Sylvia Sellers-García,Distance and Documents at the Spanish Empire’s Periphery

Reviewed by: Ignacio Martínez, The University of Texas at El Paso, USA

At its apex the Spanish Empire comprehended the fairest part of the Americas, the Caribbean, and the Philippines as a vast realm spanning across four continents upon which ‘the sun never set’. In this exciting and well-researched book Sylvia Sellers-García argues that the day-to-day governance of such an ethnically heterogeneous and expansive territory depended largely on the dissemination of information. Primarily focused on colonial Guatemala, she addresses the manner in which important government correspondence such as letters, maps, census reports, and questionnaires functioned as the currency of empire, making the flow of paper central to Spain’s imperial upkeep. Maps, in particular, were vital in making New Spain visible to Spanish sovereigns who ruled from across the ocean. Though crucial to the administration of the Spanish colonies, official documents enjoyed a rather perilous existence, for at any moment they could be lost, damaged, destroyed, stolen, or falsified, reason enough why the most important of them were written in triplicate.

This book considers two basic components of empire: distance – the nature, quality, and perception of it – and documents – their dissemination, safekeeping and archival. Both themes go hand-in-hand. This book, then, ‘arrives at the colonial conception of distance by examining how key ideas were manifested in the treatment of documents … the writing, travel, and storage of documents reveal much about how distance was mediated, if not always overcome’ (16). Distance, measured spatially and temporally, was therefore determined by a host of concerns such as inaccessible routes, demography, social and cultural remoteness and administrative insignificance. Making the case that the way we define centre and periphery can have a significant impact on how we write history, Sellers-García follows several documents from their place of origin to their ultimate destination. By shadowing these documents over time and space Sellers-García illuminates the process by which they influenced, and were influenced by, conceptions of distance and peripherality, while incorporating into the conversation the various people who along the way handled, read, debated, and added content to them – all of which give us great insight into the colonial production of knowledge. Put succinctly, ‘spatial history matters to the social history of knowledge’ (19). Sellers-García herself writes that she became interested in the topic of distance after reading an inquisition case from Escuintla, Guatemala involving the witchcraft of four women that took nine years to process.

The book is divided into three main sections. The first part deals with the issue of sight. How, she asks, did Spanish officials who were unable to cross the Atlantic ‘see’ New Spain? As she maintains, documents such as maps, informal questionnaires, visitas and relaciónes proved vital in making America visible and knowable to Spanish administrators, ‘creating Guatemala as an accessible, proximate place for the king and the elite officials of Spain’ (26). The second part of the book, her most engaging, looks at the cultural life of colonial documents. Here she highlights the work of correos (mail carriers) and escribanos (scribes). Aside from telling us who these men were – Indians and mulattos were usually overland mail carriers while Spaniards and mesitzos carried mail by horseback; escribanos were chiefly Spanish – she relates how the extensive travel of these correos informed a particular conception of distance. It took a special type of person to be a correo. This person had to have ‘bravado, resilience, and cunning’, for their profession was a highly dangerous one; at any moment they could be robbed, beaten, or kidnapped. Poorly paid, these men were forced to find innovative, and often illegal, ways to supplement their incomes. Since failure to deliver the mail was punishable by imprisonment, correos were forced to travel through dangerous routes and while in poor health.

Part Three addresses the storage, archival and preservation of important documents. As Bourbon administrators began to exert greater control over their colonies, as road conditions improved, and as once peripheral cities became central hubs, conceptions of distance began to change; ‘existing ideas about coterminous territories and boundaries became more dominant, while route based hierarches became less so’ (121). The role of escribanos and archivists also changed. While archives themselves went from being ‘nodes of communication’, to stationary repositories, archivists went from being participants in the creation of space and distance to sole custodians of the past. Why is the study of the archives themselves so important? Because, Sellers-García writes, ‘the structure of colonial archives reveals something about the structure of colonial knowledge production. And understanding those modes of organizing knowledge allows us different insights into all of the documents we use as colonial historians’ (187). In all, Sellers-García has written a well-argued and highly accessible book that casts a bright light on the precarious life of colonial documents and on the various ways they influenced the production of knowledge. This is a book that should be read by colonialists and modernists alike, if not for its temporal emphasis, then for the importance it gives to the production, dissemination and archival of the very pieces of paper many of us work with every day.