Peru Archives - Not Even Past

Indigenous Intellectuals: Knowledge, Power, and Colonial Culture in Mexico and the Andes edited by Gabriela Ramos and Yanna Yannakakis (2014)

This collective book is about the role of Indian thinkers as actors who preserved pre-Columbian knowledge within the new social order and recreated it to enforce or contest Spanish imperial rule. The book editors integrated several essays of top historians that explain how indigenous intellectuals in the colonial Andes and Mexico were important for the success of both the Spanish authorities and Indian elites in reaching political power and legitimacy.

Together, the book’s articles offers a comparative perspective of colonial Mexico and Peru focusing on the indigenous scholars’ lives, productions, and epistemological networks. This comparative analysis shows that knowledge production was more culturally and linguistically diverse in Mexico than in the Andes. On the one hand, Spanish prevailed on the Quechua as the principal written medium. This meant the indigenous people of the Andes had to learn a new foreign language to achieve social mobility and the Spanish government could centralize more rapidly its political power in the Andean region. On the other hand, in colonial Peru, Spanish rule gradually marginalized the Inca quipu system –records expressed with numerical terms while in colonial Mexico the Mesoamerican pictographic writing tradition –codex with images and words that recorded all kind of information– rapidly adapted the Castilian alphabet scripture. This exemplifies how the Spaniards were reluctant to utilize the numerical system of the Inca people while they accepted the continuity of the Mesoamerican tradition of communicating whole ideas by combining images and words. In her contribution, Gabriela Ramos suggests that the former centralized power of the Inca empire limited knowledge to very few hands while in Mexico the fragmented structure of the Aztec empire allowed a linguistic diversity that survived Spanish colonization. Ramos explains how the indigenous language, Quechua, became the lingua franca in colonial Cusco and Lima., The standardization of one language allowed the Spaniards to exert control more effectively, but also allowed natives to use the legal culture to their own benefit.

The essays also explain how indigenous intellectuals used their ancient knowledge to transform and thus critique, resist, or accommodate with the colonial system. Religious orders played an important role in the critique of power through evangelizing and educating the natives. John Charles addresses this in his study of Jesuit colleges in the colonial Andes. He demonstrates that Jesuit schooling allowed young indigenous nobles to learn the Spanish law and language to protect local self-rule and their family’s interests and investments. Andean nobles who were schooled by Jesuits did not hesitate to confront corrupt Spanish authorities using their knowledge in the litigation process. Alan Durston offers another example of resistance by Indians thinkers. He analyzes the Huarochirí Manuscript (Quechua language text that describes the traditions and myths of the natives of pre-Columbian Peru) to explain how an indigenous intellectual and nobleman prioritized local indigenous traditions that expressed historical narratives through ancient Inca myths, the huaca tales. Durston shows that indigenous writers chose to preserve their ancient records instead of embracing completely Europeans forms of knowledge.

Concerning the issue of the political adaptation of Indians to the colonial system, María Elena Martínez provides one of the most compelling aspects of the book, a study of the political functions of Indian genealogies in central Mexico and Peru. Martínez shows that genealogical narratives empowered Indian noblemen in both regions by adapting ancient traditions to understanding the Spanish conquest as a pact of vassalage with the Spanish crown. During the 17-18^th centuries, indigenous intellectuals created a great variety of títulos primordiales (Titles of land in colonial Mexico referring both to the pre-Columbian and colonial periods) and visual representations of dynasties (Peru) to retain or gain privileges from the crown. Those genealogical narratives shows that natives elites in colonial Peru conceived of Spanish rule as a peaceful and voluntary transfer of power between the Indians and the Spanish crown, not as a military conquest.

