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The Evolution of Spanish Governance during the Early Bourbon Period in Peru: The Juan Santos Atahualpa Rebellion and the Missionaries of Ocopa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 October 2016

Cameron D. Jones
Cameron D. Jones*
Affiliation:
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, California
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In 1742, a highland Andean named Juan Santos led a group of mainly Asháninka and Yanesha warriors against a handful of isolated Franciscan missions in the central high jungle of Peru. Over the next ten years the rebellion smoldered, occasionally sparking to life, as Santos's forces pushed the missionaries based out of the College of Santa Rosa de Ocopa (near Jauja, Peru) back to the highlands. The uprising culminated in a brief foray into the highlands, but never effectively reached beyond the security of the densely vegetated high jungle, known locally as the central montaña region. Despite its modest accomplishments, the rebellion secured autonomy for the combatant nations during the rest of the colonial period.

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The Americas , Volume 73 , Issue 3 , July 2016 , pp. 325 - 348
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Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2016 

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References

1. While colonial records refer to these groups as the Campa (for Asháninka) and the Amuesha (for Yanesha), I have used the names by which their modern ancestors choose to be referred, and which is consistent with current anthropological literature. See Santos-Granero, Fernando and Barclay, Frederica, Selva Central: History, Economy, and Land Use in Peruvian Amazonia (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

2. Joseph de Salazar y Monatoneo, Syndic-General of the Franciscan missions, petition to the crown, undated, Lima, Archivo General de Indias [hereafter AGI], Lima, leg. 539. For more on the eighteenth-century colonial mail system and the dissemination of information, see G. Douglas Inglis and Rodrigo Fernández Carrión, Time Frame for Empire: Transatlantic Mail and Office Routine in Spanish America, 1764-1792, unpublished manuscript; and Baskes, Jeremy, Staying Afloat: Risk and Uncertainty in Spanish Atlantic World Trade, 1760–1820 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. There has been much debate about when exactly the Bourbon reforms started in Spanish America. John Fisher uses 1750 as the starting point in his masterful work, Bourbon Peru (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2003). He argues that inconsistencies of early reform made any real impact on Peru impossible during the first half of the eighteenth century. Elliott, John, in Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492-1830 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006)Google Scholar, contends that the Americas were largely unaffected by the Bourbon Reforms until after the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763). He posits that, despite the creation of the new viceroyalty of New Granada in 1717 and its permanent establishment in 1739, commitments in Europe made it impossible to impose reform in the American possessions. More recent scholarship has considered the extent to which the Bourbon state began to enact reform in the Americas prior to the Seven Years’ War. In Shaky Colonialism: The 1746 Earthquake-Tsunami in Lima, Peru, and Its Long Aftermath (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), Charles Walker argues that, for Bourbon reformist ministers, the 1746 Lima earthquake exposed the baroque backwardness of the city. This realization inspired Bourbon officials in both Spain and Peru to enact a series of reforms aimed at creating a more modern, enlightened city. The most promising work on the early Bourbon reforms to date is probably Adrian Pearce's 1998 doctoral dissertation, “Early Bourbon Government in the Viceroyalty of Peru, 1700–1759” (University of Liverpool). Pearce argues that the early Bourbon period is the foundation of the later reforms in the Americas, noting that the major administrative structures necessary for later reform were created during the early Bourbon period (for example, the Secretariat of the Indies) and that the crown during that period attempted financial, mining, military, and ecclesiastical reforms with the colonies themselves. While, like Walker, Pearce believes that early Bourbon reforms were intermittent, he argues that they “followed a consistent, enlightened agenda.” Citing Pearce and others, Allen Kuethe and Kenneth Andrien begin their most recent work on the Bourbon reforms in 1713: Kuethe and Andrien, The Spanish Atlantic World in the Eighteenth Century: War and the Bourbon Reforms, 1713-1796 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014)Google Scholar. See also Godoy, Scarlett O'Phelan, ed., El Perú en el siglo XVIII. La Era Borbónica, (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Instituto Riva-Agüero, 1999)Google Scholar.

