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 MODERN
HISTORY
u s (l1ld Inierjyrcuuuins

Edited byJAM] t ODD

and AN N
K ALEXANDER
 Problems in Modern
Latin American History

Sources and Interpretations

1'itth Edition

Edited by

J AMI S A . WOOD
V / //| ( arolina Agricultural
art J Technical State University

\ s w R o s i ALEXANDER

('alifornia Slate University, East Bay

K"u Tw* Lo"don

I unburn ' Houtder
Executive Editor: Susan McEachem
Editorial Assistant: Katelyn Turner
Senior Marketing Manager: Kim Lyons

Credits and acknowledgments for material borrowed from other sources, and reproduced
with permission, appear on the appropriate page within the text.

Published by Rowman & Littlefield

An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard. Suite 200, Lanham. Maryland 20706
www.rowman.com

6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL

Copyright © 2019 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

First edition 1998. Second edition 2004. Third edition 2009. Fourth edition -014.

All rights resented. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any
electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems,
without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote
passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Wood, James A.. 1968 editor. | Alexander. Anna Rose, editor.
Title: Problems in modem Latin American history : sources and interpretations edited
by James A. Wood, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State I niversity; Anna
Rose Alexander, California State University. East Bay.
Description: Fifth edition. Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield. 2019. Series: Latin
American Silhouettes 1 Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018053700 (print) | LCCN 2018054324 (cbook)! ISBN
9781538109076 (electronic) | ISBN 9781538109052 (cloth : alk. paper) I ISBN
9781538109069 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Latin America—History—1830- | Latin America- Social conditions.
Classification: LCC F1413 (ebook) | LCC F1413 .P76 2019 (print) | DDC 980.013
dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018053700
!o^™
W The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Preface to the Fifth Edition, vii

Chapter I: Legacies of Colonialism, 1

1 Worlds Collide in Tenochtitlan: CAMILA TOWNSFND, 3

. .. . i tf„.c T imc 7
Assessing Indian Labor in Quito: KRIS LANE, 7
3 Rethinking the Quilombo of Palmares: STUAKI B. SCHWARTZ,
4. A Priest Reports on Social Conditions in Mexico: MANUEL ABAD

Y QUEIPO, 16
5. The Myth of Completion: MATTHEW RESTALL, 21
6. Visual Source: Ordering the Colonized Space, 25

Chapter II: Independence, 27

1 The Political Constitution of the Spanish Monarchy: CORTES OF CADIZ, 29

2 War to the Death: SIMON BOUVAR, 32
T The Vision of Father Morelos: ENRIQUE KRAUSE, 34
4. What Independence Meant for Women: SARAH C. CHAMBERS,
5. Ode to Tropical Agriculture: ANDRES BI U.O, 41
6. Tropical Versailles: KLRSTEN SCHULTZ, 43

Chapter III: Slavery. 49

1. Africans .n the American World: JOHN THORNTON 51

2. A Cuban Slave's Testimony: ESIEBAN MONTI JO, 55
A \ N«v ON « Coffee Plantation: STANLEY J. STEIN, 60
4. AWca's Botanical Legacy: Juooi, CARS, V AND R, CHARD ROSOMOFF. 63
5. Black Wet Nurses: ROBERT EDGAR CONRAD, 66
6. Abolitionism in Brazil: JOAQUIM NABIK O, 68
7 Visual Source: Homage to Princess Isabel. 72

m
iv
Contents

Chapter IV: Caudillos, 75

1. Caudillos as Scourge: CHARLES E. CHAPMAN. 77

2. Caudillos as Profit Maximizers: ERIC R. WOLF AND EDWARD C. HANSEN. 80
3. Caudillos as Protectors of the Indians: RALPH LEE WOODWARD JR.. 84
4. Caudillos as Culture Heroes: ARIEL DE LA FUENTE, 88
5. The Ribbons and Rituals of Rosismo: DOMINGO FAUSTINO SARMIENTO. 93
6. Mexico in the Age of Caudillos: FRANCES CALDERON DE LA BARCA, 97
7. Visual Source: Contemporary Caudillos?, 100

Chapter V: Liberalism and the Catholic Church, 103

1. A New Generation of Liberals: FRANK SAFFORD, 105

2. Liberalism as Anticlericalism: HELEN DELPAR, 109
3. The Postcolonial Church: JOHN LYNCH, 113
4. Good Catholic Reading for Ladies: CAROLINA CHERNIAVSKY BOZZOLO, 117
5. Generational Warrior: FRANCISCO BILBAO, 121
6. The Triumph of Reform: JUSTO SIERRA, 127

Chapter VI: Race and Nation Building, 131

1. Neocolonial Ideologies: E. BRADFORD BURNS, 133

2. Civilization versus Barbarism: DOMINGO FAUSTINO SARMIENTO, 138
3. Torn from the Nest: CLORINDA MATTO DE TURNER, 139
4. The Specter of Degeneration: MARTIN S. STABB, 144
5. Brazilianization: ALUISIO AZEVEDO, 147
6. A Raceless Nation: ADA FERRER, 151
7. Visual Source: Barbershop, 156

Chapter VII: Nationalism, 159

1• Our America: JOSE MART!, 161

3. Mtt.azo°Pridd 'r MEXICAN REVOLUTION: OCTAVIO PAZ. 163

Mestizo Pride: GILBERTO FREYRE, 166
4.
Plan for the Realization of Bolivar's Supreme Dream-
AUGUSTO SANDINO, 169
5.
6. C*RLTTA"'',NSARDMES: JUAN *>* AREVALO, 173
Carmen Miranda and Brasilidade: DARIEN J. DAVIS, 176
 Contents V

Chapter VIII: Populism, 181

1. The Peronist Political Vision: DANIEL JAMES, 183

2. Doha Maria Remembers Peron: MARIA ROLDAN, 187
3. The First Lady's Peronist Feminism: EVA PERON, 192
4. Father of the Poor? ROBERT M. LEVINE, 194
5. Cardenismo and Women's Organizing: JOCELYN OLCOTT, 199
6. Trujillo, the Benefactor: LAUREN DERBY, 203

Chapter IX: Social Revolution, 209

1. Essence of Guerrilla Warfare: CHE GUEVARA, 211

2. Cuba's Revolutionary Literacy Campaign: JONATHAN KOZOL. 216
3. Chile's Revolution from Below: PETER WINN, 220
4. The Chilean Road to Socialism: SALVADOR ALLENDE, 224
5. Christianity and Revolution: MARGARET RANDALL, 228
6. Reflections on Life as a Colombian Revolutionary: MARLA EUGENIA
VASQUEZ PERDOMO, 232

Chapter X: The Cold War, 237

1. Statements of U.S. Foreign Policy Doctrine: PRESIDENTS JAMES MONROE,

THEODORE ROOSEVELT, AND FIARRY TRUMAN, 239
2. The Lesser of Two Evils: DAVID F. SCHMITZ, 242
3. The 1964 Scare Campaign: MARGARET POWER, 247
4. Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders:
CHURCH COMMITTEE, 251
A Search and Destroy Operation in El Salvador: MARK DANNER. 255
6. The Beliefs behind the Policies: LARS SCHOULTZ. 259

Chapter XI: The Global Economy, 265

Neocolonial Economics: CELSO FURTADO, 267

Neoliberalism and Its Prospects: MILTON FRIEDMAN, 270
Global Neoliberalism: WILLIAM I. ROBINSON, 274
I Had Sacrificed My Life": NORMA IGLESIAS PRIETO, 276
Humanity against Neoliberalism: SUBCOMANDANTE MARCOS, 279
The New Left and the Global Economy: STEVEN LEVITSKY AND
KENNETH M. ROBERTS, 282
V/ Contents

Chapter XII: Historical Memory. 287

1. Memory, Truth, and Justice: ELIZABETH JELIN, 289

2. Opening Chile's Memory Box: STEVE J. STERN, 293
3. Human Rights Violations Committed by Government Agents:
CHILEAN NATIONAL COMMISSION ON TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION, 296
4. Testimony of Atrocity: RIGOBERTA MENCHU, 299
5. Analysis of Rigoberta Menchu's Testimonial: DAVID STOLL, 302
6. Memory of Silence: GUATEMALAN COMMISSION FOR HISTORICAL
CLARIFICATION, 307
7. Visual Source: Memory Sites, 310

Chapter XIII: Nature and Protest, 313

1. The Death of Ramon Gonzalez-. ANGUS WRIGHT, 315

2. Fight for the Forest: CHICO MENDES, 320
3. Capitalism and Self-Destruction: BERTA CACERES, 325
4. Blood on Their Hands: PHILIPPA DE BOISSIERE AND SIAN COWMAN, 326
5. Rights of Nature: Ecuadorian Constitution, 331
6. Lead Poisoning: JAVIER AUYERO AND DEBORA ALEJANDRA SWISTUN, 333
7. Visual Source: "Let Us Wake Up, Humanity. We're Out of Time," 336

About the Editors, 339

Preface to the Fifth Edition

The first time I stepped into my own classroom after receiving my PhD I was
armed with the Problems in Modern Latin American History book. It helped me
organize the history of more than thirty countries spanning more than two hun­
dred years in a way that was coherent and effective for student learning. Each
new edition has enhanced learning by engaging students and helping them make
connections between their own realities and those in Latin America. When James
Wood and Susan McEachem asked me to jump on board and coedit the fifth edi­
tion I was honored but also a little nervous that I now had a hand in shaping a
textbook that greatly influenced the ways I teach Latin America.
PMLAH works so well because each chapter is designed around a problems-
based approach. In each chapter students learn about one of the major issues driv­
ing change in Latin America—ranging from independence to social revolution to
historical memory—and they are asked to analyze conflicting evidence from mul­
tiple voices and viewpoints. Students have to step back and ask themselves how
to make sense of vastly different accounts of the same problem. In our world that
is bombarded with accusations of "fake news," these skills in critical thinking are
not only helpful for college-level courses but also necessary to be informed and
engaged citizens. No other textbook about modem Latin America quite offers this
level of active learning. Instead, they tend to be organized by country or region,
and students find it difficult to see the patterns of continuity and change that make
studying Latin America so interesting.
This book, first edited by Joseph Tulchin in 1973, and later by John Chas-
teen and James Wood, has had many lives. With each edition the editors tried to
get across messages that were expressly shaped by the times during which the
book was published. This edition is no different. Conversations we as educators
are having in our classes have changed since the last edition (in 2014), making
it necessary for the content of this book to change too. Students, at least in the
Lnited States, are steeped in a time of DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood
Arrivals) reform, the #MeToo movement, and young Americans protesting in
mass. These events influence not only the way they understand their own world
but also how they interpret Latin America's past and present. James and I teach at

vii
"" Preface to the Fifth Edition

very different universities—my classes are filled with first-generation and Latinx
students from the Bay Area, whereas James works at a public, historically black
university in the Southeast. While we had our current students in mind when re­
vising this edition, I also thought about the students I taught in big state schools
and smaller liberal arts-style programs in Arizona, British Columbia, Alabama,
and Georgia. Each student body informed the way we thought about the content
we selected and the messages we want to impart. Over the past two years while
James and I were revising the newest edition, I was transparent with my students
about the editing process and had the opportunity to test out the new materials on
them. My students did not hold back with their vocal and earnest critiques about
which chapters or selections worked and which ones did not. This collaborative
learning experience with my students was rewarding and ultimately made this
new edition better.
While the problems-based structure remains the same, we are thankful to
four anonymous reviewers who helped us identify critical areas to improve in the
fifth edition. First, one of the most substantial changes we made was removing
the Women and Social Change" chapter that had appeared in the last two edi­
tions. While this decision was difficult, we ultimately felt that relegating women's
\oices to one chapter sent the message that women had separate experiences and
were not part of the larger narrative. Instead, we tried to practice women's parity
the honf hlSt^.by WeavinS women's voices more seamlessly throughout

the book and including new selections by Frances ("Fanny") Calderon de la

oS Sec™; Matt°,de TUmer' and Ma™ Euseraa
others. Second, several reviewers suggested that we bnng back the "Legacies
week oTtwo "on most instructors of the modem survey spend a

week or two on the region's pre-Colombian and colonial past Our hope is that

Anna Rose Alexander

Oakland, California
 I

Legacies of Colonialism

Modern Latin American history begins with Independence in the early 1800s, af­
ter more than three centuries of conquest and colonial rule by Spain and Portugal.
The modem period of Latin American history, about which we will have a lot to
say in the coming chapters, thus rests on the foundations of a long, complex, and
often brutal experience with Iberian colonialism. Before delving into the "prob­
lems of modem Latin American history, we must first take a moment to consider
the region's complicated colonial legacies.
Like people everywhere. Latin Americans carry with them the heavy
baggage of their past. The legacies of Iberian colonialism have shaped and
continue to shape many aspects of the region's modern history, such as its
religious beliefs, its social order, and its relations with the outside world. So
powerful was the colonial period's imprint on the region that many historians
think of the first generations after Independence as defined by that colonial
baggage, making it more "postcolonial" than anything else. It is also important
to remember that the incredibly diverse lands spanning the South Atlantic and
Pacific Oceans have a history that stretches back much farther in time than the
period of Spanish and Portuguese colonialism. As the selections in this chapter
will demonstrate, the history of the region's indigenous people did not just end
when the Europeans and Africans arrived; it adapted. So, what were the lega­
cies of colonialism in Latin America?
Scholars have given various answers. Spanish and Portuguese historians tra­
ditionally lauded the colonial implantation of the Christian faith. Latin American
historians, on the contrary, more commonly condemned colonial social institu­
tions. including religious ones, as unjust or backward. Students approaching the
topic of Latin America's colonial legacies should avoid either simplistic praise or
denunciation of Spain or Portugal. Our interest is not to justify the original Euro­
pean conquest or the Latin Americans' subsequent struggle to create independent
republics. Rather, we need to understand colonialism as the starting point of the
national experience in Latin America.
Colonialism created a multiethnic population all across the region. Millions
of indigenous people survived the terrible impact of the conquest and remained

