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A Sense of Belonging: Colonial Indian Cofradías and Ethnicity in the Valley of Lima, Peru*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Paul Charney
Paul Charney*
Affiliation:
West Texas A&M University, Canyon, Texas
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Extract

With the Spanish conquest came racial miscegenation, depopulation, forced relocation, and migration, which resulted in the implosion of many ethnic (as well as linguistic) distinctions among the Indian peoples. Facilitating this implosion was a European-invented label “indio,” which eliminated—philosophically, juridically, and legally—virtually all ethnic differences. Yet it bestowed upon the Indian peoples a separate existence. In the Peruvian Andes, Indians themselves during rebellious episodes contributed to this ethnic leveling when they called for pan-Andean unity or the return of the pax incaica. To be sure, numerous Indian groups did not entirely loose their distinct identities, and the ethnic implosion itself varied in time and space. Ethnic differences could be maintained through the upkeep of cultural and racial traits, such as in dress, language, marital patterns, or territorial and social boundaries. In large measure, the leveling or disappearance of precontact ethnicities occurred at a faster rate in the urban environments where Indians from rural areas took up residence, or in any region where Spanish culture or non-Indian peoples predominated. There, the invented “indio” or new ethnicity was the viable alternative and thus stronger, while the autochthonous base and ethnic distinctions remained weaker. This weakness differentiated urbanized Indians from their rural counterparts who sustained their links to the past far longer.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 54 , Issue 3 , January 1998 , pp. 379 - 407
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1998

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Footnotes

*

This article is based on material consulted in the following Spanish archives: Archivo General de Indias, Seville; Archivo General de la Nación, Lima; Archivo Arzobispal, Lima; Biblioteca Nacional, Lima (abbreviated hereafter as AGI, AGN, AA, and BN, respectively); cuaderno, legajo, and folio (abbreviated as c, leg., and fol., respectively).

References

1 I found useful the discussion of the term “indio” in Spalding, Karen, De india a campesino: cambios en la estructura del Peru colonial (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1974), pp. 147–192.Google Scholar See Steve Stern’s analysis of the Taki Onqoy nativist movement in the sixteenth century and his review of the literature on eighteenth century rebellions in the Andes respectively in Peru’s Indian Peoples and the Challenge of Spanish Conquest, Huamanga to 1640 (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1982) pp. 55–62 and “The Age of Andean Insurrection, 1742–1782: A Reappraisal” in Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World, 18th to 20th Centuries, Stern, Steve J., ed. (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), pp. 34–93.Google Scholar For an example of the breakdown of ethnic distinctions among the Indians in Antequera de Oaxaca see Chance, John K., Race and Class in Colonial Oaxaca (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1978)Google Scholar; and for a general discussion of the loss of ethnicity, see Cahill, David “Colour by Numbers: Racial and Ethnic Categories in the Viceroyalty of Peru, 1532–1824,” Journal of Latin American Studies 26: pt 1 (1994), 327–332.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Charney, Paul, The Destruction and Reorganization of Indian Society in the Lima Valley, Peru, 1532–1824 (Ph.D. diss., The University of Texas at Austin, 1989), pp. 35–37, 174–177,Google Scholar and tables 1.1, 1.2, 4.2 and 6.3. See also my master’s thesis, The Urban Indian: A Case Study of the Indian Population of Lima in 1613 (M.A. thesis, The University of Texas at Austin, 1980), p. 42; Ayaipoma, Mario Cárdenas, “Demografía del pueblo de Santiago del Cercado,” Revista del Archivo de la Nación 8 (1985), 101–102 Google Scholar; and, “Dirigendo el adjunto papel en que se explica la población que contiene el reyno del Peru en su estado actual,” (1792), AGI, Estado 75, fol. 33.

3 Charney, , The Destruction, pp. 350–354 Google Scholar; Ayaipoma, Mario Cárdenas, La reducción indígena del Cercado (Lima: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Carlos, 1972)Google Scholar; de Contreras, Miguel, Padrón de los indios de Lima en 1613. Introduction by Cook, Noble David, (Lima: Universidad Mayor de San Marcos, 1968) pp. 336, 344–345, 507,Google Scholar and for others it is passim or in separate counts made of Asian “Indians” and Chileans in the document; Lowry, Lyn Brandon, Forging an Indian Nation: Urban Indians under Spanish Colonial Control (Lima, Peru, 1535–1765)Google Scholar (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1991), pp. 131–135.