4. See Cossío, José Campillo y and Dorado, Dolores Mateos, Dos escritos políticos: lo que hay de más y menos en España; [and] España despierta (Oviedo: Gráficas Summa, 1993)Google Scholar, orginally published in 1741 and 1742 repectively; and Juan, Jorge, de Ulloa, Antonio, and TePaske, John Jay, Discourse and Political Reflections on the Kingdoms of Peru, Their Government, Special Regimen of Their Inhabitants, and Abuses Which Have Been Introduced into One and Another, with Special Information on Why They Grew Up and Some Means to Avoid Them (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978 [1748])Google Scholar.

5. On the concept of the “composite monarchy,” see Elliott, J. H., “A Europe of Composite Monarchies,” The Cultural and Political Construction of Europe, Past & Present 137:1 (November 1992): 48–71 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6. Paquette, Gabriel, Enlightenment, Governance, and Reform in Spain and its Empire, 1759–1808 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 6–7 Google Scholar.

7. Paquette also uses the term regalism to describe the emerging philosophy of governance within the Spanish empire. Ibid.

8. Most of the previous scholarship on the rebellion has focused on its revolutionary nature within a regional Peruvian context. Excellent anthropological studies such as Varese, Stefano, Salt of the Mountain: Campa Asháninka History and Resistance in the Peruvian Jungle (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002)Google Scholar, originally published in Spanish as La sal de los cerros: resistencia y utopía en la Amazonía peruana (Lima: Universidad Peruana de Ciencias y Tecnología),1966), and Santos-Granero and Barclay, Selva Central, examine the possible causes of the rebellion in regional context from the perspective of the Ashánika and Yanesha, but look very little at factors outside of the central montaña. Nationalist historians in the mid twentieth century, such as Loayza, José, Juan Santos, el Invencible (Lima: Editorial D. Miranda, 1942)Google Scholar, and Arenas, Mario Castro, La rebelión de Juan Santos (Lima: C. Milla Batres, 1973)Google Scholar, attempted to tie the rebellion to the mainly creole-led independence movements of the 1820’s. More recently, Stern, Steve, “The Age of Andean Insurrection, 1742–1782: A Reappraisal,” in Stern, Steve, ed., Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World, 18th to 20th Centuries (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987)Google Scholar, argued that the rebellion was the first manifestation of a larger consciousness of resistance throughout the Andes that culminated in the Great Andean Revolts of the 1780’s. While historical records do not seem to support the type of direct relationship between the rebellions that Stern suggests, all of the rebellions were caused in some part by the significant shift in the way that historical actors distant from the metropole interacted with the state. For more on Andean revolts in the eighteenth century, see Godoy, Scarlett O'Phelan, Rebellions and Revolts in Eighteenth-Century Peru and Upper Peru (Köln: Böhlau, 1985)Google Scholar.

9. The conceptualization of the Atlantic World on which I base this article was pioneered by Joseph C. Miller. See Miller, “Retention, Re-Invention, and Remembering: Restoring Identities through Enslavement in Africa and Under Slavery in Brazil,” in Enslaving Connections: Changing Cultures of Africa and Brazil during the Era of Slavery, Curto, José C. and Lovejoy, Paul E., eds. (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2003), 81–121 Google Scholar; and Miller, Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade, 1730–1830 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988)Google Scholar.

10. Diez, Félix Saiz, Los colegios de Propaganda Fide en Hispanoamérica (Lima: Centro de Estudios Teológicos de la Amazonía, 1992), 39–60 Google Scholar.

11. Breve apostólico de Pío Sexto y estatutos generales para la erección y gobierno de las custodias de misioneros franciscos observantes de Propaganda Fide en las provincias internas de Nueva España (Madrid: Joaquín Ibarra, 1781).

12. Tibesar, Antonine, “The Alternativa: a study of Spanish-Creole relations in Seventeenth Century Peru,” The Americas 11:3 (January 1955): 242 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jay Frederick Lehnertz, “Lands of the Infidels: The Franciscans in the Central Montaña of Peru, 1709–1824” (PhD diss.: University of Wisconsin, 1974), 328; Saiz Diez, Los colegios de Propaganda Fide, 29–35.

13. The commissary-generals in New Spain and Peru could also intervene in the affairs of the colleges, but these offices were abolished in 1768, according to Saiz Diez, Los colegios de Propaganda Fide, 39–53, 176.

14. Saiz Diez, Los colegios de Propaganda Fide, 39–60.

15. Plan de los contribuciones anuales, y limosnas que se deven hacer a los conventos de San Francisco en este Reino del Perú, July 8, 1773, Lima, Real Academia de Historia [hereafter RAH] 9-9-3 1680, fols. 55r-55v.

