Coloniality and the Rise of Liberation Thinking during the Sixteenth Century 9781641894104, 9781641894111

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COLONIALITY AND THE RISE OF LIBERATION THINKING DURING THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

Mesoamerica, the Caribbean, and South America, 700–​1700 focuses on Central and South America and the Caribbean region in the period from ca. 700 to ca. 1700 as a critical site of conquest and colonialism, religious syncretism and exchange, and social and cultural interchange. The period in this region saw the rise of new nations, such as the Nahua (Aztec), Maya, and Inca, heterogeneous in every sense of the word. Intellectual, religious, and artistic fusion embodied new and vibrant categories and offer us a more global approach to “Medieval and Renaissance Studies.”

COLONIALITY AND THE RISE OF LIBERATION THINKING DURING THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY THOMAS WARD

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. © 2020, Arc Humanities Press, Leeds

The author asserts their moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Permission to use brief excerpts from this work in scholarly and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is an exception or limitation covered by Article 5 of the European Union’s Copyright Directive (2001/29/EC) or would be determined to be “fair use” under Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act September 2010 Page 2 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Act (17 USC §108, as revised by P.L. 94–​553) does not require the Publisher’s permission.

ISBN (print): 9781641894104 eISBN (PDF): 9781641894111 www.arc-​humanities.org

To the memory of Luis Eyzaguirre, my advisor, my friend, and an early inspiration for this book.

For some time after the discovery of America, the first enquiry of the Spaniards, when they arrived upon any unknown coast, used to be, if there was any gold or silver to be found in the neighbourhood? By the information which they received, they judged whether it was worth while to make a settlement there, or if the country was worth the conquering. (Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, book 4, chap. 1 [vol. 1])

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi

Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Chapter 1. Everyday Coloniality and Early Social Slavery Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Chapter 2. The Elusive Division-​of-​Power Ideal. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

Chapter 3. Dismantling the “Natural” Theory of Slavery. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

Chapter 4. Liberation Thinking: Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Chapter 5. Liberation Thinking: The Americas (Abya Yala) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 Bibliography. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201 Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223

ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures Figure 1. Erasmus, The Praise of Follie. Frontispiece. 1571. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 Figure 2. Artisanal representation of Noah’s Ark. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176 Figure 3. Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, Nueva corónica y buen gobierno (p. 576). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184

Maps

Map 1. Primary ethnic nations in Anahuac. From Nigel Davies, The Aztecs (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980), 19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Map 2. The Mayan region. From POPOL VUH: The Definitive Edition of the Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life and the Glories of Gods and Kings, revised and expanded by Dennis Tedlock, translator. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Map 3. Member nations of Tawantinsuyo during Atahuallpa’s government, corresponding to Peru and Bolivia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I mostly worked in quiet solitude while engaged in researching and writing what

eventually became a trilogy, Decolonizing Indigeneity: New Approaches to Latin American Literature (2017), The Formation of Latin American Nations (2018), and the present book, Coloniality and the Rise of Liberation Thinking during the Sixteenth Century. For this segment, my gratitude goes to various institutions and people, beginning with Luis B. Eyzaguirre (1926–​1999) at the University of Connecticut. Luis took on the enormous task of being my advisor for a doctoral dissertation on the Peruvian poet and essayist, Manuel González Prada, even though his field was the Boom novel of Latin America. For that I have always been eternally grateful. However, my debt to Luis goes beyond that two-​year project which eventually resulted in my first book, La anarquía inmanentista de Manuel González Prada (1998). Before he advised me on that dissertation, he had developed and taught an interesting graduate seminar in which I had the good fortune to read what are usually and typically called the Chronicles of the Indies, or simply, the Colonial Chronicles. These historiographical tracts were interesting to read, but even more so because we contextualized them with contemporary humanist masterworks from Europe. I began to see the relationship between Hernán Cortés’s letters and Baldassare Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier. Fernández de Oviedo’s Sumario de la natural historia de las Indias (Summary of the Natural History of the Indies) and Garcilaso’s Comentarios reales entered into dialogue with masterpieces such as Erasmus’s Praise of Folly and Thomas More’s Utopia. The commingling of colonialist historiography and the grand ideas of humanism piqued my interest because I could see it deepened our understanding of each and I have felt extremely fortunate to have had that intellectual experience that Luis instigated in me. Recently I consulted the web portal for the Luis B. Eyzaguirre Memorial Lecture Series at the University of Connecticut. It states the mission for the series “allows the University community to know the human side of Latin American and Caribbean Studies.” This describes Luis so perfectly. He was always looking at the human side of things, an aspect of our existence that oftentimes gets lost in the academic world of enrollments, committee assignments, and the utilitarian goals of the university in this post-​modern, post-​humanist, post-​Liberal Arts era. I dedicate this book to Luis. Besides Luis’s model and my first readings from that model with him, there have been other significant influences on this book. An early one resulted from a trip to Nicaragua in 1990 where revolutionary fervor was still everywhere, even though the Sandinistas had just lost the elections to Violeta Chamorro. My interaction with some leaders from Christian base communities accelerated my developing an interest in how to apply the Bible to real life. Presentations by members of AMENLAE, the Luisa Amanda Espinoza Association of Nicaraguan Women, were most inspiring. My discussions with local Sandinista leaders in San Juan de Limay, Estelí, let me see how to organize societies

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in ways that favor people over money. And of course, many books I bought on that trip challenged my thinking, especially those by Claribel Alegría, Gioconda Belli, Jaime Wheelock Román, and certainly the writings of Augusto César Sandino. Other people and institutions helped me along the way with this project. With my old friend Jesús Díaz Caballero of California State University-​East Bay I had ongoing conversations early on about the nature of the nation, the best editions for study, and other related issues. I will never forget those stimulating conversations with Jesús. Another inspiration derives from interactions with Sara Castro-​Klarén whose books provided stimulating reading for me. The conferences and seminars she has organized at Johns Hopkins University, just a mile down the road from Loyola, have opened new avenues of thought for me. Her encouragement has motivated me to keep going with my research, especially when bogged down with teaching and academic service obligations. I am in awe of her intellect and her kindness. If I had not had various conversations about liberation thinking with Javier Valiente Núñez who was writing a dissertation on the topic directed by Sara at the Johns Hopkins University during that period, Coloniality and the Rise of Liberation Thinking during the Sixteenth Century would not have taken the form it did. In many ways, Javier helped me to organize my thoughts and to realize that liberation thinking was not something limited to the twentieth century. Slowly I began to conceptualize the idea of a liberation thinking developing during the Renaissance. While studying independently during the summers of 1983 and 1985 in José Pascual Buxo’s Poetic Seminar, which took place in Torre II de Humanidades at the Universidad Nacional Autónima de México, I had many long conversations with the researcher Luis Wainerman. His taking the time to not only explain some of the concepts for the seminar but also orienting me in Mexican studies will always be at the forefront of my gratitude. From those conversations Luis and I have developed a life-​long friendship which continues to expand my views of things to this day. During summer trips to Peru over the last decades, I have had many long and stimulating conversations on the colonial era, on philosophy, and on literature with Wilfredo Kapsoli Escudero, David Sobrevilla, and Ricardo Silva Santisteban. Ricardo had many insights into the chronicles, David, who passed away in 2014, offered many philosophical critiques on my thinking, and my good friend Wilfredo on just about everything, but especially on the Andean world in general, and on Guaman Poma de Ayala in particular. Thinking about Latin America from inside Latin America is hugely different from thinking about Latin America from outside Latin America. My gratitude goes to my home institution Loyola University Maryland and the various centers, entities, departments, and people there who have helped me along the way. My colleagues Joseph Wieczorek, Leslie Morgan, Sharon Nell, and Thomas McCreight were most helpful, Joe who read sections at the onset of this project, Leslie as part of ongoing discussions, Sharon who let me teach a course on the authors I cover in this book, and Tom for help with some Latin language issues, but perhaps more importantly, for his engaging and supportive friendship over the years. An email exchange I had with my colleague Claire Mathews McGinnis in the theology department was also helpful on determining the precise use of terminology. Also from the theology department my very knowledgeable colleague Daniel Castillo got me up to speed on the



Acknowledgements

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bibliography for African American Liberation Theology. A class development grant from the Catholic Studies program in 2001 for a new course, “Liberation Theology for its Origins” allowed me to explore some of these writers and themes with students whose fresh outlook really opened my eyes. A summer research grant from the Research and Sabbatical Committee and the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs four years later was equally instrumental. Being named as a Faculty Fellow for the Seminar on Service-​Learning and Engaged Scholarship that the Center for Community Service and Justice at Loyola organized during the summer of 2006 got me thinking about applied knowledge, what the Center calls engaged scholarship. Especially helpful was the support and guidance of Robin Crews and Megan Linz Dickenson. The more than 150 students who did service learning in my classes over the last twenty years along with the knowledge they brought back to the classroom truly inspired me. One student in particular at Loyola really surprised me and provided for a most stimulating series of meetings. After encountering Bartolomé de las Casas in class, he proposed an independent study on the Apología o declaración y defensa universal de los derechos del hombre y de los pueblos. I was not sure what I would be getting into, but Daniel Hahesy was so enthusiastic, even offering to purchase two copies of the book at Schenhof’s Foreign Books in Cambridge, Massachusetts, one for me and one for him, that I agreed to his proposal. Thus, during the spring 2005 semester, Daniel and I met once a week for coffee while we worked on the Apología. Having never worked with this text I found the ideas we discussed most provocative. I am grateful for Daniel’s interest and passion. That work we did was fundamental for this book as well as for ­chapter 4 of Decolonizing Indigeneity mentioned above. Some service-learning students have done work with Artesanos Don Bosco, a service organization Father Ugo de Censi founded that teaches people in the town of Chacas, in Ancash, Peru, how to make fine furniture in a hybrid Inkan-​Italian style. Artesanos Don Bosco sells the furniture in my city Baltimore (and Rome and Lima), and the “profits” go back to Don Bosco’s schools in the high Andes. My students’ work and my involvement with Artesanos Don Bosco over the last two decades has certainly improved my thinking on the quest for liberation from colonialism, intracolonialism, and neocolonialism since my initial experience with the Christian base communities in Nicaragua, however imperfect my concept still may be. The trip to Nicaragua, and other journeys to Paraguay, Mexico, Argentina, Chile as well as long-​term stays in Peru and experiential learning here in Baltimore with Artesanos, the East Baltimore Latino Organization, the Mayor’s Hispanic Liaison Office, the Esperanza Center (Catholic Charities), and Casa de Maryland, were additional important sources of knowledge and inspiration in this vision quest. It may surprise younger readers that books were also of notable influence in forming this project. I have become close to Erasmus, St. Thomas More, Las Casas, and Guaman Poma de Ayala and to all the historians and commentators who have filled in the gaps. Books—​so many of them still waiting to be digitized—​are the key to past and I hope in some way I have unlocked a slice of that which came before. Some books and editions were extremely hard to find, and thanks to Peggy Field, Ginny Harper, Nicholas Triggs, and Christy Dentler, interlibrary loan librarians at the Loyola/​Notre Dame Library who

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were indefatigable in helping me with those materials. My research assistant Ana Pina Rico helped with some important edits in ­chapter  5 toward the end of this process. Loyola’s Center for the Humanities funded that research assistant as well as provided assistance with permissions and other publication costs. I appreciate Robert E. Bjork, Simon Forde and Danna R. Messer’s interest in publishing my book with Arc Humanities Press. The suggestions and gentle nudging from Danna and her colleagues Ed Robinson and Gail Welsh got me through the final challenges of converting the manuscript into the polished book. Heather Dubnick’s attention to detail as she compiled the index is most appreciated. Finally, my biggest inspiration comes from my most wonderful wife, Ursula Sayers-​Ward, the most committed liberation thinker I know.

INTRODUCTION

The long sixteenth century from around 1492 to 1616 marked one of the

most substantial cultural transformations the world had ever known. On the bright side, the literary phenomenon known as humanism flowered, and on the dark side, several Mediterranean powers were hungry to expand their territories imperialistically. Deep-​ thinking scholars such as Enrique Dussel, Walter Mignolo, and Jean Franco hold this period to coincide with the birth of modernity and the institution of worldwide colonialism.1 Because of these two interlocking aspects, the brighter and the darker, Walter Mignolo and others describe a paradigm to explain them, the modern/​colonial system.2 The European encounter with the New World resulted in large and small wars with literally thousands of nations that were then folded into the transatlantic circuit. In the throes of the ensuing chaos, the Portuguese and Spanish imposed an imperial system that stretched around the globe, the Portuguese reaching Goa in 1510 and Magellan the Philippines in 1521, the same year Hernán Cortés captured Tenochtitlan. Empires, loosely defined, were powerful states composed by multiple nations, oftentimes involved in a process of integrating additional nations into the configuration. The Spanish Empire was at its apogee during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when it controlled what is today Spain and Portugal, Naples, the Low Countries (Netherlands), the Philippines, cities and islands in Africa, and of course Abya Yala. Abya Yala, a Kuna word, encompassed the geographical region that ended up constituting the Spanish Empire in the Western Hemisphere and ran from Central California and Florida in the north to Patagonia in the south.3 While some segments of the Empire broke away during the seventeenth century, much of it remained intact until the first decades of the nineteenth when a large chunk brokered its independence, the Spanish-​American War of 1898 when Spain “lost” Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Philippines, and Guam, and in the twentieth when it granted independence to Spanish Guinea in 1968 and Spanish Sahara in 1975. The Dutch Empire was not far behind the Spanish one and at its apex it held lands in North and South America, in India, various coastal regions of Africa and Malesia and Timor. The greatest empire of them all was the British one which between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries came to dominate the world to a magnitude even greater than the earlier Spanish one did. The British Empire at one time or another included Canada, the Iroquois Confederation and other Native American nations, what was known as the 1  Dussel, “Eurocentrism and Modernity”; Mignolo, The Idea of Latin America, 5; Franco, Cruel Modernity, 5. While slavery, feudalism, and mercantilism may not suggest modernity, the birth of the nation-​state does. For Worth, “The period when Spain gained ascendency was certainly one where the practices of diplomacy and statehood gained momentum,” Rethinking Hegemony, 26. 2  Mignolo discusses this in various texts. A good place to start is “Coloniality at Large.” 3  On Abya Yala see Arias, Recovering Lost Footprints, 2:19–​30.

2

Introduction

Thirteen Colonies, British Guiana, a strip running down central and east Africa, India, Australia, Burma, Iraq, Syria, and a multitude of islands spread around the globe. While two of these empires were the ones anticipated by More and Erasmus and the third was lived by Las Casas and Guaman Poma, there were many other empires that have defined the world. Viewed together they offer a flavor of the world’s political culture that tends toward certain groups dominating other groups causing the long-​armed trajectory described in this book as colonialism and its aftereffects, coloniality. Among the other important empires that deserve mention were the Han, Median, and Roman in the Ancient World. Later, the Almohad Empire, Tawantinsuyu, the Triple Alliance of Central Mexico, the Holy Roman, the Austro-​Hungarian, the Russian, and the Ashanti empires went through their rise and fall. The central lesson to be learned about empires is that there seems to be a human tendency that leans toward power, and powerful nations tend to want to conquer other nations to extract wealth from them. To build empires, a discourse was needed to bring people into the idea and plan of expansion. While the public discourse of the Spanish and Portuguese empires was one of religion, the spreading of Catholicism, the English who would reach Plymouth in 1620 would do so in search of religious freedom, not for the people they encountered, but for themselves only. The Spanish and the English had a role in uprooting, enslaving, and even killing millions of people, even if stated religious goals were sometimes achieved. Here we are interested in the Spanish version of what we call the Colonial Force.

The Colonial Force, Coloniality, and Liberation from Them

Despite all the stated and unstated reasons for the Spanish presence in Abya Yala, the thirst for gold was a primary motor of the colonial force comprised of the initial transatlantic invasion, and the institution of the imperial system, eventually accepted by local authorities.4 This source of wealth was depleted in Puerto Rico and Hispaniola in a matter of decades. Historian Patricia Seed notes that this depletion resulted in two stages, which were at once political, economic, and social. Multiple bands of Spaniards began to search new lands for gold and some individuals began to consider new activities on the gold-​depleted islands. Chief among those activities were agriculture.5 Since conquering Spaniards were not prone to dirtying their hands, chattel slavery and other forms of forced labor became important components of the newly forming societies’ economies. Economist Immanuel Wallerstein explains this transition in the following way: At first Spaniards imposed a pilfering economy and later an economy of exploitation.6 To pilfer gold, Spaniards forced Indigenous peoples and of course their slaves into work gangs for the extracting. Eventually throughout Abya Yala, masses of runa, macehualli, slaves, or other classes of people had to face material and mental coloniality as a quotidian reality in the mines, in the fields. If Erasmus and Thomas More, two antihegemonic thinkers in Europe discussed in this book, had to consider courtly life (which seemed to be their realm of experience), 4  For a fuller discussion of the Colonial Force, see Ward, Decolonizing Indigeneity, 1–​33. 5  Seed, “Exploration and Conquest,” 103–19.

6  Wallerstein, The Modern World-​System, 337.



Introduction

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Bartolomé de las Casas and Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, two anticolonial thinkers in Abya Yala also discussed in this book, had to consider the diverse forms of servitude. Chattel slaves considered private property, indios encomendados obliged to work on the encomiendas in exchange for Catholic indoctrination, and mitayos compelled to work in the mines or the fields located in the Central Andes were all varieties of the same exploitation.7 Other kinds of Indigenous peons were integrated into the social labor fabric and their constricted everyday activities were considered “normal.” The same was true for the everyday runa people of the Andes and the everyday macehualli people of Central Mexico. Spaniards ejected them from their homes, compelled them into wars they did not understand, and required them to build churches and other edifices. Again. Spaniards regarded these activities “normal.” Men were not the only ones to withstand the worst of the colonial force. Some of these esclavos, encomendados, and mitayos were actually esclavas, encomiendadas, and mitayas. They were women and girls who had to carry the added burden of their sex with them, which became another layer of subordination and thus coloniality, also considered routine. Finally, people were migrating from one region to another, oftentimes as slaves who had to take part in the conquering of yet additional peoples. Imperialism’s uprooting people from their homes and communities was another part of everyday coloniality when viewed as “normal.” What was considered “normal” at that time, can today, with the help of decolonial theory and thinking, be considered coloniality, a condition first described by sociologist Anibal Quijano, and later developed by philosopher Enrique Dussel, and especially by the social philologist Walter Mignolo. Wallerstein helps us to grasp the intricacies of the process too. He notes, while Spaniards were engaged in their pilfering and exploitation activities, they rationalized those activities as campaigns to evangelize heathens.8 We now recognize that that rationalization is integral to coloniality because it formed originally as part of the logic of the colonial force with its military, political, and economic facets. It became an invisible element of the force that exists in the mind. Owen Worth explains that “the Spanish and the Portuguese explorations led to a mindset that placed expansion and strategic state aims to the fore.”9 Along with expansion and state aims, personal ambition—​and greed—​also influenced that mindset. Whether resulting from hegemony or coloniality, mental considerations were subordinated to the subconsciousness or kept out of the mind altogether. Coloniality of mind keeps the imperial perpetrators blinded to the fact that what they were doing was egregious, anti-​Christian, and anti-​human. Not all Europeans, however, where suffering from coloniality of mind to the same degree. Catholicism’s importation into Abya Yala may have come alongside the military conquest, hence the expression “the cross and the sword,” but once implanted, the Europeans, despite their best efforts, could not control all thought. Indeed, they could not control all religious thought in Europe, there was dissension, and thus was born Protestantism, and 7  As established by Gibson, I italicize each Nahuatl or Qheswa term when first introduced, dropping the italics in subsequent usage. In the interest of standardization, I extend this practice to Spanish terms not included in Webster’s New World Collegiate Dictionary. 8  Wallerstein, The Modern World-​System, 48. 9  Worth, Rethinking Hegemony, 26.

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Introduction

they could not control all religious thought in what was for them the New World. There was dissension, and thus was born liberation thinking, in some cases a kind of liberation theology avant la lettre. Not all liberation thinking developed in the throes of colonialism. Indeed, we can delineate three categories. Some European Catholics developed antihegemonic thinking in their own countries and realities in the hopes of improving societies and the perceived corruption of the Church. Other European Catholics directly participated in the campaigns to conquer the lands that would become the Americas but began “to see the light” and developed liberation thinking that we now know to have been a decolonial project. Finally, countless Amerindians became Catholic too, and some of them were able to gain enough perspective to cultivate liberation thinking. This book considers four intellectuals who cultivated what we are calling liberation thinking in the context of the corruption of power in Europe (More, Erasmus), and in the wars against the original Americans and the coloniality it generated (Las Casas), and in the colonial experience of Amerindian Catholic spirituality (Guaman Poma). Three of these intellectuals are representative of the great empires of the Atlantic world, Las Casas directly involved with Columbus’s Spanish enterprise, Erasmus from the Low Countries when they were under Spanish control and from Rotterdam, the city that would later become the seat of the colonialist Dutch East India Company, and More from England, the country that would develop into the British Empire. Guaman Poma’s family first suffered under the Inkan Empire and then came under the influence of Spanish imperialism. Each of these authors had to interact with an imperial culture, either in insipient form such as More and Erasmus, in the middle of an expansive thrust in the case of Las Casas, and in a maturing colonial situation during Guaman Poma’s life. All four of them were members of the same European literary network. Erasmus and Las Casas living in King Charles’s Holy Roman Empire, More living in England, all three humanists participating in a network of literary production often composed in Renaissance Latin, but also in the vernacular. All three becoming authors intensely read and discussed in the New World, reaching the eyes and ears of Guaman Poma. The Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas serves as synecdoche for early modern liberation thinking, his name is the one that comes to mind in this regard. This is not because he was a purely liberation thinker. In fact, he was not. Estelle Tarica advises against viewing him in such a fashion because “Las Casas did not question the validity of the colonial enterprise overall so long as its goal was Christianization.”10 But indeed, Las Casas was one of the Spaniards who went farthest in overcoming the mindlessness and greed that characterized many of his contemporaries. He is the one who began to clear a path. Las Casas is important for this reason, he laid down a path on how to go against the grain, how to move toward justice. And indeed many, although not all post-​ Independence indigenists still felt the pull. For Tarica, “Modern indigenismo bears the traces of Las Casas, whether directly influenced by him or not.”11 What was the pathway that Las Casas established? 10  Tarica, Inner Life of Mestizo Nationalism, 17. 11  Tarica, Inner Life of Mestizo Nationalism, 16.



Introduction

5

Because of the epiphany or conversion the former encomendero experienced, he wanted to turn around the abuse of the faith that occurred daily for political and economic purposes. Given that he could not control his fellow encomenderos, corregidores, or even ecclesiastics who became his peers and who favored the “just war” against Taíno, Inka, Chibcha, Pipil, and other Amerindian communities, he could only offer a recommendation to help those peoples survive in a violent transatlantic society whose sole purpose for existing, at least for the primary perpetrators of that violence, was to get rich. The brilliant solution that Las Casas offers is a message to all humans: happiness must be found within and the soul is superior to all that exists in a bellicose material world. He writes in The Only Way, “Since military arms are corporal and material, they cannot command by their nature that souls be held down, but bodies, things and places cannot extend their power beyond the material” (Que las armas bélicas, corporales y materiales, no se ordenan por su naturaleza a sujetar los ánimos, sino los cuerpos, las cosas y los lugares, ya que son materiales y no pueden extender su virtud más allá de la materia).12 The idea that the soul is free for all even in the midst of temporal oppression is a wonderful way to give people a space to ponder their eventual liberation through self-​agency. Las Casas also talks about freedom in the liberal sense of private property and human rights. He demands that the king “have subjects who are so free that in Justice they cannot be deprived of their things, their liberties and their rights” (tenga súbditos tan libres que, en justicia, no pueden ser privados de sus cosas, ni de sus libertades, ni de sus derechos).13 In this, he distinguishes himself from Thomas More’s fictional proposal to abolish private property. More did not have to interface with Conquistadors’ greed for material things, Las Casas did. For Las Casas, both “freedoms” were interconnected. What is beautiful about this theory is that when an individual has lost all (family, calpulli, ayllu), acknowledging the soul’s freedom is an excellent avenue for an individual to pursue happiness or tranquility. This inner peace serves as a springboard in the search for temporal freedoms that are secondary from a transcendental viewpoint and are primary when commensurate with an immanent one. Even if Amerindians tended to conceptualize property in communal terms, the acknowledgement of rights restores to them their dignity. However, social change begins from within. The proposal of spiritual freedom in the belly of temporal oppression is not an isolated idea. An example from twentieth-​century fiction can serve to fill in between the lines of sixteenth-​century historiography. Ecuadoran Luz Argentina Chiriboga’s historical novel Jonatás y Manuela is set in the colonial era, framing three generations of a family culminating with Manuela Saenz’s slave, Jonatás. It is narrated neither from the Liberator Simón Bolívar’s perspective, nor from his concubine Manuela Sáenz’s, but from Jonatás’s perspective. Slavery, before the worldwide thrust to abolish it as the nineteenth century progressed, constitutes a negative component of the nation. Specifically, Chiriboga’s historical novel foregrounds inner spirituality, which goes against coloniality

12  Las Casas, Del único modo, 414. Unless otherwise noted, all French and Spanish translations are mine and appear in the text parenthetically. Latin translations with their sources appear in footnotes. 13  Las Casas, Del único modo, 416.

6

Introduction

of the mind resulting from the slave system. Chiriboga works out the story of Ba-​Lunda’s journey from Nigeria to the Jesuit sugar fields of the Western Hemisphere. Fiction fills in gaps in the historical record, allowing readers to get into the slave’s head. Hence, when Ba-​Lunda is raped and converted into the slave Rosa Jumandi, she must find a way out. Since there is no physical mode of escape, the only possible one is a spiritual one: “Despite being locked up and sixteen-​hour work days, Ba-​Lunda created in her head a world hitherto unknown in which she took refuge” (A pesar del encierro y del trabajo durante dieciséis horas, Ba-​Lunda creó en su mente un mundo antes desconocido, en el que se refugiaba).14 Chiriboga is proposing a space for coloniality-​free thought for the enslaved person that reflects the place of the soul in Las Casas’s liberative theology, the Erasmian place of social consciousness, where knowledge, experience, and wisdom commingle.15 Liberating thinking of course could lead to liberation acting.16 Some humanist efforts were directly concerned with the temporal realm. A clear example would be Alfonso de Valdés’s Erasmus-​influenced Diálogo de Mercurio y Carón.17 This Diálogo consists of a long succession of souls passing before Charon in judgment of their earthly sins. The desire to correct temporal foibles through personal spirituality pervades the work. Valdés was a man of the court who wanted to rehabilitate temporal power directly. The spirituality of correcting temporal excesses is both therapeutic and ameliorative. Valdés was not alone in this. Other thinkers contemporary to him were trying to reform the patterns of spiritual power to cause subsequently a correction of the temporal realm. Las Casas, More, Erasmus, and Guaman Poma similarly fall into this category, albeit unevenly. Las Casas, while primarily concerned with Amerindian souls, spent long hours at meetings and tribunals fighting for Amerindian rights. More talks about reforming numerous temporal elements of society in his Utopia. Although Erasmus of Rotterdam did not really have a political mind, making him unlike his contemporary Machiavelli, he was exuberant in censuring kings and defining proper behaviour for princes, not to mention satirizing them and wayward bishops in The Praise of Folly. While Guaman Poma took part in visitas (religious inspection tours) concerned with Church and viceregal power, he also became one of the first native-​born people to develop a concern for the poor of Jesus Christ and express that concern in an alphabetic text. Although one could profess, as Huizinga does, that Erasmus “thought too naively of the corrigibility of mankind,”18 his high-​mindedness was precisely what made his thought fundamental in the development of progressive thought in Europe and the Americas. Guaman Poma also appears to be naive when he proposed a sovereign Andean monarchy, but it takes a mind free from coloniality to start to ponder the ultimate in decolonial possibilities. Where these writers were not naive was in their recognition of a cause–​effect relationship between the temporal-​spiritual and the spiritual-​temporal, and the need to 14  Chiriboga, Jonatás y Manuela, 35.

15  Adorno, Guaman Poma, 61, studies the notion of developing “conscience” in Guaman Poma.

16  Mignolo notes the relationship between “decolonial thinking and doing,” The Darker Side of Western Modernity, 3. 17  See Valdés, Diálogo de Mercurio y Carón. 18  Huizinga, Erasmus, 153.



Introduction

7

mitigate the factors causing the perversion of Christ’s well-​known axiom expressed in Matthew about rendering unto Caesar that which belongs to Caesar and unto God that which belongs to God.19 This “Splendid Principle” as Robert McAfee Brown celebrates it, is not part of a “manual” but is Christian knowledge that allows us, as he explains, to “make our own decisions, which are the only kind of ethnical decisions worthy of the name.”20 The maxim serves as the basis for temporal and spiritual power as a duality. Even though expressed as Christ’s words, neither everyday people nor power brokers tended to hold it up as a standard. Part of the problem is that even Christians who viewed themselves as Christians could not see that they were violating Jesus’s axiom as they plundered communities or exploited people. As Brown and Poling note, the axiom was a response to a question trying to dupe Jesus into a seditious response while under Roman domination, which he beautifully avoided. The axiom provokes debate (according to Brown) and can be argued either way. Poling explains: On the one hand, religion often serves the interests of the dominant classes at the expense of working class and poor people by sanctioning established authority and power—​Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s. On the other hand, religion often serves as a source of empowerment and resistance for those who suffer violence and oppression—​Render unto God that which is God’s.21

Since the maxim can be argued either way it is not found to be “dangerous” by the temporal powers. However, such a paradigm does result in a “tension,” Poling’s word, or in a “debate,” Brown’s word. Obviously to achieve liberation, especially anti​hegemonic or decolonial liberation, one must forsake political power and come down on the side of God. At least in the sixteenth century, that was the case. We can find the key to unlocking this paradox in the cleansing of the spiritual, the restoring of the division of temporal and spiritual power to society, and consequently the rectifying of the behaviours that give the division form. This rehabilitation of society by setting the spiritual free from the temporal creates what the well-​known Spanish philologist José Antonio Maravall, referring to this period, calls an “interior Christianity.”22 A Christianity from within boycotting exterior formulaic practices would move toward God, not away from God. The human body conceived as the temple of Christ brings greater spirituality. The mystics Santa Teresa de Ávila, San Juan de la Cruz, and to a lesser extent Fray Luis de León put this formula into practice.23 It is within this mystical tradition, perhaps initiated by Raimundo Lulio, that Christ’s axiom achieved full flowering.24 However, the mystics were concerned with personal 19  Matthew 22:21. For the full meaning and exegesis, Brown cites three locations in the Bible, Matthew 22:15–​22; Mark 12:13–​17; and Luke 20:20–​26. Saying Yes and Saying No, 36–​40. 20  Brown, Saying Yes and Saying No, 39. 21  Poling, Render unto God, 1. 22  Maravall, Carlos V, 215.

23  Bataillon studies Erasmus’s impact in Fray Luis’s De los nombres de Cristo in Erasmo, 761–​70.

24  Sugranyes de Franch explores Las Casas’s relationship with Lulio in his “Bartolomé de Las Casas.”

8

Introduction

spirituality, their soul’s individual relationship to God, more than social change. More, Erasmus, Las Casas, and Guaman Poma stand out because, without being mystics, they eschewed the collusion between the two powers, and they prescribed priorities for the organization of the present. By putting right the temporal elements of the spiritual kingdom, personal spirituality becomes greater. This in turn drives a greater morality into temporal behaviour on a daily basis. Put another way, inverse to the way coloniality of mind shackles cognitive development, spiritual cultivation extricates the mind from mundane temporal fetters. Humanism helped to ameliorate the spiritual orientation not only of major segments of Europe, but also of areas that were slowly becoming “Spanish America.” It is in this light of orientation that we find in More’s Utopia the tolerance toward other spiritual viewpoints. He does this when he resurrects Christ’s power partition by negating a state religion and allowing for personal beliefs. In a way, More’s real-​life appointment as Lord Chancellor of England in 1529 represented a bifurcation of power: he was only the third layperson to occupy the post since 1409. More’s immediate successor, Sir Thomas Audley, was also a layman, establishing a tradition that would bar churchmen from the position. Erasmus’s criticism of popes, and More and Guaman Poma’s of clergy was explicit in the need to limit their power while fostering greater spiritual freedom. Such a posture leads to the possibility of reform in the temporal realm, which all three thinkers viewed as corrupt. Las Casas’s placing of spiritual power before the temporal, as in More and Erasmus, would create a moral direction for behaviour. This spiritual power would function as an independent moral guiding post for the temporal sphere. Although we must concur with Matei Calinescu when he concludes, “the Renaissance itself was unable to go beyond replacing the authority of the church with the authority of antiquity,”25 these humanist thinkers’ importance lies in their yearning to reform the Church and make it more relevant to the people’s unswerving faith in renovation, not through creation, but through purification. This purging in itself was away from an ecclesiastical tradition that did not respond to people and created a thought which, though rooted in previous tradition (the Bible), formulated a “modern” mode of looking at the Church. Radical Christianity cleared a pathway for a new understanding of the world. Each of the four thinkers discussed in this book desired a conduct based on Christian love, fraternity, and equality. In the Americas, a more spiritual posture could restrict the inhumane treatment of the non-​Hispanic masses. In this the humanists banished the notion of utopia that evoked an improbable time and place. They identified with what Julio Ortega has termed the Castilian utopia that fuses time and explores the Promised Land.26 This type of project is more than literature, even though the medium is “literature.” The norm tendered for the colonies is spiritual growth before material gain, an everyday formula. All four authors, believing in free will in the face of predestination, 25  Calinescu, Faces of Modernity, 23. 26  Ortega, La cultura peruana, 12.



Introduction

9

created a principle of liberation that would propose the indisputable freedom of the soul in the midst of temporal oppression.27 Some may question why More, Erasmus, Las Casas, and Guaman Poma did not have greater success as humanists in their quests to overcome a natural concept of slavery in favor of a social one in the case of More and Las Casas, to liberate the mind in Erasmus’s case, to overturn temporal power in Guaman Poma’s. Perhaps, the answer lies in their being humanists. As Walter Mignolo explains, the humanists’ power gradually receded as the letrados, which is to say, elite lawyers, became detached from both the humanists and the medieval clericus.28 Eventually, a new globalizing mercantilist-​ tributary-​capitalist economy would leave the humanists behind in its wake. Their failure at reforming society does not mean their proposals were not desirable, it suggests that bright-​minded people had not yet found the way to reduce the levels of hegemony in society at large to the degree necessary for the Renaissance liberationists to be heard. In his Education of the Christian Prince, Erasmus warns, “Power without goodness is unmitigated tyranny, and without wisdom it is destruction, not government.”29 If Spaniards in the Indies had incorporated Jesus Christ’s teachings into their daily life as Erasmus insisted in his views on and for European society, there would have been no need for any kind of liberating discourse. Yet the murder and exploitation of native people easily could be taken as a call to adhere to Christ’s solidarity with the poor. If we consider Erasmus’s definition of tyranny, namely that the tyrant puts his own needs before the people, then the Spanish at the vanguard of the colonial force constituted literally thousands of princes putting their materialistic desires before the needs of the people, before even the necessity of Christianizing them. Viewed this way, most of these thousands of Spaniards were indeed not princes at all. They were nothing less than thousands of minor tyrants brandishing their “power without goodness” in an arbitrary way. People’s suffering and the resulting mistrust between them themselves when under imperialist subordination and between them and the imperial interlopers created an environment that would neither easily foster evangelization, nor collective resistance, nor stable governing institutions. The mistrust fostered was decidedly an aspect of the condition called coloniality, where people are not free to work and live together in harmony, and, instead, must interact hegemonically in individual and often selfish ways. For Worth, awareness of “hegemony has been used in different ways to aid the understanding of a whole range of phenomena in politics and, as an extension in social life.”30 Gramsci uses the word hegemony to refer to the condition of exploited people in post-​1870 Europe who are not only exploited but also accept their domination by the 27  On Las Casas as a prototype liberation theologian heralding the notions to emerge from Vatican II, see Ortega, “Las Casas.” 28  Mignolo, The Darker Side of the Renaissance, 290.

29  Erasmus, The Education, 22. “Hunc ternarium pro viribus absoluas oportet, nam potentia sine bonitate mera tyrannis est, sine sapientia pernicies, non regnum.” (Institutio principis christiani, 150) 30  Worth, Rethinking Hegemony, xvi.

10

Introduction

ruling class. Although Gramsci’s experience was twentieth-​century Italy, his consciousness of how power works, as noted by Ronaldo Munck, is equally applicable to colonial and postcolonial Latin American realities.31 In the Prison Notebooks, Gramsci explains that “hegemony … is characterized by a combination of force and consent which balance each other so that force does not overwhelm consent but rather appears to be backed by the consent of the majority.”32 Thus hegemony resides in the space between those in power who dominate and those without power who consent to being dominated. The hegemony that describes this condition is an integral aspect of coloniality when applied to imperial contexts. While, unquestionably, there was “power without goodness” in these kinds of relationships, there was also power “without wisdom,” which is “destruction.” Erasmus’s expression written in the courtly context of Europe evokes Las Casas’s most famous title variously rendered in English as the Devastation or Destruction of the Indies. Such a parallel between these humanist authors reveals that the Spanish were acting without wisdom, this last word understood as the combination of knowledge, experience, and good judgment. The system the colonial force put in place during the long sixteenth century, in many ways, remains fraught with those colonial and now neocolonial elements based on “power without goodness.” Spaniards as the guardians of the colonial force were nothing more than petty tyrants as they went about their daily lives, putting in place the mechanisms in which the psychosis of coloniality could thrive, instituting the kind of bias for a caste hierarchy to be established and metastasize.

Coloniality: Psychosis and Implicit Bias

How does hegemony, and in Abya Yala, coloniality, work? Mignolo expounds on mental subordination when he writes the following: “ ‘Coloniality,’ … points toward and intends to unveil an embedded logic that enforces control, domination, and exploitation disguised in the language of salvation, progress, modernization, and being good for everyone.”33 Mignolo is on the right track except it is not the circumstance of coloniality that does the unveiling, but the understanding of the circumstance of coloniality that unveils, because coloniality is a condition that seeks to conceal its existence in the hegemonic language of modernity, of “civilization,” of “progress,” of “democracy.” Indeed, with each passing step in the development of the ideologies of Christianization, democratization, and liberalization, the mechanisms of subordination become more sophisticated, and at the same time, subtler. We can think of the four authors all writing to unveil the logic of hegemony in the Church, although, not in the Gospel. If Bartolomé de las Casas and Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala were fighting against externally imposed imperialism because they were concerned about the turn the European presence had taken in the New World, we must 31  Munck, Rethinking Latin America, 45–​52.

32  Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, 1:156; helpful is a blog entry by Schwenz, “Hegemony in Gramsci,” n.p. 33  Mignolo, The Idea of Latin America, 6.



Introduction

11

confront the seeming mystery about their relationship to More and Erasmus who were largely concerned with realities within Europe itself. The answer lies in the fact all four were writing against the base behaviours that sometimes seem to predominate in society, including selfishness, greed, uncourteousness, and other traits. In Europe, those tendencies result in one set of problems, in the Americas that same set of problems exists, along with an additional series of concerns resulting from transatlantic imperialism. In other words, if hegemony operates in all or most human societies, the form it takes in colonial situations is coloniality, a sort of fortified hegemony supporting the gears of imperialism and its intendant colonialism. By any name, it is the condition that arises when selfishness, greed, uncourteousness, along with arrogance, ignorance, and the unmitigated abuse of power predominate in human behaviour.34 Why does this happen? When human actors are ignorant about what they are doing, or when greed fosters ignorance about what they are doing, which they are doing irreflexively, the lack of curiosity, which could have encouraged the learning necessary to overcome ignorance, can take the form of arrogance. Arrogance is a primary ingredient of the colonial force, because without conviction, one might not be inclined to carry on with such endeavors. All four authors studied here were writing against what the French Hispanist Marcel Bataillon once called irreflexivity, which leads to unintentional bias given form by “incuriosity” and “negligent overconfidence.”35 Additionally, while Las Casas and Guaman Poma were arguing against transatlantic or external colonialism, we might say that Erasmus and More were pleading against a kind of colonialism that occurs within nations, an internal colonialism, a hegemony of social class, which pits neighbours against neighbours, rulers against subjects.36 Both of these colonialism are “direct” colonialism, which are political, while “indirect” colonialism became known as neocolonialism, which is primarily economic.37 All varieties of colonialism lead to coloniality. While one line of thinking would have both varieties of coloniality, the internal and the transoceanic resulting from a psychosis, another would have them resulting from a form of implicit bias that some people develop, have, or maintain toward other people, peers or otherwise. Prejudice is a word that could have been familiar to the sixteenth-​ century reader, but psychosis is a term coined during the nineteenth century. Even so, we can accept psychological reasons as a basis of coloniality, just as we can accept prejudice as a factor. In its most basic sense, as put by Milton Kleg, “prejudice is an example of attitude.”38 In examples of different “nations” (sixteenth-​century word) or 34  On arrogance and ignorance as coloniality in the Zárate’s writing, see Ward, Decolonizing Indigeneity, 63–​93. 35  Bataillon, “Zárate,” 11–​13. “Incuriosity” and “negligent overconfidence” are discussed in Ward, Decolonizing Indigeneity, 14–​16.

36  For excellent explanations of internal and external colonialisms, see Brown, Religion and Violence, 48.

37  Brown, Religion and Violence, 48. According to the Merriam-​Webster Dictionary, “neocolonialism” was coined in 1961 to reflect neo forms of colonialism. www.merriam-​webster.com. Accessed January 29, 2019. 38  Kleg, Hate Prejudice and Racism, 113.

12

Introduction

“races” (twentieth-​century word) coming together, usually with violence, Kleg defines the prejudice that results as “a readiness to act, stemming from a negative feeling, often predicated upon a fixed overgeneralization or totally false belief and directed toward a group or individual members of that group.”39 Our view here is that coloniality’s root forms both psychologically and prejudicially, perhaps the former leading to the latter. Either way, or both ways, the antidote could come with education, one manner of which comes with corrective discursive writing. More, Erasmus, Las Casas, and Guaman Poma aimed their discursive writing at the multitudinous ways coloniality infiltrated diverse societies, even those that were ostensibly noncolonial. Regarding the psychological aspect, Anthony Pagden, in his now classic study on slavery, describes two aspects that form the slave’s condition. Slavery is a social form of subordination that affected individuals and families adversely in Europe, Africa, and Abya Yala. The coloniality that organized people into slaves could be determined through nationality, ethnicity, class, and later, race. A slave, of course, is the ultimate subordinated person. Pagden writes the following: “The origin of natural slavery … is to be found neither in the action of some purely human agent nor in the hand of God, but in the psychology of the slave himself and ultimately in the constitution of the universe.”40 The universe’s constitution has to do with logos, an organizing principle in Greek thought, but the slave’s psychology has to do with how he or she apprehended the condition he or she was born or passed into. The slave’s psychology is one cell of the multi-​celled epistemic coloniality to which Mignolo refers. This malady, or psychosis, inhibits individuals from taking the lead in their own lives, as David and Okasaki have shown in the case of ostensibly free Filipino-​Americans, or it can simply be accepting the “logic of domination,” as Mignolo frames it.41 This “logic” takes root through what Paulo Freire calls the prescription. He describes it as “one of the basic elements of the relationship between oppressor and the oppressed.” Importantly, this prescription does not stem solely from the thoughts and actions of the conqueror; it is a give-​and-​take process. Freire explains it this way: Every prescription represents the imposition of one man’s choice upon another, transforming the consciousness of the man prescribed to the one that conforms to the prescriber’s consciousness. Thus, the behavior of the oppressed is a prescribed behavior, following as it does the guidelines of the oppressor.42

This “psychosis” or “logic of domination” that makes subordination seem “normal,” can also be unconscious, making people be blind to it and can therefore be described in terms of unintentional bias. 39  Kleg, Hate Prejudice and Racism, 114. 40  Pagden, The Fall, 42.

41  David and Okasaki, “The Colonial Mentality Scale”; Mignolo, The Idea of Latin America, 7.

42  Freire, Pedagogy, 31. King alludes to the same condition when he writes, “By burning in the consciousness of white Americans a conviction that Negros are by nature subnormal, much of the myth was absorbed by the Negro himself, stultifying his energy, his ambition, and his self-​respect.” (“Address of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.,” 5.)



Introduction

13

Over the twentieth century and into the twenty-​first, the notion of unintentional bias has come into focus. Sometimes it can take the form of not remembering colonial activities. Willeke Sander, discussing Germans during the Third Reich and after, uses the term “amnesia” to discuss their mental state with respect to prior German colonial activities.43 For some scholars, unintentional bias goes beyond psychological explanations of what we are here calling coloniality. Greenwald and Krieger explain, “the science of implicit cognition suggests that actors do not always have conscious, intentional control over the processes of social perception, impression formation, and judgment that motivate their actions.”44 Key to understanding this is bias, the bias of coloniality. For the pair of scholars, “The term ‘bias,’ sometimes referred to as ‘response bias,’ denotes a displacement of people’s responses along a continuum of possible judgments.”45 This causes them to make certain assumptions about people unlike themselves: “Many mental processes function implicitly, or outside conscious attentional focus. These processes include implicit memory, implicit perception, implicit attitudes, implicit stereotypes, implicit self-​esteem, and implicit self-​concept.”46 Recognition of bias is helpful because it exists and does determine behaviour, but if the idea of psychosis, or even psychology is thrown out, then bias can seem innate or constant and thus uncorrectable. The key words in Greenwald and Krieger’s thinking, “outside conscious attentional focus,” imply that the expansion of an individual’s consciousness is not possible with education, therapy, experience, and further reflection on situations of diversity. Such expansion of consciousness can lead to an awareness of bias. Coloniality is a form of bias and it stems from psychoses that can be treated. While implicit-​bias scientists tend to disregard psychological causes of bias, I would argue that coloniality could have implicit and explicit agents, unconscious and conscious causes. Either way, education, therapy, state intervention, or other means can serve as an antidote with the proviso that educational curricula, therapist attitudes, governmental policies, and so can reinforce or disentangle the kinds of prejudices that cause coloniality of the mind. Yet, school, for the few people able to attend during the sixteenth century, would not have been dealing with the topic of psychology or bias. Modern psychology did not come into being until the nineteenth century. Liberation thinking, however, was possible during that time, even if it was not known by that term. It worked against those agents and causes even if it did not have a terminology to describe what it was proposing. Another problem resides in a modern academic curriculum that passes on prejudicial concepts and thinking that are imparted to students as they form or deepen attitudes about them. Matthew Restall’s Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest deconstructs the myths associated with the Conquest that teach us that Spaniards were superior to Indigenous peoples. Fictions of this nature, such as a limited number of Spaniards conquering the Mexica (sing. Mexicatl) and the Inkakuna (sing. Inka) with their horses and arms, pass 43  Sandler, Empire in the Heimat, 303–​5.

44  Greenwald and Krieger, “Implicit Bias,” 946. 45  Greenwald and Krieger, “Implicit Bias,” 950. 46  Greenwald and Krieger, “Implicit Bias,” 947.

14

Introduction

over Indigenous civil wars and the introduction of Old World diseases that went pandemic.47 These aspects external to the Spanish gave them a great advantage. To leave them out of history or to undervalue them can lead to the conclusion that Spaniards were “superior.” Education systems, both formal and informal, for colonizer and colonized, establish what Donald Macedo describes as “an assembly line of ideas” impeding either side of the colonial divide from developing what he calls “the critical capacity of analysis to develop a coherent comprehension of the world.”48 That is, Spanish and later Criollo education imparts in their group a belief in the superiority of their own culture while the values stressed in the encomienda, and later in the h ­ acienda, teach Qheswa, Yunga (Chimú), or K’iche’ speakers to believe they are inferior.49 The same was true for Afrodescendants in the variety of places where they were forced into labor.50 Recently, Nelson Manrique defined the problem in terms of race: “colonial racism was not only carried by the colonizers. It was internalized, and accepted as ‘true,’ by colonized groups” (el racismo colonial no solo fue portado por los colonizadores sino que fue interiorizado, y aceptado como “verdadero,” por los grupos colonizados).51 When a people’s language, culture, ethnonym, and environment are thrown into question, they become the target of what Ngũugĩ wa Thong’o has described as a “cultural bomb.”52 When a bomb falls on a building, some walls or furniture may remain, and consequently Ngũugĩ’s metaphor is useful in grasping that the violence of language can sometimes be as damaging as the violence of the bullet.53 Alas, even when literacy is achieved, coloniality of the mind is ever present. Macedo throws light on this problem when he talks about “a form of illiteracy of literacy, in which we develop a high level of literacy in a given discourse while remaining semiliterate or illiterate in a whole range of other discourses that constitute the ideological world in which we travel as thinking beings.”54 Thus, we might be able to read novels, but we do not know how to read chronicles, legal documentation, or even the archaeological record. Given these difficulties, even for the literate Spanish and their Criollo progeny, a suffocating social condition is set up. For example, as Freire explains, this “oppressive reality absorbs those within it and thereby acts to submerge 47  I treat plurals of Indigenous-​language nouns as we treat Greek, Latin, and French borrowings in English. As we say phenomena, millennia, and tableaux for the plurals of phenomenon, millennium, and tableau, we can say Inkakuna for the plural of Inka, altepeme for altepetl, and Mexica for Mexicatl. 48  Macedo, Literacies, 23.

49  I prefer the Spanish Criollo over the English Creole to avoid the connotations associated with the latter. Likewise, colonialism has left behind competing phonetic orthographies of words such as Qheswa, Keshua, Qhichwa, as well as Quechua or Quichua. For Qheswa voices, I utilize the spelling preferred by the Qheswa Simi Hamut’ana Kurak Suntur, the “Academia Mayor de la Lengua Quechua” based in Cuzco, Peru. 50  I take the terms transafrican and Afrodescendant from N’Gom, “Afro-​Peruvians.” 51  Manrique, La piel y la pluma, 14.

52  Ngũugĩ wa Thong’o. Decolonising the Mind, 3. 53  Ngũugĩ wa Thong’o. Decolonising the Mind, 9. 54  Macedo, Literacies, 27.



Introduction

15

men’s consciousness.”55 Few people, whether Criollo, Indigenous, or Afrodescendant, easily develop the tools to encourage an informed desire for the equality and unity of humanity. The four authors constituting the topic of inquiry for the present book are among the few. Along the way we will review and compare different strands of thought that resulted from observing realities (More, Erasmus) and investigating realities (Las Casas, More, Guaman Poma) that unveiled coloniality and then proposed anti​hegemonic solutions.

Genesis and Organization of this Book

Coloniality and the Rise of Liberation Thinking during the Sixteenth Century is the third book in an unintentional trilogy focused on sixteenth-​century writing related to the lands eventually known as Spanish America. The first book, Decolonizing Indigeneity:  New Approaches to Latin American Literature (2017), postulates new ways of approaching Latin American literature in order to decolonize our critical models for interpreting texts relative to the nation. The second, The Formation of Latin American Nations: From Late Antiquity to Early Modernity (2018), demystifies our understanding of the nation by breaking down how ethnicity, class, gender, land, armies, religion, language, and trade are all vital in the constitution and evolution of nations during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Formation of Latin American Nations views these rudiments of the nation as largely positive ingredients because they shape the nation as idealized by the people who comprise it. The third, Coloniality and the Rise of Liberation Thinking during the Sixteenth Century, provides another part of the story, and in a way, complements The Formation of Latin American Nations because it begins by sublimating additional components out of the nation. These, conversely, are negative attributes of a nation’s composition including chattel slavery, peonage, human trafficking, and the commingling corruption of religious and political power in institutions such as the encomienda and the system of Royal Patronage. These elements, as well as the repurposed Indigenous practices known as the coatequitl and mita, were conceptualized through colonialities of the mind derived from psychosis or implicit bias. Coloniality and the Rise of Liberation Thinking builds on The Formation of Latin American Nations’ interest in national elements as it turns to analyze four liberation thinkers who wrote important tracts that denuded traits we are defining as coloniality, including slavery, peonage, encomienda, and forced human migration. By doing this they disentangle these elements from the nation. I call the denuding of these traits liberation thinking. This line of inquiry represents a somewhat uncommon approach that explores liberation thinking during the early modern era, when Amerindian nations found themselves reorganized in accordance with the needs of an external, but direct form of colonialism. While three of the four’s ideas were put into circulation or potentially put into practice (More, Erasmus, Las Casas), the fourth’s ideas were never revealed to the reading public, at least not until the twentieth century. All are timely because liberationist thinking 55  Freire, Pedagogy, 36.

16

Introduction

responds to nation-​forming policies and practices based on power and economics that were the rule of the day during the early modern period and suggests freer forms of the nation still sought after even today. Coloniality and the Rise of Liberation Thinking during the Sixteenth Century is about the long sixteenth century that opens with Columbus’s first voyage and ends with Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala’s fascinating Nueva crónica y buen gobierno (The First New Chronicle and Good Government). It traces the genesis of the idea of human liberation in the face of different forms of subordination including institutionalized chattel and encomienda slavery. Catholic humanists developed arguments, theories, and theologies as they attempted to deconstruct those structures of subordination. While some threads of early modern thinking stand as a forerunner to the Liberation Theology of the twentieth century, the more general description, “liberation thinking,” embraces its diverse, timeless, and sometimes nontheological aspects. It also embraces thought occasionally viewed as impossible, “postcolonial” thinking elaborated from within colonialism, because logically it seems that postcolonial should come after the colonial, which it does. However, as we will see, it can likewise come from within the colonial after the establishment of the colony, although still from within the colony. For this reason, the Mediterranean term “decolonial” makes better sense since the “de,” or “des” in Spanish and in English, as noted in the Merriam-​Webster Dictionary, indicates “removing” something from something or “do[ing] the opposite” of something.56 If European theoretical and applied servitude came to the Caribbean with Columbus on that first voyage, a complete Indigenous rejection of that theoretical and applied servitude sprang from the Andes over a century later. For this book, two specific dates frame the discussion of liberation thinking: the publication of Thomas More’s Utopia in 1516, and the completion of Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala’s thousand-​page epistle 100 years later, in 1615–1616. Coming from a background in literature, my initial interest in researching this book centered on the colonial chronicle and its relationship to Renaissance humanism. I have wanted to commit to paper my ideas on this topic since the mid-​1980s when I took that graduate seminar Luis B. Eyzaguirre taught at the University of Connecticut. That course required interpreting the prose of Columbus, Hernán Cortés, Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Fernández de Oviedo, Bartolomé de las Casas, and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega in the context of Renaissance humanism. Those readings fired my imagination and opened a heterogeneous perspective on the sixteenth century for me: the glory of the Conquest (Columbus, Cortés, and Díaz), the injustice of it all (Las Casas), the scientific interest of flora and fauna (Oviedo), and the possibility of a utopian civilization (Garcilaso). From secondary readings assigned that included such luminaries as Thomas More, Desiderius Erasmus, and Baldassare Castiglione, I learned that those chronicles originated as part of the humanistic tradition that included, at times, what we might call essayistic attributes that take definite form in 1580 with Michele de Montaigne’s Essais. These texts—​ostensibly 56  Merriam-​Webster, www.merriam-​webster.com/​dictionary/​DE. Accessed November 28, 2018. Further discussion based on Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity, xxiv, in ­chapter  4.



Introduction

17

historiographical works—​were not shy about taking liberative positions that we can analyze at the level of discursivity. While Professor Eyzaguirre’s graduate seminar whetted my interest in the sixteenth century, my life-​long ruminations on the works of humanism eventually gave me a framework for the present book. Along the way, these materials resulted in my first published article on the topic, a comparison of More, Erasmus, and Las Casas’s approaches to the idea of slavery. That 1992 Quincentenary article appearing in the Organization of American States’ Inter-​American Review of Bibliography (also translated into Spanish and released by Universidad La Serena, Chile) served as a springboard for later inquiry resulting in parts of ­chapter  2 in the present work. Another part of ­chapter  2 builds on two sections of a 2001 MLN article, “Expanding Ethnicity in Sixteenth-​Century Anahuac,” recipient of the 2002 Harold Eugene Davis Prize for Best Article (2002) from the Mid-​ Atlantic Council for Latin American Studies (MACLAS). The discussion of slavery in Coloniality and the Rise of Liberation Thinking looks at that body of research from a new perspective, the perspective of liberation. The material herein, except for five pages from the MLN article and the OAS article, is largely presented for the first time. The first chapter of this book considers how what the Spanish called encomienda impinged upon the notion of the nation. It compares Nahua and Spanish concepts to see how they interacted with each other after the encounter. Likewise, it reviews the Aristotelian conceptualization of slavery as a natural essence. This is important because after that discussion it determines how the Great Navigator, Christopher Columbus, took a small step out of Aristotle’s system of natural hierarchies. This sets the stage for this discussion because when Columbus viewed slavery as a social condition, he prepared the way for Renaissance thinkers who would consider slavery as situational such as Bartolomé de las Casas and Thomas More. Interesting enough, More’s biographer Richard Marius considered Columbus himself to be a humanist.57 Later in life Las Casas came to edit Columbus’s diary. If Columbus’s link with More is implicit, in Las Casas’s later writing, it is explicit. One transatlantic element of the nation, Christianity, could be a repressive force when clergy and other believers incessantly failed to respect their own New Testament principle that divided spiritual and political power. Chapter 2 explores the relationship of Jesus’s maxim about Caesar and God as divergent realms of power in various imperial contexts, in the so-​called Conquest, in the encomienda, in Royal Patronage, and in the Church hierarchy to measure Christianity’s purity. The Conquistador Hernán Cortés provides an example of the how and why the division-​of-​power ideal faltered. Consciousness of the problem suggests the need for reform and sets the stage for liberative reasoning to germinate. Chapter 3 discusses how intellects such as Las Casas, More, and Erasmus took small steps out of the social condition and mindset known as hegemony or coloniality as they confronted the everyday patterns of greed while sometimes tackling head on the 57  Marius writes: “Columbus was a humanist in his way; he had unshakable faith in the classical wisdom encapsulated by Ptolemy, who believed that the world was a much smaller ball than it really is.” Marius, Thomas More, 77.

18

Introduction

practice of slavery and its causes. While slavers and theorists since Aristotle had been looking at slavery as something intimately associated with what we would call ethnic or racial origins, what they often described as “nature,” Renaissance idealists were rethinking those determinants, coming to see human bondage as a social, not natural, institution. This was an important turn because what is “natural’ cannot be modified, but what is “social” can. Three of these Renaissance thinkers were born in Europe. One, Erasmus, rarely considered the Indies when discussing everyday greed, understood at that time as one of the seven deadly sins, while another, Thomas More, composed a book inspired by new knowledge emerging from the Encounter, the Utopia. Still others, like Las Casas, who resided in the Indies, came to resist the encomienda strongly. Their ways of understanding human servitude opened a few cracks through which what we are describing as liberation thinking could filter. These small rays of Renaissance light would weaken the theoretical underpinnings for slavery for Amerindians, but not so much for people of African heritage whose time would not come in earnest until the nineteenth century (see beginning of ­chapter  1). If ­chapter  3 reveals that Renaissance thinking could move beyond the general acceptance of material temporal power with respect to chattel slavery, ­chapters  4 and 5 show that humanist thought held other possibilities as well. The determents of national origins, class, and religion can soften when interfacing with Christian idealism, which interacts with them. The final two chapters explore four strands of early modern liberation thinking, two departing from European realities but having an impact on Abya Yala (­chapter  4) and two departing from New World realities although with a theology imported from the Old World (­chapter  5). Physical escape from the grip of ethnic and gender-​based limitations on life and liberty defined by an emerging global system efficaciously conditioning minds, behaviours, and institutions, frequently was impossible. One recourse was to cultivate contestatory responses within the life of the mind. This subaltern and nonviolent way of resisting upheld the biblical criterion of dividing spiritual and temporal power and was therefore in solidarity with the nation (a spiritual connection Renan would say), but not necessarily with the temporal state.58 Alterity, in this case, can take the form of a solitary intellectual from the metropole who critiques the corruption of the division-​of-​power principle or of a homegrown intellectual from the colonies crying out against temporal abuse. In a word, cultivation of this ideal lays bare transatlantic temporal frameworks of everyday “servitude,” “hegemony,” and “coloniality” (­chapters  1 and 2) as well as circumstances defined by corruption (­chapter  2) and greed (­chapter  3). It does this while developing ethno-​spiritual frameworks of “resistance” to that greed and corruption (­chapters  3, 4, 5). Chapter 4 opens by briefly setting out how liberation thinking compares with twentieth-​century Liberation Theology. Some convergences and divergences come from a reading of Gustavo Gutiérrez’s Las Casas: In Search of the Poor of Jesus Christ. Others 58  Renan describes the nation as “a spiritual family” (une famille spirituelle), “Qu’est-​ce qu’une nation?”, 53. Renan does not acknowledge an ethnic component to the nation.



Introduction

19

derive from history. The chapter then demonstrates how Thomas More and Erasmus reacted to temporal corruption in Europe from a Catholic perspective. We tend to use “Catholic” here and throughout this book to distinguish it from Protestantism, which rapidly grew in coverage after Martin Luther proclaimed his theses in Wittenberg. Analysis of More and Erasmus establishes a comparative context to study the New World thinkers. The next chapter turns to Bartolomé de las Casas, a Spaniard whose very purpose for living was associated with the New World, and Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, an excellent representative from the first wave of organic intellectuals in the Western Hemisphere that also included Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Diego Muñoz Camargo, Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxóchitl, and others.59 Again, the frame for this exploration begins with the publication of More’s Utopia in 1516, and ends with the probable completion of Guaman Poma’s extensive manuscript 100 years later, in 1615, and the author’s demise the next year, in 1616. Las Casas and Guaman Poma embody the second stage of early modern liberation thinking, with the former serving as a bridge from More and Erasmus to a maturing colonial-​Catholic situation where the latter would work and live. Paring their work in Chapter 5 elucidates a liberation thinking that germinated in Abya Yala with a Catholicism imported from the Old World.60 Las Casas’s thesis is that one must become Catholic before one can benefit from a spiritual message professed by Jesus that offers liberation from temporal oppression. Moving into the seventeenth century, Guaman Poma’s rhetorical scheme was that Andeans were Christians before the Spanish arrived thereby negating the need for Spanish mediators. When he concludes that Andean people were Catholic, but not Spanish, he privileges the nation over the state. The processes of horizontal and vertical cultural appropriation, mapped out in ­chapters  2 and 3 of The Formation of Latin American Nations, come into play in this chapter. Here they are not inverse processes but complementary. Guaman Poma’s forceful horizontal and cross-​Atlantic appropriation of post-​Tridentine Catholicism, in which he swears allegiance to the pope as he logically should, does not conflict with his strong vertical reaffirmation of the Andean millenarian past.61 This is because he sees fit to reject the political authority of Spaniards in Peru, but not the Catholicism they brought to Peru. The intersection of religious horizontality and cultural verticality creates a liberation-​thinking model in Guaman Poma’s epistle to King Philip III that has 59  Obviously Indigenous and mixed-​heritage thinkers from the colonial period can be described as intellectuals, as Schwaller, “The Brothers,” 39–​59, does. The idea of organic intellectuals comes from Beverley, “What Happens,” 121–​12, who draws on Gramsci when referring to twentieth-​century thinkers such as Rigoberta Menchú. Some scholars omit the accent mark from Ixtlilxóchitl’s name based on Nahuatl convention. I reflect the spelling of his name as it appears in print.

60  Catholicism was even more fervent after the Council of Trent, signifying the Counter-​ Reformation, 1545–​1563. 61  I first shared some initial ruminations about liberation thinking in Guaman Poma in a paper, “An Early Example of Liberation Theology: The Interesting Case of Guaman Poma de Ayala,” XXX International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, San Francisco, May 26, 2012. My views and terminology have evolved since then.

20

Introduction

enduring relevance, despite the fact his manuscript was not afforded opportunities for publication as were manifold other chronicles authored by Spaniards. Finally, there is no precise or established term to designate this class of thought. Considering More and Guaman Poma were lay people of the Catholic Church, it seems imprecise to consider their discernment as “theology,” even though they departed from intensely spiritual positions. Indeed, since Guaman Poma was self-​taught, only by altering established expectations of how theological speculators should be trained, could he be considered a theologian. Additionally, because he held no official Church or university position, the Church hierarchy would never have considered him a theologian. While Erasmus and Las Casas were priests, and could carry out their work as theologians, we should not consider them Liberation Theologians because Gustavo Gutiérrez had not yet coined that expression and because the expression written with capitalized letters refers to a theology discerned in a specific time and place: Latin America from the late twentieth century until our time.62 There are other factors too. As Javier Valiente Núñez explains in his doctoral dissertation, Liberation Theology is theorized in a context with and takes from both Marxism and dependency theory. These tendencies were non-​ existent during the sixteenth century, Marx working during the nineteenth century, and dependency theory coming out of Argentina during the 1960s. Without question, our idea of a “liberation theology” connects so deeply to the twentieth century that Eugene Gogol asks, “can a concept of Latin American human liberation be viable if it is rooted in history and the social subject but does not encompass the philosophic moments of Hegel and Marx?”63 The answer is yes, but not necessarily within the category of “Liberation Theology,” spelt with capital letters. For these reasons, I opt for the generic term liberation thinking, spelt in lower case because it was not a movement in the usual sense, but was more like a series of points of light faintly visible in the dark firmament. We can view early modern “liberation thinking” as a precursor to Liberation Theology in some instances, but not as Liberation Theology in and of itself.64 The designation liberation thinking is an expression derived from two sources: from my conversations with Javier Valiente Núñez who uses the term, and from Walter Mignolo’s speculation on “decolonial thinking.”65 While the term is generic, it is sufficiently broad to take into account diverse strands of liberating thought during the early modern period. Liberation thinking originates in both Europe and the Americas, both strands coming together with the common goal to liberate humanity from the hegemony of the past, the materialism of that time’s present, and to push for a more humane form of social organization. 62  There are also variants such as African American Liberation Theology, see Hopkins, Introducing Black Theology. 63  Gogol, The Concept of the Other, 110.

64  As mentioned, Gutiérrez wrote a book on Las Casas, Las Casas: In Search of the Poor of Jesus Christ, and the book has a short section on Guaman Poma.

65  See Valiente Núñez, El pensamiento de la liberación; Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity, xxiv, xxvi, and 3; useful is Gómez-​Martínez, Pensamiento de la liberación who follows strands in Latin America related to the Spanish philosopher, José Ortega y Gasset. Finally, Freire’s pedagogy has been referred to as liberation thinking. See Donoso Romo, “Paulo Freire.”

Chapter 1

EVERYDAY COLONIALITY AND EARLY SOCIAL SLAVERY THEORY*

This book is about certain features of quotidian colonialism imposed on people and the liberating antidote to these features. Colonialism is that aspect of imperialism that directly impacts the people, societies, institutions, and cultures coming under imperial sway. Before we can get to the antidote, we must understand the contagion. Colonialism occurs, of course, when a political and economic force from one country invades and takes control of another country by force and by attaining hegemony over the people residing there. There is a religious, racial, cultural, or ethnic component to imperial activities if the first country differs from the second one in this regard. When the colonizing country, for any reason, and after any amount of time, quits the colonized country, it leaves behind a residue considered internal colonialism. Sometimes racial, ethnic, or religious variance makes this variety of colonialism obvious. This kind of hegemonic activity within the borders of one country may also be rooted in long-​ago migrations, the details of which may be forgotten in time, or they may have resulted from more recent foreign contacts.1 Here we are interested in the transatlantic element, first as an element that crosses the ocean (external colonialism) then as the formerly transatlantic element that has taken root in Abya Yala (internal colonialism). The moment the nation, any nation, establishes a scheme of rank within it, there follows necessarily the need for subservience. For millennia, human societies have unambiguously developed methods of subjugating their own peers as well as people from other groups. There are countless forms of achieving hegemony in social organization. Among the basic social determinants are hierarchies organized by dint of ethnicity, class, memory of the past, conceptualizations of the present, religion, language, gender, and the status of immigrating and emigrating peoples. While ethnicity, memory, religious conviction, and language can have a liberating quality to them, their positive deployment subsides in the face of political and religious power, utilitarianism, or even worse, greed. Among the most egregious of politically imposed strata are diverse forms of slavery and other involuntary labor practices. The subordinating features of ethnicity, gender, language, institutional religion, economics, class, and hegemonic interactions *  This chapter’s genesis can be found in a paper during the celebrations of the Quincentennial of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the Indies, “Hacia un nuevo concepto de esclavitud en el Renacimiento:  el paso de Colón a Moro, Erasmo y Las Casas,” 28th Congress of the Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana, Brown University, June 1990. Actas Colombinas, Universidad de la Serena (Chile) 2, no. 5 (1992): 39–​45, and expanded/​translated, “Toward a Concept of Unnatural Slavery during the Renaissance: A Review of Primary and Secondary Sources,” Revista Interamericana de Bibliografía 42, no. 2 (1992): 259–​79. 1  For further discussion on the varieties of colonialism, see Ward, Decolonizing Indigeneity, 1–​10.

22 Everyday Coloniality and Early Social Slavery Theory

between people imposed varying forms of control in nations, and especially in the social relations of colonized peoples in the very first transatlantic societies. We can view the sixteenth century as a large social laboratory, perhaps the largest ever, because during that period, the Spanish Empire put in place the structures that gave rise to a new transatlantic modus operandi. This does not mean that the new system was harmonious although those characteristics ran through it. Newly installed social hierarchies reorganized old social hierarchies, sometimes through trial and error. Some would stick and become lasting social and legal norms. Enrique Dussel puts it this way, “The present world reality manifests in its structure a lack of equilibrium that has existed for five hundred years.”2 Of the destabilizing forces, which were legion, religion was one of the primary ones. From the beginning of the colonial era that Christopher Columbus inaugurated, Spaniards took to the task of evangelization while they slowly began to construct the material basis of Catholic towns across the hemisphere. In Dussel’s words, “Evangelization involved not only personal or individual conversion, but also social and community transformation.”3 Europeans had the newly subordinated peoples construct churches, cathedrals, monasteries, parish houses, and other buildings necessary to propagate and foster the faith. It cannot be understated that, as Marcel Velázquez Castro reminds us, religion eventually came to be at the center of colonial life.4 Spaniards, and later their descendants known as Criollos, were fervent Catholics and uniformly believed that their slaves and all the peoples they were folding into their empire should be Catholic. The dissemination of the illuminating light of the words of Jesus Christ sometimes blinded out the fact that there also existed the gloomy reality of human servitude. During the early stages of the Spanish imperial thrust, when, as Immanuel Wallerstein frames it, “the modern class system began to take its shape,”5 a new estate framework began taking form, with the conquering classes from Europe replacing the native caciques, tlatoque (sing. tlatoani), and kurakakuna (sing. kuraka), or other types of hereditary lords of the hemisphere. Soon thereafter, people of mixed Eurindian descent and the Criollos appeared side by side. This middle social stratum in turn would represent a higher social rank than the former Amerindian elites who now found themselves competing with nonaristocratic compatriots to maintain their place on the newly formed third rung. In the lower social strata, up and down the hemisphere, resided the masses of runa, macehualli, or other classes of everyday people facing coloniality. These were the tributary and peon classes. Just a step lower, or in some cases on the same rung, were the slave estates, consisting of peoples of Amerindian origin or who were being trafficked from Africa.6 Yet this hierarchical pyramid was not quite set in stone. 2  Dussel, A History of the Church, 3.

3  Dussel, A History of the Church, 33.

4  Velázquez Castro, La mirada de los gallinazos, 53. 5  Wallerstein, The Modern World-​System, 67.

6  On African slavery in Latin America, see Klein and Vinson III, La esclavitud africana. On Africans and their descendants in Peru, for example, see Aguirre, Breve historia de la esclavitud, Bowser, The African Slave in Colonial Peru, and Kapsoli Escudero, Sublevaciones de esclavos.

Everyday Coloniality and Early Social Slavery Theory

23

Magnus Mörner, who spent his life studying these echelons, distinguishes three types of “social stratification”: caste, estate, and class. Birth regulates caste, an inflexible social order. Class bases itself entirely on “economic differences without legal restrictions on vertical social mobility.” The middle ground, estate, is legally determined, yet permitting some “vertical social mobility.” Mestizos most likely were associated with class norms. Over time the term “class”—​Mörner suggests—​becomes more appropriate, since stratification is increasingly associated with accumulated economic power.7 Sometimes people from one band passed for people of another, such as when Indigenous people passed as mestizos. Amerindian bondage according to the letter of the law disappeared as the sixteenth century wore on, but not so with chattel slavery, which grew in force during the colonial era. Since Europeans enslaved Africans who themselves sometimes had been enslaved by other Africans, we know slavery did not originate solely in Abya Yala but was coetaneous with similar practices in the Old World forming a complicated quilt of pro-​slavery practices after 1492. Slavery became integral to the Conquest itself. Matthew Restall reminds us, “Africans were ubiquitous … to the entire endeavor of Spanish invasion and colonization in the Americas.”8 During the first decades of transafrican bondage in New World history, chattel slavery complemented Indigenous forms of bondage enshrined in the encomienda and in other forms of cooperative labor, such as the mita and the coatequitl that Spaniards hijacked and repurposed as forms of forced labor. Later it surpassed Indigenous forms of subordination in both intensity and in cruelty. As Seijas and Sierra Silva argue, “slavery and the slave trade were vital to the colonial economy of Central Mexico during the entire seventeenth century.”9 It took only decades for Africans and their descendants to become the most abused raw ingredient of an expanding imperial society shared with Europeans, Amerindians, and their descendants. Some of the period’s chronicles are helpful for understanding this situation and for remembering aspects conveniently forgotten. Pedro de Cieza de León’s Crónica del Perú, which, besides the wealth of anthropological information on Indigenous peoples it contains, reveals a limited degree of information on transafrican slaves. According to Carlos Araníbar, Cieza was only fifteen years old when he crossed the Atlantic in search of adventure and he lived such an intensive life that he died at the age of thirty-​four, in 1554.10 In that interval he wrote the five parts of his Crónica del Perú, consulted by many subsequent historiographical authorities including Inca Garcilaso de la Vega. The representation of transafrican people is an extraordinary, although limited, aspect of his chronicle. While there certainly were black people in the invasion, chroniclers tend to glorify Spanish feats and downplay African (and Indigenous) activities. Restall comments on this situation: “Because the majority of such Africans arrived as slaves, and because of their subordinate status in the 7  Mörner, Race, 7, 54.

8  Restall, Seven Myths, 52–​53.

9  Seijas and Sierra Silva, “The Persistence of the Slave Market,” 307. 10  Araníbar, “Introducción,” ix.

24 Everyday Coloniality and Early Social Slavery Theory

increasingly ethnocentric Castilian worldview, the widespread and central role of blacks was consistently ignored by Spaniards writing about the conquest.”11 Cieza, however, is atypical in this regard. He mentions transafricans sporadically in his text, for example, in the context of mining gold in the lands that became Colombia. To mention one instance among several, the chronicler observes Capitan Jorge Robledo’s black [slave] taking possession of an increasing amount of gold.12 However, Restall sees this chronicler’s depiction of transafricans in the war effort as ambiguous. “Cieza de León never provides the total number of blacks in any one company, nor does he name any of the Africans who fought or traveled with him, but on 19 occasions he mentions their presence.”13 These kinds of omissions are verified, for example, when a black man in the Peruvian campaigns saves the day and protects the conquistador Diego de Almagro after he was hit in the eye with a javelin.14 Cieza does not even bother to give this historical subject’s name. He merely describes circumstances. Those events relating to gold are almost commonplace, as is the multitude of black men who remained unnamed. After the institution of the imperial system, Afrodescendant slaves suffered consummate objectification like in the case in Peru of Fernández de Córdova who on February 9, 1585 paid on account 3,000 pesos in silver and jewelry, slaves and embroidery as a dowry.15 People and things are commodified. Even Inca Garcilaso de la Vega living in Spain purchased, at one point, an eleven-​year-​old boy, described as a mulatto-​morisco.16 Around that time, Francisco Loyola (the so-​called Lieutenant Nun) states in matter-​of-​ fact terms that just before he participated in the Chilean campaigns, he received three slaves, two men and a negra who could cook for him.17 As with Cieza de León, he gives no name. Further research into early modern records will yield more information on this significant aspect of social organization. In a general sense, we know that during the heyday of transatlantic slavery, population tended to increase on the European, American, and Asian continents. Inversely, Africa’s contracted. Inikori and Engerman, reviewing the research, conclude, “Africa’s share of Atlantic basin population declined from about 30% in 1650 to roughly 10% in 1850.”18 Needless to say, there are twentyfold potential reasons for population numbers to fall or rise. After a series of pandemics, an additional factor was most certainly human trafficking. While millions of Nahua, Carib, and Andean peoples unmistakably perished due to the harsh viral, economic, and religious conditions Spaniards imposed on them, Europeans and Africans themselves directly subjected some eighteen million sub-​ Saharan Africans to forced migration between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. 11  Restall, Seven Myths, 52–​53.

