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Hispanic American Historical Review 87:3 Copyright 2007 by Duke University Press

Book Reviews

General

Black Atlantic Religion: Tradition, Transnationalism, and Matriarchy in the Afro-Brazilian

Candomblé . By j. lorand matory. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005.Photographs. Illustrations. Maps. Appendixes. Notes. Bibliography. Index. viii, 383 pp.Cloth, $60.00. Paper, $26.95.

Cultural histories of the “black Atlantic,” as Africa and its various diasporas are fashion-ably called in the academy, are less than 75 years old, but they’ve already established theirown orthodoxies. It is Professor Matory’s evident pleasure to skewer many of their per-ceived truths and to include in his skewering those globalization theorists who supposetransnationalism began with frequent-flyer miles or DirecTV. To them he says, checkthe traffic flows between Brazil and Nigeria for the last couple hundred years.

Prevailing “roots” scholarship (Melville Herskovits, Roger Bastide et al.) tracesa unilinear movement of African religions from West and Central Africa to the New

World, where they were communally reestablished by rural blacks hiding their primor-dial divinities behind Catholic rituals and images. Matory will have none of this. Ratherthan roots, he sees rhizomes running in all directions between the Americas, the Carib-bean, and Africa. In his model, agency is returned not to surreptitious peasants, butto a complex “ethno-class” of Afro-Brazilians acting out of enlightened self-interest.

This group, which includes “international merchants as the foremost agents” but also“musicians, literati, translators, and priests, including alienated Christian missionariesand leading Freemasons,” comprised “diverse units of collective self-construction” thatimagined the diaspora as a community (pp. 102 –3).

Matory describes this process of religious self-fashioning as “Anagonization,” fromthe term Nago used to describe Yoruba people in Brazil and elsewhere in the Americas.But the universality of his argument is vitiated by this focus on an African people whoconstructed a national identity for themselves only late in the nineteenth century, atabout the same time the “Nagos” were framing their own identity in Brazil. There are allsorts of historical and geographic contingencies (including the ease and profitability of

Atlantic trade routes and the late date of Brazilian emancipation) that make the Yoruba-Candomblé case unique and thus distant from the various Kongo-derived religions or

Vodou, for example. Perhaps the only other convincing example of Black transnational-ism is that of the “Jeje,” whose emerging ethnic and religious solidarity in Brazil mayhave inspired a parallel self-fashioning among their kindred in Dahomey, a wonderfulexample of those rhizomes Matory suggests.

Hispanic American Historical Review

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For a religious culture that celebrates its “African purity,” Candomblé is alsoremarkable for the emergence of a matriarchal priesthood without precedent in Nige-

ria. Given his stress on Afro-Brazilian agency, Matory ascribes this gender anomaly toa surprising source: “Ruth Landes’s City of Women (1947), in which the author offersCandomblé as a living and time-honored example of matriarchy, available to inspire theopponents of sexism in . . . the United States” (p. 189). Matory thus allows an awful lot ofagency to an Anglo-American anthropologist, especially since the ascension of priestly

women involves a corollary demotion of priestly men: “Landes effectively founded theBrazilian tradition by which a temple’s commitment to excluding men from the posses-sion priesthood became a significant measure of its ‘African purity’” (p. 191). One mar-

vels at the power of an anthropologist to so significantly reshape the religious practiceof her subject, but one also wonders if there were not other undiscussed factors in theBahian Weltanschauung that supported such a gender revolution.

Discussion of gender leads to the touchy issue of the adé or male possession priest, aritual specialist of great importance in Yorubaland (see Matory, Sex and the Empire That

Is No More, Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1994), who is now identified with passive homo-sexuality in Brazil. Matory carefully traces the evolution of the transvestite priesthoodfrom the Yoruba kingdom of Oyo to Bahia, adumbrating questions about sexuality that

were memorably aroused by Jim Wafer’s flamboyant account of spirit possession in ahomosexual Candomblé temple (The Taste of Blood , Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1991).

There is a more than a bit of épater l’academie in Matory’s writing, which some willfind engaging. Parts of the book are clearly addressed to a relatively small class of schol-ars; others will find the critique of transnational and globalization theory bracing. Foreither of these reasons, or for Matory’s grander project of restoring agency to the unsungentrepreneurs who shaped contemporary expressions of black Atlantic religion, this is abook that deserves to be read and discussed.

But it is J. Lorand Matory who suggests this final irony: that the writer may pro- vide the best evidence for his own thesis. Having discussed the important role that the“English Professors of Brazil” — which is to say, the Afro-Brazilian intellectuals whotraveled between Bahia and Lagos at the end of the nineteenth century — played in thedevelopment of Candomblé, Matory reveals himself as their heir, growing up in a Yoruba-centric academic family, immersing himself in their religion. “I am a son of Ogum. Herules my head and molds my personality. He makes me strong like steel” (p. 246). In thathis book may well become canonized by Candomblé practitioners, Matory (like Landes?)could wind up reshaping a religion whose past he has so carefully construed.

donald cosentino, University of California at Los Angelesdoi 10.1215/00182168-2007-005




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Book Reviews / General 573

Democracy in Latin America, 1760 – 1900. Vol. 1, Civic Selfhood and Public Life in Mexicoand Peru. By carlos foment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Maps.

Tables. Figures. Notes. Index. xxix, 454 pp. Cloth, $39.00.

Few fields have been revisited so thoroughly as that of political and civic life in nine-teenth-century Latin America. Ideas concerning citizenship, elections, representation,participation, political groups and parties, communitarism, and civic patterns haveundergone considerable revision and are the subject of ongoing research. Renewed theo-retical and practical concerns have led historians and social scientists to reorient theirquests, to reinterpret old data, and — most important of all — to track down repositoriesand information sources that have not been previously tapped. This turn has challengedlong-standing views and has launched a lively re-examination of political and civic prac-

tices in the nineteenth century. The resulting debate — encompassing a broad range ofscholars in the Americas and Europe — is not merely academic; indeed, it sheds light (andcertain shadows) on more recent political concerns.

Carlos Foment’s analysis makes a substantial and often passionate contribution tothis revisionist trend. The book revisits the emergence and scope of democratic life inLatin America, understanding the “sovereignty of the people” as the horizontal capac-ity to generate social power rather than as a structural by-product of state building,economic development, and “modernization” (p. 29). To that end, he projects on theregion the Tocquevillian perspective based on “civic life” that enlightened our under-standing of North American society more than 150 years ago. Diving into a vast array

of documentary sources — pamphlets, tabloids, travelogues, private letters, journals, andso on — the author offers a striking panorama of associational life in nineteenth-centuryLatin America. He challenges the idea that civic life and the performance of democraticprinciples are linked to a unique pattern of democratic practices. His research spans

Mexico, Peru, Argentina, and Cuba, and although the present volume focuses only onthe first two, it is evident that this multisided research project influenced the complexityof his analytical vision.

Tocqueville’s nineteenth-century account of North American civic life inspired thisrevision of civic association in Latin America; historians and social scientists should begrateful for this enriching panorama that had hardly been glimpsed previously. However,

by employing Tocqueville’s model, Foment restricts and minimizes the very scope of hisanalysis, imposing an externally crafted and lopsided pattern that obscures the complexi-ties and interconnections of Latin American civic and political processes. This is relatedto the fact that although Foment’s analysis forms part of the revisionist trend discussedabove, he does not demonstrate familiarity with the historiographical debates at the coreof that trend. Though conversant with an interesting amount of theoretical literature,he tends to ignore certain recent historiographical productions relevant to his question.

Attending to this growing body of literature would have helped him avoid commonplaceperspectives that oversimplify, and even discredit, some parts of his analysis




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I shall give three examples. Foment’s documentary evidence, however rich, doesnot support the idea that postcolonial life was “radically lopsided, with citizens inclined

to practice democracy in civil society more than in any other terrain,” and “radicallybifurcated, with citizens depositing their sovereignty on each other rather than in gov-ernment institutions.” In fact, the underlying idea that civic life developed in Latin

America within an everlasting authoritarian context ignores the complexity, as well asthe diversity, of political processes in Latin America during the long period covered bythe analysis. Also, the notion that subaltern groups were totally segregated from civicand political life has been disavowed by a wide literature that shows the political partici-pation and civic life of indigenous, mulatto, and mestizo populations, at different levelsand through changing, nonlinear patterns across the century. Finally, the perspective ofa political vocabulary based exclusively “on Civic Catholic notions of selfhood” entailsbiased implications that ignore the weight of the theological discussion in the politicaldevelopments of the Western world — not just in the Catholic parts of the same — anddisregards the considerable influence gained by the secularist trend in some Latin Amer-ican countries during the nineteenth century (such as the Leyes de Reforma in Mexico orthe laws on education and civil marriage in Argentina).

