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“I Heard it through the Grapevine”: Analysis of an Anti-Secularization Initative in the Sixteenth-Century Arequipan Countryside, 1584–1600*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

María N. Marsilli*
Affiliation:
John Carroll University, Cleveland, Ohio

Extract

Franciscan historian Antonine Tibesar’s study of the early evangelical accomplishments of the Franciscan Order in the Andes constitutes a landmark contribution to an insufficiently examined subject. Trying to detach his work from Joachimist debates, Tibesar did not deem the spirituality shared by peninsular friars to be relevant in explaining their poor early evangelical results. Although Tibesar acknowledged such shortcomings, he sustained that they were caused by an apathetic Franciscan engagement in parish work among the Indians. The inexperience of Spanish friars and the turmoil of the civil wars that ravaged the Andes in the aftermath of the conquest greatly explain this situation, he sustains. Additionally, Tibesar advances the idea that the undecided approach towards Indian conversion amongst sixteenth-century Franciscan authorities was the major cause of these first evangelical failures. Troubled by the hardships of life in Indian parishes and concerned about the lack of familiarity with parish administration among the Order’s ranks, the Franciscan establishment sent the friars contradictory orders, thus preventing them from bringing together a more coherent evangelical plan.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2005

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Footnotes

*

The collection of the archival material presented in this paper was possible thanks to the Academy of American Franciscan History Research Fellowship. I would like to specially thank Dr. John F. Schwaller for his support and encouragement.

References

1 Franciscan Beginnings in Colonial Perú (Washington: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1953). See also the Spanish translation Comienzos de los Franciscanos en el Perú (Iquitos: CETA, 1991). In New Spain, the topic has given grounds to abundant scholarly production. See, for instance, Baudot, George, La pugna Franciscana por México (México: Alianza Editorial, 1990), pp. 168 Google Scholar and his Utopia and History in Mexico. The First Chronicles of Mexican Civilization (1520-1569) (The University of Colorado Press, 1984), Chapter Two, “The Spiritual Discovery of Mexico by the Franciscans,” pp. 71–120, see particularly pp. 77–81. Also, Ricard, Robert, La “conquete spirituelle” du Mexique. Essai sur I’apostolat et les méthodes missionaires del ordres mendiants en Nouvelle-Espagne de 1523–24 à 1572 (Paris, 1933), pp. 81115 Google Scholar and Diaz, Patricia Nettel, La Utopia Franciscana en la Nueva Espaha. ElApostolado de Fray Geronimo de Mendieta (México: Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, 1989)Google Scholar. See also the classic Phelan, John Leddy, The Millennial Kingdom of the Franciscans in the New World. A Study of the Writing of Gerónimo de Mendieta (1525-1604) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1956).Google Scholar

2 Some witnesses to the spiritual conquest of the Andes, however, denounced the poor outcomes achieved by the mendicant orders and deemed them to be caused by the scarce evangelical preparation of the friars. See Quiroga, Pedro de, Coloquios de la Verdad (Valladolid: Seminario Americanista de la Universidad de Valladolid, 1992 [1565?])Google Scholar. Daisy Rípodas Ardanaz, ed. This acid Franciscan criticism of the early evangelical accomplishments in the Andes dates back to only a few years before the eruption of the Taqui Onqoy, the nativist movement that called for the expulsion of the Spaniards and their religion from the Andes.

3 Franciscan Beginnings, pp. 37–38.

4 Caciques were community or ayllu leaders, also known as kuracas.

5 Franciscan Beginnings, pp. 65–68.

6 Coronica de la Religiossisima Provincia de los Doce Apostoles del Peru de la Orden de N.P.S. Francisco, de la Regular Observancia dispuesta en seis libros, con relacion de las Provincias que della han salido y son sus hijas, Lima, [1651] (Washington: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1957), see chapter XVII.

7 Lavallé, Bemard, Las promesas ambiguas. Criollismo colonial en los Andes (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú-Instituto Riva-Aguero, 1993).Google Scholar

8 See Cook, Noble David, “Tomando posesión: Luis Gerónimo de Oré y el retorno de los Franciscanos a las doctrinas del Valle del Colca” in: Gabai, Rafael Varón and Espinoza, Javier Flores, eds. El Hombre y los Andes. Homenaje a Franklin Pease (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 2002), vol. 2, pp. 889903.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 See “Testimonio del expediente seguido sobre la genealogía de Antonio de Oré y sus hijos. Hecho en Las Palmas Canarias en Octubre de 1613,” BNL, Sala de Investigadores, Z 328, 1613.

