Ida Altman

The Revolt of Enriquillo and the Historiography of Early Spanish America

In 1519 Enrique, one of the few remaining caciques, or indigenous chiefs, of the island of Hispaniola, removed himself and some of his people from the reach of Spanish authority. For nearly a decade and a half he and his followers lived in the remote and barely accessible south-central mountains of his native island, occasionally raiding Spanish settlements for arms and tools and clashing with militia units but for the most part avoiding contact with Spanish society. Enrique eluded the numerous patrols that were sent to eradicate what became a stubbornly persistent locus of defiance of Spanish authority that attracted other discontented residents of the island, including both African and indigenous slaves and servants as well as small numbers of nominally ‘free’ Indians.

Black Society in Spanish Florida. By Jane Landers. (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1999. Pp. xiv, 390. Notes. Appendices. Index.

Despite a resurgence of interest in the Spanish borderlands of North America, the southeastern U.S. still receives much less attention than does the southwest. Doubtless this reflects both their different histories and present circumstances. Much of the sduthwest is heavily—even, in some cases, predominantly—Hispanic, culturally and demographically, and the ties between it and the Spanish-speaking world have been strong and in many instances continuous. In the southeast, however, the imprint of the Spanish past is not nearly as clear. Even where Hispanic culture is strong, it is largely the product of recent events. The Hispanic presence in southern Florida today reflects not so much its historic relationship to Cuba and the Caribbean but rather more recent developments. In addition to the problem of historical discontinuity, the complex mixture and interaction of cultures and nationalities in the colonial southeast—Spanish, English, French, African, Native American—produced complicated shifts of jurisdiction, alliance and policy that were absent in the southwest. The resulting fragmentation seemingly has discouraged inquiry into broad or long-term developments in the region, given the often scattered nature of the sources and need to conduct research in two or even three languages.

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The movement of people from Spain to the Indies, starting with the voyages of Columbus in the late fifteenth century, is fundamental to the study of early Spanish America. While Spaniards played a pivotal role in the formation of New World society, their origins and background have received relatively little systematic attention. Why has this been true? Certainly the groundwork for a more detailed consideration of Spanish emigrants has been laid long since, l but despite some important beginnings, research has progressed little in the past two decades. The traditionally separate historiographical treatment of Spain and Spanish America has fostered neglect of topics not easily classified within one field or the other, including emigration and the relation of Spain to America.2 While in recent years the other two major building blocks of colonial society-the indigenous peoples of the Americas and the Africans brought to the New World as slaves-have received an increasing amount of attention,3 a reaction to Eurocentrism has helped to create a situation in which a very superficial knowledge of early modem European or Spanish society is acceptable. Furthermore, the gaps in the historiography of early modem Spanish society, especially at the local level, may frustrate the scholar seeking greater enlightenment.4