Chapter III: Introduction: Sidenote: The Colonies and Spain

The literary activity of the Spanish Colonies in South America extended over a period of somewhat more than two hundred and fifty years, in which Spain organized and carried on her great colonial enterprise. In this undertaking the king, assisted by the Council of the Indies and the Casa de Contratación, held the colonies as royal dependencies. He was the common link between the ordinary government of Spain and the government of the Spanish possessions in America. Emigration to the colonies was controlled through the Casa de Contratación, while the Council of the Indies stood as the supreme governmental ministry. The occupation of the country was conducted largely as a material and spiritual conquest, in which conspicuous parts were played by soldiers and priests, the soldiers giving to the process of colonisation the appearance of a military campaign, while the activity of the priests was supported by the idea that the acceptance of the Christian doctrine transferred the Indians from barbarism to the status of civilization.

[Sidenote: Spain’s agencies of control]

[Sidenote: The Inquisition]

The agencies of control in the colonial undertaking, whether military, ecclesiastical or civil, were directed from Spain. These agencies, in their final organization, were gathered into three important groups, or viceroyalties: Peru, New Granada, and Río de la Plata. The viceroy in each of these semi-independent states was assisted by a small body called an audiencia, which performed the functions both of a ministry and of a supreme court. In the several subdivisions of the territory local officers, known as corregidores, carried on a practically arbitrary administration, under which the Indians were oppressed and impoverished; and in the larger town a cabildo, or municipal council, exercised a certain degree of control, when not impeded by a superior authority. Over the government and the inhabitants, in the course of time, the Inquisition extended its paralysing force; and in the presence of spies and malicious reporters men put off their intellectual independence, and either remained silent or conformed their utterances to the prescriptions of the Holy Office. This restraint naturally limited the range of ideas that found expression either orally or in writing. Authors had continually to face the possibility of seeing their manuscripts refused the privilege of publication. The subjects not liable to this embarrassment were the history of the colonies discreetly treated, the geography and natural history of the Indies, and the doctrines and history of the Church. Writings on these subjects, therefore, constitute the bulk of the colonial literature of South America.

[Sidenote: Writings in verse]

Nature as displayed in the unspoiled wilderness of the New World attracted more attention than it had received in Spain, and writers of the history of the Indies gave much space to descriptions of their unfamiliar environment. Great writers of Italy had made verse a preferred form of literature in the sixteenth century, and there is no doubt that, in addition to their example, the exaltation of spirit maintained by the unaccustomed adventures of early colonial life contributed powerfully to the extensive adoption of this form of utterance. It was undoubtedly the new and inspiring scenes and events attending the campaigns against the Araucanians that moved Ercilla to give a poetic record of his experience, in _La Araucana_. When Barco Centenera under similar influences undertook to write an account of the Spanish occupation of the south eastern part of the continent, the result was an “historical poem” called _La Argentina_; and Peralta Barnuevo’s extended history of the early development of Spanish society in Peru assumed the metrical form in _Lima fundada_. The form of Castellanos’ chronicle was practically determined by the success of Ercilla’s verses. And after these came a troop of chroniclers, whose verses were the product of imitation rather than the result of original inspiration.

[Sidenote: The question of printing]

[Sidenote: Ricardo printer in Peru]

Much that was written in the colonies has not been printed, sometimes because the manuscript was not approved by the censor, sometimes because the funds needed to cover the cost were not available, and sometimes because the manuscript was lost. The liability to loss was especially great during most of the colonial period, since manuscripts designed for printing had to be sent to Europe, and were exposed to dangers from shipwreck, the attacks of pirates, and the neglect of the persons to whom they were entrusted. It was only late that presses were established in the dependencies of South America; and even after they were provided, the quality of the work done was poor and the expense high. Printing was introduced into Mexico earlier than into South America, and it was from Mexico that Peru received its first printer. This was Antonio Ricardo, who had been a printer in Mexico for ten years. He decided to remove to Peru in 1579, but encountered serious obstacles to his proposed emigration, partly due to the fact that he was not a native of Spain. He encountered other obstacles in seeking permission to undertake the business of printing in Peru after his arrival in that country. Finally, when the catechism prepared by the Jesuits at the request of the ecclesiastical council was completed, the audiencia, on February the thirteenth, 1584, decreed that Ricardo might be permitted to print it. But the work was interrupted in order to print instructions concerning corrections in the calendar, under the title _Pragmática sobre los diez días del año_. The authorization of this publication was given by the audiencia on the fourteenth of July, 1584, and this first product of the South American press appeared a little later. The catechism became the second publication.[1]

