Viceroyalty Of Peru Research Articles

Colonial Carpenters: Construction, Race, and Agency in the Viceroyalty of Peru during the 16th and 17th Centuries

This article examines colonial documents to shed light on the presence of non-white carpenters in the carpentry trade during the first two centuries of Spanish colonial rule in Peru. It first offers a general definition of carpentry work during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and then explores the specific environments in which Indigenous, black, and mixed-race carpenters carried out their activities. Through this analysis, it becomes evident that the agency of non-white individuals and groups in the carpentry trade was shaped by the diverse labor systems that predominated in colonial society.

Methodologies for the Characterization and Identification of Natural Atacamite as a Pigment in Andean Colonial Painting

Painting materials used in Spanish American Colonial art comprised pigments and binders from European origin as well as those that were already known in pre-Hispanic times. In recent years, we have identified for the first time the mineral atacamite, a basic copper chloride (Cu2Cl(OH)3), in Andean Colonial art pieces (Viceroyalty of Peru, 16th–18th centuries). This work proposes a methodology based on a multitechnical approach to identify and establish the origin (natural or synthetic) of the atacamite pigment in Andean cultural heritage objects. Optical microscopy (OM), scanning electron microscopy with energy-dispersive spectroscopy (SEM-EDS), portable X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (pXRF), attenuated total reflection infrared spectroscopy (FTIR-ATR), micro-Raman spectroscopy, and wide-angle X-ray scattering (WAXS) were applied to analyse green pigments from the altarpiece of the Church of Ancoraimes, atacamite mineral samples from Chile, and atacamite obtained as a secondary product from traditional recipes used to produce verdigris, a copper acetate. Viride salsum by Teófilo Presbítero (SXII) and the Spanish translation by Andrés de Laguna (1566) of “De Materia Médica” from Dioscorides are both texts that include recipes involving the use of metallic copper as a starting material. These studies will contribute to the history of Spanish American Colonial art and to the knowledge on technological capacities and skills in the Andean region during this period.

Materiales para acercar mundos: América en las cartas y fundaciones de Teresa de Jesús

Teresa of Avila established her first Discalced Carmelite convent in the city of Avila in 1561, financed by the golden pesos her brother Lorenzo de Cepeda sent her from the Viceroyalty of Peru. Taking this economic dependence as a starting point, this article hopes to unravel the multitasking relationship Teresa established with America. The distant territory did not only become a source of economic relief, but it also became one of the rhetorical and spiritual pillars that would hold the unstable beginnings of Teresa's religious project. Drawing on the study of the letters, relics, and religious imagery exchanged with her brother in Quito, and focusing on the metallurgical lexicon displayed in her visionary rhetoric, as well as on her crucial understanding of the Franciscan missionary tactics, I argue that Teresa of Avila learned to strategically define her relationship with America to authorize her multifaceted spiritual and literary endeavor.

The Art of Barniz de Pasto and Its Appropriation of Other Cultures

This study analyzes the techniques and decorative motifs of several works made using barniz de Pasto, highlighting their characteristics in order to establish comparisons with artistic phenomena of Asia and Europe. A possible link can be observed between barniz de Pasto and the Namban and Pictorial style Japanese export lacquer works of the 17th and 18th centuries. A search for similarity is justified by the documentary and material evidence of Japanese works created in these styles being transported from Japan to the Viceroyalty of New Spain by Manila galleons via the trade route between Acapulco and Callao. Additionally, traces of the Spanish culture have been recognized in barniz de Pasto. For example, printed images that circulated in the Viceroyalty of Peru have been observed on a coffer. This appropriation, also observed in the mural painting of a Central Andean church, and the presence of the image of Amaru, a Quechua deity, on the same coffer, marks the Central Andes as one of the possible places where the practice of barniz de Pasto could have been established. All of this points to Central and South America’s great ability to appropriate foreign cultures and fuse them with their own during the viceregal period, as manifested in the art of barniz de Pasto.

Papeles Seductivos: Friars, Intermediaries, and Organizers in the Huánuco Rebellion of 1812

AbstractIn February and March of 1812, Indigenous, mestizo, and creole rebels led an uprising in and around the colonial city of Huánuco in the viceroyalty of Peru. The diversity of the insurgent army reflected, to an extent, the vision of bilingual friars who, in the months preceding the uprising, had written, translated, and distributed pasquinades that called on residents to unite and drive out the Spanish. Although the insurgent army had two initial victories, Spanish authorities quickly put down the movement and began an investigation into the motives and leaders of the rebellion. Their interrogations led them to the subversive friars and the “papeles seductivos” (seductive papers) that these men of the cloth had been circulating. Using a collection of digitized documents from the uprising, which includes several examples of these seditious verses, this paper examines the significance of the Huánuco Rebellion in Peruvian and Latin American history. The rebellion demonstrates the potential of friars in their role as mediators of information to destabilize colonial relations. Additionally, the diverse army of insurgents complicates, at least to a degree, historians’ frequent characterization of Peru in the independence era as a bastion of royalism beset by ethnic tension.

