South America 1600-1800

1609–17 Writings by Garcilaso de la Vega, "El Inca," are published in Lisbon and Córdoba. Born in Cuzco in 1539 to a Spanish noble and an Inka princess, Garcilaso spends most of his adult life in Spain composing a series of Neoplatonic narratives in which he attempts to reconcile the two parts of his heritage. In the Comentarios reales de los incas, he presents the lost Inka empire as a utopian ideal of Andean society.

1610 The first Jesuit missions are established among the Guarani in the forested interior of what is now Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil. The missions ultimately comprise a vast, self-sufficient network in which indigenous tribesmen are educated and protected from enslavement.

1614 Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala writes the Nueva corónica y buen gobierno de las Indias, a 1200-page illustrated chronicle of the history of the Inka and contemporary conditions in Peru. The chronicle is written as a plea for reform addressed to King Philip III by an Inka nobleman from Huamanga. The manuscript is discovered in 1908.

1621 The Dutch West India Company is founded. The Dutch begin to occupy northeastern Brazil in 1630, and in 1634 take Curacao, from which they challenge Spanish and Portuguese monopoly on trade with the Americas.

1623 The Church of Our Lady of Cocharcas is dedicated, the oldest church in South America devoted to the cult of the Virgin Mary. The church houses the miraculous replica of the Virgin of Copacabana, a statue brought to this Andean village by the Indian Sebastián Quimichi. The statue is the object of its own cult and the subject of innumerable paintings depicting its legend.

1650 An earthquake levels much of Cuzco, leading to the city's reconstruction in the style of the Andean Baroque.

1656 An earthquake forces reconstruction of many ecclesiastical structures in Lima.

1671 Rose of Lima, an ascetic Dominican Tertiary, is canonized, becoming the first New World saint, patron of Perú, the Americas, and the Philippines.

1673 Bishop Manuel de Mollinedo y Angulo arrives in Cuzco. The bishop's support for the arts and encouragement of native participation is responsible for some of the city's greatest treasures.

1688 Complaints of racism and stylistic conflicts spur an exodus of native artists from the Cuzco painter's guild and the consolidation of the stylistically distinctive.

1693–1730 The mestizo painter Melchor Pérez de Holguín works in the wealthy mining center of Potosí. Holguín's Baroque style will dominate Bolivian painting throughout the later viceregal period.

1700s The death of Charles II, the last Habsburg king of Spain, in 1700, provokes the War of the Spanish Succession and the confirmation in 1713 of the Bourbon Philip V as monarch. The Bourbon monarchy introduces administrative reform and increases colonial revenues. The power of the Council of the Indies is diminished by the new ministries of Spain.

1700–80 After a period of decline, production of silver in Perú again begins to rise; while some is exported, quantities are retained for domestic and liturgical use within the viceroyalty by both criollo and indigenous populations. Despite the oppressive conditions imposed on natives drafted for work in the mines, indigenous miners are still permitted to refine silver for their own benefit and indigenous communities are able to obtain enough for local liturgical use and for personal display. A distinctive silver style develops in the Potosí region, or Alto Perú, governed as the audiencia of Charcas.

1717-39 The audiencias of Santa Fe de Bogotá and Quito are consolidated to form the Viceroyalty of New Granada. The new viceroyalty also encompasses the Caribbean coastline of South America formerly under the jurisdiction of New Spain, as a means to combat foreign depredations on Spanish trade.

1742–52 Juan Santos Atahualpa, self-proclaimed descendant of the Inka, and his followers organize resistance to Franciscans and colonists in the eastern lowlands of central Perú. The movement retains control of lowland areas but fails to establish a base in the critical highland region.

1759 The accession of Charles III to the Spanish throne accelerates modernization of the royal bureaucracy and centralization of power, deeply affecting the entrenched criollo elite in Spanish America and spawning disaffection and revolts through the end of the century.

1776 The Viceroyalty of La Plata is created, with its capital at Buenos Aires, cutting away the southeastern portions of what had been Perú, including Charcas (now Bolivia).

1778 Free trade "within the empire" opens ports along the Spanish mainland (except Venezuela and Mexico), leading to an upsurge in exports and goods imported from Spain and Europe.

1780–81 A revolt led by Tupac Amaru II (José Gabriel Condorcanqui) against economic abuses initially elicits broad support in the highlands, even among criollos. Divisions between rebel and loyal native elites prevent the capture of Cuzco and La Paz. Repressive measures in the wake of the revolt destroy the wealth, power, and status of the traditional Indian nobility and the longstanding local autonomy of highland communities, and a new class of native governors is appointed by the colonial state.

1781 The comunero revolt in New Granada unites criollo and mestizo farmers in resistance to new taxes. The rebellion prompts some reforms favoring criollos, but the more radical wing of the movement is brutally suppressed.

1791 A slave revolt in Haiti leads to devastation of the sugar industry there and a consequent growth in exports from Brazil.