The Politics of Praise: Academic Culture and Viceregal Power in Late Colonial Peru

Several months after making a public entrance in Lima, every new viceroy of Peru was officially welcomed in a separate grand ceremony by the faculty of the University of San Marcos—one of the strongholds of the Creole elite—as the “patron” and “protector” of the university. The preparations for the viceroy’s reception at San Marcos typically began before his public entrance into the capital of the viceroyalty, often as soon as the town learned about his impending arrival and before the governing viceroy had relinquished office. In consultation with the faculty, the rector would commission one of the professors to write the welcome speech (oración panegírica) and determine the topics of a poetry competition (certamen poético) in honor of the viceroy. This competition would be publicized in the cartel del certamen poético, a lengthy announcement of the contest prepared by another prominent faculty member and then festively paraded through Lima by the rector who carried in his right hand a golden flagpole to which the cartel had been attached. The procession started at the University of San Marcos and ended in the main square (plaza mayor). Once the procession had reached its destination, the cartel del certamen was fixed for everyone to read to the pilaster of one of the columns of the arcades that framed the plaza mayor. The poets were given a few days to submit their works, and shortly before the academic reception, a panel of judges evaluated the submissions.

Customarily, it was the viceroy who set the date for this lavish ceremony. Donned in their traditional robes, the whole faculty would welcome him outside the university and lead him into the main auditorium whose walls and columns had been adorned with the poems. The viceroy was escorted by the local authorities, namely, the audiencia (the highest court of appeal within the jurisdiction which also served as an advisory council to the viceroy), the tribunal de cuentas (tribunal of accounts), and the cabildo (town council). Once the vice-sovereign and his entourage had taken their seats, the official act began. A distinguished faculty member pronounced the oración panegírica and then the prizewinning poems were recited and the prizes distributed. The winners received a fine object, such as a silver saltshaker, an inkwell, a serving dish or a candelabra. The academic ceremony concluded with regaling the viceroy, his family as well as the members of the audiencia and the town council with costly presents and a beautifully bound volume that reprinted either the welcome speech, the announcement of the poetry competition, the poems or, in some cases, all three.

Thus, three types of panegyrics were penned for the academic reception: the cartel del certamen poético, the poems that were entered into the competition, and, finally, the oración panegírica. So far, this corpus of laudatory prose and poetry remains still largely unexamined. The works of Pedro Peralta y Barnuevo (1664–1743)—arguably Peru’s most prominent scholar and writer of the eighteenth century—have received considerable attention.¹ However, critical studies have focused on his role as a member of the academic tertulias organized by viceroy Marquis of Castell dos Rius between 1709 and 1710,² and not on his participation in the academic reception of a new vice-sovereign.³ The only welcome speech that has garnered scholarly attention has been the one delivered by José Baquíjano y Carrillo (1751–1817) in 1781 for viceroy Agustín de Jáuregui. Thus, a systematic analysis of the panegyric corpus produced in the wake of the welcome of the incoming viceroy is still lacking. The speeches have been dismissed as servile recognition of the colonial order as well as a mechanical imitation of pre-established models devoid of any literary merit.⁴ Nonetheless, a closer look at these texts reveals that within the set of rules stipulated for the epideictic oratory since classical antiquity there was a certain flexibility which allowed overseas subjects to voice their demands and adapt the genre based on changing political circumstances...