Colonial Loyalties

María Soledad Barbón

Description

Colonial Loyalties is an insightful study of how Lima’s residents engaged in civic festivities in the eighteenth century. Scholarship on festive culture in colonial Latin America has largely centered on “fiestas” as an ideal medium through which the colonizing Iberians naturalized their power. María Soledad Barbón contends that this perspective addresses only one side of the equation.

Barbón relies on unprecedented archival research and a wide range of primary sources, including festival narratives, poetry, plays, speeches, and the official and unofficial records of Lima’s city council, to explain the level at which residents and institutions in Lima were invested in these rituals. Colonial Loyalties demonstrates how colonial festivals, in addition to reaffirming the power of the monarch and that of his viceroy, opened up opportunities for his subjects. Civic festivities were a means for the populace to strengthen and renegotiate their relationship with the Crown. They also provided the city’s inhabitants with a chance to voice their needs and to define their position within colonial society, reasserting their key position in the Spanish empire with respect to other competing cities in the Americas.

Colonial Loyalties will appeal to scholars and students interested in Latin American literature, history, and culture, Hispanic studies, performance studies, and to general readers interested in festive culture and ritual.

Festival patronage was a sure way of guaranteeing self-promotion, but poetry also allowed for other, more subtle ways of celebrating the Peruvian subjects and furthering their interests. As mentioned at the outset of this chapter, the panegyrics were not just descriptive, they were also prescriptive. Extolling the virtues of a monarch or a viceroy in the poems fulfilled a performative function; they were a reminder of what was expected of the object of praise. This was true not only of the poetry praising living dignitaries during their rite of institution –the proclamation of the king or the welcome of the viceroy at San Marcos; it also applied to those poems whose subject was the deceased king. The central topos of the poetry written for all royal exequies was the gratitude of the subjects for the monarch’s beneficiencia, that is the beneficial effect of his government on Lima’s residents, such as, for instance, spreading the Catholic faith by supporting religious orders, or helping the poor through the establishment of hospitals. During the royal exequies, the illocutionary force of praise was not directed at the dead king, but at his successor, who was one of the implied and real readers of the account. The poems expressed gratitude for favors and graces received and, by doing so, hinted at favors expected. In this sense, the praise bestowed on the dead king was a message designed to ensure that his successor knew what the needs of his subjects were and what he would have to live up to even though he was not explicitly mentioned in the poem. As Lisa Voigt has pointed out in her splendid analysis of festivals in colonial Potosí and Minas Gerais, the transcription of the poems that were recited and exhibited during the festivities in the festival accounts served also another broader purpose: it was a means to showcase the literary and cultural wealth of the region (Spectacular Wealth 78-83). Indeed, together with the relación de fiestas, the cartel del certamen poético, and the oración panegírica, the poetry was a testament to the intellectual and artistic prowess of the viceroyalty. The poetic competition in honor of the viceroy at the University of San Marcos, and the royal proclamations and exequies were an ideal opportunity to showcase the artistic virtuosity of Lima’s citizens. The poems produced for these occasions display all mannerisms characteristic of high baroque poetry and comprise a truly impressive array of meters. Sonnets, décimas, octaves, ballads, redondillas (quatrains), quintillas and endechas (dirges), to name just a few, were rendered in more extravagant and complicated forms by using, for example, the pie forzado (a verse with an obligated foot or ending) or quebrados (alternating four-syllable lines with longer ones), by emphasizing chronology through the use of acrostics or by composing poemas retrógrados, that is to say, poems whose lines could be equally read from left to right and viceversa. And, interspersed, of course, were plenty of intricate laberintos (Figures 1.3 and 1.4). Terralla y Landa boasts in his preface to Lamento Métrico General of having employed no fewer than thirty-two different meters in his poems for Charles III’s funeral (fol. (7r)), and all of the poetic competitions at San Marcos required the poets to show their command of twelve different types of verse. Moreover, poetry was not just written in Spanish, but frequently also in Latin and, sometimes, even in Italian (see, for instance, Valdivieso y Torrejón, Parentación real fols. 74v-76r) and in Portuguese (see Luxán 154), thus providing additional proof of the erudition, talent, and ingenuity of Lima’s poets. However, whether Voigt’s assertion that showing off this artistic splendor was one of many manifestations of the emergence of a Creole pride and responded to “the debate about the moral, spiritual, and cultural inferiority of New World inhabitants, even those of European descent” (Spectacular Wealth 83) also applies to Lima’s festivities is an altogether different matter. To begin with, none of the Limean poems –nor the relaciones de fiestas or oraciones panegíricas— make any allusion whatsoever to the denigration of Creoles by Spaniards (as is the case in some of the examples cited by Voigt for Potosí) or to the contemporaneous debates about the supposed degeneration and intellectual inferiority of the New World inhabitants. The relaciones give no indication that festivals responded directly or indirectly to the claim that Lima was culturally backward and that they were used to disprove such reputation. The authors of the poems were both Spaniards and Creoles, and the content of the compositions does not reveal a Creole-Spaniard divide. What is more, in some cases we can even see a tight collaboration between these two and other groups, particularly when it comes to commissioned works. Again, Terralla y Landa provides a good example. Not only did he –a native of Seville— write El Sol en el Medio Día on behalf of the Amerindian Bartolomé de Mesa, but his Lamento Métrico General was likewise sponsored by Mesa. And in that volume the poetic voice gives voice to the grief, not of Mesa’s fellow Amerindians, but to that of a host of different local Creole and Spanish dignitaries, administrative institutions, and professional groups, such as the viceroy, the audiencia, the tribunal of accounts, the university, the cabildo, the inquisition as well as lawyers and scribes, to name just a few. Hence the title of Terralla’s volume: it was a general lamentation. The poems were a welcome opportunity to bring oneself to the king’s attention. They did not represent the interests of a homogeneous Creole group, but rather those of different individuals and institutions. (excerpted from chapter 1)

