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The Spanish Empire’s Hidden Hand: How the Gálvez Network Turned the Tide of the War of Independence

An Independence Within an Empire

When the thirteen British colonies declared their independence in 1776, the world witnessed not only the birth of a new nation but also a decisive shift in the balance of global power. As historians such as Jeremy Adelman, J. H. Elliott, and Anthony Pagden have noted, the American Revolution unfolded within a wider imperial struggle stretching from Canada to the Caribbean.

Within that contested Atlantic world, Spain played an important—but often underappreciated—strategic role. Its intervention did not single-handedly determine the American victory, but it helped reshape the wider war against Britain by opening new fronts, redirecting British resources, and strengthening the Franco-American effort. What was celebrated as liberty in Philadelphia was, in Madrid, recognized as an opportunity: a calculated move by the Bourbon monarchy to check British expansion after the Seven Years’ War. Scholars such as Thomas E. Chávez and Gabriel Paquette have emphasized that weakening Great Britain was essential to safeguarding Spain’s Atlantic dominion.

It was in this environment that the Gálvez family of Macharaviaya in Málaga—José, Matías, and Bernardo—rose to prominence. Alongside figures such as Luis de Unzaga y Amézaga, Admiral Luis de Córdova y Córdova, and the financier-administrator Francisco de Saavedra, they formed a transatlantic network of reform, diplomacy, logistics, and military coordination that altered strategic realities on both sides of the ocean.

However, Spain did not aid the rebellion out of sympathy for revolutionary ideals, but to preserve its position within a competitive imperial system. Yet the outcome was paradoxical: by helping secure the independence of others, Spain accelerated the erosion of its own imperial logic. The story unfolds in four movements—José de Gálvez’s reforms, Unzaga’s clandestine diplomacy, Bernardo de Gálvez’s Gulf campaigns, and Córdova’s naval pressure—culminating in Yorktown and the Treaty of Paris.

A map of North America (1779) during the American Revolutionary era, illustrating the extent of Spanish possessions and the multiple theaters of war

A map of North America (1779) during the American Revolutionary era, illustrating the extent of Spanish possessions and the multiple theaters of war. Source: Wikimedia Commons

José de Gálvez: Architect of a New Imperial Order

Before Bernardo de Gálvez became known for his Gulf campaigns, José de Gálvez had articulated a new vision of imperial governance. Trained in law and seasoned within the Bourbon administration, he arrived in New Spain in 1765 as visitador general, charged with cutting through entrenched privileges and bureaucratic inertia. As Allan J. Kuethe and Gabriel Paquette note, the visitador embodied the most ambitious edge of Bourbon reform.

His mandate was to implement the centralizing reform agenda of Charles III: enhanced administrative efficiency, tighter fiscal controls, and strengthened military defenses. Gálvez reorganized the Treasury, bolstered provincial militias, and promoted the system of intendencias—administrative districts designed to tighten royal oversight from Madrid. These reforms marked a broader shift from negotiated colonial authority to a more centralized model.

He also played a central role in one of the most controversial decisions of the era: the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767. Intended as a demonstration of royal authority, the expulsion dismantled the most cohesive educational and intellectual network in Spanish America. Jesuit colleges had shaped generations of criollo elites; their removal widened the cultural and emotional distance between Crown and colony. David Brading and Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra have shown how this rupture reshaped the relationship between faith, knowledge, and civic identity in the late colonial world.

By 1776, as Minister of the Indies, Gálvez envisioned an Atlantic strategy grounded in centralization, preventive diplomacy, and trusted family networks. He placed his brother Matías as Captain General of Guatemala and his nephew Bernardo as acting governor of Louisiana, creating a chain of command aligned with Bourbon priorities. The Gálvez family came to embody an imperial project confident it could still contest British influence.

Portrait of José de Gálvez

Portrait of José de Gálvez. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Luis de Unzaga: Secret Diplomacy Before the War

If José de Gálvez was the architect, Luis de Unzaga y Amézaga was the first to put the strategy into practice. Born in Málaga to a Basque family, Unzaga represented a generation of officials who blended bureaucratic discipline with political pragmatism. As Thomas E. Chávez and Daniel C. Richter suggest, Unzaga recognized early that British vulnerability offered Spain an opening.

As governor of Louisiana from 1769 to 1777, he established covert channels of support for the North American rebels. While Madrid deliberated cautiously, concerned about revolutionary contagion, Unzaga built a clandestine network of intelligence, correspondence, and supply routes from then-Spanish-controlled New Orleans up the Mississippi River and onward to the insurgent colonies. Shipments of gunpowder, lead, muskets, and provisions, often disguised as commercial cargo, ultimately reached George Washington’s army. As Gabriel Paquette and Manuel Covo note, this assistance reflected strategic calculation more than ideological sympathy. 

Unzaga’s diplomacy extended beyond logistics. In late 1776, General Charles Lee informed Washington that he had received a letter from “Don Luis Venzaga (sic), Governor of New Orleans,” addressing Washington as “General of the United States of America.” Preserved in Founders Online, this reference does not amount to formal diplomatic recognition—Spain would not recognize the United States until 1783—but it suggests an early informal acknowledgment of the rebel leadership and a purposeful signal from Spanish Louisiana. Although Unzaga’s original letter has not survived, Lee’s reference shows how informal contacts were already testing the boundaries of imperial diplomacy. 

By the time Spain prepared to enter the war formally, Unzaga had already laid critical groundwork. When Bernardo de Gálvez replaced him in 1777, he inherited a stabilized province and a mature intelligence-and-supply network. The discreet official from Málaga had provided the foundation for Spain’s military escalation. 

Commemorative plaque dedicated to Luis de Unzuaga y Amézaga on the Alameda Principal in Málaga, Spain. The plaque reads: Luis de Unzaga y Amézaga (1717–1793) was an inspiration behind the name of the United States, Captain General and Governor of Louisiana. He promoted the construction of the Alameda Principal, including this building, where he lived and died.

Commemorative plaque dedicated to Luis de Unzaga y Amézaga on the Alameda Principal in Málaga, Spain. The plaque reads: Luis de Unzaga y Amézaga (1717–1793) was an inspiration behind the name of the United States, Captain General and Governor of Louisiana. He promoted the construction of the Alameda Principal, including this building, where he lived and died. Credit: Daniel Capilla

Bernardo de Gálvez: The Atlantic War

Bernardo de Gálvez arrived in Louisiana in 1777 as the conflict reached a turning point. Following the victory at Saratoga, the rebellion had gained momentum, France was moving toward open intervention, and Spain—guided by José de Gálvez and the Count of Floridablanca—was preparing to enter the war. As Chávez and de Covo note, the Bourbon court increasingly viewed the Gulf of Mexico as a decisive front.

At just thirty-one, Bernardo combined ambition with political acuity. His objective was clear: to prevent Britain from consolidating control of the lower Mississippi and secure the southern flank of the rebelling colonies. After Spain entered the war in 1779, Bernardo launched a coordinated campaign that would become one of the most effective—and most overlooked—of the American Revolution.

Leading a diverse force of regulars, criollos, free Black soldiers, Indigenous allies, French volunteers, and American frontiersmen, Gálvez captured Baton Rouge, then Mobile, and ultimately Pensacola—Britain’s most fortified position in the Gulf. Storms, disease, and supply shortages complicated the campaign, yet its success reshaped the geopolitical map: Spain secured the Mississippi, and Washington’s vulnerable southern flank was stabilized.

While Washington fought in the north, Gálvez’s victories disrupted British supply lines and undermined their southern operations. Jonathan Dull and David Head emphasize how combined pressures—Spanish in the south, Franco-American in the north—strained Britain’s capacity to sustain multi-theater operations.

Gálvez excelled not only as a commander but as a mediator, organizer, and governor. His inclusive policy—arming and promoting criollos, mestizos, and free Black soldiers—reflected pragmatic, Atlantic-minded governance. His victory at Pensacola in May 1781 was a strategic turning point in the Gulf theater: it removed Britain’s principal stronghold on the Gulf Coast, protected the lower Mississippi, and helped prevent British forces from concentrating fully against the Franco-American campaign that culminated at Yorktown. Charles III rewarded him with the title of Count of Gálvez and the motto Yo solo (I alone). 

Strategically, Pensacola demonstrated that Spanish power remained effective across the Atlantic. Without Gálvez’s successes—and without the silver shipped from Havana that helped finance crucial phases of the Yorktown campaign—American independence would have faced far greater obstacles. Washington commanded the army; Gálvez commanded the Gulf.

Spanish sculptor Salvador Amaya works on a statue of Bernardo de Gálvez.

Spanish sculptor Salvador Amaya works on a statue of Bernardo de Gálvez. Amaya is known for his sculptures of historical figures, including several busts of King Felipe VI of Spain. Photograph reproduced with permission of Salvador Amaya.

Luis de Córdova: A Decisive Blow

While Gálvez secured the Gulf, Admiral Luis de Córdova y Córdova struck at Britain’s global lifelines. A veteran naval commander from Seville in his seventies, he led the combined Franco-Spanish fleet during a critical phase of the conflict. Historians such as Chávez and Dull have reexamined his role, highlighting its strategic weight.

In August 1780, Córdova captured a British convoy of more than fifty ships loaded with troops, military stores, commercial cargo, and specie bound for Britain’s imperial war effort. The loss was a significant financial and logistical setback. Contemporary accounts described a deep shock in London’s mercantile circles when news of the capture arrived; the convoy’s loss deprived Britain of supplies and reinforcements intended for several theaters and exposed the vulnerability of its Atlantic supply lines. Though often minimized in British accounts, the episode demonstrated how Franco-Spanish naval pressure could complicate Britain’s ability to sustain a global war. 