16. Viceroy Castelfuerte, Relación que hizo de su gobierno, Biblioteca Nacional de España [hereafter BNE], ms. 3109, fol. 79r.

17. Joseph de Salazar y Monatoneo, Syndic of Ocopa, undated, Lima, AGI, Lima, leg. 539.

18. For a list of these payments, see Lehnertz, “Lands of the Infidels,” 316.

19. The cédulas were issued on March 12, 1718; November 10, 1719; July 17, 1729; and December 2, 1734. Copies of the last three are located in AGI, Lima, leg. 539.

20. Mapa de los mártires, 1736, AGI, Mapas y Planos, Perú y Chile, leg. 32.

21. Complaints of Amerindian “covetousness” of the tools are found in Amich, José, Historia de las misiones del convento de Santa Rosa de Ocopa (Iquitos: CETA, 1988 [1770s])Google Scholar; Fr. Paulo Alonso Carballo to Bartolomé Maria de la Heras, Archbishop of Lima, September 11, 1818, San Buenaventura de Chaviri, Archivo Arzobispal de Lima [hereafter AAL], Franciscanos XI-28; Fr. Lego. Juan de San Antonio, report to the crown, Lima, February 28, 1757, AGI, Lima, leg. 808; and Joseph Antonio Manso de Velasco, Relación que hizo de su gobierno, BNE, ms. 3108, fol. 120r.

22. Fr. Lucas de Quenca, Procurador de Indias, petition to the crown, undated, Madrid, AGI, Lima, leg. 536.

23. Francisco de San Joseph to Fr. Joseph Sanz, January 24, 1716, Tarma, AGI, Lima 541.

24. Probably the best example is in the work of Viceroy José Antonio Manso de Velasco, Relación que hizo de su gobierno, BNE, ms. 3108, fol. 118v.

25. Fr. Domingo de la Cruz, Leyes municipales de esta conversión de Pozuzu, undated but probably 1760’s, Archivo de Limites, Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores del Perú (AL-MRREE), LEB 12-4, caja 94, fols. 177r-122v.

26. These famines are described in several letters in AGI, Lima, leg. 539, but in particular and as quoted above in Francisco de San Joseph, Memorial, June 12, 1732, Ocopa, AGI, Lima, leg. 539.

27. Graneros, Fernando Santos, “Anticolonialismo, mesianismo, utopía en la sublevación de Juan Santos Atahualpa,” Amazonía Indígena 19 (January 1992): 33–35 Google Scholar.

28. Amich, Historia de las misiones, 76.

29. See Causa contra Fray Domingo Garcia, October 8, 1745, in the document collection of Loayza, Juan Santos, el Invencible, 106–109.

30. Ibid., 36–52. Santos Granero proves this correlation through a thorough examination of the mission’ censuses, and the missionaries themselves reported these connections. Fr. Francisco de San Joseph, report on the missions de Propaganda Fide, June 12, 1732, Ocopa, AGI, Lima, leg. 539. Over time, these uprisings intensified both in size and frequency, culminating in the Juan Santos Atahualpa rebellion.

31. José de Armendariz, Marqués de Castelfuerte, Relación que hizo de su govierno, BNE, mss. 3109, fol. 79v.

32. Frs. Manuel Santos and Domingo Garcia, Report to Commissar Father Fr. José Gil Muñoz, June 2, 1742, Pichana, in Loayza, Juan Santos, el Invencible, 4.

33. Ibid., 5-6.

34. Ibid.; Amich, Historia de las misiones, 167-170.

35. Frs. Manuel Santos and Domingo García, Report to Commissar Father Fr. José Gil Muñoz, June 2, 1742, Pichana, in Loayza, Juan Santos, el Invencible, 5–6.

36. Varese, Salt of the Mountain, 87–96.

37. Given the area's recent Catholic evangelization, the idea that the Yompor Ror bestowed immortality, a lesser messianic tradition, suggests that at least that aspect of this belief could have come from Christianity. Santos Graneros, “Anticolonialismo, mesianismo y utopía en la sublevación de Juan Santos Atahualpa,” 37–38.