[Sidenote: Contreras Royal Printer]

After this beginning the business of printing grew rapidly, in spite of the high cost of paper, receiving its principal impulse from a strong demand for primary books for schools and little manuals of devotion. News-sheets followed, issued at irregular intervals, and after twenty-five years, it became customary to issue them on the arrival of ships bringing news from Spain. As early as 1621 Jerónimo de Contreras, who had been a printer in Seville, appeared as the publisher of these news-sheets; and for the next hundred years he and members of his family were the leading printers of Lima. His son, José de Contreras, succeeded him in 1641, and continued his business until 1688. Two years before this last date, in 1686, José de Contreras, a grandson of the founder of the house, organized an independent printing establishment, which held a practical monopoly of printing in Lima until 1712. The printing of books for primary instruction in the local schools brought to the head of this new establishment considerable profits, and by a decree of the crown José de Contreras acquired the title of Royal Printer. The Inquisition, the University of San Marcos, and various other institutions resorted to his press for the printing required. After the death of the Royal Printer his brother, Jerónimo de Contreras, carried on the business for a number of years, and the establishment maintained itself without essential change of character until 1779.

[Sidenote: Printing by Jesuits]

Early printing elsewhere in South America was almost exclusively the work of the Jesuits. They had a press at the mission station of Juli near Lake Titicaca, in the second decade of the seventeenth century, but it was only after about a hundred years that a press was set up in any other part of South America. In the missions of Paraguay the first book printed by the Jesuits appeared in 1705. This was entitled _De la diferencia entre lo temporal y eterno_, by Padre Juan Eusebio Nieremberg, translated into Guaraní by Joseph Serrano.[2]

[Sidenote: Press of Córdoba]

The Jesuits established a printing press at Córdoba in connexion with the college of Monserrat, but after the expulsion of the order from South America the press was transferred to Buenos Aires in 1780. About eight years later the authorities of the college felt the need of the press that had been removed, and sent Manuel Antonio Talavera to Buenos Aires to request that it might be replaced by another. The negotiations ended, however, without any immediate result.

[Sidenote: Printing at Quito]

In 1741 Alejandro Coronado, a resident of Quito, petitioned the Council of the Indies for permission to establish a printing press in that city, where previously no facilities for printing had existed. This petition was granted, and by a subsequent act of the Council this privilege was extended to his heirs, in case of Coronado’s death before the projected press had been set up. Coronado’s plan was not carried out, and nearly twenty years later the Jesuits, who had a press in Ambato, removed it to Quito at the beginning of 1760. The first printing in Quito was done on that press in the early part of that year.[3]

The beginning of printing in Bogotá is assigned to various dates. According to Vergara, the press was established there in 1740, but other statements maintain that there was no printing in Bogotá until 1789.[4]

[Sidenote: The law and books]

The development of literature in the Spanish dependencies of South America was hindered, not only by the very imperfect facilities for printing, but also by the extremely rigid restrictions on the publication and importation of books. These restrictions were, however, an after-thought of Spanish legislation. A law of 1480, relating to the introduction of books into Spain, provided that “no duties whatsoever shall be paid for the importation of foreign books into these kingdoms; considering how profitable and honourable it is that books from other countries should be brought to these kingdoms, in order that by them men may become learned”.[5]

[Sidenote: The Censorship]

But this wise and liberal law remained valid for only a few years. It was supplanted by legislation conceived in fear of foreign influences that might threaten the traditions of the nation and the accepted ecclesiastical doctrines. The new law, the law of July the eighth, 1502, was issued to prohibit the publication or sale of a book on any subject whatsoever without royal authorization, or the importation of any book except after submission to a rigorous censorship and on receipt of permission. In September, 1543, Charles V ordered the viceroys, the audiencias, and the governors to prevent the printing, selling, holding, or the bringing into their districts, of books of fiction treating of profane subjects, and to provide that neither Spaniards nor Indians should read them. This legislation was designed to prevent the publication, sale, and reading of the romances of chivalry, which were held to have a demoralizing influence on the spirit of the Spaniards. A law of 1556 provided that the judges and justices “shall not permit any book to be printed or sold which treats of subjects relating to the Indies, without having a special licence issued by the Council of the Indies; and they shall cause to be collected and shall collect and send to that body all the books which they shall find, and no printer may print, hold, or sell them, under penalty of 200,000 maravedis and the loss of his printing office.” Moreover, the sending of manuscripts to Spain to be examined by the Council of the Indies was attended with very great risks; and when an American author had secured the printing of his book in Spain or in any other European country, great difficulties were encountered in his attempts to have copies of it returned to America; for it was provided by law that no printed book treating of American subjects, whether issued in Spain or in a foreign country, could be taken to the Indies until it had been examined and approved by the Council of the Indies.[6]