All the authors in this collection have a clear and concise writing style and use a wide range of primary sources: chronicles, confesionarios, trial records, lawsuits, petitions, contemporaneous histories, photographic representations that combines European and Indian forms of knowledge, and so forth. Particularly, the authors show how the analysis of chronicles and histories shed light on the intellectuals’ networks and the role of Indian scholars in preserving the oral memory of native societies that today are not well known. For instance, John F. Schwaller examined the productions of the brothers Fernando de Alva Ixtlixochitl and Bartolomé de Alva. The first served to interpret and translate the native history into models that were understood by the Spanish rulers while the second used his wide knowledge of native religious practices to enforce a better Christianization. For her part, Camila Townsend shows that Nahua historian Don Juan Zapata and other Nahua historians claimed to be the responsible for preserving their communities’ memories. The essays of Schwaller and Towsend also are also remarkable as they include an insightful analysis of the Nahuátl language. Yanna Yannakakis examined the translation process for understanding the relationship between indigenous people and the legal system. She argues that translation practices in colonial Mexico led to a process of commensuration, that is, the Spanish and native languages established a common ground so that Christianity could become comprehensible both for Spaniards and indigenous communities. She demonstrates how the Zapotec language integrated the Christian notion of sin to create a discourse on criminality, which the Indian elites then used to dispute colonial power.

This collection of essays draws attention to the importance of intellectuals in the construction of alternative ways to achieve power and social mobility. The Indian intellectuals of colonial Mexico and the Andes demonstrated the validity of the common idea that “knowledge is power.” And it is power because it offers a pathway to contest or to improve the ways that people interact with their rulers.

Andean Tapestry: Colonial Latin America Through Objects (No. 3)

Backstrap Loom, ca. 600-1476 AD Peru, Pachacamac, Gravefield I; William Pepper Peruvian Expedition; Max Uhle, subscription of Phebe A. Hearst, 1897; University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Antrhopology

This series features five online museum exhibits created by undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Texas at Austin for a class titled “Colonial Latin America Through Objects.” The class assumes that Latin America was never a continent onto itself. The course also insists that objects document the nature of historical change in ways written archives alone cannot.

Irene Smith’s exhibit offers a survey of weaving techniques in pre-colonial and colonial Peru and shows how the natives sought to keep forms of local weaving in the context of new looms and new fibers. The result were fabrics that dazzle but also reveal long-lasting Andean continuities in the midst of rapid technological change.

More from the Colonial Latin America Through Objects series:

Of Merchants and Nature by Diana Heredia López
Nanban Art by John Monsour

Cuba’s Revolutionary World

By Jonathan C. Brown

On January 2, 1959, Fidel Castro, the rebel comandante who had just overthrown Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, addressed a crowd of jubilant supporters. Recalling the failed popular uprisings of past decades, Castro assured them that this time “the real Revolution” had arrived. Castro’s words proved prophetic not only for his countrymen but for Latin America and the wider world.

Fidel Castro announcing the arrival of “the real revolution,” 1959.

The political turmoil that rocked a small Caribbean nation in the 1950s became one of the twentieth century’s most transformative events. Initially, Castro’s revolution augured well for democratic reform movements then gaining traction in Latin America. But what had begun promisingly veered off course as Castro took a heavy hand in efforts to centralize Cuba’s economy and stamp out private enterprise. Embracing the Soviet Union as an ally, Castro and his lieutenants, Che Guevara and Raúl Castro, sought to export the socialist revolution abroad through armed insurrection. Chairman Khrushchev’s early support aided the Cuban revolutionaries in defeating of the CIA invasion of Cuban émigré fighters at the Bay of Pigs. However, he subsequently lost his job over the 1962 Missile Crisis that pushed the superpowers to the brink of nuclear war.

By the end of the 1960s, rural and urban uprisings linked to the Cuban Revolution had spilled over from Central America into the bigger countries of South America. Revolutionary groups whose leaders had trained in Havana were operating in Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, and Argentina. Most of the rural and urban guerrillas may not have traveled to Cuba. Yet they certainly followed Fidel’s “anti-imperialist” example. Che himself attempted to spread the revolution to Bolivia, where he died. Other rebel groups with names such as the Tupamaros and Montoneros and still others with initials like FALN, ELN, and MIR defined the 1960s as the age of student unrest.