/
 Chapter I

a substantial part of the population. Millions of Africans joined them to labor

as slaves for the Spanish and Portuguese settlers. People of European descent
stood at the top of the social hierarchy, although they were far outnumbered by
the indigenous people and Africans. Gradually, a new social group, the people
of mixed race, grew to become a substantial part of the population. Mixed-race
people included mestizos, pardos, and a myriad of other highly localized identi­
ties. The mestizos (literally, "mixed" in Spanish, referring to mixed European
and indigenous heritage) appeared immediately after 1492 and kept on appearing
throughout the colonial period. They formed an upwardly mobile middle group,
socially below the people of European descent but above the indigenous and Afri­
can workforce. The pardo ("brown" in Spanish, equivalent to mulatto) population
grew in a similar fashion in places where the native population was sparse, espe­
cially around the tropical Atlantic and Caribbean coasts. The colonial creation of
this stratified, multiethnic social order is a cardinal fact of Latin American history
and thus receives a great deal of attention in the selections that follow.
The virtual omnipresence of the Catholic Church in colonial Latin America,
the wealth of Catholic institutions, and the close alliance between church and
state, not to mention the lasting Catholic affiliation of (until very recently) al­
most everybody, all point to another legacy of colonialism. The vast extent of
the church's authonty over colonial society makes it impossible to ignore. The
Roman Catholic Church in colonial Latin America was a conglomeration of
institutions, including ecclesiastical offices, the parish clergy, and various orders
ot nuns, monks, and friars that ran hospitals, schools, orphanages, missions, and
even slave plantations. It is fair to say that the church's reach extended into nearly
every aspect of everyday life.
Apart from its active role in the everyday life of colonial society, the Catho-
noS.rT„WaS /°"y influential in shaP'"g a"d constantly reinforcing
? C ">lomall5m> patriarchy. Historians are keen to point out that
gender roles and relations are never fixed in time and space; they are always be-

firTn11n'idTfdAhr0U8h a C0mpiex pr°cess of enfo™m™t and negotia-

fmmeLrk o? Roman'£L""0"™ Wlthm the cos™Iog,cal

for mp ri Catholicism. The church's teachings about the proper roles
«a 1 S C a ! m , t y a 0 d " y >^a n d
colonial penod and beyondThis SuborfmatePositi™to men throughout the

that era. That did not mean howe Wa* Slmply a §,ven m the dominant culture of
of Latin American colonialism Thev 1 L W°™en were Slmply the passive victims
pursued their own interests even whs ' th °, opPressed soc>al groups, actively

'n other words, they Z„cv f W3S Stacked "8™* them

The question ,hOT ^dinated status.

•n this chapter. The chapter attempts to refl "V " P°1M ab°Ut the selecti™s
Legacies of Colonialism 3

the complexities of social interactions and cultural developments in the colonial

world. As we will see, the new generation of scholars sees complexity every­
where—from language to labor to religious beliefs and cosmological visions.
As you read the following selections, see if you can recognize both the basic
contours of the colonial system and the ways that people living under colonialism
adapted to life in the new order.

QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS

1. How are the people in this chapter's selections identified in terms

of their race and ethnicity?
2.What do the selections tell us about the ways that different
groups of people—market women, indigenous laborers, and enslaved
Africans—experienced colonialism? Were there limits to what colonial
authorities could control?
3. Historians of colonial Latin America often use the concept of
transculturation in their studies. If transculturation means the blending
of two (or more) cultural practices into something new and unique, do
you see any examples of that in these selections?

1. Worlds Collide in Tenochtitlan — Camila Townsend*

Columbus's fateful arrival in the Western Hemisphere in 1492 initiated an en­

counter between the peoples of the Old World—Europe, Africa, and Asia—and
those of the New World—North and South America. Sadly, that encounter rapidly
transformed into a European conquest of the lands and lives of the native people
of the islands. From their base of operations in the city of Santo Domingo, the
Spaniards continued to explore this unknown world in the early 1500s. In 1519,
a small group of Spaniards under the leadership of Hernan Cortes landed on
the Caribbean coast of what is now Mexico, in the territory of the Aztec Empire.
Cortes quickly gathered information about the Aztecs, established relations with
various altepetls (city-states), and moved toward the Aztec capital, Tenochtit­
lan, located on an island in Lake Texcoco. In this selection, historian Camila
Townsend takes us through the 1519 encounter between Cortes and the Aztec
tlatoani, or emperor, Moctezuma II, on the causeway leading into Tenochtitlan.

"From Camila Townsend, Malintzin's Choices: An Indian Woman in the Conquest of Mexico (Albu­
querque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006), 85-89.
 Chapter I
4

Townsend's ability to read the historical sources written in Nahuatl, the Aztec
language, gives her analysis of this encounter a new depth of perspective. She
also focuses on the role played by Cortes's young, indigenous female slave and
interpreter, the famous Malintzin, also known as La Malinche and Doha Marina,
in this historic encounter. As the interpreter for Cortes, Malintzin's linguistic
skills were a crucial part of this event, but, as Town send wonders, was she really
able to "translate" what the two sides were saying to each other?

T he procession of armed Spaniards stopped at the gate where hundreds of dig­

nitaries had gathered to greet them. "Each one performed a ceremony which
they practice among themselves; each placed his hand on the ground and kissed
it," wrote Cortes a year and a half later. In true Nahua style,* each segment of the
polity accomplished its part separately. "And so 1 stood there waiting for nearly an
hour until everyone had performed his ceremony." Then the foreigners were led
across a bridge and found themselves looking at a long, open avenue that made the
mazelike medieval cities of Europe seem ramshackle indeed. "[It] is very wide and
beautiful and so straight that you can see from one end to the other. It is two-thirds
of a league long and has on both sides very good and big houses, both dwellings
and temples." Down this corridor proceeded Moctezuma with a large retinue.
Cortes said that when they were within a few paces of each other, he dismounted
from his horse and moved forward to embrace the king, lord to lord, according to
European custom, but that the men on each side of the tlatoani quickly stepped
forward to stop him. That is probably exactly what happened: the indigenous ac­
counts of the event written years later are replete with references to the Spaniards
making free with the sacred person of their lord. Cortes presented the monarch
with a necklace of pearls and cut glass. Moctezuma immediately sent a servant to
fetch an equally magnificent gift: a necklace of red snail shells, hung with beauti­
fully crafted golden shrimp. Then he ushered Cortes into one of the halls, where
they each sat upon special seats that betokened political authority. In the presence
ot their leading men. they began to talk. Malintzin stood between them.
Moctezuma addressed his uninvited guests in the elaborate courtly speech that
was always used with ambassadors. It had its own grammar and relied upon a code
ot polite inversion that all elite Nahuas understood. A prince might address his so­
cial interiors as "my grandfathers" and they might call him "my child." He might
say to them that he was unworthy to receive the honor of such a visit, when they
were to understand that they were lucky he was taking the time to see them at all
According to the memories of that day that the nobles passed down to their sons in
their own tongue, Malintzin understood Moctezuma's courtly language perfectly
but responded with brutally direct speech, devoid of honorifics or polite reversals.
We will never know what Moctezuma really said. The following year Cor­
ks reported to Charles V that he had immediately volunteered to cede his entire

• Wihua refers to the culture of the Nahuatl-speaking people of central Mexico.

Legacies of Colonialism

realm to the Spanish monarch. For many years the story was taken literally, until
certain savvy historians began to note that Cortes had strong motivations for mak­
ing this claim, and his European readers had equally good reason for choosing to
believe him: according to Spanish law, the Spanish king had no right to demand
that foreign peoples become his subjects. But he had every right to bring rebels
to heel In order for the Spanish to define the indigenous as rebels so they might
make war against them, it was important to insist that the Indians had at first
declared their loyalty. Cortes, naturally, was only too happy to tell His Majesty
Kin« Charles what His Majesty needed to hear.
&It is preposterous to think that the most powerful warrior king in all the land,

who had ruled successfully for seventeen years, would suddenly and immediately
relinquish his domains without further ado. In believing it for so many years,
Western historians have only showed ourselves to be more naive than Moctezuma
ever was Still, parts of Cortes's account of the speech do ring true. And the indig­
enous account written in the 1550s contains some of the same elements—though,
of course it might have been written under the influence of the Cortesian version,
which appeared in book form in Spain in 1552 and made its way across the sea
relatively rapidly. The conquistador put these words in the tlatoam's mouth:

For a long time we have known from the writings of our ancestors that neither
I nor any of those who dwell in this land, are natives of it, but foreigners who
came from very distant parts; and likewise we know that a chieftain, of whom
they were all vassals, brought our people to this region. And he returned to his
native land and after many years came again, by which time all those who had
remained were married to native women and had built villages and raised chil­
dren And when he wished to lead them away again they would not go nor even
admit him as their chief; and so he departed. And we have always held that those
who descended from him would come and conquer this land and take us as their
vassals. ... We believe and are certain that he is our natural lord, especially as
you say that he has known of us for some time. So be assured that we shall obey
you and hold you as our lord.

That the Indians "believed and were certain" that the Spanish king was their
"natural lord" was pure legalese, of the kind that Cortes was invested in provid­
ing, and the idea of the return of the son certainly smacks of Christianity. e
account of Chichimec history, on the other hand, seems remarkably accurate:
Nahuatl-speaking men had invaded the central valley on more than one occasion
each time marrying into the local cultures, each time facing difficulties later with
more invaders from the same northern regions. How would Cortes have known
what the Mexica* history accounts said, if not from Moctezuma? Perhaps;Ma-
lintzin had heard such tales chanted in her father's central courtyard, but that is
unlikely, as her father's people were no friends of the Mexica. Even if she had.

*The Mexica were the Nahuatl-speaking ethnic group that ruled the Aztec Empire.
6 Chapter I

though, in what other context would she have had the time and energy to tell Cor­
tes such tales? And it is certainly true that the indigenous were preoccupied from
verv early on with the Question ot how the Spanish had known of their existence,
the Europeans' knowledge, like their weaponry, implied a technological superior­
ity that promised to be a problem. Moctezuma might well have used exaggerat­
edly polite speech to explain away a phenomenon he felt needed explaining and
to attempt to incorporate the outsiders into his vision of world history, all in an at­
tempt to reassert—albeit indirectly—his own dominance and his own worldview.
The children of the indigenous chiefs later recounted Moctezuma"s speech
this way:

0 our lord, be doubly welcomed on your arrival in this land; you have come to
satisfy your curiosity about your altepetl of Mexico, you have come to sit on
your seat of authority, which 1 have kept for a while for you, where I have been
in charge for you, for your agents the rulers—[the dynasty of Mexica kings]
Itzcoatzin, the elder Moctezuma, Axayacatl, Tizoc and Ahuitzotl—have [all]
gone.... It is after them that your poor vassal [myself] came.

Stripped of the distractions provided by courtly speech, Moctezuma's com­

ment reads quite differently. In the words of a modem historian, "It is a rhetorical
artifice meant to convey the opposite—Moctezuma's stature and multigenera-
tional legitimacy—and to function [at the same time] as a courteous welcome to
an important guest."
Interestingly, Cortes wrote that Moctezuma then insisted to his Spanish audi­
ence that he was not a god and did not possess extraordinary wealth. "I know that
[my enemies] | have told you the walls of my houses are made of gold, and that
the floor mats in my rooms ... are likewise of gold, and that I was, and claimed
to be, a god The houses as you see are of stone and lime and clay," quoted
Cortes. "Then he raised his clothes and showed me his body, saying, 'See that I
am flesh and blood like you and all other men.'" The last statement certainly has
biblical overtones and could well be a product of Cortes's active imagination.
On the other hand, a Mexica speaker would have been more than likely to use
both "floor mats" and "blood" as important metaphors. They did so frequently in
their songs It is difficult to think of a good reason for Cortes to have thrown in
is particular paragraph if it had no basis whatsoever—but Moctezuma himself

aJound^blT0" d "I1"1 "T s,a,ement In trae style, he worked his way

tardswere cods '° hiS P™Ch 'Me: he did n°< bdieve *at the Span-

•iccount of it. CaS,lll° * 3S d key member ot Cortes's Mexico expedition and published a famous
Legacies of Colonialism

iwlnrtezuma dismissed the stories of his own divinity in this interesting way: "You
«take them as a joke, as I take the story of your thunders and your lightnings,
intimately however, all analyses of Montezuma's statements are conjec-
i. we can never know how faithfully he was represented by his would-be
conquerors. Sueh analyses are worth making only in order to undermine any
easy acceptance of the utterances as fact and to remind ourselves how easily the

Snamsh may naively or willfully have misinterpreted whatever he really did say
The reality is that if we want to consider what Moctezuma was thinking as he sat
Tere and listened to Malintzin's words, we essentially have only his previous and

Sure actions t0 go on. We know that he had spent the preceding months intently

gathering information. After the sighting of die first ship m 1517, he had the sea
watchrf When the 1519 expedition made landfall, he sent painters to make a
record of all that they saw. Then, as the Spanish began their ascent tow rd
Tenochtitlan he organized a veritable war room. Men who had been young at the
time later remembered: "A report of everything that was happening was given
and relayed to Moctezuma. Some of the messengers would be arriving as oth­
ers were leaving. There was no time when they weren't listening, when reports
weren't being glen." Cortes also mentioned that Moctezuma's messengers were

,1
present in every altepetl that they visited, including Tlaxca a, watching every
.he newcomers took. Bernal Diaz said that by the time the Spaniards got to

Reference was no. as wide as that of the Spanish: in what may wel

would soon arrive.

