In Shaky Colonialism, Charles Walker provides an in-depth look at the natural disasters provoked by Lima’s earthquake of 1746, and the repercussions on the religious, social, and political relationships that would come to test the viceregal leadership for decades after the fact. Resistance came from a wide variety of social groups. His analysis of the ensuing events relies largely on the accounts of Viceroy Manso de Velasco, as well as many other legal documents and texts of the time. Walker pays careful attention to how the city was re-conceived and rebuilt, and how this natural disaster sparked fierce debates in both civil and religious sectors as a result of Manso’s visions for the reconstruction. Manso’s plans of reorganization sparked multiple debates and disagreements. According to Walker, the earthquake generated strong disputes about social order, religion, morality, and the rebuilding of the city.
Racial groups and caste groups largely defined the physical and urban divisions of Lima prior to the earthquake. Of course, the upper echelons of society occupied more privileged spaces. Easily the most prevalent fear among the aristocracy was the encroachment of other groups upon their space. One was born into the upper class. Any one that gained status through other mediums was treated with suspicion. This highly maintained system of segregation was severely threatened by the aftermath of the earthquake. As a result of the chaos, diverse racial groups had little choice but to temporarily occupy the spaces previously closed off to them. With the earthquake, Walter reveals, the city’s careful hierarchy was turned head over heals, blurring many racial and social boundaries that had been established years before. The earthquake ...
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...overish religious orders and pious works, while at the same time damaging the secular community as a whole. In response, the viceroy put together a compromise that managed to upset all sides of the debate, but he managed to prompt rebuilding of the city without bankrupting the monasteries and other ecclesiastical debtors. The viceroy ultimately sent his proposal of reform to Madrid, along with a careful chronicle of the debates. Eventually, the king approved a final resolution and it was returned to the viceroy. He was instructed to pay back the convents. They were also excluded from state backed reduction in interest rates. Although the endless debates over what to do about the censos post earthquake earned Manso many enemies among the clergy, he succeeded in stemming a tide of litigations and quickened the already difficult process of rebuilding the city of Lima.
Earthquake: a series of vibrations induced in the earth’s crust by the abrupt rupture and rebound of rocks in which elastic strain has been slowly accumulating; something that is severely disruptive; upheaval (Shravan). Tsunami: an unusually large sea wave produced by a seaquake or undersea volcanic eruption (Shravan). Combine these two catastrophic natural disasters, and it will be a day that will forever live in infamy through terror; a day much like that of October 28, 1746 in Lima, Peru in which an entire city was destroyed within mere minutes. Author Charles Walker guides his audience through the devastation and wreckage of this heartbroken town and into the economic, political, religious, and social fallings that followed. Walker argues that the aftermath of this tragedy transformed into a voting of the citizens’ various ideas perceived of the future of Lima, theological consequences, and the structure of the colonial rule (p. 12). However, as illustrated by Walker, the colonial rulers would in turn batter the natives with their alternative goals and ideas for the future of Lima. Finally, the author reconstructs the upheaval of Lima during its’ reconstruction and their forced and struggled relationship with the Spanish crown that ultimately led to rebellions and retaliations by the Afro-Peruvians and Indians.
Teja, Jesus F. De La. A Revolution Remembered: The Memoirs and Selected Correspondence of Juan N. Seguin. Austin: State House Press, 1991.
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