‘Teatro de trágicos sucesos’ (XIII. 1190): The Silent Centre and the Intractable Frontiers of the Indigenous Antarctic World

This wry evasion of the staging ground of Miramontes’s predecessors is characteristic of the poem as a whole. While the wars in Chile are occasionally alluded to, they are never developed as an independent narrative strand. There is a suggestion that this evasion is in large part because since the 1598–1604 Curalaba rebellion, the region is now a hopeless prospect for Spanish victory, and the degree of parity between forces necessary for an epic retelling has been destroyed. When the 1598 revolt is described in the prophecy of the Inca sage Rumiñave during the story of Chalcuchima and Curicoyllor, the violence appears both widespread and virtually irremediable:

This unfettered pessimism regarding the Chilean frontier reflects the broader climate of public opinion in the wake of Curalaba. While, as Chapter 3 discusses, such pessimism was mounting throughout the reign of Hurtado de Mendoza if not before, the devastating rebellion proved a decisive watershed. The loss of the governor, Martín García Óñez de Loyola, of large numbers of men and of seven cities south of the Biobío – a territory never fully recuperated during the colonial period – was shocking and conclusive proof that the campaigns conducted in the region over the course of nearly half a century were not quelling resistance, indeed that the whole of Chile might yet be lost.1 Martínez discusses the ‘lastimosas relaciones’, the popular pamphlets detailing terrifying reports of casualties from the Chilean frontier which proliferated in the cities of the viceroyalty around these years and helped to foment the atmosphere of despair, in Front Lines, pp. 150–52.

At the same time, Miramontes’s description of the conflict must be read in light of what followed these disasters. The first, unprecedented response of the Crown was to dispatch a surge of peninsular troops and funds to supplement the local forces, an emergency measure which soon proved to be a regular and costly fixture, and which gave Madrid an additional reason for concern with the pace of pacification in the region. Initial optimism met with another shock in 1606 at the coal mine of Paloseco, when an ambush on Spanish forces led to a hundred deaths, the abandonment of the territorial gains made, and a new rebellion against the now dangerously depleted army. Meanwhile, an alternative proposal was taking shape. Even before the turmoil of 1598–1604 had fully subsided, voices from Santiago began to clamour that Mapuche intransigence was the direct result of the injustices perpetrated by the colonists, most notably the servicio personal rendered to encomenderos. In 1603, a junta in Lima including the oidor Juan de Villela and the Jesuit Luis de Valdivia formulated a plan, endorsed by the viceroy, to phase out the personal service of Amerindians (and replace their labour with imported black slaves), abolish the enslavement of prisoners of war and extend a general pardon to the rebels.2 On the extent of the enslavement of indigenous Reche-Mapuche during the seventeenth century, which was not confined to prisoners of war, see Van Deusen, ‘Indigenous Slavery’s Archive’. This initial plan met with resistance from the governor of Chile and was not successfully implemented, but the initiative was reformulated in 1607–09 and eventually ratified by the Crown in 1612 under the rubric of guerra defensiva, defensive war. The new proposal was to set the reforms on a more permanent basis by establishing a fortified frontier or raya along the Biobío, across which the only parties to pass would be the peaceful envoys of Church and commerce.