12  Cieza de León, Crónica del Perú: primera parte, fol. 27 [xvii], p. 60. 13  Restall, Seven Myths, 60.

14  Cieza de León, Crónica del Perú: tercera parte, fol. 9, p. 27. 15  Holguín Callo, Poder, corrupción y tortura, 57.

16  Porras Barrenechea, “Nuevos fondos documentales,” 44. 17  Erauso, Historia de la Monja Alférez, 102. 18  Inikori and Engerman, “Introduction,” 6.

Everyday Coloniality and Early Social Slavery Theory

25

Of these, some six million were shipped to North Africa or the Middle East, and as many as ten-​and-​a-​half million may have reached the shores of Abya Yala. Over a million-​and-​ a-​half lost their lives during the Middle Passage across the Atlantic and another four million lost their lives in Africa itself.19 These forced migrations would have a specific meaning for the ethnic fabric of Abya Yala. Regarding the Indigenous population, it fell by what Nathan Wachtel describes as a “vertiginous rate,” varying from sheer extinction in the Caribbean to 90 percent on the Mexican plateau, although some of the Andean altiplano peoples fared somewhat better. In Brazil, the population seems to have declined from two-​and-​a-​half million to about 800,000 in the first 100 years of contact.20 The central Pacific coast did not fare much better. Robert G. Keith, studying taxation roles, says “the number of tributaries still living in traditional Indian communities in 1575 was about 4 percent of what it had been before the conquest.”21 Wachtel coins a neologism when he calls this demographic catastrophe a “destructuration.”22 At the same time, a mass of 2.4 million Europeans arrived in Abya Yala coeval with a whopping 8.4 million Africans who began new lives as chattel slaves.23 This ebb and flow of peoples combined with mortality and birth rates created a society radically different from those known in the past. In a pan-​America where the everyday mindset of slavery as “normal” dominated, it is not surprising that the legal chains that held African Americans in poverty were not broken until well after the Enlightenment and political independence. Emancipation, for example, came in Venezuela in 1821, Mexico in 1829, Peru in 1854, the United States of America in 1863, Cuba in 1880, and Brazil in 1888. Tellingly this abolitionist movement came amidst a flurry of re-​editions of Bartolomé de las Casas’s Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (The Devastation of the Indies: A Brief Account) in Bogotá, Puebla, Guadalajara, Mexico City and Philadelphia.24 Moreover, there were frequent relapses and backtracking. After the abolition for transafricans in Peru, for example, that nation began to import Chinese-​speaking debt-​bondsmen from Asia, the so-​called coolies, adding yet another ethnic component to society. As late as the 1890s, the Yaquis, rebellious in their demand that the Mexican state restore Indigenous autonomy, fell into the category Thomas More would describe as slavery-​as-​punishment. The government responded by “deporting the Yaquis to work to death as virtual slave laborers on the sisal plantations of the Yucatán.”25 John Kenneth Turner approximates the number of

19  Manning, “The Slave Trade,” 118.

20  Weaver, Latin America in the World Economy, 21. 21  Keith, Conquest and Agrarian Change, 42.

22  Wachtel, “The Indian and the Spanish Conquest,” 212.

23  Bailey, “The Slave(ry) Trade,” 208. These figures differ a bit from Manning’s, but they are still significant numbers. 24  Hanke, Bartolomé, 70.

25  Weatherford, Indian Givers, 160; Hu-​Dehart, “Development and Rural Rebellion,” 91.

26 Everyday Coloniality and Early Social Slavery Theory

chattel slaves in the Yucatán in the last decade before the Mexican Revolution as 8,000 Yaquis, 3,000 Asians, and between 100,000 and 125,000 Mayas.26 Here, we review sixteenth-​century slavery, weighing the different theories and praxis that underpin its variants, and theorize the social and psychological conditions that result from it. First, we see how slavery, its physical condition, its intellectual foundation, and the psychology that arises coalesce into a situation that affects distinct classes of people. We call this situation coloniality. Second, we examine the Nahua system of slavery and how the Spanish system, which was not so different, took Nahua practices and mentalities and made them its own. Third, we focus on two kinds of slavery: encomienda servitude based on money, debt, and tribute, and chattel slavery based on the notion of private property. The second variety based on nature falls into Mörner’s caste category. It is a prominent strand that Anthony Pagden scrutinizes based on the Aristotelian model of natural slavery that Arab intelligentsia had recovered and restored in the West early in the second millennium making it available to be imposed on Abya Yala during the so-​ called Age of Discovery.27 We will investigate how Christopher Columbus, Thomas More, Erasmus of Rotterdam, and Bartolomé de las Casas all chiseled away at the Aristotelian concept of natural slavery with social templates thereby permuting what had initially been a caste system for Amerindians into a class system. For Latin Americans descended from Africans, however, few escaped at first from the caste system, and they oftentimes ended up in the estate system. Fewer yet moved into the class system thereby winning the potential for freedom.

Coloniality of Structure and Coloniality of Mind

One would not take or hold a person as a slave if one is not predisposed to do so mentally. As discussed in the introduction, that mentality formed psychologically or prejudicially. Here our task is not to study the differences between what is conscious and what is subconscious, for that is the task of cognitive psychologists. Indeed, few colonial subjects were truly conscious of what was going on and among them can be found the four primary subjects of our book. Before getting to them, our preliminary task requires considering coloniality of institutional structure and coloniality of mind in transatlantic formulations and in situations given form within nations. Before we can get to the conditions of slavery and analogous forms of social subordination, the topic of this chapter, we must find their root underpinning, the coloniality of the mind. Colonialism leaves in its aftermath a footprint, an insidious condition best described as coloniality, difficult to perceive and even more to reverse. Nelson Maldonado-​Torres puts it this way: Coloniality is different from colonialism. Colonialism denotes a political and economic relation in which the sovereignty of a nation or a people rests on the power of another

26  Turner, Barbarous Mexico, 8.

27  On natural slavery, see Pagden, The Fall, especially c­hapter 3, “The Theory of Natural Slavery,” 27–​56.

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nation, which makes such nation an empire. Coloniality, instead, refers to long-​standing patterns of power that emerged as a result of colonialism, but that define culture, labor, intersubjective relations, and knowledge production well beyond the strict limits of colonial administrations.28

Peruvian theorist Aníbal Quijano explains that coloniality is born in colonialism, which occurs when one country conquers the political and economic systems of another country.29 He associates it with both capitalism and racism and affirms that it organizes daily life in both physical and subjective ways. For him, colonialism can be ephemeral, but coloniality is long lasting.30 John Chasteen brings us back to the hegemonic aspect of what we are calling coloniality as it flourished in Latin America. He explains it as “a kind of domination that implies a measure of consent by those at the bottom.”31 Finally, to paraphrase and adapt an expression Mark Rifkin used to subtitle one of his books on US literature, we can talk about an “everyday coloniality” that permeated early modern quotidian activities occurring under empire and the attitudes that guided them as they were carried out.32 On top of that, we can consider a frequently unnoticed latter-​day coloniality that limits our scholarly ability to study coloniality in earlier societies. One example can serve to clarify. Pagden, despite his recognition that “the Mexica and the Inca ‘empires’ were recognizable polities,” affirms “the societies of the Mexica and the Inca were in many respects Neolithic ones.”33 Neolithic? Neolithic, Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary tells us, refers to the last phase of the Stone Age. It tells us that the Neolithic represents “the beginning of settled village life.”34 By the time the Spanish had arrived, the Inkakuna were known for their great architectural achievements: palaces, temples, and plazas, which combined stone and metallurgical wonders all connected with a great system of roads and water distribution. While they had not yet found a use for the wheel (they did have disks in their religious artwork), they had an agricultural system that delivered a diverse selection of crops depending on the step platforms of rising altitudes. Furthermore, they had the knowledge to freeze-​dry their food. While we should not blame Pagden for using the only word he knew, the universal application of a term that ascribes European history to other geographic areas, we can recognize that such a usage distorts those 28  Maldonado-​Torres, “On the Coloniality of Being,” 243. 29  Quijano, “Colonialidad del poder,” 381n1.

30  Quijano, “Colonialidad del poder,” 342. Besides Quijano, my understanding of coloniality as a mindset derives from my readings of Mignolo, The Darker Side of the Renaissance; and Ngũugĩ wa Thong’o, Decolonising the Mind. Recently, Mignolo has realized that coloniality does not need to originate as part of imperialism. He concludes, “There is coloniality without colonialism; for example, China or Japan or Russia. These formations were never colonized but did not escape coloniality” (Gaztambide-​Fernández, “Decolonial Options,” 197). 31  Chasteen, Born in Blood and Fire, 57. 32  Rifkin, Settler Common Sense. 33  Pagden, The Fall, 58–​59.

34  “Neolithic,” Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary. http://​unabridged.merriam-​webster. com/​unabridged/​neolithic. Accessed February 2, 2019.

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realities outside of Europe and fosters a coloniality of interpretation. The temporal-​ historical term in the Andes for the Inkan period is Late Horizon, the Mesoamerican one for the Mexicatl period is Postclassic. Late Horizon and Postclassic are more neutral for Inkakuna and Mexica than Neolithic and are helpful terms in fostering decoloniality. When Europeans and North Americans attach terms and labels derived from European realities to non-​European people, they distort those people and their style of life.35 This is the challenging task for scholars and students in our time, to overcome the coloniality that can cloud research methods and the attitudes that give them form. Essential to decoding the system of gears and cogs that serve as the locomotion for everyday coloniality in its “transhistoric” unfolding across time is recognizing that the past forms the present. As Moraña, Dussel, and Jáuregui conclude, “the Latin American modern subject is the product of a traumatic origin.”36 This is true, firstly, because people who originated in Abya Yala and Africa were subordinated with cruel and ruthless methods and secondly, because mestizos and later Criollos were subordinated to Peninsulares. After Independence, Criollos copied their Spanish masters and then developed even more sophisticated methods they then hoisted upon people of African and Indigenous origins. This then constitutes internal or intra colonialism. The past becomes the present, which is not quantifiable without considering the elements that gave form to the past and thereby giving form to coloniality. Since the lands that became American countries were “discovered” during the Spanish Renaissance, an argument can be made to focus on that time and place to “discover” the origins of coloniality. Consider the Spanish invasion of the Indies, a story whose basic outlines are well known from primary and secondary school textbooks. Lesser known is how coloniality functioned during that time as it shaped those events. One of Bartolomé de las Casas’s experiences is illustrative: After his religious conversion, he returned to Spain to argue for the abolition of West Indian slavery. The year was 1515 and King Ferdinand, in poor health, was en route to Seville and its warmer clime. In Placencia, on Christmas Eve, Las Casas had the opportunity to “inform” the Catholic sovereign, who suggested that he come to Seville during Easter for a longer audience. The first roadblock to changing the king’s mind regarding Amerindian slaves was the king himself. Paul Vickery sets the record straight: “King Ferdinand was the largest holder of Indians.”37 According to Pagden, the king seems to have based his right to hold slaves, and perhaps the right for Spaniards in general to practice slavery, on the papal bull, Eximie devotionis.38 The pope of course was a strong font of authority for the crown. 35  On coloniality restricting objectivity in what should be postcolonial scholarship, see Ward, Decolonizing Indigeneity, xi–​xxiv, 1–​33. 36  Moraña, Dussel, and Jáuregui, “Colonialism and its Replicants,” 2. 37  Vickery, Bartolomé de las Casas, 70.

38  Pagden, The Fall, 29. Later, Pagden fills out the complicated reality when he affirms, “the Castilian crown, had never, in fact, been entirely certain about its right to enslave Indians,” The Fall, 31. He recounts a meeting in Burgos where the licentiate and the future bishop of Cuba, Gill Gregorio, considered the Indigenous barbarians and thus slaves. The lawyer Juan López de Palacios Rubios, however, noted the Indigenous were rational and therefore preserved the right to “freedom

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But so was the pull of money. The essential roadblock to overcoming the coloniality of mind that accepted slavery resided with the aging and infirm monarch. Yet, that was not the only one. To get to a sovereign who liked to delegate matters pertaining to the Indies, Las Casas had to go through the supremely powerful bishop of Burgos, Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca, and the royal secretary, Lope Conchillos, who would eventually become president of the Secretaría de Indias. Both officials, by Las Casas’s account, “had Indians and so many …” (tenían indios, y tantos …).39 Neither of them had any inclination to let Las Casas talk to the aging monarch because it would go against their financial interests. Marcel Brion wrote nine decades ago about Fernand’s court and its reaction to Las Casas’s appearance there: “quickly informed of his arrival, it immediately set about to bar all routes.”40 The minds of the powerful men at the court just as much as the king’s mind concocted the obstacles Las Casas had to confront. Then, unfortunately for millions of West Indian people, the king passed away on January 16, 1516, before the Easter audience he was to have had with the Dominican friar. The series of ordinances known as Leyes de Burgos (1512) that allowed for encomienda slavery would stand.41 That system was so totally encompassing that historian Keith argues it “dominated Peruvian life completely,” much like the hacienda that followed it and not so unlike the European fief with which it held much in common.42 Pagden observes that with massive expansion after grabbing a hold on Peru in 1532 so many more people came into the king’s dominions. He states starkly, “With a far greater number of Indians to abuse and greater prizes to be won, the colonists’ excesses grew.”43 We will get to the details of how encomienda slavery worked later in this chapter. For now, we continue to focus on Las Casas and this condition we call coloniality. There are other revealing episodes involving Las Casas. In the middle of the controversy surrounding his attempts to evangelize the K’ekchi’ or Achi people with the book rather than the sword in what is today the Guatemalan departments of Upper and Lower Vera Paz, the Spanish council of Santiago, Guatemala, sent a letter to the king describing Las Casas as an illiterate friar who was passionate but envious, turbulent, and not saintly.44 They ratcheted up the tone when they added that all the king’s dominions were

and independence,” The Fall, 47–​52. In 1513 Palacios Rubios authored the Requerimiento, a document written in Spanish that Spaniards read to Indigenous people (who of course did not speak Spanish) demanding that they accept the authority of the king of Spain. 39  Las Casas, Historia de las Indias, vol. 3, chap. 84, p. 299. 40  Brion, Bartolomé de las Casas, 68.

41  On the Leyes de Burges allowing the encomenderos to “enjoy” West Indian peoples, see Altamira, “El texto de las Leyes de Burgos de 1512,” ley 1, p. 26. 42  Keith, Conquest and Agrarian Change, 28, 29. 43  Pagden, The Fall, 59.

44  K’ekchi’ has many spelling variants, among them Q’eqchi’ and Kekchí. Among the many sources on Las Casas’s efforts in Vera Paz is Abellán, “La experiencia,” Bataillon, “La Vera Paz,” and Arias, Retórica, 78–​84.

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in revolt, and that if the king did not take measures, all would be lost.45 While defaming someone to protect ill-​gotten wealth certainly suggests an oral or written manifestation of coloniality, the actions of speaking or writing themselves respond to an idea that resides in the mind. The bureaucrats of the court and the council members of Santiago would not have contested Las Casas’s efforts if it were not for the ideas, conceptions, interests, fears, and prejudices they held in their minds. Stated differently, the unnoticed and thus unquestioned coloniality of the Weltanschauung of that time informed how they themselves saw the world. Another way to illustrate coloniality of mind from the perspective of the powerful is through the mindset pervading the invading forces, the one which, as Restall remarks, held that “native peoples were Spanish subjects waiting to be located and informed of their new status.” It does not matter that “native peoples” had not heard of Spaniards before. These invaders immediately expected them to behave as if they understood themselves as subjects of the Spanish crown and that they were ex post facto integrated into the mindset and social structure being imposed. Additionally, as Restall puts it, there was “an assumption of rightful acquisition.” When native peoples did not fathom that assumption, Spaniards could initiate a just war. In this context, “Spanish military activities were then framed as campaigns of ‘pacification’ rather than conquest, and resistance leaders could be tried and executed for treason.”46 The subordinating manner of thinking was one side of coloniality of mind, and when Amerindians began to buy into it, the other side, they accepted their own inferiority. This buying into it is exactly Chasteen’s concept of hegemony at work. Walter Mignolo describes the relationship between the social and intellectual forces as “an imperial management of human subjectivities.”47 As the years turned to decades these two sides of the coloniality of mind were passed down to the descendants of “Indians,” Spaniards, and Africans. People would have to know their place or be very astute and figure out how to outmaneuver the coloniality that defined their place. The human tendency for acquisitiveness as seen with King Ferdinand, Bishop Rodríguez de Fonseca, Royal Secretary Lope Conchillos, members of the Spanish council of Santiago, and all the conquistadors/​now encomenderos leads to a defense of imperialist policies. We recognize from the social sciences what Wang, Seidler, Hall, and Preston underscore: “Acquisitiveness is widely regarded as a fundamental human trait.”48 Acquisitiveness can be detected in humans because they desire status, wealth, or simply the appearance of wealth.49 Peter Klarén writing about encomenderos in Peru explains that they “spent lavishly on conspicuous consumption, not only to validate their aspirations for aristocratic lifestyles and status but to display their ‘power’ as grandees 45  Hanke, “Introducción,” 51. 46  Restall, Seven Myths, 68.

47  Mignolo, “Racism as we Sense it Today,” 1740.

48  Wang, Seidler, Hall, and Preston, “The Neural Bases of Acquisitiveness,” 944. 49  Preston, “Toward an Interdisciplinary Science of Consumption,” 2, 9.

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in the colonial society.”50 There was the corresponding factor of greed (examined more fully in ­chapter  3). And, certainly under the oftentimes hypocritical veneer of a concern for the souls of Indigenous people, there was the unvarnished primary thrust Alex Dupuy describes in stark terms: “The greed for the precious metals was the primary reason for the colonization of the Greater Antilles.”51 Dupuy’s assertion is not only valid for the Caribbean but also for Central Mexico, Peru, the Amazon Basin, the US Southwest, the Southern Cone, and other places. Slaves and cheap labor were the easiest way to gather precious metals. It would go against the human nature of most individuals who are in the process of getting rich to support legislation that would remove their acquisitions from them, even when those acquisitions were people. This brings back to mind to the 1515 episode with Las Casas and Lope Conchillos who now held in encomienda the Puerto Rican Chief Jamaica Arecibo and 200 of his Taíno subjects, some classified as naboría, a word from that language meaning “service Indian.” Seduced by money and wealth, why would secretary Conchillos even consider the possibility of freeing his naborías? Unsurprisingly, he was not inclined toward the idea of liberating them. In fact, in Vickery’s take on his meeting with Las Casas, “Conchillos promised to give him whatever he deserved in the Indies.”52 In other words, he promised Las Casas immense riches in exchange for his silence. The Dominican, perhaps to Conchillos’s surprise, rebuffed the offer, essentially a bribe. It takes an exceptional man or women to give up prosperity and opulence in the name of justice, ethics, spiritual concerns, or humanity itself. Las Casas, to be sure, became one of the few early Spaniards to overcome the seduction of imperialism’s monetary benefits. The Crown did not abolish the encomienda until 1542, and then only did so in favor of mercantilist structures of subordination that shifted economic power from the encomendero. Secretary Conchillos supported a coloniality of structure in the government because he suffered from greed and a desire for wealth and status, attributes of coloniality in his mind even though he lived in Spain. This coloniality of mind provoked in him the conditions to mold even more people into a coloniality of mind, because they too desired wealth and status. Subsequently, they folded yet others into the mindset and system of coloniality. As derived from Gramsci and Chasteen’s description of hegemony, coloniality also resides in the mind of the colonized. Anand Pranjpe, although writing on the Indian Subcontinent, expressed a situation applicable to the Amerindians: “colonised people often attribute their defeat to the inferiority of their ancestral culture, or to native conceptions of knowledge.”53 Peruvian theorist Antonio Cornejo Polar defines coloniality of mind as a kind of private coloniality that victims of imperialism store away outside of the public sphere. He describes it as “a power capable of reproducing itself even in the most private instants of colonial life, even in dreams, imagination and desires” (un poder 50  Klarén, Peru, 47.

51  Dupuy, “Spanish Colonialism and the Origin of Underdevelopment in Haiti,” 15. 52  Vickery, Bartolomé de las Casas, 71.

53  Pranjpe, “Indigenous Psychology,” 28.

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capaz de reproducirse inclusive en las instancias más privadas de la vida colonial, hasta en los sueños, la imaginación y los deseos). These dreams and desires are constrained by the physical barriers of coloniality with which the mind comes in contact, and which then became the metaphors for the psychological barriers. In some minds, doubtlessly there are contradictions. Cornejo Polar continues: “almost submerged, gestures, attitudes, and movements of resistance also are dispersed through the entire social body and through its most subtle fissures” (casi subterráneamente, gestos, actitudes y movimientos de resistencia que también se despliegan por todo el cuerpos social, y por sus más sutiles intersticios).54 Thus, coloniality or resistance to it is not always apparent to the eye or to the historian who would reveal it. Mignolo outlines four avenues through which everyday coloniality can be imbedded: the economic, the political, and the civic are physical templates, the fourth, the subjective, is an epistemic template. By the economic, he means the “appropriation of land, exploitation of labor, and control of finance.” In the English territories land was what most mattered, although, the Spanish did immediately set about seizing lands for the cities they were founding such as Vera Cruz at the Mexican beachhead. However, as Patricia Seed notes in her well-​researched American Pentimento, the Spanish were initially and primarily concerned with encomienda labor, not land, and with chattel slavery. With respect to the affinity for this latter model of servitude, the Spanish were not so unlike the English. They both put a monetary value on people in Africa and other places and then engaged in trade in those peoples. Since the wealthy tended not to pay taxes, a contribución de indios burdened Amerindian peoples held in encomienda or later in hacienda, though not people of African heritage, because they were held as property. This is true because, while the conquistadors and their successors, the encomenderos, had to pay the royal fifth, they paid for it by extracting more wealth from the people they were conquering. In Paraguay, though, Spaniards did have to pay a head tax on each “Indian” they enslaved until Indigenous slavery was outlawed. In later colonial times, Peninsulares and Criollos alike were mostly exempted from taxation since the indios endeudados held that burden.55 Incontrovertibly, as Mario Pastore remarks, the encomienda was viewed as a vehicle for “tax farming.”56 While Andean people were reduced to tributarios, people of African ancestry were treated far worse as chattel, or property. Regarding the political, “the control of authority” as a means of imbedding tangible coloniality requires considering military, legal, and governmental arrangements that subordinated homologous structures in transatlantic regions. Viceregal courts regulated and reorganized conquered subjects, mercenary armies conquered outlying areas; audiencias competed in power and authority with the viceroy and supervised the hordes of letrados, or lawyers, who enticed colonial subjects, the victims of imperialism, to sue each other to derive substantial profit from those lawsuits undertaken. It was in this realm legal culture was born, and with it the letrados, at least in the Spanish-​language 54  Cornejo Polar, “Los discursos coloniales,” 216.

55  Pastore, “Taxation, Coercion, Trade and Development,” 340. 56  Pastore, “Taxation, Coercion, Trade and Development,” 343.

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field. As stated in the Introduction, Mignolo has noted that the letrados eventually accumulated more power than the humanists. This, of course, made liberation even more elusive. To Mignolo’s political we must add the religious, which, when used in conjunction with the political, as was typical during the early modern period, served as a mechanism of social control. The most common instruments to impose coloniality by religious means were the Extirpación de idolatría campaigns that tried (and sometimes succeeded in) reorganizing Mesoamerican and Andean spiritual beliefs. The other was its sister organ, the Inquisition, whose two most infamous fora resided in Lima and Mexico and which derived wealth by appropriating it from conversos (read people of Jewish heritage), chattel slaves, and even letrados and other individuals of Spanish stock. Sometimes, such as what happened with Hernán Cortés’s advance into central Mexico, religious objects of veneration were simply smashed, suggesting unambiguously to local people their deities were inferior. As for the civic, Mignolo mentions gender issues, which become problematized when conjoined to ethnicity, class, and the law, all of which mutually interact, in varying degrees, as configurations of control.57 We will explore the law below. As revealed in The Formation of Latin American Nations’ ­chapter 4, gender and nation were (are!) seamlessly integrated. The early-​dynastic Mexicatl rulers, for example, intermarried with women of other ethnicities when it suited their quest to accumulate power and prestige; this they did as they transcultured into the cultural ideal of Toltecayotl, or Toltecness, thereby climbing to the pinnacle of power elites in the Valley of Mexico.58 The female body, like the male body, as archaeologists John Papadopoulos and Gary Urton note in the introduction to their edited collection of essays by noted scholars on value, “may be commodified and objectified as labor, material, or art, or for sexual pleasure.”59 The female body can serve as a conduit for the transference of wealth. After their arrival on the scene, the Spanish bought into this system of using Amerindian women to gain wealth.60 Certainly, one essential difference between fourteenth-​century late antiquity and sixteenth-​century early modernity resides in the concept of nation.61 As James Lockhart’s research shows, Nahua groups each lived in an altepetl, a kind of ethnic state.62 The Nahua’s nation-​building tactic of giving and taking women from different altepeme, but from the same Mesoamerican cultural complex as their own to benefit each individual 57  Mignolo, The Idea of Latin America, 11.

58  On Toltecayotl, Mignolo quotes and discusses León-​ Portilla in The Darker Side of the Renaissance, 141. For further discussion, see Ward, The Formation of Latin American Nations, 58–​59, 69–​72, 90–​91. 59  Papadopoulous and Urton, “Introduction,” 26.

60  Discussed in Ward, The Formation of Latin American Nations, chap. 4.

61  On the terms late antiquity and early modern and their relationship to the colonial era, Ward, The Formation of Latin American Nations, 3–​5. 62  Lockhart, The Nahuas After the Conquest, 14.

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altepetl, differs from Spaniards’ tactic of receiving (taking) women from a decidedly different culture for their own personal financial gain and their sexual desires. The Spanish taking was different from the intra-​Nahua exchanges because such receiving benefited only the Spanish nation not the Nahua nations, called altepeme, where the benefit would have generally been mutual. Because Spaniards took women from a cultural complex different from their own, and because they subordinated members of that complex, the practice becomes what today’s society calls racism. Because many of those subordinated people were women, what we would call sexism organizes the racial scaffolding. Peruvian historian Nelson Manrique recognizes this double jeopardy when he asserts, “In the intersection between racism and gender discrimination, women have inevitably become war booty for the war’s victors” (En la intersección entre racismo y la discriminación de género la mujer ha sido invariablemente un botín de guerra para los vencedores).63 Inversely we can project that when women from a different cultural complex become war booty, a situation is systematized in terms of racism and sexism. We can certainly be referring to the long wars of Conquest, which in Peru were comprised by the Forty-​Years War. One useful way to look at this long, drawn out conflict is as Edmundo Guillén Guillén does. He calls it La guerra de reconquista inka which ran from 1536 to 1572. However, that focus and nomenclature does not adequately encompass the various civil wars among Andean ethic groups such as the one occurring in the so-​called Siege of Lima between Inkakuna and Waylakuna (Huaylas in Spanish) (1536), between the Inka panakakuna of Waskar and Atawallpa (1527–​1532), and the Spanish civil wars ending in 1541. We can understand the Taki Unquy, begun in 1564, as another kind of resistance to the Spanish presence. The Forty-​Years War concluded with the execution in 1572 of Thupaq Amaru I, the last in a long line of Sapa Inka monarchs. The term “Forty-​Years War” includes in its meaning all these bellicose facets. Alternatively, we can be talking about the soft wars that went on through the ages, interpersonal conflicts, in gendered and ethnic relationships (sometimes violent ones) even today. All of these—​gender, class, and ethnic subordination—​represent angles to institute and institutionalize hegemonic relationships. Ultimately, we must recognize violence as part of “the civic,” for it was perpetrated by the crown, the viceroy, the mercenaries, and even the clergy. Ricardo Salvatore expounds on this reality, colonisation necessitated the perpetration of violence on the subjugated indigenous populations—​a violence that was at first overwhelming but declined afterward—​in order to produce subordination to Spanish authorities, some degree of conformity and deference to colonial officials, a transformation of everyday practices among the colonised, and a radical change in their religious beliefs.64

Spaniards in “the Province and Kingdom of Guatemala,” Las Casas reports in his Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias, threw people into holes, burned them alive, and 63  Manrique, La piel y la pluma, 14. 64  Salvatore, “Conclusion,” 243.

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cut them into pieces.65 The ongoing brutal violence of the Conquest implies an ongoing and blatant disregard for human dignity during the sixteenth century. Coloniality in this sense is broader and deeper than the material conditions that a conquering power might inflict on another nation. It is that, but it is much more. If we think about it, we can see tyrants imposed conditions internally on their own subjects during the period by means of mechanisms internal to the nation too. Castilians inflicted what we are calling coloniality within Spain on Moors, Jews, and Gypsies, as well as on Catalans, Basques, and Galicians. The everyday coloniality that occurs inside one country often takes on religious, racial, ethnic, or simply class overtones. We can find it depicted in a canonical piece of European literature from just a century ago that shows that it can happen in one country or region to people living in that country or region. The Czech-​Jewish author Franz Kafka’s 1925 German-​language novel The Trial illustrates clearly how the mechanisms of internal colonialism can function for an outsider, even in a non-​imperial, but hegemonic, internal national situation. The way the novel depicts the legal system stands as a metaphor for how the law may have seemed to outsiders. Read metaphorically, it helps us to apprehend how it may have been for Amerindians listening to the Spanish-​language Requerimiento pronouncement of submission or other types of legal documents or for recently captured Africans who did not fathom the language, the culture, the monetary system, or the substance of “The Law.” A lack of familiarity with the legal system described in another language would be baffling to anyone subjected to it. Kafka’s protagonist Joseph K. is a man whose absence of a last name suggests he is Everyman. He finds himself entrapped in a legal web from which there is no exit, notwithstanding his uncle’s influence, his attorney’s counsel, or even his own information-​gathering attempts. The entire novel is concerned with his not understanding, his trying to understand, and finally his acceptance that he will never understand. Kafka’s novel could simply be a condemnation of legal systems in the West or even a condemnation of legal systems throughout humanity. Of the infinite possible readings of the novel, another could consider that Joseph K. is a Czech Jew ensnarled in the Germanic legal system becoming bewildered as he considers his situation. When Joseph K. accepts his subordination to “The Law,” that subordination is predicated on what we are describing as hegemony. Another of the infinite possible readings of the novel, one never intended by Kafka, but possible nevertheless, could be to read it a metaphor exemplifying the legal never-​never-​land plight of the original Americans, the first slaves, the first encomienda Indians, the first debt peons, and so forth, and the ignorance foisted upon them. What Kafka’s protagonist Joseph K. went through in a system he could not understand, is not unlike what the Indigenous experienced when they had to go up against the legal system of the Spanish empire. This is not so far-​fetched for the twentieth century, but it is especially not so far-​ fetched for the sixteenth century when transatlantic imperialism established the original mechanisms for transatlantic hegemony. Those mechanisms continue to survive. Writing 65  Las Casas, Tratados, 1:83–​93.

36 Everyday Coloniality and Early Social Slavery Theory

about twentieth-​century Peru, anthropologist Enrique Mayer analyzes the situation that arose with events in a small town, Uchuraccay, in the province of Huanta, Ayacucho Department. In 1983, the Peruvian press had reported that a small group of peasants in the town had killed some combatants from the Sendero Luminoso revolutionary movement. A group of eight reporters and photographers from Lima and Ayacucho went to the town to investigate what had transpired there. Mysteriously all eight of them were killed too and the blame fell on the villagers. Some of the villagers were then murdered extrajudicially by elements of the state, others by additional Sendero Luminoso forces, and others fled to the Amazon or to Lima. Three of the villagers were put on trial. The Qheswa-​speaking Simeón Aucatoma, Dionisio Morales, and Mario Ccasani appeared before a Spanish-​speaking court. Because they did not understand Spanish, Mayer concludes, “The accused comuneros never even understood the court proceedings.”66 Mayer describes the villagers as coming from Deep Peru, a term developed by historian Jorge Basadre, popularized by the novelist José María Arguedas, and employed in a commission report about the massacre penned by the famous novelist Mario Vargas Llosa. Mayer explains that for the famous novelist, Deep Peru is Indigenous Peru.67 For Mayer, “Deep Peru includes Kafkian judicial systems, which it calls its administration of justice, that systematically enmesh lower-​class and Quechua-​speaking citizens in complicated and unreal proceedings.”68 The experience of those villagers thrust into the Hispanic legal system were not unlike Joseph K.’s experience in The Trial, nor would it have been much different from what Qheswa-​speaking people in earlier centuries experienced who were also subjected to a system, be it the Audiencia, the Extirpation of Idols campaigns, or the Inquisition, that were also conducted in the Spanish language. The same kinds of legal conditions inspired another great writer, Thomas More, to free the citizens of his Utopia from The Law. We are told regarding the Utopians: they absolutely banish from their country all lawyers, who cleverly manipulate cases and cunningly argue legal points. They consider it a good thing that every man should plead his own cause and say the same to the judge as he would tell his counsel.

Anyone “uncoached in deception by a lawyer”69 can present the unvarnished facts in a court of law so that the judge can make a decision based on the unadulterated truth. More has his Utopians spurn lawyers so that they can overcome the disadvantages of a Europe overburdened by a hodgepodge of complex laws. Such laws, given that lawyers will forever be clever and cunning, tend to favor the people who can afford such counsel and disadvantage those who cannot. This disparity between the favored and the disfavored in a legal system could be taken as another form of coloniality. Mignolo’s fourth category, the epistemic, the most difficult to quantify given the loss of documentation, resides in “the subjective/​personal control of knowledge and subjectivity.” This is the kernel of coloniality of mind, when thought itself is shaped by 66  Mayer, “Peru in Deep Trouble,” 491. I also consulted Vargas Llosa, “The Story of a Massacre.” 67  Mayer, “Peru in Deep Trouble,” 477–​78. 68  Mayer, “Peru in Deep Trouble,” 484. 69  More, Yale Edition, 4:194–​95.

Everyday Coloniality and Early Social Slavery Theory

37

exigencies of imperialism. This fourth channel, what he labels the “colonial matrix,” “is invisible to distracted eyes, and even when it surfaces, it is explained through the rhetoric of modernity that the situation can be ‘corrected’ with ‘development.’ ”70 It is this stealthy quality of coloniality that makes it insidious because, if invisible, there is no way to correct it, except to begin to try to make it visible. By acute observation, as we will see with Thomas More, Erasmus, Las Casas, and Guaman Poma de Ayala, the matrix’s mechanisms can be revealed. There are two sides to the coloniality of mind that may or may not be palpable in the physical world: (1) the oppressor’s greed fed by feelings of superiority and entitlement, and (2) the oppressed’ feelings of inadequacy that debilitates the mind. Regarding the later, Mignolo draws on the work of Frantz Fanon to come to the following conclusion:  “Perspectives from coloniality … emerge out of the conditions of the ‘colonial wound,’ the feeling of inferiority imposed on human beings who do not fit the predetermined model in Euro-​American narratives.”71 Regarding the Andean region, Manuel Burga draws on the work of Wachtel when he explains that the Inkakuna, after being defeated militarily, began to look into their traditions where they found “signs, omens and prophecies” (signos, presagios y profecías) that they began to reinterpret in an attempt to fathom “the reigning nobility’s stupefaction and docility in the face of the European invaders” (la estupefacción y docilidad de las noblezas reinantes ante los invasores europeos).72 Hence, two sides to the coin of everyday coloniality are apparent: attitudes that inform imperialist mentalities and attitudes that inform the mentalities of the colonized. Only by addressing them, can we treat the “colonial wound.”

Nahua Slavery, Spanish Slavery, and Spanish Appropriation of Nahua Slavery

One of the most obvious manifestations of coloniality thrives in the institution of slavery. Oftentimes we think of slavery as originating with Columbus and therefore having a 400-​ year trajectory in the Americas that arises suddenly in 1492 when the Great Navigator scooped up several Caribbean people to bring back to the Spanish peninsula and ends with the abolition of that terrible institution. However, human bondage was not only customary in ancient and medieval European cultures, and in millenary African cultures, it similarly existed in Abya Yala long before the arrival of Columbus.73 Besides the naboría (the Caribbean), the mita (Peru), the coatequitl (Mexico), and pongo labor (Peru), there were other variants. Europeans quickly became aware of autochthonous practices of this nature. Chroniclers document pre-​Hispanic servitude in the Indies when Hernán Cortés (1485–​1547) arrived in Tenochtitlan, the Mexicatl (imprecisely called Aztec) capital. 70  Mignolo, The Idea of Latin America, 11, xi. 71  Mignolo, The Idea of Latin America, xii. 72  Burga, Nacimiento, 167.

73  Moreno Toscano, “La esclavitud,” 343.

38 Everyday Coloniality and Early Social Slavery Theory

As with European traditions later imposed, in Mesoamerica one altepetl, or etnia, tended to enslave members of another. “Etnia” is used here in the sense Anthony Smith assigned to it, “ethnic community,” which is the way it is used in Spanish or French.74 Spaniards such as Bernal Díaz del Castillo (1495–​1584) did not use such terminology. Neither did they turn to more commonly used terms such as nación because such a choice would move them toward recognizing Indigenous nations as bona fide entities. Thus, Spaniards tended to employ a generically and erroneously constructed term, “Indians,” because it made the different etnias seem less than civil societies. Even so, in late antiquity Abya Yala, state-sponsored interethnic slavery existed. In the Guatemala manuscript of his Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España, Díaz del Castillo observes, “the Indians and chiefs commonly held a quantity of men and women as slaves, and they sold and traded them as one would any type of merchandise” (los indios y çaciques comúnmente tenían cantidad de indios e indias por esclavos, y que los vendían y contratavan con ellos como se contrata cualquier mercaduría) (HV, 669a).75 Another chronicler of the first point of contact between the two cultures, Francisco López de Gómara, makes plain that thieves, families of traitors, men who were responsible for the pregnancy of female slaves, prostitutes, and even youngsters could become enslaved.76 The slave market was so lucrative that Fray Bernardino de Sahagún is able to affirm in his Historia general that the slaver was first and foremost of all the vendors.77 As discussed in The Formation of Latin American Nations, the Mexica’s slaves often came from other etnias, such as from Cempoal or Tlaxcala. As documented in that book, frequently the interethnic slaves for nation-​expanding goals were women. As map 1 shows, plenty of etnias lived around Tenochtitlan that could serve as sources of slaves. Slavery seems to have been common in other areas of Mesoamerica too. The K’iche’ may have been the most powerful collective among the various groups of Maya, an ethnonym not necessarily used by the diverse groups in that frequently employed, but artificially constructed, category (see map 2). In any case, they are emblematic for Mesoamerica. K’iche’ documents such as the Popol Vuh, now spelt Popol Wuj, reveal the presence of precontact slavery in the lands today known as Guatemala. Before the K’iche’ had emigrated from their original city of Izmachi, the Ilocab entered into war with them. The Popol Wuj recounts that the Ilocab were defeated, some sacrificed, while others “fell into slavery and in servitude” (cayeron en esclavitud y en servidumbre). After Balam Quitzé, Balam Acab, Mahucutah, and Iqui Balam, the founding fathers of the nation, left Izmachi and founded a new capital city, Q’umarkaj, spelt Gumarcaah in the text, the K’iche’ found themselves the object of hostilities. This time, people such as 74  Smith, The Antiquity, 1. Smith uses the French variant ethnie; here we use, where possible, the Spanish form, etnia. No comparable term exists in English, except the bulky expression “ethnic group.”

75  In this chapter, references to Díaz del Castillo’s Historia verdadera, Sáenz de Santa María edition, will be indicated parenthetically and abbreviated as HV. 76  López de Gómara, Historia de la conquista de México, 343–​44. 77  Sahagún, General History, vol. 10, pt. 11, 59a.

Everyday Coloniality and Early Social Slavery Theory Tula

39

Atitalaquia

Apaxco

I S O M O T

Zumpango

D A N

IM

Xaltocan

S

Teotihuacan

Cuautitlan

H

IC

H

E

C

C

Ecatepec Tolpetlac Tenayuca

Azcapotzalco Tacuba Chapultepec

Tepeyacac

LAKE TEXCOCO

Tlatelolco

Coatlichan

TENOCHTITLAN

A S L H U U C A

Mixiuhcan

S E C A N P Tizaapan TE

Texcoco

Iztacalco Culhuacan

Cuitlahuac Chalco Xochimilco Mixquic 0

5

S H U A C U L

10 mi

Map 1. Primary ethnic nations in Anahuac. From Nigel Davies, The Aztecs (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980), 19. Map by Erin Greb Cartography.

40 Everyday Coloniality and Early Social Slavery Theory

the Kaqchikels and others waged war on them, but they were defeated and the K’iche’ “made them slaves” (Los hicieron esclavos). Besides the Kaqchikels, the K’iche’ enslaved people from the Rabinal and the Zaculeu nations.78 The making of the soldiers of defeated armies slaves is similar to Mexica policy, and as we will see, is not so far from situations in Europe as Thomas More outlines. The pre-​Hispanic Nahua likewise practiced human subordination to such a degree that their language, Nahuatl, had a noun, tlacanamacac, for the slave merchant, and a verb, tlacanamaca, to sell people.79 Slaves themselves were called tlatlacotin (sing. tlacotli).80 The institution of slavery was so ingrained in Nahua society that it appears in their mythology. Alfonso Caso highlights Xilonen, a young bondmaid carried on the shoulders of a priest.81 Clendinnen finds in her research that Nahua servitude could be a punishment for an offense, or simply a matter of contract.82 Frequently slaves came from other ethnic nations, such as from the Otomi, the Chichimeca, and the Totonaca. While we now discern several aspects of Nahua slavery, there is still much to learn.83 We do not know, for instance, if it had the blatant sexual overtones later apparent to Nahua informants during the battles of the Spanish invasion and Mexicatl resistance to them. Continued appraisal of Nahuatl philological evidence may provide further insight on this issue. The most famous woman from the early colonial era, La Malinche, was twice given to a different etnia as a slave, first to a Mayan group, then to the Spanish group. Restall fixes her origins, “a Nahua noblewoman from the eastern edge of Nahuatl-​ speaking central Mexico.”84 Bernal Díaz relates her story.85 Because she was an heir to the “throne,” it became politically expedient for her birth family to get rid of her. Her mother’s female servant happened to die, making it possible to substitute her for the bondswoman. Malinche’s parents, Díaz del Castillo explains, “gave her to those from Tabasco” (la dieron a los de Tabasco) as a slave. The Tabascans later presented her to Cortés (HV, 69a). As a consequence of passing from one etnia to another, Cortés acquired a bilingual Malintzin, fluent in Yucatec or Chontal Maya and in Nahuatl.86 The 78  Popol Vuh, IV, vii, x, ed. Recinos, pp. 145, 151.

79  The remainder of this section draws from one section, “Nahua and Spanish Slavery,” and part of another, “The Spanish Appropriation of Nahua Slavery,” of a lengthy article published in the journal MLN. Ward, “Expanding Ethnicity,” 435–​39. 80  See Siméon, Diccionario, 558b, 578, 663a. 81  Caso, El pueblo del sol, 65.

82  Clendinnen, Aztecs, 99–​100. 83  See Gibson, The Aztecs, 153. 84  Restall, Seven Myths, 82.

85  For more on this, see Rose de Fuggle, “Bernal Díaz del Castillo cuentista.”

86  Restall is one of the few commentators who specifies doña Marina spoke the Yucatec Mayan language and explains she had been given to the Chontal Maya. Restall, Seven Myths, 83, 84.

Everyday Coloniality and Early Social Slavery Theory

Map 2. The Mayan region. From POPOL VUH: The Definitive Edition of the Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life and the Glories of Gods and Kings, revised and expanded by Dennis Tedlock, translator. Copyright © 1985, 1996, p. 20. Reprinted with the permission of Touchstone, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved. Map by Erin Greb Cartography.

41

42 Everyday Coloniality and Early Social Slavery Theory

practice of interethnic bondage was not limited to women alone. Lockhart confirms the existence of child slaves who had “come from a distance.”87 According to Díaz, the Mexica took Tlaxcalteca as slaves for over one hundred years (HV, 129a). These Mexica practices somewhat aligned with norms demanded by the Greek ideology that Aristotle exemplified during the sixteenth century: they both understood slavery as an interethnic convention.88 The essential difference was that the Mexica held no theory comparable to Aristotle’s theory of natural slavery; nor did they compare the relationship between body and soul with that between master and slave. Bondsmen in Anahuac could own property and get married.89 Nahua servitude differed from European concepts in other ways. Nahua slaves in the main came from outside their peer group (as in Aristotle), but they could elevate themselves to a higher status. Father Diego Durán narrates that Acamapichtli, the first Mexicatl tlatoani, had a female slave from Azcapotzalco, from a neighbourhood called Cualuhacalco. She was so beautiful the tlatoani became enamored of her. She then became pregnant, giving birth to a son, Itzcoatl.90 Although born out of wedlock and the son of a slave woman, Itzcoatl later became a “king” (1426–​1440). How could this be? After Tepanecatl assassins murdered Acamapichtli’s grandson Chimalpopoca, the “throne” reverted to Chimalpopoca’s uncle, Itzcoatl, the son of Acamapichtli and his Tepanecatl slave. Such a succession would have been impossible according to the more rigid Renaissance conventions with their Aristotelian underpinnings. To the contrary, it was quite acceptable to the Mexica. It is ironic that Itzcoatl, the son of a bondswoman, would later make his name as the first independent-​minded Mexicatl tlatoani, free from the control of both the Tepaneca and the Acolhuaque (sing. Acolhua). This historical fact similarly demonstrates the fluidity of Mexica notions of ethnicity. To be sure, Spaniards engaged in bondage too. Their annexation of ethnic nations of Mexico began as a series of slaving missions. Francisco Hernández de Córdoba led the first Spanish voyage to Mexico. Its mission was explicitly to capture slaves for return to Cuba. Juan de Grijalva led the second Spanish voyage. Díaz del Castillo participated in those early missions before his third expedition with Hernán Cortés.91 Because Spaniards did not hold Spaniards or Christians in thrall, they favored other etnias for that purpose.92 We will deal with the Spanish/​European philosophy of slavery as we proceed. Here we are establishing an overview on the practices. 87  Lockhart, The Nahuas After the Conquest, 99–​100.

88  For a comprehensive treatment of Aristotle’s application in Abya Yala, see Hanke, Aristotle and The Spanish Struggle; also Pagden, The Fall. 89  Cline, “The Spiritual Conquest,” 463. 90  Durán, Historia de las Indias, 2:56.

91  Ramírez Cabañas, “Introducción,” xi.

92  Regarding Christians not enslaving Christians, see Phillips and Phillips, “Spain in the Fifteenth Century,” 20.

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Early on in the Historia verdadera, the reader runs into the European enslavement of people on the island of Cuba. In the “Guatemala” manuscript, Díaz del Castillo recounts how on two occasions the governor of Cuba Diego Velázquez promises him “Indians” as soon as some become available (HV, 4b, 5a, 5b). In both the “Guatemala” and the “Remón” manuscripts, the foot-​soldier chronicler remembers one occasion when, to raise money for vessels to conquer the mainland, he and his cohorts had to go to war and fill the boats with “Indians” from the islands who could then be used to acquire funds. In this case, Díaz del Castillo explicitly uses the term slaves (HV, 5a, 5b). The foot-​soldier chronicler narrates all this in a matter of fact way but in the face of the verifiable remorse at enslaving free people against the wishes of God and the King (HV, 5a, 5b). Human servitude as practiced by the Spanish was an economic tool. As Rolena Adorno so convincingly evinces, Díaz del Castillo’s primary interests in the Spanish wars against native people were economic.93 He did not hide these concerns. As stated, Díaz flat out admits practicing slavery. His testimony provides insight into the mindset of those years. He reveals that Velázquez promised slaves as remuneration for work: “he showed us much love and promised he would give us Indians” (nos mostró mucho amor y prometió que nos daría indios) (HV, 5a).94 In economic terms, enslaving people was justified “to pay for the boat with them” (para pagar con ellos el barco).95 He remembers that Hernández de Córdoba “had pueblos de indios on that island” (tenía pueblos de indios en aquella isla) (HV, 5a).96 Pueblos de indios were towns where Indigenous people were conjugated. They differed from Pueblos de españoles where Spaniards were zoned to live. That Hernández de Córdoba had pueblos de indios literally means that he had “towns” of “Indians” at his disposal. The key verb here is tener whose meaning has remained relatively constant over the centuries. In 1739 the Diccionario de la lengua española lists one of its meanings as “to possess, and enjoy” (posseer, y gozar) while in 1990 the Pequeño Larousse reads “to possess and enjoy something” (poseer y gozar una cosa).97 With “to have,” and “to possess,” there are connotations of property ownership. In this context, “to enjoy,” signifies exploitation and even the commission of acts of violence. As we can suppose with the division between the pueblos de indios and the pueblos de españoles, a theoretical separation surfaces between the slavers and the slaves. The crown sought to keep the conquerors legally separate from the conquered. The segregation of Spaniards and Amerindians into distinct pueblos was a way to favor one group over another. Robert Jackson articulates that 93  Adorno, “Discourses on Colonialism.”

94  Variance in “Guatemala” manuscript: “me prometió” (HV, 4b); “nos prometió que nos daría indios” (HV, 5b).

95  Variance in “Guatemala” manuscript: “para pagar con indios el barco, para servirse de ellos por esclavos” (HV, 5b). 96  Variance in “Guatemala” manuscript: “tenía pueblo de indios en aquella isla” (HV, 5b). 97  “tener,” Diccionario de la lengua castellana, t. 6; and Pequeño Larousse, 990b.

44 Everyday Coloniality and Early Social Slavery Theory Spain imposed sumptuary laws (laws prohibiting designated groups in society from consuming certain goods, such as luxury textiles) and created separate fiscal statuses and obligations and legal systems for the indigenous and nonindigenous populations.98

While on the surface all strata appeared legally isolated, in practice there was intense cross-​cultural and cross-​social osmosis. This occurred especially when both forms of society coincided. One aspect of Nahua civil society that overlapped with the Spanish way of life was the acceptance and practice of slavery. Slavery was economically viable for imperial mining, and sugar and later cotton interests, because the work required was rudimentary. Wallerstein explains that slaves will only do what they are coerced to do and nothing more. Therefore, the slave masters could not depend on the slaves for more-​detailed labor.99 Wallerstein is referring to what would be human nature: to resist intended control over one’s mind and body. While there was hegemony, enslaved people consenting to their new reality, there was assuredly some degree of aversion to that reality. It is not coincidental that our consideration of slavery begins in the Caribbean, the very area where sugar slavery would predominate more than anything else. As for Cortés himself, Díaz reports that in Cuba he had “good Indians and encomienda” (buenos indios y encomienda) (HV, 38a). He remembers Cortés proclaiming in Santiago de Cuba that he needed hands for his great enterprise. For compensation, the participants would receive gold, silver, riches, and “encomiendas de indios.” For all this, the governor Diego Velázquez had license from His Majesty, the King (HV, 39a). The practice of remunerating with slaves was so ingrained, one could reason, as Díaz does, that Velázquez lost his famous dispute with Cortés because he failed to pay for his follower’s services with “good Indians” (buenos indios) (HV, 42a, 42b). As his men felt deceived, he lost their loyalty, a reality not lost upon Cortés. Velázquez did not seem to grasp the importance of winning friends with property, here, human property. In the end, he could not even count on the aid of his own relative, Juan Velázquez, precisely, “because he had not given him good Indians” (porque no le había dado buenos indios) (HV, 46a). The feudal medieval idea of reciprocity becomes apparent here and he who offers land and possessions can expect loyalty. Since Velázquez did not offer suitable property, he did not receive loyalty from his men. The “encomiendas de indios” may not have been legalized chattel slavery, but it took separation and hierarchization to another level since Indigenous people held in encomienda by definition owed something (labor, tribute) to the Spanish overlord who in return provided them with religious instruction. As Arturo Arias notes, after the Leyes de Indias were passed in 1542, “the encomienda became a backdoor method to justify slavery in the Americas.”100 If Africans could be slaves, the Indigenous could be encomendados. Whether technically a slave, or an encomendado, the realities on the ground were 98  Jackson, Race, Caste, and Status, 4.

99  Wallerstein, The Modern World-​System, 88. 100  Arias, Recovering Lost Footprints, 1:241.

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comparable and all-​encompassing. The notion of bondage was totally ingrained in the forming Spanish colony, despite the Leyes de Burgos (1512) and the unfulfilled Nuevas Leyes, or New Laws (1542). This was so much the case that Spaniards could conceive of the reverse idea of Spanish slaves under the Maya. Oviedo mentions how Velázquez orders Cortés to release certain Spaniards (Jerónimo de Aguilar and Gonzalo Guerrero) captured in the Yucatan (see HV, 49a). Díaz narrates the story of these Spaniards held captive by certain caciques. Aguilar did not marry; he left with Cortés to become a point in the translation triangle that he formed with Cortés and La Malinche.101 Guerrero had taken a wife, he stayed. The Spanish enslaved the Maya too. Bartolomé de las Casas, in his 1552 Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias, reports cases of Maya being bartered for “wine, oil, vinegar, bacon, clothing and horses” (vino y aceite y vinagre, y por tocinos, e por vestidos, y por caballos). Even a Mayan king’s son was sold off for a piece of cheese.102 Spaniards initially saw Yucatecs as a commodity; later, in 1532 and after they were trafficked to Peru, they became human fodder during the initial stage of the Forty-​Years War the Spanish waged against the Inkakuna. The Maya were not the only Central Americans to end up in Peru. Jaime Wheelock Román reports that between 1527 and 1531, the governor of Nicaragua, Pedrarias Dávila (Pedro Arias de Ávila), sold Indigenous slaves from that region and introduced them into slave routes ending up in the Antilles and in Peru.103 Las Casas reports that when the Spanish began ripping apart the fabric of the K’iche’ nation located in the lands today known as Guatemala, those inhabitants who did not have resources to meet tribute demands had only one choice before the new Spanish overlords: “giving them their sons and daughters, because other slaves they did not have” (dándoles los hijos e hijas, porque otros esclavos no los tienen).104 Even if Las Casas were exaggerating, as he was wont to do in the Brevísima relación as a rhetorical strategy to get on his readers’ nerves and provoke positive change, the flow of his narrative gives a general idea of the goings-​on during that time and the un-​Christian abusive tactics Spaniards employed against people to garner wealth. As the early sociological thinker from Peru, Manuel González Prada, stated in 1904, “Although Las Casas’ affirmations have been branded as exaggerated, it cannot be denied that thanks to the exploiter’s greedy cruelty, in some American peoples, the weak element finds itself close to extinction” (Aunque se tache de exagerables las afirmaciones de Las Casas, no puede negarse que merced a la avarienta crueldad de los explotadores, en algunos pueblos 101  Aguilar spoke Spanish and Yucatec, a Mayan language, La Malinche spoke the same Mayan language, as well as Nahuatl. Cortés would ask a question in Spanish, Aguilar would translate it into Yucatec, La Malinche would translate it into Nahuatl. The Nahua would respond in Nahuatl, La Malinche would translate the answer into Mayan, and Aguilar would translate it into Spanish for Cortés. 102  Las Casas, Tratados, 1:90–​91.

103  Wheelock Román, Raíces indígenas, 30. 104  Las Casas, Tratados, 1:102–​4.

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americanos el elemento débil se halla próximo a extinguirse).105 The facts are the facts and the flourishes are the flourishes, but the flourishes do not change the facts. As a consequence of a mutual deeply held acceptance of ranked societies as normative, Spanish customs could be superimposed over Nahua, Yucatec, K’iche’, and other Mesoamerican patterns. During the initial decades after the imposition of Iberian power, slaves mainly held the same status as in the pre-​Hispanic era, yet as Cline cautions, just “how much their subordinate status changes in the colonial period is unclear.”106 The existence of precontact slavery suited the Spanish ethos, for to create slavery where none existed could have appeared less Christian and consequently less acceptable to the crown. As Charles Gibson points out, Spanish slavery could operate “under a guise of legitimacy whenever Indians could be shown to be occupying a ‘slave’ status already in Indian society—​for this could be understood as a change of masters rather than as an initial enslavement.”107 In Nahua regions, other forms of forced labor drew on custom. The dreaded repartimiento often “continued to follow the procedures of the indigenous coatequitl.”108 Siméon’s dictionary lists the coatequitl as a public works project, a community effort.109 As with the above-​commented-​upon mita, while the coatequitl was required labor, it was for the common good. This aspect changed when the Spanish appropriated the system because they employed it for personal gain, not for the common good as previously conceptualized. Nevertheless, the coalescing of European and Mesoamerican forms of servitude proved to be an effective synthetic system of subordination. Slavery became so widespread during the early colony, that slaves actually became property of other slaves in Mexico.110 The enduring sentence of human servitude fell upon millions of Mexicans with such force, legend has it, that even the barbaric hand of Hernán Cortés trembled.111 Notwithstanding the severity of these sub-​human conditions, the Marquis of the Valley did not refrain from enslaving a great quantity of Nahua to rebuild Mexico City after he and his men had destroyed it.112 After the initial Spanish penetration and a new society began to establish new institutions, the number of Indigenous slaves began to decrease. Lockhart detects that the slave classes began to blend into the other lower social categories. First, with the demise of late antiquity’s Wars of the Flowers, “one source of supply was gone.” Second, a few decades after their arrival, early modern Spanish finally abolished Indigenous slavery “among sedentary peoples, relegating it to the nonsedentary fringes.”113 105  González Prada, Obras, 3:200.

106  Cline, “The Spiritual Conquest,” 463–​64. 107  Gibson, The Aztecs, 221. 108  Gibson, The Aztecs, 227.

109  Siméon, Diccionario, 115a.

110  Moreno Toscano, “La esclavitud,” 345; Gibson, Spain, 115. 111  Benítez, “El español, conquistador y conquistado,” 195. 112  Sierra, Evolución política del pueblo mexicano, 43.

113  Lockhart, The Nahuas After the Conquest, 111. Gibson reports “slaveholding by Indians was a short-​lived colonial institution. Quite expectably, it was forbidden by royal law.” Gibson, The Aztecs, 154.

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Indigenous servitude continued after the 1540s only as a detriment to rebellion, much (as we see in ­chapter  3) as Thomas More proposes.

The Encomienda and the Imposition of Debt Peonage

The encomienda was like a micronation that had its own lord who ruled over it like a fiefdom.114 The lord, or encomendero, “held Indians,” not as property, but he did control their lives. This variety of servitude was similar to, but technically distinguishable from, short-​lived Indigenous slavery (referred to above) and from long-​lasting chattel slavery (discussed in the next section). The encomienda category refers to Indigenous peoples who are “entrusted to the charge of a Spanish colonist,” who in turn, as Gibson explains, was “permitted to exact both commodity tribute and labor service.”115 Keith offers the details: “With their large households, encomenderos required numerous Indians to serve as cooks, janitors, porters, and in other domestic capacities.”116 Additionally, there was toiling in mines and later in the fields. In return, the encomendero took responsibility for the encomendados’ religious instruction and consequently needed to employ a priest or other cleric to provide it. An essential difference between encomienda and chattel slavery was that the latter could be disengaged from Christianity (although it rarely was), while the former, from its inception, grew out of Christianity. Put another way, encomienda slavery by definition could not exist except in relation to Christianity. The Leyes de Burgos legally instituted encomienda slavery and drew a line between indios esclavos and indios encomendados. These leyes allowed for the forced Christianization of the encomendados as well as their forced relocation to achieve that end. Because of the investment required for his providing of Christian teaching, the encomendero, in return, would be entitled to “enjoy” “said Indians.” In a word, this system exchanged Christian education for corvée labor. The leyes explicitly prohibit the sale of the Indigenous, differentiating encomienda slavery from chattel slavery, which saw subordinated peoples as tangible property.117 The encomienda served as a form of private enterprise, local in nature, and only sometimes involved in commerce with the motherland. Assuredly, this system was not a purely European innovation. As Leisa Kauffman notes, it was a Spanish structure adapted to local Indigenous realities and tribute collection systems.118 The mercantile aspect was a give-​and-​take process among people of European extraction, yet for the Indigenous, money and labor flowed one way, from them to the encomendero, his pockets, or perhaps to the pockets of his colleagues, the corregidor (the royal official), judges, the Church, or 114  The standard reference is Simpson, The Encomienda. 115  Gibson, Spain, 49.

116  Keith, Conquest and Agrarian Change, 41.

117  Altamira, “El texto de las Leyes de Burgos de 1512,” p. 33: ley 13; p. 40: ley 26; p. 27: ley 3; pp. 23–​25: “El Rey” and ley 1; p. 26: ley 1. 118  Kauffmann, “Figures of Time and Tribute,” 34.

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the royal coffers. For this reason, Keith describes the encomienda as a parasitic institution.119 The lines between encomienda and chattel slavery were not always clear. Robert Haskett points out, “the idea that all conquered people were war captives led to a blurring of distinctions between the encomienda and outright slavery.”120 Nevertheless, as Pagden argues, the legal distinctions were clear, those people subjected to the former were not considered chattel, while those subjected to the latter were.121 While to all intents and purposes the situation of the Indigenous worker on the encomienda was a kind of enslavement akin to feudal privilege, we should not discount its capitalist features: cash crops, exploitation of laborers who were technically free—​subjects of the king—​and the shift, after 1549, from labor to tribute.122 Owen Worth describes this combination of mercantilism and markets as “the first form of capitalism.”123 For any form of capitalism to exist, money had to be part of it. Indeed, some form of collective salary, el sesmo, seems to have been paid to workers on some encomiendas in Chile,124 and increasing numbers of silver miners at Potosí did receive a salary—​even if it was not enough on which to live. However free the mitayo worker was to work on this encomienda or that, or later, this hacienda or that, he or she did not have the economic resources to leave the system. It is easy to speculate that the hacienda system grew out of the encomienda and with it came the hacienda store and the institution of debt peonage.125 Andeans organized their families and their communities into ayllu units and to the detriment of their traditions, the Spanish powers enacted tribute from them through a kuraka or other local leader. One way to avoid payment was to flee the ayllu. Encomiendas, and later haciendas, needed farm hands. The result was that the peasants fled their ayllukuna leaving those who remained behind shorthanded to meet with ever-​increasing tribute demands. However, they did not find freedom. They were now called forasteros, or outsiders, and they ran right into other encomiendas, mines, obrajes, and perhaps even early haciendas that were in need of peones.126 There was a mighty force impelling these movements, but “few—​Pagden frets—​of the great apologists for the Indians registered any serious protest against this dislocation of the Indians tribal life.”127 Thus, dislocation continued as the norm. 119  Keith, Conquest and Agrarian Change, 55.

120  Haskett, “Our Suffering with the Taxco Tribute,” 453. 121  Pagden, The Fall, 35.

122  Wallerstein, The Modern World-​System, 92–​94, see also Burga, Nacimiento, 133. 123  Worth, Rethinking Hegemony, 25, also 26. 124  Jara, “Una investigación,” 240, 241.

125  For an interesting debate about where encomienda ends and where hacienda begins, see Lockhart, “Encomienda and Hacienda,” in Of Things of the Indies, 1–​26, and a response to it in Keith, “Encomienda, Hacienda and Corregimiento.” 126  See for example, Keith, Conquest and Agrarian Change, 30. 127  Pagden, The Fall, 35.

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An ancillary feature of the economic thrust was the deculturation and inculturation of these workers. Fernando Ortiz, in his Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar (Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar) describes this cultural give and take as transculturation. The result was a brand-​new culture, part hybrid, and part something new derived from previously unimagined cultural combinations. Elements of the new transcultured identity allowed the infusion of coloniality, and peons, yanaconas, mitayos, and pongos accepted their condition. At least at the onset of imperial influence, on many of these farms, the workers were yanaconas, yanakuna in Qheswa, literally service men and women required to provide feudal-​like labor. Gibson writes, this system “has most commonly been studied as a derivative of feudalism, which it was.”128 Precontact yanaconaje survived into the Forty-​Years War in Peru, entered into the all-​enveloping colony, survived after independence, and as José Matos Mar demonstrates, it eventually morphed into sharecropping on the coast in the twentieth century.129 The emerging feudal structure encased in the encomienda evolved over the long term, becoming, before the nineteenth century, the system known as debt peonage, slavery by another name, albeit liberated from the notion of property. Yet, already in the sixteenth century change was in the air. One drastic modification in policy occurred, as Burga explains, when “tribute began to be paid in products, not in work, as had been the case in the Inka Empire” (el tributo comienza a pagarse en productos, no en el trabajo, como se hacía en el imperio inca).130 The essential hacienda-​like feature of debt peonage that established monetary debt at unfair levels relative to the value of products was being practiced during the early modern era, as lamented by a notable chronicler from that period, Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala. In his overview of the kingdom of Peru, he laments thusly, “if [the worker] loses ten sheep (or llamas), [the foreman] will make him pay twenty, making him forfeit a day’s wages so there is no food or nourishment and his wife and children are kept occupied” (ci pierde dies carneros haze pagar beynte carneros y los quita toda su jornal y no les dan de comer ni alemento y ocupa a sus mugeres e hijos).131 There is much to lament about the expansion of the debt bondage system between the sixteenth and twenty-​first centuries. It did, however, represent a step away from chattel slavery and from feudal-​like yanakuna or coatequitl service. While these three appalling forms of severe service share the impossibility of legal escape, the introduction of money takes a (small!) step toward a market system and away from humans as property. This market system has a cultural impact. People whose parents and grandparents saw things in terms of the ayni, a work ethic based on reciprocity, were beginning to see themselves as part of the monetary system. This was not the case with all people, but with some people. The disengagement from chattel slavery for Amerindians may have allowed them greater movement, albeit within the restrictive realm of debt, while conversely making more room for chattel slavery on the backs of black people. 128  Gibson, Spain, 156–​57.

129  Matos Mar, “Sharecropping,” 163–​67. 130  Burga, Nacimiento, 133.

131  Guaman Poma, Nueva crónica, 525 [539].

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Chattel Slavery’s Philosophical Underpinnings

The even more severe institution of chattel slavery complemented the colonial function of the encomienda.132 This variety of slavery occurs, in the words of John Papadopoulos and Gary Urton, when “the body itself [becomes] an object of desire, something that can be possessed and owned, something with a fungible value—​an exchange value—​all its own.”133 Papadopoulos and Urton isolate the two defining characteristics of chattel slavery, property and value; the value at which certain properties are held that are determined by the marketplace. Since the days of the Romans and before, there were markets and there were slaves. There was trade and there was tribute. In a word, the European World-​System was not born in a day, a year, or a century. The exchange-​based and the colonialist systems have operated side by side—​assisting each other, some might add—​for millennia. However, in the European world, there were ways of making softer the cruel inhuman push to conquer and enslave. In effect, those softening discourses are ­chapter  3’s primary interest. Before getting to them, we first need to discuss chattel slavery’s philosophical underpinnings to understand what grievances grabbed the Renaissance reformers’ interest. Human bondage was an integral element of society before and during the sixteenth century in Europe, paralleling what was happening in the Western Hemisphere where it also existed. In the Old World, Greeks and Romans practiced slavery as did early Africans, and medieval Europeans and Muslims. William Phillips puts this in perspective: “During the thousand years from the end of the Roman Empire to the beginning of European expansion in the Atlantic, slavery was a social and physical reality in the Christian world, and it was reinforced by contact with the highly developed slavery of the Muslims.”134 The practice was widespread. As Dirk Hoerder makes clear, “Islamic, Jewish, Byzantine, and Latin Christians peoples all practiced state slavery (administrative, military, or fiscal) and private slavery (productive, commercial, or domestic).”135 The slaves, in Weaver’s words, “became important mercantile commodities.”136 Martin A. Klein tempers the horror of bondage when he suggests “it was unlikely, however, that many medieval or early modern societies were completely dependent on slave labor.”137 Nevertheless, the practice was widespread and the slavery-​infused World-​System incontrovertibly found itself largely engaged in human commerce across the sea. As Wallerstein observes, it had to originate “from a region that was outside its world-​economy so that Europe could feel unconcerned about the economic consequences for the breeding region of wide-​ scale removal of manpower as slaves. Western Africa filled the bill best.”138 Wallerstein’s 132  On slavery in a comparative context, see Bergad, The Comparative Histories of Slavery; also Inikori and Engerman, “Introduction,” and Klein and Vinson III, La esclavitud africana. 133  Papadopoulous and Urton, “Introduction,” 26. 134  Phillips, Slavery from Roman Times, 3. 135  Hoerder, Cultures in Contact, 40.

136  Weaver, Latin America in the World Economy, 12.

137  Klein, “The Impact of the Atlantic Slave Trade,” 34. 138  Wallerstein, The Modern World-​System, 89.

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observation coincides with Pagden who adds that slaves “came from regions where the Spanish crown had no political commitments.”139 Thus unfolded history as we know it. As we will see in the next section, Columbus brought slaves from the Caribbean with him back to Seville in the 1490s to set up that possibility as commerce. Later, as Laird Bergad points out, some 200 slaves aided Hernán Cortes in his push to subdue Tenochtitlan.140 Then they came to Peru. Indeed, Africans were second only to Amerindians in Lima and Mexico City.141 Besides Mexico and Peru, slaves became part of the fabric of the new society forming in northeastern Brazil and reached every place Spaniards and Portuguese settled.142 While the sugar enterprises in the Caribbean were not of the magnitude of the haciendas that were to follow, they did set the patterns for those later centuries. Besides Caribbean and Brazilian sugar, the discovery of silver in Potosí (present-​day Bolivia) and Zacatecas (Mexico) as well as the ongoing Indigenous demographic collapse led to even more North and Sub-​Saharan Africans being imported.143 This is not to say that the rise of chattel slavery was inverse to the decline of autochthonous populations. Seijas and Sierra Silva underscore, “Mexico’s indigenous population only recovered to its 1580s levels at the start of the nineteenth century.”144 Furthermore, the human trafficking and exploitation of Africans and their descendants predominated so much that Seijas and Sierra Silva talk about “the centrality of slavery in Mexican history.”145 The “centrality of slavery” means it was crucial for the system’s functioning. Hence, Bergad concludes that slavery became “essential to the colonial system.” This was so because it entered many facets of life. Bergad explains, “it was highly diversified, and slaves were found in every economic activity, urban and rural.” By the year 1650, some 340,000 slaves had been imported to Spanish-​speaking areas of the Americas, and 225,000 to Lusophone areas.146 All told, 1.1 million Africans would come to Spanish-​speaking areas.147 More arrived in the form of newborn babies. Slavery developed as the needs of commerce dictated, but the legal system was likewise a decisive factor. As with any imperial enterprise, the question of law is paramount to justifying it. John F. Schwaller points out that there were two types of international law that guided (should have guided) human activity during this time, one code governing relations among European states and the other between the European states and their possessions in Las Indias.148 The latter is of concern here. One of the underpinnings of the slave system was the belief in a natural order of laws that was immutable. Sixteenth-​century explorers, conquerors, and theorists held this view of things, which during that time, found in 139  Pagden, The Fall, 33.

140  Bergad, The Comparative Histories, 33–​35. 141  Bergad, The Comparative Histories, 37–​38. 142  Bergad, The Comparative Histories, 36, 38.

143  Bergad, The Comparative Histories, 36; also Chasteen, Born in Blood and Fire, 52. 144  Seijas and Sierra Silva, “The Persistence of the Slave Market,” 311. 145  Seijas and Sierra Silva, “The Persistence of the Slave Market,” 307. 146  Bergad, The Comparative Histories, 15, 50–​51.

147  Klein and Vinson III, La esclavitud africana, 144. 148  Schwaller, “Introduction,” xiv.

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Aristotle a philosophical and legal basis to buttress the ideological foundation of their enterprise. His ideas had become so accepted from the thirteenth century on that he was known simply as “The Philosopher.” This St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–​1274) had learned from his teacher, St. Albert the Great.149 In Spain, for example, the thirteenth-​century king Alfonso el Sabio quotes him in the foundational Siete partidas, and the fourteenth-​ century poet Juan Ruiz, the Archpriest of Hita, comments on an Aristotelian text in his famous Libro de buen amor.150 This footprint continued through the Renaissance where it established itself as a dominant strand of empire-​building political and social thought. The Politics, which favored a natural basis for justifying slavery, became one of the central texts giving form to this convention. Consider this passage: It is also from natural causes that some beings command and others obey, that each may obtain their mutual safety; for a being who is endowed with a mind capable of reflection and forethought is by nature the superior and governor, whereas he whose excellence is merely corporeal is formed to be a slave; whence it follows that the different state of master and slave is equally advantageous to both.151

Aristotle reasoned out his “natural” slavery defining the “master” as an integral being, maintaining that the “slave” was only partially whole, needing the former’s mind for integrity: “the slave is not only the slave of the master, but nothing else but that.”152 This kind of deductive reasoning is the result, according to J. Donald Hughes, of the attitudes of the ancient Greeks who “tried to understand nature rationally, not mythically.”153 Based on a logical methodology, Aristotle assigns the qualities of perfection to nature, allowing for “nothing either imperfect or in vain.”154 Such an ideology was useful for the ruling elite because according to it a slave devoid of reason or soul needed to be governed by the rational master.155 Because he or she lacks a soul, to use James A. Weisheipl’s phrase, he or she is “a non-​living thing [that] simply moves of itself and not by itself.”156 While Aristotle did not clearly lay out whether 149  Daly, “Revelation,” 24.

150  Ruiz, Libro de buen amor, stanzas 71–​73.

151  Aristotle, The Politics, 1252a–​1252b, p. 2. 152  Aristotle, The Politics, 1254a, p. 7. 153  Hughes, Ecology, 58.

154  Aristotle, The Politics, 1256b, p. 14.

155  Aristotle, The Politics, 1252a, p. 2; 1254b, p. 8. A hierarchic system would create an imbalance that arises from the “have-​nots” aspiring to higher status. Some interpretations of Aristotle (relying upon a reading of his Nicomachean Ethics) have caused certain commentators to come to conclusions such as Boruchoff’s: “Aristotelian justice rests upon the precept that society, like nature and the arts, must maintain a balance between its various elements. Thus, each of the four ‘just causes’ Sepúlveda outlined posits war as a means of rectifying an inequality arising from the Amerindians’ prior actions: their use of force, unlawful seizure of property, sinful deeds, and ‘inhuman’ or ‘barbarous’ instincts” (“Beyond Utopia,” 363). Although Boruchoff construes Aristotle’s political philosophy as one of balance, judging a culture “barbarian” implies a superiority complex on the part of one group which imparts a value judgment on the other. 156  Weisheipl, “Aristotle’s Concept of Nature,” 147.