Córdova aimed not at spectacle but at suffocating enemy commerce. His actions—from supporting operations around Gibraltar to controlling access to the English Channel—forced Britain to disperse its forces across the Atlantic, Caribbean, and Indian Ocean. Henry Kamen and Stein & Stein note that these operations reflected the maturity of Bourbon naval reform. In the Caribbean, Francisco de Saavedra ensured the financing and rapid dispatch of funds that sustained key phases of the Yorktown campaign. Without this support, the broader Allied strategy would have lacked its material foundation.

By the Treaty of Paris in 1783, the Atlantic map had been redrawn. Spain regained territory and prestige, but the conflict also strengthened a rising power: the United States.

Portrait of Luis de Córdova y Córdova.

Portrait of Luis de Córdova y Córdova. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Conclusion: Spain at the Threshold of a New Atlantic Order

The American War of Independence was both the beginning of a nation and a turning point for the Spanish Empire. As Elliott and Paquette argue, the Revolution must be understood within an Atlantic contest in which Spain sought to redefine its position after the Seven Years’ War.

Guided by José de Gálvez and executed through figures such as Bernardo de Gálvez, Luis de Unzaga, Luis de Córdova, and Francisco de Saavedra, Spain helped dismantle key elements of British Atlantic supremacy through a calculated mix of diplomacy, logistics, finance, and naval action. The achievement was considerable—and paradoxical. By supporting the rebels, Spain weakened the rival that threatened its flank while contributing to a political vocabulary of self-government that, as scholars from Elliott to Janet Polasky note, would echo across the Americas within decades.

The Atlantic system that Gálvez and Córdova served became a space where former viceroyal territories absorbed principles that the Bourbon reformers had tried to regulate. The Gálvez family embodies that contradictory moment: an enlightened elite able to conceive the empire as a system, yet unable to foresee its unraveling. José designed the framework, Unzaga set it in motion, Bernardo defended it, and Córdova consolidated it with a strategic victory. Together, these historical figures showed that Spain remained capable of shaping the Atlantic conflict in meaningful ways, especially as Britain was forced to fight on several fronts. Yet that achievement came at a cost. The war expanded borrowing and debt, placed new pressure on the fiscal resources of the Spanish Monarchy, and exposed the limits of the imperial system Spain sought to defend. Spain’s success was therefore real, though not unlimited: it weakened Britain, secured important territorial gains, and helped sustain Allied pressure, while also revealing the financial and political strains placed on Bourbon power as it sought to preserve Spain’s position in the Americas. Spain’s role in the American War of Independence was therefore not a footnote to someone else’s revolution. It was one of the last great demonstrations of Bourbon imperial capacity in the Atlantic world. Yet that success carried its own irony: Spain helped weaken Britain and sustain the birth of a new republic, even as those efforts exposed the limits of the imperial order it sought to defend. Its victory was real, but it belonged to a world already beginning to change—one in which the United States, born as a republic in 1776, would become a central force in the Atlantic order Spain had helped to reshape, at the threshold of Spain’s long nineteenth-century imperial decline.

José A. Adrián is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Málaga (Spain), specializing in language as a cognitive phenomenon and in its oral and written disorders. In addition to his academic work, he maintains a strong interest in history and the role of Spain in the Americas.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca: Survivor and First Spanish Chronicler of Texas

Banner for Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca: Survivor and First Spanish Chronicler of Texas

Introduction: a figure at the margins

American historical memory abounds with the names of explorers and pioneers: Hernando de Soto, associated with the European discovery of the Mississippi; John Smith and the English settlers of Jamestown; the pilgrims of the Mayflower; and, in Texas, Davy Crockett and the Alamo have become mythic symbols. Yet few can easily recall the man who, long before all of them, wrote the first chronicle of what is now Texas: Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca.
This contrast is not new. Cabeza de Vaca was never part of the traditional canon of explorers and pioneers; instead, he stands apart as a survivor who, out of necessity, became the first chronicler and an accidental ethnographer of the southern regions of what would later become the United States.

The Narváez expedition and its disastrous end

In 1527, Pánfilo de Narváez received the royal commission to conquer and settle the region then known as La Florida, a vast territory along the Gulf Coast. But the enterprise ended in disaster: shipwrecks, hunger, and clashes with Native peoples—particularly the Apalache—destroyed most of the expedition. Narváez departed with 600 men, but only four survived: Cabeza de Vaca, Andrés Dorantes, Alonso del Castillo, and Estebanico, an enslaved man of Moroccan (or North African) origin.
In Naufragios (1555), Cabeza de Vaca himself described with stark honesty the misery of those days, when survival depended on begging for food, improvising cures, or submitting to the demands of Native peoples. His account reflects not a conquest, but a defeat that forced a rethinking of the relationship between Europeans and Indigenous communities.

Bust of Cabeza de Vaca in Houston, Texas.

Bust of Cabeza de Vaca in Houston, Texas. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Eight years on foot across North America

For nearly eight years, Cabeza de Vaca wandered on foot for thousands of miles across Southwest North America, from the Texas coast to northern Mexico. Born into the minor Andalusian nobility and trained as a royal official, he was utterly unprepared for what followed. He was a captive, an itinerant trader, and eventually a healer. He learned languages, participated in rituals, and acted as a mediator between rival groups.
One extraordinary episode shows both his vulnerability and the reputation that began to surround him:

“En aquella isla que he contado nos quisieron hacer físicos sin examinarnos ni pedirnos los títulos (…). Vi el enfermo que íbamos a curar que estaba muerto (…) y lo mejor que pude supliqué a nuestro Señor fuese servido de dar salud a aquél. Y después de santiguado, rezar un Pater noster y un Ave María y soplado muchas veces (…) dijeron que aquel que estaba muerto se había levantado bueno, se había paseado y comido con ellos.”

 (“On that island I have mentioned, they wanted to make us into physicians without examining us or asking for credentials (…). I saw that the patient we were to cure was already dead (…) and as best I could I prayed to Our Lord to grant him health. After making the sign of the cross, reciting a Pater Noster and an Ave María, and breathing on him many times (…) they said that the one thought dead had risen well, had walked about, and had eaten with them.”)

It was medicine born less of science than of utter desperation. That experience transformed him—not because he set out to be more humane than other Spaniards, but because survival required him to navigate systems of violence, captivity, and coercion that did not fit his European frame of reference. He was no longer the Andalusian nobleman who had left Spain, but a man shaped by captivity, forced adaptation, and life on the margins of multiple Indigenous worlds. 

Unlike Hernando de Soto, who led an armed expedition through the Southeast of what is now the United States and left a trail of violence, Cabeza de Vaca’s journey carried him far to the west and southwest, across much of present-day Texas and into northern Mexico. He survived through forced adaptation, negotiation, and the fragile accommodations of life on the margins. A clear map of Cabeza de Vaca’s route can help readers visualize the expansive westward trek that distinguished his journey from that of De Soto.

Map: Expedition of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca 1528 bis 1536

Expedition of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca 1528 bis 1536. Source: Wikimedia Commons

An early chronicle of Texas and the Southwest

The value of Naufragios lies not only in its spirit of adventure, but also in its status as the first written chronicle of Texas and the American Southwest. Within its pages, one encounters now-vanished peoples such as those later identified as the Karankawas and the Tonkawas, described in remarkable detail in their customs, social organization, and beliefs. More than a story of exploration, the work often reads almost like a proto-ethnography (long before anthropology existed as a discipline), attentive to daily life, ritual, and conflict resolution that few other chroniclers ever attempted.

A particularly revealing passage describes how disputes were resolved among these groups:

“Cuando tienen diferencias sobre algún negocio, pelean a puñadas hasta que se desbaratan la cara y todo el cuerpo de sangre; y después de quedar así maltratados se apartan y los suyos se meten entre ellos y los pacifican; y lo más admirable es que de allí en adelante quedan amigos y no queda memoria de la injuria pasada.”

(“When they have disagreements over some matter, they fight with their fists until their faces and bodies are covered in blood; then, once battered, they separate and their people step in to make peace. What is most remarkable is that from that point on they remain friends, with no memory of the injury suffered.”)

He also recalled the sheer physical toll of survival:

“…nos mandaban sacar raíces del fondo de los esteros, y con el agua y el esfuerzo se nos despellejaban manos y pies…”

 (“…they ordered us to dig roots from the bottom of the swamps, and with the water and the effort our hands and feet were left raw and bleeding…”).

Far from the triumphalist tone of other chronicles of the Indies, Cabeza de Vaca’s work is the testimony of a man stripped bare, who observes and narrates not from the posture of conquest, but from the exposed and precarious position of a man forced to survive at the edges of multiple Indigenous worlds.

Legacy and memory

Despite the significance of his experience, Cabeza de Vaca has not become a central figure in wider American or Texan public memory. While he has never disappeared from scholarly work—and even has a statue in Houston—his life and legacy remain deeply contested. Historians such as Rolena Adorno, Patrick Charles Pautz, and Andrés Reséndez have placed him at the heart of debates on early Indigenous–European encounters, captivity, and proto-ethnography. Yet outside academic circles, he remains overshadowed by the dominant Anglo-American narrative of the frontier.

