Seventeen years after having been appointed Chief Cosmographer-Chronicler of the Indies in 1571, Juan López de Velasco (c. 1530–1598) had yet to fulfill his duty of writing a general history of the Indies. The neglect of this responsibility was referred to in a letter the Council of the Indies forwarded to King Philip II on September 1588, asking the king to appoint someone else to the office of cosmographer-chronicler. The letter was a response to a petition López de Velasco had made for a royal reward. It noted that the reward could not be justified because the council was not satisfied that López de Velasco was fulfilling the obligations of his post as cosmographer-chronicler. The letter further explained that given López de Velasco's current responsibilities as secretary of the Council of Finance, it was unlikely that in the future he would be able to meet his duties at the Council of the Indies.Footnote 1 López de Velasco was not only moonlighting at another government council but he was also successfully eschewing the historiographic duties of his original appointment.
To his credit, however, López de Velasco had diligently fulfilled the cosmographical obligations of his post by completing in 1574 the Geografía y descripción universal de las Indias, and about six years later the Sumario or Demarcación y divisón de las Indias (c. 1580). Why, then, had López de Velasco not met his historiographic responsibilities during the nearly 20 years following his original appointment? Those duties, in fact, remained unfulfilled for the remainder of López de Velasco's tenure as cosmographer-chronicler of the Indies. Although López de Velasco's tenure (1571–1591) saw a high point in the accumulation of historical and cosmographical knowledge about the Indies in the office of the chief cosmographer-chronicler, it did not result in the production of an official history of the Indies. Rather, the structural peculiarities of López de Velasco's bureaucratic post worked against the fulfillment of his historiographic duties.
To appreciate those peculiarities, I posit that López de Velasco's reluctance to write an official history of the Indies is best understood by looking at three interrelated factors: the patronage networks at the royal court and their relation to monarchical bureaucracy; the Council of the Indies' administrative reforms that led to the creation of the chief cosmographer-chronicler's office; and the climate of secrecy and censorship regarding knowledge of the Indies during Philip II's reign.Footnote 2 This article aims at a consideration of the relationship between knowledge about Spain's American territories and the constraints imposed by monarchical bureaucracy, from the perspective of the royal court in Madrid. This approach, however, complements research into this relationship that is more deeply rooted in a colonial Latin American setting and perspective: in fact, the exchange of information and knowledge between New and Old worlds in the colonial period circulated via the networks of a shared transatlantic administrative space.Footnote 3
To contextualize the creation of the double office of “cosmógrafo cronista mayor de Indias,” the following paragraphs address the interrelated topics of patronage networks at the royal court and the workings of monarchical bureaucracy.Footnote 4 They consider these topics in relation to Juan de Ovando's visita, or audit, of the Council of the Indies, which was conducted between June 1567 and August 1571.Footnote 5 Ovando's arrival as visitador or auditor of the Council of the Indies proved to be a monumental career boost for Juan López de Velasco, who since about 1563 had been toiling away at the council compiling the existing laws of the Indies, and involved generally with “papeles del servicio de su majestad.”Footnote 6 López de Velasco became one of Ovando's secretaries during the audit, and, in time, his right-hand man. By the time of López de Velasco's appointment as chief cosmographer-chronicler of the Indies in October 1571, those with relatives in Spanish America who sought favors at the Council of the Indies in Madrid were referring to López de Velasco as Ovando's privado or favorite.Footnote 7 The bureaucratic administration of Philip II's government consisted of closely knit patronage networks, and López de Velasco's patron, Juan de Ovando, enjoyed the favor of an important one, Diego de Espinosa. Coadjutor or assistant to the inquisitor Fernando de Valdés from 1564 and a member of the Council of Castile since 1560, Espinosa was named president of the latter body in 1565 and a little over a year later was appointed president of the Council of the Inquisition.Footnote 8
By the time Espinosa called on Ovando to carry out the Council of the Indies audit in 1567, he had become the most powerful figure in the government of Philip II.Footnote 9 His concurrent appointments at the Council of the Inquisition and at the Council of Castile illustrate well how a single individual could hold more than one office in the conciliar system of the monarchy's civil administration.Footnote 10 In the years before his death in 1572, Espinosa came closest to fulfilling the role of king's favorite or privado in the tightly controlled patronage networks of Philip II's government.Footnote 11 A man of humble beginnings, he had studied civil and canon law at Salamanca and afterward held a series of offices in the lay administration.Footnote 12 Although he had been admitted to first tonsure early in his career, it was not until 1564 that he was ordained to the priesthood; four years later he was named cardinal at Philip II's behest.Footnote 13
Espinosa's meteoric rise in Philip II's government is significant for the story of how Juan López de Velasco came to the office of chief cosmographer-chronicler of the Indies. As José Martínez Millán has noted, Espinosa was a key figure in the administrative reforms of Philip II's government in the second half of the 1560s.Footnote 14 Those reforms targeted the various government councils, including the Council of the Indies. The government body that oversaw Castile's overseas possessions was plagued by corruption and incompetence. In the American viceroyalties—especially Peru—the crown faced problems on several fronts: separatism and unrest; divisions over the encomienda; conflicts between friars and secular officials; a declining population of tribute-paying natives; and an apparent falling off of mining riches.Footnote 15 In a 1569 relación, or report to the king, Ovando underscored the two main problems he had identified during his visita. The first was the inadequacy of information about what the government needed to address (“que en el Consejo no se tiene ni puede tener noticia de las cosas de las Indias sobre que puede y debe caer la gobernación”), and the second was the lack of information about the laws and regulations of the colonial states (“que ni el Consejo ni en las Indias no se tiene noticia de las leyes y ordenanzas por donde se rigen y gobiernan aquellos estados”).Footnote 16 Ovando, who like Espinosa had studied law at Salamanca, acknowledged the main issues in terms of the need to gain accurate information about the Indies (los hechos), and the due awareness and subsequent application of the corresponding laws and ordinances (Derecho) in the American realms.
