Andean Activism and the Reformulation of Mestizo Agency and Identity in Early Colonial Peru
2012; Routledge; Volume: 21; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/10609164.2012.695599
ISSN1466-1802
Autores Tópico(s)Reformation and Early Modern Christianity
ResumoAbstract The article examines the activism that Peruvian mestizos undertook in order to rearticulate their agency and identity in a positive and polemical in late sixteenth-century colonial Peru. The research focuses on two related and little known documents from the 1580s, a 1584 memorial to King Philip II and a 1583 Latin letter to Pope Gregory XIII (English translation included in the Appendix). Part of a larger paper trail, these documents offer an important record of Andean activism before the church and the crown, set within the larger context of post-conquest struggles for the New World. The topic of mestizo agency is framed in terms of how colonial subjects actively engage in variable and adaptable strategies, through which they seek to reformulate their identity, place, and position within the Spanish colonial world. Keywords: PerupriesthoodmestizosagencyPope Gregory XIIILatin lettersactivismView correction statement:Erratum Notes i Translated by André Basson, adjunct professor in the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Brock University. ii The sentence 'not only poured out his most precious blood, but also [gave up] his spirit on the Cross' [non solum preciosissimum sanguinem effudit, sed etiam in Crucis patibulo animam (efflavit)] does not appear in Lopetegui's transcription (1943, 193). iii Konetzke reproduces the Spanish text of the 1578 royal edict (1953, 1:514). iv 'Christi cultum Matris acceperunt acceptum sane numquam abiecere sed' [our mothers accepted the adoration of the Mother of Christ and having accepted it definitely did not abandon it] is another partial sentence that is not found in Lopetegui's transcription (1943, 199). v Antonio de Egaña identifies Cona ('Conae' in the Latin text) with the district and province of Canas, Peru (Citation1961, 3:274 n15). Canas is a region within the present-day province of Cuzco, Peru. 1. The translations are mine unless indicated otherwise. 2. As Berta Ares Queija has noted, while in Spain Inca Garcilaso was in contact with fellow Andeans such as his childhood mestizo friend Diego de Alcobaza, who in 1603 sent Inca Garcilaso a copy of the Quechua and Aymara Confesionario that the Third Lima Council had commissioned (Citation2010, 18 and 22). The Confesionario para los curas de indios was officially published in Lima in 1585 (Durston Citation2007, 88, 90 and 94–95). 3. María Elena Martínez addresses the complex relationship of 'Iberian notions of genealogy,' 'purity of blood,' and the understanding of racial difference that emerges in the Hispanic Atlantic world (2008, 12). Although the present study does not explicitly focus on the conception of mestizo difference based on 'race,' the topic is one that merits future investigations in Spanish Peru. 4. Rolena Adorno identifies the 'complex problem of the cultural construction of a colonial [subject]' as a key issue of colonial (literary) studies, and anticipates Mazzotti by calling for 'the need to deepen our understanding of a multicultural and multilingual colonized subject as author or agent of discourses' (Citation1988, 20). 5. The history of Peruvian miscegenation of course antedates the conquest. Ares Queija notes that there were a number of black female slaves and Indian women that the conquistadors brought to Peru from other regions of Spanish America (2005, 122). James Lockhart writes that 'mestizos and Spanish children were born in Peru from 1533 on' (1994, 186). Kathryn Burns offers details on the post-conquest marriage practices of Spaniards in colonial Peru (1999, 21–22). 6. Rolena Adorno (Citation1994) offers cogent commentary on the role of the indio ladino as cultural mediator in colonial Peru, and on Guman Poma de Ayala and Juan de Santacruz Pachacuti in particular. John Charles's Allies at Odds reflects further on the significance of that mediating role, and in particular on native Andean's polemical use of literacy to undermine the Church's evangelizing efforts (2010, 9). 7. A 1554 royal decree urges colonial authorities to gather mestizos and to provide adequate schooling and training for them (Konetzke Citation1953, 1:320). 8. The children of Africans and Spaniards were labeled mulattos, while zambahigos were the offspring of Africans and Amerindians. In Spanish America, Africans were associated with slave status and were 'almost universally depreciated' (Schwartz Citation1995, 193). James Lockhart offers details on Africans in colonial Peru (Citation1994, chap. X). See also Frederick Bowser's classic work, The African slave in colonial Peru. 9. AGI Lima 314, f. 3r. Stuart B. Schwartz and Frank Solomon note that in Spanish America mestizaje ('miscegenation') was viewed 'as a social evil,' but that 'although early colonial Iberians ideologically deplored miscegenation, they also connived at it in pursuit of tangible interests' (Citation1999, 444 and 483, respectively). The pioneering study on race mixture in Latin American history is Magnus Mörner, Race mixture in the history of Latin America. 