Although these criticisms do not negate the pathbreaking character of Foment’sproposal, his perspective would have been strengthened if more contrasting historio-graphical information had been taken into account. Perhaps this aspect will be addressedin the second volume on Argentina and Cuba.

mónica quijada , Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicasdoi 10.1215/00182168-2007-006

Beyond Black and Red: African-Native Relations in Colonial Latin America.Edited by matthew restall. Diálogos. Albuquerque: University of New MexicoPress, 2005. Photographs. Illustrations. Maps. Tables. Figures. Notes. Bibliography.Index. xv, 303 pp. Cloth, $45.00. Paper, $22.95.

Many scholars of Latin American colonial history have a habit of distinguishing betweenIndo-America and Afro-America. The first region is made up of places where the colo-

nization process was grounded in the presence of massive contingents of pre-Columbianpeoples, particularly in the Andes and Mesoamerica. The second region consists ofplaces where the native population was scarce or was depleted early on; here, the colonialproject depended on the forced immigration of millions of Africans in order to make thecontinent attractive to European settlers. Brazil and the Caribbean thus would consti-tute the main backdrop for the Afro-American drama.

This taxonomy is a classic example of a situation where the analytical instrumentbecomes so deeply rooted that it spills over into the academic conscience and replaces thereality to be investigated. In fact, it is not uncommon for scholars to take the separationof Indians and blacks in Latin American history as “natural” and unquestionable. This




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conceptualization may be rooted in the fact that the period of Europe’s global expansionand colonization coincided with the creation and consolidation of the well-known asym-

metrical system that classified human types into “races” and “nations”: whites on top,blacks at the bottom, Indians and Asians somewhere in the middle. It is less well known,however, that the various forms that European colonization assumed in different localesoften shook up this taxonomy. Under these circumstances, individuals of mixed heritage

who did not fit within the original classificatory system were either turned into “aberra-tions” or simply had an indisputable invisibility imposed upon them.

These were the two ways in which groups of people whose culture and physicalappearance reflect the experience of interaction between natives and Africans — still

visible in all parts of the Americas in varying numbers — have been denied adequatehistoriographic treatment. If its only goal were to rescue these groups from such histo-riographic limbo, Beyond Black and Red would have fulfilled an excellent role — it is, afterall, the first English-language book dedicated specifically to the relationship betweenIndians and Africans and people of African descent in colonial Latin America. But thebook goes further, allowing us to grasp the relations between Africans and Indians in a

variety of contexts, bringing together research on both Spanish and Portuguese areas ofcolonization and on urban, agrarian, and mining settlements. This approach is extremelyuseful and allows the book to look past the usual simplistic perspective that sees the pre-dominant pattern of interaction between Indians and Africans as a hostile one, sinceboth groups were divided by the efforts of the colonial authorities to pit one against theother in order to better control them. The perspective that emerges in this collectionsuggests, in contrast, a huge range of possible interactions. These included conflict, tobe sure, but also cultural exchanges, mutual aid, romantic and parental relationships, andresignifications of many types. In the end, the concept that perhaps better ties togetherthe cases in question is relational diversity.

The careful reader will note that a good part of the book’s nine chapters deconstructanother concept, equally prevalent in much of traditional Latin American historiogra-phy, especially within the Marxist school. I refer to the enduring idea that “Africans”and, to a lesser extent, “Indians” constitute homogeneous social categories, separatedout from the rest of society on the basis of their legal status as slaves or for the simplefact of belonging to socially subordinate groups. In different degrees, some chapters ofthe collection question such simplifications, bringing to light situations where actionsand practices crossed class and ethnic lines, implying as a result that individuals tookconscious positions in the face of equally objective circumstances. As result, relation-ships between Africans and Indians assume a form that is quite often ambiguous, if notexplicitly contradictory — as tends to happen with all human actions.

Much of this new historiographic approach is due to the unique nature of Iberianlaw (especially Portuguese), which, as Frank Tannembaum and Gilbert Freyre haveindicated, by granting at least certain rights to Africans and Indians often generatedmasses of documentation that is rich in its intertextuality. Likewise, the Inquisitioncourts of Spanish America also produced innumerable cases from which, in one way or




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another according to the skill of the investigator, we can capture the words of Indiansand enslaved Africans and, in this way, reconstruct many of the aspects of interactions

between them.Finally, underlying several chapters of the collection one finds a theoretical path

little explored by the authors, but that could sharpen the focus on the common groundthat unites most of the experiences of interaction that the book proposes to analyze.

More than just recovering Indians and Africans as active agents of their history, theinteractions between both (and with peninsular or creole whites) can be interpreted asexpressions of social exclusion in its broadest sense — that is, as one of the results of thepoverty and marginalization that enabled colonial Latin American societies to repro-duce themselves over time. It is clear that, in the end, such a positioning forces us toassume that the history of colonial Latin America is far from being reducible to a simpledichotomy between slavery and freedom.

manolo florentino, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeirodoi 10.1215/00182168-2007-007

Afro – Latin America 1800 – 2000. By george reid andrews. New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 2004. Photographs. Maps. Tables. Appendix. Notes. Glossary.Bibliography. Index. viii, 284 pp. Paper, $19.95.

This is an ambitious book that presents the history of Afro – Latin America over the last

two hundred years. The focus is on Latin America’s black population — welcome depar-tures from more general treatments that concentrate on the socioeconomic context withthe black experience as part of a much wider panorama. Blacks are presented as activelycontesting their social position and forcing modifications that eventually result in theirinclusion as citizens. Prior to abolition, slaves progressively forced their erstwhile own-ers to respond to demands and acknowledge mutual interdependence in return for of adegree of cooperation. Passivity in the face of exploitation is not part of their history.

Afro – Latin America is defined as those areas at one time governed by Spain and Por-tugal. This excludes Haiti and the British West Indies, as well as minor Danish, Dutch,and French holdings. This tends to narrow the social stage as it sharpens the focus on

Afro – Latin Americans. The well informed will be able to supply the Atlantic world con-text as needed if the work is assigned in classes — an attractive possibility. The work seeks to be comprehensive in its coverage, but inevitably Brazil, Cuba,

Colombia, the Dominican Republic, and Panama loom large as the story unfolds. ThatBrazil is the home of 70 percent of all Afro – Latin Americans (p. 156) is a reality that

justifies its place in this work. A central thesis is the ability of Afro – Latin Americans tonegotiate with slave owners, and later with those that depended on their labor, to estab-lish an acceptable socioeconomic balance.

Andrews notes two major economic waves of Africanization: an earlier period con-nected with the initial establishment of plantation agriculture (notably sugar in Brazil)




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and an equally important wave that draws black West Indians into nineteenth-centurybanana plantations in Central America and sugar plantations in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and

the Dominican Republic. The oil industry in Venezuela and the construction and subse-quent operation of the Panama Canal after 1914 add a more-modern technological touchto this second wave. In reality, the inadequate labor pool in many areas made the intro-duction of West Indians necessary if Latin America wanted to participate in moderneconomic activity. Complaints about the Haitianization of Spanish America reflectedthe historic desire to whiten their population, but economics always prevailed. Ironi-cally, labor disputes often failed as large companies adroitly used racial tensions to theirown advantage. The central role of the West Indies as a direct supplier of black labormakes it somewhat unfortunate that Andrews chose to exclude the islands from his dis-cussion. West Indian blacks only enter the picture after they actually disembark on themainland.

As a consequence of economic realities, the region witnessed an ebb and flow ofblack to white followed by a reversal from white to black. In Cuba in the 1940 and 1950s,high birth rates among Afro-Cubans and the flight of white Cubans to Miami after 1959 increased the percentage of black Cubans. Argentina, flooded with European immi-grants after the 1870s, became decidedly white, but today it is receiving an influx ofmigrants from neighboring countries. A similar flux characterized landownership. Eco-nomic booms and busts made land valuable, then cheap and available. The last such cycleoccurred in the 1920s and 1930s. In Brazil, the collapse of coffee exports allowed many

Afro-Brazilians and European immigrants to acquire land both formally and informally.In our own time, the displacement of Afro-Brazilians in the Northeast has been under-

way for some time. The link between land use and urbanization seems clear for blacks,as it does for all races.

