Gaspar de Carvajal

Gaspar de Carvajal (born in Trujillo, Spain, c. 1500 - † Lima, Peru, 1584) was a Spanish Dominican missionary.

Biography

Expedition along the Amazon River

After joining the Dominican order in Spain, he went to Peru in 1533, dedicating himself to the conversion of the indigenous people. In 1540, Carvajal joined the expedition of Gonzalo Pizarro, governor of Quito, as chaplain, in search of the Country of Cinnamon east of Quito and the Amazon.

The expedition, in very difficult conditions, crossed the Andes and entered the Amazon jungle, an inhospitable territory devoid of provisions. Gonzalo Pizarro ordered his second in command, Francisco de Orellana, with fifty men (including Gaspar de Carvajal) to descend the Napo River, to find the place where that river flowed into a larger river, and return with the provisions. that they could find and load on the small ship they were on (the San Pedro).

Orellana reached the confluence of the Napo and Trinidad, but found no provisions. Unable to turn back due to the force of the current, he decided to continue down the river until he reached the mouth of the Amazon (1542). Carvajal, who is one of the survivors of this expedition, narrates the events of the expedition in his work Relation of the new discovery of the famous Rio Grande that Captain Francisco de Orellana discovered by great luck (parts of Carvajal's Relation appeared in Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo's Historia general y natural de las Indias, written in 1542 but not published until 1855; Oviedo's review is especially valuable because it combines parts of Carvajal's Relation with interviews with Orellana and some of his men). The Relation was not fully published until 1895 by the Chilean scholar José Toribio Medina. Later, in 1934, it was extensively revised by H.C. Heaton. This Relationship is the reason why Fray Gaspar de Carvajal has gone down in history.

The data from the Orellana expedition recorded by Fray Gaspar de Carvajal provide information of great ethnological interest, such as the layout and size of the settlements, continuous occupation along the river ravines, wide roads that connect the Amazon River with the mainland, war tactics, rituals, customs and utensils.

Return to Peru

Upon his return to Peru, Carvajal was elected subprior of the convent of San Rosario in Lima. In this position, he was chosen to arbitrate between the viceroy, Blasco Núñez Vela, and the auditors of the Royal Audience in 1554, but to no avail. After the pacification of Peru, he was sent by his superiors as a missionary to Tucumán, being named protector of the Indians in the country.

He worked for years in this territory, recording that he converted most of the indigenous people in the area. In 1553 he was instituted as prior of the convent of Huamanga and provincial of Tucumán. He introduced several Dominicans into the province, with whose help several Indian reductions and nine Spanish municipalities were founded. He was elected provincial of Peru in 1557, spending two years organizing the province and the next two visiting remote regions and founding new convents. There is evidence of a letter from Carvajal to the king informing him of the abuses committed against the Indians in the mines of Peru and asking him to intervene on behalf of the Indians. Carvajal's attitude is in line with the doctrine of his Dominican brother, Fray Bartolomé de las Casas.

In 1565 he was elected representative of his province to the Spanish court and to the Pope, but it is likely that he did not make it across the ocean.

Presence in popular culture

The renowned film by Werner Herzog, Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1973) makes Fray Gaspar de Carvajal appear as chaplain and chronicler of Lope de Aguirre's mad descent through the Amazon. This expedition, which took place in 1561 (almost twenty years after Orellana's), was the source of inspiration for the film, but it includes situations and characters from Carvajal's chronicle (that is, from the Orellana expedition)..