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Table of contents :
Cover
The People Are King
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Acknowledgments
A Note on Terminology
Introduction: The Genesis of an Andean Christianity and Politics
Part I Inca and Early Spanish Peru
1 Inca and Asanaqi in Qullasuyu
2 Spanish República and Inca Tyranny
3 Resettlement: Spaniards Found New Towns for “Indians”
Part II The Andeanization of Spanish Institutions and Christianity
4 Andeans Found Their Own Towns: The Andeanization of Reducción
5 Cofradía and Cabildo in the Eighteenth Century: The Merger of Andean Religiosity and Town Leadership
6 Rational Bourbons and Radical Comuneros: Civil Practices That Shape Towns
Part III The Revolutionary Común
7 Comunero Politics and the King’s Justice: The Común Takes Moral Action
8 A Lettered Revolution: A Brotherhood of Communities
Conclusion The Resilience of the Común and Its Legacy
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Recommend Papers

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The People Are King





The People Are King The Making of an Indigenous Andean Politics

S. E L I Z A B E T H   P E N RY

1



1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2019 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data Names: Penry, S. Elizabeth, author. Title: The people are king : the making of an indigenous Andean politics / S. Elizabeth Penry. Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2019. | Summary: “The People Are King traces the transformation of Andean communities under Inca and Spanish rule. The sixteenth century Spanish resettlement policy, known as Reducción was pivotal to this transformation. Modeled on the Spanish ideal of República (self-government within planned towns) and shared sovereignty with their monarch, Spaniards in the Viceroyalty of Peru forced Andeans into resettlement towns. Andeans turned the tables on forced resettlement by making the towns their own, and the center of their social, political, and religious lives. Andeans made a coherent life for themselves in a complex process of ethnogenesis that blended preconquest ways of life (the ayllu) with the imposed institutions of town life and Christian religious practices. Within these towns, Andeans claimed the right to self-government, and increasingly regarded their native lords, the caciques, as tyrants. A series of microhistorical accounts in these repúblicas reveals that Andeans believed that commoner people, collectively called the común, could rule themselves. With both Andean and Spanish antecedents, this political philosophy of radical democracy was key to the Great Rebellion of the late eighteenth-century. Rather than focusing on well-known leaders such as Tupac Amaru, the book demonstrates through commoner rebels’ holographic letters that it was commoner Andean people who made the late eighteenth-century a revolutionary moment by asserting their rights to self-government. In the final chapter the book follows the commoner-lead towns of the Andes from the era of independence into the present day of the Plurinational State of Bolivia. Ayllu, Reducción, ethnogenesis, Peru, Bolivia, cacique, Tupac Amaru, comunero, revolution, microhistory”—Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2019015748 | ISBN 9780195161618 (paperback) | ISBN 9780195161601 (hardback) | ISBN 9780190073923 (epub) | ISBN 9780199721900 (updf) Subjects: LCSH: Indians of South America—Relocation—Andes Region. | Indians of South America— Andes Region—Politics and government. | Indians of South America—Cultural assimilation— Andes region. | Power (Social sciences)—Andes Region—History—18th century. | Andes Region— Politics and government—18th century. | Spain—Colonies—America—Administration. Classification: LCC F2229 .P448 2019 | DDC 980—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019015748 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Paperback printed by Marquis, Canada Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America



To the people of the markas and ayllus of the Andes, the heirs of the comuneros





CONTENTS

Acknowledgments  ix A Note on Terminology  xiii

Introduction: The Genesis of an Andean Christianity and Politics  1

PART I   INCA AND E ARLY SPANISH PERU  

1. Inca and Asanaqi in Qullasuyu  29 2. Spanish República and Inca Tyranny  43 3. Resettlement: Spaniards Found New Towns for “Indians”  53

PART II   THE ANDE ANIZ ATION OF SPANISH

INSTITUTIONS AND CHRISTIANIT Y  

4. Andeans Found Their Own Towns: The Andeanization of Reducción  79 5. Cofradía and Cabildo in the Eighteenth Century: The Merger of Andean Religiosity and Town Leadership  101 6. Rational Bourbons and Radical Comuneros: Civil Practices That Shape Towns  124



viii C o n t e n t s

PART III   THE REVOLUTIONARY COMÚN  

7. Comunero Politics and the King’s Justice: The Común Takes Moral Action  145 8. A Lettered Revolution: A Brotherhood of Communities  167 Conclusion.  The Resilience of the Común and Its Legacy  200 Notes  221 Bibliography  261 Index  281



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

With a project that has taken so many years to complete, I have incurred many debts and have many, many people to thank. At the University of Miami where I wrote the dissertation that this book is based on, Noble David Cook, Guido Ruggiero, and the late Robert Levine were helpful in the foundation of the project. Above all, this has been a labor of years spent in archives and poring over documents, and the much too infrequent moments of sharing tidbits and interpretive angles with other researchers at those archives and in conferences. First, I  would like to thank the wonderful staff at the Archivo y Biblioteca Nacionales de Bolivia (ABNB). I was fortunate to begin my research with the late Don Gunnar Mendoza, director extraordinario. His over forty years of dedication to cataloging and organization of the archive made the ABNB one of the finest archives in the world. The late Dr. Josep Barnadas, who followed Don Gunnar as director of the ABNB and was the first director of the Archivo y Biblioteca Arquidiocesanos de Sucre (ABAS) was also instrumental in guiding my research. Archivists Sra. Judith Terrán, formerly associate director of the ABNB and the late Doña Anita Forenza were generous with their time and great expertise. They and other members of the ABNB staff were my surrogate family during my time in Sucre. Fellow researchers in the ABNB, especially Ana María Presta, Emma Sordo, and Heather Thiessen-​Reilly (whose time in Sucre overlapped with much of mine) and others who worked for briefer times, including David Garrett, the late Catherine Julien, Karen Powers, Cynthia Radding, and the late Ward Stavig, all made the sometimes lonely experience of archival research more rewarding. Especially appreciated were the monthly pot-​ luck dinners sponsored by anthropologist Verónica Cereceda and her late husband Gabriel Martínez which brought together historians and anthropologists working in the Sucre area for dinner and some very animated discussions. Over many research trips in twenty years of working in the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, the archival staff have been incredibly helpful. Living in Seville ix



x A c k n o w l e d

gments

is a privilege, and I was fortunate that in my first time there I was introduced to Andalusian life in the Santa Cruz neighborhood home of Doña Carmen Moguel, who treated me as her daughter. It was also while living in Spain that I realized how many things that I took to be “Andean” had multiple roots. I have also been fortunate to have been able to spend a significant amount of time in Buenos Aires working in the Archivo General de la Nación. Helpful archivists, staff, and friends there made my time more productive than it otherwise would have been. I wish to thank Ana María Presta of the Universidad de Buenos Aires, and her team of researchers, especially María Carolina Jurado, for their help. The Archivo del Arzobispal de Lima houses a wealth of documentation on local indigenous communities, and I  was privileged to work there during research trips to Peru. Director of the archive, Srta. Laura Gutiérrez, was especially helpful. I also thank Pedro Guibovich, who introduced me to Srta. Gutiérrez. His great knowledge of Peruvian archives facilitated my research there. During a year at the John Carter Brown Library as a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow I completed early drafts of ­chapters 4 and 5. I have fond memories of the weekly lunches and talks given by other fellows. Former Director Norman Fiering was helpful in many ways during my time in Providence. There are many other individuals, institutions, and archives that have helped me in countless ways as I worked to understand the lives of the comuneros. A special thanks to Cristina Bubba who provided me with a copy of the document of the foundation of Tolapampa. Anthropologist Krista van Vleet graciously allowed me to accompany her to her field site near Pocoata where we witnessed a tinku battle. I also thank three wonderful historians, now retired, who offered support and encouragement at key moments in my work, historians of Spain Richard Kagan and the late Helen Nader, and historian of Mexico William B. Taylor. Although the list is far from complete, among the many others who provided help in myriad ways through informal chats, or comments at conferences as fellow panelists or audience members, or who shared their work with me are Kenneth Andrien, Jovita Baber, Kathryn Burns, Juan Cobo, Natalie Cobo, Noble David Cook, Mercedes del Rio, Simon Ditchfield, Lee Douglas, María Elisa Fernández, David Garrett, Karen Graubart, Pedro Guibovich, the late Olivia Harris, Tamar Herzog, Alex Huerta, Christine Hunefeldt, Amy Huras, Marta Irurozqui, the late Sabine MacCormack, Jane Mangan, Kenneth Mills, Scarlett O’Phelan Godoy, Karen Powers, Tristan Platt, Susan Ramírez, Joanne Rappaport, Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Gilles Riviére, Stuart Rockefeller, Rafael Sánchez, Lynn Sikkink, Irene Silverblatt, Karen Spalding, Patricia Spyer, and Sinclair Thomson. A special thank you to Akira Saito of the National Museum of Ethnology (Osaka, Japan) who invited me to participate in two long-​term interdisciplinary





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xi

projects reevaluating reducciones. My deep appreciation goes to the team of international researchers involved in the reducción projects, especially Tetsuya Amino, John Charles, Alejandro Diez Hurtado, Luis Miguel Glave, Clara López Beltrán, Jeremy Mumford, Stella Nair, Parker VanValkenburgh, Steve Wernke, Guillermo Wilde, Marina Zuloaga, and Paula Zagalsky. Discussions over many years with these historians, anthropologists, art historians, and archaeologists working on the reducciones projects were key in helping me to refine my own interpretation of resettlement. My colleagues in the history department at Fordham University have been very supportive, above all Kirsten Swinth, who as chair was instrumental in bringing the book to publication. Colleagues, especially Barbara Mundy and the late Chris Schmidt-​Nowara, in the Latin American and Latino Studies Institute at Fordham have provided a warm intellectual home. I also wish to thank the students, both graduates and undergraduates at Fordham University, from whom I have learned so much. I have had extraordinarily generous support for research and writing from many sources. I  thank the Wenner-​Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (Grant # 5634); Fulbright/​IIE; the National Endowment for the Humanities Dissertation Fellowship; the Albert J. Beveridge Grant for Research in the Western Hemisphere from the American Historical Association; the Lewis Hanke Award from the Conference on Latin American History; the Advanced Study Center and International Institute at the University of Michigan; the Fulbright Senior Research Award; the National Endowment for the Humanities Senior Scholar Fellowship at the John Carter Brown Library; the Program for Cultural Cooperation between Spain’s Ministry for Culture and US Universities; the Short-​Term Research Grant from the International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World at Harvard University; and the National Ethnology Museum, Osaka, Japan. Also thank you to the generous offers of fellowships that I had to decline due to time conflicts: the Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, and the American Fellowship from The American Association of University Women. Thank you to Fordham University for Faculty Fellowships (2002–​2003; 2009–​ 2010) and Faculty Research Grants (1998, 2000, 2001, 2015), for time away from teaching obligations and funds to travel to archives. Chapter 8 contains material originally published in Colonial Lives: Documents on Latin American History, 1550–​1850 edited by Richard Boyer and Geoffrey Spurling, 2000, and has been reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press. An early version of parts of ­chapter  4 was published in The Council of Trent:  Reform and Controversy in Europe and Beyond, (1545–​1700):  Vol.3 Between Artists and Adventurers, edited by Wim François and Violet Soen, 2018, and has been reproduced here by permission of Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht



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GmbH & Co.KG, Göttingen, Germany. Chapter 4 is a revised version originally published in Reducciones:  la concentración forzada de las poblaciónes indígenas en el Virreinato del Perú, edited by Akira Saito and Claudia Rosas Lauro, 2017, and has been reproduced here by permission of Fondo Editorial de la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú and the National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, Japan. Portions of the introduction have been revised from material originally published in Collective Identities, Public Spheres and Political Order: Latin American Dynamics edited by Luis Roniger and Tamar Herzog, 2000, and have been reproduced here by permission of Sussex Academic Press. Susan Ferber, my editor at Oxford University Press, has been extraordinarily supportive every step of the way and, fortunately for me, never gave up on this very long-​term project. Her encouragement and editing made this book much stronger. Much of the final draft was completed in Toro, Spain. I thank my dear friends there for their support. Evenings spent in Javier and Frans’s patio, or on the plaza with Marisol, Fernando, and Tony or Consuelo and Ata are priceless and a much-​appreciated distraction from work. Nicola, who welcomed us into her home as family, is truly a force of nature. Finally, I thank Tom Abercrombie, my partner in life, my soul’s companion, and fellow Andeanist, whose own work is an inspiration to me. Tom generously offered his time and expertise to read and comment on many drafts of this account of the comuneros. To my great sorrow Tom did not live to see the final product of our many conversations, yet I feel his presence on every page. I also thank Tom’s students who enveloped me in their love as an extended family in the painful time after his death, especially Ulla Berg, Lee Douglas, Sandra Rozental, Augusta Thomson, and Alex Huerta who graciously proofread parts of the final manuscript. The remaining faults and shortcomings in the book are my own.



A NOTE ON TERMINOLOGY

In The People are King, I  use the terms “Andeans,” “indigenous people,” and “Indian” to refer to the native people of the Andes, aware that, to varying degrees, these are problematic terms. Creole Spaniards born in the Andes, were also “Andeans.” “Indigenous people,” a nineteenth-​century term, is anachronistic and when invented carried a racial stigma as a “scientific” means of categorizing humans. Today “Indian” in Spanish (indio) is an insult term, and was sometimes used as such in the colonial period. Other terms are also problematic. Some scholars have used “natural,” a common colonial term, but it carried the same racial significance as “Indian” for Spaniards. Other scholars have used runa, (Quechua: “human” or “people”) but there is little evidence that colonial or contemporary Andeans referred to themselves as runa or the Aymara language equivalent, jaqi. Since the Bolivian agrarian reforms of the mid-​t wentieth century, which sought to efface racial terms, campesino, or “peasant” has been the preferred term. Although campesino is plainly a euphemism for Indian, it is unquestionably a more polite term. However, it suggests an economic interpretation that is anachronistic; Andeans were not uniformly subsistence farmers, and Spaniards (or Creoles) were not always targeted as economically oppressive colonizers. Just as importantly, contemporary indigenous people of Bolivia object to the term because it also diminishes their “identity as a ‘people.’ ”1 Given all these problems with the typical nomenclature, and although some Andeans are now proudly reclaiming the name Indian for themselves, in the chapters where I treat the early colonial period, I will generally use the terms



Albó, “Our Identity,” 24.

1

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A NOTE ON TERMINOLOGY

“Andean” or “indigenous.” When writing from a Spanish colonial viewpoint, I will use the term “Indian.” For the chapters dealing with the eighteenth century, where I can be certain that words deriving from “común” were used with frequency, I opt to use the only terminology that derives from words I know eighteenth-​century rebels used for themselves: comunero.



The People Are King





Introduction The Genesis of an Andean Christianity and Politics

The night of October 14, 1774 was clear and cold, and the moon had risen early, illuminating San Pedro de Condocondo, an indigenous town nuzzled against the mountains on the edge of the high Andean plain in the Spanish viceroyalty of Peru. Gregorio Llanquipacha, cacique (native hereditary lord) and governor for the Spanish crown of the town of Condocondo and its vast municipal jurisdiction, had retired early for the evening. Llanquipacha had premonitions of trouble, for he had asked a half dozen men of the village to sleep at his home that night.1 Two seemingly separate events had led Llanquipacha to take this precaution. That afternoon a dispute had erupted into a bloody fight between two elected town leaders. Llanquipacha’s relations with these men, Julián Taquimalco but especially Ignacio Rudolfo Choque, were as strained as their relationship with each other. The previous year town authorities had accused Llanquipacha of stealing tax money.2 However, as governor and highest authority of Condocondo, Llanquipacha would be compelled to intervene the next day to settle the dispute between the two men, whatever its nature.3 Another incident that afternoon had also left Llanquipacha with a sense of disquiet. Father Joseph Espejo, the widely respected priest of Condocondo who had served the parish for over thirty years, had abruptly left on muleback to move to the neighboring town of Toledo. Llanquipacha had a history of conflict with the priest, but he also knew that the townspeople revered Father Espejo. Llanquipacha openly suspected that the priest had conspired with elected town officers to accuse him of stealing tax money, and so townspeople blamed Llaquipacha for forcing Father Espejo to leave. Whatever the case, a large group of townspeople had walked with the priest to the nearest town on his journey, crying and begging him to stay with them in Condocondo. Only a few months earlier the assistant priest, who had served as schoolmaster for the parish for sixteen years, had likewise left Condocondo; his move, too, was widely understood The People Are King: The Making of an Indigenous Andean Politics. S. Elizabeth Penry, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780195161601.001.0001



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by townspeople as being made at the demand of Llanquipacha. These events led governor Gregorio Llanquipacha to be on his guard. Vicente Nina, a twenty-​six-​year-​old Condocondo resident, was one of those whom Llanquipacha had asked to sleep in his house that night and who later gave sworn testimony to Spanish officials of what ensued. Sometime during the night, Nina said, he was awakened by the sound of a large rock hitting the door. Jumping from [my] bed [I]‌put [my] body against the door to support it from the inside. However, they continued to pound the doors furiously and they forced them open. Immediately, [I] recognized Cruz Yana, Damaso Yana and Ignacio Rudolfo Choque [current and former town councilmen] . . . and many more people, men, women, young boys, so that they were more than a 100 people gathered together in a mad rush, entering the room with different weapons, stones, whips and clubs.4 At that point someone struck Nina in the chest with a club, knocking him to the floor. Struggling to get up, he saw women carrying flaming straw torches approach Llanquipacha, who, already bloodied, stood next to his bed clad only in his night shirt, waving his sword. “Get out Indians!” Llanquipacha screamed at his attackers, using the insulting term Spaniards applied to native Andeans. With that the already enraged crowd surged toward him, and inflicted blows to his head and body. Nina testified that one of the women, María Lenis, the wife of Damaso Yana, took her weaving tool (a wichuña, a sharpened llama bone) and repeatedly stabbed Gregorio Llanquipacha in the ear until the point broke off in his brain. Meanwhile, others in the mob looted Llanquipacha’s office, taking his papers. Then, with the vigilantes screaming “Let’s go kill the other thief!” they ran to the home of Andrés Llanquipacha, Gregorio’s brother and his second in command, who met them with gun in hand and managed to shoot one of the mob before they murdered him. In the days immediately following the murders, a large contingent from Condocondo traveled the 70-​odd miles of mountain roads and llama trails to the seat of the regional Spanish colonial government in La Plata to present their version of events. News of the murders arrived via mail before they did. When Spanish officials realized that more than thirty people from Condocondo were waiting inside the patio of the courthouse to plead their case, they quickly had them arrested and jailed. The Condocondo prisoners offered an explanation of the crimes that the Spaniards neither expected nor believed: the murders came about in response to what they reckoned to be the forced ouster of their priest, Father Espejo. Moreover, they contended, because the común of Condocondo as a whole had killed the indigenous cacique and his second in command, it was impossible to assess any individual blame. When pressured by incredulous



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Spanish officials to offer a fuller explanation for the murders, one representative to the Condocondo town council, an accused leader of the mob, declared: It is a crime to take justice into [my] own hands, and to reprimand [my] cacique or Governor, whom [I]‌well know ought to be obeyed if he is good, but not if he is bad and his works unjust, as was the case with the deceased. [Former town councilmen] Ignacio Rudolfo Choque and Damián Lenis taught this doctrine. And also [I] know that if the común ordered [me] to do one thing and [my] Governor another, [I] ought to obey the común.5 What was the común? This book is an effort to answer that question. In Spanish language dictionaries of the era, común can refer to common property, common pastures, or more importantly the collective people of a place. Put simply, común was the Andean voice of popular sovereignty and an exclusionary term that referred solely to the common people, putting the hereditary nobility outside the bounds of their community. But the people of the Andes had not always used the term común and had not always opposed rule by their hereditary lords. The Andean community that prized commoner rule over their caciques had come into being over the course of the long colonial period, from the late sixteenth to the late eighteenth centuries. *** The People Are King is a history of how ordinary Andeans in the Audiencia of Charcas, a vast region of the viceroyalty of Peru, came to define themselves by reinterpreting colonial institutions and ideas, and their efforts to govern themselves and acquire full rights during the nearly three hundred years that they were subjects of the Spanish Crown. It demonstrates how Andeans moved from a politics of hereditary nobility, the caciques, to a hybrid form of participatory democracy, with the town council at its heart, that had roots in both the Andean and Spanish worlds. Andeans publicly articulated a political philosophy that not only questioned their political, economic and social subordination to their own hereditary lords, but presented a thesis on popular sovereignty that would threaten the structures of Spanish colonial domination. This new politics was undergirded by Andean ideas about a redistributive justice in which mountains, fields, and animals participated, as well as Christian and Spanish notions of natural rights and God-​given sovereignty. Spaniards imposed new kinds of town life, commoner-​led town councils, and Christian patron saints and festivals in the sixteenth century, but these impositions did not replace pre-​Conquest Andean social forms. Indeed, at the center of these new ideas about legitimacy and governance was the ayllu, the



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Andean kin and landholding group that predated both the Spaniards and the Incas and that during the colonial period (1532–​1825) came to be linked to Andean towns through the town council and saints’ celebrations. Andeans selectively appropriated Spanish religious and political impositions and combined them with pre-​Conquest understandings of reciprocal and moral obligations, and justice in a complex synthesis that Andeans called the común. Then, in the eighteenth century, Andean communities across the viceroyalty of Peru took collective action, deposing and, in some cases, executing abusive hereditary lords, all the while claiming they were operating in the name of the común. No one person could be named responsible for these political coups: the “común de Indios” had acted. In the 1780s as revolutionary uprisings accelerated in the Audiencia of Charcas (modern Bolivia), this political discourse spread through the mails, with indigenous communities writing back and forth to their “Amantíssimos hermanos comunes,” their “Beloved Común Brothers.”6 What led to this shift in how Andeans understood their political community? Where did this strong sense of collective life come from? To answer these questions, The People Are King offers an overview of the pre-​Conquest Andes and sixteenth-​century Spanish ways, and then turns to an in-​depth examination of how grass roots-​level political power was exercised by colonized Andeans in two broad historical periods, times that roughly bookend the long colonial era. The first runs from the late 1500s to roughly 1650, the era of the Spanish invasion and creation of the early colony, when Spain was governed by the Hapsburg dynasty. The second runs roughly from 1750 to the end of Spanish hegemony in 1825, frequently referred to as the era of Bourbon Reforms because of economic and political changes introduced by the Bourbon dynasty, which acceded to the Spanish throne in 1700. Close analysis of these two time periods reveals the changes that occurred over the long colonial era in Andean politics. The setting for this study is the Audiencia of Charcas (see Figure I.1), an administrative unit of the Spanish Indies, with its capital in La Plata (today Sucre, Bolivia). Until 1776, the Audiencia of Charcas was part of the viceroyalty of Peru, headquartered in Lima; after that it was incorporated into the new viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata, with Buenos Aires as its capital. Within the Audiencia, the primary focus is the territory of what were two pre-​Conquest federations, what Spaniards called “nations,” the Killaka, of which Condocondo was part, and its neighboring federation, the Karanqa. The contiguous core areas of these two federations covered approximately thirty thousand square miles in the highland Andes, an area roughly three times the size of the state of Massachusetts. The average altitude for the core region is over twelve thousand feet, with mountain peaks reaching twenty thousand feet above sea level. It is a cold, windswept, and dry plain of austere beauty. In this highland area, people have herded llamas and



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Figure I.1  Map of Study Area. Map by Erin Greb Cartography.

alpacas and cultivated the highland crops of potatoes and quinoa for thousands of years. The full extension of the territories of Killaka and Karanqa, taking in their “discontinuous but interconnected” outlier communities in distant, productive valleys to the east, where maize and coca were grown, and oases near the Pacific Ocean in the west, reached eighty thousand square miles, roughly the size of the states of Kansas or Utah.7 Within that region, the study concentrates on five highland towns, refounded with Christian patron saints in the late sixteenth



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and early seventeenth centuries: San Pedro de Condocondo, Santa Bárbara de Culta, Todos Santos de Tomave, Santiago de Tolapampa, and San Pedro de Totora. It also treats distant valley outliers belonging to the Killaka and Karanqa to which highland people made annual trips with llama caravans for foodstuffs. These valley settlements, nearer to the Audiencia capital of La Plata and within the core territory of the Qaraqara people, particularly the town of San Juan de Pocoata, were convenient resting places when traveling to the capital on community business. From the sixteenth century re-​foundation of these Andean communities until the independence of this region from the Spanish Empire, representatives from these towns regularly traveled to the Audiencia capital to meet with lawyers and put forward the aims of their communities. When they did so, they went with a particular understanding of the nature of the human collectivity they represented, and of its rights, based on both in their historical domination over lands they possessed and the sovereignty granted to them as people. Such ideas were grounded in Spanish law as well as in Andean moral frameworks. The Spanish civilizational project, which had at its heart the creation of self-​ governing resettlement towns for indigenous people, resulted from the Spanish Crown’s recognition of Indians’ essential humanity and fundamental right of dominium, that is, “ownership” of themselves and their property, and by extension the right to govern themselves.8 These plans for indigenous self-​government were forged during an era when the nature of sovereignty was understood as something granted by God to “the people.” These ideas had played out in Spain shortly before the invasion of the Inca empire in Castile’s 1520–​1521 Revolution of the Communities. But going beyond the idea of the sovereignty of the people was the proposition that the people had a right to take sovereignty back when their leaders became tyrants. Spaniards used these ideas to justify their overthrow of the Inca “tyrants.” Then, these political ideas were made explicit to indigenous Andeans when Spaniards moved them into resettlement towns designed to “civilize” Andeans. This book reveals how Andeans came to understand such things and to adopt the institutions imposed on them by colonizing Spaniards to speak back to power and to serve their own ends.

Andean Community Life and the Introduction of Reducciones Conquered by the Inca around 1460, less than one hundred years before the Spanish invasion, the region of this study was the most densely populated and wealthiest of the Inca Empire. It was also home to the village that would



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become San Pedro de Condocondo, where, just over three hundred years later, the común would kill Gregorio Llanquipacha. Condocondo was part of a collectivity known as Asanaqi, which in turn was part of the Killaka federation. The Asanaqi population was concentrated in the high plateau of the Andes mountains, living in small, scattered villages to the east of Lake Poopó. The Incas were attracted to the region by the large llama herds of the Asanaqi and neighboring “nations,” the fertile and irrigable fields of the Cochabamba valley, and the enormous silver deposits of the region. The Inca conquest brought benefits to the Asanaqi: peace prevailed across the region, and their sophisticated agricultural methods and transport meant that there was a surplus of food in the enormous state warehouses along the Inca highway system that could be distributed to those in need. Incas imposed their imperial religion of sun and moon worship on all, but their subject populations were allowed to keep local gods. The Asanaqi had limited say in their political life; they were ruled by a hereditary elite at local, regional and empire-​wide levels whose right to rule was grounded in their descent from deities. Like their neighboring ethnic groups and larger federations, the Asanaqi held property collectively; the only privately held property were the large estates of the Inca elite. The Incas were enormously successful in funneling wealth upward from local commoners to the ruling elite. Asanaqi commoners, for instance, were drafted by the Inca to grow maize in the Inca fields of Cochabamba, work in the Inca silver mines of Porco, and help build and maintain the highways on which llama caravans moved their goods to regional storehouses, and from there to the Inca capital in Cuzco. In 1532, when Spaniards entered the territory that would become the viceroyalty of Peru, they recognized this efficient transfer of wealth that sustained the Inca nobility and hoped to channel it into their own coffers to ennoble themselves and enrich their king. While the Spanish admired the wealth generated by the Inca Empire, they believed that Andeans lacked the essentials of civilized life:  Christianity, of course, but almost as importantly, town life. The Inca Empire did hold some impressive cities, but aside from the capital Cuzco (and a few others), they were primarily administrative centers staffed with temporary laborers. With the Spanish invasion, many of the temporary workers fled, returning to their home villages. For Spaniards, neither these administrative centers, nor the small villages in which most Andeans lived, were adequate to foster the kind of intensive interpersonal and collective sociality that Spaniards identified as necessary for civilized life. For Spaniards, the town was the república, the basis of civilized life; the municipality guaranteed rights to its citizens and brought about proper moral, religious, and political behavior. There was no national guarantee of rights and citizenship; all political life was vested in the town-​republic. The most basic political identification for Spaniards was their natal town, their patria chica, or



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little fatherland. In the Americas, then, Spaniards immediately founded towns for themselves in order to legitimate their dominion.9 Under Viceroy Francisco de Toledo, who arrived in Peru in 1569, Spaniards insisted on resettling Andeans from their small hamlets into new Spanish-​ style towns in order to introduce them to life in a town-​based republic and the institutions of church and state that supported that life. Known as reducciones, from the verb reducir, to reduce, these resettlement towns would concentrate the population into towns with a uniform grid-​pattern design that Spaniards believed would help bring civilization to the people of the Americas. In this, Spaniards were inspired by the plazas and squares of Roman architect Vitrivius, whose first-​ century work was first published in Spanish in the late fifteenth century, and that of the Renaissance Italian humanist and architect Alberti, in imaging the ideal city design. The new resettlement towns, informed by Renaissance ideals that considered the social effects of buildings and city design, were an early modern attempt at social engineering. From the Spanish viewpoint, without the orderly pattern of life, the buena policía, or “good customs,” of the Spanish-​styled municipality, the people of the Andes were estranged from civilization and Christian life. Orders governing the layout of towns issued by King Philip II called for a large plaza and straight streets that would give physical expression to buena policía. The straight streets and rectangular plazas of resettlement towns would make indigenous Andeans into “true men.”10 With the creation of resettlement towns, Spaniards renewed and intensified efforts to convert Andeans to Christianity, a requirement for buena policía. Each resettlement town was named for a saint or other Christian advocation, and a lay religious brotherhood to celebrate the saint was established for Andeans. Condocondo, which had existed under the Inca empire, was “founded” as a reducción town under Viceroy Toledo as San Pedro de Condocondo, with Saint Peter as its patron. Asanaqi people, like other Andeans, quickly took up and adapted these brotherhoods dedicated to the saints. The brotherhoods, called cofradías, clothed the image of their patron saint in elaborate textiles and, on his feast day, marched in processions through their town, carrying their saint’s image on their shoulders on platforms laden with flowers and candles. Before the end of the sixteenth century, church officials sought to limit the numbers of indigenous founded cofradías, fearing that they could be a cover for a return to pre-​Conquest religious practices. Despite Spanish efforts to halt their numbers, the new town based cofradías flourished, helping to give meaning to and create ties of sentiment to the new reducción towns. Certain aspects of Christianity, in particular the focus on the brotherhood between fellow members of cofradías who collectively served the saints, along with generosity, humility, and charity, but also Christianity’s sacrificial metaphors linking persons and domesticated animals, were well-​attuned for the emergence of a commoner-​collective



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political ethics in communities like San Pedro de Condocondo whose livelihood depended on herd animals. Building on Spanish concepts of God-​given, community based popular sovereignty, Viceroy Toledo also created a model for self-​government within the resettlement towns, the elected town council or cabildo that was to share authority with the hereditary cacique. This concept of divided rule was clearly modeled on the Spanish pattern of dual government by aristocrats and plebeians. The town councils were made up mainly of annually elected taxpaying plebeians; the nobility was specifically restricted from monopolizing offices. Town council officers would be charged with helping collect tax payments and recruiting labor, in addition to governing. Toledo’s orders also compelled them to assist the priest in conversion and teaching Christian doctrine. As town council members led celebrations for the town’s saints, they publicly engaged in actions that underscored their legitimation by tapping into pre-​Conquest roots where leaders’ political duties and their leadership of religious practices had been inseparable. Within a short time, Andeans adapted the imposed civil and religious institutions and practices and made these resettlement towns their own. More than that, commoner Andeans began to create new towns modeled on the Spanish resettlement towns. In many cases, Andeans were returning to their pre-​ Conquest hamlets, but re-​founding them with town councils and the celebration of the saints, now melded with Andean social forms. Asanaqi people originally settled by Viceroy Toledo in Condocondo would create three new towns in the early seventeenth century, carved out of Condo’s territory. Sometimes appealing to the local archbishop, other times going to the viceroy, the highest civil official in the Americas, commoner Andeans sought legal permission for their new towns. With these new town foundations, indigenous social and political life was transformed from systems of hereditary kingdoms and chiefdoms to town based communities, with a concomitant reworking of concepts of legitimate political leadership from rule by hereditary lords to self-​government by elected town councils made up of commoners.11 Andeans created a sophisticated hybrid of pre-​Conquest and Spanish political and religious ideas and practices that came together to form the común.

From Caciques to the Común While caciques continued to be regarded as the traditional authority in Andean towns, by the eighteenth century, and earlier in some cases, they were being supplanted by another set of authorities, the town council, known as the cabildo.12 Toledan ordinances describe in detail the process for electing cabildo officers,



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but this did not automatically make cabildos a legitimate authority. Other long-​ term processes simultaneously undermined caciques and strengthened cabildos. Salaries for caciques came from the tax money collected from common Indians. Just as Spanish nobles were exempted from a head tax, so too were Andean nobles. As paid bureaucrats of the Spanish state, caciques’ interests began to be more closely tied to Spanish interests. These ties were not only economic. Caciques began to take on the cultural habits of Spaniards, dressing, eating and living like them. Caciques owned haciendas, put their daughters in convents, and required “their Indians” to greet them as nobles, ringing church bells and setting off fireworks when they made official visits to one of “their towns.”13 Spanish reasons for creating reducciones had been, in part, to remove Andeans from sites of native religion. In pre-​Conquest and early post-​conquest times, caciques led public worship at local religious shrines. This was a vital component of office holding as pre-​Conquest relations were charged with religious meaning.14 As Spanish efforts at forced conversion to Christianity effectively curtailed many religious aspects of cacical activity, it also provided an avenue for cabildo legitimacy. By the eighteenth century, cabildo and cofradía roles and offices had become so closely linked that they were viewed as one complex hierarchy within indigenous towns. Cabildo officers were expected to take an active role in their town’s patron saint’s festival. Many cabildo offices had their specific church duties outlined, from providing fronds for Palm Sunday to assisting the priest in collecting charity donations.15 This certainly did not go unobserved by caciques, some of whom attempted to promote their own legitimacy by listing the saints’ celebrations that they had sponsored.16 The cabildo itself had taken on Andean shadings. Over two hundred years of practice had made the cabildo membership larger and more flexible in number and with a more distinctly Andean appearance. The people who were considered cabildo members had broadened to include other town leaders: the heads of ayllus; the captains who escorted the corvée workers to the silver mines of Potosí; and a somewhat nebulous group of former office holders known as principales.17 The political and religious institutions introduced by the Spanish in the sixteenth century had by the eighteenth century become the basis for indigenous identity conceived in terms of community-​based collectivity and sovereignty. To belong to the “común de Indios” in the late eighteenth century, one paid taxes, served corvée labor, worked community lands, and honored the local saints. To be a legitimate authority for the “común de Indios” one led these activities by serving as officer of the cabildo and cofradía. If a cacique stole tribute money or hounded the parish priest, he could be construed as a disloyal apostate and therefore an enemy of the común.



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The Age of Enlightenment and Revolution In the two hundred years following the creation of resettlement towns, Andeans melded pre-​Conquest ideas and practices to imposed Spanish institutions to create the complex synthesis that underlay their ideas about community-​based sovereignty that resided in the común. But just as the común took full shape, around the beginning of the eighteenth century, the new Bourbon dynasty in Spain, inspired by Enlightenment ideas, began to impose reforms that attacked its representational form and the thesis of popular sovereignty the común had adopted in its own vernacular. The Enlightenment is generally thought of as a time when individualism gained ground against collectivities, private property replaced commons, societies were secularized, and the state gained greater control over everyday life. These shifts are understood to go hand in hand with the rise of the sovereign individual, who, gathering with others of his kind in cafes and plazas, created not only institutions of civil society and a public sphere of debate and discussion, but also new political theory to underwrite a revised understanding of popular sovereignty. That philosophy of classic liberalism legitimated the displacement of monarchs by rule of “the people,” conceived as a collection of bourgeois individuals. Of course, the Bourbon dynasts of Spain were aghast at the anti-​monarchial sentiments of the French and American revolutionaries. They censored revolutionary writings (to little effect) and offered a hardline counter thesis to popular sovereignty, arguing that God placed sovereignty directly into the body of the king himself. Aiming to consolidate and centralize power, the Bourbons ejected the “popular sovereignty” philosophers, the Jesuits, from Spanish realms, and aimed to streamline state control over the empire’s population of individuals through a new administrative architecture, hoping to undercut the myriad fractious municipal repúblicas that were becoming a danger to crown power. The sum of these reforms can be called Absolutism. Most discussions of eighteenth-​century Enlightenment and modernity focus on northern Europe and North America, taking the French and American revolutions as the epicenters. But the earlier vernacular application of popular sovereignty in the indigenous community of San Pedro de Condocondo in 1774 underscores some truths about the origins of modernity that challenge the widely accepted view. Joining a growing chorus of revision of Anglophone and Francophone theses on Enlightenment and modernity, this book affirms that both came earlier and from further south, from Spain’s colonial peripheries.18 Yet, the Enlightenment and the course taken by political modernity in the Spanish Atlantic diverged from that of northern Europe in a critical way best explained by a difference in meaning between the English “the people” and its ostensive Spanish equivalent, “el pueblo.” While “the people” is a plurality of



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persons (and especially of “common persons”), “el pueblo” shifts in meaning between “people” and “town.” Popular sovereignty in the Spanish Atlantic world always referred to rights vested in “el pueblo,” a “people” by virtue of residence in a “pueblo” or town. When the people of San Pedro de Condocondo embraced their right to popular sovereignty, it was not as sovereign individuals, but as a sovereign town-​based community, the común.19 This particular understanding of collective or corporate political rights, one with a long genealogy in the Iberian Peninsula, is not only a property of the indigenous común. It continues to define the body politic of Creole-​dominated Spanish-​speaking countries in the Americas.20 In the eighteenth century, the Bourbon Reforms that most directly bothered Andeans could be summed up in the term “secularization.” Serving the saints, as a cofradía officer, was understood as serving the community. But those serving were exempt from taxation and corvée labor, thus depriving the state of much income. Enlightenment-​inspired reforms, with dual aims of secularizing and bringing economic rationalism to bear, also aimed to reduce the numbers of Andeans serving the saints. This would redirect income from church to state, but it also undercut Andeans’ means to legitimate authority in the común. Like the común’s killing of Llanquipacha, the late eighteenth-​ century uprisings that followed were revolutionary uprisings of commoners against aristocracy and in favor of something like municipal democracy. Seen in this manner, the Andean revolutionary movements of the early 1780s become a grassroots application of popular sovereignty not unlike that seen in other arenas of the Atlantic Revolutions. Although they were creating a new public sphere of political action in their comunes, comuneros were not members of an emerging bourgeoisie and did not employ the individualist idiom of the Enlightenment in defining themselves or their anti-​colonial movement. Instead, echoing the Hispanic world’s tradition of democratic revolution, they declared themselves to be sovereign communities. Far from being considered a vanguard by later Creole revolutionaries who fought for independence from Spain, however, the Andean comuneros led Creoles to fear and marginalize Indians from their own republican-​nationalist designs.

The Común Many indigenous people across the Andes today refer to themselves as comuneros, a term so taken for granted as indicating “peasant” or “indigenous” status that it needs no explanation.21 But the contemporary meaning of común or comunero came into use in the late seventeenth century and only became widespread in the eighteenth century as commoners sought to define their



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political interests in ways that often conflicted with their hereditary lords. During interrogations following her arrest in the murders of Gregorio Llanquipacha and his brother in San Pedro de Condocondo, María Michaela, imprisoned wife of Ignacio Rudolfo Choque, an instigator of the murders, said she owed allegiance to the “rey común.” When asked to define the term, María hedged and pleaded ignorance as a mere woman. Pressed by her interrogators, she replied that “it is the ayllus together,” making explicit an Andean definition of what on the surface would appear to be a Spanish political term.22 The term, “King common people,” or (in my translation) “the people are king,” then reappeared in another case in the nearby town of Challapata, where a cacique expressed fear of the rey común because “it” had claimed the power to elect or remove caciques. The term común or rey común had become recognized political discourse and shorthand for a political philosophy empowering common people.23 Común was the term used by colonial indigenous people themselves in their letters, petitions, and testimonies. Despite its Spanish origins, the term was an indigenous social construction, a feat of the imagination that named the political entity identified with sovereignty. How did indigenous make the term their own? Sharing etymological roots with comunidad, or community, común had been the basis for collective political action for Spaniards since at least the fifteenth century. Something akin to the “sovereignty of the pueblo,” it had been a rallying cry in the constitutionalist and pro-​parliamentary Revolution of the Communities of 1520–​1521. In the hands of colonized Andeans the term revealed a revolutionary potential that terrified Spaniards and Creoles.24 This study makes this colonial indigenous terminology visible once again.

The Común Defined The term común had many different but related meanings in the colonial Andes. These various meanings coincided, at least nominally, with formal, Spanish definitions. The Diccionario de la lengua castellana (1729) offered its first definition of común as an adjective, “that which not being privately held, pertains to all, as common goods, common pasture.” In this sense, común is roughly equivalent to sapsi, the Quechua term referring to common lands or other common property. Sapsi or sapçi was defined in González Holguín’s 1608 Quechua-​Spanish dictionary in roughly the same way, as “common thing of all.” Testimony taken in 1773 in the reducción of Santiago de Moscarí reflects this usage; townspeople complained that the cacique had appropriated community land (“comunes”) for his personal gain.25 While each tax payer had land assigned to him or her, other community lands were to provide for community needs:  to feed the poor, finance the local school, and pay taxes for the ill or those currently holding cabildo



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status, or in service to the church.26 What becomes clear is that if caciques took economic advantage of the common lands, they were directly attacking community leaders, those who served the cabildo and the Church, by undermining the community’s ability to pay the taxes of its office holders. Común also defined the collective people of a place. In the 1791 edition of the Diccionario de la lengua castellana, común can be “used as a noun, signifying the entire people of whatever province, city, town or village.” This sort of “nesting” definition where each progressively smaller group of people is known as a común is reminiscent of modern definitions of ayllu.27 The 1608 definition of ayllu from González Holguín, as “faction, genealogy, linage, kinship, or caste,” is less expansive. But by the early eighteenth century, townspeople sometimes used común and ayllu interchangeably. At other times, común referred to a group of related ayllus (what Spaniards would call a parcilidad, and known by the Quechua terms, anansaya and urinsaya), and, clearly, at other times, it referred to the entire town, (the equivalent of the Quechua and Aymara marka).

The Común as Juridical Person The term común seems to have been introduced initially as little more than legal boilerplate, something that every scribe knew to include in formal petitions but that carried little more weight than a series of “whereas,” “wherefores,” and “the parties to the aforesaid.” Probably its multiple uses as common land, common people, and common interest, and links to Andean terms such as sapsi and ayllu, led común to take on specific meaning for Andeans as a person in law, or as the collective public subject. This definition was slowly engendered by the repetitive Spanish use of the term in legal documents that would hold great import for the community. For example, in a 1711 boundary hearing in the Carangas province town of San Pedro de Totora, possession of the town’s lands were given “in voice and in name of the común of the said town.”28 At least by the 1740s, Andeans had begun to use the term themselves in somewhat the same manner, as the collective legal body of the community. Following accusations against him in 1744, the cacique of Todos Santos de Tomave countercharged that the petition was only “supposedly in the name of the común.”29 This of course suggests that the boilerplate “in the name of the común” had to be backed up with some action in order to be considered legitimate. A 1758 report from the state’s attorney for Indians in the Spanish Creole mining center of Oruro intimates how decisions of the común might be reached. Beginning his report with a summary of charges made by the community of San Pedro de Totora against their priest, including his proposal that they make additional monetary offerings on certain feast days, the state’s attorney wrote “and



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to this proposal [of the priest] they responded in the body of their común that his Majesty [the King] had ordered that they observe no such thing.”30 Although the state’s attorney offers no further details, this wording conjures an image of a public meeting where the común could make known its collective will. Indeed, public meetings seem to have been precisely how the común came to its opinion. In 1775, following a written petition in which people from Pocoata denounced their cacique, the notoriously abusive Don Florencio Lupa, and demanded a new one, Lupa responded that their complaints did not reflect the town as a whole, to which they replied: The said cacique has resorted to saying that our complaint to the royal government was made by us alone, without the agreement of the community. This is patently false in view of the meeting of more than three hundred native Indians who in his presence, acted on this information and unanimously called for our own cacique.31 With this example in mind, the increasingly repetitive use of the term común in petitions from Andeans in the last half of the eighteenth century takes on added significance. No longer mere perfunctory wording, común was coming to represent the will of the people in a very literal sense, and pretenders to cacique status were noting this change. If a cacique could claim that the común agreed with him, he regarded this as strengthening his position. In 1762 a cacique brought a complaint against a local-​level Spanish bureaucrat claiming that his community was being illegally assessed taxes for the deceased. The case was not brought by him alone, because as he added, “the común of my Indians agrees.”32

Colonialism, Property, and “Race” In English, as in Spanish, común can mean “commoner,” in contrast to aristocrats or nobles, or it can refer to “the commons” as a form of collective property, to which all “commoners” have guaranteed access. Sixteenth-​century Spanish towns possessed common lands, and even the poorest “commoners” held use rights in those common lands, by which to support themselves in some way via agriculture or herding or the gathering of firewood or chestnuts, for example. On the other hand, while aristocrats in Spain had access to their town’s commonhold land, they also had privately held land. Spaniards in the Indies identified themselves exclusively as holders of private property, aiming to amass and transfer that private property through inheritance so as to create and sustain lineages akin to those of Spain’s aristocracy.



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The towns into which Andeans were resettled were established completely as inalienable commonhold properties; the people of the town owned the land collectively. Of course, usufruct rights in common lands also seems to have characterized “property” in pre-​Conquest times. So, when Spaniards granted Andeans commonhold titles, they reinforced the merger of Andean ayllus and the new town-​based repúblicas. Caciques and town councilmen were entrusted with equitably dividing up lands within the town’s jurisdiction among its inhabitants on a regular basis as families grew or shrank. However, by the eighteenth century, caciques, whose claims to office depended on being members of aristocratic lineages, were aiming to amass private property in a manner akin to Spaniards, often by usurping parts of the common lands belonging to the communities they ruled. One result of granting common land title to “Indian” communities was to reinforce and help shape among Andeans an understanding of commoner politics that celebrated an ethics of equality, redistribution, and investment in the well-​being of the collective and of the fields, pastures, crops, and herds on which it depended, and that scorned any practices that held individual interests above those of the collective. Yet another result of the Spanish granting recognition of common land titles to the peoples resettled in new towns was to permanently equate indigeneity both with commoner status and with commons, membership in collectivities. By the late eighteenth century, when modern liberalism began to be equated with the private-​property holding individual, “indigenous culture” founded on commons appeared to be the essence of non-​modernity. Commonhold property would be coupled with new “race” theory as evidence of the inferiority of indigenous Americans. The eighteenth century was self-​ consciously the age of reason, when science replaced faith as a way to knowledge, with an urge toward classificatory or taxonomic thinking about plants, animals, and people. Turning sixteenth-​century “Protector of the Indians” Bartolomé de Las Casas’ famous saying that “all mankind is one” on its head, Enlightenment thinkers espoused a fixed racial hierarchy that enshrined “white” people at its peak and put American natives near the bottom.33 With independence in the early nineteenth century, Andeans would be systematically deprived of their rights through liberal understandings of their assigned race determined in large part through membership in comunes with commonhold, rather than private property rights. But the común was a resilient entity that survived even those attacks.

Methodology and Scope The People Are King is a work of ethnohistory, an Iberian Atlantic history, and a series of microhistories. As an ethnohistory, the study of a people’s ways of



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understanding their own past, it draws on the ethnographic method of “thick description” and poses anthropological questions to investigate the lived histories of indigenous people, analyzing their religious, political, and social practices for Andean meaning and understanding of their world.34 Increasingly, scholars of colonial Latin America such as Jorge Cañezares-​Esguerra, Karen Graubart, Jane Mangan, Bianca Premo, and José Carlos de la Puente Luna, as well as many of early modern Spain—​most prominently Helen Nader and Richard Kagan—​ have put their work in the context of the Iberian Atlantic realizing that it is not possible to isolate the events, institutions, practices or people of the viceroyalties of the New World from the Iberian Peninsula.35 This book joins that trend to make clear that the colonial Andes cannot be understood without knowledge of sixteenth-​century Spain, especially the contemporary ideas and philosophies about the importance of urban life and the nature of sovereignty, while putting the lived experience of indigenous people at the forefront. In this way, The People Are King meets one of the challenges of microhistory to connect the local case to global history. The microhistorical accounts told here provide a series of fine-​ grained, overlapping, interrelated, and sequential studies of towns in what were originally the pre-​Conquest federations of Killaka and Karanqa against a backdrop of Spanish institutions and policies.36 Within these three fields The People Are King speaks to several important scholarly debates. Foremost, the impact of colonialism on native peoples. Scholars of colonial Latin America have moved beyond the simple binary of resistance and domination, where colonized people are seen as a uniformly and heroically resistant class, and colonizers are in agreement on policies designed to maintain their economic, political, and social domination.37 One particularly powerful critique of the “resistance school” is that it flattens the real lives and politics of those in “resistance,” to create an “authentic” one-​dimensional, unchanging Indian—​what Andean scholars refer to as “lo Andino.”38 Rather than searching for cultural continuity from the colonial past into the present, The People Are King demonstrates how Andeans grabbed hold of the new languages of legal codes and rights of early modernity to defend their long-​held values of mutual responsibility and collective life in a manner akin to what Brian Owensby has found in Mexico, and José Carlos de la Puente Luna has uncovered in Peru. In some sense Andeans did resist Spanish impositions, but they did it by adopting and adapting them, giving them new meaning and making them their own. While colonialism is always destructive, and Amerindian reactions to the institutions, practices and ideas introduced by Spaniards were constrained, recent scholarship has shown that Andeans in the creole urban spaces of cities such as Lima, Cuzco or Potosí were creative and effective in carving out spaces of action.39 The People Are King brings rural Andeans into this debate by demonstrating how they fashioned new identities in what might be called a process of ethnogenesis. By taking up and



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adapting certain colonial policies, especially reducción, the resettlement into Spanish style self-​governing towns with commoner-​led councils, commoner Andeans came to challenge and ultimately replace the hereditary rule of indigenous nobles, forging a new identity for themselves as comuneros, members of a república. These resignified ideas and institutions fit well with prior ideals of mutual responsibility and collectivity. The People Are King also intervenes in debates that are more particular to colonial Latin American historiography: the impact of reducción policy, and the nature of the late colonial rebellions. Colonial Spaniards almost universally judged reducción policy to have been a failure. Studies drawing their evidence from official reports by Spanish colonial bureaucrats have concurred, pointing out correctly that Andeans fled the new towns but drawing the erroneous conclusion that the policy had no impact. Joining scholars such as Thomas Abercrombie, and more recently William Hanks, Jeremy Mumford, Steve Wernke, and Marina Zuloaga Rada (who have turned attention away from bureaucratic reports to examine what local Andean practices tell about the impact of reducción), it becomes clear that reducciones were neither a failure nor a success but rather a catalyst for a complex Andean ethnogenesis producing new forms of collective life drawing on a hybrid political/​religious hierarchy.40 My research methods have enabled close attention to this process of ethnogenesis in a handful of places over the entire Spanish colonial era. The evidence presented here reveals the sea change in indigenous forms of self-​ governance and collective self-​identification from the pre-​Conquest past of leadership by aristocratic lineages of caciques to the commoner-​led councils governing indigenous municipalities. It clearly shows that the eighteenth-​ century indigenous rebellions were as much about overthrowing indigenous aristocracies as seeking rights as self-​governing indigenous republics. In doing so, The People Are King also provides the genealogy of contemporary indigenous collectivities of the Andes, as described in depth by numerous ethnographies.41 To understand the 1774 events in San Pedro de Condocondo, the book examines events in other towns in the region over the long term and links the local and the global to make sense of both. The Llanquipacha murder is a fascinating case in its own right, comprising nearly two thousand pages of testimony, letters, petitions, and legal orders, but it gains importance as a vehicle to understand the changes that took place over the years that separated the imposition of resettlement towns in the 1570s and the revolutionary moment of the 1780s. Little about the Condo murders makes sense without an in-​depth understanding of how the común came to exist. A group of “Indians” killing their “Indian” hereditary lord because he sent away their Spanish priest was incomprehensible to



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late eighteenth-​century Spanish bureaucrats. It defied their racialized categories, and they were blind to the evolution of the común. This book is framed by two key moments in the colonial transformation of indigenous lives:  the Renaissance of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, when Spaniards forcibly resettled upwards of one and a half million native Andeans, and the Enlightenment’s late eighteenth century, when nearly Continent-​wide revolutions shook the colonial state. This work portrays the impact on Andeans and Andean responses to sixteenth-​century resettlement policies as the beginning of long-​term, social, political, and religious changes that redefined the indigenous political community. It roots indigenous rebellions of the eighteenth century in Renaissance understandings of república and an Enlightenment-​from-​below indigenous appropriation of the law that together produced a revolutionary response to Enlightenment era reforms.42 In doing so, The People Are King contributes to a rethinking of the origins of social and political change, reconsiders the long-​term impact of colonialism and provides an intimate portrait of how subaltern or colonized people defined and redefined themselves and their political communities. It tracks a transition from one kind of collectivity, the pre-​Conquest dually organized kingdoms such as the Asanaqi—​composed of subunits called ayllus, and with a population scattered in numerous small hamlets—​to another kind focusing on reducción towns, in which ayllus regrouped as parts of something Spaniards called república and indigenous people came to call the común. Many elements of pre-​Conquest indigenous life were taken up in the república/​común, but the resulting hybrid was a profoundly different kind of indigenous political form, resembling in some ways both sixteenth-​century Castilian town life, and pre-​Columbian ways, but reducible to neither. One commonality, however, is the centrality of collective life. The research for this study comes from over twenty archives and research libraries in Bolivia, Argentina, Peru, Spain, and the United States including town, regional, national, and church archives. Colonial Spaniards were exemplar bureaucrats who frequently sent multiple copies of documents to higher authorities; if a document no longer exists in Peruvian or Bolivian archives, it can frequently be found in Argentine or Spanish ones. In other cases, archives hold unique materials or original letters composed by indigenous commoners. These include holographic letters written by indigenous people, letters never meant for Spanish eyes, petitions to Crown or church authorities, trial testimonies, census materials, church inspections, tax records, baptismal records, records from indigenous lay religious brotherhoods, chapel foundations, records of community chests, testimonies taken and recorded by indigenous people, lists of indigenous household contents, contracts signed by indigenous people to hire school teachers, and complaints against caciques and/​or priests. This array of materials



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provides a panoramic view of indigenous life and a multifaceted treatment of their political culture, in many cases in the words of Andeans themselves. Moreover, the abundance of documentation has made it possible to follow local events over three centuries in a handful of related and neighboring communities, revealing not just collectivities but the interactions of specific persons. The people who are the subject of this book have too often been excluded from their own history for being so radically different from colonial Spaniards that their words could not be parsed. Rather than relying only on official reports from Spanish bureaucrats, which generally attributed to Andeans motives springing from their difference from Spaniards, this work gleans indigenous meanings and reveals how contemporary participants understood the events of their lives. It prioritizes letting them speak for themselves, sometimes by detailing the contexts of their practices or acts and the kinds of futures they worked toward and sometimes by reproducing words they spoke/​wrote to judges or comrades in arms. These sources yield some surprises. First, many principal actors were literate and wrote their own “testimonies”: that is, letters and petitions. Literacy in the Spanish language was not uncommon among people outside of the elite class of hereditary indigenous caciques. Late sixteenth-​century Andeans purchased books of Spanish law and manuals of instruction on how to file lawsuits. By the seventeenth century, they were composing petitions directed to civil and political authorities, which in some cases sought to curtail the power of the cacique in favor of town council officials. Dozens of letters were written by rebels during the Great Rebellion of the 1780s. The fact that all these petitions and letters were written in Spanish might lead one to question how much of the “native” voice can be heard in the “master’s” language.43 But literacy was not taught in indigenous languages in the Andes, and there was no standard orthography to draw on with which to write those languages. Through traces in the documentary record left by Andeans, it is possible to glimpse the kinds of social and political entities significant to them, the varieties of contexts for productive political and religious life, and the goals and values for which they fought. Andeans speak through their testimony before judges at their trials but also in litigation over local leadership positions, land, or injustices visited on them by administrative or religious authorities—​and sometimes in letters of correspondence. Rather than the aristocratic hereditary elite, the focus is on tribute-​paying commoners among native Andeans in small indigenous towns who began to reshape colonial policy for their own purposes and who created their own towns over the objections of local Spanish officials. Andeans were not merely bystanders but architects of the world-​transforming events of the age of Atlantic Revolutions and the forerunners of today’s Indianist movements in Bolivia.



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The book is divided into three parts that are both chronological and thematic. Part I moves from the mid-​fifteenth century to the late sixteenth century and examines pre-​Conquest Andean and Spanish societies then turns to the radical changes Spaniards imposed on Andeans. Chapter  1 presents an overview of pre-​Conquest Andean society from the standpoint of the Asanaqi people of the southern highlands who were conquered by the Inca in about 1460. This chapter sets the stage for understanding the transformations that both Spanish and Andean political and social organization underwent as they clashed and came together in the colonial era. Chapter 2 examines the political and religious ideas that Spaniards carried with them to the New World, particularly their notions of civilization and performance of Christianity within towns defined as republics. Chapter three looks closely at one of the most destabilizing policies introduced by Spaniards: the uprooting of 1.5 million people and their resettlement in towns based on an idealized version of those of Castile. Spaniards did not resettle indigenous people merely to exploit them economically but, as they understood it, to ensure that their “natural rights” would be protected as members of “repúblicas” subject to the king. For them, it was only within municipal social structures that civilization, and hence Christianity, could exist.44 This chapter reveals what indigenous people initially made of this resettlement policy and of the political and religious ideas and practices they were to learn in the new towns. Part II explores what Andeans born into this new colonial world made of the institutions and policies imposed on their parents and grandparents. Chapter 4 shows that Andeans both followed and modified the resettlement policies. At the center of this is the question of indigenous agency. How can Andeans “obey” the letter of the law and yet “resist” its impositions? Andeans followed legal strategies, appealing to either the civil or the ecclesiastical authorities for permission to create their own towns. Spanish resettlement policy was not an end in itself but a means to achieve evangelization and imposition of Spanish ideas of civilization. Chapter five focuses on the role of religious practices that would make the space of the newly created towns meaningful places for Andeans. The religious dimensions of political culture demonstrate how the kinds of civil and religious offices characteristic of colonially founded towns became the basis through which commoner Andeans criticized both church and state. Yet as examples of animal sacrifice demonstrate, orthodox Spanish Catholicism was not at the center of Andean political culture. Tracing the modern system of alternating sponsorship of religious fiestas with civil duties to the eighteenth century, this chapter shows how participation in religious and civil offices was transformed through the use of local, indigenous idioms into a means to legitimate authority.



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Chapter 6 turns to the civil aspects of political culture that made towns meaningful places and contrasts the commoner authority developed in c­ hapter 5 with that of the hereditary caciques. Commoners objected to the Hispanization of their caciques, but also to their aristocratic pretensions and their claims to a preeminent place in an incipient racial hierarchy. At the same time, caciques tried to preserve their authority by tapping into culturally Andean behavior, doing things such as pouring libations, as pre-​Conquest caciques did, in order to legitimate their call for commoners to perform forced labor in Spanish silver mines. Part III turns to the revolutionary outcome of over 250 years of colonialism. Chapter seven closely narrates the murders of the Llanquipacha brothers. This account reveals how people of Condo understood legitimate rule and tyranny and why they were driven to remove Llanquipacha from the office of cacique by any means. Chapter 8 examines the revolutionary moment of 1780–​1782 and reveals the crucial role that letters written by comuneros and their circulation among rebel towns played in generating and coordinating region-​wide uprisings. Through a large corpus of holographic letters, it traces the evolution of the uprising. The book concludes by comparing the proto-​nationalist quality of comuneros’ political language and their notions of municipal self-​governance and citizenship with those of their Creole contemporaries to demonstrate that a political philosophy that could support a national public sphere was not purely an elite-​driven goal. As Creoles’ ideas of “republics” independent of Spain evolved between 1780 and 1825, they justified their exclusion of Andeans from full participation in national political life by attributing to them a terrifying anti-​modernity and potential for violence. Perhaps Creoles unconsciously recognized that comuneros were also poised for autonomy and nation building.45 The brutal suppression of the revolution effectively curtailed that movement for Andeans. In the new postcolonial nation, liberal ideas of individualism and private property came to define modernity and the bounds of the proper political community. Based on their communally held lands, seen as an inefficient ancient holdover that would drag down the national economy, “Indians” were largely excluded from political rights in the new nation of Bolivia. Across Latin America, newly independent Creoles began policies aimed at destroying indigenous people’s ethnic identity. As one post-​independence patriot wrote: “To expand our agriculture it would be necessary to hispanicize our Indians. . . . it would be very desirable that the Indians be extinguished by miscegenation with the whites . . . ”46 Try as they might, however, white elites could not extinguish the indigenous común. The towns depicted in this book defeated efforts to crush their liberties and steal their lands from 1825 until the revolution of 1952, in which these comunes also played important roles. Indigenous Bolivians regained their citizenship rights



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only with the revolution of 1952 and gained full participation in the state, as well as recognition of the right to self-​governance and to possession of the commons, through the election of an indigenous president, Evo Morales, in 2005. Left behind for centuries was the alternative vision of community-​based democracy as a bulwark of human rights and rights of the land so deeply entangled in the Andes with the común of persons—​and something lately recognized in the constitution of the plurinational Bolivian state. That vision had already been eloquently expressed by eighteenth-​century revolutionaries in the phrase “rey común”: The people are king!





PA RT  I

INCA AND EARLY SPANISH PERU

Prior to the Spanish invasion of the lands of Peru, an ethnic group calling themselves Incas had consolidated an empire through violence and negotiation, forging a single state that subordinated myriad distinct peoples to a new high religion and a state-​level politics. Through a massive resettlement campaign, by seizing extensive irrigable valleys, and by coercing conquered peoples to participate in a draft that supplied laborers for imperial projects, they built a highway system, constructed terraced irrigated fields for maize cultivation, and produced enormous surpluses of stored food and clothing for Inca elites as well as workers. Monopolization of violence, the imposition of a legal code, and their vast stores of food and clothing produced a Pax Incaica that saw an end to the wars and famines that had periodically devastated the peoples within the empire called Tawantinsuyu by Inca masters. When Spaniards invaded Tawantinsuyu, renaming it Peru, they came for precious metals and to convert the peoples of the Andes into Christians and subjects of the king. They also sought to become, as had the Incas before them, a nobility who could control the labor of their new subjects. They did not do so to produce surpluses of food and clothing for themselves and their subjects, but to convert that labor, through the mining of gold and silver, into a source of private, Spanish-​owned wealth. Imposing as well a Castilian custom by which commoners paid tributes in goods and in money to their noble lords, they used the marketplace to accumulate further wealth, which many hoarded so as to be able to buy nobility back in Spain. The Spanish king took a cut of this wealth expropriated from Andeans (the royal fifth), and through the transfer to



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Spain of precious metals and of new knowledge, and new modes of governance developed in the colonial enterprise, made Spain into the wealthiest and most powerful empire the West had ever seen. They justified this systematic exploitation through the twin philosophies of legitimate sovereignty and God’s natural law. The Incas, they argued, had been tyrants, and the Spaniards had come to liberate Inca subjects from tyranny and to bring them into the light of Christianity and civilization. Discovering that Andean peoples lived dispersed across the territory in small hamlets, they aimed to create Spanish-​like towns in which the Indians could be better supervised and evangelized, thus saved from the eternal damnation to which pagans were condemned. Provision of these services justified, as payment, the new coerced labor and tribute regime that funneled wealth into individual Spanish hands and to the Spanish state. As a result, history has looked cynically upon both the justifications and judged the supposed aims of Christianization and civilization as mere window dressing on a violent and exploitative enterprise. Such cynicism is warranted to the degree that the expansion of the Spanish Empire represented the dawn of extractive global capitalism, privileging the center while impoverishing the peripheries that supplied its wealth. And yet, Spaniards were serious about their civilizational project in the Americas. Though they patronized Indians as perpetual “new” Christians, treating them legally like children of the distant father king, Spanish attachment to the core ideas of Christianity and understandings of civilization that focused on organized town life were deeply held. Of course their certainty of the superiority of their own ways constituted hubris. But their belief that civilized life required the foundation of republics, self-​governing communities established in well-​organized towns, because God had granted sovereignty to “the people” and to exercise it was to obey God’s “natural law,” meant that they were forced to make a serious effort at transferring these principles of governance, and the possibility of living a Christian life they enabled, to the people they called Indians. That effort is encapsulated in the policies of reducción, the forced resettlement of Andeans (and Mesoamericans, Caribbeans, and Filipinos) into planned towns, their conversion to Christianity by priests in those towns’ churches, including a host of religious rituals dedicated to God and the saints, and the election in such towns of governing councils called cabildos.





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The chapters of Part I introduce the settlement patterns, modes of governance, and religiosity within the Inca empire, from the point of view of the people of Asanaqi, an “ethnic group” or dual-​organized “kingdom” that is the touchstone place of this book. It provides an overview of Spanish modes of life, accounting for the centrality of urbanism to their understanding of what it was to be civilized and Christian. Comparing Inca and Spanish state forms and modes of taxation, as well as social hierarchy makes it possible to understand what changed for Andeans and what remained the same once Spaniards systematically imposed their resettlement and evangelization policies.





1   

Inca and Asanaqi in Qullasuyu

San Pedro de Condo, known as Condocondo prior to the Spanish invasion, and home to the murdered Llanquipacha brothers, is nestled into the eastward slopes of a great mountain called Tata Asanaqi. Local people regarded the mountain as a kind of deity-​ancestor and thus called themselves Asanaqi. Condocondo was one of many small settlements scattered across the broad Asanaqi territory that included an enormous area of fields, pastures, high river valleys, and a stretch of the high altitude plain called the altiplano. In the center of the altiplano, not far to the east of Condocondo and within its territory, was the southern end of the expansive but shallow Lake Poopó, once teeming with fish and great flocks of pink flamingos and other waterfowl. The semi-​desert altiplano required the Asanaqi to live dispersed across the vast territory, keeping their llamas and alpacas corralled near their homes when not herding them in seasonal local pastures or, in the summer months, moving them to grasslands on high mountain slopes. The Asanaqi, like other altiplano peoples, used their herd animals for meat; their wool for clothing, blankets, carrying sacks, and rope; and their dung to fertilize fields, mostly of potatoes and the high-​protein grain, quinoa. They made use of the temperature extremes of night and day to freeze-​dry strips of meat (charki) and potatoes (chuño) for long-​term storage. But a severe and unreliable climate, periodically affected by drought or flood and by sudden freezes and hailstorms, meant they also needed to use their llamas as beasts of burden for caravan trade, carrying wool, chuño and charki, and also salt from the Salar de Uyuni to the distant and warmer valleys where they could trade them for maize and other foodstuffs. They also traded in this way with people living in river-​basin oases on the arid Pacific coast, and those who lived from the sea itself. Their seasonal long-​distance caravan trade integrated a vast east-​to-​west swath of territory, perhaps as much as two thousand square miles in the altiplano alone. Everyday life consisted of work done to house, feed, and clothe family members. Residential hamlets included clusters of thatched-​roof houses and store-​rooms gathered around a central patio and surrounded by corrals for herd The People Are King: The Making of an Indigenous Andean Politics. S. Elizabeth Penry, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780195161601.001.0001



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animals. Families were multigenerational, with adult married children building their own homes alongside those of their parents. Hamlet residents interacted with people from other hamlets who were in search of a mate and to resolve disputes over fields and pastures. A  number of hamlets with their territories, perhaps a thousand or so people, joined together as an ayllu, a collectivity that defended common interests. And by investing authority in selected leaders, they established a means of resolving disputes. Asanaqi was made up a number of these clanlike ayllus, each of which traced its origin to its ancestral waka, a divinized part of the landscape, perhaps a mountain, such as Tata Asanaqi or a lake or large boulder that served as a local focus of worship and source of generative power.1 Much of this book focuses on matters of leadership, collective decision making, and notions of justice within the religious, political, and economic organizations that Andean peoples had made for themselves and that were amended by inclusion of Asanaqi into the Inca and then the Spanish empires. However, the key concern for people remained the well-​being of loved ones and preserving and caring for their fields, crops, pastures, and animals. Their notions of justice revolved around these basic concerns. This chapter follows the religious, social, and political lives led by the Asanaqi in the Inca empire prior to the Spanish invasion.2 A  brief survey of such things will show not only how the Spanish aimed to change Andeans but also their accommodation of many Andean ways.

The “Realm of the Four Quarters” Tawantinsuyu, the “realm of the four quarters,” as Incas called their state, was a multiethnic and multilingual empire, which spanned from modern-​ day Argentina and Chile in the south to Ecuador in the north, with an estimated population of from nine to sixteen million people at the time of the Spanish invasion.3 Their major population centers were in the high-​altitude altiplano, where large llama herds and the freeze-​dried techniques for preserving food could sustain a large population. The empire was a patchwork of distinct peoples from more than two hundred separate ethnic groups who, like the Asanaqi, were organized as embedded hierarchies of clanlike ayllus. Associations of these ethnic groups formed complex federations distinguished from one another by a diversity of languages and marked by distinct clothing. The Incas themselves were an ethnic group of about fifty thousand people from the Cuzco Valley who imposed themselves as a ruling imperial elite on all those they conquered. That the Incas accomplished this in a short time, perhaps only a hundred years, is attested to in both the archaeological record and the oral Inca accounts of their past recorded by Spanish chroniclers.4 Only a few hundred years before 1532, they were just





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one among many similarly organized peoples of the Andean region, all heirs to earlier empires such as Huari and Tiwanaku. Inca society was divided in ranked ayllus, which were grouped into theoretically symmetrical “halves” known in Quechua as anansaya (upper half) and urinsaya (lower half). These same-​named halves, which Spaniards would call parcialidades, were to be found at nearly every level of Andean society.5 Andean “kingdoms” were composed of two parcialidades, ruled not by one ruler but by two. Thus Asanaqi, like other “kingdoms” or “nations” scattered across the Andes, was a diarchy, with two rulers. Their constituent ayllus had names such as “older brother” and “younger brother” or “right” and “left,” which suggests how the ayllus were ranked. From within the highest-​ranked ayllu emerged a ruling lineage, or house, of aristocrats who claimed the title of kuraka, in Quechua-​ speaking areas, or for the Asanaqi who were Aymara speakers, mallku, the title given to the governing chiefs, one for each parcialidad of each diarchy. From local to state levels, political entities were nearly always divided into complementary halves, sometimes distinguished “ethnically” and linguistically, as well as politically. Tawantinsuyu itself was the land of four quarters, but it was also divided into complementary, theoretically equal parcialidades. It may even have been the case that anansaya and urinsaya of Tawantisuyu had their own separate “Incas,” rather than the European norm of one king for a single kingdom. For four centuries following the collapse of the Huari and Tiwanaku empires, diarchies vied with one another for land, people, and supremacy. Through warfare or alliance, groups of diarchies coalesced into federations. Incas began their expansion by conquering one such neighboring federation. They were able to expand their state rapidly because the people incorporated into the empire shared similar systems of rotative labor, collective fields, service for hereditary lords, and a hierarchically articulated pantheon. Incas took these shared principles and extrapolated them to the level of empire, making themselves the highest valued ethnic group led by an emperor who was the “son of the sun.” Sometime around 1460, the Inca emperor Pachacuti continued this expansion from a relatively small region around Cuzco to the Aymara-​speaking territory, which stretched from the Lake Titicaca region in the north to modern-​day Argentina in the south. This rich and densely populated region would become the Inca province of Qullasuyu, one of four provinces that made up Tawatinsuyu. Subjects from the conquered federations were required to work one year in seven for the Inca state as a form of a labor tax, known as mit’a (Hispanicized as mita), the Quechua expression for “turn,” emphasizing its rotative and transitory quality. After becoming part of the Inca Empire, the Asanaqi had to provide mit’a labor service for the Inca, perhaps initially transforming parts of existing roads into an extension of the great Inca highway, the Qhapaq Ñan.6 Some Asanaqi were surely assigned to work in one of the many way stations, known in Spanish



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colonial times as tambos, which appeared regularly along the road to provide food and drink for the Inca officials who traveled the road to survey the empire and its works. Incas as an ethnicity were not only the empire’s governing aristocracy but also its high “priests.” The Asanaqi, like other newly conquered people, were required to embrace Inca divine beings, such as the sun and moon, as additions to their own local wakas, their pantheons of mountains and other sacred sites in the landscape. Local wakas were absorbed into the Inca cosmological hierarchy, presided over by the sun and the moon and the creator being that the Incas claimed a special connection with. Principles of reciprocity that held diarchies together came to legitimate Inca rule and state-​level governance, which was acceptable insofar as the Inca left local deities and ancestors, community fields, and local governance in place. Local leaders established and reinforced reciprocal ties of obligation with their subjects. The two mallkus who governed Asanaqi’s parcialidades under Inca authority coordinated the periodic labor of Asanaqi households in the collective fields called sapsi, collected and held the surplus production of potatoes and quinoa generated through collective labor for redistribution to the poor and to all people in times of crop failure. The mallkus assigned house plots, fields, and pastures to each new household and adjudicated disputes among ayllus and households. While the mallkus coordinated local labor, they did not perform manual labor. Their authority to command labor stemmed partly from their high rank and, perhaps, wisdom, but more importantly from their perceived generosity. They didn’t order people to work:  they “asked” them by greeting mit’a laborers with “institutionalized hospitality.” The music, food and drink that accompanied work was seen as both a kind of gift to laborers and a religious ritual offered to Tata Asanaqi, their local deity and ancestor. In return, the mallkus received the reciprocal gift of labor from their subjects. The formal reciprocity underlying this cannot be understood simply in materialist terms during either the pre-​Columbian or colonial time.7 For Andeans there was no realm of economy, separate from religion or politics. As violent and coercive as the Inca conquest was, it did bring benefits to local people. The Pax Incaica, which largely put an end to small wars, meant that the Asanaqi people no longer had to worry about pillaging from rival groups. New infrastructure, the highway and irrigation systems introduced in the breadbasket region of the Cochabamba Valley, led to greater food production and availability. Even the forced labor of mit’a was not terribly onerous since through it Asanaqi people received greater quantities of food and clothing. Asanaqi people’s ordinary pursuit of life and happiness was not noticeably disturbed by the Inca, they lived in their same hamlets, worked their same fields and used the same pastures for their herds. As Garcilaso de la Vega, “el Inca” wrote in the early seventeenth





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century: “All that was required for human life in the way of food, clothes and footwear was available to all, and no one could call himself poor or beg for alms. In the matter of necessities they were amply supplied, as if they were all rich.”8

Inca Urbanism In 1532, the year that Spaniards first reached the Inca realm and took Inca ruler Atahualpa captive, Cuzco was the capital of the Inca empire, an impressive city full of riches and ritual pageantry that one Spaniard described as “so large and so beautiful that it would be worthy of admiration even in Spain.”9 Cuzco had come into existence only a few centuries before but was heir to earlier imperial cities. Already nearly half a millennium before the rise of Incas and Cuzco, Tiwanaku—​still magnificent though in ruins when Spaniards arrived—​was the major political and ritual center within the territory surrounding Lake Titicaca. Most Andean cities, aside from Cuzco, were centers for specialized labor, ritual, and administration, and were primarily for temporary residence. Incas adapted local patterns of life, incorporating conquered peoples into an imperial production system founded on delivery to imperial cities. Workers lodged in them while engaged in mit’a labor for the Inca state, such as repairing roads, building bridges, and tilling Inca fields, or they rested there on their journeys elsewhere.10 With little permanent population, many of these cities quickly collapsed at the time of Spanish invasion as their populations fled to their home territories. Inca cities, then, emerged as state administrative centers, through which mobilized laborers, including armies, and the products of state fields moved, and in which specialized laborers producing particularly valued goods, were settled for state purposes. This system lacked money or markets of any significance. There was a division of labor, the mit’a, but since it was generally of a temporary nature, periodic service through a system resembling a military draft, it did not produce a bourgeoisie of permanent residents aiming to make their living from commodity production. Rather than commodities produced for profit, goods produced by subjects for the state were redistributed and consumed by those subjects while working for the state. Few Asanaqi people would have traveled the nearly six hundred miles to reach the imperial city of Cuzco. However, they would have traveled frequently to Paria, the largest Inca administrative center in the southern portion of Qullasuyu. Paria was large and impressive, spread over 250 acres, with over fifteen hundred storehouses where surplus food stuffs and clothing were kept.11 Located on the Qhapaq Ñan between the Inca capital of Cuzco and the major state-​run food production and mining centers of Cochabamba and Porco, administrative centers like Paria not only linked the empire but also channeled the



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participation of dozens of large, complex ethnic groups, such as the Asanaqi of Condo, toward imperial purposes. To recruit labor for Paria, the Asanaqi lords who governed in the years leading up to the Spanish invasion, Acho and Guarache, would rely on the same rules of reciprocity that governed their local relations. In the name of the Inca, they would have “asked” people to take a turn weaving woolen cloth, or making chuño or charqui, or harvesting salt, all goods to be taken to Paria, or take a turn working on the highway or bridges near the Inca center by providing them with music, food, and drink in Condocondo. Then, Acho and Guarache would have led their labor party along the Qhapaq Ñan, stopping at tambos along the way for food, drink, and a place to rest, until reaching Paria. Paria, like other Inca administrative cities, was also a religious center. It boasted a temple dedicated to sun worship, the Inca imperial religion, as well as temples to other imperial and local gods.12 Before all their feasting, Asanaqi mit’a workers would have participated in sacrifices and libations devoted to Inca deities and Tata Asanaqi, as no meat or drink were consumed outside of a sacramental setting.13 From the maize stored in Paria, female workers brewed corn beer or chicha. Chicha was consumed in vast quantities within the context of these religious acts, as toasts that interwove the gods and genealogies of Asanaqi mit’a workers with those of the Inca nobility to legitimate Inca rule.14 Because the food, drink, and clothing each mit’a worker received was understood to be a gift from the Inca, this generosity also legitimated Inca authority. At Paria and other administrative cities, mit’a labor was coordinated by state functionaries. Inca accountants, using quipus, memory devices of knotted cord, kept track of vast quantities of goods produced by mit’a laborers and brought to Paria’s storehouses.15 Such goods included woven suits of clothing, made from llama wool, which were distributed to mit’a workers as a “gift” for their labor, and storable foodstuffs such as maize, the mainstay of the Andean diet, and chuño and charqui.16 Specialized female workers chosen from across the empire, the aqllas, who Spaniards saw as analogous to nuns and thus termed “virgins of the sun,” lodged more permanently in Paria, where they produced cumbi, a highly prized luxury cloth.17 Adorned with silver, gold or copper discs, or perhaps the vibrant pink or orange spondylus shells harvested from the Pacific Ocean, cumbi cloth shirts might become ritual gifts given by the Inca to demonstrate their generosity and create a sense of obligation among lords newly incorporated into the empire. In other cases, these sumptuous tunics rewarded service to the empire, like that of Asanaqui mallkus Acho and Guarache. Transient cities like Paria served as both production sites and major storage facilities of nonperishable goods to be used to provision imperial troops or to feed the general population when crops failed. Paria sat at a crossroads that led in the east to the rich Cochabamba Valley, the breadbasket of the empire, and





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in the west to the high Andean plain and from there down to the Pacific coast. Some Asanaqi mit’a workers would have been destined for Cochabamba, where they grew maize in Inca state fields, alongside people of the town of Totora, part of the Karanqa ethnic group. Others would have gone to work in Inca mines, bringing copper and tin to Paria. Still other Asanaqi mit’a workers produced goods in their home hamlets, bringing them with them to Paria for storage. Ethnic groups coming from subtropical areas brought chili peppers and coca leaves to Paria. From hamlets near the Pacific Ocean came spondylus shells, as well as dried fish.18 Living in large urban areas was, then, exceptional for Andean people. Although nearly all experienced them while completing their mit’a duties, their primary residences were almost always in small hamlets. Scattered across the rugged Andean landscape, the small settlements offered easier access to widely dispersed pastures and fields. Access to land at various altitudes made it more likely that some crops would survive the severe freezes, hailstorms, or torrential rains, while also providing greater variety of foodstuffs.19 Ownership of plots of land in different niches up and down a mountainside was also known in Europe, but the Andean practice went beyond European comprehension, encompassing territory in distant regions sometimes surrounded entirely by people of other ethnic groups and federations. Spaniards became aware of such claims to non-​ contiguous lands because their system for dividing up Andean peoples and provinces generally failed to recognize distant outliers, which led to Andeans assiduously and repeatedly defending land holdings in colonial courtrooms.20 After the conquest, Totora and other Karanqa people argued successfully that Inca Huayna Capac had given them title to land in the Cochabamba Valley for their collective use. Even though the Cochabamba Valley was far from their highland homes, colonial authorities would concede that the land grant from the Inca was valid.21

Imperial Ways and Local Religious Practices The four parts of Tawantinsuyu converged in Cuzco, along an astonishingly extensive system of roads, totaling nearly twenty-​five thousand miles, along which laborers, surplus goods, armies, sacrificial offerings, and communication moved toward the Inca capital. Inca administrators kept records and sent messages along the highway system coded into the knotted strings of a quipu while coordinating the mobilization of the mit’a system, and the production, movement, and storage of goods produced through it, and the vast complex of ritual activities in which those goods were consumed. Elaborate administrative centers like Paria were critical nexuses, aided by frontier fortresses and a large number of tambos



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or highway way stations for travelers and messengers. The great north-​south highway connecting Cuzco to the Lake Titicaca and Lake Poopó regions was an important communication link that also held religious significance, tracing as it did the steps of deities in Inca creation myths. After the Spanish Conquest, these same roads were adapted to link centers of production and far-​flung Indian groups to Spanish cities and, via the ports of Lima and Buenos Aires, to Spain. Spaniards would also use these roads as routes along which forced laborers were marched, silver convoys sent to port, and the royal post delivered.22 Sacred pathways called ceques also radiated out from Cuzco, linking religious shrines of local or regional importance to the capitol. The ceques formed a physical outline for an extraordinarily complex system of calendrically figured sacrifices and festival banquets at which immense quantities of foodstuffs were consumed by gods and persons.23 Some pieces of the fine cumbi cloth woven by the aqllas, considered some of the most valuable assets of the empire, were sacrificed by burning.24 Andeans also sacrificed coca leaves, fine ceramics, elaborately woven feathers, and domesticated animals, such as guinea pigs and llamas. Incas, like other Andeans, were an agro-​pastoral people who depended on herds of llamas and alpacas for wool, meat, and transporting goods. They drew analogies between animal and human societies, using pastoral metaphors to understand deference, hierarchy, and authority. Their gods were shepherdlike, and they were his to protect, making analogous their relationship to their llama herds and thus putting llama sacrifice at the center of ritual life. Important Inca rituals called for large numbers of llamas to be sacrificed and their organs, especially their hearts and lungs, “read” as auguries.25 On rarer occasions, such as a new monarch’s coronation, children were sacrificed as part of the Qhapaq ucha ceremony. The children, from the furthest reaches of the empire, were brought along the ceque lines to Cuzco where they were celebrated by high-​ranking Incas before being sacrificed at high mountain passes that marked imperial borders. The sacrificial victims helped to unite the empire as they became Cuzco-​sanctioned gods for the local population.26 But even these human child sacrifices were imagined as part of a herding poetics of ritual as they were referred to as “baby llamas.” 27 Regional cities, such as Paria, and smaller local centers, including the settlements of Asanaqi, also had ceque systems mapped across the landscape, which in some cases after the Spanish Conquest were reconfigured as Christian ritual sites.28 Huayna Capac, the early sixteenth-​century Inca ruler who redistributed labor and land in the Cochabamba Valley used ceques to mark boundaries between ethnic groups. In the postconquest era, some groups would claim these as their mojones, the Spanish term for physical markers in the landscape that delineated their towns and territory from other groups.29 Maps of ceque lines were sometimes woven into fine cumbi cloth and given as gifts to





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regional lords.30 The vast ritual and religious system that moved along the ceques and Qhapaq Ñan highway was at the same time a system of circulation, consumption, and economic production. The hereditary lords who coordinated the intertwined functions, at higher social levels, Incas, and at lower ones, the kuraka or mallku, were both political authorities and religious leaders.31 Regional and local mallkus led religious cults to wakas at sacred sites along ceque paths. Wakas might take the shape of sculpted idols but were often embodied in notable features of the landscape, like the mountain Tata Asanaqi. Wakas were “earth beings” that were understood to be the origin places of the ayllu’s ancestors, as well as a source of generative power essential for production of life.32 The metal-​rich mountains in Qullasuyu, such as Potosí and Porco, major silver producing areas, had triggered Inca imperial expansion and became sacred Inca sites.33 Silver from the mines of Porco would decorate the Coricancha, the temple of the Sun in Cuzco, and adorn the ruling Inca’s litter.34 In some cases mountains, such as Asanaqi and Potosí, had been sacred to the local population prior to the Inca conquest, and the Inca adopted them and integrated them into their cults to put their imperial imprint on the landscape. Under the Inca, mountains, as wakas, were understood to move about the territory, conquering and making alliances.35 After conquest, Christians saints served an analogous role as later generations of Andeans sometimes credited the actions of a patron saint for the location of their towns.36 While mit’a labor in Inca fields produced foodstuffs and goods largely used for feasts in honor of high-​ranking Inca deities, provisions were also returned to the mit’a laborers to celebrate their local wakas. For Asanaqi people, the mountain Tata Asanaqi served as a focus of collective feasting. There, members of Asanaqi ayllus came together to commemorate their shared past and, as a consequence of their shared practices, to reproduce their society. Acho and Guarache, the Asanaqi mallkus, led these celebrations because they were regarded as the closest human descendants of the waka Tata Asanaqi; their leadership in religious practice was completely entwined with their political leadership.37 The mummified dead ancestors of mallkus might also participate in festivals; they themselves were a focus of collective ancestor worship by ayllus.38 Funerary towers of mummified ancestors, emblazoned with Inca imperial designs, also became markers for the extension of Inca domination.39

Qullasuyu The southern quarter of the Inca realm, Qullasuyu, where Asanaqi people lived, was one of the most densely populated and wealthiest regions prior to the Spanish invasion.40 Like the rest of the empire, it was made of large federations



38

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that the Spaniards sometimes call señoríos (lordships) or nations, and which in turn were made up of a number of diarchies, led by hereditary lords, like the two Asanaqi lords of Condo, each of whom governed either anansaya or urinsaya, and within them, the constituent ayllus.41 As in the other Inca provinces, Qullasuyu’s name was taken from one of its major federations, in this case the Qulla. Within Qullasuyu, there seem to have been sixteen such federations, of whom the vast majority were Aymara speakers. Each of these federations was subdivided, with a hereditary lord, the mallku in Aymara-​speaking areas or kurakas in Quechua regions, over each half at every level, with the federation taking its name from the anansaya half. At the time of the Spanish Conquest Qullasuyu was still in the process of being incorporated into the Inca empire. After the Spanish invasion, individual caciques further muddled the mix of Inca and Aymara structures as they sought to maintain or gain status under the new colonial state by claiming that they or their ancestors held higher rank than others during Inca rule. The northern part of Qullasuyu, extending southward from Cuzco to encompass the Lake Titicaca basin (roughly the location of La Paz, Bolivia) was composed of the federations of Canas, Canchis, Qullas, Lupaqas, and Pacaxes. The entire region was administered by Incas through the major administration and ritual centers of Hatunqolla and Copacabana.42 The name Hatunqolla seems to reflect Inca efforts to homogenize the Aymara highlands; Inca administrators added the suffix “Hatun” to certain village names, making them “head” towns for administrative purposes.43 In the late eighteenth century this northern zone of Qullasuyu became the center of insurrections known as the Tupac Amaru and Tupac Catari rebellions. Further south into Qullasuyu were the federations of Killaka, Karanqa, Sura, Charka, and Qaraqara, known in the colonial records as Quillacas, Carangas, Soras, Charcas and Caracara, sets of compound and allied groups administered through the Inca town of Paria.44 In the eighteenth century this southern part of Qullasuyu became the focus of what has been called the rebellion of Tomás Catari. The Aymara federations of Qullasuyu controlled sprawling territory and widely dispersed people; in colonial times, indigenous towns would be similarly organized, albeit on a smaller scale (see Figure 1.1). The Killaka federation, to which Asanaqi belonged, extended from the southern end of Lake Poopó, southwest to the great salt flats of Uyuni, and reaching in distant territory from the western sea to the eastern tropical basin of the Pilcomayo River and to the town of Pocona, a coca producing area. Just north of Killaka was Karanqa, which later gave its name to the Spanish colonial province of Carangas. Killaka and Karanqa people were permanently grouped together in their work in Inca maize fields in Cochabamba, and from this evidence it seems likely that they together formed a “macro” federation.45 Killaka was made up of four dually organized diarchies, including the Asanaqi and the Siwaruyu-​Arakapi.



