Emplacing the South Seas in Mexico: Eugenio Salazar y Alarcón's ‘Descripción de la Laguna de México’

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Acknowledgements

An early version of this essay was presented at the 2008 RSA Chicago Conference. I wish to thank Ricardo Padrón and Matthew Edney for pointing me to the cartographic sources and for their comments, and to Carol Harllee for her suggestions on an earlier version of this work.

Notes

¹ ‘Hijos: esta silva de poesía no me determiné publicarla en mis días porque aunque (sino me engaño) tiene obras que pueden salir a la luz, temí por causa de mi profesión y oficio, no tuviesen algunos a desautoridad mía publicar e imprimir obras en metro castellano […] Y si Dios es servido que yo deje acabados e impresos mis puntos en Derecho, o en estado que vosotros los podais acabar de imprimir en mi nombre, primero que esta Silva, aun parece se podrá mejor publicar ella, pues habiéndose visto mis trabajos jurídicos, no se presumirá que gasté mi tiempo en hacer metros’ (Salazar y Alarcón, f. 1). [Dear sons: I did not resolve to publish this collection of poetry in my own days, for even though (if I do not deceive myself) it contains works that deserve to see the light of day, I feared that, due to my profession and trade, there would be those who would think more poorly of me for publishing and printing works of Spanish verse […] If it is God's will that I should leave finished and published my notes on the Law, or in a state such that you could complete and publish them in my name, but before this collection of poetry, then the publication of the latter might even better be accomplished, for, my works of jurisprudence having been seen, it will not be presumed that I wasted my time in spinning verses]. The translations in this essay are my own. I would like to thank the Real Academia de Historia in Madrid for granting me access to the original. I use Gallardo's edition for the study of the Poem.

² These men and women participated in the international migrations spearheaded by Iberian expansion, some forcibly as slave labor or exiles and others voluntarily. I will address here the practice of place making of one of the members of the latter group.

³ The newly appointed Viceroy of New Spain, the Marquis of Villamanrique, arrived in Mexico in 1585 after the sudden death of the Count of the Coruña at that post. In the following five years Salazar y Alarcón dedicated a series of poems to him and to his wife Blanca. His ‘Descripción de la laguna’ can be dated as early as that arrival in Mexico in 1585 (Martín 2002).

⁴ Peter Apian, geographer to Charles V, addressed the significance of chorography as a praxis following Ptolemy: ‘The aim of chorography is to paint a particular place, as if a painter were to paint an ear, or an eye, and other parts of a man's head’ [El fin de la corografía es pintar un lugar particular, como si un pintor pintasse una oreja, o un ojo, y otras partes de la cabeza de un hombre] (Kagan 1995).

⁵ This dual view of the physical and communal was present in Hispanic descriptions in the Siete Partidas, the Castilian legal code sponsored by Alfonso the Wise, and echoed in other European descriptions that consolidated during the Renaissance following classical tradition. Kagan traces the development of the concepts of civita and urbs from classical times to the sixteenth century. He points out how the works of Pedro de Medina in Spain, Konrad Celtis in Germany, William Lambarde and John Speed in England, and Gilles Corrozet in France belonged to a symphony of works dedicated to describing and praising European localities (Kagan 2000). In the case of Early Modern German historiography, Strauss finds that the genre served the aspirations of a declining empire (Strauss 1959).

⁶ See the introductory songs to Grandeza mexicana (Bernardo de Balbuena 1604), the Neptuno alegórico (Juana Inés de la Cruz 1680), and Triunfo parténico (Carlos Sigüenza y Góngora 1682 and 1683).

⁷ His addressees include the Marquis of Mondéjar, Charles V, Princess Isabel Clara Eugenia, Philip II, Ana of Austria, and the Marquis of Villamanrique and his wife, viceroys of New Spain.

⁸ Richard Kagan notes that in chorography authors aimed to prove the cities’ loyalty to the monarchy. Their past histories often hindered the way in which localities fit within greater historic and geographic narratives that rendered the Castilian monarchy as a natural heir to the old Roman Empire (Kagan 2001).

