Spectacular Wealth: The Festivals of Colonial South American Mining Towns by Lisa Voigt

Abstract

Portuguese Studies vol. 34 no. 1 (2018), 119–32© Modern Humanities Research Association 2018 Reviews Lisa Voigt, Spectacular Wealth: The Festivals of Colonial South American Mining Towns (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2016). 237 pages, 5 b/w photos. Print and e-book. Hardcover and paperback. Reviewed by Barbara Alge (Goethe University, Frankfurt) Public festivals have had an important function in promoting imperial expansion since the beginning of the colonization of the Americas. They were used to commemorate religious and political events, from important Catholic feast days to political acts such as the entrance of important authorities into colonial towns or weddings of the court. Spectacular Wealth, written by Lisa Voigt, complements the vast literature on festivals in eighteenth-century mining towns in colonial South America. While Voigt cites this literature, the novelty of her Spectacular Wealth lies, first, in the ‘mining’ (p. 8) of festival accounts, and, second, in the comparative approach — not only looking at festivals in Spanish and Portuguese America side-by-side, but also working out links, similarities and differences between these two regions. Drawing on archival research, Voigt examines festival accounts and the festive participation of diverse inhabitants in the silver-mining town of Potosí (viceroyalty of Peru) and in the gold-mining towns of Minas Gerais (Brazil). She not only bridges written texts and performances, but brings the festivals to life by giving a voice to different ethnic and social groups involved in the organization and performance of the festivals, as well as to those writing about the festivals in mining boomtowns, mostly for a metropolitan readership. WhilethefestivalsservedtheChurchandtheCrownforostentationinthefirst instance, they also offered an opportunity to Amerindians, Afro-descendants, Europeans and creoles to display their social capital and cultural practices in spectacular performances. Festivals were used to redefine the reputation of these groups, and to celebrate their cultural, spiritual and intellectual wealth. Tracing the multiple meanings and messages of civic festivals and religious feast days, Voigt highlights the conflicting agendas at work in the organization, performance and reporting of festivals. The book is divided by theme and approach rather than geography and corpus: Part I analyses and interprets specific texts on festivals in the Villa Imperial de Potosí (Chapter 1) and on festivals in colonial Minas Gerais (Chapter 2); Part II uses those and other texts to take a closer look at the celebrants of the festivals, with a focus on the natives in Potosí (Chapter 3), and on Afro-Brazilians in Minas Gerais (Chapter 4). Each chapter finishes Reviews 120 with a helpful summary of the main points. Extensive notes, well indicated in relation to pages, complement the information given in each chapter and five figures in black-and-white reproduced from eighteenth-century paintings and manuscripts illustrate Voigt’s observations. A conclusion tops off the complex narrative. In the introduction, Voigt presents a description of the play of the Real tragicomedia del descubrimiento y conquista del Oriente, performed at a Jesuit college in Lisbon in 1619, to outline the main themes of the book, that is, ‘the festive display of mineral wealth; of the feats and fruits of evangelization; of royal authority and ethnic difference, both feigned and real; of intergroup competition and rivalry (again, both feigned and real)’ (p. 11). The description of this play by Mimoso (Lisbon, 1620) serves as an example of what Voigt calls the ‘ambiguous genre’ of festival accounts, lying between the narrative of a performed event and their own rhetorical performances, and as such derived from other texts and oral accounts as well as the performance itself. The introduction further contextualizes the silver rush in Potosí and the gold rush in Minas Gerais historically, and provides insights into the social make-up of the mining towns, composed of those who profited from the minerals, and those who suffered from exploitation working in the mines. Voigt also mentions the writers in Portuguese and Spanish America, who play a role throughout the book, such as Bartolomé Arzáns de Orsúa and Andre João Antonil. She turns her attention to the physical and symbolical presence of different racial and ethnic groups in the festival performances. Chapter 1 focuses on three festive occasions that Arzáns uses to showcase...