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Book ReviewsPublished online: 01 Jul 2010.

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Book Reviews

An Account of the Antiquities of the Indians. Edited by JOSE JUAN ARROM. Trans.Susan C. Griswold. Durham, N.C. and London: Duke University Press, 1999.Pp. xxix, 74.

El libro que resenamos es una contribucion imprescindible a la bibliograf õ a erudita delos estudios coloniales. En una traduccion elegante y precisa, Susan C. Griswold hahecho accesible al publico norteamericano uno de los textos fundacionales de nuestraAmerica: la edicion cr õ tica de Jose Juan Arrom de la Relacion acerca de lasantiguedades de los indios de fray Ramon Pane, publicada por primera vez en 1974 porSiglo Veintiuno, y por segunda vez en su version de� nitiva en 1988 por la mismaeditorial. Estamos ante un texto muchas veces pionero. Ante el primer tratadoetnogra� co sobre el Nuevo Mundo, asõ como ante el segundo texto (el primero es, desdeluego, el Diario de Colon) escrito en espanol en tierra americana. Tambien ante elprimero en consignar los iniciales intentos de comunicacion efectiva entre losconquistadores y los abor õ genes. El humilde fraile catalan escribe, por encargo deColon, lo que pudo aprender de las creencias religiosas de los taõ nos o arahuacosinsulares a partir de su convivencia con estos entre 1493 y 1498 en La Espanola, en laregion que hoy conocemos como Haitõ . Al conceder un espacio importante para la vozdel “Otro”, la relacion accede de manera sorprendente a la modernidad. Anticipapracticas y nociones etnologicas seminales del siglo veinte: el trabajo de campo y lanocion de mito como codigo de reglamentacion social (Malinowski), la concepcioncõ clica del tiempo sagrado (Eliade), la estructura dialectica del mito (Propp yLevi-Strauss) y del rito de paso (Van Gennep), la polifon õ a de voces (la del etnologo,la del informante) que propone hoy la antropolog õ a cultural norteamericana (Clifford).A la vez, por el caso de autor õ a dual que presenta (europea/ind õ gena), la Relacion puedeleerse como texto fundacional caribeno, o emblema de lo que es hoy nuestra literatura,tan dada a rescatar la oralidad de las tradiciones nativa o africana en la narrativaindigenista o en la poes õ a de la negritud.

Debemos al maestro Arrom—profesor emeritus de Yale y miembro correspondientede las academias cubanas de Arte y Cultura y de la Lengua, autor de entre otras obras,El teatro de Hispanoamerica en la epoca colonial (1967), Mitologõ a y artesprehispanicas de las Antillas (1975), Esquema generacional de las letrashispanoamericanas (1977), Imaginacion del Nuevo Mundo: diez estudios sobre losinicios de la narrativa hispanoamericana (1991)—la actualizacion del legado de Pane.La deuda es impagable.

Porque la Relacion de Pane es un texto problematico alla donde los haya. Suestudio presenta problemas graves: manuscrito original perdido, fuente primaria unicasobre los taõ nos, desaparicion temprana de dicha cultura, carencia de diccionarios ygramaticas para el arahuaco insular, traduccion de traducciones (catalan– taõ no–

espanol– italiano– latõ n). Arrom emprende, sin inmutarse, una empresa casi imposible.Primero, reconstruir el texto, a partir de tres fuentes: mediacion de mediaciones. Pues dela biograf õ a que del Almirante escribio su hijo Fernando, hoy perdida, quedanreverberaciones en tres idiomas. La relacion completa, como parte de la biograf õ a, estaen la traduccion italiana que de esta hiciera Alfonso de Ulloa en 1570 en una carcel

1060-9164 print/1466–1802 online/01/020291-17 Ó 2001 Taylor & Francis Ltd on behalf of CLARDOI: 10.1080/1060916012009382 2

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veneciana. Y se conservan dos resumenes del texto, uno, en espanol, del padre LasCasas, y otro en latõ n, de Martir de Angler õ a.

Luego de � jar el texto tras la confrontacion exhaustiva de las tres fuentes, y a travesde un impresionante aparato erudito, Arrom nos entrega dos de las llaves para ladescodi� cacion del corpus m õ tico de Pane: la etnohistoria y la lingu õ stica comparada. Laprimera—el intento de acceder a culturas agrafas ya desaparecidas—lo lleva a leer en lamadera y en la piedra, accediendo a otra fuente mas alla de la historia, la arqueologõ a,para con� rmar o aclarar algunos de los motivos m õ ticos. La segunda le permite,partiendo del acervo reunido por linguistas, misioneros y etnografos sobre el arahuacocontinental, acercarse a los signi� cados ocultos de la toponimia, y sobre todo, a losnombres de los cem õ es o deidades del panteon taõ no, que en gran medida cifranmetaforicamente los puntos cardinales de la cultura arahuaca insular. No tardo Arrom enproveernos una tercera llave de acceso al relato de Pane. En su libro de 1975, Mitologõ ay artes prehispanicas de las Antillas, acude a la teor õ a del mito, sobre todo aLevi-Strauss, para reconocer el transito de lo crudo a lo cocido en el episodio de laconquista del cazabe por parte de los gemelos capitaneados por Deminan.

Don Pepe Arrom, quien en un acto de justicia poetica devolvio en 1992 a los catalanesel texto de Pane en su propio idioma, en una hermosa edicion publicada por laGeneralitat de Catalunya, ahora entrega la edicion inglesa de su obra magna, a traves dela traduccion de Griswold, al publico de habla anglosajona. Porque no hay Norte sin Sur,como dice Fernando Ainsa en una reciente re� exion sobre la realidad amplia de unaAmerica escindida. Que para bien sea, y enhorabuena.

Mercedes Lopez-BaraltUniversidad de Puerto Rico

To Defend Our Water with the Blood of Our Veins: The Struggle for Resources inColonial Puebla. By SONYA LIPSETT-RIVERA. Albuquerque: University of NewMexico Press, 1999. Pp. xiv, 199.

Empire of Sand: The Seri Indians and the Struggle for Spanish Sonora, 1645–1803. ByTHOMAS E. SHERIDAN. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1999.

We have before us two quite different books—one, a documentary collection relating toSpanish–Seri relations on the northwestern New Spanish frontier in the seventeenth andeighteenth centuries, the other, a monograph examining how water shaped socialrelations in the Puebla countryside over three centuries of colonial rule. Yet the booksshare common themes. Both detail ongoing processes of accommodation and resistancethat continued well past the end of the colonial era. Both deal with the shaping in� uenceof water (or the lack of water) on social and political relations. Perhaps mostsigni� cantly, both examine the contestation of authority by groups subordinated (orgroups that Spanish forces were desperately trying to subordinate) to the colonial state.

Thomas E. Sheridan’s beautifully produced collection brings together twenty-� vedocuments—ten from Jesuit sources, two from the Franciscans, who succeeded theJesuits in Sonora after the latter’s ouster in 1767, and all but one of the remainder reportsand letters from Spanish government of� cials. Only one, a Seri governor’s late eigh-teenth-century request for a monthly salary, comes from the Indian world; Sheridanreadily acknowledges that these selections represent Spanish, not indigenous, voices, andthat they “portray the Comcaac [Seri] refracted and distorted through European andEuro-American eyes” (15). The collection is arranged chronologically, treating the

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Jesuits’ early missionization efforts, the Spanish government’s attempts to subdue theSeri, especially after 1750, and the late colonial efforts to re-establish Spanish authorityin Sonora. Each document appears in an annotated English translation, followed by theSpanish original; the translations are carefully and sensitively done, and the thoughtfulintroductions and detailed annotations re� ect Sheridan’s commendable efforts to contex-tualize the selections and to track down the various personages who � gure in thecorrespondence.

