Resumen
This article explores the role played by images of the Virgin Mary in the ordering of space during the colonial period, as well as in the disruption of such order as a gesture of resistance by subordinate groups. In the Real Audiencia de Quito of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, civil and religious authorities used miraculous images of the Virgin Mary as aids in the founding of reducciones, which assured the imposition of Christian civility upon the Native population. Legal records suggest that in the second half of the eighteenth century Indigenous communities deployed similar strategies as a means of asserting their own concerns. Native actors physically manipulated Marian images in times of conflict, moving them around or apprehending them either to legitimize their desertion of colonial settlements or to resist forced relocation. In both the early colonial period and in the eighteenth century, the key strategy of shaping sacred landscapes was implemented in both Andean and Christian traditions.