Both Espinosa and Ovando were letrados, or law graduates, and in that respect they shared something with Juan López de Velasco, who had been compiling the existing laws of the Indies prior to Ovando's visita, and who likely had some university training in law (details about his formal studies are unclear).Footnote 17 Ovando and Espinosa had met in Seville in the mid 1550s when Ovando was provisor or ecclesiastical judge of Seville's diocese and Espinosa was a judge at Seville's audiencia, a post he held from 1553 to 1556.Footnote 18 In appointing Ovando provisor in Seville (1556 to 1564), the inquisitor Fernando de Valdés had given him inquisitorial powers, that is, the authority that belonged to the archbishop by reason of office.Footnote 19
Before he was called to the Council of the Indies by Espinosa in the late 1560s, Ovando had carried out a visita of the University of Alcalá, and in 1566 he was appointed to the Council of the Inquisition.Footnote 20 Thus, Ovando's and Espinosa's politico-bureaucratic careers both weaved across the patronage and administrative networks of the monarchy's government; in that regard too Juan López de Velasco's career path in later years showed similarities. His appointment as chief cosmographer-chronicler in 1571 included the review and censorship of existing histories about the Indies, a task in which he had recent experience. López de Velasco had acted directly at the behest of the Inquisition in the censorship of literary works, such as the picaresque narrative Lazarillo de Tormes, the satirical dramas of Bartolomé de Torres Naharro (the Propaladia), and the poetic works of Cristóbal de Castillejo.Footnote 21
But López de Velasco's place and rise in the bureaucratic and political patronage networks of the monarchy's government can also be understood in relation to those of royal functionaries of similar rank, such as Juan de Ledesma and Mateo Vázquez de Leca. Like López de Velasco, these two crown officials started their careers in secretarial positions. As he had done for López de Velasco, Juan de Ovando selected Ledesma as his secretary during the council's audit. Vázquez had been Ovando's personal secretary in Seville and again during the visita of the University of Alcalá.Footnote 22 The significance of the role and rank of each of these men in the politico-administrative apparatus is reflected in part in the salary they received. Initially Ledesma and López de Velasco each collected an annual salary of 100,000 maravedís (mrs), but in 1572 López de Velasco's wages effectively increased by 50 percent when he was granted an annual stipend of 50,000 mrs (or 266 ducats).Footnote 23 In comparison, Vázquez's total income in 1570 was about 180,000 mrs; Council of the Indies councilor Lope García de Castro earned 300,000 mrs, and the then-president of the council, Juan de Ovando, was paid 500,000 mrs in 1573.Footnote 24 But salary was only one aspect that reflected a royal official's rank. On Ovando's recommendation, Mateo Vázquez became the personal secretary of the powerful Espinosa in 1565. After Espinosa's death in 1572, Vázquez soon came to fulfill the role of his former patron, gaining the king's trust and serving as his right-hand man for more than twenty years.Footnote 25 Vázquez would play a significant role in Juan López de Velasco's professional future at court, as the number of letters requesting mercedes or royal rewards written by López de Velasco to Vázquez attest.Footnote 26
López de Velasco's office of cosmographer-chronicler of the Indies and his duties therein were very much enmeshed in the politico-administrative framework of Philip II's government and interwoven into its patronage networks. High-ranking royal officials like Espinosa and Ovando were at the center of the significant administrative reforms that were brought to bear on the Council of the Indies in the late 1560s and early 1570s. Central in the restructuring was the creation of the double post of principal cosmographer-chronicler of the Indies. This office was conceived as a key component in correcting the two deficiencies that Ovando's audit had identified as afflicting the Council: the lacunae of knowledge about both the nature of the Indies and the laws under which they were to be governed.
Reform and the Office of Cosmographer-Chronicler
The need for the reform of the Council of the Indies was anticipated in an often-cited 1566 memorial or report that the cleric Luis Sánchez wrote at Espinosa's behest. Sánchez had spent 18 years in the New Kingdom of Granada (the regions governed by the Audiencia of Bogotá), where he had served as secretary to the bishop of Popayán, Juan del Valle.Footnote 27 Although in his memorial Sánchez refers to Bartolomé de Las Casas (“el buen Obispo de Chiapa”) and aligns himself with those who sought the protection of the native people, he was especially insightful in understanding the main issue facing the council: a lack of understanding of what the council was mandated to govern (“Las Indias no se han entendido”).Footnote 28 The proposed solution in Sanchez's view was to call in Madrid a great assembly (“una grande junta”), wherein learned lay and religious individuals, including Espinosa, could review the reports of those Church and crown officials who had lived in the Indies, and thus determine the truth (“la verdad”) about those realms. Once adequate knowledge had been obtained, Sánchez stated, Espinosa and the Council of the Indies would be able to legislate appropriately: “y averiguado esto, que es lo que toca al hecho, V[uestra] S[eñoría] y el Consejo determinen el derecho, y den orden.”Footnote 29
Sánchez's perceptive link between fact (“hecho”) and law (“derecho”) bears a striking resemblance to what Juan de Ovando wrote upon the conclusion of his visita. In a consulta addressed to the king (circa 1571), Ovando noted the audit's two main findings: “El primero, que con ser el consejo de la indias la cabeça y la me[n]te que [h]a de gobernar todo el orbe de las Indias. . . no sabe el sujeto de las dichas Indias. . . . . El segundo, es que el dicho Consejo ni en todas las cabeças inferiores de todas las Indias. . . se saben y pueden saber las leyes y ordenanças.”Footnote 30 After explaining to the king that during the visita the laws of the Indies had been organized into seven books, following his plan for a new legal code for the Indies, Ovando underscored the importance of having Philip II appoint a cosmographer-chronicler to put in order the descriptions and history (“para que vaya poniendo en orden las descripciones y relaçiones”), so that through such an office it would be possible to figure out what kinds of knowledge were lacking (“podrá hauer notiçia en el consejo de las cosas de las Indias que hasta ahora ha faltado”).Footnote 31
Central to Ovando's reforms of the Council of the Indies as a result of the audit was the creation of the office of chief cosmographer-chronicler.Footnote 32 Under the purview of Juan López de Velasco that office would create a base of information and knowledge drawn from the Indies, through a documentation program known as the Título [Instructions] de las descripciones (1573), that would serve the Council on matters of governance and legislation.Footnote 33 The documentation program was outlined in detail for royal officials in the Indies: “la forma que se [h]a de tener en hazer las averiguaciones, descriptiones y relaçiones de todo el estado de las Indias. . . para que los que las gouiernan. . . mejor lo entiendan [el estado] y acierten a gouernar como se contine en las leyes y ordenanças siguientes.”Footnote 34
