term paper about spanish colonial period

Introduction to the Spanish Viceroyalties in the Americas

Juan Baptista Cuiris, image of Christ made with feathers, c. 1590-1600, 25.4 x 18.2 cm (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna)

“In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” These opening lines to a poem are frequently sung by schoolchildren across the United States to celebrate Columbus’s accidental landing on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola as he searched for passage to India. His voyage marked an important moment for both Europe and the Americas—expanding the known world on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean and ushering in an era of major transformations in the cultures and lives of people across the globe.

When the Spanish Crown learned of the promise of wealth offered by vast continents that had been previously unknown to Europeans, they sent forces to colonize the land, convert the Indigenous populations, and extract resources from their newly claimed territory. These new Spanish territories officially became known as viceroyalties, or lands ruled by viceroys who were second to—and a stand-in for—the Spanish king.

Girolamo Ruscelli, “Nveva Hispania tabvla nova,” engraved map of New Spain, 1599, 19 x 25 cm ( David Rumsey Historical Map Collection ). Note that at its height, the Viceroyalty of New Spain also included Central America, parts of the West Indies, the southwestern and central United States, Florida, and the Philippines.

Folding Screen with the Siege of Belgrade (front) and Hunting Scene (reverse), c. 1697-1701, Mexico, oil on wood, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, 229.9 x 275.8 cm (Brooklyn Museum)

The Viceroyalty of New Spain

Less than a decade after the Spanish conquistador (conqueror) Hernan Cortés and his men and Indigenous allies defeated the Mexica (Aztecs) at their capital city of Tenochtitlan in 1521, the first viceroyalty, New Spain, was officially created. Tenochtitlan was razed and then rebuilt as Mexico City, the capital of the viceroyalty. At its height, the viceroyalty of New Spain consisted of Mexico, much of Central America, parts of the West Indies, the southwestern and central United States, Florida, and the Philippines. The Manila Galleon trade connected the Philippines with Mexico, bringing goods such as folding screens, textiles, raw materials, and ceramics from around Asia to the American continent. Goods also flowed between the viceroyalty and Spain. Colonial Mexico’s cosmopolitanism was directly related to its central position within this network of goods and resources, as well as its multiethnic population. A biombo , or folding screen, in the Brooklyn Museum attests to this global network, with influences from Japanese screens, Mesoamerican shell-working traditions, and European prints and tapestries. Mexican independence from Spain was won in 1821.

The Viceroyalty of Peru

Lands governed by the Viceroyalty of Peru, c. 1650

The Viceroyalty of Peru was founded after Francisco Pizarro’s defeat of the Inka in 1534. Inspired by Cortés’s journey and conquest of Mexico, Pizarro had made his way south and inland, spurred on by the possibility of finding gold and other riches. Internal conflicts were destabilizing the Inka empire at the time, and these political rifts aided Pizarro in his overthrow. While the viceroyalty encompassed modern-day Peru, it also included much of the rest of South America (though the Portuguese gained control of what is today Brazil). Rather than build atop the Inka capital city of Cusco, the Spaniards decided to create a new capital city for Peru: Lima, which still serves as the country’s capital today.

In the eighteenth century, a burgeoning population, among other factors, led the Spanish to split the viceroyalty of Peru apart so that it could be governed more effectively. This move resulted in two new viceroyalties: New Granada and Río de la Plata. As in New Spain, independence movements here began in the early nineteenth century, with Peru achieving sovereignty in 1820.

Pictorial Otomí catechism (pictorial prayer book), 1775-1825, Mexico, watercolor on paper, 8 x 6 cm ( Princeton University Library )

Evangelization in the Spanish Americas

Soon after the military and political conquests of the Mexica (Aztecs) and Inka, European missionaries began arriving in the Americas to begin the spiritual conquests of Indigenous peoples. In New Spain, the order of the Franciscans landed first (in 1523 and 1524), establishing centers for conversion and schools for Indigenous youths in the areas surrounding Mexico City. They were followed by the Dominicans and Augustinians , and by the Jesuits later in the sixteenth century. In Peru, the Dominicans and Jesuits arrived early on during evangelization.

Convento,  San Agustín de Acolman, mid-16th century (photo:  Steven Zucker ,  CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

The spread of Christianity stimulated a massive religious building campaign across the Spanish Americas. One important type of religious structure was the convento .   Conventos were large complexes that typically included living quarters for friars, a large open-air atrium where mass conversions took place, and a single-nave church. In this early period, the lack of a shared language often hindered communication between the clergy and the people, so artworks played a crucial role in getting the message out to potential converts. Certain images and objects (including portable altars, atrial crosses , frescoes, illustrated catechisms or religious instruction books, prayer books, and processional sculpture) were crafted specifically to teach new, Indigenous Christians about Biblical narratives.

Aztec deities, Bernardino de Sahagún and collaborators, General History of the Things of New Spain , also called the Florentine Codex , vol. 1, 1575-1577, watercolor, paper, contemporary vellum Spanish binding, open (approx.): 32 x 43 cm, closed (approx.): 32 x 22 x 5 cm (Medicea Laurenziana Library, Florence, Italy)

This explosion of visual material created a need for artists. In the sixteenth century, the vast majority of artists and laborers were Indigenous, though we often do not have the specific names of those who created these works. At some of the conventos , missionaries established schools to train Indigenous boys in European artistic conventions. One of the most famous schools was at the convento of Santa Cruz in Tlatelolco in Mexico City, where the Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún, in collaboration with Indigenous artists, created the encyclopedic text known today as the Florentine Codex .

Church of Santo Domingo and Qorikancha, Cusco, Peru (photo: Håkan Svensson , CC BY-SA 3.0)

Strategies of Dominance in the Early Colonial Period

Spanish churches were often built on top of Indigenous temples and shrines, sometimes re-using stones for the new structure. A well-known example is the Church of Santo Domingo in Cusco, built atop the Inka Qorikancha (or Golden Enclosure). You can still see walls of the Qorikancha below the church.

Great Mosque of Córdoba, Córdoba, Spain, begun 786, cathedral added 16th century (photo: Toni Castillo Quero , CC BY-SA 2.0)

This practice of building on previous structures and reusing materials signaled Spanish dominance and power. It had already been a strategy used by Spaniards during the so-called “Reconquest,” or reconquista , of the Iberian (Spanish) Peninsula from its previous Muslim rulers. In southern Spain, for instance,  a church was built directly inside the Great Mosque of Córdoba during this period. The reconquista ended the same year Columbus landed in the Americas, and so it was on the minds of Spaniards as they lay claim to the lands, resources, and peoples there. Some sixteenth-century authors even referred to Mesoamerican religious structures as mosques, revealing  the pervasiveness of the Eurocentric conquest attitude they brought with them.

Throughout the sixteenth century, terrible epidemics and the cruel labor practices of the encomienda (Spanish forced labor) system resulted in mass casualties that devastated Indigenous populations throughout the Americas. Encomiendas established throughout these territories placed Indigenous peoples under the authority of Spaniards. While the goal of the system was to have Spanish lords educate and protect those entrusted to them, in reality it was closer to a form of enslavement. Millions of people died, and with these losses certain traditions were eradicated or significantly altered.

Title page from Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, The First New Chronicle and Good Government,  c. 1615 (The Royal Danish Library, Copenhagen)

Nevertheless, this chaotic time period also witnessed an incredible flourishing of artistic and architectural production that demonstrates the seismic shifts and cultural negotiations that were underway in the Americas. Despite being reduced in number, many Indigenous peoples adapted and transformed European visual vocabularies to suit their own needs and to help them navigate the new social order. In New Spain and the Andes, we have many surviving documents, lienzos , and other illustrations that reveal how Indigenous groups attempted to reclaim lands taken from them or to record historical genealogies to demonstrate their own elite heritage. One famous example is a 1200-page letter to the king of Spain written by Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala , an Indigenous Andean whose goal was to record the abuses the Indigenous population suffered at the hands of Spanish colonial administration. Guaman Poma also used the opportunity to highlight his own genealogy and claims to nobility.

Saint John the Evangelist , 16th century, featherwork (Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico City)

Talking about Viceregal Art

How do we talk about viceregal art more specifically? What terms do we use to describe this complex time period and geographic region? Scholars have used a variety of labels to describe the art and architecture of the Spanish viceroyalties, some of which are problematic because they position European art as being superior or better and viceregal art as derivative and inferior.

Some common terms that you might see are “colonial,” “viceregal,” “hybrid,” or “ tequitqui .” “Colonial” refers to the Spanish colonies, and is often used interchangeably with “viceregal.” However, some scholars prefer the term “colonial” because it highlights the process of colonization and occupation of the parts of the Americas by a foreign power. “Hybrid” and “ tequitqui” are two of many terms that are used to describe artworks that display the mixing or juxtaposition of Indigenous and European styles, subjects, or motifs. Yet these terms are also inadequate to a degree because they assume that hybridity is always visible and that European and Indigenous styles are always “pure.”

Applying terms used to characterize early modern European art (Renaissance, Baroque, or Neoclassical, for instance) can be similarly problematic. A colonial Latin American church or a painting might display several styles, with the result looking different from anything we might see in Spain, Italy, or France. A Mexican featherwork , for example, might borrow its subject from a Flemish print and display shading and modeling consistent with classicizing Renaissance painting, but it is made entirely of feathers—how do we categorize such an artwork?

It is important that we not view Spanish colonial art as completely breaking with the traditions of the pre-Hispanic past, as unoriginal, or as lacking great artists. The essays and videos found here reveal the innovation, adaptation, and negotiation of traditions from around the globe, and speak to the dynamic nature of the Americas in the early modern period.

Bibliography

Arts of the Spanish Americas, 1550–1850 on The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

Vistas: Visual Culture in Spanish America, 1520-1820 

Spanish Colonial and 19th century art at LACMA

The Garrett Mesoamerican Manuscript Collection at Princeton University Library

Girolamo Ruscelli’s “Nveva Hispania tabvla nova” map in the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection

The Florentine Codex at the World Digital Library

Juan Baptista Cuiris’s featherwork at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Learn more about the legacy of the Reconquest in Latin America and Columbus’ Landing and Erasing Native Resistance from Unsettling Journeys

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6 Central America under Spanish Colonial Rule

Stephen Webre, Professor Emeritus of History, Louisiana Tech University

• Published: 08 September 2021
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The Central American isthmus was under Spanish colonial rule for approximately three centuries ( ca. 1502–1821). Known interchangeably as the kingdom, audiencia, or captaincy-general of Guatemala, the region occupied territory that would later become the republics of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, plus the state of Chiapas, Mexico. Unlike New Spain and Peru, Central America did not possess great mineral wealth, but its location between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans made it an important strategic asset. As did other parts of Spain’s overseas empire, Central America presented challenges of governance and defense. During the Habsburg era (to 1700), the colonial state took shape organically, drawing upon existing peninsular models within a framework of collaboration between the monarchy and local allies, including colonial and indigenous elites and the Roman Catholic Church. This system was not elegant, but it worked as long as authorities in Spain were willing to accept a degree of corruption and inefficiency in public administration. Under the Bourbons (1700–1821), Spain’s new rulers undertook an ambitious program of reforms meant to correct the weaknesses of the old system, while promoting economic growth, strengthening defenses, and enhancing revenues. Judged by their own standards, the Bourbon Reforms registered some successes, but they also bred disaffection. The eventual cost became apparent when the traditional allegiances forged in the Habsburg era dissolved under the pressure of constant warfare, and especially the 1808 Napoleonic invasion of Spain, which precipitated the empire-wide independence crisis.

On a scale without precedent in its day, the Spanish Empire sought to unify under its rule a widely scattered assortment of Iberian settlements and native communities. Separated by forbidding terrain and vast expanses of ocean, these outposts of colonial rule were held together by a precarious web of legal traditions, ideological assumptions, and primitive technologies of communication and transportation. Reliance upon sailing vessels and handwritten correspondence made it difficult for colonial authorities to maintain effective supervision over their new possessions. 1 Over time an administrative structure emerged that adjusted adequately, if not brilliantly, to the demands of a worldwide empire. This institutional construct exhibited many characteristics of the modern nation-state then taking form in contemporary Europe. Like its metropolitan counterpart, its ability to acquire and defend territorial control, extract revenue, and secure monopolies over the administration of justice and exercise of violence was limited. It may not be far-fetched to apply the term “state” to the improvised collection of institutions and practices by which Spain sought to exercise domination in its global holdings, but, given the distance that separated its agents from the ultimate center of authority and the exploitative nature of the enterprise as a whole, “colonial state” may be more appropriate.

Early studies of Spanish colonial administration tended to focus on legal precepts and formal institutions. 2 In what might be called the “sociological” approach, more recent efforts have sought to examine actual human behavior in specific historical contexts. Considering the merits of both traditional and innovative approaches, historian John Lynch has suggested that the gap between the two may not be as great as it seems, arguing that “it may be that the term ‘colonial state’ sounds more impressive than ‘colonial institutions’, and we are simply studying the same thing under a different name.” 3 This chapter acknowledges the pertinence of Lynch’s suggestion. Although it opts to employ the more current terminology, it is heavily indebted to the work of scholars laboring in both traditions. 4

The traditional chronological frame of reference for discussions of the colonial era in Central America is the period between 1502 and 1821, that is, between the initial contact of European and Native American and the date conventionally cited to mark national independence from Spain. In geographical terms, colonial Central America typically refers to the area occupied by the modern republics of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, plus the Mexican state of Chiapas. Despite proximity and some similarity in historical experience, it is not generally understood to include Panama, which in the colonial era was more closely tied to Peru than to its northern neighbors. In studies of colonial Central America, Panama typically enters only when directly relevant to a larger issue, as does Belize, a former British colony sometimes thought of as Central American and sometimes as West Indian. 5

During the Spanish regime the area now called Central America was known as Guatemala and might be referred to as the “audiencia of Guatemala,” the “captaincy-general of Guatemala,” or the “kingdom of Guatemala.” Whatever the formal meaning of these terms may have been in the colonial era, writers since then have treated them as synonymous and interchangeable. The term “Guatemala” applied as well to the smaller territory that corresponded roughly to the modern republics of Guatemala and El Salvador combined. Guatemala was also the name applied to the largest and most important city in the region. The most populous and most culturally complex of the Central American provinces, Guatemala was also the richest in surviving historical documentation. 6 For that reason, it has been the most frequently studied by historians, anthropologists, geographers, and other specialists and it figures more prominently than its isthmian neighbors in the narrative and analysis that follow.

To begin, one might ask who the subjects of the colonial state in Central America were. In 1502, when his fourth voyage carried him along the isthmus’s sparsely settled Caribbean coast, the land that Christopher Columbus touched upon was already a cultural frontier. To the west and north, its Mesoamerican inhabitants were largely Mayas, but they included some Nahua-speakers as well. To the east and south were peoples of South American heritage. Whatever its origin, at the time of contact most of the region’s population dwelt in the interior highlands and along the ample Pacific coastal plain, a pattern that continued for much time to come. Estimates of the number of native inhabitants living in Central America at the moment of initial contact with Europeans are numerous and wide-ranging. Counts collected and analyzed by W. George Lovell and Christopher H. Lutz range from a high of perhaps 13,500,000, to a low of approximately 800,000. For their part Lovell and Lutz prefer a number in the vicinity of 5,000,000. 7 Such figures remain controversial, as seen, for example, in Juan Carlos Solórzano Fonseca’s defense of century-old estimates for Costa Rica in preference to more recent and higher numbers. 8

In terms of human resources (from the colonial state’s point of view, i.e., tax base and labor supply) the size of the region’s population is important to know, but also important are the rate and direction of demographic change and the social realities that lie behind the numbers. As in other Spanish American overseas possessions, the initial encounter was followed closely by a massive population decline with notable impact on the formation of colonial societies. Once again, precise data are difficult to come by. Lovell and Lutz propose a native population loss between contact and the mid-seventeenth century of as much as 80 to 90 percent, a figure consistent with estimates reported for other Spanish overseas possessions. 9 Most authorities attribute this hecatomb to the introduction of previously unknown Old World diseases, but frequently mentioned as contributing factors also are losses due to warfare, forced migration, and the impact of coerced labor. Some scholars report that as many as 500,000 Indians may have perished from Nicaragua alone as a result of capture and shipment to slave markets in Panama and Peru. This figure is widely contested, among others by Patrick S. Werner and Frederick W. Lange, who demonstrate convincingly that such a total would far exceed the transport capacity of the ships available in Pacific ports to carry human cargos of the size suggested. 10

The rapid decline of the native population during the first century of Spanish rule had economic and social effects. For one thing, it caused the abandonment of large expanses of previously productive agricultural land, which became available for grants to Spanish settlers. It also reduced the labor supply, prompting colonial authorities to promote measures for stricter control of remaining Indigenous communities. Meanwhile, Spanish landowners dedicated their new properties to labor-extensive activities, such as stock-raising and large-scale production of marketable commodities. These shifts accompanied what might be called a “biological revolution,” which among other things brought the introduction of new crops, such as wheat and sugar cane, and new domesticated animals, such as cattle, sheep, horses, mules, and chickens. 11 They also involved a complex scrambling of human bloodlines.

As the native population of Central America shrank, the nonnative population expanded, due to both natural increase and immigration by Spaniards and enslaved Africans. Mostly young unaccompanied males, Spanish newcomers sought companionship among Indigenous and Afro-descendant women. Children born of unions between Spaniards and Indians were known as mestizos, and the offspring of Spaniards and Africans were called mulatos . Spanish colonial authorities saw racially discriminatory policies as both appropriate and desirable, but, in a world in which miscegenation was normalized and widely practiced, the task of identifying individuals by race became more complicated with each passing generation. At one point imperial policymakers recognized and documented as many as sixty-four specific degrees of race mixture, but for practical purposes colonial speakers collapsed all these categories into a few general labels, such as casta and pardo . An ethnic label with a history peculiar to Central America is ladino . Like casta and pardo, ladino was and remains more a cultural designation than a biological one. In the early colonial era it meant simply an Indian who spoke Spanish, but over time it came to apply to any Westernized person—that is, to any person not unambiguously identifiable as either Spanish or Indigenous. 12

It is generally thought that native population reached its nadir and began to recover in the early seventeenth century, at which time demographic patterns familiar to later observers of Central America began to take definitive shape. Allowing for reporting errors remarked by Lovell and Lutz, a count dating from 1778 may offer a general glimpse of the isthmian population as it stood near the close of the colonial period. Of a total population for Central America of possibly 892,652, persons classified as Indians numbered 479,273, or about 54 percent. Although by far the largest component of the colonial population, the monarchy’s Indigenous subjects had evidently recovered only a fraction of the losses they had experienced in the more than two centuries since the conquest. The next most numerous category in the report was ladinos, who numbered 297,400, or about 31 percent, followed by Spaniards, whose numbers totaled 133,979, or 15 percent. 13

As informative as these numbers may appear, the reader should be aware that there are significant reporting gaps. For example, it would be good to know how many of the “Spaniards” appearing on the roll were peninsulars (Spaniards born in Spain), and how many were creoles (Spaniards born in the Americas). More interesting yet would be to know how many creoles were, in fact, not pure-blooded Europeans at all, but rather ladinos, who exploited possession of certain outward markers of elite status, such as light skin, education, or material wealth, to mask their humbler origins. 14 The absence of a separate count for enslaved persons, or for persons of African descent in general, may be evidence of the effectiveness of similar “whitening” strategies employed by those particular subaltern groups. Long marginalized, denied, or simply ignored in national historiographies, colonial Central America’s significant Afro-descendant population began to receive serious scholarly attention only in the late twentieth century. Since what might be called the “discovery” of African influence, important work has been done on all the Central American countries. 15 Even for Costa Rica, a country with a strong reputation for historical scholarship but also a deeply rooted national myth of “Whiteness,” scholars such as genealogist Mauricio Meléndez Obando and historian K. Russell Lohse have documented the extent to which even the most prominent of elite families numbered enslaved Africans among their ancestors. 16 Considering the 1778 census data in light of increased knowledge and understanding of the African experience in colonial Central America, it seems reasonable to imagine that by the final decades of the colonial period the isthmus’s Black and mulato population had been largely absorbed into the ladino category, or possibly even that of creole Spaniards. As to the Afro-descendant inhabitants of the Caribbean coast, it is unlikely that imperial authorities took them into account at all.

