Shaky Colonialism: The 1746 Earthquake-Tsunami in Lima, Peru, and Its Long Aftermath

CHARLES F. WALKER: Durham, NC & London: Duke University Press, 2008. On 28 October1746, a devastating earthquake, follow ed by a tremendous tsunami, destroyed Lima and its portof Callao. Deathestimates range from eight to tw enty percent, much higher than the mortalitycaused by the great earthquake and tsunami that devastated Lisbon in 1755. Indeed, the tremendousfifty-foot tidal w ave left few er than 200 alive out of Callao's population of 6,000. Diseasefollow ed in the cataclysm's w ake to claim many more victims.

Charles Walker's Shaky Colonialism is less concernedw ith those natural events than it is w ith the social and political fault linesthat the disaster accentuated. Walker draw s onthe method employed by Robert Darnton, the eminent historian of France,to take a historical event as a prism through w hich culture and society can beanalyzed. Darnton used a story about the massacre of cats by eighteenthcenturyFrench print shop w orkers to reveal the tensions betw een masters, journeymen,and apprentices and to throw light on the superstitions and religious beliefsof Parisians. Walker similarly uses the Lima earthquake to analyze the social and culturalconcerns of colonial Lima at a time w hen theSpanish Bourbon monarchy w as trying to gain greater control over Peru. Thenatural disasters revealed the w eak state of Spanish colonialism in Peru, according to Walker, a specialist inAndean history at the University of California, Davis. Many Limeosturned to religion to explain the destruction, although this conflicted w iththe new , more secular attitudes of the Enlightenment. Through apocalypticsermons and harangues, the Catholic clergy exploited the earthquake to imposeits ow n moral vision on the city. The clergy had been forecasting Lima's destruction longbefore 1746 and afterw ard claimed the disaster w as God's punishment for thecity's sinful w ays. Some prophesied the city's complete annihilation in afuture storm of fire. Bourbonofficials saw the aftermath of the earthquake as an opportunity to imposeenlightened order on the physical and social structure of the Peruvian capital.After taking steps to bury the dead and provide survivors w ith food and w ater,Viceroy Jos Manso de Velasco, count of Superunda, labored to rebuild Lima. For expert advice,the viceroy turned to Louis Godin, a French architect and scientist w ho residedin Lima. Godinproposed and the viceroy decreed that houses in Lima be limited to a single story, thatstreets be w idened, and that w attle and daub replace stone construction. Theyhoped thereby to avoid the dangers posed by collapsing upper stories w henanother earthquake occurred. The law also asserted the government's controlover the city's upper classes, w ho w ere proud of their tw o-story houses. ToSuperunda's dismay, the elite of Limarefused to cooperate. They argued that such a change w ould undercut theirsocial prestige; that by restricting them to a single story, the viceroy made itimpossible for them to loom physically over the low er classes, as the elite'ssocial status entitled them to do. Reconstruction replaced many of Lima's baroque edifices w ith neo-classical buildings, but Lima's elite refused tosubmit w hen it came to their mansions. The disasteralso intensified longstanding concerns about the behavior of "licentiousfriars" and "w andering nuns" w ho upset public order in the capital. Whilecomplaints about clerical behavior w ere not new , they grew once the earthquakedestroyed monasteries and convents. This threw supposedly cloistered nuns into Lima's streets, and monksand friars loitered in the capital instead of performing their missionaryduties on the frontier. Many Peruvians ow ed annuities ( censos ) to the clergy and petitioned the government for relief fromsuch payments. Superunda and other reformers w anted to limit the Church'sinfluence but found it difficult to do much more than join in the complaintsabout w ayw ard clergy. Meaningful secularization had to w ait. One of Walker's most beguiling chapters deals w ith attitudestow ard Lima's tapadas , richly dressed w hite w omen w hopartially covered their faces w ith a shaw l to avoid identification w hile in thestreets. They flirted and enjoyed an independence that offended conservativeand especially ecclesiastical morality. Although the clergy had railed againstthe tapadas long before 1746, theearthquake briefly gave preachers new ammunition in their battle to controlfemale behavior. Walker adds a chapter examining indigenousrevolts that threatened the colonial system around the time of the earthquake.The rebellion of Juan Santo Atahualpa already threatened Spanish control of thecentral Andes to the east of Lima.The earthquake added to festering resentment against the colonial system byindigenous and black inhabitants of the capital. Some of these conspired w ithJuan Santos' supporters in 1750. Although their revolt failed, it fueled theSpaniards' belief that their w orld w as in peril. A few years later an indigenousrebellion in Huarochiri province east of Limastrengthened those fears. One danger ofselecting an event such as the earthquake or Darnton's "Great Cat Massacre" asan historical prism is that it may give the event greater importance than itmerits. Darnton used the cat massacre as a w indow on Parisian social tensionsbut the incident itself

w as trivial enough that it could never be thought tohave caused or increased those tensions. The earthquake and tsunami, on theother hand, w ere catastrophic for Lima.It is difficult to see the catastrophe, how ever, as a cause of much more thanheightened religious hysteria. Shaky Colonialism offers a fascinatingand accessible view of the tensions that beset Lima in the mid-1700s and that bedeviledBourbon reformers w ho came after the Count of Superunda. As Walkershow s, in contrast to the crow n's control over Mexico,certain aspects of Spanish colonialism in Limaw ere surprisingly lax. Yet his focus on Limashould not obscure the fact that colonialism w as more than building height andcontrol of clergy and tapadas . In theAndean provinces the colonial system retained and even strengthened its abilityto exploit the indigenous population to the benefit of the state and thecolonial elite. Kendall Brow n Brigham Young University

Cerrar ventana