Sociedad Patriótica de Amigos del País de Quito, 1791: twenty-four members, a fortnightly paper, and a collapse inside two years
The president of the Audiencia of Quito set up an economic society in November 1791 with twenty-four members, put the bishop at its head and made the creole physician Eugenio Espejo its secretary. Espejo drafted its statutes and announced, in its name, the fortnightly Primicias de la Cultura de Quito; a Lima periodical printed the announcement within weeks. Its four commissions planned public conferences and catechisms of agriculture. Neither appeared, and it dissolved inside two years.
Why this wins its question: English-language accounts of Espejo reach for the patriot-martyr and skip the institution; Spanish-language accounts of the Sociedad Patriótica usually cite each other. This object puts the two surviving kinds of evidence side by side and lets them disagree: a Lima periodical of December 1791 that names the Audiencia president as the mover, prints the society's officers, quotes Espejo's prospectus for Primicias de la Cultura de Quito verbatim, and lists the society among its own subscribers next to Mutis — and a Quito historian of 1894 who supplies the installation date, the twenty-four members, the eight-peso subscription, the Saturday meetings, the exclusion of the friars, and the fact that not one conference was held and not one catechism written before the whole thing dissolved inside two years. The founding officer's own stated motive, to keep the distinguished people of Quito out of idleness, is quoted rather than paraphrased, and the historian's explanation of the collapse is flagged as his opinion about his own countrymen rather than reported as a cause.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The foundation is announced in a contemporary source printed a thousand miles away, and the announcement names its mover. The Mercurio Peruano of Lima, in the tome covering September to December 1791, reports on printed page 304 that "el muy Ilustre Señor Don Luis Muñoz y Guzman Xefe dignísimo de esta Provincia, de su propio motivo pensase en la plantificacion de la Sociedad, é hiciese inmediatamente seguir al pensamiento la execucion". The president of the Audiencia of Quito, it says, "designó veinte y quatro sugetos en quienes reconocia amor á la Patria, gran conocimiento de los ramos de agricultura, comercio y manufacturas"; he "constitúyese Protector él mismo", offering to mediate with the monarch so that the society be taken under royal protection, and "pone la direccion en manos del Ilustrísimo Señor Obispo". A footnote on the same page cites the "Oficio de 30 de Septiembre de 1791, al Señor Márques de Selva-alegre comisionado para el establecimiento de la Sociedad".
The same page carries the first notice of what became the first periodical of Quito, and it is worth quoting for what it does and does not say. "Plantificada de esta manera la Sociedad, su Secretario Don Francisco Xavier Eugenio de Santa Cruz y Espejo, acaba de dar á luz un Papel, anunciando el Periódico que á nombre de ella se publicará desde el primer Jueves del próximo Enero. Tiene por Epígrafe, Instruccion previa sobre el Papel Periódico intitulado Primicias de la Cultura de Quito. Con tan modesto título la Sociedad dará cada quince dias sus producciones." This is evidence that the paper was announced for January 1792 as a fortnightly issued in the society's name, and that its secretary wrote the prospectus. It is not evidence of how many numbers appeared; no source read for this object shows that.
The Lima paper quotes Espejo's prospectus at length, which is how his own voice survives in a contemporary printing. On printed page 303 the quotation runs: "Las edades de los Incas, que algunos llaman políticas, cultas, é ilustradas se absorbieron en un mar de sangre, y se han vuelto problemáticas"; the days of Reason, Monarchy and Gospel "han venido á rayar en este horizonte desde que un atrevido Genoves extendió su curiosidad, su ambicion y sus deseos al conocimiento de tierras vírgenes", but "toda su luz fué, y es aun, crepúscular" — enough to worship God and obey the sovereign, "pero defectuosa, tímida y muy débil para llegar á ver y gozar del suave sudor de la agricultura, del vivífico esfuerzo de la industria, de la amable fatiga del comercio, de la interesante labor de las minas"; and it ends "Quiteños, sed felices: Quiteños, lograd vuestra suerte á vuestro turno: Quiteños, sed los dispensadores del buen gusto, de las Artes y de las Ciencias."