Sheridan offers a richly nuanced picture of Seri–Spanish relations. His inclusion ofcertain Jesuit letters, especially those of Fathers Agust õ n de Campos and Nicolas dePerera, and of Perera’s Relacion offers a sensitive portrayal both of the Seri and of theSpanish military and civil of� cials arrayed against them, and of the con� icted role of theJesuits who struggled initially in defense of the Seri against the forces of the Spanishstate before � nally “crossing over” into alliance with those forces by the mid-eighteenthcentury. His selections paint a vivid, and at times distressing, picture of a hardening ofSpanish attitudes towards peoples considered barbarians, until by the 1750s a full-� edged “campaign of cultural genocide” was underway, with the Jesuits as“collaborators in a ‘� nal solution’ to destroy Seri society” (169).

But the Spaniards were, after all, � ghting on hostile ground, and their attempts to wipeout the Seri ultimately failed. Essential to understanding that failure is the environmentin which the Seri operated; as Sheridan succinctly remarks, “thirst was one of theComcaac’s greatest allies” (8). By the early twentieth century the Seri had been“hounded to the brink of extinction. Only the relentless aridity of the Sonoran coastprevented them from being overrun by the Mexican military”, which had by thentargeted the Yaqui, just to the south, for destruction (462). But to emphasize the region’saridity to the exclusion of other factors is to diminish the efforts of the Seri themselvesto resist. They did so, throughout the period under study and beyond. In the early periodthey moved in and out of the Jesuit missions; later they raided Spanish and otherindigenous settlements; they � ed to Tiburon Island, off the Sonora coast, when threat-ened; by the early 1800s they were raiding Baja California settlements. The Seriresponded to each threat in turn “on their own terms” (462), and by setting those termsthey maintained a level of autonomy that indigenous groups living in core regions, withtheir more plentiful resources and greater attractiveness to Spanish settlement, weresimply unable to do.

Sonya Lipsett-Rivera treats just such a region in her study of water and power incolonial Puebla. More overtly than does Sheridan in his treatment of the Seri of Sonora,she seeks to “place the environment at the center of the history of social change” inPuebla (x). She details the weakening of indigenous claims to water rights over thecourse of the colonial era as a decentralized system was ultimately centralized in thehands of those she calls “water monopolists” by the early days of the nineteenth century.Hers is a story of increasing social disequilibrium, as ecological and demographic shiftscombined to profoundly alter power relationships in the Poblano countryside.

Lipsett-Rivera sets her argument in the context of the “centralization theory” devel-oped by Eva and Robert Hunt in their studies of the Cuicatec region of Oaxaca.According to the Hunts, the development of a centralized system of water managementemerges from con� ict over access to water (40). Centralization is a product ofconsensus—the various parties affected by centralization cede a degree of autonomy forthe sake of a more equitable distribution of resources. The centralization model wouldhave it that “those most affected by these shortages should have demanded a centralizedirrigation system with an effective bureaucracy” (146). Lipsett-Rivera’s study amplydemonstrates the con� ictual context out of which centralization emerged by the earlynineteenth century, but in Puebla centralization “was imposed by one sector of the

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society; it was not the result of a common desire for a centralized bureaucracy that couldend the rising level of con� ict over water” (85). Puebla deviated from the expectedresponse because at precisely the point when “rural Poblanos needed to act together tocreate institutions that could protect their rights to irrigation, the communal valuesassociated with water were disappearing” (146).

Much of what Lipsett-Rivera sketches here does not surprise. We see the earlyintroduction of wheat and sugar cultivation to the region, the demographic decline of thesixteenth century “emptying” lands which had earlier belonged to indigenous communityand allowing the expansion of Spanish agricultural and livestock production, thepopulation resurgence of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries exerting increas-ing pressure upon remaining community resources. Where Lipsett-Rivera’s contributionis most noteworthy is in her attention to the ways in which changes in land tenure andusage over the course of the colonial era altered the region’s environment. Two centuriesof Spanish agricultural practices accelerated ecological degradation. By the eighteenthcentury “population, land, and water in Puebla were no longer in equilibrium” (57).Contributing to the “unbalancing” of the community was the increasing Spanish controlover water resources. Spanish colonial water law was based on the doctrine of “priorappropriation” of water rights, which privileged the Indian community by virtue of itslongstanding claim to and use of water. Lipsett-Rivera traces the manner in which thatdoctrine gave way as Spaniards moved from “outsider” to “insider” status. Spaniardsgradually gained rights through denunciation, composicion, rental, servidumbre (theestablishment of “squatter’s rights”), and purchase. The long-term presence of Spaniardsin the Poblano countryside created precedence—the “ancient and peaceful possession” socritical to establishing rights of access. Once Spaniards could assert this (which they didby the eighteenth century) they could challenge Indian ownership—and the very fact ofchallenge meant that no longer could Indians claim “peaceful” possession. Further, whencontested claims were adjudicated, the Audiencia was likely to divide the contestedwaters; thus the more frequent the challenges “the more likely that the irrigationallocations would be reduced over time” (78). Loss of water unbalanced the community;the increasing disequilibrium of the mid- to late-eighteenth century “inevitably” resultedin a “breakdown of the social relations underlying irrigation allocation” (45).

This social disequilibrium created spaces where various groups jockeyed for position;this was not a set piece where the “Spaniard” always ran roughshod over an unprotesting“indigenous” adversary. In many respects Spaniards enjoyed the advantage—theycommanded the attention of the crown government, and many of those who owned thelarger Poblano estates used their retainers to intimidate those who would contest theirassertion of rights—but contests over water rights pitted Spaniard against Spaniard,Spaniard against Indian, Indian against Indian, and community against community. AsLipsett-Rivera argues, “power within the countryside was not a simple ethnic attributebut the result of the interplay of many factors and the accumulation of advantages overthe course of many years” (87). Further, intimidation was not the exclusive preserve ofSpanish estate holders; indigenous groups frequently used “rebellious attitudes or actualinsurrectionary tactics to redress the balance of power” (119). Poblanos, individualfarmers and towns alike, whatever their ethnicity, resisted encroachments on theirresources, both actively and passively; to have done otherwise would have been to admitdefeat, to cease to exist as autonomous actors on the rural scene.

Yet such resistance could not mask the weakened state of many communities by thelatter years of the colony. Lipsett-Rivera discerns a lessening of the sense of communityin Poblano towns by the early nineteenth century, manifested in the increasing privatiza-tion of water rights, with the growing number of complaints about community responsi-bilities to maintain irrigation works signalling, in her mind at least, a “deterioration of

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the communal ties that united the indigenous community. As solidarity declined,” sheargues, “so too did the community’s viability and chances for survival” (143). Internallyweakened, indigenous communities could not withstand the demands of the newlyemerged “water monopolists” for the creation of a water bureaucracy, one that wouldrepresent the interests of those monopolists rather than indigenous communities orindividual small farmers. The process of centralization, begun earlier in the eighteenthcentury, had reached a critical point by the early nineteenth century, one from whichthere would be no turning away.

Sheridan and Lipsett-Rivera make important contributions to our knowledge of thesocial history of colonial Mexico. Both bring an appreciation of the in� uence of the localenvironment on the interaction of indigenous and Spaniards. In the case of the Seri, theabsolute lack of water worked to their advantage; the inhospitable region meant thatSpanish penetration was partial at best, and the Seri’s ability to use the environment totheir advantage allowed for their continued, if compromised, autonomy into the twentiethcentury. Conversely, in the Poblano countryside the very presence of initially amplewater resources, the pre-Hispanic traditions of irrigation, and the suitability of the regionfor the production of Spanish crops made the region particularly attractive to Spaniards;but by the late eighteenth century the lack of water threatened the very survival ofvillagers; the depletion of resources over time upset the environmental equilibrium, andwith it the social equilibrium as well.