The final phase of composition of Armas antárticas, then, coincided with the most intense period of debate in Lima over the future direction of policy in Chile, a period in which representatives on both sides arrived to make their cases. Miramontes’s approach to the Chilean conflict cannot be understood in isolation from this context, and his silences in this regard are often as eloquent as his emphases. One salient observation is that, while piracy and the Chilean frontier tended to be intimately connected in the popular and official imagination, in Miramontes they are not. The coincidence of the Curalaba rebellion with the Dutch attack on the island of Chiloé fostered fears of heretical forces gaining a foothold in the region and expanding northwards from there, and one persistent argument of those who argued for a continuing war of (re)conquest to the south of the Biobío was the need to secure the territory against foreign interference.3 For example, Luis de Valdivia, Señor. El Padre Luis de Valdivia de la Compañía de Iesus […] ([Madrid(?), [1610(?)]), fol. L2v. In Miramontes, as we have seen, the two threats are entirely separate, with no breath of an intended Araucanian–English alliance or foreign settlement of the region. The frequently voiced fear of a ‘domino effect’, that the effective achievement of independence by the southern Mapuche might foster unrest or emigration among the settled native groups, and extend from there into Peru, is equally dismissed. While the ravaging of Chile is tragic and horrifying, it is nonetheless a space firmly confined ‘dentro de sus límites’ [within its boundaries]; the threats to leave Arauco and mount an invasion of Spanish territory periodically uttered by the caciques in Oña and Ercilla do not feature here. Finally, there is no suggestion that Chile affords any promise of riches, social advancement or display of heroic virtues. Cumulatively, therefore, for all that Miramontes studiously avoids direct engagement with the contemporary polemic concerning the guerra defensiva, his rhetoric allows little advantage, and less feasibility, to its alternative.

The Araucanians are not the only indios de guerra who feature in the poem, however, and the brief appearances of other frontier peoples suggest that the implications of Miramontes’s approach extend beyond the Southern Cone. Shortly after recalling the wars in Arauco, Drake mentions the ‘sangrienta guerra’ [bloody war] with the ‘fiero zacateca’ [fierce Zacateca] at the northern end of the Pacific coast (III. 232), alluding to the prolonged Chichimeca War of northern New Spain (1550–90), but in the event he sails swiftly past this conflict too. Later on, Fasquindia, one of the indios urabaes or Sinú peoples of present-day Colombia (X. 911) has a cameo part in the final battle between Oxenham and his cimarrones and the Spanish troops. The character is a gross caricature of a people which in fact possessed one of the most sophisticated material cultures of the region. Gigantic, demonic and hungry for human sacrifice, his trunk-like mace, tiger skin and grotesque combat with the Spaniard Campomanes are a deformed echo of the Araucanian–Spanish combats of Oña and Ercilla, except that the ‘monstruoso cuerpo’ [monstruous body] (X. 916) of the cacique, and presumably the people he led, is dispatched uneventfully to Hades in a matter of some six stanzas. The last such people to appear are the inhabitants of the Magellan Strait, at the very extreme of the Antarctic world, who prove bellicose, treacherous, mired in diabolical practices, monstrously gigantesque, and, in sum, entirely ‘intratables’ (XVIII. 1569). Feigning friendship with Sarmiento and his men only to mount a violent attack on the newcomers, they are easily scattered by the Spanish firearms, but remain unsubdued. The peripheries of Panama, Patagonia and New Spain, then, are at once as unpromising a prospect for the colonial project, and as inconsequential in the larger struggle to defend it, as those of Chile.

As Díaz Blanco demonstrates (pp. 169–71), the guerra defensiva in Arauco formed part of a broader shift in overseas policy during the government of Philip III and his favourite, the Duke of Lerma, with whom Viceroy Montesclaros was closely aligned. The term was applied not only to Chile, but also to the armistice with Holland (1607), and corresponded with treaties with France (1601) and England (1604). This new direction began even earlier in the Americas. In 1585 measures began to de-escalate the Chichimeca War, scaling down a long and costly guerra a fuego y sangre in favour of a ‘peace by purchase’ programme, which continued under the reigns of Gáspar de Zúñiga Acevedo, Luis de Velasco and Montesclaros, who carried their ideas to Lima when they were reappointed after their term in New Spain as viceroys of Peru.4 Horacio Zapater, La búsqueda de la paz en la guerra de Arauco: Padre Luis de Valdivia (Santiago de Chile, 1992), pp. 50–57. Comparable initiatives followed in present-day Bolivia, Argentina and Paraguay in the Chiriguano (Ava guaraní) conflict, which had similarly reached its zenith between the 1560s and 1580s. In 1584, Philip II granted an unusual licence for total war, but the turn of the century saw concerted efforts to defuse tensions. An intense debate over just war in Tucumán in fact coincided with the polemics concerning Chile, as Montesclaros saw himself obliged to restrain the expansionist ambitions of its governor, the Chilean veteran Alonso de Ribera.5 Latasa Vassallo, Administración virreinal, p. 627. Contemporary commentators certainly noted parallels between these various initiatives.6 For example, Valdivia, Señor ([1610(?)]), fols K1v–2r, L2r. Such changes of tack were united, as Díaz Blanco puts it, by the conviction that ‘if a war could not be swiftly brought under control, it was preferable to sacrifice a little patrimony and reputation rather than eternally shoulder a slab which not even the most powerful monarch on earth could endure’ (p. 169). In sum, a continuing, expansive war on the margins of the Viceroyalty is regarded with decided scepticism in Armas antárticas. These spaces are dystopian centres of violence, whose inhabitants are brutish and intractable, but not liable to cause any serious disturbance beyond their own frontiers.

