Exemplary Violence: Rewriting History in Colonial Colombia

Exemplary Violence

BUCKNELL STUDIES IN LATIN AMERICAN LITERATURE AND THEORY

Series editor: Aníbal González, Yale University

Dealing with far-reaching questions of history and modernity, language and selfhood, and power and ethics, Latin American literature sheds light on the many-faceted nature of Latin American life, as well as on the human condition as a whole. This highly successful series has published some of the best recent criticism on Latin American literature. Acknowledging the historical links and cultural affinities between Latin American and Iberian literatures, the series productively combines scholarship with theory and welcomes consideration of Spanish and Portuguese texts and topics, while also providing a space of convergence for scholars working in Romance studies, comparative literature, cultural studies, and literary theory.

Selected Titles in the Series

Rebecca E. Biron, Elena Garro and Mexico’s Modern Dreams

Persephone Brahman, From Amazons to Zombies: Monsters in Latin America

Jason Cortés, Macho Ethics: Masculinity and Self-Representation in Latino-Caribbean Narrative

Tara Daly, Beyond Human: Vital Materialisms in the Andean Avant-Gardes

Earl E. Fitz, Machado de Assis and Female Characterization: The Novels

Earl E. Fitz, Machado de Assis and Narrative Theory: Language, Imitation, Art, and Verisimilitude in the Last Six Novels

Naida García-Crespo, Early Puerto Rican Cinema and Nation Building: National Sentiments, Transnational Realities, 1897–1940

Thomas S. Harrington, Public Intellectuals and Nation Building in the Iberian Peninsula, 1900–1925: The Alchemy of Identity

David Kelman, Counterfeit Politics: Secret Plots and Conspiracy Narratives in the Americas

Brendan Lanctot, Beyond Civilization and Barbarism: Culture and Politics in Postrevolutionary Argentina

Marília Librandi, Jamille Pinheiro Dias, and Tom Winterbottom, eds., Transpoetic Exchange: Haroldo de Campos, Octavio Paz, and Other Multiversal Dialogues

Adriana Méndez Rodenas, Transatlantic Travels in Nineteenth-Century Latin America: European Women Pilgrims

Andrew R. Reynolds, The Spanish American Crónica Modernista, Temporality, and Material Culture

Elisa Sampson Vera Tudela, Ricardo Palma’s Tradiciones: Illuminating Gender and Nation

Mary Beth Tierney-Tello, Mining Memory: Reimagining Self and Nation through Narratives of Childhood in Peru

Alberto Villate-Isaza, Exemplary Violence: Rewriting History in Colonial Colombia

Exemplary Violence

Rewriting History in Colonial Colombia

ALBERTO VILLATE-ISAZA

LEWISBURG, PENNSYLVANIA

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Villate-Isaza, Alberto, author.

Title: Exemplary violence : rewriting history in colonial Colombia / Alberto Villate-Isaza.

Description: Lewisburg, Pennsylvania : Bucknell University Press, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020025586 | ISBN 9781684482627 (cloth) | ISBN 9781684482610 (paperback) | ISBN 9781684482634 (epub) | ISBN 9781684482641 (mobi) | ISBN 9781684482658 (pdf)

Subjects: LCSH: Elite (Social sciences)—Colombia—Attitudes. | Violence—Colombia—History—17th century. | Civilization, Baroque—Spain. | Colombia—History—To 1810—Historiography. | Spain—Colonies—Historiography. | Spain—Colonies—America. | Colombia—Civilization—17th century.

Classification: LCC F2272 .V595 2021 | DDC 986.1/02—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020025586

A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.

Copyright © 2021 by Alberto Villate-Isaza

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Bucknell University Press, Hildreth-Mirza Hall, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA 17837-2005. The only exception to this prohibition is fair use as defined by U.S. copyright law.

