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Book Review
Comparative/World
| Jesús F. de la Teja and Ross Frank, editors. Choice, Persuasion, and Coercion: Social Control on Spain's North American Frontiers. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. 2005. Pp. xxi, 338. $24.95.
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| The essays in this volume survey an area from Florida to California in the present-day United States and through the northern tier of Mexican states. As the title suggests, the common thread running through them is the application of social control, here taken to mean the use of persuasion and coercion by the dominant group on its subordinates. In seeking to answer the question of how social control was applied in Spain's North American colonies, the contributors take approaches as varied as the regions they describe. |
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In his essay ("Who Controls the King?"), Alfredo Jiménez suggests that although the Spanish monarch exercised control over many aspects of the lives of his American subjects, ultimately they influenced his actions through their right of appeal to king and council in Spain. Jane Landers's survey of Spanish Florida and Gilbert C. Din's essay on Spanish Louisiana deal with the exercise of social control in areas characterized by the presence of individuals who owed allegiance to other European nations—England and France—as well as complex, multiracial societies. Moreover, both regions felt the impact of European wars and imperial competition. |
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Editor Ross Frank's essay is based on a close reading of the instructions that New Mexico governor Fernando de la Concha left to his successor. De la Concha's advice on how to govern New Mexico almost drips with disdain for the local populace. There is little doubt that he considered himself superior as an individual and military man to the citizenry and the Franciscans he encountered. In particular, the governor warned that the friars were meddlesome in affairs of state. He counseled ignoring their complaints and threatening them with expulsion from the province if need be. As for the Hispanic citizens, the governor compared them unfavorably with the Pueblo Indians: they were malicious, uncooperative with de la Concha's directives, and dared to complain to higher authorities. They were not to be trusted or given positions of authority. |
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In her chapter on women who subverted traditional gender roles in colonial Nueva Vizcaya, Susan M. Deeds examines how the Catholic Church reacted when social control was threatened. Antonia de Soto, an escaped mulatto slave, traveled throughout New Spain in the guise of a man. She eventually confessed to a Jesuit, Tomás de Guadalajara, and turned herself in to the Inquisition. Antonia claimed that she had become intimate with Satan. Apparently, the moral code of social control instilled in her by the church led her to cast off the freedom she had gained as a "man." |
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Contributions by Cecilia Sheridan Prieto and Juliana Barr delve into the world of nonsedentary Indian groups and their interactions with Spaniards in areas where indigenous peoples often had the upper hand. Sheridan deals with the region that today forms northeastern Mexico and southern Texas. In this part of the Spanish Empire, Indians occasionally formed new groups combining elements of several native communities. Barr presents a very original view of a world in which the Spaniards were largely at their mercy, except for small zones of Spanish control. Barr argues that the Comanche and Caddo Indians exerted social control over the Spaniards, forcing them to learn and adapt to the Indian way of life in order to remain in the area. |
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