Part of this marginal position has to do with the kind of figure Cabeza de Vaca became. He was neither a successful conquistador nor a founder of colonial institutions, and thus did not fit easily into the political or ideological stories that later shaped U.S. national identity. His trajectory—marked by captivity, forced adaptation, and uneasy coexistence within multiple Indigenous worlds—did not lend itself to the heroic model promoted in popular accounts of exploration.

Historiographically, his reception has evolved. At the end of the nineteenth century, Charles Fletcher Lummis celebrated him as “the first American traveler,” emphasizing the extraordinary journey he undertook half a century before Anglo settlement reached these lands. Later, the foundational volume Spanish Explorers in the Southern United States, 1528–1543—first published in 1907 and reissued by the Smithsonian Institution in 1935—placed Naufragios alongside other essential early accounts and reinforced its value as a primary source. More recent scholarship—such as Andrés Reséndez’s A Land So Strange (2007)—has expanded this perspective, situating Cabeza de Vaca within the broader study of Indigenous–European interaction, cross-cultural mediation, and the limits of imperial power on the North American frontier.

As with Francisco de Saavedra—another Spaniard whose role I have previously discussed—Cabeza de Vaca remains far from central in the broader American historical imagination. Yet his story helps widen our view of the country’s origins: not because he stood at their center, but because his experience reveals forms of Indigenous–Spanish interaction later overshadowed by the dominant Anglo narrative.

Title page of Naufragios (La relación)

Title page: La relacion y comentarios del gouerna, 1555. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Conclusion

Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca embodies a different kind of explorer—not the victorious conqueror, but the survivor who learns and observes. His account is the first Spanish chronicle of Texas and an irreplaceable window into the Indigenous world of the sixteenth century.

Recovering his memory is not an antiquarian gesture, but a way of recognizing that the history of the United States was, from its beginnings, plural, mixed, and shaped by cultural encounters that still echo today in debates about frontier and identity, as well as in broader discussions about intercultural contact and historical memory in the early Americas—conversations that continue to shape how we narrate the origins of the U.S. Southwest.

His voice—overshadowed in Texas and in the broader national memory—deserves to be heard again, not as a relic but as a living part of American history. It is also a reminder that the “frontier myth” of Anglo conquest, perpetuated for decades by Hollywood and popular culture, is only one version of the story—and that Cabeza de Vaca’s survival reveals another: a frontier of adaptation, exchange, and fragile coexistence.

José A. Adrián is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Málaga (Spain), specializing in language as a cognitive phenomenon and in its oral and written disorders. In addition to his academic work, he maintains a strong interest in history and the role of Spain in the Americas.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

Review of For God and Liberty: Catholicism and Revolution in the Atlantic World, 1780-1861, by Pamela Voekel (Oxford University Press, 2022). 

banner image for review of For god and liberty

In 1808, Napoleon Bonaparte invaded the Iberian Peninsula, forcing King Charles IV and his son Ferdinand VII to surrender their rights to the Spanish throne. While a brutal war ravaged the peninsula, various municipalities and corporate bodies throughout the Spanish Atlantic World formed juntas (councils) to govern in the absent monarch’s name. This episode opened an unprecedented period of political experimentation that culminated in the fragmentation of the empire and the emergence of new polities. Pamela Voekel’s latest book, For God and Liberty, challenges the notion that this period marked a triumph of secular political modernity. Instead, she reveals how these political transformations were deeply intertwined with broader historical forces. 

For God and Liberty chronicles the emergence of a religious divide among Catholics in the Spanish Atlantic World. It presents two contrasting factions: Reformist Catholics, who championed a more democratic model of church governance and advocated for a simpler, more austere Church, and Ultramontane Catholics, who fervently defended absolutism and upheld rigid secular and ecclesiastical hierarchies. Voelkel argues that individuals from both factions engaged in expansive intellectual networks, participating in what she terms a “transatlantic Catholic civil war” spanning from the late colonial period through to the post-independence era (1808-1861). She convincingly illustrates that the clashes between these groups stemmed from fundamentally different approaches to biblical exegesis and distinct interpretations of the Church’s early history.

book cover for For god and liberty

Focusing primarily on Mexico and Central America, Voekel carefully reconstructs the contours of this controversy in seven chapters organized chronologically. The first three chapters are dedicated to the period of imperial crisis. Chapter one examines the debate between Mérida’s Sanjuanistas and Rutinarios. The Sanjuanistas were a faction of the clergy that supported Bourbon initiatives aimed at strengthening a secular clergy under more direct control of the Crown. However, following the promulgation of the Cadiz Constitution in 1812, their positions became more radical, transitioning from autonomists to strong defenders of independence. Chapters two and three delve into the period of independence in Central America, illustrating the impact that religious arguments had on how the actors of that time understood politics. For instance, the Catholic reformist critique on luxury was later deployed by El Salvador’s indigo growing elite to argue from greater autonomy from Guatemala’s merchant guild. 

Chapter four through eight focus on post-independence Mexico and Central America. Voekel shows that during the first half of the nineteenth century, both liberal and conservative parties inherited the conflicts from the Catholic reformists and ultramontane Catholics steaming from the era of imperial crisis. However, the emphasis of the debate shifted from popular sovereignty to the extent of civil authorities’ control over ecclesiastical matters, such as the election of archbishops, public expressions of religiosity, and clerical celibacy. Notably, chapter eight contends that the Reforma period in nineteenth-century Mexico, often characterized as a time of radical secularism, was, in fact, a conflict among various factions of Catholics debating the appropriate relationship between the state and the church.

The Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mexico City, circa 1890
The Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mexico City, circa 1890. Source: Wikimedia Commons

One of the book’s most significant contributions is its reexamination of the role of religion in the history of the public sphere. By analyzing newspapers, pamphlets, speeches, and letters, Voekel illustrates how debates during the early phase of Mexican and Central American liberalism were deeply rooted in religious controversies. Participants in the public sphere, both layman and clergy, did not distinguish between electoral politics and religious discussions. Moreover, the author reveals that the parish church served as a vital conduit for the dissemination of political ideas long before the arrival of the printing press. This evidence enables Voekel to assert that religion was not confined to the private sphere but was, in fact, central to public discourse.

Although this book may not fit neatly into Atlantic history, it compellingly encourages moving beyond the national history framework that has largely influenced the study of Catholicism in Spanish America. For God and Liberty presents fascinating comparisons and highlights unexpected connections among the various participants in this transatlantic Catholic confrontation. For instance, the text illustrates how the arguments advanced by schismatic clerics in the province of Socorro in New Granada (present-day Colombia) for establishing an independent archbishopric and democratically electing their archbishop in 1810 served as a significant intellectual reference for reformist clergy in Salvador and Guatemala during the early years of independence. Similarly, Chapter Four transports the reader across the Atlantic to Rome, following the journey of Salvadoran envoy Victor Castrillo, who sought to negotiate the granting of a new “Patronato Regio” for the Republic of Central America with Pope Leo XIII. In doing so, the book effectively conveys the polycentric nature of these debates, steering clear of simplistic models that place Europe at the center of intellectual production.

Pope Leo XIII
Pope Leo XIII, 1878. Source: Wikimedia Commons

For God and Liberty is a timely and valuable addition to the growing body of scholarship that, over the past two decades, has integrated religion into the historiography of the Age of Revolutions, an area where Spanish America has received comparatively less attention. Voekel’s book presents a methodologically rigorous study that demonstrates a deep engagement with both English and Spanish-language authors. I would be interested to know whether dissenting voices existed within the reformist and ultramontane factions, given that historians of nineteenth-century Latin America have highlighted the diversity of political positions within the “liberal” and “conservative” parties. On the whole, however, I recommend this book to anyone interested in the revolutionary era, the history of Catholicism, and popular politics in Latin America. 

Juan Sebastián Macías Díaz earned a BA in History from the Universidad de los Andes (Bogotá, Colombia) and an MA in Latino/a and Latin American Studies from the University of Connecticut. Currently, he is a second-year PhD student in the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin. His research interests include indigenous history and popular politics in the Northern Andes during the Age of Revolutions.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

Review of Empire of Poverty. The Moral-Political Economy of the Spanish Empire, by Julia McClure (2025). 

In Empire of Poverty, Julia McClure presents an innovative approach to the study of the Spanish Empire. The book analyzes how poverty was conceived in the early years of the Spanish colonization of the Americas, and how it was transformed as attitudes towards the poor were changed by a series of economic, political, religious and social factors. Julia McClure argues that the transition to colonial capitalism in the sixteenth century modified previous attitudes towards poverty and modelled a new approach that shaped the very same institutions of empire.  

The most innovative aspect of this work is the analysis of this ideological change. Rather than emphasizing the material aspects of poverty during the transition to capitalism, as previous Marxist analysis have done (in the case of Europe see: Karls Marx’s Capital and Catherina Lys and Hugo Solis’ Poverty and Capitalism in Pre-Industrial Europe), McClure analyzes how the moral-political concepts of empire-building changed and intertwined with social, political and economic factors, eventually influencing the governing models of imperial institutions. As the Spanish conquistadors arrived in the New World and amassed wealth and riches, new theories of monetary value emerged. These theories were accompanied by framing notions of indigenous people as impoverished and ‘‘uncivilized’’, which were constructed to justify Spanish colonization and the subsequent subjugation of these communities. This also explained the emergence of new theories of sovereignty. 