10 He included in his Symbolo Catholico Indiano, a widely-known missionary manual, an Inca prayer invoking the Creator to prove that the Indians knew about the existence of only one god by natural reason. See MacCormack, Sabine, Religion in the Andes. Vision and Imagination in Early Colonial Peru (Princeton, 1991), pp. 2467.Google Scholar

11 Cook, Noble David, “Luis Jerónimo de Oré y el Symbolo Catholico Indiano” in: Fray Luis Jerónimo de Oré, Symbolo Catholico Indiano [1598] (Lima: Australis, 1992), pp. 3561, pp. 41–42Google Scholar. Oré is well known for this text, a translation of the catechism into Quechua and Aymara. Oré’s personal notes on Coporaque parish records were considered official documents in the population census taken of Yanque Collaguas Hurinsaya in 1591. See the “Visita de Yanque Collaguas Urinsaya” completed by Gaspar Verdugo in 1591. In: Pease, Franklin ed., Collaguas I (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 1977), pp. 191452, p. 343.Google Scholar

12 See Burns, Kathryn, Colonial Habits. Convents and the Spiritual Economy of Cuzco, Peru (Duke University Press, 1999), p. 3 Google Scholar. See also my Doctoral Dissertation, “God and Evil in the Gardens of the Andean south: Mid-colonial rural religion in the Diocese of Arequipa” (Emory University, 2002).

13 AGI, Lima 131.

14 See his “Relación de la Provincia de los Collaguas para la Descripción de las Indias que Su Magestad manda hacer” [1586] in Espada, Marcos Jiménez de la, Relaciones Geograficos de Indias—Perú, Vol. 1 (Madrid, 1965), p. 323.Google Scholar

15 Probably aiming at putting together a more comprehensive report, Ulloa y Mogollón selected his witnesses according to the Hanan/Hurin division of Indian communities. The division of Andean communities in moieties has deep pre-Hispanic roots and was at the basis of the Inca Empire’s political and religious organization. See, for instance, Zuidema, R. T., “Hierarchy and Space in Incaic Social Organization,” in Ethnohistory 30:2 (Spring 1983), pp. 4975 Google Scholar. See also, Gelles, Paul H.Equilibrium and Extraction: Dual Organization in the Andes” in American Ethnologist 22:4 (Nov. 1995), pp. 710742 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the Collagua Indians, see Benavides, María A., “Dualidad social e ideológica en la provincia de los Collaguas, 1570–1731” in Historia y Cultura 21 (1991-92), pp. 127160.Google Scholar

16 AGI, Lima 131. The document does not identify the parishes where the convents were to be founded. Seventeen years later, a 1610 report identifies two Franciscan convents among the Collaguas. The first was located in Yanque, with six friars in charge of four Indian parishes that provided a synodo of 450 pesos each. The second was located in Callalli, with seven friars in charge of four Indian parishes and collecting the same synodo. AGI, Lima 275.

17 AGI, Lima 135. The four priests, identified as Francisco de Loredo in Madrigal, Sebastian Duran in Caylloma, Pedro de Salinas in Lari, and Juan de Camargo in Maca and Ichupampa, vehemently denied the accusations raised by the Indians. Although the results of their appeals are unknown, only Francisco de Loredo left further archival traces. In 1615, he sent the authorities of the recently created Diocese of Arequipa an account of his services, asking for a promotion. In his résumé, Loredo stated that he had been the vicario of the Collagua Province and had served the parish of Madrigal since 1595. AGI, Lima 326.

18 Canedo, Lino, “Introduction,” in Coronica de la Religiosissima Provincia de los Doce Apostoles del Peru de N.P.S. Francisco de la Regular Observancia [1651] (Washington: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1957)Google Scholar. The chronicler completed several other texts during his lifetime. Amongst them, his biography of St. Francisco Solano, his Relación de la Provincia de los Doce Apostoles, and his Teatro de la Iglesia de Lima are widely known.

19 Coronica de la Religiosissima Provincia, Lib. 1, chapter XVII.

20 Although the chronicler portrayed Villacarrillo’s decision as arbitrary, it is likely that the comisario deemed the evangelical training of Creole friars insufficient to undertake work among Indian flocks. In 1583, Fray Juan del Castillo, probably a Spaniard who joined the Franciscan Order in Peru, asked permission to go back to Lima after spending five years at the University of Alcalá. The friar had been trying “to recruit four or five Franciscans who could read theology and stand up in a pulpit” to parish work among Peruvian Indians following Villacarrillo’s instructions. AGI, Indiferente 2093, No. 191, 1583.

21 Kunitisuyu was the portion of the Inca Empire “that begins West of Cusco and reaches the sea” according to the Indian chronicler Felipe Guarnan Poma de Ayala and included the southwestern part of presentday Peru. See his El Primer Nueva Corónica y Buen Gobierno, fol. 913. The Spaniards called it “Condesuyo” and founded there the city of Arequipa in 1540 in order to control the region and help their expansion towards the South.