Colonial Cities

Among other things, instituting Spanish rule in Central America meant founding cities, which if successful became platforms for defense, administration, production, exchange, and distribution, activities essential to the formation and maintenance of the colonial state. Among the earliest cities to be founded were Panama City (1519); Granada and León, Nicaragua (both 1524); San Salvador and San Miguel, El Salvador (1525 and 1530); San Pedro Sula and Comayagua, Honduras (1536 and 1537); and Ciudad Real, Chiapas (1538), later known as San Cristóbal de Las Casas. Due to warfare, earthquakes, and other hazards, many of these newly established cities did not remain in their original locations. This was conspicuously the case of Santiago de Guatemala, which, despite repeated misfortunes, over time became Central America’s largest and most important urban center.

The conqueror Pedro de Alvarado established Santiago in 1524, choosing for a site Iximché, the principal city of his Kaqchikel Maya allies. The first Spanish inhabitants promptly abandoned the site, however, when their disillusioned hosts rose up against them. 17 In 1527, after roaming for three years throughout the central and western highlands, Alvarado’s followers finally resettled in the valley of Almolonga, located on the lower slopes of Agua Volcano near the Indigenous settlement later known as Ciudad Vieja. Disaster soon struck again, however. In 1541, torrential rains loosened rocks and earth on the volcano’s slopes, producing a massive landslide that destroyed Santiago de Guatemala, left many of its inhabitants dead or homeless, and induced the survivors to relocate themselves once again. This time the move was to a valley called Panchoy, where the new Santiago was constructed and where it remained, grew, and prospered until 1773, when a series of earthquakes left it so badly damaged that royal authorities ordered yet another removal, this time to the valley of La Ermita, approximately 45 kilometers from the remains of Santiago. 18 Named Nueva Guatemala de la Asunción, the new establishment eventually became the national capital known as Guatemala City. Many of Santiago’s inhabitants joined the exodus to the new city, but others sought opportunity elsewhere, especially in Quetzaltenango, a K’iche’ Maya town located in the western highlands. 19 Those who chose not to move stayed in place among the ruins of once-impressive baroque structures and worked to rebuild their lives and properties. 20 By the mid-twentieth century the old city gained new importance as the tourism center called Antigua Guatemala, formally recognized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as a World Heritage Site. 21

When it came to building a city, Renaissance-era Spaniards had a clear mental image of what one should look like. 22 Except in ports and mining centers, which tended to grow organically, streets in Spanish American cities were laid out perpendicularly, creating rectangular spaces to be distributed to settlers as solares (house sites) for residential use and the tending of household gardens and domestic animals. At the center of the grid was the plaza mayor (main square), an ample public arena for ceremonies, celebrations, markets, and recreational activities. 23 Encircling the plaza were the parish church, the casas reales (government house), and the cabildo (town hall), facilities whose presence emphasized the central space’s importance to colonial life. Nonetheless, studies of colonial Santiago residential patterns by David L. Jickling challenge the common assertion that elite householders gathered purposely around the plaza and its immediate vicinity. 24

If there was an accepted model for laying out a city, there was also a recognized scheme for governing one, and, as Helen Nader points out, any adult Castilian male would have been familiar with it. 25 With historic roots running back to the Middle Ages and perhaps even to the Roman era, the Spanish municipal council was known variously as the concejo or the ayuntamiento, but perhaps most often as the cabildo, a term that might refer to the body itself, to the building in which it met, or to any formal assembly of its members. As traditionally organized, a cabildo had two components, the justicia and the regimiento . Depending upon the size and importance of the municipality, the justicia consisted of either one or two alcaldes ordinarios (municipal magistrates) and was a court of first instance for civil and criminal matters arising within its jurisdiction. Once again varying with the size and importance of the municipality, the regimiento was made up of from four to twenty or more aldermen known as regidores, who were responsible for routine matters of municipal governance, such as public order; street maintenance; water supply; and oversight of prices, weights, and measures in local markets. 26

Alcaldes ordinarios were elected by the regimiento for one-year terms, but the process for choosing regidores varied by time and place. In smaller places, they might be elected, also for one-year terms, either by the outgoing aldermen or by the body of Spanish settlers. In some cities that over time grew in population, wealth, and importance, methods of filling vacant positions might change. In Santiago de Guatemala, for example, a major urban center for which archival records survive in abundance, by the middle of the sixteenth century the Spanish monarchy began to grant petitions for direct appointments for life. By the 1590s, municipal offices were being sold at public auction, again for the life of the purchaser. These innovations had the effect of consolidating a powerful and influential municipal aristocracy, but, as studies by Stephen Webre and José Manuel Santos Pérez have revealed, the closed, hereditary, creole landowning oligarchies described in established historiography did not exist, at least not everywhere. In Santiago throughout the city’s history, the municipal council was dominated by peninsula-born Spaniards, whose fortunes originated not in landholding but in trade, finance, transport, and similar activities. 27

Regardless of their specific ethnic origins, the native peoples of Central America had much in common. For example, they were all agriculturalists, dependent for their livelihoods on the production of domesticated plants and animals for both market and subsistence. For this reason, they tended to live not in densely nucleated settlements, as the Spanish did, but spread out through the countryside in proximity to their milpas (cultivated fields). Although rational from the Indigenous point of view, this preference poorly served the needs of imperial agents, whose task was to impose social control, tribute payment, and Christian belief on the monarchy’s newest subjects. Promoted by religious leaders such as Francisco Marroquín and Bartolomé de Las Casas, beginning in the 1540s the solution adopted was to relocate the rural population to permanent towns, known as congregaciones or reducciones . In implementing the new policy, Roman Catholic missionaries were assisted by royal magistrates and native community leaders. 28 Many of the inhabitants of the newly created towns adapted well to their environments, and their towns survived as majority Indigenous communities, while others either disappeared or transformed into centers of ladino population. 29

If urbanization promoted imperial rule by shaping Spanish settlement patterns, the congregation campaign did much the same for the native landscape. Like their Spanish and ladino counterparts, native towns were established as semiautonomous municipalities governed by cabildos composed of alcaldes ordinarios and regidores. Due to a paucity of records, these important bodies are little studied, but Kaqchikel historian Héctor Concohá has obtained valuable insight by probing the internal politics of his native town of San Juan Sacatepéquez. 30

The formation of reductions represented a major alteration in the traditional Indigenous way of life, one that, along with other major changes, native peoples did not always accept easily. Forms of resistance observed throughout the colonial period ranged from violent uprisings to such passive responses as flight to neighboring unsettled areas or clandestine preservation of precontact religious beliefs, rituals, and lines of community authority. Although significant episodes of armed resistance were not as frequent as one might imagine, historian Severo Martínez Peláez has convincingly challenged the commonly held misconception that in general Central American Indians accepted colonial domination peaceably. 31 On the other hand, colonial-era resistance movements cannot generally be described as revolutionary. Rebellions with religious content tended to fuse together elements of both European and native belief systems, and even those uprisings that occurred in the context of the independence movements of the early nineteenth century focused more on the pursuit of localized objectives than on sweeping social or political change. 32

Land and Labor

As in any agrarian society, land and labor were major issues in colonial Central America.

Due in part to native population decline during the sixteenth century, land was a relatively abundant resource throughout Central America, although some provinces offered more ready access to persons of modest means than did others. Easy availability of land in Costa Rica’s central valley, for example, has been advanced in support of that country’s myth of smallholding agrarian democracy, an argument critiqued by such scholars as Elizabeth Fonseca and Lowell Gudmundson. 33

Given the matter’s fundamental importance, the colonial state took an active interest in questions of land distribution. 34 To ensure that the people in the recently established Indigenous towns were able to feed themselves and meet their tribute obligations, new reduction villages, once they were formed, were assigned lands to be held in common. As part of Spanish settlement policy, non-Indian towns were granted lands as well. Some such grants were intended as ejidos, property held in common for use as pasturage and other collective needs. Other holdings served as propios (i.e., as sources of revenue for municipal governments). Both natives and Europeans had traditions of communal property holding, but Spaniards’ interest lay more in entrepreneurial ventures than in mere subsistence, so they sought private property as well. Individual title to land could be acquired by merced , an outright royal concession, or by composición , a transaction that involved payment of a fee to regularize a title that might otherwise be questionable. After the 1590s, as the Spanish monarchy experienced increasing financial difficulties, composition became the favored method of conveying title to significant tracts of land.

Some private ownership of land occurred in Indian pueblos also, but communal possession was by far more common. A good deal of land was held by lay religious brotherhoods known as cofradías, or confraternities, which employed much of it in stock-raising. Confraternity wealth served to finance cult activities associated with the organization’s patron saint and also for relief of members and their families in the event of illness, death, or other mishap. Indigenous patterns of land use seemed irrational to many Spaniards, who reported uncultivated tracts as abandoned in an effort to acquire them through composition. During the seventeenth century when the native population bottomed out, land may have seemed a surplus commodity, but later as Central America’s Indian communities began to experience a demographic revival, pressure on available resources grew as well, leading to frequent litigation over boundaries, titles, and other issues associated with land ownership. Records of such disputes can be valuable documentation for students of social history. 35

Historian Severo Martínez Peláez and other scholars have sought the origins of Central America’s characteristic patterns of unequal land distribution in the colonial period. Although extensive landed estates did exist, especially in the western highlands and along the Pacific coast, the typical pattern appears to have been less reminiscent of the giant haciendas of northern New Spain described by François Chevalier and better represented by the mixture of private and common, small, medium, and large holdings identified by William B. Taylor in colonial Oaxaca. 36 The so-called mestizo agrarian blockade proposed by Severo Martínez Peláez as one of the factors favoring the emergence of latifundia in colonial Central America appears to have little support in the documentary record. 37

In colonial Central America, land was of little use without the hands to work it. Spanish elites sought constantly for ways to access Indian labor at the lowest cost possible. 38 Even before the first European invaders entered the isthmian provinces, the Spanish monarchy had outlawed native slavery. Nonetheless, conquerors and settlers found pretexts to continue the practice, which remained common in the early years. A contemporary institution was the encomienda , under which specific Indigenous communities were assigned to favored Spaniards, who profited from their tribute payments and coerced labor. More than a labor institution, the encomienda was also a means for officials in Spain to reward loyal service and to establish the king’s authority, all at minimal expense to the royal treasury. In return for the material benefits received, encomenderos , as the beneficiaries of encomienda grants were called, were expected to provide military service, administer justice, and promote the Christianization of their charges. Technically, encomienda Indians were not slaves but rather free vassals of the monarch. On a daily basis, however, the difference between these two conditions may have been difficult for their objects to appreciate. Abuses were common and well documented.

Promoted by the influential Dominican friar and defender of native rights Bartolomé de Las Casas, the New Laws issued at Barcelona in 1542 intended a major reform of native labor systems in the Spanish American Empire. Indian slavery was definitively forbidden and all remaining enslaved Indigenous persons were ordered freed. Also, the labor obligations of encomienda Indians were terminated. To meet the continued demand for native labor, the colonial state instituted a system known as repartimiento (distribution), under which native communities were each required to provide a certain number of workers on a rotating basis. Public functionaries would then apportion labor to Spanish petitioners, presumably according to need. Repartimiento differed from encomienda in that it took work assignments out of private hands and also ended the ecomenderos’ monopoly claim to the available workforce. Also, the new system contained measures for the good treatment of draft laborers and required payment for work performed. In some colonies, such as New Spain, by the middle of the seventeenth century the repartimiento system gave way to free wage labor at least in agriculture, but in Central America it endured until the end of the colonial period, and in one form or another even beyond that.

Whenever issues concerning Indian labor were debated, Spanish settlers were quick to make the argument that Indians were “lazy,” and that they would not plant crops even for their own subsistence except under coercion. Allegedly to prevent widespread starvation, royal authorities in Guatemala instituted a new office known as the juez de milpas (overseer of planting), whose task it was to conduct inspections of Indigenous communities to ensure that maize production quotas were being met. 39 Apparently unique in Spanish America, the jueces de milpas were the objects of repeated controversy. Citing the burden placed on Indigenous leaders to fulfill quotas while providing hospitality to visiting officials and their entourages, critics denounced the post as abusive. The monarchy outlawed the practice at least ten times between 1581 and 1681. In the end, however, as a source of public employment for needy Spaniards it was too beneficial to be given up. 40

Institutions of Colonial Rule

The encomienda, congregation, and municipal institutions in general promoted the implantation of Spanish rule on a local level, but institutions with more extensive jurisdictions were needed as well. The outlines of the later territorial organization of Central America began to emerge as leaders of the conquest asserted claims to govern provinces that largely prefigured the modern republics. The first governor of Guatemala, for example, was the conqueror Pedro de Alvarado (1527–1541). In Nicaragua, Pedrarias Dávila (1527–1531) held command, and after him his son-in-law Rodrigo de Contreras (1534–1544). Possessed of gold and silver deposits considered significant at the time, Honduras was governed briefly by a royal appointee, Diego López de Salcedo (1525–1530), but soon found itself the object of competing Spanish ambitions. In 1539, Pedro de Alvarado surrendered his claim to Honduras to Francisco de Montejo, conqueror of Yucatan, in exchange for the latter’s interest in Chiapas. Meanwhile, Costa Rica was late to come under Spanish rule. When it finally did so in the 1560s, Juan Vázquez de Coronado asserted his family’s claim to the adelantazgo (hereditary governorship). Although more in form than in substance, the monarchy continued to recognize the Coronados’ right to the title for generations to come. 41

Early governors possessed ample powers, including the authority to make land grants and award encomiendas. The latter were particularly important in the political calculations of the early colony. 42 The provision of certain public services by individual encomenderos at Indigenous rather than royal expense helped to compensate for the colonial state’s inability to maintain an autonomous bureaucracy of adequate size, training, and material resources. Aware of the role their cooperation played in sustaining colonial rule, the conquest veterans, first settlers, and other Spaniards who made up early Central America’s dominant families repeatedly petitioned the monarchy for rewards and favors, including supplementary grants of income, appointments to remunerative public offices, and especially perpetual inheritance of encomiendas, an appeal that royal authorities consistently rejected. Wary of colonial ambition, the Castilian monarchy sought every opportunity to limit the political influence of local elites. During the sixteenth century, the monarchy implemented significant policy changes, but the fact is that the colonial state never possessed the human or material resources needed to establish unquestioned hegemony. Throughout the colonial period, for the state to perform its essential functions it remained dependent upon the voluntary collaboration of elites. 43

A major step in the effort to strengthen the monarchy’s grip on the new territories was the creation of royal tribunals known as audiencias . These bodies possessed executive, legislative, and judicial powers and were the supreme authorities in the districts they governed. Each audiencia consisted of a president and a varying number of oidores (judges). In order to insulate against excessive local elite influence, the monarchy drew audiencia personnel from the ranks of career civil servants, holders of university degrees, and only rarely of colonial birth. Like other officeholders in the Spanish Indies, presidents and oidores were all subject to both regular and extraordinary performance reviews, known, respectively, as residencias and visitas .

The first audiencia to be established in Spain’s overseas possessions was at Santo Domingo in 1511, followed by Mexico in 1528, and Panama in 1538. In 1542, a provision of the New Laws authorized two additional tribunals, one at Lima and one to govern Central America. Originally to be called the audiencia of Los Confines, the new Central American high court initially convened at Gracias a Dios, a mining center in western Honduras. 44 That location proved inconvenient, and in 1549 the audiencia moved its seat to Santiago de Guatemala, after which it became known as the audiencia of Guatemala. The body remained at Santiago until the earthquakes of 1773, when the colonial capital relocated to Guatemala City.

The Spanish monarchy recognized the growing importance of the audiencia presidency by assigning its occupant additional titles. In 1560, designation as governor-general of Guatemala acknowledged the president’s sweeping executive authority throughout the Central American provinces, and 1609 saw the addition of the military grade of captain-general. Therefore, by the early seventeenth century the chief colonial magistrate of Central America bore three lofty titles simultaneously and might be referred to by any or all of them. Despite the multiple honorifics, it was not possible for the audiencia president to attend personally to every matter that arose in Spanish Central America. To address that need, beginning in the 1540s the monarchy introduced a corps of district magistrates, known variously as governors, alcaldes mayores, or corregidores . 45

According to an administrative handbook compiled in the 1640s, at that time the audiencia of Guatemala was divided into four governorships, eight alcaldías mayores, and sixteen corregimientos. 46 In general, governors and alcaldes mayores received much higher salaries than corregidores, were appointed by the monarch, and were more likely to govern districts with significant resources, substantial non-Indian populations, or other distinguishing characteristics. By contrast, corregidores were usually assigned to heavily Indigenous areas. They were poorly paid, but, because they were named by the audiencia presidents rather than by authorities in Spain, their positions were more accessible to employment-seeking local elites, who pursued them energetically. Differences in pay and modes of appointment suggest a hierarchical relationship more apparent than real. In fact, there was no difference in the authority, responsibilities, or place in the chain of command of governors, alcaldes mayores, or corregidores.

A notable exception to the system described here was the jurisdiction known as the Corregimiento del Valle de Guatemala, which included the region immediately surrounding the city of Santiago. Governed on a rotating basis by the cabildo’s two alcaldes ordinarios, the Valle de Guatemala was in reality a complex of seven smaller districts, all called “valleys” as well. With approximately eighty Indigenous communities, when the city of Santiago itself was included the Valle was home in the late seventeenth century to perhaps as many as 100,000 residents of all social levels. The district was a major source of income and the municipality’s claim to it was frequently contested. On several occasions, colonial officials recommended that the arrangement be terminated, which was ultimately done in 1753. 47

Church and State

Intimately involved in constructing the colonial state was the Roman Catholic Church, whose institutional presence was felt from the beginning. Ecclesiastical authorities maintained their own bureaucracy parallel to, and frequently entangled with, that of civil government. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Spanish monarchy treated the Church as an ally essential to its imperial project, but by the closing decades of the colonial period royal officials came to see it more as rival than as partner. 48

The basic unit of church administration was the parish, known in missionary areas by the term doctrina . Parishes in turn were organized into dioceses, and each diocese was presided over by a bishop. Under a long-standing traditional arrangement known as the patronato real (royal patronage), bishops and other senior ecclesiastical personnel were nominated by the king and submitted for papal approval, which was rarely withheld. During the colonial period there were four dioceses in Central America. Beginning with León, Nicaragua (1531), these included Trujillo, Honduras (1531, transferred to Comayagua in 1571); Santiago de Guatemala (1534); and Ciudad Real, Chiapas (1538). Similar to what occurred in colonial civil government, these divisions foreshadowed modern national boundaries, although what eventually became the republic of El Salvador did not have its own bishop until 1842 and Costa Rica not until 1850, in both cases well after independence from Spain. Initially, all the Central American dioceses were suffragan to the archbishop of Mexico, a subordinate relationship that lasted until 1743, when the diocese of Guatemala was itself elevated to metropolitan (archdiocesan) status.

