Sabine MacCormak, in Religion in the Andes, seeks to correct the historical record with respect to the European interpretation of the religion of the people in the new World. She wants to show that the Europeans suffered under profound prejudices favoring Christianity and denigrating the worth of the religion of the people of early colonial Peru.
With respect to the historical record of the religion of the people of that time and region, the author wants to show that what we know of that religion comes to us primarily from the European Christians who saw the Andean religious beliefs and practices as not worthy of the term "religious." Clearly, in order to morally justify their Christianization of the Andeans, the Europeans first had to believe---or at least pretend to believe---that the religion of the Andeans was inferior to Christianity. And this is precisely what they did.
Even more specifically, the author points out that we cannot trust the accounts of the Christianizing Europoeans with respect to the details and nature of Andean religion. Because they wanted to denigrate and discount the worth of Andean religious beliefs and practices, the Europeans were wont to distort those beliefs and practices in order to show their purported inferiority to Christian beliefs and practices.
To correct these deliberate errors and distortions, the author goes to other sources which more accurately and fairly describe Andean religion. Even this noble goal, however, has its pitfalls, of which the author is aware:
Both the structure and the argument of the book arise from the inescapable fact that whatever understanding it may now be possible to gain of Inca and Andean religion must be channeled through the writings of men who in one way or another were outsiders to that religion. No one, not even the handful of Andeans who in the sixteenth and seventeenth century put pen to paper, wrote explicitly as adherents of the ancient religi...