Lipsett-Rivera’s otherwise � ne study is marred by careless editing (footnotes 50 and51 placed together in the text on page 50; a textual reference on page 95 to a particularscholar “dismissing” the problems suffered by two Indian towns unaccompanied by anyother reference to that scholar either in the text or in a footnote; on page 100, “localof� cials imprisoned the Indian Diego Melchor because he mistreated another Indian,Nicolas de Castillo. … But a contributing factor to Castillo’s [sic] imprisonment”; onpage 139 the sentence “the data for small towns do not provide much detail are notnearly as voluminous …”). I think the author means to say that water is a lens, not aprism, through which she examines everyday life (a prism distorts, after all, and I assumeshe’s striving for clarity). Finally, she overuses the water metaphor in her selection ofchapter titles; by the time this reader reached “The Last Drop” (the � nal chapter), shehad nearly reached the end of her patience with such cute touches.

But those are ultimately minor quibbles. Lipsett-Rivera and Sheridan taken togetheradd greatly to our knowledge of how groups came together on the colonial stage, andwhat factors shaped those encounters. Other scholars would do well to follow their lead.

Leslie S. OffuttVassar College

Unrequited Conquests: Love and Empire in the Colonial Americas. By ROLANDGREENE. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Pp. xii, 287.

However much the emergence of the New Historicism may have done to invigorate thestudy of colonial writing in recent years, one of its casualties has often been lyric poetry.Typically regarded either as universal or as merely (inter)personal, love poetry hasapparently offered the cultural critic little in the way of representing power relationships,speci� c cultural constraints and mobilities, and the rise of national identities andmarginalities. This need not have been so, Roland Greene suggests in his beautifullyillustrated new book, for the lyrical discourse of love and especially that of Pe-trarchism—the discourse of unrequited love—was, during the sixteenth century, inti-

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mately involved in “the distribution of power in unequal situations” (11). Indeed,sixteenth-century Petrarchism may be considered to be “one of the original colonialdiscourses”, Greene argues (7), for the lyric discourse of unrequited love offered theconqueror special generic possibilities in the representation of the hybrid Americanreality of imperial domination and subjection which were not available to other genres,such as the chronicle and the epic. The reason why conquerors suffer, Greene explains,is their encounter with alterity—because of the “impossibility of connecting with another across a difference of sex onto which several forms of difference have beenheaped” (14–15). Thus, in the � rst two chapters, Greene traces the Petrarchan lyricmoments of unrequited love through the European � rst-person accounts of discovery andconquest, particularly the writings of Christopher Columbus (Chapter 1) and thesixteenth-century chronicles of Brazil (Chapter 2), such as Vaz de Caminha’s originaryCarta, the mid-century Portuguese chronicles, such as Magalhaes Gandavo’s Historia daProvinicia Santa Cruz, and � nally the French Huguenot Jean de Lery’s Histoire d’unvoyage. The two central chapters treat the discourse of unrequited love in lyric poetryproper, by bringing culturally divers historical and literary materials to bear on the worksof the two English imperial poets Thomas Wyatt and Philip Sidney. Thus, Chapter 3investigates “the conceit of romantic love as plague” in Wyatt (as well as othersixteenth-century poets such as the French poetess Louise Labe and the SpaniardGutierre de Cetina) before the imperial background of the great epidemics originating inthe Columbian encounters (158), and Chapter 4 discusses Philip Sidney’s poeticresponses to the “lust for power” on the part of another Philip—Philip II of Spain—inthe Americas (179), with interesting excursions about colonial � gures such as the limenoHenrique Garces, who translated Petrarch’s Canzoniere contemporaneously to Sidney’sAstrophil and Stella, in 1591 (189–90). Finally, in Chapter 5, “Huaca, Love, andConquest”, the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega emerges as the self-aware Petrarchan offspringof the union between imperial conquest and interpersonal love who resituates himself, inhis translation of Leo Hebreo’s Dialoghi d’amore and in his Comentarios reales, as amestizo “culture broker” in order to restore the autonomous character of his native Peruin the European imaginary (210).

Although this brief summary can perhaps make apparent the book’s impressive arrayof diverse texts rarely discussed in connection with one another, it cannot do justice tothe insightfulness of Greene’s close readings, which tease out the often unsuspectedlydense literary signi� cation of the literature of conquest and empire. In its argumentativeemphasis, Unrequited Conquests will be of greater consequence to Renaissance scholarsthan to colonial (Latin) Americanists—despite its somewhat misleading subtitle “loveand empire in the colonial Americas”: only one of the authors discussed at length—theInca Garcilaso—could arguably be considered to be a “colonial” (though the Inca wroteall his works, as is well known, after settling down in Spain). For all the globalizingexpansiveness of its transatlantic archive, Greene’s book does not entirely succeed inputting into practice the “polycentric historicism” for which he calls (28), appearinginstead surprisingly unselfconscious with regard to the modern imperial geopoliticalhierarchies that have informed our conventional cultural and aesthetic judgments on whatconstitutes a “central” text of the Renaissance and what constitutes merely a“representative anecdote” in early modern transatlantic imperialism (193). Clearly, thereis, as Greene himself observes (23), a “core” also in his book: the two middle chapters,“Love Poetry in the World” and “The Imperial Sidney”, which are “centered” (136)—notcoincidentally, one would suspect—on the theme of conquest in the lyric poetry not bypoets from the “colonial Americas” but rather by the two English imperial poets Wyattand Sidney, and the two initial chapters and the ultimate chapter on lyric elements in theprose of the conquest of Spanish and Luso America (as well as the diverse lyrical

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materials discussed cursorily within the two central chapters) seem to serve more or lessas a geopolitical frame of reference contextualizing the “core” texts treated in a bookprimarily about (insular) English poets. I make this observation not to diminish theaccomplishments of an excellent book but because it points to some of the moregeneral—methodologically, epistemologically, and philosophically dif� cult—questionsabout the terms of cross-cultural comparison underlying the new “transnational, transhis-torical, globalized literary study” (in the tradition of which William Kennedy’s blurbplaces this book). With this reservation, I hasten to conclude that Greene’s booksplendidly succeeds in its two main goals, which are, � rst, to overcome the anachronisticparochialism still frequently prevailing in Renaissance studies and, second, to alert us tothe intensely ideological import of early modern lyric poetry. As such, UnrequitedConquests stands as an impressive piece of scholarship in its persuasive synthesis ofhistorically informed analysis and sensitive close readings of literary texts, in the breadthand depth of its transatlantic archive, and in its powerful demonstration of the profoundlyinternational interconnectedness of prominent Renaissance � gures who have all toooften, though anachronistically, been pressed into the service of discreet nationalistliterary histories.

Ralph BauerUniversity of Maryland

Edicion y anotacion de textos coloniales hispanoamericanos. Edited by I. ARELLANOand J. A. RODRIGUEZ GARRIDO. Madrid: Ediciones Iberoamericanas, 1999. Pp. 439.

Constructing the “Criollo” Archive: Subjects of Knowledge in the “BibliothecaMexicana” and the “Rusticatio Mexicana”. By ANTHONY HIGGINS. West Lafayette,Ind.: Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures, 2000. Pp. xvii, 283.

The � eld of colonial Latin American literary studies has experienced tremendous growthover recent decades. It is interdisciplinary by nature and has many connections withareas such as cultural studies, women studies, history, ethnohistory, and anthropology.As a result, in recent years a great deal of ground-breaking scholarship has beenpublished on fascinating topics. Yet, from a literary point of view, there is an enormousvacuum when it comes to the actual editing of texts. Thus, we face the paradox oforiginal and creative interpretations that may be based on incorrect editions or carelessediting.