Debates regarding the natural rights of Indigenous people and their role in colonial society as well as discussions led by scholars of the School of Salamanca followed the scholastic tradition but also inspired new models of governance. McClure demonstrates how poverty was used as an instrument for the control and subjugation of Indigenous people in the Americas. She identifies this period as the genesis of what she calls ‘‘colonial capitalism’’, marked by the emergence of moral-political values that helped shape new theories of empire and expand sovereignty claims over additional individuals and territories.  

Picture of University of Salamanca
University of Salamanca. Source: Wikimedia Commoms

Taking a first look at the Iberian Peninsula, the book first delves with the Spanish arbitristas, intellectuals who wrote treatises to the King on the social, political and economic state of the kingdom. It analyzes the impact the New World wealth had in Spanish society at the time, rejecting previous analysis that regarded Spain as an impoverished kingdom. McClure argues that it was the sudden flow of wealth and riches from the New World that helped construct this idea of decline and poverty at home, with the arbitristas being the first to introduce and articulate this concept.  

The book then takes the reader to America to first analyze the economies of pre-Columbian societies such as the Maya, Inca or Aztec. McClure argues that these indigenous political entities had their own mechanisms to face poverty and scarcity. She defines these economic systems as ‘‘moral ecologies’’, characterized by their interactions with their surrounding environment and resources. These systems developed their own mechanisms to reduce poverty and scarcity at times of risk, whether that be it as a result of a natural disaster or harvest failure (pp.54-67). Despite the existence of these mechanisms, the author shows how Spanish officials and intellectuals constructed Indigenous people as poor, and began classifying them in different social ranges, often denoting their economic status and racial features. This only mirrored the developments that were happening at the same time in the Iberian Peninsula.  

Picture of Codex Mendoza folio 64r. The top two lines of the page on display here depict the training of a priest (which involved public works such as the repair of temples and bridges). The remaining images feature warriors, and illustrate the importance of war captives in the acquisition of social rank.
Codex Mendoza folio 64r. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Focusing again in Europe, McClure stresses the importance of the new theories of state and government that were emerging at the time. She defines them as contractual and collaborative in nature, emphasizing the negotiated relationship between vassals and rulers, despite the increasing power of European monarchs. These new theories of state –often embedded within the ‘mirror for princes’ literature– actively supported the provision of the poor and the existence of welfare systems as the monarch was regarded as the main benefactor and provider of the poor and those in need. As a result, intellectuals from the School of Salamanca legitimized the Spanish colonization of the Americas, and with it, the emergence of colonial capitalism. Their theories of sovereignty and government framed the King as the main supporter and provider of welfare and charity in the kingdom, stressing the contractual nature of this negotiated sovereignty.  

At the same time, attitudes towards poverty shifted. These shifts in approaches to poverty and poor relief formed part of a wider trend in Europe where the poor began to be increasingly policed and controlled by government institutions. Treaties such as Juan Luis Vives’ De Subventione Pauperum (1530) or Miguel de Giginta’s Tratado de remedio de pobres (1579) offered new solutions to relief poverty and advocated for a tighter control toward vagrancy. New classifications emerged between deserving and undeserving poor, which further widened the gap between legal and illegal forms of poverty. Moreover, the issue of new poor laws during the reigns of Charles V (1516-1556) and Philip II (1556-1598) meant the further criminalization of poverty, and an acceleration in state-controlled legislation (p.126). 

Additionally, the construction of poverty toward Indigenous people often meant their appropriation of their land and labor, which helped further cement the colonial project. McClure analyzes the various forms of labor appropriation and exploitation, including the encomienda system, the repartimiento, and the capture of individuals in combat through just war rhetoric (pp.138-142). In addition, as a result of the creation of novel forms of debt and tributary legislation, new forms of poverty emerged that widely affected Indigenous communities. The appropriation of lands and the legal mechanisms used to claim ‘empty’ lands or legalized already occupied ones, formed a model that ultimately favored Spanish colonists (p.164).  

At the same time, the categorization of Indigenous people as ‘‘childish’’ and in need of protection helped Spanish officials to implement further governing structures in the Americas, strengthening the visualization of the Spanish Monarchs as the benefactors of these communities. The Crown exploited this discourse to build around its institution the myth of protector of the Indians and dispenser of justice. Yet, McClure also shows that Indigenous people navigated through the intricate system of Spanish colonial law, and often sought rewards and compensation for their miseries and poverty. This bottom-up system of petitions, rewards, and amparos also shaped the imperial institutions of the Spanish empire in the New World, and created a precedent for a passive resistance and cemented the survival of pre-conquest privileges and rights among Indigenous people and communities (pp.172-173). 

In conclusion, Empire of Poverty shows how moral and political concepts of poverty influenced the governing institutions of the Spanish empire while also laying the foundations for the modern unequal systems that affect the exact same societies that were first colonized in the sixteenth century. Simultaneously, the monograph shifts attention from the Anglophone historiographical tradition that has usually overemphasized the Protestant models to study poverty and charity (highly influenced by Weber’s thesis on the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism) to explain early modern attitudes towards poverty. This offers a new paradigm to explain the role and impact of Catholicism in poor relief and poverty management.  

As a result, McClure concludes that scholars and officials of the Spanish Empire ‘reinvented poverty’ to legitimize their expansion of sovereignty in these new territories. In doing so, they created new forms of poverty through alien systems of labor extraction, tribute collection, and land appropriation. Despite this, the negotiated and participative nature of the Spanish empire also enabled its vassals to negotiate and even lobby for their own interests. At times, this led to the preservation of their rights and status, or the obtaining of rewards, in the newly created colonial society, evidencing the participatory and contractual nature of this system of rule and government. Finally, McClure stresses how the colonial capitalist model that developed over the sixteenth century paved the way for modern inequalities that continue in these territories, often shaping Indigenous ways of life and survival. 

Jorge García-García is a first-year PhD History student at the University of Texas-Austin. He studied History as an undergraduate at the University of Glasgow (United Kingdom), obtaining a MA with Honors of the First Class. He then studied a postgraduate degree in World History at the Pompeu Fabra University (Spain). His research focuses on Colonial Latin America and the Spanish Empire.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

NEP’s Archive Chronicles: Tips for using PARES (Portal de Archivos Estatales)

Banner for NEP’s Archive Chronicles: Tips for using PARES (Portal de Archivos Estatales)

NEP’S Archive Chronicles explores the role archives play in historical research, offering insight into the process of conducting archival work and research. Each installment will offer a unique perspective on the treasures and challenges researchers encounter in archives around the world. NEP’s Archive Chronicles is intended to be both a practical guide and a space for reflection, showcasing contributors’ experiences with archival research. This article, part of a two-part series by Diana, focuses on three tips for using PARES, the digital platform of the Archive of the Indies in Spain.

In the first part of this archive chronicle, “”An experiential approach to the Archive of the Indies”, I discussed why PARES is the AGI’s front façade for virtually every researcher nowadays. Even though PARES is an online tool, my user experience changed significantly once I was in the reading room. After months of searching for references and organizing them, I thought I had mastered PARES through Scott Cave’s helpful guide. But I was humbled during the first week at the archive when it became obvious that PARES does not reflect the entire holdings or archival organization of the AGI. This is certainly true for any archive or collection. Still, I did learn a few tricks along the way that changed how I approached the archive and its online catalog. This piece has three how-to’s in PARES to help make the research experience easier for researchers.

1)  How to explore the AGI’s numerous subsections or how to use PARES like a print catalog 

Most of the search results I initially got from PARES were located in the section of Contratación. However, this is the archive’s largest section with close to six thousand legajos and fifty-one sections. When I finally started consulting some of these references, I wondered why most of them came from “Autos entre partes” (litigation between private parties). Did this mean that this subsection was described in greater detail than others? What else was out there in this immense section?

Two PARES features make it easier to answer these questions:

Clicking on “Location in the Archive Classification Scheme” shows where a document or section is located within the archive.

Screenshot of system

If we click on any of the hierarchical locations, it will open a new tab or window where we can see how many units a section has and a broad description of its contents.

Screenshot of system

In this case, the subsection of “Autos entre Partes” has 207 legajos, but the Content and Structure section does not provide a substantial description. For many other archival sections, there might be a finding aid on the index file that lists references to print catalogs which you can consult at the AGI’s reading room. Identifying these broader archival sections along with the legajo range they cover is quite handy when consulting microfilmed portions of the AGI. While now considered an almost defunct technology, it is important to remember that several libraries across the Americas have AGI microfilms such as the Benson Latin American Collection, the Bancroft Library, or the Eusebio Dávalos Library at Mexico’s National Anthropology Museum.

Screenshot of system

Once we click on “207 units more”, I recommend sorting the Description Unit by Reference number. This places the oldest legajo on top of the list and allows you to systematically review the section. I also like to use the “text filter” to make targeted searches within a single description unit.

2) How to find digitized files that do not look like they have been digitized

One of the best tips an AGI archivist shared with me was how to find apparently non-digitized documents from bound volumes known as libros. For example a reference with a geographical marker (e.g. Lima, Guatemala, Charcas, Indiferente) and an L such as MEXICO,1064,L.2,f.283r-283v indicates it comes from libros on the Gobierno section (including Indiferente). While the description and digitization of these books is almost complete, they are not always subdivided by individual files in PARES.

Here’s an example of a book that is clearly subdivided and can be easily accessed by clicking on “View Images”.

