Paradise in the new world: An iberian vision of tropicality

Cultural Geographies

Volumn 17, Issue 1, 2010, Pages 77-101

  Scott, Heidi V ^a  

^a ABERYSTWYTH UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Colonialism; Latin america; Nature; Paradise; Tropicality

Indexed keywords

ACADEMIC RESEARCH; COLONIALISM; GENEALOGY; PERCEPTION; SEVENTEENTH CENTURY; TROPICAL ENVIRONMENT;

LATIN AMERICA;

EID: 75849154694     PISSN: 14744740     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/1474474009350000     Document Type: Article

References (176)

1. E. Villamil de Rada, La lengua de Adán y el hombre de Tiahuanaco (La Paz, Imprenta de 'La Razón', 1888).
2. The manuscript was first published in Lima in 1943 by Raúl Porras Barrenechea. A new edition is currently being prepared by Domingo Ledezma. I am very grateful to Domingo Ledezma for allowing me to read and cite his introductory study to the new edition prior to publication. The author may be contacted at the following address: Wheaton College, 26 East Main Street, Wheaton College, Norton, MA 02766-2322, USA.
3. For a detailed discussion of the origins and usage of the term criollo, and its English equivalent 'creole', see pp. 3-7 in R. Bauer and J.A. Mazzotti, 'Introduction: creole subjects in the colonial Americas', in R. Bauer and J.A. Mazzotti, eds, Creole subjects in the colonial Americas: empires, texts, identities (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2009), pp. 1-60. As Bauer and Mazzotti observe (pp. 5-6), the term often carried pejorative implications in the 16th and 17th centuries. Although it was used to refer to individuals born in the Americas, it was also applied to those born elsewhere but who were long-established in the New World. Prior to the 19th century, it was above all 'a geocultural designation denoting a place of birth or habitation'.
4. For brief discussions of León Pinelo within the broader context of criollo consciousness in Spanish America see, for example, chapter 6 in J. Cañizares-Esguerra, Nature, empire, and nation: explorations of the history of science in the Iberian world (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2006).
5. J.A. Mazzotti, 'Creole agencies and the (post)colonial debate in Spanish America', in M. Moraña, E. Dussel and C. Jáuregui, eds, Coloniality at large: Latin America and the postcolonial debate (Durham and London, Duke University Press, 2008), pp. 77-112.
6. J.A. Mazzotti, 'El Dorado, paradise, and supreme sanctity in 17th-century Peru: a Creole agenda', in Bauer and Mazzotti, Creole subjects in the colonial Americas, pp. 375-411.
7. For a more detailed treatment see D. Ledezma, 'El paraíso en el Nuevo Mundo de Antonio de León Pinelo: apología e historia natural y peregrina de las Américas', unpublished manuscript.
8. The term 'tropicality' was first employed by D. Arnold in chapter 8 of his book The problem of nature: environment, culture and European expansion (Oxford, Blackwell, 1996). A good introduction to this literature is provided in three themed issues of the Singapore journal of tropical geography, published in 2000, 2004 and 2005.
9. See especially D. Arnold, '"Illusory riches": representations of the tropical world, 1840-1950', 21 (2000), pp. 6-18.
10. G. Bowd and D. Clayton, 'French tropical geographies: editors' introduction', 26 (2005), pp. 271-88.
11. F. Driver, 'Imagining the tropics: views and visions of the tropical world', 25 (2004), pp. 1-17. The publication of work on European ideas of the tropics is not restricted to the Anglo-American sphere.
12. See, for example, the essays in M. Flitner, ed., Der deutsche Tropenwald: Bilder, Mythen, Politik (Frankfurt, Campus Verlag, 2000).
13. See J. Duncan, 'The struggle to be temperate: climate and 'moral masculinity' in mid-19th century Ceylon', Singapore journal of tropical geography 21 (2000), pp. 34-47.
14. D. Livingstone, 'Race, space and moral climatology: notes towards a genealogy', Journal of historical geography 28 (2002), pp. 159-80.
15. N. Stepan, Picturing tropical nature (London, Reaktion Books, 2001).