Figure 1.1  Inca Qullasuyu. The region of study under the Inca Empire, showing locations of major Aymara nations prior to Spanish invasion, the Inca Road system, and settlements on the Inca Road that continued into colonial times. Map by Erin Greb Cartography.



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The Siwaruyu-​Arakapi diarchy introduces another aspect of Inca state control. Not only did the Inca move the temporary mit’a laborers, they also frequently resettled people permanently as a means of controlling the empire. Over their century in power, the Inca resettled between three and four million people.46 Loyal subjects might be sent to newly conquered areas or recently subjugated people might be sent to live in older, more thoroughly incorporated parts of the empire.47 Siwaruyu people were probably resettled by Inca Huayna Capac on the Qullasuyu frontier in an attempt to control and pacify the area.48 In extending their empire southward the Inca had encountered the Chichas people, known as extremely fierce bow and arrow fighters during the colonial period. Unable to conquer them, the Incas relocated loyal subjects, the Siwaruyus, to settle the frontier and to help pacify people native to the area, the Arakapis. Spaniards would have their own problems in the same region subduing the Chiriguanos. Like the Inca, Spaniards would also turn to local Indian allies, other members of the Killaka federation. Doña María Lupercia Colque Guarache, the wife of Don Gregorio Llanquipacha, the murdered cacique of Condo, claimed descent from an Aymara lord, who after having fought against the Chiriguanos in the sixteenth century was rewarded by Viceroy Francisco de Toledo with exemption from taxes. The documentation of her distant ancestor’s war service appeared in a legal battle as proof of long-​term loyal service to the Spanish Crown. 49 Between the altiplano core of the Killaka and Karanqa federations and the tropical lowlands lay another large federation, the Sura, who provided much of the mit’a labor that carried maize from Cochabamba to Paria. Along the eastern flank of Sura and Killaka lay the core lands of the Charka and Qaraqara, another federation pair. Qaraqara formed the lower ranking portion of the overarching Charka federation, for which the colonial regional government, the Audiencia of Charcas, would be named. As the urinsaya of Charka, Qaraqara was made up of the diarchies of Macha, Pukwata, and Wisixsa (the latter two appear as Pocoata and Visisa in colonial documents).50 Both Macha and Pocoata were also names given to Inca tambos along the Inca road and both later become colonial resettlement towns.51 South of the Killaka and Qaraqara lay a region conquered late in the Inca expansion into Qullasuyu, dominated by the Lipi and Chicha peoples.52 These seven federations or nations—​Karanqa, Killaka, Sura, Charka, Qaraqara, Chuy, and Chicha—​are very nearly the same groups which, allied in the mid-​1400s, fought against the Inca invasion of southern Qullasuyu.53 After their defeat some of them became the Incas’ preferred soldiers, exempted from ordinary mit’a labor, and renowned for leading the Inca conquest of the region that became Ecuador.54 As their descendants described their status in a petition directed to the King of Spain, We are the four nations, the Charcas [Charka] and Caracaras [Qaraqara] and Chuys and Chichas, distinguishable by clothing and





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customs. We have been soldiers since the time of the Incas called Inca Yupanqui, and Topa Yupanqui and Guainacara [sic:  Huayna Capac] and Guascar Inca.  .  .  . excused from tribute and taxes and all other charges and personal services like herding cattle or being shepherds or from serving the mita at the court in the great city of Cuzco,  .  .  .  [or] from farming the fields, masonry, carpentry, and quarrying . . . . We were not dancers, nor clowns accustomed to sing victory songs to the Incas. . . . We, the four nations defeated and were victorious over the Chachapoyas, Cayambis, Canares, Quitos and Quillaycincas.55 That nearly a century later, in the late 1530s, the same alliance fought against Spanish forces, and the Spaniards’ five thousand Indian allies led by Inca Paullu in the decisive battle of Cochabamba attests perhaps to the longevity of cultural and political alliances.56 But the federations quickly fell apart after the battle of Cochabamba and the demographic collapse produced by the Spanish invasion. In their place were the smaller pre-​Inca diarchies and their constituent ayllus, soon turned over to conquistadors seeking their tributes and labor service in silver mines. Some of the old federation names lived on as province names under Spanish rule.

The Collapse of Inca Imperial Rule One reason the Inca Empire had been able to expand so quickly is that it did not insist on absolute homogeneity or on direct rule but worked through alliances with subject lords, leaving many local customs in place, including local pantheons, ways of dress, patterns of productive practice and social form, and local deities. This was while imposing themselves, their gods, and their rituals atop these societies. As a consequence, their subject groups still retained much of their distinctiveness at the time of the Spanish invasion. Many of these groups chose to ally themselves with the Spaniards, seeking an end to Inca hegemony, only to fall prey to a Spanish one.57 As Inca rule collapsed, Inca administrative centers, such as Paria, and imperial rituals were swiftly abandoned. In their place emerged a new set of imperial centers, a new kind of religious practice, Spanish-​founded cities, and new ways of administering empire. Even so, Andeans continued to reside in their widely distributed hamlets and to be organized through the jurisdictions of local hereditary lords. These lords were now known as caciques, and their jurisdiction, a cacicazgo, Spaniards having replaced the Andean titles of kuraka and mallku with a term generalized from the Arawak speaking Caribbean.



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After their defeat at the battle of Cochabamba, Inca Paullu was instrumental in convincing Andean lords in Qullasuyu, including the Asanaqi, to accept the Spanish king as the legitimate heir to the Inca dynasty. In recognition of their submission, Andean lords sent gifts to Spain to what Quechua speakers called the “Hatun Apu of Castile,” the “High Lord of Castile,” Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.58 Then the lords of Qullasuyu were divvied up among the victorious conquistadors, who received particular lords and their corresponding subjects in the institution known as encomienda. Obliged to indoctrinate their Indians in the Roman Catholic faith, encomenderos, the holders of the encomienda, received in return tributes and labor services. Asanaqi hereditary lords Acho and Guarache, along with the people under their rule, were given in encomienda to the conquistador Hernando de Aldana. In the neighboring town of Totora, part of the Karanqa ethnic group, the Andean lord Vilca was given in encomienda to Gómez de Luna. Acho and Guarache, like Vilca, continued to oversee collection of chuño, charqui, and maize, and rich cloth, which were now delivered to their encomenderos. In much of mineral rich Qullasuyu, encomienda laborers were largely put to work in the mines they had previously worked for the Inca, like Porco and Potosí. Since the number of conquistadors was large, preconquest federations were broken up into their constituent parts, with each new encomendero receiving a pair of local caciques.59 Local native lords like Acho and Guarache gained recognition from Spaniards, who needed their services as legitimate rulers to coordinate the delivery of tribute and laborers. Unlike the Inca conquest, the Spanish conquest added burdens without benefits for Andeans. No longer did Inca ideas of justice apply. It would become much harder to feed and clothe a family. Mita laborers would have to provide all their own supplies for their labor for their encomenderos with no compensation. The conquered people would be required to turn over a substantial amount of the food and cloth they produced to the conquerors as tribute in kind. In return, Spanish encomenderos took on the obligation to Christianize their new subjects. In Spain, state-​level ideas of justice focused on governance rather than questions of food and clothing, which were largely handled through local Christian charities. Spaniards viewed Incas as tyrants because people had little say about how they were governed, and they were under the control of hereditary lords from the local to the imperial levels. To remedy what they viewed as tyranny, Spaniards would introduce their own ideas about justice based on local governance and Christian practices.



2   

Spanish República and Inca Tyranny

Spanish understandings of liberty, justice, tyranny, popular sovereignty, and civilization cannot be understood without locating their vision of “peoplehood”; the community of persons to whom God had given the right of self-​governance and the obligation to fulfill his commandments. For Spaniards that community was understood as a república, a “public thing” that resulted from life in a well-​regulated city or town. Spaniards, like other Mediterranean peoples, were intensely urban; living in single rural households was nearly unimaginable. Perhaps unique to Castile (the region of Spain that originally governed the Americas) is the fact that one town’s jurisdiction extended to the next town’s borders, leaving no unincorporated territory.1 Within their territory, large towns had small subject villages, some with populations of under one hundred:  but even those tiny villages had a plaza, a church, and a town council, making them legally functioning towns. At the center of each of these towns was the rollo, the tall stone pillory where punishment was meted out to those who violated town laws. Here, too, was church and cemetery where the spiritual link to generations was maintained. Priests and judges regulated social existence, mediating the laws of both municipality and kingdom. Punctuated annually by the Corpus Christi procession led by co-​mingled corporate authorities of town council and lay religious brotherhoods, ritual town life produced the town itself. But if a village of a hundred or a city of ten thousand inhabitants were both considered “urban” in early modern Spain, what did urban life mean to Spaniards? This chapter examines how Spaniards understood towns and collective life—​and how these ideas were transferred to the New World. It also examines how Spanish ideas of community-​based sovereignty justified the overthrow of the Inca and determined the manner in which Indians would be governed.

The People Are King: The Making of an Indigenous Andean Politics. S. Elizabeth Penry, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780195161601.001.0001



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“What is a Citie, but the People!” Europeans had long understood the city on two distinct levels: the city as the built environment and the city as the people, distinguished by the Latin terms, urbs and civitas. Urbs was the visible, tangible city: its architecture, roads, and bridges. The great buildings of a city—​its walls, its churches, its plazas and palaces—​all reflected the great civility, the civitas, of the people. As Isidore of Seville wrote, “A city [civitas] is a number of men joined by a social bond. It takes its name from the citizens who dwell in it. As an urbs, it is only a walled structure, but inhabitants, not building stones, are referred to as a city.”2 For Castilians, this human “social bond,” the civitas, was truly the heart of the city. Civitas included not just the people of the city but also the laws and institutions that governed them, the values they embraced, their religious faith, and above all their commonwealth—​or what Spaniards called their república. These two ideas, of the city as built environment and as civilization, were co-​dependent but separable for early modern Spaniards. While ordinary citizens would not likely use the Latin terms urbs and civitas, they would understand that what made their town or city special were its human institutions. The average citizen could take part in or actively witness civic and religious practices and traditions on a regular basis because over 80 percent of early modern Castilians lived in small towns. Whether the town council was called upon to divvy up community held property or approve the “creation of a new confraternity [lay religious brotherhood] in the face of a natural disaster such as a locust invasion,” an open town council meeting of all citizens would be required.3 What this active participation in municipal governance and local religiosity brought to townspeople was buena policía, the good habits that could only be learned through town life. The number of independent towns across Castile grew dramatically under the Habsburg monarchs. As a money-​making scheme, monarchs collected a fee for permitting towns to “liberate” themselves from cities in whose jurisdiction they lay. Small towns sought independence with claims that remaining under the jurisdiction of another town interfered with their right to maintain and enforce laws and deprived them of justice.4 This was no idle claim in Castile because all rights and privileges of citizenry were based on membership in a particular town; there was no “national” citizenship. Individual and collective rights were guaranteed by the fueros, or municipal charters that granted legal jurisdiction over territory and persons to the town’s elected magistrates, a form of law dating from the eleventh century in the Iberian peninsula.5 Urban life had taken on an added importance in the Iberian Peninsula because of the “civilizing mission” towns had in the face of Islam.6 In 711, a Muslim army



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commanded by Tariq ibn Ziyad invaded the Iberian peninsula. From then until 1492, Christian Iberians fought an intermittent civil war against their Muslim neighbors, known as the “reconquest.” During the reconquest era, Muslim, Christian, and Jewish populations lived in most parts of the Iberian Peninsula, so populations of mixed religions lived under Muslim or Christian governance. Muslim rulers allowed Jews and Christians under their jurisdiction to govern themselves and practice their religion if they paid a tax in recognition of their submission to the Muslim state, a practice known as dhimma. These dhimma agreements were likely the origin of the fueros, rights and privileges of town citizenship later granted by Christian rulers. As the Christians swept southward across the Iberian Peninsula, conquering territory that in many cases had been held for centuries by Muslim rulers, the Christians who had lived under Muslim jurisdiction wanted the guaranteed rights of self-​rule that they had enjoyed with the dhimma provisions. The new Christian rulers were forced to concede rights of self-​rule in the shape of fueros: rights based on town citizenship.7

Towns and Questions of Sovereignty in Early Modern Spain Just ten years before the Spanish invasion of Tawantinsuyu, Castile itself was the scene of a violent uprising, the Revolution of the Communities, sometimes called the “first modern revolution.”8 In 1520–​1521 towns in Castile rose up against Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain, and advocated a parliamentary monarchy under a modern constitution that would reduce the king to first among equals. Another aim of the revolution was to protect tributary commoners against the pretensions of the landed aristocracy, who in some towns lived off commoner-​paid taxes and meddled in the administration of Crown justice.9 This was a revolution of towns because Spanish political life was entirely invested in municipal councils; no form of regional government interceded between municipalities and the Crown.10 The revolution began over questions of representation in parliament, known as the Cortes, which was made up of delegates elected from municipalities.11 Led by the town councils of individual municipalities, the revolution was defeated by an army of aristocrats and their mercenaries. Although the revolution was crushed, many of the goals of the rebels were enacted. Following the revolution, there was a movement toward greater accountability in government with royal appointments based on merit and taxation based on consent of the Cortes.12 More important was the expansion of the judicial system within Spain and its empire. Sixteenth-​century Castile was



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particularly litigious, perhaps because of its economic and demographic growth but more importantly because its courts held out the promise of justice. For towns under seigneurial control, it was not uncommon for villages to sue their lords to reduce their taxes or even to begin the process of obtaining independence from their lord. Although villages were not always successful with their lawsuits, they did sometimes win, thus encouraging others to pursue litigation against their lords.13 This points to a fundamental tension within Castilian society: every town had a representative council largely, if not exclusively, made up of commoners. But many towns were also governed by hereditary lords. The two governments were often at loggerheads with each other. Spanish policy for Indians in the Americas would reproduce this same tension, where it, too, would sometimes play out in the legal system. The expansion of the judicial bureaucracy following the Revolution of the Communities encouraged these cases, as cities in Spain and across the empire began to boast public defenders who represented poor litigants, including indigenous people.14 The comuneros of Castile, as the revolutionaries were known, embraced what was essentially a communitarian view of society that has a long tradition in Spanish jurisprudence.15 Juan de Segovia (b. 1386–​d. 1485) and Francisco Vitoria (b. 1486–​d. 1546), theologians at the University of Salamanca, articulated theories on community sovereignty and the right to depose a king.16 Vitoria’s scholarship dominated the sixteenth century; twenty-​four of his students held chairs at the Universities of Salamanca and Alcalá, the country’s premier universities at that time.17 As the sixteenth century progressed, Spanish neo-​scholastic scholars continued to advocate a political philosophy that was in keeping with this revolution of comuneros but that was also designed to answer the religious and political threat posed by Protestantism.18 These early modern scholars sought to revitalize the work of St. Thomas Aquinas in order to reject a Protestant political heresy that denied community held sovereignty and supported a divine right of kings. The Lutheran concept of man’s relationship to God was a particular threat because it denied the natural law basis of political society.19 In response, the Jesuit philosopher Francisco Suárez (b. 1548–​d. 1617) argued forcefully that all men possessed the same moral characteristics and could perceive natural law, so it was possible to think of the natural political order of man as a community, or what he termed “a single mystical body,” to whom God has granted sovereignty collectively.20 From there, the body of the community then lent its sovereignty to the Crown, so that the people, not God, were the direct source of the Crown’s civil power. 21 Although Suárez was speaking metaphorically in the sense that his use of the word “community” did not refer to a municipality but rather the broad community of people, these words could be construed literally in Spain. These notions of town-​based polity help to account for why the Castilian comunero revolt took the particular form



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that it did:  as a league of communities. This was also why Spaniards in the Americas would insist on their efforts to concentrate the Amerindian population in towns. Building on the ideas of Suárez and others, fellow neo-​scholastic scholar Juan de Mariana developed a theory of just rebellion against tyrants. In his major political treatise, The King and the Education of the King, Mariana argued that because the political community has placed the king in power by extending to him their sovereignty, they may revoke that sovereignty and remove him from office.22 With the 1521 Revolution of the Communities in Spain, these ideas of limitation on Crown authority briefly gained wide support in Castile, ideas that would find echoes in the colonial Andes.23 Such attacks on royal absolutism did not go unnoticed in northern Europe. Suárez’s El Defensor fidei, which condemned both absolutism and the divine right of kings in favor of community held sovereignty, was publicly burned in both London and Paris in 1614.24 This political ideology was long taught in Spanish and Spanish American universities. Even after the 1767 expulsion of the Society of Jesus, which had been heavily represented in higher education, the idea that sovereignty resided in the people who exercised it through their municipalities continued. Of course, political thought influenced by northern European Enlightenment also entered the consciousness of elite Peruvians by the mid-​eighteenth century. Through Spanish philosophers such as Benito Jerónimo Feijóo, northern-​European-​ inspired ideas began to enter university corridors and even the Viceroyalty of Peru. However, any popular understanding of Enlightenment political thought inevitably built upon what had long been understood about the proper relationship between people and government. The message of popular scholasticism that “the people” have the right or even the duty to overthrow tyrants was a celebrated theme in Spanish Golden Age theater. Classic plays with overtly political morals such as Calderón de la Barca’s La Vida es Sueño and Lope de Vega’s Fuenteovejuna enjoyed a great revival in the eighteenth century and were performed across the Americas, including in the silver mining center of Potosí. The play Fuenteovejuna, named for the small town in Spain where the actual events took place, narrated the murder of an abusive governor of the town. When asked by authorities who committed the crime, townspeople responded, “Fuenteovejuna did it.” No one person could be held responsible; the town as a whole killed the governor.25 Given the response of the comuneros of San Pedro de Condo to Spanish officials when questioned about who killed cacique Don Gregorio Llanquipachca, one might wonder if they had seen a production of Fuenteovejuna. Regardless of the inspiration, when Enlightenment ideas entered Peru, they were understood through the language and popular interpretation of the likes of Suárez, Mariana, and plays with pointed communitarian ethics like Fuenteovejuna.



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Politics of Conquest and Colonialism Although Spanish governors had begun concentrating indigenous populations into settlements in the Caribbean as early as 1503, and in Mexico prior to the Crown’s sweeping urbanization order of 1550, it was nearly forty years after the 1532 Andean invasion before the radical resettlement program known as reducción was systematically introduced in Peru. The delay came mainly from the disruption resulting from civil wars fought among the conquering Spaniards. Initially in Peru, as in the Caribbean and Mesoamerica, indigenous people were entrusted to the care of an encomendero, a “worthy” conqueror who was to Christianize and protect his charges who, in return, provided him with labor service. The model for both the encomienda system and the later resettlement program came from reconquest Spain. There, as the Iberian peninsula was won in battle by Christian northerners from the centuries-​old dominion of North African Muslims, soldier-​conquerors were doubly rewarded by Iberian princes. Vested as citizens of new (or re-​founded) municipalities and given preferred rights of self-​rule and exemption from certain taxes, some deserving conquerors were also allotted grants of yearly tribute paid by plebeians and the conquered. Early in reconquest history, from the tenth to thirteenth centuries, ennobled warriors gained señoríos, legal jurisdiction over lands and subjects who then called them señores. Later, as the reconquest reached further south, such grants went collectively to members of military orders who held rights to tributes from subjects granted to their care (in encomienda) by the king. This more limited form of aristocratic right was granted to certain conquistadores in Peru, making them encomenderos. Gaining status and tributes (and great wealth) from encomiendas, such conquistadores also earned privileged kinds of citizenship, vecinidad, within the municipalities founded in Peru for Spanish occupation. In the Americas, the notoriously brutal encomienda, which the Dominican friar (and former encomendero) Bartolomé de Las Casas so famously denounced, became the means for levying labor, rather than simply a source of taxation. The initial divisions of indigenous labor among the Spanish conquerors roughly followed the lines of the preconquest diarchies. Among other peoples, Francisco Pizarro took as his encomienda the people of the Siwaruyu-​Arakapi diarchy, part of the Killaka federation, in whose territory the silver mines of Porco lay, using the labor grant to work the silver mines for his private interest. The encomendero Hernando de Aldana received Asanaqi, another part of Killaka, while his relative Lorenzo de Aldana received people of the Suras group, also part of the federation of Killaka.26 Killaka was linked to the larger Karanqa federation, also high-​ altitude llama herders. Karanqa, now called Carangas, which included the town of Totora, was divided with Gómez de Luna receiving 370 Indians and Francisco



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de Retamoso receiving 300 Indians in 1540.27 Encomiendas were seen as “natural” units of division; a cacique and his people, regardless of their location, were assigned to the new European overlords. The Peruvian civil wars in which many encomenderos fought, thereby slowing the Spanish efforts to resettle indigenous people, were triggered in part by fights over encomienda claims. With Las Casas’s moral encouragement, the Spanish Crown briefly sought to bring encomiendas to an end with the 1542 New Laws. Encomenderos in Peru, led by Francisco Pizarro’s brother Gonzalo, rebelled, and borrowing from the 1520s Revolution of the Communities in Castile, did so with the battle cry of “Comunidades y Libertad!” killing the newly appointed viceroy and forcing the Crown to reconsider its colonial policy.28 From the Spanish imperial perspective, not only did rebellious encomenderos have to be quieted, overthrow of the Inca state and the replacement of its dominion with that of Spain had to be justified. Ironically, the Crown borrowed from the same body of jurisprudence as had the ill-​fated Castilian comuneros. Seventeenth-​century legal theorists and Jesuit scholars Francisco Suárez and Juan de Mariano had argued that a people may dethrone a tyrant. This idea hinged on a particular interpretation of sovereignty: that it was granted by God to the people collectively, who in turn granted it to their prince. Though “the people” collectively delegated their sovereignty, they ultimately retained it and therefore could revoke it. The critical point is the recognition of the ruler as a tyrant. But what if a people were blind to tyranny, or too oppressed to oppose it? Herein lies the key to justification of conquest:  if a people did not recognize the tyranny of their rulers, another power, in the name of the subjugated people, might step in to depose the tyrant. It would be on this basis that Viceroy Francisco de Toledo justified Spain’s domination of the former Inca Empire.

Viceroy Francisco de Toledo Francisco de Toledo came to Peru in 1569 as its fifth viceroy. Toledo was ruthlessly concerned with stabilizing Spanish imperial control. To this end, he continued the efforts of his predecessor, García de Castro, to circumvent encomendero power by transferring encomendero jurisdictional privileges to corregidores, an office that originated under the Trastámara dynasty in Castile as a means to exert Crown control over sovereign towns and noble lords. In effect this reduced encomenderos to paid employees of the Crown and gave corregidores some control over municipal councils.29 Toledo then turned his attention to the last reigning Inca, Tupac Amaru, who he lured from his capital-​in-​exile, Vilcabamba, and summarily executed. To be effective, Toledo’s actions demanded an audience and so elite Incas in Cuzco were



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forced to witness the execution. Tupac Amaru’s head was then hung on a post to serve as an example of Spanish justice until Toledo discovered that Andeans came to that site to revere and pay homage to the dead Inca, whereupon the head was buried.30 After executing the Inca, Viceroy Toledo undertook a massive inspection tour and census of the Andean highlands, known as the Visita General. Curiously enough, in this action he echoed similar visits by the Inca, who periodically toured his realm. There the comparison ended. What Toledo hoped to achieve by his close observation of indigenous ways was twofold:  a means to better channel Andean energies to the economic benefit of the Spanish monarchy, and a method to “civilize” the Amerindians to bring them to the true faith. To do this required rewriting Inca history to portray it as political tyranny, so that the Spanish state would possess a legitimate mandate to rule. Toledo was supported in this reinterpretation of Inca history by the work of his cousin, Fray Garcia de Toledo, legal theorist Juan de Matienzo, and historian Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa. Unlike the early accounts of contact between Europeans and Andeans that emphasized the sophistication of the Inca state, as “a people of great policía,” that is, a civilized, well-​governed people, these later, politically motivated accounts sought to prove just the opposite. 31 Fray García de Toledo took specific issue with Bartolomé de las Casas, whose attacks on the legitimacy of Spanish actions still carried great weight after his death. 32 Contrary to what Viceroy Toledo and his entourage hoped to establish, Las Casas had argued that it was the Spaniards in Peru who were tyrants, not the former Inca rulers, and he urged King Philip II to restore Inca rule.33 In response, Fray García de Toledo asserted that “Las Casas was tricked” into thinking that “the Incas were ‘Legitimate Lords’ and the Caciques ‘Natural Lords.’ ” Not only was Las Casas thoroughly deceived regarding the legitimate sovereignty of the Incas, but this misinterpretation also posed a great danger to the Crown of Castile, to Andeans, and even Christians worldwide if left uncorrected.34 Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa’s contribution to the effort to delegitimize the Inca was to write a history of the Inca empire demonstrating their tyranny. In his retelling of the Inca creation myth, Sarmiento argued that the founders of the empire had “wicked intentions . . . they understood . . . the ease with which the natives believed anything that was proposed to them with any authority or force, [so] they agreed among themselves that they could become lords . . . [and] tyrannize the other people.”35 In compiling his history, Sarmiento interviewed a number of Inca nobles of Cuzco. Toledo later used these same informants and posed leading questions designed to elicit accusations of tyranny. For example, one question asked was: “Whether it is true that they never willingly recognized or elected these Inkas or their successors as lord, but obeyed them from fear because of the great cruelties the Inkas inflicted on them and others?”36 Testimonies



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taken confirmed the premise of the question that Andean communities had never willingly lent their God-​given sovereignty to the Inca. Not surprisingly this official history concluded that the Incas were obeyed out of pure fear; they were cruel and forced Indians to work against their will. In short, they were tyrants. Legal theorist Juan de Matienzo’s work then offered an outline of how Toledo should proceed to reorganize Andeans to bring them the benefits of Spanish civilization. His plan was to introduce a distilled and ideal version of Castilian municipal life.37 Just as Sarmiento had produced a composite history by interviewing dozens of Inca nobles, Toledo, building on Matienzo’s ideas, produced and implemented an idealized Iberian municipal life. Spain was a composite of contrasting kingdoms, princedoms, viceroyalties, and regions, each with its own kinds of municipalities and rights. The viceroyalties of the Americas, however, were governed by the Council of Castile, and the specifics of Castilian lifeways and municipal forms became the model for the civilizational scheme in Peru. Even so, certain pre-​Columbian structures were adapted by the new Spanish overlords. The former “nations” under the Inca formed the outline of colonial provinces, through which tribute was collected and labor mobilized, now overseen by corregidores.38 Some provinces were named for their pre-​Conquest nations; Karanqa gave its name to the new province of Carangas. Asanaqi people were mostly included in Paria province, named for the Inca administrative center. Federation mallku—​now called caciques—​became “mita captains,” just as they had coordinated delivery of mit’a workers for the Incas. Caciques were entrusted with collecting monetary tribute—​which had not existed prior to Toledo. Even while Toledo’s ambivalent recognition of native lords (though not Inca overlords) reproduced some pre-​Columbian social formations, the resettlement process initiated during his Visita General radically fragmented those federations, putting in place institutions of commoner self-​rule through which the legitimacy of hereditary lords would come to be questioned. Finally, Spanish campaigns to extirpate idolatry paid close attention to caciques to ferret out the collective ritual practices they had once presided over, driving a wedge between caciques and their subjects, as caciques became tax collecting and labor mobilizing agents of the Spanish state and neglected Andeans’ regard for reciprocity. Early caciques strove to protect their peoples by negotiating with encomenderos about how collective impositions of goods and labor under their control would be levied, but after Toledo the monetization of tribute and more direct state control over Indian labor, levied increasingly on towns, would put caciques into an unenviable bind.39 While the Inca mit’a did not take their subjects’ clothing or food, and instead provided it, Spanish tributation included payment in goods and then money, creating an enormous financial burden for Andeans. In addition, the



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reorganization of Andean territory and the imposition of a property regime that put much of the most productive land into Spanish hands led to increasing Spanish accumulation of wealth, and consequently, increasing impoverishment of Andeans.40 Andean commoners, emboldened by their new right to self-​ government in their resettlement towns, would attribute this impoverishment to Spaniards but also to caciques. Through the 1570s the descendants of Inca-​era province or federation-​level caciques produced written accounts demanding recognition of their preeminence over lesser lords and, in so doing, began the process of Hispanicization by which their legitimacy as aristocrats was linked to Spanish definitions, including the right to ride on horseback, carry weapons, and have coats of arms.41 In the long run, such pretenses would be their undoing, but in the meantime Viceroy Francisco de Toledo refused to forward cacique petitions to Spain, ultimately reducing them to mere salaried functionaries of the colonial state. Toledo brought secret orders enabling him to cripple future claims of Inca nobles and to drastically limit the pretensions of local-​level native lords.42 But the most radical of Toledo’s policies was an exaggerated version of Inca policy, the resettlement of Andeans. With Toledo, resettlement would cut federations and even ayllus into pieces, which were then reassembled in a multiplicity of new towns. The final insult to caciques was the establishment of town councils made up of common Andeans. With rights similar to those of plebeian Castilian townsmen, and a newfound theory of popular sovereignty and just war against tyrants, these Andean town councilmen would eventually challenge cacique and Spanish rule.



3   

Resettlement Spaniards Found New Towns for “Indians”

In early 1573 the Spanish judge Don Pedro de Zárate ordered Don Hernando Chuquirivi, cacique of Asanaques (the Hispanicized name for Asanaqi) and his seconds in command, Don Martín Pacha and Don Pedro Tacachiri, to gather the Asanaqi Indians and bring them to Condo to be inspected and counted in a new census ordered by Viceroy Francisco de Toledo. Since the Spanish invasion forty years earlier, Asanaqi people had repeatedly been subject to drastic changes in their lives. Large numbers of people had died: some while fighting against the Spaniards, others allied with Spaniards while fighting Inca troops, and the greatest number from diseases that Spaniards had unwittingly brought with them. Even before Spaniards had set foot in their territory, Asanaqi people had been divided up among Spanish encomenderos as rewards for conquest. In a previous census ordered by Pedro de la Gasca in 1548, Asanaqi people had been required to assemble in Condo to be counted by Spaniards.1 But the Visita General ordered by Viceroy Toledo, unlike previous inspections, would be much more thoroughgoing. Where earlier censuses had mostly sought to determine how much wealth could be extracted from Indians by their Spanish encomendero or the Crown, the goals behind the new inspection and enumeration were much more ambitious: to complete the conversion to Christianity and to instill ideas of proper, civilized behavior for Indians. Their means to complete these goals were to move Andeans into towns modeled on those in Castile. For Castilians both civilized life and Christianity were embedded in the cityscape, and their activities, whether economic, political, or religious, were shaped by the city and its institutions. For them the Andean settlement pattern of small, scattered hamlets made their unsupervised residents prone to laziness, drunkenness, sin, and idolatry, not to proper conversion and salvation. To facilitate Christian indoctrination, as well as the collection of taxes and the mobilization of labor service, Viceroy Francisco de Toledo would require Indians to resettle in towns.2 Owing to political instability within Spanish Peru between the The People Are King: The Making of an Indigenous Andean Politics. S. Elizabeth Penry, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780195161601.001.0001



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capture of Atahualpa, the last independently reigning Inca, in 1532 and the arrival of Viceroy Toledo in 1569, such resettlement plans were only haphazardly implemented.3 But under Toledo’s supervision, Andeans would be subjected to highly efficient measures of early modernity; a thorough census and forced resettlement into planned towns were both intended to make Andeans legible to authorities and to fashion them into properly disciplined subjects.4 It was also a major step toward converting a multiplicity of distinct peoples into a homogenous new kind of humanity with second-​class, exploitable status beholden to and inferior to Spaniards: tributary Indians.

Creating the New Resettlement Towns Reducción, the word used to describe the resettlement towns into which Toledo’s reorganizational plan would move indigenous people, comes from the verb reducir, which Covarrubias in his 1611 Tesoro de la Lengua Castellana defined as “to convince” or “convinced and returned to better order.” The term, then, did not suggest so much a quantitative change as a sense of returning to the “normal” state of municipal life, through argument as well as force.5 The scattered hamlets across the countryside were to be destroyed and Indians forcibly resettled in communities modeled on idealized Castilian towns. The reducción towns were an early modern form of social engineering, designed to remake Andeans socially and psychologically, giving them a spatial model of straight thinking embodied in the straight streets and rectilinear central plaza that would make Andeans into “true men.”6 Surprisingly, this grid-​pattern design was largely unknown in the Iberian Peninsula, apart from a few planned towns such as Santa Fé. Most Iberian towns’ central neighborhoods had grown as mazes of small winding streets, sites of the judería, morería, or aljama (the ghettos), where after Christian conquest Jews and Muslims were supposed to live under their own laws. Given the chance to “correct” this design, Spaniards across the Americas opted for the checkerboard or grid pattern, with a central plaza that would be home to the parish church, the cacique, and the town council as shown in Figure 3.1. Residents’ minds would also be reprogrammed through new concepts of sin, once evangelization was made possible by Indians’ acquisition of “buena policía,” the good habits and customs that could only be learned by living in a municipal republic.7 Implementing a regime of surveillance and disciplinary techniques by which the colonial state aimed to transform and monitor the behavior of the king’s Indian subjects, Toledo’s policies made sixteenth-​century Peru into a vanguard of early modernity. Outside of Spanish cities such as Lima, Cuzco, La Paz, and La Plata, Toledo and the visitadores (the “visitors” or inspectors under his direction) aimed to



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Figure 3.1  Juan de Matienzo’s design for reducción towns, detail of fol. 38. Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. “Gobierno del Perú,” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed February 18, 2019. http://​ digitalcollections.nypl.org/​items/​487d21a0-​2601-​0130-​a73a-​58d385a7b928

establish a handful of new towns within each repartimiento, an area roughly equivalent to an encomienda claim. In each district visitors created a small number of new, concentrated settlements to replace dozens or hundreds of scattered, tiny hamlets. Since in most cases two or three reducciones were established within the territory of a cacicazgo (jurisdiction of a cacique), separated from one another by a new set of territorial boundary markers dividing the lands of reducciones, the jurisdiction of these newly established reducción towns cross-​cut and fragmented the old ayllu divisions. As such towns took hold, they created a new kind of social organization in the region, one that counterposed the authority of the new towns’ councils to that of the caciques as governors of the larger district to which the new towns pertained. Each new reducción town was defined as a self-​governing “república de indios,” modeled on the Castilian understanding of the town as self-​governing republic. Settled into their new repúblicas, Indians would be guaranteed “liberty” as vassals of the king.8 Not all Andeans moved to reducción towns. Some chose to live within Spanish cities, segregated in peripheral parishes of indigenous laborers; each of those urban indigenous parishes was also conceived as a “republic of Indians.” In like fashion, each of the Spanish-​settled cores of Spanish cities was identified as a “republic of Spaniards.” Until the end of the eighteenth century, “republic” referred exclusively to the form of governance within each of these cities and towns. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, under colonial rule, the institutions of the reducción town continued to grant indigenous



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peoples the right to self-​government and to protection as subjects of the king. Such rights, however, came with a reorganization of population, settlement pattern, territorial boundaries, legal codes, and forms of social solidarity that disrupted and vied with traditional, preconquest ways of life. Reducción was an extended process; from the time that the inspections began until the final documents detailing the tax obligations of each town, nearly two years would pass. Given the detailed orders issued by Toledo, Don Pedro de Zárate, the visitor for the repartimiento of Asanaques, would have traveled to Condo with a sizeable retinue. Certainly he would have had a priest with him, who would act as an ecclesiastical inspector. Viceroy Toledo’s orders tacitly acknowledged that many indigenous towns had been founded by Spanish administrators over the decades, so that visitors were required to note if a church had been erected in the town and if there were any complaints against the current priest. A sheriff or bailiff was to go along to enforce the visitor’s orders. At least one interpreter would be among the officials. Finally, there was a secretary who would record all the details of the visit. Descriptions of other inspection tours report that some visitors brought their entire families with them, along with various hangers-​on.9 The Indians who were being visited were required to provide food for the whole entourage, for however long the visit took. They might have been required to provide lodging, but it is just as likely that the Spanish visitors brought tents with them to avoid sleeping in Indian homes. So, a band of a dozen or more Spaniards crisscrossed Asanaques territory in the early months of 1573, visiting and counting people, cattle, and land under cultivation. Although Indians were ordered to gather in the main village of each “nation,” the visitors were required to make an eyewitness report, which seems to have led them to travel from one tiny hamlet to the next collecting information. The census made during the Visita General for members of a portion of one Asanaques ayllu exemplifies the thoroughness of the work and hints at how widely scattered ayllu members were. On May 28, 1573, visitor Pedro de Zárate made a census of the people of ayllu Hilavi, part of the anansaya parcialidad of Asanaques. When Zárate visited them, they were in a small village and mining center in Asanaques territory called Chiucori. Zarate counted only eleven tributaries in the village, men between roughly eighteen and fifty-​five who would be subject to periodic forced labor and paying tribute. Fewer than fifty people in total lined up to be counted, and many were absent, which inspector Zárate carefully noted. Don Fernando Achallanqui, whose name appears first on the ranked list, was listed as the “principal” of the ayllu. In this case, principal was a translation of the Aymara jilaqata (an Aymara term derived from jilata, the elder brother as “first among equals”), still a hereditary office in the early colonial period. Don Fernando’s wife was listed as absent, away in the large mining city of Potosí. Others were in lands near Potosí that people from ayllu Hilavi



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used to grow food to support them when they were working in the mines. The census was detailed. For example, records show that Don Fernando Achallanqui was thirty-​eight years old, married to Catalina Cuisuta, who was the same age. Their “legitimate” son, Andrés Choquechambi, was two years old in 1573. Don Fernando and Catalina owned three llamas, but no mention is made of any crops that they produced, so it is likely that they relied on mining and perhaps trade carried by llamas to earn their living. This information would help determine what tribute charges would be levied on the Asanaques people. Widows were included on the list by name and age, along with any children. Years later, in 1610, ayllu Hilavi people would produce this census record in litigation to prove their claims to lands near Potosí.10 While visiting hamlets such as Chiucori scattered across the territory of a group like Asanaques, visitors were also creating a map of lands worked and claimed by ayllu members. Ordinances written by a Toledan visitor and kept by a neighboring town help illustrate this. In creating the town of Our Lady of Bethlehem of Tinquipaya in early 1573, the visitor noted the thirty-​four small hamlets where he had traveled to conduct a census of ayllu members. These were the residential settlements where ayllu members lived prior to the creation of the reducción, spread across the territory to take advantage of fields and pastures in different ecological zones. All were ordered to dismantle their houses, move to the reducción of Tinquipaya, and build new homes there. But that did not necessarily mean they lost the lands they had previously worked; these would now be in the territorial jurisdiction of the reducción. Their thirty-​four original hamlets were named individually in the town ordinances for Tinquipaya in a regulation that prevented caciques from selling the lands to Spaniards or anyone else without a license from the new town council. This restriction reinforced the collective nature of the land title granted by Spaniards to Indians. At the same time, it highlighted that the reducción, through its commoner town council, was the legal entity charged with defending land ownership. Once reduced to Tinquipaya, individual families were to be given land only in usufruct; they could use the land but could not sell it or give it away. Following preconquest custom, plots were to be redistributed annually according to the needs of growing or shrinking families. The ordinances further specified that land was to be marked so that each family would know which plots were allotted to them, following both preconquest and Castilian custom.11 Spaniards called those boundary makers in the landscape separating landholdings mojones. Each new reducción, conceived as a town and the territory of its jurisdiction, was also given boundaries in the form of mojones, some of which were new and some of which had preconquest origins. Within that territory, lesser mojones marked off the boundaries of the ayllus, or fragments of ayllus, assigned to the new reducción town. Within the ayllu’s lands, other,



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lesser mojones separated the fields and pastures allotted in a particular year to an individual family. A report written by one of the Toledan visitors listing all the mojones for a reducción town gives an idea of the specificity in creating the reducción. On July 24, 1573, Captain Agustín de Ahumada composed a list of mojones for the town of San Juan de la Frontera. Lands were marked as beginning at “the mouth of the river that comes from the town” and running up to the lands belonging to another ayllu. Other markers in the landscape were former Inca fortresses. Besides ayllu lands, community lands dedicated to the poor and to the widows and widowers of the town were marked out in the landscape. These landmarks, along with a written description, provided legal evidence of the nested land claims of family, ayllu, town, and cacicazgo. Commonly reproduced during litigation against Spaniards or other reducción towns that threatened their lands, lists of mojones appeared frequently in court cases.12 In his instructions, Viceroy Toledo seemed to encourage visitors to make caciques their partners in the creation of the new towns. Visitors were ordered first to determine how many towns needed to be created within the repartimiento they were to visit, then suggest a smaller number to the caciques, with the idea that caciques would negotiate for a higher number of towns.13 Whether or not many visitors consciously tried to manipulate caciques as Toledo suggested, there are certainly examples of the number of reducción towns changing shortly after the original ones were created (see the map in Figure 3.2 for the original Toledan reducciones in the region). One example comes from the repartimiento of Puna, situated on what had been a border region of the Inca Empire in a mineral-​rich area that the Inca and, later, the Spaniards mined. In 1573, the Toledan visitor Captain Agustín de Ahumada, reduced people of the Siwaruyu-​ Arakapi diarchy—​a population of 5,968 men, women, and children from twenty-​ eight villages scattered over a distance of roughly 3,660 square miles—​into two reducción towns, Nuestra Señora de Talavera de Puna and Todos Santos de Tomave.14 It seems that the Siwaruyus had been relocated to the region by the Inca to protect the border and to help incorporate the local Arakapi people into the Inca realm. Within a short time after the 1573 foundations of Puna and Tomave, a third town appeared in the region, San Francisco de Coroma. Coroma, like Tomave, had been an Inca tambo on the Qhapaq Ñan and seems to have been largely settled by Siwaruyu people.15 Did Siwaruyu caciques petition to have the tambo of Coroma made into a town? That would seem to fit Toledo’s scheme to make caciques complicit in resettlement. Or should this be better understood as a conscious strategy of negotiation on the part of the Siwaruyu caciques?16 Perhaps they sought foundation of Coroma as a way to hold on to territory even as the population continued to decline, or a way to reframe a part of their preconquest social and political structures to conform to the new colonial model. They may have tried but no reducción town perfectly



Figure 3.2  Resettlement (reducción) towns in the study region created under the direction of Viceroy Francisco de Toledo in the 1570s. Map by Erin Greb Cartography.



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replicated the preconquest diarchy from which it was carved. The ayllus that made up the Siwaruyu-​Arakapi diarchy were divided, with some in both of the original reducciones and some in Coroma.17 Whatever the reason for Coroma’s foundation, it seems to have instantly gained status equal to the original Toledan reducción towns, with its own caciques, a parish priest, and town council. In the neighboring Karanqa federation, renamed the colonial province of Carangas, the Toledan visitor, Francisco de Saavedra Ulloa, was particularly stingy in creating reducciones. For the repartimiento of Totora, one of four in the province of Carangas, Saavedra reduced fifty pueblos to only one town, San Pedro de Totora. With just over seven thousand people, San Pedro de Totora had a large population that had been spread over a vast territory; clearly this one town plan was not feasible. By 1584, if not sooner, two other towns appeared in the repartimiento, Santiago de Curahuara and Santiago de Huayllamarca. Both towns were created by people originally settled in Totora. Curahuara became famous for its beautiful Renaissance-​style church with its interior completely covered in elaborate, colorful murals depicting Biblical stories, built sometime before 1608.18 In other cases, either caciques did not argue for more resettlement towns, or they made their case so well that the additional towns were seamlessly registered by the visitors as original reducciones. It also seems likely that in many cases the new towns were pre-​Conquest settlements of some sort. Tomave and Coroma had been way stations on the Inca highway, which might make them attractive to both Andeans and Spaniards, since Andeans continued to maintain the highways, delivering the mail and providing for travelers. In the neighboring repartimiento of Paria, made up mostly of Asanaqi and other Killaka people, and with a population of 11,526, nearly double that of Puna, three towns were created, including San Pedro de Condo. According to the Toledan tasa recorded in Potosí in February 1575, Condo was created from four smaller towns that were spread over approximately 1,770 square miles.19 But other documents from Condo indicate that its settlement predated Toledo. Parish records from Condo mention that the first church built there burned down sometime before 1572. And documents copied into a 1688 legal case filed by Condo caciques mention the inspection of Condo by Pedro La Gasca in 1548-​1550, over twenty-​five years before its “foundation” by Toledan visitors. This evidence of settlement prior to the Toledan reducción policy suggests that Condo was a pre-​Columbian settlement that caciques lobbied to maintain.20 Just as with Tomave, Coroma, and other towns founded after Toledo, Condo was not a perfect replica of the Asanaqi diarchy from which it was carved. Many of Asanaqi’s constituent ayllus appear in Condo, but not all. Some of Asanaqi’s ayllus were settled in the nearby reducción town of San Juan de Challapata, the jurisdiction of which included territory and peoples from portions of some of the ayllus also settled in Condo.



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The constituent ayllus (people and territory) from the cacicazgo of Asanaqi, an area in total of some 3,600 square miles, were divided and distributed among these two reducciones and a third reducción founded at some distance from this core highland territory, called San Lucas de Payacollo. 21 After the visitor had located all the people in the repartimiento/​cacicazgo to which he had been assigned by Viceroy Toledo, decided how many reducción towns to create, where to locate them, and who should be assigned to each one, he then laid out the town in a rectilinear, checkerboard pattern. At the center of each town was a plaza on which were placed the church, the cacique’s home, and a house for the town council. Extending out from the corners of the plaza were straight streets, with a group of streets assigned to each ayllu, so that the ayllus were quite literally mapped on to the towns.22 Each family’s home would have a door facing the street, so that town officials could monitor behavior, making sure that Indians did not sleep on the floor, that parents and children slept in separate rooms, and that unmarried males and females were segregated. Then the job of forcing Indians to move to the reducción was turned over to reducidores, literally reducers. Indians were instructed to build temporary huts on the site where they were to live in the reducción. After building their huts, they were to return to where they had been living and take any usable construction material, such as roof beams, from their old homes to use in building their new ones. They were then to demolish their old homes and as quickly as possible construct their new homes in their new reducción towns. The job of constructing the new town was directed by the cacique and coordinated at ayllu level by the jilaqata. Andeans built the reducción towns, beginning a process of making them their own by linking ayllus to the towns through the construction process itself. Toledo outlined various economic incentives to try to entice ayllus to build and move quickly, and even threatened to remove caciques from office if their people did not comply.23 Despite all of Toledo’s plans, there was something inherently impractical about the reducciones. A group of Charcas mallkus, writing in 1582 to the king made this clear, pointing out than many reducciones were created “where they are no pastures, or fields.” Toledo imagined that Indians could live as Spanish peasants, living in towns, walking out to their fields and pastures every day, and returning in the evening. However, the poor, dry land of the altiplano could not be cultivated intensively; it was simply not as productive as much of the land in Spain. By the same token, llamas needed much more land for pasture than sheep did in Spain, and Andeans’ methods of equitably allotting pastures for their herds were extremely complicated. One community had their cattle spread across their territory in more than fifty different locations, leading Juan Polo Ondegardo, a close observer of Andean life to remark that it would take Spaniards more than twenty years just to figure out how Andeans assigned



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pastures for their cattle.24 In order to survive, and even thrive, Andeans had lived in small settlements scattered across the altiplano for millennia. From the moment of their foundation, there was no possibility that Andeans could remain permanently in reducciones and feed themselves.

Caciques and Cabildos in the New Towns Viceroy Toledo was concerned with establishing the legitimacy of Spanish rule in the Andes, a stance that had led him to declare the Incas tyrants. To further this argument, he drew a moral distinction between the Inca ruling aristocracy and their subject people. This legitimated Spanish dominion over the former Inca state but allowed local caciques of Inca subject peoples to continue to govern, under Spanish tutelage. By doing so, Toledo replaced a single complex hierarchy of segmentary rule (ascending loyalty from family, to patriline, to ayllu, to parcialidad, to diarchy, to federation, to suyu and to empire) with multiple hierarchies in which common Andeans would be subject to control by their local cacique, their priest and their encomendero, as well as their Corregidor, and through him, the viceroy and the king. While Toledo denied that the Inca was a Señor natural, a natural lord in medieval political thought, he was forced to reluctantly acknowledge that caciques had that status when he realized that he had no other effective way to control Andean labor or collect tributes.25 Under this theory, caciques should be considered akin to dukes or counts in Spain, a status many caciques embraced quickly and emphatically, though in practice cacical “aristocracy” was limited in comparison to Spain’s great families.26 Caciques were privileged with salaries paid from commoner tributes (something not imposed under the Inca) and granted their own fields to be worked by their commoner subjects, but only the governing cacique and an inheriting son were exempted from tribute and mita service. This did not sit well with caciques, some of whom demanded the rights normally restricted to Spaniards, to carry arms, ride horses, have African slaves, dress like Spaniards in silk, gold, and silver, and sit side by side with Spaniards in church. One hundred years after Toledo’s Visita General, caciques revealed both their pretensions to full aristocracy and their resentment at not having it in a complaint brought against the Spanish administrator of labor in the mines of Potosí, that he had not made the “distinction between nobles and plebeians, when the King, our Lord, has honored and made them lords of ranking in the towns where they govern with the title of cacique, which corresponds in Spanish to counts and dukes.”27 As hereditary nobles, subject to Spanish-​style rules for the investiture of office and title, caciques continued to hold sway over their tribute paying and mita serving commoner subjects through ayllus. Initially the jurisdiction of a cacique



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was an entire repartimiento. But during the Visita General, repartimientos were carved up into multiple reducción towns, which meant that some towns housed caciques, while other towns lacked them. Within a short time, caciques, seeking a means of preserving “noble” privileges (the service of their commoner subjects, an income from the state, and exemption from tribute and mita labor) for their family members, began to clamor for the Crown to name cacique governors in the new reducción towns that lacked them, finding positions for relatives who had been reduced to commoner standing. Most of the new reducción towns thus gained their own new cacique lineages. Early on such duplication of noble cacique lineages strengthened traditional aristocratic forms of governance (against the new town councils, in which commoners participated), but also confirmed the fragmentation of the old, larger cacicazgo territory into the new, smaller town-​focused  units. Even though fragmented first by encomienda grants, and then reducción towns, elements of pre-​Columbian social organization, such as cacicazgos, ayllus, and parcialidades, figured in the design of the towns and, more specifically, in the ordinances issued by Viceroy Toledo. Toledan visitors were ordered to ask questions to elicit information about how things had operated under the Inca, such as control of territory and the jurisdiction of leadership and the workings of the mit’a system. Armed with some understanding of Andean political organization Toledo ordered that elected officials of the new municipalities were to be rotated among the ayllus and parcialidades and that the tribute rolls be recorded by ayllu.28 Indirectly this meant that Spanish tribute collection helped to reproduce ayllu structure within the reducción towns by biennially reinforcing the political and economic function of ayllus, and of course, this collection also mandated an ayllu “head person,” identified in the ordinances as a principal, to carry out these duties.29 The term ayllu is not used consistently throughout Toledo’s decrees; in some places, it is mentioned along with the cacique as part of an authority structure, while in other cases, it seems more a constituent part of the community, like neighborhood or district. In this way Toledo captured some of the ambiguity or flexibility of the term; it had no simple equivalent in Spanish and so the use varied from small kinship group to large land holding group. Ayllus were linked with territory prior to the Spanish invasion, but during the colonial era ayllus became explicitly corporate landholding groups.30 Within the resettlement towns, the cacique did not govern alone. Toledo established competing authorities: the members of the town council known as the cabildo. The concept of rule divided between the cabildo and the cacique was modeled on the Spanish pattern of dual government by plebeians and aristocrats, and it was established with the idea that the two sets of authorities would serve as a check on each other to reduce the possibility of tyrannical rule by either. Cabildos were made up of plebeians annually elected as alcaldes, regidores, and



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alguaciles (mayors/​justices, aldermen, and bailiffs), and an escribano or notary who usually served for a longer term. The first set of officers for the new reducción were named by the visitor, who was ordered to choose those most capable. Heads of ayllus, the principales or jilaqatas, would have been strong candidates for the first cabildo officers since these offices had existed under the Inca and already formed a common authority structure. At the large public meeting, called by the Toledan visitor to gather all the people newly assigned to the town, he would charge the new cabildo officers to favor “the poor and orphans and widows and needy, well looking after the republic and its business,” as the ordinances for Our Lady of Bethlehem of Tinquipaya put it.31 After being inducted into office, the alcaldes were given a staff representing the authority of their office, known as a vara. Within a short time, evidence for functioning cabildos began to be inscribed into archival records. Many of the earliest records from the 1570s and 1580s reference money paid out by the indigenous cabildos for which the notary of the cabildo had to attest.32 These town council offices were rotated between the town’s anansaya and urinsaya and among the ayllus within each. Each community was to have two alcaldes, one from each parcialidad. In comparison to the eighteenth century, when the cabildo would play an active role in curtailing the power of the cacique, fewer early records of cabildo activities exist. Part of the reason stems from Toledo’s orders. Alcaldes did not have to record any cases under a certain monetary value, and the notaries were not to keep records in such cases. The ordinances compiled for Tinquipaya stated that the alcaldes were to “judge all and whatever matters as alcaldes ordinarios, in civil cases, without creating procesos or writing anything down.”33 This was in keeping with traditional Roman, medieval and Renaissance European law that “the poor, needy, and otherwise disadvantaged” should not be subject to “the long-​drawn-​out and expensive forms of ordinary suits and proceedings at law but should be handled by summary hearing and rapid decision.”34 Andeans were entitled to such “protections” because they were considered to be miserables, a legal category tantamount to widow or orphan, but these protections deprived them of a legal, paper trail for appeal or future litigation. Although the hereditary nobility was specifically prohibited from holding office in the cabildo and were forbidden to interfere with its elections, colonial documents reveal that caciques did try to insert their relatives into cabildo offices. One prominent cacique, Fernando Ayaviri, lobbied to make one of his sons “alguacil mayor” in perpetuity with the right “to enter in all the cabildos of all the pueblos” under his father’s jurisdiction, with the right to vote in each. He did not succeed but the attempt suggests the need he felt to control the cabildos.35 Caciques tried to get their sons such posts not just for political power, but for the exemption of cabildo officers, during their



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year of service, from tribute obligations and mita duty. In effect this created a kind of annually rotating de facto nobility among the commoners of each town. Although in the early years, the reducción was politically dominated by the cacique, technically the cabildo’s decisions could not be vetoed by him. The jurisdiction of the old-​style cacique was gradually reduced by the new towns, as reducciones and the cabildo offices curtailed cacical power. With the Visita General, Toledo had established “mita captains,” powerful caciques who governed entire repartimientos and were named overseers of the entire forced labor operation in Potosí, putting them in charge of several thousand workers. But over time, as the reducción towns replaced the repartimiento and its single cacique as the main source of identity for Andeans, the powerful mita captains were replaced by “small captains” who were named from each reducción town to captain only the people sent from their own town to work in the silver mines of Potosí. A similar situation followed with tribute collection. Originally collected for an entire repartimiento, over time tribute came to be seen as a town-​based obligation, collected by each ayllu within the town’s jurisdiction. With each of these changes, the practice of authority shifted physically to the town, and authority was increasingly held by the cabildo and the commoners in it.

Institutionalizing Difference: Property, Social Estate, and “Race” Toledo instructed the visitors that the King had ordered that his Amerindian subjects govern themselves “in the manner of Spaniards,” and to insure this was carried out, each village was to retain a copy of the ordinances in their caja de comunidad, their community chest, and read it aloud twice a year.36 These ordinances detailed the cabildo’s jurisdiction, how community lands and property were to be handled, and how to keep records. In addition to the ordinances, the tasa or tax list produced by the Toledan visitors was also copied and given into each town’s safekeeping. Much like the Toledan ordinances, the long introductory portions of the Toledan tasa were copied from master instructions, making the written law that justified the reducción process and Spain’s invasion a foundational part of every indigenous town’s archive.37 That reducción towns received these ordinances and tasa documents and carefully guarded them is testified to by detailed inventories that recorded the contents of the cajas de comunidad, and by the appearance of transcriptions of these documents in later legal cases brought by reducción towns, such as the ordinances for Tinquipaya which were reproduced in a lawsuit against Spaniards who had encroached on ayllu lands in their former hamlets.38 The first item recorded in each town’s



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tasa document was Toledo’s defense of the conquest as a rescue of commoner Andeans from the tyranny in which they had been held by the Inca, It is known to all of the caciques and principales and commoner Indians of these kingdoms... [that they were] under the subjection of the Incas when His Majesty [the King of Spain] discovered and pacified them, [saving them] from the oppression and tyranny in which they lived, [that the Inca] kept them so subjected and overworked [and] did not even allow them to own anything privately, nor have anything of their own, nor work for themselves. 39 This points to a curious contradiction: Toledo denounced the Inca for not allowing anyone else to own private property, although Inca nobles did own private property, yet Toledo’s resettlement plan did not provide for private property for common Andeans.40 The newly created towns for indigenous people would only have inalienable, commonhold land. In many cases Toledo recreated the tyranny that he denounced (such as governance through hereditary caciques), but he also drew in part on Spanish examples.41 In Spain, although private property did exist, most land was held collectively by towns. Townspeople could use the commons according to complex rules during their lifetime but could not alienate it through sale or inheritance.42 In Castile, commoners did have the right to private property, and aristocrats had access to town commons. In assigning a combination of private and commonhold property rights in Peru, Toledo was not only recognizing pre-​Columbian commonhold forms of land tenure but also reproducing an important element of Spanish repúblicas:  the commons. But by assigning only commons to Indians, and reserving private title to Spaniards, he was importing the most inequitable feature of the Castilian distinction between tax-​paying commoners (for whom commons was most important) and tax-​farming hidalgos (aristocrats), who amassed private property in the form of heritable estates. Through his policies regarding property, Toledo hardened this distinction of social estate and fused it with a new, proto-​racial distinction between Indian and Spaniards. This was done in a way that made all common Indians permanent commoners, without the possibility of amassing private wealth. And all Spaniards became de facto aristocrats, characterized as persons of private property.43 Under a land policy that mandated ownership based on productive use, “excess” lands, those not under cultivation, were claimed by the Spanish Crown and auctioned to the highest bidder—​generally Spaniards but sometimes caciques—​though occasionally the communities from which they had been seized bought them back. Since “excess” meant lands not required for a community’s subsistence and tribute-​paying activities, the policy also



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condemned members of indigenous towns to a permanent form of subsistence penury, without the possibility of intensive production of surpluses for the market.44 Each family would be allotted a parcel of land sufficient for their needs, in accordance with preconquest egalitarianism, but all would be equally poor, unlike the highly stratified Castilian commoners among whom the possibility of accumulating private property made some rich and left others poor. The distinction between Indians as tribute-​paying commoners, and Spaniards as aristocrats, and the division of commons and private property between them, as well as the creation of separate Indian and Spanish republics with distinct legal standing, are what most clearly mark Spanish governance of Indians as “colonial.” Rather than producing a single, merged people divided by class, Castilian institutions were imposed in the Indies in a manner that created two permanently divided and ranked peoples, classed as distinct in origins and abilities that led to a racial regime. An apparently well-​intentioned paternalism justified these divisions, always in concert with a concern for rational government, careful record keeping, and efficient economic activity. A theme that Toledo returned to more than once in his introductory comments to the tax documents, as well as in his other orders, is that the common Indians were to be protected from their priests and from their own caciques. Part of his justification for the myriad rules laid down for reducción life was so that “poor inferior Indians of the community would be maintained in justice.” Toledo argued that caciques were collecting tribute and keeping it for themselves, “taking it from the poor and vulnerable Indians who were less capable of paying.”45 This grievance was repeated many times over the colonial era and resembled complaints that would be leveled against Condo cacique Gregorio Llanquipacha in the eighteenth century.

Cajas de Comunidad and the Written Records of Towns Toledo’s ordinances and tax provisions for the new towns were extensive. Each town was to maintain two cajas de comunidad: one essentially for money and account books and the other to hold community documents (although it seems likely that many towns kept only one chest, divided into two compartments). The community chest to safeguard documents was to be kept in the cabildo’s house and to have three locks, with the keys held by three cabildo officers. Most information about the contents of the cajas de comunidad comes from later litigation where caciques or cabildo members produced community documents to be copied into a new legal record, although a few early inventories provide a window into the kinds of documents maintained there.46 In April of 1583,



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an inventory was made of the caja de comunidad in San Pedro de Totora, a town in Carangas province. Among the contents were the Toledan ordinances for the town; an affidavit for a loan of over 2,900 pesos to a Spaniard, along with an order signed by an inspector attesting that the loan was made in good faith, and countersigned by, among others, the notary of the cabildo; bound books for receipts; an order from Viceroy Toledo regarding the status of their encomendero; and a file to record the “presentation” of priests to the town.47 This last item documented the ceremony by which the priest took “possession” of his new parish in the presence of cabildo members and sometimes the cacique. A July 1591 ceremony of possession hints at how formal and performative this act was. In this case the priest, Juan Fernández Ternero, took possession of his new parish of San Francisco de Calapiquina in the presence of the entire governing structure of the town, the caciques, cabildo members, and chief officer of the church, two of whom signed the act verifying the priest’s presence in the town.48 As the possession ceremony might suggest, Indians were to monitor their priest’s absences, since he forfeited to the caja de comunidad any salary during his absence. By the same token, the priest might solicit recommendations from his parishioners that could help him gain promotion to a bigger, wealthier parish. In 1588, Don Pedro Yucla, an Andean who identified himself as the “escribano [notary] of the cabildo,” verified that his priest, Baltasar Velázquez, spoke Aymara very well and that he had ministered to the sick during smallpox and measles epidemics.49 Not surprisingly, given that Toledo in effect monetized the Andean economy, the ordinances also carefully detailed the economic obligations of the townspeople and how those economic records should be maintained in the caja de comunidad. The method for collecting tribute was spelled out in detail: how to make a tribute list, who should go on it, and what demographic information it should include. After the tax money had been turned over to the royal treasury, salaries to caciques were to be paid from the tribute. In this way, caciques were unlike nobility in Spain: they did not collect tribute for themselves but for the state. Salaries for the priest and for a teacher were also paid from tribute. All records for economic services to the state, such as mita labor in the mines or maintenance of the tambos, were to be kept in a similar fashion. As befits a policy designed to civilize, political duties were also spelled out. The cabildo was required to meet weekly to administer justice. The exact penal jurisdiction of the cabildo is described, the monetary value of cases over which it could judge, the penalties it could prescribe, and the appellate process.50 The Toledan ordinances were all, in some way, designed to instill buena policía, the good habits that would come from town life. Some were more explicit than others. There was to be no drunkenness, “apart from some festival days with the license of the priest of the doctrina.” Elite Indians were denied the privilege of



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taking concubines. Mothers would no longer be permitted to bind their infants with textiles; presumably they should carry them like European women did. Children could no long receive names taken from fauna or flora; they were to receive Christian names.51 On Sundays and saints’ feast days parishioners were to “wash their faces, hands and feet, and comb their hair and cut their nails” to reflect their Christian status.52 Details of everyday life were spelled out. People of the community were made complicit guardians of their own behavior: knowing that church and state watched over them from the plaza they were to monitor their behavior, reporting any deviance in confession.53 While Toledo’s ordinances might sound like an explicitly colonial policy, resettlement into proper towns applied to Spaniards in the Iberian Peninsula as well as the Americas. Few of the policies that the Crown put in place in the Americas were conceived anew for indigenous people. The same language and arguments to resettle Indians were used in Crown decrees to try and force recalcitrant Spaniards in remote areas of the Americas into towns. As the king addressed one problematic group of his New World Spanish subjects, they were “without order or civility and . . . very scattered and disparate” so that the king ordered them to be reduced “where they can live with appropriate civility and order so that they may easily receive the holy sacraments and secular justice.” But not just any place could pass muster as a town; for Spanish officials to consider a place it had to have a functioning town council, no matter how large or small the population.54 Nonetheless, Andeans were governed differently in the colonies than the king’s subjects were in Spain. Castilian cities had negotiated a variety of special privileges in their constitution-​like fueros, among them the right to send representatives to the parliamentary body known as the Cortes, where they could challenge proposed Crown policies. No towns of the Indies, whether of Spaniards or of Indians, held those rights. Governance there was more strictly top-​down and, from the state’s point of view, efficient.

Conversion Toledo’s policies were not only motivated by politics and economics but also by the Crown’s desire to convert Andeans to Christianity. Part of the idea behind the relocation of indigenous people was to separate them from their local divinities: the wakas. This was a difficult task as wakas were not only idols but were embedded in the landscape, in the form of mountains, lakes, rivers, and even boundary markers. Clearly waka worship would interfere with bringing Andeans to the true faith. Before Toledo much pre-​Conquest ritual practice had been tolerated by priests who sought to adapt it to Christian ends. The Dominicans and Franciscans who began the missionary enterprise in Peru



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allowed their charges to dance and sing, as they had in Inca times, as part of their newfound Christian religiosity: hence, Quechua hymns praising the Virgin incorporated poetic language formerly used in praise of the Andean moon goddess.55 In this way, early conversion efforts in the viceroyalty of Peru seemed to echo the conversion of Europeans to Christianity, allowing or even encouraging syncretic practice.56 But Toledo’s arrival coincided with the aftermath of the Council of Trent, the Roman Catholic response to Protestantism, and Tridentine Christianity demanded conformity and absolute control of Christian practice by ordained priests.57 Laymen’s attempts to communicate directly with God were considered dangerous, as practices vulnerable to satanic deceit.58 To avert this an entire repressive apparatus had to be installed to stamp out popular Catholicism, in Europe as well as the Americas. In the repúblicas de españoles, the towns designed for Spaniards, the inquisition was established to root out such heresies, as well as uncover converts from Judaism or Islam who may have “passed” in the Indies for Old Christians. But in Peru, the Inquisition was forbidden to prosecute Indians. So in the repúblicas de indios, the Indian towns, the hunt for irregularity of Christian practice among Andeans, called idolatry, was turned over to bishops and priests.59 With the creation of reducciones, leadership of religious ritual was largely taken away from caciques. Spaniards were well aware that caciques had led collective religious practices prior to evangelization, and there was a fear that they would continue their idolatrous ways surreptitiously. Ordinances specifically charged members of the cabildo with assisting the priest in conversion by helping him with teaching of Christian catechism and doctrine. This might be done by leading group recitation of prayers, perhaps while marching through the town in procession ayllu by ayllu. The cabildo members were also charged with seeing that children attended catechism lessons regularly.60 Lay religious brotherhoods, cofradías, would further this instruction in Christian piety and charity and act as a kind of social welfare for the community, caring for the sick and poor.61 As each reducción town was created, it was given a patron saint for which the town would then be named (hence San Pedro de Condo, San Juan del Pedroso de Challapata, Todos Santos de Tomave, etc.), and a cofradía was established to celebrate the new patron. In many ways introduction of the patron saint, and indeed a full gamut of saints, was key to Spanish conversion strategy. That strategy taught the gospels and focused on the Eucharist. But it also aimed to destroy wakas, bury the bodies of mummified ancestors in cemeteries, and otherwise eradicate Andeans’ “incorrect” and idolatrous practices.62 A  patron saint, particularly one that Andeans attached to a miraculous apparition story in which the saint’s image chose the town site, became a new anchor of community, and one that could substitute for the role of waka or mummified ancestor as a link



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between the land and the body of the people. Replacing wakas with saint images worked remarkably well.63 Images multiplied, and sites of Christian devotion (chapels, crosses, and locations for celebrating the virgin) spread across the territory of each reducción. Andeans embraced cofradías so thoroughly that the church tried to limit their numbers beginning with the Third Council of Lima in 1583.64 The fear on the part of church officials was that indigenous people might use cofradías as a covert way to continue pre-​Columbian religious practices. In Spain the cult of the saints had served to displace pagan practices, so suspicion of a continuity of idolatry under the cover of saints’ cults was well founded. Cofradía officers, along with cabildo members, helped to maintain the parish archives, which would include ecclesiastical inspections, lists of births, deaths, marriages, confessions, and ornaments pertaining to the church. In this post-​ Council of Trent era of baroque Catholicism, proper church ornamentation could not be neglected, and within a short time, indigenous parishes boasted impressive lists of ornaments.65 For example, an inventory taken of the church in San Pedro de Condo in 1575 lists dozens of items, including a veil from Rouen, France to be used for weddings, missals from Rome and Seville, altar clothes from Holland, tablecloths from Germany, a silver chalice, silver cruets, a taffeta banner emblazoned with a silver cross, and a curved wooden chest from Mexico to store ornaments. Condo’s church also boasted at least ten canvas paintings, which would have been painted by Andean artisans, perhaps in La Paz, Potosí, or Oruro. While taken from European models, these paintings would have included Andean iconography that would give local meaning to Christian themes. In 1576, don Martín Taquechiri, the sacristan, and don Hernando Hucumare, the notary, of the cabildo, were among those who signed their names to confirm the inventory of the Condo church, and noted that the reducción town of Challapata, also carved from Asanaqi, had taken two of the Condo church’s paintings.66 Lest one think that the religious posts were apolitical, Toledo also established an order of seating in church for cabildo and cacique, where tribute-​ exempt indigenous sacristans, musicians and singers would attend the priest and enliven the mass. Of course, these political and religious officers were expected to read, and so Toledo also called for schools within each reducción. He evidently believed these would be staffed by “indios ladinos,” Indians literate in Spanish language and culture, as he wrote that there were “already plenty everywhere.”67

A Failed Policy? Within a few years of their foundation, reducción towns would be described by priests and colonial bureaucrats as largely deserted, their inhabitants, apart from town council officers and cofradía leaders, having fled. This led many Spaniards



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at the time to characterize reducción policy as a failure.68 To make a sweeping statement regarding failure or success forces one to look at the resettlement plan from a policy perspective, from the perspective of Phillip II, or the Council of the Indies, the body that dispatched Viceroy Toledo to Peru. However, the policy was not designed simply to put people into towns but to shape behavior, inculcate good inhabits, and eliminate Andean practices Spaniards called idolatry. The largely vacant towns led viceroys and ecclesiastics after Toledo to agree that it was a failure. But the reducciones had a lasting impact on the people who were forced into them. In his study of the resettlement policy for Maya people in the Yucatán Peninsula, linguistic anthropologist William Hanks argues persuasively that even when Mayas fled their resettlement towns, they carried within their language the basic structures of town life, whose “defining features were persuasion, habituation, and discipline.” Hanks concludes that the resettlement towns were “far more central in the history of the Maya than has been recognized by scholars.”69 The same holds true for the Andes. Spaniards could never see the reducciones as a success because Andeans did not become Spanish peasants. Many Andeans fled the resettlement towns, returning to former hamlets to live on their lands and near their pastures, something that would be nearly unthinkable to a sixteenth-​century Castilian.70 What many Spanish colonial bureaucrats overlooked was that while the reducción towns were not necessarily places of permanent residence, they became key political and ritual centers. If large numbers of people lived outside of the reducción, they also regularly returned there to fulfill their civil and religious duties. All were to attend mass and Christian doctrine and catechism sessions there regularly, while some persons or families spent periods of days or weeks fulfilling obligations to church or state, and others, such as cabildo members, cofradía officers, and the priest’s contingent of church workers, remained in the reducción town for their entire year of service. The cabildo met to dispense justice, markets were held, and saints were celebrated there. Every year cabildo members ceremoniously walked the borders of the reducción town, marked by mojones in the landscape. Inspection tours by Spanish officials, mita duty, and tribute collections were organized or allocated by reducción and carried out there. Even with all the changes wrought by reducción policy, Andean society continued to be organized by the preconquest structure of parcialidades, complete with ayllus; labor continued to be rotated as a collective duty; the poor were provided for by the community; land was worked and owned collectively; and the mails were still carried by the chasquis, the official letter carriers of the Inca state who carried messages along the Qhapaq Ñan, whose route the Spanish Royal Road, the Camino Real, followed. In a nuanced and persuasive account, historian Jeremy Mumford has argued that Toledo studied pre-​Conquest social patterns with the idea of keeping them intact in a bid to help guarantee the success of the



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resettlement process.71 The pre-​Conquest structure of two parcialidades, for example, is explicitly acknowledged in the rules regarding cabildo elections. Each community was to have two alcaldes, and the ordinances explicitly required that these alcaldes be elected from different parcialidades and ayllus. In other cases, Toledo ordered that community owned lands, the sapsi, be planted to provide food for the poor; caciques and alcaldes were required to make sure that everyone was provided with access to community land; and he strengthened the office of chasqui. Yet every one of these Andean cultural norms had a Castilian counterpart. Collective ownership of land, including pastures, woodlands, and fields, was the norm in Castile. Much like the typical Andean patterns, not only were community lands held and worked collectively, with some food specifically set aside for the poor, but each family was also assigned a garden plot to work on their own, and land could not normally be alienated to persons outside of the community. The chasquis also had their counterparts in sixteenth-​century Castile as the mails moved from town to town, with each community responsible for providing postal workers. Even the division into upper and lower halves has an analogue in contemporary Spanish villages. Spanish towns continue to be divided into districts known as sexmos, or wards, each with a representative on the town council. The same holds true for the well-​known rotational labor system.72 This is certainly not to suggest that Spanish cultural patterns replaced Andeans ones, nor that Andean patterns prevailed even in Castile. If Toledo recognized something familiar in ayllus, sapsi, chasquis, and mit’a, and encouraged their continuance, this does not make them less Andean or more Spanish. Certainly Andean relational concepts such as parcialidades and ayllus were transformed through colonialism. No longer parts of the larger diarchies or federations, parcialidades and ayllus would soon be projected as characteristic of reducciones. Change was not unidirectional, though. The civil and religious institutions and ideas introduced by Spaniards were transformed as well by Andeans, who adapted and gave new meaning to cabildos and cofradías in their colonial and hybrid contexts. Reducciones and the policies associated with them both reflected and helped create the early modern world. The detailed censuses of all Andeans—​including their age, sex, marital status, their status as legitimate or illegitimate child, the list of their animals and their fields—​made them legible for imperial bureaucrats anywhere. The policy of forced resettlement based on ideas of what constituted a superior civilization were to remake Andeans as “true men.” Christian conversion within these new towns would supply European ideas about the body and sin. These policies helped to transform Andeans into Indians, creating a systematic race-​based form of exploitation that extracted wealth and labor from them and concentrated it in the hands of Spaniards.73 These policies collapsed



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the distinction of social rank onto the difference between Spaniards and Indians and began the process of making this permanent. Spanish refashioning of mita and the addition of tribute made life increasingly difficult for common Andeans under this colonial system of exploitation. In one sense, Spanish colonial officials were correct:Andeans indeed left their reducciones, whether to return to former fields and pastures or, to Spanish cities and haciendas to avoid dangerous mita work in the mines. However, some aspects of reducción life remained appealing to Andeans. Commoner self-​ government and seeking justice from the king through the imperial legal system were privileges of reducción life. To retain such privileges, Andeans would flee to reducciones and indeed would found new settlements based on the reducción model. And in their new towns, they would establish cofradías to celebrate their new patron saints and elect commoner cabildos to govern themselves.



PA RT   I I

THE ANDEANIZATION OF SPANISH INSTITUTIONS AND CHRISTIANITY

Colonial authorities repeatedly claimed that the resettlement towns were failures. It is true that Andeans never lived permanently in the new resettlement towns. Given the region’s forbidding climate and altitude, the resettlement towns were impractical; intensive crops could not be produced within a reasonable distance, nor could animals be herded. Even so, within a very few years there was an explosion in the numbers of indigenous towns across the Andes founded by Andeans and based on the model of the reducción towns. By and large, Andeans were returning to their pre-​Conquest villages and they were actively refounding them with town councils and saints’ celebrations. But in so doing, they further fragmented the pre-​Conquest jurisdictions of federations, diarchies, cacicazgos, and ayllus while encouraging allegiance to their “new” town. Over the next century, as the idea of the común took hold, the resettlement towns and their institutions became completely Andeanized. However, as Andeans founded their own towns, chose their own saint, bought an image of him or her, and began their celebrations, they ran into conflicts with their priests. What had initially been introduced as orthodox Roman Catholicism evolved over time into hybrid sets of practices that made Christianity meaningful to Andeans. Unlike pre-​ Conquest gods and wakas, saints accepted all as their “children,” so joining a cofradía made its members co-​siblings, creating an ethos of equality. Saints’ celebrations were organized by ayllu and might include llama



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sacrifices, ritualized battles, divination ceremonies and pouring libations. Increasingly, Andeans made contact with the sacred without the benefit of priestly intervention. The Andeanized celebration of saints helped create sentimental ties to the resettlement towns as ayllus took turns sponsoring feasts, but so did more mundane, civil offices that Andeans performed, such as carrying the mail or serving in the town council. By the eighteenth century, serving the saints and serving the community were closely linked. If one wanted to serve in the cabildo, one had to prove loyalty to the town by serving lower level civil and religious posts. Serving the saints and serving the town made one a member of the común, a political community made up of the ayllus of a town, but excluding their hereditary lord, the cacique. Not surprisingly caciques came to see town authorities as rivals for power and a threat to their legitimacy. Caciques’ fears coincided with colonial bureaucrats’ desires to make the American colonies more profitable. Motivated by Enlightenment ideas that privileged reason over religion and valued economic rationalization the new Bourbon dynasty began attempts to reform the empire and to increase the income generated by Indians. Struggles between church and state ensued as the state tried to reduce the numbers of people serving the saints to redirect the money spent there to state coffers. But pitting state against church at the local level suggested that God and King were two warring majesties, and in this contest, the state would lose what had been its sacred quality in the eyes of indigenous peoples. Caciques, who many times were every bit as enlightened as any Spanish bureaucrat, began to apply these same ideas locally, challenging their priests and turning community lands into private estates. Some caciques become owners of haciendas in valuable valley lands, areas with rich soils and rivers for irrigation, good for maize, as well as fruit trees. One cacique furiously complained to the Audiencia, the Spanish regional government, that his townspeople had chopped down his peach trees on his hacienda. Why would they do such a thing when peaches were a prized delicacy in colonial Peru? What the cacique seemed to forget or ignore was that his peaches were grown on valley lands that had once been part of the town’s commonhold land, land that all comuneros would have had access to. From the comunero point of view, the peaches, like the land, had been stolen from the común by their own cacique. Chopping down the peach trees was not an act of vandalism but of rebellion.





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By the mid-​eighteenth century, townspeople were quickly moving beyond simply chopping down trees to producing petitions and testimonies collectively and signing them from the “el común de Indios.” Sometimes bringing complaints against caciques, at other times against their priests, comuneros were staking legal and public claim to their rights.





4   

Andeans Found Their Own Towns The Andeanization of Reducción

In 1639 Pedro Ramírez de Águila, a high-​ ranking church official in the Archdiocese of La Plata in the highlands of the viceroyalty of Peru, completed a detailed study of the archbishopric in response to a royal request for updated information about the region. Ramírez de Águila, who had served as parish priest in the reducción towns of Pocoata and Tacobamba, reported much ethnographic detail on Indian parishes, also known as doctrinas. In ecclesiastical terminology, a doctrina was roughly equivalent to a reducción. Within the Archbishopric of La Plata, Ramírez de Águila counted 130 doctrinas originally created by ecclesiastical authorities. However, he added that each of these parishes “has, besides its principal town, many others of fifty or one hundred inhabitants, with their chapels and cofradías founded in them. They call these annexes, [and] with those there are more than six hundred towns in highlands and valleys.”1 In the sixty-​plus years since the foundation of the reducciones, the numbers of indigenous towns had quadrupled. For over a generation, Spanish priests and Crown bureaucrats had reported that the reducciones were empty, that people had fled them either to avoid mita or paying tribute, or to return to their idolatrous practices. Official reports repeatedly announced that reducción policy had failed. In the early seventeenth century, Viceroy Luis de Velasco wrote to the Crown that “the reducciones that Viceroy Francisco de Toledo made are a thing ruined . . . because [the Indians] have fled to avoid mita in the mines.”2 Priests and corregidores blamed each other and caciques for the flight of commoner Andeans, with priests claiming that corregidores were cruelly extracting as much labor and money as they could from Andeans, while corregidores made the same accusations against parish priests, and both blamed caciques. Whatever the motivation, nearly all agreed that the towns were being abandoned. Ramírez de Águila did not dispute that, yet at the same time, he described an explosion in the number of Indian towns. The People Are King: The Making of an Indigenous Andean Politics. S. Elizabeth Penry, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780195161601.001.0001



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Why Annex Towns? Both of these seemingly contradictory observations were true. Andeans were leaving their reducción towns, but most were not leaving the larger jurisdictions of the reducciónes. In large numbers, they were returning to the hamlets scattered about the reducción territory where their parents or grandparents had lived before. They then actively refounded their hamlets as towns, based on the reducción model they had fled, complete with cabildos and cofradías to celebrate the saints. Migrating outside of the jurisdiction and territory of their reducción would change Andeans’ status. Ramírez de Águila reported that in addition to local Indians, the newly created towns were populated by foreign Indians, known as forasteros. Although some forasteros moved to nominally Spanish cities such as Potosí or Cuzco seeking work or attached themselves as paid laborers to Spanish-​owned farms known as haciendas, most forasteros had simply moved to the jurisdiction of other reducción towns. Sometimes they moved to join a spouse. In other cases, caciques lured forasteros to their jurisdiction by promising that they would pay reduced tribute in return for their labor.3 The large number of forasteros would help drive the creation of new annex towns in the jurisdiction of reducciones. Like Viceroy Toledo before him, Ramírez de Águila commented on the numbers of literate Indians, the indios ladinos. He reported that “they are eager” to learn to “read, write and speak Spanish.” Some were caciques who even adopted Spanish surnames such as Mendoza, Guzman or Velasco, and sent their sons to the Jesuit founded schools. As Ramírez de Águila made clear though, the culture of literacy in Spanish was widespread. Even those who were not the best educated or most intelligent produced “wills, petitions, and letters.”4 The numbers of indios ladinos had grown substantially in the generations following the creation of reducciones, with some learning to read and write directly through priestly instruction or from other indios ladinos. Indios ladinos adapted colonial institutions and ideas designed to evangelize Andeans and bring them buena policía.5 With their ability to navigate the Spanish and indigenous worlds, they frequently played a leading role in the creation of new towns. To be sure, not all Spaniards thought that the number of indios ladinos was a positive thing. Some wondered what they would do with their knowledge. One priest who took a particularly dim view of the indios ladinos was Bartolomé Álvarez, who served as parish priest of the reducción town Aullagas, near San Pedro de Condo in the province of Paria, during the 1580s. In a lengthy memorial dedicated to King Philip II, he railed against Andeans for not being good





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Christians and for using their literacy for nefarious ends. Álvarez believed that indios ladinos only sought an education to “know how to initiate a lawsuit and how to petition the court to move forward a criminal case.” As proof of this he offered the information that an indio ladino from the reducción town of Andamarca in the province of Carangas had “bought a ‘Monterroso,’ ” a widely published guide to the proper wording of legal documents. In Corque, another Carangas-​province reducción town, an indio ladino had bought Las Siete Partidas, a comprehensive, multivolume law code that served as the fundamental law of Spain and its empire.6 Certainly knowing “how to initiate a law suit” would be an advantage as Andeans sought to legally create new towns. However, Álvarez foresaw grave problems growing from this political education. As he put it, those who have “the desire to learn to make a petition and study law to do evil will also want tomorrow to learn to interpret the gospel,” something he clearly thought them incapable of doing properly.7 Reducción towns, as instruments to teach good habits through self-​ governance and to evangelize, were subject to both ecclesiastical and civil authorities. To make a new town, Andeans had to navigate complex church and state bureaucracies.8 In the case of Santa Bárbara de Culta, initially only a hamlet belonging to San Pedro de Condo, Andeans gained permission from the archbishop in the distant city of La Plata to found a chapel and a cofradía, thus creating incipient town institutions. La Plata was also the seat of the Audiencia, the appeals court to which they would bring suits against caciques, corregidores, priests, and Spaniards who they accused of taking their lands. In the case of Santiago de Tolapampa, just south of Condo, in the vicinity of the Siwaruyu-​ Arakapi diarchy, Andeans appealed directly to the viceroy for permission to establish their town. Both were founded as annex towns in the territory of their original reducción towns, and both were part of what in Inca times had been the Killaka federation, now split into multiple jurisdictions. These cases demonstrate how the groundwork was laid within the new towns for cofradías and cabildos, as the key institutions supporting the religious and civic sides of buena policía and república. Reading these cases with attention to the process of legal disputation that produced the sources shows that the same documents provide evidence to support very different conclusions. Those who opposed indigenous efforts to found new annex towns, the priests and corregidores, tell a story of the failure of reducción and conversion. Indigenous people themselves argued that they needed to found annex towns for a combination of practical and pious reasons; they needed to be closer to their fields and pastures and to celebrate Christian saints in their new chapels. The truth, of course, lies somewhere in between.



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Santa Bárbara de Culta Around 1616 a group of Aymara-​speaking people who had been assigned to the reducción of San Pedro de Condo in Paria province sought a license from the Archbishop of La Plata (present-​day Sucre, Bolivia) to found a chapel and cofradía for an image of Santa Bárbara they had bought. As the cofradía founders later described their settlement in a deposition given to religious authorities, Don Pedro Chiri prioste [cofradía officer] and don Diego Chiri mayordomo [cofradía officer, see Figure 4.1] and the rest of the founders of the cofradía of Santa Bárbara [in the jurisdiction] of the town of Condocondo:  I say that in the hamlet of Uma hunto [later renamed Culta] I have my farm with fields and herds. There, about nine years ago, more or less, with the assistance of the priest of the pueblo, we founded the said cofradía with the offices and conditions that continue. To found it, a license was obtained and with that it has continued to this day. And without doubt the said cofradía and church where it is founded, have everything needed to celebrate the divine cult, without missing anything, all bought at our own cost.9 After receiving a license from the archbishop, the Chiri brothers bought an image of Santa Bárbara, built a chapel in her honor, and began to collect alms in her name, all done with the knowledge, support, and permission of officials in the archbishopric. Although both Chiri brothers used the honorific title “don,” neither one claimed cacique status, yet they were founders and leaders of their cofradía. Other people whose parents or grandparents had been originally resettled in the reducción of San Pedro de Condo also sought to live in the new town growing up around the chapel dedicated to Santa Bárbara. The Chiri brothers never reported how they became aware of the process necessary to legally establish a cofradía and a chapel, but a robust business in making, selling, and repairing saints’ images and the ornaments needed for a chapel had developed in the silver mining center of Potosí, a few days’ walk from the new chapel of Santa Bárbara. While Protestants by and large rejected images in churches, Catholic theologians at the Council of Trent embraced them and sparked the codification of the visual element of Catholicism in art, architecture, and design. Lists of specific sizes and materials for items needed for chapels first appeared in publications in the viceroyalty of Peru following the Third Council of Lima (1582–​1584).10 One can imagine that the mestizo and Indian artisans and artists in wealthy mining cities such as Potosí or Oruro would be aware of regulations that were key to their livelihood and eager to explain to Andeans





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Figure 4.1  The Mayordomo. Indigenous author and artist, Guaman Poma de Ayala, made this drawing of an indigenous mayordomo of a cofradía in the early seventeenth century, about the same time that the Chiri brothers founded their cofradía dedicated to Santa Bárbara. Royal Danish Library, GKS 2232 4º [or “4to” or “quarto”]: Guaman Poma, Nueva corónica y buen gobierno (1615).

from a rural reducción what they needed to buy to conform to church rules. They may have given advice about what to include in a license petition to the archbishop. The Chiris might also have learned from watching others fail: ecclesiastical orders had led to the destruction of four or five earlier chapels in Condo’s jurisdiction. As indios ladinos they could have read those earlier orders and learned how to frame their request. One condition of the Chiris’ license was that their parish priest regularly come to their chapel to say mass. This is where the Chiris ran into problems.