[Sidenote: Sending manuscripts to Spain]

[Sidenote: Obstacles to printing]

The inconvenience of sending manuscripts to Spain to be examined and approved or disapproved by the Council of the Indies is illustrated by Bishop Villarroel’s experience. He sent the manuscript of _El gobierno eclesiástico pacífico_ to Spain, but the vessel carrying it was wrecked, and only by great good fortune was the manuscript saved. He sent another work in four volumes to Madrid, and solicited permission to publish it. The issuing of the licence was delayed three years, and in the meantime the manuscript was lost. The legal obstacles and the practical difficulties in the way of obtaining permission to print help to explain why many manuscripts, written in America or about America, remained unpublished until after the overthrow of Spanish rule in the Indies. Even after the establishment of presses in America, the great cost of paper furnished an obstacle to their extensive use, and except in Mexico and Lima there were few printing presses until late in the colonial period.

While the Inquisition tended to destroy free intellectual activity in the Spanish colonies, the Church in other ways contributed to a certain cultivation along lines approved by itself. It helped to preserve old-world traditions in some departments of life. By the study of the Indian languages, which it encouraged, and the formation and the publication of grammars, it made public and preserved a knowledge of these languages. It, moreover, founded and supported schools, that maintained the light of learning, though a feeble and fluctuating light, within a narrow ecclesiastical horizon. But all efforts in favour of liberal enlightenment were counteracted by governmental measures in opposition to the importation of books, particularly secular books of all kinds.

[Sidenote: The range of learning]

But the range of learning was limited. Until near the end of the colonial period instruction in the colleges and universities retained its mediæval character. The curriculum of studies embraced little, if anything, besides Latin, philosophy, and theology. Having attained proficiency in Latin the student was admitted to the courses on philosophy under the faculty of arts. After three years with this faculty he passed to the study of theology, which was continued for four, and later for five, years. The first enlargement of this curriculum was effected by the addition of jurisprudence, or Roman law. This change was not made until near the end of the eighteenth century.[7]

[Sidenote: Teaching by Jesuits]

The expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767 was a very severe blow to scholarly and literary activity in colonial society. The Jesuits had a school or a college in every important town of the dependencies, and their instruction was clearer and more effective than that of the other schools, although one is sometimes disposed to regard their employment of a rigid mould of predetermined form, in which to cast all minds, as the greatest educational error of history. But under conditions where, outside of the chief towns, the dominating influences made either for the roughness of the camp or the brutishness of semi-barbarism, a system of instruction that trained the mind to a definite standard was not without its merits, although that standard was the inelastic standard of the Jesuits.[8]

[Sidenote: The viceregal academy]

[Sidenote: _Triunfos de amor y poder_]

The universities presumed a more or less extensive group of cultivated persons in the towns where they were established; and when these towns were also the principal seats of government, as were Lima, Bogotá, Santiago de Chile, and Caracas, the officials of the administration formed another superior element in the population. Lima, as the viceroy’s residence, was the social capital of the dependencies. The powers of the viceroy were practically those of an autocratic ruler, during the period of his incumbency, and there were brought to Lima from Spain many of the forms and ceremonies of the Spanish court. The viceroy appeared in public with much of the state affected by European monarchs of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Sometimes he used the influence of his high position to encourage learning and literary activity. The viceregal palace, in the reign of the viceroy Casteldosríus, was the meeting-place of a society where authors assembled every Monday to present their writings and discuss subjects of interest to men of letters. Dr. Pedro Peralta Barnuevo, the author of _Lima fundada_, was a member of this academy. But the “high society” of Lima had a lower conception of literature and literary men than the learned viceroy, and expressed regret that the ancient customs and dignity of the viceregal office had been violated by the participation of the head of the state in the proceedings of a literary society. The victory of the French under Vendome over the Austrians under Starhemberg was celebrated at the palace by the production of Barnuevo’s comedy called _Triunfos de amor y poder_; and there were more regrets by the aristocracy that the palace of the viceroy had been turned into a theatre.