The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

www.bucknelluniversitypress.org

Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press

Manufactured in the United States of America

For Paola and Emilio

Contents

Preface

Introduction

PART I

Narrative Tensions

1 A Rhetorical Balancing Act

2 Instructing through Negative Examples

3 Nudity Is the Disguise: Political and Moral Instruction

PART II

Authority and Evasion

4 The Authority to Displace and Adapt the Past

5 Founding Principles

6 The Constant Threat of Beauty and Wealth

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Preface

As I write these words, Latin America is in turmoil. Evo Morales was ousted from the presidency of Bolivia, Chile is still in the midst of large manifestations and repression, Ecuador saw until recently massive protests led by indigenous organizations, and Colombia is suffering from a resurgence of violence against indigenous and social leaders after some years of relative tranquility brought about by the peace agreement. All of this is in addition to the ongoing embargo on Venezuela, the unrest in Haiti, and the effects of Brazil’s far-right government. Writing from the United States, I cannot help but ask myself what the relevance may be of this book dealing with the past of the region. How may an analysis of three historical texts of the seventeenth century speak to Latin America today? When I first started this project, I did not have an answer. Not having an answer, however, cannot be the same as throwing one’s hands up in the air and surrendering to the strong temptation of simply going through the motions in an academic setting ever more corporatized. To my mind, not having an answer must not exclude the attempt of producing insights into our current situation.

I can now see that my attempt to answer these questions encountered three main challenges. First, I decided to write in a language that is not the one spoken by the people who now inhabit the former Spanish colonies in the Americas. While the bulk of this decision responds to practical considerations, the fact that I am not (at least directly) writing to a Spanish-speaking audience is unavoidable. Ironically, writing in English shaped my approach in definitive ways, mainly as it made me consider the global context that accompanies both the specific colonial situation during the seventeenth century and the repercussions of colonization itself. To be clear, my argument does not extend to contemporary globalization per se. But, due in no small part to the English language, my initial approach shifted to a more transhistorical and epistemological understanding of colonization, which, in turn, made it possible to establish an implicit dialogue with the present.

Second, four hundred years of historical events separate my object of study from the events unfolding today. A recurrent preoccupation of mine has been to understand the violence that appears to characterize Colombian history. It was in the colonial period, many years before there was something even called Colombia, that I seemed to find, if not its origins, at least its constancy. My initial impression, as a young undergraduate bewildered by the myth of the twelve bohíos, was to conclude that there was something natural about this persistence of violence. Maybe we are prone to violence, I told myself, sometimes reinforcing a status quo sustained precisely by the systematic and selective application of violence. What I have come to understand, however, is that the endurance of violence is itself part of the Colombian foundational myth. There is no doubt that violence is real, brutal, and constant. Yet, its timeless presence has also been used to justify the need for it. As I hope to show, early modern historical accounts pitted alleged values of civilization and rationality against others considered barbaric and irrational. Imposing European civilization, establishing the republic, and modernizing the state are all spoken about in terms that, explicitly or implicitly, refer to the removal of a historical obstacle in order to make way for development. It is hard not to hear the echoes of past religious evangelization in the current expropriation of indigenous land, or the application of a hierarchical colonial social order in the enforcement of repressive laws and economic reforms.

And third, these historical accounts deal with historical human beings, not only with exempla and allegorical images. To paraphrase Anthony Cascardi’s important question regarding the study of the Spanish baroque: who are the subjects involved and how did they become subjects of control? While my analysis focuses on representations of historical figures, the president of Santafé’s audiencia is obviously not the same subject as the current president of Colombia. However, my aim is to shed light on how the logic that validates colonialism deals with colonized peoples through something more than oppressive and unequal relations with metropolitan institutions, on how pitting civilization against barbarism is not exclusively a matter of externally imposed forces. A more elucidating comparison, therefore, would be to think that, despite the differences, I share some traits with the writers I analyze, and that we also share some assumptions with the director of the Colombian National Center for Historic Memory, even though he has publicly questioned the existence of an armed conflict. Autoregulation and self-control are fundamental values of rationality and civilization, and the bases on top of which colonization reproduces itself. These values are represented as necessary for the survival of the political community in ways that tend to benefit those who see themselves as already civilized and rational. Those who rebel against the order of things are deemed resentful rioters, unreasonable interlocutors, or, in eerily persistent language, morally inferior or perverse. It has been a long process from a hesitant PhD dissertation narrowly focused on El carnero to an analysis of the way three colonial historical narratives reinforce the values through which the colonial social elite wished (and failed) to distinguished itself from a barbaric and irrational Other. I hope to have been able to speak to the present situation by reflecting on how colonization strives to control those, within the colonies, deemed responsible for embodying the values of colonization through the internalization of self-control and authority as a prerequisite for participation in the political community.