Parishes were administered by curas (pastors), who, depending upon circumstances, might be seculares (diocesan clergy) or religiosos (members of religious orders). The latter was more likely to be so in mission doctrinas, where authorities tended to favor the assignment of members of religious orders, whom they perceived to be more learned, better disciplined, and more devout than their secular counterparts. Although a number of religious orders were present in colonial Central America, only three were heavily involved in evangelization efforts. Most numerous were the Franciscans, who maintained mission settlements in the central Guatemalan highlands, Honduras, Nicaragua, and what is now El Salvador. Franciscan friars were the only missionaries active in Costa Rica. For their part, Dominican friars dominated the missions in Chiapas and northern Guatemala, especially in Verapaz, subject of a notable experiment in “peaceful” conquest conceived by Bartolomé de Las Casas. 49 Finally, the Order of Mercy controlled the western highlands of Guatemala and also maintained a significant presence in Honduras and Nicaragua. 50

Pastoral work was a departure for the order clergy, who in Europe were more accustomed to the contemplative routine of monastic life. Royal authorities anticipated that, once active evangelization was completed, the friars would be reassigned and their doctrinas secularized (i.e., transferred to diocesan control). Because order clergy operated under the direction of their own superiors outside episcopal supervision, both civil and ecclesiastical authorities considered successful completion of the secularization process to be vital to strengthening the colonial state. As was to be expected, missionary clergy resisted secularization, but at the same time secular priests had little interest in pastoral service in poor rural communities far from the comforts of city life and for which, in addition, they lacked the needed skills in Indigenous languages. As a consequence, the religious orders remained dominant in many areas until after independence, when they were suppressed by anticlerical Liberal regimes.

Apart from missionary work, the Church fulfilled many other purposes of the colonial state, providing divine reassurance in times of personal misfortune as well as times of epidemics, earthquakes, and other calamities. Clergy also drew upon the Church’s moral authority to urge proper behavior and reinforce ideological conformity. Such tasks may be associated in popular imagination with the Holy Office of the Inquisition, but that body had no tribunal in Central America and local agents typically concerned themselves with such routine matters as complaints of sexual misconduct by clergymen and inspections of arriving vessels for contraband reading material. 51 Prosecutions for witchcraft did occur, and historian Martha Few has made good use of Mexico City tribunal records to study Central American women’s involvement in illicit ritual activities. 52

The Church’s substantial material wealth reflected its lofty status in colonial society. Sources of ecclesiastical revenue included tithes, fees collected for the administration of certain sacraments, pious bequests and donations, and income from rental property and moneylending. These assets helped to finance ostentatious public display in the form of churches and other ecclesiastical buildings, elaborate altarpieces, paintings, sculptures, and other church furnishings. 53 Not everyone was impressed. For example, in his travel account published in London in 1648, the English-born Dominican friar Thomas Gage, who resided in Central America for several years during the 1620s and 1630s, wrote disdainfully of what he called “fat friars” and nuns who led lives of great luxury in the convents surrounded by private servants and even slaves. 54 Having converted to Protestantism following his return to England, Gage was scarcely an impartial observer, but in years to come, Spanish reformers would echo some of his concerns, citing as obstacles to economic expansion the so-called dead hand of the Church, the number of priests and nuns maintained without productive employment, and the frequency in the liturgical calendar of designated feast days, on which work was not performed and business not transacted. Agents of a financially pressed monarchy, Spanish officials coveted what they perceived as copious assets held or administered in one way or another by the Church. These included the cajas de comunidad (community chests) maintained by Indian pueblos, the rents due on funds invested by cofradías, and the principal represented by capellanías (private trust funds established for the long-term support of family members who chose to pursue clerical careers) invested with monasteries, convents, and other ecclesiastical institutions. When toward the close of the colonial period, the monarchy attempted to liquidate and take control of these assets, the result was resentment, resistance, and evasion. 55

It was one thing to appraise ecclesiastical wealth in terms of its supposed impact on the colonial economy or its potential to close gaps in the imperial budget but quite another to appreciate the implications of the Church’s connectedness to colonial subjects at all levels of society. For example, prosopographical research by historian Christophe Belaubre has shown in detail the ties binding elite creole families to the Roman Catholic clergy in Central America and the pecuniary interests involved. 56 Linkages existed to humbler sectors as well. The fact is that Church wealth was not employed solely in ostentatious display but also in a number of socially beneficial ways that might be seen to serve the ends of the colonial state as well. These included mortgage lending and other financial services, education at all levels, hospitals, and assistance to the poor. Because access to these benefits was concentrated in the most important urban centers, there were serious inequities in their distribution, but the Church nonetheless maintained a crucial presence even in the most remote parishes. According to Adriaan Cornelis van Oss, “in the colonial period no policy could be executed, no census carried out, no tax collected, without the intervention of the parish priest. To the Spanish colonial mind, the rural clergy provided the difference between order and anarchy in the countryside.” 57

Colonial Space and Imperial Space

Referring to colonial Argentina and Chile, historian Margarita Gascón has proposed a useful distinction between “colonial space” and “imperial space.” Events that occurred in colonial space would be known to local residents and possibly to local authorities, but rarely more than that. By contrast, when something happened in imperial space, it was likely to draw the attention of important regional interests and even of royal officials in Spain itself. 58 Occurrences in such an environment were most likely to attract metropolitan scrutiny if they appeared to threaten a colony’s production of wealth or its role in strategic imperial defense.

A peripheral possession without the massive mineral endowments of New Spain or Peru, Central America might seem to belong permanently to colonial space. Even so, there were some places whose location or other circumstances situated them for better or worse in the realm of imperial concern. Among these, trans-isthmian transit routes and their terminal ports ranked highly. For example, the Lake Nicaragua–San Juan River corridor provided European rivals to Spanish dominion with a possible alternative to Panama as a passage for crossing from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast. Situated on the lake itself, Granada was ideally placed to link a Pacific-slope hinterland to the Atlantic world via connections to Caribbean ports, such as Matina, Portobelo, or Cartagena de Indias. 59 Other important and potentially vulnerable ports on the Atlantic side were Trujillo, Puerto Caballos, and Santo Tomás de Castilla, and on the Pacific coast Caldera, El Realejo, and Sonsonate. 60 Sensitive locations other than ports included the Honduran silver-mining district surrounding Tegucigalpa, whose modest output nonetheless played an important role in providing specie to buoy the local economy and help the colonial state cover its obligations. 61 Finally, there were the still-unconquered territories of Itzá and Lacandón in the Guatemalan Petén, Taguzgalpa and Tologralpa (known collectively as the Mosquito Coast) on the Caribbean littorals of Honduras and Nicaragua, and Talamanca in Costa Rica. 62

From the beginning, Spanish settlers sought ways to insert themselves into imperial space, which offered greater prospects of influence and reward. Multiple efforts to find what Murdo J. MacLeod, following historians of Atlantic commerce Pierre and Huguette Chaunu, calls a produit moteur , that is, a product able to link profitably to external markets, foreshadowed the emergence in Central America of a monocultural export economy. Characterized by cycles of boom and bust and extremely sensitive to outside forces, such an economy would dominate Central America until at least the late twentieth century, when stronger tendencies toward diversification came to prevail.

In a now-classic work first published in 1973, MacLeod outlines a series of alternating cycles of prosperity and economic collapse. According to this scheme, Spanish economic activity during the first half century of the colonial experience (1520s to 1570s) amounted essentially to pillage. Easily extracted by exploiting plentiful Indigenous labor, marketable commodities such as gold, slaves, and cacao promised healthy returns with little investment. By the 1570s, the pillage economy reached its limits, due among other causes to severe epidemics, which accelerated the process of native population decline. During the recessionary cycle that followed (1580s–1630s), government officials promoted efforts to revive the economy, including experimentation with new products and construction of port facilities. Such activities yielded little benefit, however, and by the 1630s the colony was sinking into a prolonged depression, which, according to MacLeod endured for the next five decades (1630s–1680s). Among the outcomes of this economic contraction was the abandonment of urban centers by impoverished Spaniards and ladinos, an increase in the countryside of non-Indigenous small holding, and a more pronounced ethnic bifurcation, in which the region west of Santiago de Guatemala became more firmly identified as Indian, while that stretch of Central American territory lying to the east experienced an increased loosening of native cultural identity. Finally, a weakening of regional unity occurred, as shifts in market demand redirected economic activity toward new opportunities. For example, Costa Rica found itself drawn to Panama, while Chiapas’s production found more profitable opportunities in markets in New Spain. 63

MacLeod’s secular depression represents an important intervention in the lengthy debate over a “general crisis of the seventeenth century.” 64 Although colonial Central America has not attracted as much scholarly attention as European examples, or even such major Spanish American centers as Mexico or Peru, the depression thesis has been challenged in particular by historians Miles L. Wortman, who sees greater signs of intercolonial trade and circulation of metal money than MacLeod does, and Jorge Luján Muñoz, who stresses the documentary evidence for the robust local economy of the Valle de Guatemala. Although Wortman accepts the existence of a Central American crisis, he dates it much later in the century than MacLeod and presents it more in political than economic terms. 65

Whatever conclusion scholars may ultimately reach about the existence, precise nature, and chronological and geographic dimensions of a “general crisis,” it should not be difficult to agree that a crisis and a depression are not necessarily the same thing. On the other hand, the documentary record does offer abundant evidence that in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the colonial state in Central America was experiencing at least a “crisis of authority.” 66 As noted previously, the colonial state depended for what effectiveness it possessed upon the collaboration of local elites, who provided necessary personnel for the discharge of public responsibilities and also contributed financially to sustain essential state functions for which there was no room in the royal budget. 67 As necessary as this partnership may have been, it had its disadvantages from the monarchy’s point of view. Colonial elites expected something in return for their services and what royal authorities were most able to offer were abundant opportunities for graft, whether through the abuse of public office or of more general practices that incentivized disregard for the law. 68 The result was that Central America was notoriously difficult to govern and that royal authorities were frequently the objects of disrespect, as evidenced among other things by the 1688 assassination attempt against an unpopular oidor. In an effort to exert greater control, between 1671 and 1702 officials in Spain ordered four visitas generales to investigate allegations of public corruption. None of these inquiries yielded useful results and the last one ended when the visitador was driven from the province.

Bourbon Central America

A serious attempt to reorganize the colonial state began in 1700. In that year, King Charles II died without issue and was replaced on the throne by his cousin, Philip V. The change marked the end of the Spanish Habsburg line and the arrival in power of the French Bourbons. Like his grandfather, King Louis XIV of France, the new Spanish monarch was an advocate of royal absolutism, and he saw much need for improvement in a state apparatus that he and his imported ministers considered corrupt and inefficient. In response, Philip launched an ambitious series of policy changes that continued under his successors, especially King Charles III (1759–1788). Known as the Bourbon Reforms, these measures sought to promote economic expansion, professionalize the bureaucracy, and strengthen imperial defenses. More than anything, however, they aimed to increase revenue and consolidate royal authority. In Central America, this meant the abandonment of familiar practices in favor of new impositions by a reinvigorated colonial state. 69

A thorough redesign of imperial administration would have been beyond the means of the Habsburg monarchy. Throughout the eighteenth century, however, the Bourbons enjoyed a booming colonial economy, due primarily to indigo, for which demand was growing in England and other North Atlantic textile-production centers. The newfound prosperity was welcome, but it had its drawbacks. For example, it depended heavily on trade with Great Britain, with which Spain was frequently at war and with which, in any case, Spanish commercial regulations prohibited commerce. Not only did the indigo trade appear to promote smuggling, but also it encouraged regional and social resentments. Salvadoran producers complained of exploitation by Guatemalan merchants, who controlled credit, marketing, and transport, and the latter feared displacement by a new wave of peninsular immigrants, among them the powerful Aycinena family. 70

In addition to their financial good fortune, Bourbon administrators proved to be resourceful and demanding as they identified new sources of revenue and appropriated old ones. One early target was the Roman Catholic Church, whose wealth and power modernizing bureaucrats saw as obstacles to the consolidation of an absolutist state. Measures adopted to assert civil control of Church assets brought in additional income, but they also inspired disaffection, as did reforms adopted to impose order, accountability, and equity on the collection of taxes. One unpopular innovation was the establishment of estancos (state monopolies) over certain commodities, among them tobacco and aguardiente (an inexpensive intoxicating beverage). 71 Under this system, the monopoly determined where, by whom, and at what price these items of general consumption could be produced or sold. Such restrictions were offensive to interests at all levels of colonial society, including to creole elites, who resented the award of lucrative monopoly concessions to peninsulars in preference to American-born Spaniards. Rejection of the estancos could even turn violent, as happened in 1786 when opposition to the aguardiente monopoly provoked a riot in Quetzaltenango. 72

Although raised at some political cost, new revenues served to fund the expansion of the colony’s administrative infrastructure. Major new positions included the intendancies, introduced in Central America in 1786. Modeled on a French institution that dated to the previous century, intendants possessed broad authority at the provincial level, were generously compensated, and, to the annoyance of job-seeking creoles, tended to be recruited from peninsular ranks. With the exception of Guatemala, which continued to be governed by the captain-general, the reform divided Central America into four intendancy districts: Chiapas; El Salvador, separated from Guatemala for the first time; Honduras; and Nicaragua, which now included the formerly separate Costa Rica. The intendancy system was introduced too late in the colonial period to evaluate its effectiveness. Salvadoran elites were likely pleased by the new dispensation, which recognized them as a separate jurisdiction for the first time, but Costa Ricans, who found their province now subordinated to Nicaragua, may well have felt otherwise. 73

Most of the new revenue went to an expensive reform of provincial defenses. This project called for construction of fortifications at strategic locations, notably Omoa on the Caribbean cost of Honduras, and also for a reorganization of the colonial militia. Existing companies were increased in strength, issued quality weapons, and taught proper military discipline, and experienced peninsular officers were brought into staff command and training positions. Creole elites may have grumbled at their initial exclusion from the higher ranks, but when authorities in Spain failed to rotate in new peninsular personnel on a regular basis, American-born Spaniards came to dominate senior positions anyway. In any case, the reformed militia appeared to demonstrate its worth in 1782 when it drove the British from their positions on the Mosquito Coast, thus eliminating the single greatest threat to colonial Central America’s territorial integrity. 74

Historians differ in their assessments of the Bourbon Reforms. In terms of the monarchy’s specific objectives, the changes may have been successful, at least temporarily, and the unlikely triumph of Spanish arms over the British might seem to prove the point. But the reforms also altered colonial life in ways obnoxious not only to creole elites but also to Indian and ladino masses. The true test would come in 1808 with the imperial crisis precipitated by Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion of Spain. As historian Miles L. Wortman summarizes what happened next, “When Spain itself came under attack in the nineteenth century, the fissure became a fracture, the center gave out, the colony became independent localities, and order was destroyed.” 75

1. Sylvia Sellers-García , Distance and Documents at the Spanish Empire’s Periphery (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014) , is an admirable history of the production, distribution, and storage of written records in colonial Central America.

2. For example, C. H. Haring , The Spanish Empire in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1947) ; Mario Góngora , El estado en el derecho indiano: época de fundación, 1492–1570 (Santiago de Chile: Universidad de Chile, 1951) .

3. John Lynch , “The Institutional Framework of Colonial Spanish America,” Journal of Latin American Studies 24 (1992) .

4. Murdo J. MacLeod’s suggested label “primitive nation state” seems to pass over the “colonial” nature of the phenomenon, but his little-known essay, “The Primitive Nation State, Delegation of Functions, and Results: Some Examples from Early Colonial Central America,” in Essays in the Political, Economic and Social History of Colonial Latin America , ed. Karen Spalding , 53–68 (Newark: University of Delaware, Latin American Studies Program, 1982) , is a thorough and insightful analysis of the colonial state in the specific case of Central America, what it was, and how it functioned.

5. Belize’s Spanish-colonial experience has only recently received serious scholarly attention. See Mavis C. Campbell , Becoming Belize: A History of an Outpost of Empire Searching for Identity, 1528–1823 (Kingston: University of West Indies Press, 2011 . On colonial Panama, see Christopher Ward , Imperial Panama: Commerce and Conflict in Isthmian America, 1550–1800 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993) .

The principal documentary repositories for studying colonial Central America are the Archivo General de Centroamérica, Guatemala City, and the Archivo General de Indias, Seville.

7. W. George Lovell and Christopher H. Lutz , Demography and Empire: A Guide to the Population History of Spanish Central America, 1500–1821 , Dellplain Latin American Studies, no. 33 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995), 5 .

8. Juan Carlos Solórzano Fonseca , “La población indígena de Costa Rica en el siglo XVI al momento del contacto con los europeos,” Anuario de Estudios Centroamericanos 43 (2017): 313–345 .

Lovell and Lutz, Demography and Empire , 6.

10. Patrick S. Werner and Frederick W. Lange , “Un nuevo punto de vista de la exportación de esclavos en Nicaragua durante el siglo XVI,” Cuadernos de Antropología 30, no. 1 (2020): 1–22 .

11. For Central America, this process is described in detail by Iraís Alquicira Escartín , “Redes de abasto y sociedad en el reino de Guatemala durante el siglo XVII” (PhD diss., Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores, Unidad Peninsular, Mérida, Yucatán, México, 2017) .

12. “Ladino” is often treated as synonymous with “mestizo,” but the matter is more complex than that. See, e.g., Julian Pitt-Rivers , “Mestizo or Ladino?” Race: The Journal of the Institute of Race Relations 10, no. 4 (April 1969): 463–477 ; and John M. Watanabe , “Racing to the Top: Descent Ideologies and Why Ladinos Never Meant to be Mestizos in Colonial Guatemala,” Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies 11, no. 3 (November 2016): 305–322 .

Lovell and Lutz, Demography and Empire , 105–106.

14. A provocative study argues that ethnic reassignment could function downward as well, as creole families that settled in rural areas came to live as, and be considered to be, ladinos. See Isabel Rodas Núñez , De españoles a ladinos: Cambio social y relaciones de parentesco en el altiplano central colonial guatemalteco (Guatemala City, Guatemala: Ediciones ICAPI, 2004) .

15. For a useful guide to some of the most important contributions, see the essays in Lowell K. Gudmundson and Justin Wolfe , eds., Blacks and Blackness in Central America: Between Race and Place (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010 . Particularly strong on shifting identities is Paul Lokken , “From Black to Ladino: People of African Descent, Mestizaje, and Racial Hierarchy in Rural Colonial Guatemala, 1600–1730” (PhD diss., University of Florida, 2000) .

16. Tatiana Lobo and Mauricio Meléndez Obando , Negros y blancos, todo mezclado (San José: Editorial Universidad de Costa Rica, 1997) ; K. Russell Lohse , Africans into Creoles: Slavery, Ethnicity, and Identity in Colonial Costa Rica (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2014) .

17. The standard account of the early history of Guatemala City is Christopher H. Lutz , Santiago de Guatemala, 1541–1773: City, Caste, and the Colonial Experience (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994) .

