Peruvian Viceroyalty Research Articles

Funerales de autoridades indígenas en el virreinato peruano

This essay discusses the policies followed by the colonial church and state to Christianize the funerary rituals of ethnic authorities in the Peruvian Andes. From a comparative perspective, the essay studies this process in two cities of the Peruvian viceroyalty during the two first centuries of Spanish rule. The essay demonstrates that the changes operated were the result of ambivalent policies implemented by both church and state, and of distinct local power structures.

Bourbon Peru, 1750–1824

In his most recent book, John Fisher has come, in some ways, full circle to examine the final decades of Spanish rule in Peru. Over 30 years ago, he published Government and Society in Colonial Peru: The Intendant System 1784–1814 (Athlone, 1970). Although it contains important information about economic life in the late colonial Andes, the book was chiefly an analysis of how the Bourbon reformers instituted the Peruvian intendancies and their impact in the viceroyalty. Bourbon Peru covers some of the same ground but ranges far more widely, both in terms of the themes and the period analyzed. It synthesizes the conclusions Fisher has reached over an eminent career studying the impact of the Bourbon century on Peru. Bourbon Peru, it should be noted, is essentially the same as Fisher’s El Perú borbónico, 1750–1824 (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 2000) but lacks the illustrations contained in the latter.Although the book concentrates on the period after 1750, on the grounds that the change in ruling dynasty had comparatively little impact in the Andes prior to that date, Fisher does provide a chapter that sketches the characteristics of the Peruvian viceroyalty prior to that date. The next three chapters analyze the political, economic, and social structures of Peru and the influence of Bourbon policy on them. Fisher is particularly good in summarizing the impact of changes in commercial policy, a subject that he has written about elsewhere in considerable detail. His previous study on the late colonial mining industry provides the foundation for his contention that, despite pessimism about Peru’s future following the viceroyalty’s dismemberment in 1776, the expansion of silver production at Cerro de Pasco and other mines in Lower Peru financed commercial expansion and a somewhat unexpected prosperity. These ideas are, of course, not new, having been argued by Fisher and others previously, but they are succinctly and clearly elaborated here.Fisher’s evaluation is dependent, of course, on his perspective. He is most interested in Spain’s relationship with the colony. What seemed prosperous to the royal treasury (the revenues of which increased rapidly) or to the merchants importing European goods did not necessarily equate to economic well-being for the growing population of Indians and castas. The imperial reforms tightened metropolitan control over the colony and extracted more profit from it. It is less clear what impact they had on the health of economic sectors such as agriculture, which received less attention from Bourbon officialdom.Chapters 4–6 focus on colonial social structures, with an eye toward how they affected the Great Andean Rebellion of the early 1780s and then the movement for independence. Creoles may have helped provoke the Túpac Amaru revolt, but they quickly concluded that “preservation of their stratified and unequal social order” depended “upon the exploitation of indigenous labour through a variety of semi-coercive institutions” (p. 84). They accepted the oppression of the Bourbon reforms as the cost required to maintain the colonial order. Heightened imperialism contributed to the Great Rebellion and to the 1813–14 revolt spearheaded by Mateo García Pumacahua, but it was insufficient to provoke widespread creole support for independence. Much of the turmoil of the final years of colonial rule stemmed from attempts by the elites of Cuzco and Arequipa to assert their autonomy from Lima rather than from Spain. Unlike in Mexico, in Peru no sense of nationalism developed uniting racial and regional groups. Fisher contends, in fact, that Peru retained its colonial social and economic structures until 1850, long after political independence had been imposed.The book does reflect certain idiosyncrasies. For example, although the previous chapters are chiefly synthetic interpretations of existing research, Fisher builds the chapter dealing with independence on his own new primary research. Those who do not read Spanish will have some difficulty, as the quotations have not been translated into English. The book also contains the occasional idiosyncratic comment that should delight historians familiar with research in Lima. Fisher recounts, for example, his initial experience as a graduate student in the City of the Kings. A prominent Peruvian historian invited the young British scholar to his home for dinner. Also present were the historian’s gaggle of students, who were invited to listen to the conversation and observe the meal but to participate in neither.Bourbon Peru is a thoughtful, mature synthesis that makes rewarding study for all those interested in the late colonial Andes. It marks a relatively brief but valuable starting point for anyone interested in eighteenth-century Peru, both in terms of interpretation and bibliography.

