An examination of the application of late-colonial Bourbon policies concerning marriage and intimacy, their effects on people's lives, and how they resisted them to create, and break, intimate bonds in colonial Charcas"--
Policies concerning marriage, morality, and intimacy were central to the efforts of the Spanish monarchy to maintain social control in colonial Charcas. The Bourbon Crown depended on the patriarchal, caste-based social system on which its colonial enterprise was built to maintain control over a vast region that today encompasses Bolivia and parts of Peru, Chile, Paraguay, and Argentina. Intimacy became a fulcrum of social control contested by individuals, families, the state, and the Catholic Church, and deeply personal emotions and experiences were unwillingly transformed into social, political, and moral challenges. In Of Love and Loathing, Nicholas A. Robins examines the application of late-colonial Bourbon policies concerning marriage, morality, and intimacy. Drawing on archival sources, Robins examines how such policies and the means by which they were enforced highlight the moral, racial, and patriarchal ideals of the time, and, more important, the degree to which the policies were evaded. Not only did free unions, illegitimate children, and de facto divorces abound, but women also had significantly more agency regarding resources, relationships, and movement than has previously been recognized. A surprising image of society emerges from Robins's analysis, one with considerably more moral latitude than can be found from the perspectives of religious doctrine and regal edicts"--
In Santa Bárbara’s Legacy: An Environmental History of Huancavelica, Peru, Nicholas A. Robins presents the first comprehensive environmental history of a mercury producing region in Latin America. Tracing the origins, rise and decline of the regional population and economy from pre-history to the present, Robins explores how people’s multifaceted, intimate and often toxic relationship with their environment has resulted in Huancavelica being among the most mercury-contaminated urban areas on earth. The narrative highlights issues of environmental justice and the toxic burdens that contemporary residents confront, especially many of those who live in adobe homes and are exposed to mercury, as well as lead and arsenic, on a daily basis. The work incorporates archival and printed primary sources as well as scientific research led by the author.
This is the first work exploring the colonial roots, modern context, trajectory and legacy of the Shining Path insurgency in the region of Huancavelica, Peru, one of Peru’s most impoverished and Quechua-speaking regions. The use of terroristic violence to implement a revolutionary and exclusivist ideology was without precedent in Latin America, presaging later movements such as ISIS. Integrating interviews, testimonials, survey data and the vast primary and secondary literature on the insurgency, this work examines how Huancavelican communities experienced and continue to shoulder the consequences of an exterminatory conflict thirty years after the insurgency was largely, although not entirely, defeated.
This detailed volume offers an unprecedented exploration of incendiary conditions that stoked The Great Rebellion of 1780-1782 in Upper Peru (Bolivia). That revolt claimed tens of thousands of lives and traumatized imperial psyches for decades to come. It was, in effect, one of the most de vastating political and human disasters in Latin American colonial history. Using extensive archival research, Nicholas Robins delves into the fractious relations between Indian communities and their clergy and the role that such tensions played as a major causal factor of the rebellion. Among the grievous economic and social issues were the use of forced Indian labor, land encroachment, colonial relations with native leaders, and collection of Indian tithes and first fruits. Powerful case histories offer rare insights into the daily exercise of power in colonial Andean villages. Compelling archival evidence provides a riveting portrait of clerical abuse in rural villages and reveals how Indian peoples challenged and resisted ruling powers with varying degrees of success. Robins’ substantial documentation is enriched by a wealth of often colorful detail, making it an excellent choice for studies in Colonial Latin America n history and indigenous Latin American communities.
Conflict in Cuba is not new. Since early in the Caribbean nation's colonial history a small elite has used centralized power to rule for what they viewed as the common good. Officials often created monopolies which limited accountability, social mobility, fair play and economic development. This work traces this ethos, efforts to change it, and its manifestations in present-day Cuba. The first of seven chapters discusses the history of Cuba's government and economy, and the ongoing conflict of monism and pluralism. Several chapters then detail the insights the author gained through his work in the country: Cubans are only too aware that, with very few exceptions, they have long been under one form of tyranny or another; they hate their chains but fear to lose them; Cubans and their friends and enemies both want and fear a pluralistic Cuba; and Cubans understand that though Cuban rightists in the United States hate Castro, they share many of his principles and methods. In a final chapter, the work explores various possibilities that the future may hold for the island.