The Miscegenation of Andean and Spanish Construction Techniques on the Search for an Earthquake-Resistant Architecture in the Viceroyalty of Peru

ABSTRACT This paper aims to demonstrate the fusion between pre-Hispanic and Spanish construction elements during the 17th and 18th centuries to obtain a seismic-resistant architecture in the Viceroyalty of Peru. To this end, surveys of buildings constructed mainly in the coastal areas have been conducted to describe their main construction characteristics, relating them to ancient documents could attest to an earthquake-resistant evolution, as well as studies of its structural behavior. The list of criteria and analysis of seismic resistance shown in this paper evinces that the master builders developed a structural proposal, because of the experience and careful observation of the damages produced by the earthquakes in the buildings, until materializing a construction procedure with proportions and techniques that had demonstrated their functioning in practice.

Lejos del gabinete: viajes científicos a laAmérica portuguesa y española (1777-1792)y representación de la naturaleza

Este artigo ocupa-se de duas expedições científicas enviadas a América pelas coroas ibéricas no final do século XVIII: as viagens de Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira às Capitanias de Grão-Pará, Rio Negro, Mato Grosso e Cuiabá, e Hipólito Ruiz e Antonio Pavón ao Vice-reino do Peru. O objectivo será analisar de que forma a botânica serviu os interesses imperiais e a percepção que os naturalistas que protagonizaram estas expedições, armados com novos saberes ilustrados e novos instrumentos, tiveram da natureza americana e dos recursos naturais que esta oferecia. A partir da perceção destes viajantes e de suas práticas científicas, destacam-se algumas diferenças entre os dois impérios e os territórios que os integravam.

Slavery and Dominion in the South Sea Armada, 1570s-1680s.

A key outcome of Francis Drake’s incursion into the South Sea was the formation of the South Sea Armada, which was based out of the port of Callao in the Viceroyalty of Peru and whose primary purpose was to guard the transport of silver to Panama, where it would be transferred for trans-oceanic shipment. Yet the squadron faced immediate existential threats from within, as evidenced by the pattern of viceregal decrees targeting slaveholders who brought slaves on board for the ostensible purpose of serving as deckhands and pages, only to press them into personal service. This tension, between the demands of the maritime defense industry, on one hand, and slaveholders’ personal prerogatives, on the other, constitutes the primary focus of this article.

"¡A ver la comeria nueva / que la negla representa!": Villancicos de negros en la Bogotá virreinal

Abstract: Sung inside and beyond the confines of cathedrals during the principal religious celebrations, the musical-poetic genre of the villancico took on a special vibrancy in the viceregal city of Santafé (today, Bogotá, Colombia) from the later sixteenth century onward. The singers themselves not only played (sung) the roles of angels and shepherds, but also of others, often adapted from stock comic characters, such as the "Negro" or "Negra" (Black man or woman), found in the widely popular short comic dramas of the Spanish-speaking world. This article studies the manuscript evidence of how the villancicos composed, sung, and performed in the Bogotá Cathedral attest to the contribution of the "black voices" that were heard in this viceregal metropolis, to be embodied in these pieces. I provide transcriptions and analysis of the poems, and even theatrical scripts, found in the musical scores of a corpus of "villancicos de nacimiento" preserved in the Archive of Bogotá's Cathedral. In turn, these musical-poetic works open a window through which to better understand devotional and festive practices in a stratified colonial society and, in so doing, can give us also a picture of performance practices developed by largely unheralded and mostly anonymous Black performers of the territory of New Granada (which coincides with present-day Panamá, Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador), which was administered through the Viceroyalty of Peru until 1717.

Distinción, elegancia y luto en la moda virreinal: el uso de la indumentaria negra

Since ancient times, the wear of black garments as a sign of mourning for the loss of a loved one has been related to night and darkness, and also to the fear of the unknown and death. Although there is no continuous line about the use of black to demonstrate mourning, in the case of Spain and its overseas kingdoms, its use is directly related to the promulgation of the “Pragmatic of mourning and wax” (1502), following the death of the prince Juan de Castilla in 1497, son of the Catholic Monarchs, which prescribed austerity in the celebration of funerals. This pragmatic was in force until it was modified by the Council of Toledo during the reign of Felipe V, in the first third of the 18th century. In addition, since the reign of Philip II, in the mid-sixteenth century, dressing “Spanish style”, that is, in black, became synonymous with prestige and elegance, since the king adopted black for his closet and turned it into the color of the court and a symbol of power and glory, thanks to the arrival in Spain of the Campeche wood, originally from the Yucatan peninsula, and its commercial monopoly. The palo de Campeche was highly valued because it produces an intense and stable black dye, characteristics that had not been achieved with the European dyeing techniques of the time. The use of black clothing spread from Spain and significantly affected fashion in both Europe and America. As can be seen, the implications of wearing black garments have been economic, political, and social. The paper seeks to demonstrate the importance attributed to black clothing in two different contexts in the viceroyalty of Peru.

