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DOCUMENTINGLATIN AMERICA
Gender, Race, and Empire
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DOCUMENTINGLATIN AMERICA
Gender, Race, and Empire
Volume 1
Edited by
ERIN E. O’CONNOR
Bridgewater State College
LEO J. GAROFALO
Connecticut College
Prentice HallBoston Columbus Indianapolis New York San Francisco Upper Saddle River
Amsterdam Cape Town Dubai London Madrid Milan Munich Paris Montréal TorontoDelhi Mexico City São Paulo Sydney Hong Kong Seoul Singapore Taipei Tokyo
A01_OCON5083_01_SE_FM.QXD 7/1/10 10:53 AM Page iii
Editorial Director: Craig CampanellaExecutive Editor: Jeff LasserEditorial Project Manager: Rob DeGeorgeEditorial Assistant: Amanda DykestraSenior Marketing Manager: Maureen E. Prado RobertsMarketing Assistant: Marissa O’BrienSenior Managing Editor: Ann Marie McCarthyProject Manager: Debra WechslerOperations Specialist: Christina AmatoCover Designer: Bruce Kenselaar
Manager, Visual Research: Beth BrenzelPhoto Researcher: Nancy TobinManager, Cover Visual Research & Permissions: Karen
SanatarCover Photo: HIP/Scala/Art Resource, NYFull-Service Project Management: Madhavi PrakashkumarComposition: S4Carlisle Publishing ServicesPrinter/Binder: R. R. Donnelley/HarrisonburgCover Printer: R. R. Donnelley/HarrisonburgText Font: Garamond 3
ISBN 13: 978-0-13-208508-3ISBN 10: 0-13-208508-9
Credits and acknowledgments borrowed from other sources and reproduced, with permission, in this textbook appearon appropriate page within text.
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Prentice Hall. All rights reserved. Manufactured in theUnited States of America. This publication is protected by Copyright, and permission should be obtained from thepublisher prior to any prohibited reproduction, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission in any form or by anymeans, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or likewise. To obtain permission(s) to use material from thiswork, please submit a written request to Pearson Education, Inc., Permissions Department, One Lake Street, UpperSaddle River, NJ 07458.
Many of the designations by manufacturers and seller to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Wherethose designations appear in this book, and the publisher was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have beenprinted in initial caps or all caps.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataDocumenting Latin America / edited by Erin E. O'Connor, Leo J. Garofalo.
p. cm.Includes bibliographical references.ISBN-13: 978-0-13-208508-3 (v. 1)ISBN-10: 0-13-208508-9 (v. 1)
1. Latin America—History—To 1830—Sources. I. O’Connor, Erin. II. Garofalo, Leo.F1410.D63 2011980—dc22
201001742810 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Thematic Index xiii
Preface xv
Maps xix
Introduction xxv
SECTION I IMPERIAL ASPIRATIONS AND THE LIMITS
OF COLONIAL DOMINATION 1
Chapter 1 Christopher Columbus Evaluates IndigenousSocieties 6Leo J. Garofalo, Connecticut College
Document:Christopher Columbus’s Account of His First Voyage,
October 11, 1492 to January 2, 1493 9
Chapter 2 Politics, Gender, and the Conquest of Mexico 16Leo J. Garofalo, Connecticut College
Document:A Conquistador Recounts the Beginning of the Campaign to Defeat
the Aztec Empire, 1519–1521 19
Contents
v
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vi Contents
Chapter 3 Afro-Iberian Sailors, Soldiers, Traders, and Thieveson the Spanish Main 25Leo J. Garofalo, Connecticut College
Documents:An Afro-Iberian Pilot Allowed to Sail 27Black Sailors in Transatlantic Crews 28A Free Mulato Soldier’s Will 29Supplementing Sailors’ Wages with Petty Trade and Thievery 30
Chapter 4 A Case of Contested Identity: Domingo Pérez,Indigenous Immigrant in Ciudad Real, Chiapas 35Laura Matthew, Marquette University
Document:The Prosecutor Doubts the Claims by Pedro Gómez, Son of an Indian
Conquistador 38
Chapter 5 Runaways Establish Maroon Communitiesin the Hinterland of Brazil 45Leo J. Garofalo, Connecticut College
Document:Seventeenth-Century Quilombo of Palmares: A Chronicle
of War and Peace in Brazil 48
SECTION II CHURCH, SOCIETY, AND COLONIAL RULE 53
Chapter 6 European Priests Discuss Ruling Indigenousand African Peoples 57Leo J. Garofalo, Connecticut College
Documents:Las Casas’s Views on Indigenous Slavery. Defense of the Indians, by the
Most Reverend Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas 60Development of Las Casas’s Views on African Slavery, from 1516 to 1552.
“Petition with Remedies for the Indies” 64“Petition of Remedies for the Indies” 64“Petition of Remedies for the South American Mainland” 65“Letter to the Council of the Indies” 65History of the Indies 66
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Contents vii
Chapter 7 Fray Alonso de Espinosa’s Report on Pacifyingthe Fugitive Slaves of the Pacific Coast 69Charles Beatty-Medina, University of Toledo
Document:Alonso de Espinosa’s Letter to the Crown 72
Chapter 8 Blending New and Old Beliefs in Mexico and the Andes 75Leo J. Garofalo, Connecticut College
Documents:The Story of the Huaca Llocllay Huancupa and Its Battle with the
Convert Don Cristóbal, 1590–1608 78A Convert’s Troubling Dreams 81
Chapter 9 Patrimony and Patriarchy in a ColonialMexican Confraternity 84Annette McLeod Richie, University at Albany
Documents:Constitution for the Arch-Confraternity of the Holy True Cross, 1605 86Edict Responding to the 1605 Constitution 88
Chapter 10 Spiritual Directions: Gender, Piety,and Friendship in Late Colonial Mexico 89Karen Melvin, Bates College
Document:Testimony of María Luisa González Zepúlveda 91
SECTION III FINDING A PLACE WITHIN COLONIAL HIERARCHIES 97
Chapter 11 African Women’s Possessions: InquisitionInventories in Cartagena de Indias 100Nicole von Germeten, Oregon State University
Document:Inventories of African Women’s Possessions 103
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viii Contents
Chapter 12 The Pious and Honorable Life of AnaJuana of Cochabamba (1675) 111Rachel Sarah O’Toole, University of California, Irvine
Document:Last Will and Testament of Ana Juana of Cochabamba 114
Chapter 13 Obeying the Heart and Obeying the Church 118Patricia Seed, University of California-Irvine
Document:Petition for Permission to Marry before a Church Judge,
April 27, 1630 120
Chapter 14 Black Hierarchies and Power in ColonialRecife, Brazil 124Elizabeth W. Kiddy, Albright College
Document:The Confraternity Statutes of the Confraternity of Our Lady
of the Rosary 127
SECTION IV CHALLENGING COLONIAL AND CULTURAL NORMS 131
Chapter 15 A Romance of Early-Modern Mexico City:Self-Interest and Everyday Life in ColonialNew Spain 134Brian Owensby, University of Virginia
Document:Romance to Mexico City 137
Chapter 16 Ambitious Women in a “Man’s World” 140Leo J. Garofalo, Connecticut College
Documents:Two Poems by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, a Cloistered Nun, 1689 144Sor Juana’s Defense of Women’s Education and God-Given
Intelligence, 1691 145Catalina de Erauso’s Adventures Disguised as a Man in Seventeenth-Century
Peru 147