Kris Lane*
2. Assessing Indian Labor in Quito

After seizing control of the Aztec encounter,

gressive expansion southward into Sout . • the Inca Empire,
and eventually conquer, another advanced, urban civilization, the Inca tup

*From Kris Lane, flrt, /59P: CI* G** * — (Albuquerque: University of New
Mexico Press, 2002), 87-88, 95-97. 99-101.
s Chapter I

Along the way, on the mountainous northern fringes of Inca territory, the Span­
iards encountered, and again conquered, the various native communities that
inhabited the valleys surrounding the city of Quito in what is today Ecuador. In
this selection, historian Kris Lane, innovatively drawing on estate inventories,
wills, and other archival sources of evidence, gives us a glimpse into the work
experiences of the indigenous men and women in early colonial Quito. Lane is
unflinching in his depiction of Spanish brutality toward the indigenous people,
especially with regard to the various institutions that were developed to extract
forced labor from the conquered people. But he also shows us an unexpected side
of early Spanish colonialism in the Andes: how Quito's indigenous women found
ways to adapt, and even thrive, in the "interstices, " or small, in-between spaces,
of this emerging colonial society.

O nce again captivity—in both the brutal physical and complex psychological
senses—and its inverse, redemption, would form the contours of everyday
life, in this case for greater Quito's indigenous majority, high and low. The inter-
montane core alone had been home to several hundred thousand native Andeans
at the city s Spanish refounding in 1534, and for the vanquished the earthquake
ot military defeat was followed by aftershocks of pestilence, dispossession,
forced migration, uncompensated servitude, racialized taxation, abduction, and
rape. Whole valleys were allotted to roughly fifty conquistadors in the central
highlands, tributes and labor drafts levied through the peculiar institutions of
encomienda and mita* youths snatched from their families to serve as domestics
and concubines (slavelike) in a new master's townhouse, or as expendable porters
on some hare-brained quest for treasure in Amazonia or the Pacific lowlands.
A 11 A*10™ s'aves re^emPtion in these harsh circumstances came usually

izr
baser hii3" °
f mthe fim decades of 1Spanish rale were tens and
natlve Quiteiios redeemed. With few exceptions the colonizer's
h"ndreds
®dni3l?r T predominated, coarse veils of greed
lowland tronical ^m™8 r "C splendor of multiple Andean chiefdoms and
it jhZTl °f ''iSt°mShmg Phys,ca1']i*. Political, and art.stic
bureaulmcvSpai"'S ,ypically ^ Renaissance
separated and sorted, individuals Mdwhok Shattered'"S varicolored sand
grains
called "Indians." communities alike reduced to quanta

however greedy or misguided, never

though many would be brutallv exploited T °f G°d and king' 3nd &1~
' Plotted across three centuries of colonial rule,
Lncomienda was a kcv lahn
ShTcf 7 3
iablr L^u,lanr,,0n-1,8 h°lder
Irf dUnng the Canbbea" Pb- of the
called aii encolt7 VTh ?on<l»«tador for the purpose
had roo,s m the 1-7 3 ro,at'onal labor draft that was aDDlie/'° n "7 another Spanish colonial
' r Practices of the Inca Empire. annually to indigenous communities. It
Legacies of Colonialism

b eet peoples too had rights. Like the vanquished Moriscos of Al-Andalus*
hacj first of all a right to subsist, the crown an obligation to allot sufficient

1 nds and waters. Second, and critical to any understanding of the Spanish Ameri-
3 n case native peoples had been granted legal recourse against mistreatment by

b\h private individuals (usually holders of encomienda grants) and government

° church agents. Outcomes would almost always favor the powerful, but the
rlurts were°nevertheless obligated by order of the king to hear and document
•I indiaenous grievances. Furthermore, the pope had declared Amenndian souls
equivalent (perhaps even superior) to those of Europeans in the eyes of God. The
message to all colonists? Mistreat His innocent "children' and risk damnation.
Yet Quito's native peoples did not sit idly by, waiting to be exploited or
annihilated On the contrary, native expressions of willpower flood the colonial
record. There was violent resistance. There was also wily and creative adapta­
tion like that of the caciques, market women, and thousands of working men
discussed below. Then there was outright collaboration within the new colonial
order Even at the core it seemed the conqueror's work was never done while at
the margins the imperial juggernaut, for all its smoke and noise proved ess than
invincible. On the other hand, no amount of wile could negate the cumulative e
felt of Old World epidemic disease, which by 1599 had reduced greater Quito s
indigenous population by nearly three quarters. As refugees fled to the cities
Spanish immigrants and their descendants-among them a growing number of
mestizos, mulattos, and other crown subjects of mixed hentage—moved quickly
to seize the rich lands they left behind.

Merchant Women
There were other interstices to exploit in 1599 Quito, and —
of all ranks and ethnicities were especially quick to carve

::r0sg
Under intense pressure from reformist clerics the crown had by

^
centurv exempted all persons identified as Amenndian from sales taxes
,ne or
Following the law of unintended consequences the crown s P American
were the only economically significant members o e g
family effectively freed many native women from Jall .lire:tmx burden
tainly married women were forced to share their husbands nbute obhga»
indirectly, but a number of enterprising "Indian" sol,eras
up (or, in some cases, continued practicing) commerce, and like certal
minded caciques, a few grew rich. , . •
A sampling of the wills of Quito's women
grated to the city from the hinterland; some had probab >

."Moriscos" refers to the Moorish Muslims forced

during the early 1500s. Al-Andalus was the Moorish name for their kingdom
 10 Chapter /

Spanish soldiers. Once settled, they spent the better part of their lives in the
several open-air "flea-markets," or tiangueces, of the highland capital, the be­
nign climate freeing them from any absolute need to rent shop space. In spite
of their usually humble beginnings, these women soon began trading more than
the vegetables and cheap pottery authorized by the town council. The 1598
probate inventory of Catalina Cahar, widow of a Latacunga sub-chief, reveals
a web of connections to not only local but also interoceanic trade circuits. Her
possessions included skirts and shawls from Canar (near Cuenca), Cajamarca,
"Huancavelica," Bogota, New Spain, and China (a blue taffeta), along with a
variety of gold and silver garment pins (topos/tupus). She seems also to have
invested a small amount of cash in the highly lucrative Panama trade.
Another indigenous retailer in Quito was dona Ynes Enriquez, a native of
Panzaleo and technically a subject of don Diego Collin. Her will, filed in late
1599, lists debts owed her for jugs of maize beer (chicha/aswa) and indigenous-
style garments, some made with Andean fabrics (Huancavelica, Cajamarca, Qui-
jos), others from imported ones (Castile, Portugal). In the course of her trading
activities, dona Ynes had managed to accumulate a small amount of livestock and
a house in the St. Sebastian neighborhood. Her liquid capital was in the form of
silver and gold topos and "coral" (perhaps native Spondylus shell) necklaces and
bracelets, some of them held in hock.
Similar was Ysabel Angay, native of the Cuenca-area village of Tutiexi She
filed a will m Quito in 1599, noting various debts for jugs of chicha and baskets
she h 8 J °™ Wealth COnSiSted largely >nd>genous-style skirts,
he must have managed to put together a substantial dowry since her daughter
thechaurin'on "'I 1™ ^ 'mPOrtam textile-Producing village of Sigchos. To
he chagrin of local clergy, many indigenous and mixed-heritage women in con­
temporary Quito chose differently, avoiding marriage while openly engagino in
temporary relationships. Meanwhile, married women managed to secure dfvofces
wr h alarming frequency. This state of affairs outraged B1shop Luis llez1
Sohs, who informed the Indies Council in a ,597 letter that he Ld estabZshed

reformation," claiming that OuitoWn boasted

u°
f an alr^dy evident "great
healthy "fear of entering there." D°W ^ What he thouSht was a

Working Men

tts ;—r -
M-.. _ r„ W„„ Wm ^ J

f
Legacies of Colonialism 11

which, especially in marginal districts with significant gold deposits, could be a

lot like slavery for the average tributary.
In 1589, for example, native (presumably Palta) gold miners working near
Loyola, a tiny and remote town in the highlands south of Loja, charged their en-
comendero, Pedro de Banuelos, with multiple counts of assault, rape, and other
crimes against family members. Angered by work slowdowns, Banuelos hung
three individuals upside down over a fire, forcing them to inhale smoke before
rubbing their eyes with a mixture of urine and capsicum peppers. The charges
against Banuelos in fact extended to murder, since one victim apparently died
of torture wounds, but Quito's audiencia sentenced the sadistic encomendero to
only two years service in the South Sea galleys and a small fine. In his absence,
the state attorney noted, the crown would administer the encomienda and collect
its revenues.
A similar case from Loyola dating to the late 1570s suggests these abuses
were not unique. In fact, Banuelos may have learned his outrageous behavior
from the encomendero Juan de Estrada, who was charged with torture, mutilation,
and murder of indigenous wards by dog attack. Encomienda abuses were equally
rife in gold-rich Popayan, where miners openly flaunted the law by renting labor­
ers to one another as if they were slaves.
These are extreme cases, to be sure, but virtually everywhere it was applied
the encomienda was extraordinarily punishing for men and disruptive of indig­
enous lifeways more generally. It entailed concentrated resettlement, periodic
labor drafts, twice-yearly tribute payment in cash and kind, and indoctrination
in the Catholic faith (usually limited to rote participation in the sacraments
and forced church attendance). Assessments were periodically adjusted when
tributaries, men aged eighteen to fifty, were identified and counted by a roving
magistrate. Though on the wane by 1599 since inheritance was limited to two
generations and native populations were plummeting from disease, in Quito sev­
eral prime encomienda holdings remained in private hands until the second half
of the seventeenth century.
Even as encomienda rents were reverting to the crown all over the highlands,
indigenous labor was made available to private citizens and corporate entities
through a new institution after about 1570. This was the mita, an hispanicized
revival of the Inka corvee, or mit'a (literally "turn"). The timing of the labor
subsidy changeover was critical, since Quito's economy was undergoing a major
transition from mineral production to textile manufacture in precisely these years
(c. 1580 to 1605). At the base of both industries, however, lay Quito's agricultural
and demographic core, the fertile lands and ample hands that had attracted both
Inka and Spanish conquistadors.
In a pioneering 1947 study, Ecuadorian historian Aquiles Perez identified no
less than sixteen forms of mita labor in late sixteenth-century Quito. There were
12 Chapter /
mitas for domestic service, for gathering firewood, fodder, and household food
items, for herding livestock, working on farms, tending orchards, pressing cane,
gristmilling, construction, tilemaking, weaving, and mining. These were just the
mitas allotted to private citizens. For the city, church, and realm there were drafts
for both sacred and profane building construction, roadwork, sewage repair, mail
delivery, way-station hospitality service, and finally and perhaps most physically
punishing, long-distance porterage.
Indeed, well before the encomienda faded indigenous men were mustered by
caciques and handed over to regional crown representatives—the corregidores de
indios—for periodic repartition. Whereas the infamous silver-mine mita of Potosi
took away one-seventh of highland Peru and Bolivia's male indigenous labor­
ers at any given time, Quito's "ordinary mita" siphoned away a fifth. By 1599
perhaps five thousand to ten thousand men were engaged in mita projects at any
given moment in the immediate vicinity of Quito.