The creation of the official post of cosmographer-chronicler of the Indies in October of 1571, and thereby the institutionalization of those duties, took place in the context of Ovando's visita of the Council of the Indies, and more broadly in an environment of politico-administrative reforms led by Espinosa in the government of Philip II in the 1560s. The spirit of reform concerning the Indies is anticipated and made explicit in a memorial Espinosa commissioned Sánchez to draft in 1566. Ovando's visita of the Council of the Indies began in June of 1567, while the great assembly—la grande junta—that Sánchez called for in his memorial was convened by Philip II in May of 1568. It has come to be known as the Junta Magna.Footnote 35 It is worth noting that two time-honored Castilian administrative procedures—the visita and the junta—coincided and overlapped here, and were brought to bear on pressing issues concerning the crown's American realms. Both politico-administrative instruments were deployed at a moment when Castile was attempting to regularize the government of the Indies after the initial phase of conquest and settlement, in an effort to consolidate crown authority in its overseas possessions.Footnote 36
The overlap of junta and visita is most evident in the agenda for the Junta Magna; it “was drawn in great part from the information gathered by Ovando's visita,” and completed prior to the audit's conclusion.Footnote 37 By the start of the junta in July 1568, Ovando, working in Madrid, had gathered testimony from some 31 crown and Church officials, the majority of whom had served in the Indies. Those depositions, which also included testimony from Council of the Indies officials like Juan López de Velasco, who gave testimony in January 1568, were likely drawn upon during the Junta Magna's meetings. These were held at Espinosa's home, and both Ovando and López de Velasco participated.Footnote 38 Ovando's visita or “inquisición general,” as the audit of the Council of the Indies is called in the already cited 1569 relación, thus spilled over into the Junta Magna, the taskforce Espinosa had assembled to reassess colonial government.Footnote 39 The future cosmographer-chronicler of the Indies, Juan López de Velasco, had a front row seat for a demonstration of how an investigation of a government body, like Ovando's visita, could easily shift into politically charged issues concerning the governance of the Indies.
During the meetings of the Junta Magna, López de Velasco likely met Francisco de Toledo, who Espinosa had proposed as viceroy of Peru in 1568.Footnote 40 As evidenced in the 31 depositions Ovando's visita gathered (July 1567 to December 1568) from those who had served in the Indies, Peru was a more troubled and turbulent viceroyalty than New Spain.Footnote 41 In a June 1568 letter to Espinosa, Toledo expressed his awareness of the issues concerning Peru before the Junta Magna, and the findings of Ovando's visita were significant in the assembly's deliberations (“que la relación del visitador [Ovando] dará a Vuestra Señoría Ilustrísima [Espinosa] mayor claridad”).Footnote 42
As it turned out, among the first tasks Juan López de Velasco was given as newly minted chief cosmographer-chronicler of the Indies was to deal with historiographic polemics involving Viceroy Toledo and the governance of the viceroyalty of Peru. The controversy had to do with the publication of Diego Fernández de Palencia's Historia del Perú in 1571. Interestingly enough, and underscoring that colonial administration was indeed a shared and relatively small space, the former Lima notary Fernández de Palencia had provided testimony (in March 1568) during Ovando's visita, making reference in his deposition to those in Peru who defended the king's interest against rebels like don Sebastián de Castilla, in the early 1550s.Footnote 43 I will return to López de Velasco's involvement with Fernández de Palencia's Historia in the following section. For now, some final relevant observations about Ovando's role as visitador are in order.
As may be evident by now, Ovando's visita went far beyond the circumscribed procedure for an audit of the Council of the Indies. Sebastián de Covarrubias's Tesoro de la lengua castellana (1611) describes the visita as a task of oversight: “hazer averiguacion de cómo viven los visitados, cómo gastan la hazienda, cómo guardan sus estatutos, cómo administran justicia.” Moreover, Covarrubias notes that the visitador is the person who bears this commission and is responsible for the aftermath and outcome of the visit (“que lleva esta comission. . ., y la resulta della visita”). The visita proper, then, aims to identify deviations from the codified norm and to offer thereafter the necessary solutions or reforms.Footnote 44 Ovando's visita, however, became in addition a large-scale collection of information about the Indies that morphed into the codification of laws pertaining to those realms.Footnote 45
The 1569 visita questionnaire itself, which Ovando likely prepared with the assistance of his secretary Juan López de Velasco, exhibits the overlap of visita and information-gathering program. The questionnaire was prepared to complement depositions, gathered in Madrid between July 1567 and December 1568, with local knowledge to come directly from officials still residing in the Indies. Sent to a number of jurisdictions in America, only the first eight of the 37 questions sought details pertaining to the visita proper; the remaining 29 requested details about ecclesiastic organization, evangelization methods, geographic information, and demographic data regarding Spaniards and native peoples.Footnote 46 In this regard, the 1569 visita questionnaire anticipates the more extensive Título de las descripciones of 1573. That key piece of legislation, formulated by Ovando most likely with López de Velasco's aid, explained for those at the council and in the Indies, as María Portuondo notes, “the mechanics of gathering, organizing, and compiling the general cosmography and hydrography of the Indies and the more specific geographic descriptions, natural histories, and historical chronicles.”Footnote 47 The Instructions came under the purview of the Ordenanzas del Consejo de Indias, the laws that dealt with the Council's day-to-day operation.Footnote 48 The Ordinances, in turn, were collected as De la gobernación temporal, part of the second of seven books into which Ovando had spelled out and organized his new legal code of the Indies by the end of the visita. Referring to the compilation and organization of more than 2,000 entries into the new and streamlined legal code, Ovando explained in a consulta to the king (circa 1571) that it had been convenient to organize them into seven books: “al visitador le pareçio ser mas conueniente reducirlos [los dos mil capítulos de leyes] a ordenanças. . . las cuales diuidio en siete libros.”Footnote 49
Ovando's time as visitador of the Council of the Indies, then, constituted three overlapping phases: an exhaustive review or visita proper, an extensive knowledge-gathering program, and the preparation of a new legal code of the Indies, in the form of seven books. Juan López de Velasco was not only part of each of these interrelated stages, but his previous work between 1563 and 1565 in compiling laws of the Indies became an intermediate step in Ovando's plan for a new legal code of the American realms.Footnote 50 That codification of laws included the Ordenanzas del Consejo de Indias, which specified the cosmographer-chronicler's responsibilities, and the Título de las descripciones (Instructions) that explained the methods for gathering, organizing, and compiling the information. López de Velasco, then, was active during Ovando's visita and aware of the concept of the double office of chief cosmographer-chronicler as a central locus of knowledge. He was also a participant in and witness to the codification of the laws that would govern the office he came to occupy in 1571.