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Contents ix
Chapter 17 A “Mestiza in the Clothes of an Indian:”The Social Significance of Female Dressin Colonial Potosí 151Jane Mangan, Davidson College
Document:Lawsuit between the Monastery of San Agustín and the Jesuits over the
Ownership of Goods Left by Juana Payco, Called the Lunareja, mestizaen habitos de india, Who Died Without Leaving a Will in Potosí 155
Chapter 18 To Change the Fate of All Women: Chargesof Witchcraft against Juana de Mayo 158Leo J. Garofalo, Connecticut College
Document:Case of Witchcraft Against Juana de Mayo and Her Collaborators 161
Chapter 19 On Her Deathbed: Beyond the Stereotypeof the Powerless Indigenous Woman 168Miriam Melton-Villanueva, University of California,Los Angeles
Document:Testament of Doña Ana María de la Cruz y Alpízar, 1703 171
SECTION V THE AGE OF REFORM 175
Chapter 20 Official Paintings Seek to Classify Peoplein a Complex Society 178Leo J. Garofalo, Connecticut College
Source:Casta paintings from Mexico
Chapter 21 Creole Town Councils Fear Change fromAbove and Below 184Leo J. Garofalo, Connecticut College
Document:Caracas’s Cabildo Writes to the King to Denounce
a Royal Decree, 1796 186
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x Contents
Chapter 22 The Politics of Petty Commerce: Who Definesthe Public Good? 193R. Douglas Cope, Brown University
Documents:Dilemmas of the Bread Trade 196The Struggle to Control the Market 198
Chapter 23 Indians Do Prodigious Things, IndiansMake Everything: The Otomí of Querétaro, 1738 201John Tutino, Georgetown University
Documents:Description of the Indian Procession 204The Indian Guild’s Praise 204
Chapter 24 High Clergy Warns the Crown of Popular Discontent 207Leo J. Garofalo, Connecticut College
Document:The Bishop Defends the Clergy against Royal Reforms and Warns
of Social Tensions in Mexico, 1799 209
SECTION VI THE AGE OF TRANSFORMATION
AND REVOLT, 1780–1825 215
Chapter 25 Indian Leaders Tupac Amaru and MicaelaBastidas Fight to End Spanish Rule 219Leo J. Garofalo, Connecticut College
Documents:The Inca’s Coronation, November 4, 1780 222Ultimatum Sent to the City of Cuzco, November 20, 1780 223Letter to Tupac Amaru from Micaela Bastidas Puyucahua,
December 6, 1780 223The Inca’s Letter to Cuzco’s City Council, January 3, 1781 224The Inca’s Letter to Cuzco’s Loyalist Citizenry, January 9, 1781 225
Chapter 26 Father José María Morelos and Visionsof Mexican Independence 227Erin E. O’Connor, Bridgewater State College
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Contents xi
Sources:José María Morelos, “Sentiments of the Nation” 230Portraits of Rebel Leaders 231
Chapter 27 The Many Views of Simón Bolívar 233Erin E. O’Connor, Bridgewater State College
Documents:Simón Bolívar’s “Message to the Congress of Bolivia” 236Bolívar’s Statements on Women, Independence Movements,
and Politics 238
Chapter 28 Forging a Guerrilla Republic 240Javier F. Marión, Emmanuel College, Boston
Document:Journal Entries by José Santos Vargas, Combatant in Bolivia’s
Independence War 243
Chapter 29 Slavery, Race, and Citizenship in the Empireof Brazil: Debates in the ConstituentAssembly 249Kirsten Schultz, Seton Hall University
Documents:Project of a Constitution for the Empire of Brazil 252Constitutional Assembly debates from September 27
and September 30 253Political Constitution of the Empire of Brazil, 1824 256
Chapter 30 Empire, Loyalty, and Race: Militiamenof Color in Nineteenth-Century Cuba 258Michele Reid Vazquez, Georgia State University
Document:Declaration of Loyalty by Havana’s Pardo and Moreno Militiamen,
1823 260
Glossary 265
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Thematic Index
Citizenship and Liberation• Afro-Latin Americans: Chapters 5, 7, 29, 30• European creoles and colonists: Chapters 21, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29• Indigenous people: Chapters 23, 25, 26, 27, 28• Leaders: Chapters 25, 26, 27, 28, 29• Women: Chapters 25, 27
Conquest and Empire Building• Afro-Latin Americans: Chapters 3, 5, 6, 7• Indigenous peoples: Chapters 1, 2, 4, 6• Women: Chapters 2, 7, 16
Conversion and Religious Practice• Afro-Latin Americans: Chapters 6, 7, 12, 14• European creoles and colonists: Chapters 9, 10, 16• Indigenous peoples: Chapters 6, 8, 18• Missionaries and Church officials: Chapters 6, 8, 16, 18, 24• Women: Chapters 9, 10, 14, 16, 18
Economy, Labor, and MarketsChapters 3, 17, 21, 22
xiii
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Gender and Colonial Life• Afro-Latin American women: Chapters 11, 12, 14, 20, 29• Female leaders: Chapters 2, 10, 14, 16, 19• Female warriors: Chapters 16, 25, 27• Honor and marriage: Chapters 9, 12, 13, 15, 20, 23• Indigenous women: Chapters 2, 17, 18, 19, 20, 25• Women’s economic activity: Chapters 11, 12, 17, 18, 19
Institutions of Rule and Subjects’ Actions• Cabildo town councils: Chapters 21, 22, 25• Indian communities: Chapters 1, 4, 8, 23, 25, 27, 28• Indian leaders: Chapters 2, 4, 8, 19, 23, 25• Petitioning the Crown: Chapters 7, 21, 23, 24, 25• Courts and litigation: Chapters 4, 12, 13, 17, 18, 19• Resisting taxation and abuse: Chapters 21, 24, 25, 26, 30
Slave-holding Society and SlaveryChapters 6, 7, 11, 12, 14, 20, 29, 30
Warfare and State PowerChapters 2, 5, 7, 25, 28
xiv Thematic Index
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Preface
Although the numerous ways of analyzing the pastare part of what make the study of history interest-ing, they also make it challenging to create texts anddocument collections that are both meaningful andaccessible. Trying to cover everything can make itdifficult for readers to keep track of a book’s centralpurpose, whereas too narrow of a focus fails to pro-vide a broader sense of the course of history. To avoidbeing either too general or too narrow, DocumentingLatin America focuses on the central themes of race,gender, and politics and develops them deeply.
The majority of primary-source documents inthese volumes have been translated and introducedby scholars who have used them in their research. Afew of these sources are from works already pub-lished in Latin America, but most of them camefrom either state or religious archives, and none ofthe archival documents have ever appeared before inEnglish. These archival sources are the heart ofDocumenting Latin America, uncovering many differ-ent ways that race, gender, and politics have inter-twined over the course of centuries to make LatinAmerica the complex and fascinating world region it istoday. Some of the materials derived from scholarlyresearch explore Latin American history, politics,and culture from the perspectives of less-powerfulpeoples, whereas others address the importance ofrace and gender from the viewpoints of political andintellectual elites. Additionally, the editors haveidentified and presented document excerpts that they
refer to as classic documents that have long beenavailable in English. They have chosen these sourcesbased on their importance to the themes of the vol-ume, their accessibility, and their proven success instimulating classroom discussion.
