Hispanic Issues

Santa Arias, Raul Marrero-Fente, Santa Arias, Raul Marrero-Fente

• Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780826519580
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Lateinamerikanische & karibische Geschichte

From postcolonial, interdisciplinary, and transnational perspectives, this collection of original essays looks at the experience of Spain's empire in the Atlantic and the Pacific and its cultural production.
Hispanic Issues Series Nicholas Spadaccini, Editor-in-Chief Hispanic Issues Online hispanicissues.umn.edu/online_main.html

PART I

Politics

1

José de Acosta: Colonial Regimes for a Globalized Christian World

Ivonne del Valle

Hay algunos tan patrocinadores de los indios que afirman seriamente que se les hace injuria grave si se les fuerza [a trabajar y pagar tributos]; y de los españoles dicen que se sirvan a sí mismos, como se hace en España, o si todos quieren ser nobles que no coman ni beban; como dice el Apóstol, el que no trabaje que no coma. Y a quien esto se le haga duro, dicen, que deje la tierra que ocupó por codicia y no por conveniencia de sus habitantes originarios, y se vuelva a la estrechez de su terruño en España. Opinión que, aunque en el dicho aparece liberal y honrada, de hecho es puro disparate y llena de dificultades.

—José de Acosta, De procuranda indorum salute (1984: 515)

(There are some who are so solicitous of the Indians as to claim in all seriousness that grave injury is done them if they are forced [to work and to pay tribute]; and of the Spaniards, they say that they should serve themselves, as is done in Spain, or that if they wish to be nobles, they should neither eat nor drink; for, as the Apostle says, he who labors not, should not eat. And whosoever objects to the harshness of this, they say he should leave the land he took out of greed, rather than for the benefit of its original inhabitants, and return to his paltry plot of earth back home in Spain. A viewpoint that, for all that it appears generous and honorable, is in fact utter nonsense and plagued with difficulties.)

There is always something arbitrary in the assignation of historical origins, and yet at least from European and Latin American perspectives, the “modern” world unquestionably begins in 1492 with Spanish colonialism.¹ Previous attempts to spread and impose a single universal truth, in the form of political and metaphysical premises that would guarantee the sovereignty and power of one nation or ethnic group over others, as in the Greek and Roman Empires, or the discriminatation against certain groups based on religious differences, as in medieval anti-Semitism, come together in the experience of colonial Spanish America. From the political premises that underlie the relations between Spain and its American colonies emerge both the possibility of a global order that would assign each nation a place in a descending hierarchy, and the underpinnings of the internal colonialism of the future independent nations of Latin America.²

The development of racial categories, nationalist sentiments, bureaucratic governments, and nascent capitalism are elements that come together and are spread internationally in the Spanish colonial experience. We may also add to these converging elements the mobilization of cultural, legal, and religious policies for the formation of new subjects on a massive scale, as occurs in the imperative to create Indians as a homogenous group that, regardless of language or ethnicity, would participate, voluntarily or by compulsion, in the colonial, religious project.

De procuranda indorum salute (1588), by the Jesuit José de Acosta, is a paradigmatic text that reflects the totalizing will of Spain’s Christian Empire. This work on missions represents what is perhaps the first theory of this new world order based on the expansion of Christianity, “civilization,” and a particular economy. Acosta examines the situation in colonial Peru during the sixteenth century, and based on his diagnosis he proposes the complete rationalization of colonial life. Although intended as a practical manual whose primary goal was the evangelization of indigenous Americans, De procuranda exceeds this objective in establishing the principles by which the dystopia prevailing in the new territories could be corrected. It is important therefore not only for its overall character (the desire to regulate every aspect of colonial life) but also because Acosta recognizes the illegality of the conquest. Yet he abandons the intellectual rigor that leads him to this conclusion. In a move typical of Jesuit thought, Acosta decides to displace the conquest and to construct a less monstrous universe upon a foundation he has judged to be unacceptable.³ Felipe Castañeda argues that by deeming the violence of the conquest alien to his generation—as a historical fact—Acosta closes the debates on the justice of the enterprise and thus establishes the basis for a new, colonial regime. As if violence were a “given” condition, Acosta decides to sidestep questions about legitimacy in order to tackle the most immediate problems, and to lay down “los principios incuestionables de un orden colonial” (Castañeda 135–51) (the unquestionable foundations of a colonial order). In the following pages, I will examine the premises of this Christian and global colonial order.

The Impossibility of Other Worlds: Universal Truth as an Irrational Foundation

In the prologue of De procuranda, Acosta outlines both the objective of his text and its limitations. If one wished to achieve the “salvation” of the Indians, posits Acosta, the main challenge resided in the difficulty of finding a method that would be universally applicable to the innumerable indigenous groups whose customs were so diverse. Despite the difficulties, Acosta takes on the challenge analytically. Given that a single method for evangelizing such disparate groups was unthinkable, he begins by classifying the “barbarians” (all those who, like the Indians, deviated from “la recta razón y de la práctica habitual de los hombres” [1984: 61] [“right reason” and the common practices of men]) into three overarching categories according to what today we might call their stage of development.⁴ Thus, the method of evangelization employed with a particular group would depend on the category to which it belonged.