The Cosmographer-Chronicler at His Tasks
Philip II signed into law the Ordenanzas del Consejo de Indias in September 1571.Footnote 51 Roughly a month earlier he had appointed Ovando president of the Council of the Indies, although it appears that Ovando had been de facto president since about April 1569.Footnote 52 The Ordinances as published are made up of 122 articles, and the last five, 117 through 122, list the cosmographer-chronicler's responsibilities in detail. Juan López de Velasco's cosmographic duties included the creation of maps, “according to the art of geography” and based on the descriptions sent from the Indies to the council.Footnote 53 Those descriptions, apuntamientos, and relaciones would be provided to the cosmographer-chronicler by the council's notary of the governance chamber (escribano de la cámara de gobernación; at the time, Juan de Ledesma), who was instructed to keep in his care the Book of Descriptions. In this book, as article 75 outlined, the notary was to record all new descriptions, written and otherwise, arriving from the Indies, following the guidelines laid down in the Instructions.Footnote 54
Other cosmographical duties included preparing the necessary materials for observing and recording lunar eclipses in the Indies, in order to ascertain longitude. Moreover, to preserve and record the memory of noteworthy deeds in the Indies, the cosmographer-chronicler was to write a general history.Footnote 55 Following traditional Renaissance historiography, this involved writing a moral history concerned with “costumbres, ritos, antiguedades” and deeds and exploits, as well as a natural history recording the noteworthy flora and fauna of the various American regions.Footnote 56 Like the cosmographic endeavors, the historiographic projects would rely on the descriptions, histories, accounts, and investigations sent to the council's notary of the governance chamber, who would furnish the cosmographer-chronicler with the materials required. The Instructions article concerning the history of the Indies (Article 119), however, stated that whatever work of history was written was to remain within the council, and that only those parts of that history the council deemed appropriate were to be made public. Article 122 reiterated the controls on dissemination of information about the Indies (always and exclusively via the notary of the governance chamber's office), and stipulated that the cosmographer-chronicler's finished descriptions should not be shared with anyone but the notary, and should be deposited every year in a secret archive (“en el archivo del secreto”). Meeting this condition, according to the article, was a requirement (to be complied with in advance) for payment to the cosmographer-chronicler of the last third of his salary.Footnote 57 The notary of the governance chamber acted as the cosmographer-chronicler's archivist-librarian, through written receipts that kept track of the papers coming in from the Indies. These Juan López de Velasco could ‘sign out’ (“dexando conocimiento del recibo dellos”), while the notary of the governance chamber recorded updated descriptions and kept López de Velasco informed of the newly arrived documents.Footnote 58 Cosmographic and historical knowledge about the Indies was in no uncertain terms a state secret.
Whereas the Ordinances regulated the day-to-day operation of the Council of the Indies and were therefore addressed to officials in Madrid, the Instructions, with their 135 articles, targeted both council officials and crown (and Church) officers in the Indies, by outlining in detail the methodology for gathering, organizing, and recording cosmographic and historical information. For historical questions, Articles 17 and 18 offered a comprehensive list of the subject matters that would make up the natural and moral histories. For the natural history of each region and province, particular emphasis was placed on the native inhabitants (“las naçiones de hombres que [h]ay y las naturalezas y calidades de ellos”), as well as descriptions of flora, fauna, mineral riches, and precious stones, with a special eye to potential economic profit. The moral history was to include accounts of those who had discovered and conquered each region but in the main was to contain descriptions about local peoples (“las naçiones de los naturales que las habitaron y habitan”) with specific emphases on their language, government, religion, customs, and recordkeeping, including the use of “quipos,” or khipus.Footnote 59 Articles 81 through 83 outlined a structure (“el orden y forma”) for the natural and moral histories, and specified who was to write them. In Madrid it was up to the council's cronista Juan López de Velasco to organize these various materials into a general account, a “libro general de las cosas naturales de las Indias,” while in the Indies the task was to fall to the local chronicler. In his absence the work was the duty of the protomédico, and, as a backup, the local notary.Footnote 60
Writing the moral history, however, was deemed much more politically sensitive than work on natural history. Article 83 underscored the important relationship of governance (“para açertar a hazer mejor sus officios los que gouiernan”) and local knowledge pertaining to “las cossas morales, usos y costumbres y subcesos que ha habido y [h]ay.”Footnote 61 Writing the moral history was therefore entrusted to the council's notary of the governance chamber, and in the Indies to the notary of governance of each respective audiencia.Footnote 62 These royal officials were to review the official records (“papeles y escrituras de sus officios y archivos”) and to identify and select trustworthy persons (“personas fidedignas”) who could offer an account of the various phenomena and their respective provinces (“de las cossas de las Indias y cada provincia dellas, y hagan libro cada uno de su provincia”).Footnote 63
The article further emphasized the high level of responsibility in the charge of writing moral history (“es oficio de mucha fidelidad y confianza”), and specified that whoever was engaged in it must observe the utmost secrecy and discretion (“guardar secreto”), not sharing their work with those outside official circles. Moreover, the completed moral histories were to be filed in official archives, which were to remain closed. At the Council of the Indies, it was Juan López de Velasco's duty to write the moral history of the Indies, by working in conjunction with the notary of the governance chamber (Juan de Ledesma), who kept López de Velasco abreast of newly arrived historiographic material from the Indies and provided him with such materials. Secrecy and discretion were strongly emphasized in both the Ordinances and the Instructions, in respect to the historiographic projects that López de Velasco's office required him to undertake and complete.
