Within the Andes when considering the indigenous tradition of marriage before and after the arrival of the Spanish, women’s power, pursuit of power, and exhibition of power certainly have changed. Prior to the arrival of the Spanish, marriage within indigenous communities both expressed the perceived equality between the genders through the necessity of mutual desire by each parties and their families in creating a union (Silverblatt 153) but further promoted women’s perceived economic value through the presentment of a bridewealth (Burkett 103). These Incan rituals are consistent with the indigenous perspective of interdependence and reciprocity, granting women unique, significant social, cultural, political, and economic roles in the community.

However, with the arrival of the Spanish, these traditions changed, as person was largely defined by their market value. According to Burkett, “…the relationship between Spanish men and Indian women must be viewed as part of the total conquest and, indeed, part of the very meaning of conquest (105).”

While according to royal policy, indigenous women were free to marry whomever they chose and even encouraged to marry, statistics reveal telling points about the power dynamics of marriage in the colonial period of Spanish America. According to Burkett, largely only the upper-class women, who already were endowed with great social and political power were the ones to intermarry with the Spaniards; therefore, the supposed benefit from this connection to power is questionable due to these women’s now relative decline in power (yet their situation would have perhaps worsened had this alliance not been made.

For most women, the interracial power dynamic was most keenly felt through the encomienda system and the perpetuation of the tribute system. Through these two systems, Spanish males controlled production - both through property and labor; therefore, they both found occasions to encourage and restrict marriage for the women under their control. As Burkett notes, Spanih men attempted to prevent women from marrying at all in order to continue sexual control over them and to maintain tributary production (when a woman married, she contributed to her husband’s encomendero). Another tactic for Spaniards was encouraging intermarrying between their indigenous servants and thereby increasing the labor for their tribute. Each of these relations is characterized by a monopoly of control by the Spanish man and a lack thereof by the indigenous women, instead being manipulated to conform to his will (perhaps for any number of reasons).

Burkett’s statistics (116) support these ideas of Spaniard power influencing marriage traditions. Because a woman’s choice to marry or not marry as well as whom to marry were directly affected by Spanish rule (not even the abstract idea but by a woman’s particular Spanish male overseer), it is plain that marriage became a coercive institution with the arrival of the Spanish.