In Historiografía indiana Francisco Esteve Barba presents an extraordinary collection of bibliographical commentaries on the chroniclers and historians of colonial Spanish America. The present edition was prepared by Hortensia Esteve and is based on new materials compiled by the original author. The bibliographic material is classified according to the writer’s vocation (conquistador, soldier, missionary, navigator, poet, with an additional category for Indians), the geographical area, and the historical period. Esteve Barba discusses the discovery, the early explorers, the first general historians, the official chronicle, and the historians of the various regions—New Spain, Guatemala and Yucatán, Nueva Granada and Venezuela, Peru, Chile, and Río de la Plata. Obviously, the geographical grouping was made for the sake of convenience. One significant change from the 1964 edition is that all note references appear at the bottom of the page.
Considering the magnitude of the work, Esteve Barba is concise on the early historians and official chroniclers. Figures such as Pedro Mártir de Anglería, Francisco López de Gómara, José de Acosta, Juan López de Velasco, and Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas are succinctly presented. In addition, Esteve Barba traces the development of the “official” post of cronista mayor de Indias and devotes a small section to the Bourbon chroniclers. The longest section features the historians of Mexico (instead of New Spain). Though Guatemala and Yucatán are discussed together, Yucatán was part of the Audiencia of Mexico. The rest of Spanish America, by comparison, receives limited attention, with the exception of Peru. Peru and Upper Peru are discussed as one category, often to the detriment of the latter. Furthermore, Esteve Barba treats the indigenous writers—Juan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui and Felipe Huamán Poma de Ayala—only to the extent of their limited role in Peruvian colonial society. This tends to reveal the author’s limited understanding of the indigenous contribution.
Though Esteve Barba’s work is itself an impressive contribution to the historiography of the colonial period, this reviewer regrets that the volume includes little new research. For example, a complete edition of Pedro de Cieza de León’s Crónica del Perú and a recently published complete edition of Suma y narración de los Incas by Juan de Betanzas deserve special attention but receive no mention here. These criticisms aside, the book is quite useful not only to historians of colonial Spanish America but also to those interested in the contemporaneous history of Spain.
