Page 304 - Perú indígena y virreinal

mannerism, as well as using a whole repertoire of objects related to the jungle and the hot land [tierra caliente] so foreign to them (jungle birds, monkeys, pineapples, papayas, etc.) but that help them dream of abundance and well-being (Paradise) and counteract the hardships of their environment. This is why they look to this world of happiness in search of inspiration for their leafy compositions where vegetation invades everything and trees are covered with fruits and birds resulting in a dream-like image.
If, for ritualistic or decorative reasons, gold takes us back to pre-Hispanic times, silver represents the apex of the three centuries of viceroyalty, a period we can consider as the “Silver Era” because it fulfilled the lives of Peru and Spain. Peru’s Fortune was undoubtedly its silver and thanks to it the silversmith’s craft was developed, an exceptional art cultivated especially by the Hispanic world (peninsular and American) thanks, in great part, to the strong roots that link it to the indigenous world and its brilliant work of the precious metals. Peruvian silversmith’s crafts would have hardly achieved their levels of originality and technical quality obtained during the viceroyal era without this heritage, and the proof of this is that the only regions where silver is wrought successfully nowadays are the south Andean region and the area surrounding the Lake, exactly the area where the indigenous populations during Conquista times learned to represent these symbolic and artistic expressions of their universe as a way of communicating and preserving the memory of their past.
the fiesta and art in the 18th century in the city of kings Ricardo Estabridis Cárdenas
The classical humanistic spirit, which was reinvented by a courtly elite, began to be noticeable in the City of Kings through the various means of cultural expression of an ephemeral nature. They were inspired or based on iconographic programs and aimed at boasting the erudition of the intellectuals at Lima’s Real and Pontificia University. The fiesta became one of the above-mentioned means of cultural expression during viceroyalty years, not only of a select group but also as the result of a general feeling of the people who chose to evade difficulties in life by turning to activities of an entertaining nature.
The fiesta generally took place in the city and reunited people from different cultural classes, usually the civil and religious powers. Through their intellectuals—working as humanists—they would provide the reasoning that later turned into ephemeral artistic expressions such as triumphal arches, allegorical chariots, fireworks machines, altars and tumuli created by architects, painters and sculptors. All of them were constitutive elements that with sumptuousness and extravagance turned the fiesta into an instrument of persuasion and publicity at the service of the main power.
The fiestas, whether religious or profane, also included games such as the juego de cañas (game of the canes), chivalry jests of medieval origin—introduced into Europe by the Moslems—, games of skill consisting in stringing rings together, bullfights, masks, fireworks, dances and dramatic performances that added to the spirit of fun. According to Bromley, Spaniards and Creoles living in Lima were forbidden to work on holidays almost during a third part of the year, committing a mortal sin if they did.
Viceroyal fiestas can be divided into religious and profane. There are documents and literary descriptions as well as a few paintings speaking of them, and as Gisbert explains, we should study the inherited folklore of our times. Among the documents from the cabildo (town council), in a section dedicated to festivities in Lima’s General Archive, we can find information that escapes all transcendentalism in any permanent or ephemeral work of art as well as in the protocol of any ceremony. We are talking
about everything that refers to anecdotes during festivity days and that are not less important for this reason because it affects our daily experiences during those days. A particular case is exposed in a Memorial concerning the Indians residing in Lima and written to Alberto Chosojo, Attorney General for the Natives of this Land in 1779, in which they inform him of the robberies and abuses the Indians are suffering at the hands of blacks on the Cuasimodo festivity day. On this day they dress up in masks to look like demons and dance on the streets and commit their misdeeds. The town council members (alcaldes ordinarios) are aware of this situation but are unable to control them, given the large amount of them emerging from the churches. Chosojo was an important person. We can find his portrait in the Nuestra Señora de Copacabana convent, in Lima, where an inscription reads: “Alberto Chosop, protector of Natives, son of Ignacio Chosop and Melchora Chafo, born in Lambayeque”. In this memorial, Indians beg him to notify the stewards of the parish churches of Santa Ana, San Marcelo, San Sebastián, San Lorenzo, the Cathedral and the vice-parish church of Los Huérfanos as well as the city’s town council members to prohibit blacks in demon masks to exit the churches and participate in the procession on Cuasimodo Sunday on the festive days of the Blessed Sacrament.
All the above taken into consideration, Chosop determined, in a Decree on March 26th 1779, that the stewards of the parish churches had to control the black population during the Cuasimodo procession and once it ended, had to take their costumes off. He also ordered anybody who continued with these abuses to be sentenced to a hundred lashes in the main square. In spite of these measures, there are documents dating from 1785 that report that these abuses still continued.
Among the fiestas celebrated in Lima during the 18th Century, we will emphasise those that took place in honour of the coronation of the Kings of Spain, funeral rites and celebrations for the inauguration of religious monuments, all of them good examples that will give us an idea of the greatness of these cultural expressions.
PROCLAMATION OF KINGS IN THE 18TH CENTURY
Some of the fiestas celebrated during the 17th Century are those in honour of the kings’ coronations such as Phillip IV in 1622 and Charles II in 1666, of the Hapsburg dynasty. A century later they will be in honour of the Bourbon dynasty, with the proclamation of Phillip V in 1701 and his son Louis I in 1725. We have chosen this last one as an example of fiesta in 18th Century Lima.
Our main source of information in our study of the celebrations in honour of Louis I’ s proclamation as king is found in a book written by Jerónimo Fernández de Castro and published in Lima in 1725. In it, he describes this celebration with profuse details and carries us back to the atmosphere of the time, where protocol mixed together with ostentation from Lima’s nobility; the highbrow manifestation of a humanistic culture of exaggerated verbal flattery, and the people’s fun-loving spirit manifested in masks and street games. The festivities began on December the 2nd 1725 with the tolling of bells and a display of fireworks and continued the next day with a eucharistic celebration of thanksgiving at the cathedral, officiated by the archbishop Morcillo before the viceroy José de Armendáriz and all the authorities belonging to the political and religious powers. After the viceroy’s protocol greeting in Palace, a parade began during the early hours of the afternoon, accompanying the royal banner, with everybody in full dress. These were times in which Lima’s nobility displayed its wealth and power among its equals and the people. A good example of this can be seen when the procession walks by the Mint, where the count San Juan de Lurigancho, perpetual treasurer of the royal house, ordered a sumptuous Corinthian arch be lifted on thick silver bars on both façades, as the Romans did, with three openings, being the middle one of a larger size and above which the portrait of King Louis I hung under curtains and below the crown. The side arches, for people to pass through, are of a smaller size, adorned with two allegorical figures representing Spain and France and holding two bay branches pointing to the monarch’s portrait symbolising the origin of his noble lineage. Some tags with poems and hieroglyphs also decorate this arch: Venus, Apollo and Cupid appear in it, the latter with an arrow, sealing a heart with the following poem:
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