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The Lima Indian Letrados: Remaking the República de Indios in the Bourbon Andes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 February 2015

Alcira Dueñas
Alcira Dueñas*
Affiliation:
The Ohio State UniversityNewark, [email protected]
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Extract

In building its early modern empire across the Atlantic, Spain deployed an army of legal bureaucrats who were rooted in the Iberian culture of letters and inherited Roman law. To rule their possessions in the New World, the Habsburgs attempted a wholesale incorporation of indigenous peoples into a Hispanicized legal culture. They redistributed the native population, introduced new forms of communication, and implemented their notions of justice and social order to counter the authority of kurakas (ethnic lords) in the Andes. Over time, the establishment of Spanish legal and political institutions encouraged new supra-ayllu (community) loyalties among Andeans, while in the newly created reducciones or Indian towns, native literate officials became the immediate brokers between the colonial state and the República de Indios, a colonial reordering of indigenous worlds. Working closely with one another, indigenous escribanos, alcaldes ordinarios, procuradores de cabildo (legal advocates of the Indians’ council), along with interpreters and fiscales de iglesia (overseers of Indian conversion), performed their jobs in local office in both expected and unanticipated ways. They interwove alphabetic literacy with their experience as servants of the state and the church, creating alternative legal practices and interpretations.

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Articles
Information
The Americas , Volume 72 , Special Issue 1: Indigenous Liminalities: Andean Actors and Translators of Colonial Culture , January 2015 , pp. 55 - 75
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Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2015 

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References

1. The Habsburgs ruled their American domains as dual corporate jurisdictions, the República de Indios and the República de Españoles (or Republic of Spaniards). The ideal was to keep the República de Indios as a separate but equal jurisdiction; each republic would have a distinctive set of privileges and obligations. The history of Spanish colonialism in America, however, demonstrates the fictional character of such an ideal.

2. I use the term letrados here in recognition of the legal expertise and command of legal writing demonstrated by late colonial indigenous officials; one could think of them as all but lawyers, but without a degree in law.

3. The Procurador de Naturales was an appointed legal representative of the Amerindians before the corregidor (provincial, Spanish magistrate) and the Real Audiencia or high court.

4. For a more detailed analysis of the larger impact of the sale of offices, see Andrien, Kenneth J., Crisis and Decline: The Viceroyalty of Peru in the Seventeenth Century (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985)Google Scholar; and Lynch, John, The Hispanic World in Crisis (Oxford, U.K.; Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1992)Google Scholar.

5. Don Vicente Morachimo started his legal career in 1715, as alcalde ordinario from Santiago de Cao in Trujillo Province, where he also took on the duties of alférez (honorific position as a standard bearer in local religious processions). He was involved earlier, in 1705, in a lawsuit against his older brother José Morachimo for depriving him and another sibling of their family inheritance. Archivo Regional La Libertad, Corregimiento de Trujillo, Judicial, Causas Ordinarias, exp. 1768, leg. 220, fol. 5r, cited in Mathis, Sophie, “Vicente Mora Chimo, de ‘Indio principal’ a ‘Procurador General’ de los pueblos indios del Perú,” Bulletin de l’Institut Français d'Études Andines 37:1 (2008), pp. 199–210 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6. The petition mentioned both posts in their requests, although the final decree granted them the position of procurador de naturales only. The procurador de naturales, also referred to as diputado-general de Indios, or procurador general de naturales was, as explained above, a legal representative of indigenous communities in the royal audiencias in America and eventually in Spain. The protector operated in the same capacity but only in towns within the regional audiencia jurisdictions.

7. For a historical reconstruction and analysis of the 1697 Andean campaigns and others undertaken in the eighteenth century, see Dueñas, Alcira, Indians and Mestizos in the ‘Lettered City’: Reshaping Justice, Social Hierarchy, and Political Culture in Colonial Peru. (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8. Rama, Ángel, La ciudad letrada (Hanover, N. H.: Ediciones del Norte, 1984)Google Scholar. See also the Introduction to this special issue, Note 5.

9. Soriano, Waldemar Espinosa, “El Alcalde Mayor indígena en el Virreinato del Perú,” Anuario de Estudios Americanos 17 (Seville: Escuela de Estudios Hispanoamericanos, 1960), pp. 1–118 Google Scholar.

