A Quixotic Venture: Spanish-Philippine Poetry at the Turn of the 19th Century, or Resistance against Oblivion

This essay explores, by means of three Philippine poems written in Spanish during the first half of the twentieth century, the claim of a Philippine cultural identity sustained in the Spanish heritage. After a short overview of the Spanish colonization in the Philippines and the presence of the Spanish language in the archipelago, I will use Paul Friedrich’s theoretical approach on poetry as a source for the study of a culture. Then I will proceed to the examination of three poems written by Philippine writers: Fernando María Guerreros’ “A Hispania” (1913), Claro Mayo Recto’s “Las dalagas Filipinas” (1911), and Jesús Balmori’s “Blasón” (undated) by means of the close reading approach. In the exploration of this claim of a Philippine cultural identity rooted in the Spanish heritage, I additionally consider the role of the United States, and take into account some initiatives that have tried to continue the study of this literature throughout the twentieth and twenty-first century. I conclude that poetry is a valuable way to analyse culture, and, for the specific case of Spanish and the Philippines, I suggest that Spanish-Philippine poetry helps know the heritage of Spanish in the archipelago

Spanish Amazonia, 1532–1825

Stretching from modern-day southern Venezuela to northern Bolivia, Spanish-controlled Amazonia represented the ultimate frontier to colonial officials. Home to hundreds of native cultures, Crown authorities consistently struggled to extend hegemony to most of the region. Barriers to entry were both physical and motivational. In the shadow of the Andes, the thick vegetation, constant rains, and lack of navigable rivers from Spanish-controlled regions meant that only the most motivated could reach its most valuable natural resources. As a result, only the most intrepid, and perhaps delusional, adventurers tried. For the most part, it was religious devotion that brought Spanish subjects to the region. Therefore, Spanish colonization in Amazonia was represented largely by the mission church than any other organ of the empire. These religious enterprises fluoresced in some places, but in most others they floundered. While the difficulties of colonization meant fewer colonizers than in other parts of the Americas, the native population suffered under colonial impositions that forced changes in their traditional lifestyle, imposed coercive labor regimes, and brought disease. The native population did not accept this passively, resulting in some of the most successful uprisings in the colonial period, including the Juan Santos Atahualpa rebellion.

AMERICAN-MEXICAN BORDER CONFLICTS IN THE 1870–1910S

The article analyzes the border conflicts between Mexico and the United States at the turn of the XIXth and XXth centuries. American-Mexican relations were an important factor in the development of the regional subsystem of international relations in the Western Hemisphere. Historically, Mexico and the United States have had a complicated relationship. Mexico in the late XIXth – early XXth centuries was a secondary peripheral state, which was mainly agrarian in nature. There were both phases of acute confrontation (almost the entire XIXth century and the beginning of the XXth century), as well as periods of good neighborliness, relatively good, friendly, stable relationships and constructive cooperation. In relations with the United States at that time, it remained rather not a subject, but an object of influence. The extreme American expansionists proposed in the middle of the XIXth century to capture all of Mexico. In response to the aggressive aspirations of America, the Mexican radicals put forward their territorial claims to the neighboring country. They hoped to regain the vast northern region, that was lost during the wars of 1835-1848, which included Upper California, New Mexico, Utah, Arizona and Texas (which was called the "New Philippines" during the era of Spanish colonization). There are two stages of confrontation between the two countries: the 1870s – 1890s and the 1910s – 1920s. The most serious exacerbations on the border occurred in 1876, 1877, 1891-1893, 1896, 1906 and 1910-1919. Both government troops and irregular (militias, partisans, rebels) formations took part in the regional armed conflict. As a result, the situation stabilized for almost a century.

Colonial Consecrations, Violent Reclamations, and Contested Spaces in the Spanish Americas

During Spanish colonization in the Americas, Catholic evangelizers often purposefully consecrated spaces that were already sacred to Indigenous Americans. In many regions, however, Indigenous deities, spirits, ancestors, and their devotees, rebelled. The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 killed and evicted Spaniards while claiming Christian constructions and objects for native usage. Yet the end result of this revolt was not just the re-consecration of sacred spaces to once again welcome Indigenous spirit beings. Rather, in its wake, the line between the pure and the contaminated cannot be neatly drawn; indeed, such sharp distinctions make little sense within Indigenous epistemologies wherein binary opposition is rarely found. Comparative materials from Mesoamerica and the Andes help complicate the commonplace narrative of conquest and resistance.

