For much of the past five hundred years in Peru, church and state have worked together to destroy the culture and beliefs of the native people.
This was not always the case. Despite the grotesque acts of the conquest and the ensuing civil war, people like Antonio de la Calancha were tolerant and curious. But that changed, some seventy years after the invasion. The change of direction came with Francisco de Avila and the commencement of the Extirpacion.
Francisco was born in Cusco in 1573, and found abandoned in a doorway. Whatever his original parentage may have been, he was classified as mestizo, mixed race. As a consequence, he could aspire to education and career opportunities which were not acessible to the indios.
He managed to travel to Lima and study at the University of San Marcos. He was ordained in 1596 and became Curate of San Damian in Huarochiri. He was an ambitious man. He was named Vicar in 1598, was Licenciado in 1600 and received a Doctorate in 1603.
Avila was curate at St Damien de Checa, one of the new villages created by the Spanish to corral the people and make it easier to take their labour tribute and taxes. Such a position gave him access to forced native labour and ‘donations’ of crops and other local produce. As was common for such priests, he set up several illegal businesses in gunpowder, textile and charcoal manufacture.
When he had been ten years at St Damien, some of the parishioners launched a lawsuit against him. Many of the accusations were of economic abuse – forcing villagers to take down the roof timbers of their ancestral village before the re-settlement, so that he could use them to build a house in Lima, for example. But there were also allegations about his moral conduct. He was accused of having sexual relations with married native women, fathering an illegitimate son, and allowing, even encouraging, the locals to continue making precious offerings of silver to their traditional shrines, huacas, which he then took for himself.
Avila spent some time in prison awaiting trial, but managed to obtain signed statements recanting from many of his accusers. Out of prison again, but still under investigation, he asked the Ecclesiastical Chapter of Lima to authorise an inquiry into “idolatries”.
It must have been around this time when, according to his own account, he decided to campaign against the indigenous way of life. He was travelling to a local festival when he met with a christian convert. Cristobal Choqueccaca told him that the local people were on their way to worship Paria Caca. Francisco was “inspired” that day, he writes in his memoirs, to dedicate his life to the fight against idolatry. It was a miracle, he declares. The date was August 1608.
When he wrote his autobiography years later, he painted the accusations of the St Damien people as a response to his determination to root out idolatry. But in fact the accusations came first, and launching a campaign to destroy the huacas was his counter-accusation, a form of defence which continues to be practiced successfully in Peru’s political arena up to the present. When a new hard-line Archbishop came to power in Lima, Francisco de Avila took the chance to stage a massive public display in the main square of Lima, the Plaza de Armas, to demonstrate his personal war on indigenous religion.
He remembered this professional triumph himself 35 years later in a preface to a book of his sermons. There was “…a great pile of idols, some dried corpses whom they worshipped, faces and hands of mummies that had been preserved and handed down for more than 800 years from one generation to the next. All this made more than six loads of two quintals [six llamas carrying 90-100 kg each].”
The indians from four leagues [twelve kilometres] around had been ordered to attend. Avila met up with various worthies at the town hall and proceeded on horseback “…in front of us were all the city officials and on every corner they blew their horns…the Corregidor rode on my right side and the Mayor on my left…”
“We arrived at the Cabildo [the seat of government in the main square] and the Virrey and the Archbishop were standing in the window with some church dignitaries. There was a good pile of firewood on one platform, and the idols and mummies on the other, and in the centre there was a pole, with many clerics seated around.”
“I took up a surplice and went up to the pulpit. As I stood there they brought out Hernando Paucar from the jail, took off his blanket and hat, and tied him to the pole. I started to preach in the local language, explaining to the indians how I detested idolatry and what a great sin it is, and then in spanish I related what we had found and what the indian had done…a notary read out the sentence which was two hundred lashes, removal of his hair and perpetual banishment to Santiago de Chile. They whipped and shaved his head and put him back in the prison, and we burnt the idols, the corpses and their ornaments…..”