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Their current parish priest did not want to travel the nearly forty miles to their chapel to say mass. Instead, the priest wanted the Chiris to come to Condo. But, as the Chiri brothers pointed out, although they still belonged to the parish of Condo, Condo was too far to go to several times a week for catechism classes or to hear mass from their parish priest while tending their crops and herds of llamas, alpacas, and sheep. The priest of Condo, Gonzalo Leal Vejarano, saw things quite differently. He defied the order from the archbishop to travel to Culta to say mass. Instead he claimed that the Chiri brothers as indios ladinos were not trustworthy and had gained permission for their chapel and cofradía by lying. Worse, their lies concealed their return to pre-​Christian religious practices. Simply put, for the priest Vejarano, the Chiri brothers and all others who lived in Santa Bárbara de Culta were idolaters.11 Campaigns to extirpate idolatry among indigenous people escalated in the early decades of the seventeenth century in the viceroyalty of Peru. Tridentine reforms in the late sixteenth century had led to changes in methods of evangelization as well as changing expectations for indigenous parishioners: attempts were made to more closely control cofradía activities, deemed too independent and possibly a cover for idolatry, and priests were supposed to closely supervise their parishes.12 Regarded in ecclesiastical law as perpetual “new Christians,” indigenous people of the Americas were thought to be prone to misinterpret the gospel and in constant danger of returning to pre-​Conquest religious practice. Accusations of idolatry, usually made by the local parish priest, were frequently made against Andeans who left their reducción to create their own town. That was certainly the case in Cajatambo province where massive inspection tours were carried out in the seventeenth century after priests accused their parishioners of returning to their old villages to worship idols. Some Andeans confessed to making sacrifices to their wakas and mummified ancestors so that their community’s lawsuits would succeed, or planting crops to support their wakas and mummified ancestors under the pretext that they were for the community. In other towns, cofradía leaders confessed to asking permission from their wakas to celebrate the Christian saints. While there were no formal investigations of idolatry in the jurisdiction of Condo, certainly some native Andeans continued with some of their pre-​Conquest religious practices. Others, probably the majority, followed cultural practices that they understood as part of their own Christian practice but which many Spaniards would take as devil-​ inspired idolatry.13 Condo parish priest Vejarano never offered any evidence of his accusations of idolatry. To him, as well as many other priests, it was self-​evident that if Indians wanted to leave their reducciónes it was only with wicked intent. However, priests who could prove their accusations of idolatry, or at least claim to have destroyed Indians’ idols, and then redeemed the Indians through their wise teaching, stood





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to gain. Successful idolatry campaigns became a step to advancement, maybe a bigger and richer Indian parish, or even a benefice in a Spanish city.14 Countless “proofs of services and merits” produced by seventeenth-​century priests proudly list idols destroyed and devil-​inspired cults eliminated. The waves of accusations of idolatry in the viceroyalty of Peru fit that period’s pattern of moral reform; cultural practices, such as dancing, that earlier had been taken as legitimate ways to worship, were no longer tolerated.15 But the Chiri brothers were not to be undone by their parish priest. They filed an appeal with the archbishopric that once again confirmed that they had a license for their cofradía and had at their own expense bought everything needed for worship. The problem, as they saw it, was that they had a lazy priest who refused to walk to their chapel to say mass. Thus, they concluded their petition: We ask and beseech that Your Mercy send an order, a warrant with penalties and legal consequences so that the priest continues with the said good work [of our chapel, which] besides being in the service of God, has been for the good of the Indians. Likewise he should return all the ornaments, chalices, and all the rest of the things that he has in his power because none of it belongs to him legally but to the cofradía. With this, we should well receive the justice that we request. [signed] Don Pedro Chiri /​Don Diego Chiri16 The Chiris were in luck because their appeal was received by Dr.  Pascual Peroches. For extended periods of time during the seventeenth century the Archbishopric of La Plata was in sede vacante, without a presiding prelate. After Archbishop Fray Gerónimo Méndez de Tiedra, who originally granted the license to the Chiri brothers, died in 1620 and before his replacement arrived in 1626, Dr. Pascual Peroches, as the Vicar-​General of the diocese (chief administrative officer), was the highest-​ranking officer in the archbishopric. A native of Spain, Peroches had come to the viceroyalty of Peru as a protégé of Archbishop Mogrovejo, a prelate who was famous for his efforts to convert the Indians and for expanding of the number of parishes under his jurisdiction, probably by giving permission to people like the Chiri brothers to create new ones. Mogrovejo had earlier named Peroches chief inspector for the archbishopric of Lima, giving him wide experience in rural Indian parishes.17 Peroches’ response to the Chiri brothers’ petition was short and to the point: I order that Gonzalo Leal Vejarano, priest of Condo be notified that he [must] guard the custom in the celebration of that cofradía and that he carefully keep the Holy Sacraments in that hamlet and return the ornaments to the Indian mayordomos that he took from there on pain



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of excommunication, without giving the Indians any further reason to complain against him.18 Vejarano refused to obey Dr. Peroches’s order, leading the Chiri brothers to send yet another petition to the archbishopric. By this time, a new archbishop, Hernando Arias de Ugarte, had been named for La Plata. Upon his arrival, Arias de Ugarte began to assert his authority over the parish priests for Indians, who had been loosely supervised during the sede vacante and who were viewed as a discipline problem.19 When the Chiris’ petition was presented to the new archbishop in September 1626, he asked to have the entire case reviewed. The judicial review revealed a complex case of charges and counter-​charges between the Chiri brothers and their parish priest Vejarano. Three separate inspections had been conducted in the rural reducción town of San Pedro de Condo, the head seat of the Chiris’ parish, with ecclesiastical lawyers sent to take sworn testimony from the parish priest. Vejarano repeatedly claimed that it was never the custom for a priest to go the chapel of Santa Bárbara to say mass, that they had won their license for their cofradía through deception, that the only reason the Indians had founded the chapel and cofradía was to avoid mass, and that they were drinking, dancing, singing, and committing incest at their chapel—​all clear signs of idolatry to Vejerano. Some of the church inspectors seemed to agree: one inspector urged that the houses in the hamlet dedicated to Santa Bárbara should be burned down to force the Chiris and their ilk back to Condo. Yet, the highest authorities within the archbishopric repeatedly upheld the Chiris’ case. Even so Vejarano refused to make the long-​distance trek to the chapel of Santa Bárbara to say mass for the Indians. With orders from the archbishop and the chief administrative officer for the archdiocese, as well as the stubborn insistence of the Chiris, one would think that Vejarano would back down, obey the higher authorities, and go to the chapel and say mass. Instead he intensified his argument, adding a new accusation that, contrary to church decrees, the cofradía was not reporting its financial accounts to the archbishopric. Vejarano claimed that the members of the cofradía had begged alms amounting to over a thousand pesos, a large sum of money, which they concealed from the ecclesiastic officials so that they could use the money to get drunk and commit idolatry. Despite the Chiris’ consistent attempts to present themselves as good Christians, Vejarano insisted their motives were impure.20 However, the Chiris offered a legal counter strategy, claiming that “old Indians” in their chapel-​hamlet of Santa Bárbara de Culta were “without the sacrament of confession and have died without it, and without hearing mass.” For officials in the archbishop’s office, their emphasis on the sacraments rang true and their dedication to Santa Bárbara appeared sincere. The Chiris had followed the time-​consuming and expensive procedure to legally establish their chapel.





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They had walked over sixty miles to La Plata to obtain the license and constitution and then on to Potosí or Oruro to buy their image of Santa Bárbara and the necessary ornaments without which mass could not be celebrated. The same archbishop who licensed the Chiris’ chapel had forbidden a priest to say mass in another nearby indigenous hamlet because it was not furnished properly.21 Among the listed items the Chiris had purchased were a chalice and a paten (a plate for the host), along with a white altar cloth (a corporal) and a veil of litmus blue taffeta with which to cover them. For the priestly vestments they had purchased a silk maniple, stole, chasuble, and a linen cloth for the priest to wipe his hands on during the sacrifice of the mass. Such vestments were frequently made by native artisans who incorporated Andean fabrics, techniques, and designs, making the hybrid Andeanization of Christianity visible. The Chiris had also purchased silver cruets for water and hand cloths for the lavatory of the chapel. Finally, they had purchased a taffeta pennant with the insignia of Santa Bárbara and emblazoned with a silver cross. If the Chiris followed established instructions, this would have been a very large, nearly sixteen square feet fringed banner on a wooden pole over seven feet long. This was the banner that the Chiris carried as they marched across the archdiocese begging alms in the name of Santa Bárbara.22 This ritual act would have helped create the religious, social, economic, and emotional ties to the community growing out of the formal legal framework of license and constitution. In creating their cofradía and chapel the Chiris were laying the legal groundwork for a new parish and a new town. Decrees at the Council of Trent had provided that new parishes could be created, even over the objections of the parish priest if “parishioners can only come to receive the sacraments and attend divine offices with great inconvenience, because of distance or inaccessibility.”23 The Chiris repeatedly affirmed that people in their hamlet were without the sacraments because of the difficulty of traveling to Condo. At the same time, the cofradía dedicated to Santa Bárbara also provided a form of kinship that bound members together. Cofradía members were cofrades, co-​brothers or siblings “related” through their saint.24 Although the Chiri brothers did not include their cofradía constitution in their petition, an extant constitution for a cofradía elsewhere dating from 1592 provides a clue to their inclusiveness, “men as well as women of whatever condition of estate, whether they are young or old can enter in this holy cofradía.”25 Within a few years, the hamlet would also gain the civil offices of the cabildo. Over time, the cofradía and cabildo would provide bases for forasteros to become full members of the community. By participating in the religious and civil offices native Andeans brought Santa Bárbara de Culta into being as a town.26 The people of Santa Bárbara de Culta were not alone in doing this; by the early seventeenth century two other licensed saints’ chapels and annexes had



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Figure 4.2  The Fragmentation of Asanaqi Territory and Ayllus. In 1532, at the time of the Spanish invasion, the people of the ten ayllus that made up Asanaqi lived scattered over the territory with two “capital” towns. In the 1570s, under Viceroy Toledo, the territory was formally divided into two reducciones, Condo and Challapata, with some portion of the ten Asanaqi ayllus assigned to each town (Huari included non-​Asanaqi people). By 1625, five Andean-​created annex towns, each with only a portion of Asanaqi ayllus, had been carved out of the territory. From Condo’s jurisdiction, Culta was settled by ayllu Yanaque, Cahuayo was almost entirely ayllu Sullcayana, and Cacachaca was a mix of the ayllus Sullcayana and Lower Cahualli. Map by Erin Greb Cartography.

been founded within San Pedro de Condo’s jurisdiction by indigenous petition to authorities. Annex town foundation continued the fragmentation of what had been pre-​Conquest Asanaqi. The maps in Figure 4.2 show this fragmentation of territory and authority. In 1573 Toledo had divided highland Asanaqi territory into two reducciones, San Juan de Challapata and San Pedro de Condo. By 1625 the two Asanaqi reducciones were carved up by annex towns. Just as Condo (and Challapata) contained some but not all Asanaqi ayllus, each of Condo’s annex towns was home to members from only some of Condo’s seven ayllus. All three annexes remained under the control of Condo’s cacique, and their nascent





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cabildos were still subject to Condo’s cabildo. Culta, the first of the three annex towns to gain its independence from Condo, would only do so in 1779, over one hundred and fifty years after its foundation by the Chiri brothers. Today, people in Santa Bárbara de Culta give credit to Santa Bárbara as the founder of their town, in a miraculous apparition that forced people of the area to build a chapel in her honor.27 The story transfers agency from humans to the saint, but also it underscores the importance of the kinship created in the confraternal celebrations of cofradías in consolidating ties to a new community.

Santiago de Tolapampa Just about the same time the Chiris founded Santa Bárbara de Culta, a parish priest of the reducción town of Todos Santos de Tomave, in the neighboring province of Porco, sent an impassioned letter to the Audiencia of Charcas in the capital city of La Plata. The priest, Luis de Vega, had just found out that the Audiencia, one of only three Spanish high courts in the viceroyalty of Peru at the time, had ordered an investigation into accusations that he, along with an inspector from the archbishopric of La Plata, had burned down the homes of parishioners who had moved to an annex town they called Santiago de Tolapampa. Vega vehemently denied this accusation and even bet the Audiencia “two chickens” that they would find no evidence. Instead, he argued the houses were still standing and accused the local corregidor and his lieutenant of concocting the story to discredit him and terrorize the Indians.28 Vega’s lengthy diatribe captures the contemporary understanding that resettlement policy was largely a failure and that Indians were “resisting” the policy by fleeing their new towns. In marshalling evidence in his favor, Vega recounted the history of Todos Santos de Tomave, beginning with its 1575 foundation as a reducción, most likely taking his information from the census report made at the time of the foundation of the reducción kept in the town’s caja de comunidad.29 In creating reducciones, Spaniards were not too concerned with maintaining pre-​Conquest distinctions between ethnic groups. In the case of the reducción town of Tomave, it seems that Inca resettlement policy converged with Spanish resettlement. The Incas had resettled Siwaruyus in the region, people loyal to the Inca who were to help pacify and control the rebellious Arakapis.30 When the Toledan inspector for the area, Captain Agustín de Ahumada, came to the region he created two reducción towns, Todos Santos de Tomave and Talavera de Puna. Rather than make a town of only Siwaruyus and a town of only Arakapis, he put some people from each ethnic group in each town. 31 Vega reported that at first everyone came to mass, but within a few years people began to drift away because of the hated religious instruction. Every



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Sunday the indigenous alcaldes, acting as assistants to the priest, went from hamlet to hamlet, forcing people to come to mass.32 In Vega’s mind, the problem rested squarely with his troublesome Siwaruyu parishioners. During the 1616 Corpus Christi celebration, a major festival where townspeople marched in procession led by the priest and the consecrated host, Vega rang the church bell to gather everyone for mass and religious instruction, but few heeded the call.33 Vega sought out his Siwaruyu parishioners: “I went to their homes and found them closed and in every one, three, four, five or six people were drinking and worshipping Inca style.” Following his discovery, Vega forced a number of the Siwaruyus to the plaza where he whipped them before saying mass.34 In anticipating the Audiencia’s questions of where the Siwaruyus had fled and how they had come to be there, Vega painted a portrait of indigenous chicanery and Spanish naivete. The Siwaruyus had gone to the viceroy some years earlier and claimed that their fields and pasture lands were far from the reducción of Tomave, making it difficult for them to attend mass there. With this, they had gained permission to found an annex town with its own chapel. Vega declared that it was simply a lie: in reality, he argued, the Siwaruyus lived close to Tomave and were few in number. While it is true that Tolapampa is only ten miles from Tomave, Tolapampa’s territory, where people would have their fields and pastures, extends another twelve miles south from the town of Tolapampa. This meant that some Siwaruyus would have to walk over twenty miles each way to reach Tomave. Nonetheless from Vega’s standpoint, the Siwaruyus had tricked and deceived the viceroy with a plan to avoid mass and Christian indoctrination. To add insult to injury, the Siwaruyus had also obtained an order from the archbishopric of La Plata, requiring Vega to alternate his time between a month in the Siwaruyus’ new chapel and two months in the main church of Tomave. During Holy Week, while Vega and his Arakapi parishioners were in Tomave celebrating in a proper Christian manner, the heathen Siwaruyus were in their annex town, sinning by getting drunk and eating meat when they should have been fasting. To further prove his point, Vega recounted his attempt to discipline the Siwaruyus and their impudent response: I tell you I scolded them a thousand times and they ran away, saying to me, “The viceroy gave me permission to be in this town and I don’t want to go to Tomave.” I said to them, “Look children, even though the viceroy gave you permission to be in this town, he doesn’t know the truth, or the inconvenience. And he didn’t give you permission not to come to mass, or for your sins of incest and drunkenness. If he finds out, he’ll order you to burn this town and be Christians and return to Tomave.”35





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Vega’s petition goes on at great length, denouncing the Siwaruyus for fleeing their reducción and deceiving the viceroy, the archbishop, and several ecclesiastical inspectors who reviewed the case. Increasingly shrill, he finally concluded that his Siwaruyu parishioners were a bunch of “ignoramuses” who were “going to hell.” In many ways, Vega’s account echoes the struggles between the Chiri brothers of Culta and their priest. Vega’s account of his struggles with his Siwaruyu parishioners is now labeled as “indigenous resistance to the new regime” of reducciones in the Bolivian National Archives. Indeed, that is the way Vega interpreted and framed the events he reported. What lends credence to Vega’s account are other petitions he sent to the Crown and to the Audiencia on behalf of Indians’ rights. Just a few years earlier Vega had penned a lengthy letter to the King of Spain denouncing the mita, the forced labor in the mines of Potosí, for ruining the Indians’ lives and forcing him to close the school he had operated in Tomave. As Vega put it, “I had gathered in a school some young men and they learned how to pray very well, and some how to read and write. . . . The new year of 1612 came, and their parents were named for the mita, and they took them all away from me. . . [Now] there is no longer a school.” Without an education, he lamented “how will they be Christian?” He worried, too, over the heavy economic burden of the mita and contended that Indians were fleeing their towns as a result. Vega was sympathetic with caciques, believing that they were forced into abusive actions they did not want to take. One cacique told Vega that if he didn’t provide Indians for mita, he would be put in stocks, and “with this, father, what am I to do? I lay hands on the first Indians I find and I take everything they have, left and right, and I comply with the mita.”36 Knowing something of Vega’s pleas to the crown for better treatment of Indians might lead one to accept his account of the Siwaruyus. But since Vega had accused his Siwaruyu parishioners of idolatry, and successful prosecution of idolatry could lead to promotion and even fame in the early seventeenth century, there is a need for caution. Just a few months before he defended himself against accusations of burning down the Siwaruyu houses, Vega had applied for promotion to a wealthier parish but was rejected. He was ranked third out of three candidates despite his excellent command of Aymara. Perhaps with his accusations of idolatry he hoped to draw favorable attention to himself. 37 Fortunately, another version of these same events exists, this one from the Siwaruyu’s viewpoint. A 1603 document, held in the archives in the neighboring Siwaruyu town of San Francisco de Coroma, also recounts the foundation of Santiago de Tolapampa by Siwaruyus.38 In many ways, it complements the one produced by the priest Luis de Vega in 1613; many of the same people, the viceroy, corregidor, and priest, are mentioned by name in both accounts.



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In the Siwaruyu telling, however, they followed the channels of civil law to create their town. Unlike the Chiris who focused their efforts on ecclesiastical license and permission, the Siwaruyus took their demands for a new annex town directly to civil authorities. The account begins with the corregidor’s formal receipt of a petition presented to him by Siwaruyu cacique Don Diego Hallasa, and cabildo principales Don Baltazar Maclla and Don Juan Alavile, from the towns of Todos Santos de Tomave and San Francisco de Coroma. In the thirty years since Toledo, the office of “principal” had come to refer to those who were present or past members of the cabildo.39 As the petition is written in the first person, it seems to have been composed (or dictated) by Don Diego Hallasa, the Siwaruyu cacique of Coroma, with the assistance of the principales who also signed the document.40 I say that the Excellent Señor Don Luis de Velasco viceroy of these kingdoms orders through this provision, based on the presentation that we made, that the Indians of the said parcialidad [Siwaruyus] that are settled in the town of Todos Santos de Quiocaya [an early name for Tomave] in the pampa of Tolapampa should make there a new town and all the Indians of the said parcialidad that are contained in the said provision should be reduced to it. . . . We ask and beg Your Mercy, if to this end, you will name and order a person who will go and determine the limits of the said town and the plaza, church and house of the cabildo and all the rest necessary to conform to law so that in everything it will comply with what His Excellency [the viceroy] orders and commands, as well to the service of God, our Lord and of His Majesty and in the conservation of the said Indians . . .  Don Diego Hallasa, Don Baltazar Maclla, Don Juan Alavile 41 The petition makes clear that the townspeople from Todos Santos de Tomave and San Francisco de Coroma knew that they could appeal directly to the viceroy—​the king of Spain’s direct representative and the highest ranking Spanish official in the Americas—​over the heads of the judges of the Audiencia in La Plata.42 Much as with Spanish towns, each indigenous town was imagined as a self-​governing republic, with Crown-​delegated sovereignty. It was limited sovereignty to be sure but still gave its inhabitants negotiating power with the Crown and the Crown’s representative, the viceroy. The people who were forming Santiago de Tolapampa would gain that right to appeal, to litigate, and to dispute once they had created their town. An order from Viceroy Velasco followed the Siwaruyus’ petition to create Tolapampa. Decrees of this sort begin by repeating the information presented to them by the petitioners, who in addition to Don Diego Hallasa, Don Juan Alavile,





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and Don Baltazar Maclla, included four other Siwaruyu leaders, none of whom, aside from Don Diego Hallasa, were caciques. They recounted the history of the creation of the reducción of Tomave. Reduced by Captain Agustín de Ahumado in 1575, the petition noted that it was done “forcibly and against their will” because it was so far from their fields and pastures. These were not idle complaints; they were practical and legal justifications for a new town. Toledo’s ordinances, although no doubt frequently ignored, ordered that Indians should be consulted as to the location of their reducción town and that it should be a reasonable distance from their fields.43 Then the Siwaruyus offered what was perhaps an even more compelling reason for their new town: they feared that they could not be good Christians in Tomave. In part this was because their fields were so far from Tomave that they had to walk many hours in order to go to mass.44 But it was also the fault of the other “nation” in their reducción, the Arakapis. Siwaruyu leaders labeled the Arakapis as “cimarrones,” runaways, and wild, feral, and drunken heathen, who “regularly fail to pay or deliver their mita, tribute, and personal service.” The Siwaruyus expressed worry that their own people “are mixed up among” the Arakapis and “taking on the[ir bad] habits . . . and failing in their duties.” The only way they could be sure to maintain their good Christian habits was to keep their distance from the Arakapis. Clearly, “all of this would be remedied if . . . they can found a little town, an annex” to Tomave.45 These arguments demonstrate that early seventeenth-​century Andeans knew not only who could grant permission for their new town but also how to frame their request to appeal to Spaniards’ legal and moral concerns. After gaining permission from the viceroy for their new town, Siwaruyu leaders presented the order to the local Spanish magistrate for their province, who in turn named a judge to comply with the viceroy’s orders. Jacomé de Manacré, “commissioned judge for the matters of population,” traveled to the original reducción town of Tomave and met with the principales and alcaldes for both Siwaruyus and Arakapis, thus clearly involving the cabildo in this process of town creation (see Figure 4.3). While in Tomave, Manacré observed that most of the Siwaruyus’s houses were “all closed up with rocks and mud,” confirming that they had fled their reducción. But the Arakapis were not living there either; Tomave was largely abandoned. It seems that the Arakapis had also been busy creating new towns. To remedy the situation, Judge Manacré ordered that those Arakapis “who are outside [Tomave], settled in hidden corners and hamlets and canyons, demolish those [houses]... taking away with them whatever wooden beams there might be, to rebuild houses” in Tomave, or “buy those” of the Siwaruyus, who were ordered to sell at “very moderate prices.”46 The Siwaruyus claimed to need a new town to remain good Christians and in contrast to the charges brought by the later priest Vega, the Siwaruyus argued that the parish priest of Tomave would be able to “go there with the greatest



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Figure 4.3  The Alcalde. Indigenous author and artist, Guaman Poma de Ayala, made this drawing of an indigenous alcalde in the early seventeenth century, about the same time that the alcaldes in Tomave were involved in the creation of the annex town of Santiago de Tolapampa. Royal Danish Library, GKS 2232 4º [or “4to” or “quarto”]: Guaman Poma, Nueva corónica y buen gobierno (1615).

of ease to teach and administer the Holy sacraments to those that would settle Tolapampa.” In a sense the Siwaruyus were right. There was a parish house in Tolapampa, so the priest did not have to make the lengthy trip in one day but could spend a month there, alternating with two months in Tomave, as the archbishop had ordered. The Siwaruyus even offered to construct the new town, “at their own cost.”47 The work would be done by ayllu, coordinated by their jilaqatas, ayllu leaders, and in so doing, ayllus would be mapped onto the town.





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Their request granted, judge Jacomé de Manacré, came to the plain or pampa of tola shrubs to formally create the town of Tolapampa. The layout for the new town would follow the standard grid pattern of reducciones, which had become the model for the succeeding generations’ annex towns. Manacré read the orders from the viceroy in Spanish, because, as he noted in his report, the cacique Don Diego Hallasa and alcalde don Francisco Aja were “muy ladinos,” very fluent in Spanish language and culture. Taking in hand the original Toledan census for Tomave, and comparing that to the people assembled in Tolapampa, Manacré created a padrón—​a list of inhabitants—​for the new annex-​town of Santiago de Tolapama on January 18, 1603, making de jure what was clearly already a de facto town. The petition to the viceroy, his orders, and the padrón were carefully copied and put in the cajas de comunidad in the new annex of Tolapampa, as well as in the towns of Tomave and Coroma since Siwaruyus came from both those towns. One hundred forty-​four men, women, and children lined up by ayllu to be counted as the new residents of Tolapampa. Not merely passive witnesses, they had set in motion the creation of legal documents that vested their hamlet with semi-​independent status, laying the groundwork for the shared sovereignty that would come with a fully fledged cabildo in their república.48 This census would reinforce the ayllu structure by making it part of the town’s institutions. Within a few years, town citizenship became such an identifier that it was tantamount to “ethnic” group. But the new town of Tolapampa was not to remain an exclusively Siwaruyu town; by the early eighteenth century, the padrón also included Arakapi ayllus. And, one hundred years after its foundation, Tolapampa had gained its own annex town, continuing the fragmentation of Siwaruyu-​ Arakapi territory.49

Cofradías and Cabildos in the Seventeenth Century The accounts of town foundation in Culta and Tolapampa show the early adaptation by Andeans of the institutions of cofradía and cabildo. The case in Culta turned on the question of whether the Chiris had legally established a cofradía. For Tolapampa, the archbishop ordered that the parish priest should come to their chapel to say mass, but this could not happen without a license and a constitution to celebrate their saint, Santiago.50 The cabildo activity is, however, less visible. No cabildo officers are named in the Culta case, and only the alcaldes are mentioned in Tolapampa. Cofradía activity is more evident because Andeans were obligated to obtain permission, license and constitution before founding one. Many did, and the church, seeing them as a cover for idolatry, sought to



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limit their number. But Andeans did not have to seek permission to establish cabildos; they had been ordered to establish them. The activities of individual cabildo officers, especially alcaldes and notaries, can be traced at least to the 1580s, but fewer references exist to the cabildo as a body. The relative scarcity of early indigenous cabildo documentation in the viceroyalty of Peru stems in part from Toledo’s orders restricting Andean cabildos from recording many of their juridical activities.51 Unlike the cabildos of Spanish cities and towns, which produced prodigious documentation of cabildo minutes, including fines levied for allowing animals to damage crops, intra-​town disputes over land, and violations over town ordinances, reducción notaries were ordered not to record such activities. The notary, alcaldes, alguaciles, and jilaqatas of indigenous cabildos primarily appear as actors when pursuing causes between towns, between the común, the body of commoners of a town, and a Spaniard, or against their cacique. In all but the last case, documents are headed by the cacique gobernador, seconded by alcaldes, jilaqatas, and alguaciles in the name of the común of the town, so that “the built-​in distortions of the judicial record” obscures the role of cabildo.52 A second reason that evidence for early cabildos appears thin is that for some generations after Toledo’s time, caciques managed to insert their own relatives into cabildo posts, although over time the aristocratic claims of less prominent families in cacical “houses” weakened and evaporated. In any case, thousands of such petitions and appeals to the Audiencia are in existence, and yet are not treated as evidence of an autonomous cabildo, since the first complainant is the hereditary cacique. There are only a handful of records of pre-​eighteenth-​century cases brought by cabildos against their cacique.53 Perhaps the most illustrative is that pursued in 1661 by the indigenous town of San Francisco de Pocona, seeking removal of their cacique governor. In 1661, the entire governing body of the indigenous town of San Francisco de Pocona, all indios ladinos, demanded the removal of their cacique governor. The segunda person, Don Diego Condori, acting with power of attorney, spoke for the procurado, Don García Chane; the two alcaldes ordinarios, Don Sebastián Mita and Don Pedro Turumaya; the alguacil mayor, Nicolás Puno; the acalde of the annex town of Cupe, Don Luis Yaure; and two additional leaders who were referred to as principales, Juan Cami and Sebastián Samara. These men composed, wrote, and signed, complete with individual flourishes, the petition they addressed to the Audiencia in La Plata. They accused their cacique governor of beating and imprisoning people unjustly and ultimately driving residents from the town.54 Whatever their ancestry or pretensions, these cabildo members were in some way what the priest Bartolomé Álvarez’s most feared:  they clearly had a legal format to follow, very likely the notarial guide that Father Álvarez had identified





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as having been purchased by indios ladinos in Carangas province. Indeed, San Francisco de Pocona was a center of coca leaf production for people from the former federations of Killaka and Carangas, so perhaps they shared legal information. Part of the discussion in the file prompted by the cabildo’s request to replace their cacique governor concerned the legitimate right to rule, a topic covered closely in the Siete Partidas, another book that Álvarez claimed had been purchased by indios ladinos in Carangas province. Of course, the cacique, Don Diego Xaraxuri, fought back.55 The case involved deep-​seated questions about legitimate rule, the right of hereditary succession, and who had the authority to name or remove someone from the office of cacique governor. Even the exact title and jurisdiction of the office was under question. During most of the colonial era, cacique was regarded as a heredity office, separate from governor, an appointed office.56 But the cacique, the cabildo, the corregidor, and the bureaucrats of the Audiencia staked out different positions, with both the corregidor and the Audiencia appearing to claim jurisdiction for naming governors, if not caciques.57 The cabildo acknowledged Don Diego’s hereditary right to be cacique, but denied he had any right to be governor and used their legal standing to try to remove him from office, arguing that he lacked the capacity to govern.58 By doing so, they seemed to be claiming “the people’s” right to determine who had such qualities.

The Importance of Towns Despite Spaniards’ belief that urban life was imperative to civilization and Christianity, by and large they rejected the idea that Andeans should create their own towns. Yet, the multiplication of annex towns such as Santa Bárbara de Culta, Santiago de Tolapampa, and Pocona’s annex of Cupe during the generations following the Visita General is attested everywhere in colonial Peru. Evidence regarding town creation in the seventeenth century in Bolivian, Peruvian, Argentine, and Spanish archives demonstrates that new towns were established through the determination and persistence of indigenous Andeans largely against the will of the colonial regime, or at least its local officials, who, in nearly every case denounced their creation as efforts to avoid Christianity, or return to their old idolatrous ways. In fact, by the early seventeenth century, more than a full generation after Toledo’s Visita General and resettlement policy, it had become so important to create towns that Andeans seemed dedicated to struggles to reduce themselves.59 The rapid expansion in the number of licensed annex towns, each with a church ready for mass, patron saint, and town councils are evidence that reducción and evangelization were at some level profoundly successful, since the new towns followed the plan of the reducción and



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duplicated its key institutions. Flight was away from the original towns but into the embrace of town-​centered life.60 What was the motivation to establish so many new towns? There were at least two separate forces at work. Although the continuing decline in native population would seem antithetical to town creation, this population loss had the opposite effect.61 In the late sixteenth century, the Crown began to apply an Iberian policy known as composiciones de tierras to the land holdings of indigenous towns in the viceroyalty of Peru, where all “vacant” land was subject to being reclaimed by the Crown as part of the king’s patrimony and auctioned off, as private property, to the highest bidder, most often a Spaniard.62 With this institutionalized land theft, reducción towns were forced to bid for their own lands at auction or lose them.63 Santa Bárbara de Culta is one such case. Its fields and pastures belonged to the Chiris and other members of their cofradía, all of whom were supposed to reside in San Pedro de Condo, forty miles away. Full-​ time residence in Condo would have made working fields or pasturing llamas there entirely impossible. Moving to the area of Culta was required for life and also to continue to lay claim to lands by using them. Priests may have been correct that Indians also sought to return to at least some of their old ways, since ancestral lands held the wakas, from which ancestors were thought to have sprung and were the sites of mountains, springs, and lakes that people like the Chiris held dear. But they did not return to all their old ways; when they reoccupied distant fields and pre-​Conquest hamlets, they created new towns that became the annexes of the original reducción, incorporating its key religious and civic institutions into an original amalgam of the old and new, pre-​Conquest Andean and Spanish-​Christian ways. Land claims, however, do not explain why within annex-​towns, Andeans created chapels and organized cofradías, or why they would want to establish their own town council. Such things would be unnecessary if their motive was to return to their old ways. Andeans had begun to make an imposed religion their own; they had built their churches through their own labor and collected donations to buy saints’ images and ornaments to beautify the newly sacred places, and they buried their dead within their new churches.64 Reducciones had become key in producing social life because the Andean uptake of the civil and religious institutions within towns had become central to defining community and legitimate membership in it. That is not to say that cabildo and cofradía within reducción towns were adopted or operated exactly as they did in Castile; indigenous Andeans had their own understandings of saints and religious celebrations, kinship and personhood, political life, and authority. Self-​government by commoner Indians was a colonial innovation for those accustomed to being subject to the rule of nobles. One clear advantage of establishing new towns was the possibility for commoner Andeans to enjoy





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some degree of self-​determination and to represent their own interests against those of priests, hacendados, or, as in the cases of Pocona and Condo, their own hereditary caciques. Establishing chapels and cofradías dedicated to saints laid the groundwork for political solidarity and sovereignty within commoner-​led repúblicas. Saints, particularly patron saints with their miraculous foundation stories that held that the saint had insisted on staying in a particular location, tied Andeans to place. Saints, in contrast to pre-​Columbian wakas, were more egalitarian and accepted all as their children.65 Membership in a cofradía tied people together through “fictive” kinship capable of weaving immigrant forasteros into the communities they had fled to. The attraction of self-​determination helps to explain why most cases of town foundation were led by commoners, facing priestly and sometimes cacical opposition.66 Indeed, even the evidence of massive forasteraje during the seventeenth century—​of the flight of indigenous people from their original reducciones—​ brought them back into the arms of indigenous towns and parishes.67 Early on, becoming a forastero in a new town, out of reach of original tribute collectors and labor levies, afforded advantages, leading some caciques to attract immigrants with promises of temporary relief from fiscal pressures.68 According to the1680s census ordered by Viceroy Duque de la Palata, up to half of the population in some regions of the Andes, including the areas discussed here were forasteros.69 Caciques tried to track down people who had moved from their home communities so that they could collect tribute from them. This would come to an end with the Duque de la Palata census. Although the inspectors still carefully noted the original home reducción of forasteros, there were also orders that no more movement should take place, that forasteros should remain in their new towns where they would now pay tribute. The upshot of this is that forastero became a tribute category and permanent settlers in their new town. Forasteros’ efforts to settle in their adopted towns made cofradías and cabildo more important than ever. The new social forms of Christianity and town life made incorporation into towns easier for forasteros than it would have been before the Spanish Conquest since membership in the community could proceed through service to the community in cabildo posts and cofradía positions. Little by little the incorporation of forasteros through confraternal celebration of saint images ingrained these devotional objects into the territory in ways that paralleled and incorporated aspects of the adoration of lineage-​associated wakas, but ultimately displaced them. Another change also helped to make towns permanent: Andeans acquired recognizable surnames. Although early census reports record surnames, they were not used in any contemporary way; it is not possible use them to trace familial relations. These early surnames were completely gendered, with sets of surnames that were only used by women. Another complicating factor is that children did



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not necessarily take the surname of either mother or father. Although it is not clear exactly when this change took place, by about 1720, surnames were in place in census records. With fixed surnames, Andeans would be accountable (and legible) to Spaniards in a more complete fashion. Inheritance rules and property relations could be more closely monitored, making it harder for Andeans to leave a reducción and resettle elsewhere. 70 For Spaniards, reducción was a utopian project in social engineering on a massive scale.71 Implanting reducciones and bringing Indians to buena policía and the cult of the saints led to the uptake of those institutions and to indigenous participation in self-​governing political life, a legal regime, collective religion, and a written documentary, archival society. Yet the new colonial culture, neither pre-​Columbian nor Spanish, but one founded on permanent inequality and exploitation of Indians by Spaniards, would ensure that for Spaniards all this would be evidence of duplicity, lack of reason, and resistance to civilization. What Indians were doing in founding new towns was proof of civility and Christian zeal only when done by Spaniards.72 An insuperable contradiction at the heart of all colonial projects ensures that they can never succeed in “civilizing” the colonized. However, a reexamination of the evidence shows that Indians refused to be cast into the traditional past or infantilized as mere passive recipients of policy and policía. The Chiri brothers, the people of Tolapampa, and the cabildo of Pocona had begun a process of making reducción and its institutions their own. Producing something different than the Castilian model, later generations of Andeans would further shape the grid-​plan town spaces and institutions to their own ends. Through effective legal strategies, over the next 150 years they would transform reducción into the principal vehicle through which they would negotiate relative autonomy and assert their legal rights in colonial courtrooms. Perhaps the key innovation was the transformation of the ayllu and inter-​ ayllu relations through the indigenous appropriation or reworking and merging of cabildo and cofradía. Through this, Andeans would find a way to harmonize town república with territorial ayllus, grounding notions of justice and community politics in a thoroughly Andeanized moral order. Not just laws and religious beliefs, this moral politics (and economy) had a body—​made tangible when all the town’s ayllus came together for religious festivals and political meetings, and a name that distanced it from the rule-​by-​lineage aristocracy of caciques: the común.



5   

Cofradía and Cabildo in the Eighteenth Century The Merger of Andean Religiosity and Town Leadership

In 1756 two brothers from the reducción town of San Pedro de Totora, Estevan and Lorenzo García, took to the roads of Carangas province and the neighboring region with a message of liberation. Dressed in the plain brown robes of Franciscan friars, they went about the countryside calling Andeans to come to large gatherings where they proclaimed, “that they came to free them from the yoke of oppression, [and] that the King thus had ordered it.”1 The García brothers announced that they had royal orders reducing the fees that Andeans had to pay to their parish priests for weddings, funerals, baptisms, and, most importantly, for saints’ celebrations, but their priest had refused to post the new fees as the king ordered. Not only did they personally carry news of emancipation from town to town, the García brothers also penned petitions for Andeans far and wide demanding that priests respect the new lower charges, all in the name of “el común de Indios.”2 Well known across the region, the García brothers wielded considerable influence among their fellow comuneros, as commoner Andeans now called themselves, while Spaniards and caciques continued to call them “indios.” El común de indios did not include caciques, their efforts to paint themselves as “dukes and counts” succeeded in setting them apart. The Garcías were not members of the cacical nobility, their authority in the común de indios stemmed from holding cabildo offices and leading cofradía celebrations in honor of their saints. In the one hundred plus years since the indigenous foundations of new towns modeled on reducciones, like Santa Bárbara de Culta and Santiago de Tolapampa, cabildos and cofradias had become the institutions that defined the town, and, more importantly, the comùn, the community of self-​governing commoners attached to the town. Comuneros had expanded the cabildo, redefined cofradías, and adapted Christianity to make them all thoroughly The People Are King: The Making of an Indigenous Andean Politics. S. Elizabeth Penry, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780195161601.001.0001



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Andean. No longer merely the set list of offices that Viceroy Toledo had named in the 1570s, the cabildo had come to include an array of town leaders, including heads of ayllus. And cofradías had become so closely linked with ayllus as to be nearly indistinguishable. This chapter examines the merger of religious and civic offices in reducción towns and their annexes, with emphasis on the Andeanized, ayllu-​based cult to the saints that underwrote it. Far from orthodox Spanish Catholic practice, comuneros celebrated their saints with exuberant feasts, llama sacrifices, libations, and ritualized battles. Sometimes their saints spoke to them and led comuneros to criticize their Spanish priests’ avariciousness and lack of Christian charity. Increasingly, caciques were also targets. Caciques found themselves challenged by the merged civil and religious offices, which, outside of their control, threatened to undermine their rule. Grounding rotating commoner posts in the language and habitus of agro-​pastoral lifeways, the festive side of cabildo and cofradía made commoner leaders into paragons of generosity and fonts of community justice, by legitimating and sacralizing commoner self-​government in ways caciques could no longer match.

Economic Crisis and Religious Reform The conflict between the Garcia brothers of Totora and their priest was rooted in a larger, empire-​wide clash between church and state, dating from the sixteenth century. Spanish invasion and conquest had been partly legitimated through the Papal Bull of 1493, which “donated” the Indies to the Catholic kings in return for sending missionaries to convert the native peoples of the Americas to Christianity, thus reinforcing a theocratic basis of authority.3 Under the Hapsburg monarchy, the Crown’s role expanded from patron of the church (the patronato real), which the Spanish Crown understood to mean that the church would serve as “a branch of the civil service” that would carry out royal orders, to that of vicar (the vicariato), leading the Crown to have a “much more comprehensive system of control over ecclesiastical activities in the Americas.”4 As a result, from early on the Spanish Crown felt compelled to respond to abuses by priests against Indians and sought to curb what it viewed as excessive charges of parish priests.5 As defenders of the Catholic faith, the Hapsburg monarchy faced a series of wars in Europe, leading to increased fiscal demands on its American possessions. To meet these fiscal demands in the 1680s Viceroy Duque de la Palata sought to end what he understood to be economic exploitation of Andeans by their parish priests, empowering corregidores and lower-​level royal officials to investigate clerical abuse. This provoked an outraged response from the archbishop





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of Lima, who published his rebuttal, along with the Duque de la Palata’s laws, in Ofensa y Defensa de la Libertad Eclesiastica.6 In the mid-​eighteenth century, colonial bureaucrats and parish priests, as well as comuneros and caciques, all mined this book for ammunition in their struggles over ecclesiastical charges.7 Under the control of the Bourbon monarchs who assumed the throne at the beginning of the eighteenth century, church-​state relations continued to deteriorate. The reorganization of the Spanish Empire by Charles III (1759–​ 1788), designed to strengthen it economically and politically, was influenced by Enlightenment rationalism and Spain’s decline vis-​á-​vis other European powers. The church bore the brunt of attempts to make the empire more efficient. On the economic plane, the great wealth of the church was seen as a major hindrance to Spain’s welfare. The large extensions of real property held by the church not only deprived laymen of the opportunity to own and profit from it but also had a negative impact on the Crown’s ability to raise tax revenue. In the political sphere, the cofradías were viewed as a potential source of “opposition to royal policies,” while the fueros, the separate legal jurisdiction the church enjoyed, were seen as an even greater threat to the administration of the empire.8 For these reasons the church became a major focus of legislative attempts, known as the Bourbon Reforms, to regenerate the empire. As an unforeseen consequence, the secularizing aspects of the Bourbon Reforms had the impact of “desacralizing” power of the Spanish state and “cutting [it] loose from divine purpose.” 9 These efforts also produced enormous amounts of data about the practices of festivals and saints’ celebrations that can be used to examine Andean religiosity and ritual and evaluate the impact of evangelization.10 In the viceroyalty of Peru, the rationalizing Crown demanded a reckoning: What was happening to the money that should be flowing to the Crown? Was it being stolen by priests? By caciques? By corregidores? The Duque de la Palata’s attempts to reduce the money that parish priests siphoned from their parishioners were taken up again with the Bourbon Reforms. Numerous comuneros were excused from paying tribute or serving mita while they served in their town’s cabildo or as an officer in a cofradía celebrating their saints. Colonial bureaucrats tried to curtail the numbers excused from economic obligations to the state. At the same time the Crown wanted more pliable priests and so began attempts to remove “regular” priests, those who were members of religious orders—​such as Franciscans, Dominicans, or Jesuits from rural indigenous parishes—​and replace them with “secular” priests, who were not members of orders and therefore more completely under the control of bishops, who were named by the Spanish Crown.11 There were also demands for reform coming from within the church. The sixteenth-​century Council of Trent had confirmed the celebration of saints and their images, which in towns such as Totora led to the exuberant veneration



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of saints expressed by “touching and kissing” the images and “parading them through villages and cities in times of crisis or celebration.” This physical contact with the sacred did not always rely on priests as intermediaries; any Christian might undertake the symbolic actions that would lead to the mystical union with Christ or the saints. In the mid-​eighteenth century, a reform movement within the Catholic church sought to curtail this material notion of the sacred and replace it with a more ethereal, “mental” sense of spirituality.12 At a time when the celebration of the saints was emerging as a key to legitimation of authority in the Andes, reformers within the church began to regard comuneros’ over-​the-​top festivals as plebeian misunderstandings of the sacred, or worse.13 A royal decree issued in March 1754 ordered that if parish priests received a set salary, which in rural parishes came from tribute collection paid by comuneros, they should not receive additional fees paid for individual services such as masses for saints’ celebrations, weddings, or funerals. Priests countered that if this decree were enforced, their Andean parishioners would be in “grave spiritual danger.” It cost a great deal to operate the huge rural parishes, especially since priests claimed, Andeans wanted much “pomp and luxury” in their festivals. Andeans were dispersed in annex towns and even smaller hamlets, each with chapels, saints’ celebrations, and cofradías to sponsor them. During the Lenten season, when Andeans were required to make their annual confession, priests needed troops of mules and assistants to fan out across the reducción’s extensive territory. Priests argued that they could not possibly do this on a fixed salary; they were dependent on the money generated through masses to bridge the gap. If the charges couldn’t be done away with entirely, then royal orders demanded that aranceles, tables of lowered and fixed prices for priestly duties, be posted on church doors. Such royal orders, along with priests’ petitions against them, traveled through the colonial mail service where they were read by the comuneros who carried them. Eventually these church–​state fights touched off an Audiencia-​wide investigation and ecclesiastical inspection tour and led to attempts to crack down on the numbers of comunero cofradías and festivals.14 Attempts to reduce the numbers of cofradías or the number of comuneros who participated in saints festivals ran headlong into comunero politics. The García brothers of Totora were community leaders, they held cabildo offices, and they led festivals celebrating the saints, the Virgin, and Corpus Christi. Indeed, it was by leading festivals that the Garcías and others gained the privilege of holding cabildo office. Comuneros across the viceroyalty created a coherent political life for themselves within reducciones and annex towns with the merger of cofradía offices and town council posts, but it was a political and social life that increasingly excluded their hereditary caciques.





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Cofradías: Religion and Social Organization The cofradías in Santa Bárbara de Culta and Santiago de Tolapampa appear to have been initially organized much like Spanish cofradías, complete with constitutions, licenses from the archbishop, and fixed membership lists. But like cabildos and the reducciones themselves, cofradías had also been “Andeanized” during the intervening century.15 In Spain, cofradías might be organized by occupation, and thus function as a kind of guild, or have their membership limited by social status. Individuals remained attached to particular cofradías and devoted to the saints they celebrated throughout their lives, often granting monetary gifts or property to their favorite cofradías in their wills. Evidence from the Spanish cities in the Andes offers a similar picture of confraternal practices for Spaniards and Creoles. Cofradías there mirrored the fundamental divisions of society. Some were the exclusive preserve of the elite, while others included all the practitioners of a particular craft. Each craft or profession was organized as a guild that was at the same time a cofradía devoted to the patron saint of the craft. Butchers honored San Antonio Abad as their patron, mine workers celebrated the Virgin of the Mineshaft or San Lorenzo, and prostitutes had a patron in Saint Mary Magdelene. Unlike the Spanish or Creole case, in the indigenous reducciones and annexes, the organization of devotion to saints’ images took a different course, in part because nearly all residents of a reducción were farmers and herders without sufficient labor specialization to warrant the establishment of guilds. Without craft-​based guilds, the festive celebrations of saints had to be organized differently, in a way that reflected Andean categories. Clues to the organization of cofradías within reducciones and their annexes come from the town of Condo. In 1732, a complaint against Condo’s priest alleged that he was responsible for the deaths of two comuneros, that he had fathered numerous illegitimate children, that he used comuneros as a cheap source of labor, that his charges for funeral masses were not consistent, and that he neglected the upkeep of the church—​all typical complaints against colonial priests. For the complainants, neglect of the church was particularly egregious since, according to their petition, Condo had thirty cofradías, all paying substantial alms to the priest.16 However, in the 1730s Condo was fairly small with a population of only about 2,200 people, including all their annex towns and outlying hamlets, and celebrating thirty saints in the main church alone does not seem likely.17 A statue, and frequently a side altar, for each saint celebrated in the main parish church was customary, and while churches in many reducciones were elaborate, few would accommodate thirty statues and side altars.



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A second petition, from 1756, “in name of the entire común” of Condo, complaining that the new aranceles charges had not been posted, sheds light on how those thirty cofradías were counted. In Condo “for many years, we have [had] ten established [saints’] festivals . . . and in each festival three Indians are put in, two mayordomos [stewards] and one alférez [lieutenant]. . . so that in all the [saints’] festivals, . . . thirty Indians [serve].”18 In comunero terms, “cofradía” referred to each officeholder, so that ten saints, each with three officers, equated to thirty “cofradías,” rather than ten cofradías as would have been counted in Spanish society. Cofradía organization mirrored the social organization of Andean society. Comuneros inhabited a segmentary society, a nested hierarchy where individual loyalties moved from smaller to larger encompassing social groups. At the most basic level, an individual was part of a family household. Each household belonged to a patriline, a group of people who shared (at least by the early eighteenth century) a patronymic surname. In turn, a number of patrilines cohered in an ayllu, an association that included people, their herds, and the territory they inhabited.19 Every ayllu belonged to either anansaya or urinsaya, the two social halves of any rural Andean town. Major offices of mayordomo and alférez for each saint were rotated annually between anansaya and urinsaya and among their respective ayllus, and within the ayllus, the offices rotated among the patrilines pertaining to that ayllu.20 Thus, in this Andeanized understanding of cofradía, there was no fixed membership. Fellow ayllu members from the patriline of the current year’s mayordomo or alférez helped the officeholder to carry out his duties, becoming a temporary “cofradía.” At the end of the mayordomo or alférez’s year of service, these outgoing authorities turned their office, and the saint they celebrated, over to incoming officers, from another ayllu of the opposite parcialidad. Next time the obligation rotated to their ayllu, it would be taken up by members of a different patriline. The Andeanized cofradías also included the annexes and hamlets within the reducción’s territory. Each saint celebrated in the main church had two mayordomos, stewards designated as “del pueblo” and “de afuera,” from the town and from “outside,” from one of the annexes or hamlets in Condo’s jurisdiction. The mayordomo del pueblo cared for the saint’s image in the main church, while the mayordomo de afuera kept a smaller version of the saint in the annex or hamlet chapel.21 Ayllus within annexes and hamlets celebrated the saints in the main church and also had their own local, separate saints’ celebration as well in their annex or hamlet chapel. So for example, ayllus in Condo’s annex town of Santa Bárbara de Culta took turns celebrating San Pedro both in Condo and in Culta, but they also celebrated a saint not shared with the main church of Condo, their own patron, Santa Bárbara. In





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this way the saints’ celebrations both reinforced ties between the reducción towns and the annexes and hamlets within their territory and created divisions between them. It is not surprising that cofradías, religious organizations so fundamentally important to each town, would be organized by ayllu.22 Ayllus had been linked to reducción towns from the time of their establishment: Construction of towns was organized by ayllu, ayllus were assigned to specific neighborhoods,23 taxes were collected by ayllu, membership in the town’s cabildo was designated by ayllu, town censuses were drawn up by ayllu, mita labor sent by each town was assigned by ayllu, and annex towns were created by ayllus. Religious obligations, too, came to be organized by ayllus. Such organization for the celebration of saints made the performance of Christianity in the reducción constitutive of the ayllus themselves. This rotating system distributed cofradía obligations in a more or less equitable manner across the population, reproducing significant subdivisions of parcialidad and ayllu, head town, annexes, and hamlets. Sponsorship of a major festival could be quite onerous and costly. Alfereces, the lieutenants and standard bearers, who served saints in the main church of Condo paid one hundred forty pesos each for the honor of leading a saint’s procession, over fifteen times the annual tribute or tax payment that each Condo comunero paid. The alféreces for the annexes paid less, but still as high as forty-​five pesos. Alternating sponsorship of festivals also reflected the long-​standing Andean practice of mita, literally “turn” taking, leading one recent scholar to refer to the cult to the saints as the “religious mita.” Andean cofradías helped to create community solidarity though this extraordinarily complex system of turn-​taking. It was, however, a system that operated through memory and negotiated consensus, leaving few records.24 If not for the conflicts between parish priests, comuneros, caciques, and colonial bureaucrats produced by the Bourbon Reforms, this elaborate system of festival sponsorship would have remained invisible. From a Spanish standpoint, festival sponsorships without fixed membership would hardly be recognizable as a cofradía. 25

Cofradías and Civil Offices By the mid-​eighteenth century, if not earlier, serving as an officer in a cofradía had become a stepping stone to holding office in the cabildo.26 An early example comes from Condo in 1740. Comunero Andrés Choquechambi petitioned to be relieved from tribute because of poor health. Since he first paid tribute in 1711, he had served the community as chasqui and as tribute collector, and served



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God as mayordomo and alférez. Choquechambi had gone from lower-​to higher-​ ranking offices in his civil as well as his religious “obligations,” an indication of how comuneros understood the links between offices.27 A comunero in another highland town testified in 1776 that he “had passed his principal [offices] of mita captain, alférez of Our Lady of Candlemas, and [at the] present time the celebration of the Resurrection,” his high-​ranking civil office of mita captain complementing his high-​ranking religious office as alférez of the Easter celebration.28 Each comunero in these cases followed a path, braiding together first one civil office, then one religious office, and so on, which led to a high leadership role in the town. Serving as alférez was also seen as necessary for those who might hope to become caciques, as the hereditary cacique was gradually being eclipsed. In 1772 Joseph Fernández Acho, who sought to be named as cacique of urinsaya of Condo, emphasized that he had served as “alférez of many, many fiestas appointed for the better worship and honor of God and his Most Holy Mother and His Saints,” and he was about to begin service as alférez of Our Lady of Guadalupe. These religious offices did not stand alone; he had also served in the civil office of mita captain twice.29 What it meant to be an Andean Christian had become key to how people made themselves comuneros. Segundas, jilaqatas, alcaldes, and fiscales, all members of the expanded, Andeanized cabildo, were required to hold religious offices to gain their cabildo membership. For some segundas and alcaldes this meant serving as alférez of a major festival while holding their civil offices.30 In some towns, segundas or alcaldes were obligated to take turns paying for mass and processions. In other places, alcaldes were required to purchase palm fronds to be used for Palm Sunday.31 Other testimony confirms similar situations with alcaldes, alguaciles, and other cabildo officers serving priests in parishes across the region.32 Cabildo officers also had other religious responsibilities involving vernacular interpretations and performances of the sacraments. The linkage between civil and religious offices helps explain why religious brotherhoods were so important to comuneros. Sermons taught Andeans that society was a “mystical body,” with God/​Christ as its head, or a family, with God/​Christ as its father.33 Members of cofradías were “co-​brothers,” or spiritual siblings, linked through their relationship to their saint, and from there to God the father.34 Cofradias brought ayllu members together by linking them to the sacred, creating affective ties to their town and providing legitimacy for the authority of the civil offices of the cabildo. The result was a series of linked civil and religious posts, a hybrid institution whose importance to comuneros helps to explain why they came under attack from caciques.35 Cofradía offices were involved in legitimating an alternative set of commoner authorities, which threatened the traditional hereditary cacique.36





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Cofradías and Land Claims All land within reducciones was commonhold and supposed to be distributed according to need. For comuneros, paying tribute, serving mita, and serving the saints were understood as ways to maintain claim on community land.37 For people not formally subject to tribute or mita, primarily women or reservados (a tribute category of men who were exempted from mita duty and tribute either because of old age or some physical ailment), celebrating the saints became their way to maintain rights to community land. This accounts for why, in some parishes, women held nearly a third of all cofradía offices. Through their active participation in saints’ cults, women held on to land and were active participants in the común. Some cofradía offices were designated as chacha or warmi, Aymara for man and woman, reflecting an Andean concern for complementarity between men and women. While reservados generally held fewer cofradía offices than women, those offices allowed these men to maintain land claims. Forasteros generally also held a significant number of cofradía offices, over a third in some cases. Forasteros were no longer “foreigners”; the term had become a fiscal category for men who paid less than full tribute and sometimes did not serve mita. Serving the saints and the town in cofradías transformed forasteros from immigrants to part of the común.38 About a quarter of all cofradía offices, perhaps more in some towns, were held by married men, originarios, subject to full tribute and mita duty, and those most likely to aspire to cabildo office. In most cases both male and female cofradía office holders, particularly mayordomos, were required to move from their hamlets into town for lengthy periods throughout their year of service in order to care for the saints and the church. The men were required to keep the church candles lit at night and stand guard to ward off thieves. When called upon, they acted as assistants to the priest and went to the distant hamlets to hear confessions and administer the sacraments. The women moved into the town to “sweep the church, wash the clothes, shake out the cloths, and other exercises of this nature.” At other times, the mayordomas prepared food for “the poor people of the town.”39 Comuneros in every highland town, including Condo, had to have access to distant valley land to grow crops, particularly maize.40 To maintain claims to land, both in highlands towns, such as Totora, Tomave, Tolapampa, and Culta, and in valley towns to the north and east, to which highland people traveled in the post-​harvest winter months, increasingly required leading the celebration of Christian festivals there as well. Thus comuneros of Condo, like other highland people, participated in saints’ celebrations in their home hamlet, in their annex town, in Condo itself, as well as in the valley lands (and also, of course, in the Spanish cities such as Potosí where they performed mita duties). Condo’s



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population was both dispersed and mobile, moving from tiny highland hamlets in Condo territory to valley lands, frequently in the jurisdiction of a different reducción, much as they had before the creation of reducciones in the sixteenth century. Despite the reducción policy, Andean settlement patterns remained relatively constant. What changed were Andeans’ ideas, practices, and means to claim those lands. The desirable and rich valley lands had extremely complex systems of saints’ celebrations since comuneros from as many as three or four different highland towns might participate in valley cofradías to have access to land where they might cultivate lowland crops such as maize and peppers. Just as in Totora, priests in valley parishes were accused of not posting the aranceles of official charges for priestly duties. This prompted one priest to defend what he charged his parishioners for festivals. In doing so, he explained the relationship between serving the saints and claims to land:  “Those [festival] obligations were not purely voluntary but  .  .  .  were the result of a contract, or almost, to which . . . those Indians who accepted those lands had obligated themselves and their descendants.” In their highland towns, “they enjoy the privilege and division of lands as ordered by law for originarios” and their winter residence in the valley town “doubles this benefit.”41 Not only did people gain use of lands in the valleys by serving the saints, they maintained land claims in the highland towns by paying their tribute there.42 But this also meant that ayllu members had to serve civil offices within the valley towns. Because comuneros from each highland town with claims on a valley town’s land also had to serve the corresponding civil offices as well as celebrating the local saints, valley towns might have three or more times the usual number of cabildo members.

Celebrating the Saints The festival of Corpus Christi in the valley parish of Carasi provides an example of how comuneros celebrated their saints. There two alféreces served as “lieutenants” of the festival. Since several highland towns had people who lived in the rich valley during winter, each of those towns took a turn providing officers for the festival. The two alféreces were required to provide food for the festival: one fat cow (with a leg and tongue to go the priest as his ricuchico, literally, “rich boy” gift); one fattened pig; one “botija” of wine; a fanega (one and a half bushels) of flour; a sack of potatoes; one peso each of cakes and bread; twelve chickens; eight pesos and four reales worth of spices, oil, and vinegar; one box of candy; two platters each of choclo (corn on the cob), chuño, and hominy; one real each of garlic, onions, green hot peppers, tomatoes, cabbage, winter squash, and eggs; one pot of lard; a large slab of bacon; and one pound of wax.43 The





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role of the alférez of Corpus Christi, and other members of the joined cabildo-​ cofradía complex, was to celebrate the image of God and to perform a kind of sacrifice, through their labor and time, in his honor to provide the community with a festive banquet, which included llama sacrifices as a sacramental act and a source for meat. This performance of ritual generosity resembles descriptions of reciprocal relations between cacique and commoner under the Inca and in the early post conquest era. Mayordomos, alféreces, and other church officers were providing “institutionalized hospitality” in a ritual context that had earlier legitimated caciques, but now legitimated comunero authority.44 Corpus Christi was a multi-​day festival whose high point, besides the enormous feast, was the procession. The two alféreces and the six mayordomos for Corpus Christi held aloft long poles supporting a canopy covering the priest as he carried the monstrance, a silver vessel about two feet tall, topped by a sun-​ with-​rays-​disk with a glass chamber at its center containing the Eucharistic host. The monstance was carried so that the consecrated bread used for communion was both surrounded by symbols of Christ’s divinity and visible to the crowd.45 It was customary that other saints celebrated by the town would march in the Corpus Christi procession, their images mounted on andas (large platforms carried on cofradía members’ shoulders), with their alféreces marching in front bearing a large banner emblazoned with the iconography of their saint. The parish’s musicians would march and play music, while the cantors sang hymns. Some people danced in the procession, while others set off fireworks, or installed decorative arches over the streets, although church officials were working to end these elements of popular religion. Specific places in the town were likely decked out with outdoor altars, decorated with elaborately woven textiles and the fruits of the recent harvest, where the procession would stop for brief blessings.46 Just as they did for other celebrations, comuneros brought their crosses or saints, also decorated with brilliant textiles and perhaps strings of flowers, from their hamlet chapels into town to hear mass and recharge their spiritual power.47 Few animals were killed for meat without being offered as a sacrifice to a divinity. Most Christian festivals would have included sacrifices, particularly a major multi-​day festival held at a time of harvest abundance and celebrated in a valley town that brought together comuneros from several different highland towns and multiple ayllus. Such practices of providing food and drink to celebrants served as local interpretations of the sacred. Probably a tinku took place, a ritualized battle held between parcialidades within towns, or between towns, in which the shedding of comunero blood was understood to be a sacrificial offering. Tinku fighters drank quantities of chicha before the battle and then charged at opposing ayllu members, flinging rocks from their slings, sometimes with fatal results. Accounts of colonial tinkus confirm that they were always held in conjunction with religious festivals and led by cabildo leaders.48 The



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most institutionalized parts of the Corpus Christi celebration remained under the control of the priest, who re-​enacted Christ’s self-​sacrifice in the Eucharist. But through parallel extra-​liturgical practices including llama sacrifices, tinkus, and libations with chicha, comuneros seized control of the meaning of the sacraments for their own purposes.

“God is Only in Heaven”: Comuneros Demand Enforcement of Royal Orders Celebrations of Corpus Christi were also occasions when conflicts between parish priest and comuneros might arise. The entire population of a reducción town and its outlying annexes and hamlets turned out to march in the procession, making this major festival a perfect opportunity to confront a priest or a cacique. Such was the case in 1757 in San Pedro de Totora in Carangas province. Parish priest Eusebio Daza y Arguelles reported to the Audiencia that uprisings had taken place on both Corpus Christi (a moveable feast celebrated June 9 to 12, 1757) and, again, on the town’s patron saint’s day, San Pedro ( June 29). The leading members of Totora’s cabildo, accompanied by the alférez of the festival, called together all the townspeople, and led them, armed, to confront the priest at his home. When the cacique sided with the priest, cabildo members threatened to kill him, but instead took his vara, his staff of office, and tied him up and threw him in jail.49 Witnesses noted the involvement of women in the crowd and reported that they came with their topos, the long silver pins used to hold together shawls “to take their satisfaction” from the priest.50 A Spaniard who witnessed the confrontation reported that the assembly explained to the priest in very loud and upset voices that they don’t have to make any fiesta because God is only in heaven and that in the church there is nothing more than some saints of wood and that although he had told them that the monstrance was the Holy Lord, [they claimed] that it wasn’t the Lord but only a piece of glass and he told them that Our Lord Jesus Christ was in the consecrated host but they said that couldn’t be because it [was a piece of bread] that had been made by the sacristan.51 The priest responded to this insubordination by excommunicating the leaders, four García brothers: Lorenzo, jilaqata and tribute collector of his ayllu; Pedro, past town alcalde and current alférez for the Corpus Christi festival; Vicente, current town alcalde; and Estevan García. The excommunication order





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only served to inflame the Garcías and other people of Totora. On four separate occasions the priest posted the excommunication order on the doors of the Totora church, only to have it torn down by the Garcías or their wives.52 Civil authorities conducted an investigation into the priest’s accusations in January 1758 with a mix of Spanish and Andean witnesses. Women of Totora who were active in church offices were singled out as leaders behind the critique of the priest’s activities. Witnesses reported that the women claimed that the común had been “tricked” because the priest wanted “to take their money.” The claim that women led the outcry against the priest rings true, as it was common in Andean towns for women to have responsibility for overseeing money collected for religious rituals.53 Other witnesses asserted that people in the mob claimed that the images in their church were of “paste and they ought not to be adored because God is in heaven.” When the priest attempted to “explain Christian doctrine to them” or the mysteries of the Eucharist, they said that “it was all a lie.”54 The irony here is that early Spanish missionaries had condemned what they regarded as Andean idolatry—​worship of inanimate objects such as the sun, the moon, and mountains—​but here Andeans reversed the dynamic by rejecting Catholic idols. If God is only in heaven, he could not be in those idols inside the church.55 The priest Eusebio Daza y Arguellas argued to the Audiencia in his report that the 1754 aranceles, which the Crown had issued to lower and regulate the costs of priestly services, and were supposed to be posted on the church doors, were the cause of all the problems.56 According to him, the Indians have “misunderstood” the royal decree that they say . . . that the said decree that His Majesty has issued, recognizes that the lands are theirs and that his intention is therefore to free them of all economic encumbrance, that for now it annuls what they had [to pay] with regard to their priests, and afterwards, they will repeal that which they have [to pay] as tribute.  .  .  . One hears on their lips that with time will come everlasting freedom and they will shake off all domination.57 Undoubtedly, there was an economic motive behind the priest’s complaint, since he would lose money if the aranceles were enforced. From his standpoint, these decrees caused confusion and should be repealed. But the García brothers and other Totorans had read the royal decrees too and, as their petitions made clear, they were well aware that the king had ordered reductions in charges for priestly services. In their refusal to pay the full charges to the priest, the Totorans consistently maintained that they were following the king’s orders.58



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In the meantime, large public meetings led by the García brothers were held in hamlets in the Totora parish. The Garcías also took their message of religious dissent and tribute reduction beyond Totora. At these meetings and during their travels, the Garcías dressed in the brown robes of Franciscan brothers. One comunero witness reported that he had seen Estevan García in a Franciscan brother’s habit and that is public and well known, that the other brother, Lorenzo García [cabildo member] also went about in the said suit of the same religious order and thusly they came from Chuquisaca [the capital of the Audiencia], and they went walking through all the rest of the province, calling together the Indians and saying to them they came to free them from the oppression that they were in, that the King had ordered it thusly and the Royal Audiencia had told them to dress as religious brothers so that all would believe them and that if someone didn’t want to follow them, or obey what [the king] had ordered; they would tie them up and send them to prison in Chuquisaca, that this is public and well known that in this manner they went to all the hamlets, calling everyone together.59 To put their plans into action, the García brothers named two new alcaldes to the cabildo whose responsibility it was to collect money to defend the común in the legal complaint they were bringing against their priest for failure to obey the king’s decrees. Part of the money came from what had been collected to pay for the patron saint’s festival, which the Garcías had forced the festival sponsors to turn over to the newly named council members.60 Not only were the new cabildo members collecting funds for their legal case, but they were also reading all the mail that passed through Totora looking for information regarding the ongoing fight over the royal decrees. According to witnesses, one of the new alcaldes declared that he could “open whatever letters arrived in his hands, whether it was for the Spanish officials or his priest, as he did with one that arrived from Chuquisaca for his corregidor.”61 This offers a clue as to how comuneros managed to stay well informed about royal decrees and especially church–​state conflict. Early Spanish bureaucrats had taken over and maintained the original Inca mail system of chasquis. With comuneros carrying the mail that passed through the viceroyalty, news of royal decrees inevitably fell into the hands of literate and politically aware comuneros, and copies were made for safekeeping in the town archives. The mail also accounts for why towns across the region rose up simultaneously to demand the new aranceles during the celebration of Corpus Christi in 1757:  the García brothers had written letters and petitions not just for their own town, but for





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other towns in the region (see Figure 5.1), calling upon them to use the festival of Corpus Christi as an opportunity to claim their rights.62 Although their priest condemned them as heretics, the García brothers believed they had the right and duty to wear Franciscan robes in order to spread a message of political redemption. This was not something that would have been undertaken lightly. After the arrest of jilaqata Lorenzo García, his wife Maria Blasa explained in a petition to the state’s attorney for Indians that her husband had been given written permission to wear the Franciscan robe by the local

Figure 5.1  Petition from the Común de Indios de Choquecota, Carangas Province. This is the first of a five-​page complaint about high charges for male and female cofradía officers written in February 1758. The Garcia brothers of Totora, who were well known for authoring petitions, were blamed for this document. The document is signed “El Común de Indios.” Archivo y Biblioteca Nacionales de Bolivia, EC 1758 # 164, fol. 3r.



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monastery. During a life-​threatening illness, brought about by his frequent trips seeking legal redress for the común, Lorenzo had made a vow to San Juan de Dios, patron of the sick. After his recovery he received permission to wear the Franciscan robes. Maria Blasa added that this enraged the parish priest, Daza y Arguelles, leading him to make false allegations against her husband.63 Maria Blasa did not spell out why the Franciscan robe made the priest angry, but the priest likely thought the García brothers were masquerading as priests. Dozens of people commented on the García brothers’ sartorial choice and speculated about who had given them permission to wear the robes. Some thought the Audiencia had ordered it, others thought the state’s attorney for Indians had told them to wear them, still others were convinced that officials in the mining center of Potosí had ordered it; whoever had authorized wearing the robes, it was understood as a visible sign of truthfulness and authority. Franciscan robes had great meaning for Spanish laymen, signaling a vow of poverty and service to the community. From the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries wills frequently asked that testators be buried in them, and they sometimes arranged for twelve beggars to be dressed in such robes to accompany the coffin.64 For the Garcías, adopting the aura of mendicant friars might have been a way of highlighting the secular priests’ mercenary qualities. The robes visually set the Garcías apart, displacing their social role as colonized subjects, and at the same time made them representatives of a collectivity greater than themselves, that of the común. Of course, wearing the robes could reasonably have been interpreted as the brothers taking religion into their own hands, something absolutely forbidden to lay people since the time of the Council of Trent. The García brothers were never accused of celebrating the sacrament of the mass, but in neighboring towns, priests accused comuneros of doing so and acting as priests for their fellow townspeople.65 In their petitions, the Garcías claimed only to want enforcement of the new aranceles: that is, the published list of charges for priestly functions. They blamed the parish priest for blowing their complaints out of proportion, since they had only demanded what was their due. Alcalde Vicente García found himself arrested and all his livestock seized, only because he had signed a petition that the “Indians of the común” and cabildo members had composed to the Audiencia in order to get the aranceles. Jilaqata Lorenzo García objected that the priest was treating him and his family as if they were a group of “vagabonds” even though “we have paid and do pay the royal tribute and serve in the royal mita and all the other burdens and services that we are obligated to make in service to His Royal Majesty.”66 The García brothers never addressed accusations that they had denied essential Roman Catholic doctrine. While archival files related to the events in Totora do not answer that indictment against the comuneros, they do contain lengthy and detailed charges of abuse against the priest. The complaints





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signed by “El común de Indios” of Totora accused the priest of overcharging for burials and festivals. But the complaints are not solely fiscal. One of the García brothers had asked the priest to perform a chaupi-​misa, a six-​month anniversary mass, in memory of his recently deceased nine-​year-​ old son. However, the priest refused to say this mass for the child, claiming that “it wasn’t the custom.” Another complaint brought by the común accused the priest of trying to group together masses and say one mass to cover the needs of five or six different parishioners. And when Daza y Arguelles did say mass, the townspeople were not pleased with his manner: “They saw that it didn’t give him pleasure to say it to them.” Finally, there were overheard uttering the threat that “if the priest refused to fix charges as the king had ordered it, they would impeach him.”67 While this would not have the finality of Condocondo’s actions against their caciques, it too implies that if the priest continued to act against the wishes of the común he would be removed from office. It also points to the ambiguous role of parish priests; Andeans needed them to perform mass for Corpus and other festivals, but priests were frequently seen as taking economic advantage of their parishioners.

Community and Sacrifice Apart from the Franciscan-​robe-​clad Garcías roaming around the countryside bringing their message of political and economic redemption, Totora and neighboring towns were also the sites of rituals involving sacrifice and divination. Some might see these actions as comuneros maintaining hidden “true” religious beliefs. Certainly, the descriptions of llama sacrifice, performed with chicha, coca, and incense-​like plants, are consistent with the Inca and early post-​ Conquest era.68 However, in the context of the other events in Totora, these ceremonies in which comuneros took control of religious acts could also be seen as another element in the public’s critique of priestly abuses, abuses which the townspeople felt contradicted their understanding of a community-​based Christianity. Testimony taken in Totora described a cult reminiscent of the sixteenth-​ century revitalization movement known as Taki Onqoy that took possession of male and female comuneros, leading them to tremble and speak in tongues.69 Known as mama uso in Aymara, the meaning of the name is not clear, but one possible translation is “female illness.” The people who were accused of being leaders in the mama uso cult were also accused of collecting alms in honor of the Virgin Mary. These two details, the name of the cult and collecting alms for the Virgin, suggest that mama uso was a homegrown, heterodox cult to the Virgin. People who were afflicted with this illness of mama uso trembled and spoke in



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loud, supernatural, sometimes nonsensical voices and acted as if possessed. At least some of those involved were struck with what seems to be “speaking in tongues” while they were attending services in the church of Totora, and when they spoke they criticized the abuses of the priest.70 According to witnesses who claimed only to have watched from a distance, those involved in the mama uso cult met at night. A Spanish investigator identified one of the heads of the cult as a mestizo male who lived in Totora, but his social and cultural roles are somewhat ambiguous. The García brothers referred to Juan Hilario Román not as a mestizo but as a “poor Spaniard who is in our ayllu,” indicating that they regarded him as a member of their community.71 A mestizo was defined as person of mixed indigenous and European ancestry, while a Spaniard was simply of European heritage. However, anyone in an ayllu was automatically marked as Indian since ayllu is an Andean social form, and ayllu members paid tribute—​something from which Spaniards in the New World were exempt. For the Garcías, Juan’s cultural or racial identity did not seem to be a critical factor. However, it was a critical factor for the Spanish investigator who sought to pin blame on the “mestizo” for all the problems in the town. He was convinced that Juan Hilario Román had invented all the complaints against the priest and that he alone was responsible for the confrontation over the aranceles, despite the fact that many people, both Spanish and Andean, testified to the García brothers’ literacy and that the Garcías had been seen in other towns writing petitions for people.72 The witnesses who testified about mama uso reported that members would gather at a farmhouse, led by a group of people, among whom was the “mestizo” Juan. Juan would then burn an incense-​like plant, huaira-​coa. As soon as the smoke touched the followers, they trembled and spoke in loud, supernatural voices, as if possessed. Inside the house two altars were set up with an overhead canopy. On the altars were chicha and coca leaves, both items with ancient ritual significance in the Andes.73 A male llama was then brought into the room with the altars. The assembled followers hugged and petted the llama. After their displays of affection, he was sacrificed by slitting his throat. Then the llama was cut into pieces, grilled, and eaten. The rest of the night was spent drinking chicha, while seancelike activities took place. Leaders of the cult claimed that the Virgin Mary or Santiago spoke through them to divine the future and find lost items. The following morning, the llama bones were collected and burned—​and with that, the ceremony or cure was complete. Witnesses said that those involved claimed to make these cures or ceremonies in the name of the Virgin. And to pay the costs of the cures, they collected alms in her name.74 Given that priests in several reducción towns insisted that this cult was widespread, it is not surprising that a similar critique of priestly refusal to post the new aranceles and sacrificial cult appeared in another town of Carangas province,





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Corque. As in Totora, the uprising began on Corpus Christi, with complaints against both priest and cacique.75 Unlike in Totora, the witnesses to the sacrifice in Corque admitted to participating in the rituals. Joseph Nina, the jilaqata for his ayllu and cabildo member, testified that he had gone to Martín Quispe’s ranch where Clemente Morales, the ritual specialist, presided. There “he found an arch covered in mourning [with black cloth], and under it an altar in which they had put a [figure of] Holy Christ and an image of Our Lady of Sorrows, and in each corner there was a chalice with an egg for what purpose he doesn’t know, and under the said arch was an Indian named Clemente Morales in his traje natural [natural suit, naked] covered only with a shawl.” When asked to explain the purpose of the ritual, Nina replied that Morales could divine the future, that “through these ceremonies they could know if a trip . . . would have good or bad results.” Several others confirmed that Clemente Morales claimed to have the “gift of prophecy.” At the beginning of the ceremony, Clemente Morales “fell to the floor as if dead.” After regaining consciousness, he seemed to “remember” where he was and began “to make the prognostications,” warning Nina not to make an upcoming trip. When Nina “paid no heed to his advice” and made the trip anyway, he became very ill. The only way to be cured was to make a sacrifice. Because Nina was so sick, others carried out the ceremony in his name, sacrificing for him “coca leaves and chicha, anointing them with incense.” Nina listed ten people, men and women, who took part in the two days of curing rituals.76 Another Corque comunero, Gaspar Quispe, confirmed Nina’s account but added more description, as he had seen ceremonies performed by Clemente Morales three times. He was very “reluctant” to go, but his nephew, Martín Quispe, on whose ranch Clemente performed his ceremonies, had urged him to come see what was taking place, and so “it came about that he stumbled into what happened.” A short time after Gaspar Quispe arrived at the farm, Clemente appeared dressed in a large sack normally used to transport coca leaves worn over an Andean woman’s dress. Gaspar reported that from time to time during the service, Clemente changed his costume, as if to emphasize different parts of the ritual. At dawn, Clemente ordered that they kill a llama and “collect the blood to sacrifice it to the mountains, along with the heart and lungs.” Then, Gaspar clarified, adding that “in the morning there was a living sheep of the land [llama] and they dressed him in colored wool, and he [Clemente] put a banderilla [an ornamental banner] on him and brought him to the mountain to sacrifice him.” Despite the presence of images of the Virgin and Christ on the altars, in his testimony, Gaspar referred to the ceremonies as idolatry, the worship of false gods, as did all other witnesses.77 Gaspar’s description of Clemente Morales’s clothing warrants analysis. Morales was identified as wearing the outfit of an indigenous woman. A typical



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Andean woman’s dress at this time, a long loose fitting all-​black garment, would resemble a priest’s cassock. On top of the Andean dress, Morales wore a sack normally used to transport coca leaves, which would resemble a priest’s vestment worn during the performance of his sacred duties. All this would be in keeping with the ritual quality of the ceremonies Clemente was carrying out. Indeed, the parish priest of Corque, the home parish of Morales and the Quispes, had reported that Clemente Morales was known among “the Indians as a priest, [and] pretending to celebrate the sacrifice of the mass for many of them.”78 The parish priests in Corque and Totora seemed well aware that unauthorized “masses,” which they characterized as idolatry, were taking place. However, the heyday of idolatry campaigns in the Andes had passed, and no one from the church hierarchy seemed to take their accusations seriously. At the same time, divination cults among Andeans seem to have been both widespread and widely known.79 Testimony suggests that divination prior to travel might have been commonplace among Spaniards as well. One Spanish witness to the mama uso cult claimed that he was making a trip when he happened to see the altars set up with chicha and coca leaves and the llama sacrifice, suggesting that he was seeking guidance about the success of his trip. At the same time, civil officials blamed the intransigence of priests and their refusal to post and abide by the new aranceles as the cause behind the uproar. They discounted the idolatry accusations, perhaps thinking they were mostly cons to separate the unsuspecting from their money or goods. In fact, they completely dismissed the priests’ accusations that there was a real uprising. Sacrifice was certainly part of pre-​Columbian ritual, but it is also at the heart of Christianity. In the Bible, the Abrahamic covenant of the agro-​pastoral ancient Israelites required the blood of herd animals to be offered to God through priestly sacrifice. Christians took up such ideas in Christ’s new covenant and his self-​sacrifice for humanity as the “lamb of God.” Sacrificing a llama, known as “the sheep of the land,” was a way for comuneros of Totora and Corque to make Christianity their own and give it local meaning. At the same time, the sacrificial act, conducted without a priest, was from the church’s point of view usurpation of the priest’s monopoly over the sacraments.80 It might appear to comuneros that sharing a meal of a ritually sacrificed llama was a much more direct conduit to God than eating some bread baked by the sacristan. A  region where llama herding was key might easily adapt to the Christian idiom of Christ as the “good shepherd” and to his self-​sacrifice, as the “lamb of God.” Rather than llama sacrifice being some remnant of pre-​Columbian religious belief hidden under a mantle of pretended conversion, it can be understood as a heterodox Christian practice, where local tradition was tightly woven into an elaborate Eucharistic celebration.





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Such practices were also a means of using Christian theology to challenge priestly abuses. Taking Christianity directly into their own hands, the sacrifices and other actions in Totora and neighboring towns revealed that Andeans increasingly felt that they did not need a priest to have sacramental contact with God. Far from rejecting Christianity, the García brothers in their Franciscan habits, the Totorans who declared that “God is only in heaven,” the mama uso followers who spoke in tongues to criticize their priest, and those who sacrificed llamas to celebrate the Virgin Mary or other saints were all reinterpreting Christianity. This reinterpretation was of critical importance in defining themselves as members of the común, that is, members of the community of commoner Andeans. It made Christianity deeply pertinent to their lives as farmers and herders and offered an alternative understanding of a form of leadership founded in social equality and generosity, a leadership that, as in the examples they would often have heard in priests’ sermons of Christ and his disciples, could be both by and for the poor. As the común came clearly into being, it also closed ranks. Left out were the caciques, who were increasingly allied with Spaniards and acted as the crown’s agent in efforts to suppress the exuberant system of saints’ festivals that comuneros had taken up.

Caciques React to Cofradía Threats to Their Rule As caciques increasingly worked to muzzle cofradías, they found allies among colonial officials. From the time of the creation of reducciones, cabildo officers were exempt from tribute and mita during their year of service. Cofradía officers had also gained exemptions when in service to the church. In their efforts to extract more money from comuneros, colonial officials tried to reduce the numbers of people exempt from tribute and mita. Undercutting the system of festivals became a way for caciques to please high officials of the colonial state and simultaneously clamp down on their rivals for power. Condo cacique Gregorio Llanquipacha tried to undercut the power of cofradías by getting rid of a meddlesome priest, which led to his murder at the hands of Condo comuneros. But it was a cacique in the neighboring province of Chayanta, the notorious Don Florencio Lupa, who became famous throughout the region for his attacks on cofradías. Lupa was hereditary cacique of the town of Moscarí, where he drastically curtailed cofradías, leading to greatly increased tribute for the state. His success in increasing tribute money led to his being named as interim cacique of the town of Pocoata.81 Condo comuneros had valley lands in the jurisdiction of Pocoata that they claimed by virtue of their service to the local saints; they had good reason to be wary of the actions of Don Florencio Lupa.



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Florencio Lupa earned quite a reputation among priests and Spanish bureaucrats for his denunciation of the numbers of comuneros in service to the church. From Lupa’s perspective those avoiding tribute payment through their participation in festivals were not just simple tax scoffs—​but threats to the rule by cacique. If one had to serve as an alférez to become part of the town council or pay for festivals as part of being a council member, then by curtailing these fiestas, Lupa was undercutting the cabildos as well as the potential independence movements of annexes and hamlets that were forming incipient new towns. By centralizing control over the numbers of people eligible to participate in the nascent town government, Lupa attempted to halt the movement toward independence of comunero-​governed towns. That was also his intent in putting rollos (the obelesks that served as symbols and locations of Spanish justice) in the plazas of independent parishes that were in the process of becoming towns.82 According to one comunero, Lupa planted the rollo in the plaza by “saying that those Naturales were to be conquered and that they needed some rigorousness in order to submit themselves [to his domination].”83 Lupa defended the notion of the traditional cacicazgo by ruthlessly exerting his control over the new towns. Not surprisingly, comuneros responded by tearing down the rollos.84 After complaints from comuneros, the Audiencia in December 1775 ordered an investigation into Florencio Lupa’s conduct. The official investigation did not begin as scheduled but comuneros in the town of Pocoata conducted their own inquiry into Lupa’s conduct of office. In early May, Pocoata, Culta, and many other highland communities celebrate the festival of Cruz de Mayo, a harvest festival condemned by the colonial Church as being “idolatrous,” in which comuneros brought crosses from the hilltops near their annexes and hamlets into the reducción’s church to “hear” mass. Amid dancing in masquerade, bullfights, drinking chicha, marching with crosses across the countryside,85 and probably one or more llama sacrifices, the comuneros of Pocoata discussed Lupa’s conduct. Ten comuneros from one ayllu gathered together and recorded their own testimonies against Lupa. Three of the ten complained that the alféreces “never paid tribute before . . . and now he charges [everyone] with vigorous threats of jail to make them give it.” Another testified he had just completed his service as alférez of San Juan, for which he paid fifty-​six pesos, and despite that Lupa had charged him full tribute. Yet another comunero serving as alguacil of the cabildo had no relief from tribute payment. There were other complaints. Those serving mita in Potosí had to pay tribute, and there were no community surpluses of food to assist the mita workers or the poor.86 Following the comunero investigation into Lupa’s activities, he was temporarily forced out of office. But his conduct in increasing tribute and the favor he curried with Spanish officials in the Audiencia capital city of La Plata ensured he was a continuing influence.87 Building on over twenty years of similar accusations,





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Lupa’s complaints that excessive numbers served in cofradías touched a nerve within the empire:  his actions triggered a major ecclesiastical inspection tour and the first synod of the Archbishopric of Charcas to be held in over one hundred years.88 Finally, these complaints would force comuneros to choose sides between caciques like Lupa—​allied with the power of the Spanish colonial state—​and the newly emerging synthesis of civil and religious power that was beginning to challenge their authority. * * * Like the Garcías in Totora, the comuneros in Corque, Condo, Pocoata, and all their annexes, hamlets and estancias in highland and valley towns were adapting Christianity to their own purposes. By building their own chapels, buying their own saints to celebrate, organizing their cofradías through their ayllus, and constructing their own hybrid ways of commemoration, they created an early modern Andeanized Christianity.89 Whether it involved leading a proto-​ revolutionary movement dressed as Franciscan priests, sacrificing llamas in the name of saints and divining the future, or serving as banquet-​providing officers of saints’ celebrations organized through their ayllus, comuneros had made their Christianity deeply Andean. Comuneros adapted the practices of Spanish Christianity as part of their way of governing themselves, making leadership of saints’ festivals part of a lifetime of community service that satisfied old ideas about reciprocity and generosity. Their notions of authority derived from a pastoral repertoire of herds and herding, with Christian pastoral metaphors (“our father shepherd,” “lamb of God”) and sacrificial notions of humility and self-​ abnegation. Such practices legitimated their authority as members of the cabildo. Just as this system fully crystallized, it came under attack by Spaniards and caciques as superstition and idolatry. Sometimes, priests were willing to turn a blind eye to comunero actions and ally themselves with comuneros against their common enemies, the agents of the colonial state who sought to reduce monies funneled to church coffers. Spanish bureaucrats at all levels might stymie comunero politics, but it was those closest to home, their own caciques, who would bear the immediate brunt of comunero ire.



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Rational Bourbons and Radical Comuneros Civil Practices That Shape Towns

Overtly religious ceremonies, especially saints’ festivals—​which centered on towns, annexes, and hamlets—​created sentimental ties to place but so did civil and political rites and practices. In some ways the distinction is artificial, since “civil” ceremonies included many of the same features as “religious” ones, such as libations, sacrifices, invocations of divinity, and feasting. This was as true in Spain as in the Andes in 1570 and remained true throughout the colonial era. But it is a useful heuristic distinction, drawn from the division of “jurisdictions” between what Spaniards called “the two majesties”: heavenly (God) and temporal (King). In this context, political rites were the rituals connected to the performance of obligations to the king, which substantiated comuneros’ legal rights. Many political practices were institutionalized in the Andes during the sixteenth century as part of the resettlement policy, and as they became rituals enacted repeatedly and across generations they helped to bring the común into being in its physical sense as a town and in its corporate sense as an entity. Some of these political rituals, especially those involving the labor and wealth of comuneros, also became occasions to challenge cacique authority. Indirectly, the challenges to cacique authority were encouraged by Bourbon Reforms. After the Bourbons ascended the Spanish throne at the beginning of the eighteenth century, they adopted regalist doctrines in an effort to concentrate all power in the Crown. Prior to this, society had been conceived as a series of corporations, from town republics to the church and military orders. The granting of fueros, legal charters, to the towns of the Iberian Peninsula and those of the Americas, including reducciones, and the extension of autonomous rights to religious orders and the church itself had originally been a means of cultivating loyalty.1 In the long run though, it diffused the Crown’s power. Regalist efforts to concentrate power in the Crown led to attacks on the church’s wealth and The People Are King: The Making of an Indigenous Andean Politics. S. Elizabeth Penry, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780195161601.001.0001





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property, which in the Andes played themselves out in the struggle over control of Indian labor and wealth, and efforts to redirect money from church to state coffers. Priests sometimes fought back, encouraging their comunero parishioners to attack the legitimacy and integrity of caciques and corregidores by accusing them of extracting money and labor from their communities that rightly belonged to the king. Mita labor and tribute collection became contentious as comuneros challenged caciques and corregidores. Even those economic demands of the state, the mita and tribute collection, were full of ritual and ceremony and were important markers in comunero life. To understand the political practices and rituals that helped make the común meaningful, and that sometimes devolved into fights between comuneros and caciques, this chapter examines the kinds of political activity and ceremony in which comuneros were engaged.