Something I have always known for certain is that this project would not have been possible without support from St. Olaf College’s Time-Release Grant, and the Willson Center for the Humanities and Art’s Research Fellowship at the University of Georgia. I am also deeply indebted to Sarah Beckjord and Carmen Millán de Benavides. Their mentorship has been a constant source of inspiration. I would like to thank Frans Weiser for reading portions of the manuscript and providing insightful feedback, as well as to the participants of the Tepaske Seminar in Colonial Latin American History at the University of Kentucky: Mónica Díaz, Mariselle Meléndez, Laurent Corbeil, Javiera Jaque, Alexander Wisnoski, Caroline Garriot, Jeanne Gillespie, and Mathew Goldmark, for their criticism and encouragement. I would also like to thank the manuscript’s anonymous readers for their extremely useful comments. Thoughtful and frequent discussions with Jonathan O’Conner, Kristina Medina-Vilariño, Christopher Chiappari, and Silvia Lopez shaped my approach in subtle but no less fundamental ways. And finally, none of this would have been remotely possible without the unconditional support from my family in Colombia, whom I love so much and miss so dearly.

All translations that appear in the work are mine unless otherwise noted.

Athens, GA, November 2019

Exemplary Violence

Introduction

There has never been a document of culture, which is not simultaneously one of barbarism.

—Walter Benjamin, Theses on the Philosophy of History

While not explicitly referring to colonial situations, nor having in its scope sixteenth- or seventeenth-century historical accounts of the New World, Walter Benjamin’s understanding of the practice of history as a contradictory unit¹ allows for rethinking the way colonial historical texts produced from the European perspective are caught in the double role of serving as documents of culture and barbarism. The presence of the latter in colonial texts of the New World is both evident and constant. La brevísima relación sobre la destrucción de las Indias (1552) by Bartolomé de Las Casas is an emblematic case that describes in detail the atrocities committed by conquistadors, referring to indigenous communities as docile sheep mercilessly slaughtered by Europeans acting as savage wolves.² His Apologética historia sumaria (1554), additionally, presents a rigorous argument in favor of considering Amerindian customs and practices as evidence of rationality, as well as proving that the so-called malas costumbres (bad customs) were in no way more perverse than those of pre-Christian European cultures.³ In these two examples, and in spite of the different types of barbarism being defined and emphasized by Las Casas, the term appears inextricably linked to European culture not as its opposite, but as constitutive of it. Las Casas shows that the Spanish empire, while carrying out its civilizing and evangelizing mission in these new territories, is in fact capable of barbaric acts against cultures that are in some ways no less civilized. Equally, Amerindian customs and norms, civilized as they may prove to be, also contain within them some barbaric attitudes in need of reformation, just as it was required in Europe during the Church’s expansion. As Las Casas’s Apologética and Brevísima suggest, barbarism is part of Europe’s own historical development, as well as a component of its present colonial enterprise.

This duality between culture and barbarism leads to a consideration of the role of several colonial historians in disseminating a representation of civilization as being incompatible with barbarism. This is particularly relevant, just as it was in Benjamin’s time, at a pivotal historical moment in which violence takes on an almost ritualistic character⁴ during the early modern period, when Europe took upon itself the task of imposing new social relations, modes of production, and political structures on the New World. Such violence, however, was distinguished from the one perpetrated by Amerindians as it was imbued with a redemptive quality in which the victim was somehow guilty of resisting civilization.⁵ History as a contradictory unit thus widens the understanding of the disciplining mechanisms of the Spanish crown as belonging to una estructura más amplia, de carácter mundial, configurada por la relación colonial entre centros y periferias a raíz de la expansión europea (a larger structure, with global character, shaped by the colonial relationship between center and periphery due to European expansion).⁶ Furthermore, within this conception of history as a contradictory unit, the colonial relationship goes beyond the dynamic between the metropolis and its peripheries to include forces within the colonies themselves that reinforce the dominant structures of power; in other words, what Aníbal Quijano has called the coloniality of power.⁷ Benjamin’s thesis surpasses the scope of fascist or bourgeois ideology and their historical rewritings, and relates closely to the understanding of modernity as a phenomenon dependent on a system of power created by violent European expansion in the New World.⁸

