Lima

LIMA

LIMA. Lima, the capital city of the Viceroyalty of Peru in early modern times, lies on the southern bank of the Rímac River, west of the Andes Mountains, and eight miles inland from the western coast of South America. Conquistador Francisco Pizarro founded the city on 18 January 1535 following the Spanish defeat of the native Incan empire. Possibly to account for Lima's title as "The City of the Kings," some scholars claim that the founding date was 6 January 1535, the Catholic celebration of Epiphany, when the Magi are believed to have visited the Christ child. Pizarro chose Lima, a Spanish misunderstanding for the native word Rímac, over the Incan capital of Cuzco, which was further inland and nestled in the Andean highlands, because Lima had a milder climate and was better located in terms of ocean access and defense.

Symbolic of Spanish dominance and bureaucratic opulence, the city quickly became the crown's administrative, ecclesiastical, and economic hub in South America. The crown-appointed viceroy, whose short tenure was designed to preserve Spanish control from across the ocean, sat atop a highly structured and hierarchical regional government. Like other Spanish American cities, Lima was laid out in a grid design of east-west and north-south streets organized around a central plaza, a form later codified in the Laws of the Indies. As the capital city of Spanish holdings in South America, Lima was the first American city in which the Inquisition was established and the region's principal treasury office. Lima was also the conduit, via the nearby port city of Callao, for all incoming and outgoing trade with Europe. Most important were the precious metals that were mined and produced by Spanish-controlled Indian labor in the viceroyalty—most notably the silver mines at Potosí. Peru's silver mines were central to the European economy until the ore became depleted and a fiscal crisis seized Europe and Spanish America in the late seventeenth century. Lima did not recover from this decline until the eighteenth century, when Spain's new Bourbon rulers sought to streamline government and improve the colony's and the crown's economic positions. Despite Bourbon reforms, Lima's importance outside of Peru waned after this period.

The city's population increased only slowly, restrained in part by frequent and recurring earthquakes (most notably those in 1687 and 1746). Whereas in 1613 there were a little over 25,000 inhabitants, it took almost two centuries for that to double to almost 53,000 people (1796). As with other Spanish colonies, Lima's population at the time of the conquest was composed of a few Spaniards and numerous natives. Over time the populace became increasingly mixed as more Spaniards and other Europeans arrived, the indigenous population declined, and slaves were brought in from Africa. At least in theory, Lima's social structure was as ordered as the city's administration, with legal and geographical divisions among classes and ethnicities. Nevertheless, cultural and sexual exchange among the city's residents, the steady influx of exotic goods, and the continual influence of people and ideas arriving on visiting ships ensured that Lima would become a culturally diverse center for the viceroyalty.

See also Pizarro Brothers ; Spanish Colonies: Peru .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Andrien, Kenneth J. Crisis and Decline: The Viceroyalty of Peru in the Seventeenth Century. Albuquerque, N.M., 1985.

Bromley, Juan. La Fundacion de la Ciudad de los Reyes. Lima, 1935.

Dobyns, Henry F., and Paul L. Doughty. Peru: A Cultural History. Latin American Histories. New York, 1976.

Klarén, Peter Flindell. Peru: Society and Nationhood in the Andes. Latin American Histories. New York, 2000.

Lockhart, James. Spanish Peru, 1532–1560: A Colonial Society. Madison, Wis., 1968.

Montero, Maria Antonia Durán. Lima en el Siglo XVII: Arquitectura, Urbanismo y vida Cotidiana. Sección Historia "Nuestra América" 1. Seville, 1994.

Oliver-Smith, Anthony. "Lima, Peru: Underdevelopment and Vulnerability to Hazards in the City of the Kings." In Crucibles of Hazard: Mega-Cities and Disasters in Transition. Edited by James K. Mitchell. Tokyo, 1999.

Jamie Stephenson