Zero-Point Hubris

Reinventing Critical Theory

Series Editors: Gabriel Rockhill, Associate Professor of Philosophy,
Villanova University and Jennifer Ponce de León, Assistant Professor of
English, University of Pennsylvania

The Reinventing Critical Theory series publishes cutting-edge work that seeks to reinvent
critical social theory for the twenty-first century. It serves as a platform for new research
in critical philosophy that examines the political, social, historical, anthropological, psy-
chological, technological, religious, aesthetic, and/or economic dynamics shaping the con-
temporary situation. Books in the series provide alternative accounts and points of view
regarding the development of critical social theory, put critical theory in dialogue with
other intellectual traditions around the world, and/or advance new, radical forms of plural-
ist critical theory that contest the current hegemonic order.

Commercium: Critical Theory from a Cosmopolitan Point of View

Brian Milstein
Resistance and Decolonization
Amílcar Cabral—Translated by Dan Wood
Critical Theories of Crisis in Europe: From Weimar to the Euro
Edited by Poul F. Kjaer and Niklas Olsen
Politics of Divination: Neoliberal Endgame and the Religion of Contingency
Joshua Ramey
Comparative Metaphysics: Ontology After Anthropology
Pierre Charbonnier, Gildas Salmon, and Peter Skafish
The Invention of the Visible: The Image in Light of the Arts
Patrick Vauday—Translated by Jared Bly
Metaphors of Invention and Dissension
Rajeshwari S. Vallury
Technology, Modernity and Democracy
Edited by Eduardo Beira and Andrew Feenberg
A Critique of Sovereignty
Daniel Loick—Translated by Amanda DeMarco
Democracy and Relativism: A Debate
Cornelius Castoriadis—Translated by John V. Garner
Democracy in Spite of the Demos: From Arendt to the Frankfurt School
Larry Alan Busk
The Politics of Bodies: Philosophical Emancipation With and Beyond Rancière
Laura Quintana
Domination and Emancipation: For a Revival of Social Critique
Luc Boltanski and Nancy Fraser—Edited by Daniel Benson
Zero-Point Hubris: Science, Race, and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century Latin
America
Santiago Castro-Gómez—Translated by George Ciccariello-Maher and Don T. Deere
 Zero-Point Hubris
Science, Race, and Enlightenment
in Eighteenth-Century Latin
America

Santiago Castro-Gómez

Translated by George Ciccariello-Maher

and Don T. Deere

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London
Published by Rowman & Littlefield
An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
www​.rowman​.com

English translation copyright © 2021 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group,
Inc.
Originally published in Spanish as La hybris del punto cero: ciencia, raza e ilustración
en la Nueva Granada (1750–1816)

Copyright © Santiago Castro-Gómez

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any
electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems,
without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote
passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Castro-Gómez, Santiago, 1958- author.

Title: Zero-point hubris: science, race, and enlightenment in eighteenth-century Latin
America / Santiago Castro-Gómez; translated by George Ciccariello-Maher and Don
T. Deere.
Other titles: Hybris del punto cero. English
Description: Lanham, Maryland : Rowman & Littlefield, 2021. | Series: Reinventing
critical theory | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021040381 (print) | LCCN 2021040382 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781786613769 (cloth) | ISBN 9781786613776 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781786613783 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Ethnology—Colombia—History. | Enlightenment—Colombia—History. |
Science—Colombia—History. | Race discrimination—Colombia—History. | Colombia—
Intellectual life. | Colombia—Civilization. | Colombia—Social life and customs.
Classification: LCC GN17.3.C7 C3713 2021 (print) | LCC GN17.3.C7 (ebook) | DDC
305.8009861—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021040381
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021040382
∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
 Contents

Translators’ Introduction vii

Preface to the English Edition xv

Introduction1
1 Places of Enlightenment: Colonial Discourse and the
Geopolitics of Knowledge in the Age of Enlightenment 9
2 Purus Ab Omnia Macula Sanguinis: The Apparatus of
Whiteness in New Granada 51
3 Imperial Biopolitics: Health and Disease Under
the Bourbon Reforms 117
4 Illegitimate Knowledges: The Enlightenment as Apparatus
of Epistemic Expropriation 157
5 Striated Spaces: Geography, Territorial Politics, and
Population Control 197

Epilogue 267
Appendix: The Eighteenth Century: The Birth of Biopolitics 275
Bibliography 287
Index 307
 Translators’ Introduction

Latin American philosophy, and decolonial thought in particular, have

increasingly found a place in the English-speaking academic and intellectual
mainstream, but the books of Colombian philosopher Santiago Castro-Gómez
have remained stubbornly untranslated. This is not for lack of demand,
however. A quick glimpse at his Google Scholar entry shows, at the time of
writing this introduction, nearly ten thousand citations, mostly English works
citing his still-untranslated Spanish texts. With the translation of both this text
and his Critique of Latin American Reason,1 this situation will have changed
radically. The force of Castro-Gómez’s thought will continue to transform
the landscape of contemporary decolonial studies, Latin American philoso-
phy, political philosophy, and critical theory more generally. These are ideas
whose time has come.
In what follows, we offer a brief introduction for the uninitiated.

***

While Latin American philosophy in the twentieth century spent much time
trying to grapple with its European influences and the identity of an authenti-
cally Latin American philosophy versus a derivative copy, the originality of
Castro-Gómez’s thought lies in freeing itself from this antinomy and carving
out new space. In fact, the terrain has shifted both with respect to the tradi-
tional problematic of center and periphery and the global stakes of carrying

1
 Crítica de la razón latinoamericana (Bogotá: Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, 2011 [1996]).
English translation: as Critique of Latin American Reason, trans. Andrew Ascherl (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2021).

vii
viii Translators’ Introduction

out work in critical theory in the broad sense. Proof of this shift can be seen,
for example, in the fact that Madrid’s Complutense University, which once
sent some of Spain’s greatest philosophers, such as José Gaos and José
Ortega y Gasset, to Latin America during the Spanish civil war, recently
published a critical volume dedicated to Castro-Gómez’s thought.2 The colo-
nial framework of theoretical production, in this case, is reversed. With the
linguistic barrier removed, we are sure to see similar works forthcoming in
the English-speaking world, as the colonial geography of thought continues
to be upended.
Castro-Gómez’s work is pathbreaking in a number of registers and
intersects with many fields of thought from Latin American philosophy,
decolonial theory, political philosophy, to genealogy, philosophy of race,
and critical theory. His work is what he calls transdisciplinary, employing a
variety of sources and influences to navigate beyond traditional philosophical
terrain. He is a key figure in contemporary decolonial philosophy, offering
an original approach to some of the key questions related to Modernity-
Coloniality-Decoloniality. His distinctive approach to thinking the coloniality
of power supplements the global macro-perspective with the microphysical
detail of local genealogies. Developing genealogies of coloniality, he focuses
on the intersection of global structures of power with local transformations of
subjectivity, common sense, and modes of racialization.
The trajectory of Castro-Gómez’s work can be roughly divided between
his first three books, which focus on the genealogical and archeological
approach to practices of coloniality and the discursive formation of Latin
American thought, and his last four, which make a more explicit turn to
political philosophy, and eventually toward a positive project that he calls
transmodern republicanism.3
In his first book, Critique of Latin American Reason (1996), Castro-
Gómez offers an incisive critique of the key themes of “philosophical Latin
Americanism” in the twentieth century, reading these works through the
lens of postcolonial theorists such as Edward Said and the genealogical-
archeological lens of Michel Foucault. His aim is to overcome the stalemate
of identity and alterity in twentieth-century Latin American thought. This
question of the unique identity (or alterity) of Latin America plays a key role

2
 Filosofía política y genealogías de la colonialidad: Diálogos con Santiago Castro-Gómez, ed.
Adán Salinas Araya (Viña del Mar, Chile: CENALTES, 2017) [Political Philosophy and Genealo-
gies of Coloniality: Dialogues with Santiago Castro-Gómez].
3
 This division of his work follows the one offered by Castro-Gómez in his retrospective, contained
at the end of El tonto y los canallas: Notas para un republicanismo transmoderno (Bogotá: Uni-
versidad Javeriana, 2019) [The Fool and the Knaves], also originally published as “Mirar en retro-
spective: Debates en torno a las genealogías de la colonialidad y el papel de la filosofía política en
América Latina,” in Filosofía política y genealogías de la colonialidad, 207–274.
 Translators’ Introduction ix

in the attempt to situate the philosophical and geocultural specificity of the

region in the twentieth century. Both the philosophical historicism that we
find in Leopoldo Zea and the philosophy of liberation that we find in think-
ers like Enrique Dussel and Rodolfo Kusch, seek in some way to answer this
question of Latin America’s specificity and otherness with respect to Europe.
Castro-Gómez argues that despite critical interventions against the coloniz-
ing logic of modernity, these schools of thought remain trapped in the binary
and totalizing logics they seek to critique. The attempt to carve out a space
for Latin America in world history and philosophy leads instead to a homog-
enization of Latin America as the other of Europe. Instead, Castro-Gómez
turns to an analysis of what he understands to be Latin America’s postmodern
ontological condition and considers the resources for critique that rest not on
unity, consensus, and utopia but rather the unbinding and agonistic politics
of dissensus.
In an attempt to avoid these pitfalls, Critique of Latin American Reason
represents Castro-Gómez’s first formulation of an archeological study of
the conditions of possibility of Latin America as discursive formation in
Philosophy: what he calls philosophical Latin Americanism. He also raises
the question of the locus of enunciation of Latin American thought, critiqu-
ing the notion of a pure geocultural foundation from which an authentic
Latin American philosophy might arise. In Zero-Point Hubris, he returns to
this question of the locus of enunciation with a more fine-tuned genealogical
approach to the local history of practices.
Zero-Point Hubris thus offers a continuation of key themes of Critique,
working beyond the historicist tradition in Latin American philosophy. Here,
Castro-Gómez develops a localized history of practices, a condition of pos-
sibility for any history of ideas. With this approach, he seeks not to study the
reception of enlightenment ideas in Latin America in the eighteenth century
but rather to demonstrate how the enlightenment was itself shaped and prac-
ticed globally and locally, outside of Europe. To do this, he develops a robust
genealogy drawing from a focused but massive late colonial archive: that of
the colonial viceroyalty of New Granada from 1750 to 1816, a region that
included present-day Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador, along with parts of
Brazil, Suriname, Guyana, and Peru, prior to their independence.
If Zero-Point Hubris marks the genealogical deepening of his early archaeo-
logical work on Latin American reason, Castro-Gómez’s next book, Oneiric
Fabrics: Mobility, Capitalism, and Biopolitics in Bogotá (1910–1930) (2009),4
takes up a narrower archive in order to excavate the subjective transformations
at play in the history of capitalism in Colombia at the start of the twentieth

4
 Tejidos oníricos: Movilidad, capitalismo y biopolítica en Bogotá (1910–1930) (Bogotá: Editorial
Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, 2009).
x Translators’ Introduction

century. Instead of empirical social fabrics, this book emphasizes the oneiric
fabrics of the urban imaginary of Bogotá that produced a new apparatus of
speed and mobility, as a condition of possibility for the expansion of capitalism
in Colombia. The urban imaginary thus had real material effects in producing
new forms of subjectivity and an accompanying apparatus of mobility.
Having established this genealogical and archeological foundation to the
study of coloniality in Latin America and Colombia, in particular, Castro-
Gómez begins a series of reflections on his own genealogical method with
a two-part series of books on Foucault and governmentality: History of
Governmentality I & II (2010 & 2016).5 These investigations began with
a question about the possibility of thinking an emancipatory politics out of
Foucault’s notions of power and governmentality. Volume I works closely
through Foucault’s Collège de France lectures on governmentality in the late
1970s, and Volume II turns to the “final Foucault” of the 1980s on notions
of subjectivity and subjectivation in response to the trappings of neoliberal
and biopolitical power. Castro-Gómez argues that the turn to subjectivity and
an aesthetics of the self in Foucault is insufficient for the articulation of an
emancipatory politics. Thus, the latter volume develops a critical response to
Foucault and completes his turn toward political philosophy as irreducible to
power relations. He further develops his account of politics through a critical
reading of Slavoj Zizek alongside Latin American political philosophers such
as Enrique Dussel and Ernesto Laclau in Revolutions without Subject: Slavoj
Zizek and the Critique of Postmodern Historicism (2015).6
Most recently, his 2019 collection, The Fool and the Knaves: Notes
Toward a Transmodern Republicanism, traces his trajectory in relation to
questions of decolonial thought. He puts forth a transmodern approach to
global modernity, seeking to extend and transform the project of modernity.
Here, he is against an anti-modern attempt to locate a pure outside to moder-
nity, echoing his earliest criticisms of notions of exteriority and alterity in
Latin American philosophy. In his own account, the three fundamental axes
articulated across his work are history, power, and politics.7 In his most recent
books, he shifts from the question of power as the ultimate grid of analysis,
to a notion of politics that opens more directly to questions of emancipation.

***

5
 Historia de la gubernamentalidad. Razón de estado, liberalism y neoliberalismo en Michel Fou-
cault (Bogotá: Sigle del Hombre Editores, 2010); Historia de la gubernamentalidad II. Filosofía,
cristianismo y sexualidad en Michel Foucault (Bogotá: Siglo del Hombre Editores, 2016).
6
 Revoluciones sin sujeto: Slavoj Zizek y la crítica del historicismo posmoderno (Mexico City: Akal,
2015).
7
 El tonto y las canallas, 237.
 Translators’ Introduction xi

The power of the text in your hands begins from the fraught conjunction
posed in the title itself between the epistemological project of the zero-point
and the hubris built into this project, which proves its ultimate, if partial
undoing. For Castro-Gómez, the zero-point is not the no-place of utopian
imagination but rather a central pretension of the scientific language of the
enlightenment. Much like Descartes’ ego cogito, Castro-Gómez shows how
European thought sought more broadly to position itself outside the empiri-
cal world as an essential precondition to knowing that world objectively.
The zero-point therefore constitutes what he deems a “neutral observation
platform” from which the enlightened philosopher, scientist, and governor
can survey reality, an unassailable God’s-eye-view from which one can see
without being seen.
The zero-point was more than simply an idea, however, but a material proj-
ect that could only concretely emerge in time and space. For Castro-Gómez,
this project was hubristic in its original, Greek sense, its proponents guilty not
merely of arrogance in general but that specific kind of arrogance that forgets
the material constraints of the mortal world. What were the parameters of that
mortal world? That modernity was intrinsically bound up with the colonial
project—Latin America was not pre- or anti-modern, he insists pointedly—
and the enlightenment was consequently a transatlantic phenomenon located,
indeed forged, simultaneously in the core and the periphery. Colonialism was
a two-way street, and the hubris of the zero-point would play a major role
in deepening colonial domination, justifying the epistemic expropriation and
erasure of other ways of knowing.
But Castro-Gómez is unique in his attentiveness to the powerful tensions
this project generated once it took its place in the material world, and spe-
cifically that of what he calls the apparatus of whiteness. When modernizing
Spanish Bourbon reformers came to see whiteness as a barrier to biopolitical
governmentality, the American-born descendants of Europeans known as
criollos, in whose habitus whiteness featured prominently, doubled down on
policing the boundaries of race (here Castro-Gómez deftly decolonizes both
Foucault and Bourdieu, infusing their concepts with new, transatlantic mean-
ing). Ironically, the colonial core lost this battle to its own children, and the
result was a naturalized inequality that was embedded in independent Latin
American national states and prevails across the region today.
Zero-point hubris thus names both an essential project of Europe and
the modern/colonial world system and its fundamental impossibility. If the
first provides us with a powerful diagnostic tool for decolonial critique of
Eurocentrism and its pretensions to objectivity and neutrality, the second
offers a hopeful reminder that colonialism was not a one-way street, and
that such arrogant projects often fail. While it’s true that in this case—and
in many cases—this failure falls to the side of reaction, a subversive reading
xii Translators’ Introduction

could point instead to the persistence of resistance and alternatives occluded

by this war among colonial titans.
This signature concept will be traced through several key themes in this vast
work. We indicate three major threads here. The first is the tension between two
apparatuses (dispositivos) of power that Castro-Gómez diagnoses in the late
colonial period: whiteness and biopolitics. The apparatus of whiteness, which
Castro-Gómez locates largely in the Américas, is organized around the racial
habitus of the criollos over the castes (nonwhite subjects in the Americas: Black
people, Indians, and mestizos) rooted in the discourse of blood purity. By con-
trast, the biopolitical apparatus is connected to the imperial Bourbon reforms
organized by “reason of state” with the aim of maximizing the productivity of
the colonial population. This tension manifests in attempts by Bourbon reform-
ers to undermine the privileged status of traditional para-state powers of the
Church and the aristocracy. And the ultimately successful counterattack from
the criollos upholds and reinforces whiteness, working to “expel the state” from
taking over the administration of the colonies.
Embedded within this trajectory are questions of the emergent capitalist
global economy and the imperial practice of science. The Spanish Bourbon
state underwent a series of reforms to develop their imperial biopolitical
apparatus so as to reestablish their competitiveness against other global
colonial powers, like France, Holland, and England. This shift marks a new
concern for the health and productiveness of the population, biopolitics, espe-
cially around medicine, work, and the hospital; it also marks a new concern
for the development of the sciences of geography and botany.
A second trajectory opens the question of how to read the global entangle-
ments between European and Latin American enlightenments. At heart, this
is a question of the intersection between epistemology and the coloniality of
power. How to think of the coloniality of power not just as a system imposed
from the outside but as an apparatus of power-knowledge with its own local
practice in the Kingdom of New Granada among its enlightened Criollo
thinkers? In essence, this global entanglement between different trajectories
of enlightenment can be seen to rest on the construction of a scientific site of
enunciation, which is supposed to be pure, neutral, and placeless, which is, in
fact, coincident with a racial and political position of power, one that is only
held by the European or white criollo in New Granada. The zero-point thus
disqualifies all other epistemic positions through the epistemic expropriation
of Indigenous, mestizo, and Black modes of knowing that have a connection
to local histories, traditions, and cultures.
A third trajectory concerns the local genealogy of enlightenment criollo
thought as a counter history to the founding of the independent nation-state,
by tracing criollo practice in New Granada in the period directly leading up
to the independence struggles against Spain. Just as the French revolution
 Translators’ Introduction xiii

looms in the background of Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, this text

offers a counter history to the later emergence of anti-colonial revolution of
Gran Colombia in 1819, three years after Castro-Gómez’s genealogy ends.
Instead of an emancipatory revolution carried out by a subjugated criollo
class freeing itself from the shackles of Spanish colonial power, we instead
see the stratification of criollo power through the perpetuation of colonial
racial hierarchies. The colonial fabric is embedded into the nation-state form.
Questions of nationalism and independence from Spain remain unstated in
the background but frame much of the decolonial impetus of this work, as
the coloniality of power seeps into the Latin American present through the
inheritance of this apparatus of naturalized racial inequality.

***

Zero-Point Hubris is a theoretically innovative book that eruditely navigates a

complex historical archive. For us as translators, this has meant that the hard-
est choices were often in how to preserve the specificity of certain Spanish
colonial terms that do not easily lend themselves to translation. In some cases,
we have opted to retain the original term when necessary, including a transla-
tor’s footnote in the cases where the meaning of the term is not immediately
evident from the explanation internal to the text itself. For example, criollo,
is retained throughout as the English equivalent “creole” is rife with many
other significations that mask the specificity of the meaning of this term to
refer to American-born descendants of white Europeans. The philosophical
terminology did not present as many difficult choices, though we have opted
to translate dispositivo as “apparatus” throughout for the sake of readability
rather than the more literal “dispositif” or “dispositive.” We have translated
all citations without an existing English language translation, especially the
numerous citations from the eighteenth-century colonial archive, and made
use of existing English translations when available.
We are grateful to Santiago Castro-Gómez for his guidance and enthusiasm
as we completed this translation of his work, to María del Rosario Acosta for
her encouragement to pursue the project, to Miguel Gualdrón Ramírez for
his invaluable translation suggestions, to the series editors of the Reinventing
Critical Theory series, Gabriel Rockhill and Yannik Thiem, for their interest
in this translation, and to the editors at Rowman & Littlefield International,
Frankie Mace and Sarah Campbell, for their constant support of the project.
 Preface to the English Edition

This book is the initial result of my doctoral thesis, which was presented in
2003 toward the degree of “Doktor der Philosophie” at the Johann Wolfgang
Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt, under the title Aufklärung als kolonialer Dis-
kurs. The thesis was translated into Spanish in 2005 and published by the
Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá under the title La hybris del punto cero. A
second expanded and corrected edition of the book was later published in
2011, which serves as the basis for this English translation. The book pro-
poses taking up Michel Foucault’s genealogical method to solve a series of
theoretical and methodological problems that arose within some currents of
Latin American thought in the transition from the twentieth to the twenty-first
century. It thus seeks to use genealogy as an analytical tool to address some
open questions in two Latin American traditions in particular: philosophical
historicism and decolonial thought.
Against the historicist tradition (Leopoldo Zea, Arturo Ardao, Arturo
Roig), Zero-Point Hubris argues that we need to consider the eighteenth
century from a perspective that abandons the traditional history of ideas
and moves toward a history of practices. This means emphasizing not the
“reception” of the ideas of the European enlightenment (the way that texts by
Rousseau, Voltaire, Montesquieu, etc. were read), but the way that the politi-
cal project of the Spanish Bourbon dynasty unleashed a series of (economic,
scientific, administrative, hygienic, etc.) practices in the viceroyalty of New
Granada that sought to combat and replace the old aristocratic and unproduc-
tive practices of the white criollo1 elite descended from the first European
settlers. Against the decolonial tradition (Aníbal Quijano, Enrique Dussel,
Walter Mignolo), Zero-Point Hubris argues that we need to complement the

1
 [The direct descendants of European settlers born in Latin America—Trans.]

xv
xvi Preface to the English Edition

use of macro-sociological tools (like Wallerstein’s world systems analysis)

with tools like genealogy, which focuses on analyzing how colonial legacies
are reproduced on a microphysical level, directly related to subjectivity or
common sense, and not only on the macrophysical level of “longue durée
structures.” The book seeks to combine both analytical perspectives, attempt-
ing to avoid the overgeneralizations that the sociological Marxist perspective
of coloniality tends to fall into. In sum, Zero-Point Hubris seeks to respond to
Kant’s famous question, “What is Enlightenment?,” but to do so by shifting
the analysis outside strictly European space.
By deploying genealogy, this book seeks to establish a cartography of the
acting powers in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century New Granada, distin-
guishing two broad regimes of practices that confronted one another during
that period. The first is the apparatus of whiteness, which emerged at the end
of the sixteenth century, and which functioned as the condition of possibility
for the subjectivation practices of the white criollo elites of New Granada.
This is a power that is established and reproduced through technologies of fil-
iation and alliances, that is, well-calculated strategies of intermarriage among
those same elites. These strategies centered on the Spanish idea of “blood
purity” and sought to delineate a distancing border between criollos (direct
descendants of the first Spanish settlers) and the other population groups in
New Granada, who they referred to as “the castes” (Black people, Indians,
and mestizos2). It is here that we can appreciate what Aníbal Quijano calls
the “coloniality of power,” which refers in this case to defining social iden-
tity on the basis of the racialization of bodies. What someone “is” socially
does not depend solely on the color of their skin but on the “purity” of their
genealogical tree. Social privileges were reserved for those who were able
to demonstrate that there was no mixing with people of “bad blood” in their
ancestry. Strategies of intermarriage “among (white) equals” sought precisely
to prevent Black people, Indians, and mestizos from accessing the world of
privilege. In this sense, Zero-Point Hubris seeks to demonstrate that the “hard
core” of colonial legacies in Latin America is the naturalization of inequality
as the organizing pillar of society, a situation that persists today.
It is important to grasp that this structural inequality requires a political
operation that, following Pierre Clastres, I call the “expulsion of the state.”
By this, I refer to the attempt to avoid at all costs the constitution of a tran-
scendental power located “beyond” criollo alliance networks that would
threaten their oligarchic privileges. But this was precisely what began to
happen in the eighteenth century with the dynastic change in Spain. Zero-
Point Hubris analyzes the emergence of a second power regime that I call

2
 [Mixed-race people, specifically European and Indigenous. Mestizaje refers more broadly to the
complex process of racial mixture specific to Latin America—Trans.]
 Preface to the English Edition xvii

the biopolitical apparatus, which is linked in this case to the governmental

project of the Bourbons. At the dawn of industrial capitalism, the Spanish
monarchy hoped to ensure its commercial monopoly over certain mineral
and agrarian products and sought to transform its overseas colonies into
productive factories designed to place these products advantageously on the
world market. But to achieve this, it was necessary to implement a series
of administrative, medical, geographical, and educational reforms that were
legitimized by the discourse of the new science. The objective was to promote
scientific-technical intervention into the life of the population, so as to make it
a basic element of enlightened policymaking. From this perspective, “reason
of state” was seen as the sole intelligibility principle presiding over relations
between the Spanish Crown and its colonies, which white criollo elites felt to
be a real threat. And in reality, what they feared so much had indeed emerged:
the constitution of a power located beyond the logic of alliance capable of
“expropriating” their privileges. In this sense, this book not only examines the
specific rationality presiding over each of the two apparatuses of whiteness
and biopolitics but also analyzes the antagonism produced between them.
The political interest of the Bourbons was to combat the hegemony of both
the criollos and the Church over colonial institutions and common sense. The
criollos, in turn, sought to neutralize, delay, or slow that first moderniza-
tion process in Latin American history. As you can see, Zero-Point Hubris
analyzes the dialectic between coloniality and modernity, showing how the
former ended up becoming a precondition for the latter.
This book is particularly interested in analyzing the practices of “border
subjects,” and in this case those enlightened criollos who moved “between”
the two apparatuses. On the one hand, these subjects appropriated the dis-
courses of the new science promoted by the Spanish monarchy and func-
tioned as battering rams for the Bourbon reforms. They therefore contributed
to the dismantling of the traditional common sense on which the power of
the criollo oligarchy stood. But on the other hand, as children of this same
oligarchy, they reproduced colonial discourse toward Black and Indigenous
people and mestizos, who they saw as “lower quality” beings. In this sense,
this book shows how epistemic purity inspired by the new science and blood
purity promoted by oligarchic elites paradoxically “intersect” in the subjec-
tivity of enlightened criollos. The result is the production of a universalist
and colonial “gaze” toward populations, territory, and its resources, that I call
the “zero-point.” Latin America begins to be observed by its own intellectual
elites from the perspective of an epistemic platform that de-historicizes it,
extracting it from its specific logics and “fetishizing” it, at the same moment
that the mechanism of commodity production later studied by Marx begins to
unfold in Europe. We witness the emergence of a scientistic and colonial dis-
course about the region which would also accompany the new social sciences
xviii Preface to the English Edition

that appear in the course of the nineteenth century. We witness, in short, the
birth of Latin Americanism.
I am especially thankful to George Ciccariello-Maher and Don Deere for
the enthusiasm and precision with which they have translated the book and to
the editors at Rowman & Littlefield for their interest in publishing it.
Bogotá, May 12, 2020
 Introduction

In 1787, Russian Empress Catherine II penned a missive to Spanish King

Carlos III, requesting that he send all materials he could find on Indigenous
languages in the Americas to St. Petersburg. An enthusiastic defender of the
sciences and a personal friend of Voltaire, the Empress planned to hand this
material over to the learned members of her court so that they might prepare
a comparative study of all the known languages of the world. At that time,
as Michel Foucault (1994) has shown, enlightened Europeans believed that
they could decipher the grammatical laws common to all linguistic domains,
which would constitute the basic structure of all possible languages. This
project of a “General Grammar” required comparing some languages to oth-
ers, but not to discover their common historical origin, as had been believed
up to that point (Hebrew as the “mother language” prior to the confusion of
Babel), but rather to discover the universal linguistic structure underlying
all languages on the planet. Each particular language, then, would represent
a specific modality of this universal structure. Enlightened members of the
Russian court, led by a wise man named Pallas, aware of the fact that the
Jesuits had published many studies of Indigenous American languages,
requested the assistance of the Empress to obtain this valuable material with
the goal of contributing to the project.1
Agreeing to the Russian Empress’ request, King Carlos III ordered his
viceroys in the Americas to search out, collect, and send to Spain all exist-
ing documents on the subject. In the viceroyalty of New Granada,2 viceroy

1
 Pallas’ work was published in 1789 as Linguarium totius orbis vocabulario comparativa, augustis-
simae cura collecta, scilicet primae lenguas Europae, et Asiae complexae.
2
 [Comprising at the time what is today Colombia, Panama, and Ecuador, as well as parts of Guyana,
Suriname, Brazil, and Peru, and previously including Venezuela—Trans.]

1
2 Introduction

Antonio Caballero y Góngora assigned the task to Spanish physician and

mathematician don José Celestino Mutis. Since his arrival in New Granada
in 1761, Mutis had dedicated part of his time to searching for manuscripts
related to Indigenous languages. In reality, Mutis was not interested in the
Indians, but in advancing the new science of human languages (linguistics),
and so he was glad to receive the assignment and assembled a team to begin
the search. After a year of searching schools, convents, and libraries, Mutis
had managed to collect twenty-one manuscripts, including some of the most
important works on the Muisca language drafted by missionaries in New
Granada.3 This valuable material was shipped to Spain in the luggage of
viceroy Caballero y Góngora himself, who personally turned it over to the
palace library in 1789.4
Almost twenty years earlier, Carlos III had himself issued a decree that
categorically prohibited the use of Indigenous languages in his American
colonies. Preaching to the Indians in their own languages was no longer
among the prerogatives of the Bourbon dynasty, which was instead focused
on the linguistic unification of the Empire for the purposes of facilitating
commerce, banishing ignorance, and ensuring the incorporation of vassals in
the Americas into a single mode of production. Vernacular languages thus
stood as an obstacle to the integration of the Spanish Empire into the global
market, and Spanish became the single language that could be spoken and
taught in the Americas (Triana and Antorveza, 1987: 499–511). The royal
edict of 1770 thereby orders:

that the Indians be instructed in the Dogmas of our Religion in Castilian, and
that they be taught to read and write in this language, which should be extended
and become singular and universal in the same Territories, being the language
of the Monarchs and Conquistadors, to facilitate the administration and spiri-
tual nourishment of the natives, and so that they might be understood by their
Superiors, develop a love for the Conquering Nation, banish idolatry, become

3
 As with Nahuatl in Mexico and Quechua in Peru, Muisca (or Chibcha) was considered to be the
“general language of the Indians” of New Granada in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and as
a result professorships for the language were established in universities so that missionaries might
learn it, and dictionaries, grammar texts, and vocabulary lexicons were created. The works found
by Mutis include renowned grammar texts by the Dominican Bernardo de Lugo (“Gramática de la
lengua general del Nuevo Reino llamada mosca”) and the Jesuit José Dadey (“Gramática, vocabu-
lario y confesionario de la lengua mosca-chibcha”). For a study of works on the Chibcha language
produced prior to 1810, see González de Pérez, 1980.
4
 We know that the material sent by Mutis never reached Russia (Ortega Ricaurte, 1978: 101). The
outbreak of the French Revolution and the death of Carlos III might have dissuaded the Spanish
Crown from completing the Empress’ mission.
 Introduction 3

civilized for business and commerce; and avoid that men be confused by a great
diversity of languages, as in the Tower of Babel.5

The question is this: Why did the same king who had decreed the extinction
of Indigenous languages order the collection of all existing studies about
those languages just a few years later? What is the relationship between
the edict of 1770 and the Russian empress’ request in 1787? What does the
enlightened science of language have to do with the enlightened politics of
language? This work will seek to resolve these questions through the perspec-
tive opened up by cultural studies in general, and by postcolonial theory in
particular.6 Postcolonial theories were especially well received in humanities
departments, above all in some European and U.S. universities during the
1980s, and for good reason: it gradually became clear that the global diffu-
sion of languages like Spanish, English, French, and Portuguese could not
continue to be seen as independent of European colonialism. In other words,
postcolonial theorists began to emphasize the idea that the colonial expansion
of modern Europe necessarily entailed designing and imposing an imperial
politics of language. Linguistic phenomena thereby began to be seen as an
integral part of the colonization of the globe, and language itself as an instru-
ment of domination and/or emancipation. For postcolonial theorists, the his-
tory and transformation of modern European languages thereby become a sort
of archaeology of colonialism.
Now as Foucault (1994) has shown, the enlightenment project of “General
Grammar” was based on the assumption that the structure of science was
analogous to the structure of language, and that both are reflections of the
universal structure of reason. However, within the framework of this proj-
ect, science was privileged over language. Science was nothing but a well-
constructed language, and particular languages are imperfect sciences insofar
as they are incapable of reflecting on their own structure. This is why in the
eighteenth century the enlightenment aspired to create a universal meta-
language capable of overcoming the limitations of all particular languages.
The language of science would allow for the production of exact knowledge
about the natural and social world, thereby avoiding the indeterminacy

5
 “Real cédula para que en los reinos de las Indias se extingan los diferentes idiomas de que se usa y
sólo se hable el castellano,” in Tanck de Estrada, 1985: 37.
6
 These new fields of knowledge emerged in various universities in England and the United States
toward the end of the 1970s, very much influenced by the post-structuralism of Foucault and
Derrida, but also by the work of Marxist philosophers like Gramsci and Althusser. From post-
structuralism, this approach took the critique of classic notions of representation, knowledge, and
reality that have been fundamental to the formation of the “West” as a cultural project; from Marx-
ism they took the suspicion that ethnocentric discourses and representations of the “other” served
as tools for constituting political and cultural hegemonies both in Europe and its overseas colonies
(Moore-Gilbert, 1997; Loomba, 1998; Gandhi, 1998).
4 Introduction

characteristic of all other languages. The ideal of the enlightened scientist is

to distance oneself epistemologically from everyday language—considered
to be a source of error and confusion—and thereby to locate oneself at what
I refer to in this book as the zero-point. Unlike other human languages, the
universal language of science has no specific place on the map but is instead a
neutral observation platform from which the world can be named in its essen-
tiality. No longer produced on the basis of everyday life (Lebenswelt) but
from an observational zero-point, the enlightenment understands scientific
language to be the most perfect of all human languages, insofar as it reflects
the universal structure of reason in its purest form.
The general question that this work poses is whether or not the language of
science can be understood as analogous to how postcolonial theories analyze
the development of modern European languages. Can we also say in this case
that the development of scientific language—and in particular the analytical
categories developed by the human sciences—runs parallel and in close rela-
tion to global European expansion? Can we speak of an imperial politics of
science that functioned similarly to imperial politics of language? (Reinhard,
1982). Can science be seen as a “colonial discourse” produced within an
imperial structure for selecting and distributing knowledge? In this book, I
will attempt to answer these questions in the affirmative, showing how the
politics of the “no place” embraced by eighteenth-century human sciences
occupied a specific place on the map of colonial society and functioned as a
strategy for controlling subaltern populations.
This work therefore seeks to examine the enlightenment as an ensemble
of discourses articulated both in the global core and in the colonial periphery
of the Americas. I set out from the following working hypothesis: by believ-
ing they possessed a language capable of revealing things “in-themselves,”
enlightenment thinkers (in both Europe and the Americas) assumed that
science could faithfully translate and document the characteristics of an
exotic nature and culture. Enlightenment discourse thereby acquired an
ethnographic character, and the human sciences became a sort of “New
Chronicle” of the American world, with the enlightened scientist assuming a
role similar to that of sixteenth-century chroniclers. In this view, my interest
lies in examining the way that “America,” as an object of knowledge, is at
the center of enlightenment discourse. European thinkers like Locke, Hume,
Kant, Rousseau, Turgot, and Condorcet were constantly informed about the
Americas and the lives of its inhabitants, above all through sixteenth-century
Spanish chronicles and travel literature. In the first chapter, I will show that
the way these philosophers translated their “American readings” was one
of the factors that inspired the birth of the human sciences in the eighteenth
century. The Americas were read and translated from the perspective of the
geopolitical and cultural hegemony of France, Holland, England, and Prussia,
 Introduction 5

which at that moment served as centers for the production and diffusion of
knowledge.
But my work will of course emphasize the opposite process: How was the
enlightenment read and articulated in the Spanish colonies, and particularly in
the New Kingdom of Granada? This is why I am not interested in wondering
if enlightened New Granadian thinkers read Rousseau, Montesquieu, Locke,
or Buffon well or badly, or if the Colombian enlightenment was anything
more than the apish expression of a “delayed modernity.” As I will argue in
the first chapter, I do not consider the European enlightenment to be an “origi-
nal” text that was then copied by others, or an intra-European phenomenon
that was then “disseminated” throughout the world, toward which we can
only speak of a good or a bad “reception.” Instead, I am interested in inquir-
ing about the place from which the enlightenment was read, translated, and
articulated in Colombia. Insofar as all cultural translation entails dislocation,
relocation, and displacement (Translatio, Über-setzung), my question has to
do with the specificity of the New Granadian enlightenment, the particular
place in which the discourses of the new science were re-located and gained
meaning in this part of the world in the mid-eighteenth century.
To analyze the characteristics of this locus enuntiationis, I will make use
of three concepts from the social sciences. The first is the notion of habitus
developed by Pierre Bourdieu, which I consider in this work in direct rela-
tion to his notion of cultural capital. I will defend the hypothesis that blood
purity—the belief in the ethnic superiority of criollos over other popula-
tion groups in New Granada—functioned as the habitus through which the
European enlightenment was translated and articulated in Colombia. For
enlightened criollos, whiteness was their most valuable and valued form of
cultural capital, since it guaranteed access to the scientific and literary knowl-
edge of the epoch as well as social distance from the “colonial other” who
served as an object of their research. In their profile of the New Granadian
population, enlightened criollos projected their own habitus of ethnic dis-
tancing (their “spontaneous sociology”) onto scientific discourse, conceal-
ing it under a pretension of truth, objectivity, and neutrality. This is all to
emphasize that the Colombian enlightenment was not a simple transposition
of meaning carried out from a neutral location (the “zero-point”) with an
“original” text as its source (the writings of Rousseau, Smith, Buffon, etc.),
but was instead a strategy of social positioning by educated criollos vis-à-vis
subaltern groups.
I deploy Michel Foucault’s concept of biopolitics to consider a second
aspect of the enlightenment in New Granada. I refer to efforts by the Spanish
Empire to implement a politics of control over life in the colonies toward the
middle of the eighteenth century. In an already belated attempt to maintain
its geopolitical hegemony against powers like France, Holland, and England,
6 Introduction

the Spanish Crown hoped to take advantage of modern scientific discourses

to exert rational control over the population and territory. The Bourbon state
sought to carry out a series of enlightened diagnostics of the vital processes
of the colonial population (health, labor, diet, birth rate, climatic influence,
fertility), and to convert these into government policies (“governmentality”).
This, it was hoped, would contribute to rationalizing state administration,
improving the economic habits of subjects, and increasing the production of
wealth, thereby strengthening the Spanish Empire in its struggle to regain
hegemony in the global market. The enlightenment was read and translated
through the lens of imperial (bio)politics and this would influence how the
criollos of New Granada positioned themselves on the subject. While the
Bourbon reforms were welcomed by a sector of local elites, they threat-
ened the criollo habitus of blood purity, and so the way that criollo thinkers
articulated the enlightenment did not coincide with how the Spanish state
did. While the state articulated the European enlightenment from the perspec-
tive of imperial interests, New Granadian criollos did so on the basis of a
“national” interest. We thus witness the staging of a criollo proto-nationalism
marked by the apparatus of whiteness, which would not possess its own form
of biopolitical expression until the mid-nineteenth century.
The third concept that I will use to approach the enlightenment in New
Granada is that of the coloniality of power, developed by Latin American
theorists like Aníbal Quijano, Walter Mignolo, and Enrique Dussel. This
concept refers to the cognitive dimension of colonial power relations, or in
other words how these relations are reflected in the production, circulation,
and assimilation of knowledge. The coloniality of power has two dimensions
that I will explore in this work: on the one hand we will see how in the hands
of the metropolitan state and New Granadian criollo elites, the enlightenment
was seen as an ideal mechanism for eliminating the “many forms of knowl-
edge” that still existed among native populations and replacing these with a
single, true way of knowing the world: modern scientific-technical rational-
ity. This effort would also characterize the missionary attitude of criollo
political elites throughout the nineteenth century in Latin America.
The other dimension of coloniality that this work will touch upon has to do
with the constitution of the sciences of man in the eighteenth century. This
subject deserves a separate study but is relevant here for two basic reasons.
In the first place, and as Said’s works have already shown (Orientalism in
particular), the human sciences find their ultimate meaning and condition of
possibility in the European colonial experience. The contrast that enlighten-
ment philosophers establish between the barbarism of American, Asian, and
African people (“tradition”) and the civilization of Europeans (“modernity”)
not only provides the basic categories of analysis for future disciplines like
sociology and anthropology, it also serves as an instrument for consolidating
 Introduction 7

an imperial and civilizational process (“the West”) which feels called upon
to impose its own cultural values onto other people because they are consid-
ered essentially superior. This factor is important for understanding how the
enlightened philosophers of eighteenth-century Europe “translate” reports
about other ways of life and incorporate them into a teleological view of his-
tory in which “the West” appears as the vanguard of human progress.
However, the idea that the human sciences and coloniality are tightly
related phenomena is not immediately evident for many academics and
experts on Latin American history. A good part of nineteenth- and twentieth-
century social theory, itself a tributary of the modern idea of progress, got us
used to thinking about coloniality as modernity’s past, under the assumption
that in order to “enter” modernity a society needed to “exit” coloniality. Even
important cultural studies theorists like José Joaquín Brunner argue that prior
to the 1950s, Latin America was still experiencing a radical misencounter
with modernity, since it lacked the social, technological, and professional
“ground” necessary to uphold it. It is only with the emergence of specialized
circuits for the production, transmission, and consumption of symbolic goods
that modernity properly speaking begins in Latin America, and with it the
emergence of the human sciences as academic disciplines. The enlightened
humanist discourses of earlier periods were, in Brunner’s opinion, merely
an “ideological fragment” among elites amid a fundamentally colonial and
premodern culture (Brunner, 1992: 50–63).
In the first chapter, however, we will see that the scientific discourses of
New Granadian criollo elites were not merely “ideological fragments” pres-
ent only “in the heads” of a small group that was disconnected from its own
world and connected exclusively to Europe. Instead, these discourses were
anchored in a colonial habitus established during the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries: the apparatus of whiteness. It is precisely through these
colonial practices, that the enlightenment is read, translated, articulated, and
produced among us. As a result, it makes no sense to speak of a “radical
misencounter” with modernity in Latin America, since modernity and colo-
niality are not temporally sequential but spatially simultaneous. The second
chapter will show that the discourse of blood purity was the axis around
which the subjectivity of social actors in New Granada was constructed from
the sixteenth century on. To be white had less to do with skin color than
with the staging of an apparatus that wove together religious beliefs, types of
clothing, certificates of nobility, modes of behavior, and most relevant to this
study, forms of knowledge production.
Chapters 3, 4, and 5 will address three different aspects of criollo enlight-
enment discourse. In chapter 3, we will see how modern science, and medical
practices, in particular, served as an instrument for consolidating ethnic bor-
ders in a way that ensured the social preeminence of criollos in New Granada.
8 Introduction

Chapter 4 will examine more closely what the symbolic violence of enlight-
enment discourse consisted of. Articulated by criollo elites and sanctioned by
the imperial biopolitics of the state, the enlightenment proposed not only the
superiority of some people over others but also the superiority of some forms
of knowledge over others. It therefore functioned as an apparatus of epistemic
expropriation and the construction of the cognitive hegemony of criollos in
social space. Finally, chapter 5 will focus on the discourse of geography,
showing that territorial control in New Granada responded not only to the
geopolitical imperatives of the Bourbon state but also to the attempt by local
elites to impose their hegemony over the different populations inhabiting the
territory.
The question animating this work is the following: If enlightened European
science presents itself as a universal discourse independent of spatial con-
straints, how was its in situ translation by New Granadian thinkers in the
late eighteenth century possible at all? Throughout this work, I will therefore
emphasize the contrast between the “no place” of science and the locus of its
translation. Hence, the previously mentioned insistence on the concept of the
“zero-point.” By this, I refer to the imaginary according to which an observer
of the social world can situate themselves on a neutral observation platform
that, in turn, cannot be observed from any point. Our hypothetical observer
would be in a position to adopt a sovereign gaze toward the world, whose
power would lie precisely in that it can be neither observed nor represented.
Inhabitants of the zero-point (enlightenment philosophers and scientists) are
convinced that they can gain a point of view toward which no point of view
is possible. This pretension—which recalls the theological image of the Deus
absconditus (who observes without being observed), but also the Foucauldian
panopticon—clearly exemplifies the hubris of enlightenment thought. For the
Greeks, hubris was the worst of sins since it presumes the illusion of being
able to transcend the limits of the mortal condition and to become like the
gods. Hubris thus entails neglect for corporeality and is therefore synony-
mous with arrogance and excess. Through their pretension to lack any locus
of enunciation and translation, criollo thinkers in New Granada were guilty
of the sin of hubris—a sin that later, in the nineteenth century, would come
to be institutionalized in the criollo project of the nation-state.
 Chapter 1

Places of Enlightenment
Colonial Discourse and the Geopolitics of
Knowledge in the Age of Enlightenment

The Oriental, the African, the Amerindian are all necessary components
for the negative foundation of European identity and modern
sovereignty as such. The dark Other of European Enlightenment stands
at its very foundation just as the productive relationship with the “dark
continents” serves as the economic foundation of the European nation-
states.
—Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri

In September 1774, the German magazine Berlinische Monatschrift pub-

lished an essay in which the philosopher Immanuel Kant responded to the
question: What is enlightenment? There, Kant argued that enlightenment is
“man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity,” understood as “the
inability to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of another”
(Kant, 1991: 54). The “maturity” that Kant believed he was seeing in a still
incomplete form in his contemporary Europe, is the refusal to accept the
authority of tradition and the submission of all beliefs to the supreme court of
reason, to be judged according to principles established by reason itself. It is
these universal normative principles that would serve to unravel the myster-
ies of nature and set human society off down the inevitable path of progress.
Kant understands the immaturity of those people and individuals who resist
this path as being “self-incurred,” and believes that they are deserving of their
own misery, since the conditions were already present in the late eighteenth
century for humanity to begin to escape its ignorance.
In that same year on the other side of the world, in the gloomy capital of
an extremely remote and craggy province of the Spanish Empire, the viceroy
of New Granada, don Manuel de Guirior, charges the attorney Francisco
Moreno y Escandón with drafting a curriculum that would provide the basis

9
10 Chapter 1

for organizing a university capable of educating criollo elites in the scientific

principles of the enlightenment. Two years later, and running against the
grain of this effort, the Dutch abbé Cornelius de Pauw published an article in
the Encyclopedia arguing that no one born in the Americas was capable of
enlightenment, since they all inhabit a humid and sterile land. Five short years
later, a coalition of criollos, Indians, and mestizos born in New Granada,
would rise up against enlightened authorities to protest a tax increase ordered
by the Bourbon dynasty to fund their imperialist war against the English.
How to explain this series of simultaneous and apparently contradictory
events? An optimistic Prussian philosopher who never left his hometown
dared to speak up in the name of all humanity to announce the arrival of an
“Age of Enlightenment” in which everyone would be able to use their own
understanding without appeal to outside authorities. Not far from there, an
enlightened priest argues that the inhabitants of the Americas are incapable
of using their “own understanding,” while on the other side of the Atlantic an
outside authority in the Americas takes up the program of the enlightenment
and orders the creation of a public university. This order, however, is resisted
by a sector of local criollo elites who saw the enlightenment as a direct threat
to their traditional privileges. At the same time, a coalition of native-born
Americans, acting independently of external authorities, appeal to local
knowledge and truths to organize opposition to both counter-enlightenment
white elites and the enlightened despotism of the viceroys.
So what is enlightenment? By whom and against whom is it articulated, in
which places, and with what objectives? The thesis I would like to defend is
that the enlightenment is not a European phenomenon that is then “dissemi-
nated” throughout the world. Instead, it is above all an ensemble of discourses
produced and articulated from different locations that by the eighteenth cen-
tury was already circulating globally. I propose to relate some of these places
and discourses to one another to show that apparently contradictory events
like those mentioned above in reality form part of a single, complex planetary
network of scientific ideas, liberatory sentiments, racial attitudes, and imperi-
alist ambitions. In this chapter, in particular, I am interested in investigating
the relationship between the scientific project of the enlightenment and the
European colonial project, bearing in mind that the fundamental pretension
of enlightenment discourse was that science lacks an empirical locus of enun-
ciation. I will show that what allows for the invisibilization of the locus of
enunciation of knowledge is the way that science and geopolitical ambitions
come to be linked together in the modern/colonial world system from the
sixteenth century on. My working hypothesis is that the imperial struggle for
the control of key territories for the expansion of the nascent capitalist system
and the population inhabiting those territories provided the background for
the enlightenment.
 Places of Enlightenment 11

In order to investigate the relationship between eighteenth-century science

and geopolitics, I take as my starting point the project of a “science of man”
originally formulated by Hume in 1734 to pose the problem that I refer to
in this book as zero-point hubris. I will then attempt to immanently recon-
struct the structural linkages between this program and both capitalism and
colonialism through the writings of Kant, Rousseau, Turgot, and Condorcet.
Finally, I will seek to integrate these two aspects into an overall view through
Edward Said’s postcolonial theoretical framework, but with special attention
to the relationship between science and coloniality as formulated by Latin
American authors such as Walter Mignolo, Enrique Dussel, and Aníbal
Quijano. In so doing, I hope to gain some theoretical tools that will allow me
to reconstruct enlightenment criollo discourse in New Granada in the chapters
that follow.

1.1 THE COSMOPOLIS PROJECT

In his book Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity, the philosopher

Stephen Toulmin argues that toward the middle of the seventeenth century, a
new and strange vision of nature and society began to emerge at the heart of
European intellectual life. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a “practi-
cal” approach to knowledge had prevailed in Europe in which philosophical
questions were linked to problems related to the experience of human life.
Thinkers like Las Casas, Vitoria, Montaigne, Vives, Erasmus, and More
reflected on the moral, political, religious, juridical, and everyday affairs
of their age, rejecting all abstract, theoretical dogmatism. They were of the
opinion that knowledge should be focused on contextual issues rather than
addressing general and scholastic questions unconnected to lived experience.1
However, things began to change radically in the seventeenth century. The
use of precise instruments to observe the stars and calculate their movements,
the development of mathematics and physics, Europe’s new colonial settle-
ments, and the concomitant expansion of the capitalist economy transformed
how people looked upon the social and natural worlds. The cognitio historica
of Montaigne, Vives, and Erasmus begins to give way to the idea of a “rig-
orous science” exemplified by figures like Descartes, Galileo, and Newton.
Toulmin synthesizes this “change of mind” that began to take place within
the European intellectual community from the seventeenth century onward
in four points:

1
 Such knowledge, as Hardt and Negri (2000: 70–74) would say, was firmly committed to the plane
of immanence.
12 Chapter 1

a. Logic and rhetoric, which up to this point had been seen as legitimate
scientific fields—since they had a practical objective tied to the oral
transmission of knowledge—are now considered irrelevant. Instead of
oral argumentation, written proof, formulated in mathematical language
and understood only by experts, is established as the only form for the
validation and transmission of knowledge.
b. Juridical and moral theory, focused on understanding and resolving
particular cases, is replaced by ethics as speculation oriented toward the
study of universal principles of conduct (good, evil, justice). “Case stud-
ies” fall outside of ethical reflection.
c. The empirical sources of knowledge utilized by humanists (ancient
documents, geographical maps, travel literature, ethnographic material,
esoteric practices) are now seen as causes of error and confusion. The
only trustworthy source of knowledge is the internal operation of the
intellect, namely, the “clear and distinct” representations of the human
mind.
d. Time and space, essential variables for Renaissance thinkers, are rejected
as objects worthy of philosophical speculation. The role of the philoso-
pher is to distance himself from spatiotemporal conditions in which their
lives unfold in order to disentangle the permanent structures underlying
all phenomena, natural or social (Toulmin, 1990: 30–34).

Toulmin concludes that under this new epistemic configuration, knowledge

of human life attempts to bring together two elements symbolized by the
Greek terms cosmos and polis. Cosmos refers to nature, ordered and governed
by fixed eternal laws that are discovered by reason, whereas polis refers to the
human community and its organizational practices. From a scientific perspec-
tive, the pretension of formulating a kind of knowledge that takes man and
society as objects of study to be subjected to the exactitude of physical laws,
in accordance with Newton’s model appears. From a political perspective,
the pretension of creating a society that is rationally ordered through the cen-
tralized power of the state appears. With the help of science and through the
sovereignty of the state, the natural order of the cosmos could be reproduced
within the rational order of the polis (Toulmin, 1990: 67).
Now, what allows the project of Cosmopolis to even be formulated is the
idea that society can be observed from a neutral observation point, uncon-
taminated by the relative contingencies of space and time. No thinker man-
aged to express this pretension with the clarity of René Descartes. In the
first of his Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes states that certainty in
scientific knowledge is only possible if the observer has previously shed all
opinions anchored in common sense. We must eliminate all possible sources
of uncertainty, since the principal cause of errors in science stems from the
 Places of Enlightenment 13

observer’s excessive familiarity with their social and cultural environment.2

Therefore, Descartes recommends suspending these “ancient and commonly
held” opinions from everyday life in order to find a solid point of departure
from which it might be possible to reconstruct the entire edifice of knowledge
(Descartes, 1993: 49). This absolute point of departure, where the observer
reduces all previously learned knowledge to a tabula rasa, is what we will
call in this book zero-point hubris.
To begin everything anew means having the power to name the world for
the first time; to draw a border between legitimate and illegitimate knowledge,
and moreover to define which behaviors are normal and which are pathologi-
cal. The zero-point is thus one of the absolute epistemological beginning, but
also of economic and social control of the world. To situate oneself at the
zero-point is to have the power to institute, to represent, to construct a vision
of the social and natural world that is recognized as legitimate and underwrit-
ten by the state. This is a representation in which “enlightened men” define
themselves as neutral and impartial observers of reality. The construction of
Cosmopolis becomes not only a utopia for social reformers throughout the
entire eighteenth century but also an obsession for the European empires
fighting for control of the world at that moment.

1.1.1 The Plane of Transcendence

According to Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, the enlightenment set into
motion a transcendental apparatus whose purpose was to establish rational
mediations for all spheres of human action. Politics, knowledge, and morality
were subjected to a preconstituted order that did indeed propose a new meta-
physical ordering of the world, without reproducing the old dualisms of the
Middle Ages. It was no longer God but human nature that would guarantee
that the laws of the cosmos would correspond to the laws of the polis (Hardt
and Negri 2000: 78–79). And it is perhaps in David Hume’s 1734 Treatise
of Human Nature that we find the first systematic formulation of science
grounded in the transcendental plane of human nature as the rational basis for
the construction of Cosmopolis.3
Like Descartes, Hume proposes “a compleat system of the sciences, built
on a foundation almost entirely new, and the only one upon which they can
stand with any security” (Hume, 1960: xx). In Descartes, as is well known,

2
 “For these ancient and commonly held opinions still revert frequently to my mind, long and familiar
custom having given them the right to occupy my mind against my inclination and rendered them
almost masters of my belief” (Descartes 1993: 49).
3
 In fact, the subtitle of that book clearly indicates Hume’s objective: “Attempt to introduce the
Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects.”
14 Chapter 1

scientific objectivity results from a method in which we seek a primary

certainty in consciousness (“clear and distinct” ideas) from which we can
then, and in a strictly mathematical way, deduce all scientific truths. Hume
thinks that while all branches of the sciences seem to concern themselves
with objects outside of consciousness, in reality it is people themselves who
make judgments regarding the truth or falsehood of the propositions they use
to study those objects. Therefore, if what is sought is a solid foundation that
guarantees the certainty of knowledge, this foundation can be nothing other
than human perceptive and cognitive faculties. The study of these faculties of
human nature is the object of the “Science of Man”:

’Tis evident, that all the sciences have a relation, greater or less, to human
nature; and that however wide any of them may seem to run from it, they still
return back by one passage or another. Even Mathematics, Natural Philosophy,
and Natural Religion, are in some measure dependent on the science of Man;
since they lie under the cognizance of men, and are judged of by their powers
and faculties . . . There is no question of importance, whose decision is not
compriz’d in the science of man; and there is none, which can be decided with
any certainty, before we become acquainted with that science . . . And as the
science of man is the only solid foundation for the other sciences, so the only
solid foundation we can give to this science itself must be laid on experience
and observation. (Hume, 1960: xix–xx, author’s emphasis)

The science of man thereby becomes the epistemological foundation of all

other sciences, including natural philosophy, that is, the physics exempli-
fied by Newton. How is this possible? According to Hume, applying the
“experimental Method of Reasoning” had such positive results in the physical
sciences to the study of mankind. It is therefore a question of investigating
human behavior without beginning from any preconceived, metaphysical
idea of the human, but instead utilizing only the empirical data provided by
experience and observation.4 Just as Newton managed to free himself from
a metaphysical conception of nature inherited from Aristotle to formulate
the laws governing the movement of celestial bodies, so too must the social
scientist (the Newton of the human sciences) distance themselves from all
sorts of mythological preconceptions about humanity in order to formulate
the laws governing human nature. In other words, just as physics managed to
determine the laws governing the celestial world, the science of man ought to
apply the same method to determine the laws governing the terrestrial world

4
 On this subject, see the already classic study by Italian philosopher Alberto Moravia, La Scienza
dell’Uomo nel Settecento, in which he analyzes in detail the constitution of the French “Societé des
Observateurs de l’homme” and the birth of ethnology in the eighteenth century (Moravia, 1989).
 Places of Enlightenment 15

of social life. And since these laws, according to Hume, are anchored in
human nature, this new science would take human cognitive and perceptive
faculties as its object of analysis in order to explain—through observation
and experience—the basic structures governing social and moral behavior.
Notice that Hume’s pretension, like that of Descartes, is to locate the
science of man at an observational zero-point capable of guaranteeing its
objectivity. The only difference is that, unlike Descartes, Hume’s zero-point
is reached by applying the experimental method in order to establish an
analogy between the Newtonian universe and the political-moral universe.
But the pretension of both thinkers is the same: to convert science into an
unobserved observation platform from which an impartial observer is able
to establish the laws governing both the cosmos and the polis. To reach the
zero-point therefore implies that this hypothetical observer abandons all pre-
scientific, metaphysical observation that might cloud their view. The first
rule for reaching the zero-point is thus the following: any other knowledge
that does not meet the requirements of the analytic-experimental method
must be radically discarded. For Hume, strictly applying this rule would
allow the science of man to look upon its object of study as it is and not as
it should be. To observe human nature from the zero-point means bracket-
ing all moral, religious, and metaphysical beliefs about humanity in order to
see people in their pure facticity. The science of man is not normative, it is
descriptive.
But what is this facticity of human nature that the science of man discov-
ers? Human actions, Hume argues, are not motivated by reason but by interest
in self-preservation. No one acts in the absence of their own personal inter-
est, and so the utility (or pleasure) that a specific action offers the individual
is what explains why the action is judged to be “good” or “evil.” Morality
and justice are not therefore inscribed in human nature but are conventions
through which people publicly manifest their passions5:

Now it appears, that in the original frame of our mind, our strongest attention
is confin’d to ourselves; our next is extended to our relations and acquaintance;
and ’tis only the weakest which reaches to strangers and indifferent per-
sons . . . Nothing is more certain, than that men are, in a great measure, govern’d
by interest, and that even when they extend their concern beyond themselves,
’tis not to any great distance; nor is it usual for them, in common life, to look
farther than their nearest friends and acquaintance. (Hume, 1960: 488; 534,
author’s emphasis)

5
 See: Hume, 1960: 484.
16 Chapter 1

The first “law of human nature” discovered by the science of man is therefore
the following: natural instinct inevitably leads people to prefer the nearby
to the remote. Nothing in human nature leads them to want to “extend their
concern beyond themselves,” so that all actions they undertake, even the
most disinterested and altruistic, make sense only insofar as they benefit
themselves.6 The question Hume asks is therefore the following: How is life
in community possible? If natural law dictates that all people prefer what is
near, how can we explain their capacity to obey a remote code of impersonal
laws and to conduct themselves in a civilized way toward others. If people are
not naturally social beings, as Aristotle had believed—this is a “pre-scientific
myth” that we must abandon—then what is the origin of society? Through an
unobserved observation of how human passions function, the science of man
would attempt to explain the origin of this historical artifice called society.
For Hume as for Hobbes, the laws of society do not exist before individuals
agree to establish themselves as a social group. But according to the Scottish
thinker, what led them to this agreement was not the insecurity of a war of all
against all, as Hobbes supposed, but the need to satisfy a fundamental pas-
sion: that of “acquiring goods and possessions for ourselves and our nearest
friends” (Hume, 1960: 491–2). But since nature has not provided all people
with equal capacities and means for satisfying this impulse, it became neces-
sary to resort to an artifice: the creation of laws regulating commerce and
property.7 While it is true that this artifice restrains the egoistic impulses of
some individuals in favor of the needs of others, when considered as a whole
this is a beneficial arrangement for all. If the insatiable desire for property
were left to its own devices a war for resources would be inevitable, com-
merce would become impossible, and no individual would be able to satisfy
their self-interest. In sum, the science of man establishes that at the origin
of human society we find the creation of a regulatory mechanism for the
economy, whose function is to allow individuals to satisfy their natural neces-
sities, but only insofar as this does not threaten what all value as a public
interest: self-preservation. The law of the state must prioritize the remote so
that everyone can opt for what is nearby.
Now this “great discovery” of the science of man that Hume proclaimed
in the first half of the eighteenth century was taken up and developed by
one of his most brilliant disciples: the Scottish thinker Adam Smith. Like
Hume, Smith was convinced that the science of man must rest on the model

6
 “In general,” Hume asserts, “it may be affirm’d, that there is no such passion in human minds, as
the love of mankind, merely as such, independent of personal qualities, of services, or of relation
to ourself” (Hume 1960: 481).
7
 Locke, in his second Essay on Civil Government, had stated that private property was a “law of
nature,” one already present in the state of nature, and that its preservation and regulation was one
of the motivations for the creation of the civil state (Locke 1988: 299).
 Places of Enlightenment 17

of Newtonian physics. Like the natural order, the social order is governed
by a sort of mechanism that acts independently of human intentions. Society
(the polis) should be understood as a universe governed by impersonal laws
analogous to those governing the physical world (the cosmos): gravitation,
attraction, and equilibrium. And like Hume, Smith believes that economic
activities are the ideal sphere for impartially observing how these laws of
human nature operate. Thus in The Wealth of Nations Smith argues that:

The Division of labor, from which so many advantages are derived, is not origi-
nally the effect of any human wisdom, which foresees and intends that general
opulence to which it gives occasion. It is the necessary, through very slow and
gradual consequence of a certain propensity in human nature which has in view
no such extensive utility; the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing
for another. (Smith, 1993: 21)

The division of labor and the propensity toward commerce through the
exchange of goods are therefore universal phenomena that do not depend on
anyone’s individual consciousness or culture but are instead regulated by an
impersonal mechanism that is precisely the object of study for the science
of man and, in this case, of political economy. The universality of these
phenomena results from their anchoring in an invariable tendency of human
nature that Hume had already indicated: the need to satisfy nearby interests
over remote ones. If people enter into commercial relations, this is not due
to the interest of some in providing what others lack, but from the passionate
springs underlying all human action that lead inevitably to the egoistic pursuit
of personal benefit.8
Like Hume, Smith wonders how to strengthen this pursuit of personal
advantage in such a way that the selfish interests of individuals can be har-
monized with the interests of the collective. But the disciple’s response dif-
fers slightly from that offered by the master. While Hume finds it necessary
to restrain (through the law) the natural desire to satisfy the nearby over the
remote to ensure peaceful coexistence, Smith thinks that any coercion of
human nature would be harmful. Rather than restraining, we must strengthen
those selfish tendencies that motivate human action. Individuals must be
allowed (laissez-faire) to exercise their own will, so that the selfish pursuit of
one’s own enrichment might generate benefits for the whole collective. We

8
 “Give me that which I want, and I shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such
offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good
offices which we stand in need of. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the
baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves,
not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their
advantages” (Smith, 1993: 22).
18 Chapter 1

do not need to construct an artificial mechanism for the state regulation of the
economy, simply because this mechanism already exists (it is ontological)
and is itself regulated by the social laws of motion. The market, which Smith
sees not as a contingent sphere where some exercise power over others but
as the necessary and inevitable result of the evolution of human society, is
the natural mechanism regulating commodity exchange (Smith, 1993: 53). It
is therefore enough to allow individuals to enter the market freely to satisfy
their nearby interests for the internal and supra-individual laws of the mecha-
nism—like a sort of “invisible hand”—to regulate the equilibrium between
the individual and the collective with precision:

By preferring the support of domestick to that of foreign industry, [every indi-

vidual] intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a
manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own
gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to pro-
mote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for
the society that is was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest, he frequently
promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to
promote it. (Smith, 1993: 291–292, author’s emphasis)

The transcendental nature of the global market is based on the laws of human
nature as discovered by political economy. Smith and Hume therefore set out
from an unquestionable assumption: human nature is a transcendental sphere
valid for all people on earth that functions independently of all cultural or
subjective variables. Therefore, the science that studies this nature must be
liberated from all pre-scientific opinion and situate itself on the plane of
transcendence, at the zero-point from which it can achieve an objective and
totalizing view of its object of study. But it is worth asking here: What is the
locus of enunciation that allows Smith and Hume to claim that their enuncia-
tion has no locus? Where is the immanent power grid that postulates that this
power has a transcendental foundation? The Marxist tradition has identified
this position of power as that of a vigorous English commercial bourgeoisie
whose values centered on work ethic (Berufsethik), mercantilism, and utili-
tarianism. From this analytic perspective, the enlightened program of Smith
and Hume expressed a typically bourgeois Weltanschauung that was directly
opposed to aristocratic values that centered on leisure, the subsistence econ-
omy, and the uselessness of knowledge.9

9
 As an example, it is sufficient to recall Lukacs’ profound analysis of the “antinomies of bourgeois
thought” in his classic book History and Class Consciousness. But Hardt and Negri also belong
to this tradition when they argue that, “With Descartes we are at the beginning of the history of
 Places of Enlightenment 19

However, and while recognizing the obvious link between the enlighten-
ment and the European bourgeoisie, it seems to me that Smith and Hume’s
locus enuntiationis has another dimension that goes beyond their “class”
condition within the framework of English capitalism. At the time that Hume
and Smith penned their treatises, England, Holland, and France found them-
selves fighting for control of the Atlantic circuit, which had been in the hands
of the Spanish since the sixteenth century. These powers were aware of the
need to create commercial enclaves in the overseas colonies in order to take
advantage of the non-European workforce. England in particular decided
to establish stable colonies on the route to the Indies so that the productive
labor of the natives (settlers and slaves alike) might open up new markets and
increase the profits of commercial companies (Wallerstein, 1980: 244–289;
Wolf, 1997: 158–194). Access to new sources of wealth therefore depended
on the asymmetrical interaction between European settlers and native popula-
tions. And it is here that the enlightenment project of Cosmopolis exemplified
by Smith and Hume can be seen as a colonial discourse. As Hardt and Negri
put it:

Whereas within its domain the nation-state and its attendant ideological
structures work tirelessly to create and reproduce the purity of the people, on
the outside the nation-state is a machine that produces Others, creates racial
difference, and raises boundaries that delimit and support the modern subject
of sovereignty. These boundaries and barriers, however, are not impermeable
but rather serve to regulate two-way flows between Europe and its outside.
The oriental, the African, the Amerindian are all necessary components for
the negative foundation of European identity and modern sovereignty as such.
The dark Other of European Enlightenment stands at its very foundation just as
the productive relationship with the “dark continents” serves as the economic
foundation of the European nation-states. (Hardt and Negri 2000: 114–115)

This explains why Smith must include not only European nations but also
European colonies in his theory of the global market. The populations of
both the former and the latter are situated in the exact location that naturally
corresponds to them, which is to say that their function as producers, sell-
ers, or processers of raw materials cannot be changed, since to do so would
mean intervening in market dynamics, that is to say, wanting to change the
laws of nature. For this reason, one of the central tasks of the science of man
is to demonstrate, as we will soon see, that not all populations on the planet
exist on the same level of human evolution and that this asymmetry obeys

the Enlightenment, or rather bourgeois ideology. The transcendental apparatus he proposes is the
distinctive trademark of European Enlightenment thought” (Hardt and Negri, 2000: 80).
20 Chapter 1

nature’s master plan. The science of man would seek to account for not only
the origin of human society but would attempt to rationally reconstruct its
historical evolution to show what the inexorable logic of progress consists
of. A logic that would allow Europe to construct its economic and political
identity ex negativo vis-à-vis the colonies, and which would help colonial
criollos strengthen their racial identity vis-à-vis the castes.

1.1.2 The Denial of Simultaneity

During the second half of the eighteenth century, with the writings of Turgot,
Bossuet, and Condorcet, the enlightened project of a science of man sought
to reconstruct the historical evolution of human society. But the project
confronted a serious methodological problem: How to empirically observe
the past? If what distinguishes scientific observation is precisely the “experi-
mental Method of Reasoning” guaranteeing its zero-point location, how can
one have experiences of past societies? The solution to this dilemma rested
on a simple process of reasoning: it is only possible to scientifically observe
those societies existing in the present, but it is possible to rationally defend
the hypothesis that the historical evolution of some of these societies has
stagnated while others have progressed further. The background assumption
is therefore the following: since human nature is singular, the history of all
human societies can be reconstructed a posteriori as following the same evo-
lutionary pattern throughout time.10 So while at present we experience a large
number of societies existing simultaneously in space, not all of these societies
exist simultaneously in time. We would only need to engage in comparative
observation, according to the analytic method, to determine which of these
societies pertain to an inferior (earlier) stage and which are higher on the
evolutionary scale.
This analytic procedure had already been tested out by authors like John
Locke and Thomas Hobbes in the seventeenth century, when they sought
to explain the historical origin of the state.11 In his Second Treatise on Civil

10
 Arthur Lovejoy has shown that during the eighteenth century, the hypothesis of the “great chain
of being” that prevailed as the organizing principle of knowledge in Western science up to that
moment begins to temporalize. This means that the ontological fullness of all beings begins to be
understood as a “natural plan” unfolding gradually in time (Lovejoy, 2001: 242–287).
11
 I would like to recall here Rousseau’s excellent commentary in the Second Discourse regarding the
procedure followed by theorists like Hobbes and Locke. Rousseau insists that it is not possible to
study humans scientifically in their pure and natural state, since all empirically observable people
have been affected by civilizational processes. What science does is to isolate the individual from
civilization in a purely analytic way to discover the laws governing “human nature.” With the
basic structure of human nature thereby established, it would then be possible to apply this model
to study the “origin” of history, but bearing in mind that this is merely the application of a model
derived from physics and not the determination of a historical truth. In Rousseau’s words: “One
must not take the kind of research which we enter into as the pursuit of truths of history, but solely
 Places of Enlightenment 21

Government, Locke investigates human society’s transition from the state

of nature to civil society, setting out from the following hypothesis: at the
origins of humanity there was still no need for an organized division of
labor, since the economy was merely one of subsistence and the value of the
products taken from nature was marked by the use that people granted them
to fulfill their basic needs (Locke, 1988: 296). But we begin to leave this
“primitive phase” of human society behind when population density increases
and competition springs up between different people for the appropriation of
resources, thereby establishing the need for trade and the rational division of
labor. For Locke, leaving the state of nature coincides with the invention of
money and the appearance of exchange value.
The point is that in order to determine how “primitive societies” were
organized—without money and without a market economy—Locke appeals
to observations of Indigenous communities in the Americas as described
by European travelers, chroniclers, and adventurers. In contrast to Europe,
societies from previous epochs lived in permanent scarcity despite the vast
abundance of nature. The market (a generator of wealth) did not exist since
people were content to work only as much as necessary to obtain what they
needed to survive:

There cannot be a clearer demonstration of any thing, than several nations of the
Americans are of this, who are rich in Land, and poor in all the Comforts of Life;
whom Nature having furnished as liberally as any other people with the materi-
als of Plenty, i.e. a fruitful Soil, apt to produce in abundance what might serve
for food, rayment, and delight; yet, for want of improving it by labour, have not
one hundredth part of the Conveniencies we enjoy: And a King of a large and
fruitful Territory there feeds, lodges, and is clad worse than a day-labourer in
England . . . Thus in the beginning all the World was America, and more so than
that is now; for no such thing as Money was any where known. (Locke, 1988:
296–7; 301, author’s emphasis)

Locke’s comparative observation established that between contemporary

European and American societies there exists a relationship of non-simulta-
neity. While European societies managed to develop a mode of subsistence
based on the specialized division of labor and the capitalist market, American
societies found themselves anchored to an economy pertaining to “human-
ity’s past.” The relationship between an English worker and an Indigenous
shepherd in New Granada is one of temporal asymmetry. Both live in the

as hypothetical and conditional reasonings, better fittted to clarify the nature of things than to
expose their actual origin; reasonings similar to those used every day by our physicists to explain
the formation of the earth” (Rousseau, 1985: 78, author’s emphasis).
22 Chapter 1

seventeenth century but they belong to different stages of human develop-

ment. The different modes of subsistence in which these people’s lives take
place are indicative of the fact that societies progress in time and that this
progress consists of the gradual development of productive labor. Hunting,
herding, agriculture, and commerce represent successive stages of develop-
ment marking human progress (Meek, 1976). Seen from the zero-point, all
societies appear as if governed by an inexorable law that leads them, sooner
or later, toward the pinnacle of the modern capitalist economy. The telos of
history is the definitive suppression of that which throughout millennia con-
stituted the curse of human reality par excellence: scarcity.
But it is perhaps in the writings of Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot that we
find the clearest expression of this pretension to scientifically reconstruct the
laws governing the development of human history. Turgot sets out from the
same methodological assumption as Descartes: science must be situated at
an observational zero-point that guarantees the observer’s “epistemological
break” with all religious and metaphysical conceptions of the world. In par-
ticular, a scientific view of the past needs to be free of the Christian narrative
of the “history of salvation,” which viewed human events as oriented toward
transcendental ends. Having shed this metaphysical burden, history comes to
be seen as the result of a ferocious struggle by humans to dominate nature
through labor; a struggle that is not a product of chance but instead governed
by the same mechanical laws studied by Newton. The philosopher needs to
account for these laws, which are the same for all societies since all people
are endowed with the same organs, their ideas formed according to the same
“logic,” and their needs, inclinations, and reactions toward nature the same.12
Turgot’s rational reconstruction therefore works from the assumption that
human nature is singular (homo faber) and therefore that at the beginning
of history all humans suffered the same scarcity and barbarism. During the
first period of humanity, people lived immersed in the chaos of the senses,
language was incapable of articulating abstract ideas, and basic needs were
fulfilled through a subsistence economy (Turgot, 1973: 65–6). They managed
to escape this primitive situation when language became more complex, since
it was only then that writing, the sciences, and the arts could unfold. Thus,
humans would learn to technologically dominate the forces of nature, to
rationally organize the labor force, and the economy would slowly shift from

12
 In his A Philosophical Review of the Successive Stages of the Human Mind, Turgot writes: “The
same senses, the same organs, and the spectacle of the same universe, have everywhere given men
the same ideas, just as the same needs and inclinations have everywhere taught them the same arts”
(1973, 42). And in On Universal History, he adds: “To unveil the influence of general and neces-
sary causes, that of particular causes and the free actions of great men, and the relation of all this to
the very constitution of man; to reveal the springs and mechanisms of moral causes through their
effects—that is what History is in the eyes of a philosopher” (64, author’s emphasis).
 Places of Enlightenment 23

a domestic subsistence economy to an economy of market-based production.

For Turgot, “human progress” combines two factors that go hand-in-hand:
on the one hand, the gradual unfolding of the rational faculties and the result-
ing transition from myth to scientific knowledge (the passage from doxa to
episteme); on the other, the development of the technical means and organi-
zational capacities allowing the control of nature through labor (the passage
from scarcity to abundance).
Like Hume and Smith, then, Turgot considers the economic dimension
of human life to be the key to the rational reconstruction of the history of
people. And like Locke, he believed that the “savages of America” needed
to be placed on a lower rung of that history (humanity’s “infancy”), since we
observe in them an absolute predominance of doxa in cognitive matters and
scarcity in economic matters:

A glance over the earth puts before our eyes, even today, the whole history of
the human race, showing us traces of all the steps and monuments of all the
stages through which it has passed from the barbarism, still in existence, of the
American peoples to the civilization of the most enlightened nations of Europe.
Alas! our ancestors and the Pelasgians who preceded the Greeks were like the
savages of America! (Turgot, 1973: 89)

Here again, we find the argument of temporal non-simultaneity between

Indigenous American societies and enlightened European societies. Viewed
from the zero-point, these two societies coexist in space but not in time, since
their economic and cognitive modes of production differ in evolutionary
terms. For Turgot, human evolution seems to lead necessarily, with the same
necessity as natural laws, to the “enlightenment” observed in the European
societies of his time. Modern Europe’s mode of producing wealth (capital-
ism) and knowledge (the new science) are seen as the criteria for measuring
the temporal development of all other societies. Knowledge thus passed
through “various levels” on a linear scale, from primitive mentality to abstract
thought, and the same can be said of the modes of producing wealth, which
progress from the subsistence economy to the capitalist market economy.
Nothing on this scale of progress occurs by chance and no link in the chain
can be seen as unnecessary. The entire ensemble reveals the perfection and
precision of a rational mechanism, so that Turgot can say with all confidence:

the history of the human race, in which each man is no more than one part of an
immense whole which has, like him, its infancy and its advancement… yet in
the midst of their ravages manners are softened, the human mind becomes more
enlightened, and separate nations are brought closer to one another. Finally
commercial and political ties unite all parts of the globe, and the whole human
24 Chapter 1

race, through alternate periods of rest and unrest, of weal and woe, goes on
advancing, although at a slow pace, toward greater perfection. (Turgot, 1973:
63, 41)

What the enthusiastic Turgot does not explain is why, if all humans are equal
in terms of natural capacities, scientific thought and the market economy
emerged precisely in Europe rather than developing first in Asia, Africa, or
the Americas. What natural causes explain the temporal non-simultaneity
of different forms of wealth and knowledge production? Perhaps it was the
influence of climate and geography on the human faculties, as Montesquieu
argued? Maybe it was abrupt changes in environmental conditions, as
Rousseau had supposed? Or perhaps it had to do with the natural superiority
of the white race, as German thinkers like Blumenbach and Kant maintained?

1.1.3 Immature Races

I cited Kant at the outset of this chapter in regard to his definition of
Aufklärung, but it is now time to return to him in order to establish the
relationship between the eighteenth-century project of the human sciences
and his famous concept of “immaturity” (Unmündigkeit). I am interested in
showing how Kant’s thought is linked to this enlightenment project, and I
would like to do so with attention to a comment by the Nigerian philosopher
Emmanuel Eze: “Strictly speaking, Kant’s anthropology and geography offer
the strongest, if not the only, sufficiently articulated theoretical philosophical
justification of the superior/inferior classification of ‘races of men’ of any
European writer up to his time” (Eze, 1997: 129).
In effect, while Kant’s writings on anthropology and geography are tra-
ditionally seen as “minor works” by the philosophical community, Eze is
correct to suggest that a consideration of these texts can provide the key to
understanding Kant’s position on the science of man, or Menschenkunde,
as he called it.13 Like the other European philosophers considered up to this
point, Kant was convinced that humans should be seen as an integral part of
the natural kingdom and therefore as an object of study belonging to what
was called at the time “natural history.” However, Kant thought that beyond
being part of physical nature, there was something in humans that escaped
the determinism of natural laws and could not be studied by natural history.
This “something more” is humanity’s moral nature, whose study should be

13
 Recall that throughout his career as a university professor, Kant gave more courses on anthropol-
ogy and physical geography than on metaphysics and moral philosophy, teaching these courses
continuously for more than forty years. It is also necessary to bear in mind that until the 1760s,
Kant was known in Germany precisely for his theses on the subjects of history, anthropology, and
geography (Zammito, 2002: 292).
 Places of Enlightenment 25

based on a different method than that of the empirical sciences. Accordingly,

the science of man is divided into two major subdisciplines: “physical geog-
raphy,” which studies corporeal nature from the perspective of its external
determinations (environment, physiognomy, temperament, race), and “prag-
matic anthropology,” which studies moral nature from the perspective of the
capacity to overcome the determinism of physical nature and ascend to the
plane of freedom (Kant, 2006: 6).
Kant grants pragmatic anthropology a clear methodological priority over
physical geography because he basically held to a dualist view in which the
soul possesses greater dignity than the body and therefore the study of moral
nature is superior to the study of physical nature. It is not that Kant discounted
the advances made by the physical sciences at the time, particularly the work
of Newton (whom he admired deeply), but he considered it nonsensical to
apply the experimental method to moral affairs, as Hume hoped to do. He
recognized the importance of empirical, cultural, and historical studies to
understanding human behavior and society, but believed that these said noth-
ing about the moral character of the human being (Kant, 2006: 5). Due to the
characteristics of its object of study, pragmatic anthropology is not therefore
rooted in experience and employs a clearly anti-empirical and dogmatic
methodology. Rather than take as its object of study those aspects of human
life that change over time, pragmatic anthropology focuses on what never
changes and can always be observed in the same way: the “zero-point” of
ethics.
Kant shares with the English empiricists the idea that science operates
according to rationally defined maxims and principles, valid independent of
the relative position of the observer, so that the scientific observation point
does not depend on the nature of the object under observation. The object can
change according to its location in time and space, but observation insofar
as it is scientific focuses on the universal principles that explain this change.
The observation of the movements of the stars, for example, does not vary
according to the position of the observed object or the particular location of
the empirical observer: it remains fixed at the zero-point.14 This is why prag-
matic anthropology and physical geography have the same epistemological
status since for Kant all scientific knowledge needs to have a transcenden-
tal foundation guaranteeing its universal status. The difference is merely

14
 This explains why Enlightenment thinkers privileged astronomy over astrology. Whereas astrol-
ogy attributes to the observed object a special influence on the world, depending on the relative
position of that object and the observer, astronomy distances itself completely from both from the
object and from the observer to situate itself on a neutral observation platform. This neutrality is
what gives astronomy its scientific status, while astrology—which continues to observe from non-
neutral points (point one, two, three, etc.)—is relegated to the sphere of the “pre-scientific” and is
seen as a form of knowledge belonging to the “past” or the “infancy” of humanity.
26 Chapter 1

methodological, since the two disciplines touch on two qualitatively distinct

aspects of human experience. Physical geography, unlike pragmatic anthro-
pology, studies human beings through those aspects that change in time and
space, but this observation continues to occur formally from the zero-point.
To do so, physical geography utilizes a taxonomy for classifying living things
similar to that of Linnaeus, seeking to describe the natural world objectively
through the grouping of different individuals (minerals, animals, plants,
human beings) into abstract categories (genus, class, and species) in order to
establish formal similarities between them.
A clear example of the scientific status of physical geography is the way
Kant approaches the problem of the races. The concept of “race,” like all
categories applied to history, has no correspondence to nature but is instead
the result of a formal operation of the understanding, that is, an observation
carried out from the zero-point. In Kant’s opinion, its scientific usefulness lies
in how it allows us to establish differences among groups that pertain to a
single species (Art), but which have developed different hereditary character-
istics (Abartungen). Differences in skin color therefore do not correspond to
different classes (Arten) of people since all belong to the same trunk (Stamm),
but instead to different races insofar as each maintains a distinct phenotype.
In his 1775 essay “Of the Different Races of Human Beings,” Kant argues
that there exist only four groups that should be classified under the formal
category of race:

I believe “a division of the human species into” four races will suffice in order
to be able to derive [ableiten] all heritable and self-perpetuating distinctions
within “the species.” They are: (1) the race of whites; (2) the Negro race;
(3) the Hunnish race (Mongolish or Kalmuckish); and (4) the Hinduish, or
Hindustanish, race . . . I believe “we” can derive all of the remaining, heritable
characters of people [Völkercharaktere] from these four races either as mixed or
incipient. (Kant, 2013: 47–48)

Ten years later, in his “Determination of the Concept of a Human Race,”

Kant distinguishes these four races according to geography and skin color,
introducing a new variant into his earlier taxonomy: American Indians, previ-
ously held to be a variant of the Mongolish race, now appear as one of the
Grundrassen due to the red color of their skin.15 The four fundamental races

15
 This classification of races according to skin color clearly reveals the influence of Johann Friedrich
Blumenbach, who had distinguished five races in his book De generis humani varietati nativa:
Caucasic (white), Mongolic (yellow), Ethiopic (black), American (red), and Malaysic (coppery)
(See: Vögelin, 1989: 74). But there is no doubt another factor that explains Kant’s alteration of his
taxonomy. Between 1775 and 1785, between the drafting of these two essays, Kant had become
familiar with travel literature, and particularly the chronicles that informed the European public
 Places of Enlightenment 27

are therefore white (Europe), yellow (Asia), black (Africa), and red (America)
(Kant, 2013: 130). Kant’s basic thesis nevertheless remains the same: the four
races correspond not only to differences among human groups marked by
external determinations (climate and geography) but also and above all cor-
respond to differences in the moral character of people, that is, internal differ-
ences marked by the capacity of these groups or individuals to overcome the
determinism of nature. In other words, Kant is saying that race, and skin color
in particular, should be seen as indicative of a people’s capacity or incapacity
to “educate” (Bilden) the moral nature inherent to all humans.
In effect, due to their peculiar psychological and moral temperament,
some races cannot achieve self-consciousness and develop the will for ratio-
nal action, while others gradually educate themselves (which is to say that
they progress morally) through science and the arts. Africans, Asians, and
Americans are morally immature races since their culture reveals an inability
to attain the truly human ideal of overcoming natural determinism and placing
oneself under the authority of moral law. Only the white European race, due
to its internal and external characteristics, is capable of fulfilling this moral
ideal of humanity. In his “Physical Geography,” Kant clearly establishes the
idea that “Humanity has its highest degree of perfection (Volkommenheit)
in the white race. The yellow Indians have a somewhat lesser talent. The
Negroes are much lower, and lowest of all is part of the American races”
(Kant, 2015: 576).
The science of man that Kant defends thus proposes the existence of a
moral hierarchy within humanity on the basis of climate and skin color. Just
as Turgot and Condorcet denied the simultaneity of knowledge and forms of
production by establishing a temporal hierarchy in which the new science and
the market economy figure as vanguard institutions of human progress, Kant
denies the simultaneity of cultural forms by establishing a moral hierarchy
that privileges the traditions and customs of the white race as the sole model
for “humanity.” Thus, just as Locke and Hobbes observed American societies
like a paleontologist observes dinosaur bones—that is, as a testimony (frozen
in time) of what human life was in the past—Kant locates the “red race” at the
most primitive stage of moral development, thereby establishing the contrast
between the yesterday of Unmündigkeit and the today of Aufklärung.
Michel Foucault was right: the Kantian question Was ist Aufklärung? is a
question about the ontological status of the present. But what Foucault did not
manage to see is that the observation of this “present” is based on the contrast

regarding the traditions and customs of Indigenous Americans. In fact, Kant begins his 1785 essay
with the following phrase: “The reports [Kenntnisse] that recent travelers are spreading about the
manifold diversities [Manigfaltigkeiten] within the human species have previously contributed
more to stimulating the understanding to investigate this topic than to satisfy it” (Kant, 2013: 128).
28 Chapter 1

that the colonial discourse of the human sciences established between Europe
and its overseas colonies. It is precisely in this context that the analytic cat-
egory of the coloniality of power developed within Latin American critical
theory becomes relevant.

1.2 THE MODERNITY/COLONIALITY PARADIGM

In the previous section, I examined the enlightenment project of a “science of

man” as formulated in the eighteenth century by thinkers like Hume, Smith,
Rousseau, Condorcet, Turgot, and Kant. Our survey has considered this proj-
ect from two complementary perspectives. Epistemologically, we have seen
how the nascent human sciences appropriated the model of physics to create
their object through an impartial and sterile form of observation that I have
deemed zero-point hubris. The other perspective shows how, once installed
at the zero-point, the sciences of man construct a discourse about the history
and human nature in which those people colonized by Europe appear on the
lowest level of the developmental scale, while the market economy, the new
science, and modern political institutions are presented as the ultimate end
(telos) of the social, cognitive, and moral evolution of humanity, respectively.
In this section, I will attempt to bring these two aspects together in a
unified vision, clarifying the relationship between the enlightenment proj-
ect of Cosmopolis and the emergence of modern colonialism. To do so, I
appeal initially to postcolonial theory, and specifically to the contributions
of Palestinian intellectual Edward Said, with the goal of demonstrating the
relationship between colonialism and the human sciences. I will then move
toward the Latin American theorization of coloniality as explored by think-
ers like Enrique Dussel, Walter Mignolo, and Aníbal Quijano, in the hopes
of closing the circle and showing how the observational zero-point—from
which Hume, Smith, Kant, Turgot, and Condorcet imagined the enlighten-
ment project of Cosmopolis—was geopolitically constructed between the
sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.

1.2.1 The Orientalization of the Orient

This is not the place for a detailed presentation of postcolonial theory and the
way it was developed in the United States by those authors that Robert Young
deems the “holy trinity” of the movement: Edward Said, Homi Bhabha,
and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.16 To establish the point that interests me,

16
 For a detailed study of the work of other postcolonial theorists, I refer the reader to two antholo-
gies published in English and one in Spanish, in which some of the most important texts of this
 Places of Enlightenment 29

the structural relationship between colonialism and the human sciences, I

will focus solely on Said’s work, and specifically on his most well-known
book: Orientalism. Here, more than in other works, Said clearly argues that
the enlightenment project of a science of man was upheld by a geopolitical
imaginary (Occidentalism) that viewed the white European races as superior
to all other cultural forms on the planet.
The central argument of Orientalism is that Europe’s imperial domination
of its Asian and Middle Eastern colonies entailed the institutionalization of a
specific image or representation of “the Orient” and “the Oriental.” In Said’s
opinion, one of the characteristics of modern colonialism is that imperial
domination is not achieved by simply killing and subjugating the other by
force, but that it also requires an ideological or “representational” element.
In other words, without the construction of a discourse about the other and
without the incorporation of this discourse into the habitus of dominator
and dominated alike, Europe’s economic and political power over its colo-
nies would have been impossible. The European dominator constructs the
“colonial other” as an object of study (“the Orient”) at the same time that he
constructs an image of his own imperial locus enuntiationis (“the Occident”):

the Orient has helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image,
idea, personality, experience. Yet none of this Orient is merely imagina-
tive. The Orient is an integral part of European material civilization and
culture. Orientalism expresses and represents that part culturally and even
ideologically as a mode of discourse with supporting institutions, vocabulary,
scholarship, imagery, doctrines, even colonial bureaucracies and colonial
styles . . . Orientalism is a style of thought based upon an ontological and epis-
temological distinction made between “the Orient” and (most of the time) “the
Occident.” Thus a very large mass of writers, among whom are poets, novelists,
philosophers, political theorists, economists, and imperial administrators, have
accepted the basic distinction between East and West as the starting point for
elaborate theories, epics, novels, social descriptions, and political accounts con-
cerning the Orient, its people, customs, “mind,” destiny, and so on. (Said, 1979:
1–3, author’s emphasis)

Representations and “conceptions of the world,” as well as the formation of

subjectivity within these representations, are fundamental elements for the

theoretical current are compiled: Williams and Chrisman, 1994; Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin,
1995; and Rivera Cusicanqui and Barragán, 1999; Dube, 1999. One could also consult the fol-
lowing: Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin, 1989; Young, 1990; Moore-Gilbert, 1997; Dirlik, 1997;
Castro-Gómez and Mendieta, 1998; Loomba, 1998; Gandhi, 1998; Beverley, 1999; Ashcroft and
Ahluwalia, 2000.
30 Chapter 1

establishment of Europe’s colonial dominance. In Said’s opinion, modern

colonialism is not reducible to the arbitrary exercise of economic and military
power, but also possesses a cognitive dimension that we will henceforth refer
to as coloniality. Without the construction of an imaginary of “Orient” and
“Occident,” not as geographical locations but as forms of life and thought
capable of generating concrete subjectivities, any explanation of colonialism
(be it economic or sociological) would be incomplete. Obviously, Said notes,
these forms of life and thought are not to be found solely in the habitus of
social actors but are also anchored in objective structures: state laws, com-
mercial codes, school curricula, scientific research projects, bureaucratic
procedures, institutionalized forms of cultural consumption, and so on. Said
is very clear on the fact that Orientalism is not merely a question of “con-
sciousness” (false or true), but is above all the experience of an objective
materiality.
What particularly interests me is the role that Said grants to the human sci-
ences in the construction of this colonial apparatus. As early as the nineteenth
century, Orientalism had found a home in the metropolitan academy with
the creation of professorships on “ancient civilizations” within the frame-
work of the great enthusiasm generated by the study of Oriental languages.
Said argues that it was Great Britain’s imperial control of India that allowed
scholars unrestricted access to the texts, languages, and religions of the Asian
world, which up to that moment had been unknown to Europe (Said, 1979:
77). It was, in fact, an employee of the East India Company and a member
of the English colonial bureaucracy besides, magistrate William Jones, who
took advantage of his vast knowledge of Arabic, Hebrew, and Sanskrit to
elaborate the first of the great Orientalist theories. In a speech delivered in
1786 to the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Jones claimed that classical European
languages (Latin and Greek) derived from a common root that can be traced
back to Sanskrit. This thesis generated unprecedented excitement in the
European scientific community and fomented the development of a new
humanistic discipline: philology.17
The central point of this argument is that interest in the study of ancient
Asian civilizations conforms to a strategy for the historic construction of the
European present. The “origins” of a triumphant European civilization are
sought in the Asian world’s past. Philology seemed to “scientifically prove”
what philosophers like Hegel had been arguing since the end of the eigh-
teenth century: that Asia is nothing but Europe’s grandiose past. Civilization
certainly “begins” in Asia, but its fruits are gathered by Greece and Rome,

17
 The same could be said of the development of other disciplines like archeology which, propelled
by the study of ancient Egyptian civilization, was made possible thanks to the Napoleonic inva-
sions (Said, 1979: 87).
 Places of Enlightenment 31

which constitute the cultural referent immediately prior to modern Europe.

As Hegel would say, civilization follows the path of the sun: it appears in the
East (where it finds its arché) but it unfolds and reaches its conclusion (its
telos, its ultimate objective) in the West. European dominance of the world
required a scientific legitimation, and here is where the nascent sciences of
man—philology, archaeology, history, ethnology, anthropology, geography,
paleontology—begin to play a fundamental role. In looking to the past of
eastern civilizations, these disciplines constructed Europe’s enlightened pres-
ent by way of contrast.
Orientalism showed that Asia’s present had nothing to say to Europe since
its cultural manifestations were old and had already been “overtaken” by
modern civilization. It was only Asia’s cultural past that was of interest as
a “preparatory” moment for the emergence of modern European rationality.
From an enlightenment perspective, all of humanity’s other cultural voices
are viewed as “traditional” or “primitive” and as outside of Weltgeschichte
as a result. So within the apparatus of Orientalism, the eastern world—Egypt
being perhaps the best example of this—is directly associated with the exotic,
the mysterious, the magical, the aesthetic, and the Indigenous, in other words
with “pre-modern” cultural forms. In this way, the many existing forms of
knowledge are situated within a conception of history that delegitimizes their
spatial coexistence and arranges them according to a teleological frame-
work of temporal progression. The various forms of knowledge unfurled by
humanity would lead gradually toward a single legitimate way of knowing
the world: the scientific-technical rationality of modernity.
By establishing a direct relationship between the birth of the human sci-
ences and the birth of modern colonialism, Said makes clear the unavoid-
able link between knowledge and power identified by authors like Michel
Foucault.18 But while Foucault focused his analysis on the micro-structures of
power, Said decides to broaden this analysis to encompass the macro-struc-
tural sphere (imperial power relations), thereby situating us on the terrain of
the geopolitics of knowledge:

Orientalism is not a mere political subject matter or field that is reflected pas-
sively by culture, scholarship, or institutions; nor is it a large and diffuse col-
lection of texts about the Orient; nor is it representative and expressive of some

18
 In fact, Said explicitly recognizes his debt to Foucault’s thought: “I have found it useful here
to employ Michel Foucault’s notion of discourse, as described by him in The Archaeology of
Knowledge and in Discipline and Punish, to identify Orientalism. My contention is that without
examining Orientalism as a discourse one cannot possibly understand the enormously systematic
discipline by which European culture was able to manage—and even produce—the Orient politi-
cally, sociologically, militarily, ideologically, scientifically, and imaginatively during the post-
Enlightenment period” (Said, 1979: 3).
32 Chapter 1

nefarious “Western” imperialist plot to hold down the “Oriental” world. It is

rather a distribution of geopolitical awareness into aesthetic, scholarly, eco-
nomic, sociological, historical, and philological texts; it is an elaboration not
only of a basic geographical distinction (the world is made up of two unequal
halves, Orient and Occident) but also a whole series of “interests” which, by
such means as scholarly discovery, philological reconstruction, psychological
analysis, landscape and sociological description, it not only creates but also
maintains; it is, rather than expresses, a certain will or intention to understand,
in some cases to control, manipulate, even to incorporate, what is a manifestly
different (or alternative and novel) world. (Said, 1979: 12, first emphasis by
author)

For Said, the geopolitical nexus between knowledge and power that created
the Orient is the same that sustains Europe’s cultural, economic, and politi-
cal hegemony over the rest of the world from the Age of Enlightenment on.
In fact, one of Said’s most interesting arguments is that coloniality is a con-
stitutive element of modernity, since the latter represents itself discursively
through the belief that the geopolitical division of the world (into cores and
peripheries) is based on an ontological division. On the one side is Occidental
culture (the West), presented as the active side, the creator and provider of
knowledge whose mission is to bring or “disseminate” modernity throughout
the world; on the other we have all other cultures (the Rest), presented as pas-
sive elements and receivers of knowledge whose mission is to “embrace” the
progress and civilization which come from Europe. The Occident is therefore
characterized by discipline, creativity, abstract thought, and the possibility of
cognitively occupying the zero-point, while all other cultures are seen as pre-
rational, spontaneous, imitative, empirical, and dominated by myth.
Said’s great merit is to have seen that the discourses of the human sci-
ences are upheld by a geopolitical machinery of knowledge/power that
has cognitively subalternized all other voices of humanity, which has in
other words declared “illegitimate” the simultaneous existence of different
ways of knowing and producing knowledge. Said shows that with the birth
of the human sciences in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, we wit-
ness the invisibilization of humanity’s historical multivocality.19 Epistemic

19
 Colombian anthropologist Cristóbal Gnecco puts it this way: “Western tradition, above all since
the nineteenth century, has constructed spaces of exclusion allowing it to present the form of
knowledge that science has patiently been constructing as singular, necessary, and inevitable,
and to oppose it to other ways of knowing . . . Primitive thought was considered a sort of badly-
developed initial abstraction and was placed at the beginning of a ladder of the human condition
that began with elemental (primitive) abstraction and would end with total (scientific) abstraction.
It is therefore clear that an obvious evolutionist hegemony is anthropology’s starting point, not its
result, since adopting a perspective on the relations between societies—between Us and alterity—is
also a political act” (Gnecco, 1999: 20–21).
 Places of Enlightenment 33

expropriation corresponds to Europe’s territorial and economic expropriation

of the colonies, condemning the knowledge produced there as nothing more
than modern science’s “past.” But while Orientalism convincingly poses the
geopolitical links between enlightenment, colonialism, and human sciences,
a theory of coloniality has developed within Latin American studies that not
only complements but also adds new elements to Said’s postcolonialism.