The chapters in Documenting Latin America offera broad scope and solid coverage of Latin Americanhistory. In each volume, documents presented comefrom many different regions of Latin America, andthey consider themes and challenges particular todifferent periods of time. However, the editors havenot attempted to give equal coverage to all regionsand problems in Latin American history. Instead, theeditors selected documents either to complementothers in the volumes or to offer unique perspectiveson historical problems. Using these criteria allowedfor the inclusion of documents from areas of LatinAmerica that cannot be found in many, if any, othervolumes available at the time of this publication.This unique blend of perspectives of history fromboth above and below, from understudied as well asoften-studied regions, and from a combination ofarchival and classic sources allows readers to engagein a meaningful way with Latin America’s past.
To aid readers in the task of interpreting origi-nal sources, these volumes are broken down intosections, each of which contains several chapters fo-cused around a central theme or historical develop-ment. The introduction to each section defines anyunusual or important terms, identifies key issues in
xv
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xvi Preface
a particular era, and relates terms and problems tothe documentary history’s broader focus on race,gender, and politics. Each chapter also begins with ashort introduction that provides the reader withthe context in which the document took place. Theintroduction is followed by a brief list of questionsto consider when analyzing the document. The cen-tral feature of each chapter is a short document or setof documents. Most of the sources are excerpts fromlonger documents, but they provide readers withample text and information to develop their own un-derstanding of Latin American history. Using ana-lytical guidelines from the questions, and contextfrom the introduction, in conjunction with evidencefrom the document, helps readers to analyze thedocument and to form an argument about a givenevent or problem in Latin American history. Simi-larly, reviewing the introduction to the section inwhich a chapter appears can help to place anindividual case within a wider historical moment ortrend. The interplay between the details in the doc-uments with the images and broader issues pre-sented in various introductory materials gives thebest picture of the dynamics of gender, race, andpolitics in Latin America.
Each chapter offers italicized terms, questionsfor further study, and an annotated list of suggestedsources. Italicized terms, institutions, and names aredefined in the text or footnotes; if they appear fre-quently in the volume, they are also listed in theglossary at the end of the book. In addition to facil-itating reading comprehension, the glossary alsoprovides information about how some of these termshad distinct meanings in different regions or timeperiods. The questions offered in each chapter notonly help readers to make sense of the document athand, but they also provide potential topics forpapers, exams, and in-class discussions. In addition,the suggested sources section at the end of eachchapter shows where one can find more secondary orscholarly sources, primary documents published inEnglish, and visual and film materials. This sectionprovides a brief description of each item listed, andit is particularly useful for readers who want to ex-plore further the issues raised in the chapter for aresearch paper, class presentation, or other class ac-tivities. The editors and contributors of the volumes
have recommended a variety of materials, includingin many cases Web sites, documentaries, featurefilms, and literature. Each chapter can therefore beused to obtain either a solid understanding of onecase and a particular point or serve as a springboardfor launching a larger project following a reader’spersonal interests.
AcknowledgmentsThis document history has been, from its inception,the epitome of collaborative work. We are tremen-dously grateful to everyone who made it possible forus to see our vision through to publication. First andforemost we thank our contributors, wonderfulscholars all, who shared their expertise and time tocreate a unique and valuable resource. They respondedwith enthusiasm to our project and with good humorwhen we pressed them to meet deadlines or makechanges. We also wish to thank the many fine indi-viduals at Pearson who made it possible to completethis project. While working on the volumes, Erinbenefitted greatly from a Bridgewater State College(BSC) Faculty and Librarian Research Grant (2009),which provided course release. Leo appreciates years ofgenerous research support from Connecticut College’sR.F. Johnson and Hodgkin Faculty DevelopmentFunds.
The following reviewers offered helpful insightsand suggestions as the manuscript evolved: JurgenBuchenau, University of North Carolina; TimothyCoates, The College of Charleston; Paula De Vos, SanDiego State University; Kevin Gannon, Grand ViewCollege; Erick D. Langer, Georgetown University;Stephen E. Lewis, California State University, Chico;Nichole Sanders, Lynchburg College; Joan E. Supplee,Baylor University; Angela Vergara, California StateUniversity, Los Angeles; Rick Warner, WabashCollege; and Gregory Weeks, University of NorthCarolina, Charlotte.
College students remain at the heart of this doc-ument history. Striving to make Latin American his-tory come alive for our students led us to create thesevolumes. We especially thank the students—toomany to name individually—who tested all or partsof these volumes in classes. Erin thanks her BSC
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Preface xvii
classes on Colonial Latin America (2008, 2009), Mod-ern Latin America (2008), and Gender, Race and Na-tion in Latin America (2009). Leo thanks hisConnecticut College classes on Rebellion and Revolu-tions in Latin America (2008), Modern Latin America(2008 & 2010), Introduction to Latin American andCaribbean History (2008 & 2010), and Crossing theOcean: Spain and the Americas (2009).
Finally, we must acknowledge our debts to ourfamilies and friends who sacrificed time with us sothat we could work on this project, and who put up
with hearing about it more than they probablywanted to. Friends, you know who you are. And toEliana Iberico Garofalo, Natalia Garofalo-Iberico,Howard Brenner, Samuel Brenner, and (last but ofcourse not least) Anya Brenner: You are, as youknow, always and forever in our hearts.
Erin E. O’Connor, Bridgewater State College
Leo J. Garofalo, Connecticut College
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Maps
Canary Is.
Azores
Madeira Is.
MOROCCO
SIERRALEONE
GAMBIA
SAHARA DESERT
Ceuta
LagosGranada
GranadaSeville
Toledo Barcelona
Valencia
Elmina
Timbuktu
Arguim
Benguela
Cairo
Cape Nun
Cape Bojador
Cape Verde
Cape Verde Is.
