Choice, Persuasion, and Coercion: Social Control on Spain's North American Frontiers (review)

The title of Jesús F. de la Teja's and Ross Frank's edited volume, Choice, Persuasion, and Coercion suggests that wielding power in places like Florida, Texas, and Nuevo Santander, was more negotiation than coercion by a dominant culture over subordinates. While Spaniards attempted to exercise social control in the northern frontiers of their American empire, the degree to which they established normative Spanish cultural imperatives varied. In places where the Spanish population was settled, numerous, and hierarchically articulated, Spanish identity was the sine qua non for holding power. But in colonies where physical or geographic mobility was great and Spanish social structure was truncated, "inferiors" or "others" effectively contended for power and exerted control of their own. One might assume that on any frontier, by definition, mobility would be high and society less organized. But the scholars in this essay collection prove, with considerable skill, that the size and scope of Spain's colonial reach defies simple definitions.

The range of analytical perspectives these authors employ is as broad as the territories they examine. Sociology, gender studies, ethnohistory, law, demography, and religion inform the eleven studies gathered here. A sampling of the chapters' conclusions reveals the degree of difference among the frontier colonies. Along the Atlantic and in the Caribbean, where Spanish territorial control was suspect or contested, Jane Landers and Gilbert C. Din maintain that concerns about survival took precedence over social order. In colonies closer to New Spain, administrative officials could more effectively, but not entirely, coerce native and Spanish families to resettle in underpopulated lands, as Cynthia Radding and Patricia Osante demonstrate.

Other contributors reach surprising conclusions about places we thought we knew. Ross Frank and José Cuello explore the significance of mestizaje (miscegenation) and find that in colonies where the social and racial structures were fluid, officials adapted local conditions to enforce social order. Colonizers cited native examples to control Spanish residents in New Mexico and manipulated the sistema de castas in Saltillo to create new models for social control. Spanish colonization was simultaneously mutable, flexible, and forceful on these northern frontiers. But suppositions about the ability of Spanish administrators to adjust the tools of social control to fit local needs should not discount alternative scenarios.

Susan M. Deeds and Juliana Barr's contributions best exemplify the limits of social control on the edges of Spain's empire. Deeds shows how two women in Nueva Vizcaya undermined the Catholic Church's patriarchal order by choosing to move, adopting maleness, and practicing the arts of love. Barr expertly explains that Caddos, Comanches, and Witchitas dominated Texas and dictated terms to Spanish settlers. While all sides used diplomacy as a means of social control, the Spaniards failed to fully comprehend the terms of negotiation. When they tried to leverage captive women and children to secure diplomatic truces they unwittingly destabilized the region.

In the multifaceted colonies of Spain's northern territories, social control was subject to the ability of women, natives, Africans, vecinos (inhabitants), and elites to maneuver within the system. The ways in which these authors present their cases are as novel as the findings. Choice, Persuasion, and Coercion defines the northern frontier as colonial Spaniards would have; Florida and Sonora were both lands north of New Spain, not future territories of Mexico. Moreover, the editors, through a number of grants and the support of the Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University, twice assembled the authors so they could engage one another's work directly. The result is that the contributors compare their findings with those of their colleagues at every turn. This volume of independent essays does not suffer from the same disjointedness that most edited collections do. Collectively, the essays reveal the flexibility of Spanish colonial institutions and strategies and challenge...