The collection of essays edited by Arellano and Rodr õ guez Garrido—the result of anencuentro held in Lima on this subject—deals with a number of speci� c problems whileediting colonial texts. The aim of the book is ambitious: the articles range from purelytheoretical issues to critical editions of minor texts. As a reader, I would have bene� tedfrom a clearer organization of the articles. Indeed, this is my only qualm with the book.There are a number of ways in which it could have been organized. As it stands, it seemsto re� ect the program of the encuentro, with little thought regarding internal structure orareas of similar interest. In spite of this problem, the articles raise a number of veryinteresting issues and open numerous doors for future research.

The most salient issue to emerge is the lack of serious editorial scholarship inavailable editions. Arellano expresses the problem clearly, concluding that “es imposibledisociar la ecdotica de la hermeneutica: no se puede � jar bien un texto sin entenderlo yno se puede entender si esta mal � jado” (“Problemas en la edicion y anotacion de lascronicas de Indias”, 54). Indeed, the rest of his article offers a convincing demonstration

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by showing misinterpretations, blunders, errors, and lack of scholarship even in the besteditions available of even the most “canonical” texts. In the case of lesser-known works,or controversial ones, the picture is even bleaker. There is a clear need for interdisci-plinary collaboration on the matter. Historians are not trained as literary critics; criticsin turn may be more interested in theory and not in philology; philologists may notunderstand the cultural nuances of a text. In some cases the collaboration needs toinclude laboratory specialists who can evaluate the authenticity of the paper and ink ofsome manuscripts. This is the case impressively presented by Rolena Adorno in herstudy of the Miccinelli manuscript (“Criterios de comprobacion; un misteriosomanuscrito de Napoles y las cronicas de la conquista del Peru”). This text has stirred asigni� cant controversy, since it supposedly contains the key to reading quipus, andquestions the “true” author of Guaman Poma de Ayala’s Nueva Coronica. Adornodissects the manuscript in a thorough and convincing way. The manuscript seems theresult of a hoax, but not necessarily a contemporary one. It will be hard to resolve thequestions it raises without careful scienti� c analysis. A number of the articles includeddeal with the problems encountered in editing cronicas de Indias. Louise Benat-Tachot(“La Historia General de las Indias de Francisco Lopez de Gomara; Identi� cacion de lasfuentes y elaboracion textual”) and Monique Mustapha (“Apuntes para una edicioncr õ tica de la Historia General de las Indias de F. Lopez de Gomara. Problemas textualesy bibliogra� cos”) deal with the controversial narrative of Cortes’s conquest. Sonia V.Rose tackles the issues raised by Gomara’s � rst and main questioner (“Problemas deedicion de la Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva Espana de Bernal D õ az delCastillo”). Jose Antonio Mazzotti (“Criterios trasatlanticos para una nueva edicion cr õ ticade los Comentarios reales”) reminds us that even the most canonical texts and editionsneed to be assessed and evaluated. Ferm õ n del Pino (“Hermeneutica y edicion cr õ tica dela Historia natural y moral de las Indias del P. Acosta”) gives us a hands-on exampleof the same problem in Acosta’s work.

A second issue that emerges from the book is the need to reassess critical interest inthe more “literary” genres of colonial times. Chronicles and similar documents lendthemselves to creative theoretical readings, and thus have garnered a lot of attention.Theater, poetry, and colonial literary theory/criticism meanwhile, with a few notableexceptions, remain forgotten. One of the strengths of this book is precisely theincorporation of these genres from both a theoretical and an applied point of view. Thereare three articles devoted to Hernan Dom õ nguez Camargo, two of those dealing with histreatise Invectiva apologetica. Both Julian Bravo Vega (“Comentarios a la Invectivaapologetica (1652) de Dom õ nguez Camargo”) and Marõ a Carmen Pinillos (“La Invectivaapologetica de Hernando Dom õ nguez Camargo. Notas para su edicion”) study thissatirical document that is, at the same time, a compendium of Dom õ nguez Camargo’sideas about poetry. Francisco Dom õ nguez Matito (“El mitologismo criollo de Dom õ nguezCamargo: comentarios al libro I del Poema heroico de San Ignacio de Loyola”) looksat the author’s most famous work and postulates that, in spite of recent efforts, the poemstill remains at the margin of the colonial canon. Paul Firbas (“Apuntes y criterios parauna edicion anotada de un poema epico colonial: Armas antarticas de Juan deMiramontes Zuazola”) looks at one of the many unread and unedited epic poems of thetimes. Pedro Lasarte (“Hacia un estudio del cancionero poetico ‘Ms. codex 193’ de laUniversidad de Pensilvania”) studies the problems raised in editing a cancionero poeticoand the insights it gives us into colonial poetic activity. Theater is the subject of � ve ofthe articles. Margaret Rich Greer (“Manos teatrales: un recurso para la identi� cacion decopistas teatrales iberoamericanos”) offers a fascinating study of the actual manuscriptsand the manos that wrote (copied) them. Cesar Itier (“Los problemas de edicion.Datacion, autor õ a y � liacion de El robo de Proserpina y sueno de Endimion, auto

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sacramental en Quechua”) looks at the three existing manuscripts of the Quechua piece.Margarita Pena (“Alfred Morel-Fatio y la cr õ tica francesa sobre Ruiz de Alarcon. Haciauna edicion de La verdad sospechosa”) studies French criticism of Alarcon’s famouspiece. Jose A. Rodr õ guez Garrido (“Una pieza recuperada del teatro colonial peruano:historia del texto de El mejor escudo de Perseo del Marques de Castell dos Rius”) looksat a forgotten piece by the famous Virrey Poeta. And Miguel Zugasti gives us the criticaledition of a sainete (“Edicion cr õ tica del teatro comico breve de Lorenzo de lasLlamosas: El astrologo (sainete) y El bureo (baile)”). Finally, Celsa Carmen Garc õ aValdes offers a study and critical edition of a wonderful satiric piece: “Anotacion de untexto satõ rico: La endiablada, de Juan Mogrovejo de la Cerda”.

The � nal issue that emerges from the collection is the enormity of the task at hand.Just editing the most important cronicas will require many years of work by teams ofscholars, to say nothing about poetry and theater. It is a great challenge, but it is alsoa wonderful opportunity. In fact, I consider it the top priority in the � eld, and it is awelcome change to know that there are scholars already working on this endeavor.

Anthony Higgins’s Constructing the Criollo Archive deals with an area of colonialliterary production that has received almost no critical attention at all: texts written inLatin. The main reason is, of course, language, but we need to add the dif� culties thatthe printers faced when producing books written in a language they did not know. Forthe modern scholar many times the � rst task is to overcome the myriad of typographicalerrors that can lead to very different readings of a text. The two works Higgins study areamong the few that have had better editorial luck. Juan Jose de Eguiara y Eguren’sBibliotheca Mexicana was edited in a � ve-volume facsimile edition with a Spanishtranslation by UNAM (1986–1990), and Rafael Landõ var’s Rusticatio Mexicana wasedited with a Spanish translation in 1987. Higgins makes no comments regarding thequality of these editions, but uses them as the basis for his study.