My analysis of three seventeenth-century historical accounts about the conquest and colonization of the New Kingdom of Granada—modern-day Colombia and Venezuela—namely Fray Pedro Simón’s Noticias historiales de las conquistas de tierra firme en las Indias Occidentales (1627), Juan Rodríguez Freile’s El carnero (1636), and Lucas Fernández de Piedrahita’s Historia general de las conquistas del Nuevo Reino de Granada (1676) will emphasize their common role as colonial instruments of power over specific differences provided by the writers’ ethnic backgrounds, social status, or clerical affiliation.⁹ Pedro Simón’s (1574–1628) Noticias historiales, Rodríguez Freile’s (1566–1642?)¹⁰ El carnero, and Fernández de Piedrahita’s (1624–1688) Historia general, while being contemporary texts dealing with the same territory, and therefore narrating some of the same historical events, have never been studied comparatively. While El carnero’s extensive use of historical moments of ire and uncontrollable passions to illustrate the problematic state of the current colonial enterprise is well known,¹¹ it has not been consistently compared with Noticias historiales and Historia general. By reading them comparatively as contradictory units, therefore, I am able to identify two related—and understudied—points of analysis: First, that the emphasis on negative examples—correctives to the perceived generalized crisis of the Spanish empire—responds to the sense of crisis and anxiety that informs Baroque culture, as well as to contemporary ideologies of social and political formation, such as anti-Machiavellianism. And second, that these accounts manifest the interests of the colonial social elite by representing rules for the preservation of colonial territories as part of the larger civilizing mission of the Spanish empire. The fact that these texts deal with the New Kingdom of Granada, a marginal colonial territory, exacerbates Simón, Freile, and Piedrahita’s attempt to bridge the gap between the perceived crisis and their proposed correctives.

Benjamin’s understanding of history as a contradictory unit, furthermore, is useful to connect the duality of culture and barbarism with the historical context of Simón, Freile, and Piedrahita’s accounts. To be clear, my understanding of Baroque culture encompasses not only an aesthetic sensibility distinguished by permanent transgression of its limits, instability, luxury, unproductive excess, and proliferation of perspectives or centers, but also a historical period—what has been referred to as the long seventeenth century (1550–1750)—deeply shocked by a sense of anxiety and crisis felt at every level: from economic instability, food scarcity, and the formation of unfamiliar social relations, to the alteration of traditional values, new epistemological challenges, and emerging expressions of disconformity.¹² As John Lyons has noted in his introduction to the Oxford Handbook of the Baroque, the term Baroque permits us to focus on the dialectic, the tension, between order and disorder, Europe and the Other, the regular and the irregular.¹³ The notion of a conscious, cultivated doubleness¹⁴ that distinguishes Baroque culture both historically and typologically brings to the foreground connections I would like to highlight between the rhetorical strategies of these texts and the ideological interests of the colonial social elite that Simón, Freile, and Piedrahita represent. First, understood as manifestations of Baroque culture, the correctives proposed by Simón, Freile, and Piedrahita respond to the changing historical landscape in a way that appears to run contrary to the alleged problems that besiege society. On the one hand, the example that brings forth instruction is negative; that is, it is meant to show what not to do, and thus demand of representation the ability to evidence that behind its appearance of failure lays an unequivocal moral truth. On the other hand, in addition to transcending its overt meaning by pointing to an allegorical moral meaning, the event chosen to represent historical instruction also needs to reveal its limits by signaling that it is ultimately only appearance, and as such, liable to deception.¹⁵