38. These nations included the Machiguenga, Piro, Shipibo, Conibo, and Cashibo. Ibid.

39. Though rebel forces treated these two roughly, not killing them but beating them severely, not all Africans that the missionaries used to manage their mission received such treatment. Some joined the rebel movement, particularly those who had married into the Amerindian communities. One African, Antonio Gatica, was named by Spanish sources as one of Santos's principal collaborators. See Joseph Antonio Mendoza, Relación de Marqués de Villagarcía, BNE, ms. 3108, fol. 22r; and Joseph Antonio Manso de Velasco, Relación que hizo de su Gobierno, BNE, ms. 3107, fol. 114r.

40. Amich, Historia de las misiones, 168–169; Villagarcía, report to the king, August 16, 1744, Lima, in Loayza, Juan Santos, el Invencible, 55–69; Loayza, Juan Santos, el Invencible, 19–48.

41. Juan and Ulloa, Discourse and Political Reflections on the Kingdoms of Peru, 166–167.

42. Andrien, Kenneth, “The Noticias Secretas de América and the Construction of a Governing Ideology for the Spanish American Empire,” Colonial Latin American Review 7:2 (1998): 184–187 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43. Manuel de Amat, Relación que hizo de su gobierno, BNE, ms. 3112, fol. 188v.

44. Lynch, John, Bourbon Spain, 1700-1808 (Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1989), 160 Google Scholar.

45. Zenón de Somodevilla, marqués de la Ensenada, Instructions to Viceroy Manso de Velasco, December 21, 1744, Madrid, in Loayza, Juan Santos, el Invencible, 74–76.

46. Amich, Historia de las misiones, 176–177; Ensenada, report to the crown, March 17, 1747, Madrid, AGI, Lima, leg. 983. The beginning of this report, which was begun in December 1744, is found in Loayza, Juan Santos, el Invencible, 72–75.

47. Walker, Charles, “The Upper Classes and Their Upper Stories: Architecture and the Aftermath of the Lima Earthquake,” Hispanic American Historical Review 83:1 (2003): 55 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bueno, Pablo Emilio Pérez-Mallaína, Retrato de una ciudad en crisis: la sociedad limeña ante el movimiento sísmico de 1746 (Seville: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos, 2001), 54 Google Scholar.

48. Walker, Shaky Colonialism, 117–118; Andrien, Kenneth J., “The Coming of Enlightened Reform in Bourbon Peru: Secularization of the Doctrinas de Indios, 1746–1773,” in Enlightened Reform in Southern Europe and Its Atlantic Colonies, c. 1750-1830, Paquette, Gabriel, ed. (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2009), 183–185 Google Scholar.

49. Walker, Shaky Colonialism, 123–125.

50. de Velásco, José Antonio Manso, Relación y documentos de gobierno del virrey del Perú, José A. Manso de Velásco, Conde de Superunda (1745-1761), Cebrián, Alfredo Moreno, ed. (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Instituto Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, 1983), 263–264 Google Scholar.

51. Walker, Shaky Colonialism, 127–128.

52. Ibid., 76–77, 102; Pérez-Mallaína Bueno, Retrato de una ciudad en crisis, 240–241.

53. Andrien, “The Coming of Enlightened Reform in Bourbon Peru,” 190–191; royal decree, May 1, 1747, Archivo de San Francisco de Lima [hereafter ASFL], Registro 2, I-2, N.1, doc. 38, fols. 202r-204r.

54. Royal decree, May 1, 1747, ASFL, Registro 2, I-2, N.1, doc. 38, fols. 202r-204r.

55. Amich, Historia de las misiones, 180.

56. Ibid., 182-183.

57. The full name is Representación Verdadera y exclamación rendida y lamentable que toda la nación Indiana hace a la Majestad de Rey de las Españas y Emperador de la Indias El Señor Don Fernando VI pediendo los atienda y remedie, sacandolos del afrentoso viperio y oprobio en que están más de doscientos años.

58. Walker, Shaky Colonialism, 164–165

59. Ibid.

60. Godoy, Scarlett O'Phelan, “‘Ascender al estado eclesiástico’: La ordenación de Indios en Lima a mediados del siglo XVIII,” in Incas e indios cristianos: elites indígenas e identidades cristianas en los Andes coloniales, Decoster, Jean-Jacques, ed. (Cuzco: Centro de Estudios Regionales Andinos Bartolemé de Las Casas, 2002), 312 Google Scholar.

