The content of Fitte’s present work is exactly what the title implies. Unfortunately the result is not as provocative as most of this prolific scholar’s output nor is it as exciting as the subject matter would seem to warrant.
Despite the author’s disclaimers, the reader is once more led through the maze of personalities and events in Spain’s struggle to impose dominion over that estuary’s inhospitable coasts. Fitte’s admirable goal is to paint “the cruel hardships and the gnawing hunger endured by the anonymous masses of obscure adventurers,” and from the chronicles and letters of that far-off age he has culled a wonderful collection of italicized anguish. But the tempo is too slow and the distractions of detail too great to rescue completely those “anonymous masses” from the oblivion into which past historians have let them slip.
Such observations, however, must not lose sight of the recent and vital trend in Argentine historiography—led by Fitte, Guillermo Furlong-Cardiff, Gabriel Gustavo Levene, and others—to inject more and more social interpretation into historical studies. In this context the present book adds still another perspective to our understanding of Argentina’s Hispanic heritage.