Screenshot of system

The reference below, however, looks like it has not been digitized because it does not have the camera icon. But since it has an “L”, we can almost be sure it has been digitized. Expanding the “Location in the Archive Classification Scheme”, shows that its containing section has a fully colored camera icon (when a camera is gray, it means the section has been partially digitized).

Screenshot of PARES system

Once we click on this location, it will open a new tab where we can access the fully digitized libro.

Screenshot of PARES system

Now it is only a matter of clicking on “view images” and finding the folios from the original reference. Since the PARES viewer operates by image number, this means we have to multiply the folio number by two if it’s a verso folio and subtract 1 if it’s a recto folio. Our reference number (283r-283v) suggests the image number should be 565.

Screenshot of PARES system

Sometimes this might not work precisely so you might need to skim through a few pages to find the specific page numbers.

3) How to start identifying relevant documents for your research

Compared to its earlier version, PARES 2.0 has two new tools that are a good starting point to explore a new topic: the Authorities Search and MetaPARES.

The Authorities Search works similarly to a subject search in a library catalog. The main difference is that the results will lead you to a virtual index file that lists at the end a list of the Spanish Archives where you can find your topic and the number of documents previously identified by archivists. This search is by no means comprehensive, but it is a good starting point. For instance, to know more about the bison found in New Mexico, an authorities search would be useful to identify the jurisdiction and place names used for this region during colonial times.

Screenshot of PARES system

Screenshot of the AGI documents associated with the subject of New Mexico

Another tool that connects published and unpublished academic work to the holdings of the Spanish State Archives is MetaPARES. The goal of this portal is to refer researchers to secondary literature that cites Spanish Archives. The tool is still in development, but it is a good way to quickly become acquainted with Spanish scholarship and document collections.

Screenshot of PARES system

The MetaPARES search for New Mexico lists four results. They are not many, but they are more targeted than your typical Google Scholar search and will likely be in Spanish.

It also goes without saying that learning Spanish paleography and early modern Spanish vocabulary is key to identifying relevant documents. There are many online tools and software such as the Dominican Studies Institute Paleography Tool, the Diccionario de Abreviaturas Novohispanas, or Transkribus that make this endeavor easier nowadays. Additionally, reading transcribed document collections and getting acquainted with the structure of Spanish bureaucratic documents will improve your own reading and comprehension of the materials you collect. Navigating the archives and documents of Colonial Latin America demands practice and patience, but this experience can be slowly built throughout the years and from afar. For me, it took about seven years, but it was worth the wait.

Diana Heredia-López is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin. Originally trained as a biologist in Mexico, she has specialized in the history of science and colonialism since 2012. Her current research examines dye cultivation and commerce as a framework to investigate early modern Hispanic extractivism, knowledge production, and material culture.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

NEP’s Archive Chronicles: An experiential approach to the Archive of the Indies

NEP’S Archive Chronicles explores the role archives play in historical research, offering insight into the process of conducting archival work and research. Each installment will offer a unique perspective on the treasures and challenges researchers encounter in archives around the world. NEP’s Archive Chronicles is intended to be both a practical guide and a space for reflection, showcasing contributors’ experiences with archival research. This two-part installment explores the Archive of Indies in Spain and shares research tips on how to navigate its digital platform, PARES.

For nearly a decade, I experienced the largest imperial archive of the Americas from afar. In Mexico City, Guadalajara, and Austin I logged countless times onto a website called PARES (Portal de Archivos Estatales), a clunky but essential tool for those in need to peruse the Spanish State Archives. The most recent iteration of the PARES website allows you to create an account called a “Notepad” where you can save archival references and digitized documents. Below a selection of documents that I vowed to myself I would look in person one day:

  • Dibujo de un bisonte
  • Plano, elevación y perfil de una casa para habitación del Catedrático de Botánica
  • Alojanieve, pulperías, salinas y solimán
  • Consulta del Consejo de Indias
  • Ensalada de los Navegantes: Disertación phisicobotánico-médica

I have yet to see these documents.

Even though PARES contains the online catalog and millions of digitized documents from twelve archives, most of the items I have collected over the years come from a single repository, the Archivo General de Indias, known to most scholars as the AGI. In 2013, I did not understand what kind of archive the AGI was, let alone grasp the magnitude of its holdings. All I knew is that I had to visit someday if I wanted to become a respected Historian (una historiadora consagrada). Why such a visit was necessary truly escaped me. Up to that point, I had learned that historians of science worked mostly with print material and archives of renowned scientists and scientific institutions. As I tried to piece together the dispersal and loss of the visual culture produced in the Royal Botanical Expedition to New Spain, I longed to visit the Royal Botanical Garden of Madrid and its archive. This kind of repository was closer to the natural history collections I had known as an undergraduate while I worked at Mexico’s National Herbarium. And yet, I continued filling my PARES notepad with items from the Archive of the Indies and collecting archival references from the secondary literature I consulted.

It would take me at least another five years to learn why this archive was relevant to those studying the history of science and knowledge in the early modern Iberian world and beyond. Important books and scholars (including my own advisor and fellow colleagues) helped me understand that the Spanish Empire was held together by a large bureaucratic apparatus that was capacious enough to collect information about almost anything and anywhere. From taxes and commercial disputes to the number of trees planted in Chapultepec, the bundles of documents or legajos at the Archive of the Indies are a true unknown to the researcher, each carrying in their pages a unique blend of calamity, confusion, hope, excitement, and occasional boredom. However, finding what you need is rarely a straightforward journey. The AGI’s vast holdings are spread across seventeen main archival sections, including a relatively new addition listed in PARES as ADAGI (Archive of the Archive of the Indies). How then, does one determine where your archival journey should begin at the AGI?

Picture of boxes of Casa de Contratación for NEP's Archive Chronicles
Figure 1. These boxes at the original building of the AGI, La Casa de Lonja, emulate the classic cover of a legajo. The archive’s reading room is now located at the Cilla del Cabildo building. Image taken by the author.

The easiest and most practical answer lies, of course, in PARES. In principle, it should simply be a matter of compiling the archival references saved in one’s notepad and then tallying the sections that appear most frequently. For this purpose, one could use the thorough guides made by Scott Cave or recent ones posted on H-Net by William Cohoon and Grant Kleiser. Indeed, this is the method I initially followed in preparation for my dissertation research on the commerce and cultivation of New World dyes in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. My numerous PARES searches indicated that the section of the archive that dwelled on dyes was Contratación (commercial affairs, very broadly understood). Based on these references, I realized my time at the AGI would largely involve examining commercial disputes over dye shipments. To be honest, I was not thrilled by this prospect and thus decided to prioritize a different archival thread that drew me to the history of cochineal some years earlier.

Hailed as one of the largest exports from Colonial Mexico, cochineal is a red dye obtained from parasitic insect females that sap nutrients from its plant host, the prickly pear cactus or nopal. Archival materials about this dye are quite scattered but there are a few illustrated documents (Fig. 3) that explain how Indigenous laborers in Central and Southern Mexico aptly managed parasites, plants, and the landscape to produce a highly specialized dye at a large scale. Like other scholars before me, I was interested in this striking visual culture. This led me to pursue a distinct archival journey from the one charted by the results I had collected in PARES.

I. Through the archival weeds

Among historians, the Spanish State archives are notorious for their cumbersome and restricted approach to digitization. Until only recently, researchers were strictly forbidden from taking photos at the AGI and therefore had to request the archivists to digitize sections of the archive, a process that could take many months if not years. Yet, it would be surprising for many to hear that the AGI and other Spanish state archives were pioneers in digitization, launching PARES online fourteen years ago. From then on, researchers and accidental historians like me have been able to use this archive at a scale, speed, and distance unimaginable three decades ago. For better or for worse, virtually every scholar of Colonial Latin America now begins their archival journey with digitized documents from PARES, which account at best for about 10% of their holdings. The AGI has now fully digitized diverse subsections such as Listas de Pasajeros (located in Contratación), Patronato, most of the bound books in the Gobierno Section (see Part 2), and a good portion of illustrations, maps, and material culture contained in Mapas, Planos y Estampas (MP-Estampas).

Drawing of Bison found in documents of AGI - for NEP's Archive Chronicles
Figure 2. “Dibujo de un Bisonte”, MP-Estampas-1, Archivo General de Indias, ca. 1598. This bison, originally described as a “cow from Cíbola” was originally part of the 389 folio digitized file on Juan de Oñate’s exploits in New Mexico (Patronato,22,R.13), shown below.

Screenshot of PARES system for NEP's Archive Chronicles

It is in MP-Estampas where one can find a charming drawing of a bison originally sighted in the Zuni town of Hawikuh. This drawing brings into view something I completely missed when I first read an illustrated report on cochineal production in Yucatán located in this same section. The cropped version of the bison drawing suggests it was taken from a larger document. To fully understand its purpose, it is crucial to refer to its original location in Patronato. In contrast, the seventeenth-century dye production report, featuring an image of a prickly pear, appeared self-contained. I initially only verified that its associated documents in Guatemala’s section were fully digitized. However, many months later, when I took the time to look more carefully at the documents in the original location of the report, I finally asked the most important question about the prickly pear image: Why was a document referring to prickly pears in Yucatán deposited in the papers of Guatemala?

Image of text describing the process of cultivation of the grana or cochineal
17th century drawing of the process of cultivating the grana or cochineal

Figure 3. “Dibujo de la obtención de la grana o cochinilla”, MP-Estampas, 70, Archivo General de Indias, 1620. The illustration of the prickly pear cactus (nopal) is part of a brief report detailing how to cultivate these plants so they could sustain cochineal, an insect parasite that bore one of the most valuable red dyes in the early modern world.