10. Bayle, Constantino, El Cabildo de Indios en la América española. (Madrid: Ediciones Jura, 1951)Google Scholar; Guarisco, Claudia, “¿Reyes o indios? Cabildos, repúblicas y autonomía en el Perú y México coloniales, 1770–1821,” Revista Andina 39:2 (2004)Google Scholar. In a different direction, Jacques Poloni-Simard's comprehensive regional study of indigenous colonial Cuenca addresses the changes that occurred in indigenous cabildos from the seventeenth to the eighteenth centuries in Cuenca Province, in the jurisdiction of the real Audiencia de Quito. Poloni-Simard, Jacques, El mosaico indígena. (Lima; Quito: Abya-Yala and IFEA, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Following the career of don Pedro de Zámbisa, alcalde mayor of Zámbisa (Quito), Frank Salomon has argued that indigenous officials endured and were effective because their offices, particularly the varayuj, or alcalde, were historically related to Andean structures, thus taking advantage of a “syncretic power,” or a “stratigraphy” wherein pre-Inca, Inca, and colonial forms of power overlapped. Frank Salomon, “Don Pedro de Zámbisa, un varayuj del siglo XVI” (2013, expanded edition, unpublished). I am grateful to the author for sharing with me the most recent version of this article.

11. Espinosa Soriano, “El Alcalde Mayor indígena,” p. 10.

12. Ibid., pp. 19–20. Following the Castilian tradition in early modern municipalities, Spanish authorities in the Andes also used silver-clad staffs as symbols of corporate authority.

13. Ibid., pp. 21–22.

14. de Toledo, Francisco, Ordenanzas del Perú, Libro Segundo, tít. XV, fol. 184v. Compilation of Tomás de Ballesteros (Lima: Imprenta de Francisco Sobrino, 1752)Google Scholar.

15. Ibid., Ordenanzas, section iv, fol. 27.

16. Ibid., Libro 1, tít. XXI, Ordenanzas, section i, fol. 26v: “interpretando los negocios clara y abiertamente sin encubrir ni añadir cosa alguna, diciendo simplemente el hecho del delito . . . sin ser parciales a alguna de las partes.”

17. The land surveys conducted by the Trujillo corregidor Pedro de Alzamora y Ursino in 1710 had led to illegal composiciones de tierras (titles, amended for a fee, to lands usually grabbed illegally) in the coastal regions of Trujillo and Lambayeque, drastically reducing communal lands and generating energetic responses from the local lords, particularly after the appointed protector de naturales Andrés Vergara and the Lima Audiencia failed to address the problem. At the behest of the local authorities from the four affected towns, Viceroy Santo Buono appointed don Vicente Morachimo as “procurador general de varios repartimientos” to represent them in Madrid. The native lords hoped to have the restitution of lands in the province enforced. Once authorized, Morachimo reported in detail on the damaging land inspections or visitas de tierras by Alzamora y Ursino in 1710. He also brought a complaint stating that the reales cédulas of 1722 and 1724, which were intended to prohibit further visitas de tierras in Trujillo and ordered the restitution of the lands illegally seized from Amerindians, had remained largely unenforced. Archivo General de la Nación [hereafter AGN], Derecho Indígena [hereafter DI], February 20, 1725; Archivo General de Indias [hereafter AGI], Lima, 495, October 25, 1726; Mathis, “Vicente Mora Chimo,” p. 204. Even though the restitution of these lands, the abolition of the abusive mita system, and denunciation of the corrupt practices of the local corregidor were the primary goals of Morachimo's procuraduría in Madrid, he eventually advocated also on behalf of Andeans from Lima, Huarochirí, Huancavelica, Tarma, Collao, Azángaro, Potosí, Chachapoyas, and other regions of the viceroyalty that were similarly afflicted by the abusive repartimientos de mercancías (mandatory purchase of Spanish goods by Amerindians), the mita obligation, and the problems ensuing from increasing tribute rates and aggressive tribute collection in the early decades of Bourbon rule.

18. Don Nicolás Tupacc Guamanrinchi was certainly not the first native interpreter to act as a mediator between Indians and the colonial state. For the activities of indigenous interpreters as legal intermediaries and nuanced renditions of their role in the formation of legal culture in sixteenth-century Peru, see Luna, José Carlos de la Puente, “The Many Tongues of the King: Indigenous Language Interpreters and the Making of the Spanish Empire,” Colonial Latin American Review 23:2 (2014), pp. 143–170 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For interpreters of the early seventeenth century, see Jurado, Carolina, “Don Pedro Dueñas, indio lengua. Un estudio de caso de la interpretación linguística Andino-colonial en el siglo XVII,” Archivo y Biblioteca Nacionales de Bolivia, Anuario de Estudios Bolivianos Archivísticos y Bibliográficos 16 (2010), pp. 285–307 Google Scholar.

