The revolt of Enriquillo and the historiography of early Spanish America

Americas

Volumn 63, Issue 4, 2007, Pages 587-614

  Altman, Ida ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 60949653096     PISSN: 00031615     EISSN: 15336247     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/tam.2007.0052     Document Type: Review

References (49)

1. On the question of how Enrique has been portrayed, see Carlos Esteban Deive, La Española y la esclavitud del Indio (Santo Domingo: Fundación García Arévalo, 1995), p. 298, n. 55
2. The literature on rebellion and revolt in colonial Spanish America is extensive. See, for example, Susan Schroeder's Introduction and Murdo Macleod's concluding chapter, "Some Thoughts on the Pax Colonial, Colonial Violence, and Perceptions of Both," in Susan Schroeder, ed., Native Resistance and the Pax Colonial in New Spain (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998)
3. On this point especially see Lynn A. Guitar, "Willing It So: Intimate Glimpses of Encomienda Life in Early-Sixteenth-Century Hispaniola," Colonial Latin American Historical Review 7:3 (Summer 1998), pp. 245-263
4. Scholars of another, until recently relatively neglected, region, the present-day southeastern United States, have recognized the crucial connection between that area and the Caribbean; see, for example, Jane Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida (University of Illinois Press, 1999)
5. Paul E. Hoffman, The Spanish Crown and the Defense of the Caribbean, 1535-1585 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980)
6. and the same author's A New Andalucía and a Way to the Orient (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990)
7. See also Daniel H. Usner's discussion of the historiography of the colonial southeast in Richmond F. Brown, ed., Coastal Encounters: The Transformation of the Gulf South in the Eighteenth Century (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, forthcoming)
8. See Lynn Guitar, "Cultural Genesis: Relationships among Indians, Africans and Spaniards in Rural Hispaniola, First Half of the Sixteenth Century" (Ph.D. diss., Vanderbilt University, 1998), p. 208
9. Troy Floyd, The Columbus Dynasty in the Caribbean, 1492-1526 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1973), p. 63, writes of the execution of Anacaona that "the whole event is . . . fraught with ambiguity and obscurity" because of the lack of documentation. "What seems certain is that the Indians and their allies were badly defeated and Anacaona was hanged. Certain caciques fled to Cuba. . . . The native feuds were broken, and Ovando gave out lands and Indians to the soldiers who accompanied him."
10. See Kathleen Deagan and José María Cruxent, Columbus's Outpost among the Taínos. Spain and America at La Isabela, 1493-1498 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002), pp. 60-62
11. and Samuel M. Wilson, Hispaniola. Caribbean Chiefdoms in the Age of Columbus (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press), especially Chapter 3
12. See Deagan and Cruxent, Columbus's Outpost, p. 30
13. and Carl O. Sauer, The Early Spanish Main (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969), Chapters 2 and 3
14. Floyd, The Columbus Dynasty
15. Wilson, Hispaniola
16. Guitar, "Cultural Genesis," is promising in conception but falls somewhat short in execution; her article "Willing It So" reflects a more careful use of the relatively sparse documentary sources. Not surprisingly, the literature in Spanish is far more extensive; for a useful introduction see Frank Moya Pons, Después de Colón (Madrid: Alianza America, 1987) and, more recently
17. Esteban Mira Caballos, El Indio Antillano: Repartimiento, encomienda y esclavitud (1492-1542) (Seville: Muñoz Moya, 1997)
18. and Antillas mayores, 1492-1550. Ensayos y documentos (Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2000)
19. See Floyd, Columbus Dynasty, p. 29 on the imposition of the tribute system in 1495
20. A lengthy letter of 1516 written by members of the Dominican order in Hispaniola mentioned that although Jaraguá lacked gold, "the Indians viewed it as the most important part of the island where there were many great caciques, a great deal of food, and many beautiful women." See Roberto Marte, ed., Santo Domingo en los manuscritos de Juan Bautista Muñoz (Santo Domingo: Ediciones Fundación García Arévalo, 1981), p. 167
21. The size of the population of the islands at contact is much disputed; estimates for Hispaniola have ranged from a low of 100,000 to highs of several million. For a recent, careful reconsideration of the question, see Massimo Livi-Bacci, "Return to Hispaniola: Reassessing a Demographic Catastrophe," Hispanic American Historical Review 83:1 (2003), pp 3-51
22. For a list of early governors and audiencia members, see Guitar, "Cultural Genesis," p. 98
23. See Luis Arranz Márquez, Repartimiento y encomienda en la isla Española: El repartimiento de Alburquerque de 1514 (Santo Domingo: Fundación García Arévalo, 1991)
24. and Emilio Rodriguez Demorizi, Dominicos y las encomiendas de indios de la isla Española (Santo Domingo: Editora del Caribe, 1971)
25. st ed., 1948]), p. 74, Francisco Hernández, who was assigned 36 of Enrique's people, worked for Francisco de Valenzuela, managing his estates. It makes sense that Hernández was an employee or at best junior partner of Valenzuela, as he is never mentioned as encomendero after Valenzuela's death
26. Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas, Historia de las Indias (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1965, 2nd edition), vol. III, p. 260 (my translation)
27. According to Peña Batlle, Rebelión del Bahoruco, p. 73, doña Mencía was Enrique's cousin, and she and Enrique married in the church (in this he follows the histories written by Las Casas, Oviedo, and Herrera)
28. See Guitar's discussion of Vadillo's will in her article "Willing It So," pp. 252-254, in which she notes that Vadillo "left more than thirty individual bequests, many of which were to individuals who were designated as 'indio' or 'mestizo.'"
