Allies at Odds: The Andean Church and its Indigenous Agents, 1583-1671

4: Writing about Clerical Violence

102 Testimonies of Violence “Reading must be taught together with writing to all children,” insisted Covarrubias in his Tesoro de la lengua castellana (1611), “so as men of reason they are able not only to work the fields but also to keep accounts in order to know what they pay and what they receive, rather than do it mentally , or making signs on a wall, because that way they can make mistakes and be cheated.”1 The lexicographer defined escribir (to write) in practical terms, as a useful instrument that laborers should acquire to regulate social and commercial interactions and protect their assets from the deceits of others. Property inventories, last wills and testaments, and trial and notarial records of Spain’s imperial archives show that the practice of accounting in script permeated all sectors of early modern Spanish society (Castillo Gómez 2001). One of the era’s most widely disseminated imprints, the Jesuit priest Jerónimo Martínez de Ripalda’s 1591 Doctrina christiana con una exposicion breue, featured a multiplication table and lessons on fractions and division, which indicates that the teaching of religious dogma was also frequently combined with the teaching of numbers.2 In colonial Peru, references to the use of ledger books of credits and debts, both in urban areas and remote villages, shows that understanding of the importance of writing for meeting economic and spiritual demands was pervasive. Covarrubias and Ripalda’s emphasis on keeping accounts in writing recalls the instructions that Guaman Poma ([c. 1615] 1980, 814–15) set down for native Andean leaders: the regidor, or municipal officer, wrote the chronicler, should maintain books, khipus, and other accounts for the accurate reckoning and collection of duties owed to the Crown and Church. Yet while Guaman Poma promoted literacy and record keeping Chapter 4 Writing about Clerical Violence Writing about Clerical Violence 103 among Andeans to respond to the colonizers, and counter their schemes, he also noted the extreme punishments that the powerful imposed on subordinates when settling accounts. For instance, regidores and other native intermediaries were subject to harsh penalties when they failed to meet the Spaniards’ tribute quotas: fifty public lashes, hair cropping, and a tenpeso fine payable to the district administrator.3 Nowhere was literacy more tied to the punitive aspects of native officialdom than in the realm of fiscal management. To underscore this point, Guaman Poma ([c. 1615] 1980, 503) illustrated the scene of a corregidor who commands an African to flog a native alcalde for collecting a tribute that falls two eggs short. Drawings of this kind throughout his work suggest that intimidation by force was a significant dimension of the lives of Andeans who enforced colonial rule through the collection of fees. As economic middlemen, native officials worked an uncertain ground marked by the threat of violence; they were required to collect tribute from native villagers, on the one hand, and to protect against Spanish abuses, on the other. But lacking proper context, the illustration raises many questions about the coercive methods of the colonizers, the fiscal activities of native intermediaries, and the relationship between the two. Did the alcalde of Guaman Poma’s drawing record and collect fees willingly or always under the threat of severe punishment? Did he fail to keep accurate tribute records or make records that contradicted the accounts of the corregidor? What other types of inventories did he keep and for whom? Testimonies from Lima’s ecclesiastical archives document that high stakes were also involved for the native intermediaries who kept the accounts of parish priests. Indigenous authorities had responsibilities beyond teaching Christian doctrine and assembling parishioners for Mass; they also assisted the clergy with tribute collection and law enforcement, maintaining the padrones, or church books, that registered the names of all parishioners in order to chart their fulfillment of Christian obligations and eligibility to provide tributary labor, community payments, and parish fees. The fiscal duties of native intermediaries therefore placed them in between and at times in direct competition with the parish priests and secular authorities who vied for control over native assets. Punishments that derived from the workings of the colonial fiscal system triggered an especially strong response from indigenous officials. In fact, the frequency of Andean litigants’ objections to the colonizers’ excessive discipline, which 104 Chapter 4 tied directly to this economic function, suggests that the abuse of native church assistants over record keeping was generalized...