Page 299 - Perú indígena y virreinal

dress like Spaniards (Esquivel and Navia, 1901, 222–223; Polia Meconi, 1999, 528–531). St. James was also the saint of native resistance.
In effect, after 1700, with the change of dynasty and the subsequent Bourbon reforms that ushered in a century of great native conspiracies and rebellions, the Inca Baby Jesus assumed a profound disputatious and vindicatory significance. Its symbolic ambivalence did not make it clear whether the parishioners adored the Baby Jesus dressed as an Inca or whether, on the contrary, the figure was a Catholic Inca dressed as an Inca Messiah because, as had been prophesized by St. Rose of Lima, the Inca was meant to return in order to restore Tahuantinsuyo. It appears that this iconographic and prophetic tradition remained alive until the great rebellion of Túpac Amaru II, since in 1781, when Diego Túpac Amaru, the young son of the Inca who had risen up in arms, died, the priest of the Pampamarca doctrine buried him with a mascaypacha and bishop’s tunic (Ibid, 112). The two emblems of royal and episcopal power worn by the Inca Baby Jesus symbolized the essential demands of the Inca rebels, followers of the Jesuits: that is to say, a political aristocracy and a native priesthood possessing their own rights and privileges. Whatever the case may be, following this rebellion, precisely in 1781, the Inspector General, Joseph Antonio de Arreche, undertook an iconoclastic campaign in the Andes in which he destroyed all trace of Inca culture among the native nobility, including the portraits of the chieftains with their heraldic coats-of-arms recognized by the Spanish monarchy under the Hapsburgs.
Even though the Jesuit missionaries worked with “congregations of all kinds and all stations of people”, to quote Bernabé Cobo, which is to say people from all social and ethnic levels of society, in Peru they were responsible for running the schools for the children of the chieftains (Cobo 1964, 425). This enabled the Jesuits to attempt to implement an ambitious political and theocratic project in Cusco through a series of strategic marriages that linked the Inca dynasty with the dynasty of saints of the Society of Jesus. At the end of the 16th Century, Martín de Loyola, the grandson of the older brother of St. Ignatius of Loyola married the Inca princess Ñusta Beatriz Clara Coya, a direct descendent of the Inca Huayna Cápac and then, their daughter, Ana María Clara Coya de Loyola, went on to marry Juan Henríquez de Borja, the great-grandson of St. Francis Borgia (García Sáiz, 2002, 207–216). The political importance of these marriages was such that during certain celebrations up until the year 1741, these marriages were acted out in live dramatizations in the atrium of the Church of the Society of Jesus in Cusco (Esquivel and Navia, 1980, 434). In the 18th Century, to mark the coronation of King Fernando VI, Fray Francisco del Castillo Andraca y Tamayo († 1720)—better known as the “Ciego de la Merced” or “Blind Man of Mercy”—on behalf of the Natives of the City of Lima, penned a long Prologue for the Comedy Entitled the Conquest of Peru, in which he detailed the genealogical ramifications and consequences of these famous marriages. At the end of the prologue, the Peruvian nation informs the king of the following: “I am now so much at one with thee / that any separation I disclaim / for the union of blood / has almost created a new identity” (Vargas Ugarte, 1948, 222–237).