TURKEY
ARABIA
SOMALIA
ABYSSINIAYORUBA LAND(NIGERIA)
DAHOMEY(BENIN)LOWER
GUINEA
São Tomé
ANGOLA
MADAGASCAR
Luanda
Cape of Good Hope
Mozambique
A T L A N T I C O C E A N
INDIAN OCEAN
Re
dS
e a
M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a
Senegal River
Zambezi River
Cuanza River
Congo (Zaire) R
iver
Niger River
PORTUGAL
Lisbon Castile
NavarreAragon
Slaves
Slaves
Slaves
Slaves
Slaves
Post 1807
5%5%5%
5%5%5%
40%40%40%
35%35%35%
15%15%15%
Equator
0
0 500 1000 1500 2000 km
500 1000 mi
Slaves Routes15% percentage of total number of slaves brought to the Americas
Africa and Iberia
xix
A01_OCON5083_01_SE_FM.QXD 7/1/10 10:53 AM Page xix
xx Maps
Chichimecas
Pampas
AZTECEMPIRE
SPANISHCONQUESTS
PORTUGUESECONQUESTS
INCAEMPIRE
FORMERMAYANEMPIRE
P A C I F I CO C E A N
A T L A N T I CO C E A N
Francisco Pizarro1532-1536
Hernán Cortés1519-1521
Mapuches
Arawaks
Pedro Álvares Cabral1500
Charrúas
Guaraníes
Payaguás
Bororós
Tupi
Tupi
nam
bá
Tobajaros
Tapajós
MurasChibchas
Quito
Tenochtitlán
Caribs
Shuar
Caiapós
PachacamacCuzco
0
0 500 1000 1500 2000 km
500 1000 mi
Iberian Conquests and Indigenous Peoples
Source: Adapted from Born in Blood and Fire: A Concise History of Latin America, 2nd edition by JohnCharles Chasteen. Copyright © 2006, 2001 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Used by permissionof W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
A01_OCON5083_01_SE_FM.QXD 7/2/10 11:51 AM Page xx
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A01_OCON5083_01_SE_FM.QXD 7/2/10 12:56 PM Page xxi
xxii Maps
Viceroyalty of New Spain
Portuguese America
Viceroyalty of PeruThe viceroyalties of La Plata and New Granadaoriginally belonged to the viceroyalty of Peru
Viceroyalyof New Spain
Disputed by England, Russia
and Spain
Effective Frontierof SpanishSettlement
P A C I F I CO C E A N
A T L A N T I CO C E A N
Viceroyaltyof La Plata
(established 1776)
Viceroyaltyof Peru
Haiti (ceded to France, 1697)
Jamaica(conquered by English,
1655)
Viceroyaltyof New Granada
(established 1717, 1739)
Original boundary betweenViceroyalties of New Spain and Peru
Buenos Aires
MinasGerais
Bogotá
Quito
Mexico City
Zacatecas
Santa Fe
St. Augustine
Caracas
Santo Domingo
Lima
Cuzco
Potosí
NEW FRANCE
ENGLISH C
OLONIES
Guyana
Santiago
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro
Salvador
SãoPaulo
GoiasMato Grosso
Grão Pará Maranhão
Bahia
Pernambuco(held by Dutch,
1630-54)
Guatemala
Panama
Veracruz
0
0 500 1000 1500 2000 km
500 1000 mi
Colonial Latin American Viceroyalties
Source: Adapted from Modern Latin America, 6th ed. by Thomas E. Skidmore and Peter H. Smith(2005): Volume 1 Map 4A. By Permission of Oxford University Press, Inc.
A01_OCON5083_01_SE_FM.QXD 7/1/10 10:53 AM Page xxii
Maps xxiii
0
0 500 1000 1500 2000 km
500 1000 mi
State with date of IndependenceMexico – 1821United Provinces of Central America – 1823Haiti – 1804Gran Colombia – 1819-1830Peru – 1821Bolivia – 1825Brazil – 1822Paraguay – 1811Uruguay – 1828Argentina – 1816Chile – 1817Cuba – 1898Dominican Republic – Occupied by Haiti 1822, independence 1844Florida – U.S. 1819Louisiana – Sp. 1763, Fr. 1800, U.S. 1803
P A C I F I CO C E A N
A T L A N T I CO C E A N
HaitiHaitiHaitiDominican Dominican Republic Republic Dominican Republic
Buenos Aires
Bogotá
QuitoGuayaquil
Trujillo
Mexico City
San Francisco
Caracas
Lima
Sucre
British North America
Santiago
Rio de Janeiro
Salvador(Bahia)
São Paulo
Guatemala
Panama
Veracruz
San Antonio
Gulf of Mexico
Cape Horn
New York
Havana
Recife
Montevideo
(Disputed betweenArgentina and Chile)
Puerto Rico Puerto Rico (Spain)(Spain)JamaicaJamaica
(Br.)(Br.)
United Provinces ofUnited Provinces ofCentral AmericaCentral America
Gran Gran ColombiaColombia
Empire of Brazi lEmpire of Brazi l
United StatesUnited States
MexicoMexico
Cuba Cuba (Spain)(Spain)
PeruPeru
BoliviaBolivia
ChileChile
ParaguayParaguay
ArgentinaArgentina UruguayUruguay
Puerto Rico (Spain)Jamaica(Br.)
United Provinces ofCentral America
United Provinces ofCentral America
United Provinces ofCentral America
Gran Colombia
Empire of Brazi l
United StatesUnited StatesUnited States
Mexico
Cuba (Spain)
PeruPeruPeru
BoliviaBoliviaBolivia
ChileChileChile
ParaguayParaguayParaguay
ArgentinaArgentinaArgentina UruguayUruguayUruguay
HIDALGO
MORELOS
BOLÍVAR
SAN MARTÍN
GuyanaGuyanaGuyana
Independence Struggles and New Nations, 1811–1839
Source: Adapted from Born in Blood and Fire: A Concise History of Latin America, 2nd edition by JohnCharles Chasteen. Copyright © 2006, 2001 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Used by permissionof W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
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Introduction
“Doing” Latin AmericanHistory in the Era
of Empires
�
There are many different ways of approaching andstudying history. To make sense of the past, profes-sional historians not only specialize in particularworld regions, but they also focus on specific types ofhistory—such as political, cultural, economic, mili-tary, or social history. Historians also differ in theirspecific focus within a field of study. For example,some political historians might examine history fromthe perspective of central government officials,whereas others explore how ordinary men and womenexperienced and influenced politics. Similarly, manyeconomic historians trace how goods were producedand exchanged between different world regions, butthere are numerous others who study labor relations.Social and cultural historians often look at historyfrom the perspectives of less-powerful groups in pastsocieties or at the interactions between powerful andless-powerful individuals and groups, and their workoften overlaps at least as much with anthropology asit does with other fields of history.
Documenting Latin America focuses on the centralthemes of race, gender, and politics. These themes areespecially important for understanding and evaluat-ing the history of Latin America, where identitieswere forged out of the conflicts, negotiations, and intermixing of peoples from Europe, Africa, and theAmericas. Over time, and due largely to unequalpower relations that were central features of colonial-ism, racial ideologies developed to justify Europeandomination over indigenous and African peoples.Gender, too, played a pivotal role in determiningcolonial experiences: Not only were women denied
access to political (and often economic) power, butSpanish colonizers also used gender ideas to justifytheir dominance over non-European peoples. Raceand gender inequalities continued to haunt LatinAmerican nations in the aftermath of independence;in fact, one often finds greater constraints on indige-nous peoples, Afro-Latin Americans, and women ofall classes and races after independence than duringthe colonial period. By the mid-twentieth century,based largely on non-Europeans’ and women’s owninitiatives, state officials began to offer some politicalrights and social reforms to previously marginalizedgroups. Today, women and non-Europeans still faceserious challenges with sexism and racism, but theyhave also carved out important niches for themselvesin Latin American national politics.
Documentary sources presenting gender, race,and politics, therefore, provide readers with thetools to develop a broad understanding of thecourse of Latin American social, cultural, andpolitical history. However, the purpose of focusingon a particular theme or angle of history is not toignore other avenues of exploration. Although his-torians specialize in particular fields of historicalinquiry, every scholar must explain how her or hisspecialty relates to other fields in order to create ameaningful narrative about the past. The sameoccurs with chapters in this volume: The historiesof race and gender explored in the ensuing chaptersalso draw on labor, biographical, economic, andmilitary histories to offer a full and balancedpicture of Latin America.
xxv
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authorities and the poor, or between men andwomen. Second, although the poor, non-Europeans,and women were excluded from government institu-tions throughout most of history, the existence ofstate ideas that required some degree of ideologicalacceptance gave less-powerful peoples opportunitiesto interact with, take advantage of, and even shapethe state. Many of the chapters in these volumesreveal ways in which both the powerful and thehumble played roles in the historical development ofLatin American politics and states. Latin America alsounderwent a shift from empires in the pre-Hispanic andcolonial periods to nation states following independ-ence. As with the broader concept of the state, empiresand nation states are terms that require explicitdiscussion and definition.
