In Service of Two Masters: The Missionaries of Ocopa, Indigenous Resistance, and Spanish Governance in Bourbon Peru

Abstract

In Service of Two Masters is an institutional history of the Franciscan mission of Santa Rosa de Ocopa in the colonial viceroyalty of Peru. Located in the eastern jungle region, with its harsh climate, Ocopa presided over one of the largest mission fields in the New World. Cameron D. Jones's aim is to put Ocopa into the “wider political and intellectual context” of the Bourbon reforms, the Enlightenment, and Atlantic history, and he succeeds in this (p. 6).In the eighteenth century, the Roman Catholic Church extended a European project of creating colleges de propaganda fide to the Americas. This policy turned established monasteries, like Ocopa, into institutes to train missionaries in native languages. Doing so removed the monasteries from local control, so that rather than reporting to the provincial of the order in Peru, they reported to the commissary general of the Indies in Spain. That, and the fact that nearly three-quarters of Ocopa missionaries were recruited from Spain, put Ocopa into the crosshairs of Bourbon reform conflicts as the crown sought to exert greater control by putting more peninsulars (presumably more loyal than creoles) into colonial offices.Church-state conflict was also worsened as Spanish regalists endeavored to redirect money to the crown from church coffers. Although the Franciscans began their mission with a Lascasian aim of peaceful conversion by example, over the eighteenth century they began to fall in line with the “new method of spiritual government” that, influenced by classic liberalism and Enlightenment-era ideology, placed commerce front and center in evangelization (pp. 140–43, 169). The lowland native people whom Ocopa missionized would be introduced to capitalism (as if they had remained outside its influence before this) and through this would learn Spanish culture and religion. Jones problematizes the Franciscan mission at Ocopa by revealing the deep divisions over the implementation of this new strategy. This is not a history that glorifies the Franciscan missionary effort.As Jones points out, the historiography of Ocopa shifted in the early twentieth century, when indigenismo began to put indigenous (or at least creole) history front and center; since then, the 1740s rebellion of Juan Santos Atahualpa has dominated Ocopa's history. Jones devotes nearly a quarter of his book to Juan Santos Atahualpa, whom Jones paints as a millenarian leader whose supporters followed him because of the Inkarrí myth, the idea that the Inca would return and create an Andean utopia. However, the Inkarrí myth was recorded by twentieth-century anthropologists; there is little or no evidence for this in colonial documents other than statements from Spanish bureaucrats who, much like the Franciscans whom Jones writes about, voiced their beliefs about indigenous motivations and aims mainly through racist clichés. Plugging the Inkarrí idea into the mid-eighteenth century suggests that the rebels held a prepolitical worldview. However, Jones cites a contemporary who wrote that Juan Santos Atahualpa claimed to be the legitimate descendant of the Inca who wanted to “restore his kingdom from the power of the Spanish and free his vassals from the tyrannies that they suffer” (p. 56). The same source reported that Juan Santos Atahualpa traveled throughout the Andes in 1729–30, making it possible that he was familiar with ideas already circulating in Oruro that called for the expulsion of the Spanish and putting an Inca on an American throne. The 1739 Manifesto of Oruro, composed by creoles in the mining center of Oruro who sought to unite with indigenous Andeans to oust the Spaniards, was a major influence on Túpac Amaru and puts Juan Santos Atahualpa's call for ridding the Andes of Spanish tyranny in a political rather than millenarian light.Jones cites several contemporaries who argued that the uprising was triggered by the refusal to ordain native priests. Somewhat surprisingly, Ocopa supported a native priesthood, but regalist ministers in Madrid “opposed such deviations from orthodox social hierarchies” (p. 60). Ordination could empower indigenous people, putting them in control of not only religious practices but also the funds generated through those practices, especially confraternal activities. There is also a suggestion that the rebellion was partly a product of conflict between Franciscans and Jesuits. Juan Santos Atahualpa targeted Franciscans, calling for them to be sent back to Spain but allowing Jesuits to remain in Peru.In Service of Two Masters is a fine contribution to mission history that will also appeal to those interested in the local impact of the Bourbon reforms. Jones puts the voluminous Franciscan writings of the era to good use, as well as his extensive research in Peruvian and Spanish archives. There is much food for thought in this clearly written study.