19. See José Carlos de la Puente Luna, “Into the Heart of the Empire: Indian Journeys to the Habsburg Royal Court” (PhD diss.: Texas Christian University, 2010). For a selection of the works in the growing field of colonial indigenous litigation in Spanish America, see the introduction to this volume and particularly notes 3 and 4. Communities occasionally held their caciques accountable for their performance in the royal courts. Instances of claims made in the name of such accountability occurred in the Jauja repartimientos of Atun Jauja, Luringuanca, and Ananguanca in 1570. See José Carlos de la Puente Luna's article, in this issue.

20. This term was a late colonial appropriation of the Habsburg term “Nación Indiana.” Indigenous authorities from various regions of the viceroyalty of Perú began to present themselves as the “Indian Nation” towards the late seventeenth century to highlight their entitlement to privileges as members of a corporate entity within the empire, equal to those of the República de Españoles.

21. Dueñas, Indians and Mestizos in the ‘Lettered City,’ chapt. 2. The Bourbon reforms affected all sectors of colonial society in Peru. Tribute demands for Amerindians increased as the alcabala (sales tax) was assessed for the first time on native goods. For the particulars of the Lima conspiracy and the Huarochirí rebellion, see O'Phelan, Scarlett, Rebellions and Revolts in Eighteenth-Century Peru and Upper Peru (Berlin: Bohlau Verlag Koln Wien, 1985)Google Scholar; and Spalding, Karen, Huarochirí: An Andean Society Under Spanish Rule. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984)Google Scholar, chapt. 9.

22. Don Nicolás Tupac Guamanrinchi to don Vicente de Morachimo, AGI, Lima, 495, December 31, 1730.

23. Ibid.

24. Ibid. The original phrase is “poder y arte.”

25. Ibid.

26. Ibid. Original reads: “Con que no hay agente protector ni nadie que vuelva por ellos solo Dios que lo remedia con llevárselos.”

27. AGI, Lima, 495, 1731.

28. Among the other innovations he brought to Andean community life, Toledo introduced the writing of wills and the orderly transfer of wealth. Villena, Guillermo Lohmann and Viejo, María Justina Sarabia, eds. Francisco de Toledo. Disposiciones gubernativas para el virreinato del Perú 1575–1580, vol. 2 (Seville: EEHA/CSIC/Monte de Piedad y Caja de Ahorros de Sevilla, 1989), pp. 237–238 Google Scholar, cited in Burns, Kathryn, “Making Indigenous Archives: The Quilcaycamayoc of Colonial Cusco,” Hispanic American Historical Review 91:4 (2011), pp. 13–14, 665–689CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The escribano-quipucamayoc was expected to create and maintain these records, and to keep track of the parish priest's absences from the doctrina. The information was used to make corresponding deductions from the priest's salary. Toledo also mandated that Indian escribanos record testimonies about the daily wages paid to Indians and bear witness as to the punctuality of wage payments. Lohmann Villena and Sarabia Viejo, vol 2, p. 292, quoted in Burns). Translating khipus into written records was another cabildo task, one for which other members, serving as accountants, were responsible. See José Carlos de la Puente Luna's article in this volume. An alternative perspective on the work of the quilcaycamayoc is found in Rappaport, Joanne and Cummins, Tom, “Between Images and Writing: The Ritual of the King's Quillca,” Colonial Latin American Review 7:1 (June 1998), pp. 7–32 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29. Kathryn Burns, “Making Indigenous Archives.”

30. This state of social unrest eventually broke out in local revolts in the northern coastal area of Peru. See O'Phelan, Scarlett, Un siglo de rebeliones anticoloniales, Perú-Bolivia, 1700–1783 (Cuzco: Centro de Estudios Rurales Andinos Bartolomé de las Casas, 1988)Google Scholar.

31. For a full discussion of the origin and enforcement of the Cédula de Honores, see Dueñas, Indians and Mestizos in the ‘Lettered City,’ pp. 151–166.

32. El Cercado, the Indian reduction attached to the northeast sector of the viceregal center, was founded in 1571 as part of the Toledan reforms. Eventually, it became home not only to the local coastal indigenous groups of the Lima valley but also to an almost ceaseless flow of native migrants from neighboring central Andean and northern and southern coastal zones, from the viceroyalty at large and beyond. During the Spanish conquest period, Lima was the recipient of numerous indigenous slaves brought from as far as Mexico, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and the Caribbean, and as nearby as Panama and Cubagua island near Venezuela. Africans from West Africa, Spain, Panama, and the Caribbean who had served in the military expeditions of conquest also wound up in Lima. Van Deusen, Nancy, “Diasporas, Bondage, and Intimacy in Lima, 1535–1555, Colonial Latin American Review 9:2 (2010), pp. 247–277 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Such confluence and intermingling of ethnic groups made the city and the Lima Valley not only a highly diverse but a diasporic region as well (p. 249). The increasing numbers of mestizos and migrant Spaniards added to both the multicultural environment of Lima and its indigenous reducción at El Cercado.