Castro’s provocations inspired intense opposition. Cuban anti-communists who had fled to Miami found a patron in the CIA, which actively supported their efforts to topple Castro’s regime. American presidents supported anti-communist forces that often utilized disproportionate violence against pro-Cuban dissidence in their own countries. The insurrections fomented by leftist guerrillas lent support to Latin America’s military castes, who promised to restore stability. Brazil was the first to succumb to a coup in 1964. A decade later, juntas of generals governed most Spanish and Portuguese-speaking nations of the Western Hemisphere. Rightwing terror claimed increasing numbers of casualties into the 1980s. Thus did a revolution that had seemed to signal the death knell of dictatorship in Latin America produce its tragic opposite.

Latin America’s military establishments especially came to oppose revolution because they learned what had happened to the Cuban army that failed to defeat Castro’s guerrilla rebellion. Revolutionary firing squads killed hundreds of military and police officers when the Batista dictatorship fell. Consequently, Che Guevara’s travels in Latin America proved especially toxic. President Jânio Quadros of Brazil resigned one week after presenting Guevara with a medal and Argentina’s army generals deposed President Arturo Frondizi several months after he “secretly” met with El Che.

Omar Torrijos and Fidel Castro in 1976

However, it is instructive that two generals who performed coups d’état in 1968 took advantage of the nationalist feelings of peasants and workers to establish pro-Cuban juntas. Generals Juan Velasco of Peru and Omar Torrijos of Panama ousted elected governments in order to implement overdue social reforms. Many countries of Latin America followed the Brazilian example of establishing long-term counterrevolutionary military dictatorships. Brazil’s generals governed for twenty-one years.

The Cold War that Cuba introduced to Latin America affected the lives of countless ordinary citizens. Humberto Sorí Marín, the revolution’s first agriculture minister. opposed the turn toward communism, resigned, and fled to Miami, only to return with a cache of weapons for an uprising against Castro. He died before a firing squad. There was also Osvaldo Ramírez, the bandit king of the Escambray Mountains who led a widespread guerrilla rebellion against Castro’s rule until militia troops shot and killed him in battle. His anti-communist guerrilla successors endured within Cuba until 1965.

Cuban militiamen capture an anti-Castro guerilla fighter, c. 1962.

Antonio “Tony” Zamora was one Castro opponent who survived. He aspired to study law but left Cuba in 1960 to join the brigade of exiled Cuban youths who landed at the Bay of Pigs. President Kennedy ransomed Zamora and his fellow prisoners following the Cuban Missile Crisis. Tony became a lawyer in Miami and went on to advocate greater dialog with the Castro regime as the Cuban Revolution approached its fiftieth anniversary.

Cuba’s revolution attracted youthful visitors from all over Latin America who wished to learn how they too might become armed revolutionaries. Julio García left the University of Buenos Aires to learn how to fight as a guerrilla in 1962. However, he and several other Argentineans quit the camps after training became too rigorous for them. Venezuelans like Luben Petkoff did finish Cuban guerrilla training. Luben engaged in combat for nearly ten years only to give up finally with a pardon from one of the few democracies that survived the 1960s.

Venezuelan Leftist Guerillas

Women too became involved in the turmoil. The guerrilla Tania gave up her life for the revolution, this one in Bolivia. Tania’s real name was Tamara Bunke Bider, an Argentinean-born East German who first met Che Guevara as a government translator in East Berlin. She immigrated to Cuba in the early 1960s and eventually became Che’s spy in La Paz, Bolivia. Tania campaigned with Guevara’s last guerrilla group in 1967 and suffered the fate of most of his followers.

Student rioters in Córdoba, Argentina, 1969

Argentina’s Norma Arrostita visited Havana in 1967 to attend a conference of armed leftists from all over Latin America. When she returned to Buenos Aires, Norma acted as the lookout for the kidnapping and killing of a former general who once served as Argentina’s president. A founding member of the urban guerrilla group known as the Montoneros, Arrostita later “disappeared” in a military prison like thousands of other suspected radicals.

As Mao used to say, “The revolution is not a dinner party.” Fidel Castro provided the corollary. “But the counterrevolution” he said, “is always more cruel.”

