Translation of the original Spanish by Elizabeth Medina.
WHAT THEY NEVER TOLD US ABOUT THE CONQUEST. PART 2
WHAT THEY NEVER TOLD US ABOUT THE CONQUEST. PART 2
"The Friars Run
Around Like Maddened Stallions"
The fall of the Inca ruling class provoked an enormous social and
psychological catastrophe in the [Inca empire's] rigidly structured society.[1] The situation was made
worse, years later, by the anarchy that resulted when the partisans of Diego de Almagro and Francisco Pizarro[2] began a savage civil war, which, with brief intervals in the
fighting, lasted over a decade.
The Spaniards appear from the beginning in Peru as a corrupting
element of the strict Indian customs under the Incas’ rule of indissoluble
monogamy and an austere ethic of hard work and honesty. Many chroniclers are soon scandalized at the
direction that events begin to take.
Pedro Cieza de León wrote, "Let no one lay blame for the things that
are happening in Peru on the arrival of the Viceroy, but on the great sins that
were being committed by the people who were there. I met some men who had had more than fifteen
children with their concubines. And many
leave their wives in Spain for fifteen or twenty years, taking an Indian
mistress in place of their natural wife.
And in accordance with the many sins committed by the Christians and the
Indians, so punishment and disgrace were widespread."
Pedro Cieza de León
In general the aboriginal females reciprocate the voracious
appetites of the Spanish in matters of lust.
Beyond their sexual appetites, the Indian women in Peru -- who were also
always pragmatic -- discover that in the new order that was imposed it was
better to have mestizo rather than Indian children, not just because by
becoming the concubines of Spanish men they gained entry into the colonial world,
but also because their mestizo children would have a privileged status that was
denied to Indian children. Mestizos did
not pay tribute and had access to many of the positions reserved for Spaniards.[3] In this way, the reigning
legislation favored carnal union between Spaniards and Indians, though it did
so inadvertently. Also, as happens with
the females of any species of mammal, the Indian women surrendered pleasurably
to the triumphant males.
Less than a decade after the capture of Atahualpa (More on Inca Atahualpa later. E.M.), in the midst of civil war between the Spaniards, the
dark-skinned women show signs of terror that their white men might die in
battle. During the battle of Chupas between Almagro's mestizo son and the new governor Vaca de Castro (1541-1542), there were in the camp many ladies from
the native Cuzco nobility, the pallas, "by the Spanish much
beloved, and the women feeling for them the same love," related Cieza de
León. The Indian women were pleased
"to be in the service of such strong men and to be the substitutes of the
legitimate wives they had in Spain," he adds. When they see that the end of the war
approaches, "foreseeing the death that had to come for the men, they
shrieked and moaned and, according to the custom in their country, pulled their
hair from one side of their heads to the other."
Inca Atahualpa
What is certain is that the Spaniards win the favor of the women of
Peru and, when they do not, they take them by force. No one is satisfied with little when there is
so much to be had. The chronicler
describes this plainly: "There had
been women given to the harems of the Incas as well as for vestals in the
temples of the Sun. But there were many
more given to the Christians or that they took for themselves. The unmarried men take them as concubines
and, if they are married, as the servants of their women and sometimes to be
concubines for themselves and for others.
The black men, the mestizos and the Anacona
Indians are all the same as the Incas as far as taking women, except that the
Inca took women to keep them inside the house, faithful and well occupied and
supported, whereas these others do so for all the dissolute things imaginable, for all manner of vices.
Furthermore, besides those who act in this way -- and there are a
thousand of them for every Inca -- there were also some encomenderos who had, and others who have them even today, houses
to keep women in like those of the Incas, with the greatest vigilance and care,
in order to satisfy their sensuality, which is being done by many, and the
custom of having the encomenderos get
married[4] is disappearing..." the scholar Fernando de Santillán wrote, twenty years after the Conquest.
As in other places, it was the Indian men who were most hurt. "Many Indian women leave their husbands
or abhor or abandon the children they bear with them, seeing them as subject to
tribute and personal service, and they desire, love and cosset more the
children they have outside marriage with Spaniards and even with black men,
because they seem to them as being absolutely free and exempt, which clearly
should not be allowed in any well-governed republic," wrote Solórzano
Pereira.
Solórzano Pereira
Towards the end of the sixteenth century, Huamán Poma de Ayala observes that the Indian women dress like Spanish
women: "They wear underskirts,
sleeves, boots and blouses" and that "they no longer wish to marry
their Indian equals.... The principal
chief is marrying his daughters and sisters to mestizos and mulattoes. Since they see their chief and the other
women happy to bear mestizo children, they no longer want to marry Indians and
the kingdom is being lost."