16. See also D. Arnold, The tropics and the traveling gaze: India, landscape and science, 1800-1856 (Delhi, Permanent Black, 2005).
17. Driver, 'Imagining the tropics', pp. 13-14.
18. See also F. Driver and B. Yeoh, 'Constructing the tropics: introduction', Singapore journal of tropical geography 21 (2000), pp. 1-5; p. 3.
19. See for example D. Arnold, 'Envisioning the tropics: Joseph Hooker in India and the Himalayas, 1848- 1850', in F. Driver and L. Martins, eds, Tropical visions in an age of empire (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2005), pp. 137-55.
20. G. Bowd and D. Clayton, 'Tropicality, Orientalism and French colonialism in Indochina: the work of Pierre Gourou, 1927-1982', French historical studies 28 (2005), pp. 297-327.
21. D. Clayton and G. Bowd, 'Geography, tropicality and postcolonialism: Anglophone and Francophone readings of the work of Pierre Gourou', L'éspace géographique 3 (2006), pp. 208-21.
22. N.L. Stepan, Picturing tropical nature (London, Reaktion Books, 2001), p. 36.
23. See also N. Badenberg, 'Ansichten des Tropenwaldes: Alexander von Humboldt und die Inszenierung exotischer Landschaft im 19. Jahrhundert', in Flitner, Der deutsche Tropenwald, pp. 148-73.
24. M. Dettelbach, 'Global physics and aesthetic empire: Humboldt's physical portrait of the tropics', in D.P. Miller and P.H. Reill, eds, Visions of empire: voyages, botany and representations of nature (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 258-92.
25. M. Dettelbach, 'The stimulations of travel: Humboldt's physiological construction of the tropics', in Driver and Martins, Tropical visions, pp. 43-58.
26. See e.g. K.E. Manthorne, Tropical renaissance: North American artists exploring Latin America, 1839-1879 (Washington and London, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989).
27. L. Martins, 'The art of tropical travel, 1768-1830', in M. Ogborn and C.W.J. Withers, eds, Georgian geographies (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2004), pp. 72-91.
28. L. Martins and F. Driver, '"The struggle for luxuriance": William Burchell collects tropical nature', in Driver and Martins, Tropical visions, pp. 59-76.
29. Stepan, Picturing tropical nature.
30. See e.g. M.L. Pratt, Imperial eyes: travel writing and transculturation (London and New York, Routledge, 1992).
31. Stepan, Picturing tropical nature.
32. L. Wylie, 'Colonial tropes and postcolonial tricks: rewriting the tropics in the novela de la selva', Modern language review 101 (2006), pp. 728-42.
33. The 1992 quincentenary of Columbus' encounter with the New World provided a significant stimulus for the publication of work on early European colonialism in the Americas. Prominent examples include A. Gerbi, Nature in the New World: from Christopher Columbus to Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo (Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985).
34. S. Greenblatt, Marvelous possessions: the wonder of the New World (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1991).
35. B. Pastor, The armature of conquest: Spanish accounts of the discovery of America, 1492-1589 (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1992).
36. A. Pagden, European encounters with the New World: from Renaissance to Romanticism (New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1993).
37. Butzer describes as 'inexcusable' Elliott's 'ethnocentric dismissal of South European interest in the natural world.'
38. See K.W. Butzer, 'From Columbus to Acosta: science, geography, and the New World', Annals of the Association of American Geographers 82(3) (1992), pp. 543-65, p. 558.
39. See, for example, A. Barrera, Experiencing nature: the Spanish American empire and the early Scientific Revolution (Austin, University of Texas Press, 2006).
40. D. Bleichmar, P.S. de Vos, K. Huffine and K. Sheehan, eds, Science in the Spanish and Portuguese empires, 1500-1800 (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2009).
41. Cañizares-Esguerra, Nature, empire and nation.
