Nicanor Domínguez
Nicanor José Domínguez Faura, a native of Lima, Peru, where he was born in 1965, studied at the Peruvian Pontifical Catholic University, where he received a B.A. and a professional title (Licenciatura) in History, both in 1992. In 1995, he earned a Masters Degree in Latin-American History from the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign). His Ph.D. in History was obtained from this same institution in 2006, with a dissertation on colonial Peru. He has conducted primary research in libraries and archives in Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Spain, and the U.S. His academic interests include Andean colonial history, historic cartography, historical geography, environmental history, and the study of early colonial texts and chronicles. He has published articles, book reviews, and maps in collective works and periodical publications in Peru, Bolivia, Spain, and the U.S. He has taught undergraduate level courses at Prescott College (Prescott, Arizona, 2003-2005), as well as in his capacity of Visiting Scholar for the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign, Spring and Summer 2006). During the Academic Year 2006-2007, he was granted a Visiting Fellowship at the Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame (South Bend, Indiana), where he also taught a graduate seminar for the Department of History (Fall 2006). Since the Fall 2007, he has joined the faculty of the Department of History at Boise State University (Boise, Idaho).
Dissertation Research:
In my dissertation “Rebels of Laicacota: Spaniards, Indians, and Andean Mestizos in Southern Peru during the Mid-Colonial Crisis of 1650-1680,” I study the conflictive development, construction, and re-definition of ethnicity in mid-colonial Peru. My focus is on the problem of cultural and ethnic identity formation among Spaniards, Indians, and mestizos (mixed-bloods) in the colonial Andes, and the links and divisions among these groups present in specific intra-elite conflicts and cross-strata alliances. I address these issues through the analysis of the seminal violent events and the broader context of the 1665-1668 alleged rebellion by the Salcedo brothers (Spanish miners), and their mestizo militia in the Laicacota mining district of Southern Peru. A conflict between mining entrepreneurs of different Iberian origins, it was initially a Basque-Andalusian rivalry for the control of what was for a decade the richest mine in Peru. During the conflict, each faction relied on the support of local criollos (American-born Spaniards with roots in different Iberian regions), and of mestizos, whose rising numbers I explain as an Indian strategy of ‘de-corporatization.’ These rising numbers, I argue, were due to Indian laborers who, through their experience in cities and mining centers, became culturally Hispanicized in a process of shifting identities. Considered to be culturally mestizo, as they became alienated from their original rural communities by an unstable process of non-biological ‘mestizaje,’ they caused alarm among the authorities because of the disruptive consequences of this process for the colonial system, which rested precisely on the availability of coercible indigenous laborers living in agricultural communities. The Laicacota events transformed an intra-elite conflict into a South Andean crisis of governance, based in part on the mobilization of an unruly force of lower-class ‘mestizos.’ Its defeat allowed the maintenance of the colonial system in the Andes until the Bourbon Reforms of the second half of the eighteenth century. In a comparative view, my dissertation illuminates similar social and ethnic problems occurring in mid-colonial Mexico. Moreover, it helps to envision some of the largely ignored trans-Atlantic linkages of the Spanish Empire, through the connections between regional groups of rival Spaniards both in the Andes and Iberia. Finally, the results of my research contribute to the current discussions of ethnic identity and ethnic violence from a neglected pre-national, and pre-nationalist context.
Future Research:
I will continue the study of ethnohistorical sources related to the Incas and its empire before and after the Spanish invasion of the Andes that I started for my B.A. degree in Peru. I will approach this topic through the case of the earliest Western author who provided a full narrative about the Inca emperors, the Spanish chronicler Juan de Betanzos (ca. 1519-1576), who started as a Spanish-Quechua translator, married an Inca princess and settled in the Inca capital of Cuzco as encomendero since the 1540s. Under the guidance of the late Peruvian ethnohistorian Franklin Pease (1939-1999), I wrote my B.A. thesis on the earlier years of Betanzos’ life, until the moment of the composition of his famous text “Suma y Narración de los Incas” (1551-1556). I plan to complete a biographical study of Betanzos life, both as a way to study the fascinating problem of the accommodation of the surviving Inca elite and their alliances with the Spanish conquerors, and as a revision of what is currently know about the period comprised between the 1530s and 1570s in the Andes. It will be an essay in microhistory of the early colonial society of Cuzco in particular, and its ramifications along the Southern Andes in general.
Cartographic Work:
My interest in producing visual means of conveying historical information through mapmaking started early in my career. My maps have been published since 1986 in 42 different works, reaching a total of 130 to date. They are included in 33 books (118 maps), published in Peru, Bolivia, Spain, and the United States, as well as in 9 articles (12 maps) published in specialized academic journals in Peru and the United States. A complete list can be provided upon request.
I plan to develop the basis for the study of the historical cartography of the Andes. I will pursue this line of research with a double approach. On the one hand, I will finish the process of locating maps of the Andean region of South America produced between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries, so as to be able to produce a catalog with reproductions of them. On the other hand, I will produce a Historical Atlas of the Andes, and eventually individual Historical Atlas of Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador.
Film Interests:
In a world increasingly extroverted and driven by stimuli for our senses, images and sounds provide an alternative source of information to the important and well-established forms of written communication (books, newspapers, magazines, etc.). Along with television and music, movies make a daily impact on how Americans understand and view the world. Thus it will become increasingly important to develop critical skills in assessing the tools, techniques and messages on the medium film in order to preserve the capacity for autonomous critical judgment.
At Prescott College I was able not only of developing a class using film as a way to approach historical issues (“Latin American History through Film,” Spring 2003), I also organized the ‘Prescott College Film Series’ (a selection of more than 10 films organized around a common theme each semester, shown every week free and open to the public). The audience, formed by both College students and community residents, was provided with handouts on each film to facilitate discussions after the projection, in a Cine-Forum format. Sometimes, other Prescott College faculty members facilitated specific films akin to their specialties and/or interests. The themes of the five series were the following:
- 1st: "Latin American History through Film" (Spring 2003)- 2nd: "The History of the Future in Science-Fiction Films" (Fall 2003)- 3rd: "The Mexican-American / Chicano Experience in Film" (Spring 2004)- 4th: "Political Satire in U.S. Cinema" (Fall 2004)- 5th: "International Women and Gender Films" (Spring 2005)
| Office | L-188 |
| Phone | 208/426-4630 |
| nicanordominguez@boisestate.edu | |
| Office Hours & Courses taught (PDF) | |