Secrecy, Censorship, and the History of the Indies
In Along the Archival Grain, Ann Laura Stoler urges students of the colonial period to look and listen in the archival record for the “administrative apprehensions” of colonial agents: to locate in particular “the febrile movements of persons off balance—of thoughts and feelings in and out of place,” that “in tone and temper. . .convey the rough interior ridges of governance and disruptions to the deceptive clarity” of the mandates of colonial rule.Footnote 64 What Stoler describes is generally found in those documents in which the public and the private meld—where “the politics of empire bleeds into the texture of the personal.”Footnote 65 One such document is a June 1573 letter Juan Lopez de Velasco wrote to Francisco Cervantes de Salazar, canon of Mexico City's cathedral. Cervantes de Salazar had served since 1558 as official chronicler of Mexico City. From his post in New Spain, he was trying in 1570 to gain a position in the recently established Mexican Holy Office.Footnote 66 At the time, López de Velasco was acting in Madrid as Cervantes de Salazar's intermediary and had even interceded on his behalf before the new inquisitor general of Mexico, Archbishop Pedro Moya de Contreras.Footnote 67 The tone and content of López de Velasco's 1573 letter to Cervantes de Salazar, who was his elder, suggests a longstanding friendship. López de Velasco thanks Cervantes de Salazar for offering “papeles y cosas concernientes a la historia,” noting that since he is new in the office of cosmographer-chronicler he is in much need of historiographic material from the Indies (“como novel en el officio, yo ando tan avaro desta materia”).Footnote 68 The historical material Cervantes de Salazar eventually sent López de Velasco was likely the only manuscript of Cervantes de Salazar's Crónica de Nueva España, which López de Velasco kept and which was eventually deposited at the Council of the Indies.Footnote 69
In his letter to Cervantes de Salazar, López de Velasco offers a telling reflection on the apprehensions, doubts, and anxieties he held about his own work of writing a history of the Indies, and its value: “Lo que este cuydado mío prestará no lo sé, pero parézeme que en duda, mientras no valiere para más, deuo procurar con diligencia lo necessario para la historia, que aunque no sé si Su Magestad se servirá que se scriua ni publique ninguna por los sucesos, no sé de qué manera, que [h]an tenido las que hasta hora se [h]an visto para el Consejo y ministros dél. . . . .”Footnote 70 Here, López de Velasco's self-doubt clouds the purported clarity of what is mandated in the Ordenanzas and Instructiones. The cosmographer-chronicler nearly admits to the impossibility of writing that history in the prevailing climate of intense scrutiny, secrecy, and censorship. He knows, however, that he must press on in gathering the pertinent material (“deuo procurar con diligencia lo necessario para la historia”), if only to meet the obligations of his post. But what are the events (“los sucesos”) that López de Velasco refers to in the letter—those related to the histories the council has already seen? That is, which histories has the council reviewed thus far, and why have they not fared well?
If López de Velasco was relatively new at his job when he wrote to Cervantes de Salazar in 1573, he was most certainly green in early 1572, when, just seven months after his appointment, he was asked to vet Diego Fernández de Palencia's Historia del Perú (Seville, 1571). The king's official request was in accordance with López de Velasco's letter of appointment, which stipulated that the cosmographer-chronicler review and examine the existing histories of the Indies.Footnote 71 López de Velasco's censorial intervention of Fernández de Palencia's Historia had been initiated at the Council of the Indies by a petition from the former oidor of Lima's audiencia (1548–1563), Hernando de Santillán. It is likely that López de Velasco was acquainted with Fernández de Palencia and Santillán, and in the last line of his single-folio parecer López de Velasco prudently asks that it not be circulated: “que este parezer mio no venga a noticia de ninguna de las partes.”
Meanwhile, the former Lima notary Fernández de Palencia, who had given depositions during Ovando's visita, had turned historiographer and in February 1568 had been granted royal license to sell his Historia in the Indies.Footnote 72 Santillán, the author of Relación del origen, descendencia, política y gobierno de los incas (1563), was in Madrid in the early 1570s seeking the appointment in the Indies that he was eventually granted, as bishop of Charcas.Footnote 73 Fernández de Palencia's two-part Historia chronicles the uprising of Gonzalo Pizarro in the mid 1540s, and Francisco Hernández Girón's revolt in the early 1550s. In the petition to have Fernández de Palencia's Historia withdrawn from circulation, Santillán explains that Fernández de Palencia had gotten the historical facts wrong, to the detriment of historical veracity and of those individuals (like himself) who had diligently served the king in the war against the rebel Hernández Girón.Footnote 74 Santillán's petition was accompanied by a list of 68 specific objections (now lost) that can be reconstructed through the point-by-point responses Fernández de Palencia prepared.Footnote 75
Even though he was new in his post as chief cosmographer-chronicler, López de Velasco displays remarkable dexterity at handling these thorny matters, as evidenced in his 1572 parecer on the historiographic dispute between Santillán and Fernández de Palencia. The cosmographer-chronicler-cum-censor starts by categorizing the two parties as “el historiador” and “los detractores” (Santillán was acting in concert with Antonio de Quiñones, Inca Garcilaso's uncle). López de Velasco then writes that an investigation, with the requisite proofs, to determine the historical facts in question would take far too long to accomplish, since most of the witnesses involved still resided in the distant Indies. He notes that the disputed matters dealt with those who rose against the king in the Peruvian provinces, and that no investigation would be possible without uncovering facts that might damage honor and reputation: “remover y despertar muchas cosas enconadas y perjudiciales a la honra y fama de muchas personas.”Footnote 76
At this point, the parecer begins the exploration of hypothetical scenarios. Even if an investigation were to be conducted, López de Velasco wrote, it would be necessary to consider whether it was justified (“si sería justicia”) to reopen an inquiry on matters in which those involved have already been judged and punished. And even if the actual facts could be determined, what would happen if those facts were to contradict Fernández de Palencia's Historia, a work that had already been granted a royal license? López de Velasco writes that such outcome would certainly undermine future loyalty to the crown in those provinces (“la fidelidad que se debe esperar en lo porvenir de aquellas provincias”). Lastly, López de Velasco notes that if Fernández de Palencia's Historia were to be published, it would be prudent to first send it to Peru where trusted persons and those with long experience (“personas de confianza” and “los antiguos de la tierra”) might assess its legitimacy.