18. The most comprehensive treatment of the destruction and relocation of the colonial capital is Christophe Belaubre , “El traslado de la capital del reino de Guatemala, 1773–1779: conflictos de poder y juegos sociales,” Revista de Historia (Heredia, Costa Rica) no. 57–58 (Jan.–Dec.2008): 23–61 . See also María Cristina Zilbermann de Luján , Aspectos socioeconómicos del traslado de la ciudad de Guatemala, 1773–1783 (Guatemala City: Academia de Geografía e Historia de Guatemala, 1987) .

19. On the emergence of Quetzaltenango from K’iche’ pueblo to Guatemala’s western metropolis, see especially Jorge González Alzate , La experiencia colonial y transición a la independencia en el occidente de Guatemala: Quetzaltenango: de pueblo indígena a ciudad multiétnica, 1520–1825 (Mérida: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2015) .

20. Mario René Johnston Aguilar , “De Santiago de Guatemala a la Villa de La Antigua Guatemala: Transformación y vida social ante una crisis” (licenciatura thesis, Universidad del Valle de Guatemala, 1997) .

Other colonial Central American cities recognized by UNESCO are Panamá Viejo and León Viejo, Nicaragua.

22. Dan Stanislawsky , “Early Spanish Town Planning in the New World,” Geographical Review 37, no. 1 (Jan. 1947): 94–107 .

23. For a vivid account of daily life at colonial Santiago’s central market, see Alquicira Escartín, “Redes de abasto,” 152–198. Also, Luis Luján Muñoz , La plaza mayor de Santiago de Guatemala hacia 1678 , Publicación Especial, no. 3 (Guatemala City, Guatemala: Instituto de Antropología e Historia, 1969 .

24. David L. Jickling , “Los vecinos de Santiago de Guatemala en 1604,” Mesoamérica 3, no. 3 (1982): 145–231 .

25. Nader , Liberty in Absolutist Spain: The Habsburg Sale of Towns, 1516–1700 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 38–45 .

26. Ernesto Chinchilla Aguilar , El ayuntamiento colonial de la ciudad de Guatemala (Guatemala City, Guatemala: Editorial Universitaria, 1960) ; Stephen Webre , “The Social and Economic Bases of Cabildo Membership in Seventeenth-Century Santiago de Guatemala” (PhD diss., Tulane University, 1980) .

27. Webre, “Social and Economic Bases” ; José Manuel Santos Pérez , Elites, poder local y regimen colonial: el cabildo y los regidores de Santiago de Guatemala, 1700–1787 (Cádiz, Spain: Servicio de Publicaciones, Universidad de Cádiz, 1999) .

28. Carmelo Sáenz de Santa María , “La reducción a poblados en el siglo XVI en Guatemala,” Anuario de Estudios Americanos 29 (1972): 187–228 .

29. Sidney D. Markman , “Extinción, fosilización y transformación de los ‘pueblos de indios’ del reino de Guatemala,” Mesoamérica 8, no. 14 (December 1987): 407–427 . According to Patrick S. Werner , “Un bosquejo de la dinámica de la población de Nicaragua, 1548–1685,” Nicaraguan Academic Journal 5, no. 1 (July 2011): 81–101 , of 115 native villages counted in Nicaragua in 1581 only 64 still existed a century later.

30. Héctor Aurelio Concohá Chet , “El concepto de montañés entre los kaqchikeles de San Juan Sacatepéquez, 1524–1700,” in La época colonial en Guatemala: Estudios de historia cultural y social , ed. Robinson A. Herrera and Stephen Webre , 19–41 (Guatemala City, Guatemala: Editorial Universitaria, 2013) .

31. Martínez Peláez , Motines de indios: La violencia colonial en Centroamérica y Chiapas (Puebla, Mexico: Universidad Autónoma, Centro de Investigaciones Históricas y Sociales, 1983) .

32. See, for example, Kevin Gosner , Soldiers of the Virgin: The Moral Economy of a Colonial Maya Rebellion (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1992) ; Aaron Pollack , Levantamiento k’iche’ en Totonicapán, 1820: Los lugares de las políticas subalternas (Guatemala City: Asociación para el Avance de las Ciencias Sociales en Guatemala, 2008) .

33. Elizabeth Fonseca , Costa Rica colonial: La tierra y el hombre , 2nd ed. (San José, Costa Rica: Editorial Universitaria Centroamericana, 1984) ; Lowell Gudmundson , Costa Rica before Coffee: Society and Economy on the Eve of the Export Boom (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1986) .

34. Despite the issue’s importance, there is no solid general history of land tenure for colonial Central America as a whole. A good body of work exists for Guatemala, including Francisco de Solano , Tierra y sociedad en el reino de Guatemala (Guatemala City, Guatemala: Editorial Universitaria, 1977) ; David McCreery , Rural Guatemala, 1760–1940 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994) ; and J. C. Cambranes , Ruch’ojinem qalewal: 500 años de lucha por la tierra: Estudios sobre propiedad rural y reforma agraria en Guatemala (Guatemala: Editorial Cholsamaj, 2004) . Also useful are various contributions to the country’s rich tradition of community studies, such as Michele Bertrand , Terre et société coloniale: Les communautés maya-quichés de la region de Rabinal du XVIe au XIXe siècle (Mexico City: Centre d’Etudes Mexicaines et Centraméricaines, 1987) ; W. George Lovell , Conquest and Survival in Colonial Guatemala: A Historical Geography of the Cuchumatán Highlands, 1500–1821 , 3rd ed. (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005) ; and Daniele Pompejano , Popoyá-Petapa: historia de un poblado maya, siglos XVI–XIX (Guatemala: Editorial Universitaria, 2009) . Nothing comparable exists for other Central American countries, but two essential studies are Fonseca, Costa Rica colonial , and Germán Romero Vargas , Las estructuras sociales de Nicaragua en el siglo XVIII (Managua: Editorial Vanguardia, 1987) .

35. A valuable guide to land records surviving for colonial Guatemala is Gustavo Palma Murga , ed., Indice general del Archivo del Extinguido Juzgado Privativo de Tierras depositado en la Escribanía de Cámara del Supremo Gobierno de la República de Guatemala (Mexico City, Mexico: Ediciones de la Casa Chata, 1991) .

36. François Chevalier , Land and Society in Colonial Mexico: The Great Haciendas , ed., trans. Alvis Eustin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963) ; William B. Taylor , Landlord and Peasant in Colonial Oaxaca (Stanford, CA: Stanford UniversityPress, 1972) .

37. Severo Martínez Peláez , La patria del criollo: An Interpretation of Colonial Guatemala , ed. W. George Lovell and Christopher Lutz , trans. Susan M. Neve , 92–96 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009) .

38. William L. Sherman , Forced Native Labor in Sixteenth-Century Central America (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979) .

39. Manuel Rubio Sánchez , Los jueces reformadores de milpas en Centroamérica (Guatemala City: Academia de Geografía e Historia de Guatemala, 1982) .

40. Stephen Webre , “El trabajo forzoso de indígenas en la política colonial guatemalteca (siglo XVII),” Anuario de Estudios Centroamericanos 13, no. 2 (1987): 49–61 .

41. D. L. Molinari , “Los distritos institucionales en Centro América, 1522–1563”, in Contribuciones para el estudio de la historia de América: homenaje al doctor Emilio Ravignani (Buenos Aires, Argentina: Peuser, 1941), 571–604 .

42. Wendy Kramer , Encomienda Politics in Early Colonial Guatemala,1524–1544: Dividing the Spoils , Dellplain Latin American Studies, no. 31 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994) .

MacLeod, “Primitive Nation State,” emphasizes the extent to which the Habsburg monarchy relied upon elite collaboration to ensure performance of essential state functions.

The name signified that the new audiencia lay between and included Chiapas and Nicaragua; in other words, it was too far removed from the audiencias of Mexico City and Panama to be adequately served by either of those courts.

45. Carlos Molina Argüello , “Gobernaciones, alcaldías mayores y corregimientos en el reino de Guatemala,” Anuario de Estudios Americanos 17 (1960): 105–132 .

46. Juan Diez de la Calle , Memorial, y noticias sacras, y reales del imperio de las Indias occidentales (Madrid: 1646) .

47. Beatriz Suñe Blanco , “El Corregimiento del Valle de Guatemala: una institución española para el control de la población indígena,” Revista de la Universidad Complutense 28, no. 117 (1979): 153–168 ; Jorge Luján Muñoz , Agricultura, mercado y sociedad en el corregimiento del Valle de Guatemala, 1670–80 (Guatemala City: Dirección de Investigación, Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, 1988), 20–23 .

48. Studies on church topics are plentiful. Representative of some of the best work in the field are Adriaan C. van Oss ,” Catholic Colonialism: A Parish History of Guatemala, 1524–1821” (PhD diss., University of Texas, 1982) ; José María Tojeira , Panorama histórico de la iglesia en Honduras (Tegucigalpa: Centro de Documentación de Honduras, 1986) ; Carmela Velásquez Bonilla , El mundo de la piedad colonial: Ritos y mentalidad religiosa en la diócesis de Nicaragua y Costa Rica, siglos XVII y XVIII (San José, Costa Rica: Editorial Universidad Estatal a Distancia, 2016) .

49. For a detailed account of early Dominican activities in Verapaz, see André Saint-Lu , La Vera Paz: Esprit évangélique et colonisation (Paris: Centre des Recherches Hispaniques, Institut des Études Hispaniques, 1968) .

50. Anne C. Collins , “La misión mercedaria y la conquista espiritual del occidente de Guatemala,” in La sociedad colonial en Guatemala: Estudios locales y regionales , ed. Stephen Webre , 1–31 (Antigua Guatemala: Centro de Investigaciones Regionales de Mesoamérica, 1989) ; Víctor C. Cruz Reyes , El convento mercedario de las minas de Tegucigalpa, 1650–1830 (Tegucigalpa: Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia, 1989) ; Nancy J. Black , The Frontier Mission and Social Transformation in Western Honduras: The Order of Our Lady of Mercy, 1525–1773 (Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1995) .

51. Ernesto Chinchilla Aguilar , La Inquisición en Guatemala (Guatemala City, Guatemala: Editorial Universitaria, 1953) .

52. Martha Few , Women Who Live Evil Lives: Gender, Religion, and the Politics of Power in Colonial Guatemala, 1650–1750 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003) .

53. An innovative study by Brianna Leavitt-Alcántara , Alone at the Altar: Single Women and Devotion in Guatemala, 1670–1870 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018) , reveals the role played by widows and spinsters of all social levels in financing Church activities.

54. Thomas Gage , Thomas Gage’s Travels in the New World , ed. J. Eric   S. Thompson , 188–191 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1958) .

55. For a detailed account of one ecclesiastical institution’s financial activities, see Christophe Belaubre , “Lugar del poder y poder del lugar: el convento de la Concepción en la capital del reino de Guatemala, siglo XVIII,” in La época colonial en Guatemala: Estudios de historia cultural y social , ed. Robinson A. Herrra and Stephen Webre , 133–168 (Guatemala City, Guatemala: Editoria Universitaria, 2013) .

56. Christophe Belaubre , Élus de Dieu et élus de monde dans le royaume de Guatemala, 1753–1808: Église, familles de pouvoir et réformateurs bourbons (Paris: Harmattan, 2012) .

Van Oss, “Catholic Colonialism,” 99.

58. Margarita Gascón , Periferias imperiales y fronteras coloniales en Hispanoamérica (Buenos Aires, Argentina: Editorial Dunken, 2011), 9–10 .

59. Carlos Meléndez Chaverri , “Historia más antigua de la ciudad de Granada en Nicaragua y de su fase de desarrollo como puerto del Caribe, 1524–1685,” Revista del Archivo Nacional (San José) 63 (1994): 111–137 ; David Radell , “Exploration and Commerce on Lake Nicaragua and the Río San Juan, 1524–1800,” Journal of Inter-American Studies and World Affairs 12 (1970): 107–125 .

60. Taylor E. Mack , “Ephemeral Hinterlands and the Historical Geography of Trujillo, Honduras, 1525–1950” (PhD diss., Louisiana State University, 1997) ; Elizet Payne Iglesias , El puerto de Trujillo, un viaje hacia su melancólico abandono (Tegucigalpa, Honduras: Editorial Guaymuras, 2007) ; David R. Radell and James J. Parsons , “Realejo: A Forgotten Colonial Port and Shipbuilding Center in Nicaragua,” Hispanic American Historical Review 52, no. 2 (May 1971): 295–312 .

61. Linda A. Newson , “Silver Mining in Colonial Honduras, Revista de Historia de América no. 97 (January–June 1984): 45–76 .

62. Grant D. Jones , Maya Resistance to Spanish Rule: Time and History on a Colonial Frontier (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1990) ; Jan de Vos , La paz de Dios y del rey: La conquista de la selva lacandona, 1525–1821 , 2nd ed. (Mexico City, Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1988) ; Lawrence H. Feldman , trans., ed., Lost Shores and Forgotten Peoples: Spanish Explorations in the South East Maya Lowlands (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000) ; Troy S. Floyd , The Anglo-Spanish Struggle for Mosquitia (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press,1967) .

63. Murdo J. MacLeod , Spanish Central America: A Socioeconomic History, 1520–1720 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973) . For a thoughtful critique of the east–west division thesis, see Christopher H. Lutz and W. George Lovell , “Core and Periphery in Colonial Guatemala,” in Guatemalan Indians and the State, 1540–1988 , ed. Carol A. Smith , 35–51 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990) .

64. Essential early arguments may be found in Trevor Aston , ed., Crisis in Europe, 1560–1660 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967) . American Historical Review 113, no. 4 (2008) devoted an entire number to more recent contributions to the debate. Among other places, Latin America receives attention in John Lynch , Spain Under the Habsburgs , 2 vols. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1965–1969) ; Herbert S. Klein and John J. TePaske , “The Seventeenth-Century Crisis in New Spain: Myth or Reality,” Past and Present 90, no.1 (1981): 116–135 ; and Ruggiero Romano , Coyunturas opuestas: La crisis del siglo XVII en Europa e Hispanoamérica (Mexico City, Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1993) . Woodrow Borah , New Spain’s Century of Depression , IberoAmericana, no. 35 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951) antedates the discussion but is clearly relevant to it.

65. Miles L. Wortman , Government and Society in Central America,1680–1840 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), esp. 91–107 ; Luján Muñoz, Agricultura, mercado y sociedad .

66. Stephen Webre , “La crisis de autoridad en el siglo XVII tardío: Centroamérica bajo la presidencia de don Jacinto de Barrios Leal, 1688–1695,” Revista de Historia (Heredia, C.R.) no. 27 (January–June, 1993): 9–28 .

67. Stephen Webre , “Defense, Economy, and Politics in Seventeenth-Century Nicaragua: Don Fernando Francisco de Escobedo and the Fortification of the San Juan River, 1672–1673,” Jahrbuch für Geschichte Lateinamerikas 44 (2007): 93–110 , describes a personal tour of Honduras and Nicaragua undertaken by a captain-general in an effort to convince local elites to contribute to the cost of a fort to defend the city of Granada from a repeat of the pirate attacks of 1665 and 1670.

On the payment of indultos (fines or bribes, depending upon one’s point of view) to excuse criminal conduct, see MacLeod, “Primitive Nation State,” 57–58.

69. For good overviews of the Bourbon Reforms, see Wilbur Eugene Meneray , “The Kingdom of Guatemala during the Reign of Charles III, 1759–1788” (PhD diss., University of North Carolina, 1975) ; Wortman, Government and Society , esp. 129–156; and the essays collected in Jordana Dym and Christophe Belaubre , eds., Politics, Economy, and Society in Bourbon Central America, 1759–1821 (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2006) .

70. José Antonio Fernández Molina , “Colouring the World in Blue: The Indigo Boom and the Central American Market, 1750–1810” (PhD diss., University of Texas, 1992) . On late colonial Central America’s elite family networks, see Richmond F. Brown , Juan Fermín de Aycinena: Central American Colonial Entrepreneur, 1729–1796 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997) ; Marta Elena Casaus Arzú , Guatemala: Linaje y racismo (San José, Costa Rica: FLACSO, 1992) ; Diana Balmori , Stuart F. Voss , and Miles L. Wortman , Notable Family Networks in Latin America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984) .

71. Jorge Luján Muñoz , “El establecimiento del estanco del tabaco en el reino de Guatemala,” Mesoamérica 22, no. 41 (June 2001): 99–136 ; Jesús Rico Aldave , La renta del tabaco en Costa Rica, 1766–1860 (San José, Costa Rica: Editorial Universidad Estatal a Distancia, 2014) .

72. Alvis E. Dunn , “Aguardiente and Identity: The Holy Week Riot of 1786 in Quezaltenango, Guatemala” (PhD diss., University of North Carolina, 1999) .

73. Héctor Humberto Samayoa Guevara , Implantación del régimen de intendencias en el reino de Guatemala (Guatemala City, Guatemala: Editorial del Ministerio de Educación Pública “José de Pineda Ibarra,” 1960) .

74. Ana Margarita Gómez , “’Al servicio de las armas’: The Bourbon Army of Late Colonial Guatemala, 1762–1821” (PhD diss., University of Minnesota) ; Aarón Arguedas , “The Kingdom of Guatemala Under the Military Reform, 1755–1808” (PhD diss., Texas Christian University, 2006) ; Manuel Claro Delgado , Ejército y sociedad en Centroamérica en el siglo XVIII (Madrid, Spain: Ministerio de Defensa, 2010) .

Wortman, Government and Society , 156.

Further Reading

Brown, Richmond F.   Juan Fermín de Aycinena: Central American Colonial Entrepreneur, 1729–1796 . Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997 .

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Dym, Jordana , and Christophe Belaubre , eds. Politics, Economy, and Society in Bourbon Central America, 1759–1821 . Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2006 .

Feldman, Lawrence H. , trans. and ed. Lost Shores and Forgotten Peoples: Spanish Explorations in the South East Maya Lowlands . Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000 .

Few, Martha.   Women Who Live Evil Lives: Gender, Religion, and the Politics of Power in Colonial Guatemala, 1650–1750 . Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003 .

Floyd, Troy S.   The Anglo-Spanish Struggle for Mosquitia . Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1967 .

Gage, Thomas.   Thomas Gage’s Travels in the New World . Edited by J. Eric Thompson . Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1958 . (Originally published in 1648.)

Gudmundson, Lowell K. , and Justin Wolfe , eds. Blacks and Blackness in Central America: Between Race and Place . Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010 .

Lohse, K. Russell.   Africans into Creoles: Slavery, Ethnicity, and Identity in Colonial Costa Rica . Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2014 .

Lovell, W. George.   Conquest and Survival in Colonial Guatemala: A Historical Geography of the Cuchumatán Highlands, 1500–1821 . 3rd ed. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005 .

Lutz, Christopher H.   Santiago de Guatemala, 1541–1773: City, Caste, and the Colonial Experience . Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994 .

MacLeod, Murdo J.   Spanish Central America: A Socioeconomic History, 1520–1720 . Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973 .

Martínez Peláez, Severo.   La patria del criollo: An Interpretation of Colonial Guatemala . Edited by W. George Lovell and Christopher H. Lutz . Translated by Susan M. Neve . Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009 .

Sellers-García, Sylvia.   Distance and Documents at the Spanish Empire’s Periphery . Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014 .

Sherman, William L.   Forced Native Labor in Sixteenth-Century Central America . Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979 .