4 Meyers, Albert, “Religious Sodalities in Latin America: A Sketch of Two Peruvian Case Studies,” in Meyers, Albert and Hopkins, Diane Elizabeth, eds., Manipulating the Saints: Religious Brotherhoods and Social Integration in Postconquest Latin America (Hamburg; Wayasbah Publication 8, 1988), p. 11.Google Scholar

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6 Galindo, Alberto Flores, Buscando un Inca: Identidad y utopia en los Andes (Lima, Editorial Horizonte, 1994), pp. 78–79.Google Scholar I certainly do not mean to trivialize Galindo’s study; he convincingly shows that the Inca utopia flourished in the rural highlands, though I do doubt its impact on urbanized Indians.

7 Barnuevo, Pedro de Peralta y Rocha, , Júbilos de Lima y fiestas reales (Lima, 1723),Google Scholar unpagi-nated throughout; Lowry, , Forging an Indian Nation, pp. 270–273, 288Google Scholar; Brading, D. A.. The First America: The Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots, and the Liberal State 1492–1867 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 391–395.Google Scholar

8 Meyers, , “Religious Sodalities in Latin America,” 11 Google Scholar; Celestino, Olinda and Meyers, Albert, “The Socio-Economic Dynamic of the Confraternal Endowment in Colonial Peru: Jauja in the Eighteenth Century,” in Manipulating the Saints, pp. 101–103,105–107Google Scholar; Foster, George M., “Cofradías and Compadrazgo in Spain and Spanish America,” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 9:1 (1953), 18–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Recent European historiography of confraternities in early modern times has similarly examined the central place that the institution has been assigned in the community, going beyond the mere devotional history and antiquarianism. See the review article by Weissman, Ronald F.E., “Cults and Contexts: In Search of the Renaissance Confraternity’s Ritual,” in Eisenbichler, Konrad, ed., Crossing the Boundaries: Christian Piety and the Arts in Italian Medieval and Renaissance Confraterities (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1991), pp. 201–221.Google Scholar

9 Celestino, Olinda and Meyers, Albert, Las Cofradías en el Perú: región central (Frankfurt, 1981), pp. 110–111, 119–121,Google Scholar and cuadros section for the 1619 and 1653 figures. For the eighteenth century and some 1619 figures, see Charney, , Indian Society in the Valley of Lima, Peru, 1532–1824 (A revised version of my Ph.D. diss., 1995), table 4.1.Google Scholar

10 In urban Quito there was never a dense precontact population, and the coming of the Spaniards brought with it disease and rural-to- urban migration. The Indian cofradías similarly followed “an extreme early model of socio-racial segregation.” See Minchom, Martin, The People of Quito, 1690–1810: Change and Unrest in the Underclass (San Francisco: Westview Press, 1994), pp. 83–85.Google Scholar See also Powers, Karen Vieira, Andean Journeys: Migration, Ethnogenesis, and the State in Colonial Quito (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995),Google Scholar chapters 1 and 2. Her discussion of seventeenth century emigration from the Indian to the Spanish spheres in colonial Quito is useful.

11 See Table 1 for the list of the eight cofradías. Seven of the constitutions are in untitled (1762), and untitled (1763), AGI, Audiencia de Lima 814 and 818 (abbreviated hereafter as AL, respectively), unnumbered fols. Sent to Spain, together with 22 constitutions of other racial groups to obtain the approval of the Council of the Indies, these constitutions accorded with the seventeenth century councils of Lima and a series of Church and Crown decrees. They had been already approved by Lima’s prebend and juez ordinario de cofradías, and constituted petitions and proofs of legitimacy. For a discussion of such procedures, see Celestino, and Meyers, , Las cofradías, pp. 132–134.Google Scholar The eigth constitution, Copacabana’s, was a 1725 printed copy of the 1621 original and found in: Papeles Varios, Colección Vargas, t. 43, nu. 6, libro 23 (Jesuit Library, Lima, Peru). The discussion on the constitutions appears without footnotes unless I make a direct and extended quotation.