The first category included the Chinese, Syrians, and Japanese, who, according to Acosta, did not diverge too far from the “recta razón” (“right reason”), as they possessed stable governments, laws, cities, commerce, and letters. Given that Acosta does not specify what constituted the barbarity of these groups that had a high level of social organization and whose societies had achieved a great flowering, and given that conversion to Christianity is the final end of this classificatory system, one can infer that their “barbarity” was entirely attributable to their not being Christian.⁵ The second category included “barbarians” who did not possess written script, laws, or science, but did have governments, resided in fixed settlements, and had military leaders and religious authorities. This group, which included the Incas and Mexicas, encompassed all non-nomadic peoples of the Americas. Lastly, the third category consisted of nomadic groups that, according to Acosta, lacked any recognizable form of government or laws and essentially lived as “beasts.”

Due to the level of civilization attained by the peoples of the first category, their conversion should be achieved through the use of reason and never by the exercise of force. Members of the second category, for their part, must be subjected to the jurisdiction of a Christian authority that would ensure, through the use of strategic violence if necessary, the propagation of the faith but would allow them to maintain possession of their territories and material goods. With respect to the third category (people Acosta equates with the groups of whom Aristotle claimed that “se les podía cazar como a bestias y domar por la fuerza,” (1984: 67) (they could be hunted down like beasts and domesticated by force), it was first necessary to compel them to become “true” men, that is, to abandon the nomadic life of the wild and settle in cities where they could be educated. Only after this coerced transmutation from what Acosta described as “mediohombres” (half-men) into fully realized human subjects could the work of evangelization begin (1984: 61–71).

This framework, though ostensibly simple, has broad political implications. In the expansive philosophy of history proposed by Acosta, Christianity and a developmental doctrine comprise the two components of a unique teleology that would apply to every human community, even those that Europeans had yet to encounter. Ideally, all civilizations would someday share not only Christianity but also the same cultural models and technologies, e.g. written script, urbanism, specific institutions, and a specific form of government.

The centrality of Acosta for what Jennifer Selwyn has termed the Jesuits’ “global civilizing mission” (1) shows that his all-encompassing system to evaluate the “barbarians” (culture, religion, government, technology) was immediately understood as an instrument for expansion. De procuranda became the theoretical foundation for the whole Jesuit missionary enterprise (El Alaoui 18)—that is, for the Jesuits’ integration of the world into the fold of Christianity and Western civilization.⁶ De procuranda sets the basis for the evangelization of insufficiently Christianized populations in Europe and of pagan peoples all over the world. Even though the missionary endeavor of the Jesuits was not new by the time Acosta wrote (their work among “backward” people in Europe, and among the Moriscos in Spain, had been important precedents), from the time of its publication De procuranda provided a flexible and wide-ranging methodology for missionaries everywhere.⁷

Acosta’s universalist project establishes decreasing degrees of sovereignty for the non-Christian nations of the world. According to him, only members of the first category had the right to preserve their way of life and possessions; the second group could keep their material goods but would be subject to the sovereignty of Christian princes; and the third group would have no claim to any rights over themselves, their territories, or their property. His empirical knowledge about Amerindians and peoples in other parts of the world is structured by philosophical thought to create a rational, evolving framework that is sufficiently broad to encompass any non-Christian human group. The scientific nature of his method of general classification (Anthony Pagden considers it the origin of comparative ethnography) is founded on a mixture of religion and the study of “policía” (police), the term used at that time to refer to general forms of government. Christianity then called forth not only a universal system for the classification of civilizations, but also for a differentiated exercise of power over populations that had to become Christians.

This line of thought leads to the supposition of a future with no outside possible, unless we consider the Muslim world (the enemy of Christianity par excellence) or apostasy (another mortal adversary). Acosta’s scheme envisioned that all peoples would eventually attain the same state of civilization, either voluntarily through the use of reason or by force. This developmental Christian teleology was totalitarian. Without even mentioning the concept of sovereignty, the degree of self-determination ascribed to a given group within Acosta’s system would determine the proper method of evangelization to be employed. In this sense, the sovereignty of any group was directly proportional to its power and organization; that is to say, a group was sovereign insofar as it could demonstrate it militarily. When Acosta speaks of the first category, for example, he maintains that Chinese, Japanese, and Syrians must be reached through the use of reason, not only because of their considerable learning but also because they were “powerful” nations. By contrast, the absolute defenselessness of members of the third category is assumed in Acosta’s quotation of Aristotle concerning those groups that could be hunted down like beasts. Perhaps the greatest irony of this proposition is the fact that it is posited as a means of “saving” the Amerindians in terms of religion and civilization. In other words, Acosta prescribes a campaign of violence for which the “barbarians” should be grateful. Acosta’s model is disconcertingly closed: to resist this violence offered as assistance would mean that the Indians were ignorant of the “recta razón” (“right reason”) or, worse yet, that they voluntarily chose to reject this self-evident truth and, as a consequence, would be doubly subject to violence.

