In 1571, Spanish masons pulled apart the gold-sheathed walls of Coricancha, the Inca sun temple in Cusco, and built the church of Santo Domingo directly on its foundations. The colonial builders didn't erase the Inca stonework so much as build on top of it, and in a sense that's what happened to the Inca cosmology. Andean belief wasn't so much replaced by Catholic doctrine as folded into it. Or was it? On a recent trip to Cusco, I toured Santo Domingo and I kept noticing how similar the concepts in Inca cosmology were to my Catholic beliefs.
Wiraqucha, whom sits on top of all including the sun, is a formless maker who shapes people out of clay and stone and existed before the world had light. This is a pretty compelling analogy of the Catholic God. It was easy for the Quechuans to pass this off as a distorted memory of their true God rather than a rival to it.
The Sapa Inca ruled as Inti's living descendant, and during the June solstice festival, Inti Raymi, the Quechuans celebrated the sun's "return" after its weakest days. When the feast of Corpus Christi landed on the colonial calendar near the same weeks, Cusco's clergy didn't so much replace Inti Raymi as absorb its crowds and its timing. Both sit at the very head of their respective religious frameworks as the ultimate source of divine power, light, and life-giving force. Both link the human realm directly to the divine; Inti was viewed as the literal divine ancestor and father of the Inca emperors, while Christ is recognized as the Son of God bridging heaven and earth. Traditional depictions of Inti feature a radiant golden face with glowing sun rays, which parallels Christian artistic motifs of Christ or saints surrounded by a divine halo or solar aureole.
Pachamama is asked, fed, and apologized, and is honored to this day with the first pour of chicha spilled to the ground before drinking. Her and the Virgin Mary are seen as nurturing, approachable mother figures. Pachamama sustains life by providing food from the earth, while the Virgin Mary gives birth to and sustains Jesus, the source of spiritual life. Both act as cosmic protectors of humanity. Believers pray to both figures for safety, health, good fortune, and relief from suffering. Both receive deep devotion through rituals. Pachamama receives offerings of food, drink, and coca leaves (challa), while the Virgin Mary receives candles, flowers, and prayers.
Every notable peak in the Andes has its Apu, a spirit with its own temperament and its own claims on the villages below it. Similarly, Catholic parishes layered patron saints over the geographies. They have similar structural, protective, and intermediary roles within their respective spiritual systems. Both act as powerful spiritual intermediaries. Believers pray to patron saints to intercede with God, while they petition the Apus to convey prayers and manage the balance between humanity and the larger cosmos. Communities appease the Apus with physical offerings (pagos or challas) of coca leaves, alcohol, and food. This mirrors the feast days of patron saints, where communities offer candles, prayers, and massive public festivals to stay in the saint's spiritual favor.
The Andean cosmos runs on three connected pachas with Hanan Pacha above, Kay Pacha where people live, Uku Pacha below and inward, home to seeds, the dead, and renewal rather than punishment. Similar to heaven, earth, and hell, although Uku Pacha does not really fit the hell model with it being generative, not infernal. I believe there is also a tie to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit with the Father being Kay Pacha, the son being Uku Pacha, and the Holy Spirit being Hanan Pacha. There is also the concept of the Triad of the Sun: Apu Inti and the lord or sovereign sun (daytime); Churi Inti and the son sun (setting sun or winter solstice); and Inti Guauqui and the brother son (solar entity viewed as a personal spiritual companion to the reigning Inca emperor). I'll let you make the association to Catholicism.
The wall itself is the argument
Coricancha's lower courses were cut Inca stonework, fitted without mortar, and earthquake-resistant using a lego system to lock the stone in and allow movement. Santo Domingo's Spanish arches sit straight on top of them, and after Cusco's 1650 and 1950 earthquakes, it was the Inca foundation that stayed standing while colonial additions cracked. It's a fairly literal image for the syncretism itself: the older structure isn't gone, it's load-bearing.
Inca Garcilaso de la Vega spent his life ensuring the Quechua beliefs survived colonization and time. As a chronicler with an Inca mother and a Spanish conquistador father, he translated the cosmology into the vocabulary of the Spanish because he did not belong fully to neither audience. Reading his Comentarios Reales now, the analogues above aren't really metaphors he reached for. They were the working language of someone who needed both systems to make sense of his own family.