If the perceived challenges presented by the indios de guerra of the frontiers are thereby isolated and marginalised, those of the indios de paz at the centre of the Viceroyalty are effectively silenced altogether. As we have seen, the opening canto resumes an account of the ‘cosas de guerra’ which so fascinated Ercilla’s early readers, although transplanted from Chile to the conquest of the Inca Empire. The battle of Cajamarca is dense with allusions to the battle narratives and lexis of La Araucana, from the weapons of the indigenous warriors, ‘de pica, dardo, maza y flecha armados’ [armed with pikes, darts, mace and arrows] (I. 17), to the suggestion that the warriors sprout up from the soil itself (I. 18), to the characteristically gratuitous violence and bombastic turns of phrase (‘furibundo aliento’ [furious panting], ‘horrendos golpes desiguales’ [dreadful, fearsome blows]). As in many of the Chilean battles, the combat eventually turns into a massacre, with the barbarian army dismembered, decapitated and spilling out palpitating organs when confronted with the cavalry and artillery of the Europeans. There is, as in Ercilla, a clear social divide between the ‘común poblacho amedrentado’ [common, fearful masses] and the loyal nobles (I. 37), who resist until their king is captured. Nor are questions over the justice of this conquest muted. The capture of Atahualpa is said to be permitted by God as the only means of allowing the Gospel to be sown (I. 15–16), and accompanied with prayer, prodigies and a detailed summary of the Requerimiento (I. 19–31). His execution, however, is not. The hapless Inca’s insistence on the injury inflicted to his sovereignty (I. 27) is taken up again with the ‘epic curse’ of his traitor Felipillo (I. 52–61), who traces an uncomfortable analogy between himself and Pizarro.7 Quint, Epic and Empire, pp. 99–130; Firbas, ‘Galvarino y Felipe’, pp. 655–66.

The crucial difference between this account and the conflicts of La Araucana is that in contrast to the latter, whatever nagging doubts remain over its original justification, the conquest of the Inca Empire is conclusive. A definitive line is drawn between the pre-Christian past and evangelised present of the region, and any suggestion that the independent spirit of the noble Inca warriors will persist despite defeat, or that the mantle of Atahualpa will be assumed by a successor, is decisively excluded. Moreover, just as the demonic oracles and voices of criticism of the conquest fall silent at the pass of the conquering army, so too do questions concerning the subsequent governance of the Amerindian community. Given the contemporary concern with the depopulation of the Andes and resettlement initiatives, with the corruption of curacas and officials and the poor levels of Christianisation, and with the perceived problems of ethnic intermingling and mestizaje, which were about to coalesce in the so-called extirpación de las idolatrías [extirpation of idolatries], Miramontes’s silence on such issues is itself significant.8 See, for example, the strident condemnations and apocalyptic warnings of the impending consequences of abuses of the Amerindians in Miguel de Monsalve, Reducion universal de todo el Piru, y demas Indias, con otros muchos avisos, para el bien de los naturales dellas, y en aumento de las Reales Rentas […] ([Madrid(?)], 1604). Whether irrelevant from his urban and maritime outlook, or deemed too dangerous to broach (perhaps with the censorship of Arauco domado in mind), the overall effect is to suggest that no such complexities exist.

