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

This is a fascinating ethnography of one of the key professional groups in Spanish and Portuguese America, the scribes of the colonial "lettered city." Anyone who has worked in the archives with colonial documentation will surely have noted the similar form and structure of most types of documents. Whether in early sixteenth-century Chile, or late-eighteenth-century New Spain, a contract, a will, a "possession", a power of attorney—all will be in the same format, on similar sized pieces of paper (normally bound in bundles, the protocolos), and terminating with a sequence of signature, rúbica, and sign (signo). This is the handiwork of the notaries public (escribanos) that provide the modern investigator with most of the official records of the colonial world.

Kathryn Burns, an expert in the colonial history of Cusco, leads us on an enlightening journey back to the world of these notaries via the escribanías cuzqueñas, explaining how, unlike the orality of the pre-Hispanic context, when events were publically recited and remembered in speech, in the Hispanic realm all had to be recorded via the written word. It became a state sanctioned form through which agency was constituted in writing. The product was an instrumento, a document with legal status. For that reason when Columbus finished "taking possession" of the New World in Guanahani in 1492, by a formal speech, marking the sand with his sword, and cutting a branch from a tree, his next action was to call on Rodrigo Descobedo, a notary, to records the events in writing. Words on paper demonstrated power.

Thus, the colonial archives are basically repositories of the work of the notaries (titled as produradores) who, unlike the letrados who normally had studies Latin and had law degrees, fulfilled the basic requirements of colonial record-keeping. Their New World precursors were the tlacuilos (scribes/painters) of the Mexica, or the quipucamayocs of the Inka. For Europeans the alphabetic written word replaced such methods of recording. The notaries were of three types: the escribano público y de número (or del concejo) of individual towns where, of course, all decent Hispanics should theoretically reside, and the escribanos reales who were not limited to any specific localities. In addition the escribanos eclesiásticos recorded church matters. Normally notaries purchased the right of office and then charged fees for their services. The career began at the age of twelve and involved many stages through apprenticeship to a master; sharpening the quills, mixing the ink, making copies of drafts, accompanying the notary on home visits—menial tasks of learning en route to a position held in high esteem by colonial society. Many kept the position in the family, father handing over to son, and from 1581 they were able legally to transfer their posts on payment of a special fee.

Given the significance of the records maintained by the notaries, some succumbed to the temptations of corruption and greed. Many had other parallel interests, in agriculture, trade, mining—the entire range of colonial pursuits which they knew so well through their records, and with whose participants they often formed what Steve Stern has called "mutually cooperative exploiters." The Cusco notaries, described in eloquent detail by Burns, invested in mule trains, the coca and silver trade, livestocking, sugarcane production, and the provision of playing cards, an important entertainment item in colonial Spanish America. Like most progressive Spaniards they formed alliances within the network of those involved in land transactions, regional trade, religious confraternities, and religious orders. Checks on their practices would usually be through the residencias completed on key administrators, yet it is notable that few of those remain in the archives; "disappearing the documents" apparently became an art form.

Occasionally, of course, illegal activities were reported and investigated. Burns mentions the picaresque case of royal notary don Diego Laso of Huanta who, when the provincial administrator...