José Antonio de Areche

José Antonio de Areche Zornoza (* 1731 in Balmaseda , Province of Bizkaia , Spain ; † October 28, 1789 in Bilbao , Spain), was a Spanish lawyer, colonial administrator, who served as a general visitor in the Viceroyalty of Peru and as Spanish colonial minister.

Life

Areche was born in the Basque Country to Marcos Areche Puente and Ángeles de Fuentes Santurce y Zornoza.

He studied law and graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1751. Afterwards he stayed at the College Santa Catalina de México , in 1756 he obtained a doctorate in canon law and was rector. In 1759 he moved to the prestigious University of Alcalá as a professor .

In 1765 the court appointed him Oidor at the Real Audiencia of Manila in the Philippines . In 1767 he embarked in Cádiz to take up his post. On the way, however, he was stopped in Mexico by Viceroy Carlos Francisco de Croix and appointed to the Real Audiencia of Mexico , where the position of Fiscal del Crimen (criminal judge and public prosecutor) was urgently required . In November 1767 the Spanish colonial administration confirmed the permanent appointment. Areche was promoted to Fiscal by 1774 . In a report to Viceroy Antonio María de Bucareli y Ursúa , he ruthlessly analyzed the economic situation in Mexico: backward methods and the dependence of farm workers on the landowners depressed agricultural production and led to rural exodus. The farm workers were largely paid in kind, which suffered from traders and artisans.

His zeal for work and his discipline as well as his advocacy of the Bourbon reform policy of Charles III. made José de Gálvez y Gallardo , the general visitor for the Viceroyalty, aware of him. When Gálvez was appointed Spanish Colonial Minister after his return to Spain in 1776, he called Areche as a general visitor to Peru and appointed him a member of the Council of India . Also in the order of Charles III. Areche was added.

In June 1777 he arrived in Lima to implement the comprehensive administrative and fiscal reforms that Gálvez had introduced in New Spain and prescribed in his new position as Colonial Minister for the entire Spanish colonial empire. He encountered considerable resistance from the viceroy Manuel de Guirior and also from the Creole upper class, who feared for their privileges and benefices. Specifically, the dispute broke out between the viceroy and the visitor when Areche ordered a sales tax to be increased. In a letter to the Spanish court, Guirior complained in unusually harsh terms about Areche's leadership style. However, the visitor decided the power struggle for himself: Karl III. 1780 had Guirior deposed and replaced him with Agustín de Jáuregui , who, as governor in Chile, had stood out as an energetic reformer.

During Arehe's time in Peru, there were several uprisings among the local population - including the rebellion under José Gabriel Condorcanqui , who called himself Tupac Amaru II . Areche, together with General José Antonio de Valle, led a force of 17,000 men to besiege the rebellious Cusco . It was only through betrayal on the part of the rebels that the leader of the rebellion was arrested and the uprising put down.

The extreme severity with which Areche suppressed the revolt led to his dismissal in 1781. Gálvez sent Jorge Escobedo as a new visitor. Areche returned to Spain and took his place on the Council of India. When Gálvez died, Areche received the post of colonial minister (already under the rule of Charles IV ), but only for a third of the salary. He moved to his home province, where he died in October 1789.

literature

• Colin M. MacLachlan: Spain's Empire in the New Worlds: The Role of Ideas in Institutional and Social Change . University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, USA 1988, ISBN 0-520-07410-6 , pp. 99-100 ( books.google.de ).
• Bernard Moses: Spain's Declining Power in South America, 1730–1786 . Cooper Square Publishers, New York, NY 1965, ISBN 0-7146-2033-5 , pp. 186 ( books.google.de ).
• Benjamin Keen, Keith Haynes: A History of Latin America . 9th edition. Wadsworth, Boston, MA 2013, ISBN 978-1-133-05050-6 ( books.google.de ).

Web links

• Auñamendi Eusko Entziklopediara of the Society for Basque Studies : Areche Zornoza, José de (Spanish)