70-6869 SAEGER, James Schofield, 1938
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This dissertation has been microfilmed exactly as received 70-6869 SAEGER, James Schofield, 1938- THE ROLE OF JOSE DE ANTEQUERA IN THE REBELLION OF PARAGUAY, 1717-1735. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1969 History, general University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan THE ROLE OF JOSE DE ANTEQUERA IN THE REBELLION OF PARAGUAY, 1717-1735 DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of the Ohio State University By James Schofield Saeger, B.A., A.M. * * * * * * The Ohio State University 1969 Approved by Adviser ^ ~7a Department of History ^ ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Many people assisted me in this study. I would like to thank Don José de la Pena and his staff at the Archives of the Indies in Seville. I also wish to thank the directors and staffs of the libraries of the School of Hispanic American Studies in Seville, North Carolina State University, Duke University, Ohio State University, and Lehigh University. 1 must also acknowledge a debt of gratitude to Professor John J. TePaske of Duke University, who suggested this topic and guided this dissertation to its conclusion. I wish to thank Professor Robert H. Bremner of Ohio State University for his help in so many ways. ii ill VITA August 19,1938... Born - Columbus, Ohio 1960............. B.A., The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1962-1965....... Graduate Assistant, The Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio 19 6 3 ............ M.A., The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1965-1967....... Instructor, Department of History, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina 1967-1969....... Instructor, Department of History, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field; Latin American History Colonial Latin American History. Professor John J. TePaske iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS................................... ii VITA................................................. iii Chapter I. Introduction. .... ............ ...... 1 II. A Struggle for Supremacy..................... 23 III. Arrival of Jose de Antequera................. 42 IV. New Sources of Conflict..................... 56 V. External Factors: Viceroy and Audiencia. 73 VI. The Lines of Battle Are Drawn............... 88 VII, Antequera: Hour of Triumph................. 104 VIII. Antequera: His Downfall..................... 117 IX, Death of Antequera........................... 134 X. Conclusion.................................. 156 BIBLIOGRAPHY......................................... 159 I INTRODUCTION The history of Spanish Paraguay began in 1516. In that year an expedition under Juan Djfaz de Soifs ascended the Rio de la Plata, the great River of Silver of southeastern South America. Solfs was searching for a water passage to the South Sea. He was captured and eaten by Indians, and his force was broken up. Several members of the expedition survived, and they repeated the stories they heard of fabulous riches just beyond the horizon, especially Inca silverwork. Other explorers came to the region in the nest two decades and verified these tales. Sebastian Cabot, who visited the area in 1526;. named it the Rio de la Plata. Rumors of the wealth to be found to the north and west motivated several Spanish attempts to conquer Peru from the east coast of South America. All of these failed, but they provided the basis for a permanent Spanish colony in the Plata region.^ In 1535 Pedro de Mendoza, a Basque noble, arrived at the mouth of the Rfo de la Plata with a force of eleven ships and 1,200 men. Mendoza acted under orders from Charles V to build forts, colonize the region, and establish land communications with Peru. It was he who established the town Harris Gaylord Warren, Paraguay ; An Informal History (Norman, Oklahoma, 1949), pp. 34-50; Philip Raine, Paraguay (New Brunswick, N.J., 1956), pp. 19-24. 2 of Buenos Aires> He then sent a force to Peru under his lieutenant Juan de Ayolas. Seriously ill, Mendoza embarked for Spain and died en route. Before departing, he appointed Ayolas captain-general. Ayolas sailed north on the Parana and Paraguay Rivars and died at the hands of Guaycuru Indians. His main force remained behind under his second-in-ccmnnand Domimgo Martfnez de Irala. These men, the conquistadores of Paraguay, built a stockade on the east bank of the Rfo Paraguay in August 1537. Over 1,000 miles north of Buenos Aires, they named their new city Nuestra Senora de la Asuncion.^ Between 1537 and 1556 Domingo de Irala, the "Father of Paraguay," was the most powerful man in the Plata region; but his authority was fre quently challenged. His rule saw a succession of plots and counterplots. In 1539 the colonists named Irala governor of Paraguay under the terms of a cedula from Charles V issued in September, 1537. This docra& ordered the colonists to elect their own governor if the office fell vacant.