Justicia y tortura en los Andes: Recurso de Judas Tadeo Andrade ante la Audiencia de Charcas, 1791

Abstract

The Archivo y Biblioteca Nacionales de Bolivia is the repository of, among other treasures, a most valuable and unique document, the “Recurso de Judas Tadeo Andrade, residente en Cochabamba, ante la Audiencia de Charcas para que se reciba información de testigos, según el interrogatorio y las laminas en colores que presenta, sobre diversos excesos del gobernador intendente y otros magistrados de esta provincial.” It consists of a complaint against the Santa Crúz de la Sierra’s intendant and governor Francisco de Viedma, his asesor Eusebio Gómez García, and several other state officials, filed in 1791 before the Real Audiencia de Charcas, in La Plata. The author, Judas Tadeo Andrade, was a shoemaker, barber, and bleeder born in Río de la Plata and residing at the time in the city of Cochabamba. This late eighteenth-century document is particularly striking in that it not only addresses vividly the crooked functioning of the justice system and the tortures and abuses committed by the local authorities when they jailed its author, accusing him of having both injured a shoemaker apprentice and disrespected them, but also in that 7 of its 30 pages are colorful graphic illustrations of the irregular conducts described in it. Said illustrations depict the shackles placed on Andrade’s legs and also a metallic security device and lock put around his waist and over his stomach, the public parading of his shackled body on a piece of cloth or on horseback, and the way he was kept in chains tied to a pole while standing up inside a prison cell. Along with the document’s rich iconography, in which several contemporary characters are depicted wearing the garments corresponding to their respective occupational or social group — there being soldiers, officers, scribes, blacksmiths, local noblemen, and other contemporaries who observe the events — there are also detailed written accusations of wrongdoing by several of the crown’s officers. These charges included physical punishments inflicted on Andrade and other prisoners, some of whom died, during the almost three years that he remained locked in a Cochabamba jail, as well as diverse acts of corruption, especially bribe taking, that occurred during the handling of criminal cases and detentions. They are also accused of embezzlement of public funds, encouragement of tobacco smuggling, and influence peddling.This nicely designed publication is presented in landscape format and contains other lavish illustrations. Published jointly by the Bolivian National Archives and Libraries and the Spanish Ministry of Education and Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), the volume offers a facsimile edition of the document in question, its transcription, and three rich essays dealing with its context and related issues. The first essay is a newspaper piece originally published in 1971 by Gunnar Mendoza, who for 50 years (1944–94) directed the Bolivian archives and is credited with having published equivalent historical documents of great significance, including Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela’s celebrated Tales of Potosí. Mendoza examines the collective pre-independence mood at the time of Andrade’s complaint and also reconstructs the barber’s biography, putting into doubt his authorship of the paintings, which are instead attributed to a local artist supposedly commissioned by him to carry out the task. Later historians, however, have forcefully argued otherwise. The second essay, by CSIC researcher and historian Víctor Peralta Ruiz, is a discussion of the larger iconography addressing justice and judicial torture under the Spanish monarchy, within which the only relatively equivalent images identified are the ones contained in Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala’s Nueva crónica y buen gobierno. The third and most extensive essay, by Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas professor José Enciso Contreras, is a judicious study that addresses the extent to which Judas Tadeo Andrade’s judicial case, tortures, and confinement conditions were similar to or different from other known colonial cases. This essay confirms that judicial abuses, torture, and inhuman jails were far from exceptional in colonial Spanish America. Finally, the volume also offers a unified bibliography listing all of the pertinent works cited in the various essays.This fascinating and useful book belongs in both research collections and even general libraries. It lends itself to further discussions of the functioning of the colonial administration and judicial system, the political conditions and culture prevailing on the eve of independence, and the characteristics of the period’s dress codes and material culture. The editors and publishers should be congratulated on making available to a wider readership such a unique historical record and for the selection of informative essays to accompany and explain the significance of the document.