shamanism and politics in late‐colonial Ecuador

Study of 18th‐century “witchcraft” trials from the Audiencia de Quito indicates that many acts of magical aggression and defense belonged to the South American tradition of shamanic combat but that the conflicts provoking them derived from specifically colonial stresses. Due in part to the poor fit between jurally mandated institutions of colonial governance and the dynamics of native communities, shamanic achievement continued to be a route to indigenous power. The failure of Spanish administrators to interpret such facts politically had the paradoxical effect of accrediting shamans' magical potency in European eyes and strengthening the conviction that peoples of the colonial periphery were ungovernable and dangerous . [shamanism, Andes, Ecuador, ethnohistory]