At Her Majesty's Expense: Indian Travelers and Imperial Dilemmas at the Habsburg Court

• Autor: De la Puente Luna, José Carlos
• Formato: artículo
• Fecha de Publicación: 2008
• Institución: Universidad Católica San Pablo
• Repositorio: Revistas - Universidad Católica San Pablo
• Lenguaje: español
• OAI Identifier: oai:revistas.ucsp.edu.pe:article/430
• Enlace del recurso: https://revistas.ucsp.edu.pe/index.php/Allpanchis/article/view/430
• Nivel de acceso: acceso abierto
• Materia: mundo atlántico; pacto colonial; indios; caciques

During the 16th and 17th centuries, hundreds of indigenous subjects crossed the Atlantic and arrived at the royal palace in Madrid to meet with the king. His travels reveal an imperial dilemma: different decrees prohibited the transfer of noble and common Indians to the Peninsula, but other royal decrees and customary practices warned the Council of the Indies and the Casa de Contratación that these visitors should not be forced to return to the Peninsula. Peru. It could hardly be argued that these trips constituted "painful pilgrimages" to Spain without any echo, in which the visitors were treated with "obvious contempt". Changing this paradigm involves understanding that both travelers and their legal representatives benefited from the limits imposed on the king's absolute power, in particular, that his "hospitality" and "liberality" —as expected of a universal monarch— were "unlimited". The Indians who traveled to court were abysmally less powerful than the sovereign; however, they were in a privileged position to claim the benefits of his liberality, exerting significant pressure to satisfy their claims in Spain. In this sense, the Spanish Hapsburgs needed these trips as much as the travelers.