Infortunios de Alonso Ramírez: ‘A Just History of Fact’?

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image sizeBSS Subject Index: COLONIES — SPAIN & PORTUGAL — HISTORY, LITERATURE, CULTURE & SOCIETYINFORTUNIOS DE ALONSO RAMÍREZ/INFORTUNIOS QUE ALONSO RAMÍREZ PADECIÓ EN PODER DE PIRATAS INGLESES [C. DE SIGÜENZA Y GÓNGORA]LATIN AMERICA — HISTORY, GEOGRAPHY, TRAVEL, POLITICS & SOCIETYPIRACY [IN HISTORY, LITERATURE & CULTURE]RAMÍREZ, ALONSO (1663?–1690s?)SIGÜENZA Y GÓNGORA, CARLOS DE (1645–1700) Notes 1. See W. L. Schurz, The Manila Galleon (New York: Dutton, 1959), an invaluable study for an understanding of the Galleon's significance and history. 2. C. R. Boxer, ‘Three Unpublished Jesuit Letters on the Philippine and Mariana Missions, 1681–89’, Philippine Studies, X (1962), 434–42. 3. Even as he was leaving home, a royal decree (signed in Madrid in 1670) was working its way through the bureaucracy: all unemployed youths in Puerto Rico were required to become apprentice ship's carpenters to meet future urgent naval demands. See Richard Konetzke, Colección de documentos para la historia de la formación social de Hispanoamérica, 1493–1810 (Madrid: CSIC, 1958), II (ii), 558–59. 4. His wife was a niece of archdeacon Juan de Poblete, brother of Miguel Millán de Poblete, archbishop of Manila, 1653–67; possibly this connection played some part in the decision to try his fortune in the Philippines. 5. Though in his first sentence Ramírez speaks of his ‘tribulaciones de muerte por muchos años’ (my italics). 6. Carlos de Sigüenza ‘de 18 anos, cabello negro, natural de Madrid’, went to Mexico in the suite of the Viceroy, the Marqués de Villena in 1640; see Dorothy Schons, Notes from Spanish Archives (Austin, Texas: Edwards Brothers, 1946), 19. 7. This is discussed by E. J. Burrus, ‘Sigüenza y Góngora's Efforts for Readmission into the Jesuit Order’, HAHR, XXXIII (1955), 387–91; there is a more satisfactory discussion in Jaime Delgado, ed., [Sigüenza's] Piedad heroyca de Fernando Cortés (Madrid: Porrua, 1960), xi–xxvi. 8. In early life Van Hamme had worked among the Tarahumara Indians: he knew Sigüenza personally; he always retained his interest in Mexico as is shown by his later letters from Peking: see P. Visschers, Onuitgegeven [Jesuit] Brieven (Arnhem: Josué Witz, 1857), 55, 171, 175, 176. 9. Gemelli praised the ‘courtesy, industry, learning and unique antiquarian studies [of Sigüenza who] presented me with extraordinary rarities’. 10. For this see Richard Boyer, ‘Mexico in the Seventeenth Century: Transition of a Colonial Society’, HAHR, LV1I (1977), 454–78. 11. Libra astronomica (Mexico City: Calderón, 1690), sect. 252. 12. Some were said to have been stimulated by hyped-up versions of Las Casas's Brevíssima (such as that sponsored by Cromwell), so, nursing their selective consciences, these took to the seas to punish the Spaniards and dry the Tears of the Indians. Not all were English: the Frenchman Montbars, inflamed by his reading, saw himself as an instrument of divine justice, dedicated his sword ‘Exterminator’ to the God of Vengeance, and set sail on his divine commission: ‘to execute vengeance upon the Heathen’. But the trials of the pacific were not all one-sided and some English merchantmen learnt to go in fear of the Spanish ‘picaroons’ [<pícaro-picarón] or privateers. 13. Pirate attacks sometimes brought apparent benefits: when Arica was in danger in 1682 there was a call-up which in Potosí embraced beggars and the unemployed: ‘fue gran bien para esta Villa porque comenzaban a mover con la ociosidad algunos alborotos’ (L. Hanke and G. Mendoza, eds., Historia de … Potosí por Bartolomé Arzáns de Orsúa (Providence: Brown U. P., 1965), II, 306. 14. Ramírez left Acapulco on Good Friday, 28 March 1682, and arrived in Manila on 23 July; he does not give the dates himself but they can be found in the notes of a Mexican diarist (A. de Robles, Diario (1665–1703), II [Mexico City 1946], 16) and a letter by a Manila Jesuit (Father Gerard Bouwens to the Duchess of Aveiro in Maggs's Catalogue No. 442. Bibliotheca Americana et Philippina, Part III [London: Maggs, 1923], 155). For the Marianas see Domingo Abella, An Introduction to the Study of Philippines-Marianas Relations (Manila: IAHA, 1962), 1–50. 15. For the Jesuit mission see W. Barrett, Mission in the Marianas (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1975) and the review by F. Zubillaga, ‘América e Islas Marianas’, Archivum Historicum Societatis Jesu, XLVI (1977), 254. 