Jorge Carrera Andrade is one of the best-known living Spanish speaking poets. He is one of those Ecuadorian men of letters who invaded the field of history, and he is the one who contributed positively to Ecuadorian historiography by digging up rare books with little known information. It is to be hoped that he will continue his labors. But care must be had with poetic license in the writing of history. Thus, Toribio de Ortiguera (p. 34) most probably was not sipping any chocolate, for frequently sixteenth-century Spaniards were not very well impressed with that beverage, Guayaquil started to export cocoa only later, and even then Quiteños had little use for chocolate, preferring instead male. Also, it is possible that sundry mules reached Quito from Cartagena loaded with Spanish wines (p. 31), but it was much more typical for those noble beasts to reach Quito from the south, carrying Peruvian wines shipped through Guayaquil. If Carrera is so sure that Father Juan de Velasco utilized sources to be found in the Vatican Library (p. 66), it would be a worthy task for him to rediscover them. The founder of the Museum of Natural History in Madrid was Pedro Franco Dávila, and not Pedro Francisco Dávila (p. 65). It is hard to see any connection between the funeral of the first Marqués de Selva Alegre and independence (p. 81); nor does Carrera show his sources concerning the exportation of bananas from America to Cádiz in 1812 (p. 93) or to prove that the priest Rodríguez was murdered by the Spaniards (p. 92). But the weakest part is a piece of archileyenda negra, at the beginning of the first chapter, which runs as follows:
“El Santo Oficio fué implantado con anterioridad a las universidades, y los cirios verdes de tan alto tribunal enterraron bajo sus lágrimas de cera cualquier obra del ingenio o del pensamiento libre.— Las “Crónicas” de Cieza de León permanecieron mucho tiempo entre las manos hurgadoras del Inquisidor Gasco, salvándose por milagro de figurar en el Indice Expurgatorio. No se escaparon de la fiebre purificadera dos obras curiosas, la del Dr. Sepúlveda sobre “las guerras que hicieron los españoles en las Indias” y la de Diego Hernández sobre los abusos de los conquistadores, ambas condendadas por el Consejo de Indias y por cédula especial del Rey en 1571.”
Now, President Pedro de la Gasea did belong to the Council of the Inquisition, but it was not in that category that he looked over Cieza’s work; and as a result of this inspection he placed the government archives at the disposition of the author. Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda’s Democrates Secundas was kept from being printed in Spain because it meant to prove that Spain’s conquest of the Indies was just and legal. Concerning the third author mentioned, I only know that Diego Fernández de Palencia did publish his Historia del Perú in Seville, in 1571.
Passing to more recent events, I think Carrera is not fair to Olmedo (p. 104), who could not know that four years later Viceroy Abascal would be responsible for the massacre of the Quiteños; nor was he choosing in 1822 between Peru and Ecuador, but between Peru and Colombia, which is not exactly the same thing. It was not without reason that Quiteños called the 24th of May, 1822, the “último día del despotismo, y el primero de lo mismo.” On the other hand, I have not yet seen a document which would prove that Rocafuerte took part in the conspiracy that led to the revolt of August 10, 1809, which—incidentally—did not declare independence, but autonomy. Rather, Rocafuerte’s family seems to have been on very good terms with Abascal, probably through his brother-in-law, Gabino Gaínza.
Finally, to conclude with the twentieth century, much is said of the leftist poets and novelists, and nothing about the conservative school of historians. Would it be for ideological reasons that Clio has been expelled from Parnassus? Still, this is an interesting book.
Once more, the Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana of Quito should be commended for the handsome presentation of its publications.
