The ambiguous nature of the devil in the world of Fabiana Sánchez and her unfortunate indigenous victim highlights a common trend in the perceived interaction between human and diabolical entities in colonial Peru. It is especially significant that Fabiana Sánchez, a mestiza, pictured Lucifer with quite indigenous characteristics, while the Andean woman's depiction of him was much more stereotypical. The devil had clearly become a figure that transcended cultural boundaries in much the same way as historical actors frequently crossed the ill-defined borders of cultural and symbolic worldviews. In fact, rather than crossing frontiers, these actors existed and interacted in what have been termed ‘contact zones’, a concept which, according to William Taylor, suggests ‘spaces and times of meeting and interaction between groups, institutions and ideas that combine undefined experiences and limits, rather than two islands connected by a bridge’. In effect, these people and spiritual entities existed together in in-between places, on the outer circumference of the Erasmian Christian body, neither solely belonging to one symbolic structure nor another but often having to contend with and negotiate the conflicting spiritual requirements of both.

Providing a forum for a complex and ambiguous interaction between diverse peoples, these in-between places embodied the heart and soul of the varied and ever-changing associations between the multiple hierarchies of the viceroyalty. In colonial Peru, such interaction was determined by everyday communication among social equals of different cultures, all of whom lived within and beneath what appeared to be a rigid but overarching Dionysian power structure that descended from God, through the celestial hierarchies and Christ, to the earthly institutions of the monarchy and the church and which spread outwards in an ever-extending Christian body.

Beyond the City Walls

Despite its concerted efforts to regulate and control social, cultural and symbolic relations between individuals in colonial Peru, viceregal authority did not appear to have a marked influence upon the product of contact between ordinary people.