This approach also excludes the anxiety that Amerindian discontent with Spanish rule might lead to a willingness to ally with the corsairs. This was a spectre frequently raised by the English themselves, and one that emerges both in other poems, such as Castellanos’s Discurso del capitán Francisco Draque (c. 1586–87) and Martín del Barco Centenera’s La Argentina (1602), and in contemporary documents.9 For instance, the only survivor of Sarmiento’s colony, Tomé Hernández, who was rescued by Cavendish, claims repeatedly that Cavendish and Drake planned to colonise parts of South America, confident that the Amerindians would aid them: José Miguel Barros, ‘Primer testimonio de Tomé Hernández sobre las fundaciones hispánicas del Estrecho de Magallanes’, Anales del Instituto de la Patagonia, 9 (1978), 65–75 (pp. 72–73). In Armas antárticas, by contrast, at the only moment in which the tributary Amerindians do intervene in the struggle against the pirates, when Cavendish lands on the island of Puná near Guayaquil, they are noted only by their absence. Dutifully withdrawing from their village to provide a bait for the greedy English (XX. 1679), they show no inclination either to aid the invaders or to participate directly in defending their territory, quite literally vacating the scene to allow the Spaniards of Quito their moment of glory. The fleeting appearance of the Indians of Arica, glimpsed on horseback from a distance with canes in their hands to fool and intimidate the approaching English, has a similar effect; the riders are visible only as a hazy silhouette, passively partaking in the stratagem of the Spanish captain (XX. 1671). This virtual invisibility of the Amerindian population in post-conquest Peru is one of the most striking changes in comparison to Miramontes’s predecessors. As José Antonio Mazzotti notes, they are apparently missing from the coastal militias, which were in reality ethnically mixed;10 José Antonio Mazzotti, ‘The Dragon and the Seashell: British Corsairs, Epic Poetry and Creole Nation in Viceregal Peru’, in Álvaro Bolaños and Gustavo Verdeseio, eds, Colonialism Past and Present: Reading and Writing about Colonial Latin America Today (Albany, NY, 2002), pp. 197–214, and Mazzotti, Lima fundida, pp. 175–222. to which it might be added that, aside from the two incidents mentioned above, they do not seem to be present either in metropolis or ports at all.

There is, of course, one major exception. In the story of Chalcuchima and Curicoyllor, whose source is unclear but which has parallels with a similar story included in Miguel Cabello de Balboa’s 1586 Miscelánea antártica [Antarctic Miscellany] and with the eighteenth-century Quechua drama Ollantay, the history of the Inca Empire is addressed at length, and with evident fascination.11 The differences between the three versions are analysed in Firbas’s introduction to the poem, pp. 105–15. On the one hand, the choice of subject does not necessarily reflect a genuine interest in the contemporary Amerindian community. Tauro notes that the pre-Hispanic past was a favourite topic of the Academia Antártica, usually untroubled by any attempt to relate its historical figures to the ‘humbled subjects’ of the present (p. 15). After the final defeat and execution of Túpac Amaru and the destruction of the Inca stronghold of Vilcabamba in 1572, there seems to have been a trend for literary reimaginings of the Inca past in the guise of the popular pastoral romance, which Miramontes combines with echoes of the Moorish romance and the comedia. On the other, the choice of how to represent indigenous history was never politically neutral. One of Miramontes’s possible sources, for instance, Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa’s Historia índica [History of the Indies] (1572), was specifically intended to bolster Francisco de Toledo’s policy of presenting the Incas as tyrants and not true lords. Conversely, Cabello de Balboa’s version of the story presents Spaniards, indigenous elites and their mestizo offspring alike in an ennobling light at a moment of acute deterioration in relations.12 Sonia Rose, ‘Una historia de linajes a la morisca: Los amores de Quilaco y Curicuillor en la Miscelánea antártica de Cabello Valboa’, in Karl Kohut and Sonia Rose, eds, La formación de la cultura virreinal (Madrid, 2000), I, 189–212. While the interpolated tale is introduced with disarming sprezzatura by its raconteur, then, as civilised entertainment for a calm, homeward-bound voyage, its inclusion – rather like Ercilla’s ‘verdadera historia de Dido’, which almost certainly provides a precedent for the digression – requires the negotiation of competing historiographies, which in themselves tap into controversial contemporary questions.