Four days later an ecclesiastical judge absolved Avila of all charges against him. As a result of this triumph, the Virrey and the Archbishop agreed to create a team of “visitadors”, or inspectors, who could enter any village together with powers to investigate, judge, condemn and punish the people there. Francisco de Avila was now Visitador.
One of the fascinating aspects of this account is how it is mirrored today in the behaviour of elected Peruvian politicians and their supporters in the media. Attacking opponents and accusing them of similar actions to those they are themselves accused of – soliciting or accepting bribes for construction projects, employing “ghost” friends on the Congress payroll, engaging in criminal activities under the protection of parliamentary privilege – muddies the waters so that any underlying truth is no longer visible. This enables those in power – the Archbishop back in 1609, the Council of Magistrates or the Constitutional Tribunal today – to come down in favour of whoever can offer them the most personal reward.
We know in detail how these “Visits” were planned and carried out because they are recorded in the writings of Pablo Jose Arriaga, who left us a manual for the guidance of the Extirpadors.
Under Chapter titles such as “What a Visitor Should do upon Reaching a Town”, “How a Visit Should be Begun” and “How a Sorcerer Should be Examined”, he gives step by step advice on how to win the confidence of the community, or intimidate them.
The “visitadors” would enter and read out an edict and give the villagers two days to bring out their idols, denounce their witches or priests, and their pagan practices, or suffer the consequences.
The edict included a list of 23 questions, from
“1. Do you know any people, men or women, who have adored shrines, mountains or springs, with a view to obtaining health, life and wellbeing?”
Through to
“23. Do you know any people who, when they harvest the maize, set aside some of the cobs …. for a traditional ceremony where they burn them and offer them to the shrines?”
The first day consists of parades around town, holding masses, singing, teaching, giving out pieces of bread, and visiting the sick, explaining that the Visitors have come not to punish but to teach.
On the second day, there is a lecture against drunkenness and idolatry, and it is explained that those who come forward to denounce their fellows will be pardoned, whilst those who do not will be punished. The people are again encouraged to bring out their sacred objects “without fear”.
“The important thing is thus to acquire an entering wedge by hearing about some one huaca in a town, or about the sorcerer who guards it.” writes Pablo Jose Arriaga. “The Indians freely offer information about neighbouring towns and will then give themselves away easily.”
This was followed by a list of fifteen activities which were forbidden, to be read out to the public meeting, together with the punishments that would be carried out on anyone who was found to have broken these religious laws.
“The priest holding the benefice of a town will take particular pains to prevent the celebrations that the Indians observe at seed time, when they indulge in drinking and singing, which continue to be a great offense to the Lord Our God, etc. He will make every effort to see to it that when they send out the aforesaid invitations, the celebrants are given something to eat but prevented from drinking excessively as has been done up to now. Item. From now on in no case nor for any reason will the Indians of this town, whether men or women, play drums, dance, or sing and dance at a marriage or town festival, singing in their mother tongue as they have done up to now.”
“From now on Indian sorcerers and ministers of idolatry must not cure the sick in any way, because experience has shown that when they effect cures they cause those who are sick to become idolaters and to confess their sins to them in the pagan manner.”
“Extreme rigor and every means of punishment should be used in addition to preaching and teaching, prohibiting them from assembling publicly or secretly to get drunk during their festivals, or during the Christmas and Easter seasons, or during the festivals of the advocation of the town, and every Indian who does so should be punished severely and upon the caciques should be executed the penalties laid down in the aforesaid decrees for the improvement of their ways.”
“The priest of this town will strictly enforce the decrees against drunkenness and chicha made of jora… for this is the most efficacious means of destroying idolatry….”
Within a year of his appointment as Visitador, he had taken his repressive campaigns to the communities and landscapes described in the Huarochiri Manuscript, claiming later to have destroyed five thousand “idols” in that first year. In 1611 together with some Jesuits he climbed the ancient rocky staircase to Paria Caca, the mountain, demolishing whatever they found there and erecting a cross.