Huamán Poma de Ayala
Concubinage loosens family relations, invents a new chaos in lineage
and imposes disorder on society, alarming bishops and viceroys. Their concern is futile. The attraction wielded by freer sex in soft colonial
society is too powerful, to such a point that it will last until our days.[5] In the 16th century, the
measures taken have no real effect.
Viceroy Francisco de Toledo points out that licentiousness was so common that
concubinage almost was not considered illegal.
Very soon, mestizos and mestizas join in these unsanctified
practices in a social climate of permissiveness and tolerance. The president of the Audiencia
of Lima and pacifier of Peru, Pedro de La Gasca, when he decides to send two mestiza daughters of Juan
and Gonzalo Pizarro to the king in 1549, explains his reasons to the monarch for
doing so. Mestizas, he says, "often
have the temperament of Spanish women that they inherit from their fathers, of
getting whatever they want, and the little concern for their honor that they
learn from their mothers." A
dangerous mixture for the moral health that the authorities wanted to impose in
vain on Peruvian society.
Pedro de la Gasca
Neither do clerics and nuns escape from the widespread licentiousness. Towards the end of 1592, the choirmaster of
the Cathedral of La Plata, which is today the city of Sucre in Bolivia, sent a report to the Spanish king, which the latter had
requested, on the situation of the clergy in his jurisdiction. Doctor Felipe Molina enumerates a long list of irregularities committed by the
religious of the Peruvian high country, but when he comes to "the
monastery of the nuns of this city of La Plata," he describes a life
behind the convent walls that is truly libertine. The nuns steal from each
other and take valuable objects from the sacristy. This seems to scandalize the
choirmaster more than the fact that "the prioress... was pregnant"
and that "in the process of this investigation and before its conclusion,
she aborted deliberately."
"Another two nuns... had given birth a few days ago, their many
attempts to abort having failed."
On the day of "the baptism of one [of the nuns' children], there
was rejoicing behind the communion gate[6] with an afternoon tea, which the father of the baptized child
attended."
The abbess, denounced choirmaster Molina, "was very ugly,"
and so, in order to entice her lovers and "give gifts to those she
loved," she basely exploited the work of the other nuns, such that
"they had to sew and wash the linen of the men she had dealings
with," and she even stole their food.
The situation wasn't much more edifying among the Spanish friars of
the different orders, entrusted with catechizing the Indians. The cohabitation
of the religious with their catechumens is extremely frequent. Molina says that
there are priests "who are publicly raising [their children]..." The
friars acted at whim, thanks to the passiveness with which the Indians bore the
priests' misbehavior. "These vices that they live in within their
orders," says the choirmaster, "go unpunished and, moreover, are
permitted, because the Indians never dare to complain."
Such sexual activity was not, however, gratuitous for the priests.
The friars are "full of tumors and get them treated outside their
convents, in this city, in public view, where I have seen them. And some who are lame, others without noses,
come to this city to attend to their business affairs... and they go about the
city, the squares and shops alone, doing business, buying things and sometimes
wearing their habits very indecently, dismounting in the squares and uncovering
wide breeches[7] made out of colored fabric and beribboned with laces, in sight of
everyone...." In other words, not only are they libertines, they are
dandies as well.
Not satisfied with Indian women, the friars go "where only
civilians ought to," also to "the houses of women of dubious
reputation, given over to vice. And,
finally, they run around like maddened stallions turned loose. And many of them, [who before were] good
religious, become very bad catechists and priests, and no trace is left in them
of religion or even of Christianity, apart from their priestly
habits." A poor example for the
Indians, whom they had to "indoctrinate and civilize."
Such widespread abuse against the women of the land contributed, yet
again, to the decadence and prostration of the masculine Indian world. The
aboriginal men not only find themselves divested of females with whom to have
children and form families. This same fact was also unmistakable evidence of
their impotence and their incapacity to protect their women, to attract them
and succeed in keeping them at their side in order to project their future continuity
through new generations.
This was going on half a century after the arrival of the Spaniards
in the Inca Empire. One hundred and fifty years later, the Spanish travelers
Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa discover that, not only had the situation stayed the same,
it had gotten considerably worse.
"Among the vices that reign in Peru," they point out,
"concubinage must be considered the most important as the most scandalous
and widespread. Everyone practices it: Europeans, creoles, bachelors, married
men, secular and regular ecclesiastics."
