Most visitors to the fabled "White City" of Arequipa, in Peru's southern highlands, are struck by the richness of the architectural carving in the city's many colonial monuments. Extraordinarily creative, the sculptural decoration engulfs entire walls with curling vines, blossoming flowers, and jungle animals. The carved façades of churches and mansions look more like needlework tapestries than stone carvings.

Those who linger over the details of these buildings discover an even more remarkable secret: their decoration derives from European models but also includes depictions of local flora and fauna as well as pre-Hispanic figures and symbols. This style is known as mestizo, mixed, because its cultural blend is an intermarriage between indigenous people and Europeans, whose progeny were known by the same name. It should come as no surprise that this exuberant experiment in cultural convergence was first fostered by the Jesuits.

It began in 1698, the year when the Jesuits finished carving the front of their new Church of Santiago, the third they had built on the earthquake-ravaged site since they first arrived in Arequipa in 1577.

The Church of Santiago in Arequipa, Peru, better known as La Compañía, is one of the earliest and most splendid examples of the style of architecture called "mestizo" (mixed) because it blends European motifs with those indigenous to the Andes. The church, also the seat of a former Jesuit college and a missionary center, is the third building on the site since its foundation in 1577.

A few decades earlier, when construction of the church was taken over by architects Juan de Aldana and Simón de Barrientos, Jesuits had introduced a new stone they hoped would stand up to the constant seismic activity in the area around Arequipa, which sits at the foot of Misti and Chachani, two of the most dramatic volcanoes of the Andes. Every few decades the colonists had to rebuild from the ground up after tremors leveled the city.

Ironically, the solution came from the volcanoes themselves. A pure white volcanic tufa stone, naturally abundant in the region, proved to be earthquake resistant, and from the mid seventeenth century nearly all new construction was built with it. The buildings are still standing today, even after a disastrous earthquake in 2001.

An unexpected advantage of the porous stone was that it was extremely easy to carve, giving free reign to the creative impulses of craftsmen. Many of these sculptors were of indigenous or mixed heritage, and they incorporated motifs and natural features from their own environment into the predominantly European baroque church and house decorations. These local references included the chirimoya fruit, cacao, pumas, and monkeys, as well as Inca symbols such as the ccantu lily and masked heads that resemble pre-Hispanic prototypes. Strangely enough, some of the flora and fauna were from jungles several days' journey from Arequipa.

The splendid doorway on the side of the church features a giant panel with a relief carving of Santiago Matamoros (St. James the Moor-Slayer) engulfed in tropical flora. Below is a pair of mermaids, a common motif in "mestizo" style architecture that first appeared in Arequipa.

Although artists copied European models such as engravings when decorating these façades, they arranged them in ways quite foreign to European style, more in the manner of pre-Hispanic Andean art. Such is the mosaic-like arrangement of motifs seen on the Santiago church façade, especially around the second-story window. This side-by-side arrangement of decorative elements recalls the grid structure of Inca and other pre-Hispanic textile patterns.

The façade of the Santiago church, probably designed by Jesuit Br. Agustín de Acosta and the stonemason Diego de Adrián, has been called "one of the masterpieces of colonial South American decoration of any time or latitude." Its surface is covered with climbing vines, tropical flowers, and pre-Hispanic symbols such as the tiger with flowering branches growing from its mouth. Scholars generally accept the building as the originator of this vigorous new style, which soon spread throughout the southern highlands, to Lake Titicaca in the East, and down into La Paz, Sucre, and Potosí in present-day Bolivia—frequently in other Jesuit buildings.

On the side door of the same church, in a section begun in 1654 by Barrientos, is another supreme example of this style. The lower (and earlier) part of the doorway, done in the classical manner with columns, gives way above to a later carved panel of Santiago Matamoros, St. James the Moor-Slayer, and it includes very early examples of a mermaid motif that mysteriously became typical of this mestizo style later in the century—even though most of these churches are hundreds of miles from the sea.

One exuberant offspring of the Santiago façade is in the adjacent Jesuit college, whose late seventeenth-century main courtyard is the masterpiece of architect Lorenzo de Pantigoso and stonemason Juan Ordóñez, assisted by a small army of Amerindian carvers.

The elegant courtyard of the former Jesuit college in Arequipa is one of the finest in Latin America, the work of architect Lorenzo de Pantigoso, stonemason Juan Ordóñez, and legions of indigenous carvers. The seventeenth-century fountain provides the courtyard with the same aura of repose that it had in the days when students walked its halls. Each of the arcade's piers is carved on all four sides with climbing vines in bloom, usually crowned by an angel. The deep shadows cast by the ornamentation provide a striking contrast with the brilliant white volcanic stone.

Few courtyards are as impressive in their decoration. This one derives its particular character from the sharp contrast between the somber and almost blindingly white stone and the lavish, deeply carved ornamentation that casts a lace-like net of shadows over its surface. Hidden amid tropical creepers and flowering trees and guarded by pumas in the gargoyles above are Christian symbols such as angels and two delightful portraits of Ignatius and Xavier, seemingly sprouting from branches of succulent leaves. With its elegant fountain, also decorated with tropical flora, the courtyard is as tranquil now as it was in its years as a college, when students and scholastics passed under its arches. Today the courtyard is an upscale handicrafts market—undoubtedly one of the most tasteful shopping malls in the world.

