148 CHAPTER 7 THE BOURBON REFORMS AND SPANISH AMERICA
science as the Frenchman Charles Marie de La Con-
damine and the German Alexander von Humboldt.
Among the clergy, the Jesuits were most
skillful and resourceful in the effort to reconcile
church dogma with the ideas of the Enlighten-
ment, in bridging the old and the new. In Mexico,
Jesuit writers like Andrés de Guevara, Pedro José
Marquez, and Francisco Javier Clavigero praised
and taught the doctrines of Bacon, Descartes, and
Newton. These Jesuits exalted physics above meta-
physics and the experimental method over abstract
reasoning and speculation, but they all combined
these beliefs with undeviating loyalty to the teach-
ings of the church. Thus the expulsion of the Jesu-
its from Spanish America removed from the scene
the ablest, most subtle defenders of the traditional
Catholic worldview. In their Italian exile—for it
was in Italy that most of the Jesuit exiles settled—
some of them occupied their leisure time writing
books about the history and geography of their
American homelands. The most important of these
works was the History of Ancient Mexico (1780–
1781) by Francisco Clavigero, the best work of its
kind written to date and an excellent illustration
of the characteristic Jesuit blend of Catholic ortho-
doxy with the critical, rationalist approach of the
Enlightenment.
Despite their frequent and sincere professions of
loyalty to the crown, the writings of colonial intel-
lectuals revealed a sensitivity to social and political
abuses, a discontent with economic backwardness,
and a dawning sense of nationality that contained
potential dangers for the Spanish regime. Colonial
newspapers and journals played a signifi cant part
in the development of a critical and reformist spirit
among the educated creoles of Spanish America.
Subjected to an oppressive censorship by church
and state and beset by chronic fi nancial diffi culties,
they generally had short and precarious lives.
The circulation and infl uence of forbidden
books among educated colonials steadily increased
in the closing decades of the eighteenth century
and the fi rst years of the nineteenth. It would nev-
ertheless be incorrect to conclude, as some writers
have done, that the Inquisition became a toothless
tiger in the eighteenth century and that radical
ideas could be advocated with almost total impu-
nity. It is true that the infl uence of the Inquisition
weakened under the Bourbons, especially Charles
III, because of the growth of French infl uence. But
the censorship was never totally relaxed, the Inqui-
sition continued to be vigilant, and with every turn
of the diplomatic wheel that drew Spain and France
apart, the inquisitorial screws tightened. Thus the
outbreak of the French Revolution brought a wave
of repression against advocates of radical ideas in
Mexico, culminating in a major auto-da-fé in Mex-
ico City, at which long prison sentences and other
severe penalties were handed out. How powerless
these repressions were to check the movement of
new thought is illustrated by the writings of the
fathers of Spanish-American independence. Their
works reveal a thorough knowledge of the ideas of
Locke, Montesquieu, Raynal, and other important
fi gures of the Enlightenment.Creole Nationalism
The incipient creole nationalism, however, built on
other foundations than the ideas of the European
Enlightenment, which were alien and suspect to
the masses. Increasingly identifying themselves
with their respective provinces as their patrias (fa-
therlands), eighteenth-century creole intellectuals
assembled an imposing body of data designed to
refute the attacks of eminent European writers like
Comte Georges de Buffon and Cornelius de Pauw,
who proclaimed the inherent inferiority of the New
World and its inhabitants.
In the largest sense, the creole patria was all
America. As early as 1696, the Mexican Francis-
can Agustín de Vetancurt claimed that the New
World was superior to the Old in natural beauty
and resources. New Spain and Peru, he wrote in
fl orid prose, were two breasts from which the whole
world drew sustenance, drinking blood changed
into the milk of gold and silver. In a change of im-
agery, he compared America to a beautiful woman
adorned with pearls, emeralds, sapphires, chryso-
lites, and topazes, drawn from the jewel boxes of
her rich mines.
In the prologue to his History of Ancient Mexico,
Clavigero stated that his aim was “to restore the