1.2.2 The Destruction of the Myth of Modernity

The critique of colonialism already enjoys a long tradition in Latin American
social theory: from the works of Edmundo O’Gorman, Rodolfo Stavenhagen,
and Pablo González Casanova in México, to the contributions of Agustín
Cuevas in Ecuador, Orlando Fals Borda in Colombia, and Darcy Ribeiro in
Brasil, and on to the significant work of Aníbal Pinto, Ruy Mauro Marini,
Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and other dependency theorists, not to mention
Mariátegui, Haya de la Torre, Martí, Rodó, and to other “classics” of Latin
American thought. But with notable exceptions, few studies have empha-
sized the properly epistemic dimension of colonialism. In fact, the majority
of research has concentrated on its economic, historic, political, and social
aspects, approaching these from the disciplinary paradigms of the human sci-
ences without paying attention to what I am here calling coloniality.
As one might expect, it is from within Latin American philosophy that a
critique of colonialism that emphasizes its epistemic nucleus has begun to be
sketched out. I refer concretely to the works of Argentine philosopher Enrique
Dussel, and specifically those centering on his critique of Eurocentrism. In
fact, this subject has constituted one of the pillars of the “philosophy of lib-
eration” that he has developed over more than thirty years. Since the 1970s,
Dussel has sought to demonstrate that a structural relationship exists between
the great theoretical products of modern philosophy and European colonial
praxis. Setting out from Heidegger’s critique of Western metaphysics, Dussel
argues that modern philosophy of consciousness, from Descartes to Marx,
neglected the fact that thought is not disembodied but instead deeply rooted
in everyday human life (Lebenswelt) (Dussel, 1995a: 92; 107). It is precisely
the relationship that modern thought establishes between an abstract subject
(with no sex, no class, no culture) and an inert object (nature) that explains the
“totalization” of the Western world since this type of representation blocks
from the outset the possibility of exchanging knowledge and ways of produc-
ing knowledge between different cultures. As a result, European civilization
has looked at everything outside of itself as “barbarism,” as brute nature that
needs to be “civilized.” In this way, the elimination of alterity—including, as
we will see, epistemic alterity—constituted the “totalizing logic” that came to
be imposed on Indigenous and African populations beginning in the sixteenth
34 Chapter 1

century, both by the Spanish conquistadors and their descendants, the criollos
of the Americas (1995a: 200–204).
Since the 1990s, Dussel has been creatively reformulating his theory of
coloniality. The logic of Western domination is no longer conceived in terms
of an “ontological totality” a là Heidegger, but instead as a “myth” with
a concrete name: Eurocentrism. This myth, in Dussel’s opinion, emerges
with the discovery of the Americas and has dominated our theoretical and
practical understanding of what modernity means ever since. Dussel’s thesis
(1998: 3) is that beginning in the eighteenth century, enlightenment thought
developed a vision of itself, a discourse on its own origins according to which
modernity was an exclusively European phenomenon that emerged at the end
of the Middle Ages, and which then—on the basis of purely intra-European
experiences like the Italian Renaissance, the enlightenment, the Scientific
Revolution, and the French Revolution—was disseminated throughout the
world (figure 1.1). According to this view, Europe possesses unique internal

Figure 1.1 The Eurocentric Myth of Modernity.

 Places of Enlightenment 35

qualities that allowed it to develop scientific-technical rationality, which, in

turn, explains its superiority over all other cultures. Thus, the Eurocentric
myth of modernity was the pretension of identifying European particularity
directly with universality (Dussel, 1995b: 19–26).
Against this model, Dussel proposes an alternative that he calls the “plan-
etary paradigm” and which he formulates as follows: modernity is a phenom-
enon of the world system which emerges as the result of the administration
that different European empires (first Spain, then France, Holland, and
England) undertake from their central position within this system. This means
that events like the enlightenment, the Italian Renaissance, the Scientific
Revolution, and the French Revolution are not European but global phenom-
ena, and that as a result they cannot be understood independent of the asym-
metrical relationship between Europe and its colonial periphery. In Dussel’s
words:

Modernity is not a phenomenon of Europe as an independent system, but of

Europe as center. This simple hypothesis absolutely changes the concept of
modernity, its origin, development, and contemporary crisis, and thus, also the
content of the belated modernity or postmodernity.
In addition, we submit a thesis that qualifies the previous one: the centrality
of Europe in the world-system is not the sole fruit of an internal superiority
accumulated during the European Middle Ages over against other cultures.
Instead, it is also the fundamental effect of the simple fact of the discovery, con-
quest, colonization, and integration (subsumption) of Amerindia. This simple
fact will give Europe the determining comparative advantage over the Ottoman-
Muslim world, India, and China. Modernity is the fruit of these events, not their
cause. Subsequently, the management of the centrality of the world-system will
allow Europe to transform itself in something like the “reflexive consciousness”
(modern philosophy) of world history… Even capitalism is the fruit and not the
cause of this juncture of European planetarization and centralization within the
world-system. (Dussel, 1998: 4–5)

This alternative paradigm (figure 1.2) clearly challenges the dominant view
according to which the conquest of the Americas was not a constitutive ele-
ment of modernity, since the latter was based on intra-European phenomena
like the Protestant Reformation, the emergence of the new science, and the
French Revolution. Spain and its overseas colonies had fallen outside moder-
nity since none of these phenomena took place there. Following Immanuel
Wallerstein, Dussel instead shows that modernity was founded on the basis
of a materiality that was created beginning in the sixteenth century with
Spain’s territorial expansion. This generated the opening of new markets
and the incorporation of unprecedented sources of raw materials and a labor
36 Chapter 1

Figure 1.2 Dussel’s Planetary Paradigm.

force that allowed for the “primitive accumulation of capital.” The modern/
colonial world system begins with the simultaneous constitution of Spain as
the global core vis-à-vis its American periphery. Modernity and colonial-
ity therefore belong to a single genetic matrix and are therefore mutually
dependent. There is no modernity without colonialism and there is no colo-
nialism without modernity because Europe only becomes the “core” of the
world system at the same moment that it constitutes its overseas colonies as
“peripheries.”
The importance of Dussel’s “planetary paradigm” is that it allows us to
demonstrate the coexistence of locations from which the enlightenment
is articulated. If the enlightenment is not something that is preached from
Europe but instead from the world system itself as the result of the interaction
between Europe and its colonies, we could then say that the enlightenment
is articulated simultaneously in various locations within the modern/colonial
world system. Enlightenment discourses do not travel from the core to the
 Places of Enlightenment 37

periphery, but instead circulate throughout the world system and anchor
themselves to different nodes of power. This is how the late-eighteenth-cen-
tury struggle for hegemony among new imperial powers managed to redefine
the meaning of the European civilizing mission and the role of scientific
knowledge in that mission. In that moment, the enlightenment was enunciated
from the perspective of this new struggle for world domination, and it is there,
as we have seen, that the project of a science of man developed by Hobbes,
Rousseau, Smith, Hume, Kant, Turgot, and Condorcet was articulated.
Dussel also believes that the incorporation of the Americas as the first
periphery of the modern world system generated not only the “primitive
accumulation of capital” in core countries but also the first properly modern
cultural expressions. The first “geoculture” of world-modernity, understood
as a system of ritual, cognitive, juridical, political, and axiological symbols
pertaining to the expanding world system, had as its center not France or
England, but Mediterranean Catholic Europe.20 We could equally say that
the first modern/colonial discourse, exemplified by the Sepúlveda-Las Casas
debate, found its origins in Spain. What the sixteenth- and seventeenth-cen-
tury Spanish world contributed to the world system was not only territories,
a labor force, and raw materials as Wallerstein believes, but also discursive
elements that allowed for the very constitution of modernity.
In effect, Dussel speaks of modernity as a global phenomenon, but one
with two different manifestations: the first was consolidated during the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries and corresponds to the Catholic, humanist,
Renaissance ethos that flourished in Italy, Portugal, Spain, and their American
colonies (Dussel, 1998). This modernity was administered globally by the
first hegemonic power of the world system (Spain) and generated not only a
first form of subjectivity built on the basis of modern/colonial discourse but
also a first critique of that discourse.21 Dussel conceptualizes this subjectiv-
ity in philosophical terms (drawing on Levinas’ thought), describing it as
a conquering, aristocratic “I” that establishes an exclusionary relationship

20
 This does not mean that prior to 1492 processes of self-centered European cultural modernization
were not gestating. Dussel is clear on this point: “According to my central thesis, 1492 is the date
of the ‘birth’ of modernity, although its gestation involves a preceding ‘intrauterine’ process of
growth. The possibility of modernity originated in the free cities of medieval Europe, which were
centers of enormous creativity. But modernity as such was ‘born’ when Europe was in a position
to pose itself against an other, when, in other words, Europe could constitute itself as a unified
ego exploring, conquering, colonizing an alterity that gave back its image of itself” (Dussel, 1993:
66, author’s emphasis).
21
 Dussel has written a great deal on this subject. His central argument is that, in his mid-sixteenth
century debate with Ginés de Sepúlveda, Las Casas discovers for the first time the irrationality of
the myth of Modernity, albeit with the philosophical tools of an earlier paradigm. Las Casas’ pro-
posal was to “modernize” the other without destroying their alterity; to adopt Modernity without
legitimating its myth. Modernization from alterity, not from the “sameness” of the system (Dussel,
1995b: 69–72).
38 Chapter 1

of domination toward the “other” (Black people, Indians, and mestizos) of

the Americas.22 This ego conquiro of the first modernity thereby constitutes
the protohistory of the ego cogito of the second modernity (Dussel, 1995b:
48). This second modernity, which presents itself ideologically as the only
modernity, does not begin until the late seventeenth century with Spain’s geo-
political collapse and the emergence of new hegemonic powers. The central
administration of the world system is now carried out from different locations
and responds to the imperatives of efficiency, biopolitics, and rationalization
described by Max Weber and Michel Foucault.
This all entails that modern subjectivity is not only bourgeois subjectivity,
as social theory has claimed since the nineteenth century, but that a form of
subjectivity was also generated in the Spanish colonies that has constituted
part of world modernity since the sixteenth century and coexisted with the
birth of the European bourgeoisie in the seventeenth and eighteenth centu-
ries. I call this subjectivity Spanish, but it was above all criollo, established
in concordance with the colonial discourse of blood purity. The thesis that I
will defend in this book is that the locus of enunciation of enlightened criollo
discourse coincides with the locus of blood purity discourse, and that this
coincidence should not be viewed as abnormal or “hybrid”—as those who
equate the enlightenment with the bourgeoisie believe—but as typical of
modernity in the Spanish colonial periphery.

1.2.3 The Discourse of Blood Purity

Dussel’s philosophy of liberation establishes a critical dialogue with
Wallerstein’s world systems analysis, seeking to integrate the critique of
colonialism into a globalizing perspective. However, the central disagree-
ment between the two projects—namely, Dussel’s argument that a Spanish-
Catholic modern geoculture emerged prior to the French Revolution—merits
more sustained discussion. This discussion has been carried forward in large
part by the Argentinean semiologist Walter Mignolo, who developed an
explicit critique of Wallerstein’s theses by embracing Dussel’s reflections on
the emergence of a modern/colonial (but not strictly bourgeois) subjectivity
in the Spanish world.
Mignolo recognizes the importance of Wallerstein’s monumental book
The Modern World-System for the epistemological displacement it produced
in social theory in the 1970s. Linking the contributions of dependency theory
to Braudel’s works on the Mediterranean, Wallerstein manages to analyze
the centrality of the Atlantic circuit for the establishment of the modern

22
 “The conquistador is the first modern, active, practical human being to impose his violent individu-
ality on the Other” (Dussel, 1995b: 38).
 Places of Enlightenment 39

world system in the sixteenth century (Mignolo, 2000: 11). With this, the
Mediterranean ceases to be the axis of world history, as Hegel had argued,23
and Europe begins to be “provincialized” within social theory. What is now
important is not to study Europe as such, but rather the “world-system” in
all of its structural variations (cores, peripheries, and semi-peripheries).
However, Wallerstein’s project still understands peripheries as geo-historical
and geo-economic units, but not as geo-cultural ones. While Wallerstein is
indeed correct to indicate that the modern world system begins around 1500,
his perspective remains Eurocentric. He believes that the first geo-culture
of this system—liberalism—only took form in the eighteenth century as a
result of the globalization of the French Revolution. In Mignolo’s opinion,
Wallerstein therefore remains a prisoner to the myth constructed by enlight-
enment philosophers according to which the second modernity (of the eigh-
teenth and nineteenth centuries) represents modernity par excellence (2000:
56–57). From this perspective, the geo-culture of the first modernity remains
invisible.
In his book, Local Histories/Global Designs, Mignolo argues that the con-
quest of the Americas meant not only the creation of a new “world-economy”
(with the opening of the commercial circuit linking the Mediterranean to the
Atlantic) but also the establishment of the modern world’s first great “dis-
course” (in the terms of Said and Foucault). Against Wallerstein, Mignolo
argues that the universalist discourses legitimizing the global expansion of
capital did not emerge in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a result
of European bourgeois revolution, but that they had already appeared much
earlier during the “long sixteenth century,” and coincided with the forma-
tion of the modern/colonial world system (Mignolo, 2000: 23). The first
modern universalist discourse is therefore not linked to the liberal bourgeois
mentality but, paradoxically, to the aristocratic Christian mentality. This first
discourse, according to Mignolo, was the discourse of blood purity, which
functioned in the sixteenth century as the first classification scheme for the
global population. While the discourse of blood purity did not emerge in
the sixteenth century but had rather been gestating throughout the Christian
Middle Ages, it went “global” thanks to Spain’s commercial expansion into
the Atlantic and the beginning of European colonization. This means that a
classificatory matrix pertaining to local history (medieval European Christian
culture) became—by virtue of the global hegemony Spain gained during the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—a global design that served to classify

23
 Here it is worth recalling Hegel’s famous phrase: “The three continents of the Old World are there-
fore essentially related, and they combine to form a totality . . . For the connecting link between
these three continents, the Mediterranean, is the focus [Mittelpunkt] of the whole of world his-
tory . . . World history would be inconceivable without it” (Hegel, 1975: 171–172).
40 Chapter 1

populations according to their position within the international division of

labor.
As a cognitive scheme for classifying populations, the discourse of blood
purity is not a product of the sixteenth century, but instead draws upon the
tripartite division of the world suggested by Herodotus and accepted by
some of the most important thinkers of antiquity: Eratosthenes, Hipparchus,
Polybius, Strabo, Pliny, Marinus, and Ptolemy. The world was seen as a great
island (the orbis terrarum) divided into three major regions: Europe, Asia,
and Africa.24 While some assumed that among the Antipodes, to the south of
orbis terrarum, there might exist other islands inhabited perhaps by a nonhu-
man species, ancient historians and geographers were most interested in the
world as they knew it and the population types that the three major regions
were home to. Thus, the territorial division of the world became a hierarchi-
cal and qualitative division among populations. Within this hierarchy, Europe
occupied the most prominent position, since its inhabitants were considered
more civilized than those of Asia and Africa, considered “barbaric” by the
Greeks and Romans (O’Gorman, 1991: 147).
Medieval Christian intellectuals appropriated this population classifica-
tion schema, but not without introducing some modifications. Thus, for
example, the Christian belief in the fundamental unity of the human species
(all people are descended from Adam) forced St. Augustine to recognize
that if other islands existed beyond the orbis terrarum, their inhabitants—if
they were indeed inhabited—could not be classified as “men,” since poten-
tial inhabitants of the “City of God” could only be found in Europe, Asia,
or Africa (O’Gorman, 1991: 148). Likewise, Christianity reinterpreted
the old hierarchical division of the world. For what were now teleological
reasons, Europe continued to occupy a privileged position above Asia and
Africa.25 These three geographical regions were seen as the places settled
by Noah’s three sons after the flood, and therefore as inhabited by three
completely different types of people. The children of Shem populated Asia,
those of Ham established themselves in Africa, and those of Japheth settled
in Europe. This means that the three parts of the known world were hier-
archically ordered according to a criterion of ethnic differentiation: Asians

24
 For the characterization of the orbis terrarum and its influence on the division of global populations,
I basically follow the arguments developed by the Mexican philosopher and historian Edmundo
O’Gorman in his book La invención de América. Mignolo explicitly supports O’Gorman’s argu-
ment (Mignolo, 1995: 17).
25
 While Europe certainly did not embody the most perfect of civilizations from a technical, eco-
nomic, scientific, or military perspective—it was rather poor and “peripheral” vis-à-vis Asia and
northern Africa—it was seen by many as the seat of the only society based on the true faith. This
made it the representative of the immanent and transcendent destiny of humanity. Western Chris-
tian civilization was the bearer of the norm through which it was possible to judge and evaluate all
other cultural forms on the planet (O’Gorman, 1991: 148).
 Places of Enlightenment 41

and Africans were descended from those sons who according to the biblical
story fell into disgrace before their father, and were considered racially and
culturally inferior to Europeans, the direct descendants of Japheth, Noah’s
most beloved son.26
Mignolo (1995: 230) argues that Christianity resignified this ancient schema
of population division, making it function as an ethnic and religious tax-
onomy of the population27 whose practical dimension only became clear in
the sixteenth century. Columbus’ voyages had made it clear that the new
lands of the Americas constituted a geographical entity distinct from the
orbis terrarum, immediately provoking a broad debate about the nature of its
inhabitants and territory. If only the “island of land”—the part of the globe
comprising Europe, Asia, and Africa—was assigned by God to man after his
expulsion from paradise, then what juridical status did these newly discov-
ered territories possess? Did they fall under the universal sovereignty of the
Pope, and could they therefore be legitimately occupied by a Christian king?
If only the children of Noah could prove their direct descent from Adam, the
father of humanity, what anthropological status did the inhabitants of the new
territories have? Were these beings devoid of a rational soul who could there-
fore be legitimately enslaved by Europeans? Following O’Gorman, Mignolo
argues that in the end, these new territories and their populations were not
seen as ontologically distinct from Europe, but as their natural extension (the
“New World”):

During the sixteenth century, when “America” became conceptualized as such

not by the Spanish crown but by intellectuals of the North (Italy and France),
it was implicit that America was neither the land of Shem (the Orient) nor the
land of Ham (Africa), but the enlargement of the land of Japheth. There was no
other reason than the geopolitical distribution of the planet implemented by the

26
 The biblical story shows that it was Noah himself who established a hierarchy among his three
sons. The event that prompted this hierarchization is told in Chapter 9 of the Book of Genesis: after
the flood had ended, Noah became drunk and lay naked in his shop. Ham, his youngest son, entered
and saw his father’s nudity without attempting to cover it, while Shem and Japheth, walking back-
ward, took a blanket and covered Noah’s body. Upon awakening from his stupor, Noah realized
what had happened and passed the following judgment: “And he said, Cursed be Canaan [the son
of Ham]; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And he said, Blessed be the Lord God
of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the
tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant” (Genesis 9: 25–27). In accordance with this story,
the hierarchy was established as follows: first Japheth, Noah’s eldest son and father of the Europe-
ans, then Shem, father of the Asians, and finally Ham, the cursed son, father of the African nations.
27
 Mignolo refers explicitly to the famous T-O map by Isidoro de Sevilla (560–636 C.E). This map,
first used to illustrate Sevilla’s book Etymologiae, represents a circle divided in three by two lines
forming a T. The top portion, which takes up half of the circle, represents the Asian continent (the
Orient) populated by Shem, while the other half of the circle, the bottom half, is divided into two
parts: the left represents the European continent populated by Japheth, and the right represents the
African continent settled by Ham (Mignolo, 1995: 231).
42 Chapter 1

Christian T/O map to perceive the planet as divided into four continents; and
there was no other place in the Christian T/O map for “America” than its inclu-
sion in the domain of Japheth, that is, in the West (Occident). Occidentalism, in
other words, is the overarching geopolitical imaginary of the modern/colonial
world system. (Mignolo, 2000: 58–59, author’s emphasis)

Mignolo’s point here is that the belief in Europe’s ethnic superiority over
colonized populations was projected onto the cognitive schema of the tri-
partite division of the world’s population and the imaginary of the Orbis
Universalis Christianus. The vision of the Americas as a prolongation of the
land of Japheth meant that the exploitation of their natural resources and the
military subjugation of their populations was held to be “just and legitimate,”
because it was only from Europe that the light of true knowledge of God
could come. Conversion was therefore a state imperative that determined
that only “old Christians”—namely, those not mixed with Jews, Moors, and
Africans (people descended from Ham or Shem)—could legitimately travel
to and establish themselves in American territory. The New World thus
became the natural stage for the extension of white European man and his
Christian culture. In other words, the apparatus of whiteness is, according
to Mignolo’s interpretation, the first global apparatus to be incorporated into
the habitus of the European immigrant population, legitimating at the same
time the ethnic division of labor and the transfer of people, capital, and raw
materials on a global scale.
We should note at this point that Mignolo’s reading both converges with
and diverges from that of Said. Like Said, Mignolo knows that without the
construction of a discourse capable of incorporating the habitus of both
the dominators and the dominated, European colonialism would have been
impossible. But against Said, Mignolo does not identify this discourse with
“Orientalism” but with “Occidentalism,” thereby emphasizing the need to
inscribe postcolonial theories within specific colonial legacies (in this case,
Spanish colonialism).28 By posing Orientalism as the colonial discourse par
excellence, Said seems not to realize that the discourses on the “other” gener-
ated by France and the British Empire correspond to the second modernity.
As a result, Said not only neglects Spain’s sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
geo-cultural and geopolitical hegemony but also ends up legitimizing the

28
 “I attempt to emphasize the need to make a cultural and political intervention by inscribing postco-
lonial theorizing into particular colonial legacies: the need, in other words, to inscribe the ‘darker
side of the Renaissance’ into the silenced space of Spanish/Latin America and Amerindian contri-
butions . . . to postcolonial theorizing” (Mignolo, 1995: xi).
 Places of Enlightenment 43

eighteenth-century (Eurocentric) view of enlightened modernity that Dussel

has denounced. On this point, Mignolo writes:

I have no intention of ignoring the tremendous impact and the scholarly

transformation Said’s book has made possible. Nor do I intend to join Aijaz
Ahmad and engage in a devastating critique of Said because the book doesn’t
do exactly what I want it to. However, I have no intention of reproducing the
enormous silence that Said’s book enforces: without Occidentalism there is
no Orientalism, and Europe’s “greatest and richest and oldest colonies” are
not the “Oriental” but the “Occidental”: the Indias Occidentales and then the
Americas. “Orientalism” is the hegemonic cultural imaginary of the modern
world system in the second modernity when the image of the “heart of Europe”
(England, France, Germany) replaces the “Christian Europe” of the fifteenth to
mid-seventeenth century (Italy, Spain, Portugal) . . . It is true, as Said states,
that the Orient became one of the recurring images of Europe’s Other after the
eighteenth century. The Occident, however, was never Europe’s Other but the
difference within sameness: Indias Occidentales (as you can see in the very
name) and later America (in Buffon, Hegel, etc.), was the extreme West, not
its alterity. America, contrary to Asia and Africa, was included [in the map] as
part of Europe’s extension and not as its difference. This is why, once more,
without Occidentalism there is no Orientalism. (Mignolo, 2000: 57; 58, author’s
emphasis)

But despite their differences, if there is one thing that Mignolo and Said’s
theoretical projects share it is the importance they grant the sphere of coloni-
ality in explaining the phenomenon of colonialism. Both Said’s Orientalism
and Mignolo’s Occidentalism are understood above all as cultural imaginar-
ies, as discourses that become concrete not only in disciplinary “apparatuses”
(laws, institutions, colonial bureaucracies) but that are also translated into
concrete forms of subjectivity. Orientalism and Occidentalism are above all
modes of life, structures of thought and action incorporated into the habitus
of social actors.
Mignolo thereby reinforces Dussel’s argument: the subjectivity of the
first modernity has nothing to do with the emergence of the bourgeoisie
but is instead related to the apparatus of whiteness. The modern/colonial
world system’s first geoculture was that of an identity grounded in ethnic
difference from the other, a distinction that posed not only the superiority of
some people over others but also the superiority of some forms of knowledge
over others. This is why the enlightened discourse of criollo elites, with its
emphasis on objective knowledge, did not contradict but only reinforced this
apparatus of whiteness, as we will see in subsequent chapters. Imagining
44 Chapter 1

themselves to be located on a neutral observation platform, criollos “erased”

the fact that it was precisely their ethnic preeminence in social space (blood
purity) that allowed them to consider themselves atemporal inhabitants of the
zero-point, and other social actors (Indians, Black people, and mestizos) as
inhabitants of the past.
In fact, Mignolo argues that the key to understanding the emergence of the
enlightened scientific epistemology of the eighteenth century is the separa-
tion that European geographers had previously established between the ethnic
center and geometric center of observation (Mignolo, 1995: 233–236). In
almost all known maps up to the sixteenth century, the ethnic and geometric
centers coincided. So, for example, Chinese cartographers generated a rep-
resentation of space in which the emperor’s royal palace occupied a central
position around which his imperial dominions were organized. The same was
true of medieval Christian maps in which the world was arranged circularly
around the city of Jerusalem, and in thirteenth-century Arab maps in which
the Islamic world appeared as the center of the world. In all these cases, the
“center was mobile” because the observer was not interested in concealing
their place of observation and excluding it from the representation. On the
contrary, it was clear to the observer that the map’s geometric center coin-
cided with the ethnic and religious center from which they observed (the
Chinese, Jewish, Arab, Christian, or Aztec cultures, etc.).
However, with the conquest of the Americas and the need to represent the
new territories precisely under the imperative of their control and delimi-
tation, something different begins to occur. Cartography incorporates the
mathematization of perspective, which in that moment was revolutionizing
pictorial practices in Mediterranean Catholic Europe (especially in Italy).
This perspective presupposed the adoption of a single and fixed point of
view, a sovereign gaze located outside of all representation. In other words,
perspective is an instrument through which one sees but one cannot, in turn,
be seen; perspective, in short, grants the possibility of having a point of view
toward which no point of view is possible. This completely revolutionized
the scientific practice of cartographers. With the locus of observation becom-
ing invisible, the geometric center no longer coincides with the ethnic center.
On the contrary, European cartographers and navigators, now equipped with
precise measuring instruments, begin to consider representations made from
the ethnic center to be pre-scientific since they remain linked to a specific cul-
tural particularity. Truly scientific and objective representation can abstract
itself from its place of observation and generate a “universal view” of space.
It is precisely this view which claims to articulate itself independent of its
ethnic and cultural observation points, that I call in this work zero-point
hubris.
 Places of Enlightenment 45

Following closely what Dussel and Mignolo have argued, I will therefore
say that zero-point hubris, with its pretentions of objectivity and scientific-
ity, does not emerge with the second modernity but instead takes root in
the geoculture of the first modernity. It is not the effect of the Copernican
Revolution or bourgeois individualism,29 but of the Spanish state’s need
to exercise control over the Atlantic circuit—against the claims of their
European competitors—and to eradicate old belief systems in the periphery
that were considered “idolatrous.” Different ways of seeing the world could
no longer coexist but instead needed to be taxonomized in conformity with
a hierarchization of time and space. From the sovereign viewpoint of the
unobserved observer, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century world maps orga-
nized space according to larger units called “continents” and smaller units
called “empires,” which were completely unrelated to physical geography.
These were geopolitical constructs and, as such, were ordered according to
extra-scientific imperatives. Europe—as had already occurred with Isidoro de
Sevilla’s T/O map—continued to function as the center of cultural production
and distribution, whereas Asia, Africa, and the Americas were considered
cultural “recipients.” As we will see, this continental and geopolitical separa-
tion of the world would provide the epistemological basis upon which the
anthropological, social, and evolutionist theories of the enlightenment would
be drawn up. Mignolo reinforces this thesis when he writes that:

The colonization of space (as well as of language and memory) took, during
the sixteenth century, the form of an evolutionary process in which certain
kinds of territorial representations (languages and ways of recording the
past) were considered preferable to others. Differences were translated into
values . . . During the sixteenth century a transition took place, in Europe, in
the organization of space that impinged on the conception and evaluation of
time . . . What happened was a long intellectual process that Maravall beauti-
fully reconstructed as the emergence of the idea of “progress” in the European
Renaissance . . . Colonization of space (of language, of memory) was signaled
by the belief that differences could be measured in values and values measured
in a chronological evolution. Alphabetic writing, Western historiography, and
[sixteenth-century] cartography became part and parcel of a larger frame of

29
 In fact, “zero-point hubris” has a clearly aristocratic—and not bourgeois—stamp, as Bourdieu has
demonstrated. It presupposes a divorce between the intellect, which is considered superior, and
the body, which is considered inferior. It affirms, moreover, the world as spectacle, as the stage
for contemplation from the heights (Bourdieu, 1984). In this way, by ignoring its own material
conditions of possibility, “zero-point hubris” legitimizes an ideological separation between the
economic universe (from which the observer can calmly “abstract” themselves, since it is taken
care of) and the universe of symbolic production (which is the “true” world to be conquered by
genius and intelligence).
46 Chapter 1

mind in which the regional [Europe] could be universalized and taken as a

yardstick to evaluate the degree of development of the rest of the human race.
(Mignolo, 1995: 256–257, author’s emphasis)30

It is here that we see the relevance of the category of the geopolitics of knowl-
edge, used widely by Mignolo. I have said that one of the consequences of
zero-point hubris is the invisibilization of the particular locus of enunciation
and its transformation into a place without a place, a universal. This tendency
to convert a local history into a global design runs parallel to the establish-
ment of that particular place as a center of geopolitical power. To the central-
ity of Spain, and later France, Holland, England, and the United States within
the world system, there corresponds the pretension of turning their own local
history into the single and universal location for the articulation and produc-
tion of knowledge. Knowledge not produced in these power centers or in the
circuits they control is declared irrelevant and “pre-scientific.” The history
of knowledge, as represented from the zero-point, has a place on the map,
a specific geography. Asia, Africa, and Latin America, as with Isidoro de
Sevilla’s T/O map, fall outside this cartography and are not seen as regions
that produce knowledge, but as consumers of the knowledge generated in the
global core.

1.2.4 The Coloniality of Power

Alongside Dussel and Mignolo, it is necessary to study the contributions of
sociologist Aníbal Quijano to the construction of a critical theory of coloni-
ality. From his 1970s writings on the emergence of Cholo identity in Peru
to his work in the 1980s on the relationship between cultural identity and
modernity, Quijano has long proposed that the cultural tensions of the conti-
nent needed to be studied with reference to the horizon of colonial relations
of domination established between Europe and the Americas. However, in
the 1990s Quijano broadened his perspective to argue that colonial power
is not reducible to the economic, political, and military domination of the
world by Europe, but that it also primarily involves the epistemic foundations
sustaining the hegemony of European models of knowledge production. For
Quijano, the critique of colonial power necessarily entails an interrogation of
its epistemic nucleus, that is, a critique of the type of knowledge that legiti-
mated European colonial domination and a critique of their pretensions to
universal validity.

30
 The Spanish anthropologist José Alcina Franch has also shown in various works how the enlight-
ened idea of “progress” emerged beginning in the sixteenth century, and that it can be reconstructed
in the writings of Acosta and Las Casas (Alcina Franch, 1988: 207–211).
 Places of Enlightenment 47

Like Mignolo, Quijano argues that colonialism sunk its epistemic roots
into the hierarchical classification of populations that emerged in the six-
teenth century but found its most powerful legitimation in seventeenth-cen-
tury naturalist models and nineteenth-century biologistic models. These were
taxonomies that divided the global population into different “races,” assign-
ing to each a fixed and immobile position within the social hierarchy. While
the idea of “race” had already been gestating in the Reconquista Wars on the
Iberian Peninsula, it is only with the establishment of the world system in the
sixteenth century that this idea becomes the epistemic foundation for colonial
power (Quijano, 1999: 197). The idea that superior and inferior races exist
“by nature” would serve as one of the pillars upon which Spain consolidated
its control of the Americas during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
and as a scientific legitimation of European colonial power in later centuries.
In order to account for this phenomenon, Quijano developed his concept of
the coloniality of power.
The coloniality of power is an analytical category that refers to the spe-
cific structure of domination implemented in the American colonies since
1492. According to Quijano, Spanish colonizers established a power relation
toward the colonized based on their ethnic and cognitive superiority over the
latter. Within this power matrix, it was not simply a question of subjugating
Indigenous people militarily and dominating them by force, but of radically
transforming their traditional ways of knowing the world so they would adopt
the oppressor’s cognitive horizon as their own. Quijano describes the coloni-
ality of power in the following terms:

[It] consists, in the first place, of a colonization of the imagination of the domi-
nated; that is, it acts in the interior of that imagination . . . The repression fell,
above all, over the modes of knowing, of producing knowledge, of producing
perspectives, images and systems of images, symbols, modes of signification,
over the resources, patterns, and instruments of formalized and objectivized
expression, intellectual or visual or visual . . . The colonizers also imposed a
mystified image of their own patterns of producing knowledge and meaning.
(Quijano, 2007: 169)

Here we see that the first characteristic of the coloniality of power, the most
general of all, is domination through means that are not exclusively coercive.
This was not a question of the mere physical repression of the dominated,
but of naturalizing the European cultural apparatus as the only way of relat-
ing to nature, to the social world, and to subjectivity. This was therefore a
sui generis project that sought to radically change the cognitive, affective,
and volitional structures of the oppressed, to transform them into a “new
man” in the image and likeness of white western man. To accomplish this
48 Chapter 1

civilizational objective the Spanish state created the encomienda,31 whose

function was to integrate Indians into the cultural patterns of the dominant
ethnic group. The role of the encomendero was to diligently oversee the “total
conversion” of the Indian through systematic evangelism and hard physical
labor. Both instruments, evangelism and labor, were geared toward the trans-
formation of private life with the goal of allowing the Indian to escape their
condition of “immaturity” and to finally access modes of thought and action
suited to civilized life.
The coloniality of power refers to how Spanish domination attempted to
eliminate the “many forms of knowledge” that had existed among native
populations and to replace them with others that would serve the civiliza-
tional objectives of the colonial regime. It thereby points toward the epistemic
violence that the first modernity exercised over other forms of producing
knowledge, images, symbols, and modes of signification. However, the cat-
egory also has another complementary meaning. While these other forms of
knowledge were not completely eliminated but at most stripped of their legiti-
macy and subalternized, the colonial apparatus did exert a continuous fasci-
nation over the desires, aspirations, and will of subaltern subjects. Quijano
formulates this second characteristic of the coloniality of power as follows:
“Then European culture was made seductive: it gave access to power. After
all, beyond repression, the main instrument of all power is its seduction.
Cultural Europeanisation was transformed into an aspiration. It was a way
of participating” in colonial power (Quijano, 2007: 169, author’s emphasis).
This aspiration toward cultural Europeanization formed part of a power
structure that cut across oppressors and oppressed alike and which, as I will
show in this book, constituted the foundation on which the enlightenment
project of Cosmopolis in New Granada was built from the late eighteenth
century on. Bringing together the theses of Quijano and Mignolo, I will
therefore say that the apparatus of whiteness represented an a priori condi-
tion for discourse and action in colonial society and functioned as the axis
around which the subjectivity of social actors was constructed. To be “white”
had less to do with skin color than with the personal staging of an apparatus
woven together from religious beliefs, styles of dress, nobility certificates,
modes of behavior, and most importantly for this project, ways of producing
and transmitting knowledge. Flaunting those cultural insignias of distinction
associated with the apparatus of whiteness was a sign of social status; a way
of acquiring, accumulating, and transmitting symbolic capital.

31
 [The encomienda system was an early Spanish colonial institution of compulsory labor imposed
on Indigenous people in “exchange” for supposed spiritual guidance. Individual Spaniards who
possessed their own set of Indigenous subjects are referred to as encomenderos—trans.]
 Places of Enlightenment 49

To conclude and synthesize, I will therefore say that thinkers like Dussel,
Quijano, and Mignolo have considerably broadened the notion of colonial
discourse introduced by Said in the late 1970s. Drawing upon Foucault, Said
had shown colonial discourse to be a system of signs through which colo-
nial powers imposed specific kinds of knowledge, disciplines, values, and
behaviors onto colonized groups. Dussel, Quijano, and Mignolo demonstrate
that, understood in this way, colonial discourse not only finds legitimation in
modern science but also plays an important role in configuring the scientific
imaginary of the enlightenment. Science and colonial power are part of a
single genealogical matrix configured in the sixteenth century with the estab-
lishment of the modern world system. Or put differently: if modernity and
coloniality are two sides of a single coin, it is therefore possible to reconstruct
the linkages between the colonial project and the scientific project of the
enlightenment. This is the thesis that I have sought to present in this chapter
and that I will develop through a case study in the chapters that follow.
 Chapter 2

Purus Ab Omnia Macula Sanguinis1

The Apparatus of Whiteness in New Granada

Every colored person who is not completely black like an African, or

copper-colored like an Indian, calls himself a Spaniard; belongs to the
gente de razón, that is, gifted with reason, and this ‘reason,’ which is
both arrogant and lazy, tells the whites and those who think themselves
white that agriculture is work for slaves . . . It was strange to see many
zambos, mulattos and other colored people who, through vanity, call
themselves Spaniards, and think that they are white because they are
not red like the Indians.
—Alexander von Humboldt

The 1previous chapter allowed me to establish the relationship between the

social-scientific project of the Enlightenment (Cosmopolis) and the geopoliti-
cal nature of its declarations. I have been interested in examining the tension
between the pretension immanent to this discourse—namely, that it lacks
a particular locus of enunciation (zero-point hubris)—and the geocultural
and geopolitical interests that marked its production. Alongside Said and
Latin American theorists like Dussel, Quijano, and Mignolo, we have seen
that those Erkenntnisinteresse were often articulated through the discourse
of ethnic superiority of some populations over others, deeply rooted in the
subjectivity of the social actors in question. I have referred specifically to the
discourse of blood purity since these authors argue that the colonial discourse
of whiteness is not opposed to modernity (as modern social theory tends to
argue), but instead coexists with modernity. Modernity and coloniality are
two sides of the same coin.

1
This inscription, which certified the blood purity of the graduate, appeared printed on all diplomas
issued by the Universidad Tomística de Bogotá during the eighteenth century.

51
52 Chapter 2

We will now demonstrate this coexistence of modernity with coloniality

through a case study. The thesis that I will defend in the following chapters
is that the locus of enunciation of enlightened criollo discourse coincides
precisely with the discourse of blood purity and it is in that specific geocul-
tural space that the modern apparatus of the zero-point coincided with the
colonial apparatus of whiteness. But first, it is necessary to examine closely
how the imaginary of whiteness was constructed in the colonial periphery of
the Americas. In this second chapter, we will therefore see that the discourse
of blood purity was the axis around which the subjectivity of social actors in
New Granada was constructed. To be white had less to do with skin color than
with staging a cultural apparatus that wove together religious beliefs, styles of
dress, nobility certificates, modes of behavior, and forms of knowledge pro-
duction. I will focus on some of the practices through which this imaginary
was constructed and how it was embraced by different and conflicting social
groups. The purpose of this exercise is to show that the struggle over distanc-
ing and appropriation, centered on the imaginary of whiteness, constituted the
ground on which the scientific knowledge of enlightened criollo elites stood
in the second half of the eighteenth century.

2.1 THE ETHNICIZATION OF WEALTH

Antón de Olalla was a modest farmer and infantry sublieutenant who arrived
in New Granada with the Jiménez de Quesada expedition in 1537. He par-
ticipated actively in the “pacification” of the Panche and Muisca Indians and
in the war against the cacique of Guatavita.2 As a reward for his services, the
Spanish Crown assigned Olalla a portion of the spoils expropriated from the
Indigenous people by Quesada’s troops, and made him part—and profitably
so—of the first distribution [repartimiento] of Indians in the New Kingdom.
By royal decree, he was named trustee of the encomienda of Bogotá in 1547,
which encompassed hundreds of hectares of land on the outskirts of the city
and included nearly one thousand Indigenous tributaries paying him the
equivalent of one thousand pesos annually. Taking advantage of this massive
supply of Indigenous labor at his disposal, Olalla was able to accumulate
enough capital to purchase fertile lands and establish cattle ranches near
Bogotá, so that in a short time he had become the largest landholder in the
region. In less than fifteen years, he managed to take possession of seven
estates that produced a large quantity of cattle, sheep, pigs, as well as cheeses,
corn, and wheat. His wealth moreover assured him access to important

2
 All the data presented here about Olalla and his family are drawn from the research of Colombian
historian Jairo Gutiérrez Ramos (1998: 16–26).
 Purus Ab Omnia Macula Sanguinis 53

political positions. In 1544 he was named Lieutenant Governor of the New

Kingdom of Granada, and between 1557 and 1573 he was mayor of Bogotá
on four occasions.
After Olalla’s death, his descendants began a very well-calculated series
of marital alliances to consolidate and increase the family’s inherited estate.
Olalla’s daughter, doña Jerónima de Orrego, married the admiral Francisco
Maldonado de Mendoza, a Spanish noble who had recently arrived in New
Granada. Maldonado de Mendoza officially took over as the new encomend-
ero of Bogotá in 1596 and sought to diversify the productive activities of his
lands.3 Taking advantage of the “personal service” of the Indians entrusted
to him, he dedicated his life to increasing his fortune and multiplying his
businesses. He worked in the sale of provisions and entered the mining busi-
ness, acquiring a crew of Black slaves. Before dying in 1631, Maldonado
de Mendoza established an entailed estate, the Mayorazgo de la Dehesa de
Bogotá, through which he guaranteed that only members of his lineage would
have access to his assets and required them to use his surname.4 The four sub-
sequent generations of descendants, spanning the entire seventeenth century,
constituted an endogamous clan composed of the most prestigious families
of Bogotá, hoarding encomiendas, land, mines, and moreover monopolizing
municipal and provincial power in the New Kingdom of Granada.
The example of Olalla and his descendants allows me to pose the hypothesis
that I hope to defend in this section of the book: that from the very outset of
the colonization of New Granada, individual phenotype (white, Black, Indian,
mestizo) determined one’s position within social space and, as a result, one’s
ability to access those cultural and political goods that could be understood
in terms of distinction. Olalla’s case is interesting because it shows that the
construction of a tangled web of kinship and the acquisition of nobility titles
or their hereditary transmission were the two fundamental strategies utilized
by colonial elites to perpetuate their lineage and power. But these two strate-
gies shared the same presupposition: the need to avoid any association with
the “stain of the land,” to trace an ethnic border that would prevent the mix-
ing of blood with Indians, Black people, mulattoes, or mestizos. I will refer

3
 Gutiérrez Ramos calculates that at the end of the sixteenth century, don Francisco Maldonado’s
lands reached some 20,000 hectares. The number of cattle he maintained on these lands oscillated
between 5,000 and 8,000 head and on his “El Novillero” estate alone he could maintain up to 12,000
sheep (Gutiérrez Ramos, 1998: 37–40).
4
 It is worth transcribing part of the will, as reproduced by Gutiérrez Ramos: “so that the persons that
might marry the heiresses of this estate, however, in the case of having other surnames must have
my own and that of my aforementioned wife, calling themselves and naming themselves Maldo-
nado de Mendoza without mixing this with other surnames and taking the coat of arms of these two
surnames, carrying them on their shields, stamps, and emblems, and placing them on their houses
and whatever works they might execute without mixing them with any others, under the penalty that
to do differently would result in loss of the estate” (Gutiérrez Ramos, 1998: 46).
54 Chapter 2

to the construction of an apparatus of whiteness according to which all other

racial groups could be defined by lack as “pardos.”
To clarify how New Granadian elites constructed a cultural imaginary of
whiteness, we will first look at how the relationship between nobility, wealth,
and blood purity was framed in the Spanish Americas. In 1736, officers of
the Spanish navy Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa described the ethos of the
dominant classes in the Spanish Americas as follows:

One must assume that the creoles’ vanity and pretension concerning their social
status reaches such a point that they argue constantly about the origin and devel-
opment of their family tree. They do it in a way that they do not even have to
envy the oldest, noblest families of Spain. Obsessed by this topic, they have it as
the most important subject of conversation with strangers whom they instruct in
their noble lineage. But it is well to speculate dispassionately on the little things
which give them away. One can discover so many errors in their genealogies
that it is rare to find a family which does not have impure blood or some other
equally significant defect. (Juan and Ulloa, 1978: 219, author’s emphasis)

This passage by Juan and Ulloa reveals that the claim to blood purity, that is,
to enjoy the condition of a white noble, was the distinctive sign that allowed
criollos to differentiate themselves socially from mestizos and other social
groups. What mattered was not being “truly” white, since almost no members
of the criollo elite were able to prove their nobility claims,5 but rather to stage
oneself socially as white and be accepted as such by the most preeminent
social strata. This is why whiteness did not correlate strictly to skin color but
designated above all the kind of wealth and social status a person possessed.
Whiteness, as Bourdieu would say, was a cultural capital that allowed crio-
llo elites to distinguish themselves socially from other groups and legitimate
their control over those groups in terms of distinction. Whiteness was there-
fore fundamentally a lifestyle that was displayed publicly by the highest strata
of society and desired by all other social groups.
The example of Olalla allows us to see what exactly this cultural capital of
whiteness consisted of. As I have said, in the second generation after Olalla
the Mayorazgo de la Dehesa de Bogotá was created, indicating the formation

5
 In a study of the nobility of Quito, Christian Büschges (1997: 51) emphasizes that throughout the
colonial period there was not a single request for proof of nobility sent from local elites to the Royal
Chancelleries of Granada and Valladolid, the offices empowered by the Spanish Crown to settle
such cases. According to Büschges, this proves that the concept of nobility in New Granada had a
highly “informal” character since one was considered noble for simply claiming and being recog-
nized as such by criollo elites. Pilar Ponce de Leiva (1998: 43–44) speaks in this sense of a de facto
but not a de jure aristocracy and compares it to the petty Castilian nobility. It was thus one thing to
claim to be noble—to ensure a degree of social prestige—but it was a very different thing to pos-
sess a nobility title (to be noble “in property”) that could only be issued by Spanish chancelleries.
 Purus Ab Omnia Macula Sanguinis 55

of a new colonial aristocracy determined to defend itself from any meddling

“social climbers” and those outside the original clan. Belonging to this clan
demanded the fulfillment of at least one of two prerequisites: the first was to
have “the blood of conquistadors,” or in other words to prove descent from the
“first settlers” of New Granada (in our example, the descendants of Olalla);
the second was to have “noble blood,” or to prove direct descent from a noble
(in our example, the descendants of Maldonado de Mendoza). Put differently,
New Granadian elites surrounded themselves with a social fortress based on
two conceptions of “honor”: on the one hand, blood nobility, acquired as a
child of noble parentage and transmitted legally to descendants; on the other,
privilege nobility, acquired as the child of “distinguished” parentage—albeit
not according to lineage—but lacking the same validity of blood nobility.
My point is that the cornerstone of this social fortress constructed by
colonial elites was its fundamentally ethnic character. This becomes clear if
we recall that the requirement for the procurement and display of any title of
nobility was blood purity. We know that in Spain, the sine qua non condition
for receiving a nobility title was for the claimant to be an “old Christian” and
not mixed with the “evil races,” that is, not having Moorish, Guinean, Jewish,
or Gypsy blood. In the Americas, this sort of discrimination was even more
powerful due to the existence of two republics, that of the whites and that of
the Indians, such that one’s legal status was directly related to membership in
an ethnic group. This led to social inequalities not being based solely on the
various levels of material life (rich or poor), but above all on differences of
blood, heredity, and lineage. Which means that while in Spain, blood purity
was a primarily religious demand—required, for example, of Spaniards want-
ing to “pass to the Indies”—in the Americas it becomes an ethnic question
and only secondarily religious and economic. The proof of this, as we will see
later, lies in the fact that in the great majority of dissent cases, the arguments
put forward are essentially racial while arguments relative to the economic
condition of subjects turn out to be marginal and, in any case, inadmissible
according to the laws protecting the social status of whiteness.6 The juridi-
cal order reflected a cultural value scale in which ethnic differences were far
more important than the economic distinctions among social actors.
Ethnic inequalities were therefore not based on the purely subjective evalu-
ations of elites but were also sanctioned by a juridical order responsible for
putting each individual into their corresponding ethnic group. So, for exam-
ple, in the proceedings and records of local councils [cabildos] as well as in
encomienda titles, it was officially noted whether a person was descended
from the “first settlers” or not; nobility claims could be authorized before

6
 See for example the documentation from the archive of the council of Medellín between 1674 and
1812 as compiled by William Jaramillo Mejía (2000).
56 Chapter 2

the Real Audiencia7 and local mayors so that whites would enjoy the right to
receive special protections according to their ethnic status.8 The official reg-
isters also established a difference between “citizen” [vecino] and “resident”
[morador], reserving the first category for members of the oldest and most
distinguished families of an area. Similarly, in the Church’s sacramental pro-
ceedings, baptisms of whites and those of Indians, Black people, and mulat-
toes were registered in two separate books, as occurred, for example, in the
parish of Nuestra Señora de Santa Bárbara in Bogotá (Ramírez, 2000: 44). In
all of these cases, the function of the juridical order was to use ethnic argu-
ments to legitimize existing de facto social and material differences between
whites and the castes.
It should be clear that the cultural values privileged by the criollo elite
to distinguish themselves socially from other groups had little or nothing to
do with one’s profession, commercial activities, or economic success, and
everything to do with criteria like honor, nobility, and above all ethnic status.
This is why the concept of “class”—in the sense of the Marxist tradition—
seems to me inadequate for describing power relations among different social
groups during the colonial period. I prefer to describe such relations through
the category of the “coloniality of power,” which as we have seen refers to
the creation and reproduction of a racial taxonomy that was key to construct-
ing personal subjectivity, consolidating social hierarchies, and maintaining
the established order.

2.1.1 The Spontaneous Sociology of Elites

In chapter 1, referring to the ethnic taxonomies of the population of the
Americas elaborated by sixteenth-century Spanish cartographers, chroniclers,
and cosmographers, I showed that the discourse of blood purity also contains
a cognitive dimension. In the previous section, I said that the power criollo
elites held over subaltern groups required the construction of an imaginary of
whiteness through which both sides “recognized” the legitimacy of a social
order built on ethnic differentiation. I will now attempt to link these two ele-
ments, showing how ethnic taxonomies formed part of a cultural imaginary
of whiteness. To do so, I will briefly study some “habitual” ways—that

7
 [Spanish courts or tribunals which were granted broad judicial, legislative, and executive powers,
making them key mechanisms of colonial control—Trans].
8
 To give just one example: when a white was imprisoned, it was prohibited to subject them to cer-
tain punishments reserved for “pardos,” such as restraint by shackles, chains, or stocks. It was also
forbidden to hold a white person in the same jail as a Black person. When these laws were violated,
the white victim could complain openly and request an exemplary punishment for the authority
responsible, for not having taken their distinction and privileges into account (Gutiérrez de Pineda,
Pineda Giraldo 1999: 426).
 Purus Ab Omnia Macula Sanguinis 57

is, those anchored in habitus—that dominant criollos represented others,

themselves, and their “natural place” in society. I refer to an entire series of
unreflective assumptions, assessments, and preconceptions through which
criollos “constructed” social reality, projecting onto it their particular ideals
and aspirations. I will refer to this series of particular representations, which
nevertheless claimed to represent objective social reality, as the spontaneous
sociology of elites.9
The Swedish historian Magnus Mörner (1969: 61) has demonstrated
that the notion of “caste” was widely used by elites in the colonial Spanish
Americas to designate people with mixed blood. An individual’s membership
in one of the castes acquired a culturally pejorative valorization in colonial
society that was sanctioned by the juridical order. And while official popula-
tion censuses carried out in the eighteenth century did not use the category of
“caste”—referring instead to “whites,” “Indians,” “slaves,” and “free people
of all colors”—the obsession of criollo elites to avoid any suspicion of the
“stain of the land” was such that they established a large number of classifica-
tory taxonomies in an effort to specify which caste each individual belonged
to. Through these taxonomies, elites imaginatively constructed a social order
and elaborated representations of the respective positions they and the castes
should occupy within that order.
I will refer first to one of the most interesting techniques of social racializa-
tion to appear in eighteenth-century Spanish America: so-called “caste paint-
ings.” A pictorial genre that emerged in Mexico, caste paintings represented
artistically the different castes constituting colonial society (García Sáiz,
1989). While these paintings did not enjoy much influence in New Granada,
it is nevertheless interesting to study their primary characteristics in order to
get an idea of how the “spontaneous sociology of elites” operated.
Caste paintings represent the complex process of mestizaje that was occur-
ring throughout the Spanish Americas during the eighteenth century. They
consisted of a collection of scenes—generally sixteen paintings—showing
the different types of racial mixture and designating each with a name, an
activity, and a specific social position. The series of paintings followed a
strict taxonomic progression: beginning with the representation of a model
“pure race”—Spanish—and then, in descending order, representing all castes
according to their distance from the original ethnic model. Such paintings

9
 Althusser (1990: 94) coined the term “spontaneous philosophy” to refer to the manner in which
“practical ideologies” are introduced surreptitiously into the theoretical practice of scientists.
Althusser views these ideologies or Weltanschauungen as “ideological means by which the ruling
class achieves hegemony” that leak into the teaching and practice of the social sciences. Several
years later, Pierre Bourdieu spoke of “spontaneous sociology” to illustrate how sociological lan-
guage runs the risk of adopting a series of preconceptions trapped within common language that
contains a “petrified philosophy of the social” (Bourdieu et al., 1991: 21).
58 Chapter 2

always feature a father, mother, and son, indicating their skin color, clothing,
and characteristic work activity as well. The sixteen most frequently repre-
sented “blood types” in caste paintings10 were the following:

1. From Spanish and Indian, mestizo

2. From mestizo and Spanish, castizo [pure-blooded]
3. From castizo and Spanish, Spanish
4. From Spanish and Black, mulatto
5. From mulatto and Spanish, morisco
6. From morisco and Spanish, chino [Chinese]
7. From chino and Indian, salta atrás [leap backward]
8. From salta atrás and mulatto, lobo [wolf]
9. From lobo and china, jíbaro
10. From jíbaro and mulatto, albarazado [white spotted]
11. From albarazado and Black, cambujo
12. From cambujo and Indian, zambaigo
13. From zambaigo and loba, calpamulato
14. From calpamulato and cambuja, tente en el aire [hold yourself in midair]
15. From tente en el aire and mulatto, no te entiendo [I don’t understand you]
16. From no te entiendo and Indian, torna atrás [turn backward]

While some of these names might seem slightly eccentric to us, they should
not be seen as arbitrary. Rather, these names designated the precise position
corresponding to each person within the process of social mobility. On the
basis of the three basic types (Spanish, Indian, and Black), an entire series
of subtypes was constructed to which a high degree of ethnic discrimination
corresponded. The categories “leap backward” and “turn backward,” for
example, refer to the fact that a mestizo descended from Blacks who marries
an Indian woman would thereby move backward in the whitening process
(Rosenblat, 1954: 174). The category “hold yourself in midair” meant that
no advancement was possible since the union occurred between two people
(calpamulato and cambuja) whose blood was already a complete mixture of
the three races and therefore equidistant vis-à-vis whites and Indians. In other
cases, the category designated some physical or linguistic characteristic of
the individual. The “chino” had curly hair without being Black, while the “I
don’t understand you” resulted from mixture among descendants of people
(possibly newly arrived slaves) who did not speak Spanish well. Some cat-
egories, like “lobo,” “albarazado,” “barcino,” and “cambujo” were adopted
in a derogatory manner from the terms commonly used in animal breeding.

10
 See: https​:/​/co​​mmons​​.wiki​​media​​.org/​​wiki/​​Categ​​ory​:Mexi​​can​_C​​asta​_​​paint​​ings_​(seri​es_by​_Migu​
el_Ca​brera​).
 Purus Ab Omnia Macula Sanguinis 59

As we can see, both the names and the progression of the paintings reveal
a “spontaneous sociology”: the higher the degree of blood mixture, the less
the possibility of social mobility. Which meant that the less “pure” the blood
running through a person’s veins, the fewer possibilities they would have for
improving their social position. Note, for example, that the stigma of racial
mixing could disappear by the third generation only because the male mestizo
was seen as the son of two “pure” races (Spanish and Indian), and therefore
had the opportunity to “redeem” his progeny if he produced legitimate chil-
dren with a white woman. In turn, the product of this union (the castizo) could
have legitimate children who would be immediately considered Spanish,
but only if he faithfully followed his father’s example, namely, to marry a
white woman. On the other hand, as soon as blood was “contaminated” with
Black elements, redemption became impossible. The mulatto, product of the
union between a Spanish man and a Black woman, could no longer whiten
his blood, even if he, his children (moriscos), and his grandchildren (chinos)
were to have legitimate children with white women. The principle is clear:
Black blood cannot be redeemed. On the contrary, the higher the percentage
of Black blood, the higher the degree of racial and social degeneration. The
use of zoological categories (wolf,11 coyote12) indicates that the individuals
belonging to these castes are hardly distinguishable from beasts.
While caste paintings did not have a serious impact among New Granadian
artists, criollo elites used the same classification principle to formulate their
own ethnic taxonomies. Consider, for example, the following passage by the
Capuchin friar Joaquín de Finestrad:

Like the Arabs and Africans that inhabit the southern nations, so too are the
Indians, the mulattoes, the Blacks, zambos, leap backward, hold yourself in
midair, terceroons, cuadroons, quintroons, and cholos or mestizos. Those with
black and white blood are called mulattoes; those born of mulatto and black,
zambos; those born of zambo and Black, leap backward; those born of zambo
and zamba, hold yourself in midair; those born of mulatto and mulatta, the same;
those born of mulatto and white, terceroon; those born of terceroon and mulatta,
leap backward; those born of terceroon and terceroon, hold yourself in midair;
those born of terceroon and white, quatroon; those born of quatroon and white,
quintroon; those born of quintroon and white, Spanish, since they are now
deemed to be beyond the Black race. (Finestrad, 2000 [1789]: 135)

Notice that for Finestrad, all the castes of New Granada are “like the Arabs
and Africans,” which is to say that they are “children of damnation” for being

11
 http:​/​/www​​.artn​​et​.co​​m​/mag​​azine​​_pre2​​000​/f​​eatur​​es​/ra​​mirez​​​/ram1​​2​-06.​​asp
12
 http:​/​/www​​.artn​​et​.co​​m​/mag​​azine​​_pre2​​000​/f​​eatur​​es​/ra​​mirez​​​/ram1​​2​-01.​​asp
60 Chapter 2

mixed with the descendants of Shem and Ham.13 On the other hand, he uses
names employed by the Mexican painters (“hold yourself in midair,” “leap
backward”) but adapts these to the particular racial situation in New Granada.
Nevertheless, Finestrad’s taxonomic categories are slightly more precise
than those used in Mexico, since names like “terceroon,” “quatroon,” and
“quintroon” referred to their temporal proximity or distance from the model
of racial purity. Hence, the terceroon was the product of three generations of
white parentage, the quatroon of four, and the quintroon had cleansed their
“evil blood” for five generations and could therefore produce children who
would be considered criollos.
In a magnificent essay, Ilona Katzew (1996) argues that ethnic classifica-
tion systems reflect the need by eighteenth-century elites to create order and
control amid the chaos that increasing mestizaje represented for them. This
obsession with order also reflected the spirit of the Enlightenment, with its
interest in those kinds of systematic classifications that Michel Foucault calls
Tableaux. In fact, many caste paintings were sent to the natural history col-
lections that were then increasingly popular in Bourbon Spain:

In 1776, the same year the Gabinete [the Royal Cabinet of Natural History in
Madrid] opened its doors to the public, an official decree was issued requesting
viceroys and other functionaries to send natural products and artistic curiosi-
ties. Casta paintings were displayed with a host of archeological objects, rocks,
minerals, fossils, and other “ethnographic” items. By entering the space of the
Gabinete, casta paintings acquired a specific meaning related to their assumed
“ethnographic” value. The Gabinete provided the ideal forum from which
colonial difference could be contained and articulated as a category of nature.
Thus, the inclusion of objects such as casta paintings, in addition to satisfying
Europeans’ curiosity for the exotic, points to their need to classify the peoples
of the Americas as a way of gaining control to the unknown. (Katzew, 1996: 15)

Katzew correctly points out the intrinsic relationship between systems of

ethnic classification and so-called natural history, a problem that I will have
an opportunity to work through in the fifth chapter. For the moment, I am
interested in highlighting how these classification systems were anchored
in a spontaneous sociology and formed part of an apparatus of whiteness.
Recall that the caste paintings were not created by European scientists but
by elite criollo artists, who were no doubt responding to a necessity of their
social group. We could therefore say that, beyond what Katzew suggests, the
importance of these classifications lies in the fact that it was through them and

13
 I will expand on this point in the fourth chapter.
 Purus Ab Omnia Macula Sanguinis 61

the contrast they presented that the dominant ethnic group “sociologically”
defined what it meant to be white. Once a taxonomy of all possible blood
mixtures had been established, it was then possible to determine ex negativo
which social privileges members of the different castes should be excluded
from or, to say the same thing, which privileges belonged exclusively to those
establishing the categories.14 The conclusion is that the discourse of blood
purity, with all its ethnic and separatist connotations, was an integral part of
the habitus of dominant criollo elites insofar as it operated as a principle for
the construction of social reality.
Now, this spontaneous sociology of the elites not only served to classify
and define the number of castes but also assigned a value to the character
and personality of the individuals belonging to them. This was an important
part of the elite goal of generating “order” amid the social “chaos” provoked
by the eighteenth-century process of mestizaje. The Indian was of course the
first group subjected to this kind of axiological classification. As the defeated
race, their cultural difference was interpreted as a symptom of lack vis-à-vis
the Spanish ethos of the victor. The military triumph of the conquistadors
therefore meant the construction of an apparatus that established their own
cultural modes of relating to nature, society, and subjectivity as the norma
normata according to which all cultural expressions are to be judged. Thus, if
the Indians attributed a different value to work than productivity, the Spanish
interpreted this as a symptom of laziness and idleness; if they worshiped gods
that were not those of the Bible, they were superstitious; if they had a differ-
ent way of understanding sexuality, they were considered depraved; if they
used a different technology for land cultivation, they were branded as stupid
or “unenlightened.” Cultural deviation from the dominant model began to
be seen as a natural defect typical of the caste. To belong to the Indian caste
meant not only to have differentiating somatic characteristics but also and
primarily to possess a character and personality that was essentially inferior
to that of Western man.
In New Granada, as in other parts of the Americas, idleness and laziness
were the “natural defects” most often attributed to the character of Indians and
mestizos. The spectacular decline in the Indigenous population contributed to
the idea that Indians and their mestizo descendants were naturally “lazy,” and
that the best thing would be to replace them with stronger and harder-working
races like Blacks or to recruit them into the army to “discipline” them. In their
report to Spanish authorities, officers Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa refer

14
 The same occurs with these taxonomies as Mignolo had said of sixteenth-century maps of the New
World: the subject who classifies—like he who draws the maps—positions himself “outside of
representation” (Mignolo, 1995: 219–313).
62 Chapter 2

to mestizos as “lazy and immoral people,” as lacking productive work habits

and therefore susceptible to falling into all sorts of licentious behaviors:

It should be noted that the inland provinces of that part of America, which are
those in the mountains, are also the most extensive and populated of all the
regions: there the mestizo caste abounds, and are of little to no use in those
countries, because the abundance of fruit therein, and their lack of industrious-
ness in labor, has reduced them to an idle and lazy life; depositaries of all vices,
the majority of these people never marry, and live scandalously, although there
this irregularity of life is not strange being as common as it is. (Juan and Ulloa,
1983 [1826]: 164)

With regard to Black people, research by anthropologists Virginia Gutiérrez

de Pineda and Roberto Pineda (1999: 12–18) into documents on the slave
trade in New Granada, as well as judgments issued against it, reveal what sort
of social value they were granted. If the principal vice attributed to Indians
was laziness, it was pride that most characterized Black people.15 This ste-
reotype of the “arrogant” and “rebellious” personality of Black people was
so deeply rooted that the price slave dealers charged varied according to the
slave’s place of origin, since buyers believed that slaves from the Congo
were “fatuous”—and should therefore be cheaper—while those arriving
from Angola were “docile” and “restrained.”16 In general, Blacks were also
accused of being dishonest, having a “malignance prone to slander,” and of
being inclined to all sorts of licentious behaviors. Among these, sexual pro-
miscuity stands out, and as a result, Black women were considered “easy and
foul-mouthed,” inclined to prostitution and cohabitation, while Black men
had the reputation of being “restless lovers.”
Since they carried the “blood of the earth” in their veins, pardos of all
combinations (mestizos, mulattoes, zambos, terceroons, etc.) were seen
as racially inferior to the Spanish. In other words, not only did they carry
the vices of their primary races—Indian or Black—in their blood, but also
inherited new vices through their racial combination. The zambo was con-
sidered the most despised of all castes since they resulted from the mixture

15
 Note that both vices are related to the laboral status of Indians and Black people. The pejorative
evaluation of the former refers to the Indian’s resistance to physical labor; in the latter, to the resis-
tance among Blacks to obeying the orders of overseers. Both vices were considered “mortal sins”
according to catholic teachings, but among Indians and Black people these were seen as “natural
defects” of their racial constitution, making their correction through penance and repentance dif-
ficult or impossible.
16
 The geographic origin of Black slaves could not be concealed by the dealers, since they bore marks
on their bodies called “sajaduras” that identified them as coming from different regions of Africa
(Díaz, 2001: 37).
 Purus Ab Omnia Macula Sanguinis 63

of Indians and Blacks.17 Besides being “extremely irascible, cruel, treasonous

and, in sum, people with whom contact should be avoided,”18 the zambo was
considered to be “taciturn, with a fierce and malicious look, and a nature so
perverse that it leads them easily to evil.”19 In contrast, mulattoes were con-
sidered racially superior to the zambo, with a great capacity for literacy that
made whites fear them as a result.20 However, mulattoes were also seen as
“scandalous and petulant,” qualities received through their Black ancestry,
and were as a result often accused of robbery and other crimes against prop-
erty (Gutiérrez de Pineda and Pineda Giraldo, 1999: 63). Mulatto women
were highly regarded for their beauty but considered to have inherited their
Black ancestors’ tendency toward sexual promiscuity, which is why the most
widespread characterization referred to their “unrestrained sexuality.” It was
not only mulatto women, however, but in general, all caste women who were
seen by white elites as tending “naturally” toward fornication and cohabita-
tion. Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa write that

Mestizo or mulatto women from the second to the fourth or fifth generation
normally are the ones who give themselves up to this licentious life, although
they do not view it this way. Indifferent toward legal marriage, they feel equal
to any married woman . . . But mulatto and mestizo women are not the only
ones who take up this sort of existence. Involved also are those who have left
the Indian and Negro race completely and are now known as Spanish. (Juan and
Ulloa, 1978: 291–292)

All these examples show that not only the definition of who belongs to a caste
according to the degree of “impurity” of their blood but also the imputation of
a denigrative value onto all members of that caste, were strategies anchored
in an apparatus of whiteness. We must insist that classification tables—racial
or moral—were not a purely speculative exercise by elites but rather pos-
sessed a concrete materiality, since they were devised to classify individuals
whose function was as a labor force in the service of the owners of the mines,
haciendas, and encomiendas. Indians and Black people were seen as per-
sonal property, subject to laws regulating inheritance, debts, and taxes, and
therefore excluded from all ecclesiastic and civil privileges. This condition

17
 The enlightened criollo Jorge Tadeo Lozano writes: “Of late there results from the Indian and
the African a mixed caste, whose individual members are called Sambos. This caste, the worst of
all, is in external appearance more similar to the Black, but horribly disfigured with some Indian
features. Their moral characteristics bring together all the evil qualities of their races of origin”
(Tadeo Lozano, 1809: 366).
18
 Cited in Rosenblat (1954: 167).
19
 Cited in Gutiérrez de Pineda and Pineda Giraldo (1999a: 361).
20
 Rosenblat (1954: 162) cites the case of a mulatto from Cajamarca who was punished with twenty-
five lashes in the public square when it was discovered that he knew how to read and write.
64 Chapter 2

of servitude was, without a doubt, the material basis on which the dominant
class constructed its cultural imaginary of racial purity.

2.1.2 The Pathos of Distance

Besides the ethnic and moral classification tables described above, New
Granadian colonial elites made use of other strategies to affirm their identity
as the dominant ethnic group. I refer to the public use of emblems of rank.
Pierre Bourdieu has developed the notion of habitus to conceptualize how
individuals incorporate a whole series of cultural values related to their “class
condition” into their psychological structure, which unfailingly identify them
as members of a specific social group.21 Profession, clothing, use of language,
type of home and location, and family structure all constitute a sort of “finger-
print” indicating the location of agents in social space and how they position
themselves strategically in relation to other agents (Bourdieu, 1990; 2000). I
will use this notion of habitus to show that the flaunting of cultural insignias
by New Granadian elites functioned as a strategy for the social construction
of subjectivity.
As a sign of status and power, the Catholic family was one of the cultural
insignias that elites used to demonstrate their ethnic privileges. The model of
the Spanish family as sanctioned institutionally by the Church and the state
functioned as a social apparatus distinguishing legitimate from illegitimate
family relations. The socially legitimate family was one that formally fulfilled
the norms of marriage in facie eclesiae, that is, Catholic marriage. In order to
be invested with sacramental character, the Catholic marriage ceremony pre-
supposed a series of legal and moral requirements, whose formal fulfillment
represented part of the dominant class’s habitus: indissolubility, monogamy,
family honor, sexual fidelity by the woman, and responsibility of the father
toward his offspring. The legitimate family was the place where consensus
about the “natural order” of things, the “common sense” accepted by all
members as appropriate to their social condition, was established. Employing
Bourdieu’s terms (1998: 67; 72), I would say that the acquisition of primary
habitus within the Catholic family means that it was there that members of
the dominant ethnic group learned the practical knowledge (sens pratique)
governing the meaning of their “location” in social space.

21
 For Bourdieu, class differences do not merely have to do with the possession of material wealth, as
Marx believed, but are also explained by the existence of different group schemas for classifying
practices. These schemas establish differences between “true” and “false,” between “good” and
“bad,” between the “distinguished” and the “vulgar.” Different practices, differences in wealth, and
the expression of different opinions constitute an authentic “language” or code of communication
that individuals belonging to the same class share (Bourdieu, 1998: 8).
 Purus Ab Omnia Macula Sanguinis 65

But the norms defining the legitimate family are the same norms that
exclude all other models of family relations as “illegitimate.” And this is
precisely what explains why the Catholic family functioned in New Granada
as a mechanism for the social construction of whiteness. Casual or permanent
unions among members of the castes almost always occurred on the margins
of Catholic marriage. It was difficult for Indians, Black people, and mestizos
to identify with the hegemonic model of the Catholic family, due in part to the
fact that their own cultural traditions privileged other familial patterns. Even
well into the eighteenth century, the Spanish matrimonial paradigm was not
a part of their habitus because, since the beginning of the conquest, relations
between Spanish men and Indian, Black, or mestiza women did not constitute
a legitimately sanctioned nuclear family. The women who entered into such
relationships were seen as concubines and their children were considered not
only illegitimate but bastards. These children, contaminated by the “blood
of the earth,” automatically acquired a condition of social inferiority with
respect to their Spanish parent, predisposing them to establish relationships of
cohabitation and concubinage with members of other castes. By contrast, the
Spaniard was compelled by habitus to engage in legitimate matrimony with
a woman of his own social level in order to fulfill the demands of his status.
One could therefore say that among members of the New Granadian nobil-
ity, marriage—and its most immediate legal consequence, the legitimacy
of children—functioned as a mechanism for ethnic differentiation from the
“cohabitation” that predominated among the castes (Dueñas Vargas, 1997).
For Bourdieu, the family is where agents appropriate the accumulated
wealth of previous generations and use it as a point of departure for subse-
quent capital accumulation. This inherited wealth will then be the instrument
through which some agents differentiate themselves from others accord-
ing to their position in the hierarchy of social space. For this reason, mar-
riage “among equals” was one of the strategies most often utilized by New
Granadian colonial elites to consolidate their ethnic distance from the other
social strata. Recall the case discussed above of the daughter of the enco-
mendero Olalla, doña Jerónima de Orrego. Her marriage to the Spanish noble
don Francisco Maldonado de Mendoza constituted the beginning of a great
family dynasty that dominated the political and social scene in New Granada
throughout the eighteenth century. This type of alliance was very common
among members of the dominant elite as a means for transferring, managing,
and reconverting their capital.22 Such alliances ensured that their immate-
rial inheritance, called blood purity, would be transmitted to subsequent

22
 Pilar Ponce de Leiva (1998: 273) shows that in the concrete case of the council of Quito, of the
ninety-four members exercising the right to speak and vote between 1593 and 1701, seventy-eight
belonged to the city’s most prominent families.
66 Chapter 2

generations, thereby avoiding any threat to this accumulated wealth by an

aspiring “upstart.” In a society where the concept of honor was directly tied
to legitimacy, any child born out of wedlock was considered an interruption
of the lineage and a grave offense against the dignity of the family. Through
a closed system of alliances, it was therefore possible to prevent any member
of the castes from being able to enter the elite family sphere, endangering
the honor, prestige, and good name—the symbolic capital accumulated by
lineage.
This primary habitus acquired by criollo elites therefore entailed what
Nietzsche might call the pathos of distance, the need to demonstrate, latently
or openly, the incommensurable distance between the “masters” and their
inferiors.23 Of course, this distancing was not equally possible for all mem-
bers of the dominant ethnic group, since many lacked the necessary wealth.
Certainly, the accumulation of economic capital was not the ultimate, declared
goal of elite strategies for positioning themselves in social space, but without
material wealth it was difficult for them to maintain their distance from the
castes for very long. Thus, for example, many poor whites—or “embarrass-
ing ones” as they were called at the time—were forced to intermarry with the
daughters of prosperous mestizo traders to improve their economic situation.
Similarly, and in response to the shortage of potential spouses of their same
rank, many white women from impoverished families had to marry members
of the castes.24 However, the general rule was that, despite the need to yield
a bit when it came to the taboo against inter-ethnic marriage, criollo elites
sought something much more desirable than wealth itself: identification with
the discourse of blood purity as a criterion for social distinction. The symbolic
capital of whiteness was made clear through the flaunting of external signs
that were exhibited publicly to “display” the social and ethnic standing of
those bearing them.
One such demonstrative sign was clothing. In New Granada’s colonial
society, clothing was a mark that identified a person’s socio-racial charac-
ter. Local elites sought to imitate the tastes of the high Spanish nobility,

23
 To exemplify this pathos of ethnic separatism it is worth citing the case of a Bogotá criollo named
Francisco Javier Bautista, who upon being invited to participate in the festival of San Juan Bautista,
patron saint of the so-called “Brotherhood of the Pardos,” refused the invitation with indignation on
the argument that it was incompatible with the purity of his blood, and that the invitation resulted
from the “depraved intention of some who have sought to inconvenience [me] by suggesting that
I am of their stock” (quoted in Díaz, 2001: 184).
24
 With data and statistics, the historian Guiomar Dueñas Vargas has shown how an ethnic and sexual
imbalance was one of the characteristics of Bogotá in the eighteenth century. The “marriage mar-
ket” was disadvantageous for both white women and mestizas. White women had to seek a partner
among the “whitened” men of the castes, or alternatively to opt for the monastic life and spinster-
hood. Mestizas generally opted for informal relationships, leading to a proliferation of illegitimate
children (Dueñas Vargas, 1997: 82).
 Purus Ab Omnia Macula Sanguinis 67

institutionalized since the end of the seventeenth century by the so-called

Sumptuary Laws. According to these laws, the type of luxuries an individual
displayed in their personal attire must correspond directly to their social rank,
in agreement with a well-established hierarchy: nobles with titles, gentle-
men and councilors, merchants, squires, and farmers (Martínez Carreño,
1995: 33). The goal was to regulate not only the form of the garments, but
also the material, craftsmanship, and adornments. Nobles were allowed to
flaunt expensive jewels and to use luxurious materials like velvet and silk,
while these were prohibited for the lower classes. In the Americas, where
the domestic slave represented the status of her master and needed therefore
to dress luxuriously, Sumptuary Laws had a special rule. King Felipe II cat-
egorically prohibited Black and mulatto women from wearing silk dresses or
adorning themselves with gold, cloaks, or pearls, the violation of which could
be punished with up to one hundred lashes. But this applied only to the castes
since any member of the colonial elite was free to wear garments that in Spain
were a privilege of the noble strata. In New Granada, “where a mantilla scarf
was worth more than a gold necklace and a small handkerchief the same as
a cow” (39), elites were prepared to make any sacrifice to obtain the visible
signs ensuring the performance of their whiteness.25 It was little wonder that
contraband in luxurious European clothing became a fabulous business.
In a classic essay, historian Jaime Jaramillo Uribe (1989: 191–198) has
shown how the use of “don” was another symbolic strategy deployed by New
Granadian elites to perpetuate their social being. This monosyllable preced-
ing one’s name was a symbol of nobility in Spain, granted only to those ful-
filling certain requirements, including legitimate birth and pure blood.26 But
in the Americas, the same thing happened with “don” as with the Sumptuary
Laws: criollo elites appropriated it informally, without needing to present
the necessary nobility titles, and used it broadly to reinforce their ethnic
distance from subaltern groups. To address someone as “don” or “caballero”

25
 A good example of this is the “dispute for offenses to honor” that two elites from the Antioquia
region lodged before the Real Audiencia of Medellín. One witness claimed that the daughter of the
accused wore “the color red on her dresses,” making her appear to be a “quatroon of mestizos.”
Another witness declares that he did not consider the same person to be a mulatto or white, but
mestiza, “because she used a skirt and handkerchief” (Jaramillo Uribe, 1989: 190). In another case,
also documented by Jaramillo Uribe, a gentleman from the town of San Gil appealed to the Real
Audiencia to complain that the mayor of Ocaña had prohibited him from using a white hat charac-
teristic of nobles. The offended claimed that the mayor had caused him to suffer “the public shame
of removing the biretta or white hat that I was wearing, ordering me to no longer use this head
covering as it was a distinction only to be used by nobles and not by commoners or people of bad
race, being myself of good reputation and in the position of a white man with clean blood” (Ibid).
26
 Büschger (1997: 51) argues that in Spain this qualifier was given above all to habit knights [cabal-
leros de hábito], adding that in the Americas there never developed a class of nobility able to use
the official title of “knight” that was granted by the Spanish Crown to officers with distinguished
military service. Until today, both “don” and “caballero” are used in Colombia as signs of courtesy
and/or social recognition.
68 Chapter 2

[gentleman or knight] meant to recognize that he and his family were “decent
people” and not mixed or of lowly origin. The exhaustive research carried
out by Virginia Gutiérrez and Roberto Pineda of the census registers in the
Santander region during the late eighteenth century shows that people offi-
cially classified as “white” generally bore the prefix “don” or “doña” before
their given name (Gutiérrez de Pineda and Pineda Giraldo, 1999: 424). In
cases where the male head of the family carried the “don” but his wife did
not use “doña,” it meant that he was white and she was mestiza. However,
there could be cases in which people were officially recognized as “white”
but lacked the distinction of “don.” This indicates not only that the process of
cultural whitening of mestizos was already very advanced in the eighteenth
century, but also that some members of the local aristocracy were not willing
to tolerate someone using “don” improperly, without proving they belong to
the most distinguished families of the region.
But it was not only the prefix “don” and clothing type that served as cultural
credentials attesting to a person’s whiteness: it was also the type of economic
activities to which they dedicated themselves. Wallerstein (1998: 76) argues
that the international division of labor was marked by a fundamentally ethnic
character.27 The ethnicization of the labor force to which Wallerstein refers
was apparent not only in the recruitment of the workforce for the haciendas,
plantations, and mines but also in the cultural value imputed to the type of
activities carried out by the people working there. In New Granada, manual
labor was seen by the criollo elites as a “vile” exercise because it was under-
taken by Black slaves, Indians on encomiendas, and mestizo peasants (also
called “peons”). The symbolic display of whiteness therefore required that a
person considered white occupy “noble trades” and not “vile and mechani-
cal trades” (Juan and Ulloa, 1978 [1826]). Besides the jobs characteristic of
rural and mine labor (farmers, mazamorro [corn stew] vendors, freighters,
mule drivers, etc.), these “common” professions included schoolmaster,
tailor, cobbler, merchant, silversmith, pharmacist, chicha [fermented corn

27
 This meant that specific economic roles were reserved for specific ethnic groups, so that individuals
belonging to those groups were “born,” so to speak, to occupy a specific position in the system of
production. Particularly during the constitution of the modern world system—which Wallerstein
identifies with “the long sixteenth century”—the contingent of social actors that formed the basic
labor force in peripheral regions did not constitute “classes” but “ethnic groups.” Their economic
function was determined by their “culture,” that is, their language, religion, customs, geographic
origin, and behavioral patterns. Wallerstein’s argument is that the “primitive accumulation of capi-
tal” that made possible the three great world revolutions of modernity—the scientific revolution
of the seventeenth century, the political revolution of the eighteenth century, and the industrial
revolution of the nineteenth century—occurred in the sixteenth century, precisely at the moment
when, thanks to the ethnic division of international labor, Spain was able to extract from its colo-
nies the riches that generated the inflationary phenomenon that affected the rest of Europe (Wolf,
1997:139).
 Purus Ab Omnia Macula Sanguinis 69

drink] vendor, baker, and even surgeon.28 “Noble” trades, on the other hand,
included public offices (mayor, soldier, judge, attorney, scribe, notary, pros-
ecutor), as well as intellectual labor, jurisprudence, and the priesthood. More
than wealth, what was required to obtain one of these positions and profes-
sions was to have a good surname and to keep it “clean,” which is to say free
of ethnic contamination from members of the castes.
This hierarchy of skills and trades served as a selection mechanism that
would qualify or disqualify an individual from being part of the white elite.
The maintenance of this hierarchy was ensured by the legal status granted
to the guilds, corporative urban organizations which brought together work-
ers from different sectors (silversmiths, jewelers, bakers, weavers, notaries,
etc.). While some of these groups pressured the crown for a higher social
standing for their profession, the stigma of ethnic origin weighed too heav-
ily upon their practitioners, who were for the most part mestizos. Notaries,
for example, could argue that their profession was not mechanical, but the
dominant class considered them ineligible to occupy positions of a higher
social standing since they lacked a university education, which is to say that
they had not been subjected to the regime of “information.” As I will show
later, this informational regime sought to determine the precise ethnic origin
of candidates for entry into the university, so that for a scribe to assume pub-
lic office it was not enough to simply know how to read and write: they also
needed to prove their status as white.29
Residence type and location were also another strategy used by criollo
elites in the social construction of whiteness. An analysis of the type of mate-
rials used for home construction in Cali at the beginning of the nineteenth
century reveals the following: 100 percent of houses made out of mortar and
tile housed whites; 53 percent of those constructed with mud and tile were
inhabited by whites, followed closely by mestizos (41.3 percent); on the other
hand, 81 percent of houses made from mud and straw were inhabited by
mestizos, while whites only lived in 9.8 percent; finally, no whites occupied
homes constructed of mud and bamboo, 37.1 percent were inhabited by mes-
tizos, 48.1 percent by Black people, and 11.1 percent by Indians (Gutiérrez de
Pineda, Pineda Giraldo, 1999: 439–440). If on the other hand we look at the

28
 Jaramillo Uribe cites the case of the son of a surgeon from Cartagena who was rejected by the
Colegio Mayor de Nuestra Señora del Rosario in Bogotá because the profession of surgeon was
considered mechanical and unworthy of nobles (1989: 189). Renán Silva mentions two similar
cases: a candidate from Cartagena was refused permission to matriculate because his father was a
merchant (buying and selling candles) while another was rejected for being the “common son of a
baker” (Silva, 1992a: 214–215).
29
 In practice, social discrimination based on occupation was not strictly applied by the crown. We
know that public offices could be sold to the children of people whose occupations were directly
related to manual labor. However, I am referring to the importance that this type of ethnic and labor
discrimination played in the apparatus of whiteness.
70 Chapter 2

distribution of the population among the various neighborhoods of Bogotá at

the end of the colonial era, the figures are revealing. People were grouped by
caste and social strata according to the following pattern: La Catedral (today,
La Candelaria) was inhabited by the aristocracy of the capital, largely com-
posed of white families, while Las Nieves, Santa Bárbara, and San Victorino
were deemed “slums” and largely populated by Indians, mestizos, and
impoverished whites who worked as servants, merchants, or artisans (Dueñas
Vargas, 1997: 90–93; Mejía Pavony, 2000: 302–310). Home construction
materials and location were therefore a sign distinguishing the rank and “eth-
nic character” of their inhabitants.
We should add that some homes belonging to the dominant ethnic group
were marked with heraldic symbols. Noble families would have their coat of
arms carved into the main entrance of their houses, making clear that those
living there were among the “decent” and distinguished people of the city.
This was also visible in the decoration of their rooms, furniture, paintings
of family members, and in some everyday utensils (silverware, dishes, fans,
saddles). Emblems and coats of arms were not merely decorative elements
but contained as well an entire “ethnic language” testifying to the family’s
rank, lineage, and blood purity.
Perhaps one of the cultural practices that most demonstrated one’s white-
ness was the possession of slaves. To own slaves was not only something
of obvious economic value for the master but also meant the possibility of
“showing” one’s status and power to others. Thus, for example, wealthy
wives did not walk the streets with their slave women simply for company,
but to put their condition as distinguished white women on public display.
When a woman from the white stratum first entered the convent, part of the
dowry given to the convent was a contingent of Black or mulatto slaves.30
Something similar occurred when white men entered religious orders or
schools. This explains why a large percentage of slaves living in Bogotá
between 1700 and 1750 were in the hands of the clergy (Díaz, 2001: 138).31
Seminarians, priests, nuns, and students, almost all of whom were part of the
criollo aristocracy, owned slaves and publicly flaunted them as private prop-
erty, despite the internal rules of religious orders.

30
 Octavio Paz provides the following description of the convent of Las Jerónimas in México, in
which Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz was enrolled, but which could apply as well to convents like that
of Santa Clara in Bogotá or that of Las Conceptas in Cuenca: “The convent population was com-
posed of nuns, servants (maids and slaves), ‘girls,’ and ‘lay sisters’ . . . Nuns brought their own
maids and slaves to the convent. The ratio of servants to nuns is revealing: there were three maids
for each nun. In some convents the ratio was even higher: five maids per nun” (Paz, 1988: 119).
31
 Research by Rafael Díaz reveals that of the 2,044 owners of slaves in Bogotá between 1700 and
1775, 680 were priests, 451 were soldiers, 301 were state functionaries, 131 were lawyers, and 108
were nuns or regular priests (Díaz, 2001: 141).
 Purus Ab Omnia Macula Sanguinis 71

As mentioned previously, all of these strategies for the construction of

whiteness had as their objective, open or veiled, the private concentration of
(economic, social, and cultural) capital in the hands of the criollo nobility.
Since the time of the conquest, Spanish settlers had taken over the social priv-
ileges and the economic riches of the territory of New Granada, often at the
expense of the Crown’s own interests. During the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, their descendants, criollo encomenderos and ranchers, sought to
fortify their power vis-à-vis the state through the creation of close family
alliances. To do so, they sought to create matrimonial links with recently
arrived Spanish functionaries, thereby gaining the unconditional support of
the peninsular bureaucracy for their local interests. Through this and other
strategies of empowerment—for example, buying public offices—criollos
enjoyed enormous influence both in the court and the tax service. These sorts
of practices, extremely common under the Habsburgs, extended well into the
Bourbon era of the viceroyalty.

2.1.3 Subaltern Tactics

I have shown that blood purity functioned as a hegemonic discourse of sub-
jectification in colonial New Granada. This discourse was not constructed
on the basis of philosophical theories or ideas learned from books but from
cultural practices inscribed in a network of knowledge/power that, following
Mignolo and Quijano, I have called the coloniality of power. The appara-
tus of whiteness was forged in the heat of a battle carried out against other
groups for the possession of social privileges, using an ensemble of strate-
gies for cultural distancing. However, this idea of a cultural battle would not
be complete if we failed to mention how the oppressed “cannibalized,” in
a manner of speaking, the strategies of the oppressors and turned them into
tactics of resistance.32 The defeated communities were never passive elements

32
 I use here the distinction that French thinker Michel de Certeau makes between “strategies” and
“tactics.” The category of “strategy” refers to the “manipulation . . . of power relationships that
becomes possible as soon as a subject with will and power (a business, an army, a city, a scientific
institution) . . . postulates a place that can be delimited as its own and serve as the base from which
relations with an exteriority composed of targets or threats (customers or competitors, enemies,
the country surrounding the city, objectives and objects of research, etc.) can be managed. As in
management, every ‘strategic’ rationalization seeks first of all to distinguish its ‘own’ place, that
is, the place of its own power and will, from an ‘environment’ (1984: 35–36).” In other words,
strategies are calculated, conscious, and self-interested practices carried out from a position of
(social, scientific, political, military) power, which allow for the delimitation of a field of action
toward the subaltern through physical coercion or ideological persuasion. “Tactics,” on the other
hand, are practices carried out from a disadvantageous position within the relations of power. They
are actions of subaltern resistance that attempt to make an unfavorable situation favorable while
playing according to the rules established by the hegemonic power. “The space of a tactic,” De
Certeau argues, “is the space of the other. Thus it must play on and with a terrain imposed on it and
organized by the law of a foreign power. It does not have the means to keep to itself, at a distance,
72 Chapter 2

that were functional for the system of colonial apartheid, but instead used the
apparatus of whiteness to position themselves advantageously within social
space. Since whiteness was the most valuable form of cultural capital, it was
not odd for members of the castes to try to gradually “whiten” themselves as
a way of fighting for hegemony. I would therefore say, following Quijano,
that the oppressor’s culture was a “seduction” that “gave access to power”
and that subaltern groups attempted to appropriate the cultural capital of
whiteness as a tool for social mobility. Cultural Europeanization became an
aspiration shared by all but was utilized in different ways according to the
position agents occupied in social space (Quijano, 2007: 169).
A keen observer of the moment, the criollo thinker Pedro Fermín de
Vargas, describes the strategies of mulattoes and mestizos in New Granada
in the following terms:

Those who have passed five consecutive generations intermarrying with whites
are held to be among the latter category, and can without obstacles claim the
preeminence of criollos, an elevation granting them prestige that the prior
classes would be incapable of . . . What happens with Indians occurs equally
among Blacks, and in their place the mulattoes multiply, and like the mestizos
this race also aspires to the criollo hierarchy, that is to say, that of the whites of
the country, intermarrying as much as possible and thereby increasing every day
with very perceptible improvements . . . The reason that Indians and blacks do
whatever they can to transform themselves into mestizos and mulattoes, moving
closer to the condition of whites, it is natural that they see the debasement of
their original conditions, a debasement they cannot escape, in the current state of
those colonies, except by raising themselves up to the level of whites. (Vargas,
1986 [1808]: 171; 174–175)

In effect, with the progress of racial mixing in the seventeenth and eigh-
teenth centuries, ever greater numbers of people aspired to the cultural signs
of distinction exclusive to the white stratum. Two basic factors contributed
to this situation, both of which are contained in Vargas’ observations: one
phenotypic and the other economic. In the first place, the intensity of mix-
ing made it increasingly difficult to distinguish whites from mestizos based
on external characteristics. Many terceroons could easily pass for white, as

in a position of withdrawal, foresight, and self-collection: it is a maneuver ‘within the enemy’s field
of vision,’ as von Bülow put it, and within enemy territory . . . It must vigilantly make use of the
cracks that particular conjunctions open in the surveillance of the proprietary powers. It poaches in
them. It creates surprises in them. It can be where it is least expected. It is a guileful ruse. In short,
a tactic is an art of the weak” (37).
 Purus Ab Omnia Macula Sanguinis 73

census registers and baptism statistics from the period make clear.33 Second,
the vertiginous increase in the mestizo population during the eighteenth cen-
tury stimulated a gradual recovery from the recessionary tendencies of the
New Granadian economy in the seventeenth century and a greater demand for
lands legally protected as Indian reservations [resguardos] (McFarlane, 1997:
67). The invasion or illegal concession of protected lands to small mestizo
farmers favored the gradual enrichment of those who dedicated themselves
to the slave trade, manufacturing, and agricultural products. Above all in
the “hot lands” of Tocaima, Vélez, and Socorro, there began to emerge in
the eighteenth century a large contingent of traders and small businessown-
ers—the majority mestizos and mulattoes—who competed favorably against
criollo landowners. These businessmen owned small farms and mills that
energetically supplied the needs of the urban centers, thereby competing
with large hacienda owners (Díaz, 2001: 129–130). Moreover, by marry-
ing women from impoverished white families, this class of nouveau riche
attempted to distance themselves from the “degradation” of their Indian and
Black ancestry and reclaim the symbolic credentials that would legitimize
their economic power. They attempted, as Vargas put it, to “transform them-
selves” by “raising themselves up to the level of whites.”
One notorious case of the way that mestizo businessowners began to gain
power and reclaim juridically their condition as white in the late eighteenth
century is that of the Muñoz family in Medellín. In 1786, Gabriel Ignacio
Muñoz, a rich businessman from the city, initiated a criminal lawsuit against
lieutenant governor Pedro Elejalde for having refused him the formal courtesy
of “don” in a public document. As I have already mentioned, the use of “don”
before one’s given name signified public acceptance of one’s status as white.
The Muñoz family was certainly descended from a family tree that included
intermarriage with mestizos and were moreover recognized businesspeople
in the Antioquia region, meaning they were engaged in the “mechanical
trades.” To top it all off, Gabriel Muñoz was not a legitimate child but born
out of wedlock. However, his family’s wealth and power allowed Gabriel
to feel entitled to demand treatment corresponding to “white people.” The
family’s tactic consisted of using the same strategy pursued by criollo elites
against the grain, by constructing a genealogical narrative of their ancestors
that referred back to the first settlers of the region. Thus, Muñoz’s lawsuit is
framed in the following terms:

33
 Data compiled by Guiomar Dueñas in the parishes of Bogotá toward the end of the colonial period
shows that the number of children baptized and classified as white greatly exceeded the “real” num-
ber of children born of Spaniards. By 1779 the proportion of whites was 49.8 percent according to
that year’s census, and by 1810 the proportion of white children baptized was 61.2 percent in rela-
tion to the castes. These statistics clearly show that the level of mestizaje was already too high and
that mestizos successfully fought to be officially classified as white (Dueñas Vargas, 1997: 90–91).
74 Chapter 2

I, don Gabriel Ignacio Muñoz, a citizen of Nuestra Señora de Copacabana, in the

jurisdiction of this Villa [Nuestra Señora de La Candelaria de Medellín], appear
before your mercy, and insofar as the law allows I say that for my purposes,
information should be admitted from witnesses who will be examined according
to the following questions: . . . if they know I am reputed to be a white man and
of clean blood . . . if they know I am the natural son of don Francisco Muñoz
de Rojas and a principal lady of this Villa, descendant of its first founders,
having been under the word of marriage… say if from both lines I am of clean
blood, without mixture with Moors, Jews, zambos, mulattoes, or any other bad
race . . . I which your honor will see my assertion corroborated as a whole, with
more advantages than I have hinted at, making clear who my parents were, what
privileges and circumstances they have enjoyed, from which your honor, Mr.
Inspector, will conclude that the lieutenant could not and should not have denied
me the courtesy of the “don,” without serious injury to my honor. For it is a fact
that in this province it is this courtesy that distinguishes whites from the other
people of the low sphere, such that for those to whom it is denied, by the same
fact the common does not protect their rightful privileges.34

But Gabriel Muñoz’s imaginary construction of family identity and claim

to the cultural credentials of whiteness provoked unease among a criollo
nobility that did not tolerate the social climbing of the mestizos. Anxious to
defend their cultural capital at all cost against the claim of these “intruders,”
local criollos mobilized quickly against the Muñoz family. In 1787, the attor-
ney general of Medellín officially requested that the racial character of “los
Muñoces” be determined through a meticulous examination of baptismal and
census registers, as well as marriage and burial ledgers for the previous three
or four generations. The goal was to legally prove that the ancestors of the
Muñoz family had been registered as “mestizos” and that several members
of the family were blacksmiths. It was suspected that, thanks to the influ-
ence gained by their wealth, the Muñoz family had managed to alter various
documents that certified their impure origin. The attorney general’s request
is therefore that “the local council hand over the registry books pertaining
to the distinction and class of peoples, to certify from the records in which
the Muñoces Rojas are registered as belonging to the mestizo class, and to
recognize the amendments and erasures these contain.”35
Faced with this offensive, the Muñoz family lawyer lodges an appeal for
reinstatement in which he brilliantly shows that the corrections in the registry

34
 “Autos obrados por Don Gabriel Ignacio Muñoz, contra el teniente Gobernador Don Pedro Elejalde
por haberle negado el ‘don’” [1786]. In: Jaramillo Mejía, 2000: 213; 217.
35
 “Información que pretendía el procurador general de esta villa contra la calidad de los Muñoces”
[1787]. In: Jaramillo Mejía, 2000: 431.
 Purus Ab Omnia Macula Sanguinis 75

do not prove anything and that the performance of mechanical trades does not
in any way undermine the quality of people and much less does it harm the
state since it instead contributes to increasing its wealth:

The Romans, whose culture knew nothing of sacred history, ignoring the true
origin of our nature and subsequent advances, categorized the arts according to
their exercise, discriminating between the liberal and the mechanical and appro-
priating for the former the honor they denied the latter. Some Spanish writers
followed this detour, but they tried in vain to collect quotations and authorities
that did not serve but to uselessly occupy time and banish the laudable exercise
of those in the second class. For this reason, the moderns have taken great pains
to abolish an error that brings only fatal consequences for the well-being of the
vassals and rightful regime of the people, showing the usefulness of these, no
less than the necessary work of open popular education. And they solidly warn
that those light and fantastic thoughts seeking to celebrate some trades and
debase others are a deviation from all good government, because if all conspire
uniformly for society and the benefit of the people, why should some be consid-
ered vile and others respected?36

This appeal to the enlightened ethos of the epoch and the goodness of the
biopolitics of the state was sufficient for the Muñoz family to be exonerated
of all charges against them and socially recognized as a prestigious Medellín
family, despite their “infected origin.”37 This example shows that toward
the end of the eighteenth century, the changing attitude of the state toward
the traditional privileges of the nobility and the gradual enrichment of the
mestizo population meant that some subalterns—the richest—could utilize
the same strategies of the dominant, and even appeal to ideological state
apparatuses like law, marriage, and the university, to reconvert the economic
capital they had obtained into the cultural capital they desired. With that,
they sought cultural whitening, that is, to gain symbolic legitimacy that had
until then belonged to the whites in order to be their social “equals.” So, for
example, prosperous mestizos diligently sought to marry their daughters to
whites (even poor whites) to improve their status, since this would allow
them to elevate their own social position and that of their descendants.38 As
the economic capacity of mestizos improved, they were able to afford the

36
 In: Jaramillo Mejía, 2000: 461–462.
37
 This was the exact expression used by the Muñoz family lawyer to refer ironically to the attorney
general’s grievance. In: Jaramillo Mejía, 2000: 461.
38
 This also occurred with other sectors of the population, like mulattoes, for example, who preferred
that their daughters not marry Black people since this would reinforce the stain of their origin. In
general, we could say that marriage to a “racial inferior” was repudiated by all the castes since it
entailed a regression of their social position.
76 Chapter 2

garments and adornments exclusive to the white stratum and demand to be

treated as a “don” or “doña,” as was seen in the case of the Muñoz family.
Many mestizos did everything possible to “launder” the blood lineage of their
ancestors so that their children might be allowed to occupy public posts or
be admitted into seminaries, convents, or universities, spheres traditionally
reserved for the dominant ethnic group. Some free mestizos and mulattoes
were even granted the luxury of buying Black slaves and using them as per-
sonal servants, hoping to thereby demonstrate greater social dignity.39
An example of cultural whitening very close to the subject of this investi-
gation is that of Salvador Rizo, a free Black native to Mompox who worked
as a illustrator on the Royal Botanical Expedition. We know that Mutis
greatly appreciated his abilities and he was even honored by the latter by
dedicating his name to a new plant, the Rizoa. His people skills allowed
him to gain the confidence of the scientist from Cádiz, to the point of being
named chief steward of the expedition and charged as such with managing
all of the institution’s money. His responsibilities included hiring “obedient
slaves of good race” in Cartagena to work on the ranches in the hot lands that
housed the Botanical Expedition (Ortega Ricaurte, 2002: 125). Later, Rizo
served in Bolivar’s liberating army and was finally arrested and condemned
to death by Pablo Morillo. His process of whitening even had an impact
on his form of death, since he was executed “honorably” in the Plaza de
San Francisco in Bogotá, sharing the same fate as his companions from the
Botanical Expedition, the “wise” criollos Francisco José de Caldas and Jorge
Tadeo Lozano (who, as we will see, did not conceal their profound skepticism
toward the intellectual and moral capacity of Black people). Today, history
remembers Caldas and Lozano’s “martyrdom for the homeland,” and their
names have been granted to universities and scientific research centers, but
the fate of personalities like Salvador Rizo have been forgotten.
The case of Rizo, however, is symptomatic of what was occurring all across
New Granadian society. In the run-up to the independence wars, the divid-
ing line between different social strata, which had been traditionally based
on the ethnic ascription of individuals, was gradually blurring. According
to the 1778–1780 censuses, the racial profile of New Granada had changed
to a surprising degree, becoming a heavily mestizo and highly Hispanicized
society, unlike those colonial societies located in Mesoamerica and the
Southern Andes.40 Mestizos were by now 47 percent of the population of New

39
 Rafael Díaz mentions the case of Joseph Perea, a free mulatto who became wealthy through mining
with slave labor and who in 1739 donated the not insignificant sum of three thousand pesos to the
Convent of the Conception in Bogotá, insisting that such a donation would not affect his “sizeable
possessions” at all (Díaz, 2001: 178).
40
 In McFarlane’s words, “New Granada bore little resemblance to the colonial societies of its
Andean neighbors with their large Quechua and Aymara-speaking populations. Seen as a whole, it
 Purus Ab Omnia Macula Sanguinis 77

Granada while whites constituted barely 26 percent, Indians 20 percent, and

Black slaves 8 percent (McFarlane, 1993: 34). In a society that was nearly
50 percent mestizo and an economic situation that favored the enrichment of
many of them, the process of cultural whitening was inevitable. Whiteness
became the most desired prize of all social strata, particularly mestizos,
because appropriating it meant gaining power in relation to the dominant
criollo establishment. To become white therefore meant to become “equal” to
the dominant by employing the same practices that allowed the latter to con-
struct their cultural hegemony, using these instead as a tactic of resistance and
mobilization. The new Bourbon dynasty recognized at the time the need to
establish racial and population policies that would fit the new demographic
and economic realities of the continent, following the rationalistic imperative
of governmentality. Policies that, as I will show next, generated an intensifi-
cation of the “race war” in New Granada.