Andrews moves the discussion from black and white to today’s brown. The browncategory appears to be absorbing both black and white, forming a racial composite. Therecent trend for blacks to self-identify as brown, coupled with that of individuals previ-ously identified as white that now declare themselves brown, leads to fusion. Perhaps itindicates that José Vasconcelos’s raza cósmica has gained acceptance as a hemisphere-wideself-identified reality. Andrews suggests that Latin Americans have at last given up on

whitening. This may be correct, given the falling birth rates in Western Europe, but whether it will linger on in a new formulation remains a to be seen. It would seem thatthe process described here is a global one, with implication for the United States as thecountry debates immigration reform.

This work will be useful for researchers interested in the topic. Much of value islisted in the notes and the selected bibliography. That the author conducted his researchin libraries throughout Latin America points the way for future in-depth studies.

Professor Andrews has written a thoughtful account that should change the way we view and teach the role of Africans in the New World.

colin m. maclachlan, Tulane University

doi 10.1215/00182168-2007-008




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Avatares de la medicalización en América Latina, 1870 – 1970. Edited by diego armus.Buenos Aires: Lugar Editorial, 2005. Illustrations. Notes. 304 pp. Paper.

Diego Armus’s new collection pairs original analyses with previously published workto show readers how scholarly research on the history of medicine and public health inLatin America has developed in recent years. Armus says he selected essays that focuson Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico between 1870 and 1970 because the historiography forthose countries is especially rich. The articles feature topics ranging from a sensation-causing painting that depicted the 1871 yellow fever epidemic in Buenos Aires to the com-parative institutional history of public health and social-service agencies in twentieth-century Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. The volume presents several carefully selectedapproaches to the “new” history of medicine. At the same time, it makes work previously

published in Portuguese and English available to Spanish speakers and brings scholar-ship published in Mexican and Brazilian journals to the attention of scholars in Argen-tina, where the book was published.

Readers familiar with Armus’s 2002 edited collection, Disease in the History of Mod-ern Latin America (Duke Univ. Press), will recognize the volume’s first essay, in which

Armus charts the origins of the “new” history of medicine. He shows how the newer work differs from more traditional histories that offer biographies of famous physi-cians or discussions of scientific discoveries, and that portray the practice of medicineas a never-ending march of progress. Armus argues that recent work is characterizedby three themes: emphasis on the social, political, and cultural dimension of epidemics;

consideration of the links between disease and nation building; and examination of thepower relations embedded in discussions of bodies, sickness, and cures.

The volume is organized geographically, beginning with studies of Argentina, fol-lowed by work focusing on Brazil and Mexico. The essays on Argentina are unpublished,as is one of the essays about Brazil. Two essays, those by Laura Maolsetti Costa andSérgio Carrara, focus on the ways in which illness has been represented culturally. Inher study of the image of yellow fever in Buenos Aires, Malosetti Costa discusses theintense public discussion provoked shortly after the 1871 epidemic by the presentationof an oil painting that depicted a nursing child clutching at his dead mother’s breast, asdoctors and public health officials look on. Malosetti Costa argues that “this image con-

tributed to the emergence of a new sensitivity to sickness and death” and underscored theimportance of inculcating so-called modern public health measures in the city (p. 43).Carrara’s essay, “Estrategias anti-coloniales: Sífilis, raza e identidad nacional en el Brasilde entreguerras,” draws on a variety of sources, including theater dialogue, to demon-strate the diffusion of discourses about syphilis in early twentieth-century Brazil, wherethey informed larger discussions about national identity.

A discussion about race and eugenics features prominently in the collection. Nísia Trinidade Lima and Gilberto Hochman, like Carrara, explore the links between diseaseand national identity in Brazil. In their previously published “Condenado por la raza,absuelto por la medicina: El Brasil descubierto por el movimiento médico-higienista




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de la primera república,” they show that early twentieth-century doctors initiated ruralhygiene campaigns under the belief that residents of the countryside were racially infe-

rior and degenerate compared to city dwellers; however, the authors argue, this con-tact with hinterlands led doctors to conclude that the health situation in such settingsresulted more from the public sector’s neglect than from the inherent degeneracy of thepeople. In her examination of hygiene campaigns in Porfirian Mexico, Claudia Agostonishows that physicians interested in preventive medicine similarly advanced the use ofpublic hygiene programs as a way to redeem the population from the ills from which itsuffered. In Mexico, according to Agostoni, public officials especially targeted mothersas the “natural” vectors of hygiene education. Alexandra Stern’s study of demographicdiscourses around mestizaje between 1920 and 1960 shows how Mexican social scientistsmixed an international blend of theories linking race, body, crime, and society into auniquely postrevolutionary ideology. Agostoni’s article appeared previously in MexicanStudies/Estudios Mexicanos , and previous versions of Stern’s have appeared in edited col-lections released in Mexico and in the United States.

Four additional articles round out this collection. Armus employs social and cul-tural history to understand the strategies of protesting tuberculosis patients in Argen-tina sanatoria at the turn of the century, while Eric Van Young reviews the work ofthree Mexican authors who focus on the history of mental health and psychiatry in thecountry. Susana Belmartino’s analysis of the differences among public health institutionsin Argentina, Brazil, and Chile employs a decidedly political-science perspective. AndSimone Petraglia Krops, Nara Azevedo, and Luiz Otávio Ferreira examine the medicalresearch leading to the discovery and treatment of Chagas disease from the perspectivesof social and institutional history.

While readers may be familiar with some of these essays, Armus’s creative assemblyof original and previously published articles will be welcome to those who have not hadan opportunity to appreciate the range of issues the “new” medical history addresses.

They may wish, as well, to consider how to apply some of the featured approaches to newdiseases, fresh topics, or alternative national or regional contexts.

katherine elaine bliss, Georgetown University doi 10.1215/00182168-2007-009





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Background

An Inca Account of the Conquest of Peru. By diego de castro titu cusi yupanqui.Edited and translated by ralph bauer. Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2005.Illustrations. Map. Notes. Glossary. Bibliography. Index. xv, 166 pp. Cloth, $50.00.Paper, $21.95.

An English translation of Titu Cusi Yupanqui’s account of the invasion and dominationof the Andean peoples by Francisco Pizarro and his followers and successors is long over-due. This 1570 “Relación,” or history and chronicle (here edited, translated, and anno-tated by Ralph Bauer) purports to tell the story of native resistance and accommodation,and cultural change, mixture, and survival. The names and actions of five Andean rulers

(Pachacuti Inca, Topa Inca Yupanqui, Huayna Capac, Manco Inca Yupanqui, and TituCusi Yupanqui) frame the personal narrative, which subtly reveals the clash of world- views and values between natives and Spaniards and the resulting incomprehensibility ofcertain Spanish actions and claims from the native point of view — even after almost 50

years of continuous interaction.But good translation is difficult and involves far more than the literal substitution

of words from one language for those of another. Bauer’s introduction points out someof the problematics of recording and translating oral tradition. Titu Cusi dictated thecontent in Quechua to the missionary Fray Marcos García, who “ordered” and translatedit into Spanish. Martín de Pando, Titu Cusi’s bilingual mestizo secretary, transcribed it.

The result is a “chronicle of the impossible,” to use Frank Salomon’s 1982 phrase: a storyof the contact era that, in making itself understandable to the Spanish no longer is faith-ful to the Andean materials. Bauer underscores the hybridity of the text. The fact thatthe account was meant to establish the legitimacy of Titu Cusi and his father as Andeanlords and the illegitimacy of Spanish domination results in the assumption of a Spanishlogic of succession. Other European elements include distances recorded in leagues, nottime, and the use of pesos to assess value. The text suffers further inaccuracies and dis-tortions as it is rendered into English through an English professor’s cultural filter. Bauermisdefines such key words and concepts as repartimiento (pp. 1, 10, 129) and encomienda(p. 24), equating the terms with lands and boundaries. This contradicts his own cor-

rect definition of repartimiento in the glossary (p. 160). Tierra(s) is another term foundthroughout the text that he translates both as land(s) and country, when in several placesit clearly refers to a population or a people, that is, ethnic group(s). Elsewhere, he renderspassages too loosely, translating, for example “se pasaron a esta mi tierra a rreconocermepor señor” as “They crossed the border into my land in order to pay tribute to me as theirmaster” (p. 131). The addition of the word “border,” not found in the original, territorial-izes an empire that natives still conceptualized in kinship terms. Other translations callinto question his grasp of the Spanish language; for example, “el español en rrescibién-dolo [la chicha (corn beer)] de su mano [de Ataguallpa] lo derramó” (vol. 2, p. 9 in HoracioUrteaga’s edition, Relación de la conquista del Perú, Imprenta y Libreria Sanmarti, 1916)




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becomes “when he [Atahuallpa] offered our customary drink [ chicha] to one of them, theSpaniard poured it out with his own hands” (p. 60).