Wortman, Miles L.   Government and Society in Central America, 1680–1840 . New York: Columbia University Press, 1982 .

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José Rizal (1861–1896)

• First Online: 26 March 2017

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• Syed Farid Alatas 3  

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Rizal was a thinker and nationalist during the final days of the Spanish colonial period in the Philippines. He lived a short life but was an exceptionally productive thinker, unmatched by anyone in Southeast Asia, perhaps even Asia. The construction of a social theory from Rizal’s works can be founded on three aspects of his substantive concerns. Firstly, we have his views on the nature and conditions of colonial society. Secondly, there is Rizal’s critique of colonial knowledge of the Philippines. Thirdly, there is his discussion on the meaning and requirements for emancipation.

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José Rizal, ‘The Truth for All’, Political and Historical Writings (Manila: National Historical Institute, 1963), 37.

José Rizal, The Lost Eden ( Noli me Tangere ), Leon Ma. Guerrro, trans. (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1961). 19.a.

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de Morga, Historical Events of the Philippine Islands , xxx.

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de Morga, Historical Events of the Philippine Islands , 134 n. 1.

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‘A monument more enduring than bronze’.

Ferdinand Blumentritt, ‘Prologue’, in Antonio de Morga, Historical Events of the Philippine Islands by Dr Antonio de Morga, Published in Mexico in 1609, recently brought to light and annotated by Jose Rizal, preceded by a prologue by Dr Ferdinand Blumentritt , Writings of Jose Rizal Volume VI (Manila: National Historical Institute, 1890/1962), viii.

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Syed Hussein Alatas, The Myth of the Lazy Native: A Study of the Image of the Malays, Filipinos and Javanese from the 16th to the 20th Century and its Function in the Ideology of Colonial Capitalism (London: Frank Cass, 1977), 125.

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Alatas, S.F. (2017). José Rizal (1861–1896). In: Sociological Theory Beyond the Canon. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-41134-1_6

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Philippines Under Spanish Rule, 1571-1898

Introduction, general overviews.

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• The New World Order and Social Consequences
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Philippines Under Spanish Rule, 1571-1898 by Edward R. Slack LAST REVIEWED: 30 June 2014 LAST MODIFIED: 30 June 2014 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199766581-0164

Miguel López de Legazpi’s (b. 1502–d. 1572) conquest of Manila in 1571 ushered in a 327-year epoch of Castilian rule in the Philippine Islands, but his actions also created unintended historical by-products that made the undertaking dissimilar to any other colony in the Spanish empire. Most notable were that the archipelago was located in Asia, it consisted of many islands inhabited by a variety of Malay and Austronesian peoples, and Chinese cultural and economic influences, which had been developing since at least the Tang dynasty, competed with Castilian/Mexican. Manila became both a battleground and mixing pot for Asian, Malay/Austronesian, and Iberian/Mexican peoples, religious beliefs, political institutions, technologies, and cultivated crops and domesticated animals, to name but a few of the exchanges that occurred over the three centuries of Spanish dominion. Before the word “globalization” became a ubiquitous catchphrase in the late 20th century, the Manila Galleon, Amoy, Malay, and Portuguese trade routes converged on Manila, uniting Europe, the Americas, East/South/Southeast Asia, and Africa through maritime commerce across the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans in the late 16th century. From that time, traditional scholarship on the Philippines tended to be Iberian-centered narratives flowing unidirectionally from Madrid/Cadíz to Mexico City/Acapulco to Manila and presenting nationally biased and commodity-centered analyses, penned by academics in Spain and Mexico. Beginning in the early 20th century, scholars from the United States in various disciplines began writing their own interpretations of the colonial period that preceded the half-century of American occupation. Filipino social scientists have entered the fray since the 1920s, but exponentially more so following independence in 1946, contributing an important indigenous perspective that had been absent from previous erudition. Despite this centuries-old body of literature, the era of Spanish colonialism is, relatively speaking, an understudied field of academic inquiry. This bibliography is an attempt to frame the 1571–1898 era on a more globally comparative canvas, highlighting the cultural exchanges systematically linking the greater Manila region, China, and New Spain/Mexico, and to accentuate recent trends in scholarship while simultaneously acknowledging classic works from earlier periods.

Since the islands of the archipelago were never unified before the Spanish arrived, and even after three centuries many of them still displayed autonomous tendencies (especially the Muslim islands of Mindanao and the Sulus), the geographical scope of broad surveys on this era is essentially limited to the island of Luzon and the Visayas. Centered on Manila, Castilian power in the Philippines can be explained as a series of concentric circles of weakening influence. A common thread running through the books in this section are gratuitous examinations of the initial conquest, various civil and religious administrative practices, the process of Hispanization, indigenous reactions against exploitative policies, the co-optation of local elites into the power structure, financial and economic matters, security concerns (both foreign and domestic), and Chinese immigration and trade. Early works, epitomized in Zúñiga 1966 , are simply chronological storytelling from the Spanish point of view. The second phase of general histories is more analytical (benefiting from ethnographic and anthropological approaches), and the overviews are penned by American-educated Filipino intelligentsia. Benitez 1929 and Zaide 1949 exemplify the attempt to add pre-Hispanic indigenous and Asian influences to the discussion, coinciding with a more objectively critical evaluation of Castilian colonialism. The third and present phase builds upon this foundation and re-centers the focus on Filipino experiences and cultural practices that either resisted or blended with Hispanic, Chinese, and American cultural assimilation strategies. Cushner 1977 , with its synoptic style, reveals an empathetic understanding of Philippine culture and its history. The multivolume works in Roces 1977 and Punongboyan, et al. 1998 present multifaceted snapshots of Filipino history, with its people on center stage. Abinales and Amoroso 2005 , a welcome addition to the genre, contextualizes more recent events into the longue durée of the archipelago’s history.

Abinales, Patricio N., and Donna J. Amoroso. State and Society in the Philippines . New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005.

Abinales and Amoroso follow the complicated trajectory of Philippine history from pre-Hispanic times to the turn of the 21st century. Written for both students and scholars, the book blends textbook facts with sophisticated analysis. Although most of the book is dedicated to examining the legacy of US colonial and post-colonial relations on Philippine politics, economics, and society, it provides adequate coverage on a wide range of topics.

Benitez, Conrado. History of the Philippines: Economic, Social, Political . Boston: Ginn, 1929.

The author of this massive (472 page) volume dedicated to Philippine history was the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of the Philippines. The book contains an enormous amount of information from prehistory, through the Spanish colonial era (the bulk of its contents) to the early period of US occupation. Although rather dated and dry by today’s standards, it is nevertheless an authoritative work for its time.

Cushner, Nicholas P. Spain in the Philippines: From Conquest to Revolution . Quezon City, Philippines: Ateneo de Manila University, 1977.

The best English-language monograph available on the history of Spanish imperialism in the Philippines. Cushner’s book condenses the entire spectrum of Castile’s economic, religious, political, and social program into just over 200 pages of narrative. Especially enlightening are the chapters that discuss the exploitative practices of forced tributes and labor, and colonial trade and finance.

Punongboyan, Raymundo, and Prescillano Zamora, et al. Kasaysayan: The Story of the Philippine People . 10 vols. Manila, Philippines: Asia Publishing, 1998.

A solid Filipino-centered study that in many ways mirrors the structure and organization of Roces 1977 two decades earlier. The result of a Philippine-American joint venture between A–Z Marketing and Readers’ Digest, each volume contains a collection of essays penned by a myriad of respected academics.

Roces, Alfredo R., ed. Filipino Heritage: The Making of a Nation . 10 vols. Manila, Philippines: Lahang Pilipino, 1977.

A very detailed and nationalistic ten-volume work that encompasses the long arc of history from pre-Hispanic times through the Marcos era. The strengths of this encyclopedic approach are the numerous articles written by renowned scholars and an amazing variety of illustrations that include rare documents, paintings, drawings, and maps.

Zaide, Gregorio F. The Philippines since Pre-Spanish Times . Manila, Philippines: R. P. Garcia, 1949.

A hefty tome close to 500 pages in length; the prolific and esteemed Filipino historian Gregorio Zaide organized an excellent survey. Zaide spends the first fifth of his work excavating Asian influences in the archipelago prior to Magellan’s arrival. The remainder of the book evaluates a panorama of Spanish colonial policies, international and regional conflicts, the Galleon trade, and wars with Muslim sultanates in Mindanao and the Sulu Islands.

Zúñiga, Joaquín Martínez de. An Historical Overview of the Philippine Islands . Manila, Philippines: Filipiniana Book Guild, 1966.

Originally published in 1803. The first few chapters (1–6) describe the conquest of the islands, while the next thirty evaluate in chronological order the major achievements and noteworthy events during the administrations of each governor-general. The final chapters cover Britain’s occupation of Manila from 1762 through1764 and the guerilla tactics of Simon de Anday Salazar (1701–1776) that kept the English from conquering Luzon, and ends with the city’s restoration to Spanish control.

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Life in the Spanish Colonies

Written by: Mark Christensen, Assumption College

By the end of this section, you will:.

• Explain causes of the Columbian Exchange and its effect on Europe and the Americas during the period after 1492
• Explain how the growth of the Spanish Empire in North America shaped the development of social and economic structures over time
• Explain how and why European and Native American perspectives of others developed and changed in the period

Suggested Sequencing

This Narrative should be assigned to students after the First Contacts Narrative. Connections can be drawn between this Narrative and the Las Casas on the Destruction of the Indies, 1552 Primary Source.

The reliance of Spain on the cooperation, tribute, and labor of Native Americans and Africans drastically shaped life in colonial Spanish America. Daily life was a complex combination of compliance and rebellion, order and disorder, affluence and poverty. On the one hand, Spaniards relied on Native Americans for labor, tribute, and assistance in governing the many Native American towns. On the other hand, many Native Americans realized the benefits of accommodating the Spaniards to maintain traditional ways of life. In short, cooperation served the interests of both parties, although it was negotiated daily.

Upon their arrival in the New World, Spaniards constructed their colonies and cities upon or alongside established Native American communities such as the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, on the site that later became Mexico City. To establish political and economic control over their new colonies, the Spaniards created two “republics”: the República de Españoles and the República de Indios . They and their enslaved Africans (and even free Africans) were in the first, and Native Americans were in the second. Although both republics fell under the purview of Spanish law, they operated semi-autonomously, with each established town having its own town council. For example, Mexico City had both a Spanish and a Native American town council.

At its height, Tenochtitlan was one of the largest cities in the world, with a population of up to 200,000. After the conquest of the Aztec empire, the Spanish appropriated this floating city as their capital. Note the flag of Imperial Spain at the top left of the island city.

The town councils governed the daily affairs of each town and its inhabitants in each respective republic. Councils in Native American towns were run by Native American officers, often those who already held positions of power. For example, the Maya ruler in most preexisting Maya towns became the governor of the colonial town council. The Native American nobility in each town filled other local government positions. In short, the establishment of the republics, their towns, and their respective town councils allowed the Native Americans a great deal of autonomy and gave the original Native American elite a way to maintain their positions of authority in daily life. The Spanish relied heavily on these Native American elites not only to maintain order in the towns but also to redirect their systems of tribute into the hands of the Spaniards and assist in the establishment of Catholicism in their towns.

As subjects of Spain, Native Americans had various daily responsibilities. As Christians, they were to attend services and send their children to daily catechism classes. They also paid various religious fees and taxes designed to support the Church in the Spanish colonies. Local priests and officers of the Inquisition (a Roman Catholic tribunal established to investigate and suppress heresy) maintained spiritual order and orthodoxy among all inhabitants of the colonies. In addition, Native Americans had labor and tribute quotas to fill. Such duties provided many opportunities for confrontation and discontent, and the local Native American elite adjudicated many such situations through the town council. Indeed, the archives are full of petitions by Native American councils against corrupt priests and Spanish officials and complaints against excessive tribute quotas. Yet the council likewise mediated local affairs, including land disputes, bills of sale, and the filling of town positions. It even meted out punishments for wrongdoing. In many ways, the town councils in the República de Indios allowed Native Americans to continue governing Native Americans.

To govern and tax the Native Americans in the early decades of colonization, the Spanish relied on the encomienda , a grant of native labor and tribute given to Spanish conquistadors and settlers. Abuse and distrust of the system led to its gradual and sometimes incomplete phasing out, with control over Native American tribute and labor reverting to the crown, which tried to control corrupt colonial officials.

Tribute varied according to region and era but included mainly goods Spaniards could ship back to Spain for profit or sell on the local or regional market. Products presented as tribute included maize from Culhuacan, silk from the Mixteca Alta region, honey from Yucatan, pearls from the Caribbean, gold from Columbia, and even cattle from Argentina. After the initial years of colonization, Spaniards in central Mexico organized Native American labor around the repartimiento , or “allotment,” system. The repartimiento required those between the ages of eighteen and fifty years to give service in a variety of projects, from laboring in a Spaniard’s field to participating in large construction projects. The Native Americans were to receive payment for their labors, but it was often insufficient or withheld. In South America, labor was organized through the mita, an Incan system in which adult Native Americans were drafted for extended periods. For example, the silver mines of Potosí required the labor of thousands of Andean laborers, who were drafted from towns hundreds of miles away and required to serve one year of every seven. Eventually, the decline in the Native American population and difficulties with the forced-labor system led to the development of wage labor.

The rich silver deposits of the Cerro Rico mountain in Potosi, in present-day Bolivia, supplied Spain with immense wealth in the sixteenth century. The Spanish appropriated the Incan system of labor tribute known as the mita to ensure a constant source of labor in the mines.

Although Native American tribute and labor served as the linchpin of colonial society, Africans also contributed to the daily life of the Spanish colonies. In general, Spaniards employed native labor whenever possible. However, where the supply was insufficient, they purchased African slaves to work in the more profitable industries such as mining and sugar. For example, after the decimation of the native population in the Caribbean, Spaniards brought thousands of enslaved people from West Africa to work the islands’ sugarcane fields. This drastically altered the Caribbean’s population demographics. Not all enslaved Africans worked in the mines or sugar plantations. In the cities and large towns, they were rented out and served in other domestic roles, including as wet nurses and maids. Africans also learned the skilled trades of their owners and became proficient tailors, blacksmiths, and artisans.

Because Spanish law allowed an enslaved person to purchase his or her own freedom, Spain’s colonies boasted a sizeable portion of free blacks who engaged in myriad trades; freed slaves became sailors, merchants, and even slave owners. Many joined militias and defended thousands of miles of coastline along the Spanish colonies against pirates – another common element of life in the colonies. They served in return for a salary, social advancement, and tax exemption. Moreover, free Africans formed their own Catholic brotherhoods – common among Spaniards and Native Americans – that supported an African-Christian worldview while providing monetary support for members by funding funerals and celebrations and even serving as banks.

Spanish cities and the activities within them modeled those found in Europe. Like their counterparts in Spain, the capitals of Mexico City and Lima housed universities, cathedrals, exquisite homes, central courthouses, and exclusive shopping. Cards, music, books, plays, bullfights, and parties occupied the time of the elite. Poorer citizens also partook in such activities but on a smaller scale, enjoying local ballads, cockfights, and town gatherings on feast days. The elite dined on wheat bread, olive oil, cured meats, and wine, while commoners ate maize tortillas, manioc, chilies, turkeys, and small dogs, and drank the local indigenous intoxicant. Cities boasted the most refinement and Spanish influence, whereas the countryside was denigrated for its overwhelming “Indian” feel.

Throughout the colonial period, sexual relations between different people from the Americas, Europe, and Africa created a growing mixed-race population known as the castas . Disregarded as a minor inconvenience at first, the castas eventually threatened the social hierarchy. The Spanish sought to maintain themselves at the top and keep Native Americans and Africans at the bottom, whereas the castas were allowed a place somewhere in the middle. In daily life, however, people were often racially categorized by how well they spoke Spanish, how they dressed, what food they ate, or their social circle of acquaintances. As a result, in practice, the hierarchy allowed for some flexibility.

Castas paintings from the mid-1700s document the cultural blending seen in Spanish colonies. Do these images support the assertion that there was a degree of social mobility in the Spanish colonies? Why or why not?

Perhaps this flexibility best reflects life in the Spanish colonies. It consisted of specific obligations, religious institutions, and social hierarchies, to be sure. Yet Native Americans, Africans, and Spaniards negotiated their own experiences, from conformity to resistance, within these limits. Most lived somewhere between the two extremes, doing their best to adapt their traditional ways of life to a diverse colonial world.

Review Questions

1. Why did the Spanish build their colonies alongside Native American communities such as the Tenochtitlan?

• To capitalize on preexisting cities and power structures
• To show respect for the Native American towns and villages
• As a way to collaborate with the Native Americans and the African slaves
• As a means to extract even more natural resources from the Native Americans

2. Under Spanish law, Native Americans were required to

• attend church services and pay religious fees and taxes to support their conversion
• share their Native American culture with the Spanish to create a coherent community
• move their homes to Spanish-approved communities
• marry Spaniards and support their families by working

3. The Native Americans were required to submit to Spanish law, but

• many were able to preserve their culture while accommodating Spanish norms
• most resorted to outright revolt to resist new impositions
• many abandoned their culture to fully embrace the Spanish way of life
• few were able to understand the new culture and therefore were punished

4. The main purpose of the encomienda system was to

• establish a racial hierarchy for social situations
• alleviate the disputes that occurred between Native Americans and Spaniards
• govern and tax the Native American communities
• create a tolerant community with multiple religions and ways of governing

5. In practice, the encomienda system created a

• forced labor system to support plantation-based agriculture and mining
• labor system whereby Native Americans voluntarily paid tribute to their Spanish conquistadors
• collaborative labor system that encouraged Native Americans and Spaniards to work together
• labor system that paid Native Americans for their labor on large Spanish construction projects

6. A result of the Native Americans’ susceptibility to European disease was

• the importation of African slaves for labor purposes
• the hostile resistance of Native Americans to Spanish conquest
• the harvesting of high-caloric and diverse food stuffs for the European population
• the rapid evolution of a capitalist system in Europe

7. The Spanish law permitting a slave to purchase freedom allowed for

• a strict racial hierarchy in which African slaves were consistently at the bottom
• opportunities for free blacks to become sailors, militiamen, and blacksmiths
• additional conflicts between slaves and Spaniards
• the establishment of a Catholic church that excluded non-Spanish people

8. In practice, the castas system was

• very strict and rigid
• fluid, to a certain degree
• precisely articulated
• based entirely on bloodline

9. The social hierarchy created by Spanish settlers and Native American people resulted in

• the encomienda system
• the repartimiento system
• the castas system
• the cabildo system

Free Response Questions

• Explain how the Spanish relied on existing social structures to maintain order in their colonies.
• Explain why social structure in the Spanish colonies could be considered both rigid and flexible.

AP Practice Questions

An oil painting from 1777 entitled Las castas mexicanas (The Mexican Castes).

1. The image provided most likely represents

• the enslavement of Native Americans by colonizers in the Americas
• the dynamic social hierarchy in Spanish colonies
• the system of forced labor created to efficiently extract precious mineral resources
• Spanish reliance on Native Americans for political and economic advancement

2. The image provided most likely represents

Primary Sources

Bartolomé de Las Casas Describes the Exploitation of Indigenous Peoples: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/ushistory1os/chapter/primary-source-bartolome-de-las-casas-describes-the-exploitation-of-indigenous-peoples-1542/

Suggested Resources

Boyer, Richard, and Geoffrey Spurling. Colonial Lives: Documents on Latin American History, 1550-1850 . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Elliott, J.H. Imperial Spain: 1469-1716 . New York: Penguin, 2002.