Higgins aim is to explore the emergence of a criollo subject during the eighteenthcentury, and how that subject constructed knowledge as a way to legitimate the powerand privilege that criollos had in their society. In this sense, Higgins follows the lead ofAngel Rama’s La ciudad letrada and his analysis of writing as a tool for the creationof a social class whose power was predicated in the exclusion and exploitation of theindigenous and mestizo populations (in the case of Mexico). Higgins also studies theway these two texts are part of the emergence of a discourse of modernity in LatinAmerica. Under this light, the juxtaposition of these two texts becomes more relevant.Eguiara is still writing from a baroque perspective, whereas Landõ var has moved into thelanguage of the enlightenment. Both authors were clerics, both trained by the Jesuitmethod (ratio studiorum), both tried to depict the nation and society they lived in. InEguiara’s case, his method—the long compilation of names—follows the scholasticmodel, based on authorities. Higgins follows Foucault’s idea of the “archive” andappropriately titles one of the chapters on Eguiara “Supplementing Authority”. But ofcourse, the intent of such a project carries the seeds of its own failure, expressed by thetitle of the next chapter: “The Fragmentary Archive”. It is telling that one of the longsegments of the Biblioteca is devoted to the great erudite Carlos de Siguenza y Gongora,arguably the greatest colonial example of a brilliant scienti� c mind operating within theparameters of scholasticism and pre-modern thought. It is also telling that Eguiara feltthe need to write twenty “prologues” to his work. This proliferation is not unique (thinkabout Guaman Poma, for example), and is also related to the traditional Jesuit system oflearning. Land õ var, on the other hand, belongs to modernity. As a Jesuit, he was part ofthe group expelled from the Spanish territories by Carlos III in 1767. Following the pathof most Jesuit exiles, he settled in Italy, where he composed his poem. RusticatioMexicana is a long, didactic text that wants to offer a detailed look at the “heterogeneity”

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of the New World. Thus, Land õ var writes about the land, the � ora and fauna, the peopleand the traditions of his native land. Higgins’s reading of the poem is illuminating, andis a welcome step into an area that needs much further study: the work of the exiledJesuits. Indeed, while in Italy, this group of intellectuals produced some of thefundamental works that would shape the historical and political discourse of thepost-independence nineteenth-century Latin American nations; texts that, once againwith a few exceptions, are begging for critical editions and new readings.

Francisco Javier CevallosUniversity of Massachusetts, Amherst

History of the Triumphs of Our Holy Faith amongst the Most Barbarous and FiercePeoples of the New World. By ANDRES PEREZ DE RIBAS. Tucson: University ofArizona Press, 1999. Pp. x, 762.

The reader who is already familiar with missionary texts from the seventeenth centurywill fully appreciate the enormous task they present to translators. Fluid and precise, this� rst complete English translation of Perez de Ribas’s Historia de los triumphos denuestra santa fee entre gentes las mas barbaras y � eras del nuevo Orbe (1645) is � rstrate.

The preface explains the dif� culties of translation faced by Daniel T. Reff, MaureenAhern and Richard K. Danford, and how they resolved them. It also spells out thesigni� cance of the Historia to colonial historiography and ethnography, and how Perezde Ribas wrote the chronicle while carrying out missionary and other duties.

Reff’s critical introduction, “The Historia and Jesuit Discourse”, begins with a sectionthat tackles critical methodologies and their applications to missionary discourse. Heexplains why and in what ways modern ethnographic critique aids the analysis ofmissionary texts in general and the Historia in particular. Reff reviews “the principalcontingencies that in� uenced Perez de Ribas’s representation of the Jesuit experienceand Indian cultures” (11)—i.e. the questions of humanism, theology, philosophy andchurch politics that consciously and unconsciously in� uenced this missionary andhistorian from Cordoba, Spain. Reff’s observations here are so clear and concise that thereader need not be a specialist in order to comprehend them. Indeed, undergraduates inhistory, literature or anthropology courses would immediately grasp the whys and howsof his approach to Perez de Ribas’s chronicle, which is much more than a history ofJesuit evangelization efforts in northern New Spain.

In his second section, Reff draws attention to the surprising absence of parallelsbetween Jews, Moors and Indians in the Historia, and he speculates that Perez de Ribaswas possibly a descendant of conversos (13, n. 3). He correctly identi� es a formidableobstacle to scholarly appreciation of this and other missionary texts: “modern researchersundoubtedly have ignored the Historia and similar colonial-period texts because theperceived ‘� ctions’ appear too numerous to trust the text as a whole” (15). Missionarydiscourse is not a question of a scholar’s trust; it’s a question of a missionary’s trust inGod. Reff argues that Jesuit missionaries were not ignorant of the laws of nature: theysubordinated these to the Law—i.e. Catholicism—and Augustine was their guide.Likewise, the “identi� cation with the apostles” (17) that marks missionary discourse wasnot paranoid delusion, but a lived reality for Perez de Ribas and other Jesuits.

In the section titled “Literary and Rhetorical Contingencies”, Reff departs fromhistorians and anthropologists who have assumed that Perez de Ribas was imitating(poorly) Renaissance and modern historiographical models. Although he acknowledges

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the Cordoba native’s debts to such models, Reff argues that scholarly attention must bepaid to the Bible, hagiography and sacred oratory, for Perez de Ribas “privileged thedivine in his thinking and writing” (20). In “The Political and Institutional Context ofJesuit Discourse”, Reff shows how various concerns of the Spanish crown and churchshaped what Perez de Ribas did and did not set down in his Historia. Numerous textualexamples are marshaled in this section, which handily demonstrates that Perez de Ribas’representation of Indians, Spanish monarchs and missionaries was contingent on politi-cal, religious and economic circumstances, including the tussles among civil andreligious authorities in Spanish Europe and America.

In “Jesuit Images of the Indians and the Process of Conversion”, we discover howsuch contingencies relate to the importance that Perez de Ribas assigned to languageacquisition within the conversion process. Reff allows us to see how this missionary-au-thor’s attitude toward indigenous cultures differed from those of fellow Jesuits andmembers of other religious orders. He brings into focus the dialectics of praise andblame which characterizes Perez de Ribas’ representation of Indians, and he suggests theideological motivations and contradictions of that imaging. “The Dynamics of Jesuit–Indian Relations” is a section that reveals why and how Perez de Ribas was an authorwho straddled frontiers linguistic, religious, ethnic and scienti� c.

The glossary (739–40) and bibliography (741–51) are useful tools for the specialistand non-specialist. Maps (81, 325, 485) allow the reader to follow Perez de Ribas’narration, and a table provides a quick way to place the chronicle in the trajectory of hislife and career (14). Notes to the translation clarify dif� cult passages without over-whelming the non-specialist, and they will also be appreciated by the specialist. With itshighly readable English translation and sound critical apparatus, this edition of Perez deRibas’ Historia was long overdue.

Ruth HillUniversity of Virginia

La logica en el Virreinato del Peru. A traves de las obras de Juan de Espinoza Medrano(1688) e Isidoro de Celis (1787). Por WALTER REDMOND. Lima: Ponti� ciaUniversidad Catolica del Peru; Mexico: Fondo Editorial de Cultura Economica, 1998.Pp. 417.

Dentro de los estudios sobre la cultura virreinal, la � losof õ a de este per õ odo ha sidodoblemente marginada: por un lado, son pocos los especialistas que se interesan por ella;por otro lado, los historiadores de la � losof õ a la consideran carente de valor.Reivindicarla es, pues, uno de los objetivos del libro de Redmond. A traves de el, elautor pretende refutar el “repudio de la escolastica latinoamericana como ‘oscurantista’,‘decadente’, ‘retrograda’, etc.” por parte de los historiadores de la � losof õ a del siglo XIXy primera mitad del siglo XX (40). De ahõ que, en un gesto apologetico, sostenga que“la ensenanza de la � losof õ a en America era parecida a la de Espana, y su nivel tecnicono era notablemente inferior; en efecto, obras escritas por � losofos en America fueronutilizadas en Europa” (39).