The situation that was denounced a century and a half before by
Viceroy Toledo had remained unchanged, or had worsened. "It is so common
for people to live in continuous concubinage, that in the small villages it
even becomes a source of pride. And so,
when a newcomer arrives and takes up residence for some time and does not
practice the country's custom, it is noticed and their abstinence is
attributed, not to virtue, but to stinginess and the desire to save, it being
believed that they do so to avoid spending money." They said this from their own experience. In Quito they were asked by the neighbors about their concubines, and
when they answered that they lived without women, the residents of the place
were stupefied.
Virrey Francisco de Toledo
The Spanish mariners are scandalized by the conditions in which the
religious live. Their descriptions are
much more amazing than those of the choirmaster of the cathedral of La
Plata. "The convents," they
write, "are never closed and thus the religious live in them with their
concubines inside their cells, like the [secular priests] who keep mistresses
in their private residences, in exact imitation of married men.
"These people take so few precautions, or none at all, to cover
up their conduct, that one is left with the impression that they themselves
take a certain degree of pride in publicizing their unchastity. And this is what they transmit whenever they
travel, since they take with them their concubine, children and servants, and
thus make known the disorder of their lives."
Things do not stop there. The bastards of the religious socially
inherit their fathers' honorary titles without shame. Thanks to this, in Quito one finds "innumerable
'provincials', 'guardians', and 'instructors'[8] from all the religious orders," because "the children
always keep as an honorary title that of their father's station, and in public
they are almost known [only by that title]." As for the concubines, they are conferred the
social prestige and authority of their men of the cloth, and treat the
townspeople "like underlings and treat them with contempt, or reduce them
to a role of servitude as though they were their own servants." De Ulloa and Juan exclude only the Jesuits from this generalization.
Of the others, "hardly a one escapes from these excesses."
They tell that on one occasion they went "to one of those
convents" to say goodbye to some priests they had met. When they reached
the cell of the first priest, they found "three young and attractive
women, a religious, and another -- the one we had gone to visit -- who had had
an accident and lay unconscious on the bed.
The women were burning herbs to cure him and doing some other things to
bring him back to consciousness."
They found out from one of the friars that one of the three young women
was the injured priest's mistress. They
had had a marital argument the day before, and the priest's concubine, to
irritate him, had gone to stand in front of the church where the religious was
preaching. The friar lost his temper and, in the middle of a fit of rage, fell
from the pulpit and lost consciousness. The other two females, a third
religious explained, were the woman of the head of the congregation, and his
own.
"What is even more striking," they write, "is that
the convents are reduced to being public bordellos, as happens in the smaller
settlements, and in the larger ones they become theaters of unheard-of
abominations and execrable vices."
The parish priests did not behave more chastely. The authors of “Secret News from America”[9]
relate that the parish priest of a town in the province of Quito led such a
scandalous life that complaints reached the bishop. When he was summoned for a fraternal rebuke,
the priest told his provincial superior "that if he had any need of the
parish, it was just to keep his mistresses and to make women fall in love with
him, because as far as his personal needs went, all he needed to live on was a
sack and a refectory ration; and so, if [the provincial] tried to forbid him
his amusements, then they could keep the parish, which he had absolutely no
need of." The result, add the chroniclers,
was that the religious returned to the town "and continued with his
perverted life as before." Surely,
the one who had rebuked him was not living much more chastely than the parish
priest himself.
Another priest whom the travelers met, a man "already past the
age of eighty," nonetheless lived as man and wife with a young and
attractive concubine -- so young and attractive that she was taken for one of
the daughters that the religious had had with other women, because she was his
fourth or fifth stable partner. And
since he had fathered children with almost all of them, there was a veritable
swarm of children there, some of them small and others grown." A situation which did not totally lack
advantages, since the priest had among his children many altar boys to help him
celebrate mass.
The parishes were, above all, an excellent business from the
economic point of view, as De Ulloa and Juan pointed out, because of the
implacable exploitation of the parishioners with masses, papal bulls and other
paid ceremonies, and as a means to obtain an abundance of young girls for bed
and domestic service.
In the jurisdiction of Cuenca (today Ecuador), a priest became enamoured of the chief's
daughter, who was unusually beautiful.
He had sought her out many times before, but the adolescent had always
rejected him. He therefore asked her
father for her hand in marriage, assuring him that he was going to request
special dispensation from his bishop in order to marry.