16. Possibly the priest was well treated because Dampier thought he was only a Friar; in fact he was a local Jesuit. Dampier's account of the affair (A New Voyage round the World [London: Knapton, 1697], X) is fascinatingly corroborated by Father Bouwens’ reports to Carlos II and to the ‘Mother of the Missions’ which show the Jesuit had a sharp eye for weighing up men, ships and armaments. His reports, unknown until 1923, bear out Dampier, once allowance has been made for OS and NS dating. See Maggs’ Catalogue 442, pp. 217, 219. Dampier gave the Governor powder, shot and arms, and in return received ample food supplies. The Governor also begged for their ‘delicate large English Dog and had it given him very freely by the Captain, though much against the grain of his Men, who had a great value for that Dog’. 17. The Viceroy was known for his compassion: his residencia reports that he was accustomed to ‘oir generalmente a todos en suma benignidad, atención y agasajo, sin dejar de consolar el más miserable e infirmo’; he was ‘el alivio de los pobres’ (L. Hanke, Guía de fuentes virreinales [Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 1977], I, 174,176). The Archbishop, Aguiar y Seijas, may also have been interested in Ramirez's story since his nephew, the Dominican friar José Seijas, had just previously been murdered in the Philippines by pirates. 18. Though we know where he went since the Viceroy arranged for him to join the fleet which sailed to victory against the French on 19 July 1690. Sigüenza recommended him to one of the captains, his friend Juan Enríquez Barroto, ‘excelente Mathemático y a cuyos desvelos deberá la Náutica Americana grandes progresos’. Sigüenza wrote two enthusiastic accounts of this victory in which occurs the name of don Alonso Ramírez, captain of musketeers, who covered himself with glory in the storming of Guarico, and was awarded two sonnets. But Sigüenza was not a novelist: this gallant hero is not the pícaro-pirate of the Infortunios but another of the same name. 19. Defoe had at least crossed the Channel; as for Sigüenza ‘aunque no he salido a peregrinar otras tierras (harto me pesa), por lo en extremo mucho que he leído, paréceme puedo hacer concepto de lo que son y de lo que en ellas se hace’. 20. It may be assumed Ramírez himself had many hidden reasons for wanting to see his story published; but his main declared aim was defined in the opening words of the narrative where he claimed that he was seeking only to ease his psychological wounds by eliciting compassion; the censor Ayerra noted this point. 21. Dampier, like Esquemeling and Basil Ringrose (as Percy G. Adams has pointed out), often paused in narrating an adventure to describe a town, an island, or occasionally a plant or animal. Dampier's description of Mindanao, for example, is a model. 22. Possibly Sigüenza was more involved with his great work, the Libra astronomica, which appeared at the same time; it is worth noting that although Ramírez did not reach the city until early May 1690, the Infortunios had already passed the ecclesiastical censor by 26 June. 23. Later, in 1694, Sigüenza bought himself a copy of the Morga (now in the Lilly Library, Bloomington); he already had a copy of Aduarte (now the property of Professor C. R. Boxer) which could have given him much material had he chosen to use it. Aduarte has a vivid description of one Manila Galleon voyage on which the ship's provisions were destroyed early on, and for the rest of the journey passengers and crew had to live on beans for three months; this diet seems to have had a deplorable effect on the crew who fell into two gangs and fought amongst themselves continually, ‘como si fueran moros y cristianos’ (Aduarte, Book I, ch. 8). 24. For instance, there was a Siamese embassy to England in 1687 (Records of Relations between Siam and Foreign Countries, IV [Bangkok: National Library, 1920], 207); to England and Venice (Records of Fort St. George: Diary for 1687 [Madras: Government Office, 1916], 158); to Manila in 1686 (J. S. Cummins ‘A Spanish Sidelight on "Siamese" White’, Journal of Southeast Asian History, V (1964), 129–32, and cf Dampier's New Voyage, ch. XVII); to Manila, 1683 (Casimiro Díaz, Conquistas de las islas Filipinas, segunda parte, [1718] [Manila, 1890], ch. XIII); in 1688 Dampier (Voyage, ch. 18) encountered ‘a small Frigot from Siam, with an Ambassador from the King of Siam to the Queen of Achin. The Ambassador was a Frenchman’. But the most celebrated of all these embassies was that of Siam to France which made its mark in French literature when Fénelon preached to the ambassadors in Paris, 6 January 1685. 25. Daniel Defoe published five hundred works, less than a dozen of which carried his name on the title page: the General History of the Pyrates by Charles Johnson (1724) was not identified as Defoe's until 1932: see the edition by Michael Schonhorn, (London: Dent, 1972) xxii–xxiii.