LA QUINTRALA AND BARRABÁS: FIGURES OF EXCESS IN THE WORK OF GERONIMO DE UGAS: AN INTERPRETATION OF GOVERNOR MENESES’S TRIAL OF RESIDENCE (1670)

Abstract

In this article, I suggest that both Francisco de Meneses, commonly referred to as Barrabás, and Catalina de los Ríos Lisperguer, the famous Quintrala, can be interpreted as figures of excess. While the former, as governor, drove the possibilities of poor governance to its limits, the latter provides a quintessential example of the impunity that members of powerful families enjoyed in the 17th century. Both characters are symptoms of the corruption of local power, particularly evident when we analyze their relationship. Their alliance can be erected on an actantial pole which opposes the judicial persecution expressed in allegation No. 133 of Meneses’s trial of residency. This text, narrated by the scribe Geronimo de Ugas, is based on two trials against Catalina de los Ríos in the decade of 1660. In this work, Ugas becomes a true narrator, witness, and character, if we consider the eminently fictional nature of the text, as Smietniansky has observed in these kinds of reports. He also personifies the scribe’s function as both textual authority and witness of reality, allowing other voices to emerge, such as those of the people who, in order to save themselves and their families, escaped the Ligua encomienda estate, as well as the voice of Catalina de los Ríos herself, succeeding in his efforts to manipulate the trial in her favor. Although the text is quite fragmentary and formulaic, it allows us to indirectly access these unprecedented trials and their narrative configurations in regards to one of the most revisited life stories in Chilean history.