El imperio de la virtud by Jorge L. Terukina Yamauchi

Abstract

Reviewed by: El imperio de la virtud by Jorge L. Terukina Yamauchi Charles B. Moore Terukina Yamauchi, Jorge L. El imperio de la virtud. Tamesis, 2017. 418 pp. Yamauchi's El imperio de la virtud is a welcome and much-needed critical tour de force in colonial Spanish American criticism. It not only takes a fresh look at Bernardo de Balbuena's often misunderstood and overly-simplified, if not ignored, Grandeza mexicana of 1604, but finally puts the work into the extremely complex literary and cultural context of its day. To this end, the author masterfully lays out in dense yet very readable and understandable language the personal and cultural baggage with which Balbuena pleads his case for continued peninsular hegemony of New Spain. Yamauchi's frequent summaries of the material guide the reader through what could have been an unforgiving quicksand of theories, quotations, and ancient debates on race, economy, religion, and ethnicity. His carefully chosen close readings from not only Grandeza mexicana but from an almost overwhelming plethora of other ancient and early modern works which influenced or challenged the poem's intent clarify and illuminate the book's thesis. He weaves his thesis concerning the cultural superiority of the Spanish into what is a true encyclopedic compendium covering ancient through sixteenth-century culture. The book is divided into two parts. Part I is then subdivided into a must-read "Introducción" and two sections, while Part II includes four sections. There are twenty-three supporting figures which illustrate tools used by Spaniards (i.e. portraits, coats of arm, maps) to support their claim of superiority over criollos in Mexico. The twenty-page bibliography is essential reading for any colonialist. Part [End Page 420] I, "Hacia Grandeza mexicana: una epistomología del 'centro,'" sets the stage for Balbuena's use of Greco-Roman praise of cities and theory of the five zones to support Spain's right to govern New Spain. According to these concepts, only Europeans from the Mediterranean temperate zone had the appropriate skill set (or "virtue" per the book's title) to govern, guide, and direct the progress of the colonies. These theories dismissed their criollo rivals as entitled inferiors who were opposed to real work and desired to live off the heroic exploits of their conquering ancestors. Peninsulars like Balbuena who lacked direct blood lines to power had to look for other reasons to substantiate their desire for control of the encomienda plantation system, its Indian free labor pool, and all the high-ranking (and paying) positions in the colonial bureaucracy. Spain's virtuous and intelligent temperament based on classical Greco-Roman determinist theories was the perfect answer to this dilemma. In Part II, "Grandeza mexicana y la polémica por la posesión de la Nueva España," I found Yamauchi's discussion of Balbuena's rhetoric on work and art particularly fascinating. He shows how, in Grandeza mexicana, Balbuena legitimizes the newly-established Spanish professional and artisanal labor force in New Spain. It is a generator of wealth and the Aristotelian "good life," as opposed to the landed aristocratic criollo mentality which drains the economy and sees "work" as only a corrupt accumulation of greed. Work shows the superior peninsular ability to govern and enables the polis to live in order and justice. The Spanish have worked to build a beautiful, albeit artificial, paradise out of the barbaric desert of Mexico. The marvels of this city now match the Greco-Roman model of the theory of the five (acceptable) inhabitable zones of Mediterranean stock. The "value added" price and speculation of any goods the Spanish are now selling here is a positive development in the early-modern capitalist economy which Balbuena glorifies in his long enumerations of professional jobs and architectural marvels the Spanish have brought to Mexico. Balbuena sees this commerce as an example of Spanish justice and virtue. The medieval criollo mentality considered profits on investment as evil, deceptive magic. Yamauchi clearly guides the reader to understand how Balbuena uses the vague term interés to legitimize the new art and act of making money. The poet inverts the Universidad de Salamanca's misreading of Aristotelian-Thomist economic theory by...