Mending with short means: The prompt rebuilding strategies of royal officers after the earthquake that destroyed the City of the Kings (Lima, Peru), in 1687

Abstract

This study examines the strategies that colonial authorities implemented to respond to the effects of the earthquake that hit Lima in 1687. This natural event disrupted people’s everyday li- ves and government’s quotidian matters. The extensive material destruction was evident in most buildings in the capital city of the Peruvian viceroyalty. Its local government, led by the viceroy, had to organize rapidly to design and implement several measures to tend the increasing needs
of Lima’s people. In addition to this, colonial authorities were also in charge of rebuilding those building structures that symbolized royal power, as headquarters of governments’ offices and tribunals. With a depleted royal treasury, royal representatives resorted to various mechanisms to complete their building projects, reducing the burden on the kings’ treasury as much as possible. This work illustrates various cases on which colonial authorities preferred projects of reduced costs, sought alternative sources of revenues, or transferred the building cost to third parties. It is this capacity to deal with unexpected circumstances effectively overshadows traditional discour- ses of decadence about the Spanish monarchy in the late seventeenth century.