Here the parecer touches on the anxiety that was a salient issue in historiography about the Indies. López de Velasco notes that it was especially important at the time to avoid error: “en historias antiguas esta diligencia no es menester,” but “en las de los tiempos presentes lo es por el peligro que hay de errar y ofender por la diversidad e incertidumbre de la fama.”Footnote 77 In the end, López de Velasco recommends that there be no further printings of Fernández de Palencia's Historia and that existing copies be gathered and withdrawn from circulation. Early on in his post of chief cosmographer-chronicler, López de Velasco was aware that writing the history of the Indies was a political act—with concomitant repercussions for the present and future of colonial statecraft. This was especially so in matters pertaining to such troublesome realms as the Peruvian viceroyalty.Footnote 78 Writing the history of the Indies could also have an impact one's career, especially for those like Santillán, Fernández de Palencia, and López de Velasco who were dependent on patronage networks and the related economy of royal rewards and offices. It is likely, then, that his experience with Fernández de Palencia's Historia was on López de Velasco's mind when he wrote to Cervantes de Salazar in June 1573 about the climate of scrutiny, secrecy, and censorship that prevailed at the Council of the Indies regarding the histories of the region.Footnote 79
Fernández de Palencia's work had not only received royal license but had been written at the behest of the former viceroy of Peru, Andrés Hurtado de Mendoza, and under the sponsorship of the then president of the Council of the Indies, Francisco Tello de Sandoval, who had given Fernández de Palencia access to official documents.Footnote 80 Fernández de Palencia offers these details in the work's dedication to Philip II. Given the “official” oversight under which the Historia was written, it must have been especially troubling for López de Velasco, in terms of fulfilling his own historiographic duties, to work against the extensive and powerful scrutiny to which the book had already been subjected. But Fernández de Palencia's Historia had also attracted the displeased attention of the king's chief minister in Peru, Viceroy Francisco de Toledo.
Upon his arrival in Peru in 1569, Viceroy Toledo had launched a historiographic campaign to delegitimize Inca rule.Footnote 81 In a December 1573 letter to the king, Toledo articulated his anger and frustration regarding the unrestricted circulation of Fernández de Palencia's Historia, especially after he had expressly written to Philip II with reasons to prohibit the work.Footnote 82 Toledo's objections to the history hinged on his own efforts to debunk the legitimacy of Inca rule. Over a period of time (from 1570 to 1572) Toledo had sent the king a series of probanzas or transcripts taken from Inca and non-Inca witnesses. The aim of these notarial documents (known as the Informaciones) was to discredit any legitimate rights the Incas had as former lords of the land. Toledo had pointed out that Fernández de Palencia's Historia hindered his own attempts at rewriting history to bolster Philip II's own legitimate rights of title in Peru, referring specifically to the final chapters of the Historia's Part 2 (Book 3, chapters 4–9) in which Fernández de Palencia offers a genealogy and history of Inca rulers. Toledo writes that those details are damning to his cause of legitimizing the crown's rule: “perjudican mucho a los derechos que vuestra majestad tiene en estos reinos y va favoreciendo la tiranía de los yngas. . .y haciéndolos señores naturales y que les venía estos reinos por herencia.”Footnote 83
But Toledo does not stop there. Rather, he makes a pointed and telling reference to the damage done by the writings of Las Casas. With a touch of bitter sarcasm the viceroy tells the king, “y no nos ha dado pequeña experiencia las obras que Chiapa dejo escritas de las cosas de los indios para escarmentar de no creer a otros que tienen menos autoridad.”Footnote 84 Toledo may have viewed Fernández de Palencia as a lesser intellect and historian than Las Casas but he nonetheless saw the former's work as damaging to his own historiographic revisionism. The viceroy concludes on the topic by noting that he has prohibited the circulation of Fernández de Palencia's Historia.Footnote 85
Toledo's letter to the king concerning the Historia was written a little over a year after the viceroy's military campaign against the Incas at Vilcabamba, which culminated in the capture and execution in Cuzco of Túpac Amaru in September 1572. It was also penned after Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa's 1572 book Historia Índica (History of the Incas)—a work that Toledo had commissioned—had arrived in Madrid. Sarmiento de Gamboa's work was, like Fernández de Palencia's Historia, likely in López de Velasco's thoughts when he wrote to Francisco Cervantes de Salazar in June 1573. Despite the ‘official’ status of Sarmiento de Gamboa's Historia, the crown opted not to publish it, although the reasons for the decision are unclear.Footnote 86 But in his December 1573 letter to the king, Toledo underscored perhaps his key point about writing the history of the Indies. Fernández de Palencia's Historia, he wrote, touches on matters that are important now and even more so in the future (“no de poco momento sino de grande importancia ansi en estos tiempos como en los venideros”).Footnote 87 Tellingly, López de Velasco highlights a similar point in his June 1573 letter to Cervantes de Salazar, noting the importance of chronicling “las cosas pasadas en Indias y de las presentes, por la luz que dan para sospechar o prevenir las venideras.”Footnote 88 Both the king's chief minister in Peru and his middle-ranking official at the Council of the Indies had a clear sense of how writing the history of the Indies could affect present and future matters of colonial politics and governance.
Evading the Writing of History
López de Velasco was no stranger to court polemics surrounding histories of the Indies, and he tried to sidestep such controversies in three ways. He directed his efforts in the 1570s to fulfilling the cosmographic duties of his post, limiting his historiographic endeavors to gathering historical material written by others. He also sought to shift his attention and efforts toward other projects and offices at court. Focusing on the less politically charged cosmographic work, he completed the Geografía y descripción universal de la Indias by September of 1574. Although subjected to some scrutiny at the Council of the Indies and limited to circulating only in official circles, the work was generally well received.Footnote 89 In a December 1576 report, the Council of the Indies noted that the Geografía was an “obra muy buena y conueniente” and granted López de Velasco a 400-ducat reward.Footnote 90 In good time, López de Velasco completed his second cosmographical composition, the Sumario (c. 1580). Sometimes referred to as the Demarcación y division de las Indias, this work was a summary of the Geografía and was “intended to instruct a new cadre of members at the Council of the Indies.”Footnote 91 In keeping with the policy of secrecy, the king ordered that the available copies of the Sumario be collected and locked up (“se recogiessen en el Consejo y se pusiessen en algun caxon cerrado”), to be consulted only by those authorized to do so.Footnote 92 López de Velasco's time was also occupied with preparing the instructions for the observation of the lunar eclipses of 1577 and 1578, to determine longitude.Footnote 93 In addition, he drew up a series of questionnaires (1577 and 1584) that would become the basis for the Relaciones geográficas de Indias.Footnote 94
Concerning historiographic matters, López de Velasco relied on the authority of his office to get his hands on existing histories of the Indies and related materials. In the late 1570s he gained possession of Las Casa's Castilian and Latin works about the Indies from the Colegio de San Gregorio of Valladolid, including the Historia General de las Indias. The September 1579 royal order came with the warning about keeping these secret (“os mandamos tengais muy a recaudo las obras y libros y no las entregueis a persona ninguna”).Footnote 95 Las Casas's works were later passed on (in 1597) to the then official chronicler of the Indies, Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas.Footnote 96 Earlier during his tenure (in 1571), López de Velasco had requested from the officials at the cathedral of Seville (through the Council of the Indies) the papers of Christopher Columbus, and of the former cosmographer of the Indies, Alonso de Santa Cruz.Footnote 97 López de Velasco acknowledged receipt of Santa Cruz's papers in November 1573.Footnote 98 In September 1572 a royal order was issued to gather from the heirs of Francisco López de Gómara and bring to the Council of the Indies his papers pertaining to his history of the Indies.Footnote 99 López de Gómara's Historia general de las Indias y la conquista de México (1552) offered the most sweeping general history of the Indies available at the time, and was one of the most widely circulated cosmographical descriptions of the New World.Footnote 100
López de Velasco also had in his possession Pedro Cieza de León's Crónica del Perú (1553), the first comprehensive history of the Andes and the Incan empire.Footnote 101 He also had access to fray Bernardino de Sahagún's work of early ethnography and study of Nahua culture, the Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva España, completed in 1575–77 and generally known as the Florentine Codex.Footnote 102 By the early 1580s López de Velasco had accumulated a significant library-archive of important histories of the Indies, material to draw from in composing the history his post required him to write. But by then López de Velasco had begun to shift his attention to other projects and endeavors at court, supporting the shift with appeals to Philip II's powerful secretary, Mateo Vázquez.