Kamen, Henry. Empire: How Spain Became a World Power, 1492-1763 . New York: Harper, 2004.

Restall, Matthew. Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Schwartz, Stuart B. Victors and Vanquished: Spanish and Nahua Views of the Conquest of Mexico . Boston: Bedford, 2000.

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Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness

In our resource history is presented through a series of narratives, primary sources, and point-counterpoint debates that invites students to participate in the ongoing conversation about the American experiment.

Working with Spanish Colonial Records and Archives: Reflections and Practicalities

Oona thommes paredes.

H aving recently completed several months of archival research on the early Spanish colonial period in Mindanao, I thought it would be useful to share with other potential researchers and students the practical and personal issues I encountered during that time, with the objective of making their turn less disorientating and hopefully more productive.

When my archival research project was still in preparation, I had turned to older, more experienced colleagues (Philippinists and Americanists) for advice, and they were quite generous with their time in discussing my project and in offering encouragement. However, I was unable to gather much information in terms of the practicalities involved. This was due in part to every project being unique in scope and requirements, and the fact that many of these colleagues had not been to these particular archives in recent years. Archival research is also such an individual and rather introspective enterprise that, in a sense, nothing but the doing can truly prepare you for it. Nonetheless, the dearth of practical advice made the prospect of archival research seem unnecessarily daunting, and the prospect of walking into Spanish archives downright intimidating. In fact, when I first arrived in Spain, I was still so nervous even after completing the application for my research permit that I postponed picking it up for a full week.

This would not be relevant except that in every archive I worked in, the staff commented that I was the first researcher on the Philippines they had seen in a long time. In the case of the two religious archives, they told me it had been many years since anyone had expressed an interest in their collections. Reflecting on my own experience, I would wager that this apparent lack of interest is not, in fact, due to a lack of interest, or even a lack of funds, but due to the sheer intimidation that new researchers must feel when they ponder dealing with Spanish archives. I have written this article with that situation in mind, in the hopes that by providing some practical nuts-and-bolts knowledge that everyone can use at the outset, others will have a more realistic idea of what to expect, and more new researchers will be willing to make that journey.

While this article is geared specifically to those interested in the history of the Philippines, the information presented here will be relevant to any researcher who may need to delve into the Spanish archives, which cover a rather wide geographical range. In the course of my own research on Mindanao, for example, I encountered documents referring not only to the usual suspects (places we know the Spaniards had been, such as the Americas, and also Guam, Maluku and the rest of what is now Indonesia), but also to Thailand, Vietnam, Burma, China, Japan, India, other Pacific islands, and even Thibet. The Spanish archives are therefore relevant not only to studies of Spain’s former possessions and nautical haunts, but also to broader Southeast Asian and Asian studies. 1

My particular project involved dissertation research that focused on religious conversion, missionary activity, and armed conflict in northeast Mindanao in the 16 th and 17 th centuries. It specifically required me to collect data from materials archived in the United States and Spain. The peculiarities of these individual collections will be explored further below; for now let us begin with the archival researcher’s most essential tools.  

PREPARATION

 paleography training .

I will never forget my first encounter with Spanish script from the 16 th century,  a photocopy of diplomatic correspondence from Puebla, Mexico being studied by a fellow graduate student at my university. It was a series of squiggles, beautiful as it was, it was utterly incomprehensible; it could have been an abstract work of modern art. After squinting at one section for a full minute, I was dumbstruck by the realization that I could not decipher a single letter. This, when the archival project I proposed for my dissertation research had already been approved by my committee and, for logistical reasons, it was too late to retool my project entirely from scratch.

The ethnohistorian John Chance taught me that the only way to deal with the issue of paleography, or the scholarly interpretation of earlier forms of writing and the documents that utilize such writing, was to start trying to read them. No class or tutoring would be able to mitigate this particular process, he told me I had to start staring at the script and eventually it would begin to makes sense.

This wisdom was confirmed by other researchers I met in Spain. One profesora from Mexico had taken several classes in Spanish paleography which, essentially, consisted of staring at texts until they began to make sense, albeit in a classroom environment where you could discuss particular issues with others and someone could check your transcription. However, the availability and cost of such classes can be highly problematic, and many researchers make do without such preparation. While 19 th century writing is relatively modern and therefore accessible without preparation, those of other centuries will require practice.

In any case, for someone who, like me, works with a wider time frame  —16 th to 19 th centuries— self-study is the most practical route. The following two books were my introduction to Spanish paleography, and they remain my most valuable  references. I highly recommend them to anyone preparing for archival research on Spanish colonial texts. Within the United States, at least, they are easily available from various university libraries through Inter-Library Loan.  

 I was fortunate in my particular research project to begin at the Vatican Film Library, where I read through a microfilm copy of the Pastells collection (more on this later). Pastells transcribed documents from various Spanish archives at the turn of the 20 th century, first by hand and later with a typewriter. The ability to see the letters in the squiggles comes only with the passage of time, but the norms of abbreviation can easily be studied and memorized. By starting out with the Pastells collection, I was able to read real text from the 16 th and 17 th century  and therefore learn its peculiar orthography, language, and flow  but transcribed in the consistent and easy-to-read late 19 th century hand of Pastells. After studying the Pastells transcriptions for a good month, I learned what to expect in terms of the abbreviations and other norms, and was therefore able to make the transition to primary sources without serious problems. From that point on, all that remained was to apply the paleography I had learned in order to decode what letters the squiggles represented.

 A final practical word about this particular skill is that it is like a muscle that requires regular exercise. Otherwise, the words again dissolve into squiggles. But the degeneration of this skill is mitigated by knowing the norms of transcription. Armed with this knowledge, it will take you only a few minutes, rather than hours, to get acclimated and unsquiggle the texts.

A working knowledge of Spanish might seem an obvious part of one’s archival toolkit, but I’ve since learned that quite a few researchers make do with relatively minor reading ability. The historian Peter Schreurs, for example, began his graduate research on Limasawa and Caraga armed only with his knowledge of Latin, French, and Italian. With his lucky combination of great intellect and extensive historical knowledge, he worked past this limitation to learn both Spanish and Portuguese  on the job. But most of us are not so blessed.

For those who grew up in the Philippines speaking a Philippine language, Spanish will seem a familiar enough language, leading to the belief that one is able to read and understand it as I believed as well. Certainly every Spanish word or phrase mentioned in this article will be comprehensible to most Filipinos, and at some level, we can get away with relying on instinct. But to work extensively with primary sources you will need at least an intermediate level of Spanish to do your work viz., if you are unable to read and understand every word of a short novel 2  or a long academic article (with a dictionary of course), then your level remains insufficient, for two reasons.

First, you will have to deal with an infinite number of subtleties in the primary sources, the things that are implied between the lines or by the use of particular tenses. For example, the subjunctive is not only used for making polite requests, and the imperfect doesn’t automatically indicate that something happened in the past. There will be emotions (disbelief, outrage, sarcasm, resignation) conveyed in the documents that may be relevant, even critical, and even if you do not fully comprehend what is going on, you should at least be able to determine that something special is happening. It might also be important to know not only how or when something happened, but also whether it actually happened. To this end, even those who (like myself) test at a high-intermediate level will find the following book useful:

 Second, given that all languages change over time, Spanish orthography or spelling has also undergone many transformations over the centuries. Don’t forget that some of the Spanish writers were non-native speakers of Spanish (e.g., Portuguese, Catalan, Basque), and would have spelled things their way. The same goes for regional accents such as the very distinct Andaluz speech pattern of southern Spain (more on this later). Other writers may have been functionally literate but not literary geniuses, and would have written as they spoke, phonetically. This is not such an issue by the 19 th century, but you cannot depend on your dictionary in terms of early colonial orthography; you must be able to deduce the modern and unabbreviated form of the word. Here is a snippet from an account (dated 1565) of Legazpi’s voyage: 3

 …tambien les dixo el General q les vendiese alg os bastimentos de arroz y puercos y gallinos q dixeron tener deloq al el mastre de campo vio en el Pueblo câtitad prometiero d traerlas y no lo puxieron ni bolvieron mas ni bolvió el q se ofrecio de yr a Tandaya y ellos quisieron cûplir cô solas palabras sin ninguna obra.

Here is what it looks like written in modern (dictionary) spelling:

  …también les dijo el General que les vendiese algunos bastimentos de arroz y puercos y gallinas que dijeron tener de lo cual el maestre de campo vio en el Pueblo cantidad prometieron de traerlas y no lo pusieron ni volvieron más ni volvió el que se ofreció de ir a Tandaya y ellos quisieron cumplir con solas palabras sin ninguna obra.

Note with dixo (dijo) and puxieron (pusieron) that you cannot simply replace every misplaced  x with the same letter. Many misspellings are relatively easy to decipher, such as:  rrio=rio; hedad=edad; caygamos=caigamos, qual=cual; hize=hice; muger=mujer . But often it is not just one word but a whole phrase that has to be deciphered, such as: andicho=han dicho; asido=ha sido; edado=he dado; evisto=he visto.

 In addition, if you studied Spanish in the United States or elsewhere in the Americas, you will almost surely be missing the familiar second person plural or vosotros form, which is used in Spain but not in the Americas. If so, then you must start paying attention to it. 

Beyond the academic part of the equation, you will need to know the language well enough to deal with the practicalities of your stay and of your research. In the archives you will need to comprehend and communicate in Spanish to place an order for a document or request a photocopy. Such tasks are not always straightforward, and I was surprised by how complicated it sometimes became. And even if, like me, you constantly forget your vocabulary, the staff will still appreciate your effort; it may mean the difference between your copies being available today or not until next week, when your visa has already expired. When you have ordered to view a document that does not materialize, it may mean the difference between the staff answering with a diligent I’ll see what the delay is about or a haughty It will get here when it gets here. I say this only because I had heard from others that the staff of the Archivo Histórico Nacional in Madrid were surly and unhelpful. After my own very positive experience there, I would emphasize that any effort to communicate matters greatly, because even the most sophisticated, cosmopolitan Spaniard will grow tired of dealing with an English-only speaker.

Beyond such basics, you need to take advantage of the expertise of others working in the archives (staff, fellow researchers) when you cannot decipher a word, or can’t figure out where to find something, which will happen very often. It will allow you to form friendships with colleagues there, the majority of whom will be from Spain and the Americas; it will allow you to attend academic lectures at local universities and institutes; and ultimately, it will expand your horizons regarding your own research. Considering the solitary nature of archival research, being able to follow a conversation in Spanish will, at the very least, make your life more bearable socially.

  I would like to direct an additional note on language to Filipinos in particular: Our indigenous language skills will make it relatively painless to pronounce modern Spanish (with the possible exception of the verb desarrollar ). But there is also a distinct disadvantage to this because, with your ease in pronouncing the language, people will assume you know more than you actually do, and that you are either pretending to be dull or are in fact not very bright (maybe even mentally retarded). This will be on top of the inevitable issues of cultural difference you will already be dealing with. Ironically, I found that explaining my limitations got me nowhere. No one will believe you, especially if you manage to blurt out a well-practiced (and therefore flawless) Lo siento pero no puedo hablar muy bien . Eventually I decided to try changing my pronunciation to sound more unnatural, and the strategy yielded immediate results. People began using simpler, less colloquial words and were noticeably more patient in that I was not expected to know things only native speakers would know. Bear this in mind before you obsess about perfecting your pronunciation.

SPECIAL EQUIPMENT

 If you wear prescription glasses for everyday use, consider getting a pair of reading glasses with anti-glare coating to minimize the potential for headaches from staring closely not only at paper documents but also at digitized documents on a computer screen several hours at a time. Another piece of equipment you might find handy is a large magnifying lens, preferably in a rectangular shape. Digitized documents can usually be zoomed to facilitate reading, but paper documents will not do that of course.

 If you are using a laptop computer, please take a few minutes to make sure that your keyboard can easily insert diacritic marks on top of and underneath letters, like this: à, í, ü, ñ, ç. You should be able to do this by pressing the equivalent mark followed immediately by the letter, e.g., for an umlaut (ü), you use the double quotation marks (“). It does not matter what word processing program you use because this is a function of the keyboard itself: you cannot program it differently. If your keyboard cannot do this in any program, you must find a different computer. Otherwise you will waste a lot of time going into the insert character utility of your word processing program over and over again. Diacritic marks are a key component of Spanish as a written language, and the wrong keyboard will be a big hassle. Also take note that computer keyboards in Spain are configured differently and will take some time to get used to.

 ONLINE CATALOGS 

The final preparation to consider before we proceed to a discussion of the archives themselves is knowing what is available in each collection. It is our great fortune that in this day and age internet technology permits us to examine catalogs and sometimes even the documents themselves from another location. With the exception of the private Religious archives, i.e., the Jesuits’ microfilm library and the Recoletos’ Provincial archive, the archives discussed below can be searched online from anywhere in the world , all you need is a stable internet connection. The url for each catalog is provided below under the individual archives.

 The online catalogs were invaluable to me in terms of general preparation as well as writing my research and grant proposals. They also helped me immensely in planning determining how much time to spend at each archive. Moreover, the online catalogs will allow you to work more efficiently, because you will already have a list of documents to request when you arrive. The gem of all online catalogs is that of Spain’s state-run archives, which is known as the AER or Archivos Españoles en Red , which is discussed the next section. 

THE STATE ARCHIVES OF SPAIN

 The Archivos Estatales or state archives form a vital part of Spain’s national patrimony and cultural legacy. Researchers from all over the Americas and elsewhere go to Spain to study their histories. One day at the Archivo General de Indias (AGI), after reflecting on the rows of Andean and Amerindian faces in the sala de investigadores or researcher’s reading room, I had to ask one of the staff archivists how he felt as a Spaniard, seeing all these Americanos studying how his people had colonized theirs, studying their revolutions against people like him. He said he tried not to think about it too hard, but that Spain had no choice but to reckon with its own past, and that there was still much to learn. I mention this to remind Filipinos of the obvious: a considerable part of our own national identity is wrapped up in those archives as well. It is my hope that eventually more and more Filipinos and Philippinists make the journey to lay claim to that legacy, if only to come to terms with the totality of our historical legacy. Think of it as an academic hajj .

When you do make that hajj , you will need a Tarjeta Nacional de Investigador or National Researcher Card, which is your research permit. It is referred to in print as the TNI, and verbally as the carnet de investigador (researcher I.D.). You apply for it in person at the first state archive you visit, and if you bring the right materials with you, 4  the application process itself will be easier than buying a train or airline ticket. When you apply for the TNI, there is a form to fill out, and they issue you a temporary permit, valid until your permanent research permit has been processed and approved, which normally takes a day. If they are not too busy, they should find someone to take you to the Sala de Investigadores (the reading room) and introduce you to the staff, who will show you how to log into, search through, order and/or view documents, and request copies from Athe system.

 The TNI is valid for three years and will give you access to all the state archives. All you have to do at each new archive is register at the office so that their computers will accept your login number (i.e., TNI number). You will need the TNI card to enter any sala or reading room. Memorize your TNI number, too, because you will need it to do anything in the archives, including log in, order a legajo (document bundle), request, pay for and pick up reproductions, and inquire about the legajos you ordered or reserved. If you lose your card, it will also be easier to replace if you know your number by heart. Outside the archives, the card can also be used as personal identification in a pinch.

 Applying for the TNI will be your first face-to-face contact with the state archives. While there is no need to dress formally, do dress presentably enough to demonstrate that you are a responsible person who will respect their archival treasures. With your TNI, you will be legally bound to follow all their rules, which were designed to preserve their collection for future generations. For example, under no circumstances are you allowed to wield anything containing ink inside the sala (try a mechanical pencil instead). Inside the sala of the AGI, there are armed guards who will not hesitate to remind you of this.

A final practical matter for the state archives in general is that each archive has its own modus operandi and its own peculiarities. General information about the state archives (hours, services, directions, special advisories, 5  etc.) is available through the section on Archivos on the website of Spain’s Ministry of Culture, at http://www.mcu.es/archivos/index.jsp. Take careful note not only of their opening hours, but also the schedule for ordering documents, the maximum number of documents you can order at a time, and the normal schedule for photoduplication services. There may be busy days when you find yourself on the waiting list, but never despair because there is always some turnover of work stations during the day. For example, the AGI is most crowded in the weeks immediately before and after Sevilla’s world-famous observance of Semana Santa (Holy Week), but the longest I ever had to wait was one hour.

For a relatively thorough orientation to the kinds of primary Philippine materials that can be found in Spanish repositories, I highly recommend the compilation below. Like a travel guide, it is by no means exhaustive, and provides only general information on the collections. It is nonetheless the only source I know that provides all this information in one place, and in my case it was invaluable for determining where to focus my research.

Patricio Hidalgo has other publications relevant to Philippine studies, though they are mostly bibliographic compilations, including a companion guide that lists repositories of primary sources located outside Spain. 6  I have not seen this particular guide, but it is no doubt as useful as the one cited above. This particular Guía de Fuentes is available in Spanish (and soon in English) through Digibis (Madrid) at  http://www.digibis.com/catalogo.htm. The Digibis catalog also carries several CD-Roms B part of the Clásicos Tavera project B that compile many of the classic publications from the Spanish colonial period, and therefore an important resource for anyone with an interest in Philippine history. For those with concerns about ordering online from Spain, my experience with two separate credit-card orders was uneventful, and I received my orders (in the U.S.) within a few days. In both cases international shipping was already factored into the cost of each item. 

ARCHIVOS ESPAÑOLES EN RED

The Ministry of Culture in Spain is engaged in a long-term project to digitize and make available online their wealth of archival records. To this end, they have established the Archivos Españoles en Red (Spanish archive network) or AER, located at http://www.aer.es. Access is free of charge; you need only to sign up for an account (click on Alta de Usuario ), upon which you will be issued a TNI number exclusively for online use. Please note that this number has no relevance offline  you will still need to apply for a real TNI to use in the actual archives. Once you are logged on, you should explore this website as much as possible. Under Enlaces de Interés you will find some very informative links on archival research in general, and there is a bulletin board called the Foro de Investigadores through which you can ask all and sundry questions of other AER users. Under Búsquedas you can run systematic searches of the AER database, and the search results can be saved for future reference in your very own Agenda del Investigador .

Try using the search engine or browsing through the catalog section by section. The escalator-like symbol next to a title indicates that there are subfolders, and the camera symbol indicates some digitized content in one or more subfolders. No special software is required to view the documents, and for ease of viewing you are allowed to manipulate the images to a certain extent (contrast, zoom, tone, etc.). All told, the AER is a tremendous resource, but no system is perfect. Bear in mind that, as with anything computer-related, there will be occasional glitches in the system, and at times the browser will unexpectedly freeze and shut down.

The most relevant section will be the Documentos e Imágenes Digitalizadas , through which you will find a partial catalog of documents drawn from various archives, and digitized images of many of the these documents. If a document has been digitized, you will normally be unable to touch the original document due to preservation concerns. However, the quality of the AER’s digitized images is equal to what you will see at the actual archive. It will take time to get used to reading such documents on a computer screen (online or at the archives), but the resolution almost always exceeds anything that you may get as a printed image.