Through this archival discovery I learned that I should not take digitized items from PARES for granted. Our time as researchers at the AGI seems so precious that we tend to prioritize legajos (bundles of documents)that are only available to consult in situ. Yet, it is also important to read in tandem relevant digitized documents for they might lead us to different sections of the archive. This is especially relevant for sections at the AGI that archivists curated long after the documents came to the archive such as MP-Estampas or Patronato. When documents are plucked out of the original trail that brought them to the archive, it is easy to miss what was their original purpose and the creators behind them.

My lack of diligence in reading digitized documents was compensated by my stubbornness to find out more about prickly pears in the Yucatán Peninsula. Since the report was one of the first documents that caught my attention when I first articulated my dissertation project, I was determined to find more about it. Yet, when I looked for traces about prickly pears or dyes in Yucatán, my PARES search results were disappointing. This is not entirely surprising as Yucatán was considered a remotely communicated region during Spanish colonial rule. But my inability to find relevant documents about my inquiry was rooted in the heterogeneous cataloging of the archive, not its remoteness. That is, the level of description of each legajo varies greatly across sections. There are legajos that archivists have thoroughly, or at least decently described, thus allowing for easy identification of relevant documents amidst hundreds of folios. Others, like many legajos from the infamous miscellaneous section of Indiferente General, have just a broad identification label with a range of years, sometimes without any geographic attribution.

Figure 4. Comparison between two legajos with contrasting levels of description: The left one lists correspondence from different viceroys in New Spain and has been fully digitized and organized by year. The right one is only available to consult in situ and covers over two-hundred years of Council and Board reports.

I decided to immerse myself into the world of scantily described legajos and started to look for anything remotely related to Yucatán. To navigate the heterogeneous cataloging of the AGI, I established the main coordinates of my search in terms of geography –any jurisdiction related to colonial Yucatán; people: any colonial bureaucrat related to prickly pears and cochineal; time frame: three decades before or after 1620, the year of the report. I also relied on three strategies: 1) use print catalogs to understand the organization of different archival sections; 2) look for archival clues and references on expert literature; 3) ask for help from the authors or readers of expert literature.

These somewhat obvious strategies allowed me to find numerous fragments scattered across various legajos in the sections of Gobierno and Escribanía. While there were many days when I poured over dozens of pages thinking I had not found a single thread, I came to realize that I needed this time to get acquainted with the archive and the voices spread across its sections. It taught me how to ask the archive better questions and start using PARES not as a fishing net to simply see “what’s out there”, but as a navigational chart. 

II. Labyrinth shortcuts

My weeks-long search for Yucatán’s prickly pears was mostly successful because the AGI has an extraordinary scholarly community that extends beyond its walls at the Cilla del Cabildo building. The famous 11 am coffee break that AGI users take every day certainly captures the enthusiasm and collaborative spirit surrounding the archive. Even if one does not partake in this ritual every day, it is incredibly easy to meet local and international scholars working on a wide array of topics related to the Spanish Empire and the early Americas. I was lucky enough to meet two researchers working on Yucatán that pointed me to key legajos and kept an eye for anything related to my dissertation. Additionally, the in-site archive’s library, the Hispanic American School Library, and the unmatched expertise of local scholars became the best way to learn about other Spanish archives and become acquainted with new historiographies.

Entrance of the Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos in Seville
Figure 5. Entrance of the Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos in Seville. Wikimedia Commons

To venture into the archival weeds of the AGI, more than patience or resourcefulness, one needs time and money. A prolonged stay in Seville is cost- and time-prohibitive for most scholars. Thus, making the most of each archival visit is vital. Over the past decade, the Spanish State Archives have made substantial changes that have increased their accessibility: longer operating hours, self-digitizing initiatives, an online system to book appointments, and the use of WeTransfer to send digitized files. And while their implementation at the AGI has been slow, I cannot stress enough how transformative some of these have been. They allow for better planning and use of time in the reading room. There is still plenty to improve especially on the cataloging front. In the second part of this piece, I will share a few tips that helped me improve my use of PARES and understand better their cataloging and organization.

Now that the AGI has loosened its strict policies about digitization, scholars will not need to spend as much time in Seville as older generations of historians did. Those of us who had the privilege of making a long research stay at the AGI might fear that the increase of short visits and indiscriminate use of cameras will erode the archive’s strong community. I do not know the AGI well enough to predict whether this will happen or not, but I do know that my colleagues’ love for coffee, gossip, and archival adventures is as timeless as the cover design of an AGI legajo. I do not expect to see a shortage of researchers sharing over coffee their grievances and archival finds any time soon.

Diana Heredia-López is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin. Originally trained as a biologist in Mexico, she has specialized in the history of science and colonialism since 2012. Her current research examines dye cultivation and commerce as a framework to investigate early modern Hispanic extractivism, knowledge production, and material culture.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

Review of Piracy and the Making of the Spanish Pacific World, by Kristie Flannery (2024)

Banner for review of Piracy and the Making of the Spanish Pacific World

Kristie Flannery’s groundbreaking first book, Piracy and the Making of the Spanish Pacific World is not only about how Spanish colonial rule worked in the Philippine Islands. Rather, Piracy and the Making of the Spanish Pacific World analyzes how colonialism, forms of capitalism, and religion forged political, economic, and religious alliances across Asia, the Americas, and Europe. This research reveals that colonialism in the Philippines was a process that went beyond the boundaries of the islands. The book shows that globalization and European imperial expansion influenced how ideas and actions traveled through the Spanish Empire in specific places or vast spaces such as the Pacific Ocean.

Flannery invites readers to explore the ways in which societies are structured. The book recovers forgotten stories of Indigenous soldiers and migrants who struggled to restore their identities when they were arbitrarily and constantly changed. Piracy serves as the central theme in the book and functions as the axis from which the real or imaginary fears that threatened the loyalties established between the inhabitants of the Philippines and the Spanish empire in Asia revolve. Piracy works as a driver of alliances between social groups and as an excuse to impose a regime of violence and genocide on an unwanted migrant population. This book examines how violence, piracy, imperial loyalties, and concepts of identity shifted and remained ambivalent, shaped by the actions of people and the fears—both real and imagined—that arose in a globalized imperial world.

Map of Philippines created in 1734
Carta Hydrographica y Chorographica de la Yslas Filipinas MANILA, 1734. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Much of the conceptual support of this book revolves around key notions such as loyalty, identity, and violence. These categories of analysis are fundamental to understanding how subjects were classified in the colonial system using terms that were incorporated so deeply that they survived even the disappearance of the Spanish empire. In other words, this conceptual framework sheds light on why it is relevant to understand the motivations that compelled people to exercise acts of discrimination and violence against Muslim and Filipino subjects. Some policies of discrimination witnessed and exercised during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries could be interpreted as political strategies to exploit and segregate people from China, creating a system of social control that was both tangible and intangible– or in the words of the author, both real and imaginary.

The methodological challenge of this book is contained in the possibility of archival research also of a global order. Kristie Flannery draws from Asian, Latin American, and Spanish archives in cities such as Manila, Seville, Mexico, and London among others, and integrates an extensive multilingual corpus of documents. By intersecting sources and exploring seemingly disconnected materials, the methodology expands into a spatial and scalar approach. This approach enables an ambitious exploration of riverine, maritime, and land connections, as well as the barriers between them. Each chapter begins with the departure or arrival of a ship that also represents a way of venturing into history in a fluid way to read a historical moment where real and imaginary piracy contributed to the Spanish colonial order in the Philippines.

Depiction of the Manila Gallon arriving to the Ladrones Island. 7 smaller ships around it.
Reception of the Manila Galleon by the Chamorro in the Ladrones Islands, ca. 1590.
Source: Wikimedia Commons

The book is composed of five chapters, an introduction, and an epilogue. Chapter 1, set in the eighteenth century, explores how the ideas of Muslims and Islam from the Mediterranean shaped Spanish strategies in the Americas and the Philippines, influencing defense strategies against Moorish piracy and later creating alliances between various actors according to their notions of religion and loyalty. This is a fascinating chapter in which identity and loyalty are central to understanding that the Spanish empire did not always reach all corners in the same ways.

Chapter 2 explores how the fluctuating threats of Mora piracy impacted the transient Chinese population, who settled far beyond the shores of Manila. The threats of pirate fleets reveal how the massacres of the Chinese population in 1603, 1639, and 1662 in the Philippines created an environment where religion was the engine of waves of violence and that ended up pushing alliances of the Sangleyes (referring to the Chinese migrants in the Philippines) in Manila as faithful vassals.

Chapters 3 and 4 delve into the invasions of Manila during the eighteenth century, showing how indigenous Filipinos challenged loyalties to face the arrival of the British by showing strong local opposition. And then Flannery analyzes how Spanish rule was restored by confronting the British invasions and also the local insurgents. Finally, Chapter 5 shows how migrants born in China after the war were collectively expelled from Manila and the forms of resistance these migrants used to confront an expulsion.

Book cover

In general terms, I identify several substantial contributions of this research to the study of imperial colonial historiography and the Spanish Pacific. First, the analysis of the history of piracy in the Spanish Pacific offers an understanding of how Spanish forms of government and colonial authority were adaptable to different contexts. In other words, there is not a single, uniform way of understanding the Spanish empire in the Americas and in the Philippines. Instead, there are intermediate positions, in this case, mediated by alliances, which must also be considered in the historiography. These individuals played active roles in shaping history and provide new perspectives for reinterpreting traditional historical narratives.

