El Gran Norte de México: Una frontera imperial en la Nueva España (1540-1820) (review)

Abstract

2??8Book Reviews345 including Ysleta, Socorro, and San Elizario. In all likelihood this northern portion will be the part of the Camino Real diat motorists from the United States will explore . The much more interesting part of die road, from the standpoint of travel adventure, however, is the southern section, which is located in Mexico. It is here thatJackson really shines, offering his firsthand travel tips to out-of-die-way places, many that once were important stops on the Camino Real in Mexico and are no longer occupied and tricky to find. An excellent example of the kind of useful information the traveler will find relates to the directions to the silver-mining town of Cusihuiriáchic in the State of Chihuahua. After giving detailed directions that include looking for signs, sleuthing out cross streets, making right-hand and left-hand turns, it must have occurred to the author that there was a pretty good chance the motorist would miss a crucial street or turn. With this in mind, Jackson advises, "If you have trouble, just ask anyone for 'Cusi' and they'll direct you there" (p. 127). This would surely be a welcome suggestion to a lost traveler unsure how to pronounce the tongue-twisting name of their intended destination. With this guide in hand, the traveler should have every confidence in venturing on a Mexican trip into the past of the Camino Real. New Mexico State UniversityRick Hendricks El Gran Norte de Mexico: Una frontera imperial en la Nueva España (?540-1820). By Alfredo Jiménez. (Madrid, Spain: Tébar, 2006. Pp. 536. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 8473602218. €28.95, Paper.) The history of northern New Spain has traditionally received litde scholarly attention in Spanish-speaking countries. This remarkable lack of scholarship is particularly noteworthy ifwe take into account the almost inexhaustible wealth of data recorded in Spanish-language documents available in numerous repositories on both sides of the Atlantic. Jimenez's commendable work is an opportune and necessary contribution to put ^n end to such an astonishing neglect. Jimenez's Gran Norte ("Great North") refers to the territories north ofdie Valley of Mexico that were once Spain's borderlands. Central to the author's methodology is his reported attempt "to do ethnographic work" (hacer etnografía) dirough the use ofarchival documents produced by the people who inhabited the Spanish frontier (p. 23). The book is divided into two intrinsically different sections. The first (pp. 27-138) is further subdivided into three chapters, each ofwhich can be read as a separate synthetic essay. Chapter 1 provides a concise but thorough summary of the Iberian background and the institutional framework that shaped the nordiern frontier, situating it widiin the larger context of the Spanish Empire in the Americas. In Chapter 2Jiménez oudines a number of geo-cultural areas, summarily describing the ecological and climatic features of each, along with some of the cultural traits of the main native peoples that inhabited them. Chapter 3 is a brief diachronic narrative of die key processes and events in die history of the "Spanish Great North." 346Southwestern Historical QuarterlyJanuary The second section of the book (pp. 139-472), Que hablen ellos ("Let Them Talk"), is a collection of excerpts from primary sources, some of them previously unpublished. This section contains recurrent explanatory digressions through which the author expands on many ofthe topics oudined in the first section. The documents fall into six thematic chapters, respectively dealing with the natural scenery, the roles of the Crown and the Church, warfare, economy and society, and culture, with some overlap in dieir contents. In the closing chapter, the author discusses the relative lack of significance of this region in the historiography of Spain and Mexico, as compared to the pervasiveness of the Western frontier in U.S. historiography. Jiménez sets forth two aims; the first is to highlight die extension and complexity of New Spain's northern frontier dirough die use of documents from the colonial period. The second goal is to advocate an approach to the study of the Great North within the larger framework of the Spanish Empire. Through his discriminatory choice ofdocuments,Jiménez has, nevertheless...