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The Americas 62.1 (2005) 47-63



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Amores Prohibidos:

The Consequences of the Clash of Juridical Norms in Sixteenth Century Peru

Texas Christian University
Fort Worth, texas
Laws make criminals.
Lao-tzu, Chinese Philosopher
(circa sixth century B.C.E.)

Fundamental to the establishment of Spanish colonial power in America was the formation of a system of laws and the invention or extension of institutions needed to implement them. In Peru, a more systematic imposition of Spanish regulation began in the 1540s with the introduction of the New Laws (1542), which were directed to the west coast of South America in 1543 by the first appointed Viceroy, the ill-fated peninsular noble, the caballero (gentleman) Blasco Nuñez Vela. His ill-humor and steadfast refusal to negotiate the strict interpretation and implementation of these laws, which were detrimental to the economic and social interests of the encomenderos (recipients of a grant of native labor for service to the crown), resulted in his beheading and contributed to the civil wars that lasted until the end of the decade. Once peace was re-established by the king's agent, the Licenciado Pedro de la Gasca, these laws and others of Castilian inspiration ordered the Spanish towns (villas) and cities, centers of the colonial elite and their servants in the 1550s and 1560s.1 [End Page 47]

Cruel Caciques

It took longer for peninsular laws to reach out into the countryside. In the rural areas, the presence of few Spaniards and even fewer royal officials allowed rural natives to live, in part, according to their "usos y costumbres" (traditions and customs, customary laws) into the 1560s. In the three decades since the Spanish invasion, Old World diseases had decimated the native population; ethnic groups had been divided to form encomiendas (native labor given in trust to individuals who had served the king). Encomenderos had begun demanding labor and tribute, often breaking unrecognized native rules of reciprocity so integral to indigenous expectations and etiquette. Segments of the population had seen and interacted with the encomendero and his agents as early as the mid-1530s. New crops and animals had made an appearance, especially in the suburban gardens around recently founded Spanish urban centers. By the end of the decade a handful of Spaniards had started to raise small numbers of livestock on common grasslands, but given the demographic disaster there was plenty of pasture for all to use. A census of the population had been taken at least once in 1540. A few Franciscan priests arrived to found a mission in 1551 around which the town of Chiclayo would be laid out. Commoners worked for their encomendero and served in the inns (tambos), but in general there was no prolonged and intense contact with the Spanish for the vast majority of natives, who still lived scattered across the landscape in small kin-based groupings and speaking their own languages. Survivors who could not adjust to such intermittent contact had no alternative but to flee. The pace of change quickened with the founding of a Spanish town in the Valley of Saña in 1563 and more profoundly with the arrival of an Audiencia judge, Dr. Gregorio Gonzalez de Cuenca, who brought new laws in the wake of the discovery of a potential rebellion in the highlands.2

The persons at the forefront of the changes when they came, the persons who embodied the community of their followers, were the hatun curacas or paramount lords or chiefs—who had traditionally been accepted as the incarnation of a group's ancestral gods. Such old-style curacas, called dueños de indios, were in the early 1560s still carried atop a litter when they traveled in procession from ceremonial center to ceremonial center, accompanied by a troupe of singers, dancers, trumpet players, pages, attendants, [End Page 48] and women who dispensed maize beer and toasted corn to onlookers. Followers greeted such personages appropriately, lifting their hands over their heads, palms out, and making smacking noises with their lips, as...

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