Colonial Travelers in Latin America

I bought my copy of Colonial Travelers in Latin America, edited by Irving A. Leonard (1972) when I was in college. And thanks to the wonders of my random book reading system, I have finally gotten around to reading it. I have to admit, it does look a little boring on the outside, which is probably why I hadn't read it up until now.

At the time that I bought it, I was fascinated with the conquest of the Americas by the Spanish, particularly the stupendous memoir by Cabeza de Vaca about his doomed expedition to Florida in 1528 and his journey through the present-day Southeastern US and Mexico before making his way back to Europe nearly ten years later (the book was also made into a movie, which isn't bad). It really is a great narrative, and I read it multiple times in college and wrote several papers on mister cow head.

So, at the time I was all excited about more contemporary writings about colonial Latin America. And this book, although I didn't read it until nearly ten years after I bought it, does the trick. Leonard compiles readings from the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth century, written by men of different nationalities traveling through the Spanish and Portuguese colonies for different reasons (including religion, commerce, and science). The translations are very readable and intriguing, and the selections add color and context to the writings of more well-known colonial writers like Bartolome de las Casas or Cabeza de Vaca. Rather than being overly political or religious in their observations, the writers in this collection give detailed descriptions of everyday life in the colonies over three centuries. We get notes on clothing, food (one writer is very impressed with potatoes, after having them for the first time), the social relationships, the women, the natives, the slaves, the modes of travel, and the personalities of the different peoples.

If you have any interest in this period of history in the Americas, then you won't go wrong by checking out Leonard's anthology.