Historia natural y moral de las Indias Open Access

The issuance of this second Mexican edition of the work of the great Jesuit historian of the latter 16th century represents much more than just a move to incorporate the Historia natural y moral in the publisher’s new series on “Cronistas de Indias”; “much more,” in that, since 1940 when the first edition appeared, a series of research advances have provided answers to questions that were not available earlier. For example, the works of Lopetegui and Zambrano¹ have disclosed much new biographical data and provided new insights into the literary work of Acosta, the Jesuit missionary and administrator. More importantly, the publications of the research efforts of Barlow, Sandoval, Kubler and Gibson,² among others, have tended to make less polemical, more solidly based on fact, the editor’s 1940 attempted refutation of the charges of plagiarism, which had so damaged Acosta’s reputation since the mid-19th century attacks of Ramírez, Chavero, Bandelier, García Icazbalceta, and others. Finally, the editor’s own studies in the intellectual history of colonial America, continued throughout the years since 1940, and climaxed in 1961 with the publication of The Invention of America,³ have made appropriate a revision of his earlier introductory sections because of the increased understanding of the writer and his intellectual ambiente. Thus, while the reissue of this classic work would possibly be appropriate under almost any circumstances, it is particularly appropriate under the present ones.

In the ninety-five pages of introductory materials the editor has included a lengthy prologue, plus three appendices which provide detailed biographical data as well as a complete listing of the author’s works, an index to all the works cited by Acosta, and a guide, with a chronology and the key points involved, to the Durán-Tovar-Acosta materials and to the debates concerning them. By including this third appendix the editor has been able to concentrate his attentions, in the prologue, upon an analysis of Acosta’s work itself. This had not been the case in the earlier edition, in that a major amount of space had been allotted to defending the author against the charges of plagiarism made by a series of Mexican writers beginning with García Icazbalceta, and Ramírez and, in the main, not refuted up to 1940. The research advances since 1940, plus O’Gorman’s classic defense of 1940, have thus made possible this more abbreviated coverage accorded to the issue in this second edition.

The major part of the editor’s introduction is devoted to an analysis of the Historia, with particular emphasis placed upon an examination of the relationship of the author’s ideas and beliefs to those current in his day and age. Generally speaking, Acosta, when examined in this fashion, proved to be something of an anomaly. Although he was writing as a cleric and frequently cited the writings of the saints, he limited his use of these sources to relevant topics and did not hesitate to speculate upon his own account when this did not appear to take him into prohibited areas. He seemed in total ignorance, however, of the Copernican revolution, wrote of a geocentric universe and, in other ways, seemed unaware of the scientific advances of his day, still dividing matter, for example, into the simple elements of earth, water, air, and fire. Nevertheless, his great powers of observation, his willingness to speculate, his relative freedom from dogmatic blindness, helped to bring success to his attempt to provide an inventory of American nature, to coordinate the physical facts of the new with the theories of the old world.

One minor, but irritating fault, might be pointed out; that is, the lack of specific indication by the editor that a greater amount of space in Acosta’s work is given to Peru and the Peruvian area than to Mexico and things Mexican. This is minor, in that a glance at the text will eliminate any doubts in the reader’s mind, but irritating in that such an omission tends to rob the author of some of his greatest contributions: his chapters on Inca life, and his descriptions of Andean flora and fauna. Has O’Gorman, after accusing the earlier Mexican detractors of Acosta of being too narrowly nationalist in spirit, almost fallen into the same error!