‘Vigilando | el orbe que en tus hombros se sustenta’ (I. 6): The Viceroy and the Republic

The oration is in fact a response not only to Camões, but also to Ercilla’s own excursus on the just war in the final canto of La Araucana, as discussed in Chapter 2. Both Ercilla and Miramontes’s veterans begin with a consideration of the universal origins and consequences of warfare before considering the circumstances of particular conflicts. For the former, war, even ‘civil’ war such as that waged against Portugal, is a divine gift to men, falls under the ius gentium and is an instrument for maintaining peace and order in a fallen world, as long as it is employed licitly by a king. For the latter, by contrast, war is the devil’s work, a ‘pestilencia de la tierra, | hija de la ambición y la codicia’ [pestilence of earth, child of ambition and greed] (II. 182), generating an endless cycle of violence which only feeds further evils and obstructs the cause of civilisation, prosperity, politics and religion. It is a perversion peculiar to humanity, yet contrary to human reason, since ‘Sólo el hombre sociable a quien entrego | hizo Dios de razón y entendimiento, | soberbio, intolerable y arrogante | procura destruir su semejante’ [only sociable man to whom God entrusted reason and understanding, proud, intolerant and arrogant, seeks to destroy his own kind] (II.185). The examples of such monstrosities offered are not only instances of civil strife, but include the great conquests of antiquity: Alexander’s defeat of Darius, the siege of Troy, the fall of Carthage to Scipio (II. 183). Indeed, from this universalist perspective, all wars are civil. If, in Ercilla, one cannot fail to recognise the scholastic rhetoric of the jurist’s son, in Miramontes’s disquisition it is above all the voice of Erasmian pacifism which resonates. In the logic of the former, war is a natural, human right and unjust only when wrongfully employed; in the latter, the exercise of arms can prove ‘gobierno político en el suelo’ [political government on earth], but only by exception.

The speech is programmatic for the poem on a number of levels. To begin with, this is the closest it comes to providing a reasoned foundation for the scepticism towards conquest and inclination towards defensive war which will emerge in the cantos that follow. The exceptions to the general illegitimacy of armed conflict – the case of a holy war or the avenging of a public injury inflicted by one sovereign on another, both standard conditions in scholastic treatises of the time – conveniently correspond both to the early conquests of Peru, whose divine inspiration is clear, and to any defensive reprisals taken against the pirates, who carry out the bidding of a hostile and heretical sovereign. What is left unclear at this stage is that any more aggressive or expansive action can be unambiguously sanctioned. Secondly, however, the speech also marks a turning point for the civic political community of Lima. As the previous chapters discuss, in both La Araucana and Arauco domado, the concord of the Spanish American city is always fragile. Rebellion, dissent and unrest are persistent threats, and as a result one of the first duties of the viceroy is to represent and enforce ‘la voz del rey’ among these restive communities. In the account of the civil wars, urban rebellion does feature in Armas antárticas too, and in very similar terms and imagery to the former poems: as a conflagration, whose embers are always liable to flare up again (II. 113, 173); a many-headed hydra; or a darkening storm, dispelled by the rays of the sun (II. 150–51). The poet follows Oña in making the crowd a diverse body of opinion, in which loyal elements are forced to ‘callar’ [keep silence] (II. 130) and the most culpable figures are those in a position of power, and in attributing the success with which the unrest is crushed to the ‘prudencia’ and ‘sagacidad’ of the viceroy rather than the employment of force and terror.

After the ‘viejo sagaz’ works his rhetorical magic, however, rebellion within the city is no longer a concern. It is worth noting here that Miramontes’s confidence in the serenity of the body politic is by no means shared by his contemporaries. In the urban environment, this period saw a transition from unrest spearheaded by a few prominent individuals to more diffuse manifestations of discontent among the lowest strata of society. As Montesclaros would articulate after the 1613 uprisings in New Spain and Potosí, such ill-defined movements presented a new and frightening threat of a conflict that might engulf the whole of society.2 Latasa Vassallo, Administración virreinal, p. 277. An anxiety which features prominently in the official correspondence is that of an uprising which might bring together the various racially categorised castas of the cities of Peru, whose number vastly exceeded that of the Spaniards. One further apprehension was that these might then ally with the so-called ‘soldados’, as indeed occurred in Potosí in 1613.