Latin America’s colonial history encompasses aperiod when Portuguese and Spanish emperors ruledalmost all of the Western hemisphere’s territory, pop-ulation, and wealth (mines, plantations, taxes, andtribute). Even before the arrival of Europeans, impe-rial rulers dominated the most densely populatedregions of the Americas, with the Aztecs controllingthe large urban centers of the Valley of Mexico andthe Incas presiding over the peasant populationsof the Andes. On the most basic level, the term empiredescribes the political organization of a collection ofstates and territories ruled by an emperor. Empiresprimarily fostered vertical links between subjectsand the emperor, that is between the ruled and theruler, rather than favoring horizontal ties that bringtogether regions, unite competing social sectors, orreconcile the elite groups dominant in each jurisdic-tion. In fact, a key strength of the Iberian empireswas their ability to maintain a level of competition,antagonism, and even distrust among subjects.Competition and overlapping jurisdictions ensuredthat individual subjects and different sectors orinstitutions depended on the mediation and favoroffered by the imperial administration and, ulti-mately, the king or queen.2 The documents collectedin Volume I of Documenting Latin America show howSpain and Portugal extended their imperial power
Powerful Terms,Terms of PowerGender. Race. State. Empire. Nation. Subaltern.Elite. All of these are central concepts developed inDocumenting Latin America. However, none of theseterms are simple or static; instead, they are complexand change over time. Furthermore, scholars some-times disagree on how to define terms and how theyfunction in history. It is, therefore, important todiscuss how the editors and contributors of thesevolumes define, approach, and engage with core ter-minology throughout the chapters of this collectionof primary-source documents.
Politics, Power, and Belonging:States, Empires, and NationsWhen one thinks of the state, it is typically stateinstitutions, such as ministries of finance or SuperiorCourts, that come to mind, or perhaps the stateofficials who administer these organizations at thecentral, regional, and local levels. Members of acountry, however, sense that the state is more thanjust institutions and administrators: Many U.S.citizens, for instance, take particular pride in livingunder a state that they believe advances the rule oflaw, equality before the law, justice, and freedom. Allstates are comprised of two components that operatesimultaneously: The state system includes governmentinfrastructure, the administrative hierarchy, andpolicies; equally important, the state idea indicates aset of ideologies aimed at legitimizing a given rul-ing regime.1 To function, a state system requires asignificant portion of the population to accept thestate idea, and no state idea can succeed in the longterm if a viable state system is lacking. This descrip-tion of the state can help readers to understand twocentral features of Latin American politics since 1500that are apparent in historical documents. First, thestate is made up of a series of practices that institu-tionalize unequal power relations, whether betweenlocal versus central government officials, between state
2Henry Kamen, Empire: How Spain Became a World Power,1492–1763 (New York: Harper Collins, 2003).
1Philip Abrams, “Notes on the Difficulty of Studying the State(1977),” Journal of Historical Sociology 1, no. 1 (March 1988):58–89.
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“Doing” Latin American History in the Era of Empires xxvii
into the Americas and built institutions by combin-ing European models with local indigenous customsand by drawing on the traditions established byEuropeans, Africans, and missionary colonizers.Iberian imperial policies simultaneously favored andbolstered the dominance of wealthy European menwhile still providing the poor, non-Europeans, andwomen with some ways to protect and advance theirinterests. Particularly important to the state idea ofthe colonial period was the notion that the monarchwas a compassionate, protective paternal figure whowas concerned with the plight of all subjects livingwithin the empire. If monarchies lost this legitimacyand subjects questioned their benevolence, Europeanempires would lose much of their power and holdover Latin American populations.
Contradictory and coercive, the Iberian colonialstates were also remarkably enduring. When theyfinally dissolved in the early nineteenth century, thesemassive European empires were replaced with (inmost cases smaller) nation states. Benedict Andersontransformed the study of nations and nationalismswhen he identified modern nations as imaginedcommunities, a term still frequently used among schol-ars. Anderson asserted that all modern nations arecommunities because a critical mass of each nation’smembers not only identify themselves with a partic-ular territory or government, but they also possess astrong sense of belonging together due to shared lan-guage, customs, and values. This community, how-ever, is imagined rather than real because all nationalterritories are too large for members to all know eachother directly, and because class, race, and genderdivisions preclude a natural sense of unity.3 Whenscholars discuss modern nation states in any part of theworld, they are referring to large (usually contigu-ous) territories governed by a central state, in whicha significant or particularly powerful portion of thepopulation is convinced that members of the terri-tory form a single national community. The statesystem—clear leadership, laws, infrastructure, andmonetary systems—is combined with the patrioticsentiment of the nation. In fact, nationalism often
provided the state idea through which central gov-ernment authorities sought to increase and legit-imize their power.4 Though nations are part ofmodern history—the earliest date back to the lateeighteenth century—they often claim to be ancientand to build on a long-standing and natural culturalidentity. Yet the question of national culture is prob-lematic, because all nations are made up of people ofmany different customs, religions, and even lan-guages. Therefore, one must always ask: Whose cul-ture becomes the national culture? How and why areother cultures excluded, and with what implicationsfor the marginalized groups? The answer to thesequestions is often the story of interethnic and genderdomination. In Latin America, race and gender divi-sions threatened to undermine nationalistic claimsby revealing the exclusive nature of the state andenduring hierarchical social practices, which did notallow women and non-whites full membership inthe nation state. The struggle to overcome intereth-nic and gender divisions in Latin America has beena long process that remains incomplete.
Identity and Power: Gender and Race, Subaltern and EliteEvery individual in the modern world is shaped byhis or her race, gender, and relative economic andsocial power. These forces are so prominent that theyoften seem natural or straightforward, but they are,in fact, quite complicated. Even some scholars, forexample, associate gender only with women, andrace exclusively with peoples of non-European her-itage. However, men as well as women live genderedlives, and peoples of European descent are influencedby their racial identities—albeit not in the sameways as non-Europeans. Moreover, although one canfind consistencies in race and gender ideologies overtime, the meaning given to these identities is bothculturally specific and historically dynamic. Inshort, race and gender are constructed identitiesrather than biological categories.
4For a good discussion of the state in the nation state, see E. J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme,Myth, and Reality (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
3Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Originsand Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (New York: Verso, 1992[1983]).