Redmond pretende lograr su objetivo a traves del estudio de dos casos paradigmaticos.Tal como lo indica en el subtõ tulo, analiza dos obras: la Philosophia thomistica, seucursus philosophicus de Espinosa, impresa en Roma, y los Elementa Philosophiae deCelis, impresos en Madrid. En realidad, el estudio de Redmond es incluso mas puntual,dado que se limita al analisis de un solo capõ tulo de la obra mencionada del Lunarejo,

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el dedicado a los universales; en cuanto a la obra de Celis, por el contrario, elacercamiento es de caracter general. Redmond analiza ambas obras en el contexto de lasegunda escolastica de los siglos XVI al XIX (25). Dentro de la evolucion de la misma,la Philosophia y los Elementa representan dos momentos, hasta tal punto distintos, que“no coinciden en el mismo paradigma � loso� co”: la � losof õ a del Lunarejo se situa antesdel impacto de la modernidad, mientras que la de Celis ya lo acusa (370). En amboscasos, Redmond empieza con breves apuntes sobre la vida y las obras de los autores,y pasa luego al trasfondo � loso� co y una explicacion general de las dos obrasrespectivas.

Sin embargo, el nucleo del libro es, sin duda alguna, el estudio de los “universales”dentro de la logica del Lunarejo. Simpli� cando mucho, se trata “del problema del unoy de lo mucho” (92) o, en otras palabras, de reunir fenomenos individuales bajo unconcepto comun; asõ , los caballos individuales bajo el concepto de “caballo”; caballos,sapos, aguilas bajo el de “animal” etc. Los universales son, como senala Redmond conrazon, una constante en la historia de la � losof õ a (92s), y tienen particular importanciadentro de la escolastica. A traves de un minucioso analisis, Redmond logra hacerinteligible la problematica sumamente compleja. El autor concluye que Espinosa quisoparticipar en la evolucion de la tom õ stica europea, y “probar que un aporte americano ala discusion era posible” (331). En el contexto de la escolastica del siglo XVII, elLunarejo llega a ser, segun opina el autor, una “� gura menor”, “aun cuando no puedacompararse con los comentadores tomistas mas grandes como Suarez o Juan de SantoTomas” (331).

El tratamiento de la obra de Celis que sigue a la de Espinosa es, como ya dije, decaracter panoramico y mucho mas breve (38 pp. vs. casi 300 dedicadas al Lunarejo). Lacomparacion � nal entre la Philosophia y los Elementa (369–71) se limita a algunasobservaciones someras. La desproporcion en el espacio consagrado a ambas obras y ladiferencia en el tratamiento de las mismas no puede sino dar la impresion de ciertaincoherencia.

Lamentablemente, existen otras limitaciones que tienen su ra õ z en la historia de laobra. El libro que reseno es la impresion de la tesis doctoral que el autor presentara enla Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos en 1972 (“La Logica en el Virreinato delPeru a traves de las obras de Juan de Espinosa Medrano e Isidoro de Celis”), precedidaahora por un prologo que, escrito “veinte anos mas tarde”, podemos suponer redactadoalrededor de 1992. El copyright de la edicion es de 1998, lo que revela un proceso deimpresion extremadamente largo. Sigue al prefacio de la tesis una bibliograf õ a detrabajos del autor publicados entre 1969 y 1992 relacionados con la � losof õ a colonial.Desafortunadamente, el autor no ha reelaborado la tesis original, integrando lainvestigacion de los cinco lustros que habõ an pasado desde su defensa. Esto vale tantopara la investigacion � loso� ca (cuyos avances senala Redmond en el prologo) como ladedicada a la vida y obra del Lunarejo (cabe destacar los trabajos de Luis JaimeCisneros, Jose Antonio Rodr õ guez Garrido, Pedro Guibovich y Jose Carlos GonzalezBoixo). La bibliograf õ a al � nal del volumen tampoco ha sido puesta al d õ a. Solo untrabajo reciente es citado en el prologo “veinte anos mas tarde” (12, nota 2). Finalmente,la impresion es algo descuidada: as õ , la pagina 76 esta superpuesta con la pagina 38,cuyo texto sin embargo no corresponde a la pagina de esta edicion; la pagina 317 porotra parte esta en blanco.

A pesar de estas limitaciones, el libro de Redmond logra demostrar que la � losof õ a enel virreinato del Peru (y, por analog õ a, la novohispana) era parte integrante de la � losof õ aoccidental: los � losofos americanos estaban al tanto de la evolucion europea y, por otraparte, sus obras se discut õ an en Europa. “Europa”, sin embargo, se limita en este contexto

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a Espana y al mundo eclesiastico. La America hispana comparte las limitaciones de sumadre patria.

Karl KohutUniversidad Catolica de Eichstatt

O Mar e o mato: Historias da escravidao (Congo-Angola, Brasil, Caribe). By MARTINLIENHARD. Salvador: EDUFBA/CEAO, 1998. Pp. 165.

Fruitless Trees: Portuguese Conservation and Brazil’s Colonial Timber. By SHAWNWILLIAM MILLER. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000. Pp. xii, 325.

These two books, in each of which o mato, or the forest, plays a major role, could notbe more dissimilar. In Martin Lienhard’s O Mar e o mato: Historias da escravidao, theforest appears as the deep, impenetrable space where slaves might escape from mastersand reconnect with ancestral spirits, whereas Shawn William Miller in Fruitless Trees:Portuguese Conservation and Brazil’s Colonial Timber presents the forest as a vast andvaluable resource poorly harvested by Portuguese colonists. These historians not onlyconceptualize the forest in radically distinct ways, but they use very different methodolo-gies.

Lienhard’s book consists of essays on slavery, not the forest, and the forest thereforeappears as a subtheme in the text. Lienhard’s interest lies in the discourse of Africansand slaves; to reveal the discourse of Africans and slaves, which is hidden in the textswritten by their colonizers, is the perennial problem of the postcolonial historian.Lienhard approaches this problem conceptually and cross-culturally in three essays, oneon the Caribbean, one on Africa, and one on Brazil. It is in the discourse of Africans andslaves that the forest appears; and thus Lienhard seeks to understand the meanings givenby slaves and Africans to the forest.

In Cuba, Lienhard examines the Mambo, the ritual songs of the Palo MonteAfro-Cuban religious tradition, and � nds the historical memory of slaves embedded inthe cryptogrammic language of the songs. That language, a pidgin, in contrast to theSpanish spoken in the daily lives of slaves, was reserved for religious purposes. In theMambos, the image of the forest is tied to the memory of Africa, to the resting place ofancestors, and to the place where herbs, stones, and wood were gathered for rituals.Lienhard’s essay on Congo and Angola similarly focuses on language; in this case heuses of� cial reports written by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Portuguese of� cialsand missionaries and draws out from them an African discourse. By examining thedescriptions of communications in these reports, he � nds evidence of an African oraltradition that utilized intermediaries and physical gestures to deliver messages toPortuguese of� cials from African chiefs. In this discourse, the dream of returning to theforest appears as a form of resistance, as a rejection of the Portuguese colonial enterprise.It was only in the forest that Africans could gain a military advantage over thePortuguese, who saw the forest as “impenetrable and unknown: a military and techno-logical hell” (74). Moreover, in the forest, seen as a sacred space by Africans, Africanswere rejuvenated and re-energized for future battles with the Portuguese. Finally,Lienhard’s examination of quilombos (runaway slave communities) in the Caribbean andin Brazil focuses on the investigations conducted by colonial authorities into these formsof slave resistance. In the interrogations of slaves, Lienhard looks for the language usedby slaves to express themselves. Lienhard argues that the slaves intended to make theirway deep into the forest, to sacred places where they could re-encounter Africa.