Clearly, it is in Miramontes’s interests to dispel any concerns about the volatility of the arms-bearing population of the coastal cities. We have already glimpsed the manner in which the humble soldiery is transformed in the poem into a valiant, disciplined and, apparently, ‘hidalgo’ force. What is intriguing is that the civic body politic undergoes a similar transformation. The old man’s speech represents what is effectively a community engaged in an informal exercise of self-governance. The anonymous old man derives his authority from his long experience in both military and civilian life, which makes him an ‘espejo | de prudencia’ [mirror of prudence] (II. 181), rather than from any official position, and he exercises it through a free employment of persuasive speech which can prove effective only through the consensus of his listeners. In this sense, he acts as a symbolic representative of the cumulative wisdom of the community. Such wise former warriors are a standard type of epic, from Homer’s Nestor to Ercilla’s Colocolo or indeed the Rumiñave who features in Miramontes’s Inca legend. Their absence in Oña is testimony to his attempt to strip the Araucanian community of political legitimacy while concentrating the political virtues of the Spanish in the person of Hurtado. In all these cases, though, the figure of the old adviser is represented as extraordinary, a celebrated hero who now exercises the acknowledged privilege of counsel to the ruler-general and an oligarchy of warrior-aristocrats. In Miramontes, conversely, the figure remains anonymous, and his counsel is not restricted to a select few; the entire civic body deliberates and acts on his advice.

The motif of the citizen’s assembly, usually convened to deliberate on the justice and conduct of an armed conflict, is repeated time and again across the course of the poem. When the news of Oxenham’s depredations reaches Panama, the first response is in the hands of ‘los canos viejos de maduro seso, | por la esperiencia de los largos años’ [the grey-haired old men of mature mind, through the experience of long years] (VI. 521). Their leadership is opposed by the hot-blooded youth of the city, who assert that matters of war are ruled by the sword alone (VI. 523). In the event, though, a consensus is reached that matters which concern the whole community, in war as well as peace, belong to age and experience. ‘Los viejos aconsejen y disputen, | los mozos obedezcan y ejecuten’ [let the old men advise and dispute, the young men obey and execute], decree the senior citizens, and the Real Audiencia follow their initiative in dispatching an experienced force to Ballano with a similarly senior and prudent commander in charge. This dynamic is replicated even in the non-Spanish communities which feature in the poem. For all their apparent savagery, the islanders of Cybú nevertheless heed the cunning stratagem proposed by ‘el más anciano’ [the oldest man] (III. 251); Drake’s plan of circumnavigation is first debated by the senior voices of Parliament; when the doubts of the older cimarrones are overruled by the impetuous ‘mozos juveniles’ [youthful men] (V. 392) and the alliance with the English is forced upon the community, it is the first indication of the disaster which awaits the palenque.

Such assemblies are, again, a topos of the epic tradition, but with certain limitations which are not present in Miramontes. Their participants in Ercilla (and a long tradition before and after him) are exclusively noble, while in Oña the plebeian borrachera of the Araucanians and rebellious conciliábulos of the Quito conspirators scarcely constitute political assemblies at all, and the smaller councils convoked by Hurtado are held behind closed doors with select advisers. The critical difference in Armas antárticas is that these councils are open, inclusive, local and civic events, in which authority is accorded on the basis of age and experience rather than any explicit social status, administrative function, or learning. The Spanish community which greets the incursion of the English is, then, one whose model of government is mixed in practice, if not in theory. The spectre of mutiny and urban rebellion which plagues Miramontes’s predecessors here gives way to a civil resolution of conflict through debate and consensus in which a broad sector of the (male, and presumably white) populace participates.

The effective disappearance of armed mutiny, civic unrest, Amerindian resistance and exploitation and expansive warfare from the political horizons of the urban viceroyalty raises one further question: where does this leave the viceroy? In a world in which the civic communities of the colonies are serenely self-governing, while further conquest on the frontiers is no longer a desirable goal, two of the primary functions accorded to the figure in Oña and Ercilla become somewhat redundant. As we have seen, this transition does place greater weight on the primacy of the viceroy’s duties to plan, resource and oversee the defence of the realm’s seaboard, and it is to the viceregal court that representatives of the various polities repeatedly appeal to uphold the ongoing struggle against the pirates. The figure is more than a captain-general, however. While the effective self-governance of both civilian and military collectives might lead to expectations of the viceroy fading somewhat into the background after the second canto, in fact the opposite occurs. Only when the viceroy’s authority is firmly and unequivocally established can the processes of civil government begin to develop, for, as the poet observes, ‘no es posible tenga dura | lo qu’está en su centro violentado’ [it is not possible for anything to hold firm which is forced apart at the centre] (II. 145). Moreover, aside from the specific interventions of viceroys in the unfolding of events, and the dedication to Montesclaros at the outset, two extensive catalogues of historical viceroys feature which allow for a more leisurely consideration of the quality of viceregal rule: in the list of early occupants of the position in the second canto, and in the array of statues and epitaphs prophetically interpreted by Rumiñave in the thirteenth.