42. J. Pimentel, 'The Iberian vision: science and empire in the framework of a universal monarchy, 1500-1800', Osiris 15 (2000), pp. 17-30.
43. L. Millones Figueroa and D. Ledezma, eds, El saber de los jesuitas, historias naturales y el Nuevo Mundo (Madrid, Iberoamericana, 2005).
44. See e.g. J.H. Elliott, The Old World and the New (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1971).
45. Pagden, European encounters.
46. Arnold, The problem of nature, p. 143.
47. See also C. Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian shore: nature and culture in western thought from ancient times to the end of the eighteenth century (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1967), p. 437.
48. Glacken suggests, furthermore, that early European visitors to the equatorial regions of the New World appear to have been impressed, above all, by their very inhabitability, and by the realization that climatic conditions did not correspond to antique theories of a territory rendered uninhabitable by infernal heat.
49. See Glacken, Rhodian shore, p. 437.
50. C. Columbus, The four voyages, edited and translated by J.M. Cohen (London, Penguin Books, 1969), p. 66.
51. On Oviedo's struggle to represent New World nature to his European readership see e.g. K.A. Myers, Fernández de Oviedo's chronicle of America: a new history for a new world (Austin, University of Texas Press, 2007).
52. A. Pagden, European encounters with the New World (New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1993).
53. D. Cosgrove, 'Tropical hermeneutics and the climatic imagination', Geographische Zeitschrift 90 (2002), pp. 65-88, p. 77.
54. N. Wey-Gómez, The tropics of empire: why Columbus sailed south to the Indies (Cambridge, MA, and London, The MIT Press, 2008).
55. Ibid., pp. 48-9.
56. Ibid., ch. 3.
57. P. Mártir de Anglería [Peter Martyr], Décadas del Nuevo Mundo (Madrid, Ediciones Polifemo, 1989), pp. 384-5.
58. Wey-Gómez, The tropics of empire, p. 433.
59. See book II in J. de Acosta, Natural and moral history of the Indies, edited by J. Mangan and translated by F. López-Morillas (Durham and London, Duke University Press, 2002).
60. Acosta, Natural and moral history, pp. 89 and 92.
61. Ibid., p. 82.
62. R. Grove, Green imperialism: tropical island Edens and the origins of environmentalism, 1600-1860 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 32-3.
63. See Wey-Gómez, The tropics of empire, p. 216.
64. Where accounts of exploration are concerned, Christoval de Acuña's account of his 1639 journey along the length of the Amazon from Quito to Pará in the company of Pedro de Texeira is of particular importance and is heavily cited by León Pinelo.
65. See C. de Acuña, Nuevo descubrimiento del gran río de las Amazonas (Madrid, 1641).
66. See e.g. H. Kamen, Spain 1469-1714: a society of conflict (London and New York, Longman, 1983).
67. J. Lynch, The Hispanic world in crisis and change, 1598-1700 (Oxford, UK and Cambridge, MA, Blackwell, 1992).
68. A. Pagden, 'Heeding Heraclides: empire and its discontents, 1619-1812', in R. Kagan and G. Parker, eds, Spain, Europe and the Atlantic world: essays in honour of John H. Elliott (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 316-33.
69. For a detailed discussion see Cañizares-Esguerra, 'Nature, empire and nation, ch. 4. An earlier version of this chapter was published in article form.
70. See J. Cañizares-Esguerra, 'New world, new stars: patriotic astrology and the invention of Indian and Creole bodies in colonial Spanish America, 1600-1650', American historical review 104 (1999), pp. 33-68.
71. See also B. Lavallé, Las promesas ambiguas: criollismo colonial en los Andes (Lima, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 1993), pp. 50-9.
72. On 18th and 19th century disputes over the respective qualities of European and American nature, see A. Gerbi, The dispute of the New World: the history of a polemic, 1750-1900 (Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1973). First published in Italian in 1955.