The courtyard is guarded from above by gargoyles shaped like pumas, wild cats indigenous to the Andes. Their stylized, frontal appearance recalls pre-Hispanic sculpture.

Inside, the Church of Santiago is remarkably sober, with massive Ionic columns grafted onto heavy, earthquake-resistant walls. Here all the lavish spirit of the façade is relegated to the retablos, altarpieces, elaborately decorated structures sometimes three stories tall, covered with brilliant gold leaf. The main altarpiece is especially prominent, drawing the eye from the church's dark entrance, an effect heightened by natural light from the dome. The centerpiece is the Madonna and Child (ca. 1603) by the Italian Renaissance artist Br. Bernardino Bitti, SJ (1548-1610), who left a career in Rome to serve the missions in outermost Peru.

The interior of the Church of Santiago is much more somber and classical than the façade would suggest, except for the three-story, gold-plated retablo, or altarpiece. In the center of the lower part of the altarpiece is a rare oil painting by the Italian Renaissance artist and Jesuit brother Bernardino Bitti, who made Peru his home at the end of the sixteenth century.

The austerity of the church's interior is offset by the splendor of the sacristy, a giant vaulted chamber painted in vibrant reds, blues, greens, and gold. Here, the tropical flora, toucans, and other exotic designs appear again—a polychromatic response to the creative spirit of mestizo style.

The Jesuits maintained an important presence in the city, where they had other properties. They had been invited to Arequipa in the first place to "unburden the conscience" of the conquistador Diego Hernández Hidalgo and enjoyed special privileges, obtaining choice pieces of property adjacent to the main square and also in a fashionable rural area where descendants of conquistadors had villas.

One of their most impressive civic structures is the former Jesuit residence, built in 1738 in the typical manner of an urban palace, with an elaborate façade fronting a series of decorated courtyards. The structure features one of Arequipa's most elaborate courtyards, where the sober classical details of the architecture blossom with oversized tropical flowers, snarling pumas, and other exotica.

Above the main doorway is an extraordinary plaque representing the family tree of Jesus, with Christ's IHS symbol at the top—also the symbol of the Society of Jesus. The tree looks like an elaborate bouquet of tulips, its leafy tendrils snaking around the corners and filling nearly every inch of space. This building, recently taken over by a bank, is now perhaps the most aesthetically pleasing setting to use an ATM.

This detailed panel, from the former Jesuit residence in Arequipa, represents the family tree of Jesus, culminating in Christ's monogram, IHS, also the symbol of the Society. The tree itself looks more like a floral bouquet of exotic tulips.

Far away from the city center, in a breathtakingly beautiful agricultural region bordered by barren peaks, lies a former Jesuit hacienda, ranch, at Socobaya. The Jesuits were granted this prime piece of agricultural property by descendants of the founder of Arequipa, Garcí Manuel de Carbajal. They began construction in 1585 and maintained a prosperous farm and retreat house here until they were expelled from Spanish territories in 1767.

It may seem surprising that Jesuits were involved in agriculture, but farms were one of the main ways they financed their South American works, from the Paraguay reductions to the missions on Lake Titicaca.

Jesuit ranches in Peru, Chile, and Argentina cultivated wheat and barley, corn, beans, lentils and potatoes, spices such as anise and cumin, fruit, grapes, and flax for the textile industry. Their livestock included cattle, horses, mules, and sheep, whose wool was essential for textiles. The trade in mules was an especially vital source of funding, since they were needed for the mines in the Bolivian Andes.

Today the Jesuit ranch at Socobaya has a very different mission. The original chapel, with its modest bell tower and a gilded altarpiece inside, now serves as the setting for society weddings, with the ranch's grand courtyard a favored spot for photographs as is the refectory for banquets.

	Hidden away in the richly carved vegetation of the college courtyard are images of the Jesuit saints Ignatius of Loyola and Francis Xavier. This panel, which shows Ignatius wearing his chasuble and holding a mon-strance, is almost hidden by the leaves and vines of exotic plants.
	Far from the city center, in the verdant agricultural region of Socobaya, stands a ranch that once belonged to the Society of Jesus. Through the production and sale of crops and livestock, the Jesuits financed their expensive mission enterprises.

The experimental style of the architectural carving on these extraordinary Jesuit buildings in and around Arequipa, enlivened by indigenous Andean elements, are unique. They stand as testimony to the Jesuits' global effort to accommodate to local styles and traditions, creating a Christianity that brings together often vastly different worlds. As the headquarters of an extensive mission operation, Arequipa set a model for the Jesuit's approach to indigenous culture throughout the Southern Andes.

Gauvin Alexander Bailey, associate professor of Renaissance and Baroque Art at Clark University, is author of Art on the Jesuit Missions in Asia and Latin America, 1542—1773 (University of Toronto Press 2000) and Between Renaissance and Baroque: Jesuit Art in Rome, 1565—1610 (University of Toronto Press 2003). He recently completed The Arts of Colonial Latin America (Phaidon 2004).