Bauer also makes statements that deserve more annotation. It should be noted,for example, that Francisco Pizarro was not born a hidalgo, but a poor and uneducatedswineherd (p. 2). He achieved the status of marquis and gentleman relatively late in life, asa result of his South American exploits. Likewise, upon reading the sentence, “Thus, themarquis had them for lunch before they could have him, because he now knew about theconspiracy against the Spaniards” (p. 69), I was confused, thinking this another exampleof mistranslation. Upon checking the original — “Y sauido por el marqués la traiçión queestaba armada para matarles, antes que los comiesen los almorzó él” (Urteaga, p. 22) — Ifound it a reasonable literal translation. Urteaga footnotes the text to explain Pizarro’spreventive actions, and it would have been helpful for Bauer to follow suit here.

Finally, the edition suffers by a none-too-careful editing. Typographical and spell-ing errors abound, but I will not belabor the reader with examples. These faults, and thefact that it is not an authoritative translation, make this volume unsuitable for classes onLatin American history and culture or Native American literatures (not withstandingthe claims on the back cover), if accurate rendering, clear cross-cultural understanding,and standards of English use and grammar are any consideration.

susan elizabeth ramírez, Texas Christian University doi 10.1215/00182168-2007-010

Memorias histórico, físicas, crítico, apologéticas de la América.By josé eusebio llano zapata . Edited by ricardo ramírez, antonio garrido, luís millones figueroa, víctor peralta ruiz, andcharles walter. Lima: Instituto Francés de Estudios Andinos / PontificiaUniversidad Católica del Perú / Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, 2005.Illustrations. Tables. Notes. Bibliographies. 622 pp. Paper.

Epítome cronológico o Idea general del Perú: Crónica inédita de 1776 .Edited by víctor peralta ruiz. Madrid: Fundación MAPFRE Tavera, 2005.Illustrations. Notes. Bibliographies. Indexes. 320 pp. Cloth.

José Eusebio Llano Zapata is one of the most representative authors of the Spanish American Enlightenment, yet he is also one of the least known. His invisibility, to besure, has to do with the almost complete lack of interest by historians in the intellectualhistory of colonial Latin America. Had he been born in Germany, France, or British

America, library shelves would have long been lined with monographs deconstructinghis every utterance, for his was a subtle mind. But more important than the biases ofhistorians, his invisibility is the result of having his work buried for centuries in dustyarchives. Typical of colonial Spanish American scribal culture, his most important workcirculated only in manuscripts.

Book Reviews / Background 581




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In Cádiz, Peruvian folklorist Ricardo Palma obtained a copy of the first volumeof Llano Zapata’s magnum opus, the Memorias histórico, físicas, crítico, apologéticas , and

published it in 1904. Peruvian intellectuals, however, under the spell of positivism, foundLlano Zapata too “credulous” for their taste and made no effort to find and publish theremaining two, even though all three volumes were duly catalogued at the Bibliotecadel Palacio Real in Madrid. Only through the collective efforts of Ricardo Ramírez,

Antonio Garrido, Luis Millones Figueroa, Víctor Peralta Ruiz, and Charles Walker hasit now been possible to finally bring all three volumes to print. Llano Zapata’s Epítomecronológico is something else, for since the late nineteenth century the authorship of thismanuscript, at the Real Academia de Historia in Madrid, has been attributed to thecount of Castañeda y de los Lamos. It took the detective work of another subtle Peruvianmind, Víctor Peralta, to prove (at least to my satisfaction) that the Epítome was pennedby Llano Zapata.

The illegitimate son of a priest, who himself had been born out of wedlock, LlanoZapata was born in Lima in 1721. After attending the Franciscan College of San Buena-

ventura de Guadalupe, Llano Zapata embarked on a career of scholarship and erudition,publishing works on biblical exegesis, comets, and local earthquakes. Indefatigable, hemingled with learned Jesuits, founded an academy to promote the study of Greek, andhoped to become a favorite of the viceregal court. But illegitimacy must have hinderedhis efforts at upward mobility, for in 1750 Llano Zapata left for Cádiz, although not untilhe had spent five years in Santiago, Mendoza, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, and Rio de

Janeiro compiling statistics and surveying the new lands. In Cádiz he befriended Julián de Arriaga, the minister of the Navy and the Indies. Intoxicated by the possibilities of sucha powerful patron, Llano Zapata assembled a massive study of Peru’s natural resources,hoping to gain the sympathy of the crown. In 1757, the first volume of his Memoriashistóricas , an exhaustive survey of mines in the viceroyalty of Peru, reached the Academyof History. Although a committee of the academy approved publication, the Council ofIndies, the final arbiter of things American, rejected it. Llano Zapata remained hard-pressed for money until his death in 1780 but still hoped his efforts would one day berewarded. During those years, he completed the other two volumes of his Memorias , as

well as his Epítome, and published two collections of his letters to famous men. The editors of Memorias consider Llano Zapata’s work to be a treatise of natural his-

tory, but it should rather be read as a study of cameralist political economy. Throughout,Llano Zapata offers a meticulous survey of the myriad mineral, botanical, and animalresources available in Peru. Packed with statistics and detailed description of technolo-gies and processes of production, the Memorias sought to highlight the untold economicpotential of Peru while promoting mercantilism. For example, Llano Zapata adopts anorganicist view of the origins of minerals (that minerals grow as vegetables) becausehe wants to convince his audience that old mines will eventually become productiveagain. An overwhelming mass of detail on mines of silver, gold, mercury, iron, loadstone,pearls, diamonds, rubies, marble, salt, and saltpeter are introduced as an invitation to




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streamline production. His volume on minerals includes a section on roads, both naturaland ancient, because he believes that circulation is the key to commerce.

But Llano Zapata was not only a political economist; he also saw himself as thePeruvian embodiment of the Spanish Benedictine Benito Feijóo. Llano Zapata’s Memo-rias bears the title “critical” for a reason: He seeks to correct misleading, erroneous, andfantastic accounts about American mines, fauna, and flora peddled by foreign travelersand unreliable informants. When discussing ruins, Llano Zapata, for example, considersas a deliberate forgery the stone of Calango, which allegedly had inscriptions document-ing the visit of St. Thomas the Apostle to this coastal town in southern Peru: “This is notcredible, not even possible” (p. 377). Memorias was a Feijónian, sustained attack on theshallow, untrustworthy accounts of foreign travelers and on Baroque oral (and learned)traditions. Yet authors like Antonello Gerbi have dismissed Llano Zapata as credulousand irrelevant. Some of Llano Zapata’s entries would superficially appear to confirmGerbi’s views. Take, for example, the case of Llano Zapata’s description of the “entomo-dendros” tree, drawn verbatim from Antonio León Pinelo’s Paraiso del Nuevo Mundo.

Although he himself had never seen the tree, Llano Zapata reluctantly agreed withPinelo that the seeds of the tree were in fact insects whose legs would eventually becomethe roots and their bodies the trunk (p. 433 –34). But rather than being representative ofLlano Zapata’s credulity, this account should be considered a sign of his modernity, for

when Llano Zapata wrote on the insect-seed, a debate was raging in Europe on a polypthat behaved both as a plant and as an animal. Llano Zapata’s “entomo-dendros” wasthe Peruvian equivalent of Abraham Trembley’s polyp. In short, Llanos Zapata’s Memo-rias should be read sympathetically as holding a key to interpreting Peru’s enlightenedmodernity. But how to read Llano Zapata’s Epítome?

The Epítome is a rather traditional text that, unlike the Memorias , appears entirelylacking in epistemological self-awareness. The purpose of the Epítome is not to sift reli-able from unreliable accounts, nor is it to offer a cameralist, statistical narrative of thePeruvian past. Epítome is simply a summary of key events during the administration ofevery Peruvian ruler from Manco Capac to the viceroy Manuel de Amat. The noveltyof the text lies in the events Llano Zapata considers key. His narrative of the Incas reliescompletely on easily available colonial chroniclers. His accounts of the viceroys, how-ever, break new ground because Llano Zapata focuses on the expeditions to the Amazonand the South Sea they promoted, as well as the pirates that were confronted. LlanoZapata thus brings to bear new Dutch, French, and English sources. The text also offers

various accounts of autos-da-fé and viceregal entries. Unlike the Memorias , the Epítome often confuses Lima for Peru. Be that as it may, both the Memorias and the Epítome areextraordinarily rich sources now finally available for colonial historians to explore anddigest.

jorge cañizares-esguerra , University of Texas at Austindoi 10.1215/00182168-2007-011

Book Reviews / Background 583




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Colonial Period

Bárbaros: Spaniards and Their Savages in the Age of Enlightenment . By david j. weber. Western American Series. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005. Illustrations. Maps. Notes. Bibliography. Index. xviii, 466 pp. Cloth, $35.00.

