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Cultural Encounters: The Impact of the Inquisition in Spain and the New World

University of California Press

When you tell someone your secret, your freedom is gone.
FERNANDO DE ROJAS, La Celestina

On a November morning in 1539 don Carlos Ometochtzin, the native leader of the former city-state of Texcoco, was taken out of the prison of the Holy Office garbed in the typical sanbenito cloak and cone-shaped hat of the sentenced offender. He was paraded through the streets of downtown Mexico City, candle in hand, to a scaffold surrounded by the multitude that came to witness his sentencing and abjuration, and later to see his strangled body burn at the stake.1 For the majority of the natives, it would be unfortunate that never again would an anti-Spanish rebel meet his end at such a public spectacle. In less than a decade, the stake where individual bodies were set ablaze was replaced by the local controls of provisors (or vicars-general) of the dioceses or archdioceses2 and, even more important, by the confessional, its penances, its magical threats, and its very real capacity to command the submission of tens of thousands of wills to the nascent colonial structure. The two related processes alluded to by these eventsthe failure of the Indian Inquisition and the consequent rise of penitential discipline, whose control mechanisms played a leading role in the colonization of the Nahuas (the Aztecs and their linguistic and cultural neighbors)are the subject of this essay.

From the beginning of the colonial effort in New Spain, ambivalence about the Holy Office limited its utility as an instrument for the domination of natives. For instance, the movement to exclude the Indians from the authority of the Inquisition reached an early climax in 1540, when the apostolic inquisitor, Fray Juan de Zumrraga, received a reprimand from Spain for imposing the death sentence on the cacique don Carlos.3

Fig. 1.
Two figures in penitential costume.

The Indians, however, continued to be processed by the Inquisition throughout the decade. And although official warnings to avoid treating the natives with severity were heard, no official prohibition against trying them outside the local dioceses or archdioceses was issued until 1571, when Philip II formally removed the Indians in the Spanish colonies from the jurisdiction of the Holy Office.4 Despite a previous absence of legislation specifically excluding the Indians, some form of proscription nonetheless existed, because it appears that only one case involving Central Mexican Indians came before the Holy Office from 1547 to 1574.5 Ambivalence is further suggested by the fact that out of 152 procesos acted upon between 1536 and 1543, the years of greatest inquisitorial

persecution of natives, only about nineteen involved Indians (see Table 1.1) and the number accused was quite small, approximately seventy-five.6

Given the seemingly endless possibilitiespainfully brought home to us by the experiences of some contemporary nation-statesfor forcing subordination through a "culture of terror,"7 why were so few natives tried, tortured, or executed by the Inquisition? And why was colonial policy so inconsistent that the Indians ended up beyond its grip altogether, although no law demanded that that be the case until 1571, while the need for maximizing control was fully recognized as critical, by both Church and Crown, prior to this date? As is usually the case when spectacular forms of oppression give way to their more subtle varieties, the reasons commonly offered for the Spanish retreat from an aggressive application of such a powerful instrument for subjecting natives have centered on an assumed rising cry of humanitarian sentiment,8 which is said by some9 to have echoed the following orders issued in 1540 to the apostolic inquisitor, Archbishop Zumrraga:

since these people are newly converted . . . and in such a short time have not been able to learn well the things of our Christian religion, nor to be instructed in them as is fitting, and mindful that they are new plants, it is necessary that they should be attracted more with love than with rigor . . . and that they should not be treated roughly nor should one apply to them the rigor of the law . . . nor confiscate their property.10

But the implementation on humanitarian grounds of these instructions could not have been the primary force that led to the exemption that was generally observed. First of all, the Visitor General Francisco Tello de Sandoval, who replaced Zumrraga in New Spain in 1544 and was responsible for making known the New Laws of 1542the laws that exhibited the greatest degree of toleration Charles V was able to muster on behalf of the Indiansnot only was not instructed to avoid trying natives when acting as apostolic inquisitor but, on the contrary, during his three-year term failed to dismiss the cases against the Indians that came before the Holy Office.11

Second, although we know from the effects of the writings of Bartolom de Las Casas and those of other reformers that this movement could have an influence on the formation of colonial policy,12 the reform was focused on limited circles during the middle decades of the century and was more successful among Spanish rulers in the Old World than among colonial officials, who had to face the very real wrath of the settlers when they ventured arguments on behalf of the Indians. Fur-