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250 Conclusion The Afterlife of a Baroque Archive In an obituary dated August 22, 1700, the Mexico City chronicler Antonio de Robles announced the death of his friend Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora: the Licenciado Don Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora has died; a lay priest, native of this city, great mathematician, [and] emeritus professor of the same discipline, he was in the Society of Jesus for seven years, leaving it in the year 1667. He printed several very erudite works, had acquired all the histories and reports of the Indies, [and] by royal decree and commission of the viceroy, Conde de Galve, went to the Bay of Santa María de Galve, alias Pensacola, to explore that region, after which he reported on the advantages of populating it. He was royal cosmographer, accountant for the Royal Mexican University , distinguished in all sciences, general examiner of the artillery, corrector for the Holy Office of the Inquisition of this New Spain, head chaplain of the Hospital of the Love of God. He was a distinguished philosopher, comparable to those celebrated by antiquity, a great poet. (murió el Lic. D. Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, presbítero, natural de esta ciudad, gran matemático, catedrático jubilado de esta facultad ; había estado en la Compañía siete años, y se salió de ella el año de 1667; imprimió algunas obras muy eruditas; había adquirido todas las historias y noticias de Indias; fue por comisión del virrey, conde de Galve, por cédula real a la bahia de Santa María de Galve, alias Panzacola , a reconocer aquella tierra, de que informó cuanto convenía su población; fue cosmógrafo de S. M. contador de la real Universidad mexicana, insigne en todas ciencias, examinador general de artilleros, corrector del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición de esta Nueva España, Conclusion 251 capellán mayor del hospital del Amor de Dios; fue insigne filósofo, que se pudo comparar a aquellos que celebra la antigüedad; grande poeta.)1 In an example of the symbiotic relationship among fields of knowledge during the seventeenth century, Robles presents Sigüenza’s disparate pursuits as the product of a precocious and cultured intellect, lamenting that the viceroyalty had lost such a leading scholar. While in the following century local authors continued to praise Sigüenza for his eclecticism, however, they began distancing themselves from the rhetorical patina of much of his prose.2 By the early twentieth century , historians and literary critics alike went even further, explicitly emphasizing Sigüenza’s scientific and antiquarian pursuits over what they viewed as his Baroque excesses. At the same time, they began to promote Sigüenza as a very early patriot who wrote for the “love of his country” well before the advent of Mexican independence.3 Although there has recently been renewed interest in the rhetorical structure of Sigüenza’s writings, studies continue to separate his style from the political context of late seventeenth-century New Spain.4 While building on the literary methodology of these studies, this book has argued that Sigüenza’s diverse works elucidate the interdependence of style, rhetoric, and political ideals in late seventeenthcentury Mexico. It has proposed that what has often been interpreted as the emergence of a patriotic “consciousness” can better be understood as an “archive,” which, in both a material and metaphorical sense, was formative for a specifically Creole authority. From Sigüenza ’s perspective, the art of gathering, combining, and relating disparate objects from an archaic past or a confused present, of comprehending and organizing the diverse population and territory of the Novohispanic present, or of establishing a politically endowed citizenry all demanded an understanding of local conditions. This notion of a local collection permeated all of his writings, regardless of their specific style or topic. Although even at the end of his life the completion and coherence of his archive was more a desire situated in the imaginary sphere of his writings than a material and institutional reality, these writings also delineate the political force that he attributed to his archive. It is clear that through his collection Sigüenza hoped to respond to the urgent need to establish points of stability and transition during the final years of Habsburg rule. The recovery of a unified past, the formation of a local community of citizens defined by lineage and virtue, and the closure of national...

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