[Sidenote: Lima and the other capitals]

Lima at this time, the beginning of the eighteenth century, had about seventy thousand inhabitants, Europeans, mestizos, Indians, and negro slaves. Gold and silver flowed into the city from the mines, and the buildings that were constructed after the earthquake of 1687 were superior to those which had been destroyed; they gave Lima an appearance of prosperity; they suggested a degree of luxury that had not been evident earlier. The creoles, always fond of display, sought to avoid the simplicity and rudeness of the smaller towns. They made their wealth conspicuous by their possession of paintings from Italy and Spain, by their extravagant dress, and by their abundant ornaments of gold, pearls, diamonds, and other precious stones; and it is said that the nobles of Lima exceeded in luxury the aristocracy of Spain. The Peruvian capital was enlivened not only by the presence of the fifteen hundred students of the University of San Marcos, but also by a large number of convents or monasteries, in which the conflicts attending the elections of their officers often ran so high that large sections of the population became involved, and the secular authorities were called upon forcefully to interfere.

Bogotá, Caracas, Quito, Santiago, Asunción, and Buenos Aires were capitals, like Lima, but on a smaller scale. Common fundamental characteristics prevailed in all, except as these were modified by the different material interests and opportunities of the several cities. In the very small towns and in the country the Indians and the mestizos predominated, suggesting barbarism rather than civilization.

[Sidenote: Colonial society]

The colonial society of Spanish South America had no notion of social or political equality like that entertained by the British colonists in North America, and consequently recognized marked class distinctions as a phase of the normal social order. The authorities in Spain, charged with the government of the colonies, maintained the traditional view of social inequality, and encouraged its practical development by creating a titled nobility and conferring upon encomenderos a status of superiority over their dependents not greatly unlike the relation of superior and inferior that prevailed during the period of European feudalism. Under this social order the subdued Indians became an element, naturally a subordinate element, in the composite society of the colonies, instead of drifting into irreconcilable hostility to Europeans, as happened in British North America.

[Sidenote: Groups and classes]

An analysis of Spanish colonial society in South America would reveal a body of officials composed almost exclusively of men born in Spain, and educated in accordance with the ideas and traditions of Spain’s conservative administration. These were the viceroys, the judges of the audiencias, the royal treasurers, and the corregidores, or governors of small districts. Hardly less important than the civil officials were the ecclesiastics, who were sent to the colonies by the authorities in Spain, and paid out of the royal revenues of the colonies. These members of the clergy became teachers, missionaries, and parish priests, many of whom were friars belonging to the various religious orders. A third group was composed of soldiers, who were sent from Spain for a period of four or five years, and a more or less extensive body of militia. This military force was employed in putting down insurrections, defending the frontiers and extending the dominion of the Spaniards. And it was in this group that a number of the most noteworthy writers of South America appeared.

Some of the officials, in the exercise of their practically irresponsible authority, often made illegitimate appropriations from the public funds that passed under their control; and the parish priests, in many cases, and the petty governors almost universally, extorted whatever was to be had from the Indians by a systematic process of merciless oppression.

[Sidenote: The Creoles]

[Sidenote: Social stagnation]

The dishonesty of officials, coupled with the fact that they were almost exclusively Spaniards, sent from Spain to occupy their posts for a few years, at length alienated the sympathies of the creoles and the mestizos from the Spanish administration. The creoles, persons of pure Spanish blood born in America, in many cases took advantage of the instruction offered in the colonial universities, and in some instances continued their studies in Spain. They became men of cultivation and sober judgment; they knew the circumstances and needs of the society of which they were members; they had a patriotic interest and an instinctive pride in their communities or commonwealths; yet they were practically barred from office, and their advice was seldom, or never, solicited. By this egoistical and stupid conduct of the government in Spain the creoles and the mestizos were thrown into an attitude of opposition; a rigid line was drawn between them and the Spaniards; and on the American side of this line the creoles and mestizos formed a new society which increased in numbers and self-confidence with the passing decades. Finally, these two classes, merged into one and supported by the civilized Indians, asserted their determination to abolish Spanish domination and be independent. But throughout the two centuries and a half of colonial existence, under the influence of Spanish conservatism, the colonies remained, to a very great extent, in a state of social stagnation until near the end of the eighteenth century.

