An Indigenous Intellectual in King Philip's Court Available to Purchase

Chapter 6 examines Don Diego de la Torre’s political message and his intellectual interventions on the meaning of empire in the South American mainland. By navigating the Spanish legal system, Torre proposed an innovative project for the reform of the New Kingdom of Granada. Torre addressed the king in writing and drawing and left the most extensive archival record we have today by any Indigenous or mestizo intellectual of the northern Andes. He transformed the course of the kingdom with his double reading of the Indigenous world and Spanish laws. The chapter argues that Torre’s writing and political action unleashed a political process that culminated with the replacement of all the magistrates of the audiencia and lasting change in the kingdom’s administrative structure. The result, however, did not fulfill Torre’s own vision for the kingdom but brought a wave of reforms that were ultimately harmful to the Native peoples.