Prof. Rocío Quispe-Agnoli (Michigan State University)
“Spanish and Inka Elite Encomenderas: Social Mobility and Ethnic Pride in Colonial Perú”
Monday January 9, 2012 – 4:00-6:00 pm in Buchanan Tower 799 (FHIS Lounge)
This talk will present and analyze the textual ways in which sixteenth and seventeenth-century Spanish and Inka elite women participated in one of the most prominent institutions in colonial Spanish America, the encomienda. Encomenderas
received a labor grant from the Spanish Crown as a reward for their services, or that of their husbands. This presentation will cover social mobility and ethnic pride as strategies used by encomenderas to exercise and express their source of power and authority in early colonial Perú.