The Role of theCatholic Church in Colonial Peru

OnNovember 15, 1532, Francisco Pizarro led a procession of Spanish conquistadorsto the area surrounding Cajamarca, a prominent Incan city. These men had onlytwo things on their minds, conquer and convert. From their position outsideCajamarca, Vincente de Valverde a Dominican friar entered the city unarmed foran audience with Atahualpa, the Inca. He told Atahualpa of Jesus, the Pope, theHoly Trinity, the Christian God, and then handed him the Bible. After flippingthrough the Bible Atahualpa threw it down; he rejected Christianity and refusedto surrender to the Spanish even with a threat of merciless war. Atahualpadefiantly declared, “Your own god, as you tell me, was put to death by the verymen he created. My god still lives in the heavens.” The horrified Valverde fledback to the encampment of Spanish soldiers to muster up a small army, withsuperior weaponry, to strike down the blasphemous Inca. The conquistadors, ledby Pizarro, charged into the city and massacred most of the six thousandwarriors in it. They captured the Inca, the city, and slaughtered most of thepeople inside it. This marked the beginning of a new era; an era whereCatholicism only worsened the conquistadors’ unnerving treatment of the Incans;and where the Catholic church’s attempts to protect the Incan’s rights didlittle to make up for it.

Thepre-Columbian Incans were a successful civilization. They operated on anauthoritarian social structure, where most of the benefits went to the Inca, or the ruler of the Incan empire.Groups of Incans were separated into ayllus, groups of small families that workedtogether for the good of the community. The Inca followed a polytheisticreligion. Their primary god of worship was Inti, the sun-god. All of the Incasare believed to have been his descendents. This Incan society was fairlysuccessful before the Spanish came to the Americas.

Pizarro’sarrival in late 1531 only exacerbated the precarious circumstances that alreadyexisted across the empire. A civil war between Atahualpa and supporters ofHuascar, Atahualpa’s older half-brother and fierce rival had been raging.Originally the two shared the empire, until Atahualpa left his domain in Quitoand invaded Huascar’s territory. Atahualpa eventually executed Huascar.Pro-Huascar auxiliary troops joined Pizarro early on in his conquest of Peru.

TheSpanish forces of Pizarro, reinforced by native auxiliary warriors and Diego deAlmagro moved swiftly through Peru, conquering everything in their path. Aftermilking the Incans for ransom gold, Pizarro forced Atahualpa to convert to Christianityand then executed him; obviously they did not value Atahualpa’s conversionenough to let him live. The apparent juggernaut that was Pizarro’s army plowedtheir way to Cuzco, the capital of the Incan empire. Exactly one year after thecarnage at Cajamarca, the Spanish captured Cuzco; and placed Manco Capac II,kin of Huascar and his followers on the Incan throne as a Spanish puppet. Pizarro,now the governor of Peru, seemed to have a firm grip on the Spanish colony.

However, Pizarro would only remain incontrol of Peru until 1541. During this time, Manco Capac II would rebel andform an Incan colony in Vilicamba (a city high in the mountains); Pizarro wouldfight a civil war against Almagro, and finally be assassinated by the remainsof his followers. Civil war between the Spanish colonizers would continue until1548, when Pedro de la Gasca restored the authority to the crown of Spain.However, Pedro de la Gasca did nothing to stop the horrible encomienda,instituted by the conquistadors.

The encomienda system gave individual conquistadorsauthoritarian power over entire Incan villages. The encomedero, as the owner ofthe encomienda was called, took land from the natives, taxed them, andpractically forced them into slavery. The encomienda system also forced theIncans out of their normal social structure involving ayllus. The encomederoswere required by the crown to protect and convert the Incans. However, theysimply exploited the Incans for cheap labor and wealth. In many cases therequired priests were not provided. Many encomederos did not believe that theIncans were worthy of or capable of understanding the Catholic Faith.

