Patrimony Lost: Hispanic-American Treasures in Foreign Collections

We came to this country to study its antiquities, which is to say, make collections of them.

Eduard Seler (ca.1897)

The greatest thrill that any researcher can experience is coming across, quite unforeseen, priceless documents long given up as lost. In the case of myself and two close colleagues, Wendy Kramer and Christopher H. Lutz, the documents that have come to light and that have so delighted us include Libros de Cabildo numbers two and three of the city of Santiago de Guatemala, the capital of Spanish Central America. Libro Segundo is a register of events that took place between 1530 and 1541; Libro Tercero is a log spanning the years 1541 to 1553. Our incredulity at learning the whereabouts of these two volumes was matched, if not surpassed, by the anticipation of verifying their existence and thereafter consulting them, something that has not occurred (as best we can determine) in over a century. Far more than the minutes of mundane municipal affairs, these two Libros de Cabildo contain valuable information about Spanish conquest and colonization, and indigenous resistance to it, that will enhance considerably our understanding of the early colonial period, not only in Guatemala but throughout Central America.¹ Furthermore, the Libros de Cabildo have proven to be the proverbial tip of the iceberg, for the cache of which they form part contains other treasures perhaps not quite so unique but nonetheless of significant historical worth.²

Here I reprise some of the circumstances surrounding the chance discovery, cause for quiet optimism, and explore further how Hispanic American patrimony, that of Guatemala in particular, was acquired by an array of non-Guatemalan individuals and institutions. Consequently, not all national treasures are to be found in the country itself but must be sought in foreign collections.

The Hispanic Society of America

The Hispanic Society of America (Figure 1) is one of New York's most venerable art institutions, renowned for its majestic paintings by Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (1863-1923) of The Provinces of Spain, though masterpieces by El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopoulous, 1541–1614), Francisco de Zurbarán (1598–1664), Diego Velázquez (1599–1660), Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617–1682), and Francisco de Goya (1746–1828) are also among its prized possessions. Far less known is that the Hispanic Society is home to a magnificent library and archive, the contents of which have only lately been reappraised and are awakening the interest of the academic world³

Figure 1.

Main Entrance to the Hispanic Society of America, New York

Source: Photo by the author.

It was in this context that, in November 2010, my colleague Chris Lutz was contacted by Sebastián van Doesburg, after the Dutch ethnohistorian (at the time a Guggenheim Fellow affiliated with the American Museum of Natural History) became aware of the nature of some of the Hispanic Society's exceptional holdings. It was finding out about the two Libros de Cabildo, which have been housed at the Hispanic Society for over a century, that prompted Van Doesburg to contact Lutz, which he did at the bidding of fellow ethnohistorian Florine Asselbergs, a scholar whose interests (like ours) lie in the complex interactions between Spaniards and Indians in colonial Guatemala.⁴

When we arrived in New York to inspect the Libros de Cabildo firsthand, we could scarcely believe our good fortune at being able to peruse unique sources long thought lost.⁵ The Libros de Cabildo, it turns out, are but two items among hundreds acquired by the founder of the Hispanic Society, Archer Milton Huntington (1870–1955), in a purchase he made of a catalogue (number 418 to be precise) offered him by the German bookseller and publisher, Karl W. Hiersemann (1854–1928), a year before the outbreak of the Great War.⁶

Transactions between Huntington and Hiersemann

The relationship between Huntington and Hiersemann, and the deals they struck even while continents apart, is key to understanding how the impressive collections of the Hispanic...