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Peru The Colonial Church
The crown, as elsewhere in the Americas, worked to
solidify
the Andean colonial order in tandem with the church to
which it
was tied by royal patronage dating from the late fifteenth
century. Having accompanied Francisco Pizarro and his
force
during the conquest, the Roman Catholic friars proceeded
zealously to carry out their mission to convert the
indigenous
peoples to Christianity. In this endeavor, the church came
to
play an important role in the acculturation of the
natives,
drawing them into the cultural orbit of the Spanish
settlers. It
also waged a constant war to extirpate native religious
beliefs.
Such efforts met with only partial success, as the
syncretic
nature of Andean Roman Catholicism today attests. With
time,
however, the evangelical mission of the church gave way to
its
regular ecclesiastical endeavors of ministering to the
growing
Spanish and creole population.
By the end of the century, the church was beginning to
acquire important financial assets, particularly bequests
of land
and other wealth, that would consolidate its position as
the most
important economic power during the colonial period. At
the same
time, it assumed the primary role of educator, welfare
provider,
and, through the institution of the Inquisition, guardian
of
orthodoxy throughout the viceroyalty. Together, the
church-state
partnership served to consolidate and solidify the crown
authority in Peru that, despite awesome problems of
distance,
rough terrain, and slow communications, endured almost
three
centuries of continuous and relatively stable rule.
Silver production, meanwhile, began to enter into a
prolonged
period of decline in the seventeenth century. This decline
also
slowed the important transatlantic trade while diminishing
the
importance of Lima as the economic hub of the viceregal
economy.
Annual silver output at Potosí, for example, fell in value
from a
little over 7 million pesos in 1600 to almost 4.5 million
pesos
in 1650 and finally to just under 2 million pesos in 1700.
Falling silver production, the declining transatlantic
trade, and
the overall decline of Spain itself during the seventeenth
century have long been interpreted by historians as
causing a
prolonged depression both in the viceroyalties of Peru and
New
Spain
(see
fig. 2). However, economic historian Kenneth J.
Andrien has challenged this view, maintaining that the
Peruvian
economy, rather than declining, underwent a major
transition and
restructuring. After silver production and the
transatlantic
trade eroded the export economy, they were replaced by
more
diversified, regionalized, and autonomous development of
the
agricultural and manufacturing sectors. Merchants, miners,
and
producers simply shifted their investments and
entrepreneurial
activities away from mining and the transatlantic trade
into
internal production and import-substituting opportunities,
a
trend already visible on a small scale by the end of the
previous
century. The result was a surprising degree of regional
diversification that stabilized the viceregal economy
during the
seventeenth century.
This economic diversification was marked by the rise
and
expansion of the great estates or haciendas that were
carved out
of abandoned native land as a result of the demographic
collapse.
The precipitous decline of the native population was
particularly
severe along the coast and had the effect of opening up
the
fertile bottom lands of the river valleys to Spanish
immigrants
eager for land and farming opportunities. A variety of
crops were
raised: sugar and cotton along the northern coast; wheat
and
grains in the central valleys; grapes, olives, and sugar
along
the entire coast. The highlands, depending on geographic
and
climatic conditions, underwent a similar hacienda
expansion and
diversification of production. There, coca, potatoes,
livestock,
and other indigenous products were raised in addition to
some
coastal crops, such as sugar and cereals.
This transition toward internal diversification in the
colony
also included early manufacturing, although not to the
extent of
agrarian production. Textile manufacturing flourished in
Cusco,
Cajamarca, and Quito to meet popular demand for rough-hewn
cotton
and woolen garments. A growing intercolonial trade along
the
Pacific Coast involved the exchange of Peruvian and
Mexican
silver for oriental silks and porcelain. In addition,
Arequipa
and then Nazca and Ica became known for the production of
fine
wines and brandies. And throughout the viceroyalty,
small-scale
artisan industries supplied a range of lower-cost goods
only
sporadically available from Spain and Europe, which were
now
mired in the seventeenth-century depression.
