Pan-America

Jorge Canizares-Esguerra’s Puritan Conquistadors focuses on the similarities between the Spanish and English colonial experience in the Americas. Essentially they framed their conquest in the same terms, as a chivalrous struggle over Satan and his minions. To both civilizations, Satan had control over the indigenous populations and the new world was his fiefdom, a false paradise. The struggle was continuous and Satan was a moving target as the realities of the situation changed. For example, the English first saw the Spanish as demons before shifting their focus to the native population. The book maintains that the discourses were remarkably similar as both the Spanish and English made gardens out of the wilderness, maintaining a siege mentality and often speaking in millenarian terms. Of course, some differences are inherent, such as the Spanish being more inclusive with their religion, seeking converts as opposed to the English who saw their Christianity as more exclusive.

After the first introductory chapter, the work covers the ongoing epic struggle to remove Satan from the New World. Subsequent chapters cover the shared understanding of demonology and shared perceptions of Satan working in the landscape. The book then shifts to the idea of the New World as a garden, to be turned from wilderness into a New Jerusalem or holy land. The last chapter examines how the subsequent literatures went their separate ways, portraying the English as Puritans and the Spanish as ruthless conquistadors.

The book suggests otherwise, that both cultures were remarkably similar in their conquests, at least theoretically. While they may have framed their conquests in similar terms, the reality of the situation is not discussed. What results is an intellectual history of the conquest that does not address the practicality of the situation, whether or not either culture actually practiced what their rhetoric suggested. Still, the book goes a long way to correcting any semblance of a Black Legend, arguing for an Atlantic paradigm, a Pan-American view of the conquest that shows both the English and Spanish came from Christian traditions that were more similar than different.