The European Background of Andean Scholarship

Colonial Andean writing remains a key example of the trans-culturation of early-modern European forms of communication, areas of knowledge, and categories of thought that made their way to the Americas with the Spanish invasion, which became transformed during the process of colonialization. This chapter builds on the notion of trans-culturation, which Cuban sociologist Fernando Ortiz first introduced in 1940, to counteract oversimplified and racist notions of the “acculturation” and “de-culturation” of indigenous peoples under Spanish colonialism. In the transition from one culture to another, Ortiz maintained, a process of cultural creation occurs that expresses not only the acquisition of the