The Colonial Amazon and the Shaping of the New World by Rodrigo
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One World is not Enough: The Colonial Amazon and the Shaping of the New World by Rodrigo D. Toromoreno A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Romance Languages and Literatures: Spanish) in the University of Michigan 2015 Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor Gustavo Verdesio, Chair Professor Enrique García Santo-Tomás Professor Eduardo Góes Neves, Universidade de São Paulo Professor Jean M. Hébrard, l'École des Hautes Études en Sciences sociales Assistant Professor Daniel J. Nemser © 2015 Rodrigo D. Toromoreno Dedication To Lucía and the women who have shaped my world. ii Acknowledgements If it were merely a question of thanking those who were directly involved in the production of this dissertation, that list would not accurately reflect the collaborations from which the work has benefited. Like the colonial texts I examine, this project was not written in a vacuum. It is the result of years of conversations and encounters, sometimes born out of chance, that have moulded the ideas therein. I would like to begin by thanking the director of my dissertation, Gustavo Verdesio, not only for the indefatigable patience with which he has guided the project from its inception to its completion, but for his willingness and ability to read its content at those stages when the dissertation seemed to be devoid of any. To his lively discussions and perceptive suggestions I attribute the most developed aspects of the project, as these sections have come to be this way from the inquisitive approach to colonial literature that he has championed. My gratitude extends to Enrique García Santo-Tomás for the sincerity of his comments and above all for the consideration with which he expressed these. It is this manner of fomenting an interest in the betterment of one’s work that has made him indispensable as a committee member and greatly esteemed in the most respected of ways as a teacher. For the generosity with which he has shared his knowledge of colonial scholarship and his time, I would like to thank Daniel Nemser in whom I have found a model for the innovative work that can be done in the field. The aspects of my academic formation that I owe to Josiah Blackmore are countless. I take this opportunity to express my gratitude for being a mentor of the highest order, cultivating through conversations and his own work the seeds of my interest in the colonial literature. iii I have been fortunate enough to have received feedback and support from various insightful faculty members at the University of Michigan and abroad. Amongst the latter, I am thankful for the friendly guidance Eduardo Góes Neves once offered a complete stranger which made the process of locating primary sources all the less daunting. In much the same way, Jean Hébrard, I thank you for your enthusiasm in the project which has been very encouraging. I appreciate the time given to me by Catherine Brown who was kind enough to entertain my ideas with an attentive ear and a welcoming hot cup of tea. I reserve special thanks for those whose classes have provided the ideal environment for the germination of early concepts: Daniel Noemi, Patricia Simons, Alison Cornish, Martin Powers, Gareth Williams, Hitomi Tonomura, Diane Owen Hughes, and Juli Highfill. I thank the institutions that have kindly supported my research either financially or in terms of access to information and to an audience. In addition to the Horace Rackham Graduate School and Boynton Scholarship Fund for granting me the Predoctoral and Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships, my thanks extend to the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, the International Institute at the University of Michigan, the Department of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, all of which financed necessary trips to archives. To this list I add the Newberry Library, Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, and University of Minho for providing the opportunity to present early versions of the second chapter. Without the support of the administrators and archivists at the Biblioteca Ecuatoriana Aurelio Espinosa Pólit, the Iglesia de la Compañía de Jesús de Quito, the Biblioteca da Ajuda, the Arquivo Nacional Torre do Tombo, and the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, I would not have been able to spend time with the material this study demands. iv My family, which has grown since I began my degree, and friends have been instrumental to this project’s completion. My sister and brother Andrea and Jerry Toromoreno, my brothers and sisters-in-law, my nieces Sofía Mendieta and Ève Gendreau, my friends Michael di Prospero and his family, Chet Roivas, Jon Denton, Brigidda Bell, Martin Vega, Helena Skorovsky, Matthieu Dupas, Wendy Sepponen, and Ximena Gomez: I would like to thank them all for the support they have each lent in their own way. Their questions regarding what exactly it is I study has urged me to work quickly enough to hopefully provide them with an adequate response. Regardless, my parents, Rebeca Sigüencia and Luis Toromoreno, along with my loving in-laws, Mariana Jara and José Mendieta, have been the ones who have demonstrated an unparalleled understanding of what being an ‘eternal student’ entails and have helped me tremendously in the process. I can think of no better way to culminate this gesture of gratitude than to thank the person behind it all. Lucía, without your tireless belief that I could, indeed, bring this project into fruition, I would not have had the opportunity to be dedicating it to you. You have been the silent engineer behind this dissertation and it is to you that I owe the world. v Table of Contents Dedication ....................................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................ iii List of Figures ............................................................................................................................... vii Abstract ........................................................................................................................................ viii Chapter 1: Designed by Committee ................................................................................................ 1 Chapter 2: The Fluid Amazon....................................................................................................... 63 Chapter 3: World Relief .............................................................................................................. 120 Chapter 4: An Awkward Fit ........................................................................................................ 189 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 269 vi List of Figures Figure 1 - Map featured in Saavedra y Guzmán, Martín de. Descubrimiento del río de las Amazonas y sus dilatadas provincias. 1639. .............................................................................. 114 Figure 2 - Albert Eckhout. Still Life with Palm Inflorescence and Basket of Spices, c.1640 ..... 181 Figure 3 - Albert Eckhout. Tupinamba / Brazilian Woman and Child, 1641 ............................. 182 Figure 4 - Albert Eckhout. African Woman and Child, 1641 ..................................................... 183 vii Abstract This dissertation revisits the term ‘world’ to examine its function in the construct ‘New World’, focusing on seventeenth-century imaginings of the Amazon River at a time when geopolitical affairs were challenging what appeared to be a categorical concept. Analyzing a series of mid-century expeditions from opposing parties and geographical extremes of the river, Jesuit annual reports in which subsequent settlement designs are laid out, official documents with similar aspirations, chronicles describing life in the tropical rainforest, and visual sources including a still life painting where this material is rendered, the colonial Amazon is read through these texts in a way that seeks to understand the system they collectively shape—the ‘world’ that, in other words, they form. The crux of the analysis then becomes an engagement with the question of what it means to be in this world shaped predominantly by water, and in particular what it means for those who exist within it in a mode that does not agree with its design. That ‘world’ is understood as an entity which is ‘whole’ is a premise that sets the context of the first chapter which explores renditions of an incomplete New World in ontological terms. Elaborating on this direction, the second chapter uses a mid-century expedition, recorded by the Jesuit Cristóbal de Acuña, to explore the mechanics of world shaping wherein the Amazon’s topography is conceptually rearranged to align with geopolitical interests. The handling of nature is further examined in the third chapter through a Dutch a still life painting of colonial Brazil and a Portuguese letter advocating the transplantation of crops to the colony. Here ‘tropical nature’ is treated as a concept that is fashioned in response to erstwhile renditions of these worlds, turning the shaping process into a revisionist undertaking. viii Using Amazonian archaeology in conjunction with annual reports of Jesuit aldeas, the final chapter examines the project’s central question through Amerindian responses to the world order established