[PERU] &
MOYA Y VILLAREAL (Ramon de).
Autograph Letter Signed to Sr. Don Manuel de Roda, giving a long and interesting description of his voyage to South America, and his impressions of the countries he saw.
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY TRAVELS IN PERU, ARGENTINA & CHILE
A substantial and detailed report of a Spanish bureaucrat’s travels throughout South America, highlighting issues of importance to the government abroad.
Ramon de Moya y Villarreal would later become the governor of Chuchito province. Here he presents a long and interesting survey of his travels in South America. Among the places visited were Buenos Ayres, Mendoza, Santiago de Chile and finally Lima in Peru. The report covers a wide range of matters and includes descriptions of natural history - birds, animals - and agriculture of the places visited. He deplores the neglect of the Indigenous peoples by the clergy and reports having met one Native man who had not been able to hear Mass in 24 years through lack of opportunity. He repeats the cliche that the Indigenous population were lazy and unwilling to work. But may have been biased since he also claimed to have found that they “hate and despise Europeans and think themselves superior to us. This is partly due to the writings of Father Feijoo who has praised the natives’ intelligence too highly.” Benito Jeronimo Feijoo was a Benedictine monk whose essays were widely read throughout Spain; he is sometimes called the Father of the Spanish Enlightenment.
The report was submitted to Manuel de Roda who was an important figure in the eighteenth-century Spanish Enlightenment, and minister of Charles III, the reforming king.