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developed a two-tiered definition of gender, whichmany historians continue to use as a foundation forgender analysis in the twenty-first century.6 Scottasserts that on one level gender is “a constitutiveelement of social relationships based on perceiveddifferences between the sexes.” This suggests thatgender informs both relations between the sexes andalso how individuals and societies make sense ofassumed sexual differences. Many times, the suppos-edly inherent differences between men and womenwere (and are) socially structured—in other words,girls were taught to behave one way, boys another.By the time individuals reach maturity, these behav-iors seem natural and timeless rather than learned.Scott’s definition of gender also has another impor-tant part to it. She argues that gender is “a primaryfield within which or by means of which power isarticulated.” Here, she means that gender ideologies(assumptions about male and female qualities, orparental versus childlike qualities) can be manipu-lated by individuals and groups either to expresspower or try to increase their power over others.Gender often functions this way in politics, and notonly when women are involved. For example, whenstate officials use ideas about manliness to excludecertain adult men from political participation, theyare using gender ideas to justify their actions. Gen-der, thus, encompasses ideas about how men andwomen are supposed to act, and it influences rela-tionships, including political relationships, betweenindividuals or groups.
Gender is, therefore, one of the essential build-ing blocks of all societies and states, and under-standing how gender functioned and changed overtime is a crucial part of studying history. In LatinAmerica, for example, colonial state officials identi-fied indigenous peoples as niños con barbas (beardedchildren) who, although they might achieve physicalmaturity, were ostensibly perpetual children in otherways. This gendered racial notion justified theunequal power relations between colonizers andcolonized peoples, although this state-sanctioned
Genetic studies make clear that biogeneticallydistinct races do not exist: Races are cultural inven-tions that respond to specific ideologies and histori-cal circumstances (e.g., justifying conquest, coercinglaborers, imposing religious conversion). In the mostbasic sense, race divides humans into distinct groupsbased on their supposed inherited physical and be-havioral differences. Starting in the fifteenth century,Europeans and their American-born descendants de-veloped a notion of race that reflected their attitudesand beliefs about the African, American, and Asianpeoples they were encountering. Iberian colonizerstypically believed that birth determined a person’sphysical and intellectual characteristics; they eventhought temperament derived from race. However,to establish an individual’s race, the state or thosearound an individual relied on cultural markers likereligion, dress, occupation, place of birth, language,marriage partner, and the like.5 Thus, race functionedmore like what one might call ethnicity today. Conse-quently, by changing or manipulating the emphasiswithin a combination of these characteristics a per-son’s race might change! By the time Latin Americannations achieved independence, modern ideas aboutrace as a biological category had begun to take shape,and peoples of European descent used these notionsto identify some so-called races as inherently supe-rior (European or “white”) or inferior (indigenous,African, and Asian). Such assertions were problem-atic in Latin American nation states, however, as thesupposedly inferior peoples were also purportedly fel-low members in the imagined community of the na-tion; in some cases these groups even accounted forthe majority of the nation’s population. The histori-cal figures and authorities presented in these volumesdebated and deployed these markers of difference in avariety of ways, and one can trace how the signifi-cance of race developed over the course of time.
Gender functions similarly to race in the study ofhistory, as it, too, is socially constructed and has beenused to justify unequal power relations. Joan Scott
6Joan Wallach Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category for HistoricalAnalysis,” in Gender and the Politics of History (New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1988), 28–50.
5Magnus Mörner offers one of the fundamental discussions of racein the Americas. His work still represents an important point ofdeparture for any study of ethnicity, class, and social identityconstruction in the Americas. Magnus Mörner, Race Mixture in theHistory of Latin America (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967).
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“Doing” Latin American History in the Era of Empires xxix
interethnic paternalism did not always work in prac-tice as it was meant to in theory, as many chapters inVolume I show. Women continued to be excludedfrom politics after independence, but their margin-alization held new meaning in the republican era.Denying women political rights helped to define thepolitical nation as a male domain, and excludingwomen served to obfuscate class and race divisionsbetween men in a given nation. Gender and race,therefore, upheld the politics of exclusion in LatinAmerica just as they did in the United States andother parts of the world. And, just as in other soci-eties, one can still find ways that these notions limitthe rights and power of women and non-whites incontemporary Latin America.
Wealthy European men—the elite—benefitedthe most from gender and race ideologies, whichhelped them to rule over, exploit, and marginalizeother groups. In many ways, elite is a clear-cut termthat refers to those individuals or groups who dom-inate politics, the economy, and society. However,different kinds of elites existed, and it is importantthat one avoid the trap of thinking that elites weresomehow uniform or homogenous. For example,members of the intellectual elite, whose ideas greatlyinfluenced society and politics, were not necessarilythe wealthiest men or those in political power.Different elite groups also competed with each otherover economic and political power, and they oftenheld divergent ideas about how society, the economy,and politics should be structured. Another potentialdivision appeared between political and religiouselites: In certain periods and locations, Church andstate officials allied closely, whereas in other circum-stances these two elite groups were at odds with eachother. Even within the Church, deep divisions surfaced between the regular clergy (who belongedto religious orders) and lay clergy (who ministered to the members of a diocese); in many instances,these different Church officials fought bitterly overthe jurisdiction of particular populations. Some-times elite factions even made alliances (usuallybrief ) with less-powerful peoples in order to beat acompeting elite faction.
At the other end of identity and power politics,one finds subaltern peoples. Although a sophisticatedfield of subaltern studies exists, in these volumes the
term subaltern refers simply to those groups that wereoutside of the dominant power structure.7 Mostobviously, subalterns included indigenous peoples,Afro-Latin Americans, and peoples of mixed racialdescent. However, it also included poor people ofEuropean descent and women across class and racelines. It is important to note that some individualscould be considered subaltern in some circumstancesbut part of the dominant power structure in others.Context mattered. An elite woman of European descent was part of the dominant race and class whenconsidering her social status and power over non-Europeans, yet, throughout most of Latin Americanhistory, such a woman was excluded from politicalpower and had limited rights to make decisionsabout the property she owned. Another examplewould be a male cacique (local indigenous leader)during the colonial period: in his case, he would bepart of the political structure, at least at the locallevel, from which the elite woman was excluded. Healso enjoyed privileges, exercised power over indige-nous commoners, and could participate in com-merce. But he was still subaltern, because he wasexcluded from the higher ranks of political power,and there were ways that his status was lower thanSpanish men of lesser wealth. In cases like these,whether an individual would be considered subal-tern or part of the dominant group depended on thenature of one’s historical inquiry. The topic beingexplored, the forms of sociopolitical power underscrutiny, and the broad questions one is trying toanswer, for example, determine which groups shouldbe included in the category of subaltern or elite withany given chapters of this documentary history.Furthermore, subaltern groups or individuals didnot necessarily share the same problems or goals, and
7South Asian studies groups coined this phrase for history frombelow. See Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the SubalternSpeak?” in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. CaryNelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Urbana: University of IllinoisPress, 1988), 271–313. A variety of scholars apply subaltern stud-ies to Latin America; see Ileana Rodríguez, ed., The Latin AmericanSubaltern Reader (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001).Historians debate how to take Latin America’s subalterns intoaccount; a good discussion of this is Eric Van Young, “The NewCultural History Comes to Old Mexico,” Hispanic AmericanHistorical Review 79, no. 2 (1999): 211–247.
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women who witnessed or created key moments inLatin American history; nothing gives readers atruer and more in-depth understanding of the past.Making history is really a process of giving meaningto the written and visual remains of the past. Thisbook requires readers to evaluate the past and drawtheir own conclusions, maybe even to question orchallenge the editors’ or contributing scholars’ viewsof the past.
