Un clérigo muy particular ante los indios de Charcas (Bolivia) y su memorial de 1588 recién publicado

Abstract

The recent publication of an extensive report to king Philip II, sent to him in 1588 from what is now Bolivia, sheds new light on the evangelization of the native population of the Andes. Both the report and its author, a Spanish priest by the name of Bartolomé Álvarez, are news to scholars. Álvarez wrote more than fifty years after the arrival of the Spaniards in the territory and argued that Andeans had not been effectively converted to Christianity, despite token appearances to the contrary; they rejected Christian indoctrination and sought to free themselves from Spanish rule. For this failure of imperial policy, Álvarez blamed corrupted officials of the viceregal administration. He also blamed the jesuits and the Church authorities, whose ideas about the native population were naive. Only the lower secular clergy, the rural parish priests such as himself, are spared from his criticism, for which he provided a great deal of valuable Information, ethnographic as well as linguistic.