Although they are all part of the same system of Archivos Estatales and therefore follow more or less the same cataloging system, specific style will differ slightly from archive to archive (including the AER, which is also accessible at the various archives). By browsing through the AER, you will learn how each archive is conceptually organized, and eventually you will learn which sections are most relevant to your work. Click on the Archivo General de Indias , for example, and you will learn that there are different Secciones containing very different sorts of documents, that those pertaining to the Philippines are not limited to a single Audiencia de Filipinas . Other archives directly relevant to Philippinists are the Archivo Histórico Nacional (AHN) and the Archivo General de Simancas (AGS). With regard to differing citation styles, i.e. to find the same document in the physical archive, take note of the catalog information that is provided in the full AER listing.

As an example, let us consider a document from 1632 in which the Procurador General of the Recoletos, fray Pedro de San Nicolás, informs Bishop Arce of Cebu of  Avarious crimes committed in the province of Caraga [eastern Mindanao] by some of its natives. This document refers to the Caraga Revolt of 1631, which is indexed as La sublevación de Caraga . Below is the information that appears on the AER catalog listing for this document.

Archivo Histórico Nacional  

Código de Referencia: ES.28079.AHN/141//DIVERSOS‑COLECCIONES,26,N.62 Título:   Informe sobre varios crimenes cometidos en prv. de Caraga  Alcance y Contenido:   Informe presentado, con permiso del obispo de la ciudad del Santísimo Nombre de Jesús, fray Pedro de Arce, por fray Pedro de San Nicolás, procurador general de los agustinos descalzos, sobre varios crímenes cometidos en la provincia de Caraga, de las Islas Filipinas, por algunos de sus naturales. 12 hjs. fol. sello placa  Nivel de Descripción:   Unidad Documental Simple  Fecha(s):    [c] 1632‑06‑22. Manila  Signatura(s):   DIVERSOS‑COLECCIONES,26,N.62  Volumen: Productor(es):   Información de Contexto  Notas:  Signatura antigua: DIVERSOS‑DOCUMENTOS_INDIAS,N.320 Notas del Archivero: Autor responsable: Guzmán Pla, María del Carmen. Fuentes de Información: Pescador del Hoyo, M.C. ‘Documentos de Indias…’ Índice(s):    

Whereas the AER reference number appears on top as the código de referencia , the rest of the listing informs you that the document is from the Archivo Histórico Nacional (AHN) and its call number or signatura in its home archive is ADiversos-Colecciones,26,N.62,” which is its location in the actual AHN in Madrid. The signatura antigua is its old reference number prior to the reorganization and computerization of the state archives, and is useful for checking references found in older bibliographies or studies.

This part of the website is constantly under development, and each month brings new additions. At the time of writing, the Philippine images are relatively limited, and the AER contains only a small percentage of all documents that have already been digitized. Moreover, only a very small percentage of all Philippine and other documents have been digitized. But what is already available through the AER is of unquestionable value to researchers, as well as those preparing to undertake archival research.

A FEW WORDS ABOUT SEVILLA

Before we move on the AGI, a few words about its geographical location. The city and province of Sevilla, in the Autonomous Community of Andalucía, is where the Casa de Contratación (House of Trade) was established in 1503 to regulate commerce, navigation, and many other matters related to the colonies. Nearly everyone and everything (including Magellan) went through here first. The main colonial archive, into which the records of the Casa de Contratación were eventually incorporated, was established here two centuries later. Sevilla is a beautiful, magical city that will inspire you to formulate more historical research projects just as an excuse to return. Of course, you will then have to do the actual research, but that’s life.

Andalucía is also the home of the peculiar Andaluz speech pattern, which can only be described as Spanish at warp speed, so fast that whole consonants get thrown by the wayside. 7  For example, the question Cómo estás, Tomás? (How are you, Thomas?) will end up sounding like Cometá Tomá? Oddly, they also add consonants where there are none, e.g., the word edad (age) becomes hedad , with a hard h . If your name is Jesús you will be called Jesú . If you want two or three of something, be prepared for do and tre . And sometimes you will not know if you are being addressed in familiar or formal terms ( quiere and quieres will sound exactly the same). At the AGI in Sevilla, many of the staff will speak this way. So will almost every food service worker in every eating establishment in the area. Just get used to it.

If you are staying in Sevilla for several weeks or months, there are many affordable apartments or rooms available for rent, except during Semana Santa . Many of these are advertised online, and almost anywhere within the Centro of Sevilla is walking distance to the AGI. To gauge distances on a map, the distance between the AGI and the Plaza de Cuba (in barrio Triana, across the Guadalquivir River using the closest bridge, San Telmo) is roughly ten minutes at a leisurely pace. Almost any point within the barrios of Santa Cruz and Arenal is only five minutes away by foot, while those of San Vicente and Macarena may be ten. With all the walking you will do, I should also warn you against eating the oranges off those pretty trees that line the streets: the fruit is so bitter, even animals will not eat it.

An option for researchers to consider is the Escuela de Estudios Hispanoamericanos (EEHA). It houses a respectable research library (though with only a handful of Philippine books), and has a Residencia for scholars coming from out-of-town. They also hold weekly lectures called mesas redondas on a wide range of research topics, and it is worth attending at least a few. They are often quite interesting, and you are also likely to see other AGI researchers there. Take advantage of these lectures to hone your listening and comprehension of proper academic Spanish is much easier to understand than everyday vernacular, especially in Sevilla. If you cannot find the schedule of lectures, you might just try showing up at the Escuela at a little before 7 pm on any given Tuesday and inquire at the reception.

The EEHA Residencia is a good place for a brief stay, and there’s no denying that it helps your bona fides somewhat when colleagues find out you are staying at ALa Escuela. But as guests have no access to kitchen or laundry facilities, and the cost of outside laundry service is ridiculous (at least 7 euros for a single load of wash), unless you have a substantial grant you may wish to weigh other options. Some might also find the general ambience of the Escuela a bit off-putting. I heard more than one person joke that the place was so austere, it must have been designed by the Opus Dei . Finally, there is the 24-hour live and video security throughout the building and the grounds, which makes you feel safe until you realize that you are also under constant surveillance, except inside your room. Even if you have nothing to hide, it may eventually start to bother you.

That said, the Escuela’s rooms are not only very secure, they are quite nice, each with a private bath, and ideally located at the Plaza del Duque (around the corner from El Corte Inglés , the largest supermarket and department store in town). At 40 euros a day, they are not cheap, but the EEHA offers residential scholarships ( becas ) for non-Spanish citizens. These amount to free lodging for a month or so, a value of about 1200 euros. More information is available at http://www.eeha.csic.es. Be prepared to use only Spanish in applying for this beca , and to demonstrate your competence in Spanish through the quality of your proposal and your correspondence with them. Philippinists should be aware that rarely do our kind make an appearance vis-à-vis the local academic establishment, and this rarity may cause them to take full advantage of your presence there. You might be asked (as I was) to give one of those mesa redonda lectures that are normally reserved for more established scholars. In fact, only becarios with a Ph.D. present their work, so I did not come prepared. Don’t let this happen to you.

Knowing my own linguistic limitations, I was absolutely horrified by the prospect of speaking extemporaneously in Spanish, and tried to explain to the Director that, despite my reading abilities, I was in fact not ready to give a presentation in his language, and it would only embarrass them in the end. It would have been convincing except that I explained it just a little too well, so the Director chided me for joking around as he wrote down the date of my lecture. Most people will confuse good pronunciation with fluency, so let that be a lesson. As such, I had no choice but to spend all my free time for the next two weeks neglecting my other work in order to write a lecture in tortured Academy Spanish and pestering other, busier researchers to check my grammar. In English, I normally would not need more than an outline for such a presentation, but in Spanish I had to read it out word for word, to avoid embarrassing myself (and by extension all Filipinos). So, if you can, do prepare something in advance, even if it is only a basic Spanish translation of one of your old papers. Even if you never present it as a lecture, you can print a copy for anyone interested in your research.

ARCHIVO GENERAL DE INDIAS (Sevilla, Andalucía, Spain)

The AGI is no doubt the archival headquarters for the Spanish colonial period, with almost 50,000 legajos or bundles of documents, each of which might contain a stack of papers more than a foot high. While Filipinas comprises only a small part of this grand collection, it is the motherlode as far as this period is concerned. Yet the AGI’s collection of Philippine materials is sadly underutilized, and many of its documents might not have been viewed in the past century. They are just there, waiting to be explored. This is no doubt why the staff notices when someone is researching Filipinas . 8

 A good, basic orientation to the kinds of Philippine materials that can be found at the AGI is already available in pages 58-77 of Patricio Hidalgo’s Guía de Fuentes Manuscritas para la Historia de Filipinas Conservadas en España , mentioned in the previous section. There is no need to repeat it here. But I want to dispel the rumour I heard (which may still be circulating) that there is a room of Philippine materials at the AGI in which one can browse through random stacks of uncatalogued Philippine materials. I asked the archivist I became friends with there:  there is no such room. Believe in conspiracy theories if you must, but the bottom line is that if it does not have a reference number in the computerized catalog, they cannot retrieve it for you.

There are, however, many, many legajos that have only nondescript labels that say absolutely nothing about their contents. If you have the time to explore, it is worth the trouble to go through at least one or more of these, just to see what might be there. It might just be more workaday bureaucratic correspondence, filed in triplicate, informing the Governor General that his letter of a certain date had been received and that there would be a proper reply sent in due course, and in the meantime long live the King, may God keep Him for as many years he wishes as he defends our Most Holy Faith, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But even within that context there are many interesting possibilities, and you never know what you might find.

When you are there, take the time to look through their library. Those bookshelves are lined not only with dictionaries but also with reference materials pertaining to Spain’s colonial history. Just browsing at random, I found a number of surprisingly useful books, including a comprehensive series that compiled the laws of the Indies, or rulings pertaining to the colonies, highlighting important legal distinctions between the colonization or pacification of the Philippines and the conquest of the Americas, especially with regard to the rights of indigenous leaders. There is a separate library from which books can be requested, reserved, and brought to your workstation. During renovations to the AGI, the card catalog and request forms are located right next to the entrance of the temporary quarters on Calle Sto. Tomas. This is something you can do should you find yourself on the waiting list or are having a particularly slow morning.

The AGI has its own procedures for ordering legajos for viewing, and I will only include here the things that might be useful to know before you walk into the sala for the first time. First and foremost is that the staff will retrieve orders only three times a day B if you place your order before 9 a.m. (this includes orders placed after 1 p.m. the day before), you will get your legajos by around 9:30 a.m. After that, you must wait until after 11 a.m. to get your legajos . The final round of orders is concluded around 1:00 p.m. If you place your order after that time, don’t count on seeing your order until the next day, because the AGI closes at 3 p.m. By the same token, if you plan to arrive at the AGI first thing in the morning and expect immediate access to your legajos , you should order them by 1 p.m. the day before and place them in reserve. You can keep materials on hold if you plan to use them again within a few days, but you can have only three existing orders at a time. At this time, there is also a need to conserve table space in the sala (see fn. 5), because the current workspaces are not big enough for more than one legajo .

The request forms on the archivists’ desks are for microfilm and other special items. Most of your document requests will made online from your work station. If you order something online and there is a microfilm copy, you will be asked to choose the microfilm copy, which will require filling out a paper form. If you want printouts of your microfilm pages, you must do it yourself at the machine. The staff will load the roll for you, and show you how to print; if you make only a handful of printouts, they will not bother with the charges. 

As for reproductions, photoduplication, and other services, you will need a master form (the largest form on the archivists’ desks) for each type of reproduction you are ordering. This means that you must list orders for printouts of digitized documents (imágenes impresas) and photocopies (fotocopias) on separate master forms. In each case, you can select one or more particular pages to be copied, or request a copy of the whole document B just make sure you indicate the page numbers clearly, and that the information on the master form matches the individual orders.

In addition to the master form, each individual order for imágenes impresas is placed online from your work station. Each printout is relatively cheap and you will be tempted to order printouts of everything. The nice thing about imágenes impresas is that if you pay for your printouts by 11 a.m., you can generally pick them up after lunch on the same day. They say that, in theory, you can wait until you are done be it a week or even a month before you choose to pay. But please be aware that these orders are spooled on the AGI server and will remain there until you pay for your order. Too many spooled orders will shut down the system, and they don’t like it when that happens. Once your imágenes impresas order reaches a hundred pages or more, it’s time to pay up so that it can be cleared from the server’s memory. Payment is really the only bothersome part of the process because you must exit the archive and go to a bank around the corner, wait in line, wait for the teller to place the money in the AGI’s account, then take the receipt back to the AGI office to prove that you paid. At that point they will press the Aprint@ button and tell you how long it should take to print everything out.

Photocopies and other reproductions of non-digitized items take much longer, and are ordered individually with a paper form that is inserted in the respective legajo . Make sure the information there matches what is on your master form. Photocopies at the AGI can take six weeks or more due to their backlog, but they deliver these orders by insured mail. If you order a lot of copies and printouts, you might find it useful to either retain a copy of your master form or write down the information in your notes for reference purposes. If your total order is massive (I have around 1500 pages of reproductions), doing this will allow you cross-reference the documents you have received and help you determine whether anything is missing.

If like me you stay in Sevilla long enough and pick up some of your special orders in person, you might decide to mail them home in boxes rather than cart them around in your already heavy luggage to the next archive (remember, all those souvenirs will weigh a ton). The Sevilla post office has sturdy boxes for sale and insured mail is reliable and reasonably priced. According to my archivist friend at the AGI, if disaster strikes and the mailed reproductions are somehow lost, the AGI will try its best to help you out. If you retain a copy of your master forms, you will be able to re-order all the same documents by mail as a last resort. Of course you will have to pay for everything all over again, but you can do this by international wire transfer.

ARCHIVO HISTÓRICO NACIONAL (Madrid, Spain)

 The AHN is distinct from the AGI in that you will encounter a much smaller percentage of digitized documents here. Despite the relative inconvenience of having to order photocopies instead of imágenes impresas , this can be a welcome change after you’ve grown tired of staring at a computer screen all day. Their coverage of the Philippines is not quite as monumental and nebulous as that of the AGI, and therefore it will be in many ways much more manageable. Most of the materials you will find here are from later in Spanish colonial period, especially from the 19 th century. Consequently, the correspondence and reports you will encounter here are somewhat more complete, and so much easier to read.

 Working at the AHN is much less complicated than working at the AGI. For one, it is a smaller archive, with fewer work stations in a very pleasant sala blessed with lots of natural light. Ironically, they appear to have the same number of staff working in the reading room. The AHN also has a treasurer only a few doors down from the sala , which means greater convenience in paying for copies. There is also a cafeteria only two buildings away in the same compound (ask the security guard). 

 As for special procedures, they will not retrieve new legajos in the second half of the day, but their system allows for greater leeway with orders in the morning, when compared to the AGI system. You place your legajo orders both online and on paper, but there are no set times during which such orders can be placed. Every legajo I ordered arrived less than 15 minutes after I placed the order. Their Photoduplication department also seems much more efficient. Here, photocopies normally take only one week instead of six. They are able to mail orders out, as well as receive orders by mail. For a minor fee you can expedite your request into a one-day pickup under special circumstances (e.g., your flight leaves the next day). 9

What I liked best about the AHN was that sala was quiet, even though it is located in the heart of busy Madrid. This is because, although the AHN is located inside the larger campus of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) 10 on Calle Serrano (a busy four-lane street), the archive is situated away from the main road, surrounded by other buildings that dampen the sound of city traffic. In contrast, the AGI is located in the heart of Sevilla’s tourist attractions, right next door to both the Cathedral and the Reales Alcázares . As such, researchers in the AGI listen to the klop-klop of horse-drawn carriages, the bustle of tourists, and the revving of automobiles all day long.

As with the previous archive, there is a special residence for visiting scholars close to the AHN. Even those who are no longer students can stay at the Residencia de Estudiantes , and you can find the necessary information through their website at http://www.residencia.csic.es/. For those staying elsewhere in Madrid, the archive is a relatively long block from the nearest Metro stop ( República Argentina on the n o 6 grey line), but it is a pleasant walk.

PRIVATE ARCHIVES

 The archives described below are open to the public, free of charge, but are considered Aprivate because they are not financed or run by government officials. As such, you will need to make your own arrangements with each individual archive, but as their mandates are similar to those of public libraries, researchers need not do anything in advance unless they are applying for in-house grants or are requesting special workplace accommodations. The exception is the archive of the Augustinian Recollects, for the simple reason that there is only one very busy archivist, and if he is away on business, no one will be able to help you, and you will have traveled all the way to the foot of the Pyrenees for nothing.

THE VATICAN FILM LIBRARY (St. Louis University, St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.A.)

 The Vatican Film Library is located inside the Pius XII Memorial Library on the lovely campus of St. Louis University (SLU), a private Jesuit school located in the midwestern United States (not to be confused with the actual Vatican Library in Rome). The Film Library contains no original manuscripts but microfilm copies of materials from other Jesuit repositories, including their Roman archive. Through their website, http://www.slu.edu/libraries/vfl, you can learn more about their collections and the fellowship options for researchers from out-of-town. They do not have an online catalog.

 Philippinists will be interested two collections, both of which are extensive. The first is the Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu or ARSI collection, which contains administrative records from the Jesuit Generalate in Rome. There is material from every administrative region or Assistancy, including the Spanish Assistancy, under which records of the Philippine Province can be found. In their bound catalog, look under Assistentia Hispaniae > Provincia Philippinarum . There are 12 ARSI microfilm rolls pertaining to the Philippines, including some with interesting but brief biographies B in Spanish B of Jesuit missionaries who served in the Philippines. But most of the rest of the ARSI is in either Latin or Italian, the languages of the Vatican, and my very limited knowledge of these languages prevented me from learning much from this collection.

The second, of greater interest, is the Pastells collection, which is essentially a microfilm copy of the original Pastells collection housed in the grand Catalonian archive of the Jesuit order, the Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu Cataloniae (AHSIC) in Sant Cugat del Vallés, Barcelona. Hidalgo’s description of the AHSIC’s Pastells documents (pages 267-273 of the Guía de Fuentes ) of course applies to its duplicate in the Vatican Film Library. In brief, the Pastells collection is comprised of transcriptions made by Pablo Pastells, S.J., at the turn of the 20 th century, of primary sources found mostly in the AGI in Sevilla, but with a few from the AHN, the Archivo General de Simancas (Valladolid), the Biblioteca Nacional (Madrid), the Real Academia de la Historia (Madrid), and various Jesuit archives. In the course of undertaking this project, which was primarily about the history of the Jesuit order, Pastells transcribed documents pertaining to the political and ecclesiastical history of the Philippines. Pastells himself had worked as a missionary in the Philippines in the late 19 th century, serving eastern Mindanao for over a decade. The larger collection has considerable coverage of the American colonies, as well as the Marianas, China, and everywhere else the Jesuits traveled in Asia.

The Vatican Film Library is a sadly under-utilized resource in terms of Philippine historical studies, and I was told in 2004 that I was the first person to check out the Pastells microfilm collection in a very long time. That said, you can be sure that fellowship applications for research about the Philippines will be eagerly considered by the library.

There are some practical issues with regard to using the microfilm collection at the VFL. The first is that their machines are so old, they look like Soviet-era contraptions and will feel awkward if you are used to modern microfilm readers. That said, they are purely mechanical, using only a hand crank, and therefore do not require any special training and are less likely to break down. However, the text is not quite as clear in these older machines, possibly because of an inferior light source. The second issue is that these old machines are not connected to any printers. However, on the second floor of the Pius XII Memorial Library, you will find about six modern microfilm readers, four of which are connected to rudimentary printers, and two of which are connected to scanners. You will of course need explicit permission to take the microfilm out of the VFL reading room.