In this light, to begin with, the reader is left in no doubt during the course of Arana’s tale about the policía of pre-Hispanic Inca society. As Chapter 3 illustrates, a capacity for ‘true’ love and civility were intimately associated in the literary culture of a Viceroyalty very much under the spell of Renaissance Petrarchan and Neoplatonic sensibilities, and the denial of the former to a given community generally correlated with the denial of the latter. Like the Araucanian nobles of Oña, Miramontes’s star-struck couple love with unquestioned courtesy and reciprocity, but also surpass the former in their chastity and steadfastness. Like ‘dos templados instrumentos’ [two instruments in tune], their souls are fused together as ideal Neoplatonic lovers (XIV. 1218). The supposed idolatry of Inca society is similarly downplayed. A reverence for the sun god Apollo appears to be pseudo-monotheistic, while the panoply of Greco-Roman mythological convention forms an inoffensive backdrop to the pastoral scenes. References to more suspect beliefs and practices such as sacrifice, emperor worship or diabolical rituals are absent, with the only borrachera being an anomalous and purely secular event. The emphasis here is thrown into further relief by the sharp distinction between the Incas and the neighbouring caribes of Vilcabamba with whom they come into conflict. The latter are mired in diabolical practices, including infanticide and human sacrifice, their savagery far exceeding that of Oña’s Araucanians.

The nature of the rule exercised by the royal Inca brothers, with whose internecine struggle the fate of the two lovers is bound up, as Curicoyllor is forcibly wed to the younger, before she and Chalcuchima flee to the protection of the elder, is more ambivalent. It is complicated from the outset by a gradual transformation in their two characters. While the newly crowned Inca Chuquiyupangui of Cuzco first appears on the scene as a tyrant in the making (XI. 990), whose suspicion, envy and deceit lead him to incriminate and attempt to execute his virtuous brother, he subsequently undergoes a surprising reform. Early on, he repents of his behaviour under the influence of good advice, and later restrains the ‘primer movimiento’ of desire for Curicoyllor in order to protect and honour the fugitive couple as conscience and the assembled nobles dictate. The affable Infante Chuquiaquilla, who establishes his court in Vilcabamba, takes the opposite trajectory, from virtue and sagacity to lust, decadence and reckless treachery, eventually sending assassins to kill Chalcuchima in his brother’s capital and attempting to mount an unjust war on Cuzco before beating an ignominious retreat. The question of Inca governance more broadly is treated with similar ambivalence. The origin of Inca rule depicted in ekphrasis in the throne room of Cuzco is clearly illegitimate, imposed ‘en ultraje | de los caciques que en la tierra había’ [in violation of the caciques who already lived in the land] (XVII. 1462). The topical corte–aldea, or court–country, opposition is also stressed, as the rich courtly ceremony of Vilcabamba is compared unfavourably to the modest idyll of the shepherd Oparo who lives in contentment outside it. At the same time, the two cities are nonetheless causes of marvel in their civic, artistic, architectural and landscaping achievements; justice is generally upheld, and the overall representation is of an ordered political community with some analogies to the ritual life and festivities of Spanish American cities.