^ Irala's rule was interrupted for two years in 1542 with the arrival in Paraguay of the Great Pedestrian, Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, the newly appointed adelantado and governor of Paraguay. But Cabeza de Warren, Paraguay. 34-50; R. B. Cunningham Graham, The Conquest of the River Plate (London, 1924), pp. 1-70; Luis L. Domfnguez, ed.. The Conquest of the River Plate (1535-1555). I, Voyage of Ulrich Schmidt to the Rivers La Plata and Paraguay (London, 1891), pp. 1-91. Ibid.; George Pendle, Paraguay; A Riverside Nation (London and New York, 1954),pp. 7-8. Warren, Paraguay. 46. Vaca was an inept leader and on August 25, 1544, the province of Paraguay experienced its first revolt. Citing Charles V*s cedula of September, 1537, the Paraguayans, most of them loyal to Irala, overthrew the adelantado and re-elected Irala governor. This cedula applied only to a specific instance, but the conquistadores and their descendants for the next two hundred years would claim that it gave them the right to replace an intolerable governor.^ When Irala died in October, 1556 his legacy was a firmly estab lished colony. Irala had seen Asuncion become the first city of the Plata region, after Buenos Aires was abandoned ini1541. He had parcelled out some 20,000 Guaranf Indian natives of the region in encomiendas^ to 320 of his followers. By 1556 the city of Asuncion covered an area of three square miles. It was the site of a cathedral, two parish churches, three monasteries, and two schools. Shortly before his death, Irala welcomed to Asuncion Pedro FernSndez de la Torre, the second titulary bishop of Paraguay. This event marked the establishment of the Roman Catholic Church in Paraguay in its traditional form.^ Ibid.; Mangus MÔrner, The Political and Econcaaic Activities of the Jesuits in the La Plata Region. The Hapsburg Era (Stockholm, 1953), p. 53; Bernard Moses, The Spanish Dependencies in South America; An Introduction to their Civilization (New York and London, 1914), Vol. I, pp. 188-203. The encomienda was an institution which Spaniards first used in lands reconquered from the Muslims. In America, the encomienda was a system in which the crown "commended" a certain number of Indians to worthy Spaniards. Each owed specific obligations to the other. The Indian had to labor a certain number of days for encranendero. who in turn was obligated to see to the physical and spiritual welfare of his charge. Warren, Paraguay, 68-80; Ricardo de Lafuente Machafn, gobernador Domingo Martinez de Irala (Buenos Aires, 1939) passim. The majority of the people in early colonial Paraguay were Indians belonging to the Tupf-Guaranf linguistic family, who probably originated in the basin of the Rjfo Paraguay. By 1537 they had spread out over much of eastern South America to Bolivia, most of coastal Brazil, the interior of the Amazon, and the present republics of Paraguay, Uruguay, and northern Argentina. Before 1537 the Carios, the most advanced of the Guaranf tribes, cultivated maize and manioc. They supplemented their diet with fish.and game and developed rudimen tary industrial arts like weaving cotton and making a few domestic imple ments. A sedentary people, the Guaranf exhibited few of the hostile characteristics of the fierce Puelche and Abipones of Argentina or Payaguas, Guaycurus, or Charruas who also lived in Paraguay. Thus their conversion to Christianity and reduction to Spanish authority and civilization were relatively easy tasks.^ Never fulfilling its founders' expectations as a route to Peru, the area around Asuncion in the middle of the sixteenth century was a more desirable place to colonize than Buenos Aires because of the climate and relative friendliness and adaptibility of the aboriginal population. With plentiful supply of willing laborers, the colonizers of Paraguay were also favored by good soil for agriculture, a mild climate, forests, and grasslands. These partly compensated for the region's absence of mineral wealth. Colonial Paraguay consisted of an irregular triangle of roughly Julian H. Steward and Louis C. Faron, Native Peoples of South America (New York, Toronto, London, 1959), pp. 325-334; Alfred Metraux, "The Guaranf," in Julian H. Steward (ed.). Handbook of South American Indians. Vol. Ill (Washington, D.C., 1948), pp. 69-94. 5 60,000 square miles, formed at the confluence of the Paraguay and Alto Parana Rivers, spreading out from Asuncion in a radius of some one hundred and twenty miles north, east, and south of the city. West of the Paraguay River lay the nearly uninhabitable Chaco region, two-thirds of the present republic. The Chaco's arid plains were hostile to human life. They prevented Spanish attempts to reach the silver mines of Upper Peru from the Plata region,^ "In the Spanish colonization of the New World," Elman R, Service notes, "the encomienda system and the mission system were the two most important means of institutionalizing control of the native population , , ."10 Both institutions existed in competition with each other in Paraguay, In the area around Asuncion, the region of primary Spanish settlement in Paraguay, the colonists quickly extended Spanish control over the natives by the encomienda.