3. Rethinking the Quilombo of Palmares ~ Stuart B. Schwartz*

^ 7 eara°rdim** ^nS"°m Palmares—developed

as the fact that it was composed mostly of enslaved people who had escaped from

enslaved people T\hiTsterton Wordfor a commum<y of runaway

is, interpretation of the SS &W& " Kvisi°"-

culture. Using new retJZtZlZT^T ^ularly Angolan)
(both African and Brazilian) Schwarbex7i rf, " ma,ysis °flanS""ge

ethnicity and culture within the neo AM^" questlons °f enslaved Africans'

ings, while not definitive, clearly demo JL T i. commumty °f Palmares. His find-
of cultural linkages and bonds ofiniti f ™ 6 imstence °f"fascinating network
What does the existence oftch TT **** "Cmss ""Atlantic Ocean,
enslaved people in colonial Latin America? "h™ "* C"W ad"P'""i°"S of

Ifonns to the^BraziliM cobm^Uituatio6 adaption of Afric™ cultural

rican and criouloi came together in their c" °f various ori8ins> Af-
Palmares people called each other malum, ™° °
n n PposltIon t0 slav«y- Within

^Pa'so used among s,aves who had

"From Stuart B. Schwartz SI

Legacies of Colonialism 13

In Palmares we can see the attempt to form a community out of peoples of

disparate origins. Such an attempt had to be made by all fugitive communities,
but in the case of Palmares there are some specific features that help to explain
its particular history as well as the history of slave resistance in colonial Brazil
as a whole. The search for "African" elements at Palmares and in the cultural
"survivals" of slaves or fugitives as a whole has too often focused on specific
cultural or ethnic identities. In fact, much of what passed for African "ethnicity"
in Brazil were colonial creations. Categories or groupings such as "Congo" or
"Angola" had no ethnic content in themselves and often combined peoples drawn
from broad areas of Africa who before enslavement had shared little sense of re­
lationship or identity. That these categories were sometimes adopted by the slaves
themselves indicates not only the slaves' adaptability, but also the fact African
societies had considerable experience with, and a variety of institutions for, the
integration of disparate peoples and the creation of solidarities across ethnic lines.
There is, I believe, a deeper story in Palmares and one with broad impli­
cations for the subsequent history of slave resistance in Brazil. A key to the
problem lies in the etymology of the word quilombo. This term came to mean
in Brazil any community of escaped slaves, and its usual meaning and origin is
given as the Mbundu word for war-camp. By the eighteenth century the term
was in general use in Brazil, but it always remained secondary to the older term
mocambo, a Mbundu word meaning hideout. In fact, the word quilombo does
not appear in any contemporaneous document until the end of the seventeenth
century except for its midcentury use by the poet Gregorio de Mattos, who
employed it with the meaning of any place where blacks congregated. The first
document I have seen with the term quilombo used for a fugitive community is
dated 1691 and it deals specifically with Palmares. The chronology and the con­
nection with Palmares are not accidental. Within the term quilombo is encoded
an unwritten history that only now because of recent research in African history
can be at least partially understood.
While Palmares combined a number of African cultural traditions and in­
cluded among its inhabitants crioulos, mulattoes, Indians, and even some ren­
egade whites, or mestizos, as well as Africans, clearly the traditions of Angola
predominated. Its residents referred to Palmares as angola janga (little Angola)
in recognition of that fact, and in a complaint of 1672 the municipal council of
Salvador referred to the "oppression we all suffer from the gentiles of Angola
who live in Palmares." But, within the context of Angolan history, what is the
significance of that connection for the history of Palmares?
The kingdom of Ndongo, which the Portuguese came to call Angola in the
late sixteenth century, was a land in turmoil, invaded from the coast by the Portu­
guese and from the interior by bands of marauding warriors from central Africa.
The dissolution of the old Kingdom of Kongo and the Lunda state in Kitanga
created a period of military struggle and disruption that destroyed villages and
 14

Chapter /

bangala" or ^aka»^^|rfro^1efp^^^^^„e,lli,18 th<™seives "In,.

Angola, disrupting extsting states and eventSlly ireatmg ZXZT^'^

The precise origins and cultural traditions of th r u , P°,ltles-

relationship of the designation* u > u ''nbangala and even the

of debate LongI sonr "!^ ^ haVC be™ a

Jaga society were noted by contend L S°me aSpeCtS of ,mbangala/

to historians of T" 'ha* "* °f direC' ^

•n Palmares. First, the Imbangala raiders 'lived e S PeC'a"y t0 those """ested

o n
Reportedly, they killed the babies born to th, Pe™nnent war-footing.
Children into their ranks so that over time to W°me"' inte8rated adopted

of large numbers of people of various ethnic h T* '° be " comP°site force

mzed military stmcture. That organi7abn u 8rOUnds United by an »iga-

tbem the scourge of the ,£5^ P 3 re uted ™"tary ferocity made

Portuguese relations were alternately hf!I ? great'y feared' Imbangala-

1619, Imbangala lords served as merLnar f i,fr'endly' Between '611 and

supplied a flow of captives to the slave w!' , 8""' governors and

ormed by an Imbangala fusion with the indi ^ * pUanda" New states were
conquered or created a number of kingdoms „ n™'8" 35 'he ,mbangala
Congo-Angola region. Two of thes~ w "f 7 Mbundu Pe°P>« of the
the kingdom of Matamba, ruled by Queen ZTn' °f KaSan®e aad

2*rset-to , Kwango nver ^a«

first fought until the mid-seventeenth clnn^u' W"h Wh°m the Portuguese
e states battled each other for contr 1 r u e" "" a"'ance was formed

pr«siSS ss-ta.-=r
military stKietvT h etba'c dements eomprisl 7 k°" 'hat provided »be-
The ki-lomb°. a
incorporating larsf T 7 W3r'this institution created'3'1™ C°Uld beIon8> served
bangala ki-lombo wa™ i'?ngers who lacked a co^of"' WaiTi0r CU" by

so important to the othe r ° n beCaUSe of its ritual C7 ^ The Im'

w«bm its confines and althn'To matrilineal peoples of the 6 ^ MnshiP>

rructured by initiation rather than

 Legacies of Colonialism
15
by kinship. Historian Joseph Miller believes that the Imbangala "killing" of their
own children was a metaphor for the ceremonial elimination of kinship ties and
their replacement with the rules and proscriptions of the ki-lombo.
The creation of a social organization based on association created risks. The
inhabitants of the ki-lombo stood in a special spiritual danger since they lacked
the normal lineage ancestors who might intercede with the gods on their behalf.
Thus a chief figure in the ki-lombo was the nganga a nzumbi, a priest whose
responsibility was to deal with the spirits of the dead. The Ganga Zumba of Pal­
mares was probably the holder of this office, which was in effect not a personal
name but a title. There are other echoes from the descriptions of Angola that seem
suggestive. In the Imbangala, quilombo leadership depended on some kind of
popular acclaim or election just as some of the Brazilian accounts suggest. Most
curious is the observation of Andrew Battell, who lived among the Imbangala
and who noted that their chief luxury was palm wine and that their routes and
camps were influenced by the availability of palm trees. His comment makes the
association of the maroon community with a region of Palmares (the word means
palm trees) seem more than coincidental.
If the founders of Palmares had used the Imbangala ki-lombo as the basis for
their society, their version of it was incomplete or at least a variation on the basic
model. A number of features associated with the Imbangala ki-lombos had no par­
allel in Brazil. The Imbangala were always referred to as cannibals who practiced
cannibalism and human sacrifice to terrorize their enemies. These practices were
strictly controlled as was the preparation of magi a samba, a paste made from
human fat and other substances which supposedly made the ki-lombo warriors in­
vincible. A strict set of ritual laws (kijila) surrounded the ki-lombo. Women were
prohibited from the interior compound of the ki-lombo and there were strict ritual
proscriptions against menstruating women. None of these customs are mentioned
in the surviving documentation on Palmares.
The use of the term quilombo in reference to Palmares does not necessar­
ily mean that all the ritual aspects of that institution as they were practiced in
Angola were present in Brazil or that the founders or the subsequent leaders of
Palmares were necessarily Imbangala. Many aspects of the Imbangala ki-lombo
could be found in other Central African institutions like the kimpasi, secret initia­
tion camps of the Kongo, which also created new social bonds by association.
Much of what was inherent in the ki-lombo would have been understood by non-
Imbangala. As noted, Imbangala dynasties and institutions were incorporated
in a number of Mbundu states, and the quilombo came to symbolize the sover­
eignty of these states. Our best source in this regard is Antonio de Oliveira de
Cadornega, the principal chronicler of seventeenth-century Angola. Cadornega
used the term quilombo to describe Jaga troops, quilombos de Jagas, or gente e
quilombos de Jagas, but also as a descriptive term for the kingdoms of Matamba
and Kasange. The use of the phrase "kingdom and quilombo" of Matamba was a
 16
Chapter 1
general descriptive use of quilombo that referred to rhecp imKan^i • a
polities but did not necessarily suggest the full existence of the original 'inst'imt0^

ssr b — g *—
es, rh;f ,he above hypwh-
the introduction of the term in ^ r ??0,f1ev'denee to suggest that
was not accidental and that it represented more th" T Se.VeMeenth centuiy
ing. If true, then we must deal with the Af S ' mP y " lln8uistlc boi™w-

vivals" disembodied from their „ he,Af"can aspecIS °f Palmares not as "sur-

and perhaps intentional use of an Aft, ™ ™beU' bUt 3 far more dynamic

designed to create had »<*" specifically

provide an effective military organization T T f dlsparate ori8ins and to
fitted such a description, aTd the attacks mad S'aVes of Brazil

meats made the milita^ organLta ofThe T C °l°nM govern-

The success of quilombos varied as greatly Z7 7° essential for survival,
leadership, longevity, and internal fr 9"Uombos themselves in size,
'fie smaller Taken together. Palmares and
Brazilian slave regime. 3 contlnuous commentary on the

ViSSKSSS-S?
H rote a report addressed to the SpanishT"" T 7 XiceroW"y of New Spain
cerpted in this selection, he provided ^ f S 1799 reP° ™hich is ex-
c«as A ^T'0, 'S Va"°m g^pstedT'"""' °f 'he C°"di,ions

to to \ Pe°P e °fmixed rac'"l m!esZ,l7 J"°"S 'h°Se grouPs ^

o 7i7;mr?y the **"tenth ce7u 'VeiZefdlSCUSSed* the ""reduction

clergy,men frnm ,u 6 eccles,a^ical fuero the sn^tni , " mai™aining

fiom the jurisdiction of local judges (n^thaZfofighu exemP'ed

~ ne.hght to maintain the

•roni Manuel Abad v 0 '
Legacies of Colonialism 17

ecclesiastical fuero continued well into the nineteenth century). Abad y Queipo
makes several specific recommendations to the king in his report. What were they,
and what do they tell us about social conditions in late colonial New Spain?

N ew Spain has close upon four and a half million inhabitants, and these can
be divided into three classes, Spaniards, Indians, and castas. The Spaniards
form one-tenth of the total, and they alone possess almost all the property and
wealth of the kingdom. The other two classes, comprising nine-tenths of the
whole, can be divided into two-thirds who are castas and one-third pure Indians.
Indians and castas are employed in domestic service, agriculture, and the menial
side of trade and industry. That is to say, they are the servants, employees, or la­
borers of the first class. Consequently between them and the Spanish class there
is that conflict of interests and feelings that invariably prevails between those
who have nothing and those who have everything, between vassals and lords,
leading to envy, thieving, and poor service on the part of some, and to contempt,
exploitation, and harshness on the part of others. To some extent these conditions
are prevalent all over the world. But in America it is worse, for there are no grada­
tions between classes, no mean; they are all either rich or poor, noble or infamous.
The two classes of Indians and castas live in a state of utter degradation and
squalor. The color, ignorance, and poverty of the Indians place them at an infinite
distance from a Spaniard, and the laws do not help. Enclosed within a radius of
600 yards which the law assigns to their village, they have no individual property.
The community land, which they work under great duress and for no immedi­
ate benefit, must be all the more hateful a burden, the more difficult it becomes
to make use of its products; for under the new organization imposed by the law
of intendancies nothing can be decided concerning community land without re­
course to the superior junta of the royal treasury in Mexico City. Prohibited by
law from intermixture and union with the other castas, they are deprived of the
enlightenment and help that they should receive from communication and deal­
ings with other castas and people. Isolated by their language and their most use­
less and tyrannical government, they preserve forever their traditions, usages, and
gross superstitions, which in each village eight or ten old Indians mysteriously
seek to maintain, living idly at the expense and exertions of the others and ruling
them with the harshest despotism.
The castas are degraded by law as descendants of negro slaves. They pay trib­
ute, and as the registers are drawn up with great precision the tribute becomes for
them an indelible mark of slavery which the passage of time and race mixture in
succeeding generations never efface. There are many whose color, physiognomy,
and way of life would enable to rise to the class of Spaniards were it not for this
stigma which holds them down in their original class. Degraded by law, they are
poor and servile, lacking proper education and bearing still some of the stain of
their origin; in these circumstances they must feel cmshed in spirit, and surrender
 18

to excess^he'116'' Str°ng Passi°ns and fierv te . Ch1»erl

members of this^'"^'"8 '5 that 'hey do no/breakT,no" h™1* 'he law

The Indians, ife^ c^V,or ca" still be recogn.zed a"d """maay

o^^i^°
I^
n0,,e,,tirely
bUnSIss"^ 'the'iT ^ P'aCe by the Strict
exclusive privilege andth ^ regarded as merchants -'i?*1", C°nd"lon The l-
a
monopoly trade in their „ t0 enforc e it give them" 'i""1 JUdges' wbose
Wy t0 two hundred tboT'7 ^'° extrac' from hi„ 7 Y '° conduct a
feat resentment Yet i„ Pesos' Their forced a a five-year period from
'hey administered SP " e of »>" there were us' n eXOrbitant ^ies caused
hemselves were no, a ,mPar"'a"y
and correction* "°
0 Sitive feature*

fSSSEBsSSSSSpSSW

'he'T medicines^ Md ^bor Th^ n,Stnes a"d works Zh°P'e'Wm 'heir af-
act as their Iawi tbey 'hemselves 38 their d°etors nr y Vlslt and com-

agai®t the o ^esrS and mediat

ors with "?™ ""P'Y the rem",)
0 68 Pay for
p
•he only ones^korn ti? °
S f ,he magS ^ " P^mT'Ja d Thay a'»

^fhmcoumTrther^^an^^r them

0ther two clas^P a8air]st the en Suarantee and n have the greatest

ae Pdlory, the peniten-

 Legacies of Colonialism
19
tiaiy, and the gallows? What ties can bind these claw* th» ~
beneficent protection they simply cannot understand? government. whose

It may be argued that fear of punishment is sufficient to keep the people in

subjection to the laws and the government. According to one political authority
ere re two classes who tnvalidate this argument: the powerful, who brelk
the net, and the wretched, who slip through its mesh. If this is true in Europe it
,s even more so m America, where the people live without a house or a home
virtual nomads. So let us hear from modern legislators how they propose ,o
keep these classes subject to law and government, by means other than relig on
which ,s preserved m the hearts of the people by the preaching and counseUn
pulpit and confessional of the ministers of the Church. These are the true custo­
dians of the aws and guarantors of their observance. It is they who have most
influence on the hearts of the people and who strive most to keep them obedient
and submissive to the sovereign. They are, therefore, the most powerful force
for attaching to the government the two wretched classes, or nine-tenths of the
whole population of the kingdom.
The clergy therefore, have to their credit services of great importance to the
government and the entire monarchy, and these easily counterbalance the failings
o a few of their members. The need to support their position and to repair the dam­
age we are now suffering has obliged us to draw attention to these facts. The evil
which threatens us is great, the moment is critical, and the plea for Your Majesty's
indulgence is urgent. If we were more content, we would also be more modest
We have discussed the pernicious effects of existing land distribution, the
lack o property or its equivalent among the people, the degradation of the In­
dians and castas in practice and in law, the disadvantages of the tribute and of
commumty land, the unsalaried status of judges and consequent ill effects of
established laws on the situation of the people, at the same time as the paternal
concern of ^our Majesty has been exercised on the new legislation so important
or the future welfare of these kingdoms. Now it is only right to submit to Your
Majesty our proposals for the remedy of these evils, in order to raise the people
from their poverty, suppress their vices, and bind them closer to the government
in obedience and subjection to the laws.
The first essential is the abolition of the tribute paid by Indians and castas,
e second is the abolition of legal discrimination against the castas; they should
be declared honest and honorable, eligible for civil offices that do not require
noble rank and provided they qualify for them by their good conduct. Third, free
distribution of all vacant public lands to Indians and castas. Fourth, free division
of Indian community land between the Indians of each village. Fifth, a land law
similar to that in Asturias and Galicia,* whereby under new tenancy arrange-

Tw o autonomous principalities on the Iberian Peninsula generally considered part of Spain.