Jonathan C. Brown, Cuba’s Revolutionary World (2017)

For more on twentieth-century Latin American revolutions, try these:

Jorge I. Domínguez, Cuba: Order and Revolution (1978).
The foundational text for any serious study of Cuba’s three revolutions in the modern age: the Wars of Independence, the 1933 Revolution and rise of Fulgencio Batista, and the 1959 Revolution of Fidel Castro and his many associates.

Alexandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958-1964 (1997).
A fascinating account of Havana-Moscow relations culminating in the October Missile Crisis of 1962. The authors had access to Soviet and US document collections but only a few Cuban ones, which are generally not available to researchers. The title derives from a statement by President Kennedy during a White House discussion about Premier Khrushchev’s possible motivations for placing nuclear missiles in Cuba.

Jan Lust, Lucha revolucionaria: Perú, 1958-1967 (2013).
The most thorough study of a guerrilla movement in any country of Latin America during the 1960s. The author interviewed survivors and collected detailed information on leaders and fighters from a variety of sources.

Valeria Manzano, The Age of Youth in Argentina: Culture, Politics, and Sexuality from Perón to Videla (2014).
An important study of the student movements of one important country in South America during an age of youthful protests and cultural change wrought by national political turmoil and military interventions. The book covers the period from the 1955 overthrow of Juan Perón to the 1976 coup d’état that preceded the last military dictatorship of the country.

Antonio de Ulloa’s Relación Histórica del Viage a la America Meridional

By Haley Schroer

Nineteen-year-old Antonio de Ulloa set sail for the Americas in the spring of 1735. Ulloa was traveling as one of two assistants to a contingency of French scientists appointed to South America. The observations Ulloa and his counterpart, Jorge Juan, made on the excursion culminated in Relación Histórica del Viage a la America Meridional. The Relación Histórica is a five-volume work published in 1748 that provides in-depth cultural descriptions of the Spanish colonies’ major cities. As a traveler’s account, Relación Histórica made the colonies accessible for the considerable literate Spanish population who knew little of the empire’s overseas territories. For contemporary readers, it proves fundamental to understanding the socio-racial caste hierarchy that defined the colonies.

Antonio de Ulloa y de la Torre-Giral became a general of the navy and a colonial administrator. He was later the first Spanish governor of Louisiana (via Wikimedia Commons).

By the eighteenth century, Spanish colonial society comprised a diverse socio-racial landscape. Intermarriage and sexual unions among Indigenous, African, and Spanish populations produced a society that could not easily be categorized according to conventional European social and economic privileges. Establishing a sociedad de castas (caste society), elite Spaniards recognized upwards of twenty racial castes with behavioral qualities unique to each group. Implementing the hierarchy relied primarily on public forms of social control, such as the prohibition of certain castes from administrative and commercial positions and laws that excluded certain fashions from non-Spanish castes. Colonial elites, however, faced challenges in enforcing strict racial stratification, and, as Ann Twinam has shown, loopholes broke down the efficacy of the racial hierarchy. Traveler’s accounts of the Spanish colonies offer key outside perspectives on these inconsistencies that allow us to evaluate how deeply socio-racial limitations permeated through colonial society.

Antonio de Ulloa’s fifth chapter, “Understanding the People of Quito; the Castes Found; Their Customs, and Riches” addresses the realities of implementing the caste system in a complex urban environment. Immediately, Ulloa asserts a high level of stratification found within society, noting that noble families “have kept themselves in their luster, connecting themselves with each other and not mixing with the people of low birth.” Ulloa further defines “low birth,” describing “four classes: that are Spanish, or whites; mestizos; Indians, or Naturals; and Blacks with their descendants” (363). While Ulloa’s racial classification affirms the presence of racial separation, the description of only four racial castes points to larger questions of the racial demography found in Peru. Ulloa presents Africans as a distinct group in society, but they are “not as abundant, as in other places in the Indies,” suggesting that Quito did not rely as heavily on African slave labor as perhaps other colonial cities.

A casta painting from ca. 1770. It depicts a Spanish father and an indigenous mother with their mestizo baby (via Wikimedia Commons).