Civil Practice as Political Ritual One of the earliest political dramas that was repeated with some regularity was the effort that assigned people to place in order to organize and tax them. The Toledan tasa had done this in the sixteenth century, followed by various inspection tours and the censuses they produced for the cajas de comunidad and crown archives. Censuses of the early and mid-​colonial period required all the people of a town to assemble and then began enumeration with the cacique and his patriline within his ayllu, then each following ayllu list began with its jilaqata or principal.2 In each case, the list continued street by street, household by household, naming every living person (and even some of the more prominent dead), including infants by age and civil status. Sometimes a trade (laborer, farmer, trader) would be listed, and oftentimes if the person were currently serving an office either in the town council or in a religious brotherhood that was noted in the margin, perhaps indicating to officials that too many people were in service to the church and thus avoiding their taxes. In drawing up census documents, the process generally worked as it did during the creation of the annex town Tolapampa in 1603: After a Crown official, or a troupe of officials, arrived to the town, cabildo officials would bring out the last padrón census from the documents in the caja de comunidad. And from that they would create a new one, comparing them to assess changes in the total population to determine whether the town’s total tax burden would rise or fall. More than simple demographic information making Andeans legible for colonial bureaucrats, these were blueprints for shared civil space, a reflection of the lived community that through such rituals emerged as a collective social being.3



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The collective lands that belonged to reducción towns were vitally important to comuneros, and the annual walking of the town borders was one of the most important political ceremonies the cabildo took part in. Walking from boundary marker to boundary marker, mojón to mojón, in some ways resembled a colonial version of the Inca ceque system which in some cases marked borders as well as mapped shrines.4 In case of border disagreements with other towns, as occurred with Totora in 1711, town criers would go to all towns in the dispute, announcing publicly the time and place where all concerned parties should gather to walk the mojones together. Sometimes such actions were successful, and agreement on the placement of the mojones made the communities, as well as their borders, visible and legible.5 If that was not successful, comuneros could turn to the colonial court system to adjudicate their dispute. Participation in the court system itself was a political ritual, giving legal access to the king’s person through his intermediaries. Legal suits for the town were brought in the name of the común of the town, thus enshrining their corporate identity in the town’s archives. But it was not always possible to settle land disputes peacefully, and then a festive tinku battle might shift into a land war, between ayllus or between towns, to determine boundaries. Within the jurisdiction of a town, the alcaldes held the power (sometimes contested by the cacique) to equitably redistribute use rights to community lands among its households. Fairness in such redistributions was guaranteed by a balance of power among ayllus, and within them, among patrilines, but especially by annual rotation of the offices of alcalde and jilaqata among patrilines and constituent households. Carrying the mail was an important, highly ritualized civil duty centered on the town and its annexes. Comuneros carried letters, parcels, and passengers by mule over strictly defined routes along highways on a set schedule.6 Andean towns funded much of the chasqui service, providing laborers to man the tambo, the way station through which the mail passed, and supplying mules and food for the chasquis and travelers. An 1808 document from the reducción town of Challapata in Paria province described how chasquis service worked. Challapata, a fairly large town near Condo (and one of the three original reducciones of the Asanaqi diarchy), manned the royal tambo of Ancacato and was responsible to the Creole postmaster in the mining center of Oruro. At any one time, eight comuneros held ranked offices that were rotated between the parcialidades and among the ayllus. At the top were two chasquis mayores, also referred to as alcaldes of the tambo, the highest-​ranking civil officials for the way station. This post was typically reserved for past members of the cabildo. The chasqui mayor held office for four months, and paid 120 pesos to the postmaster in Oruro, as well as providing food and coca leaves for the tambo. Ranking below the two chasqui mayores were two chasqui ayudantes, or “assistants” who contributed seventy-​ two pesos to the postmaster and also served for four months. At the bottom of





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the ladder of postal duties were four postillones, who each paid thirty-​two pesos to the postmaster and served for six months in the tambo.7 With as many as twenty different people holding office every year, many comuneros served as chasqui and frequently cited it in claims on community land, in seeking higher office, and in general as proof of their loyalty to the community and to the king.8 Written documents also loomed large in civic ritual. The formal receipt of royal decrees and orders sent to Andean towns through the mail brought an element of public ritual to the town. When a royal order arrived, the cacique or members of the town council formally acknowledged the authority of the order and publicly complied with it by first kissing the order and then placing it over their heads.9 The comunero audience was a key part of this performance, since such orders only became legitimate when read aloud.10 The royal orders were then put into the locked caja de comunidad.11 Ordinary comuneros also kept documents as mementos of their performance of ritualized acts signaling membership in the común. Comuneros received receipts for their tribute payment twice a year which they carefully safeguarded to produce as evidence if needed.12 Annual elections in each town for the cabildo officers and for festival sponsors were another ritualized enactment of political authority and corporate identity. Colonial documents consistently use the verb elegir, which can be translated as “elect” or “choose,” and the process by which town council members gained their posts was somewhere between the two meanings. Detailed records of these elections come from the late eighteenth century. Town ordinances called for elections to be held January 1.13 A Spanish judge was to preside over the election, although priests substituted when judges were in short supply. Gathering at the cabildo office, if they had one, or in the home of the cacique or his segunda or at the home of the parish priest, the meeting itself was also called cabildo. The outgoing town council members and former office holders who formed the electorate then sat in designated places according to seniority. Libations of chicha or aguardiente (brandy) would be poured, coca leaves chewed, and eventually, the varas, or staffs of office pertaining to each post, were passed from outgoing to incoming authorities. Afterward the newly elected council and the principales pasados, the former cabildo officeholders, would attend mass together to sanction the election and reinforce the solidarity of the común.14 During this mass the new office holders would receive “la paz,” literally “the peace,” the formal blessing from their priest, for the first time.15 Not just anyone could be chosen for office:  Religious and civil offices were ranked and alternated, and formal “careers” of sequenced years of duty, spread over many years, consolidated systems of turn taking that rotated political power. A person who aspired to be alcalde had to serve lower-​level civil offices, as well as religious offices, and in each post served moved up a hierarchy of responsibility representing their family, patronymic group, ayllu, and parcialidad.16



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The cabildo had evolved and expanded since its formal Toledan foundation, although the offices and titles varied a bit by town. By the end of the eighteenth century, alcaldes were elected for towns, and also for annexes, and in many cases for ayllus, too. Town-​wide alcaldes (alcalde mayor, and the higher-​ ranked alcalde ordinario) were inducted into office with a formal decree naming their obligations. In August 1776, the new alcaldes for Santa Bárbara de Culta were sworn in, promising to root out any “abuses against our Holy Catholic Faith . . . make everyone hear the Holy Sacrament of the mass every Sunday and keep fiestas . . . [and follow] orders from his parish priest.” They were also to help with allocation of community land, tribute collection, and naming people for mita.17 While each ayllu might have an alcalde, they all had a person elected to collect tribute, known as a jilaqata or jilanco.18 These officers were also known as principales. The meaning of the term “principal” shifted over time but generally referred to anyone who had held a formal office within town government, and by virtue of that was allowed to attend council meetings and participate in the election of each year’s new cabildo officers.19 Prior to the end of hereditary cacicazgos in the early nineteenth century, the segunda, the cacique’s assistant, was also part of the expanded cabildo. Finally, the mita captains who led the labor parties to work in the mines of Potosí had also become part of the cabildo governing structure of the town. Although there were exceptions, candidates for higher-​ranked offices were generally expected to speak, if not read and write, Spanish.20

Bourbon Reforms, Fiscal Obligations, and the Status of Caciques The fiscal demands of the colonial state, especially the twice-​yearly tribute collection and annual mita dispatch, were occasions for political rites that bound the community. In the mid-​eighteenth century, these two acts became the source of great social tension. Bourbon efforts to generate more crown income focused on reducing the number of festivals by taking aim at local priests. The Crown’s agents for these attacks were the corregidores (Crown-​appointed bureaucrats, usually Spaniards or Creole Spaniards) and the hereditary caciques. These Crown-​allied figures were encouraged to denounce priestly excesses and the church’s absorption of common Indian labor, time, and resources in festival offices. Comuneros took such denunciations as an attack on their method of “electing” legitimate commoner authorities; to counter it, they sometimes came to the priests’ aid, accusing the corregidores of gouging them for excess repartos (forced sales of goods) and the caciques with burdening them with unreported labor obligations that hid money due to the crown.





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Bourbon reform efforts, then, backfired. Investigations into financial abuses by priests, and of “excessive” festival offices led to a broader critique of Catholicism and the church’s role in the everyday lives of comuneros. Likewise, the measures meant to rationalize administration of tribute and mita, “secularizing” power, and better controlling the flow of tribute and labor became tools to undermine the colonial administration, creating a new social space for criticism of caciques and corregidores.21 It was not the Bourbon Reforms and their oppressive new economic levies, per se, that would radicalize comuneros but rather the crossfire between church and state at a moment of secularization that brought comuneros to act collectively and to recognize themselves as political communities. Bourbon Reforms inadvertently attacked the entwined religious and political practices that had laid the groundwork for the emergence of the común over the previous two hundred years. Against that attack the común would defend itself. Orders from Spain calling for more efficient tribute collection appeared during the reign of Charles III, though comuneros suspected change was in the offing even before they reached the viceroyalty of Peru. But rather than an increase, they envisioned a decrease in payments and labor, in response to their complaints to the Crown of excessive exactions from colonial officials. Undoubtedly influenced by priests’ reluctance to publish new, lower tariffs for priestly duties, comuneros came to believe that the king of Spain had reduced tribute and the frequency of mita service but that these reductions were hidden from them by conniving caciques and corregidores. Even after new regulations governing tribute collection became known, rumors persisted that reductions were hidden by caciques, who were viewed as disloyal to both Crown and community. As the idea of común self-​governance grew in legitimacy, comuneros challenged caciques’ underpayment of tribute as fraud perpetrated against the Crown. Thus two seemingly opposed ideas existed simultaneously: one, that the king had reduced tribute, and dishonest caciques were hindering the king’s wishes and pocketing the difference; and two, that the king had established firm criteria for collecting tribute money that dishonest caciques were thwarting by under-​reporting the number of tributaries, thus paying a smaller gross amount that the community actually owed. Either way, from a comunero point of view, a benevolent king’s wishes were being frustrated by caciques. Such conclusions about the perfidy of these nonelected local officials derived in part from the comunero understanding of tribute and mita obligations. Even during rebellion many, if not most, communities continued to pay tribute and dispatch mita service, indicating their belief in their legitimacy. Aside from being civil ceremonies that brought the común together, tribute paying and mita service were legal obligations that defined one as an “indio,” as a member of a specific



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indigenous town. Tribute was levied on households within communities, not on individuals per se. A young man did not begin to pay tribute until he was married with a separate household. Paying tribute and serving in the mita thus marked achieving adulthood and full membership in the community, including use rights to agricultural fields and pastures granted by the cabildo in return for responsible service to the común. Attacks on these rites of passage could be construed as attacks on the community’s ability to make itself legitimate. Moreover, comuneros understood their tribute and mita services to the king as their part of a “pact,” in return for which the king had granted them lands and recognized their legal rights.22 In light of this “pact,” only a generous king could ameliorate tribute and mita abuses; when comuneros claimed that fraudulent corregidores and caciques hid from them reductions in these obligations, they always maintained that the king had ordered it. But caciques had no such immunity from suspicion of malfeasance in their covenant with the común, even when their illegal acts were in defense of the community. Usurpation of tribute stole money from the king but could also allow caciques to protect their communities from unreasonable economic pressures. That is, by undercounting tributaries, the cacique could reduce the gross amount the community was liable for and thus distribute the tax burden more equitably. (Of course, caciques might also have done this to ensure that they could meet the tax quota. When they failed to do so, they were often jailed.) High praise for a cacique was that he managed to pay all the tribute “without bothering the poor Indians of the community.”23 In 1760 a group of tribute collectors from ayllus under cacique Florencio Lupa’s governance described how they, not Lupa, collected the tribute: they collected more from those who had more and less from poor people. They had no idea how many people of each tax category were named in the tax census, but they did know the total tribute that their respective ayllus had to pay.24 Of course, a cacique might undercount tributaries in order to turn their labor to productive enterprises for the community such as grain mills, whose proceeds would go into the community chest ostensibly to pay for community needs, such as salary for a school master. Or, the cacique might use the uncounted tributaries for his own profit, a frequent complaint. At least by the mid-​eighteenth century, this implied covenant, whereby caciques protected their communities by absorbing or distributing fiscal burdens and in return community members provided labor, was the only tie left giving caciques legitimacy. The ability to lead a (pre-​Christian) religious cult that had previously given caciques legitimacy had been largely absorbed by cabildo members, who now led Christian festivals. If a cacique’s rule was no longer sufficiently legitimated through religious rites or an economically defined reciprocity, the community had two principal methods to rid themselves of him. They could accuse him of fiscal malfeasance or accuse him of lacking the lineage





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status that defined hereditary rule, that is, of having illegitimate ancestry or being altogether non-​Indian, which is to say mestizo, mulatto, or Spaniard. Up through the 1780s the categories by which Indians were distinguished from Spaniards remained full of ambiguities. Some people were Indians because they paid tribute, served in the mita, and had rights to their communities’ commons, while others claimed exemption from such duties by virtue of being Spaniards or Creole Spaniards. Between those two statuses lay a world of ambiguity. Since the sixteenth century caciques had sought recognition of a Spanish-​ style kind of hereditary nobility. They were exempt from tribute and mita, often sent their sons to Jesuit schools and their daughters into convents, been engaged in the acquisition of private estates, and enjoyed “Spanish” privileges such as riding on horseback, wearing Spanish-​style clothing, and carrying sword and dagger. A  close look at comunero conflict with caciques Don Gregorio Llanquipacha and Don Florencio Lupa reveals the ambiguous contours of social distinction and the rapidly decreasing legitimacy of particular caciques and hereditary rule more generally. These conflicts also show how Bourbon Reforms encouraging comuneros to critique their caciques and corregidores led to comunero radicalization.

The Ritual of Mita Service Cacique Don Florencio Lupa had outsized influence with crown officials and played a leading role in implementing the Bourbon Reforms with respect to the church in comunero towns. At least early in his career, he participated in and led public rituals, but his attacks on the festival system demonstrate that his attitude toward it was ambivalent at best. Economic obligations to the Spanish colonial state could only be met successfully by careful attention to social and religious ritual. Like other colonial caciques, Don Florencio Lupa straddled two worlds while attempting to maintain his legitimacy in both.25 It was when Lupa attempted to separate the sacred from the profane with his attacks on the church and the entwined civil-​religious festival system that he began to lose his legitimacy in the eyes of the común. Lupa’s attempt to maintain ritualized legitimacy in the eyes of comuneros while demonstrating his worldly and wealthy sophistication become clear with an in-​depth examination of the dispatch of mita workers. This account is taken from testimonies given in the 1760s and 1770s from former jilaqatas of Moscarí, Lupa’s hometown. In the early spring of 1760, Lupa gathered the mitayos (men destined to work in the mines and mills of the Villa Imperial of Potosí) from the province of Chayanta near the town of Pocoata to travel the last leg of their journey together. They had come from their home pueblos during the last several days to



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meet on August 24, San Bartolomé’s day, when Chayanta province traditionally dispatched its workers.26 Just as every town collected its tribute on a particular saint’s day each province or group of towns within a province celebrated a cabildo, an official meeting of town leaders around a saint’s festival, in order to formally designate mitayos for that year.27 In 1760 twenty-​ six mitayos from Moscarí were dispatched to Potosí accompanied by arrieros, long-​distance traders who carried their goods on mule back.28 These arrieros were responsible for transporting the food for the workers and their families during the journey to Potosí. Wives and children went along with the mitayos in an effort to reduce the desertion rate from the Potosí mines.29 The jilaqatas of Moscarí testified that their jilancos and arkiris accompanied them.30 Jilancos, ayllu authorities, went along as the “purse-​ strings,” the people who could slowly dole out the town’s money to provide for the mitayos and their families. To raise this money to support the mitayos, the town of Moscarí owned several grain mills. The arkiris were musicians who played wind instruments and accompanied mitayos with dirgelike music as they left their villages and likely provided sacred music for church festivals and Christian mass. 31 Not all colonial witnesses agreed that sending the mitayos off was a sad affair for which funeral music was appropriate. In 1795 Marcelino Lupa, Don Florencio’s son, disputed other reports of mitayos taking their leave as if going to a certain death, their faces “blackened” in mourning, dancing in a large “wheel” around an old woman gloomily beating a small drum. Instead, Don Marcelino claimed to have witnessed solemn but not mournful mita Indians with “their heads and hats covered with crowns of laurel and carnations and other flowers as a spectacle more of happiness and diversion than the sadness [usually reported by the opponents of forced labor].”32 Of course, as a hereditary lord, Marcelino Lupa was exempt from forced labor so did not have to worry about dying in a mine accident or suffering a slow death from choco, the “brown lung” disease many miners got during mita service.33 In 1760, thirty-​year-​old Don Florencio Lupa led an entourage of some one hundred people, including the mitayos, their wives and children, their mule teams, their money managers, and their musicians. With their heads crowned with flowers, the mitayos made the journey from Moscarí to the assembly point in Pocoata. The elderly men who had served as jilaqatas of Moscarí also testified that cacique Florencio Lupa provided this group with “aguardiente, coca, and chicha” in the “ancient custom.”34 Their way from Moscarí to Pocoata was a sacred path, whose way was lined with “altars.” At each altar, the entire entourage would halt and Florencio Lupa would provide everyone with a large portion of chicha, both to drink and with which to pour libations, a custom known as a ch’alla.35





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When Florencio Lupa served as interim cacique of Pocoata from 1772 to 1776, the mitayos of the towns of Moscarí and Macha joined with those of Pocoata at a cabildo meeting held at Don Florencio’s hacienda. Large contingents of workers and their families from all three towns came to the hacienda, where Don Florencio was expected to feed them lavishly. Huge earthenware jars of chicha would wash down the roasted llama and cuy meat.36 They certainly would have eaten the potatoes baked in earthen ovens, flavored with aji, hot peppers brought from the lowlands. How did Don Florencio finance such an extravagant feast? In a report made by Corregidor Carlos Hereña in 1772, he complained that caciques in Chayanta followed a “pernicious” custom of naming a number of men as colque runas in each community, literally “silver people.” Although the practice varied by town, in general the “silver people” contributed a large sum of money (fifty to seventy-​five pesos) to caciques to avoid mita duty. The payment might be used to hire a substitute worker, or support the local church or school, or to line the cacique’s pocketbook. Corregidor Hereña complained that money from the “silver people” was being used for something called alanocas, that is, the “charges of the cabildos . . . that reduce the [Indians] to disorder and drunkenness.”37 In other words, money from the “silver people” supported providing food and drink for the workers when they met in cabildo en route to the silver mines. Another possible source of the bounty laid out by Don Florencio Lupa for his workers came from tributes that were collected around the same time as the mita workers were dispatched.38 As cacique, Lupa required everyone to provide him with a ritual offering of a chicken every six months at the times of tribute collection.39 In return for the ritual offering, the alcaldes and jilaqatas acting as tribute collectors and led by Lupa provided a ch’alla, a poured libation, a bit of home-​made chicha or aguardiente spilled in honor of God or gods, or a “sprinkling” or “flicking” of these beverages from their fingers as an honor and in response to the gift and the tribute money.40 Lupa, then, was fulfilling many ritual duties. In contrast to the Llanquipachas of Condo, Lupa seems to be have embraced practices of ritual gifting that fall under the rubric of “Andean reciprocity.” But he was not alone in performing these rituals. Other community leaders such as the alcaldes and jilaqatas who comprised the town council members also took part. The 1760 jilaqatas’ description of the Moscarí mitayos’ journey to Pocoata implied that Lupa personally led his people in pouring libations on saints’ altars at intervals along a sacred path. The jilaqatas seemed to suggest to the Spaniards who took or read their testimony that Lupa practiced a shady sort of heterodox Christianity or worse, a bit of idolatrous sleight-​of-​hand designed to induce his people to work. However, from the perspective of mitayos at Don Florencio’s hacienda, a different picture of the cacique begins to emerge, that of a patronizing, wealthy, Hispanicized Christian. The hacienda of Coropaya was one of four



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homes that Lupa owned in the 1770s, including two other valley haciendas and a home on the plaza in Moscarí. The Coropaya hacienda was a broad expanse of territory that Lupa had purchased from land that had been previously alienated from indigenous commons. Lupa’s residence was elaborately decorated to demonstrate his Christian faith. In the main hall hung six enormous paintings, all approximately six feet tall, in elaborately carved wooden frames of four “doctors” of the church, including St. Augustine and perhaps St. Thomas Aquinas. Other large paintings portrayed the Christian Trinity and the crucified Christ. A small china image of the infant Jesus and a medal emblazoned with the face of the Virgin completed the religious imagery. Six huge maps of the earth, painted in the style of globes and hung in ostentatious fashion with frames of gold, adorned the walls of the salon. Don Florencio employed three educated young men in his household as his secretaries. The hacienda structure was quite large and had seven other rooms, including a kitchen with an oven for baking bread, an item almost completely unknown in European rural homes at the time. A large garden with fruit trees and willows complemented the home. Near the garden was a ten-​foot-​long wooden bench so that Don Florencia and his wife Doña Polonia could sit and enjoy their prosperity. At this working hacienda, Don Florencio maintained two grain mills and ten mules.41 In other towns of Chayanta province, it was customary for the cacique to pay to have mass said for the mitayos, and Lupa would have done the same. The priest would then pray for the success of the mita workers and ask the saints to protect them.42 It is likely that the segunda, on mule back, poured libations in front of the church and led a parade around the plaza, returning to the church to the sounds of the arkiris playing dirges on their wind instruments.43 After completing their ritual in the center of town, the mitayos prepared for the final part of their journey. As they marched toward Potosí where they would settle in the parishes of San Francisco el Chico and San Cristóbal in the ranchería, the neighborhood of Indian laborers, their last views of the town would have been the white dome of the Church of San Juan de Pocoata, an impressive sight for the mitayos.44

Ritual and Revolt in Tribute Collection While most comuneros served as mita workers only three or four times over the course of their lives, every household paid tribute twice a year. Historical documents show how tribute collection operated in one of Condo’s annex towns, Nuestra Señora de la Vera Cruz de (Our Lady of the True Cross of) Cacachaca. Like Culta, Cacachaca had been founded as a chapel with its saint





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image in the early seventeenth century, and, also like Culta, still maintained its political, social and religious ties to Condo. Tribute collection was officially to take place on Christmas, December 25 and San Juan, June 21, although dates could vary. Tribute was collected in conjunction with a saint celebrated by the town or annex, since that was an occasion that would bring people together. In 1757, tribute collection in Cacachaca triggered a revolt when comuneros learned of a rumored reduction in tribute. They came to believe that the king had reduced tribute but that Condo cacique Gregorio Llanquipacha had hidden this from them. The “Christmas” tribute collection in Condo’s annex town of Cacachaca was held the week following the celebration of the feast of the Purification of Our Lady on February 2. In 1757 cacique governor Gregorio Llanquipacha rode at the head of the official contingent that came to collect the tax money owed to the king. With him was his legal counsel, Don Miguel Calisto, his segunda Don Roque Choquechambi, and the jilaqatas of the four Condo ayllus represented in Cacachaca, the elected tax collectors for their ayllus. Gregorio Llanquipacha, as anansaya cacique, was the principal political leader for the reducción and the annex towns and hamlets within its territory and thus was responsible for the dispatch of the mita workers to the silver mines of Potosí and for the tribute collection he paid to the royal treasury, from which his salary came.45 He was a liaison between the comuneros who paid taxes and the Spanish colonial state, because as a member of the native hereditary nobility, he was exempt from both taxation and forced labor. As Llanquipacha and his contingent of tax collectors entered Cacachaca, they were greeted by the alcalde for the annex town, Don Ignacio Aica, who had already set up the table for the cabildo. Large jars of chicha sat nearby as tribute collection mandated exchanges of libations between the jilaqata tax collectors and the people paying taxes. The listing of officials and their titles suggests the solemn procession that accompanied this procedure of tax collection. Even more impressive to the assembled audience of comuneros waiting to pay their taxes was the pageantry of the corps who led the procession:  bearers of red flags, trumpeters, and drummers marched in advance of the officials, and their arrival was announced by the repeated pealing of the church bells and firecrackers. Llanquipacha would have worn a suit, complete with ruffled shirt and crimson embroidered vest. He would have had loaded pistols on both hips, along with his saber, indicative of his wealth and elite status in the colonial world. Certainly, he would have been carrying his riding crop whip, with silver tips on the ends of the braided leather and wearing his silver spurs. His favorite horse (or more likely, given the altitude, mule) would have been saddled with his silver-​trimmed bridle and bit. After all, this was a state visit of the highest-​ranking local official, the cacique governor, Don Gregorio Feliz Llanquipacha.46



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Don Gregorio described what happened that summer day after their arrival in Cacachaca: It is customary that all the tributary Indians gather themselves together, as in fact they were gathered according to law [when we arrived]. Calling their names in agreement with the padrón in which they are listed, we began  .  .  .  with Nicolás Tijulla, who was listed first, being the head. When he heard his name, he jumped up in a rage and in a loud voice responded with great audacity, objecting [that he would not pay]. . . . Since he was an originario, from the first day that he had been included in the tribute list, he had always paid 4 pesos 4 ½ reales. Now he was resisting, saying that he ought not to pay the said pesos but only 3 pesos and 4 reales. Seeing this, the other Indians resisted in one voice.47 As Llanquipacha explained, the first name on the census was always the head of his ayllu, the jilaqata or perhaps alcalde of the ayllu. The colonial census followed a geographic format reflecting the physical layout of the community since ayllu members lived in close proximity to one another. The ceremonial reading of the padrón during tribute collection thus reinforced the community’s sense of itself by announcing its leadership hierarchy and relating ayllus to the community as a whole.48 Llanquipacha referred to Nicolás Tijulla as an originario, or “original Indian,” a tribute category of those whose ancestors were “originally” assigned to Condo and who had access to adequate land to pay the highest tribute. The other main tribute category was forastero, the permanently settled immigrants who paid less than originarios. Certain men were generally excluded from tribute payment, those under eighteen or over fifty, single men, cabildo members, cofradía officers, and those serving mita. Gregorio Llanquipacha carefully pointed out Tijulla’s tax status since cacique attempts to collect tribute from those in excluded categories was a source of conflict. What happened next is best explained by other observers. Santos Manuel Calli, an alcalde from ayllu Cahualli, was standing nearby when Nicolás Tijulla refused to pay the full tribute, and he reported that Tijulla announced that a royal decree had been issued lowering the tribute but that it had been hidden from them by Llanquipacha. Another comunero added that he heard that the decree “was very well known because they told them that it had been published in the Villa of Potosí, Oruro and the city of La Plata.” The third person summoned to pay his tribute was absent so his wife stood in his place. She walked up to the tribute table and from her small purse counted out four pesos and four and a half reales. She put all the money on the table and then, declaring “that according to what the other Indians were saying her husband ought not to pay more than three pesos four reales,” she picked up the “extra” peso and turned and walked





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away.49 However, Llanquipacha refused to accept anything other than the full four pesos and four and a half reales. After the first refusal to pay, Gregorio Llanquipacha immediately asked for help in squashing the rebellion, pointing out his fear of “bankruptcy” of the Royal Treasury if he were unable to collect the tribute. He wrote to the corregidor, the province-​level Spanish magistrate, that the leaders of this rebellion have said publicly to all the Indians of our parcialidad and ayllus that they have obtained a decree from His Majesty in which he commands and orders that they have a reduction of tribute. . . . We have had no notice of this. We’ve pondered this and [believe] that the above mentioned revolting and malevolent Indians, drawing on their tendencies to distort [the facts] have spread such news.50 Llanquipacha called for the full force of the Spanish state to halt the rebellion, and in doing so, he tacitly drew a distinction between himself and the “Indians.” In his view “Indians” were the people he ruled, people who were easily misled by rumor, people who lied and did not take responsibility for their actions, and people who were wild, “revolting and malevolent.” He reported that all his actions in collecting tribute had been in accordance with Spanish law, and that he was reasonable, just, and implicitly “Spanish.”51 The corregidor of Paria province, Don Alexandro Murillo, carried out the investigation into the uprising, interviewing nineteen comuneros who were present at the time of the attempted tribute collection.52 Tomás Taquimalco, past principal of Cahuayo, another of Condo’s annex towns, testified that he had been told by Pascual Gonzales Choque, a former alcalde serving as alférez for the celebration of the Purification of Our Lady, that the decree had been hidden more than five years.53 There were reports that the decree had absolved mita laborers of the need to pay tribute during their duty. Although mita workers had been excused from tribute since the sixteenth century, there had been efforts to change this law and caciques like Gregorio Llanquipacha took advantage of the confusion to collect tribute from the exempt workers. At the end of his investigation, the corregidor concluded that former alcalde Pascual Gonzales Choque, principal and jilaqata Nicolás Tijulla, and principal and former mita captain Joseph Barcaya were leaders of the rebellion, and he ordered their arrests. Pasqual Gonzales Choque was immediately brought into custody, and his goods were inventoried and embargoed.54 The corregidor also arrested Nicolás Tijulla. Since there was no prison in Cacachaca, he locked Tijulla and Choque up in a simple room. Early the next morning an Andean woman came rushing to the house where Don Gregorio Llanquipacha was staying to report what she had seen:  “There were some Indians spread out [around



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Cacachaca], some in the ravine and others on a knoll that is across from and very close to the houses [on the outskirts of town] and that according to what she discovered, they wanted to carry out some surprise [attack].” Llanquipacha immediately went to the corregidor who was staying nearby. The corregidor then “ordered some of the young Spaniards that I had brought in my company to go and identify the Indians and arrest them and . . . investigate what they were doing or waiting for in the ravine and knoll.”55 Six men rode out to investigate. One of those in the patrol, Pedro de Aseñas, testified that when they got close they saw a woman “put out a red flag” on the wall across from the knoll, evidently a warning of the approach of the Spanish troops. As Aseñas looked at the knoll, he discerned some people seated there, and then a second later he saw that both from the knoll and ravine a mob of “Indians were descending, firing stones from their slings in pursuit of some of the young men sent to scout out the Indians . . . [chasing them] to the edge of town making a riot of noise and voices that caused much terror.”56 Aseñas testified that the attackers were making an “algazara,” or “the noise.” Modern Spanish dictionaries define this sound as the ululating uproar of the “Moors” when they surprised or attacked their enemy, or as those in Cacachaca described it, a blood-​curdling cacophony of loud “guffaws” and “whistling”—​ a high pitched trilling shriek that drove the young Spaniards “crazy” with fear. This is not the only instance where comuneros were described as “Moors.” 57 For Spaniards, the Reconquista, the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula from Muslims, was a favorite trope to use to define their relationship to “Indians,” people who were non-​Christian and in need of reconquest. The description was a shorthand for racializing and dismissing violent comuneros and any claims they made.58 The composition of the troops sent to investigate bears a closer examination. The corregidor who dispatched the troops referred to them as “some young Spaniards.” But among them were two men with indigenous Andean names, Antonio Choqueticlla and Cristóval Guarache. Choqueticlla and Guarache were names of hereditary lords of the town of Quillacas. In the year this confrontation took place, the cacique of Quillacas was Alexo Choqueticlla Colque Guarache, likely Antonio Choqueticlla’s father since Antonio himself would later become the cacique principal of Quillacas. Antonio Choqueticlla was also Gregorio Llanquipacha’s brother-​in-​law.59 Maria Lupercia Colque Guarache, Gregorio Llanquipacha’s wife, claimed descent from Juan Colque Guarache, hereditary lord of the preconquest Quillacas federation and a sixteenth-​century ally of Viceroy Francisco Toledo.60 The Choqueticllas, like the Guaraches, owned homes on the plaza in the Audiencia capital of La Plata as well as haciendas in the rich Cochabamba Valley. These two young men were no more “Indian” than Pedro de Aseñas, Manuel de Loaysa, Tomás Bargas, or Antonio





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de Lira, the other “Spanish” troops sent to Cacachaca. That is, as wealthy elites with illustrious ancestry, who rode on horseback and carried guns, both of which required special permission for Andeans, they were perceived as having little in common with the screaming horde pouring down the hill. By the same token, it is unlikely that any of the young men fit the definition of “Spanish” as one who was born in Spain. They probably would all have been categorized by peninsular Spaniards as mestizos, people of mixed ancestry and culture, or perhaps, without the Andean names, as Creoles: that is, of European ancestry but born in the Americas. While the corregidor described them all as “some young Spaniards,” the Cacachaca comuneros tellingly characterized them as “cholo thieves.” In the late eighteenth century, the term “cholo” was just coming to refer to people of mixed cultural heritage, or as defined today, a “civilized Indian.”61 In this case, it was a defiant taunt, putting those so named back in their place as having fallen into a marginal category, not Spanish, not truly Indian, and certainly not comunero. Like the corregidor’s young troops, Gregorio Llanquipacha was denounced as a “cholo thief,” ostensibly an Indian, but with the cultural trappings of the Spanish lords he emulated. After chasing the young “Spanish” troops or “cholo thieves” with their slingshots and whips, the people who invaded Cacachaca made their demands known: free the accused, Pascual Gonzales Choque and Nicolás Tijulla, or the Spaniards “would be destroyed.” A  number of women who approached the young “Spaniards” repeatedly yelled this message, followed by the men of the rioting mob.62 Given that the attackers were waving their slings and whips, the threats were undoubtedly more explicit than reported. During the uprisings of the 1780s, “cholos” were eviscerated and beheaded, and threats of drinking chicha in an enemy’s skull were common. Before the terrified young “Spaniards” had a chance to respond to the threats, the mob broke the stocks holding Pascual Gonzales Choque and freed him. Nicolás Tijulla’s stocks proved more difficult and one of the troops, fearing for his life, freed Tijulla. The mob embraced the men, and going behind the church, they produced several enormous terracotta jugs of chicha. As they drank, the crowd swelled with people who had been scattered at the foot of the mountains that surrounded Cacachaca and who joined the celebration.63 The “Spanish” troops remained in the plaza, talking with the old men and few women willing to answer their questions. They identified most of the rioters as being from Cacachaca and allies of Choque and Tijulla. Nicolás Tijulla’s wife was credited with calling together the rioters to free her husband; perhaps she was the woman who hung out the red flag to signal the attack. But there were also a small number of people from Pocoata, a town in neighboring Chayanta province, where Tijulla’s wife had gone to gather support.64 Christóval Guarache,



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one of the “Spaniards” sent to arrest the “Indians,” explained why the Pocoatans came. Guarache testified that most of them [rioters] were Indians of Cacachaca and its hamlets. He heard in the plaza [in response] to his questions about who the Indians were and why they had rioted, that the women and some of the men who were there were from Pocoata in the jurisdiction of Charcas [Chayanta province], and they had come to free him [Tijulla] because he was an alférez in the annex of Campaya of the curate of Pocoata.65 Just as Condo and Culta comuneros participated in saints’ festivals in valley towns where they held plots of land, so did Cacachaca people, in this case in annex towns of Pocoata. These ritual ties between the two towns were completely outside of the Spanish-​organized political state and also outside of the direct control of any cacique.66 In the meantime, the troops decided they should leave Cacachaca while they could, after questioning the few “loyal Indians” in the plaza. The majority of the rioters were still parading around town. The “peaceful Indians” urged the others to stop the commotion, telling them that the prisoners had been pardoned. With this, the furor temporarily died down and the troops were able to leave. But as they left, Gregorio Llanquipacha, and the urinsaya cacique of Condo, Santos Pacheco, could be seen on the road leading away from town.67 The Cacachacans began to yell that they would “kill the thieves and cholos of Condocondo.” They continued to scream, yell, and whistle as the troops rode away, “making them crazy,” and “mocking Royal Justice” with their otherworldly noises. As a final insult and to show their complete “contempt,” the Cacachacans turned toward the fleeing young men, dropped their pants, and urinated toward them.68 Llanquipacha found the confrontation with comuneros exhausting, or at least that is what he claimed. In July 1757, five months after the tax revolt in Cacachaca, he wrote to the Audiencia to request permission to relinquish his cacicazgo for three or four years because of his “broken health.” He had served as cacique for ten years, but those obligations had taken their toll on his financial and physical health, and now he believed that his life was in danger.69 He laid all the blame at the feet of those who had been arrested in connection with the Cacachaca tax revolt, and he wanted them banished from Condo. As Llanquipacha put it, they “have alarmed my people  .  .  .  making them bring continuous appeals to this Royal Audiencia. The principal among those [is] . . . Ambrocio Copacondo whose perverse and restless nature is assisted by his knowledge of reading and writing.”70 Ambrocio Copacondo, who had worked as a secretary to Gregorio Llanquipacha and other caciques, penned a number of petitions to the Audiencia,





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blaming Llanquipacha for having him arrested to prevent his accusations of tax fraud from reaching higher authorities. In Copacondo’s words, “I say that I find myself imprisoned . . . with shackles like a deceiving thief and without more motive than the [accusations of the] tyrant and traitor of the Royal Treasury of His Majesty: interim governor of this pueblo, don Gregorio Llanquipacha.”71 Despite Copacondo’s claim, Gregorio Llanquipacha was not an interim governor, but the legitimate hereditary lord of Condo, officially named by the Audiencia as cacique in March 1747.72 Just as the rioters in Cacachaca called Llanquipacha a “cholo,” and still others called him a “sambo,” being called interim was meant to cast doubt on his legitimacy.73 After the Cacachaca tax revolt Ambrocio Copacondo found himself back in prison and directing more petitions to the Audiencia. In May 1757, three months after the uprising, he explained more of Llanquipacha’s ways of defrauding the community. Condo owned four grain mills that the reducción had been “given by Our King and Lord” in the sixteenth century. Profits from these were to cover tribute for those unable to pay or for those who were exempt, such as the town council officers and those in service to the church. But rather than the rent proceeds going into the community chest, Llanquipacha was appropriating these funds for himself. As Copacondo reported, Llanquipacha is a “fraud” and a “traitor to our king” who has “said that he will take revenge” on those who led the uprising, and “distort the nature of the revolution” that they led.74 Copacondo went on to defend himself, arguing that he was not in Cacachaca at the time of the tax uprising but in Potosí on personal business. What begins to emerge from this and other documents is what led town leaders, such as Copacondo, to argue that tribute had been reduced. Comuneros did not doubt the legality or morality of paying tribute to the king. Why then did so many believe that the tribute collection in Condo and its annexes was unjust? Why would they call their hereditary lord a cholo, a failed pretender to Spanish status? Condo comuneros did seem to think of tribute as part of a community obligation. In return for paying tribute, taking turns at mita duty, and serving the church in various ways, comuneros demonstrated their legitimate membership in the community and therefore enjoyed certain rights. The king of Spain had long been chief moral guarantor of this reciprocal “pact,” but it was enforced locally through the Audiencia. If those given just exemptions were ignored or somehow trampled on, then those doing this were immoral, or “frauds.” Since the king was the guarantor of this pact, it follows that, if this pact were broken, he or his agents would repair it. It was well known that the Crown had forced the reduction of priestly charges but that this had been ignored for several years. Because many royal decrees had been hidden from the people of Condo, it would also follow that an order mending the problems regarding tribute had likely been hidden.



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But this was not so much a case of a violated “moral economy” as it was a case of a changing definition of community and of what kind of authority could be legitimate. Moral economy interpretations presuppose a “traditional” governmental stasis which has been somehow upset and to which people long to return.75 That was no longer the case in the viceroyalty of Peru. Rather, the situation in Condo and its annexes was very much in flux. The question was: what kind of person, in what kind of post, could be a legitimate authority? Along with a shift from hereditary cacicazgos toward commoner cabildo members, definition of community was also undergoing change. Copacondo (perhaps unintentionally) pointed to this when he wrote that Llanquipacha would “distort the nature of the revolution.” The revolts and petitions were about tax fraud, but more to the point they were about who or what would be the legitimate government for the town. Increasingly, caciques like Gregorio Llanquipacha or Florencio Lupa, men with enlightened values who regarded themselves as more rational than their “Indian” townspeople, no longer reflected the reality of indigenous social organization and identity. Instead, community interests were being furthered by another set of authorities—​the “commoner” alcaldes and jilaqatas of the cabildo—​legitimated through participation in religious and political rituals which gave the común its sense of being and place.



PA RT   I I I

THE REVOLUTIONARY COMÚN

Andean comuneros were heirs to two distinct political philosophies—​ pre-​Conquest Andean and Spanish—​that became, through colonial experience and practices, complementary. In pre-​Conquest times, political and religious spheres were inseparable. At the apex of society stood the God-​like Inca, the son of the Sun. Every request from the Inca emperor to the cacique, and cacique to the common people, had to be framed within the religious cult to local and regional gods. Although no Spanish monarch could ever hope to have that kind of absolute sovereignty united in his person, Spanish political power also had its religious foundations. The scholastic theory underlying Habsburg rule argued that the Christian God was the original source of sovereignty in the world. God granted sovereignty devolved to the people as a whole. The people then granted it to the king, making the king the medium for divine justice. But if the people in their corporate capacity were the conduit between God and king, the power that so devolved paved the way for the king’s just removal. In the late eighteenth century, those ideas of just overthrow of tyrants were applied by comuneros at their local level, as caciques became targets. Caciques had succeeded in making themselves distinct from commoner Indians. The común, made up of indigenous commoners, understood itself as capable of taking moral action. Consisting of Christians loyal to the King, the común increasingly began to see caciques as disloyal apostates. This was the case in San Pedro de Condocondo, where townspeople killed their cacique because they believed he had acted against the común.



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In a truly revolutionary moment, this idea of popular sovereignty—​ that the cacique only had the authority the común extended to him—​spread across the viceroyalty. Comunes demanded the right of self-​government, sometimes by naming their own caciques, or their own corregidores, at other times advocating for a new Inca king to replace the Spanish monarchy. In any case, they knew that they did not stand alone: they were not merely unconnected islands of commoners. As the uprisings spread across the Audiencia of Charcas, indigenous towns maintained an extensive intercommunity correspondence, writing back and forth to their común brothers. In these letters, the term común suggested something both tangible and intangible, literally the community itself, but also the idea of the community as the focus of political action and identification. These revolutions were brutally suppressed. Their notable leaders were singled out for horrific executions for threatening the colonial state. But Spaniards did not grasp the nature of comunero leadership or their aims, so their attempts at suppression backfired. The común and its ideas of collective sovereignty, and the right to select their own rulers, lived on.



7   

Comunero Politics and the King’s Justice The Común Takes Moral Action

In March 1769, Don Gregorio Llanquipacha filed a legal petition with the Audiencia requesting an authorized copy of a 1697 royal order in which the king had reiterated that caciques were to be accorded privileges like those of “the noble hidalgos of Castile.” Llanquipacha was not alone in his request; caciques across the viceroyalty sought official copies of the decree as Spanish guarantees of their “noble” status.1 Llanquipacha’s relationship with the people under his rule in Condo had not improved since the impudent treatment he had received in Cacachaca ten years earlier. Perhaps he thought that with their great professed loyalty to the king of Spain, this decree would garner him the respect he believed he deserved as the legitimate hereditary lord of Condo and all the annex towns and hamlets in its territory. That was not to be. Don Gregorio Llanquipacha and his brother and segunda, Don Andrés Llanquipacha, were confronted in the dead of night in October 1774, by a mob of men, women, and children yielding torches and weapons. The immediate spark was a single insult to the común: the idea that the cacique had sent away their beloved priest. But this single insult was perpetrated on the heels of a long history of provocations, denunciations, and litigation. Examining the Condo events makes it possible to discern comunero understandings of justice, authority, and community sovereignty that authorized these acts of violence. Tensions between caciques and comuneros, as well as tensions between towns like Condo and the annex towns within their jurisdictions, come into play here against a backdrop of vernacular political philosophy. Condo, like other reducción towns across the viceroyalty of Peru, was both heir to and creator of a politics that not only defined tyranny but also prescribed a remedy: the right of a people to reclaim their inherent sovereignty and overthrow a tyrant. The People Are King: The Making of an Indigenous Andean Politics. S. Elizabeth Penry, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780195161601.001.0001



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Initial Responses to the Llanquipacha Murders The day after the murders of the Llanquipachas, October 15, 1774, alcaldes of the town officially identified the bodies, certified the deaths, and described the wounds. There were three bodies, those of Gregorio Llanquipacha and his brother Andrés, who acted as Gregorio’s segunda, and one of the attackers who Andrés had shot dead with his flintlock before the mob overcame him. The caciques’ homes were littered with the discarded murder weapons; piles of bloody rocks, bits of whips, broken weaving implements of sharpened llama bone (wichuñas), and broken clubs matted with bloody skin and hair. Also left behind were the burned out torches that witnesses had seen the women carry. Both the Llanquipachas had suffered more than one “mortal” blow. Gregorio was stabbed repeatedly in his ear, by women wielding wichuñas, likely indicating his failure to “hear” some prior complaints. Andrés, too, had severe wounds. The left side of his body had been “sliced with the point of a sword” and his “hide” had been removed, perhaps to make a drum as a relic, as it would have been in pre-​Conquest times.2 Both brothers were badly bruised and bloodied, nearly beyond recognition. The widows and other family members of the dead caciques spoke to the alcaldes and told them that the people of ayllu Sullcayana had come in a fit of rage the night before and murdered Gregorio and Andrés Llanquipacha. The day after the murders, the Llanquipachas’ nephew, Manuel Choqueticlla, sent an impassioned letter reporting the murders to corregidor Manuel Cabello. I send news that during the night all the Indians of ayllu Sullcayana entered armed where my uncles Don Gregorio and Don Andrés Llanquipacha were and brutally killed them, on order of Ignacio Choque and Damaso Yana. The alcalde of [ayllu] Cahualli says that the alcalde of [ayllu] Sullcayana ordered it and told him in plain words that he ordered that they come.3 Choqueticlla made it clear that ayllu Sullcayana, one of seven ayllus in Condo, murdered his uncles. 4 But he also asserted that the alcalde of ayllu Cahualli told him the Sullcayana alcalde ordered his people to gather and that the jilaqata of Sullcayana, Ignacio Choque, gave the order to kill them. With this report, it begins to appear that the whole governing structure of ayllu Sullcayana had mobilized to take concerted action. Most ayllu Sullcayana people lived in Cahuayo, an annex town of Condo. Given that Cahuayo is about twenty-​five miles, or about an eight-​hour walk from Condo, the murders led by the Sullcayana alcalde and jilaqata sound less spontaneous and more like planned political action.





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On the basis of such reports, the corregidor for Paria province, Manuel Joseph Cabello, quickly concluded that this was premeditated murder brought about because of accusations of tax fraud. Complaints that caciques funneled tribute money into their own pockets were not uncommon; the 1757 confrontation in Cacachaca was over tax fraud. The corregidor also suspected that this rebellion would likely spread to other ayllus of Condo. Violence had erupted in Condo and its annexes in the past and had spread to other towns in the province. Cabello hurriedly scribbled an initial report to the Audiencia outlining his worries and noted that those who committed the murders were all from ayllu Sullcayana. After completing the account, Cabello added in a hastily scratched postscript the names of the four past and present cabildo members from ayllu Sullcayana that he believed to be the main ones responsible: Marselo Taquimalco, Francisco Acarapi, Hilario Michaga, and Blas Copatiti.5 However, the accused of ayllu Sullcayana viewed the murders differently. They not only claimed that the caciques had been killed in self defense but that the común of Condo as a whole had killed the caciques, making it impossible to assess any individual blame. They explained that the deaths occurred in response to what they viewed as the expulsion of their priest, Dr. Joseph Espejo. Within days of the murders, the accused began to issue petitions and give testimony to this effect. The first petition sent to the Audiencia, the Spanish high court in La Plata, arrived within a week of the murders. In this petition the same four principales of ayllu Sullcayana named as the leaders in the murders, Marcelo Taquimalco, Francisco Acarapi, Hilario Michaga, and Blas Copatiti pleaded their innocence. On October 14, the day when their community first received word that their priest was moving to Toledo, a town in the nearby province of Carangas, All of [us] gathered together for the purpose of seeing off the priest or begging him with the most tender displays that he not leave because of the pain that his departure would cause [us] . . . . [We] had expressed [our] love for him over the long space of more than thirty years . . . . He defended [us] from the violence and vexations with which [our] caciques bothered [us]. . . . But since his departure was final [we] sadly and tearfully accompanied him to the Pueblo of Huari where he was to spend the night. Once [we] returned to [our] pueblo, [we] remembered the sinister accusations that the Cacique Don Gregorio and his brother Don Andrés Llanquipacha had made against [our] priest.6 The townspeople blamed the Llanquipachas for driving away the priest, saying that he had been forced to “flee their persecutions.” And so, “driven by the pain that had stunned [us], [we] all went, women and children included,



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to the house of the Llanquipachas for the sole purpose to investigate the motive that they had to banish [our] priest.” When the townspeople arrived at the Llanquipachas’ they engaged in a shouting match, telling the caciques that if their beloved priest should leave town, the caciques should leave, too. “At this suggestion without having gone further into the report that we brought, they came out unexpectedly with unsheathed swords in their hands and began to attack all the people, mistreating several until, taking in hand a blunderbuss they killed a tributary Indian.”7 The petitioners wrote that the Llanquipacha brothers confronted them with two loaded pistols, leading the crowd to riot, killing the two brothers in self-​ defense with “sticks, rocks and other weapons” they happened to find handy. They claimed that “they were unable to see who the authors of this deed were because of the confusion,” and because it was dark. They asked for royal protection and that the case be adjudicated in favor of the community. In contrast to the eyewitness accounts of Llanquipacha sympathizers, they argued that the attack was not premeditated but a spontaneous act of self-​defense. More important is the reason they gave for going to the Llanquipachas’ houses: they were furious that their priest had been “banished.” There was no mention of stolen tribute money in this petition, but there was a worry that these killings would be mistaken as retribution for tax fraud.8 This fear that the Spanish government would turn the Llanquipacha killings into a fight over tribute prompted a letter from two other cabildo members from ayllu Sullcayana, Damián Lenis and Ambrosio Benito.9 Dated exactly one week after the murders, the letter was addressed to their parish priest in Potosí, the mining center where comuneros served mita duty. Dr.  Joseph de Suero, the priest of San Bernardo, the parish which the people of Condo belonged to while in Potosí, was an outspoken supporter of Indian rights.10 Damián Lenis, Condo’s mita captain, and Ambrosio Benito, serving his turn in mita service, were well acquainted with Dr. Suero; in writing to him they knew that they were addressing an ally. The letter echoed the first petition from Condo: “We want to inform you of what has happened, and it is this, Sir:  There has just been an uprising in the town of Condo, caused by the Governor Don Gregorio Llanquipacha. The reason was the departure of the priest Dr. Espejo for the town of Toledo.” Lenis and Benito portray Llanquipacha acting not as a loving father to his children, the common metaphor used in colonial documents, but in an adversarial role to his townspeople, stockpiling Spanish-​style weapons and recruiting outside troops to quell their complaints. They asked Dr. Suero to vouch that they had been in Potosí when the murders occurred and to forward their version of events to the attorney for the Audiencia. According to the letter written by Dr.  Suero at the urging of Lenis and Benito, they had taken an extra turn of mita duty to avoid confrontation with Llanquipacha.





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Dr. Suero also reported their long-​standing complaints against Llanquipacha, an indication that the comuneros of Condo had turned to their Potosí parish priest before.11 While these letters and petitions were circulating, a large contingent of Condo comuneros traveled for several days to the capital of La Plata to present their case to the Audiencia, expecting to be protected by the king’s justice. News of the murders arrived before they did. When Audiencia officials realized that more than thirty comuneros from Condo were in the atrium of the courthouse, they were quickly arrested and jailed.12

El Común de Indios Marcelo Taquimalco, a thirty-​five-​year-​old principal of ayllu Sullcayana who had written the Audiencia pleading the innocence of his community, was among those arrested. In his statement to the authorities, Taquimalco testified that on the day of the murders, he was in Condo’s annex town Cahuayo when an alcalde brought him a letter from cacique Gregorio Llanquipacha ordering him to bring two mules to help move a new priest to Condo. Receiving this order, Taquimalco and others left not to get the mules but to see off the current priest, Dr. Joseph Espejo. Arriving in Condo, they encountered a “multitude of people” who were “grieving” over the loss of Dr. Espejo. This “multitude” accompanied the priest to the neighboring town of Huari, about a forty-​minute walk away. Taquimalco testified that he returned to Condo in the company of Nicolás Michaga, Blas Copatiti, and Cruz Yana, all principales of ayllu Sullcayana. Upon their return to Condo, they decided to gather the común to confront the Llanquipachas whom the throng believed had deliberately sent the priest away. The común split up, with part going to cacique Don Gregorio’s house and Taquimalco himself going to the home of Don Gregorio’s brother and segunda, Don Andrés. At Andrés Llanquipacha’s house, Cruz Yana, alcalde of Condo’s annex town Cahuayo, kicked the door open, and Andrés appeared with a pistol in his hand. The “común” said to Don Andrés “how could he have permitted such a fine priest to leave?” Rather than answering the question, Don Andrés fired his pistol into the crowd, killing a comunero. Taquimalco gave Don Andrés a push, and the crowd fell on him and killed him with stones and sticks. All depositions taken from the Condo comunero defendants echo this testimony:  that the people were distraught and grieving over the loss of their priest, that they blamed the Llanquipacha brothers for forcing him to leave, and that the común of Condo as a whole had committed the murders.13 But there is more to the testimony. The Spanish interrogators in La Plata asked if those imprisoned understood the seriousness of their actions. Perhaps



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given the fact that many Condo comuneros had come to La Plata to offer their version of events, Audiencia officials wondered if they fully comprehended that murder of caciques could be construed as treason. In response, Taquimalco acknowledged that it is a crime to take justice into [my] own hands, and to reprimand [my] Cacique or Governor, whom [I]‌well know ought to be obeyed if he is good, but not if he is bad and his works unjust, as was the case with the deceased. This doctrine was taught by Ignacio Rudolfo Choque [jilaqata of Sullcayana] and Damián Lenis [mita captain]. And also [I] know that if the común ordered [me] to do one thing and [my] governor another, [I] ought to obey first [the común].14 Cruz Yana, alcalde of Cahuayo, testified that he, too, went to Don Gregorio’s home. He saw Francisco Chura kick in the door, whereupon Gregorio came out waving his sword. The crowd demanded, “Give us back our priest!” Gregorio replied, “Get out, Indians!” and struck at several of them with his sword. Cruz Yana took the sword from Llanquipacha’s hand and then the crowd fell on him, killing him with blows from sticks and stones gathered by the women and men. He added, “it would be a fault to lose respect for the Governor. [I]‌know that it is a crime to kill him. But if the común orders [me] to do one thing and the Governor another, [I] would obey the común.”15 Francisco Chura, the ayllu Sullcayana principal who admitted to kicking open Don Gregorio’s door, insisted that the comuneros addressed Gregorio politely but demanded their priest back and vowed that they would have no other. Gregorio yelled, “You’ve come here to kill me!” and struck at them with his sword. Chura grabbed a stone from the courtyard and the crowd attacked, with the women landing blows with large sticks. On questions of obedience, Chura, too, testified that “a governor should be obeyed if he is good, but not if he is bad; that if the común orders one thing and the Governor another [I]‌would obey first the común but that [I] would obey the corregidor in all cases.”16 Still another principal from ayllu Sullcayana, Blas Copatiti, testified that the jilaqata, Ignacio Rodulfo Choque, had sent a comunero to advise everyone that Dr. Espejo was leaving and that they had gathered to receive his blessing and see him off. When asked the series of questions relating to obedience, Copatiti echoed the same doctrine as the earlier witnesses. The testimony made clear that the murders were politically motivated: the will of the community had been thwarted by the caciques and they paid with their lives. For the Spanish interrogators, the homespun ideas of just rebellion were frightening and from the beginning of the investigation they focused on who taught this doctrine. The two who were accused were town leaders, Ignacio





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Rudolfo Choque, former alcalde and current jilaqata, and Damián Lenis, captain of the mita.

The Defense of the Común In the days following the murders, the legal defense of those accused in the Condo murders became clear: First, the murders were committed in self-​defense, after the Llanquipachas had attempted to subvert the will of the community; second, the murders were the collective action of the común, so no individual could be held accountable. The most complete statement of this defense was made in a petition submitted to the Audiencia on November 2, 1774, just over two weeks after the murders. This petition signed simply “El Común de Indios de Condo” infuriated the Audiencia and sparked a search for the “true” authors; the Audiencia found it impossible to believe that the Condo people were the intellectual framers of such subversive ideas. The petition of the Común de Indios of Condo begins with humble language but then rapidly changes into an attack on the dead caciques and a defense of the actions of the community. It details how Gregorio Llanquipacha maintained an alliance with whoever held the post of corregidor and asserts that for the comuneros there was no other recourse: the corregidor treated Llanquipacha as a son and refused to listen to any complaints about him. However, the petition also is very clear that the motivation behind the actual murders was the banishment of the priest. The economic impositions of the Llanquipachas surely contributed to the atmosphere of hatred and distrust, but the banishment of the priest was the reason given for the final deadly confrontation. The petition begins: Very Illustrious Lord: The miserable Indians of the town of Condo, Province of Paria, who by result of the chance deaths of the interim cacique Don Gregorio Felix Llanquipacha and his brother Don Andrés, find ourselves imprisoned in this royal jail . . . . We come to prostrate ourselves reverently at the sovereign feet of Your Lordship, imploring your well-​known clemency and crying out with silent voices of veneration for the equitable and superior compassion that . . . resides in the compassionate and Illustrious Heart of Your Lordship. . . . Well, Lord, the aforementioned dead cacique had so continually oppressed us, that he wasn’t satisfied with the hard extortions and usury that he inflicted on us; he was inclined in equal measure toward our ruin and total extermination.



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The petitioners reiterated various economic complaints, including the twenty-​year-​long accusation that Llanquipacha was stealing tax money. In fact, two of the principales had done censuses for the ayllus they represented and demonstrated the difference between how many taxpayers Llanquipacha claimed to have collected from, the basis for what Llanquipacha delivered to the Royal Treasury, and how many people actually paid taxes. They went on to complain over more mundane matters, such as how Llanquipacha demanded to be heralded when he entered an annex town. Llanquipacha “went around with buglers, and pistols, and they had to receive him with fireworks and pealing of the Church bells in the annexes.” Getting to the events leading up to the murders, the blame fell squarely on Gregorio Llanquipacha’s shoulders. Gregorio had become convinced that the priest was behind all the charges of tax fraud and had decided he had to get rid of him. Persuaded that our priest, Don Joseph Gutiérrez de Espejo and his assistant [Don Diego Mariño] had influenced [us to make] the accusations of tax fraud, . . . he obtained the decree for the expulsion of the priest and his assistant, which took place the day of the 14th of the immediate past month of October. This event was very grievous to the town, and to all his parishioners, who were so surprised and confused that the majority of them went to the cacique’s house to ask him if he would deign to restore to us our vicar, benefactor, parish priest, and father, who without reason, he had taken from us.  .  .  . And full of violence and fury at this supplication, he became a brute, insulting the Indians with many . . . threats such that his excesses merited this response from the supplicants: “If you don’t want to respond to such an humble petition, then you too, should leave the town.” At that the cacique and his brother, Don Andrés, began to fire shots toward the Indians so that right away one of them died. Because of that we feared our total ruin and extermination, it seemed that there was no way to hide or avoid damnation, . . . and in using the natural defense recommended by all laws we tried as a last hope the desperate remedy of fighting with the cacique and his brother in order to take their weapons . . . and it just so happened that both of them died, without it being positively known so that it could be verified beyond doubt [who was responsible]. Having come to make a report to Your Highness, and to make known our innocence, we have [instead] been imprisoned, where we now are. They added one last complaint: that the corregidores and caciques were so closely allied that the people of Condo could not get justice from the corregidor. They therefore asked for an impartial judge.





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We will affirm our innocence before a judge of integrity who shall be entrusted with the investigation. This will not be the corregidor whom the cacique has patronized longingly. This petition for another judge is necessary for [the investigation], so that it will be judged fairly. . . . In sum, whatever complaint that the parishioners make to the caciques or lieutenants, the appeal goes to the corregidores who . . . intercede [for the cacique] as fathers for their own children. Everyday experience verifies the truth of this. They concluded their petition (Figure 7.1) by asking for the protection of the Audiencia and signed with a flourish, “El Común de Indios de Condocondo.”17 In the royal jail, Spaniards questioned the comuneros to determine who was behind such an elaborate plea. Juan de la Cruz Fernández Choque was the only one who had any information, and it was secondhand. He testified that “[My] mother had advised [me] that Ignacio Rudolfo Choque had ordered it made, but that [I]‌don’t know with whom, or who wrote it.” Four days later, the state’s attorney was able to decisively name the author: Joseph Gemio, secretary for two lawyers in La Plata.18 Gemio was thrown in prison and held there for two months while Spanish authorities investigated. Gemio testified that two Indians, unknown to him and who identified themselves only as being from the parish of Condo, approached him with a rough draft. When he asked how the document should be signed, they replied that it was not necessary to use their names, only “El Común de Indios de Condocondo.” He testified that this initial draft was so poorly written he had to read it over three or four times to understand it. Gemio later modified his statement, this time swearing that the “two Indians” approached him about writing the petition to the President of the Audiencia and that he wrote from their dictation. Since Gemio spoke both Quechua and Aymara, he could have taken their dictation. Gemio testified that the two took the draft to show to a priest to help them with the petition and then returned three or four days later with the parts Gemio had written plus additional “chapters.” Gemio then made the clean copy from this.19 The prosecuting attorney for the Audiencia, however, found “it very difficult to believe that he didn’t know the names of the Indians as well as the priest.”20 After some time in prison, Gemio revealed that Ignacio Rudolfo Choque was one of the Indians who had approached him, but he never revealed the identity of the priest who helped the comuneros compose the petition. An obvious suspect would be Dr. Joseph Espejo, the Condo priest whose expulsion led to the murders of the caciques, or the Condo’s parish priest in Potosí, Dr. Joseph Suero. Or perhaps an even more likely candidate would be Don Diego Mariño, the assistant priest who served as schoolmaster in Condo for sixteen years. He was clearly



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Figure 7.1  Final page from “El Común de indios” of Condo petition. At top is the signature “El Común de Indios de Condocondo” with paraph. Following this are notations for the state’s attorney sending the document to Audiencia officials for investigation. Archivo y Biblioteca Nacionales de Bolivia, SGI-​3, fol. 22v.

sympathetic to the comuneros and had written petitions to the Audiencia complaining about Gregorio Llanquipacha’s usurpation of tribute money.21 Whatever the case, the priest whom Gemio claimed helped with the petition was never identified. Who did compose the petition? If Gemio’s first confession was true, then Choque and whoever was with him appeared with a poorly written, difficult-​ to-​read draft. That description would certainly fit Choque’s writing. The massive files relating to the Llanquipacha case contain many examples of Choque’s writing, and although literate in Spanish, his spelling and syntax are clearly





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influenced by Aymara, his first language. Gemio identified which parts of the petition he composed, and they are the more formal, “legalese” portions of the plea. The more colloquial sounding parts, beginning with uncharacteristic casualness (“Well, Lord . . . ”) and containing the harshest allegations, Gemio denied having composed. Strangely enough, when Choque was taken into custody, the Spaniards did not ask him if he authored the petition; instead they asked if he had gotten Gemio to write it, which he acknowledged. Ignacio Rudolfo Choque joined the other thirty Condo comuneros in the La Plata jail. That Choque was likely one of the intellectual authors of the plea signed “the común” became clear when a second, more radical petition arrived to the Audiencia—​this time signed by Choque, and by Condo’s mita captain, Damián Lenis. This second petition contains the same complaints against Llanquipacha, plus others. Lanquipacha was said to have forced townspeople to buy brandy from him at inflated prices; to have had a large number of colque jaques, “silver people,” who were forced to pay a large sum of money to him to avoid mita duty; to have stolen land from ayllu Sullcayana and given it to people in his own ayllu; and finally, to have had the priest sent away. Again, the petition writers placed great emphasis on the priest’s departure as prompting the final confrontation, describing it in much the same way as the other letters, testimonies, and petitions: when the común got to Llanquipacha’s house, it was dark, the door was open, and they walked in and shouted: “Cacique, your whole community is here, asking you to get yourself up, go to Huari and get our priest back. And if you don’t want to do it because of hatred or evil ends, well, we’ll just tie you up and take you there.”22 As in the earlier accounts, Gregorio shot at the comuneros, as did his brother Andrés. Here, this second petition becomes more idiosyncratic and revolutionary. From beginning to end, the document veers from first person plural (we, ours), to second person plural (they, theirs), to first person singular (I, mine), seeming to draw distinctions in responsibility. After the speech written in the first person (“we’ll just tie you up”) Choque switches to second person: They took the guns from the caciques, they went to the city of La Plata to present themselves with the guns to the Royal Audiencia, explaining everything that happened. [Rather than] Your Highness declaring “well done” for the murders and absolving the Indians, it happened that the Corregidor of the province sent a report to the Royal Audiencia with a sinister accusation made by the widows of the governors, who wanted to impute that the Indians had robbed their husbands of their wealth, and killed them for that reason, which is entirely false! And without further documentation or proof, about thirty naturales [comuneros] were



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arrested and the corregidor sent troops to the town of Condo against all the Indians, as if it had been a crime of lese magestad or treason against the sovereign.23 Was Choque being sarcastic when he offered that the royal officials should say “well done” over the murder of the two caciques? Or did he believe that what the común had done was perfectly legal? When those initially arrested were questioned, the suggestion was made to them that murdering the cacique was treason. After all Lanquipacha was a state employee (his salary came out of local taxes) and local representative of the state bureaucracy (he collected the taxes and sent out the labor parties). Choque not only explicitly rejected the interpretation of the murders as treason but also suggested that royal officials acted hastily and without sufficient evidence in their rush to judge the común guilty. Choque’s long list of crimes committed by Llanquipacha also insinuated that Audiencia officials did not understand rule by the consent of the governed, or what constitutes tyranny. The rhetorical strategy of listing Llanquipacha’s crimes, followed by the righteous manner in which his community confronted him, their expectation of pardon, and the denial of charges of treason, all led to one conclusion:  this was a legal act, whether or not the colonial government recognized it. Again, as in the petition signed “the común,” Audiencia lawyers sought out the authors. Since there were two signatures affixed to the plea, Ignacio Rudolfo Choque and Damien Lenis, the investigation focused on them. Choque was easily accessible to investigators as he was in the La Plata jail. He responded directly to the questions, saying that “it was [I]‌who ordered that the said representation be made . . . and the signature that is at the bottom of it and says Ignacio Rodulfo Choque is [my] own and that [I] recognizes it as such.” He testified that no other person had influenced him and that he used a draft of an earlier petition that he had sent to the Viceroy about the Llanquipachas stealing tax money. The question was then put to Choque: Where did this first draft come from? Who made it? Responding very obliquely, Choque averred that the petition came to be written serendipitously, “while [I] was at home, a gentleman showed up. [I] complained to him about the suffering of the Indians [at the hands of] the Llanquipachas. How would [I] be able to make my complaint against them to the Viceroy? [We] had no person who would be able to make a petition for this purpose. Then the gentleman produced the petition that [I] introduced [to the Audiencia]. [I] am unable to remember this man’s name.” A  mysterious gentlemen showed up at Ignacio Rudolfo Choque’s house in Condo and offered to write a petition condemning the cacique as a thief and liar? That scenario seems unlikely. While it is possible that Choque composed the petition without assistance, it is also likely that a draft of an earlier complaint written by





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the assistant priest for Condo, Diego Mariño, who had served as a teacher in the parish for sixteen years, had served as a model for this plea.24 However Mariño’s complaint, while harshly critical of the Llanquipachas, does not go nearly as far in exculpating the común as the one Choque commissioned and signed himself. What about Damián Lenis, the other signatory on the petition with Choque? Lenis denied he had anything to do with writing it, as he was in jail in another province when it was written. When questioned, Choque acknowledged that he was the sole author and that Lenis had nothing to do with the creation of this petition. But since Lenis had been involved in earlier complaints Choque asked the notary to sign Lenis’s name to the document. Evidently Choque felt that Lenis would have been in agreement with the ideas expressed in the plea. The first testimony given by those arrested for the murders stated that the doctrine that the común should be obeyed over the cacique had been taught to them by Choque and Lenis. Given that Choque and Lenis shared not just outrage over Llanquipacha’s criminal behavior in stealing from the community but had articulated and disseminated a political philosophy empowering common people, Choque’s decision to attach Lenis’s signature seems reasonable. But Choque did not want to simply share credit for these ideas, he also wanted to share blame for their consequences.

A New Public Sphere One question that cannot be answered with certainty is Llanquipacha’s accusation that Dr.  Espejo was behind the charges of tax fraud brought by the comuneros of Condo. Although the petition signed “El Común de Indios de Condocondo” stated that Llanquipacha had obtained an order for Espejo’s expulsion for that reason, there is no evidence of this. On the contrary, some of the testimony indicates that perhaps Espejo got fed up with his treatment at the hands of Llanquipacha and decided on his own to leave. Regardless of why Espejo left, the people of Condo were convinced that Llanquipacha was behind it. Llanquipacha undoubtedly had good reason to want to be rid of a meddlesome priest. Even if Dr. Espejo did not directly encourage the complaints against Llanquipacha, his assistant Don Diego Mariño did and penned at least one himself, which earned his expulsion from Condo just a few weeks before Espejo was forced out. The two priests’ close allies among the comuneros were clearly the leaders in these allegations. Ignacio Rodulfo Choque, the jilaqata and former alcalde of ayllu Sullcayana, the accused ringleader in the murders, who had played a key role in tax fraud charges, was in daily contact with Dr. Espejo in the time leading up the murders. Damián Lenis was a cantor for the church and also had regular contact with the priest.



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However, relying too heavily on Llanquipacha’s version skews this account to a colonial Spaniard’s view of “Indians,” namely that the unscrupulous priest, Dr.  Espejo, was cynically manipulating his Indians in a power struggle over the fiscal demands of the state. They were his pawns to be played against Llanquipacha, the state’s local representative.25 This view places all power in the hands of Dr. Espejo and minimizes the advocacy of the comuneros of Condo. While Dr.  Espejo’s ouster from the community was the reason given for the Llanquipacha murders, he disappears from the documents after that. Ignacio Rudolfo Choque’s jailhouse correspondence includes letters to several community leaders of Condo but without any references to the priest. Dr. Espejo could have been one of the ghostwriters of the plea of the El Común de Indios de Condocondo, but that cannot be known. The priest was important to the people of his community not because he was plotting rebellion but because of his role as priest. Religious offices garnered prestige for their holders, but more than that, community involvement in saints’ festivals created a shared social space where the idea of Condo as an entity could take hold. It was the común of Indians of Condo that claimed responsibility for the murders of Gregorio and Andrés Llanquipacha, not ayllu Sullcayana, and clearly not any entity called Asanaqi.26 The murders were committed by the town of Condo against a despotic local lord, whose power over them was maintained through his ties to corrupt elements of the Spanish colonial state. That the común felt itself bound together through institutions introduced by Spaniards does not diminish their indigenous authenticity. The people of Condo did not succumb to alien civil and religious institutions; they turned these imposed institutions to their own ends. That is, they constructed a new polity (the común of Condo), new authorities (non-​noble Indians who served the común), and new forms of legitimation (offices in the combined civil and religious town hierarchy) to form their own identity and a new kind of collectivity. In essence, for the people of Condo, the social space that generated the común had become a specific public sphere, where the collective could exercise political authority in opposition to the authority represented by Gregorio and Andrés Llanquipacha. The events of Condo and its annexes reveal a profound shift in Andean concepts of polity and legitimate government, in what constituted the común, and in how authority over the común might be legitimated. The fact that Gregorio Llanquipacha was a legitimate hereditary cacique over the community of Condo and its annexes was never seriously questioned but his right to represent the people of Condo was.27 Instead of translating into legitimate authority, Gregorio Llanquipacha’s noble pretensions undercut his legitimacy. By wielding force to achieve his economic goals, eating from silver plates and using golden toothpicks, wearing fancy ruffled suits, and treating community-​held property as if it were his own, his cultural values and “ethnic” identification had clearly





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become closer to Spanish than Indian in the eyes of the común.28 Llanquipacha’s townspeople not only questioned his authority but murdered him when he negated the will of the común. As the común rejected Llanquipacha’s authority, it embraced the town council as the legitimate authority in Condo and its annexes. The accused leaders of mob actions in Totora, Corque, and Cacachaca in 1757 and in Condo in 1774 were current cabildo leaders, or had held civil and religious offices. The intellectual authors of the concept of común were cabildo members. Testimony taken in Condo indicated that the civil and religious offices of the reducción towns had merged into one hierarchical scheme in the minds of indigenous people. The non-​nobles or comuneros “elected” to leadership roles in Spanish-​ style institutions of cabildos and cofradías had turned them to their own ends. Cabildos and cofradías did not replace indigenous structures, nor were they a thin veil behind which the indigenous people maintained their pristine pre-​ Conquest culture; rather they built upon an amalgam of pre-​Columbian ideas of ritualized legitimation and Christian ceremonies and concepts to create a new public sphere where identity could be defined. Drawn from Spanish cultural premises, such as Christian notions of justice and the “civilizing” effects of town life, a discourse using the language and words of the Spanish colonizers but imbued with new, Andeanized meaning emerged to delimit legitimate authority within this new hybrid context. These transformations marked a struggle to define a collective “Indian” identity: the común. In petitions, letters, and testimonies following the 1774 murders, the accused argue that it is impossible to say that any one person or persons committed the crime; the común of Indians of Condo took this action. This represents a fundamental rejection of Llanquipacha’s right to represent his people and a bold introduction of a new concept of polity. Spanish interrogators, following the murders, attempted to discover what the común was.

El Rey Común The most dramatic testimony comes from a woman, Maria Michaela, the wife of Ignacio Rudolfo Choque, the former alcalde and current jilaqata, and an accused murderer. Michaela was arrested at the same time as her husband, in early December, 1774, about six weeks after the murders. Her testimony echoed much of the earlier statements. It was a clear night, the moon had already risen, and a large number of people had gone to the Llanquipachas’ to ask for the return of Dr. Espejo. She, of course, denied that she and her husband led the mob. Instead, she asserted that the ones who confronted the Llanquipachas had come first to their house to ask for advice. When asked the key questions as to whether



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allegiance and respect is owed to the cacique governor she seemed to consider what her audience wanted to hear before replying that “one ought to respect and fear the governor, but not the común or rey común, although the people of the community say that they ought to be respected, feared, and obeyed.” When pressed for a definition of rey común by interrogators, she first pleaded ignorance as a woman, then replied, “It is the ayllus together,” making explicit an Andeanized definition for the ostensibly Spanish term.29 Her statement, translated into Aymara, was read back to her, and then she added the following, perhaps in an attempt to clear her husband of responsibility: “When the Indians came to [my] house, among them was Gregorio Yana and Xavier Therrasas. They said that they had quarreled with the Governor and his brother because they were the cause of losing their priest. [My] husband told them, ‘You all are the people of the community, you all can do what you want, I will not meddle in anything.’ ”30 By denying her husband’s role in the murders in this manner, Michaela inadvertently confirmed the doctrine he was accused of teaching, that the people of the community collectively held sovereignty in their town. Although the term común by itself is used repeatedly, “rey común,” which has essentially the same meaning but more poetically expressed, appears only in two other cases. A brief look at one of these parallel cases sheds some light on Michaela’s testimony.31 In early 1776, a group of people from the neighboring town of Challapata brought a complaint against their cacique, Ambrocio Cruz Condori. In the twenty-​one years that he had held the position, they claimed he had charged excessive fees for trade goods, tributes, and cofradía offices, and had replaced legitimate jilaqatas with people of his own faction. They proposed a more suitable candidate for cacique: Gregorio Callapa, “a legitimate descendant of Don Fernando and Don Juan Martínez Callapa, who were the first caciques of both Challapata and Condo.”32 While on the surface this may sound like an endorsement for maintaining “traditional” hereditary lords as caciques, those bringing the complaints were past cabildo officers who wanted to replace their current native lord with one more to their liking from another town. Cruz Condori responded to the charges first by pointing out that Gregorio Callapa of Condo had no real claim to be cacique of Challapata. Then he explained Callapa’s political philosophy, “that the rey común can remove and put in a cacique, and that for my part, if I don’t give up the staff of office spontaneously, they’re going to take it from me with force.”33 He went on to say that the Indians of Challapata were in daily communication with the people of Condo—​ the same ones who killed their cacique two years earlier. He feared the same would happen to him.34 What, then, was the rey común? It should be respected, obeyed, and feared over everyone and everything else. It could name whomever it chose for cacique.





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It could depose those it deemed unworthy of office. It could even kill a tyrannical lord. And who spoke for the rey común? Jilaqatas, segundas, alcaldes, the people who held office in the cabildo, and those who had office in cofradías had become the voice of popular sovereignty. When Michaela quoted her husband’s words she, perhaps unconsciously, confirmed this political doctrine. Ignacio Rudolfo Choque said, “You all are the people of the community, you all can do what you want.”35 In effect, Ignacio Rudolfo Choque gave absolution for any action taken by the rey común, because it is the people and the people’s will that should be obeyed. Can this be understood as a vernacular Andean interpretation of the neoscholastic political theory introduced to reducción towns two hundred years earlier? Toledo had written that the Incas were tyrants, that they abused the commoner Indians, and that Spain had invaded to overthrow the Inca and protect the rights of commoner Indians. If this political philosophy recorded in the opening lines of each reducción town’s original tax records was held in every town’s community chest it was also echoed in the religious teachings and practices of cofradías. It too reverberated within pre-​Columbian practices that mandated community-​based work parties, feasting, and sacrifice, all material expressions that united ayllus. Comuneros had created an elaborate synthesis that was leading to revolutionary conclusions: they had the right to freely chosen self-​government. In the meantime, with many community leaders in prison, life went on in Condo. On January 14, 1775, prisoners Ignacio Rudolfo Choque, Marselo Taquimalco, and Blas Copatiti sent a petition to the Audiencia asking that they be freed. They pointed out that the meeting for the Christmastime tribute was to be held on January 20 and that fifty-​seven men would be dispatched for mita service. The town of Condo had not been remiss in any obligations to “His Highness.”36 Comuneros saw no incongruity between killing their hereditary lord and maintaining their financial duty to the Crown. During the Great Rebellion of 1780–​1782, many comuneros continued to pay tribute, serve mita duty, and pay their fees for church services. Demands for lowering these burdens were not made; instead claims were made that the king himself had lowered these duties, so by paying less comuneros were merely carrying out the king’s will. Priests were frequently called upon to testify to the innocence of an accused rebel. Invariably, the priest offered as evidence of loyalty and proof of not having participated in rebellion the fact that so-​and-​so continued to collect tribute or dispatch mita workers, or participate in church fiestas. The idea that these uprisings simply pitted “Indian” against “Spaniard” and were motivated by harsh economic burdens has its origin in colonial Spanish interpretations. There is an element of truth in these ideas, but by unquestioningly accepting broad interpretations the agency of complex people like Ignacio Rudolfo Choque, who both murder their cacique and pay their taxes, disappears from the picture.



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The cohesiveness of the Condo defendants began to unravel after some months in jail in La Plata. Francisco Chura, Blas Copatiti, Marcelo Taquimalco, and Cruz Yana, who had all testified in October that the común had killed the Llanquipachas, gave new statements in June 1775, in which they blamed Ignacio Rudolfo Choque. They continued to maintain that it was impossible to know exactly who committed the murders. But Ignacio Rudolfo Choque was named as the leader who brought them together to confront the Llanquipachas and also as the one who devised their defense strategy. Copatiti testified that Choque “bought 12 reales of chicha [beer] for us and instructed us that in no way were we to say that he was the principal perpetrator, [Choque] brought me to this city forcibly and with threats.”37 Cruz Yana confirmed that he had also testified under the threats and influence of Ignacio Rudolfo Choque. Yana spoke with Choque before the arrests, and Choque told him to say that the “común has committed the murders, without designating any person so that no one would be hurt, that they were Indians of the King.”38 On the basis that they had been coerced by Choque, the Condo defendants asked the prosecuting attorney of the Audiencia to pardon them. The attorney refused, noting that “to pardon these would open the field to others authorized by the[ir] example, and it would establish a fantastic power to the común, that would grow in their loathsome towns.”39 What the Audiencia officials failed to realize was that whether jailed or free in the countryside, the example of the común of Condo was reverberating not just in the Audiencia of Charcas but throughout the viceroyalty of Peru. The común had defined itself as Christian and loyal to the King, henceforth its enemies were apostates who were disloyal to the Spanish sovereign. In the late eighteenth century, the común found its enemy in its midst: hereditary lords who disdained priests and ignored the commandments of the king. These caciques were to be the first targets as rebellion spread in the Audiencia of Charcas.

Revolution Begins Spaniards and Creoles in the capital city of La Plata ignored the warnings of the district attorney and returned to their sleepy existence, largely unaware of the growing unrest in the Audiencia. In 1776 Condo comuneros who had been arrested for the murder of the Llanquipachas but released due to lack of evidence, Damien Lenis and Juan de la Cruz Fernández Choque, were accused of writing letters claiming a reduction in tribute along with the official decrees to back it up.40 Quick arrests seemed to restore calm. That calm came to an abrupt end on the morning of September 10, 1780. On that Sunday morning, Rosa Pereyra, a forty-​year-​old “Negra criolla” (a woman of African ancestry born in the Indies) and slave, walked along a





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tree-​lined boulevard leading out of the city of La Plata. Heading for the outskirts of town where she intended to sell cakes to travelers, she walked past the bustling central plaza where the archbishop and Audiencia ministers strolled around the market stalls, past fine neighborhoods of Spanish vecinos, and finally past the Indian parishes on the edge of town. But instead of leisurely selling her cakes, she rushed back into town with a fantastic report: there was a growing swarm of Indians massing “like ants” on the hills outside of La Plata. Estimates put the number at between twenty-​five thousand and forty thousand comuneros from Paria and Chayanta provinces, all of them blowing trumpets, beating drums, and preparing for war. Why were these Indians preparing to invade La Plata? The rumor spread quickly among the Spanish population: the mob had come to free the people of Condo, still in jail for the murder of their cacique. As an indication of the seriousness of their intentions, they had attached the head and heart of cacique Don Florencio Lupa to a cross on the hill of Quirpinchaca overlooking the city.41 Indeed, early that same morning the cacique’s head and heart had been found wrapped in a shawl and stuck on the cross. A crowd gathered as the remains were brought into the plaza of La Plata. This rabble of Spaniards then ran through town, past the Royal College of Saint John the Baptist and past the monastery of Santa Monica, all the while screaming “the head of Lupa!” Cloistered inside the monastery but within earshot of the crowd were two of Lupa’s daughters, one of whom had taken religious vows and the other who had decided to live within the convent in order to “free herself from the dangers of the [secular] world.”42 Lupa’s head was taken to the royal jail, where it was put on display in a cell. But the crowds craning to see the famous cacique had overrun the courtyard and were too large for the jailers to manage. Fearful that the bars of the cell would be broken in the mad rush to see Lupa’s severed head, the Spanish Audiencia officials were finally forced to cover the head from view to disperse the people.43 Lupa was well known to many in the city of La Plata. Three years earlier, in 1777, already fearing for his life, he had written directly to King Charles III asking permission to emigrate from Peru to the “kingdoms” of Spain. The king was certainly familiar with Don Florencio. Letters with the signature of Charles III had been sent both to his royal Audiencia and to his archbishop in La Plata asking that they investigate the charges that Don Florencio had brought against his priest, charges that fueled a massive investigation into priestly abuses. Then, after accusations that he had mistreated his townspeople, Don Florencio sought to flee to Spain in 1777. Unfortunately, all that remains of Don Florencio’s petition in the records of the Archive of the Indies in Seville is simply a notation: “Don Florencio Lupa, cacique of the town of Moscarí requests that he be granted permission to come to these Kingdoms.”44 Nothing more. No explanation for why he wished to come and no indication of the action taken by the



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Council of the Indies. Perhaps they asked for supporting evidence for why this Indian noble should be allowed to immigrate to Spain. Or maybe they merely decided that it was no longer in the Crown’s interest to allow Indians (even wealthy, hispanized ones like Don Florencio) to come, so they rejected the request outright. Whatever the case, Don Florencio did not leave Peru, or even his hometown of Moscarí. Instead, he steadfastly denied charges that he had abused his authority, all while maintaining that unscrupulous Spaniards, cynically manipulating “his” guileless Indians, were behind the accusations. This was the complex man, the sometime “Indian darling” of La Plata society, whose head and heart were found on the cross on the hill of Quirpinchaca. Who killed him? And what motivated them to bring his head and heart so far and put them where they did? Lupa’s daughter, Doña Theodora Lupa y Hinojosa, claimed in a letter to the Audiencia that the night before Lupa was taken captive, one of the new Moscarí alcaldes, Martín Coto, had “gotten the people drunk at his house and cautioned the bailiffs who slept in the vestibule of the governor’s house not to lock the door that night, so that it would be possible [for them] to unleash their assault.”45 Other information came from a Spaniard who happened to have passed through Moscarí just after the town celebrated its patron saint, Santiago, at the end of July 1780. He spoke with the alférez of Santiago, an “Indian” whose name does not survive in the documents. This alférez undoubtedly played an important role in the cabildo of Moscarí. Perhaps he was Martín Coto, alcalde of Moscarí, who arranged to enter Lupa’s house without the guards noticing. The alférez’s words to the Spaniard leave little doubt of how he viewed his authority vis-​à-​vis that of cacique Don Florencio Lupa. The Spaniard reported that the alférez said to him: “That if Governor Don Florencio Lupa doesn’t accept half the tribute [in payment], since it was ordered reduced, they would throw the silver at him and they would carry out his obligations, or on the other hand, if they found themselves motivated, he could lose his life.”46 Apparently they found themselves motivated. And with alcalde and alférez participation, this cacique murder begins to take on the same cloak of political action as the death of the Llanquipachas in Condo six years earlier. Lupa himself had reported threats on his life. At about the same time that the alférez of Santiago bragged that Lupa would be forced to recognize the tribute reduction, Lupa related to the corregidor a serious altercation that took place when Lupa’s appointed tax collector in Moscarí tried to collect tribute. A group of hacienda Indians confronted Lupa’s tax collector and took his vara, his staff of office. Then men and women from five haciendas gathered and said they would only pay twenty reales in tribute, just a fraction of the three pesos, four reales they had paid in the past. In his report, Lupa quoted them as saying that “the 3 pesos 4 reales were for me. And why was it good only to make public the legal charges of Church fees, and not the reduction of tribute, as it ought to be?” At





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this point, the son of Lupa’s tax collector took out his account book in order to prove that they had to pay the higher amount. As he began to read, someone in the crowd snatched the account book, while others pushed Lupa’s segunda to the ground and grabbed the tax collector’s son by his hair and began to tie them up. One of the hacienda Indians, Pasqual Aiacoma, unsheathed his knife and, according to Lupa, announced that they did “not have to pay more than 20 reales, and that he would collect it and would take it to the Royal Treasury. [Then he added] that it would be a shame to take the life of [Lupa’s tax collector] since he is an Indian like him. And what they all wanted was to see me [Lupa], to have me present in order to kill me.”47 Lupa’s attacks on cofradías and the church were coming home to roost. He had succeeded in forcing the publication of reduced church charges, the new aranceles, by writing petitions for towns across the province demanding the lower fee schedules. Now there were rumors of Crown orders lowering tribute payments, and Lupa’s tributaries assumed the rumors were true and that Lupa was hiding the documentation and pocketing the difference. No doubt Lupa would not have appreciated the irony that he, a tribute reformer, would be accused of usurpation or that, like the priests who he had accused of hiding the new aranceles, he should fall victim to the accusation of concealing the king’s orders. Like the Llanquipachas, Lupa was deeply enmeshed in the Spanish world. If it were not a requirement for caciques to be Indians, Lupa and the Llanquipachas would have refused the label. Now their aristocratic pretensions made their comunero subjects regard them as not Indian. Indian, it seems, had become the equivalent of comunero, a member of the común. These caciques and the notion of hereditary aristocracy had become the común’s enemies. An anonymous, probably Spanish, La Plata diarist at the time described Don Florencio as “truly amiable, generous with his friends and courteous with strangers; but on the other hand, his implacable hatred of the ministers of the Lord made him despicable and a vessel of contempt.”48 That contempt for the church, manifested in his persecution of priestly fees and of “excessive” numbers of festival sponsorships which drained the Crown’s potential tributary income and mita workers for the mines, had made him a favorite reformer among Bourbon bureaucrats, but an enemy of the común. Like the Llanquipachas, he had undermined not just the church and its ministers but the cycles of yearly service to the sacred images of saints, Christ, and the Virgin. No doubt the comuneros of Moscarí and Condo would have liked to pay less for serving as alférez or mayordomo of their cofradías, and for the baptisms, weddings, and burials that framed these festival sponsorships as church-​related rites of passage. But reducing or abolishing festival sponsorships or removing priests was perceived by comuneros as a direct attack upon the sovereignty of the común. Abolishing cofradía offices was to have relieved them of a



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burden, but from the comunero perspective it undermined the complex system of alternations by which commoner authority in the cabildo had come to be legitimated. Through festival sponsorships and the religious devotions to saints Andeans had linked community authority to the most potent symbols of personal and community identity.49 The Bourbon Crown’s efforts to modernize its empire through Enlightenment ideas of secularization and anti-​ corporatist individualism ran counter to comunero understandings. Caciques’ active support of these ideas made them enemies of the común. It was the común’s commoner leaders who took action against the caciques in the name of all their people. Like those of the Llanquipachas, Lupa’s death was a violent one. The común did not just kill their caciques, but conveyed a message to the Audiencia and the people of the city of La Plata through their specific acts. It was routine in Spanish exemplary punishments to display criminals’ severed heads and other body parts on pikes outside of towns that they wanted to warn, which was why the appearance of Lupa’s head on the cross on the hill of Quirpinchaca was so terrifying. And the heart? In the Aymara language people who lie are said to have things hidden in their heart. When comuneros sacrificed their llamas in honor of saints and to commemorate the común, they made a special offering of the heart and lungs. Lupa, the widely hated cacique, was an exemplary sacrifice for comuneros and one whose meaning even the least able Creole or Spaniard could comprehend. However, from the perspective of comuneros in the neighboring town of Macha, allies of those Moscarí people who had removed Don Florencio Lupa from office and made his body a warning to the Creoles and Spaniards of La Plata: “the Indians [of Moscarí] who have brought the head of the dead Don Florencio Lupa [to La Plata] were ordered to do so, and [therefore] they are not guilty, but the whole común is; it brought him prisoner.”50 Alcaldes and alfereces in the name of the común of Indians of Moscarí had claimed the right to name their ruler. Within a few weeks these now thoroughly Andeanized understandings of popular sovereignty and of just war against tyrants, drawn from Toledan tasa document, and the preaching of Jesuits and other religious, would spread across the viceroyalty of Peru.