Decentralization and Democracy in Latin America

When the Spanish invaded the Inca empire in 1532, the cult of the ancestors was an essential feature of pre-Columbian religion throughout the Andes. The dead influenced politics, protected the living, symbolized the past, and legitimized claims over the land their descendants occupied, while the living honored the presence of the dead in numerous aspects of daily life. A central purpose of the Spanish missionary endeavor was to suppress the Andean cult of the ancestors and force the indigenous people to adopt their Catholic, legal, and cultural views concerning In her book, Gabriela Ramos reveals the extent to which Christianizing death was essential for the conversion of the indigenous population to Catholicism. Ramos argues that understanding the relation between death and conversion in the Andes involves not only considering the obvious attempts to destroy the cult of the dead, but also investigating a range of policies and strategies whose application demanded continuous negotiation between Spaniards and Andeans. Drawing from historical, archaeological, and anthropological research and a wealth of original archival materials, especially the last wills and testaments of indigenous Andeans, Ramos looks at the Christianization of death as it affected the lives of inhabitants of two principal cities of the Peruvian viceroyalty: Lima, the new capital founded on the Pacific coast by the Spanish, and Cuzco, the old capital of the Incas in the Andean highlands. Her study of the wills in particular demonstrates the strategies that Andeans devised to submit to Spanish law and Christian doctrine, preserve bonds of kinship, and cement their place in colonial society. Rapid and widespread death decimated the descendants of the Inca Empire, but the mere number of the dead does not tell the story. Rather, Ramos brilliantly demonstrates that, beginning with the execution of Atahualpa, death and the dead were one of the great colonial sites of ongoing contestation about both the here and now and the hereafter. In an exquisitely researched study, Ramos traces the shift from pre-Columbian to colonial Andean funerary rituals and the differing ways that they became the center of how 'Andeans and Europeans communicated and exchanged their visions of power and the sacred,' in a true dance of death. --Thomas B. F. Cummins, Harvard University Death and Conversion in the Andes is a highly innovative study that looks at the conquest period in a new light. By analyzing how the conception of death and death rituals changed during the early colonial period, Gabriela Ramos is able to gain many new insights into how the conquest modified indigenous beliefs. For those interested in ethnohistory and the effects of colonialism in Spanish America, this is a must read. --Erick D. Langer, Georgetown University

The Defense of Cartagena

C ARTAGENA, founded in 1533 by Pedro de Heredia on a sandy island west of the Magdalena entrance, had become a strategic Spanish American point by the eighteenth century. It ranked third among Spain 's new world ports, being surpassed only by La Habana and Lima (Callao).' Even more than Portobelo and Panama, it was the defensive key to Spanish trade with western South America. This commerce still traveled to and from the Pacific largely by way of the isthmus, though the old galeones fleet which was its former sole link with Spain, had now dropped in importance.2 With the creation of the Peruvian viceroyalty in 1542, the part of northern South America called New Granada became loosely appended to it and remained connected for nearly two hundred years. Then, to remedy a chaotic situation caused by the deposition of colonial president, Francisco Meneses Bravo, by the audiencia of Santa Fe de Bogota6 in 1715,3 New Granada was founded as a separate viceroyalty on May 27, 1717. Just at that time, moreover, the Spanish government of Philip V, dominated by Abbot Giulio Alberoni, was preparing operations for the recovery of Sardinia and Sicily.4 Spain thus faced another general European war only four years after the Treaty of Utrecht, and she thought the Caribbean coast needed. more protection than it could receive from the distant Peruvian viceroy at Lima. The new political unit consisted of the provinces of Santa Fe, Cartagena, Santa Marta, Maracaibo, Caracas, Antioquia, Guayana, Popayan, and San Francisco de Quito, or in modernl terms Colombia, Venezuela, and The author is professor of history at the University of Illiiiois. 1 Cristobal Bernvddez Plata, Discursos leicdos ante la Real Academia Sevillana de Buenas Letras por los Seniores Don Crist6bal Bermiidez Plata y Don Celestino Lopez Martinez (Sevilla, 1931), p. 35. 2 Richard Pares, War and Trade in the West Indies, 1739-1763 (Oxford, 1936), p. 5. 3 Francisco Javier Vergara y Velasco, Capitutlos de itna historia civil y militar de Colombia, 3d. ser. (Bogota, 1908), pp. 65-77. 4 Antonio Ballesteros y Beretta, Historia de Espaina y si influencia en la historia universal, V (Barcelona, 1929), 51-59. Alberoni did not become a cardinal until July, 1717.