Second, forms of violence during this period continue to be fundamental elements in understanding how notions of identity and understanding of the “other” as alien to one’s own materialized. In addition, they were motivated by religious and political discourses that were also transoceanic. That is, ideas and actions also traveled with people. Third, this research carefully highlights how the Spanish empire classified colonial subjects based on race, social status, and religion and created policies of exclusion that were used to subvert an order according to real or imagined motivations that people had. This research shows that forms of social differentiation also can be inherited. Perhaps, this is why it is so important for Flannery to show how colonial and early modern ideas and practices persist and influence the ways we see each other and our world today. This is a carefully structured book with a geographical richness to enjoy. A book that becomes part of the field of colonial studies with a fascinating vision of a space sometimes forgotten by historiography: the Pacific.

Cindia Arango López. Historian, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Medellín. Mg. in Geography, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá. Specialist in Environment and Geoinformatics: SIG, Universidad de Antioquia. Currently, PhD student in Latin American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, TX-USA. She has been a professor of the undergraduate program in Territorial Development at Universidad de Antioquia, Oriente campus, Colombia. Currently, she is developing her candidacy for her doctoral research on the navigators bogas of the Magdalena River in the 18th century in Colombia.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

Review of The Age of Dissent: Revolution and the Power of Communication in Chile (2023), by Martín Bowen

banner image of Review of The Age of Dissent: Revolution and the Power of Communication in Chile (2023), by Martín Bowen

Martín Bowen’s most recent book, The Age of Dissent: Revolution and the Power of Communication in Chile, explores the turbulent period between 1780 and 1833 in which the inhabitants of the Captaincy General of Chile, a sparsely populated Spanish colony on South America’s Pacific Coast, witnessed an unprecedented scale of political experimentation and mobilization. Beginning in 1780, a series of plots, revolts, and a brutal civil war initiated in 1816 culminated in the collapse of Spanish rule and the emergence of Chile as an independent republic. In this context, women, artisans, indigenous, and free and enslaved peoples of African descent participated in the emergence of a pluralistic political landscape in which radical political dissension became an inescapable part of politics.

Drawing from archival repositories in Chile, Argentina, and Spain, The Age of Dissent skillfully uses newspapers, congressional debates, court cases, travel accounts, and material culture such as badges, flags, portraits, and other insignia to interrogate the ways in which Chileans from different social backgrounds experienced and participated in the desacralization of royal authority and the opening of politics. The book’s central claim is that this process was marked in large part by the emergence of radical political dissent and the appearance of new mediators in the political sphere. Bowen points out that while a diversity of opinions existed before the monarchical crisis, Chileans started to question the sacred foundations of royal power in this period by publicly expressing dissenting ideas about the legitimacy of the king and his agents.

book cover

The definition of radical political dissent used in the book is broad and incorporates a series of practices used by different actors to express disagreement either with the foundations of the ancient regime’s political power or with the ideas of republicanism. Thus, the realms of communication and visibility became the prime means to express radical political dissent. Dressing, iconoclasm, and rumor, alongside other written and discursive practices, were used by patriots and royalists alike to achieve their political goals.

The Age of Dissent is divided into two parts and eight thematically organized chapters. The first part explores how visibility became a realm of political action in Chile during the monarchical crisis. According to Bowen, insignia such as badges, clothes, and portraits were meant to manifest the transcendent origin of the political power of the monarch and his agents. However, after 1808 using the same insignia could potentially become a medium to express radical political dissent. For instance, chapter two analyzes the contested meaning of clothing during the revolutionary and post-revolutionary periods. Clothing, broadly defined to include hats, canes, and capes, represented the “natural” social hierarchies of the ancient regime societies. In Chile, sumptuary clothing was reserved for the elites, and popular was banned from their use. Nonetheless, patriots inverted the meaning of clothing by using hats or ragged clothing as republican symbols. Similarly, chapter four demonstrates how acts of iconoclasm, for instance, the destruction of portraits of King Ferdinand VII, were used to transgress the traditional boundaries of political participation.

King Ferdinand VII and Queen Maria Christina of Spain and their hats
King Ferdinand VII and Queen Maria Christina of Spain and their hats. Source: Wikimedia Commons

The book’s second part is concerned with what Bowen defines as the “field of propagation”. In these chapters, Bowen reconstructs in great detail how, during the Age of Revolutions, Chileans believed that actions and behaviors, vices and virtues, could easily propagate throughout the social body via imitation and contagion. In this context, the elite’s behavior was thought to influence popular classes. Chapter Five explores how patriots invented new models of heroism during the Revolutionary period to destabilize traditional conceptualizations of heroism and loyalism. Following a similar line, chapter six explores how certain political ideas were thought to be vectors of contagion and how political actors in Chile used different forms of communication to spread dissenting ideas.

Notably, the book develops a rich conceptual frame to understand political action during the revolutionary and post-revolutionary periods. Categories of analyses such as “mimesis,” “publicness,” and “contagion” allow Bowen to capture the period’s social and political language, serving as an explanatory framework to understand how actors made sense of their actions. Furthermore, The Age of Dissent skillfully shows the complexity of the political landscape of revolutionary and post-revolutionary Chile, avoiding overly simplistic characterizations of the political actors. For instance, it shows that radical political dissent could be present within the same political factions.

"Chile's First National Congress," oil painting by Nicanor González Méndez, 1903.
“Chile’s First National Congress,” oil painting by Nicanor González Méndez, 1903.
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Another important historiographical contribution is that the book places Chile in the wider context of Atlantic revolutionary politics. Often characterized as a backwater of the Spanish empire sheltered from the political agitation of the period, Bowen shows that Chileans were in close contact with revolutionary developments in the Atlantic World via the circulation of people and information. Bowen further stresses this point by analyzing a series of vignettes intertwined within the chapters of the book, such as the official celebration of US independence in Santiago on the fourth of July of 1812 or the arrival of Fernando Condorcanqui, the eldest son of Túpac Amaru II, to the port of Talcahuano in 1784.

The Age of Dissent is a welcomed contribution that adds to recent studies on popular politics, the public sphere, and the crisis of colonial rule in Spanish America. Furthermore, it expands our understanding of how communication and visibility became important tools that Chileans used to shape the transition from colony to republic. Nonetheless, the book lacks a detailed explanation of the origins of political dissent. Why did some political actors choose to side with the royalists or patriots? Did elements such as geography, literacy, or class shape this process of self-identification?  Overall, The Age of Dissent’s captivating narrative and creative use of primary sources make it a compelling reading not only for scholars of Chile but also for anyone interested in the Age of Revolutions.

Juan Sebastián Macías earned a BA in History from the Universidad de los Andes (Bogotá, Colombia) and an MA in Latino/a and Latin American Studies from the University of Connecticut. Currently, he is a first-year PhD student in the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin. His research interests include indigenous history and popular politics in the Northern Andes during the Age of Revolutions.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

Promiscuous Power: An Unorthodox History of New Spain by Martin Nesvig (2018)

Power, he argues, was “promiscuous” in sixteenth-century Michoacán because there were dozens of claimants to overlapping jurisdictions: indigenous nobilities, native commoners, encomenderos (tributary lords responsible for conversion of entrusted indigenous communities), bishops, parish priests, friars, audiencia (high court) magistrates, alcaldes mayores (city mayors), city councils, corregidores (regional authorities), viceroys, general inquisitors, inquisitorial delegates, cathedral chapters, etc. Each corporate group brought the “imperial” state to a crawling halt. In fact, he argues there was no single colonial “state” but dozens, if not hundreds, of micro- imperial ones, in and around cities and in the many distinct regional rural hinterlands of the sprawling province of Michoacán. Nesvig describes these micro-states as being led by clerical caudillos (charismatic leaders of armed posses) and encomenderos who enjoyed flexing their raw patriarchal muscles (complemented by some matriarch encomenderas who flexed their biceps and ass-kicking thighs).

Nesvig irreverently pokes fun at the large Inquisition historiography that finds the key to the building of the colonial state in inquisitorial hegemony and fear-inducing techniques. He shows all these arguments to be nonsense because people in Michoacán repeatedly and literally shit on the Inquisition agents.

Rarely does the nature of the sources match the voice of an author as it does in Nesvig’s Promiscuous Power. Like his subjects, Nesvig likes shitting on the conventions of academic writing. Here is a sampling.

Francisco Hernández Girón was a Spanish encomendero in the Viceroyalty of Peru (via Wikipedia)

Nesvig quotes a bandit who beat, stabbed, and robbed the officials carrying the sealed correspondence of inquisitor of Mexico City, as saying:

“Come on, that paper isn’t worth anything, and whoever wrote it must be like you–come on, you dog, faggot, cuckold, snitch, asshole” (170)

And he writes:

“People laughed at the king and the pope and called their judges squashes, putos, and little whiny bitches while stabbing and cracking them and smacking their idiotic, pompous bonnets off their heads.” (171-72)

“Orduña [the Inquisition delegate in Michoacán’s capital Valladolid] thus upended the acceptable semiotics of power, and in so doing, he showed his rivals that he did not care a fucking bit if they thought he was a plebeian thug.” (129)

“True, he was a priest, but as he had no university education, he thought that licenciados (college graduates) were pompous assholes.” (115)

“He [Badillo a theologian, newly appointed inquisition delegate for Michoacán] was a creature of classroom lectures and of the intricate hierarchies and cultural niceties of academia, its ceremonial buffoonery and false collegiality.” (107)

I found Nesvig’s stylistic and historiographical irreverence both refreshing and powerful. I do have a critique, however.

