Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Abbreviations
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Antecedents: The Viceroyalty of Peru Prior to 1750
- 2 Government, Defence and the Church
- 3 Economy, Demography and Finance
- 4 Society, Ethnicity and Culture
- 5 Resistance, Revolts and Rebellions
- 6 Royalism, Patriotism and Independence
- 7 Conclusion and Epilogue: The Bourbon Legacy
- Appendices
- Archives and Bibliography
- Index
4 - Society, Ethnicity and Culture
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Abbreviations
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Antecedents: The Viceroyalty of Peru Prior to 1750
- 2 Government, Defence and the Church
- 3 Economy, Demography and Finance
- 4 Society, Ethnicity and Culture
- 5 Resistance, Revolts and Rebellions
- 6 Royalism, Patriotism and Independence
- 7 Conclusion and Epilogue: The Bourbon Legacy
- Appendices
- Archives and Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In a prophetic and revealing report sent to the minister of the Indies immediately after the outbreak of the rebellion of Túpac Amaru, visitador general Areche underlined the tendency of españoles in Peru – creoles and peninsulares alike – to assume that the viceroyalty's Indian majority was normally incapable of coherent political expression: ‘Josep Túpac Amaro’, he wrote, ‘ha sido capaz de introducir su nombre, aun que con abominación, en la sucessiva Historia de esta América, por los modos mas raros que pueden imaginarse y que muchos dudarían de la natural imbecilidad del común talento de los de su Nación’. Four months later, following the capture of Túpac Amaru himself together with ‘el gran catálogo de los de su Familia’, Areche expressed his somewhat contradictory conviction that ‘Túpac Amaru trató esta revelión con personas de esfera ó con los que protegan la iniqua livertad, la detracción, el odio de europeos’, adding that he was in no doubt ‘que no hay mal en las Provincias interiores que no está engendrado en Lima donde se fragua, abla, y siente de todo lo que no es su antiguo desorden, con una avilantez y franqueza extremada’. This perceived creole-Indian tendency to ally against the interests of European Spaniards was intensified, in the view of the paranoid Areche, by the fact that the Indians of Peru, unlike those of New Spain ‘todos deliran sobre descendencia R'l, sobre armas y privilegios’, a feature which certain ‘manos, traidores a la verdad’ in Lima encouraged. However, half a century later, commenting upon the composition of the royalist forces at the battle of Ayacucho, Jerónimo Valdés drew attention to the fact that the army which had fought until 1824 to maintain Spanish authority against ‘todos los Estados que ya se habian hecho independientes’ had been ‘muy escaso’ of European troops, with the consequence that ‘con soldados indios ha sido con los que sostuvimos los ultimos años de tan porfiada contienda’.
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- Bourbon Peru 1750–1824 , pp. 80 - 93Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2003