Looking to the French Bourbon system, he suggested that the corrupt regional administrators called corregidores be replaced with Crown-appointed bureaucrats known as intendants. They would gather valuable data about their districts, which administrators would use to design social and economic reforms. Campillo further maintained that people would become more productive if they lived in town settlements rather than in rural areas. He even thought to intervene in church administration, suggesting that many bishoprics were too large to adequately administer to the faithful or oversee the clergy, who had fallen into a state of disastrous disorder. His ideas became the basis of the eighteenth-century Spanish reform agenda known as the Bourbon reforms. Along with similar movements in Portugal, France, and Austria, these focused on gathering useful information that could be used to improve the populace and thereby enrich and empower the state. In the Spanish Empire, they reached their peak under the rule of King Charles III in the 1770s and 1780s—the very time when Martínez Compañón found himself in Peru.
While the central concepts of the Bourbon reforms were applied throughout the Spanish Empire, the program had a special focus in America. There, it rested largely on Campillo’s assertion that it was “the Indians” who were the “true Indies and the richest mine of the world.” Their labor, purchasing power, and knowledge of the American environment held vast untapped potential, and he recommended that Spanish reformers focus their efforts accordingly. They were to “reduce the Indians to civil life, and treat them with kindness and sweetness; [and] pique their interest in industry, and in this way make them useful vassals and Spaniards.” Campillo suggested that the king send the Peninsula’s most adept thinkers to America, where they would observe the treatment of Indians and file reports about their status. Then they would help to teach Indians about which crops were the most profitable. They should arrange for them to be given land to cultivate, along with the accompanying rights so that they might pass this land down to their children. Campillo argued that the Indians should learn to speak Spanish fluently. Indian leaders should be encouraged to dress like Spanish plebeians so that they might inspire their communities to do the same. Overall, Campillo’s plan for economic government was a pragmatic eighteenth-century vision of a colonial utopia that rested on the backs of natives who behaved like Spanish plebeians. Like the utopias that had come before it, it was a best-case scenario, a dream of what the Spanish could do in America. Forty years later, when Martínez Compañón dared to imagine how he might implement a similar project of improvement in his own jurisdiction of the vast Kingdom of Peru in the wake of the largest Indian rebellion the Spanish had ever faced in America, he had Campillo’s blueprint to guide him but a much more complex reality to contend with.
CHAPTER 1
The Books of a Bishop
By December 1767, twenty-nine-year-old Baltasar Jaime Martínez Compañón had likely grown tired of waiting to begin the journey to distant Peru and his new life in Spanish America. Earlier that year King Charles III had called him to serve the Spanish Crown and the Catholic Church as chantre, or musical director, of Lima’s metropolitan cathedral. In the meantime, he had completed his duties as a consultant to the Inquisition in Madrid and had prepared for departure. By June, his license to cross the Atlantic was in order. Yet almost half a year later, he still found himself waiting. At least some of the delay must have been meteorological: 1767 was one of the most active years for North Atlantic hurricanes, and October and November were prime storm season. At that time of year, ships making the crossing from Cádiz to the southern ports of Spanish America had to take particular care not to find themselves stranded in the windless equatorial region or battered by ferocious winds with nicknames like the “bellowing forty” that lurked below thirty degrees latitude.1
Though waiting for the weather to improve was the most prudent course, such inaction must have been all the more difficult, considering that Cádiz was a city built around voyages. In 1717, it became the center of Spanish trade with the American colonies when the Crown pronounced it the monopoly port on the Peninsula because its wide harbor better accommodated the larger ships of the eighteenth century. Situated on a narrow isthmus a few miles off the mainland, the city stood on rocky, sandy terrain surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean. Arriving vessels passed through the intimidating La Candelaria Fortress, with its breakwaters and cannons, before reaching the protected Santa María port. As the fourth-largest city in Spain, Cádiz in 1750 was home to 60,000 people, making it comparable in size with other large European cities such as Dresden and Stockholm. Many of its inhabitants were from merchant families whose affluent, cosmopolitan lifestyle marked it as a fashion and culture center second only to Madrid. The city was also famous for its merchant neighborhood, the so-called City of the Hundred Palaces, as well as its cathedral, which, when construction was complete, would feature grandiose towers as high as those of the famous Giralda of Seville.2
The ocean air and bustling streets of Cádiz were strikingly different from the cool, verdant valleys of Navarre that the Bishop’s family called home. Baltasar Jaime Martínez Compañón was born on January 6, 1737, in the town of Cabredo, Navarre. Located in the Pyrenees region of northeastern Spain, Navarre was its own kingdom and held special fueros, or local legal privileges, including an independent viceroy and ruling Cortes. Shared culture, language, and social systems linked Navarre and the rest of Spanish Basque country (Alava, Guipúzcoa, and Vizcaya) with the French Basque provinces of Basse Navarre, Labourd, and Soule. Martínez Compañón’s father, Mateo, worked as a customs officer to provide for his wife, María Martínez de Bujanda, and their family. Though there are no images of him as a child, Martínez Compañón as an adult was thin and of average stature, with pale skin and black hair. He had thick, dark eyebrows, prominent cheekbones, and a long Romanesque nose. His portrait (see Plate 8) highlights his curious eyes and penetrating, determined gaze.
Martínez Compañón began his education studying Latin in the nearby town of Quintana, continuing in La Merced Convent in Calatayud (Aragón), where he studied philosophy. He completed his first university training in canon law at the Universities of Huesca and Zaragoza, also in Aragón. He earned his degree in canon law in 1759 at the College of the Holy Spirit at the University of Oñate in Guipúzcoa. This course of study would have included grammar (or reading, writing, and Latin); rhetoric (dealing with classical works in Spanish and Latin, and learning persuasive speaking and writing techniques); and philosophy (which covered logic, physics, mathematics, and moral philosophy). It was designed to prepare the student to think on his feet and argue convincingly while referencing the most important classical scholarship—essential skills for a successful ecclesiastical career. After serving as a chancellor at the University of Oñate, Martínez Compañón was ordained as a Catholic priest in 1761 in the town of Vitoria. Two years later, still at Oñate, he earned his doctorate in theology and canon law. This advanced degree allowed him entry into the highest echelons of church bureaucracy. In 1766, he was called to serve as an adviser to the Inquisition, an appointment that brought him into the orbit of high-level Church and Crown officials and likely factored in his subsequent career successes. One year later, his hard work was rewarded when he was presented to King Charles III as a potential canon of Lima’s cathedral.3
During the few months’ delay before his departure, the young prelate would have had ample time to get to know the two men who would accompany him to America. Pedro de Echevarri, his personal servant, was twenty years old with dark hair and eyes. His face was dotted with smallpox scars. Also Basque, he came from Oñate.4 Echevarri served Martínez Compañón in Lima, and became his secretary once the young canon was promoted to bishop. He attended him on his grueling visita through the mountains, jungles, and deserts of Trujillo and later followed the newly promoted archbishop of Santa Fé north to Bogotá, New Granada. As Martínez Compañón’s personal secretary, Echevarri patiently penned the thousands of pages of official correspondence that his employer dictated. His handwriting is legible and pleasing to the eye—especially when compared with that of his superior, which is gnarled, small, and hurried. It appears to be Echevarri’s hand that transcribed the hundreds