73. The code of laws was completed in 1635 but, due to lack of funding, it was not published until 1681, two decades after León Pinelo's death, under the title Recopilación de leyes de los reynos de las Indias.
74. In 1644, he was made a judge of Seville's Casa de la Contratación (House of Trade), with residence at the royal court in Madrid. Alongside his official employments, León Pinelo produced numerous scholarly works, including El Paraíso en el Nuevo Mundo, many of which related to the Indies.
75. See J. Toribio Medina's introduction to A. de León Pinelo, Discurso sobre la importancia, forma, y disposición de la Recopilación de leyes de las Indias Occidentales que en su Real Consejo presenta el Licenciado Antonio de León (Santiago de Chile, Fondo Histórico y Bibliográfico José Toribio Medina, 1956), pp. 61-7.
76. See Ledezma, 'El paraíso en el Nuevo Mundo', pp. 11-14.
77. Ibid., pp. 4-7.
78. This expression is borrowed from C. Withers, 'Geography, enlightenment, and the paradise question', in D. Livingstone and C. Withers, eds, Geography and Enlightenment (Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 1999), p. 68.
79. Delumeau suggests that, between 1540 and 1700, at least 155 literary works on the subject of the earthly Paradise were produced in Europe. J. Delumeau, History of paradise: the Garden of Eden in myth and tradition (New York, Continuum, 1995), p. 140.
80. For discussions of the history of the idea of paradise in the age of European overseas expansion, see especially Delumeau, History of paradise; Glacken, Rhodian shore, pp. 355-74.
81. J. Prest, The Garden of Eden: the botanic garden and the re-creation of paradise (New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1981).
82. Withers, 'Geography, enlightenment', pp. 67-92.
83. On the mapping of paradise, see A. Scafi, Mapping paradise: a history of heaven on earth (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2006). Scafi (p. 254) argues that the reasons for the decline of belief in an existing paradise should be sought in long-term changes in theological and philosophical thought since the 1400s rather than in the impact of Renaissance-era explorations. Curiously, his detailed study does not consider early modern theories of an American paradise.
84. Delumeau, History of paradise, p. 158.
85. Although Columbus' association of South America with paradise is most widely known, between the 16th and 18th centuries a number of other individuals argued that the New World - and above all Brazil - either was or had been the location of Eden. One of these men, a Portuguese-born resident of Brazil named Pedro de Rates Hanequim, was condemned to death in 1744 by the Lisbon Inquisition for his belief that the earthly paradise still existed in his adopted country.
86. See Preface to S. Buarque de Holanda, Visión del paraíso: motivos edénicos en el descubrimiento y colonización del Brasil (Venezuela, Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1987). The book was first published in Portuguese in 1959.
87. See also C. Ziller Camenietzki, 'O paraíso proibido. A censura à Chronica de Simão de Vasconcelos em 1663', in Millones Figueroa and Ledezma, El saber de los jesuitas, pp. 109-34.
88. For discussions of Amerindian influences on European notions of a New World paradise see e.g. J.C. Ochoa Abaurre, 'Mito y chamanismo: el mito de la tierra sin mal en los Tupí-Cocama de la Amazonía peruana', unpublished doctoral thesis (University of Barcelona, 2002).
89. C. Slater, Entangled Edens: visions of the Amazon (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 2002), ch. 2.
90. León Pinelo, El paraíso, vol. I, pp. 115-18, traces the origins of this idea to the writings of Moses Bar-Cefas and Saint Ephrem.
91. Ibid., p. 38.
92. Ibid., p. 36.
93. Ibid., p. 381.
94. Ibid., pp. 374-8.
95. Ibid., pp. 137-8.
96. Ibid., p. 137.
97. At least on paper, the Viceroyalty of Peru extended as far as the line of demarcation that separated the Portuguese territories from those of the Spanish crown and therefore incorporated a large portion of the Amazon basin.
98. Ibid., p. 352.
99. Ibid., p. 72.