David Weber spent the first three decades of his career transforming himself into themaster synthesizer of Spanish and Mexican history in southwestern North America.In Bárbaros: Spaniards and Their Savages in the Age of Enlightenment , however, he casts arigorous comparative gaze across two continents, examining the strategies employed bySpain’s Bourbon reformers to confront the independent Indian nations that containedSpanish expansion from the Argentine pampas to the Great Plains.

John Lynch’s review of Weber’s The Spanish Frontier in North America inspired thismassive undertaking. Lynch “gently chided” Weber for failing to compare and contrastSpain’s northern frontier with its frontiers in Central and South America (p. xiii). Weberrose to the challenge and began more than a decade of research in Spain, Mexico, Ven-ezuela, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina. As his enormous bibliography and exhaustive end-notes reveal, Weber has mastered both the Spanish- and English-language literatureproduced by scholars in at least seven modern American nations. He focuses on familiargroups like the Araucanians and Apaches but brings understudied groups such as theSeris of Sonora or the Miskitos of Nicaragua into the mix as well. The result is a sweep-ing synthesis on a hemispheric scale.

Despite such scope, Weber carefully defines what Bárbaros is and is not. As ananthropologist, I would have liked more information on the Indians themselves, evenif such reconstructions have to be filtered “through the haze of linguistic and culturalassumptions of non-Indians” (p. 17). But Weber eschews such speculative ventures. “Icannot illuminate Indian societies from within or confidently explain events or processesfrom the manifold cultural and material perspectives of a great variety of Native peoples,some of whom comprehended reality in ways quite foreign to the Western rationalismthat has shaped my own thinking,” he observes (p. 17). Bárbaros is narrative, not ethno-history. It focuses “more on the record-keeping observers than on the observed” (p. 17).

As in his earlier books, Weber also avoids sweeping generalizations or grand theo-

ries. He takes great pains to point out the contradictions in Bourbon policies, the shift-ing regional geopolitics that made uniform policy impossible to develop, much lessimplement, and the pragmatism that often superseded ideals on the edges of Spain’s

vast American empire. Negotiating frontiers in the late colonial period was not anexperiment in Enlightenment governance. Bourbon officials fought both offensive anddefensive wars. They bribed, traded, and forged lasting pacts with some groups whileattempting to conquer or obliterate others. “It was power, then, more than the power ofideas, that had determined how enlightenment Spaniards would treat ‘savages,’” Weberobserves at the end of his book. “Ideas may have the power to shape policy, but poweralso shapes ideas” (p. 278).




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Nonetheless, Bourbon policies represented at least a partial break with Habsburgprecedents. Trade, not religious conversion, became the preferred method of incorporat-

ing independent Indian groups into the Spanish orbit, if not the Spanish Empire. Bour-bon reformers often borrowed from French and English imperial models, ignoring — orsurprisingly ignorant of — earlier Spanish policies in the New World. Spanish de factorecognition of Araucanian independence in the seventeenth century, when the Bío-BíoRiver became the southern border of Spanish Chile, did not inform Spanish alliances

with Creeks, Cherokees, and Choctaws in southeastern North America during the latecolonial period. Similar strategies developed independently in response to Indian powerand not in response to the lessons of the past.

One of Weber’s more fascinating themes is the shifting cultural line between gift-giving and bribery. Among kin-based societies like the Comanches, “The bestowing ofgifts, which increased the status of the giver, often established an alliance or a famil-ial relationship — a ‘fictive kinship,’ and the receipt of gifts came with the obligationof reciprocity, even among ‘kin’” (p. 191). Even when independent Indians demandedSpanish “gifts” as a form of tribute, the fiction that such gifts were voluntary had to bemaintained. As Weber points out, “Form was as important as substance” (p. 191). Andsubstance often changed as gifts “crossed cultural boundaries into Indian societies.” Asa result, some Indians invested European material symbols like medals and flags withthe “power to bring good or evil” and trade goods such as beads and mirrors “with suchspiritual weight that their owners took them to the grave” (p. 192).

Patrilineal Spaniards often framed such exchanges in terms of the father-child bond. To matrilineal Indian groups, however, such bonds may have held very different mean-ings; fathers were not authority figures, but kind and loving relatives to whom “childrenowed no special obligations” (p. 215). Even though Weber is not an ethnohistorian, his

work continues to be informed by ethnohistorical and anthropological research.Bárbaros continues several of Weber’s stylistic conventions as well. Weber rarely

clutters his text with the individual names of scholars; he lets endnotes bear that freight. There is also a heightened tautness and muscularity to his prose. Such economy is onereason Bárbaros covers so much ground and yet never overwhelms the reader with unnec-essary verbiage or detail. It is a monumental tour de force that moves with the speed ofan express train. Readers can jump on board confident that Bárbaros represents the bestof contemporary scholarship from two continents, in two languages, judiciously assimi-lated and evaluated by a synthesizer at the top of his game.

thomas e. sheridan, University of Arizonadoi 10.1215/00182168-2007-012

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Choice, Persuasion, and Coercion: Social Control on Spain’s North American Frontiers. Edited by jesús f. de la teja and ross frank. Foreword by david j. weber.

Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005. Notes. Glossary. Bibliography.Index. xxi, 338 pp. Paper, $24.95.

Many years ago I wrote an essay entitled “Sons (and Grandsons) of Bolton” examin-ing recent trends in borderlands historiography. The volume under review demonstratesthat Mexican borderlands research is not only in a post-Boltonian, but even in a post-

Weberian stage. From the editors to the contributors to the author of the foreword,many familiar names abound: De la Teja, Frank, Weber, José Cuello, Cynthia Radding,

Jane Landers, Susan Deeds, Tom Sheridan et al. This excellent volume gathers together11 explorations of how, and how well, the Spanish crown controlled its distant northern

frontier in the face of a penny-pinching colonial bureaucracy, hostile indigenous peoples,and ever-increasing encroachment by foreign powers.Far from a reiteration of the Boltonian presidio and mission paradigm, the essays

reflect a new level of sophistication in exploring how social control was exercised, howit was linked to constructions of social identity, and how indigenous and European con-ceptions or misperceptions of one another played a central role across time and spaceon the frontier. Each is solidly rooted in archival research, and the authors frequentlyrefer to each others’ work, reflecting a close-knit community of scholars who have beenexchanging ideas for a long time. In fact, the genesis for this volume was a conferenceco-sponsored by Southern Methodist University, home of the dean of the “new” border-

lands history, David J. Weber.De la Teja’s introduction sets the theme: “social control as a broad concept encom-passing the myriad ways in which a society attempts to maintain order by persuading,coercing, or educating individuals to accept and behave according to the principles and

values — norms — ” that the Spanish, in this case, sought to impose (p. xiii). A lfredo Jiménez opens the collection with “Who Controls the King?” an essay that reviews the“intricate combination of royal authority, power and responsibility, mutual rights andobligations, doggish loyalty and fervent obedience to the king, confidence in God andthe throne, and the freedom to demand, complain, and defend oneself” (p. 6). In separatechapters, Gilbert Din and Jane Landers examine Spanish military, economic, and social

diplomacy in Louisiana and Florida, where powerful colonial neighbors (France andBritain) and the presence of disparate native groups, as well as African and Afromestizopopulations, both free and chattel, made for a particularly complex ethnic stew. Along thesame lines is Frank’s essay, “‘They Conceal a Malice Most Refined’: Controlling Socialand Ethnic Mobility in Late Colonial New Mexico.” Here the malice is represented bythe economic activities of New Mexico’s vecinos , who consistently trade and treat withthe Apache, Comanche, and Ute tribes in defiance of regulations. The authorities werealso trying to exercise a gentle control over a restive Pueblo population, ever mindful ofthe Great Revolt of 1688, as well as keeping Franciscan power in check.

Delving deeper into the question of social control is Susan Deeds, whose essay deals




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with “gender, power, and magic in Nueva Vizcaya.” The tale of Antonia, the mulattaslave who masqueraded as a man, is a story of freedom not only “from legal bonds of

slavery, but also from the gendered bonds of patriarchy in a frontier province” (p. 95).Deeds uses historical work on women’s roles in Latin American society, in conjunction

with Inquisition and Jesuit records, to reconstruct a case of witchcraft, “love sorcery,”clerical temptation, and social deviance in the seventeenth century.

