Vassalos-escritores e informações oficializadas. A interferência política da Coroa Espanhola na escrita de Índias na segunda metade do século XVI (Novo Reino de Granada)

Abstract

During the sixteenth century, the Spanish Crown needed information about its new territories in order to control, manage, and protect them. For this reason, it constantly requested, through the Council of the Indies, its production from its vassals allocated in the Indies. This request, however, was accompanied by the elaboration and development of forms of control by the Crown so that it could get the necessary knowledge without the information escaping from its administrative control structure. The search for papers and information constituted an aspect involved in the process expansion of the Spanish Empire towards the West Indies. As the territories expanded, the more the Crown needed papers and the more it sought to institutionalize mechanisms that would allow a private use of information. This thesis seeks to problematize the constant circulation of information regarding the Indies and the Crown’s attempt to control them, specifically in relation to the New Kingdom of Granada (approximately the current regions of Colombia and Venezuela, between 1561-1589.). In order to demonstrate this problematic, we will use, as a privileged instrument of information, the documentation by a historical agent who, in different circumstances, maintained a substantial written communication with the Council of the Indies: Friar Pedro de Aguado. This provincial of the Franciscan Order in the New Kingdom of Granada, between1573-1575, wrote to the Council as a predicator, a provincial, a provincial procurator, and a chronicler. In the moments he wrote as a province member, Aguado unveiled a set of religious and political actors who were constantly in dispute and wrote to the Council of the Indies and to the king to ask every kinds of things and also to denounce the unruly life of the franciscan province of which he was a part. In the case of archival documentation, it is possible to see the Council of the Indies frequently requiring data about events and political problems so that it could be aware of the problems and interfere in them. On the other hand, as a chronicler Aguado wrote a voluminous chronicle, the Recopilación Historial, which deals with the most diverse historical agents and themes related to the conquest of the region of the New Granada. This chronicle was presented to the Council of the Indies for the purpose of obtaining licenses for printing and selling, which were granted in 1581-1582. Authorization was allowed, however the Council officials edited it, erased it, and removed full pages, in many cases, entire chapters. Information which, once published, could put in question, among other things, the legitimacy of the Spain presence in the region was removed from the text. Divided into three parts, this thesis seeks to analyse, in selected temporality, region and object, how the Crown was able to manage the circulation of information and control it.