Geographies of the Mudéjar in the Spanish Colonial Americas

Recent scholarship on the use of Islamic-looking motifs in the Spanish colonial Americas has questioned the value of approaches rooted in formal analysis and an understanding of this phenomenon, known as the mudéjar style, as a stylistic survival. Calling instead for more historically grounded research, scholars have advocated for contextual studies of mudéjar forms, among them the wooden ceilings often called alfarjes or artesonados. Their studies have sought out identities of the designers and builders of wooden ceilings, exploring construction techniques and recuperating period-specific terminology. Studies of the ways in which the ceilings conveyed meaning to their colonial-period viewers have been fewer. This essay explores their reception through the analysis of texts from the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. It approaches the subject through two case studies, one centering on the region of Michoacán in the Viceroyalty of New Spain, and the other on cities in the Viceroyalty of Peru. Drawing primarily from ecclesiastic chronicles, it explores the ideas and values that the chroniclers and presumably some of their contemporaries projected onto wooden ceilings in churches, convents, and monasteries. The ways in which they described those ceilings were shaped by colonial-period conceptions of territories and their boundaries, and thus their writings map geographies of artistic production that differed considerably from the landscape traced in the field’s foundational scholarship.

Bailes y danzas en la época colonial. Dinámicas mestizas en la ciudad de Jujuy, siglos XVII-XVIII

This paper presents the identification of dances configured during the American reality of the colonial period in a city located between the Viceroyalty of Peru and the Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata, in the context of the 17th and 18th centuries, but with pre-Hispanic and modern projections in order to outline performances on which there are scarce records, and with comparative references to a wider space related to the case study: the Rio de la Plata, the Andean world and the border with the Chaco. In particular, the researcher proposes the hypothesis that dances were stabilizing poles for the conflictive and complex mimesis with the background of coexistence, articulated the diverse American societies of Europeans, Indians and Afro-Americans, based on mestizo dynamics which combined the dances with food and drink, sensuality, power and authority and local religiosity. The research was carried out from a cultural history perspective, working with original documentation generated by the state, the church and judicial records of individuals. However, due to the concise historical data, archaeological interpretations of pre-and post-Hispanic societies, as well as ethnographic surveys of the Andean and Chaco region were considered in this case study.

Resource endowments and the problem of small change: insights from two American mints, 1600–1700

This article discusses historical evidence from the Potosi mint and Massachusetts Bay mint that illustrates the importance of the resource endowment (in this case silver) for the provision of small change. We show that the availability of silver was fundamental in shaping incentives. The relative scarcity of silver in Massachusetts Bay contributed to the small scale of the mint's operations, and implied that neither the monetary authority nor the mintmaster faced a significant tradeoff between drawing seigniorage from the mint and the production of small-denomination coins. In contrast, in the Viceroyalty of Peru, the abundance of silver, and the consequent large level of production of the mint's heavy peso coin, heightened the tradeoff between the fiscal and monetary objectives of the coinage. We suggest that these incentives negatively affected the production of fractionary coinage in the Peruvian viceroyalty, whereas in Massachusetts Bay the production of small-denomination coins was the norm.

Surnames and population structure in the Doctrine of Belén, Altos de Arica, Viceroyalty of Peru (1750-1813).

The analysis of multiple population structures (biodemographic, genetic and socio-cultural) and their inter-relations contribute to a deeper understanding of population structure and population dynamics. Genetically, the population structure corresponds to the deviation of random mating conditioned by a limited number of ancestors, by restricted migration in the social or geographic space, or by preference for certain consanguineous unions. Through the isonymic method, surname frequency and distribution across the population can supply quantitative information on the structure of a human population, as they constitute universal socio-cultural variables. Using documentary sources to undertake the Doctrine of Belén's (Altos de Arica, Chile) historical demography reconstruction between 1763 and 1820, this study identified an indigenous population with stable patronymics. The availability of complete marriage, baptism and death records, low rates of migration and the significant percentage of individuals registered and constantly present in this population favoured the application of the isonymic method. The aim of this work was to use given names and surnames recorded in these documentary sources to reconstruct the population structure and migration pattern of the Doctrine of Belén between 1750 and 1813 through the isonymic method. The results of the study were consistent with the ethno-historical data of this ethnic space, where social cohesion was, in multiple ways, related to the regulation of daily life in colonial Andean societies.