Juliana Barr, in “Beyond Their Control: Spaniards in Native Texas,” inverts theusual historical perspective by pointing out that it was the Spanish who stumbled intoalready-existing networks of trade, warfare, and alliance: “In seeking to understandnegotiations of power in Texas, it is essential to recognize that Texas was a core of native political economies, a core within which Spaniards were often the subjects or potentialsubjects of native institutions of social control” (p. 152). Cynthia Radding explores the“central, ongoing tension” between reducción, a policy of congregating Sonoran peoplesinto nucleated villages for tax, labor, and evangelization purposes, and dispersion to scat-tered rancherías , as well as the struggle between colonialism and traditional cacique pat-terns of rule. Radding examines the role of the mission cabildo as both an instrument ofsocial control and a vehicle for resistance.

José Cuello looks at how the “system of castas ” operated as a form of social con-trol through the creation of “racialized hierarchies,” expanding the old Magnus Mörnermodels into greater depth in a frontier context. Geographical particularity is reflectedby the essays of Cecilia Sheridan, Patricia Osante, and Jim Sandos, who examine howsocial control was exercised, respectively, in the northeast, Nuevo Santander, and mis-sion society in Alta California.

While too specialized for the general reader, scholars knowledgeable in frontierhistoriography will appreciate the scrupulous primary and secondary research, as well asthe depth of sophistication that these essays bring to what is becoming the “post” post-Boltonian school of borderlands history.

peter stern, University of Massachusetts, Amherst doi 10.1215/00182168-2007-013





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588 HAHR / August

The Möbius Strip: A Spatial History of Colonial Society in Guerrero, Mexico.

By jonathan d. amith. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005. Maps. Tables.

Figures. Notes. Glossary. Bibliography. Index. xvii, 661 pp. Cloth, $75.00.

One of the things you notice in talking to Latin Americanist historians about the workof celebrity biogeographer Jared Diamond is their almost visceral reaction to his two-dimensional view of history, particularly evident in the wildly successful Guns, Germs,and Steel (W. W. Norton, 1997). As a colleague observed, “He doesn’t understand thatLatin American history plays out in three dimensions, not two,” and this allusion to John

V. Murra’s notion of verticality could easily have been extended to n-dimensions. If youkeep that in mind, Jonathan Amith’s ambitious and impressive account of the historicalgeography and ecology of the Iguala Valley in central Guerrero falls into place, down to

the enigmatic title. Perhaps one should add that Amith’s argument is neither Diamond’snor Murra’s, despite the fact some historical geographers in Mexico, such as BernardoGarcía Martínez, have observed that portions of Guerrero bear more than a passingresemblance to Murra’s well-known theory of ecological niches.

The agricultural potential of the Iguala Valley, Amith observes, diminishes as onetravels south because average rainfall declines while temperature rises. Consequently,population densities were higher in the north; this, combined with the proximity of mar-kets in Taxco, Cuernavaca, and Mexico City, drove up relative land rents in the north. By1750, this process had reached something of equilibrium, and with it, effected a transi-tion from ranching to agriculture. As elsewhere in New Spain, the potential profitability

of the grain trade attracted investment and further commercialization. At the same time,the absence of investment and markets in south-central Guerrero made for “bifurcatedpatterns of development into northern and southern regions . . . between the increasinglyimpoverished south-central jurisdictions of Tixtla and Chilapa and the richer Taxco andIguala jurisdictions to the north” (pp. 68, 257). This divergence precipitated a complexseries of struggles between colonists, indigenous village authorities, migrant peasants,and the colonial authorities that exacerbated, rather than mitigated, regional economicdisparities. The late-colonial cacao boom between Guayaquil and New Spain throughthe port of Acapulco, for example, only served to increase the demand for mules andmuleteers from the Iguala Valley and had important spillovers into the salt and cotton

trades as well. Even “well-intentioned” policies, such as the establishment of the famousspinning school at Tixtla under the subdelegate Juan Antonio de Rivas, could not with-stand the effects of outmigration to the Iguala Valley and came to naught. Throughout

Amith’s account, there is a continuing emphasis on native agency and on “place makingand place breaking” as something more than mere reaction to an alteration in relativeprices. The analysis is firmly based on impressive archival research, much of it in pre-

viously neglected materials. Indeed, it is difficult not to admire a study in which eventhe activity of itinerant merchants is analyzed down to the level of individual journeysbetween such places as Tenancingo, Acapulco, and Tepecuacilco.

The novelty of Amith’s effort lies in his argument that southern Guerrero’s unique




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system of exchange was not organized around a dominant market center but insteadconsisted of “a series of loosely articulated small markets strung together by petty trade

in specialized production and endless webs of credit and debt,” or a “model of exchangeover multiple sites of acquisition and sale” (pp. 360, 361). It suggests, albeit from a gen-erally conventional anthropological perspective, that there is something wrong theneoclassical model that views exchange and arbitrage as essentially identical. Of course,there have been other efforts to bring such a perspective to colonial Mexico, particularlyEnrique Semo’s Historia del capitalismo en México (Ediciones Era, 1973), which gets a foot-note but deserves better. The question is, and always has been, whether market incen-tives alone were sufficient to organize commercial activity in New Spain, as Stanley Steinpointed out over a generation ago. You don’t necessarily qualify as, God forbid, a Marxistfor asking. Despite what our colleagues in economics believe, the answer isn’t written inthe axioms. As Woodrow Borah astutely observed, cotton was a tributary good beforethe arrival of the Spaniards because that was the only “efficient” way of bringing it to thehighlands to be woven, especially in a world of nontrivial transportation costs and ethnicsubjugation.

Somewhere out there, a historically sophisticated economic history of colonial Mexico remains to be written. When it is, one suspects that books such as Amith’s — andothers like it — will finally give us a “new” economic history worthy of the name.

richard j. salvucci, Trinity University doi 10.1215/00182168-2007-014

Historia de un cosmopolita: José María de Lanz y la fundación de la Ingeniería de Caminos en

España y América. By manuel lucena giraldo. Colección ciencias, humanidadese ingeniería. Madrid: Colegio de Ingenieros de Caminos, Canales y Puertos, 2005.Illustrations. Appendix. Notes. Bibliography. Indexes. 266 pp. Paper.

Manuel Lucena Giraldo’s book explores the eventful life and career of José María deLanz, military man, scientist, professor, imperial bureaucrat, and creole patriot. Of theeighteenth-century enlightened Spanish scientists who are considered the founders ofmodern science and technology in the Hispanic American world, José María de Lanz is

perhaps the least known. Lucena Giraldo hopes to shed light on the content and tran-scendence of José María de Lanz’s scientific and technological writings and discoveries,as well as his contribution to the establishment of academic and research institutions inthe Hispanic world. Going beyond the sometimes limited scope of the biographic genre,this book provides a case study of the social and cultural history of the Enlightenmentin the Spanish Americas. It offers information on themes such as the sociology of theSpanish imperial administration; the history of creole education, ideology, and culture;the history of modern science; and the history of the transfer of technological knowledgein the Atlantic world during the revolutionary age.

The experience of José María de Lanz illustrates, for instance, the cosmopolitan





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nature of the creole elite’s education, with elementary studies in their place of birth com-pleted by a prolonged and intense period of formation in Europe. Following that pattern,

José María de Lanz was born in Campeche, New Spain, and attended institutions such asthe Seminario de Vergara in the Spanish Basque country, where he acquired a solid back-ground in the latest scientific and technological knowledge, along with the traditionalcurriculum in religion and the humanities. After the seminar years, de Lanz entered theexclusive Real Academia de Guardamarinas de Cádiz, which launched his brilliant careerin the Spanish Royal Navy. He served as an officer and became a part of the eighteenth-century military community involved in the promotion of scientific knowledge and theculture of the Enlightenment. During these early years as an enlightened naval officer,

José María de Lanz collaborated in a variety of research projects, the most importantbeing the elaboration of the Atlas Marítimo de España.

Everything in the early professional years of our protagonist pointed toward a pros-perous career in the service of the Spanish imperial administration — until he was sentto Paris in 1789 on a mission of technological espionage. There, his life underwent asubstantial change that transformed him into an international scientist, a renegade, anexile, an admirer of and collaborator with Napoleon, and a future activist for the inde-pendence of Spanish America.