12 The number 24 (veinticuatro) applied to alderman or municipal officers in Seville and other towns in Andalusia, or to the corporation that consists of 24 members. No doubt it was transplanted in the New World. See Veláquez, Mariano and Gray, Edward, comps. Dictionary of English and Spanish, (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1973),Google Scholar and Corominas, Juan, Diccionario critico etimológia de la lengua castellana, 4 vols (Madrid: Editorial Gredos, 1954).Google Scholar In the context of the cofradía, I assumed that hermanos 24 refers to such officers that have a higher status than menores, as well as special privileges.

13 Untitled (1762), AGI, AL 814: 15th provision of Santa Cristóbal’s constitution.

14 Ibid., The 11th provision of Santa Ana’s constitution.

15 Untitled (1763), AGI, AL 818: 10th provision of Landelaria’s constitution. Libro de actas de la cofradía de nuestra señora de copacabana … (1758), AGN, Juzgado de Cofradías: Real Audiencia (abbreviated hereafter as JCRA), c. 174, unnumbered fols.

16 Lowry, , “Religión y control social en la colonia; El caso de las indias urbanos de Lima, 1570–1620,” Allpanchis 32 (Cusco, 1988), 27.Google Scholar

17 Libro de actas … (1758), AGN, JCRA, c. 174.

18 Ibid.

19 The social heterogenity has been noted for European fraternities. See Weissman, , “Cults and Contexts,” p. 209.Google Scholar

20 Lowry, , Forging an Indian Nation, pp. 157–158,Google Scholar and table 6 and graphs 1 and 2.

21 Libros de actas … (1758), AGN, JCRA, cl74.

22 James Lockhart has found that Nahua women actively participated in one cofradía, the Most Holy Sacrament, some even serving as officers, and their membership in it was higher than the men. See his, The Nahuas After Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Central Mexico, Sixteenth through the Eighteenth Centuries (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), pp. 226–228.

23 Lowry, , “Religión y control,” pp. 18–23.Google Scholar

24 Gareis, Iris, “Religión popular y etnicidad: La población indígena de Lima colonial,” Allpanchis, 23:40 (1992), 117–143 Google Scholar; See also Mannarelli, María Emma, “Inquisición y mujeres: Las hechiceras en el Peru durante el siglo XVII,” Revista Andina, 3:1 (Cusco, 1985), 146–147 Google Scholar; Bowser, Frederick P., The African Slave in Colonial Peru, 1524–1650 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974), pp. 251–253 Google Scholar; Causa criminal contra Alonso Cabello, traginador de coca (1669), AA, Sección: Idolatrías y hechicería, leg. 5, exp. 23, fols. 1–20.

25 Megged, Amos, “Accomodation and Resistance of Elites in Transiton: The Case of Chiapas in Early Colonial Mesoamerica,” HAHR 71:3 (1991), 492–500.Google Scholar Piatt, Tristan, “The Andean Soldiers of Christ: Confraternity Organization, the Mass of the Sun, and Regenerative Warfare in Rural Potosí (18th-20th Centuries),” Journal de la Société des Américanistes 73 (1987), 146–173 Google Scholar; Lima, Flavio Rojas, La cofradía: reducto cultural indígena (Guatemala: Centro Editorial Vile, 1988), pp. 12, 16–17Google Scholar; Varón, Rafael, “Cofradías de indios y poder local en el Perú colonial: Huaraz, siglo XVII,” Allpanchis, 17:20 (Cusco,1982), 135–140 Google Scholar; Celestino, and Meyer, , Los cofradías, p. 127 Google Scholar; Wood, Stephanie, “Adopted Saints: Christian Images in Nahua Testaments of Late Colonial Toluca,” The Americas 47:3 (1991), 291–293 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; MacLeod, Murdo L., “The Social and Economic Roles of Indian Cofradías in Colonial Chiapas,” in Cole, Jeffrey A., ed., The Church and Society in Latin America (Tulane: Center of Latin American Studies, 1984), pp. 77–78.Google Scholar Members of a community-type ayllu identified with a common ancestor.