While preserving a hint of the historical illegitimacy of Inca rule, then, Miramontes clearly nuances the earlier campaign to present the Incas as tyrants. At the same time, he distances himself from the alternative approach of idealisation most notoriously expounded in the Inca Garcilaso.13 While Miramontes could not have known the Comentarios reales, the first part of which was published in 1609, it is tempting to speculate that he might have come across Inca Garcilaso’s translation of León Hebreo’s Diálogos de amor (1590); the relationship between Chalcuchima and Curicoyllor is certainly suffused with Neo-Platonic concepts. The Incas of Armas antárticas are complex characters, no more inherently flawed or virtuous than the sovereigns of contemporary kingship dramas whom they resemble. While civil war is shown to be constantly brewing within the royal family, it is, in the event, entirely bloodless and offset by the mediating influence of the aged counsellor Rumiñave, generating a delicate, but not impossible, balance of power. Intriguingly, there is no attempt, such as Cabello de Balboa had made, to relate the tale explicitly to post-conquest history. While there are clearly echoes of later events, in nomenclature, settings and most obviously Rumiñave’s prophecy as he interprets the strange sculptures which depict the future lords of Peru, the contact between Europeans and Inca nobility with which Cabello de Balboa’s love story concludes, holding up the possibilities of patronage and marital alliances, is entirely absent. The final union of the protagonists is abruptly and tragically severed without progeny, and the two worlds remain separated by a historical chasm.

It does not seem quite accurate to suggest that this complex depiction of the flourishing of the Inca Empire has no bearing on the present of the region. There is, admittedly, no explicit indication of continuity, depicting entrenched customs still in need of reform or attributes of shared identity as Oña had done. The story remains firmly rooted in its temporal remoteness, and when it concludes, the poem’s narrative resumes its regular course without comment or reaction. There are, nonetheless, subtle analogies with later history. As we have seen, the ‘fe’ of Amerindian heroines and of Dido in La Araucana is associated with the independence and resistance of the republican community, while its apparent absence in the blithe couples of Oña suggests the happy possibilities of colonial settlement. The fidelity of Chalcuchima and Curicoyllor, by contrast, arguably points towards their future incorporation into universal Christendom. It is frequently shown to be a sign of divine favour and virtuous disposition which allows a glimpse of future enlightenment and salvation (XV. 1302–03, 1349; XVI. 1443; XVII. 1471).

In sum, then, while there is a stark differentiation between the Amerindians of the centre and the frontiers of Armas antárticas, they reflect a consistent approach towards the questions of conflict and assimilation within the viceroyalty. While the former are, via the description of their past, highly individuated and able to participate fully in the political, amorous and artistic languages of Europe, the latter are ‘intratables’, possessing only the most rudimentary material culture and constituted into a loose and precarious political community. The former use war as an art, for self-defence or political gain. The latter live and breathe warfare, and while no match for the Spaniards (or Incas) in pitched battle, are nevertheless able to resist in a seemingly interminable cycle of violence when their territory is infringed. While the former seem, even in pre-Hispanic times, inclined by virtue and nature towards receipt of the message of salvation, the latter appear at best obtuse, and at worst mired in diabolical practices.

In total terms, such differences constitute a post-facto explanation for maintaining the practical boundaries of the Viceroyalty where they lie, as supporters of the guerra defensiva effectively advocated. Once the era of clemency arrives (I. 4) and the Gospel is swiftly sown, the latent possibilities of the Amerindian community of the Central Andes are realised, and its members become a fully Christianised and subdued, if fully separate, component of the colonial polity. If these inhabitants are thereby silenced, those of the frontiers are simply pushed to the margins, enclosed within a dystopian space beyond which they are as incapable of influencing events as their would-be conquerors are of imposing their will upon them. While these conclusions have important implications for the emerging dialogue concerning warfare and expansion which I will consider shortly, the immediate effect of this binary representation of the indigenous communities of Armas antárticas is to neutralise both with regards to the defence of the shores of Peru against heresy. For differing reasons, neither community presents a challenge to Spanish hegemony in the region, and neither constitutes either potential allies or effective opponents of the corsairs. The centre of gravity of the conflicts in the region therefore shifts decisively from inlands to coast, and it is to this new war against piracy that I now turn.