 Chapter I
20

ments a village would be allowed to open those lands of the great proprietors left
uncultivated for twenty or thirty years, at a just assessment in case ot disagree­
ment on condition that they enclose this land and take any other necessary steps
,o preserve the rights of property. The provincial intendants would have cogni­
zance of all this in first instance, with appeal to the audiencia of the district, as in
all other civil cases. Sixth, free permission for all Spanish classes, castas, and In­
dians from other villages to reside in Indian villages and to construct houses and
buildings, paying a ground rent. Seventh, a decent salary tor all district judges,
with the exception of the alcaldes ordinarios, who ought to discharge this office
freely as a council duty. If to all this is added free permission to establish small
cotton and woolen workshops, it would increase the impact of the other measures
and help the people to take their first steps to improvement. These are already per­
mitted in the case of larger factories through a special license from the viceroys
or governors; but this is hard on the poor and should be removed together with
all other obstacles, except for the alcabala tax on exports and imports of goods.
Self-interest produces and reinforces the ties binding society together, and
these in turn reflect the strength of individual interests. This principle alone, ap­
plied to the clergy, would be sufficient to preserve intact their immunity from
criminal prosecution, though there are also other reasons. The interests of the
clergy vary in importance according to the religious order or class they belong
to, and within these according to their individual position. They are all solid with
the government, but not all in the same way. A cura [priest] and a senior sacristan
both receive their benefices and privileges from Your Majesty. But as these are
greater in the case of the cura than in that of the sacristan, then so is the cura's
gratitude, support, and respect for the laws which protect him the greater of the
two. The different level of benefice produces a different level of support from
the beneficiaries, and a different level of solidarity among beneficiaries, such
as between one sacristan and another, or between one cura and another. Canons
show even more solidarity than do curas and sacristans, because their appoint­
ment is higher. And bishops show more than any others, because they receive
more appointments from Your Majesty than anyone else. They are your natural
counsellors, receive military honors, and often head the highest tribunals and
commissions. They are treated with the greatest honor and respect, defended by
the laws, and in short owe to Your Majesty their promotion to bishop and all the
privileges, other than those of divine origin, that go with it. This accumulation
ot offices so unites and identifies them with Your Majesty that they see all your
interests as their own and nothing will ever move them from this conviction.
ut the rest ot the clergy, who do not have an established benefice and live
only from the small stipends of their office, receive nothing from the government
the semk't VA™ ^ °tlKr daSSeS 6XCept 11,6 P1™1^ of the ffiero. Of
case in hu ^ °f^enca ^-tenths are in this category; at least that is the
this diocese. The regular clergy can be considered the same. Some are

\
 , • ,• 21
Legacies of Colonialism

assistants to curas, and it is they who perform most of the preaching and hearing
f confessions, and who have most to do with the lower two classes of society,
o thev have great influence over the minds of these classes. Therefore the cleri­
cal fuero is the only special tie that attaches them to the government. Therefore
if the fuero is removed, the tie will be broken, and influence over the lower two
classes will be weakened. Therefore prudence and policy demand that there be
no change and no setback.

5. The Myth of Completion — Matthew Restallw

Historians often use a tool called periodization in our work. We talk or write
about this or that period-for example, the period of Reconstruction in the U.S.
South-as a kind of shorthand for a set of common characteristics that define a
particular span of time. Often, however, when we look more closely at a historical
period we can see that there is always some artificiality to our constructions of
when a period begins and ends, and that those historical periods are perhaps
so different from the ones that preceded and followed them. In this selection, we
explore historian Matthew RestalUs innovative research, which asks us to ques­
tion our understanding of the periodization of colonial Latin American history
Restall does so by focusing on a series of "myths" about the so-called Conquest
of the Indies a historical construct based on the noUon that the Europeans

aiTZuatl, the languages of the Mayas and &

iZZrZZcZZTntuZr7,Zd^ '"e conquest happened.

irrra-uSSEsiS'S:-----
*From Matthew Restall, Sn- Myths of,he Spanish Conquer,(New York: Oxford U„ivers,«y Press,
2003), 71-75.
22 Chapter I

tenuous in 1536, after the lifting of the Inca siege of Cuzco. An independent Inca
state persisted until its ruler, Tupac Amaru, was executed by the Spanish in 1572,
and significant portions of the Andes remained outside direct colonial rule even
after that. Similarly, when the Spaniards founded Merida in 1542, Mayas contin­
ued to rule the vast majority of the Yucatan Peninsula. Independent Yucatec Maya
polities still existed in 1880, when Bishop Crescencio Carrillo y Ancona asserted
that "the conquest [of Yucatan] was completed entirely with the victory gained in
the battle of San Bernabe of June 11,1541, against the army of Cocom, king of
Sotuta. who was the only one who had not offered obedience."
The second dimension of incompleteness relates to the protracted nature of
the military conquest of the so-called fringe or marginal regions of what gradu­
ally became Spanish America. Above all else Spaniards sought native settlements
upon which to construct their colonies. But outside Mesoamerica and the Andes,
they tound sparse populations of semisedentary and nomadic natives who were
not amenable to colony building. In such regions it took decades to establish toe­
holds and these remained unstable, poor, and attractive to few colonists. Writing
in 1701, Juan de Villagutierre Soto-Mayor, author of the official account of the
Spanish conquest of the Itza Maya in the previous decade, admitted that Spanish
expansion had left 'great portions" of the Americas partially or entirely uncon-
quered—and he recognized that this was due to the intractability of some natives
and to the difficult terrain in some regions. But most of all, argued Villagutierre,
it was because God was saving some natives for subsequent generations of
Spaniards. So much for secular explanation! As Villaontierre ™

Native Americans never ended. Florida's

Is when the colony was taken over by
the United States (to whom thev have never
never fnrmolKi 1 J -.1 N -T-I

eventually killed the black

Legacies of Colonialism 23

The third aspect of the myth of completion is that of the pax colonial, the
peace among natives and between them and the Spanish colonists that supposedly
came in the Conquest's wake. The flip side to this—the corresponding dimension
of incompleteness—is the fact that Spanish America was rife with native revolts
against colonial rule. As one prominent historian has observed, "then and now the
colonial era has typically been thought of as a peaceful time," despite "apparent
endemic violence."
There is a pair of possible reasons for this. One is the localized nature of
colonial revolts, which made them relatively easy to put down and therefore
appeared to colonial and modem observers insignificant compared to the kinds
of wars that swept Europe during the same centuries and would ravage much of
modern Latin America. The other relates more closely to the myth of completion.
Despite periodic Spanish hysteria over real or imagined revolts by natives and
enslaved Africans, Spaniards believed that their empire was God's way of civiliz­
ing natives and Africans in the Americas. Colonial rule was thus seen as peaceful
and benevolent, an interpretation that relied upon the Conquest's being complete.
Ironically, although the native perception was almost the opposite—that the
Spanish presence was a protracted invasion that required a mixed response of
accommodation and resistance—it also contributed to the illusion that the pax
colonial was real. The willingness on the part of native leaders to compromise,
to find a middle course between overt confrontation and complete capitulation,
helped give the impression of a colonial peace.
The impression of a colonial peace overlooks the ubiquity of everyday forms
of resistance—the fourth dimension of incompleteness. Historians tend to look
for dramatic revolts and miss less obvious patterns of resistance, even if they
are more pervasive and often as violent. Everyday resistance manifested itself
in numerous ways, ranging from individual acts of violence by natives against
Spaniards to workplace ploys such as footdragging, sabotage of equipment, and
theft. The ongoing existence of unconquered regions—often referred to by the
Spaniards as despoblados (uninhabited areas)—and shifting colonial frontiers
gave natives a further option. As individuals, families, or entire communities,
they could resist Spanish rule by temporarily fleeing or permanently migrating
out of the empire.
The fifth dimension of the Conquest's incompleteness was the degree to
which native peoples maintained a degree of autonomy within the Spanish empire.
This was in part an autonomy permitted and sanctioned by Spanish officials, and
it was nurtured by native leaders through illegal means and legal negotiations. As
a general rule, Spaniards did not seek to rule natives directly and take over their
lands. Rather they hoped to preserve native communities as self-governing sources
of labor and producers of agricultural products. This practice had precedent in
Islamic-Iberian custom, as it developed in the eighth-centuiy Muslim invasion of
the Iberian Peninsula and during the subsequent centuries of the Reconquista. u
 24 ru
Chapter /

it was also a practical response to Spanish-American realities. The new settlers

were not farmers, but artisans and professionals dependent upon the work and
food provided by native peoples who greatly outnumbered them.
This colonial system worked best where organized, sedentary agricultural
communities already existed—that is, well-fed city-states—and it was in such
areas, primarily in Mesoamerica and the Andes, that Spaniards concentrated their
conquest and colonization efforts. Although it is unlikely that any native com­
munity escaped the ravages of epidemic diseases brought across the Atlantic
native regions unevenly experienced direct conquest violence. For centuries after
the arrival of Spaniards, the majority of natives subject to colonial rule continued
to live m the,r own communities, speak their own languages, work their own
fields, and be judged and ruled by their own elders. These elders wrote their own
anguages alphabet,cally (or, in the Andes, learned to write Spanish) and engaged

th beheaded

modation. From such a v Pr°CeSS °f neg°tiati°n and accom'

the Conquest could never be complete. ^ ^ ^ ^ °yllu Sti1' CXisted'

Amidst the complex s^teen^entu^Th685 'S ^ °f the spiritual conquest,

regarding the efficacy of different cZve ^u"8 Spanish PrieStS and friars
native peoples, there emerged a mvth reJ^T ds and the sPiritual state of

held that while native people remained*1' 8 their Christianization- This myth
they had essentially been converted in ^ Pr°ne t0 recidivism'

vanguards of that process, the Franckl y YS °f evanSelization. As the

myth; their perspective fared well over theT ^ §reatest ProPonents of its
m the early twentieth century bv Robert Rie" ™eS™d was Siven renewed vigor
du Mexique (The Spiritual Conquest ofM^ i' U Con^ Spirituelle
~
In recent decades, scholar^ dmpa,gns-
was a widely read—» -
tion
to Chnaianiry. While someS?"COmPlex P^ture ofnafive reac-
veneer
dedin, 'Stlanity-and others have proposed thT' ^!rell810n survived behind a
blended
d lnt0 a set of unique regionalPposedthat native and European religions
Legacies of Colonialism 25

Franciscans and other Spanish friars and clergy hoped to utterly destroy all
traces of native religions, to wipe the slate clean and establish a new church free
of the pagan accretions of both sides of the Atlantic. They certainly succeeded in
bringing Catholicism to native America, but if the purpose of the spiritual con­
quest was to install a Christianity free of local cultural variation, that conquest
was not completed in the sixteenth century. In 1598 the Archbishop of New
Granada (colonial Colombia) lamented in a letter to the king that six decades of
Christianization efforts had left the native Muisca as "idolatrous" as ever. Nobody
would accuse Latin Americans of being idolatrous today, but few would disagree
that the spiritual conquest, as conceived almost five centuries ago, remains very
much incomplete.
The final dimension of incompleteness concerns the persistence of native
cultures. The aspect of native culture of greatest concern to Spaniards was re­
ligion, as Christianization provided the empire with a rationale and justification
that transcended and was supposed to disguise the mundanely self-serving reali­
ties of colonial expansion. Other aspects of native culture were of secondary im­
portance. There was no campaign to force natives to learn Spanish, for example.
In fact, Spanish priests were encouraged and periodically required to preach in
native tongues, while the church generated an extensive religious literature in
local languages. And although the lack of a preconquest writing tradition in the
Andes meant that Quechua-speaking lords and other local Andean rulers learned
to write legal documents in Spanish, Mesoamerica community leaders learned to
write their own languages alphabetically.
Beyond aspects of culture with religious implications, Spaniards were not
concerned with the wholesale Hispanization of native peoples. Not until the
nineteenth century did such issues become a major governmental concern and
the subject of debates among the dominant classes. This underscores once more
that the cultural conquest, if we can talk of such a thing, was so incomplete that
three centuries after the Spanish invasion the descendants of the conquistadors,
from Mexico to Argentina, were debating ways in which their nation's "Indi­
ans" could be made into true citizens of the republics—that is, less "Indian"
and more European.