8   

A Lettered Revolution A Brotherhood of Communities

Panic had seized the high court officials of the Audiencia when Lupa’s head and heart were found hanging from the cross of Quirpinchaca in September 1780. For six years the Condo defendants had languished in the La Plata jail. Prisoners had to make their own arrangements for food and medical care, and the Condo defendants had few resources for either. Many of them died waiting for the final adjudication of their case, while a lucky few had been freed for lack of evidence. When Audiencia officials heard the rumor that forty thousand Indians were massing on the hills overlooking La Plata, preparing to invade if the Condo comuneros were not freed, they immediately released the nine remaining defendants. Later assessments blamed the region-​wide 1780s insurgency on the Audiencia’s failure to deal with the Condo defendants.1 But even if the Audiencia had acted earlier in setting punishments in the case, perhaps banishing the men from the province, the Audiencia, or even the viceroyalty, their ideas of popular sovereignty and the right to overthrow tyrants had already spread. In the six years that had elapsed between the murders of the Llanquipachas and Lupa, a sea change had taken place among comuneros. Radicalized and licensed to act in defense of commoner sovereignty, Andean comunes realized that they were not alone in their struggle: comuneros across the Audiencia were making common cause against their caciques. Condo comunero prisoners became causes celebres in the province of Chayanta, and people from towns like Moscarí and Macha made common cause with the Condo comuneros. Two things stand out in the developments of 1780 as the provinces of Paria and Chayanta became the flashpoint of Andean revolution. The first is the possibility of coordinated region-​wide action, given that earlier acts of violence were mainly carried out within individual communities in the name of local grievances. The second is a

The People Are King: The Making of an Indigenous Andean Politics. S. Elizabeth Penry, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780195161601.001.0001



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notable shift in comunero objectives. Up until 1780 the comunero battle cry was like that of most insurgent Creoles in this period, “Long live the king and death to bad government.”2 At first, comuneros assumed the iniquities they suffered to be the handiwork of corrupt corregidores, caciques, and priests subverting the benevolent will of the king, whose tribute reductions and guarantees of rights to his Indian subjects those corrupt governors ignored. But by 1781 rumors began to circulate that the king of Spain was dead, and rebels—​comuneros as well as some urban Creoles and mestizos—​began to seize on the idea of installing a Peruvian king, an Inca one, to be precise. Both these ideas in Andean rebellion were relatively new. Creoles had called for an Inca king in the mining center of Oruro in the 1730s, and region-​ wide indigenous rebellion linking Spanish cities and comunero towns had sprung up in Lima and Huarochirí in 1750, as well as in a movement that swept Peru’s tropical lowlands in the 1740s.3 But both took on massive new dimensions in 1780–​1782 as a series of uprisings, known collectively as the “Great Rebellion” spread across the highlands of the viceroyalty of Peru and the recently created viceroyalty of Rio de La Plata (see Table 8.1 for a timeline of key events). Together, mass movements, and the idea of an Inca king, and a focus on heroic figures such as Tomás Catari, Tupac Amaru, and Tupac Catari have helped to fuel interpretations of rebellion that denied a leading role to comuneros and comunes. If rebellion spread across the Andes, and if the goal was to install an Inca king, such interpretations assumed then the rebellion must have been a movement by indigenous aristocrats, the caciques, to resurrect pre-​Columbian ethnic kingdoms or the Inca empire itself. How else might Indians have been mobilized to rebel en masse, and for what end would they seek to install an Inca king, if not to turn the world upside down, aiming to reject all things Spanish and to reinstate an Andean utopia? But as historian David Cahill has argued, “there is little direct evidence of these in the extant documentation.”4 An earlier generation of scholars sought to understand the uprisings as a whole, seeing that the central theaters of war were united by trade routes, through the mails, and by mita service.5 Nationalist histories turned this paradigm on its head, leading scholars to stress the uniqueness of each leaders’ appeal and aims. This chapter seeks to bridge the gap between those two interpretive stances by telling the story of the Great Rebellion not from the viewpoint of its leadership but from the bottom up to suggest that grassroots mobilization and aims were similar across the region.6 This analysis privileges how local comuneros became aware of the broader struggle of their brothers in arms. Comuneros from small towns across the Andes seized a revolutionary moment to denounce tyrants and claim their right to choose who would govern them. Through congregations at





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Table 8.1 Timeline of Key Events 1739

Manifesto of Oruro, Creoles seek to unite with Andeans against Spaniards under an Inca king

1774 October 14

Llanquipacha brothers murdered by común of Condo

October 24

Thirty two comuneros from Condo travel to La Plata to plead their case; are arrested and imprisoned

1778

Comunero Tomás Catari travels to Buenos Aires in an effort to be named cacique of Macha

1779

Tomás Catari arrested and jailed in La Plata with Condo defendants

1780 August 26

Corregidor of Chayanta confronted with crowd when he tries to dispatch mita; crowd demands release of Tomás Catari

August 30

Audiencia releases Tomás Catari from La Plata jail

September 10

Cacique Florencio Lupa’s head and heart nailed to cross outside La Plata; in response the Audiencia releases the Condo prisoners

November 4–​10

Tupac Amaru begins rebellion in the Cuzco region with arrest then execution of his corregidor

December

Tupac Amaru travels to the Lake Titicaca region

1781 January 2–​10 January 15

Siege of Cuzco; Tupac Amaru fails to rally troops for attack Tomás Catari is killed while in custody of Chayanta province corregidor Paria province corregidor killed by comuneros

January 26

Carangas province corregidor killed by comuneros

January-​ February

Tupac Amaru letter dated November 21, 1780 calling for an indigenous-​Creole alliance arrives in Oruro Creole Jacinto Rodríguez of Oruro offers to be viceroy under Tupac Amaru; leads Creole crowd in cheers for Tupac Amaru Rodríguez sends letters to comunero towns in Paria and Carangas provinces, asking for them to invade Oruro to kill Spaniards

February 9–​16 Crying “comuna, comuna,” comuneros from Carangas and Paria provinces invade Oruro; Spaniards in Oruro accuse Creoles of being their accomplices (continued )



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Table 8.1 Continued February 19

Dragoon troops from Montevideo march to put down rebellion

February 20–​ March 1

Tupac Catari leads uprising in the region of La Paz

March 8-​9

Comuneros attack Oruro

March 14

First siege of La Paz begins under command of Tupac Catari, lasts 109 days

March 18–​19

Comuneros attack Oruro

April 1–​2

Comuneros attack Oruro

April 7

Tupac Amaru captured

May 18

Tupac Amaru executed

August 4

Second siege of La Paz begins, lasts seventy-​five days

August 25

Andrés Tupac Amaru and Quechua troops join Tupac Catari

November 6

Twenty-​two thousand comuneros surrender

November 9

Tupac Catari captured

November 14

Tupac Catari executed

1782 January 21

1795

Viceroy of Buenos Aires offers pardon, forty-​day deadline to accept

March

Fighting continues after deadline for accepting pardon

July

Rebellion completely suppressed Last of Creoles arrested for Oruro uprising released

saints’ festivals and through the mails, not only did rumors of tribute reductions and how caciques thwarted the común spread but also specific calls to arms, to fight in Oruro, La Paz, and towns across the Audiencia. A  burst of awareness of common political identity suddenly made regional alliances possible. No longer did communities think that their problems were theirs alone; by and large caciques across the region were seen as corrupt, Hispanicized, and no longer representative of the will of the community. The community had firmly redefined itself with the cabildo as its rightful leadership and the cacique, as well as sometimes priests and colonial bureaucrats, as conspirators who blocked the will of the común. Conspiracy theories abounded: “our cacique has hidden a tribute reduction from our town”; “the corregidor treats our cacique as his son and refuses to give us justice”; and the most radical of all, “the king has recognized that the land is ours and soon we will pay no tribute!”





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As these rumors circulated, so did an awareness of the common politics of the común and comuneros. The first targets as rebellion spread were caciques, people like Gregorio Llanquipacha and Florencio Lupa. But this was both a revolutionary moment and a transitional one—​revolutionary in the sense that comuneros claimed the right to rule themselves based on an understanding of community-​held sovereignty, and transitional in the sense that while comuneros would rid themselves of their hereditary caciques, they still retained the office of cacique. But the común would choose who would serve, and the person they chose would serve at the pleasure of the común.

Rumors of Tribute Reduction Circulate at Saints’ Festivals During the winter months of 1780, when the remaining nine Condo defendants in the murders of the Llanquipachas still languished in the royal jail in La Plata, they were joined by a commoner named Tomás Catari from the reducción town of Macha. Much like the Condo allegations against the Llanquipacha brothers, Catari had challenged Macha cacique Blas Bernal, based on his usurpation of tribute and status as a mestizo. Catari even trekked all the way to Buenos Aires to lay his claims before the viceregal government. Although officials in Buenos Aires were receptive to Catari’s petitions, local officials back in La Plata, and especially the corregidor of Chayanta, were less so, leading to his imprisonment on and off from 1778 until August 1780.7 It was during Catari’s last few weeks in prison that rumors of tribute reduction—​and the idea that he had himself brought orders of a reduction from Buenos Aires—​reached a crescendo. Although in testimony to royal officials Catari denied that he had brought tribute reduction, the rumor spread. For fifty years, rumors of tribute reduction, and of the king’s decrees being hidden by evil caciques and corrupt corregidores, had been commonplace. In 1757, and again in 1776, Condo comuneros claimed to have news of an order of tribute reduction, one that had been hidden from comuneros. People were fully prepared to believe that their caciques were pocketing excess tribute money. During the early months of 1780, Catari held meetings across Chayanta province where, according to witnesses, he described having an audience with the King of Spain. Accounts of these meetings varied, but there was basic agreement that Catari had led people to believe that he had made a pact with the Crown, a pact now abrogated by corregidores and caciques. According to one witness, Catari told his audience that “they ought not to pay more than one of the tribute



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payments in a year, that of San Juan, that the one of Christmas was for [the corregidor] and the caciques. Also, that they weren’t obligated to go to the royal mita but one time in their life.” Other witnesses said there was a formal “contract” between the corregidor and the caciques to keep the excess tribute and divide it between them.8 However, a few people were suspicious of Tomás Catari. Comunero women from the town of Pocoata were heard to say that they thought it was very peculiar that Catari claimed in these meetings to have brought a decree lowering tribute yet never produced the decree.9 Much like the earlier notices of hidden aranceles and reports of tribute reduction in the towns of Totora and Cacachaca, news of tribute reduction traveled through gossip exchanged during saints’ festivals.10 Spaniards apprehensively reported large gatherings of Indians in valley towns in 1780. The fall and winter months of June, July, and August were the time of saints’ celebrations in the valley towns, and also harvest season and the arrival of highlanders with their llama caravans carrying salt and chuño to trade for maize. These saints’ celebrations provided a ritual means by which highland comuneros maintained local land claims and trading partnerships and marked a key moment in the political year, the time when the corregidor would come to oversee the annual dispatch of mita labor and collect tribute money. Traveling through Chayanta province that winter, a contingent of colonial bureaucrats, including Chayanta province Corregidor Joaquin de Alós, arrived in the valley town of Carasi on June 23, the day before the celebration of its patron saint, San Juan Bautista. The occasion brought together people from the towns of Macha, Pocoata, and Chayanta, all highlanders who participated in the festival for San Juan to maintain their rights to use valley lands. The morning following the festival, while the corregidor made the list for the mita, another official noted in his diary that he saw large “meetings of Indians, where they were saying that they don’t have to pay more than 12 reales of tribute, and only on San Juan.” From Carasi, colonial officials traveled to San Pedro de Buenavista, another valley town, where they celebrated their patron saint’s day on June 29. Again, the town was full of comuneros from highland towns. There caciques told the corregidor that “they weren’t able to collect the tribute because of the rumor that they don’t have to pay more than 12 reales and only on San Juan.”11 These confrontations continued town by town until late August, the time for the dispatch of mita workers. Corregidor Alós met with mitayos in Pocoata, just as Florencio Lupa had done years earlier. But this time, comuneros demanded that Alós free Tomás Catari from the La Plata prison. After a violent confrontation, Alós was taken captive and an emissary was sent to secure Catari’s freedom in exchange for Alós’s life. Once freed, Catari traveled to Macha.





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Far from quieting the province, Catari’s return to his hometown of Macha gave new credence to hopes for tribute reduction. These expectations were indirectly confirmed by an order issued by corregidor Alós. Trying to secure his own release, and when he obviously thought his life was in jeopardy, Alós issued an order giving exceptional powers to Catari. Brought to the Audiencia’s attention by an irate Macha comunero, one of Catari’s early supporters turned adversary, the document affirmed Alós’s words that “I order and command that the said Don Tomás Catari name those Indians who seem to him useful as Governors, segundas, jilancos, and alcaldes mayores, . . . removing and deposing those that seem to him not to be competent.” Some Macha comuneros were angry over this decree and thought Catari should just govern his own ayllu and not try to run “the whole kingdom.” 12 Catari’s correspondence following this decree took on a more assertive tone, as he exerted his authority in Chayanta province and beyond. A  letter composed under Catari’s name, but likely written by a Creole or mestizo amanuensis (possibly his priest), and sent to the governors of Condocondo (with a copy to the corregidor of Paria province, Don Manuel de la Bodega y Llano), revealed how Catari saw his new status. As part of his bargain for freeing Corregidor Alós, Catari had asked for the release of his jailhouse compatriots, the Condo defendants from the Llanquipacha murder trial. After gaining their freedom on the morning of September 10, 1780, the nine defendants traveled to Macha. During the several months spent together in the La Plata prison, the Condo defendants and Catari had found common goals. In Macha, the Condo comuneros would have seen Alós’s extraordinary decree posted in the plaza. Given the decree, perhaps they thought that a letter from Catari, whom Alós had empowered to promote the “public tranquility,” would ease their reentry into Condo in the eyes of the Spanish authorities, the corregidor and cacique. The letter from Catari to the Condo caciques and the Corregidor confirmed that they, the Condo comuneros, “are coming [to you] pardoned and absolved by the Royal Court of whatever excesses that they might have committed in the deaths of the deceased Governors don Feliz [sic] and Don Gregorio Llanquipacha. . . . I [Catari] ask you as governors, principales, and the rest of the community to receive these unfortunate ones with love, charity and reciprocal friendship as our brothers.” 13 What must have gone through the minds of the leaders of the Llanquipacha murders as they returned triumphantly to Condo? They had been pardoned by the Audiencia, higher authorities had finally recognized the righteousness of their actions—​and had confirmed their understanding of political philosophy governing the proper relations between común and governor, that the governor only ruled with the consent of the governed. No wonder Gregorio



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Llanquipacha’s son, Lucas Felix Llanquipacha, the new cacique, begged the corregidor to replace him: “put another in my place, [someone]. . . to the satisfaction of the Indians of the community; if you don’t, our lives are not secure.” 14

Comuneros Demand the Right to Name Their Caciques One of the most startlingly revolutionary actions of comuneros was their widespread assertion of popular sovereignty, the notion that the común had the right to choose whom it wanted as cacique, without regard to hereditary status. Certainly, the people of Condo had affirmed their right to remove their cacique when he acted against their wishes. And the comuneros who put the head and heart of Florencio Lupa on the hill outside the Audiencia capital of La Plata left little doubt where they believed power resided in their community. Here again, comunero desires meshed well with the actions of Tomás Catari. Although Catari had tried to gain the office of cacique, he did not try to emulate hispanized caciques such as Florencio Lupa or Gregorio Llanquipacha with their fancy clothes and toothpicks made of gold. Instead, after spending many months in jail along with the defendants from Condo, Catari seemed to embrace the same political philosophy that allowed the común to name its own caciques. After his release from prison, Catari became something of a symbolic leader for comuneros in the region, an idea encouraged by Corregidor Alós’s proclamation. Catari followed a legalistic path laid out by the corregidor’s decree, but just as importantly he knowingly tapped into comunero understanding of legitimacy. Contrary to the wording of Alós’s mandate, Catari did not name or depose authorities, rather he confirmed the común’s decisions to do so and sent them on to the court in La Plata for legal certification. Such was the case in the town of Sacaca, where comuneros from each parcialidad named their own new caciques on September 22 and then to traveled to Macha where Tomás Catari, in the name of the community, forwarded their petition to the Audiencia.15 By deposing their caciques and gaining Catari’s endorsement, comuneros acted in compliance with law, as they understood it. This becomes clear in the case of Chayanta town, whose cacique Marcos Soto was a close friend of Florencio Lupa. Indeed, at the same time that comuneros of Moscarí arrested Lupa, people of Chayanta did the same with Marcos Soto. In Soto’s case, the común of his town developed a lengthy written indictment of his activities. Among his crimes: he took crops produced on community land and kept them for himself, he forced forasteros to serve mita duty, he charged mitayos tribute, he named fifty men as colque runas, “silver people” who paid to





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be relieved from mita duty, he forced townspeople to supply him with brandy and chicha to prod him to administer justice, and so on. There was only one conclusion to be reached: Now we say we do not want him as our governor, for we have experienced such bad treatment and labors, so that another governor should be named, someone that the community would elect, someone from our class. In the name of the community of Laymes [parcialidad of Chayanta], I sign this. I, Diego Chico. The community wanted someone “from our class,” not a member of the hereditary elite, but someone regarded as a member of the community, a comunero. This indictment of Soto, and the message that the community would elect one of their own was forwarded to the Audiencia with a letter from Tomás Catari, asking the Audiencia to endorse the community’s decision.16 Examples of communities replacing their caciques abound—​some like Chayanta by forwarding their petitions through Catari, still others by sending them directly to the Audiencia.17 An indictment similar to that against cacique Marcos Soto of Chayanta was introduced against Don Nicolás Guaguari, cacique of San Pedro de Buenavista, a town with rich valley lands to which people of Chayanta town (as well as Condo and Culta) had claims. Comunero Simon Castillo, from Chayanta town, wrote the petition denouncing cacique Guaguari and sent it directly to Audiencia officials in La Plata.18 Colonial officials considered Castillo “worse than Catari because the letters of his petition are from his own hand.”19 From Moscarí on September 27, Diego Yugra sent a letter to the Audiencia saying “the común of this town have elected me for their Governor and Cacique.” In Carasi in mid-​November two comuneros presented petitions to their corregidor saying their community had named them governors.20 The multiplicity of these cases across the Audiencia reveal that comuneros believed that their communities had the right to select their caciques—​no longer a hereditary post but in the process of becoming an office within the cabildo. An exemplary case among the many of comuneros choosing their own cacique is that of San Francisco de Coroma in Porco province, the same town to which people of Tolapampa had turned for support in 1603 when they sought to separate themselves from Tomave and establish their own annex town. In October 1780, at the request of comuneros from the town who wanted to name their own caciques, Tomás Catari sent a letter addressed to the cacique, the alcaldes, and the regidores of the community. In it, he accused the cacique of ignoring decrees from King Charles III that favored comuneros.



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The intention of the royal and merciful sovereign is that the governors and principal caciques should be defenders and protectors of the poor, miserable and defenseless tributary Indians, but you [cacique] don’t do that. . . . The carrier [of this letter] is Antonio Alexandro Guarachi, who comes with precise orders to collect all the papers, documents, instructions, and decrees that favor the tributary Indians as are established in the Royal Provisions. In the cited decrees it is also ordered that the governors be at the direction of the Indians who make up the respective department and community . . . . [you should], . . . elect a person [as governor] who will be selfless and dedicated to royal service and with this [order] he should appear before a lawful judge for the confirmation of his title.21 The message to the comunero audience was two-​fold: first was the right of popular sovereignty: governors are to be chosen by the community and are at the “direction of the Indians,” and, second, comunero rights as tributary Indians are guaranteed in “papers, documents, instructions, and decrees.” The Coroma cacique, Sebastián José Martínez, testified that during the week before All Souls Day (November 1), principales of Coroma ayllus led the común as they marched to the plaza accompanied by drums and trumpets. There, the assembled people listened while one of the cantors of the Coroma church read this letter aloud in Spanish and then explained its meaning in Aymara. During the first reading, cacique Martínez was frightened and hid, but on the second reading, perhaps thinking he could maintain his hold on power, he took part in a formal ceremony acknowledging receipt of the letter. Although Martínez could not sign his name and likely was not literate, the document recording the ceremony was written in the first person, as if composed by him. “I received this letter. . . . I obey [it], I kissed [it] and put [it] over my head as it is a superior order.” The document marking the formal reception ceremony of Catari’s letter with its “orders” from Charles III was composed and witnessed by Lucas Machaca, another church cantor. Other witnesses included the town’s alcaldes and alguaciles. The formal ritual of receiving and obeying the order, identical to that carried out by Spaniards, would surely not be lost on those members of the común assembled in the plaza. Even if they could not decipher the written code or understand the Spanish language this act of ritual submission by the cacique to authority of the común could be “read” by any observer.22 After the ritual with the letter, Guarachi and the principales seized cacique Martínez’s vara. Then, going to his home, they took the tax census material, and tried to remove all the other community papers, but Martínez managed to





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hold on to most. After confiscating his symbols of power and rule, the vara and documents, Martínez and his family were thrown in jail. 23 Following this confrontation, Antonio Guarachi collected the tribute money and, along with a sizeable contingent of Coroma comuneros, including an alcalde, an alguacil, and cantor Lucas Machaca, traveled to Potosí to deliver it to authorities. Going to a public notary in Potosí, Guarachi and the other principales of Coroma asked for a petition to be written to the Audiencia-​level attorney for Indian affairs, informing him that they had Coroma’s tribute collection and asking him to ensure that the Royal Treasury would receive the money from them since the cacique normally delivered it. Two days later, on November 22, the comuneros returned to collect their petition and asked to have another document written. This time they needed a letter to the corregidor, requesting official confirmation for the new governors that the común had elected. Apparently suspicious, the notary asked the comuneros if they had some official document he could consult to aid him in composing the petition. In response, Guarachi and the other ayllu heads returned to where they were staying, collected the letter they had solicited from Catari, and returned to show the notary. However, given the fear provoked by the armed upraising spreading across the viceroyalty, the notary had contacted authorities, who seized the letter and arrested the Coroma comuneros. Royal authorities interrogated Guarachi. How did he know Catari? Why he would go along with Catari’s orders? In response, Guarachi claimed that he had only known Catari a short time. He said they had met two months earlier, in September, when returning from his annual trip to valley lands to trade for grain, he had traveled through Macha and run into several people from Coroma there, including a jilaqata and an alcalde. Having heard the rumors that Catari had brought decrees favorable to the comuneros, the jilaqata and alcalde had gone to Macha to consult Catari. The result of their trip was the letter urging them to gather all the written documents in Coroma in order to discover what favorable decrees might be hidden there and the instructions to then elect a governor of their own choosing.24 From Guarachi’s telling, Coroma people believed that they were following the letter of the law by producing Catari’s orders in Potosí, but instead found themselves in jail. Not only were caciques like that of Coroma deposed, many were also killed by comuneros. Blas Bernal, the cacique who Tomás Catari had challenged in Macha, had been killed by Macha comuneros while Catari was still imprisoned. After the cacique of Challapata, Diego Apasa, was killed, Martín de la Cruz Caysa, a principal and past governor of Challapata, claimed that the rebels were under orders from Cuzco area leader Tupac Amaru to kill all the caciques and



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their families. Indeed, one account from the Cuzco region claimed that Tupac Amaru’s “exuberant rebels beat a royalist kuraka [cacique] to death in front of his family.” 25 Others said that his cousin and fellow rebel leader Diego Tupac Amaru issued the order. Still others said that orders to kill the caciques came from Tomás Catari. Regardless of who might have given such an order, caciques had gotten the message that their lives were in danger. A number of Chayanta province caciques and their families took refuge from comuneros in the church of the valley town of San Pedro de Buenavista where they quickly found themselves under siege. Cacique Hilario Caguasiri and his son managed to escape disguised as a woman and an “Indian,” respectively, but another cacique, Santos Puma, was killed there by rebels.26 In the town of Yura, near Tomave, cacique Pablo Choquevilca was stoned to death. Jilaqata Ramón Paca led the attack on him during the carnival celebration in late February 1781. Comuneros from Yura then decapitated Choquevilca and took his head to Macha. But Tomás Catari had been arrested and killed while in custody in January 1781 and the alcaldes of Macha had no interest in Choquevilca’s head. Instead they tried to charge Ramón Paca for the privilege of burying the head in Macha. Paca refused. He and the Yura comuneros with him unceremoniously dumped the head on their way back to Yura.27

Royalist Rebels Revolution spread not only across the Audiencia of Charcas (see Map 8.1) but also across nearly the whole of South America in the 1780s, from northern Argentina to Ecuador to Colombia, erupting in reducción towns as well as in Spanish cities with their mixed populations of “creole Indians,” mestizos, Afro-​ Latinos, and Spanish Creoles. Many of these rebels also called themselves comuneros.28 At first, loyalty to the crown of Spain continued, with the familiar battle cry of “Death to bad government! Long live the King!” reflecting a belief in the essential goodness of the king.29 That comuneros long-​maintained loyalty to the king comes through in an account from the corregidor of Chayanta province, Juan de Acuña. On November 19, 1780, as Acuña left church after Sunday services, he was met by a group of what he estimated to be four thousand Indians who presented him with a royal order from 1692. This ninety-​year-​old document, retrieved from a community archive, contained an order from Viceroy Melchor Portocarrero y Lasso de la Vega that mandated that Indians were not liable for tribute payment during their turn of mita service. The multitude demanded that Acuña obey the order. Fearing for his life, Acuña yelled “Viva el Rey!” to make his escape. The crowd responded in kind, with “Long live the King,” clearly believing that the king would force their corrupt local officials to obey his orders.30





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Figure 8.1  Major regions of conflict. Most of the 1780–​1782 conflict took place in the Audiencia of Charcas whose borders at the time extended well north of Lake Titicaca and that by then had been incorporated into the viceroyalty of Rio de La Plata. Map by Erin Greb Cartography.

Oruro Creoles Embrace an Inca King But loyalty to a royal monarch did not necessarily mean loyalty to Spain; an American king was a possibility. And who would be a more fitting king for the viceroyalty of Peru than an Inca? In 1739, a manifesto issued in the mining center



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of Oruro declared that a fifth-​generation direct descendent of the last ruling Inca from “Great Cuzco” was prepared to become king: [We] desire to restore to him what is properly his, that is, to reestablish this monarchy. He beseeches the creoles and the caciques, and all the naturales [Indians] to lend their hand to the heroic action of restoring that which is his and liberating the homeland, purging it of the tyranny of the Guampos [disparaging slang term for peninsular Spaniards] that consume us, and every day bring us closer to our ruin. Written by a group of Creoles who sought to unite Andeans and Creoles against Spaniards, the manifesto denounced Spaniards as usurpers, tyrants, and bloodsuckers, while promising to lift the economic and labor burdens from Andeans, prohibit any Creoles and mestizos from being added to tribute roles, protect the “holy law of our Lord Jesus Christ,” and “reestablish the great Empire and Monarchy of our ancient Kings.” The plot was crushed, but not the idea of an Inca monarchy.31 Indeed, forty years later it was taken up by muleteer and cacique of Tinta, José Gabriel Condorcanqui. More famously known as Tupac Amaru, a reference not only to his claims of descent from legitimate Inca nobles, a claim that historian David Garrett has proved was thoroughly disputed by the Inca nobility of the Cuzco region, but also to the last Inca emperor put to death by Viceroy Toledo more than two hundred years earlier. Tupac Amaru arrested, then executed his corregidor in November 1780 and began issuing letters and decrees in the name of the King of Spain. As Peruvian historian Scarlett O’Phelan-​Godoy has argued, Tupac Amaru seems to have been directly inspired by the earlier events, as “many of the points and the ideas” from the Oruro manifesto were repeated in his proclamations.32 In the 1780s, the idea of an Inca appealed to many people, not only native Andeans. Some of the strongest support for an Inca monarch came from Creoles and mestizos, people of European or mixed European and indigenous descent, not because they hoped to return to a pre-​Conquest Inca state but because the term Inca connoted a legitimate monarchy for the viceroyalty of Peru.33 One such Creole was Jacinto Rodríguez. Rodríguez, a member of a wealthy Creole mining family, had served as alcalde of the Spanish-​Creole city of Oruro since 1772. But in the late eighteenth century, the Bourbon Crown sought to rein in Creoles and began replacing Creole officeholders with, in their view, more trustworthy peninsular Spaniards. In the January 1781 elections, the Spanish corregidor of Oruro allowed only Spanish candidates to stand for office, further straining ties between peninsular-​born Spaniards and Creoles. At the time of the elections, pasquines or broadsides supporting Tupac Amaru, with his hoped-​for Creole-​Indian alliance and claims to Inca status, had already appeared in Oruro.34





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Peninsular Spaniards rightfully questioned Jacinto Rodríguez’s allegiances. Within a few weeks of the election, he promoted himself as a possible viceroy under an American monarchy headed by Tupac Amaru. Organizing a parade in Tupac Amaru’s honor, Rodríguez dressed in a black velvet jacket that he claimed was identical to one worn by Tupac Amaru and led a crowd of Creoles in cheering the new king. Though it was short lived, Oruro was the only creole city to support Tupac Amaru. The revolution marked a brief, but important cultural moment as creoles dressed in indigenous clothes to show their allegiance.35 For Rodríguez and other Oruro Creoles, the enemy was clearly peninsular Spaniards who sought to monopolize the wealth and political control of the viceroyalty.36 To eliminate the hated Spaniards, Jacínto Rodríguez called upon local comunero towns in Paria and Carangas provinces for assistance. Perhaps to gain their support, he also confirmed the rumors of tribute reduction. A rash of letters, some between communities, others between communities and Rodríguez, followed his call to arms. Because the letters were linked to Creole rebellion, which Crown authorities saw as a greater threat than the Indian uprising, the letters were carefully preserved. The parish priest of Toledo in Paria province collected twenty-​six comunero letters as critical evidence to be used in the prosecution of Rodríguez and his allies. One letter signed by “Your loving Común Brothers” declared that they were ready to fight but questioned the best route to Oruro, as they needed to collect stones as ammunition for their primary weapon, their slings. “If we come by way of the pampa, there are no stones, [and without those] things will go badly for us.” Things did go badly in Oruro. Perhaps as many as twelve thousand comuneros from the provinces of Paria and Carangas, who had recently killed not only caciques but also their corregidores, responded to Rodríguez’s call to arms, invading Oruro in February 1781 attacking and killing the hated chapetones, native Spaniards.37 For a brief moment, the Creole-​indigenous alliance in Oruro revealed “a profound sense of Americanness.” As they marched into Oruro comuneros chanted “comuna, comuna” turning the idiom of the común into a rebel imperative, which frightened Spaniards took to mean “all for one.”38 Did comuneros ally with Rodriquez because they believed he would become Tupac Amaru’s viceroy? Perhaps, but they were to be sorely disabused of that notion. In a letter signed by “Your Loving Brothers of the Community of Challacollo” indigenous comuneros lamented that Creole Jacinto Rodríguez had turned against them:  “The traitorous creoles of the Villa of Oruro have linked up with the chapeton [Spanish] soldiers and the creoles coming from Cochabamba. They are against us, and they are making war so that they can burn all the towns. . . . We won’t allow them to kill us like those that they finished off at Tapacarí and other towns.”39 Comuneros responded to this new mobilization, again invading Oruro in March 1781, killing Creoles as well as Spaniards. Oruro



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was the only Spanish-​Creole city to be invaded during the Great Rebellion. La Plata was threatened, Cuzco was briefly under siege, and La Paz was held captive twice, but only Oruro was invaded, suffering massive destruction and loss of life.

Comuneros Embrace a Legitimate Inca King For many comuneros in the 1780s, as it was for some Creoles, the Inca was a symbol of legitimate rule, a legitimate dynasty for the Andes. As one captured comunero rebel testified, when questioned about his role in the uprising, he had heard that Charles III had died and he believed that now Tupac Amaru “was king.” Perhaps it did seem possible for one dynasty to replace another, especially one with American legitimacy.40 It was the political symbolism inherent in the term Inca and the political capital generated by a call to rally around an ‘Inca’ that drew comuneros to the ranks. The rebellions within the Audiencia of Charcas preceded the uprisings in the Cuzco region and continued after the death of Tupac Amaru. The various Incas who appeared in this revolutionary moment followed the lead of the comuneros and the demands of the 1739 Oruro manifesto. This is not to diminish the importance of Tupac Amaru, or other Inca claimants, but to emphasize that support for an Inca king was very much a conscious decision of the comunes taken to secure their own rights of self-​ government as repúblicas, not to dismantle them to return to pre-​Columbian forms of hereditary rule.41 The message of a new American monarchy did resonate with some comuneros in the Audiencia of Charcas in the 1780s, leading them to support Tupac Amaru as viceroy or even as king. References to an Inca, sometimes Tupac Amaru, appear infrequently in testimony and letters of comuneros, indicating the possibility of a broader political horizon, replacing one legitimate king with another. A number of letters passed through the town of Challapata in Paria province, the planned meeting place for the comunero invasion of Oruro encouraged by Creole Jacinto Rodríguez. In mid-​February 1781, the común of Challapata forwarded a decree from Tupac Amaru to Potosí, calling for troops. The letter accompanying the decree was addressed to the “Señores alcaldes of the royal tambos,” the indigenous postmasters at the stations along the way between Challapata and Potosí. Another letter written on February 27, addressed “To the principales of the town of Toledo and to the alcalde mayor Don Crus Callisaya,” advised that every ayllu should elect a “person of honor and status” as a captain, in order to coordinate their activities with Tupac Amaru. To clarify where they stood, they added “we ask God to make Tupac Amaru our monarch.” It ordered that “when you see this, pass it from tambo to tambo under appropriate security to the Villa of Potosí.”42 In a letter reproduced here (Figure 8.2), dated March





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Figure 8.2  Letter from Tolapampa alcaldes, (Porco Province) March 27, 1781, calling for troops for Tupac Amaru. In this letter (only the second page is reproduced here) Joaquín Cordova, the alcalde from ayllu Palpa of Tolapampa and Alexandro Aysa, the alcalde from ayllu Andoga of Tolapampa, write to alcaldes of another town warning them that five thousand Spanish-​ Creole troops are on the march. They are asking the alcaldes for “well armed soldiers in conformity with what our King Inca Don José Gabriel Tupac Amaru orders us . . . we are ready with our soldiers.” The note at the end added later in a different handwriting reports that alcalde Joaquín Cordova has been arrested. Archivo y Biblioteca Nacionales de Bolivia, SGI #154, fol 16v.

27, 1781, Tolapampa alcaldes called on alcaldes of another town to send “well armed soldiers” to fight as ordered by “Our King Inca Don José Gabriel Tupac Amaru .” The language used in these letters shows that support for an Inca did not eclipse rule by cabildo. Having an Inca added a level of legitimacy to the



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revolution that could be recognized by all, creoles included, but did not alter the fundamental organization by comuneros in their towns.

A Cacique as Inca Viceroy Unsurprisingly, the idea of an Inca king appealed to some of those who regarded themselves as hereditary nobility. If caciques were like “counts and dukes” in Spain, how much better it might be for them to have a hereditary, ‘Indian’ monarchy in the Andes. Much like the Creole Jacinto Rodríguez in Oruro, the cacique of Hatunquillacas, Alexo Choqueticlla Colque Guarache, volunteered to be viceroy under the new Inca king. This was the same Alexo Choqueticlla Colque Guarache whose son was among the troops that came to arrest the comuneros in the tax revolt of Cacachaca in 1757. By 1781, Choqueticlla had been cacique for nearly three decades and had a well-​earned reputation for squeezing every last cent from the comuneros in his town. Choqueticlla was not someone who would allow himself to be challenged by Andean commoners. In a lengthy letter, an alcalde of Hatunquillacas, Felipe Allasa, accused Choqueticlla of acting duplicitously. The alcalde claimed that Choqueticlla had written to Tupac Amaru to confirm that he had indeed “been crowned king in the Indies,” so that he (Choqueticlla) could become viceroy, while at the same time collecting money from “all the caciques of this province to raise soldiers” to attack and defeat the comuneros. According to the alcalde, Choqueticlla had responded to Jacinto Rodríguez’s call for troops and fought in Oruro, perhaps thinking he was supporting the Tupac Amaru cause by killing peninsular Spaniards. Then apparently realizing which way the winds were blowing, Choqueticlla countercharged that not he, but the alcalde had gathered the común to fight in Oruro. What role the alcalde played in the attack on Oruro was not clear, but he denounced Choqueticlla in no uncertain terms for his vainglory. In one particularly telling line that emphasized the notion of the equality inherent in the común, the alcalde wrote, “Your mercy [Choqueticlla] tells me that you are my superior, but I have no superiors.”43 In one way or another, this idea echoed across the region.

Tupac Catari as Inca Viceroy Following the early successes of Tomás Catari and Tupac Amaru, a commoner from the town of Sicasica near La Paz, Julián Apaza, took the nom de guerre of Tupac Catari and led two large-​scale sieges of the city of La Paz. Apaza clearly identified with his predecessors, claiming to have letters from Tomás Catari authorizing his actions and naming himself as Tupac Amaru’s viceroy in letters that circulated widely under his signature. Tupac Catari was stunningly





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successful in mobilizing tens of thousands of troops from the area around La Paz and Lake Titicaca. In one of the only large-​scale actions during the uprisings, Tupac Catari held the city of La Paz hostage for three months beginning in March 1781. Two thousand Spanish troops marched from Oruro in May, meeting with other troops from Cochabamba to lift the siege. But when Spanish troops departed, Tupac Catari laid siege for a second time, this time for seventy-​five days. The La Paz–​Lake Titicaca region was the only area where Quechua and Aymara comuneros came together to fight, with remnants of Tupac Amaru supporters joining with Tupac Catari troops. Like Tomás Catari and Tupac Amaru, Tupac Catari used the mails to extend his influence, sending letters as far as the town of Coroma, over 250 miles away, appointing a captain to raise troops for an assault on La Paz.44 However, once again troops from Oruro rescued La Paz. On November 6, 1781, twenty-​two thousand comuneros surrendered. A week later Tupac Catari was arrested and executed.

Revolution Organized Through Mail Routes and Letters Throughout the “Great Rebellion,” the colonial mail system continued to operate, with comuneros responsible for carrying the mail. The large-​scale organization of postal routes, moving from Cuzco to La Paz to Oruro to Potosí to La Plata and beyond, provided a preexisting link to mobilize and unite towns, a fact shown by the geographic patterns of comunero letters captured by Spaniards. These widely circulating letters, the contexts in which they were written, the examples of how and when they were read, and the routes they traveled all provide evidence of comunero political thought as well as demonstrating how regional links among towns were forged, and how troops were mobilized. The letters also revolutionized comuneros because they made clear that towns across the region spoke the same political language, espoused the same religiosity, and confronted the same threats. Letters such as that in Figure 8.3 communicated the conduct of the uprising, but in addition to their factual content, they show how communities and comuneros understood each other and their aims through an ongoing written “conversation.”45 A letter between two annex towns in Carangas province, warning of immanent attack, urges them to come as “soon as possible and don’t stop, not even an hour.” Letters captured by the priest of Toledo in the province of Paria provide many other examples of comunero correspondence. The letters are brief and contain information, such as calls for troops, the availability of rocks for slingshot ammunition, and when to attack. Like other letters written or commissioned by



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Figure 8.3  From the “Comunes” and Captains of Carangas Province towns. This short note on a torn piece of paper is typical of comunero correspondence. The annex town of Rivera in Carangas province sends news “to the communities and captains” of their head town of Guachacalla and annex town of Savaya. They have news of Tarapacá (in modern Chile) that people have left from there and that the other communities should gather right away because they face immanent attack. It is signed from “Your servants, comunes and captains.” Archivo y Biblioteca Nacionales de Bolivia, SGI #176, fol. 50.

comuneros, these were written in Spanish but by people for whom it was not a first language. Spanish was the written lingua franca for letters that sometimes traveled between Quechua and Aymara speakers. These letters circulated from early February through mid-​March of 1781. The addresses, salutations, closings, and signatures demonstrate how widespread the political philosophy empowering commoners had become. The addressee of the letters was either the cabildo as a whole or cabildo officers, that is alcaldes or principales. For example, a letter written on February 27, 1781, begins “To the Principales of the Town of Toledo and alcalde mayor Don Crus Callisaya.” An undated example written in early February 1781 was sent “To the cabildo of Colpacaba. To the Señor Principal.”46 These salutations demonstrate that cabildos were the major political referent in indigenous communities, displacing caciques. The model of formal closing and signature used within the body of these letters also makes clear this town-​based political philosophy. A  letter dated February 8, 1781, was signed “Your beloved sons of the community of





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Challacollo.” A letter from March 7, 1781, is addressed to “Very Beloved Señores Comunes.” Another from March 4, 1781, is addressed “To the Señores Comunes of Toledo”; one from March 12 begins “Beloved Brothers of the común of the Province of Paria.” Letters are signed by “Your humble sons, The Comunes,” “Your loving sons of the community,” and “Your loving brothers of the común.”47 These salutations and signatures were a means of self-​authorization; comunes of these towns were seizing authority to govern themselves and announcing it to all who read or heard the letters. Dozens of letters also circulated widely in Carangas Province, home of San Pedro de Totora. The letters, similar to those in Paria province, circulated between January and March of 1781, and were signed with various versions of común, including “Your most humble sons of the comunes of the Province,” “Your loving comunes,” “Sons of the Comùn,” and “Your Común Servants.” Comuneros here had complained bitterly over the treatment they received from their corregidor. He became their first target, his throat cut, followed by caciques from at least three Carangas towns. What is unusual about the comuneros of Carangas is that they not only claimed to right to name their caciques but also the corregidor. The comùn of the province named by “acclaim” the treasurer of the Caja Real, the local branch of the royal treasury, a Creole by the name of Pablo Gregorio de Castilla, as their new corregidor. While much of the comunero correspondence in Carangas was to and from comuneros, many letters were directed to their new corregidor. Comuneros demanded that he inventory all the money and goods of the murdered corregidor, with comunero “capitans” and “legal representatives” witnessing the twenty-​four-​page list of books, paintings, clothing, cash, and gold. Following this, comunes from several towns asked for small loans from the seized goods, “to give food to our común,” while others asked for mules that the previous corregidor had. Spaniards interpreted these events in Carangas as proof that Castilla was manipulating the Indians but as the letters, such as that in Figure 8.4, show the Carangas comuneros were keeping a very close eye on their new corregidor.48 The following letter was not one of those captured in Toledo, nor one from Carangas province, but a letter sent by Nicolás Catari, a Chayanta province cousin of rebel Tomás Catari. After the death of Tomás in January 1781, the Audiencia focused much of its attention on his relatives Nicolás and Damaso Catari who, unlike Tomás, made no effort to claim any cacicazgo. In fact, they played minor roles in the uprising prior to the death of their more famous relative. But following Tomás’s death, Nicolás and Damaso openly promoted the idea that Tomás had brought favorable decrees from the viceroy that were being hidden by the Audiencia. Following a battle fought to avenge Tomás’s death, Nicolás called for reinforcements among neighboring towns.



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Figure 8.4  A letter from the comunes to the corregidor of Carangas province Pablo de Castilla. Dated February 4, 1781 and signed by “Your most loving comunes.” The letter is directed to Pablo Gregorio de Castilla, a Creole, selected by the comunes of Carangas to be their new corregidor after they killed their former one. In this, the comunes relate that they have taken the keys to the royal treasury. The Carangas comunes write Castilla saying that he is their advocate (abogado) and indicating that they trust him. This letter was filed in the investigation into Castilla’s complicity in the uprising. Archivo y Biblioteca Nacionales de Bolivia, SGI #176, fol. 5.

To the Señores, past Principales, of the communities of the parish of Yocalla and Tarapaya. My very esteemed and dear ones. Immediately upon seeing this you must make every effort to communicate and notify everyone using every means possible. We are doing our part here. We have heard the





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news that the soldiers are heading out from all the large towns such as Chuquisaca [La Plata], Potosí, and other places. For this reason I write to you, as we are the indios originarios of all these corregimientos, subject to the labors, first of God and of Our Lord King and other governors. And considering this, you must do everything possible to prevent the soldiers from passing through, since if they get past, they will finish us, and do whatever they want and whatever suits their will. And we, all of the provinces and communities of this side, are working to prevent them from defeating us. I say to all of you that you should warn all the provinces and the communities of Indian people so that they do their part, just as I advise. If you do not take care to defend yourselves you will see what hardships they will subject us to from then on. Thus, my brothers, I charge you not to ignore the soldiers who seek to leave Potosí. I hope that you will also warn the people of Puna and Tomave, some of whom are tributary people. Let God preserve you many years hence. From Macha, January 28, 1781. Your servants who wish to serve you. I, Nicolás Catari and the Comunidades. To the Señores, past Principales, of the communities of the parish of Yocalla and Tarapaya. May God protect you many years in YOCALLA Let it pass hand-​to-​hand in power of the Alcaldes of Tinquipaya without any delay because of its urgency. Let  all the people of the community of Tinquipaya come to this place, Cazcará. Pedro Suyo will take this immediately.49 Yocalla, a small annex of the reducción of Tinquipaya, was not a major religious shrine, nor did it have a large population base. However, it was a fixed stop on the colonial postal circuit, so it would have been easy for this letter to be carried to other towns from there.50 The importance of the civil-​religious hierarchy in Andean towns is clear in the letter, as it is addressed to the past principales: former alcaldes, alféreces, alguaciles, and jilaqatas, and the now de facto electorate for the cabildo.51 The letter was to be carried by alcaldes. It also points to the significance of towns as sources of identity, as the warning is not issued to the ethnic groups from which the reducciones were carved. The signature plainly points to this:  “I, Nicolás Catari and the communities.” There is also a clear distinction made between hereditary nobility and common people, since the nobility were excluded from cabildo office and, of course, from tribute payment. At two different points in the letter, Nicolás uses tribute categories as referents:  first, including himself, “we are indios originarios,” and then in reference to Puna and Tomave, “some of whom are tributary people.” The several Christian references in the letter, “subject to the labors . . . of God,” “let God



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preserve you,” “may God protect you,” are formulaic, but used consistently here and in other letters, indicating that Christian religiosity played a significant role in the lives of the correspondents who wrote, received, read, or heard this letter. By calling on God and the king, the author was indirectly making a claim about the loyalty the communities might still hold for legitimate higher powers. Using this language also demonstrated to those who read or heard the letter that the author was speaking from authority and the revolution was legitimate.52 On February 10, this letter fell into the hands of the parish priest of Tinquipaya in Chayanta province, the parish to which Pedro Suyo, the alcalde who was charged with carrying the letter, belonged. It was one among many rebel communications the priest forwarded to Don Jorge Escobedo y Alarcón, the governor of Potosí. There were still other letters that, for whatever reason, Suyo refused to turn over. In his note sending along the call to arms from the communities, the Tinquipaya priest explained a curious proximate event involving Pedro Suyo: the day following the celebration of the Purification of Our Lady, the third of February. Pedro Suyo . . . entered my room with a multitude of his followers and Indian allies, telling me that all his community wanted him for their governor, and thus would I give him the bastón [staff of office]. I did it, but only after making him thoroughly aware that it would not be final until the Royal Audiencia was made aware of this because the naming [to office] would come from there. He responded to me that it was not important that they agree, that it was enough that I alone name him for governor.53 Suyo was replacing an unpopular cacique, Juan Arque. Five months earlier, Arque had sent an urgent report claiming that the alcalde Suyo was trying to depose him. He claimed that Suyo wanted to kill him and that he had only been able to escape Tinquipaya dressed as an “Indian” in poncho and stocking cap.54 Now, following a major fiesta, at which he likely served as alférez, Suyo had succeeded to office, because “his community wanted him for their governor.” Suyo also confirmed the importance of religious practice to leadership in asking the priest to sanction him as governor by blessing him. Like the letter of Nicolás Catari, a brief letter sent to Santa Bárbara de Culta in February 1781, also called for troops. The letter was addressed to the cabildo of another town but was forwarded to an alcalde of Culta, indicating that letters were publicly recirculated among comunero towns, multiplying their audience and impact. The local priest saw the alcalde reading it to a crowd of people during a festival. He took the letter from the alcalde and forwarded it to Potosí authorities.





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To the cabildo of Colpacaba. To the Señor Principal. I have definite information on the news brought by the messenger. He says that more than 2500 soldiers have done great harm, and have humbled all of those of Peñas and Hurmires. Just as many, they say, are coming by way of Chichas. We will be surrounded this very night. Without a doubt they will arrive and wipe us out and none of us will be left in this province. Thus, for God’s sake come as soon as you see this and take the news to everyone, as far as Culta, Cahuayo and Lagunillas, to all the hamlets. Come in all fury with the greatest haste, in the manner of soldiers without an hour’s delay. I beg you in the name of Holiest Mary, to come, no matter what, all the comunes as one. God Our Lord will help us. Challapata. Chungara.55 Again, postal routes figure prominently: the towns of Challapata and Condo shared duties at the tambo of Vizcachas on the route between the two tambos of Lagunillas and Peñas, all stops through which the mail traveled. Festival ties also helped carry the news. Among the people in the crowd listening to the letter were Chayanta province comuneros from Macha and Tinquipaya. The priest of Culta reported on the crowd’s reaction to the letter:  “And those from this parish, after having read it, met with those from Tinquipaya, begging them to go to Challapata, and that if they didn’t, they would be lost. The next day, the alcaldes of our parish gathered together many Indians and dispatched each of them with two or three slings, bats, and other things for their defense.”56 In the priest’s telling, the comuneros had also become very impudent: On the 15th [of February], the Jueves de Compadres,57 while I was going to marry some of my little parishioners, I met three Indians who were left over from those elected as our alcaldes. One of them came up to me to ask what news I  had of the soldiers. I, as if ignorant of everything, responded that I didn’t know anything. But this wouldn’t do; he thumped me on the side over my heart and told me that I had things hidden in my heart, and that I didn’t want to tell them anything. With this display, he took his leave. 58 The priest unintentionally pointed out how many comuneros might be eager to assume leadership roles in the town; three candidates who could have served were “left over” after the election. The candidates for alcalde had clearly lost faith in their priest and, using an Aymara metaphor for dishonesty, accused him of lying to them about the whereabouts of Spanish troops sent to crush the uprising.



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From mid-​January through early April 1781, comunero towns across the audiencia carried on an extensive correspondence through the postal system. Thousands responded to calls for arms and joined Tupac Catari in his siege of La Paz and in the comunero invasion of Oruro. For a time, some people continued to believe that Tomás Catari had brought a reduction in tribute and repartos (goods that corregidores forced Indians to buy) that was being hidden. In February 1781, as Nicolás and Damaso Catari threatened the city of La Plata at the Battle of Punilla, they persisted in claims that the edicts issued by the viceroy in Buenos Aires had been stolen by Juan de Acuña, the Spanish corregidor in whose custody Tomás Catari had been at the time of his death. Nicolás and Damaso Cataris wrote to the Audiencia demanding Acuña’s satchel of papers be turned over to them.59 But they and their close allies also wrote to communities, promising them a share of the papers. One letter was sent to Tinquipaya: To the Señores of the Community of the repartimiento of Tinquipaya. Join together to help us. We are united in one body as we were at Punilla. And in accordance with your patience, you will be thanked. As soon as things calm down, you will get some of the papers with the reduction for your government. And for that, all of us of the community of Macha beg you and we await your favor. We leave on Ash Wednesday, no matter what. Macha, February, 21, 1781.60 The Battle of Punilla, the battle fought closest to La Plata, had taken place the day before this letter was written and was a rout for the comuneros. Ash Wednesday, February 28, was still a week away at this time, and there was clearly hope that the troops could regroup with reinforcements. But what stands out in this letter is the promise of papers—​official papers with their reductions of tribute given by the viceroy, papers that would go into the community chest to be brought out whenever anyone doubted comuneros’ legal rights. Many letters were sent to or from the town of Tomave in Porco province. On the first Sunday in Lent, March 4, 1781, Tomave comuneros executed their cacique, with the assistance of people from their annex towns of Tolapampa and Opoco. Early that morning over three hundred comuneros, led by their alcaldes, attacked and killed the cacique and a group of Spaniards who were unfortunate enough to be there.61 In the next few days, before news of this had traveled very far, two calls to arms arrived in Tomave. The first, dated March 5, came from Damaso Catari, requesting that Tomave people join in battle. The letter contained a threat to kill whoever read the letter if they did not issue the call to arms.62 In this case, there were likely a number of comuneros who could read the letter since the priest who had served Tomave since 1769 claimed to have taught his parishioners “not only in their common language, but also in Castilian.”63





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A second appeal arrived in Tomave a few days later: Señores Comunos of all the Province My Dear Sirs, I am informing you all that I  have just arrived from the province of Cochabamba and the Cochabambinos and the Chapetones [Spaniards] have united. They are coming, destroying towns; they have destroyed two towns, and thus Your Mercies, when you see this, prepare yourselves for our defense. Everyone should come immediately. Pass this letter to every town in this province of Paria. God protect us for many years. Poopó, March 7, 1781. From Their Mercies, the Principales of all the community of this town of Poopó, etc. For these reasons, whoever would resist this order, should suffer a vile death. As soon as you see this letter, hit the road, even if it’s the middle of the night, for God’s sake. In any case, the news that the priest of Poopó, don Manuel Aranibar, has given confirms that you should be well warned. March 8, 1781. [signed] COMUNIDADES Señores of the comunidad of Condo. When you see this, prepare immediately to leave for Poopó as the Cochabambinos and the Chapetones have come together and they are destroying towns as they say in the letter. You all must warn [the town of] Salinas that we must join. Pass this letter. Señores of the comunidad of Aullagas. When you see this, prepare yourselves as it says in the letter and come to Coroma. Vale. Señores of the comunidad of Coroma. When you see this, prepare yourselves as it says in the letter. Vale. Señores of the comunidad of Opoco. When you see this, prepare yourselves as it says in the letter and send it to Tomave immediately. Vale.64 This circular letter began in the Paria province town of Poopó, once an annex of Challacollo, another town that figures prominently in many of the 1781 comunero letters. Poopó provided chasquis to the postal tambo of Venta de Media, from which the letter passed to Condo, which provided chasquis for another tambo, Vilcapuquio. The letter left the main postal route and went to Aullagas, then on to Coroma, the parish to which Aullagas belonged. Opoco, the next town, was an annex of Tomave and had taken part in killing the cacique on March 4.65 On March 22 (Figure 8.5) and again on March 27, 1781, Tomave alcaldes sent their own warnings and calls to arms with letters to alcaldes of neighboring



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Figure 8.5  Letter from alcalde and comunidad of Tomave to alcaldes and comunidad of Yura, March 22, 1781 (Porco Province). In this letter an alcalde of Tomave sends a warning that two thousand soldiers are headed their way and that they should be ready to fight. Just some two weeks earlier, comuneros of Tomave, along with those from Tolapampa, executed their cacique. The different handwriting at the bottom of the notes states that the alcalde Lucas Choque has been taken prisoner. Archivo y Biblioteca Nacionales de Bolivia, SGI # 154 fol. 17.

towns.66 But shortly after the alcaldes of Tomave issued their calls for support, it was becoming clear that the revolution there was failing, even as it continued in the Oruro—​La Paz region. On March 30, a comunero captain of Tomave fired off an angry letter to a comunero leader in Yura. My friend, there is very bad news from Macha from the new Governor, Don Sebastián Aricoma. They say that Catari is in jail. To find out





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absolutely, the entire community ought to go there in person. It’s ordered that the royal tribute has to be paid now and there’s no reduction. It’s very bad for us. . . . This news was brought by the Alcalde of Macha. . . . You’ve been lying [to us].67 A few days later the governor of Toropalca wrote to the rebel governor in Yura, saying that he received the call to arms from him and from Tomave, but that he would not be able to supply them with troops. His townspeople were skeptical and wanted written proof. These people [in Toropalca] don’t want you to order me to get them ready for this battle. They want to see some of the papers of orders from the King Our Lord and from Catari as they were given, that’s what these people say.68 It seems likely that the “these people” in Toropalca had received a message like that sent to Tinquipaya: join with us, and you’ll get copies of the tribute reduction. But like the women of Pocoata a few months earlier, when they failed to see the written orders, they doubted their existence. This letter is signed warmly, “your brother,” and contains all manner of honorific language, as if the writer still wished to believe that the rumored papers were real. Turning to the documents in their community archives, documents that had been slowly added to the town records since the days of Viceroy Toledo two hundred years earlier was the way comuneros hoped to resolve long-​standing grievances over payments and service. When documentary proof of their rights to govern themselves had failed to move caciques and their Creole allies, comuneros were forced to turn to violent revolution to press their rights as legitimate, self-​governing communities. By April 1781, Tomás Catari and Tupac Amaru had been executed. The revolution would continue in the region around La Paz and the comunero towns around Lake Titicaca for nearly another year at great loss of life. Tupac Catari would be captured and executed in November 1781. In early June 1782 a call to arms in the name of a new Inca King, Don Estevan Atahualpa, named for the Inca put to death by Pizarro in 1533, was delivered to alcaldes in towns near La Paz but there was no longer any stomach for battle, and the letter was turned over to Spanish authorities.69

A Revolution Crushed but the Común Strengthened The revolutionary uprisings of 1780–​ 1782 across the highlands of the viceroyalties of Peru and Rio de La Plata were the culmination of thirty years



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of concerted actions within widely dispersed comunes, who sought justice by denouncing corrupt and abusive leaders, their corregidores, priests, and caciques, to the Audiencia’s legal system. Official records compiled by Spanish bureaucrats in the months and years following the uprisings emphasized the movement of indigenous armies under the leadership of the Catari brothers, and Tupac Catari and Tupac Amaru, and sought to determine the immediate causes, usually attributed to fiscal abuse from corrupt priests or corregidores or caciques. The Spanish emphasis on leadership and causation led them to misinterpret the dynamics of this revolutionary moment. Accounts by colonial officials play loose with numbers, giving totals in the tens of thousands of indigenous armies poised to invade La Plata, Oruro, Cusco, and La Paz; likewise, Tupac Amaru deliberately exaggerated the numbers of his “soldiers” to frighten royalists. Depending on the source, as he approached and laid siege to Cuzco in January 1781 Tupac Amaru’s troops numbered 60,000, or 30,000, or 3,000 or 1,800.70 Likewise the numbers of Indians repeatedly invading Oruro were reported from 4,000 to 12,000. Clearly, such numbers need to be treated carefully. Indigenous forces were made up of subsistence farmers, not full-​time professional soldiers. And as has been true of peasant armies all over the world, they faced serious obstacles in organizing long-​term actions far from their hometowns. Compelled to follow the demands of the agricultural calendar it was difficult for any leader to prevent desertions at crucial moments of planting and harvest and even more difficult to billet and provision their “soldiers” as they moved across territories far from their homes.71 Unlike the urban militias and professional soldiers that hunted them, they were in no position to forcefully pillage the storehouses of communities along the way, since they depended on the goodwill of those very communities. Slings wielded by indigenous fighters on foot were no match for the guns of mounted soldiers provisioned by the state, except when those gun-​ bearing soldiers were considerably outnumbered. Organized from below, indigenous armies were the militias of the común. They were most effective in short-​term conflicts, and ill-​equipped to face professional soldiers sent to put down their uprising. Once it became clear that the rumors that fed the growth and spread of the uprising (e.g., the king had ordered reduction in tribute and suspension of mita, but corrupt officials were hiding that fact, or that the king was dead, and an Inca king had taken his place) might not be true, and once faced with bloody reprisals, their zeal faded. Perhaps a hundred thousand people died in these revolutionary movements in 1780–​1782 out of a total population in the region of perhaps 1,200,000. Possibly ten times as many indigenous rebels (and innocent victims in towns raided and burned by marauding state armies) lost their lives as their enemy caciques, and Spanish priests, corregidores, and soldiers. Those identified as regional leaders were





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publicly executed, their bodies torn apart and sent to towns across the region to be displayed to dissuade others.72 Most surviving caciques in the Audiencia of Charcas, and many across the viceroyalties of Peru and Rio de la Plata, were loyal to the Spanish Crown.73 For many caciques this was a time of “social mobility,” as they won military promotions and generous pensions from the Crown. Those caciques who helped crush the comuneros were rewarded with medals bearing the image of Charles III. Tomás de la Cruz Choque, cacique of Quillacas who fought with a cavalry from Challapata and took part in battles near La Paz, was awarded a medal and promoted to captain of the cavalry. Caciques from Pucarani-​Omasuyus and Copacabana received promotions. Clemente Azurduy of Yotala, Bartolomé Choqui of Turco, and Pedro Lazaro of Challapata also won medals for their loyalty. Many caciques asked for additional rewards. Diego Colque Guarachi, who was awarded a medal, asked to be named cacique of Chayanta and San Pedro de Buenavista as a reward. Cacique Joseph Colque asked that he and his son be permanently exempted from tribute, but royal officials rejected a request that would remove them from the category of “Indian.” Don José Chuquiguanca received a pension of eight hundred pesos annually for the loyalty of his father, cacique of Azángaro in the fight against Tupac Amaru. Likewise in the Cuzco region, “Few caciques gave their unwavering support to Túpac Amaru,” most were royalists. Among those loyal to the Spanish crown from the Cuzco region, for example, the cacique of Nuñoa in Lampa province and the cacique of Cancaguasi received medals, a cacique from Condesuyus was made a coronel in the militia, and a cacique of Coporaque was made captain.74 Spanish interpretations of these “terrible and bloody revolutions” quickly hardened and calls were made for a “new conquest.”75 Despite evidence to the contrary, Spaniards saw Indians as under the sway of their caciques, who were understood to be fighting to return the viceroyalty to Inca rule. In May 1781, even before the captured Tupac Amaru had been executed, the Spanish inspector for the viceroyalty of Peru, José Antonio de Areche, in a radical misreading of comunero motives, reported that the “uprising of the Indians” was born of the public “worshiping of the customs and costumes of their first Incas” that kept their memory alive. No one wanted a return to pre-​Conquest Inca rule, least of all the comuneros; that would mean an end to their comunes, their cabildos, the saints they celebrated, and most importantly an end to their recently claimed popular sovereignty. Although many comuneros, as well as some creoles and mestizos, supported the actions of the self-​proclaimed Inca, Tupac Amaru, to become the new legitimate king, the Inca nobility in Cuzco did not. Indeed, the Inca nobility of Cuzco were devout loyalists to the Spanish Crown who were instrumental in defeating Tupac Amaru.76 But rather than reward the Inca nobility for their long-​term loyalty, Spaniards were blinded by their own prejudice against



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“Indians,” and so they enacted policies forbidding the display of paintings of Inca nobility or coats of arms, or papers showing royal Inca heritage and wearing of Inca style clothing, believing that had led to rebellion. Indigenous women would now dress like Spanish peasants, wearing the full-​skirted pollera. Ironically, given the organization and leadership of the uprising, Spaniards began efforts to replace caciques with cabildo-​led government. In the same report where Areche denounced the memories of the Inca as the cause of the rebellion, he argued that “the Indian towns should not be governed  .  .  .  by caciques . . . but by their alcaldes,” thereby unintentionally reinforcing the community level popular sovereignty that undergirded the uprisings.77 Rules for cabildo elections were issued, with mandated Spanish observers to be in attendance. Cabildo elections had taken place for years, but in the future formal written records were to be kept by Audiencia officials. For decades, even centuries, the activities of alcaldes, regidores, and escribanos, acting in the name of the común, had been recorded.78 But Peninsular and Creole Spaniards alike convinced themselves that they were addressing the underlying cause of rebellion by ordering caciques to yield power to the elected cabildos.79 Yet, these same officials complained when comuneros elected to cabildo office the same alcaldes who had not long before led them in rebellion.80 Some Creoles did recognize the revolutionary potential before them. A letter written by an Audiencia lawyer in La Plata in August 1781 raised the comparison of the failed indigenous uprising to the sixteenth-​century Revolution of the Communities in Spain, intuitively recognizing commonalities. But the author concluded that while the “ancient honor” of the great cities of Spain had been “tarnished” through their capitulation to the revolution, no city “inhabited by Spaniards or Mestizos” had joined in the fight, ignoring that Oruro had, however briefly, joined.81 And more importantly the author had ignored the fact that the indigenous towns, Condo, Totora, Tolapampa, and all the rest were the true centers of the comunero struggle. The author’s reluctance to fully acknowledge the coeval revolutionary struggle of comuneros set a pattern. As historian Sinclair Thomson has argued there was a concerted effort on the part of Spaniards to “silence” or “disavow” the revolutionary actions of Andeans because the “radical principle of indigenous political sovereignty” was too “disturbing” for Spaniards to contemplate, thus their revolution had to be annulled from the public mind.82 Many historians, drawing on official reports produced in the aftermath of the uprisings, have agreed with Areche’s diagnosis, and have focused on a purported cacical leadership of Tomás Catari, Tupac Amaru, and Tupac Catari, and of a revitalized Inca past. Such arguments are in concert with those of contemporary anthropologists who seek to bolster the idea that indigenous Andeans preserve pre-​Columbian ways and have resisted Spanish colonialism. It seems that the





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radical principle of indigenous popular sovereignty has itself been too disturbing for such scholars to contemplate.83 In the half century that followed the Andean revolution of the comuneros, Creole Spaniards would organize their own revolutionary movement, one that vacillated between creating a new monarchy and instantiating popular sovereignty along a republican, nation-​state model. Cacicazgos would be abolished, but the indigenous común would not be treated as an ally in the Creole revolution. Instead, in the age of liberalism and Enlightenment, it became an obstacle, along with Indians who were regarded as “backward” and uncivilized in part owing to the collectivism of the común. Nevertheless, the común survived.



Conclusion The Resilience of the Común and Its Legacy

By the time of the great indigenous uprisings of 1780–​1782, 250 years after the Spanish invasion of Peru in 1532, and nearly two hundred years after the systematic resettlement program carried out under Viceroy Francisco de Toledo, all of the reducciones established in the territories of the pre-​Columbian Karanqa and Killaka federations continued to exist as centers of indigenous self-​government.1 Added to them were perhaps three to four times as many neo-​reducciones, annexes planned and created on the reducción model by Andeans themselves, as they effectively and legally repopulated the extensive territories from which they had been reduced. In some sense, the kind of spatial, geographic infrastructure of governance that Spaniards envisioned for Andeans as permanent residents of towns failed to jell, since Andeans generally moved back to and resided in small and widely dispersed hamlets, near their fields and pastures, rather than in the towns themselves.2 Such was required for the sustenance of life given the thin and scattered ecological resources of the arid steppe of the Altiplano, so different from the comparatively well-​watered and fertile terrain of Castile that had been the Spaniards’ model for settlement. Of course, re-​populating the old settlements, bestowed with new institutions, also helped secure land rights and offered autonomy in granting an everyday life distant from both Spanish authorities and hereditary caciques. Given the emergent centrality of towns, and the concept of the común to the political, economic, and religious organization of Andeans under Spanish rule, it should not be surprising that entities like the Karanqa and Killaka federations (and within the latter, the Killaka, Asanaqi, and Siwaruyu-​Arakapi diarchies) faded into the past. They were sometimes partly kept alive through the association of past hereditary lordships with other things such as Tata Asanaqi the mountain, now associated with Saint Peter, and Tata Killakas, the image of Christ crucified who is the object of pilgrimage in the church of the reducción town of Sanctuario Quillacas. The People Are King: The Making of an Indigenous Andean Politics. S. Elizabeth Penry, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780195161601.001.0001



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Comunes like that of San Pedro de Condo rose up against caciques and corregidores, arguing that sovereignty lay within the común itself, endowed with the right to choose or depose its governors. Gathering their legal documents and scouring the mails and archives for evidence of the king’s beneficence (lowering of tribute levels) that dishonest caciques and corregidores had hidden from them, they mounted legal challenges and sought justice from the Audiencia. When they heard a rumor that the king in Spain had died, they rallied behind a potential Inca king, most prominently Tupac Amaru. If this indigenous rebellion had succeeded as a revolution in overthrowing the colonial enterprise, installing an Inca king and becoming independent as a nation-​state, the end result would have been decolonization of the kind achieved by Haiti in 1803. But that is not what happened. Instead, there ensued a complex series of events eventually leading to a Creole victory over Spanish forces in 1825, after a fifteen-​year war in which indigenous people fought on both sides. The incorporation of indigenous people of the Andes into the newly created nation-​ states of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Argentina, followed a revolution that emancipated Creoles from the Spanish Empire but left indigenous people under the yoke of a Creole nation-​state, and under a president, not a king, in a condition known as neo-​colonialism. In the century and a half following independence what comuneros experienced were concentrated, sustained attacks against their institutions, their legal standing, the rights of their members, their very existence. From subjects of the king whose rights were protected by participation in their repúblicas, under the independent nation-​states comuneros were deprived of their rights as citizens and excluded from political participation based on laws that required literacy and privately held property to enjoy full citizenship rights.

Urban Creole Republics Unlike cities in Spain, those in the Americas, had no permanent representation in the Cortes. Creole-​dominated city governments of the Indies had repeatedly sought permission from the Crown to send legal representatives to the Spanish capital of Madrid to pursue their municipal interests. Advocating the absolute power of the king, Bourbon rulers had squelched meetings of the Cortes, but the principle remained: cities like Oruro, La Plata, and Potosí were taxed and governed by Castile without the formal representation that the cities of Spain theoretically enjoyed. Above the level of the town or city in the Indies there was no representative form of government, only the Crown-​appointed judges and lawmakers of the Audiencia, increasingly dominated by Peninsular Spaniards in the late eighteenth century.



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Creole aspirations for greater liberty remained resolutely royalist. On the one hand they, like the indigenous común, used legal means. On the other hand, they plotted revolution to install their own, American monarchy.3 The history of the Incas penned by “el Inca” Garcilaso de la Vega and published in the mid-​ eighteenth century had a galvanizing effect on such thinking. The book helped Creoles to re-​imagine the Inca Empire in glorified, utopian terms. It led some indigenous people, particularly caciques who claimed descent from the last Incas, but especially, Creoles, who now located their ancestral roots in the soil of Peru, toward the idea of installing a native monarchy. In the absence of a Creole landed nobility, descendants of Incas were the best candidates for a monarchy based on the legitimacy granted by natural law to “native princes.” Two hundred years had passed since Viceroy Toledo had executed the last claimant to the Inca throne, and Toledo’s claims of Inca tyranny were now overshadowed by the potential legitimacy of a native aristocracy with roots in Peruvian soil. Peru’s ancient rulers retained a kind of legitimacy—​as a monarchy native to the land—​even though their rule had ended centuries earlier.4 Despite their desire for an Inca, no one would assume that Creoles wanted to return to pre-​Columbian times, to literally restart the Inca Empire; instead Creoles’ search for an Inca was a logical choice for a legitimate American monarchy. The Creole-​authored 1739 Manifesto of Oruro, which urged Creoles and Andeans to unite behind a descendant of the last ruling Inca to save themselves from tyranny and to expel Peninsular Spaniards, is an early and clear example of Creole desires for a legitimate American monarchy in the viceroyalty of Peru. Creoles again sought to find common cause with indigenous peoples in the Oruro uprising of 1781. But when the Indians called in by Creoles to help kill Peninsulars failed (or refused) to distinguish between Creoles and Spaniards, it became clear to Creoles that they would not fare well under a new Inca. In the wake of the indigenous revolutions, Creoles joined Peninsulars in rejection of Garcilaso’s idealized vision of Inca rule. They attempted to halt distribution of Garcilaso’s works, banned traditional indigenous clothing, paintings of Incas, and use of the title of Inca. Where Creoles saw their desire for an American monarchy as a rational demand for a legitimate government separate from Spain, they interpreted indigenous support for a new Inca as millenarian, backward looking, and untenable. But by the revolutionary moment of the 1780s, the Inca Empire was hundreds of years in the past, and returning to it would not include repúblicas, cabildos, and a común with the right of self-​determination, the things that comuneros fought for. Many Creole interpretations of the uprisings point to Inca revivalism as a principal cause. Yet Tomás Catari, who took up leadership of a rebellion that started before him and continued after his death, was not an Inca or a cacique, and he made no reference to a new Inca state. The towns of the provinces of



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Carangas, Paria, Chayanta, and Porco who found in him a promising leader had sought the right to name their cacique governors, and pursued their rights as repúblicas, hoping above all to lower tribute and abolish mita. Unlike Catari, Tupac Amaru, whose real name was José Gabriel Condorcanqui, did come from a cacical lineage. He was also a long-​distance muleteer whose business was impacted by increases to the alcabala (sales) tax. Claiming Inca descent, he had renamed himself Tupac Amaru after the last rebel Inca, executed by Viceroy Toledo in Cuzco two hundred years before. The towns he led to rebellion had the same goals as those of the region of the Catari revolt, as did those of the province of La Paz led by Julián Apasa Nina, a commoner from the town of Sica Sica who renamed himself Tupac Catari after earlier rebel leaders. Both Tupac Amaru and Tupac Catari at various times styled themselves as viceroys of the king of Spain.5 Spanish and Creole assertions that “Indians” wanted to return to the Inca Empire, are simply that, assertions based on racism, the essentializing conceit of blood that of course “Indians” would reflexively embrace an “Inca.” Spaniards pointed to these leaders, to Inca revivalism, abuses by caciques, corregidores, and priests, and the literate indios ladinos and mestizos blamed as “outside agitators” for comunero petitions to the Crown as causes of the uprisings. They were rarely concerned with the indigenous uptake of theses of popular sovereignty that can be heard in testimony of común leaders tried for killing the Llanquipacha brothers. Since then, scholarship has often tended to repeat the explanations for the rebellions of eighteenth century Spanish administrators. The names Tomás Catari, Tupac Amaru, and Tupac Catari have become labels for distinct phases of generalized revolution and have attracted much scholarly attention.6 But the “great man theory” of history with its focus on charismatic heroes tends to overshadow the underlying reality of a revolution that began and was organized at the grassroots level in hundreds of separate locations, becoming regionally coordinated and associated with those leaders only late in the game.7 Calling the events in San Pedro de Condo “the Tomás Catari rebellion,” when Catari had no role in them, or lumping all three regional phenomena under the name Tupac Amaru points in a misleading direction. In the same way, earlier scholarship that pointed always to external influences (the abuses of corregidores, caciques, or priests) also pointed away from the long-​ term development and achievements of the Andean común. The origins of such thinking might be found in Spaniards’ and Creoles’ prejudices during the last quarter of the eighteenth century, including increasingly racist conclusions about Indians’ capacity for rational self-​government. Those racial assumptions tarred comuneros as backward, pre-​modern obstacles to progress and thus made indigenous comunero political projects and their beliefs in popular sovereignty nearly invisible to the Creole and Peninsular



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minority in Peru. When Creoles began to think of their own emancipatory projects involving popular sovereignty, after the rebellions, fear of what might happen should the region’s majority population of Indians get the vote made unthinkable any future indigenous participation in a revolutionary seizure of sovereignty from Spain.

The Impact of Colonialism This history of the development and actions of the común complicates our understanding of the long-​term impact of Spanish colonialism on the indigenous peoples of the Andes. At one time the consensus was that although Spaniards devastated Andean polities through conquest, economic extractivism, and heavy-​handed religious indoctrination, Andean politics and religion remained largely intact until, when at the end of empire, Enlightened Spanish Creoles abolished hereditary cacicazgos. In this interpretation, the great indigenous uprisings in the late eighteenth-​century Andes, were seen as evidence both of the failure of two centuries of Spanish civilizational policies for Indians, through the implantation of buena policía and Christianity through reducción, and of a millenarian revival of a pre-​Columbian social form, the cacicazgo, as Andeans sought redemption through a new Inca. Only during the nineteenth century, argued many scholars, did “peasant” communities begin to govern themselves through town councils, via the conjoined civil religious hierarchy. Such conclusions originated in part from a top-​down historical reading of the period, emanating from Spanish colonial administrators’ understandings of the situation, and in part from the “romance of resistance,” regarding Andeans as victors of a long-​term struggle with Spanish overlords only to the degree that they were impervious to the cultural baggage Spaniards had imposed on them. These scholarly positions supposed that a tragic and defeated full cultural assimilation or a staunchly heroic complete imperviousness to Spanish influence were the only possibilities for Andeans under Spanish rule. Such stark binaries in the historical literature have several sources. One is the periodization that attributes every form of Enlightened emancipation of indigenous peoples to independence and the Liberal constitutionalism of the nation state; indigenous self-​governance then appears to be a product of revolution, not one of its precursors.8 Nationalist histories’ grand narratives also tend to attribute moral valences to group actors (the good Spaniards assimilated the bad Indians, in the pro-​Spanish “white legend” version, or the good Indians resisted the bad Spaniards, in the anti-​Spanish black legend one), while anticolonial scholarly sympathies with the downtrodden conclude that indigenous peoples must not have been vanquished, so as to cast them as heroic figures. These interpretations



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have been more nuanced by scholarship since the 1980s, especially that which has drawn, from a multiplicity of local sources revealing indigenous organizational forms and motives for action rather than depending on the narrative accounts of Spanish administrators.9 The dramatic increase of petitions of grievances put forward by or in the name of the común over the eighteenth century also reveals a key aspect of what might be termed the “legal Enlightenment,” by which Enlightenment itself can be considered a product of indigenous agency, not its cause.10 Looking closely not only at moments of general crisis such as the Spanish invasion and conquest or the revolutions of 1780–​1782 but at the shifting shape of indigenous collective political and religious organization over the entire colonial era, it is possible to overcome what now appears to be another overly simple question: whether reducciones and the Spanish civilizational project for Indians succeeded or failed. It was neither and both. Reducciones and the practices within them produced something new, not reducible either to pre-​Columbian or Spanish ways. Spaniards may have complained about indigenous resistance to their civilizational policies, but they got what they wanted when it came to the extraction of wealth from indigenous communities:  leaving them impoverished compared with the stored bounty of Inca times. They did so by first converting a heterogeneous multiplicity of distinct peoples into “Indians,” a specieslike class of non-​Spanish tribute-​paying and labor-​owing commoners, and then by making sure that no one could conclude that Indians had become adequately Christian, living in buena policía and capable of rational self-​government, thereby ready to be stewards of their own God-​given popular sovereignty. To retain Indians in tutelage, and to justify the collection of tributes and coercion of Indians to perform mita labor services, Spaniards had to argue that Indians continued to need the guiding hand of Spain. It was a brutal paternalistic colonialism that treated Indians as juridical minors with reduced rights as subjects of the Crown, all aimed at transforming indigenous peoples. Growing scholarly attention to local sources for understanding indigenous peoples during the colonial era has abundantly shown how Andean people, faced with almost three centuries of colonial rule, spoke back to empire, adapting and adopting elements of colonial culture that they found useful for their own purposes.11 Over the course of two centuries, the imposed practices of self-​governing cabildos in town-​sized republics, and a Christianity performed by cofradías and systems of sponsorship of saints’ festivals, became entrenched in the reducciones. Indeed, this transformed version of Spanish civil and religious governance became constitutive of the ayllu. These practices were integrated with preconquest agro-​pastoral lifeways, and Christian notions of authority, service and sacrifice were melded with Andean egalitarian principles of turn-​taking and reciprocal obligation, and with hierarchical ones in the Andean analogy between



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human herding of animals and deities’ shepherding of men. Sun, moon and mountains as care-​takers of men joined saints’ images, “Our Father Shepherd,” and the “Lamb of God” in this hybrid politico-​religiosity, producing a complex synthesis of representative, commoner/​comunero self-​government with its own ethics and morality, challenging the aristocracy of traditional Andean life. These conclusions join a growing consensus among scholars recognizing functioning cabildos starting in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, not the nineteenth, both in reducciones (and then their annexes) and in urban indigenous parishes.12 Drawing on detailed documentation produced within and about those towns, this book has documented the impact of widespread indigenous literacy of indios ladinos such as the Chiri brothers of Culta, the Garcia brothers of Totora, and Ambrocio Copacondo and Ignacio Rodolfo Choque of Condo, and Andeans’ active pursuit of justice for their comunes in colonial courtrooms. Doing so has made it possible to recognize Andeans’ uptake of practices, as well as moral and political philosophy, and to see comuneros not as passive victims of Spanish abuses but as active participants, along with colonial Creoles, in the construction on empire’s periphery of Enlightened modernity.13

Racial Classification in the Age of Atlantic Revolutions The Enlightenment tends to call to mind the primacy of reason over faith, the rise of scientific and technical domains of knowledge, and, more generally, the progressive “emancipation” of persons, particularly individuals, to think for themselves. Hand-​in-​hand with this went a preference for private property over commons.14 It also raises the question of which persons Enlightenment thinkers considered able to emancipate themselves. Along with classifying nature, such thinkers also produced taxonomies of persons that justified limiting citizenship rights to men. They also provided an early theory of race along with a racist ranking from most inferior (for Kant, natives of the Indies) to superior (whites). Enlightenment may have been about emancipation, but it was only emancipation for some and was indeed a blueprint for white male supremacy. While the indigenous común became increasingly legally active and politically strident over the eighteenth century, the original categorization of Indians as people equal to Spaniards argued by Las Casas, which had prompted the Crown to declare Indians subjects of the king, was gradually eroded by an increasingly cynical new racial paradigm that doubted their capability for self-​ government. The colonial scheme that had equated indigenous peoples with taxpaying Spanish commoners, and made Spaniards in the Indies into de facto



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aristocracy, hardened into a racial divide, particularly after 1782. But while Creole Spaniards imagined themselves as inherently superior to Indians, their position as the aristocrats of the Indies was under serious threat from two directions. This came from below, as racial and cultural mixing and rampant social climbing threatened the very boundary of who counted as “Spanish,” and from above, owing to the racial taxonomizing done by Spanish Enlightenment theorists, which called into question the legitimacy of Creole “Spanishness.”15 Peninsular Spaniards hypothesized about the importance of environment in shaping acquired characteristics to account for perceived differences between themselves and Creoles. Creoles, went popular opinion back in Spain, had been transformed by being born and raised in a tropical climate, eating different foods and being suckled by Indian or African wet nurses. They no longer shared the characteristics of the Iberian “nations” of Castile, Galicia, or Cataluña from which their ancestors had come. With the coming of independence, when they would no longer be “Spaniards” in any sense, Creoles needed a new way to deny the coevalness of indigenous peoples and Afro-​Latin Americans. The emerging concept of race provided a means to deny citizenship to “backwards,” “non-​ white” inhabitants of the territory.16 Creoles, with roots in the Indies rather than Spain, began to envision themselves as people distinct from Spaniards. They began to recognize themselves in the mirror of the discrimination they suffered from Peninsulars, who classified Creoles below themselves in the emergent theory of racial hierarchy. As a Creole identity came into focus, it needed a way to become something neither “Spaniard,” nor “Indian.”17 Independence hero Simón Bolivar described the Creole predicament this way: We are not Europeans, and we are not Indians, but a species midway between the aboriginals and the Spaniards. Americans by birth, and Europeans by rights, we find ourselves in the conflicting situation of disputing with the natives over titles of possession, to maintain ourselves in the country that saw our birth, against the opposition of the invaders [Spaniards].18 In the end, since the label American had been hijacked by British North Americans to name their new settler state, and in any case the Indians were more “American” than they were, Creoles called themselves blancos, whites, pointing to a kind of difference distinct from that of personal lineage or nation of origin. White thus became the superior side of a racial divide between whites and Indians, whereas Indian, now permanently associated with a “commoner” laboring and tributary status, came to inhabit a permanent status of inferiority



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at the bottom of a racialized hierarchy in which “whites” inherited the lineage superiority, and the private property, of the aristocracy.

Shifting Interpretations of Popular Sovereignty The king of Spain was understandably horrified by the actions of indigenous communeros as they sought the right to govern themselves. Much like the more famous revolutionaries in the United States and France but on a more local scale, comuneros fought to eliminate their hereditary lords and for the right to elect their own rulers. This was indeed an age of Atlantic revolutions. In response, the Spanish Crown took steps to impose a counter-​doctrine to bolster a more centralized and powerful absolutist monarchy. Such misgivings about the philosophy of popular sovereignty were not new. The work of early modern Jesuit Francisco Suárez, who espoused ideas of community-​held popular sovereignty, had been banned in 1767, the year that the Jesuit order, which had dominated Spanish American universities (and taught the theory in its reducciones in Paraguay), was expelled from the Spanish Empire.19 In the aftermath of indigenous revolutions where the idea of popular sovereignty was revived, absolutist Crown officials went further. Secular catechisms were composed to drill Andeans comuneros on the divine right of kings; no longer were they to believe that the pueblo was the original holder of God-​given sovereignty. Composed in the same format as the religious catechism that Andeans were taught, it posed questions and answers that were to be memorized: Q: Who are you? A: I am a loyal vassal of the King of Spain. Q: Who is the King of Spain? A: He is a Lord so absolute that he recognizes no greater temporal authority. Q: And where does the King derive his royal power? A: From God himself.20 Composed in 1792 and imposed over the next decade, such lessons were meant not just for members of the indigenous comunes, but for Spaniards and Creoles, too. No doubt their immediate impact was counterproductive, since this secular catechism contradicted claims of the right to municipal self-​government. Among the educated Creole elite, manuscript proposals for a reform of imperial governance that drew on the notion of popular sovereignty were already in wide circulation, advocating for the development of a robust parliamentary system that would include representatives from the colonies.21



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Once presented with the opportunity, Creole patriots would coopt comuneros’ claims of popular sovereignty for themselves. In 1808 when Napoleon invaded Spain, deposing the king and installing his brother, Joseph Bonaparte, as a new king, Creoles and Spaniards alike argued that in the absence of the legitimate king, sovereignty reverted to the people. Revolutionary fervor overtook major cities in Spain and in Spanish America aiming to reclaim sovereignty from French tyranny. Storming city council halls and the Audiencia buildings of La Paz, La Plata, and Buenos Aires, revolutionaries led by Creoles called open meetings to decide next steps: whether to continue to support the king in exile, to adhere to the regency established in Cádiz by resisting remnants of royal government, or to overthrow monarchy altogether.22 The difficult question to answer when considering the doctrine of popular sovereignty, however, is just what is meant by “soberanía del pueblo,” since pueblo in Spanish means both “the people” and “the town.” Up until this moment of insurrection, it had always been interpreted as “the people of the town.” Comuneros understood popular sovereignty as held by the people and the town, as did Creoles. But given that Indian towns and Spanish cities were understood to be different kinds of republics considering them together produced a conundrum. With an absent king, however, it was possible to imagine a more encompassing sovereign peoplehood, the population of the king’s realm. That was the definition chosen by the Cortes of Cádiz in composing the Constitution of 1812, a parliament governing a single, empire-​w ide Spanish nation. But the flexibility of the term and the practicalities on the ground in the colonies led in other potential directions. Revolutionary activity emerged within the elective cabildos of Spanish cities, focused on the governing institutions of the Audiencias. Aiming to overthrow those centers of royal power, “peoplehood” for Creole revolutionaries came to settle on the districts and capital cities of the Audiencias or Viceroyalties. These became the focal points of new cabildo-​ like representative governments, governing not just a republic conceived as a city, but an extensive one, covering many cities and indigenous towns, reimagined as a nation-​state.23 From 1808 to 1812, as Creoles mobilized to fill the void of sovereignty back in Spain, and as Spaniards in the Peninsula waged guerrilla campaigns against the occupying French, the Cortes meeting in Cádiz worked to write a new Spanish constitution covering Spain and its colonies. Over that period much debate turned on the question of representation for colonials, and particularly of the representation of colonized peoples, the Indians of Spanish America and the Philippines. A new constitutional monarchy, led by a house of commons, seemed a possibility that an indigenous común might seize. In Central America, indigenous towns mobilized to elect representatives to inform the region’s representatives to the



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Cortes.24 There is little evidence of such meetings in the region of the Audiencia of Charcas, the scene of so much warfare between 1809 and 1825. The independence wars came to the former Asanaqi territory, with royalist armies encamped in San Pedro de Condo, and major battles fought in the pastures outside the nearby annex towns and tambos of Ancacato and Tolapalca. During those wars, indigenous comunes were pillaged by soldiers on both sides and conscripted into both armies. The común allied itself sometimes with rebels, and sometimes with royalists, just as the Creole population of the region did.25 When royalists were finally routed in the Battle of Ayacucho in 1825, this region went rapidly from being a district within a new nation called the United Provinces of the Rio de La Plata (with its capital in the former viceregal seat of Buenos Aires), to being part of Peru (during the short-​lived Peru-​Bolivia alliance), and finally to becoming part of the nation-​state and republic of Bolivia, with the city of La Plata, soon renamed Sucre, as its capital. Following independence, cabildo-​led towns like San Pedro de Condo, Santa Bárbara de Culta, Todos Santos de Tomave, Santiago de Tolapampa, and San Pedro de Totora learned to swear loyalty to the new Republic and to honor its revolutionary founders (Bolivar, Sucre, and San Martín) in place of the king. But if they expected to have a voice in the new representative bodies brought into existence by constitutional conventions in their new country, they were to be disappointed. The age of Atlantic revolutions might have brought emancipation to Creoles, but it did not bring decolonization in the current meaning of that term. As in North America, independence in Spanish America left the colonizing white Creoles in power, not the colonized indigenous peoples. The new nation states were founded, that is, on neocolonial principles that left much of the population marginalized by the new theories of racial difference and by Jim Crow–​like laws that left them in a weaker position than they had been under the Spanish king. Despite being deprived of the right to vote and having their towns delegalized, there never a point that comuneros gave up the idea that they were citizens. They continued to express their patriotism, and loyalty to the king or state.26 The new Creole rulers of Spanish American nations would continue to thrive on the surpluses extracted from indigenous tribute and labor, and the situation of the común would become increasingly precarious over the next century’s rule by republican nation states.