Second, this duality, evident in the construction of the texts’ narrative strategies, is not the isolated result of an elaborate rhetoric or of an overly complex argumentation. On the contrary, taken as a response to the historical changes of the Baroque period, the tension of demanding an allegorical reading while warning against the dangers of appearance is also the product of Simón, Freile, and Piedrahita’s specific type of document of culture, whose main concern is to reflect on the imposition of civilization on territories and peoples thought to be barbaric. Their attempts to convey a straightforward narrative of political, technical, and moral European superiority, which should naturally impose over inferior cultures, is nonetheless riddled with tensions that aggravate conflicts and ambiguities between the writers’ social interests and personal affective identification.¹⁶ Similarly to the rhetorical contradiction of the texts, then, Simón, Freile, and Piedrahita reinforce (what they perceive to be) the principal tenets of European culture in the New Kingdom through allegorical representations of historical events, while, at the same time, shining light on the contradictions of imposing a more advanced culture when colonizers allegedly behave as barbaric peoples.

The tension between social interests and personal affective identifications can be better understood in terms of interposing layers. The first layer is grounded on the colonizer’s attempt to suppress other knowledges, while instilling imported cognitive perspectives on colonized populations. Although Noticias historiales, El carnero, and Historia general are not missionary manuals directly related to the conversion of indigenous populations, they nonetheless reflect on the development of a historically distinct and well-defined European culture in the New Kingdom, and thus constitute a fundamental tool for naturalizing the colonial enterprise as the imposition of civilization. The understanding of how colonization came to be in the New Kingdom becomes the blueprint for distinguishing political communities with an unmediated relationship with nature from others in which rationally developed laws or norms are considered fundamental principles of social formation.¹⁷ Simón, Freile, and Piedrahita play an important role in reinforcing the values and basic tenets of Europe’s understanding of the world in the New Kingdom, particularly when contrasted with an amorphous, racialized, and negative colonized identity made of thousands of distinct autochthonous Amerindian customs and traditions.¹⁸ However, this layer clashes with the fact that for Simón, Freile, and Piedrahita such a blueprint appears to be faulty. The second layer springs, therefore, from a perception of prevalent individual moral failings in the colonial setting. These texts identify moments of crisis or exception that convey the prevalence of behaviors anathema to ideal tenets of civilization. Barbarism, in this sense, does not refer exclusively to an other—Amerindian or African—but also to types of behavior, ways of thinking, kinds of labor, modes of social relations, and much more taking place inside the colonies. The ideal tenets of European culture, as correctives, also become identity markers that define internal colonial relations.

Considering Simón, Freile, and Piedrahita first and foremost as writers of documents of culture allows for establishing significant connections to the figure of the letrado discussed by Ángel Rama. The colonial Latin American city, according to Rama, reached its initial apogee in the visible concrete application of Baroque cultural patterns, while the inhabitants of the lettered city, trained mainly in Jesuit schools, became specialists in the manipulation of symbolic languages to staff colonial administrative and ecclesiastical structures in direct subordination of the metropolis.¹⁹ Although these connections will be developed in the course of the argument, it is important to note here that these accounts, in addition to reconstructing historical events, also create a symbolic representation of the process of rationalization that supports the historical lesson of the event.²⁰ In other words, Simón, Freile, and Piedrahita are not passively transcribing or recording past occurrences. Instead, they use the historical event to represent dominant cultural parameters while showing to be active participants in their dissemination. This in a historical period where the letrado, and not the conquistador, constituted not only the main producer and consumer of various documents of culture, but also the primary elite dweller of the nascent colonial urban centers. Considering these three individuals as letrados thus enables me to maintain a dialectical tension between the representation of the dominant culture among those who already participate in it and the obfuscation produced within the colonial setting, where many need to be excluded from full participation. An important clarification, however, is that the double game of showing and veiling takes place within the colonial setting rather than in relation to the metropolis. The mechanisms of control in the texts here studied are displayed internally in the hopes of better safeguarding culture from a barbarism that is neither geographically far nor perceived as socially rare. Colonial social relations and modes of production necessitate the participation of individuals who nonetheless have to be hierarchically organized according to imposed norms.