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a slave was a human or not, he did propose that any bondsman refusing to submit to Greek rule could be subjected to a just war.157 Following the Aristotelian logic, the victor is the victor because of superior and therefore natural abilities. Thus, “it seems that force never prevails but in the consequence of great abilities.”158 He then goes into the legal arguments that always come back to natural factors. In a word, all notions of slavery can eventually be traced to the natural determinants that cause certain people to be slaves. Although it is not explicit, as José Rabasa cautions, it is easy to deduce from Aristotle a concept of slavery grounded in national ethnicity.159 This is what Pagden is getting at when he states it was grounded in culture.160 Early in the Politics (the second chapter of the first book), Plato’s disciple quotes the poets who believe “it is proper for the Greeks to govern the barbarians, as if a barbarian and a slave were by nature one.”161 As is obvious, Aristotle applied this designation to those who were not of the Greek culture.162 If Greeks are Greeks and barbarians are barbarians, what is the characteristic that distinguishes them if not ethnicity, even if this category and language had yet to be conceived? Elsewhere, in order to preclude classifying persons of nobility as slaves, Aristotelian logic asserts: “we must acknowledge that there are some persons who, wherever they are, must necessarily be slaves,” while people “of noble descent” “in no situation” can be.163 While Aristotle does not talk about ethnicity (a metric not yet known to the Greeks) and logically avoids racial notions (a concept not dominating the social science scene until the late nineteenth century), the idea of Greeks and Barbarians divided essentialistically from each other in nature is just another way, perhaps the first way, to create these categories.164 Since Aristotle was “the Philosopher,” these ideas were certainly read by Renaissance historians, theologians, and lawyers who were living and breathing in a resurgence of classical archetypes. During the late Middle Ages, as Pagden explains, Europeans considered non-​ Europeans such as Berbers, Turks, and Ethiopians as barbarians. He has found additional evidence suggesting that certain Europeans regarded Europeans of other etnias 157  Aristotle, The Politics, 1256b, p. 14.

158  Aristotle, The Politics, 1255a, pp. 9–​10.

159  Rabasa, “Utopian Ethnology in Las Casas,” 268–​69. 160  Pagden, The Fall, 16, 19, 20.

161  Aristotle, The Politics, 1252b, pp. 2–​3.

162  Mignolo takes issue with the use of the term culture, which he defines as “a key word of colonial discourses classifying the planet,” Local Histories, 15. His argument is convincing, yet I have found no other word free from colonial connotations because other signifiers such as tribe, ethnic group, and etnia also seem to be tainted. 163  Aristotle, The Politics, 1255a, p. 10.

164  The notion of race arrived in Europe in waves. In France, “A New Division of the Earth, according to the Different Species or Races of Men who Inhabit it” was published in 1684, Boulle, “Francois Bernier,” 11. Hannaford suggests racial consciousness became institutionalized in three stages: 1684–​1815, when writers use race “as an organizing ideal,” 1815–​1870, “when the map of Europe was reconstructed to restore things to their legitimate prerevolutionary ‘natural’ origins,” and finally, 1870–​1915, “the high point in the idea of race,” Race, 187.

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(Irish and Normans) as barbarians.165 Canonized from Aristotle’s Politics, this terminology became widespread during the sixteenth century. In Institutio principis Christiani, or The Education of a Christian Prince, for example, Erasmus of Rotterdam remarks how on occasion princely power is hereditary, a “custom among some barbarian peoples in the past (according to Aristotle).”166 We notice that in Erasmus here barbarians are a thing of the past, not of the present. The Spanish authors Bartolomé de las Casas and Antonio de Guevara also used the word. The latter became famous in literary circles, among other reasons, for two chapters from his book Relox de Príncipes. These offered a critique of empire not easily emitted from within the empire. Rather than in a direct approach, the criticism appears as a parable that operates through analogy. In this story, a Danubian peasant addresses the Roman senate and denounces imperialism, the violence it implies, and the effect it has upon the people governed. Guevara was arguing against what was then called the Conquest, falling into a category we might call pacifist, or even progressive. For example, as Santa Arias takes note, Guevara’s thesis was that those who reside in nature—​read Indigenous people—​can be happier than those who live under empire.167 However, Guevara seems to have vacillated in his use of the term barbarian since in another version of this story integral to another work, his Libro áureo, the author, or the editor, deleted the term. Hence, in the Relox version people, “may be Greek, or barbarian, or Roman” (que sea griego, que sea bárbaro, que sea romano), but in the Libro áureo, the label is suppressed and peoples are classified as simply being “Greek or Roman” (que sea Griego que sea Latino).168 The assertion “we demand obedience of the untamable barbarians” (dimos la obediencia a los indómitos bárbaros) is likewise suppressed in the Libro.169 While we cannot know with absolute certainty which of the versions is earlier, or if the Libro áureo was a pirate edition as David A. Lupher asserts, we can conclude that Guevara was comfortable with the term, at least in some points.170 Yet if the Libro áureo was an earlier version dating from 1518–​1524 as Lupher suggests, it may explain why the authorities were disinclined to allow its publication. We would then suspect that the term was gaining wider usage during those years. This linguistic usage of the word barbarian took the same form during the European enterprise in Abya Yala. Given the colonial mentality in which the concepts of fatherland 165  Pagden, The Fall, 15. The early modern period in Spain could be viewed as beginning with the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella uniting Aragon and Castile in 1469. See Cowans, Early Modern Spain, 1.

166  Erasmus, The Education of a Christian Prince, 5; “quod et olim apud barbaras aliquot nations fieri solitum testator Aristotles” (Institutio principis christiani, 136). 167  Arias, Retórica, 64.

168  Guevara, Relox de príncipes, 2:637; Guevara, Libro áureo de Marco Aurelio, 1:125; also Guevara, Libro áureo in Bulletin Hispanique, ed. Foulché-​Delbosc, 120.

169  Guevara, Relox de príncipes, 2:639; Guevara, Libro áureo de Marco Aurelio, 1:127; also Guevara, Libro áureo in Bulletin Hispanique, ed. Foulché-​Delbosc, 122. There is one more case where Guevara describes the Germans as “las gentes tan bárbaras,” which is completely suppressed in the Libro, Guevara, Relox de príncipes, 2:642. 170  Lupher, Romans, 51.

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(patria) and nation linked to cultural groups,171 neo-​Aristotelians did not have difficulty in equating Spaniards and Greeks while describing the ethnicities of America as barbarians. In the end, as Pagden maintains, “It was only this identification of the natural slave with the barbarian that made the theory of natural slavery of any use in the discussion over the nature of the American Indian.”172 During the wars of annexation, even detail-​oriented chroniclers such as Pedro Cieza de León saw nations as civilized or barbarian. Referring to the Isla del Gallo, or Gorgona Island, where Pizarro and his “thirteen of fame” took refuge after drawing the famous line in the sand, Cieza de León refers to its inhabitants as “barbarian peoples” (gentes bárbaras).173 Yet these were sedentary peoples with an organized urban structure. Cieza himself is aware of this and he observes that houses are fortified inside a wooden fence (tienen las casas armadas en grandes horcones a manera de baruacoas o tablados).174 A wooden fence implies permanence and a feeling of community and it creates a town protected from outsiders as well as an implication of local laws and customs that govern the community. The idea of a town goes to the Greek ideals of polis and civis.175 Therefore, it is difficult to fathom how Cieza and his compatriots could consider such sedentary people “barbarian,” except as part of a conscious or subconscious coloniality needed to justify in their minds what they were saying and doing. They were looking at things through an imperial lens. Cieza’s depiction of these people as barbarians implies an inherent denial of their civil life. The idea of “towns” was apparent to Cieza de León on other occasions. On his trek through the lands that would eventually become the modern republic of Colombia, he describes certain valley city-​states he had been observing on his way to Cali, “there are many Indian towns comprised of different nations and customs, very barbarian” (ay muchos pueblos de Indios de diferentes naciones y costumbres, muy bárbaros).176 Cieza de León concedes the status of “nation” to “barbarian” peoples, which was not the case with the Nahua-​centric Tlaxcaltecan historian Diego Muñoz Camargo, who revealed a lack of sympathy toward nomadic peoples he described as “barbarians” to whom he denied the status of “nation.”177 Unsurprisingly, the denomination is offensive to those who find themselves described by it. If we turn to an early seventeenth-​century text for a reaction, the response is unmistakable. The Texcoco-​focused historian Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxóchitl repudiates well before 1640 the “barbaric interpretation” of the name Chichimecatl that resulted from painting and how the term sounds in the Nahuatl language. For him, the proper name “Chichimecatl” applied to his people from their origin 171  See Monguió, “Palabras e Ideas.” 172  Pagden, The Fall, 47.

173  Cieza de León, Crónica del Perú: primera parte, fol. 14 [iiii], p. 32. 174  Cieza de León, Crónica del Perú: primera parte, fol. 14 [iiii], p. 32. 175  See, for example, Pagden, The Fall, 15.

176  Cieza de León, Crónica del Perú: primera parte, fol. 40v, p. 89. 177  Muñoz Camargo, Historia de Tlaxcala, 104.

56 Everyday Coloniality and Early Social Slavery Theory

negated the meaning of barbarian from it.178 This ethnonym cannot mean “barbarian,” a word applied only with injurious intent. While there was a theorizing of the “barbarian” in the twentieth century that deconstructed notions of barbarism, there was previously a theorizing of “barbarians” that constructed inferiority for certain kinds of peoples.179 The theorizing of “barbarians” forms a kind dualism, us against them, as opposed to a more inclusive “together” which was not the norm. Bringing this all together, we can encapsulate the dualist architecture of this kind of thought. While in the Greek world, Pagden reminds us, there existed “two distinct forms of slavery, the civil and the natural,” it was the natural one that offered “the means to explain why it was morally right for one nation—​in the case Greeks—​to enslave members of another.”180 Slavers and defenders of slavery used the theory of natural slavery to justify its use in the so-​called Conquest. Francisco González de Oviedo, an important official chronicler, coincides with Cieza’s use of the term “barbarian.” Pagden explains:  “The Indians, he thought, most clearly resembled the ‘Ethiopians’—​the barbarian inhabitants of a vague geographical area that spread from the Atlas Mountains to the Ganges—​and Aristotle’s favorite barbarians, the Thracians.”181 Besides the use of this term as a pejorative, Oviedo sets up the Western discursive strategy that Edward Said would later describe as Orientalism, which establishes “a kind of intellectual authority over the Orient within Western culture.”182 By establishing authority over the East, by comparison, an authority envelops Amerindians. We know now that these people’s ancestors many millennia ago migrated from the East via Siberia and Alaska.183 Internal colonialism later incorporates this Orientalist paradigm into its tenants, as with Domingo Faustino Sarmiento’s discourse.184 But writers solely concerned with documenting and justifying the Conquest, such as Cieza de León, Bernal Díaz del Castillo, or Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, were not the only ones active at that time. Reformists, idealists, and liberating thinkers would push social slavery into the discourse as a starting point to soften the binary structure informed by the doctrine of natural slavery. Ironically, if naturalist theories of slavery were dualist (Greek-​ barbarian), they formed another dualism with social slavery. This dualism functioned oppositionally between essentialist subordination and social subordination. Awareness of that oppositional dualism represents a first step toward liberation 178  Alva Ixtlilóchitl, Obras históricas, 2:37.

179  Within his attempt to conceptualize twentieth-​century theorizing of the barbarian, Lund consults Wallerstein, Dussel, Mignolo including precursors Candido, Ortiz, and Malinowski. Lund, “Barbarian Theorizing,” 54–​72. Certainly, new language for old paradigms continues to appear: “socialism” and “lack of democracy” take on the functions of the old term barbarian. 180  Pagden, The Fall, 41. 181  Pagden, The Fall, 25.

182  Said, Orientalism, 19.

183  Lewis, Jr., et al., “Mitochondrial DNA and the Peopling of South America.”

184  Sarmiento, Facundo, 75. We should not be too hard on Sarmiento since he was writing in the middle of a civil war of words and acts. Lund begins “Barbarian Theorizing” with Sarmiento.

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thinking. Finally, all forms of slavery, natural, social, and encomienda (which was social) formed yet another dualism, the greatest dualism of all, the dualism between the materiality of slavery and idealism that worked against all forms of social subordination. One of the greatest stains on the history of humanity is slavery, whether directed toward “barbarians” or not. Aristotle’s ideas furnished a philosophical foundation to govern the pyramidal social structure in which the Amerindians found themselves at the bottom, just above the Africans. We are not concerned here with the details of the theoretical debates and hearings, since Hanke, Pagden, and other scholars have excellently dealt with them.185 With the birth of a new multiethnic society during the sixteenth century, natural notions of slavery began to shift somewhat to allow for social ones that noteworthy early modern thinkers developed and popularized. This trend was concomitant with involuntary servitude beginning to disappear on the European continent (but not in Africa and the Indies), a decline that coincided with the rise of feudalism in the Americas.186 Given slavery’s long arc, it is instructive to return to the moment when one of its central underpinnings began to weaken, when the convention of natural slavery was recast, however slightly, as a social one.

Columbus: One Small Step beyond Aristotle

With Christopher Columbus’s voyages, the long sixteenth century begins, and early modernity arrives in Abya Yala. Slavery was a well-​established practice in Columbus’s world and it constituted a consequential attribute of transoceanic crossings. It is not so strange that Columbus would be familiar with human servitude. His biographer Samuel Morison describes “coffles of Negro slaves” that the Genoese probably saw upon his arrival at Lisbon in 1477.187 Columbus’s acceptance of this practice appears in the briefs that he wrote to the Catholic Kings, Ferdinand and Isabella. To pay for the enormous expenses associated with his enterprise, the explorer recommends selling slaves. He sets his ideas down in a 1494 memorial: Your Majesties could give license and permission for enough carvels to come every year to bring the above-​mentioned livestock, other necessities of life, and things to populate, and to make use of the land. And this, at reasonable prices for your costs, could be paid for with slaves from these cannibals, people so fierce, clever, well-​proportioned, and of very good understanding, that once removed from that inhumanity, we believe that they will be better than any other slaves. [Sus Altesas podrán dar liçençia e permiso a un número de carabelas suficiente que vengan acá cada año, e trayan de los dichos ganados e otros mantenimientos e cosas de poblar el campo e aprovechar la tierra, y esto en precios razonables a sus costas de los que les truxieren, las cuales cosas se les podrían pagar en esclavos d’estos caníbales, gente tan fiera e dispuesta e bien proporcionada e de muy bien entendimiento, los

185  For those Spanish debates, see Hanke, The Spanish Struggle and his Aristotle; also Pagden, The Fall and Lupher, Romans in a New World. 186  Davis, The Problem of Slavery, 7, 37.

187  Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea, 32.

58 Everyday Coloniality and Early Social Slavery Theory cuales quitados de aquella inhumanidad creemos que serán mejores que otros ningunos esclavos.]188

This acceptance of vassalage was part of an already established Weltanschauung that the Great Navigator never questioned. Morison explains: “It was a conception founded on the Spanish enslavement of Guanches in the Canaries, and on the Portuguese enslavement of Negroes in Africa, which Columbus had observed and taken for granted, and which the Church condoned.”189 After a close reading of his diary, Beatriz Pastor concludes that in his mind those people went through a “gradual transformation into potential merchandise.”190 Given his early life experiences, it is not surprising that Columbus would objectify the people he encountered. Columbus’s attitude, similar to his cataloging of the Native Americans as “Indians,” would survive for centuries. His idea of slavery, like Aristotle’s, drew on the perception of cultural distinctiveness. Different peoples behave differently. Behaviour was another factor, Pagden concludes, that Greeks considered when they dislocated themselves from other peoples who they did not consider Greek.191 It follows logically for the colonizers then, that “once removed from that inhumanity,” Amerindians could become better slaves. If their behaviour changed, they could become less barbarian. Regrettably, Columbus does not fully take the next step and consider that being “removed from that inhumanity” might make them consonant to Spaniards (or Greeks). Columbus’s acceptance of slavery has made him a villain in the eyes of some commentators. But when viewed in terms of Aristotelian philosophy, a gray nuance filters into black and white concepts of the man. Notwithstanding an acceptance of bondage, Columbian abstraction on this topic does represent a small advance over Aristotle’s philosophy, so ingrained in the conquering ideology. First, Columbus describes slaves as having “very good understanding.” This superlative mental capacity puts the Columbian slave at a distance from the Aristotelian one, “whose excellence is merely corporeal.” The Columbian model of the slave, ironically, can also reflect characteristics Aristotle credits to the master. With “very good understanding,” it follows that he could be endowed, un-​Aristotelianly, with a “mind capable of reflection and forethought.” Second, Aristotle does not believe in a slave’s ability to self-​perfection because he who “is a slave by nature” cannot escape the natural status quo. As mentioned, Columbus’s views differ from the Philosopher’s because those unfortunate souls only had to be “removed from that inhumanity” and they could be “better than any other slaves.” Hence, their condition becomes dynamic, not static. In the same Memorial, Columbus clarifies that by sending certain Caribs to Spain for instruction and baptism, they could be purged of “that inhuman custom” (aquella inhumana costumbre) of cannibalism, and they could 188  Colón, Textos y documentos, 153. Spanish was a second language for Columbus and consequently we find the adjective “buen” confused with the adverb “bien” in the expression “muy bien entendimiento.” 189  Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea, 291.

190  Pastor Bodmer, The Armature of Conquest, 41. 191  Pagden, The Fall, 18, etc.

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learn to be translators.192 Translators! Undoubtedly, Columbus had them in mind as translators to further his and Castile’s economic goals. But someone who could oscillate between dissimilar languages surely has developed a mental capacity that supersedes Aristotelean barbarism. Fortuitously, Columbus’s model based on the needs of the moment destabilizes the natural model of slavery because it exposes the plain truth that slaves can ameliorate their level of “civilization.” If the people enslaved had but to be dislodged from the “inhumanity” of the Indias Occidentales to improve their lot, then it follows that Columbus could visualize civil society’s refining impact on a slave. The Admiral had begun to think in a way that would allow him to begin to believe in the perfectibility of those so vulgarly called “Indians.”193 This small step of awareness creates an opening through which others can pass and begin the decolonial project. The gulf between Aristotle and Columbus demonstrates how the idea of slavery was less rigid in the mind of the latter. The idea that a slave could have a mind with the necessary gifts for translation and improve him or herself results, perhaps, from the power of the relatively more enlightened Renaissance over Columbus. Columbus is relevant here because not only was he influenced by the Renaissance, he in turn also influenced the Renaissance, in a general and in a specific sense, because a young Bartolomé de las Casas saw Columbus exhibiting seven surviving Taínos in Seville, because his father accompanied Columbus on his second transoceanic voyage, and because he later acquired access to Columbus’s papers and he transcribed and abstracted the diary of Columbus’s first voyage.194 Certainly something survived of Columbus in Las Casas. Paolo Emilio Taviani recognizes that the celebrated navigator was neither Medieval nor Renaissance since he straddled the two ages.195 Although he is capable of moving beyond the inelastic Aristotelian concept to see slaves as a social, not natural, category, he is still incapable, however, of conceptualizing a symmetry of dissimilar peoples, part and parcel of progressive thought during the Renaissance.

192  Colón, Textos y documents, 153.

193  Las Casas (Apología, 15) was the one who first called the term “Indian” vulgar.

194  Giménez Fernández, “Fray Bartolomé de las Casas,” 68–​69; Dunn and Kelly, “Editor’s Introduction,” 3–​14. 195  Taviani, “El hombre Colón,” 92.

Chapter 2

THE ELUSIVE DIVISION-​OF-​POWER IDEAL

In the introduction to this book, we considered the topic of “Coloniality as psychosis or as implicit bias.” Exploring the psychology of conscious or subconscious imperialist actors and the bias that resides in the unconscious and perhaps conscious mind (coloniality of mind) leads to our interest in excavating the embedded social mechanisms (coloniality of structure) that go beyond and deeper than the obvious interoceanic political authority of Spain. This exploring and excavating facilitates dissecting the hegemonies that originated with European society and then devolved into the coloniality of colonial society. Since the principal stated mission of Spanish activities in the New World was to bring Christianity to the newly found lands, it is helpful to talk of religious power, but also political and economic power, and the relationship between them. It is when the ideals of the religious do not align with the practices of the political or economic, we can begin to talk about the failure of those ideals. Conversely, as we see in the final three chapters, adhering to this Christian ideal is exactly the way St. Thomas More, Desiderius Erasmus, and Bartolomé de las Casas unearth the problems resulting from coloniality of mind and coloniality of structure. Similarly, Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala wrests religion from the state and creates a new conception of the spiritual, profoundly, yet unexpectedly for his time, liberating the spiritual from the temporal. Before we can get to those matters, we must first explain the Christian division-​of-​power axiom and then review the corruption of that ideal during the sixteenth century. While the division-​of-​power principle comes from the Bible, and we are talking about Christian communities, the principle was not always adhered to. Indeed, as Lilian Calles Barger remarks, the religious and the political were mostly fused during the medieval period.1 They were so fused that there was a common symbol, or metaphor, as Raquel Chang-​Rodríguez calls it. For her, dos cuchillos, “two knives or swords,” constituted “a medieval legal concept that joined spiritual to secular authority.”2 In practice, Church and state were especially cleaved during the Middle Ages by what Josep M. Barnadas describes as the “idea that the faith could and should be propagated by military means.”3 This idea became practice. J. Lloyd Mecham informs us that in Spain, after the Umayyad, or Moorish, invasion, Castilian kings, not Bishops, followed Visigoth tradition by founding and restoring (in recovered lands) episcopal sees, by electing and deposing bishops, by convening councils, and by judging ecclesiastical pleitos, a process called the “privilege of particular patronage.”4 This practice was not restricted to the Medieval period. 1  Barger, The World Comes of Age, 38.

2  Chang-​Rodríguez and Vogeley, “Introduction,” 35. 3  Barnadas, “The Catholic Church,” 511. 4  Mecham, Church and State, 7, 9.

62 The Elusive Division-of-Power Ideal

Along these lines and denoting historical continuity, the well-​known French historian Lucien Febvre defined the Reformation as being “reduced to two poor and dry elements, the first ecclesiastical and the other political” (réduit à deux éléments bien pauvres et bien secs: l’un ecclésiastique et l’autre politique).5 Also referring to the Reformation, Barger sets up the discussion: “Theology’s resistance to a direct address of the political was deep-​seated, the result of a theologico-​political truce. Centuries before our current understanding of ‘the secular’ as a sphere of society devoid of any appeals to divine authority of transcendent meaning, European reformers were laying down the essential elements of the modern relationship between religion and politics.”6 Barger uses terms such as the “Great Separation” and cordon sanitaire.7 We must remember that the Protestant Reformation was not the only reformation going on at that time. Erasmus, for example, was clear on the need to reform the Church to head off the beachhead Martin Luther and others were establishing. Barger explains that “Catholic liberationists, seeped in [early] modern European theology and working independently of church hierarchy, took up the older Protestant move of an oppositional popular religion.”8 She does not say which Catholic liberationists she has in mind when she says they were also turning to the Bible itself for inspiration, a key move for liberating discourses. The division-​of-​power ideal derives from the Gospel according to Matthew, which sets up the principle when it has Jesus proclaiming, with respect to taxation, that his followers should render under Caesar that which is Caesar’s and unto God that which is God’s.9 This idea was fortified, as Barger observes, with “the Augustinian model of two cities —​the earthly and the heavenly.”10 During the early modern period there could be no absolute independence from the Church’s authority but criticizing temporal power (either monarchy-​based or based in ecclesiastical privilege) did work to purify the temporal while at the same time foregrounding the spiritual. This idea from the Gospel coincides with the idea we have of Jesus as someone outside the temple and certainly outside Roman law and authority. He was there with his disciples, not interested in Caesar, but not wanting to cross Caesar, so that he and his band could pursue spiritual growth. We will see later that the failure to adhere to this division-​of-​power principle resulted in ethically (and ethnically!) flawed institutions such as encomienda servitude, which disregarded Christ’s ideal as it picked up the exploitative slack not covered by chattel slavery to increase imperial profit margins. Not writing about the encomienda, but in a more general sense, Barger expounds on how during this period, “One could hold to religious values in the private realm and exercise

5  Febvre, “Une question mal posée,” 8. 6  Barger, The World Comes of Age, 37.

7  Barger, The World Comes of Age, 38. Barger is drawing on the work of Mark Lila. 8  Barger, The World Comes of Age, 35. 9  Matthew 22:21.

10  Barger, The World Comes of Age, 38.

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effective, and often contradictory, political rights in society, for example, holding that all things belong to God while hallowing private property.”11 Besides real estate and what was constructed on it, encomenderos, church officials, imperial bureaucrats, and Spaniards of other professions held on to chattel slaves as property and on to indios encomendados who were not property but were treated as such—​despite fervently professing to be Catholic. However, spiritual leaders such as Antonio de Montesinos, Las Casas, and Domingo de Santo Tomás began to criticize the gap between Christian ideal and everyday practices. As we will see in the last two chapters of this book, St. Thomas More, Erasmus of Rotterdam, and Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala took the division-​of-​ power ideal to heart and it became a foundation of their liberation thinking. Before getting to their attempts at adhering to the principle, we must consider the social, political, and religious failures of adhering to the principle. When respected, the division-​of-​power principle can serve as an absolute morality to protect the people, when maligned, to serve a particular moment’s power needs. In the latter case, Christian morality devolves into situational morality. The following equation may help to clarify this inverse liberating posture: T ∥ S = L, where “T” stands for “temporal” (or political), “S,” “spiritual,” and “L,” Liberation, if, and only if, T and S are ∥, or parallel. Put differently the relationship T ≅ S = L means that when “S” is congruent to “T,” then there is liberation. Alternatively, liberation can happen if T ≤ S = L, when the temporal is less than or equal to the spiritual. Conversely, the relationship T ≥ S = SUB reveals that when the temporal is greater than the spiritual, there is subordination. If the division-​of-​power criterion’s corruption led to societal subordination, such as when men of the cloth took part in actual conquistador bellicose activity and even encomienda slavery, the antidote to such corruption could be found in adherence to the principle that privileged the spiritual over the material, which engendered Renaissance liberation thinking. We will get to liberating forms of thought more fully in ­chapters  4 and 5. At this juncture, we must first continue exploring forms of subordination whereby the temporal exceeds the spiritual, such as the variants of slavery seen in ­chapter  1, and the fusion of the temporal and the spiritual in institutions such as the encomienda and the Patronato in this chapter. Lamentably, the division between spiritual and temporal power in everyday practice over the centuries is illusory. Already mentioned in this regard was the Middle Ages. Where achieved, it ultimately became corroded so that the standard of parallelness did not ring true. Church and state bureaucracies did not usually separate them. They worked hand in hand, although sometimes oscillating, as during the Reconquista to form a unified system of re-​conquest. As Enrique Dussel sees it, as medieval, Renaissance, European, and Arabic cultures coalesced, there “was a tendency to unify indissolubly the aims and purposes of the state and of the Church.”12 An example will illustrate. In manuscript documents from the Odriozola Peruvian Manuscript Collection housed at Duke University’s rare documents library, there are letters, and testaments that give a 11  Barger, The World Comes of Age, 38. 12  Dussel, A History of the Church, 38.

64 The Elusive Division-of-Power Ideal

flavor of the time. In one written between 1547 and 1548 during the Gonzalo Pizarro rebellion, number XXVIII, item 6, we find a document signed by a Señor Cabrera. This is what he writes: “And there where we had been sitting before the fire, four harquebus-​men arrived who were sent by Friar Pedro Muñoz and Friar Gonzalo, Friars of Mercy who were with two of the harquebus-​men. They sent those harquebus men to apprehend me; upon arrival they tied my hands and after a while they untied them” (Y donde á un rato sentados al fuego llegaron cuatro arcabuceros que enviaron Fray Pedro Muñoz y Fray Gonzalo, frayles de la Merced que estaban con dos arcabuceros … enviaron á dichos arcabuceros á me prender; y llegados lo hicieron y me ataron las manos y desde á un rato me las desataron).13 At the very moment when Spain was in the throes of establishing its empire in Peru, reigning in renegade priests who should have been reigning in the conquistadors and encomenderos was difficult and represented an unmitigated fusion of temporal and spiritual nodes. The most famous priest from the period, Father Vicente Valverde, seems to have ordered the battle against (slaughter of!) the unsuspecting soldiers of Atawallpa’s forces who were in the Cajamarca plaza expecting a diplomatic gathering. We draw additional examples in the next section on Hernán Cortés. Examples of this nature in the Indies are not surprising and we can find similar cases in medieval Europe. While we are primarily discussing Spain and her colonies here, the Iberian world was not the sole place that witnessed the ideal’s debasement and was not unique in these matters. Jasper Ridley proffers evidence that makes manifest a well-​known disregard in England for Christ’s axiom. In 1511, for example, Bishop (later Cardinal) Wolsey, at that time a churchman on the council of Henry VIII, advised the king to go to war against France. This manoeuvre, according to Ridley, has “been cited as proof of his subordination to the Papal See,” which also wanted war against France.14 Evidence of this fusion of the spiritual and the political became incontrovertible when Wolsey, the Cardinal a latere would become in December 1515 Lord Chancellor of England.15 In this environment, it is hard to decide if Wolsey was a priest using the state or a politician who had been using the Church for his own ends. We do know that wielding such power on both sides of the divide, he became one of the richest men in England. Wolsey was no mere aberration. He was part of a long tradition. Thomas More’s biographer, David Sacks, explains, “in the medieval English state, a substantial majority of governmental officials had been churchmen.” Sacks cautions that the understanding of “state” at that time does not coincide with ours for there is no notion “of an autonomous political entity enjoying rights, having interests and undertaking actions distinct from the person and power of the monarch.”16 Irrespective of the constituent elements that give form to the state, collusion between it, whatever its composition and attributes, and spiritual power became outrageous when in 1534 the English parliament passed the Act of 13  Odriozola, MS No. 6, “Pizarro, Gonzalo (1502–​1548), et  al. Transcripts of a collection of 19 letters, 1547–​1548, written during the rebellion of Gonzalo Pizarro in Perú (1546–​1548),” “Peruvian Manuscript Collection.” 14  Ridley, Statesman and Saint, 41. 15  Ridley, Statesman and Saint, 51. 16  Sacks, “Introduction,” 44.

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Supremacy making the king Supreme Head of the Church. In such a milieu it is chimerical to attempt to ascertain the differences and boundaries between the state—​the temporal operations of an organized body of people occupying a finite quantity of territory—​and the Church—​the framework through which an organization of religious believers fulfill their inner spiritual needs. As a final note on this topic, to be fair, Sacks argues that during the early Tudors’ reign there was an increasing reliance “on laymen as leading counselors” while at the same time, “the ecclesiastical presence elsewhere in the royal administration had waned.” He observes, “More’s selection for membership in the royal council and his subsequent rise to importance as an official should be seen as part of this trend in early Tudor government.”17 Precisely for this reason More is a captivating figure, not only because his presence as a secular in the royal government—​despite his priestly attributes—​showed how the crown was evolving—​despite its total appropriation of spiritual power—​but also because his writing reveals a concern for division of power and provides a long-​lasting inspiration on this topic. We do suspect that More’s concern for separating the spiritual from the temporal was atypical of elites during that time, in England, in Spain, or in France. We will return to this interesting personage in ­chapter  3.

Hernán Cortés: Using Spiritual Power to Temporal Advantage

During the first half of sixteenth century, temporal and spiritual powers seemed to collude with each other. Despite the deep spirituality he professed, Christopher Columbus “took” the land that he encountered. For the scholar Luis Rivera, what Columbus does is expropriate the places he stumbled across and he does this with a powerful marker. Rivera writes, “As a symbol of the expropriation, Columbus placed crosses in strategic sites on the islands he visited.” The crosses, Rivera explains, “had a double meaning,” the lands now belonged Christianity, but they also belonged to the Spanish Catholic Monarchs.18 Thereby he set the tone for the conquistadors who would come on his heels. In this vein, the Conquistador Hernán Cortés founded Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz on the Mexican coast. He based the municipality on religion (Vera Cruz means “True Cross”) and ethnicity (Spaniards, not Amerindians, remained behind in political control). With hindsight, we can grasp more precisely what was going on in the sixteenth century. Auguste Comte, the nineteenth-​century founder of sociology, sheds further historical light on these two realms, the political and the religious as essential to Christianity. He describes them as the temporal and the spiritual.19 We can also describe them as the political and the religious. This dualistic usage of temporal and spiritual suggests that the former is ephemeral and the latter eternal, but the Church can be just as temporal as the state. A more precise triangular formulation would situation the spiritual as divided from the political and the religious, that is, the temporal, which is ephemeral. The muddling of the spiritual and temporal/​political/​religious realms would be common in the Indies as it became integral to the conquering strategy and the coloniality of mind and structure 17  Sacks, “Introduction,” 44.

18  Rivera, A Violent Evangelism, 7, 8.

19  Comte, Cours de philosophie positive, 5:258–​59, for example.

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needed to acquire more territories. Conquistadores and their scribes, after all, would not tend to state, “I am greedy and I want riches,” they more likely said they had come for the glory of Spain, and more importantly, to spread the word of Jesus Christ. There was the noble idea of a spiritual conquest, but there were religious incursions into the temporal realm as well as political and military incursions into the religious realm, both with disastrous results for the continent’s original inhabitants. Regarding the former, J. M. Cohen brings us back to the cross when he summarizes the result of those incursions during that period: “Nowhere was the cross so flagrantly used as a weapon of offence. Nowhere was charity so hideously divorced from faith.”20 The cross is just another sword, los dos cuchillos. Cohen hits upon a theoretical rule, the more the spiritual approaches the temporal, the more the “spiritual” is divorced from the spiritual. Regarding the latter, when the political/​military gets into the business of spirituality, the pureness of the spiritual world takes a hit, and takes a negative hit in public opinion as well. Throughout for-​profit military leader Hernán Cortés’s push into Mexico, the entanglement of temporal and spiritual power was evident. Bernal Díaz del Castillo explains that when Cortés sent his solicitors to Charles’s court, they were received not by the king who was in Flanders, but by Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca, the Bishop of Burgos, who had been named President of the Junta de las Indias and whom we met in the previous chapter (with respect to Las Casas). This was the prelate who decided to side with Velázquez during the famous power struggle in which the governor of Cuba tried to revoke Cortés’s power (HV, 107a).21 Bernal Díaz del Castillo also reports that in Santo Domingo “Hieronymite friars” (frailes jerónimos) were acting as governors (HV, 211b). If temporal and spiritual confusion occurred at the highest levels of government and Church hierarchy, it likewise presented itself at the level of street diplomacy. During the Velázquez-​Cortés struggle, both Cortés himself and Díaz del Castillo confirm the existence of clerics who performed political tasks. To cite another example, when Pánfilo de Narváez, who had orders to arrest Cortés, had ensconced himself in Cempoal on the Mexican coast, he sent a certain cleric named Guevara to Villa Rica de Vera Cruz to arrest Gonzalo de Sandoval, whom Cortés had left in charge there after founding the town. Both Cortés and Díaz del Castillo confirm this action.22 For his part, Cortés orders the “Friar of Mercy,” Bartolomé del Olmedo, a Mercedarian, to deliver a letter to Narváez.23 In his second letter to King Charles, Cortés unambiguously links the friar with political power when he records that he sent two letters via the friar, one from him himself and another from “mayors and aldermen of the Town 20  Cohen, “Introduction,” 13. That Cohen’s assessment was framed in such absolutes only attests to the degradation of the principle of temporal and spiritual power during those events so long ago. Cohen, writing in the 1960s, committed some errors in his analysis, that there was no Qheswan resistance after the Inka’s death (there was, through 1771), that nineteenth-​century editors suppressed parts of Agustín de Zárate’s chronicle (the first and second editions were tampered with; see Bataillon, “Zárate,” Roche, “Les Corrections”), Cohen, “Introduction,” 11, 13.

21  In this chapter, references to Díaz del Castillo’s Historia verdadera, Sáenz de Santa María edition, will be abbreviated as HV. 22  HV, 236; Cortés, Cartas, 70b.

23  HV, 247–​50; Cortés, Cartas, 70a.

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of Vera Cruz” (alcaldes y regidores de la Villa de la Vera Cruz).24 The act of commissioning the friar as an emissary for the mayor and council members of Vera Cruz forces the man of the cloth to act as an instrument of Cortés’s political machinations. Díaz del Castillo offers an additional clue left out of Cortés’s second letter. The Friar of Mercy openly engaged in delivering gold trinkets to Narváez’s men to help win them over to Cortés’s side (HV, 240a). A priest trafficking in gold may have been too much for Cortés to admit openly. In truth, clerics such as the Friar of Mercy acted as spies, diplomats, and partisans of one side or the other in the dispute. While Cortés was in the thick of his enterprise, he felt he needed to utilize any means at hand to achieve his ends. By his way of reasoning, if using priests and friars in a temporal function to achieve these goals was possible, then he should avail himself of their talents to further his ends. Nowhere is the farce of Christianity more apparent in Cortés than in his march to Mexico-​Tenochtitlan. The conquistador subjugates town after town, either by force, or by subterfuge. As a gift from local leaders, Cortés and his men receive women to take as wives, concubines, or simply sex slaves. These were, perhaps unintended, attempts at nation-​building, which, of course, should fall under the purview of the state.25 However, Cortés never “accepts” these women without the intervention of a cleric—​many times the Friar of Mercy—​who at each instance would help convert concubines to Christianity and thereby force the conversion of elements of a particular urban center to Catholicism (HV, 147). This friar served as Cortés’s personal chaplain.26 This member of the regular clergy’s role is a prime example of the collusion between the cross and the sword so typical of the invasion and basic to any anatomy of power in the “Indies.” After his disaster known one-​sidedly as “la noche triste,” Cortés searches for help from both powers, the spiritual and the temporal. In his second letter, he affirms that it will please God to aid “our waning forces and to send help immediately” (nuestras pocas fuerzas y enviará presto el socorro) while he awaits military help from Hispaniola.27 The idea of praying to a spiritual power while turning concurrently to military might suggests this idea of complementarity. After the destruction of Tenochtitlan, he had seen the need for evangelization, affirming in his fourth “Carta de relación” that the Nahua were apt for conversion for which he would need clergy. Such need had a spiritual meaning, but there was also temporal benefit. When Cortés (temporal power) went out of Tenochtitlan to meet the symbolically numbered twelve Franciscan friars (spiritual power) then approaching the city, he knelt in their presence and kissed their hands,28 symbolically subordinating the temporal sphere to the spiritual one. As John Leddy Phelan suggests, for Cortés, “a political alliance with the friars was desirable and necessary.”29 This was one possibility among 24  Cortés, Cartas, 70a.

25  As discussed in Ward, The Formation of Latin American Nations, 192–​212. 26  Schwaller, “Introduction,” xxi.

27  Cortés, Cartas, 96a. Different editions have this quote reading differently, such as “nuestras pocas fuerzas y enviar presto el socorro.” Despite the typographical errors the meaning of the passage is clear. 28  Phelan, The Millennial Kingdom, 33. 29  Phelan, The Millennial Kingdom, 35.

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several he could foster to reorganize and, in some cases, rename Nahua forms of life in accordance with Spanish models. The Spanish monarchy, which found itself split between spiritual and material proclivities would repeat this pattern a thousand times. If uniformity of belief, even Christian belief, is imposed by force, then a lack of division of power becomes apparent. According to Miguel Ángel Ladero Quesada, medieval Christianity created an ideological foundation by which common faith was the best guarantee for the stability of the social body.30 It was mainly for this reason that the Catholic Monarchs (especially Ferdinand) opted for what Barnadas has termed “the façade of uniformity of belief” and what Suárez Fernández has called “maximum religiosity.”31 Whether defined by Barnadas’s “façade” or Suárez Fernández’s “maximum religiosity,” both goals had political implications. It was in this way that Spain became a united Church-​state. To spread the faith, Spain sent great waves of friars and priests to the Caribbean and to New Spain. The early clerics were so concerned with matters of the spirit that, paradoxically, they would resort to corporally punishing the Indigenous to alleviate their spirits. The Franciscans in Tlatelolco “heard the civil and criminal cases of Indians, punished culprits, and sentenced them to a local Franciscan jail.” If a Nahua missed mass on Sunday, his or her punishment could be whipping. The Franciscans even maintained that the Nahua wanted physical discipline. Some Church prisons survived into the seventeenth century.32 The error in all this, according to Benzion Netanyahu, is that Spaniards were not able to distinguish between what he calls an “identity of beliefs” and an “identity of interests.” He concludes that such a construction is authoritarian in nature, “for very often uniformity of beliefs is as much against human nature as it is against progress itself.”33 Plainly, progress in a modern sense would heed the Enlightenment’s thrust to move Church further from state in order to move away from “uniformity of beliefs.”

The Encomienda, the Church, and the Fusion of Temporal and Spiritual Power

We have already begun our discussion on the origins of the encomienda and debt peonage as systems of social subordination. Here we further consider the institution of encomienda in its relationship to Catholicism. In the wake of Taínos fleeing the brutal designs of the conquistadors in the Caribbean, the crown, toward the end of 1503, approved a form of corvée labor that combined the colony’s economic interests with the supposed spiritual well-​being of Indigenous people: the encomienda.34 There was the expectation that this “give and take” system could solve the problem of potential workers fleeing, while solving the other difficulty, the need to evangelize, the Spaniards’ stated primary 30  Ladero Quesada, España en 1492, 107.

31  Barnadas, “The Catholic Church,” 511, and Suárez Fernández cited in Ladero Quesada, España en 1492, 108. 32  Gibson, The Aztecs, 117.

33  Netanyahu, “The Primary Cause of the Spanish Inquisition,” 15–​16. 34  Mörner, La corona, 22.

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mission in the Indies. Another aspect was understated, but it was clearly understood that this arrangement would recompense and satisfy the conquistadors’ demand that they be compensated for their “great” endeavor in the name of the Crown. From the Caribbean, the encomienda system stretched out to Mexico, to Nicaragua, Panama, and then down the Andes. Within encomienda slavery conventions, temporal and spiritual powers conflated and became mutually corrupted. In truth, the encomienda cemented temporal and spiritual power most completely. This institution muddled Christ’s axiom regarding division of power, degrading the creed with a bitter ugly reality, an all-​powerful economic aspect. Again, the axiom derives from Jesus’s disciples informing him that the Romans wanted to collect taxes. His response was that they should give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to Him. This criterion spelled out in Matthew is incontrovertibly one of the greatest social organizing principles and, as mentioned, became central to a strand of idealism in the Christian West as it developed out of the Roman Empire. Drawing on St. Deny, Erasmus of Rotterdam proclaims in Education of a Christian Prince, “what God is in the ranks of heaven the bishop should be in the church and the prince in the state.”35 It was not until the next century when political theorists such as Jean Bodin “put to one side questions of theology,”36 that it would become easier to disentangle the two powers, although surely, Montesquieu would disagree after his famous meeting with Jesuit scholars at the Sorbonne. High-​mindedness is surely a tricky thing to achieve in the face of tradition, greed, power, and the forces that mutually debase them. Certainly, any consideration of the post-​1492 world should begin with Columbus who is paradigmatic of the medieval conflation of power that the encomienda would later come to represent. He simultaneously preached Christianity and slavery, which Stephanie Merrim refers to as his “double optics, mercantile and religious which accorded both his and the Crown’s needs.”37 From this dual thrust Columbus proposed slavery to finance his mission and if proposing evangelization strengthened his proposal, then why not? He may have truly been a Christian in his heart, but, given the Zeitgeist, he could not be open-​minded enough to discover the inconsistency in his thought on these matters. That kind of clarity of vision would not come until several decades later when Erasmus, Thomas More, and Bartolomé de las Casas began to put pen to paper. Drawing on the research first presented in Decolonizing Indigeneity, it is imperative to state that various human attributes such as ignorance, arrogance, peer-​pressure, and the weight of economic exigency put blinders on humans making it challenging for them to come at problems with a fresh field of vision.38 It can be hard to see the proverbial forest because there are so many trees. It can be an onerous task to isolate anticolonial strands when the coloniality of mind and practice was everywhere. In this regard, 35  Erasmus, The Education of a Christian Prince, 23; “vt quod dues est inter coelitum ordines, id episcopus sit in ecclesia, id princes in republica”(Institutio principis christiani, 151). 36  Spellman, European Political Thought, 3.

37  Merrim, “The First Fifty Years of Hispanic New World Historiography,” 63. 38  Ward, Decolonizing Indigeneity, 64–​66.

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Columbus was no different than the multitude of men and women at that time. Where he differed from others was the way he changed the world. After his “discovery” and the rudimentary governing practices he established, his views and practices became standard in the decades that followed. They anticipated the institution of the encomienda. As discussed above, the document that made the encomienda an institution was the series of ordinances known collectively as the Leyes de Burgos. It is useful to focus solely on the economic aspect as does Robert G. Keith in his Conquest and Agrarian Change (1976), but there is an attendant religious dimension, which is the concern of this chapter. These Burgos laws, promulgated on December 27, 1512, demonstrate an irrefutable confusion between the two powers. The king mandated that the encomenderos, private entrepreneurs, would furnish churches and religious instruction to their “Indians.” To be sure, the first ordinances mandated the construction of churches. The authorities compelled Indigenous peoples to go to mass and say the “Ave Maria,” “Pater Noster,” “Credo,” and “Salve Regina.”39 In return for the religious formalities and instruction, the encomendero could “enjoy” the services of said Indians.40 How many Indians did he “enjoy”? Keith underscores the massive scope of these enterprises. For example, encomiendas on the Peruvian coast could hold anywhere from 1,000 to 30,000 people, while those granted in Cuzco ranged from 5,000 to 40,000 workers.41 However, before the Indigenous could go to church, they had to build the church, frequently from materials that were coming from the ruins of their own temples, sacred sites, and residential dwellings. This power arrangement ignores the resolution of the temporal-​spiritual conflict: what we have is forced temporal labor for the glory of God. We can see that there was a muddling of both powers in the Franciscan Order. Motolinía, commenting on Easter of 1540 in New Spain, for instance, tries to get across how it was better for the Nahua to pay in this life than in the hereafter. He relates a story about an “Indian” who finally had screwed himself up to pay ten little disks of gold as restitution, a necessary process for absolution.42 He comments on other cases in which vecinos (citizens) offered former slaves or inheritances as restitution.43 This type of swap, kindred to encomienda mentality, demonstrates a lack of division of power, and the Church’s thirst to acquire material wealth. The crown thereby fostered the Church’s growth. There was a definite monetary aspect to this. Certainly, Spanish priests did not imagine holding up More’s Utopians and their rejection of gold. It worked the other way too. When the Nahua served as workers or musicians in churches, they “were commonly exempted from early colonial tribute.”44 While the ideal distinguished religious 39  Altamira, “El texto.” The paraphrase is from p. 27, the “Ley Tercera.” Also the “Ley Quarta,” 28.

40  Altamira, “El texto,” 26, “Ley Primera.” The text reads as follows: “mandamos que las tales personas a quien se encomendaren los dichos yndios puedan gozar e gozen cada vno conforme a los yndios que traxere[n]‌.” 41  Keith, Conquest and Agrarian Change, 33, 36. 42  Motolinía, Historia de los indios, 92b.

43  Motolinía, Historia de los indios, 94a–​94b. 44  Gibson, The Aztecs, 197.

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service from the needs of the state, and religious service from encomienda labor, the original mendicants found themselves up against this privilege conferred on the conquistadores to reward them. As Charles Gibson reflects, “after the middle sixteenth century churchmen accepted encomienda and could no longer convincingly maintain their position as defenders of the life of the spirit in opposition of the encomenderos’ oppression.”45 They may have had economic reasons for this change in attitude: Churchmen could oppose encomienda in part because they were prohibited from becoming encomenderos, but ecclesiastical condemnation of latifundium would have meant condemnation of an institution that was essential to ecclesiastical wealth and power.46

To vote for the division of power and rule out the encomienda would be to limit the Church’s power in New Spain. The encomienda’s eventual decline (on paper it lasted for one sole generation), and the rise of the hacienda with its debt-​peonage practices that coincided with the inverse trend of ecclesiastical acceptance of the status quo says much about the ability of wealth to corrupt. Confusion of powers was apparent in relations within the Church and between the Church and state.

Royal Patronage and Fusion of Power

From the beginning of the European presence, the New World witnessed temporal and spiritual confusion. In some versions of the story of the encounter between Inkakuna and Spaniards, Father Valverde instigates the first battle. Later, during Spanish civil wars in Peru between the followers of Pizaro and Almagro, there was further muddling of power. Arthur Franklin Zimmerman writes, “The audiencia of Lima, which was, at the time, ruling until a new viceroy could arrive in Peru, called out the military forces. The despair of the audiencia must have been great, for it made the archbishop a general, and he actually led the regiments.”47 Obviously, it was a different time. Spanish life stuck in the middle of civil strife would have been improvised, but the kernel was there, and traditions were established. Temporal and the spiritual muddling, the capitulation to material pressure, is not so strange from the practical standpoint of imperialism, yet it did present a problem from the theological perspective of Spain’s stated primary mission in North and South America. Beyond the exigencies of battle and war, as just mentioned regarding Spanish civil wars in Peru, and as seen in Hernán Cortés’s letter, the confusion of power issued specifically from Patronato Real, or Royal Patronage, a system Mecham defines “as the [temporal] power to nominate or present a cleric for installation in a vacant benefice.”48 Some commentators of Church history, Mecham writes, “place the date of the Spanish origins of the practice at 655 when the Synod of Toledo granted to laymen the right 45  Gibson, The Aztecs, 112. 46  Gibson, The Aztecs, 405.

47  Zimmerman, Francisco de Toledo, 35. 48  Mecham, Church and State, 4.

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of presentation to each church erected by them.” Lands reconquered from the Moors after 711 provided further impetuses for spiritual and temporal entanglement. Mecham explains, “Pope Urban II in 1095 confirmed the grant of patronage over all places conquered from the Moors and over newly founded churches excepting episcopal churches.”49 The story does not end there. In the wake of Columbus’s encounter with another world in 1492, Pope Alexander VI continued conceding Royal Patronage when he issued the papal bull Inter cetera on May 4, 1493. This edict, which marks patronage’s beginnings in America, mandated “the Catholic faith and Christian religion be exalted and be everywhere increased and spread, that the health of souls be cared for and that barbarous nations be overthrown and brought to the faith itself.”50 The pope noted that the admiral and his people had “discovered certain very remote islands and even mainlands … wherein dwell very many peoples living in peace.”51 In his bull, Alexander hoped, “if they were instructed, the name of the Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ, would easily be introduced into the said countries and islands.”52 The tradition of Royal Patronage, a wholesale movement away from Jesus and a conflation of spiritual and temporal power, became further entrenched with the first bull, and then a second, called Eximiae Devotinis released by Alexander on November 16, 1501. Patronage was an efficacious scheme to corrupt Christ’s axiom regarding the compartmentalization of God from Caesar Alexander himself in some ways weakened the division. A Catalonian by birth, he was a pope interacting with Spain in the time of the initial penetration of the Indias Occidentales. He was associated with the Borgia family in Italy, a family that weakened the papacy’s moral authority, as did his multifold concubines and the Inter cetera itself that some have viewed as a veiled acceptance of slavery. Regarding Royal Patronage, John Schwaller elucidates: under this concept, the Crown promised to finally support missionary activity in return for administrative control over the Church—​nominally, the appointment of bishops, archbishops, and parish priests. In order to establish a firm legal claim on the New World with the ius predicandi (‘the law of teaching’), the Crown had to send out missionaries.53

In an article written early in the twentieth century, Francis Merriman Stanger, an expert on patronage, asserted the following: “The effect of the system was to make the king in 49  Mecham, Church and State, 9.

50  Gibson, The Spanish Tradition, 36. The 1493 document reads as follows:  “la Fée Catholica y Religion Cristhiana, sean exaltadas, mayormente en nuestros tiempos, é que en toda parte sea ampliada é dilatada é se procure la salvación de las almas, é las barbaras naciones sea deprimidas y reducidas á esa mesma Fée,” Colección de documentos inéditos, 16:356; also, TR, 2:1284. 51  Gibson, The Spanish Tradition, 37. The 1493 document reads as follows: “hallaron ciertas islas remotisimas é tambien tierras firmes … en las cuales habitan muchas gentes que viven en paz,” Colección de documentos inéditos, 16:358; also, TR, 2:1285.

52  Gibson, The Spanish Tradition, 37. The original is as follows: “si fuesen dotrinados se introduciría con facilidad en las dichas tierras é islas el nombre del Salvador é Señor Nuestro Jesucristo,” Colección de documentos inéditos, 16:358; also, TR, 2:1285. 53  Schwaller, “Introduction,” xiv.

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reality head of the Spanish church, since the appointment or removal of every church official throughout his dominions upon him depended. His authority in Church matters was more directly felt than was that of the pope.”54 The paradox here is that Alexander’s bulls did not simply grant Royal Patronage. They allowed, for example, “perpetual concession and assignment, for you and your heirs, the monarchy of Castile and León, of all and each one of the separated and hidden mainland and islands, situated toward the western regions, discovered today or to be discovered in the future.”55 The concession of land as war booty, implying future mercantile gain, falls squarely on the temporal side of the divide. The expression “in the future” sets up the groundwork for the propagation of this practice until eternity. Patronage became ever more far-​reaching with Julius II’s bull Universalis Ecclesiae, which conceded all-​inclusive patronage in the new colonies on July 28, 1508. One wonders at what point the system of Real Patronato de Indias became a defining characteristic of royal power, yet with the Universalis, one can no longer deny its vitality. This system became so ingrained, and gave the king so much power, that Mecham asserts, “it can be contended with considerable truth that the king was more than a patron in America; he exercised quasi-​pontifical authority.”56 What did patronage mean on the ground? To offer one example from among the many culled from the historical record, we turn to Zimmerman’s biography of the most famous viceroy of the early imperial era. He writes, “Toledo reported that he had established seminaries for the training of priests in the principal cities. To conclude, Toledo recommended that the viceroy should present all names for vacancies in the Church.”57 Patronage works in two ways here, the first being temporal power founding seminaries for clergy. One can assume that if the viceroy were putting money into the seminaries, he would want to have a say in matters associated with them, perhaps regarding the admissions selection process and about the curriculum’s very nature. The second concerns temporal power’s authority to name priests. Without a doubt, the viceroy’s office could side-​step priests who did not favor imperial power, as would have been the case with Toledo’s suppression of ecclesiastics who adhered to the redemptive doctrines of Bartolomé de las Casas.58

On the Temporality of Ecclesiastical Authorities

The inverse was also true of a weak papacy. Without the monarchy, Beatriz Fernández Herrero concludes, it could not go forth with its enterprise of evangelization.59 In Spain, 54  Stanger, “Church and State,” 411.

55  “concesión y asignación perpetuas, tanto a vosotros como a vuestros herederos y sucesores, los reyes de Castilla y León, de todas y cada una de las tierras firmes e islas apartadas e incógnitas, situadas hacia las regiones occidentales, descubiertas hoy o por descubrir en lo futuro,” Las Casas, Tratados, 2:1282. 56  Mecham, Church and State, 36.

57  Zimmerman, Francisco de Toledo, 71.

58  Hampe Martínez, “Recent Works on the Inquisition,” 44–​46. 59  Fernández Herrero, La utopía de América, 437.

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its subjugation to the monarchy became absolute, as Enrique Dussel reminds us, “thanks to Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros.”60 The Church’s subservience to the crown set the latter up for an inherent conflict of temporal and spiritual interests, which as Gibson correctly opines, created a paradox: “the nation that performed the conquests and established encomienda, was the same Spain that occupied itself so determinedly with the Christian conversion of native peoples.”61 For Sarah Cline the matter is simple: “Conversion was politically important for it was the legal basis for the Spanish Crown’s overseas empire.”62 Leslie Byrd Simpson rightly points out the complexities of the imperial situation: On the one hand the Crown undertook to protect and evangelize the native populations; on the other it was bound to favor the numbers of Spaniards who had conquered the Indies at their own expense and who might reasonably expect some material reward, while the fiscal exigencies of the Crown itself could not be lost sight of.63

The roots of this quandary subsist in the subordination of various sectors of the Caribbean even before the siege of Tenochtitlan. Because Taínos and other peoples of that region fled ever-​increasing maltreatment at the hands of Spaniards and consequently were not available for conversion to Christianity, as mentioned, the encomienda served as a solution to draw them back. An additional problem had to do with the outsized quantity of churchmen. As Irving Leonard writes, “The number of priests, monks, and nuns became disproportionate to the needs of the New World society and a heavy drain upon its resources. Inevitably, the weight of this burden fell hardest upon the exploited Indian population.”64 The sheer weight of the clerical bureaucracy, itself a corruption of the temporal-​spiritual principle, besides directly exploiting Amerindians, gave various underemployed clerics time to engage in materialist activities that worked against the ideal. Additionally, just as temporal authority used the faith to further its temporal goals, ecclesiastical authorities themselves occasionally coveted temporal power. Bernal Díaz confirms that Hieronymite friars exercised temporal power in Santo Domingo. They did this by directing its Royal “Audiencia” during the period in which Spaniards overran the lands latter called New Spain (HV, 105a, 233a). This clerical “Audiencia” acted politically by sending Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón as “oidor” with Narváez’s ships to New Spain, a gambit Narváez reacted to by expelling the “oidor” to either Cuba or Castile (HV, 240a–​241a).65 Other examples of not meeting Christ’s lofty standard are apparent. Consider the case of Fray García Guerra (viceroy 1611–​1612) whose story, just to provide historical context, comes on the heels of Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxóchitl’s presenting 60  Dussel, “Europe, Modernity, and Eurocentrism,” 470. 61  Gibson, Spain, 68.

62  Cline, “The Spiritual Conquest Reexamined,” 455. 63  Simpson, Encomienda, 1.

64  Leonard, Baroque Times, 44.

65  This same Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón, in 1526, tried and failed to establish a colony of 600 near Charlestown, South Carolina.

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his Compendio histórico del reino de Texcoco (Historical Compendium on the Kingdom of Texcoco) (1608) and coincides with the chronicler’s labors to get his grandfather’s testament translated into Spanish and notarized (1611). In other words, an environment so stable that a Nahua-​speaking writer could release (but not publish) a Spanish-​ language history of his ancestral altepetl replete with an alignment of Nahua and Christian timelines without causing fear in imperial authorities (at least not until the next generation, Sigüenza y Góngora’s) suggests clerical power must have been firmly entrenched.66 Sent to become the Archbishop of New Spain, García Guerra arrived in the port of Veracruz to make the overland journey to Mexico City. The authorities facilitated the execution of this trip with pomp and luxury. After his arrival in the viceregal capital, he, as head of the Church, would form one pole of a dual power arrangement with the viceroy. When the crown recalled Viceroy Don Luis de Velasco (son of the first viceroy also named Luis de Velasco) to the mother country in 1611, Fray García Guerra felt the pull of command and he began to covet temporal power even more. At the very moment of Velasco’s departure from Veracruz, Fray García Guerra began his triumphal re-​entry into the city to claim the seat of temporal power, the viceregal throne. Irrespective of formulaic religiosity such as abasing himself at the site of the Virgin of Guadalupe’s appearance, Fray García Guerra enjoyed temporal delights such as food, song, and bullfights.67 This Archbishop-​Viceroy ruled Mexico for a short interlude until his premature death), but he did it, in Leonard’s words, with “the absolute power of a combined Church and State.”68 So began the seventeenth century in New Spain. Leonard puts into words that which would have been obvious to any learned observer of the time. “Much wealth poured into the coffers of the Church, which exercised as pervasive an influence in the secular affairs of these overseas realms as its parent organization had in the Middle Ages of Europe.”69 In addition, he adds, “many of these [religious] institutions amassed large properties in lands and goods which enabled them to conduct highly profitable business ventures of a capitalistic character.”70 The situation was really quite terrible as money and violence took precedence over Christian ideals. As Zimmerman makes plain, “The moral state of the priesthood was very low.”71 Barnadas reconfirms this when he writes, “the mass of the secular clergy was morally and intellectually decadent.”72 In fairness, there were efforts to mediate immorality. Zimmerman referring to one religious order, explains, the Augustinians had recommended that none of their members should have Indian women as their personal servants; that all members were to learn the language of the

66  Regarding Sigüenza y Góngora’s fear of Nahua people, see Paz, Sor Juana, 65.

67  I have followed Irving Leonard in the story of Fray García Guerra, Baroque Times, 1–​20. 68  Leonard, Baroque Times, 33

69  Leonard, Baroque Times, 32. 70  Leonard, Baroque Times, 45.

71  Zimmerman, Francisco de Toledo, 24.

72  Barnadas, “The Catholic Church,” 519.

76 The Elusive Division-of-Power Ideal natives; that none were to engage in commerce; and that there should be two visitors who would regularly inspect the work which was being done.73

Kings, viceroys, audiencias, and cabildos promulgated regulations, citizens and other actors acknowledged them, but oftentimes they did not obey them. The idea of viveza criolla was born, the desire of getting ahead at someone else’s expense. Gonzalo Portocarrero sizes up the situation when he states the following: “It is symptomatic that the practice of transgressing began with the authorities themselves” (Es sintomático que la práctica de la trasgresión haya comenzado por las mismas autoridades).74 What “transgressing” did was allow for the flexibility of those at the top to completely control those at the bottom in any way that they pleased. When “transgressing” occurred in the spiritual sector, temporal concerns were not so remote. Again, it would be unfair to the Church to single it out for corruption when it worked in tandem with royal power incarnate in both the monarchy and the imperialist state. This tricky situation was tolerated because, as Gibson notes, it was the only means for the Spanish monarchy to extend its political and spiritual leadership, having controlled the Church in America since the papal bulls of 1501 and 1508 conceded Royal Patronage to Ferdinand.75 Gibson explains that Patronato Real implied state domination over the church, but it simultaneously allowed for ecclesiastical intrusion into civil and political affairs. In the complexities of law and precedent it was impossible to say where church authority ceased and state authority began.

In the end, “Ecclesiastics were often appointed to high political posts.”76 These practices did not solely amount to allocation of people, they also included the transfer of monies. The practice of the capellanía, the bequest of what Barnadas describes as “a capital sum to a specific religious house in return for spiritual services from the legatee,” prompted the ecclesiastical institutions’ accumulation of vast material holdings, as verified in the documentary evidence. Barnadas describes the mechanics of the practice: “If the bequest took the form of property, the legatee would work it directly or lease it out to a third party, as was done in the case of many haciendas, urban properties, and mines.”77 Gibson concludes, the corruption between the two realms was so great that, “Few Viceroys in Spanish America were able consistently to remain on cordial terms with the high-​ranking churchmen of their viceroyalties.”78 The lack of separation was so extensive that sacerdotal power, being essentially temporal in nature, easily became confused with the temporal authority of kings, princes, viceroys, council members, encomenderos, hacendados, corregidores, and merchants. 73  Zimmerman, Francisco de Toledo, 24.

74  Portocarrero, Rostros criollos del mal, 190. 75  Gibson, Spain, 76. 76  Gibson, Spain, 80.

77  Barnadas, “The Catholic Church,” 531. 78  Gibson, Spain, 80.

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This temporal and spiritual conflict would characterize the entire first century after Columbus’s first voyage (and beyond). In the principal areas of settlement, the Church organized doctrinas with a full-​time cleric serving, while outlying areas could only count on visitas by rotating clergy. The doctrina marked the beginning of Church prosperity in the hemisphere. There were assorted cases of priests engaged in galloping profiteering such as one that Kenneth Andrien takes note of, the case of Francisco de Ávila, a vicar in Huarochirí province, who between 1597 and 1607 exploited Indigenous labor, charged prohibitive parish fees as well as transacting trades in foodstuffs and other agricultural products. These types of behaviours set tradition in custom so that they would survive into the independence period. Florencia Mallon, writing on the nineteenth century, puts it this way: The role of the parish priest in the community was also central to the penetration of commercial capital. From the moment of birth to the moment of death, it seemed, peasants were always handing money to the priest, whether for baptism, marriages, funerals, or masses. If a peasant did not have the money for these parochial services, the priest was more than willing to officiate on credit, and charge later. The level of peasant indebtedness to the priest often allowed the latter to accumulate lands in the parishes to which he was assigned. Moreover, the prestige of being connected with the church facilitated the priest’s commercial and moneylending activities, both in the community and the regional economy as a whole.79

Situations of this nature were common enough for Clorinda Matto de Turner in include them in her well-​known nineteenth-​century novel Torn from the Nest. One of the novel’s characters, Marcela Yupanqui, laments, “when my mother-​in-​law died last Christmas, Father Pascual attached our potato harvest to pay for the burial and the masses.”80 Here we can see how priestly temporal practices rooted in the sixteenth century, documented in Indigenous authors such as Guaman Poma de Ayala, survive into the nineteenth century, when Matto de Turner felt they were severe enough that they needed to be denounced.81 These practices were about material gain, but to cover up these kinds of activities, priests had to deflect, cynically, what it was they were doing. To cover up his business dealings, Francisco de Ávila made (or concocted) the charges that “Andean parishioners used Christian rituals to mask traditional rites for the huacas,” thereby prompting the campaigns of “extirpación de idolatrías,” the eradication of idolatrous rites.82 While his efforts produced the so-​called Huarochirí manuscript, a great archive of Andean knowledge, the suffering his activities must have 79  Andrien, Andean Worlds, 171–​72; Mallon, The Defense of Community, 36. 80  Matto de Turner, Torn from the Nest, 11.

81  Guaman Poma writes the following in one of the many instances he discusses the topic, “Cómo los dichos padres por uengarse del cacique prencipal o de los yndios hazen permuta o enbía a otro padre ýnteren; enciste y le manda que le rrobe y le castigue cruelmente a los yndios y a las yndias. Y manda ajuntar y enserrar para hilar y texer a las solteras y biudas y casadas. Y con todo este daño se uenga de los pobres yndios y ancí se ausentan.” Nueva crónica, 571 [585]. 82  Andrien, Andean Worlds, 171–​72.

78 The Elusive Division-of-Power Ideal

caused  would have been horrific. The inverse of temporal power was a “spiritual” power no less oppressive and not very spiritual at all. Manual Burga puts this in perspective: the colonial church had to embark on a campaign to extirpate native religious beliefs just as the viceroy had to expunge Inkan political power in Vilcabamba. He concludes that the colonial state intervened in religious matters during the time of Viceroy Toledo (1569–​1581) more than any other.83 Finally, as the colonial order wore on, other types of relationships and organizations developed. One counter-​intuitive and noteworthy phenomenon was the formation of cofradías or brotherhoods. Iñigo García Bryce explains that these associations were fundamental in integrating Indigenous peoples into the Catholic way of life. Some cofradías adhered to the cult of a particular saint. García Bryce makes this linkage clear: the tailors established their cofradía in the Church of San Francisco in 1573, the shoemakers were associated with the cathedral’s San Crispín brotherhood since around that time too. This scholar also cautions, “for Indians, blacks, and castas, brotherhood membership reinforced the[ir] position in the upper echelons of the popular classes and separated them from the plebe.”84 While religion assimilated people, greater assimilation implied a more elevated status, or in some cases, preserved status already attained. An intriguing side effect of fellowships is that they linked up to commercial activity.

83  Burga, Nacimiento, 189, 190.

84  García Bryce, Crafting the Republic, 30, 32, 31; see Ramos, Muerte y conversión, 150–​54.

Chapter 3

DISMANTLING THE “NATURAL” THEORY OF SLAVERY

In the midst

of encomienda, chattel slavery, nonsensical violence, the pillaging of villages, untold violence against women, and the high-​volume peer pressure felt by Spaniards to commit the violence as well as the concomitant intense feeling of loss felt by the Indigenous, it would have been very difficult in the midst of it all to understand the inscrutable reality of those days, years, and decades and discern a way out. What happened was unprecedented. This is the term social psychologist Shoshana Zuboff has put forward to understand these kinds of circumstances. She tells us that “when we encounter something unprecedented, we automatically interpret it through the lenses of familiar categories thereby rendering invisible precisely that which is unprecedented.” Of course, the Indigenous knew the newcomers were strange, and the Spaniards, familiar with slavery, were accustomed to feudal realities, the existence of serfs. But the violence of imposing those realities on so many people must have made many of them seem like the proverbial deer paralyzed and immobile caught in the oncoming headlights. Zuboff offers an example: A tragic illustration is the encounter between indigenous people and the first conquerors. When the Taínos of the pre-​Columbian Caribbean islands first laid eyes on the sweating, bearded Spanish soldiers trudging across the sand in their brocade and armor, how could they possible have recognized the meaning and portent of that moment? Unable to imagine their own destruction, they reckoned that those strange creatures were gods and welcomed them with intricate rituals of hospitality. This how the unprecedented reliably confounds understanding existing lenses illuminate the familiar, thus obscuring the original by turning the unprecedented into an extension of the past. This contributes into the normalization of the abnormal, which makes fighting the unprecedented even more of an uphill climb.1

This was the situation because everybody was stunned by the unprecedented which impeded their cognitive abilities to analyze and then theorize a way out. After time, however, certain strands of Renaissance humanism would begin to analyze the unprecedented, almost anticipating modern psychology, decolonial psychology in some instances. One strand in that process resides in the development of the idea of social slavery as a possibility to replace natural slavery. The development of an “enlightened” European theory of social slavery, however terrible that sounds, was terrible only relative to our modern concepts of equality and freedom. Relative to natural slavery it represented an advance. Social concepts of slavery were variable and allowed for the softening of the rigidity of slavery as a natural conception. While social slavery in practice could be just as violent and oppressive as natural 1  Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 12; also 12–​14.

80 Dismantling the “Natural” Theory of Slavery

slavery, the debilitation of the natural precept allowed for seeing slavery as a social condition that can change because of fluctuating social mores, spiritual influence, economic forces, and even climate change and natural disasters. The passing of the natural in the face of the social left a social construction that itself would be overthrown in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, although not completely. It has been a long road. The rise of a concept of social slavery surfaces ever so slightly in Christopher Columbus, as noted toward the end of ­chapter  1. This idea gained traction in certain thoughtful authors in the decades after the abuses of Columbus, and as Cortés and Pizarro prepared to commit untold travesties. There is an upside to this. If those terrible social circumstances needing to be addressed had not developed, liberation thinking would not have incubated and then rose up to respond to those circumstances. In ­chapter  1, we probed human domination in the Western Hemisphere through outright chattel and encomienda slavery, two varieties of ethnic subordination; and in ­chapter  2, we explored the corrupting deviation from the division-​of-​power principle that led to the subjugation of diverse peoples who were supposedly receiving the word of God. These forms of servitude grew in the shadow of Christianity. We need to say Christianity because the degradation of Christian ideals occurred in both branches of the creed that crossed the Atlantic. David Byron Davis puts it this way: “for some three centuries both Catholics and Protestants found ways of reconciling their beliefs in natural liberty and limited worldly power to the harsh realities of Negro slavery.”2 These hierarchies take form by “reconciling” with Christian teaching, or put more starkly, by ignoring, hijacking, or even distorting that teaching. Greed fuelled the confusion of power, which caught the attention of noteworthy humanists of the Renaissance in the throes of the Reformation, just before the Counter-​Reformation. They were living precisely during the invasions of the Caribbean, the Valley of Mexico, Guatemala, Yucatán, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, and Brazil.3 The failure of Christian praxis in Europe and in those early incursions into what was then called the Indies evoked a corrective response of special flavor in the writings of Bartolomé de las Casas (Spain: 1474–​1566), Thomas More (England:  1478–​1535), and Desiderius Erasmus (Holland:  1469?–​1536). This is not to imply that these Renaissance reformers were the only ones to react, or that the slaves themselves did not react to their condition. There were cimarrones. Spanish and Portuguese both have words for resistance communities, palenques in the former, and quilombos in the latter.4 Those are interesting stories, but generally they are known from the colonialist perspective of slavers and their communities, not from the decolonial perspectives of the slaves themselves and their communities, making them into stories of others by others. Those stories reveal much but analyzing them is not our goal here. Here we are interested in Renaissance discursive thinking as it moved to make things better for all concerned. 2  Davis, The Problem of Slavery, 222.

3  Las Casas who died in 1566 died three years after the end of the Council of Trent usually understood as the beginning of the Counter-​Reformation. Guaman Poma de Ayala was the only one of the four authors covered in this book who was subjected to the rigidity of Counter-​Reformation. 4  Bergad, The Comparative Histories, 46.

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81

While slavery was not broadly proscribed until the end of the nineteenth century (and then still practiced well into the twentieth and twenty-​first centuries in some Mayan districts and in Africa), these thoughtful wordsmiths, thinking ahead of their time, were fundamental in weakening the Aristotelian framework, suggesting a greater pliancy for the institution.5 Their arrival on the intellectual scene responded directly to the contamination, corruption, and greed of European societies during the years leading up to and continuing through the Counter-​Reformation. The manner of theorization embodied in these three thinkers results, as Matei Calinescu states, “from a radical impatience with the imperfection of the world as it is, and claims that no matter how difficult to attain, perfection is accessible to man as a social being.”6 The perfectibility of humanity is integral to these arguments. This tendency did not remain in Europe. It was as expansive as was human migration. Charles Gibson has remarked, “in the second and third decades of the sixteenth century, when Spaniards in the New World were turning from the limited West Indies to the ampler field of Mexico, a special humanistic influence reached Spain from Northern Europe.”7 Most certainly, Gibson had Erasmus and More in mind. Regarding the term “humanism,” Bruno Damiani reminds us, despite its being coined by the Germans to refer to a certain strain of literary culture during the nineteenth century,8 its use to refer to specific Renaissance literati has become common. Jacob Burckhardt may have been the one who first used the term to refer to celebrated Italian Renaissance authors, including Dante and Boccaccio.9 With respect to humanism, several Catholic missionaries in the New World embodied that movement’s vanguard. These forward-​thinking men of the cloth, David Byron Davis explains, “saw much to admire in the simple contentment of the Indians, whose mode of living seemed to resemble that of the first Christians.”10 Las Casas was in that group mentioned by Davis, but to grasp his positionality better we can consider him in a context with his contemporaries, More and Erasmus. Thomas More was a Catholic humanist to the death who, perhaps without intending to, spearheaded an ethical strain that worked against the material aspects of early modern society. His ethical/​ theological stance ultimately cost him his head after rejecting Henry VIII’s attempt to divorce Catherine of Aragón. His outsize intellectual influence stems from a relatively short text he published that bore the title, Utopia, which means “no-​place.” More’s Utopia became lavishly esteemed. As Peter R. Allen has shown from the prefatory letters to the book, praise came initially from the most authoritative humanists of the period: Giles, Noviomagnus, Grapheus, Budé, Erasmus, and others. This 5  On the Yucatan, see below. On the Sudan see McLoughlin, “Economic Development and the Heritage of Slavery,” 357 and on US-​sponsored human trafficking to provide cheap labor on US military bases see Simpson, “U.S. to Probe Claims of Human Trafficking,” n.p. 6  Calinescu, Faces of Modernity. 7  Gibson, Spain, 70.

8  Damiani, “Prólogo,” v.

9  Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance, 148–​53. 10  Davis, The Problem of Slavery, 5.

82 Dismantling the “Natural” Theory of Slavery

support identified the “Utopia to any sixteenth-​century reader as an important humanist book … a book which could not be ignored.”11 As the stated model for this genre of writing, the Utopia was positively influential in Europe, and in that part of “Europe” that would slowly become the Americas. It became so influential that today the adjective “Utopian” has passed into standard Spanish and English to signify something so idealistic it is unattainable. Most certainly, however, to believe that society can be better than it is, is necessarily not “Utopian” in the modern sense; it simply belies a faith in the possibility of humanity perfecting itself, creating something that prior to that point had existed in “no place”. This is the basis of liberation thinking. Thomas More’s thought sparked both social experiments and new genres of literary and historiographical expression in the Western Hemisphere. It all began with his Utopia, as Marius writes, which debuted in 1516 in Latin. Four other Latin editions appeared by 1519, yet there were no editions in the vernacular—​save one in German that appeared in 1524, until an English rendering appeared in 1551.12 The first Spanish-​language edition did not break onto the scene until 1613 when issued in Córdoba. The text’s impact during the first half of the sixteenth century derived from those first five Latin editions. For instance, Vasco de Quiroga (1470s–​1535), an oidor of the second Audiencia mexicana, tried to organize the Tarascan, or P’urhépecha, people in his new bishopric of Michoacán around the model set forth in More’s Utopia.13 Quiroga, perhaps as a direct consequence of his pondering the pages of the Utopia, sent a long report to the Council of the Indies in which he admonished the subjugation of Indigenous peoples.14 Juan de Zumárraga, the first bishop of New Spain beginning in 1527 (when Pedrarias Dávila began selling slaves in Nicaragua), had his own personal copy of the Utopia.15 Zumárraga and Quiroga’s Morism (and Erasmism) formed a node in New Spain along with the omnipotent presence of the Dominican, Bartolomé de las Casas who would go on to be the first bishop of Chiapas. The Dominican went to Mexico City to attend Ecclesiastical Juntas in 1535, 1536, 1539, and 1546.16 He met the oidor Quiroga and the bishop Zumárraga in attendance at a clerical meeting in 1536 and he interacted most likely with them. He probably had under his arms, or in the large trunk that always accompanied him, his own speculative tract Del único modo de atraer a todos los pueblos a la verdadera religión (The Only Way), on which we focus later in this book. As just alluded, Quiroga himself had just concluded an antislavery treatise. Helen ​Rand Parish vividly recreates the reality of those meetings described as Utopian.17 11  Allen, “Utopia and European Humanism,” 99. 12  Marius, Thomas More, 153.