“They travelled with Dr Avila to Yampilla, about a league from Huarochiri, and destroyed a shrine, and climbing a hillside took apart another, formed of seven great rocks, each devoted to a particular divinity, and there was a priest there to take care of them with the task of fulfilling the obligations of one to the others, and finally the company undertook to destroy the idols called Xamuna and Pariacaca, famous throughout the region. It took a few days to reach the peak where they found the last, climbing up steps cut into the rock by the Indians. They put a cross up in place of the idol and returned.”
After the success of these visits throughout the region of Huarochiri, they continued to Yauyos and then to Xauxa, to Andajes and to Chinchaycochas. A prison was set up on the outskirts of Lima to house the pagan priests, but as there were so many it could only hold “…one from each village for the warning of others.”
In 1616 Avila was appointed to “Visit” Huanuco, Huamachucho and Conchucos, whilst Diego Ramirez moved on to Huaylas. Arriaga himself accompanied Doctor Hernando de Avendaño to the Chancay region, making a record of the team’s achievements there, in their circuit to 31 towns to the north of Lima. He joyfully relates some of the triumphs of these Visits.
“…in the Province of Checras [in Chancay], were discovered many great idolatries and huacas, amongst them one so famous amongst the indians, and revered by towns far away, which was the body of an ancient chief called Libracacancharco, which was found on a rough mountain a league from the village of San Chrisobal de Rapaz, in a cave under a pavilion, with a diadem of gold on his head, and dressed with seven very fine garments, which the Indians said had been sent as presents from the ancient Inca kings. This body…and another of a general of his called Chichu Michuy which was in a different place, and also very revered, were taken to Lima…and the bodies were burnt with many other holy things, to the horror of the indians…”
But individual victories against the Devil such as this, do not convey the full scale of the repression that was taking place. Arriaga again lays it out for us in detail.
“From February 1617 to July of 1618, there are 5694 persons who have been confessed, 679 ministers of idolatry, …, 703 principal Huacas, which have been taken from them, and 3488 Conopas, 45 Mamazaras, and many other Conopas, 189 Huancas (these are different from the Huacas), seven hundred and seventeen 717 Malchis, and the Sorcerers who were punished, in the plains sixty-three, the cradles, which were burned, 357, and 477 bodies stolen from the Church, and not counted, many bodies Chacpas, nor Chuchos, who also revere, and that they keep them in their homes, nor the Pacts, nor Axomamas, nor Micsazara, nor Huantayzara, nor Huayriguazara, nor other things, in which they have a thousand superstitions, that all have been burned.
To see this in context, Chancay had a population of 13,000 in the census of 1575, of which just 2626 were tax payers, that is householders or working men.
The quality of life for the indians under Spanish rule was such that the number of workers across Peru of did not begin to rise until the nineteenth century. On the contrary, the population, which was already a fraction of its level before the first arrival of the Spanish with their diseases and their wars, continued to fall. For Chancay, successive censuses in 1591 showed a slight increase in taxpayers to 2682, but they were then reduced by 30% to 1838 in 1601, and again by 12% to 1648 by 1627.
So in this population of, perhaps, 1740 taxpayers and 8600 people in 1617, it would seem that more than half confessed to be pagans. There was a pagan priest for every twelve people, that is one for every shrine. There was one shrine or holy site for every three households. In addition, there were one or two conopas or small offering objects destroyed for each household, and the bodies of 1200 revered ancestors were burnt, two for every three taxpayers. Every family and house was affected throughout the region.
The Visits were not isolated events. They continued at regular intervals for the next fifty years. In Chancay, according to records maintained to the present day in the Archbishopric of Lima, and also in the Bishopric of Huacho, there were further visits in various districts in 1622, 1644, 1646, 1647, 1650, 1653, 1662, 1663, 1665, 1668, 1675, 1676 and 1677.
The Visitors saw themselves as saving the Peruvian people from themselves.
“To understand what a miserable state these people are in, and the extreme need they have of help, there is no better testimony that to see a day of the Exhibitions, when all their objects of idolatry are brought together…the dried bodies, and remains of their ancestors … the clothes they wear for the festivals, the feathers with which they dress themselves, the pots, jugs and bowls … to make beer,… the ordinary trumpets of copper, and sometimes of silver, big horns, and other instruments brought to the fiestas, tamborines, well made…for the dances, and …deer antlers, skins of foxes and of sierra pumas and many more things that have to be seen to be believed.”