Independence and the Liberal Assault on the Común (1825–​1952) Following independence, Creoles adopted and intensified the liberal reforms begun under Bourbon rule, beginning with the centralization of political power



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and the privatization of church and cofradía properties. To that they added further tenets of liberalism, particularly antipathy toward aristocracy, certain forms of corporatism (such as the autonomy of town-​republics), and commonhold land titles. The liberal constitution of Cádiz in 1812, followed by Simón Bolivar in 1825, continued the efforts begun in the 1780s to abolish the hereditary caciques. After independence, the new constitutions of the nation-​states of Peru and Bolivia abolished aristocracy, and at that point, the era of the cacique gobernador was over. Not surprisingly, there is no record of any indigenous resistance to their abolition. The term “cacique” lived on as an alternate title for the cabildo’s elected jilaqatas. Generalized distrust of indigenous cabildos led to them being officially abolished and replaced by a new, appointed office given the old name of corregidor but this time functioning as a commandant in their indigenous town. Creole governments persisted in their efforts to reform indigenous communities and to make Indians into proper citizens, something they could not be as long as they clung to collective land titles and the corporate identity of the común—​and within it, the ayllu. The Andean común, however, resisted all of these efforts. The doctrine of liberalism held that only private property, owned by sovereign individuals, was used to maximum advantage. The state ordered a census of individual property holdings in indigenous regions in the mid-​nineteenth century, aiming to abolish tribute and impose a tax on wealth and income. However, abolition of tribute was regarded as a breach in a pact with the state by which collective land rights were guaranteed, and state census takers were met by a hail of stones from indigenous slings. The newly imposed corregidores, usually a local mestizo, had to find practical means of collecting tribute and making sure that collective obligations (such as carrying the mails and maintaining roads) continued to be met. That practical means seems always to have been the cabildo, officially recognized or not.27 When agrarian reform was finally legislated in 1874, aiming to convert collective land titles into private ones and antiquated subjects into propertied citizens, it was done without taking individual indigenous property rights into account. In theory, it was to be one step toward citizenship for Indians; in practice, it was the opposite. “Officially eliminating ayllus, dissolving Indian representation, and openly appropriating Indian land in the name of civilization and modernity. . . . [with] the goal of promoting individual private property and rural capitalism in the countryside,” the policy was disastrous, in many regions, for the indigenous común.28 Lands that had belonged to reducción towns, via commonhold titles granted by the Spanish Crown, were auctioned off to the highest bidders to become haciendas, large estates that mostly ended up in the hands of persons now calling themselves white. Working for a white hacendado made Andeans into peones (dependent workers attached to the property), not owners of property



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themselves, and therefore they were ineligible for full citizenship and did not have the right to vote. Racial hierarchy was codified and disguised in laws that demanded literacy and ownership of private property as Creole governments applied the “discriminatory standards of a universal humanism.”29 The people working the hacienda lands and living in the hamlets of their former reducción capitals were attached to the land in a status akin to medieval feudal serfs or sharecroppers in the United States. State auctioning of lands belonging to Andean comunes continued until the 1930s, creating a form of feudalism that was far more severe than any vassalage to noble lords in the history of Castile. It is only a slight exaggeration to describe all hacendados as whites. Descendants of deposed caciques, including progeny of Condo’s Llanquipachas, held on to the valley lands they had usurped from the común, and over the generations, those ex-​cacique families did in effect “whiten” themselves, merging with the Creole landlord elite. But while fertile valley lands belonging to the común of Condo were lost, Condo’s altiplano heartland was spared this nineteenth century feudalization. White hacendados were only interested in fertile and productive lands that would render them sizable rents, which excluded the steppe-​like high plains of the southern altiplano. For that reason, the core highland territories of all the towns of this study escaped peonage, in part for lack of bidders, but also in part for their astute political interventions.30 When their titles were declared invalid, these towns banded together, appointing legal representatives to defend their rights before congress and the courts. Such representatives, mostly literate Andeans themselves, were called Apoderados, persons with power of attorney. Their petitions, sometimes heard in congress, drew on community and national archives for original land titles, particularly those produced by the auction of “excess” lands in the composiciones of the 1590s, and readings of the law and the constitution to justify their continued legality. The petitions, ranging in date from the 1870s to the 1930s, are full of the testimony and signatures of cabildo members of the towns seeking redress, evidence for the resilience of the común and the failure of governmental fiat to abolish indigenous self-​government.31 In spite of this resistance, the people called Indians were disenfranchised, even in these “free” communities. For whether they became peones on white-​ owned haciendas or remained on their ancestral lands claiming the validity of commonhold titles, those without individual, private land titles were not considered citizens. Having lost the limited support they had for schools in the colonial era, the increasingly illiterate Indians became identified as incomplete or dependent persons, insufficiently autonomous to merit the status of rights-​ bearing citizen. Over the course of the twentieth century, as “whites” came to reject biological categories of race they embraced the idea that Indians were fundamentally culturally different from them, thus putting a benign face on a



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perceived cultural difference believed to be immutable and thus a coded from of racism.32 Segregation became the watchword; Bolivian elites “believed that neither education nor citizenship was necessary for Indians.” What set native Andeans apart and made them racialized “Indians” was their culture, “how they dressed, what language they spoke, their illiteracy, and their lack of formal education.” They were to be segregated from or made subordinate to the gente decente, the decent people, of Bolivian society, who took on the mantel of master citizens.33 The comunes came under repeated attack, but rather than withering away, time after time they reappear in the sources in full bloom. During Bolivia’s turn-​ of-​the-​twentieth-​century “War of the Capitals,” indigenous troops under the apoderado Zárate Willka, and several other regional leader/​apoderados, broke from their Creole general, aiming to found an entirely indigenous republic.34 Revolts broke out across the territory again in 1921, leading to a brutal crackdown on indigenous militants.35 The drafting of indigenous soldiers to combat Paraguay in the disastrous Chaco War of 1932–​1935 and the rigors of the great depression radicalized indigenous communities once again; they were to send común representatives to the indigenous congress called by leftist military dictator President Gualberto Villarroel in 1945, but their hopes would be again dashed when Villarroel was killed by a mob in 1946.36 Mobilized through their continuing participation in the military and in national markets, indigenous people rallied during moments of optimism and resisted during the alternating years of conservative backlash. Conservative politicians saw Indians as a drag on the country’s progress, and not content with the results of nineteenth-​century efforts at assimilation, opted for more ethnocidal policies, such as the eugenicist immigration laws that sought to increase the quotient of “white” blood by attracting North American and European immigrants, including thousands of Mennonites, Jews fleeing the Nazis, and, then, Nazis fleeing justice.37 Communally organized rural indigenous people enthusiastically joined in the 1952 Bolivian revolution, installing a socialist government, and pressing for, and achieving, both land reform and universal male suffrage. Yet the revolutionary regime’s Indian policy still was premised on assimilation, this time through the ballot box, through participation in national politics, through expanded opportunities for education, and above all, through class consciousness. Rural Andeans were no longer to be called Indians. Instead President Paz Estenssoro declared, they were to be “campesinos,” that is, peasants. The revolutionary government also encouraged cabildos to transform themselves into sindicatos campesinos, or peasant labor unions; this move was particularly successful in communities that had been transformed into haciendas between the 1870s and the 1940s. In these moves, class identity substituted for racial identity, but in



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effect, campesino rapidly became the polite euphemism for Indian. Nonetheless for the first time, indigenous Andeans had gained the right to vote in national elections. Subsoil resources such as oil, gas, and mines were nationalized, and their workers became unionized state employees. In the countryside, however, land reform was a mixed blessing; it meant the breakup of the big haciendas but it did not return community commonhold land. Instead, land was to be put in the hands of individual Andeans in the form of private property.38 Political instability and economic crisis followed the 1952 revolution, including a series of military coups and dictatorships. Increasing state debt left the country more and more at the whim of the demands of their loan guarantors, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, leading ultimately to politics of austerity, privatization, and the shrinking of the state in line with the neoliberal “Washington Consensus.” Over four decades after the 1952 revolution, political power shifted uneasily between nominally socialist and conservative Creole political parties, punctuated by periods of dictatorship. Rural-​to-​urban migration saw rapid growth of impoverished migrant communities on the outskirts of Bolivian cities, populated by indigenous peoples often denigrated by white elites as cholos, the slur for partly assimilated people of indigenous background that comuneros had hurled at Gregorio Llanquipacha in the late eighteenth century.39 Bolivians generally, and the rural indigenous communities in particular, failed to prosper economically in the last half of the twentieth century. But the común has persisted.

The Resilience of the Común: Ethnographic Sources The late twentieth and early twenty-​first centuries have been a rich era for Andean studies, producing work focused on the history and ethnohistory of indigenous peoples, and a host of ethnographies written by anthropologists carrying out fieldwork in indigenous communities. In spite of attacks on the común from the Bolivian state since independence in 1825, these ethnographic studies have revealed considerable continuities with the patterns of social and political life visible in late colonial documents: the continued existence of all of the reducciones and neo-​reducción annexes treated in this book, the continuing functioning of the cabildo, and the kind of civil-​religious hierarchy linked to the governance of intra-​town ayllus that characterized the colonial period. All attest to the continuing vitality of notions of morally legitimate authority tied to analogies drawn among kinds of shepherding by God of humans, by persons of llamas, and by the mountain earth beings of wild animals.



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The civil-​religious hierarchy and fiesta-​cargo system are scholars’ terms for the Andeanized merger of cabildo and cofradía described in this book. Ethnographies have also revealed an indigenous term for describing it: Thakhi, or pathway. Regarded from the perspective of the comuneros who enter a lifetime of service to the saints and to the community by performing the costly duties of civil and religious office, sequences of alternating saints’ festival sponsorship and cabildo offices are envisioned as a career path, a journey from newlywed status to full adulthood, by which proofs of self-​sacrifice and service, and repeated enactment of llama sacrifices to become “herders of men,” cement one’s reputation not only as a leader, but as a humble and trustworthy person of transparent chuyma, or heart and character.40 Some of the documents drawn on for this study were preserved not by the state but in community archives accessed by ethnographers. The document on the foundation of Tolapampa, for example, was preserved by the cabildo of Coroma and shared by the ethnographer and activist Cristina Bubba who has worked closely with leaders of that town. The document itself connects the distant past to the present through the continuity of cabildo office: It was kept within a bundle of textiles, including an Inca shirt (an uncu) passed from alcalde to alcalde over centuries of election cycles for cabildo officers. Wearing those textiles, their ancestors’ articles of clothing, entering town council officers assume the identity of sixteenth-​century leaders when they ceremonially walk, with their staffs of office (called or tata reyes, father kings) from mojón to mojón around the boundaries erected around their municipal jurisdiction in the era of Viceroy Toledo.41 In Figure C.1 community authorities from around the region pose with their staffs of office in Tolapampa. This is not to say that the Andean común is in any way static. The colonial común underwent several changes of name over the post-​independence era, from común to comunidad campesina, to “ex-​comunidad,” and with reorganization of state hierarchy, “canton capital,” or “capital of a province section.” The most recent changes have been even more striking. In deep contrast to the past, however, they have produced considerable improvements in the legal standing of the twenty-​first-​century heirs to the colonial común.

Indigenous National Politics in Evo Morales’s Plurinational State In 1994, still following neoliberal policies, Bolivia accelerated the decentralization of national political power with the Law of Popular Participation. This law was passed to “promote and institutionalize civic participation” by increasing the



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Figure C.1 [9.1 in file]  Contemporary Community Authorities. In this 2004 photo, male and female community authorities from across the region meet in Tolapampa. Note that many carry their traditional staffs of office, known in colonial times as varas and today called tata reyes, father kings. Peter Lowe/​CAOKQL-​SOP.

“direct participation of marginalised groups such as . . . . indian communities.”42 Whatever its drawbacks, the law did breathe new life into the former reducción towns. In that same year, the first Aymara vice president of Bolivia, Victor Hugo Cárdenas, was elected. The electorate was expanded, with increasingly active participation in national political parties by rural Andeans and rural-​to-​urban migrants in Bolivian cities. Neoliberalism’s politics of austerity defunded the state, and the Law of Popular Participation urged the people to take up the slack. In the cities, problems of infrastructure and policing fell to neighborhood organizations, sometimes producing chilling results, such as lynch mobs. But the licitation of neighborhood political organizing also led to new political paradigms. Long-​established urban festive organizations and new neighborhood organizations came into sync, in a manner resembling the long-​ago merger of cabildo and cofradía in rural towns. This produced an Andeanized understanding of political legitimacy, this time injected directly into national politics.43 Critics branded this emergent politics “populism.” There is something to be wary of in collective action, especially when it seizes from the sovereign state the right to inflict punishment. That is especially true when such collectivities close ranks not only against external forces but their own members. Yet there is great



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appeal, too, in the power of such collective action to halt depredations by a state acting against popular interests. The Andeanization of Bolivian politics introduced another salutary feature of común-​style leadership into the national scene: the politics of humility. Candidates for office must demonstrate their humility to their base—​now a democratized one embracing the formerly excluded urban migrants and rural communities. They do so by pointing to humble origins as well as humble aims in their political campaigns, often by appearing on stage in indicative costume, or alongside a mother or sister wearing the pollera, the billowing skirt that marks indigenous “chola” status.44 They also point to the egalitarian and redistributive aims that in rural communities are expressed by ritual generosity, supplying food and drink to followers, but in urban ones may be signaled by distributing cases of beer among supportive political and festive organizations.45 These reorganized political actors of indigenous “populism” were galvanized from the 1970s through the 1990s by coups installing right-​wing military officers in the presidency and particularly by the policies they supported. Especially burdensome and drawing rejection from the común were neoliberal policies imposed on the country by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, among them economic austerity and privatization (of the mines, oil and gas fields, telecommunications, and particularly, water and power), which displaced thousands of workers and made water into an unaffordable resource for the masses of rural-​to-​urban migrants on the urban periphery. In repeated moments of crisis, indigenous communities, now mobilized by radio rather than the mails, blocked roads to cut supplies to the cities and impede the movements of government troops. Marches on the capital from rural towns coalesced with actions by neighborhood organizations, the coca-​growers’ associations, and miners’ cooperatives, leading indigenous people to occupy city centers once forbidden to Indians and thus come into conflict with the police forces of the Creole state.46 In 2005, Bolivia elected its first self-​identified Aymara president, Evo Morales, the coca-​growers’ union leader at the forefront of the new political mobilization. Morales and his Movement for Socialism (MAS) party won the 2005 elections with 54  percent of the vote, sweeping away the old Creole-​dominated political apparatus that had been in place since 1825. A political cartoon at the time showed Morales closing a book labeled “colonialism,” suggesting that the colonial era did not end with nineteenth-​century independence from Spain but only with his election in the twenty-​first century. Today’s Plurinational State of Bolivia, the official name finally recognizing the nation’s multiethnic population, has the “most indigenous friendly” laws in the Americas.47 Andeanized understandings of commoner self-​government, undergirded by an Aymara-​Christian pastoralism, have crystallized into the concept of thakhi, understood to refer to “ayllu democracy.”48 This and other



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principles of indigenous self-​government, such as the complementary roles of the leadership of married couples described by the Aymara term chacha-​warmi (man-​woman), have been incorporated into Bolivia’s new constitution in the concept of sumaq qamaña, living well or living in harmony, an indigenous inspired goal that promotes commons and collectivities as better stewards of shared resources and as ethically superior to capitalism’s individualist accumulation. Bolivian national law now protects the legal personhood of the Pachamama, “Mother Earth,” who now has standing to have legal cases brought in her name for environmental degradation. Bolivian law acknowledges that “the exercise of individual rights are restricted by the exercise of the collective rights.”49 Taking advantage of the provisions of the new 2009 constitution, many of the old communes, still governed through rotative and elective town council representing the territory’s ayllus, have reasserted their sovereignty, reorganizing themselves as Tierras Comunitarias de Origen (TCOs, Original Community Lands), to preserve collective landholding and to reserve rights of self-​governance, in addition to control over resources such as water and subsoil mineral wealth.50 This ayllu-​level assertion of sovereignty over their natural resources has sometimes brought them into conflict with the national government. The new constitution also provided for municipalities to gain legal autonomy. The first town to do so was San Pedro de Totora, part of the pre-​Conquest Karanqa nation and later the colonial province of Carangas. A parallel social movement, and a competing view of sovereignty, is represented by CONAMAQ (the Consejo de Ayllus y Markas de Qullasuyu, the Council of Ayllus and Towns of Qullasuyu), which more radically aims to reconstitute the old, pre-​Conquest confederations of diarchies but this time led by elected, not hereditary, mallkus, with the aim of erecting an entirely indigenous state according to pre-​Columbian principles.51 The pre-​Conquest “nations” of Karanqa, Killaka, and Asanaqi have been reborn, if only so far as a political project by a fledgling organization.52 Similar projects aim to reconstitute most of the other former federations and diarchies in existence in Qullasuyu at the time of the Spanish invasion. The country’s 2009 constitution recognizes legal pluralism, allowing communities self-​defined as indigenous “originarios” to incorporate into law their own “traditional” usos y costumbres, uses and customs. This harkens back to the Laws of the Indies, to the early colonial policies that provided for town-​ based self-​government by indigenous commoners with their own ordinances, and to early twentieth-​century demands for respect for indigenous rights and ideas of justice, but it also rests on ideas about cultural difference now to be respected rather than erased. When today indigenous Andeans make llama sacrifices and pour libations to mountain spirits these are differences that they choose for themselves based on their autonomy and rights to make decisions about their own lives. Rural development has proceeded apace in places like



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Condo and Culta and Totora and Tolapampa, as a portion of state revenues have been returned to them to provide potable water, health services, new roads, electricity, and improved schooling. At the same time, opening the door not only to self-​governance but also to participation in national politics has led to further demands and to occasional conflict between three competing views of sovereignty: that of the local comunes (ayllus and towns), the incipient reconstituted regional pre-​Conquest kingdoms, and the nation-​state of Bolivia. Most notably that conflict has been over the extent of the sovereignty that the común, now reorganized as municipalities and TCOs, might seize from the national state, with control over subsoil resources, contracts with foreign oil and mineral corporations, and control over infrastructure projects being the most incendiary issues.53 Such conflicts are inevitable when the sovereign interests of local communities, reconstructed sub-​state “nations,” and overarching states diverge. These conflicts are evidence of the continued vitality of the común, which was capable of electing Evo Morales but also remains capable of contesting state-​ imposed visions of governance to promote its own distinct interests. In these struggles echoes the voice of Ignacio Rudolfo Choque, alcalde and jilaqata of San Pedro de Condo, who in 1774 taught his fellow comuneros that no tyrant had the right to govern them, and that they, the people, were king and as such would choose their own leaders and govern themselves.





NOTES

Introduction 1. ABNB EC 1774 #137, “Testimonios de Autos Criminales seguidos contra las personas de Demaso Yana, Cruz Yana, Ignacio Rudolfo Choque . . . y demás cómplices yndios y yndias del pueblo de Condocondo, y aillo Sullcayana.” The town is also known as Condocondo or simply Condo. 2. ABNB TI 1779 #135, “Expediente de la demanda de Damián Lenis, Ignacio Choque y otros contra Gregorio y Andrés Llanquipacha por robo de crecida porción de dinero de los Reales Tributos que cobraban en el pueblo de Condocondo,” fols. 12r–​14r. 3. Although eyewitnesses inevitably began their accounts of the Llanquipacha murders with the fight between Taquimalco and Choque, no witness states the nature of the fight or why it was so clearly believed to be linked to the murders. 4. ABNB EC 1774 #137, fols. 16r–​17v. Direct testimony in Spanish colonial documents was, with few exceptions, always recorded in the third person. In my translation, I have placed first person pronouns in brackets to indicate that this recorded an eyewitness report. Unless otherwise noted, all translations from Spanish are mine. I have maintained the original Spanish in document titles and quotations, for clarity I have added accents and spelled out abbreviated words. “Saltando de su cama se puso a sobstenerlas de adentro con el cuerpo, y sin embargo de esto bolbieron adar otro feros golpe y consiguieron el abrir las puertas, e immediatamente conoció que Cruz Yana, Damaso Yana, y Ygnacio Rodolfo Choque que hasían cavesas Principales del Ayllu Sullcayana, mucha más Gente de hombres, Mugeres, y muchachos que pasaban de ciento y tantas Personas se combocaron en tropel entro de la sala todos con diferentes armas de Piedras, Chicotes, y Garrotes.” 5. ABNB SGI 1781 #83, “Autos formados sobre el tumulto en el pueblo de Condo y muertes que hicieron los Llanquipachas,” fols.8r–​9r. In my translation, I have added first person pronouns in brackets. “Es delito tomar la Justicia por su mano y repredenden à su Casique o Governador à quien bien conose deve obedeser si es bueno, pero no si es malo y obra injusticias, como lo hacía el Difunto, cuia doctrina se la enseñó Ygnacio Rodolfo Choque, y Damián Lenis, también save que si el común le manda una cosa, y su Governador otra, deve obedeser primero à aquel.” 6. AGI Charcas 601, “No. 5 Expediente de las Capitulaciones Celebrados para el Perdon que solitaron los Yndios,” fol. 85. 7. Cottyn, “Negotiating Communal Autonomy,” 142. 8. Vitoria, Political Writings, c­ hapter 6 “On the American Indians.” 9. Spanish colonial expansion depended critically upon town foundation and its assignment of land and jurisdiction to town citizens, see Nader, Liberty in Absolutist Spain, 92–​98 and Kagan and Marías, Urban Images of the Hispanic World,  28–​39.

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10. Kashima, et al., “Influence of the Italian Renaissance”; Kagan and Marías, Urban Images of the Hispanic World, ­chapters 1–​2; Nuttall, “Royal Ordinances,” 746; Juan de Matienzo cited in Fraser, The Architecture of Conquest, 43. 11. Rivera Cusicanqui refers to this rule by elected officials in indigenous communities, as “ayllu democracy.” See Rivera Cusicanqui, “Liberal Democracy and Ayllu Democracy.” 12. Sala i Vila, Y se armó and O’Phelan Godoy, Kurakas sin sucesiones have traced this change to the decades following the 1780s indigenous uprisings. Thomson, We Alone Will Rule places the transition in authority from cacique to the “base” prior to the uprisings. 13. ABNB SGI 1781 #83; ABNB Rück 1780 #96, “Diario trunco de los sucesos desde el 17 de febrero (domingo) hasta octubre 16 de 1780 en Chuquisaca”; ABNB EC 1774 #137. On Hispanicized caciques see Stern, Peru’s Indian Peoples, 167–​172; Rasnake, Domination and Cultural Resistance, 121–​23. 14. Murra, “An Aymara Kingdom in 1567,” 133–​137. 15. ABNB EC 1772 #120, “Autos seguidos contra el cura de Carasi de la provincia de Chayanta Dionicio Larrazabal, sobre el cumplimiento de los aranceles de derechos parroquiales,” fol. 2v.; AGNA 9.31.7.3, “Exp. 1035, Testimonio de entradas, gastos y servicios del Curato de San Pedro de Buenavista, por Theodoro Ceballos,” fol. 20. 16. ABNB EC 1775 #165, “Autos seguidos por Luis Guarcaya [Barcaya] . . . y otros positores al cacicazgo del pueblo de Condocondo,” fols. 133r–​134v. 17. Although for Spaniards the term “principal” could encompass the hereditary elite, letters circulating among the comunes in 1780–​1782 indicate that by that time, at least, principales were current or past office holders. See, for example, ABNB SGI 1781 #193, “Expediente que contiene la convocatoria por los Yndios alsados de Chayanta a los de otros pueblos,” fol.1. 18. See, for example, Cañizares-​Esguerra, How to Write the History of the New World; Dussel, “Beyond Eurocentrism”; Premo, Enlightenment on Trial; and Silverblatt, Modern Inquisitions. 19. As Forment, in Democrary in Latin America explains: “Tocquevillians assume that democracy is based on a set of abstract and universal norms derived from either the Anglo-​Puritan or the French Republican tradition. But when Latin Americans practiced democracy in daily life, they did so by relying on their own narrative resources rooted in Civic Catholicism,” 25. 20. In his critique of Benedict Anderson, Lomnitz points out that while Anderson correctly identified the American colonies as the birthplace of nationalism, he used northern European examples and history to explain Latin American origins of nationalism. Lomnitz contends that modern Latin American nationalism must be understood against the backdrop of Iberian corporatism, not the individualism of the northern European Enlightenment. See Lomnitz, “Nationalism as a Practical System.” 21. A closely related term, from the same root, comunitarios, is also used by some indigenous Bolivians. 22. ABNB SGI 1781 #83, fols.51v–​53r. 23. In Pocock’s terms, común had passed the “serendipity test” reappearing unexpectedly in another distinct case. Pocock, “The Concept of a Language,” 27. Thomson found a similar phrase used in Pacajes province near La Paz. We Alone Will Rule, 151, 324. 24. Andeans invading the Spanish mining city of Oruro in 1781 yelled “comuna” as a kind of battle cry. From a contemporary Spanish chronicle, comuna was “A word they used when they wanted to rob or kill, as if they were saying, ‘all for one.’ ” Quoted in Cornblit, Power and Violence, 154–​160. 25. ABNB TI 1773 #34, “Expediente de capítulos puesto por Don Matheo Jorge, Manuel Baleriano, y otros Yndios del pueblo de Moscarí, por si y su común contra el cacique de dicho pueblo Don Florencio Lupa,” fol.1r–​v. On the relationship between sapsi and local community leadership see Puente Luna, “ ‘That Which Belongs to All.’ ” 26. Although nearly all formally enrolled tributaries were men, women sometimes paid tribute in order to maintain land holdings. Generally they were widows of tributaries. This sometimes led to problems if they chose to remarry, see, for example, see ABNB EC 1791 #86, “Pascuala Almendras, india originaria de la doctrina de San Marcos de Miraflores contra su cacique . . . por despojo de los terrenos.” 27. Platt, “Mirrors and Maize,” 230–​223. Also see Thomson, We Alone Will Rule, 24.





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28. ABAS 1711 PAR #4976, “Deslinde de tierras en Totora,” fol.6r. “en vos y en nombre del común de dicho pueblo.” 29. ABNB EC 1744 #102, “Los indios de Tomavi [Tomave] contra el cacique Jose Martínez,” fols. 15r–​16, “suponiendo nombre del común.” 30. ABNB EC 1758 #164, “Autos seguidas por Lorenzo García Apasa y demás comunidad, contra el cura Dionisio Larrazabal por excesos,” fols. 36r–​37r. “i a esta propuesta rrespondieron los Yndios en cuerpa de su Común en que su Magestad mandava en sus reales sedulas no obervasen semejante cosa.” 31. ABNB EC 1776 #57, “Autos de capítulos puestos por las comunidades del partido de Pocoata al cacique Don Florencio Lupa,” fol. 24r–​v, “que dicho cacique quiera tomar por efugio del decir, que nosotros haviamos ocurrido a hacer la representacion de nuestros padecimientos a la Real Audiencia a particularmente sin intervension de la comunidad, lo que es sumamente falso a vista del congreso de mas de tresientos yndios originarios que en el acto de la referida informasion concurrieron en su presencia alcamando a todos a una voz por nuestros caciques proprietaries.” 32. ABNB EC 1762 #87, “Padrón que formó el General Don Pablo de Aois,” fol.58r “el común de mis yndios conbienen.” 33. For examples of Enlightenment thinking on race see Harvey, The French Enlightenment and its Others and Eze, Race and the Enlightenment. 34. Ethnohistory arose in the United States in the mid-​twentieth century as research for Native Americans’ land claims against the US government. It has always been a disciplinary hybrid, bridging history and anthropology. See Harkin, “Ethnohistory’s Ethnohistory.” I take inspiration from ethnohistorical works by Thomas Abercrombie, José Carlos de la Puente Luna, Brian Owensby, and Joanne Rappaport. The term “thick description” comes from anthropologist Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures. 35. On Atlantic history, see the essays in Greene and Morgan, Atlantic History:  A Critical Appraisal. Outstanding examples include Cañizares-​Esguerra, How to Write the History; Mangan, Transatlantic Obligations; Premo, The Enlightenment on Trial; Puente Luna, Andean Cosmopolitans; Graubart, “Learning from the Qadi”; Kagan and Marías, Urban Images of the Hispanic World; and Nader, Liberty in Absolutist Spain. 36. As Walton, DeCorse and Brooks argue microhistory is not the province of one discipline, it “is less a method than an orientation, sensibility, and aesthetic.” The challenge, as they and others have pointed out, is to “relate the microhistorical case to the macrosocial factors . . . how to relate the global to the local.” “Introduction” in Brooks, DeCorse and Walton, eds, Small Worlds, 4–​5. In meeting this challenge, I follow the examples of E. P. Thompson and Clifford Geertz. The subtitle of this book alludes to the influence of Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class, my hope also is to “rescue” these revolutionaries “from the enormous condescension of posterity,” 12. Writing at the nexus of history and anthropology, I follow Geetz’s nuancing of detail, his technique of “thick description” to reveal the world of the comuneros. For a critique of too localized microhistories, see Weinstein, “History Without a Cause?” 37. Studies of colonialism have largely moved beyond conceptions of resistance and domination. Ortner called for moving beyond simple resistance in her landmark article, “Resistance and the Problem of Ethnographic Refusal.” For Andean studies, see Scott “A Mirage of Colonial Consensus” and Wernke “Negotiating Community and Landscape.” 38. Archaeologist Alan Kolata has argued most aggressively against the idea of “lo Andino,” see Ancient Inca. The concept of lo Andino still plays a role in contemporary scholarship. See, for example, Serulnikov whose interpretation of indigenous actions focuses on both a close examination of local politics and a desire to maintain ancient, pre-​Conquest ethnic kingdoms. Serulnikov, Subverting Colonial Authority,  1–​2. 39. Graubart, With Our Labor and Sweat; Mangan, Trading Roles; Premo, The Enlightenment on Trial; and Puente Luna, Andean Cosmopolitans. 40. Here, I built on the work of Abercrombie on the impact of reducciones in Pathways of Memory and Power; and more recent scholarship from Hanks, Converting Words; Mumford, Vertical Empire; Wernke, “Negotiating Community”; and Zuloaga Rada, La Conquista Negociada. Also see the articles in Saito and Rosas Lauro, Reducciones:  la concentración forzada. On ethnogenesis see the early work by Powers, “Resilient Lords” and more recently Sidbury and



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Cañizares-​Esguerra, “Mapping Ethnogenesis.” Although my work looks at a longer-​term process of ethnogenesis, with an emphasis on the growth of the conjoined offices of cabildo and cofradía, my interpretation of late colonial rebellion most closely aligns with Thomson, We Alone Will Rule. In reevaluating the appeal of an Inca king, I have benefited from the work of Garrett, Shadows of Empire; and Cahill, From Rebellion to Independence. 41. Examples include Abercombie, Pathways of Memory and Power; de la Cadena, Earth Beings; Gose, Deathly Waters and Hungry Mountains; Rasnake, Domination and Cultural Resisitance. 42. On a legal Enlightenment from below in Spain and Spanish America, see Premo, The Enlightenment on Trial. 43. On this question see Hanks, “Authenticity and Ambivalence”; and Owensby, Empire of Law,  9–​11. 44. Espinosa argues that “sixteenth-​century subjects of the municipalities of the Spanish empire held high expectations of their democratic system. . . .who used their institutions . . . to challenge anyone who threatened their privileges—​from the monarch and his authorities to other individuals and municipalities.” Espinosa, Empire of the Cities, 277. 45. For the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, see Mallon, Peasant and Nation; Thurner, From Two Republics. 46. Platt, “Liberalism and Ethnocide,” 5; Anderson, Imagined Communities, 13–​14, emphasis in original.

Chapter 1 1. My discussion here necessarily simplifies wakas. For a more complex discussions see Kolata, Ancient Inca, 148–​157; Bray, The Archaeology of Wak’as. 2. Andeans before the Spanish Conquest had no written language as we generally understand the term, only their quipus (pneumonic string devices). Therefore, much of what we know of pre-​ Conquest Andean life comes from records made by Spanish observers who were describing a social order that they were simultaneously destroying. Archaeology is an exception in that it can provide us with more of an indigenous perspective. See for example D’Altroy, The Incas; VanValkenburgh, “Building Subjects”; Wernke, Negotiated Settlements. An important innovation in recent archaeological studies is the privileging of a “transconquest perspective.” See Wernke, “Negotiating Community.” Rather than treating the European invasions “as a single transcendent moment” for indigenous peoples, the focus is “on the affective, institutional, and material continuities between” Inca and Spanish rule, VanValkenburgh, “The Past, Present and Future of Transconquest Archaeologies,” 1. 3. Kolata, Ancient Inca, xiii, 111. 4. For the Inca conquest of the region in this study see Gyarmati and Castellón, Paria, 16–​25 and Platt, Bouysse-​Cassagne, and Harris, Qaraqara-​Charka,  69–​90. 5. The equivalente Aymara terms are alax and manxa. 6. López and Ballivián, “El Qhapaq Ñan,” 239. 7. The description of reciprocity is drawn from Murra, “An Aymara Kingdom.” Murra argues that reciprocity quickly unraveled after the Spanish invasion, Murra, “Aymara Kingdom,” 133–​136. For more on the pre-​Conquest economy, see Murra, La organización económica and Kolata, Ancient Inca, ­chapter 4. On reciprocity in the colonial Andes, see Abercrombie, Pathways of Memory and Power; Rivera Cusicanqui and Platt, “El Impacto Colonial”; Spalding, De Indio a Campesino; Stern, Peru’s Indian Peoples. On gift societies, the classic source is Mauss, The Gift. 8. Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries, 257. 9. Sancho de la Hoz (1543) quoted in Kolata, Ancient Inca, 174–​175. 10. Mumford, Vertical Empire,  24–​25. 11. Gyarmati and Castellón, Paria, 137. 12. Gyarmati and Castellón, Paria, 133–​139. 13. On labor services under the Inca see Kolata, Ancient Inca, ­chapter 4. 14. Abercrombie, Pathways of Memory and Power, 163; Morris, “Maize Beer.” 15. How long quipus continued in use, and their legibility are areas of scholarly debate. See Quilter and Urton, Narrative Threads. Salomon and Niño-​Murcia believe that quipus were in use until the early twentieth century, see Salomon and Niño-​Murcia, The Lettered Mountain.





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For quipu use in litigation in the early colonial period, see Puente Luna, “That Which Belongs to All.” 16. On the importance of cloth to the Inca, see Murra “Cloth and Its Functions.” 17. Gyarmati and Castellón, Paria, 144. 18. Gyarmati and Castellón, Paria, 137. 19. Murra, Formaciones económicas, ­chapter 3. 20. See ABNB TI 1579 #46 “Los ayllus de Macha contra Alonso Diaz sobre las tierras del valle de Carasibamba,” published in Platt, Bouysse-​Cassagne, and Harris, Qaraqara-​Charka, 541–​570. 21. Claros Arispe, “Repartimiento de tierras.” 22. Hyslop, The Inka Road. 23. Cobo, Inca Religion, 51–​84; Bauer, Sacred Landscape. 24. Murra, “Cloth and Its Functions.” 25. Benson, “Why Sacrifice?,” 1, 10. The importance of hearts and lungs comes from contemporary ethnography, see Abercrombie, Pathways of Memory and Power, 515. 26. D’Altroy, The Incas; Kolata, Ancient Inca, 181–​182. 27. In the sixteenth century, mestizo Jesuit Blas Valera argued that there was no human sacrifice under the Inca, that Spaniards had misunderstood that the same term used for human children also referred to infant llamas. Hyland, Gods of the Andes, 56. 28. Medinacelli González, “De Sariris, Marcanis e Inkas,” 260. 29. del Rio, Etnicidad, territorialidad y colonialismo, 314–​317; Platt, Bouysse-​Cassagne, and Harris, Qaraqara-​Charka, 533. Rostworowski de Diez Canseco, Conflicts Over Coca Fields, 202. 30. Gyarmati and Castellón, Paria, 27, 21. 31. Bauer, Sacred Landscape. 32. Marisol de la Cadena explores the contemporary understanding of these landscape deities in Earth Beings. 33. Cruz, “De wak’as, minas y jurisdicciones,” 297–​298. 34. Van Buren and Presta, “Organization of Inka Silver,” 174. 35. Cruz, “De wak’as, minas y jurisdicciones.” 36. Abercrombie, Pathways of Memory and Power, 272. 37. Kolata, Ancient Inca, 55; Gose, Invaders as Ancestors, 16; Ramos, Death and Conversion, 11. 38. Cobo, Inca Religion,  39–​43. 39. Medinacelli González, “De Sariris, Marcanis e Inkas,” 255–​257. 40. Bouysse-​Cassagne, “Urco and Uma,” 201. 41. Kolata, Ancient Inca, 51. 42. Julien, Hatunqolla. 43. Presta, “Prologo,” 15. 44. Gyarmati and Castellón, Paria. There was no standardized orthography for Aymara or Quechua in the colonial period, so spellings were approximated in the Spanish alphabet. I spell pre-​Conquest names such as Killaka and Karanqa using modern orthography, and retain Hispanized colonial spelling, such as Quillacas and Carangas for the colonial period. 45. Claros Arispe, “Repartimiento de tierras.” 46. D’Altroy, “Funding the Inka Empire,” 103. 47. Kolata, Ancient Inca, 80–​96; Wernke, “Negotiating Community.” 48. About this same time, Inca Huayna Capac moved the entire population from the Cochabamba Valley to the coca plantations of Pocona, so that those moved could man fortresses against the Chiriguanos. Cloros Arispe, “Repartimiento de Tierras”; Abercrombie, “Politics of Sacrifice,” Appendix 1. 49. ABNB EC 1775 #165, fols.54–​65. 50. This description is drawn from Abercrombie, Pathways of Memory and Power; Harris, “From Asymmetry to Triangle”; Mendoza, Flores, and Letourmeux, Atlas de los ayllus; and Platt, Bouysse-​Cassagne, and Harris, Qaraqara-​Charka,  59–​67. 51. Vaca de Castro, “Ordenanzas de tambos,” 435. 52. Harris, “From Asymmetry to Triangle.” 53. Gyarmati and Castellón, Paria, 19–​ 25; Platt, Bouysse-​ Cassagne, and Harris, Qaraqara-​Charka,  69–​90. 54. Bouysse-​Cassagne, “Urco and Uma,” 206.



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55. From the 1582  “Memorial de Charcas” (AGI Charcas 45), published in Platt, Bouysse-​ Cassagne, and Harris, Qaraqara-​Charka, 841–​842. 56. Platt, Bouysse-​Cassagne, and Harris, Qaraqara-​Charka, 103–​128; Platt and Quisbert, “Tras la huella del silencio.” Inca Paullu received an encomienda as his reward for service to the Spanish Crown. 57. In every case, the Spanish Conquest relied on indigenous allies. For an overview of the conquest era see Restall, Seven Myths. 58. Platt and Quisbert, “Tras la huella del silencio,” 131. 59. For the early encomienda divisions, see Abercrombie, Pathways of Memory and Power, 138–​ 149; 425–​428. On encomenderos in the region, see Presta, Los Encomenderos. For Totora, see Medinacelli González, Sariri: Los llameros,  85–​86.

Chapter 2 1. Nader, Liberty in Absolutist Spain, 1. 2. Kagan and Marías, Urban Images of the Hispanic World, 9. The quotation in the title is from Shakespeare, Coriolanus Act III, Scene I  quoted in Kagan and Marías, Urban Images of the Hispanic World, 10. 3. Nader, Liberty in Absolutist Spain, 3, 37–​8. 4. Nader, Liberty in Absolutist Spain, ­chapter 5. 5. González Díez, El Regimen Foral. The appendix contains fueros from dozens of towns in Castile. 6. Kagan and Marías, Urban Images of the Hispanic World, 26–​27 and Buchell, Gordon, and Miller, eds., The Foucault Effect, 87. 7. Medieval Islamic society was much more tolerant of those who practiced another religion than was Christian society, see Black, “Conciliar Movement,” 595. The link of fueros to dhimma is in Dodds, Menocal, and Balbale, Arts of Intimacy, 78–​79, 92. Graubart draws parallels between rule of Muslims in Spain, and rule of Indians, Graubart, “Learning from the Qadi.” 8. Indeed, that is that subtitle of Maravall’s classic work on the subject, Las Comunidades de Castilla: Una primera revolución moderna. 9. The constitution written by the rebels while in the Castilian city of Ávila reveals their aims. Perhaps the most surprising demand was an end to encomiendas in the Americas. For the text of the constitution, see Díaz Belmonte, Los Comuneros. 10. Nader, Liberty in Absolutist Spain,  8–​9. 11. The Cortes is the oldest parliamentary body in Europe, dating from 1188, see O’Callaghan, The Cortes,  1–​20. 12. Espinosa, Empire of Cities, 13. Espinosa argues that much of the comunero agenda was implemented throughout the empire, including the Americas. 13. Kagan, Lawsuits and Litigants, 137–​138. 14. Bilinkoff describes the new officials in Spain who were to “ ‘assist [the poor] in their lawsuits and affairs in the city,’ functioning, in effect, as public defenders,” Avila of Saint Teresa, 76. For expansion of the judicial bureaucracy in the Americas, see Espinosa, Empire of Cities, ­chapter 5. 15. Rubinstein, ¡Viva el Común! puts the rebellion in a longue duree framework. On communitarian values in sixteenth century Castile, see Vassberg, Land and Society. 16. Black, “The Conciliar Movement”; Hamilton, Political Thought; Doyle, “Vitoria on Choosing,” 45–​58; Sánchez-​Sorondo, “Vitoria,”  31–​44. 17. Hamilton, Political Thought, 175. 18. Skinner, Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. 2:138. 19. Skinner, Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. 2: ­chapters 5–​6. Luther condemned the 1524 Peasant Revolt in Germany, a revolt akin to that of the Spanish comuneros. His argument for full submission to secular authority left little room for legitimate resistance. 20. Skinner, Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. 2: 165. 21. Wilenius, Social and Political Theory, 76. 22. Skinner, Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. 2: 346. 23. Stoetzer argues that “the ‘subversive’ theories of Suárez” were taught throughout Latin America, only coming under attack by “Enlighted despotism” in the late eighteenth-​century.





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Stoetzer, The Scholastic Roots, 121. Guerra points out that in nineteenth-​century Latin America, “[p]actismo—​a relation between king and kingdom consisting of reciprocal duties and rights—​was not a remote reference but a memory of a still very recent political practice.” Guerra, “The Spanish-​American Tradition,” 3. 24. Guerra, Modernidad e Independencias, 73. 25. Nineteenth-​century Spanish liberals imagined no conflict between their nation and their town government, see Nader Liberty in Absolutist Spain, 11. In the Spanish Revolution of 1858, crowds in Spain called for the pueblo-​rey, the people-​king who would exercise legitimate political power, see White, “Liberty, Honor, Order,” 348. Helmer, Apuntes Sobre el Teatro includes a 1619 list of plays performed in Potosí, including Fuenteovejuna. It is possible that people of Condocondo had seen performances of the play. 26. Worried over the effect his mistreatment of the Indians that he held in encomienda might have on the immortal disposition of his soul, Lorenzo de Aldana left funds to support primary schools for his former charges. While it is not clear how long the schools operated, many extant letters written by indigenous people during the 1780s rebellion are from the towns to which Aldana bequeathed money for schools. On Aldana’s will see Beyersdorff, Historia y Drama, 136–​149 and del Rio, “Riquezas y Poder.” On encomienda see Abercrombie, Pathways of Memory and Power, 136–​153 and Gyarmati and Castellón, Paria,  25–​27. 27. Medinacelli, Sariri: Los llameros,  85–​86. 28. Lohmann Villena, Las Ideas Jurídico-​Políticas and Lorandi, Ni Ley, Ni Rey, ­chapter 3. 29. Lohmann Villena, El Corregidor. 30. Wachtel, Vision of the Vanquished. Philip II ordered that the Incas in Vilcabamba should be offered encomiendas so that they could live in a manner appropriate for their status. However, Toledo decided to act on his own and declared war on the Incas in Vilcabamba. See Julien, “Toledo and His Campaign.” 31. Relación Sámano-​Xerez quoted in Fraser, The Architecture of Conquest, 23. Kagan and Marías trace the Greek and Roman roots of policía and what it meant to sixteenth-​century Spaniards (see Kagan, and Marías, Urban Images of the Hispanic World, 27–​28). 32. Brading identifies Fray García de Toledo as the author of the anonymous attack on Las Casas, known as Anónimo or Parecer of Yucay (1571), published as Pérez Fernández, El anónimo. This discussion is indebted to Brading, The First America, ­chapter 6. 33. Las Casas, Los tesoros del Perú. Mumford argues that the term tyranny was understood in the sixteenth century to mean something close to twentieth-​century totalitarianism:  see Mumford, Vertical Empire, 99–​117. In addition to Mumford, on the effort to redefine Incas as tyrants, see Brading, First America; Fraser, The Architecture of Conquest, 42–​43; Muldoon, The Americas, 83–​84; Pérez Fernández, El Anónimo; Sempat Assadourian, Transiciones, 160–​161. On Las Casas’s efforts to restore Inca rule, see Julien, “Toledo and His Campaign.” 34. Pérez Fernández, El Anónimo 114, 124–​137. 35. Sarmiento de Gamboa, History of the Incas, 60. Urton’s analysis of the Inca creation myth puts it into its post-​Conquest social and cultural context and reveals how it was “concretized” to the benefit of a provincial Inca noble, Rodrigo Sutiq Callapiña. Urton, History of a Myth. 36. Jiménez de la Espada, ed, 1882, quoted in MacCormack, “Ethnography in South America,” 134. 37. Matienzo, Gobierno del Perú; for a close analysis of Matienzo’s work see Morong Reyes, Saberes hegemónicos. 38. Julien, “Uru Tribute”; Julien, Hatunqolla,  10–​12. 39. For classic treatments of relations between caciques and their subject in the early colnial era see Larson, Cochabamba; Spalding, Huarochirí; and Stern, Peru’s Indian Peoples. 40. Herzog, “Colonial Law and ‘Native Customs’ ”; “Terres et déserts, société et sauvagerie.” 41. Arze and Medinaceli, Imágenes y Presagios; Jurado, “ ‘Todos Descendientes.” 42. Julien, “Toledo and His Campaign”; Mumford, Vertical Empire, 97, 102–​103.

Chapter 3 1. Abercrombie, Pathways of Memory and Power, 143. ATP, no number, July 16, 1688, Don Francisco Choqueticlla requested copies to be made of documents dated 1575 and 1550 that



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were kept in Condo’s caja de comunidad. The later document references the La Gasca visita done in Condo. 2. To compare to New Spain see Owensby, Empire of Law, 21. 3. On early attempts at resettlement in the northern regions of the former Inca empire, see Ramírez, The World Upside Down, 71. 4. This is much like the processes that Scott attributes to the nineteenth century, Seeing Like a State, part 3. Mumford applies a similar argument to reducciones, Vertical Empire, 176–​179. Silverblatt sees the bureaucracy of the inquisition as yet another example of the “modernity” of early modern Spain’s empire, Modern Inquisitions. 5. On the meaning of reducción and its origins also see Cummins, “Forms of Colonial Towns,” 202–​203; Hanks, Converting Words, Part I; Mumford, Vertical Empire, 1, 48. There is a growing literature on reducciones, see the essays in Saito and Rosas, Reducciones. For reducción and conversion see Durston, Pastoral Quechua, ­chapter 3; and Zuloaga, La conquista negociada. Scott emphasizes that not all Spaniards supported the resettlement project, Scott, “A Mirage of Colonial Consensus.” That is also a theme in Mumford, Vertical Empire, 91–​94. Herzog compares resettlement in the Americas with that in Spain to argue that it was not a colonial policy, Herzog, “Indigenous Reducciones and Spanish Resettlement.” 6. Juan de Matienzo (1567) cited in Fraser, The Architecture of Conquest, 43. 7. On the use of confession to mold minds see Harrison, Sin and Confession. 8. The term “liberty” is frequently used in relation with reducción policy. In a broadside dated Valladolid (Spain) November 24, 1601, the king ordered Viceroy Velasco to insure that the Indians “lived with the full liberty of vassals.” In this case, concern was for the labor supply for Potosí. NYPL Rare Book Collection *KB 1601. Fray Miguel de Monsalve argued that the reducción policy, unlike towns in Spain which guaranteed liberty to their citizens, made slaves of Indians. Miguel de Monsalve, Redvcion vniversal de todo el Pirv (Madrid? 1604), fol.6v. 9. Guevara-​Gil and Salomon, “A ‘Personal Visit,’ ” 18. 10. Guevara-​Gil and Salomon, “A ‘Personal Visit,’ ” 10–​13, describe in detail the two models for a visita. “Visita de Pedro de Zárate al ayllo Hilavi de Hanasaya de los Asanaques” in Platt, Bouysse-​Cassagne, and Harris, Qaraqara-​Charka, 604–​618. 11. “Chapters and Ordinances” in Abercrombie, Pathways of Memory and Power, 429–​35; Zagalsky, “El Concepto de la comunidad,” 81. 12. Palomeque, “Los Chicha,” 177–​179. Toledo required notarized, written descriptions of mojones placed at the site of the mojón and maintained by the reducción town. ABNB EC 1764 #131, fol.91 quoted in Zagalsky, “El concepto de comunidad,” 81. Lists of mojones were also produced in trials in New Spain, see Owensby, Empire of Law, 21–​2. Municipal governments of sixteenth-​century Spanish towns also held regular inspection tours of the town’s mojones. See Vassberg, Land and Society,  76–​77. 13. Romero, “Libro de la Visita General,” 164. 14. Distances were measured in leagues, which varied from two and a half miles to three and a half miles. In colonial times it referred to the distance a person could walk in a given time. Foundation of Puna and Tomave is from the AHP CR 18, “Libro donde se asientan las tasas de los yndios que están en la corona real que mandó hazer el Excelentísimo. Señor Don Francisco de Toledo Vissorrey . . . 1575 años,” fols. 28r–​v. In the Toledan tasa, Tomave (also spelled Tomavi and Tomohave in colonial documents) was called Quiocaya; the name was changed to Tomave sometime before 1603. 15. López, and Ballivián, “El Qhapaq Ñan”, 239, lists Coroma and Tomave as Inca tambos. Coroma was also named as a pueblo in the 1540 encomienda grant given to Gonzalo Pizarro by his brother Francisco. At that time, thirty-​four Indians from the pre-​Conquest federation of Qaraqara lived in Coroma, which was in Killaka territory. Perhaps this was another case of Inca resettlement. Pizarro encomienda grant in Platt, Bouysse-​Cassagne, and Harris, Qaraqara-​Charka, 297. 16. Zagalsky in “Tensiones, Disputas y Negociaciones” makes the case for a conscious strategy followed by the Visisa Indians in the creation of Caiza. Where previous generations of scholars tended to see reducción as simply a forced, top-​down policy, more recent work shows a more nuanced picture. See Baber “Empire, Indians,” on Tlaxcala (Mexico); Wernke “Negotiating Community” on the Colca Valley of Peru; Zuloaga Rada La Conquista Negociada on Huaylas,





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Peru. Mumford’s elegant history of reducción policy argues that Toledo consciously adopted Andean policies in an attempt to replicate the Inca’s success in economics and governance, Mumford, Vertical Empire. 17. In addition to Siwaruyus and Arakapis, Puna and Tomave also had a small minority of Uru people. Urus, who were settled in various reducciones, including San Pedro de Condocondo, were regarded as inferior and less civilized by the Spaniards. On Uru people see Wachtel, “Men of Water.” 18. The reducción of Totora is in AGNA 9.17.2.5  “Retasa de Francisco de Toledo,” fol.149r.; The earliest mention of Curahuara and Huayllamarca is in AGI Indif. 532, “Instrucción de la catedra, curatos y dotrinas,” ca. 1584. On Carangas towns also see Medinacelli, Sariri: Los llameros, and Riviére, “Sabaya.” Curahuara and Huayllamarca are contemporary spellings, Curaguara and Guayllamarca were most commonly used in colonial documents The Curahuara church is known as the “Sistine Chapel of the Altiplano.” 19. Condo’s original jurisdiction was much larger than that, it extended at least forty miles. It is also likely that dozens of small hamlets were consolidated to make the reducción, rather than just four listed by the Toledan inspector. 20. Parish records are from AOO, “Libro 1, 1571”; ATP, July 16, 1688 copy of 1575 and 1550 documents requested by Don Francisco Choqueticlla. Wernke has found evidence that locations for reducción towns in the Colca Valley were negotiated among the ayllus and Spanish inspector, Wernke, “Negotiating Community.” 21. For an analysis of Asanaqi ayllu names and the division of ayllus in Condo and Challapata see Abercrombie, Pathways of Memory and Power, 254. 22. Former reducción towns still retain their division by ayllus. For example, see the contemporary map of Chukiquta, which was the colonial town of Choquecota (also spelled Chuquicota in colonial documents) in the province of Carangas, in Ayllu Sartañäni, Perspectivas de Descentralización, 63. 23. For a contemporary take on how ayllus are written into towns, see Urton, “La Arquitectura Pública.” Duties for town officials (specifically the alcalde), with the admonition to monitor private homes are in Toledo, Disposiciones Gubernativas, vol. 2, 222–​236. Incentives to complete the reducciones are in Toledo, Disposiciones Gubernativas, vol. 2, 225–​261. 24. Petition of Charcas mallkus, “Memorial de Charcas,” in Platt, Bouysse-​Cassagne, and Harris, Qaraqara-​Charka, 716; Juan Polo Ondegardo (1571) quoted in Medinacelli, Sariri:  Los llameros, 90. 25. Sempat Assadourian, Transiciones, ­chapter 4. 26. Gibson, Inca Concept of Sovereignty. 27. “Memoria de don Fernando Ayawiri” (ca. 1582)  in Platt, Bouysse-​Cassagne, and Harris, Qaraqara-​Charka, 612. Testimony complaining about their treatment is in ABNB MO 670, 1677–​1679 (ALP, Minas, t.125, No. XXI.), “Autos criminales seguidos ante el Corregidor de Potosí  .  .  .  Los caciques, principales y gobernadores de los pueblo de indios que sirven la mita de Potosí contra José Fernándes de Valencia, capitán mayor de dicha mita.” Original Spanish: “Distinción de los nobles y plebeyos, cuando el rey nuestro señor los está honrando haciendoles señores de estados en los pueblos que gobieron con preminencias, con título de caciques que corresponde en español a condes y duques.” 28. Toledo, Disposiciones Gubernativas, vol 2: ­chapter 63. 29. Toledo, Disposiciones Gubernativas, vol 2: 215. 30. On defining ayllus, see Salomon, “Introduction” in Salomon and Urioste, The Huarochirí Manuscript, and Platt, La Persistencia de los Ayllus. 31. “Chapters and Ordinances” in Abercrombie, Pathways of Memory and Power, 429. 32. For evidence of active cabildos in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries see AHP CR 18, fol.237, where the notary of the cabildo of San Pedro de Totora, Hernando Sacama, signed a receipt for over 2,900 pesos paid out of the community chest in 1583. AHP CR 19 “Descargo de los salarios de los caçiques prinçipales y segundas personas” contains records of payments from 1575 to 1594; in 1578 they are signed by Pablo Titicondo, notary of the cabildo, in 1581 they are signed by cabildo notary Martín Marca. A  published account of the “election” of a segunda persona (cacique’s second-​in-​command) in 1584 for Macha in Chayanta province includes public commentary by don Lope de Mendoza alcalde and



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principal of ayllu Solcahavi and Pedro Juarez, notary of cabildo of ayllu Condohata, Platt, Bouysse-​Cassagne, and Harris, Qaraqara-​Charka, 790–​791. Puente Luna, “Guaman Poma de Ayala,” cites a 1581 document in which caciques “se juntaron a cauildo,” 32–​33; Puente Luna, “That Which Belongs to All” describes the actions of the cabildo in paying for and advancing legal cases for the community in the sixteenth century. 33. “Chapters and Ordinances” in Abercrombie, Pathways of Memory and Power, 429. 34. Borah, Justice by Insurance, 13. 35. Prohibitions on caciques serving in the cabildo are in Toledo, Disposiciones Gubernativas, vol II: 220. Ayaviri’s request is published in Platt, Bouysse-​Cassagne, and Harris, Qaraqara-​ Charka, 727–​729. In other cases caciques and their immediate families attempted to maintain control of towns not only through cabildo as noted above, but also through cofradías; BNP 1697, “Son of cacique as prioste” unnumbered document from Sancos, Huamanga. Mumford argues that in some regions “caciques and their relatives became the alcaldes and regidores, treating the new offices not as threats but as vehicles for their own ambitions.” Vertical Empire, 66. 36. Toledo, Disposiciones Gubernativas, vol 2: 36; vol 2: 264. 37. The master instructions that were copied into each town’s documents are in “Las cavezas de las tazas que se dieron para los Yndios” in AGNA 9.17.2.5, a copy of a portion of the Toledan tasa made in 1785, and published in Salles and Noejovich, La Visita General. 38. See “Chapters and Ordinances” in Abercrombie, Pathways of Memory and Power, 429–​435. 39. AGNA 13.18.7.1 5v–​6r. Original date 1575, copied into a legal suit between two reducción towns in 1613. This same introductory material appears in in the 1575 Toledan tasa kept in Condo’s caja de comunidad, ATP 1687 “Quillacas Asanaques Tasa,” unnumbered document, contains a request from a Condo cacique to have a notarized copy made of the tasa. 40. On Inca property, see Kolata, Ancient Inca, 53–​54, 126–​27; and D’Altroy, The Incas, 213, 440. 41. Mumford, Vertical Empire, ­chapter 7. 42. The conversion of community (and church) lands in Spain into private holdings only occurred in the nineteenth century, as a product of liberal policies. Vassberg, Land and Society,  86–​89. 43. Colonial land policies quickly transferred the most productive lands into private property for Spaniards, see Herzog, “Colonial Law and ‘Native Customs.’ ” 44. Herzog, “Colonial Law and ‘Native Customs,’ ” 314–​317. 45. AGNA 13.18.7.1, 6r, 7r. Original Spanish: “Los ynferiores yndios pobres de la comunidad dejasen de ser mantenidos en justicia,” “llevavanselos los dichos caciques los menos cabos pagavanseles los yndios pobres y prone.” 46. Ordinances for the caja de comunidad are in Toledo, Disposiciones Gubernativas, vol. 2:  2.Ordinances designate different key holders, sometimes the cacique, the corregidor or the priest. Some towns, such as Condo, had cajas de comunidad prior to Toledo. Ordinances issued in 1566 by Dr. Cuenca called for a caja, as well as cabildos, alcaldes, escribanos, and schools, see Rostworowski, “Algunos Comentarios,” 126,128. Ordinances from Macha (Chayanta) were copied into a land dispute in 1613, AGNA 13.18.7.1. “Chapters and Ordinances” for one reducción have been published in English in Abercrombie, Pathways of Memory and Power, 429–​435. Cajas de comunidad were also community treasuries. AGNA 13.18.6.4 “Visisas Revisita,” fol. 9r documents a forced loan to Spaniards in 1582 from a caja de comunidad; AHMC: EC #4 “Escritura de Censo” documents Spaniards paying rent on land to an indigenous caja de comunidad in 1579. In the viceroyalty of Mexico, as in Peru, legal activities of towns were also financed through cajas, see Yannakakis, Art of Being in-​ Between, 37. Towns continued to add to their archives. In the late eighteenth century, towns confronted colonial officials with their own copies of viceregal or ecclesiastical decrees. AGI Charcas 545 “Testimonio de los Autos de Sublevación de Chaianta,” April 9, 1785, fol. 246. 47. Inventory of documents from Totora is in AHP CR 18 fols. 236r–​237v. Loans to Spaniards were not uncommon. Presta argues that the loans from indigenous towns were key to the expansion of silver production in Potosí in the late sixteenth century, see Presta “La Compañía del Trajín.” 48. AGI Charcas 79, Nº. 23, “Informaciones de oficio y parte: Juan Fernández Ternero, clérigo presbitero y cura en la doctrina de San Francisco de Calapiquina,” 1592, fol.16r.





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49. Indigenous oversight of priests is in Toledo, Disposiciones Gubernativas, vol. 2: 92, 237. AGI Charcas, 79, Nº. 20, “Información de oficio y parte: Baltasar Veláquez, clérigo presbítero, cura y vicario de Puna,” 1591, fols. 17v–​18v. 50. On tribute, tambos, and jurisdiction, see Toledo, Disposiciones Gubernativas, vol. 2, 37. 51. “Chapters and Ordinances” in Abercrombie, Pathways of Memory and Power, 429–​435. 52. Toledo, Disposiciones Gubernativas, vol. 2, 252. 53. Foucault identified questions of “[h]‌ow to govern oneself, how to be governed . . . to be characteristic of the sixteenth century.” Burchell, Gordon, and Miller, eds., The Foucault Effect, 87 54. Scott, “A Mirage of Colonial Consensus,” 895. Herzog in “Terres et Déserts” and “Indigenous Reducciones and Spanish Resettlement” offers many examples of Spaniards being “reduced” in Castile as well as the Americas. Spanish authorities only considered places with functioning cabildos to be towns. 55. Mannheim, The Language of the Inka, 146. 56. MacCormack, “ ‘The Heart Has Its Reasons,’ ” 450–​451. 57. For the sharp break in the manner of evangelization following Trent, see Durston, Pastoral Quechua, 28–​29; Estenssoro Fuchs, Del Paganismo, ­chapters 3–​4; and MacCormack, “ ‘The Heart Has Its Reasons.’ ” On the Council of Trent, see O’Malley, Trent, 11. 58. Nalle notes that among the “professional classes,” Erasmian ideas of direct communication with God were very well received, Nalle, God in La Mancha,  20–​21. 59. On idolatry in Peru see Mills, Idolatry and its Enemies. 60. “Chapters and Ordinances” in Abercrombie, Pathways of Memory and Power, 431. Durston describes mass recitation organized by ayllu, Pastoral Quechua, 273–​274. 61. Toledo, Disposiciones Gubernativas, vol. 1, 202; vol. 2, 166. For Spanish confraternities see Flynn, Sacred Charity. 62. Hanks points out that the conversion that Spaniards wanted to accomplish was not simply religious but also political, and that conversion “is a social and cultural process.” Hanks, Converting Words, 5. Cussen, “The Search for Idols” links beatification of saints to campaigns against idolatry. 63. Mills examines the commonalities between “Christian sacred images” and wakas. Mills, “The Naturalization of Andean Christianities,” 506–​515. 64. Lisi, El Tercer Concilio Limense, 195. 65. For the impact of the Council of Trent on indigenous Andeans see Penry, “Canons of the Council of Trent.” 66. AOO fols. 373r–​374r for 1575 inventory; fol. 376v, signatures. On Andean artists and religious art, Nair, “Localizing Sacrednes’; Cohen Suarez, “From the Jordan River.” 67. Perhaps Toledo was right. Nearly ten years earlier, in 1566, Dr.  Cuenca issued ordinances establishing community chests and calling for Indios Ladinos to be named as escribanos in indigenous towns, Rostworowski, “Algunos Comentarios,” 126, 128. 68. Despite what colonial officials wrote, the majority of reducción towns still exist today. All the towns treated in this book still exist in contemporary Bolivia. Gade and Escobar found that most reducción towns founded in the southwestern portion of the department of Cuzco still exist, see “Village Settlement.” 69. Hanks, Converting Words, 5, xiv. 70. Málaga Medina, among others, argues that this flight was proof of their failure, “Las Reducciones Toledanos.” 71. On the Inca roads, see Hyslop, Inka Road System. Mumford, Vertical Empire, and see Gibson, Inca Concept of Sovereignty. 72. Land ownership in Castile is described in Vassberg, Land and Society; postal service is in Vassberg, The Village and the Outside World, 170. In some Spanish towns this rotational labor system operated until the 1980s, see Behar, The Presence of the Past, c­ hapter 11. For village governance in the sixteenth century, see Vassberg, The Village and the Outside World,  14–​18. 73. Nemser argues that the resettlement policy in Mexico racialized space and that “ ‘Indian’ was the product . . . of a century of targeted and material practices of colonial governmentality.” Nemser, “Primitive Accumulation,” 337.



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Chapter 4 1. For analyses of Ramírez del Águila’s report and his career see Latasa, “Charcas Reivindicada,” and Barnadas, El Presbítero y Cronista. The quotation is from Ramírez del Águila, Noticias Políticas, 111–​12. AGI Charcas 135, Feb 1, 1614 Arzobispo of La Plata Alonzo de Peralta to the King, confirms that Ramírez del Águila had inspected the entire archdiocese. 2. Hanke and Rodríguez, Los virreyes, 52. Velasco served as viceroy of both Peru and New Spain (Mexico). While he denounced flight from reducciones, Velasco also granted petitions that allowed people to return to their home villages in both viceroyalties. For New Spain, see Owensby, Empire of Law, 22. 3. A 1683 census of Totora (Carangas province) lists towns of origin for forasteros, including husbands and wives from different towns, see AGNA 13.18.4.4, Duque de la Palata revisita of Totora. Caciques sometimes actively recruited forasteros to move to their jurisdiction, see Powers, “Resilient Lords.” In other cases, indigenous migration was to Spanish cities, see Wightman, Indigenous Migration. 4. Ramírez del Águila, Noticias Políticas,129–​30, 131, 125. To amuse his readers, Ramírez de Águila reproduced some of these letters and wills from commoner Indians in his report to the Crown, highlighting their orthographic errors. The letters, petitions, and wills from indigenous parishioners are not included in the published version, only in the original manuscript held by the Lilly Library. 5. Priests (like Luis de Vega who figures in this chapter) often claimed to have set up schools in their parishes. An example of indigenous alcaldes hiring an indio ladino to teach is in ABNB EC 1773 #50 Adiciones, “Expediente formado ante el Fiscal Protector General, por Blas Raimundo de Hilaricona, indio noble, vecino del pueblo de Azángaro, maestro de escuela de niños naturales,” fol. 1r–​v. On the role of indios ladinos in conversion see Charles, Allies at Odds. 6. Álvarez, De las Costumbres, 268. Monterroso refers to Monterroso, Pratica Civil y Criminal. Leonard identifies Monterroso as a “long-​standard guide for public scribes,” one of the best-​ selling guides in the 1580s, along with the Siete Partidas. See Leonard, Books of the Brave, 207, 221. On the origin and purpose of the Siete Partidas see O’Callaghan, “Alfonso X and The Partidas.” For the English translation of the Siete Partidas, see Burns, ed., Las Siete Partidas. 7. Álvarez, De las Costumbres, 268. 8. Recopilación de las Leyes, Libro I, Título IV Ley xxy. 9. ABAS CCE No. 5020  “Condo, liçençia para capilla,” 1626. fol. 1r. Spanish original:  “Don Pedro Chiri prioste y don Diego Chiri mayordomo y de los demás fundadores de la cofradía de Santa Bárbara del pueblo de Condocondo. Digo qu en la estancia de Uma Hunto tengo mis haçiendas de chacaras y ganados de ella en la qual abrá nuebe años poco mas o ms. que con asistençia del cura del dicho pueblo fundamos la dicha cofradía con los cargos y condiçiones que por ella consta para fundalla se lleuo liçençia del ordinario y con ella se a continuado hasta oy día. Y sin embargo de que en la dicha cofradía y yglesia done esta fundada tiene todo rrecaudo para çelebrar el culto diuino, sin que les falta cosa alguna comprado a nuestra costa.”This document, like the others I  quote in this book, was written in Spanish, not in Aymara, the native language of the Chiris. I follow Owensby in arguing that by contextualization the indigenous voice comes through Owensby, Empire of Law, 9–​11. On the question of the native voice in the colonial language see Hanks, “Authenticity and Ambivalence.” 10. O’Malley, Trent, 273. The detailed instructions on church and chapel design, as well as the linens and furnishings required were codified by Carlo Borremeo and published in his Instrucciones de Fabrica (1577). They were frequently reprinted in colonial council decrees. On the influence of Borromeo in the Catholic world, see Ditchfield, “San Carlo Borromeo.” 11. The Council of Trent required that priests attend to their parishioners; see Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2:744. Also see O’Malley, Trent, 218. For the Third Council’s statement see Lisi, El Tercer Concilio, 175. 12. Priests frequently accused Indians of founding cofradías as covers for idolatry. Post-​Trent changes in evangelization are analyzed in MacCormack, “The Heart Has Its Reasons”; and Estenssoro, Del Paganismo a la Santidad. People in the reducción town of Pocona were





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accused of creating confraternities for devil worship. AGI Charcas 417,L7 Pocona idolatry 1684–​1690, fol. 52v. 13. Duviols, Procesos y visitas, 696, 447, 453. Scholars have moved away from the “assimilation/​ resistance paradigm” that tended to see conversion “as a kind of cultural surrender.” Greer and Mills, “A Catholic Atlantic,” 12, 11. Regardless of what colonial priests wrote, most scholars today agree that at least by the early seventeenth century, most colonial indigenous people, much like contemporary indigenous people, regarded themselves as “Christians,” although their Christian practice might include llama sacrifice, libations poured in honor of mountain spirits, or as in Cajatambo for their mummified ancestors (malquis). On the question of conversion, in addition to Greer and Mills, see Abercrombie, Pathways of Memory and Power; Durston, Pastoral Quechua; Estenssoro Fuchs, Del paganismo a la santidad; Hanks, Converting Words; Ramos, Death and Conversion, and Zuloaga, La conquista negociada. 14. As Mills writes, “There was no hiding that becoming an idolatry inspector was a smart career move,” “Bad Christians in Colonial Peru,” 195. Others sought wealth more directly. Francis, “ ‘In the Service of God’ ” documents a case of extirpation where the priest seemed as motivated by a search for precious jewels reportedly embedded in idols as he was in ending idolatrous practices. 15. MacCormack, “ ‘The Heart Has Its Reasons,’ ” 450; Estenssoro Fuchs, Del paganismo a la santidad. It was also an age of moral reform in Europe, see O’Malley, Trent, 261. 16. ABAS CCE No. 5020 fol.1r. Spanish original: “A Vuestra Merced pido y supplico me mande despachar Recaudo en forma con penas y aperçiuamentos para que el padre cura continue en la dicha obra pia, pues demás de ser seruicio de dios esta sido para el bien de los naturales y que asi mesmo buelba todos hornamentos calises y las demás cosas que tiene en su poder pues no le perteneçe por ningún derecho sino a la dicha cofradía por ser suya que en ello reçiuiremos bien y merced con justicia que pedimos [firmas: don Pedro Chiri/​don Diego Chiri].” 17. On the leadership vacuum in the archbishopric, see Draper, Arzobispos, ­chapter 4. Mogrovejo’s visitas were required by Trent decrees, see Tanner, Decrees, 2:688. For details of Mogrovejo’s visitas and the numbers of new parishes created, see Benito, Libro de Visitas. On Peroches’ career, see AGI Charcas, 88, N. 21, 1618 “Información de Pascual de Peroches.” 18. ABAS CCE No. 5020 fol. 1v. Spanish original: “mando se notifique al beneficiado Gonçalo Leal Uejarano cura de Condocondo guarde la costumbre que ay en la çelebraçion desta cofradía y en acudir a la administración de los santos sacramentos astastançia [sic] y buelba a los yndios [entre renglones = mayordomos] los ornamentos que della obiere lleuado so pena de excomunión mayor sin dar lugar a que los yndios buelban a quejarse.” 19. Draper, Arzobispos, ­chapter 6. 20. In one of the few references to cofradías in the decrees of the Council of Trent, cofradías were required to maintain financial account books, see Tanner, Decrees, 2:740. For comparison to other regions where people fled their resettlement towns, see the pathbeaking study by Hanks on the spread in the sixteenth century of what he terms Maya reducido, Maya language inflected with the language of reducción, Hanks, Converting Words. 21. ABAS CCE No. 5020, fol.3r. Spanish original: “careçen de los sacramentos de la confesion y se an muerto sin ella ni tanpoco oyen missa.” For Trent’s confirmation of the sacraments of confession, extreme unction and the mass, see Tanner, Decrees, 2:703, 710, 774–​776. A priest in Macha was found guilty of saying mass in an annex town chapel that lacked proper “ornaments” in AGI Charcas 91, Nº. 11 “Información de los meritos y servicios del Licenciado Gabriel de Torres Estrada (1639).” Later priests were forbidden to say mass in any unlicensed chapel, established without viceregal permission. AAL Capítulos 1757 # 31:11, “Canta, autos seguidos por Don Salvador Gerónimo de Portalanza,” fol.6. 22. On the meaning of Andean motifs in colonial era material culture, see Cummins, “Let me see.” On Andeans’ manufacture of church textiles, see Stanfield-​Mazzi, “Weaving and Tailoring the Andean Church.” Civil authorities sought to curtail native Andeans carrying pennants, see ABNB:  Mizque 1637 #4  “Ordenanza dada por Don Diego be Birrueta y Corella, corregidor de la la Villa de Salinas dirijida a las autoridades del valle de Huaycoma, para que prohivan a los Yndios llevar pendones a las fiestas.” According to Abercrombie (personal



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communication), a similar, perhaps the same, pennant was still being carried in processions in Santa Bárbara in the 1980s. 23. Tanner, Decrees, 2:279. 24. In another case of annex town foundation in the present day department of Arequipa, Peru, the link between cofradía and town was made explicit in the agreement creating the town. Town founders noted that to make their town “permanent” they established a chapel and cofradía dedicated to the Virgin of Copacabana. See Penry, “Pleitos coloniales,” 453. 25. ABAS Cofradías #306 1612  “Limpia Conc̨epc̨ión en Molle Molle.” Spanish original:  “ansi hombres como mujeres de qualquier condiçion y estado que fueron chicos y grandes puedan entrar en esta Santa cofradía.” This cofradía included Spanish and Andean cofrades, with unmarried and widowed Andean women. 26. Saignes has argued that cabildo, cofradía and compadrazgo (god-​parents) became the prime institutions for forging community. Saignes, “Indian Migration.” 27. Abercrombie, Pathways, 272; Nicolas, Zegarra, and Puma, Ayllusninchismanta parlarispa. Also see the account of the miraculous foundation of the shrine of Copacabana in Ramos Gavilán, Historia del Celebre Santuario. 28. Vega’s letter is in ABNB CACh 1616 #728, “Memorial de Luis de Vega . . . contra la acusación de haber él quemado las casas de los indios.” For more on Vega, see Draper, Arzobispos, 99–​ 122. One might wonder why the Audiencia would even suspect a parish priest of burning down the homes of his charges. It was not an accusation without precedent, however, Alonso Peña Montenegro, Bishop of Quito published a popular guide for parish priests in which he argued that if it were necessary to save their souls, to force Indians to return to their reducción church, the priest was completely justified in burning down homes. See Peña Montenegro, Itenerario para Párrocos, vol. 2: 403. 29. Details on reducción foundation are in AHP CR 18 “Libro donde se asientan las tasas de los yndios.” In February 1575 the people were “reduced” from 28 villages totalling 5,968 people to two reducción towns, Talavera de Puna and Todos Santos de Quiocaya, by 1616 known as Todos Santos de Tomave. A third town, San Francisco de Coroma, was created between 1575 and 1600. Evidence that towns kept their foundational documents appear in legal records, frequently produced as evidence for land holding. The reducción of Tomave was founded with approximately 450 tributary heads of household of whom about sixty were Siwaruyus. There was also a third smaller ethnic group, the Urus. AHP CR 18, fols.28–​40. On Urus, see Wachtel, El regreso de los antepasados. 30. Abercrombie, “The Politics of Sacrifice” Appendix 1. 31. AHP CR 18, fols.28–​40. At the time of the Visita General in 1575, and in 1602–​1603 when Siwaruyus asked permission to found a town, Tomave was known as Todos Santos de Quiocaya, but by 1616, when Vega wrote his petition, it was known as Tomave, the name it still has today. 32. The alcaldes, as cabildo officers, were charged by Toledo to assist the priest, see Toledo, Disposiciones Gubernativas vol. 2, 169. 33. A moveable festival, celebrated in May or June, the Corpus Christi procession would make the town visible to itself; people marched in procession in ranked categories (by office or profession held, by guild or cofradía, etc.). For the history and development of Corpus Christi, see Rubin, Corpus Christi:  The Eucharist. For Corpus Christi in the Andes, see Dean, Inka Bodies. 34. ABNB CACh 1616 #728, fol.1v. Spanish original: “fuy abuscar y hallé las casas atracandas y cerradas por defuera, y en cada una tres, quatro, sinco y seis personas bebiendo y mochando al uso del inga.” This conforms to other reports from the region, where in 1649, some seventy small idols were found in the neighboring town of Coroma. See Abercrombie, Pathways of Memory and Power, 277. 35. ABNB CACh 1616 #728, fol.2r. Spanish original: “Dixe que lo avía reñido mil veses y que se escapan condesir [‘] el Virrey me dio liçençia de estar en este pueblo y no quiero yr a Tomahabi[‘] y que aunque les e dicho [‘]mirad hijos que aunque os dio liçençia el Virrey de estar en este pueblo, no supo la verdad ni los inconvinientes. Y no os la dio para no venir a missa ni para vuestros pecados inçestos y borracheras. Y si lo sabe os mandará quemar el pueblo y que seáis xpianos y bolváis a Tomahabi.[‘]”





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36. AGI Charcas 135, “Memorial de Luis de Vega,” March 6, 1612. Spanish original: fol. 9r “Que había juntado en una escuela algunos muchachos y sabían ya rezar muy bien, y algunos leer y cantar . . . Llegó año nuevo de 1612, y señala con sus padres para la mita y llevaronmelos todos . . . Ya no ay escuela . . . como serán xpianos?Fol. 7r [‘]Con este Padre que tengo de haser? Echomano de los primeros yndios que hallo y quitoles quando tienen a diestro y a siniestro y cumplo la mita.[‘]” 37. This is certainly not to say that idolatry, however defined, did not occur or was only a rhetorical strategy used by priests. On idolatry in the Andes see Mills, Idolatry and Its Enemies. Vega’s failed attempt for promotion is in AGI Charcas 135, “Oposiciónes, doctrina de Julloma,” September 21, 1613. 38. The 1603 Siwaruyu petition, along with other important documents, is held in bundles of Inca era and early colonial textiles in Coroma, Bolivia. For an analysis of these bundles of textiles with their documents, see Bubba, “Los rituales,” 396, n. 17. I thank Cristina Bubba and Thomas Abercrombie who provided me with a copy of the Coroma document. 39. The transformation in principal was not an even process across the viceroyalty. As late as 1619, a principal claimed the office had been held by his family since the time of the Inca. Platt, Bouysse-​Cassagne, and Harris, Qaraqara-​Charka, 781. 40. Don Diego Hallasa seems to have been a very prominent cacique with close ties to Spaniards. In 1590, a Don Diego Hallacsa, identified as a Siwaruyu cacique, contributed thirty silver pesos in personal support of the King of Spain. He also signed his name to the document. Given that spellings of indigenous surnames could vary considerably, Hallacsa was likely the same person as Hallasa. Platt, Bouysse-​Cassagne, and Harris, Qaraqara-​Charka, 991. 41. “Siwaruyus of Tomave to Viceroy Velasco,” 1603, Siwaruyu petition, Coroma, Bolivia town archive, fol. 1r–​v. Note that this document was copied by native Aymara speakers. I  have maintained the original spellings, but added accent marks and spelled out abbreviations. Spanish original:  “Digo que el Excelentísimo Señor Don Luiz de Vilasco Visorrey destos Reynos por esta su Provición de que hacimos presentación manda se pueblen los Yndios de la dicha parcialidad [de Siwaruyus] que estan Poblados en el Pueblo de Todos Santos de Quiocaya [Tomave] en la pampa de Tolapampa y que para yfecto se haga en ella Pueblo nuebo y rridusgan en el todos los Yndios de la dicha parcialidad que contiene la dicha proveción  .  .  .  pedimos y suplicamos si a servido de mandar nombrar persona que baya a señalar el dicho Pueblo y los lemites del y la plaça Yglecia Cassas de Cavildo y todo lo demás necisario con forme a dercho paraque en todo si cumpla lo que su Excelentísimo hordena y manda pues tanto conuiene al servicio de dios= Nuestro Señor y de su Magestad bien y conservación de los dichos Yndios.” In Tomave the parcialidades initially took the names of the two ethnic groups rather than the usual anansaya and urinsaya. 42. Other caciques seeking permission to “reduce” Indians wrote directly to the king himself, bypassing even the viceroy, see AGI Charcas 49 “Los caciques y principales del repartimiento de Carangas al Rey,” January 1, 1612. It may be that Viceroy Velasco was more receptive than other viceroys to the pleas for annex towns. Owensby points out that Velasco, who also served as viceroy for New Spain (Mexico), granted “permission for people to return to their villages of origin.” Owensby, Empire of Laws, 22. In a 1684 dispute between Carangas towns Choquecota and Totora over a small pueblo named Sirco, Choquecota claimed that people of Sirco had received permission from Velasco to be there, and also permission for a priest to say mass in their chapel, see AGNA 13.18.4.4. Visita of the Duque de la Palata. 43. Siwaruyu petition, fol.1v “forciblimente y contra su boluntad” Toledo, Disposiciones Gubernativas vol. 1, 34, 257. 44. Siwaruyu petition, fol. 2r. 45. Siwaruyu petition, fol. 1v. “hasen tantas fallas y quiebras en los pagos de sus tasas mitas servecios personales” “. . . revueltos entre ellos toman las costumbres . . . van haciendo las mezmas quiebras” fol. 2r. “. . . todo lo qual serremediara . . . se hesiese . . . un pueblosuelo anexo.” 46. Siwaruyu petition, fol.2r. “juez comisionario de lo tocante a la población” “están casi todas tapiedas con piedras y barro” fol. 2v. “que están del metidos en guaycos estancias y quebradas que desbaraten las tales  .  .  .  y traygan a ella maderras que tuvieren y asi quitaren para rrehedeficar las casas . . . compren las . . . de los Sevaroyos. . . a mui moderados precio.”



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47. A 1649 ecclesiastical inspection reportedly turned up over seventy small idols in neighboring Coroma, also home to Siwaruyus, which might cast doubt on the orthodoxy of Christian practices in Tolapampa, Abercrombie, Pathways of Memory and Power, 277. Siwaruyu petition, fol. 2r. “puede con mucha comodidad doctrinar y admenistrar los santos sacramentos a los que se publaren en Tolapampa” “a su costa.” 48. This act of town formation, akin to the “visits” of colonial officials, created reality as much as it recorded it, see Guevara-​Gil, and Salomon, “A ‘Personsal Visit.’ ” 49. AGNA 13.18.9.1  “Deduzion de Indios Tributos,  .  .  .  en la Doctrina de Todos Santos de Tomahave,” contains early eighteenth-​century census records for Tolapampa with Arakapi ayllus. By 1722, Tolapampa itself had an annex, Nuestra Señora de la Misericordia de Chacala, which also still exits in contemporary Bolivia. 50. Success in gaining licenses for cofradías and outlying chapels varied. Although the evidence is not clear it appears that in Carangas province every pre-​Toledan hamlet managed to obtain at least a chapel, if not a cofradía. Records indicate that Carangas was reduced from 147 hamlets to six towns in the 1570s. In 1910 an ecclesiastic inspection counted 147 chapels in the area which suggests that each pre-​Toledan hamlet may have been reestablished to conform to colonial law. Medinacelli, Sariri: Los llameros,  90–​91. 51. By contrast many early cabildo records, including in native languages, are extant for the viceroyalty of New Spain (present-​day Mexico and Mesoamerica). For example see Lockhart, et al, The Tlaxcalan Actas. 52. Puente Luna, “That Which Belongs to All,” 21. 53. For early seventeenth-​century cabildo activities in Huarochirí, see Puente Luna and Honores, “Guardianes de la real justicia”; for the region under study here, see Mumford, “Las llamas de Tapacarí”; for indigenous cabildo activity in Lima, see Graubart, “Learning from the Qadi;” for indigenous notaries in Bogotá region, see Rappaport and Cummins, Beyond the Lettered City, 124–​126. 54. ABNB EC 1664 #3, “Los indios principlaes alcaldes de Pocona por que se quite la gobernación a Diego Jarajuri [Xaraxuri] el joven y le dé al viejo.” fol.1r–​v. 55. ABNB EC 1664 #31 fol.4r–​v. 56. On the meaning of governor, cacique and related terms such as cobrador see Garrett, Shadows of Empire,  34–​44. 57. ABNB EC 1664 #31. The cacique accused the corregidor of having defied royal authority by refusing to give proper obeisance to a royal order by kissing it and placing it over his head. This refusal scandalized indigenous and Spanish witnesses. The Audiencia accepted the cacique’s testimony and began prosecution of the corregidor (fol. 33v) who then backed down, claiming a misunderstanding (fol.34r.) 58. ABNB EC 1664 #31, fol.44r. 59. For additional examples see the case of Itapaya (Bolivia) in ABAS Visitas 1680 #4838, “Visita del curato de Tapacari,” and AHMC EC #7, “En el pueblo de yndios llamado Hitapaya;” and the town of Aymaya (Bolivia) in ABAS Visitas 1680 #4845, “Visitas de Chayanta.” The case of Mungui (now in the Department of Arequipa, Peru) is analyzed in Penry, “Pleitos coloniales,” 450–​455. 60. Hanks’s pathbreaking work demonstrates the impact of resettlement policy in Yucatán, Hanks, Converting Words. 61. On the population decline see Cook, Demographic Collapse. 62. Herzog analyzes the rational behind composiciones and their impact in the Quito region in “Colonial Law and Native Customs.” For the Iberian policy see Nader, Liberty in Absolutist Spain, 124. 63. Examples of towns battling over the composiciones include ABNB EC 1593 #19. “Composición de las tierras Guaranga en el repartimiento de Macha.” 64. Ramos, Death and Conversion, 218. 65. Gose points out that the pre-​Conquest cacique was regarded as “a direct descendent of, and privileged intermediary with” the ayllu’s waka and was “invested with a degree of divinity,” see Invaders as Ancestors, 16. Ramos notes that in pre-​Columbian Peru those “social and political hierarchies persisted” after death. Saignes has argued cabildo, cofradía and compadrazgo became the prime institutions for forging community relations. Saignes, “Indian Migration.”