⁹ Martínez Martín identifies this emulation of the bucolic as a process of nationalization of the landscape along the lines of Sannazzaro's Arcadia and Garcilaso praise to Toledo (161). The approach of this essay does not equate a panegyric to the landscape as the early stages in a lineal process leading to modern nation states.

¹⁰ Salazar y Alarcón engaged the poetic endeavors of the Salmantine School. In his ‘Epístola al insigne Hernando de Herrera,’ a description of the city dedicated and sent to Fernando de Herrera, he sends to Herrera a depiction of the metropolis as a perfect classical polity according with the lineaments of chorography. This is the first work to situate the literary production of New Spain as a continuation of Herrera's literary innovations. Unfortunately, the Poem reached its destination after the addressee's death.

¹¹ [From the tumultuous sea where he reigned, / Neptune saw this gleaming city, / And in order to enjoy one day / The delights that he imagined, / He wished to occupy a choice / Spot, for the gift he hoped for, / And that she might approach him / And enjoy her pleasant waves / And to this end, he ordered The South / To dig into the hard mountain rock / Carving a secret aqueduct / In the bowels of the rocky earth / And to adorn himself with the attractive object / Of the lovely city, there were / Verdant ridges brimming with beauty / Enfold a spacious and gentle plain].

¹² O. H. K. Spate reminds us that ‘South Seas’ was the predominant designation for the Pacific Ocean well into the eighteenth century (Spate 1978, 1979).

¹³ Emma Ramírez postulates, first, an analogy between Neptune and Cortés, and later, possibly, between Neptune and Viceroy Villamanrique (Ramírez 2004).

¹⁴ [Of grave aspect and visage most serene, / A silver beard reaching down to his chest. / Long locks adorned and laden / With the maroons of the Thracian Strait / And the white pearls that the Indian Ocean's / great breast bequeaths to his breast.]

¹⁵ Once mortals were organized into cities, the gods chose a city where they were rendered tribute. At times, two divinities chose the same location, and conflict ensued.

¹⁶ While acknowledging Harley's challenge to the empiricist paradigm within the field of cartography as well as the influence of his work outside of his discipline, Denis Wood (2002) responds to Harley's notion of map as a discursive function. Andrews addresses his work from the perspective of an empiricist historian (2001). Others trace his transition to a poststructuralist approach to map studies (Edney 2005) and question the partial use of poststructuralist arguments in his later work (Belyea 2002; Wood 1993).

¹⁷ In his Della historia Vinitiana, Pietro Bembo—who corresponded with Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, Spanish geographer of the discovery—rebuffed the Ptolemaic notion of inhabitable zones. The reports of New World marvels invited him to envision a possible return to a faultless Golden Age there (Cosgrove 1992).

¹⁸ Adriaen Collaert's ‘America Retectio’ (1580–1586) also depicts Neptune in the act of the discovery of the New World (Santiago Páez 1993). The engraver highlights the discoveries of Christopher Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci as accomplishments spearheaded by Genoese and Florentine interests. While not in direct dialogue with Salazar's depiction, Coallert's engravings suggest another instance where Neptune is called upon to allegorize new worlds and new discoveries. Moreover, his claim over the sovereignty of the act of discovery itself indicates that the debates over dominion of the New World were far from resolved at the time, and were coeval discussions to Salazar's Poem.

¹⁹ The latter's city views appeared in visual chorographic volumes such as Braun and Hogenberg's Civitates Orbis Terrarum, Abraham Ortelius's Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, and Sebastian Münster's Cosmographia.

²⁰ Emma Ramírez speculates that the reference to Jupiter in Salazar y Alarcón's Poem may represent these world powers and their ambitions over the New World. I find this interpretation problematic for, according to Roman mythology, he was seen as the supreme power, served as overseer of international relations, and his presence guaranteed that all treaties were honored. See Gantz (1993) and Grimal (1991).