13  Insúa Rodríguez, Historia de la filosofía, 73; Zavala, La “Utopía” de Tomás Moro, 3–​29, esp. 4–​16; and Ideario de Vasco de Quiroga, for example, 35; and also “La utopía de América en el siglo XVI,” 130–​38; also Mörner, La corona, 28–​29; and Warren, Vasco de Quiroga, for example, 31. Abellán provides a short review of “utopismo” in America, “Utopismo americano” and “Los ‘Hospitales-​ Pueblos,’ ” 390–​96. Finally, see Quiroga, Ordenanzas, 75–​103. 14  Mörner, La corona, 27.

15  Bataillon, Erasmo, 816.

16  Parish, “Una historia desconocida,” 9.

17  Parish, “Una historia desconocida,” 23–​28.

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If More, and to a lesser extent Erasmus, were the theoreticians behind the front lines, Las Casas, armed with his humanism engagé, his quill, and his voice, ripped into the philosophical and theological fabric of the Holy Roman Empire with great force. This was true to the extent that his defense of Indigenous peoples, sometimes called Indigenismo, or Indigenism, was still being debated during the twentieth century.18 To deny that Las Casas spurred reformist thought in the Americas would be to ignore his importance (as mentioned, he was also Bishop of Chiapas from 1545 to 1546). Writing on this topic, Santa Arias suggests that Las Casas did nothing less than subvert “the ideology of hegemonic culture,” forming a radical critique of the Conquest.19 Las Casas took that which came before (a quintessentially humanist practice), reorganized it, and presented it as a liberating moral doctrine. While Erasmus never visited Las Indias, his liberating thought was instrumental in reformist tendencies that occurred during early encounters between European and American cultures. Américo Castro explains that the scholar from Rotterdam’s pacifist influence filtered into Charles V’s court commencing with the year 1520.20 His forward-​ looking influence was such that he garnered Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda’s wrath earlier than Las Casas did. Sepúlveda put out his Antapologia pro Alberto Pio in Erasmum or Antiapología en defensa de su amigo Alberto Pío, conde de Carpi, contra Erasmo de Rotterdam (1532) against Erasmus’s progressive ideas.21 Despite the Spaniard’s best efforts, Erasmus so influenced Charles V’s court that, before the coronation of Philip II, Hispanidad was almost synonymous with Erasmismo. The noted French Hispanist Marcel Bataillon has stated that Erasmism extended itself to the Americas merely because Hispanic culture found itself there.22 Irving Leonard documents the existence of Erasmus’s books, in particular, the Apotegmas, in the newly colonized lands.23 Diego Méndez, principal scribe for Columbus’s last voyage, lists several of Erasmus’s books in his will including the Arte del bien morir, a sermón, the Lingua Erasmi, and the Colloquia. Some of these incunabula were written in the original Latin and some were Spanish translations. Despite the Milan Index of 1554 banning a number of Erasmus’s works, his stature in the “New” World would continue 18  For a negative view of Las Casas, see his most ardent detractor Menéndez Pidal; for a positive one, Gutiérrez. 19  Arias, “Empowerment,” 164.

20  Castro, Hacia Cervantes, 106, 103, respectively.

21  Even though Erasmus quotes Sepúlveda positively in his Ciceronianus as a young man of great future, he demonstrates his lack of knowledge about him by calling him Portuguese: Sepúlveda hailed from Córdoba (Bataillon, Erasmo, 407). Later, Sepúlveda carps at Erasmus precisely for not dealing with the themes of nature and reason (Bataillon, Erasmo, 408), motifs that the Aristotelians employed to defend the practice of slavery. Erasmus and More’s friend Juan Luis Vives also stimulated violent counter responses from Sepúlveda. See Brading, The First America, 82 and Lupher, Romans, 107. 22  Bataillon, Erasmo, 807.

23  Leonard, Los libros, 204.

84 Dismantling the “Natural” Theory of Slavery

to endure.24 In 1559 the Inquisition would officially declare Erasmus a heretic,25 and therefore his influence after that time may not have been not so much as a book to be read, as it was a feeling in the air, floating in the conversations of spiritual people who cared. His footprint was generally felt in Franciscan activity in New Spain and tangibly in the writing of Juan de Zumárraga.26 Insúa Rodríguez adds that even though the works of Erasmus and the Valdés brothers (perhaps the greatest exponents of Erasmism in Siglo de Oro Spain) were condemned, those of Juan de Zumárraga, “an enthusiastic humanist admirer of Erasmus” (humanista admirador entusiasta de Erasmo), continued to circulate.27 If Bishop Zumárraga were an insignificant figure, this would not concern us here, yet this man of the cloth was the first archbishop of New Spain, one of the founders of the University of Mexico, and deeply committed to the education of the Nahua peoples.28 It is significant that the first book produced in Abya Yala, Zumárraga’s Doctrina breve, was of what Insúa Rodríguez terms “pure Erasmist inspiration.” Insúa backs up this claim with the detail that in his Doctrina breve Zumárraga lifted entire sections of Erasmus’s Enchiridion and Paraclesis.29 The Enchiridion, William Egginton remarks, had been “published in a Spanish translation in 1526 and enjoyed immediate and long-​lasting success.”30 Given the impact that Zumárraga had on New Spain, the saturation of Erasmism there is indisputable. While Las Casas does not quote Erasmus so frequently, his thought regarding inner spirituality parallels that of Erasmus. Santa Arias has commented on this link pointing out that the Enchiridion forecasts Las Casas’ attack on “the hypocrisy of the European Christians.”31 While Bataillon concentrates on New Spain (he also mentions La Española and Brazil), there were Erasmists in Peru. Vicente de Valverde became famous for his role in 24  Bataillon, Erasmo, see esp. the Appendix, “Erasmo y el Nuevo Mundo,” 807–​31; Erasmus’ influence is well documented in Leonard, Los libros, 80, 102, 197, 204, 246, 251, 247. For Erasmus’s impact on Zumárraga, see Greenleaf, Zumárraga, for example, 37; What remains needed in Erasmus-​ Zumárraga studies is a close intertextual analysis comparison of Erasmus’ works and Zumárraga’s Doctrina breve (Mexico, 1544) and Doctrina crítica (Mexico, 1546). A facsimile edition of the former was published in New York by the United States Catholic Historical Society in 1928 and a copy of the latter is housed in the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. Also Leonard, Los libros, 197. 25  Hampe Martínez, Las bibliotecas privadas, 202. 26  Bacigalupo, A Changing Perspective, 22.

27  Insúa Rodríguez, Historia de la filosofía, 72–​73.

28  While Zumárraga may have been enlightened, he also turned the weight of the Inquisition on native lords who resisted Christianization. Such was the case of Don Carlos, a lord of Tetzcoco, executed by the Inquisition for apostasy. Schwaller tells us, “This incident so shocked both laity and clergy that in the aftermath the Crown withdrew all native peoples for the jurisdiction of the Inquisition,” “Introduction,” xxi. 29  Insúa Rodríguez, Historia de la filosofía, 72. 30  Egginton, The Man, 23.

31  Arias, “Empowerment,” 171.

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Atawallpa’s encounter with the Bible.32 Named Bishop of Cuzco in 1537, he had previously studied at the University in Valladolid when Erasmus’s influence began to rise. Teodoro Hampe Martínez has documented through bookstore receipts that Father Valverde had two of Erasmus’s books, which he perhaps had with him during the encounter with the Inka king at Cajamarca but had most certainly acquired before he passed away when his personal library was liquidated. Those two were the Enchiridion and another, described as some type of narrative.33 Erasmus felt the need to reform systematically the Church, a posture that would anticipate thought in Abya Yala. For Gibson, the “Erasmian vogue in Spain, brief but intense, provides one of the most striking illustrations of Spanish receptivity to reforming ideas prior to the Reformation.” During that same period, “Erasmus’ friend and fellow humanist Thomas More located Utopia in the American hemisphere as a foil and challenge to Europe.” This picture is not complete because, according to Gibson, an essential element was still missing: “it remained for Spanish ecclesiastics to make the practical humanist application to the colonial scene.”34 It is for this reason that we will also turn to one of the more famous ecclesiastics of the imperial era, Bartolomé de las Casas. Another interesting issue centers on the possibility of mutual influences between the three, which we should probe before moving toward the primary issues. Erasmus and More indisputably influenced each other. Whether Las Casas, their contemporary, influenced them, or they him, is another matter. Already mentioned is the possibility that Las Casas met with Quiroga and Zumárraga at those Mexico City meetings where he may have encountered More and Erasmus’s thought, as he may have at the royal court in Spain. Intellectual networks in Europe give reason for pause in this matter. The whole issue of whether Las Casas could have been a source for More’s Utopia takes a form akin to a Swiss cheese, with lots of holes in the timeline and there is difficulty pinpointing who was where and with whom. Here we can only set the stage for a ventilation of these issues. Bataillon fixes the moment that Charles V (soon to be Charles I of Spain) assumes control of the Low Countries (Netherlands) as coming at the onset of 1515. We know that Erasmus, a Dutchman, makes a short trip to England in the spring of 1515.35 He may have met with More. For his part, the Englishman was called to the Netherlands on May 7 of the same year as an official representative of his country.36 As Hexter makes plain, this was no small embassy: More and three colleagues were to seek a favorable trade agreement between England and the Netherlands.37 The negotiations occurred in Ghent and after they ended, or went into hiatus late July or early August,38 More 32  Hampe Martínez, Las bibliotecas privadas, 85–​87.

33  Hampe Martínez, Las bibliotecas privadas, 83, 84–​85. 34  Gibson, Spain, 71.

35  Bataillon, Erasmo, 79, 80. 36  Fox, Utopia, xiv.

37  Hexter, “The Composition of Utopia,” 4:xxix. 38  It is unknown if they resumed or not.

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went to Antwerp where Hexter places him in the company of Peter Giles. Additionally, Richard Marius has More and Erasmus meeting during the summer or fall of that year in Bruges.39 Alistair Fox has More composing the second part of the Utopia from May to October of this same year,40 October being the month he was recalled home.41 Later that year, Erasmus went to Ghent where the Chancellor of Brabant, Jean le Sauvage, the man who suggested he compose Institutio principis Christiani, or The Education of a Christian Prince, offered him the position of councillor to Prince Charles, then sixteen years old, later king of the Holy Roman Empire.42 What is not clear is if Erasmus was in Antwerp with Giles and More, or in Ghent when More and his colleagues were in diplomatic negotiations. Concomitantly, in September, Las Casas, with Montesinos and a third Dominican friar, embarked from Hispaniola bound for Spain.43 Given the duration of a transoceanic voyage, it seems he would have arrived in Europe too late to have personally met up with More and Erasmus. However, that is not the only part of the story. Before March 30, 1515, Victor Baptiste explains, an early draft of Las Casas’s Memorial de remedios para las Indias (actually released in 1516) was given to Adrian de Utrecht, Charles’s representative in Spain (in Latin) and to Cardinal Ximénez (in Spanish).44 This would have been immediately before Las Casas’s east-​bound voyage across the Atlantic. In January of the new year, Gustavo Gutiérrez recounts, Las Casas would personally give a copy to his protector Cardinal Cisneros.45 These drafts, as Baptiste clarifies, were presumably circulating in the court around the time Erasmus received his honorary appointment as councillor to the prince. Yet it is not clear how to explain documents ending up in the hands of the two officials before March since Las Casas did not leave Hispaniola until September, not catching up with the king until Christmas of that year, and not giving a draft to the cardinal until January 1516. It does not seem possible he circulated these documents himself in 1515, however, it would be fascinating to study the possibility that he had sent a copy back to Spain on a crossing prior to his own. We do know that Las Casas, a year earlier, on Pentecost, after observing the military violence, the abuse on the Cuban encomiendas, and after he had been reading the Bible, had his conversion, what Lewis Hanke called a “radical change of heart.”46 He may therefore have written his draft, or an early draft, while still in the Caribbean and sent it across the Atlantic with a courier. For example, Lawrence A. Clayton explains that Governor 39  Marius, Thomas More, 148. 40  Fox, Utopia, xiv.

41  Hexter, “The Composition of Utopia,” 4:xxxiii.

42  Bataillon, Erasmo, 80; Huizinga, Erasmus, 92.

43  Helps, The Life of Las Casas, 32; Gutiérrez, Las Casas, 68. 44  Baptiste, Bartolomé de las Casas, 9. 45  Gutiérrez, Las Casas, 68.

46  Hanke, Bartolomé, 1–​2. Muskus considers whether the conversion occurred when Las Casas gave up his encomienda or eight years later when he entered the Dominican order, The Origins and Early Development, 28.

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Velázquez, aware that Las Casas would end up in Castile, anticipated that eventuality by sending Pánfilo de Naváez at the end of 1514 or early in 1515 to undercut Las Casas’s envisaged critique of the encomienda. Any member of Navárez’s crew could have had a copy of Las Casas’s manuscript. Or other voyages could have served as a conduit.47 If that were the case, it is not far-​fetched to speculate that the chancellor of Brabant had a draft of Las Casas’s Memorial that he then gave to Erasmus in Ghent. Indeed, if so, anyone on Prince Charles’s negotiating team might have been privy to a draft of the Memorial and then shared it with More in Ghent before he went to Antwerp. It may be that in May of 1515, as Fox suggests, Erasmus was with More in Bruges. If so, he may have shown the Englishman a draft of The Education of a Christian Prince.48 While Erasmus’s presence in Bruges, or Ghent, or Antwerp needs to be ascertained, if More had received a draft copy of the Memorial, either from the Dutch humanist or from someone on Charles’s negotiating team, it certainly would have spurred his conversations with Giles about the ideal commonwealth in Antwerp. At any rate, Erasmus eventually guided More’s Utopia though the publishing process with Thierry Martens who operated his press in Louvain in 1516, the book appearing in December of that year.49 We do know that Las Casas had personal contact with the chancellor of Brabant who recommended he compose the Memorial. It is possible that Las Casas wrote the Memorial, sent it the chancellor, who then gave it to Erasmus who finally presented it to More. But then again, some difficulties with the timeline arise. It appears that Las Casas did have contact with the chancellor, but in 1518, not 1516, and certainly not in 1515. He did compose a Memorial de remedios para las Indias for him. However, we should not mistake that Memorial dated 151850 for the earlier Memorial de remedios para las Indias from 1516. All of this could be a confusion of dates and repetitions of titles thereby belying the possibility of a direct influence of Las Casas in More, unless of course a draft of the first Memorial got across the ocean early on and into the hands of either le Sauvage or Cardinal Ximénez, as Victor Baptiste suggests. In either case, the Jean le Sauvage situation makes evident a “Latin” world where ideas were flowing back and forth. Studies on More and Erasmus document these humanist links. It is provocative to picture Las Casas filtering into this network right around the time the Utopia appeared. To conclude this line of discussion, the Leyes de Burgos, promulgated in 1512 just before Las Casas’s 1514 conversion, could not have been the work of the Dominican as some have suggested.51 Nevertheless, the Leyes themselves were influential in Europe. They provoked between the years 1511 and 1513 what Hanke has called “the most 47  Clayton, Bartolomé de las Casas: A Biography, 86.

48  Fox, Utopia, 7. Marius, Thomas More, 148, is less precise about this time together, framing it as “sometime during the summer or fall of 1515.” 49  Marius, Thomas More, 153.

50  Castañeda, de Rueda, Godínez, and La Corte, “Presentación,” 15. 51  Altamira, “El texto de las leyes de Burgos 1512.”

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searching questions any colonial nation can ask of itself.”52 They and other Spanish sources most certainly reached More, a line of inquiry that still needs examination. It is not that these three thinkers were single-​handedly responsible for challenging the Peripatetic theories on natural servitude undergirding the Conquest. In fact, lawyers were challenging legal norms for slavery in southern Europe. Sally McKee shows how the court systems in the lands that were not yet “Italy” were offering opinions that made slavery a weaker institution. Courts in places like Florence, Genoa, and in the Venetian colony of Crete were starting to grant freedom to children of enslaved women if the father were free and indeed, in some cases allowing for intestate succession.53 Given what we know about the frequency of owners’ sexual “liaisons” with their female slaves, such legal decisions would do much to reduce the productivity of what we might call “slave factories.” Such legal realities were part of the social fabric informing humanism, no doubt. Let us not forget More was a lawyer. Finally, some scholars have asserted that Las Casas, More, and Erasmus were hidebound by tradition; that they were conservative. Ramón Menéndez Pidal suggested that Las Casas, besides suffering from quixotic craziness, propagandized judgments that were totalitarian in nature.54 Jasper Ridley, probably thinking of some of More’s legal decisions, avers that More “was in every way a conservative by temperament, what we today would call a man of the Right, and never a man of the Left,” and from a literary standpoint, Peter Iver Kaufman argues that that the Utopia is a work of “Ecclesial Reaction.” He perceives in the text a tendency toward “structure and ritual,” “rules and rituals,” “ritual and routine,” “rules, restraints, and routines.”55 Similarly, Johan Huizinga, disappointed by Erasmus’s (albeit reluctant) criticism of Martin Luther, trumpets the possibility that late in life one can “see the aged Erasmus on the path of reaction.”56 Regardless of the repudiation of Las Casas by neo-​Aristotelian, conservative, or pro-​war groups, notwithstanding More’s real-​life attitudes, and despite Erasmus’s perceived reactionary tendencies, all three left reformist writings that would spur a somewhat-​ more-​enlightened posterity. In all their cases, a gap could have existed between the life they led and the literature they produced. Few societies, if any, can boast that they can 52  Hanke, The Spanish Struggle, 36.

53  McKee, “Inherited Status and Slavery in Late Medieval Italy and Venetian Crete,” 31–​53. 54  Menéndez Pidal, El padre Las Casas, 337, 326–​28.

55  Kaufman, “Humanist Spirituality,” 35, 36, 37. Kaufman’s analysis grows out of earlier investigation by John M. Headley examining “More’s ecclesiology” in the Responsio ad Luterum. However, his investigation shows that in “1523 began the career of Thomas More as polemicist and apologist.” Headley refers here to More’s defense of Catholic structures against Luther. A crucial element in this regard is that More’s “reaction” began in 1523, which is quite some time after the first edition of the Utopia (Louvain) in 1516. See his “Thomas Murner.” The quote is from p. 76. For the same reason, Brian Gogan has affirmed, “Martin Luther killed off the More of Utopia.” See his The Common Corps of Christendom, 10. The truth of the matter is that the Utopia is a work of such complexity that various levels of interpretation are possible with respect to More’s life and work. 56  Huizinga, Erasmus, 173.

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make daily life agree with theoretical ideals. Erasmus and Las Casas remained solitary figures in the societies where they lived and worked. More lost his life for being true to his convictions. Posthumously, though, their writings did inspire others to rethink unconsciously or subconsciously held views. Given their weight in the history of ideas in Europe and Latin America, we now offer a close textual comparison necessary to illuminate the contours and connectedness of their progressive thought and what it means for the nations where applied. The best manner to judge this trio of thinkers is by their extant writings, not by biographers and critics each with their own perspective. We now turn to a troika of remarkable books that came out more or less a century after those legal decisions in Florence, Genoa, and in the Venetian colony of Crete. Two of them debuted just a decade or two after Columbus’s momentous voyage: Erasmus’s Praise of Folly (1511) and Thomas More’s Utopia (1516). Another came out five decades after that first voyage, Las Casas’s Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (written in 1542, published in 1552). All these tracts had an enormous impact on reform mindedness in the continents newly encountered by Europeans.

Thomas More, Ethics, and the New World

Thomas More (England: 1478–​1535), knighted in 1521, canonized in 1935, is especially relevant to the development of progressive ideals in this era. Although Chambers has indicated medieval characteristics regarding More’s most famous book, Utopia,57 the multiplicity of views possible expressed in it, as we will see, indicate some advantage over Las Casas’s single-​mindedness. Ridley suggests that in his life, More was both tolerant, such as in his role as under-​sheriff of London during the riots of 1517 and closed-​ minded, being a “savage persecutor of heretics who devoted his life to the destruction of Lutheranism.”58 Luther, of course, represented a real challenge to Catholicism. The German monk had received his doctorate during the same decade, in 1512, and he published his Ninety-​Five Theses in 1517. Any real-​life dogmatism in More stemmed from his hope that Christianity would not self-​segregate into opposing camps. It was through anti-​Reformation unity that humanity could find strength to fight evil. However, the real-​life Judge More did not influence idealist reflection so much; it was the Utopia and the ideas expressed therein that provisioned morally minded men with a concrete model for tolerance in a New World context. Utopia had a lasting influence on the construct known in Europe as the Indies. Likewise, its writing drew on knowledge emanating from these strange lands. Thomas More, like any man of letters during the Renaissance, had a library and was a serious reader. He had studied the trivium (the lower division of a liberal arts curriculum that included grammar, logic, and rhetoric) at St. Anthony’s School in London and he went on to study the quadrivium (the upper division of a liberal arts curriculum that included arithmetic, 57  See Chambers, Thomas More.

58  Ridley, Statesman and Saint, 78, 238.

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geometry, astronomy, and music) at Oxford.59 He most certainly read the standard fare for humanists during the Renaissance. Edward Surtz, S.J., mentions Vespucci’s Quatuor nauigationes (1507) and Pietro Martire d’Anghiera’s De orbe novo (1511) in this regard.60 We could quickly add Vespucci’s 1503 Mundus nouus. Alfred A. Cave takes a dim view of these kinds of assertions regarding Martire and even Vespucci, since authors such as the latter depicted Amerindians as barbarians and savages, which were characteristics opposite to those More described in his opus.61 Others such as Patricia Seed accept Vespucci as a source.62 It is of course possible that More reacted against the bias and negativity of Vespucci and Martire, or Mártir in Spanish, and inverted those shades of representation. There is a slight chance that another source, as stated above, may have been a Las Casas text, with Erasmus as intermediary.63 There were also nonliterary factors that affected More. We have mentioned Italy and the legal system. Italy embodied Renaissance lettered production and culture. As such, it would later serve as a major source of inspiration for Shakespeare and Spanish poets such as Boscán and Garcilaso de la Vega. Other sources were more personal. Hexter brings up More’s own brother-​in-​law John Rastell who was contemplating making the trek to the northern continent.64 A few words are necessary about his connecting of Utopia with the Americas. To criticize England, he deliberately chose an uncharted island, immune to the vice and corruption of Europe. As Egginton puts it, the “Utopia would hide its sharp criticism of power and hypocrisy behind the defense of a nonexistent land.”65 This is not unlike the priest Guevara who, to criticize Spain, set his story during the heyday of the Roman Empire. Therefore, it is not by accident that Raphael Hythlodaeus, the visitor More has arriving in Utopia, is an imaginary friend of Amerigo Vespucci (YE, 4:48–​51).66 As pointed out, Vespucci may have been a source and is meaningful, among other reasons, because mapmaker Martin Waldseemüller had named these newly found lands for him in 1507: América, not Amerigo (the Italian transcription for Americus), so that it would agree in gender with the three known continents: Africa, Asia, and Europa. That More situates his Utopia 59  Marius, Thomas More, 15, 25. 60  Surtz, “Introduction,” clxxix.

61  Cave, “Thomas More,” 229; Cave states in no uncertain terms, “But no new evidence demonstrating that More was in fact steeped in the early literature on the New World has been produced. Claims that he read Columbus and Pietro Martire as well as Vespucci remain unsubstantiated.” “Thomas More,” 209.

62  Seed seems to disagree with Cave when she asserts that More was “inspired by Amerigo Vespucci’s partially fictional best seller about his voyages to Brazil,” American Pentimiento, 30.

63  Baptiste’s Bartolomé de las Casas is the primary proponent of a Lascasian component in the Utopia basing his thesis on a close textual comparison of certain passages of the Utopia and the Memorial de remedios para las Indias, eventually published in 1516. 64  Hexter, “The Composition of Utopia,” 4:xxxi. 65  Egginton, The Man, 24.

66  References to the Yale Edition of the Complete Works of St. Thomas More will be indicated parenthetically and abbreviated as YE.

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in the Americas is explicit. The proof presents itself in a letter that he wrote to his friend Peter Giles where he wryly “laments” that he did not probe further into the exact position of Utopia. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt as to which hemisphere the author refers. It is the Western Hemisphere: “We forgot to ask, and he [Hythlodaeus] forgot to say, in what part of the new world Utopia lies” (YE, 4:42–​43). We can consider More’s response to Vespucci, Pietro Martire, and the corpus of Spanish writing taking form at that time as a decolonial response. This is because in a way, he inverted the colonial paradigms ingrained in the biases and mode of thinking of Vespucci, Martire, and others. By inverting the imperialist hierarchy of things, the coloniality of the situation becomes apparent. For example, the idea of Spaniards as civilized and “Indians” as barbarians, when inverted would have the “Indians” as civilized and the Spaniards as barbarians. Since such a representation would have been seen as ridiculous by the intelligentsia of that time, the coloniality of the pre-​inversion duality is revealed. An inversion of this type would become a hallmark of Las Casas’ decolonial method. This is what he did in his famous debate with Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda: he inverted Sepúlveda’s arguments to make a point. As I wrote in Decolonizing Indigeneity, “By standing Sepúlveda on his head—​as Las Casas does—​and deleting the nationalistic and inward turning ‘Spanish’ stereotypes from the categories he establishes, a generic frame can be derived by which to decolonize the mentalities that informed and continue to inform the debate.”67 This is what More does also. Spaniards scramble for gold, and inversely, More’s Utopians find the precious metal of little value. Spaniards talk about slavery in Aristotelian terms as a just-​war done deal, and More, in contrast, makes it relative to a social situation, makes it into something that can be avoided. We will get to Las Casas below; here we are concerned with More’s very famous work. What interests us here specifically in this chapter is Utopia’s portrayal of slavery because it serves as a springboard to unhinge Aristotle’s theory of “natural slavery” in favor of the practice construed as a social condition, which was more flexible. More justified human servitude neither by reason of nature as in the Peripatetic premise, nor by desires of commercial gain as in Columbus, but rather by reason of social condition. This overcomes the notion of “caste” and puts slaves in the category of “class” as defined by Mörner (see beginning of ­chapter  1). Such a condition works against Aristotle’s most famous proposition that precludes a slave from being so because of birth circumstances. Specifically, More accepted slavery only (1) as criminal punishment for theft or physical or verbal violence against the people of Utopia; (2) for committing adultery; (3) for being taken a prisoner of war; or (4) for deciding to become so voluntarily. These categories are products of social conditions and in no place does More link slavery to nature, or to the as yet uninvented concept of race. There were four crimes against the citizenry of Utopia for which More deemed enslavement a proper punishment. These were theft, physical violence, spiritual intolerance, and adultery. For More, the death penalty was too severe a response to theft. More upheld the Ten Commandments and preferred life in chains to death as a more 67  Ward, Decolonizing Indigeneity, 112.

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humane category of punishment. In the first book of Utopia, Hythlodaeus poses the question: “God has said, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ and shall we so lightly kill a man for taking a bit of small change?” (YE, 4:72–​73). The Bible itself strengthens Hythlodaeus’s argument: “Finally, the law of Moses, though severe and harsh—​being intended for slaves, and those a stubborn breed—​nevertheless punished theft by fine and not by death” (YE, 4:72–​73). For crimes of violence, More is more severe. He accepts slavery or execution if the propagator kills or physically harms a citizen of Utopia (YE, 4: 202–​3). Violence goes beyond the physical since it could also be verbal and, for More, a person who slurs a fellow Utopian should be punished by means of slavery. Astonishingly, when a citizen expresses any ideas too forcefully, a call to slavery similarly can be mustered: “If a person contends too vehemently in expressing his views, he is punished with exile or enslavement” (YE, 4: 220–​21). A condemnation of bigotry approaches a position of tolerance. Regarding gender relations, More’s stance is rigid by our standards. Since he was Catholic to the core, matrimony was a particularly sacred bond. A lack of respect for it merits a puritanical response: “Violators of the conjugal tie are punished by the strictest form of slavery” (YE, 4:190–​91). Yet this Utopian culture has the virtue of fostering gender parity in its human relations. Slavery is a harsh response to adultery, but it does not discriminate by means of gender. Besides slavery as punishment, More consents to slavery stemming from just wars. Sometimes, Susan Bruce notes, these kinds of pushes can be “preemptive strikes” against other peoples.68 As part of a more critical stance toward the Utopia, scholar Ethan Schmidt finds three elements of colonialism in it, the taking of land, a policy of violence, and an inclination of cultural assimilation.69 Such a postcolonial reading was not the one Renaissance reformers carried out in the New World since they presumably could not go that far in their thinking. However, it is patently true that More conceives of prisoners of war as slaves: “Prisoners of war are not enslaved unless captured in wars fought by the Utopians themselves” (YE, 4:184–​85). More does not explain if this type of slavery results from defensive or offensive confrontations. Was he referring to warfare the Utopians waged on their own soil or to expeditions of conquest? As mentioned above, as Haskett makes manifest, the lines separating encomienda from chattel slavery blur when Spaniards enslaved people in Mexico as punishment for revealing hostilities toward them. Such actions, from an Iberian perspective, would insert those Mexicans into this just-​war category More espoused. The English humanist does not state whether these wars are offensive or defensive, or if there are mitigating circumstances, or not. Notwithstanding this ambiguity in his concept, he does not allow for trafficking in humans from other nations, as did Christopher Columbus and other Christians in the process of conquering Abya Yala, a noncolonial name for the Americas. Utopians explicitly exclude slaves “they could acquire from slavery in other countries.” Bondage is more a means of punishment than it is a means to acquire capital. 68  Bruce, “Utopian Justifications,” 29.

69  Schmidt, “The Well-​ordered Commonwealth,” 309–​10.

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More softens Aristotle’s precepts regarding just war, for in no place does the term natura link up with servitude, thereby revealing a branding derived socially, rather than naturally. This puts substantial distance between him and Aristotle who averred, “what we gain in war is in a certain degree a natural acquisition.” As explained before, Aristotle conceived victory in war as a condition of nature, negating its resulting from chance: “it seems that force never prevails but in consequence of great abilities.”70 What is obtained naturally—​read legally—​is acceptable for the market place, therefore, we have Columbus’s human trafficking proposals. Thirdly, More disavows hereditary slavery: “nor are the sons of slaves, [slaves]” (YE, 4:184–​85). Such a posture would wrinkle hereditary lines of slavery, making them last one generation, much like encomienda slavery reduced to one generation, the life of the encomendero, or like legal decisions proffered in Florence and Genoa in cases where the father was a free man. The rejection of hereditary slavery is another way to say Aristotle’s thinking on this matter was flawed. Economics do come into play, though, in another circumstance. More does accept serfdom as an individual’s voluntary decision, his fourth required condition: “There is yet another class of slaves, for sometimes a hard-​working and poverty-​stricken drudge of another country voluntarily chooses slavery in Utopia” (YE, 4:184–​85). An act of free will must be considered a social choice, not the force of nature. None of the positions questions a bondsman’s rationality or the nature of being human. Any slave could just as well be characterized as Aristotle’s master, “endowed with a mind capable of reflection and forethought,” as well as his subordinate, whose hallmark was that of corporeal excellence. Here we verify that the Catholic reformer’s thought endeavors to override the hierarchic proclivities of Aristotle’s philosophy. For More, slavery is only a means to a better end. Even when imposed as punishment for a crime against Utopians, even if committed by foreigners invading Utopia, it is imposed for the greater good. For him, human bondage was cruel (not as terrible as death), yet it resulted from individual decisions and the social degeneracy of crime, adultery, bigotry, or war when just. Unlike Aristotle, who postulated what we might regard in our time as racial or ethnic divisions between the Greek and the barbarian nations, More only saw social conditions. While More’s Utopia gave rise to a genre known as Utopian fiction and even dystopian fiction more properly found in the science fiction in our time, he had a sincere interest in reforming society when he wrote it. Little wonder that one of Alistair Fox’s chapters in his monograph on More’s speculative work is titled, “Utopia and the Drive for Reform.”71 It was a daring work, and More feared being roundly criticized for it and he felt the need to back pedal a bit and include a second letter to Peter Giles after the first edition in which he seems to put himself outside of any notion we would consider genre based. Thus, the work could be “fiction,” but also about “reality.”72 Its author felt the need 70  Aristotle, The Politics, 1256b, p. 14 and 1255a, p. 9. 71  Fox, Utopia, 3.

72  See Fox, Utopia, 103–​5.

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to do this because it is a daring deed indeed to speak the truth about social ills when so many people who were part of those very social ills would read the text. We should not criticize his back pedaling, though. It is courageous to take on social evil such as was slavery. In the nineteenth century, Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, the author of Sab (1841), an abolitionist novel set in Cuba, later felt the need to leave the book altogether out of her complete works. Combating hegemony is a perilous enterprise.

Las Casas, the Cry against Slavery, and the Birth of Indigenismo

The literariness of More’s work places it a writing tradition that goes all the way back to the Greek philosophers. The nonliterary pretensions of Las Casas, Motolinía, and other clerics in Mexico during that period set them apart from other humanists’ pretensions, since those and other Spanish writers, as Stelio Cro points out, took life experience as its point of departure.73 More, unlike the Spaniards, did not leave Europe, but he did pen the Utopian tract that had the greatest impact, both in literature and in the social experiments that were to follow. This brings us to the Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas whose work did not have literary intentions, but who, like More, did make his writing weigh upon the world. Enrique Dussel underscores the Dominican’s importance: “Neither in the history of Europe nor in the five centuries of modernity had anyone so clearly formulated those strategic political and ethical criteria.”74 Perhaps the most Utopian of works (as José Antonio Maravall suggests75) is the Memorial of 1518 that Las Casas gives to the chancellor of Brabant, Jean le Sauvage, in which he proposes importing Spanish field hands, labradores, to the Indies thereby removing the need for slavery. This occurred in the first decades of his career as an activist when he lobbied for the importation of peasant folk from Berlanga (Soria), in Spain. These rustic souls might have been humble, but they were Christians, and they would foster an agrarian, mercantilist, economy. Unfortunately, Las Casas’s plan to import this humble folk to the Caribbean islands, in Álvaro Huerga’s words, resulted in a “total failure” (fracaso total). A heartbreaking effort it was, because numerous farm workers died on the transoceanic trip. Others had difficulty plying their trade in the New World. Another factor was the disaster of the seeds not arriving. Negative experiences in trying to promote Christianity would only intensify Las Casas’s obsession in saving Amerindian souls, for without them there would be no Indies.76 Bartolomé de Las Casas’s “Struggle for Justice” (to use Hanke’s now famous phrase) was mounted in an environment where Aristotle’s prescriptions were employed not merely to justify slavery, but also as a yardstick for determining the level of “civilization.” Las Casas could not make believe Aristotle did not exist. Given the authority the ancient philosopher still wielded, calling up his precepts was to build a conceptual scaffolding 73  Cro, Realidad y utopía, 4–​5.

74  Dussel, Politics of Liberation, 204.

75  Maravall, Utopía y reformismo, 202. 76  Huerga, Vida y obras, 121–​28.

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that would be familiar to other “Latinos” (intellectuals versed in Latin) and bureaucrats. This was the case with the Aristotelian framework in the Apologética historia.77 Las Casas did not accept Aristotelian natural servitude. He explains, “these Indian peoples are by their nature of good understanding by reason of natural causes” (estas indianas gentes son de su naturaleza de buenos entendimientos por las causas naturales).78 Weakening Aristotle’s philosophy, they could not logically be slaves because, being “by nature of good understanding,” they are “endowed with a mind capable of reflection and forethought.” In this he follows Columbus whose writing he translated and who had earlier described the Taínos as being of “good understanding.” Although Las Casas refers to nature, he does not do so to foster a master–​slave hierarchy, but to say the Indigenous were naturally smart, a tactic which may not be an 180-​degree decolonial inversion, but certainly moves in that direction. This makes us see that Las Casas’s reversal of Aristotle, who was in the air, and was a primary font for Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, constitutes a decolonial methodology that results in liberation thinking. As Las Casas slowly liberated himself from the imperialist factors of Columbus’s mind such as the “paid for with slaves from these cannibals” proposals, a decolonial posture is suggested. I say “suggested,” because not all decolonial thinking and activity gets to noncoloniality. Much of it is a small step, just as Columbus represented a small step, just as Las Casas stepped out of Columbus to a degree but still remained a long way from the twentieth-​century decolonial theorist Frantz Fanon. Some scholars in our time might say, because of his totalizing Christian bent, Las Casas could not be truly decolonial. But that is too much to ask of someone thinking within the frame of the Zeitgeist of the long sixteenth century. Worthy of consideration are the small and sometimes giant steps these thinkers took, not so much “the where” they got to, because they did not get to where we are, but simply that they took these steps and advanced the discussion in the direction of justice. This is not difficult to imagine if we recognize that we at the present day are not where thinkers, activists, and scholars will get in the future. This brings us to The Only Way, written, as Miguel Angel Martínez observes, after May 29, 1537, since the author cites at length the papal encyclical, Sublimis Deus, released at that time.79 This work by Las Casas is a poorly studied treatise because scholarship has favored others such as the Historia de las Indias (History of the Indies) and the Brevísima relación. This hole in Lascasian scholarship may result from the fact that the first twentieth-​century edition, Agustín Millares Carlo’s, published very late in 1942, in Mexico, presents philological difficulties because time only preserved three chapters with which editors could work. The second edition in Spanish did not arrive on the scene until appearing in the Obras completas in 1990. Frances Patrick Sullivan, S.J. and Helen Rand Parish did not translate into English and edit the work until 1992. However, Martínez notes, what has come down to us contains “what is essential and specific to 77  Las Casas understood Aristotle’s concept of the barbarian as having four subdivisions, which he reviews in his Apología. For a clear analysis of this matter, see Pagden, The Fall, 126–​37. 78  Las Casas, Apologética historia, cap. XL, 1:211. 79  Martínez, “El respeto a la cultura,” 396.

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this treatise” (lo esencial y específico de este tratado).80 In this treatise, Las Casas takes the Aristotelian concept of nature and turns it inside out. From the bottom up, he sets the stage for a system of natural law that protects all peoples. First, he argues, “war is unnatural.” Then he builds on that idea, adducing, “nature itself has created a certain kinship between human beings regardless of their class or nation. According to that kinship we are forbidden to violate one another.”81 Las Casas’s brilliance is apparent. In one stroke of the quill he rejects Aristotle’s natural hierarchies, promotes international peace, becomes an early promoter of nonviolence, and institutes the basis for human rights.82 In short, all people are equal according to Las Casas’s doctrine, “no one, no place privileged.”83 Inversions of this nature, like his inversion of Aristotle’s prescription regarding “a mind capable of reflection and forethought,” pertain to a solid decolonial methodology.84 This brings us to another text that employs the same technique. In his Apología:  o declaración y defensa universal de los derechos del hombre y de los pueblos (The Apology: Or a Universal Declaration and Defense of the Rights of Man and of Peoples), Las Casas again turns Aristotle upside down, fleshing out four types of barbarians: cruel people, illiterate people, ungovernable people, and non-​Christians. Certainly, there were Indigenous people who were cruel, but Las Casas juxtaposes Spanish cruelty and Indigenous docility (good for receiving the Word). He then goes great lengths to prove that Spaniards with their cruelty, more than Indigenous people, fall into the first category, that of the barbarians.85 As Las Casas concludes, there can be only one way to think about the Philosopher in the New World: “¡Adiós Aristotle!”86 On this score, and José Rabasa presses the point, Las Casas dismantles the binary opposition of “civilization” and “barbarism.”87 What he did was invert Aristotle to prove him and his Renaissance disciples wrong. The barbarian becomes civilized and the civilized, barbarian. As More, Las Casas views slavery as resulting from a social condition, although the latter’s perspective represents a substantial degree of progress over the former because it does not accept such a social condition. For him, slavery’s social roots stemmed from greediness. More argues that where there is greed there is no justice (YE, 4: 196–​97). Greed, as noted in ­chapter  1 and the next section, is a primary factor in the growth of the mentalities of coloniality. Given that slavery was such an omnipresent condition of the colony, its weakening represented a degree of decolonial headway. 80  Martínez, “El respeto a la cultura,” 396.

81  Las Casas, The Only Way, 163. I  use Parish and Sullivan’s wonderfully executed translation/​ edition of The Only Way. 82  See Wright-​Carozza, “From Conquest to Constitutions.” Wright-​Carozza has several articles on this topic.

83  Las Casas, The Only Way, 83; “sin escoger pueblo o lugar alguno,” Las Casas, Del único modo, 205. 84  For example, Ward, Decolonizing Indigeneity, 110–​12. 85  Las Casas, Apología, 18; also Lupher, Romans, 136. 86  Las Casas, Apología, 29.

87  Rabasa, “Historiografía colonial,” 71.

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Las Casas does not accept slavery even as a social paradigm derived rationally and, in his Brevísima relación, he condemns it and greed with passion: There has not been cause to make slaves out of these Indigenous: except for perverse, blind, and obstinate will: except to comply with the avaricious tyrants’ insatiable greed for money: as all the others in all the Indies have done, taking those lambs and sheep from their homes, seizing their women and children by the cruel and nefarious means of which have already been spoken: to cast them into the King’s irons in order to sell them as slaves.88

Because Las Casas, unlike More, lived in the Americas where human bondage was widely practiced, he was able to recognize that the social conditions that led to a life in irons were not punishment for adultery, or bigotry, or individual volition. One can trace slavery’s primary cause in the imperial system to the just-​cited “avaricious tyrants’ insatiable greed.” Greed can be tempered with the application of Las Casas’s quest for a more primitive form of Christianity. Father Juan de Mariana, writing at the last gasp of the sixteenth century in a tract on kings and their instruments of government, offers a theoretical history of humanity. In it, early peoples before the age of the great monarchies went to war less frequently, precisely because they suffered less from greed.89 We ponder the social detriments of greed more fully in the next section, with respect to Erasmus. Las Casas, who studied and edited Columbus’s diary, was aware that his reasoning differed from the Great Navigator’s mode of thinking. In his Historia de las Indias, he places the blame squarely on the admiral for selling Caribbean people to comply with the economic realities imposed by the crown. Specifically, he censures “paying for maintenance and other merchandise brought from Castile by trading Indians as slaves” (pagar los mantenimientos y otras mercaderías traídas de Castilla con dar de los indios por esclavos). Las Casas’s argument is simple: inner Christianity should take precedent over worldly concerns. The laws of Christ should weigh more than royal disfavor.90 Without conceiving the term, he favors the division of power as prescribed in the book of Matthew. Las Casas became so impassioned in his thirst for justice that he altered Columbus’s diary as he struggled for a peaceful evangelization of Indigenous people.91 Las Casas’s reformist ideas caused a commotion in Europe (and in places like Peru where they caused a civil war). While, as Josep M. Barnadas points out, “the Iberian peninsula was the scene of reforming movements of great intensity,”92 it was also engaged 88  “Todos estos Yndios no ha avido mas causa para los hazer esclavos: de sola la perversa ciega e obstinada voluntad: por cumplir con su insaciable cudicia de dineros de aquellos avarissimos tyranos: como todos los otros siempre en todas las yndias han hecho, tomando aquellos corderos y ovejas de sus casas e a sus mugeres e hijos por las maneras crueles y nefarias ya dichas: y echalles el hierro del Rey para venderlos por esclavos” (TR 1:150–​52). 89  Mariana, Obras, 2:467b.

90  Las Casas, Historia, 1:440.

91  Zamora, “ ‘Todas son palabras formales del almirante,’ ” 27; Merrim, “The Counter Discourse.” 92  Barnadas, “The Catholic Church,” 514.

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in the most egregious violence against other nations. Nevertheless, among the handful of dedicated reformers, Las Casas had the greatest influence. Rolena Adorno’s Polemics of Possession confirms he met authors who for us would be famous and noteworthy. Inca Garcilaso had met Las Casas in Seville and Bernal Díaz del Castillo, that famous encomendero who had gained wealth with Cortés’s mercenaries, “knew him personally, criticized him roundly, and wrote him letters asking him to use his influence on his behalf.”93 Beyond meeting authors of a historical bent, his œuvre was having an impact on the polemical writing of others. Adorno has determined that Bernal Díaz wrote his Historia verdadera in a manner that would defend the “just war” against the Mexica (sometimes imprecisely referred to as Aztecs).94 In other words, Díaz was responding to Las Casas. Just-​war policies explain why Spaniards would brand their Indigenous peons with a “G” for “Guerra.” Díaz del Castillo admitted that the Spanish branded women.95 Davies remarks that the Spanish branded all peoples they captured with a “G,” making them slaves.96 Such actions demonstrated that Spaniards rationalized shackling Mesoamericans through a just-​war mentality and (coincidentally) coinciding with More’s third rule on this practice. If Las Casas was reshaping prior doctrinal works, in the everyday world his ideas questioned the very activities of encomenderos and slavers who were also writing furiously to defend their activities. Polemics reached a hot point between 1550 and 1551, when Las Casas’s public debate at the University of Valladolid with the Aristotelian Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda on the natural capabilities of the American natives reached epic proportions.97 After that, Las Casas continued in his efforts to melt down the third rail Sepúlveda was bent on laying. He went before the Council of Castile where he successfully blocked publication of Sepúlveda’s Democrates alter, sirve de justis belli causis apud Indos, a treatise that documented the latter’s belief “in the justice of the wars against the Indians.”98 In a milieu where Las Casas pestered establishment politicians and bureaucrats insistently the institution of the encomienda was in jeopardy.99 Given this influence, we can say as Adorno does, that the ideological framework for the Historia verdadera resulted directly from Díaz del Castillo’s fear of Las Casas, both from the tribunals at Valladolid and from the Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias. We note that Bernal Díaz finished his opus in 1568, just two years after Las Casas had passed away, suggesting that Las 93  Adorno, The Polemics, 14. 94  Adorno, “Discourses.”

95  Díaz del Castillo, Historia verdadera, 666b. 96  Davies, The Aztecs, 272.

97  Hanke, The Spanish Struggle, 117–​31; and his Aristotle, 38–​73. Just as Sepúlveda became a thorn in Erasmus and Las Casas’s sides, so too de Liberation Theology have its critics, such as Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation, and later Pope Benedict XVI. See Daly, “Revelation,” 40.

98  Hanke, The Spanish Struggle, 114; Pagden analyzes Sepúlveda’s Democrates and Apologia as literary, not political, works, see Pagden, The Fall, 109–​18. 99  Adorno, “Discourses,” 246–​51.

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Casas was affecting the intellectual community even after his death. We say this because Díaz del Castillo’s chronicle remains one of the best known, even to this day. Las Casas’s influence is no mere intertextual supposition. Manuel Burga has demonstrated a rise in the number of capellanías (chaplaincies) in colonial Peru between the years 1550 and 1689. The Peruvian historian credits this rise in capellanías to the “relation[ship] between Las Casas’ message and the sense of guilt that began to pervade the collective conscience of Spaniards.”100 If the meetings in Valladolid about the moral fiber of Amerindians demonstrated Las Casas’s influence in Europe,101 the rise of “God’s annuity,” the capellanía was the outcome of his message reaching other priests who in turn reached Criollo and Spanish elites. Therefore, the Dominican’s view eventually prevailed in some spheres of influence. He would even influence the independence movements of both North and South America. Thomas Jefferson had copies of at least two of Las Casas’s Tratados in his library, and Simón Bolívar was familiar with his ideas.102 Although the Dominican’s endeavors to convert K’ekchi’ or Achi (Mayan) people to Christianity peacefully were less than successful, his efforts to rehabilitate the European perception of the inhabitants of the Americas held such power that he would later be [unfairly] accused of being the mainspring of the Black Legend. The Black Legend is a term for the negative public opinion in northern Europe fostered for political gain against Spain, which would pursue Spaniards into the ensuing centuries. Since the “Black Legend” has been such a prevalent force in English-​language writing and politics, and since I have composed this book in English, a word or two is necessary about this angle of Las Casas studies. The Spanish novelist Emilia Pardo Bazán coined the term at the onset of the twentieth century to refute anti-​Spanish discourse in the Anglosphere. The “Black Legend” was a deliberate misreading of Las Casas’s Indigenismo to justify English imperialism to the detriment of Spanish imperialism.103 Similarly, the often cited but incorrect characterization of Las Casas as a proponent of African slavery (even, in some writing, the founder of black slavery!104) seems to stem from the Black Legend. As preeminent Lascasian scholars such as Adorno and Clayton note, while a young Las Casas still developing his doctrines did advocate African slavery as a way to protect the Indigenous, later when he learned about the Portuguese in Africa, he turned against all forms of slavery.105 For Adorno this idea of Las Casas as the bad guy seems to have made its initial appearance during the Enlightenment in canonical works 100  Burga, “The Triumph of Colonial Christianity,” 44. 101  See Hanke, Bartolomé.

102  Hanke, Bartolomé, 42, 74; also Hanke, Aristotle, his The Spanish Struggle. Hanke’s work seems to be polemical, see O’Gorman, “Lewis Hanke,” and Hanke’s response, “Bartolomé de las Casas, an Essay.” 103  Pardo Bazán, La España de Ayer, 32, 38. 104  Adorno, The Polemics, 64.

105  Adorno, The Polemics, 65; Clayton, Bartolomé de las Casas and the Conquest, 138–​39. Sánchez Godoy argues that not only did Las Casas find a way to preach against black slavery within the language of domination, he also was able to overcome his initial bias to preach against slavery for all men and women. Sánchez Godoy, El peor de los remedios.

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such as William Robertson’s 1776 History of America.106 Referring to Las Casas’s role in the dissemination of the Black Legend, Patricio Boyer confirms his role as the “unwitting progenitor of this anti-​Spanish tradition.”107 “Unwitting” is the best descriptor for his supposed role because the atrocities the Black Legend attributed to the Spanish conquistadors hijacked both his pro-​Catholic intent and his view that Spain could do better, while at the same time passing over his role in ending the taking of Amerindians as property. The inverse rhetorical ploy used by the English diminished Las Casas in the eyes of Spaniards, while it obfuscated the atrocities that the English themselves were committing. More objectively, Las Casas became the originator of Indigenismo in Latin America. In its most basic sense Indigenismo implies a variety of Hispanic discourse that defends original peoples first against the conquistadors, then against encomenderos, later against hacendados and, finally, bringing us up to the present day, against Criollo elites, industrialists, foreign investors, transnational shells and corporations, as well as narco-​ networks. Antonio Cornejo Polar has argued that the colonial chronicle and the heterogeneous cultures that serve as its referent represent a first pass at Indigenismo.108 The distinguished critic may have had Las Casas in mind since the Dominican directed his anti-​Aristotelian activism in favor of the Indigenous against first the conquistadors and later against the encomenderos. Some scholars have expressed doubt about Las Casas’s intent because he was so concerned with the spread of the faith. Certainly, it could be a kind of oppression to impose a religion on a people. But perhaps Estelle Tarica is excessive when she labels Las Casas’s posterior influence on Indigenismo as a kind of colonial heritage.109 It is unreasonable to expect that Las Casas could be open-​minded about other religions during the place and time he lived. On the scale of colonialist doctrine, he would have been on the side most concerned with justice. K’iche’ intellectual Waqi’ Q’anil Demetrio Cojtí Cuxil frames Las Casas as an anticolonialist.110 Indeed, as I argued elsewhere, Las Casas was concerned with private property and other rights that would fall more into the category liberalism than it would fall into the category conservatism.111 Las Casas’ Indigenismo was at once spiritual and practical. Had he lived 100 years later, and if he had had contact with English, French, and Dutch, he would have written the same kinds of things although with broader cultural slants. If he had lived 200 years later, he might have become an abolitionist To conclude this section we can assert that, despite his pretensions to history, and regardless of the degree of its value to historians, Las Casas’s rhetorical and ideological 106  Adorno, The Polemics, 69.

107  Boyer, “Framing the Visual Tableaux,” 365.

108  Cornejo Polar, Literatura y sociedad, 37; also Mazzotti, “Indigenismo de ayer.” For further discussion, see “Indianism, Indigenism, and Indigenous Expression,” in Ward, Decolonizing Indigeneity, 134–​40. 109  Tarica, Inner Life of Mestizo Nationalism, 16–​21. 110  Cojtí Cuxil, El movimiento Maya, 58.

111  Ward, “Liberalismo y anarquía,” 115–​52.

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strategies make his writing akin to Michel de Montaigne’s essays. He has a discursive strategy and tries to persuade, like an essayist. Indeed Robert G. Mead, Jr. included a section on him in his Breve historia del ensayo hispanoamericano.112 In another regard, his labor portends the cry for justice of Indigenous activists such as the subaltern-​to-​ mainstream testimonio of Rigoberta Menchú, edited by Elizabeth Burgos.113 In that sense, his denunciation of slavery epitomizes an early strand of Indigenismo in Latin American thought. Alternatively, his writing can function as an antecedent or precursor to twentieth-​century Liberation Theology. While different from Liberation Theology (spelt with capital letters) because it does not dialogue with dependency theory and Marxism, Las Casas’s discursive enterprise holds much in common with and anticipates important theologians such as Gutiérrez who, not uncoincidentally, authored a book about him.114

Erasmus’ Condemnation of Greed

We now look at two topics as Erasmus saw them, slavery and greed. The former was not a primary subject of thought for Erasmus, the latter was. Craving what belongs to others, we remember from this chapter’s introduction, is a fundamental element of the condition we have described as coloniality. While Renaissance intellectuals would not have had consciousness of “coloniality” (we acquired awareness of this condition in our time), they did perceive the problems greed causes. The human inclination toward acquiring things as property, we remember, was what Las Casas saw as causing slavery. While Erasmus does not discuss it in his most famous book, the Praise of Folly, he recognizes its existence in the Education of a Christian Prince. In the latter, he acknowledges hierarchical relationships in a way that suggests they are routine: “man over another, master over slaves, father over children, husband over wife.”115 Yet, he censures human servitude. He advises, “since nature created all men free and slavery was imposed upon nature … consider how inappropriate it is for a Christian to acquire mastery of fellow-​Christians, whom the laws did not intend to be slaves and whom Christ redeemed from all slavery.”116 He rejects natural slavery, but, in truth, because of the way he frames this argument, he leaves open a window to allow for the enslavement of non-​Christians, which as seen earlier in this chapter, was standard Spanish practice. This 112  Mead, Breve historia, 18.

113  Sommer is the first to draw a parallel between Las Casas and Menchú (“Las Casas’s Lies,” 240), while the idea of a category for ethnoesssay, or testimonio-​essay, is mine. Ward, Decolonizing Indigeneity, 140–​42. 114  Santa Arias has affirmed that Las Casas nourishes liberation theology and philosophy as elaborated by Gutiérrez and Dussel. Arias, Retórica, 3, 5. 115  Erasmus, The Education, 37; “hominis in beluas, heri in seruos, patris in liberos, mariti in vxorem” (Institutio principis christiani, 163).

116  Erasmus, The Education, 40; “Cum natura genuerit omneis homines liberos et praeter naturam inducta sit seruitus, quod ethnicorum etiam leges fatentur, cogita quam non conueniat Christianum in Christianos vsurpare dominium” (Institutio principis christiani, 165).

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unenlightened stance to project during the decade that the Spanish were meticulously “reorganizing” the Caribbean, is to be expected given the Zeitgeist. Erasmus does better on the other issue. Avarice is a class of servitude that resides in the mind, an element of coloniality that results from character, bad education, Erasmus might say, or could be self-​inflicted for un-​reflective people, we might suspect. Erasmus did not associate this human attribute with slavery as did Las Casas, who was greatly bothered by rampant greed. Recognizing this human weakness helps clarify both Erasmus and Las Casas’s thought vis-​à-​vis the New World. Greed fuelled the misplaced zeal toward deciphering the myths of El Dorado and Cíbola, the lost city of gold. As the Amerindian population declined so too did the possibility of easy riches; therefore, Spanish rapaciousness increased, stimulating further interest in the El Dorado legends, which in turn stimulated even more rapaciousness. Greed’s corollary in Erasmus must necessarily be nature, a well-​thought-​out concept that emerges from his work. When comparing its relationship to the Aristotelian system and its relationship to slavery, the Erasmian notion of nature is indispensable to our discussion. Set loose from the Peripatetic, Erasmus does not see nature in terms of rationality. For him it was something that could (and does) give human beings deficiencies. Early in the Praise of Folly, he imputes human failings to nature: Nature, in many ways more of a stepmother than a loving parent, has implanted a defect in the minds of mortals—​especially those who have a little more intelligence—​namely, the tendency to be dissatisfied with what they have and to admire what belongs to others.117

Erasmus’s view of the omnipotence of nature as well as its ability to instill greed in the hearts of men and women does not help him to hold the human condition in high regard. This is why Erasmus was so concerned with the fine points of the delicate pedagogy regarding the education of Christian princes. This insidious vice was the same one over which Las Casas mulled as he tried to make sense of the above-​mentioned “avaricious tyrants’ insatiable greed for money.” Erasmus’s contemporary, More, similarly addresses voracity’s grip on the “New World” with an inverse logic, proclaiming that gold, by nature, is useless (YE, 4: 156–​57). For Erasmus, the people who suffer most from this form of moral turpitude are precisely “those who have a little more intelligence.” The more you know the more you want. One decolonial reading of the Praise of Folly is the following one: Avaricious people, the ones who claim a higher degree of intelligence, bear a striking similarity to those masters of slaves whom Aristotle describes as being “endowed with a mind capable of reflection and forethought.” This reading of Erasmus allows us to invert Aristotle’s paradigm of the intelligent master and simple-​minded slave so that it is precisely the more learned individual who is more prone to greed, becoming a slave to it. If coveting what belongs to others is “a defect in the minds of mortals”—​as Erasmus states—​then it is a condition of the mind, what we are calling coloniality of mind. 117  Erasmus, The Praise, 34; “Quandoquidem id mali natura, non paucis in rebus nouerca magis quam parens, mortalium ingeniis inseuit, praecipue paulo cordatioru, vt sui quemque poeniteat, admiretur aliena” (Moriae encomium, 94–​96).

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For Erasmus, nature is something that gives humans defects, and in a more global sense, he also conceives it as the “parent and provider of the human race.”118 While Erasmus did acknowledge the existence of slavery, his view of nature cancels it, at least for Christians. It follows that, because nature “manages to equalize everything, even in the midst of such teeming variety,” human inequalities go against nature.119 The key is in moderation; by being moderate, a balance can be achieved.120 The salute to parity fixes Erasmus’s thought in line with the Renaissance ideals of equilibrium and harmony. We can conclude this line of reasoning with a thought offered by the Jesuit, Juan de Mariana, who explains, “it is evident that as greed decreases, equality and our liberty increase” (es evidente que disminuida la codicia, ha de ser mayor la equidad y mayores nuestras libertades).121 The attenuation of excessive acquisitiveness, then, not only works against slavery, but it does so as it fosters equality and liberty. In some way Erasmus was like Thomas More of the Utopia and to criticize greed he had to do so in a work impishly titled Praise of Folly.122 While there is a play on More’s name in the original Latin version of the title, Moriae encomium, the English translation’s title allows us to take the work as a playful frolic among various themes. A safer way to criticize human tendencies such as covetousness or the Catholic religion during the Renaissance is to do it as satire, lest the book’s readers recognize themselves in its pages. Of course, that was Erasmus’s idea, but like Thomas More, he felt the need to soften the thrust of his broad-​based reproach to keep himself out of danger. Thus, the Praise became a model for rhetoric in later times. Beyond Aristotle: Renaissance Liberation Thinking, a New Awareness

In the end, all three, More, Las Casas, and Erasmus dealt in varying degrees with a concept of nature that was alien to Aristotle. The reasoned and just equilibrium of their liberating discourse distinguishes them from hierarchical beliefs, which, frankly, face-​to-​ face with moneyed interests, could have put their lives at risk during the Renaissance. More proposed a system we might judge communist had he lived after Marx, wherein all people (at least men) are commensurate to each other under the law unless they commit a crime. This is of course interesting because Marxism would have a role in 118  Erasmus, The Praise, 28; “natura parens et humani generis opifex” (Moriae encomium, 88).

119  Erasmus, The Praise, 35; Et ô singularem naturae sollicitudinem, vt in tanta rerum varietate paria fecit omnia!” (Moriae encomium, 96).

120  Erasmus, The Education, 16; “At eadem in principe nihil aliud esse potest quam temperantiae documentum, cum is rebus modice vtitur, cui quantum libet, tantum suppetit” (Institutio principis christiani, 145–​46). 121  Mariana, Obras, 470a.

122  There are other similarities, Egginton notes that both the Utopia and the Praise of Folly “had not referents in the real world,” a strategy that they used to hide their criticisms of the real world, The Man, 24. Egginton also observes that the idea of foolishness to hide the truth would later be employed by Cervantes in his great novel, The Man, 25.

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the formation of some strands of Liberation Theology in the latter half of the twentieth century.123 None of More’s criteria for accepting slavery relates to cerebral capacity or nature, but rather to a social circumstance. This is not so different from rules put in place during the time of Queen Isabella that prohibited formal slavery except as “a punishment meted to resisting, rebellious, or cannibalistic individuals and tribes.”124 Regarding Las Casas, one can see an evolving process in his life. Early on, he held Indigenous people in encomienda and subsequently discerned that having them was morally flawed. He then gave up his holdings. Many scholars, even nineteenth-​century sympathetic sympathizers such as the Peruvian essayist Manuel González Prada, basing themselves on Las Casas’s early writing and not consulting his later work, repeat the mischaracterization that Las Casas favored enslaving Africans to save Amerindians.125 As Adorno teaches us, this is incorrect. Such reasoning is off the mark because it takes one point on Las Casas’s long writing trajectory and extends it to define the man in his entirety. Reading history, Las Casas learned that the Portuguese did not merely capture scores of Africans in a “just” Christian war against the Moors, but that they enslaved the Africans for profit. He then recognized during the 1560s when he was writing his Historia de las Indias that black servitude was likewise against nature.126 Liberation Theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez puts this succinctly: “What Las Casas has learned with regard to the Indians now helps him perceive the tremendous injustice being committed against the Africans.”127 This was extraordinary, since as Adorno reminds us, Las Casas “became one of the few Europeans in the sixteenth century to speak out against it,” black slavery, that is.128 Las Casas is an extremely momentous figure because, as Santa Arias points out, his “texts offer one of the best paradigms for the study of history, political discourse, and power, as they relate to sixteenth century European political culture.”129 We could add that his writing contributes to the development and evolution of politics as they moved slowly (albeit still incompletely) toward a process of de-​hierarchization, a trajectory apparent even within his own work. We can describe his scholarly arc as a long and drawn-​out coming of age. As Gustavo Gutiérrez clarifies, his “transformation” was a “subtle” one.130 It took time to dismantle piece by piece the coloniality of his mind. Going against the grain, as it were, he must have doubted from time to time if it could really be that the world was wrong, and he was right. Yet he doggedly persevered. This 123  See Valiente Núñez, “Liberation Theology and Latin American Testimonio.” 124  Gibson, Spain, 52.

125  González Prada, Obras, 2:31 wrote toward the end of his life, “Las Casas, el símbolo de la piedad, aconseja la introducción de esclavos; y para redimir al indio, quiere inmolar al negro.”

126  Arias, “Equal Rights,” 280; Adorno, The Polemics, 11; Dussel, Politics of Liberation, 197, offering a different date, explains, “In 1547 he discovered that the African slaves suffered the same injustice. He matured in his theory.” 127  Gutiérrez, Las Casas, 49.

128  Adorno, The Polemics, 65.

129  Arias, “Bartolomé de las Casas’s Sacred Place,” 121. 130  Gutiérrez, Las Casas, 48.

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pushed him well beyond Columbus’s greedy conception of “the Indies” as a font of commodities. Toward the end of his life, Las Casas found himself preaching the equality of all humanity.131 We can conclude from his work that the causes of slavery do not derive from people’s nature, but from the cruel fires of coloniality of mind fanned by Europeans’ gold lust in the newly encountered lands. These ideas were the building blocks for the abolition of autochthonous slavery in the Spanish Empire in the fifth decade of the sixteenth century. This does not imply that there was an all-​encompassing sense of doing the right thing. Hidden under the veneer of supposed justice, unfortunate negros bozales were still arriving from Africa and Bartolomé de Medina had discovered how to amalgamate raw silver by means of mercury (quicksilver), a procedure that reduced forced labor’s exigency.132 In the same manner, encomienda subjugation declined not only because of Las Casas and his Dominican cohorts, but also because of Indigenous demographics: as increasing numbers of Amerindians died from European diseases, the ability to maintain the system became progressively more difficult.133 Eventually, Keith explains, the encomendero was replaced with the corregidor de indios.134 Such a change would strengthen pathways fostering increased debt peonage not to mention the high values a slave could command. Owing to a labor shortage in the mines, Leslie Byrd Simpson informs us, it remained virtually impossible to control the illicit trafficking of Indigenous people.135 More’s prescriptions for prisoners of war, even if applied after 1560, could have supported a mindset for justifying the shackling of Chichimecatl militants at the northern frontier of New Spain.136 Finally, even for free Amerindians, uprooted from ancestral lands, working for exiguous sums of money in the silver mines or for the encomiendas, life was little better than slavery. Indeed, José Carlos Mariátegui observes that servitude in the mines or in the obrajes was so terrible that it was slavery.137 Reform did not significantly alter the suffering of Indigenous Americans.138 At the same time, the enslavement of Africans grew and became institutionalized. There was philosophical backsliding too. Franz Hinkelammert bears down on the fact that in John Locke’s Second Treatise on Government from 1690 there was a sustained avocation for slavery based on the idea of the natural State (government) and on the idea that waging an unjust war is cause for enslavement.139 It is illuminating to know in our quest to comprehend human nature, however, that during that terrible arc in world history known as the Conquest, there 131  Hanke, “La actualidad,” xviii.

132  Moreno Toscano, “La esclavitud,” 345; Simpson, The Encomienda, n196–​97; Gibson, Spain, 121. 133  Gibson, Spain, 63.

134  Keith, Conquest and Agrarian Change, 44. 135  Simpson, The Encomienda, 144. 136  Helms, Middle America, 151.

137  Mariátegui, Siete ensayos, 41.

138  Seed, American Pentimento, suggests intriguing cultural differences between English and Spanish modes of conquest. 139  Hinkelammert, “The Hidden Logic,” 12.

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were thinkers trying to overcome the shackles of their minds. These models continue to exert an influence in our thinking about overcoming hegemony. Las Casas, More, and Erasmus, casting Aristotle aside in the face of overarching opposition from their humanist contemporaries, represent a significant advance in both the breadth of human thought and the independence of spirit. Erasmus’s writing about avarice and nature, Las Casas’s proclaiming that slavery can be traced back to avarice, and More’s showing how it issued from social conditions that could be avoided with exemplary conduct, provided a mighty example of liberating thought for those in power. These authors’ endeavors threw the laws of bondage onto shaky ground. The significance of this deep-​thinking trio lies in the certitude that all its members broke from traditions associated with mental colonialities. They did this by seeing life from a more Christian perspective—​not considering nation, nature, or market value—​but by trying to right the wrongs of social imbalance. We dedicate considerable time to what could be called liberation thinking, proto-​Christianity, inner Christianity, original Christianity, or even a liberating theology in the final two chapters. We conclude this one by affirming that what this trinity of intellects did with their true Christianity was to start breaking the chains of hegemonic and imperialist mentalities by becoming aware of their mechanisms. While forging utopias on the backs of existing societies is nothing less than what Susan Bruce has labeled as “settler colonialism,” reforming the mentalities at the European center of empire—​especially if defined by greed—​results in a weakening of the very colonialities that undergird those settler mentalities.

Chapter 4

LIBERATION THINKING:  EUROPE

Political scientists and historians tend to think of “liberation” as something achieved after the decolonization of South Asia and Africa around the middle of the twentieth century. And it makes sense, countries such as China, Korea, France, Poland, the Netherlands, and others liberated themselves from the tyranny of fascism and authoritarianism after the Second World War. India and Pakistan liberated themselves from British imperialism in 1947, and Bangladesh from Pakistani hegemony in 1971. Numerous countries gained independence during this period, Syria and Iraq in 1920 and 1932 respectively, Nigeria and Kenya in 1960 and 1963, Sudan and Mali from France in 1960, Equatorial Guinea from Spain in 1968, and Angola and Mozambique from Portugal in 1975.1 Without a doubt, we could make a long list of countries and enclaves that gained independence during the twentieth century. There are notable exceptions, however, such as the Palestinians and Kurds, whose cries for liberation have fallen on deaf ears. Concomitantly, the rise of statist Marxism during the twentieth century in places such as the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Angola, and others fostered a discourse of political and social liberation.2 In Abya Yala, liberation movements rose in Peru, Chiapas, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala, although the results were uneven and sometimes not the expected ones.3 Finally, most relevant to our discussion here, there developed a theology of liberation that, perhaps surprisingly, came out of readings in the Bible, Marxism, Latin American dependency theory, the documents from the Second Vatican Council meeting of Catholic Bishops in Medellín, Colombia, and related discussions between 1962 and 1968.4 After that, an African American theology of liberation came out of the United States.5 1  There are many works on decolonization, to mention a few, Bereketeab, Self-​determination; Gamble, Contesting French West Africa; Jansen and Osterhammel, Decolonization; and Waites, South Asia and Africa.

2  Beyond Marxism’s foundational works, there is a wealth of additional documents as well as scholarship, to name a few, Dalton, Miguel Mármol; Guevara, Che Guevara and the Cuban Revolution; Mariátegui, Siete ensayos; Reed, Ten Days that Shook the World; and Trotsky, The Chinese Revolution.

3  On those, see Caldwell, Narrative Voices and the Liberation Movement in Chiapas; Alegría and Flakoll, No me agarran viva; Cabezas, La montaña es algo más que una estepa verde; Burgos and Menchú, Me llamo Rigoberta; and LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions.

4  On the history of Liberation Theology, see Ferm, Third World Liberation Theologies. Some useful general readers are Boff and Boff, Introducing; Gutiérrez, The Power of the Poor and A Theology of Liberation; and Groody and Gutiérrez, The Preferential Option for the Poor. 5  See, for example, Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree; Hopkins, Introducing Black Theology of Liberation.

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Along the same lines, although the term “postcolonial” was coined in 1883 (according to the Merriam-​Webster Collegiate Dictionary online), it gained considerable currency during the 1980s with the South Asian Subaltern Group. During those years, it expanded into what Patricia Seed describes as a “postcolonial discourse movement.”6 It garnered precise meaning with Bhabha’s Nation and Narration (1990) and Spivak’s The Post-​ Colonial Critic (1990), and it became institutionalized with Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin’s anthology, The Post-​Colonial Studies Reader (1995). There are other tendencies epitomized by Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, and Edward Said. Césaire’s 1950 Discours sur le colonialisme argued that economic exploitation could never be defensible. Fanon gave us a variety of books, the first two being the 1952 Peau noire, masques blancs (Black Skin White Masks, 1967) and the 1959 L’An V de la Révolution Algérienne (A Dying Colonialism, 1965). Said’s 1978 book Orientalism brought to the fore how Western authors represented Asian, African, and Middle Eastern peoples in their writing not so much as a way to explain them, but to further Western goals. If Said help decolonize the idea of the “Orient” in English-​language literature, Césaire spoke strongly against French colonialism, while Fanon spoke eloquently about colonialism as a psychological condition. In nineteenth-​century Spanish America, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, José Martí, Eugenio María de Hostos, and Manuel González Prada authored important decolonial treatises. Afterwards, José Carlos Mariátegui, Luisa Capetillo Octavio Paz, Eduardo Galeano, César Chávez, and Miguel d’Escoto got people thinking about the colonialism’s heritage and nonviolent ways to resist it. Academics have also seen postcolonialism or decolonialism as a crucial area of inquiry. An abundant body of research has been conducted by Walter Mignolo, Enrique Dussel, Aníbal Quijano, César Germaná, Santiago Castro-​Gómez, Ramón Grosfoguel, Arturo Arias, Sara Castro-​ Klarén, Carolina Ortiz Fernández, Nelson Maldonado-Torres, and many others too numerous to mention here. These scholars have planted the seeds for further decolonial research and activism within the Academy. Postcolonialism is one way to look at this trend. Counter-​hegemonic discourse is another. In this book, early on, we discussed hegemony as conceptualized by Gramsci, Owen Worth, and John Chasteen as a form of control exacted from those above that comes with a degree of consent from those below. Worth in his very complete discussion of hegemony describes counter-​hegemony as a resistance to neoliberalism. He also frames counter-​hegemonic discourses as resisting globalization. While Worth is discussing economics during the twentieth and twenty-​first centuries, it is useful for us to consider the category counter-​hegemonic discourse as also encompassing postcolonialism and decolonialism. It could also incorporate Liberation Theology. This is true in the twentieth and twenty-​first centuries, and it could be true during the sixteenth century when counter-​hegemonic expression falls into the category we are describing as liberation thinking. With so much decolonial activity going on in the political, economic, and social arenas, it is not surprising that some political, journalistic, and academic attention would focus 6  Seed, “Colonial and Postcolonial Discourse,” 193.

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on those liberating events and ideas. Ofelia Schutte is just one of the scholars digging into this field of research. When she supposes, “Personal liberation, social liberation, and national liberation are the three major categories within which the topic of liberation arises in Latin America,” she has the twentieth century in mind.7 When scholar Jaime Hanneken explains that people today are writing, “a full generation after ‘postcolonial’ first gained popular usage in English departments as a descriptor and then a category of literature and culture,” she is also referring, of course, to the twentieth century.8 While neither Schutte nor Hanneken delves into the possibility of early decolonial or postcolonial thought, neither denies it. It is not sufficiently on the radar for them to consider in their twentieth-​century critical projects. Nevertheless, perhaps unintentionally, they leave open a window for other veins of decolonial thought. When Hanneken refers to postcolonialism, she is writing about a term that describes a movement that comes as a response to South Asian decolonization, a movement that goes from India, to Great Britain, to the United States and ultimately to some sectors in Latin America. There can be other terms and other roots, and other areas of academic interest. To be sure, Walter Mignolo distinguishes between the Anglo-​American paradigm of the “postcolonial” and the Franco-​Hispanic paradigm of the “decolonial.”9 Even so, as Mignolo knows, the decolonial is not only geographic, it also has to do with time and specifically with a time earlier than the twentieth century. He explains in the third volume of his paradigm-​shifting trilogy, “Decolonial thinking materialized, however, at the very moment in which the colonial matrix of power was being put in place, in the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries.”10 Schutte likewise appreciates that there can be decolonial moments before our time. While studying Jose Carlos Mariátegui, she discovers that for him the Conquest caused an economic rupture. He explains that Peruvian history was “severed.”11 In her analysis of South America’s first socialist, Schutte explains that according to Mariátegui, the Conquest does not represent “a higher step in civilization reaching the Americas—​as it did for Marx and Engels—​but an interruption of the living continuity of pre-​Colombian culture by usurpers.”12 Mariátegui is not the only famous intellectual who saw the Conquest as a key moment. Liberation Theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez puts it like this: “The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are important milestones in human self-​understanding. [The h]uman relationship with nature changes substantially with the emergence of experimental science and the techniques of manipulation derived from it.”13 Recognizing that liberation, science, and self-​awareness were possible in previous centuries is a significant acknowledgement of the long arc of human 7  Schutte, Cultural Identity, 9.

8  Hanneken, Imagining the Postcolonial, 1.

9  Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity, xxvi.

10  Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity, xxiv. Hanneken shows the linkages between Hispanic and Francophone liberation thought, although she prefers the term “postcolonial.” 11  Mariátegui, in Schutte, Cultural Identity, 28. 12  Schutte, Cultural Identity, 29.

