Between Excess and Pleasure: The Religious Festivals of the Indigenous People of Jujuy, Seventeenth-Nineteenth Centuries

Abstract

This work analyzes Indigenous religious festivals in the Viceroyalty of Peru. Our hypothesis is that indigenous parishioners engaged in festive spending that enabled colonial legal domination by the State, the Church, and its agents of exploitation because the festivity reinforced the authority of curacas and Indian governors and popularized an overindulgence in drinking and feasting. The case study is Jujuy, a district located in the Peruvian regional space with a dominant indigenous population, similar to Charcas, Potosí, and La Paz. This geographical context allows us to establish historical comparisons in order to determine the different types of festivals, the legality and legitimacy of economic exploitation, as well as how these festive performances fell within the framework of colonial rule.