although people of African descent constituted such a significant part of Trujillo’s population, Martínez Compañón never imagined how they might be incorporated into his utopian vision. In this, he was similar to other reformers of the Spanish eighteenth century, who focused on generating a productive plebeian class of poor Spaniards, mestizos, and Indians while relegating people of African descent to the category of slaves, marking them as easily replaceable beings unworthy of improvement.5
In terms of market forces, the fate of slavery was tied to the broader fiscal well-being of Trujillo. Bourbon economic restructuring meant that while Trujillo’s hacendados had been previously able to purchase African slaves from Panama, they could now do so only by way of Buenos Aires and secondary markets in Chile and Lima. As a result, slaves were suddenly more expensive and scarcer, driving up labor costs. At the same time, cheaper Brazilian sugar was flooding the Peruvian market. By 1784, the situation was so bad that Crown-appointed visitador Jorge Escobedo, who spent six years in Peru acting on behalf of the powerful minister of the Indies José de Gálvez, met with local officials to discuss the matter. In response to their complaints, he proposed that Brazilian sugar be prohibited in Spanish territory and that slaves be made available for purchase in Panama. His suggestion fell on characteristically deaf royal ears.6
Slaves aside, the situation in Trujillo was so dismal that in 1763, Corregidor Don Miguel Feyjoo concluded that “it seems that the same appreciable advantages for human happiness have turned into ruin and desolation. Not only … the many Spanish who have come to Peru, but also … the … natural children of the country [the Indians] find themselves notably diminished.”7 There seemed to be an almost endless need for improvement in Trujillo. Martínez Compañón would dedicate himself to it with an intensity reflected—but not equaled—by his colleagues among the bishops and archbishops of America, marking himself as an iconoclast among reforming prelates. To accomplish such a far-reaching agenda for change, he relied on the clergy to become foot soldiers working to foster public happiness and improvement at the farthest corners of the bishopric. He tasked them with promoting the agricultural, economic, and educational development that was the foundation of his utopian vision. At the same time, they would act as collaborators in his natural history research, sharing invaluable data on local resources, traditions, and customs. Although Martínez Compañón employed the time-tested information-gathering techniques of questionnaires and a visita to learn about his bishopric, he still needed local clergy to function as his eyes on the ground. It was only with their dedicated assistance that Trujillo could move forward toward its idealized future.
A Bourbon Bishop in Trujillo
When Martínez Compañón was named bishop of Trujillo, he became a member of the so-called Bourbon prelates: high-level ecclesiastics of the eighteenth century who functioned as “a kind of religious civil service, closely identified with the task of national improvement.”8 These archbishops, bishops, and cathedral canons were secular clergy who were ideologically and politically tied to the Spanish Crown, often having been handpicked by Charles III himself. As the king’s representatives in America, they were responsible for implementing his vision of reform for the Catholic Church. They oversaw the campaign to “secularize” Indian parishes by replacing the friars who administered them with secular parish priests. To avoid past abuses, they monitored these priests closely, scrutinizing their physical residences in their parishes, cataloging the sacraments they performed, and limiting their involvement with local judicial matters. The Bourbon prelates also managed a broad campaign of parish finance reform, closely examining religious brotherhood dues and arancel income from the collection of fees charged for sacraments. They targeted convents where nuns enjoyed lavish dowries, personal servants, and opulent costumes that flouted the Bourbon calls for austerity in religious devotion. In worship, they championed a return to private piety by discouraging the baroque tradition of overwhelming the senses with lavish architecture, self-flagellation, and opulent church décor.9
Many Bourbon prelates were involved in political economy projects that meant to improve the social and economic lives of their constituents. In Ecuador, Bishop José Pérez Calama opened a road connecting the jungles of Esmeraldas with their rich production of fruit and cloth to the commercial center of Quito. In New Granada, Archbishop Antonio Caballero y Góngora collaborated with scientist José Mutis to improve public health by promoting the newly invented smallpox vaccine. Many prelates worked to improve education: Bishop Francisco Fabián y Fuero, for instance, supported a literature academy and endowed university professorships in Puebla. Some even gathered natural history data about the Americas, with Pérez Calama contributing articles to the Mercurio Peruano journal, Caballero y Góngora supporting the Royal Botanical Expedition in New Granada, and Archbishop Francisco Lorenzana publishing a new edition of Hernán Cortés’s letters from Mexico, elaborated with his own reports on local nature and society, as well as newly commissioned illustrations and maps.
Though Lorenzana’s Historia de Nueva España is well known, scholars are less familiar with his 1768 manuscript, “Instructions for Making Indians Content in Spiritual and Material Things.” In keeping with what Spanish reformer José Campillo had called for twenty-five years earlier, Lorenzana mandated renewed efforts toward the spiritual and “material” education of Indians. Properly educated, he believed, the Indians would become more closely integrated into Spanish society. Therefore, priests and ecclesiastics should help them to engage in commerce, learn new agricultural techniques, and practice Spanish-style social norms, such as maintaining separate bedrooms for parents and male and female children. Despite such good intentions, Lorenzana was careful not to threaten the strict social hierarchy of the colonies, never suggesting that the Indians deserved to enjoy the social, racial, and economic advantages carefully guarded by Spaniards and Creoles. Other reforming prelates constructed similarly paradoxical campaigns that purported to benefit the Indians while ensuring their social inferiority. For instance, Archbishop Manuel José Rubio y Salinas sought to help the natives of Mexico by creating 237 primary schools for them; but he planned to use the schools to extinguish indigenous languages by forcing students to speak only Castilian. He also spent twenty-five years actively blocking an attempt to create a seminary for Indian boys just north of Mexico City.10
In Trujillo, Martínez Compañón did not display such paternalistic disdain for America’s native population. Instead, he referred to the Indians as “my beloved children” and placed them at the center of the utopia he envisioned. In addition to promoting their welfare and improvement in spiritual and temporal matters, he thought to afford them ideological advantages that would enhance their positions in colonial society. As we shall see, he suggested to King Charles III that deserving Indians be allowed to dress in the silken finery that was officially reserved for Spaniards. He believed that those Indians who most excelled in school should be honored with burial plots within their churches, just like Spanish elites. He even ventured that they be allowed to use the noble titles don or doña in their public lives, and be addressed with the supplicatory second-person title of vos in municipal government and at church. Although he, too, promoted the use of Castilian in primary schools, his careful cataloging of Quechua names for plants and animals, as well as the 344-word “Chart of 43 Castilian Words Translated to the Eight Languages That the Indians of the Coast, Sierra, and Mountains of the Bishopric of Trujillo Speak,” demonstrates that he sought to value and preserve the native languages of the Andes, rather than simply erasing them from existence. Instead of blocking a seminary for Indian students, as Rubio y Salinas had, in Trujillo the Bishop created his own body of itinerant priests’ assistants drawn from native communities. Such daringly egalitarian rhetoric not only reinforced his position in the debate over the inferiority of the New World; it also made him radically different from many of his peers. He was fully ensconced in the highest echelons of the Church hierarchy in America, yet he was wholeheartedly involved in secular reform, deeply engaged in scientific research, and, to a much greater degree than his compatriots, completely dedicated to the cause that mattered most to him: improving the Indians.11
Martínez Compañón’s plans to assist the Indians must have been swirling in his head ever since he