2.2 BIOPOWER AND THE RACE WAR

The topography that I described in the previous section demonstrates that

social struggles in this region of the world were not understood as a confron-
tation between classes, but between ethnic groups and races. The dominant
group—the criollos—were not defined by possession of the means of eco-
nomic production or cultural value associated with efficiency and productiv-
ity, but by having been subjectified as “white” by the apparatus of whiteness.
Blood purity is constituted in the hegemonic discourse of subjectification that
cuts across dominant and dominated alike in New Granada. But now comes
the question: did the promotion of modern science supported by the Bourbons
constitute a rupture with or simply an extension of traditional modes of
knowledge and socialization already prevalent in New Granada?
This section will show that new eighteenth-century population designs, far
from transforming the social world in the direction hoped for by the Bourbon
state, were assimilated by the grammar of the “coloniality of power” firmly
anchored in New Granadian society. In other words, the state dynamic of
biopower was absorbed by the dynamic of the coloniality of power. What
I hope to underline here are the “perverse consequences”—to put it another
way—of the politics of Bourbonic modernization: the intensification of the
race war in New Granada.

also differed markedly from the society of the adjoining province of Caracas, where creole planters
dominated a society that rested on African slavery” (McFarlane, 1993: 38).
78 Chapter 2

2.2.1 The Perspective of the Whole

Michel Foucault shows how the “art of government” began to change in
Europe in the mid-eighteenth century. A good governor was no longer
defined by their ability to watch over the souls of subjects (the model of the
“good shepherd”), but by their capacity to take charge of social relations
between people, leading them wisely toward a very precise goal: the optimi-
zation of material and human resources present in the territory. Put simply,
the art of government begins to follow an economic model. To govern a
state “well” meant to exercise economic control, the rational administration
of inhabitants, wealth, customs, territory, and the production of knowledge.
To increase wealth and to create a productive subject through the rational
control of the vital processes of the population (natality, mortality, diet,
place of residence, health, and labor), such were the characteristics of a
good government in the eighteenth century. This new “science of govern-
ment” centered on the life of the population is what Foucault calls “biopoli-
tics” (Foucault, 1999: 195):

One of the great innovations in the techniques of power in the eighteenth cen-
tury was the emergence of “population” as an economic and political problem:
population as wealth, population as manpower or labor capacity, population bal-
anced between its own growth and the resources it commanded. Governments
perceived that they were not dealing simply with subjects, or even with a “peo-
ple,” but with a “population,” with its specific phenomena and its peculiar vari-
ables: birth and death rates, life expectancy, fertility, state of health, frequency
of illnesses, patterns of diet and habitation. (Foucault, 1978: 25)

In perhaps no other part of the western world was the enlightened project of
biopolitics as necessary as in Spain’s overseas colonies. At the beginning of
the seventeenth century, when the Bourbon dynasty occupied the Habsburg
throne in Spain, the geopolitical balance of forces had begun to change
throughout Europe. During the sixteenth century, thanks to a strict com-
mercial monopoly, Spain had established absolute control over the Atlantic
circuit, allowing it to capture a large quantity of resources from its American
colonies. Through the House of Trade in Sevilla, the Habsburgs had man-
aged to channel all trade with America toward a single port of entry (first
Sevilla and then Cádiz), putting transoceanic trade in the hands of authorized
Spanish merchants. Foreigners were excluded from any direct commercial
link with the Spanish colonies. Paradoxically, the major beneficiaries of
this trade were not the Spanish themselves, but foreign merchants, bankers,
and shipbuilders, mostly English and Dutch. From the end of the sixteenth
 Purus Ab Omnia Macula Sanguinis 79

century, a commercial oligarchy had been consolidating in Holland, France,

and England with a great interest in expanding toward the Atlantic, backed
up by significant naval power and the formation of statuary companies.
Throughout the seventeenth century and above all after the signing of the
Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which put an end to the Thirty Years War,
Spain began to lose control of the Atlantic commercial circuit (Arrighi, 1999:
60–62). English, French, and Dutch traders, with the help of corrupt local
officials, managed to establish an extensive piracy and contraband network
in the Caribbean, so that at the outset of the eighteenth century foreigners
had taken over the better part of the American market. Amsterdam replaced
Sevilla as the new neuralgic point of trade with the Americas and the center
of the international economy was displaced from the southern coast of Europe
to the northwest (Wallerstein, 1980: 37). The Bourbon dynasty, knowing
full well the commercial, technical, and military disadvantage it faced with
regard to its powerful neighbors, sought to regain Spain’s lost hegemony.
The Bourbons knew very well that the nation that managed to modernize its
political, economic, and military institutions most quickly, but above all the
nation that managed to exercise rational control over the population, would
come to control global trade.
However, when Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa traveled across South
America in the mid-eighteenth century as secret observers in the service of
the Bourbon state, they described a bleak scene. Ineffective laws, the unlim-
ited rapacity of public employees, contraband, corruption of the clergy, and
above all the economic habits of the population constituted an obstacle to
Spain becoming a serious competitor for control of global markets against
England and France. What was needed was therefore a policy package geared
toward radically changing those ancestral habits. These policies, based on
precise knowledge of the population to be governed, the available natural
resources, and the “natural laws” of commerce, would be sufficient to create
a new type of man: the homo oeconomicus the Spanish empire desperately
needed.
In 1789, one of the most eminent Spanish economists of the period,
don José del Campillo y Cossío, minister to the Bourbon King Felipe V,
critically evaluated Spanish management in the Americas in the following
terms:

After the conquest came the greed of the mines, which for a time provided
great profits to Spain, while it was her people who extracted the gold and silver
but later, when we should have matched our conduct to the circumstances and
applied ourselves to farming and occupations that now employ men, we have
continued to extract infinite wealth that was passed on to and has enriched other
80 Chapter 2

nations; and the true treasure of the state, which is men, has been extinguished
by this cruel work. (cited by Arcila Farias, 1955: 10, author’s emphasis)41

Campillo’s report clearly reflects how the biopolitics Foucault speaks of

had begun to permeate Bourbon policy in the Americas. Eighteenth-century
Spanish political leaders and economists had a very clear idea about what the
art of “governing well” would look like for the empire: improving manufac-
turing through the introduction of machines, increasing wealth by promoting
agriculture and applying botanical knowledge, and constructing roads, canals,
and ports. All of which presupposed knowledge about the population with the
goal of optimizing the labor force, since as Campillo argues, “the true trea-
sure of the state is men.” Unlike the Habsburgs, the Bourbons realized that
the true wealth of nations lay not primarily in natural resources, but in avail-
able human resources. Precious metals did not constitute wealth in and of
themselves; their utility depends directly on the type of person that extracts,
markets, and manages them. It was therefore a question of creating a produc-
tive subject that would obey state directives.
The Bourbon reforms thus attempted to create the conditions for the state to
exercise political control over social institutions, natural resources, and above
all over the life of subjects. With the support of a technical-administrative
rationality, the Bourbon state sought to occupy the perspective of the Whole:
to concentrate, process, and redistribute information through codification
systems like the census and statistics; to elaborate a unitary representation of
territory through objectification techniques like cartography; to mold mental
structures and impose unitary forms of thinking through ordering codes like
law, education, and civic rituals; to punish idleness and create a useful labor
force to stimulate the economic development of the colonies through strate-
gies of social cleansing like medicine and criminology; to centralize and
maximize fiscal income and rationalize state finances through surveillance
apparatuses like General Inspection; and to inventory exploitable natural
resources and improve techniques of food production and marketing through
cognitive systems like the new science. In sum, the goal was to transform the
Spanish state into a great factory of subjectivities capable of taking advantage
of its immense human resources to successfully compete in the struggle for
control of global trade.
Advised by what Phelan (1978: 3) deemed a “small group of incipient
technocrats,” the Bourbons took on the task of completely rationalizing the
structure of the Spanish empire. This presupposed a threefold process of the
formalization, instrumentalization, and bureaucratization of Spanish society

41
 The quotation is taken from José del Campillo y Cossío, Nuevo sistema de gobiernoeconómico
para la América. Mérida: Universidad de los Andes 1971.
 Purus Ab Omnia Macula Sanguinis 81

and its institutions. Formalization refers to the attempt to apply abstract crite-
ria of action, that is, those not tied to domestic, private, or religious judgment,
for the orientation of collective life. This meant subjecting collective life to
an impersonal, legally ordained code instead of a personalized and traditional
code, and ultimately dissolving traditional community bonds in favor of “act-
ing according to rules” carefully designed by the state.
Instrumentalization, in turn, has to do with how these rules favored the
utilization of a series of technical, educational, political, and scientific instru-
ments to achieve specific predetermined ends. Collective action should be
guided toward attaining goals “useful to all of society” through the calcula-
tion of the most adequate means. This means that human action was no lon-
ger linked to the axiological postulates present within particular groups but
should instead take on a decidedly technical character.
Finally, bureaucratization refers to the fact that the state—and no longer
the Church or the aristocracy—was the authority charged with establishing
the ultimate goals of social life and implementing the technical means to
achieve them. This demanded the concentration of power in the hands of a
technocratic elite and specialized functionaries, loyal solely to the state and
not to particular interests, whose job it was to design and execute public poli-
cies of population control.
As I have said, the objective of all these reforms was to make rational
use of the human resources available across the entire Spanish territory,
and principally that of the population concentrated in the Indies. More than
warriors and conquistadors, the state needed economic subjects capable of
producing wealth and stimulating commerce and industry. Just as Campillo
had explained, armed control over a territory means nothing if the territory’s
riches and the productive capacity of the inhabitants do not result in the
universal benefit of all sectors of the empire.42 Bourbon policy toward the
Indies is therefore oriented toward encouraging agricultural production (at the
expense of gold production) and the expansion of trade between the colonies
themselves, freeing them from old regulations and excessive taxes so that
Spanish products could compete favorably with contraband. Of course, this
all required the modernization of the tax system and the protection of regional
industries, as well as a more equitable distribution of fiscal burdens. What
was therefore needed was a stricter and more efficient administration that
would reestablish the metropole’s control over the local audiences overseas
in order to unify the financial system and rebuff commercial aggression from
European rivals (McFarlane, 1993).

42
 “Our Spanish warriors did not look after the fact that a country’s trade, held exclusively, is much
more valuable than its possession and domination, because the fruit is extracted and is not spent on
its defense and government” (cited by Arcila Farias, 1955: 9).
82 Chapter 2

2.2.2 The Face of Machiavelli

But the technocratic character of these new policies was a direct threat to what
Phelan called the “unwritten constitution” (1978: 17), in reference to the tradi-
tional practice in the Americas of subjecting public decisions to the interests of
private actors like the clergy and the local aristocracy. In this sense, Bourbon
policies gravely disturbed the existing equilibrium between the main power
groups of New Granada. This equilibrium was based on the fact that local oli-
garchies, thanks to their close friendships and alliances with the colonial bureau-
cracy, hoarded most of the economic, social, and cultural capital available in
different spheres of social space. The Bourbons began a policy of expropriating
and concentrating capital in the state, which now became the administrator of
all flows of economic and symbolic capital in society. This meant that particu-
lar groups, no matter how much economic power (money) or symbolic power
(legitimacy) they enjoyed, were forced to cede much of the administration of
this power to an impersonal, central agency. In this way, the rationality of the
Bourbon state was constitutively linked to an internal war carried out by all
of its “apparatuses” against the resistance of subjects who saw their particular
interests threatened by an abstract and technocratic “general interest.” The
point I want to emphasize here is that the biopolitics of the Bourbon state also
meant an internal war against the habitus of American criollos, their economic
interests, and most importantly for my purposes, their pretensions of whiteness.
In effect, the new imperial biopolitics meant getting rid of incompetent and
unproductive functionaries and those disloyal to the interests of the central
government, and strengthening the metropolitan authority of the Audiencias.
It was necessary to cut the umbilical cord tying public functionaries to the
particular interests of the criollo oligarchy and foreign contrabandists. Since
the sixteenth century, it had been common for both the clergy and the most
important criollo families to intervene directly in the political decisions of
local audiencias. They did so, as we have seen, by establishing all kinds of
alliances—preferably family alliances—with the civil and ecclesiastic func-
tionaries sent by the Crown. As representatives of a government that they
felt to be distant and incompetent, Spanish functionaries found themselves
trapped in a web of alliances and agreements woven by criollos, serving as
their spokespeople before the metropolitan authority instead of the opposite.
But this practice—in operation for two centuries and inscribed in the habitus
of criollos and understood as “natural” by them—would be violated by the
Bourbon reforms. Now, the official policy was to expropriate all economic
and administrative privileges from criollos and the Church.43 Beginning in

43
 This implied, for example, eliminating the selling of public posts, thereby undermining criollo
access to the audiencias and tipping the balance of power in favor of functionaries named directly
 Purus Ab Omnia Macula Sanguinis 83

particular with the government of Carlos III (1759–1788), it was imperial

policy to educate a professional bureaucracy in the Americas, with obedi-
ent and well-trained, full-time civil servants who were solely and directly
responsible to the King, and who worked according to uniform directives and
guaranteed the strict application of top-down reforms. Figures like state min-
ister José de Gálvez and Inspector General for New Granada Juan Francisco
Gutiérrez de Piñeres exemplified this profile of the new civil servant. It was
no longer about the conciliatory politician currying favor with the clergy and
elites, but the impersonal technocrat pursuing rational ends without worrying
about “adapting” to local circumstances.44
The visit by Gutiérrez de Piñeres to New Granada in 1778 sheds light on
some interesting aspects of this policy of expropriation. One of the priori-
ties of the Inspector General was to eliminate the presence of criollos in the
Audiencia de Santafé (Bogotá), for which he needed to strike directly at the
economic interests of the local aristocracy. We have already seen how these
interests did not always have a real economic materiality—since only some
criollos were truly rich in New Granada—but were instead anchored in the
possession of a symbolic capital (imaginaries of whiteness, nobility, and
distinction) that could eventually be reconverted into economic and politi-
cal capital.45 This is why one of the expropriation strategies deployed by the
state was to directly attack the central source for the appropriation and accu-
mulation of symbolic capital: criollo family networks. Combating displays
of nobility and nepotism by criollos meant destroying the primordial unit of
organization that allowed them access to important positions in the Church
and the state. And so one of Gutiérrez de Piñeres’ first measures was to cut off
the possibility of capital reconversion, prohibiting Spanish functionaries from
marrying women from the criollo nobility and ordering that “blood relatives
to the third degree nor in-laws to the second degree” could not be employed
in the same treasury office (Phelan, 1978: 14).46

by Spain (Phelan, 1978: 9). John Lynch argues that during the period 1647–1750, that is, before
the ascent of the Bourbons, 44 percent of audiencia members were criollos, and as late as 1760
the majority of judges in the Audiences of Lima, Santiago, and Mexico were criollos. However,
in 1751 and 1808, only 23 percent of appointments to the American audiencias were granted to
criollos. In 1808, of the ninety-nine individuals occupying positions in colonial tribunals, only six
were criollos (Lynch, 1991: 21).
44
 McFarlane (1993: 169) suggests that the criterion of good government that prevailed among the
viceroys prior to 1778 was of maintaining “harmony” between the interests of elites and the inter-
ests of the state, implementing certain Crown policies while omitting others that were believed not
to adapt to the local situation.
45
 I use here the concept of the “reconversion of capital” introduced by Pierre Bourdieu (1984).
46
 It seems as though one of the central goals of this measure was to dismantle the clan of the criollo
Álvarez family, which controlled the greater part of the treasury administration. Almost all func-
tionaries of this agency were related by marriage to the family which had powerful interests in
the tobacco industry. Since one of the priorities of the state was to establish a monopoly over the
production, distribution, and export of tobacco, it needed to weaken the linkages connecting the
84 Chapter 2

Criollo habitus had been disrupted not only by the displacement of their
administrative privileges but also, and above all, by the symbolic transgres-
sion this displacement represented. If the possession of state posts was seen
as recognition of the criollos’ whiteness and nobility, their allocation to social
inferiors by the state was little more than a humiliation and an insult. It is
important to insist that up to this moment, the social preeminence of the New
Granadian nobility had not been guaranteed by wealth so much as by rewards
from the Crown in the form of positions of legal privilege and quotas in the
sinecures and activities of the government. Thus, for McFarlane, “elite poli-
tics was informed by a belief that crown and nobility were mutually depen-
dent, with reciprocal claims on each other, and political activity revolved
around competition for access to the rewards offered by the patrimonial state
and its church” (1993: 240). With its new expropriation policy, however, the
state had created very different rules of the game that were completely for-
eign to the traditional habitus of the criollo patricians.
But the state’s most powerful blow to the symbolic capital of elites was
without a doubt its policy favoring the social mobility of Indians, free Blacks,
mulattoes, and mestizos. I have said that the main interest of the Bourbon
state was to create a new type of “subject” capable of rationally utilizing
available natural resources to generate income for the royal treasury through
productive activities. This desired subject was not solely limited to elites, but
also encompassed members of the castes and their mestizo descendants, who
by then constituted almost half of the population and were therefore the prin-
cipal labor force in New Granada.47 On the advice of a team of economists,
the Spanish government realized that the condition of possibility for convert-
ing members of the castes into truly economic subjects was reducing as much
as possible the legal barriers separating them from whites. Some of these
economists, like the already mentioned Campillo, even suggested instituting
strict social equality between Indians and Spanish. According to Campillo,
Indians, and by extension mestizos as well, should enjoy the same rights of
entry “into the houses of governors, intendants, and other ministers, and the
same place in the Church and in all honorific posts of which their merit makes

owners of large tobacco farms to political decision-making agencies (McFarlane, 1993: 211–212).
Gutiérrez de Piñeres’ strategy worked, since after three years only two members of the Álvarez
family retained their fiscal positions in Bogotá (Phelan, 1978: 16).
47
 Recall, for example, that by 1523 Emperor Carlos V had established that Indigenous men of work-
ing age (between eighteen and fifty) had to pay a tribute to the Spanish state in recognition of the
King’s authority. It was later established that direct descendants of mixed Indians, that is, zambos
(children of Indians and Blacks) and mestizos (children of Indians and whites) must also pay tribute
like the Indians. But with the increasing mestizaje of the eighteenth century, it was no longer clear
who needed to pay tribute and who did not. It was increasingly difficult to determine in the registry
who was mestizo, mulatto, Indian, or zambo.
 Purus Ab Omnia Macula Sanguinis 85

them worthy; and in a word, to give in all and for all the same treatment as
Spanish from the same sphere.”48
Although the Crown did not take Campillo’s suggestion literally, the
policies of the Bourbon state did at least manage to relax a bit the bound-
ary between nobles and plebeians. It needed to take advantage of the labor
force of the growing mestizo population and socially legitimize its produc-
tive activities. But this necessarily entailed eliminating a series of juridical
obstacles that prevented members of the castes from deploying their full eco-
nomic potential. The elimination of these juridical segregation barriers was
important, since the enrichment of mestizos was not a sufficient condition
for their economic activity to be seen as legitimate if the individual had not
overcome the obstacle posed by whitening.
One of the measures taken by the state to “release” the economic poten-
tial of mestizos—above all the richest—was the establishment of what were
called gracias al sacar certificates, which offered pardos an exemption from
the “state of infamy.”49 Applicants who could prove that some percentage
Spanish blood ran through their veins or those of their children were able to
juridically obtain the status of whiteness, qualifying them to receive educa-
tion, marry whites, enter the priesthood, and most importantly, engage in
productive economic activity. By juridically “washing away” the “stain of
the land,” or what is the same thing, expropriating unproductive elites of
their most prized symbolic capital, the state sought to reward the economic
accomplishments of the mestizo population and stimulate the creation of
wealth. Bit by bit a situation emerged in which it was the law of the state and
not the segregationist discourse of the criollos that determined an individual’s
social status.50 The result was twofold: on the one hand, it gave mestizos the
go-ahead to enrich themselves through productive economic activities while,
in parallel, it led to the impoverishment of unproductive whites who were
left with no choice but to marry “lower quality” but richer people to maintain
their status; on the other hand, the traditional dividing lines between whites
and pardos were gradually dissolving, which as we will see greatly alarmed
criollo elites, who watched with horror as their imaginaries of nobility and
blood purity were publicly discredited.

48
 Cited by Arcila Farias, 1955: 11.
49
 It is clear that only wealthy mestizos could request a gracias al sacar, since the fees one needed
to pay were significant. By royal decree on February 10, 1795, it was ordered that exemption from
the category of pardo was obtained for a fee of 500 reales and from the category of quinteroon (the
closest to white) for 800 reales. Another decree from August 3, 1801, established that exemption
from the category of pardo cost 700 reales and quinteroon 1,100 reales (Rosenblat, 1954: 180).
50
 To stimulate industrial production in the colonies, the Bourbons offered the status of nobility to
any person who had employed and would employ garment workers for two or three generations
(Jaramillo Mejía, 1996: 63).
86 Chapter 2

Another measure that served to expropriate the symbolic capital of criollos

and stimulate the social mobility of mestizos was the promotion of pardos
within the army.51 Until the mid-eighteenth century, the army represented a
center of power and privilege for criollo officers who, as whites, received all
the same immunities enjoyed by Spanish soldiers. In 1643, King Felipe IV
had issued a royal decree, which was reiterated four times, stipulating that
military posts should not be created for mulattoes, morenos,52 or mestizos
(Rosenblat, 1954: 153). But frequent English attacks on Spanish ports in the
Caribbean forced the state to strengthen and restructure the army. Facing
the impossibility of maintaining large Spanish garrisons in the Americas,
and wary of handing over too much power over the troops to criollos, the
Bourbons created a new militia that granted pardos a series of privileges pre-
viously reserved for white officers.53 Black and mulatto soldiers, who made
up the bulk of the pardo battalions in Cartagena, received gifts and privileges
from the state in recognition of their merits. Once again, the law of the state,
by protecting the military privileges granted to mestizos and consequently
encouraging their social whitening, undercut the criollo discourse of caste
separation.
It would be worthwhile to illustrate the Crown’s effort to expropriate the
symbolic capital of criollos through the case of don Jorge Miguel Lozano de
Peralta, better known as the Marquis of San Jorge. This distinguished repre-
sentative of Bogotá’s criollo elite was a direct descendant of don Antón de
Olalla, the sixteenth-century Spanish encomendero whose case I mentioned
earlier. This made him the custodian of an immense amount of capital accu-
mulated over several generations, allowing him to aspire to occupy the high-
est posts in the colonial administration. But the Marquis encountered many
bureaucratic obstacles preventing his access to these desired positions, and
which he considered violations of his “noble rights.” In 1767, the state forced
him to pay a large quantity of money as tribute for the public use of his titles,

51
 Recall that already in 1738, Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa had urgently recommended that
the Bourbon state demote criollo officers and allow mestizos to be incorporated into positions of
responsibility within the army. “They declare themselves vassals of the king of Spain, and though
mestizos, they take pride in being Spaniards and in descending from Indians, in such a curious way
that, though they have an equal share of both, they are most bitter enemies of the Indians, who
are their own blood . . . The troop these people form, although not all the same in color and some
seeming more brown than the Spaniards, are as splendid and good as the best in Europe, because
mestizos are generally well made, stocky and tall, some of such good stature that they exceed regu-
larly tall men; and they are suited to war because they are raised in their countries accustomed to
being on the move from one place to another, forced to walk barefoot, generally underdressed and
malnourished, so that no work would be strange to them in war, and lack of conveniences would
not cause them discomfort” (Juan y Ulloa, 1983 [1826]: 177).
52
 [Generally used to refer to a mixture of Black and Indigenous ancestry—Trans.].
53
 Until the seventeenth century, using a horse and weapons had been reserved exclusively for the
white stratum in New Granada. Black people and mulattoes were punished with particular severity
for riding horses.
 Purus Ab Omnia Macula Sanguinis 87

lest they be suspended indefinitely (Gutiérrez Ramos, 1998: 125).54 Then, the
viceroy Messía de la Cerda, concerned about the Marquis’ continued com-
plaints before the Council, ordered him detained in jail for a few hours and
the viceroy Flórez later stripped him of his encomienda in the Llanos. This
all represented an outrage against not only the presumptuous Marquis but also
against the entire criollo elite of Bogotá, who watched with anger how inves-
tigator Gutiérrez de Piñeres gradually “de-criollized” the council according
to the new state policies. Advised by a team of criollo lawyers, in 1785 the
Marquis sent a lengthy document to the king of Spain bitterly complaining
about the state’s expropriation of his privileges:

But it would not be strange to let fall here the most tender sobs of the American
Spaniards. What value do we in this part of the world gain from our merits and
the services that we have rendered? What of the blood our ancestors gloriously
shed in the service of God our Lord and Your Majesty? What of their zeal, labor,
and suffering in the conquest of these Indies? What of the continuous desire to
show our love for Your Royal service and glorious occupations that the fidelity
of our predecessors taught us? What of the efficient recommendations and pref-
erential attention that Your laws of the Indies and specific Royal Decrees grant
us? What of the viceroys here, their families and retainers who insult, mock,
humiliate, and oppress us? . . . Finally, Sire, the more distinguished the unhappy
American Spaniards are, the more they suffer. Their fortune has already been
destroyed, and now their honor and reputations are under attack, staining them
by depriving them of any honorific position of consequence. (Lozano de Peralta,
1996 [1785]: 281)

Lozano’s complaints centered on the refusal to recognize the inherited

privileges of the criollo elite (“the unhappy American Spaniards”) which,
as I have argued at length, were based on an apparatus of whiteness. The
Bourbon state, through its viceroys, had not only trampled the lineage of
the criollos, the direct descendants of the conquistadors who provided Spain
with glory and honor, but also the rights conferred to them under Spanish
laws. The Marquis specifically mentions the case of a viceroy who preferred
to name a surgeon or barber as governor instead of a distinguished criollo.
Lozano considers this attitude to be an example of arrogance and despotism
by Bourbon functionaries, who arbitrarily designate their servants to the best
administrative posts, “be they hairdressers, barbers, lackeys, it is as though

54
 These were payments for taxes known as medias anatas y lanzas, which were tied to nobility titles.
During the eighteenth century, and due to the crisis of the hacienda system, many families from the
titled nobility suffered great economic difficulties, which in some cases led to the loss of their titles
for not being able to pay the state for debts that had been accumulating for years.
88 Chapter 2

they consider them worthy of better rights over citizens of more outstanding
merit” (Lozano de Peralta, 1996 [1785]: 279; 282).
In another section from the same document, the Marquis compares viceroy
Caballero y Góngora to “Niccolò Machiavelli, evidently a teacher of his max-
ims and policies,” for how he broke up the legal barriers separating nobles
from the castes and refusing to comply with a law called the Royal Pragmatic
(which I will discuss later).
In effect, the way that some Bourbon state functionaries like Caballero y
Góngora exercised power appeared in the eyes of the criollo nobility as the
face of Machiavelli. But what seems to have been unclear for these crio-
llos was that this exercise of power did not obey the whims of this or that
functionary, but rather state policy. Personalities like the Marquis of San
Jorge, owners of large tracts of unproductive land and defenders of an ethos
that privileged contemplation over labor and the defense of private inter-
est over the public, were a nuisance to the new economic directives of the
state. Spanish functionaries managed to link the Marquis to the Comunero
Rebellion of 1781 and minister Gálvez, in a letter dated June 15, 1784,
ordered Caballero y Góngora to “restrain him to prison and lock him away for
life in the castle of San Felipe de Barajas in Cartagena, with no further trial,
maintaining in prison the considerations of his nobility,” which the viceroy
enthusiastically did (Gutiérrez Ramos 1998: 133). There the old Marquis
would die on August 11, 1793.
Aware of the great importance mestizos had begun to gain in society and
the problem posed by criollo dominance, the Bourbons ensured the ascent of
the castes, conceding to them exemptions and dispensations and even selling
them the much sought-after capital of whiteness. But the offended criollos
violently defended their privileges, taking juridical measures to keep ethnic
barriers intact and throwing the “original sin” of the mestizos in their face.
The biopolitics of the Bourbon state would need to yield to the coloniality of
power prevailing in New Granada since the seventeenth century.

2.2.3 Nostalgia for Apartheid

Bourbon policies sought to establish a new rationality in the colonies that
would integrate into a single project social groups that had formed amid
two hundred years of ethnic conflict. There was no attempt to dismantle the
principles of social stratification inherited from the past, but only to achieve
the legal, economic, and cultural homogeneity necessary for the absolute
power of the monarch to act efficiently. The Bourbons believed that it would
be enough to design a policy more geometrico [in a geometric style] in order
to put the different sectors of colonial society to work. They were confident
that it would be enough to rid society of the bureaucratic vices of the past
 Purus Ab Omnia Macula Sanguinis 89

so that human action, expertly directed by the state, could work in harmony
with the functioning of natural laws and the Spanish Empire would finally
set off toward inevitable material and spiritual progress. But the enlightened
optimism of the Bourbons would collide head-on with the ethnic struggles
prevailing in the colonies. Before they could activate the “preestablished har-
mony” of the natural laws of society, their policies of expropriation increased
racial tensions in the Americas.
Hounded by the social, demographic, and phenotypic rise of mestizos
and pressured by liberal state policies, criollos went on the defensive and
sought to barricade themselves into their already weakened ethnic fortress.
Defensive of their increasingly illusory blood purity, they shut mestizos out
of any possibility of entering the world of privilege through marriage. As we
have already seen, honor was considered by the highest strata as a heritage
to be maintained and defended at all costs, since it guaranteed the supremacy
and social distance of the ennobled criollos from inferior social sectors. This
was why if a family member entered into an “unequal marriage” with a mes-
tizo or mestiza, it was seen as dishonoring the name of the entire family line.
The strategy of the criollo clergy and aristocracy was to lean heavily on the
government in Madrid to gain legal protection mechanisms for their most
prized symbolic capital: whiteness.55 They hoped that the state would ratify
the traditional idea that marriages between people from different social sec-
tors was a violation of natural law, which constituted the juridical foundation
for social stratification in the colony.
As a result of these pressures, the central government issued a 1776 law
called the Royal Pragmatic, which sought to counteract the social whitening
of the castes through the strict regulation of “unequal marriages,” thereby pre-
venting mestizos from enjoying the privileges reserved for the white stratum.
To avoid white families finding their honor injured by the unwanted marriage
of one of its members, the law established that no marriage between children

55
 So, for example, on October 6, 1788, the council of Caracas sent a plea to the king in the following
terms: “This council fears that if the pardos are admitted to the ecclesiastical state, it will decay
greatly from the high rank in which there exists such a distinguished clergy as in this province. The
pardos are seen with great contempt here for their origin and for the tributes that your royal laws
impose upon them. They descend from slaves, their parentage is illegitimate, and they have their
origins in the union of white men and Black women . . . The damages to the secular state would be
no less if the pardos were allowed to marry white commoners. Because within a few years of allow-
ing these marriages there would be such confusion within the family that it would be impossible to
discern who is mixed and who is not. Marriages would become difficult for Europeans, who only
want to marry whites, and instead of increasing the number of citizens with the qualities required
by law for distinguished employment, they would decline and so would the state . . . Finally, the
abundance of pardos in this province, their proud and arrogant temper, and their notable determi-
nation to become equal to the whites, all demand as a political measure that Your Majesty keep
them in a position of dependence as they have been up to this point; otherwise, their arrogance will
become unbearable and they will soon want to dominate those who have been their lords from the
beginning” (quoted in Rosenblat, 1954: 183).
90 Chapter 2

under twenty-five years of age could be celebrated without the specific con-
sent of the parents or guardians:

And having become so frequent the abuse of unequal marriages by children

of families, without awaiting the advice and consent of parents, relatives, or
those in the place of parents, with other very serious damages and offenses to
God, disturbing the good order of the state and sowing continuous discord and
prejudice among families, against the condition and pious spirit of the Church,
that although it does not annul or settle such marriages has always detested and
forbidden them as opposed to the honor, respect, and obedience that children
should give parents in matters of such seriousness and importance . . . I com-
mand that from now on, according to the provisions in them that to celebrate
the contract of betrothal, children of families under twenty-five years must
request and obtain the advice and consent of the father and, failing that, of the
mother . . . That this obligation includes all without exceptions, from the highest
classes of the state to the most common people, because there exists equally for
all the natural and indispensable obligation to respect parents and elders who
are in their position according to natural and divine law and by the serious-
ness of the choice of being with a suitable person; whose discernment cannot
be entrusted to the children of families and minors without the intervention of
paternal consent and deliberation, to reflect on the consequences and to contain
beforehand turbulent and harmful impact on the public and families.56

This law contributed to reinforcing the pathos of distance of dominant elites

since it invoked the old discourse of blood purity to prevent whites from
breaking out of their traditional ethnic cloistering. As a result, two individuals
from different racial conditions were not free to enter into a marriage rela-
tion, but instead needed to demonstrate the express approval of their parents
or risk severe punishment from the socioeconomic order. While the Church
could not declare an interracial marriage invalid, it did bring enormous
pressure to bear to avoid those intermarriages that whites opposed for their
“turbulent and harmful impact on the public and families.” If such a marriage
were to take place, the law considers that both the couple in question and
their children should be barred from receiving or passing on inheritances,
and that the parents they disobeyed were free to annul their wills. It is clear
that the purpose of this measure was to prevent the symbolic capital of elites,
as concretized in titles of nobility, entailed estates, family names, and other
hereditary privileges, from falling into the hands of people of “bad race.” As
Lorenzo Benítez, a lawyer from the Real Audiencia put it, the spirit of the

56
 “Pragmática sanción para evitar el abuso de contraer matrimonios desiguales” [1776]. In: Jaramillo
Mejía, 2000: 764.
 Purus Ab Omnia Macula Sanguinis 91

Royal Pragmatic “was nothing less than to ensure that families preserve the
luster and honor with which they entered the world, and that nobles not mix
with commoners through the yoke of marriage.”57
Armed with this juridical apparatus, criollo patricians unleashed a counter-
offensive to maintain the apartheid regime that had traditionally upheld their
economic and social privileges.58 Parents could now lodge what were called
“dissent cases,” invoking their right to prevent their children from marrying
people of an “inferior condition” and thereby maintaining the racial homoge-
neity of the family. Despite state efforts to favor the mobility of “the castes of
the land,” the most traditional sectors of colonial society found these dissent
cases to be an ideal mechanism for avoiding interracial marriages. They could
now lean on old rights of nobility and argue that the social mobility of the
castes was a threat to the social stability of the empire since the obligation of
the state was to delineate a juridical barrier of ethnic separation that would
protect the ideal of the white, noble, Catholic man loyal to the sovereign. It is
no coincidence that in the majority of dissent cases lodged in New Granada at
the end of the eighteenth century, opposition to unequal marriages was based
not on economic or social arguments but on racial ones. Their hope was to
counteract the tendency among many noble but impoverished families—with
no resources aside from the capital of their whiteness—to intermarry with
rich mestizos to improve their economic situation.
For example, there is the case brought before a tribunal in Medellín in 1793
by don José Ignacio Callejas, a citizen of the city of Rionegro in Antioquia
province, who sought to prevent his niece from marrying a mestizo busi-
nessman despite the fact that her own father had already consented to the
marriage:

Before your mercy as a person of my confidence and in the best form of law, I
appear and I say: that news has reached me that don Miguel Mejía, a citizen of
this town in Medellín, without reflection and consideration of his quality, and
worried about the wretched situation in which God has put him, and without

57
 “Disenso puesto por don Lucas y don Miguel Jerónimo Mejía al matrimonio que con Lorenzo Parra
intenta contraer doña Salvadora Mejía” [1793]. In: Jaramillo Mejía, 2000: 548.
58
 Toward the end of the eighteenth century, the ethnic cloistering of criollos had reached such a high
degree that a veritable system of racial apartheid was even applied in rural schools. Jaime Jaramillo
Uribe documents the case of the parish priest of Girón, who in 1789 requested from the viceroy
a license to organize a public school. The school regulations proposed by the clergyman included
strict ethnic and social discrimination, tinged with the benevolence of “Christian morality”: “In the
classroom, superior white students would be separated from inferior ones by half a meter. White
children would occupy the first rows, and the commoners and castes those in the rear.” To attenu-
ate the effects of the discrimination, which bothered the priest who authored the initiative, “special
care would be taken so that the children of good stock not audaciously mock or insult those of
lowly origins, nor mix with them but to teach them to ignore them or help them with what they need
as an effect of the generosity that ought to be typical of noble people” (Jaramillo Uribe, 1982: 253).
92 Chapter 2

thinking with the honor that he should, wants to defile and debase his ancestors
and descendants and those of the Orrego family as well, by giving as wife one of
his daughters, named María Josefa, to Miguel Parra . . . I beg of your mercy not
to allow such a marriage, until the above-mentioned Parra proves that his quality
is equal to she who he intends as a consort, since for her part I am prepared to
convince the court that the Orrego, Velásquez and Noreña are not of the same
quality and bad race as the Parra family. With judicial documents I will make
it clear that they are descendants of noble, white, Spaniards, for whose virtue
and with the force of law that aids me and for our own honor (since the father
of the contracting party ignores this most worthy jewel), I oppose the above-
mentioned marriage, making use of the Royal Pragmatic of His Majesty don
Carlos III to do so.59

The petitioner then appealed to the Royal Pragmatic to prevent his family
name from being “tarnished and debased” through unwanted intermarriage
with a person of “bad race.” He presented the tribunal with judicial docu-
ments (birth certificates, baptism records, written testimonies) to prove that
Miguel Parra’s ancestors were publicly renowned to be mestizos or mulattoes
and that they were not of equal racial standing as the Mejía family. Once
the racial inequality between the Parra and the Mejía families, the basis of
the entire juridical argument, had been established, the petitioner introduced
witnesses who emphasized the economic and social inequality of the couple.
Thus, for example, one witness insisted that “the quality of the Parra family
is not distinguished if we focus on their possessions and the trade of black-
smith that many have exercised.”60 Faced with such evidence, and despite the
fact that the Royal Pragmatic favored the authority of the father above other
relatives, the judge declared that “the Mejía family are subjects of distinction
and clean and have remained in this state, and the Parra family in the capac-
ity of the low sphere, for which reason it is seen that there exists between the
engaged parties a notable inequality preventing said marriage, I [therefore]
declare just and reasonable the dissent lodged by don José Ignacio Callejas
and his consort doña Rosalía Orrego, to the matrimony that Miguel Parra
attempted to enter into with doña María Josefa Mejía y Orrego.”61

59
 “Sobre el pleito (porque) Miguel Mejía quiere casar a su hija” [1793]. In: Jaramillo Mejía, 2000:
531. Author’s emphasis.
60
 “Disentimiento interpuesto para impedir el matrimonio entre Miguel Lorenzo Parra y Doña María
Josefa Salvadora Mejía” [1793]. In: Jaramillo Mejía, 2000: 526. In the hegemonic imaginary of
whiteness, as I will show later, mechanical trades—like blacksmithing—were considered appro-
priate to the castes since the ethnic division of society was also and above all an ethnic division
of labor.
61
 “Sobre el pleito (porque) Miguel Mejía quiere casar a su hija” [1793]. In: Jaramillo Mejía, 2000:
541. In this case, it is interesting to see how Miguel Parra attempted to deploy the same juridical
elements as his accuser in order to nullify the dissent case. In the first place, he appealed to the
 Purus Ab Omnia Macula Sanguinis 93

I will cite one further case, documented this time by Virginia Gutiérrez
de Pineda and Roberto Pineda Giraldo, to show that not only skin color but
also a person’s general phenotype played a fundamental role in the discourse
of blood purity that criollos sought to defend at all costs. In the year 1783,
doña Tomasa Salazar decides to lodge a dissent case against the matrimonial
pretensions of her daughter Graciela Varelas with a tailor named Domingo
Gómez. In the judicial record, doña Tomasa affirms that all of her relatives
“are Spanish whites, public and well-known, clean of all bad race,” while her
daughter’s betrothed is “a pure mulatto, old and toothless, the color of dark
cinnamon, pug-nosed and with curly hair.”62 This case clearly shows how
dissent cases were the primary weapon utilized by criollo elites to defend
the inherited cultural capital of whiteness, above all when it was under threat
from Black people.
The values of the dominant criollo ethnic group, sanctioned by the Church
and expressed in the discourse of blood purity, needed to be defended against
the Bourbon state’s attempts to legitimize the social advancement of the
castes. The battle between groups aspiring to racial whitening as a means of
social mobility and the dominant criollo establishment that sought to contain
this process became ever more dramatic with the passing of the eighteenth
century. The “race war” present from the first years of the Conquest intensi-
fied in proportion to the increasing mestizo population. The Bourbon reforms,
in turn, contributed to exacerbating ethnic conflict between different social
groups. The unintended and perverse effect of Bourbon biopolitics was an
increase in the distance between criollo elites and the general population.
Rather than achieving a multiethnic consensus around the rationalist project of
imperial modernity, the reforms became a factor that contributed to fortifying
the ethnic cloistering of elites—a cloistering that would find one of its most
reliable expressions in ideological apparatuses like the colonial university.

2.3 THE WALLS OF THE LETTERED CITY

Up to this point, I have shown that the network of power in New Granadian
society from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries was characterized by the
“coloniality” of its practices, and I attempted to define that coloniality not so

Royal Pragmatic to argue that José Callejas’ claim was not appropriate since his fiancée already
had her father’s consent. When this attempt failed, the accused appealed to the court with the argu-
ment that the ancestors of his fiancée’s family are also mulattoes and therefore that the Parra family
was not racially inferior to the Mejía family (2000: 542). This is an example of how subalterns
attempted to appropriate the same apparatuses of control used by elites and to turn these against the
grain. However, in this case, the social prestige of the Callejas family weighed far more heavily.
62
 Cited by Gutiérrez de Pineda and Pineda Giraldo, 1999: 475.
94 Chapter 2

much in historical terms (“colonialism”), but as a modality of power capable

of producing “subjects.” Alongside Quijano and Mignolo, but also utiliz-
ing concepts drawn from Foucault and Bourdieu, I have sought to describe
this production of subjectivity through the concept of “blood purity.” I have
argued that whiteness was a principle of subjectification shared by dominant
and dominated alike, which served as a catalyzing matrix for social conflicts
in New Granada. The Bourbon reforms, conducted under the global design of
biopolitics, were necessarily caught up and involved in this local history of
knowledge/power. For these reasons, and with attention to Quijano’s obser-
vation that the coloniality of power necessarily gains an epistemic dimension,
we must now ask how the discourse of “blood purity” became embedded in
institutions of knowledge production in New Granada and came to be present
within what I have called zero-point hubris.
However, resolving this problem requires a prior investigation. We need to
first ask about the social status of the producers of this scientific knowledge
and how blood purity contributed to molding their subjectivity. In a word,
we need to ask about the training of a lettered colonial elite and its social
function within the dominant ethnic group. The last section of this chapter
will therefore be dedicated to showing that this educated elite [los letrados]
played a fundamental role in the consolidation and legitimation of a social
order that was hierarchically structured according to ethnic origin. I do so
with attention to Ángel Rama’s observation that colonial letrados did not pas-
sively reflect the dictates of an order imposed from abroad, but themselves
helped to legitimize—through the privilege that writing granted them—an
“order” and a “natural sense” of the social world in which they themselves
participated:

The conquerors . . . required a writer of some sort (a scribe, a notary, a chroni-

cler) to cast their foundational acts in the form of imperishable signs. The
resulting scripture had the high function reserved to notarial documents, which
according to the Spanish formula, give witness or “faith” to the acts they record.
The prestige that could only derive from the written word thus began its porten-
tous imperial career on the American continent.
In Latin America, the written word became the only binding one—in contra-
distinction to the spoken word, which belonged to the realm of things precarious
and uncertain . . . Writing boasted a permanence, a kind of autonomy from the
material world, that imitated eternity and appeared free from the vicissitudes
and metamorphoses of history. Above all, writing consolidated the political
order by giving it rigorously elaborated cultural expression. (Rama, 1996: 6–7).

Rama’s observation is important because it shows us that the function of

the colonial letrados was to use abstract language to give “order” to social
 Purus Ab Omnia Macula Sanguinis 95

dynamics marked by the sign of the “chaotic” and the “dangerous”—dynam-

ics that, according to what we have seen in this chapter, were characterized by
conflict around the symbolic capital of whiteness. Perceiving themselves to
be unconditioned by society, lettered practice established a rupture between
the “doxa” of (other) social practices and the “episteme” of knowledge they
themselves produced. Knowledge thereby acquires a privileged status (a
“value”) within colonial society. The insecurity and precarity of a social
world traversed by the “race war” had to be domesticated through an ideal
order designed by an elite of experts. The letrados were therefore specialists
in the production of an abstract language about divine and human things, a
distant and “auratized” language limited to a small sector of the dominant
white ethnic group. My thesis is that the “ordering reason” of the letrados
was constituted in the hinge joining power to knowledge, that is, on the nec-
essary linkage between the ethnic segmentation of New Granadian society
and the knowledge guaranteeing the legitimate maintenance and control of
that segmentation.

2.3.1 Walls Painted White

From the outset of colonization in the Americas, catechizing Indians was one
of the motives behind training a lettered colonial elite. Insofar as the colonial
enterprise was ideologically justified by the imperative to convert the Indians,
the leadership of the secular clergy (bishops and archbishops) and religious
orders (Franciscans, Augustinians, Dominicans, and Jesuits) advocated for
the establishment of schools and universities that would adequately prepare
aspiring priests. However, not all church leaders agreed on the appropriate-
ness of giving Indians the opportunity to receive education and be ordained
as priests. We know that in the viceroyalty of New Spain, Franciscans and
Jesuits attempted to educate in Latin, the arts, theology, and philosophy an
Indian elite capable of joining the priesthood, obtaining academic degrees,
and even occupying native language chairs in the university.63 But this initia-
tive clashed with opposition from the secular clergy and Dominicans, who
questioned the mental capacity of Indians to assimilate the abstract language
of western knowledge. Their lack of moral fortitude, their natural tendency
toward drunkenness, and the fear that they might mix Christian doctrine with
idolatry were some of the arguments utilized (Chocano Mena, 2000: 66–68).

63
 Hans-Albert Steger (1974: 228) mentions the case of the Indian Antonio López, who was appointed
by the University of Guatemala to a chair in the Cakchiquel language. But traditional elites were
so alarmed that they managed to annul López’s appointment by accusing him of allegedly being
drunk while giving his classes.
96 Chapter 2

In New Granada, there was also opposition to Indians learning the

humanities and being ordained as priests. At most, and in light of the need
for native language preachers, Indians were allowed to occupy the “lower
orders” and study in some schools governed by Augustinians and Jesuits.
But as the Indigenous population declined, the few existing chairs in the
Chibcha language began to disappear, as did the Crown’s interest in conver-
sion. The advent of the Bourbons consolidated this tendency, and in 1770
King Carlos III ordered the eradication of Indigenous languages and only
authorized the official use of the Castilian language.64 Adding to this was
the suspicion weighing on mestizos as well from an ecclesiastical apparatus
dominated by criollos and peninsular Spanish. Not only illegitimacy but also
blood mixing was seen as an obstacle to obtaining positions in the church or
accessing the knowledge of lettered culture. Mestizos could only be ordained
as priests after the bishops had approved a rigorous and exhaustive report on
their life and habits.
With access to the education of the Church limited to Indians, Black
people, and mestizos, and with the need to learn or teach Indigenous lan-
guages undermined, a wall was gradually built around lettered culture made
up of ethnic distinctions. Dominant white elites were determined to prevent
the incursion of the castes into the sacrosanct precinct of knowledge and to
reserve the exclusivity of intellectual labor for themselves. Some literate
Indians and mestizos could certainly work as notaries, but with rare excep-
tions, none could enter the temple where the cadre of high intellectual life
were trained: universities and residential colleges [colegios mayores].
In effect, from the beginning of the colonial period universities in New
Granada had functioned as platforms for legitimizing the dominant white eth-
nic group’s monopoly on the highest administrative and ecclesiastical posts.
The university population was a society apart, limited to the most select elites
and composed of individuals who aspired to hold positions of political and
spiritual leadership in the colonies. No one was allowed to enter the univer-
sity who did not belong to these social groups by race and lineage. The found-
ing charter of the Colegio Mayor de Nuestra Señora del Rosario, drafted in
1653 by the archbishop friar Cristóbal de Torres, puts it clearly as follows:

64
 In line with his modernizing policies, Carlos III sought to homogenize the Spanish empire with
the goal of more efficient administration. More than a king, this required a religion and a law, a
single language, and a single system of weights and measures. His royal declaration of 1770 argued
that the existence of many languages was unfavorable to commerce and confused subjects like the
Tower of Babel, and he therefore ordered that all preaching to Indians be done in Castilian. At the
same time, he ordered that “the different languages used in the same dominion be eradicated, and
only Castilian be spoken.” “Real cédula para que en los reinos de Indias se extingan los diferentes
idiomas de que se usa y sólo se hable el castellano.” In: Tanck de Estrada, 1985: 37–45.
 Purus Ab Omnia Macula Sanguinis 97

All the students to be received from now on, we establish that they shall provide
proof at least of cleanliness, a quality requested by all residential colleges; and
that this is precisely necessary to serve the Holy Tribunal of the Inquisition.
In addition, we also establish that where possible, those of illustrious blood
are preferred; and that if not notably inferior in ability they will be necessarily
selected, since this represents a great part of the greatness of this College, and its
veneration and appreciation, for which we establish that all pupils be legitimate
children, without the opposite being dispensable; and we even want their parents
to be legitimate, and that the opposite be granted only with great cause; the sec-
ond being that the parents do not have lowly trades, much less those considered
infamous by the laws of the kingdom, without this being dispensable either; the
third being that they not have blood of the land, and that if their progenitors did,
they have left this condition so that they might have a custom of nobility and
not another sort; and the fourth being that they be persons of great hope for the
public good.65

This text shows that those aspiring to enter the university needed to fulfill
several religious, ethnic, social, and economic conditions. At a religious
level, candidates should be “of clean blood,” which is to say old Christians
without any ethnic contamination by gypsies or Jews, under penalty of being
denounced before the Inquisition. We have already seen how this formed part
of an apparatus that sought to maintain the purity of the Catholic faith in the
colonies. But the discourse of blood purity also presupposed the maintenance
of the apparatus of whiteness that I have discussed at length. This explains
the requirement that not only the candidate but their parents as well must be
legitimate children, that they not dedicate themselves to “lowly trades,” and
that above all the not be stained by the “blood of the land”—that they not
be mixed with Blacks, Indians, mestizos, or mulattoes. Finally, candidates
needed to prove that they belonged socially to “noble families,” meaning that
pupils must possess a social and economic status such that they be seen as
“persons of great hope for the public good.”66
The institution of the university functioned in the colonial period as a
rigid mechanism for legitimizing whiteness as inherited cultural capital. As
Bourdieu has shown, elites tend to perpetuate their social being—that is, to

65
 “Constituciones para el Colegio Mayor de Nuestra Señora del Rosario” [1654]. Title III, Constitu-
tion III (author’s emphasis).
66
 These requirements were not exclusive to the Colegio Mayor de Rosario. The Colegio de San
Bartolomé, governed by Jesuit priests, similarly demanded that its students be “Spaniards,” that is,
white. The founding charter of the Colegio Seminario, signed on October 18, 1605, stipulates that:
“we order that the persons who might enter said seminary be poor, Spaniards, born of legitimate
marriage, and of an age of at least twelve years; and that they know how to read and write; of good
habits and abilities; and all else equal with a preference for the descendants of conquistadors” (cited
by Jaramillo Mejía, 1996: 23).
98 Chapter 2

reproduce their wealth—through strategies of fertility, marriage, economics,

and above all education (Bourdieu, 1998: 20). This explains why families
from the dominant class want their children educated in the most prestigious
schools since these lead to the highest social positions. Seen from this per-
spective, the school system is a bridge between the primary habitus acquired
within the family and accomplishing the social aspirations engendered by this
habitus. Schooling institutes and legitimizes social rank distinctions since it
naturalizes (and universalizes) the habitus of the dominant classes. We have
already seen how, in the case of New Granadian society, this difference of
social rank was above all an ethnic one. The discourse of blood purity and
the “pathos of distance” from the castes formed part of the primary habitus of
elites. Higher education thereby transformed de facto social differences into
de jure ethnic differences. So if a member of a criollo family was accepted
into the university, this meant public recognition of their “whiteness,” or the
social legitimation of their inherited cultural capital.
To enroll at the two residential colleges in Bogotá (San Bartolomé or
Rosario) or at the three universities operating in Quito (the Jesuit San
Gregorio Magno, the Dominican Santo Tomás, or the Augustinian San
Fulgencio), candidates were subjected to a rigorous interrogation called the
“information.”67 Only if the candidate fully satisfied the requisites demanded
in the interrogation could they then be admitted as a member of the college.
To carry out the selection process, the college in question designated several
commissioners and a notary to record the testimony of the witnesses (gener-
ally two) convoked to certify the candidate’s “nobility.” In the Colegio de San
Bartolomé in Bogotá, the procedure was rigorously regulated:

After the rector and the nine councilors who are appointed to investigate the
nobility of the candidate, the secretary is instructed to take the statements, he
will go to the secretariat with the two annual councilors, and execute the follow-
ing: First he will make the witnesses, who are noble people, swear by Our Lord
and the sign of the cross. After finishing, the statement will be read to the wit-
ness and the latter will be made to sign it. (cited by Jaramillo Mejía, 1996: 55)

The ritualism of the “information” is not exaggerated but corresponded in

reality to a public ceremony establishing a legitimate separation between
whites and the castes, proclaiming the establishment of ethnic borders valid
for life. Ethnically separated from the rest of the population, those admitted

67
 Entering a college usually involved paying a tuition fee (convictores) or winning a scholarship
(becarios). The Colegio Mayor de Rosario normally offered fifteen scholarships per academic
period, while San Bartolomé usually offered ten to twelve. There were also royal scholarships for
the children of functionaries of the Crown (Silva, 1992a: 178).
 Purus Ab Omnia Macula Sanguinis 99

to matriculate (or “don the robe”) were anointed, as in a knighting ceremony,

to assume the material and spiritual leadership of society.68 And so for a can-
didate to be rejected by a college created a profound personal and collective
crisis, since it meant not only being excluded from the “right to lead” that
they felt entitled to by birth, but also exposing their entire families to public
disgrace, reducing them to the uncomfortable condition of “non-white.”
In effect, if we look at the interrogation to which witnesses were subjected,
we can understand fully the gravity of possible rejection. In the case of the
Colegio de San Bartolomé in 1689, the interrogation consisted of six ques-
tions. They were asked specifically about the legitimacy and blood purity of
the candidate (“clean of all bad race, from Moors and Jews and those pun-
ished by the Inquisition”); about whether their ancestors were “clean of the
Indian and Black slave races”; and about the labor and juridical condition of
their parents (Jaramillo Mejía, 1996: 52). By 1777, when criollo elites felt
threatened by increasing mestizaje and the social mobility policies of the
Bourbons, admission requirements became even stricter. Now there were
seven questions inquiring not only about the candidate but also their parents
and grandparents (“legitimate children”), seeking to determine if anyone in
the family had engaged in “vile or mechanical trades,” and any of the can-
didates’ ancestors were “stained by the vileness, or any bad race like Jews,
Moors, mulattos, mestizos, or recent converts.” Moreover, witnesses were
interrogated as to the candidate’s “life and habits” since the college needed to
ensure that none “suffered a chronic ailment or contagious disease.”
Admission to residential colleges and the awarding of scholarships there-
fore presupposed a rigorous process of ethnic, religious, and social selection
that only members of the most prominent families could successfully pass.
For their part, family dynasties competed for scholarships since—like enco-
miendas and slaves—these could be passed by inheritance from fathers to
sons and from brother to brother (Silva, 1992a: 195). In this way, the most
powerful families put their whiteness on public display and assured their
control and access to public posts,69 so that “donning the robe” in one of the

68
 I take this comparison from Bourdieu (1998: 22), who uses it to refer to graduation ceremonies.
But Bourdieu’s metaphor is also apt for the case of New Granada. The Universidad Tomística
de Santafé, the only accredited degree-granting institution of higher education in New Granada,
included the following recitation on its diplomas: vir purus ab omni macula sanguinis atque legi-
timus et natalibus descendens. This certification of legitimate birth and pure blood functioned as
recognition of the graduate’s “whiteness” and thereby as an initiation rite into the world of public
responsibilities.
69
 Of course, academic titles were neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for accessing the
highest bureaucratic posts. The clearest example of this is don Jorge Miguel Lozano de Peralta, the
Marquis of San Jorge, who despite not finishing his legal studies at the Colegio Mayor de Rosario,
was nevertheless a city councilor in Bogotá, mayor of the city, and major sergeant of the militias
(Gutiérrez Ramos, 1998: 122; 131). Neither after the colonial era, nor during the entire nineteenth
century or much of the twentieth have we seen the professionalization of public posts in Colombia.
100 Chapter 2

residential colleges meant joining the most select clan in New Granadian
society.70 Some of the most eminent thinkers and scientists of New Granada’s
Enlightenment belonged to this select clan: Francisco Antonio Zea, Francisco
José de Caldas, José Félix de Restrepo, Frutos Joaquín Gutiérrez, Eloy
Valenzuela, Camilo Torres, Diego Martín Tanco, José María Salazar, Pedro
Fermín de Vargas, Jorge Tadeo Lozano, José Ignacio de Pombo, and many
more.
However, there was a group of candidates who did not need to present such
“information” in order to enroll in colleges and who did not therefore belong
to the category of “clean whites.” These were called “manteos,” “manteístas,”
or “capistas,”71 generally children of wealthy mestizos recruited to cover
the immense need for priests. As I have already said, mestizos were only
admitted to the priesthood and education after individualized and exhaustive
scrutiny. Once admitted to the college, manteos represented a separate ethnic
group. They could not have much contact with the white students and so were
required to live outside the cloister despite the fact that their parents paid full
room and board. Once they had finished their studies, they could not aspire
to positions of high leadership but were instead destined to occupy interme-
diate and subordinate positions (as parish priests or notaries), which were
nevertheless necessary in a largely illiterate society. Little is currently known
about manteos due to the lack of documentary sources. Renán Silva describes
them as having constant disciplinary problems with college authorities and
as having produced some captains and other heroes of the independence wars
(Silva, 1992a: 223).
We should add that professors were also required to fully prove their
condition as white to be able to teach in the colleges. While professors were
generally recruited from the contingents of graduates from the same college,
thereby assuring a prior process of ethnic selection, this was not considered
sufficient. On many occasions, and to clear up all doubts about the racial
quality of a professor, the “information” process was demanded when the
university convoked the “competition for chairs.” Jaime Jaramillo Uribe doc-
uments the case of a priest named Pedro Carracedo, a graduate of the Colegio

70
 Renán Silva has shown how four families from different regions of the kingdom hoarded scholar-
ships from the Colegio Mayor de Rosario during most of the eighteenth century. The Flórez family
from Bogotá obtained sixteen scholarships between 1662 and 1776; the Díaz-Granados family
from Santa Marta obtained twelve between 1772 and 1772 and 1800; the Caicedo family from
Cali obtained eleven between 1777 and 1811, while the Camacho family from Tunja obtained ten
scholarships between 1773 and 1819 (Silva, 1992a: 197). In the same study, Silva has also shown
that 20.8 percent of scholarships granted by the Colegio Mayor del Rosario between 1660 and 1830
were obtained by the children of conquistadors and settlers, 18.2 percent by the children of royal
functionaries and 9.5 percent by the children of encomenderos. During this extended period, only
a single scholarship was awarded to the son of a merchant.
71
 [Trans. note. Manteo refers to a cloak, capista is derived from cape]
 Purus Ab Omnia Macula Sanguinis 101

de San Bartolomé who received a doctorate from the Universidad Tomística,

and who stood for a vacant chair in philosophy at the Colegio Seminario de
San Carlos in Cartagena. Don Juan José Sotomayor, who was also a candidate
for the chair, alleged that despite his academic titles and recommendations,
Carracedo did not qualify as a candidate because he was mulatto, since his
mother was the illegitimate daughter of a Black woman:

The title of presbyter should not be considered as sufficient judgment in the

case, because in addition to the information required by the Holy Council of
Trent, such titles are not indicative of rigorous blood purity, in this diocese
they are often dispensed out of necessity, as indeed occurred in the case of the
presbyter in question. This is why the University must be more scrupulously
managed regarding a matter of such importance to its decorum, demanding the
respective purity required by its statutes . . . The constitutions of our College
necessarily require the circumstance of having descended from Spanish par-
ents who are clean of all bad race, which is not the case with solicitor Matías
Carracedo and Manuela Yraola, the parents of our opponent . . . being forced to
add, although with regret, that they are taken for and reputed to be mulattos, and
particularly the mother, illegitimate daughter of a Black woman who still lives,
confirming these facts not only through their notoriety, but also her refusal to
define herself. (cited by Jaramillo Uribe, 1989: 187)

On the other hand, the demand for blood purity also applied to relatives who
accompanied the pupils. Regulations for residential colleges stipulated that
students—most of whom enrolled from a very young age—could be per-
manently supported by relatives serving as “tutors.” These relatives could
even work in the college as sacristans or secretaries but were subject to strict
discipline. Regardless of age, they wore a uniform with no coat of arms, ate
the same meals in the refectory as everyone else, and were subordinated to
the rector of the cloister. For their part, students and their relatives could be
accompanied by servants tasked with carrying out “minor trades.” But the
rules were very clear: “We do not want pupils [or their families] to each
have their own Indian servants since it would lead to great disturbances and
infidelities.”72 This rule, however, which sought to avoid private service by
members of the castes, did not apply to the dowries that students brought
with them. It was customary for parents to “donate” a small number of

72
 “Constituciones para el Colegio Mayor de Nuestra Señora del Rosario” [1654]. Title iii, Constitu-
tion x.
102 Chapter 2

servants—Indians, mestizo peons, or Black slaves—for agricultural labor on

the college haciendas.73
In effect, slave labor was systematically used to support the whitening
regime of the colleges. The historic archive of the Colegio Mayor de Nuestra
Señora del Rosario is full of transactions documenting the purchase of Black
slaves by the rector himself, who set them to agricultural work on the col-
lege’s numerous haciendas (Ortega Ricaurte, 2002: 137–145). The historian
Germán Colmenares (1998: 67) has shown that one of the largest investments
made by Jesuits was the purchase of Black slaves, which they used for hard
labor in the more than one hundred haciendas that sustained their colleges in
New Granada. These haciendas were managed according to a strict economic
rationality. The Jesuits calculated the depreciation of their haciendas due to
the decline in the Indigenous workforce and the impact that this demographic
factor could have for covering college expenses, which is why they preferred
to use Black and not Indigenous workers.74 Black people worked in cattle
farming, as well as in the production of cacao, beans, and sugar. The Jesuits
kept their slaves under lock and key, separating men from women, and physi-
cally punished those who refused to work, although such punishments were
not to be excessive and under no circumstances could they be administered
by the fathers themselves. Furthermore, to avoid the temptations of the flesh,
priests were not allowed to be present when Black women were punished.
To summarize, we could say that colonial universities, built on the dis-
ciplinary model of the convent, were a closed (private) space for “training”
the intellectual personality in accordance with the ethnic and social expecta-
tions of the ruling elite. In this separatist environment, the lettered minority
defined itself not only by its racial ascription but also found social meaning
for its existence in those ethnic distinctions that were now legitimized by the
privilege of knowledge. The lettered belonged to an elite group and embraced
as natural those interests, ways of thinking, tastes and lifestyles, in sum,

73
 At their foundation, colleges needed to guarantee the possession of sufficient income to cover
necessities. The possession and management of large haciendas, bought or donated, including the
Indians, mestizos, and Black people who worked there, was how they obtained this income. In the
inventory of haciendas that constituted the “initial capital” of the Colegio Mayor del Rosario, the
archbishop friar Cristóbal de Torres includes the donation of a slave workforce: “There are forty
slaves on these haciendas, according to the numbers provided to us, men, women, and children.
Having the Achaguas [a local indigenous group], which your Excellency granted us, these will not
be necessary, because they tell us the Achaguas are of better and greater service. It will therefore
be decided to sell said slaves, at least thirty of them, and use for rent what these slaves bring, which
will be about eight or nine thousand pesos, and will rent four-hundred” (Constituciones para el
Colegio Mayor de Nuestra Señora del Rosario. Título i, Punto i).
74
 Germán Colmenares (1998: 57–66) argues that this preference for Black slaves could have resulted
from the fact that Spanish laws prohibited the granting of encomiendas to priests and also to the
progressive deterioration that the encomiendas suffered as a form of organization during the sev-
enteenth century. However, he also demonstrates that the Jesuits enjoyed the largesse of “personal
service” by Indigenous people and that some haciendas had more than 120 Indigenous workers.
 Purus Ab Omnia Macula Sanguinis 103

the entire system of assumptions tied to the habitus of the dominant white
ethnic group. Their original experience of the social (their primary habitus),
marked by the apparatus of whiteness, was fundamental for constituting their
subjectivity.75 Elites, so to speak, blocked the castes’ access to the lettered
city by the “front door” but supported it through the “back door” since they
used Black and Indigenous labor on the haciendas that sustained the colleges
economically. In this way, Black people, Indians, and mestizos helped to
materially uphold the same apparatus that excluded them.

2.3.2 Battles for University Capital

As we have seen, Bourbon biopolitics represented a violent intervention into
an elite criollo habitus based on the apparatus of whiteness. The reforms
sought to reduce the privileges of the nobility and increase the social mobil-
ity of the castes, strengthening the unity of the empire under the control of
the state. Above belonging to any caste, ethnic group, or social condition,
all loyalties had to point toward a single center. The Bourbon state sought
to integrate all social sectors into a single “national culture” on the basis of
shared traditions (language, allegiance, and religion). The old concept of a
multiplicity of autonomous kingdoms united by the person of the king thus
disappeared, giving way to the idea of a homogeneous national state (König,
1994: 59). The overseas “kingdoms” of the past now became colonies, whose
obligation was to furnish significant economic benefits to the central state. As
I have said, this meant installing the economic model as the ideal of “good
government.”
One of the central objectives of the reforms was to reduce the influence
of “private” entities like the Catholic Church in all spheres of society. The
imperative to concentrate capital demanded that the state receive tribute
and profits from all Church possessions. It is enough to remember that the
Church owned a large portion of productive lands in the colonies and that
the entire educational apparatus was under its control. If the point was to
intensify agricultural production, create a new kind of “economic subject,”
and put the new science into the service of exploring natural resources,
then it is clear why the religious orders stood in the way of Bourbon bio-
politics. It would be impossible to implement the global designs of the state
if the religious orders (and the Jesuits above all) continued to exercise an

75
 As I will seek to show in the next chapters, New Granadian letrados—and in particular, enlightened
thinkers in the second half of the eighteenth century—reintroduced the unconscious assumptions of
their first experience of the social into their scientific practices. Which means that the populational
and territorial classifications on which they worked were traversed by what I have called here the
“spontaneous sociology” of elites.
104 Chapter 2

undeniable moral authority over the population, on top of hoarding the eco-
nomic resources of their immense estates [latifundios] and monopolizing
the education of elites. The 1767 expulsion of the Jesuits was an important
step in the attempt to strengthen state authority, but it still needed to dis-
mantle the educational apparatus that they left behind as their legacy and
to replace it with a new one suited to the imperatives of governmentality.
Education needed to be placed under state control and toward its ends,
leading to a permanent conflict between the “two swords”: civil power and
ecclesiastical power.
The colleges of the Society of Jesus in New Granada were governed by
what was called the Ratio Studiorum, a pedagogical treatise prescribing
how the educational mission of the Jesuits should be carried out. The Jesuit
educational ideal was centered on the religious and “characterological” devel-
opment of the student. This entailed a practical apprenticeship in Christian
virtues through strict isolation from the world in line with the private model
of the convent.76 Students were to be protected from contagion by the “lowly
people,” as befitting the children of the aristocracy. It was important to avoid
any situation of “moral danger,” and so the behavior of students both within
and outside the college needed to be closely watched by a “decurion” or a
classmate in charge of ten students and relieved weekly, whose mission it
was to inform the teachers of any offense observed among his companions
(Bertrán-Quera, 1984: 26). Students were prohibited from attending any type
of public spectacle or having direct contact with women in the cloister or in
the street.77

76
 Discipline within the colleges was truly like that of a convent. Father Manuel Pacheco, historian
for the Society of Jesus in Colombia, described the daily routine of students at the Colegio de San
Bartolomé as follows: “The pupil at San Bartolomé was awoken from sleep by a bell rung at five
in the morning. He had a half-hour to get dressed and ready, because at half past five he was to
be in the chapel for a quarter-hour of mental or vocal prayer. He then dedicated himself to study-
ing for an hour and a quarter. Lunch or breakfast followed at seven. He then went to the college
of the Society to attend mass and classes. He then returned to the college at ten-thirty for half an
hour of study there. At eleven, the bell rang to eat. All lined up for the dining-hall and remained
standing next to their seats for the father Rector to bless the table before they would sit. During
the meal, they read some instructive book, not only to increase the pupils’ knowledge but also to
better maintain silence. At the end of the meal they were granted some time for recreation, during
which all students went together to a location designated for this effect. At one o’clock, one hour of
studying, and at two they returned again to the college to attend classes until five. In the seminary
again they were allowed a snack and rest until six. Then came an hour of studying and at seven the
repetition of the lessons heard throughout the day. At seven and three-quarters dinner followed by
a brief recess. Before going to bed, they went to the chapel to pray the litanies and examine their
consciences. At nine, the bell gave the signal to sleep, and a quarter of an hour later the lights were
to be put out” (Pacheco, 1989: 130–131).
77
 The Constitutions of the Colegio de San Bartolomé (1605) stipulated the following: “No woman
will enter the College, no matter how important, nor for any reason, nor to converse or party, under
penalty of greater excommunication ipso facto incurrenda” (cited by Jaramillo Mejía, 1996: 23).
 Purus Ab Omnia Macula Sanguinis 105

In terms of academic training, students at Jesuit colleges advanced their stud-

ies in three progressive stages: grammar, philosophy, and theology. Grammar
classes—also called “humanities”—focused on learning and utilizing Latin.
Texts by Cicero, Virgil, Erasmus, and Vives were used to practice reading,
interpretation, writing, and the translation of Latin classics. The study of phi-
losophy lasted four years and included classes in logic, natural philosophy,
moral philosophy, and metaphysics. Aristotle was seen as the most eminent
authority in all these subjects, although students also read texts by Duns
Scotus, Porphyry, Molina, and Suárez. Theological education centered on
studying Saint Thomas Aquinas, with two daily lessons before and after
meals, but also with an emphasis on holy scripture and moral theology. The
teaching method was one of repetition, recitation, and disputation. The class
was divided into “decuries,” groups of ten students under the oversight of
a “decurion” whose role was to make his classmates recite their lesson and
then report the results to the teacher (Bertrán-Quera, 1984: 42). It was also
common to divide the class into two sides that would stage a confrontation
between a thesis to be defended and another thesis to be attacked. The most
important thing here was not so much judgment as the exercise of memory,
whose objective was to stimulate the internalization of lessons.
As we can see, and with the exception of some courses given by the
Jesuits on astronomy, mathematics, and cosmography78 and other courses on
medicine at the Colegio del Rosario in Bogotá and Santo Tomás University
in Quito, New Granadian education focused on the quasi-rote learning of
texts written in Greek or Latin. The canon of study was entirely fixed by
the religious orders, without any state intervention. The advances made by
European sciences since the seventeenth century were practically unknown
in New Granada a century later. It was not Newton, Galileo, or Copernicus
but Aristotle and Aquinas who were charged with guiding students toward the
“scientific” study of nature. Logic and theology were seen as “foundational”
for any study of the social and natural world. And this occurred not only in
the Jesuit colleges but in all other educational institutions in the viceroyalty.
The Colegio Mayor del Rosario, run by Dominican priests, stipulated the
following:

We order that no one in the school can hear any other Faculty, without first
having heard the Arts of Saint Thomas, for many reasons: first, because it is
not correct that they hear the Theology of Saint Thomas without first studying

78
 “According to the Ratio [Studiorum], teaching will begin with Euclid, practical arithmetic, geom-
etry, principles of astronomy, cosmography. Later it moves on to the broader study of geometry,
surveying, the theory of the planets. Ptolemy, the letters of Johann Regiomontano, the Alfonsine
tables, etc. are also studied. Without forgetting the treatise on music” (Bertrán-Quera, 1984: 23).
106 Chapter 2

the Arts of Saint Thomas; second, because medicine also needs this foundation;
third, because laws and canons cannot be fully achieved without this precaution,
as logical truths teach us; and without these fundamentals they are not accom-
plished in canon law or legists.79

But this situation would begin to change once the expulsion of the Jesuits
was consolidated. In 1768, King Carlos III ordered a full inventory of their
goods (haciendas, churches, libraries, and colleges) in order to put these in the
service of the “public good” (Soto, 1993: 5). That same year, the prosecutor-
protector of Indians in the New Kingdom of Granada, don Francisco Antonio
Moreno y Escandón, was commissioned by the viceroy to write a report on
the state of education. His mission was to evaluate the necessary conditions
for founding and financing a public university in New Granada. The objec-
tive of the Bourbon state was to dismantle the private model of the convent
and declare education an object of “public utility.” From that point on, the
educational system was to be subordinated to economic policies of the state,
where the dominant values were orchestrated in the name of utility, material
prosperity, and public happiness. In this new enlightened context, scientific
education was seen by the state as an indispensable requirement for the
implementation of its economic project.
Moreno y Escandón denounced the monopoly religious orders enjoyed
over colonial universities, criticizing the uselessness of studies centered on
the private education of their own members. The consequence of this was that
religious orders imparted a type of education aimed at training priests, theolo-
gians, and metaphysicians, while preventing the state from interfering in the
content of that education. Imperial biopolitics, by contrast, needed the public
and secular training of judges, doctors, and scientists faithful to the modern-
izing goals of the state, making state control over academic processes increas-
ingly urgent. The curriculum reform thus entailed replacing the “humanities”
(grammar, rhetoric) with the “useful sciences” (mathematics, physics)80:

If in all the wise world the introduction of useful philosophy has been necessary,
purging logic and metaphysics of useless and reflex issues, and replacing what

79
 “Constituciones para el Colegio Mayor de Nuestra Señora del Rosario” [1654]. Título v, Consti-
tución v.
80
 Pierre Bourdieu has shown how the opposition between these two areas of knowledge is rooted in
the struggle between two principles for legitimizing knowledge. One, represented by the defense of
the humanities, ties knowledge to ethics (the private sphere) and its administration by the Church.
The other, represented by the useful sciences, ties knowledge to the economy (the public sphere)
and its administration by the state. As Bourdieu writes in Homo Academicus: “A support for sci-
ence which is confined with the hostile relationship which the Roman Catholic bourgeoise has
always had with science. It has long tended to channel its children into private education, which
upholds the moral order” (Bourdieu, 1988: 51).
 Purus Ab Omnia Macula Sanguinis 107

had been taught under the name of physics with the solid knowledge of nature
supported by observation and experience: nowhere in the world does this seem
more necessary than in these fertile countries, whose soil and sky invite us to
recognize the wonders of the Most High placed so far from the wise academies,
to exercise at some time the curiosity of the Americans. (Moreno and Escandón,
1982 [1774]: 62)

The commercial exploitation of these “fertile countries” thus demanded

a radical change in the institutional status of knowledge, starting with the
language in which this knowledge was produced and transmitted. Latin,
for centuries the privileged vehicle for accessing lettered knowledge, began
to give way to pressure from European vernacular languages in which the
new scientific knowledge of modernity was being produced. This is why the
prosecutor believed that courses in Latin, useful perhaps for understanding
ancient poetry and theological texts (“useless musings and sophistry”), in no
way helped to train the kind of homo academicus that the state needed. The
elimination of Latin from university studies was geared not only toward edu-
cating a cohort of linguistically homogeneous subjects, but also a broad group
of letrados capable of producing knowledges in their own language. The state
required knowledges that were subjected to the model of economic rational-
ity: useful to society, sociable, reconvertible into government policies, able
to circulate quickly and reach a greater number of users. As a result, the
foundation of philosophy could not be Aristotelian logic, which according to
Moreno y Escandón “corrupts the understanding of the children, forcing them
to syllogize from their very first lessons,” but instead mathematics. In the first
year of philosophy they should study basic arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and
trigonometry. In the second year, the prosecutor considered it indispensable
to introduce the student to basic elements of modern physics, according to
the Newtonian method:

The utilities resulting from this instruction will be infinite both for their own
benefit and the common benefit of a country whose geography, natural history,
meteorological observations, field of agriculture, and knowledge of precious
minerals are crying out for instruction, which priests can only achieve leading
other men in their parishes. This will be the source of universal influence for
the promotion of agriculture, the arts, and commerce throughout the kingdom,
whose ignorance has reduced them to the greatest dejection. (Moreno and
Escandón, 1982 [1774]: 67)

It was therefore clear that humanistic education needed to be displaced in

favor of a technical and scientific education that would be useful for the
state’s governing projects. But the superiority of the empirical investigation
108 Chapter 2

of nature over the study and interpretation of canonical texts was not merely
an epistemological postulate. The economic rationality of the state demanded
an optimization of existing natural resources based on scientific knowledge.
Science, stripped of its humanistic past, needed to become a fundamental pil-
lar of biopolitics. Birth-rate policies, programs for eliminating idleness, the
promotion of work, colonization projects for depopulated areas, hygiene cam-
paigns, the establishment of orphanages, in short, the entire governmentality
project needed to be legitimized by the “unquestioned” results of the new sci-
ence. “Public happiness” no longer required moral or theological legitimacy,
but a scientific guarantee.
But the new educational policy caused great unrest not only within the
religious orders directly impacted by the loss of their monopolies but also
among the local criollo elite. We have already seen how the mere admission
of some of their members into the university was an important mechanism
of social legitimation for aristocratic families. More than the opportunity to
access new knowledge, higher education was seen by students as recognition
of their family’s noble status. But the Bourbon reforms radically changed this
perspective. The introduction of empirical research methods demanded the
development of new competencies by students, whose acquisition had noth-
ing to do with the social status of their family but with a personal effort to
seek the truth instead of memorizing it. The proposed elimination of the lectio
and disputatio as teaching methods meant precisely that truth was an arduous
process of conquest, not the repetition of formulas frozen in time. Candidates
for public office needed to understand that the intellectual aristocracy of the
humanists was to be replaced by the meritocracy of the technicians and sci-
entists. But not all criollo aristocrats were willing to accept this.
On the other hand, Moreno y Escandón’s reforms affected the economic
interests of the Dominicans, who after the expulsion of the Jesuits had enjoyed
the privilege of having the only university authorized to grant degrees. Up to
the moment of their expulsion, the Jesuits had maintained a legal and politi-
cal battle before the Crown for the same rights as the Dominicans to grant
degrees, since without this privilege their graduates could be excluded from
high administrative positions, civil as well as ecclesiastical.81 The efforts
of the Society were successful but truncated by its forced exile, which the
Dominicans skillfully took advantage of to capture vast economic resources.
However, Moreno y Escandón does not look kindly on the fact that payment
for graduation rights would fall into private hands without the state receiving
any benefit:

81
 On this dispute between the Colleges of San Bartolomé and Rosario, see: Silva, 1992a: 41–44. For
the case of the dispute between Jesuits and Dominicans in Quito, see: Vargas, 1983.
 Purus Ab Omnia Macula Sanguinis 109

In this capital, the sacred religion of preachers in its Santo Domingo convent
enjoys the faculty of conferring degrees up to that of Doctor, a permission that
gives them the name of university and for which the same religion appoints one
of its members as rector, and Religious Lecturers of the same convent . . . They
receive the price of the degrees, and more for arguments, which they distribute
among themselves. (Moreno and Escandón, 1982 [1774]: 60).

Dominican friars, official defenders of Thomism, did not oppose the educa-
tional reform simply because they believed it contravened Holy Scripture—
since it included Copernicus’ heretical teachings—but above all because it
would strip them of their monopoly on higher education. The introduction of
the new scientific curriculum implied that graduates trained in the old schools
would be displaced by enlightened young graduates trained in geography,
natural history, meteorology, and agriculture (Safford 1989: 134). Behind
this conflict of disciplines was competition for access to bureaucratic posts
and the defense of old economic privileges. For this reason, the Dominicans
mobilized their influence in Madrid and Bogotá to finally doom Moreno y
Escandón’s proposed reform plan to failure (Soto, 1993: 53–57).82 Opposition
led by the Dominicans and joined by the majority of the criollo elite was
proof that that the expropriation policies implemented by the Bourbons “from
above” clashed directly with the apparatus of whiteness forged through three
centuries of colonization. Their violent incursion into criollo habitus would
eventually seal the failure of the Bourbon reforms in New Granada.
Metropolitan biopolitics divided criollo elites into two sides, orthodox and
enlightened, who embraced opposing attitudes toward the reformist project
of the state. The enlightened sector identified with the pathos of novelty
since they were convinced that society had to be renovated as a whole, that
it was necessary to break with traditional forms of producing and transmit-
ting knowledge, and that modern science would provide the tools to invent
everything from zero. The orthodox sector, by contrast, considered this
attitude to be dangerous to the status quo and saw in the enlightened sector

82
 During his time in Bogotá, the German scientist Alexander von Humboldt was a privileged witness
to this struggle for control over university knowledge between the state and the Dominican priests,
although his stubbornly “enlightened optimism” toward the outcome would be frustrated: “Mutis,
who has had such a great influence on the enlightenment of this region, was the first who dared, in
Santafé [Bogotá] in 1763, to demonstrate in a program the advantages of Newtonian philosophy
over peripatetics, teaching the former publicly as professor of mathematics at the Colegio del Rosa-
rio. The Dominicans, who swear on the writings of Saint Thomas, wanted to accuse him of heresy
and denounce him to the Inquisition, but without success . . . Father Rosas, an affable monk from
the convent of San Augustín with whom I lived in great friendship, wanted to publicly defend the
Copernican system in the convent. The Dominicans were alarmed and prosecutor Blaja opposed
the Copernican system due to the decree of the Junta. The Viceroy left the decision on the matter to
two clerics, one of whom was Mutis . . . The Augustinian monk defended his thesis, to the disgust
of the Dominicans”(Humboldt, 1982 [1801a]: 46).
110 Chapter 2

the embodiment of all evil, assuming an aggressive attitude toward them.

Gonzalo Hernández de Alba describes how some students from the orthodox
wing lit a bonfire in Bogotá’s central plaza to burn a portrait of the enlight-
ened criollo Frutos Joaquín Gutiérrez alongside a large number of scientific
books and manuscripts, at the same time that the bells of excommunication
rang from the Cathedral (Hernández de Alba, 1996: 142). The orthodox side
would eventually win the battle for the control of knowledge in the universi-
ties and the enlightened sector would have to settle for conquering spaces
outside the classroom (Silva 2002: 155–211). But as we will see in chapter
4, both sides, contending for control of the classrooms and appointments,
would find themselves united in the battle against a much more dangerous
common enemy: the traditional knowledge of the castes. The “pathos of dis-
tance” from Black people, Indians, and mestizos would also be reflected in
an “epistemological break” from traditional modes of knowledge production.
And in this case, it would be the enlightened side that would light the path to
criollo victory.

2.3.3 Dr. Eugenio’s Corpse

I have described the colonial university in New Granada through Ángel
Rama’s metaphor of the “lettered city,” showing that its walls were “painted
white,” marking an ethnic border against all those not belonging to the domi-
nant white sector. However, the walls of the lettered city were not completely
impermeable. Some members of the castes managed to penetrate the interior
of the city and navigate innumerable obstacles to acquire the much longed-for
university degree. But these were generally exceptional and tragic victories,
since colonial society eventually imposed its frameworks of ethnic exclusion
onto these characters, throwing their lowly origins in their faces. This was
the case of the Quito doctor Eugenio de Santa Cruz y Espejo, one of the most
important enlightened thinkers of the Spanish Americas.
Espejo illustrates like no one else the fate of those mestizos who at the end
of the eighteenth century dared to openly defy the coloniality of university
institutions. Documents from the period attest to the fact that Espejo was the
son of Luis Santa Cruz y Espejo, a Quechua Indian native to the Cajamarca
region, and a mulatto woman named María Catalina Aldaz y Larrainzar,
the daughter of a freed slave.83 In effect, there seems to be no doubt that
Espejo’s grandfather bore the Quechua surname Chúsig, which he later
changed to Cruz, and that his profession was “stonecutter.” He was most

83
 In a document from 1789, the Bethlehemite friar José del Rosario argued that María Catalina
Aldaz was reputedly “a mestiza or mulatto woman, from which Eugenio followed as a cholo or
zambaygo, in respect of his father and grandfather being Indians” (cited by Astuto, 1981: 454).
 Purus Ab Omnia Macula Sanguinis 111

likely a hispanized Indian, since according to testimony from the friar José
del Rosario, “he wore shoes and a cape, not a shirt or Indian clothing.”84 The
doubts instead emerged when the ethnic origins of Espejo’s mother are inves-
tigated. Arturo Roig insists that the testimony according to which Espejo’s
mother was the daughter of a free mulatto woman was merely despicable
slander staged by the political enemies of the thinker from Quito (Roig,
1984b: 23). He supported this thesis with important genealogical research
showing that Espejo’s maternal grandmother was of Basque ancestry. In
fact, the strange pseudonyms Espejo used in his work The New Lucian of
Quito (Don Xavier de Cía, Apéstegui, and Perochena) showed—according to
Roig—that his mother’s side was descended from a Spanish nobleman from
the house of Perochena named Peretón de Cía who arrived in the Americas
toward the end of the fifteenth century, marrying María Martín de Larrainzar,
a Basque woman from the ancestral house of Apesteguy. These would have
been the grandparents of Espejo’s maternal grandmother. What Roig does
not say is whether their descendants had children with a Black slave, which
would at least partly confirm the testimony of the Bethlehemite friar.
In any case, what is certain is that our philosopher was invariably tainted
with the “stain of the land” and that in the eyes of the criollo elite he looked
like a simple “cholo.” The question is: how could someone who so blatantly
violated the hegemonic discourse of blood purity be accepted into the sacred
precinct of the colonial university, acquiring therein the titles of doctor and
lawyer? We may be able to find the answer in the new educational policies
implemented by the Bourbons at the end of the eighteenth century. As I
have said, the Crown’s interest was to transform a private and ecclesiastical
university geared fundamentally toward educating the nobility into a public,
state university geared toward the scientific training of the most dynamic eco-
nomic sectors of society, which of course included mestizos. In the specific
case of Quito, after the expulsion of the Jesuits the state opened the doors to a
true secularization of higher education, even managing to turn the Dominican
University Santo Tomás into a “public” university in 1787. And while these
efforts ended in failure as in Bogotá, we can say that the young Eugenio
Espejo—and with him an entire generation of the children of wealthy mesti-
zos—was favored by this passing wave.
In effect, while Espejo could not show the certificate of blood purity
demanded by the “informational” regime, he was in fact able to instead
acquire a certificate of vita et moribus, that is, a report on his “good man-
ners,” which was sufficient to be admitted into the university under the new
enlightened policies of the Bourbons. This was most likely how the young

84
 Cited by Roig, 1984b: 29.
112 Chapter 2

Espejo managed to navigate the first ethnic obstacle in order to begin study-
ing medicine in 1765 in the Dominican college of San Fernando, graduating
two years later at only twenty years of age. Later, in 1770, he completed his
studies and obtained a degree in civil and canonical law at the Universidad
de Santo Tomás.
But the problem was not so much entering the university but leaving it as
a practicing professional, since obtaining academic degrees and their later use
were jealously controlled by the guardians of the most traditional ruling class,
regents of university life who did not look kindly upon the new Bourbon
policies. This is where Espejo would again need to confront the challenge
of overcoming the obstacle of blood purity since only those students who
fulfilled the requirements for “walking” could receive degrees. Recall that for
the chance to walk, graduates needed to publicly display their family crest, in
other words, the credentials of their noble and white status.85 Roig infers that
Espejo managed to navigate this new obstacle with the help of the nobility
titles of his maternal ancestors and by making intelligent use of his father’s
surname (Santa Cruz), displaying a cut-out cross on a red, taffeta cloth (Roig,
1984b: 38).
But things would not always be so easy for the recently minted mestizo
doctor and lawyer. To get a license allowing him to practice his profession,
the council of Quito demanded he prove the purity of his blood. Accused of
having the “stain of the land,” Espejo preferred to “forget” his father’s Indian
blood, instead emphasizing the noble character of his maternal grandparents.
But Espejo was publicly humiliated and had to wait eight years to obtain
a license. His colleagues, most of whom were from Quito’s posh nobility,
were unwilling to tolerate the presence of a “cholo” in their profession. It is
therefore no surprise that Espejo began to adopt a combative attitude toward
the customs of his contemporary society, which would be fully reflected in
the caustic and satirical style of his work.
In 1779, Espejo wrote a work called The New Lucian of Quito in which he
radically criticized the city’s educational system at the end of the eighteenth
century. Hoping to ridicule the oligarchy that blocked his entry into influential
circles, Espejo aimed his attacks against the “lettered city” in which its mem-
bers were educated, and particularly against the sort of Homo Academicus

85
 Amid great pomp, the graduate was accompanied from his home to the doors of the university
by a procession consisting of the dean, professors from the faculty, friends, family members, and
musicians. After traversing the main streets of the city, the graduate entered university grounds
where he received his degree, later repeating the return procession to his house, where a private
celebration awaited him. According to Steger (1974: 195), university statutes indicated that during
the procession, the graduate must display the insignias corresponding to his rank (family shields,
banners, and coats-of-arms), which certified his “white” status and publicly legitimized the grant-
ing of the degree. In this way, the university presented the new doctor into society, consecrating
his new function as a “public man.”
 Purus Ab Omnia Macula Sanguinis 113

produced by the colonial university. To exemplify the terrible quality of

graduated professionals, the doctor chose a famous sermon—“The Sorrows
of the Most Holy Virgin”—delivered in the cathedral of Quito by one Sancho
Escobar y Mendoza, who had studied in the Jesuit college and prided himself
on being a great orator. As he makes clear in the book’s dedication, Espejo
paints Escobar (who he refers to under the pseudonym of “Murillo”) as “the
faithful portrait of the pedant, the semi-wise, uneducated man” (Espejo, 1981
[1779]: 6). What the colonial university, so proud of its nobility and lineage,
truly produced was mediocre people like Escobar, lacking in good taste, igno-
rant of the new science, preoccupied with useless metaphysical questions, and
made vain by a form of knowledge—Scholasticism—that was only useful for
discussing incomprehensible subtleties.
Such an attack on the very foundations of colonial education were never
forgiven by his enemies, who did not rest until they had done away with
the bothersome doctor entirely. As revenge for the accusations in The New
Lucian, don Sancho Escobar took advantage of the death of one of Espejo’s
patients to accuse him of professional incompetence and even murder. The
sick man was none other than his own nephew, don Manuel de Escobar,
deacon of the town of Zámbiza, who Espejo had treated for two months, who
nevertheless died of a relapse. Infuriated by the fatal outcome, don Sancho
insists that Espejo deliberately let the patient die and that his moral perver-
sion was made evident by his writing of “satirical papers against people of
the highest respect.” The point that I want to emphasize here is that Escobar’s
arguments about professional incompetency and moral degradation were
based on Espejo’s ethnic origin:

I say that what must be first remedied is that Dr. Eugenio surnamed Espejo
appeared before the Lord Provisor instead of the Lord Protector General of the
natives of the district of this Real Audiencia regarding being a natural Indian
from Cajamarca; because it is established that his father Luis with the surname
Chúsig, which was changed to Espejo, was a native Indian of said Cajamarca,
who came serving as chamber page to father Fray Josef del Rosario, bare in
foot and leg, clothed in a blue shirt and pants of the same, and on his mother’s
side, one Aldaz, although her nature is doubtful, but all doubt falls back on
whether she is Indian or mulatto . . . Because the declarant knew practically the
insufficiency of the named Eugenio for the long time that he was in his house;
adding the same practical knowledge that the declarant had of the defect of his
application to the study of medicine, using it only to catalog books from differ-
ent faculties, and having all desire to write satirical papers against people of the
highest respect, believing by this to appear to be a person educated in many fac-
ulties [ . . . and] seeming to be not a doctor who cured but a corrupt oil causing
114 Chapter 2

deadly contagion in the soul, in addition to the inevitable blush of dealing with
an individual of such low extraction and origin. (cited by Freile, 2001: 13)

These kinds of accusations hindered Espejo’s professional career and closed

the doors of university teaching to him, despite his recognized talents as a
doctor, intellectual, and philosopher. Quito elites, attempting to avoid “deal-
ing with an individual of such low extraction,” began a campaign to discredit
him that eventually involved him in the famous Golillas incident.86 Espejo
was unjustly imprisoned and sent to Bogotá to be tried by the viceroy of
New Granada himself in 1789. Despite the seriousness of the charges against
him—and his friendship with “suspicious” characters like Antonio Nariño
and Francisco Antonio Zea—he was freed and allowed to return to Quito to
continue his scientific and literary activities. There he was offered a position
directing the recently founded public library that had belonged to the Colegio
Máximo of the expelled Jesuits. But as a prerequisite for being named to the
position, Espejo was once again required to prove the purity of his blood,
which yet again put his name in the crosshairs of his enemies.
But the worst tragedy had yet to befall the doctor from Quito. The cam-
paign to discredit him reached its climax when his brother, the priest Juan
Pablo Espejo, was accused of treason. The latter had carried on a romantic
relationship with a prostitute named Francisca Navarrete who, apparently
unhappy with the priest’s decision to end the relationship, decided to accuse
him of making and disseminating seditious statements. The woman informed
authorities that Espejo accused the King of being a tyrant, that it was neces-
sary to expel all of the “chapetones”87 from the Americas, that the French
were not heretics but defenders of human liberty, and that a plan was already
in motion to free Quito from the yoke of its oppressors.88 It is still not clear
whether the woman lied openly out of spite, if she told the truth about what
the priest Espejo had said or, if so, whether his brother Eugenio shared these
ideas. What is certain is that the doctor’s enemies saw the opportunity they
had been waiting for in order to finally be rid of him. Without any proof
linking him directly to his brother’s plans, Espejo was imprisoned and sen-
tenced to two years in the Franciscan monastery of Popayán. In the prison

86
 This refers to a skit entitled “Portrait of Golilla” targeting Spanish authorities in Quito. “Golil-
las” [a collar or ruff] was the derogatory nickname given to Spanish functionaries (“chapetones”)
holding public posts in the Indies, but who did not graduate from the residential colleges. The skit,
falsely attributed to Espejo, mocked the minister of the Indies don José de Galvez and explicitly
supported Túpac Amaru’s Indigenous rebellion.
87
 [Trans. note: greenhorn, derogatory term for recently arrived Spanish officials]
88
 See: “Compendio de los puntos vertidos por el Presbítero Don Juan Pablo Espejo en dos conver-
saciones tenidas en la havitación de Doña Francisca Navarrete, que van en los mismos términos
y voces que las profirió según que así se halla sentado con juramento en el gobierno de esta Real
Audiencia” [1795]. In: Freile, 2001: 62–64.
 Purus Ab Omnia Macula Sanguinis 115

he contracted dysentery and fell gravely ill, but despite this he was held in
chains and treated like a common criminal. Despite his dramatic appeal for
liberation sent to viceroy Ezpeleta from prison,89 Espejo remained a prisoner
and died on December 27, 1795.
His death certificate, dated December 28, 1795, is registered in the book
reserved for mestizos, Indians, Black people, and mulattoes. The registry
speaks of “Dr. Eugenio’s corpse,” eliminating all surnames in accordance
with the practice of masters toward their servants and slaves (Roig 1984b:
32). White elites punished with death and disgrace the attack by a “cholo” on
the lettered city and its guardians. Paradoxically, the same Espejo had become
one of the greatest promoters of enlightened medicine in Quito. The paradox
lay, as we will see in the next chapter, in the fact that modern medicine is
founded on an epistemic expropriation of traditional knowledge. Medical
practice not only worked hand-in-hand with state biopolitics—which Espejo
insisted on always obeying and respecting—but also served as a mechanism
for the social domination of the castes.90 In this way, the social and political
violence that Espejo suffered due to his ethnic origin corresponds directly
to the symbolic violence that he himself exercised as an enlightened doctor
toward the traditional knowledge of Black people, Indians, and mestizos. The
“spontaneous sociology” that condemned Espejo was the same that Espejo
himself reproduced with his defense of enlightened knowledge. My argu-
ment will therefore be that the coloniality of power extends its networks to a
domain that enlightened thinkers believed to be pure and uncontaminated by
social practices: the discourse of modern science.