Ulloa deepens his discussion of the socio-racial dynamic found in Quito by describing stereotypical behavior associated with the most prominent racial groups. Ironically, he condemns Spaniards as “the most unhappy, poor, and miserable; because the men do not apply themselves to any business” due to their superior racial quality (365). He praises mestizos who “work with perfection,” but ultimately fall prey to “the defect of Laziness and sloth, of which dominates them strongly” (365). These observations of work ethic mimic popular conceptions of how race influenced personality and behavior. Finally, Ulloa evaluates the visual appearance of Quito’s inhabitants, claiming, “people dress ostentatiously; and fabrics of gold, silver, fine scarves, and other types of silk and wool are not uncommon” (366).

800px-Paisaje_periferico_de_Lima_en_1744_-_AHG

An illustration from Relación Histórica del Viage a la America Meridional of the peripheral countryside of Peru (via Wikimedia Commons).

Ulloa’s account also addresses larger questions concerning the conceptualization of race in both colonial and peninsular Spanish society. His depiction relies heavily on exterior evaluations of race, such as status, behavior, and appearance, suggesting that society largely defined racial classification through overt visual markers. Ulloa’s description demonstrates that implementation of the racial caste system had some influence in Quito. For example, according to Ulloa, mestizos frequently worked in artisanal occupations such as “painters, sculptors, silversmiths, and others,” demonstrating a sense of racial occupational organization (365). He reinforces ideas being produced within the Spanish colonies by proving that racial stratification was clearly noticeable to foreigners.

Despite confirming widespread stratification in daily society, Ulloa’s account proves even more valuable for the inconsistencies that it records. He writes that, “many mestizos appear to be of the same color as legitimate Spaniards, being white, and blonde; and they are considered as such, even though in reality they are not.” (353) In this one brief sentence, Ulloa recognizes a fundamental weakness in the socio-racial hierarchy. Despite the creation of at least twenty racial castes in society, ambiguous physical markers allowed some social mobility along the racial spectrum. Mestizos with European complexions could sometimes assimilate into the Spanish demographic, which undermined the rigidity of the caste system.

Bust of Antonio de Ulloa in modern day Quito, Ecuador (via Wikimedia Commons).

Traveler accounts such as Ulloa’s are useful to historians in determining how colonial society presented itself to foreigners, but authors of such accounts carried preconceived notions of the Spanish colonies. Ulloa’s account inherently reflects peninsular prejudices and preconceptions of the colonies. Historians must determine to what extent Ulloa imposed peninsular ideologies upon the colonial social structure. As an outsider, for example, since Ulloa most likely only gained access to public society, he can demonstrate the racial stratification seen in public but cannot speak to the intimate realities that occurred in private.

Antonio de Ulloa’s analysis of Quito’s residents exists within a broader attempt to categorize and identify the unique racial make-up of the Spanish colonies. Colonial society continuously tried to grapple with its own racial ambiguity, often relying on public campaigns like casta paintings that depicted mixed race families and the racial variety of the caste society and whitening decrees that attempted to regulated social structures. However, travelers’ accounts like that of Ulloa offer an outsider’s perspective to the multi-colored reality. Answering key historical questions about race in Peruvian society while raising further inquiries into the realistic validity of the caste system, Relación Histórica del Viage a la America Meridional places modern readers in the thick of colonial Quito society.

Sources for this article and for further reading:

Magli M. Carrera, Imagining Identity in New Spain: Race, Lineage, and the Colonial Body in Portraiture and Casta Paintings. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003.

Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa, Relación Histórica del Viage a la America Meridional. Madrid: 1748. The Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, University of Texas Libraries.

Irving A. Leonard, Introduction to A Voyage to South America, by Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa. Translated and Abridged by John Adams. Tempe: Arizona State University, 1975.

Ann Twinam, Purchasing Whiteness: Pardos, Mulattos, and the Quest for Social Mobility in the Spanish Indies. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015.

You may also like:
Ann Twinam disucssers her book Purchasing Whiteness: Race and Status in Colonial Latin America.
Susan Deans-Smith explains how casta paintings described the racial hierarchy of Colonial Latin America.
Adrian Masters reviews The Disappearing Mestizo, by Joanne Rappaport (2014).

