Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

El regreso de Viracocha

1987; Institut Français d'Études Andines; Volume: 16; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3406/bifea.1987.949

2076-5827

Antoinette Fioravanti-Molinié,

Latin American history and culture

Abstract Why is the name of the divinity Viracocha given to the Spaniards at the time of the conquest of the inca Empire? Several answers to this classical question of the andean historiography are reviewed. The most likely considers Viracocha as an aspect of the andean sacred in general, and applies it to the corpus of data on the different eras of the human history. The hypothesis thus formulated serves to demonstrate that the name given to the Spaniards was consistent with the indigenous vision of the world. An apparently trivial question therefore allows to make the Andean conception of time and its relationship to the pantheon more explicit.