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  • Miera y Pacheco: A Renaissance Spaniard in Eighteenth-Century New Mexico by John L. Kessell
  • Jesús F. de la Teja
Miera y Pacheco: A Renaissance Spaniard in Eighteenth-Century New Mexico. By John L. Kessell. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2013. Pp. 212. Color and black and white illustrations, map, notes, bibliography, index.)

Of all of New Spain’s northern frontier provinces, none has a richer, more colorful history than New Mexico—sorry, Texas. In part, that rich history stems from a longer Spanish presence, and in part it is the result of a much larger Hispanic population. By the time the book’s namesake, Bernardo de Miera y Pacheco, arrived in El Paso (then part of New Mexico) sometime around 1743, the province had not only recovered from the spectacularly successful though short-lived Pueblo Indian revolt of 1680, but was actually thriving as a multiracial, multicultural frontier. Tens of thousands of Pueblo and Plains Indians interacted with smaller though significant numbers of Spaniards, creoles, mestizos, mulattoes, and genizaros (detribalized and hispanicized indigenes) in a region spanning from the eastern slopes of the Rockies to the plains of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas.

What better way to tell the story of the violent and vibrant nature of this frontier than through Miera y Pacheco, a Spaniard from Cantabria, whose activities [End Page 218] touched on so many aspects of New Mexican life? In fact, long-time Spanish borderlands historian John Kessell makes of that broader story, necessitated by the paucity of records regarding much of Miera y Pacheco’s life, a virtue. Were we to strip away the stories of viceroys and governors, Indian campaigns and inspection visits, what could be said about the Spanish immigrant personally would be limited indeed. Kessell is able to deal with Miera y Pacheco’s early life in a couple of pages, where he mostly discusses family circumstances and speculates on what might have brought the Spaniard to the New World. And so it remains throughout the book; Miera y Pacheco is rarely at the center of activities but he is there, Forrest Gump-like, leaving just enough of a trail that we can see the development of the New Mexico frontier through much of the eighteenth century.

Among his semi-talents, for Miera y Pacheco never appears to have been a true master of any, his artistic eye stands out. He produced maps of the region that attest to more than a cartographer’s skills—there are depictions of indigenous peoples, of confrontations between Spanish troops and native warriors, of fanciful representations of existing and abandoned American Indian settlements, and always a proud representation of the Spanish monarchy to which he seems to have been so attached. But, Miera y Pacheco’s artistry was also at work in the production of altar screens, both in stone and wood, of statues of saints and angels, and of religious paintings. Not surviving are his failed attempts to repair the province’s cannon and a dam project that did not survive its first substantial rainfall. All of these activities, which also included farming and ranching and military service, allow Kessell to delve into the stories of the good and not-so-good governors whose patronage allowed Miera y Pacheco to do what he did.

Miera y Pacheco is also a wonderful example of Kessell’s artistry as a historian. His trademark use of images is on full display. The interplay between pictures and text both illustrate and illuminate the text, particularly the two sets of color plates. And, of course, there is Kessell’s old-school (in the best sense of the word) narrative style. His points are embedded in well-told stories that offer sympathetic insights into a frontier that is at once exotic and familiar. In fact, a number of connections to Texas’s Spanish colonial experience can easily be made from the text, reminding Lone Star readers that Spanish Texas was not unique; fears of foreign encroachment, struggles to find an effective Indian policy, and the challenges of isolation were common themes throughout Mexico’s colonial north. A great read for anyone interested in the history of the Southwest under...

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