10. '[And] in future it is feared that if these people are not confronted in time they will become a threat,' 'although the arms ban is thought to be a solution' (AGI Lima 314, f. 3r). 11. It appears that García de Castro had appealed to the king prior to 1567, as Konetzke documents a royal edict (10 December 1566) banning mestizos (Indians and mulattos) from carrying weapons (1953, 1:420). A similar royal prohibition is dated 19 December 1568 (Konetzke Citation1953, 1:436–37). 12. Catherine Julien convincingly argues that Toledo declared war on the Incas at Vilcabamba without the king's approval (2007, 155–58). 13. The letter, dated at Cuzco, 1 March 1572, bears the heading 'Carta del Virrey D. Francisco de Toledo a S.M. en la que hace una relación sumaria de las pruebas que a su juicio han resultado de las informaciones [Letter of Viceroy Don Francisco de Toledo to Your Majesty wherein a summary account is given of the facts that, in his judgment, are the result of the Informaciones] (Levillier Citation1940, 2:3). 14. Julien's translation. The original source is a letter from Philip II (Madrid, 30 December 1571), AGI, Lima 569, lib. 13, ff. 340v–41 (Julien 2007, 256). Antonio Colajanni offers details on the Informaciones and their context (Citation2004, 65–70). 15. Toledo's choice of enforcing the arms ban in Cuzco is not accidental but strategic. Cuzco was not only associated with the Inca past but the city was also the home of a small mestizo elite, which in the 1560s had as its gathering place the home of Don Carlos Inca, the son and 'heir' of the last Cuzco Inca. Don Carlos, who was married to a Spanish woman, was implicated in a 1567 uprising (Ares Queija Citation2005, 135). Ares Queija notes, however, that of the many uprising of the 1560s—either thwarted or realized—the majority were led by Spaniards or by Indians, and not mestizos (2005, 136). 16. The term nazion or nación does not refer to our modern term 'nation' but rather to one's place of origin and common ties to a particular people. Here Toledo locates mestizos squarely within the 'republic of Spaniards.' 17. The text of the letter has been divided into numbered paragraphs (Par.) to facilitate referencing alongside the folio numbering. The translation available in the Appendix is of a manuscript copy of the Latin letter found at the Archivo Vaticano Secreto, Stato di Spagna, 30, ff. 390r–92v, and is based on our own transcription of the source manuscript. In collating our transcription with that of León Lopetegui (Citation1943, 193–200), we have identified a number of omissions vis-à-vis the source document, ranging from single words to longer sentence fragments. In the translation we highlight major omissions only. We have also consulted Manuel M. Marzal's partial Spanish translation of the letter (Citation1983, 322–23). To my knowledge ours is the first, complete English language translation of the source document. 18. Paulino Castañeda Delgado offers more details on the nature of the Papal bulls, their context and diffusion in Spanish America (2008, 324–34). 19. Sabine MacCormack (Citation2006) offers details on the Jesuits and Latin instruction in colonial Peru. Though since their arrival in colonial Peru in 1568 the Jesuits were committed to include mestizos, that policy changed as of 1582, when it was decided to exclude them. Views among the Jesuits toward the exclusion were mixed, however (Coello de la Rosa Citation2006, 121–22). 20. Lopetegui notes that both Toledo in his letters to Madrid, and the Jesuit José de Acosta in his De procuranda Indorum salute (1577), document such abuses (1943, 196 n37). In one of his 1 March 1572 dispatches to the king, Toledo writes: 'to these parts come many clerics and most of them after having made their fortune in silver return to the kingdoms of Spain to spend it. And it seems to me a particular foolishness of this vineyard of God that these clerics are here only for the harvest, given that their profession demands just the opposite' (Levillier Citation1924a, 4:9). John Charles documents charges from native Andeans on such abuses (Citation2010, 53–57). 21. Archivo Vaticano Secreto, Stato di Spagna, 30, f. 388v. The Italian text of the missive is reproduced in Lopetegui (Citation1943, 201) and in Trujillo Mena (Citation1981, 206), both of whom also offer contextual details. 22. Rengifo's Memorial is at the Archivo General de Indias, Lima 126, ff. 115r–16r. The 1588 royal cédula is available in Konetzke (Citation1953, 1:595–96). 23. Nancy van Deusen aptly notes that in colonial Peru 'hijo natural' and mestizo were synonymous (2001, 40). 24. Pedro Rengifo provides these details in a probanza de méritos y servicios (c. 1583), of both father and son, that he presents at the Council of the Indies while in Madrid (AGI, Patronato Real, 127, N. 1, R.11, image 1). 