User:ILCS.16/Indigenous peoples of Peru

Article Draft

Lead

Adding a section about gender and gender expression in Incan civilization as well as a section on homosexuality in Andean civilizations.

Marriage

Ceramic Sculpture That Portrays Ceremonial Sexual Union Between Man and Woman

Women typically got married around 16 years old while men typically married when they were 20 years old. Before the Spanish Inquisition, Incas often engaged in trial marriages. Trial marriages typically lasted a few years and at the end of the trial, both the man and the woman in the relationship could decide to either pursue the relationship or return home. According to Powers, “Andean peoples had clearly understood, long and before the ride of the Inca state, that women’s work and men’s work were complementary and interdependent, that the group’s economic subsistence could not be attained in the absence of one or the other.” Once married, women often stayed home to watch over children and livestock, collect food, cook, weave, etc. On the other hand, men often took on more physically taxing responsibilities.

Intermarriage

From the earliest years, Spanish soldiers and colonists intermarried with the Indigenous women. The Spanish officers and elite married into the Inca elite, and other matches were made among other classes. A sizeable portion of the Peruvian population is mestizo, of Indigenous and European ancestry, speaking Spanish, generally Roman Catholic, and assimilated as the majority culture.

In the late 19th century, major planters in Peru, particularly in the northern plantations, and in Cuba, recruited thousands of mostly male Chinese immigrants as laborers, referred to as "coolies". Because of the demographics, in Peru these men married mostly non-Chinese women, many of them Indigenous Peruvians, during that period of a Chinese migration to Peru. In the late 20th and 21st centuries, many scholars have studied these unions and the cultures their descendants created.

The Chinese also had contact with Peruvian women in cities, where they formed relationships and sired mixed-race children. Typically the Indigenous women had come from Andean and coastal areas to work in the cities. Chinese men favored marriage with them over unions with African Peruvian women. Matchmakers sometimes arranged for mass communal marriages among a group of young Peruvian women and a new group of Chinese coolies. They were paid a deposit to recruit women from the Andean villages for such marriages.

In 1873 the New York Times reported on the Chinese coolies in Peru, describing their indentured labor as akin to slavery. It also reported that Peruvian women sought Chinese men as husbands, considering them to be a "catch" and a "model husband, hard-working, affectionate, faithful and obedient" and "handy to have in the house".

As is typical in times of demographic change, some Peruvians objected to such marriages on racial grounds. When native Peruvian women (cholas et natives, Indias, indígenas) and Chinese men had mixed children, the children were called injerto. As adults, injerto women were preferred by Chinese men as spouses, as they had shared ancestry.

According to Alfredo Sachettí, low-class Peruvians, including some black and Amerindian women, were the ones who established sexual unions or marriages with the Chinese men. He claimed this mixing was causing the Chinese to suffer from "progressive degeneration". In Casa Grande highland Amerindian women and Chinese men participated in communal "mass marriages", arranged when highland women were brought by a Chinese matchmaker after receiving a down payment for the marriage.

Gender

Gender was defined and reinforced throughout different stages in a child’s life: from ages 3 and under both males and females were referred to as “Wawa,” from ages 3-7 both males and females were referred to as “Warma,” from ages 7-14 females were referred to as “Thaski” (or “P’asña”) and males were referred to as “Maqt’a,” from ages 14-20 females were referred to as “Sipas” and males were referred to “Wayna,” from ages 20-70 females were referred to as “Warmi” and males were referred to as “Qhari,” from ages 70-90 females were referred to as “Paya” and males were referred to as “Machu,” from ages 90+ both females and males were referred to as “Ruku.”

Before Spanish colonization, Incas recognized a third non-binary gender called “Qariwarmi.”  According to scholar Micheal Horswell, "qariwarmi (men-women) shamans mediated between the symmetrically dualistic spheres of Andean cosmology and daily life by performing rituals that at times required same-sex erotic practices. Their transvested attire served as a visible sign of a third space that negotiated between the masculine and the feminine, the present and the past, the living and the dead. Their shamanic presence invoked the androgynous creative force often represented in Andean mythology." In terms of gender dynamics/ roles, there was a lot of gender parallelism in Incan society. In other words, men and women worked and operated as counterparts and one gender was not subordinate to the other.

Spanish colonization largely disrupted gender and gender expression in the Incan Empire. During the 1570s, Francisco de Toledo, Viceroy of Peru, created ordinances that prohibited male Incas from wearing their hair as long as female Incas, men from dressing like women, and women from dressing like men. Punishments for such offenses included 100 lashes for a first-time offense, being tied to a pole for 6 hours for a second-time offense, and remittance to the magistrate of the valley for a third time offense.

Homosexuality in Inca Empire

Erotic Ceramic Sculpture from Museo Larco

Moche, an Andean civilization in Peru that predated the Incan Empire, are thought to have accepted homosexuality. According to Crompton, about 40% of huacos from the period depict both men and women engaging in same-sex relations. While it is still unclear how homosexuality was perceived in the Incan Empire, similar to Moche huacos, Incan ceramics suggest that homosexuality was accepted in the Incan Empire before Spanish colonization. Some of the ceramics found depict two men having anal sex, while others emphasize female sexual pleasure; both challenge the idea that sex is solely meant for procreation. Further evidence suggests that in Incan society, lesbians were referred to as “holioshta” and were highly valued.

Recipiente Mochica Coito from Museo Larco

After arriving in Peru, Francisco de Toledo, the Viceroy of Peru, and Spanish priests were shocked by both the presence of homosexuality and premarital sex in Incan society. Historian Maximo Terrazo claims that after his arrival, “Toledo ordered that evangelized natives caught cohabiting outside church-sanctioned wedlock receive 100 lashes of the whip.” Furthermore, under the Spanish inquisition, “homosexuals could be burned at the stake. 1 The majority of the Moche huacos and Incan ceramics that depicted homosexual behavior, pleasurable female sex, and masturbation were destroyed by Toledo and his clergymen. Terrazo further suggests that such things became considered a “taboo imposed by the Christian religion that men have sex only for procreation and that women do not experience sexual pleasure.”