Title
A ‘Personal Visit’: Colonial Political Ritual and the Making of Indians in the Andes*
Date Issued
01 January 1994
Access level
metadata only access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Salomon F.
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Start page
3
End page
36
Volume
3
Issue
February 1
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Historia
Antropología
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-84953480771
Source
Colonial Latin American Review
ISSN of the container
10609164
Sponsor(s)
*The research summarized here was funded by a Regular Grant-In-Aid from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Inc, and by the Graduate School of the University of Wisconsin. We thank P. Julián Bravo, Librarian of the Biblioteca Ecuatoriana Aureliano Espinosa Pólit (Cotocollao, Ecuador) for providing the main source. Karen Powers of Northern Arizona University afforded valuable documentary data. We also thank our colleague Jack Kugelmass and several graduate students at Madison for helpful criticism. 1"El qual juicio de visita tiene su apoyo, en lo que Dios se refiere en el Génesis, quando hablando á nuestro modo dixo que queria baxar y vér, si era cierto el clamor que havia llegado á sus oídos." 2 "El Virrey marqués de Montesclaros comparaba estas visitas a los torbellinos que suele haver en las plazas y calles, que no sirven sino de levantar el polvo y paja y otras horruras de ellas, y hacen que se suban a las cabezas." Montesclaros ruled Peru 1607-15. 3 Visitas personales de indios. 4An encomendero was a Spanish Crown beneficiary entrusted with the governance of a native population and privileged to receive its tribute. Regulating this institution, with its irrepressible potential for neofeudal politics, proved a chronic problem of the early Viceroyalties. 5The appointment of Manuel Tello de Velasco, a judge of the Audience of Quito, as the visitador in the case study below typifies the political utility of the inspection maneuver (Phelan 1967,231, 260-63). 6 The Gramscian concept of hegemony is useful for understanding how the Spanish elites, both metropolitan and local, exerted political, cultural and social leadership not only through naked force but by forging a subtle and active 'consensual worldview' (Gramsci 1971, 58; Mouffe 1979). Hegemonies are generated by elites, but further shaped by forces beyond their command: "We have to push the notion of hegemony into the lived space of realities in social relationships, in the give and take of social life as in the sweaty warm
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