33. See the article by José Carlos de la Puente Luna in this issue.

34. AGI, Charcas, 56, Potosí, March 9, 1633.

35. Mathis, “Vicente Mora Chimo,” p. 204.

36. AGN, DI, Lima, May 20, 1763, leg. 11, cuad. 311, fols. 22v–23. The ethnicity of Pedro Nieto de Vargas is unclear in the documentation. The Audiencia designated him as “don Pedro Nieto de Vargas, Diputado de los Indios de este Reyno.” Ibid., Lima, June 27, 1763, fols. 25v–26.

37. The writers cited these texts to demonstrate that Andeans “are competent to perform in all ecclesiastical capacities including the episcopal offices,” and pointed out that there were already several Indian priests in Lima who were “ecclesiastic role models.” AGN, DI, Lima, May 20, 1763, leg. 11, cuad 311, fols. 21–27. Alonso De la Peña Montenegro's Itinerario para párrocos contains a series of treatises about how to achieve a successful conversion of Indians, which includes the duties of the parish priests and instructions as to how to indoctrinate and control Indians in the parishes or doctrinas. Montenegro, De la Peña, Itinerario para párrocos de indios en que se tratan las materias más particulares a ellos para su buena administración, nueva edición (Madrid: Oficina de Pedro Marín, 1771)Google Scholar.

38. AGN, DI, Lima, May 20, 1763, leg. 11, cuad 311, fols. 21–27.

39. Lohmann Villena and Sarabia Viejo, eds. Francisco de Toledo. Disposiciones gubernativas 1575–1580, pp. 289–290.

40. The original phrase is “los procuradores nos deshuellan.” Just a few examples of the recurrent complaints of this kind may be found in AGI, Lima, 495, October 15, 1730; and AGN, DI, Lima, May 20, 1763, leg. 11, cuad 311, fol. 23v.

41. “Así no pueden ser los indios bien defendidos porque están muy preocupados [los procuradores] con tantos negocios.” (Because the procuradores are very busy with their many businesses, the Indians cannot possibly receive a good defense.) AGN, DI, Lima, October 7, 1762, leg. 18, cuad 311, fols. 8–11; AGN, DI Lima, May 20, 1763, leg. 11, cuad 311, fol. 22v.

42. “con Real amparo y magnificencia que se digne V. Majestad hacerles para que logren el beneficio y honores que les franquea en todos grados.” AGN, DI,, Lima, October 7, 1762, leg. 18, cuad. 311, fol. 8.

43. Ibid., fol. 8v; AGN, DI, Lima, October 29, 1763, leg. 18, cuad. 311, fol. 49–49v.

44. The new legal activists were don Vicente Lina, don Pasqual de Asaba, don Francisco Gonzalo Heciosup, Santiago de la Vega, Francisco Jordan, Joseph Hilario Islache, and Ramón Tinoco. They sent petitions to the Real Audiencia asking “A V.E. [Vuesa Excelencia] piden y suplican que se sirva de mandar se guarde y cumpla el real Despacho . . . y en su consecuencia se digne . . . elegir y nombrar los procuradores de la Nación de los Suplicantes según el Real animo de SM para que estos solos hayan de entender en la defensa de los indios.” AGN, DI, Lima, October 7, 1762, leg. 18, cuad. 311, fol. 10v. To y.e. [Your Excellence] [the undersigned] beg and implore that you command that the royal decree be enforced . . . .and that, as a result, the procuradors of the petitioners’ nation be elected and appointed, according to the will of y.m. [Your Majesty] so that only they themselves be in charge of the Indians’ legal representation.