Lucena Giraldo constructs Lanz’s scientific and political biography by gatheringan impressive array of information from diverse European and American archives andlibraries — an admirable piece of puzzle solving that constitutes one of the main meritsof the book. The author tracks Lanz’s early scholarship in the field of differential andintegral calculus, analyzes his contributions to the field of cartography and cadastralgeography in France during the revolutionary years, and describes his cooperation with

Agustín de Betancourt, which produced his two most noteworthy legacies: the publica-tion of the innovative and popular work on applied mechanics, Ensayo sobre la composiciónde las máquinas, and the design and implementation of a curriculum for the career of civilengineering that established that profession in Spain ( Ingeniero de Canales y Caminos ).

The study concludes with a chapter on Lanz’s return to Latin America in 1822, wherehe lent his scientific skills and political and administrative experience to the process ofnation building in Gran Colombia.

Historia de un cosmopolita is a good example of the progress made in the historiog-raphy of science and technology in Latin America during the last two decades. As theauthor points out at the beginning, in Latin America the field is still at an early stage, lessadvanced than in Europe and the United States. One of the tasks to be tackled, accord-ing to the author, is the “location, description, and evaluation of the contributions madeby the members of the scientific community” (p. 17). There is no doubt that this bookconstitutes a notable contribution in that direction.

jesus cruz, University of Delawaredoi 10.1215/00182168-2007-015




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Children of the Father King: Youth, Authority, and Legal Minority in Colonial Lima .By bianca premo. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005.

Illustrations. Maps. Tables. Figures. Appendixes. Notes. Bibliography. Index. xiii,350 pp. Cloth, $59.95. Paper $24.95.

Bianca Premo’s engaging and important study of childhood “as it was both lived andimagined” in colonial Lima (p. 2) operates on two levels: it is both a history of actualchildren and childhood, and it is about generational relations as a metaphor of colonialrule. According to Premo, these two threads of inquiry are entangled, for “the social his-tory of children . . . cannot be separated from . . . the overarching political ideology thatbound colonial subjects to the Spanish Father King” (p. 15).

Premo’s study yields a number of interesting empirical findings. Amid ideologies

of racial and corporate separateness, households were characterized by striking “castediversity” (p. 50). Indeed, domestic realities diverged widely from the “ideal typicalpatriarchal family” insofar as nonpatriarchs — including widows, wet nurses, and arti-sans — routinely performed the everyday work of rearing the city’s children. Premo sug-gests that families who did not conform to the prescriptive model tended to experiencethe brunt of legal intervention into domestic matters. She also describes how the city’snunneries and foundling home were important sites of social reproduction, marked bymany of the same dynamics of race and gender as households themselves.

A temporal window of 170 years (1650 to 1820) allows Premo to discern changesin legal discourse and practice over time. By the late eighteenth century, the courts

were taking a greater interest in unpropertied children, and the reach of secular judicialauthority was growing. The terms of legal disputes concerning children also changed, asarguments about emotion, education, economic investment, and social control eclipsedolder invocations of patriarchal right. This welter of change adds up to what Premoterms “the new politics of the child.” Ultimately, it heralded a growing valorization ofchildhood such that by the end of the century, even slave children were considered chil-dren first and foremost, and only secondarily slaves. How these legal changes reflectedor catalyzed changes in social practice is less clear.

Minority is a concept key to the analysis. Premo argues that minority in the colo-nial context was a “multivalent legal category” that was “tightly bound up with other

categories that had little to do with actual biological age, such as ‘miserables,’ ‘orphans,’and the ‘unprotected’ ” (p. 20, 6). It included not only children, but also Amerindians, who were perpetual legal minors. Thus, “age . . . combined with other social markers toform a complex of statuses and identities for colonial adults and children alike” (p. 6).

Another category that is scrutinized is patriarchy. Premo makes a compelling case thatpatriarchy is best treated as contemporaries understood it, in the aggregate, as a conceptcapturing “the ideological affinity between the social and legal infantilization of slaveadults and the subordination of children to elders, of wives to husbands, and of colonizedto colonizer” (p. 10). In this analysis, patriarchy transcends gender even as it captures





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how gender was bound up with other social and legal relations of power, including thosebetween generations.

Part of Premo’s analytic project is to show how poor and relatively powerless colo-nials were agents, rather than mere objects, of law and politics. Ordinary litigants appro-priated philosophical discourse to their own ends, and new ideas introduced from onhigh created opportunities for claims-making among subalterns. The argument is welltaken, but given that much recent legal and political history has focused on discursiveinterchanges between elite and popular sectors, it is not altogether unexpected. Theargument also rests on a key methodological assumption: that court declarations andtheir conceptual frameworks may be attributed primarily to litigants, rather than to law-

yers and scribes. Premo makes this assumption explicit, and indeed her sources suggestit may sometimes be warranted (as one anecdote on pp. 7 –8 suggests). But one won-ders whether it is always or even consistently the discursive universe of litigants that isconveyed in the judicial record; if it is not, then the extent to which everyday Limeñosexercised agency through legal argumentation is perhaps overstated.

These objections notwithstanding, this book has many strengths. Chief amongthem is the formidable amount of archival research that undergirds it. An indefatigableresearcher, Premo draws on census, notarial, and institutional records, and above allon judicial cases from civil and ecclesiastical courts. Historians of childhood frequentlylament the patchy presence of young people in the archives. Premo’s tireless archival pur-suit suggests that information is abundant, but locating it may require methodologicalresourcefulness. An example is the invocation of “reverential fear” by individuals seekingto annul marriage and ecclesiastical vows. Petitioners sometimes claimed they had beenpressured by fear of their elders, a scenario that according to canon law impeded free willand abrogated sacramental vows. Premo examines how litigants couched claims of rev-erential fear, and what the courts made of them, to reconstruct social and legal attitudestoward generational and gender authority (some of the elders whom petitioners claimedto fear were female). Finally, underlying the prodigious research is a keen historicalimagination. The author clearly became absorbed in the world narrated in her sources,and the account is leavened by her empathy for the individuals she encountered there.

This book is of great interest to historians of children and family. The author haselucidated practices surrounding childrearing and the meanings that accrued to child-hood in a colonial context. But its relevance extends beyond this specialized readership.Premo has made a compelling case for what parents and children, childhood, minority,and generation have to do with the operation of power in a colonial society in general. Inthis sense, Children of the Father King is an original interpretation of colonialism and itssocial and political dynamics.

nara milanich, Barnard Collegedoi 10.1215/00182168-2007-016




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Go-betweens and the Colonization of Brazil, 1500 – 1600. By alida c. metcalf. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005. Illustrations. Maps. Tables. Notes.Bibliography. Index. xiv, 375 pp. Paper, $22.95.

Alida Metcalf offers an important revisionist interpretation in this highly readable studyof Portugal’s struggle to found a New World colony. The book begins and ends withan anecdote about Margarida, an Indian woman who helped Bahian plantation ownerssubdue members of her own ethnic group, the aggressive Aimoré. A baptized resident ofa prominent settler’s estate, Margarida persuaded her kinsmen to abandon their violentresistance and enter colonial society under the tutelage of Jesuit missionaries. “Becauseof her language, her mobility, and her understanding of two opposing cultures,” writes

Metcalf, “this woman became the go-between who made possible peaceful encounters

between two previously hostile groups” (pp. 1 –2). In the tradition of more famous nativeintermediaries like Doña Malinche, who aided Cortés, the youth Felipe who served asinterpreter for Pizarro, or Pocahontas and Sacagawea, who played critical roles in thecolonization of North America, the conduct of this Aimoré woman testifies to the ubiq-uitous presence of cultural negotiators in the early Americas.

The author argues convincingly that actors traditionally cast in bit parts as histori-cal curiosities should occupy center stage if we are to understand how the Portugueselaid claim to Brazil over the course of the sixteenth century. Ordinary sailors, penalexiles, and Norman interpreters; indigenous concubines and their children; native ora-tors, shamans, and wandering prophets: these individuals acted as go-betweens, cultural

brokers who connected colonizers with the colonized in countless complex daily inter-actions. Third-party participants in virtually all colonial encounters, they moved withsurprising agility between Portuguese and indigenous domains, belying conventionaldepictions of a dyadic collision between two irreconcilable worlds. Several Tupi women,for instance, helped their Portuguese husbands rise to the status of chiefs within nativepolities. Other natives fostered various forms of communication and exchange. Thisfluidity across racial and ethnic lines helps explain why “highly pronounced economicexploitation continued to coexist . . . with a degree of cultural tolerance in the colony ofBrazil” (p. 274).