89
 It is worth transcribing some asides from this petition: “In spite of an apparently armed sentinel,
many vigilant spies who guarded me, dying locked up in a dark and damp dungeon; in spite of
all this and much more even violent oppression, I would have pondered and found the discretion
of using the natural remedy of prostrating myself at the feet of Your Excellency with my repre-
sentations, and making you not only accessible but very kind toward my suffering. But in the first
moments, and from the scandalous vexation that this has caused me, I expected quick relief from a
generous feeling of error; and on the other hand my heart, always and deeply sacrificed to devotion
to the Sovereign, offered as a gift from His Majesty the cruel treatment that was given to me, and
the highest silence toward this same treatment. After two months of this, in the harsh prison of a
barracks, I resolved to raise my complaints at the feet of that same sacred Majesty, whom I was
alleged to have falsely and slanderously offended with the most sacrilegious infidelity . . . I have
been until now treated by the entire apparatus as a prisoner of the state. In fiscal hearings, in inter-
locutories, in the whole monstrous process I have had no other order” (Espejo, 2001 [1795]: 72).
90
 Here is but a sample (and I will bring in more in the next chapters): in his work known as Blan-
cardian Science, Espejo harshly criticized those who practiced medicine without the accreditation
of proper university degrees, accusing them of being empiricists and laymen (Espejo, 1981 [1780]:
323). I will show how the practice of empirical medicine, anchored in Indigenous or African
cultural traditions and practiced primarily by mestizo healers, is seen by the enlightened sector as
medical science’s past and as an imminent danger to all of society.
 Chapter 3

Imperial Biopolitics
Health and Disease Under
the Bourbon Reforms

The principal objective that the sovereign prizes over all others is the
good of his subjects: his principal focus ought to be directed to their
preservation and happiness; and just as the best good of those who
possess it is life and health, the law that the Monarch imposes to this
end is not severe, but benign.
—Francisco Gil

In the previous chapter, I showed that the apparatus of whiteness acted as

a mechanism for generating subjectivities in New Granada. The discourse
of blood purity rooted in criollo habitus serves as the ideological basis on
which this group legitimated its power over the castes. I also pointed out
that enlightened Bourbon discourse was perceived by a sector of the criollo
elite as a threat to their claim to whiteness, even though the intention of the
Crown was never to undo social hierarchies. Here, I will investigate the bio-
political apparatus of the Spanish Empire and its impact on the community
of enlightened criollos in New Granada. The following hypothesis will guide
this investigation: in contrast to the most traditionalist criollos, the minor-
ity sector of enlightened criollos will see the introduction of the Bourbon
reforms as a good thing, not considering them a threat but rather a compli-
ment to the colonial discourse of blood purity. The enlightenment pretension
to be positioned as impartial observers of the world—what I have called here
“zero-point hubris”—will give them the perfect motive to strengthen their
established imaginary of superiority over the castes. The discourse of science,
articulated by enlightenment thinkers of New Granada, will be in the end a
colonial discourse.
To be situated at the zero-point, as stated earlier, is to have the power to
construct a vision of the social world that is recognized as legitimate and

117
118 Chapter 3

endorsed by the state. It is the work of constructing social reality where the
“experts”—in this case, the enlightened criollos of the eighteenth century—
define themselves as neutral and impartial observers of the world. The crio-
llo thinker, Francisco Antonio Zea, understood this perfectly in his famous
speech from 17911:

No one can overlook the fact that the wise are to Republics what the soul is to
man. They are the ones who animate this vast body of a thousand arms and put
it into movement, as it carries out whatever they suggest; but it does not know
how to act by itself, nor move one more point in the course they trace for it. In
fact, the artist, the farmer, the artisan will never go beyond what they have seen
their father or teacher do, if the keepers of human knowledge and progressive
understanding do not offer to bring their philosophical lights to the workshop,
the field, or the office. (Zea, 1982 [1791]: 93–94)

The enlightenment presupposed the establishment of a border between those

who know how to play the game of science (the experts) and the “others”
who remain imprisoned in the cultural shackles of “common sense.” Experts
are like the soul, situated by means of “philosophical light” in a position of
cognitive objectivity that allows them to give life to the totality of the social
body. Without the assistance of knowledge produced by the wise, the rest of
the population (the artist, the farmer, the artisan) would be aimless, immersed
in the darkness of traditional knowledge. In this chapter, it will be shown that,
in the hands of enlightened criollos, modern science and medicine in particu-
lar served as instruments for the consolidation of ethnic borders that ensured
their control over social space. The apparatus of biopolitics is linked with the
apparatus of whiteness.

3.1 THE DISENCHANTMENT OF THE WORLD

OR THE TWILIGHT OF CHARITY

Already in the sixteenth century, the Spanish Crown established an indis-

soluble link between evangelization and the politics of the hospital. The hos-
pital was essentially conceived as an institution of charity whose function was
to benefit the poor.2 The word “hospital” was associated with the Christian

1
 I agree with Renán Silva’s evaluation in the famous article “Avisos de Hebephilo” published by
Zea in the eighth issue of the Papel periódico de Santa Fe de Bogotá, that Zea is fully inscribed
within the colonial imaginary of Spanish absolutism, an imaginary also assumed by the enlightened
criollos of New Granada (Silva, 2002: 159).
2
 In this context, support for hospitals depended in large part on the charity of wealthy aristocrats,
who publicly demonstrated their Christian virtue through generous donations. The doctor and
 Imperial Biopolitics 119

virtue of “hospitality” and for that reason religious orders were in charge of
the medical and spiritual assistance of the sick, seeing this as an essential
part of their ministry. The hospital was a place administered by clergy—and
not by the state—in which it was not so much the body but the soul that they
sought to cure. Orphans, beggars, the elderly, and the disabled, that is to
say, all those who due to physical incapacity or extreme poverty could not
make use of physical strength to support themselves through work, would go
there to seek temporary shelter (Quevedo, 1993: 51). Until the period of the
Bourbon reforms, the institution of the hospital was seen in the colonies of the
Americas as an aid institution, defined within the evangelizing function of the
religious orders. Medical practice in hospitals was exercised as a service to
the most disadvantaged members of society, and for this reason it was not the
doctor but the priest who was responsible for administering care to the sick.
Of course, people also went to hospitals to be cured of bodily illness.
Particularly during the first years of the conquest, many Spanish soldiers
arrived at the hospital wounded by poison arrows, mosquito bites, or affected
by some contagious disease.3 We know that in this period, epidemics of fever
and dysentery were frequent, and even the flu was a great cause of mortality
during the Conquest. This situation led King Ferdinand the Catholic to order
the founding of the first hospital in the New Kingdom of Granada in 1513 in
the city of Santa María la Antigua del Darién, financed with royal funds and
administered by Franciscan friars (Soriano Lleras, 1966: 38–39). However,
despite the fact the religious orders took responsibility for attending medi-
cally to bodily disease, managing disease was a philanthropic exercise, not
a therapeutic one. Disease was seen as an individual problem that had more
to do with the spiritual well-being of the patient than the material well-being
of society.
The case of the Royal Hospital of San Lázaro in Cartagena de Indias could
be illustrative in this respect. The hospital was created in 1608 to house all of
the lepers of the New Kingdom of Granada, at a time when leprosy was still
seen as a “biblical illness,” a divine punishment for sin (Obregón 1997: 35).
This was, in short, an illness of the soul that should be treated “spiritually”
by priests. This demanded the practice of Christian charity in accordance with

historian Emilio Quevedo cites such a donation in 1564 by Friar Juan de los Barrios, in which
private resources are allocated for the establishment in Bogotá of “a hospital in which the poor of
this city will live, gather, and be cured, both Spaniards and natives, [and in this] way I will and I
should, I bestow and I know that I give, donate, transfer and fully pass on, perfectly, irrevocably,
and completely as it is said between mortals, the houses of our dwellings, that are in this city of
Santa Fe [Bogotá] . . . such that now and forever there will be founded thereon a hospital” (cited
by Quevedo, 1993: 70–71).
3
 Soriano Lleras (1966: 31) comments that insects in the hot regions probably took more Spanish
soldiers and colonists as victims than the poisoned arrows of the Indians.
120 Chapter 3

the famous parable of Lazarus and the rich man as told by Jesus.4 Thus, the
leper was not the object of medical treatment but mercy and their confinement
in the hospital fundamentally adhered to this aim.5
The hospital was thus a place that “dispensed” divine grace, and this was
not limited to lazar houses. The San Pedro hospital in Bogota in 1564 was
also a “shelter for the poor” administered by the patronage of the city’s bish-
ops. In 1630, King Felipe III decreed that the institution was to be managed
by the order of the Brothers of San Juan de Dios, who converted it into a
hospital-convent under the name Hospital of Jesus, Joseph, and Mary6 and
later, San Juan de Dios.7 Neither the names assigned to the hospital, nor its
conventual organization, and not even its geographical location were mere
coincidence. The hospital had a manifestly evangelical purpose: to spiritually
comfort the mildly ill, showing them the need for Christian charity; and to
prepare the gravely ill for death, helping them to conclude their existence at
peace with God.8
Another method used in the colony was that of the hospital-school. It
involved institutions that combined religious and moral instruction with
medical assistance. This was the case, for example, with the monks of the
Incarnation in Popayán, who ran a center dedicated to the service of “poor
maidens” (Paz Otero, 1964). There was also an institution of this sort func-
tioning in Popayán administered by a group called the “Camilo Brothers of
good death.” As their name indicated, the work of these priests was concen-
trated on helping the terminally ill, but also ensuring the education and care
for the poor. The Camilo fathers not only visited the sick and administered
final anointment, but also taught classes on Christianity and performed cesar-
ean sections.
It should be noted that the three forms of hospital organization, the con-
vent, the school, the lazar house, share the same type of orientation: their

4
 According to this parable, Lazarus was a mendicant leper who was eager to satiate himself with
the scraps that fell from the table of the rich man, without any compassion from the latter. Both
dead, the rich man was sent to Hades, while Lazarus was consoled on the lap of Abraham (Lucas
16: 19–25).
5
 The activity of the Jesuit priest Pedro Claver is well known. Also known as “the apostle of blacks,”
he dedicated his life to work for the sick in the hospital. Soriano Lleras says that “Saint Pedro Claver
acquired clothes and medicine that he would send daily to the sick via messenger. When there were
religious festivals he would reward them with a better and more abundant feast than they would
prepare in the houses of friends, and he would also amuse them with a band of performers from the
Jesuit college” (Soriano Lleras, 1966: 66).
6
 See: Soriano Lleras, 1966: 89.
7
 Curiously, even though the hospital was seen as an extension of the sacred mission of the Church,
it was bad economic management that motivated the King’s decision. According to Soriano Lleras,
the hospital’s income was being poorly administered by the priests, there was a scarcity of water
and food, the alms of the parish were lower by the day, there were intruders occupying rooms in the
house, and the priests did not visit the sick often enough (Soriano Lleras, 1966: 64).
8
 See: Restrepo Zea, 1997: 81.
 Imperial Biopolitics 121

private character. That is to say, these are institutions administered by para-

state organizations—religious orders—whose governing policies escape
state control. But with the introduction of the Bourbon reforms, this situation
would change radically. The Bourbons made wealth and “public happiness”
the pillars of their government. This meant turning the state into the ordering
axis of each and every factor that intervened in social life. The Bourbon state
occupied, as stated earlier, “the perspective of the Whole,” that is to say, it
assumed the task of exercising rationally founded control over the wealth,
the territory, and the population in its charge, with the aim of promoting
the economic development of the empire. This task entailed, of course, the
nationalization of spheres that had up until then been under the control of
particular interests. It was necessary to expropriate the control over social
flows of symbolic and economic capital from these subjects, centralizing this
control in the hands of one unified and absolute subject: the state. In a word,
the project of governmentality implemented by the Bourbons required the
deterritorialization of those spheres that emerged as key for the increase of
economic productivity. And one of these key spheres was public health.
This juridical and political expropriation that began in the eighteenth cen-
tury, however, ran parallel to epistemological expropriation. The establish-
ment of the state as the only administrative center of social life represented
an attack on the idea of God as the foundation and guarantee of the efficacy
of the instrumental field of society (economics, politics, and law). Bourbon
policies no longer set out from God as the guarantee of an eternal cosmic
order, but rather from human activity (productive labor) as the only means for
ordering nature and subjecting it to the immanent dictates of reason. Sickness
and poverty ceased to be fates that were accepted with resignation, and were
now seen as dysfunctions that could be domesticated by scientific-technical
rationality. This explains why the Bourbon state attempted to seize control
from the Church over the dispensation of the meaning of health and disease.
These phenomena now required a new meaning legitimated by the absolutist
state and its cognitive organum: modern science.
Under the Bourbon government, disease was no longer seen as spiritual
evil afflicting the individual for their sins, and thus a punishment from
God, but rather as an evil that besieged the entire ensemble of society and
one with material causes. It is not the body of the individual but rather the
social body that is the carrier of disease. For this reason, the diagnosis of
disease is tied to population technologies like demographic calculations,
estimated mortality rates and life expectancy, the rationally founded study
of the role of education, and scientific knowledge of geography and the
“natural laws” governing commerce. What disease “means” no longer
depends on private institutions like the Church dispensing meaning but
on public policy directed by an economic model. The “good government”
122 Chapter 3

that the Bourbons aspired to was directly predicated on the success of its
economic management, such that the management of public health was
capable of ensuring the growth of productivity. From this point of view,
sickness begins to have an economic meaning granted by the ideological
apparatuses of the state, at the expense of the “theological” meaning dis-
pensed by the Church.
Intervention into public health became one of the priorities of enlightened
government. Improving the health of the population, particularly of those
sectors at a productive age, meant bettering the possibilities for economic
growth in the colonies, and thereby ensuring Spain’s competitiveness on
the global market. It was no longer simply a matter of preserving the health
of criollo aristocrats—the only ones who could enjoy personalized medical
treatment—but also that of the growing mestizo population, which at this
time had become the key motor for wealth production in New Granada. The
Bourbon biopolitical project required the impetus of actions to strengthen
and increase the active working population, which required an all-out war
against the two great enemies of productive labor: disease and poverty. It
thus became necessary to reform hospital policy, which until then had under-
stood disease as an individual problem and poverty as a problem of Christian
charity. Both problems, disease and poverty, ceased to be private issues and
became public ones, administered by the scientific-technical and bureaucratic
rationality of the state.
This change in meaning is evident in the plan for the construction of the
San Pedro Hospital in the city of Zipaquirá, which was presented to the vice-
roy of New Granada by Pedro Fermín de Vargas. The enlightened criollo
began by emphasizing the “healthy instruction” that Christian charity repre-
sented for the fulfillment of the moral duties required by social life. Imbued
with this Christian spirit, the Spanish kings founded hospitals to provide shel-
ter for the poor and needy while they were sick. Nevertheless, the majority of
these hospitals, while inspired by evangelical charity, were founded “without
knowledge of the most essential principles of medicine and politics, [which]
has caused some more harm than benefit” (Vargas, 1944 [1789a]: 120). To
correct this error, Vargas proposed that the hospital of Zipaquirá not be the
responsibility of any religious community, and instead be public, that is, that
it be directly subject to the central government of Bogotá. The viceroy should
appoint a governing council composed of the chief magistrate, two mayors,
and two native citizens chosen every two years from representatives of the
people. They, and no longer the religious communities, would be responsible
for the administration of the hospital in its totality. There would of course be
a position for the chaplain, but his salary (200 pesos) will be much less than
that of the doctor (500 pesos), given that the latter would assume full respon-
sibility for the well-being of the sick. The chaplain would be limited to caring
 Imperial Biopolitics 123

solely for the spiritual well-being of the sick, without assuming any kind of
medical function (1944 [1789a]: 130–131).
For Vargas, as for all the criollos that sympathized with the Bourbon
project, it became clear that medicine was one thing and the love of one’s
neighbor another. The former belonged to the external domain of the public
and should therefore be administered by the state; the latter belonged instead
to the internal domain of conscience (the private sphere) and should be
administered by the Church. But in this division of labor, the private should
be subject to the public, considering that it is there where the well-being of
the human in this world is at stake. And since the function of the hospital is
to rehabilitate the body of the sick so that they can be useful to the homeland,
the chaplain should also be subordinated to the orders of higher authorities:
the doctor, the mayor, and the chief magistrate. The “truth” administered
by the state—whose cognitive instrument is science—is “of this world” and
therefore superior to the metaphysical and uncertain truth administered by
the Church.
Along this same political line that sought to subject the private to the pub-
lic, the enlightened criollo José Ignacio de Pombo proposed to the Provincial
Board of Cartagena that the convent of San Diego, directed by the Franciscan
priests, be definitively closed and the building established as a hospital.
Pombo justified his proposal with two short pragmatic arguments: the first
is that the convent is bankrupt and the monks need to continuously attend
to its material upkeep, neglecting their religious obligations; the second is
that the convent building “presents with its location and construction, all
the advantages that one could desire for the establishment of the proposed
Hospice [Hospicio] It is in an airy, healthy, and able location away from the
general population” (Pombo, 1965 [1810]: 174). According to Pombo, the
Franciscans should not only cede their building, but they will also have to
contribute one-fourth of the rent necessary to sustain the hospital, allocating
as well a significant portion of the returns obtained from masses and alms
collected in the chapel:

If by law, the goods of the church are those of the poor and the clergy mere
administrators, the proceeds of these quarters belong most justly to nobody
else . . . and the most proper destination of these is none other than the Hospice
in which a considerable number of the truly poor of the Diocese will be gath-
ered, and in which they will consequently all enjoy this beneficence . . . The
proceeds of these dispensations cannot have a better or more proper destina-
tion than the Hospice. It is not ecclesiastic income, nor is it owned by the
Bishop; and is it [not] a duty to employ them to pious ends? And what could
be greater, or more urgent, than the assistance and relief of the poor? (Pombo,
1965 [1810]: 175)
124 Chapter 3

The “immanent vision” of health and disease defended by Vargas and Pombo,
certainly recognized that it is God who gives and takes life, but it affirmed
that human reason is fully able to discover the laws determining the function
of the “machine of the body,” as Mutis called it. The study of these physical
laws is seen by the thinker from Cadiz as a legitimate way to worship God,
“since if the world is made according to such wise and manifest laws, what
more than the man eager for knowledge, who allocates a few moments to the
contemplation of things that enter his senses, as the most opportune medium
for the praise due to the creator?” (Mutis 1983 [1762]: 41). For this same
reason, in his impassioned defense of vaccination, Mutis—who in addition to
being a doctor was also a priest—asserted that the preservation of human life
and the increase of population are divine mandates (“be fruitful and multiply,
and populate the earth”) and that vaccination therefore could not be contrary
to religion. It is God himself who has given human beings the natural light
to discover the secrets of nature through science, all with the purpose of bet-
ter realizing his eternal designs. Opposing scientific practice in the name of
religion is seen by Mutis as a cruel and inhumane attitude:

If such had been the will of the Creator in the proliferation of humankind, if
the people in their misfortune, seduced by such scruples continue to resist the
benefits of inoculation, it would be to voluntarily sacrifice countless victims
who undoubtedly perish in each epidemic, making us positively guilty of such
a horrible sacrifice. (Mutis, 1983 [1796]: 226)

God is thus recognized as the arbiter of life, but insofar as this life can be
preserved and elevated to a level of human quality in terms of physical
health, it is not the responsibility of God but of science. This is the argument
of criollo scientist Jorge Tadeo Lozano, who in his essay on the brevity of
life—a theme traditionally dealt with by theology or moral philosophy—did
not appeal to the Bible but to natural history. Lozano shows that the brevity
of life can be explained entirely by “internal causes”: nutritional deficiency,
unhealthy climate, immoderate lifestyle, contagious diseases, poor hygienic
conditions, and excessive work. Above all, diseases are responsible for the
destruction of “ninety percent of the human species” and none of these is a
“direct consequence of the human constitution”; that is to say their mortal-
ity cannot be attributed to the will of God or the fragility of human nature
punished by original sin, but rather to the ignorance of the people and
the defects of a health policy not enlightened by science. Smallpox, mea-
sles, “paralipsis,” asthma, “hydropesia,” birth complications, “apoplexia,”
“putrid fevers” [typhus], and dysentery are evils that can be corrected by
enlightenment knowledge and good state politics (Lozano, 1993 [1801a]:
57–59).
 Imperial Biopolitics 125

3.2 INFESTED CITIES

A good example of this shift in the meaning of illness is that of the two small-
pox epidemics that devastated the capital of the viceroyalty in 1782 and 1802.
One year after the Comunero Revolt, an epidemic of smallpox was declared
in the viceroyalty of New Granada, having come from the provinces to the
north. Alarmed by the rapid advance of illness and its imminent arrival in the
city of Bogotá, the Archbishop and viceroy Antonio Caballero y Góngora
issued an edict in which the disease is presented as a divine punishment for
the sins of the people:

Humanity is greatly afflicted by the general punishments sent by Divine provi-

dence from time to time to wake up mortals and shake them from the profound
lethargy that they are immersed in by continuous prosperity. Wars, famines,
and plagues are the visits of the Father in the fashion of the Holy Scriptures
to manifest his anger to the people; and these are the wake-up calls that God
uses by his intelligent design and highest providence . . . We know with some
consolation that when warned of the punishment that they are justly accused
of, families prepare with practices of piety to receive the inevitable contagion
as one of the eventualities to which our nature is subject . . . It is very good to
think ahead of time to secure such healthful resources. It would also be good to
remove the fear and horror, as far as possible, that contagious diseases naturally
inspire in humanity. Even more, these tend to usually be purely human means
and are not very effective in achieving that the God of anger and vengeance,
so well-deserved for sins and public scandals, become and manifest toward us
as the God of health and mercy . . . With greater activity and more confidently
than in human help we should plead from Divine clemency the softness of the
scourge in the benignity of contagion, as if it were of the kindness of the Father
that persists with his sovereign warning through the propagation of the epi-
demic . . . To this end we highlight Sunday, the 24th of this month to celebrate a
votive mass with the Most Holy Patent to continue the Prayers organized by the
Church for this time of disease . . . We should await the fervent devotion of our
diocesans, that aware of the common danger, will try to yearn, cry, and clamor
for God with sincerity and veritable repentance for their sins . . . For which we
exhort and persuade every one of our beloved diocesans to prepare yourselves to
pray to God with a true confession and penitence for their sins; and we concede,
in virtue of the Pontifical faculties that we have, a Plenary Indulgence to all of
the persons who truly received communion on this day having truly repented
and confessed.9

9
 “Edicto del virrey Antonio Caballero y Góngora, Santa Fe, 20 de noviembre de 1782” (Frías Nuñez,
1992: 240–241).
126 Chapter 3

I have cited the 1782 viceroyal edict in extenso because there we find the cen-
tral motives for what I have called the theological meaning granted to illness
by the ecclesiastic apparatus. Within the framework of this technology of sig-
nification, the smallpox epidemic does not have natural causes but is instead
the visible expression of something invisible, supernatural, and in this case,
God’s anger at “the sins and public scandals” of the New Granadian people.10
The epidemic should not be seen as a natural phenomenon against which it
is possible to take preventative measures based on scientific knowledge, but
rather as a pedagogic instrument in the hands of God “to wake up mortals
and shake them from their profound lethargy.” “Purely human means” are
thus worthless in the fight against the contagion, since what is needed is the
religious resignation of the people in the face of their well-deserved punish-
ment. Before having faith in the “human means,” considered by Caballero y
Góngora as “barely effective,” New Granadians should instead repent in their
hearts and pray to God that the epidemic does not take too many victims.11
It is important to note that even though Caballero y Góngora was the vice-
roy of New Granada, that is, the official representative of the Bourbon state
in the colony, his position toward the smallpox epidemic is not that of a state
functionary—who speaks in the name of bureaucratic rationality—but that
of the shepherd of the flock. He does not therefore speak under the authority
granted him by the state, but “in virtue of the Pontifical faculties” that he has
as the archbishop of New Granada.12 And as a representative of God more

10
 The “public scandals” that Caballero y Góngora refers to have to do with the Comunero Revolt
against viceroyal authorities one year before the epidemic. It is interesting to note in this regard
that Caballero y Góngora made several pastoral visits to the regions that had rebelled to achieve
their “pacification.” He was accompanied on some of these visits by the capuchin friar Joaquín
de Finestrad, who I will discuss elsewhere in this book. What is interesting here is that in his
1789 book El vasallo ilustrado, Finestrad—a decided opponent of enlightenment ideas—gave
the epidemic the same punitive significance that the enlightened Caballero y Góngora had given
it seven years earlier in his edict. According to Finestrad, the Comunero Revolt was not caused
by the bad government of the Bourbons but the moral decadence of the New Granadian people,
whose rebellion was later punished by God with the epidemic. “The principle that gave rise to the
previous inquietude and formidable storm of disruption that we suffered in 1781 that came close
to a regrettable wreckage is the unrestrained liberty with which they live in such abomination as is
often seen in this Kingdom. The anatomy that I have formed of these people does not allow me to
refer blame for this general commotion to the bad governance of the wise Ministers of the King, as
without Christian reflection the tumultuous commoners proclaimed. All public calamities, plagues,
famines, and wars are punishments for the sins of the Republic” (Finestrad, 2000 [1789]: 265).
11
 This type of theological meaning of disease is deeply rooted in popular religious practice. Renán
Silva notes the case of the 1587 smallpox epidemic in Tunja, where a council of citizens asked the
priest of Chiquinquirá to loan them the miraculous image of the Virgin to take it on a procession
through the city. The same happened during the famine in the valley of Tenza in 1696, when the
citizens organized a procession through the whole region, carrying the image of Santo Ecce Homo
and calling out for forgiveness for their sins (Silva, 1992b: 22).
12
 This displacement of voice from that of the viceroy to that of the archbishop was not due to Cabal-
lero y Góngora’s ignoring or questioning the biopolitical guidelines of the Bourbon state in terms
of the necessity of inoculation, but was rather a question of political strategy. This can be seen from
 Imperial Biopolitics 127

than of the King, his vision of disease is eminently theological. Health is not
seen as a problem that falls to the state, but rather to the Church. It is not the
doctor that is charged with combating disease, but the priest. Thus, the decree
is a call to pastoral activity for the priests (“we exhort and persuade each and
every one of our beloved diocesans to prepare yourselves to pray to God”)
and to individual repentance of the parishioners.
But something very different happens with the 1802 epidemic. The mean-
ing of disease has changed radically, such that it is no longer the Church
apparatuses but state apparatuses that define what disease “is” and how to
combat it. Twenty years after the first smallpox epidemic, the government
had strengthened its position against local instances of power, and public
health had finally become state policy. When a new outbreak was announced
in 1802, the viceroy Pedro Mendinueta took a set of measures no longer based
on theology but rather on scientific knowledge. In a public announcement
written by the chief justice Juan Hernández de Alba in the forced absence of
the viceroy, the central government stipulates the following:

That no one, of their own accord, administer an inoculation without previously

consulting or satisfactorily taking the counsel of a Doctor; understanding that
these must be doctors admitted and recognized by public authority, excluding
all the rest . . . The Parish Priests, Prelates of Religious Houses, Preachers,
and Confessors that exhort the people to offer themselves with docility to the
beneficent ideas and merciful desires of the Supreme Government are moreover
responsible for dissipating the errors and worries of the masses . . . In order to
diminish the evil of the epidemic, the precaution of the previous announcement
is also reiterated with respect to the cleanliness of the streets, formally prohibit-
ing the disposal of garbage, rubble, filth, and dead animals, and requiring each
citizen to keep the front of their respective house or shop swept, and if this is not
done the established penalties will be imposed without exemption . . . Having
permitted inoculation as a means to reduce the risk of death from smallpox, and
practicing the most active and effective diligences, on the order of the Supreme
Government, to request the Vaccine or the material contained in cowpox, with
which once inoculated one is absolutely protected from smallpox, let it be

the fact that in 1783 Caballero y Góngora commissioned Mutis to draft a report to minister of the
Indies José de Galves in which he notified him of the progress being made to combat the epidemic,
referring to the close to 1700 people who had been officially inoculated (Silva, 1992b: 41; Alzate,
1999: 4). Furthermore, his own nephew had received the inoculation (Frías Nuñez, 1992: 83).
What we see here is Caballero y Góngora, with the collective memory of the Comunero uprising
still very fresh, preferring to make use of the voice of the pastor admonishing people for their sins
instead of the voice of the enlightened governor organizing a rational crusade against the epidemic.
It was not convenient at this moment to boost confidence in human reason, but to the contrary to
stimulate the feeling of dependence of vassals on God and the King. On Caballero y Góngora’s
great political skill in navigating his double condition of viceroy and archbishop, see, Tisnés, 1984.
128 Chapter 3

declared and advertised that this permission for smallpox inoculations shall
immediately cease once the Vaccine is found and its virtues felt . . . Finally,
the Supreme Government, desiring to provide not only to this neighborhood but
also to neighboring areas and all areas of the empire, the important protective
benefit of the Vaccine, offers the award of 200 pesos to anyone who has the
good luck to find it.13

As we can see, the differences between the viceroyal edict of 1782 and the
1802 public announcement are evident with respect to the meaning of the
epidemic. The measures taken to avoid contagion no longer involve public
prayers and individual repentance, but medical inspection and hygiene.14 The
state recommends the method of inoculation, thereby clashing with the most
ideologically conservative sectors of the Church, who saw in this practice
a point of conflict with divine revelation.15 What smallpox is and how one
should combat it is no longer a matter for the Church to define, but rather the
state since it has the expert knowledge—the new science—necessary to deter-
mine its truth. All other forms of knowledge will be relegated to the order of
ignorance and superstition. For this reason, the public announcement subtly
urges priests to avoid nourishing “the errors and worries of the masses,”
submitting themselves “with docility to the beneficent ideas and merciful
desires of the Supreme Government.”16 The doctor, as recipient of this new

13
 “Bando del oidor decano Juan Hernández de Alba, Santa Fe, July 9th, 1802” (Frías Nuñez, 1992:
253–256).
14
 In his Disertación físico-médica para la preservación de los pueblos de las viruelas, a mandatory
reference text in the colonies following the 1784 royal decree, the enlightened doctor Francisco Gil
states that the greatest obstacle to vanquishing the disease is “the piteous deception in which the
majority of men live, according to which it is fated that almost everyone will contract this disease,
and it would be vain to flee, because in the end all is that which God wants” (Gil, 1983 [1784]: 91).
Gil intends to counteract this “piteous deceit” by showing that even though bodily maladies enter
the world because of human sin, they are not inevitable, thus God has given humans the means
to combat them. In Gil’s opinion, “God has not given rise to any disease, but rather they all owe
their origin to natural causes; and if we avoid these, we liberate ourselves from them. This is an
invariable truth in conformity with sovereign and beneficent intentions of the Creator” (Gil, 1983
[1784]: 122).
15
 Marcelo Frías Núñez sums up this ideological conflict nicely as follows: “[Inoculation] produces
a modification in the idea of Nature: its ceases to view nature as something immutable and nature
appears increasingly like something that can be modified with the application of technical skill.
This idea, at the same time, removed the foundations of a society whose morality was based in
a theological understanding: God is the only master of our destiny. All techniques for protection
against the future thus appear as an affront to the will of God” (Frías Núñez, 1992: 49–50). The
doctor Francisco Gil recognized that the practice of inoculation had many enemies in the Spanish
empire, and that in the year 1724 some priests preached against the practice from the pulpit of the
Church of San Andrés, claiming that it was a “diabolical invention” and a “gift from Satan” (Gil,
1983 [1784]: 36).
16
 Here, it is necessary to distinguish the attitude of different sectors of the Church toward the bio-
political measures of the state. Renán Silva (1992b: 42–44; 98–99) has shown, for example, that
even though the practice of inoculation was criticized by the high clergy it was accepted and even
promoted by many local parish priests and preachers.
 Imperial Biopolitics 129

expert knowledge, replaces the priest in the task of diagnosing disease. But
the doctor, in turn, and thanks to the institution of the Protomedicato,17 oper-
ates as a functionary of the state. The announcement makes clear that only
those doctors “admitted and recognized by public authority, excluding all the
rest,” may complete the official inspections of these cases.18 It becomes clear
that the Bourbon state aspires to not only have a monopoly on violence but
also a monopoly on the cultural signification in society, delegitimizing and
replacing all other private organizations in this role (the Church, the criollo
aristocracy, traditional medicine). It is only by believing itself to possess such
a monopoly that the state can prohibit, under the threat of a fine, the throw-
ing of trash into the street and offer a cash reward to whoever discovers the
antidote to smallpox.19
So what happened between the smallpox epidemic of 1782 and that of
1802? It could be summed up as follows: a shift occurred from a theological
to an economic signification of health and disease. For the state it became
critical to prevent the epidemic from taking so many victims from the popu-
lation, no longer out of Christian charity but because it would decrease the
available labor force and consequently the production of wealth. The battle
against disease was no longer just a problem of a moral or religious order, but
one of economic calculus. Public hygiene and stimulating scientific research
were actions promoted by the state because with them it was believed that the
state could avoid a decrease in the active laboring population. The obligation
of the state was to protect its human resources and safeguard the increase
of population, for which public health comes to be an object of strict state
regulation. The eradication of smallpox thus becomes a biopolitical ques-
tion, as was well expressed by Eugenio Espejo, the doctor from Quito, in his
Reflections on a Method for Saving the People from Smallpox:

17
 The Protomedicato was a medical institution consisting of a board of state-appointed doctors that
would regulate medical practices, with boards in Spain and its colonies [Tr.].
18
 This measure is due in part to the reservations expressed by Francisco Gil with respect to the
effectiveness of vaccination. The Spanish doctor claimed that while vaccination can weaken the
strength of the epidemic, its unregulated practice could lead to a greater spreading of the illness,
and because of this he recommended strict supervision by a doctor officially endorsed by the state
(Gil, 1983 [1784]: 38–40). José Celestino Mutis also claimed that without “all the precautions and
resources offered by the science of the professors,” vaccination could lead to “mistakes caused by
the unawareness or positive ignorance of the people” (Mutis, 1983 [1796]: 223).
19
 In fact, the vaccine had already been discovered in England by doctor Edward Jenner in 1796.
Nevertheless, and in light of gravity of the epidemic, it was not possible to wait for the vaccine
to be brought from Spain, and so the government worked to acquire the material—present in the
udders of cows—on local ranchers’ haciendas. For this, a medical commission was created and
tasked with finding the appropriate cows and extracting the vaccine material. In this respect, José
Celestino Mutis wrote a short treatise in which he provided instructions on how to recognize,
extract, transport, and preserve the viral matter. See: Mutis, 1983 [1802]: 234–236.
130 Chapter 3

The happiness of the state depends on it seeing itself (if I can explain myself
in this way) as responsible for a very large population, because the splendor,
strength, and power of the people, and consequently of the whole kingdom,
depend on the innumerable masses of rational individuals that they provide with
utility; and (inevitably) promoting the means of propagating the human species,
with the help of its unharmed persistence, is and should be the aim of all patri-
ots. (Espejo, 1985 [1785]: 27–28)

From this perspective, inoculation was seen by enlightened thought as a

humanitarian and patriotic action, because with it the depopulation of the
viceroyalty could be contained. What might seem at first glance a cruel,
reckless, and inhumane action (artificially introducing disease into a healthy
body), became in the hands of the state the key to ensuring the progress and
happiness of the people. For this reason, Mutis did not hesitate to recommend
that newborns be the first to be inoculated, because “artificially accelerating
the inevitable experience of smallpox from three to six months in children,
would be the secret to increasing the population and relieving families of sor-
row” (Mutis, 1993 [1801a]: 132).20 This is also why the Royal expedition that
introduced Jenner’s vaccine into New Granada21 was praised by the criollo
Miguel de Pombo as an unequivocal sign of humanitarianism and the “pater-
nal affection” of King Carlos IV, who “moved by the havoc caused by small-
pox in the colonies, in spite of the shortages of his public funds, the hardships
and management of a long war, considers and executes an expensive expedi-
tion whose goal is to get us the vaccine” (Pombo, 1942 [1808]: 198).22
For enlightened criollos like Espejo, Mutis, and Pombo, the wisdom of
the state can be seen in how it rationally combats obstacles to the growth of

20
 In his report to the minister of state José Gálvez on the smallpox epidemic of 1782, Mutis stated
that if children artificially receive the virus, “it will thus leave the majority of useful inhabitants
free of smallpox, from having experienced it in their early years” (Mutis, 1983 [1783a]: 208),
author’s emphasis.
21
 This was the Royal Philanthropic Expedition sent to the Americas by King Carlos IV in 1803 with
the goal of distributing the vaccine against smallpox. In New Granada, this expedition—known
as the “Salvani expedition”—was able to carry out more than 56,000 vaccinations according to
official reports (Ramírez Martín, 1999: 385–389).
22
 Pombo’s praise of Jenner, who discovered the vaccine, was no less enthusiastic, placing him on
the level of Harvey, Galileo, and Newton: “While men know to appreciate life, and while they see
it as the first of all goods, they will not remember Jenner without blessing his memory, recalling it
to their last grandchildren. It would be in good time, Columbus the discoverer of the New World,
Galileo the first to measure time with pendulums, Harvey the first who understands the circula-
tion of blood, and Newton the first who unravels and explains the laws of nature . . . But for you,
enlightened Jenner, for you the incomparable glory of having first discovered and communicated
from the cow to the human a fluid that protects from the most terrible disease, from a disease that
ravaged the countryside, ruined cities, and depopulated the land. This land will cover itself with
new inhabitants and it will be you who restored and preserved the human species” (Pombo, 1942
[1808]: 199).
 Imperial Biopolitics 131

the working population, that “good government” is that which uses scientific
knowledge as a means to secure the economic prosperity of the viceroy-
alty. Ultimately, it was a matter of the pretension to subject the “chaos” of
nature—and its two “undesired” manifestations, scarcity and disease—to the
dictates of human reason, without having to appeal to judgment by a superior
will accessible only through prayers and spells.

3.3 MOTHS DESTROYING THE REPUBLIC

In 1791, in the thirteenth issue of the recently founded Papel Periódico de

la Ciudad de Santafé de Bogotá, editor Manuel del Socorro Rodríguez offers
the following reflection: “To me it seems that if all politicians in the Universe
asked themselves the question, ‘what is the most proper means for making
a Republic flourish in a short time’?, all would unanimously respond: to
establish in every populated part of the district a hospice and a Friends of the
Country Economic Society” (Rodríguez, 1978 [1791]: 97). The question is:
what does a hospice have to do with the establishment of an economic soci-
ety? A lot, if we keep in mind that the change in cultural meaning that dis-
ease underwent in the eighteenth century also entailed a change in the social
status of mendicancy and poverty. Poverty ceased to be seen as an individual
eventuality that is the object of Christian charity by the Church, and became
instead a disfunction of society which is the object of correction by the state.
It was no longer a matter of giving alms to the poor lying in the street, but of
integrating the needy into a public rehabilitation apparatus coordinated by
the state, converting the “invalid” into someone who is “valid,” and trans-
forming the poor into a useful workforce for society. The economic rational-
ity of the state thus demanded the extirpation of idleness and the promotion
of useful work.
The link between mendicancy and economics, signaled by Rodríguez, was
concretized in New Granada with the creation in 1790 of the Royal Hospice
of Santafé, whose aim was to capture alms, classify the needy, and discipline
mobile beggars. Under the initiative of Don Francisco Antonio Moreno and
with the support of viceroy Ezpeleta, a house was founded to collect beggars
equipped with doctors, chaplains, majordomos, administrators, and secretar-
ies, and financed by public alms, and the sale of Black slaves,23 and some

23
 In the fourth issue of the Correo Curioso, on Tuesday, March 10, 1801, a public announcement
stated the following: “For sale. There is to be found at the Royal Hospice House a young slave of
good service, ready for hard work; he is married to an Indian woman, who is also young. Whoever
would like to buy him should speak with D. Antonio Caxigas, the administrator of said house. He
is being sold for the benefit of the poor.”
132 Chapter 3

state funds. Rodríguez comments on the work of the Royal Hospice in his
newspaper with the following words:

Having the Hospice arranged in the desired terms, one would no longer find
vagrants of either sex in the streets who, trusting in the certainty of nourish-
ment they can attain every day with the alms they collect, do not think of
anything else but hiding an infinity of vices behind beggars’ customs . . . With
the Hospice, there would not be as much bad upbringing and effeminacy in
this large mob of vicious youth and idlers, who do not exert themselves in
anything but cultivating paths of iniquity, such that every corner and door of a
tavern, from morning until the latest hour of the night, does not offer any sight
aside from debauchery, relaxation, indecency, impiety, all sustained and caused
by drunkenness . . . With the Hospice, many young and old would no longer
become miserably poor, which leads to many illicit love affairs among those
who cannot cultivate them in any other way as they become the perfect instru-
ments of this kind of commerce, devastating many houses. (Rodríguez, 1978
[1791]: 98–99)

The purpose of the hospice was therefore to classify and resocialize beggars
in order to distinguish between those who were “truly” poor and those who
were simply idlers living off of the labor of others. This would allow the
viceroyalty to uproot the most dangerous vice for the economic interests of
the state: idleness. Certainly, charity toward the poor is a virtue demanded
by God in the gospels, but when vice and laziness of others is encouraged
under the pretext of charity, one is actually committing “an abuse of the law
of Jesus Christ.”24 The editor of Semanario thus advocated an “enlightened
and patriotic charity” in which love for one’s neighbor is repurposed by the
state into public utility. This would allow for the alms of the people, rather
than fomenting laziness, to be channeled toward “a great reform of customs,
since by these means we would make useful citizens of those who under
the feigned habits of poverty were truly idlers and moths destroying the
Republic” (Rodríguez, 1978 [1792]: 327, author’s emphasis).
The poor needed to be “collected” not only to prevent the propagation of
vices and disease but also to classify them and know who was and was not
“rehabilitatable”; who could work and who truly needed medical assistance.

24
 Rodríguez words are harsh toward those who believe that alms are a Christian duty no matter who
is asking for them: “Here, sirs, is the family of Jesus Christ so recommended by his law; but here
is a people that was not unhappy, if you look at them with a more rational compassion, with a more
enlightened and generous charity, it is your fault that they remain in this miserable misfortune,
because you do not want to give them more dignified alms than religion, more laudable for your
zeal, more glorious for the fatherland, and more useful for themselves. That is to say, alms that
redeem them once and for all from having to beg for alms” (Rodríguez, 1978 [1791]: 105).
 Imperial Biopolitics 133

Only the doctor had the authority to decide who could be excused from pro-
ductive labor, after subjecting beggars to a rigorous physical exam. Rodríguez
thinks that the lame, amputees, and the blind, even if they are old, should not
be seen as “civil cadavers” or “wandering specters of society,” since they can
still learn a useful trade.25 Everyone, including women and children, can and
should work for their own support and for the benefit of the community. The
function of the Royal Hospice was precisely to help these individuals learn
all sorts of manufacturing useful for commerce: spinning, linens, separating
cotton, making wax candles (Rodríguez, 1978 [1791]: 142).
No mendicant at the Hospice should remain without work, unless a doctor
certified that their physical disability required a period of recovery and reha-
bilitation, for which the Royal Hospice should also be prepared. It is exactly
this model of hospice workshop that José Ignacio de Pombo proposed for the
Cartagena project cited previously:

We have not spoken of the factories with respect to the raw materials the
provinces produce, such as fique, agave, cotton, etc., and especially the most
ordinary, easy, and common, that have most interest for consumption, and give
work to the greatest number of hands; because their establishment goes along-
side the proposal for the Hospice, where they will establish the teachers needed
to train them, along with machines and instruments corresponding to the effort.
Intelligent men will emerge from these workshops and will establish others in
every province. (Pombo, 1965 [1810]: 188)

In addition to developing the work of unproductive sectors, the medical-

ization of poverty had another important economic function: stimulating
population growth. Combating the vices of the streets would not only extend
productive life—since vices weaken the health of the body—but would also
stimulate the reproduction of healthy bodies “useful to the state.” It is not
strange, then, that in the same issue in which he writes about the economic
function of the Royal Hospice (Friday, May 6, 1791), the editor of Papel

25
 “One-armed amputees, that class of men we see as absolutely useless, except for walking, could
have occupations that make use of the scarce power that they have; given that their number is quite
small such that there are perhaps only six in the capital city, seeing that there is no purpose they
can serve, it will be enough to remove them from the streets, carrying out at the same time two
dignified works of religion and politics. First, offering them rest that they could never enjoy in their
miserable lives as beggars; and second, removing the risk of vice that not only they can fall into
but that unwary youth will also follow by example. Nor should the blind be considered as specters
and wandering specters of society. They are men who can serve in some fashion, repaying with
the work of their hands the food that is provided them. Lack of vision is not a lack of power that
incapacitates for any kind of occupation: they can work at pottery, palm weaving, and separating
cotton; and work in other manufactures according to their respective abilities” (Rodríguez, 1978
[1791]: 143).
134 Chapter 3

Periódico announces a prize of fifty pesos for the discourse proposing the
best solutions to the problem of the depopulation of New Granada.26 The
criollo Diego Martín Tanco, winner of the announced competition, explained
in his Discourse on Population that the best way to achieve this objective was
“to employ the inhabitants without exception of sex, age, and faculties, so that
the result would be opulence, the power of the state, its abundant population,
and a good extensive to all the kinds of hierarchies” (Tanco, 1978 [1792]:
130). In his Discourse, Tanco agrees point by point with Rodríguez in assert-
ing that the problem of New Granada is not so much the small number of
inhabitants, but the insalubrity and immorality of those who are there:

A Kingdom should not be called well-populated even if it is overflowing with

inhabitants, if they are not hard-working and do not usefully employ themselves
in those tasks that produce food, clothing, adornment, and other things needed
for the comforts of life. That would be merely a multitude of idlers whose very
inaction would bring them quickly toward their end, their posterity on this earth
soon disappearing because a man without work is filled with vices, which mor-
ally turns him into a terrible and vile monster of society; and physically fills
him with ills that are passed on uninterrupted to his children and grandchildren.
(Tanco, 1978 [1792]: 130, author’s emphasis)

The message is clear: disease, vice, and unproductive labor are factors that
contribute to the de-population of the viceroyalty and infringe upon the eco-
nomic prosperity of the Spanish empire. It is thus necessary to rehabilitate
the sick population of New Granada, not only physically but also morally.
The sickness of the body and the soul mutually condition one another. This
is why the “great reform of customs” announced by Rodríguez y Tanco is
centered on an ethics of work and efficiency inspired by state apparatuses
such as the Royal Hospice. The hospital, which up to this point occupied a
domain separate from medicine, now became a center for physical and moral
rehabilitation, since its function was to intervene on the body of the sick to
restore its productive energy through the application of expert knowledge.
The medicalization of poverty begins only when health and disease become

26
 “A native subject and citizen of this capital, knowing that they could never achieve the true happi-
ness of the Kingdom without achieving an increase in the population; mindful that a good patriot
ought not only work for the time of their existence, but for their posterity, just as our fathers did,
the quantity of fifty pesos is offered to whomever produces a Discourse showing with solid and
well-founded reasons how to increase population in such a way that in forty or fifty years one could
probably expect a significant transformation of the arts, industry, and other areas that form the good
of the state of a Republic. Said discourse should be composed with the utmost clarity, shining forth
with the elegance of vigorous and demonstrative reasoning. The measures proposed ought to be the
most simple and straightforward, such that the project does not result in great costs to the Royal
Treasury, nor in taxes on the public.”
 Imperial Biopolitics 135

economic variables, that is to say, when the hospice becomes a curative

mechanism in the service of the productive apparatus.
The capuchin Friar Joaquín de Finestrad also understands idleness and
poverty as grave obstacles to the prosperity of the viceroyalty. If what the
government seeks is “to establish a new political edifice” which would put
Spain in a position “capable of making her respectable in all of Europe,”
then it is necessary to begin with a profound reform of the habits of the
population (Finestrad, 2000 [1789]: 148). Reforming administrative and
political structures is worth nothing if the morality of the governed is not
first transformed. For this reason, the government’s attention should be
focused on permanently uprooting vagrancy and idleness, which are the
principal “spiritual maladies” of New Granada. Finestrad considers idleness
to be a disease, that is, a deviation from the normal conduct established by
human nature, because even in wild animals “indolence and idleness is for-
eign to them, and continued occupation is natural” (148). So the mission of
government should be to collect vagrants and confine them, separating them
from the rest of society:

Gathering up the idlers, wayward, and layabouts is an important aim of

Government. Tolerance for these monsters of the Republic, far from being use-
ful to the Crown, is harmful to its preservation. An infected limb is cut from
the human body to prevent the contagion from spreading to the rest of the body.
Idlers, the wayward, and layabouts are corrupted members of the Republic and
it is necessary to isolate them in order to preserve its good order and splendor.
(Finestrad, 2000 [1789]: 148)

Here, poverty acquires a very different status than the one it held in the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries: now it is equated with public uselessness
and it requires medico-political treatment. In fact, the medical metaphors
Finestrad uses (“corrupted member”) are quite clear in this respect: the poor
should be treated as sick beings that require medical and spiritual attention.
Given that the purpose of the Bourbon reforms was to place Spain within the
dynamic of the second modernity that haunted all of Europe like a specter,
it is not strange that idleness would be perceived as an unpatriotic or even
unnatural conduct. For enlightenment thought, it was “natural” for produc-
tive labor to be the instrument allowing the definitive overcoming of scar-
city. The humanity of the human was precisely its capacity to destroy and
expel the chaos of nature, converting it through work and technology into an
ordered entity. As such, the vagrant and the needy are held to be sick beings,
if not subhumans (monsters of the Republic), since their attitude is not one
of actively transforming nature but of defending themselves from it, passively
resigning themselves to live in dependency on others. The obligation of the
136 Chapter 3

state is thus to resocialize such people through confinement in hospitals, with

the goal of turning them into productive subjects.

3.4 THE HOSPITAL AS THE DREAM OF REASON

“Gathering up the poor”—as Finestrad put it—meant confining them in hos-

pitals intended to rehabilitate their physical health, making their “body useful
to the nation.” But if the sick and the poor now needed be cured, the old struc-
ture of the colonial hospital would have to be completely updated. Zero-point
hubris demanded the immediate substitution of the new for the old. To do so,
the hospital needed to be rationally designed in advance, not only adminis-
tratively, but also architecturally and geographically. It needed to be turned
into a small laboratory sketched out a priori where one could put the rational
control over nature into practice. Like Platonic forms, the hospital belonged
to the intelligible world, since it first had to be thought, conceived rationally,
before being implemented in the sensible world. First a rational model of
the hospital had to be elaborated and later this model could be translated to
empirical reality, such that only in a space conceived more geometrico could
the poor and the sick internalize and incorporate the rational order dreamed
by the state into their habitus. Prior design on the basis of an ordered rational-
ity is thus one of the characteristics of the biopolitics of the hospital.
In 1789, the chief magistrate of Zipaquirá, don Pedro Fermín de Vargas,
complained to the viceroy of the “poor construction” of houses in the parish
and commented that, “it is advisable to remedy the political and moral evils
resulting from this.” “Your excellency,” he argues, “knows how much the
comfort of buildings influences public health and how many plagues have
owed their origin to their neglect” (Vargas, 1944 [1789d]: 141). He therefore
proposed that the hospital building be constructed according to architectural
norms established a priori to facilitate the full recovery of the sick:

We know from repeated terrible experiences the great problems caused by hos-
pitals, the proximity of the sick, making diseases oftentimes incurable by this
terrible method. Toward this end, the Zipaquirá hospital will have infirmary
rooms of corresponding length and width, not only to avoid the proximity of the
sick but also to provide the needed relief for their treatment and so that depen-
dents can enter without obstacle. Every room will have a number of windows
corresponding to its size, so that the air is not corrupted, but there will be no con-
nection between rooms except through corridors. (Vargas, 1944 [1789d]: 124)

Unity, functionality, and, above all, rigorous order, are the characteristics of
hospital architecture indicated by Vargas. Order should have been established
 Imperial Biopolitics 137

before the hospital exists since this would impede any future disorder. The
design for this order falls to enlightened men who possess the knowledge
required to successfully combat the undesired effects of nature. Insofar as
they were “dreamers of order,” men of science were tasked with “seeing to
foresee”; with constructing a rational model that could anticipate the move-
ments of nature with the aim of controlling them. Prior to being an empirical
reality, the hospital should be established as an idea, installed as a universal
space of order to combat all that which deviates from the dreamed and desired
norm. Just as disease is nothing but a “perverse consequence” of our igno-
rance of natural laws, so too must the hospital reflect the intelligible order of
these laws in the sensible world. Only in this way can disease be completely
understood and eradicated.
José Ignacio de Pombo also imagined a rational distribution of spaces
for his ambitious project to renovate the Hospital of San Juan de Dios in
Cartagena. Not only did the hospital need dedicated rooms and halls to attend
to the sick, but also sufficient space to assemble a veritable medical school
within, including a botanical garden, a department of zoology, and an astro-
nomical observatory:

The Hospital of San Juan de Dios offers as many comforts and advantages as
can be desired to establish the complete study of Medicine, Surgery, Pharmacy,
and Anatomy, with a good Anatomical theater for the dissection of cadavers; for
the school of Chemistry, its laboratory; for Minerology its corresponding col-
lection; for Zoology, its department; and also for an Astronomical Observatory
with its meridian telescope and all other necessities which are no less important;
and all of this not only without harm to the Hospital and its poor and sick, but
with the known utility of these studies and their teaching. The great capacity
and extension of said building and factory in all directions, knowing how to
take advantage of it and distribute it properly, and an advantageous location for
relations with the indicated establishments, make it the most suited location in
all of the city for these ends. (Pombo, 1965 [1810]: 181)

It is not only the architecture but also the hospital’s location that needed to
be thought out in advance. Above all in those areas prone to epidemics, it
was advisable to build hospitals outside of town and in high places where
the wind blows to prevent the spread of “fetid air.”27 In his 1784 Disertación
físico-médica, the Spanish doctor Francisco Gil proposes to the government

27
 The science of the period supported the opinion of the count of Combie-Blanche, who in issue
57 of Papel Periódico (Friday, March 16, 1792) asserted the following: “The observations of all
centuries and all Nations concur to prove indisputably, that fetid air is the immediate cause of all
pestilent contagions, be they endemic or epidemic.”
138 Chapter 3

in Madrid the creation of “field houses” for the recovery of those infected
with smallpox. The objective of these houses was to submit the infected to a
constant surveillance by the doctor, isolating them from all contact with the
outside world and in this way avoiding the spread of the disease in densely
populated areas (Gil, 1983 [1784]: 60; 62). The idea of the hospital was
understood and designed as a machine for surveillance and recovery, thus
its objective was to reestablish the health of the sick, returning to them the
corporeal faculties needed to serve society usefully. Gil’s recommendation
was therefore to “have the hospital outside of the city, where you can keep
the inoculated until their full recovery.”28
Doctor Francisco Gil’s a priori design became empirical reality in
New Granada when the smallpox epidemic suddenly broke out in 1802.29
Immediately, viceroy Mendinueta ordered a small hospital to be established
on the outskirts of the city to care for those first infected. However, faced with
the magnitude of the epidemic, the government decided to completely isolate
Bogotá through the creation of hygienic zones (also called “degredos”) which
everyone who entered the city was required to pass through. In addition to
their curative function, degredos operated as a rigorous mechanism of sanitary
control. Every traveler was suspected of carrying the disease and therefore
subjected to a careful interrogation in which the authorities would investi-
gate their geographic origin,30 other people they had been in contact with, as
well as their clothing and kind of merchandise that they were transporting.31
Each person needed to undress and ventilate their clothing, while also being
examined by a doctor to determine if they should remain in quarantine (Silva,

28
 It is interesting to observe that not only hospitals but also schools should be constructed according
to a priori rational models. This design should guarantee that the wind will carry away all “fetid
vapors” from the school and also facilitate constant surveillance by the teacher. The criollo Diego
Martín Tanco, in his Discurso sobre la educación, stated: “The building that is to serve as the
school should not, as a matter of fact, be in the center of the city or neighborhood, but rather in its
most isolated area, far from all the bustle that can attract the attention of the children and distract
them from their obligations. If it can be high up, that is preferred over lower areas, as it is healthier,
better ventilated, and has more agreeable views. On the main entry door from the street, a sign with
beautiful golden letters shall be hung: SCHOOL OF THE HOMELAND, so that it is known and
respected by the public. The instruction room for the children should be large and well-lit; and in it
the director should also have his seat, such that they can see what each one is doing, and nothing
is hidden, without the need of making use of the care of others” (Tanco, 1942 [1808b]: 86–87),
author’s emphasis.
29
 The minister of the Indies, José Gálvez, had sent Gil’s work to all of the colonies so that their
respective authorities could follow his prescriptions (Frías Núñez, 1992: 113). The town council
of Quito convened a group of doctors to study Gil’s treatise and they submitted their written com-
mentaries. One of the texts turned in to the council was Eugenio Espejo’s Reflexiones.
30
 The common opinion was that epidemics almost always came from the ports of the Caribbean
Sea (especially Cartagena) and that from there they traveled down the Magdalena river, through
Mompox, toward the interior of the Kingdom (Silva, 1992b: 13).
31
 Control was directed above all toward wool and cotton garments, as Francisco Gil’s Disertación
argued that these materials transported contagion (Gil, 1983 [1784]: 62).
 Imperial Biopolitics 139

1992b: 15). The degredo thereby became the empirical concretization of an

ideal model, that as I stated, sought the social establishment of order.
In effect, we know that as a result of the 1802 epidemic, the construc-
tion of degredos was accompanied by rigorous policing measures in the city
of Bogotá. With the goal of rapidly identifying and isolating the sick, the
town council [cabildo] arranged the creation of a health council responsible
for coordinating systematic inspections of the city’s eight neighborhoods
(Rodríguez González, 1999: 38). The health council, composed of two doc-
tors in addition to commissioners and leading citizens [vecinos principales]
from each neighborhood, was given the task of inspecting the city block by
block and street by street to locate the sick and determine to which popula-
tion group they belonged. Frías Núñez (1992: 136) states that in the houses
of the “leading citizens,” inspectors were limited to knocking on the door and
asking if there was anyone sick inside, while in the houses where “people of
color” lived a painstaking search was carried out. Once they were identified
by the sanitary police, those suspected of carrying the disease were to be forc-
ibly detained in one of the four degredo hospitals built for this purpose. There
they were examined by the doctor, the custodian of expert knowledge with
which they could determine who was sick and what treatment was needed to
reintegrate them into public life.
But the empirical instantiation of the “enlightened dream” seemed to
exceed the financial and administrative capacities of the Crown. The con-
struction and maintenance of hospitals designed in this way required not
only a specific cognitive competency (expert knowledge of a formal char-
acter, and professionals who embody this knowledge) but also a high level
of rationalization at the political and bureaucratic levels. It was necessary to
impose new taxes, to reorganize those already existing, and to channel these
resources toward the new sphere of “public health.” It was also necessary to
create price control mechanisms to prevent speculators from taking advantage
of health crises for their own benefit (Silva, 1992b: 75). Added on top of this
was the need to coordinate systematic censuses of the population, process the
information obtained, administratively reorganize cities and towns accord-
ing to this information, create new sanitary laws, and implement fines for
infractions, and so on. In sum, state biopolitics required setting into motion
a type of rationality aimed at establishing technically realizable objectives,
maximizing resources, minimizing costs, and taking advantage of the existing
workforce with the maximum possible degree of efficiency. The condition of
possibility for the realization of the enlightened dream was, in turn, another
dream of reason.
We can see an example of this in the proposed hospital policy for the
Spanish state formulated by Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa. The two
Bourbon functionaries strongly criticized the irrational way (the “bad
140 Chapter 3

providence”) that the question of health had been managed up to that point.
The reason for this bad policy is that the state had allowed criollo hacenda-
dos to consider Black people and Indians to be private property, as though
their labor force belonged to them exclusively and not to the “public hap-
piness.” So when these people were beset with epidemics, the state would
avoid responsibility for their care, leaving them in private hands32 instead of
establishing public hospitals in each town, where people could be cured and
promptly returned to work:

There is not a Hacienda, of either the regular or secular clergy, or laypeople,

that does not make this kind of use of Indians in all of Perú, with the exception
of the sugar mills and factories that the Society has in the Quito province, and
the haciendas of the valley that belong to all kinds of people who work employ-
ing Black people. In this supposition we can say without taking distance from
the complete rigor of the truth, that the Indians are the ones who work all the
haciendas, factories, mines, and as mule-drivers to traffic between places; and
things being such as they are, it seems that it is just that all those who use the
labor of the Indians contribute to their recovery when they are ill, such that their
numbers do not diminish; since the greater the number of Indian workers the
greater the profits from their labor. (Juan and Ulloa, 1983 [1826]: 325, author’s
emphasis)

What, then, did the rational design elaborated by Juan and Ulloa consist of?
First, it signaled that the function of the state was to optimize the available
workforce in its territories and channel it toward activities that are useful
for the community. This implied, in the second place, granting a new status
to Black and Indian labor. Instead of seeing them as slaves destined for the
“personal service” of private individuals, the state should see them as workers
that produce wealth for the whole of society. The rationality of state policy,
in the model of Juan and Ulloa, is measured according to strictly economic
criteria. The greater the number of healthy individuals, the greater the rate of
population growth and “the greater the profits from their labor.” And if it is
Indians, Black people, and mestizos who sustain the economy then the duty
of the state is to safeguard their health and allocate adequate means to cure
them when they are sick.

32
 Left to the piety of their white masters, Indians and Black people died by the thousands with the
onset of epidemics, “as it is said in the first part of History, their shelter is reduced to a poor shack
without any furniture . . . Disease attacks them in this state, and taking its regular course it is fatal
for their lives. There is no one else to help them there except the women of the Indians, and no
medicine but nature, nor any other gift for nourishment but herbs, cancha or mote, mascha and
chicha: thus not only smallpox, but any other serious illness is fatal for them from the outset” (Juan
and Ulloa, 1983 [1826]: 321).
 Imperial Biopolitics 141

In the third place, Juan and Ulloa proposed the creation of public hospitals
in every town, financed with taxes on the production of sugar cane and alco-
hol. No person or private entity would be exempt from this tax obligation (or,
“right to hospitality”), not even the Catholic Church, which owned the largest
mills. Equally, the encomenderos should be required by law to construct infir-
maries on their haciendas so that Indians could receive free medical attention.
However, since the Indians themselves benefit from this medical care, they
should be taxed “one or two more reales in addition to their annual tribute.”
Finally, Juan and Ulloa believed that the administration of these new hos-
pitals should not be granted to the Brothers of San Juan de Dios, as this would
“add riches on top of what these communities already have, without public
benefit or hope thereof.” Economic management of the hospitals should
instead be entrusted to the Jesuits, whose “wise conduct” in the rational
administration of their business is well known.33
Juan and Ulloa’s rational plan was not translated into empirical reality
by the Spanish Crown, but it is a good example of the way hospital policy
initially emerged as a “project of the mind”—to use the expression of Rama
(1996: 9). As is well known, Ángel Rama refers to the dream of the utopi-
ans and Renaissance architects who founded cities in the colonial Américas
according to preestablished models.34 But his theory of the “lettered city”
helps us to understand how rational plans for the hospital, even if never
implemented in practice, served to establish the dominion of a symbolic order
that consolidated the ethnic, social, and cultural hegemony of criollos.

3.5 THE TAMING OF CHANCE

The establishment of a hospital structure oriented toward the reestablish-

ment of physical and moral health formed part of the Bourbon project of
rationalizing the economic and administrative structure of the empire. The

33
 “The immediate receipt of all the assigned hospitals should go to the Society without getting into
the royal houses, nor with intervention from the Officials of the Royal Hacienda . . . Similarly, the
power to name necessary administrators and custodians should be granted to the Society so that
they receive the rights to the hospitals, with the intervention of the prosecutor-protector.”
34
 “Before becoming a material reality of houses, streets, and plazas, which could be constructed only
gradually over decades or centuries, Latin American cities sprang forth in signs and plans, already
complete, in the documents that laid their statutory foundations and in the charts and plans that
established their ideal designs, with the fatal regularity that lurks in the dreams of reason . . . The
dreams of architects (Alberti, Filarete, and Vitruvio) and designers of utopias (More, Campanella)
came to little in material terms, but they fortified the order of signs, extending the rhetorical capac-
ity of this instrument of absolutism to impose hierarchical order on sprawling empires. Born of
circumstances specific to the age, the influence of these urbanistic designs far outlasted it. Such is
the nature of the order of signs that it privileges potentiality over reality, creating frameworks that,
if not eternal, have lasted and can still be found today” (Rama, 1996, 8–9).
142 Chapter 3

integration of the workforce into the market required on the one hand that
disease no longer be understood as individual but instead social, and on the
other that an inventory of populations be carried out in order to understand
the evolution of the state of their health. But this inventory also required the
use of an instrument of knowledge—mathematics—that would make the
social measurement of disease possible. “Mathematical reason” would make
it possible to banish the idea that health and disease were questions of chance
or divine will, showing that the entire universe is subject to cause and effect
and that knowledge of this order can be rationally discovered by science and
used wisely by the state.
Under the influence of Newton, which had already been felt in New
Granada since before the arrival of Mutis, a mechanistic vision of the world
and nature was being gradually imposed in official circles of the eighteenth
century.35 Enlightened New Granadians believed that the entirety of nature
was governed by constant and eternal laws that could be formulated math-
ematically by human reason.36 In his inaugural lecture as the chair of math-
ematics in 1762, Mutis stated that when God created the machine of the world
“everything was arranged by number, weight, and measure with such a fixed
order and foundation that the same movements of those very first centuries
will reverberate until the last” (Mutis, 1983 [1762]: 41). If everything in the
universe is subject to fixed laws, then there is nothing that cannot be known
through mathematics. Thus, Mutis claimed that no other form of knowledge
could turn out to be more useful to the state, since “all the ministries, depart-
ments, practices, occupations, and employments worthy of man are copi-
ously illuminated by mathematics.” Medicine, of course, does not elude this
universal applicability of mathematical thought. According to Mutis, all the

35
 Since 1740, the colleges of the Society of Jesus in Quito and Bogotá had promoted the teaching of
authors like Newton, Copernicus, and Descartes. Christian Wolff’s Elements of All the Mathemati-
cal Sciences was widely circulated in New Granada, as can be seen by the repeated appearance
of this text in inventories of elite criollo libraries and colonial universities (Quintero, 1999; Ortiz
Rodríguez, 2003: 28–30).
36
 The unshakeable confidence in man and the power of reason to dominate the forces of nature
through knowledge was an important part of the enlightened imaginary. The criollo José Félix de
Restrepo, in a lecture given in 1791 to the students of the Royal Seminary of Saint Francis of Assisi
in Popayán, claimed that with respect to man “there is nothing that can resist his thought, the sole
origin of his sovereign authority . . . To aid the forces of the eyes, according to the laws of a wise
theory, thought creates instruments whose support extends the image of the object, illuminates, and
brings it close. With the help of the microscope thought penetrates the interior of bodies, distin-
guishes imperceptible parts, and contemplates the marvels of its composition in wonder . . . Even
though his height does not exceed six feet, he dares to refine a project that a giant with a thousand
arms would not have the audacity to attempt; the winds become his vassals and servants, taking
him to the other side of the widest seas; he tames the beasts of the forests. He constructs ships that
will serve his grandchildren and their descendants. He marks out the movements of lightning, the
most terrible phenomenon we know, and he makes a bridge to Rhône that will so shock posterity
that it will be attributed to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit” (Restrepo, 2002 [1791]: 416).
 Imperial Biopolitics 143

laws governing the universe can also be observed in that “small world” that
is the human body. “It would be exhaustive,” he argued, “to want to name in
detail all the parts of the human body whose movements are in tune with the
laws of mechanics, without which it is impossible to understand the physics
of the human body” (42).
The usefulness of mathematics for medicine was not only rooted in under-
standing the laws of the body, but also in the creation of instruments that
would allow one to measure the frequency of disease. Population censuses
were founded on the idea that empirical facts—and in this case social facts—
could be abstracted and converted into quantities that could be analyzed,
compared, and processed with a high degree of certainty. The “data” thus
obtained could be used by the state to develop government policy toward
the population in order to promote “public happiness.” The state certainly
needed a healthy population that could work efficiently, but it also needed to
know how many actual and potential workers there were in the territory, the
number of births and deaths, who these people were, where they lived, their
“life expectancy,” how many had been admitted to the hospital with illnesses,
what kind of sickness were they afflicted with, the percentage of the sick
who recovered, and so on. Thus, interest in the application of mathematics
to the “science of good government” was born, as a biopolitical instrument
that would allow the state to know and effectively administer the available
human resources.
From this perspective, Joaquín de Finestrad, cited above, proposed peri-
odic population censuses with the following argument:

For the better order and repair of the Republic the knowledge of the families
that compose it with the impartial distribution of different classes of individu-
als that make up the neighborhood is necessary. To calculate consumption the
most exact reporting of the number of habitants in each province, their customs,
occupations, character, and constitution is necessary. With this knowledge the
Government could remedy so much illness . . . The good aristocrats will be
known, the unruly will not be disguised, the bastard children of society will be
seen, and the traitors, murderers, thieves, and seditious will not have a city of
refuge. (Finestrad, 2000 [1789]: 161)

The censuses served not only to exercise strict police control over the popu-
lation, as Finestad wanted but also to calculate their growth rate and state of
health. In the report on the first general census of the population of Bogotá,
published in the fifth and sixth issues of Correo Curioso, Francisco José
de Caldas states that the benign climate of the capital, the salubrity of its
atmosphere “which is rarely infested with pestilent vapors” and the “great
fertility of the women,” give hope that the population will grow rapidly and
144 Chapter 3

that Bogotá will become “one of the greatest and most populous cities in the
world” (Caldas, 1993 [1801]: 38). The city had 20,081 inhabitants, 11,890
of whom were women and only 8,191 men: a situation that does not seem to
worry the wise New Granadian. The abundance of women is instead promis-
ing, since the number of “useful arms for the homeland” would potentially be
increased, as demonstrated by the fact that births exceeded deaths by 247 per-
sons in 1800. It was even more important to quantify the number of persons
admitted to hospitals and to know how many of them had died or recovered.
Caldas reported that 1,723 people entered the Hospital San Juan de Dios in
1800, of which only 274 died and 1,449 were cured. It was encouraging to
learn that of these 1,723 people, 1,522 were poor or beggars (88 percent), of
whom only 268 died (15 percent). The report proudly suggested that royal
policies of collecting the poor were working, even though there was still
much to do since the number of beggars and vagrants “who did not have per-
manent housing” was around 500 in the city. It was also important to know
where these people lived and how their homes were distributed in order to
exercise more effective sanitary control in case of epidemics. Caldas said that
in Bogotá there were eight neighborhoods with 195 blocks and 4,517 doors,
with the peripheral neighborhood of Nieves (inhabited primarily by mestizo
artisans) being the most populated among these.
Enthusiasm for statistics also spread to various rural parish priests, who
meticulously recorded the number of births, deaths, and marriages every
year and sent these to the newspapers. This allowed authorities to calculate
population growth in every part of the viceroyalty. Priests who collected data
were publicly recognized as “protectors of the public good” and held up as
examples for others. This was the case for the priest Francisco Mosquera,
whose labor was recognized by Caldas, who was at that time editor of the
Semanario del Nuevo Reino de Granada. Mosquera carried out the work of
producing birth and death statistics in the city of Popayán between 1800 and
1804 by using the city’s parish records. “If all parish priests,” wrote Caldas,
“were driven by the zeal of that of Popayán, they would carry out the most
important service to the State, giving light to the population. This is the true
political thermometer: here we know the salubrity of the climate, the ease of
subsistence, the fertility of marriages, and a hundred other notions necessary
for those careful to rule us, and with which they can reflect on the economy
and happiness of the homeland” (Caldas, 1942 [1809b]: 195).
Populational statistics were used, as Caldas states, to know the “salubrity
of the climate” and thus prevent the spread of epidemics. This was the case
with statistics on illness and death between 1802 and 1807 in the Hospital de
Popayán, also published in Semanario. These statistics showed that of 4,975
sick patients 305 had died, and that the majority of these deaths occurred
between 1805 and 1806. From this, Caldas concluded that it is likely that at
 Imperial Biopolitics 145

this time the atmosphere of the city was carrying “pestilent vapors” and that it
would be important to provide hospitals with measuring instruments to record
climatic variations:

Would this knowledge designed for an individual in every hospital to keep a

detailed record of the readings of these instruments not be worth it? Would it not
be rather interesting to add to these [statistical] lists the number of those sick,
with a note of their disease and its major occurrences? To publish every year
the result with the number of deaths? . . . All of these instruments are of little
expense and can be easily obtained. It would be for the good of the prelates in
charge of these hospitals for such machines to be supplied, as indispensable as
necessary as opium and ipecac to tend to the necessities of the sick. (Caldas,
1942 [1809c]: 14)

Statistics and instruments for quantitative measurement began to be seen as

means in service of the fundamental objective of the state: increasing of eco-
nomic productivity of the population. It was not mathematics per se but rather
its social application that interested the Bourbon state, that is, mathematics
as an enabler of a technology of population control. Taming chance and sub-
jecting disease to a policy of order thus became central elements of imperial
biopolitics. For this, it became necessary to link mathematics to a number of
empirical factors (transformed into “variables”) that seemed totally unrelated
in the eyes of the common person: the number of births and deaths per year,
the size of the territory, the distribution of the population by region, race,
and sex, royal income from taxes, the production and consumption of food,
the price of supplies, the fertility rate of marriages, the temperature of cit-
ies and the countryside, the number and age of those sick from epidemics,
the intensity of internal and external commerce, and so on. Thanks to all of
these calculations one could deduce the state’s present and future capacity to
administer the productive life of the population.
In his Memoria sobre la población del Reino, the criollo Pedro Fermín de
Vargas makes a similar calculation, albeit much less optimistic than that of
Caldas:

To know how low the resources of this population are and how little can be
expected of them, one need only calculate the number of births every year, sup-
posing as I said that the number of inhabitants of the Kingdom is 2,000,000; and
relating the number of births to those existing in a ratio of 1 in 23 or 24, and
even higher in the cities depending on commerce and size, where we calculate
a mean that will be 24, thus: 2,000,000 over this number, the result is 83,333,
which is the number of births in an average year. In the same way we know that
the number of deaths of those living is around 1 in 29; and making the same
146 Chapter 3

calculation the result is 68,895 deaths in an average year, which subtracted from
the 83,333, leaves 14,368, which would be our population increase each year;
and thus according to the same principle, in 25 [years] the population will be
3,059,200, with a small margin. Thus, in order for this colony to reach the popu-
lation that it needs and can support, many centuries would need to pass without
any epidemics of disease, nor other causes that counter this increase. (Vargas,
1944 [1789c]: 94–95)

Here, Fermín de Vargas uses statistical data as a form of reasoning that

quantifies the human with utilitarian aims of social control. Sequential tables
allow the state to take an inventory of human beings and their habits with the
goal of imposing taxes, exploiting natural resources, and “ordering society”
according to a priori rational parameters. The goal was to know chance in
order to subject it to an arithmetic of order; but above all else, to control
deviant factors—in this case disease and poverty—in order to channel and
integrate them into a project of governmentality designed by the state and its
enlightened technocrats.

3.6 LICENSE TO CURE

In addition to the hospital and populational statistics, the political economy

of health had one of its most effective instruments in the “Royal Court of the
Protomedicato.” This was an institution created by the King and Queen of
Spain with the purpose of regulating and surveilling the professional practice
of doctors, surgeons, and pharmacists.37 Through this institution of control,
the state sought to centralize and professionalize available human resources,
prohibiting the practice of medicine to those who did not have the required
“license to cure.” Among the most important responsibilities of the court
were the following38:

• To examine graduates requesting to professionally practice the “art of

medicine.” Once all of the documents presented had been meticulously
reviewed, including a written declaration of the candidate’s “blood purity,”
the Court would summon them for a rigorous examination evaluating their
theoretical and practical knowledge. The examiners, also called “synodals,”
were generally professors of medicine, anatomy, and surgery.
• To periodically visit pharmacies to inspect the quality of medication dis-
pensed to the public. The visitor, accompanied by a pharmacy professor,

37
 On the history of the regulation of medical practice in medieval Spain, see: Ruiz Moreno, 1946.
38
 All of this information is drawn from Tate Lanning, 1997.
 Imperial Biopolitics 147

would examine the pharmacy’s accreditation document, the books used for
preparing the medications (weights and measurements) and the most sold
medicines: salts, oils, balms, purgatives, salves, syrups, tinctures, and flow-
ers. If these did not meet the quality requirements established by the court,
the pharmacy in question was closed and the owner fined.
• To oversee the legal practice of medicine and surgery. Illicit bloodletting,
operations, and “empirical” treatments for illness were severely punished
by law, such that the Court would carry out inspections of doctors, sur-
geons, and bloodletters to check their qualifications and licenses to prac-
tice. Those who did not have their documents in order were reported to the
local authorities and sanctioned with fines. In cases where somebody died
due to the administration of medicine or treatment at the hand of someone
without authorization, the punishment was inevitably prison.
• To monitor the advertisement of remedies and medicines in newspapers.
This is due to the fact that at the end of the eighteenth century, many news-
papers and gazettes were publishing advertisements and promoting recent
discoveries against muscular pains, toothaches, diarrhea, and other com-
mon ailments. The Court required that all remedies first be examined by
an authorized doctor prior to being published. When a drug was advertised
without authorization, the Court could initiate legal proceedings against the
owners of the newspaper.

While the Spanish crown established Courts in what are today Cuba, Mexico,
Argentina, Peru, and Chile, there are no signs of the existence of a medi-
cal police with these characteristics in New Granada. All that is known is
that there were figures that occasionally performed the function of the pro-
tomedicos but from this we cannot deduce the presence of an institution
capable of carrying out the normative and punitive tasks described above.39

39
 Summing up advances in medicine during the first 162 years of the colony in Colombia, doctor
Pedro María Ibáñez noted “the arrival of the first doctor to Santa Fe and the creation of the Pro-
tomedicato” (Ibáñez, 1968 [1884]: 15). According to his own information, Ibáñez referred to the
arrival of Spanish doctor Diego Hernández in 1639, named by the King to perform the functions
of the protomedico, to whom the Archbishop Brother Cristóbal de Torres awarded an annual sal-
ary of 350 pesos. However, he later noted that the “position of the Protomedico was vacant after
the death of doctor Diego Hernández, and the King named viceroy Solís in 1758 to don Vicente
Román Cancino.” For his part, Emilio Quevedo (1993: 55; 59), appealing to documents published
by the historian Guillermo Hernández de Alba, emphasizes that doctor Hernández only spent ten
years in Bogotá, that is, until 1649, in part because the faculty of medicine at the Colegio Mayor
del Rosario had to be closed due to a lack of students. Moreover, Quevedo shows that all that is
known of Vicente Román Cancino is that he held the chair in medicine at the Colegio del Rosario
when it reopened in 1753, but not that he was the head of a Protomedicato capable of acting as
medical police. All of this means that discounting the few individual activities of Hernández and
Cancino, the Royal Tribunal of the Protomedicato never existed in Bogotá. We also know little
about the activities of the Protomedicato in Cartagena, apart from the fact that it was staffed by
various doctors (Solano Alonso, 1998).
148 Chapter 3

Nevertheless, an examination of the conflict that took place at the dawn of the
nineteenth century between state health policy and the interests of the criollo
aristocracy with respect to the Protomedicato could be useful in understand-
ing the conflict between imperial biopolitics and the coloniality of power,
which I already discussed in the previous chapter.
I will refer first of all to the dispute that took place in Cartagena over
the protomedico position left vacant as a result of the death of its previous
holder, Doctor Francisco Javier Pérez. Two candidates were nominated to
fill this position: the criollo doctor Alejandro Gastelbondo who studied in
the Colegio Mayor del Rosario in Bogotá and was the disciple of Vicente
Román Cancino, and the Spanish doctor Juan de Arias, a graduate from Cádiz
and disciple of the surgeon Pedro Virgili (also the teacher of Mutis). Even
though Gastelbondo possessed great experience as a doctor in the Hospital
of San Juan de Dios in Bogotá and in the Military Hospital of San Carlos in
Cartagena, and Arias had only arrived in New Granada in 1784, the posi-
tion was irrevocably awarded to the latter by viceroy Mendinueta in 1797.
The reason: despite having his degree, Gastelbondo had not been a profes-
sor of anatomy and surgery, and above all he was a pardo (Quevedo, 1993:
125–127).
To be able to practice, Spanish law required that all “Latin” doctors—that
is, those with a university degree in medicine—be legitimate children. We
already saw in the previous chapter that legitimacy operated as mechanism
of ethnic differentiation in colonial society. In the case of Gastelbondo, how-
ever, the legal argument employed to impugn his candidacy was not that he
was a bastard, but that he had mixed blood and therefore belonged to one of
the castes. The “infamy” of his birth excluded him from the practice of medi-
cine according to the statutes of the university that, as we saw, prevented all
those who could not demonstrate the purity of their blood from entering their
halls. The question is why doctor Gastelbondo’s “impurity” was ignored and
never registered in the files of the Colegio Mayor del Rosario? Why did they
allow him to matriculate, graduate, and practice medicine for so many years
without a problem?
One possible response is that local needs prevented the law from being
strictly enforced. Smallpox epidemics hit rural areas hard, where the only
possibility of medical treatment was offered by traditional masseuses and
healers. In some cases, the sick were cared for by barbers or “romancista,”
surgeons who unlike “Latin” doctors were not university graduates, but had
learned western medicine autodidactically. The vast majority of these sur-
geons were mestizos who were not in a condition to appear for examination
before the Protomedicato and obtain a license, since they could not prove
their blood purity. The only legitimate doctors were those who graduated
from universities, of which there were only two in New Granada between
 Imperial Biopolitics 149

1636 and 1800, according to the information given by Quevedo, with

Gastelbondo being one of them (Quevedo, 1993: 119).40 In the face of this
difficult situation, it is not surprising that the Colegio Mayor del Rosario had
overlooked the candidate’s “lower” ethnic quality. In other words, facing the
alternative of leaving the entire kingdom without medical attention, viceroyal
authorities preferred to interpret the law realistically and to allow not only
mestizos—like Alejandro Gastelbondo in Bogotá and Eugenio Espejo in
Quito—but also the illegal practice of healers and empirical doctors in the
provinces. If the intention of biopolitics was to promote the health of the
population, the state needed to act pragmatically. It needed to reform—or at
least “relax”—the university statutes that prevented mestizos from graduating
and, at the same time, to tolerate the nonprofessional practice of some barbers
and romancistas.
But this is exactly where the conflict between the biopolitical apparatus of
the center and the apparatus of whiteness anchored in the periphery appears.
The New Granadian aristocracy looked badly on the state’s tolerance of
doctors graduating from the castes. The reason for this unease is clear: the
cultural capital of whiteness that legitimated their social domination of sub-
alterns (the pathos of distance) was being threatened. Elites complained that
the proliferation of healers, the monopoly of surgeons—a profession consid-
ered “mechanical”—and the admission of mestizo students to universities,
had done away with the social prestige of medicine. Young people from
“good families” stayed away from the faculties of medicine to avoid associ-
ating with people of a lower ethnic and social quality (Tate Lanning, 1997:
207). As a result, pressure from the aristocracy was brought to bear on local
authorities to reinforce the ethnic boundary that prevented mestizos from
gaining the same social status as whites. And this is also why, confronted
with the insistence of the governor of Cartagena and local elites, viceroy
Mendinueta denied Gastelbondo’s application and awarded the vacant posi-
tion of Protomedico to the Spaniard Juan de Arias.
However, the traditional discourse of criollo elites did not prevail against
biopolitical designs in all cases. In 1798, King Carlos IV proposed to
solve the health crisis New Granada was undergoing and he ordered the

40
 By way of comparison, between 1607 and 1738, the University of Mexico conferred 438 degrees
in medicine, which is to say, they graduated an average of three doctors per year. The University
of San Carlos in Guatemala awarded thirty degrees between 1700 and 1821, an average of one
Latin doctor graduated every four years (Tate Lanning, 1997: 205–206). Note that the situation in
Guatemala—which until the beginning of the nineteenth century graduated an average of eighteen
doctors per thousand inhabitants—was far superior to that of New Granada during the same period.
If we add to this the fact that the salary of a graduated doctor was scarcely better than a porter, it is
easy to imagine why faculties of medicine were closed for so long in New Granada. For the local
children of the aristocracy, it was much more profitable, and more socially prestigious, to study
law or theology.
150 Chapter 3

reorganization of the Protomedicato and the reform of the study of medicine.

To fulfill this royal mandate, the viceroy requested a written plan from doc-
tors Sebastián López Ruiz, Honorato de Vila, and José Celestino Mutis on
how to carry out these reforms. López Ruiz was a criollo doctor from Panama
who was proud of being “pure of all bad race” and of belonging to one of the
most noble and distinguished families in his region.41 He studied medicine at
the University of San Marcos in Lima, where he received a Galenic training,
acquiring a medieval conception of the profession no longer in harmony with
the biopolitical project of the Crown. Mutis, by contrast, was always very
close to the Bourbons and from the time of his arrival in Bogotá supported
reforming university studies and the implementation of an enlightened public
health policy. The reports by Mutis and López Ruiz requested by viceroy
Mendinueta exemplify the conflict between the interests of the Crown and the
criollo aristocracy around the “ethnic question.”
López Ruiz began his report in a rather unusual fashion, requesting that
the viceroy “investigate if the others named with me to report are true doc-
tors with legitimate legal requisites” (López Ruiz, 1996 [1799]: 73). That is
to say, he requests that the other two commissioned for the report, Honorato
de Vila and José Celestino Mutis, demonstrate the legitimacy of their knowl-
edge, presenting university titles accrediting them as doctors. What is behind
such a request? In my view, it was a strategic move by the most traditional
criollo elites against the biopolitics of the state.42 These elites sought to rein-
force control over the legal border preventing the social climbing of people
of lower ethnic quality. One of the strategies to achieve this—in addition to
the previously mentioned “dissent cases”—was to put a brake on the illegal
practice of medicine.43 It was well known that a character like Mutis, more
interested in the economic and scientific progress of the viceroyalty than in
the formalities of the law, encouraged people to practice medicine who did
not meet the legal requisites. One of them was the criollo priest Miguel de
Isla, who despite not having formally studied was an enlightened autodidact
trained under the tutelage of Mutis and had a great deal of experience as a

41
 Such was his zeal for the capital of whiteness that he publicly repudiated one of his sisters for
having stained the family name by marrying a Black man. Pilar Gardeta Sabater (1996: 15) claims,
however, that his father married a mulatta in his second marriage, which raised suspicions of the
Panamanian doctor’s “ethnic quality.” In some government circles in Bogotá a rumor circulated
that López Ruiz was the son of a mulatto and a mulatta, which was categorically denied by the
doctor, who repeatedly proved that he was the legitimate son of old Christian Spaniards descended
directly from conquistadors.
42
 Here, I part ways with the interpretation that sees this incident as a purely personal dispute between
López and Mutis over cinchona bark—which I will address below—or a simple confrontation
between two groups of New Granadian intellectuals, the enlightened and the orthodox.
43
 Here, keeping in mind that the majority of healers and romancista surgeons were mestizos.
 Imperial Biopolitics 151

doctor in the San Juan de Dios hospital.44 With his direct attack on Mutis’
“illegal” aspiration to train doctors outside the university, López Ruiz sought
to break one of the strongest pillars of Bourbon biopolitics in New Granada.
López Ruiz’s strategy was to discredit Mutis’ authority as an ad hoc pro-
fessor of medicine. To this end, he stated in his Report on the Professors of
Santa Fe that until this moment “nobody has seen” Mutis’ degrees accrediting
him as doctor and he suspects that they did not exist since the Royal College
of Surgery in Cadiz, where Mutis studied, only trained Latin surgeons but
not doctors (López Ruiz, 1996 [1801]: 91). He even suggested that naming
Mutis professor of mathematics at the Colegio Mayor del Rosario in 1762
was completely illegal because it was done “without competition, without
literary exercises and without the prior grace of his Majesty.” He testified that
“it has been 26 years since I came to this capital, and not once have I seen this
professor teach or preside over a single public event of mathematics.” Mutis
was thereby presented as an “intruder” arbitrarily favored by the Bourbon
state, who endangered the symbolic capital of elites (whiteness, nobility, dis-
tinction) by encouraging the promotion of doctors without university degrees
through his bad example. For this reason, López Ruiz’s report is in reality a
critique of state policies that neglect the laws regulating the medical profes-
sion45 and threaten the traditional privileges of the criollo nobility:

I see subjects that without requisites adhering to the expressed principles, and
what is more, without having had a Classroom or Medical Court of medicine
where it could be legitimately studied, nor anyone with competent authority to
examine them and renew or issue titles, practice the stated faculties in all their
civil and forensic breadth with impunity, and they are treated as Doctors . . . As
Medicine and Surgery have always been in a dejected state, no respectable
young man will dedicate himself to their study until he sees them shine with the
honor with which your Majesty awards, distinguishes, and protects his students.
(López Ruiz, 1996 [1799]: 83; 87)

44
 Isla did study philosophy with the Jesuits at the Javeriana University in Bogotá and later entered
the order of San Juan de Dios. However, he did not obtain his license to practice medicine from
the university but from his order’s superior, Father Francisco Tello de Guzmán. His ample knowl-
edge of pharmacy, botany, anatomy, and physiology was even recognized by Viceroy Caballero y
Góngora, who named him doctor of the military hospital of Santa Fe (Quevedo, 1993: 131). Dur-
ing the second epidemic of smallpox in Bogotá, he was one of the most active doctors (Rodríguez
González, 1999: 40).
45
 López Ruiz refers to the sixteenth-century Laws of Castile, which speak of severe penalties for
those who practice medicine or surgery without the proper degrees and licenses. The punishments
prescribed by the law range from a fine of six to twelve thousand maravedís to exile (López Ruiz,
1996 [1799]: 80–81).
152 Chapter 3

For his part, Mutis began his report by stating that the proliferation of disease
in New Granada hindered the enlightened plans of the government, since “so
many calamities pile up that they present themselves on a daily basis, forming
the horrible image of a generally wrecked population, as half of these indi-
viduals are not utilized for society or public welfare” (Mutis, 1983 [1801a]:
35). With this, he put himself on the side of those who sought to make health
a question of “public welfare” administered by the state. This is why, if Mutis
agrees with López Ruiz on the need to end the illegal practice of medicine, it
is not to defend the privileges of the criollo nobility but to avoid the further
destruction of the population’s health by charlatans and healers, and thereby
the economic productivity of the Kingdom. Mutis knew perfectly well that
the King had requested this report to mitigate a situation affecting the public
well-being of the entire viceroyalty, not the private well-being of one social
group in particular (the criollos) or of one professional trade (medicine).
From this point of view, the doctor from Cadiz argues that López Ruiz’s dec-
larations are not only full of “bitterness and acrimony,” but that they seek to
defend his particular interests more than the interests of the state:

This skilled professor [López Ruiz], even though he has satisfied and paid of
his own merit up to the point of refusing to concur with the practices of his col-
leagues, would better provide consolation to the public and himself if his aid
were not so scarce… It is well known in the capital and notorious in the whole
Kingdom, that despite my advanced age and tasks of royal service, I keep my
doors open at all hours to receive all persons without distinction or specific
interest, to whomever requests help for their illnesses. In this way I have sacri-
ficed much of my time, that I could have directed to my comfort or rest, while
López wastes all of his cultivating his friendships, plotting his projects, under-
taking his ambitions, and exalting his discoveries, that he claims on his word to
have verified, failing to contribute for his part to the consolation of a suffering
humanity, who dares not arrive at his door. (Mutis, 1983 [1801a]: 39; 43)

Mutis’ critique points to the fact that people like López Ruiz, who utilize the
medical profession as a means to consolidate a lordly and aristocratic ethos,
uninterested in public well-being, are the ones who encourage the presence
of healers and intruders in the New Kingdom of Granada.46 They fill the

46
 Recall what was said previously in the sense that medicine was not seen at this time as a lucra-
tive career, but above all as a Christian commitment to the poor. When taking their oath, doctors
agreed to help and tend to the poor without charging fees or expecting salaries. Piety and charity
were thus the two principal virtues of the doctor. The Bourbons were able to transform the medi-
cal duty to “love thy neighbor” into the patriotic obligation to public health, a sufficient motive
to induce doctors to care for the poor without charging them. This is precisely Mutis’ argument
against López Ruiz.
 Imperial Biopolitics 153

immense void left by the lack of professional attention and attend to those
who could not afford to “arrive at the door” of an aristocrat like López Ruiz.
This is precisely why Mutis would argue that the solution to the public health
problem does not consist of prohibiting ipso facto the presence of healers
without licenses, since this would leave the population definitively without
any type of medical care. The solution is rather to distinguish those empiri-
cal doctors who are nothing more than “upstart charlatans,” from those who
“through their education, charity, and good conduct” could be legitimately
used as auxiliaries in subordinate activities (barbers, surgeons, bloodletters,
midwives, pharmacists) or could even be promoted as doctors. Mutis referred
specifically to barbers and bloodletters, stating that no learned population
can take pride in having these “better and in more abundance” than New
Granada.47 It is thanks to them that the 1782 smallpox epidemic was success-
fully combated since they performed an important function as inoculators. He
also refers to pharmacists such as Father José Bohórquez and don Antonio
Gorráez, and even doctors without degrees like father Miguel de Isla and don
Manuel de Castro, whose labor had been useful in helping the most disadvan-
taged sectors of the population.48
The panorama was therefore not as gloomy as that presented by López
Ruiz, who, with his “impassioned imagination,” argued that the scarcity
of professors necessarily means the complete ignorance and barbarism of
medical practice in the viceroyalty.49 Mutis thought that public health policy

47
 Mutis claims that “during the last half century there have been those that I found accredited and
later I met many of average skill and many of superior skill, whose disciples are successively
replacing other youth because of the propensity, of course, with which the barbers’ apprentices
apply themselves to this practice: from which very good romancista surgeons could emerge, admit-
ted to the pertinent class of public education” (Mutis, 1983 [1801a]: 42).
48
 López Ruiz did not consider either Brother José Bohórquez or Father Miguel de Isla, both religious
figures with ample experience looking after convents and charity hospitals, to have the capaci-
ties necessary to practice as doctors or pharmacists. In this respect, he maliciously wrote: “If the
punctual specification of people were not so tedious, I could lay out here a long list of secular and
regular subjects who are intruders in medicine, surgery, and other subordinate fields; who are not
content to practice with the public, and even dare to enter into the cloisters, and the convent cells
of monks, accompanied by other religious figures to visit the sick and practice on them” (López
Ruiz, 1996 [1799]: 74). He specifically writes of Miguel de Isla: “The friar Father Miguel de Isla,
who until recently worked in the religious hospital of San Juan de Dios since his tender youth,
already secularized with clerical habits, and of course Don Miguel has not had additional studies, or
practiced medicine, which he himself proposed to acquire, as in many religious hospitals. In 1792
after having served as Prior in various convents of his province, he returned to the capital: and so
he won the title of doctor given by his Excellency Viceroy Don José de Ezpeleta, prior to an exam
that Don José [Celestino] Mutis, his teacher, gave with approval; but where did he graduate from
with a bachelors in medicine and practice?” (López Ruiz, 1996 [1801]: 95).
49
 “One should appreciate much more the horrific picture than the ideal one conceived in his impas-
sioned imagination and relayed in his report to Sebastián López, buried in the profound abyss of
ignorance as to how many doctors existed and exist today in Bogotá and with such dark colors, that
one would not know how better to paint the unhappy fortune of our barbarous Indian neighbors,
the Chimila and Guajiro” (Mutis, 1983 [1801a]: 39).