13  Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation, 18.

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antihegemonic activity. Recognizing that liberation can happen at any time in history, in any location, among any people, in any way devised, takes a new way of looking at things of the past. An open-​ended idea of liberation in thought, discourse, literature, theology, or philosophy has to do with breaking out of the bounds of the established epistemes of a given moment. This happened during the Renaissance when a new form of theologizing took root. Manuel García Castellón describes this as pietas literata, which is not only pious but also earthly.14 Pietas was not only pious it was also devotion to gens or clan, to patria, or fatherland. One of Spain’s renowned theologians who would take up the issues surrounding the Conquest was Francisco de Victoria (1540–1592). Victoria once wrote, “the office of the theologian is so wide that no argument, no dispute, nor any subject (locus) is alien to its profession.”15 However, a wide range of speculation does not necessarily imply an open mind in the undertaking of such speculation. The Mexican philosopher Felipe Curcó Cobos expounds on this topic: “Knowledge is … hopelessly bureaucratized. And every bureaucracy, by definition, imposes a disciplinary logic that forces one to act according to certain protocols that inhibit critical spontaneity.”16 From our scholarly perspective of the twenty-​first century, we know that a discipline is one ray of light shined on a subject and another discipline is another ray in a different color shined on the subject. We also know that interdisciplinary studies can project a prism of light, a spectrum of light, on a topic. Each ray of light, and/​or each subsequent ray of light adds nuance to our understanding. These rays of light can shine across the unfolding of centuries, and they can also illuminate the mind of an individual at any point in time, if the mind is an intellectually curious one. Bartolomé de las Casas’s life experiences serve to illustrate. At first, he was close to the conquistador class and felt the encomienda was just fine. That was one ray of experience, the one coming from within the imperial system. The economic and religious logic of that time among Spaniards dictated that the encomienda was “normal.” Later when Las Casas began to reflect on his own experiences, observations, and the sermons he heard in church, he began to see the flaw in that bureaucratic logic and he became a priest initiating his eight-​year journey toward the Dominican order, giving up his indios encomendados in the process. That was another ray of experience, the religious experience. This focused into a third kind of ray, the turn toward liberation thinking. This ray also proved initially to be insufficient or incomplete. Further on, as discussed in the previous chapter, from his reading about Africa and what the Portuguese did there (yet another vector), Las Casas slowly began to realize that chattel slavery was also wrong. This was yet another perspective, another color of light. In this way decolonialists cultivate liberation thinking, by diverse experiential and lettered learning, in various places, in different manners, and from different perspectives. Becoming conscious requires an exceptionally long arc, from multiple perspectives, sometimes taking an exceedingly 14  García Castellón, Guamán Poma, 62. 15  Quoted in Pagden, The Fall, 25–​26.

16  Curcó Cobos, “Latin American Political Thought,” 67.

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long time. In this vein, some people, some few people, some gifted people begin to think in terms of liberation. That a certain few people can see deeper and broader than the rest has been known for a long time. In Plato’s well-​known allegory in book seven of his Republic, one of Socrates’ dialogues with Glaucon tells the story of some people who live in a cave. They have lived there since childhood and are chained to a wall, or parapet, upon which their shadows are projected from a fire. Because these prisoners conceive life based on their assumptions about the shadows dancing on their wall, their perception of the world is a two-​dimensional one. If one of the cave dwellers managed to come up out of the cavern, he or she would be blinded by the sunlight, read “God,” and would be exposed to three-​dimensional life. After returning to the subterranean, and readjusting his or her eyes to the darkness, this cave dweller would find that the others would not accept the truer vision of life presented to them. If we consider that the existence outside the cave was divine life, and the cave dwellers did not know it, their view of things would remain limited. Socrates underscores the singularity of the individual who had escaped from the cave to see the light. Nor, again, is it at all strange that the one who comes from the contemplation of divine things to the miseries of human life should appear awkward and ridiculous when, with eyes still dazed and not yet accustomed to the darkness, he is compelled, in a law-​court or elsewhere, to dispute about the shadows of justice or the images that cast those shadows, and to wrangle over the notions of what is right in the minds of men who have never beheld Justice itself.17

What is exemplary about this allegory is that not only does the man or woman who sees the light seem strange to the men and women who remain in the darkness, but to him or her, they seem strange because his or her eyes have difficulty adjusting to the light. For William Egginton, what is striking here is “the image of a world hiding behind the one we actually inhabit, whose truth can be known by a select few.” One of the readings of this allegory is that “such men” who see the light “should be entrusted with the management of society,” a view that could be described as totalitarianism.18 Indeed Daniel Castro, Estelle Tarica, and other scholars have noted a kind of imperial religiosity in Las Casas’s thought.19 What Egginton, Castro, and Tarica are talking about is something akin to an enlightened despot. Las Casas, however, went through a progression, not just out of the encomienda, and out of an attitude that accepted African slavery, he also came to accept Peruvian sovereignty at the end of his life. That said, one does not have to be imperialistic, despotic, or totalitarian simply because they still do not get to “our way” of doing things during “their time.” If they see the light of fraternity, equality, and mutual aid in their community of men and women, even if their notions of fraternity, equality, and mutual aid seem stilted by our standards, we can give them credit where credit is due. 17  Plato, The Republic, 231–​32. 18  Egginton, In Defense, 59.

19  Castro, Another Face of Empire; Tarica, Inner Life of Mestizo Nationalism, 16–​21.

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Long before the fraternité of the French Revolution declared that all who lived in France would be entitled to the rights of citizens, some modern Renaissance thinkers began to favor replacing the idea of hierarchical estates with a framework based on equality of national origins.20 These particular early modern Catholic thinkers did not accept Church practice as carried out, nor did they blindly accept temporal power. In general, they understood that temporal power was here to stay, but they looked for spiritual ways to purify it. Some of them derived from the Gospels the need for favoring poor people and then compared it to social realities to measure the distance. This they did some three-​and-​a-​half centuries before the Liberation Theology emerging out of the Vatican Councils of 1959 and 1968. Because of our interest in the sixteenth century here, we are not discussing the Liberation Theology, Philosophy, or Pedagogy developed by deep thinkers from our time such as Gustavo Gutiérrez (Peru), Daniel Berrigan (United States), Leonardo Boff and Frei Betto (Brazil), Ernesto Cardenal (Nicaragua), Enrique Dussel (Argentina), Oscar Romero (El Salvador), Juan Luis Segundo (Uruguay), Jon Sobrino (Spain), Paolo Freire (Brazil), and others.21 Neither are we discussing the true precursors of Liberation Theology who can be found in Manuel Larraín de Talca (Chile), Dom Helder Camera (Brazil) José Dammert (Peru), Leonidas Proaño (Ecuador), Eduardo Pironio (Argentina), and others.22 Felipe Curcó Cobos, drawing on Dussel, highlights that liberation philosophy, “stems from the growing misery of Latin America, and, in particular, from the perspective of its three great revolutions (Mexican, Cuban, and Sandinista).”23 We could say similar things about Liberation Theology and Liberation Pedagogy. However, during the sixteenth century, there were neither revolutions nor totalizing civil wars as occurred centuries later in El Salvador and Guatemala, nor all-​encompassing popular movements of liberation as seen in Bolivia or Ecuador. Our interest here is showing that we should not discount the possibility of an even earlier round of liberation thinking that occurred during the sixteenth century that can still hold meaning today. The loosely conceived bookends for this study, and these last two chapters, run from Thomas More’s Utopia, published in 1516, and Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala’s Nueva crónica, finished one century later, apparently just before 1616. We are not the first to (re)assemble More, Erasmus, or Las Casas in the same context. Santa Arias has mentioned the critical spirit Las Casas shared with the two famous Renaissance scholars and their colleague Luis Vives.24 Philip Dust has studied them together (again with Luis Vives). Robert Miola’s Early Modern Catholicism: An Anthology of Primary Sources (2007) includes coeval texts by More, Erasmus, and Las Casas. But none of these consider Guaman Poma who comes at the end of the period (and was not 20  On French citizenship in all her colonies, see Johnson, The Emergence of Black Politics, 79. On the idea of human rights before the Enlightenment see Aldunate, “Human Rights,” 298. 21  Rivera, A Violent Evangelism, studies the ampler field of “liberation discourse,” comparing Gutiérrez and Freire. 22  Barrios, “Antecedentes y recepción,” 28.

23  Curcó Cobos, “Latin American Political Thought,” 75. 24  Arias, Retórica, 62–​63.

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European although his Spanish came from Castile and his Christianity from Europe). Here we offer the first full-​scale comparative discussion of antihegemony regarding the three Europeans, but going beyond that, including for the first time, the baroque author Guaman Poma de Ayala into this intellectual cluster. Las Casas, More, and Erasmus were mostly contemporaries and if not of the same mind, of similar optimism about the possibility of reforming corrupt sectors of humanity. Guaman Poma’s view was more nuanced, and he came later on the timeline. He was probably born the year More died, 1535, which was the year before Erasmus ceased to exist. At the end of Las Casas’s long life in 1566, the Andean kuraka would have been about twenty years old. Thus, we can see, Guaman Poma’s adult life began after More, Erasmus, and Las Casas were active, with the notable exception of De thesauris, from the end of Las Casas’s life. To provide additional literary context about that chronological point, if Guaman Poma de Ayala died in 1616, he would have died the same year as his contemporaries Cervantes, Shakespeare, and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega. The year 1616 seems to signal the end of an era, an era that began exactly one century earlier with the publication of Thomas More’s Utopia. The generic term “thinking” is appropriate here because not all thought from that century was theological, nor was all theology from that century liberation oriented. However, a small corner of intellectual activity was liberation leaning whether it was theology, or simply progressive humanist reflection. We now consider two thinkers we met in ­chapter  3, Thomas More and Erasmus of Rotterdam. In the next chapter, we return to ­chapter  3’s Father Las Casas, and then turn to another incredibly special figure, Guaman Poma, an organic intellectual who was born, lived, and wrote in his native Peru.

Liberation Thinking as Decolonial Thought

Much as Liberation Theology during the twentieth century ceased to privilege oligarchic omnipotence, liberation thinking during the long sixteenth century took the position that abuse of Church power and temporal supremacy soiled social mores. Additionally, in the Western Hemisphere it argued that encomienda economic power should not be a primary guiding force in the new colonies. The king, however, seems to have agreed to this only to bring economic interests under his purview, not necessarily to unshackle his new subjects. Thus, these anti​hegemonic thinkers needed to confront an even more formidable wall. While Liberation Theology was immensely concerned with poverty and the structural and developmental reasons for it, and such language and frameworks of consciousness had not yet fully developed in the sixteenth century, both centuries’ thought in this regard concerned itself with abuse of state and economic power, with human behaviour, and with becoming conscious of the un-​Christian aspects of those areas so they could be corrected. There is nothing unusual about this manner of thinking. Certainly, as early as St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–​1274), tyranny was equated with sin.25 More, Erasmus, and Las 25  Mazzotti studies this notion in the Royal Commentaries and links it to bonus communis, rooted in the teachings of Jesus Christ, “Garcilaso y el ‘bien común’,” 186–​87.

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Casas dominate the sixteenth century within this genre of thinking, and the notion of “the poor of Jesus Christ” makes its appearance in the late-​sixteenth, early-​seventeenth-​ century epistle of Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala.26 This kind of thinking was not uncommon for the period. García Castellón mentions Erasmus in this regard, but he also focuses on similar thinking in José de Acosta, an important Jesuit administrator and ­intellectual force active in the latter half of the sixteenth century. Acosta was concerned that “events” taking place were not correlating with “the truth of the Gospel.”27 These kinds of reflection continued to occur in the Anabaptists, Quakers, and Transcendentalists that Lev Tolstoy would recover and rethink later in the nineteenth century in Kingdom of God is within You (1894), which preached a return to Inner Christianity. Essays as diverse as José Martí’s “Nuestra América” (1891), Manuel González Prada’s “Nuestros indios” (1904), José Carlos Mariátegui’s Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality (1928), and Nobel Laureate Octavio Paz’s Labyrinth of Solitude (1950) all noted the durable heritage of colonialism. Imperialism’s after-effects deterred a society from living and breathing as a healthy organism nourished by a notion of equality and freedom of expression. The problem originates when people allow themselves to be seduced by wealth and prestige, they become unable to see the reality before their eyes. Lastly, although not commonly thought of this way, a good amount liberation thinking during both periods was concerned with division of power and fairness and justice in the realms of evangelization, limitations on material gain, and the idea of a pure society organized according to the norms of early Christianity. Sixteenth-​century liberation thinkers on the western side of the Atlantic preoccupied themselves additionally with imperialism’s effects on the ground, and famous ones from the twentieth century, with its structural heritage described earlier in this book as coloniality. Twenty-  ​​and twenty-first-​ century Liberation Theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez also discusses the historical attributes of present-​day hegemonies in his A Liberation Theology (1971). For him, “the driving force of history is the difficult conquest of freedom, hardly perceptible in its initial stages.” He talks of a long push starting in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to “be free of all alienation and servitude.”28 This is what this book is about, these, because of all the opposing “noise,” “hardly perceptible” early efforts to conquer liberty. Guaman Poma de Ayala’s bare bones reinterpretation of his time and place includes, as mentioned, a concern for “the poor of Jesus Christ,” among others, which makes him stand out among producers of liberating discourse at that time. Mabel Moraña rejects restrictive periodizations and suggests Guaman Poma belonged to the decolonial cluster that included Mariátegui, Fanon, and Césaire even though he was writing in the high colonial period. Referring to these four authors and others she writes, “thinkers and political activists have perceived, since the colonial period and from very different 26  Muskus takes issue with Gutiérrez’s associating the “poor of Jesus Christ” with Amerindians in Las Casas’s thought. Las Casas, Muskus explains, did associate “Indians” with Jesus, but did not equate them with the poor, The Origins and Early Development, 30–​33. 27  García Castellón, Guamán Poma, 63.

28  Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation, 18, 19.

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perspectives, the magnitude and scope of conflicts and injustices that emerged from the devastating processes of conquest and colonization of transoceanic territories.”29 In this, Guaman Poma was not working in a vacuum, even in his time. He constructed his thought on Bartolomé de las Casas’s solid intellectual foundation of liberation, itself grounded in the discourse of the time given form by luminaries such as Erasmus and Thomas More, among others, while all the while reacting against the ideology of imperial apologists such as Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda.30 Just as the southern European Las Casas pushed liberal Catholic thought further than the northern Europeans More and Erasmus had intended, the Andean Guaman Poma de Ayala nudged even further the Spaniard Las Casas’s doctrines to achieve an even stronger defense of “the poor of Jesus Christ.” He fulfils this need by separating temporal from spiritual power, much as in Jesus’s above-​ mentioned axiom about rendering unto Caesar that which is of Caesar and unto God that which is of God. The minute a thinker gets to that point, an incarnation of pure Christian thought that isolates spirituality from temporality, a setting apart of pope from king, he or she lays the building blocks from which to begin grappling with things from the perspective of liberation. This is necessary since, by its very nature, the temporal is associated with money and power, and if the spiritual links to them, then it too can be sullied. By keeping the spiritual as pure as possible in a materialistic world, there is at least the possibility of establishing the long visual angle necessary for developing an awareness of the abuse of the poor obscured by the employment of double discourse to conceal that abuse, the acceptance of un-​Christian behaviours in the name of Christianity, and ultimately, the un-​Christian treatment of non-​Christians and New Christians alike. Oftentimes believers of the faith construe reflection of this type as radical because the doctrine and its practice are at odds with many of the materialist tenets of “Western Civilization,” and even with the institution of the Church, despite the West’s paradoxical identification with Christianity. This is true in our time, and during the initial stages of modernity. In a pair of chapters dealing with liberationists from the Renaissance, three of them from the Old World, recognizing that there were simultaneously organic actions of liberation in the New World expands the field of vision. These include the Taqui Oncoy, or Taki Unquy, in the Central Andes in the midst of the Forty-​Years War and the imposition of Spanish rule.31 Additionally, intellectual figures such as Guaman Poma dealt with in the next chapter, added their words to the mix, even if mostly unheard during that time. That said, in a great representation of the axiom that the pen is mightier than the sword, intellectual movements and trends that Walter Mignolo would consider forms of decolonial thinking, have developed. To illustrate, he cites numerous examples of “decolonial options,” including “the Christian option, [the] liberal option, the Marxist option, the Islamic option, the feminist option, etc.”32 Not all these options are thinking in an absolute sense. As Arturo Arias points out, “decoloniality is not just a theory. It 29  Moraña, “Postscriptum,” 216.

30  For more on these genealogies see Arias, Retórica.

31  On the Taki Unquy, see Castro-​Klarén, The Narrow Pass, 95–​116. 32  Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity, xv.

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is primarily a visceral reaction against coloniality leading to concrete, organized, political actions, where the ancestral principles and historic struggles of Afrodescendants and Indigenous peoples begin to disrupt, transgress, and transverse Western thinking.”33 Decolonial options of these varieties can respond to colonial, neocolonial, and internal colonial situations. They can take place in the press, in bookstores, on the internet, and in the streets. Recent Peruvian history, lamentably, suggests the Marxist option, or more precisely, one Marxist option, has not worked, since Sendero Luminoso, or Shining Path, has too much blood on its hands. The “decolonial option,” however, has been expressed in a variety of positive and constructive ways in Peru such as with the feminism associated with the late-​nineteenth-​century “enlightened women authors,” and with the Indigenismo of González Prada, Mariátegui, Clorinda Matto de Turner, César Vallejo, Ciro Alegría, and José María Arguedas. Even the Negritud of Nicomedes and Victoria Santa Cruz, Susana Baca, Lucía Charún-​Illescas, and their colleagues is a liberating vector in art. Oftentimes tendencies such as Indigenismo, Negritud, and feminismo are organic in nature and spring up from local communities. This is not ineludibly the case with Catholic liberation thinking during the Renaissance, and therein lays a seeming paradox. Let us look deeper into this. It is ironic that from within transatlantic colonialism itself comes Catholicism, and within it, the discursive roots of Catholic liberation thinking, which can serve as an antidote to colonialism, and intra-​and neocolonialism in the Western Hemisphere.34 Christianity came as Cortés worked his way into Mexico. For example, he demanded that female slaves become Christians before he accepted them. Bernal Díaz explains: “but to take them, since as we are saying, we are brothers, there is a need that they do not have idols in which they believe and adore” (mas para tomarlas, como dice que seamos hermanos, que hay necesidad que no tengan aquellos ídolos en que creen y adoran).35 The encomienda also moved to make Abya Yala peoples Christians, and there were other avenues for the faith to filter into newly conquered subjects. Once Christianity took root, it would not take long for some to realize that its belief system suggested the need to resist the travesties being committed. The spiritual, or primitive, approach to the faith preaches a return to the earliest stage of the movement as described in the Bible and every so often combines its message with a political mission to set the 33  Arias, Recovering Lost Footprints, 1:13.

34  During the fall 2018 semester, S.  Charles Roger, a student in my Introduction to Latin American and Latino Studies course got me thinking about the drug trade as kind of colonialism. Narcocolonialism encompasses the transnational enterprises that produce, supply and distribute drugs, the transnational gangs that vie to control peoples, the people who are terrorized by the violence at the local level, the people who become addicted to the drugs and the people close to them, and arms of the state corrupted by drug monies. Narcocolonialism includes elements that emanate from the state and other elements that irradiate from drug lords, police collusion, and the international connections formed by street-​corner sellers and everyday addicts, consumers for pleasure who hegemonically accommodate to the system. 35  Díaz del Castillo, Historia verdadera, 97a.

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downtrodden free. The concern with poverty came from within a Catholicism that arose in the Middle East and in Europe and then came to the Western Hemisphere in a language that originated in Spain, Portugal, or France. Theologians from that era such as the Spanish-​born Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas became “aware” or “conscious” in Abya Yala or in the Philippines just as his twentieth-​century disciples did whether they were born in Spain (like the Jesuit martyrs in El Salvador) or in Latin America (like Archbishop Romero in El Salvador or Gustavo Gutiérrez in Peru). Specifically, Las Casas’s conversion anticipates the transition that some Spanish priests in El Salvador would undergo during the twentieth century. I am referring to Ignacio Ellacuría, Segundo Montes, Ignacio Martín-​Baró, Juan Ramón Moreno, and Armando López who, as faculty at the University of Central America, were martyred for their views. Their colleague Jon Sobrino, likewise from that university, survived and learned even more upon experiencing the martyrdom of his colleagues. Las Casas, Ellacuría, and Sobrino would have had different concerns if they had remained in the Old World. What could be merely antihegemonic thought in Europe can become decolonial awareness in a New World that was heavily colonized. The social realities of the Americas and the Philippines enmeshed in coloniality engender additional penetrating forms of discernment allowing us to see the entire world, or at least the whole Western world, with a floodlight. We can consider what Bartolomé de las Casas wrote as an early variety of liberation thinking, anticipating some of the themes expressed in the writing of Sobrino and others. That said, it should come as no surprise that the Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutiérrez, one of the top twentieth-​century liberation theologians, would dedicate a thick 653-​page tome to Bartolomé de las Casas, a volume that carries a revealing subtitle, “In Search of the Poor of Jesus Christ.” It follows that, to refer to embryonic liberation thinking by Catholic priests (Erasmus or Las Casas) as theology, or seculars (More or Guaman Poma) as lay theology, or simply thought, sets the stage to understand that liberation-​thinking genealogies are not confined to the twentieth century. We are not the first to assert that there were emergent liberation theologians during the early modern period. David A.  Lupher identifies the early Franciscans in Mexico teaching Latin to Nahua elites, as precursors of “liberation theology.”36 José Ortega looks at Bartolomé de las Casas from this angle.37 Again, it is not coincidental that Gutiérrez has produced a book on Las Casas. Indeed, Manuel García Castellón’s monograph describes “Guaman Poma de Ayala as a liberation theology pioneer.” It is in this spirit that we now explore three trend-​setting sages of liberation, Thomas More, Erasmus, Bartolomé de las Casas, and a fourth who was effectively silenced, Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala. Their quest to release humanity from the scourges of materialism as well as political and sometimes ecclesiastical abuse orients them toward this special sphere of operation: the liberation of the spirit in the depth of temporal oppression, which offers a vantage point where social reflection can take place unencumbered. 36  Lupher, Romans, 230. 37  Ortega, “Las Casas.”

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Gutiérrez, referring to a Latin America that has suffered 500 years of colonial, intracolonial, and neocolonial interventions, explains in A Liberation Theology that it has gone through “a long period of real ignorance of its own reality.” The process begins with nothing more than a “tearful description with an attendant accumulation of data and statistics.” Such a step, while implying an awareness of certain realities, does little to improve them. Tears imply emotion and a lack of objectivity. This last quality, however, is an essential step on the path out of colonial, intracolonial, and neocolonial situations. In the process, Gutiérrez recommends, “having no false hopes regarding the possibility of advancing smoothly and by pre-​established steps towards a more developed society.” The struggle ahead takes the shape of a long and labyrinthine path. Again, objective analysis is necessary but to assemble a more complete picture of multilayered and multinuanced realities, we must fashion new paradigms. To develop such a holographic three-​dimensional space, we must assimilate and digest supplementary information. Thus, Gutiérrez reminds us about the necessity of “paying special attention to the root causes of the situation and considering them from a historical perspective.” Despite the financial markets and international capitalism of our time, he reminds us, “the old forms of imperialistic presence by means of the enclave economy (mining centers and plantations), simple prolongations of the central economies, still exist.”38 Being aware of such roots and their interaction with the multinationals (such as depicted in José María Arguedas’ 1964 Indigenist novel Todas las sangres) are necessary to understand the Luso-​Hispanic Americas from chronological, social, ethnic, political, philosophical, pedagogical, and theological perspectives. Combatting the Wickedness Within, and Without

By developing a “historical perspective” as Gutiérrez prescribes, we come closer to stepping out of the paralysis and tunnel vision of what Shoshana Zuboff describes as the unprecedented (described at the beginning of ­chapter  3) to begin mapping out the “old forms” and the “enclave economy.” A perspective on those forms became clearer in ­chapter  1 upon discussing chattel slavery, encomienda peonage, and the coloniality of mind resulting from greed and other aspects of hegemonic mindsets. That there was a stepping out ahead of the unprecedented in developing an awareness of coloniality of situations and the coloniality of mind that fosters them, is conclusively documentable with some strands of spiritual Christianity during the sixteenth century. The essential idea is that one must begin with the self to make changes. In the Education of a Christian Soldier (or Knight), Erasmus refers to our inner Adam, that inner self that lusts after women (or men, we could add) and money, which we must fight against all the time. We must consistently struggle against this inner Adam because, he tells us, “we can neither wall him out nor drive him from our camp.”39 Too many men (and women) accept 38  Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation, 49, 52.

39  Erasmus, The “Enchiridion,” 39; “quem neque arcere vallo licet, neque castris exigere fas est” (Enchiridion militis Christiani, 42). Because of the domestic ideal, Erasmus does not include women in these kinds of pronouncements. We know they are there and should be there.

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depravity, they “come to terms” with their “vices,” go against God’s will.40 Only in this war with ourselves can we find inner freedom. If we take this theology and extract its meaning, we have stepped on a rung out of the coloniality of mind. Self-​awareness most likely comes before social awareness. Besides coloniality’s inner characteristics, the outer ones that result from them were known during the sixteenth century, even to people who were of the colonizing stratum. It is not surprising that people who became aware of this were Erasmists such as Antonio de Guevara, a Franciscan priest, court historiographer to Charles V, and Bishop of Guadix.41 Guevara described the effects and results of coloniality, although labeling it as tyranny. As previously discussed, he wrote on Rome as a metaphor for Spain, and in this way has a Danubian peasant address the Roman Senate: because I see that he who has much tyrannizes he who has little and he who has little serves (even though he does not want to) he who has much. Chaotic greed conspires with secret malice, which gives way to public thievery, and with public thievery, no one gets it under control. Thus, one evil man’s greed acts to prejudice an entire people. (porque veo que el que tiene mucho tyraniza al que tiene poco, y el que tiene poco sirve (aunque no quiere) al que tiene mucho, y la codicia desordenada se concierta con la malicia secreta, y la malicia secreta da lugar al robo público, y al robo público no ay quien le vaya a la mano; y de aquí viene a resultar después que la codicia de un hombre malino se ha de cumplir en perjuicio de todo un pueblo.)42

This “tyranny” is part of what we are dubbing coloniality: the avarice from which people suffer causes them to take from their victims, subordinating them through hidden or clandestine mechanisms that hurt them, and society at large because, to survive, they must consent to those at the top, “even though [they do] not want to.” To react to these sorts of external-​to-​the-​self-​situations, as Erasmus himself states in the Enchiridion, “mortal life is nothing but a kind of perpetual warfare.”43 We are condemned to it. Human beings “are being assaulted without letup by such iron shod hordes of vices, ambushed by so many stratagems, beset by so many snares.”44 People who surround us “are equipped with a thousand tricks and devices for doing us harm.”45 40  Erasmus, The “Enchiridion,” 39; “Etenim qui cum vitiis pacem iniit” (Enchiridion militis Christiani, 43).

41  Hampe Martínez suggests that Guevara was influenced by Erasmus’ Enchiridion (Bibliotecas privadas, 44). Other critics such as Beckford consider Guevara outside the Erasmist view the world. See her Territories of History, 64.

42  Guevara, Relox de príncipes, 2:640. The other version of the speech can be found in Libro áureo, which is abridged and reads somewhat differently, Libro áureo de Marco Aurelio, 1:127–​28; also in Guevara, Libro áureo, with slight variance, 122. 43  Erasmus, The “Enchiridion,” 38; “nil aliud esse vitam mortalium, nisi perpetuam quondam militiam” (Enchiridion militis Christiani, 40).

44  Erasmus, The “Enchiridion,” 38; “cum fine toc ferratis vitiorum copis oppugnemur tot captemur artibus, tot appetamur infidiis” (Enchiridion militis Christiani, 41).

45  Erasmus, The “Enchiridion,” 38; “mille dolis, milli docendi, artibus in nos annati que mentes nostras tellis igseris” (Enchiridion militis Christiani, 41).

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Figure 1. Erasmus, The Praise of Follie. Frontispiece. 1571. From the database, Early English Books Online.

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It follows that coloniality, reconnoitered even from the vantage point of Christian thinkers, is everywhere. We cannot escape from it. These psychological currents deepen and hide further from view with immeasurable attitudes such as the malice Guevara mentions, the stratagems of which Erasmus warns. If people do not have intellectual tools to perceive those tricks, or if they lack the moral fiber to stand against tyranny, they help to weave an impermeable psychological fabric that allows tyrants to thrive. Coloniality not only lodges in tyrants’ acts: it lodges conjointly in the behaviour of those who stand by and do nothing while others continue to be manipulated. Erasmus sets the stage when he asks the following question: “Suppose you see a brother being treated outrageously, but your own heart is unperturbed as long as your own welfare is not involved. Why does the soul feel nothing here?” This is the eternal question regarding the human condition: how mass atrocities can be committed while the public silently watches from the sidelines. Erasmus’s answer is simple. An onlooker doing nothing when another person is being treated “outrageously,” fails to do so, the deep thinker from Rotterdam tells us, because his soul “is dead.”46 Frantz Fanon would later describe this kind of condition as where one is expelled from one’s own self, of then being mutilated (d’expulsion de soi-​même, de mutilation rationnellement poursuivie).47 Humanity has long known the facets of coloniality that liberating thought addresses, but it is only recently that we had the psychology, the theory, and the vocabulary, to describe them adequately. The West developing its global and economic system of control over the southern hemisphere has not impeded dissent from within. One strong strand of Western thought consists of elaborating of theories of justice, freedom, and universality even as its power centers embark upon imperial ventures. Such theories and normative rules expressed by jurists, governments, philosophers, theologians, and literary thinkers are a corrective rejoinder to the all-​too-​human tendency to commit actions for crass personal gain while creating a discursive smokescreen to hide motivations and oftentimes the actions themselves. At no time was the discrepancy between theory and practice as stark as during the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Counter-​Reformation, and at no moment was the tarnishing of an enlightened principle as incontrovertible as during that period known as the Conquest of the Indies. When wickedness and selfishness surge forth, inevitably certain voices arise in defense of the inviolate model, crying out for justice while “having no false hopes” of success in overturning the materialist model. Of the crowd of postmedieval thinkers, the final two chapters of Coloniality and the Rise of Liberation Thinking during the Sixteenth Century study four, each from a different country, but all associated with the Spanish overrunning of Abya Yala, either directly or not, either providing universal wisdom in an enlightened manner, or responding to the violence directly. The tenacious thinkers who have “no false hopes” were not at the frontline of Christianity inherent to the cross accompanied by the sword; they were an antidote to it. What form did the cross-​and-​sword 46  Erasmus, The “Enchiridion,” 43; “Nempe quia mortua” (Enchiridion militis Christiani, 50). 47  Fanon, L’an V de la révolution algérienne, 48.

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brand of Catholicism embodied in the conquistadors and their priests take? It was a brand that had been hijacked and distorted. Immanuel Wallerstein, weighing the balance between crusading Christianity and the personal and national quest for wealth, suggests that the conquistadors’ religious enthusiasm was simply a rationalization to justify their inordinate thirst for precious metals. This does not prove that the conquistadors and even the clergy, the royalty, and the nobility were aware of the twisted turns to which they were subjecting their minds. Wallerstein suggests that countless actors in the invasion “internalized” this rationalization.48 Also likely is that they lied so much to themselves, that they began to live in their mendaciousness, and thus as Fanon might say, they became separated from their selves. We would go too far though, if we rejected all religious thought, for without a doubt, a noble strain of spirituality took root in a few men, of the cloth or otherwise, during that time. More, Erasmus, Las Casas, and Guaman Poma stand out in this regard. Additionally, a few Spanish-​speaking women permeated the social fabric. Among them, the most famous is Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, who regrettably falls out of the 1516–​1616 scope of this exploration. To negate these thinkers’ idealism would be to skew our understanding so much that it would be unrecognizable with respect to the “big picture.” We now consider a pair of well-​known humanists who were influenced by European activities during the time frame the Europeans were penetrating Abya Yala, but who also, perhaps even more so, influenced the thinking of some of those Europeans who succeeded in garnering power in what was for them a new world. There was an intellectual give and take with these two humanists caught in the middle. Christianity, after all, came from Europe and it is impossible to talk about “Catholic liberation thinking” during the Renaissance without setting up a European basis for such a possibility. St. Thomas More and Desiderius Erasmus offer a footing and a point of comparison for discussing New World sages such as Bartolomé de las Casas and Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala covered in the concluding chapter. One of the reasons why Thomas More and Desiderius Erasmus rose to prominence was the appeal of their concerns regarding the Catholic Church. They viewed its doctrine and dogma as unacceptably sullied in the application of power in Europe and beyond and their many readers seemed to agree. Indeed, it was an extraordinary time given the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Counterreformation, the Baroque, intra-​ European wars, and the Conquest itself, with recurring opportunities for corruption. If there was a trend toward venality, it was able to metastasize into the heart of Abya Yala as the Church expanded into a new geographic field. One must also consider the expansion of the Church’s coffers, especially given the tens of thousands of new “parishioners” on the Eastern side of the Atlantic. And, of course, the subversion of the ideal occurred not only in the Church but in the people calling themselves Christians, but who did not adhere to Jesus’s teachings. We turn first to More, and then to Erasmus to deepen our understanding of these issues. 48  Wallerstein, The Modern World-​System, 48.

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Thomas More, Sir, Saint, Liberation Thinker

Thomas More’s Utopia is noteworthy because, as Santa Arias emphasizes, it began to make itself felt in the literature emerging from imperialist activities.49 While stories and documents coming from the New World may have inspired More, it was the lack of dedication to authentic Christian ideals in the Old World that caused him to write such a text. Yet the text does not represent a purely theological thrust. In a most primary sense, the author was trying to define “the best state of a commonwealth” (de optimo reipvblicae statv) (YE, 4: 46–​57).50 But it does, I think, offer an extraordinary exploration of spirituality in the ideal commonwealth. In his introduction to the Yale edition, J. H. Hexter disengages the Utopians from the Europeans and, reflecting on this issue, asks the question, “which are truly Christian?” pagan Utopians, or Christian Europeans?51 This is an enormously important question, but Brendan Bradshaw takes issue with this line of thinking: For if, on the one hand, the Utopian community was happily devoted to virtue and free from the ritualism of late-​medieval Christianity, on the other hand, it lacked scripture and the sacraments on which depended the Church’s claim to be the unique source of revelation and of grace. If, therefore, Utopia represents More’s model of true Christianity it must be accepted that he did not consider scripture, the sacraments, the cult of Jesus himself, to be essential features of a truly Christian existence.52

Bradshaw misses the point here. He does not distinguish Christianity from the Church, two distant cousins often at odds with each other, despite the rhetoric, dogma, and theology that suggest otherwise. During the age of Jesus, there were no sacraments or scripture and certainly, Christ and his disciples were Christians without them. As Ernest Renan, a nineteenth-​century historian of Christianity makes manifest, “Jesus himself was not a theologian” and “Jesus had neither dogmas nor a system” (Jésus, de même, no fut pas un théologien …) (Jésus n’eut ni dogmes, ni système …).53 This original Christianity, pure and unadulterated by dogmas and theological systems that Renan describes holds much in common with the place More describes in his “scripture,” the Utopia, which unfortunately, exists “Nowhere.” Indeed, the reader of Utopia learns of a near absence of jurisprudence and the lettered culture that would go along with it in Utopian society. As noted in ­chapter  1, the Utopians “absolutely banish” lawyers in their country. Moreover: “They have very few laws because very few are needed for persons so educated. The chief fault they find with other peoples is that almost innumerable books of laws and commentaries are not sufficient” (YE, 4:194–​95). It is not scripture or canon law that guides positive behaviour, then, it is an inner morality, which we will discuss below. 49  Arias, Retórica, 63.

50  References to the Yale Edition of the Complete Works of St. Thomas More will be indicated parenthetically and abbreviated as YE. 51  Hexter, “The Composition of Utopia,” 4: lxxv, his emphasis. 52  Bradshaw, “More on Utopia,” 7. 53  Renan, Vie de Jésus, 46.

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The Utopia is a text of extraordinary value, both for what it teaches and for its impact. After reviewing the prefatory letters and verses that contemporary humanists contributed to Utopia, Peter R. Allen concludes that these authors, “also agree that its philosophical principles are those of the Christian ethic, the traditional and simple philosophy of Christ.”54 More’s text bears out the conclusions reached in the prefatory materials. For example, the goal of religious freedom takes a turn toward Christ’s non-​ clerical movement in a manner that, as we shall see, Las Casas was not able to conceive. More’s perfect priests are “of extraordinary holiness,” and their number is limited to “no more than thirteen in each city—​with a like number of churches” (YE, 4: 226–​27). While Las Casas saw the need for a sizable number of priests (see below), More wanted to reduce their number. Las Casas stood apart from More in this matter because he saw the need for priests to spread the Word to the newly garnered flock. Furthermore, there is a slight possibility that More had heard of and was responding to clerical numbers and behaviour; priests were beginning to emigrate across the Atlantic in droves. If not, it was his intuition that this would happen. As previously mentioned, there were so many Church professionals taking part in the Spanish invasion of the Indies, that, as Leonard puts it, they “became disproportionate to the needs of the New World society and a heavy drain upon its resources.”55 By reducing the amount of clergy, More cleared a path for a more individual form of spirituality preserved through tolerance. Consequently, there was no need to spread the ideas of a particular faith. For this reason, Utopian clerics are devout of thought. This non-​institutional devoutness is a reaction against the abuses of the clergy stemming from a lack of temporal and spiritual separation. The division-​of-​power ideal is key to understanding this way of thinking. In the face of failings to achieve the ideal, Renaissance liberation thinkers took up the mantle to restore it. We see this with More, and in the next section with respect to Erasmus. These thinkers set the stage for us to comprehend Guaman Poma’s powerful use of the ideal in his liberation. To get there, commentary on the Utopia’s binary demarcation of power is prudent.56 During the description of the censoring of morals in Utopia, More openly reveals his stance on temporal and spiritual power. Speaking of the clerics, he indicates, “their function [is] to give advice and admonition, but [the duty] to check and punish offenders belongs to the governor and the other civil officials” (YE, 4:228–​29). Here More preserves the cordon sanitaire between the powers but the reader of Utopia would not be so naive to assume that the two realms do not cooperate, for even in the most benevolent society people talk and share information. While the theological firewall separating the spiritual and the temporal is not as impervious as the simplicity of what Christ suggests regarding Caesar and God, it is a substantial step back toward 54  Allen, “Utopia and European Humanism,” 104. 55  Leonard, Baroque Times, 44.

56  More would later become quite preoccupied with the topic. In 1532 Christopher St German published an anonymous work entitled A Treatise concernynge the diuision betwene the spirytualitie and temporaltie. More responded the next year with The Apologye of syr Thomas More knyght. See Gogan, The Common Corps, 6.

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Christ and away from bishops who function as chancellors (Cardinal Wolsey) and political instruments of conquest that function under the guise of spiritual purity (Spanish Inquisition), the hijacking of dogma (the encomienda), crass materialism (clerics with business enterprises), or even religious jails (Franciscans in Mexico and Jesuits in Lima). With state-​controlled religious formalism in place, there could not be religious freedom because formulae exclude the right to choose. Even though Utopians practice a religion, “which is serious and strict, almost solemn and hard,” the seriousness comes from inner spirituality not from exterior religious formalism. Rafael Hythlodaeus, More’s imaginary visitor to the island, reveals that King Utopus “made the whole matter of religion an open question and left each one free to choose what he should believe” (YE, 4:160–​61). Such temporal tolerance of the autonomous spirit can be evidenced by the variety of beliefs: “There are different kinds of religion not only on the island as a whole but also in each city. Some worship as god the sun, others the moon, others one of the planets” (YE, 4:216–​17). One can see here that More’s Utopians would tolerate the Sun or Moon worship so common in Abya Yala before the Europeans arrived, although he must have been thinking of the Greeks and Romans since, at the time of the Utopia’s composition, Anahuac and Tawantinsuyu still remained outside the Spaniards’ field of desire.57 Utopians also accepted the word of Christ brought by Hythlodaeus and his companions when they arrived in Utopia (YE, 4:217–​19). This acceptance of various theological convictions could predict the religious syncretism practiced in the colonies in which a mestizo culture was forming and in which, depending on the degree of transculturation, retained, in greater or lesser degrees, elements of pre-​European religions. It is not surprising then, that More located his Utopia in an unspecified area of the “new world” (YE, 4:42–​43). There was a central difference between religious practice in Utopia and the colonies. In the latter, the state intervened to preserve and propagate “Christianity,” a code word for diffusing European culture. In the former, the state did not intervene, leaving open religious debate, in the words of Bradshaw, “as the best means of sifting competing religious claims and of vindicating the truth.”58 King Utopus was clearly more open-​minded and tolerant than were the succession of Spanish monarchs who were to rule the Indies with an iron hand. The only thing not tolerated in Utopia is intolerance itself. More felt so strongly about this that he made the following proposal: “If a person contends too vehemently in expressing his views, he is punished with exile or enslavement” (YE, 4:220–​21). This type of sentence would seem harsh or even cruel to modern readers, and we could take it as an overreaction to intolerant behaviour. It is a response (albeit much too strong) to protect freedom of thought. We do need to qualify the concept of tolerance and partition of power in More. He tempered such open-​mindedness by the role of Utopian priests: “They preside over divine worship, order religious rites, and are censors of 57  Anahuac is the Nahuatl term referring to Central Mexico, Tawantinsuyu refers to the realm of the Inkakuna. For the latter, I have followed the spelling required by the dictionary of the Qheswa Simi Hamut’ana Kurak Suntur. 58  Bradshaw, “The Controversial Sir Thomas More,” 542.

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morals” (YE, 4: 226–​27). In this, More adds another layer of semantic substance to the work. Here we are talking about public morality, not private spirituality. All the same, the ingredients of society should be qualified as elements of the whole, not the work in its entirety. In these instances, as is completely understandable, More suffered lapses into realities that pertain more to Renaissance Europe than those we would expect in Utopia.59 If the priests “order religious rites,” then Peter Iver Kaufman certainly is correct in his claims about ecclesiastical standards, as discussed in ­chapter  3. While the idea of a public morality seems to fly in the face of the division-​of-​power standard, such a “flaw” allowed the continuance of an ecclesiastical system that gave idealist Spaniards something to grab on to, such as with the hospital Vasco de Quiroga organized in Mexico.60 The same sort of “flaw” made it politically possible for Inca Garcilaso de la Vega to use Utopia’s social norms to define Tawantinsuyu in his Comentarios reales (1609), or Royal Commentaries, composed during the post-​Tridentine reign of Philip III.61 If the priests function as “censors of morals” then they could end up being intolerant of other viewpoints. Even so, viewed in context, we must remember, “There are different kinds of religion not only on the island as a whole but also in each city.” This being so, if we accept Catholic morality, that is, a morality associated with the Church, we must accept that there might be a problem with the respective faiths, with their associated morals, of diverse origins. We can infer, happily, that if a citizen did not agree with the morals of one locale, he or she could move to another location, thereby guaranteeing religious freedom. Gold and Free Will

Gold and goldwork held paramount religious meaning for the people of Abya Yala, the Kuna name for “America” which as Arturo Arias notes, “represents the Latin American continent from an Indigenous perspective.” The term Abya Yala has been gaining decolonial currency among Amerindians during the twentieth and twenty-​first centuries.62 Many of the cultures of Abya Yala before the advent of the Spanish dedicated time and energy to creating finely honed religious and cultural art with gold. The Taínos were able to extract it from rivers. The early Colombians developed metalworking especially with gold to a high degree of sophistication. For the Inkakuna, it represented the tears of the sun. Gold, once a connection with the gods, became the bane of Abya Yala people’s existence. In the wars against them, the thirst for gold was one of the primary incentives for the Spaniards’ destructive marches up and down the Western Hemisphere. Bartolomé de las Casas explains that when Spaniards arrived in K’iche’ (present-​day Guatemala) and inquired about gold, and people there responded there was none, a tyrant, probably 59  More’s inability or refusal to define his view of the clerical make-​up of the Church continued into his other works. See Headley, “On More and the Papacy.” 60  Abellán, “Utopismo americano” and “Los ‘Hospitales-​Pueblos.’ ”

61  On the parallels between More and Garcilaso, see Durán Luzio, “Sobre Tomás Moro en el Inca Garcilaso.” 62  Arias, Recovering Lost Footprints, 1:39 and Recovering Lost Footprints, 2:25.

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Pedro de Alvarado, “ordered that they be burnt alive” (mandólos luego quemar vivos). Las Casas laments that not only were many K’iche’ people burnt to a crisp, but “all those provinces” (todas aquellas provincias) were incinerated too.63 Gold was a common trade item and the European monarchies needed it to cover their expenses. People were also interested in the precious metal because it was a marker of status. If society favors ostentatiousness, many people will stop at nothing to compete, to get ahead, to impress the people they encounter on a day to day basis. It is by showing off more wealth, by desiring to get ahead, that people (so they hope) move up the social, political, and sometimes ecclesiastical ladder. The greatest symbol of coloniality was gold, since it was so expensive, since it was so coveted, since lives and even cities were destroyed to acquire it, and because it had nothing to do with the needs of everyday nourishment and shelter. The gold fervor was so prominent that other societal needs remained unattended. Furthermore, that intense gold fever so prevalent in Europe during the period of the invasion and settling of Abya Yala prevented the Word from being properly propagated. Thomas More, and Las Casas and Guaman Poma de Ayala after him, all proposed the soul’s primacy over gold paralleling Christ’s repudiation of the marketplace in the temple.64 The need to talk about gold and the soul in one breath may seem surprising, but few minds were free enough from hegemony to perceive the destructive relationship between them. More responds to the European mindset. When three Anemolian ambassadors come to Utopia, they are all decked out with silks and gold jewelry. When the Utopians met the Anemolians, they thought they were of low class because they wore gold (YE, 4:154–​55). In this reverse world of Utopia, only slaves wore gold. Because of that, when the Anemolians realized that the slave-​class wore more gold then them and that free Utopians wore no jewelry, the narrator recounts, “they were crestfallen and for shame put away all the finery with which they had made themselves haughtily conspicuous” (YE, 4:156–​57). Teaching by example and not by word is the central pedagogical message here. In this vein, with respect to gold, the Utopians were the opposite of the Spaniards. This is a startling position to take given this precious metal’s importance in the European economy at that time. Wallerstein brings the centrality of gold into focus: “it sustained the trust of expansion, protecting this still weak system against the assaults of nature.”65 In short, both contemporary Catholic thinkers, More and Las Casas (as would later Guaman Poma de Ayala), went up against a central feature of the European economic system when they placed God before gold. More’s devaluing of gold represents the vanguard of antimaterialism, the vanguard of anti​hegemony, and the clearing away of space for cultivating free will. If people like More and Las Casas could overcome human selfishness, others could too. In a Christian sense the removal of selfishness has to do with free will. The “discovery” of the “new” world as a concept given form by the gold and the gold fever 63  Las Casas, Tratados, 1:82–​85.

64  YE, 4:156–​57; Las Casas, Tratados, 1:21, 151; John 2:14. For a somewhat different interpretation of gold in the Utopia and the Bible see Allen, “Some Remarks on Gold,” 5–​6. 65  Wallerstein, The Modern World-​System, 76.

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associated with it allowed a handful of thinkers in the “old” one to first become aware of the problem and to then create pristine paths of thought leading out of it. What is of consequence in Utopia is not the mode of spirituality, but the profundity of that spirituality. This is removed from Las Casas’s situation where the cogs of imperialism in the Caribbean or New Spain left little room for freedom of religion. Additionally, any concept of religious freedom would be in direct conflict with the papal bull of 1493. On the other side of the coin, More and Las Casas parallel each other in a principal aspect of their concepts of spirituality, the belief in free will. Erasmus’ 1524 debates with Luther on the question of free will, the former in favor, the latter against, are well known. This debate was critical because Erasmus’s defense of free will could be interpreted as an example of what Burckhardt termed “the development of the individual” during the Renaissance.66 For Las Casas, as ­chapter  3 reveals, Indigenous people had the mental capacity to become Christians and to choose between good and evil. After all, they had gold, but did not covet it. They sometimes saw it in divine terms. It was up to Christians to decide which path to take, toward God, or away from Him. Thomas More expressed a similar view: citizens had the power to choose between Good and Evil, between the spirit and the material. The only difference between the Spaniard and the Englishman was that the former saw only one specific path to God, while the latter, at least in Utopia, was untethered to any particular denomination. Notwithstanding this divergence, the concept of free will stood firmly in place in both of their thought systems, the soul’s primacy over the material, enshrining the division of power as an ideal. On Liberation from Private Property

Gold is one indicator of the materialism and hegemony that people need to overcome. Liberation from private property is another viable way to set humans free. Thomas More tells Amerigo Vespucci’s imaginary traveler Rafael Hythlodaeus, “When every man aims at absolute ownership of all the property he can get, be there never so great abundance of goods, it is all shared by a handful who leave the rest in poverty.” Unlike Las Casas’ real-​life liberal strategy with respect to private property (see ­chapter  1), More recommends abolishing it, because: “While it lasts, there will always remain a heavy and inescapable burden of poverty and misfortunes for by far the greatest and by far the best part of mankind” (YE, 4:104–​5). The solution that More proposes is that the Utopians, because they do not believe in private property, look at land holdings as inconsequential. Hythlodaeus explains: “No city has any desire to extend its territory, for they consider themselves the tenants rather than the masters of what they hold” (YE, 4:112–​13). More really was onto something here because in the very next century England would become engaged in appropriating the North American continent, and philosophers such as John Locke would defend these activities. Locke, for example, in his Second Treatise 66  See Burckhardt, “The Development of the Individual” in The Civilization of the Renaissance and Erasmus, De Libero Arbitrio (1524).

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on Government (1690) would develop a theory of the natural state, opening up the possibility of a land grab.67 This desire to eradicate property clearly anticipates Liberation Theology because it moves to attenuate class differences. Sobrino, the only Jesuit to survive the 1989 faculty massacre at the University of Central America, writes in Jesus in Latin America about solidarity with the poor: “Effective defense of the poor involves removing the real, objective sin that impoverishes them; this sin cannot be eradicated without taking on the condition of the poor; their dignity cannot be given back to them with taking on their humiliation.”68 What both More and Sobrino are talking about, one from the perspective of Renaissance humanism, the other from that of twentieth-​century Liberation Theology, is that structural reasons for poverty must be removed because it is logical to do so (More), because it removes sin (Sobrino). Sobrino emphasizes that sin is not only someone’s personal failure in his or her relationship to God, but it is additionally committing an act that prevents “the kingdom of God from becoming a reality for the poor.”69 Reading about Sobrino’s notion of the Kingdom of God back to back with the Utopia puts a somewhat different twist on the Utopia. The Jesuit writes, “the kingdom of God must not be a universal symbol of utopian hope, interchangeable with any other utopia, but more specifically the hope of those [specific] groups who suffer under some kind of material and social oppression.”70 The “hope” could be the notion of private property’s removal as a possibility as it was with communal Indigenous practices encapsulated in the ayllu or capulli. This would interface with More’s thinking, or it could be the idea of social or material parity that Sobrino outlines. What More is reacting to are two economies that defined sixteenth-​century lives, which Sacks describes as “large-​scale regional, national, and international markets” that worked above and to the detriment of “cooperation among neighbors or gift exchanges.”71 In another place, Sacks, adds, it is often tempting for traders to bypass dealings with their neighbors to gain the higher prices available in the more impersonal markets farther afield. The consequence could be a strong sense of injustice and betrayal felt by those members of the local community deprived of what they might consider necessities for their livelihoods.72

Sacks sets up a context to understand More who is suggesting stepping back from the global markets of that time and developing humane modes of organizing work, land, and communities. One feature of this thinking is the rejection of style, fashion, and what 67  Hinkelammert explains this concept: “In the natural state every one can take whatever lands that he or she wants. However, one cannot take the amount of land that one wants, but only that extension of land that one effectively works and not according to caprice,” “The Hidden Logic,” 15. 68  Sobrino, Jesus in Latin America, 145.

69  Sobrino, Jesus in Latin America, 143–​44. 70  Sobrino, Jesus in Latin America, 142. 71  Sacks, “Introduction,” 35. 72  Sacks, “Introduction,” 37.

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we would call today, branding: “in Utopia all were dressed alike, and in a homespun fashion at that.” This is a total identification with the poor carried out on a daily basis. What More does in Utopia is invert our normal expectations with respect to wealth. The Utopians devalue gold and reconceptualize property. Inversions of this type reveal the coloniality of the situation and represent a decolonial pass. Discernment on the Material and the Development of the Conscience

The decolonial turn away from private property also represents a turn away from imperialist tendencies.73 If people are no longer coveting material goods, they are less likely to turn their sights on what their neighbours have and be more content with what they have. The sanitation of coloniality improves communities from within and it also equalizes relationships between communities in both national and international spheres. We need to state two things: first, the Utopians’ devaluing of gold and rejecting of private property is a way to say we should have other ideals besides the simpleminded accumulation of material things. We can read into this that Thomas More was trying to create a Utopian community much like Jesus Christ and his disciples did, poor people with lofty ideals. We say read into it, because More does not use the word Christian in this passage. Conversely, we might find it offensive that slaves were the ones forced to wear gold (YE, 4:154–​57). What we must do here is return to the Renaissance to understand that world and the way More thought. What the famous author is trying to do is invert the master–​slave equation, turn it on its head to empty it of meaning. He does this as a rhetorical strategy that we can take as a decolonial push. This is clear when More explains how Utopians view the people who emulate the wealthy: “they wonder at and abominate the madness of persons who pay almost divine honors to the rich, to whom they neither owe anything nor are obligated in any other respect than that they are rich” (YE, 4:156–​57). Perhaps without intending to, the author makes a statement against a particular aspect of the human condition, which can also be a colonial paradox, that is, the condition whereby subjugated peoples identify with the people who are subjugating them. As noted above, this condition, “a kind of domination that implies a measure of consent by those at the bottom,” is what Chasteen describes as hegemony. To address the all-​too-​common phenomenon of the oppressed identifying with the oppressor, a consciousness must be raised favoring the common good. In this way Hythlodaeus has the foresight to lament the condition of workers who “agonize over the thought of an indigent old age” (YE, 4:240–​41). This is the first step toward becoming conscious as explained in this chapter’s introduction. Then, to become liberated, poverty-​stricken people must become aware that their condition results from the unfair appropriation of finite resources. They must become aware that the wealthy “invent and devise all ways and means by which … they may keep without fear of loss all that they have amassed by evil.” The routine “all ways and means” are nothing less than the above-​ mentioned being “ambushed by so many stratagems, beset by so many snares” of which 73  The term “decolonial turn” comes from the volume on decoloniality edited by Castro-​Gómez and Grosfoguel.

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Erasmus warned. Along these lines, More wants us to get beyond what he calls “a kind of conspiracy of the rich” (YE, 4:240–​41). He ponders the possibility of what life would be like, “if money were entirely done away with everywhere” (YE, 4:242–​43). The answer, of course, is that Christ can abolish all this worldly misery with a Christianity of the primordial kind, where gold fever and private property are no longer defining attributes of society. And of course, by taking away the thirst for land and gold, the interest in conquering other lands would certainly decline.

Erasmus of Rotterdam and the Life of the Spirit

We now turn to the views of More’s friend Erasmus of Rotterdam. Despite the tremendous labor required to impose an incontrovertible division of power, Erasmus was persistent in his insistence on a pure Christianity, which, as we shall see, could be a form of liberation thinking. In his letter to Louvain scholar Martin Dorp, Erasmus laments, “Christ taught one thing and human traditions command something else.”74 This is no small statement, because besides taking on Church and state, this assertion goes against the medieval educational tradition, which held the Church up as the highest truth. In this, Erasmus goes against both tradition and the Church. William Egginton explains the situation: “Erasmus believed that following the personal model of Christ was far more important than the arcane trivia of academic theology or the sedimented practices of religious institutions.”75 Erasmus’s stance demands a revitalization and purification of the Church (which if achieved could take the wind out of the growing Protestant sails). Erasmus was concerned with the world within a person’s mind and how to protect it from the world outside. Division of Power: Popes, Priests, Princes, and Men

In The Education of a Christian Prince, Erasmus pointedly distinguishes between temporal and spiritual power and between the functionaries of these two realms. Specifically, he denies spiritual power to the prince: Admittedly, the prince is not a priest, and therefore does not consecrate the body of Christ; nor is he a bishop, and so he does not preach to the people on the mysteries of Christianity and does not administer the sacraments; he has not made his profession in the order of St. Benedict, and therefore does not wear the cowl.76

74  Erasmus, The Praise, 155: “Et aliquoties non habeant quot respondeant consulotoribus, cum perspiciunt aliud docuisse Christum, aliud humanis traditiunculis imperari” (Opus epistolarum, 2:101). It is a curious phenomenon that this passage was suppressed (along with a good deal more—​from lines 310 to 358, and from 395 to 608, Allen text [Moriae encomium, Opus epistolarum 2:99–​106]) in the modern Spanish translation by Lorenzo Riber of the Real Academia Española. See letter number 337, “Erasmo Roterodamo a Martín Dorpio,” Section 3: “Correspondencia con Tomás Moro.” In Erasmo, Obras escogidas. 75  Egginton, The Man, 24–​25.

76  Erasmus, The Education, 19; “Princeps non est sacerdos, fateor, et ideo non consecrat corpus Christi, non est episcopus ac proinde non concionatur apud populum de Christi mysteriis nee

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Conversely, we can infer that Erasmus denies temporal power to the priest. He notes an analogous but distinct nature to temporal and spiritual structures. For theological support in developing his argument, he looks to St. Denis, “who divided the world into three hierarchies: what God is in the ranks of heaven, the bishop should be in the Church, and the prince in the State.”77 While there are three realms here, not two, it is notable that the realm of heaven is closed to man and the priest. Of the two remaining legs of the triangle, the Church is restricted to the spiritual side while the state remains on the temporal side. The problem occurs when the ecclesiastical realm, which should remain pure, does not do so, moving that leg of the triangle over to the temporal side, and in doing so, distorting the symbolic triangle. This creates an imbalance weighted against the ideal. There is still a tension between inner Christianity and real-​world human traditions, which continually suggests the need to filter the temporal out of the spiritual. This is especially true if we recognize Religion, the realm of the bishop, as closer, regrettably, to temporality than to spirituality, even if not exclusively so. In his letter to Paul Volz, Erasmus reflects on this corruption between the two powers: “No one is farther from true religion than he who very much seems to himself to be religious. Nor is the situation ever worse with respect to Christian piety than when what is of the world is twisted toward Christ and when the authority of men is preferred to divine authority.”78 Because the powers connive with each other so pervasively, Erasmus did not react solely to clergymen. In Praise of Folly, his criticism reached up and excoriates the papacy itself: “As if the church had any more deadly enemies than impious popes, who allow Christ to fade away in silence, who bind him with mercenary laws, who defile him with forced interpretations, who murder him with the pestilent wickedness of their lives.”79 Erasmus’s totalizing censure includes priests, prelates, and popes as well as the “authority of men.” All that touches temporality can be sullied. By restoring the power partition, Christ will no longer “fade away in silence,” hidden in the confusion between kings and popes, between nobles and bishops, behind castles and cathedrals. Christ’s metaphorical destruction of the temple as narrated in the Gospel according to St. John epitomizes the removal of intermediaries between God and people, of go-​betweens tainted by the possibility of material gain.80 Removing intermediaries administrat sacramenta. Non est professus institutum diui Benedicti. Et ob id non gestat cucullam” (Institutio principis christiani, 148).

77  Erasmus, The Education, 23, I have modified punctuation and capitalization for clarity; “qui treis fecit hierarchias, vt quod deus est inter coelitum ordines, id episcopus sit in ecclesia, id princeps in republica” (Institutio principis christiani, 151).

78  Erasmus, Christian Humanism, 132; “Nemo longius abest a vera religione quam qui sibi valde videtur religiosus. Nec vnquam peius agitur cum pietate Christiana quam cum quod est mundi ad Christum detorquetur, cumque hominum autoritas diuinae praefertur” (Opus epistolarum, 3:377).

79  Erasmus, The Praise of Folly, 113: “quasi vero vlli sint hostes ecclesiae perniciosiores quam impii pontifices, qui et silentio Christum sinunt abolescere et quaestuariis legibus alligant et coactis interpretationibus adulterant et pestilente vita iugulant” (Moriae encomium, 174). 80  John 2:13–​19.

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reduces the opportunity for temporal formalism, a starting point for corruption between the two realms. When formalism recedes, the spirit will not only be seen and heard, it will also be felt. This is why the Gospel according to St. John teaches that the true temple is not a building, but Jesus’s body.81 By extension, all humans have their own temples in their own bodies, the temple of inner spirituality. Upon ridding themselves of the structures external to them that are in the end illusory, humans can take one step away from temporal power as Jesus Christ once did by distancing themselves from both Caesar and the moneychangers. Freedom from rituals opens a doorway to an inner spirituality. It is precisely the existence of priests, bishops, and popes out of control, besmirched by temporal power, that Erasmus comments on, that causes More to create the impeccable priests of Utopia. In matters pertaining to the Church’s inner workings, both writers demonstrated a proclivity toward re-​dividing the two spheres. Stated differently, both authors saw the exigency of a reformed spirituality, unshackled from the temporal license the Church had developed over centuries. They did not imagine purging temporal elements from spirituality by destroying the temple as Christ did; they felt that simply purging the Church of temporal elements through the intellect would purify spirituality. Primitive Christianity and the War within the Mind

As Gustavo Gutiérrez has rightfully asserted, “The primitive church represents the model that inspires the work of evangelization among these sixteenth century missionaries.”82 Erasmus was not involved with missionary work as was the clergy in Abya Yala, but he was extremely involved in primitive-​Christianity thinking even though he never left Europe. Coinciding with Gutiérrez, Américo Castro also refers to this desire to reduce clerical power to the spiritual as “primitive Christianity.”83 A “primitive Christianity” is one that would revert to Christ’s time, giving God that which is God’s while letting Caesar demand that which is Caesar’s. The scholar from Rotterdam comments on this passage, updating it: “He orders tribute to be paid if it is due, as if it is of little concern to Him, provided that that which is due to God is given Him.”84 This Christianity that resided not in the Church, but in the soul of men and women, is opposed to what might be called clerical or ecclesiastical Christianity. Teodoro Hampe Martínez refers to this tendency as a type of humanism that took a “critical position vis-​à-​vis traditional religiosity” (posición crítica frente a la religiosidad tradicional).85 Erasmus finishes his thought emphasizing that the authentic believer “is someone who has embraced Christ in the depths of his 81  John 2:21.

82  Gutiérrez, Las Casas, 42.

83  Castro, La realidad histórica de España, 557–​58.

84  Erasmus, Christian Humanism, 119; “Censum ita dari iubet, si debeatur, quasi ad se non multum pertineat, modo detur Deo quod illi debetur” (Opus epistolarum, 3:368). 85  Hampe Martínez, Bibliotecas privadas, 34.

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heart and who expresses this by acting in a Christian spirit.”86 The need for an interior Christianity was apparent to people such as Erasmus who observed the corruption of the ideal in life and realized that, when practicing it, a process of purification was cultivated. It is so easy to think of temporal power lying with the state and spiritual power with the Church. Yet when temporal concerns infiltrate and smear the purity of the spiritual kingdom codified in ecclesiastical power, we must admit they weaken its adherence to the ideal. Conversely, it is not so easy to think of spiritual power within the state. Yet because temporal authorities wield so much authority, a lack of spirituality on their part can lead to grave consequences. In his Education of a Christian Prince, Erasmus expresses the following truth: “The diligence and moral standards of the priests and bishops are admittedly an important factor here, but not nearly so much as those of princes.” This is a concern because, if greed fixes the norms of human behaviour, evil metastasizes. Erasmus bemoans this sad circumstance: “The corruption of an evil prince spreads more quickly and widely than the contagion of any plague.”87 One strategy to fight against the seed of evil lies with the cultivation of the spirit. The above-​mentioned theological construction, “what God is in the ranks of heaven, the bishop should be in the Church, and the prince in the State,” stipulates that the earthly prince should be “what God is,” that is, pure and good. If spiritual power is truly free of temporal concerns, then the prince can take refuge to recharge himself morally. By returning to the pure beginnings of Christianity, both Church and State could become cleansed, bifurcating spiritual and temporal powers creating paths whereby the spiritual might cleanse the temporal. How did Erasmus get to this theology? It most likely stems from his early educational experience when as a teenager he attended the Brethren’s Saint Lebwin at Deventer. Raymond Himelick annotates that Erasmus studied poverty, simplicity, humility and “devotion rather than dogma” there.88 From these studies, Erasmus developed a form of militant Christianity, not to conquer other worlds, but to conquer worldly vice and materialism. Hence, in the Enchiridion, he relies on the Gospel according to John, who foregrounds the simple truth that the world itself “is wholly bent on mischief,” and thus, “abhorrent to Christ.”89 We can consider this posture a kernel with the necessary elements to move toward a liberating theology. In this treatise, Erasmus ponders how war, from the beginning, must be fought from inside the human mind: “within the most private recesses of our consciousness we carry a foe more intimate, more domesticated.”90 86  Erasmus, The Education, 18; “sed qui Christum intimis complectitur affectibus ac piis factis exprimit” (Institutio principis christiani, 147).

87  Erasmus, The Education, 21; “Plurimum ad id habent momenti studia moresque sacerdotum et episcoporum, fateor, sed multo magis principum” /​“Nullius pestilentiae neque citius corripit neque latius serpit contagium, quam mali principis” (Institutio principis christiani, 150, 149). 88  Himelick, “Introduction,” 12.

89  Erasmus, The “Enchiridion,” 38; “Tum rursus à dextra le-​Vicini, vache à fronte pariter, atque à tergo mundos hic nos oppugnat, qui juxta Joannis vocem, totus in vitü est constitutus, coque Christo tum insestus, tum etiam invisus” (Enchiridion militis Christiani, 41).

90  Erasmus, The “Enchiridion,” 39; “intus denique in ipsis animi penetralibus hostem serimus pluscuam familiarem, pluscuam domesticum” (Enchiridion militis Christiani, 42).

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Gutiérrez calls that activity in “the most private recesses of our consciousness,” a process of “critical reflection,” a process that “should contribute in one way or another to a more evangelical, more authentic, more concrete, and more efficacious commitment to liberation.”91 He warns this is not a once-​in-​time moment, “but rather a permanent effort of those who seek to situate themselves in time and space, to exercise their creative potential, to assume their responsibilities.”92 This is to say that reflection on liberative possibilities must be carried out on a daily basis. In the European context, this is about a struggle against routine incursions of corruption in peoples’ lives caused by insidious greed, and in a larger sense, by the human inclination toward war. It is against the internal hegemonies of nations and it is about the hegemonies stronger nations imposed on weaker ones. In the American context, this is about all that, but, as the next chapter reveals, it is also a struggle against everyday coloniality. Gutiérrez is aware of this when he links “critical reflection” to the struggle against imperialism and its aftereffects. He concludes this cycle of thought: “overcoming the colonial mentality is one of the important tasks of the Christian community.”93 In his book on Bartolomé de las Casas, Gutiérrez cites some characteristics of what we are calling coloniality, “evasion, dissimulation, lies, and the efforts of power and the bureaucracy.”94 While it would be too much to expect a mind from the sixteenth century to unfetter itself conclusively from a European mentality given form by hegemony, Erasmus makes great strides with respect to the Church’s temporal power. As we will see, Las Casas goes even further. Against Materialism, Advocating Nonviolence

Before getting to Las Casas, a word about Erasmus’s position on violence and nonviolence is obligatory. Erasmus holds importance because he develops the doctrine of nonviolence, a doctrine later taken up by Lev Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Luisa Capetillo, César Chávez, and Miguel d’Escoto. Nonviolence is a useful doctrine because responding to violence with violence tends to escalate the violence, while responding to violence with nonviolence offers the chance of reducing the level of violence in the best of cases, or at least maintaining the level in the worst of cases. It is clear from Erasmus’s writings that he was against the perpetration of violence and thus against war. In a little-​known letter from 1513 written to Anthony a Bergis, the author puts into clear terms his dim view of bellicose activity, especially when waged by Christian kings and pontiffs and bishops—​he mentions Pope Julius in this regard.95 Part of this stems from his nonviolent stance, but another part of it is the need for peace-​infused Christianity being a role model for other religions. He asks rhetorically, for example, “What do you suppose the Turks think, when they hear of Christian kings 91  Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation, 81. 92  Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation, 57. 93  Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation, 77. 94  Gutiérrez, Las Casas, 9.

95  Erasmus, “Letter to Anthony a Bergis,” 57.

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raging against each other, with all the madness of so many evils let loose? And raging for what? merely on account of a claim set up for power, for empire, and dominion.”96 The key idea here is that a king or a pope would wage wars for power. The quest for power may occur in palaces and on battlefields but it originates in the mind, and it is there that we must combat it. Erasmus explains this thusly: “Our wars, for the most part, proceed either from ambition, from anger and malice, from the mere wantonness of unbridled power, or from some other mental distemper.”97 Instead of war, the scholar from Rotterdam proclaims that people should be called to Christ through “mildness and gentleness.”98 Considering that the cause of war stems from a warped spirit, it is there, in the mind, where it should first be combated. All of this brings us to how the Christian prince should behave; what should his domestic and foreign policies be. A war waged against the hegemony of the mind begins inside the mind, but from there it must extend to the exterior circumstance. Erasmus tells the prince: So long as you follow what is right, do violence to no one, extort from no one, sell no public office, and are corrupted by no bribes, then to be sure, your treasury will have far less in it than otherwise. But disregard the impoverishment of the treasury, so long as you are showing a profit in justice.99

Erasmus clearly implies here that decisions made to make money are wrong especially if violence is committed against people. He argues that the only true profit of mutual benefit comes with justice. In his letter to Bergis, he warns that there is no glory to war and proposes “it is infinitely more glorious to build and establish, than to ruin and lay waste a flourishing community.”100 Central to these ideas, besides solidarity with “the weakest classes,” is a commitment to peace and an aversion to war. “Do violence against no one,” since it is not qualified, suggests a recommendation template for both domestic and foreign policy. While Erasmus is talking to one prince in particular in his Education of a Christian Prince and so is referring to one kingdom in particular, one kingdom that is to become a very large one indeed—​the Holy Roman Empire—​this idea anticipates Gutiérrez, who tells us that to live the Christian life implies “struggling—​with clarity and with courage, deceiving neither oneself nor others—​for the establishment of peace and justice among all people.”101 A love of peace implies peace with one’s conscience, and from there it implies national and international peace.

96  Erasmus, “Letter to Anthony a Bergis,” 58. 97  Erasmus, “Letter to Anthony a Bergis,” 55. 98  Erasmus, “Letter to Anthony a Bergis,” 55.

99  Erasmus, The Education, 19; “dum quod rectum est sequeris, dum nemini vim I facis, neminem expilas, nullum vendis magistratum, nullo munere corrumperis; nimirum minus habebit tuus fiscus, contemne fisci detrimentum, dummodo lucrum facias iusticiae” (Institutio principis christiani, 148). 100  Erasmus, “Letter to Anthony a Bergis,” 56. 101  Gutiérrez, A Liberation Theology, 31.

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There is another precept from Matthew, book 5, verse 39 beneficial here because it helps explain Erasmus, and because it is a central idea in the thinking of Lev Tolstoy, a nineteenth-​century proponent of nonviolence. Tolstoy is important here because he was in dialogue with the anabaptists and transcendentalists and his thinking was taken up by Gandhi who transmitted it to Martin Luther King and César Chávez. The passage in question reads: “But I say this to you: offer no resistance to the wicked. On the contrary, if anyone hits you on the right cheek, offer him the other as well.” This idea, “offer no resistance to the wicked,” would become central to Tolstoy’s Kingdom of God is Within You. Back during the Renaissance, Erasmus outlines what happens or what could happen if a prince adopts this maxim: Similarly, if you choose to tolerate injuries rather than avenge them at great cost to the state, your empire is likely to be reduced to some extent. Put up with it, and consider that you have gained an enormous amount by bringing harm to fewer people than you will otherwise have done.102

This is not a relative concept; it is an absolute one. To decide not to bring pain by avoiding war, can have stark consequences which Erasmus outlines: “Finally, if you cannot defend your kingdom without violating justice, without much human bloodshed, or without great damage to the cause of religion, than abdicate rather than that, and yield to the realities of the situation.”103 In the king’s interactions with his people, Erasmus exhorts, do “not think that you have acquired an opportunity for plunder, but for service.”104 This idea of service is central to liberation thinking; to get out of one’s self to do not for one’s self, but for others. As we are suggesting, advocating nonviolence sets Erasmus up a as a liberation thinker, but it also sets him up a precursor to nineteenth and twentieth century proponents of nonviolence such as Tolstoy, Gandhi, King, Chávez, Capetillo, Miguel d’Escoto, and, of course, the Anabaptists.

102  Erasmus, The Education, 19. “Item dum ferre mauis iniuriam quam magno reipublicae detrimento vlcisci, fortasse decedit nonnihil imperio tuo. Feras illud abunde magnum lucrum esse ducens, quod paucioribus nocueris” (Institutio principis christiani, 148).

103  Erasmus, The Education, 19. “Denique non pates tued regnum nisi violata iusticia, nisi magna sanguinis humani iactura, nisi religionis ingenti dispendio: depone potius ac cede tempori” (Institutio principis christiani, 148). 104  Erasmus, The Education, 25; “nee arbitreris tibi praedam obtigisse, sed administrationem” (Institutio principis christiani, 152).

Chapter 5

LIBERATION THINKING: THE AMERICAS (ABYA YALA)

In this chapter,

we center on Bartolomé de las Casas who was from Spain and Guaman Poma de Ayala who was from Peru. As was the case with the previous chapter dedicated to Europe, this one, focused on Abya Yala, the Kuna name for the New World, deliberates on the need for the fortification of the spiritual to address the travesties temporal power commits. Some of these are committed by cynics who hide their selfish activities un-​Christianly under the cloak of Christianity. As philosopher Curcó Cobos discerns, the cynic will not respond to arguments to what is being done. He suggests that liberation philosophy, such as Enrique Dussel’s, must respond to that cynicism “by articulating its tenets in terms of action, praxis, and resisting power.”1 We can broaden Curcó Cobos’s intent and state that liberation philosophy, theology, and thinking all suggest the need for action to reform temporal power. Additionally, this chapter discusses antidotes to colonial structures of encomienda, as well as the transatlantic and hence colonialist state and Church. Finally, for this manner of discernment to flourish within Catholicism in Abya Yala, Catholicism first had to migrate across the Atlantic and then establish itself, logically, for its different strains to take root and for a body of the faithful to form. This is the great paradox because as Severino Coratto has duly noted, “Not only was [Catholicism] imposed by force, as the religion of the c­ onquistador, but it also functioned as a religion of oppression.”2 Nevertheless, only after Catholicism had established itself, could Catholic liberation thinking emerge. For that to happen, it had to overcome Amerindian spiritualities or blend with them enough for the Christian evangelization of Abya Yala to run its course. Put another way, if sixteenth-​century Catholicism by its very nature was colonialist, within that vector of colonialism subsisted, ironically, the seeds of overcoming that coloniality. In a way, sixteenth-​century liberation thinking holds an affinity with what we call postcolonial thinking in English-​language discourse, what Walter Mignolo calls decolonial thinking based on Mediterranean word choices. Roland Green makes an interesting point about the subtlety and the paradox of postcolonial thought that germinates during colonial eras. He writes: Political independence cannot mark the start of postcolonial thinking; it is only one of several imaginable thresholds, including discovery or encounter itself, that precipitate such thinking, which involves a thinking past the conditions of colonial society to consider how they might develop into something else under the pressure of still unrecorded events. This kind of thinking often takes place in colonial writings, especially where an

1  Curcó Cobos, “Latin American Political Thought,” 83.

2  Croatto, “The Gods of Oppression,” 43; for a discussion see García Castellón, Guamán Poma, 133.

140 Liberation Thinking: The Americas empire is obliged to observe its contradictions, confront its limits, or address its critics. While most agents in a colonial scene remain impervious to postcolonial thinking, many of those who participate in such thinking are colonialists themselves, indispensable to or at least implicated in the apparatus of empire.3

Upon contemplating Green’s depiction of the paradox of postcolonial thinking coming out of the throes of imperialism, the Friar Bartolomé de las Casas most certainly comes to mind. He was an encomendero who understood something clearly at last and then shed many aspects of the imperialist mindset in come to develop his variety of liberation thinking. Others were not colonialists. Nueva crónica y buen gobierno and its Peru-​ born author Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala come to mind. This author also developed his decolonial thinking during the colonial era, but unlike the youthful Las Casas, he was neither a colonialist, nor was he known to the world before the German scholar Richard Pietschmann found his manuscript lying in dusty archives in Copenhagen at the dawn of the twentieth century. Even though Guaman Poma did not influence his peers and their descendants the way Las Casas (and certainly More and Erasmus) did, his thought reacted against the coloniality of the early seventeenth century and yields insight into nativist decolonial methodologies. The sort of decolonial discernment both Las Casas and Guaman Poma developed is here described as Christian liberation thinking. Again, the term decolonialism, more proper to Latin American realities than postcolonialism, the favored term in English-​language scholarship, refers precisely to intellectual trajectories like the one that Las Casas and Guaman Poma approached: the restoration of Andean sovereignty. Mignolo explains, “decolonial thinking and doing emerged and unfolded, from the sixteenth century on, as responses to the oppressive and imperial bent of modern European ideals projected to and enacted in, the non-​European world.”4 Here again, as mentioned in our discussion of Roland Green’s proposal, without colonialism there would be no need for decolonial thinking. Decolonial thinking is born in the vortex of colonialism. It is there that we must look to find both its origins and its meaning for today. Reflecting along these lines, theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez asks the question, “To what extent ought the protests, reflections, and engagements of so many missionaries of the sixteenth century in the face of the Indians’ suffering be guidelines for our own days?”5 The easy answer is that the colonized Indigenous of the sixteenth century anticipated the neocolonial poor of the twenty-​first century. This answer resides 3  Green, “Colonial becomes Postcolonial,” 424–​25. Curiously, other scholars seem to disagree. For Lins Ribeiro, “the duration of the postcolonial condition is an area of intense debate, one that is particularly interesting for Latin Americans since, historically, postcolonialism started there in the early nineteenth century” “Why (Post)colonialism and (De)coloniality are not Enough,” 289.