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66. Penry, “Pleitos Coloniales.” 67. The classic work on forasteraje in the Cuzco region is Wightman, Forasteros. For the Audiencia of Charcas see Larson, Cochabamba, ­chapter 3. Although his focus is on language rather than town foundation in the Maya Yucatán, Hanks identifies reducción as the single most influential policy imposed by Spaniards on the Maya people and that flight “exported the forms of reducción.” Hanks, Converting Words, xiv, 58. 68. On how caciques recruited outsiders to their towns, thus encouraging forasteraje, see Powers, “Resilient Lords and Indian Vagabonds.” 69. On the Duque de la Palata’s visita see Cole, “Viceregal Peristance.” 70. Sixteenth-​century Spaniards did not have fixed surnames in the modern sense either. For example, a male child might be given the surname of an uncle. 71. On the new world as tabula rasa and Spanish modernity see Alonso, The Burden of Modernity. 72. Every conqueror proudly listed the towns they founded (or refounded) as they moved across the landscape. As Nader points out, Spain “became an empire by increasing the number of towns.” Nader, Liberty in Abolutist Spain, 98.

Chapter 5 1. ABNB EC 1758 #136, “Autos seguidos por don Lorenzo García Apaza, y demás indios, contra su cura don Eusebio Daza y Arguelles,” fols. 29v–​33v. 2. ABNB EC 1758 #164, “Autos seguidos por Lorenzo García Apaza y demás comunidad, contra el cura Dionisio Larrazal por excesos,” fol.15; fols. 13r–​v; fol.12r–​v; ABNB EC 1758 #4 Ad., “Autos seguidos por parte del cura del beneficio de Totora,” fol. 4r.; ABNB EC #136, fol. 3v. 3. Góngora, Studies in the Colonial History, 61. 4. Farriss, Crown and Clergy, 15, 28–​29. 5. ABNB CR 1591 #241, “Real Cédula al obispo de Charcas en careciendo el cumplimiento de la circulares Reales referentes a los indios y que se abuse por bautismos, entierros, misas, testamentos.” 6. Crahan, “Church-​State Conflict,” 224, passim. Melchor de Liñán y Cisneros, Ofensa y defensa de la libertad eclesiástica. 7. Handwritten copies of the book circulated among caciques and comuneros. ABNB EC 1772 #108, “Autos seguidos contra Felix Aravicino, escribano, por haver dado testimonio a los indios de Paria de un libro titulado Ofensa y defensa de la libertad eclesiástica.” In the 1790s complaints about priestly excesses led the governor intendente of Cochabamba to order the publication of Palata’s ordinances in both Spanish and Quechua, see Quispe Escobar La mit’a religiosa, 233. 8. Farriss, Crown and Clergy, 91–​101. There is a large literature on the Bourbon Reforms. Two of the most recent studies that are particularly helpful are Paquette, Enlightenment, Governance and Reform, and Kuethe and Andrien, The Spanish-​Atlantic World. 9. Taylor, “Between Global Process and Local Knowledge,” 151. 10. Scholars have moved away from the “assimilation/​resistance paradigm [of conversion] in the direction of a more complex take on the religious interchange characteristic of colonial societies. Colonial Catholicism was made, it is increasingly argued, by Indians—​not to mention Mestizos and other mixed-​race persons—​as well as by Europeans and white Creoles.” Greer and Mills, “A Catholic Atlantic,” 12. 11. Andrien, “The Coming of Enlightened Reform”; Kuethe and Andrien, The Spanish Atlantic World, 168–​169, 177, 192. 12. Larkin, The Very Nature of God, 4–​7. This was a European wide reform movement, especially strong in France, see Kuethe and Andrien, The Spanish Atlantic World, 261. 13. Albán, Propriety and Permissiveness, 103–​121. Colonial officials were not consistent in their attempts to halt plebeian activities. In 1750, Gregorio Llanquipacha, cacique of Condo, complained that he was forced to pay for bull fights to entertain his mita workers in Potosí. ABNB TI 1760 #133, “Representación de don Gregorio Llanquipacha, cacique del pueblo de Condocondo, sobre las nuevas obligaciones que se le quieren imponer.” 14. ABNB EC 1760 # 75, “Autos seguidos por los Curas de Indios de este Arzobispado, sobre la supresión de la Real Cédula que manda que los indios no paguen ovenciones,” fol.31;



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fols.34v–​38; fol.45v. The set salary was known as the sínodo, and the fees paid for individual services were obvenciones. 15. Durston argues that the “functions of the priest and his deputies were being taken over by Indian cofradías” by the early seventeenth century—​even to the point of performing baptism in emergency situations, Durston, Pastoral Quechua, 175, 279. Mills points out that “Indians themselves steadily reinforced saints’ cults as authentically Andean forms,” Mills, “The Naturalization of Andean Christianities,” 522. 16. ABNB EC 1732 #48, “Querella de los indios Joseph Condori y Barcaya, i otros del pueblo de Condocondo contra su cura.” 17. Population figures are from 1735 in AGNA 13.18.5.1 “Padrón Original de los Yndios . . . del Pueblo Real de San Pedro de Condocondo.” Quispe Escobar found that Tapacarí celebrated nineteen festivals in 1796, an unusually high number. 18. ABNB TI 1756 #41, “Petición de José Guarcaya [Barcaya], indio principal, a nombre del común de indios de Condocondo, para que se les disminuyan los gastos que tienen que erogar en las fiestas,” fol.1. Spanish original: “tenemos dies fiestas entabladas desde muchos años . . . y en cada fiesta se ponen tres Yndios dos Mayordomos y un Alféres . . . que en todas las fiestas se exercitan treinta Yndios.” The ten festivals that Condo celebrated were the Holy Name of Mary, San Miguel, San Francisco Xavier, San Salvador, Our Lady of Candlemas, the Resurrection of Our Lord, Corpus Christi, San Pedro, Santa Rosa and the Nativity of Our Lady. 19. Ayllus might also include agentive places in the landscape associated with that territory, what de la Cadena calls “earth beings,” de la Cadena, Earth Beings. 20. See Penry, “Transformations in Indigenous Authority” ­chapter 7 for a close analysis of festival leadership. Quispe Escobar found that festival sponsorship rotated among ayllus in late eighteenth-​century Tapacarí, La mit’a religiosa, ­chapter 3. 21. ABAS CCE 1757 # 5079, “Provisión Real deruego y encargo para que el Provisor y Vicario General deeste Arzobispado por lo que le tocas practique lo mandado por el auto proveido por esta Real Audiencia . . . por [el] común del Pueblo de Colquemarca,” fol.33v. 22. In addition to the discussion here, on linking cofradía and ayllu see Celestino and Meyers, “La Posible Articulación del Ayllu”; Fuenzalida Vollmar, “Estructura de la Comunidad”; Hunefeldt, “Comunidad, Curas, y Comuneros”; Quispe Escobar, La mit’a religiosa; and Varón, “Cofradías de indios.” 23. These ayllu divisions have been mapped for some contemporary towns, see López, Flores, and Letourneux, Laymi Salta. 24. Quispe Escobar coined the term “religious mita.” The major exception to the lack of records for cofradía activity comes from the 1790s when clashes between church and state over expansion of the mita system for the mines of Potosí led to extensive investigations of confraternal activities. Priests outlined how saints’ celebrations alternated among towns within regions. See, for example, AGNA 9.31.7.2, Leg. 36. “Continuación del expediente No. 2 sobre mayordomías y fiestas voluntarias, con las protestas por el Señor Visitador eclesiástico de suspender la visita.” A unusually well-​documented case is that of Tapacarí, Cochabamba, see Quispe Escobar, La mit’a religiosa. 25. Associations based on festival sponsorship by office are known to contemporary scholars by various names: mayordomía, alferazgo, or priostasgo, all names that refer to specific offices and not the whole complex. However, none of these terms were used consistently by colonial people. In most cases, colonial documents use the term “cofradía” through the early nineteenth century. In order to avoid confusion, I will continue to use the term “cofradía,” with two caveats; one, it is far removed from European usage at the time, and two, it is no longer used by contemporary comuneros to describe their saints’ celebrations. 26. Puente Luna suggests that links between civil and religious offices began in the early seventeenth century. The examples from Culta and Tolapampa suggest that as well. Puenta Luna, “That Which Belongs to All,” 48. 27. ABNB TI 1740 #61, “Recurso del indio tributario Andrés Choquechambi, del pueblo de Condocondo, para que se le declare reservado por su edad i pobreza.” 28. ABNB TI 1779 #195, “Tercero Quaderno Pruebas producidas por los Yndios de Pocoata sobre los capitulos puestos al Cacique Florencio Lupa,” fols. 9–​10. Spanish original: “havia





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passado sus principales de Capitan Enterador, Alféres de Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria, y ahora tiempos la función de la Resurreción.” 29. ABNB EC 1775 #165, “Autos seguidos por Luis Guarcaya, Santos Gonzales, y otros positores al cacicazgo del pueblo de Condocondo,” fol. 135r–​v. Spanish original: “Alféres de muchíssimas Fiestas señaladas para mayor culto y honor de Dios y de su Madre Santíssima y sus Santos.” 30. ABNB EC 1772 #120, “Autos seguidos contra el cura de Carasi Dionicio Larrazabal sobre el cumplimiento de los aranceles de derechos parroquiales,” fols. 16–​17v.; AGNA 9.31.7.2 “Ovencional de Micani,” fols. 14–​15. 31. ABNB EC 1772 #120, fols. 2v, 23v, 27v, 55r. Also see AGNA 9.31.7.1 “Testimonio de entradas, gastos.” 32. For examples from Chayala, Tapacari, Pocoata, and Macha see AGNA 9.6.5.6 “Testimonio del Quaderno 8º” fol. 60; fol. 63; fol. 48; fol. 45; fol. 52v; fol. 55. 33. ABNB CACh 1647 #1553, “Pastoral del Obispo de Tucuman, 15 julio 1647.” How Andeans received and understood such sermons was not something priests could not control. A Lentan sermon triggered the murder of a corregidor when Andeans “misunderstood” it, ABNB CACh 1630 #1394, “Dr. Pedro Ballersteros, a la misma, comunicando que los Jueces comicionados para recoger indios que sirvan en la mita, han abusado de su comisión.” 34. This metaphor was widely understood in the Catholic world, see Terpstra, “Boundaries of Brotherhood.” 35. Known to scholars as the fiesta-​cargo system, there is a large literature on the topic, much of it on Mesoamerica. The classic article positing that it is a post-​independence phenomena is Chance and Taylor, “Cofradias and Cargos.” For the Andes see Abercrombie, Pathways Of Memory and Power; Celestino and Meyers, Las Cofradías en el Perú; Charney, “A Sense of Belonging”; Platt, “The Andean Soldiers of Christ”; Rasnake, Domination and Cultural Resistance; and Varón, “Cofradias de Indios.” 36. Most scholars have dated the fiesta-​cargo system to the post-​independence era. However, Stern has suggested that scholars have imposed too formal a definition on the historical fiesta-​ cargo system. His research on Mexico indicated that late colonial people did have some sort of “prestige ladder.” Stern, The Secret History of Gender, 418. Puente Luna traces it to a much earlier point and suggests that “a ladder of civil-​ecclesiastic offices . . . was beginning to crystallize among Andean communities in the seventeenth century”; “That Which Belongs to All,” 48. 37. The relationship between land and tribute has continued to the present century, see Platt, “The Andean Experience of Bolivian Liberalism.” 38. These figures come from the town of Pocoata, 1754, AGNA 13.18.9.2 and are closely analyzed in Penry, “Transformations in Indigenous Authority.” “Wife” and “husband” offices, chacha and warmi (guarmi in colonial documents) are from AGNA 9.31.7.3 “Testimony de entradas . . . de San Pedro de Buenavista,” 1797; AGNA 9.6.5.6 “Testimonio del Quaderno 8° de los Autos obrados sobre la Mita de Potosí,” fol. 44v.”; and ABNB EC #104 1772, “Testimonio del expediente formado contra el cura de Carangas.” Quispe Escobar found that women held half of the mayordomo offices and that some cofradía offices were designated for forasteros in Tapacarí, La mit’a religiosa, 155, 152. 39. AGNA 9.31.7.1  “Testimonio de entradas, gastos, y servicios del Curato de San Pedro de Buenavista,” fols. 8r–​v. Spanish original: “labar la ropa, sacudir los chuses y otros exercicios de esta naturaleza.” Quispe Escobar, La mit’a religiosa, 160. Providing poor relief was a principal aim of Iberian cofradías, see Flynn Sacred Charity. 40. For the early colonial ethnic distribution across highlands and valleys see the map “Distribución étnica en Charcas (c. 1540) in Platt, Bouysse-​Cassagne, and Harris, Qaraqara-​Charka, 272. 41. ABNB EC 1772 #120, fols. 56v–​57r. Spanish original: “no ser puramente voluntarias aquellas oblegaciones, sino resultantes de un contrato, o quassi con que . . . se obligaron assí, y assus posteros los yndios que aseptaron aquellas tierras. . . . gozan de los privilegios y repartimiento de tierras ordenados por las Leyes, para los originarios. . . . se les duplica este beneficio.” 42. See AGNA 9.6.5.6  “Testimonio del Quaderno 8o de los Autos obrados sobre la Mita de Potosí,” for testimony on the relationship between serving the saints and land claims. For



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linking cofradía office to land claims in Tapacarí, see Quispe Escobar La mit’a religiosa, 213–​219. 43. ABNB EC 1772 # 120, fol. 1r-​v. 44. The classic account of institutionalized hospitality comes from Murra, “An Aymara Kingdom.” 45. Rubin, “Corpus Christi,” 19. 46. The documentary appendix in Platt, “The Andean Soldiers of Christ” contains much information on Corpus Christi and other festivals and cofradias in the vally town of San Marcos de Miraflores for the late eighteenth century, including that dances, fireworks, and arches had recently been prohibited. For a description of Corpus in late colonial Cuzco, see Cahill, “Popular Religion and Appropriation.” 47. Recharging the sacred quality of crosses or images is done in contemporary Bolivia. In 1995 I attended a Cruz de Mayo festival in Pocoata, where I witnessed no less than thirty-​five elaborately decorated crosses carried into town. The crosses were decorated for the harvest season with strings of potatoes and corn hung over them and draped with fine weavings or expensive purchased shawls. Thanks to anthropologist Krista van Vleet who allowed me to accompany her briefly in her fieldwork in a village near Pocoata. Either Cruz de Mayo or Corpus Christi would be a prime festival for this event. Hamlets of San Marcos de Miraflores brought images into town during Corpus in 1779, Platt, “The Andean Soldiers of Christ,” 184. 48. A  way of resolving tensions between ayllus, especially with land disputes, tinkus are still fought at major festivals in Santa Bárbara de Culta and other towns of the region today. My description is drawn in part from a tinku I witnessed between the towns of Pocoata and Macha. For contemporary tinkus in this region see Abercrombie, Pathways of Memory and Power; Platt, “Mirrors and Maize.” ARC Corr: Causes Criminales; Provincias; Leg. 84 “Criminales contra Faustino Guaguamanani sobre la muerte que se dio en la estancia de Biluyo del Pueblo de Langui, a Sebastiana Lazo muchacha, haviendo hido a ver las Pedradas, que se tiravan los Yndios, aquel día de Carnestolendas en concurso.” 49. ABNB EC 1758 #136, fol. 29v.; fols. 19r–​23. 50. ABNB EC 1758 #136, fol. 19v. 51. ABNB EC 1758 #136 fol. 3v–​4r. Spanish original:  “en altas y mui alteradas voces que no tienen ellos que haser fiesta alguna por que Dios solamente estava en el cielo y que en la Yglecia, no havía mas que unos Santos de Palo y que aun el Señor que el les decía que hera Señor Sacramentado, no hera Señor, sino un pedaso de Vidro, con la hostia que havía hecho el Sacristan.” 52. ABNB EC 1758 #136, fols. 19r–​23; fols. 29–​33. 53. AGNA 9.31.7.1  “Testimonio de entradas, gastos, y servicios del Curato de San Pedro de Buenavista”; fol.4v. 54. ABNB EC 1758 #136, fols. 39–​44; fols. 33v–​39; fols. 2r–​5r. 55. The “Catecismo Mayor, para los que son mas capaces” after asking and confirming that “the sun, the moon, the stars” are not God, but his creations, clarifies that saints’ images are not to be adored; they are merely representations. Torres Rubio, Arte de la Lengua Aymara. 56. A real cédula regarding priestly charges was issued March 24, 1754. For reaction see ABNB EC 1760 #75, “Autos seguidos por los Curas de Indios de este Arzobispado . . . sobre al supresión de la Real Cédula que manda que los indios no paguen ovenciones.” 57. ABNB EC 1758 #136, fols. 1v–​5v. Spanish original: “disen . . . que dicha Zédula, la ha expedido su Magestad conosiendo que las Tierras son suyas, y que su animo es por esto librarlos de toda pención, que por aora quita la que tienen en orden a sus curas y que despues quitaran ellos la que tienen de los tributos . . . . ia oie en sus Lavios que llegaran a conseguir con el tiempo una perpetua Libertad y sacudimiento de toda sugeción.” 58. ABNB EC 1758 #136, fols. 39–​44r. 59. ABNB EC 1758 #136, fols. 31v–​32r. Chuquisaca was the indigenous name for La Plata (today Sucre, Bolivia), the seat of the Audiencia of Charcas. Spanish original:  “que bió a Estevan García en habitos de Religioso Francisco y que es público y notorio que el otro hermano Lorenso García, también andaba con el dicho traje de Religioso del mismo orden y que desde Chuquisaca vinieron asi, y andubieron todo lo mas de la Provincia, combocan los Yndios y diciendo les venían á libertarlos de la opreción en que estaban que asi lo mandaba el Rey y la Real Audiencia les havia dicho se vistieran de Religiosos para que todos los creyeran; y que





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al que no quisiese seguir los lo amarrasen; y que embiasen preso a Chuquisaca porque no querían obedecer lo mandado que es público y notorio que de este modo se andubieron por todas las estancia combocandolos.” Meetings like this were not unprecedented. Early seventeenth-​century priest Pérez Bocanegra claimed that Andeans were “holding meetings [juntas]on feast days, especially the patronal feasts of pueblos and cofradias, to discuss Christian doctrine and to comment on sermons they had heard.” Durston, Pastoral Quechua, 285. 60. ABNB EC 1758 #136, fols. 39–​44. 61. ABNB EC 1758 #136, 43v. Spanish original: “abrir cualesquiera cartas que llega a sus manos, ya sean para el Corregidor o para su Cura, como lo hizo con una carta que bino de Chuquisaca, para su Corregidor.” 62. ABNB EC 1758 #159, “Representación de Don Manuel de Góngora, cura de la doctrina de Corquemarca, para que se le facilitar todos los auxilios precisos a la pacificación a aquella doctrina,” fol. 10v; ABNB EC 1758 4 Adiciones, fol. 5r; ABNB EC 1758 7 Adiciones, “Autos formados ante la Audiencia de Charcas, en virtud del recurso que interpuso el cura de la doctrina de Curaguara de Pacajes, Dr. Fernando Justo de Betancur y Bergara.” 63. ABNB EC 1758 #164, fols. 17r–​v. 64. Eire, From Madrid to Purgatory, 109; 105–​113. 65. ABNB EC 1758 #159, fol. 5r–​v. 66. ABNB EC 1758 #136, fols. 15r–​16r. ABNB EC 1758 #164, fol.15r. Spanish original: “emos contribuido y contribuiemos los reales tributos y serbisios de la Real mita y demás cargos y serbisios aque estamos obligados a haser en serbisios de su real Magestad.” 67. ABNB EC #164, fol. 27r–​v. Spanish original: “visto que no le dio el gusto de darlas.” ABNB EC 1758 #136, fols. 44v–​49v. Spanish original: “y si el cura no se arreglase a lo que mandaba el rei, lo capitularian.” The request to remove the priest was also put in a formal written petition signed by a dozen men from Totora. ABNB EC 1758 #164, fol. 21r–​v. 68. For the early colonial record see Arriaga, The Extirpation of Idolatry in Peru, 41–​46; the archaeological evidence for Inca practices, see Millaire, “The Sacred Character of Ruins,” 54; for contemporary accounts of similar practices see Abercrombie, Pathways of Memory and Power, ­chapter 8; Gose, “Sacrifice and the Commodity Form,” 299; Rasnake, Domination and Cultural Resistance, 226–​227. 69. The classic work on Taki (or Taqui) Onqoy is Stern, Peru’s Indian Peoples. For a critique of how historians have dealt with this case, see Mumford, “The Taki Onqoy and the Andean Nation.” 70. ABNB EC 1758 #136, fols. 44v–​49v; fols. 26v–​28v. 71. ABNB EC 1758 #164, fols. 15–​16. Spanish original:  “un pobre español que está en dicho nuestro aillo.” 72. One Spanish witness testified that he knew Pedro García Chino Apasa because he had seen him many times in Pacajes, where he wrote petitions for Andeans. ABNB EC 1758 #4 Ad., fol. 5. 73. See the collection edited by Saignes and Salazar-​Soler, Borrachera y Memoria. 74. ABNB EC 1758 #136, fols. 39–​44r. The seancelike quality of the gathering is very much like that reported by Platt in late twentieth-​century Chayanta province; see Platt, “The Sound of Light.” Also see Véricourt, Rituels et Croyances Chamaniques. 75. In addition to Totora and Corque (also known as Corquemarca), the nearby Carangas province towns of Choquecota and Curaguara had similar problems between comuneros and priests that seem to have been influenced by Totora, ABNB EC 1758 #125, “Representación de Juan Bautista y Juan Ramírez, indios, contra su cura por asotes que les hiso dar en plasa pública”; ABNB EC 1758 #117, “Denuncia de Salvador Fernández, principal del pueblo de Choquecota, en representación del común de indios, contra su cura don Dionisio Arrazabal”; ABNB EC 1758 # 7 Adiciones. These problems were also widespread in the archbishopric of Lima, where complaints were frequently brought in the name of the común by the alcalde ordinario of the cabildo. See for example AAL 1754 Capítulos Leg. 31; Exp. II “Santa, autos seguidos por el alcalde, don Pascual Rueda, del pueblo de Lacramarca, en representación del común de los indios.” Many times titles given by colonial bureaucrats or added by later archivists downplay the role of alcaldes. On how the record obscures the role of cabildo members see Puente Luna, “That Which Belongs to All,” 31.



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76. ABAS PAR 1757 # 5073  “Provición Real para que Vuestro Corregidor de la Provincia de Carangas guarde” fols.8v–​9r. Spanish original: “encontró un ramada cubierta de luto, y en ella un altar en que tenían puesto un Santo Cristo y una ymajen de Nuestra Señora de Dolores, y en cada canto una limeta y un guebo cuio fin no save, y que en dicha ramada estava un Yndio llamado Clemente Morales el que estaba en su traxe natural solo si cubierto de su manta . . . .por medio de aquellas seremonias avían de saver si en un viaje que se les ofresía abían de tener buenos o malos susesos y que avindose echo mortisino en el suelo tendido despuso de un rato hiso que recordaba y empeso el dicho Clemente Morales a haser pronosticos. . . . despresiado su aviso . . . que los demás sacrificaron coca y chicha ynsensandolo con ynseinsio.” An indigenous woman accused of idolatry in Tapacarí in the 1790s claimed to cure people in the name of the Virgen de los Dolores, see Quispe Escobar, La mit’a religiosa, 141–​142. 77. ABAS PAR 1757 # 5073, fol. 9r–​v. Spanish original:  “recojió la sangre para sacrificarla a los serros, con el Corazón y bofeo . . . por la mañana hiso un carnero de la tierra de vivo y vistiéndolo de lana de colores le puso una banderilla y los llevo al serro a sacrificarlo.” 78. ABNB EC 1758 #159, fol.5r. Spanish original: “los yndios por sacerdote fingido celebrandoles a muchos de ellos el sacrificio de la misa.” 79. ACLP, tomo 40, fs. 149–​154. “Encuesta sobre curaciones mágicas, Pelechuco, 1747,” transcribed by Thierry Saignes. 80. This is a major theme in Abercrombie’s treatment of contemporary Culta; see Abercrombie, Pathways of Memory and Power. On sacrifice see Valeri, Kingship and Sacrifice,  62–​83. 81. Lupa’s appointment to Pocoata is in AGNA 9.30.1.6 (Exp. 7) Hereña to the Audiencia July 29, 1772. There is some suggestion that one ayllu of Pocoata directly or indirectly invited him to become cacique; see ABNB EC 1777 # Adiciones 23, “Recurso a nombre de don Florencio Lupa, cacique del pueblo de Moscarí en los autos que contra el susodicho se ha formado por usurpación de tributos.” 82. For the Carasi testimony, ABN EC 1772 #120. For complaints over rollos, see ABNB TI 1779 #195. 83. ABNB TI 1779 #195, fols. 34v–​36r. Spanish original: “diziendo que estos Naturales estaban por conquistar y que necesitaban agun rigor para sujetarlos.” For how comuneros responded to rollos, see ABNB SGI 1781 #25, “Autos seguidos sobre el tumulto acaecido en el pueblo de Calcha.” 84. ABNB TI 1779 #195, fols. 5r–​6v. 85. Those activities were specifically prohibited, see Rodriguez Delgado, Constituciones synodales, 110–​111. Similar activities occurred in Spain. In sixteenth-​century Spain processional crosses “were used to conjure locusts and  .  .  .  to dip in streams or the ocean for rain.” Christian, Local Religion, 184. Compare Cruz de Mayo with this sixteenth-​century description of a festival in Spain. The procession was “accompanied by many clergy, crosses, pennants, and musicians, . . . many dancers come . . . Bulls are run, the best ones available.” Christian, Local Religion, 113. But also compare to Cobo’s 1653 description of Inca practices, “[In] the sixth month, which corresponds to May. . . the maize was harvested and stored with a certain festival called Aymoray. They celebrated it by bringing the maize from the chacaras and fields to their houses, all the while dancing with certain songs in which they asked that the maize last a long time and not run out before the next harvest. . . . They made a sacrifice to the Sun of a large number of sheep [llamas]. . . Cobo, Inca Religion, 139–​141. 86. ABNB EC 1776 #57, “Autos de capítulos puestos por las comunidades del partido de Pocoata al cacique Dn. Florencio Lupa,” fols. 57r–​58r. Spanish original: “nunca pagaba los tributos los alféreses y . . . . Aora a cobrado a rigor de amenasos de la carsel hecho dar.” 87. Hundreds of pages in archives in Bolivia, Argentina and Spain document Lupa’s vast activities. Lupa authored extensive complaints against priests for comuneros across the province. See, for example, ABNB EC 1772 #120, fols. 53v–​54r. 88. The Audiencia of Charcas granted Lupa specific permission to petition directly to the Council of Indies in Spain, AGI Charcas 514, “Respuesta del Señor Fiscal de 30 de Julio de 1777,” fol.2. Lupa was mentioned by name in the royal order for the synod meeting, Cédula Real de Aranjuez April 10, 1769 in Argandoña Pastén, Constituciones Sinodales. 89. See Mills, “The Naturalization of Andean Christianities,” and Greer and Mills, “A Catholic Atlantic,” 11.





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Chapter 6 1. On regalism under the Bourbons, see Paquette, Enlightenment, Governance, and Reform, especially ­chapter 2, and Kuethe and Andrien, The Spanish Atlantic World, 7–​8; 261. For how granting of town charters worked in Spain, see Nader, Liberty in Absolutist Spain. 2. On how state visits and census reports created reality as much or more than they reflected it, see Guevara-​Gil and Salomon, “A ‘Personsal Visit.’ ” 3. Rules for how a padrón should be conducted are in ABNB EC 1777, 23 Adiciones, “Recurso a nombre de don Florencio Lupa, cacique de Moscarí.” 4. Julien, Hatunqolla, 202. 5. ABAS PAR #4976, 1711, “Deslinde de tierras en Totora.” 6. NYPL *KE 1772 “Reglamento general, y metódico de los días, y horas fixas, que se establecen, en que los conductors de à caballo, destinados à server el correo ordinario”; JCBL Peru 1827 “Manifiesto que hace el ciudano Juan de Azaldegui administrador general de correos de la República del Perú.” 7. ABNB EC 1808 #131, “Expediente seguido por José Payllo Chungara, indio principal de la doctrina de Challapata, actual maestro de postas del Tambo Hancacato [Ancacato],” fol.16. The high charges for these offices suggest that there were ways to recuperate the money, perhaps through the charges for sending mail or charges for food for travelers who passed through the tambo. 8. ABNB EC 1791 #86, “Pascuala Almendras, india orginaria de la doctrina de San Marcos de Miraflores, contra su cacique por despojo de los terrenos que él mismo le asignó como a viuda con hijos”; ABNB TI 1740 #61, “Recurso del indio tributario Andrés Choquechambi, del pueblo de Condocondo, para que se le declare reservado por su edad i pobreza.” A very similar sounding scheme was proposed 1773 by a corregidor to fund schools; there should be one or two ‘mitayos’ who would pay fifty-​two pesos each to support the town’s school. One or two comuneros should provide ink and paper for students. Perhaps the corregidor was picking up on an idea for civil offices already in place in Andean towns. ABNB TI 1774 #99, “Expediente sobre la prohibición de lengua de este Reyno y erección de escuelas para la enseñanza de los naturales.” 9. AGI Charcas 545, “Remitido con Real Orden de 9 de Abril de 1785. /​Testimonio de los Autos de Sublevación de Chaianta /​N 8 L. H/​3o de la sublevación de Chayanta”; Rappaport and Cummins, Beyond the Lettered City, 21. 10. Ramos, Death and Conversion, 188. 11. The physical conditions under which documents were kept reflected the attitudes toward them, see Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record, 154. 12. ABNB SGI 1781 #83; ABNB TI 1740 #61. Even if they could not read, most people could recognize their written name and the name of their town on their receipts, and so had a kind of “pragmatic literacy,” Justice, Writing and Rebellion, 34–​35; Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record, 236. Comuneros in some towns also received receipts for making annual confession and communion. These documents were specific written records of membership in their común, their record of payment in support of the king, and their record of completing their annual church ritual. Priests provided receipts for payments for masses, and also recorded everyone’s name in registers of baptisms, marriages, and funerals. All of life’s stages were marked by the performance of ritual and written records of such rites and preserved in town, church, or family archives. 13. Although mandated to be held on January 1, elections were generally held in conjunction with a saints’ celebration. 14. Numerous reports on elections in indigenous pueblos exist, see for example ABNB TI 1787 #34, “Elecciones de Alcaldes Yndios del partido de Paria”; TI 1788 #49, “Expediente de elecciones de indios en el Partido de Carangas”; TI 1793 # 89, “Expediente sobre confirmación de indios alcaldes de Oruro”; and to compare to Spanish elections see TI 1787 #141, “Expediente relative a la elección de alcaldes y devias empleados.” Election reports specify the principales were eligible to vote for alcaldes. There are also reports of elections for cacique, TI 1796 #72, “Expediente de elecciones de caciques interinos de Capinota hechas por el subdelegado de Arque.”



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15. How the blessing should be done is described in Argandoña Pastén, Constituciones La Plata, vol. 2:401. Cacique Florencio Lupa complained that his priest refused to bless him, yet blessed alcaldes. AGI Charcas 730 “La Real Audiencia informa . . . .” unnumbered fols. This was not uncommon complaint by caciques, see AGNA 9.31.7.1 “Ynformación producida por los Governadores de Macha”; ABNB TI 1778 #177, “Demanda de los indios del pueblo de Arabate, contra Diego Condeguallpa.” 16. This is suggested by the ages of office holders, generally the more prestigious the saint, the older the people who served as alférez. 17. ABNB TI 1777 #139, “Expediente formado en virtud de recurso de los indios de Condo, contra el cobrador de repartos,” fols. 1r–​2r. Spanish original: “abuso corruptelas y en contra de Nuestra Santa Fe Cathólica . . . hará que todos oygan el Santo Sacrificio de la Missa los Domingos y Fiestas . . . [] mandatos de su Cura.” 18. ABNB TI 1776 #24, “Autos originales seguidos de Orden de la Real Audiencia sobre varios capítulos, puestos contra el cacique Don Ambrocio de la Cruz Condori.” 19. They were sometimes referred to “principales pasados” after having held office. See ABNB SGI 1781 #193 “Expediente que contiene la convocatoria por los Yndios alsados de Chayanta a los de otros pueblos,” fol. 1r. 20. ABNB EC 1775 #165, fols. 109r–​110r. 21. Serulnikov, Subverting Colonial Authority also explores this idea. My analysis differs in that rather than categorizing the people involved in making critiques in a top-​down fashion as natural “ethnic groups” or “peasants,” I  query more precisely who put forward the criticism, what in their opinion motivated it, and what it meant in terms of local politics. Penry, “Transformations in Indigenous Authority” examines these same issues in depth. 22. Platt in “The Andean Experience of Bolivian Liberalism” has shown how this pact continued under republican governments in Bolivia. 23. ABNB EC 1775 #165, fols.81v–​82r. Spanish original: “sin molestar a los pobres Yndios de la comunidad.” 24. ABNB TI 1773 #34, “Expediente de Capítulos puesto por Don Matheo Jorge, y otros Yndios del Pueblo de Moscarí, por si y su común, contra el cacique Don Florencio Lupa,” fols. 37v–​42v; other examples of tribute as community, rather than individually based, ABNB TI 1737 #56, “Reclamo de Christobal Minchaga i otros indios del pueblo de Condocondo contra el aumento que se les quiere hacer en los tributos”; ABNB TI 1738 #52, “Los indios de Condocondo sobre el aumento de tributos por el corregidor.” 25. There is a sizeable literature on the difficult position of colonial caciques—​especially for the sixteenth century. See, for example, Saignes, “De la borrachera al retrato”; Spalding, “Resistencia y Adaptación.” 26. Platt, “Conciencia Andina” identifies San Bartolomé’s day as the date for mita dispatch. 27. Originally, adult married men were to serve mita once every seven years, but the rules were not always followed, sometimes men served with much greater frequency. See Bakewell, Miners of the Red Mountain. 28. ABNB TI 1773 #34 contains earlier complaints against Lupa, for that reason, the 1760 testimony is included. 29. In an attempt to keep mitayos entertained caciques were asked to pay for bull fights in Potosí. Gregorio Llanquipacha balked at this expense. See ABNB TI 1760 #133  “Representación de don Gregorio Llanquipacha, cacique del pueblo de Condocondo, sobre las nuevas obligaciones que se le quieren imponer a las cuales no está obligado por el carácter de cacique que inviste.” 30. Spellings in colonial documents are ‘hilancos’ and ‘arquiris,’ here I  use modern Aymara orthography. 31. Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela cited by Platt, “Conciencia Andina.” Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela identifies the type of music played as “ayarichis.” Gunnar Mendoza explains ayarichis as being “from the Quechua aya=death, and ríchij=to make to go: that which makes one go to the dead. Funereal musical wind instruments,” in Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela, Historia de la Villa Imperial de Potosí, vol.1: 96, ft.2. 32. ABNB Minas 1795, t.129 (1177), “Testimonio del informe que don Francisco de Paula Sanz, gobernador intendente de Potosí, dirigió a don Pedro Melo de Portugal, virrei,” fols. 65v–​66r.





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Spanish original: “sus cabezas y moneras cubiertas de coronas de laurel, claveles, y otros flores havía un espectaculo propio mas a la alegría y diversión que a la tristeza.” 33. ABNB Minas 1794, t.129, No.3. “Apuntamientos para el Bando y Providencias que conviene publicar en los Pueblos . . . para la expedita verificación de la nueba Mita.” 34. Aguardiente, coca, and chicha have ritual significance for Andean people. For the ritual significance of drinking alcoholic beverages in the Andes, see Saignes and Salazar-​Soler, eds. Borrachera y memoria; for coca, see Allen, The Hold Life Has. 35. ABNB TI 1773 #34, fol.44v. The path of altars is reminiscent of the ceque system of the Inca, a series of paths connecting sacred sites. For a colonial description, see Cobo, Inca Religion, and for an anthropological treatment see Bauer, The Sacred Landscape, and Zuidema, The Ceque System of Cuzco. However, “sacred paths” known more commonly as “the stations of the cross” frequently led into Iberian Peninsula towns of the same era, as well as colonial Spanish towns. 36. Cuy is a kind of guinea pig. 37. ABNB EC 1776 #57, fols. 35–​36r. Colque runa is Quechua, the Aymara is Colque jaques. Most terms relating to the mita and mining are Quechua as it was the lingua franca of Potosí. On colque runas /​jaques, see Sanchez-​Albornoz, Indios y tributos; Barragán, “Extractive Economy and Institions?” Florencio Lupa claimed that colque runa money supported the local church, testimony confirms that it was sometimes paid to the cantor, ABNB TI 1779 #195, fs. 9r–​10v. Later testimony confirms this, using the term “colque runas de musicos” because the money paid for church musicians, AGNA 9.31.7.2 “Ovencional de Micani,” fol.1v. 38. Tribute was collected at either the celebration of San Bartolomé or Santa Rosa, AGNA 9.14.8.8, “Testimonio del Quaderno 4° de los Autos obrados sobre la mita de Potosí,” fol.39r lists Santa Rosa as one of the two most expensive festivals for Pocoata in 1795. 39. ABNB TI 1773 #34, fols. 94r-​96v. Known as an ychoco, the term is related to pre-​Conquest confession. On pre-​Conquest confession see Harrison, Sin and Confession, ­chapter 2. 40. The flicking of liquor was a tinka, see AGNA 9.31.7.2, “Ovencional de Micani,” fs. 19–​24. Bertonio defines tinka as “ttinccatha:  dar papirotes con los dedos en qualquiera parte,” Bertonio, Vocabulario de la lengua Aymara. In the present-​day Andes, tinka refers to the sprinking of holy water by a priest when he blesses someone or something. 41. ABNB TI 1776 #77, “Segundo cuerpo de autos de embargo de bienes del cacique Don Florencio Lupa,” fols. 42–​43 lists Lupa’s household goods. Lupa’s other haciendas were equally elaborate. 42. AGNA 9.31.7.3, “Testimonio de entradas, gastos y servicios del Curato de San Pedro de Buenavista.” 43. The description is based in part on contemporary ethnography in Platt, “Conciencia Andina.” 44. ABNB Rück 1736 #31, “Libro del capitán mayor de la mita de Potosí,” fol.106v. 45. ABNB EC 1772 #118, “Cacicazgos Lejajo 3 Títulos de cacicazgos,” descriptions of cacique duties in 1728, fol.2r–​v; in 1753, fol.4r–​v. 46. ABNB EC 1758 #134, “Denuncia de Gregorio Llanquipacha,” for Llanquipacha’s initial report, fols.5v–​7v. For Llanquipacha’s demands to be greeted by the peeling of church bells, etc., ABNB SGI 1781 #83, fols. 22r–​22v.; his extravagant clothes, ABNB EC 1774 #137, “Testimonios de autos criminales seguidos contra las personas de Damaso Yana . . . Ignacio Rodulfo Choque, etca.,” fol.7v.; his silver tack was listed among goods that his wife claimed were stolen the night of the murders, ABNB SGI 1781 #83, fol.95r. Gold toothpicks were taken that night, too. 47. ABNB EC 1758 #134, fs.5v–​7v. Spanish original:  “es Costumbre de que todos los Yndios tributarios se ande juntar, como de facto se juntaron según el establecimiento; y haviendo llamado por sus nombres mediante el Thenor del Padrón en el que están numerados, y haviendo empesado por sus nombres, y como fue, y estar primeramente Nicolas Tijulla este por cabesa quien de que oio su nombre selevantó con una furia y en altas boses respondió con grande osadia, oponien[6v]dose contra el real presepto siendo Yndio originario y desde el día que anumero pagava quatro pesos, y quatro reales y medio, y aora averse resistido en que no devía pagar por tersio los dichos pesos, sinos solos tres pesos y quatro rreales, y visto a este los mas de los Yndios se resistieron a una vos.” 48. For an overview of inspection tours, see Guevara Gil & Salomon, “A Personal Visit.”



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49. ABNB EC 1758 #134, fols.12v–​13v; fols. 16r–​17v. Spanish original: “dijeron que sabían muy bien que había dicha cédula por que les dijeron en la Villa de Potosi, Oruro, y ciudad de la Plata que se había publicado” “segun espresaban los demás Yndios no debía pagar su marido mas de los tres pesos quatro reales” 50. ABNB EC 1758 #134 fols. 5v–​7v. Spanish original: “an hechado boses publicamente a todos los Yndios de la dicha nuestra parsialidad y aillos en que tenían conseguido zédula de Su Magestad, en la que ordena y manda que tengan rebaja de tributos, . . . ni aun notisia emos tendido, y discubrimos que los enumpciados reboltosos y malebolos Yndios baliendose de su abiesa inclinasión an hechado semejante boses.” 51. ABNB EC 1758 #134, fols. 14r–​15r.; fols. 15r–​16r. 52. ABNB EC 1758 #134, fols. 12v–​34v. 53. As alcalde Choque had many conflicts with Llanquipacha, see ABNB TI 1755 #85, “Reclamo hecho por Pascual Gonzales [Choque], indio principal del pueblo de Condocondo.” 54. ABNB EC 1758 #134, fols.35v–​36r. 55. ABNB EC 1758 #134, fols. 40r–​41r. Spanish original: “estaban unos Yndios esparcidos unos en dicha quebrada y otros en un morro que se halla enfrente de las caserías muy inmediates y que según discurria querían haser alguna nobedad” “les mandé a unos mosos Españoles que llebé en mi compania a que fuesen y reconosiesen dichos Yndios y los trajesen presos para aberiquar que hasían o que esperaban en dicha quebrada y morro.” 56. ABNB EC 1758 #134, fols. 41r–​42v. Spanish original: “bajaban . . . Yndios a jondasos tras de unos mosos que se embiaron a registrar dichos Yndios . . . hasta el canto del Pueblo hasiendo mucho tumulto de algasara y voses que daban que causaba mucho terror.” 57. Diccionario de la Lengua Española, Edición del Tricentenario. ABNB EC 1758 #134, fols. 41r–​42v. 58. On the ideological work of language see Justice, Writing and Rebellion, 206. 59. ABNB TI 1760 #133. 60. ABNB EC 1775 #165, fols.54–​65 contain the Colque genealogy. 61. The American Heritage Larousse Spanish Dictionary, 1968. Compare definitions from the 1992 ed. of the Diccionario de la Lengua Española: “1. mestizo de sangre europea e indígena. 2. Amér. Dícese del indio que adopta los usos occidentales.” 62. ABNB EC 1758 #134. fols.41r–​49v. 63. ABNB EC 1758 #134, fol.42r. 64. ABNB EC 1758 #134, fols.74v–​8rv. 65. ABNB EC 1758 #134, fol.49v. Spanish original: “que los más de ellos eran Yndios de dicho Pueblo de Cacachaca y los de sus estancias y que oió en la Plasa a las preguntas [entre renglones= que hise] que que Yndios eran aquellos y por qué hasían aquel tumulto dijeron las Yndias y algunos Yndios que estubieron allí que eran de Pocoata en la jurisdicción de Charcas y que por ser este Alféres en el anexo de Campaya del curato de Pocoata lo havían benido alibrar.” 66. This was not the only time that Pocoatans gathered to “free” people. In 1780, at the beginning of rebellion in Chayanta, a group from both Charcas (including Pocoatans) and Paria reportedly demanded the release of the Condo prisoners still jailed from the 1774 murder of the Llanquipachas. 67. Sometime earlier the Cacachacans had taken Santos Pacheco’s vara, threatening him and then arresting him and bringing him to Condocondo. ABNB EC 1758 #134, fol.58v. Removing an office holder’s staff was treated as a very serious offense, even an act of treason. 68. ABNB EC 1758 #134, fols. 42v., 43v., 45r. Spanish original: “maten a esos ladrones y a los cholos de Condocondo.” 69. The 1735 census of Condocondo confirms the death of thirty-​four-​year-​old Ignacio Felix Llanquipacha who left behind a widow and four children, including the twelve-​year-​old Gregorio Felix and six-​year-​old Andrés Felix. AGNA 13.18.5.1, “Padrón original de los Yndios tributaries, casados, viudos, y solteras . . . de San Pedro de Condocondo.” After a series of interims, Gregorio became cacique. 70. ABNB TI 1757 #14, “Autos formados por don Gregorio Llanquipacha, hacienda dejación del cargo de Gobernador y cacique.” Spanish original:  “an tenido inquieto aquel mi pueblo . . . haviéndolos venir a continuos recursos a esta Real Audienica siendo entre ellos el





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principal . . . Ambrosio Copacondo quien ayudandole a su perberso e ynquieto natural el saver leer y escribir.” Two petitions written by Copacondo in the Cacachaca case attest to his literacy. Internal evidence indicates that they were written by someone whose first language was not Spanish, and that the writer was well versed in sixteenth and early seventeenth-​century documents. 71. ABNB TI 1772 #115, “Ambrosio Estanislao Copacondo, con Gregorio Llanquipacha, por usurpación de tributos,” fols.1–​3r. Spanish original: “Digo que me hallo preso . . . con priciones como un ladron fasineroso y sin mas motibo que el tirano y traydor de los reales avers de su Magestad governador Ynterino deste dicho Pueblo Don Gregorio Llanquepacha.” 72. ABNB TI 1747 #12, “Obrados i Real Provisión sobre reclamo de Don Gregorio Llanquipacha, para que se le ampare en la poseción de cacique principal.” 73. Priest Diego Mariño referred to Llanquipacha as a sambo. AGI Charcas 528, letter of Diego Mariño, February 12, 1778. 74. ABNB EC 1758 #134, fol. 92r. Aymara does not distinguish between Spanish “o” and “u” or “e” and “i.” Copacondo’s first language was Aymara, leading him to substitute these letters for each other, what linguists call language interference. Spanish original:  “el fraudar” “traydor . . . de Nuestro Rey” “el desir que a de tomar por benganza” “a confundir la reboloción practicada.” 75. This interpretive model is most closely associated with E. P. Thompson’s work on eighteenth-​ century England but has also been applied to the Andes. See Thompson, “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd”; for the Andes, see Larson, Exploitation and Moral Economy; Stavig, “Ethnic Conflict, Moral Economy”; and Serulnikov, Subverting Colonial Authority, 28, 90, 103, 139, 189.

Chapter 7 1. ABNB EC Adiciones 1800 #27, “Varios indios principales ante la Audiencia de Charcas, soliciten testimonies de Real Cédula.” Vicente Morachimo, an Andean noble, traveled to Madrid and sought enforcement of the 1697 order. On Morachimo see Dueñas, Indians and Mestizos,  62–​65. 2. Some attackers claimed to have drunk Gregorio’s blood, ABNB SGI 1781 #83, fol.328v. Julián Nina, the alcalde ordinario in 1774, testified that Blasa Augustina told him that she had drunk her cacique’s blood as well as stabbing him with her wichuña. Officials were particularly horrified by women’s participation in the murders. The prosecuting attorney wrote that Maria Lenis, by wounding Llanquipacha with her wichuña, had “dishonored the piety of her sex, and was worthy of the most severe punishment,” fol.353v. 3. ABNB EC 1774 # 137, fol.1r–​v. Spanish original: “passo a noticiando como todo el Ayllo de Yndios de Sullcayana han dentrado armados todos y acossa de la media noche, en donde lo habían muerto rigorosamente a mis thios a Don Gregorio, y a Don Andrés Llanquepacha, por manda de Ygnacio Choque, Damaso Yana, y dise el Alcalde de Cabelli que mandó el Alcalde de Sullcayana y le dijo en palabras que él mandó que binieran.” 4. Sullcayana was part of the anansaya half of Condo, the others were Callapa (the Llanquipachas’ ayllu), Upper Cahualli, Lower Cahualli, and Collana. Urinsaya of Condo had only two ayllus, Yanaque and Changara. At the time of the murders, Condo’s population, spread across three annex towns (Culta, Cacachaca and Cahuayo) and many small hamlets, was approximately 3,400. 5. ABNB SGI 1781 #83, fols.4 r–​5r. 6. ABNB SGI 1781 #83, fols.101r–​103r. In my translation I have added first person pronouns in brackets. Spanish original: “se combocaron todos y se le presentaron a fin de despedirse ô suplicarle con las mas tiernas demostraciones aque no se ausentarse; porque el dolor que les ocacionaba su partida . . . aun exedia al amor que le havían professado pues en el dilatado espacio de más de treinta años, . . . defendiéndolos delas violencias, y bejaciones con que los molestaban sus caciques . . . Pero biendo que era inescuable la partida lo acompañaron llenos de llanto y tristessa hasta el Pueblo de Guari donde fue haser noche el expresado Cura, y haviendose estos regresado a su pueblo, hasiendo memoria que las siniestras acusaciones del Casique Don Gregorio y su hermano Don Andrés contra su cura.”



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7. ABNB SGI 1781 #83, fol.101v. In my translation I added first-​person pronouns in brackets. Spanish original:  “que impedidos del mismo dolor que los tenía casi pribados pasaron sin reserba de mujeres y niños a la casa de los referidos Llanquipachas sin otro fin que inquirer el motibo que havían tenido para desterrar asu cura.” Fols. 101v–​102r., “a cuia propuesta sin haver presedido más de lo que llevamos relacionado salieron de improbiso con espadas desnudas en las manos y acometiron a toda la gente maltratando aquantos lo encontrarían hasta que hechando mano de un trabuco mataron a un Yndio tributario.” 8. ABNB SGI 1781 #83, fol.102r. Spanish original: “con palos, piedras, y otras armas” “sin que se pudiesa saver quienes eran los autores de este hecho así por la confución.” 9. Damián Lenis was mita captain in 1774. He was arrested as an accomplice in the murders but freed on bail when he proved that he had been in Potosí at the time. The Llanquipacha widows still held Lenis responsible for the murders. In 1776 he was accused of inciting rebellion, by circulating letters claiming that the king had reduced tribute. Lenis’s defense was that he was illiterate. Spanish officials did not believe this because Lenis was a church cantor. He confessed that he could read but only things that were related to church. See ABNB TI 1777 #139 “Expediente formado en virtud de recurso de los indios de Condocondo, contra el cobrador de repartos del Corregidor de la Provincia de Paria don Narciso de San Juan y Mancilla” and ABNB TI 1779 #135, “Expediente de la demanda de Damián Lenis, Ignacio Choque y otros contra Gregorio y Andrés Llanquipacha.” Damian’s daughter, Maria, was accused of stabbing Gregorio in the ear. 10. From the time of Viceroy Toledo, each town that served mita was assigned to one of fourteen parishes in Potosí. Suero served as priest of the Potosí parishes of San Bernardo (parish of Condo, Challapata and Quillacas) and San Lorenzo (parish of Carangas province towns) and was a strong critic of the mita, see Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela, Historia de la Villa Imperial, vol. 2: 254. 11. ABNB SGI 1781 #83, fol. 15r, Spanish original: “pasamos aparticiparle el caso sucedido: y es Señor que acaba de haber un alzamiento en el Pueblo de Condocondo motibado por el Governador Don Gregorio Llanquepacha, que con motibo de la salida de el cura el Dr. Espejo al pueblo de Toledo.” Viceroy Toledo prohibited Indian ownership of weapons, see Toledo, Disposiciones Gubernativas vol. 2: 256. Llanquipacha’s permission to carry weapons is in ABNB TI 1748 #109, “Solicitud del cacique Gregorio Llanquipacha para usar armas.” Dr.  Suero’s letter is ABNB SGI 1781 #83, fols.18r–​19r. 12. ABNB SGI 1781 #83, fols.74r–​75r. 13. ABNB SGI 1781 #83, fols. 8r–​9r. Spanish original: “que como havía permitido que un Cura tan bueno saliese.” 14. ABNB SGI 1781 #83, October 27, 1774, fols.8r–​9r. In my translation I  have added first-​ person pronouns in brackets. Spanish original:  “es delito tomar la Justicia por su mano, y reprehenden à su Casique o Governador à bien conose deve obedeser si es bueno, pero no si es malo y obras injusticias, como lo hacia el difunto, cuia doctrina se la enseñó Ygnacio Rudolfo Choque, y Damián Lenis, también save que si el común le manda una cosa, y su governador otra, deve obedeser primero aquel.” 15. ABNB SGI 1781 #83 fols.109v-​110v. Spanish original: “que nos haréis bolver a nuestro cura” “fuera Yndios.” In my translation I have added first person pronouns in brackets: “Que será culpa perder al respeto al Governador y que conose es delito el matarlo. Que si el común le mandase una cosa, y el Governador otra obedesería al común.” 16. ABNB SGI #83, fols.110v–​11v. Spanish original:  “me beneis [venís] amatar.” In my translation I have added first person pronouns in brackets: “Que será culpa perder al respeto al Governador y que conose es delito el matarlo. Que si el común le mandase una cosa, y el Governador otra obedesería al común.” 17. ABNB SGI 1781 #83, El Común de Indios de Condocondo to the Audiencia, November 2, 1774, fols. 22r–​23v. For a full transcription of the document, see Penry, “Transformations in Indigenous Authority,” 413–​419. In referring to themselves as “miserables” the authors of the petition were claiming a particular legal status, see Cunill, “El indio miserable.” 18. The questioning of the Condos in prison and the fiscal’s announcement that Gemio had written the document, are noted in the margin of the Condo plea, ABNB SGI #1781 #83, fols.





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21r–​23v. In my translation I have added first person pronouns in brackets: “que su Madre le avisó que Ygnacio Rudulfo Choque mandó hacer que no save con quien, ni quien lo escrivió.” 19. ABNB SGI 1781 #83, fol. 24r–​v. 20. ABNB SGI 1781 #83, fols. 34r–​35r. 21. AGI Charcas 528, untitled package of materials from 1774–​1780 related to Llanquipacha usurpation of tribute. 22. ABNB TI 1779 #135, “Expediente de la demanda de Damián Lenis, Ignacio Choque y otros contra Gregorio y Andrés Llanquipacha por robo de crecida porción de los reales tributos,” fols. 1–​3v. Spanish original:  “aquí está toda su comunidad apedirte te lebantes, y passes a Guari a rebolber a nuestro Cura, y si por odio o malos fines no lo quieres buenamente hasser te llebaremos amarrado.” 23. ABNB TI 1779 #135, fs. 1-​3v. Spanish original:  “Lo qual executado recogiendo las armas que quitaron a dicho cassiquez passaron a la Ciudad de la Plata a presentarze con ellas en la Real Audiencia exponiéndole todo lo acaecido; y después que su Alteza declaró por vien hechas las Muertes y absolbió a los Yndios sucedió haben Ymformado el Coregidor de la Provincia ala Real Audiencia con una relación siniestra que le hisieron las Viudas de los Governadores que se reducir a imputar a los Yndios que por robarles assus Maridos su caudal havían executandolos Muertes que es falsíssimo; y sin mas documento ni comprobante que este prendieron treinta y tantos Naturales, y el Corregidor despachó soldados al Pueblo de Condo contra todos los Yndios como si hubiesse sido delito delessa Magestad, o traición ante Soberrano.” 24. ABNB TI 1779 #135, fols. 7r–​8r. In my translation I have added first person pronouns in brackets. Spanish original: “que él fue el que mandó hacer dicha representación . . . y que la firma que está al pie de ella y dise Ygnacio Rodulfo Choque es suia propia y la reconose por tal.” Fols.10v–​11r., “que estando el declarante en su casa llegó a ella un Cavallero, a quien se le quejó de los padesmientos de los Yndios con los Llanquipachas y que como podría hacer recurso contra ellos al Señor Virrey pues no tenía persona que le hiciese un Memorial a este fin; y que entonces el dicho Cavallero le formó el Memorial que tiene entregada: que no se acuerda como se llamava este sujeto.” Mariño’s petition is in AGI Charcas 528, untitled package of materials from 1774–​1780 related to Llanquipacha usurpation. 25. Llanquipacha was able to steal tribute money for many years because he had allies within the state bureaucracy. Condo comuneros eventually addressed their complaints to the viceroy in Lima because of corruption they believed existed in the Audiencia of Charcas. 26. Condo comuneros never used the term Asanaques to characterize themselves, but Gregorio Llanquipacha embraced the idea of being hereditary ruler of an ancient Andean kingdom and sometimes described himself as cacique of Asanaques. 27. In the eighteenth century there was an explosion in the numbers of people with legitimate hereditary claim to cacicazgos. The Spanish resolved this by allowing all those with hereditary claim to apply. The corregidor supplied the names of the top three candidates to the Audiencia, and a cacique was chosen from that list. Gregorio Llanquipacha went through this process in 1747 when he became cacique. ABNB TI 1747 #12, “Obrados i Real Provisión sobre reclamo de Don Gregorio Llanquipacha para que se le ampare en la poseción de cacique principal i governador del pueblo de Condocondo,” fol.5r. 28. ABNB SGI 1781 #83, fol.95r. Also see Bouysse-​Cassagne and Saignes, “El Cholo.” 29. ABNB SGI 1781 #83, fols. 51v–​53r. Spanish original: “se deve respetar y temer al Governador, pero no al común, o rey común, aunque las gentes de la Comunidad dizen que les deven respetar, temer, y obedeser” “que los Aillos Juntos la constituien.” 30. ABNB SGI 1781 #83, fols. 51v–​53r. In my translation I  added first-​person pronouns in brackets, except in the case of Michaela’s reported speech of her husband, which was recorded in the first person. Spanish original: “que quando fueron los Yndios a su casa y entre ellos el Gregorio Yana y Xavier Therrasas, expresando havían de reñir al Governador y su hermano por que eran causa de que perdiesen a su cura, les dijo su marido, [‘]vosotros sois gente de la communidad, podéis hacer lo que quiciereis [quisierais], que yo no me meto en cosa alguna.[‘]”



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31. The other case is from the La Paz region in 1771, where people were quoted as saying “muerto el corregidor ya [no] había juez para ellos sino que el REY era el común por quien mandaban ellos.” This case is analyzed by Thomson, We Alone Will Rule, 151. 32. ABNB TI 1776 #24, “Autos originales seguidos de orden de la Real Audiencia de la Plata sobre varios capítulos puestos contra el cacique Don Ambrocio de la Cruz Condori por la comunidad de sus Yndios,” fols. 2–​3v. Spanish original:  “por ser lexitimo acrehedor como decendiente lexitimo de Don Fernando y Don Juan Martínes Callapa, quienes fueron los primeros cassiques de dicho pueblo de Chayapata y mas del de Condocondo.” 33. ABNB TI 1776 #24, fol. 11. Spanish original: “que el rey común puede quitar y poner cassique, y que si mi parte no suelta el Basston expontaniamente sele quitarían a jondassos.” 34. Spaniards believed that the Condo comuneros who killed the Llanquipachas were allied with Challapata. ABNB SGI 1781 #83, fol.139r–​v. 35. In personal correspondence historian Richard Kagan pointed out similarities between this quotation and traditional notions of civitas, an important theme in Kagan and Marías, Urban Images of the Hispanic World. 36. ABNB SGI 1781 #83, fol.59r–​v. The accused maintained close ties to the community. Among Choque’s correspondence are letters to past and present alcaldes of Urinsaya and to alcaldes from Condo’s annex town of Cacachaca. 37. ABNB SGI 1781 #83 fol.165. Spanish original: “comprando para todos nosotros doze rreales de chicha nos enseñó que de ningún modo dixessimos era él principal autor; traiéndome forsadamente y con amenasas a esta ciudad.” 38. ABN SGI 1781 #83 fol.196v. Spanish original: “el común havían perpetrado las muertes, sin designar personas para que no les hiciesen ningún daño, pues eran Yndios del Rey.” 39. ABNB SGI 1781 #83, fols. 282v–​283v. Spanish original: “Perdonar a estos, sería abrir campo a que otros autorisados del exemplar, y constituiendo un poderio fantastico al común, se hiziesen en los Pueblos aborrecibles.” 40. ABNB TI 1777 #139. 41. Rosa is identified by name and gives testimony in ABNB SGI 1781 #83, fol. 433r–​v. A slightly different version of her testimony, including comparing the Indians to ants is in AGI Charcas 594 “Pral. Nº.2,” fol. 3v. The estimation that twenty-​five thousand to thirty thousand Indians were preparing to attack the city is from that same document. The estimation of forty thousand comes from ABNB Rück 1780 # 96, “Diario trunco de los sucesos desde el 17 de Febrero (domingo) hasta Octubre 16 de 1780 en Chuquisaca.” Chuquisaca is the indigenous name for La Plata. 42. ABNB Rück 1780 #96, fol. 3v. Spanish original: “por librarse de los peligros del siglo.” The fact that Lupa had daughters in a convent indicates his wealth. Women entered convents only with sizable dowries. See Burns, Colonial Habits. 43. ABNB SGI 1781 #83, fol. 418r. 44. The notation for Lupa’s petition is in AGI Charcas 736, “Charcas /​Ynventario de esta Audiencia desde 1760 a 1800 /​Lego. 632.” Spanish original: “Don Florencio Lupa cazique del Pueblo de Moscarí sobre que se le concede licencia para venir a estos Reynos.” Charles III’s correspondence regarding Lupa is in AGI Charcas 514, September 17, 1777. 45. AGI Buenos Aires 71, “Año de 1785. Número 4o. Chayanta. Duplicado. Memoria, razón de los principales cavezas del tumulto,” fs. 207–​208v. Spanish original: “hizo emborrachar a la gente en su casa y previno a los alguaziles que dormían en la zaguán de la casa del Governador no cerrasen en esa noche la Puerta que assí combenía para destrara su asalto.” 46. AGI Charcas 545 “Remitido con Real Orden de 9 de Abril de 1785. Testimonio de los Autos de Sublevación de Chaianta,” fols. 112–​113v. Spanish original:  “que si el Governador Don Florencio Lupa no reciba los reales tributos por mitad como que estaban rebajando le botarían la Plata, y harían su dever como que se hallaban animados a perder la vida en caso contrario.” 47. AGI Charcas 545 “Remitido con Real Orden de 9 de Abril de 1785”, fols. 104–​105v. Spanish original: “los 3 pesos 4 reales hera para mi y solo hera bueno para haser publicar los Aranseles de derechos parrochiales y no para rebajarles el tributo como era devido” “que no havían pagar más que los 20 rreales y aun estos los cobraría él, y pasaría a las reales caxas . . . que le tenía lastima de quitarle la vida por ser indio como él y que lo que querían todos ellos era averme tenido presente para quitarme la vida.”





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48. ABNB Rück 1780 #96, fol. 3r. Spanish original: “era verdaderamente amable, generoso con los amigos, y cortes con los estraños, pero por otra parte le hacía despreciable y vaso de contumelia el implacable odio que en el reynaba, asi los Ministros de el Señor.” 49. Comuneros adaptation of cofradía roles created “structures of feeling” that linked them to their town and their común. See Williams, Marxism and Literature, 128–​35. 50. AGI Buenos Aires 71, “Número 4° Chayanta,” fs. 38–​42. Spanish original: “los yndios que han llevado la caveza del finado Don Florencio Lupa fueron mandados, y no tienen delito, sino todo el común, que lo trajo preso.”

Chapter 8 1. AGI Charcas 596, “Testimonio de los Autos de Sublevación de Chaianta N. 10 L J Quinto de la Sublevación de Chaianta,” fol.69v. 2. The classic account of one Creole uprising in which this slogan was used is Phelan, The People and the King. 3. For the 1730s Oruro events see AGI Charcas, 363; for the Huarochirí uprising see Spalding, Huarochirí; for the 1740s rebellion of Juan Santos Atahualpa see Jones, “The Evolution of Spanish Governance”; Jones, In Service of Two Masters; Stern, “The Age of Andean Insurrection.” 4. This was the dominate theme of earlier historiography such as Fisher, The Last Inca Revolt; Hidalgo, “Amarus y Cataris,” and it continues in more recent work such as Robins, Genocide and Millennialism; Stavig, The World of Túpac Amaru; and Walker, The Tupac Amaru Rebellion. Cahill’s comments are in his review of Genocide and Millennialism, 321. 5. Argentine historian Boleslao Lewin and Peruvian historian Carlos Daniel Valcarcel are the most famous early proponents. More recently, Scarlett O’Phelan Godoy’s analyses have considered the region as a whole. 6. Peruvian nationalist considerations have shaped interpretations of Tupac Amaru and led scholars to assert differences between his cause and fight from the regions of conflict that are in contemporary Bolivia. However, most of the conflict took place within the borders of the Audiencia of Charcas. The analysis here privileges the Audiencia of Charcas, which included territory north of Lake Titicaca that was later incorporated into the nation of Peru. To test this hypothesis for areas outside of Charcas requires a bottom-​up analysis of rebellion of the type done here. 7. The viceroyalty of Rio de La Plata, with Buenos Aires as its capital, was created in 1776 and the Audiencia of Charcas was placed under its jurisdiction. Many copies of Catari’s petitions exist: see, for example, AGI Charcas 551 “Año de 1785, Número 2.” Tomás Catari has been closely studied by Andrade, La Rebelión de Tomás Katari, and Serulnikov, Subverting Colonial Authority. 8. AGI Charcas 545, “Remitido con Real Orden,” fols. 208–​211; fols. 109–​110. 9. AGI Buenos Aires 71, “Año de 1785,” fol. 205v. 10. AGI Charcas 594, “Diario de Gelly” traces these events from the perspective of a colonial bureaucrat; published in Barnadas, “Un documento sobre la revolución de Chayanta.” 11. AGI Charcas 594, “Diario de Gelly.” 12. AGI Buenos Aires 71  “Año de 1785, Número 4o.,” fols. 18v–​19; 20v–​21v. Spanish original: “ordeno y mando que el referido don Thomas Catari nombre a los Yndios que le pareciere útiles de Governadores, segundas, hilancos, y alcaldes maiores . . . quitando, deponiendo a los que le pareciere no ser combinientes.” 13. AGI Charcas 594, “N.° 2°, fols. 9v–​10v. Spanish original:  “quienes van perdonados y absueltos por la Real Audiencia de qualesquiera exceso que hubiesen cometido en la muerte de los finados Gobernadores Don Felix y Don Gregorio Llanquepacha . . . Gobernadores, Principales, y más Comunidad les pido reciban estos infelices con amor, caridad, y reciproca amistad como a hermanos nuestros.” 14. AGI Buenos Aires 71 “Año de 1785, Número 4°,” fols. 238–​239r. Spanish original: “poner otra en mi lugar . . . a la satisfacción de los yndios de la comunidad, y de lo contrario nuestros vidas no están seguras.” 15. Information from Sacaca is in AGI Buenos Aires 71 “Año de 1785 Númo. 4º.” fols. 85v–​87.



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16. AGI Buenos Aires 71 “Año de 1785, Núm.° 4°,” fols.11–​13. Spanish original: “Aora decimos que ya no le queremos para nuestro Governador, por lo que experimentamos tantos maltratamientos y travajos, sino que nos nombre otro Governador aquien la comunidad elegiere, que sea de nuestra clase. En nombre de la comunidad de Laymes, lo firmo. Yo, Diego Chico.” Catari’s letter is fol. 13. While Serulnikov also traces the legal paths followed by Tomás Catari, drawing on much of the same documentary evidence as Penry, “Transformations in Indigenous Authority,” Serulnikov interprets this as an effort at “reestablishing pre-​Hispanic polities”; see Subverting Colonial Authority, 2. 17. As Thomson points out, in the La Paz region Tupac Catari and Miguel Bastidas both “regularly issued titles for authorities at the request of community members”; see We Alone Will Rule, 226. In the Cuzco region, Tupac Amaru also named caciques and alcaldes, but O’Phelan Godoy suggests these were top-​down decisions; see Un siglo de rebeliones, 187; Walker, The Tupac Amaru Rebellion, 95. 18. AGI Buenos Aires 71 “Núm.° 4º. Chayanta,” fols. 83–​85v. 19. AGI Charcas 545 “Remitido con Real Orden,” fols. 243–​248v. Spanish original: “es peor que Catari que la letra de su esquela es de su puño.” 20. AGI Buenos Aires 71 “Año de 1785 Númo. 4º.” Yugra’s announcement for Moscarí fols. 142v–​ 3, Spanish original: “el común de este pueblo me ha elegido por su governador y cacique.” Carasi account is in AGI Charcas 545 “Remitido con Real Orden de 9 de Abril de 1785,” fols. 243–​248v. 21. AGI Charcas 545, “Remitido con Real Orden de 9 de Abril de 1785,” fols. 236–​237. Spanish original:  “La mente de la soberana Real Clemencia es que los governadores y cassiquez principales sean defensores, y protextores de los desbalidos Yndios tributarios miserables indefensos pero no se ve . . . El Portador es Antonio Alegrandro [sic] Guarachi quien va con presisa orden de recoxer todos los papeles documentos instrucciones, y más recaudos que favorescan a los Yndios tributarios pues así halla extablecido en las Reales Dispociciones. En las sitadas Cédulas se halla tanbién [sic] mandado el que los Gobernadores sean a dirección de los Yndios que componen el respectibo repartimiento e comunidad. . . . lo eligirán [sic] a la persona que sea desinteresada, y aplicada al Real Servicio, y con esto se dé quenta al Juez Competente para la confirmación de su Título.” 22. Reading and writing were taught separately, so it is possible that Martínez could read but not write. AGI Charcas 545, “Remitido con Real Orden de 9 de Abril de 1785,” fol.237r. “Resiví esta carta . . . obedesco, besé‚ y puse en mi cabeza por ser mandato superior.” In their analysis of an obedecimiento cermony in seventeenth-​century Colombia, Rappaport and Cummins point to the multiple origins and layers of meaning in this action of kissing and touching the document. Based on a translation of an Arabic term for obedience as “on my eye and on my head,” they argue for Muslim origins for this ritual of submission to law, something that would have been introduced to Spaniards during their seven-​hundred-​year presence in the Iberian peninsula. On the other hand, the kissing of the document could have a more profound message for Andean people than Spaniards. Incaic worship of wakas involved making kissing sounds, muchana in Quechua, toward the figure being worshipped. By the seventeenth century, this same word was multivocal, referring to submission both to religious or secular authority. See Rappaport and Cummins, “Between Images and Writing.” 23. ABNB SGI 1780 # 206, “Expediente que contiene las diligencias actuadas por el Corregidor de la Provincia de Porco, sobre los insultos que el cacique de Coroma Don Sebastian José Martínez experimentó de su comunidad.” 24. AGI Charcas 545 “Remitido con Real Orden de 9 de Abril de 1785,” fol. 240r. 25. For the death of Bernal see Serulnikov, Subverting Colonial Authority, 105; for Cruz Caysa’s testimony, see ABNB SGI 1781 Rück 103, “Testimonio del Expediente seguido contra José Gregorio Arroyo por complice en la sublevacion,” fols. 25v–​26r; for beating a kuraka to death see Walker, The Tupac Amaru Rebellion, 53. 26. ABNB SGI 1781 #64, “Expediente seguido contra los Yndios José Gregorio Arroyo y demás cómplices de la sublevación del Pueblo de Challapata,” fols. 13–​14; AGI Buenos Aires 71 Num.°4.° Chayanta, fols. 136–​139; 133–​134. 27. Rasnake, Domination and Cultural Resistance, 144–​146.





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28. See, for example, Phelan, The People and the King. In the mid-​eighteenth century, rebels in Paraguay also called themselves comuneros, López, The Revolt of the Comuneros. 29. Rodríguez, The Independence of Spanish America, 161. 30. AGI Charcas 545 “Remitido con Real Orden de 9 de Abril de 1785,” fols. 243v–​248v. 31. AGI Charcas 363, “Manifiesto de Oruro,” fol.11r., “con deseo de restaurar lo propia y volver a extableser esta monarquía. Le suplica a los criollos y a los caciques y a todos los naturales le den la mano para esta tan heroyca acción de restaurar lo propio y libertar la patria purgándola de la tiranía de los Guampos que nos consumen y cada día va a más nuestra ruina.” Nineteenth-​ century Creoles pointed to the indigenous population as the only possessors of natural rights in the Americas, see Pagden, Spanish Imperialism, ­chapter 5. 32. Garrett, “ ‘His Majesty’s Most Loyal Vassals.’ ” O’Phelan Godoy, Un siglo de rebeliones, 69. One of the great strengths of O’Phelan Godoy’s work is to survey the uprisings in the Andean highlands as a whole, rather than anachronistically divide the region by nineteenth-​century national borders. 33. Flores Galindo, In Search of an Inca; also see Pagden, Spanish Imperialism, ­chapter 5. 34. Walker, The Tupac Amaru Rebellion, 56. 35. Cajías, Oruro 1781, 16, 1247. 36. The most detailed treatment of the Oruro rebellion is Cajías, Oruro 1781. Also see Cornblit, Power and Violence and Robbins, Mesianismo y la rebellion indígena. 37. Cajías, Oruro 1781, 1237; AGI Charcas 601, fol. 78, Spanish original:  “Sus Hamantes hermanos Comunes”; “ponemos en esa panpa pelada a donde no ay piedra nos puede yr mal.” 38. Cornblit, Power and Violence, 154. Figures on the number who invaded Oruro vary a great deal, a mestizo witness estimated five thousand men and seven thousand women were involved in the actual invasion. Other estimates are by town and ayllu and do not seem to reach that high a figure. Nearly all were on foot, very few had firearms, their weapons were rocks, whips, knives, slings. Cajias, Oruro 1781, 772–​775. 39. AGI Charcas 601, fol. 67, Spanish original: “sus amantes hijos comunidad de Challacollo”; “los traicioneros criollos de la Villa de Oruro como avían camachicado con los soldados de Chapitones y criollos que vienen de la provincia de Cochavanba contra nosotros a hasirnos guerra por asular a todos los Pueblos . . . no ia de permetir que nos maten como los an acavado al Pueblo de Tapacari y a otros Pueblos.” 40. ABNB SGI 1781 #61, fol.14. Walker quotes a captured rebelled who believed that Tupac Amaru would be crowned in Buenos Aires, The Tupac Amaru Rebellion, 98. Sala i Vila points out that the supposed death of the king also animated rebels in 1814, Y se armó, 235–​239. 41. O’Phelan Godoy provides examples of town-​based uprisings across the eighteenth century in the region that became the nation of Peru. These were organized, led, and/​or triggered by alcaldes or other cabildo officers. She asserts, though, that it was because those towns had illegitimate caciques, thus forcing the cabildo to take a position of leadership, and that the cabildo had a limited role in towns with traditional hereditary lords. Un siglo de rebeliones, 56, 68, 74, 76, 111, 116, 171, 219, 220. On the legacy of Tupac Amaru, see Walker, Tupac Amaru Rebellion, 275–​278. 42. AGI Charcas 435, Carta No. 7° Testimonio en que constan las noticias de la Provincias sublevados tomados por el Señor Governador de Potosí, Dr. Don Jorge de Escobedo,” fols. 66v–​67v, Spanish original: “Señores Alcaldes de los tambos reales.” AGI Charcas 601, “Nº. 5 Expediente de las capitulaciones,” fol. 63. Spanish original: “Alos Prencipales del Pueblo de Toledo y alcalde mayor Don Crus Callisaya,” “peronas de onrra y onor,” “pidamos a Dios que dicho Tupa Amaru sea nuestro Monarca.” AGI Charcas 435, “Carta No. 7°,” fol. 67v. Spanish original:  “vista luego passen tambo por tambo con un proprio siguro a la villa de Potosi.” These letters like others in this chapter show language interference in spelling and syntax from Aymara. 43. ABNB SGI 1781 #139, “Expediente formado en virtud de la representación de Pasqual Choqueticlla Colqueguarachi, [Colque Guarache] hijo legítimo de don Alejo Choqueticlla, cacique governador que fue del pueblo de Hatunquillascas, Paria.” fols. 3r–​4v. Spanish original: “se abía coronado de Rey en las yndias”; “todos los casiques desta Provincia de rrama para que saliese a ella con soldados”; “Me dise Vuestra Merced ser mi superior yo no tengo superiores.”



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44. AGNA 9.30.2.5, Exp 2, fol.2 20 May 1781. Two of Tupac Catari’s letters have been translated and published in Thomson et al., The Bolivian Reader, 127–​129. 45. The idea of analyzing the letters as intertextual communication comes from Hanks, “Authenticity and Ambivalence.” 46. AGI Charcas 601, “No. 5 Expediente de las Capitulaciones Celebradas para el Perdón que solitaron los Yndios de diferentes Provincias,” fol. 63, “Alos Prencipales del Pueblo de Toledo y alcalde mayor Don Crus Callisaya.” ABNB SGI 1781 #42, “Expediente sobre los alborotos de los indios de Yocalla,” fol. 1r., Spanish original: “Al cabildo de Colpacaca. Al Señor Principal.” 47. AGI Charcas 601, “No. 5 Expediente,” fol. 67, Spanish original: “sus Amantes hijos comunidad de Challacollo”; fol. 68, “Muy amado Sinor Comones”; fol. 65 “A los Señores Comunes de Toledo,” fol. 85, “Amantíssimo hermanos comunes de la Provincia de Paria,” fol. 77, “sos hijos minores Los Comones”; fol. 78, “Sus Hamantes hermanos Comunes”; fol. 67 “sus amantes hijos.” 48. ABNB SGI 1781-​1784 #176, “Autos que corresponden a la testamentaria y bienes del intestado corregidor de la provincia de Carangas.” Spanish original: fol. 1v “su más humildes hijos los comunes de la Provinica,” fol. 5r. “Sus Amantes Comunes,” fol. 6v, “Hijos del Comun,” fol.50, “Sus criados comunes”; fol. 71 “para dar de comer ami gente.” On the uprising in Carangas, see Cajias de la Vega, Oruro 1781, 512–​516; and Gavira Márquez, Población Indígena. 49. ABNB SGI 1781 #193 “Expediente que contiene la convocatoria por los Yndios alsados de Chayanta a los de otros Pueblos,” for the original letter. Like many of the other letters here, copies were made and sent to higher authorities. The letter was a single sheet of paper folded to from an envelope and addressed to current and past cabildo members. Spanish original: Muy estimados y queridos míos luego luego [sic] que veían este hande poner todo el esfuerzo que puedan de a comunicarse y advertirse entre todos vosotros con el empeño de todos los modos, que aquí lo estamos nosotros haciendo de nuestra parte, oyiendo las voces que corren de los soldados que salen de todos los Pueblos grandes con son Chuquisaca, Potosí y de otros más lugares, y por este motivo me pongo a escribirles como que somos los Yndios Originarios de todos los Corregimientos, sujetos de los trabajos lo primero de Dios y del Señor Nuestro Rey y demás maiores de Governadores, y considerando estos hande esforzar con todo empeño ano dejar el que pasen dichos soldados porque se pasan dichos soldados nos acabaron y harían lo que quisieren y les pareciere de sus voluntades. Y Nosotros entre todos las Provincias de Comunidades de este lado estamos a bajando a que no nos vensa; y más digo a todos vosotros que advierten a todas Provincias y comunidades de gente Yndianos a que hayan de su partes los mismos que que le advierto y sino ponen cuydado en defenderse veran que trabajos nos rienden y sujeten desde luego en adelante y assi hermanos míos les encargo que no se descuyden de dichos soldados que quieren salir de dicho lugar de Potosí y espero que advertiranlo mismo al Pueblo de Puna y Timabi [Tomave] que partes son de gentes tributarios. Y a Dios quien os guarde muchos años de esta suya Macha y Enero 28 de 1781 vuestros servidores quienes deseamos servirles. Yo Nicolas Catari y los Comunidades. Alos Señores Principles. Pasado de las comunidades del Curato de Yocalla y Tarapaia quarde Dios muchos años en. YOCALLA Pasar de mano en mano del poder de los Alcades de Tinquipaya sin tardanza ninguna porque presa mucho. Vendrá todos lo gente de la comunidad de Tinquipaya a este lugar Cazcará Pedro Suyu hará pasar este luego luego. 50. Several other comunero letters went through or from Yocalla. 51. ABNB TI 1787 #34, “Elecciones de Alcaldes Yndios del partido de Paria en el año de 1787,” describes how elections were conducted. 52. See Hanks, Intertext, 149–​160. 53. ABNB SGI 1781 #193, fol.3r. Spanish original: “el día siguiente a la Purificación que contamos tres del corriente se me entró a esta mi habitación el Pedro Suio (el mismo que hizo cabeza en los pasados movimientos) con una multitud de sus parciales, y aliados naturales diciendo me que toda su comunidad lo quería por su Governador, y así que le diese el baston, lo que





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ejecuté por que aun después de hazerle mil reflexiones que en el día no le combenía asta dar quenta ala real Audiencia, para que de alla biniese nombramiento me respondió que eso no importaba que lo que combenía, y era bastante que io solo lo nombrase por Governador.” 54. ABNB EC 1780 #84, “Juan Evangelista Arque, indio principal y cacique de Porco, pide al protector general, ampara por el despojo de su cargo y por la tentative de asesinato de que ha sido víctima,” fol.5r. 55. ABNB SGI 1781 #42, “Expediente sobre los alborotos de los indios de Yocalla,” fol. 1r. Spanish original: “Al cabildo de Colpacaba. Al Señor Principal Doy la noticia fijo, que llegó el Propio con la noticia que los havía arrastrado a todos de los de Peñas, y Hurmires una lástima dise que havían hecho los soldados más de dos mill quinientos otros tantos disen que vienen por arte de Chichas nos veremos rodeados para esta noche llegarán sin falta a despoblar a todos nosotros, sin que quedemos ninguno todos de esta Provincia, y asi por Dios Vista esta bengan y den noticia atodos hasta Culta, Cabayo [Cahuayo] y Lagunillas, atodas las Estancias pasará a toda furia con maior empeño como amodo de soldado sin demora ni una ora y suplico por Maria Santíssima bengan entodo caso todos los comunes a comforme nos ayudará Dios nuestro Señor seno[s guar]de por muchos años. Challapata= Changara.” This letter and the one forwarding it have been analyzed in Abercrombie, Pathways of Memory and Power, 297–​99 and Penry “Letters of Insurrection.” 56. ABNB SGI 1781 #42, fol.2r. Spanish original: “y después de haverla leydo los de este [curato] combocaron a los de Tinquipaya, rogandoles bayan para Challapata, y que sino se beyan perdidos. Al día siguiente salieron los Alcaldes de nuestro Curato, y juntaron muchos de los Yndios y los despacharon acada qual dos o tres jondas, palos y algunas otras cosas para su defensa.” 57. Jueves de Compadres, a festival marking the beginning of carnival season, is celebrated two weeks before Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. 58. ABNB SGI 1781 #42, fol. 3r. Spanish original: “El día quinse Juebes de Compadres haviendo estado vendo a casas algunos Filqueritos, encontré con tres Yndios, quienes havían sobrado de los electos de nuestros Alcaldes y el uno de ellos se acercó a preguntarme que noticias havía tenido de los soldados: Yo como ignorante de todo, respondé no saber cosa alguna no basto esto, sino dándome algunos golpes en el lado del corasón me decía que todo lo tenía ocultado dentro de mi corasón y que no quería abisarles cosa alguna, y con estas demostraciones, se despidió.” 59. Lima’s city council blamed the rebellion on repartos and so abolished them in December 1780, Walker, The Tupac Amaru Rebellion, 89. AGI Charcas 435, Carta No. 7, fol.18v. 60. AGI Charcas 435, Carta No. 7, fol.88v. For transcription of the Spanish original see Penry, “El Discurso Político,” 482. 61. ABNB SGI 1781 #58, “Legajo contra Matheo Xavier Yndio de Tolapampa por sublevado y muerte que executo en Don Marcos Torres.” 62. ABNB SGI 1781 #61, “Causa criminal contra Ramón Paca, Bentura Pinto, Pedro Copacava, y demás reos prinsipales, comprehendidos en la sublevación, Muertos, y rovos perpretados en este Pueblo de Yura y sus ynmediasiones etca.,” fol.10. 63. AGI Lima #1562 “Relación de méritos de Andrés Encalada y Torres.” 64. ABNB SGI 1781 #61, fol.13. For transcription of the Spanish original see Penry, “El Discurso Político,” 482–​483. 65. AGNA 13.18.7.4 lists Opoco as an annex of Tomave. 66. ABNB SGI 1781 #61, fs. 17, 16. 67. ABNB SGI 1781 #61, fol. 15. Spanish original: “Amigo mío ay otra nobedad mui fuerte de Macha del Governador nuebo Don Sebastián Aricomo y disen que Catari está preso y para enteranse del todo major será ocurrir toda la cumunidad en persona y saber de cierto pues manda que los Reales tributos se pagase corriente y no ay ninguna Rebaja pues estamos mui malos para nosotros del todo . . . esta noticia atraydo [atraído] el Alcalde del Asiento de Macha . . . que usted a sido mui falso.” 68. ABNB SGI 1781 #61, fol. 19r. Spanish original:  “estos gentes no quierren haser que me mandes de aprontarse en esa batalla quierren bea algunos papeles de mandado del Rey Nuestro Señor y de Catari y como dio desen estos gentes.”



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69. ABNB SGI 1782 #32, “Expediente seguido contra Alejo Calisaya, sober que esta se halla seduciendo nuevamente a los indios.” 70. Cahill, From Rebellion to Independence, 121; Walker, The Tupac Amaru Rebellion,120, 92; also see Campbell, “The Army of Peru.” 71. Walker also points to the difficulty of maintaining a peasant army given their “agricultural tasks,” and attributes the defeat at Cuzco to dysentery and hunger, The Tupac Amaru Rebellion, 46, 136, 127. 72. Walker, The Tupac Amaru Rebellion, 166; Thomson, We Alone Will Rule, 18–​21; Stern, “Age of Andean Insurrection,” 35, 77 n.3. 73. On loyalist caciques, see Choque Canqui, “Los caciques”; Glave, Vida, símbolos; O’Phelan-​ Godoy, Un siglo de rebeliones; Stavig, “Eugenio Sinanyuca”; Garrett, “His Majesty’s Most Loyal Vassals.” As Thomson notes for the La Paz region, “There were, then, remarkably few exceptions to the rule that caciques were identified with the Spaniards and as traitors to the movement.” See Thomson, We Alone Will Rule, 224. 74. Cahill, From Rebellion to Independence, 135. O’Phelan Godoy names Cuzco area caciques rewarded by the Crown for loyalty, Kurakas sin Sucesiones, 32-​34. Walker points out that “Indians would almost invariably constitute the majority of combatants on both sides,” The Tupac Amaru Rebellion, 52. For caciques who continued to hold high rank in the military in the late eighteenth century, see Ricketts, Who Should Rule? 75. AGI Indif. 411, The Audiencia of Charcas to the King, 13 June 1781. 76. Inca nobles in Cuzco regarded Tupac Amaru as “neither leader nor liberator, but rather an arrogant mestizo cacique from a small puna [highland] pueblo.” Garrett, Shadows of Empire, 207. 77. AGI Cuzco 29  “N. 279,” Areche to Galves, May 1, 1781. Sala i Vila emphasizes that the changes to the cacicazgo begun by Areche, especially putting tribute collection in the hands of the cabildo, were the key to its decline, Y se armó,  68–​76. 78. Puente Luna has traced active cabildo officers to the sixteenth century in the Audiencia of Lima in Andean Cosmopolitans. Also for the Audiencia Lima, O’Phelan Godoy sees active cabildo officers in the eighteenth century but she attributes that to illegitimate caciques. In addition to the cases detailed here for the Audiencia of Charcas, examples from the Archbishopric of Lima: AAL 1646 Capítulos Casma Leg. 13; Exp. IV; AAL 1754 Capítulos Leg. 31; Exp. II; AAL 1755 Capítulos Leg. 31; Exp. IV; AAL 1755 Capítulos Leg. 31; Exp. V; AAL 1757 Capítulos Leg. 31; Exp. X; AAL 1757 Capítulos Leg. 31; Exp. XI; AAL 1759 Capítulos 32:2; AAL 1759 Curatos: Ancash Leg. 3; Exp. XXIII; AAL 1759 Curatos: Ica Leg. 21; Exp. XXXVII; AAL 1763 Capítulos Leg. 32; Exp. XII; AAL 1763 Capítulos Leg. 32; Exp. XI; AAL 1764 Capítulos Leg. 32; Exp. XIII; AAL 1769 Capítulos Leg. 32; Exp. XXVI. Cases from Cuzco include:  ARC 1766 Corregimientos:  Causes Criminales; Provincias; Leg. 84; ARC 1767 Corregimientos: Causes Criminales; Provincias; Leg. 84; ARC 1772 Corregimientos: Causes Criminales; Provincias; Leg. 84; and ARC 1773 Corregimientos:  Causes Criminales; Provincias; Leg. 84. 79. AGI Cuzco 29 for specific prohibitions, also Garrett, Shadows of Empire, ­chapter 7. Several scholars have noted the strengthening of the cabildo after the era of Tupac Amaru and have attributed it to the actions of Spaniards in the wake of rebellion, see Scarlett O’Phelan Godoy, Kurakas sin sucesiones; Sala i Vela, Y se armó el tole-​tole. 80. Rebellion participants were elected to cabildo offices in the province of Paria, ABNB TI 1787 #34. Creole Spanish citizens of Pocona recognized the indigenous alcaldes as leaders of the rebellion and called for the suppression of the indigenous cabildo. AHMC, MEC 76, 1781, letter from “vecinos españoles to the “Señor Governador de Armas” December 19, 1781. 81. ABNB SGI 1781  “Colección Gabriel René Moreno,” Juan Josef de Segovia to Francisco Thadeo Diez Medina, August 24, 1781. 82. Thomson, “Sovereignty Disavowed,” 411. 83. While he sees Tupac Amaru as an important leader, Cahill has been critical of much of the scholarship on him, referring to it as “nationalistic hagiography,” see Cahill, “First among the Incas,” 166. He has also called into question whether Inca revitalization movements existed, see Cahill’s review of Genocide and Millenialism, 321.