Castro-Gomez_9781786613769.indb 153 17-11-2021 08:24:47

 154 Chapter 3

in New Granada did not need to begin from zero, since while there were no
doctors brandishing pompous degrees, there were in fact enough qualified
people to fulfill the function of keeping the population healthy, capable of
ensuring the production of wealth for the Empire. What was needed was to
organize medical studies that could provide these groups with the education
necessary to effectively fulfill their mission. It was not the granting of degrees
that mattered but the type of education imparted, considering that there were
many doctors with degrees like López Ruiz who practiced medicine “without
having greeted the most celebrated authors of our century and without the
most minimal attention to their theoretical and practical erudition that raises
the doctor if not to the outstanding sphere, at least to that of of an average
professor of his degree” (Mutis, 1983 [1801a]: 57). He thus proposed the
creation of eight fixed chairs revolving around the three axes of enlightened
medicine of his time (Newton, Linnaeus, and Boerhaave), including training
in “basic sciences” like physics, chemistry, and mathematics, as well as the
latest advances in subjects like botany, natural history, clinical medicine,
physiology, and pathology.50 Mutis also proposed candidates to fill these
chairs, including the controversial Father Miguel de Isla and the young
Botanic Expedition assistant don Francisco Antonio Zea, who never studied
medicine.
Mutis’ plan was approved by the Crown and definitively signed on August
6, 1805 (Quevedo, 1993: 149). We also know that despite strong opposition
from the most conservative criollo elites, father Isla received his medical
degree without having to study at the university, with which he could be
named professor of medicine at the Colegio Mayor del Rosario. On this
occasion, state biopolitics appeared to triumph over the defenders of a social
structure that defended the privileges associated with blood purity. Of course,
it is not that Mutis and the Bourbon state promulgated social equality between
whites and mestizos.51 What happened was that for pragmatic reasons—“state
reason”—it was necessary to relax a bit the juridical border separating whites
from the castes, due to the fact that at the end of the eighteenth century, the

50
 The pensum that Mutis proposes is radically anti-scholastic, following the reformist line of the
Bourbon state incarnated a few years earlier by the prosecutor Moreno y Escandón. Recall that
in 1768, the criollo prosecutor had proposed changing the medical curriculum from its traditional
Aristotelian-Galenic orientation to make it a truly scientific activity based on systematic observa-
tion, experimentation, and the formulation of laws according to the Newtonian analytic-synthetic
method.
51
 Mutis’ visceral contempt for pardos can be seen in this phrase, where he comments on the situation
of the Royal Protomedicato in the city of Cartagena: “Would it not be very convenient to name and
install [as Protomedico] an incorruptible, educated subject and the rest of the necessary guarantees
for the performance of his function, in the example of enlightened Kings and much more necessary
in that city, where the noble profession of medicine has unfortunately been debased and practiced
by Pardos and people of lowly origins, with the exception of this or that Spanish surgeon from the
royal or merchant marine?” (Mutis, 1983 [1801a]: 56).

Castro-Gomez_9781786613769.indb 154 17-11-2021 08:24:47

 Imperial Biopolitics 155

mestizo population was already the main labor force in New Granada. So
the state had no qualms in promoting and encouraging the social mobility
of subaltern social strata, hoping thereby to punish the most unproductive
sectors of society (landholders and aristocratic criollos). What mattered to
the technocratic state was not so much “who” performed a public labor (like
that of a surgeon, pharmacist, or professor of medicine) but their efficiency
in achieving the general objectives designed by the central government. But
as we will see in what follows, in the mentality of enlightened criollos, the
“who” continued to take precedence over the “how” and biopolitics ended up
being for them an extension of their spontaneous sociology.

Castro-Gomez_9781786613769.indb 155 17-11-2021 08:24:47

 Chapter 4

Illegitimate Knowledges
The Enlightenment as Apparatus
of Epistemic Expropriation

All of these people of the lower strata, who are not governed by the
right use of reason and counsel, conduct themselves with a kind of
indifference and abandon that would be unbelievable among rational
people.
—José Celestino Mutis

In chapter 2 we examined the hegemony of the apparatus of whiteness in

New Granadian social space, and in chapter 3 we saw how the biopolitical
apparatus, with its pretension to occupy the “zero point,” established a kind of
rationality that articulated the thought and action of a minority sector of these
elites: enlightened criollos. Now we need to link these two approaches within
a single ensemble to show that zero-point hubris and the aristocratic discourse
of blood purity were not antagonistic but complementary. The question that
I would like to formulate here is the following: What effects did the dis-
course of blood purity have on the scientific imaginary of eighteenth-century
criollos? If it was precisely the criollos who appropriated enlightenment
discourse in New Granada, were they able to achieve their aspiration of posi-
tioning themselves as impartial observers of the world from the neutrality of
the zero-point, or were they simply projecting their own habitus of social and
ethnic distancing into scientific discourse? In this chapter, I will show that
in the social location occupied by the enlightened criollos of New Granada,
two apparently contradictory apparatuses were joined together: the apparatus
of whiteness and the biopolitical apparatus.1 The discourse of blood purity

1
 In the first chapter, closely following the theses of Latin American thinkers such as Quijano, Dussel,
and Mignolo, I argued at length why this contradiction is merely apparent.

157
158 Chapter 4

and the discourse of epistemic purity formed two parts of a single matrix of
power/knowledge.
My hypothesis is that the barrier separating enlightenment science from
common opinion or doxa in reality coincided with the ethnic border dividing
criollos from the castes. The establishment of this ethnic border was legiti-
mated by an act of epistemic expropriation, that is to say, by a foundational
act of symbolic violence that I would like to account for in this chapter. I will
thus show that zero-point hubris, embraced by both the metropolitan state and
enlightened thinkers in New Granada, was in fact an extension of the spon-
taneous sociology of the elites, who saw their dominion over Black people,
Indigenous people, and mestizos, who they considered inferior beings, as
“natural.” Seen from this perspective, enlightened discourse not only pro-
poses the superiority of some people over others, but also the superiority of
certain forms of knowledge over others. It therefore functioned as an appa-
ratus of epistemic expropriation, establishing the cognitive hegemony of the
criollos in New Granada.

4.1 ACCURSED CHILDREN

I have said that the implementation of enlightenment medical practice in

New Granada required two conditions: one of a formal character, the “epis-
temological break” from magico-religious interpretations of the world; the
other political, state intervention to guarantee the institutionalization of
this rupture. The zero-point was to be reached insofar as the meaning of
health and disease ceased to be guided by the influence of religious thought
and came to be defined by the expert knowledge of modern medicine.
Modernizing the colonies thus meant that the scientific-technical vision of
reality, orchestrated by the state, would completely replace all other ways
of knowing the world. From then on, these other forms of knowledge would
begin to be seen as the pre-history of medicine, that is, as “epistemological
obstacles” that needed to be defeated in order to achieve knowledge of “the
things themselves.”
Now, in a complementary way, we need to ask the following: What did the
blind faith of elites in the superiority of Western knowledge over the knowl-
edge of the castes stem from? To resolve this question, I will refer to the dis-
course of blood purity that, as we saw in the first chapter, operated since the
sixteenth century as a schema for classifying the global population according
to ethnic origin. I will argue that this taxonomic schema was anchored not
only in the habitus of Catholic missionaries but also in that of the enlightened
scientists educated in their colleges. I will examine the spontaneous sociology
of two eighteenth-century Jesuit chroniclers of New Granada, to see how this
 Illegitimate Knowledges 159

ideological representation passes uninterrupted into the scientific observa-

tions of enlightened criollos.
In his 1741 book El Orinoco ilustrado, the Spanish Jesuit José Gumilla
wonders about the historical origins of the Indigenous people of New
Granada. His response corresponds to the discourse of blood purity as defined
in the first chapter. Even though Europeans and Indigenous people are
descendants of Noah, and thus children of God, since Noah is descended from
Adam, this does not mean they are equal. Indigenous people are descendants
of Ham, Noah’s second son, who God cursed for having ridiculed the naked-
ness of his father, while the Europeans are descendants of Japheth, Noah’s
first born, who God blessed after the flood:

I say, first, that the Indians are the children of Ham, Noah’s second son, and that
they descend from him, in the same way that we descend from Japheth by way
of Tubal, the founder and settler of Spain, who was his son and Noah’s nephew
and came to Spain [in the] year 131 after the Great Flood, [year] 1788 of the
creation of the world. (Gumilla, 1994 [1741]: 55)

According to the Christian discourse of blood purity, the children of Shem

populated the Asiatic region, the children of Ham populated Africa, while
the children of Japheth (“we,” as Gumilla says) populated Europe. The ques-
tion was: How did the children of Ham come to America and what was the
difference between them and their brothers who remained in Africa? Unlike
the first Jesuit chroniclers (e.g., José de Acosta), by the eighteenth century
Gumilla already knows that the Americas do not represent part of the orbis
terrarium but rather constitute a space separated from Europe, Asia, and
Africa by the immensity of the ocean. Thus, he speculates that the children
of Ham who lived on Cape Verde did not forget the boat-building technique
that they had learned from their ancestor Noah, and that some of them set sail
and “carried by the wind” were able to cross the Atlantic (hundreds of years
before Columbus), arriving on the coast of Brazil, whence began the popula-
tion of the territories of the Americas (Gumilla, 1994 [1741]: 55, 201).2 In this
way, one part of the “accursed race” settled in the Americas and gave rise to
the Indigenous people later conquered by Spain.

2
 Gumilla supports his speculation with the case of a boat that set sail from the Canary Islands in
1731, reaching the mouth of the Orinoco river by the fury of the wind and the current: “Who can
deny that what happened in our day could not take place in previous centuries? And will we not
see classical authors attest to it? Nor should we be averse to the fact that, from the coasts of Spain,
Africa, and others, after the confusion of tongues and the separation of those peoples, many boats
were carried by the wind, in various times, towards the West, in the same way as the boat referred
to above from the Canaries” (Gumilla, 1994 [1741]: 200).
160 Chapter 4

American Indians and Black Africans thus belonged to the same branch
(the children of Ham), but there were differences between them. God had cer-
tainly destined both to servitude under European people, but the spirit of the
Indians is even more “timid” than that of Black people. While Black people
serve only their European master and never an Indian, Indians happily serve
the Black slaves of the Europeans. “What mystery is this?” Gumilla wonders:

I respond that they behave in this way to verify, to the letter, Noah’s curse when
he awoke from his dream and said to Ham: A servant of servants shall he be
unto his brethren . . . And these are precisely the Indians, who not by force, but
by their own inclination, verify the curse that Noah cast upon Ham. I would add:
All Europeans that are in or have been to the Americas, know that the vice most
embedded in the marrow of the Indians is drunkenness. It is most common and
fatal flaw of those natives; and I also blame Ham for this universal weakness
among Indians, like nudity, that the gentiles of the Americas have wasted and
continue to be wasted by their own temperament. (Gumilla, 1994 [1741]: 55)

The point that I wish to highlight is that, using the discourse of blood purity
mentioned above, Gumilla lays out a hierarchical taxonomy of the American
population based on ethnic origin. Whites (Spanish and criollo) are at the
top, whose social, cultural, and political institutions are essentially superior
to all the other races. Next come Black people, who despite their mental
and cultural inferiority are at least loyal to their masters and receptive to the
liberating message of the gospel. Finally, on the lowest rung of the ladder
are Indians, who very much despite civilizing efforts, remain in a barbarism
that seems to be “embedded in their marrow.” And there are also hierarchies
among different groups of Indians. Gumilla says that the Indians of Mexico
and Peru are superior to those of New Granada, because while the former
were able to develop a culture similar to the pagan empires of the East
(Egyptians, Medians, Persians), the latter remain enveloped in the darkest
barbarism, attenuated only by the merciful efforts of Jesuit missionaries. In
sum, the Indian of New Granada, and above all those inhabiting the Amazon
jungle, is nothing but a “never before seen monster, with an ignorant head,
an ungrateful heart, an inconsistent chest, a lazy back, and fearful feet”
(Gumilla, 1994 [1741]: 49). Such is the “spontaneous sociology” revealed by
Father Gumilla’s taxonomy, shared by the majority of his fellow Jesuits in
New Granada3 and by the eighteenth-century criollo elites educated in their
colleges.

3
 The Jesuit criollo Juan de Velasco wrote in his 1789 Historia del Reino de Quito that the Indians
carry the curse of Ham “marked on their body”: “Everyone, or almost all of them are born with a
red mark on their buttocks, over the tailbone, which as soon as they begin to come of age becomes
 Illegitimate Knowledges 161

Now, as Mignolo (1995) has shown, this ethnic and moral hierarchy was
transferred to the epistemological terrain: to the hierarchical ordering of
people based on ethnic origin and attitude toward the gospel there also cor-
responds a hierarchical ordering of their systems of knowledge. In this way,
the knowledge produced by European people (the children of Japheth) was
seen as superior to that produced by the Indians of Mexico and Peru (the
Christianized children of Ham), and their knowledge was “more advanced”
than that of the Indians of the Amazonian region (the children of Ham in
rebellion against evangelization). According to the eighteenth-century Jesuits
active in New Granada, this cognitive limitation of the children of Ham was
due to the poverty of their languages, the product of the confusion of tongues
that took place in Babel 6000 years after the creation of the earth. Father
Pablo Maroni, a Jesuit missionary in the Amazon, wrote that the languages
of the Indians of the Marañón region are denotative since they only serve to
express concrete objects like plants, fruits, or animals but not abstract notions
like God, the soul, or sin. This is why Jesuits had to introduce the use of the
“the language of the Inca” (Quechua) in the Amazon, because according to
Maroni, “it is the most substantial and expressive of the many languages used
in South America” (Maroni, 1988 [1738]: 168). Father Gumilla, for his part,
closed the circle by saying that the linguistic poverty of the Indians was the
product of divine punishment after the fracturing of languages at Babel, since
the children of Ham were bestowed with less expressive languages (Gumilla,
1994 [1741]: 197–198).
Thus we see that the “spontaneous sociology of the elites” that attributed a
lesser capacity for abstraction to Indigenous languages—and thereby to their
systems of knowledge—than European ones, was legitimized by a theory
according to which the linguistic diversity of the world took place 6000
years after the creation of Hebrew as the Ursprache (the language express-
ing the most perfect knowledge of all: that of divine law) from which others
were derived through a process of degeneration. For this reason, eighteenth-
century Jesuits claimed that the capacity for abstraction in the Quechua lan-
guage was not even a product of the intelligence of the Incas—as Garcilaso
had claimed, for example—but of the initial contact that this language had
with Hebrew. The Jesuits Gumilla and Velasco agree, arguing that one part
of the ten tribes of Israel was in the American Andes after their dispersion
in the time of Shalmaneser, the King of Assyria, that is, long before the time
of the Incas. This would explain why there were Hebrew words in Quechua
(Gumilla, 1994 [1741]: 199; Velasco 1998 [1789]: 299). And this also would
explain why the Incas still had “recollections” of abstract ideas like God the

darker and darker, taking on a dark-green color. Who knows if the curse of Noah marks with this
stamp the descendants of Ham for having attacked his nudity?” (Velasco, 1998 [1789]: 330).
162 Chapter 4

creator, surely reinforced by the presence of the apostles like Saint Tomas and
Saint Bartolomé in the Americas (Velasco, 1998 [1789]: 298; Maroni, 1988
[1738]: 171; 282).
Despite the fact that some eighteenth-century European circles began
to argue that Sanskrit constituted the common root of all Indo-European
languages, enlightened thinkers like the French La Condamine, who I will
discuss at greater length, continued to cling to a hierarchical view of knowl-
edge and languages based on their capacity for abstraction.4 After visiting the
Jesuit missions in the Amazon, La Condamine writes that despite there being
“shared Hebrew words in many languages of the Americas,”

All the languages of South-America whereof I have had any knowledge, are
very barren; many of them are full of energy, susceptible of elegance, especially
the ancient Peruvian tongue; but all of them are equally void of terms, to express
abstracted and universal ideas; an evident proof, how little progress the under-
standings of these peoples have made. Time, duration, space, being, substance,
matter, and body, all these words, with many others, have no term equivalent to
them in their speech: and not only the names of metaphysical essences, but even
those of moral ones, cannot be expressed by them, but imperfectly, and by long
circumlocutions. (La Condamine, 1747 [1745]: 58–59)

Indeed, many eighteenth-century European theorists believed that the deci-

sive step marking the exit from barbarism and the entrance into civilization
was the development of an abstract language. Whereas the savage remained
immersed in a “sensory” language that only allows one to know empiri-
cal objects, civilized man had managed to develop a language that allowed
him to grasp universals. This was why only civilized people had developed

4
 This conception differs, however, from the theory of language developed in the same period by
other European thinkers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In his Essay on the Origin of Languages,
Rousseau agrees with La Condamine on a single point: in terms of historical development, denota-
tive language definitely precedes abstract language. Unlike civilized people, primitive communities
use an elemental language devoid of logical means and differentiated grammatical functions. It is,
in sum, a language that prevents the abstraction of thought. However, Rousseau did not see this as
a symptom of the inferiority of primitive man vis-à-vis civilized man, but quite the opposite. The
evolution of language from the particular to the universal, from the concrete to the abstract, is for
him a sign that language has been denaturalized and corrupted in proportion to human civilization.
Social decadence and linguistic abstraction are thus concomitant phenomena. In Rousseau’s words:
“In proportion as needs increase, as affairs become entangled, as enlightenment extends, language
changes character; it becomes more precise and less passionate; it substitutes ideas for feelings, it
no longer speaks to the heart but to reason . . . [L]anguage becomes exact and clearer, but more
drawn out, more muted, and colder.” (Rousseau 1998: 296). And elsewhere: “All written languages
must change character and lose force as they gain clarity, that the more one aims at perfecting
grammar and logic the more on accelerates this progress, and that in order to make a language cold
and monotonous in no time, one has only to establish academies among the people that speak it”
(Rousseau, 1998: 303–304).
 Illegitimate Knowledges 163

science because as Plato had put it, scientific knowledge is knowledge of

universals. And this is also why, according to enlightenment philosophers,
the most advanced people were the ones who had elaborated juridical codes
based on general principles and not merely on particular norms (Pagden,
1997: 131–134).5
Needless to say, this inability to formulate abstract concepts that enlight-
ened thinkers attributed to “savages,” corresponds directly with the thesis
that these people suffer from the incapacity to produce alphabetic writing.
Mignolo points out that even though the Aztecs had calendars and the Incas
had quipus for narrating their history, the fact that they did not have written
records of these was understood by the Spanish as proof of their cognitive
inferiority vis-à-vis European people (Mignolo, 1995: 125–169). From this
perspective, alphabetic writing is seen as evidence of the superiority of those
who have developed it over those people with other systems of nonalphabetic
notation (hieroglyphic, pictorial, or verbal). Only the possession of alphabetic
writing could guarantee the possibility of generating analytic thought, and
thereby producing knowledge. The Indians are thus seen as barbaric beings,
equipped with a “primitive mentality” and therefore as incapable of generat-
ing abstract knowledge. This was precisely Father Gumilla’s opinion of the
Amazon Indians:

The nations that we are addressing are singularly uncultured and wild, neither
reading, nor writing, nor pictures, nor hieroglyphs, like the Mexicans used, nor
columns, nor historical records, like the colored knots that the Incas kept of
their ancient memories, nor any sign to recall the memory of the past, has been
founds in these nations. (Gumilla, 1994 [1741]: 52)

The inability to “recall the memory of the past” that Gumilla speaks of is thus
a sign that Indigenous people do not and cannot possess an abstract language
that would enable them to formulate and produce scientific knowledge. All
of their knowledge in the field of medicine, for example, is seen as the result
of ignorance and superstition, and thus lacks validity. Due to the “stain”
of their ethnic origin, Black and Indigenous people could never develop
thought with universal scope, independent of the European scientific tradi-
tion. Scientific discourse demands the creation of a universal and specialized
language, capable of formulating and transmitting complex ideas; Indians,

5
 It is surprising that a twentieth-century thinker affiliated with “critical theory” such as Jürgen
Habermas defends a thesis analogous to eighteenth-century enlightenment thinkers. In his Theory
of Communicative Action, Habermas argues that the linguistic, moral, and cognitive structures of
“primitive man” enabled only “the concretism of thought,” which is therefore structurally inferior
to the universalist thought developed by Western man (Habermas, 1987: 46).
164 Chapter 4

in contrast, remain trapped in a denotative language that prevents them from

thinking in universal terms. The only option is thus to become literate, which
would mean taking on the language of science (Latin) and power (Spanish) as
their own, and thereby obeying the “regime of truth” legitimated by writing
(Zambrano, 2000).
But while the Jesuits branded Indigenous and Black healers as “charlatans”
due to their natural inability to produce knowledge, they said nothing, in con-
trast, about white healers belonging to religious orders like the Franciscans.
Many of the prescriptions formulated by the Franciscans in eighteenth-cen-
tury New Granada to cure illnesses included concoctions with burned horse
manure, goose intestines, old rooster broth, dog blood, fox testicles, the urine
of young boys, deer penis, and mouse ears to name only a few. Consider, for
example, the following remedy “to remove a fever from the bones,” from the
Franciscan Pharmacopoeia:

You take the head of a dead dog, who has been in the trash heap for a long
time, and remove the nape of the neck, that comes out to about one peso or a
little more, depending on the size of the dog, wash it with vinegar and then with
a lot of water, take it to the oven so that it roasts well, until it has the color of
cinnamon, and then mince finely, strain the powder through the sieve and onto
a gold doubloon, put it in a glass with two ounces of filtered honey, and take it
for nine days, making enough powder ahead of time so that you do not run out,
with three or four bones of dog’s napes, as stated, you will have it.6

Formulas like these, very typical of Indian healers, were known and used
in Bogotá by priests like Brother Diego García, who was a personal friend
of Mutis and participated actively in the Royal Botanical Expedition. Even
Mutis, as Díaz Piedrahita clearly indicates, despite his academic formation,
prescribed remedies based on Indigenous botanical and zoological knowledge
(Díaz Piedrahita, Mantilla, 2002: 50). In fact, the Franciscan Pharmacopoeia
was already a blend of European medical knowledge from the Middle Ages
and pre-Columbian Indigenous traditions. The question is then: Why was the
criollo elite willing to tolerate this mixture when the remedies were formu-
lated by Franciscan healers but rejected them in horror when they came from
Indigenous healers? One possible answer is that to the criollo mind, although
Indigenous medical knowledge lacked validity of its own, it could neverthe-
less be “redeemed of its stain” by entering into contact with the tradition of
Western medicine and when formulated by “white” doctors.

6
 “Recetario franciscano del siglo XVIII” (Díaz Piedrahita y Mantilla, 2002: 84).
 Illegitimate Knowledges 165

4.1.1 The Color of Reason

It becomes clear that the spontaneous sociology of New Granadian elites
constructed an image in which all knowledge from Europe was seen as essen-
tially superior to the knowledge produced and transmitted empirically by
the natives of the Americas and Africa. Without a language capable of com-
municating abstract and universal ideas, Indigenous knowledge lacked all
epistemic validity. This judgment can be clearly seen in the case of traditional
Indigenous medicine. Gumilla, for example, claimed that the Indians of New
Granada did not have the necessary piety to pity the sick nor the adequate
knowledge to cure them. They leave the sick alone without any treatment, and
when they do offer it, the remedy turns out to be worse than the disease since
the medical knowledge of the Indians is rooted in ignorance and superstition
(Gumilla, 1994 [1741]: 106–107). Maroni says that even a simple cold can
lead to the death of Indians due to their lack of rational ability to understand
the origin of the illness:

All of these diseases and the death that follows from them, they usually attribute
not to natural causes, and even less to their own disorder or heavenly disposi-
tions, but to the power and efficacy of spells, harmed by this or that Indian
who is known to be a witchdoctor. To tell them that a disease comes from this
or that disorder or the passage of time, that death follows laws, all of this is to
speak to them in gibberish and they do not even pay attention to what you tell
them. All of their discourse that men and women are thinking about day and
night is that that Indian who entered their house or passed by them closely, that
the other to whom they refused something that they had asked, would whisper
against them and cause them harm; that that disease is one of many seeds that
are now sprouting; and other nonsense they have as articles of faith. (Maroni,
1988 [1738]: 192)

One example of this contempt for the knowledge of non-European people

has to do with the cure for snake bites. Gumilla thought that venomous
snakes were messengers “that divine justice has sent to the shores of the great
Orinoco river . . . as a scourge and punishment for the barbarous behavior
of its inhabitants” (Gumilla, 1994 [1741]: 244), such that only God in his
divine grace could provide the antidote for the bite. The Jesuit mentions the
“Guayaquil vine” that is chewed for a long time and then smeared over the
entire body by Black workers in the region. He also refers to a “seed” found
by Filipino Indians that the Jesuit missionaries called “San Ignacio,” which
they used as an antidote and prophylactic in all of their missions. So the exis-
tence of an antidote against snake bites is not due to the wisdom of Indians or
Black people but to the grace of God and the perspicacity of the Jesuits. For
166 Chapter 4

his part, Maroni recognizes that some of the antidotes prepared by the Indians
have shown positive results: “Some Indians also have their natural medicines
and effective herbs with which they heal, especially viper bites . . . The most
skilled in curing are the Omaguas, with the knowledge they have of various
rinds and medicinal herbs; this is perhaps why among other Indians they are
known as great sorcerers” (Maroni, 1988 [1738]: 194). Nevertheless, the
Italian Jesuit adds that this curative art, which he calls “sorcery,” stems from
an agreement the Omaguas have with the devil, from whom they undoubtedly
learned “various abuses and curses for their revenge.”
This spontaneous sociology that denied members of the castes the possibil-
ity of producing valid knowledge was shared by enlightened thinkers at the
turn of the nineteenth century, as we can see in the text Memoria sobre las
serpientes written by the criollo Jorge Tadeo Lozano in 1808. As evident in
the title, this text was written “to certify the true remedies capable of helping
those who have been bitten by venomous snakes,” because according to the
author, “medicine [in New Granada] is entrusted to the caprice and ignorance
of charlatan healers who operate by mere routine” (Lozano, 1942 [1808]:
117). What Lozano sought to show was that those claiming to cure snake
bites with the application of traditional herbs and salves were nothing more
than ignorant charlatans. Knowledge rooted in oral traditions was seen by
Lozano as a “mere routine” that must be submitted to the court of reason to
empirically test its scientific validity. Experience is “the only oracle that one
should believe on these subjects,” such that all “popular remedies” needed
to be “sanctioned by that great master.” Therefore, when examining which
snakes are venomous and which herbs provide appropriate antidotes, the
author recommended using the classification tables developed by Linnaeus.
For Lozano, doing so would show that the antidotes derived from falcon’s
vine [Guaco] and used by the Black inhabitants of Chocó are nothing other
than a fraud, as can be seen in the case of “a Black woman who was bitten by
a common lancehead on the Bayamón hacienda [who applied] considerable
amounts of falcon’s vine in and around the bite, and despite the espoused vir-
tues of this treatment, died miserably thirty hours after the tragedy” (Lozano,
1942 [1808]: 118).
But not all enlightened thinkers completely rejected the virtues of the anti-
dote against snakebites discovered by the Black inhabitants of Chocó. Some
wise criollos even recognized the efficacy of falcon’s vine, but like the Jesuits
they did not attribute this remedy to genius of those who discovered it but
to the goodness of God and/or nature.7 This was the case for Pedro Fermín

 When the remedy came from a European scientist, by contrast, praise was not directed to the good-
7

ness of nature but rather to the genius of the discoverer. This was the case, as already mentioned,
with Pombo’s praise of Jenner for discovering the smallpox vaccine.
 Illegitimate Knowledges 167

de Vargas, who related his experience with the antidote in issue 34 of Papel
Periódico. The Black inhabitants of the region had observed that the laugh-
ing falcon—a bird that eats snakes—would eat the leaves of the vine prior
to going on the hunt for its prey, thereby protecting itself from its venomous
bite. On the basis of this observation, they extracted the juice of its leaves and
inoculated themselves in different parts of the body, immunizing themselves
against a possible bite. When a person had been bitten, healers would apply
the extract directly to the patient’s wound or have them drink it for five or six
days in a row in small doses (two spoonfuls per day). The result, as Vargas
himself testified, was that the patient was completely cured (Vargas, 1978
[1791]: 290).
Nevertheless, the enlightened criollo began his account with a citation
from Pliny the Elder stating that nature has been more open with animals
than with men,8 from which he concludes that “animals have been the inven-
tors of the majority and the most certain of remedies with which we preserve
our existence” (Vargas, 1978 [1791]: 201). For Vargas, the credit does not
go to the people who prepared the antidote against snakebites but to the
falcons, which is as absurd as saying that the credit for the discovery of the
smallpox vaccine goes not to Jenner but to the cows! But this absurdity had
its reason: in one case, those who discovered the antidote were Black healers
from Chocó, while in the other case it was an enlightened, white, European
scientist. In fact, Vargas’ incredulity to the possibility that Black people
could have discovered an effective vaccine against snakebites is limitless.
Determined to examine this incredible news through the court of reason, he
had a Black man who worked as a slave in the Royal Botanical Expedition
apply the antidote, calling upon José Celestino Mutis himself as his witness:

The operation he performed on me was as follows. The Black man extracted the
juice of some leaves of the Guaco into a glass, he had me drink two teaspoons
and he proceeded to inoculate me by the skin, making six incisions: one on
each foot, another between the index finger and the thumb on each hand, and
the last two on both sides of the chest . . . To satisfy myself beyond doubt of
the efficacy of the Guaco herb, I took the snake, which seemed a bit restless,
into my own hands; but it did not look like it was going to bite, and once I was
no longer afraid, I picked the snake up twice more in the presence of Dr. José
Mutis . . . Having seen what I did, the others who had been inoculated were also
determined to pick up the snake; and they moved it about such that it got irri-
tated and finally bit Dr. Francisco Matis on the right hand, drawing some blood.
Something frightened us about this accident, and we had not ceased to be wary

8
 “Ingenio nostrum est usuque parare magistro Quod docuit natura feras ratione carentes.”
168 Chapter 4

of some terrible occurrence, but the Black man showed much serenity, as did
the bitten man after his wound was treated with the leaves of the herb and was
assured that there was no risk. In fact, nothing came from that bite. Matis ate
breakfast immediately with an appetite, worked all day at his art as a painter,
and slept through the night without feeling the slightest novelty, leaving all of
us entirely convinced of the goodness of the remedy, and desiring of its spread
for the benefit of the human species. (Vargas, 1978 [1791]: 202–203)

Vargas’ “learned skepticism” had borne fruit: the human species could now
celebrate having a new remedy, whose discoverers nevertheless needed to
be systematically invisibilized. In accordance with the guidelines of the new
imperial politics, the function of the state was to expropriate the private
capital of all its vassals with the aim of centralizing and redistributing it for
public benefit, especially when this capital took the form of useful knowledge.
In possession of an antidote against venomous snakebites, the state could
reap economic benefits comparable to those obtained from the exportation of
cinchona. Thus, Vargas recommends making falcon’s vine into “an object of
commerce to supply European pharmacies” (Vargas, 1978 [1791]: 291). The
criollo owners of the large plantations in Mariquita, Vélez, Guaduas, Honda,
and Girón, all places where the plant grew in abundance, would certainly
benefit from this. On the benefit that the Black inhabitants of Chocó might
receive from this commerce, Vargas said nothing.
On other occasions, criollos would attribute the efficacy of antidotes pre-
pared by Indians to the “felicitous chance” that rewarded the persistence of
these “farmers” in the art of experimentation. Francisco José de Caldas tells
the story of a Noanama Indian, renowned in the art of curing snakebites, who
accompanied him in 1803 to travel across the jungles of Mira in search of
exotic plants. Developing a friendship with the Indian, Caldas convinced him
to reveal the secret of his remedies. Thus, when the Indian indicated which
plants were effective against different bites, the “wise” Caldas noted that all
of these pertained to the Besleria family according to Linnaeus’ universal
taxonomy. Surprised by the coincidence, Caldas wonders:

How is it that this farmer never mistook this genus, this greatly varied and
capricious genus? Experience, extensive use, and felicitous chance have surely
taught the inhabitants of these countries where snakes are in abundance that
such a plant is a powerful remedy . . . A man who has never heard of the name
Linnaeus or of family, genus, species; a man who has heard no teachings except
necessity and occurrence, could not bring nine or ten species together under a
genus that he calls Contra and the botanists call Besleria without having a back-
ground of knowledge and felicitous experiences in curing those miserable ones
bitten by snakes. I do not ask you to take his word for it; but these facts should
 Illegitimate Knowledges 169

call our attention and encourage us to have experiences with all of the Besleria.
(Caldas, 1942 [1808b]: 165–166)

Caldas’ anecdote therefore has a moral character. It is not that Indians were
capable of having a medical science even comparable to that developed by
Europe. What can be learned from this event is that experimentation is the
beginning of the road to true scientific discovery, just as Newton would say.
But in reality, the Indians barely set out on this great road, and they were
guided more by chance than by intellect. This is why Caldas says that the
“background of knowledge and felicitous experiences” that the Indians have
is still not enough for science to exist. Scientific truth certainly begins with
experience but is defined thanks to the elaboration of universal categories
like those developed by Linnaeus in the case of botany. The medical knowl-
edge of the Indians, by contrast, does not go beyond their merely particular
experience and nor could it be formulated in a universal language. Under such
conditions, the remedies developed by the Noanama Indian lack scientific
status, such that Caldas recommends not taking his word for it.9
Another example of how the spontaneous sociology of the elites seeps into
enlightened knowledge is that of the insalubrity of the Indians as a cause of
the depopulation of the viceroyalty. In his 1741 chronicle, Father Gumilla
gives four reasons to explain the dramatic decline in the Indigenous popula-
tion during the previous century: “the lack of compassion they have for their
sick,” “the voracity with which they eat when they have the opportunity,”
“their nudity and lack of covering,” and “their plunging into the river to clean
themselves, even when sweating” (Gumilla, 1994 [1741]: 210). This means
that it was not the massacres suffered during the conquest, nor the cruelty
of the taxes imposed by the Spanish, nor even the diseases brought from
Europe, that explain the demographic crisis of the Indigenous people of New
Granada. Gumilla argued that Black slaves also work very hard in the mines
and suffer from diseases brought from Europe, but their numbers increased
rather than decreased. It was rather their “unhealthy customs” that caused
depopulation among Indians in the viceroyalty. Due to their indolence and
ignorance, Indians would go to work “poorly clothed and almost uncovered”
and squander their weekly salary “eating, drinking, and dancing without
rhyme or reason,” which gravely deteriorates their physical health. On top of

9
 In fact, like all other enlightened thinkers, Caldas thought that Indigenous ways of life and knowl-
edge were things of the past. We know, for example, that Caldas was interested in studying and pre-
serving statues of Saint Augustine, since he considered them valuable antiquities (Pineda Camacho,
2000: 26). That is to say, Caldas adopts an enlightened attitude where he does not see manifestations
of the devil and idolatry in the artistic and cognitive production of the Indians, which needs to be
destroyed, but rather the expression of forms of life and thought that belong to the past and should
be “monumentalized.”
170 Chapter 4

this he added the unnatural practice of their women, such as voluntary steril-
ization10 and the killing of newborn daughters.11
This idea that the unhealthy habits of the castes explain most of the depop-
ulation of the viceroyalty formed part of the habitus of the criollo elite. In his
Reflexiones sobre el origen de las comunas enfermedades que despueblan
este Reyno, enlightened criollo Manuel del Socorro Rodríguez, who was
very careful to hide his African roots,12 maintained that popular use of the
fermented corn drink chicha was the main cause of the diseases ravaging the
New Granadian population:

The barbarism that all of the Nations of the Americas lived in during the cen-
turies of their heathendom, their savage customs, their natural laziness toward
agriculture, and their total neglect of all arts that aim at the rational and solid
preservation of the species, have made them so prone to drunkenness that almost
all of their physical observations are directed towards those plants, fruits, and
roots that can give them the harshest substances suitable for making countless
strong concoctions, with which they feed their vicious propensity for drinking.
It is seen as a heroic action amongst them to discover a new way of making this
sort of wine or beer. The most loved man of the Homeland, the most useful to
humanity was the one who invented a new kind of Chicha stronger than the ones
known previously . . . The man who reflects and applies himself to investigating
the physical causes of having so few elders in this Kingdom with respect to the
total number of inhabitants, will certainly come to know that there is no other
cause than the generalized use of Chicha. It is the terrible origin of countless
diseases that lead the majority of the people directly to the grave. (Rodríguez,
1978 [1795]: 983; 985)

As can be seen in Rodríguez’ text, criollo elites attributed “countless diseases”

that devastated the people to the cognitive obscurity in which Indigenous

10
 “American women take a more certain means, oppressed by their melancholy, or exasperated by
seeing foreign people in their lands; or as some have said: to not give birth to servants for these for-
eigners, many decide to sterilize themselves with herbs or drinks that they ingest for this aim . . . I
say many because I have effective proof of it; and of the proof of the fact, in some provinces of
islands the same can be inferred without recklessness, where the same motive and blind barbarism
of the American women persists” (Gumilla, 1994 [1741]: 313).
11
 “after feeling the first pains, the Indian woman secretly goes to the meadow by the river or the
stream nearby, to take care of the birthing on her own; if a boy comes to greet the light, she washes
him beautifully and happily . . . but if it is a girl who comes out, she breaks her neck, or without
harming her (as they say) she buries the baby alive; later she bathes for a while and then returns
home, as if nothing had happened . . . And even if the birth is within the house in front of her
husband and relatives, if the creature comes out with any defect…, be it girl or boy, nobody is
opposed, and all consent to the death that is carried out in this way” (Gumilla, 1994 [1741]: 209).
12
 According to the historian José Torres Revello, Rodríguez “was a native of Bayamo, in Cuba,
where he was born in 1754. His parents Manuel Rodríguez and Antonia de la Victoria were
considered Spanish, or white, but they branded Manuel del Socorro a mulatto” (cited by Ortega
Ricaurte, 2002: 128).
 Illegitimate Knowledges 171

people lived. The knowledge they produced was not “rational,” since their
experiments were not directed toward scientifically understanding the pro-
cesses of nature, but satisfying their own passions. That is to say, the Indians
never managed to situate themselves at the zero-point that would guarantee
them objectivity in their comprehension of the origin of disease, instead their
knowledge was rooted in the impulsive domain of subjectivity. Curiously,
Rodríguez would incur the very objection that he criticized: the inability of
the observer to establish an “epistemological break” from their own habitus.
As I have been showing, in “scientifically” observing the medical practices
of Black and Indigenous people, enlightened criollos were in fact projecting
their own “spontaneous sociology” onto the observed object. Late eighteenth-
century New Granadian science thereby acts as technology through which
the “other” is named, classified, and stripped of all rationality. From the zero-
point at which the criollos believe themselves to be situated, the cognitive
practices of the castes were declared to belong to the domain of myth, and
its practitioners condemned to occupy a subordinate position in social space.

4.1.2 Contagious Ethnicities

Let’s return briefly to the question of smallpox discussed in the previous
chapter to exemplify the way elites projected their own aristocratic imaginary
of blood purity when it was a matter of “scientifically” observing the behavior
of others. One of the questions that most intrigued enlightened doctors was
that of the ethnic and geographic origin of smallpox. Was it a disease known
to ancient people or was it a recent disease? Was Europe its place of origin or
did it instead come from Africa or Asia? Within which European, African, or
Asian people did the disease have its origin? How did the virus arrive to the
Americas? All of these were questions that affected not only the diagnosis but
also the prevention of the disease.
In his Disertación físico-médica, Doctor Francisco Gil argued that small-
pox could not have originated in Europe, since Greek and Roman doctors
did not give any accounts of it (Gil, 1983 [1784]: 4). Neither Galen nor
Hippocrates nor Celsus ever spoke of the disease; on the contrary, the first
doctors that described it were all Arabs—Al-Razi, Avicenna, and Averroes—
proof that this was a relatively young virus. Although this would lead one to
suppose that smallpox originated in Asia, Gil preferred to give credit to the
hypothesis that the virus appeared in Africa, extending from there into the
Arab countries and later coming to Europe:

I stated above that smallpox had its origin in Ethiopia; and this news will be
no surprise to he who knows that Africa always gave birth to the worst plagues
that we have seen in Asia and Europe. Pliny the Elder observed it in his time.
Thucydides, in his remarkable description of the plague of Athens, states that
172 Chapter 4

it began in Ethiopia, moved on to Egypt, and from there to Persia until finally
it arrived in Greece. They claim that the great plague also had the same origin,
which spread across the world in the time of the Emperor Justinian and lasted
52 years. And lastly all of the traders and travelers that come from Turkey, say
that it is common to feel in that Empire, that many plagues that destroy those
domains come from Africa. (Gil, 1983 [1784]: 6)

Africa is therefore the cradle of the most horrible diseases that have devas-
tated humanity throughout history. How is this claim supported? Certainly
not with scientific arguments—Gil supported his claims with “texts” and not
the “oracle of experience”—but rather with what I have called here habitual
representation. In the habitus of dominant groups, formed and solidified dur-
ing more than 200 years of colonial dominion, the idea becomes anchored
that Africa is a place of punishment for the world because that is where the
“accursed children” lived. By contrast, it is from Europe that redemption for
this punishment would come, since its inhabitants had been commissioned by
God to show other nations the path to civilization. A disease like smallpox
could not have originated in Europe but, on the contrary, it is from Western
knowledge that the correct diagnosis and antidote to the disease will come.
Gil does not even recognize the fact that the inoculation was discovered by
the Chinese and adopted later by Turks. In his opinion, such a discovery was
not motivated by genuine scientific rationality, as it is found in Europe, but
by vanity. The Chinese, lovers of physical beauty, did not want their faces
to be disfigured by the disease when they reached adulthood and therefore
inoculated their children. The Circassians also adopted this practice due to
the fact that they trafficked slave women and needed to preserve their beauty:
“It is said that we owe this invention to the women of Circassia and Georgia
for being the most beautiful in the world.” This also explains, Gil adds, “the
many decorations, jewelry, and ointments with which they adorn themselves;
and even as the Missionary Capuchin Fathers preach out against their abuse,
they have not been able to stop it” (Gil, 1983 [1784]: 33).
The doctor from Quito, Francisco Javier de Santa Cruz y Espejo, also
claimed that the silence of classical authors toward the disease and the fact
that the Arabs were the first to describe it is irrefutable proof that smallpox
had exerted its tyrannical reign over the human body for the span of only six
centuries.13 He added that there are three reasons to believe that smallpox
originated in Africa: “its burning hot climate, its lands filled with filth, and
its inhabitants, perhaps the most negligent and idle of all the earth” (Espejo,
1985 [1785]: 41, author’s emphasis). On the other hand, the fact that the

13
 We now know that smallpox is one of humanity’s oldest diseases, first known and documented
over 3,500 years ago.
 Illegitimate Knowledges 173

sovereigns of all of Europe have implemented inoculation as an antidote

against smallpox is proof that “Europe is clean of [the disease] due to its cus-
toms and policies, and that perhaps we would not see it in any region were it
not for the squalid laziness of the Africans and the effeminate delicateness of
the Asians” (Espejo, 1985 [1785]: 36–37, author’s emphasis).
It is clear, then, that the tripartite schema of the world according to which
Europe is the central transmitter of civilization while Asia and Africa are
peripheral transmitters of barbarism, seeps into the “scientific” arguments
of enlightened doctors like Gil and Espejo. Due to their barbarous customs,
the inhabitants of Asia and Africa are marked as the epicenter of contagious
diseases, while Europe discovers the antidote and combats the disease due to
its “better customs and policies.” It is not strange that Espejo would see mem-
bers of the American castes—who the spontaneous sociology unconsciously
represented as the “children of Ham”—as diffusion foci for the virus. Their
sordid customs encourage the contamination of the air—the vehicle of the
virus’ transmission14—with “fetid and pestilential vapors”:

[The common air] is too fetid and filled with strange rotten bodies, and the
reasons for this are, first: the pigs that roam through the streets during the day
and sleep in the shops of their owners at night, who are generally Indians and
mestizos. Second: these same people relieve their basic necessities in the small
plazas and most public streets of the city without the slightest shame. (Espejo,
1985 [1785]: 58)

The constant surveillance of the activities of mestizos and Indians, coupled

with a strict control of excrement, are the two strategies Espejo proposed to
safeguard public health in Quito. The “unhealthy air” that spreads epidemics
comes from the castes, who are solely responsible for the overcrowding and
filth in which they live. For this reason, the sanitary policy of the state was
directed toward the gathering of beggars, as discussed above, with the aim of
cleaning the streets and resocializing the work force, but also to fight against
all foci of infections: stagnant water, cemeteries, toilets, and trash dumps. For
enlightened thought, however, all of these foci were “spontaneously” related
to the activities of the castes. Espejo knew, for example, that pig breeding
in the city was a necessary evil, because lard was used by commoners in
all food preparation, but he recommended that its sale be regulated by the

14
 Espejo argues at length that air is not the focal point of the disease, but only the vehicle of its trans-
mission: “the entire mass of air, is nothing other than a vehicle apt to transmit to diverse points the
heterogeneity with which it is filled . . . You can see here how infection takes hold of the air with
the strange particles that fluctuate within it, causing all of the destruction that is warned of in all
epidemics” (Espejo, 1985 [1785]: 49).
174 Chapter 4

establishment of butchers and slaughterhouses that comply with minimal

sanitary norms. Thus, “lard will be sold in pure form without mixture, which
the fraudulent Indians add to get a bigger profit.” Chicha bars, where the
“lower classes” congregate to get drunk, Espejo identified as potential foci of
infection. To increase profits, Indians and mestizos used not only corn chicha
in the making of “spirituous liquors,” but also added “two narcotic herbs
called huantug [angel’s trumpet], and chamico [devil’s snare], that disturb the
mind and make you crazy” (Espejo, 1985 [1785]: 68). Thus, the state needs
to “extend the investigation everywhere, dump out liquor where it is found,
break the glasses that contain them, and require the vendors of shavings to
make note of who they sell to, so that it can be known who buys them most
frequently” (69).
Enlightened thinkers expressed a profound suspicion about the hygiene of
the castes in Bogotá as well. Mutis in particular was disgusted by the attitude
of the “worthless masses” toward the inoculation campaign organized by
the government during the 1782 epidemic. The doctor from Cadiz reported
that around nine thousand people openly resisted inoculation and preferred
to remain exposed to contagion, attributing this resistance to the barbarous
customs dominating the behavior of these people:

Of all these people, the majority were from the worthless masses; miserable,
indigent, poorly governed people, terribly inclined toward fermented drink…
All of these people of the lower strata, who are not governed by the right use of
reason and counsel, conduct themselves with a kind of indifference and abandon
that would be unbelievable among rational people. Everything interests them
more than their own health, which they look upon with scorn and carelessness.
Counsel has not been enough to get them to abstain in advance, or when ill,
from fermented drinks that they see as an antidote to all ills. Unfortunately,
such people will always be the victims of their own caprice in any epidemic:
though I am not sure if it can be said, the state loses little with them. (Mutis,
1983 [1783a]: 205–206, author’s emphasis)

Once more we see that scientific observations are infused with the habitual
seeping-in of spontaneous sociology: if nine thousand Black, Indigenous,
and mestizo people refuse inoculation, this is not because they possess
another kind of knowledge or set of values that allows them to legitimately
understand the disease in a different way, but rather because they are people
governed by caprice and not by the correct use of reason. The unhealthy
practices of these “miserable people,” especially their natural tendency to
drink, become a dangerous site of disease transmission. Their absolute lack
of moral judgment and public responsibility—“everything interests them
more than their own health”—is actually an obstacle to the implementation
 Illegitimate Knowledges 175

of health policy. Thus, even though “the wise Mutis” shouldn’t say it (but he
does say it!), it would be preferable for these nine thousand infected people
to die, because in any case that are useless for strengthening the productive
capacity of the viceroyalty.

4.2 THE CUNNING OF BOTANICAL REASON

In the fifth chapter of The Order of Things, Michel Foucault claims that natu-
ral history opens a “new field of visibility” for science in the eighteenth cen-
tury, due to the fact that, for the first time, living beings begin to be classified
according to a mathematically constructed order (1994: 132–133). Writing
the history of a plant or an animal no longer meant simply enumerating its
elements, pointing out its similarities with other living things, or describing
what modern travelers and sages of antiquity had written about them, but
rather it was the more geometrico establishment of an order in which botany
and zoology could treat their objects in the same way as mathematics, alge-
bra, or geometry. The great variety of living things would be reduced to a
universal language that would allow any individual, in any part of the world,
to observe empirically different things in the same way. Elephants and horses,
for example, could now be observed through a language that established for-
mal similarities between them (both are mammals, quadrupeds, vertebrates,
etc.), and the same occurred with plants, which are classified according to
abstract categories like genus, class, and species.
In this section, I will analyze how this process of the unification of the gaze
noted by Foucault runs parallel, on the one hand, to the political economy
of the Bourbon state in its efforts to centralize knowledge of nature, and on
the other hand, to the epistemic expropriation of the castes by the criollos.
It will become apparent how the language in which the meaning of health
and disease was enveloped before the eighteenth century was perceived by
enlightened thinkers as the source of all errors and ambiguities of traditional
knowledge, and should be replaced by the precise, mathematical language of
science.

4.2.1 Rules for Guiding the Mind

I raised a point earlier that will be fundamental for the purposes of this
investigation: until the eighteenth century, work was above all a strategy
to defend human existence from the power of nature, which was always
considered alien and hostile. It was a matter of creating an always fragile
environment for protection against the omnipotence of the external world.
Available knowledge and technology appeared to recognize that scarcity was
176 Chapter 4

a sine qua non curse on human reality and work therefore became associated
with the idea of survival. However, the birth of the new science, the creation
of the modern state, and the development of new technologies allowed this
perspective to change: rather than being hounded and subjected to hostile and
arbitrary nature, people began to think of themselves as “owner and lord”
of the land. There thus appears an idea (an obsession, perhaps) that modern
people still have not abandoned: that abundance might replace scarcity as
the original situation and foundational experience of human existence on the
earth. Starting in the eighteenth century, work is no longer geared simply
toward survival, but rather toward the creation and accumulation of wealth
with the goal of achieving the great modern utopia: the definitive overcoming
of scarcity (Echeverría, 2001: 151).
In this sense, the eighteenth century was, as Foucault points out, a moment
of rupture in European and World history. It is the moment in which the state
takes on the task of eliminating scarcity through the rationalized production
of wealth, which unleashed a fierce battle between dominant powers (France,
England, and Spain) for control over markets. The French Bourbon dynasty
that ruled in Spain from the beginning of the eighteenth century introduced
a series of reforms aimed at turning science and technology into pillars of
economic growth. The control and appropriation of nature was to be imple-
mented in the colonies through the institutionalization of an ensemble of sci-
ences that allowed the state to recognize, evaluate, name, classify, export, and
commercialize those natural resources considered useful for the project of
wealth accumulation. In this sense, natural history, and botany in particular,
was one of the sciences most appreciated and promoted by the Spanish state
for realizing these goals.
Michel Foucault attributes an epistemological preeminence to botany over
sciences related to natural history like mineralogy and zoology. According
to the French philosopher, the study of plants—more than that of animals
or minerals—allowed one to better “make visible” the (unmediated) corre-
spondence between the order of discourse and the order of nature; between
words and things (Foucault, 1994: 137). Nevertheless, and in agreement
with Foucault’s thesis on the preeminence of botany over other disciplines
in natural history, I argue that the reason for this preeminence is not in itself
epistemological, but rather economic.15 The commercial utility of vegetal

15
 We could add a less obvious reason for this: for elites in Europe—the social location where
scientific knowledge was produced and centralized during this period—it was easier to collect
exotic plants than to collect animals brought from the colonies. That is to say, it was much easier
and cheaper to have herbariums than zoos. Interest in animal fossils had still not appeared in the
eighteenth century, since it would coincide with the birth of biology. At the same time, as I will
argue in the next chapter, scientific interest in minerals was very limited due to the influence of
physiocratic theories in the economic domain.
 Illegitimate Knowledges 177

products—for example, in medicine—was much greater than that obtained

at the time from animals or minerals, which led the state to allocate greater
resources to research in the field of botany. In the case of the Spanish Empire,
the organization of scientific expeditions in the colonies, the creation of
botanical gardens in the metropole (in Madrid there was no Royal Zoo but
rather a Royal Garden), and the centralization of the medical-pharmaceutical
structure (The Royal Pharmacy and the Protomedicato) are clear tendencies
in this direction.
The same process that I described above with respect to medicine began
to occur with botany: knowledge of the properties of plants is stolen or
“expropriated” from private hands (healers, untrained doctors, priests) and
centralized in the hands of the state. The reason for this epistemological-
political transfer is not hard to understand: if what was sought was to over-
come the terrible scarcity of the past, then the “archaic” knowledge of those
subjects who had been incapable of replacing scarcity with abundance had
to be slowly “emptied.” Different forms of life that for centuries had coex-
isted as self-enclosed kosmoi now had to be integrated into a single model
of civilization and production. The multiple “premodern” humanities had no
alternative but to modernize or disappear, to integrate into the global process
of commodity production and circulation. In the same way, the diverse ways
of knowing nature, the human, and society produced within these “archaic”
humanities would have to give way to the hegemony of a single form of true
knowledge, scientific-technical rationality. In the face of this, all other forms
of producing knowledge appeared to be tied to ignorance, superstition, and
barbarism. For this reason, the traditional method of classifying plants used
by Indigenous Americans—based on the religious, spiritual, and medicinal
meaning of each specimen—would appear illegitimate to the classification
system developed by the Swedish naturalist Linnaeus, a system that allowed
one to identify, name, and catalog in a unitary fashion every specimen of the
vegetal realm.
Indeed, Linnaeus declares all the names used prior to him to classify
inhabitants of the vegetal realm—in all times and places—to be illegitimate.16
His classification system is based on the allocation of a unique name to each
genus and species of plants.17 Each plant has a compound name: the first
identifies the genus and the second the species to which it belongs. That is
to say, each individual specimen ceases to have value of its own. What is

16
 Linnaeus is clear on this point: “I have fundamentally reorganized the entire field of natural history,
elevating it to the stature it now has. I doubt that anyone could make any advances in this domain
today without my help and guidance” (Cited by Beltrán, 1997: 33).
17
 The sexuality of plants is the cornerstone on which Linnaeus’ entire classificatory edifice rests.
The type of sexual organs (stamens and pistils) is used to identify and differentiate the classes,
species, and last, genera.
178 Chapter 4

important now is determining similarities among different individuals, whose

result is the species, and similarities among different species, whose result is
the genus, to then later group everything into a system of universal classifica-
tion. The great success of Linnaean taxonomy was due precisely to the fact
that it offered the possibility of establishing a systematic inventory of existing
natural resources, which was very useful for the commercial interests of the
state. Botany and politics now had a universal language that allowed them
to know the “truth” of the natural world over which humans should exercise
their mastery. In fact, Linnaeus did not consider his system to be an artificial
construct, but rather believed it corresponded directly to nature “in itself.”
The order of the system is nothing but a reflection of the intrinsic order of the
world. As it was said at that time: Deus creavit; Linnaeus disposuit.
Michel Foucault makes the following comments with respect to Linnaeus’
system:

The Classical age gives history a quite different meaning: that of undertaking a
meticulous examination of the things themselves for the first time, and then of
transcribing what it has gathered in smooth, neutralized, and faithful words. It is
understandable that the first form of history constituted in the period of ‘purifi-
cation’ should have been the history of nature. For its construction requires only
words applied, without intermediary, to things themselves. The documents of
this new history are not other words, texts or records, but unencumbered spaces
in which things are juxtaposed: herbariums, collections, gardens; the locus of
this history is a non-temporal rectangle in which, stripped of all commentary, of
all enveloping language, creatures present themselves one beside another, their
surfaces visible, grouped according to their common features, and thus already
virtually analysed, and bearers of nothing but their own individual names.
(Foucault, 1994: 131, author’s emphasis)

Naming nature meant ordering it, placing it under the systematic control of
scientific language. The naturalist is therefore like a new Adam: by naming
the world for the first time he discovers it, making manifest the systema natu-
rae designed by God himself. But naming the world scientifically also meant
establishing a “pathos of distance” toward any other possible way of naming
it, since modern science demands the erasure of all linguistic indeterminacy.
The words that name the world should be “smooth, neutral, and faithful,”
such that they can be applied “unmediated” to the things themselves. So,
for example, the name given by a botanist to a newly discovered plant spe-
cies ought to be so universal that any scientist in the world could recognize
the object it describes without ever having seen it. The particularities of
common language give rise to error and confusion in the world of science;
thus, the ideal of the modern naturalist is to distance oneself from everyday
 Illegitimate Knowledges 179

language in order to reach the “zero-point” that allows one to describe the
world objectively. The names of plants could not refer to their religious or
medicinal use, as with the names used by Indigenous people and peasants,
and they must moreover be in Latin, the language of the cultured elite and
bureaucratic power (Nieto Olarte, 2000: 119).18 Describing the natural world
from a single viewpoint and a single platform, and using a universal language
valid in all place and time: such was the enlightenment ideal of the zero-point.
This would also be the ideal that would inspire the great scientific explora-
tions of the eighteenth century.

4.2.2 The Voyage of the Criollo Adams

After having pioneered the great voyages of exploration in the sixteenth
century, Spain remained at the margins of such initiatives for most of the
seventeenth century. It was now France, England, and Holland who invested
great resources into overseas exploration campaigns. What motivated these
efforts was no longer the discovery of unknown lands and new commercial
routes, but rather the discovery of primary materials that the metropole
could capitalize upon economically. England had created the properly
modern imperial model: it was not only about exploiting the mineral riches
of the colonies, as Spain had done, but of creating and maintaining a com-
mercial infrastructure that would allow the colonies to produce and export
raw materials while the metropole manufactured industrial products to then
be distributed to other countries. The modern/colonial project of overcom-
ing scarcity through the accumulation of wealth thus required the creation
of a complex network including promoting the free exchange of commodi-
ties between the metropole and its colonies, financial incentives for private
businesses, and strengthening the bank, along with the rationalization of
industry and agriculture.
It is in this geopolitical context that scientific expeditions began to play
a fundamental role. The powers competing for hegemony in the world
system of the eighteenth century had begun an ambitious plan for the sys-
tematic knowledge of the natural and human resources in their colonies, and
Spain could not fall behind in this project.19 It was necessary to carry out

18
 In fact, this ideal of a pure (apolitical and metacultural) language was never accomplished, as
Mauricio Nieto clearly shows with respect to the names given to plants by enlightened scientists. In
many cases, these names refer to influential figures from Spanish history and politics, for example,
the genera Carludovia (which refers to the marriage of Carlos III to Queen Ludovica), Flor-
idablanca (the count of Floridablanca), Godoya (minister Manuel Godoy), and Juan Ulloa (unit-
ing the names of the officers Jorge Juan and Antonio Ulloa). Not to mention, of course, the genus
named Bonapartea in honor of the great political figure of the era (Nieto Olarte, 2000: 1201–1121).
19
 José Alcina Franch (1988: 195–198) notes nineteen Spanish scientific expeditions undertaken dur-
ing the reign of Fernando VI (1746–1759), Carlos III (1759–1788), and Carlos IV (1788–1808),
180 Chapter 4

an exhaustive inventory of the flora of the new world and to scientifically

determine which exotic species could be rapidly transformed into “exchange
value.” Determined to put an end to Spain’s scientific indifference and its
economic disadvantage vis-à-vis England, the Bourbons implemented a
series of measures to evaluate the economic potential of its American colo-
nies. To avoid the Spanish economy’s continued dependence on the importa-
tion of precious metals, the state needed to know which vegetal species could
be useful in developing agriculture, strengthening commerce, and promoting
health reform throughout the empire. For this reason, Carlos III ordered all
the overseas viceroys to gather objects of natural history and to promote the
discovery of “useful trees, bushes, and plants.”

How much the examination and methodical knowledge of the natural products
of my territories in the Americas is worthwhile for my service and the good of
my vassals, not only to promote progress in the physical sciences, but also to
uproot doubts and falsifications in medicine, tincture, and other important arts;
but also to increase commerce and establish herbariums and collections of natu-
ral products, describing and delineating the plants found in my fertile provinces
in order to enrich my Cabinet of Natural History and the Botanical Garden of
the Court, by sending the seeds and live roots of the most useful plants and trees
to Spain, especially those that are used or should be used in medicine and in
naval construction. Thus these can become acclimated to our various conducive
climates, while we also gain geographical and astronomical observations so as
to take steps to further these sciences. (cited by Hernández de Alba, 1996: 154)

The Spanish Crown was not interested in grand theories and scientific
debates, but in the practical aspect of science, its potential to become a source
of economic, political, and military capital. This is why botany turned out to
be the biopolitical project’s greatest ally: botanical activity in the periphery
and the political needs of the metropolitan state became mutually dependent
phenomena. Criollo botanists needed state support to elevate the prestige of
their practice and increase their social distance from the castes, just as had
occurred with doctors; the state, meanwhile, needed the botanists to fulfill
its goal of classifying the natural resources under its jurisdiction. The King’s
order to gather “the seeds and live roots of the most useful plants and trees”
could not be accomplished without the help of a local group of botanists
trained in the new classification system designed by Linnaeus. In the same
way, the state needed a team of experts in the metropole capable of organiz-
ing the botanical cabinets and gardens, so the exotic plants brought from the

without even counting the innumerable expeditions carried out in the American viceroyalties
throughout the eighteenth century.
 Illegitimate Knowledges 181

colonies could become acclimated to Spanish soil, since it was only in this
environment that they could carry out a systematic study of their possible
uses for agriculture, commerce, and medicine. Added to this was the expert
knowledge required on both sides of the Atlantic by the sailors and officials
charged with sending, transporting, and receiving these agrarian riches from
the colonies (Puerto Sarmiento, 1988: 22; Nieto Olarte, 2000: 53–54). In a
word, around the mid-eighteenth century, botany had become a matrix for
the production of expert knowledge tied to geopolitical power apparatuses.
One of Spain’s first efforts to explore the vegetal wealth of its American
colonies was the Limits Expedition to the Orinoco, which took place between
1754 and 1761. The main objective of the expedition was to precisely demar-
cate the borders between Spain and Portugal in the Americas, in order to put
an end once and for all to the long dispute between the two Iberian pow-
ers that began with the Treaty of Tordesillas.20 To this end, the expedition
included a commissioner from each nation accompanied by geographers,
cartographers, and expert illustrators. But in addition to this, the expedition
also had an economic objective: to explore the routes of the Orinoco river,
catalog economically useful plants from the region, establish new settle-
ments, and subdue Indigenous populations that impeded commerce. At this
time, the territory of Guyana was already seen by the empire as a kind of
natural “El Dorado”; a factory of natural resources capable of giving Spain
an economic and commercial advantage over its European competitors. The
expedition thus sought to set the stage for the definitive integration of Guyana
as a Spanish territory, so as to counter the presence of the English, French,
and Dutch in the area (Lucena Giraldo: 1998: 25–38).
Among the members of the Limits Expedition was the Swedish botanist
Pehr Löfling, a favorite disciple of Linnaeus who was contracted by the
Spanish state to head the scientific team in charge of exploring the vegetal
world of the Amazon. Löfling’s presence was due to the mutual economic
benefit that Spanish and Swedish authorities expected to receive. Sweden,
at the time a peripheral country in Europe, was fighting to gain a position in
international trade and saw the expedition to the Orinoco as an opportunity to
acclimate some medicinal American plants to their territory. Linnaeus him-
self had convinced the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences of Stockholm
to sponsor Löfling’s voyage, arguing that American products like cinchona
bark and cinnamon could generate lucrative profits for the Swedish economy
(Nieto Olarte, 2000: 45). Spain, meanwhile, was interested in taking advan-
tage of Linnaeus’ new botanical system, which Löfling knew firsthand. At
the end of the day, enlightened technocrats saw nature in the Americas as an

20
 In the next chapter, we will see how these kinds of expeditions formed part of the new economic
and political practices at the end of the eighteenth century.
182 Chapter 4

immense “chaos” that needed to be ordered according to a precise nomencla-

ture in order to subject it to the dictates of economic rationality.
Löfling left Cadiz for the northeastern part of New Granada, what is today
Venezuela, believing himself a sort of enlightened messenger and without
knowing hardly anything of Spain and its colonies. He carried a copy of the
French translation of El Orinoco ilustrado in his luggage, and I suppose it
was through Father Gumilla that the Swedish botanist got his first “view”
of the Amazon. The two years that he spent in the region were marked by
constant illness, difficulties of communication (he did not speak Spanish and
his Spanish colleagues did not speak French), and restrictions on writing his
notes in Swedish, because the Spanish authorities were afraid that he might
be sending secret information. In the end, far from his homeland and unable
to complete his enlightened mission, Löfling died of malignant fevers in
February 1756 (Amodio, 1998: 63–71).
But the Spanish empire would not give up easily on their goal of exploring
the territories of the New World. The Royal Botanical Expedition to New
Granada (1783–1817) was also framed by the eighteenth-century Bourbon’
state’s will to know. After the Seven Years’ War with England, Spain felt
the need to make its colonies into gigantic zones for working and produc-
ing primary materials, with the goal of breaking the economic monopoly of
its competitors. The colonial administration, a disastrous business up to this
point, needed to become a source for wealth production and accumulation.
The Royal Botanical Expedition to New Granada, like those organized to
New Spain, Chile, Peru, and the Philippines, opened up the possibility of
strengthening the internal economy of the empire through the discovery of
new commercial products. Already since 1763, José Celestino Mutis had tried
to persuade the King to finance a botanical expedition in New Granada, using
political and economic arguments:

I know, sir, that I would offend the great understanding of your majesty, if I
were to relate in detail the great utility that could result from my prospective
voyage with two assistants for scientific work, and two more for paintings, illus-
trations, and other material labors. No one would know better than your majesty,
of course, the immortal glory that your majesty would acquire from this glorious
enterprise executed with dignity, no other nation like Spain has been interested
in knowing the admirable products with which Divine Providence has enriched
the expansive territories that have the fortune to live under the happy command
of your majesty in the New World . . . America, in whose blessed soil the creator
deposited an infinite number of the most admirable things, has stood out not
only for its gold, silver, precious stones, and other treasures that it hides in its
bowels; it also produces exquisite dyes on its surface for use and commerce that
industry will continue to discover in its plants; cochineal dye is in abundance in
 Illegitimate Knowledges 183

this kingdom, even though the natives of these provinces in their indolence do
not cultivate it; there is also the precious wax of a bush called laurelito and that
of the palm; many glues that could be used by the arts; admirable wood to make
musical instruments and furniture; they also produce many other trees, herbs,
resins, and balsams for the good of humanity, that will eternally preserve the
credit of their as yet unknown fertility. (Mutis, 1983 [1763]: 127–128)

The “glorious enterprise” Mutis advocates would revolve around the activity
of botanists and illustrators. The botanists, led by Mutis, traveled the country-
side to take systematic samples of every kind of plant, root, bulb, and tuber.
The collection of samples was not arbitrary, since it followed the parameters
for classification and observation established by Linnaeus. His vision trained
to see universals, the botanist grouped and classified the samples gathered,
proceeding to organize nurseries, herbariums, and experimental modes of
cultivation (like those developed by Mutis and his assistants on Mariquita
estate). The name and common use that people of the region might have for
the samples taken were not relevant to the universal aims of the botanist,
since all local knowledge had to be legitimated by appearing before the court
of botanical reason. At best, Indians and peasants were consulted as “native
informants” to provide leads for locating certain plants and animals.21 And
although the vernacular name of a sample often appeared in botanist’s reports
the drawings of the illustrators, this information was more of organizational
than scientific interest, since it allowed the authorities to quickly find the spe-
cies in question.
For their part, the illustrators represented the gathered samples according
to the strict specifications of the botanist. As the illustrations were not meant
to appeal to the aesthetic sense of the observer but to the analytic rationality
of the scientist, the illustrator’s function was to emphasize only those ele-
ments of the sample (the shape and color of the leaves, structure of flowers
and fruits, type of seeds, etc.) that could facilitate its inclusion in Linnaeus’
universal taxonomy; that is, so that they could be presented in the court and
before the international scientific community as the discovery of new gen-
era and species.22 We could say that these drawings were equivalent to the

21
 We know that some Indigenous people were used on the expedition as “herbalists,” that is, as
people who knew the flora and fauna of the region and were capable of finding and transporting
and kind of sample no matter how difficult its location might be.
22
 Mauricio Nieto helpfully notes that these drawings had the function of “bringing closer” and mak-
ing intelligible to the European observer the “savage” habitat of the New World: “The specimens
had to be packed and preserved not only so that they would remain unaltered on long journeys,
but also so that they could be presented in Europe as new discoveries. The jungle, the tropics,
and the New World were places where plants and animals proliferated, but not knowledge. This
was produced and certified in European institutions: laboratories, museums, gardens, and printing
presses. The objects of nature should be removed and accumulated within these institutions where
184 Chapter 4

sixteenth-century Spanish chronicles: both types of documents were proof of

entry into a universality defined by and from Europe. In the first case, a new
kind of humans made their entrance onto the stage of “Universal History,”
as Hegel would propose, while in the second, the exotic objects in question
are not humans but plants entering into “Natural History.” Entrance into the
world of the universal thus takes on the character of discovery, and the illus-
trators are chroniclers who testify faithfully to the feats of the new conquista-
dor: the botanist. Thus, the authority of the drawing, like that of the chronicle,
rests on the realism of its testimony. The illustrator must “copy nature with
exactitude, especially plants, without seeking to adorn or augment anything
with their imagination” (Nieto Olarte, 2000: 70).23
From this point of view, the Royal Botanical Expedition to New Granada
was an Entdeckungsreise, a sort of “second conquest” organized and exe-
cuted no longer directly by Europeans but by their American descendants,
the criollo botanists.24 They embarked on the task of finding, distinguishing,
and naming every single species and genus, bringing to light the immanent
order of creation. In addition to “discovering” objects that supposedly no
one in history had previously known, these criollo Adams incorporated the
objects into a universal language that could only be understood by the com-
munity to which they themselves belong: that of enlightened men who make
legitimate use of reason. Knowledge of the vegetal world rooted in local prac-
tices and traditions is thus considered botany’s “prehistory,” an ensemble of

the naturalist, the man of science, could work in a suitable and familiar environment. In the cabinet,
herbarium, or museum, the [European] botanist would take on a central and privileged position that
would grant him ‘direct experience’ of a number of objects that nobody could have examined in
the field” (Nieto Olarte, 2000: 69–70).
23
 Foucault’s claim that “the blind man in the eighteenth century can perfectly well be a geometrician,
but he cannot be a naturalist,” is very interesting in this respect (1994: 133). Foucault is referring to
the privilege that scientific observation gives to vision over touch, sound, and taste in its eagerness
to eliminate all possible uncertainty. This is a technically controlled visibility “restricted, moreover,
to black and white”: “Displayed in themselves, emptied of all resemblances, cleansed even of their
colours, visual representations will now at last be able to provide natural history with its proper
object” (Foucault, 1994: 133–134, author’s emphasis) Foucault’s statement here contrasts markedly
with the vivid colors of the more than five thousand prints sent by Mutis’ nephew to Spain in 1817.
Color was very important indeed for the criollos of New Granada, such that in some cases (e.g., with
cinchona) this detail could determine who was in charge of the commercial monopoly over a new
product. As we will see later, Mutis, who claimed to have discovered a new species in New Granada,
distinguished between four types of cinchona according to the color and size of their leaves.
24
 Unlike all the other eighteenth-century American expeditions, which took place under rigid penin-
sular oversight, the Royal Botanical Expedition to New Granada was a local criollo enterprise that
grew out of Mutis’ initiative and was concretized thanks to his friendship with viceroy Caballero
y Góngora. All of the scientists and illustrators that took part in it, with the exception of Mutis
who himself had spent over thirty years living in New Granada, were criollos (Puerto Sarmiento,
1988: 115–118). Included among the most distinguished scientists that participated in the botani-
cal expedition were figures such as: Francisco José de Caldas, Jorge Tadeo Lozano, Francisco
Antonio Zea, José Joaquín Camacho, Miguel Pombo, José María Carbonell, Sinforoso Mutis, and
Eloy Valenzuela.
 Illegitimate Knowledges 185

superstitions toward which the scientist must establish a linguistic and episte-
mological pathos of distance. In the journal of the expedition, the rapporteur
Eloy Valenzuela describes the discovery of a plant as follows:

Drawn here is a Melastoma polyandra. The perianth can be seen as one piece;
cylindrical in the part that fills the germ and sharp in the upper part . . . Petals
6, a bit narrow later widened, plunging obliquely toward the tip and curving
toward the pedicel, white, two or three time larger than the germ and attached
internally on the edge above it. At their base the stamens number 24 or more,
three for each petal and one in each clear, filiform, some broken, of the same
length as the petal. Cylindrical style, straight, larger than the stamens. Fruit:
round berry, atropurpureum, very shiny, spattered with little atoms of dust, hol-
lowed out at in the apex by the receptacle of the flower, succulent, of 6 locula-
ments formed by the flesh, and 6 receptacles of many seeds nested lanky and
slightly compressed. Solitary peduncles, terminal, the subordinate, alternatively
opposed, subdivided in 3 tri-flowers: under the axil of each decussation another
single tri-flower is born. (Valenzuela, 1983 [1783–1784]: 210–211)

Valenzuela’s description of nature must conform to the mathematical preci-

sion of expert language. Like the illustrator with their lines, the rapporteur
must use sterile language, purified of all sensory and cultural contamination,
thereby ruling out any possible indeterminacy. In a plant where the peasant
sees similarities with the familiar world surrounding him (using names like
“lion’s tooth,” “mouse ear,” “candlestick,” “cow’s tongue,” etc.), the criollo
botanist sees only numbers and geometric figures. Familiarity with the envi-
ronment, reflected above all in popular language, constitutes an epistemologi-
cal obstacle that must be eliminated to access true knowledge.
The criollo expeditioners, proud to belong to the white race and trained
in the use of a language inaccessible to the castes, knew that they had the
power to name the world over which they would exercise dominion. As new
Adams in the middle of paradise, blessed with universal language and vision,
the expeditioners had the sensation of seeing the territory of New Granada
for the first time, and thus assuming the right to name the plants and ani-
mals. Even the most familiar places appeared before their eyes as something
unprecedented, as Caldas put it in a personal letter: “What a new and unusual
object for me, for me who has passed through these places three times, how
much they had amused and amazed me, and I had not noticed! Here I came to
understand the value of the Enlightenment and to see with philosophical eyes.
Before I did not notice the layers, the angles, in short, the Comte de Buffon’s
theory of land, but now everything calls me, everything interests me.”25

25
 Cited by Díaz Piedrahita, 1997: 75.
186 Chapter 4

“To see with philosophical eyes” means taking distance from the world in
order to see it for the first time and from a universal perspective. What used
to be closeness, face-to-face, familiarity with local language and culture,
now becomes an “epistemological obstacle”; a veil that prevents one from
seeing “the thing in itself.” The only way of pulling back this veil to achieve
certainty is to break with the smells, colors, tastes, and all other “barbarous”
ways of seeing the world. Settling in the sterile environment of the universal
thereby allows the criollo scientist to see with “clarity and distinction” what
all the other inhabitants of the colony cannot see; discovering what for other
mortals forms an integral part of their daily life. Local knowledges, traditional
practices through which the natural world is seen, named, and governed, are
relegated to the past. For the criollo scientist what exists is only the present
of a territory revealing its secrets for the first time to the human gaze, and the
future of a policy promising the establishment of a Regnum Hominis on earth.

4.2.3 Mutis’ Magical Brew

Perhaps the clearest example of how scientific knowledge, colonial power,
and the discourse of blood purity became tightly linked in New Granada was
the famous dispute between Mutis and Sebastián López Ruiz over who had
discovered cinchona. I already briefly mentioned this dispute in the previous
chapter with respect to divisions within the criollo elite toward the biopo-
litical designs of the state (scholastic vs. enlightened). But it is necessary to
broaden this reflection with the example of cinchona since this will allow me
to illuminate the link between zero-point hubris, the epistemological expro-
priation of traditional knowledges, and the economic interests of the criollo
elite.
Economic interest in cinchona bark was not new in the eighteenth century.
It was already known from the sixteenth century on that cinchona from the
Loja region near Quito was very effective at curing all types of fevers (or
“calentures,” as they called them at the time).26 Legend says that around 1630
the Cacique Pedro de Leiva of the Malacatos tribe in Loja province gave an
infusion of cinchona bark to a Jesuit missionary sick with a fever. The mis-
sionary, cured almost miraculously, provided the remedy to the mayor of
Loja, and also being cured of his ills, he informed the vicereine of Peru about
it, who distributed it to the sick and poor of Lima, with the remedy coming

26
 The doctor from Quito, Eugenio Espejo, summarized the economic and medicinal interest in
cinchona in the eighteenth century as follows: “The bark is an essential necessity for intermittent
fevers and even when feeling physically well, for all types of fevers; to cure hydropsy; to eradicate
the effects of scurvy; to guard against gangrene and cancer, and finally for very many and easier
uses . . . Cinchona is like a distinct and precious currency with which you can buy human health”
(Espejo, 1985 [1786]: 31).
 Illegitimate Knowledges 187

to be known as the “powder of the countess” (Jaramillo Arango, 1951: 247).

Word of the quasi-miraculous recovery of the viceroy quickly echoed through
the European courts. The powder of the vicereine, better known as Jesuit
powder, since it was they who first sold the product, began to be requested
by pharmacies on the old continent. “Loja bark” became famous in the global
core for its proven curative properties, and in the periphery (the viceroyalties
of Peru and New Granada) for the abundant profits gained by its exportation.
What was new in the eighteenth century was not, therefore, the marketing
of cinchona, but rather the legitimation of the trade by scientific knowledge
and state biopolitics. Competition for the commercial monopoly on cinchona
and the expansion of English and French colonial powers (and the conse-
quent need for antidotes against terrible tropical fevers) unleashed a scientific
debate over the real medicinal properties of cinchona, the supply of adequate
doses, and the different varieties of trees that produced it. The Spanish state,
hoping to limit contraband of the product and monopolize its sale in Europe,
turned to botany and medicine to establish with certainty what types of
cinchona were useful for curing which types of illnesses. The unification of
criteria around these questions was due to two factors: first, the growing claim
by different exporters in the colonies that they possessed “the best” kind of
cinchona. Second, the increased cost of harvesting, transporting, and market-
ing the product. The Spanish state could not afford the luxury of investing
so much money in the exportation of a poor quality product, exposing itself
to rejection by the demanding European market. Expert scientific knowledge
would allow the state to decide which type of cinchona was best, where it
was located, and how best to harvest and transportit without affecting the
medicinal properties of the bark.
The dispute between Mutis and López Ruiz in New Granada took place
in this geopolitical context. Since his arrival in Bogota, Mutis knew that
discovering the best type of cinchona was more than sufficient reason for the
state to finance a botanical expedition in the New Granadian territory. In his
presentation to King Carlos III in 1763, Mutis states that

The greatly useful cinchona bark: a treasure uniquely bestowed on the territo-
ries of your majesty, whose distribution to other nations is in your hands, like
the position of the Dutch distributing cinnamon from Ceylon. Those who have
a certain horror, unjustly conceived by some doctors in Europe, who have not
taken the caution to separate the true and the fresh from the false and vile, a hor-
ror introduced through ignorance or ambition, will know how to act with greater
confidence, free and certain, when my observations reach the public, which I
make public in some European academies where they propose new discoveries,
for the anticipated good of the human species. A remedy that is so remarkable
that they dispute its superiority compared to the few known antidotes, and that
188 Chapter 4

Divine Providence has put in the hands of your majesty for the universal good of
humanity…, will come to be scarce in the third century of its happy discovery,
if your majesty does make the most opportune decisions in time . . . It is very
frightening, my lord, that we could come to lack cinchona, as it seems every day
by experience. Your majesty would not permit that the ambition of those who
trade in this precious species multiply the miseries that we fundamentally fear.
(Mutis, 1983 [1763]: 129–130)

In this text, Mutis claimed that modern science finds itself with the capac-
ity to distinguish true and fresh cinchona from the false and vile, such that
he tried to persuade the King to name him head of a scientific expedition to
the interior of New Granada. The central purpose of this voyage would be
to find a variety of cinchona to replace “Loja bark,” since Mutis feared that
a hundred years of tree cutting in that region of Peru would end up ruining
sale of the product, consequently harming the Spanish treasury and the “good
of the human species.” The naturalist put all of scientific competency at the
service of the King, convinced not only that he could discover an alternative
variety of cinchona, but that he could also propose a completely new way of
cultivating, processing, and transporting it. Without the necessary measures,
that is, assigning Mutis the command the enterprise, Spain would not only
lose out on the cinchona trade, but it would be the English and the Dutch who
would fill the market with other products from the colonies, like cinnamon
from Ceylon or lower-quality cinchona. The commercial future of cinchona
bark thus depended on Mutis’ scientific activity in New Granada, at least as
he himself described it.
At this point, the second protagonist of this story entered the scene, the
criollo doctor Sebastián López Ruiz. We know that Mutis’ early 1763 petition
was rejected by the Crown, which was interested in the moment in saving the
cinchona crops already existing in Peru. Things remained as they were until
López Ruiz officially presented a document to the Crown in 1774 in which
he claimed to have discovered of his own accord a new variety of cinchona
in the Andean region of Tena, on a farm belonging to the recently expelled
Society of Jesus.27 The discovery caused an uproar in botanical circles on
the peninsula. Casimiro Gómez Ortega and Antonio Pallau, professors in the
Royal Botanical Garden, carefully examined the samples and concluded that
the New Granadian cinchona discovered by López Ruiz was of better qual-
ity than that produced in Loja. With this endorsement of the metropolitan

27
 Hernández de Alba (1993: 173–175) says that the discovery was officially presented to the Crown
through the viceroy of New Granada Manuel Antonio Flórez, and that proof of the discovery
(four crates containing samples of the new variety) was duly submitted to the Royal Pharmacy of
Madrid.
 Illegitimate Knowledges 189

scientific community, López Ruiz was invited to Europe, made a member of

the Royal Medical Society of Paris, and named Botanist of the Royal Order
by the Spanish Crown, with the commission to oversee the monopoly and
exportation of the new cinchona he had discovered (Hernández de Alba,
1996: 175).
Mutis was infuriated by this unexpected appearance of the criollo López
Ruiz. He felt that an “intruder” was usurping his right to be in charge of such
an important botanical discovery, receiving corresponding honors from the
international scientific community and supervising the establishment of the
cinchona monopoly in New Granada. Who better than José Celestino Mutis,
personal doctor of viceroy Messía de la Cerda, professor of mathematics at
the Colegio Mayor del Rosario, friend of the “immortal Linnaeus,”28 gradu-
ate from medical school at the Royal College of Cadiz, and disciple of the
famous surgeon Pedro Virgili, to receive official recognition to lead the
scientific exploration of New Granada? It was intolerable for Mutis that an
“upstart” like López Ruiz who had not even studied medicine in Europe but
rather in the provincial Peruvian University of San Marcos, could take credit
for the discovery of a new cinchona variety. If scientific knowledge was the
legitimating instance for what could be considered “true,” who was this poor
unknown man and moreover mulatto López Ruiz in the face of the interna-
tional prestige of the “wise Mutis”? He expressed this bitterly in a personal
letter written from his home in Mariquita in 1790:

I am already tired of enduring political inflammations that have degenerated

into a slow fever which will ultimately consume my life without the pleasure

28
 We know that from distant Sweden Linnaeus corresponded frequently with Mutis, commending
his scientific work in New Granada, promising to make him a member of the Uppsala Academy of
Science, and consecrating the discovery of new species of plants in his name. It is not difficult to
imagine the effect that these praises from the wise Scandinavian had on the ego of the doctor from
Cadiz. Upon Linnaeus’ death, Mutis sent a letter of condolence to his son stating the following:
“I have just learned with much pain . . . that your beloved father, whose loyal friendship I had the
honor of cultivating over many years, overcoming the great distance between inhabitants of the
North Pole and the Equator . . . You will know that since 1761 . . . I had the singular satisfaction
of receiving his first letter, finding myself so far away, kissing for the first time his letters that were
so important for the wise men of Europe. In them, as this great man was accustomed, I saw sweet
expressions with which he admonished me to kindle the fire inside me for the study of nature as I
was yet a young man. From then on I encouraged myself to embrace your father’s friendship; and
from this time on I cultivated his friendship with much loyalty, continuing our correspondence for
the long span of 18 years… I certainly do not find a similar genius across the ages dedicated to
the contemplation of the works of nature, if I have any knowledge of these things, that I can justly
compare to the great Linnaeus, the greatest prince of nature. I only have this comparison: as much
as the great Newton achieved in the study of philosophy and mathematics, the immortal Linnaeus
moved forward the study of botany and natural history . . . I hope, oh humane young man, that I
do not offend your modesty, nor do these praises bother you; because if you inherit the greatest
part of the right of blood, the least part is not due to me by the right of friendship” (Mutis, 1983
[1778]: 77; 79).
190 Chapter 4

of seeing the happiness for which I had yearned; and the only satisfaction that
remains within me is not having numbered zero among mortals. The great char-
latan adventurer of whom I speak is among the many mediocre of the profes-
sion: but with the grace of having given in to the madness of robbing me of my
discoveries. I beg Your Merciful influence so that the ministry not be seduced
by a man who has proven to do nothing in the long time of his commissions, of
whom they know only his name and nothing more. It is one of many superficial
understandings, swindling with the shamelessness with which he appears among
the people in order to hide what he is and the race that he comes from. (cited by
Pérez Arbeláez, 1998: 79; 81, author’s emphasis)

Mutis’ argument is thus that López Ruiz is a person of “bad race” and that
his moral qualities therefore leave much to be desired. This would explain
why López Ruiz “swindled” knowledge that only someone like Mutis could
have of New Granadian flora. This was a veritable “intellectual heist,” as
Hernández de Alba puts it, proper to someone from the lowest sectors of
society. But God consoles the good and punishes the evil, which is why Mutis
feels confident that one day his discoveries will be recognized worldwide and
his name will figure in the annals of science as the wise man who revealed the
secrets of cinchona bark to humanity, while López Ruiz will be recognized
by posterity for “what he is”: a petty mulatto thief, so envious that he sought
to “capture the popular spotlight” by stealing the intellectual labor of others
better than himself.29
However, Mutis’ irritation was not only about the attack on his intellectual
prestige. It also had to do with something that he does not dare mention in his
letters or writings as it would be considered undignified for an enlightened phi-
losopher: his obsession with power. What Mutis sought was to organize a com-
mercial monopoly for cinchona in New Granada in which the state would be
the sole buyer, exporter, and distributor of the product. This certainly impacted

29
 Caldas attests to the profound distrust and even contempt that Mutis felt not only for López Ruiz
but for all the criollo scientists around him, complaining of how Mutis treated him when he pre-
ferred to place someone with inferior scientific qualifications but with full confidence, his own
nephew Sinforoso Mutis (a criollo but of his same blood), at the front of the botanical expedition:
“This wise man [Mutis] always fed me with hope and offers that he did not know how to fulfill
while he was alive. I was not able to get him to even set up a single position on my behalf, or to
follow through with what he solemnly offered in my presence to the Excellent Lord that rules us,
nor did he take the smallest step in my placement . . . He told me many times in word and in writ-
ing that I would be his dignified successor, that I would be his political confessor, and the trustee
of all of his knowledge, his manuscripts, his books, and his riches. How many times did he flatter
me by calling me the fortunate Caldas! But his mysterious and untrusting character, that he could
not get by without, always kept him in the silence of his own refuge. He never began the promised
confession, he never lifted the veil, nor did he introduce me into his sanctuary. He always kept me
in the dark as to the state of his affairs, and I have only come to know them superficially after his
death” (Caldas, 1942 [1808b]: 143).
 Illegitimate Knowledges 191

the interests of the criollo owners of large cinchona estates—who aspired to

become exporters—but it would favor the mercantilist interests of the Spanish
state and of course those of people like Mutis, whose “scientific” counsel in the
court and in the storage, packaging, and transport of the bark would undoubt-
edly be very well compensated by the government. Taking advantage of his
close friendship with viceroy Caballero y Góngora, Mutis proposed an ambi-
tious project for the cinchona monopoly that would include the construction of
an immense factory at the Honda port (where they would store and package the
product), the creation of a navigation system to allow the secure transport of
the product from the Magdalena river to Cartagena, the employment of thou-
sands of harvesters on the estates, and the massive importation of Black slaves
who would be used as a cheap workforce. Mutis’ “optimism of the intellect”
seemed limitless: New Granada would export two thousand crates of cinchona
per year and the suffering of a sick humanity would be relieved for more than
ten centuries! (Hernández de Alba, 1996: 195–196).
However, there was the “mulatto” López Ruiz, overshadowing the enlight-
ened dream of the Spanish scientist. His discovery of an alternative variety
had been certified, he had been commissioned by Madrid to organize the cin-
chona monopoly, and he was not inclined to let Mutis usurp his legitimately
acquired rights. Showing off his rhetoric as a lawyer trained in scholastic
doctrine, López Ruiz maintained that the privilege of leading the Botanical
Expedition and receiving 2,000 peso salary assigned to this position was
rightly his. It was Mutis who was usurping the rights of an already certified
discovery, such that his naming to lead the expedition was done in an illegal
and treacherous way, taking advantage of López Ruiz’s trip to Europe:

Having secured the protection offered by the Most Excellent Lord Archbishop
Viceroy of this kingdom Don Antonio Caballero y Góngora, Don José Mutis
was able to ponder much in order to plot his placement at my expense . . . Don
José was triumphant, coronating his patrons with my dispossession as well as
with honor, and a salary of 2,000 pesos that he enjoyed as the prize for my
discovery, and for the Royal Commission conferred upon me by the Certificate
and Royal Order of November 21 and 24, 1778 . . . He waited for my long
absence in the Court, which kept me from defending myself against his harm,
and favored claims to make people believe on his word that it was he who was
the Discoverer of this Cinchona, to print it and publish it with my back turned,
when after ten years deprived of salary due to his indefatigable persecution sup-
ported by the favor of Lord Góngora, I received a Royal Order to go to Madrid.
At the cost of unutterable grief, opprobrium, indigence, sacrifice, and the sor-
rowful abandon of my wife and children, I could at last undertake such a costly
and lengthy voyage to proclaim my grievances and devastation at the foot of the
Throne. (López Ruiz, 1996 [1801: 103; 106)
192 Chapter 4

To counter this argument, Mutis claimed that he himself discovered the new
variety of cinchona in 1772, two years before the appearance of the untimely
López Ruiz, and that if he kept silent about it this was not to await the absence
of his opponent, but simply because he was “buried in a profound philosophi-
cal lethargy,” engrossed in his work as a naturalist and professor without
caring to certify his discoveries (Mutis, 1983 [1783b]: 139–140). His only
consolation is recognition for his work by the likes of Linnaeus, Bergius,
Logié, and Alströmer, all Swedish botanists of great international prestige.
Mutis claims that it was the “prince of Botany” himself who, in a letter dated
June 6, 1773, testified to his great discovery.30 He knows, however, that no
argument, not even that of being the “son of a mulatto and mulatta”31 could
prevent López Ruiz from being the new commissioner of cinchona in New
Granada, so he decides to vindicate his name not before the fallible human
court but rather before the higher court of reason. From then on, he prefers
to be faithful to his “philosophical lethargy” and work on the volume that he
believed would place his name alongside the greatest names in the history of
science: El arcano de la quina revelado a beneficio de la humanidad.32
Published as a series in Papel Periódico, Mutis’ work is a pathetic example
of what I have called in this book zero-point hubris. The very idea of a “mys-
tery revealed” shows Mutis’ enlightened aspirations: to discover, to remove
once and for all the veil that has for centuries kept men from obtaining
true knowledge of the medicinal properties of cinchona. In his opinion, no
European or American botanist had yet been able to pull back this veil. The
proof of this is the great confusion reigning over the scientific community
with respect to the names, species, and varieties of cinchona (Mutis, 1978
[1793]: 304).33 Mutis referred to the plant as the “second tree of life” and

30
 “It would be too audacious on my part to abuse the time and patience of your excellency, repeating
on this occasion the specificity of my discoveries . . . [But] so as not to neglect the duties bestowed
upon me by the supreme office of your excellency, I will address you with the words of the gentle-
men Linnaeus, in his common and familiar style: datas a te 6 Junii 1773 his diebus rite accepi,
nec umquam gratius per totam vitam, cum ditissimae errant tot raris plantis, avibus &c. Ut plane
obstupesceban, a clear indication of my innumerable discoveries” (Mutis, 1983 [1783b]: 142).
31
 We know that one of the arguments used by Caballero y Góngora to discredit López Ruiz before
the Council of the Indies was his condition as “son of a mulatto and mulatta, [since] his father mar-
ried a Black woman in his second marriage, and had with her other children of the zambo color that
lived there” (cited by Gardeta Sabater, 1996: 15).
32
 For a study of Mutis’ much heralded work in terms of his relationship with Spanish scientific com-
munity, see: Amaya, 2000: 103–159.
33
 It is worth reproducing here parts of a text by Mutis that is not well-known, a personal letter to the
doctor from Quito, Eugenio Espejo, in which he summarizes the aims of his Arcano and details
his plans for the cinchona monopoly: “The matter of cinchona has been a mystery for a century
and a half and the moment has arrived to illuminate this for the benefit of humanity. It has been
believed in Europe and also in America, that all cinchona and its general febrifuge virtues are the
same, but of greater or lesser efficacy according to the conditions of climate, soil, season, age, and
benefits . . . [I] work to show that the species of cinchona being several and truly distinct according
to botanical rigor, that only Primitiva is directly febrifuge . . . Cinchona Primitiva has become rare,
 Illegitimate Knowledges 193

claimed to have discovered the secret of its medicinal properties, as well as

the recipe for a “balm of life” to fight any kind of fever:

The most natural, simple, and healthful preparation is fermented Cinchona. The
liquor that results from this procedure is that Balm of life, or Universal panacea
sought to offer throughout the centuries, that would provide permanent relief
if bestowed on mortals. Far from flattering the weakness of man that vainly
yearns for immortality, we only claim to announce the most universal and least
troublesome treatment for his inevitable ailments. If any remedy merits such
bombastic statements, none is better suited than that which in all times and with
such imperfect knowledge of its beneficial preparation and its most precious
virtues to the species, I name the Tree of Life. (Mutis, 1978 [1793] 438–439).