6. Visual Source Ordering the Colonized Space*

The desire To create order out of what they perceived as chaos drove the Euro­
peans ' earliest efforts in the New World. They associated order with cities. For
example, the Laws of the Indies, issued by the Spanish Crown to regulate life in its

*From C. F Fritzsch and Quintin Pierre Chedel, Stadt St. Domingo [Leipzig, 1755], map, Library of
Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/74691049.
 26

aaaa^jgr^g*. -*-«•
Chapter /

». jza.s,ZZ*r
wcw/ <>«&• corresponded to a moment in the rle • / / embodiment of
as a whole, but only the lands of the ^ °pment °fWestem civilization
for the dream
./Srj/ European experiment with "ordering" v 'T ^ *^U"t0 Doming° was the
brother, Bartholomew, founded the city in,4%/ Chnst0Pher Columbus's
1502 b ya colonialgovernor aftera h u J i l a t 7 r e f ° U n d e d

It would become the oldest continuously i„h

original settlement.
Americas. Santo Domingo is locatPri I J turoPean
settlement in the
L
southern coast of the island Columh ° °"g !/
banks the 0zama River on the

of its refounding ifsPado^a (Hispaniola). By the time

Taino people due to diseZZTdisZZZ f"* " native
colonial cities like Santo Domingo grZ at th "* You cou'd cay that

"es. That grow,,, required the impfZffl7T communi-

Of this European "ordering" project can vSZ™- f °f W>""

Domtngo produced in Germany in the MlZf ""<>& °f colonial San,o

—«»•—c..mkeUniver.
 II

Independence

When the nineteenth centurv be«an Pi.mnA ^

transition. It was a revolutionary mnmp t !!! Amencas were in a state o
world. Europe was in the middle of dealinsTwth P,°Jlt'CaI hlSt0iy of the Atlanti.

and the subsequent rise of Napoleon Bontparte 'onf ^VO,UtIon of 178-

British colonies of eastern North America had u decades earlier the

lishing the Americas' first constatZ ^7°* their lndePend^ estab-

Domingue followed suit in the 1790s whe^ ^ C°lony of Saint"

led by Toussaint UOverJe ^etlTedlw*7"f •f

known as the Republic of Haiti Though it wa7th °m ln what became

examples of anticolonial rebellion and revol, f 0 " ghly shaken y

h these vivid
was still in good shape in 1800. U ^ 0nial mJe ln Latl'n America

tuguese lato' °De °f ,he Spamsh

Cuba and Puerto Rico) underwent a fWIth ^ n0table excePtions of
mother countries. In the Spanish Amerir ^ ? separatl0n from their imperial
was extremely violent and reanirpd T C° °fies' tbat Process of separation
(defenders of the continuation of i ""m' IV cade of war between royalists
break with imperial rule) to be achie^T r™! ^ patriotS (those who sougbt to

process of separation in both Sn w forem°st, the great impetus behind the

brought on by the Nanol ' (1/ • menca and Brazil was the historic crisis
S

vadedthe™ erian PelPsu a° Th 'n 18°7' Nap°le°n's -

resulted in the caoture of h11 7™ "°f 1807^1814 " was known)
apparent, Prince Fell l. Tf ^ CharleS IV mi his son-the hetr
^ Spam withom atmg ^e pT NaP°ie°n'S f°rCeS " FranCe<Ieav"

VI fared better; he JeZsI n , TT J?0' regeDt (S°°n t0 be ^ loio

reestablished the en-m' m D°
1 1 family and royal entourage, and
and Portugal and M ^ , 18 ° '
8 Fr6nch f°rCeS had taken contrd of Spain
g 1, and Napoleon placed his brother Joseph on the Spanish throne.

27
 28
Chapter II

The other thing that the Latin American movements for independence
shared was a common phlosophy that came out of the European Enlightenment
and that was based on the concepts of liberalism, republicanism, and national­
ism. Liberalism, in theory, meant the legal equality of all citizens (though it did
no, work that way in practice). Republicanism meant a form of Lnsbtut on t

iiis=s
g vernmen, with representatives elected by the people (though, agam L mac
bee this right did not apply to all of the population). Nationalism meant a sense
corf 71 TVf C°mm0n identlt^ which in «* Americanthmjes was

for an polit,caiiy active mdiv,duais

king put on the throne bv Nan f 0"Id we rec°gnize
u the authority of this false
king's^restoration? Do tve^e^Hv^eed ^ W* W3,t f°r °Ur **
occupation had some Spanish sunnort & ^ Whlle. the French reg'me of
resist it. Spanish rebels initiated a strategy LP ??Iy aCtive SPaniards chose to
while temporary governing bodies r 11 I • gU la warfare against the French

out Spain and its American colonies iLseTunta^^MK SPr°Uted UP thr°Ugh"

independence movements in Snanich a 'J d become the basis of the

also called the Constitution of Cadiz The SPanish Constitution of 1812,

were holding out in oTc^l ^ ^

In the colonies, a growing sen of oren le8ltimtzed
the juntas,
and landscapes of the Americas helned t P?tn0tlsm' orPride in the culture

dence, and the juntas that formed in places la^B^ ^ ^ t0Ward indepen"
on this opportunity to declare indeoendenr f UeTn0S Alres and Caracas seized
Napoleon's forces were finally defeated • if,T Cph BonaParte- But when

Spanish throne as King he i f FcnUnand retUmed

tution's provisions and launched a milita™ 3CCept the Cadiz consti'

Amencan colonies. From 1815 until 1825 h tt .

C ampaign t0 reSain control of the

the South American continent between^rovV T ^ °Ught aCr°SS Mexico and

f

sl'ghtly different and avoided major bloodshedlvfi **** BraZil fared

royal court to Rio de Janeiro, and later snl.tr 1 temporarily

relocating the
Pans. Portugal and Brazil. Nonetless bvT 25 emP^ into two
5 ar°se from the ashes of colonial rule. 3 °f^ American repub-

pottam P0lS-:^:^a^America introduced a ^

wodd T °f nati™al ^entity anTradal "m ru ^ and eleCti°nS' K aIs0

on economic anS life independence at fa^an

 Independence
29

Wha, is more d i
ff
icu h for h ist
o r
i
a n SI
barriers to international trade were lifted bv the newlv in^
s ,o assessl^
j

that flowed from political independence had any tangible effect on the f*
lives of ordinary Larin Americans. How far doL m,„ sol^ Z te
revolution of mdependence reach? By the end of this chaptep students ^U b
able to formulate their own answer to this important question.

QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS

rernted^n SthribeJhe ^u!^1 philosophy ^flying the documents ex­

cerpted in this chapter. What were its defining elements?
2. Did the movements for independence challenge the colonial
conception of racial or gender hierarchy? Were women able to use the
disruption of independence to their advantage?
3. How does Bello connect nature and"agriculture to the budding
national identity he sees after the wars for independence?

1. The Political Constitution of the

Spanish Monarchy ~ Cortes of Cadiz*

In 18°8, as the French occupation was being implemented, the juntas that were
rm mg t iroughout the Spanish empire came together in the city of Aran juez.
id!) •Upieme Central Junta called for the convening of what was known in Span-
nntin °'} ias.the Cortes- an assembly of representatives of the entire Spanish
on. mc ik ing its American colonies. The Cortes was charged with producing
ew government and writing a new political constitution, all while maintaining
e tes,stance to the French regime. Due to setbacks on the battlefield in 1810,
the ^ €i ^°] e,nment u as forced to withdraw to the only safe place left to them,
exc SUl"t 7/"r' ^ That is where they wrote the document that is
P eC. e °W' PPe Spanish Constitution of 1812 is often regarded as liberal in

lentation. What evidence do you see of that?

I "eSatoTo^G°d AImighty' Father' Son' and Ho"y SPiri£' author and supreme

trans u?ht'Ca de la M°narquia Espanola Promulgada en Cadiz el 19 de Marzo de 1812,'

ood, accessed May 1, 2013, http://www.cervantesvirtual.com.
30
Chapter II

The General and Extraordinary Cortes of the Spanish Nation, well con­
vinced, after the most minute examination and mature deliberation, that the an­
cient fundamental laws of this Monarchy, aided by every appropriate precaution
and measure, that can assure their complete fulfillment in a stable and permanent
manner, are properly calculated to fulfill the grand object of promoting the glory,
prosperity, and welfare of the nation, decree the following Political Constitution
for the good governing and right administration of the State.

Of the Spanish Nation

f,
Af'cle L The sPamsh nahon is the gathering together of all the Spaniards
ot both hemispheres.
Article 2. The Spanish nation is free and independent, and neither is nor can
be the property of any family or person.
3_ Sovereignty belongs to the nation; consequently it exclusively pos­

sesses the right of establishing its fundamental laws.

pronertTInd' rrr iS 0bllged- by wise andiust laws, to protect the liberty,

property, and all other legibmate rights of every individual which composes it.

Of Spaniards

Article 5. Spaniards are [defined as]-

A«"zrr 'he,r feedom

well as being just and citable." °f the
in the»do™tne

pnnclPal duties
s:

of every Spaniard, as

the laws, and respe« fteTs?lH!sh?dSoriHeesfa',hfil1,0 C°nStitution> obey

proportion to his asTetTth^fl^croTfcStote!5 a'S° t0 COntribu,e 3

arms in defense tar

Of the Cortes

resent the nation, named by fecitizenT'hi^h086'1161^ °f <1>e dePuties who reP"

Article 28. The basis"hereafter to be explained.

spheres- "al Presentation is fte same in bJh hemi_
 Independence 31

Article 29. This basis is the people composed of those inhabitants who. by
both family lines, are natives of the Spanish dominions; [and] of those who have
letters of citizenship from the Cortes.
Article 31. For every seventy thousand souls, consisting of those expressed
in Article 29, one deputy shall be sent to the Cortes.
Article 34. For the election of deputies to the Cortes, juntas shall be held in
the parishes, districts, and provinces.
Article 35. The parish electoral juntas shall be composed of all the citizens
and residents within the bounds of the respective parishes, including the secular
clergy.
Article 36. These juntas shall meet in the Peninsula and Islands* and posses­
sions adjacent the first Sunday in October the year preceding that in which the
Cortes is to meet.
Article 37. In the overseas provinces the juntas shall meet the first Sunday of
December, fifteen months preceding the meeting of the Cortes, in order to insure
sufficient time for them to exercise their rights in advance.

Of the National Militias

Article 362. There shall be national militia units in each province, composed of
the inhabitants thereof, in proportion with its population and other circumstances.
Article 363. The mode of the militia's formation, its number, and its compo­
sition shall be arranged by a separate ordinance.
Article 364. Militia service shall not be continuous, and will only occur when
circumstances demand it.

Of Public Education

Article 366. Elementary schools shall be established in every town through­

out the kingdom, in which children shall be taught reading, writing and counting,
the catechism of the Roman Catholic religion, [and] that will include a brief
exposition of civil obligations.
Article 367. Measures shall also be immediately taken to found a competent
number of universities and other establishments for the promotion of science,
literature, and the fine arts.
Article 368. The plan of general instruction shall be the same throughout the
kingdom; the Political Constitution of the monarchy shall be expounded in all
the universities and literary establishments where the ecclesiastical and political
sciences are taught.

'The document refers to the Iberian Peninsula and the Canary Islands. Spain had earlier colonized the
Canary Islands, and thus the islanders were, in effect, Spaniards.
32 Chapter II

Article 371. Every Spaniard possesses the liberty to write, print, and publish
his political ideas without any previous licence, revision, or permission needed
under the restrictions and responsibility established by law.

2. War to the Death Simon Bolivar*

Among the many leaders of the Latin American movements for independence,
Simon Bolivar stands out. A member of one of colonial Caracas's leading fami­
lies, Bolivar led the sort of patriot movement that existed in most other parts of
Spanish America—a movement dominated by criollos (creoles, or Spanish people
born in the Americas) but that needed the support of the nonwhite majorities.
Bolivar s early career as a patriot military commander featured battles to defend
the independence of his home territory of Venezuela as well as battles to liber­
ate neighboring New Granada (present-day Colombia) from the royalists. The
following selection comes from an 1813 proclamation given by Bolivar in the
western Venezuelan town ofTrujiUo. In it, he famously drew a rhetorical line in
blood separating all American-born people from all Spanish born. What purpose
did such rhetoric serve in the struggle for independence?