Converting the people to their religion was the justification for the Spanish of their presence in the New World. After military conquest, after stealing all the gold and silver they could find, and after their own internal ten year war for the greatest share of the spoils, they set out to dominate and eliminate the indigenous culture, particularly religious belief. Native rituals that were proscribed included dancing, singing, drinking, and rites for the newborn and the dead. And eventually the native language.
In February 2018 over 150 mummy bundles or fardos were found at Pachacamac – not burials, but bundles that had been burnt before they were buried.. The archaeologists were able to find amongst the ashes ceramics, textiles and other objects as well as human remains.
At first it was thought they were the remains of some previously unknown ritual practice. But the number and position of the burnt mummy bundles suggested they were a late introduction to the site. This led to a surprising conclusion – they could be the remains of one of the Autos da Fe, Processions of the Faith, where the mummified ancestors, musical instruments, and other cultural objects seized by the Visitors in the Extirpacion of the Idolatries were publicly paraded in Lima and then burnt.
They could in fact be what is left of the hundreds of mummy bundles (fardos) and offerings that Father Francisco de Avila paraded and burnt in the 1608 ceremony held in the Main Square of Lima, the Show that won him the Extirpacion contract and directed the role of Church and colonists in Peru for the next 500 years.
Mansio Serra de Leguizamon came with the Pizarro brothers to invade Peru and was the last of the Spanish conquistadors to die at the age of seventy-eight. This is what he wrote in his will, in 1589.
“I wish Your Majesty to understand the motive that moves me to make this statement is the peace of my conscience and because of the guilt I share. For we have destroyed by our evil behaviour such a government as was enjoyed by these natives. They were so free of crime and greed, both men and women, that they could leave gold or silver worth a hundred thousand pesos in their open house.”
“So that when they discovered that we were thieves and men who sought to force their wives and daughters to commit sin with them, they despised us. But now things have come to such a pass in offence of God, owing to the bad example we have set them in all things, that these natives from doing no evil have turned into people who can do no good.”
“I beg God to pardon me, for I am moved to say this, seeing that I am the last to die of the Conquistadors.”
And that was before the Extirpations started.
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3 December 2018. Two time president Alan Garcia`s request for political asylum in Uruguay because of “political persecution” is rejected. He has been in hiding in the Uruguay Embassy in Lima since late November, after he returned from his home in Madrid for a court hearing and was forbidden leave the country. In 1992, after his first Presidential term, he had sought asylum in the Columbian embassy and then fled the country, only returning when the statute of limitations freed him from accusations of corruption in the handling of public money.
9 December 2018. The constitutional referendum takes place the same day as the local and regional elections. Vizcarra asks people not to support the two chamber proposal he had made, as Congress has tacked on to it a reduction of the powers of the president to dissolve Congress. The public votes Yes-Yes-Yes-No as Vizcarra requests, with greater that 85% approval.
December 31 2018. A few hours before midnight, the Fiscal of the Nation Pedro Chavarry announces he is removing Fiscals Domingo Perez and Vela from their Lava Joto investigations. The following day marches are organized in Trujillo, Cajamarca, Arequipa, Chimbote and Cusco under banners such as “Fuera Chavarry – Rata Maldita!” I join the gathering crowd in Lima’s Plaza San Martin late in the afternoon and follow the march to the Public Ministry, where the two fiscals have arranged a press conference at 8.30 pm.
Marches in the city centre are usually treated with indifference, but this time the passing taxi drivers and the private cars sound their horns in support. Even the police, in heavy body armour and carrying guns, seem supportive.
The next day, January 2nd, Chavarry announces the Fiscal’s reinstatement.
23 January 2019. Alberto Fujimori is taken from hospital where he has spent the last three months, and returned to jail. A government medical panel has found there was no reason for him to stay in hospital.