This “magic elixir” that Mutis spoke of with such enthusiasm was nothing
other than beer made by fermenting cinchona. Gonzalo Hernández de Alba
says that the formula for preparing it was more or less the following: “dis-
solve thirty-two pounds of cane sugar in water; evaporate by boiling until it
attains the consistency of a syrup and dilute with egg white. Mix with fifteen
bottles of water and add between one-half and three-fourths of a pound of
ground cinchona powder, preferably white. Let the mixture ferment and it
becomes beer” (Hernández de Alba, 1996: 238). In the end, the mystery that
a sick humanity has been awaiting for so many centuries and that not even the
greatest minds of Europe have been able to discover was simple and within
reach: sugar water with eggs and cinchona powder. According to Hernández
de Alba, even the wise Alexander von Humboldt tried Mutis’ magical drink
in Bogotá and after emphasizing its fever-reducing and restorative qualities,
exclaimed that not even the Germans themselves prepared such a fine brew.
But while Mutis was convinced that his brew was an unprecedented
contribution to the history of Western medicine, he recognized that it was

its availability exhausted by the ambitions of commerce; leading to the misrecognition and confu-
sion of the Succedaneum and the Substitute, such that the blameless ignorance of the professors
has reached the point where no one in Europe can distinguish and separate a cinchona primitiva
branch if it is mixed with others, nor could they demonstrate what distinguishes them . . . My aim
is to collect all of the cinchona primitiva that remains unused beyond the limits of the Royal Fac-
tory. I will also cover and collect all there is from this province of Popayán and I will show it to
those who are interested in this trade as it could help inform them . . . To proceed with certainty,
I should discover at your mercy that Divine Providence has not squandered the precious primitiva
tree. According to my extensive experience and careful calculations, there is hardly one tree per
thousand even counting the three remaining cinchona species together. It withered in its native
soil, as they have continued taking advantage of its few offspring, or the trees of later discoveries
will also quickly wither. There is still the means to collect what would always remain unused, and
ultimately the strongest and most dignified resource of his Majesty the King and his power to set
up gardens, with which I am charged by the Royal Commission” (Mutis, 1993 [1788]: 141–143.
194 Chapter 4

Indigenous Americans who had first glimpsed this great discovery.34 Not that
Indigenous people knew the medicinal properties of cinchona and the right
way to prepare it, since their savagery and rustic ways of living prevented
that. But just as the “cunning of reason” is always at work to the benefit of
humanity, it was this same savagery that curiously allowed Indigenous people
to carry out their first great experiment with the magical brew. Due to their
natural tendency toward drunkenness, Mutis conjectures that perhaps these
people had used the cinchona bark to make their fermented drinks:

Truly and in good faith, we confess that there exists no monument or tradition,
with which we could grant our Indians, inventors of the remedy, the glory of
having used fermented cinchona; but if we take note of their great passion for
this kind of drink, and the primitive practice of brewing powders in wine, that
the Spaniards developed according to formulas scattered across all of Europe,
it seems very plausible that they could learn from what the Indians did, brew-
ing the bark recently cut from the tree, and roughly crushed, keeping it in their
chicha for several days . . . This speculation certainly seems plausible as the
history of barbarous Peoples is universally well-known. Always occupied with
their present necessities and never thinking of what is to come; nor tormented
with foresight of future ills and so they only apply the simplest remedies to their
sick that in such that in such conditions they use plants from the mountains.
And thus this would be an exception never before seen that the Indians in their
humble shacks recovered from their remedies, when we see their unhappiness
and actual deplorable behavior despite the civilization and culture of our times.
(Mutis, 1978 [1793]: 463–464)

Mutis prefers to recognize the “savage Indians of the past” as his most
immediate predecessors in the discovery of cinchona rather than impertinent
colleagues like López Ruiz. After all, neither could claim the glory of hav-
ing been the scientist that revealed the mysteries of cinchona to humanity
before the court of reason: the latter for being mulatto, and the former for
being Indians. Constructing an imaginary prehistory of his discovery, Mutis
ensures the necessary epistemological distance to reclaim his place in the his-
tory of science. The medical practices of Indians were mere doxa, knowledge

34
 “We love the favorable effects of this preparation more every day, obliging us to finally spread
the benefit that we have announced to Humanity for years; and without going beyond the limits
of an honest ambition for glory, we also judge this discovery to be original. We say it frankly:
we certainly have not found any trace, in all of the pomp of medicine, from the happy age of the
introduction of cinchona into Europe to the present, that could have led us to this gate. Even though
we can guarantee that we have not learned these ideas from anyone else, we suggest that they were
supported at first by certain empirical practices, and in other mixtures that perhaps the Indians
would make with this bark” (Mutis, 1978 [1793]: 463).
 Illegitimate Knowledges 195

anchored in common sense or in the irrationality of their religious beliefs.

Mutis contrasts these with the episteme of modern science, of which he is a
recognized guardian. As an expert botanist, he occupies a position of author-
ity in the scientific field that allows him to draw the border between legitimate
and illegitimate knowledges, establishing enlightened nomos as the universal
classification principle. In this way, enlightened scientific practice ensures
the epistemological control of a body of experts that legitimizes the interests,
values, and habitual worldview of the social group to which they belong.
We should note finally that Mutis’ attitude toward knowledge was as
Eurocentric as that of the aforementioned Caldas with regard to his “native
informant.” Caldas wondered with amazement how that uneducated Indian
could “accidentally” select plants within the universal taxonomy developed
by Linnaeus, taken as the ultimate universal criterion of truth. If Caldas
recognized the “vestiges of truth” in the empirical knowledge of Indigenous
people, it was only because this knowledge could be legitimated by Linnaeus’
theories and understood as its “prehistory.” In the same way, Mutis never
questioned the universality of Linnaeus’ classification, despite evidence that
this system was built from the experience of European nature and it was diffi-
cult to extend its analysis to the tropical nature of the Americas. Without even
considering the question of how one could “fit” such a completely different
nature into the narrow molds created by Linnaeus, Mutis preferred to legiti-
mate his own discoveries through the unquestioned wisdom of the “prince of
botany.” Mutis professed such reverence for his Swedish colleague that he
publicly boasted of maintaining correspondence with him and in some cases
even cited parts of this correspondence in public documents. For example, in
a letter to Archbishop Caballero y Góngora, Mutis wrote:

It would be too audacious on my part to abuse the time and patience of Your
Excellency, repeating on this occasion the specificity of my discoveries, Your
Excellency having the goodness to have listened to them previously, when the
heavy weight of governing this kingdom did not weigh on your shoulders. Yet
so as not to neglect the duties bestowed upon me by the supreme office of Your
Excellency, I will address you with the words of the gentleman Linnaeus, in his
common and familiar style: “datas a te 6 Junii 1773 his diebus rite accepi, nec
umquam gratius per totam vitam, cum ditissimae errant tot raris plantis, avibus
&c. Ut plane obstupesceban,” a clear indication of my innumerable discoveries,
when a few small communications caused such great admiration in that consum-
mate naturalist. (Mutis, 1983 [1783b]: 142)

Mutis’ message is clear: one is “someone” in the history of science when

one publicly receives recognition from the European scientific community
and especially from someone as famous as “the gentleman Linnaeus.” One
196 Chapter 4

is “nobody,” on the other hand, when one has “the stain of the land” as in
the case of López Ruiz, or when the knowledge obtained is not “legitimate,”
that is, when it has not been learned in university lecture halls or remains
unknown to Europeans. Mutis and Caldas are scientists of the periphery,
that thanks to their social position there, they can delegitimize local knowl-
edges in the name of a supposedly universal knowledge produced in Europe.
Linnaeus, for his part, is a scientist of the global core who, thanks to the
European administration of the modern/colonial world system, can establish
and control international networks that give his particular work an aura
of universality. Corresponding with scientists in the periphery like Mutis,
offering to present his discoveries in Europe, citing his name in international
publications, promising to make him a member of some prestigious scientific
institution, or simply dedicating a plant in his name (Restrepo Forero, 2000:
205). Scientists of the periphery thus become mere cultural consumers, users
who administer the “universal knowledge” that Europe produces and use it to
distance themselves from the subalterns of their own localities.
 Chapter 5

Striated Spaces
Geography, Territorial Politics,
and Population Control

One of the fundamental tasks of the State is to striate the space over which
it reigns, or to utilize smooth spaces as a means of communication in
the service of striated space. It is a vital concern of every State not only
to vanquish nomadism but to control migrations and, more generally, to
establish a zone of rights over an entire “exterior,” over all of the flows
traversing the ecumenon.
—Deleuze and Guattari

When Alexander von Humboldt arrived in Bogotá in July 1801, he brought

a gift for the viceroy Pedro Mendinueta in his crates: eight cartographic
documents including plans of the cities of Bogotá and Cartagena and exact
maps of the Orinoco and Magdalena rivers. This was more than a simple act
of personal courtesy: for the Spanish empire, geography held a privileged
place in its geopolitical ambitions, as it allowed them to not only know and
measure the territories they had conquered but to construct a general map of
the population and natural resources of the colonies. Humboldt’s gift was
a symbol of a new alliance between science and politics: greater scientific
knowledge meant greater control over the population and its workforce; and
greater prosperity in a territory meant greater freedom to produce scientific
knowledge. Both the baron and the viceroy therefore saw the situation as
mutually beneficial: the scientist because he could freely carry out his obser-
vations, and the politician because he recognized the new power that these
observations generated.
The viceroys, of course, did not have to wait for Humboldt’s arrival to rec-
ognize the power of geography. Seventy years earlier, the French Geodesic
Mission had inspired great excitement in New Granada for the usefulness of
geographic knowledge. In 1768, the attorney Francisco Moreno y Escandón

197
198 Chapter 5

informed viceroy Messía de la Cerda that geography, natural history, and

agriculture required a dedicated department in the university curriculum.
Likewise, one of the reasons Mutis gave viceroy Caballero y Góngora in
1783 for carrying out the Royal Botanical Expedition was the possibility
of advancing “a program of astronomical, geographic, and physical obser-
vations,” since “his Majesty is lacking a detailed geographical plan of his
expansive territories, with the exception of coasts and ports, we could form an
exact map in the course of our voyage, without the immense expense usually
incurred by an expedition of this kind” (Mutis, 1983 [1783b]: 143, author’s
emphasis).
This viceroyal interest in measuring space and representing it on a grid
crisscrossed by meridians, parallels, longitudes, and latitudes corresponds to
what Deleuze and Guattari (1987: 495) have called the striation of the earth.
This notion refers to the imposition of a model of state organization and con-
trol over space that allows it to be converted into territory, which is to say a
space subjected to the empire of logos and governmentality. The territorial
politics implemented by the Spanish empire sought precisely to convert the
space of the colonies and its populations into an objective, measurable, and
thus controllable quantity. In what follows we will see how the geography
of the eighteenth century became a “a royal science of striated space” (1987:
486) and what the epistemic and social consequences of this shift were. My
hypothesis is that, seen from the perspective of the metropole, the territorial-
ization of space was tied to the Bourbon dynasty’s interest in introducing the
nascent logic of capitalist production into the colonies; however, seen from
the perspective of the American periphery, this same territorialization obeyed
the interests of criollo elites in controlling the nomadism of the castes and
subjecting them to the criollos’ unquestioned ethnic superiority. Exploring
the linkage between the biopolitical apparatus and the apparatus of whiteness
from the other angle is therefore the aim of the present chapter.

5.1 GEOGRAPHY AS “RIGOROUS SCIENCE”

During the entirety of the eighteenth century, geography enjoyed great popu-
larity in Europe and the Americas, not only as an auxiliary science to naviga-
tion, which it had been linked to in previous centuries, but also for its ability
to stimulate the imagination of adventurers, navigators, and the learned. In
addition to having a clear economic interest, scientific expeditions financed
during this century by England, France, and Spain, were seen as great adven-
turous journeys to exotic regions, such that the reports scientists wrote about
their discoveries were simultaneously descriptions of territories and popula-
tions that did not have a “place on the map.” Expeditions like those of Cook
 Striated Spaces 199

in the Pacific, Humboldt in the Andes, or La Condamine in the Amazon made

a true mapping of the world possible on a scale never before seen by human-
ity (Pratt, 1992: 15–37).
Insofar as geography contributed decisively to this great mapping of the
globe, it was also defining itself as a science of its own. The invention of
instruments allowing for the precise measure of angles, distances, the posi-
tion of the planets, heat, atmospheric pressure, and the elevation of the
mountains, made geography a science desirous of its own identity, worthy of
honorable inclusion in academic curricula. It was not in vain that Diderot and
D’Alembert placed geography on their list of “sciences properly speaking” in
the Encyclopedia, thereby elevating it to the same rank as physics and astron-
omy. Like the latter, geography had been able to detach from its mythological
past and occupy the observational “zero-point.” Nevertheless, as we will see
in this section, geography’s transition toward the zero-point is accompanied
by its intrinsic connection to geopolitics, from which it gains its legitimacy.

5.1.1 From Cosmography to Geography

In the first chapter, I referred to maps as cognitive schemas for classifying
populations and I mentioned the map that divided the earth into three major
regions, each inhabited by the sons of Noah and their descendants. For cen-
turies, much of Western cartography was tied to a strategy of military and
ideological control over other populations, but its ultimate aim was to show
that the world, as it appeared on maps, was arranged according to higher
divine designs. Thus, for example, the cartographer Hermann Schedel’s map
from the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493) shows the three known regions of the
world—Asia, Africa, and Europe—under the dominion of Shem, Ham, and
Japheth, respectively (map 1).
Each major ethnic group that appeared after the flood corresponded to a
specific place on the map. The German cartographer’s source for drawing
the map is sacred history, the sole repository of the truth of human life. The
topographical characteristics of the territory (rivers, mountains, seas) and
their inhabitants (yellow, black, and white) have meaning only insofar as they
refer to a metaphysical context. The message is clear: God himself, through
unfathomable designs, attributes a moral and physical geography to each
ethnic group that differentiates them from the others.
Even after the ancient imaginary of the orbis terrarium became unsustain-
able thanks to the discovery of the Americas, sixteenth- and seventeenth-
century European cartographers continued to read the information coming
from the colonies through the imaginary of the orbis universalis christianus.
One example of this is the cosmographies that circulated widely in various
European state and intellectual circles at the time. Cosmographies consisted
200 Chapter 5

Map 1 Liber chronicarum, Herman Schedel (1493)

of a collection of reports on distant territories, usually accompanied by a map,

whose purpose was to serve as a useful “source of knowledge” for the state
that was more than a simple chronicle. In this sense, cosmographies used
empirical sources and new measurement techniques to produce maps, placing
less emphasis on the biblical representation of history. Despite this, cosmog-
raphers were still not able to detach themselves from the Christian imago
mundi, and particularly the idea that there is a correspondence between moral
and physical geography. This is the case with the mapa mundi produced by
the cosmographer Simon Grynaeus in 1532, accompanied by a collection of
reports on voyages to the Orient and the new world, published under the title
Novus Orbis Regionum (map 2).
Alongside a relatively advanced measure of the planet’s longitude,
Grynaeus’ map is surrounded by illustrations of fantastical animals, sirens,
and strange characters. The American continent now appears as a separate
geographical entity, but its inhabitants, represented in the bottom left corner,
are typified as cannibals. This belongs entirely to the medieval imaginary
of the antipodes: monstrous beings whose “habitat” was situated outside of
the orbis terrarum and who were not considered descendants of Adam. The
representation of the Pillars of Hercules (on the lower right), symbolizing the
end of the known world, indicates that all of these beings have their place
 Striated Spaces 201

Map 2 Novus Orbis Regionum, Simon Grynaeus (1532)

outside of properly human territory, which belongs to the sons of Adam to

whom Christ explicitly directed his liberating message. They are therefore
infrahuman beings who are beyond salvation by nature.
The cosmographies used by the Spanish empire to “map” their colonial
possessions in the Americas were somewhat more systematic. Alonso de
Santa Cruz, the head cosmographer of Kings Carlos V and Felipe II, knew
that the exactitude of maps depended on the precision of measures of ter-
restrial longitude. For this purpose, he prepared a geographic questionnaire
to be filled out by governors and navigators, the source of the Relaciones
Geográficas.1 The questionnaire sought to determine the longitude of the
territories of the Indies astronomically, through observations including
the position of the sun at midday, the position of solar and lunar eclipses,
and the distance between different populations (Millán de Benavides,
2001: 80).2 In addition to these details, the questionnaire—which by 1573
included 135 questions—inquired into the customs of the inhabitants, the
characteristics of the flora and fauna, and details of economic interest to the

1
 The Relaciones were actually responses to the questionnaire that came included with the Royal
Ordinances, and which were to be completed by the responsible authorities in each province.
2
 The first major collection of all the information contained in the Relaciones was completed in 1574
by the head chronicler for the Crown, don Juan López de Velasco. In his Descripción y demar-
cación de las Indias Occidentales, López de Velasco produces an encyclopedia that includes his-
torical, ethnographic, scientific, and geographic material, accompanied by fourteen maps of Spanish
possessions in the Indies (Mignolo, 1995: 283–284).
202 Chapter 5

Crown like the whereabouts of gold and silver mines, location of ports, the
depth of the waters, and so on. Spain began to see the exact delimitation
of territories as an urgent necessity, due not only to economic competi-
tion with Portugal (recall the vague jurisdictional delimitation of the two
empires established by Pope Alexander VI in the Treaty of Tordesillas), but
also the demands of Spanish conquistadors and encomenderos themselves,
who insisted on enforcing the precise limits of the territories that they dis-
covered and administered before the Crown.
An examination of the Audiencia de Quito’s seventeenth-century
Relaciones Geográficas shows the Crown ordered that the information solic-
ited in the questionnaire be divided into at least two parts: one part would
refer to the “natural” environment while the other would concentrate on the
“moral” sphere.3 Thus, for example, the chief magistrate of Jaen in Quito
province, includes in the “natural” section information about the location of
the city, climate, nearby rivers, different kinds of trees and fruits that grow in
the area, mountains, animals, and gold mines. In the “moral” part, by contrast,
he includes details about the population, the exact number of citizens [veci-
nos], foreigners, women, widows, children, encomenderos, Indians, Black
people, mulattos, and zambos.4 The information contained in the Relaciones
in the seventeenth century was still quite vague, however. The description of
the population does not emphasize the type of economic activity being per-
formed but rather their capacity to pay tributes and receive religious instruc-
tion. Nature is described according to its beauty and exoticism, underscoring
its “savage” character: “There are turkeys, curassows, pheasants, parrots,
macaws, ducks, wild boars, deer, monkeys, armadillos, and moose. There are
venomous vipers, snakes, spiders, scorpions, and ants, along with predatory
bats. Trees whose apples are lethal” (1994 [1606]: 72).5 Furthermore, the
exact location of populations is based on their relative distance from neigh-
boring populations, without using a universal measure. According to the chief
magistrate of Jaen,

They say they do not know the degree of latitude where the city is located,
except that it seems to be in the southern zone of Paita, which is 170 leagues
from Lima, 160 from Quito (to whose Audiencia it pertains), 30 from the city

3
 In some cases, two more parts would be added to the Relación: a “military” section that included
details about the number of troops stationed, and another “ecclesiastic” section that included infor-
mation on the number of parishes, priests, and encomiendas.
4
 “Descripición de la ciudad de Jaen y su distrito en la provincial de Quito, sacada de las relaciones
hechas el de 1606 por Guillermo de Martos, Corregidor” [1606], In: Pilar Ponce de Leyva (ed.),
Relaciones histórico-geográficas de la Audiencia de Quito (siglos XVI–XIX). Quito: Marka/Abya
Yala 1994.
5
 Ibid.
 Striated Spaces 203

of Chachapoyas, 70 from the town of Sana, 40 from Santiago de Neiva (1994

[1606]: 72).6

But responding to the same questionnaire 150 years later, the governor of
Quito don Juan Pío Montufar y Fraso begins his Relación with the following
information: “This city is situated below the equinoctial line, at 13 minutes
and 3 seconds southerly latitude, and 298 degrees, 15 minutes and 45 seconds
longitude” (1994 [1754]: 324).7 In addition to this precision of geographic
detail, there is a very meticulous description of the economic activities of the
population,8 and of the available natural resources in the area. The view of
nature is stripped of its wonder and is now an objectifying gaze that considers
natural resources from the perspective of their economic utility:

Since 1630, when cinchona was invented, that whole territory has been the most
favorable to its production; its harvests are abundant, both for its consumption
across the Americas as a febrifuge, and for its increasing shipments to Europe,
where it is also used in the finest dyes. (1994 [1754]: 344)9

At the same time, mid-eighteenth-century maps abandon the “baroque” view

characteristic of cosmography in prior decades, to instead become representa-
tions that see space as just one more fact of nature that can transmit objective
information about a territory—like a falling stone, which can be understood
without recourse to sacred history or cultural traditions. The artistic, sensu-
ous, and fantastical representations still present in cosmography are set aside
to make way for a rational and quantitative view of space.
What then happened to the Relaciones Geográficas between the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries? The shift from Habsburg to Bourbon dynas-
ties involved a radical change in the political economy of the Spanish empire.
The fundamental concern of the Bourbon government was to respond to new
exigencies of international commerce and politics, which required an increas-
ing rationalization of the artisanal and agrarian infrastructure. Spain would
not be able to successfully compete on the global market against France,

6
 Ibid.
7
 “Razón sobre el estado y gobernación política y military de las provincias, ciudades, villas y lugares
que contiene la jurisdicción de la Real Audiencia de Quito. Por Juan Pío Montufar y Fraso” [1754],
in Pilar Ponce de Leyva (ed.), Relaciones histórico-geográficas de las Audiencia de Quito (siglos
XVI–XIX). Quito: Marka/ Abya Yala, 1994.
8
 “The most established fate of its inhabitants is weaving of cloth, cotton canvases, flags, and rugs,
which they make in 12 workshops, sending these down the Guayaquil river and navigating from that
port or traffic of the coasts of Peru . . . A great number of Indians of this jurisdiction work in the
field, cultivating some very fertile lands, whose abundant production of grains and beautiful grass
for livestock provide subsistence for this town” (1994 [1754]: 328).
9
 Ibid.
204 Chapter 5

Holland, and England, if it kept its peasantry at the level of self-sufficiency

with neither the buying power nor the surplus necessary to allow commercial
growth and capital accumulation (in the hands of the state). As we saw in
chapter 2, this meant that the administration of the Kingdoms of the Indies
was now guided by the imperative of governmentality, the need to convert the
vassal into a productive subject. For this reason, the mid-eighteenth-century
Relaciones Geográficas shift their emphasis toward the economic activities of
the population and the commercial use of natural resources. The location of
gold and silver mines is no longer as important as it was in the sixteenth- and
seventeenth-century Relaciones. What mattered most was the exact location
of cinchona, cinnamon, and cochineal plantations—all primary materials
amenable to exportation and even industrialization. Similarly, reporting the
location of encomiendas and Indigenous populations loses its importance
vis-à-vis the description of roads, ports, canals, and other transit pathways.
A change in the status of geography also unfolds in parallel to this change
in political economy. Scientific representations of space begin to be guided
by zero-point hubris, by the idea that geography is only possible as a “rigor-
ous science” insofar as it is capable of generating a strictly mathematical
observation of territory. This required leaving behind any type of sensual-
ism that could constitute an “epistemological obstacle,” interfering with the
objectivity of the representation. Illustrations should be austere and calibrated
to the strict rules of measurement, leaving no room for myth, fantasy, and
imagination. Maps are no longer seen as “signs” of a sacred history that
demarcate the meaning of a territory and its population prior to the interven-
tion of the state. With the help of maps and under the imperative of economic
policy, it is now the state that determines what a territory and its population
mean. From the observational zero-point, territory appears as a tabula rasa,
stripped of all transcendental meaning and thus ready to be filled with mean-
ing by government action. The scientific representation of space and the state
control of population are thus parallel phenomena, insofar as techniques of
objectivation become instruments of economic power.

5.1.2 Voyage to the Center of the Earth

Zero-point hubris demanded that scientific representation of space not be
“smooth,” that is, it had to be decoupled from the “affective” representa-
tion of this space by its inhabitants.10 To do so required finding a universal

10
 “Smooth space is filled by events or haecceities, far more than by formed and perceived hings. It
is a space of affect, more than one of properties . . . It is an intensive rather than extensive space,
one of distances, not of measures and properties. Intense Spatium instead of Extensio” (Deleuze
and Guattari, 1987: 479).
 Striated Spaces 205

measure to help determine the territory’s coordinates, allowing a scientist

from anywhere in the world and independently of all cultural representa-
tions, to interpret the data and communicate it to their peers objectively.
The space they sought to observe then was therefore not one in which social
actors formed their personal or collective identities, but rather one that was
outside the scope of human perception; an abstract space determined by the
mathematic precision of degrees, minutes, seconds, angles, latitudes, and lon-
gitudes that no mortal was capable of seeing with their own eyes. This was a
striated space that was therefore untranslatable into the everyday perceptual
frameworks of social actors, but immensely useful for the governmental aims
of the state.
The 1734 Geodesic Expedition to the Audiencia de Quito organized by the
French state was an important step toward this much yearned for universal
measure. From a scientific point of view, the expedition emerged from the
need to experimentally test which of the two competing theories about the
“shape of the earth” was true. One thesis argued that the earth was a globe
flattened at the poles and widened at the equator, while the other argued that
the flattening occurs at the equator and not the poles (Lafuente & Mazuecos,
1992: 29–37). To elucidate this question, the French government decided to
send two simultaneous scientific expeditions, one to the North Pole (Lapland)
and the other to the equator, to carry out the relevant measurements. If after
comparing the two measurements, the arc of the polar meridian turns out to
be greater than that of the equator, it would prove that the earth flattens at its
poles. This would of course have immediate consequences for the surveying
of geographic maps, as it would allow a degree of precision never before
achieved in the delimitation of territory.
But precisely for this reason, the Geodesic Expedition had not only a scien-
tific interest but a geopolitical one as well. France, which was competing with
Spain, Holland, and England for control over key zones of influence across
the planet, knew very well that the precision of maps was a fundamental tool
for achieving military and commercials aims. The triangulation of French ter-
ritory, ordered by Minister Colbert at the beginning of the eighteenth century,
had already shown that the ordering of space turned out to be very useful
for systematic tax collection and for establishing a communication network
that would encourage trade, as well as for carrying out a complete inventory
of natural resources. The French government thus decided to finance these
very costly expeditions and entrust their organization to the Paris Academy
of Sciences. The astronomer Louis Godin was designated as the head of the
Expedition sent to Perú11 accompanied by, among others, the hydrographer

11
 The territory of the Royal Audiencia de Quito, where the Geodesic Expedition arrived in 1736, was
until 1739 a part of the Viceroyalty of Perú, after which it was incorporated into the newly created
206 Chapter 5

Pierre Bourguer, the botanist Joseph Jussieu, and the geometer Carl Marie de
La Condamine. King Louis XV of France officially petitioned his Bourbon
relative Phillip V of Spain to allow and facilitate the scientists’ mission to its
territory.
Even though the King of Spain was obligated by dynastic line from a
family pact signed in 1733, from the beginning it was clear that the Spanish
government was suspicious of the true motives surrounding the mission.
Spain knew that if France possessed exact scientific knowledge of its colonial
possessions, this could endanger their commercial sovereignty over these
territories. Maritime contraband of French products was already a headache
for Spanish authorities, to which the proximity of French possessions in
the Caribbean and Guiana only added. This is why the Spanish government
accepted the official French petition, but on the condition that the Parisian
scientists be accompanied at all times by Spanish scientists. Two navy
officers are named to this assignment: Jorge Juan y Santacilia, an expert in
astronomy and mathematics, and Antonio y Ulloa y de la Torre-Guiral, an
expert in geography and natural history.12 I have discussed the writings of
both scientists in detail in previous chapters. In addition to closely monitor-
ing the activities of their French colleagues, the two Spanish officials carried
specific instructions from the government:

They will draw up plans of the cities and ports, with their fortifications, where
they are based, and they will inform them of the terms of the province and
governance, of the peoples or places they contain, and the fertility or barrenness
of their lands, as well as the inclination, industry, and skill of the natives, and
the bravery or joviality of the unsettled Indians, and the facility or difficulty of
settling them. (cited in Lafuente & Mazuecos, 1992: 90)

Like their French brothers, the Spanish Bourbons began to see science not as
an activity reserved for aristocratic elites, but as a very useful tool of govern-
ment. This is why the Geodesic Expedition in reality adhered to a geopolitics
of knowledge in which the interests of economic and military powers were
involved. Geography, as Harvey claims, had become a valuable instrument
for European states competing for control of the still-nascent world market.
The accumulation of power, wealth, and capital depended in part on a state’s
exact knowledge of its cities, jungles, mountains, rivers, flora, fauna, and,

Viceroyalty of New Granada. This means that part of the work carried out during the expedition,
which lasted more than ten years, was officially carried out in the territory of New Granada.
12
 Recall that in eighteenth-century Spain, astronomy and geography were taught in the Naval Mili-
tary Academy of Cádiz, as auxiliary sciences to navigation. As part of the institution’s curriculum,
Spanish naval officers read the Compendio de navegación by Jorge Juan and the Compendio de
matemátics by Louis Godin, both members of the Geodesic Expedition (Capel, 1995: 507–509).
 Striated Spaces 207

above all, of the workforce in available in the territories under its control
(Harvey, 1990: 232). This explains why the expedition was marked by con-
stant ideological and political frictions.
Perhaps the clearest example of this was the controversial pyramid epi-
sode. To determine the equatorial meridian, the French and Spanish scientists
had to carry out complicated astronomical observations. To this end, they
decided to build pyramidal observatories in Caraburo and Oyambaro on the
plains of Puembo and Yaruqui, respectively, not far from the city of Cuenca.
Apparently, when Juan and Ulloa took a short trip to Guayaquil, the French
scientists decided to engrave a commemorative plaque on the pyramids that
omitted their names and the Spanish emblem.13 In response to strong protests
from the two Spanish scientists, the central government decreed the immedi-
ate demolition of the pyramids and the destruction of their commemorative
plaques. Despite the fact that La Condamine thoroughly explained the reason
for excluding the Spanish names to the authorities and solemnly promised
to engrave the emblem, the plaques were destroyed, although they did not
end up tearing down the pyramids (Villacrés Moscoso, 1986: 89–90). The
remains of the original marble plaques were taken by a priest from Cuenca
and later found by Francisco José de Caldas in 1804,14 who deposited them in
the Astronomical Observatory of Bogotá, which later give rise to an unpleas-
ant diplomatic incident between Colombia and Ecuador in the mid-nineteenth
century.15

13
 The inscription reads as follows: “Auspicus Philippi v Hispaniarum, El Indiar, Regia Catholici,
Promovente Regia scientiarium Academia Paris Emir Herc De Fleury, Sacrae Rom, Eccl, Cardinal
Supremo (Europa Plaudente) Galliar, Admistro Cels, Joan, Fred, Phelipeaux Com de Maurepas
Regis Fr. A. Rebus Maritimis Et Omnigenae Eruditiones Mecaenate; Lud Godin, Pet Bourger,
Car Maria de la Condamine Ejusdem Acad, socii, Ludovici xv Francor, Regis Christianissimmi
Jussu Et munificentia in Peruviam missi Ad Metiendos In Aequinotiali plag terrestres gradus, quo
genuine telluris figura tamdem innatescat” (Villacrés Moscoso, 1986: 24, author’s emphasis).
14
 Caldas reports his experience in Cuenca as follows: “Here left Monsieur de La Condamine a slab
of white marble of which there are many in the area. However, the new owners [of the hacienda]
removed it from its place and allocated it to a much different fate than its origin. Instead of pre-
serving the memory and the results of these observations in this piece of stone . . . it was used
as a bridge over a ditch, buried in soil. What a fate! Is there perhaps an ingenious enemy of this
celebrated voyage? All perishes, everything is ruined by barbarians… This is the state in which
things were found when I arrived in Cuenca. All of my care was directed to figuring out the
whereabouts of this precious plaque and the fate given to it by these barbarians . . . I thought of
kindly requesting that they return this jewel to the astronomers to whom it belong; I also thought
of showing it to the government so that they could free it of its fate and preserve it. However, the
knowledge that I had gained of the litigious nature of these people, who make a case out of the
smallest trifle, reflecting that nothing would improve, even in winning this astronomical lawsuit
it would remain in the hands of the unenlightened and in 10 years it would once again be put to
barbarous and miserable use, I was determined to take hold of it myself and relocate it Bogotá”
(Caldas, 1942 [1809a]: 118–119).
15
 It is worth recounting this incident, as it gives us an example of the complex relations between sci-
ence and politics. In 1836, the president of the Republic of Ecuador, Vicente Rocafuerte, decided
to save the pyramids from the oblivion that they had been in for almost 100 years. Rocafuerte’s
208 Chapter 5

It was not only major geopolitical issues that caused tensions around the
Geodesic Expedition, however, but also internal battles within colonial soci-
ety. When the French arrived in Quito in 1736, the governor was don Dionisio
de Alcedo y Herrera, a very well-educated and erudite Bourbon functionary,
who received the distinguished visitors with honor. However, that same year
he was replaced by a criollo from Lima’s nobility, José de Araujo y Río, who
from the beginning did not trust the presence of the foreigners in his territory.
Perhaps due to the confrontation developing at the time between criollos and
European newcomers [chapetones], or maybe due to the growing suspicion
with which the criollo nobility viewed the avatars of Bourbon politics, the
new governor ordered the arrest of the Spanish scientist Antonio de Ulloa
simply because he called him “Your Grace” [Vuesa Merced] instead of his
“Lordship” [Señoría] (Lafuentte & Mazuecos, 1992: 114–115). Not content
with this, the criollo governor informed the viceroy of Perú that the French
scientists had brought contraband merchandise in their luggage with the clear
complicity of Alcedo y Herrera, which they were now publicly selling on the
streets of Quito. Alcedo y Herrera was put on trial in Madrid for contraband
and La Condamine in Quito for the illegal sale of merchandise, and while the
latter suit was unsuccessful, it generated a climate of public hostility against
the expeditioners. The fact that La Condamine and his colleagues were noth-
ing more than “French libertines” in the eyes of Quito’s established nobility
undoubtedly contributed to this.
But let’s return to the relationship between science and geopolitics.
Around the middle of the eighteenth century, the border between French,
Portuguese, and Spanish territories in the Amazon region was not clearly

interest was undoubtedly to attempt to strengthen commercial ties with France, which along with
England had at that moment become the European power that the republican elites looked to. In
addition to ordering the restoration of the pyramids and the engraving of a commemorative plaque,
Rocafuerte gave a speech emphasizing the scientific labor of France and stating that the destruction
of the plaques was due to the “dismal politics of the Spanish monarchs,” enemies of liberty and sci-
ence. Fortunately, the glorious science of France, argued Rocafuerte, had been restored by a coun-
try that finally escaped the “despotism of the inquisition” and colonial slavery. The restoration of
the pyramids was thus a symbol of the friendship that unified Ecuador with “the most enlightened
part of the European continent” (Villacrés Moscoso, 1986: 123). However, in 1856, the governor
of the Ecuadorian province of Azuay complained bitterly that the pyramids had been “profaned by
a daring hand,” such that the remains of the original plaque were “robbed” from Ecuador in 1804
“to satisfy the vanity of a traveler.” As a result, the governor demanded that the Colombian gov-
ernment promptly return the plaque that at the time was still resting on the observatory in Bogotá.
Informed of the incident, the Colombian foreign minister at the time, don Lino de Pombo, wrote a
note in protest requesting an explanation from Ecuadorian government for their words. Governor
Azuay responded that he had certainly acted hastily, but in any case the Ecuadorian government
requested the return of the original plaque. Minister Pombo then presented a law to Congress that
would return the original stone to Ecuador as a “donation” that had been “rescued” by the “wise
and distinguished Granadian Francisco José de Caldas.” The law was finally passed in 1857 but the
plaque was not returned until 1886, when it was brought to Cuenca where it rests today (Villacrés
Moscoso, 1986: 129–131).
 Striated Spaces 209

defined. In accordance with the Alexander VI’s 1493 Papal Bull, the border
between the territories conquered by the crowns of Castilla and Portugal
was fixed by an imaginary line from pole-to-pole 22 degrees west of the
Cape Verde islands. Everything west of this line belonged to Spain, and
everything east of it to Portugal. However, faced with such an imprecise
delimitation, jurisdictional conflicts between the two crowns were chronic,
especially in unexplored regions like the Amazon. The issue was compli-
cated further when the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht established a border that
was supposed to separate French Guiana from Portuguese Guiana. France
naturally hoped to expand its borders to the banks of the Amazon river
(called the “Marañón” at the time), as this would give them the opportu-
nity to capture part of river navigation and slave trade. On the other hand,
constant incursions by the Portuguese by way of the Orinoco river endan-
gered Spanish sovereignty over its territories. Thus, geographic knowledge
of the region, and in particular exact knowledge of the network of rivers
connecting the Orinoco to the Amazon and its Atlantic estuaries, became
a geopolitical priority. And this is where the figure of La Condamine once
again enters the picture.
Once his measurement work was completed in Ecuador, La Condamine
received instructions from the French government that he not return by the
usual route (Quito-Popayán-Bogotá-Cartagena), but by crossing through the
Amazon and reaching the Atlantic at the port of Cayena. The French sought
to take advantage of the presence of a scientist like La Condamine to obtain
firsthand information of the region’s natural resources. Certainly, a voyage of
this sort through the Amazon jungle was no easy task at that time. For assis-
tance, La Condamine decided to travel accompanied by a criollo scientist, the
geographer and mathematician from Riobamba, Pedro Vicente Maldonado,
whose Mapa de la Provincia de Quito had become famous among specialists
of his time. Furthermore, Maldonado was a very good friend of the Jesuit
missionaries of the Marañon river, which gave La Condamine access to valu-
able anthropological and geographical information for the trip. He not only
had the opportunity to get to know the work of Father Gumilla (El Orinoco
ilustrado) and Father Maroni (Noticias auténticas del famoso Río Marañón),
mentioned in the previous chapter, but he also obtained the original map
of the Amazon river drawn by the head of the missions, the German Jesuit
Samuel Fritz (Map 3). Even though the map dated from 1691, La Condamine
decided to give it to French authorities in 1752, who were surprised by the
multitude of data it provided on the connection between the Amazon and
other river systems, previously unknown Europe. In fact, the details provided
by Father Fritz’s map—who lacked precise instruments of measurement at
the time—were what made Maldonado and La Condamine’s trip across the
Amazon possible.
210 Chapter 5

Map 3 Curso del Río Maranón, Samuel Fritz, S.J. (1691)

In his account La América Meridional, written as a report to the Royal

Academy of Sciences in Paris, the French scientist presented himself to his
colleagues as the veritable Christopher Columbus of the Amazon: “I met
there with new plants, new animals, and new men” (La Condamine, 1747
[1745]: 24). An entire virgin continent, unexplored, rich in natural resources,
would now be at the disposal of European science, and particularly France,
which could thus become a new “Amazonian power”:

I will venture to say, that the multitude, and diversity of plants and trees, to be
met with on the banks of the river of Amazons, during its whole course, from
the Cordeliers des Andes to the sea, and on the sides of divers rivers, that lose
themselves therein, would find ample employment, for many years, for the
most laborious botanist; as it would also for more than one designer. I speak
here, only of the labour it would require, to make an exact description of these
plants, and to reduce them into classes, and range each under its proper genus
and species. What would it be, if we comprehend herewith, an examination
into the virtues ascribed to them by the natives of the country? An examina-
tion, which is undoubtedly the most attractive of our attention, of any branch of
this study. It is not to be questioned, indeed, but ignorance and pre-possession
have greatly multiplied and exaggerated these virtues; but, are the Quinquina,
the Ypecacuana, the Simaruba, the Sarsaparilla, the Guiacum, the Cacao, and
the Banilia, or Vanelloes, the only useful plants that America produces? And
 Striated Spaces 211

the singular virtues of these being well known, and sufficiently proved, is not
this encouragement enough, to proceed to new enquiries? (La Condamine, 1747
[1745]: 37–38)

La Condamine paid particular attention to two of these natural products: cin-

chona and rubber. He wrote an illustrated report on cinchona that he sent to
Linnaeus, and which would serve as the basis for its inclusion in the latter’s
famous taxonomy under the name Cinchona. This report, written not by a
botanist but a geodesist, was later translated in Bogotá by Sebastián López
Ruiz and used as one of the arguments in the quarrel against Mutis, discussed
above. But while cinchona was relatively well-known for its medicinal value,
La Condamine thought that rubber, then unknown in Europe, could have an
immense industrial value since its gum had such great elasticity with which
one could make all kinds of unbreakable objects like boots, balls, and bottles
(La Condamine, 1747 [1745]: 39). And although he recognizes that the
“natives of this country” possess some kind of knowledge of rubber’s prop-
erties, the wise Frenchman does not recognize this knowledge as valid and
argues that modern science is the only source of cognitive legitimacy. The
natural resources of the Amazon should be extracted, but not the knowledge
local inhabitants have of these resources. Such knowledge, as I stated above,
is seen as the dark prelude to European science, and Native Americans as the
anthropological past of humanity. The territories beyond Europe are thereby
transformed into territories that are behind Europe.
In fact, when describing the Amazon Indians, La Condamine proposes a
curious equation between geography, intelligence, and skin color: the greater
the heat and humidity of a territory, the less white the skin, and the lesser
cognitive maturity of its inhabitants. The place one occupies in geographic
territory thus corresponds to one’s place in ethnic, historic, and epistemic
territory. This is in short the environmental thesis which I will discuss in the
next section. Amazon Indians, despite the great variety of existing tribes and
linguistic families, all have some things in common: they live in the humid-
ity of the jungle, they have reddish skin, and they lack the words to express
abstract ideas. The Indigenous people of this region thus all share a “common
character, at bottom,” that La Condamine describes as follows:

Insensibility is the basis; which, whether it ought to be honoured with the name
of apathy, or branded with that of stupidity, I leave to others to decide. This
proceeds, undoubtedly, from the small number of their ideas, which extend no
farther than their necessities. Gluttons, even to voracity, when they have where-
with to satisfy themselves; yet moderate, when they needs must, even to shift-
ing without any thing, or seeming to desire aught. Pusillanimous and cowardly
to the last degree, if drunkenness does not transport them; enemies to labour;
212 Chapter 5

unmoved by an incentive to glory, honour, or gratitude; wholly intent upon the

object that is before them; and always determined thereby, without any regard
to futurity; incapable of foresight and reflection; giving themselves up, when
not under restraint, to a childish joy, which they express, by skipping about, and
immoderate flights of laughter, without either meaning or design: thus they pass
their lives without thought; and grow old, without having taken leave of infancy;
all the failings whereof they retain. (La Condamine, 1747 [1745]: 26)

However, the immaturity (Unmündigkeit) of the Indigenous people did not

prevent La Condamine from giving credence to one of their most incred-
ible stories: the existence of the Amazons. The Indians recounted that in the
middle of the jungle there existed a community of warrior women called
Amazons with amputated breasts who lived without men and went into com-
bat naked. In Europe, the story became famous thanks to the report lieutenant
Francisco de Orellana wrote to emperor Carlos V, where he stated that he and
his troops had encountered and battled these women. From there, the details
of the legend grew. It was said that once a year the Amazons left the jungle to
find men who they would force to procreate with them, and that once the chil-
dren were born they would kill the boys and only keep the baby girls. They
also said that they chose the most valiant of them all as their singular leader,
which was decided by ferocious battles between them. What is certain is that
La Condamine, who definitely knew these stories, spent much of his scientific
investigation in the jungle asking about the Amazons. What intrigued him
was not only the existence of these women, which he took for granted, but
their exact location on the physical map and on the map (tableau) of Natural
History.

Amongst the rest, an Indian of St. Joachim d’Omaguas told us, that might,
perhaps, still find an old man at Coari, whose father had seen these Amazons;
and on our arrival afterwards at that place, we were inform’d, that the Indian
of whom he spoke was dead, but we saw his son, who seem’d to be about sev-
enty, and commanded the other Indians of that district. He assured us, that his
grandfather had actually seen those females pass by at the mouth of the river
Cuchivara, wither they had come from that of the Cayamé, which disembogues
itself into the Amazon . . . An Indian also of Mortigura, a mission adjacent to
Para, offer’d to shew me river, which would carry one up to within a little dis-
tance of the country, now actually inhabited by these Amazons. (La Condamine,
51–52)

In the end, perhaps due to time constraints, La Condamine and Maldonado

gave up following the clues given by the Indians to locate these strange women.
Nevertheless, their scientific curiosity found comfort in the hypothesis that,
 Striated Spaces 213

while they would never find the land of the Amazons, this was not irrefutable
proof of their nonexistence. Perhaps one fine day the strange women would
grow bored of their solitude and come in search of men, forgetting their
ancient aversion to them. In any case, La Condamine claims that if there is
anywhere in the world where women could exist without men, it is America,
“where the vagabond lives of women, who often follow their husbands to
wars, and are not a jot happier in their domestic lives, might naturally give
birth to this idea” (La Condamine, 55, translation modified).
But while the Amazons were never found, the hope of discovering nov-
elties and riches in this jungle region continued to mobilize state coffers.
Forty years after the voyage of La Condamine, captain Antonio de la Torre y
Miranda, accompanied by the Black illustrator Salvador Rizo, undertook a
voyage to the eastern plains [llanos] to explore the territory of the old Jesuit
missions. The captain had been sent by viceroy Caballero y Góngora and
charged with drawing up a plan of the Meta and Orinoco rivers and explor-
ing the territory of Guiana, near the border with Holland and Portugal. In
mid-1783, after traveling nine months, De la Torre y Miranda returned to
Bogotá and delivered to the viceroy the maps drawn up by Rizo alongside a
full report describing the flora, fauna, trade, customs, and inhabitants of this
immense region (Moreno de Ángel, 1983: 232–234). And while there are no
remaining copies of this report, only the maps and the diary of the voyage,
this might be what Caldas refers to when he cites a piece of writing by “one of
our compatriots, who has traveled the Orinoco and made excellent economic
and political observations of the trade and agriculture of the regions this
mighty river bathes” (Caldas, 1942 [1808a]: 50). Caldas writes:

This canal (the Orinoco), he says, will in time be the one that unites the most
remote parts of our America with the capital of this Kingdom; its shores will
surely be seen one day populated by rich factories and commercial cities, where
the products of Asia and Europe will be united with those that can come from
all of this Kingdom that can travel by way of the Mamo, the Apure, the Meta,
and the Guaviare to the Orinoco; and those of Peru, Brazil, and Paraguay from
different branches of the Amazon. (Caldas, 1942 [1808a]: 50)

Geography as a “rigorous science” continued to be something more than lab-

oratory research carried out by experts. It was a key piece on the chessboard
on which European powers competed to control the world. The addition of
New Granada to the provinces adjacent to the Orinoco river sought to put
the brakes on the expansion of the English and Dutch in the area, using the
territories of Guiana as a beachhead. It was also hoped that this jungle region
could become a pole of economic development for the viceroyalty, and even a
kind of “Guantanamo Bay” or space for confining the “vagabonds, criminals,
214 Chapter 5

and incorrigibles” of the homeland. Recall that in his famous Proyecto

Económico, Bernardo Ward proposed that the Spanish Crown definitively
banish gypsies from the Iberian Peninsula to the banks of the Orinoco.16

5.2 THE CONSTRUCTION OF

“ANTHROPOLOGICAL PLACE”

According to Deleuze and Guattari (1987: 385), striated space is character-

ized by the artificial construction of fixed trajectories and well-determined
directions that serve to control migration, regulate population flows, and
regulate everything that happens in this space. In fact, without the striation
of space the existence of the state itself would not be possible, since it exists
precisely to establish law and order over a territory under its sovereignty.
One reason that explains the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century hegemony
of the Spanish empire was its ability to “striate the sea,” that is, to convert
the Atlantic circuit into a “territory” where the circulation of commodities,
slaves, and people between the new and old worlds could be perfectly regu-
lated. But faced with the emergence of England, France, and Holland as new
powers competing for control of maritime space, Spain was compelled not
only to striate the sea but also the land, subjecting the physical space of the
colonies to a strict organization of all flows. As I have sought to show in this
work, the striation of space also, and primarily, included the extensive “map-
ping” of the population.
In what follows, I will investigate one of the most widespread modes of
population mapping during the Age of Enlightenment: the construction of
“anthropological place.”17 This basically involved examining certain physi-
cal and moral characteristics of ethnic groups in the colonies (Black people,
Indians, mestizos, Spaniards), to later establish a causal relationship between
this “identity” and its geographical setting. I will focus on the role played by

16
 Ward’s text states the following: “In order to remove the bad example and avoid the prejudices
caused by the gypsies in advance, the most certain way appears to be purify the Kingdom of all of
these men and women, large and small, all at once; which can be done in a pious way very useful
to Spain, with the King indicating a spot in the Americas, far from other Spanish vassals, where
they could form their own colony, with the hope that it would be useful. This could be on the banks
of the Orinoco river . . . The same providence could be taken with the other vagabonds, criminals,
and incorrigibles, not being able to make a career with them in the Hospices, and threatening the
danger of causing disturbances or corrupting others with their bad example” (cited by Varela y
Álvarez, 1991: 101).
17
 Marc Augé says that anthropological place is one of the foundational myths of modern ethnology.
From whence comes the spatial notion of culture, which will later constitute the object of study
of a new discipline: anthropology. The idea is that: “To be born is to be born in a place, to be
‘assigned to residence’. In this sense the actual place of birth is constituent of individual identity”
(Augé, 1995: 53).
 Striated Spaces 215

modes of knowledge like geography and economics, and particularly the way
in which the scientificity of these nascent disciplines is shot through with
imperial aims of striating colonial space and “mapping” its populations.

5.2.1 The Project of the Economic Atlas

In the first issue of the Semanario del Nuevo Reino de Granada, Caldas
declared that “geographic knowledge is the thermometer with which we mea-
sure the enlightenment, commerce, agriculture, and prosperity of a people”
(Caldas, 1942 [1808a]: 15). Caldas’ great project was, in fact, to make geog-
raphy “the fundamental basis of all political reflection” through the develop-
ment of a great Economic Atlas of the viceroyalty. He imagined “an economic
map that, by presenting in a glance, our products, fields, forests, mountains,
population, and the wealth and poverty of its parts, would put the politician,
magistrate, and minister in a position to judge things, their worth, and their
true relations: this is what we need to be happy.”18
The geographical encyclopedia Caldas dreamed of was a totalizing repre-
sentation of the territory that would illustrate the natural characteristics, cli-
mate, economic potential, populated and depopulated areas, roads and trade
routes of each region, and as we will see later, “the temperament and customs
of its inhabitants.” His hope was to provide the central government with this
encyclopedia as the basis for developing economic policy in the viceroyalty
since, according to the geographer from Popayán, with its help “we will see
the steps we have taken, what we know, what we do not know, and we will
measure our distance from prosperity” (Caldas, 1942 [1808a]: 16, author’s
emphasis). But since Caldas’ category of “prosperity” was by then an eco-
nomic category, we need to approach this subject from the perspective of the
new economic science that he and his enlightened colleagues had in mind,
and that in those days had a concrete name: physiocracy.
Toward the end of the eighteenth century, the theses of French economists
like Quesnay, Turgot, and Mirabeau enjoyed considerable influence over
enlightened circles in Spain and its American colonies. The central concern
of the Bourbon leaders with respect to their economic policies was in reality
a dilemma: how to link the demands of international trade with a rural and
artisanal caste society without having to modify its hierarchical relations of
production? In a word, if the Spanish empire wanted to successfully compete
for control of the world market, it had to transform the structure of its agrar-
ian and artisanal production in accordance with modern values like output,
efficiency, and utility without calling into question the absolute power of the

18
 Cited by Díaz Piedrahita, 1997: 141, author’s emphasis.
216 Chapter 5

monarch.19 Spain wanted to become a modern economic power while main-

taining social stratification and traditional relations of production. To achieve
this aim, the state needed the power to completely regulate the economic
life of the empire in accordance with policies legitimated by geography and
nascent economic science. The physiocratic theories defended in Spain by
enlightened functionaries like Floridablanca, Campomanes, and Jovellanos
gain importance in this context (Elorza, 1970).
The physiocrats basically posed the idea that economic prosperity is rooted
in a natural order preestablished by providence, so that for a state to govern
rationally it should turn to economic science to understand and develop this
order adequately. Given that human subsistence depends on the relations we
establish with the land and given that the majority of the population was still
concentrated in the countryside, the physiocrats singled out agriculture as the
fundamental sector of the economy. The “wealth of nations” thus depends on
the development of agriculture, which thereby constitutes the basis of com-
merce (Villanueva, 1984; Fox-Genovese, 1976). The state, as the sole admin-
istrator of national assets, should promote the cultivation of lands and the
occupation of its inhabitants in agricultural activities, with the aim of making
agriculture the most productive sector of the internal market while facilitat-
ing the exportation of grains to the external market. From an economy based
on subsistence agriculture (everyone eats what they cultivate), society should
shift to commercial agriculture, where production should be geared toward
strengthening the internal market between regions, and surplus directed
toward the exportation of products needed by other countries. This entailed
a transformation of the unproductive habits of the feudal nobility, for whom
the land was above all synonymous with social distinction. But the laboring
habits of peasants, for whom it was enough to produce what was needed for
them and their family, were also transformed. It also entailed that the state
exercise strict control over agrarian production, defining in advance which
products were desirable for “public utility” and monopolizing their distribu-
tion through licenses known as estancos.
In New Granada, where agriculture revolved around the large haci-
enda, the theses of the physiocrats were warmly welcomed by enlightened

19
 The absolutist Spanish state rested on the assumption that all inhabitants of the Empire, regardless
of sex, race, or social distinction, were equally vassals of the monarch. The “social pact” discussed
in Spain had nothing to do with the “social contract” of Locke and Rousseau. The absolutist
conception of the state understood the social pact only regulated the obligations of vassal to their
monarch and vice-versa. From this perspective, all vassals, the Church included, should submit to
what the monarch considers appropriate to “public utility,” in accordance with the latter’s “superior
enlightenment.” The reforms introduced by the Bourbons did not seek then to undo social hierar-
chies but to harmonize those hierarchies with the governmental policies of the state.
 Striated Spaces 217

criollos toward the end of the eighteenth century.20 Luis de Astigarraga, in his
Disertación sobre la agricultura (1978 [1792]: 26), writes that “agriculture
[is] the most solid and fundamental basis for the happiness of the people.”
This opinion is shared by the criollo Diego Martín Tanco in his aforemen-
tioned Discurso sobre la población, for whom agriculture “is the golden
foundation on which the happiness of empires is based” (Tanco, 1978 [1792]:
196). Pedro Fermín de Vargas uses the same metaphor as the Physiocrats to
illustrate the “natural connection” between different branches of the econ-
omy, in his Memoria sobre la población. He writes that, “The political body
can be compared to a tree, whose roots are agriculture, whose trunk is the
population, and the branches, leaves, and fruit are industry and commerce”
(Vargas, 1944 [1789c]: 95). And also using an organic metaphor, the criollo
lawyer José María Salazar compares agriculture and commerce to “the two
breasts that raise and feed the state” (Salazar, 1942 [1809]: 220).
Agriculture, now understood as the foundation that upholds the economy,
thus becomes an object of philosophical study and reflection for the New
Granadian criollo elite. The governor of Santa Marta at the time, don Antonio
de Narváez, recommends utilizing the immense agricultural resources of the
Atlantic coast with the argument that “one cannot have commerce without
agriculture, which provides fruits and materials, especially here where there
are no arts, or factories that benefit them” (Narváez, 1965 [1778]: 20). A
“scientifically based” economic policy cannot begin at the end (branches,
leaves, and fruits), rather it should concentrate on the foundations (roots).
Thus, rather than continuing to focus on extracting minerals for commerce,
the government should encourage the cultivation of wheat, cacao, cotton,
and tobacco. This would not only generate new sources of work for the
native population, but it would also promote “import substitution.”21 Since
the population is the trunk that strengthens the entire tree, Narváez believes
that the state should develop a population policy that would allow hundreds
of potential workers, hitherto concentrated in unproductive regions, to move
favorably toward cultivation zomes. As rich and fertile as land may be, is
worthless if there are not enough hands to cultivate it. Like Vargas, Narváez
suggests a “natural connection” between agriculture, trade, and population,
using the metaphor of a chain:

20
 Despite the fact that trade was traditionally seen as a “mechanical trade,” many figures among the
criollo nobility tended toward this kind of activity to fight the poverty into which they had fallen.
In this respect, see Renán Silva’s case study of the commercial ideology of the family of Camilo
Torres in Popayán. Silva, 2002: 408–409.
21
 José Ignacio de Pombo wrote in this regard: “It is shameful to say, but we receive the sugar, cacao,
and tobacco we consume from elsewhere, brought in immense quantities every year, when we
could provide a considerable part of these fruits from the land if we cultivated them, and also bring
ourselves great wealth by trading them (Pombo, 1965 [1810]: 194).
218 Chapter 5

But if it is given that without agriculture there can be no trade, it is also true that
without population there can be no agriculture. Trade, agriculture, and popula-
tion are like three rings of a chain that must all be unified and linked; or like the
three sides of a triangle, without any of which there remains only an angle or an
open space, without forming a shape. (Narváez, 1965 [1778]: 41–41)

The criollo José Ignacio de Pombo also argued in a similar vein to Narváez,
but in his Informe al Consulado de Cartagena he complains bitterly of the
state’s neglect of economic policy. Closely following Gaspar Melchor de
Jovellanos’ 1794 Informe en la expediente de la ley agraria, a text heav-
ily influenced by the physiocrats, Pombo refers to the political, moral, and
physical obstacles facing agricultural progress in New Granada. Among the
“political obstacles,” Pombo mentions the state’s abusive taxes on prod-
ucts such as tobacco, sugar cane, and indigo, as well as the lack of a state
population policy, as his colleague Narváez pointed out. But among the many
obstacles that Pombo identifies, I am particularly interested in one that relates
to the aforementioned project of an Economic Atlas: the lack of a geographic
map of the province. In Pombo’s view, it is useless to boost the population
of productive regions without first educating the farmers in the diverse kinds
of arable lands and the different crops that grow well at different elevations
and temperatures. Pombo therefore claims that the making of a geographic
map is not tangential but rather fundamental to the economy of the province
of Cartagena (Pombo, 1965 [1810]: 139).
Pombo’s geographic map and Caldas’s Economic Atlas are thus convergent
projects. Both set out from the same assumption used by the physiocrats with
their metaphors of the tree, the two breasts, and the chain: physical nature
and human society are not two different orders but are instead governed by
the same eternal laws, such that sciences like economics and geography are
far from marginal or useless for the life of the public. On the contrary, both
can offer the state valuable information about things “in-themselves” just like
physics. Both Pombo and Caldas believe that the order of the polis should
faithfully reproduce the order of the cosmos, and that science is the key to
carrying out this project (cosmopolis). With this in mind, both offer their
judgments to the statesman to design economic policy on a strictly scientific
basis. In fact, Caldas and Pombo are convinced that without scientific knowl-
edge of the geography of regions, populations, and plants, the statesman will
be unable to develop coherent economy policy and the state will remain con-
demned to “groping in the dark.”
The geographic encyclopedia seeks to generate a table (tableau) in which
all of the items indicated by the physiocrats appear: agriculture, trade, indus-
try, and population. The link between these elements is not part of the politi-
cian’s common sense, which tends to consider these as separate phenomena,
 Striated Spaces 219

but rather must be unraveled by the analytic-synthetic reason of the scientist.

Caldas claims that the relationship between them is given by laws of nature
and varies according to the climatic zone in question. His thesis, which is
very similar to that of Humboldt, is that variations in altitude bring changes
in temperature affecting vegetation types, land fertility, and even the moral
character of a population in a specific region. The task of the geographer
would be to determine the different environmental levels or “floors” (Caldas
argued there were twelve)22 and establish a classification system that dif-
ferentiates these according to altitude, humidity, temperature, luminosity,
atmospheric pressure, and the chemical composition of the soil (map 4). In
this way, topographical and climatic variables establish the boundaries of the
chart within which the triangle of agriculture-population-commerce is drawn.
Caldas is convinced that the agriculture, trade, industry, and the popula-
tion of New Granada will benefit greatly from his encyclopedia. Since in this
region of the planet all possible climates exist, it would therefore be sufficient

Map 4 Nivelación de una montaña de Ibarra by Francisco José de Caldas

22
 Caldas writes: “Would it not be at once novel and beautiful to divide all arable parts of the earth
into twelve zones, with one inch on the barometer corresponding to each one? Would it not be
novel to assign demarcations to each plant and to say exactly and concisely: ‘inhabits the first
zone’, ‘inhabits the third to the fifth zones’, and so on for all the rest? I have projected barometric-
botanical levels similar to those construed by baron von Humboldt, with sole aim of giving an idea
of the diverse altitudes of the terrain. I divide them into twelve zones that are not of equal width,
because the upper ones gradually increase their elevation; I also place the plants that live in each
zone on the chart” (Caldas, 1942 [1810b]: 190).
220 Chapter 5

to determine at which level this or that plant or animal develops best, includ-
ing elephants and dromedaries,23 with the aim of importing them and “accli-
mating them” to our environment:

New Granada, in the heart of the torrid zone under the Equator itself, with terri-
tory in both hemispheres and divided by the different branches of the Andes, has
hot plains at its base, cool temperatures on the flanks, polar regions at the peaks.
It has all climates and every elevation. Thus, all of the fruits of the earth and
all the animals of globe can live and prosper, as if in their own country, within
the limits of the Viceroyalty of Santafé. You wish to bring Lichen rangiferinus
from Lapland, this algae precious to the northern people of Europe? Put it in
the extreme regions in the frigid part of our mountain range that produces only
cryptogams. Do we want reindeer? Put them on the snowy peaks. We want to
acclimate the dromedary or the elephant? The plains of Neiva, the banks of the
Orinoco, and the solitary jungles of the Amazon await them. Do we prefer the
cinnamon, cloves, or betel nuts that abound in the Orient? These same countries,
these same jungles could produce these species alongside ivory. It is enough to
know what temperature, what degree of humidity this or that product has in its
native country, in order to be able to point your finger to where it could prosper
among us. (Caldas, 1942 [1810a]: 166–167)

However, it is not the politician but rather the scientist that points to the
precise place agriculture should occupy in relation to population and trade.
Caldas recalls the efforts made by viceroy Flórez in 1777 to promote the
cultivation of cochineal in New Granada, an attempt that found no reception
at all among landowners and farmers. This proves that no matter how good
the intentions of a leader or how enlightened his economic policies may be,
he will be unable to uproot old agriculture practices solely by decree. Making
such changes requires a systemic education of peasants, which should be car-
ried out by a “body of wise patriots.” Caldas refers concretely to establishing
an Economic Society of the Friends of the Country like those already flour-
ishing in Spain, whose task would be to establish and extend the branches of
trade, agriculture, and industry. The viceroyalty’s economic policy should
thus be a joint project toward which both the scientist and the politician
work, with each assuming their proper function: “the wise should aid the

23
 Even though Caldas does not explicitly mention it, this principle also applies to the importation
of “suitable” populational groups for the industrial and commercial development of the country,
who will substitute for Black, Indigenous, and mestizo populations, as would occur during the
nineteenth century in various Latin American countries.
 Striated Spaces 221

government in this respect, and the government should lend them their help
and all of their protection (Caldas, 1942 [1810a]: 162).24
However, the article published by Caldas in 1810, that is, twenty-five years
after Campomanes founded the first Economic Society in Madrid, proves that
this project had definitively failed in New Granada. Some sixty-eight such
societies existed in Spain by 1791, and some societies were also operating in
other colonial cities like Mexico City, Havana, and Buenos Aires at this time.
In New Granada, however, these societies would never be anything more
than a “beautiful thought” (Caldas, 1942 [1810a]: 163). As early as 1784,
some people, mostly soldiers and hacienda owners, had wanted to found an
Economic Society in the city of Mompox, and they requested an operating
license from the central government without success. Then, in 1801, the
viceroy Pedro Mendinueta, under pressure from influential figures like Mutis
and Tadeo Lozano, finally issued a license approving the operation of an
Economic Society in Bogotá. The first meeting, held in Mutis’ own house,
appointed a committee of prominent members to draft statutes for the society
on the model of the peninsular societies. But while the statutes were approved
by Mendinueta in 1802, the society was never operational, due perhaps to
fears expressed by Mutis that it could become a nucleus of criollo dissent and
resistance against the economic policies of the empire (Jones Shafer, 1958:
237–238).
Nevertheless, it is worth collecting here the opinions of those thinkers
who supported the foundation of an Economic Society of the Friends of the
Country in Bogotá, since this project represented, so to speak, the institu-
tionalization of Caldas’ geographic ideas. In chapter 3, we saw how as early
as 1791 don Manuel del Socorro Rodríguez had already become an ardent
defender of the creation of a hospital for the poor and an Economic Society
in Bogotá, as means to overcome the moral decadence into which the city had
fallen. For Rodríguez, one of the central functions of the society would be
studying the means for uprooting poverty, idleness, and mendicancy in New
Granada. Acting as sort of “police committee,” the society should develop
censuses to determine the number of idlers in the city, implement adequate
means to “gather them,” and establish workshops where they could learn a
trade “useful to the homeland” (Rodríguez, 1978 [1791]: 97). The criollo
Diego Martín Tanco also argued that a Society of Friends of the Country

24
 Caldas is thinking of a relative autonomy for economic societies that was never achieved in the
Spanish empire. The societies of the friends of the county founded in Spain during the eighteenth
century were always under the direct control of the government and subject to the political impera-
tives of its foreign policy (Jones Shafer, 1958). The lack of criollo participation in state economic
policy, also demanded by Camilo Torres in his Memorial de Agravios, was one of the causes
behind the discontent that developed against Spain in the colonies around the beginning of the
nineteenth century.
222 Chapter 5

should focus all of its attention on extirpating idleness and increasing the
Kingdom’s economically active population, since “a country of vagabonds
will always be a country of the poor” (Tanco, 1978 [1792]: 185). To achieve
this goal, the Economic Society should exclude “all ideas of nobility, elevated
birth, distinguished descendants, and honorific employments,” and instead
favor “talent, determination, judgement, and integrity” (194). In other words,
Tanco thinks the society should not be composed of aristocrats with their
contempt for manual labor and trade, but rather of individuals capable of
stimulating the three central branches of economic life: agriculture, arts, and
commerce, without granting priority to any one of them.25
The opinion of the chief magistrate of Zipaquirá, don Pedro Fermín de
Vargas, moves in the same direction, while leaving aside any reference to
the police function of the Economic Societies. In his Pensamientos políticos
sobre la agricultura, comercio y minas del Virreinato de Santafé de Bogotá,
the criollo thinker claims that “the first measure for the advancement of agri-
culture and by all means the only that should be employed is the establishment
of an Economic Society of Friends of the Country, like the many that exist in
Spain” (Vargas, 1986 [1789b]: 29–30). This society should be composed of
a “patriotic body” charged with traveling to Europe and purchasing machines
necessary for promoting agriculture. It should also encourage the writing of
scientific treatises on the best methods for cultivating wheat, indigo, cacao,
cotton, and many other agricultural products with competitions. Like Tanco,
Vargas thinks the Economic Society should not, however, neglect to promote
trade, because “a country composed of farmers and deprived of trade will be
the poorest of any known” (35).
But perhaps the most well-supported opinion on the suitability of found-
ing an Economic Society of Friends of the Country was that of the criollo
aristocrat Jorge Tadeo Lozano, one of the strongest proponents of the proj-
ect. Under the curious pseudonym “the Indian of Bogotá,” Lozano presents
his ideas in various issues of his own journal, the Correo curioso, erudito,
económico y mercantil de la ciudad de Santafé de Bogotá. Despite taking
from the Physiocrats the thesis that agriculture is “the first and most noble of

25
 Tanco is polemicizing with those criollo aristocrats who, like Mirabeau, dreamed of a strictly agrar-
ian economy, and even claimed, in an almost Rousseauian manner, that commerce was the cause of
the moral decadence of society. Tanco appears to refer directly to the aforementioned Disertación
sobre la agricultura, published a few months prior in Papel periódico by don Luis de Astigar-
raga, where phrases such as the following appeared: “The greenness of the countryside, the song
and simplicity of the birds, the land’s reward for the farmer’s work, and that entire natural way
of living, instills love toward the Creator and charity toward men. The countryside is where our
understanding is most free to know and praise the supreme omnipotence of God: it is there where
times is passed with utility . . . Unlike what happens in cities and courts. There the understanding is
distracted by useless diversions and tormented by mundane objects; the Creator is regularly forgot-
ten and his ultimate end is rarely remembered” (Astigarraga, 1978 [1792]: 34–35).
 Striated Spaces 223

all the arts,” Lozano concurs with Vargas and Tanco that the promotion of
agriculture should go hand-in-hand with the development of trade. Toward
this end, he proposes the creation of a “Patriotic Commerce Company”
whose function would be to make the trader into something more than a
simple merchant, elevating them to the category of “professional” (Lozano,
1993 [1801b]: 107).26 With this in mind, one of the central objectives of the
Economic Society was to dignify those professions considered “vile” by the
nobility; seeking to modify the value scale derived from Spanish colonial
society and point it toward a positive evaluation of productive labor:

A wise and prudent government does not fail to protect those who dedicate
themselves to an honorable occupation. The Noble who passes his days in
shameful laziness is viler, than the Artisan who has a trade, no matter how
humble it may be. Useful Arts are seen as despicable and their Artificers are
treated with nothing less than vilification; they would rather perish from hunger
and educate their children in the same principles than make them learn a trade
or apply themselves to work in the field; there are even those who blush at the
thought of learning the Science of commerce. This undoubtedly comes from
contempt toward the Arts and Agriculture, and the vanity displayed by a birth
qualified with a piece of paper. (Lozano, 1993 [1801c]: 176, author’s emphasis)

In addition to promoting trade, the Economic Society should offer draw-

ing classes for artisans and devote itself to public instruction in all kinds of
manufacturing. On the other hand, Lozano thinks the primary activity should
be drawing the geographic map of New Granada in the sense proposed by
Caldas. As this kingdom has within it “all of the climates in the world,” the
society should dedicate itself to studying the “most suitable [way] to receive
a universal culture of the all the plants of the globe” (Lozano, 1993 [1801c]:
177). Lozano proposes the development of a “rural calendar” that will indi-
cate not only to the politician but above all to peasant when, where, and how
to sow what kind of seeds.27 Depending on the elevation, variation of winds,
time of year, humidity of the terrain, and air temperature, it would be advis-
able or not to promote the cultivation of certain plants. In a similar project,
José Ignacio de Pombo suggests from Cartagena that the Patriotic Society
should begin publishing a newspaper dedicated exclusively to the rural
economy, “giving precise rules for discerning different kinds of lands, their

26
 For Lozano, commerce is not a contemptible activity typical of the lower classes of society, but
rather “a practical art comprising many rules and combinations” (Lozano, 1993 [1801a]: 107).
Commerce is a science more than a trade.
27
 The editors of Correo curioso offered a prize of one ounce of gold to the author of this rural calen-
dar and the winner was apparently Caldas, who presented himself under the pseudonym “Silvio”
(Pacheco 1984: 84).
224 Chapter 5

preparation and fertilization, for the cultivation of plants most suited to each,
their benefits, and the most productive species according to temperature”
(Pombo, 1965 [1810]: 170).
Like Pombo and Lozano, Caldas was aware that this major project for
scientific and technological guidance could not be accomplished without the
help of his geographic encyclopedia. Thus, nine years later, and in light of the
failure of the Patriotic Society of Bogotá, he nostalgically writes:

In a body of wise, eternal patriots, that rejuvenates like nature, that contin-
ues on despite the vicissitudes and inconstancy of human affairs, industry is
linked with commerce, and how much it can do for numerous, rich, and happy
people . . . We know that there was excitement in this capital a few years ago
around the project of a Patriotic Society; we know that a dossier was compiled
for this interesting purpose; and we know that it did not become anything more
than a beautiful thought. Is there perhaps an enemy of New Granada who hin-
ders and ruins us? . . . I hope these reflections make an impression on our fellow
citizens! I hope that they rekindle the ideas of a patriotic Society! (Caldas, 1942
[1810a]: 163)

5.2.2 Nomadic Populations

While the project of an Economic Society of Friends of the Country was
never realized in New Granada, the populational politics designed by the
Bourbon government were. A policy of spatial reorganization began during
the administration of King Carlos III (1759–1789) whose first steps had
already been taken with the creation of the viceroyalty of New Granada in
1739. There was a dual objective in this territorial and politico-administra-
tive reorganization: in the first place, to guarantee the military defense of
the empire against continued external threats (English attacks) and internal
threats (Indigenous and maroon attacks); and in the second place, to exer-
cise control over dispersed settlements, those inhabiting unproductive and
“empty zones,” with the aim of relocating them to centers of agricultural
production. Advised by their team of physiocrats and technocrats, the
Bourbons wanted to take full advantage of the labor force of the economi-
cally active population, concentrating it in areas where they could work
as farmers or artisans. Combating the “sedentarism and nomadism” of the
population was thus one of the central objectives of Bourbon territorial poli-
cies (Herrera Ángel, 2002: 66).
In New Granada, however, while these policies were enthusiastically
embraced by a sector of the criollo elite, the possibility of accomplishing
these aims with the existing population was viewed with pessimism. The
environmental thesis predominant among enlightened criollos held that there
 Striated Spaces 225

existed a direct correspondence between geographic place and anthropo-

logical place. As with plants and animals, the characterology of populations
varied by humidity, altitude, atmospheric pressure, and the conditions of the
climate in which they live. From this perspective, various thinkers insisted on
the need to carry out a kind “blood transfusion” in the populational habitat
of New Granada.
We already saw how the criollo economist Antonio de Narváez argued that
without populational politics it would not be possible to develop agriculture
and trade in the provinces of Santa Marta and Riohacha. Increasing the popu-
lation of areas that were especially agriculturally rich was thus a first-order
imperative, but Narváez warns that not just any kind of people will be useful
for carrying out this policy. Bearing in mind the influence of the climate on
work habits and even on people’s mental capacities, Narváez thinks that the
province’s existing population is not suitable for the economic development
of the region:

There are very few pacified and taxpaying Indians in the province. Their natu-
ral abandon and tendency toward idleness, in which they are born and raised,
has led them to contract a kind unshakeable aversion to work, that has become
characteristic of them. Mulattos, sambos and Blacks, freed slaves, mestizos, and
other castes of common people in this country (who make up almost the entirety
of the population), partake greatly of this character, and even the climate con-
tributes to forming and strengthening it among them, because such a hot climate
dissipates strength through continual sweat, makes work more repugnant and
more sensible in cold countries. At the same time, they manage to live easily
without work in such a wonderfully fertile land . . . The whites, and above all
the Europeans born in the most temperate, benign, and dry climates cannot
withstand the difficult and heavy work of farming in this hot and humid climate.
(Narváez, 1965 [1778]: 45–46).

However, if the native population of New Granada is useless for advanc-

ing the government’s economic policy, if the majority of them exhibit an
“unshakeable aversion to work” that is explained by racial and climatic fac-
tors, then what is to be done? Narváez proposes a “scientific” solution to this
problem: the importation of Black people from Africa. In the same way that
Caldas would suggest taking into account scientific studies showing the geo-
graphic characteristics in which different types of plants and animals develop
in order to “acclimate” them to New Granada, Narváez suggests that the
climate of the Atlantic coast corresponds directly to that of Africa, such that
it would be convenient to populate this region with slaves brought from the
African continent. Black people born in Africa are more accustomed to work-
ing in hot climates, are “naturally docile,” and can apply themselves to any
226 Chapter 5

kind of domestic or agricultural labor. “Not earning a day’s wage, nor causing
other expenses, after their purchase, maintenance, and clothing, which is very
limited,” Narváez claims that Black slaves “make labor much less costly and
therefore much more useful” (Narváez, 1965 [1778]: 46).
However, Narváez’s “scientific ideas” were not in harmony with the prac-
tices of hacienda owners, militia leaders, and mine owners in New Granada.
Throughout the eighteenth century, hundreds of Black slaves were imported
from Africa relocated to the Cauca Valley or the Atrato region, but they were
never given preference over Black and mulatto slaves born in the Americas.
They were all equally seen as commodities destined primarily for the mines,
and only secondarily for agricultural labor. In fact, and against all enlight-
ened physiocratic and environmental ideas, while Black slaves had been
farmers and had knowledge of advanced agricultural technologies (raising
cattle, use of iron plows), in New Granada they were employed in mining,
using only rudimentary technologies (Werner Cantor, 2000: 95–101). On the
other hand, state economic policy was challenged by a number of illegitimate
Black settlements known as palenques. Palenques were communities of fugi-
tive slaves (“maroons”) surrounded by a defensive stockade and located in
inhospitable and swampy areas in the savannah, far from the economically
productive regions—communities that could never be fully subjected to state
control (Conde Calderón, 1999: 43–54).
As for the Indigenous population, enlightened thinkers saw them as a
veritable obstacle to the economic development of the viceroyalty. Due to
their ethnic and geographic characteristics, Indians were completely unsuited
to the disciplined productive labor the new times demanded. According to
Pedro Fermín de Vargas, the strategy for getting rid of these “undesirable
populations” was not to replace them with more suitable ones from abroad,
as Narváez suggested, or to exile them to a faraway place, as Bernardo Ward
wanted, but rather to “mix them” with a superior race in order to permanently
eliminate all of their negative characteristics:

In order to increase our agricultural production, it would be equally necessary

to Hispanize our Indians. The general indolence, stupidity, and insensibility
that they show toward all that motivates and encourages all other men, leads
one to think that they come from a degenerate race that deteriorates with
distance from its origin. We know from repeated experience with animals
that races improve through mixing, and we can even say that this observa-
tion can equally be made with the people we are speaking about, since the
intermediate castes resulting from the mixture between Indians and whites
are acceptable. In consequence . . . it would be very desirable if the Indians
became extinct, confusing them with the whites. (Vargas, 1944 [1789a]: 99,
author’s emphasis)
 Striated Spaces 227

Vargas’ ideas were certainly in line with the population politics of the Crown
in the eighteenth century, which sought to permanently do away with the
traditional separation between a Republic of Spaniards and a Republic of
Indians. As we know, as early as the 1512 Laws of Burgos and the 1542
New Laws, a regime of Indian protection was established that would eventu-
ally be concretized in an institution called the Resguardo (or reservation).
Resguardos sought to end the abuses of the native population by the Spanish
conquistadors (so-called “personal service”), while at the same time guar-
anteeing the exploitation of the Indigenous labor force. To this end, Indians
were organized into communities separate from the Spanish, assigned to spe-
cific non-marketable territories that were to be cultivated in order to pay trib-
utes in kind. In turn, Spaniards were forbidden from settling in “Indian land,”
and Indians were forbidden all dealings with the other castes, be they Blacks,
mulatto, or mestizo. This policy of racial separation was intended to ensure
satisfactory agricultural development and to give Indians a “fixed place” in
colonial economy (González, 1992: 25–36). However, beginning in the late
seventeenth century, things began to change. The Crown’s segregationist
measures were undermined by the increasing process of mestizaje, which I
mentioned in the second chapter, but also, and above all, by the increasing
importance of the hacienda economy.
In effect, with the accelerating of mestizaje and the progressive depopu-
lation of the Indigenous resguardos, in addition to the crisis of the mining
economy (as a result of international geopolitical and economic shifts), the
hacienda started to become the center of commercial activity in New Granada
in the eighteenth century. Many Indigenous people, seeking to escape the
tribute, posed as mestizo peasants so that they could be hired on haciendas. In
fact, mestizos enjoyed many prerogatives unavailable to Indians: they could
move freely, buy, sell, and work as a “peon” on farms since there was no leg-
islation that specified their function. If we add to this the state’s support for
economic activities in the agricultural sector (through physiocratic ideas), we
see that Vargas’ argument about the extinction of the Indigenous population
is more than just a philosophical proposition. The liquidation of resguardos
(now seen as “unproductive” lands) and the growing process of mestizaje
brought with it the crisis of an economic system in which Indigenous people
were at least able to legally preserve their forms of communal organization.
In the name of the enlightenment and progress, the undesirable Indigenous
population not only lost its traditional ties with the land but also the juridical
protection that Crown had hitherto granted it (González, 1992: 115–124).
Even the enlightened Spaniards Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa, upon see-
ing the miserable labor conditions that the Indians had fallen into with the
crisis of resguardos, preferred to temper their judgment a bit with respect to
the supposed natural incapacity of these populations for work:
228 Chapter 5

Undoubtedly the Indians now show very little affinity for work. Undeniably
they are naturally slow, indolent, and lazy. But it is to their own advantage to be
slothful. The political and economic system they live under is so bad that they
earn the same whether or not they work hard. Thus, it is not strange that they
are more inclined to laziness than to work. This is natural in all men. A survey
of even the most primitive peoples of the world would prove that no one will
work without the incentive of personal gain. Those most stimulated by personal
enrichment will be the most industrious. The Indians’ situation is such that it
makes no difference whether or not they earn money by their sweat and toil,
since they never see what they earn. The value of work is a vague ideal; the
harder they toil, the more they see flowing into the hands of the corregidores,
priests, and hacendados. The labor of the Indians simply does not redound to
their own benefit. In view of all this, what reasonable men can attribute sloth
and debility to the Indians without blaming extortion, greed, and ruthlessness of
the Spaniards? (Juan and Ulloa, 1978 [1826]: 142–143)

This is not, however, the opinion that would prevail in the enlightened com-
munity of New Granada. The majority believed that the aversion to work
was a “natural vice” of the Indians and that this would not change simply by
improving work conditions on the hacienda. Even if the Indians had labor
guarantees, no change at the political, social, or economic level would pre-
vent their natural condition from continuing to be “Indian.” However, some
criollos thought that not all Indians were equal by nature, since their condition
varied according to the climate in which they were born and raised. In their
opinion, it was necessary to advance toward a scientific populational policy
that takes account of the natural relationship between geography, race, and
economics.

5.2.3 Racial Geography

This pessimism toward the character of the New Granadian population was
not seen by these criollo authors as anchored in their own “spontaneous
sociology,” but rather in objective data produced by sciences like natural
history and geography. For this reason, the debate over where each specific
population type should be located in the viceroyalty became one of the favor-
ite subjects of conversation among criollo elites. It appeared clear that the
Bourbon government’s desired policy of spatial and populational reorganiza-
tion required “scientific support” at the local level in order to be carried out.
And even though the project of the economic societies failed, criollos did not
cease to harbor the illusion that science and politics would finally be united
in New Granada. The idea of constructing the polis according to the model of
the cosmos, continued to serve as a powerful imaginary that brought together
 Striated Spaces 229

the desires of figures like Caldas, Lozano, Ulloa, Vargas, Salazar, Restrepo,
Narváez, and Pombo. All of them were convinced that if the goal was to relo-
cate populations in order to boost agriculture and trade, then the state needed
to have an encyclopedia at its disposal that would allow it to know which
geography corresponded naturally to a specific racial type.
While as we will see in the next section, the idea of a racial geography
was very widespread all across Europe and formed part of the enlightenment
project of the “sciences of man,” for some New Granadian thinkers, particu-
larly Caldas, it seemed to be linked as a corollary to Humboldt’s geography
of plants. When the German scholar visited Bogotá in 1801, his project of
developing a “physical table” of the plants of the New World was already
in a mature stage. Humboldt believed he was founding a new branch of sci-
ence that organically united physics, botany, geography, and natural history,
resulting in a classification of all plants according to the zones and different
altitudes where they were found. The study of the influence of the physical
environment (considered in terms of levels of humidity, temperature, and
atmospheric pressure) on the life of plants, was thus Humboldt’s great sci-
entific project. In a sketch published in the Semanario del Nuevo Reino de
Granada translated from French by Jorge Tadeo Lozano, Humboldt presents
his encyclopedic project in the following way:

I have proposed to unify in a single table the totality of physical phenomena

presented to us by the equinoctial regions from sea level in the South to the
highest peak of the Andes. This table shows: the vegetation of animals, geologi-
cal phenomena, culture, air temperature, the threshold of permanent snow, the
chemical constitution of the atmosphere, electric tension, barometric pressure,
the decrease in gravity, intensity of blue in the sky, the depletion of light as it
crosses layers of air, horizontal refraction, and the boiling point of water at dif-
ferent altitudes. (Humboldt, 1942 [1808]: 49)

At first sight, it would seem that Humboldt’s proposed encyclopedia coincides

precisely with Caldas’ economic Atlas. Both sought to develop a taxonomic
table showing the relationship between the geographic environment and the
development of life. Both, moreover, sought to influence the political deci-
sions of governments.28 However, a more careful look reveals the following:
Humboldt does not include human populations among the forms of life that

28
 In this respect, Humboldt writes the following: “The extent of agriculture, its diversified objectives
according to the character and customs, and frequently the imaginary superstitions of the people,
the influence of more or less invigorating nourishment on the energy of the passions, the history
of navigations and wars undertaken to procure the production of the vegetal kingdom, are among
many considerations that link the geography of plants with the moral and political history of man”
(Humboldt, 1942 [1808]: 49).
230 Chapter 5

he attempts to study. When he includes culture in his list, he is not referring to

the different cultural forms of people and the influence of geography on these,
but to the different ways of “cultivating” the products of the land according
to their relation to the physical environment. On the contrary, Caldas from
the beginning expresses that his geographic encyclopedia will cover the influ-
ence of the climate not only on the animal and vegetable kingdoms but on all
“organized beings,” in general, including the distinct human races.
In effect, Caldas establishes a direct correspondence between the geogra-
phy of a territory and the moral character of its inhabitants. Differences in
altitude, atmospheric pressure, air temperature, and the chemical composition
of the atmosphere have direct consequences for the morality of people and
thus for the economy of a region since it is impacted by work habits, intel-
ligence, and the practice of virtue. However, Caldas makes it very clear that
even though his position is environmentalist, it is not determinist and much
less materialist, because it does not see man solely as a body nor does it grant
geography unlimited power over the will. He accepts, like Descartes, the
Christian postulate according to which the human being is a composite of two
substances, body and soul, meaning that “the body of man, like all animals,
is subject to the laws of matter” (Caldas, 1942 [1808b]: 139). But with the
soul, there exists a dimension in humans that does not respond to the logic of
a machine, and which thereby escapes the power of nature to become a free
being. Caldas’ conclusion is that “it is true that the climate has an influence
but only in increasing or decreasing the stimuli of the machine [the body],
with our will always remaining free to embrace good or evil. Virtue and vice
will always be the result of our choice in all latitudes and temperatures” (140).
However, reading Caldas’ text gives the impression that his concession
of the influence of the environment over intelligence and morality is much
greater than he himself wishes to recognize, above all when this influence
has to do with the biological and racial constitution of people. Consider the
following passage, for example:

Instinct, docility, and in a word, the character of all animals depends on the
dimensions and capacity of their skull and brain. Man himself is subject to this
general law of nature. Intelligence, profundity, broad views, and the sciences,
like stupidity and barbarism; love, humanity, peace, all of the virtues, as well
as vengeance and all vices, are continuously related to the skull and the face.
A spacious dome with a large brain beneath it, a high and prominent forehead,
and a facial angle close to 90 degrees signal great talents; the heat of Homer
and the profundity of Newton. On the contrary, a narrow forehead compressed
toward the back, a small brain, a thin skull and a sharp facial angle, are sure
indications of small ideas and limitation . . . When this level increases, all the
organs destined to exercise intelligence and reason grow; when it decreases,
 Striated Spaces 231

these faculties decrease as well. The European has 85 degrees and the African
70 degrees. What differences there are between these two races of the human
species! Arts, sciences, humanity, and reign over the earth are the heritage of
the first; stupidity, barbarism, and ignorance are qualities of the second. (Caldas,
1942 [1808b]: 145–146)

Caldas’ position is very similar to Kant’s, which I examined in the first

chapter. He is not saying that some races are “naturally immoral,” but that
some races, due to their physical constitution (brain size, facial angle) and
the geographic characteristics where they live (cold or temperate climates),
are intellectually and morally immature. The Black race, for example, not
only comes from hot climates but also has a small brain and a sharp facial
angle, making their struggle against natural determinism much more difficult
and complicated than individuals from the white race. This is why the Black
race has difficulty cultivating their abilities for the humanities (“the heat of
Homer”) or the sciences (“the profundity of Newton”), and will confront
innumerable obstacles to rejecting vice and choosing virtue. The white race,
by contrast, possesses all the natural and geographical conditions for culti-
vating intelligence and morality, which is why, according to Caldas, they
enjoy a “reign over the earth.” Stupidity and barbarism are not therefore the
natural condition of the Black race, but the perverse result of an endowment
that blocks the development of their moral nature. In other words, differences
in moral and intellectual character between people result from the greater or
lesser capacity that these groups have to overcome the determinism of nature.
Caldas puts these “scientific ideas” into practice to examine the moral
and intellectual state of the inhabitants of New Granada according to the
geographic environment they inhabit. The Black person that inhabits the
hot regions of the coasts will have the following characteristics according to
Caldas:

Simple and talentless, they concern themselves only with the objects at hand.
The imperious necessities of nature are followed without moderation or
restraint. Lascivious to the point of brutality, they surrender themselves with-
out restraint to the trade of women. The latter, perhaps more licentious still,
become harlots without shame or regret. Idle, they hardly know the comforts of
life, despite possessing a fertile country . . . Vengeful, cruel, jealous with their
compatriots, they let the European use their woman and their daughters. Yams,
plantains, corn, these are the objects of their labor and the products of their
miserable agriculture. (Caldas, 1942 [1808b]: 147)

The “wise Caldas” has nothing to say about the horrendous slavery imposed
on Black people by their European masters, the cruel abuse they have
232 Chapter 5

perpetrated against Black women, or the ethnic prejudices that permeate his
own words. Observation and experience, central elements of the modern
scientific method, have allowed him to situate himself in the observational
zero-point and rise above his own doxa. This is why, paradoxically, Caldas
takes himself to be describing an objective situation that has nothing to do
with human decisions. It would be of little use for the government to imple-
ment educational programs or decide to train Black people on the coast in
new agricultural techniques. Physiological and climatic conditioning weigh
too heavily on their capacity to learn. Caldas’ latent suggestion is that state
educational policy should be focused on the populations inhabiting the more
temperate regions of the viceroyalty, that is, the Andes, where there was a
greater possibility of overcoming the determinism of nature. In this sense, the
historian Alfonso Múnera is right to claim that Caldas’ text favors a central-
ist national imaginary focused on Bogotá, in which civilization and progress
are only possible in the serenity of the Andes mountains (Múnera, 1998: 54).
In fact, the Andes, with their oscillation between dry and humid weather,
their abundance of pastures and their pleasant mountains, are much more
favorable to the development of the intellectual and moral capacities of the
population. “The people who live there are agricultural, industrious, and saga-
cious . . . Here under a serene climate with occupations more suited to their
constitution, man has multiplied marvelously.” “Robust men and beautifully-
colored women are the patrimony of this happy soil” (Caldas, 1942 [1808a]:
29; 20). Note that Caldas is including the Indigenous and mestizo population
in this description, confirming what we noted above regarding Black people:
that Indians are not an immoral race by nature, but the development of
their faculties depends in large part on their geographic habitat. This is why
Caldas introduces the distinction between Indians who live in the Andes and
those who live in the hot areas or the jungle. While the latter are “savages”
who live off of hunting and fishing, the former are “civilized” because they
practice agriculture and “live under the fine and humane laws of the Spanish
monarch.” Caldas even claims that Indians of the Andes are “whiter” than the
coastal Indians, because the mountains protect them from the constant wind
from the east and “they spend their days in a land where perfect calm reigns,
that the slightest murmur has never interrupted” (1942 [1808b]: 156). As an
example, he cites the Indigenous communities of Otavalo, at the foot of the
snow-covered Cotacachi, who spend their days on industrious activities and
have white skin, as opposed to the other Indians of the viceroyalty who have
reddish skin (157).
Proof that the Andes are more favorable for the humanization of the castes
can be found in the fact that the mulattoes who live there are much more
measured in their customs (and whiter!) than their coastal counterparts.
According to Caldas,
 Striated Spaces 233

These [mulattoes] are whiter and have a sweeter character. The women are
beautiful and one can see the delicate features and contours of this sex. Decency,
honesty, dress, domestic occupations, regain all their rights. There is no fear-
lessness here, they do not battle with waves and beasts. The fields, the harvest,
the flocks, the sweet bread, the fruits of the land, the goods of a settled and
industrious life are spread across the Andes . . . Love, that torrid zone of the
human heart, does not have those furies, those cruelties, that bloodthirsty and
ferocious character of the mulatto of the coast. Here there is equilibrium with the
climate, here perfidies are mourned, sung, and take on the sublime and pathetic
language of poetry . . . All of the castes have yielded to the benign influence of
the climate, and the inhabitant of our cordillera is distinguished by their brilliant
and determined character from those below their feet. (Caldas, 1942 [1808b]:
166–167)

But Caldas is not the only one who defended the environmental thesis and
its consequences for the Andes. The criollo thinker Francisco Antonio Ulloa
also argued that the geography of the Andes had a positive influence on moral
development.29 In his 1808 Ensayo sobre el influxo del clima en la educación
física y moral del hombre del Nuevo Reyno de Granada, Ulloa confirms
Caldas’ thesis in the sense that the cold climate of the mountains stimulates
the development of intelligence more than the hot coastal climate. As one
rises from sea level toward the mountains, the physical and moral perfection
of the inhabitants also increases. At sea level, we find “colossal, pallid, brutal,
and languid men, stained with the color of copper, without energy or liveli-
ness in their movements, who barely seem to be animated at all . . . No poet,
orator, musician, painter, nor any bold genius capable of honoring his country
will ever emerge from these hot regions” (Ulloa, 1808: 294). By contrast, in
the heights of the Andes everything seems different. Even the animals are
more hardworking and robust, the trees more majestic, and the vegetation
richer than in the hot regions. The intermediate region of the Andes seems to
be a zone similar to what Virgil described in his poems: “the most appropriate
habitat for man”:

This is where the imagination is exalted and heated, and where the festive
genius of poetry must burn with the noblest sparks of enthusiasm. Here painting
and music, cheerful and comforting arts, will sow flowers and bravely explain

29
 Ulloa gives Caldas credit for having been the first to systematically reflect on this subject: “Even
though another pen has already sketched valiant tables on the influence of the climate on the beings
organized under our Kingdom, I will trace my brush strokes over these same objects, insofar as
suits my proposed ends” (Ulloa, 1942 [1808]: 292–293).
234 Chapter 5

all the majesty of feeling. Under this mild heat man develops tranquilly. (Ulloa,
1808: 299)

Ulloa seeks to derive from all these reflections practical suggestions for the
central government toward what would be a scientifically based population
policy. If the population best endowed by nature is that of the Andes, state
policy should be aimed at protecting this population and to improving its
health, with the goal of strengthening its physical and moral development.
Above all, attention must be paid to the health of the young population, since
children constitute the future workforce needed by the region’s economy,
which requires implementing a special public hygiene program. Ulloa sug-
gests that newborn babies in the Andes be bathed in water warmed to the
exact temperature of the mother’s womb, in order to avoid abrupt changes
that might affect not only the “machine” of the infantile body but also their
future moral constitution. In the same way, as they grow, Andean children
should not be protected excessively from the cold, as rich families tend to do,
because this would mean neutralizing the beneficial influence of the climate
on their temperament. Even children should be bathed in freezing water, like
strong Scottish peasants were accustomed to do in the middle of winter, and
as history also confirms: men as intelligent as Seneca and Horace bathed
every day in cold water, even in their later years (Ulloa, 1808: 301–307). The
moral: cold water, like the cold climate, stimulates the development of poetic
and philosophical abilities.
But just as the positive influence of cold climates should be encouraged,
the bad influence of hot climates should be corrected. Children from hot
zones should be raised completely naked in order to counteract in some way
the harmful effects of heat and perspiration on their moral constitution. Ulloa
takes the example of the inhabitants of the island of Malta, who are robust
and hardworking despite the intense heat because they have lived nude since
their earliest infancy. Similarly, since the milk of women from hot climates
is “less succulent and less dense” than that of women from cold climates,
infants should be fed exclusively with donkey, goat, or cow milk (Ulloa,
1808: 311–312). One should be especially cautious to avoid the use of wet
nurses from “the dregs of the people,” since all of the moral and physical
defects of the castes are transmitted to the child through milk:

How many times have I seen a child nursing on the breast a beast warmed with
fury! How many times have I seen a wetnurse who is sick, or drunk, feeding
her noxious milk to a child that was born as beautiful as love . . . It is true that
the disastrous consequences foul milk causes in the machine of children is not
immediately apparent. But time discovers all of these seeds and prepares them a
life filled with disease . . . The germ of the diseases bad milk carries stays hidden
 Striated Spaces 235

for a long time, as with hereditary diseases or certain poisonous substances,

which once introduced into the human body remain dormant and idle for a time
until they wake up and return to life when least expected. (Ulloa, 1808: 315)30

Regarding how children from hot climates should sleep, Ulloa thinks that nei-
ther hammocks nor cradles should be used, because their movement increases
the centrifugal force of the blood and circulation to the brain, which is already
quite high and harmful in hot areas. One need only take a chicken by its feet,
whirl it around in the air, and then put it on the ground to see how a child from
a hot climate could be affected by the cradle’s motion: the chicken’s eyes will
turn red and the animal will fall heavily to the ground, without strength or
moving its head (Ulloa, 1808: 316). This shows that the nervous system of
children in hot climates is weaker than those in cold climates, which is why
they tend to wake up startled at the slightest noise. In any case, and despite
their excessive sensitivity, they get used to sleeping very few hours from a
very young age, because excessive heat generates apathy and promotes lazi-
ness (337). Yet, apathy can also be a problem in the Andes. Ulloa points out
that one of the disadvantages of a cold versus hot climate is the melancholy it
often arouses in the spirit. Since the movement of blood slows with altitude,
women tend to be very quiet and depressive, and pass on a general feeling
of sadness to their children. However, the enlightened criollo thinks that this
disadvantage can be corrected by periodic exercise, frequent bathing, and the
consumption of food that thickens blood flow (323).
One of the central points that a scientific population policy must keep
in mind is precisely the kind of nourishment that children consume. In hot
climates, where blood circulation is faster, children should not eat fish (the
preferred food of the “low people”) as it reinforces the natural tendencies of
the organism in these hot regions: it ruins the imagination and disorders the
nerves. Rather they should adopt the diet Lycurgus imposed on the Spartans:
eating many vegetables to stimulate discipline. In addition to sleeping little
and becoming quasi vegetarian, children from hot regions should not eat
too much, since this increases their natural tendency to sweat. They should
instead follow the example of young Roman soldiers, who ate only once a
day and remained strong and courageous regardless (Ulloa, 1808: 333–335).
However, to prevent sweat and heat from weakening their bodies and causing
them to collapse, Ulloa recommends that schools give them lots of milk or “a
bit of watered-down wine, which enlivens and revives” (346).

