Rolena Adorno: The account of Don Juan de Mendoza y Luna, the marquis of Montesclaros, viceroy of Peru, to his successor (GkS 589, 2°)

During the years of Guaman Poma’s preparation of his Nueva corónica y buen gobierno the viceroy of Peru was Don Juan de Mendoza y Luna, the marquis of Montesclaros, who governed from 21 December 1607 to 18 December1615. In accordance with a royal directive of 8 November 1614 that required him to transmit information on his governance to his successor, Montesclaros prepared a full report for Don Francisco de Borja y Aragón, the prince de Esquilache. This memorial, presented here in one of its multiple copies, was dated 12 December 1615.

Montesclaros dispatched his report from the chacra de Mantilla, that is, possibly the country estate (in Spanish, “heredad”) of Don Juan de Mantilla, later known as Fray Juan de la Concepción. The “chacra de Mantilla” may alternatively be a euphemistic reference to the convent of the Discalced Franciscans, located across the Rimac River from the center of Lima.  Mantilla had retired there when he took the habit in 1601. At the entrance to this convent but outside its cloistered confines, the viceroy Montesclaros had erected living quarters with balconies overlooking the public alameda that he had constructed in 1611 at the foot of the district of San Lázaro. To this “curious chapel and garden,” remarked the Jesuit historian Father Bernabé Cobo (1882, 273), Montesclaros and his successors often retired to escape the hubbub of the viceroyal palace and court.

The penetrating overview of the viceroyalty, its problems, and the means to remedy them presented by Montesclaros in this report was recognized in its own day by the jurist and prosecuting attorney of the Royal Council of the Indies, Dr. Juan de Solórzano Pereira. In his Política indiana (1648) Solórzano frequently cited the legal dispositions of Montesclaros as models of prudence and rectitude.

Montesclaros’s final report is still appreciated today for various reasons: first, its candor in warning of the errors in governing into which Montesclaros himself had fallen; second, its consideration of a broad range of complex and important questions regarding the governance of the viceroyalty, and, finally, its analysis of the peculiarity of the Peruvian government with its two, mutually dependent but differentiated “republics,” one of Indians, the other of Spaniards (Latasa Vassallo 1997, 10-11).

The Montesclaros report was acquired by the Royal Library in 1721, approximately a century after its composition, as part of the private library, totalling 17,000 volumes, of the Danish lawyer, historian, and book-collector Christian Reitzer (1665-1736). Reitzer was a professor of law at the University of Copenhagen and keenly interested in the then-emerging discipline of political science. (Ilsøe 1999, 381, reproduces the relevant portion of the 1721 Reitzer catalog). Other manuscript copies of Montesclaros’s report are archived in public repositories in Spain, and it has been transcribed and published in documentary collections.

The present copy of the Montesclaros manuscript is contemporary with its composition.

Not transcribed in this copy are the two brief final sections of the original report, pertaining to the viceroy’s duties as president of the Audiencia, or highest civil and criminal court, and as captain general of the viceroyalty (Mendoza y Luna 1964, 264-272). But these lacunae are a small loss in comparison with Montesclaros’ long and informative expositions on the governance of the two “republics” of Peru. On the other hand, this copy provides phrases missing from the transcription of the report as published in the Colección de documentos inéditos.

The interest of this lengthy final report of Montesclaros in the present context is double:  First, it underscores the interest that the Royal Library and its donors, from their perspective in Protestant Northern Europe, had in Spanish politics and governmental administration. Its presence in the royal collections is the likely continuation of a tradition that included, earlier, the acquisition of the Guaman Poma manuscript. Second, the contents of Montesclaros’s report and Guaman Poma’s “buen gobierno” significantly overlap in their recommendations for civil and ecclesiastical administrative reform as well as in their criticisms of the abuses perpetrated by the colonists against the native Andeans. This coincidence invites the reconsideration of Guaman Poma’s claims to have served “in the houses and palaces of good government” and urges the continued investigation of his biography.

Select Bibliography:

Cobo, Bernabé de, S.J.

1882    La historia de la fundación de Lima. 1629. Manuel González de la Rosa, ed. Imprenta Liberal. Lima.

Colección de documentos inéditos, relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organización de las antiguas posesiones españolas de América y Oceanía. Luis Torres de Mendoza, ed. Serie 1.1864-84. 42 vols. Madrid. Rpt. Kraus Reprints 1964-1969.

Hanke, Lewis, and Celso Rodríguez

1978    Los virreyes españoles en América durante el gobierno de la Casa de Austria. Biblioteca de Autores Españoles 281. Perú 2. Atlas. Madrid.

Herrera Casado, Antonio

1990    El gobierno americano del marqués de Montesclaros. Colección Virrey Mendoza 2. Institución Provincial de Cultura “Marqués de Santillana. Guadalajara, Spain.

Ilsøe, Harald

1999    Det kongelige Bibliotek i støbeskeen. Studier og samlinger til bestandens historie indtil ca. 1780. Danish Humanist texts and Studies 21. 2 vols. Museum Tusculanums Forlag. Copenhagen.    

Latasa Vassallo, Pilar

1997    Administración virreinal en el Perú: gobierno del marqués de Montesclaros (1607-1615). Editorial Centro de Estudios Ramón Areces. Madrid.

Lohmann Villena, Guillermo

1959    Las relaciones de los virreyes del Perú. Escuela de Estudios Hispanoamericanos. Sevilla.

Mendoza y Luna, Juan, el marqués de Montesclaros

1964    Relación del marqués de Montesclaros, virrey del Perú, a su sucesor en este cargo, sobre el estado y gobernación de dicho país. 1615. In Colección de documentos inéditos . . . de América y Oceanía. Vol. 6,  pp. 187-272.

Miró Quesada Sosa, Aurelio 

1962    El primer virrey-poeta en América. Don Juan de Mendoza y Luna, marqués de Montesclaros. Biblioteca Románica Hispánica, Gredos. Madrid.

Moreyra y Paz Soldán, Manuel

1954    De la correspondencia del virrey marqués de Montesclaros. Revista Histórica 21: 328-354. Instituto Histórico del Perú. Lima.

Solórzano Pereira, Juan de

1648    Política indiana. Sacada en lengua castellana de los dos tomos del derecho, y gobierno…de las Indias Occidentales. D. Díaz de la Carrera. Madrid. Translation of his Disputationem de Indiarum jure, 1629-1639.

© Rolena Adorno 2001