Public Health in Lima, Peru, 1535
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THE NATURE OF COLONIAL BODIES: PUBLIC HEALTH IN LIMA, PERU, 1535- 1635 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Notre Dame in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Kathleen M. Kole de Peralta Karen Graubart, Director Graduate Program in History Notre Dame, Indiana July 2015 © Copyright 2015 Kathleen M. Kole de Peralta THE NATURE OF COLONIAL BODIES: PUBLIC HEALTH IN LIMA, PERU, 1535- 1640 Abstract by Kathleen M. Kole de Peralta In 1535, Francisco Pizarro founded Lima, Peru in the middle of a coastal dessert. Its residents transformed the landscape to build a colonial capital and in the process, the landscape shaped local understandings of race, gender, social status and power. Lima’s urban environment created a public health discourse that focused on the relationship between the natural world and human welfare. These discussions emerged in response to the rapid rate of Lima’s growth and the challenges it faced, including deforestation, food supply challenges, and the concentration of waste, disease, and illness. I argue that Lima’s cabildo [municipal government], comprised of just a fraction of the population, seized on these adversities to empower themselves over the majority of the population, promote their interests, and negotiate interactions between humans and their environs. Using the discourse of colonial bodies, health, and the natural world, town councilmen endeavored to control a racially and socially diverse population that surpassed 25,000 people by 1614. For my family ii CONTENTS Figures……………………………………………………………………... iv Tables………………………………………………………………………. v Acknowledgments………………………………………………………….. vii Chapter 1: What Nature Does to the Body………………………………… 1 1.1. Introduction…………………………………………………… 1 1.2 Models of Conquest……………………………………………. 3 1.3 Cabildo Organization…………………………………………... 8 1.4 Early-modern Disease Theories……………………………….. 15 1.5 Cabildos and the advent of Public Health in Latin America…... 21 1.6 The Foundation of Lima……………………………………….. 23 1.7 Phases of Urbanization: The Peruvian Civil Wars, 1550-1555, 1570-1600 and 1613-1635…………………………………………. 30 1.7.1 The Peruvian Civil Wars…………………………..…………. 30 1.7.2 The Mid-Sixteenth Century, 1550-1555……….…………….. 32 1.7.3 1570-1600……………………………………………………. 34 1.7.4 1610-1635………………………………………….………… 36 1.8 Conclusion……………………………………….…………….. 39 Chapter 2: Dividing Waters………………………………………………... 41 2.1 Introduction……………………………………………………..41 2.2 Appropriating the Pre-Columbian Hydraulic Network………....44 2.3 Water Distributions and Jurisdiction…………………………... 48 2.4 Sanitation………………………………………………………..61 2.5 Separation……………………………………………………….68 2.6 Conclusion………………………………………………………74 Chapter 3: Hospitals………………………………………………………... 75 3.1 Introduction……………………………………………………. 75 3.2 The Architecture of Hospital San Andrés……………………… 80 3.3 Hospitals for Almost Every Body……………………………… 90 3.4 The Many Faces of Poor……………………………………….. 99 3.5 The Nature of Care……………………………………………... 102 3.6 Conclusion……………………………………………………... 108 Chapter 4: Food and the Body iii 4.1 Introduction…………………………………………………….. 110 4.2 Early-Modern Food Theory…………………………….……… 120 4.3 Municipal Food Regulations………………………….……....... 125 4.4 To Drink and Be Wary…………………………………………. 136 4.5 Conclusion……………………………………………………... 147 Chapter 5: Healthy Landscapes……………………………………………. 149 5.1 Introduction…………………………………………………….. 149 5.2 Defining Healthy Landscapes………………………………….. 151 5.3 Waste Removal………………………………………………… 156 5.4 Animals……………………………………………………….... 168 5.5 Green Spaces…………………………………………………… 171 5.6 Conclusion……………………………………………………... 178 Chapter 6: Poison and Potions: Apothecaries and Pharmaceutical Practice.. 180 6.1 Introduction…………………………………………………….. 180 6.2 The Role of the Protomedicato………………………………… 182 6.3 The Nature of Pharmaceutical Practice………………………… 186 6.4 Cabildo Inspections of Pharmacies…………………………….. 196 6.5 Municipal Intervention in Pharmaceutical Practice……………. 199 6.6 Conclusion……………………………………………………... 204 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………. 205 Bibliography……………………………………………………………….. 210 iv FIGURES Figure 2.1 Important watersheds along Peru’s central coast, 1535……….. 45 Figure 2.2 Four Main Acequia Lines, Rímac River Valley, 1535………....46 Figure 2.3 Lima’s traza and the Huatica and Magdalena Acequia, 1535….48 Figure 3.1 Reconstruction of Hospital San Andrés………………………...81 v TABLES Table 3.1 Origin of Patients admitted to Hospital San Andrés May 1609….76 Table 3.2 Hospital Foundations in Lima, 1538-1660……………………… 93 Table 4.1 Items purchased by Santa Ana’s Mayordomo, Sept. 1611-Aug. 1612………………………………………………………………………....112 Table 4.2 Items purchased by San Andrés’ Mayordomo Nov. 1612- Oct. 1613………………………………………………………………………....113 Table 4.3 Food purchased for hospital San Andrés during Holy Week 1602…………………………………………………………………………116 Table 6.1 Medicines and Supplies purchased for Santa Ana’s pharmacy…. 