The history of the north Mexican states for the first three decades of independence is woven around the conflict between three entangled and inseparable ideologies: philosophy (liberal vs. conservative), politics (federalist vs. centralist), and religion (secular vs. clerical). The state of Lower California, primarily because of its isolation from the central government, went through the same stages of neglect and domination that characterized other population centers—such as Monterrey—in the north. But, unlike Nuevo León which has numerous able historians, Lower California has received little study.
A Peruvian who immigrated to Lower California in 1849 did much to document the historical vicissitudes of this relatively unresearched portion of Mexico. A lawyer by profession and at various times a journalist, teacher, judge, and politician, Manuel C. Rojo felt the need to “compile all those data which we consider necessary for the time when a pen, better trimmed than our own but no more impartial, will write . . . The History of Lower California . . .” (p. 14). Although he began an active judicial and political career in 1860, Rojo had begun three years earlier to work on the documents that he finally gave to the Bancroft Library in 1879.
Rojo talked with men who participated in history-making events, practicing many of the principles that oral historians are even yet perfecting. He corresponded with officials who knew the governors, copying their responses in full in his Notes. He claimed to be impartial, yet his strong liberal, federalist, and secular feelings crept into the narratives at almost every opportunity. But Rojo was not just doctrinaire, because he had developed his strong beliefs after years of public service —years in which the central government, far removed from the turmoil of Lower California, had failed to support the state’s officials. Rojo complained at one point that he was the laughing-stock of the criminals in his district because the government refused to make needed reforms in the trial process.
Rojo’s Notes give intimate views of the soldiers, missionaries, and Indians on the frontier. He includes information on the terms of several governors—Luis del Castillo Negrete, Francisco Padilla, Mariano Garfias, L. Maldonado, and Francisco Palacios Miranda—that is unavailable in other sources, because records have been destroyed or inadequately preserved. The seemingly naive quality that marks his anecdotes probably is the result of nineteenth century phraseology rather than lack of understanding. And when the stories are not particularly revealing about a character or event, they are always interesting in themselves.
Professor Gericke’s translation is lucid and readable, although one of his stated goals was to retain as much of the flavor of Rojo’s extended and complex sentences as possible. The only distracting features of what is a handsome book are the price and the absence of a map. Several attractive, but incidental, drawings by Henry Chapman Ford are included.
