Into the Archive: Writing and Power in Colonial Peru (review)

Into the Archive is a witty, engaging and insightful study of how the archives of colonial Peru aren’t what they seem. Armed with critical insights into historical sources and history-writing, Kathryn Burns lays to rest any assumption that archives are straightforward carriers of historical “truths.” Personal interest, formulaic slights of hand, back-handed entrees, plus the political and social weight of petitioners/clients played roles in the finished product, coloring evidence and historical certainties. By providing a rich ethnography of colonial notaries and notarial records, we now have a sense of the intricate web of social ties that could—with the trick of pen and paper—result in a seemingly uncomplicated bill of sale or labor contract. We uncover the humanness of archives and, most significantly, reframe them as processes in the production of knowledge. Into the Archives is a sophisticated exploration into one facet of the relationship between writing and power.

Burns argues that since much of our understanding of Peru’s colonial past depends on documents recorded by notaries, we have an obligation to “go deeply into the archive” to grasp the contexts shaping their creation. What does that entail? Burns talks of notaries as ventriloquists, translating personal desires and claims over lands, labor, and goods into publically recognized facts. These acts of transformation, however, were shaped by specific social, political, and economic possibilities—conditions that could facilitate, distort, or impede the expression of personal wishes and claims. This is what we must excavate.

Burns asks who had the ability to construct legal truths from personal claims; she also queries who had the ability to make the claims in the first place. “Going deeply into the archive” however, also entails analyzing the notarial records as a particular form of representation, subject to strictures and format. It means taking seriously the inconsistencies between formal promise and actual practices as well.

In the course of her search, Burns plumbs records—and history—to uncover aspects of the ventriloquists’ art that have become so expected, so much a part of historical common sense, that we have lost sight of the social conditions of their making. She transforms the “yawing gap” between the official record and actual practice into an instrument of discovery: the unearthing of the human relations and political contexts producing knowledge and the social parameters of received “truths.”

Burns begins her excavations of knowledge production with a careful scrutiny of the records themselves. She investigates legal history to account for the highly formal, structural box that all notarized documents had to accommodate. Well-versed in the instructional manuals produced in Spain, Burns describes her amazement at finding directives in the Cuzco archives telling notaries how they are supposed to conduct business. We share her pleasure in discovering this burgeoning, self-help industry.

After studying the constraints of analytical form and exhortations regarding notarial practice, Burns addresses the pressing question of who these colonial notaries were. What were their backgrounds? What credentials were required? Where and how did they acquire them? What was their position and reputation? What did their jobs actually entail? And, not least, whose interests were served in archival ventriloquy? Burns analysis opens our eyes to the ways that these factors might have influenced how—or what—information was transmitted. We begin to grasp why the archive looks the way it does today.

Burns compares notaries in the new world and old, and her fine-grained analysis of Cusco’s pool tells as much about the production of legal truths as it does about the nature of social power in an important regional center of colonial rule. Through records duly notarized—like wills, deeds, and legal engagements —Burns gives shape to the lives and careers of Cuzco’s notaries. This careful tracking opens doors to the workings of power through mid-level networks in a colonial capital city, an unusual center because of the significant presence of members of the indigenous elite who enjoyed economic and political...