But more than obscuring in the sense of hiding and veiling, the ideological function of these texts could be better explained as obfuscation in the sense of bewilderment, of paralyzing the clear understanding that civilization depends on that which it has claimed to have overcome. In contrast to a blindfold, as it will be analyzed in greater detail, this sort of blindness is conceived as an excess of light produced by a revelation whose purported truth is so intense that there’s no room for thoughtful response. That is not to say, however, that there is no response. Christine Buci-Glucksmann, analyzing the paradox of Baroque vision, refers to a sense of unknowing that would be other than simple ignorance,²¹ which speaks to Simón, Freile, and Piedrahita’s incomplete authority: one that leaves room to examine unintended possibilities. The ideological function of Noticias historiales, El carnero, and Historia general is ambiguous because obscuring the violence that colonization entails is not the result of ignoring it altogether, but rather of confronting values that, allegedly, run contrary to it. As it will become clear, this explains why the texts’ historical instruction is unstable and allows for the possibility of escaping the intended rhetorical control. Reading these accounts as contradictory units, and maintaining their dialectical quality within Baroque culture, is useful for analyzing the way rhetorical ambiguities reflect the response of an elite social group to the anxiety of historical change.

Simón, for instance, a Spanish-born Franciscan friar and missionary, may appear to reinforce the dominant culture acting solely from power relations dominated exclusively by metropolitan providential ideology. Noticias historiales, a detailed account of the conquest of the territory now comprised of Colombia and Venezuela, presents colonization as a primarily apostolic undertake, dominated by the Catholic Church, and closely related to the divine sovereignty of the Spanish crown. It is divided into three parts, each, in turn, subdivided into seven noticias. The first part—the only one published in Simón’s time, in Cuenca, Spain, in 1627—focuses on modern-day Venezuela and on Lope de Aguirre’s rebellion. The other two parts deal with the conquest of the territories east and west of the Magdalena River (Colombia) respectively, paying special attention to the war with the Pijao nation. It would not see the light of day in its entirety until 1892 when it was published by Medardo Rivas in Bogotá.²²

It is worth taking into account that Simón’s travel to the New Kingdom is part of the larger effort by the Franciscan order to reinvigorate their apostolate in the region.²³ He is in charge of educating other young Franciscan missionaries in Santafé and Tunja, and later of conducting an official review in what is today Venezuela to assess the evangelizing efforts of the order.²⁴ His account, while not dealing explicitly with the Franciscan evangelizing mission, is also aware of the need to reinforce and monitor the commitment of those responsible for advancing the colonial apostolic mission. This framework of external imposition, however, did not immunize his account from censure, as only the first part saw the light of day in spite of the support of the marquis of Cañete, his benefactor from San Lorenzo de la Parrilla, where Simón was born.²⁵ The Franciscan order preemptively censored the publication of the text in its entirety, still cautious after Sahagún’s Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España (1545–1585) and the ensuing debate regarding the role of preserving indigenous history and customs for evangelization, as well as to not contravene Philip’s II decree of 1577 forbidding the publication of Amerindian-related matters.²⁶

Simón’s Noticias historiales is thus permeated by the overarching preoccupation of limiting the exposure to Amerindian practices and customs inside the colonies. The account has a reflexive quality in which the colonizer is recognizing supposed threats to his own culture regarding a barbarism that must be confronted. Along with Simón’s work as teacher and official inspector of other Franciscan missionaries, which radically transforms autochthonous knowledges and cosmologies, comes the strengthening of the fundamental tenets of the apostolic undertaking beyond proselytism through history as teacher of individual moral values. However, Simón’s Noticias historiales also struggles to clearly define identity markers that characterize civilized behavior in a colonial environment in which barbarism was perceived to be in close proximity and in dire need of extirpation. As these markers move away from genealogical connections to the metropolis, they become reliant on internalized principles of social relations.