Accompanying this is the completion of the relative marginalisation of the Spanish monarch already begun in Arauco domado. Broadly speaking, the sovereign is quite simply a non-actor in this account of Peruvian history, but the poem is bracketed, in the second canto and the nineteenth, by two significant interventions of the royal presence. The first is the thwarted introduction of the New Laws, and the second the dispatch of the armada to settle the Magellan Strait. These interventions share a self-evident zeal for justice and religion with particular regard to the Amerindians, setting out firstly to eliminate an ‘intolerable agravio injusto’ [intolerable unjust injury] (II. 117), and later to spread the Gospel to the inhospitable frontier. Both, however, are abject failures. The expedition to the Strait has already been considered in detail. To this it might be added that the catastrophe focusses the stark vision of royal impotence in the Antarctic sphere which already emerges in the poet’s early apostrophe to Charles V:

As a result, the emphasis falls instead on the necessary virtues of viceregal rule. These are developed in most detail in the two catalogues mentioned above. The vision of the statues in the palace of Vilcabamba is particularly heavily weighted in political terms. It immediately follows Chuquiaquilla’s triumphal entry into the city with his new bride, Curicoyllor, anachronistically accompanied by banners, tapestries, ‘danzas, regocijos, invenciones | de máscaras, libreas, galas, juegos, | hogueras, luminarias, hachas, fuegos’ [dances, celebrations, inventive masks, liveries, finery, games, bonfires, festival lights, candles, fireworks] (XII. 1121), music of ‘dulzainas, sacabuches, chirimías’ [dulzainas, sackbuts, shawms] (XIII. 1122), and ephemeral triumphal arches (XIII. 1125). While all this has very little to do with pre-Hispanic Inca customs, they are immediately recognisable components of the civic celebrations of the Spanish American city. More specifically, the mention of triumphal arches and of the façade of Chuquiaquilla’s palace, which is decorated with images of Jupiter, recalls the official entry into Lima of a new viceroy, who would process through ephemeral arches adorned with allegorical emblems often taken from classical mythology.3 The inclusion of the arches in Miramontes’s description is particularly striking, since Acosta made a point of noting in his Historia natural y moral that the Incas did not construct arches or vaults (p. 298). The façade of the palace emulates the ecphrasis of the palace at Calcutta in Os lusíadas, which is also followed by a catalogue of viceroys; this probably explains why it is the palace rather than the arches that contains the allegorical images. As Osorio puts it, the arches were effectively ‘“mirrors of viceroys”’, and, as in Europe, ‘part of a contractual dialogue of give-and-take between the city and the prince or monarch’, expressing in the case of Lima civic concerns to be addressed and the desired virtue and actions of the incoming ruler.4 Osorio, Inventing Lima, p. 63. The mythological ekphrasis which accompanies the Infante’s procession is in this light highly ironic: a series of the rapes of Jupiter, seen through the tearful eyes of his raped and kidnapped bride Curicoyllor, it marks the beginning of the decline of his rule and makes the violation a mirror more generally of the abuse of power.5 Albeit that, as Valencia notes, it is not without precedent: mythological rape scenes often acted as a display of power in the palaces of Europe, which makes Miramontes’s critique all the more poignant. The Melancholy Void, p. 30. The statues of the viceroys that follow, then, act as a virtuous counterpoint. Representing ‘ilustre majestad’ in their own right, rather than as a reflection of the monarch (XIII. 1139), the viceroys constitute the worthy successors to the Inca dynasty.

Bearing in mind the political function accorded to such ritual displays, one might say that Miramontes here presents his dedicatee with an exemplary history of the functions, virtues (and occasional failings) of his predecessors at the outset of a new reign. While all the virtues which appear are standard and orthodox – prudence, justice, piety, liberality and so on – there are nevertheless some significant silences and emphases. Beginning with the silences, there is no mention of the viceroy’s role as father and protector of the Indians, always one of the first mandates to appear in royal instructions, and the absence of which is particularly striking in the context of a prophecy uttered by an Inca sage to an audience of prospective Amerindian subjects. The viceroy’s duties to the royal treasury are similarly absent – perhaps unsurprisingly given the genre, although this does not prevent Oña from praising his patron’s astute management of Crown finances in the final cantos of Arauco domado. Nor, aside from the passing allusion to the ‘majestad’ exuded by the forthcoming ‘hijos del sol’ [sons of the sun] (XIII. 1143), is there much sign of the sacral mystery of power.6 This is a concept much stressed by Cañeque (although mainly in reference to New Spain), for whom ‘theology was inseparable from political concerns’ in the conceptualisation of the viceroy: The King’s Living Image, pp. 31–45.