4  Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity, 3, differentiates the postcolonial from the decolonial: “Decolonial thinking materialized … at the very moment in which the colonial matrix of power was being put in place, in the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries.” And: “Postcoloniality has a different genealogy of thought. In terms of existence it emerged from the experience of British colonization … and, obviously, after the concept of postmodernity was introduced by the late 1970s,” The Darker Side of Western Modernity, xxiv, xxvi. 5  Gutiérrez, Las Casas, 4.

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in understanding that human nature, being what it is, can be pushed one way or guided another way, in that time and in our time. Studying the past can help us determine what courses of actions and thought can help resolve today’s unresolved problems. This is what makes the liberation thinkers covered in this book timely for our age, such as they were timely for previous periods. This is not merely an intellectual posture; it is also a social and legal one. A very brief digression into more familiar contemporary times can serve to illustrate. Consider the United States, conceived as now coloniality-​free by both liberals and conservatives who sincerely believe that the time of slavery is over, and that all people are free to work. They think this way because they cannot see that not all work is free. To offer one from the multitude of examples that shows how the old hacienda model applies to other subsequent genres of business, we can turn to the US Supreme Court. In a 2019 case, New Prime v. Oliveira, we learn about a truck driver, Dominic Oliveira, who worked for the New Prime trucking company. First, New Prime required him to drive 10,000 miles as an apprentice—​without pay. Then they promoted him from apprentice to trainee. As such, he was obliged to drive another 30,000 miles for just four dollars an hour. After he was promoted to full-​time he was shunted to the category “contractor,” not “employee,” and thusly, according to Slate Magazine’s court reporter Mark Joseph Stern, “He was forced to lease his own truck (from a company owned by the owners of New Prime), buy his own equipment (from the New Prime store), and pay for his own gas, often from New Prime gas pumps.”6 This is no different from the attributes of colonial-​style hacienda surviving in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as analyzed by the social critics Manuel González Prada in Peru and Rigoberta Menchú in Guatemala.7 The hacienda, with its on-​site store, pharmacy, and cantina anticipates the multifaceted practices of New Prime trucking. These conditions are technically not slavery, but they are certainly slave-​like. Yesterday’s encomienda, repartimiento, hacienda, mita, or coatequitl is today’s contract worker, temporary worker, Kelly Girl, or as simply framed in Peru, “a worker off the payroll” (un empleado fuera de planilla). Taking it a step further, yesterday’s hacienda-​store loan is today’s amortized loan, today’s credit card debt. I am not the first to make observations of this nature. In Surveillance Capitalism Shoshana Zuboff points to other scholars who have described these twenty-​first-​century realities as patrimonial capitalism or neofeudalism. The economist Thomas Piketty coined the first term in his monumental Capital in the Twenty-​First Century to reflect “the emergence of a new patrimonial capitalism.”8 The idea of patrimonial brings to mind the encomienda and the hacienda. Neofeudalism takes into account these structures and practices that existed in the past and continue to exist as they glide into the present. A thorough and detailed study of work arrangements over the centuries would show the durability of oppressive forms of work. It would also show that many of the cases studied have also been met with resistance. Here, though, our task is to consider that earlier 6  Stern, “The Supreme Court Just Handed a Big, Unanimous Victory to Workers.” 7  As discussed in Ward, Decolonizing Indigeneity, 131–​32.

8  Piketty, Capital, 173; Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 44.

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line of problems and the response to them: the first generation of Christian liberation thinkers in the Western Hemisphere.

Bartolomé de las Casas: Toward a Decolonial Theory of Liberation

Bartolomé de las Casas was not the first liberation thinker in the Americas. That distinction goes to another Dominican friar, Antonio Montesinos, whose sermon, “grito,” according to Manuel García Castellón, constitutes the first liberation theology event in Latin America. García Castellón also notes in this context Ramón Pané, probably a Hieronymite priest, who wrote an important Relación on the Taíno people, and who was the first priest to take into account local culture.9 Indeed it was Montesinos’s sermon—​as Lewis Hanke suggests—​that may have been the first time Las Casas, an encomendero himself during his first years in the Caribbean, heard such discursive language. Montesinos may have planted a seed but it took a couple of years for Las Casas to go through a conversion.10 There was something about the environment, something about the “circumstance,” García Castellón affirms, that allowed a distinctly American form of theologizing to be born and then develop.11 Despite the areas in which he diverged from the interests of the northern European humanists, Las Casas held much in common with More and Erasmus, especially with respect to their thinking on behavioural modification and statecraft during the Christian era. For example, as Santa Arias explains, Las Casas aspired to More’s “best state of a commonwealth” (optimo reipvblicae statv), although with the notable exception More was referring to Europe and Las Casas “makes clear reference to colonial exploitation” (hace referencia clara a la explotación colonial).12 The interest in the ideal notion of the commonwealth in the Indies and the ideal notion of Christianity in the Indies prepared the way for Las Casas to become the preeminent defender of human rights in the Indies during the Renaissance and as such we may consider him a liberation thinker. His defense of human rights was not a mere lawyerly kind of activity. With him, it was a priestly activity. As historian Alberto Flores Galindo observes, “to go towards the Indian was synonymous to going toward the poor person” (Aproximarse al indio era sinónimo de aproximarse al pobre).13 This concern with poor people gets to the crux of liberation thinking. Las Casas was a liberation thinker because he was responding to certain terrible realities on the ground, such as those covered in this book’s ­chapters  1 and 2, and we cannot read him independently of those realities. Juan Freide, considering Las Casas and the theologian jurists of that time, offers the following words of caution: In my opinion, the point of view of authors who view with rapture the prolix juridical-​ theological discussions provoked by the entrance of the Indian into the Hispanic world,

9  García Castellón, Guamán Poma, 43, 47. 10  Hanke, The Spanish Struggle, 21.

11  García Castellón, Guamán Poma, 48. 12  Arias, Retórica, 68.

13  Flores Galindo, Obras completas, 3.1, 31.

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without concerning themselves with the impact of those ideas on reality, is incorrect and does not serve the ends of Latin American historiography. The same may be said of authors who consider the discussions a “struggle for justice” (transforming themselves in the process into Hispanistas) and forget that the discussions had a pragmatic end, corresponded to a social need, and developed under the pressure of circumstances. Studied in their American context, these discussions about the Indian problem lose their abstract aspect.14

Freide’s concerns are valid because these ideas affected Amerindians just as they inversely affected Europeans. That which lessened the Amerindians’ pain, became an affront to the conquistadors and colonists’ greed. But few were questioning the “right” of Catholics to conquer the “heathens.” Doubtlessly, Las Casas was mostly concerned with “saving souls” in the context of conquest, but we should not forget that his proposals had a softening effect on the Conquest, as much as there could be a “softening” effect on the “Conquest.” Even though that reality of five centuries ago has long since disappeared, mistreatment of Amerindians continues, such as the 1932 disaster in El Salvador and in the horrible civil wars in Guatemala and Peru during the 1980s.15 In all three of those terrible situations the main target seemed to be Amerindians, even if official discourse framed the violence as anticommunist or antiterrorist activity. The Dominican scholar-​activist is still meaningful and we still read his various works. By Rolena Adorno’s count, he wrote more than 2,000 folios, which amounts to a complete works of fourteen volumes.16 Such a large corpus, a portion of it issued in the sixteenth century, another in the nineteenth, and additional pieces in the twentieth, cannot help but make a mark and continue to do so. As Javier Valiente Núñez reminds us, “the spirt of Las Casas and the few missionaries and bishops who defended the Indian cause is still present through the words and praxis of liberation theologians.”17 Las Casas is pivotal because he shows how to go against the mainstream currents of one’s time. We can consider him an important model in our time, but we should not underestimate his noteworthiness for sixteenth-​century liberation thinking, as we shall see. Las Casas was political philosopher, liberation thinker, and eventual decolonial operative struggling to free first Amerindians, then African slaves. He finally considered restoring the sovereignty of Tawantinsuyu. He was all of this, but he was also humble. Margarita Zamora writes of him: “He interpreted his historic achievements not as exceptional but, quite the contrary, as attainable by anyone willing to submit reality to the test of honest intellectual reflection followed by (this is the key) actions consistent with the results of that reflection.”18 It is that reflection that allows for consciousness of what is 14  Freide, “Las Casas and Indigenism,” 129.

15  On the 1932 massacre in El Salvador, see Miguel Mármol’s testimony, based on his interview with the poet Roque Dalton; on Guatemala’s civil war, see Rigoberta Menchú’s testimony, based on her interview with Elizabeth Burgos, and on Peru’s internal conflict, see Flores Galindo, “El Perú hirviente de estos días,” in Obras completas, 3.1, 311–​66. 16  Adorno, The Politics, 61.

17  Valiente Núñez, “Liberation Theology and Latin American Testimonio,” 209. 18  Zamora, “The Intellectual Legacy,” 110.

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happening right before our eyes; but it also attracts the attention of the very people it is trying to correct who, oftentimes, were not humble. For Santa Arias one of the ways Las Casas coincides with Erasmus results from the manner they both used accusatory rhetoric.19 Las Casas’s decolonialist role means that over the centuries, he garnered the wrath of imperial bureaucrats (Francisco de Toledo), Hispanists (Ramón Menéndez Pidal) and even well-​meaning scholars who could not fathom an absolutely pure Christianity during the Renaissance (Stelio Cro, Américo Castro).20 Viceroy Toledo, named to the position by the Junta Magna de 1568, which saw the need to institute the Inquisition in Peru, became a primary persecutor of Dominicans, especially those in the Lascasian fold. Pedro Guibovich Pérez’s research on the Sacred Office causes him to conclude that Toledo’s administration, which ran from 1569 to 1581, unmistakably fostered a virulent anti-​Lascasism.21 This anti-​Lascasism coincides with the banning of various of Erasmus’s works by the Milan Index of 1554. First and foremost, Toledo was concerned with implanting Spanish imperial power and with ending what we have called the Forty-​Years War, which he achieved in 1572. That war covered the span during which Inkakuna were fighting among themselves (Waskar and Atawallpa), Andeans among themselves (Inkakuna and Waylakuna), Spaniards among themselves (Pizarrists and Almagrists), the rise of the Taki Unquy anti-​Spanish movement, and Spaniards working hand in hand to annihilate the Inka system. Lascasism, because of its powerful decolonial message, could have gotten in the viceroy’s way. Despite public and political consternation about Las Casas, however, he was not working to abolish imperialist activity in an absolute sense, since, for most of his life after conversion, he thought that the Spanish, as Christians, had a responsibility to proselytize in what was for Spaniards a New World. Enrique Dussel, whom Curcó Cobos describes as “one of liberation philosophy’s greatest proponents,” has encapsulated Las Casas’s thinking this way: “It is illegitimate to impose on the Indians a dominion against their will, but it is equally illicit for the Spanish to escape the responsibility to save the Indians through Christianity.”22 We can say that Las Casas was opposed to political colonialism, but, as would be expected for the time, he favored a kind of religious colonialism.23 It is imperative to add, however, that his strategy of religious expansionism was predicated on nonviolence. In Vera Paz, Guatemala, he tried to evangelize by peaceful means. Here again, the Dominican coincides with the theologian from Rotterdam. Later, as we discuss, in the Tratado de las “doce dudas” (Treatise on the Twelve Doubts) written toward 19  Arias, Retórica, 97.

20  Other clerics sympathetic to Indigenous people were Francisco de Vitoria, Alfonso Toribio de Mogrovejo, Antonio de Valdivieso, Pedro de la Peña, Domingo de Santo Tomás, Bernardino de Sahagún, and the above-​mentioned Zumárraga. Their absence in this study does not diminish their contributions. Some of these theologians, however, were not inclined to support northern European Humanism. Vitoria condemned Erasmus’s works in 1527. See Pagden, The Fall, 61. Easily accessible is van der Kroef, “Francisco de Vitoria and the Nature.” 21  Guibovich Pérez, En defensa de Dios, 35.

22  Curcó Cobos, “Latin American Political Thought,” 74; Dussel, Politics of Liberation, 206. 23  On Las Casas as a colonialist, see Castro, Another Face of Empire.

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the end of the Forty-​Year War he was starting to reject the idea of Spanish sovereignty over Peru, except to spread Christ’s message. In this way, he evolved toward a decolonial position at least from a political perspective. He was concerned with the effects and side effects of imperialism, what we call coloniality, in most situations. Gutiérrez mentions some of these attributes. As mentioned in the previous chapter, for Gutiérrez, these encompass “evasion, dissimulation, lies, and the efforts of power and the bureaucracy,” not unlike the targets of criticism More and Erasmus proffered. Such behaviours worked to cover over and justify imperialistic efforts. Gutiérrez cautions, “Nor were the abuses … acts of individuals alone. They were rooted in the profound injustice of the economic and social system being implanted in the Indies at that time,” or put another way, in “the structural causes of a situation of exploitation and injustice.”24 Before we get to Las Casas’s critical thinking which could be classified as unadulterated Christianity, we must pause for a moment in order to delve into the manner in which Christianity itself was diffused through the Western Hemisphere and about a polemic regarding the same. This pass is necessary because without Christianity there can be no Christian liberation thinking. On Evangelization: Form, Content, and Language; Motolinía vs. Las Casas

Before the possibility of a Christian liberation thinking could occur, the Spanish friars first had to convert a big enough corpus of Indigenous people to Catholicism for people to start thinking Christianly. We will get to Guaman Poma in the latter half of this chapter, and we will get to Las Casas shortly, but here we have to say something of the process and debates on evangelization which eventually paved the way for thinkers like Guaman Poma. The evangelization method had to be set forth. The process was a challenging one and not all held the same view as to how to carry out such a massive undertaking. As the Peruvian scholar Manuel Burga understands it, there were two concerns: the eagerness to weed out pre-​Christian beliefs and the need to outline the proper way to spread Christianity, these being two sides of the same coin.25 At the forefront of this process was the clergy of which there were also two types with their corresponding missions. Irving Leonard explains them nicely: “The Church’s forces were divided into the secular priests entrusted with administering the Sacraments and preventing backsliding among the faithful, and the religious orders such as the Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians, Jesuits and the like, upon whom devolved primarily the tasks of education and proselytizing.”26 Since there was a serious problem concerning the morality of the secular clergy, it would fall to the religious orders to try to refine conditions in a way concomitant with each order’s beliefs and practices so that true evangelization could take place without further loss of souls. 24  Gutiérrez, Las Casas, 9, 52. 25  Burga, Nacimiento, 189.

26  Leonard, Baroque Times in Old Mexico, 44.

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The issue of exactly how to convert New World people responds to New World realities where the Spanish clung to ecclesiastical requirements to the detriment of inner Christianity. In truth, this was also the case, at least initially, with the Indigenous. This is unsurprising because the ecclesiastically inclined Spaniards in their midst provided their immediate model. Charles Gibson quite rightly concludes that the Mexica embraced the “overt aspects of Christian religion,” that is, “the great churches and monastery buildings, the ceremonies, the processions, and the images of the saints.” Marriage and baptism were two important kinds of ceremonies.27 Josep M. Barnadas sums up the consequences for autochthonous peoples in the post-​contact Catholic context: “Outwardly they became Christian, while inwardly they remained adherents of indigenous religious creeds.”28 Why would the Indigenous adapt these outer trappings so readily? Cline suggests that the Nahua were predisposed to conversion, “because the pattern in pre-​Hispanic central Mexico was that the conquered populations took on the gods of the conquering power.”29 Rocío Cortés advances another convincing reason. Christian doctrine and the Spanish language “opened up a space for new forms of subaltern negotiation on the part of the students” taught by the mendicant orders.30 During this period, as Asunción Lavrin emphasizes, despite all the good intentions and efforts, sixteenth-​century New Spain was slow to accept the possibility of “indigenous spirituality.”31 What Lavrin means, of course, is Indigenous Catholic spirituality. Evangelization was advanced by resident or visiting clergy who baptized and catechized, celebrated mass, and reinforced “the notion of Christian marriage to one wife.”32 Conversion was aided by the fact that the conquered peoples—​as Octavio Paz famously asserted in The Labyrinth of Solitude—​abandoned by their gods, their rulers assassinated, had no temporal guidance.33 The rituals endowed structure. For this reason, Ursula Lamb points out, “The credenda—​what they were required to believe—​ of the new faith were not nearly so important to the Indian as the agenda—​what they needed to do, the prescriptions for conduct.”34 This is the issue we now discuss. There were two powerful figures at the center of this polemic, one from the Dominican order, Bartolomé de las Casas, and one from the Franciscan order, Toribio de Motolinía. Because Motolinía was a Franciscan, we could say he was of the same group 27  Gibson, The Aztecs, 100.

28  Barnadas, “The Catholic Church,” 529. Barnadas points out that a similar phenomenon occurred with black people: “the slaves found that practising what African religion they could recall, while hiding behind a façade of conformity to Catholicism, kept alive simultaneously both [by] the hope of liberation and the affirmation of the identity that was being denied them in colonial society.” Barnadas, “The Catholic Church,” 530–​31. 29  Cline, “The Spiritual Conquest Reexamined,” 477. 30  Cortés, “The Colegio Imperial,” 87; also, 95. 31  Lavrin, “Indian Brides of Christ,” 232.

32  Cline, “The Spiritual Conquest Reexamined,” 477. 33  Paz, El laberinto de la soledad, 80. 34  Lamb, “Religious Conflicts,” 537.

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as Father Bernardino de Sahagún who cultivated the template for ethnographic interview and created a large depository of Nahua knowledge. Lee and Brokaw, discussing the Franciscans, explain “they focused on indigenous traditions such as the legal system and religious practices similar to European ones that demonstrated the Indian’s intellectual capacity and their suitability for conversion to Catholicism.”35 As millenarians, the Franciscans saw the evangelical mission as urgent. Las Casas had a different view, one that was more about spirituality. As David Orique notes, it has not been widespread practice to compare Las Casas to other contemporary theologians, such as Motolinía. For him, the former’s theology was primarily prophetic, the latter’s millenarian, and he mentions in this regard Vasco de Quiroga, as Utopian.36 He also takes note that Las Casas and Quiroga had received more formal training, with Las Casas taking two degrees, while Motolinía simply “pursued the required novitiate studies in philosophy and theology.”37 It is not that Las Casas did not also think of similarities between European and Amerindian systems as did Motolinía, it is that he had a distinct view regarding evangelization. The first instinctive way to convert Andeans, Chibchas, Pipils, K’iche’s, and Nahuas to Christianity was to simply smash their sacred areas into smithereens and erect a cross over the rubble. Some of the proponents and perpetrators of this type of violence defended it with the just-​war theories such as those espoused by Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, the father of modern political philosophy after Niccolò Machiavelli. The worst-​case examples include Cortés on his march to Tenochtitlan in Central Mexico, Diego de Landa’s book-​burning in Yucatán, or Father Francisco de Ávilá’s campaigns of extirpation of idolatries during the administration of Viceroy Toledo in Peru.38 Las Casas, without a doubt, opposed such practices and championed the idea that war could not precede the gospel. His program of evangelization was based on peaceful conversion. In the words of Rocío Cortés, he “proposed that, since the indigenous people were human beings with equal natural rights and capabilities to all men, their manners could be changed by merciful persuasion.”39 His program, laid out in the 1534 De unico vocationis modo, translated as The Only Way, had five elements, the fifth of which called for a “life of purity, full of justice, of love of charity, a blameless life, an exemplary, holy life, one that gives no cause for quarrel or offense or harm or trouble” (TOW, 151).40 What Las Casas 35  Lee and Brokaw, “Fernando de Alva Ixtilxochitl,” 9. 36  Orique, “Journey to the Headwaters,” 3.

37  Orique, “Journey to the Headwaters,” 3; “The Life, Labor, and Legacy,” 325. 38  Dussel, Politics of Liberation, 192–​96. 39  Cortés, “The Colegio Imperial,” 87.

40  Hernández observes that once Las Casas got to this point, he maintained the same ideology until his death, “Rasgos modélicos,” 507. In this chapter references to The Only Way will be from the Parish-​Sullivan edition and translation and will be indicated parenthetically and abbreviated as TOW. I could not find the section from which this quote comes in the Millares Carlo-​Hanke edition of Del único modo. The Parish-​Sullivan edition is the more complete of the two. Hernández also notes that The Only Way is the go-​to edition to understand Las Casas’ missionary mission, “Rasgos modélicos,” 507.

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felt with this Erasmian-​like thinking was that evangelization could best be achieved, “not just by word, but also by deed, winning people over gently, persuasively, attracting them” (TOW, 85).41 His views on this issue went against the warmongers of his time. Put even more precisely, he was completely against war; as Ramón Hernández states, in no place, manner, or time would he accept “the smoke of the sulfur of war” (el humo de azufre de la guerra).42 What is more, they brought him into conflict with other peaceful men of the cloth, such as the Franciscan Toribio de Motolinía. We mentioned in ­chapter  3 the spellbinding footprint of Thomas More in Vasco de Quiroga and of Erasmus in Juan de Zumárraga. The latter, the bishop of Mexico, a Franciscan, spurred on by his reading of Erasmus, doubtlessly shared a number of beliefs with his fellow Franciscans during his regency as bishop. Let us take a moment to think of spirit and formula. Lamb encapsulates the notion of division between the body and the soul, between the state and the Church in this way: “The missionary hastened to win the Aztec’s soul for Christ; the conquistador claimed his body for Spain.”43 What we learned about formula and spirit in More raises an eyebrow upon considering what Motolinía (and other Franciscans) proposed. A cursory reading of the “Second Treatise” in his Historia de los indios de Nueva España (History of the Indians of New Spain) reveals a focus on teaching the Nahua how to “persignarse,” or genuflect, and how to recite the “pater noster,” or Our Father. He frames in a positive context how the new converts created crosses, retablos, or altarpieces, began to form processions and how the children danced with joy to celebrate the word of God.44 Finally, in various instances, Motolinía appreciates the boundless numbers of baptisms carried out by the sixty or so Franciscans in Mexico, 300,000, 200,000, 150,000, 100 by each Franciscan, etc.45 At this point we enter the era’s debate about whether it was prudent to baptize such crowds, laying to the side the mysteries of the faith. This was one of the reasons for the discord between the different sects, Augustinians, Dominicans, and Franciscans, a tension which, as Motolinía confirms in his second treatise, resulted from the contrasting baptismal proposals and practices among the orders.46 Similar debates erupted over the teaching of doctrine in Nahuatl or Spanish. Naturally, teaching in an Indigenous language implied imparting the meaning of the faith not just performing a rite. Within the querelle on evangelization dwelled another querelle, this one on the place of Nahuatl, Qheswa, and other Amerindian languages in evangelization practices and in 41  The complete Spanish sentence is rendered thus, “Y como Cristo, a manera de un dechado de las gracias espirituales, enseñó y estableció la forma de predicar o promulgar su ley, no sólo con sus palabras sino también con sus obras, esto es, persuadiendo y atrayendo dulce y suavemente a los hombres” (Del único modo, 209). 42  Hernández, “Las Casas en contra de la guerra,” 279. 43  Lamb, “Religious Conflicts,” 537.

44  Motolinía, Historia de los indios, 80b, 82a. 45  Motolinía, Historia de los indios, 80–​81. 46  Motolinía, Historia de los indios, 86a.

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the larger place of the imperialistic thrust. The debate centered on whether Hispanic instructional institutions should offer original peoples’ languages or obstruct them from the educational model. Leonard observes, “learning was almost wholly neo-​scholastic,” and in fact limited to the trivium which, as Lockhart and Schwartz explain, included theology, law, and medicine. Lockhart and Schwartz note that this trivium was like the curriculum in “Spain in every detail except for the existence of some chairs of Indian Languages.”47 This stemmed from a royal decree issued by King Philip II on September 19, 1580 that proclaimed the need to establish a chair in Nahuatl at the University of Mexico and chairs in Qheswa at the universities in Lima and Quito.48 The Andes represents a revealing case, worthy of a short digression. It was for a time permissible to accept mestizo Qheswa-​speaking priests in the Central Andean region who assuredly evangelized in Qheswa. Blas Valera, a Jesuit, comes to mind, but he was discredited, eventually, probably because of his Qheswa-​centric views.49 By “spiritual” or “intellectual” during this period of the Counter-​Reformation in the Andean sphere, we are primarily talking about evangelization. Consider the University of San Marcos in Lima. Its doors were open to Criollo and Spanish elites. William R. Galt tells us, at least in the beginning, its faculty was exclusively clerical, although shortly afterwards Viceroy Toledo secularized the university without challenging the supremacy of theology in the curriculum. Toledo’s role in university establishment and reform is notable in the Western Hemisphere because of administrative secularization and the fact he had the insight to establish a chair in Qheswa at San Marcos, even before the king called for the creation of these positions.50 That chair was conferred to the Criollo Juan de Balboa, the first American to have received a doctorate from the university.51 Tellingly for the time, Balboa’s degree was in theology, not language, which had to be added to the trivium of theology, law, and medicine. To consider the existence of such a chair can only be paradoxical because authorities did not grant Qheswa Simikuna, or Qheswa-​speakers, admission to the institution until 1697 when a royal cédula granted pure-​blooded Andeans the right to attend classes.52 This was more than a century after San Marcos’s founding. So why did Toledo previously institute the chair in Qheswa? He did so because he realized the Spanish priests did not know Qheswa or other Indigenous languages—​ indeed there were many, see map 3—​needed for evangelization. The use of Indigenous languages suggests that evangelization went beyond rites and customs and moved toward explaining the mysteries of the faith. Hence while the university was an instrument of spiritual conquest, and while cofradías and encomiendas may have been as much about power as they were about religion, there was some content-​based evangelization carried out by bilingual priests spurred on by educators in the Cátedra Qheswa at San 47  Leonard, Baroque Times in Old Mexico, 67; Lockhart and Schwartz, Early Latin America, 160. 48  Lope Blanch, “La lenta propagación de la lengua española,” 98. 49  See Hyland, The Jesuit.

50  Galt, “Life in Colonial Lima,” 249.

51  Holguín Callo, Poder, corrupción y tortura, 37n126. 52  Galt, “Life in Colonial Lima,” 249.

150 Liberation Thinking: The Americas 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

C A LV A AYA V A C A H U A N C A PA M PA

PIURA

M O Y O PA M PA L A M B AY E Q U E

HUAMBO

C H A C H A P O YA

CAJAMARCA HUAMACHUCO

HUACRACHUCO CONCHUCO

CHIMÚ

CHIMÚ

CONTISUY0 CHUMPIVILCA COTAPAMPA OMASAYO AIMARA CHANCA CHOCORVO CHOCLOCOCHA YANAHUARA QUECHUA VILCAPAMPA LARES PAUCARTAMPO CAVINA CHILQUE

HUAMALI H U AY L A P I N C O WANUCO OCRO ATA V I L L O

C H I N C H AY C O C H A

LURIN

YA U Y O A N G A R A 8

PISCO

QU E C H UA

HUANCA

LIMA

ICA NAZCA

11 6

12 13

CUZCO

10 9 VILCA 3 7 SORA 5 4 RUCANA

PA R I N A C O C H A

15 2

14

CANA

C O L L A C O L L A H U AYA COLLAGUA CAVANA OMASUYO UBINA LUPACA A R E Q U I PA

1

AY M A R A C O C H A PA M PA

CARUMA PA C A S A MOQUEHUA

TA R ATA URU

PACIFIC OCEAN

ARICA

CARANGA

CHARCA YA M PA

QUILLAGA

RA

TA R A PA C A

CHICHA LIPE

0

200

400 mi

Map 3. Member nations of Tawantinsuyo during Atahuallpa’s government, corresponding to Peru and Bolivia. From Wikimedia Commons. Map by Erin Greb Cartography.

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Marcos University. Some limited conversion occurred in the encomiendas, and, indeed it is possible there may have been some authentic spirituality in the cofradías and other venues as well. Finally, we must surmise that fluency in Qheswa was important because after conversion priests were in day-​to-​day contact with their parishioners. Gabriela Ramos comments that an important slice of the colonial Church believed that the priest who heard confession, had to understand what he was hearing.53 Returning to our discussion about New Spain, the large numbers of Franciscan baptisms there, naturally, imply that if the outer trappings, the ceremonies, came first, the spirit could eventually follow. Commenting on marriage, Motolinía takes heart in the fact that after conversion scores of Nahua respected Christian norms of monogamy while leaving behind vices such as drunkenness. They become purer in virtue and service to God.54 So, what was the hurry for conversion? John Leddy Phelan suggests that not a few were fearful of the millenarian coming of the Apocalypse.55 Additionally, Motolinía did have a practical justification for his view: How can one priest find the time to baptize, confess, marry, give funeral rites, preach, pray, officiate at mass, learn Nahuatl, and teach Christian doctrine to the young all at the same time? The answer lies with giving up some of the pomp and ceremony customary in Spain.56 One could infer that the mass baptisms were a softening of focus in rites from what was the norm in the metropole, which would imply a reduction in comprehension. Such a large gathering of people in the setting without the age of electricity’s microphones or other electronic equipment to amplify sound would suggest that it would have been difficult to hear the priest’s words. The celebration of mass rites suggests that new converts did not fathom the mysteries of the faith. What it meant, on the contrary, was that the eschatological fear of the end of time caused a great rush to conversation with a less-​than-​perfect concern for the teaching of the mysteries of the faith. In Del único modo de atraer a todos los pueblos a la verdadera religión, or The Only Way, Bartolomé de las Casas took exactly the opposite track, that they clergy needed to explain the mysteries of the faith first. He sets it straight that Christ “ordered baptism to accompany repentance. In baptism, repentance occurs through confession, the putting aside of old evils, of unbelief” (TOW, 81).57 One of the aspects Las Casas is getting at is that the rites of Christianity have no meaning if there is no consent, and consent must be informed and be freely obtained. In The Only Way, Las Casas supports this view by bringing into the conversation the law “Nihil consensui,” which states: “Nothing contradicts consent more than force or fear—​and consent is the basis for judgment in good faith.” Las Casas causally links this idea with the acts or rites when he tells us that 53  Ramos, Muerte y conversión, 114.

54  Motolinía, Historia de los indios, 245a–​b. 55  Phelan, The Millennial Kingdom.

56  Motolinía, Historia de los indios, 187a–​b.

57  “Y en la penitencia incluyó Christo y prescribió el bautismo; porque en él se hace la penitencia por la confesión y deposición de los antiguos males e impiedades, y va acompañada al mismo tiempo de la remisión de los pecados” (Las Casas, Del único modo, 202).

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priests cannot carry out “certain transactions” without consent. These include faith, marriage, baptism, voting, and jurisdiction (TOW, 96).58 It seems a strange strategy to include faith with baptism and marriage in the category “transactions,” rendered in Spanish as “negocios,” the latter two being sacraments and hence formal, and the first being God-​inspired or spiritual. Yet we can appreciate this construction if Las Casas’s view that the spirit precedes matter in all “transactions” is based on consent and takes on the qualities of goodness. This goodness expands from the temporal sacraments of the Church and reformulates civil institutions such as democracy, limited as it was in Las Casas time, and the legal system. In the subordination of rites to spirit, Las Casas coincides with an Erasmus troubled by the hollowness of ceremony. In his Education of the Christian Prince, the scholar from Rotterdam talks of “Empty gestures,” which are offered, and how there is too much concern among the nobility for “statues, wax masks, family trees.”59 While Erasmus is referring to goodness that comes from the depths within, he explicitly links this understanding to Christianity in a pure form. Erasmus warns the prince, “do not think that Christ is found in mere ceremonies.”60 In his quest for a pure Christianity, Las Casas was perhaps an Erasmist at heart. An Early Modern Liberation Thinker

The concept of justice and the preeminence of Jesus Christ over temporal matters make Las Casas a kind of liberation theologian avant la lettre, although, as we will see, there is a problem in seeing him as being before his time. His sixteenth-​century liberation thought should not be confused with twentieth-​century Liberation Theology (in this book capitalized) as it developed after the Vatican II Council (1962–​1965), and two gatherings of the Latin American Episcopal Conference, at Medellín in (1967) and Puebla (1979), although surely, there can be myriad liberation theologies in many times and places. Walter Mignolo hints at this in an interview with Ignacio López-​Calvo regarding decolonial projects when he stated, “Theologies of liberation are a diverse sets of projects.”61 While there are theologies of liberation in many times and places, certain determining constants are found in the genealogies of this kind of thinking such as a concern for the poor, the model of Jesus Christ, and even scholastic elements. To offer one example, Gabriel Daily reminds us that Vatican II “expressed its continuing esteem for Thomasism,” the thought and philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–​1274).62 Put another way, strands of medieval theology could make it into the twentieth century and strands of liberation theology can already be found during the sixteenth century. 58  Las Casas, Del único modo, 407. 59  Erasmus, The Education, 14. 60  Erasmus, The Education, 18.

61  López-​Calvo, “ ‘Coloniality is not over, it is all over,’ ” 178. 62  Daly, “Revelation,” 36.

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Yet these are not just random points on the timeline. What the sixteenth century had in common with the twentieth is that they were both defined by immense social disruption. England and France had just gone through the Hundred Years War, and Europe was transforming itself from the medieval period to the Renaissance. Columbus’s voyage and Vespucci’s writing had proven that there were four continents suggesting that Christianity mysterious relationship with the number three was not infallible. England, France, and Spain were ruled by absolutist monarchies, and the last country’s king Charles had taken control over the Low Countries. And Spain was garnering new continental power as it forged a new transatlantic empire. The twentieth century was a time defined by the cold war and Latin America felt pulled in two directions between the US and the USSR. The US had shown it was not above overthrowing governments that were trying to give land to peasants (Guatemala in 1954) or universal medical care and education to its populace (Cuba after 1959). There were revolutionary groups fighting governments such as the Tupamaros in Uruguay, and the MR-​13 group in Guatemala. More importantly, the exploitation of urban workers and agrarian campesinos intensified. The details of each period were different, but the intensity of social change was mind-​boggling for people living during those two centuries. In the throes of the first period some strands of liberation theology erupted precisely when Las Casas and Erasmus were active, and indeed they contributed to those strands.63 Liberation thinking, a broader category, also appeared in sixteenth-​century works such as Thomas More’s Utopia, and in the early seventeenth century when the lay theologian Guaman Poma de Ayala seems to have penned his work. A wide array of scholars has explored distinctive features of Las Casas’s life and work.64 One way of viewing him is as an early modern liberation theologian, though researchers have infrequently seen the need to look at him contextually with More, Erasmus or Guaman Poma. To consider these four intellects together sets up a framework to study a four-​part prism of Renaissance thought hitherto only partially explored in comparative fashion. José Ortega gives us something to think about regarding the timeliness of Las Casas’s activities. That is, he underscores that twentieth-​century discernment included an awareness of history and of prior discernment. He writes: “it is evident that the Bishop of Chiapas’ militant activism turns him into a forerunner of the movement in the Church that began during the 1960s known as the ‘theology of liberation’ ” (es evidente que el militante activismo del obispo de Chiapas le convierte en un adelantado de movimiento de la Iglesia iniciado en la década de los sesenta y conocido como la ‘teología de la liberación’).65 Put another way, the Jesuit liberation theologian José Aldunate states plainly, “Medellin adopted the spirit of men such as Bartolomé de las Casas.”66 Defending 63  It is not unusual to describe Las Casas as a theologian. Valdivia Giménez, “Indiscutible es la condición de teólogo de Bartolomé de las Casas,” Llamado a la misión pacífica, 46.

64  Abellán, Adorno, Arias, Brion, Gutiérrez, Hanke, Parish, Pérez Fernández, Rabasa, Vickery, and Zamora are representative. 65  Ortega, “Las Casas,” 67.

66  Aldunate, “Human Rights,” 300.

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the oppressed during the sixteenth century is not unlike opting for the poor in post-​ Vatican II theologies, even if the periods in time are centuries apart. Gustavo Gutiérrez explains that calling Las Casas a “liberation theologian” calls “attention to certain important aspects of his thought and the permanent liberative dimension of Christian faith.” For Gutiérrez, a theology does not need to be “modern” to be liberation, it must simply be a theology of liberation. He remarks that viewing Las Casas as being “ahead of his time”—​adelantado—​is “an outgrowth of the arrogance of the modern spirit, which regards itself as the final stage of history and which distorts past reality accordingly.” He adds, “these persons [‘of the modern spirit’] argue as if only now has the gospel finally come to present us with its urgent requirements of justice.”67 Gutiérrez, of course, is completely right, especially from a perspective that considers the Bible’s wisdom timeless. Additionally, if we bring in Dussel here, Las Casas was indeed modern if we consider that modernity begins with 1492. Las Casas’s decolonial deliberation, described by Dussel as a “surprisingly critical and modern position,” institutes modern liberation thinking at the onset of modernity. For this reason, Dussel describes his writing as “the first critical discourse of all modernity.”68 Las Casas was writing at a special time. The Renaissance, for example, saw the birth of modernity in other ways too, such as Cervantes’s new way of writing novels which allowed for human subjectivity in interpreting them. Thus, the second half of William Egginton’s book title, How Cervantes Ushered in the Modern World, indicates the sea-​change taking place at that juncture. It is significant that the person who coined the phrase “liberation theology” discusses Las Casas in this context. We are not saying, however, that by framing Las Casas as an early modern liberation theologian, he was the first or the second, in this regard, since there could be a number of theologians of this ilk in the thousand years that preceded him, and even in the Caribbean in the years right before he had his conversion. We are simply stating he was a liberation theologian before this category and expression had been coined. He favored Indigenous people so much that he incurred the wrath of rich and powerful Spaniards over many centuries; and he garnered the respect of theologians such as Domingo de Santo Tomás during the sixteenth century, and Aldunate and Gutiérrez during the twentieth. Gutiérrez is humble in this regard since he himself may have coined the expression in 1968 with a lecture he gave in Chimbote, Peru, titled “A Theology of Liberation.”69 The expression may have come into English in a Washington Post article, dated March 1, 1970.70 As previously stated, we are interested here in a certain variety of liberation theorization as developed by four minds active in the period beginning with Utopia’s publication in 1516 and ending the year after Guaman Poma seems to have finished Nueva crónica y buen gobierno, in 1616, the year he passed away, completing a 100-​year span that began with More’ celebrated work and ends with the conclusion of Guaman Poma’s 67  Gutiérrez, Las Casas, 8.

68  Dussel, The Politics of Liberation, 197, 201.

69  Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation, 175n1. Indeed the Oxford English Dictionary attributes the expression to him. Accessed May 1, 2014. 70  Oxford English Dictionary, accessed online May 1, 2014.

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astonishing life. Again, it is logical to hold Las Casas’s theology as liberating, even if it came centuries before Liberation Theology, a movement during the twentieth. We can hold similar views of Erasmus, Thomas More, and Guaman Poma, although each is different from Las Casas in his own way. Theologizing Liberation Decolonially

Las Casas was not the first to preach pure Christian values in Abya Yala. Father Antonio de Montesinos condemned the settlers’ un-​Christian habits from his pulpit in Hispaniola in 151171 and Columbus himself in his diary’s landfall entry of October 11 (which Las Casas would transcribe), despite his imperialist attitude and actions, suggested conversion through love instead of by force.72 Clerics such as Montesinos and Las Casas had to go against elites of influence both inside and outside ecclesiastical structures. For the men of the cloth as for encomenderos in the New World, and as for power players in the Spanish peninsula there were everyday opportunities for temporal venality, and worse, for simply continuing with things the way they were. It would take men with strong souls, strong minds, and spiritually fortified courage to try to change things. When the first Franciscans were on the Island of Hispaniola, they made some limited incursions into Spaniards’ lives by declaring it a sin to have Indigenous women as concubines. They went straight to the Commander insisting that they set the women free or marry them.73 When the Dominicans arrived, Raymond Marcus infers, they went even further, trying to impose their morals and ethics on the Spaniards, even the powerful ones, the crown’s appointees.74 As early as his 1516 Memorial de remedios, Las Casas seemed to be arguing for separate communities for the Indigenous in the Caribbean. He asks, “that your lordship command making a community in each town and city of the Spaniards in which not one citizen have Indians who are known or indicated” (que vuestra señoría mande hacer una comunidad en cada villa y ciudad de los españoles, en que ningún vecino tenga indios conoçidos ni señalados). In this first known writing of Las Casas, we see him start to set up the idea of communities that could protect Indigenous people. He also asks the king (probably Ferdinand II of Aragón, recently deceased) to order that the Indigenous peoples “do not serve or work in any area” (que en ninguna cosa sirvan ni trabajen). We see him imploring, that your most reverend lordship order that, in those islands, in each one of them, a religious person be assigned who will be zealous of service to God, Your Highness, and the population on the land, and who will work to obtain the utility and conservation of the Indians with much vigilance and care.

(Que vuestra reverendísima señoría mande poner en aquellas islas, en cada una dellas, una persona religiosa, celosa del servicio de dios y de Su Alteza y de la poblaçión de 71  For more on Montesinos, see Hanke, The Spanish Struggle, 17–​22; also Pagden, The Fall, 30–​41. For Las Casas’s view of Montesinos, see ­chapter  4 of his Historia de las Indias, 3:13–​16. 72  Colón, Textos y documentos, 30. 73  Las Casas, Historia, II, 41, 152.

74  Marcus, “El primer decenio,” 112.

156 Liberation Thinking: The Americas la tierra, y que procure la utilidad y conservación de los indios con mucha vigilancia e cuidado.)

In another place he seems to accept the Indigenous working in “mines” (minas) and “farming” (labranzas), but he “ups the ante” and affirms “that each community should have … ten clerics, that they be distributed in the pueblos de indios” (que cada comunidad ha de tener son diez clérigos, que estén repartidos en los pueblos de los indios).75 In The Only Way, written later in life, Las Casas saw the temporal, “the kingdoms of the worldly, the carnal, the myopic,” as being “time bound and evanescent” (TOW, 94).76 Only through reorienting these worldly realms could they become good. For Las Casas, “Christ’s ultimate purpose was to aim His kingdom below at the kingdom above, the everlasting kingdom” (TOW, 94).77 It is in this context where we can understand that the Dominican friar wanted to reorient completely Spain’s role in the New World. Ivonne del Valle W. puts it this way: “For Las Casas it was clear that nothing in the Indies belonged to the Spanish and that the only thing they had a right to do was to evangelize.”78 This is a limitation to Las Casas’s decolonial theology, but during that time and place, on the heels of the Reconquista, face-​to-​face with the “Turks” and the persistence of some threads of medieval thought, his thinking could not be outside of Christianity’s interests. Undoubtedly it was the Christian thrust of his decolonial thinking that gave him access to the king’s court. Otherwise he would have mostly been a “voice in the wilderness.” Las Casas laid out a five-​element program of evangelization in The Only Way. The fifth calls for a “life of purity, full of justice, a love of charity, a blameless life, an exemplary, holy life, one that gives no cause for quarrel or offense or harm or trouble” (TOW, 151).79 This then is the foundation for Las Casas’s theology, which can be carried out in a day-​to-​day manner. Seek purity first, search for justice, set an exemplary example, and evangelization will take place without violence. There is no need to blame the Indigenous for what Spaniards are “suffering,” there is no need for quarrels. People need a “life of purity,” only possible with a wholesome Christianity, free from the impediments of worldly desires. The wars against Indigenous peoples, their proximate annexation into the Spanish Empire, and the encomienda’s institution were missions of the body, not the spirit. For this reason, Las Casas was appalled at the way Spaniards treated Indigenous bodies, so poorly indeed, that many ceased to exist, no longer able to contain the spirit. Las Casas cared that his compatriots worried only infrequently about the dissemination of this pure form of Christianity, and as noted above, that they typically only took interest in the rituals and procedures of it. Spaniards used terror tactics as they effected a forced, but symbolic destruction of idols and other remnants of Nahua, Mayan, Andean, and other religions. 75  Las Casas, Memorial de remedios (1516), Obras completas, 13:24, 23, 26, 37.

76  “el reinado de los hombres profanes, carnales o temporales se ordena a un bien temporal y transitorio,” Las Casas, Del único modo, 404.

77  “su fin y su intención es ordenar inmediatamente su reinado y su régimen al reino celestial y eterno,” Las Casas, Del único modo, 404. 78  del Valle W, “José de Acosta,” 56.

79  I could not find the section from which this quote comes in the Millares Carlo-​Hanke edition of Del único modo.

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For Las Casas, the sole reason for “conquering” the newly found lands was to bring the word of Jesus so that when the king’s new subjects died, they could go to heaven. This is based on the original authority of passage the papacy had conceded to the Spanish. In the Tratado de las “doce dudas,” Las Casas affirms the following: The sole and ultimate reason the Holy See conceded the supreme principality and the imperial government of that new world of the Indies to the Kings of Castile and León was the preaching of the Gospel and the propagation of the Christian religion and its faith and the conversion of those natural peoples. (La causa única y final de conceder la Sede Apostólica el principado supremo y superioridad imperial de aquel nuevo orbe de las Indias a los Reyes de Castilla y León, fue la predicación del Evangelio y dilatación de la fe y religión cristiana y conversión de aquellas gentes naturales.)80

More than simply trying to set up a spiritual empire as Castro and Cro would have it, Las Casas wanted the state to reorient the nature of the Conquest and the encomienda system in accordance with the more spiritual motives for having Spaniards in the Americas.81 As theologian Gutiérrez explains, the encomienda was a place contrary to God: “Inasmuch as the goods acquired by the encomenderos are the fruit of an unjust, oppressive regime based on the Indians’ labor, that acquisition, in moral terms, is theft and robbery.”82 Such practices needed to be suppressed to get the Spanish mission back on track. The reversing of spiritual decadence would, in time, remedy temporal deficiencies. From the perspective elaborated in Historia de las Indias, compliance with the laws of Jesus should take precedence over earthly matters, even in the face of royal disfavor.83 Las Casas advanced a simple yet innovative concept: the equality of the spirit would set right the material injustices such as the corvée labor system. With religion reduced to exterior aspects and practices, the unvarnished meaning of Jesus Christ was lost. In the razor-​sharp discourse of the Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias, or Devastation of the Indies, Las Casas decries that from the beginning, “Spaniards have not taken the care to ensure that the faith of Jesus Christ was preached to those peoples” (no se ha tenido mas cuydado por los españoles de procurar que les fuesse predicada la fee de jesu christo a aquellas gentes).84 Las Casas believed that “those peoples” were not irrationales in the sense that Francisco de Vitoria used the term. Because they were not, they were “capable and docile enough to receive all good doctrine, the most able to receive our sacred Catholic faith” (muy capaces e dóciles para toda buena doctrina, aptísimos para recebir nuestra sancta fe católica).85 Not only were they competent to receive Christ’s faith, there would be grave 80  Las Casas, Tratado de las “doce dudas,” Obras, 11.2:51.

81  Castro, Hacia Cervantes, 100; Cro, Realidad y utopía, 41. See Menéndez Pidal, El padre Las Casas. 82  Gutiérrez, Las Casas, 41.

83  Las Casas, Historia, 1:440.

84  Las Casas, Tratados, 1:192.

85  Las Casas, Tratados, 1:17. For Pagden, Vitoria held four categories of thought on Indigenous peoples possessing “true dominium over their affairs.” In the second, their humanity could be denied only if they were foolish (amentes) or irrational beings (irrationales). He concludes, “it was

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consequences if the faith were not “preached to those peoples.” Las Casas lamented the abuse of king’s temporal power and Spaniards’ lack of interest in the soul of the king’s new subjects. This hypocrisy created a situation in which “so many souls … are burning in hell” (tan innumerables animas … están ardiendo en los infiernos).86 For Las Casas, then, the temporal’s predominance damaged the spiritual. To compensate, he proposed a return to a spiritual life for all people, regardless of ethnic origin. To prove forced conversion was morally wrong, he embarked in 1537 on an experiment of peaceful conversion at Tezulutlán in Guatemala, known at that time as Tierra de Guerra because the Maya would not submit to the Spaniards. This was the praxis of the theories enumerated in his The Only Way.87 As with 1970s Liberation Theology, Las Casas cared about equality. Edmundo O’Gorman reaches a provocative conclusion that has some validity about the concept of equality in Las Casas. For the Mexican philosopher, the equality which Las Casas conceived is not linked to the metaphysical plane of the divine but to the physical realm of the natural. Las Casas’ notion is in embryonic form the equality of the philosophers of the Enlightenment. It is derived from a concept of Humanity that was based on immanence and whose correlate is Nature, as opposed to the transcendental concept of Christianity whose correlate is God.88

Whereas Plato saw natural reality as a copy of the soul (read god), Aristotle, as James A. Weisheipl clarifies so well, “tried to maintain both the priority of Soul and the reality of ‘nature’ as a primary, spontaneous source of characteristic movement and rest.”89 By locating the “soul” and “nature” in the same plane, Aristotle, perhaps without realizing it, created an unhindered path toward a hermeneutics that would interpret the Cosmos as an immanent construction. Even so, it is more likely that the Dominican’s thought was immanent by conceiving the divinity of God through his earthly son Christ, thereby perceiving the equality of humans as based in Nature (read immanent Christ). This is a little different from Erasmus who saw nature instilling in people “the tendency to be dissatisfied with what they have,” creating potential inequities between more-​selfish and less-​selfish people. Classical philosophy colored Las Casas’ exegesis of Christ, which it had to since he was a humanist in the Renaissance sense of that term. He had studied Aristotle as a defense against the doctrines of Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda and he conceivably developed his understanding of the “Philosopher” through Saint Thomas Aquinas’ clear to Vitoria from the reports he had received from America … that the Indians were not simply irrationales or some other species of beastmen.” See his The Fall, 68, and Francisco de Vitoria’s Relectio. 86  Las Casas, Tratados, 1:150.

87  The most comprehensive treatment to date on this endeavor is Bataillon, “La Vera Paz.” Abellán offers a concise overview in “La experiencia.” 88  O’Gorman, “Lewis Hanke,” 568.

89  Weisheipl, “Aristotle’s Concept of Nature,” 143. His emphasis.

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writings, another one of his sources.90 This process would again detach the spiritual from the temporal when giving greater weight to the soul. Las Casas’s vocation of liberation, then, was to bring the “Conquest” back to its original purpose, which he saw as its chief goal: to spread the Gospel. With respect to his adherence to the notion of immanence, we can envisage Las Casas as a precursor to the deism of the Enlightenment. Las Casas spurned the Peripatetic theories used to defend the oppression of the inhabitants of the Indies. He rebuffed Ginés de Sepúlveda’s traditional philosophical apology for “just war” and the shackling of the masses because he desired to allow, as Christ did, all humans into the temple of equality.91 He began to change his views to coincide with what he learned based on his observations of real-​life conditions and on his deeper and broader readings: at first, he had encomienda slaves; he then repudiated the encomienda to save the Indigenous. For a brief time, he embraced ongoing African chattel slavery as a way of liberating the Indigenous. That interval in his intellectual development lasted until he studied Portuguese history in Africa, and then he pounced against it too. Given that Las Casas’s viewpoint evolved, his egalitarianism is even more striking. We can explain his intolerance of other religions as stemming from an environment that could question neither the king nor the pope’s authority within the context of empire even in the face of the unbridled corruption and disorder in the colonies that caused him to desire conformity of spirit, leading to Procrustean attitudes regarding religious freedom. Predictably, he could not accept religions such as the Nahua one, as when in the Historia de las Indias he described Moctezuma, the Mexicatl tlatoani, as a “man who was lacking knowledge of God.”92 Las Casas could not have known what the seventeenth-​ century chronicler Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxóchitl assumed in his Historia de la nación Chichimeca, that the Nahua believed or were coming to believe in a monotheistic deity referred to as the “unknown God, creator of all things and originator of them” (Dios no conocido, criador de todas las cosas y principio de todas ellas) and then as the “hidden God and creator of all things” (Dios incógnito y criador de todas las cosas). If this deity, sometimes referred to as In Tloque in Nahuaque, existed in the mind of Nahua pipiltin, or nobles, we could extrapolate that Moctezuma had knowledge “of God,” just not the Christian God.93 Nor could Las Casas have known about the Andean deity Pachakamaq described by another author roughly contemporary to Alva Ixtlilxóchitl. I am referring to Inca Garcilaso de la Vega who in his Royal Commentaries refers to Pachakamaq also as the “unknown God” (dios no conocido).94 Pedro Cieza de León, writing half a century 90  Aquinas wrote extensively on Aristotle’s works. For a list and relative dating of his Aristotelian exegesis see Gilson, The Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, 7 and after.

91  For the Las Casas-​Sepúlveda polemic, see all works by Hanke, and for consideration of them, O’Gorman, “Lewis Hanke.” Also helpful is Quirk, “Some Notes.” 92  Las Casas, Historia de las Indias, 3:444, “hombre que carecía de conocimiento de Dios.” 93  Alva Ixtlilxóchitl, Obras históricas, 2:125, 126.

94  Garcilaso de la Vega, Comentarios reales, II, ii; II, iv. Discussed in Ward, Decolonizing Indigeneity, 122–​24.

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before Garcilaso de la Vega, in 1553, tells us that the “Qulla nation” (nación de los Collas) worshiped Teqsi Wiraqocha (Ticeuiracocha) and that they described him as “the maker of all things” (el hacedor de todas las cosas).95 Wiraqocha and Pachakamaq may be monotheistic conceptualizations arrived at individually, or ideas may have flown back and forth in the wake of Pachacutiq’s conquest of the Aymara-​speaking Qulla during the fifteenth century. What is interesting here resides in the monotheism that these Andean and Nahua beliefs suggest and in the inability of the Spanish priests to comprehend it as such. There is yet another example of this kind of theology. In a questionnaire filled out in the town of Motul, Yucatán, Catholic clerics reported that the people there “had knowledge of one sole God who created heaven and earth” (tenian conocimiento de solo un Dios que crio el cielo y la tierra).96 Upon reading this document, Víctor Montejo, Mayan and Mayanist, assigns a name to the deity, Hunab’ Ku’h, which means Only One-​God.97 Cieza de León, Alva Ixtlilxóchitl, Inca Garcilaso, and the Yucatec questionnaire were drawing on diverse traditions from distinct geographic spaces, but their monotheistic argument seems to congeal. In various regions, therefore, central Mexico, Cuzco, and Yucatán, Indigenous communities were monotheistic or becoming monotheistic. This is what the consonance of In Tloque in Nahuaque, Pachakamaq, Wiraqocha, and Hunab’ Ku’h suggest. Las Casas could not get to this way of thinking nor could he ever recognize this way of thinking as valid. Nevertheless, from the perspective of human equality, Las Casas was not intolerant: he accepted Amerindians as humans. The central problem for true Christianity, again as considered in Matthew, was that the exploitation of the faith for political purposes blatantly disregarded Christ’s precept proscribing rendering unto God that which is God’s while rendering unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s. According to Las Casas, the Church was an instrument for the conversion of the Indigenous, for the spiritual betterment of Spaniards, and hence for the creation of a new society. There is a central difference between More and Erasmus, and Las Casas. The two northern Europeans were writing in the relatively static medium of Europe (after the Hundred Years War, but during the Reformation) with established temporal and spiritual laws, unfair as they may have been. The Spaniard wrote in a milieu that, given the constant tension between the European, African, and Amerindian ways of being, remained in a quasi-​permanent state of chaos, or at best, could only retain the appearance of conformity over a boiling pot of slavery and other forms of coerced labor and consequently, of rebellion. For Las Casas, the Church then, becomes the order, stability, and direction that could guide society. This brings us back to the idea of local “communities” that he talked about in his 1516 Memorial de remedios, each of which should have a contingent of priests, because as he would state in the Tratado de las “doce dudas,” the Spanish sovereigns’ sole role in the New World was “the propagation of the Christian religion.” This Tratado brings these proposals and beliefs to their ultimate consequences 95  Cieza de León, Crónica del Perú: primera parte, fol. 62 [lii], p. 136. 96  Colección de documentos inéditos, 78. 97  Montejo, “Mayalogue,” chap. 1.

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when Las Casas finally affirms that Europeans need Amerindians’ permission to be in the New World. He writes: It is worth saying, considering rights and proper circumstances, in order for our kings to acquire with legitimacy the just possession of supreme lordship over the Indies, there is a necessary requirement that the consensus of kings and people of that world intervenes, that is they give their consent to the institution and largesse that the Holy See has authorized to our kings.

(Para que con legitimidad, vale decir considerando los derechos y las debidas circunstancias, nuestros ínclitos Reyes alcancen la justa posesión del señorío supremo sobre las Indias, es requisito necesario que intervenga el consenso de los reyes y pueblos de aquel mundo, o sea que éstos den su consentimiento a la institución o donación otorgada a nuestros Reyes por la Sede Apostólica.)98

This is a complicated idea. We can certainly say that Las Casas still accepted the idea of Spanish expansion as a kind of mandate, but now the local lords of the Indies must authorize it. Las Casas should have known that each sixteenth-​century nation, what we might call polity in our time, would have reacted differently to proposals such as this one. In the Peruvian civil wars of the middle of the sixteenth century Wankakuna and Waylakuna aided the Spanish in their battles against the Inkakuna, the Wankakuna during the initial Spanish penetration and the Waylakuna during the Siege of Lima. Regional struggles with deep roots informed the nuances and complexities of Indigenous–​Spanish relations. For the purposes of illustration, it would be like the Inka ruler negotiating with authorities in Portugal, Catalunya, Galicia, Euskadi, and Castile at the same time. It would have been quite challenging. We most certainly could not expect all kings and kingdoms giving their consent in harmony, especially considering the patchwork of nations that existed. As a result of Las Casas conflating all the diverse Indigenous nations into the homogenizing category of “las Indias,” he does not seem to consider the possibility of a diversity of interests. For this reason, we cannot catalogue Las Casas a purely decolonial activist, at least not in a geopolitical sense. Nevertheless, his proposal stands as an extraordinary advance over the premise of “just war” into unexplored legal and ideological territory. It represents an evolution of thought that put Las Casas beyond most of his contemporaries. His thinking suggests a diplomatic expansion, but does not give up on expansion because, in his mind, God trumps nationness. The Church, then, is the temporal medium that justified the end, which was spiritual, which means we can categorize Las Casas as a decolonial activist in the theological mode, but only later in life in the political or ethnosocial mode.

Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala’s Decolonial Reasoning

Why would we readers in the Global North dominated by the social and philosophical constructs of the Anglosphere be interested in the knowledge brokered by diverse Indigenous cultures? For Arturo Arias there is a simple truth, “Indigenous knowledges are crucial.” This is because by reading and understanding Indigenous authors, we 98  Las Casas, Tratado de las “doce dudas,” Obras completas, 11.2:65.

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can break through “both globally and in Abiayala.”99 That is, we can break through to attain new ways of understanding the Indigenous in Abya Yala, the Kuna name for “America,” which is beautiful, and, we can break through to them, and acquire new ways of understanding our own actions through history that have created the post-​industrial wasteland, which could be viewed as another example of the unprecedented as Zuboff describes it.100 Indigenous knowledge may hold the key, or one of the keys, to saving the planet. Recognizing what was done, can help us to find a way out the environment–​ economy conundrum in order to preserve the Earth’s lands and atmosphere. Indeed, in our time, Liberation Theology has become concerned with humanity’s negative effect on the biosphere. This is the object of a very recent book by my Loyola colleague Daniel P. Castillo, An Ecological Theology of Liberation, which seeks to understand the “relationship between salvation, liberation, and care for creation.”101 Creation here, of course, is God’s creation, the earth. Liberation Theology has begun to respond to a possible planetocide. Theologians are not the only ones concerned of course. Another locus of ecological activity lies with the world’s indigenous and, of interest for our avenue of exploration here, with the indigenous of Abya Yala. There has been so much recognition of this fact that an acronym has been coined, IEK, for Indigenous Ecological Knowledge.102 Here though, we turn toward autochthonous thought not during our time when we are all breathing the vapors a polluted atmosphere, but at the moment modernity came to Abya Yala, when at the moment of the institutionalization of mercantile and capitalist economies, locals were concerned with preserving the Andean way of life, possibly understood as kasay in the Huarochirí manuscript. Kasay’s multiple connotations, Karl S. Zimmerer explains, range from “existence and subsistence to appraisals of health and well-​being.”103 There can be no indigenous approach to ecology if there is no indigenous culture left on the planet. This brings us to Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala who was active during the time the Huarochirí manuscript was composed. This author can be understood to be one of the first organic intellectuals of Spanish America who identified not as a mestizo (as Inca Garcilaso de la Vega) or as a Criollo (as Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl), but as an Indigenous person. Thus, he may have been less inclined to try to accommodate with Spanish and forming Criollo power. This is the way Gonzalo Lamana views him, as someone writing against a colonial power based on Spanish privilege.104 Furthermore, Lamana explains, unlike other texts that flowed from Spain and or Spaniards, this one is good not just for Spaniards and the colonial system, it is good for everybody who reads 99  Arias, Recovering Lost Footprints, 2:2.

100  There are dangerous tendencies both in the earth, “the destruction of continental crust” (Spencer, Roberts, and Santosh, “Growth”) and in the atmosphere (Incropera, Climate Change). See also Blackman and Veit, “Titled Amazon Indigenous Communities.” 101  Castillo, An Ecological Theology of Liberation, 38.

102  See McCarter et al., “The Challenges of Maintaining Indigenous Ecological Knowledge.”

103  See Zimmerer, “The Indigenous Andean Concept of ‘Kawsay,’ the Politics of Knowledge and Development, and the Borderlands of Environmental Sustainability in Latin America.” 104  Lamana, “Enseñar y ver,” 150.

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it.105 It is good for a whole array of personages who populated the social landscape. Lamana mentions just a few: priests, caciques, corregidores, miners, “Indians,” and other people.106 Notice that these authorities were European: priests and corregidores, and were Indigenous:  caciques and “Indians.” Such a social configuration forces a leveling out of hierarchies. Why read Guaman Poma today? Because he was one of the continent’s first decolonial thinkers, a mindset we can also describe as liberationism.107 There are all kinds of hierarchies still in play today, economic, political, social, and even communicative. Efforts to respond to the unprecedented can help us to address those hierarchies. Guaman Poma was able to get ahead of the unprecedented because he did not face a sudden and unforeseen disaster. He was living the aftermath of the disaster day by day since the day when growing up he became aware of his surroundings and had the time, took the time, to consider the details of the disaster. While there is a decoloniality to Guaman Poma de Ayala’s thinking, we must remember that decolonial is our term. Although Guaman Poma did want to delink from Spanish imperialism, he did not want to do so from Catholicism, which also originated from Europe. That inverse manner of thinking—​rejecting imperialism but accepting Catholicism—​suggests the complexities of the colonial situation. Rosenthal looks with trepidation at approaches that frame Guaman Poma as someone solely interested in decolonial activities. However, she recognizes that “His writing and illustrations indubitably offer unique insights into the lived experience of colonialism.”108 That “lived experience” can seem contradictory—​rejecting imperialism, but accepting Catholicism, itself a kind of imperialism. But it was not contradictory, I think, in the mind of Guaman Poma. Here we will consider his complex thinking on this matter, which was a form of liberation thinking, not entirely different from Las Casas’s brand of thought. Guaman Poma de Ayala labored on his Nueva crónica y buen gobierno (New Chronicle and Good Government), a massive missive to King Philip III, for more than a decade.109 He was the first literate Peruvian to rise up and write against the Spanish invasion, although he did so several decades after the execution of Thupaq Amaru, which signaled the conclusion of the Forty-​Years War.110 Nelson Maldonado-​Torres explains that his “chronicle 105  Lamana, “Enseñar y ver,” 154. 106  Lamana, “Enseñar y ver,” 151.

107  Lamana, “Enseñar y ver,” 150, also describes Guaman Poma as “decolonial.”

108  Rosenthal, “Gaumán Poma,” 79. Rosenthal takes issue with Mignolo’s decolonial analysis of Guaman Poma. 109  Earlier it was thought that Guaman Poma worked on his manuscript primarily between 1613 and 1615 (Adorno, Cronista y príncipe, 42), but considering recent research conducted by Lohmann Villena, Adorno now establishes that frame as occurring between 1600 and 1615 (Polemics of Possession, 31–34).

110  Porras Barrenechea notes that Titu Cusi Yupanqui’s manuscript, maintained at the Escorial Library, the “Instrucción del Inga don Diego de Castro Titu Cussi Yupangi,” is dated February 6, 1570, Los cronistas, 550–​51. Markham suggests that Juan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti-​Yamqui Salcamaygua wrote his “Account of the Antiquities of Peru” around 1620, “Introduction,” viii. While one could assume both texts were composed as a form of resistance to Spanish imperialism, neither takes on the Empire in the open way Guaman Poma does.

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is a counternarrative that challenged the views about time, space, and subjectivity that were unfolding, and illustrates well the understanding of colonization, tied to ‘discovery’ as it was.”111 As both Rosenthal and Maldonado-​Torres recognize, Guaman Poma both understands and lives colonialism. Without personally feeling and seeing the results of Spanish imperialism, he would have written a quite different “letter,” or perhaps he would have written no letter at all. Nevertheless, he did live and understand colonialism and we do have his chronicle in the form it came down to us. He seems to think of his text as the first Indigenous-​authored one since he titled it the Primer, or “first” new chronicle, because Titu Cussi Yupangi’s “Relación,” the Instrucción al licenciado Lope García de Castro, dated 1570, would most likely have been unknown to him.112 If he became aware of the first part of Inca Garcilaso de la Vega’s Royal Commentaries, it would have probably been too late to have had much impact because it appeared in Lisbon in 1609. Distribution networks were not very sophisticated, or the edition met some resistance, because, as historian Flores Galindo observes, half of the print run remained in the author’s personal library.113 Guaman Poma also would not likely have been aware of other mestizo or Indigenous-​authored works from other locales such as Diego Muñoz Camargo’s Historia de Tlaxcala (before 1585) or Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxóchitl’s Relación histórica de la nación tulteca (1600–​1608) because these were only circulating in manuscript form, not appearing in print form until centuries later. His representation of the Andes is more polemical then either Titu Cussi Yupangi, or Santa Cruz Pachacuti’s Relación de las antiguedades desde reino de Perú (1613 or 1620–​1630), which seems to be from a decade later. The intellectual community these authors constituted with their readers did not occur during their lifetimes, it was a posthumous community that formed with us readers in the twenty-​first century, but not for the authors themselves. The notion of polemics well describes Guaman Poma’s writing. His chronicle was no mere book of history. Indeed, Ñusta Carranza Ko argues that in writing his chronicle he inverts the “lettered city” so aptly described by the important literary scholar Ángel Rama in his well-​received La ciudad letrada (1984).114 The “lettered city” was the web of writing created of elites to control power and express themselves. This is what Guaman Poma went up against. For Raquel Chang-​Rodríguez, the Nueva crónica “offers the sharpest and most polemical reinterpretation of the conquest” (ofrece la reinterpretación más aguda y polémica de la conquista).115 For that reason, and for the wealth of information the chronicle contains, it is a valuable document for us to study to understand antihegemonic decolonial reasoning coeval to the hegemony of colonialism. 111  Maldonado-​Torres, “Colonialism, Neocolonial, Internal Colonialism,” 69.

112  Carrillo suggests that except for the linkage between Valera and Garcilaso, the rest of the mestizo and Indigenous chroniclers did not seem to share linkages, Cronistas, 9. 113  Flores Galindo, Obras completas, 3.1:50. See also Navarro Gala, “Inventario,” 187. 114  Carranza No, “La inversión.”

115  Chang-​Rodríguez, El discurso disidente, 7.

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It may strike informed and uninformed readers alike as a curious decision to include Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala as a proponent of liberation thinking in a context with the European authors Thomas More, Erasmus, and Bartolomé de las Casas. Usually “Indians” are thought of as people Tzvetan Todorov described in his La conquête de l’Amérique (1982) as the “Other,” not as people who have knowledge with universal application, as is often the case with European writers. Yet, Indigenous texts from the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries such as the Nueva crónica or Popol Wuj can be taken as a font of liberating knowledge, as the Guatemalan anthropologist Ricardo Falla has argued.116 Christopher Chiappari shows how the Popol Wuj, sometimes called the Mayan Bible, holds meaning for liberation practitioners from Guatemala in our time.117 This is because, as Arturo Arias states, “Emerging Indigenous textualities disrupt … the myth of homogeneous nation-​states.”118 Underneath the “homogeneity” of nation-​states, of course, lies what Dussel sets forth as “the coloniality of power,” the oppression of some groups by other groups by means of a racial axis. Arias is concerned with Indigenous writing in our time, but what he says is equally true about the colonial era. Guaman Poma’s text could have disrupted imperialism’s mechanisms and for that reason, it went undetected. Gunman Poma’s writing could have held meaning for Andeans during the colonial period, but few readers could have been familiar with it. Since the intricacies of the imperial bureaucracy effectively silenced him, he could not transmit meaning in the colonial order. He can only have meaning for us thinking about the colonial order. In a recent interview with Richard Chuhue Huamán and Wilfredo Kapsoli, the historian Carlos Araníbar has made an important observation. The upside of the travesty of the silencing of Guaman Poma’s work is that he did not have to go through censors. His work remains unadulterated, not filtered through the colonial sieve. It is unique in this regard with respect to other texts from the period.119 There are philosophical along with theological, sociological, and political strains. As Walter Mignolo puts it, Guaman Poma’s Nueva crónica y buen gobierno is a “decolonial political treatise.”120 In this text, there unfolds a primary mission for Andeans to be free of the Spaniards. This is a multi-​layered political philosophy, because it rejects Iberian hegemony and proposes Andean sovereignty. Its theological aspect describes the Andeans as “the Poor of Jesus Christ,” a frequent expression the author employs. The text focuses on poor people, poor only because Iberian domination forced them into abject poverty. Under the Iberian yoke only a strict adherence to the mode of Jesus Christ will liberate them. Again, it is helpful to remember that we are not referring to the Liberation Theology from the second half of the twentieth century. This class of thinking existed well prior to the century of Gustavo Gutiérrez, Jon Sobrino, Frei Betto, Ernesto Cardenal, and Leonardo and Clodovis Boff, although it was not a coherent movement 116  Falla, El Popol Wuj.

117  Chiappari, “Toward a Maya Theology of Liberation,” 54. 118  Arias, Recovering Lost Footprints, 1:4.

119  As discussed in Chuhue Huamán, “La última entrevista,” 199. 120  Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity, 272.

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disseminated in lettered, political, and religious communities, as would be its twentieth-​ century successor. Indeed, as my Loyola University colleague Claire Mathews McGinnis reminds me, the discussion of the poor goes back to the Old Testament and is picked up in the Gospels according to Luke and Matthew’s “Blessed are the poor” and “Blessed are the poor in spirit.”121 Domingo de Soto (1494–​1560), a Salamancan establishment theologian, as Enrique Dussel reminds us, adjures in his De justitia et jure libri X, a treatise on law, that a bishop should help the poor in his bishopric. He admonishes the bishops: “You [all] will always have poor people among you [all]” (Pauperes sempre habebitis vobiscum). This idea also comes from Matthew.122 These kinds of biblical ideas circulated in ecclesiastical writing; thus it is less surprising that Guaman Poma used them than that he had access to them at all. But somehow, he did access them, likely through his readings and/​or conversations with clergy members and he saw their applicability in the Andean region. Just exactly who were the poor? Dussel explains, “The ‘poor’ are reality and at the same time a ‘category.’ They are the nation, class, or person, the oppressed woman, or the domesticated child controlled by the structures of domination.”123 Guaman Poma certainly included women and children in his view of the poor, and he included the large mass of “Indians,” which goes along with Dussel’s idea of “nation, class.” Referring to eighteenth-​century liberation thinker Ottobah Cugoano as well as Guaman Poma, Walter Mignolo states, “they took Christianity in their hands and instead of submitting to it with the humility of the humiliated, they appropriated it to slap the face of European Christians, using arguments that reflected their unique perspectives.”124 What better way to enunciate liberation thinking than from within the world view and epistemology of the dominant religion? Hundreds of years later, the African American attorney Thurgood Marshall would use the US constitution the same way to argue for fair treatment of transafrican people: trying to get the dominant white folk to respect their own words enshrined in the law. After numerous occasions of arguing before the Supreme Court of the United States, Marshall ended up becoming a US Supreme Court Justice. Guaman Poma had a quite different destiny, to go underground through the centuries, until he resurfaced unscathed at the onset of the twentieth century. We can simply say that Guaman Poma stands for a more radicalized version of what standard theologies of justice of the time (de Soto) were arguing and a somewhat more radicalized version of liberating theologies of the time (Las Casas, Domingo de Santo Tomas). As is evident from his chronicle, Guaman Poma was quite Catholic, enough so that one student of his work describes his adherence to the Gospel as “fervent.”125 For this reason, it does not seem likely that his Christian perspective was merely a “strategy 121  Mathews McGinnis, email, February 12, 2014.

122  Matthew 26:11; qtd in Dussel, El episcopado hispanoamericano, I:43. The translation is by my friend and Loyola colleague, Thomas McCreight, who also suggested it was Jesus speaking. 123  Dussel, A History of the Church, 9.

124  Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity, 134. 125  García Castellón, Guamán Poma, 9–​10.

