Abstract
This chapter examines works by Francisco de Seyxas y Lovera and Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, produced under the influence of the President of the Council of Indies, and the New Spain’s viceroy within a naval policy aimed to strengthen the empire’s authority over the Atlantic and the Caribbean, between 1688 and 1696. These noblemen collaborated toward steering the Spanish empire to increase expenditures in the Windward Armada, and the naval protection of the Caribbean. Through the examination of both authors’ works, this chapter analyzes how maritime knowledge shapes their political trajectories as they insert themselves in the imperial project of Spain’s naval authority. This project diverges from previous studies on Mexican and peninsular baroque arguing that these texts constitute a body of maritime narratives that act as a commentary on hydro-power in which New Spain is central to the Spanish imperial project, exercising it from a position of hemispheric dominance.
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Notes
- 1.
This textual production effort and narrative of urgency that Galve and Vélez distribute through the court is not an isolated case in the Spanish empire. In her intervention at Lasa 2019, María Ximena Urbina Carrasco highlighted the role that news and rumors had in pressing the court to reinforce the Spanish maritime power in the Chilean area. Urbina Carrasco defines this as a “mechanism of dynamism and influence to the court” and according to her, it explains why even though they were never heavily attacked, they benefited from military investments.
- 2.
The complete title of the document is “Nueva demarcación de la bahía de Santa María de Galve (antes Panzacola) que por orden del exmo. Sr. conde de Galbe, virrey de la Nueva España hizo el año de 1693 don Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, cosmógrafo del rey, nuestro señor y su catedrático jubilado de Matemáticas de la Academia Mexicana.” [New demarcation of the bay of Santa María de Galve (before Panzacola) that for order of the excellent lord Count of Galbe, viceroy of New Spain, made in the year of 1693, don Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, cosmographer of our lord the King, and his retired chair of Mathmatics in the Mexican Academy] María Rodríguez-Sala offers the archival reference: Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Colección Muñoz, Vol. 1, fols.116–134v; y en AGI, México, 617, documento 13 (Rodríguez-Sala 56).
- 3.
Lorente Medina, in his 2017 edition of Infortunios, following López Lázaro and Buscaglia-Salgado, recognizes now Sigüenza’s participation in the political agenda of Galve, although he just summarizes the arguments from both authors without revisiting the remaining of Sigüenza’s works.
- 4.
On the identity of Alonso Ramírez, López Lázaro has not found any document that proves the existence of an individual with that name, hence there is the possibility for the name to be a pseudonym. Nevertheless, José Buscaglia-Salgado has found the marriage certificate of an Alonso Ramírez with a Francisca Javiera Ribera de Poblete in the metropolitan cathedral of Mexico City, dated November 8, 1682. Buscaglia-Salgado maintains that Ramírez is in fact a real name and that this individual from the marriage certificate is Infortunios protagonist (161).
- 5.
Tittle page of the Mercurio volante in its facsimile edition in Obras históricas reads: ESCRIBIOLA | POR ESPECIAL ORDEN DE EL EXCELENTÍSIMO SEÑOR CONDE GALVE, | VIRREY, GOBERNADOR Y CAPITÁN GENERAL DE LA NUEVA ESPAÑA, |(Wrote it by special orders from the excellent lord Count of Galve, Viceroy, Governor, and General Captain of New Spain).
- 6.
AGN 4349/9, 8r–8v.
- 7.
Library of Congress, G1015.T4 1630, web.
- 8.
AGS Guerra y Marina, Parte de Mar, Decretos, legajo 3799.
- 9.
Ídem.
- 10.
Another of Seyxas’s letters specifically mentions 50 shields of silver per month, ordered by Vélez, and paid from the Council of Indies’s own budget. (AGS Guerra y Marina, Parte de Mar, Memoriales y peticiones de partes, legajo 3799).
- 11.
AGS Guerra y Marina, Parte de Mar, Decretos, legajo 3800. The appointment is also mentioned in AGS, Guerra y Marina, Libro de Decretos 414, páginas 156–57; As well as his salary of 30 shields, pg. 166–67.
- 12.
AGS Guerra y Marina, Parte de Mar, Cartas, legajo 3804.
- 13.
AGS Guerra y Marina, Parte de Mar, Memoriales y Peticiones de Partes, legajo 3815.
- 14.
“Y del viaje de Alonso Ramírez parece expresamente que Vel y Donkin pasaron al Mar del Sur.” [And from the travels of Alonso Ramírez it seems clear that Vel and Donkin crossed to the South Seas](McCarl 159). Leonor Taiano also notes that Seyxas confirms Ramírez’s tale with his own experience as witness of the departure of Vel y Donkin ships from the London port, what would corroborate López Lázaro’s thesis that Infortunios is based on real events (357). Independently of the veracity of Seyxas statement, this gesture proves that the Galician author gives a non-fiction status to Sigüenza’s work and that, through the inclusion of the witness statement, he was establishing a reciprocal connection of authority argument and validation.
- 15.
On the issue of accusations, Piratas actually throws a safe line to Galve when discussing the Mexican mutiny of 1692, and blames the insurrection of indios to the influence of the “great number of foreigners among the Spaniards” (137).
- 16.
AGN 28642/4, oficios vendibles, vol. 10, 175–184.
- 17.
AGN 23366/31, Histórico de hacienda (1ª serie), volumen 640, expediente 31.
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Supiot, C. (2022). On Paper Ships, Sailors, and Cosmographers: Spanish Maritime Narratives and Political Networks of an Imperial Project. In: Moraña, M. (eds) Hydrocriticism and Colonialism in Latin America. Maritime Literature and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08903-9_4
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