Idolatry and the Construction of the Spanish Empire by Mina García Soormally (review)

This monograph explores religion's role in late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Castilian imperial projects. García Soormally achieves this by bridging themes and issues in southern Spain, the Canary Islands, and Mexico City. She divides her book into four thematically organized chapters that draw upon published primary sources, plays, and secondary sources.

In the first chapter, García Soormally sets a foundation for the discussion of idolatry. She underscores that idolatry is in the eye of the beholder and notes that while Spaniards condemned indigenous people for idolatry, Protestants accused Catholics of the very same thing. For the Canary Islands and Spanish America, García Soormally defines idolatry as, "those beliefs and practices of the natives that do not conform to those of Catholicism and become, for this reason, the target of the Spanish colonizers. It is that irreducible excess of indigenous culture that persists in spite of imperialistic efforts, the remains of a subjectivity that, once colonized, becomes sinful, erroneous and false" (19).

In the second chapter, the author follows the ways in which the legacies of the Spanish Reconquista (the Christian campaign to "reclaim" the Iberian peninsula from Muslim rule) and Castilian ventures in the Canary Islands fashioned how Spaniards treated indigenous people in the Western Hemisphere. She shows that Fray Pedro de Gante, and other Franciscans, followed the example set by Fray Hernando de Talavera in Andalusia. For instance, Talavera opted to incorporate non-Christians in newly conquered territories through persuasion rather than force, and he eschewed distinguishing between New and Old Christians. Furthermore, García Soormally argues that Iberian Jews and Muslims were ultimately forced to convert or leave, while in New Spain expulsion was not an option because Spaniards were the invaders, although this reviewer believes it could be argued that Catholic forces were also the invaders in southern Spain.

The third chapter focuses on Juan de Zumárraga's tenure as bishop and then archbishop of Mexico (1528–48). Garcáa Soormally explores a handful of cases tried by Zumárraga against indigenous people for alleged idolatry in attempts to establish Spanish hegemony. Her analysis does not include seventeenth-century extirpation campaigns undertaken by Catholic priests such as Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón, Pedro Ponce de León, and Jacinto de la Serna. Although she correctly notes that the Holy Office of the Inquisition in Mexico, established in 1571, did not have jurisdiction over indigenous people, she omits the ecclesiastical mechanisms that regulated Catholic orthodoxy among native populations well into the nineteenth century.

In the final substantive chapter, the author analyzes the strategic usage of miraculous apparitions to convert local populations and harness non-Catholic devotion. She argues that in the Canary Islands and New Spain the spiritual conquest had a bifurcated attack that first delegitimized and marginalized pre-Contact devotions and then superimposed Catholic symbols over local deities. To establish this idea, García Soormally builds on Stafford Poole's discussion of the Iberian "apparition genre:" the trend of the Virgin Mary appearing to poor non-Catholics. She follows this phenomenon from the Canary Islands to Mexico City and proposes that the Mexican cult of Guadalupe developed during Archbishop Alonso de Montúfar's tenure (1551–72). She argues that Montúfar approved of the Virgen de Guadalupe's veneration, which faced reproach by notable Franciscan friars, so that he could appease the indigenous populations who had been banned from worshipping Tonantzin and curtail the importance of regular orders. With hopes of curbing "idolatry," the cult of Guadalupe masked and encouraged heterodoxy.

There is one issue with this book worth addressing. The author intermittingly refers to indigenous people, Muslims, and Jews, as infidels, idolaters, and pagans without the use of quotation marks. This language perpetuates, perhaps unintentionally, colonial discourse and delegitimizes non-Catholic practices. Notwithstanding this issue, this monograph is a welcome addition to studies of devotion and persecution in the...