°f,y°Ur br°therS' S6nt by the Sovere'gn Congress of

exiled ,h/ [PreTday C0l0mbia]' has COrae 10 lib"ate you. Having

expelled the oppressors from the provinees of Merida and Trujillo it is now
SK.? S'H-t0 deStr°y the Spaniards''° Protect the A™™a„s, and
th!" °nCe f°rmed the Confederation of
conXtionltSnna fi n' °? """ ™ g0Vemed

for our mission is designed" ^ fT"?1 °f their Hberty and independence,

shackle some of our towns Jdnotto hT "T 'h3™ °f Servltude wWch sti11
to which the rules of war might entitle us1"86 "" eXerC'Se 3CtS of dominion

ence the afh ietions'you8 w^e"forced toT h"5™ '° °bserve with indlffer"

who have ravished you, plundered you andT^ barbarous Spaniards,

They have violated the sacreri rioht- e ,rought y°u death and destruction.
solemn agreements and treaties. In fart" thevTv ^ ^ br°ken ^ m°St
crime, reducing the Republic of vPnP ' i y , x e committed every manner of
nee therefore ^ fngh,fU' deSolati™- Jos-
vengeance, and necesstty compels us to exact it. Let the

trans. Lewis Bemad (N™'L=cma.ed. Harold A. Brack Jr,

Independence 33

monsters who infest Colombian* soil, who have drenched it in blood, be cast out
forever. May their punishment be equal to the enormity of their perfidy, so that
we may eradicate the stain of our ignominy and demonstrate to the nations of the
world that the sons of America cannot be offended with impunity.
Despite our just resentment toward the iniquitous Spaniards, our magnani­
mous heart still commands us to open to them for the last time a path to reconcili­
ation and friendship. Spaniards are invited to live peacefully among us, if they
will renounce their crimes, honestly change their ways, and cooperate with us in
destroying the intruding Spanish government and in the reestablishment of the
Republic of Venezuela.
Any Spaniard who does not, by every active and effective means, work
against tyranny on behalf of this just cause, will be considered an enemy and pun­
ished. As a traitor to our nation, he will inevitably be shot by a firing squad. On
the other hand, a general and absolute amnesty is granted to Spaniards who come
over to our army with or without their arms, as well as to those who render aid
to the good citizens who are endeavoring to throw off the yoke of tyranny. Army
officers and civil magistrates who proclaim the government of Venezuela and join
with us shall retain their posts and positions. In a word, those Spaniards who ren­
der outstanding service to the State shall be regarded and treated as Americans.
And you Americans who, by error or treachery, have been lured from the
paths of justice, are informed that your brothers, deeply regretting the error of
your ways, have pardoned you, as we are profoundly convinced that you cannot
be truly to blame, for only the blindness and ignorance in which you have been
kept up to now by those responsible for your crimes could have induced you
to commit them. Fear not the sword that comes to avenge you and to sever the
ignoble ties with which your executioners have bound you to their own fate. You
are hereby assured, with absolute impunity, of your honor, lives, and property.
The single title, "Americans," shall be your safeguard and guarantee. Our arms
have come to protect you, and they shall never be raised against a single one ot
you, our brothers. , . ,ra
This amnesty is extended even to the very traitors who most recently ha
committed felonious acts, and it shall be so religiously applied that no.reason­
able cause or pretext will be sufficient to oblige us to vio ate our o er. m

extraordinary and extreme the occasion you may give to provo e ouj"
Spaniards and Canary Islanders, you will die, though you be neutral unless^you
actively espouse the cause of America's liberation. Americans, you will live,
if you have trespassed.
General Headquarters, Trujillo, June 15, 1813

*Colombia here is no, yet the name of a particular nation. Rather, it refers generally to the Americas,
the lands discovered by Columbus.
 34

3. The Vision of Father Moreios ~ Enrique Krause*

In 1811, Father Jose Maria Moreios took up the banner of the man who initiated
•he Mexican movement for independence, Father Miguel Hidalgo, after Hidalgo
was executed by a firing squad. It had been Hidalgo i famous "Cry of Dolores"
,n September ISO that started the independence struggle in the colony of New
pain (modern Mexico). The fact that Moreios (and Hidalgo before him) were

MrsX ^trft frtless ^ can,pai^s -d

nmcon

brought with him to the strugglefor M^xkaffad* T ldeoI°8icaL MoreIos

body of arguments to legitimate it Their nv n pendence a hl§hly original

included quite modern economic «' • i j W3S mora1' but they also

kled here'and ZTZtZZ S t ^ P^^-albeit "spnn-

in which Moreios expounded unon thes'f ViSi°n" The occasion

even constitutional form was the Congress gl^mg them legal and sometimes

and legislator revealed M *

more than a worldly political contest of arms He al ^ 'Can mdePendence as
in the Christian sense of the term. ° a^° considered it as a mission,

go's, and because of ^etocluy^edTri hUmb'er than Father Mi8ueI ™dal-

by Moreios granted as much importance to ^ doctrine espoused
it did to Mexican independence from S • °m S equalit y among Mexicans as
indigenous people who, in the words ofBish .ff* 46 conditi™ °f the
ranee and misery," and the plight of the castas^ f ? QUe'P°' Uved "ign0~
indigenous descent) who bore The indelihl (°f YanousIy ™*ed African and

Proposals similar to those that the blho'hTM°K'°S adva„ced

Mhho m^9io) (Barceiom

 Independence ^

noble or infamous, with no gradations in between." Four years later the trav
eler Alexander von Humboldt, who met with Abad y Queipo during his stay in
Mexico, repeated the same verdict: "Mexico is the country of inequality. Possibly
no other country exhibits such shocking inequality in its distribution of wealth
civilization, population, and arable land. The color of a man's skin determines the
rank he will occupy in society. A white man, even barefoot, counts himself among
the nobility of the country." Daily experience in the modest ecclesiastical offices
exercised by Morelos shaped his attitude toward this inequality. Unlike Hidalgo.
Morelos did not call for conflict among classes. His was a constructive project of
concord for all the inhabitants of Mexico except for Peninsular Spaniards. Three
years before the Congress of Anahuac, in November 1810, Morelos had issued a
regulation for his army that prefigured his vision of an ideal society:

If any movement is detected among the Indians and castas to attack whites,
for example, or among whites to attack pardos, whoever tries to begin such a
movement will be immediately punished. Our constituted officials [of all ethnic
origins] must act in complete harmony ... in complete accord and brotherhood
... to punish public misdeeds committed against anyone.

A year later [referring to the possibility of interethnic conflict] Morelos clari­

fied that it would be "the gravest of errors" to instigate "horrible anarchy" among
the inhabitants of the area where his army operated. He therefore declared that
the only purpose of his struggle was to transfer the reins of government from
Peninsular to Creole hands, believing that a newly harmonious social, economic,
and ethnic order would result:

Let there be no more ethnic distinction made among our people, but rather, we
shall all be called simply americanos. Regarding each other as brothers, we shall
all live in the holy peace that our redeemer, Jesus Christ, bequeathed us when he
rose triumphantly into heaven. Let there be no motive for fighting among those
who were called castas, nor between whites and blacks, nor between blacks and
Indians. Such fighting would be the greatest error that those in our situation
could commit, leading to our total destruction, both spiritual and temporal. The
whites are our leading representatives. They were the first to take up arms in our
struggle. They therefore deserve our gratitude and should not be the targets of
the sort of hatred that some have tried to foment against them. It is not our way
to attack the rich merely for being rich, so no one should loot the possessions of
even the richest among us.

In 1812, in Oaxaca, Morelos declared with greater succinctness, in his

typically ironic style: "The lovely nonsense that divided Indians, mulattoes, and
mestizos into distinct 'qualities' of human beings is hencefoith abolished. From
now on. all are to be called americanos."
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 Fig. 242.
A–D. Angiopteris evecta.
A. Apex of sporangium showing “annulus.”
B. Sori.
C. Sporangium.
D. Section of sporangium, showing the two lateral bands of thick-walled
cells.
E. Danaea: a, roof of synangium, with pores; b, sporangial cavities; v,
vascular bundle; i, indusium.
(D, after Zeiller.)
The roots of Marattiaceous ferns (fig. 244) are characterised by
the larger number of xylem and phloem groups; the stele is polyarch
and not diarch, tetrarch or hexarch as in most Leptosporangiate
ferns.
 Fig. 243. Angiopteris evecta. Section of petiole (considerably reduced)
and of a single vascular bundle (magnified): px, protoxylem; st, sieve-
tubes.

Fig. 244. Angiopteris evecta. Transverse section of root, with part of the
stele magnified: s, sieve-tubes; p, phloem; px, protoxylem.
Archangiopteris. This monotypic genus, discovered by Mr Henry in
South Eastern Yunnan, was described by Christ and Giesenhagen in
1899[751]. The comparatively slender rhizome has a fairly simple
vascular system[752]. The simply-pinnate leaves bear pinnules like
those of Danaea, but the sori agree with those of Angiopteris except
in their greater length and in the larger number of sporangia.
Marattia. This genus, which extends “all round the world within the
tropics[753],” includes some species which closely resemble
Angiopteris, while others are characterised by more finely divided
leaves with smaller ultimate segments. The fleshy stipules
occasionally have an irregularly pinnatifid form (fig. 241, B). The
sporangia are represented by oval synangia[754] (fig. 245, A; the black
patches at the ends of the lateral veins) composed of two valves,
which on ripening come apart and expose two rows of pores formed
by the apical dehiscence of the sporangial compartments (fig. 245,
A′, B). In Marattia Kaulfussii the sori are attached to the lamina by a
short stalk (fig. 245, B, B′) and the leaf bears a close resemblance to
those of the Umbelliferous genera Anthriscus and Chaerophyllum.
The vascular system is constructed on the same plan as that of
Angiopteris but is of simpler form.
 Fig. 245.
A. Marattia fraxinea. A′. A single synangium showing the two valves and
pores of the sporangial compartments.
B, B′. M. Kaulfussii.
C. Kaulfussia (synangium showing pores of sporangial compartments).
D, E. Marattiopsis Münsteri.
(C, after Hooker; D, E, after Schimper.)
Danaea. Danaea, represented by about 14 species confined to
tropical America, is characterised by simple or simply pinnate leaves
with linear segments bearing elongated sori extending from the
midrib almost to the margin of the lamina. Each sorus consists of
numerous sporangia in two parallel rows united into an oblong mass
partially overarched by an indusium (fig. 242, E, i) which grows up
from the leaf between the sori. In the portion of a fertile segment
shown in fig. 242, E, the apical pores are seen at a; and at b, where
the roof of the synangium has been removed, the spore-bearing
compartments are exposed. The vascular system[755] agrees in
general plan with that characteristic of the family.
Kaulfussia. The form of the leaf (Vol. I. p. 97, fig. 22) closely
resembles that of the Horse Chestnut; the stem is a creeping
dorsiventral rhizome with a vascular system in the form of a “much
perforated solenostele[756].” The synangia are circular, with a median
depression; each sporangial compartment opens by an apical pore
on the sloping sides of the synangial cup (fig. 245, C)[757].
Copeland has recently described a Marattiaceous leaf which he
makes the type of a new genus, Macroglossum alidae. The sori are
nearer the margin than in Angiopteris and are said to consist of a
greater number of sporangia. The photograph[758] of a single pinna
which accompanies the brief description hardly affords satisfactory
evidence in support of the creation of a new genus. The structure of
a petiole which I have had an opportunity of examining, through the
kindness of Mr Hewitt of Sarawak, shows no distinctive features.

III. Ophioglossales. (Isosporous and

Eusporangiate.)
The three genera, Ophioglossum, Botrychium, and
Helminthostachys, are characterised by the division of the leaves
into a sterile and a fertile lobe. The fertile lobe in Ophioglossum
bears two rows of spherical sporangia sunk in its tissue; in
Botrychium and Helminthostachys the spores are contained in large
sporangia with a stout wall[759]. The prothallus is subterranean and
without chlorophyll. In the British species of Ophioglossum, O.
vulgatum (the adder’s tongue fern), an almost cosmopolitan species,
the sterile part of the frond is of oval form and has reticulate
venation. In O. pendulum and O. palmatum the lamina is deeply
lobed. In the genus Botrychium, represented in Britain by B. Lunaria,
both sterile and fertile branches of the frond are pinnately divided,
while in Helminthostachys the sporangia are borne on
sporangiophores given off from the margin of the fertile branch of a
frond similar in habit to a leaf of Helleborus.
 Fig. 246. Ophioglossum vulgatum. Transverse section of petiole and
single bundle: p, phloem; px, endarch protoxylem.

Fig. 247. Botrychium virginianum: e, endodermis; c, cambium; x, xylem.

A, diagrammatic section of stem; B, portion of the stele and
endodermis enlarged.
(A, after Campbell; B, after Jeffrey.)
The stem of Ophioglossum is characterised by a dictyostele of
collateral bundles with endarch protoxylem: the vascular system of
the leaf-stalk is also composed of several separate strands (fig. 246).
In Botrychium the stele is a cylinder of xylem surrounded externally
by phloem. This genus affords the only instance among ferns of a
plant in which the addition of secondary tracheae occurs on a scale
large enough to produce a well-defined cylinder of secondary xylem
traversed by radial rows of medullary-ray cells[760] (fig. 247). The
unsatisfactory nature of the evidence in regard to the past history of
the Ophioglossales renders superfluous a fuller treatment of the
recent species.
 CHAPTER XXI.
FOSSIL FERNS.