[Sidenote: Restrictions on commerce]

The industrial and commercial life of the colonies suffered under restrictions quite as effective as those that burdened the cause of letters. Importation to the dependencies of South America was limited by positive laws, and the exportation of certain products was made practically impossible, because they could not successfully compete with similar commodities produced elsewhere, on account of the greater cost of transportation from the western ports of South America. Agriculture was limited by the prohibitory cost of transporting its products, and by the fact that the small population offered only a restricted demand for them, a demand that was insufficient to bring into cultivation the available fertile land or to employ the available labourers. This limited domestic demand and the impossibility of exporting the products constituted an effective restriction on agricultural progress; and this restriction was intensified by arbitrary governmental prohibition affecting certain branches of cultivation, notably wine and sugar. But mining for gold and silver was free from all restrictions, and the fact that the crown received one-fifth of the products was a reason for governmental encouragement of the industry. This freedom in the development of mining and the hindrances encountered by other forms of industry caused the population and the appliances of civilization to increase more rapidly in the mining regions, in the inhospitable high lands of Upper Peru, than in the fertile valleys of Chile or on the rich Argentine plains. Potosí, for instance, became a bustling city of 150,000 inhabitants before Buenos Aires and the towns of Chile had emerged from the condition of dirty frontier villages.[9]

[Sidenote: The spiritual inheritance]

[Sidenote: Mediævalism in the colonies]

But the most effective factor in determining the character of colonial society was the spiritual inheritance from Spain. In government it was the spirit of autocracy, producing a political administration in no respect controlled by the popular will, an administration imposed by the king advised by the Council of the Indies. In matters of religion the spirit of the Spanish church passed to the colonies, and carried over to them the ecclesiastical traditions of the mother country, with no break, like that which appeared between the Puritans and the dominant Church of England. This was important for the aesthetic life of the colonies, for the artistic notions and sentiments entertained by the Church as a social body were transferred to Spanish America, and manifested their creative force in developing a somewhat original church architecture, and in elaborating the courts and interiors of secular buildings. The aesthetic sense displayed in the Spanish colonies stands in interesting contrast with the Puritanic barrenness of the British colonies in artistic matters. The Spanish colonies, moreover, contained more abundant survivals of mediæval ideas and traditions, and the lines of connexion with the European past tended to maintain the colonies for many decades in a state of social stagnation. This inheritance of conservatism helped to keep alive, in at least some part of the population, the sentiment of human dignity as a force counteracting the vulgarizing and brutalizing influences that attended life on the frontier of civilization. In this attitude the persons asserting their superiority were convinced of the value of their ideas and experience, and were moved to convey to posterity their opinions and a knowledge of the organization and growth of the colonial communities in which their lives were passed.

[Sidenote: Circumstances favouring literary production]

In considering the volume of literary production in the Spanish dependencies in comparison with the inferior amount produced in the British colonies, one must take account of two important facts bearing on this subject. In the first place, there was in the Spanish colonies a very large number of men, soldiers and priests, who derived their support from the state, and were thus relieved from the necessity of acquiring a livelihood by their personal efforts or by expending mental energy in forming plans, and in executing them by the employment of their time and force. In the second place, a relatively large number of men in the Spanish colonies were celibates, and consequently their time, their thoughts, and their energies were not absorbed in providing for the current wants of families, or in accumulating property to be passed as an inheritance to a succeeding generation. In the British colonies there was practically no subsidized class; and every man was interested in providing for a family and in accumulating property for the benefit of his heirs. This was the absorbing thought of the British colonists as they pressed back the aborigines and advanced upon the wilderness. They, moreover, conceived the affairs of the colonies as their own affairs and felt no need of sending elaborate reports to the king, or of writing geographical descriptions and historical narratives for the enlightenment of the nation they had abandoned. They were content with a minimum of communication with the mother country. The Spanish colonies, on the other hand, lived by their connexion with Spain and by action of the Spanish government.

[Sidenote: Spanish interest in America]

The intellectual class of Spain had more interest in the American possessions than was manifested by any class in Great Britain with respect to the British colonies; and this superior interest of Spaniards constituted a demand for information concerning the New World, which encouraged persons in Spanish America by their writings to meet this demand.

These introductory suggestions help to explain the remarkable literary activity in the colonies during the period under consideration.