The Spanish Language in Latin America during the Colonial Period

Language was an essential tool in the Spanish colonization of the Americas. Starting in 1492, a series of Iberian fleets arrived in the so-called New World with horses, gunpowder, and the printed word in their possession. These artifacts served a major role in the submission of the native population, not only physical but intellectual and spiritual. To appreciate the spread of el español in the newly found territories, it is important to look at how Spanish was perceived by medieval philologists such as Antonio de Nebrija, author of Gramática de la lengua española; to appreciate the registers in Christopher Columbus’s journals (as edited by Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas); to analyze the status of native tongues like Nahuatl, Quechua, and scores of others, as well as the selection Spanish missionaries made of a few of those languages—called lenguas generales—for pedagogical instruction; to look at translators like La Malinche, Melchorejo, and Julianillo; to consider the role the printing press and translations of the Bible played in indoctrinating the indigenous population; to listen to the parlance of African slaves brought from the early 16th century onward; and finally to appreciate the verbal and aesthetic evolution of Spanish in the pens of Sor Juana Inés de La Cruz and many other important Spanish-language colonial authors.

The influence of Indian languages on the functioning of grammatical forms in Spanish in the Mexican state of Oaxaca

The article deals with the local-specific features of the functioning of grammatical forms in the Spanish language of the Mexican state of Oaxaca. Examples of the influence of Native American languages on the grammatical structure of the Spanish language are analyzed and given. The co-existence of the dominant Spanish and Indian languages had an impact on the Mexican variant of Spanish. During the three hundred years of Spanish colonization, the cultural diversity of the State of Oaxaca was mixed and expanded. Thus, a mixture of Spanish, autochthonous and African groups emerged, which defined the language of the residents of the region in particular. The implementation of language units in the state is characterized by a peculiarity that is expressed at the grammatical level. The purpose of the article is to analyze the influence of Indian languages on the grammatical structure of Spanish in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. The research was based on articles, fiction written by Oaxaca authors. Textbooks on grammar of autochthonous languages of the Oto-Manguean group were studied. Interviews with governors, poets, state linguists and Oaxacan speakers in markets, streets, cafes were analyzed. As a result of the study, the Oaxaca resident’s speech revealed grammatical features influenced by Indian languages that distinguish local speech from that of the capital. As a result of the findings, there are prospects for further research into the influence of indigenous languages on Spanish in the State of Oaxaca.

In the Name of Spanish Colonization

This article analyzes the early records of Mission San Gabriel to conclude that the missionaries replaced native identities with new categories of gentile and neophyte, based on religious criteria, and blurred the racial-social distinctions brought by the colonizers from Mexico into one California frontier class, the gente de razón, based on their roles in colonization and their adherence to Catholicism. The consequences can be measured in the 1769 explorers’ depictions of Indigenous, in native resistance, and most clearly in the mission register of baptisms, confirmations, and marriages. Christian Indians from Baja California who participated in the colonial enterprise complicated the frontier class distinctions. The early practice at Mission San Gabriel became the model for later mission practice.

Ángel María Garibay (1892-1967): the analysis of Nahuati poetic texts as a contribution to Mexican historical science

The subject of this research is scientific activity of the Mexican philologist and historian Ángel María Garibay (1892-1967), who dedicated his life to accumulation, translation and analysis of various types of texts written in the Nahuatl language during the pre-colonial period and Spanish colonization of the Americas. The goal consists in clarification of schoolar’s contribution to the development of Mexican historical science, namely the ancient history of Mexico. The article analyzes the key stages in scientific career of A. M. Garibay, as well as examines his major works. The persona of this scholar and his writings unfortunately did not receive due attention in the Russian Latin American Studies. The conclusion is made that the works of A. M. Garibay predetermined the vector of research in the area of culture of pre-Columbian period of Mexico for decades ahead. His outlook upon the history of pre-Columbian civilizations in a remarkable manner intertwines with the perception of ancient history of the region by Creole historians of the late XVIII century. Garibay alongside Creole historians analogizes the culture of ancient Mexicans with the cultures of European antiquity. This article can be valuable to national researchers dealing with Mexican historiography and Mexican history overall.