Osmundaceae.
From the Culm of Silesia, Stur[761] described impressions of sterile
fronds which he named Todea Lipoldi on the ground of the similarity
of the finely divided pinnules to those of Todea superba and other
filmy species of the genus. The type-specimen of Stur (in the
Geological Survey Museum, Vienna) affords no information as to
sporangial characters and cannot be accepted as an authentic
record of a Lower Carboniferous representative of the family.
Another more satisfactory but hardly convincing piece of evidence
bearing on the presence of Osmundaceae in pre-Permian floras has
been adduced by Renault[762], who described petrified sporangia
from the Culm beds of Esnost in France as Todeopsis primaeva (fig.
256, F). These pyriform sporangia are characterised by the presence
of a plate of large cells comparable with the subapical group of
“annulus” cells in the sporangia of the recent species (fig. 221).
Zeiller[763] has published a figure of some sporangia described by
Renault from Autun resembling the Osmundaceous type in having a
plate of thick-walled cells instead of a true annulus, but the plate is
larger than the group of cells in the recent sporangia, and both
sporangia and spores are smaller in the fossil. The sporangia from
Carboniferous rocks described by Weiss as Sturiella[764] bear some
resemblance to those of recent Osmundaceae, but there is no
adequate reason for referring them to this family.
The generic name Pteridotheca is employed by Scott as a
convenient designation for unassigned petrified sporangia of
Palaeozoic age with an annulus and other characters indicating fern-
affinity. In the species P. Butterworthi[765] the sporangia are
characterised by a group of large cells suggesting comparison with
the annulus, or what represents the annulus, in Osmundaceae and
Marattiaceae. Scott has also described a sporangium from the Coal-
Measures containing germinating spores[766]; the structure is similar
to that of recent Osmundaceous sporangia, and it is interesting to
note that germinating spores have been observed in the recent
species Todea hymenophylloides[767].
Additional evidence of the same kind is afforded by fertile
specimens of a quadripinnate fern with deeply dissected oval-
lanceolate pinnules described by Zeiller from the Coal-Measures of
Heraclea in Asia Minor as Kidstonia heracleensis[768] (fig. 256, E).
Carbonised sporangia were found at the base of narrow lobes of the
ultimate segments and, as seen in fig. 256, E, the sporangial wall is
distinguished by a plate of larger cells occupying a position like that
of the “annulus” of recent Osmundaceae. Zeiller regards the
sporangia as intermediate between those of Osmundaceae and
Schizaeaceae. From the same locality Zeiller describes another
frond bearing somewhat similar sporangia as Sphenopteris
(Discopteris) Rallii (fig. 256, D)[769]: the term Discopteris was
instituted by Stur for fertile fronds referred by him to the
Marattiaceae[770].
It is by no means safe to assume that these and such Upper
Carboniferous sporangia as Bower[771] compared with those of Todea
were borne on plants possessing the anatomical characters of
Osmundaceae rather than those of the extinct Palaeozoic family
Botryopterideae. This brings us to the important fact, first pointed out
by Renault, that the Botryopterideae are essentially generalised
ferns exhibiting many points of contact with the Osmundaceae[772]. It
is clear that whether or not we are justified in tracing the
Osmundaceae as far back as the Lower Carboniferous period, some
of the characteristics of the family were already foreshadowed in
rocks of this age.
Through a fortunate accident of preservation, unequivocal
evidence of the existence of Osmundaceae in the Palaeozoic era is
supplied by the Russian Upper Permian genera Zalesskya and
Thamnopteris.
Zalesskya.
This generic title has been instituted by Kidston and Gwynne-
Vaughan[773] for two Russian stems of Upper Permian age, one of
which was named by Eichwald[774] Chelepteris gracilis, but the
probability that the type of the genus Chelepteris is generically
distinct from Eichwald’s species necessitated a new designation for
the Permian fern.
In habit the stem of Zalesskya resembles that of an Osmunda or a
Todea, but it differs in the possession of a stele composed of a
continuous cylinder or solid column of xylem surrounded by phloem,
and by the differentiation of the xylem into two concentric zones. The
leaves are represented by petiole-bases only; the sporangia are
unknown. The stem and leaf-base anatomy fully justifies the
inclusion of Zalesskya in the Osmundaceae.

Zalesskya gracilis (Eichwald). Fig. 248.

The type-specimen is a partially decorticated stem, from Upper
Permian beds in Russia, provided with a single stele, 13 mm. in
diameter, surrounded by a broad thin-walled inner cortex containing
numerous leaf-traces and occasional roots: this was doubtless
succeeded by a sclerotic outer cortex. In its main features Zalesskya
gracilis agrees closely with Z. diploxylon represented in fig. 249. The
stele consists of a continuous cylinder of xylem exhibiting a fairly
distinct differentiation into two zones, (i) a broader outer zone of
narrower scalariform tracheae (x ii, fig. 248) in which 20 to 25
protoxylem strands (px) occur just within the edge, (ii) an inner zone
of broader and shorter tracheae (fig. 248, x i). The protoxylem
elements (px, fig. 248) are characterised by a single series of
scalariform pits, while the metaxylem elements have multiseriate pits
like those on the water-conducting elements of recent
Osmundaceae. The tracheae show an interesting histological
character in the absence of the middle substance of their walls, a
feature recognised by Gwynne-Vaughan[775] in many recent ferns.
External to the xylem and separated from it by a parenchymatous
sheath is a ring of phloem, ph, composed of large sieve-tubes and
parenchyma separated from the inner cortex by a pericycle 4 to 5
layers in breadth. The occurrence of a few sclerotic cells beyond the
broad inner cortex points to the former existence of a thick-walled
outer cortex. The leaf-traces are given off as mesarch strands from
the edge of the xylem; they begin as prominences opposite the
protoxylem and become gradually detached as xylem bundles, at
first oblong in transverse section, then assuming a slightly crescentic
and reniform shape, while the mesarch protoxylem strand takes up
an endarch position. As a trace passes further out the curvature
increases and the protoxylem strands undergo repeated bifurcation;
it assumes in fact the form and general type of structure met with in
the leaf-traces of Todea and Osmunda. Numerous diarch roots,
given off from the stele at points just below the outgoing leaf-traces,
pass outwards in a sinuous horizontal course through the cortex of
the stem.
Fig. 248. Zalesskya gracilis (Eich.). Transverse section of part of the stele:
ph, phloem; x i, x ii, xylem; px, protoxylem. (After Kidston and
Gwynne-Vaughan. × 20.)
 Fig. 249. Zalesskya diploxylon. Kidston and Gwynne-Vaughan.
Transverse section of stem. ph, phloem. (After Kidston and
Gwynne-Vaughan. × 2½.)
In Zalesskya gracilis the xylem cylinder was probably wider in the
living plant than in the petrified stem. In Zalesskya diploxylon[776], in
all probability from the same Russian locality, there can be little
doubt that the xylem was originally solid to the centre (fig. 249). In
this species also the phloem forms a continuous band (ph, fig. 249)
consisting of four to six layers of sieve-tubes.

Thamnopteris.
Thamnopteris Schlechtendalii (Eich.). Figs. 250, 312, A,
Frontispiece.
In 1849 Brongniart[777] proposed the name Thamnopteris for a
species of fern from the Upper Permian of Russia originally
described by Eichwald as Anomopteris Schlechtendalii. A new name
was employed by Brongniart on the ground that the fossil was not
generically identical with the species previously named by him
Anomopteris Mougeotii[778]. Eichwald’s specimen has been
thoroughly investigated by Kidston and Gwynne-Vaughan[779]. The
stem (Frontispiece) agrees in habit with those of Zalesskya and
recent Osmundaceae; on the exposed leaf-bases the action of the
weather has etched out the horse-shoe form of the vascular strands
and laid bare numerous branched roots boring their way through the
petiole stumps. The centre of the stem is occupied by a protostele 13
mm. in diameter consisting of solid xylem separated by a
parenchymatous sheath from a cylinder of phloem. The xylem is
composed mainly of an axial column of short and broad reticulately
pitted tracheae (fig. 250, b and Frontispiece), distinguished from the
sharply contrasted peripheral zone of normal scalariform elements,
a, by their thinner walls and more irregular shape. The protoxylem,
px, is represented by groups of narrower elements rather deeply
immersed in the peripheral part of the metaxylem. A many-layered
pericycle, per, and traces of an endodermis, en, succeed the
phloem, ph, which is characterised by several rows of large
contiguous sieve-tubes; beyond the endodermis is a broad thin-
walled inner cortex. The leaf-traces arise as in Zalesskya, but the
protoxylem in Thamnopteris is at first central; as the trace passes
outwards a group of parenchyma appears immediately internal to the
protoxylem elements and gradually assumes the form of a bay of
thin-walled tissue on the inner concave face of the curved xylem.
The next stage is the repeated division of the protoxylem strand until,
in the sclerotic outer cortex, the traces acquire the Osmundaceous
structure (fig. 312, A, p. 453). The petiole bases have stipular wings
as in Todea and Osmunda.
 Fig. 250. Thamnopteris Schlechtendalii (Eich.). Part of stele: a, outer
xylem; b, inner xylem. (After Kidston and Gwynne-Vaughan. ×
13.)
OSMUNDACEAE

The striking feature exhibited by these Permian plants is the

structure of the protostele, which in Thamnopteris and probably in
Zalesskya diploxylon consists of solid xylem surrounded by phloem:
this may be regarded as the primitive form of the Osmundaceous
stele. In Osmunda regalis and in other recent species of the genus
the xylem cylinder has the form of a lattice-work; in other words, the
departure of each leaf-trace makes a gap in the xylem and the
overlapping of the foliar-gaps results in the separation of the xylem
into a number of distinct bundles. In Zalesskya gracilis the continuity
of the xylem is not broken by overlapping gaps; in this it agrees with
Lepidodendron. In Thamnopteris the centre of the stele was
occupied by a peculiar form of xylem obviously ill-adapted for
conduction, but probably serving for water-storage and comparable
with the short and broad tracheae in Megaloxylon[780]. There is
clearly a well-marked difference in stelar anatomy between these
two Permian genera and Todea and Osmunda: this difference
appears less when viewed in the light of the facts revealed by a
study of the Jurassic species Osmundites Dunlopi.

Fig. 251. Lonchopteris virginiensis. (After Fontaine. ½ nat. size.)

As possible examples of Triassic Osmundaceae reference may be
made to some species included in Stur’s genus Speirocarpus[781]. S.
virginiensis was originally described by Fontaine[782] from the Upper
Triassic rocks of Virginia as Lonchopteris virginiensis (fig. 251) and
has recently been figured by Leuthardt[783] from the Keuper of Basel.
The sporangia, which are scattered over the lower surface of the
pinnules, are described as globose-elliptical and as having a
rudimentary apical annulus; no figures have been published. In habit
the frond agrees with Todites Williamsoni, but the lateral veins form
an anastomosing system like that in the Palaeozoic genus
Lonchopteris (fig. 290, B). There would seem to be an a priori
probability of this species being a representative of the
Osmundaceae and not, as Stur believed, of the Marattiaceae.
Seeing that Lonchopteris is a designation of a purely provisional
kind, it would be convenient to institute a new generic name for
Triassic species having the Lonchopteris venation, which there are
good reasons for regarding as Osmundaceous ferns.
Similarly Speirocarpus tenuifolius (Emmons) (= Acrostichites
tenuifolius Font.), which resembles Todites Williamsoni (see p. 339)
not only in habit and in the distribution of the sporangia but also in
the venation, is probably an Osmundaceous species.

Osmundites.
Osmundites Dunlopi, Kidston and Gwynne-Vaughan[784], fig. 252.
This species was found in Jurassic rocks in the Otago district of
New Zealand in association with Cladophlebis denticulata[785] (fig.
257). The type-specimen forms part of a stem 17 mm. in diameter
surrounded by a broad mass of crowded leaf-bases. The stele
consists of an almost continuous xylem ring (fig. 252) enclosing a
wide pith: the phloem and inner cortex are not preserved but the
peripheral region of the stem is occupied by a sclerotic outer cortex.
The mass of encasing leaf-bases resolves itself on closer inspection
into zones of foliage-leaf petioles and the petioles of scale-leaves
with an aborted lamina. A similar association of two forms of leaf is
seen in the existing American species Osmunda Claytoniana and O.
cinnamomea. The cortex and armour of leaf-bases are penetrated by
numerous diarch roots. The xylem cylinder, six to seven tracheae
broad, is characterised by the narrower diameter of its innermost
elements and—an important point—by the fact that the detachment
of a leaf-trace does not break the continuity of the xylem cylinder (fig.
252). Each leaf-trace is at first elliptical in section; it then becomes
curved inwards and gradually assumes the horse-shoe form as in
Zalesskya and in the recent species. The single endarch protoxylem
becomes subdivided until in the petiole it is represented by 20 or
more strands.
 Fig. 252. Osmundites Dunlopi Kidst. and G.-V. Portion of xylem showing
the departure of a leaf-trace. (After Kidston and Gwynne-
Vaughan; × 36.)
In the continuity of the xylem cylinder this species of Osmundites
shows a closer approach to Todea barbara or T. superba (fig. 221, B)
than to species of Osmunda; it differs from Zalesskya in having
reached a further stage in the reduction of a solid protostele to one
composed of a xylem cylinder enclosing a pith. This difference is of
the same kind as that which distinguishes the stele of Lepidodendron
rhodumnense from L. Harcourtii. In Lepidodendron short tracheae
occasionally occur on the inner edge of the xylem cylinder, and in
recent species of Todea the same kind of reduced tracheae are met
with on the inner edge of the xylem[786]. In both cases the short
tracheae are probably vestiges of an axial strand of conducting
elements which in the course of evolution have been converted into
parenchymatous cells. In Lepidodendron vasculare the mixed
parenchyma and short tracheae in the centre of the stele represent
an intermediate stage in xylem reduction, and the arrangement in
vertical rows of the medullary parenchyma in Lepidodendron is
precisely similar to that described by Kidston and Gwynne-Vaughan
in Thamnopteris. In both cases the rows of superposed short cells
have probably been produced by the transverse septation of cells
which began by elongating as if to form conducting tubes and ended
by assuming the form of vertical series of parenchymatous elements.

Fig. 253. Osmundites Kolbei Sew. (⅓ nat. size.)

In another Jurassic species, Osmundites Gibbiana[787], the xylem is
of the Osmunda type and consists of about 20 strands instead of a
continuous or almost continuous cylinder.