Forbidden Passages. Karoline P. Cook

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СКАЧАТЬ and Alonso Ortiz de Zúñiga were all described during the visita as sons of Moriscos. Their cases were bound to an investigation of Antonio Ortiz, interpreter for Viceroy Mendoza in the Guerra de Jalisco, and they were all affected by the charges against him for extortion, illegally selling “indios jaliscos” as slaves, and cheating the people for whom he was interpreting. Licenciado Lorenzo de Tejada, judge of the Audiencia of Mexico, presented charges against these men as part of his ongoing enmity with Antonio Ortiz, whom he accused of bribing them to ruin his credibility as visitador. Tejada’s accusations reveal insights into the lives the interpreters forged for themselves in New Spain, as well as Spanish conceptions of honor and anxieties about intermixture between Amerindians and Muslims. They cast Ortiz de Zúñiga, Triana, and his cousin Romero as men who “live more like Muslims than like Christians.”⁴⁷ They had achieved some degree of authority in colonial society due to their role as interpreters, which may have made other Spaniards uncomfortable or envious, given their reputedly lower status. Tejada described Triana as a Morisco slave whose parents were also “newly converted” Muslim slaves in the household of the Marqués de Tarifa in Seville. In New Spain, Triana had found work as a gardener (hortelano) for the Marqués del Valle Hernán Cortés before being removed from his post for unseemly behavior. Triana’s cousin Marcos Romero was also portrayed as a “Morisco, son of newly converted Moriscos.”⁴⁸ Finally, Alonso Ortiz de Zúñiga, who acted as tutor and guardian to a young woman from a prominent family, was labeled a “bad Christian … the bastard son of the Morisca slave of Doña María, wife of the señor de Ginés.”⁴⁹

      A recurrent concern in the accusations against the interpreters was their contact with indigenous women. Triana lived “among Indians” and had in his house a tavern where he sold pulque to Indians and Africans. Spanish authorities remained anxious about indigenous drinking throughout the colonial period, as consumption of fermented beverages like pulque in New Spain or chicha in the Andes had enduring religious and ceremonial significance that ecclesiastical authorities deemed contrary to Christian baptism.⁵⁰ Triana’s “conversation and dwelling has always been with Indians and among Indians, eating with them on the floor and doing their dances and ceremonies (mitotes).”⁵¹ Furthermore, although married to a Spanish woman in Castile, Triana was “cohabiting (amancebado) with many Indian women, living more according to the law of Muhammad than as a Christian.”⁵² In Cuernavaca, Triana also allegedly stole from Alonso Pérez Tamayo a female slave and a free indigenous woman, both of whom he held “captive and hidden for many days, being a drunk, a thief, and an amancebado, and having other dirty and low vices.”⁵³ Similarly, Marcos Romero had resided “among Indians and outside the traza of the Spaniards,” before the Royal Audiencia ordered him to leave his house and live with Spaniards under pain of one hundred lashes “for the damage and evils he does to [the Indians].”⁵⁴ Romero was “blasphemous and amancebado with many Indian and mestiza women. He lives more like a gentile and according to the law of Muhammad than as a Christian, and his business and conversation was and is with Indians.”⁵⁵

      Although Spanish authorities attempted to keep the “Republic of Spaniards” and the “Republic of Indians” physically and jurisdictionally separate, recent studies have demonstrated that a great deal of interaction did occur. Royal officials developed and implemented urban spatial models such as the congregación, in which native communities were to be organized and settled under the care of priests who would see to their religious instruction. This idealized spatial arrangement was intended to keep indigenous peoples separate from the feared “vagabonds” and persons of mixed ancestry who were known as castas and generally deemed disorderly.⁵⁶ In both viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru, members of religious orders strived to create segregated settlements that would facilitate their efforts to evangelize indigenous peoples, establishing missionary village parishes (doctrinas). Viceroys such as Francisco de Toledo in Peru carried out programs of resettlement (reducción) to move indigenous peoples into small towns and villages on a Spanish model that would be easier to administer and control.⁵⁷ However, by the 1550s in New Spain, this sometimes controversial project to maintain two separate republics was already being undermined by the movement of castas into indigenous settlements.⁵⁸