30
 Ulloa’s argument against the castes is the same that the Spanish used against the criollos, claiming
superiority over the latter because they were nursed by Black and Indian women, which left them
prone to “inherit” their racial defects: “he who suckles lying milk comes out a liar” (Lavallé 1990:
123). As we will see later, this argument was also used by de Pauw, Robertson, and other European
philosophers to show the inferiority of all inhabitants of the Americas.
236 Chapter 5

State education policy also needed to be based on how children’s natural

dispositions differ according to climatic variation. Since people from tem-
perate climates like the Andes possess a stronger sensibility for the arts, the
state should create schools there to give classes in architecture, painting, and
drawing.31 And since nothing is better than combining the fine arts with natu-
ral history, Ulloa recommends that Andean schools incorporate into their cur-
riculum the design methods developed by the Dutch educator Petrus Camper,
who would have his sculptors and illustrators take the heads of animals and
men of distinct races as their models in order to appreciate the differences
and similarities of their physiognomies. Ulloa even ventures to reproduce
the following fragment from Camper because he considers it “very useful”:

By comparing the heads of diverse peoples such as a Black, a Kalmyk, a

European, and a female Monkey, I observe that a line stretched from the fore-
head to the surface of the face to the upper lip, indicates a difference between the
physiognomy of these peoples, and allows one to see a distinct analogy between
the head of a Black and the Monkey. After having formed the design of each
one of these heads around a horizontal line, I add their facial lines with many
angles, and at the same point that I lowered the facial line towards the front, I
had a head that was a member of the ancients. But when this same line gave an
indirect angle, it formed the physiognomy of a Black, and invariably the profile
of a Monkey and a Dog. (Ulloa, 1806: 354)

It would not be an overstatement to say that beyond the openly racist connota-
tions of this fragment, it also reveals a “white” and Hellenocentric conception
of what beauty means. Ulloa who, like all enlightened criollos, had incorpo-
rated the discourse of blood purity into his habitus, believed that the ideal of
physical beauty had been forever established by Greco-Latin sculptors and
thus he affirms that Camper, like Winkelman, takes the Greek model as the
foundation of aesthetics (Ulloa, 1806: 355).
I conclude this section by stating that both Caldas and Ulloa thought that
climate exercised an influence, be it positive or negative, on the moral charac-
ter, but they also believed that the negative influences could be corrected and
the positive ones strengthened by scientifically directed policy. In this sense,
both wanted to distance themselves from the suspicion of “geographical
determinism” raised by their colleague Diego Martín Tanco, who in a letter

31
 Ulloa complains that in Bogotá there was still no public school of fine arts, and that the few classes
taught on drawing were only for women who studied in Colegio de la Enseñanza. However, he
claims that the natural talent of “a certain very commendable youth of the capital” whose name he
omits “is proof that we can make progress in drawing even without teachers” (Ulloa, 1806: 353).
The cold climate naturally produces potential artistic geniuses.
 Striated Spaces 237

sent to the editor of the Semanario del Nuevo Reino de Granada as a polemic
against Caldas, argued that it was not climate and race but the lack of educa-
tion and good policies that should be taken into account when considering the
morality of the New Granadian population (Tanco, 1942 [1808a]: 61–68).32
But if Tanco, Caldas, and Ulloa agreed on one thing, it was precisely on the
need to give politics a scientific foundation, and in their aspiration to put
the “wise criollo” in a position of moral and intellectual authority over the
Spanish politician.

5.3 THE CRIOLLOS IN THE “DISPUTE

OF THE NEW WORLD”

We have said that the construction of anthropological place was one of the
most widely disseminated strategies for populational mapping in the Age of
Enlightenment. Assigning a collective identity inextricably linked to terri-
tory to determinate human groups ultimately contributed to imperial aims
of organizing or “striating” colonial space. It was not only Spain that was
interested in this kind of mapping, however, but also the other emerging pow-
ers of the world system. In his classic 1955 book, The Dispute of the New
World, Antonello Gerbi takes up the history of the enlightenment debate on
the inferiority of man and nature in the Americas (Gerbi, 2010). This debate,
which involved the activity of three important academies of science—that
of London (the Royal Society), Paris, and Prussia—and which revolved
around the writings of the philosophers Hume, Voltaire, Buffon, de Pauw,
Raynal, and Robertson, was not a purely academic exercise, however. What
was at stake in the background was something much greater: the redefinition
of political power between European courts (England, France, and Prussia)
which animated the dispute right at the moment in which the Spanish empire
was losing its hegemony in the world system. What was particularly interest-
ing for these imperial courts was to develop maps in which the space of the
American man appeared as “inferior” to the space of European man because
it allowed them to legitimize their colonial ambitions over this and other
regions of the worlds.

32
 Tanco summarizes his position as follows: “it is not the climate that shapes men’s morals, but
opinion and education, and such is its power, that they always triumph in the latitudes and even
in the temperament of each individual . . . In a word: climate, nourishment, nation, family, tem-
perament do not absolutely destine man to embrace vice or virtue; everyone in all places is free
to make the choice. This is my opinion and that of those whom I follow: my reason persuades me
that the contrary is conducive to moral error; by giving climate and nourishment such an absolute
and powerful influence, neither vice nor virtue would be actions in men worthy of blame or praise”
(Tanco, 1941 [1808a]: 67–68).
238 Chapter 5

However, the population maps drawn from Europe did not coincide point
by point with those made by enlightened criollos in the colonies. The criollos,
as we have seen, also had an interest ad intra in constructing the anthropo-
logical place of the castes to legitimate their ambitions to dominate them.
But European maps did not distinguish between the space of criollos and the
space of the castes. Instead, they represented both as inhabitants of the same
“unhealthy” space, and as expressions of a single degenerate and corrupted
nature. The tension generated by the clash between the European and criollo
population maps is thus the subject I will examine in this last section.

5.3.1 The Imperial Gaze: Savages and Europoids

The thesis that geography has a decisive influence on morality and intelli-
gence does not originate in the “second modernity” (the eighteenth century)
but rather the “first modernity” (the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries).33
Recall that one of the arguments made by the friar Bartolomé de las Casas
in his polemic against Sepúlveda in support of the American Indians was
that the “natural capacity for good understanding” depends in part on the
“disposition and quality of the region” and on the “mercy and mildness of
the weather.” It is worth citing the passage where Las Casas describes the six
natural causes that favor the development of rationality and morality:

It is to be considered that men have natural abilities for good understanding

which can be born of the concurrence of six natural causes or some of them,
and these are: first, heavenly influence; second, the disposition and quality of
the region; third, the composition of the members and organs of the senses;
fourth, the mercy and mildness of the weather; fifth, the age of the parents; and
the goodness and mildness of sustenance also helps, which is the sixth. (Las
Casas, 1958: 73)

Las Casas concludes from this that the nature of the Americas is capable
of producing rational beings and not simply half-men or “homunculi,” as
Sepúlveda argued. Recall as well that the latter’s thesis was that Indians could
be legitimately enslaved because they were manifestly inferior to Europeans
in terms of their physical, moral, and intellectual capacity. From the polemic
between these two Spanish thinkers, we can conclude that colonialism and
environmental theories have been linked since the sixteenth century, such
that when Buffon and his colleagues put forth arguments about the inferior-
ity of American man, they found themselves treading already well-known

33
 See my reflections on these two categories in the first chapter.
 Striated Spaces 239

epistemic territory. The difference is that whereas Las Casas and Sepúlveda
thought of racial superiority or inferiority in synchronic terms, eighteenth-
century enlightenment thinkers understood it in diachronic terms, introducing
the variable of time as a criterion of judgment. In this case, the inferiority of
the Americas is not based on an ontological difference but on a historic differ-
ence that eliminates the spatial coexistence of different societies in the name
of temporal and progressive linearity, with modern Europe at the vanguard.
American man can and should be colonized because he occupies an inferior
evolutionary stage compared to that currently experienced by European man.
The latter, for his part, has the mission and moral responsibility to bring
civilization to every corner of the planet, thereby promoting the progressive
“humanization of humanity.” What Buffon will do is to think of European
superiority in terms of the history of the Earth, with geographic influence as
the hinge of his argument.
In effect, it was Buffon who first elaborated a theory of the earth that sought
to explain the planet’s successive geologic and climatic changes from its for-
mation to the present, and he was the first to conclude on this basis that the
nature of the Americas is openly hostile to the development of civilization.
When Buffon wrote the The Epochs of Nature in 1779, he had already spent
several years working on an encyclopedic natural theory of the earth (in nine
volumes) which put him into various difficulties with the theologians of the
Sorbonne. The Count’s scientific explanations did not align with the seven
biblical days in which God supposedly created the universe. For Buffon, the
earth’s geological and climatic history had begun 76,000 years ago and not
4,004 years before Christ as was believed in theological circles. And seven
epochs had passed between the establishment of its current form and the
emergence of civilization. His thesis is that it is not possible to understand
human civilization without first understanding the history of the geologic
conditions that have served as its condition of possibility. Buffon supposes
that civilization is the result of a long process that began when the earth, like
other planets, entered a primitive state of liquefaction (Buffon, 2018) During
that first epoch, and as a consequence of its greater proximity to the sun, the
earth rotated around its axis faster than the more distant planets and it thus
acquired the shape recently discovered by La Condamine and his colleagues
on the geodesic expedition: a globe flattened at the poles and widened at the
equator. This first fact would determine the successive climatic development
of the planet, including the birth of civilization.
With two-thousand nine-hundred and thirty-six years having passed,
according to Buffon’s modest calculations, a second epoch began marked
by the progressive solidification of the globe and the formation of the first
mountain ranges. Since the globe is not a perfect sphere and the activity
of the sun is stronger at the equator than the poles, we can assume that the
240 Chapter 5

northern regions cooled before the southern regions, creating ideal condi-
tions for the flourishing of life and its natural environment: water. A vast sea
formed around the poles gradually expanded to overtake the entire surface
of the earth, placing the entire planet under the rule of the sea, initiating the
third epoch. Seashells found on top of the highest mountains are proof of this
universal flood and can no doubt “be regarded as the first inhabitants of the
globe” (Buffon, 2018 [1779]: 51). I am particularly interested in the fourth
epoch because this is when, for Buffon, the conditions existed for the emer-
gence of terrestrial fauna, and particularly gigantic animals. His thesis is that
water did not recede from the surface of the earth uniformly, but rather first
happened in the northern regions: the high mountains of Siberia, the entire
territory of Europe, and vast parts of Asia. This is why these dry lands in the
north were the first to be fertilized with life, which explains its immense vital
superiority over the humid lands of the south:

All these considerations suggest to us that the regions of our north, whether
the sea or the land, not only were the first made fertile, but it was also in these
same regions that living Nature was raised to its greatest dimensions. And how
can one explain this superiority of force and priority of origination given to this
region of the north exclusively among other parts of the Earth? Because we
see by the example South America, in the lands where only small animals are
found, and in the seas solely the manatee, which is as small by comparison with
a whale as the tapir is by comparison with the elephant. We see, I say, by this
striking example, that Nature never produced in the lands of the south, animals
comparable in grandeur with the animals of the north. (Buffon, 2018 [1779]:
95–96, author’s emphasis)

Since the quantity of organic material is greater in the North that in the South,
it was there that the largest and strongest animals appeared.34 There had never
been animals the size of the rhinoceros, mammoth, elephant, giraffe, camel,
hippopotamus, or whale in South America. All the animals one finds in the
Americas are weaker and smaller. When life was overflowing with strength
in the North, the Americas were a swampy and barren region where only
mosquitoes and reptiles lived. Buffon’s conclusion is that life in the Americas
“was born late and never existed there with the same force and active power
as in the northern regions” (Buffon, 2018 [1779]: 93).

34
 Gerbi attributes Buffon’s fascination for elephants, rhinoceroses, mammoths, hippopotamus and
other giant animals to Buffon’s own formidable size. He was a large well-built man who looked
more like a marshal than a scientist. On the other hand, Gerbi attributes Buffon’s contempt for
insects and other small animals to another of his physiological qualities: shortsightedness, which
prevented him from using a microscope (Gerbi, 2010: 16; 18–19)
 Striated Spaces 241

But if America is a continent that remained submerged for much longer

under water, what kind of civilization could arise there compared with that
of Europe? Buffon’s response is unequivocal: the nature of the Americas is
not only unfavorable to the development of animals, but also to the develop-
ment of civilization. There life is still young and untamed, and so human
populations have to resign themselves in the face of the overwhelming power
of untamed nature. The people who live in the Americas are passive and
indolent, incapable of rational control over the forces of nature. Like the
higher animals, the people of the Americas are small in size and tend to get
smaller, they are infertile and hardly sexually active, they are fearful and
cowardly, and they lack all moral force. Even the European colonists suffer
upon settling in America the inevitable organic degradation that results from
the atmosphere and become Europoids. As we will see, it was precisely this
thesis—the degeneration of Europeans in America—that provoked not only
the apologetic reaction of the New Granadian criollos but also the indignation
of enlightened elites in the United States.35
Even more fervent in his denigration of the Americas than Buffon was
the Dutch cleric Cornelius de Pauw, who served on the court of Frederick
the Great and was a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. Due to
his undeserved fame as an “expert in exotic cultures,”36 Diderot commis-
sioned de Pauw to draft an article on the Americas that would be published
in 1776 in the second edition of the Encyclopedia. The cleric, however, had
never visited any of the countries about which he wrote with such elegance.
His sources were taken from the writings of the Inca Garcilaso, Las Casas,
Acosta, La Condamine, and Gumilla, among others.37 What is striking is
that he reads all of these sources according to the Buffonian thesis of the
immaturity of the American continent. Thus, for example, where speaking of
the scarcity of population and civilization at the moment of the conquest, de
Pauw claims that

The near complete lack of agriculture, the enormity of the jungles, the plains of
these same lands, the water of the rivers scattered in their basins, the swamps
and the lakes, multiplied to infinity, the mountains of insects as a consequence

35
 We know that once independence had been achieved, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin
traveled to France to get Buffon to retract his injurious claims, but even though the Count promised
to correct “some errors,” not a single amendment was issued from his pen in the final volumes of
his Natural History.
36
 At this time de Pauw had already published his A General [Philosophical] History of the Ameri-
cans (1768) and his Investigaciones filósoficas referents a los Egipcios y a los Chinos (1774),
which were much appreciated by the editors of the Encyclopedia.
37
 As Abel Orlando Pugliese points out so clearly, “The ‘recherches’ of C. de Pauw are precisely
‘philosophical’, and not empirical nor historical; that is to say, research (without case studies, so to
speak) on the experiences and reflections of others” (Pugliese, 1994: 1362).
242 Chapter 5

of all this, make the climate of America an unhealthy element in certain zones,
and much colder than it should be due to its latitude. (de Pauw, 1991 [1776]: 6)

The echoes of Buffon resound here, in the sense that the southern regions
cooled later than the northern ones and that the water from the universal flood
took much longer to recede. He concludes from this that American nature,
due to its jungly and swampy character, holds back any effort at civilization.
This is also why the Indians fell ill at the moment of the conquest and disap-
peared upon the slightest contact with Europeans. Their weak physical consti-
tution prevented them from developing resistance against venereal diseases.
Moreover, the rugged character of the geography prevented contact between
them, making population increase and the development of agriculture dif-
ficult (de Pauw, 1991 [1776]: 10). All species of domestic livestock brought
from Europe degenerate in America, which explains why women in the
Americas produce such weak milk. It would seem as if all the food that one
consumes there, instead of producing strong beings, creates people inclined
to laziness, partying, and drunkenness. “One suspects,” de Pauw writes, “that
the cold and phlegmatic temperament of the Americans leads them to these
excesses more than other men, which we could call, following Montesquieu,
a national drunkenness” (20). So that what explains the lack of civilization
in the Americas it is not so much the technical inferiority of the Indians vis-
à-vis the Europeans, nor the economic backwardness of the Spanish empire
vis-à-vis the other European powers, but the natural degeneration that the
American climate produces. Not only the living beings native to the Americas
but also those implanted in the Americas from Europe, become degenerate
beings:

It is possible that there are particular causes in the American climate that lead
certain species of animals to be smaller than their counterparts on our continent
like wolves, bears, lynxes, wild cats, and other. It is also in the quality of the
soil, the air, and the food that M. Kalm believes you can find the origin of this
degeneration that also extends to livestock brought from Europe to the terra
firma English colonies. (de Pauw, 1991 [1776]: 19, author’s emphasis)

The only possible conclusion from this line of reasoning is that: “the criollos
have suffered some kind of alteration due the nature of the climate” (de Pauw,
1991 [1776]: 22). In effect, the conditions of geography and salubrity are so
bad in the Americas that no person or animal from Europe can keep their
faculties intact there. Not even the criollos, who pride themselves on being
superior to the savage natives, can escape this environmental degeneration.
De Pauw argues that the criollos share the same vice as the natives: “they
expect everything from nature and nothing from their own hands.” Instead
 Striated Spaces 243

of transforming the rugged climate by felling forests and drying up swamps,

the criollos prefer to boast of their inactivity and be served by the labor of
the Indians. The cleric mocks that it is Spanish writers like Feijoo who take
up the defense of the American criollos: “If the criollos had written works
capable of immortalizing their name in the intellectual world, we would not
have had to take up the pen in their defense in the pompous style of Jerónimo
de Feijoo, which only they can and should do” (23).38
Others, such as William Robertson, were more favorable to the qualitative
distinction between criollos and natives. A priest from Edinburgh and chap-
lain to the King of Scotland in the time of Hume, Robertson was the author
of the well-known History of America published in 1777. The reason for this
distinction between criollos and natives is methodological: against Buffon
and de Pauw, Robertson considers it an error to establish a categorical dif-
ference between the climate of the two hemispheres and to attribute such an
absolute effect to geography on the development of morality and intelligence:

But in inquiries concerning either the bodily or mental qualities of particular

races of men, there is not a more common or more seducing error, that that of
ascribing to a single cause, those characteristic peculiarities, which are the effect
of the combined operation of many causes. The climate and soil of America
differ, in so many respects, from those of other hemisphere, and this difference
is so obvious and striking, that philosophers of great eminence have laid hold
on this as sufficient to account for what is peculiar in the constitution of its
inhabitants. They rest on physical causes alone, and consider the feeble frame
and languid desire of the Americans, as consequences of the temperament of
that portion of the globe which they occupy. But the influence of political and
moral causes ought not to have been overlooked. (Robertson, 1790 [1777], 56)39

Robertson’s opinion is thus the same as that defended by Diego Martín Tanco
in his polemic against Caldas: in addition to climate and geography (physi-
cal factors), it is necessary to consider the influence of moral and political

38
 As Gerbi rightly notes, Father Feijoo had expressed his admiration for the criollo culture of the
American viceroyalties, even claiming that education flourishes there more than in Spain and that
people born in the Americas have greater intellectual energy than those in Europe (Gerbi, 2010:
186–187).
39
 The reference to Buffon and de Pauw’s writings is direct, as can be seen more clearly in this pas-
sage: “Struck with the appearance of degeneracy in the human species throughout the New World,
and astonished at beholding a vast continent occupied by a naked, feeble, and ignorant race of men,
some authors of great name have maintained, that this part of the globe had but lately emerged
from the sea, and become fit for the residence of man; that every thing in it bore marks of a recent
original; and that its inhabitants, lately called into existence, and still at the beginning of their
career, were unworthy to be compared with the people of a more ancient and improved continent”
(Robertson, 1790 [1777], 48–49).
244 Chapter 5

factors, like, for example, different levels of social evolution, in order to

judge the constitution of the different races of the Americas scientifically.
And this is precisely where the methodological crack opens that allows us
to mark a qualitative difference between criollos and natives. Even though
the Europeans and Indigenous people share the same geographic habitat and
are subjected to the same climatic influence, the way they respond to this
influence is qualitatively different. Since they occupy a higher level of social
evolution, Europeans intervene actively to control nature and subject it to the
imperatives of reason, while Indigenous people, immersed at a lower level,
appear passive with respect to the “laws of the climate”:

The talents of civilized men are continually exerted in rendering their own con-
dition more comfortable; and by their ingenuity and inventions, they can, in a
great measure, supply the defects, and guard against the inconveniences of any
climate. But the improvident savage is affected by every circumstance peculiar
to his situation. He takes no precaution either to mitigate or to improve it. Like
a plant, or an animal, he is formed by the climate under which he is placed, and
feels the full force of its influence. (Robertson, 1790 [1777], 204)

The Buffonian thesis of the European’s degeneration in American territory

is thus undermined. Even if a European changes geographic habitat, he will
never become a Europoid because his nature is already instilled with cogni-
tive, moral, and social competencies that are evolutionarily acquired and can-
not be reversed. Thus, in order to understand a specific population’s capacity
to respond to geographic imperatives, it is more important to investigate their
level of social evolution than the climate. Robertson yields on this point to
the dominant opinion of the eighteenth-century enlightened community:
there is only one humanity but it exists at different levels of evolution. Just
as an individual transitions gradually from infancy to maturity, the same
goes for the development of the species, only that while some people have
reached maturity, others remain stuck in infancy. What is interesting about
the Americas, according to Robertson, is that it allows the scientist to observe
the coexistence of different evolutionary levels, making possible an a poste-
riori reconstruction of human history. In that history, the “American savage”
occupies the lowest rung, insofar as they represent the most primitive stage
of human evolution:

In order to complete the history of the human mind . . . we must contemplate

man in all those various situations wherein he has been placed. We must fol-
low him in his progress through the different stages of society, as he gradually
advances from the infant state of civil life towards its maturity and decline. We
must observe, at each period, how the faculties of his understanding unfold, we
 Striated Spaces 245

must attend to the efforts of his active powers, watch the motions of affection
as they rise in his breast, and mark whither they tend, and with what ardor they
are exerted . . . [T]he discovery of the New World enlarged the sphere of con-
templation, and presented nations to our view, in stages of their progress, much
less advanced than those wherein they have been observed in our continent. In
America, man appears under the rudest form in which we can conceive him to
subsist. We behold communities just beginning to unite, and may examine the
sentiments and actions in the infancy of social life. (Robertson, 1790 [1777],
43–44)

For Robertson, human history is not a simple extension of the history of the
earth, as Buffon presumes, since there is something that qualitatively sepa-
rates people from nature and all other living beings: the capacity to think, or
what some call “spirit” (or Mind). But this spirit is not given once and for
all but has a history, and the Native American is important for the human
sciences precisely because they expand our knowledge of this “history of the
spirit.” From Robertson’s long-distance ethnology (he had never been to the
Americas), this analysis of “savage thought” helps us reconstruct the history
of this first stage of the human mind. Thus, his essentially phenomenological
explication differs from that offered by Buffon and de Pauw on the following
point: the natural weakness of the Indians is not due to the detrimental influ-
ence of the climate but to the incipient evolutionary level of their cognitive
capacities.
Robertson accepts that the Indians were unable to resist the Spanish con-
quest despite their overwhelming numeric advantage. He also recognizes that
the majority of them died from diseases that were common in Europe, or
performing physical labor that would have been done by a European without
major health consequences. Buffon and de Pauw argue that this proves the
great physical inferiority of the Americans with respect to the Europeans.
Unlike them, however, Robertson believes that this weakness cannot be
explained by physical factors alone, but that there also exists a psychologi-
cal factor that his colleagues did not account for: the limited development
of intellectual capacities. If Indigenous Americans lack virility and strength,
this is not only due to the (hot, humid, or jungly) geographic location they
inhabit but due to the fact that their thought cannot rise above sensory stim-
uli. “The thoughts and attention of a savage are confined within the small
circle of objects, immediately conducive to his preservation or enjoyment.
Everything beyond that, escapes his observation, or is perfectly indifferent to
him” (Robertson, 1790 [1777], 75). This means that if Indigenous people are
not inclined to productive labor, it is not because they are physically weaker
than Europeans but because they do not have the mental capacity to detach
themselves from the present and plan for the future. Their infantile mind is
246 Chapter 5

anchored in the here and now, such that any kind of anticipatory or forward-
looking activity is completely foreign to them:

His thoughts extend not beyond what relates to animal life; and when they are
not directed towards some of its concerns, his mind is totally inactive. In situ-
ations where no extraordinary effort either of ingenuity or labor is requisite, in
order to satisfy the simple demands of nature, the powers of the mind are so sel-
dom roused to any exertion that. The rational faculties continue almost dormant
and unexercised . . . Hence the people of several tribes in America waste their
life in a listless indolence. To be free from occupation, seems to be all the enjoy-
ment towards which they aspire. They will continue whole days stretched out in
their hammocs, or seated on the earth, in perfect idleness, without changing their
posture, or raising their eyes from the ground, or uttering a single word . . . The
cravings of hunger may rouse them; but as they devour with little distinction,
whatever will appease its instinctive demands, the exertions which these occa-
sion are of short duration. (Robertson, 1790 [1777], 79–80; 82–83)

The inactivity of the body thus has more to do with the immaturity of the spirit
than the influence of the climate. Climate is certainly a variable to account
for since food is more abundant in tropical zones than cold regions, where
the need to gather food in the winter stimulates the development of the intel-
lectual faculties. This is why, Robertson argues, “the North-Americans and
natives of Chili, who inhabit the temperate regions in the two great districts of
America, are people of cultivated and enlarged understandings, when viewed
in comparison with some of those seated in the islands, or on the banks of the
Maragnon and Orinoco” (Robertson, 1790 [1777], 81). Even the Presbyterian
pastor is inclined to divide American Indians into two broad groups according
to the geographic zone they inhabit: one group that lives in North America
between the St. Lawrence River and the Gulf of Mexico and also between La
Plata river and Tierra del Fuego; and another group composed of Indians that
lives in southern or tropical America, including the Indigenous populations of
New Granada. In the first category, “the human species appears manifestly to
be more perfect. The natives are more robust, more active, more intelligent,
and more courageous.” In the second group, conversely, the Indians are “less
vigorous in the efforts of their mind, of a gentle but dastardly spirit, more
enslaved by pleasure, and more sunk in indolence” (205–206).
Despite this concession to climate, however, Robertson believes that
American inferiority vis-à-vis the European is better explained in terms of
cognitive evolution. It is enough to look at the kind of language that the
natives of America speak to notice that their capacity for reflection is quite
limited. Directly citing La Condamine, Robertson says that the American
Indian is
 Striated Spaces 247

unacquainted with all ideas which been denominated universal, or abstract, or

of reflection. The range of his understanding must, of course, be very confined,
and his reasoning powers be employed merely on what is sensible. This is so
remarkably the case with the ruder nations of America, that their languages
(as we shall afterwards find) have not a word to express any thing but what
is material or corporeal. Time, Space, Substance, and a thousand other terms
which represent abstract and universal ideas, are altogether unknown to them.
(Robertson, 79)

If American languages do not allow for the articulation of abstract ideas, then
any kind of social reflexivity is also impossible. Mentally abstracting from
the present and projecting human activity into the future is also not possible,
nor is the development of writing and the art of calculation: “There are many
who cannot reckon farther than three; and have no denomination to distin-
guish any number above it . . . When they would convey any number beyond
these, they point to the hair of their head, intimating that it is equal to them”
(Robertson, 77). But worse still is that the lack of reflection also implies that
inability to distance oneself from immediate needs, leading to the confusion
of needs with sentiments. The Indians are thus insensible, cold, melancholic,
dull beings who are hard-hearted and not excited by anything, not even the
death of their kin or the ineffable pleasures of sexual love. Citing Gumilla,
Robertson says that when an Indian gets sick, their family members abandon
them to die, and he notes that the Spanish had to mandate them by law to
care for each other in case of illness. Similarly, they appear to be completely
indifferent to sex40 and despise any show of affection from their women, who
they treat “no better than a beast of burden, destined to every office of labor
and fatigue” (89). Their coldness of feeling is such that when the men get
together to hunt or row, they spend entire days without exchanging a single
word and it is “only when they are animated by intoxicating liquors . . . that
they become gay and conversible” (196).

5.3.2 The Periphery Writes Back

The criollos of New Granada reacted indignantly to these kinds of imperial
representations of the population and territory of the Americas. Their irritation
was not so much that Black people, mestizos, and Indians were denigrated
(on this they agreed fully), but that they were themselves being dangerously
“equated” with the castes. As we already saw in the second chapter, criollo

40
 Opinions of this sort regarding the sexual indifference of Indians led Hegel to write: “I even recol-
lect having read that a clergyman used to ring a bell at midnight to remind them to perform their
matrimonial duties” (Hegel, 1975: 165)
248 Chapter 5

elites based their social preeminence on a discourse of ethnic superiority that

was profoundly anchored in their habitus. This meant that the attack by the
philosophes was intolerable for criollos not because it injured their nationalist
ambitions, as Gerbi argues, but because it threatened their most sacred cul-
tural capital: blood purity. We will thus see that the criollos’ reaction, rather
than being a nationalist defense, is a defense of their own whiteness.

5.3.2.1 In the Belly of the Beast

“On July 15, 1767 a writ from his Majesty was announced to all the Jesuits
banishing them from Spanish territories, and even though I am not certain at
present where we will go, it will likely be Italy.”41 These words, cited by the
historian Juan Manuel Pacheco, were written from Mompox by Father Juan
de Valdivieso on the eve of his forced exile to Italy. The Jesuits of Mompox
and Cartagena were in fact the first to be expelled from New Granada, and
all of the disciples of Saint Ignatius who were missionaries in the viceroyalty
had to pass through Mompox. Among them was Juan de Velasco, a priest
from Riobamba, who ran the philosophy program in the Jesuit College in
Popayán, and who Gerbi identifies as one of the writers who “exposed” the
doctrines of Robertson, Buffon, and de Pauw (Gerbi, 2010: 217).42 In effect,
Velasco left New Granada for good in November 1767, without knowing that
his Historia del Reino de Quito would become one of the central documents
in “the dispute of the New World.”
Upon arriving in Italy, Velasco and his companions from the order found
themselves engulfed in an unexpected intellectual polemic. In 1768, a year
after his exile, the first volume of A General History of the Americans by
Cornelius de Pauw was published in French. Two years later, the Dutch
Cleric’s work was openly critiqued by the Benedictine Priest Joseph
Pernetty in his Dissertation sur l’Amérique et les Américains. The publica-
tion of Robertson’s History of America came later in 1777, a text that was
quickly disseminated throughout Europe and greatly popularized Buffon’s
environmental thesis. All of these works, in addition to profoundly affect-
ing the image of the American criollo, among whom the Jesuits considered
themselves a sort of “intellectual vanguard,” also drew upon a series of
travel narratives written by priests of the Society like Lafiteau, Buffier, and
Charlevoix, later compiled as Lettres Edifiants (Corvalán, 1999: 147–154).

41
 Cited by Pacheco, 1989: 513. According to Pacheco, the Jesuits of New Granada were assigned
Urbino, Italy as their place of residence. Others were allocated to small cities like Fano, Pergola,
Fossombrone, and Senigallia.
42
 Velasco was born into a prestigious aristocratic family from Riobamba. His father, don Juan de
Velasco y López de Moncayo, was a sergeant major in the army, and his baptismal godmother,
doña Teresa Maldonado, was the sister of the enlightened geographer and intellectual don Pedro
Vicente Maldonado, who I have mentioned previously in this work.
 Striated Spaces 249

It is not surprising that the exiled Jesuits, still disturbed by the injustice of
expulsion, felt attacked by these modern philosophers and decided to defend
their missionary work. Although I will focus on the arguments of Father
Velasco, I will also consider the work of the Mexican Priest Francisco Xavier
Clavijero, who Velasco acknowledged as an influence. Taking advantage of
their new homes in Europe, “in the belly of the beast” as Martí would say, the
two Jesuits embarked upon an impassioned defense of the Americas and its
people against the “slander” of Robertson, Buffon, and de Pauw.43
The point that the Jesuits criticize most strongly is the geographical
determinism of modern philosophers. It is not true, Velasco argues, that the
Americans are weak due to the negative influence of the climate on their
bodies. The development of physical strength has more to do with work hab-
its, than one’s place of birth and residence. Someone born strong in a cold
climate can become idle and weak if they do not exercise through work; simi-
larly, someone born weak in a hot climate can become strong if they apply
their body to physical labor. “I knew an Indian named Chacha in the province
of Ibarra,” he writes. “He was born and raised in a hot climate, and being
over 30 years old, he dedicated himself to digging ditches for sugar mills. I
saw him often working among more than one hundred Black Africans, who
looked upon him with great respect and more than a little envy” (Velasco,
1998 [1789]: 328). The New Granadian Jesuit thus appeals to experience as
the ideal means to refute the theories of philosophers who have never been
to the Americas. In this way, he seeks to uphold an idea that comes from
modern science itself: general theories, as coherent as they may be, should be
considered false if they cannot be validated by experience.
Other examples show that it is equally erroneous to establish a direct
relationship between climate and intelligence. Long experience as a mis-
sionary taught Velasco that the Indian could excel in any domain of human
knowledge if provided with the “correct education.” Many came to study in
the University and became scholars of law or philosophy, while others even
became doctors in the Church. Such was the case of an Indian nicknamed
Lunarejo, who was considered a saint and who joined the Dominican order
and became the rector of the University of San Antonio Abad del Cuzco:

The Dominicans from Lima have an original portrait of this Indian, famous no
less for saintliness than erudition, as his excellent works show. He is in a very
beautiful painting called the three doctors, hung in the grand salon where they

43
 Clavijero’s History of Mexico was published in Italian in 1781. Velasco, for his part, completed
Historia del Reino de Quito in 1789, but despite his efforts to find support in Spain, the (incom-
plete) manuscript was not published until the mid-nineteenth century. On the polemic around the
manuscript in Ecuador, see: Roig, 1984a: 93–96.
250 Chapter 5

hold literary events. In the middle is Saint Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor;
to the left, Father Francisco Suárez, the Exceptional Doctor; and to the right
the Indian Lunarejo, the Sublime Doctor. This is what M. de Pauw’s beasts can
accomplish if they acquire an education. (Velasco, 1998 [1789]: 347)

The climate therefore has nothing to do with strength or intelligence. Clavijero

writes that “the Swiss are stronger than the Italians, and still we do not believe
the Italians are degenerated, nor do we tax the climate of Italy” (Clavijero,
1807, [1781]: 337). And Velasco, for his part, points out that you do not see
as many drunks on the streets of Quito in a year as you do in a single week
in the major cities of Europe, without this implying that the European cli-
mate leads to drunkenness (Velasco, 1998 [1789]: 341). We therefore have
no reason to think that the American climate, as opposed to the European, is
harmful to moral and intellectual development. On the contrary, as Clavijero
ironically remarks, “If M. de Paw had wrote his Philosophical Researches in
America, we might with reason apprehend the degeneracy of the human spe-
cies under the Climate of America” (Clavijero, 1807, [1781]: 327).
With regard to the thesis about the degeneration of criollos, Velasco and
Clavijero take a firm position. The fine arts have flourished in both Quito
and Mexico, and universities have produced prestigious American-born doc-
tors whose works are recognized across Europe. Velasco says that nothing
impressed the wise La Condamine more during his stay in Quito than the
magnificent splendor of the churches. He also cites the case of a French doc-
tor named Gaudé who decided to abandon Paris for Quito, attracted by its
refined culture and the piety of the criollo families (Velasco, 1998 [1789]:
355–356). Speaking about his own experience, the Jesuit relates the following
episode that took place not in Quito or Bogotá but Italy:

The case of Bologna was amusing and even comical, in which the modern
philosophers represented the most ridiculous but well-deserved role. When
the first group of Jesuits expelled from Spanish territory arrived there in 1768,
they were visited by several people of distinguished character curious to meet
them . . . Their sweet and agreeable manner lead one to ask what part of Spain
was he a native of? He responded none, because he was American. They were
stunned by this response, looking incredulously at one another . . . They believed
without a doubt that the Americans, even if they were born of Europeans, were
deformed dwarves, little different from the Indians, according to pictures they
had seen of them. The left their error behind more disabused of it every day.
With the familiar manner they maintained, they finally came to see that these
witty people born in a climate deemed ill-fated, were capable not only of writing
well; but of writing in such a way that demanded the admiration and attention of
the enlightened world. (Velasco, 1998 [1789]: 355)
 Striated Spaces 251

But in addition to extolling the intelligence of the criollos, a large part of

Velasco and Clavijero’s arguments were dedicated to a defense of the Indians
and their history. There are three slanders directed from Europe against the
American Indians that the Jesuits wish to discredit: their alleged homosexu-
ality, the quality of women’s milk, and the absence of universal concepts
in their languages. Clavijero is indignant in the face of the first slander. No
respectable historian has testified to homosexuality as a common practice
among Indians, and on the contrary, almost all write that many communities
have severe laws prohibiting the practice. And if some Caribbean people were
once “infected by that vice,” this did not mean that all Americans practiced
it. If this were true, then all European people would be culpable of the same,
since the Greeks and the Romans were prone to such an “abomination”
(Clavijero, 1807 [1781]: 360). With regard to mother’s milk, the argument
had already been deployed by the Spanish against the criollos since before
the eighteenth century: from birth, Spaniards in the Indies were nursed by
Indian and Black servants who transmitted the defects of their own race and
“bastardized them.” Clavijero simply responds that if Europeans and crio-
llos take Indian women as wet nurses, it is because “they find that they are
wholesome, faithful, and diligent in such service.”44 And against de Pauw’s
accusation that Indian women menstruated irregularly, a clear symptom of
their unhealthy physical constitution, the priest responds that he “can give no
account,” commenting sardonically that: “M. de Paw, who has from Berlin
seen so many things of America, has perhaps found, in some French author,
the manner of knowing that which we neither can, nor choose to inquire into”
(336).
What Velasco and Clavijero can in fact “give account” of is that Indigenous
languages are as expressive as any European language. The two learned
Quechua and Nahuatl, respectively, as part of their missionary training. It is
enough to cite Clavijero’s always ironic commentary:

M. De Paw without leaving, without moving from his closet at Berlin, knows
the things of America better than the Americans themselves, and in the knowl-
edge of their different languages even excels those who speak them. We have
learned the Mexican [language] and heard it spoken by the Mexicans for many
years; but never knew that it was deficient in numerical terms, and words signi-
fying universal ideas, until M. de Paw gave us that information . . . We knew,
lastly, that the Mexicans had numeral words to express as many thousands, or

44
 This argument is also interesting, since Father José de Acosta, whom Clavijero very much admired,
said that the Society of Jesus should take precautions in ordaining criollo priests, “due to the vices
that stay with them from having nursed Indian milk and having grown up among Indians” (cited
by Lavallé, 1990: 326).
252 Chapter 5

millions, as they pleased; but M. de Paw knows the direct contrary, and there is
not a doubt but he knows better than us; because we had the misfortune to be
born under a clime less favourable to the operations of the intellect. (Clavijero,
1807 [1781]: 394–395)

If Indigenous languages can articulate abstract ideas, this means that Indians
were capable of developing scientific knowledge. Contradicting Robertson,
Velasco argues that the ancient Peruvians invented sundials, constructed
astronomical observatories, and developed complex methods for measur-
ing time, which shows that “they were very proficient in gnomic science”
(Velasco, 1998 [1789]: 355–391). For his part, Clavijero affirms that while
no American nation knew the art of writing, some had developed methods
to preserve historical memory: “What were the historical paintings of the
Mexicans but durable signs, to transmit to posterity the memory of events to
distant places and distant ages?” (Clavijero, 1807 [1781]: 373). But despite
recognizing this, Jesuit arguments in defense of the Indians have to do above
all with their capacity to learn and assimilate Western knowledge. Buffon’s
environmental thesis is not refuted by showing that the Indians produce a
different science from the West, but by emphasizing that they have civilized
their moral and political customs through Christianity, that they have studied
in prestigious universities and even become doctors of the Church. For the
two criollo exiles, Western knowledge continues to be the “canon” from
which the moral and intellectual maturity of Indigenous people is judged. The
question is therefore: what does this Jesuit “vindication” really consist of?
Arturo Roig insists that although Velasco and Clavijero were members
of the landowning criollo class, they represented the most progressive and
intelligent sector of this class, because they used the figure of the Indian
as an ideological resource to resist the excesses of Spanish colonial policy
(Roig, 1984a: 242). I would add that the defense of the Indian advanced by
two Jesuits is actually a defense of the mission of the Society of Jesus in the
Americas (and the world), which in their opinion had been mistreated with
the expulsion decree of the Bourbons. The latter acted unjustly because they
now wanted to take advantage of the Indians as a productive labor force after
it was the Jesuits (and not the goodness of the government or a favorable
climate) that had taken on the responsibility of civilizing them. The Jesuits of
New Granada, as we said earlier, had vast territories under their pastoral juris-
diction and allocated to missions in the Orinoco, the Amazon, and the Eastern
Plains. Moreover, they owned immense haciendas and colleges where the
wisest criollo elites were educated, with whom they maintained their close
political, social, and blood ties. Thus, the Jesuit vindication of the Indian
served as an “ideological resource” to show two things: first, that with their
missionary work in the Americas the Jesuits (and no other religious order)
 Striated Spaces 253

were responsible for offering the West an opportunity to unite all human
cultures45; and second, that it was the criollos educated in their colleges who
were most suited to govern the destiny of the American colonies, and not a
Bourbon dynasty corrupted as it was by an insatiable modernizing desire.46
In fact, and very much despite their adherence to the Jesuit project of cul-
tural syncretism, it seems clear that Velasco and Clavijero participate in the
same habitus of ethnic distancing that I examined in the second chapter. The
social preeminence of the criollos over the castes, as I argued, is based in an
apparatus for which “blood purity” is the symbolic capital functioning as an
element of distinction. Velasco could respect the Indians because he believed
they were racially pure, but he profoundly despised mestizos, mulattos, and
zambos because they were mixed races. Curiously, after having dedicated
many chapters to refuting Buffon, Robertson, and de Pauw’s theses, the Jesuit
from Riobamba concludes by stating that mestizos (at the time fifty percent
of the New Granadian population) constitute “the shame of the New World”!

The vices of drunkenness, theft, and lying reign among the mestizo, Black,
mulatto, and zambo masses, with the exception of the individuals who lack no
good in any class. If any one of these four classes could reasonably be called
the shame of the inhabitants of the New World, it is the mestizos, because they
are generally idlers without employment or occupation, and not obligated like

45
 In this sense, the Ecuadorian philosopher Bolívar Echeverría is right when he says that the project
of Jesuit universalization constituted a kind of alternative modernity (which he calls “baroque
modernity”) against the hegemonic project of capitalist modernity. Despite being an order of the
Catholic church, the Jesuits were not a medieval order (like the Franciscans and the Dominicans)
but rather a modern order. This is why the cultural unification of the world that they proposed
should not be confused with the medieval project of the “Christian Orb.” Rather, it was a gigantic
project of “cultural syncretism” built on the material foundation of the modern world system,
which sought prefigurations and signs of Christianity in the past of all human cultures. Echeverría
says that this project, “seen in light of this end of the postmodern century, does not seem purely
and properly conservative and retrograde; their defense of tradition is an invitation to return to the
past or to premodernize the modern. It is a project that is also inscribed, albeit in its own way,
in the affirmation of modernity” (Echeverría, 2000: 65). For his part, Octavio Paz comments that
“The spiritual and intellectual nucleus of the strategy was a vision of world history as the gradual
unfolding of a universal and supernatural truth . . . The road to that universalization led through the
ancient beliefs and practices of India, China, and Mexico” (Paz, 1990: 35).
46
 In this respect, Octavio Paz claims: “The awakening of criollo spirit coincided with the rise of
the Jesuits, who displaced the Franciscans and Dominicans to become the most powerful and
influential order in New Spain. The Jesuits were more than teachers to the criollos; they were
their spokesmen and their conscience . . . Jesuit syncretism, joined to emerging criollo patriotism,
not only modified traditional attitudes about Indian civilization but motivated a kind of resurrec-
tion of that past . . . Other theologians, among them a majority of the Jesuits, maintained that the
Indians’ ancient beliefs—either by virtue of natural grace or because of the Spaniards—contained
a glimmering of the true faith, even though only confused memory of the doctrine survived” (Paz,
1990: 36–37)
254 Chapter 5

others by the public authority to work, they give themselves without restraint
over to vice, for which idleness is the fertile mother. (Velasco, 1998 [1789]:
357)47

Clavijero also took part in this “spontaneous sociology” when discussing

Black people. In his eagerness to refute the thesis that the physical form of
New World natives is contrary to the standard of Greco-Latin sculpture, the
Jesuit argues that there is a race that is imperfect from the aesthetic point of
view, it is not the Indians but Black people:

What can be imagined more contrary to the idea we have of beauty, and the per-
fection of the human frame, than a man whose body emits a rank smell, whose
skin is black as ink, whose head and face are covered with black wool, instead
of hair, whose eyes are yellow or bloody, whose lips are thick and blackish, and
whose nose is flat? Such are the inhabitants of a very large portion of Africa,
and of many islands of Asia. (Clavijero, 1807 [1781]: 331)

In sum, the two Jesuits attempt to respond to the environmental thesis of

Buffon and his followers through an exaltation of the criollo and the American
Indian that nevertheless fails to escape the ethnic prejudices anchored in the
habitus of criollo elites. Antonello Gerbi (2010: 183) says that their emphatic
response was the result of their wounded pride because in the arguments of
the European philosophers they seemed to hear the echo of the slander that
they had received for centuries from the Iberian Peninsula. Even though the
Spanish and criollos believe themselves to be equally white, Catholic, and
pure of blood, their difference is rooted in the fact that ius soli prevailed
over ius sanguinis. Due to sole fact of having been born in the Americas and
not in Spain, criollos should be subordinated to the Spanish in all aspects of
social life. Thus, as the Spanishness of the criollos was called into question in
Europe, they were also involved in the same prejudices of which the Indians
were victims. If we add the expulsion of the Jesuits to this resentment at the
“equalization” to which the criollos were subjected, it is easy to understand
why the members of the Society of Jesus who were, according to Octavio
Paz, the “voice and conscience” of the criollos, reacted in the way they did.
With their vindication of the intellectual and moral capacity of the criollos,
the Jesuits sought not only to refute Buffon’s argument about the so-called

47
 On the contrary, when Velasco speaks of the idleness of the Indians, his words take on a differ-
ent tone. If the Indians don’t work, this should not to be considered a vice but a Christian virtue,
because they are content with “a rag to cover themselves, what is needed to feed them, and they
don’t aspire for more or want more. In this they are worthy of praise, and without knowing it,
they adhere to the saying of the apostle: habentes alimenta el quibus tegamur, his contenti sumus”
(Velasco 1998 [1789]: 340–341).
 Striated Spaces 255

“American degeneration.” In reality, their battle was more political than

philosophical: to show that the criollos were called to govern the Americas
independent of the Spanish. But, and this is the point that I wish to highlight,
what they demanded was not just to govern a territory, but also above all to
govern the American population: the criollos should govern over the castes,
independent from Spain, because they have the right of an indisputable ethnic
superiority.

5.3.2.2 Criollo Counterattack

The echoes of this “dispute of the New World” taking place in Europe also
resonated in New Granada. It was not only the exiled Jesuits who reacted
to the denigration by European philosophers, but also the most prominent
members of the New Granadian elite. The books of Buffon, Robertson,
Raynal, and de Pauw circulated in their original languages among Bogotá’s
enlightened community, as can be seen in the library catalog of don Antonio
Nariño,48 meaning that the criollos had first-hand access to the central texts of
the debate.49 Like the Jesuits in Bologna, enlightened criollos in Bogotá were
also disturbed by those texts proclaiming “equality from below” between
criollos and the castes. This equality strongly reminded them of the arsenal
of arguments that the Spanish had leveled against them in previous decades.
It is enough to consider, as an example, that one of the reasons given to deny
the inheritance of encomiendas to criollos was that they were of “lower qual-
ity” than their Spanish parents for having been born in American territory.
Many sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spaniards argued that the influence
of the tropical climate caused a kind of bodily and spiritual “mutation” in all
Europeans born overseas. Despite being the children of Spaniards, criollos
were not only born with bodily characteristics inferior to their parents, but
also with a negative shift in their temper and morality (Lavallé, 1990: 16–21).
Thus, for the most orthodox among the Spanish there was no difference
whatsoever between a criollo and a mestizo, because both were equally con-
taminated by the “stain of the earth.” It is not surprising then that the criollos
decided to counterattack and push back against the arguments of Buffon,

48
 The historian Juan Manuel Pacheco reports that “Nariño hastily hid various compromising books
after he was arrested for publishing The Rights of Man: Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws and
Persian Letters, and William Robertson’s History of Carlos V and History of America; the anti-
Spanish Historie philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens
dan les deux Indes by Guillermo Tomás Raynal; the work of Cornelius de Pauw denigrating the
Americans, General History of the Americans, and the work of the materialist Baron d’Holbach, La
morale universelle ou les devoirs de l’homme fondée sur la nature. Still remaining in his library,
among others, are Condillac’s Logic, Buffon’s Natural History in 36 volumes, and the mathemati-
cal works of Christian Wolf” (Pacheco, 1984: 14).
49
 In fact, almost all of the central works of the European enlightenment could be found in the librar-
ies of educated New Granadians, as Renán Silva’s magnificent study shows (2002: 279–311).
256 Chapter 5

Robertson, and de Pauw, seeking to eliminate all suspicion of their equality

with the castes.
As Andrea Cadelo Buitrago has clearly shown, the Semanario del Nuevo
Reino de Granada, the journal founded by Caldas in 1808, became the stage
for the criollo reaction against their foreign accusers. This is where articles by
Francisco Antonio Ulloa, José María Salazar, Joaquín Camacho, Jorge Tadeo
Lozano, and Francisco José de Caldas himself were published, in which,
according to Cadelo, “the criollo refutation of a purported American inferior-
ity was also made also through an climatic position that reproduced the theses
of the European naturalists” (Cadelo Buitrago, 2004: 107). This “climatic” or
environmental position as I have called it here is clearest in Caldas’ articles.
Particularly, in his text Del influjo del clima sobre los seres organizados, he
praises Buffon, who he does not hesitate to call “the Pliny of France” and
elevate to the category of those “extraordinary geniuses . . . who have opened
the doors to the sanctuary” (Caldas, 1942 [1808b]: 157). Caldas takes from
Buffon the thesis that the climate of the Americas is not particularly favorable
for the development of large animals, which explains why the llama, wolf,
puma, and vicuña are small, malformed, weak beings compared to the ani-
mals of the old continent.50 In fact, Caldas believes that the discovery of the
“bones of carnivorous elephants” in Soacha, rather than contradicting Buffon
as might be expected, confirms his hypothesis of a universal flood that forever
changed the planet’s climate. What was found in the savannah of Bogotá
were not living elephants, but cadavers of elephants that were dragged there
as the result of the catastrophe that belatedly submerged South America:

In the surroundings of this capital, in the esplanade of Bogotá near Soacha,

there are bones of carnivorous elephants, according to Humboldt. I have seen
and exhumed many such oversized bones from the jurisdiction of Timaná in
the headwaters of the Magdalena river. Don Manuel María Arboleda, friend of
the sciences and the learned, sent a box of these bones to Humboldt himself in
Quito. I had found prodigiously large teeth, and at the moment you can see a
monstrous one in the hands of don Manuel de Socorro [Rodríguez], a librarian
in this capital . . . What should we think of these spoils abandoned to chance,
without attention to altitude, latitude, and climate? Could the temperature of our
planet have changed over the centuries? . . . Could a general revolution have
cast the cadavers of elephants, the tapir, and the tiger from the heart of Asia and
Africa to the extremities of the globe? (Caldas, 1942 [1808b]: 157)

50
 “The wolf, perhaps the most ferocious animal in our temperate zone, is nowhere near as cruel as the
tiger, the panther, and the lion of the torrid zone, nor the white bear, lynx, and hyena of the frigid
zone” (Caldas, 1942 [1808b]: 157).
 Striated Spaces 257

However, Caldas is not inclined to go as far as the French naturalist with

the hypothesis of a universal flood. The perpetual humidity of the Americas,
which for Buffon is proof that only insects, reptiles, and strange inferior
animals can grow there, Caldas only recognizes in the regions near sea level,
and not in the high regions. As we already saw in the previous section, Caldas
believes that the Andean climate is good for the development of life and the
higher faculties, because this zone dried out more quickly after the flood than
the coastal regions, albeit later than Europe. So while Buffon holds that the
climate of South America is harmful to life, this claim is only a half-truth
because the Count only accounts for latitude, not elevation. If one looks at the
flora, fauna, and human life of the Americas from the perspective of altitude
and not just latitude, then Buffon’s thesis would need to be nuanced:

When you only pay attention to latitude, when you see nature in parts and on a
small scale, when you don’t take into account all of its resources and its agents,
then the law escapes, you only see contradictions, slander, and you come to
monstrous conclusions. Instead of painting it, you degrade it, and instead
of knowing it better, you spill obscurity over its august face. (Caldas, 1942
[1808b]: 155)

It is precisely in the heights of the Andes that the city of Bogotá is located,
the most important civilizational center of New Granada, clear proof that
Buffon’s accusations against American nature and culture are false. José
María Salazar gives a passionate defense of the climate and history of this
geographic zone in his Memoria descriptiva del país de Santafé de Bogotá.
He is directly polemicizing with the French naturalist M. Leblond, who had
read his memoir titled Memoire pour server a l’histoire naturelle du pays de
Santa-Fe de Bogota relativement aus principaux phénomenes qui resultant
de sa position in front of the Academy of Sciences in Paris in 1786. There
Leblond replicated Buffon and de Pauw’s anti-American arguments point by
point, after having traveled himself to the Orinoco, New Granada, and the
viceroyalty of Perú. Salazar begins by providing a rather detailed descrip-
tion of the savannah of Bogotá, highlighting the beauty of its landscapes, the
fertility of its lands, and the salubrity of its climate.51 In the middle of this

51
 A curious fact is that one of the arguments Salazar uses to contradict Lebland is the great beauty
of Tequendama Falls and the purity of the water of the Bogotá river! With an almost romantic
emphasis, he writes: “The song of the birds, the sound or rustling of the leaves animates this bright
aspect, which stirs the attention of the traveler at every turn, elevating their curiosity. Meanwhile,
one hears the noise of the great waterfall in the distance, the pleasant roaring of the river as it falls,
which imperceptibly increases becoming quite intense when nearby. Here, in serene days, one
observes the most beautiful spectacle that can be seen or imagined and one feels exalted or filled
up with those ideas that great works of nature always inspire in us. The high part of the river is
258 Chapter 5

paradise, a great city of thirty thousand inhabitants was erected that Salazar
presents as a model of prosperity and culture. Bogotá is adorned with thirty-
one churches, public buildings, universities, convents, hospitals, colleges,
parks, gardens, fountains, libraries, ‘a theater with very solid architecture’,
and an astronomical observatory which is ‘the first temple dedicated to
Urania in the Americas’” (Salazar, 1942 [1809]: 218). In terms of the tem-
perament of its people, Salazar asserts that

The child of this climate is generally kind in character, the friend of novelty,
very hospitable, and of tranquil heart, influenced not a little by his political
situation, he craves rest and quiet. The eminent class of citizens, especially the
literary class, speaks a language that is without doubt the purest of the Kingdom,
uncorrupted by mixture with Indian words, as happens in other countries, and
distinguished from other peoples by its particular accent. The women are gener-
ally beautiful, they have clear talent, and their rosy complexion, proper to the
climate, animates all of their features. (Salazar, 1942 [1809]: 219)

Bogotá is then distinguished as “one of the most cultured cities of the

Americas,” contradicting the accusations of Leblond and the other European
naturalists who purport to equate the savage with the criollo. For Salazar, the
city’s culture is represented by “the eminent class of citizens,” those who
speak pure Spanish, without “mixture with Indian words,” but with a differ-
ent accent from the peninsula. It is the university-educated class that goes
to the theater, that can use the libraries, send their daughters to convent and
cultivate the fine arts of the West. Painters like Gregorio Vásquez “who has
given us paintings filled with life and movement,” and young musicians “not
content to repeat the admirable pieces of Hayden, Pleyel, etc. invent beauti-
ful compositions from their own heart” belong to this class (Salazar, 1942
[1809]: 223). This is, in sum, the robust class of criollos, which Salazar is so
careful to distinguish from “the lower people of Santa Fe who are the most
wretched of the Kingdom, abhor work, do not care for cleanliness, and are
almost touched with stupidity” (219).
But despite his profound contempt for the “worthless class of people” who
“do not represent an important role in the majority of societies” (Salazar, 1942
[1809]: 228), the criollo lawyer is compelled to offer a defense of the Indians
and the pre-Columbian past. This was due to the fact that it was not possible
to delink his defense of high criollo culture from the benevolent influence
of Bogotá’s climate, since his argument accepted the basic presuppositions
of environmentalism. If Salazar asserted that the inhabitants of Bogotá had

delightful with its pleasant shores, clear waters, the elevation of those mountains crowned by for-
ests, and the rapid forming of fog or its momentary dissipation” (Salazar, 1942 [1809]: 213–214).
 Striated Spaces 259

developed a high level of culture due to the salubrity of the savanna climate,
then he should say the same of the Muiscas, the ancient inhabitants of the
region. Above all because one of Leblond’s arguments was that the unstable
climate of Bogotá’s savannah, with its unexpected changes between hot and
cold, sun and rain, often on the same day, was completely unfavorable to
the development of civilization. Defending the criollos necessarily meant
defending the Indians, although it was not the living but the dead: the oldest
inhabitants of Bogotá’s savannah.
Salazar argues that although they did not achieve the level of civilization of
the Mexican and Peruvian empires, the Muiscas were far from the miserable
and savage people that Leblond believed them to be.52 They had moral and
economic laws, they possessed “immense riches and the most brilliant pal-
aces and buildings,” they had a “harmonious and rather sweet and expressive”
language, with which they could express ideas about a supreme uncreated
being. Despite not having developed writing, they preserved the memory of
the past through myths like that of Bochica, who Salazar identifies as “one of
Jesus’ messengers who came to illuminate these regions by preaching the law
of grace” (Salazar, 1942 [1809]: 201). Thanks to this early pre-Columbian
evangelization, but above all the great goodness of the climate, the “ancient
Bogotans” were much superior to all the other communities that lived in the
present-day territory of New Granada: “The natives of Bogotá surpass the
other Americans in their religious ideas and political institutions” (204).53
In his defense of the American climate and its beneficial influence on pre-
Columbian civilization, Salazar and other criollo thinkers find support in the
favorable opinions of Alexander von Humboldt, who was very impressed
by his visit to the ancient monuments of México, Perú, and Cundinamarca.
Humboldt was well-acquainted with the ongoing debate in Europe about
“American inferiority,” but he immediately assumed a position opposed to
that of Buffon, Robertson, and de Pauw: “Many Europeans have exaggerated
the influence of these climates on the spirit and claimed that it is impos-
sible to undertake spiritual work here; but we should assert the opposite,

52
 “The French writer pledges to degrade this region before the arrival of the Spanish, and he paints a
sad picture of the unhappiness in which they lay until that memorable epoch. It was the most mis-
erable and destitute country, he says, where the wretched Indian had no goods and no subsistence
other than rivers without fish, birds in small number, one or two quadrupeds, and few vegetables.
The uncultivated lands offered only some plants, some pitiful roots, quinoa, potatoes, and corn,
perhaps misleading one’s expectations due to the instability of the climate. What could have been
gotten from neighboring countries was not for lack of objects to exchange, and an armed force
was needed to procure it. The houses appear made for animals and not for humans, etc.” (Salazar,
1942 [1809]: 201).
53
 The most curious part of this apology is that Salazar uses Robertson’s History of America (!) as a
source of information, an author that he considers “more worthy of our respect and more a friend
of the truth than Leblond” (Salazar, 1942 [1809]: 203).
260 Chapter 5

and according to our own experience, proclaim that we have never had
more strength than when contemplating the beauty and magnificence that
nature offers here” (Humboldt, 1989 [1803]: 95). His five-year sojourn in
the Americas (between 1799 and 1804), during which he toured jungles,
mountains, deserts, rivers, seas, and plains, traversing all climatic zones
and carrying out hard physical and intellectual labor, would be proof that
the supposed insalubrity of the American climate was nothing more than a
myth.54 Not even his stay in the humid region of the Orinoco, where fevers
and malaria were usually endemic, managed to weaken his iron-like health.55
Nevertheless, reflecting on the reasons for the advance of civilization in some
people over others, Humboldt writes the following:

The civilization of peoples is almost always the inverse of the fertility of the
country they inhabit. The greater the obstacles that nature presents, the greater
the moral faculties of man develop. This is the case for the inhabitants of
Anahuac (or Mexico), Cundinamarca (or the Kingdom of Santa Fe) and Perú,
who formed great political associations and enjoyed a level of civilization simi-
lar to that of China and Japan, whilst man still wanders about wild and naked
in the jungles that cover the plains east of the Andes. But if it is not difficult to
conceive why the civilization of our species makes greater progress in Northern
regions than in the midst of the fertility of the tropics, and why this began in the
heights of the mountains and not on the banks of the great and mighty rivers,
yes it explains why civilized and agricultural peoples do not come from inhabit-
ing climates where nature spontaneously produces what one would not acquire
under a less propitious sky without the most arduous labor. (Humboldt, 1942
[1808]: 131)

This passage from the article Humboldt published in the Semanario de Nuevo
Reino de Granada reveals his opinion on the subject of the evolution of the
human species. The Baron knew very well what he was talking about: he was
a disciple of Blumenbach in Jena (1797) and was acquainted with his brother
Wilhelm’s texts on the subject (Plan d’une Anthropologie comparée and

54
 The idea that the American territories are endemically humid due to being submerged longer is
also a myth according to Humboldt: “Closely examining the geological makeup of the Americas,
reflecting on the equilibrium of fluids spread across the surface of the earth, it cannot be accepted
that the new continent came out of the water later than the old one. One observes the same suc-
cession of stone layers as in our hemisphere, and it is likely that the granite, mica schists, and the
different formations of gypsum and clay of the Peruvian mountains were formed in the same period
as the analogous rocks in the Swiss Alps” (cited by Castrillón Aldana, 2000: 20).
55
 In another letter, written to his brother Wilhelm from Havana in 1801, he comments on this theme:
“My health and my happiness have visibly increased since I left Spain, despite the constant change
in humidity, heat, and the cold of the mountains. I was born for the tropics, I have never been so
constantly healthy as in these two years” (Humboldt, 1989 [1801b]: 66).
 Striated Spaces 261

Le XVIII siècle) published between 1795 and 1797. Both Blumenbach and
Wilhelm basically followed Kant’s anthropological theses that I mentioned in
the first chapter: the single trunk of humanity is divided into different races,
each of which, achieves greater or lesser moral and intellectual progress
according to their peculiar psychological temperament. Americans, Africans,
and Asians are incapable of leading the upward movement of civilization,
while only the white European race can lead humanity toward realizing its
own moral nature. Disagreeing with this view, Alexander believes that the
progress of humanity occurs in all people on earth, and that the difference in
civilization between them has little to do with race.56 The factor that explains
why civilization progresses more in northern zones than tropical ones is
instead the degree of difficulty presented by nature. Where the fruits of nature
are within arm’s reach during the entire year, man’s moral and intellectual
faculties develop with less intensity. Life is simply enjoyed without greater
concern, and it is not necessary to compensate for that which nature denies
through the development of science and technology. But in the northern
zones, where the seasons require methodical work and economic planning,
said faculties reach much greater development:

Thus the inhabitants of the equinoctial regions know all the vegetal forms that
nature has placed in their favored country, and the land boasts before their eyes
as varied a spectacle as the blue of the sky, in which there no constellation is
hidden. The peoples of Europe do not enjoy such advantages, because the weak
and sickly plants that the love of the sciences or the caprices of refined luxury
make them cook in the stove hardly offer a shadow of the majesty of the equi-
noctial plants, and even many kinds remain unknown by them: but the culture
and richness of their languages, the imagination and sensibility of their poets

56
 This does not mean that Humboldt was free of the racial prejudices characterizing enlightened
Europeans of his time. He firmly believed in the superiority of the white race and Europe’s
“civilizing mission,” but he was critical of the idea that race was the central factor in scientifically
explaining cultural evolution. While white skin color contributes chemically to the development
of intelligence (as Kant also thought), the evolutionary trigger is the degree of difficulty that they
encounter in their struggle against nature. In his Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial
Regions of America, During the Years 1799–1804, the Baron writes: “If the variety and mobility
of the features embellish the domain of animated nature, we must admit also, that both increase
by civilization, without being solely produced by it. In the great family of nations, no other race
unites these advantages in so high a degree as the Caucasian or European. It is only in white men
that instantaneous penetration of the dermoidal system by the blood can produce that slight change
of the colour of the skin which adds so powerful an expression to the emotions of the soul” (Hum-
boldt, 1852 [1834]: 305). A passage like this helps demystify the figure of Humboldt a bit, whose
beatification has been in large part due to Latin American historians themselves, and it confirms
Abel Orlando Pugliese’s view that “with him the dispute [of the New World] did not end, but rather
reached its culmination, revealing fundamental antinomies of the positions at stake. His paradigm
for the objectification and thematization of the Americas continues being so European, perhaps
even more so than those of the [other] parties to the controversy” (Pugliese, 1994: 1364).
262 Chapter 5

and painters, offer them an inexhaustible source of compensation. (Humboldt,

1942 [1808]: 44–45, author’s emphasis)

Humboldt thus rejects the idea that race and climate would allow for the
straightforward condemnation of pre-Columbian people. Taking some argu-
ments from Rousseau, the German scientist thinks that while civilization may
be preferable to barbarism, the simple life of the natives has its advantages.
They did not have to work to obtain food nor concern themselves too much
with planning the future, but were able to enjoy a “natural life” in harmony
with the environment. By contrast, the “caprices of refined luxury” seen in
Europe have many moral disadvantages. The progress of civilization, despite
compensating for natural want, also generates a series of miseries for human-
ity. Humboldt takes the development of agriculture as an example, and in
particular those crops that the criollos saw as the great hope of the viceroy-
alty: coffee, indigo, and sugar cane. Instead of being content with natural
cultivation, Europeans preferred to acclimate these products to American
soil in the belief that they were contributing to the progress of civilization.
“But these new agricultural crops,” Humboldt writes, “far from having been
advantageous to humanity, have increased the immorality and the misery of
the human species: the introduction of African slaves to the Americas has
caused devastation on the old continent and endless discord and bloody ven-
geance on the new” (Humboldt, 1942 [1808]: 133).
Therefore, while Humboldt’s arguments could support his defense of the
criollos, the American climate, and its pre-Columbian past, his opinions
were not completely welcomed. His critique of the introduction of African
slaves to support the hacienda economy, his reservations about the belief that
European civilization has brought only benefits to humanity, and above all
his thesis that race cannot scientifically explain the superiority of some people
over others, would be seen with great hesitancy by the enlightened criollo
elite. We know about Caldas’ suspicion toward Humboldt and his work. And
even though much has been said about the incident that provoked rumors
of Humboldt’s alleged homosexuality and caused his break with Caldas,57
it would not be unreasonable to assert that this suspicion also reflected the
distance the Baron maintained from the elite criollo habitus. Proud of his

57
 In early 1802, Caldas asked Humboldt if he could accompany him on his trip to explore the
Ecuadorian Andes, but the Baron unequivocally refused, apparently because he wanted to climb
Mount Chimborazo in the company of the young criollo Carlos Montúfar. Profoundly hurt by the
rejection, Caldas wrote to Mutis that Humboldt had breathed the “poisoned air” of Quito, allowing
himself to be corrupted by “obscene and dissolute” youth who would drag him “to their homes
where impure love reigns.” Caldas’ resentment reached the point of claiming that Humboldt’s
moral weakness directly affected his competency as a scientist and confirmed the fact that protes-
tants were heretics. See: Castrillón Aldana, 2000: 33–37.
 Striated Spaces 263

Europeanness and his bloodline, Humboldt mocked their very tropical “crio-
llo psychology,” with its passion for false nobility titles and ridiculous belief
that darker skin color implied moral and social degradation (Minguet, 1985:
258–269).58
But unlike Humboldt, the most noble and preeminent scientists among the
local elite (like Caldas and Lozano) certainly had an interest in emphasizing
the superiority of criollos over the castes as a way of refuting the “slander
against America.” In the fragment of his work Fauna Cundinamarquesa pub-
lished in issue 48 of the Semanario, Jorge Tadeo Lozano distinguishes three
races that constitute the population of New Granada: American, African, and
Arab-European. Lozano recognizes that the three races have been affected
by the American climate, but not to the same degree. Thus, for example, the
American race, composed of those Indigenous to the new world, as the race
native to these lands experiences the influence of the climate most strongly:
“their moral character seems to come from the circumstances that surround
them more so than their own nature” (Lozano, 1809: 357). The Black race,
in contrast, has been transplanted from another continent but it has not been
able to adapt to the hot climate of the Americas, and so maintains intact the
moral character associated with its environment of origin: “Many naturalists
have observed that all products of Africa reflect the roughness of the climate
in which they were born in their customs and appearance. Black people are
palpable proof of this assertion: their moral character comprises those pas-
sions that make man hard and unsociable” (365).
Conversely, the Arab-European race is qualitatively distinct from the other
two because it has been able to exercise rational control over the American
climate instead of being affected by it. Although like Black people it is a
transplanted race, climatic change has not affected its physical, moral, and
intellectual capacity at all. Rather, Lozano claims that being transplanted to
new climates has contributed notably to increasing its faculties:

58
 Take the following two quotations as an example, taken, respectively, from the Political Essay
on the Kingdom of New Spain and his Relación histórica, where Humboldt refers ironically to
the colonial society of Spanish America: “In a country governed by whites, the families reputed
to have the least mixture of negro or mulatto blood are also naturally the most honoured. In Spain
it is almost a title of nobility to descend neither from Jews nor Moors. In America, the greater or
less degree of whiteness of skin decides the rank which man occupies in society. A white who
rides barefoot on horseback thinks he belongs to the nobility of the country” (Humboldt, 2014:
184–185). “In the colonies, the true visible stamp of nobility is skin color. In Mexico as in Peru,
Caracas, and the island of Cuba, one hears someone say daily to a man walking barefoot: and this
white is so rich perhaps he believes himself to be whiter than me? The population that moved from
Europe to America being so large, one understands well that the axiom ‘every white is a knight’
singularly contradicts the aspirations of European families, whose notability and title date back
very far” (cited by Minguet, 1985: 259–260).
264 Chapter 5

With the exception of some almost unnoticeable changes that the different
atmospheric temperatures and altitudes have produced in them, they remain
just as they were in Spain, whence the majority has emigrated in these regions.
Therefore the assertion that the physical and intellectual faculties of Spanish
Americans have degenerated and degraded, and that their nature is so weak that
at forty years old they seem overwhelmed with the saddest decrepitude, should
be seen as false and unfounded. To the contrary, it seems that the transplanta-
tion to these regions has granted them a degree of perfection in both their mate-
rial organs and their intellectual faculties, whose perspicacity cannot be justly
denied. (Lozano, 1809: 361)

However, Lozano is aware that his racial defense still did not account for de
Pauw’s objection: American criollos still have not made any substantial con-
tribution to the sciences and the arts, which would be proof of their inferiority
and dependency on Europe. According to Lozano, two causes explain why
criollos do not yet stand out in the philosophical and artistic fields. First of
all, the Arab-European race lives primarily in the cities and administers the
fruits of the fertile American soil, making it a kind of “idle race” enjoying
pleasures and luxury more than manual and intellectual labor (Lozano, 1809:
363–364). Second of all, it is a “young race” that has needed to devote itself
to subjugating nature and civilizing the Indians for 200 years, such that it has
not had enough time to show its true capabilities. It was only very recently
that they began the task of reforming their colleges and universities, cultivat-
ing the sciences and the arts, but it will not be long before the criollos “make
their detractors see that the Americas, having known how to enrich Europe
with its natural products, will also know how to imitate it in producing inge-
nuities comparable to the best of that part of the world” (362).
Lozano’s latter argument was actually one of the favorites of the criollo
elite. If one accepts the enlightened presupposition that all human societies
progress with time, then the harsh judgment of European philosophers about
the Americas should take into account its diverse racial composition and the
current state of its temporal evolution in accord with this composition. The
white race, represented by the criollos, is certainly the most evolved of all
the American population (in its physical, moral, and intellectual aspects), but
it is still not as culturally evolved as the white European race. Nevertheless,
this comparative delay has nothing to do with an inferiority of faculties
vis-à-vis the white man of the old continent. It is rather a temporal (and not
ontological) delay since, due to the particular historical circumstances that the
criollos have had to confront in the Americas, their faculties have had to be
applied more to controlling nature than to cultivating of the humanities and
sciences. José María Salazar presents the argument as follows, speaking of
the high culture of Bogotá:
 Striated Spaces 265

Although the humanities have had more flattering success, and this city can be
called one of the most cultured of the Americas, we do not yet find ourselves
in that degree of splendor to which the present epoch aspires. Nations do not
emerge so quickly from their first downtrodden stage onto the level of those
that are in a position to enlighten them; and is only up to the movement of time,
aided by the influence of circumstance, to dispel their obscurity. Society, like
man, has its respective stages, even the wisest peoples of the universe have
passed through them, and the progression of the centuries, capable of working
the greatest wonders, has only been able to raise them to the degree of glory that
we now see. Santa Fe is today an example of this dismal truth, and if the dawn
of philosophy has shone on its horizon, the darkness that surrounds us has not
fully dissipated. (Salazar, 1942 [1809]: 223–224, author’s emphasis)

The “slandering of the Americas” is therefore an injustice because it is equiv-

alent to punishing a child who has barely entered adolescence for not behav-
ing like an adult. The Americas, led by its most evolved race, the criollos, will
soon leave infancy and enter fully into the age of reason. When this occurs,
“American genius, when fortune puts it in a position to express itself, will be
perhaps the most loved by Minerva; and in this New World the works of the
spirit will be as remarkable as the works of nature” (Salazar, 1942 [1809]:
226). It is only a question of time before the Americas arrive at what Kant
called “maturity” since the region already has the appropriate race to do so.
One needs to only wait for this race to mature a bit more to make “autono-
mous use of reason” and govern its own destiny. Then America will be able to
form an independent nation in which criollo men can govern over the castes
and trade freely with their white peers in Europe, just as the “dismal truth” of
human evolution dictates. In the end, and despite the suspicion of European
philosophers, the cunning of reason will end up finding its way.
 Epilogue

I began this book by making reference to the relationship between the enlight-
enment science of language and the enlightened politics of language, in rela-
tion to a request sent in 1787 by the Russian Empress Catherine II to King
Carlos III of Spain, and the decree promulgated by the latter twenty years
earlier prohibiting the use of Indigenous languages in the Americas. I now
hope to conclude by returning to the same history, with the goal of illustrat-
ing some of the themes and concepts utilized throughout this investigation.
The 1770 decree promulgating Spanish as the sole and official language of
the Empire led gradually to the elimination of Latin as the scientific language
par excellence. This strengthened the ascent of a new criollo class legitimated
by knowledge that spurned the scholastic and demonstrated an interest in
Indigenous cultures that was more scientific than religious. From the pages of
the Papel periódico, Manuel del Socorro Rodríguez led an offensive to ban-
ish Latin from the universities of Bogotá at the same time that he defended
the reopening of the defunct chair in Chibcha, to be studied now as a his-
torical curiosity. Equally, the criollo priest José Domingo Duquesne argued
that Latin could no longer serve as the morphological basis for studying
Indigenous languages—as had been the case with the grammar texts written
by seventeenth-century missionaries—instead insisting that they should be
seen according to a completely different logic from that of western writ-
ing.1 José Celestino Mutis himself, upon receiving his mission from viceroy

1
 Duquesne believed that the Chibcha language should be seen through the logic of ideographic
writing, and even claimed to have decoded some Chibcha hieroglyphics referring to astronomy
engraved on a stone. His linguistic theories were highly respected by Humboldt. See: Langebaek,
2001: 23–24; González de Pérez, 1980: 151–153; Ortega Ricaurte, 1978: 110–111.

267
268 Epilogue

Caballero y Góngora to compile the manuscripts requested by the Empress of

Russia, writes the following:

Since my arrival in this Kingdom, I implemented my plans to collect printed

books and manuscripts, principally in the languages of our Americas, and to
establish lists of the most common words in the absence of complete vocabular-
ies. My aim was to deposit these treasures in some Academy of Fine Letters,
fearing how quickly these languages walked toward oblivion with the extinction
of these barbaric nations, and seeing at the same time from afar that a taste for
these precious antiquities should be reborn, but perhaps with the imponderable
misfortune of neither finding them, nor knowing that they existed. (cited by
Ortega Ricaurte, 1978: 95)

Enlightened criollos no longer saw Indigenous languages as useful instru-

ments for conversion, but as “archaeological pieces” belonging to a distant
past. As I have shown in chapter 4, criollos believed that Indigenous lan-
guages corresponded to a primitive stage of linguistic evolution, since they
had no words for expressing abstract concepts. Mutis in particular hoped
that Russian scholars would manage to advance the study of these “precious
antiquities” and perhaps reveal to which specific moment in the human past
Indigenous people and their languages belong. This narrative among enlight-
ened criollos, which considered Indigenous languages and knowledge as
doxa, as an expression of ignorance, or simply as the remote prehistory of
the western episteme, has been analyzed in this book through the category of
the coloniality of power.
Now, the 1770 decree did not provoke as dramatic effects in New Granada
as it did in Peru or New Spain, because by the late eighteenth century the
Indigenous population had declined considerably and the process of mestizaje
was very advanced. As I have shown in chapter 2, mestizos had incorporated
the apparatus of whiteness into their habitus, such that before the decree
many of them avoided using their languages of origin in order to eliminate
any suspicion that they bore the “stain of the land.” This apparatus, which
encouraged whitening as a means to obtain the privileges reserved for criollo
elites, has been analyzed in this book through the category of blood purity.
On the other hand, enlightened thinkers considered all particular languages
to be a source of error and confusion, and that none was fully adequate for
achieving the certainty of knowledge. No form of knowledge that mixed
everyday words, local beliefs, and subjective opinions could be considered
“science.” The ideal of the enlightened scientist was to distance oneself
epistemologically from everyday language, breaking categorically with its
“local grammar,” to situate oneself on a universal platform from which the
world could be observed objectively and dispassionately. This epistemic
 Epilogue 269

technology, which claimed to mark a radical separation between the subject

and object of knowledge to position oneself in an uncontaminated epistemic
location, has been analyzed in this book through the category of zero-point
hubris.
The coloniality of power, blood purity, and zero-point hubris have there-
fore been three of the central categories used in this investigation. They have
allowed me to analyze how enlightened criollos used the universal language
of science in New Granada. Postcolonial theory has been useful for me in
examining how the translation of a text whose language claims to be valid in
the same way and in all places gains very different characteristics from the
original when this translation takes place from a “colonial context” (Scharlau,
2002: 20; 2003: 106). In this book, I have shown that the translation by crio-
llos of enlightened scientific language acquires an “ethnographic” character
in New Granada. European science helps its criollo translators to describe the
habits, customs, and history of “barbarian peoples.”
One of the goals of this book has been to show the role that enlightened
science played in the formation of criollo nationalism in New Granada.
In fact, when I wrote the first outlines of this project at the University of
Tübingen in mid-1998, I was planning to write about the birth of “criollo
consciousness” in Latin America during the eighteenth and nineteenth cen-
turies. Of course, the subject was very vague, but at the time I was very
much influenced by the work of philosophers like Leopoldo Zea and Arturo
Roig, by Latin Americanists like Beatriz González Stephan, Hugo Achúgar,
and Mabel Moraña, as well as by Ángel Rama’s The Lettered City.2 Since
Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities was very fashionable in those
days among Latin Americanists, I thought it would be a good idea to link
the idea of nineteenth-century nationalism to my interest in the question of
criollo consciousness. But bit by bit, my initial framework began to falter as
the work of Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak, Walter Mignolo,
and Aníbal Quijano reached my hands. These texts showed me that it made
little sense to research the formation of criollo nationalism without keeping
in mind the question of coloniality. Up to that point, I thought the colonial
period had “ended” in Latin America with the advent of national states in
the nineteenth century, but reading those postcolonial theorists forced me to
revise this assumption. It was then that I began to read Anderson’s book in
a different light.
Almost all historians agree that “criollo consciousness” in Latin America
began to mature during the second half of the eighteenth century, meaning
that the nation began to be imagined (or symbolically invented) by criollos

2
 See my book Critique of Latin American Reason (2021).
270 Epilogue

long before the establishment of national states. However, and still broadly
agreeing with this thesis, I hope to have shown that the formation of “criollo
consciousness” (which in this book I have preferred to refer to as criollo habi-
tus) does not sink its roots solely in intellectual processes (travels to Europe,
the circulation of books and ideas, the emergence of journalism, the critique
of scholastic philosophy, etc.) as Anderson argues, but in the accumulation of
a specific type of capital that dates back to the sixteenth century: the symbolic
capital of whiteness. It was their sense of racial superiority over the “castes”
that created the impetus for Latin American criollos to imagine the nation
and their tutelary position therein. Of course, intellectual contact with the
artifacts of eighteenth-century Enlightenment European culture (Aufklärung)
is an important factor in understanding the formation of criollo habitus, but
it only tells us part of the story. But the other part, that having to do with the
internal link between nation and coloniality, falls outside of accounts like
that of Anderson. So the main thesis of this book is that “blood purity” marks
the location from which criollos translate and enunciate the Enlightenment
in New Granada. I thereby argue that the enlightenment can be understood
among us as a set of unique practices (and not only as a “belated reception”
or an “inferior copy” of the European enlightenment), because its locus
enuntiationis and its locus traductionis were marked by a local history of
knowledge/power. The central goal of this book has been to try to understand
the specificity of this phenomenon.3
On the other hand, Anderson is right to indicate that the expansion of spa-
tiotemporal experience is an important factor in explaining the birth of criollo
habitus, but he does not offer us many theoretical tools for understanding the
problem. He limits himself to underscoring the role played by the circulation
of ideas in the enlightened press, a position slightly reminiscent of Jürgen
Habermas’ concept of Öffentlichkeit. This project, in contrast, has sought to
show that the broadening of the spatiotemporal experience of criollos goes
hand-in-hand with Europe’s colonial expansion and the struggle for geopoliti-
cal control of the world. It is the establishment of what Wallerstein calls the
“modern world-system,” with its fundamental asymmetry between cores and
peripheries, that sets the stage for the enlightenment in the eighteenth cen-
tury. This point, which is often ignored by social philosophers and scientists,
opens up the perspective of postcolonial analysis in which it is no longer pos-
sible to separate the emergence of criollo nationalism from the decline of an
old world order in which Spain was losing its hegemonic position within the

3
 I set out from the assumption that processes similar to those emerging in New Granada took place
in all of the other viceroyalties of the Spanish Empire during the eighteenth century, such that a case
study focused on one of them might shed light on considering other particular cases. However, it
would be worth engaging in a comparative study to validate or refute this hypothesis.
 Epilogue 271

world system. Now it would be France and England that would assume global
hegemony, and toward whom “criollo consciousness” would be oriented
from the end of the eighteenth century on. This book studies a “mixed” period
(1750–1816) in which criollos identified with the enlightened biopolitics of
the Spanish Empire during the Bourbon reforms (the colonial order), while
at the same time looking for their place within the newly approaching hege-
monon (the republican order). This is why the community they imagine is an
order that contains both sides of the coin: the modern-colonial nation. And
this is undoubtedly what gives the criollo nationalist imaginary the unique
character that Anderson indicates.
Something that always caught my attention in Anderson’s book is that he
grants little to no attention to science in the formation of the criollo national-
ist imaginary. But if we begin from the assumption that the modern/colonial
world system provides the stage for the emergence of the enlightenment,
it then becomes necessary to investigate the relationship between science,
nation, and geopolitics. This is why I have emphasized concepts like biopoli-
tics and the geopolitics of knowledge, attempting to show how imperial dis-
courses of science were incorporated into criollo habitus since before national
states were a political reality in Latin America. It is important to emphasize
that when I speak of “science” I have not been referring to scientific ideas in
themselves, but to science as a discourse, to the narrative legitimation that
science offered for the implementation of certain population control prac-
tices in the eighteenth century. From this perspective, one of the conclusions
arrived at in this book is that the locus of enunciation and translation for
criollos, the scientific imaginary of the zero-point, and the colonial imaginary
of whiteness coincided. In other words, the epistemological border separating
enlightened science from lay doxa—and which allowed the imperial state to
design its policies for governing the population—corresponded to the ethnic
border separating criollos from the castes.
This vision of science as discourse also explains the kind of sources uti-
lized for this investigation.4 These were basically short articles written by the
prevalent Enlightenment writers in New Granada, published in periodicals
like Correo Curioso, Papel Periódico, and the Semanario del Nuevo Reino
de Granada. We should bear in mind that at that moment the borders between

4
 Although this is not a work of “History,” I have benefited greatly from the work of several histori-
ans. Many books have been written about the second half of the eighteenth century, some written
by the “fathers” of modern historiography in the country (Jaime Jaramillo Uribe, Germán Col-
menares, Gonzalo Hernández de Alba) and by prestigious foreign historians (John Leddy Phelan,
Hans-Joachim König, Frank Safford, Anthony McFarlane), but for the purposes of this project,
interdisciplinary works have been more important, above all those moving between history, the
sociology of science, and the sociology of culture. In this sense, I should emphasize especially the
work of Renán Silva and researchers like Diana Obregón, Mauricio Nieto, Luis Carlos Arboleda
and Olga Restrepo.
272 Epilogue

scientist and the lettered intellectual were still not clear, and that the majority
of enlightened thinkers saw themselves as “philosophers,” that is, as learned
people fluent in a very general set of knowledge geared toward the “public
good.” The articles they wrote were seen to be of general interest and were
published alongside everyday news, poems, sales announcements, and edito-
rial commentaries. The borders between scientist and politician were also
unclear, so several of the texts used are reports addressed to viceroys, gover-
nors, and mayors.
It is precisely this lack of definition between the borders of science, litera-
ture, and politics that has compelled me to approach the subject from a trans-
disciplinary perspective. The question of the place from which the European
Enlightenment was translated and enunciated in New Granada led me not
only to analyze discursive practices but also to make incursions into terrains
neighboring philosophy and the sociology of culture. The stress that postco-
lonial theories place on the locus enuntiationis of knowledge contradicts the
pretension of modern western science that it lacks a locus of enunciation and
translation, which explains my interest in the epistemological problem of the
“zero-point.” On the other hand, the thesis that blood purity operated as an a
priori for the cultural translation of the Enlightenment in New Granada—that
is, as the condition of possibility for its articulation by New Granadian criollo
elites—explains my interest in Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology and specifically
his concepts of habitus and cultural capital.
All research requires the delimitation of the object of study, which neces-
sarily displaces or even eliminates from consideration other subjects that
could be relevant for the same research. In my case, there is an important
question that could not be fully addressed, even though it touches the very
heart of postcolonial theory. I refer to the persistence (and resistance) of sub-
altern knowledge. This project centered on criollos, on governmental state
apparatuses, and on the hegemonic knowledge produced by these instances of
power, but we need to bear in mind what Walter Mignolo has called “Border
Thinking,” that is, the way that this hegemonic knowledge was resignified by
subalterns to serve their own purposes. Some of this was mentioned in the
second chapter with respect to mestizos, but a separate investigation would be
necessary to show, for example, how vaccinations were culturally translated
by healers at the time, or what active role Indians and Black people (and their
specific forms of generating knowledge) played in scientific explorations like
the botanical expedition, the geodesic expedition, or the Salvani expedition.
Finally, this is where I thank all of the people and institutions that con-
tributed to the completion of this project. In the first place, Professor Birgit
Scharlau of the Institut für Romanische Sprachen und Literaturen at the
University of Frankfurt, for wisely directing my doctoral thesis. Equally
to the Faculty of Social Sciences and the PENSAR Institute of Social and
 Epilogue 273

Cultural Studies at the Universidad Javeriana, under the leadership of its

director Guillermo Hoyos Vásquez, for the unconditional support received.
This project benefited greatly from visits to consult the libraries of Duke
University, the University of Pittsburgh, El Colegio de México, and the
Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar in Quito. I am grateful to Walter
Mignolo, John Beverley, Mabel Moraña, and Catherine Walsh for facilitating
my trips from Colombia to visit these libraries. I also want to express thanks
to the DAAD and Colciencias for the research grant in Germany that allowed
me to successfully complete this research.
 Appendix
The Eighteenth Century: The
Birth of Biopolitics1

In Zero-Point Hubris, I sought to map the emergence of two technologies of

power that coexisted in the territory of New Granada between the sixteenth
and the early nineteenth centuries. The first technological ensemble corre-
sponds to what Aníbal Quijano and other authors have called the “coloniality
of power,” and refers to the way in which colonial populations are governed
according to a hierarchical distribution based on degrees of “blood purity.”
This is, in other words, a sovereign government technology whose effec-
tiveness requires the implementation of what we might call an apparatus of
whiteness. The second ensemble, by contrast, corresponds to what Foucault
called the “great technological mutation” of power relations that took place
during the eighteenth century, which refers to the emergence of economic
government over the life of populations. It is to this second technological
ensemble, whose effectiveness required the implementation of security appa-
ratuses, that I will refer in what follows.
If there was a “mutation” in the eighteenth century, and if this produced
the irruption of something truly new, it was the appearance of life on the
political stage. For the first time, human life ceased to be seen as a gift from
God, becoming an effect of political action. Life as something that can be
produced, administered, and managed by the state; in sum, life as the result
of human intervention and planning toward an “environment.”
I don’t want to focus on the very interesting contemporary debates about
the concept of biopolitics, nor do I want to repeat the arguments already made
in Zero-Point Hubris. However, I want to return once again to the eighteenth

1
 Some of these ideas were presented in Bogotá on May 6, 2009, at the International Workshop, “The
Eighteenth Century: Ruptures and Continuities,” organized by the Ministry of Culture, the Church
of Santa Clara Museum, and the Museum of Colonial Art.

275
276 Appendix

century to identify there the birth of the second technological ensemble

mentioned in the book, taking advantage on this occasion of the publication
of new literature on this subject and about this period. I refer above all to
the publication of Michel Foucault’s 1977–1978 and 1978–1979 lectures
at the Collège de France Security, Territory, Population and The Birth of
Biopolitics; and also to the work of the philosopher Francisco Vásquez
García, who has reflected on the history of biopolitics in Spain, closely fol-
lowing the research carried out in England by the History of the Present net-
work under the leadership of the sociologist Nikolas Rose. Needless to say,
my approach to the eighteenth century is not that of a historian weighing the
evidence of the sources, but that of a philosopher looking for clues to under-
stand the kind of power relations that historically emerged in Colombia and
which still constitute our present.
I will organize my presentation as follows: first I will focus on the way
that the Spanish Empire deployed a biopolitical government toward the
colonial population, in its eagerness to recover the commercial advantages
it had lost with the rise of new global powers like England, France, and
Holland. I will then show the importance of political economy in the eigh-
teenth century, both for the enlightened Bourbon government and for New
Granadian criollos.