In early 1578, through Mateo Vázquez, López de Velasco petitioned to be named “His Majesty's Servant” or contino, a position requiring a lifelong financial commitment on the part of the crown.Footnote 103 As Portuondo notes, López de Velasco was very likely following the lead of the former chief cosmographer of the Indies, Alonso de Santa Cruz, who had been appointed contino by Charles V in the 1530s.Footnote 104 López de Velasco's wish to be part of a select circle of courtiers was denied. A year earlier he had written to Vázquez asking for a different appointment: as tutor of the crown prince. In a February 1577 letter, López de Velasco spoke of how his studies of the Castilian language and the book he had completed on that subject, Ortografía y pronunciación castellana (Burgos, 1582), amply qualified him for the post, but his request was not granted.Footnote 105
From about 1576 López de Velasco had also been involved in other humanistic projects at court. He had been acquiring books for the library of Philip II's palace-monastery, El Escorial, and had also been engaged in a related project to locate and collect manuscripts for the editing and publishing of the works of Isidore of Seville.Footnote 106 By the early 1580s, however, López de Velasco was seeking offices in other government councils. In May 1581 he petitioned the king's Chamber Council asking for the post of escribanía mayor de rentas (secretary at the Royal Exchequer), an appointment he was granted.Footnote 107 It is likely that through this appointment López de Velasco came to occupy the post of secretary of the Council of Finance, the position mentioned in the already cited letter (of September 1588) in which the Council of the Indies asked the king to name someone else to the office of cosmographer-chronicler.
Taking on other posts and endeavors kept López de Velasco active in the economy of royal rewards and offices at court. It not only afforded him the opportunity to obtain a post he desired, but it also gave him with a strategic out from writing a history of the Indies—from having to explain why he was not fulfilling the historiographic obligations of his office. Hopes of financial gain and personal advancement were at play, as was the nature of the politico-administrative system in which López de Velasco served. In an April 1584 letter to Mateo Vázquez, López de Velasco candidly admitted that he had considered the post of cosmographer-chronicler as a somewhat temporary position, in which he would wait for something more fitting his inclinations and studies to become available.Footnote 108 It appears that for López de Velasco the role of chief cosmographer-chronicler of the Indies was not a ‘profession’ as such, but rather a position on the way to more desirable and less politically charged appointments at court.
The office López de Velasco coveted was that of secretary to the king, a post of prestige, influence, and profit because of the access it afforded to the monarch. He sought such a post in March 1586, but it appears that his petition did not have the support of the ubiquitous and influential Mateo Vázquez, Philip II's private secretary.Footnote 109 The position López de Velasco did secure in September 1588 was that of secretary of the Council of Finance, with a salary of 200,000 mrs, twice his salary at the Council of the Indies.Footnote 110 Better still, it had no historiographic demands. López de Velasco remained at this post until his death in 1598. In 1591, Philip II named Arias de Loyola chronicler of the Indies; with that appointment the office of cosmographer-chronicler of the Indies was split, with the duties of cosmographer going to Pedro Ambrosio de Ondériz.Footnote 111 After five years, Arias de Loyola had not yet produced the desired history of the Indies, so the council replaced him with Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas, who, between 1601 and 1615, composed the four-volume Historia general de los hechos de los castellanos en las Islas i Tierra Firme del Mar Océano.
López de Velasco was indeed a reluctant historian of the Indies but that did not preclude him from offering his opinions on the composition of official crown historiography. Those he outlined in a two-part memorandum commissioned at Philip II's behest and supporting the idea that the history be written. The first part was Que su majestad debe mandar escribir su historia; the second laid out an order for the writing (Orden para escribir la Historia de Su Majestad).Footnote 112 In the undated memorandum, likely from the 1580s, López de Velasco offers his methodology for the writing the king's official history.Footnote 113 The endeavor, López de Velasco writes in his impeccable script, should not be given to a single individual. Rather, it should be done by committee. The first step would entail selecting and summarizing the necessary papers of His Majesty's reign, setting aside those documents that should remain secret and withheld from the public domain. The committee, López de Velasco continued, should be made up of three of His Majesty's ministers, letrados or jurists with knowledge of the matters of state; two learned individuals with humanistic and historiographic expertise; and one soldier for those matters in the history pertaining to war. The committee would organize and arrange the history, consulting with the king at every step of the way to obtain his approval and thereby to infuse the history with greater credibility and legitimacy.
The writing phase of the history would be left to a team of two or more capable individuals. Near the end of the memorial, López de Velasco even addresses practical concerns pertaining to the efficiency and economy of his proposed arrangement. He notes that since the ministers who would make up the committee were already on the crown's payroll, the financial cost involved would be low (“no a mucha costa de Su Majestad”), while the team approach to composing and writing the history would expedite matters considerably. López de Velasco concludes by saying that the overall expense would certainly be less than paying the salary of a single chronicler, who might, in fact, die without having written a single word.