“They Will Live without Law or Religion”: Cádiz, Indigenous People, and Political Change in the Viceroyalty of Peru, 1812–1820

AbstractThis article argues that the impact of the Constitution of Cádiz among Indigenous communities in the Viceroyalty of Peru was significant. In the context of the imperial crisis of the Spanish crown, Indigenous people took the tools that the constitution granted them to increase their level of self-government. Moreover, the changes implemented by the constitution persisted after its abolition, allowing Indigenous people to retain a level of self-government otherwise impossible to conceive after Ferdinand VII restored absolutist rule. In other words, Indigenous communities held on to their jurisdictional authority and refused to surrender the political tools that the constitution had granted them. Their actions demonstrate that the constitution was a watershed moment in the history of the viceroyalty because it inaugurated an era of political change with consequences nobody could predict at the time.

El rol de los sectores indígenas en la independencia del Perú. Bases para una nueva interpretación

El rol de los sectores indígenas en el proceso de independencia del Perú nunca ha sido del todo claro. Para algunos historiadores los sectores indígenas no tuvieron mayor participación en el proceso, pero para otros los sectores indígenas fueron los auténticos patriotas cuya inalterable lealtad a la causa de la independencia se contrapuso a la actitud dubitativa exhibida por las elites entre 1808 y 1824. Dado que los sectores indígenas constituían la mayoría de la sociedad virreinal y que participaron activamente como soldados en la guerra de independencia, este artículo propone avanzar más allá de posturas dicotómicas para analizar a los sectores indígenas como destacados actores políticos del periodo. A partir de la exploración de las estrategias políticas que los sectores indígenas desplegaron desde el comienzo de la crisis monárquica en 1808 y hasta el fin de la guerra en 1824 se propone que los sectores indígenas inauguraron una nueva manera de hacer política que definiría la guerra y que perduraría mucho después de la independencia.

Momentos antes de la Independencia

We analyze the colonial moment that the Viceroyalty of Peru had using the qualitative approach and the constructivist critical paradigm. The 18th century is a time of political definitions in Europe, despite the fact that Spain was involved in worldwide war conflicts, especially with England. The Bourbons had better administration and as a result a better economy to the detriment of the native communities where the colonies were located. In the international context Spain is worn out by the war with the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Fernando VII ceases to be popular to be unfriendly and hated by the Spanish people who defeated the French invasion of the Bonapartes, all this context had an impact on independence of the Spanish colonies in America.

De Amberes a Cuzco, la odisea de una obra de Erasmus Quellinus II para los jesuitas en Perú.

Este artículo se centra en la documentación sobre el lienzo de San Gregorio Nacianceno, firmado por el pintor flamenco Erasmus Quellinus II, que tenía la iglesia de los jesuitas de Cuzco antes de la expulsión de la orden del virreinato peruano en 1767. La documentación revisada ha permitido seguir la obra desde su llegada hasta la iglesia de la compañía cuzqueña, y sus posteriores vicisitudes tras la expulsión de los Jesuitas y su llegada a la iglesia del Sagrario en Lima. Por lo que este estudio también permite comprender cuál fue el proceso de dispersión de muchos de los bienes artísticos de la Compañía en Perú.

La universidad de San Ignacio de Córdoba (Argentina) en el exilio de Faenza

La enseñanza impartida por los antiguos jesuitas, en sus distintas provincias, tuvo un correlato que se inicia con la Fórmula del Instituto, continuando con sus Constituciones, la Ratio Studiorum y las aprobaciones reales y pontificias logradas para el otorgamiento de grados académicos. La expulsión no significó que esos privilegios fueran empíricamente obstruidos, sino que por el contrario, el exilio lo fue no solo de los jesuitas, sino también de sus ministerios, como el de la educación. Para tal afirmación tomamos el ejemplo de la Universidad de San Ignacio de Córdoba en el virreinato del Perú, cuyo plan de estudio o pensum, se recuperó, primero en Bastia y luego con más certidumbre en Faenza. De esta manera, en su antigua sede de la provincia del Paraguay solo quedó un edificio confiscado, vacío del contenido que le proporcionaron sus profesores y discípulos. Es decir que en 1767 se habían mudado a otro ámbito donde continuaron los estudios.

Una mirada al teatro profesional en la Audiencia de Charcas a finales del siglo XVI: el caso del autor de comedias Francisco de Morales

In this article I intend to reconstruct —mainly through notarial records of La Plata— the presence in Charcas, during the 1590s, of Francisco de Morales, an autor de comedias by the time already famous in Lima. Within this framework I propose some conclusions about the emergence of professional theater in the territory that allow me to show how Charcas, since a very early period, was essential to the conformation of professional theatre circuits in the Viceroyalty of Peru.