Power and Violence in the Colonial City Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figure, maps, and tables
- Preface
- Map 1 Present-day Bolivia and surrounds
- Map 2 Principal routes of the Viceroyalty of Peru (second half of the eighteenth century)
- 1 Oruro between two epochs: a mining cycle
- 2 Under Spanish law
- 3 Oruro in 1741: details of a stormy election
- 4 The people
- 5 “Madmen, comedians, and hypocrites”
- 6 Captains of shipwreck
- 7 Returning to the known
- 8 “The fruits of the earth”
- 9 The end of an epoch: the Indian uprisings of 1780–1781
- 10 Oruro in the economic and geopolitical context of the epoch (c. 1780–1781)
- 11 The Oruro uprising
- 12 The voice of the rebels
- 13 Picking up the pieces
- Appendix A Indian raids on Oruro, 1781: testimonies
- Appendix B Testimonies of inhabitants of the city
- Appendix C Table of public jobs in Oruro, 1730–1784
- Bibliography
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES
4 - The people
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 March 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figure, maps, and tables
- Preface
- Map 1 Present-day Bolivia and surrounds
- Map 2 Principal routes of the Viceroyalty of Peru (second half of the eighteenth century)
- 1 Oruro between two epochs: a mining cycle
- 2 Under Spanish law
- 3 Oruro in 1741: details of a stormy election
- 4 The people
- 5 “Madmen, comedians, and hypocrites”
- 6 Captains of shipwreck
- 7 Returning to the known
- 8 “The fruits of the earth”
- 9 The end of an epoch: the Indian uprisings of 1780–1781
- 10 Oruro in the economic and geopolitical context of the epoch (c. 1780–1781)
- 11 The Oruro uprising
- 12 The voice of the rebels
- 13 Picking up the pieces
- Appendix A Indian raids on Oruro, 1781: testimonies
- Appendix B Testimonies of inhabitants of the city
- Appendix C Table of public jobs in Oruro, 1730–1784
- Bibliography
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES
Summary
Who were the litigants in this confrontation? An approximate reconstruction of their biographies on the basis of various references and scattered fragments of documentation indicates that they were important individuals in the town because of their prestige and influence as well as their economic resources.
Melchor de Herrera, faction leader and a favorite target for the wrath of the opposing coalition, appears to have been a man of considerable resources. In the petition made before the audiencia in La Plata by his attorney Ambrosio Cabrera, he is described as an affluent, enterprising, and responsible man:
[H]e is alcalde provincial of this town [Oruro] and of the provinces of Paria and Carangas and owns his house and has the largest family in the vicinity and he has twice been alcalde ordinario and alcalde de la hermandad and corregidor of the province of Carangas; … he has discovered several minerals and going into the land in the year thirteen he registered a patent on the gold mine called Choquetanca and today he is the largest quicksilver miner in that town where he is working two mines in Poopó, one in Oruro, three in La Joya whose mine he has just equipped at his own considerable expense, and he produces more metals and silver marks in a single month than all the others as is obvious from the accounts.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Power and Violence in the Colonial CityOruro from the Mining Renaissance to the Rebellion of Tupac Amaru (1740–1782), pp. 53 - 62Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995