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for political acceptance of his proposals,” a possibility Dussel ponders, although we should not rule that out as an aspect of it.126 More likely, it seems possible that he was a fervent believer and he understood the political possibilities. In any case, there can be no doubt as Dussel unequivocally puts it: “The Chronicle is an argument against the Spanish conquistadors in the name of the Christianity they preach.”127 Historian D. A. Brading calls for further study of this aspect of Guaman Poma’s work: If modern anthropologists have hailed the Nueva corónica’s testimony regarding native social practice, there has been remarkably little theological assessment of Guaman Poma’s fundamental premise that Christian revelation should be regarded as the fulfillment rather than as the negation of social morality and cosmic reverence of Andean society.128

Philosopher Dussel adds, “Guaman had a messianic interpretation of Christianity, an anticipated theology of liberation.”129 For his part, García Castellón, the student of Guaman Poma just alluded to, shows by comparing Guaman Poma’s chronicle with Gutiérrez’s theology that there are striking similarities. If García Castellón develops his approach by “applying the principles of Liberation Theology to Guaman Poma’s work” (aplicar los principios de la Teología de la Liberación a la obra de Guamán Poma), we develop ours by considering Guaman’s outlook developed through experience in his social medium in which he was self-​taught, always keeping in the back of our minds the liberative qualities of his text. Other liberation thinkers, including St. Thomas More, Erasmus of Rotterdam, and especially the Dominican Bartolomé de las Casas, who were writing before and during the time he was born (Las Casas producing still during his formative years), merely provide points of comparison with his oeuvre.130 Along these lines Javier Valiente Núñez compares Las Casas and Guaman Poma and catalogues the former as a precursor to Indigenist liberation theology and the latter as a precursor to Indigenous liberation theology. Here, by all means, we will not leave Gustavo Gutierrez out of the conversation because he is a preeminent Liberation Theologian and because he authored a book about Las Casas that included a short section on Guaman Poma. Essential to this undertaking is considering the ideal nation as shaped by the cleavage between the temporal and spiritual as a Gospel-​derived foundation for an early modern theory of liberation. In 1986, Rolena Adorno felt the need to state she was committing a decolonial act by writing on an author who was one of “the small handful of ethnic Americans who were, in effect, members of the first generation of Latin American writers.”131 Adorno’s books and articles written on Guaman Poma had positive results because they have inspired a whole generation of scholarly output on that initial wave of Latin American 126  Dussel, Politics of Liberation, 212. 127  Dussel, Politics of Liberation, 212. 128  Brading, The First America, 165.

129  Dussel, Politics of Liberation, 221.

130  García Castellón, Guamán Poma, 11. 131  Adorno, Guaman Poma, 3.

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writers. Here we can build on her model and efforts to try to overcome a certain bias that holds liberation theology to be a tendency solely associated with the second half of the twentieth century and does not take in account the possibility of earlier liberation speculation such as with More, Erasmus and Las Casas during the sixteenth century, with Guaman Poma during the seventeenth, with Ottobah Cugoano during the eighteenth, with Ernest Renan’s Life of Jesus (in French, 1863) and Tolstoy’s Kingdom of God is Within You (in Russian, 1894) during the nineteenth. While Guaman Poma is not the “same” as those who would write 300 years later. We can regard his thought within the long trajectory of liberation thinking, not limited to the more narrowly defined angle of Liberation Theology. Such recognition is even more important considering the Church prohibited ordaining native and mestizo Peruvians at that time. He could never become an established theologian like Erasmus or Las Casas, simply because of what today we would call his ethnicity. Put another way, given the integration of spiritual with temporal power that excluded native Andeans from the authority positions that mattered in both state and Church, it was illegal for Guaman Poma to be a theologian. Here there is no need to argue for any particular label, lay, embryonic, proto, or early theology, thinking, or speculation since there can be distinctive ways to frame and argue for each of them. Cataloging was not Guaman Poma’s concern and should not be ours. What is important are the ideas that earn him a respectable place in the narrative of nations, even though his voice remained silenced until the twentieth century. An Andean, an Englishman, and a Spaniard, and the Question of Sources

To set the stage for a deeper discussion on early modern liberation thinking in Guaman Poma we will review here a few ideas regarding St. Thomas More and many more regarding Friar Bartolomé de las Casas. We considered More in ­chapter  3 with respect to his views softening the prevailing concept of slavery, and in ­chapter  4 as a liberation thinker. More became a bona fide liberation thinker with his 1516 Utopia 100 years before 1616 when Guaman Poma seems to have passed away. Given that we are looking at the Andean author in a trajectory fortified and guided by More and later Las Casas, regarding the former, there is a need first to address a concern Sara Castro-​Klarén raises. She warns, “To speak of Thomas More and Guaman Poma in the same breath is to breed confusion.”132 She offers this word of caution because some commentators have linked More’s text to Peru and she cautions that while More was writing about no place, Guaman Poma was writing about some place. More wrote about what could be, and Guaman Poma about what was, and how it should be. It is necessary to bring up Castro-​Klarén’s concern here because Francisco Pizarro and his men encountered Peru well more than a decade after Thomas More went to Flanders in 1514. As noted earlier, he may have received accounts of the Caribbean islanders, and perhaps, or perhaps not, one of Las Casas’s documents at that early date, although certainly some kind of news of the New World, potentially even of Vespucci. If one of Vespucci’s works inspired him, as mentioned in ­chapter  3, it was a negative inspiration. As Alfred Cave 132  Castro-​Klarén, The Narrow Pass, 176, 177.

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observes, for Vespucci, “Indians” were savage and cannibals, More’s Utopians where rational humanists.133 In 1514, Cortés had not yet even imagined Tenochtitlan and even further into the future were Pizarro’s imperialist successes in Peru. In a word, we must state unequivocally that More’s text offers not even a glimpse of an idea of Peru. There can be no wavering in recognizing this. However, what More and Guaman Poma have in common is a desire to make better places that do exist, England in the case of the former, and Peru in the case of the latter. More writes about England in a way that models an ideal future with tolerance and without corruption and Guaman Poma writes about the Andes in a way that models an ideal future without corrupting colonialism. They are both liberation thinkers in this regard. If some of the thematic parallels between More’s and Guaman Poma’s liberative positions are notable, those between Guaman Poma and Bartolomé de las Casas are even more striking. After discerning Guaman Poma’s solidarity with the poor in his body, his existence, his soul, and in his writing, Father Gustavo Gutiérrez groups him with the Dominican friar: Guamán Poma and Las Casas were two of those who, from a starting point in a faith in the God of life, refused to tolerate the unjust, premature death of the Indians. They belonged to culturally different worlds, and they lived in different years; but they had this in common, that they both saw an autochthonous population living a life of contempt and abuse at the hands of others.134

Their discerning abilities and decolonial proposals made them both cultivators of liberationism, Guaman Poma, no less than Las Casas. The former is simply different in the way he executed his script and, in the way he was silenced, unlike Las Casas who was only partially silenced, and only later in life. Guaman Poma’s manuscript simply remained buried in the archive, unpublished, Las Casas’s published books and manuscripts had wide dissemination, although eventually banned. When Guaman Poma argues that temporal power must revert to the Andeans themselves, Kenneth Andrien emphasizes, he was drawing on the work of two priests, Fray Bartolomé de las Casas (who never made it to the Andes) and Fray Domingo de Santo Tomás (who was assigned to the Andes).135 The latter, as Peter Klarén stresses, opposed the encomienda, and in debates with the pro-​encomendero chronicler Polo de Ondegardo, he advocated “a colonial order run by councils of native chiefs in alliance with agents of the crown and Church.”136 This idea reverberates in Guaman Poma. Regarding Las Casas, as Dominican priest/​scholar Isacio Pérez Fernández has shown, he had Peru on his mind when he wrote several of his works, which came to be on the mind of Peruvians who read them or heard about them. Most certainly, Las Casas’s theology inspired the encomienda-​banning Nuevas Leyes, promulgated on November 20, 133  For more on this, see Cave, “Thomas More.” 134  Gutiérrez, Las Casas, 11.

135  Adorno, “Bartolomé de las Casas y Domingo de Santo Tomás”; Andrien, Andean Worlds, 121. 136  Klarén, Peru, 56.

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1544, although he was not satisfied with them.137 Indeed, as Jorge Mojarro as argued, Las Casas’s influence was so commanding it reached all the way around the globe to the Philippines.138 Pérez Fernández notes that in a Gran Junta of the various religious in Peru convoked by García de Castro in 1567, Las Casas held a certain sway over Jerónimo de Loaisa, Pedro de Toro, and Alonso de la Cerda. However, there were many bumps in the road. The Inquisition eventually arrested Pedro de Toro and other Dominicans and threw them into prison. Another Dominican, Fray Francisco de la Cruz, met Las Casas in Valladolid and embraced his doctrines. At some point he announced the destruction of Spain and the millennium in the Indies.139 Both de Toro and de la Cruz appeared at an auto-​da-​fé in Lima, de Toro “in effigy” since he had already died, and de la Cruz in person.140 Both were set afire. Las Casas’s influence hit other roadblocks such as when the Viceroy Francisco de Toledo, on his own, without being directed to do so by the king, asked for royal permission to confiscate all of Las Casas’s works, an authorization he received in a letter dated March 1571.141 Previously, in preparation for his journey to Peru, he had read Las Casas among other authors. Father Pérez Fernández mentions the Tratados distributed between 1552 and 1553, the 1553 treatise De thesauris: Los tesoros en el Perú (On Peru’s Tomb Treasures), and the Doce dudas finished in 1564.142 As a notable example of cynicism in the world, it is quite possible that Viceroy Toledo’s attempts to show the “tyranny of the Inkakuna” (tiranía de los incas) were a play on the now deceased Las Casas’s “tyranny of the Spaniards” (tiranía de los españoles). Toledo deviously twisted Las Casas’s expression at once to destroy his doctrine, and to show the idea that the Inkakuna were not natural rulers. Such an argument conceded to Spaniards the right to overthrow the Inka dynasty with which it was still locked in struggle.143 After Viceroy Toledo’s intellectual formulations began to gain currency, Las Casas’s ideas could only filter through underground channels spoken of in hushed tones, perhaps every once in a while in a hidden manuscript or book passed from hand to hand in the dark hours of the night. One of these may have been the Tratado de las “doce dudas” circulating in manuscript form. Some of these copies survived and today are associated with different repositories including the John Carter Brown Library, the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, the National Library in Madrid, the British Museum, the Vatican, the Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris, the University of Salamanca, and other places, suggesting a wide dissemination.144 It is not hard to imagine Las Casas’s works circulating around Peru. Adorno determines that Guaman Poma “knew him by his works, some forty to fifty years after Las 137  Pérez Fernández, Bartolomé de las Casas, 587–​88. 138  Mojarro, “La defensa del indio.”

139  Flores Galindo, Obras completas, 3.1, 31.

140  Pérez Fernández, Bartolomé de las Casas, 367, 524, 527, 563. 141  Pérez Fernández, Bartolomé de las Casas, 460, 461, 478. 142  Pérez Fernández, Bartolomé de las Casas, 469–​70.

143  Pérez Fernández, Bartolomé de las Casas, 515, insinuates this. 144  Denglos, “Introducción,” xxxvii–​xlviii.

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Casas died.”145 Andrien and Adorno are not the only scholars to detect Las Casas at work in Guaman Poma’s view of things. Brading goes as far as to assert the following: “Guaman Poma must surely figure as the chief native disciple of Bartolomé de las Casas, his hopes for Peru a faithful application of the doctrines of the great Dominican.”146 There is one philological problem, because Guaman Poma never explicitly mentions Las Casas’s name. Adorno explains. She contrasts Guaman Poma’s historiographical approach with his contemporary, Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, and arrives at an illuminating conclusion. She writes: The dialogue that Guaman Poma undertook with the European sources available to him, differs from the one developed by Inca Garcilaso. Guaman Poma mentioned the authors he was making use of only infrequently. Additionally, he utilized some historiographical texts and then others of diverse literary genres. While Inca Garcilaso quoted other works, many times to support his own assertions, Guaman Poma converted other’s texts into his own, depriving them of their authority as external sources … Our chronicler did this by converting his European sources into anonymous reports, incorporated into the text just as if they represented our author’s own thought and expression. (El diálogo que Guaman Poma emprendió con las fuentes europeas a su alcance, es diferente al elaborado por el Inca Garcilaso. Guaman Poma no mencionó, sino muy pocas veces, los escritores que aprovechaba. Además, utilizó algunos textos historiográficos y otros que pertenecen a distintos géneros literarios. Mientras que el Inca Garcilaso citaba otras obras, muchas veces para verificar sus propias aseveraciones, Guaman Poma convirtió los textos ajenos en el suyo, privándolos de su autoridad como fuentes externas … Así, nuestro cronista convirtió sus fuentes europeas en informes anónimos, incorporados en el texto como si representaran el pensamiento y la expresión del mismo autor.)147

Despite the philological ambiguities, Adorno finds the following in her investigations: “Guaman Poma’s proposal for a universal empire of autonomous kingdoms follows directly from las Casas’ Doce dudas.” Importantly, she then inserts the composition of the Tratado de doce dudas on the time line of history, “Las Casas wrote the Doce dudas while the last few Inca princes, Titu Cussi Yupanqui and Tupac Amaru, were alive, so his proposal for the Inca restoration, though visionary and quixotic, was not illogical.” She adds that the ideas of Inka restoration enjoyed great “vitality,” “not only as presented by Las Casas but as advocated by his colleagues and followers in the 1570s in Peru.”148 Within this idea of Restoration, theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez finds another thematic link to Las Casas. Both he and Guaman Poma reject just-​war arguments against the Andeans, they both reject the encomienda system, and both proposed a papal legate in the Andes.149 Adorno explains what this means: “Guaman 145  Adorno, The Polemics, 14.

146  Brading, The First America, 165. 147  Adorno, Cronista y príncipe, 86. 148  Adorno, The Polemics, 41.

149  Gutiérrez, Las Casas, 489, 623n70.

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Poma’s work stands as testimony to the fact that the powerful ideas of reform could not easily be destroyed.”150 This is certainly the case even if ultimately they did not prevail and, in today’s terms, it is almost as if his ideas are finally “trending” to a degree, at least among scholars (but not among political elites). In the Toledan environment it is not surprising Guaman Poma does not explicitly mention the Dominican friar in his chronicle, although he does mention (ever so briefly) other authors such as Johann Boemus, Juan Ochoa de la Sal, Agustín de Zárate, Diego Fernández, Gonzalo Pizarro, and Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo (NC, 416 [418], 1078 [1088]).151 Guaman Poma knew that if he were to get his letter placed “in the archive” as Adorno puts it, or even published, which may have been his hope, he might not be able to do so if he directly cited the Dominican, especially given the memory of the Inquisition’s treatment of Lascasians.152 Guaman Poma may have been in Huamanga when Toledo passed through there from 1570 to 1571, and if he had any contact with Toledo and his team, he may have experienced the anti-​Las Casas sentiment personally.153 Toledo may have coincided with the priest Cristóbal de Albornoz in Huamanga since the latter had been sent there from Cuzco. We know Guaman Poma was with Albornoz and thus he may have brushed up against Toledo. However, even if Guaman Poma were what we might call a closet Lascasian, as we are suggesting, it would be an error to say that the division-​of-​ power tenet in Guaman Poma came directly and/​or exclusively from Las Casas. Simply stated, Las Casas was one source among various. As previously mentioned, Fray Domingo de Santo Tomás was another, and there were others. Guaman Poma had access to the memory of Taki Unquy because he was from Huamanga and he took part in the campaign to extirpate idolatries headed by Cristóbal de Albornoz. We should emphasize, however, that regardless of these multiple influences, he was an original thinker of merit. Catholicism Predating itself in Peru as Autochthonous Liberation Thinking

Among the many obvious proofs that Catholicism came to the Andes, one resides in the fact that without it, there could be no liberation theology there, and without it, and we would not be writing this chapter. Guaman Poma had an interesting take on Christianity’s arrival in the Andes, but first some ground. Before Christianity’s arrival there, Andeans worshiped wakakuna (sing. waka). In its most basic sense, waka is a sacred thing or a place. There were also principal earthly deities associated with a mountain, Apukuna (sing. apu). Pachakamaq, today an archaeological site outside Lima, then a major pre-​Inkan sanctuary appropriated by the Inkakuna, was a principal place of worship. It had an akllawasi, the house of virgins, and was a primary place to worship. Pacha Kamaq, the “earth maker,” functioned as a principal shrine during the Inka period and priests associated with the sect were independent of Inkan priesthood because they 150  Adorno, The Polemics, 59.

151  In this chapter, references to Guaman Poma’s Nueva crónica will be from the Murra, Adorno, and Uriose edition and will be indicated parenthetically and abbreviated as NC. 152  Adorno and Bosurup, New Studies of the Autograph Manuscript, 7. 153  Pérez Fernández, Bartolomé de las Casas, 464.

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were held in such high esteem. In 1533, Hernando Pizarro (Francisco’s brother) went to Pachakamaq and he and his band made off with a considerable amount of religious relics simply because they were made of silver and gold, thereby wreaking havoc on the idol-​oracle, central to the pilgrimage center. Burga takes into consideration that for everyday Andeans, the destruction of Pachakamaq, the death of the Inka Atawallpa, and the taking of the capital city of Cuzco represented signs that Jesus Christ was superior to wakakuna and apukuna.154 Octavio Paz, referring to a similar situation regarding the Nahua of central Mexico, tells us, “the now-​orphaned Indians, the links to their ancient cultures broken, their gods and their cities now dead, find a place in the world by means of the Catholic faith” (por la fe católica los indios, en situación de orfandad, rotos los lazos con sus antiguas culturas, muertos sus dioses tanto como sus ciudades, encuentran un lugar en el mundo).155 This may have been a common experience for more than one native group. For communities like these, the place of refuge became the house of the Christian God. Obviously, this was not wholly the case with Mexico and certainly not with Peru, but it may elucidate to a degree why Guaman Poma and his disciples (if he really had them as he claims—​ see below) adopted Christianity so fervently. Guaman Poma and his followers were not in a world blanketed by Christianity. More precisely, they lived in a world more aptly described as being in the throes of evangelization. Simply accepting the Christian God does not a good Christian make. One must learn the basic tenets of the faith, one transcendent god, no polygamy, subservience to Rome, and on a deeper level, the mysteries and meaning of Jesus Christ. Besides debating between Spanish or Nahuatl or other local language as a medium of evangelization, as seen previously in this chapter, Church officials held a variety views on how to evangelize. We discussed the discrepancy in the Mexican context in views divided between Motolinía’s tendency toward ritualism and Las Casas’ toward spiritualism. Some clerics—​Andrien summarizes—​like the Jesuit José de Acosta, “called for using stronger tactics—​forceful destruction of idols and pagan rituals, followed by the imposition of rigid Roman Catholic orthodoxy.” Others like the Dominicans Las Casas and Santo Tomás advocated “conversion by persuasion.” Three Lima provincial councils, 1551–​1552, 1567–​1568, and 1582–​1583, Andrien explains, “attempted to resolve tensions over appropriate methods of indigenous conversion.”156 Adorno comments on the chronicler Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala and these councils: Guaman Poma also reveals his familiarity with the provincial church councils held in Lima in 1567 and 1582–​1583 to establish and refine policies for evangelizing the Andean peoples. His enthusiastic support of their decrees on a broad range of issues suggests that he viewed rigorous and thorough evangelization as a pressing need in Andean society.157

154  Burga, Nacimiento, 136.

155  Paz, El laberinto de la soledad, 92.

156  Andrien, Andean Worlds, 162, 163. 157  Adorno, The Polemics, 27.

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Adorno suggests Guaman Poma might have been working at the third Lima council as a translator, since he seems to have been familiar with many of the participants, but she warns there is no conclusive evidence that he was there.158 The second Lima council took place during a messianic anti-​Spanish uprising that occurred in Huamanga starting a few years before 1564 when the priest Luis de Olivera detected it. US historian Steve Stern maps out for us the unrest centered in four sections of Huamanga, Lucanas, Soras, Chocorvos, and Río Pampas. The idea supposed “a pan-​ Andean alliance of deities would defeat the Chief Christian god and kill the Spanish colonizers with disease and other calamities.”159 Burga explains that the priests of this movement called Taki Unquy preached the severing of ties with the Spanish and the Christian Church and they proposed a return to the pre-​Hispanic economic system of reciprocity. The priests, called taquiongos, banned European-​style clothing, and proposed a return to Andeanness, which would be total.160 Taki Unquy, however, was brutally repressed. Colonial authorities cut off the taquiongos’ hair and whipped them publicly. They then compelled them to build churches, and supply labor, building materials as well as money. Cristóbal de Albornoz, the priest charged with extirpating the Taki Unquy movement hyperbolically claimed he had punished eight million implicated individuals. As revealed in Nueva crónica y buen gobierno, Guaman Poma accompanied him in this campaign to extirpate Taki Unquy (NC, 280 [282], 283 [285], 676 [690]). The Taki Unquy may have been defeated, but protest was later able to surface in a new way in a quite different belief system, one that referred to itself as Christianity. Like other religions, this one had a theology that explained its mysteries, it also had a theology that sometimes called for liberation. As a foundation to develop Andean liberation, liberation practitioners viewed the coming of Christianity not as part of the Conquest, but as prior and superior to it. This may not have been true historically, but it became true theologically. As Sara Vicuña Guengerich emphasize, both Guaman Poma and Inca Garcilaso participated in this type of discursive construction.161 Qheswa-​speaking intellectuals were not the only ones taking positions of this nature. Raquel Chang-​Rodriguez and Nancy Vogeley have observed that the Franciscan Luis Jerónimo de Oré viewed Indigenous origins in the context of Genesis. We understand today that the authors of Genesis, a Jewish text, could not have known about Andeans, but at that time in the Andes, with everybody who mattered claiming to be Christian, it seemed logical. The conclusion, as Chang-​Rodríguez and Vogeley finish their thought, accepts “Americans’ participation in a common humanity.”162 Thus Guaman Poma’s intellectual formulations in these matters should not be regarded as exceptional. Guaman Poma not only has embraced Christianity, he reorients its history to coincide with his Andeanist line. We should add that his contemporary, the Nahuatl-​speaking 158  Adorno, The Polemics, 29; Quispe-​Agnoli, La fe andina, 45. 159  Stern, Peru’s Indian Peoples, 51. 160  Burga, Nacimiento, 152, 153.

161  Vicuña Guengerich, “Virtuosas o corruptas,” 672.

162  Chang-​Rodríguez and Vogeley, “Introduction,” 9–​10.

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Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxóchitl, embarked upon a similar discursive strategy in Mesoamerica when he aligned chronologically the precontact activity of the tlatoque and Christion Popes; as when he fixes the destruction of the Toltec empire in the year 959, “being the Pontiff of the Church of God John XII” (siendo Pontífice de la Iglesia de Dios Joannes XII).163 Of course, the Toltecs neither had the European calendar nor could they have known who the Pope was in Rome, but Alva Ixtlilxóchitl fixes a universal history that makes sense, even if Tolteca and Catholics did not, could not, have known about one another. Consequently, Guaman Poma’s discursive strategy is similar to his Mexican contemporary because it also builds on the notion of a universal Christianity. Further research will likely show it to be representative of early seventeenth-​century Indigenous Christian thinking. Nor is this unusual in theology. For the Jesuit scholar Jeffry Klaiber (who recently passed away and who will be sorely missed), early theologians did this such as when the Church father Justin “held that Christ, as the Word of God, preexisted His own coming in time and was known, albeit obscurely, by all men who lived according to reason.” In fact, Klaiber finds a quote where Justin suggests that even Socrates knew something of Jesus Christ.164 Along these lines, it is not surprising that Guaman Poma would suggest that the Andeans known as Wiraqocha Runa and Wari Wiraqocha descended from Noah after the flood (NC, 9 [9]‌). This terminology is interesting because, as Covy has shown, the Inkakuna grew out of a prior culture, the Wari; and we strongly suspect that Wiraqocha was originally a Wari deity, which the Inkakuna continued to hold in esteem. Along these lines, it is the Wari people who descend from Noah. Guaman Poma was not the only chronicler to attribute an Old World origin to Native Americans. The king’s royal treasurer Agustín de Zárate held that they came from Atlantis. Similarly, Jerónimo de Mendieta, as Quispe-​Agnoli recounts, saw them as being one of the lost tribes of Israel.165 Klaiber reviews other chroniclers who discussed pre-​ Hispanic or simply pre-​Valverde Christian proselytization, including the story of Noah, Christ’s birth, and other moments. He cites in this context Martin de Marúa, Cieza de León, and Montesinos, as well as Santa Cruz Pachacuti and Guaman Poma.166 Mendieta’s apocalyptic thought compared the slavery of the Israelites with the slavery of Indigenous peoples.167 One dimension of apocalyptic thought is that with the end of the world near, there was the possibility of regeneration.168 Mendieta is a little like Zárate and Guaman Poma in the sense all three tried to fix an Old World origin for New World people. They are, however, poles apart in their intent. Guaman Poma linked Andeans to Noah to make them independent from Spanish priests, corregidores, encomenderos, and hacendados, Mendieta to the Jewish people to censure their slavery, and Zárate to Atlantis to deny 163  Alva Ixtlilxóchitl, Obras históricas, 2:13.

164  Klaiber, “The Posthumous Christianization of the Inca Empire,” 508.

165  Zárate, “Declaracion,” Historia del descubrimiento, [1]‌; Quispe-​Agnoli, La fe andina, 85. 166  Klaiber, “The Posthumous Christianization of the Inca Empire,” 511, 514–​15. 167  Quispe-​Agnoli, La fe andina, 85. 168  Quispe-​Agnoli, La fe andina, 77.

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Figure 2. Artisanal representation of Noah’s Ark. Photo by Thomas Ward, Lima, Peru, August 1, 2012

them their history. The first two were involved with developing an outlook of liberation, the third, with defending imperialism. This is a crucial point with respect to the first two because one cannot propose liberation theology, even in its prototypical incarnation, if one is first not Catholic. One cannot be Catholic without Catholicism coming first to one’s community, and all the better if Catholicism does not come with the colonizers. At another point, Guaman Poma seems to make a mistake saying that the Wari Wiraqocha Runa who came from Noah’s ark were Spaniards (NC, 49 [49]), an idea he most likely acquired from the perfunctory materials set down in other chronicles. Sabine MacCormack corrects this apparent slip of the tongue: “he meant that they were descended from the original man created by God.”169 Later, the chronicler has the apostle St. Bartholomew performing miracles in Colla in Antisuyo (NC, 92[92], 93 [93]). This is not strange. Earlier, Pedro Cieza de León had established a basis for the unity of humanity when he asserted, “we and these Indians originate from our ancient parents Adam and Eve” (nosotros y estos Indios todos traemos origen de nuestros antiguos padres Adán y Eva).170 Meanwhile, Guaman Poma tells us his people “began to work, to 169  MacCormack, Religion, 318.

170  Cieza de León, Crónica del Perú: primera parte, fol. 4, p. 8. On Adam and Eve and Guaman Poma, see López-​Baralt, Guaman Poma, 142–​51.

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hoe, like their father Adam” (Comensaron a trauajar, arar, como su padre Adán) (NC, 50 [50]). Cieza’s offering of a simple-​stated biblical truth created a good building block for a unified humanity in the Christian fold. MacCormack suggests Guaman Poma got these kinds of ideas from an intellectual milieu given form by Las Casas’s Apologética historia, by Domingo de Santo Tomás, and even by early hagiography that had the apostle Bartholomew reaching India. In Inca Garcilaso’s case, as argued by Duviols and ratified by García Pabón, the historical Wiraqocha he depicts held some relationship with St. Bartholomew.171 Garcilaso, Las Casas, Santo Tomás, and Guaman Poma were all drawing on the same cultural and theological currents. José Antonio Mazzotti discusses the importance of St. Bartholomew in the Andes and he describes a mestizo brotherhood in Cuzco whose members “recognized Bartholomew as their patron saint.”172 As MacCormack puts it, “The first Spaniards to study the Americas found it difficult to believe that Christianity had never been preached in the newly discovered continent.”173 Thus it was not “strange” to consider St. Bartholomew’s appearance in the Andes. Additionally, it had a liberating effect. Francisco Ortega Martínez makes this clear: “For if Christ had already sent to Peru an apostle to preach the Gospel, effectively making Christian neophytes out of Andeans, then the justification for Spanish military presence in Peru (reasonable only in light of the missionary undertaking) was fundamentally challenged.”174 We can fathom the perspective which inserts the Indies into a context with Europe as a liberating discourse. In Politics of Liberation, Dussel expounds on how it works: This manner of uniting chronologies (Western Christian culture with the Incas) shows a mode of the historical story, the “meaning of the history,” exemplars, which he teaches to try to establish comparisons in the centre-​periphery chrono-​topos, where the periphery is “above” and not “below,” and where it is the “location” of the discourse, the locus enuntiationis.175

There may be a problem with the word “history” here because of all the connotations this category has in the West. The use of this word is where Walter Mignolo gets in trouble with Rosenthal.176 It is more the “meaning of history” as a mode of thinking, as Dussel explains, but even more correctly, it is a worldview where theology and history are one. It is this kinship with theology that makes Guaman Poma an important ingredient of the subject matter discussed in this book. Finally, even though Guaman Poma writes about the Inkakuna using a chrono-​topos methodology, he is not pro-​Inka. Indeed, he portrays

171  Discussed in García Pabón, De Incas, 28, 31.

172  Mazzotti, Incan Insights, 241. For a fuller discussion on St. Bartholomew, see Mazzotti, Incan Insights, 239–​77. 173  MacCormack, Religion, 312, 312–​18.

174  Ortega Martínez, “Writing the History of an Andean Ghost,” 238. 175  Dussel, Politics of Liberation, 214. 176  See Rosenthal, “Gaumán Poma.”

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the Inkakuna in a somewhat negative way to explain why, among other reasons, these pre-​Hispanic Christian activities in the Andes are not well known. Andrien correctly clarifies that for Guaman Poma, long before Spaniards came to the Andes, St. Bartholomew arrived to teach Andeans how to be good Christians, but the Inkakuna had erased this first Christianity with their pagan ways.177 There seems to be some controversy regarding the author’s conceptualization that Christianity proceeded the Spaniards. Here I would simply like to make the point that this is not a historical premise, it is a theological one useful in setting up a decolonial premise.178 We must remember that while Guaman Poma had Inka blood running through his veins, he did only partially so. One branch of his family tree came from outside the Inka power structure and was therefore more of a regional elite. In one fell swoop, with his Bartholomew in the Andes, Guaman Poma discredits the Inkakuna, preserves regional kuraka power, and eliminates the need for a Spanish presence in the Andes. It is also crucial to underscore the startling, but unstated, nomenclatural relationship between the apostle Bartholomew and Bartholomew de las Casas, both Bartolomé in Spanish. It might be that Guaman Poma does not mention the Dominican friar (after all Garcilaso, living and writing in Spain, only mentions him twice in his Commentaries), but putting the saint front and center he, by association, covertly moves the early pro-​Indian liberation thinker to the fore. Guaman Poma bolsters the non-​Spanish Christian heritage when he refers to how Andean peoples respect their elders. He presses home this point: Someone from the Andes “fears an honored old man as he would his father, as he would his mother. This is from God’s Ten Commandments that were respected in this Kingdom of Indians even though they didn’t know it” (Ansí temía al Viejo honrrado como a su padre, como a sus madre. Es de los diez mandamientos de Dios. Tenía en este rreyno los indios aunque no lo sauía) (NC, 448 [450]). It is not only the genealogies of Noah and St. Bartholomew that prove a preconquest Andean Christianity, it is also traditional Andean customs and teaching. These elements reflect the Bible, and both “prove” Christianity’s anteriority to Pizarro’s arrival. Adorno puts this kind of transatlantic historical fusion into perspective: “he created an elaborate and complex cosmology that wove the dynasties of the Andean past (pre-​ Inca and Inca) into a Christian (Augustinian) model of universal history.”179 As Victoria Cox demonstrates, Guaman Poma inserts the Andean calendar into the Christian one, although perhaps not seamlessly so, in order to make his Andean-​Christian arguments.180 As noted, this is similar to his contemporary Alva Ixtlilxóchitl who correlated events on both sides of the Atlantic, which affirmed their coevalness. With respect to Guaman Poma, Quispe-​Agnoli suggests his comparing the Old Testament with New World Indigenous 177  Andrien, Andean Worlds, 121.

178  For a discussion and debate on this problem, with bibliography, see Rosenthal, “Gaumán Poma,” 72–​74. 179  Adorno, The Polemics, 38.

180  Cox, Guaman Poma de Ayala, 69, 85–​87.

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societies might have been a technique derived from his reading of the Friar Luis de Granada (1504–​1588) whom he quotes on more than one occasion (see for example NC, 367 [369]).181 Being a fervent devotee, Guaman Poma may have really believed one of Noah’s sons came to Tawantinsuyu. There is another way that Guaman Poma argues, albeit indirectly, that Christianity preceded the Spaniards’ arrival. He finds this in the Andeans’ attitudes toward precious metals, which links his thinking on this matter to More, Erasmus, and Las Casas who abhorred greed, the gold fever, and the passion for El Dorado. He cites examples in his “Prologue to Spanish Christian Readers”: Christian reader, you see here all Christian law. I have found that the Indians are not so covetous neither in gold nor in silver; nor have I found anyone who is in debt for one-​ hundred pesos, nor a liar, gambler, lazy, prostitute (male or female); nor do they take from themselves; unlike you all, completely disobedient toward your father and your mother, your prelate and your king. (Cristiano letor, ues aquí toda la ley cristiana. No [h]‌e hallado que sea[n] tan cudicioso[s] en oro ni plata los yndios, ni [h]e hallado quien deua cien pesos ni mentiroso ni jugador ni peresoso ni puta ni puto ni quitarse entre ellos que bosotros lo tenéys toda ynobedente a buestro padre y madre y perlado y rrey.) (NC, 367[369])

The image and problem of precious metals appears in other places in Guaman Poma’s epistle. Spaniards are so greedy that they, metaphorically, eat gold (NC, 369 [371]). They then go back to Spain disseminating the image of the Indians having gold and silver, and that they even wore clothing of these precious metals, causing more Spaniards to come to the Andes (NC, 370 [372]). The author warns that corregidores, fathers, and encomenderos who covet gold will go to hell (NC, 374 [376]). This cry against greed is along the lines of Las Casas’s previously discussed arguments, especially as expressed in his Devastation of the Indies. It coordinates Guaman’s thinking with Erasmus who, we remember from ­chapter  3, spent a considerable amount of time on this human failing. When liberation thinkers assess gold and silver as a negative aspect of colonial society, they also line up with More’s Utopia since the Utopians reject the use of gold. Two paragraphs further on, when the Peruvian likens Spaniards’ thirst for silver to idolatry, he turns around the paradigm Christian-​heathen so that the Spaniards are the idolaters, not the native Andeans. Dussel finds in this quote “a ferocious critique of European Modernity, in its permanent cynicism contradicting its own values from the sixteenth century to the present.”182 While this view aligns with some strands of Renaissance reformism, it certainly takes those strands and goes much further then Erasmus and More would ever imagine. However, Guaman Poma did not have the same educational opportunities as did his European brethren. He learned by quietly listening during the third Lima council and during Albornoz’s anti-​idolatry campaign, where he presumably started thinking 181  See also Quispe-​Agnoli, La fe andina, 51. 182  Dussel, Politics of Liberation, 217.

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about the “cynicism” of Spanish arguments. García Castellón cautions that since Guaman Poma was self-​taught, he could neither be a theologian, nor could his chronicle be a theological treatise, but nevertheless, his document does represent “serious theological achievement” (serios alcances teologales).183 And truthfully, Guaman Poma, because he lacked a university degree and had not taken orders, could not be considered a professional theologian in the expression’s usual sense. Yet this puts Guaman Poma down a bit and does not consider Indigenous variations on liberation themes. By Guaman Poma’s time, the Jesuits were no longer admitting mestizos into the order, and the Spanish crown had prohibited their ordination, policies enacted in the 1580s. Without being stated flat out, there was a prohibition on theological discernment by Native Americans. At that time, the notion of admitting Indigenous people who were literate in Spanish, called indios ladinos, into the priesthood would have seemed ludicrous to Spaniards (but not to Andeans—​see below). We are referring to the 1580s when the ecclesiastical authorities enacted anti-​mestizo restrictions and when Archbishop Toribio de Mogrovejo summoned the third Lima council.184 What Guaman Poma achieved under these conditions is noteworthy. He was a man of his time and intellectual place, negotiating a path for himself on the slippery slope of sixteenth-​century colonialities that rejected the potential piety of Andeans. Guaman Poma—​like other Indigenous chroniclers—​felt the need to insert the Andes into the Western episteme in his struggle for inclusion into that episteme, for the advancement of his people, for the liberation of his people. Of course, the first Christians to arrive in the Andes were the sixteenth-​century Spaniards, and Guaman Poma’s assertion that one of Noah’s sons had come and brought God, meaning the Hebrew God, could seem like a frivolous claim from the vantage point of twenty-​first century historiographical conventions if not thought about deeply. This assertion, however, meant that Andeans had their own direct path to Christianity and did not need intermediaries. This is a necessary first pass to disentangle the temporal from the spiritual (as Christians understood these categories) and construct a new architecture of power locating the temporal in the hands of kurakakuna and the spiritual in the hands of certain Andeans even though they would still be turning to the pope for spiritual guidance. As Sabine MacCormack indicates, it is not solely the thematic material that points to the book’s Christian spirit, it is also its organization. She writes, “Martin Ayala’s biography prefaces the Crónica, thus underscoring one of its central themes, which was that in the last resort Peru’s true Christians were Andeans, not Spaniards.”185 Most certainly, the letter at times becomes a Christian document. Adorno recognizes that Guaman Poma’s “closest models” were “the collections of sermons that were published in Peru for the conversion of the native population.”186 One of Guaman Poma’s influences was Luis de Granada whose Rhetoric for the Preacher attempted to provide guidance to those 183  García Castellón, Guamán Poma, 14.

184  On these restrictions and this period, see Hyland, The Jesuit, 180. 185  MacCormack, Religion, 319. 186  Adorno, Guaman Poma, 57.

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writing sermons. Granada was a Dominican friar noted for his theological learning. Quispe-​Agnoli, referring to Guaman Poma’s writing, clarifies, “the sermon is a discursive genre that calls and exhorts” (El sermón es un género discursivo apelativo y exhortativo), whose “themes of moral reflection … should move the person who hears or reads them to action” (tópicos de reflexión moral que debían mover al oyente o lector a la acción).187 That some sections of Guaman Poma’s epistle take on the form of a sermon links his writing to theological discourse and this discourse is concerned with liberation. The sermon of the ages precluded that, if Noah’s sons and St. Bartholomew had been in the Andes before the conquistadors, Spaniards were in no position to be holding authority of the Andeans. Liberation Thinking: Jesus’s Poor and an Ethnic Theory of Sovereignty

As Gutiérrez argues, Guaman Poma’s raison d’être for undertaking his writing project can be linked to a kind of early liberation theology. This theology, based on scripture or received second-​hand orally, was also experiential, grounded in life. Guaman Poma was a wanderer and he saw much. We think about his statement that serves as a subtitle for this book, that he “was walking in the world always searching for the poor of Jesus Christ and in the sacred service of His Majesty” (andaua ciempre por el mundo en busca de los pobres de Jesucristo y de su santo servicio de su Magestad) (NC, 1109 [1119]).188 A point needs to be made here. For Jacques Ellul, “few themes are more authentically Christian than” the idea of solidarity with the poor. However, there is a problem. Ellul explains at length: We moderns have rediscovered that Jesus was the poor man par excellence, that he came from the poor that he promised the Kingdom, that the poor man on earth in fact represents Jesus Christ; and we remember that the parable in Matthew 25 (on the judgement of nations) is the central text of the revelation. Theologically, the election of the poor is just. But unfortunately this theological discovery often gives rise to a sentimental attitude toward the poor and merely induces a bad conscience—​the sense of being different, of being privileged—​in the rich Christian.189

Ellul uses “modern” as we might use it, that which is contemporary to us, but we should expand its meaning to the way Mignolo uses it, beginning with the events that unfolded after 1492, long before the Enlightenment or the Industrial Revolution.190 Guaman Poma is modern in Mignolo’s sense, or if we like, we can consider him “early modern” to insert him into Ellul’s admonition about having just a bad conscience and see he goes beyond that. As he wandered day after day, Guaman Poma, slowly began to “dress in sackcloth” 187  Quispe-​Agnoli, La fe andina, 41–​43; Adorno certainly influenced Quispe-​Agnoli’s notion of affect and action. See Adorno, Guaman Poma, 62–​65. 188  Gutiérrez, Las Casas, 447. Lamana explores the seeming contradiction between the poor of Jesus Christ and the notion that some people are bad and some are good based on individual actions. “Enseñar y ver,” 161–​65. 189  Ellul, Violence, 30.

190  Mignolo takes Said to task for locating the birth of modernity as late as the eighteenth century. Mignolo, The Idea of Latin America, 40.

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(bestirse de un saco), that is, he went beyond solely having a “bad conscience” and actually became a poor man so that he could serve as an eyewitness (sentenciador de ojos y a uista) (NC, 902 [916]–​903 [917]). But the Andean was doing more than just serving as an eyewitness. He was trying with his life to imitate the ultimate model in Christianity, Jesus Christ. This is what pristine or primitive Christianity is all about, the imitation of Christ.191 David Boruchoff frames it as having good examples, and the best example being the one of Christ himself. The example of Christ serves to “both attract and instruct converts.”192 In his discussion of this, Boruchoff consults one of Zumárraga’s texts from 1533. In it the bishop calls on the Mendicants of the Franciscan and Dominican orders, to “Imitate Christ, who from infancy wandered in Egypt and beyond the confines of his homeland, not even having a place to reset his head.”193 If we bring Moises into the picture, a fuller meaning emerges. Moises wandering in Egypt becomes Guaman Poma wandering in Peru. If the Jews escaped from slavery, then the Peruvians could do so too. The Peruvian intellectual was not the first to go through such a transition as the one that goes from power to poverty, nor was he the last. Writing on Las Casas as he entered into an analogous process of giving up his wealth (his encomienda), Gustavo Gutiérrez observes the following: “This descent from his social class is the condition of the authenticity of a transformation that he does not wish to remain, all too idealistically, on a purely interior and ‘spiritual’ level.”194 Despite being from different sides of the world, the spurning of wealth and the cultivation of liberation thinking was something both colonial-​era authors have in common. In our reading of Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, we must concern ourselves with the notion of the conquered Andeans as “the poor of Jesus Christ,” which we will get to, but also his notions of Church (which institutionalizes Jesus) and state (a colonizing system). We started this discussion in ­chapter  2 with the failure to adhere to the division-​ of-​power ideal and continue here as we see how the concepts of nation and religion play out in Guaman Poma’s worldview and result in liberation thinking. Based on ethnicity, he deployed his thought as an instrument designed to resist the Spanish annexation of Western Hemisphere lands. His theorization resolves the equation E+R=HC, where “E” stands for “ethnicity”; “R” “Resistance” or a new “Redemption” interacting with it; and “HC” “Hybrid Cultures,” which are ethnically centered, but liberated. We discover that one aspect of HC is a precontact notion of the Andean nation meshed with a postcontact construing of Christianity as precontact, at variance with a conquest mentality given shape materially by the encomienda, chattel slavery, tributo de indios, and forming debt-​ peonage networks.195 191  The expression “The Imitation of Christ” comes from De Imitatione Christi, published in 1418 by the German-​Dutch monk and scribe Thomas à Kempis. 192  Boruchoff, “Martín de Murúa,” 79. 193  Boruchoff, “Martín de Murúa,” 84. 194  Gutiérrez, Las Casas, 51.

195  For further discusión of Guaman Poma’s concept of the nation, see Husson, “La defensa de la nación indo-​peruana.”

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When Guaman Poma recognizes a terrible collusion among the powers, he turns to explore what restituting the partition of spiritual and temporal power means in both political and religious terms. It becomes clear to him that he is Catholic, and Andeans are Catholic, and they must become even more so. Therefore, Andeans inevitably need to be under the pope for spiritual guidance. Similarly, recognizing the principle of division, he realizes that it is reasonable to be Catholic, but not be Spanish. In terms of our formula, E+R=HC, Guaman Poma de Ayala has “E,” an Andean ethnicity (or ethnicities), he takes an “R,” a religion as resistance and/​or redemption, all of which results in a cultural admixture that we can describe as “HC,” a hybrid culture at once Andean and Christian. This culture, mixed even further than the precontact one his mitmaq migrant family experienced (pl. mitmaqkuna; colonial neologism pl. mitmaes), is now infused with a Semitic faith that originated in the Middle East. How does this startling amalgamation of belief and culture come to pass? While Guaman Poma, who also spoke Aymara, a non-​Inkan language, was a Christian who was not necessarily in favor of the return of the Inkakuna as sovereigns (something some of his Qheswa-​centric contemporaries contemplated), he did see an Andes liberated from Spain through a Christian lens. In Razones de sangre, Gonzalo Portocarrero considers this seeming paradox that is not a paradox: “Under the light of Christian doctrine, Andean men could think about their situation as with the Jews in exile, as a test. Their putting up with injustice would make them stronger and worthy of God’s respect” (A la luz de las doctrinas cristianas los hombres andinos podían pensar su situación como la de los judíos en el exilio, como una prueba; soportar la injusticia los haría más fuertes y merecedores del aprecio de Dios).196 But Guaman Poma goes beyond merely “putting up with injustice.” Different from most, he condemns authority figures from Spain. These included lascivious priests and avaricious encomenderos who abused their religious and economic power. This brings us back to Las Casas. As Father Pérez Fernández remarks, one of his early proposals was the “creation of some type of Indian ‘communities’ that he considers necessary to facilitate evangelization” (creación de un tipo de “comunidades” indias que considera necesario para posibilitar la evangelización).197 Needless to say, this idea is analogous to having pueblos de indios and pueblos de españoles. In The Narrow Pass of our Nerves, Castro-​Klarén clarifies Las Casas’s thinking on this matter: “The idea that the Indians should be left in communities of their own was predicated on the notion that they had demonstrable intelligence to rule themselves, even though they needed still the light of Christianity to achieve their divinely intended purpose on earth.” She concludes explaining Guaman Poma takes up this fundamental notion and makes it his own: This idea of separate communities was later embraced by Guaman Poma, who also wrote to the king in search of relief from the death toll of the conquest and Spanish rule. Guaman Poma, however, went beyond Las Casas in that he would also expel the priests

196  Portocarrero, Razones de sangre, 116.

197  Pérez Fernández, Bartolomé de las Casas, 575.

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Figure 3. Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, Nueva corónica y buen gobierno (p. 576), Murra, Adorno, Urioste, eds., Mexico: Siglo XXI, p. 631. “Mala confesión.”

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about whose greed and un-​Christian practices he writes a scathing tract in his El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno (1615).198

Guaman Poma plainly insinuates that Spaniards should give back the lands they have taken. He reasons this out in the following manner: “The Spaniards have Castile, the Indians have the Indies” (Castilla es de los españoles y las Yndias es de los yndios) (NC, 915 [929]). This expulsion of Spaniards from Las Indias is a kind of regionalism that goes beyond Las Casas since it does not require Andean lords’ permission for the Spanish presence, it simply disavows a Spanish right to be in “the Indies.” However, other Lascasian ways of phrasing support Guaman Poma’s argument. Consider this one from the Tratado de las “doce dudas”: The Holy Apostolic See, upon conceding the aforesaid principality and imperial sovereignty of that Indian World to our Kings of Castile and León, did not mean to deprive the monarchs and lords of that aforementioned New World of its royal states, lordships, jurisdictions, honors, and greatness. (La Sancta Sede Apostólica, en conceder el dicho principado y superioridad imperial de aquel indiano orbe a los Reyes nuestros de Castilla y León, no entendió privar los reyes y señores naturales de aquel dicho nuevo mundo, de sus estados reales, señoríos y jurisdicciones, honras y dignidades.)199

This idea of local sovereignty arrives intact in Guaman Poma’s proposals. But his going beyond Las Casas suggests Guaman Poma was an original thinker. The expulsion of encomenderos, corregidores, and even priests opens a space for the Andean nobility to assume its rightful place as rulers again. For this reason, Guaman Poma reminds his readers of Viceroy Toledo’s ordinances which mandate “that not one Spaniard, mestizo, mulatto be received in the above-​mentioned towns among the Indians” (que no rrecidiesen en los dichos pueblos entre yndios nengún español ni mestiso ni mulato en todo el rreyno) (NC, 1116 [1126]). This idea of returning local lands could be expressed in other ways too: “It is quite fair that said lands, corrals, and parishes sold in his majesty’s name be returned and reinstituted because conscientiously they cannot be taken away from the natural inhabitants, the legitimate owners of said lands” (Es muy justo que se vuelba y rrestiuya las dichas tierras y corrales y pastos que se bendieran en nombre de Magestad porque debajo de consencia no se le puede quitársela a los naturales, lexítimos propietarios de las dichas tierras). But here Guaman Poma allows ingeniously that this land also “be rented to Spaniards, mestizos, mulattoes, blacks, cholos, zambos, and to everybody that tends towards other casts and generations” (se lo alquile a los españoles, mestizos, mulatos, negros, cholos, zanhahigos, a todos los que tiraren a otra casta y generación) (NC, 526 [540]). Renting does not give up the right to the land and it is a way to invert the economic power structure to favor Andeans. Restitution was a way to form a shield over the runa, or people, to protect them from transatlantic hegemony and the 198  Castro-​Klarén, The Narrow Pass, 135. Quispe-​Agnoli reaches the same conclusion, “Las Casas usa un modelo discursivo de retórica eclesiástica que Guamán Poma emplea y sobrepasa,” La fe andina, 54. 199  Las Casas, Tratado de las “doce dudas,” Obras completas, 11.2:53.

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contamination that comes with it. However, it would be incongruous to assume such a policy would protect Andeans from cultural contamination if property owners were to rent to people not of Andean stock. Spaniards were cultural chauvinists. This could be one problem the liberation theorist does not see. Otherwise, renting to Spaniards would work toward inverting economic hegemony. In any case, Guaman Poma denounces the abuses of priests and doctrinas from within the parameters of Catholicism. However, as Mignolo puts it, “what he was thinking responded to needs, desires, and vision grounded in the history of the Tawantinsuyu.”200 This does not mean Guaman Poma was arguing for the restoration of the Inka order. In an unanticipated pitch, Guaman Poma proposes political power revert to his son (NC, 949 [963]). As mentioned above, he was not part of the Inka power elite from Cuzco (or Quito) and it is quite possible that our author was responding to the anti-​Inkan ideologies emitted from the Toledan circle of chroniclers as well as drawing on his family’s own experience as mitmaq. Both experience and ideologies in the air were seeds for his anti-​Inkan sentiments, which were uneven, and not absolute. It goes without saying that we should let Guaman Poma speak for himself. There is no need to ponder if subaltern subjects can speak or if we can hear them speak as did the notable scholar Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in her famous late-​twentieth-​century essay, “Can the subaltern speak?” The answer, despite all the polemic is quite simply yes, and it is up to us to sit down and read the subaltern to see what it is he or she has to say.201 Perusing his letter shows that the Andean chronicler was not pro-​Inka, but pro-​ Andean, and was so with a consciousness of the world. If we come back to our quote on Spaniards in Castile and Indians in the Indies and fill in the reminder of the idea, we can verify that he had a balanced approach: “The Spaniards have Castile, the Indians have the Indies, and the blacks have Guinea. Each of these is a legitimate owner” (Castilla es de los españoles y las Yndias es de los yndios y Guenea es de los negros. Que cada déstos son lexítimos propetarios …) (NC, 915 [929]). The symmetry and balance of his argument works against coloniality and slavery in Abya Yala but has the same meaning for colonialism and slavery in Africa. In another place, the epistle writer adds the fourth quadrant and proposes leaders for each from the appropriate regions. In this vein, he proposes a black prince for Guinea, a Christian king for Rome (Castile), he adds a Turkish monarch for the Moors, and for the Indies, as mentioned above, he offers his son, a grandson and great-​grandson of Thupaq Inka Yupanki (NC, 949 [963]).202 Mignolo takes note that these four regions coincide with the four suyos of Tawantinsuyu and that each of the known ethnicities of that time got a quadrant.203 We can add that Guaman Poma’s quadrangular 200  Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity, 88.

201  Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” On Guaman Poma as a subaltern subject speaking, see Castro-​Klarén, The Narrow Pass, 200–​201.

202  Elsewhere Guaman Poma repeats this idea including the Pope: “en el mundo el papa es papa, lugar de Dios, enperador y rreys españoles o yndios o negros son rreys y duques y condes, marqueses y caualleros que decienden déstos” (NC, 936 [950]). 203  Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity, 272.

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configuration coincides with similar Nahua and K’iche’ configurations as described in Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxóchitl’s Sumaria relación de todas las cosas que han sucedido en la Nueva España [A Concise Account of Everything that has Happened in New Spain] as well as in in the Popol Wuj.204 What we see in Guaman Poma’s four innovative quadrants is a proposal for self-​determination based on what we, in our time, might call “race,” but what in his time were understood to be naciones or kingdoms. Guaman Poma came to these ideas reflecting on Andean realities as well as Las Casas’s message projected posthumously to him. There is a geographical aspect to this and there is a theological aspect too. As Jean-​Philippe Husson explains, what both thinkers have in common is a belief in the divine right of peoples over their lands, a belief that has a juridical force greater than any other kind of right.205 Exactly what is this right? In its initial form, the first principle of Las Casas’s Tratado de las “doce dudas” maps out the basis for this basic right of existence of all nations: All infidels whatever sect or religion they might profess … have and possess dominion over their things that they have acquired without prejudice toward others. With the same impartiality, they possess their principalities, kingdoms, states, stateliness, jurisdictions, and dominions.

(Todos los infieles, de qualquiera secta o religión que sean … tienen y poseen señorío sobre sus cosas que sin perjuicio de otro adquirieron. Y también con la misma justica poseen sus principados, reynos, estados, dignidades, jurisdicciones y señoríos.)206

Where Las Casas talks in generalities, Guaman Poma makes a specific argument constituted as the Christian trinity with the points he configures as Spaniards/​Castile, Blacks/​Guinea, and Indians/​the Indies, which he then turns into a quadrant upon adding the category Moors/​Gran Turk. The anti-​imperialist, anti-​slavery message that Guaman Poma puts forward is simple: people should stay put in their own territories and be content with what they have. This is a nuanced view of the world incompatible with the Spanish ethnocentric thrust. As Marie Elise Escalante Adaniya observes, there is an acceptance of heterogeneity here, quite different from Garcilaso de la Vega’s homogenizing discourse.207 There is also a spiritual dimension to this. If people are reveling in the spiritual life, they will not covet the material things of other nations that exist in the temporal sphere. Talk of quadrants and sectors in this period contests the Spanish-​only view of things based on greed imposed on the King Charles’s Holy Roman Empire and the Western Hemisphere. We remember that Thomas More argues that greed goes against the very notion of justice. The Utopians’ rejection of gold was a rebuff of greed. For his part, Erasmus had noted people’s “tendency to be dissatisfied with what they have and to admire what belongs to others.” Greed, as stated in previous chapters, is a primary cause in the growth of the mentalities of coloniality. Las Casas quite specifically 204  Alva Ixtlilxóchitl, Obras históricas, 1:295; Popol Vuh, II, i, pp. 114–​15.

205  Husson, “La idea de nación en la crónica de Felipe Guaman Poma,” 102. 206  Las Casas, Tratado de “Las doce dudas,” Obras completas, 11.2:35. 207  Escalante Adaniya, Un estudio sobre la nominación, 93.

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attributes slavery to the “avaricious tyrants’ insatiable greed.” We know from our above-​ mentioned discussion of Guaman Poma’s criticism of the gold fever that he was aware of this problem. It becomes a sort of leitmotif as when he tells us that the captains and soldiers “wanted to arrive [in the Andes] because of their greed for gold and silver” (deseauan llegar de la codicia de oro y plata) (NC, 370 [372]). This is a basic realization of the reality on the ground, but it also reveals the life of public discourse on the dissemination of Christianity. The greed that Guaman Poma criticizes goes beyond what the conquistadors were doing. It also goes beyond the dastardly origin of the colonial force. It coincides with the human condition as described by Erasmus and it persists seventy years after the Spaniards’ arrival reveling the coloniality that has been put in place and remains. Guaman Poma states, “Even now the desire for gold and silver persists, and Spaniards kill each other” (Aún hasta agora dura aquel deseo de oro y plata y se maten los españoles) (NC, 372 [374]). His decolonial disclosure is apparent when he reminds his reader of the Christian mission with respect to material riches: “Jesus Christ was a live God who came to take souls from the earth, not silver; neither did he ask for tribute nor did he consent to it” (Fue Jesucristo Dios bibo que uino a sacar las ánimas que no plata del mundo y no pedió tributo ni consentió) (NC, 962c [979]). García Castellón reconfirms that the gold, with its modes of production, works to instill selfish egoism, which works against humanity.208 As mentioned, one of the ideas of pristine Christianity is living one’s life as Jesus lived it. From a theological standpoint, Gutiérrez emphasizes that this thirst for gold was a class of idolatry that Guaman Poma and Las Casas before him criticize, since “gold de facto replaces God.”209 Even worse, in another place, Gutiérrez establishes the terrible relationship “in the Indies between gold and death.”210 The more Spaniards wanted gold, the more they would kill for it. Atawallpa in Cuzco and Cuauhtemoc in Tenochtitlan are but two examples. Since it is impossible to remove the idea of gold from Peru, one way to expunge Peru of such greed is to change people’s values. This can be accomplished by inculcating a more primitive Christianity. Another way is to expel the Spaniards. We can consider both as decolonial options. There is another element in Phelan’s book on Franciscan millenarianism in the Western Hemisphere. He points out that its last flowering occurs during the seventeenth century. Apocalyptic thought may have been at play in Guaman Poma’s mind. Since he knew the Spanish were so greedy, they would not give up power for Christian reasons. A quadrangular model is integral to one of his lines of thinking. Guaman Poma writes that Wayna Qhapaq “had four kings from the four quadrants of this kingdom” (tenía quatro reyes de las cuatro partes deste rreyno) (NC, 948 [962]). Again, as Mignolo notes, the quadripartition of Tawantinsuyu is not unlike the division of the world into Guinea, Spain, the Andes, and the Ottoman kingdom. Phelan explains that the central idea was based on “four great world monarchies to be followed by the fifth world monarchy, which 208  García Castellón, Guamán Poma, 149. 209  Gutiérrez, Las Casas, 15. 210  Gutiérrez, Las Casas, 58.

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would be the millennial kingdom of the Apocalypse.”211 These four monarchies might be viewed as chronological, one after the other, or they could be synchronic, all of them existing simultaneously. Guaman Poma’s quadrangular reasoning is different from the way Phelan describes the generalized millenarianism in which both Charles V and the pope would cease to exist.212 Las Casas himself does not go that far regarding the pope. Nevertheless, it has an apocalyptic ring to it, cleansing out the Spanish, and announcing the true kingdom of Jesus. Another way to view the Apocalypse is as a New World order “in which—​in Gutiérrez’s words—​peoples of different cultures and religions would coexist.”213 Again, the acceptance of heterogeneity is present. One aspect of this ethnic theology is based on Jesus Christ and the people He is protecting, the Andeans. Of course Christianity is not supposed to have ethnic denotations or connotations, but when under the influence of imperialist action, it does not necessarily live up to its ideals. Of the various phrases that Guaman Poma repeats habitually in his letter, “the poor of Jesus Christ,” stands out and calls attention to the spiritual aspect of his thought (for example, NC, 367 [369]; 485 [489]; 498 [502]; 559 [573]; 1109 [1119]). Discussion of the poor and poverty, Gutiérrez tells us, “has a distinct biblical ring.” To support this view, he refers to Psalms 14.4: “Will all those evil doers never learn, they who eat up my people just as they eat bread?”214 From passages like this, Erasmus and Las Casas decry greed; Guaman Poma looks for restitution, which he does not find. From the same passage Guaman Poma may have gotten the imagery of Spaniards eating gold. For more details on biblical exegesis and Guaman Poma, the reader can consult Gustavo Gutiérrez’s overview.215 Here we are interested in the liberationist aspect of Guaman Poma’s thought as it applies to the Andean nation. As part of his treatise on Good Government (NC, 437 [439]–​486 [490]) and subsequent to it in the long section on corregidores, notaries, miners, and government officials, Guaman Poma protests against the conditions under which the poor of Jesus Christ must live every day with the coloniality they must endure along with the concomitant lack of concern people of power have for them. In other words, he seeks “redemption” for the downtrodden so that they can take their rightful place in the nation that is there. In the face of money-​hungry priests/​friars and government officials, Guaman Poma proclaims the following: There is no one who will speak for the poor of Jesus Christ, unless he [or she] turns back again and returns to the world for the poor. In this way, they will be favored [even] in the face of all the injuries and evils that they are suffering in the Kingdom of Indians, because everyone is against the poor Indians.

211  Phelan, The Millennial Kingdom, 118. 212  Phelan, The Millennial Kingdom, 118. 213  Gutiérrez, Las Casas, 450. 214  Gutiérrez, Las Casas, 447.

215  Gutiérrez, Las Casas, 444–​52.

190 Liberation Thinking: The Americas (no hay quien buelva por los pobres de Jesucristo, cino que torne otra ues, vuelba al mundo por sus pobres. Y ací será favorecido de los tantos daños y males que pasan en este rreyno los indios, porque todos son contra indios pobres.) (NC, 485 [489])

Even the Lord Himself appears to have abandoned his poor: “My God, where are you? Don’t you hear my call to remedy the poor; because of so much remedying I walk” (Dios mío, ¿adónde estás? No me oyes para el rremedio de tus pobres, que yo harto rremediado ando) (NC, 1104 [1114]). The idea here is that the poor are abandoned and left unprotected. Guaman Poma recounts that this is so because “everyone comes to weigh down even more the backs of the Indians while at the same time favoring the citizens, the wealthy, and the mine owners” (Que antes todos uienen a cargar en más a los yndios y a faboreser a los uecinos y rricos y a los mineros) (NC, 485 [489]). This most certainly goes against early Christianity because the powerful take the encomienda, which can be understood to be, as Gutiérrez puts it, “a stolen thing” then used hypocritically “to honor God.”216 Again, the meaning here of vecinos is not so much neighbours but more “citizens,” who were Spaniards, and later, “Criollos.” Indigenous people only with great difficulty could penetrate this category. Describing everyday Andeans as “the poor of Jesus Christ,” which was an accurate description in the postcontact period, is a way of recognizing them as “Indians” but also allowing them to demand their rights as Christians. This brings us back to our equation of liberation, E+R=HC. They are ethnic Andeans, or “E,” they are redeemed through Christ, or “R,” allowing for the creation of “HC,” a hybrid culture comprised of adherents of the faith from an ethnicity hitherto unknown to Spaniards, which serves as a petri dish for liberation thinking. The Emergence of Liberation Thinking despite the Coloniality of Power

Yet “redemption” in Guaman Poma does not represent an unqualified freeing of the soul for he was writing within the late sixteenth-​, early seventeenth-​century orbit with rigid locally and vertically defined hierarchies of caste. Hierarchies of religion and government were beginning to function vertically, but being imported, we must recognize that they were originally transatlantic. This means they were horizontal before they were vertical.217 These hierarchies became vertical when they became rooted in Abya Yala. The verticality, however, was never an autonomous or sovereign force. An ongoing stream of bishops, regular and secular clergy, and, of course, everyday Spaniards who were Catholic to the core were arriving over the horizon. Papal influence was also added to the mix. The prejudices and stereotypes that they brought with them were channeled into the vertical font which was reorganized in accordance with the norms being imported. The overarching European horizontality that was developing vertical roots while becoming institutionalized on the shores of the Pacific Ocean and in the adjacent Andean mountains was not the only cultural force. There were additional intersecting 216  Gutiérrez, Las Casas, 47.

217  I have explored horizontal and vertical cultural movement more fully in The Formation of Latin American Nations, 10, 51–​52, 58–​59, 66, 156–​63, 194–​200, etc.

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cultures. If the Spanish cultural imposition was horizontal and formed wells of verticality, Andean cultures were, in their own right, vertical forces rooted in self-​identity. In the interaction between these horizontal and vertical flows there was sometimes divergence and other times fusion and even cohesiveness, sometimes there was inculturation, and in the case of the Andean, deculturation. This back and forth, push and pull, was the complex cultural activity that Fernando Ortiz accurately called transculturation in his well-​known book on the topic, Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar. Guaman Poma’s culture was a mytho-​ideologically constructed vertical array of fonts. The vertical fonts have to do with the identity one holds dear for him or herself. Ofelia Schutte explains why this is important to this kind of thinking: “Identity can be an ‘arm’ of liberation theory used to reinforce the goals of those struggling against oppression by a hostile or superior force.”218 Guaman Poma was certainly thinking about himself and his family, but he also held dear to his heart a category of people the Spanish pejoratively labeled “Indians.” Keeping in mind the specificity of Andean “Indians,” they were a community, or more precisely a diverse collection of communities that were different from each other in language and other attributes (see map 3), but that shared common ancestral traits, histories, religions, archival methods, farming techniques, and intercultural connections. Furthermore, Andeans were different from “Spaniards” and thus that common dualistic pairing—​Spaniard-​Indian—​during the Age of Imperialism created an even stronger pan-​Andean “Indian” identity than may have existed otherwise. Schutte is useful in understanding the importance of this shared community. She writes: Cultural identity, like the concepts of ethnic identity or gender identity, can be used to distinguish the positive features uniting a number of individuals around something they hold to be a very valuable part of their selves. In this case, the values upheld refer to a certain cultural heritage to which individuals feel strongly attached by historical and/​ affective ties.219

Verticality then was a powerful font of identity which was liberating because it was self-​affirming. However, self-​affirmation during the colonial interval could be viewed as dangerous to imperial interests. Everything positive that the members of the “Republic of Indians” might have seen and felt about themselves, had to be tempered with subservience, real or feigned. Guaman Poma had to pay tribute not only to God and the Virgin Mary, but also to “the consecration of the Sacred Mother Church of our holy father, Pope of Rome, and of our lord and Catholic King, Don Philip, the third of glorious memory” (los dichos del seruicio de Dios y de la santa madre yglecia de nuestro muy santo padre papa de Roma y de nuestro señor y rrey católico don Phelipe tercero de la gloriosa memoria) (NC, 486 [490]). In fact, these hierarchies, whether working vertically or horizontally, represent structures of coloniality that defined human relationships. These are organized by what we could call race (or ethnicity) and by a dynamic that Aníbal Quijano describes as the coloniality of power. Quijano explains, “Coloniality of power was conceived together with 218  Schutte, Cultural Identity, 12. 219  Schutte, Cultural Identity, 12.

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America and Western Europe, and with the social category of ‘race’ as the key element of the social classification of colonized and colonizers.” In the sixteenth century the term “race” still had to come to mean what it means today. Terms used during that time were pueblo and nación.220 But whatever the term, the axis described by Quijano is apparent. Obviously addressing coloniality of power was heavy on Guaman Poma’s mind, even though that term is ours and not his. We know it weighed heavy on him because he authored a book. One does not usually compose a book of over 1,000 pages for himself or herself, but for others. To get others to read a book, one has to write it for them in a way that will be pleasing to the eye, so that they would not take offense to it, ceasing to continue to read it. Thus, besides God, about whom he clearly felt fervent, Guaman Poma must praise the king and the pope, whom he did not feel fervent about, but to whom he knew must show subservience. He states his wish that his book be in the “service of God, of the Sacred Mother Church, of Your Sanctity, and your Majesty” (seruicio de Dios y de la santa madre yglecia y de vuestra Sanctidad y de vuestra Magestad) (NC, 486 [490]). Guaman Poma would have to get his letter by the censors if it were to be published, which it was not; but he may have had this in mind as he composed his mammoth text. Knowing that Guaman Poma had to please the king, allows us to postulate that he was suffering from coloniality of the mind. Cox sets this straight. After the regime’s consolidation, the Church and the imperial administration set about to colonize the minds of the Indigenous. This was done with indoctrination which itself was realized with education and confession.221 What the author thought came from his own nature interacting with horizontal and vertical colonialities. In other words, he was suffering from coloniality, he was aware of the conditions of it that he did not like, but he accommodated those conditions—​to a degree—​as a means to a greater end. Distinct types of coloniality had been rising, constituting a complex structure indeed. Let us look at how coloniality works in the local setting with five examples. José F. Buscaglia-​Salgado has recently further described coloniality of power, first described by Quijano, in a very stark and straightforward way, as “a tradition of terror and human devastation.”222 Of course imperialism itself causes “terror and human devastation,” but it is the cause. Coloniality is the result, the tradition of horror that stems from it. Once the tradition takes root, usually with multiple vectors, it expands, or at least tries to expand. Some of the vectors are always successful. Buscaglia therefore refers to the “persistence of the coloniality of power.”223 Let us look at some of these vectors. The first vector of coloniality of power has to do with coercive social relations cultivated among Spanish administrators, corregidores, and kurakakuna. The corregidores were from Spain or self-​identified with Spain (in the unlikely case they were Criollos) and thus their power was horizontally derived. The kurakakuna were hereditary lords whose authority over 220  Quijano, “Coloniality and Modernity/​Rationality,” 171. 221  Cox, Guaman Poma de Ayala, 186.

222  Buscaglia-​Salgado, “Race and the Constitutive Inequality,” 122. 223  Buscaglia-​Salgado, “Race and the Constitutive Inequality,” 122.

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everyday people was vertical. This is an important point, and Gonzalo Lamana makes it: this is not a binary system where all Spaniards are bad and all “Indians” are good.224 Recognizing this, Lamana argues that Guaman Poma’s text is not purely an anticolonial tract.225 We can take this a step further and argue that Guaman Poma’s text goes after all kinds of coloniality and/​or hegemony, it goes after bad Spaniards and bad Andeans. Not unlike More and Erasmus, it goes after selfish actors in particular geographic spaces. It works to understand the coloniality of all situations and how the various kinds of social actors reacted and responded to it. Not all the vertical coloniality went necessarily against the runa. There were collective structures of reciprocity such as ayni, or shared work, that benefited all. But when transatlantic influence filtered into that verticality, structures such as the rotating mita became peonistic. To begin, Guaman Poma can be objective and realizes that not all Spaniards are bad. He can see goodness in some authorities. He talks about “honored and Christian corregidores, who fear God and his Majesty and who earn their salary through untainted means” (corregidores, honrrados y cristianos, temeroso[s]‌de Dios y de su Magestad, ganan linpiamente de su salario) (NC, 489 [493]). Yet, he also understood, as mentioned, that other corregidores became enmeshed in transgressing in the colonial grid itself. In his letter, Guaman Poma relates to the king that the corregidores get involved in various business enterprises and to acquire funds, they raid the treasury to take out loans. This is not purely an economic problem for the monarchy. It also has to do with the Erasmian concern one would hope he might have in his subjects, because those who lose out the most are “the poor Indians of this kingdom” (los pobres yndios de todo este rreyno) (NC, 489 [493]). Then there are the kurakakuna who turn their backs on the realities of exploitation imposed by the corregidores: “because of having fear of them, of being mistreated by them, or of having their governmental positions given by God and His Majesty taken away, or even of false charges levied against them, members of the [Andean] nobility remain quiet and make believe there is nothing wrong” (por tenelle[s] miedo porque no les maltrate o porque no las quite la gouernación que le dio Dios y su Magestad o porque no proseda falsa enformación, y ancí con ella calla[n] y dicimula[n] los prencipales) (NC, 489 [493]). In such a situation, it is not hard for a kurakakuna to feel intimidated. This uneasiness is not the result of an imagined danger since there was a real possibility that he and his sector could be mistreated or falsely accused. Because of this he may favor the corregidor over the runa people. The trepidation that a kuraka feels might cause him to remain silent, or he may remain silent in the hope of a future gain. This is the second vector of coloniality of power, which is private and psychological. The way this works is that the Andean lords, “the kurakakuna, do not defend them [the runa] because they get in with them [the corregidores] and become their compadres” (no le[s]‌ defiende[n] los caciques prencipales porque se hazen con ellos y se hazen compadres) (NC, 489 [493]). Where the verticality of the kurakakuna should function as a buffer to protect Andean people from transatlantic coloniality, it does not, because 224  Lamana, “Enseñar y ver,” 157–​58. 225  Lamana, “Enseñar y ver,” 158.

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Christian custom—​naming godfathers—​is utilized to create new horizontal links, an additional structure of subordination. The kuraka finds himself in a social debt to the corregidor, thus taking part in a merging of Spanish and Andean nations, to the detriment of the latter. The merging occurs at the exact point where horizontal and vertical power intersect in the daily family relations between the kuraka and the Spanish authorities. This obsequiousness results from the kurakakuna being afraid of losing the natural offices they hold by means of heredity. It is the inclination to do or not that can become a kind of coloniality of the mind, depending on the path taken. Because of mental coloniality, a kuraka may not be inclined to denounce or thwart an abuse of economic power. These negative arrangements used against the common good, work in tandem with other similar arrangements and practices the Spanish invaders employed and imposed. When the kuraka overcomes fear and/​or the desire to climb socially, he reacts against that internal coloniality that eats away at his insides. In such cases, temporal and ecclesiastical power can come down hard on him. This would be the third way coloniality comes into play. Guaman Poma offers a case in point, Don Cristóbal de León, whom we will meet below as one of Guaman Poma’s disciples, “was harassed by the aforementioned corregidor of the province of the Lucanas” (le amolestia el dicho corregidor de la prouincia de los Lucanas), perhaps precisely because he and others of his stripe were “defending the poor.” León represented a threat because “he had many other disciples who have become Christians and primary ladinos. He was a friend of defending the poor” (tubo otros muchos decípolos y an salido cristianos y ladinos prencipales, amigo de defender a los pobres). It was not only one corregidor who pursued Cristóbal de León one on one, indeed it was a whole band of “fathers, priests, officials and encomenderos” (padres y curas y corregidores, comenderos), who tracked him down (NC, 495 [499]). It was not only public actions that worked to bring him down, it was equally the “false statements” (falsos enformaciones), that is, the slander that sullied his reputation. This suggests another vector, the fourth, which was the use of writing in what Angel Rama has described as la ciudad letrada, “the lettered city,” to control people. These “false statements” put to paper became part of the legal machinery. What must have really threatened the authorities was that kurakakuna such as Cristóbal de León were lettered elites, sometimes described as indios ladinos (NC, 889 [903]). Adorno suggests that this category was less biological and more religious, cultural, and linguistic.226 She cautions that outsiders coined the expression and used it within colonialist discourse, and further warns, “it was not used by natives for self-​identification except when dealing with Spanish-​speaking outsiders.”227 Guaman Poma used the term for his Spanish reader, the king, so that he could relate to the words before his eyes. Guaman Poma reveals the lettered aspect to this ladino category when he writes, “this above-​mentioned León drafted a few written chapters by his hand to ask for justice for his wife” (Este dicho León hizo unos capítulos por escrito de su letra para pedir justicia 226  Adorno, The Polemics, 204.

227  Adorno, Guaman Poma, xliv; “Images of Indios Ladinos,” 233.

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a su señoría) (NC, 680 [694]). This is a visible example we offer to demonstrate the concept and possibility of literate agency. Quispe-​Agnoli remarks that a ladino agent of this type “has a capacity to demand rights” (está en la capacidad de reclamar los derechos).228 Clamoring for rights in this context questions Spanish authority and puts the agent in danger. Given that Spaniards expected Andeans to be docile and accept unconditionally their condition as colonial underlings, they express surprise at a written denunciation. They do not expect that someone who for them is nationless and a “barbarian” would be able to think and write on their own. Chang-​Rodríguez clarifies, “the most distinctive feature of colonization” (el rasgo más distintivo de la colonización) is “not recognizing ancient Americans as subjects” (el desconocimiento de los antiguos americanos como sujetos).229 This nonrecognition is even more pronounced in the face of an Andean who can write. Once one voice rises, however, the gears of coloniality rev up and push that voice back down. Those “priests, officials, and encomenderos” may have won out in their day, but ultimately, they lost because the writer Guaman Poma preserved the story of Cristóbal de León for us to read today as we try to isolate those colonialist gears of subordination to understand the levers that controlled them. The occurrences surrounding his life are important because when liberation thinkers and practitioners get in the way of Spanish temporal power, they are usually squashed. Here knowledge of him has been preserved and integrated into our understanding of coloniality. The fifth vector of coloniality of power occurs when Andeans themselves inculturate to new political realities and become agents themselves of coloniality, thus it is not only a problem that entails Spanish power elites. While in a number of passages Guaman Poma defends his class status, in others he reacts outright against his peers who come to align with hegemonic interests. He counters kuraka wannabes, people from the lower strata who have moved up into positions of power to become “false primary kurakakuna” (falsos caciques principales) (NC, 762 [776]). In one instance he criticizes both the upstarts and the Andean nobility: “marcacamayos, petty bosses, lords of the pampa, and khipu keepers who rob from the aforementioned poor Indians and take away from their houses silver, food, and their livestock” (marcacamayos, mandoncillos, pampacamayos y quipocamayos [que] quitan y hurtan en ausencia de los dichos yndios pobres y [que] sacan entrando de [sic] su casa plata y comidas y le quita sus carneros) (NC, 857 [871]). From a decolonizing stance, we might think positively of professionals such as the khipukamayoqkuna, the keepers of Andean traditions, but if we believe Guaman Poma, we realize some of them developed patterns of unprincipled activities during the chaos of the first century of subordination to Spanish imperialism. Considering this aspect, Guaman Poma is as Erasmus, censuring impure Christianity in his own social medium. He goes against the hegemony derived from internal colonialism. The decolonial stance is nuanced in this case. Another way to describe this reality is by acknowledging that the human condition, all too susceptible to the desire for material gain—​the previously 228  Quispe-​Agnoli, La fe andina, 130.