In that closing statement, López de Velasco seemed unaware of the irony it could convey—given that he himself did not write a single word of the history of the Indies he was to compose. But beyond that irony, López de Velasco's historiographic views in the memorandum are telling in regard to the writing of the history of the Indies. The prominence of jurists or letrados in the historiographic committee López de Velasco proposed is in keeping with his own experience and training at the Council of the Indies, and with then-current practice in wider government circles, where letrados exerted significant influence. On the other hand, writing official history by committee, and especially so the history of the Indies, would certainly shift the onus and responsibility from the lone chronicler to a wider circle of ministers and royal officials.
The commission-like arrangement that López de Velasco proposed—reminiscent of action by a junta—sought to bring to the writing of official history a collectivity that would instill the endeavor with a degree of anonymity that likely appealed to López de Velasco's bureaucratic sensibilities.Footnote 114 It shielded any single individual from the political fallout that could result from writing the history of the Indies at court in Madrid. Secrecy was also a consideration in López de Velasco's historiographic outlook, in terms of what should be made public in the writing of history. This concern was no doubt a disposition that López de Velasco's bureaucratic ethos had incorporated and honed through his experiences at the Council of the Indies during Philip II's reign.
The History Realized
The first general “official history” of the Indies was Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas's Historia general de los hechos de los castellanos en las Islas i Tierra Firme del Mar Océano, composed between 1601 and 1615.Footnote 115 In the front matter, Herrera y Tordesillas includes a not-so-veiled reference to López de Velasco's prudent deferment of writing such a history. He draws a direct link between his own role as chronicler of the Indies and the office of cosmographer-chronicler that López de Velasco occupied from 1571 to 1591. In the dedicatory letter to Philip III (October 20, 1601), Herrera y Tordesillas reminds the king that his father, Philip II, had called upon him (“me mandó”) to undertake the task of writing the history of the Indies. In his dedicatory address (October 15, 1601) to the then-president of the Council of the Indies, Pablo de Laguna, Herrera y Tordesillas positons his own history in the context of Juan de Ovando's reforms at the Council of the Indies and refers to the creation of the cosmographer-chronicler's office in particular. Without mentioning names, Herrera y Tordesillas writes that many years had passed after Ovando's death in 1575 without the history of the Indies having been written.
Herrera y Tordesillas saw his own Historia as fulfilling, after long years, the historiographic duties of the post of official chronicler of the Indies.Footnote 116 In the dedication he underscores a key point about the functioning of the monarchy's politico-administrative system: the degree to which important crown projects were inextricably linked to a single royal minister or official. It has been remarked that the office of chief cosmographer-chronicler of the Indies “languished in the hands of López de Velasco,” and that once Herrera y Tordesillas was appointed chronicler of the Indies he “moved aggressively to strengthen” the “power and prerogatives” of the office.Footnote 117 Ovando's death in 1575 without a doubt resulted in a directional vacuum at the Council of the Indies, with the council's presidency remaining unoccupied until 1579.Footnote 118 At Espinosa's behest, Ovando had been the architect of the sweeping reforms of the Council of the Indies, and of the related creation of the office of chief cosmographer-chronicler as a crucial locus of information about the Indies. Without Ovando's personal sense of mission and direction, there was very little pressure on López de Velasco to comply with the historiographic obligations of his post. Thus López de Velasco could more freely opt to avoid the pitfalls associated with historical writing about the Indies, focusing instead on the cosmographical responsibilities of his post— duties that did not threaten the internal politics of the crown's colonial possessions or the politics at Council of the Indies. Moreover, evading writing the history of the Indies was also López de Velasco's strategy for safeguarding his place and prospects within the patronage networks at court in Madrid, and the concomitant ties to the economy of royal rewards and offices.
Referring to the first hundred years of New World historical writing, Kira von Ostenfeld-Suske aptly notes in regard to historians of the place and period: “[R]ather than being ancillary to action, history-writing was an essential form of action, and a sense of what their works would do weighed heavily.” Footnote 119 This was especially true for those with close ties to the royal court. As an official historian, López de Velasco dealt with the environment of secrecy and censorship that governed the writing of history about the Indies during Philip II's reign, and at the same time lived in a world centered at the royal court in Madrid, where how to write an official history of the Indies commensurate with the larger political needs of the Spanish monarchy was still being worked out. Some of the issues at stake included weighty and thorny matters like the legality and morality of conquest that spoke to the crown's legitimate rights in Spanish America.
It was Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas who would sort out how to write the official history of the New World in writing his Historia.Footnote 120 A prolific writer and career historian in courtly circles from the mid 1580s, Herrera y Tordesillas in the 1590s came to hold the posts of official chronicler of the Indies (appointed in 1596) and official chronicler of Castile (appointed in 1598).Footnote 121 He was also a key participant in debates (and treatises) at court on the writing of official history.Footnote 122
López de Velasco shared Herrera y Tordesillas's humanist background, but he is better described as a career bureaucrat than a career historian. He came up in the Council of the Indies, in the world of letrados or jurists, and his historiographic endeavors were shaped by a legalistic disposition that inclined him toward historical material that was written by others and could be corroborated through some form of firsthand, sworn testimony. But in fairness, López de Velasco was acting largely in relative conformity to the demands of the environment in which he worked. As Maria Portuondo has keenly observed, with the reforms of Council of the Indies Ovando had “proposed a scheme for organizing knowledge that relied on eyewitnesses and notarized depositions,” an arrangement that handily brought together historiography (and cosmography), the law, and monarchical bureaucracy.Footnote 123 Neither a cosmographer or a historian by training, López de Velasco was selected for the office of cosmographer-chronicler of the Indies because of his proficiency in compiling the existing laws of the Indies in the early 1560s, and because of his familiarity with and knowledge of the papers of the Council of the Indies. Above all, however, López de Velasco was chosen for the post because during the course of his administrative career he had interiorized an ethos characterized by dependability, diligence, discretion, and, above all, trustworthiness. Prior to and during Ovando's visita, López de Velasco had proven himself to be a trusted and dependable bureaucrat; in a phrase, un hombre de confianza, at court and in government circles.
