The General Manuscripts Miscellaneous Collection contains thousands of items that are not part of provenance-based or topical collections. Featured below are nine recently acquired historic documents about topics as varied as indigenous insurrections against Spanish colonial authorities, plantations and slavery in the Caribbean, the education of girls in 17th century Cuba, and the expulsion of Jesuits from Paraguay in the 18th century, among others.
Ruedas, Jerónimo de, and Others, Report to King Charles III of Spain on Indigenous Revolutionary Movements in South America, 1781 June 15
Ninety-six page unpublished, confidential report written by seven Spanish colonial judges (oidores) of the Real Audiencia of Río de La Plata y Charcas to King Charles III of Spain, offering their analysis of the independence movements of Quechua, Aymara, and other indigenous peoples against colonial rule in South America and connecting the indigenous uprisings of the 1770s and 1780s led by Túpac Amaru II and Tomás Katari to the American Revolution.
The report recounts events leading up to Indigenous liberation movements in the 1770s and 1780s, including the abusive administration of the Corregidor of Chayanta, which led Tomás Katari to travel to Buenos Aires in 1778 to air his people’s grievances to the Spanish authorities, as well as Katari’s arrest and execution and the rebellion that followed. The authors also discuss at length the rebellion led by Túpac Amaru II and the violent Spanish attempts to suppress it. They also write about the circulation of revolutionary pamphlets by Indigenous organizers in the city of La Paz, Bolivia, as a means of building support for a revolution against Spanish colonizers.
Click to view finding aid and the digitized manuscript.
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