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Shawn William Miller’s Fruitless Trees is a well-researched, carefully written mono-graph on the Portuguese crown’s timber policy and the effects of this policy on Brazilianforests. Unlike Lienhard, who seeks the suppressed discourse of Africans and slaves incolonial texts, Miller uses those texts to reconstruct how the crown and the colonistviewed the forest and assessed its value. Miller � rst states that Brazilian timbers wereamong the � nest in the world, an important fact in a pre-industrial world where woodwas essential to virtually any economic enterprise. Building on its medieval notions offorests and timbers, the Portuguese crown monopolized Brazilian timbers, beginningwith Pau Brasil, or brazilwood, the � rst export of any value from Brazil. In succeedingcenturies, the crown extended its monopoly over brazilwood to hardwoods, and becamedirectly involved in the cutting of timber in the colony. The crown’s restrictive policystemmed in part from its desire to control valuable exports, but also from its need tosupport its navy, which needed high quality timbers.

Miller argues that Portugal’s highly monopolistic policies contributed to the destruc-tion of the Brazilian forests. Because colonists did not own the valuable hardwoods ontheir land, and because cumbersome royal regulations restricted how a landowner mightproceed with regard to the timber on his or her lands, there was no economic incentivefor harvesting timber, indeed, there was a greater incentive to indiscriminately burn theforest, to destroy the crown’s timber, and to erase any evidence that any hardwoods hadever existed on the lands.

Miller’s analysis of Brazilian colonial forests is indebted to the critiques of thePortuguese crown’s timber policy written in the late eighteenth and early nineteenthcenturies by individuals who, in� uenced by Adam Smith, applied his ideas to Portugal.In particular, a Brazilian, Jose Joaquim da Cunha de Azeredo Coutinho, expresses manyof Miller’s own views, arguing in his 1794 Ensaio economico sobre o commercio dePortugal e suas colonias (Economic Essay on the Commerce of Portugal and HerColonies) that only through demonopolization would a viable timber industry emerge inBrazil. In Miller’s paraphrase of Azeredo Coutinho, “if the crown truly wanted toconserve Brazil’s incomparable trees rather than see them go to waste it would have togive the landholders a stake in their timbers” (217). Just as Azeredo Coutinho comparesPortuguese policy unfavorably to that of northern European countries, so too does Millercontrast Portugal’s highly restrictive forest policy with the more liberal stance adoptedby England. In each case the forest was destroyed, but whereas England “awardedbounties to the private producers of timber and shipstores in North America” in Brazilthe situation was quite different because “comparatively few of Brazil’s timbers wereemployed in the effective accumulation of colonial wealth and capital” (231).

In addition to his critique of Portuguese timber policy, Miller presents valuable dataon the scope of the Brazilian timber industry, the men and women who lived from it,the trees exploited, and the value of Brazilian timbers to national and internationalwoodworking enterprises. He documents more than 350 different timbers exploited inBrazil. He describes how the Brazilian timbers, denser and heavier than the European orNorth American oak, required design modi� cations in shipbuilding. He revises thetraditional low estimate given to the value of timber among colonial Brazil’s exports.These chapters support his view that had Portuguese policy taken a different direction,the Brazilian timber industry could and would have developed, with substantial bene� tsto Brazilians. The Portuguese crown’s legislation, which restricted the cutting of trees,the processing of planking, or the export of valuable timbers, all in the name ofconservation, however, had precisely the opposite effect. The great tragedy for Miller isthat the forests of Brazil were destroyed “for no good end” (231).

Read together, these two books sum up the conundrum of the modern historianseeking to understand the colonial history of Latin America. As Miller’s detailed analysis

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shows, it is eminently possible to reconstruct how the state and the elite perceived,interacted with, and were affected by Brazil’s extensive forests. That is a fascinatingstory that has not been fully told by historians. But, as Miller himself found in hisinvestigation into the lives of the Brazilian woodsmen, and as Lienhard’s less empiricaland more conceptual attention to language makes clear, it is very dif� cult to incorporatethe voiceless into that story. Lienhard’s work employs new ways of understanding thevoiceless—in this case the slaves, Africans, or woodsmen—but so much of their storyremains hazy, ambiguous, and vulnerable to the projections of modern historians. Canthe two approaches be brought together successfully? These two books not onlyenlighten, but also raise this important question for historians to ponder.

Alida C. MetcalfTrinity University

Indios detras de la muralla. Matrimonios ind õ genas y convivencia inter-racial en SantaAna (Lima, 1795–1820). Por JESUS COSAMALON AGUILAR. Lima: Ponti� ciaUniversidad Catolica del Peru, 1999. Pp. 273.

La indianidad antes de la independencia latinoamericana. Por HERNAN HORNA.Uppsala: Uppsala University Press, 1999. Pp. 147.

Las multiples experiencias ind õ genas precolombinas y coloniales son centrales para lahistoriograf õ a latinoamericana de las ultimas decadas, sobre todo en los pa õ ses andinos.Los dos libros considerados, marcadamente diferentes, constituyen ejemplos particularesde la variedad de enfoques al tema. Mientras que Horna traza un amplio panorama dela “historia indõ gena” americana, desde los or õ genes de las antiguas civilizaciones hastala epoca de la independencia, Cosamalon Aguilar explora las relaciones inter-raciales delos indios en un barrio limeno en el ultimo lustro del siglo XVIII y las dos decadassiguientes. Ante el problema basico de como aproximarse a un objeto de analisistradicionalmente marginado, Horna lee “entre l õ neas” (11) la documentacion de lahistoria y la historiograf õ a dominante. Cosamalon Aguilar, por otro lado, examinamateriales escasamente consultados: unas dos mil partidas de matrimonio, entre otros.

La primera parte de La indianidad antes de la independencia latinoamericana, “Haciauna historia de las antiguas civilizaciones americanas” (9–71), discute el establecimientoy desarrollo de las culturas indõ genas en las Americas. Considera las migraciones quepoblaron el continente, la domesticacion de productos agr õ colas, “las interrelacionesentre las diferentes culturas americanas” (18), y sus contactos con el Asia anteriores ala colonizacion europea. Horna antepone una seccion sobre los “Fanatismos religiosos”de los colonizadores, que incluye mencion a la quema de “los libros sagrados” de losmayas (31), a sus comentarios sobre “Los sacri� cios humanos.” Estos concluyen con uncaracterõ stico llamando de atencion a la historiograf õ a tradicional cuando se preocupa porasuntos ind õ genas: “el recurrente tema de los ‘sacri� cios humanos’ en la historiograf õ aoccidental no esta libre de axiomas ideologicos y culturales” (34). Las ultimas seccionesse concentran en destacar los logros de las “altas culturas” americanas: de los mayas,aztecas y, sobre todo, de los incas. Examina sus conocimientos cientõ � cos, sistemas de“escritura”, arquitectura, poblacion, estructura social y estatal, y menciona algunelemento ideologico-cultural, como la “m õ stica imperial de los Aztecas” (47) y la“autodenominada mision civilizadora de los Incas” (58). En el apartado sobre los incasanade consideraciones sobre el ayllu como unidad productiva, mayores matices en ladiferenciacion social y laboral, y sobre el sistema de reciprocidad y de tributos.