Contents

List of Abbreviations

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Celebrating the Monarchy in Bourbon Lima 1. The Politics of Praise
2. Discourses of Loyalty 3. Staging the Incas

Epilogue: From the “Very Noble and Loyal” to the “Heroic City of the Free”

Works Cited

Sujets

• Social History
• HISTORY
• Histoire
• Religión
• América del Sur
• South America
• Latin America
• Religion

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 31 octobre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268106478
• Langue: English

Extrait

Colonial Loyalties

University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 www.undpress.nd.edu
Copyright © 2019 by the University of Notre Dame
All Rights Reserved
Published in the United States of America
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019948644
ISBN 978-0-268-10645-4 (Hardback) ISBN 978-0-268-10648-5 (WebPDF) ISBN 978-0-268-10647-8 (Epub)
∞ This book is printed on acid-free paper.
This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [e-mail] .
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
INTRODUCTION Celebrating the Spanish Monarchy in Eighteenth-Century Lima
CHAPTER ONE The Politics of Praise
CHAPTER TWO Discourses of Loyalty
CHAPTER THREE Staging the Incas
EPILOGUE From the “Very Noble and Loyal” to the “Heroic City of the Free”
Notes
Bibliography
Index
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FIGURE 1.1. Poem by Marcelina de las Cuentas y Sayas in honor of Viceroy Manuel de Amat.
FIGURE 1.2. Poem by Esteban Terralla y Landa in praise of Bartolomé de Mesa.
FIGURE 1.3. Laberintos lamenting the death of Barbara of Portugal, queen of Spain.
FIGURE 3.1. Portraits of Inca and Spanish kings.
FIGURE 3.2. Portrait of Bartolomé de Mesa Túpac Yupanqui.
FIGURE 3.3. Individual scenes depicting the Amerindian celebrations for Charles IV’s proclamation in Lima.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In the course of writing this book, I have benefited from the generosity of far more people than I can name in this space. Many conversations with colleagues, students, conference participants, friends, and family have contributed to shape my thinking about colonial festivals.
I should first like to thank my wonderful family: my siblings, Mercedes and Gonzalo, my mother, Diana, who has always supported me lovingly and unconditionally, and my late father, José Antonio, whose lifelong passion for Bernal Díaz del Castillo sparked my own interest in colonial Latin America. I dearly would have liked to place this book into his hands. I am deeply grateful to friends and colleagues in many countries who have read parts of this book at different stages or offered emotional support. In Germany, my thanks go to Horst Pietschmann, Bernhard König, and also to Andrea and Wolfram Domke. In Spain, special thanks go to Magdalena Canellas and Antonio López and their family for offering me a home away from home and for guiding my steps when I first worked at the Archivo General de Indias in Seville. I cannot forget the stimulating conversations I have had with friends and colleagues in Lima, particularly Carlos Gálvez Peña, José Antonio Rodríguez Garrido, Pedro Guibovich, and Carmen McEvoy, and the incredible patience of Ada Arieta, an extraordinary paleographer, in helping me decipher some of the more illegible manuscript sources. I also owe a debt of gratitude to friends and colleagues in the United States who have directly or indirectly supported my work: Charles and Doris Fraker, Suzanne Petersen, Alexander Hollman, Pedro Lasarte, Heidi Scott, Michael Papio, Ela Gezen, Diógenes Costa-Curras, Roberto Ludovico, Christina Karageorgou-Bastea, Jose Ornelas, Gloria BernabeRamos, José Madiedo, Yamile Silva, David Lenson, Jonathan Skolnik, Luis Marentes, Erika Schluntz, Shivonne St. George, and my colleagues at the Ibero-American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, particularly Ruth Hill and Karen Stolley. The anonymous readers for the University of Notre Dame Press meticulously detailed areas for improvement and supported this project while providing invaluable direction for a final revision of the manuscript. Throughout, translations are mine unless otherwise noted. As to the errors in this book, there is no one to acknowledge but me.
My very special gratitude goes to the staff of various libraries and archives in Spain, Peru, and the United States for offering guidance on many questions of central importance to the project: the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University, the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, the Archivo Histórico de la Municipalidad de Lima, the Instituto Riva-Agüero, and the Archivo General de la Nación, also in Lima. Travel for research at these places was generously funded by the Program for Cultural Cooperation between Spain’s Ministry of Culture and United States Universities, the John Carter Brown Library, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the University of Massachusetts. Thanks to the John Carter Brown Library also for the permissions to reproduce illustrations in their collection.
