Tactical Piety: Heretical Piracy and Catholic Rhetoric in Colonial Quito, Panama, and Guatemala

Abstract

During the sixteenth and seventeenth century, Francis Drake and other English corsairs attacked Spanish coastal cities and ports. In response to the attacks, Spanish functionaries devised a religious rhetoric as an offensive and defensive strategy. While recent studies have analyzed colonial poetry and the influence of religion on piracy, not many have paid attention to official administrative correspondence. This thesis focuses on three particular archival sources from three different locations that experienced pirate attacks: Quito, Panama, and Guatemala. I use Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network Theory to examine the religious rhetoric of written correspondence and other documents by Spanish administrators who attempted to create a network of Catholic combatants. I argue that the Catholic rhetoric embedded in the three documents reveals an administrative use of religiosity with the purpose of persuasion both to build identity and show a united front against pirates.