26 Untitled (year?), AGI, Patronato Real 248, ramo 37, unnumbered fols.; Lowry, , Forging an Indian Nation, 48–51.Google Scholar

27 Untitled (1677), AL no number, AGI, unnumbered folios.

28 Rodrigo Castillejo (1597–1598), AGN, Protocolos Notariales (abbreviated hereafter as PN) fols. 1460–1461.

29 Cline, S.L., Colonial Culhuacan, 1580–1600: A Social History of an Aztec Town (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986), pp. 80–84.Google Scholar

30 Burga, Manuel “Triumph of Colonial Christianity in the Central Andes: Guilt, Good Conscience, and Indian Piety,” in Szuchman, Mark, ed., The Middle Period in Latin America: Values and Attitudes in the 17th-19th Centuries (Boulder: Lynne Riener Publishers, 1989), p. 48.Google Scholar

31 Autos formados por los mayordomos …(1767–1817), AGN, Temporalidades: Censos y Cofradías (abbreviated hereafter TCC), leg. 323, fols. 12-13,15,25. This document provides a list of Indian bequests to various cofradías in the Lima area. See also the sample of Indian wills as used in table 2, and Testimonio de Juana Taulli… (1622), AA, Cofradías (abbreviated hereafter Cof.) leg. 40, unnumbered fols, and in the same leg. see Mayordomos … de las Animas de Purgatorio, el Cercado, sobre la donación de Ana Pizarro, india … (1607), AA, Cof., leg. 40, unnumbered fols.

32 Testamentos de indios, AGN, one leg., unnumbered fols; the wills of Saoni (1596) and Hernández (1641). Wills and donations made by Indian migrants without heirs in the 1570s set the pattern of benefitting church-operated establishments, like that of the Indian hospital of Santa Ana, with money bequests, clothing, livestock; see Marcos de Esquivai (1569–1577), AGN, PN, fols. 189, 326, 509, 582. For the definition of patacón, see Diccionario de la Lengua Española (Madrid: Real Academia Española, 1970).

33 Cristóbal de Piñeda (1620–1623), AGN, PN, fol. 16 contains the will of Juana Pazna; Testamentos, AGN, will of María Cecilia (1682); and El capitán don Juan Rivera, natural originario del pueblo de Santiago de Cercado y mayordomo actual de la cofradía de santissima sacramento … (1776–1817), AGN, TCC, leg. 323, contains the will of don Domingo Pasqual (1734), unnumbered fols.

34 Piñeda (1611–1612), AGN, PN, fols. 181–183.

35 Testimonio del expediente sobre el deslinde de tierras pertencientes a los indios del pueblo de Surco y al de la chacra de hacienda de San Juan del Colegio de la companía de Jesús (1603), BN, B1342, fols. 16–17, 28.

36 For examples, see Testamentos, AGN, wills of Alonso Vallejos (1669) and Ana María (1660). In fact, don Domingo Pasqual (his will was also in Testamentos and dated 1734) of the Cercado acted as the mayordomo of Sacramento, while being a member of Candelaria. See Pasqual’s will in: “El capitán don Juan de Rivera … (1776–1817),” AGN, TCC, leg. 323. See also Testimonio de testamento de Andres Cancho-haique, indio … ortorgó en 9 de Marzo de 1686, AGN, Derecho Indígena y Encomienda (abbreviated hereafter as DIE), c. 151, fols. 1–3; Iris Gareis found similiar patterns, see her “Religión popular,” pp. 133–134, and Minchom suggests it in; “The People of Quito,” p. 83.

37 Gerais, , “La religión popular,” pp. 131, 133–134.Google Scholar

38 Cofradías Varias: San Joseph (1775–1778), AA, Cof., leg. 40, unnumbered fols.

39 Autos seguidos por los mayordomos de la cofradía de nuestra señora de Copacabana contra los mayordomos de la cofradía de Jesús … (1631), AGN, Real Audiencia: Causas Civiles (abbreviated hereafter as RACC) c. 310, fol. 99.

