The Battle for Bodies and Souls in the Colonial North Andes: Intraecclesiastical Struggles and the Politics of Migration

Abstract

H I S study uses intraecclesiastical conflict in the Audiencia of Quito as a vehicle for exploring the relationship between migration and political change from approximately 1534 to 1700. First, it analyzes how lower caste agency, in the form of Indian population movements and resultant mestizaje, subverted the race-based political order of the colony. Second, it examines how the products of migration, forasteros and castes, helped shape the colony's local political universe and then were themselves conscripted into elite conflicts (in this case with regard to the church).' The essay aims to achieve these objectives in two ways. First, it closely examines the lived experiences and ideological discourse of the lower clergy regarding the systemic problems arising from Indian migration and mestizaje in the province of Latacunga, in the Audiencia of Quito. Second, it delineates the role of that province's forasteros and castes in the classic power struggle between the regular and secular clergy. Embedded in this analysis is an assessment of the relative importance of politicoeconomic and ideological motivations for the conflict. According to the existing literature, the regular-secular controversy in Spanish America originated in papal decrees that entrusted the conversion

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