Curas and Social Conflict in the Doctrinas of Cuzco, 1780–1814

Abstract

Historians concerned to evaluate the turbulent political history of southern Peru in the late colonial period have, in the main, sought their answers in the voluminous correspondence generated in the wake of the several rebellions, seditions and sundry protests and riots which so scarred the epoch. Several historians have recently explored the wider structural context of such unrest, and we even have a socio-racial analysis of the leading cadres of the Túpac Amaru rebellion of 1780. Beyond the political and economic or commercial context within which such political conflict took place, however, we still lack an analysis of social stratification in southern Peru which embraces both the divisive and cohesive facets of inter-class relations, with all that the imply fo the potential formation of political alliances in the region. Moreover, apart from the immediate conflicts which precipitated the two major uprisings of 1780 and 1814, little is known of the nature of social relations at local level during the interregnum of some three decades which separated those two revolts, or indeed before 1780.