| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.5 | The History Cooperative

Magdalena Chocano Mena. La fortaleza docta: Elite letrada y dominación social en México colonial (siglos XVI-XVII). Barcelona: Ediciones Bellaterra. 2000. Pp. 415.
In this examination of the formation and functioning of the intellectual culture of sixteenth and seventeenth-century New Spain, Magdalena Chocano Mena attempts to renovate Angel Rama's proposal that the intellectuals of New Spain formed a city within a city, a lettered city (La Ciudad Letrada [1984]). She asserts that the lettered city was, in fact, la fortaleza docta, the learned fortress, created by criollos, American-born Spaniards, to legitimatize and fortify their elite position.	1
To build and sustain their fortress, the author contends, these elite men of colonial Mexico undertook two processes. First, they denigrated and invalidated Indian culture in order to eliminate any indigenous claim to knowledge and its associated social power. Secondly, they elevated the social value of the intellectual enterprise in order to establish intellectual capital sufficient to claim and preserve elite social and political positions within New Spanish society. Although these two developments are well recognized by historians of colonial Mexico, Chocano Mena explores exactly how these processes evolved by analyzing a wide array of printed primary documents, such as sermons, essays, funeral eulogies, and Inquisition records.	. . .

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