“To Correct These Detestable Luxuries”: Funerals, Ceremonies, Fiestas, and the Limits of Selfhood and Self-Presentation in Late-Colonial Lima, Peru

Upon the death of King Philip V in 1747, Lima played host to a series of exequias, or funerary rites, in the deceased monarch’s honor. The rites formed part of a longstanding tradition in which the viceregal capital marked life-cycle events for the Spanish Crown. The staggeringly expensive ceremonies called for significant pomp and circumstance, and enlisted the city’s high-ranking colonial officials, along with their slaves, to play highly visible roles while outfitted in sumptuous finery. While the purpose of these events was to cement ties between Peru and Spain and to make the presence of monarchs felt in distant corners of the empire, they also had unintended consequences. In the days, months, and years between royal ceremonies, limeños (as the city’s inhabitants were known) had cultivated their own sumptuous ceremonial culture. Funerals for men and women of various classes featured coffins adorned in rich fabrics, lloronas expressing the grief of those left behind, and large crowds who gathered to send off the departed for days at a time. For colonial officials, these acts were abusive, superfluous, and in need of correction.  Why? What made a royal funeral a necessary citywide commitment (in terms of both the human and financial resources involved), while other, smaller-scale versions were offensive to good taste? In fleshing out and comparing these life-cycle events, this paper brings into relief the mounting tensions between the exigencies of subjecthood and the desire for selfhood in the late-colonial era.