61. Ballesteros, Jorge Bernales, “Fray Calixto Tupac Inca, Procurador de Indios, y la ‘exclamación’ revindicacionista de 1750,” Historia y Cultura 3 (1969): 6 Google Scholar; Fr. Isdoro Cala y Ortega, petition to the crown, May 7, 1751, Cádiz, AGI, Lima, leg. 988; Walker, Shaky Colonialism, 164–166; Calixto, petition to the crown, Colección Vargas Ugarte (CVU), Papeles Varios, Mss., tomo 18, no. 25.

62. Mathías de Velasco, Summary of Joseph de San Antonio's petition to the crown, June 28, 1751, Madrid, AGI, Lima, leg. 541; Joseph de San Antonio, Petition to the crown, May 2, 1751, Madrid, AGI, Lima, leg. 541.

63. Bernales Ballesteros, “Fray Calixto Tupac Inca,” 8.

64. A narrative of this journey is found in Bernales Ballesteros, “Fray Calixto Tupac Inca,” 6–8; Calixto to the Cabildo de Indios of Lima, November 14, 1751, Madrid, AGI, Lima, leg. 983; and Joseph de San Antonio, petition to the crown, May 2, 1751, Madrid, AGI, Lima, leg. 541. For more on the Planctus indorum, see Navarro, José María, Una denuncia profética desde el Perú a mediados del siglo XVIII: el “Planctus indorum christianorum in America Peruntina” (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 2001)Google Scholar.

65. This frantic search is evident in Ensenada's letters to the Council of the Indies, May 7, 8, 9, and 10, 1751, Madrid, AGI, Lima, leg. 988.

66. Joseph de San Antonio, Petition to the crown, May 2, 1751, Madrid, AGI, Lima, leg. 541.

67. Walker, Shaky Colonialism., 172–173; Nicolás de Salazar, account of the Lima Conspiracy, undated, Lima, AGI, Lima, leg. 988; Manso de Velasco, report to the crown, September 24, 1750, Lima, in Loayza, Juan Santos, el Invencible, 161–178 (original in AGI, Lima, leg. 988).

68. Spalding, Karen, Huarochirí: An Andean Society under Inca and Spanish Rule (Stanford,: Stanford University Press, 1984), 274–278Google Scholar; Manso de Velasco, report to the crown, September 24, 1750, Lima, AGI, Lima, leg. 417. See also de Melo, Sebastián Franco and Spalding, Karen, El diario histórico de Sebastián Franco de Melo: el levantamiento de Huarochirí de 1750 (Lima: Centro Peruano de Estudios Culturales, 2012)Google Scholar.

69. Manso de Velasco, report to the crown, September 24, 1750, Lima, Juan Santos, el Invencible, 163. The issue of corrupt corregidores would haunt the Spanish colonial authorities as one of the major catalysts for the Túpac Amaru rebellion in Cuzco (1780-82).

70. Ibid., 163.

71. Ibid., 164.

72. Manso de Velasco, Relación y documentos de gobierno del virrey del Perú, 254.

73. Amat, Relación que hizo de su gobierno, BNE, ms. 3112, fol. 188v.

74. Real cédula, March 11, 1751, Buen Retiro, AGI, Lima, leg. 542.

75. Ferdinand VI to Manso de Velasco, October 7, 1752, Buen Retiro, AGI, Lima, leg. 1607.

76. The viceroy cut funding on May 9, 1752, but the original proclamation no longer exists. However, a long ledger note in the treasurer's report for 1752 in Archivo de la Nación del Perú, Caja Real, Jauja, box 624, summarizes it.

77. For the fall of Ensenada, see John Lynch, Bourbon Spain, 1700-1808, 172. The reversal of Manso de Velasco's decision is found in the ledger notes of the treasurer's report of 1754, AGN, Caja Real, Jauja, box 624.

78. Manso de Velasco, report to the crown, September 13, 1756, Lima, AGI, Lima, leg. 808.

79. Order of deportation for Friar Calixto, November 22, 1757, Madrid, AGI, Lima, leg. 988; Manso de Velasco to Julián de Arriaga, Minister of the Indies, January 30, 1759, Lima, AGI, Lima, leg. 988.

80. For a detailed account of the Andamarca raid, see Glave, Luis Miguel, “El Apu Inca camina de nuevo,” Perspectivas Latinoamericanas 6 (2009): 28–68 Google Scholar.

81. Lehnertz, “Land of the Infidels,” 147–149.