This book investigates three Indian revolts in the Americas: the 1680 uprising of the Pueblo Indians against the Spanish; the Great Rebellion in Bolivia, 1780--82; and the Caste War of Yucatan that began in 1849 and was not finally crushed until 1903. Nicholas A. Robins examines their causes, course, nature, leadership, and goals. He finds common features: they were revitalization movements that were both millenarian and exterminatory in their means and objectives; they sought to restore native rule and traditions to their societies; and they were movements born of despair and oppression that were sustained by the belief that they would witness the dawning of a new age. His work underscores the link that may be found, but is not inherent, between genocide, millennialism, and revitalization movements in Latin America during the colonial and early national periods.
On the basis of an examination of the colonial mercury and silver production processes and related labor systems, Mercury, Mining, and Empire explores the effects of mercury pollution in colonial Huancavelica, Peru, and Potosí, in present-day Bolivia. The book presents a multifaceted and interwoven tale of what colonial exploitation of indigenous peoples and resources left in its wake. It is a socio-ecological history that explores the toxic interrelationships between mercury and silver production, urban environments, and the people who lived and worked in them. Nicholas A. Robins tells the story of how native peoples in the region were conscripted into the noxious ranks of foot soldiers of proto-globalism, and how their fate, and that of their communities, was—and still is—chained to it.
On the basis of an examination of the colonial mercury and silver production processes and related labor systems, Mercury, Mining, and Empire explores the effects of mercury pollution in colonial Huancavelica, Peru, and Potosí, in present-day Bolivia. The book presents a multifaceted and interwoven tale of what colonial exploitation of indigenous peoples and resources left in its wake. It is a socio-ecological history that explores the toxic interrelationships between mercury and silver production, urban environments, and the people who lived and worked in them. Nicholas A. Robins tells the story of how native peoples in the region were conscripted into the noxious ranks of foot soldiers of proto-globalism, and how their fate, and that of their communities, was—and still is—chained to it.
Policies concerning marriage, morality, and intimacy were central to the efforts of the Spanish monarchy to maintain social control in colonial Charcas. The Bourbon Crown depended on the patriarchal, caste-based social system on which its colonial enterprise was built to maintain control over a vast region that today encompasses Bolivia and parts of Peru, Chile, Paraguay, and Argentina. Intimacy became a fulcrum of social control contested by individuals, families, the state, and the Catholic Church, and deeply personal emotions and experiences were unwillingly transformed into social, political, and moral challenges. In Of Love and Loathing, Nicholas A. Robins examines the application of late-colonial Bourbon policies concerning marriage, morality, and intimacy. Robins examines how such policies and the means by which they were enforced highlight the moral, racial, and patriarchal ideals of the time, and, more important, the degree to which the policies were evaded. Not only did free unions, illegitimate children, and de facto divorces abound, but women also had significantly more agency regarding resources, relationships, and movement than has previously been recognized. A surprising image of society emerges from Robins’s analysis, one with considerably more moral latitude than can be found from the perspectives of religious doctrine and regal edicts.
Exploring one of the least studied genocides in post-conquest South America, Robins calls into question many of the central assumptions currently held by genocide scholars. Victims of genocide usually lack the organization and weaponry to battle their enemies. During the 1780-1782 Great Rebellion in Peru and Upper Peru (now Bolivia), however, the Indian revolutionaries faced the better-organized and armed loyalist army. Whereas genocidal policies are usually characterized by centralized leadership, the Great Rebellion was highly fragmented and confederational in nature, undercutting the widely-held assumption that only the State is capable of committing genocide. The Rebellion is one of the rare cases when the victims of genocide emerged victorious. Focusing on the events occurring in the region south of La Paz, Robins examines how a native millennial movement evolved into an Indian-led attempt at genocide, dealing an unprecedented challenge to Spanish rule in the Americas. In the eyes of the rebels, this revolt fulfilled prophecies of an inevitable, divinely assisted, and long-awaited return of native rule. Just like at the dawn of the colonial period, this new era was to be born of pachacuti, or cataclysm. But this time the Spanish interlopers and their culture would be targeted for destruction.
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