In 1537, word reached the then currentPope, Paul III, that the encomederos were treating the Incans (and other NativeAmericans) like “dumb brutes created for our service, pretending that they areincapable of receiving the Catholic Faith.” The angered Pope went on to say,when he issued the Sublimus Dei– On the Enslavement and Evangelization of Indians in the New World, “The said Indians and all otherpeople who may later be discovered by Christians, are by no means to bedeprived of their liberty or the possession of their property, even though theybe outside the faith of Jesus Christ and that they may and should, freely andlegitimately, enjoy their liberty and the possession of their property; norshould they be in any way enslaved; should the contrary happen, it shall be nulland have no effect.” The Catholic Church obviously tried to protect the rightsof the Incans, but to what degree were they successful?

The first reaction to the pressurefrom the church was the institution of the New Laws of 1542. These laws called“For the good treatment and preservation of the Indians.” Enconmenderos were nolonger aloud to enslave natives, and the creation of new encomiendas was madeillegal. These laws were mostly ignored by the conquistadors. Something had tobe done.

The Catholic Church and Pope Pius Vput a tremendous amount of pressure on the king of Spain for changes in Peru.Francisco de Toledo, an old friend of the royal family was made viceroy,captain general, and governor of the viceroyalty of Peru in 1569. Toledo iswell known for abolishing the encomienda system. However, Toledo instituted reducciones,or resettlements.Each reduccione was basically a set of houses surrounding a plaza, church,jail, and town hall. Though these new towns were a serious improvement from thecruelty of the encomiendas, they still forced the Incans into a social orderthat wasn’t theirs, and continued to spread alien diseases like small pox. Thereducciones were mainly instituted to make the Catholic Church believe thatsomething was being done; they were in fact a subterfuge to provide labor inPeruvian mines and further native conversion. Reducciones were spread acrossthe colony by visitadoresor small teams of inspectors who burnt down old towns, and created reducciones.We find again, that the Catholic Church meant well, but were not able to makeup for the cruelty of the conquistadors.

Earlier in 1536, Manco Capac IIabandoned his role as a Spanish puppet and established an independent Incansociety high in the Andes Mountains, in Vilcabamba. In 1572, Toledo and an armyof Spaniards vanquished Vilcabamba and the many, many, thousands of Inca thatlived there. The last Inca, Tupac Amaru, was executed, marking the end of theInca Empire.

The Church and conquistadors brought manyreligious changes to Peru. Ideals of human sacrifice and cannibalism wereabolished. The concepts of good, evil, Heaven, Hell, and the modern nuclearfamily (father, mother, children etc.) were all introduced by the Spanish. Therazing of temples and destruction of idols resulted from the view thatexpression of native culture was the work of the devil; book burnings were notuncommon. The affect that religion had on the interaction between the Spanishand Incans was profound. Even the mestizos had a large affect on Inca, becauseof their religious beliefs.

The mestizos were the offspring ofSpaniards and native women. This was one of the ways that the Spanish hoped toconvert Incans. Many mestizos went on to become Jesuits or friars. It wasfairly common for the Jesuits, mestizo or not, to create their own colonies inPeru. They guarded these colonies against exploitation by Spanish, Portuguese,and secular colonies. They were able to convert many Inca to Christianity.

From 1532 to 1572 the Spanishconquistadors performed many horrible acts of cruelty upon the Inca. Whether itbe massacring them at Cajamarca, or exploiting them in encomiendas, religionplayed a serious part. Atahualpa’s rejection of Christianity gave them theright to attack him, and the idea that the Incans weren’t worthy ofCatholicism; or that they were doing their holy duty by converting them gavethe conquistadors a clear conscience. The Catholic Church made a zealous effortto end the brutal treatment of the Inca, but it was not able to make up for theoverall Spanish cruelty. Catholicism had a negative affect upon theconquistadors’ already horrible greed-based treatment of the Incans, and theCatholic Church’s attempts to protect the Incan’s rights did little to make upfor it.

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