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Jay, Felix
2002 0-7734-7131-6This study focuses on a single biographical sketch, written less than 60 years after Las Casas' death by a fellow Dominican and based partly in the man's own writings and partly on documentary and other material found in books, papers and archives.
2002 0-7734-7142-1
Father Francisco Xavier Clavijero, S.J., was born in 1731 in Veracruz. He was one of the leading teaching members of the Jesuit Society in New Spain. He occupied the chair of Philosophy in the Colegio de Guadalajera when the decree of the expulsion of members of the Society led to his exile to Italy. In Europe he met with ignorance of the past and present Mexico, and so created his masterpiece, the Historia. Clavijero was a theologian, philosopher, geographer, physicist, and ethnographer. This translation consists of the original Author’s Preface, some additional notes to Book I, and a total of four books. Book I presents a summary of the natural history and the condition of its inhabitants. Book II lists the various expeditions undertaken with a view to exploitation and exploration starting with Cortés and concluding with Admiral Atondo’s voyage in 1683. The author then begins with the founding of earliest Jesuit missions, and introduces the great initiators, Fathers Kino, Salvatierra, Píoccolo, and Juan de Ugarte. Book III reports the successive establishment of missions, the contact with the natives, the success and/or failure of the apostolic effort, famine, local resistance, etc. Book IV describes the extension of the missionary effort in the north of the peninsula and beyond and the charting of the coasts. It gives details of the fourteen mission stations in existence at the time of the departure of the Jesuits in 1768. The Appendix to Book I consists of two parts: the first demonstrates the idiomatical difficulties presented by the language of the Cochimí nation; the second part is made up a research into the source of the venom of the rattlesnake, the mechanics of the serpent’s bite and possible cures.
1997 0-7734-8607-0
Written in 1595, Fray Mendieta's work presents the history of the advent of Christianity in the Caribbean and Mexican regions as a consequence of the Spanish Conquest. He illustrates the triumph and tragedy of the missionary effort and the difficulties in the conversion of the Indians, conflicts between spiritual ends and material interests. This edition of translated sections also presents some translated selections from Mendieta's letters, including a letter addressed to King Philip II of Spain.
1999 0-7734-8192-3
Organized aggression and conquest have always provided violent men with an opportunity to commit atrocities, and this applies to the Spanish Conquest of the Americas. In Peru, two names overshadow all acts of violence by reason of exceptional, systematic, continuous and paranoic expressions of evil: Lope de Aguirre and Francisco de Carvajal. Aguirre's crimes appalled his tough contemporaries, and inspired writers and writers and filmmakers of later generations. (Werner Herzog's 1973 cinematographic classic Wrath of God is based on his life.) Francisco de Carvajal, in four short years, left a trail of atrocities, murders, corruption and robberies that earned him the name "Demon of the Andes." In Bogotá, Juan Rodríguez Freyle set down a chronicle of lawlessness, greed, murder, passions, intrigue, and corruption and the often criminal behavior of the guardians of the law and judicial inspectors. Throughout this volume, the translator has chosen to let the eyewitnesses and secondary sources tell the stories.
2002 0-7734-7170-7
2002 0-7734-7168-5