40 Testamentos, AGN, wills of Cayn (1639) and de la O (1676).

41 Ibid., will of de la Cruz (1688).

42 Ibid., wills of both Huaquillas (1633) and (1648).

43 Autos seguidos por los mayordomos (1631) AGN, RACC, c. 310, fols. 1–5.

44 Ibid., fols. 23–25, 27, 53, 122.

45 Ibid., fol. 28.

46 Ibid., fols. 62–64, 113–123.

47 Ibid., fols. 53, 64–72, 84–110.

48 Ibid., fols. 97–110, 127.

49 Ibid., fols. 77–78, 122.

50 Ibid., fol. 129.

51 Ibid, fols. 1–12.

52 Ibid., fols. 2–6. Chumbi left alms to five different cofradías.

53 The following refer to cofradía lands in the Indian communities of Surco, Magdalena, Carabayllo, and Cacahuasi (incorporated into the Cercado): Contiene este proceso … a pedimiento de don Domingo Tantachumbi, hijo y sucesor de don Francisco Tantachumbi, cacique y gobernador del pueblo de Surco … (1642), BN, B870, fols. 7–14, contains the will of don Domingo, 1636; Francisco Roldán (1734–1742), AGN, PN, fols. 56–60, 149–151; Francisco Cayetano Arrendendo (1727–1734), AGN, PN, f. 86; Castillejo (1599–1602), AGN, PN, fols. 673–674; Testamentos, AGN, will of José Fernández de la Cruz (1688); Autos formado por los mayordomos … (1767–1817), AGN, TCC, leg. 323; Untitled (no date), AGN, JCRA, leg. 1, contains the 1642 will of Catalina Francisca; Testimonio de lo escrito de trato y convenio que celebran los indios de la comunidad de Surco con el Padre Bartolomé de la Rea … sobre el aprovechamiento de las aguas del rio de Surco y de los riegos… (1803), AGN, Juzgado de Agua, c. 3.3.16.40, unnumbered fols.

54 Testamentos, AGN, wills of María de la O (1676), and Tomás García Flores (1761).

55 Testamentos, AGN, wills of Alonso Condor (1632), Martín Arma (1634), Julio Aula (1636), Francisco Tesina (1642), Alonso Vallejos (1669), and Juan Augustín de Osorno (1687); Autos formado por los mayordomos … (1767–1817), AGN, TCC, leg. 323, contains the will of María Geronimo (1688), unnumbered folios; Piñeda (1620–1623), fols, 55–58, 15–19.

56 Castillejo (1599–1602), AGN, PN, fols. 672–675; Arrendondo (1727–1734), AGN, PN, fol. 731: Testamentos, AGN, will of María Jacoba (1652), Juana Bartolo (1657), and Blasido Puno Cansinos (1776).

57 Roldán (1734–1742), AGN, PN, fols. 150–151.

58 Castillejo (1599–1602), AGN, PN, fols. 899–902.

59 Piñeda (1620–1623), AGN, PN, fols. 351–352.

60 Visita de Pachacamac (1643), AA, Expediente. XXI, leg. 7, fol. 10.

61 In his discussion of the common characteristics of cofradías in Guatemala, Flavio Rojas Lima suggests this useful static-dynamic dichotomy model. See his, La cofradía reducto cultura indígena, (Guatemala; Centro Editorial Vile, 1988), pp. 17–18.

62 Foucualt, Michel, The History of Sexuality, 3 vols, translated by Hurley, Robert (New York: Vintage Books, 1990) pp. 1, 92–102Google Scholar; Foucault, Michel, Power/Knowledge; Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977 Gordon, Colin, ed., (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), pp. 142, 207–208 Google Scholar; Rouse, Joseph, “Power/Knowledge,” in Gutting, Gary, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Foucault (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 106–109.Google Scholar Foucault’s conceptualization of power, though criticized for being too broad and lacking specificity as to render it cognitively useless, is nonetheless flexible and therefore far more useful than overly structured paradigms. Moreover, it modifies and sometimes negates top-down analysis of power. Of course, I am aware of the cottage industry of criticisms spawned by Foucault’s view of the world, but one critical work I found useful was: Merquior, J.G., Foucault (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), passim, especially pp. 108–118 Google Scholar for his discussion of Foucault’s concept of power.