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La segunda parte, “De la colonizacion a la descolonizacion iberoamericana” (72–130),esta dividida en dos secciones. En la primera, “La conquista revisitada,” Horna presentaun estudio compartativo de la “conquista” de los distingos grupos ind õ genas. Destaca loscon� ictos internos, como la guerra civil en Tawantinsuyo (96), y el uso del “rapto” comoestrategia militar: “desde el albor del ‘descubrimiento’ y conquista, el rapto de jefesindios por montoneras conquistadoras (baquianos) fue la caracterõ stica principal. … Estaestrategia se uso tanto en la captura de Guacanagar õ y Caonabo en el Caribe como enla de los emperadores Montexuma y Atahualpa en Mexico y Peru” (83). Insiste, tambien,en las alianzas entre conquistadores y grupos amerindios (85, 92): “La colaboracionind õ gena en la derrota de los mismos indios es un ingrediente constante” (96). Lasegunda seccion, “Del subdesarrollo al neocolonialismo”, parece utilizar la teor õ a de ladependencia para enmarcar la historia del periodo colonial. Senala, por ejemplo, elcaracter “dependiente” de Espana y Portugal con respecto al norte de Europa (96), y sere� ere a la “descapitalizacion de Hispanoamerica” (101). Asimismo, considera laencomienda, el repartimiento laboral (la mita y el cuatequil), y los obrajes comoinstituciones que llevaron a una “realidad esclavizante … a pesar de las leyes y buenasintenciones” de la Corona (107). Finalmente, describe el ascenso de las elites criollas enuna sociedad “pigmentocratica” (109) y, en el contexto de las reformas borbonicas, sueventual liderazgo polõ tico en proyectos independentistas que de ninguna manerafavorecieron a los indios.

Indios detras de la muralla es un estudio rigurosamente documentado sobre lasrelaciones, con� ictos y convivencias inter-raciales de los migrantes indõ genas de laparroquia de Santa Ana, con comparaciones con otras de la ciudad de Lima. Estadividido en dos partes y tambien cuenta con una “Introducion” (13–24) y unas“Re� exiones � nales” (221–26). La primera parte, “La ciudad, los hombes y sus leyes”(25–120), examina el marco legal y social pertinente para el resto del estudio, desde elestablecimiento del “Cercado de indios,” en 1571, hasta las reformas borbonicasorientadas a “reprimir” aspectos de la vida popular, que “transcurrõ a basicamente en lascalles y plazas” (30, 31). Tambien proporciona datos basicos sobre la poblacion y discutela composicion etnica de los sectores populares a � nales de la colonia, indicando lapresencia ind õ gena entre “la plebe” urbana (70).

En el segundo cap õ tulo, “Entre el cielo y la tierra: matrimonios, legislacion y racismo”,Cosamalon Aguilar marca la transicion entre una concepcion del amor y las relacionesmatrioniales basada en el amor libre y la libertad individual (en el siglo XVII), hacia una,a partir de la segunda mitad del siglo XVIII, que identi� ca el amor con las pasiones y,por lo tanto, apunta a la necesidad de controlarlo mediante fuerzas racionales (75). Eneste contexto, la expedicion de la Pragmatica Sancion de Carlos III en 1776 para Espanay 1778 para America, impuso un mayor control de la sexualidad al requerir el permisopaterno para el matrimonio (76). Como muchas leyes pensadas originalmente para laselites, la aplicacion de esta pragmatica se ampl õ a eventualmente (a partir de 1803) atodas las clases. Desde entonces, padres y familiares que se oponen a la eleccion de losnovios, incluso cuando los motivos son otros (sociales, economicos, o de mal caracter),usan las diferencias raciales para obstaculizar ciertos enlaces, ya que el Estado sancionaesta diferencia de “calidad” y no otras para impedirlos (106–7). A consecuencia, muchosnovios esconden o minimizan las diferencias raciales que podr õ an bloquear susmatrimonios (113). Este es uno de los ejemplos de “resistencia cotidiana,” mediante lacual miembros de los sectores populares manipulan estrategias legales para subvertir laefectividad de ciertas leyes (119; tambien 95).

La segunda parte, “Los matrimonios, el barrio y la convivencia” (125–220), desarrollaun analisis de “la endogamia, el mestizaje y la migracion” ind õ gena en la parroquia SantaAna (125), basado en una amplia base de datos estad õ sticos provenientes de los registros

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parroquiales matrimoniales. Los altos õ ndices endogamicos y la practica ausencia dematrimonios entre mujeres blancas con hombres de otros grupos demuestran laimportancia de “las denominaciones raciales en la sociedad limena de � nes del XVIII”(143). Por otro lado, los matrimonios inter-raciales “no constituyen una rareza” (153), ysu frecuencia queda parcialmente explicada por el grado de contacto y convivencia enun espacio urbano: “los indios originarios de la ciudad … se casaron en un 20% conmujeres de raza negra”, � gura mucho mayor al 6% de los de la sierra sur (154). Alexaminar la procedencia de los testigos matrimoniales y sus relaciones con los novios,el libro resalta tanto la relevancia del lugar de origen de una poblacion compuesta en su“gran mayor õ a” por migrantes (140), como la de su nuevo ambito citadino. Compartir unbarrio, las mismas calles, esquinas y pulper õ as, forja “una ‘identidad barrial’ que permit õ ala identi� cacion de los vecinos con un espacio determinado” (187). Cosamalon Aguilarconcluye insistiendo en “la � uidez y la riqueza de las relaciones establecidas por losindios en Lima” (221), una Lima mucho mas integrada y, con la posible excepcion delfutbol, con mas espacios de convivencia inter-racial que la actual (225).

La seccion “Otra perspectiva historica” (9–12) del libro de Horna plantea lasdi� cultades de estudiar la historia indõ gena dentro de los parametros de la historiograf õ aoccidental. Ademas de leer la “historia o� cial colonialista” (11) a contrapelo, recomiendaincorporar perspectivas interdisciplinarias y la “vision propia” de “indios que tomanconciencia de su situacion y son pol õ ticamente activos” (12). Lamentablemente, quizasdebido a que se basa en una documentacion demasiado convencional para lograr esosobjetivos, La indianidad rara vez proporciona una “vision” ind õ gena de la historiaamericana. Similarmente, al insistir en denunciar las injusticias sufridas por los distintosgrupos indõ genas, tiende a minimizar su resistencia y su papel como agentes de su propiahistoria.

Cosamalon Aguilar destaca algunos elementos que complican su analisis estadõ stico,como el aumento de la ilegitimidad y de las relaciones consensuales en el periodo queestudia (40, 133), las estrategias de negociacion legal mencionadas, y lasobredeterminacion de las categorõ as raciales (por factores como el estatussocio-economico y, sobre todo, lugar de procedencia): “El v õ nculo de paisanaje era tanfuerte que incluso superaba la barrera racial, personas de distintas razas se identi� cabanentre si gracias al origen” (202). Sin embargo, apenas se detiene a considerar el impactode estos elementos en sus interpretaciones. Por otro lado, la solidez global del analisiscuantitativo, podr õ a enriquecerse con un mayor desarrollo y so� sticacion en el examencultural que introduce en las ultimas paginas sobre la convivencia en espacios urbanos,la identidad barrial, el control disciplinario, y otras estrategias de exclusion y separacionracial.

Entre sus pocos paralelos, ambas obras subrayan que varios aspectos de la historiaind õ gena necesitan mayor estudio; tambien observan que las elites criollas a� rman supapel dominante en una sociead racialmente heterogenea explotando las tensiones ytemores raciales entre indios, negros y castas. La indianidad es un ensayo interpretativoque analiza, sintetiza y expone claramente la informacion de una considerablebibliograf õ a, y adelanta algunas propuestas originales sobre las civilizaciones amerindiaslatinoamericanas. Indios detras de la muralla, a su vez, es un novedoso y detalladoestudio sobre aspectos claves de la vida urbana de migrantes ind õ genas en Lima. Ademasde contar con una solida base documental, dialoga con la literatura existente sobre temasrelacionados, y plantea problemas sugerentes para futuras investigaciones.

Fernando UnzuetaOhio State University

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