189 Table 6.2 Medicines sold to don Juan Zapata c. 1633……......……............. 191 Table 6.3 Medicines sold to don Juan Zapata c. 1633……………………... 195 vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation would not have been possible without the generous support of the Notre Dame History Department, the Union of Graduate Historians, the Graduate School, and the Kellogg Institute for International Studies. The journey of researching and writing this project took a special course that began under the late Dr. Sabine MacCormack and bloomed under the guidance of Dr. Karen Graubart. I am extremely grateful to Karen for taking me under her wing and helping me find my own way. vii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION WHAT NATURE DOES TO THE BODY: THE LOCAL POLITICS OF HEALTH 1.1 Introduction The fifteenth century marked the beginning of what became an unprecedented era of global exploration and migration. Waves of conquistadors left the Iberian Peninsula and invaded territories in the Canary Islands, the Americas, India, Africa, China, and the Philippines. Spanish settlers consolidated these lands within the Spanish Empire by founding towns with a concejo or cabildo [town council]. In a study of sixteenth-century Tenerife, Seville, and Lima, historian Ellen Douglass Howell found that town councils in each location maintained certain continuities with the Iberian model while developing local adaptations.1 Howell proposes several explanations for these variations; she writes that cabildos differed owing to their relative importance to the crown, acquiescence of royal power, and geographic location.2 It is the last theory, geographic location that this study of colonial Lima, Peru builds upon. 1 Ellen Douglass Howell, “Continuity or Change: A Comparative Study of the Composition of the Cabildos in Seville, Tenerife, and Lima,” The Americas 24:1 (1967): 33-45. 2 Ibid., 45. 1 Lima’s location and surroundings influenced its political organization and the trajectory of its expansion. Here I adopt Linda Nash’s approach to colonization in nineteenth-century California, which argues against unidirectional colonization: the idea that Europeans reworked the land to meet their needs. Rather, the transformation worked both ways; humans altered the environment and the environment altered them.3 Francisco Pizarro founded Lima, the City of Kings, in the middle of a coastal desert, bound on the west side by the Pacific Ocean and nestled along the banks of the Rímac River, one of three regional watercourses. Despite this challenging landscape, the influx of African slaves and European and indigenous immigrants outpaced the number of deaths. Consequently, Lima transformed from a small settlement into one of the largest cities in the Americas. An examination of Lima’s early colonial records reveals how the local environment influenced the city’s municipal administration. The rapid rate of Lima’s growth generated a number of environmental problems common to early-modern cities- deforestation, water pollution, food supply challenges, and the concentration of waste, disease, and illness. I argue that Lima’s cabildo, comprised of just a fraction of the population, seized on these adversities to empower themselves over the majority of the population, promote their interests, and negotiate interactions between humans and their environs. Using the discourse of colonial bodies, health, and the natural world, town councilmen strived to control a racially and socially diverse population that surpassed 25,000 people by 1614. 3 Linda Nash, Inescapable Ecologies: A History of Environment, Disease and Knowledge (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 16. 2 1.2 Models of Conquest The majority of the secondary literature emphasizes one of four conquest narratives: military vanquish, evangelization, social/cultural agency, and environmental degradation. The military conquest attributes the success of Spanish invasions to superior military technology such as gunpowder and horses.4 The spiritual conquest, perhaps most famously embodied by Rober Ricard’s The Spiritual Conquest of Mexico, reconstructs colonization as the history of the Catholic Church’s efforts to evangelize indigenous populations through missions, religious instruction and performing holy sacraments and services.5 Social and cultural historians, by contrast, counter the victor-vanquished narrative by focusing on the experience and agency of Spanish, Indian, and African peoples, including the role of gender and 4 John Hemming, The Conquest of the Incas (San Diego: Harcourt, Inc., 1970); William Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico (New York: Modern Library, 2001) and William Prescott,