Nesvig demonstrates on every page that the “state” enjoyed extraordinary legitimacy and authority, despite his claim that the state does not exist as such. But he has a difficult time finding the state only because he is on the trail of the narrowly defined Weberian state, that is, the state that has a monopoly on violence. Yet in Michoacán, there was a vibrant imperial state. Each of the corporate groups Nesvig investigates left a massive trail of petitions for redress via at least a dozen different bureaucratic channels and courts (Nesvig himself finds his sources in seven or eight different archives, and within each archive, in 5 or 6 different types of bureaucratic files). The audiencias (the high courts of Mexico and Guadalajara), the Inquisition (in Mexico and the Suprema in Madrid), the viceroy, the ecclesiastical courts (both of Mexico and Valladolid-Michoacán), and the crown sent dozens of  visitas and residencias (mandatory outside evaluation of outgoing authorities) to investigate and mete out justice, whose dictates, in turn, were embraced or appealed in endless litigation. One finds the state in this infrastructure of paperwork, not in the monopoly of violence. The colonial state was a state of paper.

Nesvig is right that the colonial state was archipelagic, colonized by fierce defendants of corporate legal rights. Yet it was no vacuous abstraction. It manifested itself daily in rivers of ink and the profligate collective investments in paper, paralegals, lawyers, and lobbyists. The state lay in the daily, routine acceptance that courts, councils, magistrates, and monarchs could ultimately be swayed to listen. More often than not, conflict was resolved through the exchange of blasts of documents, not gun battles, civil wars, and massacres. This was the lasting legacy of even the most violent of Latin American colonial caudillos.

Other Articles You Might Like:

Three Hundred Sex Crimes
Facing North From Inca Country
No More Shadows: Faces of Widowhood in Early Colonial Mexico
Purchasing Whiteness: Race and Status in Colonial Latin America

Also by Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra:

From There to Here: Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra
Puritan Conquistadors
Jerónimo Antonio Gil and the Idea of the Spanish Enlightenment

When Montezuma Met Cortés: The True Story of the Meeting that Changed History, by Matthew Restall (2018)

Matthew Restall’s When Montezuma met Cortés delivers a blow to the basic structure of all current histories of the conquest of Mexico. Absolutely all accounts, from Cortés’ second letter to Charles V in 1520 to Inga Clendinnen’s  masterful 1991 article “’Fierce and Unnatural Cruelty,’”[1] assume that the conquest of Mexico was led by Hernán Cortés, who is described by Wikipedia as a “Spanish Conquistador who led an expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire and brought large portions of what is now mainland Mexico under the rule of the King of Castile.” These accounts represent Cortés as willingly deciding to enter Tenochtitlan in the hopes of capturing Montezuma, the Aztec Emperor, expecting to rule Mexico via a proxy ruler, and seeing himself as Julius Cesar in Gaul. Although Clendinnen shows that there was no Machiavellian logic in any of this Cortesian strategy, she keeps the trope of Cortés as the central protagonist of a tragic-comedy.

Montezuma’s reasoning for allowing Cortés and his 250 surviving conquistadors to enter Tenochtitlan is, after Cortés’s overblown heroics, the second leg of all histories of the conquest. Montezuma’s actions have been cast as a surrender to prophecy, implying imperium translatio (willingly bestowing sovereignty upon superior returning deities), idiotic cowardice, or simply unfathomable, unintelligible reaction. Either way, Montezuma always comes across as a diminished ruler, even a puppet. Cortés captured, imprisoned, killed, and desecrated Montezuma’s remains.

The third leg of the stool organizing narratives of the conquest of Mexico is the brutality of Aztec rule and the extent of the Aztec practice of human sacrifice. The alleged industrialization of Aztec ritual sacrifice has allowed some traditional accounts to justify the conquest.

Restall knocks down all three legs. He demonstrates that the numbers of sacrificed captives that are thrown around make absolutely no sense. The proposed numbers do not match basic arithmetic, demography, or the archeological findings at templo mayor, where the sacrifices were supposed to have taken place.

The leg that sustains Cortés as protagonist tumbles down just as easily. Restall demonstrates that Cortés was a mediocrity before landing in Yucatan and after the conquest.  Cortés arrived in Hispaniola in 1504 and participated in the conquest of Cuba in 1511, playing the role of follower not leader throughout. After Tenochtitlan, Cortés led the conquest of Honduras and California where his incompetence shined through, not his greatness.  Restall  shows that leaders of the many Spanish factions, namely, the captains, bosses of family/town share-holding companies, who in Mexico made all key decisions, not Cortés.

Finally, the leg in the stool that portrays Montezuma as fool, is demolished by Restall in showing that Montezuma made fools of  Cortés and his captains. He led them down  a path that would secure attrition and observation. The envoys of Montezuma in Yucatan encouraged a path to Tenochtitlan via an enemy route. Cortés and his captains encountered first the Totonec and then the Tlaxcalan, before crossing the mountains to get to the valley that nestled Tenochtitlan in the middle.  Restall demonstrates that when the weakened conquistadors stopped fighting with the Tlaxcalan, it was the latter,, not Cortes, who chose the path to get to the Aztec capital to visit Montezuma, including a  detour to the city of Cholula.

This detour has always puzzled historians because it was out of the way and because the “conquistadors” staged a massacre of Cholulan lords for no apparent reason whatsoever. In his letters to Charles V, Cortés sought to explain the massacre as preventive violence to clamp down on the simmering rise of treasonous behavior among allies. Restall shows, however, that the massacre was a Tlaxcalan initiative and that the Spaniards had no role in its planning.. Tlaxcalan elites massacred the Cholulan for having recently broken the Tlaxcala Triple Alliance (that also included Huejotzingo) in order to embrace the Aztec. Even in their massacres, Cortés and his captains were puppets.

A 17th century CE oil painting depicting the meeting of Spanish Conquistador Hernan Cortes and Aztec ruler Montezuma (Motecuhzoma II) in 1519 CE (via Ancient History Encyclopedia)

Restall dwells on Montezuma’s zoos and collections to provide an answer to another puzzling decision of Cortés and his captains: they disassembled their fleet in Veracruz and crossed Central Mexico to dwell in Tenochtitlan for nine months. What would 250 badly injured and poorly provisioned conquistadors expect? To rule an empire of millions from the capital by holding the emperor hostage? Ever since Cortés penned his letters to Charles V, chroniclers and historians, (including indigenous ones trained by the Franciscans who wrote accounts of the conquest in the 1550s for the great multi-volume encyclopedia of Aztec lore, the Florentine Codex) have accepted this as a plausible strategy, even a brilliant Machiavellian one that took Montezuma unaware.    Restall, however, proves that the Spaniards remained nine months walled in Montezuma’s palaces near the monarch’s zoo and gardens.

Restall proves that Montezuma’s majesty resided in his collection: zoos, gardens, and pharmacopeias. Montezuma collected women, wolves, and dwarfs. He led Cortés and his bosses to Tenochtitlan to add the pale Spaniards to his menageries and palaces. The Spanish factions had no choice. Montezuma was no one’s puppet. He used the Spaniards as curiosities to reinforce his majesty and power. Montezuma was no one’s prisoner; he was murdered. His body never desecrated by his own people. After the murder, the Spaniards were slaughtered and the few survivors fled the capital in the middle of the night, humiliated and beaten. The historiography has called the night when the Aztecs routed the Spaniards the Noche Triste.

Cortés and his surviving captains reassembled after the rout in Tlaxcala, from where they allegedly led a year long assault on Tenochtitlan. Restall shows that this protracted,  final battle over the capital and the surrounding towns was not a campaign Cortés; captains controlled, any more than they controlled the first visit to Tenochtitlan. The final siege of Tenochtitlan was a war among noble Nahua factions as well as the reshuffling of altepetl (Nahua city) alliances. Elite families of Texcoco realigned to create a new alliance with Tlaxcala.

Restall introduces a new category to replace conquest: war.  He equates the violence unleashed by the arrival of conquistadors with the violence of the two World Wars in the twentieth century. There was untold suffering and civilian casualties, systematic cruelty by ordinary people, rape and sexual exploitation as tools of warfare.

He is right. Yet this shift, paradoxically, infantilizes the natives and concedes all agency, again, to Europeans. In the political economy of malice, Spaniards had no monopoly. Restall demonstrates that Tlaxcalan and Texcocan lords led the massive massacres in Cholula and Texcoco. It is clear, also, that lords used the war to transact women like cattle and to  amplify the well-entrenched Mesoamerican system of captivity and slavery. Why then does Restall concede to the Spaniards all the monopoly of cruelty? War made monsters not just out of ordinary vecinos from Extremadura and Andalucia. War also made monsters of plenty of local lords.

[1]  Inga Clendinnen “Fierce and Unnatural Cruelty”: Cortés and the Conquest of Mexico, Representations 33 (1991): 65-100

Other Articles You Might Like:

Facing North From Inca Country
No More Shadows: Faces of Widowhood in Early Colonial Mexico
Purchasing Whiteness: Race and Status in Colonial Latin America

Also by Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra:

From There to Here: Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra
Puritan Conquistadors
Jerónimo Antonio Gil and the Idea of the Spanish Enlightenment

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