The cornerstone of Acosta’s global program is the imperative to Christianize. If Christianity had been simply one possibility among many, then Acosta’s hierarchy of civilizations would have served only as a tool for the study of human diversity and not as a project for imperial expansion. Classifying “barbarians” was an exercise that made sense not for its own sake but as a means to understand how they should be dealt with to make them abandon their barbarity and accept the truth of the gospel. Thus, the project posited by Acosta encompassed those who were already Christian, those who were in the process of conversion, and those who had the potential to convert. There were no other possibilities except for the enemies mentioned above. Consequently, it was important to quickly and summarily silence alternative doctrines that had begun to emerge in the colonies.

Francisco de la Cruz, a Dominican friar burned at the stake in Lima in 1578, sentenced by a tribunal that included Acosta, is a case in point. De la Cruz’s “heresy” consisted of asserting that the salvation of the Indians did not necessarily depend on their being Christians—believing in Christ or knowing of Him—but rather in simply leading a virtuous life. The thesis of this Dominican heretic, whom Acosta alludes to, without naming him, as the “pseudo-Pablo” (1987: 215), assumed that other worlds were possible: if the Indians could achieve salvation without knowing Christ or without following the precepts of Christian life as outlined by the Church, then Christianity itself was unnecessary either in Peru or anywhere else.⁸ Accordingly, the Spanish Empire was also superfluous.

The ideas put forward by de la Cruz and the reality of the Indies brought Acosta face to face with the irrationality of the Christian myth. In the case of America, Christ was not an origin already present in the cultural and linguistic horizon of its inhabitants; in America, he had to be fabricated. This logical impasse confronted the evangelizers with the fact that Christ was an empty signifier for the Andean peoples. And yet Spain’s sovereignty over the territory and its inhabitants was founded upon this void. Consequently, in Acosta’s text, Christianity is an irrational proposition transformed into law. Furthermore, Christ as a comprehensible and significant message does not figure in De procuranda, despite the many chapters that Acosta dedicates to the matter. Only as a command does he appear on the horizon of the New World. “El misterio de Cristo,” avers Acosta, “no obligo a comprenderlo nadie, porque es de pocos; pero digo que deben creerlo todos” (1987: 219) (I don’t require anyone to understand the mystery of Christ, as that is only for a few; but I say that everyone must believe in it). Once this premise is established, without which it was possible to imagine (just as both de la Cruz and Bartolomé de Las Casas, each in his own way, had done) a world in which the inhabitants of America could continue to live in their territories without the need (and much less the obligation) to know Christ or to follow the preaching of his “emissaries,” Acosta outlines his reforms for the domestication of a grotesque colonial reality.⁹

The Heart of Darkness: The Origin of Sovereign Power

According to Acosta, evangelization in the Americas had yielded such meager fruits not only because of the obstacles inherent in the enterprise (the persistence of Andean religious beliefs, for example) but also due to the methods employed up to that point (1984, Book 1: XI). The violence perpetrated by soldiers and the abuses committed by missionaries and bureaucrats were impediments to the establishment of a government that could promote a true conversion. Thus, an important objective of his text is to proclaim the imperious need to discipline the corps of officials charged with the colony’s political, religious, and military administration. The danger for the Spaniards of falling into a moral abyss was linked to the perversion of the will to power in the absence of oversight.

Furthermore, this descent seemed assured by the small numbers and fragmentation of the colonizers, who were an isolated minority in the new territories. In contrast to the experience of the Apostles, writes Acosta:

entre nuestros ministros del Evangelio, [es] sorprendente la soledad. De ella va brotando, en primer lugar, poco a poco la desgana; después la permisividad, al no haber testigos de su pecado ni temor alguno de reconvención; finalmente tras la caída la enmienda se retarda y se hace difícil, al carecer de médico. De ahí el hábito de pecado, a continuación el olvido de toda obra buena, finalmente la pérdida de esperanza en una enmienda de vida. (1987: 105)

(among our ministers of the Gospel, the solitude [is] surprising. Fr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Series Page
• Contents
• Introduction: Negotiation between Religion and the Law
• Part I. Politics
• Part II. Religion
• Part III. Law
• Afterword: Teleiopoesis at the Crossroads of the Colonial/Postcolonial Divide
• Contributors
• Index
• Series List