Exemplary Violence: Rewriting History in Colonial Colombia

240 Pages·2021·1.915 MB·English

by  Alberto Villate-Isaza

Exemplary Vio lence
Q
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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 Vio lence: Rewriting History in Colonial
Colombia
Exemplary Viol ence
Q
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 rec ord 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 per-
mission 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 Amer i ca
For Paola and Emilio

Contents
Preface ix
Introduction 1
PART I
Narrative Tensions
1 A Rhetorical Balancing Act 21
2 Instructing through Negative Examples 41
3 Nudity Is the Disguise: Po liti cal and
Moral Instruction 6 3
PART II
Authority and Evasion
4 The Authority to Displace and Adapt the Past 89
5 Founding Princi ples 114
6 The Constant Threat of Beauty and Wealth 140
Conclusion 165
Notes 173
Bibliography 207
Index 219
vii

Preface
As I write these words, Latin Amer i ca is in turmoil. Evo Morales was ousted from
the presidency of Bolivia, Chile is still in the midst of large manifestations and
repression, Ec ua dor saw until recently massive protests led by indigenous organ-
izations, and Colombia is suffering from a resurgence of vio lence against indig-
enous and social leaders a fter 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 analy sis of
three historical texts of the seventeenth c entury speak to Latin Amer i ca today?
When I first started this proj ect, 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 surren-
dering to the strong temptation of simply g oing through the motions in an aca-
demic 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 de cided to write in a language that is not the one spo-
ken by the p eople who now inhabit the former Spanish colonies in the Amer i-
cas. 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 unavoid-
able. Ironically, writing in En glish s haped my approach in definitive ways, mainly
as it made me consider the global context that accompanies both the specific
colonial situation during the seventeenth c entury and the repercussions of col-
onization itself. To be clear, my argument does not extend to con temporary
globalization per se. But, due in no small part to the Eng lish language, my initial
approach shifted to a more transhistorical and epistemological understanding
ix
x Preface
of colonization, which, in turn, made it pos si ble to establish an implicit dia-
logue with the pre sent.
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 vio lence that appears to characterize Colombian history. It
was in the colonial period, many years before t here was something even called
Colombia, that I seemed to find, if not its origins, at least its constancy. My ini-
tial impression, as a young undergraduate bewildered by the myth of the twelve
bohíos, was to conclude that t here was something “natu ral” about this per sis tence
of vio lence. Maybe we are prone to vio lence, I told myself, sometimes reinforc-
ing a status quo sustained precisely by the systematic and selective application
of vio lence. What I have come to understand, however, is that the endurance of
vio lence is itself part of the Colombian foundational myth. There is no doubt
that vio lence 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 con-
sidered barbaric and irrational. Imposing Eu ro pean civilization, establishing the
republic, and modernizing the state are all spoken about in terms that, explic-
itly 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 evange-
lization in the current expropriation of indigenous land, or the application of a
hierarchical colonial social order in the enforcement of repressive laws and eco-
nomic reforms.
And third, t hese historical accounts deal with historical h uman beings, not
only with exempla and allegorical images. To paraphrase Anthony Cascardi’s
impor tant question regarding the study of the Spanish baroque: who are the sub-
jects involved and how did they become subjects of control? While my analy sis
focuses on repre sen ta tions of historical figures, the president of Santafé’s audi-
encia 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 p eoples through something more than oppressive and unequal
relations with metropolitan institutions, on how pitting civilization against bar-
barism is not exclusively a matter of externally imposed forces. A more eluci-
dating 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 assump-
tions with the director of the Colombian National Center for Historic Memory,
even though he has publicly questioned the existence of an armed conflict. Auto-
regulation and self- control are fundamental values of rationality and civiliza-
tion, and the bases on top of which colonization reproduces itself. These values
are represented as necessary for the survival of the po liti cal community in ways
that tend to benefit those who see themselves as already civilized and rational.
Those who rebel against the order of t hings are deemed resentful rioters, unrea-