If economic regionalization and diversification worked
to
stabilize the colonial economy during the seventeenth
century,
the benefits of such a trend did not, as it turned out,
accrue to
Madrid. The crown had derived enormous revenues from
silver
production and the transatlantic trade, which it was able
to tax
and collect relatively easily. The decline in silver
production
caused a precipitous fall in crown revenue, particularly
in the
second half of the seventeenth century. For example,
revenue
remittances to Spain dropped from an annual average of
almost 1.5
million pesos in the 1630s to less than 128,000 pesos by
the
1680s. The crown tried to restructure the tax system to
conform
to the new economic realities of seventeenth-century
colonial
production but was rebuffed by the recalcitrance of
emerging
local elites. They tenaciously resisted any new local
levies on
their production, while building alliances of mutual
convenience
and gain with local crown officials to defend their vested
interests.
The situation further deteriorated, from the
perspective of
Spain, when Madrid began in 1633 to sell royal offices to
the
highest bidder, enabling self-interested creoles to
penetrate and
weaken the royal bureaucracy. The upshot was not only a
sharp
decline in vital crown revenues from Peru during the
century,
which further contributed to the decline of Spain itself,
but an
increasing loss of royal control over local creole
oligarchies
throughout the viceroyalty. Lamentably, the sale of public
offices also had longer-term implications. The practice
weakened
any notion of disinterested public service and infused
into the
political culture the corrosive idea that office-holding
was an
opportunity for selfish, private gain rather than for the
general
public good.
If the economy of the viceroyalty reached a certain
steady
state during the seventeenth century, its population
continued to
decline. Estimated at around 3 million in 1650, the
population of
the viceroyalty finally reached its nadir at a little over
1
million inhabitants in 1798. It rose sharply to almost 2.5
million inhabitants by 1825. The 1792 census indicated an
ethnic
composition of 13 percent Spaniards, 56 percent native
American,
and 27 percent castas (mestizos), the latter
category the
fastest-growing group because of both acculturation and
miscegenation between Spaniards and natives.
Demographic expansion and the revival of silver
production,
which had fallen sharply at the end of the seventeenth
century,
promoted a period of gradual economic growth from 1730 to
1770.
The pace of growth then picked up in the last quarter of
the
eighteenth century, partly as a result of the so-called
Bourbon
reforms of 1764, named after a branch of the ruling French
Bourbon family that ascended to the Spanish throne after
the
death of the last Habsburg in 1700.
In the second half of the eighteenth century,
particularly
during the reign of Charles III (1759-1788), Spain turned
its
reform efforts to Spanish America in a concerted effort to
increase the revenue flow from its American empire. The
aims of
the program were to centralize and improve the structure
of
government, to create more efficient economic and
financial
machinery, and to defend the empire from foreign powers.
For
Peru, perhaps the most far-reaching change was the
creation of a
new viceroyalty in the Río de la Plata (River Plate)
region in
1776 that radically altered the geopolitical and economic
balance
in South America. Upper Peru was detached administratively
from
the old Viceroyalty of Peru, so that profits from Potosí
no
longer flowed to Lima and Lower Peru, but to Buenos Aires.
With
the rupture of the old Lima-Potosí circuit, Lima suffered
an
inevitable decline in prosperity and prestige, as did the
southern highlands (Cusco, Arequipa, and Puno). The
viceregal
capital's status declined further from the general
measures to
introduce free trade within the empire. These measures
stimulated
the economic development of peripheral areas in northern
South
America (Venezuela) and southern South America
(Argentina),
ending Lima's former monopoly of South American trade.
As a result of these and other changes, the economic
axis of
Peru shifted northward to the central and northern Sierra
and
central coast. These areas benefited from the development
of
silver mining, particularly at Cerro de Pasco, which was
spurred
by a series of measures taken by the Bourbons to modernize
and
revitalize the industry. However, declining trade and
production
in the south, together with a rising tax burden levied by
the
Bourbon state, which fell heavily on the native peasantry,
set
the stage for the massive native American revolt that
erupted
with the Túpac Amaru rebellion in 1780-82.
Data as of September 1992
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