Visible Empire: Botanical Expeditions and Visual Culture in the Hispanic Enlightenment, by Daniela Bleichmar (2012)

by Christina Marie Villarreal

The European Enlightenment occurred as an ongoing dialogue of ideas—a discourse composed of voices from around the globe. As Daniela Bleichmar demonstrates, southern Europe, long ignored in scholarship on the Enlightenment, had a crucial voice in the conversation.

In Visible Empires, Bleichmar claims that Imperial Spain, more than any other contemporary empire, used visual documents like paintings and maps to make the empire tangible and, in this way, “governable.” Images, she argues, made visible the hidden or secret. Bleichmar highlights the Hispanic World’s investment in knowledge production at the peripheries of empire. She emphasizes how scientific investigations, specifically botanist and natural history expeditions, fit into the Spanish Empire’s attempt to reestablish itself as a European political and economic power in the late eighteenth century. Her findings demonstrate how relationships between the center and periphery of empire were often a matter of perspective.

Bleichmar makes use of the long ignored and beautiful visual archive of botanical paintings produced by Spanish expeditions around the Atlantic. She reads these centuries-old detailed depictions of flora and fauna to stress the relevance of vision to governing of the empire. For Spain, these illustrations provided visual evidence of worlds across the sea and of our ability to understand nature. They buttressed Spain’s ownership of the unseen. The Spanish metropole also used this method to understand the racial compositions of distant populations. New Spain’s casta paintings and Peru’s taxonomical illustrations gave the metropole a window into their kingdoms abroad. Simultaneously, the project supplied the peripheries of empire with the agency to codify their populations. While knowledge of its far-off inhabitants gave the metropole a sense of discovery and ownership, the power to produce pictures of their world gave people on the periphery power of their own.

An image from "Flora Huayaquilensis," a visual collection of South America's plants as seen by Spanish botanist Juan José Tafalla during a 1785 expedition through Peru and Chile. ([Juan Tafalla], “Flora Huayaquilensis,” ourheritage.ac.nz | OUR Heritage - See more at: http://otago.ourheritage.ac.nz/items/show/7696#sthash.r8R9WHhx.dpuf)

An image from “Flora Huayaquilensis,” a visual collection of South America’s plants seen by Spanish botanist Juan José Tafalla during a 1785 expedition through Peru and Chile. ([Juan Tafalla], “Flora Huayaquilensis,” ourheritage.ac.nz | OUR Heritage)

During the Enlightenment, intellectuals and others contested and refined the themes of art, science, and knowledge using visual representations. The “correct” representation did not always come from the center or metropole but, as Bleichmar explains, it was often difficult to tell where in the empire botanical Enlightenment projects began. Indeed, knowledge moved in multiple directions. Bleichmar explores how some naturalists understood colonial agendas in ways that differed from the intentions of the Spanish metropole. Consider Basco y Vargas’ pepper initiative in the Philippines. He prioritized his local economic goals over the philosophical inquiries coming from Spain. In this case, the periphery directed knowledge production as Basco y Vargas determined what botanical investigation to support.

Allegiances and relationships to a “center” thus differed depending on local context. However, by suggesting “the goal of this intensive natural history investigation… was nothing less than to rediscover and reconquer the empire at a time of intense crisis,” Bleichmar seems to suggest that Spain held more control over the direction of knowledge production. In addition, the author admits that the only a limited audience saw or studied the visual illustrations produced by enlightenment botanist. These minor inconsistencies leave the reader with a lingering question: to what extent did “visual” knowledge shape the empire at large?

Botanical drawing from “Flora Huayaquilensis” (Pinterest/Carlos Adanero)

Aside from images, Bleichmar also examines the tremendous written archive that preserves the voices of botanist and economists. While historians typically use images in their work without fully exploring the significance they held for their creators, the author’s examination of written sources provides the reader with a fuller understanding of the botanical illustrations. Paired with Bleichmar’s engaging prose, Visible Empires constitutes a thorough interpretation of southern European Enlightenment and provides a fine example of a historical investigation achieved with beautiful visual sources.