The emphasis on what Metcalf terms “cultural arbitration,” as opposed to medi-

ation — because the dynamic ultimately redounded to the advantage of the Portu-guese — sheds light onto two additional groups, the first commonly emphasized by histo-rians, the second less so. After Jesuits arrived in the colony in 1549, they quickly became,according to the author, “some of the most powerful go-betweens of the sixteenth cen-tury” (p. 90). Although they sought to break the bonds between native converts andtheir tribal practices, to achieve this they generally rejected the use of force in favor ofpersuasion — teaching, preaching, and discussion in native languages or through transla-tors, conducted in mission villages geographically separated from settler enclaves. Met-calf recognizes the gap between missionary intentions and their outcome. In the mostsustained analysis yet published of the spread of epidemic disease in sixteenth-century





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Brazil, she devotes a chapter to describing the biological destruction wrought by Jesuitsand others who moved easily from one sphere to the other.

An ever-expanding population of mamelucos — backwoodsmen of mixed Amerin-dian and European ancestry — were equally dexterous occupants of this cultural middleground. Unpublished Inquisition records, which Metcalf employs along with Jesuitarchival material and diverse published sources, reveal the importance of the mamelu-cos, particularly in Bahia’s developing sugar export economy. Rivals of the Jesuits, theyrose to prominence after disease decimated the coastal native population. Operating inthe interior of the colony, they coaxed Indians out of the forests, away from the mis-sionaries, and onto the plantations to augment the enslaved labor force. “The mamelucogo-between became a chameleon in the wilderness, adapting to, and insinuating himselfin, each new situation,” Metcalf writes (p. 249). Their most controversial role linkedthem to indigenous santidades (sanctities), native messianic movements that combined

Tupinambá, Roman Catholic, and possibly central African practices in resistance to Por-tuguese colonialism during the second half of the century. Participating in rituals asso-ciated with these movements, mamelucos ran afoul of the Inquisition, accused, amongother transgressions, of heresy, idolatry, and “sins of the flesh,” including polygamy, con-duct that was an outgrowth of their cultural hybridity.

Metcalf’s argument goes a long way toward clarifying the importance of all of theseactors to the colonial project. At times, however, her go-between concept loses value bybecoming too encompassing, as when she applies it to Heitor Furtado de Mendonça,Brazil’s first inquisitor, whom she describes as a go-between acting as “the principalmediator between sinful individuals and God” (p. 236). The concept sometimes seemsill-suited even to the Jesuits, who supported a vicious military campaign against uncon-quered Indians conducted by Governor Mem de Sá in the 1550s. Likewise, if the out-come of mameluco activity was ultimately the supply of Indian slave labor, it is hard toaccept that persuasion, the defining characteristic of cultural intermediaries in Metcalf’sformulation, can be understood as antithetical to violence. A solution lies in theoriz-ing the two as a continuum: violence is negotiation by other means, to modify Carl

von Clausewitz. If certain individuals and their actions strain against the model, it is atestament to Metcalf’s contribution that her study will surely prompt scholars to explorethese tensions. She has provided a powerful narrative of Brazil’s first century — probablythe best now available in English — that will speak both to specialists and students newto the study of Portuguese America.

hal langfur, SUNY Buffalodoi 10.1215/00182168-2007-017




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National Period

Aldabonazo: Inside the Cuban Revolutionary Underground, 1952 – 1958: A Participant’s

Account . By armando hart dávalos. New York: Pathfinder Press, 2004. Map.Photographs. Plates. Glossary. Index. 387 pp. Paper, $25.00.

The historiography of the Cuban Revolution has focused on a variety of trends andtendencies. Cuban publications concerning the struggle against the regime of Ful-gencio Batista (1952 –58) — whether waged by clandestine guerrillas or by Cubansin exile — have represented this process in terms that depict the period as essentiallyheroic. In the literature on the guerrilla campaign, the greatest emphasis has been onkey moments in this type of struggle taking place in the cities, and to a lesser extent on

the activities of members of the July 26 Revolutionary Movement (MR-26-7) in exile, theUniversity Students’ Federation (FEU), and the radical student activists of the Directo-rio Revolucionario 13 de Marzo, fundamental organizations that led the insurrectionaryrevolutionary movement during this period.

Within contemporary debate, the alternative tendency has been to depict the periodof national rebellion using the memoirs of principal protagonists: among others, impor-tant political and military actors and, increasingly, through somewhat autobiographicalstudies focused on Fidel Castro. This forms the context for this book, narrated by one ofthe representatives of the underground urban movement, who not only participated inthe founding of the revolutionary movement that came to power in 1959 but also lived

through the events he helped to create and formed part of the leadership of that revolu-tionary movement. The author reconstructs the events he lived through using his ownmemories with the help of documentary sources.

This book differs from others in that the author, in bringing his experience to life,offers at the same time a political landscape of the generational conflict reflected in dif-ferent revolutionary styles, rooted in the Party of the Cuban People (Orthodox) of Edu-ardo Chibás, whose thesis, which forms the conclusion of the book’s epilogue, functionsas a call to arms. One of these revolutionary styles — the one that the author originallysubscribed to — was the movement headed by Dr. Rafael García Bárcena, organizer ofthe National Revolutionary Movement (MNR). The MNR employed a different strat-

egy than the revolutionary movement that later evolved into the July 26 Movement,headed by Fidel Castro. It is from this lens that he narrates the various events in whichhe participated between 1955 and 1959, in the urban underground, in the Sierra Mae-stra, during political imprisonment, and finally the taking of power. In these settings,stemming from the main action, the fundamental emphasis was on tasks in the capitaland the eastern provinces, particularly the activities of the leadership of the MR -26-7 in Santiago de Cuba, as well as the interrelationship with the Sierra Maestra campaign.

Virtually absent is any mention of actions in the western and central provinces, a gapthat is beginning to be addressed by the historiography.

Other thematic emphases concern the rebellion within the University of Havana,

Book Reviews / National Period 595




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the assault on the Moncada barracks, and other relevant events and characters. Thebook contains more than one hundred pages of important documents, other first-person

accounts, and photographs. The narrative presents the “big picture” of the major role played by leaders during

the stages and missions that the author participated in: the organization of a nationalnetwork, the Asamblea del PPC (0) and its influence on the structure of the MR-26-7,the support for a general strike in 1958 in support of the Granma expeditionary force,and the insurrectionary uprising in the provinces, as well as the incarceration of politicalprisoners.

The book sheds light on the historiographical debate over the strategy of the gen-eral strike and armed insurrection. Certain passages and documents contribute to theanalysis and evaluation of concepts concerning strategies, tactics, methods of struggle,and mentalities, one example of which is expressed in the correspondence between Faus-tino Pérez and the author, especially in the so-called concept of “the mountains andthe plains,” as well as references to patriotic and anti-imperialist thought shown in thedocuments.

Hart Dávalos provides scholars of Cuba a wealth of information with which to stim-ulate future research. His book will also be of value for students and the general publicinterested in contemporary Latin America.

gladys marel garcía pérez, Unión de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba (UNEAC)doi 10.1215/00182168-2007-018

The Imagined Island: History, Identity, and Utopia in Hispaniola.By pedro l. san miguel. Translated by jane ramírez. Latin America in

Translation. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. Illustrations.Notes. Bibliography. Index. x, 194 pp. Cloth, $59.95. Paper, $22.50.

In The Imagined Island , Pedro San Miguel establishes a number of purposes for the fiveessays that constitute the volume. One is to extend and apply theories that reveal thefictional narratives with which historiographies are constructed. Flowing from that, theauthor analyzes historical visions of the colonial period. The third involves a sustained

critique of the works of seven authors: Antonio Sánchez-Valverde, Pedro FranciscoBonó, José Gabriel García, Manuel Arturo Peña-Batlle, Joaquien Balaguer, Juan Bosch,and Jean Price-Mars (the last, a Haitian, is the only one not from the Dominican Repub-lic). The dominant concern of the first four essays involves a critical examination of

writings about the relationship between Haiti and the Dominican Republic and how thenarrative, fictional frameworks of these authors produce the contrasts drawn betweenthe two halves of Hispaniola. The critique focuses on Dominican constructions of Haitias a black “other” and the Dominican Republic as fundamentally white, Spanish, Euro-pean, and civilized. In his analyses, San Miguel covers a vast range of literature, focusingprimarily on historical texts, with limited discussions of novels, essays, and ethnogra-




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phies. The research that produced this volume is so considerable that the notes and indextogether constitute one-third of this otherwise slim work. The author very effectively

fuses a “history of ideas” app

Documents

Hispanic American Historical Review 2007 Shumway 618 9