      The design of the new Spanish settlements echoed idealized images of Roman city plans, in the form of the traza, or grid pattern, that surrounded a central plaza, in ways that also followed the contours of early modern Spanish ideas about what constituted good government (buen gobierno, policia).⁵⁹ In Nueva Galicia, the Spanish towns were also likely founded according to this orderly municipal model, with the cabildo (town council), church, public works, and governor’s house given their own blocks (cuadras) along neatly organized streets radiating from the main plaza. Residents, or vecinos, were assigned spaces for their homes, four to a block.⁶⁰ The surrounding indigenous pueblos were then granted by the governor to the men who had participated in the conquest as encomiendas, or labor grants, to be exploited.⁶¹ The grid pattern layout of Spanish American settlements stood in sharp contrast to the Iberian towns and cities such as Granada, Córdoba, and Seville, their winding narrow streets mirroring the medinas across North Africa. Marcos Romero’s life “outside the traza” cast him as disorderly and unwilling to live a lifestyle associated with proper Spanish and Catholic mores. The traza established a deliberate spatial distinction from Muslim cities, a rupture from the Islamic past in a “New World,” as Spaniards increasingly looked back to ancient Rome for a model of imperial expansion, conquest, and settlement. Romero’s dwelling also put him in too-close proximity to the indigenous peoples whom authorities hoped to Hispanize and assimilate into colonial society, while still keeping them legally separate.

      The question of trustworthiness also arises frequently in witnesses’ testimonies. A perceived lack of proper Christian comportment, or anything that would cast doubt on an individual’s piety, could call into question that individual’s credibility or loyalty in business ventures, especially in their role as interpreters. In the early Portuguese accounts by João de Barros and Eanes Gomes de Zurara, members of these expeditions expressed concern that a translator who was a Muslim captive would defect once among other Muslims, or translate in ways that would benefit his or her own precarious position.⁶² Go-betweens could assume the role of arbitrator, someone whose allegiance was crucial to the success of colonial projects, yet who ultimately ended up favoring a certain side in the encounter, or whose actions were aimed to benefit only themselves. Intermediaries were often shrouded with suspicion, due to their ability to speak multiple languages and inhabit two or more worlds.⁶³ While members of these early Atlantic expeditions may have relied on Arabic speakers as cultural brokers, they did not entirely trust them.

      In this context, labeling someone a Morisco and noting they did not attend Mass was sensitive in its connection with the Crown’s projects to evangelize indigenous peoples and professed concern to limit their exploitation by Spanish settlers. In their role as intermediaries, interpreters could easily fall under suspicion of manipulating translations for personal gain. This anxiety is reflected in Licenciado Lorenzo de Tejada’s charges against the interpreters accused of being Moriscos. The judge of the Audiencia of Mexico took aim at Triana’s trustworthiness, in what must have been an attempt to cast doubt on his reliability as an interpreter: Triana was “such a liar that he never, or only by mistake, tells the truth, and a very bad Christian who never enters any church, nor has anyone seen him confess.”⁶⁴ Tejada claimed Marcos Romero took advantage of his role as translator in order to trick and mistreat the Indians. Romero’s frequent drunkenness also led him to lie and hurl insults, rendering him as dubious a figure as his cousin Triana.

      Each of these charges amounted to an attack on the interpreters’ personal honor. The full list of charges presented by Tejada as he summoned witnesses against Triana noted that because he lived among Indians, took part in their dances, and “serve[d] them for pay and as watchman of their fields, which is the greatest cowardice, vileness and dishonor that a Spaniard can do in this land.”⁶⁵ Triana also “eats with them [the Indians] on the ground” and is “so full of vices and bad customs that in these parts there is not known СКАЧАТЬ