More books on Early Modern science:

Jorge Cañizares Esguerra’s review of Shores of Knowledge: New World Discoveries and the Scientific Imagination

Laurie Wood’s review of The Discovery of Jeanne Baret: A Story of Science, the High Seas, and the First Woman to Circumnavigate the Globe

Purchasing Whiteness in Colonial Latin America

The castas, or mixed race populations, suffered numerous forms of discrimination in colonial Latin America, but in practice pardos and mulatos could still achieve some social mobility. A rare few, by the mid eighteenth century, were able to petition the Spanish crown through a process known as the gracias al sacar, to purchase whiteness.

The accompanying watercolor provides a rare visual of one of those so whitened. Dr José Manuel Valdes was born illegitimate in Lima, Peru, in 1767, the son of a mulata named María and an Indian named Baltasar. Placed in a primary school at the age of three, by the time José was five his teacher concluded that he was so precocious that he needed advanced education. A childless couple subsidized his advanced learning.

José Manuel apprenticed to become a surgeon, for even though his talents would have permitted him to become a physician and receive a doctorate from the university, royal legislation prohibited that he receive these degrees. He found a mentor in the distinguished physician Hipólito Unanue, who promoted the young José Manuel’s career. Unanue practiced in “all the great houses” of Lima, and he introduced José Manuel into elite circles, famously proclaiming, when faced with a difficult case, that his patients should “call José Manuel to come so he can ‘do his witchcraft here.’”

As his practice flourished, José Manuel donated significant proceeds to charity; he continued his education, teaching himself to read French, Italian and English while collecting a notable medical library. Residents of Lima were accustomed to see him on his way to medical calls with the windows of his carriage drawn, so he might read and not be distracted. This was how popular water colorist (costumbrista) and fellow pardo Pancho Fierro portrayed him in this image. It was because José Manuel was “so esteemed in Lima” that the Viceroy, the audiencia and the city council successfully petitioned the Spanish king to whiten him, which permitted him to receive his doctorate, become a physician, teach at the university and serve as the chief medical officer in Lima. His story is just one example of the very different ways that the Spanish world facilitated the mobility of deserving individuals, no matter their race.

Photo Credits:

Lavalle, José Antonio. El Dr. D. José Manuel Valdés. Lima: Torres Aguirre, 1886. (Courtesy of the Latin American pamphlet digital project at Harvard University and the Museo de Arte de Lima)

You may also like:

Susan Deans-Smith’s Discover piece on artistic depictions of racial mixing in Colonial Spanish America

And Kristie Flannery’s review of Imperial Subjects: Race and Identity in Colonial Latin America

Making History: Christopher Heaney

Interview by Jen Eckel

We begin our series with an interview with Christopher Heaney.

Christopher Heaney is a Harrington Doctoral Fellow in the History Graduate program at the University of Texas at Austin. After graduating from Yale University with a B.A. in Latin American Studies, he worked in journalism for several years, including a life-changing stint at the oral history project StoryCorps.

In the fall of 2005, a Fulbright Fellowship took him to Peru to continue his undergraduate research on the explorer Hiram Bingham and the excavation of Machu Picchu. The year of research in Cuzco and Lima produced articles for The New Republic and Legal Affairs Magazine, and an Op-Ed for the New York Times, and, ultimately, Cradle of Gold: The Story of Hiram Bingham, a Real-Life Indiana Jones, and the Search for Machu Picchu (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), his first book.

At UT, Heaney studies the history of archaeology and indigenous peoples in the Americas, particularly Peru, knowledge production in the Atlantic World, museum-building, race and nation-building, and grave-robbing, the world’s second-oldest profession.

In the interview, Christopher tells us about how he stumbled upon Hiram Bingham, the subject of his undergraduate thesis and first book, and how he combined his love of archaelogy and history to become a historian of Latin American history.

Learn more about Christopher Heaney and his work by visiting his website.

You may also like:

This recent National Public Radio story about the recent legal battle between Yale University and the Peru government, featuring comments from Christopher Heaney.

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