²¹ [Upon the great beast, an opulent seat / Of bright mother-of-pearl, which, wounded by the Sun / Dazzles with an array of sheens and overtones / Like the brilliant breast of the strutting peacock. / Seated there the king, before whom the proud Sea / Bows humbly, the monarch who is obeyed / By the fiercest and most horrid of sea creatures / And by the wild and furious winds … / Close by him, the proud and wealthy South Sea / Anxious to serve and please him.]

²² [Going down to The Lake, fresh and lovely, / He saw three fresh and beauteous hillsides; / And it seemed to him (considering it well) / That they would be more attractive and beautiful / If surrounded by water; and then he proceeded to do it, / Enfolding the delightful hills / With fresh water, which made / Their freshness grow, and their grace and verdure.]

²³ [Tecpeccingo, he called the first hill, / Which means a small peak; / And Tepcapulco, the last hill, / Because water and air are broadens, / Xico, the hill that separates the other two, / A name that means ‘in the middle’]

²⁴ [He commanded the South Sea to calm itself / And, from various sides, to embrace / The great city, and always to serve it / With fruitful arms, and to please it. / And that it should supply the city in its many needs, / And all else he should deliver it / For its use and sustenance, / And for its ornamentation and its noble argument.]

²⁵ Contrary to the common view that Columbus simply sailed west, he intentionally and systematically sailed ‘south’ in his Voyages towards a belt of the tropics, a region of the globe impossible to inhabit according to Mediterranean geographers. This ‘southing’ strategy, in turn, shed light on the assumptions that explorers, missionaries and administrators held about the peoples and places of Atlantic Africa, the Americas, the greater Basin of the Indian Ocean, and the Pacific (Wey-Gómez 2008).

²⁶ The letter to Miguel Salvador de Valencia (Barcelona 1566) recounting Miguel López de Legazpi's discoveries in the Pacific reminds us that such discoveries were perceived as local expeditions accomplished by ‘mexicanos’ under his Majesty's rule (Anon 1566).

²⁷ Salazar's and Vega's paths crossed earlier in their careers in New Spain before the latter set sail to Manila (Martín 2002). The poems dedicated to Vega upon the death of his wife suggest that the friendship continued throughout their lives (Silva). Miguel de Benavides, bishop of Segovia, recommended our author for the post of governor of Manila in 1598, a gesture that shows that he was well regarded by those promoting expansion to the Pacific (Benavides 1598).

²⁸ In his study of the late seventeenth-century emblem and poem, ‘Such Ruin Could Not Fit’ by Isidro Sariñana, Michael Schreffler (2007) points to a refashioning of geopolitical space within the limits of Spanish imperial discourses. The visual representation challenges an ‘Atlanticentric view of the world’ by portraying New Spain as a regally dressed figure—a stasis that bestows a measure of political power on the allegorical figure of the Americas (125). The critic finds a parallel to this challenge in the sixteenth-century encomium to Mexico, Bernardo de Balbuena's Grandeza Mexicana. While I concur that the Poem proposes a new spatialization of Mexico as a global territory, I differ with the view that such representations of centrality relate to emerging discourses of Creole identity and patriotism as proposed by David Brading and Georgina Sabat de Rivers (Pettinaroli 2008).

²⁹ Several of the projects of expansion in the New World proposed to the monarchy were to be spearheaded from Novohispanic territories. Alonso de Zorita's proposal for peaceful expansion to Florida and New Mexico, for instance, was received as naïve and rejected by the Crown in 1561. Known as ‘Plan Florida,’ the proposal entailed peaceful expansion northward, with its base in Nueva Galicia. The plan was to convert the Chichimeca and convince them to establish themselves into settlements where they would practice agriculture (Vigil 1981; Zorita 1999). Instead, Rodrigo de Vivero y Velasco advocated for the military conquest of Virginia earlier in the following century, favoring commerce between New Spain and Asia and fostering the prospects of inserting the northern territories into a larger commercial system (Vivero y Velasco 1904).