Primary sources include almost any materialsthat capture the memories and thoughts of peoplewho lived through particular events or periods inthe past. In these two volumes on Latin Americanhistory, readers encounter transcriptions of ships’logs, legal codes, scholarly essays, lists of possessionsfrom wills, testimonial life accounts, portraits, andinterrogations from court cases. Each source holdswithin it useful insights and potential pitfalls; thetrick is to extract those insights while avoidingmany of the pitfalls. Historians typically employ anarray of strategies to recognize what the content ofthese sources means. A basic strategy is to ask one-self: Who created this source, under what circum-stances, for what audience, and with what objectivein mind? It is also imperative to consider whosevoice, or what combination of voices, one “hears”while reading a document or viewing an image.A written source, or even a visual one, may containinput from one or more creators, speaking for them-selves or on behalf of others. It is critical to deter-mine this voice and authorship as accurately aspossible. These volumes also present readers withinformation about people marginalized within LatinAmerican society, many of whom were illiterate.Their thoughts and actions may be hidden withinthe words, impressions, or descriptions expressed byothers, providing readers only indirect access to thevoices of the marginalized. This raises questionsabout an author’s viewpoint that may be distortingany given document. Such distortions within asource do not mean that one must discount every-thing one reads; instead, the challenge is to figureout how an author’s perspective affects what a readergleans from a particular document. A good tech-nique for doing this is to question: What other per-spectives might there be on an issue or event beingpresented in this document? It is critical to read
they sometimes clashed and competed with eachother. In the short term, an individual mightimprove his or her life through such contests, but inthe long term competition among subalterns usuallyserved to keep wealthy European men in power.
All of these terms refer to fluid categories andprocesses in history. They are complex rather than sim-ple and historically adaptable rather than unchanging.All of the terms also focus on individuals’ and groups’relative positions with regard to power. Instead ofthinking of power as absolute or as something thatone holds, it is more useful—and more historicallyaccurate—to think of power as something that oneexercises. This distinction is important because itindicates that even though subalterns were (and are)excluded from most formal positions of power, theymight still exercise power in significant ways, partic-ularly in an informal or local-level capacity. Powerexists in a continuum, with different individuals andgroups enjoying different kinds and levels of author-ity. Chapters in Documenting Latin America revealmyriad ways that wealthy European men wieldedtremendous power and manipulated gender and raceideas to maintain inequalities. At the same time,many chapters allow readers to explore the numerousand sometimes surprising ways that women and peo-ples of indigenous or African descent manipulatedideologies that were meant to subordinate them inorder to advance their personal or collective interests.These tensions, contradictions, and negotiations overgender, race, and politics were driving forces thatmoved Latin American history forward; they con-tinue to shape the region today.
Getting the Most Out ofPrimary-Source DocumentsWorking with primary sources makes history bothexciting and daunting. In the chapters to follow,readers can dive into the archives of Latin America’spast alongside the historians whose work it is tomake sense of what are sometimes confusing orconflicting accounts. The primary sources inDocumenting Latin America offer unparalleled per-spectives on the views and lives of men and
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documents or images “against the grain” or “betweenthe lines” to discern and analyze the author’s per-spective, or to learn something that the authormight have been hiding or ignoring. Implementingthese methods, as well as others learned in class or onone’s own while working with the materials, enablesreaders to develop their own ways of engaging withLatin American history and sources.
Questions to Ask WhenInterrogating a Primary Source
1. What type of source is this?2. What is known about who created it, when,
and where?3. Whom did the author consider the audience
for this piece?4. What views or perspectives were presented?
Were other views silenced or challenged?5. Is there evidence of distortion in the docu-
ment? How might this be explained?6. What can the source tell a reader about an
event or period in history? What are the limitsto what it can reveal?
7. How does this source fit into a bigger histori-cal picture or period? Does it challenge a big-ger picture or narrative in any way?
Volume 1: Empires and Their SubjectsVolume I of Documenting Latin America allows read-ers to explore how Latin American empires and soci-eties appeared and changed from the Europeaninvasions of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries tothe independence period of the early nineteenth cen-tury. Conquests in the Americas, the enslavement ofAfricans, and colonization coincided with the periodduring which Western Europe emerged from theMiddle Ages, experienced the Renaissance, and cre-ated the mechanisms and institutions of early mod-ern states and empires.8 In this period, European
monarchies created mechanisms like councils ofstate and viceroys to govern overseas territories; theyestablished trade monopolies and fleets to engage inglobal trade; and they extended the reach of royalcourts and the inquisition to regulate subjects’ activities and thoughts. In short, they made modernstates and empires possible.
Unprecedented European expansion and theglobalization of trade and human movement creatednew ways of interacting and organizing life, oftenwith a unique set of peoples. Monarchs, nobles, bureaucrats, priests, and commoners of Europe,Africa, and the Americas came together—oftenthrough violence, always through negotiation ofsome sort, and occasionally though cooperation—toform the impressive and wealthy Spanish and Portuguese Empires and their diverse and numeroussubjects in the Americas. These new Americanempires grew out of European practices of conquestand governance combined with Amerindian tradi-tions of empire building; both Europeans andAmerindians contributed notions of subjects’ rightsand obligations. For example, indigenous ideas ofreciprocity between the rulers and the ruled meldedwith European beliefs of a monarch’s paternalisticprotection and lenience. In the Americas, Spain andPortugal created systems of royal courts that all res-idents could access and through which some receivedspecial protection and rights (e.g., communal lands).
Empires had existed in the Americas prior to thearrival of Europeans. In fact, the relatively youngInca and Aztec Empires had been extending imperialcontrol over new regions, independent ethnicgroups, and important resources right up to the in-vasion. The Mayan polities had declined some timeearlier. But in all three cases, and in a few other sim-ilar regions, the existence of dense populations ofsedentary agriculturalists ruled indirectly by ethni-cally dissimilar leaders paved the way for theSpanish to impose their domination and meld their practices and institutions with the earlierAmerindian ways. Amerindian history also matteredtremendously for Portugal’s colony in Brazil. Alongthe coast, the Portuguese found that the semiseden-tary Tupi-Namba organized into tribal societiescould be engaged in trade and later forced to workon early sugar mills. In every part of the Americas
8“Early modern” refers to the period between the Middle Ages andthe French Revolution (1789).
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almost every village and town. The creation of thecapital to invest in commerce and the demand forlaborers also promoted a spectacular expansion of theslave trade in African peoples, and this trade grew insize and importance with each century. The AfricanDiaspora and the creation of new multiethnicsocieties and networks of administration and evan-gelization endowed the Americas with new kinds ofpeople, new kinds of beliefs and religious practices,and many institutions and strategies of rule thatbound the system together and gave mature Iberiancolonialism the flexibility to last for centuries untilSpain and Portugal lost their hold over the Americanterritories in the nineteenth century.
Conquest and incorporation into imperial systems,thus, took place through interplay between Europeanand indigenous actors. African peoples played a role,too, but they often faced the greatest challenges inshaping American societies. This volume offers vari-ous documents and voices that record the historicalagency that people of all walks of life and ethnicbackgrounds exercised in the world’s first era of glob-alization. Often these groups and individuals becamevisible in the historical record only when imperialstates took real form. This happened when peoplefaced judges in court, listened to and discussed themeaning of sermons, denounced their neighbors toChurch investigators, recorded marriage in a parishbook, dictated a will, or engaged in any of the otherhundreds of ways of taking official or legal action.
