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intr oductio n 1 In late January 1757, an elderly cleric named Juan Antonio de los Santos appeared on the outskirts of the quiet village of Laguna, in present-day Bolivia. As he rode his mule into town, Father de los Santos was gripped first by surprise, and then increasingly by rage, as he discovered that the customary celebrations had not been organized to commemorate his arrival at his new parish. Spurring on his mule toward the main plaza, he encountered the lieutenant governor, Mateo Padilla, whom he questioned, insulted, threatened, and then began to chase through the village. The lieutenant governor, having briefly taken refuge near a well, was continuing his flight toward his home when “it came to the priest’s mind the very extreme of what one is able to imagine, which was that of setting foot to land . . . and throwing stones at the official.”1 Such commotion soon caught the attention of many residents who “stood watching [the priest who was] . . . screaming out loud as if mad to all.” According to Governor Francisco de Guemes Hestres’ wry report of the incident, Father de los Santos had announced his impending arrival “neither to any resident of the town, nor . . . to his own assistant, wanting without doubt that they foresee by extraordinary means the day and hour of his entrance.”2 Following his confrontation with the lieutenant governor, Father de los Santos then went to his church and “rang the bells . . . all that afternoon, filling . . . the town with fear.” Overcoming their trepidation, several women gathered to pay their respects to the priest and “to see if . . . they could calm his mood . . . [but] he would not see them, [calling them] bitches.” Undeterred , another group of parishioners soon came to his house, but he “was Introduction t 2 mercur y, mining, and emp ir e taken with such an extreme indisposition that he even slapped himself, cursed against his parents, against God and the Virgin . . . [and] against [the] Viceroy.” Throughout the day, and the coming weeks, Governor Guemes and the town’s residents would be subject to an unrelenting barrage of insults by Father de los Santos, such that it “embarrasses one to utter them” and “the pen cannot find expressions” to communicate their gravity.3 About a month later, despite repeated threats to abandon the parish, Father de los Santos attended pre-Lenten festivities at the home of the governor . The merriment was cut short, however, when the cleric exclaimed that his host and his hundred or so guests were “rogue dogs” who deserved nothing less than excommunication. According to Governor Guemes, this latest outburst had no “other source than his insanity” and caused the revelers to “flee with great violence through the doors of my house.”4 Father de los Santos’ treatment of the corregidor, or governor, coupled with threatening his parishioners “with rigorous exams of doctrine and confession,” explained the “terror and . . . panic with which his parishioners see him” as well as why no one “dared to appear at his church.”5 For his part, the governor also chose to attend services officiated by another cleric. One Sunday, while crossing the crowded plaza on his way home from mass in the company of another priest, the governor encountered and greeted Father de los Santos. In response, the cleric, furious and . . . filled with ire, asked why I had not attended mass, to which I answered with the utmost courtesy . . . that . . . I had already heard mass. To this civility and politeness of mine he lost all control (if a madman has any control to lose). Telling me with greater ire and louder shouting and . . . coming near . . . to attack me and wetting my face with his spittle, [exclaiming ] “don’t you know that you have an obligation to attend mass in your parish and . . . that I have more jurisdiction than you, that I will excommunicate you and banish you from town, that the corregidors are servants of the priests” . . . to which I said to him, with calmness . . . that I would hear mass where I chose.6 Father de los Santos then moved to assault the corregidor, and would have done so “if the pleas of two clerics that were there did not restrain him.”7 Governor Guemes had learned of Father de los Santos some six years earlier, in the fabled silver mining city of Potosí. There, according to Guemes, the cleric was “known by everybody [to be] . . . crazy . . . and I assure Your Highness . . . by the observations I have made...

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