Conquerors to bureaucrats bureaucracy ascendant, 1550-

  • Structure of colonial administration: audiencias, viceroys, corregidores, cabildos

  • Authority, flexibility, and stability: “I obey but do not comply.”

  • Church and the State: real patronato,

  • Regular (orders) and Secular clergy: from evangelizing to administering sacraments

  • Church and popular religion: Cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe

Theory of patriarchal rule:

  • From king to father and mother of family

  • Tree or spoked wheel (Burkholder and Johnson)?

  • Hierarchy vs. multiple lines of authority

Structure of colonial administration--mix of judicial, administrative, executive modeled after Spain

  • Audiencias: high court of appeals, founded early as check on conquistadores and crown authorities

  • Viceroys: wide array of powers, limited by short terms

  • Corregidores, local administrator, tax collector, justice of the peace

  • Cabildos, town councils of the richest families; coopted, not elected

  • But no Cortes (regional parliament), unlike in Spain

Formation of Audiencias

  • 1511-1603: 11

  • Highest court in each region--executive, administrative & judicial

  • Centered on native pops., wealth

  • 1783-87: 3

  • At independence (~ 1825), 11 became national capitals

    1521Mx C.

    1538 Pan. C.

    1543 Lima

    1543 Guat C.

    1547 Guadalajara

    1547 Bogota

    1559 La Plata

    1563 Quito

    1583 (Manila)

    1603 Santiago

    1783 Buenos Aires

    1786 Caracas

    1787 Cuzco

    1511 Sto. Dgo.

Don Antonio de Mendoza (1490-1552)

  • Viceroy of New Spain, 1535-49 “have special care of the good treatment, conservation, and increase of the Indians”

  • delayed enforcement of New Laws

  • “promoted” to Viceroy of Peru, 1551

Don Francisco de Toledo, Viceroy of Peru, 1569-81

  • 5th viceroy of Peru, founder

  • Journeyed 5 years throughout VR.

  • Formalized Potosí mita

  • Administered and legislated broadly

Authority, flexibility, and stability

  • Authoritarian structure checked by overlapping lines of authority

  • “Obedezco, pero no cumplo [I obey but do not comply].”--the freedom of distance (e.g., Mendoza declined to implement New Laws in New Spain)

  • Residencia, the end-of-term judicial review of injustice

  • Stability: persisted for 3 centuries, few riots or rebellions. Sale of offices weakened administration.

New Laws of 1542 (Charles I)

  • Designed to protect Indians and restrain encomenderos

  • Prohibited Indian slavery

  • Prohibited new encomiendas, inheritance of old ones

  • Provoked rebellion in Peru

Residencia of 1565 Mexico City

  • Indians complained to the authorities of abuses

  • Investigation detailed abuses

  • Oidores and encomenderos were occasionally jailed for abuses

Conspiracy of the Encomenderos, 1565-68 (New Spain)

  • Led by Martin Cortes sought to be Viceroy

  • Sought to extend encomiendas

  • Total defeat for encomenderos

One of the first visitadores of the Church (Peru)

    “he showed himself to be a severe and just judge for he punished cruelly the haughty priests… Moreover he persecuted the witchdoctors and idolaters, destroying huacas and idols.”

Visitador Julio Lopez de Quintanilla

  • “was one of the most worthy visitadores of the church. He was a good Christian and friend of the poor, modest, humble and a good judge.”

Corregimiento

  • Used native

    • town structure
    • native caciques

  • Corregidor often purchased position with loans from merchants

  • Repaid with forced sale of goods to natives (repartimiento)

Clergy: regulars and secular

  • Church and the State: real patronato

    • King controlled all clerical appointments and communications
    • 1574: increased power of seculars, reduced regulars

  • Regular (orders), evangelizers, educators, administrators

  • Secular clergy: administered sacraments (baptisms, marriages, burials), thrived on parish fees

  • Economic power of church

Fray Bernardino de Sahagún

  • Authored General History of the things of New Spain--12 vol. “encyclopedia” in Spanish and Nahuatl

  • Detailed ethnography of native customs, history, culture

Primer to teach writing to natives Mexico, 1569

  • Friars were the educators

  • Developed literate native elite (particularly in Mexico)

  • Some parish books were kept in Nahuatl until ~1650

New towns centered on churches

Ixmiquilpan, Hidalgo (Mexico)

  • Churches often constructed by native artisans

  • Murals in this church depict native views of the conquest

Friars administered to the sick and dying

Virgin of Guadalupe…said to have appeared Dec 1531 to Juan Diego

  • Virgin’s image imprinted on manta

  • chapel existed on hill north of Mexico City from 1556

  • first evidence on apparition dates from 1648

  • no conscious substitution of devotion to virgin for a native deity

  • devotion confined to criollos, 1648-1736

  • after epidemic of 1736-7, devotion spread

End

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