The artful priest sent a messenger on some insignificant pretext to
carry papers to the bishop and, meanwhile, he concocted "a fake license
through which the prelate allegedly granted him permission to marry. As soon as the messenger returned, [the
priest] showed the chief the alleged authorization. That same night, the false marriage took
place and the deacon played the role of priest without the attendance of any
other witnesses, or other circumstance, since malice gave it to understand that
for such cases these were unnecessary, and from then on they lived
together" (the priest and the chief's daughter).
After many years, and when the priest had already had several
children with his false wife, the deception was discovered and the superiors of
the religious punished him by removing him to another jurisdiction. "The unfortunate Indian woman was left
saddled with children, and the chief, full of grief from the mockery committed
against him, died shortly afterward, and the greatest part of the punishment
fell on those who had been guilty of nothing more than believing in the words
of a priest."
The celebration of orgiastic festivities was a common practice among
the priests. Nothing seemed more
repugnant than this to Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa, so much so that they imagine that such things were
"inventions of the Devil himself."
But no -- they are the inventions of the ministers of the Lord.
Jorge Juan Santacilia
Antonio de Ulloa
The priests finance, organize and participate in the carousing.
"And gathering together their concubines, they hold the celebration in one
of their own houses. After the dancing begins, so do the goings-on with drinks
of local brandy and fruit, and, as the excitement mounts, the entertainment
moves on to lewdness and acts of such immodesty and bawdiness that it would be
foolhardy to refer to them, or lacking in prudence to stain this narrative with
such obscenities. And so, leaving them hidden in the regions of silence, we
shall limit ourselves to saying that all the malice that one might wish to
express with regard to this issue, however great, could never plumb the depths
that those perverted souls are mired in, nor would it be enough to understand
it -- such is the degree of excess that debauchery and loose behavior have
reached there."
Civil society follows similar models of libertine behavior, to the point
that, as the sailors discover to their surprise, there are no prostitutes in
the viceroyship of Peru. Such is the
ease with which women will go to bed with anyone who pleases them that
prostitutes would starve to death. Much
to the embarrassment of the Spanish chroniclers, the virtue of Peruvian women
consists, simply, of not going to bed with whoever crosses their path and
importunes them to do so, but with those whom they choose -- something which is
too dissolute for the puritan morals of the age.
[1] Herren footnotes that polygamy was the
privilege of high officials and incest was only allowed to the imperial family
(as in the case of the Egyptian pharoahs).
[2]
Francisco Pizarro associated with Diego de Almagro to undertake the conquest of
Peru with the support of Carlos I of Spain in 1529. Pizarro captured and killed the Inca emperor
Atahualpa, entered Cuzco in 1533 and founded the city of Lima. Almagro contested Pizarro's claim to wealthy
Cuzco to no avail, and set off to claim Chile in 1536, which was his prize but
turned out to be poor in mineral wealth and bristling with hostile
Indians. Almagro returned from his
disastrous expedition and finally fought Pizarro, but was defeated and killed
by him.
[3] This was not the case in Chile, where
according to the historian Luis Galdames the mestizos made up the colonial
labor pool that did the hard physical labor in the cities and in the
countryside and whose lives were marked by poverty, ignorance, superstition and
violence. Galdames may refer to a consolidated
stage of colonization, besides which no doubt there were differences between
the Peruvian and Chilean processes.
[4]
According to the late philologist Mirtha Alarcón, the encomenderos, Spaniards who were
awarded large land grants by the Spanish monarch, were required by law to
marry, under pain of being stripped of their encomienda.
[5]
Footnote by Herren: "A few years
ago, the Peruvian government found itself obliged to launch a publicity
campaign in favor of 'responsible parenthood' before the scandalous increase of
children with unknown fathers."
[6] M. Alarcón explained that behind the altar
there was a gate that separated the church from the convent, at which the nuns
would receive communion from the priest during mass.
[7] According to Herren, these were wide
pantaloons fashionable as underwear in the 16th century.
[8] Titles
of ecclesiastical functions: Provincials
were in charge of a province of the Church; Guardians were the gatekeepers of
the convents, and Instructors were the readers of edifying texts at mealtimes
in the convent refectory (Qtd. M. Alarcón).
[9]
Herren footnotes that this report, its original Spanish title Noticias secretas de América, was
prepared by Spaniards Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa, ship lieutenants who
participated in a mid-18th century French expedition led by Charles La
Condamine, whose objective was to make precise measurements of the earth. They spent 11 years in South America and,
aside from their scientific research, wrote this confidential report at the
behest of the Marquis of Ensenada on the situation in the colonies they visited
and lived in.
No comments:
Post a Comment