Within colonial societies in the Americas, noone group was homogeneous, including the Euro-peans. For example, regional loyalties, social status,ethnic allegiance, institutional infighting, competi-tion, and greed divided people in the colonies. Themultiple and competing interests helped ensure thatthe functioning of colonial governance and the livesof subjects within the empire were not solely top-down processes. Documenting Latin America collectsthe kinds of court cases, petitions to authorities, andclaims to rights that make the reality of subjects’negotiations abundantly clear.
Economic and cultural activities also expose thefact that indigenous and African peoples, alongsideelite and plebeian Europeans, generated the wealthand values that built and sustained European powerduring this era. Notaries’ records, litigation over
that the Spanish and the Portuguese turned to, thediversity of Amerindian society shaped the funda-mental nature of the colonies established there. Notonly were colonies made possible and profitable bythe indigenous inhabitants, the Aztec and IncaEmpires could not have been defeated without theinternal diversity and politics of indigenous societiesthat produced people willing to ally with outsidersto defeat overlords.
Christopher Columbus, and the conquering sol-diers in Mexico, offer examples of the conquistador’smindset; they also reveal the central role thatindigenous allies played in early European victories,setting in motion the arrival of more Europeans andguaranteeing that ethnic groups would not all expe-rience colonialism in the same way. In addition, notall Europeans were white, and not all conquests weresuccessful. Afro-Iberians working as sailors, soldiers,and traders help explain the early importance of theAfrican Diaspora to Iberian colonialism. The blackanti-conquistador represented another result of theDiaspora, and Church and state authorities foundthey needed to negotiate and compromise with thosethey could not fully conquer, contain, or convert.Fluidity and flexibility characterized conquest soci-ety in the sixteenth century.
Mexico and the Andes offered populous andwell-organized societies and rich mineral deposits.Consequently, these regions became the core ofSpain’s American empire at least until the eighteenth-century rise in economic and demographic impor-tance of plantation colonies in other parts of SouthAmerica and the Caribbean. In Brazil, no silver orgold deposits motivated efforts to control the work-force to guarantee mining production, at least notuntil gold and diamonds were found in the late colo-nial period; however, despite high levels of indigenousmortality and escape, the colonists used indigenouslabor in northwestern Brazil’s cane fields and millsuntil they accumulated the resources to importAfricans as enslaved laborers.
The colonial economies survived the disruptions ofwarfare and the ongoing toll that disease took onindigenous populations, and they became centeredon mining and plantations. These colonial economieseventually created extensive networks of trade andcommercial activity, reaching all levels of society and
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property, and regulations of local marketplaces showhow real people experienced colonialism, survived,and adapted. They also wrote poems and createdvisual art addressing these themes, and those sourcesare included in this volume as well. The intercon-nected colonial economy and the multiethnic citiesit spawned were built from both above and belowwith participation at many levels. In fact, marketparticipation and the growth of cities and townsmarched forward in tandem with the creation of newkinds of societies, religious beliefs, and people ofmixed ethnic heritage. Diversity and contradictionbecame hallmarks of mature colonial society duringthe seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
How Iberians governed amidst diversity andcontradictions remains one of the key questionsmotivating scholarly investigation and debate. Colonialhegemony remains one of the best ways to understandhow Iberian domination secured a measure of consentby those at the bottom and the middle. Spanish andPortuguese colonialism allowed opportunities forpeople of many different backgrounds to find ways ofbelonging to these empires, although never as equalsto Europeans. In particular, the colonized embracedCatholicism and the advantages Catholic institutionsoffered; many cases included in the volume demon-strate how common Catholic participation became.The construction of these colonial cultural identitiesand religious allegiances also made rebellion rare.Much more common were various forms of adaptiveresistance, which allowed individuals and colonizedgroups to accept some change and make concessionsin order to resist total transformation or specific,hated colonial impositions. People either changed inorder to remain who they were, or they created newblended beliefs or rituals that combined elementsfrom more than one tradition.
These arrangements between rulers and theruled also broke down when the levels of dominationrose, the processes of mediating conflict faltered, orwhen significant crises weakened the state at the cen-ter. Each of these occurred in the eighteenth and earlynineteenth centuries. Increasing in intensity and fre-quency from the late 1700s forward, these disrup-tions to the “way things worked” under Iberiancolonialism led to changing forms of resistance, re-bellion, and consciousness. Eventually, at different
points in time groups at all levels of colonial SpanishAmerican society questioned colonial rule, and manyfought to end it. They often clashed with each overthe alternatives to European domination. SmashingIberia’s American empires and colonial hegemonydid not easily lead to national unity.
Spanish and Portuguese imperial archives arereplete with remains of the elaborate Iberian bureau-cracy, and colonized people’s active and sustainedengagement with it. Similarly, the national, regional,and local archives are crowded with a multitude ofdocuments and wonderful, heartbreaking, and sim-ply confusing stories about Latin America’s colonialpast. Historians, other scholars, and activists all minethese repositories for a glimpse of the past. InDocumenting Latin America, readers dive into thesecollections to learn more about imperial aspirationsand the limits of colonial domination. This process ofdomination and co-option not only helped establishthe norms of colonial rule into the seventeenth cen-tury and beyond, but it also gave indigenous peoplea place in the Church, Brazilian slaves a forum forleadership, and non-Europeans—often women—additional tools to promote and protect their inter-ests. Indians and women were well aware of theirsubordinated status in colonial society, but life incities and towns afforded them opportunities tosecure niches in an expanding economic system andeven to parlay their knowledge of selling or healingto earn a living. A few women—both indigenous andIberian—flaunted the norms barring women frompublic discourse, soldiering, or exercising politicaloffice. Colonial society became rich in its complexityand in the ways people found identity as subjectswithin empires ruled from a remote imperial center.
The age of reform following the eighteenth-century ascension of the Bourbon Dynasty to theSpanish and Portuguese thrones ushered in an era ofunprecedented change in imperial rule. This periodalso coincided with the emergence of European creoleand nativist identities and rising peasant and in-digenous descent and revolt. Creole elites oftenfeared both the upward mobility of social sectorsnormally relegated to inferior positions and workwithin society and a loss of privileges due to reformsfrom European rulers. Clergy worried of the frayingbonds of rural populations’ loyalties. Certainly
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xxxiv Introduction
resistance to higher taxes and outright rural insurrec-tions throughout the eighteenth century proved thatmany of these concerns were well founded. In fact,when full-scale revolts broke out and hardened intoindependence movements from the 1780s into the1820s, creole patriots, parish priests, and indigenousofficials—all supposedly beholden to the colonialstate—figured prominently among those fightinghardest to tear down the imperial system. In both
Spanish America and Brazil, formal independencedid not guarantee equality and full citizenship for all:Indians, women, and Afro-Latin Americans, in partic-ular, still faced systematic exclusion. Latin America’sdiverse, multiethnic societies, with both mechanismsof inclusion and exclusion and negotiation and coer-cion, would continue and would continue to changewell into the modern era of the nineteenth andtwentieth centuries.
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DOCUMENTINGLATIN AMERICA
Gender, Race, and Empire
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