229  Chang-​Rodríguez, La palabra y la pluma, 30. This “ignorance” can be another facet of coloniality, see Ward, Decolonizing Indigeneity, 63–​65.

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discussed greed—​best describes this situation, even if fueling coloniality at one end of transatlantic cases. Guaman Poma, by going against the grain, against those of privilege, taking a stand in favor of the poor ethnic Andean majority, or “E,” searches for a redemption, “R,” that overcomes the structures of subordination we have described as coloniality, when horizontal and vertical processes intersect and result in “HC,” a hybrid culture. This “HC” can now become liberated since Christianity had been ushered in three-​quarters of a century prior. Guaman Poma is an unrelenting champion crying out in favor of the poor. Unlike Las Casas who offers remedies in his Remedios, Guaman Poma states repeatedly there is no remedy, a leitmotif that defines his work. Las Casas could have hope as he offered his recommendations to help the poor of Jesus Christ and in this he persisted. He is the optimist, Guaman Poma the pessimist. Despite the Peruvian’s anaphoric “and there is no remedy” (no hay rremedio) (NC, 489 [493]), he does insist on denouncing the mechanisms of what we are calling coloniality, which by inverting, could suggest ways to overcome the hierarchies of his time. His dauntless and persistent spirit kept him on board denouncing corruption through all the passages of the Nueva crónica—​serving as a model of faith-​based activity. Toward a Sui Generis Andean Priesthood

One of the remedies that Guaman Poma does seem to propose is the idea of priests who were not from Spain but from the Andes. This goes to the theologically derived idea of the existence of Christianity as a vertical font in Andean nation. In the social context of Guaman Poma’s formation, we should stipulate it would have been a “laughable” idea in the Spanish mind that Andean men might become Catholic priests. If they could not be writers, how could they become priests? Even the Jesuits, as “progressive” as they were for the time, were leery about mixed heritage clergy. On December 14, 1582, the Jesuit provincials in Lima voted unanimously against continuing to ordain mestizo priests.230 Here we are talking about mestizos, not “Indians” who would have been even farther from what was the established norm at that time. If Guaman Poma was born in 1535, as we think he was, the Jesuit decision would have occurred when he was forty-​seven years old, right around the time he was beginning to write his opus, or beginning to think about writing his opus. Other orders as well openly rejected mestizo priests although there were some exceptions such as the Franciscan Jerónimo Valera.231 Sabine Hyland has found that the episcopate did ordain some mestizo priests during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but that such priests had to be assigned to Indigenous doctrinas.232 Blas Valera, S.J. is another example. He ended up in a dungeon. Such blatant racism is obvious to us in our time, but would not necessarily have been apparent during that time. 230  Hyland, The Jesuit, 68.

231  Hyland, The Jesuit, 68n56. 232  Hyland, The Jesuit, 68n56.

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In the Mexican orbit, Stafford Poole finds that Church legislation allowed loopholes for “Indians” and castas to be ordinated. Hyland observes that after the Spanish crown allowed ordination, there was resistance to it, and the Council of Indies did not allow it until it granted bishops the right to grant dispensations for “illegitimate”—​read mestizo—​men to be ordinated.233 Clearly, as the thesis of Enrique Dussel’s El episcopado hispanoamericano (The Hispanic American Episcopacy) states, the bishops were most concerned with a defense of the “Indians” and with preaching the Gospel to them.234 However, the fear of mestizo and “Indian” priests resided in the concern that such priests would not be successful in extirpating idolatry. In any case, their inclusion in Indigenous doctrinas could be in accordance with the practice of different pueblos for “Spaniards” and “Indians. In such an intellectual milieu the idea of “Indian” priest in daily contact with his parishioners would have been “too much” for his parishioners if they were Spanish. From our twenty-​first-​century vantage point, we could state that the inverse of extirpating idolatries would necessarily entail extirpating coloniality. As seen, one way to extirpate coloniality from existing paradigms is to invert them, to see if the resulting structure would be acceptable to local populations. As discussed above and in Decolonizing Indigeneity, liberationists such as Las Casas inverted colonial paradigms as method to lay bare the camouflage that attempts to cover over lugubrious imperial realities.235 Also mentioned, Guaman Poma specifically inverted Rama’s cultural paradigm described as The Lettered City. Carranza Ko notes that when he does this “he subverts the existing power structure” (subvierte el sistema del poder existente).236 Guaman Poma’s inversion of The Lettered City parallels his inversion of colonialist culture and the priesthood, which would have created strangeness in the minds of Spaniards. When the inverse seems strange or not possible, the coloniality indicator rises. This is clear to us today, but it was clear to Guaman Poma too, although he expresses his awareness with a different vocabulary set. In this vein, Guaman Poma considers priests from Spain in the Andes and imagines priests from the Andes in Spain. The aforesaid foreigner doctrinaire fathers, called mitmaq of Castile in the Indians’ language cannot consider themselves landowners even if they are sons of a Spaniard since they are not sons of Indians … All of them are interim because only the Indians can be legitimate landowners who God has planted in this kingdom. And if by any chance an Indian went to Spain, he would be a foreigner, mitmaq, in Spain.

(Que los dichos padres dotrinantes estrangeros, que en la lengua de los yndios se llama mitimac de Castilla, todos no se puede llamarse propetario, aunque sea hijo de español como no sea hijo de yndio … Todos son ynteren[os] porque sólo los yndios son propetarios ligítimos que Dios plantó en este rreyno. Y ci acaso fuera a España un yndio, fuera estrangero, mitima, en España.) (NC, 657 [671])

233  Poole, “Church Law,” 638–​39; Hyland, “Illegitimacy,” 431.

234  Dussel, El episcopado hispanoamericano, III:xiii. Dussel repeats this idea in A History of the Church, 9. 235  Ward, Decolonizing Indigeneity, 95–​130. 236  Carranza Ko, “La inversion,” 50.

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Guaman Poma would never suggest it openly, but by letting logic fill in between the lines, we can ponder what would happen if an Indian priest were to go Spain to preach and evangelize. This is a coloniality indicator. If it seems logical one way—​from east to west—​ but not when flipped—​from west to east—​we can consider the possibility of coloniality in the human relationships herein described. While Spanish priests are “accepted” in Peru, obviously, an Andean priest would not be accepted in Spain. This conjures up the image of a kind of natural priest who comes from the Andean nation. Guaman Poma offers up the example of Martín de Ayala, his brother whose father was Luis Ávalos de Ayala, famous for killing Quispe Yupanki during the siege of Lima (a battle during the Forty-​Years War), who unselfishly serves the poor: Father Martín de Ayala, mestizo, after being ordained to give mass as a priest, was a very holy man who did not want a collative curateship. Instead he would be with the poor in Huamanga’s city hospital. He was a chaplain for said poor and was very penitent.

(Padre Martín de Ayala, mestizo, después de auerse ordenado de misa saserdote, fue muy gran sancto hombre, el qual no quizo dotrina nenguna, cino toda su uida que auía de estar con los pobres del hospital de la ciudad de Guamanga. Y fue capellán de los dichos pobres y hazía muy mucha penitencia.) (NC, 18 [18])

The idea here is that there is a pure Andean priest based in nature, although here a mestizo (thus his view of this specific mestizo, does not coincide with his view of other mestizos born of lasciviousness whom he censures). As Boruchoff points out, Guaman Poma holds up his brother as a model priest imitating Jesus Christ.237 Furthermore, by inserting the blessed Martín into his priestly context, Guaman Poma cannot resist setting up a comparison between him and the Spanish priests whom he shames with his presence: “the aforementioned fathers and priests of these kingdom’s collative curateships, with the pretext of bedding down with the aforementioned single girls, make their rounds of streets and houses, going into each house day and night” (los dichos padres y curas de las dotrinas destos rreynos, con color de tener amansebamiento a las dichas solteras, ellos propio de día y de noche rronda las calles y casas, entrando a cada casa) (NC, 598 [612]). This brings Guaman Poma close to proposing a priesthood of Andeans for Andeans. In one place he states, “It is only fair that both male and female Indians have an order and a church … St. Catherine and Saint Mary Magdalene” ([Es m]uy justo que tengan orden y yglecia de … de Sancta Catarina y de Sancta Madalena las yndias y los yndios). Guaman Poma finishes this thought by adding, “These two convents with their nuns can be founded by poor natural Indians so that they can serve God and his sacred mother” (Estos dos conuentos y monjas se le puede funda […] pobres naturales yndios, para que se cirua Dios y su madre sancta) (NC, 629 [643]). While there is certainly some ambiguity, because being a native speaker of Qheswa, Guaman Poma did not feel comfortable with the norms of gender and number agreement in his Spanish, it does seem that he is proposing Andean nuns in the latter quote. What is more, in the first quote he seems to be proposing a church and even an 237  Boruchoff, “Martín de Murúa,” 96–​104.

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order (like the Franciscan order) for men and women of the Andes. This could be a direct response to orders such as the Society of Jesus, which as stated, rejected mestizo (illegitimately born) priests. An order, of course, can have priests, friars, and monks as well as nuns. Franklin Pease, for the same reasons, notes this possibility and he frames it in a similar fashion when he suggests that Guaman Poma would support “the ordination of Andeans and mestizos” (la ordenación de andinos y mestizos).238 This is an amazing proposal because it was enunciated during the colonial era when mestizos and Andeans were largely prohibited from the priesthood. Given that the idea of Andean priests would have been something of a pipe dream, a more practical possibility for his proposal is to replace the Spanish ecclesiastics with Christianized Indians who could then serve (even if not actually ordained) in the Andean Kingdom of God. Guaman Poma writes: That they should have in each town a Christian indio ladino and, if possible, all of them should be Christians and Ladinos to watch over the priests, corregidores, encomenderos, chiefs, and petty bosses from those towns so that they do not steal and deceive them. And Indians that do not idolatrize, get drunk, or kill can give notice to the authorities about service to God in this kingdom. (Que tengan en cada pueblo un yndio ladino cristiano y, ci pudiere, que sean todos ellos cristianos y ladinos para ue[la]dor de los padres y corregidores, comenderos, de los caciques y de los indios mandoncillos de los dichos pueblos porque no rroben y uellaqueen. Y los indios que no ydulatren ni se enborrachen ni se maten y estete [sic] dicho cristiano, dé noticia a la justicia de todo lo dicho del seruicio de Dios en este rreyno.) (NC, 889[903])

The idea that each town should have a Christian Indio Ladino follows, yet recasts, Las Casas’s 1516 Memorial de remedios, as we saw above, where he recommended, “in those islands, in each one of them, a religious person be assigned who will be zealous of service to God.” Thus, whether a mitmaq Church priest from Iberia or an Indio Ladino, either can provide the spiritual regulation necessary to control figures of temporal authority in the communities of the Indies. Guaman Poma not only builds a theoretical and practical case for an Andean liberation spirituality, he puts himself at the center of a small movement. We mentioned Don Cristóbal de León, who after being harassed by the corregidor, became “a disciple of the author of this book” (decípulo del autor deste dicho libro) (NC, 495 [499]). We remember that Cristóbal de León himself “had many other disciples who became Christians and principal ladinos, all friends of [the mission of] defending the poor” (tubo otros muchos decípulos y an salido cristianos y ladinos prencipales, amigo de defender a los pobres) (NC, 495 [499]). In effect, we have disciples of disciples. Additionally, there are documented cases of other indios ladinos discerning along the lines of liberation theology, even if they were not professional theologians. In a 1625 memorial, fifteen 238  Pease, Las crónicas, 311.

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principales denounce the abuses of the parish priest in Collana de Lampas. They open their memorial with a lament that sounds much like Guaman Poma: The poor who carry the weight of God suffer without consolation, without shelter, and without remedy are this way when [for example,] we send twelve Indians with forty chapters to demand against Doctor Mejía, [and] he devised a plan to get rid of those who delivered them, wanting to kill them. (Los pobres, que tanto encargó Dios, padesemos sin consuelo, sin amparo y sin rremedio, pues quando despachamos doze indios a pedirlo con quarenta capítulos contra el doctor Mejía, tuvo trasas de quitarlos a los que le llevaban, queriéndolos hazer mater.)

They complete the thought by begging Jesus Christ to bring justice to them.239 These liberation-​minded community leaders may or may not have known Guaman Poma de Ayala, but their memorial proves there was some discernment in the air in those first decades of the seventeenth century. Like Guaman Poma, with their writing they inverted the Lettered City as a way to work against the coloniality of the situation. Not only did Guaman Poma have disciples, or potential disciples, in real life, his book’s readers, intended or otherwise, may also become disciples and be spurred to action from their reading. Despite his indigeneity and his Indigenismo, the biblical doctrines Guaman Poma espoused relate to the human condition and thus in diverse instances stand for eternal truths. Gutiérrez asserts the same for Las Casas.240 It is not that Guaman Poma is before his time, it is simply that he conveys universal truths, applicable in his time and in ours. In this he is not unlike Erasmus of Rotterdam, St. Thomas More, Bartolomé de las Casas, and other like-​minded intellectuals who wanted to make things better for people around the world.

239  Rivarola, Español andino, 45. 240  Gutiérrez, Las Casas, 8.

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INDEX

Acosta, José de, 114, 173 administrators, 189, 192–​93 Adorno, Rolena, 98, 99–​100, 104, 143, 163n109, 167–​68, 171–​74, 178, 194 Africa, 1, 2, 12, 24–​25, 146n28. See also Africans/​ transafricans African Americans, 25 African American theology of liberation, 107 Africans/​transafricans emancipation of, 25 enslavement of, 18, 23–​25, 51, 99–​100, 99n105, 104, 105 social hierarchies and, 57 US Constitution and, 166 Aguilar, Jerónimo de, 45, 45n102 Albert the Great, St., 52 Albornoz, Cristóbal de, 172, 174, 179–​80 Aldunate, José, 153–​54 Alegría, Ciro, 116 Alexander VI, Pope, 72–​73 Alfonso el Sabio, 52 Allen, Peter R., 81, 124 Almagro, Diego de, 24, 71 Alva Ixtlilxóchitl, Fernando de, 19, 55–​56, 74–​75, 159, 160, 164, 175, 178, 187 Alvarado, Pedro de, 126 ambition, personal, 3, 5, 9 Amerindian languages, 148–​49, 151. See also specific languages Amerindians, 1, 2. See also specific groups Amerindian communities, 5 Amerindian religion, 33 Amerindian rights, 6 banned from clergy, 180 Catholic, 4 Christian education of, 70 colonialism and, 15–​16 Columbus perceives perfectability of, 58–​59 conversion of, 145–​52 demographic catastrophe in, 25 encomienda slavery and, 47–​49 enslavement of, 18, 23, 38, 42, 46, 51, 104. See also slavery evangelization of, 70, 145–​52 exploitation of, 2–​3, 9 identity of, 162–​63 as lost tribe of Israel, 175

mistreatment of, 2–​3, 9, 18, 23, 38, 42, 46, 51, 104, 143, 156 Old World origin attributed to, 175, 177, 178–​79, 181, 183 social hierarchies and, 57 Amerindian women, 33–​34, 38, 42 Anabaptists, 114, 137 Anahuac, 39, 42, 125, 125n57. See also Mexico Andean Christianity, 19, 174, 178–​81, 183 Andean culture, 191 Andean liberation, 174, 199 Andeanness, 174, 191 Andeans, 24–​25, 32, 36, 48, 49, 172–​74, 179, 183. See also Inkakuna; Wankakuna; Wari; Waylakuna as clergy, 196–​200 identity of, 174, 191 inculturation of coloniality and, 195 as Jesus’s poor, 165–​66, 182, 189–​90, 196, 200 Old World origin attributed to, 175 Andrien, Kenneth, 77, 169, 171, 173, 178 antihegemonic thinking, 2–​3, 4, 7, 17–​18, 108, 109–​10, 113, 187 anti-​mestizo restrictions, ecclesiastical authorities and, 180 Aquinas, St. Thomas, 52, 113, 152, 158–​59 Araníbar, Carlos, 23, 165 Arecibo, Jamaica, 31 Argentina Chiriboga, Luz, 5–​6 Arguedas, José María, 36, 116, 118 Arias, Arturo, 44, 108, 115–​16, 126, 161–​62, 165 Arias, Santa, 54, 83, 84, 101, 104, 112, 123, 144 Aristotle, 158 on barbarians, 54 Columbus and, 57–​59 on concept of just war, 93–​94 concept of natural slavery, 17, 18, 26, 52–​57, 52n156, 91–​95 concept of nature, 96 concept of slavery as interethnic convention, 42, 53–​54, 93 influence in the Renaissance, 52, 53 Las Casas and, 158–​59 master-​slave paradigm and, 102 as philosophical and legal basis for slavery, 52–​57, 52n156

224

Index

Politics, 52, 53, 54 Renaissance legacy of, 103–​6 Ashanti Empire, 2 Ashcroft, Bill, 108 Atawallpa, 34, 64, 85, 173, 188 Augustine, St., 62 Augustinian order, 75–​76, 148 avarice. See greed Avellaneda, Gertrudis Gómez de, 93 Ávila, Francisco de, 77–​78, 147 Ayala, Luis Ávalos de, 198 Ayala, Martin de, 189, 198 Ayllón, Lucas Vázquez de, 74

Baca, Susana, 116 Balam Acab, 38 Balam Quitzé, 38 Balboa, Juan de, 149 Baptiste, Victor, 86, 87, 90n63 barbarians/​barbarianism, 53–​56, 56, 56n180, 91, 93, 95n77, 96. See also barbarians/​ barbarianism Barger, Lilian Calles, 61, 62–​63 Barnadas, Josep M., 61, 68, 75, 76, 97–​98, 146, 146n28 Bartholomew, St., 176, 177, 178, 181 Basadre, Jorge, 36 Bataillon, Marcel, 11, 83, 84–​85 Benavente, Toribio de. See Motolinía Berbers, 53 Bergad, Laird, 51 Bergis, Anthony a, 135–​36 Berrigan, Daniel, 112 Betto, Frei, 112, 165 Bhabha, Homi, 108 Black Legend, 99–​100 Bodin, Jean, 69 Boemus, Johann, 172 Boff, Clodovis and Leonardo, 112, 165 Bolívar, Simón, 99 Boruchoff, David, 52n156, 182, 198 Boyer, Patricia, 100 Brading, D. A., 167, 171 Bradshaw, Brendan, 123 Brazil, 25, 51 Brion, Marcel, 29 British imperialism, 1–​2, 4, 99–​100 Brokaw, Galen, 147 Brown, Robert McAfee, 7 Bruce, Susan, 92 Burckhardt, Jacob, 81, 128 Burga, Manuel, 37, 49, 78, 99, 145, 173, 174 Burgos, Bishop of. See Rodríguez de Fonseca, Juan

Burgos, Elizabeth, 101 Buscaglia-​Salgado, José F., 192

caciques, 22, 163 Calinescu, Matei, 8, 81 Camera, Dom Helder, 112 capellanías, 76, 99 Capetillo, Luisa, 108, 135 capitalism, 9, 48, 49, 141 Cardenal, Ernesto, 112, 165 Carib people, 24–​25 Carranza Ko, Ñusta, 164, 197 Caso, Alfonso, 40 caste hierarchy, 10, 26, 197 Castillo, Daniel P., 162 Castro, Américo, 83, 133 Castro, Daniel, 111 Castro-​Gómez, Santiago, 108, 130n73 Castro-​Klarén, Sara, 108, 168, 183, 185 Cátedra Qheswa, San Marcos University, 149, 151 Catherine of Aragón, 81 Catholic Church, 68–​71. See also Catholicism; clergy Catholic Monarchs and, 70–​71 corruption and, 122 corruption in, 4 division of power and more, 131–​33 encomiendas and, 68–​71 greed and, 70–​71 hierarchy of, 17 logic of hegemony in, 10–​15 reform of, 8 the state and, 61, 63, 64–​65, 182 Catholic humanists, 16 Catholicism, 2, 19, 22 autochthonous liberation thinking and, 172–​81 corruption and, 19 encomienda and, 68–​71 Guaman Poma and, 19–​20, 163, 166–​67, 183, 186 importation of, 3 Indigenous Catholic spirituality, 145–​52 indoctrination in, 3 Liberation Theology and, 176 liberation thinking and, 19, 62, 116–​17, 122, 139, 172–​81 predating itself in Peru, 172–​81 reformation and, 62, 80–​81 Cave, Alfred A., 90, 90n61, 90n62, 168–​69 cave, allegory of the, 111 Cempoal people, 38 censors, 165 Césaire, Aimé, 108, 114 Chambers, R. W., 89

index Chang-​Rodríguez, Raquel, 61, 164, 174, 195 Charles V, 4, 66, 83, 85, 86, 87, 119, 187, 189 Charún-​Illescas, Lucía, 116 Chasteen, John, 27, 30, 31, 108, 130 chattel slavery, 2–​3, 15–​16, 18, 23, 25–​26, 32–​33, 44–​45, 49, 63, 80, 110, 182 Christianity and, 47 vs. encomienda slavery, 47, 48, 50, 92 historical context, 50–​51 philosophical underpinnings of, 50–​57 property and, 50 two defining characteristics of, 50 value and, 50 Chávez, César, 108, 135, 137 Chiappari, Christopher, 165 Chibcha, 5 Chichimeca people, 40 Chichimecatl, 55–​56, 105 Chocorvos, 174 Christian idealism, 18, 61, 63–​64, 69, 80, 122, 123–​26, 142, 188, 190, 195 Christianity, 17, 19, 61, 116–​17. See also Christian idealism; evangelization Andean, 174, 178–​81, 183 Andean liberation and, 174 chattel slavery and, 47 Christian knowledge, 7 Christian love, 8 Christian trinity, 187 division-​of-​power ideal and, 61–​78 early, 114 encomienda slavery and, 47 Guaman Poma and, 173, 174–​75, 182–​83 inner, 7, 97 Las Casas and, 140 liberation thinking and, 139 notion of universal, 175 pre-​Conquest, 178–​83 primitive, 97, 131, 133–​35, 182, 190 radical, 8 used as rationalization to justify the Conquest, 122 Christianization. See evangelization Chuhue Huamán, Richard, 165 Cíbola, myth of, 102 Cieza de León, Pedro de, 23–​24, 55, 56, 159, 160, 175, 176, 177 Cisneros, Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de, 74, 86 class, 12, 18 coloniality and, 33 hegemony of, 11 private property and, 129 subservience and, 21–​22, 34 Clayton, Lawrence A., 86–​87, 99

225

Clendinnen, Inga, 40 clergy, 9, 124–​26, 131–​33, 163, 183, 185, 186 Amerindians and mestizos banned from, 180, 196 appointed to political posts more, 76 corruption and, 75–​78 criticism of, 8 division-​of-​power ideal and, 124–​25 Guaman Poma’s proposal for Andean, 196–​200 moral state of, 75–​76 number of, 74, 124 sent to New World, 65–​68 transgressions by, 76 used Christianity as rationalization to justify the Conquest, 122 Cline, Sarah, 46, 74, 146 coatequitl, 15, 37, 46, 49 cofradías, 78, 149, 151 Cojtí Cuxil, Demetrio, Waqi’ Q’anil, 100 Collana de Lampas, 200 Collas, 160, 176 Colonial Force, 2–​10, 11 colonialism, 2, 11, 108, 114, 164. See also coloniality Amerindian nations and, 15–​16 centrality of slavery to, 51 coloniality and, 26–​27, 27n31 definition of, 21 “direct” vs. “indirect,” 11 drug trade as, 116n34 external, 21 footprint of, 26–​27 French, 108 internal, 21, 28, 35, 56, 195 as psychological condition, 108 three elements of, 92 coloniality, 2–​10, 11, 18, 28–​29, 101, 186, 191–​93 awareness of, 118 characteristics of, 118–​19 civic, 32, 33–​36 class and, 33 colonialism and, 26–​27, 27n31 denuding traits of, 15–​16 economic, 32 epistemic, 32, 36–​37 ethnicity and, 33 evangelization as rationalization of, 3 everyday, 21–​59 extirpation of, 197 as form of bias, 13 four avenues of embedding, 32 functioning of, 10–​11 gender and, 33–​34 hegemony and, 10

226

Index

horizontal, 190–​91, 194 implicit bias and, 10–​15, 61 infusion of through transculturation, 49 internal, 28, 194 law and, 33, 35–​36 liberation from, 2–​10 in the local setting, 192–​93 material, 2 of mind, 2, 3, 5–​6, 14–​15, 26–​37, 61, 96–​97, 102, 104–​6, 118, 187–​88, 191–​96 physical barriers of, 32 political, 32–​33 of power, 165, 190–​96 prejudice and, 13 private, 31–​32 psychosis and, 10–​15, 61 religious, 33 slavery and, 26 Spanish privilege and, 162 of structure, 26–​37, 61 subjective, 32 tyranny and, 119, 121 vertical, 190–​91, 193 violence and, 34–​35 colonialization, failure to recognize subjectivity and, 195 “colonial matrix,” 37 Columbus, Christopher, 16, 17, 22, 65, 72, 83, 90n61 Aristotle and, 57–​59 greed of, 105 as humanist, 17, 17n57 imperialism and, 91 as paradigmatic of medieval conflation of power, 69–​70 perceptions of Amerindians, 58–​59 Renaissance and, 58–​59 slavery and, 26, 37, 51, 57–​59, 80, 92–​93 writings of, 57–​59, 97 Comte, Auguste, 65 Conchillos, Lope, 29, 30, 31 the Conquest, 16, 17, 34, 54, 105, 110 economic rupture and, 109 justified by idea of natural slavery, 56 as key moment, 109 Las Casas’s radical critique of, 83 myths of, 13–​14 slavery and, 23 unprecedented nature of, 79, 118, 162, 163 violence of, 34–​35, 79, 92 conquistadors, 5, 65, 66, 69, 122, 188. See also specific conquistadors conversion, 67, 74, 151. See also evangelization conversos, 33

cordon sanitaire, 62, 124 Cornejo Polar, Antonio, 31–​32, 100 corregidores, 5, 105, 163, 179, 185, 189, 192–​93 corruption, 18, 19, 71 Cortés, Hernán, 1, 16, 17, 33, 37–​38, 40, 42, 44–​46, 45n102, 64, 65–​68, 116, 169 march to Mexico-​Tenochtitlan, 67, 147 slaves and, 51, 80 uses spiritual power to temporal advantage, 65–​68 writings of, 67, 71–​72 corvée labor, 47, 68, 157 Council of Castile, 98 Council of the Indies, 82, 197 Counter-​Reformation, 80–​81, 80n3, 121, 149 Covy, R. Alan. 175 Cox, Victoria, 178 Criollos, 14, 22, 28, 99, 162, 190 Cro, Stelio, 94 Cuauhtemoc, 188 Cuba, 1, 25, 42, 43 Cugoano, Ottobah, 166, 168 culture, 53, 53n163 cultural appropriation, 19 “cultural bomb,” 14 cultural distinctiveness, 58 cultural verticality, 19–​20 deculturation, 49, 191 imposition of Spanish, 46, 190–​91 transculturation, 49 Curcó Cobos, Felipe, 110, 112, 139, 144 Cuzco, 173, 177, 186, 188

Daily, Gabriel, 152 Damiani, Bruno, 81 Dammert, José, 112 David, E. J. R., 12 Dávila, Pedrarias (Pedro Arias de Ávila), 45, 82 Davis, David Byron, 80 debt peonage, 47–​49, 68, 71, 105, 182 decolonialism, 3, 20, 79, 91, 108–​9, 113–​18, 139–​45, 140n4, 161–​68 decolonial methodology, 91, 95 “decolonial options,” 115–​16, 188 “decolonial turn,” 130, 130n73 decoloniality, 4, 16, 102, 108–​9, 115–​16, 167–​68. See also decolonialism decolonial thinking. See decolonialism decolonization, 108 de-​hierarchization, Las Casas, Bartolomé de and, 104–​5 de la Cerda, Alonso, 170 de la Cruz, Francisco, 170

index de la Peña, Pedro, 144n19 dependency theory, 20, 101, 107 d’Escoto, Miguel, 108, 135, 137 Díaz del Castillo, Bernal, 16, 38, 40, 42–​44, 56, 66–​67, 74, 98–​99, 116 disease, 14, 24–​25, 105 division-​of-​power ideal, 61–​78, 80, 115, 131–​33 Christianity and, 61–​78 clergy and, 124–​25 corruption of, 18 critique of, 18 Erasmus and, 124, 131–​33 failure to adhere to, 182–​83 Guaman Poma and, 124, 182–​83 liberation thinking and, 114 More and, 124–​25 public morality and, 125–​26 Renaissance liberation thinkers and, 124 doctrinas, 77, 186, 196 Dominicans, 144, 146–​47, 148, 173, 181, 182 Dorp, Martin, 131 Dupuy, Alex, 31 Durán, Diego, 42 Dussel, Enrique, 1, 3, 22, 28, 56n180, 63, 74, 94, 108, 112, 139, 144, 154, 165–​67, 177, 179, 197 Dust, Philip, 112 Dutch East India Company, 4 Dutch Empire, 1

ecclesiastical authorities, 5, 73–​78, 180. See also Catholic Church; clergy; specific authorities economic power, 21–​22, 61 education, 14, 47, 70, 148–​49, 151, 179–​80 Egginton, William, 84, 90, 103n122, 111, 131, 154 El Dorado, myth of, 102, 179 Ellacuría, Ignacio, 117 Ellul, Jacques, 181 emancipation, 25 encomenderos, 5, 30–​32, 47–​49, 70, 104–​5, 169, 179, 183, 185 encomiendas, 3, 14–​15, 17, 68–​71, 74, 113, 149, 157, 182 banning of, 169–​70 Catholicism and, 68–​71 church and, 68–​71 conversions in, 151 decline of, 71 encomienda labor, 32. See also encomienda slavery “encomiendas de indios,” 44–​45 imposition of debt patronage and, 47–​49

227

Las Casas’s critique of, 87 as parasitic institution, 47 Spanish conceptions of, 17 taxation and, 32 encomienda slavery, 16, 26, 29, 32, 44–​45, 57, 63, 69, 80, 104, 105 Castilian crown and, 31 vs. chattel slavery, 47, 48, 50, 92 Christianity and, 47 Indigenous peoples and, 47–​49 Engels, Friedrich, 109 Engerman, Stanley L., 24–​25 England, 64–​65, 85–​86. See also British imperialism English pilgrims, 2 Enlightenment, 25, 68, 79–​80, 99–​100, 181 enslavement of Africans/​transafricans, 18, 23–​25, 51, 99–​100, 99n105, 104, 105 of Amerindians, 18, 23, 38, 42, 46, 104 of Amerindian women, 38, 42 of non-​Christians, 101 of prisoners of war, 92 psychology of, 12 of women, 3, 38, 42 episteme(s) breaking bounds of established, 110–​11 epistemic coloniality, 36–​37 inclusion in, 180 equality, 8, 112, 157–​58 Erasmism, 82, 83–​84, 119, 119n41, 193 Erasmus, Desiderius, 2–​4, 6, 15–​16, 20, 37, 61, 81, 84–​85, 112–​13, 130–​31, 148, 179, 195. See also Erasmus, Desiderius, works of antihegemonic thinking of, 17–​18 Aristotle’s conception of natural slavery and, 26 on barbarians, 54 condemnation of greed by, 101–​3 conservatism and traditionalism of, 88–​89 on corruption, 19 criticism of popes by, 8 declared a heretic by the Inquisition, 84 definition of tyranny, 9 degradation of Christian ideals and, 80 division-​of-​power ideal and, 69, 124, 131–​33 eternal truths and, 200 free will and, 128 on greed, 18, 106, 179, 188, 189 Guaman Poma and, 165, 179 Las Casas and, 84, 85, 87, 115, 142, 144–​45, 152 liberation thinking and, 113–​14, 122, 153–​55, 160, 167, 168

228

Index

the life of the spirit and, 131–​37 logic of hegemony and, 10–​15 Luther and, 88, 128 More and, 85–​86, 87, 90, 103, 103n122 on nature, 102–​10 non-​Aristotelian concept of nature and, 103–​4 nonviolence and, 135–​37 as precursor to Liberation Theology, 117 reform and, 62, 83–​84, 85, 88–​89 Sepúlveda and, 83, 83n21 on slavery, 17–​18, 101–​3 subordination of rites to spirit and, 152 war within the mind and, 133–​35 Zumárraga and, 82, 84, 84n24 Erasmus, Desiderius, works of Apotegmas, 83 Arte del bien morir, 83 banned by Milan Index of 1554, 83, 144 Colloquia, 83 Education of the Christian Prince, 9, 54, 69, 86, 101–​3, 118–​19, 131–​32, 134, 136, 152 Enchirdion, 84, 85, 119, 119n41, 121, 134 Lingua Erasmi, 83 listed by Columbus’s scribe, 83 Moriae encomium, 103 Paraclesis, 84 Praise of Folly, 6, 89, 101, 102, 103, 103n122, 120, 132 Erauso, Catalina de. See Francisco de Loyola. Escalante Adaniya, Marie Elise, 187 estate system, 26 ethics, the New World and, 89–​94 ethnicity, 12, 53n163, 191–​92 in Aristotle, 53–​54, 93 coloniality and, 33 ethnic subordination, 34–​35 ethnic theology, 189 Guaman Poma and, 182, 183, 186 notions of in Mexica, 42 slavery and, 38, 53–​54 subservience and, 21–​22 verticality and, 191, 193 evangelization, 4, 9–​10, 19, 22, 67–​68, 70, 74, 116–​17, 145–​52, 175, 183 Amerindian languages and, 148–​49, 151, 173 debates on, 148–​49 education systems and, 148–​49, 151 exploitation and, 3 forced, 47, 84n28 Las Casas and, 29–​30, 147–​48, 156 Las Casas’s five-​element program of, 156 liberation thinking and, 114 Motolinía and, 148, 151 Nahuatl language and, 173

papacy and, 73–​74 Qheswa language and, 149 as rationalization of coloniality, 3, 61, 71–​72, 73–​74, 157, 159 Spanish language and, 173 Extirpación de idolatría campaigns, 33 Eyzaguirre, Luis B., 16, 17

Falla, Ricardo, 165 Fanon, Frantz, 37, 91, 108, 114, 121, 122 Febvre, Lucien, 62 feminism, 115, 116 Ferdinand, 28–​29, 30, 57–​58, 76 Fernández, Diego, 172 Fernández de Córdova, 24 Fernández de Oviedo, Gonzalo, 172 Fernández Herrero, Beatriz, 73–​74 feudalism, 48, 49, 57, 93 Filipino-​Americans, 12 Flores Galindo, Alberto, 142, 164 forasteros, 48 Forty-​Years War, 34, 45, 49, 115, 163 Fox, Alistair, 86, 93 Franciscans, 67, 68, 70, 84, 117, 146–​48, 151, 155, 182 Franco, Jean, 1 freedom, 5, 128 free will, 126–​28 Freide, Juan, 142–​43 Freire, Paolo, 12, 14–​15, 112 French colonialism, 108 French Revolution, 112 Friars of Mercy, 64, 66–​67 fusion of power, royal patronage and, 71–​73

Galeano, Eduardo, 108 Galicians, 35 Galt, William R., 149 Gandhi, Mahatma, 135, 137 García Bryce, Iñigo, 78 García Castellón, Manuel, 110, 114, 117, 142, 167, 180, 188 García de Castro, Lope, 170 García Guerra, Fray, 74–​75 García Pabón, Leonard, 177 Garcilaso de la Vega, Inca, 16, 19, 23–​24, 90, 98, 126, 159–​60, 164, 171, 174, 177, 187 gender, 33–​34, 92 Genesis, 174, 175, 176, 176, 177, 178, 179 Germaná, César, 108 Gibson, Charles, 46, 47, 71, 74, 76, 81, 85, 146 Giles, Peter, 81, 85, 91, 93 Gogan, Brian, 88n55 Gogol, Eugene, 20

index gold, 2, 105, 126–​28, 179, 188, 189 González Prada, Manuel, 45, 104, 108, 114, 116, 141 Gonzalo de Vera, Friar , 64 Gospels, 166, 167 Gospel according to John, 133 Gospel according to Matthew, 62, 69, 137, 160, 166 poor people in, 112 Gramsci, Antonio, 9–​10, 19n59, 31, 108 Granada, Luis de, 179, 180–​81 Gran Junta of 1567, 170 greed, 18, 30–​31, 80, 102, 119, 121, 196 Catholic Church and, 70–​71 coloniality of mind and, 37, 96–​97, 187–​88 of Columbus, 105 Erasmus on, 101–​3, 106, 179, 188, 189 Guaman Poma on, 179, 188 Las Casas on, 102, 106, 179, 187–​88, 189 More on, 179, 187 slavery and, 96–​97, 101–​3, 187–​88 Green, Roland, 139–​40, 140n3 Greenwald, Anthony G., 13 Gregorio, Gill, 28–​29n39 Griffiths, Gareth, 108 Grijalva, Juan de, 42 Grosfoguel, Ramón, 108, 130n73 Guaman Poma de Ayala, Felipe, 2–​4, 6, 8–​9, 12, 15–​16, 61, 80n3, 113, 145, 153 adoption of Christianity by, 173, 174–​75, 182–​83 Andean-​Christian arguments of, 178–​79, 196–​200 Andean identity and, 162–​63, 178, 191 Andean priesthood and, 196–​200 apocalyptic thought and, 188–​89 attributes Old World origin to Amerindians, 175, 177 Catholicism and, 19–​20, 122, 163, 166–​67, 183, 186, 187 chrono-​topos methodology and, 177–​78 closest models of, 180–​81 colonialism/​coloniality and, 37, 164, 186, 191–​92, 193 condemnation of Spanish authorities by, 183, 185, 186 criticism of clergy by, 8 on debt peonage, 49 decolonial reasoning and, 161–​68 disciples of, 199 division-​of-​power ideal and, 124, 182–​83 education and, 179–​80 epistle to Phillip III, 19–​20

229

Erasmus and, 179 ethnicity and, 168, 182, 183, 186 haciendas and, 49 hegemony and, 193 horizontal and vertical cultural constructs and, 19–​20, 190–​91, 190n217, 192, 194, 196 imitatio Christi and, 182 imperialism and, 163, 165 inversion of colonial paradigms by, 197–​200 Jesus’s poor and, 6, 114–​15 just wars and, 171 lack of censorship and, 165 Las Casas and, 115, 168–​72, 178, 183, 185, 187 “lettered city” and, 164, 194–​95, 197, 200 Liberation Theology and, 117, 167, 181, 199–​200 liberation thinking and, 114, 139, 153–​55, 165, 172–​96, 199 logic of hegemony and, 10–​15 More and, 168–​72 notion of universal Christianity and, 175 notions of Church and state, 182 Nueva crónica y buen gobierno, 16, 19, 112, 140, 163–​67, 163n109, 174, 184, 189–​90, 192–​93, 196–​200 proposal to expel Spaniards, 184–​86, 188 proposes Andean priests, 196–​200 quadrants for self-​determination proposed by, 186–​89 question of sources and, 168–​72 redemption in, 190, 196 restitution proposed by, 185–​86, 189 sermons as source for, 180–​81 on slavery, 186, 187 on soul’s primacy over gold, 127 spirituality, 173 theological achievements of, 180 as translator, 174 Guerrero, Gonzalo, 45 Guevara, Antonio de, 54, 66, 90, 119, 119n41, 121 Guibovich Pérez, Pedro, 144 Guillén Guillén, Edmundo, 34 Gutiérrez, Gustavo, 18–​20, 86, 104, 109, 112, 114n26, 133, 140, 165, 167, 169, 171, 181, 188–​90 on coloniality, 135 on encomiendas, 157 on importance of “historical perspective,” 118 on Las Casas, 140, 145, 154, 182, 200 A Liberation Theology, 114, 118 “In Search of the Poor of Jesus Christ,” 117

230

Index

haciendas, 14, 29, 48, 51, 71, 141 Hall, Julie L., 30 Hampe Martínez, Teodoro, 85, 119n41, 133 Hanke, Lewis, 57, 86, 87–​88, 94–​95, 142 Hannaford, Ivan, 53n165 Hanneken, Jaime, 109 Haskett, 92 Headley, John M., 88n55 Hegel, G. W. F., 20 hegemony, 3, 10–​15, 18, 35–​36, 108, 130 Chasteen’s definition of, 27 coloniality and, 10–​15 functioning of, 10–​11 Gramsci’s use of the word, 9–​10 Guaman Poma and, 193 liberation from, 128–​30 logic of in the Church, 10–​15 of mind, 31 of social class, 11 subservience and, 21–​22 transatlantic, 35–​36 Henry VIII, 64, 81 Hernández, Ramón, 148 Hernández de Córdoba, Francisco, 42 heterogeneity, 187, 189 Hexter, J. H., 85, 90, 123 Himelick, Raymond, 134 Hinkelammert, Franz, 105 Hispanidad, 83 Hispaniola, 2, 155 Hoerder, Dirk, 50–​51 Holy Roman Empire, 2, 4 Hostos, Eugenio María de, 108 Huamanga, messianic anti-​Spanish uprising in, 174 Huarochirí manuscript, 77–​78, 162 Huerga, Álvaro, 94 Hughes, J. Donald, 52 Huizinga, Johan, 6, 88 humanism, 4, 6–​10, 16–​18, 79, 80, 88, 90, 94, 122 human trafficking, 15, 45, 92, 93, 105. See also slavery Hunab’ Ku’h, 160 Husson, Jean-​Philippe, 187 Hyland, Sabine, 196 imitatio Christi, 182, 188, 198 imperialism, 1–​2, 3, 35–​36, 91, 114, 163, 165, 191 British, 99–​100 coercive social relations within, 192–​93 colonialism and, 21 discourse and, 2

imperialist mentalities, 37 inversion of its hierarchy, 91 law and, 51–​52 logic of hegemony and, 10–​15 self-​affirmation and, 191 Spanish, 99–​100, 163 subordination to, 195 vertical and horizontal hierarchies and forces within, 190–​91 India, 1, 2, 177 Indigenismo, 4, 83, 94–​101, 116, 167 Indigenous Christian spirituality, 180 Indigenous Christian thinking, 175 Indigenous Ecological Knowledge (IEK), 162 Indigenous knowledge, 161–​63 Indigenous peoples. See Amerindians; specific groups Indigenous slavery, abolition of, 46–​47 Indios/​as encomendados/​as, 3, 47, 63 Indios/​as esclavos/​as, 3, 47 indios ladinos, 180, 199–​200 Inkakuna, 4–​5, 13–​14, 27–​28, 37, 45, 49, 71, 78, 125n57, 160, 172–​73, 177–​78, 183 gold and, 126 restoration of, 171, 186 Sapa Inka monarchs, 34 “tyranny” of, 170 Inikori, Joseph E., 24–​25 the Inquisition, 33, 84, 84n28, 144 Insúa Rodríguez, Ramón, 84 intellectuals, Indigenous, 19, 19n59, 162 internal colonialism/​coloniality, 21, 28, 35, 56, 195 Iraq, 2 Iroquois Confederation, 1 Isabella, Queen, 57–​58, 104 Israelites, slavery of, compared to slavery of Amerindians, 175, 182, 183 Itzcoatl, 42 Izmachi, 38

Jackson, Robert, 43–​44 Jáuregui, Carlos A., 28 Jefferson, Thomas, 99 Jesuits, 69, 173, 180, 196 Jesus maxim about Caesar and God, 17, 62–​63, 69, 72, 115, 124, 133, 160 teachings of, 122, 123, 127, 131, 133, 157, 160 Jesus’s poor, 6, 7, 9, 114–​15, 114n26, 117, 165–​66, 181–​90, 181n188 Andean people as, 182, 189–​90, 196, 200 Las Casas and, 114n26

index Jews, 35. See also Israelites, slavery of John XII, Pope, 175 Juana Inés de la Cruz, Sor, 122 Juan de la Cruz, San, 7 Juan Ruiz, Archpriest of Hita, 52 Julius II, Pope, 73 justice, 114, 121, 187 Justin, 175 just wars, 92–​93, 98, 161, 171

Kafka, Franz, 35, 36 Kapsoli, Wilfredo, 22n7, 165 Kaqchikels, 40 kasay, 162 Kauffman, Leisa, 47 Kaufman, Peter Iver, 88, 88n55, 126 Keith, Robert G., 25, 29, 47, 70, 105 K’ekchi’ (Achi) people, 29–​30, 29n45, 99 khipukamayoqkuna, 195 K’iche’ people, 14, 38, 40, 45, 126–​27 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 12n42, 135, 137 Klaiber, Jeffry, 175 Klarén, Peter, 30–​31, 169 Kleg, Milton, 12 Klein, Martin A., 50 knowledge, 110, 161–​62, 180. See also episteme(s) Krieger, Linda Hamilton, 13 kurakakuna, 22, 180, 192–​95 kuraka power, 178

labradores, 94 Ladero Quesada, Miguel Ángel, 68. ladinos, 180, 194–​95 Lamana, Gonzalo, 162–​63, 181n188, 193 Landa, Diego de, 147 language. See also specific languages education and, 148–​49, 151 evangelization and, 148–​49, 151, 173 subservience and, 21–​22 Las Casas, Bartolomé de, 2–​9, 12, 15–​19, 31, 61, 63, 73, 80n3, 81, 94–​101, 112–​13, 142–​61, 170 acceptance of Amerindians as humans, 160 acceptance of Peruvian sovereignty, 111, 143 African slavery and, 99–​100, 99n105, 104 as anticolonialist, 100 antihegemonic thinking of, 17–​18 anti-​war views of, 148 Aristotle and, 26, 95, 95n77, 158–​59 attempts to evangelize K’ekchi’ (Achi) people, 29–​30 attends Ecclesiastical Juntas, 82–​83

231

Black Legend and, 99–​100 bound for Spain, 86 Christianity and, 80, 122, 140 circulation of his work, 170–​71 classical philosophy and, 158–​59 as clergy, 20 coloniality and, 28–​29, 104–​5, 135 “colonial matrix” and, 37 Columbus and, 97 compared to Montaigne, 100–​101 conservatism and traditionalism of, 88–​89, 100 conversion of, 86–​87, 110–​11, 117, 142 as decolonial activist, 161 decolonial methodology of, 91, 95 decolonial theory of liberation and, 142–​45, 155–​61 de-​hierarchization and, 104–​5 devaluation of gold by, 127 dismantles binary of “civilization” and “barbarism,” 96 as early modern liberation thinker, 152–​55 as encomendero, 104, 110, 140 encomienda and, 18, 87, 104 Enlightenment and, 99–​100 on equality of the spirit, 157, 158 Erasmus and, 84, 85, 87, 115, 142, 144–​45, 152 eternal truths and, 200 evangelization and, 4–​5, 19, 29–​30, 145–​52, 156–​57, 159 fights for Amerindian rights, 6 five-​element program of evangelization, 156 on freedom, 5, 128 free will and, 128 gives up his encomienda, 182 goes before Council of Castile to block Sepúlveda’s publication, 98 on greed, 102, 106, 179, 187–​88, 189 Guaman Poma and, 115, 165, 168–​72, 178, 183, 185, 187 humanism and, 94 humility of, 143 imperialism and, 128 imperial religiosity of his thought, 111 importance of, 94 Indigenismo and, 83, 100, 101 influence of, 97–​99, 169–​70 inspires Nuevas Leyes, 169–​70 inversion of colonial paradigms by, 197 inverts Aristotelian concept of nature, 96 Jesus’s poor and, 114n26, 117 just wars and, 171

232

Index

Liberation Theology and, 101, 101n114, 117, 167 liberation thinking and, 110–​11, 113–​14, 117, 139, 167, 168 logic of hegemony and, 10–​15 on Maya as slaves, 45 millenarianism and, 189 as momentous figure, 104–​105 More and, 85, 87, 90, 90n63, 115, 142, 168–​72 non-​Aristotelian concept of nature and, 103–​104 nonliterary pretensions of, 94 on number of priests, 124 persuasiveness of, 101 polemics and, 98–​99 private property and, 128 public debate with Sepúlveda, 98–​99 quest for more primitive form of Christianity, 97 question of sources and, 168–​72 reception of his ideas, 97–​99 reformism and, 88–​89, 97–​98 rejection of “just war,” 161 rejects chattel slavery, 110 reputation of, 99–​100 sees Columbus exhibiting Taínos in Seville, 59 significance of, 106 on slavery, 17–​18, 106, 187–​88 on soul’s primacy over gold, 127 on Spanish quest for gold, 126–​27 spiritualism and, 173 spurning of wealth by, 182 “Struggle for Justice,” 94–​95 subordination of rites to spirit and, 152 subversion of “ideology of hegemonic culture,” 83 use of word “barbarians,” 54, 96 views slavery as resulting from social condition, 96–​97 on violence committed by Spaniards, 34–​35 West Indian slavery and, 28–​29 Las Casas, Bartolomé de, works of Apologética historia, 95, 177 Apología: o declaración y defensa universal de los derechos del hombre y de los pueblos, 95n77, 96 De thesauris: Los tesoros en el Perú, 113, 170 Devastation or Destruction of the Indies (Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias), 10, 25, 34–​35, 45–​46, 89, 95, 97, 98, 157, 179 Historia de las Indias, 95, 97, 104, 157, 159 Memorial de remedios para las Indias, 86, 87, 90n63, 94, 155–​56, 160, 196, 199

Obras completas, 95, 143 The Only Way (Del único modo), 5, 82, 95–​96, 147, 156, 158 Tratado de las “doce dudas,” 144–​45, 160–​61, 170, 171, 185, 187 Tratados of, 99–​100, 170 Lascasianism, 172, 185 Lavrin, Asunción, 146 law. See also specific laws coloniality and, 33, 35–​36 imperialism and, 51–​52 international, 51–​52 natural, 96 slavery and, 51–​52 Lee, Jongsoo, 147 León, Cristóbal de, 194–​95, 199 Leonard, Irving, 74, 75, 124, 145, 149 le Sauvage, Jean, 86, 87 letrados, 9, 33 “lettered city,” 164, 194–​95, 197, 200 Leyes de Burgos, 29, 45, 47, 70, 87–​88 Leyes de Indias, 44–​45 liberation, 16 African American theology of, 107 from Colonial Force, 2–​10 from coloniality, 2–​10 decolonial theory of, 142–​45, 155–​61 Indigenous variations on, 180 liberation movements, 107 liberation pedagogy, 112 liberation philosophy, 112 of the mind, 9 from private property, 128–​30 theology and, 155–​61, 174. See also Liberation Theology use of the word, 107 Liberation Theology (or liberation theology), 4, 16, 101, 104, 108, 109, 112, 165–​68, 172, 176, 181, 199–​200 coining of the term, 20 eradication of private property and, 129 Guaman Poma and, 181, 199–​200 Las Casas and, 101, 101n114 liberation thinking and, 18–​19, 20, 152 Marxism and, 104 precursors of, 117 liberation theory, identity and, 191 liberation thinking, 7, 9, 15–​16, 56–​57, 63, 139–​200, 163 at any time in human history, 109–​11 autochthonous, 172–​81 birth of, 4 Catholicism and, 19, 116–​17, 122, 139, 172–​81

index as decolonial thought, 113–​18 division-​of-​power ideal and, 114, 124 emergence of, 109–​11, 190–​96 Erasmus and, 153–​55, 160, 167, 168 ethnic theory of sovereignty and, 181–​90 in Europe, 107–​37 evangelization and, 114 Guaman Poma and, 153–​55, 165, 181–​96 Jesus’s poor and, 181–​90 justice and, 114 Las Casas and, 117, 152–​55, 167, 168 Liberation Theology and, 18–​19, 20, 152 More and, 123–​26, 153–​55, 160, 167, 168 in Peru, 172–​81 Renaissance and, 103–​6 social change and, 152–​53 stages of, 18–​19 Lima provincial councils, 173–​74, 179–​80 Lins Ribeiro, Gustavo, 140n3 Loaisa, Jerónimo de, 170 Locke, John, 105, 128–​29 Lockhart, James, 33, 42, 46, 149 Lohmann Villena, Guillermo, 163n109 López, Armando, 117 López-​Calvo, Ignacio, 152 López de Gómara, Francisco, 38 Low Countries (Netherlands), 1, 4, 85–​86 Loyola, Francisco (Erauso, Catalina de), 24 Lucanas, 174, 194 Luis de León, Fray, 7 Lulio, Raimundo, 7 Lund, Joshua, 56n180 Lupher, David A., 54, 117 Luther, Martin, 19, 62, 88, 88n55, 89, 128

MacCormack, Sabine, 176, 177, 180 Macedo, Donald, 14 macehualli, 2, 3 Machiavelli, Niccolò, 6, 147 Magellan, Ferdinand, 1 Mahucutah, 38 Maldonado-​Torres, Nelson, 26–​27, 108, 163–​64 La Malinche, 40, 45, 45n102 Mallon, Florencia, 77 Manrique, Nelson, 14, 34 Maravall, José Antonio, 7, 94 Marcus, Raymond, 155 Mariana, Juan de, 97, 103 Mariátegui, José Carlos, 105, 108, 109, 114, 116 Marius, Richard, 17, 17n57, 82, 85 Markham, Clements R., 163n110 Marshall, Thurgood, 166 Martens, Thierry, 87

233

Martí, José, 108, 114 Martín-​Baró, Ignacio, 117 Martínez, Miguel Angel, 95–​96 Martire d’Anghiera, Pietro (or Mártir de Anglería, Pedro or Martyr d’Anghiera, Peter), 90, 90n61, 91 Marúa, Martin de, 175 Marx, Karl, 20, 103, 109 Marxism, 20, 101, 103–​4, 107, 115, 116 master-​slave paradigm, 102, 130 materialism, 5, 9, 30–​31, 57, 71–​72, 121, 128–​37, 196 Matos Mar, José, 49 Matto de Turner, Clorinda, 77, 116 Maya, 26, 38, 41, 45, 158. See also K’ekchi’ (Achi) people Mayer, Enrique, 36 Mazzotti, José Antonio, 177 McGinnis, Claire Matthews, 166 McKee, Sally, 88 Mead, Robert G., Jr., 101 Mecham, Lloyd, 61, 71–​72, 73 Medina, Bartolomé de, 105 Menchú, Rigoberta, 101, 141 Méndez, Diego, 83 Mendieta, Jerónimo de, 175 Menéndez Pidal, Ramón, 88 mental subordination, 10, 37. See also coloniality mercantilism, 8, 48 Merrim, Stephanie, 69 mestizos, 23, 180, 196–​200 Mexica, 13–​14, 27, 28, 40, 42, 146 Mexican Revolution, 26 Mexicatl, 33, 37–​38, 42 Mexicatl period, 28 Mexico, 2, 25, 50, 51 Mignolo, Walter, 3, 9–​10, 12, 27n31, 30, 32–​33, 36–​37, 53n163, 56n180, 108–​9, 115, 139–​40, 140n4, 165–​66, 177, 181, 181n190, 186, 188–​89 on “decolonial thinking,” 20 interview with López-​Calvo, 152 Milan Index of 1554, 83, 144 Millares Carlo, Agustín, 95 millenarianism, 175, 188–​89 miners/​mining, 105, 163, 189 Miola, Robert, 112 missionaries, 81. See also specific religious orders mita, 15, 37 mitayos/​as, 3, 48 mitmaqkuna, 183, 186 Moctezuma, 159 modernity, 1n1, 37, 179, 181n190

234

Index

Mogrovejo, Alfonso Toribio de, 144n19, 180 Mojarro, Jorge, 170 Montaigne, Michele de, 16, 101 Montejo, Víctor, 160 Montes, Segundo, 117 Montesinos, Antonio de, 63, 86, 142, 155, 175 Moors, 35, 72 Moraña, Mabel, 28, 114–​15 More, Thomas, 2–​6, 8–​9, 15–​19, 40, 47, 61, 64, 69–​70, 83, 88–​94, 124n56, 126n59, 148, 179 anticipation of communism by, 103–​4 Aristotle and, 26 background of, 81–​82, 89–​90 Catholic liberation thinking and, 122, 123–​26 Christian idealism and, 80, 122, 123–​26 “colonial matrix” and, 37 concern for division of power, 65–​68 conservatism and traditionalism of, 88–​89 devaluation of gold by, 127 on development of conscience, 130–​31 division-​of-​power ideal and, 124–​25, 133 Erasmus and, 85–​86, 87, 90, 103, 103n122 eternal truths and, 200 free will and, 127–​28 on greed, 179, 187 Guaman Poma and, 165, 168–​72 humanism and, 90 inversion of imperialist hierarchy by, 91 on just wars, 93–​94 Las Casas and, 85, 87, 90, 90n63, 115, 142, 168–​72 as lay person, 20 legacy of, 93–​94 on liberation from private property, 128–​30 liberation thinking and, 113–​14, 122, 123–​26, 153–​55, 160, 167–​68 literariness of his work, 94 logic of hegemony and, 10–​15 in Low Countries, 85–​86 Luther/​Lutheranism and, 88n55, 89 master-​slave paradigm and, 130 on materialism, 130–​31 non-​Aristotelian concept of nature and, 103–​4 as precursor to Liberation Theology, 117 public morality and, 125–​26 question of sources and, 168–​72 reformism and, 88–​89 religious freedom and, 128 significance of, 106 on slavery, 17–​18, 25, 26, 91–​93, 96–​97, 106 on soul’s primacy over gold, 127 tolerance and, 124, 125–​26

Utopia, 6, 8, 16–​19, 36, 81–​82, 85–​94, 88n55, 90n63, 103, 103n122, 112, 123–​31, 153, 168, 179, 187 Vespucci and, 90, 90n62, 91 Moreno, Juan Ramón, 117 Morism, 82 Morison, Samuel Eliot, 57–​58 Mörner, Magnus, 23, 26, 91 Motolinía (Benavente, Toribio de), 70, 94, 145–​52, 173 Motul, Yucatán, 160 Munck, Ronaldo, 10 Muñoz, Friar Pedro, 64 Muñoz Camargo, Diego, 19, 55, 164 Muskus, José, 114n26 mystics, 7–​8

naboría, 31, 37 Nahua, 24–​25, 33–​34, 70, 74–​75, 159, 173 conversion of, 67 encomienda and, 17 slavery and, 26, 37–​47 whipped for missing mass, 68 Nahuatl, 40, 148–​49, 173 narcocolonialism, 116n34 Narváez, Pánfilo de, 66, 67, 74, 87 natural law, 96 natural slavery Aristotle’s conception of, 26, 91–​95 dismantling, 79–​106 Erasmus’s rejection of, 101 Locke and, 105 More’s unhinging of Aristotle’s concept of, 91–​93 social slavery and, 79–​80 nature Aristotelian conception of, 96 Erasmian notion of, 102–​3, 106 non-​Aristotelian concept of, 103–​104 Netanyahu, Benzion, 68 newborns, born into slavery, 51 New Christians, un-​Christian treatment of, 115 New Prime v. Oliviera, 141 New Testament, 166. See also Gospels; specific Gospels Ngũugĩ wa Thong’o, 14 Noah, 175, 176, 176, 178, 179, 180, 181 non-​Christians, 101, 115. See also specific groups nonviolence, 135–​37 notaries, 189 Nuevas Leyes, 45, 169–​70

index obrajes, 48 Ochoa de la Sal, Juan, 172 Odriozola Peruvian Manuscript Collection, Duke University, 63–​64 O’Gorman, Edmundo, 158 Okasaki, Sumie, 12 Old Testament, 166, 174, 175, 176, 176, 177, 178–​79 Olivera, Luis de, 174 Olmedo, Bartolomé de, 66 Ondegardo, Polo de, 169 Oré, Luis Jerónimo de, 174 Orique, David, 147 Ortega, José, 117, 153 Ortega, Julio, 8 Ortega Martínez, Francisco, 177 Ortiz, Fernando, 49, 56n180, 191 Ortiz Fernández, Carolina, 108 Otomi people, 40 Oviedo, Fernández de, 16, 45 Oviedo, Francisco González de, 56

Pachakamaq, 159–​60, 172, 173 Pagden, Anthony, 12, 26–​29, 28–​29n39, 48, 51, 53, 53n163, 55–​57, 157–​58n85 Palacios Rubios, Juan López de, 28–​29n39 palenques, 80 panakakuna, 34 Pané, Ramón, 142 papacy, 73–​74, 190. See also specific popes Eximie devotionis (papal bull), 28–​29, 76 Sublimis Deus (papal encyclical), 95 Papadopoulos, John, 33, 50 Pardo Bazán, Emilia, 99–​100 Parish, Helen Rand, 82, 95 Pastor, Beatriz, 58 Pastore, Mario, 32 Paz, Octavio, 108, 114, 146, 173 Pease, Franklin, 199 peonage, 15, 48 Pérez Fernández, Isacio, 169, 170, 183 Peru, 36, 51, 143. See also Forty-​Years War abolition for transafricans in, 25 emancipation in, 25 Erasmus of Rotterdam and, 84–​85 Las Casas’s acceptance of Peruvian sovereignty, 111 Spanish civil wars in, 71 Phelan, John Leddy, 67, 151, 188–​89 Philip II, 83, 149 Philip III, 19–​20, 126, 163, 191 the Philippines, 1 Phillips, William, 50

235

pietas literata, 110 Pietschmann, Richard, 140 Piketty, Thomas, 141 Pipil, 5 Pironio, Eduardo, 112 Pizarro, Francisco, 55, 71, 80, 168, 178 Pizarro, Gonzalo, 64, 172 Pizarro, Hernando, 173 Plato, 53, 111, 158 Poling, James Newton, 7 polis, 55 political independence, 25 political power, 15, 61 politics, religion and, 61 pongo labor, 37 Poole, Stafford, 197 popes, 8, 131–​33, 175, 183, 189. See also papacy; specific popes Popol Vuh (Popol Wuj), 38, 41, 165 Porras Barrenechea, Raúl, 163n110 Portocarrero, Gonzalo, 76, 183 Portuguese Empire, 1, 2, 51, 187 postcolonialism, 16, 108, 109, 139–​41, 140n4 Potosí, silver discovered in, 51 poverty, 113, 117, 134, 165–​66, 181n188, 182, 189. See also Jesus’s poor power. See also spiritual power; temporal power abuse of, 183 coloniality of, 165, 190–​96 division-​of-​power ideal and, 61–​78, 131–​33 fusion of, 71–​73 need for binary demarcation of, 124, 124n56 “power without goodness,” 10 Pranjpe, Anand, 31 precious metals, 179. See also gold; miners/​ mining; silver prejudice, 11–​14 Preston, Stephanie D., 30 priests. See clergy princes, 131–​33 prisoners of war, 92, 105 private property, 5, 128–​30 “privilege of particular patronage,” 61 Proaña, Leonidas, 112 Protestantism, 3–​4, 19, 62, 80 Protestant Reformation, 62 psychology, decolonial, 79 psychosis, coloniality and, 10–​15 public morality, division-​of-​power ideal and, 125–​26 pueblos de españoles, 43, 183 pueblos de indios, 43, 183 Puerto Rico, 1, 2

236

Index

Qheswa language, 14, 36, 148–​49, 151 Quakers, 114 Quechua language, See Qheswa language Quijano, Anibal, 3, 27, 108, 191–​92 Quiroga, Vasco de, 82, 85, 126, 147, 148 Quispe-​Agnoli, Rocío, 175, 178–​79, 181, 195 Quispe Yupanki, 198 Qulla people, 160 Q’umarkaj, 38

Rabasa, José, 53, 96 Rabinal nation, 40 race, 12, 14, 21–​22, 53n165, 191–​92. See also ethnicity racism, 14, 34, 196 Rama, Ángel, 164, 194, 197 Ramos, Gabriela, 151 Rastell, John, 90 reciprocity, structures of, 193 the Reconquista, 63, 156 redemption, 190, 196 reform, 7–​8, 81, 105, 172, 179 Erasmus and, 83–​85, 88–​89 Las Casas and, 88–​89, 97–​98 More and, 88–​89 Reformation, discrepancy between theory and practice during, 121 religion. See also specific religions of Africans/​transafricans, 146n28 Amerindian, 33 concept of, 182 Extirpación de idolatría campaigns, 33 politics and, 61 religious discourse, 2, 18 religious freedom, 125, 126, 128 religious horizontality, 19–​20 religious orders, 145. See also specific orders religious power, 15, 61 subservience and, 21–​22 the Renaissance, 4, 8, 28, 103, 154, 179 Aristotle’s influence on, 52 Columbus and, 58–​59 “development of the individual” during, 128 discrepancy between theory and practice during, 121 ideals of equilibrium and harmony, 103 liberation thinking and, 103–​6 reformation and, 81 Renaissance humanism, 16–​17, 18, 79, 80, 90, 122 Renan, Ernest, 123, 168 repartimiento, 46 the Requerimiento, 28–​29n39, 35

Restall, Matthew, 13–​14, 23–​24, 30, 40 restitution, 189 Ridley, Jasper, 64, 88, 89 Rifkin, Mark, 27 Rivera, Luis, 65 Robertson, William, 100 Robledo, Jorge, 24 Rodríguez de Fonseca, Juan, 29, 30, 66 Roger, S. Charles, 116n34 Roman Empire, 2 Romero, Oscar, 112 Rosenthal, Olimpia E., 164, 177 Royal Patronage, 15, 17, 71–​73, 76

Sacks, David, 64, 129–​30 Sahagún, Fray Bernardino de, 38, 144n19, 147 Said, Edward, 56, 108, 181n190 Salvatore, Ricardo, 34 Sánchez Godoy, Rubén, 99n105 Sander, Willeke, 13 Sandoval, Gonzalo de, 66 Santa Cruz, Victoria, 116 Santa Cruz Pachacuti, Juan de, 163n110, 164, 175 Santo Tomás, Domingo de, 63, 144n19, 154, 169, 172, 173, 177 Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino, 56, 108 Schmidt, Ethan, 92 Schutte, Ofelia, 109, 191 Schwaller, John F., 51–​52, 84n28 Schwartz, Stuart B., 149 Second Vatican Council, 107, 112, 152 Seed, Patricia, 2, 32, 90, 90n62, 108 Segundo, Juan Luis, 112 Seidler, Rachael D., 30 Seijas, Tatiana, 23, 51 self-​affirmation, 191 self-​determination, 186–​87 selfishness, 127–​28, 188 Sendero Luminoso, 36, 116 Sepúlveda, Juan Ginés de, 52n156, 56, 83, 83n21, 91, 95, 98–​99, 115, 158–​59 servitude, 18, 32 Shakespeare, William, 90 Siege of Lima, 34 Sierra Silva, Pablo Miguel, 23, 51 silver, 51, 105, 179 Simpson, Leslie Byrd, 74, 105 slavery, 5–​6, 12, 26, 32, 37–​47, 51. See also enslavement acquisitiveness and, 31 in ancient Greece, 56 Aristotle on, 17, 18, 52–​53, 52n156 autochthonous practices of, 37–​47

index banning of autochthonous, 105 centrality to colonial system, 51 chattel, 2–​3, 15–​16, 18, 23, 25–​26, 32–​33, 44–​45, 47–​57, 63, 80, 92, 110, 182 civil vs. natural, 56 coloniality and, 26 Columbus and, 37, 57–​59 the Conquest and, 23 cry against, 94–​101 in Cuba, 43 as economic tool, 43–​44 encomienda, 16, 26, 29, 32, 44–​45, 47–​49, 57, 63, 69, 80, 92, 104, 105 Enlightenment and, 79–​80 Erasmus on, 17–​18, 101–​3 ethnicity and, 38, 53–​54 greed and, 31, 96–​97, 101–​3, 187–​88 Guaman Poma on, 186, 187 hereditary, 93 inter-​Amerindian, 37–​47 as interethnic convention, 42 justification for, 44–​45 kinds of, 26 Las Casas on, 17–​18, 106, 187–​88 law and, 51–​52 Mexico and, 50, 51 More on, 17–​18, 91–​93, 96–​97, 106 Nahua, 26, 37–​47 natural, 9, 12, 17–​18, 26, 52, 52n126, 55–​57, 79–​106 newborns born into, 51 pre-​Conquest, 37 private, 50 as punishment, 91–​92, 104 “slave factories,” 88 slavery-​as-​punishment, 25 social, 9, 17, 18, 56, 57, 79, 91–​92, 96–​97 Spanish, 26, 28–​29, 28–​29n39, 32, 37–​47 Spanish monarchy and, 28–​29, 28–​29n39 state, 50 stemming from just war, 92 theories of, 52–​57 transafrican, 23–​25 weakened by court systems in Europe, 88 Smith, Anthony, 38 Sobrino, Jon, 112, 117, 129, 165 social change, liberation thinking and, 152–​53 social hierarchies, 21–​23, 26, 44, 46, 57. See also class social slavery, 9, 17, 18, 56, 57, 79–​80, 91–​92, 96–​97 Socrates, 111, 175 Soras, 174

237

Soto, Domingo de, 166 South Asian Subaltern Group, 108 sovereignty, 181–​90 Spaniards, 22 belief in their own superiority, 13–​14 exchange of Amerindian women and, 34 Spanish council of Santiago, Guatemala, 29–​30 Spanish imperialism, 1, 2, 4, 22–​23, 51, 61, 81, 99–​100, 105. See also imperialism; Spanish monarchy Spanish language, evangelization and, 173 Spanish monarchy, 28–​29, 28–​29n39, 31, 43–​44, 57–​58, 65, 68, 69, 70–​71, 73, 76 Spanish privilege, 162 spiritual conquest, idea of, 66 spiritual freedom, 5–​6 spirituality, 7–​8, 173 Andean liberation spirituality built by, 199 Indigenous Christian, 145–​52, 173, 180, 199 personal, 7–​8 state religion and, 8 tolerance and, 124 spiritual power, 61 Cortés and, 65–​68 temporal power and, 6–​9, 18, 61, 65–​71, 115, 124–​25, 124n56, 131–​33, 159, 180. See also division-​of-​power ideal Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, 108, 186 “Splendid Principle,” 7 Stanger, Francis Merriman, 72–​73 state, Church and, 8, 61, 63, 64–​65, 125, 182 Stern, Mark Joseph, 141 Stern, Steve, 174 subordination, 10, 12, 16, 56–​57, 68, 80, 194 subservience, 21–​22 sugar enterprises, 51 Sullivan, Frances Patrick, 95 Surtz, S.J., Edward, 90 Synod of Toledo, 71–​72

Tabascans, 40 Taínos, 31, 59, 74, 95, 126, 142 Taki Unquy, 34, 172, 174 Talca, Manuel Larraín de, 112 Taqui Oncoy (Taki Unquy), 115 taquiongos, 174 Tarascan (P’urhépecha), 82 Tarica, Estelle, 4, 100, 111 Taviani, Paolo Emilio, 59 Tawantinsuyu, 2, 125n57, 126, 143, 150, 179, 186, 188–​89 taxation, 32, 48, 62, 69

238

Index

temporality, of ecclesiastical authorities, 73–​78 temporal power, 61 acceptance of, 18 overturning of, 9 spiritual power and, 6–​9, 18, 61, 65–​71, 115, 124–​25, 124n56, 131–​33, 180. See also division-​of-​power ideal Tenochtitlan, 1, 37–​38, 51, 67, 74, 169, 188 Tepanecatl, 42 Teqsi Wirqocha (Ticeuiracocha), 160 Teresa de Ávila, Santa, 7 terror, 192 testimonios, 101 Tezulutlán, 158 theology history and, 177 liberation and, 174 “thirteen of fame,” 55 Thomasism, 152 Thupaq Amaru I, 34, 163, 171 Thupaq Inka Yupanki, 186 Titu Cusi Yupanqui, 163n110, 164, 171 tlacanamacac, 40 Tlatelolco, 68 tlatlacotin, 40 tlatoani, 22, 42, 175 Tlaxcalteca, 38, 42 Todorov, Tzvetan, 165 Toledo, Francisco de, 73, 78, 144, 147, 149, 170, 172, 185 tolerance, 124, 125–​26 Tolstoy, Lev, 114, 135, 137, 168 Toltecayotl, 33 Toltec empire, 175 Toro, Pedro de, 170 totalitarianism, 111 Totonaca people, 40 Transcendentalists, 114 transculturation, 49, 191 tributes, 9, 48, 182. See also taxation Triple Alliance of Central Mexico, 2 Turner, John Kenneth, 25–​26 tyranny, 9, 35, 113, 119, 121 Uchuraccay, 36 United States, emancipation in, 25 University of Central America, massacre at, 117, 129 University of Valladolid, 98–​99 Urban II, Pope, 72 Urton, Gary, 33, 50 US Constitution, 166

US Supreme Court, 141 utopia, 8, 16 Utopian fiction, 93–​94 Utrecht, Adrian de, 86

Valdés, Alfonso and Juan, 6, 84 Valdivieso, Antonio de, 144n19 Valera, Blas, 149 Valera, Jerónimo, 196 Valiente Núñez, Javier, 20, 143, 167 Vallejo, César, 116 Valle W., Ivonne del, 156 Valverde, Vicente de, 64, 71, 84–​85, 175 Velasco, Luis de, 75 Velázquez de Cuéllar, Diego, 43, 44, 45, 66, 86–​7 Velázquez, Juan, 44 Velázquez Castro, Marcel, 22 Vera Paz, Guatemala, 144 Vespucci, Amerigo, 90, 90n61, 91, 128, 168–​69 Vickery, Paul, 28, 31 Victoria, Francisco de, 110 Vicuña Guengerich, Sara, 174 Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz, 65–​67 violence, 34–​35, 79, 92. See also just wars Virgin of Guadalupe, 75 visitas, 77 Vitoria, Francisco de, 144n19, 157–​58n85 Vives, Juan Luis, 83n21, 112 viveza criolla, 76 Vogeley, Nancy, 174

Wachtel, Nathan, 25, 37 wakakuna, 172, 173 Waldseemüller, Martin, 90 Wallerstein, Immanuel, 2, 3, 22, 44, 50–​51, 56n180, 122, 127 Wankakuna, 161 Wang, John D., 30 Ward, Thomas Decolonizing Indigeneity: New Approaches to Latin American Literature, xi, 15, 69, 91, 197 The Formation of Latin American Nations: From Late Antiquity to Early Modernity, xi, 15, 19, 33, 38 Wari, 175, 176 Waskar, 34 Waylakuna (Huaylas in Spanish), 34, 161 Weaver, Frederick Stirton, 50 Weisheipl, James A., 52, 158

index Wheelock Román, Jaime, 45 wickedness, combatting, 118–​22 Wiraqocha, 160, 175, 177 Wolsey, Thomas, Bishop (Cardinal), 64 Worth, Owen, 3, 9, 48, 108 Xilonen, 40 Ximénez, Cardinal, 86, 87

yanaconas (yanakuna), 49 Yaquis, 25, 26 the Yucatán, 25–​26

Yucatecs, 45 Yunga (Chimú) speakers, 14

239

Zacatecas, silver discovered in, 51 Zaculeu, 40 Zamora, Margarita, 143 Zárate, Agustín de, 172, 175–​76 Zimmerer, Karl S., 162 Zimmerman, Franklin, 71, 73, 75–​76 Zuboff, Shoshana, 79, 118, 141, 162 Zumárraga, Juan de, 82, 84, 84n24, 84n28, 85, 148, 182