Freile and Piedrahita, similarly, share Simón’s view of the colonial enterprise as being mainly apostolic in nature but closely connected to the Spanish crown’s sovereignty. For that reason, as was the case with Simón, they understand evangelization as complementary to supporting the Spanish empire through wealth extraction. Yet, as subjects born in the New Kingdom of Granada, they also display a more critical attitude toward the squandering of profits and resources by including commentaries or specific examples of such instances. Freile, whose parents were among the first conquistadors of the territory, often complains in his text about the poor administration of resources by colonial functionaries. El carnero is, on the one hand, a traditional chronological narrative that describes the main events of the conquest and colonization of the New Kingdom.²⁷ On the other hand, it also constitutes a clear example of the changing attitudes in colonial historiography during the seventeenth century. Among the more traditional episodes, there are several stories of witchcraft, infidelity, deceit, and crimes of passion, all of which cement Freile’s reputation as one of the most innovative and engaging writers during the colonial period in Spanish America.²⁸ El carnero, therefore, has been commonly read as a denunciatory account that reveals the underbelly of colonial society.²⁹ His critique is also paired with the perception of an awakening Spanish-American consciousness that allegedly instills in him an incipient love for his patria, the New Kingdom.³⁰ This combination of critical attitude and proto-nationalism—along with the text’s difficult classification—has had the effect of canonizing El carnero as a fundamental pillar for the development of what would later become Colombian literature.³¹

Criticism of colonial institutions and functionaries, to be clear, is evident in El carnero. But as critics have also noted, these instances of condemnation are heavily tinted with commentaries and biblical excursus meant to guide the reader’s interpretation to moral condemnation.³² Freile frames these stories of deviancy within a generalized atmosphere of moral corruption, in which elite society is more worried about maintaining appearance and accumulating wealth than in advancing the colonizing enterprise. As it will be developed later, these moral overtones clearly represent Freile’s interests and identifications, and are, consequently, the source of most of the text’s ambiguities. While being outside the metropolis and in opposition to it in many regards (Spanish authorities and newcomers to the New Kingdom erode both his privileges and wealth), Freile reinforces dominant cultural parameters that distinguish the type of social relations most valued by him from those who deserve his condemnation. Interestingly, although Amerindians do not commit these censurable acts exclusively, Freile still identifies their root cause in the indigenous communities’ willful repudiation of Christian teachings. Freile’s social critique and complaints against colonial institutions are instrumental in defining the limits of European cultural values against the perceived barbaric behavior of Amerindian peoples, thus reinforcing the hierarchical social structure which benefits him.

Piedrahita, for his part, shares characteristics that unite him to both Simón and Freile. On the one hand, he is a member of the clergy, and like Simón, occupied high positions within the Church. While not a member of any religious order, Piedrahita became a diocesan priest and doctrinero in charge of catechizing indigenous peoples in the surrounding areas of Santafé (Bogotá), to later occupy the bishopric of Santa Marta and Panama.³³ Historia general, written between 1666 and 1676 mostly while in Spain, is a historical account of the conquest and colonization of the New Kingdom of Granada, encompassing from a hundred years before Columbus’s arrival through 1573. However, his account was not published until the year of his death in 1688. Although Piedrahita promises a second part, which would have covered up through 1630, it was never written.³⁴ The account is divided into twelve books, which alternate between the campaigns of the three major conquistadors of the region who, following different routes, converged where the city of Bogotá now sits: Nicolás de Federmán, who departed from the coasts of Venezuela; Sebastián de Belalcázar, who departed from the city of Quito; and Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada, who followed the Magdalena river upstream from the Atlantic coast of Colombia. The first two books concentrate on the indigenous communities of the territory, their traditions, ceremonies, and customs. Special attention is paid to the Muisca nation, which for Piedrahita show signs of possessing the most sophisticated political, social, and religious structures of the native communities of the region. The last two books describe the despotic inspection of Juan de Montaño. This description is influenced by Piedrahita’s own sour experiences with Inspector General Juan Cornejo a hundred years later.³⁵ According to Sergio Elías Ortiz, Piedrahita also composed a series of autos sacramentales and dramas that are unfortunately lost.³⁶

As an active member of the Catholic Church in the New Kingdom, it is not surprising that his Historia general also considers evangelization the primary role of the colonial enterprise. This certainty in the preeminence of the apostolic mission is, however, undermined by doubt in its future. In an attitude shared to different extents by Simón and Freile, administrative corruption, squandering of resources, and moral failings have, for Piedrahita, an adverse impact on the real possibilities of expanding the Church and supporting the material well-being of the Spanish empire. Piedrahita is also a native of the New Kingdom, but unlike Freile, is of mixed descent. His father was a Spanish hidalgo who, after participating in some conquest campaigns, made a modest living as