In the enormous canvases of Cusco, painted in the 17th and 18th Centuries in order to publicize and spread the news of these matrimonial alliances, the lengthy legends and explicative tablets on the paintings reflect the closeness of the kinship ties. Martín de Loyola is depicted as the nephew of St. Ignatius and Juan Henríquez de Borja is passed off as Juan de Borja, the son of St. Francis Borgia. However, what we are interested in here is not the exact historical accuracy of these family ties, but the providential and messianic model used by the Jesuits. In effect, it was the Jesuits who promoted the marriage of the captain who captured and handed over the last Inca rebel of Cusco for execution to the heiress of the Empire of the Sun and niece of the Inca who was executed. In the painting, Martín de Loyola, in the company of Beatriz—dressed as an Inca princess—holds the Inca axe of command. In the upper part of the painting we can see Diego Sairi Túpac, Felipe Túpac Amaru (the Inca captured by Martín de Loyola) and the Inca princess Ñusta Cusi Huarcay, who give their blessing to the marriage through their presence. The same can be said of the two Jesuit saints in the middle of the composition: St. Ignatius of Loyola and St. Francis Borgia. The key to this painting resides in the depiction of the sun, previously considered a pagan god and now, following the Incas’ incorporation into the Spanish Catholic Empire and their
conversion to Christianity through the Society of Jesus, the symbol of an Austro-Andean Empire, illuminated by a new Sun of Justice. The monogram of Christ is resplendent, made up of the letters JHS (Jesus Homini Salvator), the acronym for the holy name of Jesus and the ultimate emblem of the Jesuit Order. It made sense for the native Brotherhood of Jesus to dress the Baby Jesus as the true Inca Punchao, the “Sun of Suns” or Saviour of the World. After all, in his Autobiography St. Ignatius of Loyola himself relates how Christ appeared before him in the form of a brilliant sun (Loyola, 1947, 576).
lima in the 17th century
Guillermo Lohmann
Should you travel to the Indies, you must to Lima go, the finest fruit of all that is Spanish; Lima, where no finer spread has ever yet been set before the King. Lope de Vega, The Night of San Juan (Second Journal) The Heraldry of Lima
In order to understand why the supremacy of the “Ciudad de los Reyes” —“The City of the Kings” as was its official title throughout the 17th Century —was so all embracing, and to fully appreciate its achievements within the context of the southern Spanish Indies, one must understand that at that time it was at once a Viceroyalty which covered a territory that is now eight countries, namely Panama, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile, a metropolis whose primate (at that time the Cardinal’s purple was very much in evidence) ruled over eight dioceses, the seat of a court of law and, until 1648, the Southern Hemisphere’s only university, as well as being a regional centre for the Holy Inquisition. As far as trade and business were concerned, Lima was a financial capital, acting as it did as the bank vault for royal income as well as being the commercial centre, supplying outlying regions. Lima’s Consular Tribunal ranked alongside that of the Spanish, whilst it was also home to the only printing press in the region. No mean feat for a city whose contemporaries proclaimed it with no little hyperbole, “The Athens of the New World”.
From this ample background arose in prime position among the twenty-four heraldic institutions that constituted the glory of the Baroque Monarchy as represented in the frieze in Madrid’s Palacio del Buen Retiro, the coat of arms of Lima as the symbol of the Viceroyalty, in other words of the Kingdom of Peru. As such, the city had been granted the privilege of enjoying representation at the Spanish Court in Madrid, where its delegate would be received with all the pomp and circumstance of an ambassador. Chroniclers from the region justifiably sang the city’s praises, proudly proclaiming that the hierarchy in place within the Metropolis was to be considered a Court in its own right, and had no hesitation in comparing Lima to Lisbon, Seville or Venice.
The crown itself recognised the existence of such a hierarchy, as of the fifteen heads who governed Peru throughout the 17th Century, a number of whom did so on merit thanks to their literary prowess, no less than seven were from Lima, the ceremonial capital of La Nueva España. What is more, amongst the royal delegates in the Spanish Dominions of the New World, the representative for Peru was granted the privilege of being escorted by members of The Honourable Company of Gentleman Lancers and Arquebusiers, a body of men whose status was comparable to that of the Royal Bodyguard. This outline of the wide range of governmental distinctions bestowed upon Lima would not be complete without mentioning that the city was the only in the New World exempt from the authority of a Corregidor or Chief Magistrate, the highest ranking royal representative in a region.
Further evidence of this courtly treatment is the fact that from 1616 to 1627, among the aristocratic residents of the city were to be found the Marquis and Marchioness of Santiago de Oropesa, a union between descendants of illustrious families—on his side the Enriquez de Borjas, related to Prince Viceroy Esquilache of Borja and Aragon, the grandson of Saint Francis of Borja, on her side, of Doña Isabel Clara Coya, granddaughter of the last Inca, and through whose veins flowed the blood of the line descended from Ignacio de Loyola, founder of the Jesuits.
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