22 Ulloa y Mogollón, well acquainted with local Indian traditions, collected additional ethnographic information on both groups. According to the Corregidor, both Indian groups used skull deformation to honor their paqarinas and display ethnic affiliation, a practice later firmly banned by Viceroy Toledo. See Avendaño, Máximo Neira, “Arequipa Prehispánica” in Historia General de Arequipa, Avendaño, Máximo Neira et al. (Arequipa: Fundación M.J. Bustamante de la Fuente, 1990), pp. 5184, p. 177.Google Scholar

23 On the notion of “archipelago” settling, see the seminal work by Murra, John V., The economic organization of the lnca State (Greenwich: JAI Press, 1980).Google Scholar

24 In the 1970s, Peruvian ethnohistorian Franklin Pease collected a local variation of the widespread myth of Inkarrí, a colonial version of a creator-deity, in Yanque. The story describes how the god assigned crops to the different Indian villages according to altitude zones, from potatoes in the high plateau to seaweed (cochayuyo) on the coast. G.Y., Franklin Pease, “Una versión ecológica del mito de Inkarri,” in Hartmann, Roswih and Oberem, Udo, eds., Amerikanistische Studien Libro Jubilar en homanaje a Hermann Trimbom (St. Augustin: Haus Völker u. Kulturen, Anthropos-Inst., 1978), vol. 2, pp. 136139.Google Scholar

25 Fray Luis Jerónimo de Oré, who compiled the earliest oral account on the Collaguas, reports that Mayta Capac married Mama Yacchi, the daughter of a Collagua native chief and thus consolidated the incorporation of the region into the Inca Empire. To honor the newlyweds, the ethnic group built a copper house later destroyed by Gonzalo Pizarro to provide his horses with horseshoes. Using his linguistic abilities, Oré managed to find the building remains and melted the metal to fabricate bells for the church of Coporaque. Oré, Symbolo Catholico Indiano, fol. 41. According to the cusqueño chronicler Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, instead, Mayta Capac visited the Arequipa Valley and, finding it scarcely populated, ordered three thousand mitmaq families to settle in five newly founded villages. Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Comentarios Reales de los Incas, Lib. 2, Cap. 9.

26 Rodríguez, Guillermo Galdós, “Naciones Ancestrales y la Conquista Incaica” in Avendaño, Máximo Neira et al., Historia General de Arequipa, pp. 185213, p. 186 Google Scholar. On the remarkable hydraulic engineering techniques used to build the terraces, see John M. Treacy, Las Chacras de Coporaque.

27 Ulloa y Mogollón, Relación, p. 316.

28 Franklin Pease G.Y., “Una version ecológica,” p. 138.

29 His brother Gonzalo, for instance, was granted the Collaguas in an encomienda that he later used to fund his rebellion against the Crown. For a complete list of the Arequipeño encomenderos in southwestern Peru see Davies, Keith A., Landowners in Colonial Peru (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1984)Google Scholar, appendix A. Some of their biographies are in Lockhart, James, Spanish Peru, 1532–1560. A Social History (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968)Google Scholar and his The Men of Cajamarca. A Social and Biographical Study of the First Conquerors of Peru (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1972). For a detailed study of the Pizarra brothers’ state, see Gabai, Rafael Varón, Francisco Pizarro and his Brothers. The Illusion of Power in Sixteenth-Century Peru (University of Oklahoma Press, 1997).Google Scholar

30 Cook, Alexandra Parma and Cook, Noble David, Good Faith and Trustful Ignorance. A Case of Transatlantic Bigamy (Duke University Press, 1991).Google Scholar

31 See Medina, Alejandro Málaga, “Toledo y las reducciones de indios en Arequipa. Aspecto demográfico” in Historiografía y Bibliografía Americanista 16:3, pp. 389400 Google Scholar. See also his “Los Collaguas en la Historia de Arequipa en el siglo XVI” in Pease, Franklin, ed., Collaguas I (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 1977), pp. 93129.Google Scholar

32 “Los Collaguas en la historia de Arequipa,” p. 108.

33 About the successful use that the local Indians made of the Arequipan urban market, see Takahashi, HitoshiMigración y Trabajo en el Sur Andino” in Etnografía e Historia del Mundo Andino, Masuda, Shozo, ed. (University of Tokyo, 1986), pp. 10938.Google Scholar

34 See Davies, , Landowners in Colonial Peru, pp. 2027 Google Scholar, for a detailed description of the Arequipan changing attitudes towards land use between the early 1540s and the mid 1550s.

35 Marsilli, “God and Evil,” Chapter Three, “Sex, Lies, and Beating: Or How to Make Sweet Relationships Go Sour in the Diocese of Arequipa.”