25. Noting the mestizo-creole rivalry, Alexandre Coello de la Rosa analyzes the Jesuit's exclusion of mestizos from the Company in the early 1580s in the context of the emergence and consolidation of a creole social category (Citation2008, 38–39). 26. van Deusen notes that in colonial Peru there was a large number of orphaned and abandoned mestizo children (2001, 40). The mestizos' mention of the loss of their repartimientos appears to be a reference to a 1549 law that stated 'that no mestizo born out of wed lock could inherit an encomienda' (2001, 46). 27. The proverb also appears in Part I of Don Quixote (1605), where it is glossed as 'whoever wishes to be successful and wealthy should enter the Church, or go to sea as a merchant, or enter the service of kings in their courts' (Cervantes Citation2003, 335). 28. Archbishop Mogrovejo arrived in Peru immediately after Toledo's term as viceroy. As van Deusen notes, Mogrovejo has been called the '"Supreme Organizer" of the Church (as Toledo had been for the viceregal government),' and strove to consolidate the power of the church and to defend clerical immunity (2001, 64). Among the Council's aims was clergy conduct reform (MacCormack 2006, 584). 29. From a canon law perspective, Thomas Duve offers more details on the activism of mestizos before the Third Lima Council (2010, 1–29). 30. As Elizabeth Kuznesof notes, the 'race' of some mestizas who married prominent colonial Spaniards often 'drifted' from baptism register to marriage register, in as much as there was a 'tendency for women to absorb the social characteristics of their husbands' (Citation1995, 164 and 162). Kathryn Burns writes that 'Spaniards developed a kind of gendered double vision of their own progeny' (1999, 17). Mestizos were viewed as a threat to Spanish patriarchal culture, while mestizas were instead seen as easily incorporated into that culture, and as a means to consolidate and perpetuate it through future marriage alliances (1999, 17). It is also noteworthy that negative views cast mestizas as 'the devil's bait,' their alluring beauty representing an even greater temptation for Spanish men (Ruan Citation2011, 7). 31. Mestizos were absorbed into colonial Spanish society in accordance to their social status, so that mestizos of higher social rank, and who were recognized by their Spanish father, generally were considered creoles. Lower ranking mestizos and mestizas may be incorporated into the indigenous population, while others became domestic servants or engaged in artisanal and commercial activities. Some middle ranking mestizos held ecclesiastical positions or were officials in the colonial administration (Ares Queija Citation2005, 134–35). 32. Thierry Saignes and Thérèse Bouysse-Cassagne offer details on the topic of the 'bad milk' of native mothers, conceived as a source of mestizos' moral waywardness (Citation1992, 33–34). María Elena Martínez links the 'metaphor of contaminated breast milk' applied to native women in America to similar views toward moriscas and conversas in Spain (2008, 151–52 and 55–56). 33. Ares Queija stresses the symbolic significance of the figure of the indigenous mother in mestizo self-definitions (2004, 32–37). On more than one occasion in the Comentarios reales Inca Garcilaso uses variants of the phrase 'la lengua que mamé en la leche' [the language I suckled in my mother's milk] (Citation1963, 2:80) to refer to indigenous language knowledge and proficiency, and to emphasize matrilineal native Andean bonds. 34. Francisco de Solano associates this royal edict with a series of decrees, dated 1 November 1591, aimed at raising funds to support a naval force for the protection of the Carrera de Indias, but does not offer commentary on mestizos (Citation1993, 80–81). 35. Raúl Porras Barrenechea notes that the 1591 cédula was the result of archbishop Mogrovejo's refusal to ordain mestizos, but does not offer more details (Citation1999, 98). Castañeda Delgado, on the other hand, explains that Mogrovejo 'made room [for mestizos], in theory, through his Lima [church] decrees, and also in practice but with great selectivity.' 'In a word, Toribio [Mogrovejo] saw mestizaje as a great possibility but one that lacked maturity; its fruits would come in time' (2008, 52). 36. Konetzke documents subsequent seventeenth-century exclusionary legislation targeting mestizos (Citation1958, 2:68, 2:85, 2:99, 2:356–57, 2:638–39). 37. I acknowledge Mazzotti's original reference to the Spanish term agencia (2008, 92), and expand on its meaning for my own purposes. 38. Those polemics, or 'struggles for the New World,' are addressed in Antonello CitationGerbi's The dispute of the New World, and, more recently, in Rolena Adorno's The polemics of possession in Spanish American narrative. 39. The Información or probanza prepared in Lima comprises 28 questions that are posed to the witnesses, and in total takes up folios 23r to 70v, while the one gathered in Cuzco has 14 questions and makes up folios 70v to 102v of the dossier (AGI, Lima 126, ff. 1–116). Victor M. Barriga provides partial transcriptions of these two documents (Citation1939, 2:254–86 and 2: 230–49, respectively).
Referência(s)