia: Personal Narratives of Healing by Yumbos	p. 107
Shamanism	p. 117
Narrating the Sacred Landscape: Religious Ethnographies of the Particular	p. 141
Notes	p. 165
References Cited	p. 169
Index	p. 183
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