The installation and the offices are recorded by the Quito historian Federico González Suárez a century later, from the same period's papers. On his printed page 370: the arrangements made, the numerary members named, the honorary members elected and the president, treasurer and secretary designated, "se celebró, con grande aparato, la instalación de la Sociedad, el día treinta de Noviembre de 1791, en el gran salón del antiguo colegio de los jesuítas". Its title was "Sociedad patriótica de amigos del país de Quito"; the members were the oidores and various notable vecinos; its president was Muñoz de Guzmán himself, president of the Audiencia; its secretary "el Doctor Don Francisco Eugenio de Santacruz y Espejo, el criollo más ilustrado, que, sin duda ninguna, había entonces en la colonia"; the bishop was made Director and Don Ramón Yépez censor. He adds that the installation drew "las principales matronas de la ciudad y los artesanos".
The statutes were Espejo's work and the stated motive of the crown's officer was not what a modern reader expects. González Suárez, printed page 372: "el proyecto de los estatutos había sido trabajado por Espejo, y el 24 de Febrero de 1792 los sancionó el Presidente Muñoz de Guzmán". Speaking of the motives that had impelled him to establish the society, the president "decía, que lo había hecho á fin de evitar la ociosidad y los vicios, que de ella resultaban en las gentes distinguidas de Quito". The society's object was the improvement of the colony in every sense, through four commissions: "de Agricultura; de Ciencias y Artes útiles; de Industria y Comercio, y de Política y Buenas letras", each member free to propose the means he thought best for remedying the province's ills.
Its membership, its money and its exclusions are all small and all documented. Printed page 373: the members met every Saturday at three in the afternoon; the society had a treasurer and every member was obliged to contribute eight pesos sencillos a year for its expenses; "los socios de número eran veinticuatro". The parish priests of the city, the dean of the cathedral chapter and the senior canon were all numerary members — and, González Suárez notes with astonishment, "los únicos que no fueron invitados á la Sociedad, fueron los frailes". Twenty-four men paying eight pesos a year is the whole institutional weight behind the plans in the preceding claims.
The diagnosis the society set out to answer is stated by the same source without flattery, and it is the reason the enterprise matters. On printed page 373: "El estado de decadencia de Quito y de todas sus provincias en aquella época era alarmante: los indígenas iban disminuyendo rápidamente, la agricultura era rudimentaria, el comercio casi ninguno, la industria estaba destruida y la ganadería caminaba á su ruina." The remedies the members agreed were to hold a monthly public conference on the colony's prostration and to compose catechisms of agriculture, industry and stockraising.
The failure is on the record in the same sentences as the plan, and it is total. "Pero ni las conferencias se tuvieron, ni los catecismos llegaron á componerse, y la Sociedad misma se disolvió casi por encanto"; and, earlier, "poco duró la Sociedad: á los dos años no cabales estaba ya disuelta completamente". The bishop's inaugural address had exhorted the members to union and constancy, which González Suárez reads as if the prelate had foreseen it. The explanation he offers — "merced á la inconstancia, cualidad característica de nosotros los quiteños, tanto en el siglo pasado como en el presente" — is his own judgement about his own countrymen, not a finding, and is recorded here as such.
One printed leaf shows the society acting as a participant in a trans-American republic of letters rather than a local club. The "Continuación de la lista de señores subscritores al Mercurio Peruano", on the leaf numbered 259 of a second digitised copy of the same tome, opens with "La Sociedad Patriótica de la Ciudad de Quito" and continues with the dean of the cathedral of Santa Fe de Bogotá, "Don Joseph Celestino Mutis, Director de la Real Expedicion Botánica del Nuevo Reyno de Granada", a commissary of the Inquisition in the bishopric of Cuzco, the director of mining at Potosí and a militia captain. The Quito society subscribed to the Lima periodical that was announcing it, and appears in that list beside Mutis.
What these two witnesses can and cannot carry should be stated plainly. The Mercurio Peruano is contemporary and printed, but it is a friendly notice written while the society still existed, by a periodical the society subscribed to, and its praise of "un xefe ilustrado" is promotional; it is good evidence of the founding act, the twenty-four designations, the offices and the announcement of the paper, and no evidence of results. González Suárez wrote a century later, cites the Audiencia's and the Curia's papers, and is the only witness read here for the installation date, the statutes, the subscription and the dissolution; he is also openly partisan. Nothing in this object measures what the society produced, because neither source read here reports any output beyond the announced paper.