Indeed, there is little that is remote or inexplicable in Miramontes’s effigies, despite the fantastic setting. His viceroys are accessible and visible figures, who manifest their virtues above all in a series of concrete interactions with their subjects. These subjects, it transpires, are primarily the urban citizens of the viceroyalty, and especially those of Lima, which adds another resonance to the analogy with the inaugural arches constructed by the cabildo on behalf of the civic community. The virtue of liberality hence translates into a policy of favouring the ‘beneméritos’, by whom the poet apparently indicates serving and former soldiers rather than necessarily the descendants of conquistadors (e.g. II. 113, 176; XIII. 1168, 1176), as well as patronage of the arts (XIII. 1213). That of piety is shown through programmes of charitable and public works, the construction of churches, hospitals, monasteries, bridges and dams (I. 6, XIII. 1177). Prudence is directed especially towards the wisdom of practical foresight (I. 6; cf. II. 177, XVIII. 1510, XX.1654), and this foresight is, as has become clear through the course of this chapter, especially necessary when planning defence.

The viceroys in these scenes appear as not merely virtuous rulers, but in a sense the true heroes of the poem. The ‘bultos distintos’ [individual shapes] (XIII. 1139) of the statues in the palace of Vilcabamba allude to the ‘figuras de bulto’ [statues of figures] in Fitón’s cave in La Araucana (LA XXIII. 67–70), who represent ‘el extremo y excelencia, | de armas, letras, virtud y continencia’ [the extreme and excellence of arms, letters, virtues and continence], while in Rumiñave’s catalogue they are introduced as ‘ínclitos varones | de quien se escribirán altos poemas’ [illustrious men, of whom lofty poems will be written] (XIII. 1140). Both references make clear that these are the fitting protagonists of epic. They are in fact quite literally the worthy successors not only to the less worthy Incas, but also, and more immediately, to the conquistadors, as the glorious effigies of Columbus, Pedro Arias Dávila and Francisco Pizarro are seamlessly followed by those of every viceroy until the present. While military responsibilities loom large in their characterisation, however, these are not generally men of arms themselves. Their heroic musings are directed towards defence, primarily of the coasts, and any measures taken are always delegated, through favouring the soldiery, promoting the strengthening of naval resources, and heeding the counsel of experienced veterans. If Oña’s viceroy is a sun whose rays penetrate to the furthest corners of the region, those of Miramontes appear to illuminate a much more limited, civic sphere – barely emerging, in fact, beyond Lima itself.

To conclude, then, the transition from a polity actively seeking to aggrandise its boundaries to one predominantly focussed on defence brings about a corresponding shift in the character of the political community of the viceroyalty. As the threat of unrest gives way to a model of governance based on broad, if informal, consensus, and directed by figures of pragmatism and experience, the role of the viceroy also shifts correspondingly towards a gentle, republican exercise of authority within a primarily local sphere. This function is nonetheless a heroic one, not least because the effective sovereign of this new sphere must exert control not only over land and cities, but also over a chaotic and unpredictable sea. Arguably, because the fortunes of Miramontes’s poem were wedded to the potential favour of the viceroy, but less decisively tied to a specific individual than was Oña’s, the viceroy emerges as at once a hugely important but also somewhat impersonal character. While there is limited differentiation between one and another, there is as a result a more overarching vision of the nature of viceregal power as a totality, and of its interaction with the body politic. Within this model, the threat of instability is, it might be said, externalised: the pirates who prey on the coast are not, as in other poetic accounts, a catalyst for revealing the cracks and corruption within the viceroyalty, but rather promote internal unity in a shared cause.

There is, however, one element which brings this framework into question: the cimarrones. The question of racial mixture within the city is, as we have seen, a prominent one in the contemporary agitation over potential rebellion. Effectively excluded from those scenes focussed on Lima and its satellite cities and ports in Miramontes, it nevertheless irrupts beyond the city walls, through the intervention in the narrative of the free Africans of Panama. These occupy an uneasy position within the poem, at once ‘other’, foreign and exotic, and a familiar component of the viceregal polity. As we shall see, their presence dissolves much of the comfortable distinction between internal and external conflict carefully elaborated thus far, and transfers much of the ambiguity associated with the Amerindian political community in the earlier poetic tradition to this new, hybrid and distinctively colonial component of the maritime Antarctic world.