36 Alexandra Parma Cook and Noble David Cook, Good Faith, p. 30.

37 Crespo, Juan Carlos, “Los Collaguas en la Visita de Alonso Hernández de Bonilla,” in Collaguas, pp. 5391.Google Scholar

38 Málaga Medina, “Los Collaguas en la historia de Arequipa,” pp. 114–115.

39 Castaneda, C. E., “The Corregidor in Spanish Colonial Administration” in HAHR 9:4, pp. 446470, p. 450.Google Scholar

40 Ibid., p. 457.

41 Ibid., p. 456.

42 Kroeber, C. B., “The mobilization of Philip II’s revenue in Peru, 1590–1596” in The Economic History Review, New Series, 10:3 (1958), pp. 439449, p. 442.Google Scholar

43 AGI, Justicia 480, “Visita Hecha al Virrey del Perú y Presidente de la Real Audiencia de Los Reyes Don Fernando de Torres y Portugal, Conde del Villar, 1588–1594,” fol. 1190 ss. See the transcription in “Los Collaguas en la Visita de Alonso Fernandez de Bonilla” by Juan Carlos Crespo, in Collaguas I, pp. 53–91.

44 Spalding, Karen, “Kuracas and commerce: A chapter in the evolution of Andean society” in HAHR 53(4) 1973, pp. 581599 Google Scholar. See also her “Social climbers: changing patterns of mobility among the Indians of Colonial Peru” in HAHR 50:4 (1970), pp. 645–664.

45 Marsilli, “God and Evil,” Chapter Two “Build your Church, Pay for Your Indians’ Taxes: The Making of a Career in the Diocese of Arequipa.”

46 Ibid., Chapter Three, “Sex, Lies, and Beating: Or How to Make Sweet Relationships Go Sour in the Diocese of Arequipa.”

47 See my discussion of the 1671 case of idolatry among the Indians of Chichas, and Salamanca, in “El Diablo en Familia: Herejes, hechiceros e idólatras en Arequipa Colonial” in Más allá de la dominacion y resistencia: Ensayos de Historia Peruana (IEP, forthcoming).Google Scholar

48 For an analysis of cases of Indian idolatry among Arequipan kuracas during the late colonial period, see Millones, Luis, “Los ganados del Señor: Mecanismos de Poder en las comunidades Andinas. Arequipa, siglos XVII-XIX,” Historia y Cultura 11 (1978), pp. 743.Google Scholar

49 Archivo Regional de Arequipa, Protocolo 187, fol. 6r-9v.

50 “Visita de Yanquecollaguas (Urinsaya),” by Gaspar Verdugo, Museo Nacional de Historia, Lima-Perú, See the transcription in Collaguas I, pp. 191–343.

51 Cock, Guillermo, “Los kuracas de los Collaguas; poder político y económico” in Historia y Cultura, 1976-77, vol. 10, pp. 95118, p. 102.Google Scholar

52 “Visita de Yanquecollaguas (Urinsaya),” fol. lv/2r.

53 Ibid., fol. 44v-96r.

54 Ibid., fol. 97r-155v.

55 Cock, “Los kuracas de los Collaguas,” p. 114.

56 Marsilli, “God and Evil,” Chapter Four “The Bad Indian Christian: Heresy, Witchcraft, and Idolatry.”

57 Salomon, Frank, “Introductory Essay: The Huarochiri Manuscript” in The Huarochirí Manuscript. A Testament of Ancient and Colonial Andean Religion, Salomon, and Urioste, , eds. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991), pp. 138, p. 4.Google Scholar

58 Alejandro Málaga Medina, “Los Collaguas en la historia de Arequipa,” p. 126.

59 We do not know the precise affiliation of the fourth kuraca, Agustin Casa. Yet, because he is listed last in the document we can assume that he was from Lari Collaguas Hurinsaya.

60 Ramirez, Susan E., “The ‘Dueño de Indios’: Thoughts on the consequences of shifting bases of power of the ‘Curaca de los Viejos Antiguos’ under the Spanish in sixteenth-century Peru,” in HAHR 67:4, pp. 575610, p. 592.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

61 Ibid., pp. 596–7.

62 The case of the Cañipa family, in the highlands of Arica, probably constitutes the best-studied case of creation of a colonial chiefdom using Spanish bureaucracy in the Diocese of Arequipa. See Hidalgo, Jorge, “Cacicazgos del sur occidental Andino: origen y evolución colonial” in Chiefdoms in the Americas, edited by Drennan, Robert D. and Uribe, Carlos A. (University Press of America, 1987), vol. 2, pp. 29896.Google Scholar Also Hidalgo, Jorge and Durston, Alan, “Reconstitución étnica colonial en la sierra de Arica: El cacicazgo de Codpa, 1650–1780,” in Actas del IV Congreso internacional de Etnohistoria (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 1998), vol. 2, pp. 3271.Google Scholar