45. [The entire text of this note is underlined in the original.] “Por la Reyna Madre Ntra. Sra. Da. Isabel los reencargos que hizo sobre el buen tratamiento, amparo y patrocinio que se les debía hacer a los naturales, por la Ley 1, Título 10, Libro 6 de las recopiladas, insertando el testamento de la dicha Reyna Ntra Sra, y por la que dispuso el Sr. Rey Dn. Carlos Segundo que es la 23 del dicho título y libro insertando en ella la Real Cláusula puesta en ella de la Real Mano del Se Sr. Dn. Phelipe Cuarto el Grande, su padre, que reproducen y solo expresan sus últimas palabras que son a la letra. ‘Cuyos naturales estimo y quiero que sean tratados como lo merecen, Vasallos que tanto sirven a la monarquía y tanto la han engrandecido e ilustrado.’ [. . .] Concluyendo sus reales palabras, ‘Que se cumplan y guarden las leyes con tal especial cuidado que no den motivo a la real indignación y que cualquiera defecto que se causase sea cargo de residencia’“. AGN, DI, Lima, October 7, 1762, leg. 18, cuad. 311, fol. 9.

46. Ibid., fols. 8v–9.

47. Ibid., fols. 9v–10. “Declarándolos por capaces de poder ocupar cualesquiera cargos honoríficos y ser promovidos a las órdenes sacras en la misma forma que los españoles y con las demás circunstancias que se expresa en la determinación de tal acuerdo.”

48. AGN, DI, Lima, May 20, 1763, leg. 11, cuad. 311, fols. 22v, 25. The actions of the native litigants from El Cercado in the Lima Audiencia had already begun to yield some results in March and April 1762, when the viceroy issued Decrees 22 and 24, asking the fiscal and the fiscal protector-general to prepare a report on the state and number of current posts of procuradores in preparation for the election of the new Indian procuradores. AGN, DI, Lima, October 7, 1762, leg. 18, cuad. 311, fol. 8. The Lima conspiracy of 1750 attempted to assassinate the viceroy and flood the city as a response to the Bourbon social and economic pressures on Andeans described above. See Karen Spalding, Huarochirí.

49. The cabildo officers rejected the Audiencia's decision to allow Portalanza and Guzmán to present further defense of their case or even to discuss the validity of the royal decree. They argued that such a ruling was an executive rescript and that its execution could not be suspended (“es un rescripto ejecutivo y no puede suspenderse su ejecución”) and that the court should impose closure (“perpetuo silencio”) on the matter. They asked that the court punish the procuradores for their insolence in trying to damage the good name of the Indian Nation. AGN, DI, Lima, October 7, 1762, leg. 18, cuad. 311, fols. 8–11. Moreover, the petitioners asked on October 25, 1763, that Portalanza and Manuel Soriano (a new substitute procurador) leave their posts immediately and surrender the complete archive in their possession and that no more be said on the matter (“que se les imponga perpetuo silencio sobre la materia”). AGN, DI, leg. 18, cuad. 311, fols. 36–37. The cabildo officers presented all these allegations directly to the Audiencia, very likely with the assistance of lawyers.

50. AGN, DI, Lima, June 27, 1763, leg. 11, cuad. 311, fol. 22v; AGN, DI, Lima, November 3, 1763, leg. 18, cuad. 311, fols. 50–51. Alberto Chosop was elected principal procurador de naturales and Santiago Ruiz Tupac Amaru Inga as his substitute. But in fact, Chosop had been acting in that capacity since 1735 and continued to do so well into 1789, when we find him advocating for a native community from Surco.

51. Cabildo positions carried privilege, connoted prominence, and enlarged family estates. They also served as proof of merit in the hands of noble Andeans in the eighteenth century and also among noble Tlaxcaltecans in New Spain as early as 1551 and throughout the colonial period. AGN, Lima, Fácticas El Cercado, 1691, leg.1 exp. 6, doc.3; Villela, Peter B., “Indian Lords, Spanish Gentlemen: The Salazars of Colonial Tlaxcala,” The Americas 69:1 (July 2013) p. 13 Google Scholar.

52. Larson, Brooke, Trials of Nation Making: Liberalism, Race, and Ethnicity in the Andes, 1810–1910 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 97, 113–114, 148–149Google Scholar.

53. Alcira Dueñas, Indians and Mestizos in the ‘Lettered City,’ chapt. 4. As an extension of the rights conferred to Indians in the 1735 cédula, the cabildo of El Cercado had advanced a petition that Indians also be appointed as civil servants in the Santa Ana Indian Hospital of Lima, “para server y asistir los oficios de dicho hospital excluyendo a los mulatos, zambos y negros.” AGN, DI, Lima, June 27, 1763, leg. 11, cuad. 311, fol. 26v. Their misgivings about competing castas here come to our attention as an interesting aspect of the social consciousness of these indigenous leaders.

54. “Querer que entreguemos los papeles es despojarnos del empleo en que estamos.” AGN, Lima, October 29, 1763, leg. 18, cuad. 311, fol. 49v.