This is a useful and interesting book on an important topic. The cofradías, or voluntary religious confraternities associated with the worship of saints, which often served also as mutual aid societies, played a major role in the social and economic life of colonial Latin America, but have received relatively little attention from scholars. The authors, anthropologists who have done fieldwork and archival research on the Peruvian central highlands, modestly describe this work as a “first approximation,” which they are following up with the empirical investigation that will ultimately allow them to describe in more detail how the cofradías functioned. The first two chapters provide a theoretical framework and review the history of European cofradías from the beginnings of Christianity. The rest of the book traces the rise and decline of Indian cofradías in Peru, concentrating on the region of Jauja and Tarma, with which the authors are most familiar.
The authors conclude that cofradías were established soon after the conquest in the Spanish towns, spreading to the Indian communities at the end of the sixteenth century with the encouragement of the missionaries, who saw them as a means to uproot idolatry and attach the Indians more firmly to Christianity. They came to own considerable amounts of land and livestock, which were donated to them and provided revenue to cover the costs of the cults. More important, the authors see these cofradías as a way of perpetuating the traditional pattern of ayllu organization in a period of radical social change, partly by compensating for the emotional trauma of conquest, but also because cofradías seem to have become identified with particular ayllus, taking over many of the functions traditionally performed by the latter. This accounts both for the strength of the cofradías during the colonial period and for their decline in the nineteenth century, when liberal legislation deprived them of their independence and subjected them to the tutelage of the sociedades de beneficencia pública as a result of which much of their property was sold off.
In conclusion, this is a well-written and stimulating book, though the arguments might have been easier to follow if the authors had more frequently summarized what they were saying. Since many of their more interesting ideas did not receive much elaboration, one awaits the results of their ongoing investigations with great interest.
