Cueva Enríquez y Saavedra, Baltásar de la (c. 17th Century)

Baltásar de la Cueva Enríquez y Saavedra (count of Castellar), viceroy of Peru (1674–1678). An experienced administrator, Castellar attempted to reform colonial administration and increase crown revenues by streamlining accounting procedures and investigating tax collectors and regional treasuries throughout the viceroyalty. Through his efforts, hundreds of thousands of pesos in back taxes and other revenues owed to the crown were collected, many from the consulado (merchant guild). His anticorruption campaign resulted in the public execution of two treasury officials and sanctions against many others, one of whom attempted to assassinate Castellar in 1675. Disgruntled treasury officials and members of the powerful consulado of Lima complained so strenuously to the crown that Castellar was removed from office in 1678.

See alsoViceroyalty, Viceroy .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

See the excellent account of colonial administration in Kenneth J. Andrien, Crisis and Decline: The Viceroyalty of Peru in the Seventeenth Century (1985), esp. pp. 184-189, which give details of Castellar's career. A more general discussion of colonial administration can be found in Mark A. Burkholder and Lyman L. Johnson, Colonial Latin America (1990).

Additional Bibliography

Hunefeldt, Christine. A Brief History of Peru. New York: Facts on File, 2004.

Mannarelli, María Emma. Private Passions and Public Sins: Men and Women in Seventeenth-Century Lima. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2007.

San Cristóbal Sebastián, Antonio. Obras civiles en Lima durante el siglo XVII. Lima: Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería, 2005.

Torres Arancivia, Eduardo. Corte de virreyes: El entorno del poder en el Perú en el siglo XVII. Lima: Pontífica Universidad Católica del Perú, 2006.

                                       Ann M. Wightman