Abstract

Where is the church? And what is it? In transposing to Spanish America a question that arose in the bitter confrontations between Catholics and Donatists in Augustine's North Africa, I would like to explain some aspects of the impact of Catholic Christianity, and thus of the Europe that had created it, overseas. Specifically, I will tell the story of Peru, the outlines of which are paralleled, not only throughout the Andes, but also in Brazil, Mexico, and Central America. The works of Augustine, including his writings against the Donatists, were read by Spanish missionaries in America, but it is not merely, nor even primarily, the influence of Augustine that I am tracing here. Rather, what concerns me is to reveal the functioning of a series of tensions and contradictions in the impact of Europe on the world. It is fashionable, of course, to highlight the oppressive and destructive nature of colonial regimes and to stop at that. But this, however justified, along with reference to the all-pervasive power of a dominant culture will not on its own help us understand the ambiguities, tensions, and contradictions that filled the minds of people at the time, and that in one way or another motivated their actions