You can use either coins or copy cards (available on the main floor) to pay the per-page printing fee. If you want to retain reference copies of more than a few pages, however, you have the option of using the Minolta scanners to read the microfilm and convert the images into a PDF document, which you can then save and take home on a portable storage device, such as a floppy disk, ZIP disk, or USB drive. In my case, I would load the scanned documents onto a removable USB drive until it was full, then download its contents into my laptop’s hardrive, and then use my CD burner to create a backup. Then I would empty my USB drive and return to the Minoltas to scan some more documents. Of course, you will need to ask one of the librarians to show you how to use these machines, which are splendid but tricky. When I was there, they did not have any CD burners on the library’s computers. But technology always changes, and as I write this, it has been over a year since I used their machines; I recommend calling first to verify what recording options are actually available.

St. Louis, Missouri, is easily accessible by air and car, and a range of local accommodations is available, including SLU’s in-house hotel, the Water Tower Inn. You can find some very basic information through their website at http://www.slu.edu/events/wti.html, but you’ll need to call for their rates. Even though the Water Tower Inn is relatively economical, and there is a considerable discount for long-term stays, I also suggest calling the VFL secretary in advance to ask about other options. I started out at the Water Tower Inn, but courtesy of the VFL secretary, I was pleased to move to a closer and much cheaper apartment being sublet for visitors by the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. The university’s cafeteria and a student center with various food service options are both within a two minute walk from the library. The VFL itself is currently located in an odd corner on the ground floor of the Pius XII library, and the environmental controls in that room only seem to work at full blast. In the summer, it will be freezing, no matter where you sit: bring a sweater, warm socks, and maybe even a scarf.

THE NEWBERRY LIBRARY (Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.)

 The Newberry Library is another profoundly under-appreciated and under-utilized resource for Philippine history and ethnology. It is a treasure trove of books, manuscripts, maps, and pictures, all of which are potentially relevant to a wide range of research possibilities. It has a very special connection to the Philippines in the form of the Ayer Collection, which was originally assembled at the very beginning of the American occupation of the Philippines. Many of the Ayer materials are unique, salvaged from the Barcelona library of the Compañía General de Tabacos . There are excellent materials dating from the latter half of the 18 th century until the Revolution. There are hundreds of photographs from the Dean Worcester and other collections. There is an assortment of manuscripts and booklets on the religious missions, the British invasion of Manila, various explorations of the archipelago, and their accompanying maps, from the Spanish period. They also have accounts of early explorations of the New World and the Philippines, including a reportedly contemporary copy, in manuscript form, of an eyewitness account of Legazpi’s arrival in the Philippines in 1565. A very large portion of Blair & Robertson’s 55-volume compendium The Philippine Islands 1493-1898 12 is in fact comprised of translations from materials in the Ayer collection, which underscores the breadth and significance of this collection.

 Rizalians will be delighted to know that there is a precious handful of correspondence by our dear José Rizal. This includes a sparsely filled notebook in which he wrote down how much he spent on food and other expenses in Madrid, and in which he laments on March 31 st (the same day he spent 1,20 pesetas in stamps to mail a letter to the Philippines) that, my days pass with speed and I find that I am very old for my age; I lack the joy of young hearts… 13  Filipinos overcome by homesickness while at the Newberry can take comfort in the bust of Rizal that watches over the Special Collections reading room. The reading room itself is a very pleasant and quiet place, and in late 2004 they were talking about providing internet access from there, which would make it easier to cross-reference the library’s catalog as you work. The staff there is incredibly efficient, helpful, and accommodating, but every archive has its conventions and procedures. To stay in their good graces, do memorize the in-house rules (no pens, etc.) and observe them diligently.  

The Newberry has a very accessible and informative website, which includes an excellent overview of their collections. Go to http://www.newberry.org/ and browse under the ACollections & Catalogue@ section. Please be aware that less than half of their collection is represented on the online catalog, but it is constantly being updated. Most of the original Philippine manuscripts can be searched only through the old-fashioned card catalog. But those with access to a university inter-library loan system within the U.S. will easily find a copy of the following reference bibliography, which is the single best introduction to the Newberry’s Philippine treasures.

Calendar of Philippine documents in the Ayer Collection of the Newberry Library , edited by Paul Lietz. Published in 1956 by the Newberry Library, Chicago (ISBN: 0911028013). It is out of print, but I was able to obtain a used copy from the online bookseller Alibris for less than $10. The Newberry of course has in-house copies for researchers to consult.

 On the same website, in the Scholars & Teachers’ section, researchers will also find a wide variety of in-house fellowship and financial aid options for working at the library. Some housing options for researchers are available on the FAQ page for Fellowships, with additional options available by writing the Research & Education office. Even without a fellowship, I highly recommend contacting the Research & Education office to negotiate some form of affiliation. Fellows and other scholars so recognized by the Newberry have important privileges in that you are allowed to reserve microfilm and certain categories of books, and are given your own study carrel, through which you also receive high-speed internet access. You will also be allowed in the library after public hours, during which you have no access to the special collections but are free to browse the card catalog, use the microfilm reader, and pore through the reserved materials in your carrel. You will also be able to use the employee lunchroom and leave things in the fellows’ room, which might make your daily commute easier. In addition, an affiliation might in some cases give you access to Chicago’s other private libraries, including those at the University of Chicago. Finally, a fellowship or other such affiliation with the library will place you in the company of scholars whose companionship and insight may prove valuable to your own quest. This particular benefit of my affiliation with the Newberry remains my fondest memory of my time there.

 The Newberry Library is located in possibly the most beautiful neighborhood in Chicago, known locally as the Gold Coast. It is in the heart of  The Loop@downtown and directly across the street from Washington Square, a quiet and unassuming park with a colorful history. 14  The library is easily accessible from anywhere in the city through public transportation, lying equidistant to both the Clark & Division and Chicago stations on the El train’s red line. A great many bus lines also pass through this area. At certain times of the year, downtown Chicago is itself so pleasant to walk in that you might find yourself going past your regular El stop just to have a longer walk. All things considered, it is one of the most pleasant places I can think of to do archival and library research.

ARCHIVO DE LA PROVINCIA DE SAN NICOLÁS DE TOLENTINO (Convento del Orden de los Agustinos Recoletos, Marcilla, Navarra, Spain)

Of all the archives described in this article, the Provincial archive of the Augustinian Recollect Order in Marcilla (ARM) may be the only true logistical challenge for the researcher. This is because it is located in a very small rural town (pop. 3,000 or less) in economically depressed northern Spain, and you will be at a loss for finding accommodations. Also, no one in this town even among the Recoletos themselves speaks English, or will admit to doing so. This part of Spain went to Franco during the Civil War, and there remains a streak of conservatism that may prove a challenge for some, especially after such cosmopolitan centers as Sevilla, Madrid, and Chicago. People are no more religious here than in the rest of Spain, but they will nonetheless make it their business to know whether you are Catholic, and whether you in fact attend Mass regularly. That said, nowhere else in Spain was I welcomed so wholeheartedly into local people’s homes, and made to feel like a treasured part of their lives. I made some real friends in Marcilla, and I miss them very much.

The Recoletos have very significant historical tie to the Philippines, for that is where their Order spent their formative years as a missionary order, starting in the early 1600s. The Philippines, especially the Visayas and Mindanao, was their first mission field, and some of the Recoletos’ most important figures earned their stripes, and sometimes their martyrdom, there. As the Fathers and Brothers in Marcilla will tell you, the Philippines, and Filipinos, still hold an important place in their hearts. Marcilla itself has a special connection to the Philippines in that until the mid-1980s this was where new Filipino priests and brothers came to receive their theological formation (education) within the Order. In 1998, the Philippines was given its own Provincialate, and the Province of San Ezekiel de Moreno was born. Since then, the original Province of San Nicolás de Tolentino has focused on its remaining mission fields, primarily in the Americas.

However, the Recoleto convent in Marcilla retains possession of the archives pertaining to its genesis as a Religious Order. This means that all their original records on the Philippines from the Spanish colonial period remain in Spain. However, Filipino Recoletos undertook a project some years ago in which a large portion of the original Provincial archive referring to the Philippines was scanned electronically and preserved on CD-Rom. Researchers in Metro Manila might want to first inquire about accessing those digital records before planning a journey to Marcilla. I compared the CD-Roms’ contents with the actual archive and can tell you that the scanned documents are of good quality, and the CD-Rom collection is quite comprehensive, with the documents arranged in the correct order, retaining the pagination of the original legajos , etc. But they do not include everything, and in the case of one very long document from Legajo 61, some pages were omitted. In any case, even though holding the actual documents in your hand is, in my view, a singular experience, the CD-Rom version is a worthy substitute, especially for those who cannot afford to travel to Spain at this time.

As to the contents of the ARM, they will concern mainly those researchers whose areas of interest were part of the Recoleto mission field, including but not limited to northern and eastern Mindanao (Misamis, Caraga, Surigao, Agusan), where they planted and maintained new missions from the 1620s until the late 1800s, when the Jesuits moved in. Local history buffs will be particularly delighted by the detailed coverage of Misamis from the 18 th century on. Those Mindanao historians who have relied on the Jesuits for information will probably be stunned when they learn how important the Recoletos actually were to the island’s history, and that proper credit for the successful Christianization and Hispanization of north-eastern Mindanao indeed belongs to the Recoletos. 15   It’s true that the Jesuits tried to plant the first ever mission in northern Mindanao in Butuan in 1596 but it was never fully established, and faltered due to personnel problems. They soon abandoned this part of Mindanao to the newly established Recoleto Order, also known as the Agustinos descalzos (barefoot Augustinians). Other significant fields were parts of the Visayas especially Mindoro, and various parts of Luzon. Those researching the Muslim/ Moro areas of the Philippines will also find some interesting material on piracy and other interaction between them and the missionaries. In addition to the ARM itself, the Convento has a very good library on religion and missiology that is worth a serious look.

 On the practicalities of using the ARM, the archive itself is in clausura (cloistered), but they have a general index that will help you decide what legajos to ask for. Since they rarely have researchers passing through, procedures, schedules, and other terms will have to be negotiated with the Father archivist on an individual basis and entirely in Spanish. The current archivist, Father José Manuel Bengoa, is himself a scholar and despite his young age has already published extensively on the history of the Recoletos. He is an outgoing, jovial person whose enthusiasm for his work and his vocation is a welcome change from the weighty scholars you will no doubt have met in the course of your research. He can speak Italian, but not English. The Convento itself is a very peaceful if lonely place to work, with all the modern conveniences, including efficient radiators and high-speed internet.

The Marcilla convent of the Recoletos has a website at http://www.terra.es/personal2/recole01/, but you will not be able to find information about their archives there. Best to write the general email address, and then wait for the archivist to write you back. Be patient, because he is often traveling. For the ARM archive on CD-Rom, the homepage for the Philippine Recoletos is http://www.recoletos.ph/page/home, and the contact information for their Provincial center in Quezon City is at http://ezekiel.pinoyrekoleto.com/contact_us.html.

In terms of the logistics of going to Marcilla, the most direct route is to fly into Pamplona, take a taxi to the bus station downtown, then take the regular bus service, which is run by Conda S.A.. They have a good website with an English version at http://www.conda.es/index.php?idi.eng. The last bus that passes by Marcilla leaves at 8 pm daily, and will drop you off rather unceremoniously an hour later at an unlit stop about 50 meters from the entrance to the Convento. The fare is extremely cheap, almost negligible considering the distance they take you. You will of course not be staying at the Convento, unless you happen to have a relative in the Order, or are yourself a Religious from another Order.

There is only one commercial accommodation in Marcilla, a hostel (locally referred to as la fonda , or Athe inn) just a short walk away but then again, everywhere in town is a short walk away. Fearing that the Recoletos would cloister me in the nunnery on the other side of town, I insisted on staying at the fonda . It certainly made for a very colorful experience, but if I could turn back time and do it all over again, I would beg Fr. José Manuel to place me with one of his parishioners. If you stay several weeks, as I did, then the fonda’ s cheap daily rate (minimally edible food included) is just not worth it, unless you delight in sharing a single bathroom with anywhere from 2 to 6 (possibly more) other people who, like too many people in Spain, are incorrigible smokers. While I never felt my personal safety threatened there, I did not enjoy being the only female boarder at the fonda , and was relieved when the waitress the most colorful character of them all moved in temporarily to save money. Incidentally, the fonda will also do laundry for you, at a per-load price, in a doubtful washing machine. In sum, the fonda is on the dodgy side and not a place for the weak-hearted.

The town of Marcilla itself has a government website at http://www.marcilla.es/, and an amateur website at http://www.telefonica.net/web2/marcillaot/. One thing to bear in mind is that Marcilla is at a relatively high elevation (almost 1,000 feet), and on the edge of the lovely Pyrenees mountain range. In April it can still get very cold here, sometimes even freezing, at night. But for this inconvenience you are rewarded with perhaps the most beautiful and sparsely populated natural landscape in Spain, and encounter some of its most considerate and good humoured people. If you can find a way to take a drive through the countryside, through the well-preserved medieval towns, and into the neighboring Basque region, do not hesitate to do so.

PARTING WORDS

 I hope that this information encourages others to explore some of these archival treasures, and that they come to be exploited as fully as possible by Philippinists. More potential repositories of records from the Spanish colonial period remain, including the archives of Mexico. In the meantime, please feel free to contact me directly if you have specific questions regarding the archives and places mentioned in this article. My contact information will be updated regularly on the Philippine Studies Group website, which currently is located at http://psg.csusb.edu/.

Oona Thommes Paredes Arizona State University,  School of Human Evolution and Social Change

Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia.  Issue 7. States, People, and Borders in Southeast Asia. September 2006 Although all the web urls were working at the time of original publication in March 2006, they have  not been updated or checked since that time.

• See, for example, Rubiés, Joan-Pau, AThe Spanish contribution to the ethnology of Asia in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,@ Renaissance Studies  17(3):418-448, 2003. ↩
•  Do not reach for poetry or the novels of Gabriel García Marquez. Start with with the straightforward language of Laura Esquivel=s  Como Agua Para Chocolate  or the light popular novels by Paulo Coelho. ↩
• Relacion del viaje e jornada, que larmada de su Mag. hizo del descubrimiento de las Islas del Poniente, que partio del puerto de la navidad delaño 1564 de que fue por general el muy Illmo señor Miguel Lopez de Legazpi  (Manuscript 1410, Ayer Collection, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL, USA), pages 23-24. ↩
• You will need two color photographs, your passport or other official national identification, and something that proves you are a legitimate scholar, such as an affiliation with a university. In my case, all it took was my student I.D. card. But just in case, I recommend bringing a signed, official-looking letter from your department, on university letterhead, that certifies you are a student or faculty member who is doing research on a particular subject. You will also need some cash to pay the negligible processing fee. ↩
• This is your only reliable source for updates on the renovations at the AGI, whose reading room has for the moment been moved from the Casa Lonja to an inconspicuous, unmarked building across the street on Calle Sto. Tomás, No. 5. The temporary  sala  is much smaller and therefore the number of workplaces and individual table space is limited. ↩
• Researchers in the United States may also want to check the microfilm collection of the Library of Congress=s Manuscript Division, which includes reproductions of select portions of Spain=s archives, acquired under the auspices of their Foreign Copying Program and through private donations. ↩
• My favorite example is a popular song by the Andaluz band Chambao,  Ahí Estás Tú , which was used for a national television campaign to promote tourism in Andalucía. The refrain,  y ahí estás tú  (Aand this is where you are@) B but pronounced  yáyetatú  B was utterly incomprehensible to Spaniards up north in Navarra. Those I spoke to insisted that it was not Spanish, even though the phrase was itself the title of the ad, and was written prominently onscreen. ↩
• Do try to talk to the staff about what you learn there B  you might well be able to tell them something new about their  Filipinas  collection. One day for a change of pace I started looking at documents from the Philippine Revolution, and found a special collection of photographs from that time, which was described in the catalog as including pictures of  insurrectos . Bracing myself for images of bolo-wielding Katipuneros either dead or about to be executed, I instead found an array of individual and group portraits featuring unidentified men in European dress, some of whom were definitely of pure European descent. One photograph was of an unidentified man who bore a striking resemblance to images of Andres Bonifacio I had seen in elementary school. The archivist was grateful for the possible identification, which he said would be noted in the catalog. He asked me who else I could identify, and I’m sorry to say that, because my research focus is neither on this late period nor on the Tagalog region, Emilio Aguinaldo was the only other face I recognized with any certainty. The European-looking  insurrectos  were a particular mystery, as they appeared in almost every photograph and, like the  indios , were unidentified. This particular set of photographs is cataloged in  Diversos ,S.2, among the papers of General Camilo Polavieja, as A Diversos ,37,n.3,d.1(s/f). It requires special handling and must be requested at least a day in advance. If this interests you, make sure to view the other  legajos  within  Diversos , especially 26, 27, and 33. ↩
• In my case, the treasurer seemed so delighted to meet a Filipino who was willing to speak some Spanish that  he  expedited my order for me, making a show of calling the Photoduplication department and scolding them to speed it up so I would not have to pay the Aridiculous@ 20 euro shipping charge. In retrospect, one could interpret his actions as paternalistic, or maybe even flirtatious B but 20 euros is still a lot of money. ↩
• CSIC is Spain’s national umbrella research organization, and they sponsor research in the humanities, social sciences, and physical sciences. The EEHA and its  Residencia  in Sevilla are both branches of CSIC. Spaniards pronounce the initials as ASE-sik. ↩
• There is currently no catalog that indexes the Philippines portion of this collection, but if anyone is interested, I can offer a work record that provides a rough outline of the contents for each volume and roll. The VFL also has a copy. ↩
• The essential   ABlair & Robertson@ set has been placed on CD-Rom thanks to the Bank of the Philippine Islands. Two online retailers that sell this CD-Rom collection are www.myayala.com and www.defensor.org. The University of Michigan also has produced an online archive called AThe United States and its Territories, 1870-1925,@ at http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text‑idx?c=philamer. It contains a photo archive, as well as scanned pages of several important publications from this period, including Blair & Robertson. I do not believe the entire 55-volume compendium is actually online at this time, but at the very least the indeces are already available. ↩
• Mis días corren con velocidad y encuentro que soy muy viejo (así me llaman muchos) para mi edad. Me falta la alegría de los corazones jóvenes … (Ayer MS 1417, p. 88) ↩
•  In the early 1900s it became known as ABughouse Square@ and was a popular public space for political and artistic free speech. Later in the 20 th  century, the serial killer John Wayne Gacy reportedly prowled the park for victims. ↩
• See  Caraga Antigua: The Hispanization and Christianization of Agusan, Surigao, and East Davao  by Peter Schreurs, MSC. Published in Cebu by University of San Carlos Press, 1989 (ISBN:971-100-054-7). Even though I had read this book, which was written by a priest from neither Order, I was struck by the profundity of the Recoletos= work in Mindanao, which in my view remains unacknowledged. Newspaper accounts from the 19 th  century, stuffed into the ARM  legajos  indicate that a major political brawl erupted at that time between these two Religious Orders, not only for territory but also for proper recognition, which the Recoletos obviously lost. ↩

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