In The Bishop’s Utopia, Emily Berquist Soule analyses Baltasar Jaime Martínez Compañón’s tenure as Bishop of Trujillo from 1779-1790. The author draws from personal correspondence, inventories, bureaucratic records and, most prominently, a nine-volume record on the people, history, and the environment in Trujillo commissioned by the Bishop. The author places Martínez Compañón as a reformer steeped in late eighteenth-century Enlightenment ideology. However, Berquist Soule persuasively argues that Martínez Compañón, unlike other reformers, believed the people and environment of the Americas were not innately inferior vis-à-vis Europe. However, because the bishop sought to reform perceived social and economic inefficiencies—such as the inability for natives to climb the social ladder and choose products in an open economic system—Martínez Compañón’s utopian vision clashed with colonial realities. Consequently, as the term utopia implicitly suggests, the author demonstrates that local circumstance, royal policy, and bureaucratic red tape often mitigated the Bishop’s vision.
Berquist Soule successfully examines the intellectual currents that informed Martínez Compañón’s vision of utopia. The Bishop attempted to enact a series of improvements characterized by the larger Bourbon-era reforms to revitalize a financially strapped Crown. At the heart of the Bishop’s reforms was the “Hispanicization” of the native population in which “catholic morality and Spanish propriety” would bloom in urban settlements (2). Although the Bishop was paternalistic, Martínez Compañón departed from his European counterparts on the inherent value of native populations and the American environment. Berquist Soule uses the Bishop’s inventory of books and personal correspondence to highlight his belief that Indians were of a similar “calidad” and only needed improvement through the inculcation of Spanish social mores, language and education (101). The author also focuses on the Bishop’s efforts to create towns and schools and improve the working conditions at the Hualgayoc mine. Most prominently, the Bishop commissioned a nine-volume work entitled Trujillo del Peru, which highlights the fauna and flora of the bishopric through 1372 watercolours. Martínez Compañón hoped to show the Crown that the people and the land of Trujillo could be a productive part of the Spanish empire. Thus, while the Bishop was marked by reformist ideology, Berquist Soule successfully shows that the Bishop believed in the innate usefulness of the Americas.
Berquist Soule underscores the Bishop’s belief in the usefulness of the Americas through his reliance upon native participants and local actors to establish social, economic and religious reform. For instance, the bishop sent two questionnaires to parish priests while on his two-year, eight-month visita of the entire bishopric to gather knowledge on the local populace and environment. Martínez Compañón hoped that if native populations were involved, they would become “willing participants” in the Bishop’s vision of utopia (92). Native leaders requested assistance for the creation of towns and primary schools. Berquist Soule interestingly notes that native leaders employed the language of reform to receive assistance from the bishop, indicating an awareness of the current intellectual climate in the larger Spanish empire. By using such language, natives convinced the Bishop that their visions of utopia intersected. The bishop then attempted to persuade local hacendados (landowners) to offer their land and supply capital for schools. When hacendados resisted, the Bishop employed various local actors to convince the landowners. The town created at San Antonio succeeded due to the combined efforts of natives, clergy, and officials to mollify the resistance of Fernández Otero, the local hacendado.
Berquist Soule also shows how native participation was essential to the creation of the Trujillo del Peru. Native participants gathered the information requested by the parish priests, who then sent them to artists, whom the author believes were most likely native. Although the Bishop and bureaucratic officials compiled the final data, the author argues that native participation in the project demonstrates their desire to promote themselves as contributing vassals to the Crown. In sum, Berquist Soule ably shows that the Bishop relied upon local actors to enact his social, cultural, and economic vision of utopia.
Despite local collaboration on many of the Bishop’s projects, Berquist Soule argues that local and empire-wide realities often mitigated the Bishop’s utopian plans. Hacendados resisted attempts to use their land to build native towns, or employed the language of reform to mollify the Bishop but failed to uphold their verbal decrees. The attempt to build a town at Las Playas failed due to sustained resistance from the hacendados and the lack of a native population to supply adequate capital to create the homes. Bureaucratic officials also extended verbal support for the Bishop to create seminaries, colleges and primary schools for natives, but stopped short of supplying monetary assistance. Regional circumstance prevented the Bishop’s vision of utopia regarding schools. The 1780 Tupac Amaru rebellion in southern Peru heightened fears of similar uprisings. Therefore, officials cast a wary eye towards any change in the social order, particularly when Martínez Compañon suggested successful students be accorded the honorific don and the vos tense, or the ability to wear Spanish clothing. Colonial tax policy and miner resistance to a more capitalistic local economy prevented meaningful change to the social and economic structure of the Hualgayoc mine. Lastly, royal officials disregarded the Trujillo del Peru due to increasing scepticism towards New World methods of data compilation as well as the use of indigenous languages vis-à-vis the new Linnaean system, which used Latin. In many cases, then, competing visions from various actors mitigated the Bishop’s “utopia”.
Berquist Soule’s work is most compelling when the author analyses the inherent tie between visions of utopia and the perceived reality of dystopia. By seeking to correct what Bishop believed to be in error, Martínez Compañón implicitly critiqued the mainstays of colonial rule: a social order in which Indians were inferior, and a closed economic system in which natives were in perpetual debt. Revamping the closed economic mining system towards a more liberal, capitalistic system was antithetical to a colonial regime. Moreover, the Bishop’s attempts to lessen the social divide between Spaniards and natives through dress and deferential language threatened the hierarchy that colonialism attempted to justify. Consequently, Berquist Soule persuasively argues that the Bishop was a man ahead of his time.
While Berquist Soule created a vivid picture of the Bishop’s utopia, less convincing is the author’s use of similar language for the other involved actors. Hacendados and miners who prevented the creation of Indian towns and an open economic system were already living in their “utopia”, and simply desired the status quo. In this instance, notions of “utopia” seem to overstate the visions of the actors. In addition, the author attempts to discern the utopian visions for native populations, but most of the evidence is steeped in Spanish reform rhetoric of “poor” Indians who need assistance. As many authors show, natives often employed expected terminology towards Spaniards to exploit the colonial system for their benefit. As such, while the Bishop believed that his vision of utopia intersected with the natives, it is difficult to discern actual native voices.
Nevertheless, Berquist Soule expertly uncovers both the intellectual climate informing Martínez Compañón’s vision of utopia and the local circumstance that mitigated the Bishop’s efforts. This title is highly suggested for those interested in the intellectual history of the late eighteenth century as well as the process of scientific data collection in the New World.