Portions of this book appeared in the following journals and essay collections: “El Júbilo de la Nación Indica: Indigenous Celebrations in Lima in Honor of Charles IV (1790),” Jahrbuch für Geschichte Lateinamerikas 43 (2006): 147–65; “‘De la muy noble y muy leal’ a la ‘heroica y esforzada’ ciudad de Lima: Rituales públicos durante la transición a la Independencia,” in En el nudo del Imperio: Independencia y democracia en el Perú, ed. Carmen McEvoy, Mauricio Novoa, and Elías Palti (Lima: Instituto Francés de Estudios Andinos and Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 2012), 171–86; “ ‘Never before seen, and never to be seen’: Fray Francisco’s La conquista del Perú and the Royal Celebrations for Ferdinand VI,” Romanistisches Jahrbuch 64 (2013): 286–300; and “The Politics of Praise: Academic Culture and Viceregal Power in Late Colonial Peru,” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 45 (2016): 1–17.
My debts to Nil Santiáñez are too numerous to detail. He accompanied me throughout the entire process, read the manuscript in its different iterations, gave me the critical response I needed, and encouraged me when I doubted. This book owes its existence in great part to his unstinting support.
ABBREVIATIONS AGI Archivo General de Indias, Seville AGN Archivo General de la Nación, Lima AHML Archivo Histórico de la Municipalidad de Lima AHN Archivo Histórico Nacional, Madrid
INTRODUCTION
Celebrating the Spanish Monarchy in Eighteenth-Century Lima
In his Relation du voyage de la Mer du Sud aux Côtes du Chily et du Perou, fait pendant les années 1712, 1713, 1714 (A Voyage to the South-Sea and Along the Coast of Chili and Peru in the Years 1712, 1713, and 1714), published in Paris in 1716 and translated into English only one year later, the famous French military engineer and explorer Amédée-François Frézier relates with outright indignation a number of civic festivals in Lima designed to humiliate the indigenous population. One ritual especially stood out for him:
Notwithstanding the Wars and the Destruction of the Indians, there is still a Family of the Race of the Ingas living at Lima, whose Chief, call'd Ampuero, is acknowledg'd by the King of Spain as a Descendent of the Emperors of Peru: As such his Catholick Majesty gives him the Title of Cousin, and orders the Viceroy, at his entring into Lima, to pay him a Sort of publick Homage. Ampuero sits in a Balcony, under a Canopy, with his Wife; and the Viceroy, mounted on a Horse managed for that Ceremony, causes him to bow his Knees three times, as paying him obeysance so often. Thus, at every Change of a Viceroy, they still, in Show, honour the Memory of the Sovereignty of that Emperor, whom they have unjustly deprived of his Dominions; and that of the memory of the Death of Atahualpa, whom Francisco Pizarro caused to be cruelly murder'd, as is well known. The Indians have not forgot him: The Love they bore their native Kings makes them still sigh for those times, of which they know nothing, but what they have been told by their Ancestors. (Frézier, Voyage to the South-Sea and Along the Coast of Chili and Peru, 272; emphasis in the original)
Rather than a description of reality, Frézier s account is above all an expression of an anti-Spanish sentiment that was shared by many of his contemporaries in northern Europe. 1 At no time during the colonial period did the scene depicted above take place during the public entry of a new viceroy. No incoming viceroy made his horse kneel in a mock gesture of obeisance to descendants of the Incas seated for the occasion under a canopy. And Ampuero was neither a proper name, as Frézier seems to suggest, nor the chief or leader of an Inca lineage; Ampuero was the surname of a prominent limeno aristocratic family of racially mixed an- cestry. 2 Furthermore, no Spanish monarch ever bestowed on the Am- puero family, or on any other descendant of the Incas for that matter, the title of cousin. In fact, it is unclear whether the Frenchman ever witnessed the solemn entrance of a viceroy during his stay in the capital. Nonetheless, this did not prevent the political philosopher Edmund Burke, who acknowledged the French explorer s account as one of his main sources, from paraphrasing forty years later this very same incident in his comparative history of the Anglo and Spanish American colonies, Account of the European Settlements in America (1758). In contrast to Frézier, however, Burke reached a slightly different conclusion. Like Frézier, he condemned the symbolic violence that was being inflicted on the indigenous residents of Lima, yet at the same time his own interpretation also showed a hint of admiration for the Spaniards:
This manner of proceeding may be thought of as the most refined strain of insolent tyranny, and to be as unpolitic as it is insulting; but it is not impossible that those vents, which they suffer the people to take, may carry off a spirit that might othe