29. Las Casas, Historia, vol. III, p. 261
30. Fray Cipriano de Utrera's scholarly study, Polémica de Enriquillo (Santo Domingo: Editora del Caribe, 1973), attempts to refute many of the particulars of Las Casas's account. This focus substantially skews the emphasis in what is nonetheless the most extensive scholarly treatment of the revolt. His work, completed in the late 1940s or early 1950s and published posthumously from an unedited manuscript, is valuable in that it reproduces (mainly in the footnotes) long excerpts from the extant records. Utrera's work is so convoluted that it is frequently difficult to decipher; see the comments in the preface written by E. Rodríguez Demorizi. Notwithstanding the undeniable importance of the volume, it nonetheless seems worthwhile to reexamine the revolt and consult the existing records. The bulk of the documentation consists of letters and records of the audiencia of Santo Domingo, which provide insight into Spanish officials' evolving perceptions of a rapidly changing society, as well as aspects of interethnic and social relations that help to define the larger context of relations among Spaniards, Indians and Africans in the early Spanish Caribbean
31. For a transcript of the Interrogatorio Jeronimiano of 1517 (original in Archivo General de Indias, Seville, Indiferente General, legajo 1624) and testimony of the witnesses, see Rodríguez Demorizi, Los dominicos, pp. 273-354
32. One of the witnesses in the 1517 Jeronymite inquiry, Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón, testified that "estando los dichos indios en pueblos juntos muchos caciques entrellos averia muchas discordias y desavenencias aun tambien tendrian aparejo de se levantar conra los españoles." See Rodríguez Demorizi, Los dominicos, p. 308
33. See Utrera, Polémica de Enriquillo, p. 442
34. Marte, Santo Domingo, p. 331
35. Alpargates were a kind of sandal made of rope or hemp; AGI Patronato 174 ramo 52
36. According to Deive, La Española y la esclavitud, p. 292, Sebastián Ramírez de Fuenleal, who had been "juez de Granada durante la rebellion de las Alpujarras, recibe la comisión de poner fin a la Guerra del Baoruco." In a letter of 1529 Ramírez de Fuenleal observed that the mountains in which Enrique was entrenched were more rugged than those of Granada
37. AGI Patronato 174 ramo 52. While the president might have been somewhat disingenuous in arguing the military superiority of Enrique and his followers over other combatants Spaniards had encountered to date in America, he recognized and articulated an important advantage that the inhabitants of Hispaniola had gained compared to groups that the Spaniards engaged elsewhere. On this point see John F. Guilmartin, Jr.'s perceptive comments in "The Cutting Edge: An Analysis of the Spanish Invasion and Overthrow of the Inca Empire, 1532-1539 in Kenneth J. Andrien and Rolena Adorno, eds., Transatlantic Encounters. Europeans and Andeans in the Sixteenth Century (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991). Guilmartin (p. 61) points out that in confronting Pizarro and his men, the Incas "simply did not possess the means to profit from their understanding of the Spaniards' weaknesses and limitations" and that "some twenty years, or two generations, were needed for the indigenous populations of the Americas to absorb effectively the military technologies that might have enabled them to survive on their own cultural terms." In his education and his life-long exposure to Spanish society, Enrique was very much a product of the second generation
38. Deive provides a good if brief synopsis of Enrique's revolt (pp. 289-299). See also his La esclavitud del negro en Santo Domingo (1492-1844) (Santo Domingo: Museo del Hombre Dominicano, 1980) vol. 2, pp. 442-445
39. See Rodríguez Demorizi, Los dominicos, 332-333 for Pedro Romero's testimony in the inquiry conducted by the Jeronymites in 1517
40. See discussion of the revolt in Deive, La esclavitud del negro, vol. 2, pp. 439-441, mainly based on Oviedo's account. The slaves also threatened the estate of oidor Licenciado Zuazo, said to have more than 120 slaves
41. Jane Landers, "The Central African Presence in Spanish Maroon Communities" in Linda M. Heywood, ed., Central Africans and Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). p. 234. The population figures she cites come from a report by archdeacon Alonso de Castro to the Council of the Indies
42. Deive, La esclavitud del negro, p. 441, writes that "uno de los lugares favoritos para refugiarse, y que con el tiempo sería la cimarronera más común de todas las que existieren en la isla, era el sistema montañoso de Baoruco, donde desde 1519 el cacique Enriquillo se hallaba alzado con sus partidarios."
43. See Utera, Polémica de Enriquillo, pp. 481-484, note 57, in which he discusses the African slave known as Sebastián Lemba and quotes a letter of July 1546 from oidor Grajeda, who wrote that Lemba and other captains "have been in revolt in the sierra of Bahoruco, where don Enrique, indio, once was" (from AGI Santo Domingo 49)
44. On maroon societies see Richard Price, ed., Maroon Societies: Rebel Slave Communities in the Americas (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996)
45. and Jane Landers, "The Central African Presence."
46. There are a number of studies of particular maroon communities; in English see Patrick Carroll, "Mandinga: The Evolution of a Mexican Runaway Slave Community, 1735-1827," Comparative Studies in Society and History 19:4 (October 1977), pp. 483-505
47. and William B. Taylor, "The Foundation of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de Amapa," The Americas 26:4 (April 1970), pp. 439-446
48. and Bárbaros. Spaniards and Their Savages in the Age of Enlightenment (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005)
49. and The Canary Islands after the Conquest (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982)