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Conclusion 1. This also holds true in other regions of the former viceroyalty of Peru, see Gade and Escobar, “Village Settlement.” There are currently two digital projects underway to map the former reducción towns across the Andes, GeoPACHA (Geospatial Platform for Andean Culture, History and Archaeology) and LOGAR (Linked Online Gazetteer of the Andean Region), general editors, Steven A. Wernke, Vanderbilt University and Parker VanValkenburgh, Brown University, see https://​geopacha.cast.uark.edu/​ 2. On the spatial governance of congregaciones in colonial Mexico, see Nemser, “Primitive Accumulation.” 3. Even among the British North American rebels there was support for royal rule. In a bold interpretation of the American Revolution, Eric Nelson argues that British North American rebel leaders supported a strong monarchy, taking issue with Parliament’s right to govern them, not with George III’s. After the American Revolution, these same pro-​monarchists were involved in writing the US constitution and thus created a strong president with more power than the British king. Nelson, The Royalist Revolution. 4. Flores Galindo, In Search of an Inca; Pagden, Lords of All the World, ­chapter 5. 5. AGI Charcas 601, “No. 5 Expediente,” fol. 87; Walker, The Tupac Amaru Rebellion, 78, 173. 6. See Walker, The Tupac Amaru Rebellion; Serulnikov, Subverting Colonial Authority; Thomson, We Alone Will Rule; also Stavig, The World of Tupac Amaru; Stavig and Schmidt, The Tupac Amaru and Catari Rebellions. During the 1970s and 1980s, these figures lent their names to indigenous movements and guerrilla organizations. 7. Cahill has been critical of much of the literature on Tupac Amaru, categorizing it as “nationalistic hagiography,” see “First among Incas,” 166. 8. Echeverri, Indian and Slave Royalists. 9. A  partial list would include:  Abercrombie, Pathways of Memory and Power; Cajias de la Vega, Oruro 1781; Puente Luna, “That Which Belongs to All”; Puente Luna and Honores, “Guardianes de la real justicia”; Del Rio, Etnicidad, territorialidad y colonialismo; Dueñas, “The Lima Indian Letrados”; Echeverri, Indian and Slave Royalists; Estenssoro Fuchs, Del paganismo a la santidad; Garrett, Shadows of Empire; Gose, Invaders as Ancestors; Graubart, “Learning from the Qadi”; Harrison, Sin and Confession; Jurado, “ ‘Todos descendientes;’ ” Larson, Cochabamba; Lorandi, Ni ley, Ni rey; Mills, “The Naturalization of Andean Christianities”; Mumford, Vertical Empire; Nair, “Witnessing the Invisibility”; O’Phelan-​Godoy, Un siglo de rebeliones; Penry, “Transformations in Indigenous Authority”; Platt, “The Andean Soldiers of Christ”; Premo, The Enlightenment on Trial; Ramírez, The World Upside Down; Ramos, Death and Conversion; Rappaport and Cummins, Beyond the Lettered City; Rasnake, Domination and Cultural Resistance; Saignes, “Indian Migration and Social Change”; Scott, “A Mirage of Colonial Consensus”; Serulnikov, Subverting Colonial Authority; Silverblatt, Modern Inquisitions; Spalding, Huarochirí; Stavig, World of Túpac Amaru; Stern, Peru’s Indian Peoples; Thomson, We Alone Will Rule; Walker, The Tupac Amaru Rebellion; Wernke, “Negotiating Community and Landscape”; and Zagalsky, “Tensiones, Disputas y Negociaciones”; Zuloaga, La Conquista Negociada. 10. Premo, The Enlightenment on Trial. 11. See, for example, Abercrombie, Pathways of Memory and Power; Dueñas, Indians and Mestizos; Platt, “The Andean Experience of Bolivian Liberalism”; Puente Luna, Andean Cosmopolitans; Puente Luna and Honores, “Guardianes de la real justicia”; Premo, Enlightenment on Trial; Rappaport and Cummins, Beyond the Lettered City; Rasnake, Domination and Cultural Resistance; Thomson, We Alone Will Rule; and Zagalsky, “Tensiones, disputas y negociaciones.” 12. For examples see Puente Luna, “That Which Belongs to All”; Puente Luna and Honores, “Guardianes de la real justicia”; Dueñas, “Cabildos de naturales.” 13. Premo, The Enlightenment on Trial; Cañizares-​Esguerra, How to Write the History of the New World. 14. Englishman John Locke is famous for his celebration of the superiority of private property over commons, which helped to justified the seizure of Indian lands in North America. Locke was by no means the first to theorize property in this way:  the Composiciones de Tierras carried out by the Spanish Crown beginning in 1593 seized lands precisely for being



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under-​productive, auctioning them off to the private purchasers who became the Indies’ first hacendados. These same style land seizures and sales occurred even earlier in Castile. 15. To counter the threat from below, Creoles lobbied for legal means to prevent mestizaje, such as parental control over children’s marriage choices, and had proposed sweeping “ethnic cleansing” programs in cities that would send urban Indians back into subsistence agriculture in their places of origin, or on a case by case basis legally redefine the “mixed” population back into the clear-​cut early colonial categories of Indian, Black, or Spanish, with Spanish now redefined as “white.” See Socolow, “Acceptable Partners”; Abercrombie, “Q’aqchas and la plebe.” 16. Abercrombie, “Q’aqchas and la plebe”; Katzew, Casta Painting, ­chapter 4. 17. Brading, First America; Abercrombie “Q’aqchas and la plebe.” 18. Bolívar’s “Discurso de Angostura” in Lecuna, ed., Proclamas y discursos del Libertador, 205. 19. For the impact of neo-​scholastic ideas on the late eighteenth-​century uprisings, see Phelan, The People and the King, 85–​86. For their impact on idependence see Rodríguez, Independence of Spanish America, 37; Stoetzer, Scholastic Roots. 20. Block, Mission Culture, 129. Góngora, Studies in the Colonial History, 194–​205. 21. Abercrombie, Passing to América, 147, 243, n.2. 22. Rodríguez, Independence of Spanish America, 2–​3; Dym, “Independence: Hispanic Americas.” 23. Anderson also identifies the importance of large metropolitan areas to the new republics but misses why they were important, see Imagined Communities. Also see Lomnitz’s critique of Anderson, “Nationalism as a Practical System.” 24. Dym, From Sovereign Villages, 128–​137. 25. From 1810 to 1820, the provinces of Carangas, Paria, and Porco were the setting for many major battles of the independence war. Thousands of indigenous troops, mostly on the side of independence, died in the battles of Ancacato and Vilcapuquio, two of the tambos within Asanaqi territory, while the armies of both sides billeted themselves in San Pedro de Condo and San Juan de Challapata. Local commanders from the communities of the region led guerrilla fighters against the royalists who held the territory tenuously during much of this time, committing all manner of abuses that only increased the pro-​independence resistance. See Soux, El complejo proceso. For similar processes within the new nation of Peru see Méndez, The Plebeian Republic. 26. For a comparable case see Méndez, The Plebeian Republic. 27. Platt, Estado Boliviano y Ayllu Andino; Platt, “Liberalism and Ethnocide”; Platt, “The Andean Experience of Bolivian Liberalism.” 28. Ari, Earth Politics,  5–​6. 29. Dubois, Princeton Companion to Atlantic History, 54. 30. The maize-​producing valley towns to which they had long traveled with llama caravans to gain their daily bread, however, were largely enveloped by the hacienda system. 31. Such efforts, via which communities provided powers of attorney to certain indigenous leaders to pursue region-​wide relief, have entered the literature under the somewhat misleading name of a movement of “caciques apoderados.” See Condori Chura and Ticona Alejo, El escribano de los caciques apoderados and Ari, Earth Politics, ­chapter 2. Although it was not in fact an effort to re-​install hereditary caciques, indigenous intellectuals did make use of old collective land titles referencing diarchies and their cacique governors. For such efforts in the region around Condo, see Abercrombie, Pathways of Memory and Power, 304–​308. 32. On the blending of culture into ideas about race see de la Cadena, Indigenous Mestizos. 33. Ari, Earth Politics, 14. Guerrero, “Administration of Dominated Populations.” 34. Condarco Morales, Zárate: El temible Willka; Mendieta, Entre la alianza y la confrontación; Irurozqui, A bala piedra y palo. 35. Choque Canqui, La masacre de Jesús de Machaca; Larson, Trials of Nation Making, 229–​239. 36. Gotkowitz, A Revolution for Our Rights, ­chapter 7, 233–​234. 37. Stepan, Hour of Eugenics; Spitzer, Hotel Bolivia. 38. On the revolution of 1952 see Dunkerley, Rebellion in the Veins; and the collection of essays in Grindle and Domingo, Proclaiming Revolution. 39. Ari, Earth Politics, 15, 34, 86–​88. Cholo, and its feminine form, chola, came into use in the late eighteenth century to label urbanized “Indians,” formerly called indios criollos; see





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Abercrombie, “Q’aqchas and la plebe.” The female role, and an associated costume deriving from that era, is associated with market vendors and domestic servants; see Weismantel, Cholas and Pishtacos. 40. Ethnographic works on the region include:  on San Pedro de Condo, Sikkink, New Cures, Old Medicines; Boutier and Qamasa, “Apuntes acerca del sistema de cargos”; on Culta, Abercrombie, Pathways of Memory and Power; on Cacachaca, Arnold, Aruquipa, and de Dios Yapita, Hacia un orden andino; Arnold and de Dios Yapita, Río de vellón; on the Karanqa (Carangas) region, Ayllu Sartañani, Perspectivas de descentralización en Karankas; Riviére, “Sabaya”; Choque Mariño, “Amt’añ thakhi” en Socoroma”; on Chayanta, Macha and Pocoata, Platt; “Andean Soldiers of Christ”; Harris, “From Asymmetry to Triangle”; Van Vleet, Performing Kinship; on the Pacajes region, Albó, Achacachi; Albó and Ticona, Jesús de Machaca; Patzi Paco, Sistema communal; Quisbert, Líderes indígenas; on Coroma, Bubba, “Los rituales a los vestidos”; on Yura, neighbor of Tomave, Rasnake, Domination and Cultural Resistance. On thakhi, see Abercrombie, Pathways of Memory and Power; Albó and Ticona, Jesús de Machaca; Ticona, “El Thakhi entre los aimara”; Quisbert, Líderes indígenas. On caciques apoderados and post-​1952 indigenous activism, see Ticona, Saberes, conocimientos y prácticas anticoloniales; Ticona, Bolivia en el incio de Pachakuti. On erection of statue of Tupac Catari, see Berman, Descolonización Aymara. On chuyma, the Aymara concept of the seat of memory, knowledge, and personhood, see Orta, “Syncretic Subjects”; and Orta, Catechizing Culture, 148–​163. 41. On tata reyes, see Rasnake, Domination, and Cultural Resistance, 223–​224; on textile bundles (q’epis) and the ritual acts involving them, Bubba “Los rituales a los vestidos”; rituals with clothing of deceased, see Abercrombie, Pathways of Memory and Power, 335–​337. 42. Goudsmit, Deference Revisted, 13. 43. Goldstein, The Spectacular City; Reu, “Saint Worship and Citizenship”; Guss, “Gran Poder”; Lazar, El Alto, Rebel City. And compare to the situation in Venezuela, Ciccariello-​Maher, “Building the Commune.” 44. Albro, “The Populist Chola”; Albro “Reciprocity and Realpolitik”; and Albro, “Culture of Democracy.” 45. Reu, “Saint Worship and Citizenship.” 46. Gill, Teetering on the Rim; Gutiérrez Aguilar, Rhythms of the Pachakuti. 47. Ari, Earth Politics, 182. Also, Postero, Now We Are Citizens; Van Vott, Friendly Liquidation of the Past; Van Cott, Racial Democracy in the Andes; and Thomson and Hylton, “Chequered Rainbow.” For a treatment of the successes and failures of the Morales government vis-​a-​vis indigenous emancipation ten years on, see Postero, Indigenous State. 48. Ticona, “El Thakhi entre los aimara y los quechua”; also see Rivera Cusicanqui, “Liberal Democracy and Ayllu Democracy in Bolivia.” 49. “Law of the Rights of Mother Earth,” December 2010 published in Ari, Earth Politics, 193–​ 197. Also see Albó, “Suma qamaña = convivir bien.” On the Peruvian side of the border, see de la Cadena, Earth Beings. 50. Goudsmit, Deference Revisted,  86–​87. 51. Lucero, Struggles of Voice. 52. Inscribed within CONAMAQ and headquartered in the former reducción town of San Juan de Challapata is JAKISA, the “nation” of Jatun Killaka Asanajaqi, incorporating the ayllus of Challapata, Cacachaca, the northern part of Condo, and Culta into a projected new political entity led by an elected authority titled Jiliri Mallku. 53. Particularly intense conflict has erupted between the Morales government and the indigenous TCOs of TIPNIS, an enormous national park in the tropical portion of the country, over a government plan to bisect the park (and the TCOs’ sovereign territories) with a transnational highway connecting Bolivia to Brazil. See Calla, “TIPNIS and Amazonia”; Fabricant and Postero, “Sacrificing Indigenous Bodies and Lands”; and Mokrani and Uriona, “La construción del estado plurinacional.”





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INDEX

For the benefit of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–​53) may, on occasion, appear on only one of those pages. Page numbers followed by t or f indicate tables or figures, respectively. Page numbers followed by n indicate endnotes.   Abercrombie, Thomas, 18, 223n34, 223–​24n40, 224n7, 224n14, 225n25, 225n36, 225n48, 226n59, 227–​28n1, 228n11, 229n21, 233n13, 233–​34n22, 235n38, 239n35, 241n68, 242n80, 255n55, 257n9, 258n15, 258n21, 258n31, 259n40 Absolutism, 11 Acarapi, Francisco, 147 Achallanqui, Fernando, 56–57 Acho, 34, 37, 42 activism, 259n40 Acuña, Juan de, 178, 192 administration ages of office holders, 244n16 mayordomos, 83f, 106–​7, 109, 110–​11, 238n25, 239n38 agrarian reform, 211–​12 agriculture,  32–​33 aguardiente (brandy), 245n34 Ahumada, Agustín de, 58–​60, 89, 92–​93 Aiacoma, Pasqual, 164–​65 Aica, Ignacio, 135 Aja, Francisco, 95 Alavile, Juan, 92–​93 Alberti, 8 alcaldes (mayors/​justices), 63–​64, 94f 96, 108, 128, 234n32. see also individual alcaldes assist priests, 89–​90 Great Rebellion letters, 186–​87, 191 Pre-​Conquest social patterns in, 72–​73 service to saints, 108 alcoholic beverages, 34, 245n34, 245n40. see also chicha, aguardiente as ch’alla, 132–​33

Aldana, Hernando de, 42, 48–​49 Aldana, Lorenzo de, 48–​49, 227n26 alferazgo, 238n25, 244n16 alférez,(pl. alféreces), 106, 107–​8, 110–​11 alguacil (pl. alguaciles) (bailiffs), 63–​64, 96 Allasa, Felipe, 184 Alós, Joaquin de, 172–​73, 174 alpacas, 36 altiplano, 29 Álvarez, Bartolomé, 80–​81, 96–​97 Amazonia, 259n53 American Revolution, 257n3 anansaya, 45, 106 Ancacato (tambo), 210, 258n25 ancestral lands, 212–​13 Andamarca (town), 59f,  80–​81 andas, 111 Andean studies, 214–​15 Andeans. see also Indians artists, 231n66 censuses, 73–​74, see also padrón Christianity, 1–​23, 75–​77, 101–​2, 108, 121, 123, 238n15 community life, 6–​9 conversion of, 69–​71 cultural norms, 71–​73, 212–​13 documentary record, 20 economic exploitation of, 102–​3 idolatry, 113, 235n37 literacy, 20 lo Andino, 17–​18, 223n38 motifs, 233–​34n22 politics,  1–​23 281



282 I n d e

Andeans (Cont.) reciprocity, 133 religiosity,  101–​23 resettlement of, 25, 26, 40, 52, 53–​74, 89, 228n15 resistance to Spanish institutions, 17–​18,  75–​77 segregation of, 212–​13 settlement patterns, 109–​10 social organization, 106 spaces of action, 17–​18 terminology for, xiii–​xiv towns,  79–​100 Anderson, Benedict, 222n20 Andes, 7–​8, 257n1 animal sacrifice, 21, 36. see also llama sacrifice annex towns, 80–​81, 88f, 97–​98, 105–​7, 206, 234n24, 235n42. see also individual towns Apasa, Diego, 177–​78 Apasa Nina, Julián, 119, 202–​3, 247n2. see also Tupac Catari apoderados, 212, 258n31, 259n40 aqllas, 34, 36 Aquinas, Thomas, 46–​47, 133–​34 Arakapis, 40, 92–​93 aranceles, 104 Aranibar, Manuel, 193 archbishoprics, 233n17 archaeology, 224n2, 241n68, 257n1 archives,  19–​20 Areche, José Antonio de, 197, 198–​99, 256n77 Argandoña Pastén, Pedro Miguel de (archbishop), 242n88, 244n15 Argentina, 201 Arias de Ugarte, Hernando, 86 Aricoma, Sebastián, 194–​95 arkiris, 132 Arque, Juan, 190 arrieros, 132 Asanaqi (Asanaques), 27, 37, 51, 200, 218, 229n21, 249n26, 258n25 ayllus, 29–​30, 45 censuses, 53 cofradias,  8–​9 fragmentation of, 51, 87–​89, 88f Inca conquest of, 6–​7 independence wars, 210 mit’a workers, 34–​35 in Qullasuyu, 29–​42 reducción towns, 88f Spanish conquest of, 48–​49 towns, 9, 88f tribute charges, 56–57 Aseñas, Pedro de, 138 Atahualpa, 33 Atahualpa, Estevan, 195 Atlantic revolutions, 206–​8, 223n35

x

Audiencia of Charcas. see Charcas Augustina, Blasa, 247n2 Augustine,  133–​34 Aullagas, 59f, 80–​81, 193 authority, 64–​65, 142, 159 comunero, 123 theocratic, 102 Ayacucho, 210 ayarichis (music), 244n31 Ayaviri, Fernando, 64–​65 ayllu democracy, 217–​18, 222n11 ayllus, 3–​4, 29–​30, 72–​73, 205–​6, 229n21, 238n23 cofradia organization by, 100, 101–​2, 105–​7,  238n22 of Condo, 247n4 definition of, 14 dispute resolution between, 32, 240n48 elimination of, 211–​12 fragmentation of, 54–​55, 57–58, 63, organization of, 45, 106–​7 in reducciones, 63, 229n23 Aymara, 38, 39f, 224n5, 225n44, 244n30 Language interference with Spanish, 154–​55, 247n74, 253n42 Aymoray festival, 242n85 Aysa, Alexandro, 183f Azángaro (town), 197 Azurduy, Clemente, 197   baptisms, 238n15, 243n12 Barcaya, Joseph, 137–​38 Bastidas, Miguel, 252n17 Battle of Ayacucho, 210 Battle of Punilla, 192 Benito, Ambrosio, 148–​49 Bernal, Blas, 171, 177–​78 blancos (whites), 207–​8 Blasa, Maria, 115–​16 blessings, 244n15 Bocanegra, Pérez, 241 Bodega y Llano, Manuel de la, 173 Bolivar, Simón, 207, 210, 211 Bolivia, 22–​23, 201, 231n68, 244n22 constitution,  218–​19 independence wars, 210 Indian policy, 213–​14 Law of Popular Participation, 215–​16 Law of the Rights of Mother Earth (Pachamama), 259n49 Morales government, 217–​19, 259n47, 259n53 as plurinational state, 215–​19 transnational highway through, 259n53 War of the Capitals, 213 Bonaparte, Joseph, 209 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 209 border disagreements, 126





Index

Borremeo, Carlo, 232n10 boundary markers (mojones), 36–​37, 57–58, 228n12 Bourbon Reforms, 4, 11, 76, 124–​42, 237n8 vs comunero understandings, 166 intensification,  210–​11 secularizing aspects, 103, 128–​31 Bourbons, 243n1 Brazil, 259n53 Brotherhoods, 8–​9. see also cofradías brotherhoods of communities, 167–​99 Bubba, Cristina, 215 buena policía (good customs), 8–​9, 44, 54, 68–​69, 80, 100 Buenos Aires, 171, 210 bull fights, 237n13, 244n29 bureaucracy, 45–​46, 83f, 167, 226n14, 228n4 butchers, 105   Cabello, Manuel Joseph, 146–​47 cabildos (town councils), 9–​10, 26, 229–​30n32,  253n41 16th century, 205–​6 17th century, 95–​97, 205–​6 18th century, 101–​23 abolishment of, 211 active officers, 256n78 Andean, 52, 72, 74, 95–​97, 98, 99, 100, 101–​23 in annex towns, 98 authority, 159 caciques in, 230n35 church duties, 10 commoner, 74, 142 community building, 101–​2, 234n26, 236n65 duties and functions, 70, 211, 215, 229n23, 236n53, 256n79 early records, 63–​64, 229–​30n32, 236n51 election rules, 198 Great Rebellion letters, 186–​87 indigenous, 211, 236n53, 256n80 members, 10, 101–​2, 107–​8, 128, 241n75 merger with cofradías, 215, 216 in resettlement towns, 62–​65, 72, 206 Cacachaca (Nuestra Señora de la Vera Cruz de Cacachaca), 88f, 134–​40, 159, 172, 246n67 cacicazgos, 41, 54–​55, 63, 128, 204, 249n27, 256n77 fragmentation of, 62–​63. caciques (native hereditary lords), 76, 230n35, 236n56, 249n27. see also individual caciques apoderados, 212, 258n31, 259n40 aristocracy, 62 authority of, 16, 41, 144, 222n11, 244n25, 256n78 cofradía threats to, 102, 121–​23 comunero replacements, 9–​10, 15, 107–​8,  174–​78 elections for, 243n14

283

Hispanicized, 174, 222n13 Inca viceroys, 184 leadership,  197–​98 loyalists, 197, 256n73 military, 256n74 murders of, 2–​3, 18–​19, 47, 143, 145–​49, 150, 151–​57, 158–​60, 162–​63, 169t, 173–​74, 187, 192, 193–​95, 194f, 221n3, 247n2 noble privileges, 62–​63 petitions, 52, 235n42 post-​independence wars, 211 pre-​Conquest, 236n65, see also kuraka; mallku recruitment of forasteros, 232n3, 237n68 in resettlement towns, 62–​65 segunda personas, 108, 128, 229–​30n32 social status, 50, 128–​31, 145, 197, 227n39 tribute collection, 51, 128–​31 Caguasiri, Hilario, 177–​78 Cahill, David, 168, 223–​24n40, 240n46, 251n4, 256n70, 256n74, 256n83 Cahuayo (La Concepción de Cahuayo), 88f, 137, 146, 191 Caiza, 59f, 228–​29n16 cajas de comunidad (community chests), 65–​66, 67–​69, 230n47, 231n67 Cajatambo, 84 Calisto, Miguel, 135 Callapa, Gregorio, 160, 247n4 Callapina, Rodrigo Sutiq, 227n35 Calli, Santos Manuel, 136–​37 Callisaya, Crus, 182–​84, 186–​87 Cami, Juan, 96 Camino Real (Spanish Royal Road), 72–​73 campesinos (peasants), xiii, 213–​14, 244n21 Canas (pre-​Columbian federation), 38 Cancaguasi (town), 197 Canchis (pre-​Columbian federation), 38 Cañezares-​Esguerra, Jorge, 16–17, 223n35 capitalism extractive, 26, 204–​5 rural,  211–​12 Caracara (Qaraqara), 38, 39f,  40–​41, reducción, 59f Carangas (Karanqa), 4–​6, 38–​40, 39f, 51, 200–​75,  218 chapels, 236n50 encomienda, 42, 48–​49 ethnographic works on, 259n40 Great Rebellion, 169t, 181, 185, 186f, 187–​89, 188f,  202–​3 Land claims in Cochabamba valley, 34–​35 location, 39f reducciones, 60, 200, 229n18 revolutionary battles, 258n25 Spanish conquest of, 48–​49 Carasi (town), 110–​11, 172, 175 Cárdenas, Victor Hugo, 215–​16



284 I n d e

cargos, 239n36 Caribbeans, 26 Castile, 43–​44, 53–​54, 73, 231n72. see also Spain Revolution of the Communities, 45–​47, 198 Castilla, Pablo Gregorio de, 187–​89, 188f Castillo, Simon, 175 Castro, García de, 49–​50 Catari, Damaso, 187, 192 Catari, Nicolás, 187–​90, 192 Catari, Tomás, 168, 171–​73, 174, 187, 203 leadership, 198–​99,  202–​3 murder, 169t, 177–​78, 195 petitions, 173, 174, 175–​76, 177, 251n7, 252n16 timeline, 169t Catholicism, 82–​83, 113, 128–​31 Civic, 222n19 colonial, 237n10 popular,  69–​70 Roman,  75–​76 Spanish, 21 Caysa, Martín de la Cruz, 177–​78 Census. see also padrón Andean censuses, 73–​74 mid-​19th century, 211 Visita General, 50, 53–​57, 62–​63, 64–​66, 125 Central America, 209–​10 ceques (sacred paths), 36–​37, 245n35 chacha, 109, 239n38 Chaco War, 213 Challacollo (town), 59f, 186–​87, 193 Challapata (San Juan de Challapata), 87–​89, 160 annex towns, 87–​89, 88f ayllus, 60–​61, 229n21 cacique, 160 church inventory, 71 Great Rebellion, 182–​84, 191, 197 JAKISA, 259n52 jurisdiction,  60–​61 location, 59f, 88f revolutionary war, 258n25 Chane, García, 96 Changara (ayllu), 247n4 chapels in annex towns, 98 licensing, 236n50 Charcas (Charka), 38–​41 caciques, 197 Great Rebellion, 178, 179f, 182, 197 representation, 210 territory, 4–​6, 5f, 39f, 59f, 251n6 uprisings, 144, 246n66 Charles III, 103, 129, 163–​64, 175–​76, 197 Charles V, 42, 45 charqui, 34 chasquis (letter carriers), 72–​73, 114–​15, 126–​27 chaupi-​misa, 117

x

Chayanta, 59f, 167–​68, 174–​75, 241n74 ethnographic works on, 259n40 Great Rebellion, 191, 197, 202–​3, 246n66 mita service, 131–​32, 134 chicha (corn beer), 34, 245n34 Chicha (pre-​Columbian federation), 39f,  40–​41 child sacrifice, 36, 225n27 Chino Apasa, Pedro García, 241n72 Chiri, Diego, 82–​84, 85–​87, 206 Chiri, Pedro, 82–​84, 85–​87, 206 Chiriguanos, 40 Chiucori, 56–57 cholos, 138–​39, 214, 217, 258–​59n39 Choque, Ignacio Rudolfo, 2, 3, 146, 150–​51, 153–​ 57, 159–​62, 206, 219 conflict with Llanquipacha, 1, 246n53 conflict with Taquimalco, 221n3 correspondences, 158, 250n35 Choque, Juan de la Cruz Fernández, 153, 162 Choque, Lucas, 194f Choque, Pascual Gonzales, 137–​38, 139 Choque, Tomás de la Cruz, 197 Choquechambi, Andrés, 56–57, 107–​8 Choquechambi, Roque, 135 Choqueticlla, Antonio, 138–​39 Choqueticlla, Francisco, 227–​28n1 Choqueticlla, Manuel, 146 Choqueticlla Colque Guarache, Alexo, 138–​39,  184 Choquevilca, Pablo, 177–​78 Choqui, Bartolomé, 197 Christianity. see also saints’ celebrations Andean, 1–​23, 75–​77, 101–​2, 108, 121, 123, 205–​6,  238n15 conversion to, 26, 69–​71 Iberian Peninsula, 44–​45 indigenous, 233n13 sacred images, 231n63, 240n47 sacrificial practices, 120 sites of devotion, 70–​71 Spanish attachment to, 26 Christianization, 42 Chui, 39f,  40–​41 Chukiquta (town), 229n22 Chungara, 191 chuno, 34 Choquecota (town), 55f, 114–​15, 115f, 229n22, 235n42, 241n75 Chuquiguanca, José, 197 Chuquirivi, Hernando, 53 Chuquisaca, 114, 188–​89, 240–​41n59, 250n41. see also Sucre (La Plata) Chura, Francisco, 150, 162 church design, 232n10 church musicians, 245n37 church property, 210–​11 church textiles, 233–​34n22





Index

church-​state relations, 102–​3, 104, 128–​31 chuyma, 259n40 citizenship, 44–​45, 48, 211–​13 Civic Catholicism, 222n19 civic ceremonies, 124, 125–​28 civic participation, 215–​16 civil offices, 107–​8 civil practices, 124–​42 civilization, 7–​8, 50, 211–​12 civilized Indians (cholos), 139 civitas, 250n35 class consciousness, 213–​14 class differences, 65–​67, 231n58 cloth. see textiles clothing Franciscan robes, 114, 115–​16 of indigenous women, 197–​98, 217 cobrador (term), 236n56 coca, 96–​97, 245n34 Cochabamba, 34–​35, 38, 237n7 battle of Cochabamba, 41 Great Rebellion, 179f, 181–​82, 184–​85, 193 location, 5f, 59f, 179f Cochabamba Valley, 35 cofradías (brotherhoods), 8–​9, 10, 70–​71, 75–​76, 205–​6, 230n35, 232–​33n12 17th century, 95–​97 18th century, 101–​23 Andean, 87–​89, 95–​97, 98–​99, 100, 101–​23, 233n20, 234n24, 234n26, 236n65, 239n38, 239–​40n42 in annex towns, 87–​89, 98–​99, 105, 234n24 authority, 159 and ayllus, 106–​7, 123 and civil offices, 107–​8 community building, 98–​99, 101–​2, 234n26, 236n65 community lands, 210–​11 financial account books, 233n20 forasteros in, 98–​99, 239n38 and land claims, 109–​10, 239–​40n42 licensing, 236n50 membership, 109 merger with cabildos, 215, 216 for new patron saints, 74 organization of, 100, 101–​2, 105–​7, 238n22 privatization of property, 210–​11 temporary, 106 terminology for, 238n25 threats to cacique rule, 121–​23 women in, 109 Colca Valley, 229n20 Collana (ayllu), 247n4 collective action, 3–​4, 216–​17 collective feasting, 37 collective fields (sapsi), 13–​14, 32, 58–​60, 72–​73 collective labor, 72–​73

285

collective or community lands, 7, 15–​16, 66, 72–​ 73, 126, 210–​13 comunes, 13–​14, 72–​73, 211–​12, 230n42 sapsi (collective fields), 13–​14, 32, 58–​60,  72–​73 Tierras Comunitarias de Origen (TCOs, Original Community Lands), 218, 259n53 collective rights, 211, 217–​18 collective sovereignty, 144 Colombia, 201 colonial culture, 100, 233–​34n22 colonialism, 15–​16, 73, 223n37 end of, 217 impact of, 17–​18, 204–​6 neo-​colonialism, 201, 210 politics of, 48–​49 resistance to, 198–​99 Spanish, 26, 221n9 Colpacaba (town), 186–​87, 190–​91 Colque, Joseph, 197 colque jaques (Aymara, silver people), 155, 245n37 colque runas (Quechua, silver people), 133, 174–​75,  245n37 common lands (commons). see collective or community lands commoners, 15. see also comuneros commonhold property. see collective or community lands commons (common lands). see collective or community lands communitarian values, 46–​47, 226n15 community Andean,  6–​9 definition of, 142 community building brotherhood of communities, 167–​99 institutions for, 99–​100, 234n26 community chests (cajas de comunidad), 65–​66, 67–​69, 230n47, 231n67 community lands (comunes). see collective or community lands community leadership contemporary authorities, 215, 216f merger with Andean religiosity, 101–​23 compadrazcos (god-​parents), 234n26, 236n65 Composiciones de Tierras, 98, 236n63, 257–​58n14 común, 3–​4, 9–​10,  12–​15 común de Indios Great Rebellion letters, 186–​87 independence wars, 210 legacy of, 200–​19 liberal assault on, 210–​14 militias,  196–​97 moral action, 145–​66 name changes, 100, 215 petitions by or in name of, 77, 114–​15, 115f, 116–​17, 151, 154f, 205



286 I n d e

común de Indios (Cont.) post-​independence,  215 requirements for belonging, 10 resilience,  200–​19 revolutionary,  143–​44 rey común, 12–​13, 22–​23,  159–​62 sovereignty of, 11–​13, 165–​66, 174–​78, 209, 219 strengthened,  195–​99 común de Indios de Condo,  149–​51 Llanquipacha murders, 2–​3, 18–​19, 47, 101–​2, 143, 145–​49, 150, 151–​57, 158–​60, 162–​63, 169t, 173–​74, 221n3, 247n2 petitions, 114–​15, 115f, 151–​57, 154f común de Indios de Moscarí, 166 comuneros, 12–​15, 101–​2, 123 agenda, 226n12 battle cry, 167–​68, 222n24 cofradía roles, 107–​8, 251n49 commoner cabildos, 74, 142 complaints against priests, 122, 124–​25, 241n75, 242n87 demand for enforcement of Royal Orders,  112–​17 in early modern Spain, 46–​47 Great Rebellion, 168–​70, 169t, 182–​84, 185, 186f, 187–​89, 188f, 192, 193–​95, 194f invasion of Oruro, 192, 196 letters, 185, 186f, 187–​89, 188f, 193–​95, 194f, 254n50 as Moors, 138 objectives,  167–​68 politics, 104, 145–​66 radical,  124–​42 right to name caciques,  174–​78 self-​description,  249n26 social organization of, 106 support for Inca king, 182–​84 terminology for, xiii–​xiv as tributary Indians, 176, 188–​90 comunes (community lands). see collective or community lands común-​style leadership, 217 CONAMAQ (Consejo de Ayllus y Markas de Qullasuyu, Council of Ayllus and Towns of Qullasuyu), 218, 259n52 concubines,  68–​69 Condesuyus, 197 Condo (Condocondo, San Pedro de Condo), 4–​7, 86, 123, 227n25, 229n17 annex towns, 87–​89, 88f, 98–​99,  106–​7 ayllus, 60–​61, 229n21 cabildo,  107–​8 cacique murders, 2–​3, 18–​19, 47, 143, 145–​49, 150, 151–​57, 158–​60, 162–​63, 169t, 173–​74, 221n3, 247n2 caciques apoderados, 258n31

x

cajas de comunidad, 230n47 church inventory, 71 cofradías,  105–​6 común, 201, 249n26 ethnographic works on, 259n40 foundation, 8–​9,  60–​61 Great Rebellion, 179f, 191, 193, 198–​99 heartland, 212 independence wars, 210 jurisdiction, 87–​89, 229n19 La Gasca visita done, 227–​28n1 land claims, 109–​10 location, 5f, 29, 59f, 88f, 179f population, 246n69, 247n4 post-​independence wars, 210 rebellions, 141, 147, 203, 258n25 rural development, 218–​19 saints’ celebrations, 107 tribute collection, 141, 161 Condorcanqui, José Gabriel, 180, 202–​3. see also Tupac Amaru Condori, Diego, 96 confession, 228n7, 243n12, 245n39 congregaciones, 257n2 conquest politics, 48–​49 Consejo de Ayllus y Markas de Qullasuyu (CONAMAQ, Council of Ayllus and Towns of Qullasuyu), 218, 259n52 constitutionalism,  204–​5 contemporary community authorities, 215, 216f conversion, 69–​71, 231n62, 232n5, 233n13, 237n10 Copacabana (town), 179f, 197, 234n27 Inca ritual center, 38 Virgin of, 234n24 Copacondo, Ambrocio, 140–​42, 206, 246n69 Copatiti, Blas, 147, 149, 150, 161–​62 Coporaque, 197 Cordova, Joaquin, 183f Coricancha, 37 corn beer (chicha), 34, 245n34 Coroma (San Francisco de Coroma), 193, 228n15 cabildo, 215 cacique,  175–​77 creation, 58–​61, 234n29 ethnographic works on, 259n40 Great Rebellion, 193 idolatry, 236n47 Siwaruyu petition to found Santiago de Tolapampa,  91–​95 Coropaya,  133–​34 corporatism, 210–​11, 222n20 Corpus Christi festivals, 43, 89–​90, 110–​12, 234n33, 240n47 Corque (Corquemarca) (town), 59f, 118–​19, 123, 159, 241n75 corregidores, 49–​50, 128, 187, 211





Index

correspondence. see letters; individual writers corruption, 249n25 Cortes (Spain), 42, 45–​46, 49–​50, 226n11 Coto, Martín, 164 Council of Lima, 70–​71, 82–​83 Council of the Indies, 71–​72 Council of Trent, 69–​70, 82–​83, 103–​4, 231n57, 231n65, 232n11, 233n21 Covarrubias, 54 creation, 227n35 Creoles, 22, 201, 253n31, 258n15 Great Rebellion, 169t, 179–​82, 202 independence wars, 210 indios criollos, 258–​59n39 political parties, 214 popular sovereignty, 209 post-​independence wars,  210–​14 racial classifications, 206–​8 terminology for, xiii, 207–​8 uprisings, 209–​10, 251n2 urban republics, 201–​4 crosses, 240n47, 242n85, 245n35 Cruz Condori, Ambrocio, 160 Cruz de Mayo festivals, 122, 240n47 Cuisuta, Catalina, 56–57 Culta (Santa Bárbara de Culta), 4–​6, 81–​89, 95–​96,  97–​98 alcalde, 128 ayllus,  106–​7 cabildos, 95–​96, 238n26 cofradías, 95–​96, 105, 238n26 contemporary, 242n80 Cruz de Mayo festivals, 122 ethnographic works on, 259n40 Great Rebellion, 190–​91 land claims, 109–​10 location, 5f, 88f post-​independence wars, 210 rural development, 218–​19 social organization, 106–​7 tinkus, 240n48 cults divination,  119–​20 mama uso,  117–​20 saints’ cults, 100, 107, 109, 238n15 cultural practices, 84–​85, 158–​59, 212–​13, 258n32 Andean norms, 71–​73 buena policía (good customs), 8–​9, 44, 54, 68–​ 69, 80, 100 colonial culture, 100, 233–​34n22 Spanish norms, 73 traditional usos y costumbres (uses and customs),  218–​19 cumbi (cloth), 34, 36–​37 Cupe (annex town), 96, 97–​98 Curahuara (Santiago de Curaguara), 60, 229n18, 241n75

287

cuy, 245n36 Cuzco, 7–​8, 33, 35–​36 forasteros, 237n67 Great Rebellion, 169t, 179f, 196, 197–​98 reducción towns, 231n68 territory,  4–​6, 5f   dancing,  84–​85 Daza y Arguelles, Eusebio, 112, 113, 115–​16,  117 decolonization, 210 democracy, 222n19 ayllu, 217–​18, 222n11 despotism, 226–​27n23 devil worship, 232–​33n12 dhimma,  44–​45 diarchy, 37–​38,  45–​46 dictatorship, 214 divination cults, 119–​20 doctrinas, 79 documentary record, 19–​20, 215 census records, 56–57 election reports, 243n14 Inca, 34 legal documents, 80–​81 lists of mojones, 57–58 receipts and registers, 127, 243n12 reverence toward, 252n22 rules for public scribes, 232n6 service records, 40 storage of, 243n11 textile bundles (q’epis), 215, 235n38, 259n41 town records, 67–​69 wills, petitions, and letters, 80. see also letters; petitions Dominicans, 69–​70, 103 drums, 146 drunkenness,  68–​69 Duque de la Palata, 99, 102–​3, 232n3, 235n42, 237n69, 237n7   earth beings, 238n19 economy crisis,  102–​4 moral, 142, 247n75 pre-​Conquest,  224n7 Ecuador, 201 education, 91, 212–​14 Jesuit schools, 80 parish schools, 232n5 primary schools, 227n26 secular catechisms, 208 elections, 127, 198, 243n14 encomenderos, 42, 48–​49, 226n59 encomiendas, 42, 48–​49, 63, 226n59, 226n9, 227n26 Enlighted despotism, 226–​27n23



288 I n d e

Enlightenment, 11–​12, 19, 47, 76, 103 from below, 224n42 legal, 205, 224n42 racial classification, 206–​8, 223n33 environmental degradation, 217–​18 Erasmus, 231n58 Escobedo y Alarcon, Jorge, 190 escribanos (notaries), 63–​64, 231n67 Espejo, Joseph, 1–​3, 147–​49, 150, 151, 153–​54,  157–​58 ethnic cleansing, 213, 258n15 ethnic groups, 239n40, 244n21 ethnic identification, 158–​59 ethnogenesis, 18, 223–​24n40 ethnography, 214–​15, 259n40 ethnohistory, 16–17, 214, 223n34 eugenics, 213 evangelization, 231n57, 232–​33n12 excommunication orders, 112–​13 extirpation, 233n14. see also idolatry extractive capitalism, 26, 204–​5   feasts, 102 federations, 38. see also individual federations Feijóo, Benito Jerónimo, 47 Fernández Acho, Joseph, 107–​8 festivals. see also saints’ celebrations Inca practices, 242n85 feudalism,  211–​12 fiesta-​cargo system, 215, 239n36 Filipinos, 26 fiscal obligations, 128–​31 food and foodstuffs collective feasting, 37 production and distribution of, 32–​33 forasteros, 80, 98–​99, 109, 232n3, 237n68, 239n38 France,  209–​10 Franciscan robes, 114, 115–​16 Franciscans, 69–​70, 103 Fuenteovejuna (Lope de Vega), 47 fueros (municipal charters), 44 based on dhimma,  44–​45. funeral registers, 243n12   García, Estevan, 101, 104, 112–​16, 118, 206 petitions, 113, 114–​15, 115f,  116–​17 García, Lorenzo, 101, 104, 112–​13, 114–​17, 118, 206 petitions, 113, 114–​15, 115f,  116–​17 García, Pedro, 112–​13 García, Vicente, 112–​13, 116–​17 Garcilaso de la Vega, 32–​33, 202 Garrett, David, 180, 223–​24n40, 236n56, 253n32, 256n73, 256n76, 256n79, 257n9 Gasca, Pedro de la, 53 Geertz, Clifford, 223n34, 223n36 Gemio, Joseph, 153–​55

x

GeoPACHA (Geospatial Platform for Andean Culture, History and Archaeology), 257n1 George III, 257n3 Germany, 226n19 gift societies, 224n7 god-​parents (compadrazcos), 234n26, 236n65 government self-​government, 9, 44–​45, 55–56, 74, 98–​99, 144, 208, 217–​19 village governance, 231n72 governors, 236n56 Graubart, Karen, 16–17, 223n35, 223n39, 226n7, 236n53, 257n9 great man theory, 203 Great Rebellion, 20, 161, 167–​99, 202–​3 Battle of Punilla, 192 letters, 183f, 184–​95, 186f, 188f, 194f regions of conflict, 178, 179f timeline, 169t Guachacalla (town), 185, 186f Guaguari, Nicolas, 175 Guarache, 34, 37, 42 Guarache, Alexo Choqueticlla Colque, 138–​39 Guarache, Cristóval, 138–​40 Guarache, Juan Colque, 138–​39 Guarache, Maria Lupercia Colque, 40, 138–​39 Guarachi, Antonio Alexandro, 176–​77 Guarachi, Diego Colque, 197 guarmi (warmi), 239n38 guerrilla campaigns, 209–​10, 257n6 guilds, 105   haciendas, 211–​12, 213–​14, 257–​58n14, 258n30 Hallasa, Diego, 92–​93, 95, 235n40 Hanks, William, 18, 71–​72, 223–​24n40, 224n43, 228n5, 231n62, 231n69, 232n10, 233n13, 233n20, 236n60, 237n67, 254n45, 254n52 Hapsburg monarchy, 102–​3, 143 harvest festivals, 122 Hatunqolla, 38 Hatunquillacas, 184 Hereña, Carlos, 133 Herzog, Tamar, 227n40, 230n44, 231n54, 236n62, highlands, 212, 239n40 highways Camino Real, 72–​73 Inca Qhapaq Ñan highway, 25, 31–​33, 35–​37, 39f, 58–​60, 72–​73, 231n71 transnational, 259n53 Hilavi (ayllu), 56–57 Hispanicization, 52, 222n13 history, 223n36 Holguín, González, 13–​14 hospitality, institutionalized, 32, 110–​11, 240n44 Huari (Santiago de Huari), 45–​46, 88f, 149 Huarochirí, 168, 236n53, 251n3





Index

Huayllamarca (Santiago de Huayllamarca), 60, 229n18 Huayna Capac, 35, 36–​37, 40, 225n48 Hucumare, Hernando, 71 human sacrifice, 36, 225n27 humanism, universal, 211–​12 humility, 217 Hurmires (town), 191   Iberian Peninsula. see also Spain Muslim rule, 44–​45, 48, 226n7 resettlement towns, 69 Spanish reconquest of, 138 stations of the cross, 245n35 town planning, 54 urbanism,  43–​45 ibn Ziyad Tariq, 44–​45 idolatry, 69–​70, 71–​72, 83–​84, 119–​20, 231n59, 232–​33n12. see also religious practices Andean, 113, 235n37 Annex town foundation and accusations of,  84–​85 campaigns to extirpate, 51, 84–​85, 91, 95–​96, 119–​20, 122, 233n14 Catholic, 113 signs of, 86 illiteracy,  212–​13 immigration laws, 213 Incas, 6–​8, 25, 45–​47, 143 administrative centers, 33–​34, 39f animal sacrifice, 21, 36, 225n27 archeological evidence of, 241n68 Atahualpa, 33 ayllus, 45 Aymoray festival, 242n85 benefits to local people, 32–​33 ceques (sacred paths), 36–​37, 245n35 collapse,  41–​42 comunero embrace of Inca king, 182–​84 conquest, 6–​7, 32–​33, 224n4 creation myth, 227n35 expansion,  46–​47 imperial ways, 35–​37 importance of cloth to, 225n16 labor system (mit’a), 25, 31–​33, 34, 37, 51–​52, 224n13, 244n27, 248n10 as legitimate lords, 50 Oruro Creole embrace of Inca king, 179–​82 Paullu Inca, 41, 42 property, 230n40 Qhapaq Ñan highway, 25, 31–​33, 35–​37, 39f, 58–​60, 72–​73,  231n71 in Qullasuyu, 29–​42 rejection of Tupac Amaru, 180, 198 resettlement campaign, 25, 40, 228n15 revitalization movements, 198–​99, 202–​3,  256n83

289

rule over Asanaqi, 6–​7 as señores naturales, 62 Spanish prejudice against, 197–​98 Tawantinsuyu (realm of the four quarters), 25–​26,  30–​33 tyranny, 6, 25–​26, 42, 43–​52, 227n33 urbanism,  33–​35 in Vilcabamba, 49–​50, 227n30 independence,  210–​14 independence wars, 210 Indians, 202–​3. see also Andeans assimilation,  213–​14 citizenship,  211–​12 cholos, 138–​39, 214, 217, 258–​59n39 disenfranchised,  212–​13 parish priest abuses against, 102, 128–​31 representation of, 209–​10, 211–​12 rule of, 226n7 segregation of, 212–​13 Spanish categorization of, 131, 205, 206–​7 Spanish prejudice against, 197–​98, 206–​7 terminology for, xiii–​xiv tributary (taxpaying), 53–​54, 176, 188–​90,  206–​7 urbanized, 258–​59n39 indigenous languages, 20 indigenous movements, 257n6 indigenous peoples cabildos, 211, 236n53, 256n80 Christian practice, 233n13 colonial era, 205–​6 elections, 243n14 emancipation of, 259n47 ethnographic works on, 259n40 extraction of wealth from, 204–​5 independence wars, 210 loans to Spaniards, 230n47 migration of, 232n3 national politics, 215–​19 oversight of priests, 231n49 primary schools for, 227n26 representation,  209–​10 terminology for, xiii–​xiv uprisings, 144. see also uprisings Visita General, 50, 53–​57, 62–​63, 64–​66, 125 women, 99–​100, 109, 113, 172, 197–​98, 222n26, 234n26, 247n2 indios criollos, 258–​59n39 indios ladinos, 71, 80–​81, 82–​83, 206 infrastructure, 32–​33, 216, 219 inspection tours, 245n48. see also Visita General (General Visit) International Monetary Fund (IMF), 214, 217 irrigation,  32–​33 Isidore of Seville, 44 Islam, 44–​45, 226n7 Itapaya (Bolivia), 236n59



290 I n d e

JAKISA, 259n52 jaqi, xiii Jatun Killaka Asanajaqi, 259n52 Jesuits, 11, 80, 103, 131, 166, 208 Jews, 44–​45, 54, 213 jilaqatas or jilancos, 56–57, 63–​64, 96, 128, 132, 211 Juan Santos Atahualpa, 251n3 Juarez, Pedro, 229–​30n32 judicial system, 42, 45–​46, 49–​50, 167, 226n14 Jueves de Compadres festival, 255n57 just rebellion, 47, 150–​51, 166 justice, 42, 67, 145–​66   Kagan, Richard, 16–17, 221n9, 222n10, 223n35, 226n2, 226n6, 226n13, 227n31, 250n35 Killaka (pre-​Columbian federation), 4–​6, 38–​40, 39f, 48–​49, 200, 218 King’s justice, 145–​66 kinship, fictive, 98–​99 Kolata, Alan, 223n38, 224n1, 224n3, 224n7, 224n9, 224n13, 225n26, 225n37, 230n40 kuraka, 36–​37, 45. see also cacique   La Concepción de Cahuayo. see Cahuayo La Gasca, Pedro, 60–​61 La Paz, 250n31, 256n73 Great Rebellion, 168–​70, 169t, 179f, 184–​85, 192, 193–​94, 195 location, 5f, 179f La Plata. see Sucre La Vida es Sueño (Calderón de la Barca), 47 labor supply. see also mita service collective labor, 72–​73 encomienda, 42, 48–​49 local systems, 32 mobilization of, 53–​54 rotational systems, 231n72 rules of reciprocity, 34, 37 labor unions (sindicatos campesinos),  213–​14 Lagunillas (tambo), 191 Lake Poopó, 29, 39f Lampa (province), 197 land ownership, 6, 35, 65–​67 allotments, 61–​62, 126 in Castile, 231n72 claims, 58–​60, 98, 109–​10, 223n34, 239–​40n42 collective fields (sapsi), 13–​14, 32, 58–​60,  72–​73 collective or community lands, 7, 13–​14, 15–​ 16, 58–​60, 66, 72–​73, 126, 210–​13, 230n42 disputes, 35, 126, 240n48, 257–​58n14 grants, 35, 63 maize fields, 34–​35, 38, 39f Tierras Comunitarias de Origen (TCOs, Original Community Lands), 218, 259n53 and tribute, 239n37 land reform, 213–​14

x

language, 246n58 Las Casas, Bartolomé de, 16, 48–​49, 50, 206–​7,  227n33 Law of Popular Participation, 215–​16 Law of the Rights of Mother Earth (Pachamama), 259n49 Laws of the Indies, 218–​19 Laymes, 175 Lazaro, Pedro, 197 leadership, 195–​96, 253n41 in archbishoprics, 233n17 community, 215, 216f común-​style,  217 contemporary, 215, 216f festival, 238n20 importance of religious practice to, 190 merger with Andean religiosity, 101–​23 thakhi (pathway) service, 215, 217–​18, 259n40 town,  101–​23 league (distance), 228n14 legal documents, 80–​81 legal Enlightenment, 205, 224n42 legal pluralism, 218–​19 legal system, imperial, 74 Lenis, Damián, 3, 148–​49, 150–​51, 155, 156–​57, 162, 248n9 Lenis, Maria, 2, 247n2 letter carriers (chasquis), 72–​73, 114–​15,  126–​27 letters, 20, 80, 254n50. see also documentary record; petitions; individual authors and writers Great Rebellion, 193–​95, 194f revolution through mail routes and letters, 183f, 184–​95, 186f, 188f Lewin, Boleslao, 251n5 libations, 102 liberty (term), 228n8 Lima, 168, 236n53, 241n75, 255n59 Lipi people, 40 literacy, 20, 71, 80, 91, 206, 212–​13 pragmatic, 243n12 Spanish-​language,  71 llama sacrifice, 102, 118, 119–​20, 166, 215, 225n27, 233n13 llamas, 36, 61–​62 Llanquipacha, Andrés Felix, 246n69 conflict with comuneros, 147–​48, 149, 152, 155 murder of, 2–​3, 18–​19, 145–​46, 148, 149, 151, 156, 169t, 221n3 Llanquipacha, Gregorio Felix, 121, 237n13, 244n29, 246n69, 249n27 as cholo, 139, 140–​41 conflict with Choque, 1, 246n53 conflict with comuneros, 67, 131, 137–​38, 140–​ 41, 145, 147–​49, 150, 151, 155 conflict with Espejo, 1–​2, 152, 157





Index

murder of, 1–​3, 18–​19, 145–​46, 148, 150, 151, 156, 158–​59, 169t, 221n3, 247n2 noble pretensions, 158–​59 permission to carry weapons, 248n11 request for privileges, 145 as sambo, 140–​41, 247n73 self-​description,  249n26 tribute collection, 135–​37 tribute thefts, 1, 141, 142, 153–​54, 156–​57,  249n25 Llanquipacha, Ignacio Felix, 246n69 Llanquipacha, Lucas Felix, 173–​74 Locke, John, 257–​58n14 LOGAR (Linked Online Gazetteer of the Andean Region), 257n1 Lope de Mendoza, don, 229–​30n32 Lower Cahualli (ayllu), 88f, 247n4 loyalists, 197, 256n73 Luna, Gómez de, 42, 48–​49 Lupa, Florencio, 14–​15, 121–​23, 142, 242n81, 242n88, 244n15, 245n37 appeal to emigrate, 163–​64 conflict with the común,  165–​66 contempt for the church, 165 Coropaya hacienda, 133–​34 mita service ritual duties, 131–​34 murder, 162–​64, 166, 169t secretaries,  133–​34 threats on his life, 164–​65 tribute collection, 130–​31, 164–​65 Lupa, Marcelino, 132 Lupa, Polonia, 134 Lupa y Hinojosa, Theodora, 164 Lupaqas, 38 Luther, Martin, 226n19 Lutheranism,  46–​47   Macha, (town) 166, 233n21, 239n32 alcaldes in, 229–​30n32 caciques, 177–​78, 229–​30n32 ethnographic works on, 259n40 Great Rebellion, 167–​68, 173, 177–​78, 179f, 191,  194–​95 location, 59f, 179f tinkus, 240n48 Macha, (diarchy), 40 Macha, (tambo), 40 Maclla, Baltazar, 92–​93 mail system, 126–​27, 211 chasquis (letter carriers), 72–​73, 114–​15,  126–​27 revolution through mail routes and letters, 183f, 184–​95, 186f, 188f, 194f maize, 34–​35, 38, 39f, 258n30 mallku, 32, 36–​37, 45. see also cacique Jiliri Mallku, 259n52 mama uso,  117–​20

291

Manacré, Jacomé de, 93, 95 Mangan, Jane, 16–17, 223n35, 223n39 Manifesto of Oruro, 169t, 179–​80, 202 Influence on Tupac Amaru, 180, 182 Marca, Martín, 229–​30n32 marches, 217 Mariano, Juan de, 47, 49 Marias, Fernando, 223n35 Mariño, Diego, 152, 153–​54, 156–​57, 247n73 marriage registers, 243n12 Martínez, Sebastián José, 176–​77 mass movements, 168 Matienzo, Juan de, 51, 55f mayordomos, 82, 83f, 85–​86, 106–​8, 109, 110–​11,  238n25 de afuera,  106–​7 del pueblo,  106–​7 women, 239n38 Méndez de Tiedra, Gerónimo, 85 Mendoza, Gunnar, 244n31 Mennonites, 213 methodology and scope, 16–​23 Mexico, 48, 231n73, 257n2 Michaela, Maria, 12–​13, 159–​61 Michaga, Hilario, 147 Michaga, Nicolás, 149 Migration Forasteraje, 99, 237n68 immigration laws, 213 indigenous, 232n3 rural-​to-​urban,  214 Mills, Kenneth, 231n59 military service, 213, 256n74 mines, 34–​35, 37, 48–​49 encomendero service in, 42 locations, 39f mita service in, 79 patron saint of, 105 Miserable (legal category), 64, 151, 176 Mita, Sebastián, 96 mita captains, 51, 64–​65 mita service Bourbon Reforms, 128–​31 under Inca (mit’a), 25, 31–​33, 34, 37, 51–​52, 224n13, 244n27, 248n10 justification for, 205 mine work, 79 payments to avoid, 133 religious work, 107–​8 ritual of, 125, 131–​34 for Spaniards, 42 modernity, 11–​12, 17–​18, 22–​23, 53–​54, 206, 211–​12, 228n4, 237n71 Mogrovejo, Archbishop, 85, 233n17 mojones (boundary markers), 36–​37, 57–58, 72, 126, 215, 228n12



292 I n d e

monarchy constitutional,  209–​10 Hapsburg, 102–​3, 143 Inca,  179–​82 support for, 257n3 Monterroso (Pratica Civil y Criminal), 80–​81,  232n6 Moors, 138 moral action, 145–​66, 247n75 moral economy, 142, 247n75 Morales, Clemente, 119–​20 Morales, Evo, 22–​23, 215–​19, 259n47, 259n53 Moscarí (Santiago de Moscari), 13–​14, 59f, 121, 132, 163–​65,  167–​68 Mother Earth (Pachamama), 217–​18 mountains, 37 Movement for Socialism (MAS), 217 muchana, 252n22 Mumford, Jeremy, 18, 72–​73, 223–​24n40, 224n10, 227n33, 227n42, 228n4, 228n5, 228–​ 29n16, 230n35, 230n41, 231n71, 236n53, 241n69, 257n9 municipal life, 51 Murillo, Alexandro, 137 Muslims, 44–​45, 48, 54, 138, 226n7   Nader, Helen, 16–17, 221n9, 223n35, 226n1, 226n3, 226n10, 227n25, 236n62, 237n72, 243n1 names personal names, 68–​69 surnames, 80, 99–​100, 237n70 national markets, 213 national politics, 213–​14, 215–​19 nationalism, 204–​5, 222n20, 251n6, 256n83, 257n7 Native Americans, 223n34 native people, xiii, 17–​18. see also individual peoples natural law, 26 natural resources, 218–​19 natural rights, 253n31 Nazis, 213 Nelson, Eric, 257n3 neo-​colonialism, 201, 210 neo-​liberalism, 216, 217 new Christians, 84 New Laws, 48–​49 New Spain (viceroyalty of), 228n12, 232n2, 236n51 New World, 43 Nina, Vicente, 2 nomenclature, xiii–​xiv notaries (escribanos), 63–​64, 231n67 Nuestra Señora de la Vera Cruz de (Our Lady of the True Cross of) Cacachaca. see Cacachaca Nuestra Señora de Talavera de Puna. see Puna Nuñoa (town), 197

x

obvenciones, 237–​38n14 Ofensa y Defensa de la Libertad Eclesiastica, 102–​3,  237n7 O’Phelan-​Godoy, Scarlett, 180, 222n12, 251n5, 252n17, 253n32, 253n41, 256n74, 256n79, 257n9 Opoco (town), 192, 193 originarios, 109, 136, 218–​19 orthography, 20, 225n44, 244n30 Oruro, 14–​15, 82–​83, 168 Castilian rule, 201 comunero invasion of, 192, 196 Great Rebellion, 168–​70, 169t, 179f, 179–​82, 184–​85, 193–​94, 198, 251n3, 253n36, 253n38 location, 5f, 59f, 179f Manifesto of Oruro, 169t, 179–​80, 182, 202 Our Lady of Bethlehem of Tinquipaya. see Tinquipaya Our Lady of the True Cross of (Nuestra Señora de la Vera Cruz de) Cacachaca. see Cacachaca Owensby, Brian, 17–​18, 223n34, 224n43, 228n2, 228n12, 232n2, 232n10, 235n42 ownership, 6. see also land ownership; property   Paca, Ramón, 177–​78 Pacajes (colonial province), 222n23, 259n40 Pacaxes (pre-​Columbian federation), 38 Pacha, Martín, 53 Pachacuti,  46–​47 Pachamama (Mother Earth), 217–​18 Pacheco, Santos, 140 pactismo, 226–​27n23 padrón, 95, 136, 243n3. see also census Palata, see Duque de la Palata Palpa (ayllu), 183f Papal Bull of 1493, 102 Paraguay, 208, 213 parcialidades, 45, 63, 72–​73 Paria (Inca administrative center) 33–​37, 41 Paria (province) 51, 82, 126–​27, 137, 147, 151, 163,  167–​68 gatherings to free people, 246n66 Great Rebellion, 167–​68, 169t, 173, 181, 182–​ 84, 185–​87, 193, 202–​3 location, 39 population,  60–​61 reducciones,  60–​61 revolutionary battles, 258n25 Paria (town), 59f parish priests. see priests parish schools, 232n5 parliament, 45 pastoralism,  217–​18 pastures,  61–​62 paternalism, 67, 205 patria chica,  7–​8





Index

patrilines, 106 patron saints, 70–​71, 98–​99, 105. see also saints’ celebrations patronato real, 102 Paullu (Inca), 41, 42 Pax Incaica, 32–​33. see also Incas Paz Estenssoro, Victor, 213–​14 Peasant Revolt, 226n19 peasants (campesinos), xiii, 213–​14, 244n21 Peña Montenegro, Alonso, 234n28 Peñas (tambo), 191 pennants, 86–​87, 233–​34n22 peones,  211–​12 Pereyra, Rosa, 162–163 Peroches, Pascual, 85–​86 personal names, 68–​69. see also surnames Peru, 201, 210 colonial provinces, 51 Inca and early Spanish, 25–​27 pre-​Columbian,  236n65 viceroyalty territory,  4–​6, 5f Peru-​Bolivia,  210 petitions, 20, 77, 80, 206. see also documentary record; individual authors and writers from apoderados, 212 from caciques, 52 by or in name of común, 77, 114–​15, 115f, 116–​17, 151, 154f, 205 post-​independence wars, 212 Siwaruyu petition to found Santiago de Tolapampa, 91–​95, 235n38 Philip II, 8, 50, 71–​72, 227n30 Philippines,  209–​10 Pizarro, Francisco, 48–​49 Pizarro, Gonzalo, 48–​49 Platt, Tristan, 222n27, 224n46, 224n4, 224n7, 226n55, 226n56, 229n30, 239n35, 239n37, 240n48, 241n74, 257n9, 258n27, 259n40 pluralism, legal, 218–​19 Pocoata (San Juan de Pocoata), 4–​6, 14–​15, 40, 123, 239n32, 239n38, 240n48, 242n81, 246n66, 259n40 Cruz de Mayo festivals, 122 location, 5f, 59f rebellion against tribute collection, 139–​40, 172​ Pocona (San Francisco de Pocona), 59f, 96–​99, 232–​33n12,  256n80 police, 216, 217 policía, 227n31. see also buena policía (good customs) political parties, 214 political rituals, 125–​28 politics Andean,  1–​23 comunero, 104, 145–​66 of conquest and colonialism, 48–​49 of humility, 217 national, 213–​14,  215–​19

293

Polo Ondegardo, Juan, 61–​62 Poma de Ayala, Guaman,  83f, 94f Poopó (town), 193 popular Catholicism, 69–​70 popular sovereignty, 6, 11–​12, 52, 144, 166, 203–​4,  205 comunero assertion of, 174–​78 shifting interpretations of, 208–​10 population decline, 236n61 populism,  216–​17 Porco mines, 39f, 42, 48–​49, 59f Porco province, 37 Great Rebellion, 192, 193–​95, 194f,  202–​3 revolutionary battles, 258n25 Portocarrero y Lasso de la Vega, Melchor, 178 postal routes: revolution through, 183f, 184–​95, 186f, 188f, 194f postillones,  126–​27 Potosí, 37, 42, 82–​83 bull fights, 237n13, 244n29 Castilian rule, 201 Great Rebellion, 179f,  182–​84 labor supply, 228n8 location, 5f, 39f, 59f, 179f mita mine service, 91, 131–​32 mita religious service, 238n24 plays performed in, 227n25 saints’ celebrations, 109–​10 silver production, 230n47 Pratica Civil y Criminal (Monterroso), 80–​81, 232n6 prejudice, 197–​98,  203–​4 Premo, Bianca, 16–17, 222n18, 223n35, 223n39, 224n42, 257n9–​11 priests abuses against Indians, 102, 128–​31 complaints against, 116–​17, 121, 122, 124–​25, 241n75, 242n87 Inca high priests, 32 indigenous oversight of, 231n49 salary and fees, 104 secular, 103 principales, 10, 63–​64, 92, 96, 127–​28, 186–​87 priostasgo, 238n25 private property, 16, 65–​67, 211–​12, 213–​14, 230n42, 257–​58n14 privatization, 210–​12, 217, 230n42 professional classes, 231n58 property, 15–​16,  65–​67 collective fields (sapsi), 13–​14, 32, 58–​60, 72–​73 collective or community lands, 7, 13–​14, 15–​ 16, 58–​60, 66, 72–​73, 126, 210–​13, 230n42 Inca, 230n40 private or individual holdings, 16, 65–​67, 211–​ 12, 213–​14, 230n42, 257–​58n14 Tierras Comunitarias de Origen (TCOs, Original Community Lands), 218, 259n53



294 I n d e

property rights, 6, 65–​67, 211–​12, 257–​58n14 prostitutes, 105 Protestants and Protestantism, 46–​47, 69–​70,  82–​83 public scribes, 63–​64, 231n67, 232n6 public sphere, 157–​59 Pucurani-​Omasuyus,  197 pueblo-​rey (people-​king), 227n25 Puente Luna, José Carlos de la, 17–​18, 222n25, 223n35, 223n39, 229–​30n32, 236n53, 238n26, 239n36, 241n75, 257n9, 257n12 Pukwata, 40. see also Pocoata Puma, Santos, 177–​78 Puna (Talavera de Puna), 58–​60, 59f, 89, 188–​90, 229n17, 234n29 Punilla, 192 Puno, Nicolás, 96   Qhapaq Ñan highway, 25, 31–​33, 35–​37, 39f, 58–​ 60, 72–​73, 231n71 Qhapaq ucha ceremony, 36 Qaraqara, 38–​40, 39f Quechua, 69–​70, 225n44, 245n37 Quillacas (town), 38, 39f, 59f, 138–​39, 197, 200, 225n44 Quiocaya, 92, 228n14, 234n29. see also Tomave quipus (pneumonic string devices), 34, 224n2, 224–​25n15 Quispe, Gaspar, 119 Quispe, Martín, 119 Quispe Escobar, Alber, 238n17, 238n20, 238n22, 238n24, 239n38, 239n335, 239–​40n42, 242n76 Quito, 236n62 Qullas,  37–​38 Qullasuyu, 29–​42, 39f   racial classifications, 15–​16, 138, 258n32 Enlightenment thinking on, 206–​8, 223n33 modern racism, 202–​4, 211–​13 resettlement policy and, 65–​67, 231n73 radio, 217 Ramírez de Águila, Pedro, 79–​80, 232n1, 232n4 Rappaport, Joanne, 223n34, 236n53, 243n9, 252n22, 257n9, 257n11 rationalism, 103 rebellion. see uprisings receipts, 127, 243n12. see also documentary record reciprocity, 32, 34, 37, 133, 224n7 record keeping. see documentary record reducción, 8–​9, 18, 2​ 1, 26, 40, 48, 51, 228n8, 228n12, 231n54 Andeanization of, 79–​100 Failure, question of, 71–​74, 89, 228–​29n16 impact of, 18, 19, 72, 237n67

x

reducción towns, 26, 53–​74, 205–​6, 228n5, 231n54, 231n68 Asanaqi, 79–​100, 88f cabildos (town councils), 62–​65, 72, 206 cofradías, 105 common lands, 16, 66, 211–​12 construction, 61 creation, 6–​9, 54–​62, 234n29 failure, question of, 71–​74, 79, 205 Juan de Matienzo’s design for, 55f locations, 59f, 88f, 229n20 Maya reducido, 233n20 patron saints, 70–​71 reasons for, 10, 229n23 as repúblicas de indios, 55–56 self-​government,  9 tasa documents, 65–​66 Visita General, 50, 53–​57, 62–​63, 64–​66, 125 written records, 67–​69 reducciones. see reducción towns regalism, 243n1 regidores (aldermen), 63–​64 religious art, 231n66 religious practices. see also idolatry; sacrificial practices; saints’ celebrations Andean,  101–​23 ch’alla,  132–​33 communion, 111, 243n12 confession, 68–​69, 71, 86–​87, 104, 109, 228n7, 243n12 devil worship, 232–​33n12 divination cults, 119–​20 Incaic worship, 252n22 local practices, 35–​37 as mita, 107–​8, 238n23 ritual practices, 70, 117–​21 sacred images, 231n63, 240n47 sacred paths (ceques), 36–​37, 245n35 Spanish Inquisition, 69–​70, 228n4 religious reform, 102–​4 Renaissance period, 19 repartos, 255n59 representation,  209–​10 república(s),  7–​8 de españoles,  69–​70 de indios, 55–56, 69–​70 Spanish,  43–​52 urban Creole republics, 201–​4 reservados, 109 resettlement, 228n3, 231n73, 236n60 by Incas, 40, 89, 228n15 by Spaniards. see reducción policy applied to Spaniards, 69, 231n54 resistance, 204 Andean, 17–​18,  75–​77 to colonial expansion, 17–​18, 198–​99 to Spanish institutions, 17–​18, 75–​77





Index

Retamoso, Francisco de, 48–​49 revivalism, Inca, 198–​99, 202–​3, 256n83 Revolution of the Communities (Comuneros of Castile), 45–​47, 198 rey común, 12–​13, 22–​23,  159–​62 ricuchico,  110–​11 rights based on town citizenship, 44–​45 collective, 211, 217–​18 individual,  217–​18 to name caciques,  174–​78 natural, 253n31 of popular sovereignty, 6, 176 to property, 6, 65–​67, 211–​12, 257–​58n14 to self-​government, 55–56, 208, 217–​19 to vote, 213–​14 Rio de la Plata, 4–​6, 5f, 168, 210, 251n7 rituals, 86–​87, 243n12, 245n34. see also sacrificial practices for battle, 102 civic ceremonies, 124, 125–​28 with clothing of deceased, 259n41 mita service, 131–​34 political,  125–​28 religious practices, 70, 117–​21, 252n22 with textile bundles (q’epis), 259n41 in tribute collection, 134–​42 Rivera (town), 185, 186f Rivera Cusicanqui, Silvia, 222n11, 224n7, 259n48 roads Camino Real,  72–​73 Inca Qhapaq Ñan highway, 25, 31–​33, 35–​37, 39f, 58–​60, 72–​73, 231n71 maintenance of, 211 transnational highway, 259n53 Rodriquez, Jacinto, 169t,  180–​82 rollos, 242n82 Román, Juan Hilario, 118 Roman Catholicism, 75–​76 Royal Orders, 112–​17, 127 royalists, 178, 197, 257n3 runa, xiii rural development, 218–​19   Saavedra Ulloa, Francisco de, 60 Sacaca, 59f, 174 Sacama, Hernando, 229–​30n32 sacred images, 231n63, 240n47 sacred paths (ceques), 36–​37, 245n35 sacrificial practices, 36, 117–​21 animal sacrifice, 21, 36, 225n27 human sacrifice (Qhapaq ucha), 36 llama sacrifice, 102, 118, 119–​20, 166, 215, 225n27, 233n13 Saint Mary Magdalene, 105 saints, 37, 75–​76. see also individual saints

295

saints’ celebrations, 75–​76, 102, 103–​4, 109–​12, 123, 124, 238n24 costs of, 107 excessive offices, 128–​31 mama uso cult, 117–​20 mayordomos for, 106–​7 organization of, 106–​7 patron saints, 70–​71, 98–​99, 239–​40n42 rebellion spread through, 172 saints’ cults, 100, 107, 109, 238n15 sponsorship of, 21, 107, 205–​6, 215, 238n20, 238n25 tribute reduction rumors, 172 saints’ chapels, in annex towns, 79, 81, 82, 86, 87–​89, 90 destruction of, 82–​83 saints’ images, 82–​83, 103–​4, 240n58 miraculous apparition, 70–​71 Salar de Uyuni, 29 Samara, Sebastián, 96 sambos, 140–​41, 247n73 San Antonio Abad, 105 San Bartolomé festival, 245n38 San Bernardo parish, 248n10 San Francisco de Calapiquina, 68 San Francisco de Coroma. see Coroma San Francisco de Pocona. see Pocona San Juan Bautista de Carasi. see Carasi San Juan de Challapata. see Challapata San Juan de la Frontera, 58–​60 San Juan de Pocoata. see Pocoata San Lorenzo, 105, 248n10 San Lucas de Payacollo, 60–​61 San Marcos de Miraflores, 222n26, 240n46 San Martín, 210 San Pedro (saint’s day), 112 San Pedro de Buenavista, 172, 177–​78, 197 San Pedro de Condo. see Condo San Pedro de Totora. see Totora Sanctuario Quillacas, 200 Santa Bárbara, 82, 89, 106–​7 pennants, 86–​87, 233–​34n22 Santa Bárbara de Culta. see Culta Santa Monica monastery, 163 Santa Rosa festival, 245n38 Santiago de Curaguara. see Curahuara Santiago de Huari. see Huari Santiago de Huayllamarca. see Huayllamarca Santiago de Moscarí. see Moscarí Santiago de Tolapampa. see Tolapampa Santos Pacheco, 140, 246n67 sapsi (collective fields), 13–​14, 32, 58–​60, 72–​73 Sarmiento de Gamboa, Pedro, 50–​51 Savaya (town), 185, 186f schools. see education secular catechisms, 208 secular priests, 103



296 I n d e

secularization, 12 Segovia, Juan de, 46–​47 segregation,  212–​13 segundas, 108, 128, 229–​30n32 self-​government, 9, 44–​45, 74, 98–​99 demand for, 144 right to, 55–56, 208, 217–​19 señores, 48, 62 señoríos (lordships), 37–​38, 48 serendipity test, 222n23 Serulnikov, Sergio, 223n38, 244n21, 247n75, 251n7, 252n16, 252n25, 257n6, 257n9 service records, 40 settlement patterns, 109–​10, 200. see also resettlement sexmos (wards), 73 Las Siete Partidas, 80–​81, 96–​97, 232n6 silver, 48–​49, 230n47 silver people (colque runas /​colque jaques), 133, 174–​75,  245n37 sindicatos campesinos (peasant labor unions),  213–​14 Sistine Chapel of the Altiplano (Curahuara), 60, 229n18 Siwaruyu people petition to found Santiago de Tolapampa, 91–​95,  235n38 resettlement of, 40, 89–​91, 234n29 Siwaruyu-​Arakapi, 38–​40, 48–​49, 58–​60, 95, 200 slavery, 228n8 small captains (mita), 64–​65 social engineering, 54, 100 social estate, 65–​67 social mobility, 197 social organization, 63, 72–​73, 105–​7 socialism, 213–​14, 217 Society of Jesus, 47. see also Jesuits Solcahavi (ayllu), 229–​30n32 Soras, 38 Soto, Marcos, 174–​75 sovereignty ayllu-​level assertion of, 218 collective, 144 of común, 11–​13, 165–​66, 174–​78, 209, 219 in early modern Spain, 45–​47 of Incas, 50 indigenous,  198–​99 legitimate, 25–​26, 50 popular, 6, 11–​12, 52, 144, 166, 174–​78, 203–​4, 205,  208–​10 theories of, 12, 46–​47 Spain call for new conquest, 197–​98 Castile, 43–​47, 53–​54, 73, 231n72 cofradías, 105 colonial expansion, 26, 48–​49, 198–​99, 204–​6, 221n9, 237n72, 257–​58n14

x

Composiciones de Tierras policy, 98, 236n63, 257–​58n14 Comuneros in. see Revolution of the Communities Constitution, 209 constitutional monarchy, 209–​10 cultural norms, 73 early modern, 43–​47, 228n4 in early Peru, 25–​27, 41–​42 guerrilla campaigns against French, 209–​10 Hapsburg monarchy, 102–​3, 143 indigenous allies, 226n57 judicial system (Cortes), 42, 45–​46, 49–​50,  226n11 land ownership, 231n72 Muslim rule, 44–​45, 48, 226n7 New Laws, 48–​49 New Spain (viceroyalty of), 228n12, 232n2, 236n51 popular sovereignty, 208–​10 prejudice against Indians, 197–​98 reconquest of Iberian Peninsula, 138 reductions. see reducción religious reform, 102–​4 reorganization by Charles III, 103 resettlement by. see reducción resettlement towns. see reducción towns Revolution of the Communities, 45–​47, 198 Royal Orders, 112–​17 tax revenue, 103 town charters, 243n1 Spaniards, xiii, 230n47 Spanish Inquisition, 69–​70, 228n4 Spanish language literacy, 71 Spanish república,  43–​52 Spanish Revolution, 227n25 Spanish Royal Road (Camino Real),  72–​73 Spanish-​language literacy, 20, 118, 154–​55, 246–​ 47n70. see also Indios ladinos speaking in tongues, 117–​18 staff of office (tata reyes, father kings), 215, 216f, 246n67, 259n41 Suárez, Francisco, 46–​47, 49, 208, 226–​27n23 Sucre (La Plata), 4–​6, 81–​82, 210, 250n41 Castilian rule, 201 Chuquisaca, 114, 250n41 doctrinas, 79 Great Rebellion, 162–​66, 167, 169t, 179f,  181–​82 independence wars, 210 location, 5f, 59f, 179f Suero, Joseph de, 148–​49, 153–​54 Sullcayana (ayllu), 88f, 146–​47, 247n4 sumaq qamaña (living well or living in harmony),  217–​18 Suras, 38–​40, 39f,  48–​49 surnames, 80, 99–​100, 237n70 Suyo, Pedro, 190





Index

symbols and symbolism crosses, 240n47, 242n85, 245n35 tata reyes (father kings, staff of office), 215, 216f, 246n67, 259n41   Tacachiri, Pedro, 53 Taki (Taqui) Onqoy, 117–​18, 241n69 Talavera de Puna. see Puna Tambo de Lagunillas, 88f tambos, 31–​32, 34, 35–​36, 39f, 68, 182–​84, 191, 210, 225n51, 228n15, 231n50, 258n25 Tapacarí (town), 238n17, 238n24, 239n32, 239n38 Taquechiri, Martín, 71 Taquimalco, Julián, 1, 221n3 Taquimalco, Marcelo, 147, 149–​50, 161–​62 Taquimalco, Thomas, 137 Tarapacá, 185, 186f Tata Asanaqi, 29, 32, 34, 37, 200 Tata Killakas, 200 tata reyes (father kings, staff of office), 215, 216f, 246n67, 259n41 Tawantinsuyu (realm of the four quarters), 25–​26, 29–​42,  45 taxes. see also tribute payments alcabala (sales) tax, 202–​3 collection of, 53–​54 dhimma,  44–​45 exemptions, 40 TCOs (Tierras Comunitarias de Origen, Original Community Lands), 218, 259n53 terminology, xiii–​xiv Ternero, Juan Fernández, 68 testimonies, 20, 77 textile bundles (q'epis), 215, 235n38, 259n41 textiles, 68–​69, 225n16, 233–​34n22 cumbi, 34, 36–​37 thakhi (pathway), 215, 217–​18, 259n40 Therrasas, Xavier, 159–​60 Thompson, E. P., 223n36, 247n75 Thomson, Sinclair, 198–​99, 222n23, 222n27, 223–​ 24n40, 250n31, 252n17, 254n44, 256n73, 256n82, 257n6, 257n9, 257n11, 259n47 Tierras Comunitarias de Origen (TCOs, Original Community Lands), 218, 259n53 Tijulla, Nicolás, 136–​38, 139–​40 tinkus, 111–​12, 126, 240n48 Tinquipaya (Our Lady of Bethlehem of Tinquipaya), Toledan ordinances for, 57, 63–​64 Great Rebellion, 189–​90, 191, 192 TIPNIS, 259n53 Titicondo, Pablo, 229–​30n32 Tiwanaku empire, 33, 45–​46 Todos Santos de Quillocaya, 234n29. see Tomave Todos Santos de Tomave. see Tomave Tolapalca, 210

297

Tolapampa (Santiago de Tolapampa), 4–​6, 81, 89–​96, 97–​98,  238n26 cofradía, 105 contemporary community authorities, 215, 216f foundation, 125, 215 Great Rebellion, 183f, 192, 193–​95, 194f,  198–​99 land claims, 109–​10 location, 5f post-​independence wars, 210 rural development, 218–​19 Toledo (Paria town), 59f, 181, 182–​84, 186–​87 Toledo, Francisco de, 8, 9–​10, 40, 49–​52, 66 defense of conquest, 65–​66 order of seating in church, 71 ordinances, 63, 67–​69 policies regarding property, 65–​67 resettlement policy, 51, 53–​62, 59f, 88f Visita General, 50, 53–​57, 62–​63, 64–​66, 125 Toledo, Garcia de, 50, 227n32, 228–​29n16,  248n11 Tomás Catari rebellion, 203 Tomave (Todos Santos de Tomave), 4–​6, 14, 228n14 annex towns, 89, 90, 91–​94 foundation, 58–​61, 89, 92–​93, 234n29 Great Rebellion, 179f, 188–​90, 192–​95, 194f land claims, 109–​10 location, 5f, 59f, 179f post-​independence wars, 210 school, 91 Siwaruyu petition to found Santiago de Tolapampa,  91–​95 Uru people, 229n17, 234n30 topos, 112 Toropalca (town), 59f, 195 Totora (San Pedro de Totora), 4–​6, 14–​15, 34–​35, 42, 60, 235n42, 241n75 border disagreement, 126 caja de comunidad,  67–​68 comunero demand for enforcement of Royal Orders, 112–​17, 159 Great Rebellion, 172, 179f,  198–​99 land claims, 14, 35, 109–​10 legal autonomy, 218 location, 5f, 59f, 179f population, 232n3 post-​independence wars, 210 reducción, 60, 229n18 rural development, 218–​19 saints’ celebrations, 103–​4, 112–​13 Spanish conquest of, 48–​49 town councils. see cabildos towns. see also individual towns Andean,  79–​100 annex towns, 80–​81, 88f, 97–​98, 105–​7, 206, 234n24, 235n42



298 I n d e

towns (Cont.) basic structures of town life, 71–​72 citizenship in, 44–​45 civil practices that shape, 124–​42 as civilizing, 159 communal lands. see collective or community lands defining features of, 71–​72 in early modern Spain, 45–​47 importance of, 97–​100 leadership of, 101–​23 reducción towns, 6–​10, 16, 26, 53–​74, 55f, 59f, 79–​100, 88f, 229n20, 231n68, 233n20, 234n29 as repúblicas, 7–​8, 16, 43, 56 traditional usos y costumbres (uses and customs),  218–​19 transconquest perspective, 224n2 transportation Inca highway, 25, 31–​33, 35–​37, 39f, 58–​60, 72–​73,  231n71 postal routes, 183f, 184–​95, 186f, 188f, 194f transnational highway, 259n53 tributaries Indians, 53–​54, 176, 188–​90, 206–​7 women, 222n26 tribute payments, 222n26, 244n24 abolition of, 211 collection of, 64–​65, 67, 125, 128–​31, 134–​42, 161, 211, 231n50, 239n37, 245n38, 256n77 justification for, 205 rebellion against, 134–​42, 171–​74 in Spain, 25–​26, 51–​52 thefts of, 130, 249n25 Toledan ordinances regarding, 68 Tupac Amaru (last reigning Inca), execution,  49–​50 Tupac Amaru (rebel leader), 168, 177–​78, 182, 203, 251n6, 252n17, 253n41 execution, 195 leadership, 198–​99,  202–​3 literature on, 256n76, 256n83, 257n7 support for, 183f,  197–​98 timeline, 169t viceroy for, 184–​85, 202–​3 Tupac Amaru, Andrés, 169t Tupac Amaru, Diego, 177–​78 Tupac Amaru rebellion, 180–​81, 182–​84, 195–​97, 202–​3, 253n41, 255n59, 256n74 defeat at Cuzco, 256n71 letter for troops, 183f support for, 184, 201 timeline, 169t Tupac Catari, 168, 192, 203, 252n17, 254n44 execution, 195 leadership, 198–​99,  202–​3

x

statue, 259n40 timeline, 169t as viceroy, 184–​85 Turco (town), 197 Turumaya, Pedro, 96 tyranny, 145, 219 Inca, 6, 25–​26, 42, 43–​52, 227n33 just rebellion against, 47, 52, 161   Uma hunto, 82. see also Culta United Provinces of the Rio de La Plata, 210 United States, 223n34 Upper Cahualli (ayllu), 247n4 uprisings Atlantic revolutions, 206–​8 común, 143–​44,  162–​66 effects on común,  195–​99 encomendero rebellion, 48–​49 Enlightenment and, 11–​12 great man theory of, 203 Great Rebellion, 20, 161, 167–​99, 169t, 179f, 183f, 186f, 188f, 194f,  202–​3 just rebellion, 47, 150–​51, 166 through mail routes and letters, 183f, 184–​95, 186f, 188f, 194f Peasant Revolt, 226n19 Revolution of the Communities (Castile),  45–​47 royalist rebellion, 178 Spanish Revolution, 227n25 against tribute payments, 134–​42 urban Creole republics, 201–​4 urban planning, 54 urbanism. see also towns in early modern Spain, 43–​45 Inca,  33–​35 urinsaya, 45, 106 Uru people, 229n17, 234n30   Valcarcel, Carlos Daniel, 251n5 Valera, Blas, 225n27 van Vleet, Krista, 240n47 VanValkenburgh, Parker, 224n2, 257n1 varas or tata reyes (father kings, staff of office), 215, 216f, 246n67, 259n41 vecinidad, 48 Vega, Luis de, 89–​91, 232n5, 234n28, 234n30 Vejarano, Gonzalo Leal, 83–​86 Velasco, Luis de, 79, 92–​93, 232n2, 235n42 Velázquez, Baltasar, 68 Venta de Media, 193 Vera Cruz de Cacachaca, 88f. see also Cacachaca vicariato, 102 viceroys, 184–​85,  202–​3 Vilca, 42 Vilcabamba, 49–​50, 227n30 Vilcapuquio, 258n25





Index

Villarroel, Gualberto, 213 Virgin Mary: mama uso cult, 117–​20 Virgin of Copacabana, 234n24 Virgin of the Mineshaft, 105 Visisa, 40, 228–​29n16 Visita General, 50, 53–​57, 62–​63, 64–​66, 125 visitadores,  54–​55 visitas, 243n2 Vitoria, Francisco, 46–​47 voting rights, 213–​14   wakas, 29, 32, 37, 70–​71, 224n1, 231n63, 252n22 Walker, Charles, 251n4, 252n17, 252n25, 253n34, 253n41, 255n59, 256n71, 256n74, 257n6, 257n9, War of the Capitals, 213 warmi (guarmi), 109, 217–​18, 239n38 Washington Consensus, 214 weapons: permission to carry, 138–​39, 248n11 Wernke, Steven A., 18, 223n37, 223–​24n40, 224n2, 225n47, 228–​29n16, 229n20, 257n1, 257n9 whites (blancos),  207–​8 wichuñas (sharpened llama bone weaving implements), 2, 146, 247n2 Willka, Zárate, 213 wills, petitions, and letters, 80. see also letters; petitions Wisixsa, 40 women, 56–57, 109, 197–​98 aqllas, 34, 36

299

in cofradías, 109 concubines,  68–​69 indigenous, 197–​98, 217 mayordomos, 239n38 as moneymanagers, 113 prostitutes, 105 in rebellion, 253n38 tributaries, 222n26 World Bank, 214, 217 written documents. see documentary record; letters; petitions; individual authors and writers   Xaraxuri, Diego, 97   Yana, Cruz, 2, 149, 150, 162 Yana, Damaso, 2, 146 Yana, Gregorio, 159–​60 Yanaque (ayllu), 88f, 247n4 Yaure, Luis, 96 ychoco, 245n39 Yocalla (town), 189–​90, 254n50 Yotala (town), 59f, 197 Yucatán, 236n60 Yucla, Pedro, 68 Yugra, Diego, 175 Yura (town), 59f, 177–​78, 193–​95, 194f, 259n40   Zárate, Pedro de, 53, 56–​57 Zuloaga Rada, Marina, 18, 223–​24n40, 228n5, 228–​29n16, 233n13, 257n9