1. BIOPOLITICS AND BOURBON REFORMS

The key to understanding the emergence of biopolitics in the Spanish Empire

is without a doubt the dynastic change that occurred at the beginning of
the eighteenth century. The French Bourbon dynasty rises to the Spanish
throne with the reign of Felipe V (1700–1746), after a war of succession that
replaces the Habsburg dynasty, which ended with the death of Carlos II. What
is important here is understanding that this was not merely about a change
of government, but a change of governmentality. Unlike the Habsburgs, the
Bourbons did not favor an imperial-territorial style of government, but an
economic one. This means that what was important for them was not the
acquisition of new lands and new subjects, but the efficient economic man-
agement of territories and populations that were already theirs. The Bourbons
watched with horror as Spain was displaced from its old global influence by
other European states and realized that the cause of this decadence was an
internal one. It was not only the old bureaucratic and administrative struc-
tures of the Habsburgs that needed to be reformed, but also the habits of the
population and the government of the colonies. The only way to achieve this
was to centralize all power in the hands of the state at the expense of local
powers. So the Bourbons’ main interest was to transform the state into a
 Appendix 277

machine that did not seek to establish alliances with established territorial
powers (the Church, the nobility, the courts, and municipal councils, etc.), but
to strip these powers of their traditional codifications1 in the name of a sole
and absolute “reason of state.”
I should say, apropos of this, that in chapter two of Zero-Point Hubris I
refer to the apparatus of whiteness linked to a particular system of alliances
among criollo elites, who sought thereby to perpetuate their control over New
Granadian social space and to avoid the centralization of power. This was
therefore an apparatus geared toward the “expulsion of the state” through the
constitution of familial and patrimonial powers. By contrast, the biopolitical
apparatus that emerges in the eighteenth century is geared precisely toward
dismantling this system of alliances in favor of the construction of the central
state. We thus find two technologies of power confronting one another in
the second half of the eighteenth century: one advocating the expulsion of
the state in the name of particular interests (ethnic-racial codification) and
another advocating the expulsion of those interests in the name of the sole
power of the state (state overcoding). This was a battle of technologies that,
while taking on different forms, would never again be absent in the history
of this country.
I want to briefly and schematically review the way in which the Bourbons
sought to implement their absolutist biopolitics, taking three areas of inter-
vention as examples—demographics, poverty, and disease—and mentioning
how these policies were implemented in Spain and replicated in the New
Kingdom of Granada. I should clarify that the reflections that follow do not
seek to suggest a total rupture or a radical discontinuity between the policies
of the Habsburgs and the Bourbons, but merely to make conceptually visible
the differences in emphasis between the two dynasties with regard to these
three areas of intervention.2
I should say first that the eighteenth-century Spanish state began to see
governing the population as a key element for increasing the power of the
sovereign. I refer to the discovery that the life of the population is immanent
to the state, which can intervene and regulate in its biological processes on
the basis of scientific-technical knowledge. How many people there are in a
territory, what types of illnesses afflict them, their death and birth rates, and

1
 In Zero-Point Hubris I referred to this deterritorialization of codes through Pierre Bourdieu’s con-
cept of the “expropriation of capital.”
2
 In reality, the Bourbon government was cross-cut by multiple “truth games” that sometimes col-
lided and at other times connected precariously: (1) the tension between the transcendent principle
of the “Christian Republic” (theopolitics) and the immanent principle of “Reason of state” (bio-
politics); (2) the tension between the government of souls (pastoral power) and the government of
men (governmental power); (3) the tension between the territorial world economy (statism) and the
non-territorial world economy (capitalism); and (4) the tension between disciplinary technologies
(mercantilism) and security technologies (physiocracy and liberalism).
278 Appendix

so on, are no longer simply “natural data” but variables that can be altered
by the state in its own interest. They are resources that the sovereign must
administer and manage with the help of scientific knowledge.
Even so, already in the seventeenth century under the Habsburg gov-
ernment, there were voices identifying depopulation as one of the central
problems of the Spanish Empire. It was believed that the main causes of this
depopulation were the corruption of moral customs, and above all prostitu-
tion, which drove young men away from their conjugal bed; the high number
of priests and monks, which reduced procreation; in addition to high rates of
emigration to the Indies. A 1623 Pragmatic Sanction by Felipe IV sought to
counteract these problems and raise the number of vassals by creating new
marriage incentives, prohibiting prostitution, lifting taxes from those with six
or more male children, and raising the age of joining the priesthood (Vásquez
García 2009: 27–30). However, Bourbon biopolitics functioned completely
differently. Enlightened thinkers in the mid-eighteenth century like Ward,
Jovellanos, Olavide, and Camponanes argued that the “population” did not
refer so much to the number of subjects as to their quality. What they sought
was not necessarily more people, but more qualified people capable of taking
charge of the agricultural and industrial labor that the state required. Thus, it
was not simply a question of increasing the number of births but of making
existing vassals “useful.” In other words, we could say that the objective of
the Bourbon biopolitical project was not the numerical increase of the popula-
tion but the production of new subjectivities.
With this objective, the Spanish Empire carried out some “demographic
experiments,” perhaps the most important of which was the colonization of
the Sierra Morena. This was a project conceived by Olavide and Campomanes
during the government of Carlos III, which sought to populate the Spanish
region with subjects capable of embracing productive work habits and of
employing the most advanced agricultural techniques of the time. This soci-
ety of settlers needed to be very closely observed by inspectors charged with
meticulously controlling the daily production of each family, and thereby
ensuring the fulfillment of the goals drawn up by the state (Vásquez García
2009: 44–45). These were subjects formed through the deterritorialization
of their prior habits and their reterritorialization in controlled environments.
And while we have no indication that similar experiments were carried out in
New Granada, we do know that the depopulation of the kingdom was one of
the most important subjects for the viceroys, men of letters, and members of
the enlightened community. In 1791, the editor of the Papel Periódico de la
Ciudad de Santafé de Bogotá, Manuel del Socorro Rodríguez, announced a
prize of fifty pesos for the essay proposing a better solution to the depopula-
tion of New Granada. The criollo thinker Diego Martín Tanco, administra-
tor of the Bogotá Post and winner of the contest, begins his Discourse by
 Appendix 279

asserting that “a kingdom should not be called well populated even if it

overflows with inhabitants, if these are not laborious and usefully employed
in those tasks that produce for man food, clothing, adornment and other
things proper to the convenience of life ” (Tanco 1978 [1792]: 132). The
quality of the population, not the quantity. Tanco refers to works by Ward
and Campomanes to show that population quality is a matter of control and
planning that should be addressed through a new science: political economy.
I will take up this subject later.
For the time being, we can say that Tanco’s Discourse addresses another
problem perceived at the time as a principal cause of depopulation: poverty.
If the goal is to safeguard the quality of the population, then it is necessary
to replace idleness and “laziness” with productive labor, since “a country of
idlers will always be a country of the poor” (Tanco 1978 [1782]: 185). Here,
Tanco echoes the imperial biopolitics of the Bourbons, committed to poverty
control and the correctional confinement of the poor. And while this was
not a new problem in eighteenth-century Spain, its solution was. Since the
sixteenth century, Erasmist writers like José Luis Vives had challenged the
Christian idea that poverty was in and of itself proof of saintliness (the poor
as symbol of Christ) and distinguished clearly between the pauper verecun-
dus (“shameful poor”) and the pauper superbus (“phony poor”).3 Vives saw
the latter as a mortal danger for the state, for which he proposed the creation
of a beggars police charged with separating the shameful from the phony and
forcing the latter to work or be locked up (Vásquez García 2009: 56–57).
These reflections on the government of poverty were still framed within
Habsburg theopolitics—reinforced by the Council of Trent—that associated
poverty with immorality. If they wanted to lock up the “phony poor” or set
them straight, this was to avoid the spread of sin and to promote the re-
Christianization of the wayward.
What the eighteenth-century Bourbons propose is very different.
Enlightened reformers linked to the Crown no longer see the problem of
poverty as theological but as economic. The poor and beggars were not seen
as an obstacle to salvation—a problem to be attended to by the Church—but
as an obstacle to “public happiness” whose resolution lay in the hands of the
state. But this was not simply a question of just any work, or for people to do
the same work they knew how to do before, but of occupying them with those
tasks most likely to increase the wealth of the state, using new techniques and
ways of doing things—taking them off the street to put them in workshops
and hospices where they would become “new subjects.” Again, we find two
simultaneous movements, both coordinated by the state: deterritorialization

3
 See Vives’ 1526 treatise De Subventione Pauperum.
280 Appendix

from “old” ways of living and working, and reterritorialization in new work
environments. So Carlos III’s 1775 poor laws established that the “useful
poor” should be interned in hospices where they would learn a trade under
state supervision, while the “useless poor” (e.g., the sick) would be interned
in mercy houses that were now also administered by the state and no longer
by the Church. The de-sacralization of poverty and the stratification of its
administration.
In eighteenth-century New Granada, disciplinary confinement was imple-
mented as a means to combat laziness and poverty. With the founding of the
Royal Hospice of Santafé, the measures sought by the Crown for definitively
banishing idleness were finally implemented. In 1791, Manuel del Socorro
Rodríguez said that all people interned in the hospice, women and children
included, needed to learn to work in those trades useful for commerce: spin-
ning, linen, the ginning of cotton, the production of wax candles, and so on
(Rodríguez 1978 [1791]: 142). The goal was to classify and resocialize beg-
gars, transforming them into a cheap labor force, to strengthen productive
sectors of the economy, and to increase ranks of the population that were
“useful” to the state. Such were the functions of the Royal Hospice that in
the opinion of José Ignacio de Pombo it should be converted into a school-
workshop equipped with modern instruments and machinery so that it would
produce master craftspeople capable of establishing new hospices in other
regions of New Granada (Pombo 1965 [1810]: 188).
Disease also became a key area for the biopolitical intervention of the
Bourbons, one closely tied to the two areas considered above, namely demog-
raphy and poverty. If a state’s wealth did not consist only in the number of
its inhabitants but in the usefulness of its labor force, then it was clear that
this working population needed to be protected from the danger posed by
diseases. If the population did not manage to stay healthy, it could hardly be
trained to work. Spanish authorities therefore favored the implementation of
a series of measures aimed at avoiding epidemic contagion, the propagation
of diseases, and the increase in infant mortality.
Of course, the Spanish Empire already combatted diseases prior to the
eighteenth century, but the sick were primarily under the care of the Church.
Hospitals managed by the Church were places that people went to die, where
what was sought was not to cure the body but to cure the soul: spiritual relief
at the hands of the priest rather than bodily well-being at the hands of the
doctor. This is why under the Habsburg government hospitals were seen as
“aid” institutions, framed within the evangelizing function of the Church. But
things began to change with the arrival of the Bourbons in the eighteenth cen-
tury. In the first place, medicine is no longer seen as aid, but as a population
technology administered solely and exclusively by the state. In this context,
eighteenth-century medicine acquires a new function: to contribute to the
 Appendix 281

organization of society as a means for the physical and economic well-being

of the population. The specific question of disease is thereby inscribed within
a broader one: the physical health of the working population. And insofar as
the health and physical well-being of the population become a key objective
of state power, the status of hospitals as institutions also changes: the hospital
is no longer a place where one goes to die, but where one goes to live. In the
eyes of Spanish reformers, hospitals needed to become curing machines.
Beginning with the reign of Carlos III, medicine becomes a means to
improve the quality of the population of the Spanish Empire. The doctor
comes to be seen as a “state functionary” whose mission is not only to fight
the illness afflicting particular individuals, but also to contribute to improving
“public health.” Illness is not something that only afflicts the individual body
but the “social body” as well, the population as a whole. The Bourbons there-
fore implemented a series of measures to protect the life of that population. I
will mention two examples of these measures, emphasizing their close links
to eighteenth-century medicine: the fight against smallpox and urban hygiene;
both are paradigmatic for illustrating the emergence of new technologies of
power over life.
Inoculation, a procedure utilized beginning in 1720 to combat smallpox,
consisted of inserting the purulent material directly into a healthy individual,
making their body resistant to possible future epidemics. In other words,
instead of waiting for the epidemic to arrive to then treat the infected, what
we see here is a preventative intervention in which smallpox is fought before
it appears. In the hands of the state, inoculation and later the smallpox vac-
cine fall into what Foucault called “security apparatuses,” a technology of
government that seeks to manage risks to life. Security apparatuses exercise
control over apparently uncontrollable events like famines and epidemics
through the calculation and reduction of risk, thereby protecting the finances
of the state and preventing the death of the useful population. Thus, when
the Bourbon monarch Carlos IV launched the “Royal Philanthropic Vaccine
Expedition” in 1803, also known as the Salvani Expedition, whose goal
was to bring the Jenner vaccine to the American colonies, the objective was
to reduce the high mortality rates of smallpox contagion, above all among
infants, since this meant protecting the future labor force necessary for the
preservation of the state. Such a biopolitical marriage between the calculation
of risks and preventative medicine was also clear enough to New Granadian
doctors like José Celestino Mutis and Eugenio Espejo, who decidedly sup-
ported inoculation even when this practice was the object of bitter polemics
in Spain between the Protomedicatos and the Church. And what was at stake
was no small thing: in the eighteenth century, we witnessed the battle between
a biopolitical rationality that saw life as a manipulable and manageable object
in the hands of the state, and a theopolitical rationality that defended the
282 Appendix

inviolability of a natural order created by God and protected by the Christian

sovereign. On the one hand, the deterritorialization of life, wrenched from its
cosmological codifications; on the other, its sacred territoriality grounded in
natural law [ius naturalista].
The second example, related to urban hygiene, points in exactly the same
direction as the previous one. Toward the end of the eighteenth century, a
hundred years before Pasteur’s discoveries, the miasmic doctrine was pre-
dominant among doctors, according to which many contagious diseases were
transmitted through the air. Protecting the life of the population demanded
the implementation of security apparatuses capable of preventing contagious
diseases, especially in those places where people congregate, and where the
circulation of air is difficult: cities. Urban hygiene is thereby framed as a tech-
nology for controlling the circulation of water, air, people, and excrement.
How to guarantee the ventilation of houses and streets in such a way as to
avoid future epidemics? How to rationally construct cities, guaranteeing pub-
lic salubrity in the process?4 What is the best place to build hospitals, cem-
eteries, and slaughterhouses so that the “fetid air” circulates freely? These
were the questions that enlightened eighteenth-century reformers sought to
resolve and which would lead to the development of concrete biopolitics:
urbanism.
The historian Adriana María Alzate (2007) has written a beautiful book
where she shows how late-century viceregal authorities made hygiene in
Bogotá into a matter of public policy; the cleaning and paving of the streets,
the management of garbage, the construction of sidewalks, cemetery removal,
the disinfection of hospitals, control of stray animals, and the channeling of
water. All of these measures, as we have said, had a preventative character:
they were technologies that sought to manage and administer the risk of
contagion through the calculation of probabilities. Government over the life
of the population, biopolitics, is in this case linked to the implementation of
security apparatuses.

2. POLITICAL ECONOMY AS A
TECHNOLOGY OF GOVERNMENT

It is not possible to talk about the eighteenth century without mentioning

the importance that scientific knowledge acquired during this period, not
only as an instrument for generating a vision of a world almost completely

4
 Recall here that Foucault establishes a distinction between health and salubrity. Health refers to the
state of the individual body, while salubrity is a biopolitical matter to be managed through a specific
technique: hygiene (Foucault, 2001: 150).
 Appendix 283

emancipated from theology but also as an instrument for the immanent

government of that world. Natural scientists tend to speak of the incredible
advances made by physics and astronomy, while historians and sociologists
prefer to mention sciences like botany, medicine, and geography. This was
the path that I myself followed in Zero-Point Hubris. However, I want to
concentrate now on a science with tremendous importance for the formula-
tion of government policy in that period: political economy. We will not
understand what the entrance of life onto the political stage during the eigh-
teenth century involved without taking into account the way that discourses
of political economy contributed to generating the “governmental reason”
that took the management of that life precisely as its objective.5 In what fol-
lows, I will briefly reconstruct the development of political economy during
the eighteenth century, with a focus on mercantilism and physiocracy and
leaving aside liberalism, a school of economic thought that would not have
its greatest impact in Spain and the Americas until the nineteenth century.
Mercantilism, understood as a set of doctrines and techniques for govern-
ing and managing the economy, was predominant in Europe from the early
seventeenth century until the mid-eighteenth. The mercantilists believed that
in order to increase a nation’s wealth, the state should assume absolute con-
trol of all economic activities, and trade in particular. It granted international
trade a central role in enriching nations and considered a favorable trade bal-
ance—that is, exporting the greatest quantity of commodities in exchange for
the greatest quantity of precious metals—to be the thermometer measuring
the prosperity of a kingdom. To accomplish this objective, it was necessary
to incentivize the export of manufactured goods and restrict the importa-
tion of consumer goods, implementing severe control measures.6 The state
needed to control (internal and external) trade through law, monopolies, price
controls, quality standards, interest rates, and the prohibition of the cultiva-
tion and exportation of consumer goods. In sum, mercantilism proposes a
totally regulated economy through what Foucault would call “disciplinary
mechanisms.”7 The omnipresence of the state was needed to control trade
and to strengthen the exercise of a sovereignty monopolized by the figure of
the monarch.

5
 Here it is worth remembering that Foucault himself recognized that the concept of biopolitics
remained unclear without considering that the “general framework” within which it is inscribed is
what he called “governmental reason.” It was precisely political economy, expert knowledge, that
contributed the most to delineating the limits of this “governmental reason” (Foucault, 2009: 383).
6
 This policy would later be known in economics as the “import substitution” model.
7
 We must make a conceptual distinction between the “disciplinary mechanisms” mentioned by
Foucault in relation to the political-economic exercise of “reason of state” and the “disciplines” he
reflects on in the second part of Discipline and Punish.
284 Appendix

In Bourbon Spain, and despite some trade reforms made beginning with
the government of Carlos III, mercantilism was the prevalent doctrine
throughout the eighteenth century. The main economists of the period were
influenced by mercantilism. Thus, for example, Jerónimo de Uztáriz from
Navarra,8 a fervent admirer of Colbert, believed that it was necessary to
increase exports of manufactured goods to stimulate internal production
and reduce as much as possible the importation of consumer goods. And
since the goal was to increase manufacturing exports, it was also neces-
sary to numerically increase the working population. Spanish mercantilists
in the early eighteenth century established a directly proportional equation
between the population and wealth: the greater the population, the greater
the wealth for the state. The population is not seen as a set of natural pro-
cesses but as itself a form of “wealth” at the complete disposal of the sover-
eign, and the sovereign treats the population as a father would his family. In
fact, the familial metaphor was a favorite of the mercantilists: the king is the
father and manufactures are the central source of familial wealth. To govern
his home well, the king needs to ensure that the family produces what they
themselves consume instead of importing them. And at the end of the day,
the Spanish Bourbons of the eighteenth century always saw the economy as
the government of the home.
On the other hand, the existence of the colonies was a fundamental part
of Spanish mercantilism, since it allowed the acquisition of cheap resources
through monopoly. Colonial economies were required to work directly for
Spain and the government forced them to consume products imported from
the metropole. In his 1762 Reflections on Spanish Trade with the Indies, the
Asturian Pedro Rodríguez Campomanes had established that Spanish pos-
sessions in the Americas needed to submit to the “colonial pact,” so wide-
spread in mercantilist thought, which put them in a situation of economic
dependency vis-à-vis Spain. According to Campomanes, this entails the need
to prevent the colonies from becoming producers of consumer goods and
also prohibiting them from trading directly with foreign countries so that all
trade must be realized exclusively by the metropole and its ships. On top of
this, and to increase imperial income, the government charged a tax on all
sales—the much-hated alcabalas—which was not reinvested into the local
economies but sent directly to Spain. In sum, and to simplify it to a phrase,
mercantilism made colonialism a key factor for the accumulation of capital
in the imperial European core.
However, toward the middle of the eighteenth century there appeared in
France a new type of economic thought: physiocracy. Thinkers like Quesnay

 See his text The Theory and Practice Of Commerce and Maritime Affairs (1724).
8
 Appendix 285

argued that mercantilism was not key to increasing the wealth of nations. The
problem with mercantilism was its excessive focus on trade, neglecting what
the physiocrats saw as the fundamental sector of any economy: agriculture.
The true agents of economic growth were not traders but farmers (fermiers),
that is, the feudal nobility, the landowners, since agriculture was seen as the
sole source of all wealth. Commerce and industry only transform the wealth
generated with agriculture but do not produce new wealth. As a result, the
good government would consist in favoring the prosperity of farmers, since a
country will be richer as its agricultural production increases. To achieve this,
the sovereign should eliminate all price control measures, allowing the agrar-
ian cycles themselves to determine the quantity and quality of both production
and consumption. In fact, one of the basic differences between the physiocrats
and the mercantilists is that while for the latter the economy depends directly
on state intervention, for the former the economy is anchored to a “natural
order” that the state cannot and should not disturb. Any state intervention into
the natural laws would be an alteration of the social order, creating dangerous
disorder, so in terms of government, the state should simply let things hap-
pen without doing anything: “laissez faire, laissez passer.” Foucault is right
to say that eighteenth-century physiocracy inaugurates a new technology of
government that serves to limit state action from within. From this moment,
government practice no longer consists of extending the tentacles of the “rea-
son of state [razón de estado]” in all directions, but of deciding what should
be governed and what should be left ungoverned. The limits of government
action are thus sketched out between what should and should not be done:
“between the agenda and the non-agenda” (Foucault, 2010: 12).
In Bourbon Spain, physiocratic doctrines enjoyed a feeble reception and
remained in any case within the limits of reason of state. We could say that
physiocracy polished some elements of mercantilism, which continued to be
the “official” economic doctrine of the Spanish Empire. Perhaps the most
relevant part of this reception has been, as previously mentioned, the idea that
the population is not just a matter of numbers but of quality, the thesis that
the population is not a basic datum, a “raw” material over which the power
of the sovereign is exercised, and nor is it a simple sum of the individuals
inhabiting a territory. The population is a variable that depends on natural
factors: climate, the richness of the land, the geographic environment, race,
and so on. And these factors cannot be changed simply by decree, through
the absolute will of the sovereign. There are things relevant to the population
that escape the imperial control of the state and demand a different type of
government action.
This is just one of the reasons that explain the enthusiastic reception
of physiocracy among New Granadian criollos. Personalities like Caldas,
Lozano, Tanco, and Salazar emphasized the particularly rich American soil
286 Appendix

and the differential quality of its inhabitants. From their perspective, the
wealth of the state would not be increased by burdening criollo interests with
taxes—as the imperial government had done up to that point under the influ-
ence of mercantilism—but by strengthening their agrarian and commercial
activities, because due the superior qualities of their race, they were the most
productive sector of the population (above Black people, Indians, and mesti-
zos). Moreover, they were slaveholders and the owners of large estates [lati-
fundios], such that the physiocratic theses fit their economic interests like a
glove. Some of them, like Pedro Fermín Vargas, José Ignacio de Pombo, and
Antonio de Narváez, went beyond physiocracy to dabble in a nascent liberal-
ism, demanding the elimination of state monopolies [estancos] and absolutely
free trade. For all of them, a country’s wealth did not depend on the expanse
or fertility of the territory or the diversity of its agricultural products, but on
the productive labor of its inhabitants (Silva 2005: 189).
To summarize, we can say that the absolutist biopolitics of the Bourbons
sought to deterritorialize the traditional codes governing the social fabric of
the Americas and while they succeeded in some cases, they were incapable of
reterritorializing them. The argument presented in Zero-Point Hubris is pre-
cisely that the apparatus of whiteness managed to connect to the biopolitical
apparatus but always under the hegemony of the former. What prevailed in
New Granada, even after the wars of independence, was the struggle between
a multiplicity of regional and hereditary interests seeking control of the state.
But for a long time, the basic rationality of the apparatus of whiteness also
prevailed: the social ordering of the population according to a hierarchy based
on blood purity. The more efforts there were to subject social flows to the
singular control of the state, the more difficult this task was revealed to be.
The whole nineteenth century would be a testament to the struggle between
the statification of hereditary powers and the hereditization of state power.
Biopolitics was thus revealed to be a mirage, a dream of reason capable of
producing monsters.
 Bibliography

PRIMARY SOURCES

Astigarraga, Luis de. [1792]. “Disertación sobre la agricultura dirigida á los habitan-
tes del Nuevo Reyno de Granada.” In Papel Periódico de la Ciudad de Santafé de
Bogotá 1791–1797. Vol. 2, (nos. 55 and 56). Bogotá: Banco de la República, 1978.
“Autos obrados por Don Gabriel Ignacio Muñoz, contra el teniente Gobernador Don
Pedro Elejalde por haberle negado el ‘don’” [1786]. In Nobles, blancos y mesti-
zos en la Villa de Nuestra Señora de La Candelaria de Medellín. Probanzas de
nobleza, familia y mestizaje del cabildo 1674–1812, edited by Jaramillo Mejía,
William. Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de Antropología e Historia, 2000.
Caldas, Francisco José [1801]. “Padrón General de la Ciudad de Santafé de Bogotá,
conforme al estado en que se hallaba á fines del año de 1800.” In Correo Curioso,
Erudito, Económico y Mercantil de la Ciudad de Santafé de Bogotá. Bogotá:
Colcultura 1993.
———. [1808]. “Estado de la Geografía del virreinato de Santafé de Bogotá, con
relación a la economía y al comercio.” In Semanario del Nuevo Reino de Granada,
Volume I. Bogotá: Biblioteca Popular de Cultura Colombiana, 1942.
———. [1808]. “Del influjo del clima sobre los seres organizados”. In Semanario
del Nuevo Reino de Granada, Volume I. Bogotá: Biblioteca Popular de Cultura
Colombiana 1942.
———. [1809]. “Bosquejos inéditos”. In Semanario del Nuevo Reino de Granada,
Volume III. Bogotá: Biblioteca Popular de Cultura Colombiana, 1942.
———. [1809]. “Razón de los nacidos, casados y muertos en la ciudad de Po- payán
en el quinquenio que se expresa, tomado de los libros parroquiales, por el cura rec-
tor de esa Catedral, el Dr. D. Francisco Mosquera.” In Semanario del Nuevo Reino
de Granada, Volume II. Bogotá: Biblioteca Popular de Cultura Colombiana, 1942.
———. [1809]. “Estado del Hospital Real de la Ciudad de Popayán, al cuidado de los
RR. PP. Belemitas, para el quinquenio que se expresa.” In Semanario del Nuevo

287
288 Bibliography

Reino de Granada, Volume III. Bogotá: Bibloteca Popular de Cultura Colombiana,

1942.
———. [1810]. “Memoria sobre la solución del problema propuesto en el nú- mero
21 del Semanario (año 1808): ¿Cuál es la producción propia de nuestro clima que
se deba cultivar con preferencia a las demás; y cuál es la producción extranjera que
nos interesa connaturalizar en nuestro suelo?” In Semanario del Nuevo Reino de
Granada, Volume III. Bogotá: Biblioteca Popular de Cultura Colombiana, 1942.
———. [1810]. “Sobre el plan de un viaje proyectado de Quito a la América septentri-
onal, presentado al célebre director de la Expedición botánica de la Nueva Granada,
D. José Celestino Mutis, por F.J. de Caldas.” In Semanario del Nuevo Reino de
Granada, Volume III. Bogotá: Biblioteca Popular de Cultura Colombiana 1942.
———. [1816]. “Carta a Toribio Montes.” In Cartas de Caldas. Bogotá: Academia
Colombiana de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales, 1978.
“Compendio de los puntos vertidos por el Presbítero Don Juan Pablo Espejo en dos
conversaciones tenidas en la havitación de Doña Francisca Navarrete, que van en
los mismos términos y voces que las profirió según que así se halla sentado con
juramento en el Gobierno de esta Real Audiencia” [1795]. In Eugenio Espejo pre-
cursor de la independencia (Documentos inéditos 1794–1797), edited by Carlos E.
Freire. Quito: AbyaYala, 2001.
“Constituciones para el Colegio Mayor de Nuestra Señora del Rosario” [1654].
“Descripción de la ciudad de Jaen y su distrito en la Provincia de Quito, sacada de
las relaciones hechas el de 1606 por Guillermo de Martos, corregidor” [1606]. In
Relaciones histórico-geográficas de la Audiencia de Quito (siglos xvi-xix), edited
by Pilar Ponce de Leyva. Quito: Marka / Abya Yala, 1994.
“Disentimiento interpuesto para impedir el matrimonio entre Miguel Lorenzo Parra
y Doña María Josefa Salvadora Mejía” [1793]. In Nobles, blancos y mestizos en
la Villa de Nuestra Señora de La Candelaria de Medellín. Probanzas de nobleza,
familia y mestizaje del cabildo 1674–1812, edited by William Jaramillo Mejía.
Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de Antropología e Historia, 2000.
“Disenso puesto por don Lucas y don Miguel Jerónimo Mejía al matrimonio que con
Lorenzo Parra intenta contraer doña Salvadora Mejía” [1793]. In Nobles, blancos y
mestizos en la Villa de Nuestra Señora de La Candelaria de Medellín. Probanzas
de nobleza, familia y mestizaje del cabildo 1674–1812, edited by William Jaramillo
Mejía. Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de Antropología e Historia, 2000.
“Edicto del Virrey Antonio Caballero y Góngora, Santa Fe, 20 de Noviembre de
1782” in Enfermedad y Sociedad en la crisis del antiguo regimen. Nueva Granada
en el tránsito del siglo XVIII al XIX: las epidemias de viruela, by Marcelo Frías
Nuñez. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1992.
Espejo, Eugenio de Santa Cruz. [1779]. “El Nuevo Luciano de Quito o Despertador
de los ingenios quiteños en nueve conversaciones eruditas para el estímulo de la
literature.” In Obra educativa, edited by Philip L. Astuto. Caracas: Biblioteca
Ayacucho, 1981.
———. [1780]. “El Nuevo Luciano de Quito o Despertador de los ingenios quiteños
en siete diálogos apologéticos.” In Obra educativa, edited by Philip L. Astuto.
Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1981.
 Bibliography 289

———. [1785]. “Reflexiones sobre la utilidad, importancia y conveniencias que

propone Don Francisco Gil, Cirujano del Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo, y su
sitio, e individuo de la Real Academia Médica de Madrid, en su Disertación físico-
médica, acerca de un método seguro para preservar a los pueblos de las viruelas.”
In Dr. Eugenio Espejo 1785–1985. Reflexiones Médicas. Quito: Casa de la Cultura
Ecuatoriana, 1985.
——— . [1786]. “Memoria sobre el corte de la Quina.” In Dr. Eugenio Espejo
1785–1985. Reflexiones Médicas. Quito: Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana, 1985.
———. [1795]. “Carta al virrey Conde José de Ezpeleta.” In Eugenio Espejo precur-
sor de la independencia. (Documentos inéditos 1794–1797), edited by Carlos E.
Freire. Quito: Abya Yala, 2001.
Finestrad, Joaquín de. [1789]. El vasallo instruido en el Estado de la Nueva Granada
y en sus respectivas obligaciones, introduction and transcription by Margarita
González. Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2000.
Gil, Francisco. [1784]. Disertación físico-médica para la preservación de los pueblos
de las viruelas. México: Rolston-Bain, 1983.
Gumilla, José. [1741]. Historia Natural, Civil y Geográfica de las naciones situadas en
las riveras del Río Orinoco. Su autor el padre Joseph Gumilla, Misionero que fue
de las Misiones del Orinoco, Meta y Casanare. Santafé de Bogotá: Imagen, 1994.
Humboldt, Alexander von. [1801]. “Diario vii a-b.” In Alexander von Humboldt en
Colombia. Extractos de sus Diarios. Bogotá: Publicismo y Ediciones, 1982.
———. [1801]. “Carta a Wilhelm von Humboldt.” In Cartas Americanas. Caracas:
Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989.
———. [1803]. “Carta al abate Cavanillas.” In Cartas Americanas. Caracas:
Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989.
———. [1808]. “Geografía de las plantas, o cuadro físico de los Andes equinoc- cia-
les y de los países vecinos.” In Semanario del Nuevo Reino de Granada, Volume
II. Bogotá: Biblioteca Popular de Cultura Colombiana, 1942.
———. [1811]. Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain. Translated by John
Black. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
———. [1834]. Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America,
During the Years 1799–1804, Volume I. Translated by Thomasina Ross. London:
George Routledge and Sons, 1852.
“Información que pretendía el procurador general de esta villa contra la calidad de los
Muñoces” [1787]. In Nobles, blancos y mestizos en la Villa de Nuestra Señora de
La Candelaria de Medellín. Probanzas de nobleza, familia y mestizaje del cabildo
1674–1812, edited by William Jaramillo Mejía. Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de
Antropología e Historia, 2000.
Juan, Jorge and Antonio De Ulloa. [1826] Discourse and Political Reflections on
the Kingdoms of Peru. Translated by J. Tepaske and B. Clement. Norman, OK:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1978.
López Ruiz, Sebastián. [1799]. “Informe sobre el estado de la Medicina.” In Sebastián
José López Ruiz (1741–1832). Sus escritos médicos y el ejercicio de la medicina en
el Virreinato de Nueva Granada durante la segunda mitad del siglo xviii, by Pilar
Gardeta Sabater. Málaga: Universidad de Málaga, 1996.
290 Bibliography

———. [1801]. “Informe sobre los profesores de Santa Fe.” In Sebastián José
López Ruiz (1741–1832). Sus escritos médicos y el ejercicio de la medicina en el
Virreinato de Nueva Granada durante la segunda mitad del siglo xviii, by Pilar
Gardeta Sabater. Málaga: Universidad de Málaga, 1996.
Lozano de Peralta Maldonado de Mendoza, Jorge. [1785]. “Representación del 30
de abril de 1785.” In Anuario Colombiano de Historia Social y de la Cultura 23
(1996), 278–299.
Lozano, Jorge Tadeo. [1801]. “Historia Natural. Duración y tabla de las probabili-
dades de la vida humana.” In Correo Curioso, Erudito, Económico y Mercantil de
la Ciudad de Santafé de Bogotá. Bogotá: Colcultura, 1983.
———. [1801]. “Plan de una compañía patriótica de comercio.” In Correo curioso,
erudito, económico y mercantil de la ciudad de Santafé de Bogotá. Bogotá:
Colcultura, 1993.
———. [1801]. “Sobre lo útil que sería en este Reyno el establecimiento de una
Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País.” In Correo curioso, erudito, económico
y mercantil de la ciudad de Santafé de Bogotá. Bogotá: Colcultura, 1993.
———. [1808]. “Memoria sobre las serpientes y plan de observaciones para aclarar
la historia natural de las que habitan el Nuevo Reino de Granada, y para cerciorarse
de los verdaderos remedios capaces de favorecer a los que han sido mordidos por
las venenosas; por don Jorge Tadeo Lozano Maldonado de Mendoza, individuo de
la Real Expedición Botánica de Santa Fé de Bogotá, y encargado, con real aprobac-
ión, de su parte zoológica.” In Semanario del Nuevo Reino de Granada, Volume I.
Bogotá: Biblioteca Popular de Cultura Colombiana, 1942.
Lozano, Jorge Tadeo. [1809]. “Fragmento de una obra titulada Fauna Cundinamarquesa,
ó descripción de los animales del Nuevo Reyno de Granada; su autor D. Jorge
Tadeo Lozano Maldonado de Mendoza, Individuo de la Real Expedición Botánica,
y encargado con real aprobación de su parte zoológica.” In Semanario del Nuevo
Reino de Granada (Microfilm). Biblioteca Nacional, Bogotá.
Maroni, Pablo. [1738]. Noticias auténticas del famoso río Marañón y misión apostólica
de la Compañía de Jesús de la provincia de Quito en los dilatados bosques de dicho
río, escribialas por los años de 1738 un misionero de la misma Compañía, edited by
Jean Pierre Chaumeil. Colección Monumenta Amazónica. Iquitos: IIAP / CETA, 1988.
Moreno y Escandón, Francisco. [1774]. “Plan de estudios y método provisional para
los colegios de Santa Fe, por ahora y hasta tanto que se erige Universidad Pú- blica,
o su Magestad dispone otra cosa.” In Filosofía de la ilustración en Colombia,
edited by Germán Marquínez Argote., Bogotá: El Búho 1982.
Mutis, José Celestino. [1762]. “Discurso preliminar pronunciado en la apertura del
curso de matemáticas, el día 13 de marzo de 1762, en el Colegio Mayor del Rosario
de Santafé de Bogotá”. En: Guillermo Hernández de Alba (comp.). Escritos cientí-
ficos de Don José Celestino Mutis. volumen ii. Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de
Cultura Hispánica 1983.
———. [1763]. “Representación hecha a su majestad Carlos iii.” In Mutis y la expe-
dición botánica. Bogotá: El Ancora, 1983.
———. [1778]. “Al eruditísimo varón Carlos Linneo, Profesor de Historia Natural
en Upsala, hijo dignísimo del príncipe de la Historia natural, el caballero Carlos
 Bibliography 291

Linneo, desea mucha salud José Celestino Mutis.” In Mutis y la expedición

botánica. Bogotá: El Ancora, 1983.
———. [1783]. “La epidemia de viruelas en el Nuevo Reino de Granada en 1782.
Informes al Ministro español don José de Gálvez.” In Escritos científicos de Don
José Celestino Mutis, Volume I, edited by Guillermo Hernández de Alba. Bogotá:
Instituto Colombiano de Cultura Hispánica, 1983.
———. [1783]. “Carta al Arzobispo-Virrey Antonio Caballero y Góngora.” In Mutis
y la expedición botánica. Bogotá: El Ancora, 1983.
———. [1788]. “Carta de José Celestino Mutis a Eugenio Espejo sobre el tema de
la Quina.” In Voto de un ministro togado de la Audiencia de Quito, by Eugenio
Espejo. Quito: Comisión Nacional Permanente de Conmemoraciones Cívicas,
1993.
———. [1793]. “El arcano de la quina revelado a beneficio de la humanidad.
Discurso que contiene la parte médica, y en que se manifiestan los yerros in- cul-
pablemente cometidos en la práctica de la Medicina por haberse ignorado la dis-
tinción de las quatro especies oficiales de este genero, sus virtudes eminentes y su
legítima preparación: conocimientos, que ofrecen el plan de reforma en la nueva
práctica de esta preciosa corteza.” In Papel Periódico de la Ciudad de Santafé de
Bogotá 1791–1797, Vol. 3 (nos. 89–128). Bogotá: Banco de la República, 1978.
———. [1796]. “Defensa del uso científico de la vacuna de Jenner.” In Escritos
científicos de Don José Celestino Mutis, volume I, edited by Guillermo Hernández
de Alba. Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de Cultura Hispánica, 1983.
———. [1801]. “Estado de la Medicina y de la Cirugía en el Nuevo Reino de
Granada en el siglo xviii y medios para remediar su lamentable atraso.” In Escritos
científicos de Don José Celestino Mutis, volume I, edited by Guillermo Hernández
de Alba. Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de Cultura Hispánica, 1983.
———. [1801]. “Instrucción sobre las precauciones que deben observarse en la
inoculación de las viruelas, formada de órden del Superior Gobierno.” In Correo
Curioso, Económico y Mercantil de la Ciudad de Santafé de Bogotá. Bogotá:
Colcultura, 1993.
———. [1802]. “Instrucción formada por orden del Superior Gobierno para solicitar
en las haciendas del ganado vacuno en este Reino la materia vacuna contenida
en las viruelas de las vacas.” In Escritos científicos de Don José Celestino Mutis,
volume I, edited by Guillermo Hernández de Alba. Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano
de Cultura Hispánica, 1983.
Narváez y de la Torre, Antonio. [1778]. “Provincia de Santa Marta y Rio Hacha del
virreinato de Santa Fé. Informa su Gobernador Don Antonio de Narváez y la Torre
al Señor Ministro de Indias sobre la posición, fertilidad, circunstancias y ventajas
que logra para la agricultura y comercio; frutos que produce; su mísero estado
por la escasa población, especificando su número y calidades.” In Escritos de dos
economistas coloniales: don Antonio de Narváez y la Torre y don José Ignacio de
Pombo, edited by Sergio Elías Ortiz. Bogotá: Banco de la República, 1965.
Pombo, José Ignacio de. [1810]. “Informe al Real Consulado de Cartagena de
Indias, a la Suprema Junta Provincial de la misma, sobre el arreglo de las con-
tribu- ciones en las producciones naturales, en la navegación y en el comercio:
292 Bibliography

sobre el fomento de la industria por medio de los establecimientos de enseñanza

y fábricas de efectos de primera necesidad que se proponen; y sobre los nuevos
cultivos y poblaciones que son necesarias para la prosperidad y seguridad de la
provincial.” In Escritos de dos economistas coloniales: don Antonio de Narváez
y la Torre y don José Ignacio de Pombo, edited by Sergio Elías Ortiz. Bogotá:
Banco de la República, 1965.
Pombo, Miguel de. [1808]. “Noticia del número de personas que se han vacunado en
esta capital desde 1 de marzo de 1805, en que por efecto de la bondad del Soberano
se dio principio a las primeras vacunaciones, hasta 29 de mayo de 1808, en que se
continúan, observándose en el fluido la misma frescura, vigor y actividad que mani-
festó entonces.” In Semanario del Nuevo Reino de Granada, volume I. Bogotá:
Biblioteca Popular de Cultura Colombiana, 1942
“Pragmática sanción para evitar el abuso de contraer matrimonios desiguales” [1776].
In Nobles, blancos y mestizos en la Villa de Nuestra Señora de La Candelaria
de Medellín. Probanzas de nobleza, familia y mestizaje del cabildo 1674–1812,
edited by William Jaramillo Mejía. Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de Antropología
e Historia, 2000.
“Real Cédula para que en los Reinos de Indias se extingan los diferentes idiomas de
que se usa y sólo se hable el Castellano” [1770]. In La ilustración y la educación
en la Nueva España, edited by Dorothy Tanck de Estrada. México, 1985.
Restrepo, José Felix de. [1791]. “Oración para el ingreso a los estudios de filosofía.”
In Obras Completas. Bogotá: Universidad Santo Tomás. Biblioteca Colombiana
de Filosofía, 2002.
Robertson, William. [1777] The History of America, Volume II. Basil: Printed for J.J.
Tourneisen and J.L. Legrand, 1790.
Rodríguez, Manuel del Socorro. [1791]. “Discurso sobre la Caridad Ilustrada.” In
Papel Periódico de la Ciudad de Santafé de Bogotá 1791–1797. Vol II (nos.
10–14; 16–18). Bogotá: Banco de la República, 1978.
———. [1792]. “Relación del estado en que se halla la obra del Real Hospicio de
pobres de esta capital, á que se dio principio el día 1 de Abril de 1790.” In Papel
Periódico de la Ciudad de Santafé de Bogotá 1791–1797, volume II. Bogotá:
Banco de la República, 1978.
———. [1795]. “Reflexiones sobre el origen de las comunes enfermedades que
despueblan este Reyno.” In Papel Periódico de la Ciudad de Santafé de Bogotá
1791–1797, volume. V. Bogotá: Banco de la República,1978.
———. [1796]. “Sobre la recolección de los pobres de esta corte.” In Papel Periódico
de la Ciudad de Santafé de Bogotá 1791–1797, volume VI. Bogotá: Banco de la
República, 1978.
Salazar, José María. [1809]. “Memoria descriptiva del país de Santafé de Bogotá, en
que se impugnan varios errores de la de Mr. Leblond sobre el mismo objeto.” In
Semanario del Nuevo Reino de Granada, volume II. Bogotá: Biblioteca Popular de
Cultura Colombiana, 1942.
“Sobre el pleito (porque) Miguel Mejía quiere casar a su hija” [1793]. In Nobles,
blancos y mestizos en la Villa de Nuestra Señora de La Candelaria de Medellín.
Probanzas de nobleza, familia y mestizaje del cabildo 1674–1812, edited by
 Bibliography 293

William Jaramillo Mejía. Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de Antropología e

Historia, 2000.
Tanco, Diego Martín. [1792]. “Discurso sobre la población.” In Papel Periódico
de la Ciudad de Santafé de Bogotá 1791–1797, volume II. Bogotá: Banco de la
República, 1978.
———. [1808]. “Carta al Señor D. Francisco José de Caldas.” In Semanario del
Nuevo Reino de Granada, volume I. Bogotá: Biblioteca Popular de Cultura
Colombiana, 1942.
———. [1808]. “Discurso sobre la educación.” In Semanario del Nuevo Reino de
Granada, volume I. Bogotá: Biblioteca Popular de Cultura Colombiana, 1942.
Ulloa, Francisco Antonio. [1808]. “Ensayo sobre el influxo del clima en la educación
física y moral del hombre del Nuevo Reyno de Granada.” In Semanario del Nuevo
Reino de Granada (microfilm). Bogotá: Biblioteca Nacional.
Valenzuela, Eloy. [1783–1784]. Primer Diario de la Expedición Botánica del Nuevo
Reino de Granada. Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de Cultura Hispánica, 1983.
Vargas, Pedro Fermín de. [1789]. “Plan de las Constituciones que se presentan al
Excelentísimo Señor virrey del Reino para al Hospital Real de San Pedro de la
parroquia de zipaquirá.” In Pensamientos políticos y memorias sobre la población
de Nuevo Reino de Granada. Bogotá: Biblioteca Popular de Cultura Colombiana,
1944.
———. [1789]. “Pensamientos políticos sobre la agricultura, comercio y minas del
virreinato de Santafé de Bogotá.” In Pensamientos políticos. Bogotá: Procultura
1986.
———. [1789]. “Memoria sobre la población.” In Pensamientos políticos y memo-
rias sobre la población de Nuevo Reino de Granada. Bogotá: Biblioteca Popular
de Cultura Colombiana, 1944.
———. [1789]. “De la policía y decoro en las construcciones.” In Pensamientos
políticos y memorias sobre la población de Nuevo Reino de Granada. Bogotá:
Biblioteca Popular de Cultura Colombiana, 1944.
———. [1791]. “Relación sobre el Bejuco del Guaco.” In Papel Periódico de la
Ciudad de Santafé de Bogotá 1791–1797. Vol. 1 (nos. 34–35). Bogotá: Banco de
la República, 1978.
———. [1808]. “Relación sucinta del estado actual de las colonias españolas en la
América Meridional.” In Pensamientos Políticos. Bogotá: Procultura 1986.
Velasco, Juan de. [1789]. Historia del Reino de Quito en la América Meridional
escrita por el Presbítero Don Juan de Velasco, nativo del mismo Reino, volume I.
Quito: Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana “Benjamín Carrión” / CNPCC, 1998.
Zea, Francisco Antonio. [1791]. “Avisos de Hebephilo.” In Filosofía de la ilustración
en Colombia, edited by Germán Marquínez Argote. Bogotá: El Búho 1982.

SECONDARY SOURCES

Ahmad, Aijaz. 1993. In Theory. Classes, Nations, Literatures. London/New York:

Verso.
294 Bibliography

———. 1999. “Teoría, política, subalternidad y poscolonialidad.” In Pensar (en)

los intersticios. Teoría y práctica de la crítica poscolonial, edited by Santiago
Castro-Gómez, Oscar Guardiola-Rivera, and Carmen Millán de Benavides.
Bogotá: CEJA.
Alcina Franch, José. 1988. El descubrimiento científico de América. Barcelona:
Anthropos.
Althusser, Louis. 1990. Philosophy and the Spontaneous Philosophy of the Scientists.
London/New York: Verso.
Alzate Echeverri, Adriana María. 1999. Los oficios médicos del sabio. Contribución
al estudio del pensamiento higienista de José Celestino Mutis. Medellín:
Universidad de Antioquia.
———. 2007. Suciedad y orden. Reformas sanitarias borbónicas en la Nueva
Granada 1760–1810. Bogotá: Editorial Universidad del Rosario.
Amaya, José Antonio. 2000. “Una flora para el Nuevo Reino. Mutis, sus colabora-
dores y la botánica madrileña (1791–1808).” In Culturas científicas y saberes
locales: asimilación, hibridación, resistencia, edited by Diana Obregón. Bogotá:
Universidad Nacional de Colombia.
Amin, Samir. 1997. Los desafíos de la mundialización. México: Siglo XXI.
Amodio, Emanuele. 1998. “El paraíso vegetal. Las fronteras étnicas de un botánico
ilustrado.” In La Comisión Naturalista de Löfling en la Expedición de Límites
al Orinoco, by María Teresa Tellería, et al. Madrid: Consejo Superior de
Investigaciones Científicas.
Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and
Spread of Nationalism. London/New York: Verso.
Araya, Adán Salina, ed. 2017. Filosofía política y genealogías de la colonialidad:
Diálogos con Santiago Castro-Gómez. Viña del Mar, Chile: CENALTES.
Arboleda, Luis Carlos. 1993. “El objeto y el método de la historia de las ciencias.”
In Historia Social de la Ciencia en Colombia. Tomo i: Fundamentos teórico-
metodológicos. Santafé de Bogotá: Colciencias.
———. 1993. “La ciencia y el ideal de ascenso social de los criollos en el virrein-
ato de Nueva Granada.” In Historia Social de la Ciencia en Colombia. Tomo iii:
Historia natural y ciencias agropecuarias. Santafé de Bogotá: Colciencias.
Arcila Farías, Eduardo. 1955. El siglo ilustrado en América. reformas económicas del
siglo xviii en Nueva España. Contribución al estudio de las instituciones hispano-
americanas. Caracas: Ediciones del Ministerio de Educación.
Arrighi, Giovanni. 1999. El largo siglo XX. Dinero y poder en los orígenes de nuestra
época. Madrid: Akal.
Ashcroft Bill, Gareth Griffiths y Helen Tiffin. 1989. The Empire Writes Back. Theory
and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures. New York/London: Routledge.
Ashcroft Bill, Gareth Griffiths y Helen Tiffin, eds. 1995. The Post-Colonial Studies
Reader. New York/London: Routledge.
Ashcroft, Bill y Pal Ahluwalia. 2000. Edward Said. La paradoja de la identidad.
Barcelona: Bellaterra.
Astuto, Philip L. 1981. “Cronología.” In Obra educativa, by Eugenio de Santa Cruz
y Espejo. Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho.
 Bibliography 295

Augé, Marc. 1995. Non-Places: An Introduction to Supermodernity. Translated by

John Howe. London/New York: Verso.
Bachmann-Medick, Doris, ed. 1996. Kultur als Text. Die anthropologische Wende in
der Literaturwissenschaft. Frankfurt.
Beltrán, Antonio. 1997. “La historia natural de Buffon: la eternidad en la historia.” In
Las épocas de la naturaleza, by G.L. Leclerc Buffon. Madrid: Alianza.
Bertrán-Quera, Miguel S. J. 1984. La pedagogía de los jesuitas en la Ratio Studiorum.
La fundación de los colegios. Orígenes, autores y evolución histórica de la Ratio.
Análisis de la educación religiosa, caracterológica e intelectual. San Cristobal/
Caracas: Universidad Católica del Táchira/Universidad Católica Andrés Bello.
Beverley, John. 1999. Subalternity and Representation. Arguments in Cultural
Theory. Durham/London: Duke University Press.
Bhabha, Homi. 1994. The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge.
Bitterli, Urs. 1991. Die “Wilden” und die “Zivilizierten”. Grundzüge einer Geistes-
und Kulturgeschichte der europäisch-überseeischen Begegnung. München: Beck.
Blaut, J. M. 1993. The Colonizer´s Model of the World. Geographical diffusionism
and Eurocentric History. New York/London: The Guilford Press.
Blanco Martínez, Rogelio. 1999. La ilustración en España y Europa. Madrid:
Endymion.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1988. Homo Academicus. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
———. 1990. In other words : Essays Towards a Reflexive sociology. Stanford:
Stanford University Press.
———. 1997. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
———. 2000. Pascalian Meditations. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
———. 1998. Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action. Stanford: Stanford
University Press.
1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, trans. Richard Nice.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Pierre Bourdieu, Jean-Claude Chamboredon, and Jean-Claude Passeron. 1991. The
Craft of Sociology: Epistemological Preliminaries. Translated by Richard Nice.
New York: Walter de Gruyter.
Brunner, José Joaquín. 1992. América Latina: cultura y modernidad. México:
Grijalbo.
Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc. [1778]. The Epochs of Nature. Translated and Edited
by Jan Zalasiewicz, Anne-Sophie Milon, and Mateusz Zalasiewicz. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2018.
Büschges, Christian. 1997. “La nobleza de Quito a finales del periodo colonial (1765–
1810): bases jurídicas y mentalidad social.” In Procesos. Revista Ecuatoriana de
Historia 10, 43–61.
Cadelo Buitrago, Andrea. 2002. “Hábito e ideología criolla en el Semanario del
Nuevo Reino de Granada.” Tesis de grado. Bogotá: Pontificia Universidad
Javeriana, Facultad de Comunicación y Lenguaje.
Capel, Horacio. 1995. “Ramas en el árbol de la ciencia: Geografía, Física e Historia
Natural en las expediciones náuticas del siglo xviii.” In De la ciencia romántica
296 Bibliography

a la ciencia ilustrada. Actas de las ii Jornadas sobre “España y las expediciones

científicas en América y Filipinas”, edited by A. Diez Torre, T. Mallo, and D.
Pacheco Fernández. Madrid: Doce Calles.
Castrillón Aldana, Alberto. 2000. Alejandro de Humboldt: del catálogo al paisaje.
Medellín: Universidad de Antioquia.
Castro-Gómez, Santiago. 1996. Crítica de la razón latinoamericana. Barcelona:
Puvill Libros.
———. 1999. “Epistemologías coloniales, saberes latinoamericanos: El proyecto
teórico de los estudios subalternos.” In El debate de la poscolonialidad en
Latinoamérica. Una postmodernidad periférica o cambio de paradigma en el
pensamiento latinoamericano, edited by Alfonso de Toro and Fernando de Toro.
Madrid: Iberoamericana.
———. 2000. “Ciencias sociales, violencia epistémica y el problema de la inven-
ción del otro.” In La colonialidad del saber: eurocentrismo y ciencias sociales.
Perspectivas latinoamericanas, edited by Edgardo Lander. Caracas: CLACSO/
UNESCO .
———. 2003. “Apogeo y decadencia de la teoría tradicional. Una visión desde los
intersticios.” Estudios culturales latinoamericanos. Retos desde y sobre la región
andina, edited by Catherine Walsh. Quito: Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar/
Abya Yala.
———. 2009. Tejidos oníricos: Movilidad, capitalismo y biopolítica en Bogotá
(1910–1930). Bogotá: Editorial Pontificia Universidad Javeriana.
———. 2010. Historia de la gubernamentalidad. Razón de estado, liberalism y neo-
liberalismo en Michel Foucault. Bogotá: Sigle del Hombre Editores.
———. 2015. Revoluciones sin sujeto: Slavoj Zizek y la crítica del historicismo pos-
moderno. Mexico City: Akal.
———. 2016. Historia de la gubernamentalidad II. Filosofía, cristianismo y sexuali-
dad en Michel Foucault. Bogotá: Siglo del Hombre Editores.
———. 2019. El tonto y las canallas. Notas para un republicanismo transmoderno.
Bogotá: Editorial Pontificia Universidad Javeriana
———. 2021. Critique of Latin American Reason. Translated by Andrew Ascherl.
New York: Columbia University Press.
Castro-Gómez, Santiago y Eduardo Mendieta, eds. 1998. Teorías sin disciplina.
Latinoamericanismo, poscolonialidad y globalización en debate. México: Porrúa.
Castro-Gómez, Santiago y Oscar Guardiola Rivera. 2000. “Geopolíticas del cono-
cimiento o el desafío de “impensar” las ciencias sociales en América Latina.” In
La reestructuración de las ciencias sociales en América Latina, edited by Santiago
Castro-Gómez. Bogotá: CEJA.
———. 2002. “El plan Colombia, o de cómo una historia local se convierte en diseño
global.” In Indisciplinar las ciencias sociales. Geopolíticas del conocimiento y
colonia- lidad del poder. Perspectivas desde lo Andino, edited by Catherine Walsh,
Freya Schiwy, and Santiago Castro-Gómez. Quito: Universidad Andina Simón
Bolívar/Abya Yala.
Chocano Mena, Magdalena. 2000. La fortaleza docta. Elite letrada y dominación
social en México colonial [siglos xvi–xvii]. Barcelona: Bellaterra.
 Bibliography 297

Clavigero [Clavijero], Francisco Saverio. [1781] The History of Mexico, volume

II. Translated by Charles Cullen. London: J. Johnson, St. Paul’s Churchyard,
1807.
Colmenares, Germán. 1984. “La economía y la sociedad coloniales, 155–1800.” In
Manual de Historia de Colombia, Vol. I. Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de Cultura.
Colmenares, Germán. 1998. Haciendas de los jesuitas en el Nuevo Reino de Granada.
Siglo xviii. Santafé de Bogotá: Tercer Mundo/Universidad del Valle/Banco de la
República/Colciencias.
Conde Calderón, Jorge. 1999. Espacio, sociedad y conflictos en la Provincia de
Cartagena, 1740–1815. Barranquilla: Fondo de Publicaciones de la Universidad
del Atlántico.
Conrad, Sebastian y Shalini Randeria, eds. 2002. Jenseits des Eurozentrismus.
Postkoloniale Perspektiven in den Geschichts- und Kulturwissenschaften.
Frankfurt: Campus Verlag.
Corvalán, María Eugenia. 1999. El pensamiento indígena en Europa. Santafé de
Bogotá: Planeta.
De Certeau, Michel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Translated by Steven F.
Rendall. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus. Translated by Brian
Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.
De Paw, Cornelius. “América” [1776]. In Europa y Amerindia. El indio americano en
textos del siglo xviii, edited by José E. Juncosa. Quito: Abya Yala, 1991.
De Toro, Alfonso y Fernando de Toro, eds. 1999. El debate de la poscolonialidad
en Latinoamérica. Una postmodernidad periférica o cambio de paradigma en el
pensamiento latinoamericano. Madrid: Iberoamericana.
Descartes, René. 1993. Meditations on First Philosophy. Edited by Stanley Tweyman.
New York: Routledge.
Díaz Díaz, Rafael Antonio. 2001. Esclavitud, región y ciudad. El sistema esclavista
urbano-regional en Santafe de Bogotá, 1700–1750. Bogotá: CEJA.
Díaz Piedrahita, Santiago. 1997. Nueva aproximación a Francisco José de Caldas.
Episodios de su vida y de su actividad científica. Santafe de Bogotá: Academia
Colombiana de Historia.
———. 2000. Matís y los dos Mutis. Bogotá: Academia Colombiana de Ciencias
Exactas, Físicas y Naturales.
Díaz Piedrahita, Santiago y Luis Carlos Mantilla. 2002. La terapéutica en el Nuevo
Reino de Granada. Un recetario franciscano del siglo xviii. Bogotá: Guadalupe.
Dirlik, Arif. 1997. The Postcolonial Aura. Third World Criticism in the Age of Global
Capitalism. Boulder: Westview Press.
Dube, Saurabh, ed. 1999. Pasados Poscoloniales. México: El Colegio de México.
Dueñas vargas, Guiomar. 1997. Los hijos del pecado. Ilegitimidad y vida familiar en
la Santafé de Bogotá colonial. Bogotá: Universidad Nacional.
Dussel, Enrique. 1992. 1492: El encubrimiento del otro. El origen del mito de la
modernidad. Conferencias de Frankfurt 1992. Bogotá: Anthropos.
———. 1993. “Eurocentrism and Modernity (Introduction to the Frankfurt Lectures),”
In Boundary 2 20, no. 3 (Autumn 1993), 65–76.
298 Bibliography

———. 1995a. Introducción a la filosofía de la liberación. Bogotá: Editorial Nueva

América (5th edition).
———. 1995b. The Invention of the Americas: Eclipse of “the Other” and the Myth
of Modernity. Translated by Michael Barber. New York: Continuum.
———. 1998. “Beyond Eurocentrism: The World-System and the Limits of
Modernity.” In The Cultures of Globalization, edited by Frederic Jameson and
Masao Miyoshi. Durham: Duke University Press.
Echeverría, Bolívar. 2000. La modernidad de lo barroco. México: Era.
———. 2001. “Modernidad y capitalismo (Quince Tesis)”. In Las ilusiones de la
modernidad. Quito: Tramasocial (2nd edition).
Elorza, Antonio. 1970. La ideología liberal en la ilustración española. Madrid:
Tecnos.
Escobar, Arturo. 1999. El final del salvaje. Naturaleza, cultura y política en la
antropología contemporánea. Santafé de Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de
Antropología.
Eze, Emmanuel Chukwudi. 2001. “El color de la razón: la idea de “raza” en la antrop-
ología de Kant.” In Capitalismo y geopolíticas del conocimiento. El eurocentrismo
y la filosofía de la liberacíon en el debate intelectual contemporáneo, edited by
Walter Mignolo. Buenos Aires: Ediciones del Signo/Duke University.
Fernández Herrero, Beatriz. 1992. La utopía de América. Teoría, leyes, experimentos.
Barcelona: Anthropos.
Foucault, Michel. 1978. The History of Sexuality, Volume I: An Introduction.
Translated by Robert Hurley. New York: Pantheon.
———. 1984. 1999. “La incorporación del hospital en la tecnología moderna”. In
Obras Esenciales. volumen iii. Estética, ética y hermenéutica. Barcelona: Paidos.
———. 1994. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New
York: Vintage Books.
———. 1999. “La gubernamentalidad”. In Obras Esenciales. Vol. iii. Barcelona:
Paidós.
———. 2001. “The Birth of Social Medicine.” In Power, edited by James D.
Faubion. New York: The New Press.
———. 2009. Security, Territory, Population. Lectures at the Collège de France,
1977–1978. Translated by Graham Burchell. New York: Picador.
———. 2010. The Birth of Biopolitics. Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–
1979. Translated by Graham Burchell. New York: Picador.
Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth. 1976. The Origins of Physiocracy. Economic Revolution
and Social Order in Eighteenth-Century France. Ithaca/London: Cornell University
Press.
Freile, Carlos. 2001. Eugenio Espejo. Precursor de la independencia (Documentos
1794–1797). Quito: Abya Yala.
Frías Nuñez, Marcelo. 1992. Enfermedad y sociedad en la crisis del antiguo régi-
men. Nueva Granada en el tránsito del siglo xviii al xix: las epidemias de viruela.
Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas.
Gandhi, Leela. 1998. Postcolonial Theory. A Critical Introduction. New York:
Columbia University Press.
 Bibliography 299

Gardeta Sabater, Pilar. 1996. Sebastián José López Ruiz (1741–1832). Sus escritos
médicos y el ejercicio de la medicina en el Virreinato de Nueva Granada durante
la segunda mitad del siglo xviii. Málaga: Universidad de Málaga.
García Sáiz, María Concepción. 1989. Las castas mexicanas: Un género pictórico
americano. Milán: Olivetti.
Gerbi, Antonello. 2010. The Dispute of the New World: The History of a Polemic,
1750–1900. Translated by Jeremy Moyle. Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University
Press.
González, Margarita. 1992. El resguardo en el Nuevo Reino de Granada. Bogotá: El
Ancora.
González de Pérez, María Stella. 1980. Trayectoria de los estudios sobre la lengua
Chibcha o Muisca. Bogotá: Instituto Caro y Cuervo.
Gnecco, Cristóbal. 1999. Multivocalidad histórica. Hacia una cartografía poscolo-
nial de la arqueología. Bogotá: Universidad de los Andes.
Gutiérrez Ramos, Jairo. 1998. El mayorazgo de Bogotá y el marquesado de San Jorge.
Riqueza, linaje y poder en Santa Fe, 1538–1824. Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de
Cultura Hispánica.
Gutiérrez de Pineda, Virginia y Roberto Pineda Giraldo. 1999. Miscegenación y cul-
tura en la Colombia colonial, 1750–1810. 2 volumes. Santafe de Bogotá: Uniandes
/Colciencias.
Hardt, Michael and Toni Negri. 2000. Empire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Harvey, David. 1990. The Condition of Postmodernity. An Enquiry into the Origins
of Cultural Change. Malden/Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1984. The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume 1: Reason
and the Rationalization of Society. Translated by Thomas McCarthy. Boston:
Beacon Press.
Hegel, G.W.F. 1975. Lectures on the Philosophy of World History. Introduction:
Reason in History. Translated by H.B. Nisbet. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Hernández de Alba, Gonzalo. 1996. Quinas amargas. Mutis y la discusión naturalista
del siglo xviii. Bogotá: Imprenta Nacional de Colombia.
Herrera Angel, Marta. 2002. Ordenar para controlar. Ordenamiento espacial y con-
trol politico en las Llanuras del Caribe y en los Andes Centrales Neogranadinos.
Siglo xviii. Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de Antropología e Historia/Academia
Colombiana de Historia.
Hoffmann, Sabine. 2001. Die Konstruktion kolonialer Wirklichkeit. Eine diskurs-
analytische Untersuchung französicher Karibiktexte des frühen 17. Jahrhunderts.
Frankfurt: Campus Verlag.
Hume, David. [1739]. A Treatise of Human Nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1960.
Ibañez, Pedro María. 1968. Memorias para la historia de la medicina en Santa Fe de
Bogotá. Bogotá: Imprenta Nacional.
Jaramillo Arango, Jaime. 1951 . “Estudio crítico acerca de los hechos básicos en la
historia de la quina.” In Revista de la Academia Colombiana de Ciencias Exactas,
Físicas y Naturales. No. 30, 245–283.
300 Bibliography

Jaramillo Mejía, William, ed. 1996. Real Colegio Mayor y Seminario de San
Bartolomé. Nobleza e Hidalguía. Colegiales de 1605 a 1820. Bogotá: Instituto
Colombiano de Cultura Hispánica.
———, ed. 2000. Nobles, blancos y mestizos en la Villa de Nuestra Señora de La
Candelaria de Medellín. Probanzas de nobleza, familia y mestizaje del cabildo
1674–1812. Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de Antropología e Historia 2000.
Jaramillo Uribe, Jaime. 1984 . “El proceso de la educación, del virreinato a la
época contemporánea.” In Manual de Historia de Colombia. Bogotá: Procultura /
Instituto Colombiano de Cultura. Vol III.
———. 1988 . “La filosofía en el siglo xix y principios del xx”. In AA.VV.
Tendencias actuales de la filosofía en Colombia. Bogotá: USTA.
———. 1989. Ensayos de historia social. La sociedad neogranadina. Bogotá: Tercer
Mundo / Uniandes. Tomo i.
Jones Shafer, Robert. 1958. The Economic Societies in the Spanish World (1763–
1821). Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.
Kant, Immanuel. 1991. Political Writings. Edited by H.S. Reiss. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
———. 2006. Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. Translated and edited
by R. Louden. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 2013. Kant and the Concept of Race: Late Eighteenth-Century Writings.
Translated and edited by J. Mikkelsen. Albany: SUNY Press.
———. 2015. Natural Science. Edited by Eric Watkins. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Katzew, Ilona. 1996. “Casta Painting: Identity and Social Stratification in Colonial
Mexico.” In New World Orders: Casta Painting and Colonial Latin America,
curated by Ilona Katzew. New York: Americas Society Art Gallery.
König, Hans-Joachim. 1994. En el camino hacia la Nación. Nacionalismo en el pro-
ceso de formación del Estado y de la Nación de la Nueva Granada, 1750–1856.
Santafé de Bogotá: Banco de la República.
Lafuente, Antonio y Antonio Mazuecos. 1992. Los caballeros del punto fijo. Ciencia,
política y aventura en la expedición geodésica hispanofrancesa al virreinato del
Perú en el siglo xviii. Quito: Abya Yala.
Langebaek Rueda, Carl Henrik. 2003. Arqueología colombiana: Ciencia, pasado y
exclusión. Bogotá: Colciencias.
Las Casas, Bartolomé de. 1958. Apologética historia de las Indias. Madrid: Biblioteca
de Autores Españoles. Tomo cv.
La Condamine, Charles-Marie de la. [1745] A Succinct Abridgment of a Voyage Made
Within the Inland Parts of South-America. London: E. Withers and G. Goodfalls, 1747.
Lavallé, Bernard. 1990. “Del indio al criollo: evolución y transformación de una
imagen colonial.” In La imagen del indio en la Europa moderna. Sevilla: Consejo
Superior de Investigaciones Científicas.
Lewis, Martin y Kären Wigen. 1997. The Myth of Continents. A Critique of
Metageography. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Locke, John. [1689] Two Treatises on Government. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1988.
 Bibliography 301

Loomba, Ania. 1998. Colonialism / Postcolonialism. New York/London: Routledge.

Lovejoy, Arthur O. 2001. The Great Chain of Being. A Study of the History of an
Idea, 22 ed. Cambridge/London: Harvard University Press.
Llano Isaza, Ramiro. 1999. Centralismo y federalismo (1810–1816). Bogotá: Banco
de la República/El Ancora.
Lucena Giraldo, Manuel. 1998. “El Dorado geométrico. La expedición de límites al
Orinoco, 1754–1761.” In La Comisión Naturalista de Löfling en la Expedición
de Límites al Orinoco, edited by María Teresa Tellería, et al. Madrid: Consejo
Superior de Investigaciones Científicas.
Lynch, John. 1985. Las revoluciones hispanoamericanas 1808–1826. Barcelona:
Ariel.
———. 1991. “Los orígenes de la independencia Hispanomericana.” In Historia de
América Latina, Vol. V, edited by Leslie Bethel. Barcelona: Crítica.
Martin-Alcoff, Linda y Eduardo Mendieta, eds. 2000. Thinking from the Underside
of History. Enrique Dussel’s Philosophy of Liberation. Boulder: Rowman &
Littlefield Publishers.
Marquínez Argote, Germán. 1992. “Filosofía de la ilustración.” In AA.VV. La
filosofía en Colombia. Historia de las ideas. Santafé de Bogotá: El Búho
———. 1995. “Enrique Dussel: filósofo de la liberación latinoamericana (1934–
1975)”. In Introducción a la filosofía de la liberación, by Enrique Dussel. Bogotá:
Nueva América (5th edition).
Martínez Carreño, Aida. 1995. La prisión del vestido. Aspectos sociales del traje en
América. Bogotá: Ariel.
McFarlane, Anthony. 1993. Colombia Before Independence: Economy, Society, and
Politics Under Bourbon Rule. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Meek, Ronald. 1976. Social Science and the Ignoble Savage. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Mejía Pavony, Germán Rodrigo. 2000. Los años del cambio. Historia urbana de
Bogotá 1820–1910. Bogotá, CEJA.
Mignolo, Walter D. 1995. The Darker Side of the Renaissance. Literacy, Territoriality
& Colonization. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.
———. 1998. “Posoccidentalismo: El argumento desde América Latina.” In
Cuadernos Americanos 67, 143–165.
———. 2000. Local Histories/Global Designs. Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges
and Border Thinking. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Millán de Benavides, Carmen. 2001. Epítome de la conquista del Nuevo Reino de
Granada. La cosmografía española del siglo xvi y el conocimiento por cuestion-
ario. Bogotá: CEJA.
Minguet, Charles. 1985. Alejandro de Humboldt, historiador y geógrafo de la
América española (1799–1804), Vol. I. México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma
de México.
Moravia, Alberto. 1989. Beobachtende Vernunft. Philosophie und Anthropologie in
der Auklärung. Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch verlag.
Moreno de Angel, Pilar. 1993. Antonio de la Torre y Miranda. Viajero y poblador.
Bogotá: Planeta.
302 Bibliography

Moore-Gilbert, Bart. 1997. Postcolonial Theory. Contexts, Practices, Politics.

London: Verso.
Mörner, Magnus. 1969. La mezcla de razas en la historia de América Latina. Buenos
Aires: Paidos.
Múnera, Alfonso. 1998. El fracaso de la nación. Región, clase y raza en el Caribe
colombiano (1717–1810). Bogotá: Banco de la República / Ancora.
Nieto Olarte, Mauricio. 2001. Remedios para el imperio. Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano
de Antropología e Historia.
Niranjana, Tejaswini. 1992. Sitting Translation. History, Post-Structuralism, and the
Colonial Context. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Obregón, Diana. 1997. “Struggling Against Leprosy: Physicians, Medicine and
Society in Colombia, 1880–1940.” Doctoral Thesis. Virginia Tech University,
Blacksburg.
O`Gorman, Edmundo. 1991. La invención de América. Investigación acerca de la
estructura histórica del nuevo mundo y del sentido de su devenir. México: Fondo
de Cultural Económica (segunda reimpresión).
Ortega Ricaurte, Carmen. Los estudios sobre lenguas indígenas en Colombia.
Bogotá: Instituto Caro y Cuervo.
———. 2002. Negros, mulatos y zambos en Santafé de Bogotá. Sucesos, personajes
y anécdotas. Bogotá: Academia Colombiana de Historia.
Ortiz Rodríguez, Alvaro Pablo. 2003. Reformas borbónicas: Mutis catedrático, dis-
cípulos y corrientes ilustradas, 1750–1816. Bogotá: Colegio Mayor de Nuestra
Señora del Rosario.
Pacheco, Juan Manuel. 1984. Ciencia, filosofía y educación en Colombia (siglo xviii).
Bogotá: Ecoe.
———.1989. Los jesuitas en Colombia, Vol. i. Bogotá: CEJA.
Padgen, Anthony. 1995. Lords of all the World. Ideologies of Empire in Spain,
Britain and France, 1500–1800. New Haven & London: Yale University Press.
———. 1997. European Encounters with the New World. From Renaissance to
Romanticism. New Haven & London: Yale University Press.
Paz, Octavio. 1990. Sor Juana, or the Traps of Faith. Translated by Margaret Sayers
Peden. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Paz Otero, Gerardo. 1984. La medicina en la conquista y la colonia. Popayán:
Talleres editoriales del departamento.
Pérez Arbeláez, Enrique. 1998. José Celestino Mutis y la Real Expedición Botánica
del Nuevo Reino de Granada. Santafe de Bogotá: Fondo FEN Colombia.
Pineda Camacho, Roberto. 2000. “Demonología y antropología en el Nuevo Reino de
Granada (siglos xvi-xviii).” In Culturas científicas y saberes locales: asimilación,
hibridación, resistencia, edited by Diana Obregón. Bogotá: Universidad Nacional
de Colombia.
Phelan, John Leddy. 1978. The People and the King: The Comunero Revolution in
Colombia, 1781. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Ponce de Leiva, Pilar, ed. 1994. Relaciones histórico-geográficas de la Audiencia de
Quito (Siglos xvi–xix). Quito: Marka / Abya-Yala.
———. 1998. Certezas ante la incertidumbre. Elite y cabildo de Quito en el siglo
xvii. Quito: Abya-Yala.
 Bibliography 303

Puerto Sarmiento, Francisco Javier. 1988. La ilusión quebrada. Botánica, sanidad y

política científica en la España ilustrada. Madrid: Ediciones del Serbal/Consejo
Superior de Investigaciones Científicas.
Pugliese, Abel Orlando. 1994. “El “antiamericanismo” en el pensamiento europeo y
Alexander von Humboldt.” In De orbis Hispani linguis litteris historia moribus.
Festschrift f r Dietrich Briesemeister zum 60. Geburstag, edited by Axel Schömberger
and Klaus Zimmermann. Frankfurt am Main: Domus Editoria Europaea.
Pratt, Mary Louise. 1992. Imperial Eyes. Travel Writing and Transculturation. New
York/London: Routledge.
Quevedo v., Emilio. 1993. Institucionalización de la medicina en Colombia 1492–
1860: Antecedentes de un proceso. Historia social de la ciencia en Colombia, vol.
vii. Bogotá: Colciencias.
Quijano, Aníbal. 1999. “Colonialidad del poder, cultura y conocimiento en América
Latina.” In Pensar (en) los intersticios. Teoría y práctica de la crítica poscolonial,
edited by Santiago Castro-Gómez, Oscar Guardiola Rivera, and Carmen Millán de
Benavides. Bogotá: CEJA
———. 2007. “Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality.” In Cultural Studies 21, nos.
2–3 (March/May 2007), 168–178.
Quintero, Jorge Eliécer. 1999. “La huella de Christian Wolff en la educación
Neogranadina.” In Revista Historia de la Educación Colombiana 2, 83–92.
Rama, Ángel. 1996. The Lettered City. Translated by J.C. Chasteen. Durham: Duke
University Press.
Ramírez, María Himelda. 2000. Las mujeres y la sociedad colonial de Santafe de
Bogotá, 1750–1810. Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de Antropología e Historia
Ramírez Martín, Susana María. 1999. La mayor hazaña médica de la colonia. La Real
Expedición Filantrópica de la vacuna en la Real Audiencia de Quito. Quito: Abya-Yala
Reinhard, Wolfgang.1987. “Sprachbeherrschung und Weltherrschaft. Sprache und
Sprachwissenschaft in der europäischen Expansion.” In Humanismus und Neue
Welt, edited by Wolfgang Reinhard. Weinheim: VCH/Acta Humanoria.
Restrepo Forero, Olga. 1993. “Naturalistas, saber y sociedad en Colombia.” In
Historia Social de la Ciencia en Colombia. Vol iii: Historia natural y ciencias
agropecuarias. Santafé de Bogotá: Colciencias.
Restrepo Forero, Olga. 2000. “La sociología del conocimiento científico, o de cómo
huir de la ‘recepción’ y salir de la periferia.” In Culturas científicas y saberes
locales: asimilación, hibridación, resistencia, edited by Diana Obregón. Bogotá:
Universidad Nacional de Colombia.
Restrepo Zea, Estella. 1997. “El hospital San Juan de Dios, 1635–1870.” In Medicina
y salud en la historia de Colombia, edited by Javier Guerrero Barón. Tunja:
Universidad Tecnológica y Pedagógica de Tunja.
Rivera Cusicanqui, Silvia y Rossana Barragán, eds.. 1999. Debates PostColoniales:
una intro- ducción a los estudios de la subalternidad. La Paz: Sierpe Publicaciones.
Robinson, Douglas. 1997. Translation and Empire. Postcolonial Theories Explained.
Manchester, UK: St. Jerome Publishing.
Rodríguez, Pablo. 1997. Sentimientos y vida familiar en el Nuevo Reino de Granada,
siglo xviii. Santafé de Bogotá: Ariel.
304 Bibliography

Rodríguez González, Ana Luz. 1999. Cofradías, capellanías, epidemias y funerales.

Una mirada al tejido social de la Independencia. Bogotá: Banco de la República/
Áncora.
Roig, Arturo Andrés. 1984. El humanismo ecuatoriano de la segunda mitad del
siglo xviii. Vols. I and 2. Quito: Banco Central del Ecuador/Corporación Editora
Nacional.
Rosenblat, Angel. 1954. La población indígena y el mestizaje en América. Vol ii: “El
mestizaje y las castas colonials.” Buenos Aires: Nova.
Rousseau, Jean Jacques. 1998. Essay on the Origin of Languages and Writings
Related to Music: Collected Writings of Rousseau, Vol. 7. Translated and edited by
John T. Scott. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England.
Rousseau, Jean Jacques. 1985. A Discourse on Inequality. Translated by Maurice
Cranston. New York: Penguin, 1985
Ruiz Moreno, Aníbal. 1946. La medicina en la legislación medioeval española.
Buenos Aires: El Ateneo.
Safford, Frank. 1989. El ideal de lo práctico. El desafío de formar una elite técnica y
empresarial en Colombia. Bogotá: Universidad Nacional/El Ancora.
Said, Edward. 1979. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books.
———. 1994. Kultur und Imperialismus. Einbildungskraft und Politik im Zeitalter
der Macht. Frankfurt: Fischer Verlag
Scharlau, Birgit. 1982. “Beschreiben und Beherrschen. Die Informationspolitik
der spanischen Krone im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert.” In Mythen der Neue Welt.
Zur Entdeckungsgeschichte Lateinamerikas, edited by Karl-Heinz Kohl. Berlin:
Frölich & Kaufmann.
———, ed. 2002. Übersetzen in Lateinamerika. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.
———. 2003. “Repensar la colonia, las relaciones interculturales y la traducción.” In
Iberoamericana III 12 (2003), 97–110.
Silva, Renán. 1992a. Universidad y sociedad en el Nuevo Reino de Granada.
Contribución a un análisis histórico de la formación intelectual de la sociedad
colombiana. Bogotá: Banco de la República.
———. 1992b. Las epidemias de viruela de 1782 y 1802 en la Nueva Granada.
Contribución a un análisis histórico de los procesos de apropiación de modelos
culturales. Cali: Universidad del Valle.
———. 2002. Los ilustrados de Nueva Granada, 1760–1808. Genealogía de una
comunidad de interpretación. Medellín: EAFIT / Banco de la República.
———. 2005. La ilustración en el virreinato de la Nueva Granada. Estudios de his-
toria social. Medellín: La Carreta Editores.
Smith, Adam. 1993. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.
Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.
Solano Alonso, Jairo. 1998. Salud, cultura y sociedad en Cartagena de Indias, siglos
xvi y xvii. Barranquilla: Universidad del Atlántico.
Soriano Lleras, Andrés. 1966. La medicina en el Nuevo Reino de Granada durante la
conquista y la colonia. Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia.
Soto Arango, Diana. 1993. Polémicas universitarias en Santafe de Bogotá, siglo xviii.
Bogotá: Colciencias/UPN.
 Bibliography 305

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1994. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” In Colonial and
Postcolonial Theory. A Reader, edited by P. Williams and L. Chrisman. New York:
Columbia University Press.
Steger, Hans-Albert. 1974. Las universidades en el desarrollo social de la América
Latina. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Stoler, Ann Laura. 1995. Race and the Education of Desire. Foucault`s History of
Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things. Durham: Duke University Press.
Tanck de Estrada, Dorothy. 1985. La ilustración y la educación en la Nueva España.
México: Secretaría de Educación Pública.
Tate Lanning, John. 1997. El Real Protomedicato. La reglamentación de la profe-
sión médica en el Imperio español. México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de
México.
Tisnés Jimenez, Roberto María. 1984. Caballero y Góngora y los comuneros.
Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de Cultura Hispánica.
Toulmin, Stephen. 1990. Cosmopolis. The Hidden Agenda of Modernity. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Triana y Antorveza, Humberto. 1987. Las lenguas indígenas en la historia social del
Nuevo Reino de Granada. Bogotá: Instituto Caro y Cuervo.
———. 1993. Las lenguas indígenas en el ocaso del imperio español. Santafé de
Bogotá: Colcultura/Instituto Colombiano de Antropología.
Turgot, Anne-Robert-Jacques. 1991. “Cuadro filosófico de los sucesivos progresos
del espíritu humano.” In Discursos sobre el progreso humano. Madrid: Tecnos.
———. 1998. “Plan de dos discursos acerca de la historia universal.” In Cuadro
filosófico de los progresos sucesivos del espíritu humano y otros textos. México:
Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Varela Julia y Fernando Alvarez-Uría. 1991. Arqueología de la Escuela. Madrid: La
Piqueta.
Vargas, José María, ed. 1983. Polémica universitaria en Quito colonial. Quito:
Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador/Banco Central del Ecuador.
Vásquez García, Francisco. 2009. La invención del racismo. Nacimiento de la bio-
política en España, 1600–1940. Madrid: Akal.
Vezga, Florentino. 1985. La expedición botánica. Cali: Carvajal y Compañía.
Villacrés Moscoso, Jorge. 1986. Las aventuras de los geodestas franceses del siglo
xviii en la región amazónica. Guayaquil: Universidad de Guayaquil.
Villamarín, Juan y Edith Villamarín, 1982. “The Concept of Nobility in Colonial
Santa Fe de Bogota.” In Essays in the Political, Economic and Social History of
Colonial Latin America, edited by Karen Spalding. Newark, Del: Latin American
Studies Program, University of Delaware.
Villanueva, Javier. 1984. El comercio internacional en Turgot y los “economistas”
franceses del siglo xviii. Buenos Aires: Instituto Torcuato Di Tella.
Vögelin, Eric. 1989. The History of the Race Idea from Ray to Carus. Baton Rouge:
Louisiana. State University Press.
Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1980. The Modern World-System II. Mercantilism and the
Consolidation of the European World-Economy, 1600–1750. San Diego/New
York: Academic Press.
306 Bibliography

———, et al. 1996. Open the Social Sciences. Report of the Gulbenkian Commision
on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
———. 1998. Historical Capitalism with Capitalist Civilization. London/New York:
Verso.
———. 1998. Impensar las ciencias sociales. Límites de los paradigmas deci-
monónicos. México: Siglo xxi.
Werner Cantor, Erik. 2000. Ni aniquilados, ni vencidos. Los Emberá y la gente negra
del Atrato bajo el dominio español. Siglo XVIII. Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de
Antropología e Historia.
Williams, Patrick y Laura Chrisman, eds. 1994. Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial
Theory. A Reader. New York: Columbia University Press.
Wolf, Eric. 1997. Europe and the People Without History. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Young, Robert. 1990. White Mythologies. Writing History and the West. New York:
Routledge.
Zambrano, Marta. 2000. “La impronta de la ley: escritura y poder en la cultura colo-
nial.” In Memorias hegemónicas, memorias disidentes. El pasado como política
de la historia, edited by Cristóbal Gnecco and Marta Zambrano. Bogotá: Instituto
Colombiano de Antropología e Historia/Universidad del Cauca.
Zammito, John H. 2002. Kant, Herder and the Birth of Anthropology. Chicago/
London: The University of Chicago Press.
 Index
Adam(s), 40, 41, 159, 178, 179, 184,
185, 200, 201
agriculture, 22, 51, 80, 107, 109, 179–
81, 198, 213, 215–20, 222–23, 225,
229, 229n28, 231–32, 242, 262
Amazon, 160–63, 181–81, 199, 208–13,
220, 252
Americas, 1, 2, 4, 10, 21, 24, 34–35,
37, 39, 41–47, 52, 54–57, 60–61, 67,
79–83, 86, 89, 95, 110–11, 114, 119,
130, 159–62, 165, 170–71, 180–81,
195, 198–201, 203, 214, 226, 235–68
anatomy, 126n10, 137, 146, 148,
151n44
anthropology, 6, 24–25, 31–32, 214
apparatus, x–xiii, xvi–xvii, 6–8, 13,
19n9, 30–31, 42–43, 47–48, 51–52,
54, 60–61, 63–64, 69n29, 72, 75, 77,
80, 82, 87, 91, 93, 96–97, 103–4,
109, 115, 117, 118, 122, 126–27,
131, 134–35, 149, 157, 181, 198,
253, 268, 272, 275, 277, 281–82,
286
architecture, 136–37, 236, 258
Aristotle, 14, 16, 105
Audiencia, 56, 82, 83, 90, 113, 114,
202–3, 205
307
barbarism, 6, 22–23, 33, 153, 160, 162,
170, 173, 177, 230, 231, 262
biopolitics, ix, xii, xvii, 5, 8, 38, 75, 78,
80, 82, 88, 93–94, 103, 106, 108–9,
115, 117–18, 136, 139, 145, 148–51,
154–55, 187, 271, 275–79, 282–83,
286
blood purity, xii, xvi–xvii, 5–7, 38–40,
44, 51, 51n1, 52, 54–56, 61, 65–66,
70–71, 77, 85, 89–90, 93–94, 97–99,
101, 111–12, 117, 146, 148, 154,
158–60, 171, 186, 236, 248, 253,
268–70, 272, 275, 286
Blumenbach, Friedrich, 24, 26, 260–61
border(s): distancing, xvi;
epistemological, 13, 195, 271–72;
ethnic, 53, 98, 110, 118, 158, 271;
legal/juridical, 150, 154; subjects,
xvii; thinking, 272
botany, xii, 151, 154, 169, 175–78, 180–
81, 184, 187, 189, 192, 195, 229, 283
Bourbon reforms, xii, xvii, 6, 80, 82,
93, 94, 108–9, 117, 119, 121, 135,
271, 276
Bourdieu, Pierre, xi, 5, 45n29, 54, 57n9,
64, 64n21, 65, 83n45, 94, 97–98,
99n68, 106n80, 272, 277n2
308
Buffon, George-Louis, 5, 43, 185, 237,
238, 239, 240, 240n34, 241, 241n35,
242, 243–45, 243n39, 248–49, 252–
57, 255n48, 259
Caballero y Góngora, Antonio, 2, 88,
125, 125n9, 126, 126n10, 127n12,
151n44, 184n24, 191, 192n31, 195,
198, 213
Caldas, Francisco José, 76, 100, 143–
45, 168–69, 169n9, 184n24, 185,
190n29, 195–96, 207, 207n14, 208,
208n15, 213, 215, 218–21, 219n22,
220n23, 221n24, 223–25, 223n27,
229–33, 233n29, 236–37, 243, 256–
57, 256n50, 262–63, 262n57, 285
Campillo y Cossío, José, 79–81, 80n41,
84–85
capital: accumulation of, 36–37, 284;
cultural, 5, 54, 72, 74–75, 82, 93,
97–98, 149, 272; economic, 66, 75,
121; symbolic, 48, 66, 82–86, 89, 90,
95, 151, 253, 270; university, 103
capitalism, ix–x, ixn4, xvii, 11, 19, 35,
277n3
cartography, xvi, 44–46, 80, 199
cinchona (bark), 150, 168, 181, 184n23,
186–94, 186n26, 192n33, 194n34,
203–4, 211
classification, 24, 26n15, 39, 47, 59–61,
63–64, 103n75, 166, 177, 180, 183,
195, 219, 229
Clavijero, Francisco Xavier, 249–54,
251n44
climate, 24, 27, 124, 143–44, 172, 180–
81, 192n33, 202, 208, 219–20, 223,
225, 228, 230–37, 236n31, 237n32,
242–46, 249–50, 252, 255–60,
259n52, 262–63, 285
coloniality, viii, viiin2, x, xii–xiii, xvi–
xvii, 6–7, 11, 28, 30, 32, 34, 46–49,
51–52, 56, 71, 77, 88, 93–94, 110,
115, 148, 268–70, 275
Condorcet, Jean-Antoine-Nicolas, 4, 11,
20, 27, 28, 37
Index
cosmography, 105, 199, 203
Cosmopolis, 11–13, 19, 28, 48, 51, 218
critical theory, vii–viii, xiii, 28, 46,
163n5
Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari, 197,
198, 204n10, 214
Descartes, René, xi, 11–13, 13n2, 15,
18n9, 22, 33, 142n35, 230
Diderot, Denis, 199, 241
discourse: of blood purity, xii, 7, 38–40,
51–51, 56, 61, 66, 90, 93, 97–98,
111, 117, 157, 159–60, 186, 236;
colonial, xvii, 4, 9, 19, 28, 37–38,
42, 49, 51, 117; enlightenment/
enlightened, 4, 10, 43, 157, 158; of
epistemic purity, xvii, 158; of the
human sciences, 28
disease, 99, 117, 119, 121, 124–32,
126n11, 128n14, 130n22, 134–40,
140n32, 143, 145–46, 152, 158, 165,
169–75, 172n13, 173n14, 234–35,
242, 245, 277, 280–82
division of labor, 17, 21, 40, 60, 68,
123; ethnic, 42, 92n60
Dominicans, 95, 108–9, 109n82, 249,
253nn45–46
Dussel, Enrique, ix–x, xv, 6, 11, 28, 33–
38, 37nn20–21, 38n22, 43, 45–46,
49, 51, 157n1
Echeverría, Bolívar, 176, 253n45
economic atlas, 215, 218, 229
encomienda, 48, 48n31, 52–53, 55, 63,
68, 87, 102, 202, 204, 255
enlightenment, ix, xi–xii, xv–xvi, 3–11,
13, 19, 23–25n14, 28–29, 31–38,
45, 48, 49, 51, 60, 100, 109, 110,
117–18, 124, 126, 135, 142, 157–58,
162–63, 179, 185, 214–16, 227, 229,
237, 239, 255, 270–72
epistemic/epistemological: border,
13, 195, 271–72; break, 110;
expropriation, xi–xii, 8, 115, 157–58,
175; purity, xvii, 158; violence, 48
 Index
ethnology, 14, 31, 214n17, 245
Eurocentrism, xi, 33–34
evangelization, 118, 161, 259
expedition: botanical, 76, 164, 167, 182,
184, 184n24, 187, 190n29, 191, 198,
272; Geodesic, 205, 206, 206n12,
208, 239, 272; limits, 181; Salvani,
130n21, 272, 281
Fermín de Vargas, Pedro, 72, 100, 122,
136, 145–46, 166, 217, 222, 226, 286
Finestrad, Joaquín de, 59–60, 126n10,
135–36, 143
Foucault, Michel, viii, x–xiii, xn5, xv, 1,
3, 3n6, 5, 27, 31, 31n18, 38–40, 49,
60, 78, 80, 94, 175–76, 178, 184n23,
275–76, 281–83n6, 283n8, 285
Franciscans, 95, 114, 119, 123, 164,
253nn45–46
geoculture, 37–38, 43, 45
geography, viii, xii, 8, 24–27, 24n13,
31, 45–46, 107, 109, 121, 197–200,
204, 206, 206n12, 211, 213, 215–16,
218, 228–30, 229n28, 233, 238,
242–43, 283
geopolitics of knowledge, 9, 11, 31, 46,
206, 271
Gerbi, Antonello, 237, 240n34, 243n38,
248, 254
Gil, Francisco, 117, 128nn14–15,
129n18, 138, 138n29, 171–72
governmentality, x–xi, 6, 77, 104, 108,
121, 146, 198, 204, 276
Gumilla, José, 159–61, 159n2, 163, 165,
169, 170nn10–11, 182, 209, 241, 247
Habermas, Jürgen, 163n5, 270
habitus, xi–xii, 5–7, 29–30, 42–43, 57,
61, 64–66, 82, 84, 98, 103, 109,
117, 136, 157–58, 170–72, 236, 248,
253–54, 262, 268, 270–72
Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri, 9,
11, 13, 18n9, 19
309
Hegel, G. W. F., 30–31, 39n23, 43, 184,
247n40
hegemony, xvii, 4–6, 8, 32, 37, 39, 42,
46, 57n9, 72, 77, 79, 141, 157–58,
177, 179, 214, 237, 271, 286
Hobbes, Thomas, 16, 20, 27, 37
hospital, xii, 118–20, 122–23, 134,
136–41, 141n33, 143–46, 148, 151,
151n44, 153n48, 221, 258, 281–82
Humboldt, Alexander von, 51, 109n82,
193, 229, 229n28, 256, 259–60,
260nn54–55, 261n56, 262, 262n57,
263, 263n58, 267n1
Hume, David, 4, 11, 13–19, 13n3, 15n5,
16n6, 23, 25, 28, 37, 237, 243
ideological apparatuses, 93, 122
immaturity, 9, 24, 48, 212, 241, 246;
immature races, 24, 27, 231
Japheth, 40–42, 159, 161, 199
Jaramillo Uribe, Jaime, 67, 69, 91n58,
100–101, 271n4
Jesuits, 1, 95–96, 102–6, 108, 111, 114,
141, 151, 160–61, 164–66, 248–55,
253nn45–46
Jovellanos, Gaspar Melchor de, 216,
218, 278
Juan, Jorge and Antonio Ulloa, 54,
61–63, 68, 79, 86, 139–41, 140n32,
179n18, 206, 206n12, 207, 227–28
Kant, Immanuel, xvi, 4, 9, 11, 24–28,
24n13, 26n15, 37, 231, 261, 261n56,
265
la Condamine, Carl Marie de, 162,
162n4, 206–13, 207nn13–14, 239,
241, 246, 250
Las Casas, Bartolomé de, 11, 46n30,
238–39, 241
Linnaeus, Carl, 26, 154, 166, 168–69,
177–78, 177nn16–17, 180–81, 183,
189, 192, 192n30, 195–96, 211
310
Locke, John, 4, 5, 16n7, 20–21, 20n11,
23, 27, 216n19
locus of enunciation, ix, 8, 10, 18, 38,
46, 51–52
López Ruiz, Sebastián, 150–54,
150nn41–42, 151n45, 152n46,
153nn48–49, 186–92, 194, 196, 211
maps, 12, 44–45, 61, 197, 199–201,
203–5, 213, 237–38
Maroni, Pablo, 161–62, 165–66,
209
Marx, Karl, xvii, 33, 64n21; Marxism,
xvi, 3n6, 18, 56
Mendinueta, Pedro, 127, 138, 148–50,
197, 221
Mignolo, Walter, xv, 6, 11, 28, 38–49,
51, 61, 71, 94, 157, 161, 163, 201,
269, 272–73
Montesquieu, Charles Louis de
Secondat, xv, 5, 24, 242, 255
Moreno y Escandón, Francisco Antonio,
9, 106–9, 154, 197
Mutis, José Celestino, 2, 76, 109n82,
124, 127, 129–30, 129nn18–19,
130n20, 142, 148, 150–54, 152n46,
153nn47–49, 154nn50–51, 157,
164, 167, 174–75, 182–84nn23–24,
186–96, 189n28, 190n29, 192nn30–
33, 194n34, 198, 211, 221, 262n57,
267–68, 281
Nariño Antonio, 114, 255
Narváez, Antonio de, 217–18, 225–26,
229, 286
Negri, Antonio. See Hardt, Michael and
Antonio Negri
Newton, Isaac, 11–12, 14–15, 17, 22,
25, 105, 107, 109, 130, 142, 154,
169, 189, 230–31
Noah, 40–41, 159–61, 199
objectivity, xi, 5, 14–15, 45, 118, 171,
204
Occidentalism, 29, 42–43
Orientalism, 6, 29–30, 33, 42–43
Index
pathos of distance, 64–71, 90, 98, 110,
149, 178, 185
Pauw [Paw], Cornelius de, 10, 237,
241–49, 255–56, 259
Paz, Octavio, 70n30, 253n45–46, 254
Peru, ix, 1n2, 2n3, 46, 140, 147, 160–
62, 182, 186–89, 203n8, 205, 207–8,
213, 252, 257, 259–60, 263n58, 268
physiocrats, physiocracy, 176n15, 205–
18, 222, 224, 226–27, 277n3, 283–86
politics/policy: imperial, xii, 3–4, 6, 10,
29–31, 44, 82–83, 106, 145, 148,
168, 179, 215, 237, 271, 276, 279,
284–86; of language, 3–4, 267; of
order, 137–39, 145–46; populational,
144, 224–28
Pombo, José Ignacio de, 100, 123–24,
133, 137, 217n21, 218, 223–24, 229,
280, 286
Pombo, Miguel, 130, 166n7, 184n24
postcolonial theory, viii, 3–4, 11, 28, 33,
42, 269–70, 272
poverty, 119, 121–22, 131–35, 146, 161,
215, 217n20, 221, 277, 279–80
power, viii, x–xiii, xvi–xvii, 6, 8, 12–14,
18–19, 28, 31–32, 37–38, 46–49,
53–56, 64, 70–73, 77–79, 81–82,
86, 88, 93–95, 104, 115, 117, 127,
130, 133n25, 134, 141n33, 148, 158,
164, 179, 185–86, 190, 197, 204,
206, 210, 215–16, 230, 237, 246–47,
268–70, 272, 275–77, 281
production: of knowledge, 3, 32–33,
46–48, 78, 107, 163, 172, 181;
subjectivities, 94, 278; wealth, 6, 23,
81, 102, 129, 140, 154, 176, 203n8
public health, 121–22, 127, 129, 136,
139, 150, 152n46, 153, 173, 281
Quechua, 2n3, 76n40, 110, 161
race, viii, xi, 24–29, 47, 55, 57–59, 61–
63, 67n25, 72, 74, 76–77, 90–101,
145, 150, 159–60, 185, 190, 216n19,
226, 228, 230–37, 243–44, 251,
253–54, 261–65, 285–86
 Index
race war, 77, 93, 95
Rama, Ángel, 94, 110, 141, 269
rationality, xvii, 6, 31, 35, 80, 82, 88–
102, 107–8, 121–22, 126, 131, 136,
139–40, 157, 171–72, 177, 182–83,
195, 238, 281, 286
representation, 3n6, 12, 29, 33, 44–45,
57, 61n14, 80, 172, 184n23, 203–4,
215, 247
Restrepo, José Félix de, 100, 142n36,
229
Robertson, William, 235n30, 237, 243–
49, 252–59
Rodríguez, Manuel del Socorro, 131,
170, 221, 256, 267, 278, 280
Roig, Arturo Andrés, xv, 111–12, 115,
249n43, 252, 269
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, xv, 4–5,
11, 20–21n11, 24, 28, 37, 162n4,
222n25, 262
Said, Edward, viii, 6, 11, 28–33, 39,
42–43, 49, 51, 269
Saint Augustine, 40, 169n9
Saint Thomas, 105–6, 109n82, 250
Salazar, José María, 100, 217, 229,
256–59, 264–65, 285
science, xii, xvii, 1–4, 8, 10–12, 22, 24,
27, 35, 80, 103, 105–9, 113, 115n90,
117, 123–29, 154, 158, 163–64, 169,
171, 175–80, 188, 195, 198–99, 211–
31, 252, 261, 264, 267–72, 279, 283;
of government, 78, 142–43, 197–98;
human, 4, 6–7, 11–20, 25, 27–33, 37,
57n9, 245; modern, 33, 77, 115, 118,
121, 206–8, 249
Sépulveda, Juan Ginés de, 37, 238–39
Shem, 40–42, 60, 159, 199
Silva, Renán, 69n28, 98n67, 99–100,
108n81, 110, 118n1, 126n11,
127n12, 128n16, 138–39, 217n20,
255n49, 271n4, 286
slavery, 19, 41, 51, 53, 58, 62, 67–68,
70, 73, 76–78, 89n55, 99, 102, 111,
115, 131, 140, 160, 167, 169, 172,
311
191, 208n15, 209, 214, 225–26, 231,
238, 262, 286
smallpox, 124–30, 138, 140n32, 148,
151n44, 153, 166–67, 171–73, 281
Smith, Adam, 5, 16–19, 23, 28, 37
space, xi, 8, 12, 20, 23, 25–26, 44–45,
52–53, 64–66, 71n32, 72, 82, 102,
118, 136–37, 162, 171, 178, 197–
218, 237–38, 247, 277
Spivak, Gayatri, 28, 269
statistics, 80, 144–46
strategies, xvi, 4–5, 30, 53, 63–89, 98,
150–51, 173, 175, 199, 226, 237
subject, xvii, 19, 33, 78, 80–81, 84, 94,
103, 121, 136, 204, 278–79
subjectivity, viii, x, xvi–xvii, 29–30,
37–38, 43, 47–48, 51–52, 56, 61, 64,
71, 77, 80–82, 94, 103, 117, 171,
216, 278
Tadeo Lozano, Jorge, 63n17, 76, 100,
124, 166, 184n24, 221–24, 229, 256,
263–64, 285
Tanco, Diego Martín, 100, 134, 138n28,
217, 221–23, 236–37, 243, 278–79,
285
taxonomies, 26, 41, 45, 47, 56–57,
59–61, 158, 160, 168, 178, 183, 195,
211, 229
technologies, xvi, 176, 226, 277n3,
282; of control, 275, 277, 281, 285;
populational, 81, 121, 145, 271, 280
territory, xvii, 6, 8, 10, 37, 40–41,
45, 78, 80–81, 121, 145, 185–86,
197–215, 224, 227, 230, 237, 239,
255, 276–86
theology, 8, 95, 105–8, 122, 124, 126–
29, 149n40, 239, 279, 283
Toulmin, Stephen, 11–12
Turgot, Anne-Robert-Jacques, 4, 11, 20,
22–24, 27–28, 37, 215
Ulloa, Antonio de, 54, 61–63, 68, 79,
86n51, 139–41, 179n18, 206–8,
312
227–29, 233–37, 256. See also Juan,
Jorge and Antonio Ulloa
utility, 15, 17, 80, 106, 130, 132, 137,
176, 182, 203, 215–16
vaccine, 124–30, 167, 281
Valenzuela, Eloy, 100, 184n24, 185
Velasco, Juan de, 160–62, 201n2,
248–54
Wallerstein, Immanuel, xvi, 19, 35,
37–39, 68, 79
Ward, Bernardo, 214, 226, 278
whiteness, xi–xii, xvi–xvii, 5–7, 43, 48,
51–109, 117–18, 149–51, 157, 198,
248, 263n58, 268, 270–71, 275, 277,
286
whitening, 58, 68, 75–77, 85–86, 93,
102, 268
Index
work/labor: intellectual, 69, 96, 190,
260, 264; productive, 19, 22, 121–22,
133–35, 226, 245, 252, 279, 286
world-system, xi, 10, 35–39, 43, 46–47,
49, 68n27, 179, 196, 237, 253n45,
270–71
writing: alphabetical, 45, 163; of
history, 22, 94, 175, 247, 252, 259,
267
Zea, Francisco Antonio, 100, 114, 118,
154, 184n24
zero point, xi–xii, 4–5, 8, 11, 13, 15,
18, 20, 22–23, 25–26, 28, 32, 44–46,
51–52, 94, 117, 136, 157–58, 171,
179, 186, 192, 199, 204, 232, 269,
271–72