100. Delumeau, History of paradise, p. 158, observes that, in the early 17th century, the Dominican Luis de Urreta proposed that paradise was located in Africa, on the equator. This theory established a link between the earthly paradise and the kingdom of Prester John.
101. León Pinelo, El paraíso, vol. I, pp. 333 and 353. Rather than challenge the prevailing view that paradise was located in the orient, León Pinelo argued that the New World could properly be referred to as 'oriental'. In addition to pointing out that any location on the globe could be considered, in relative terms, to be in the east, he argued that the New World was situated in the orient in relation to the longitudinal location at which Moses wrote his history of paradise, namely at around 70 degrees. This was based on the understanding that the globe was divided into two halves, each measuring 180 degrees, and that if a meridian were drawn through the site at which Moses composed his description, the 180 degrees of territory that lay directly to the east of this point included part of the New World. To account for the fact that large areas of the Americas lay outside this area, he argued that these territories, which included South America, could also be called 'oriental' because they were an unbroken continuation of those that did fall within the 180 degrees. The whole of Africa, by contrast, lay outside this area, and therefore could not be considered 'oriental'.
102. See Pinelo, El paraíso, Book III, ch. 3.
103. Ibid., p. 379.
104. Ibid., p. 68.
105. Ibid., p. 380.
106. León Pinelo regarded Africa as part of the tropics, but only in a strictly latitudinal sense, as he did not believe it possessed the natural attributes that could make it a candidate for the location of paradise. His assessment of India was clearly far more positive. However, in rejecting dry and arid environments as suitable areas for the location of paradise, the treatise lends weight to Arnold's argument that the green and humid environments of tropical America became most intimately associated by Europeans with 'the tropics', and also resonates with the view of 19th century British travellers who regarded many areas of India as not truly 'tropical' because they failed to find the exuberant tropical nature that they had anticipated. As Arnold demonstrates, many 18th and 19th century Europeans consequently regarded India as being 'in the tropics, but not necessarily of the tropics'.
107. See D. Arnold, The tropics and the traveling gaze: India, landscape and science 1800-1856 (Delhi, Permanent Black, 2005), ch. 4 (quotation on p. 114).
108. See also D. Arnold, 'India's place in the tropical world, 1770-1930', The journal of imperial and commonwealth history 26 (1998), pp. 1-21.
109. León Pinelo, El paraíso, vol. I, p. 386.
110. Ibid., p. 392.
111. Ibid., Vol. II, Book V.
112. Ibid., p. 427.
113. Ibid., p. 431.
114. Ibid., p. 527.
115. León Pinelo identified the Amazon as the River Gehon which, according to the account of the four rivers of paradise in Genesis 2:13, 'surrounds the whole country of Ethiopia'. The Old Testament (London, Burns Oates and Wasbourne Ltd, 1949), vol. I. Translated from the Latin Vulgate by R. Knox, p. 3. He argued that the New World, and above all its equatorial regions, could properly be referred to as 'Ethiopia', a name which, he explained, was derived from the Greek words 'aetho', meaning 'to burn', and 'ops', meaning 'face', and used by the ancient Greeks to refer to African and Asian peoples whose skin, they believed, was dark in colour on account of the sun's heat. Although the natives of the New World were not as dark-skinned as those of Africa, he reasoned, the term 'Ethiopians' could nevertheless be understood to include them. Making reference to contemporary writings on the origins of the Amerindians, he reinforced his argument by suggesting that the native peoples of the New World, along with the 'Ethiopians' of Africa and Asia, were all descendants of Cain.
116. See Pinelo, El paraíso, pp. 524-27.
117. J. Cañizares-Esguerra, Puritan conquistadors: Iberianizing the Atlantic, 1550-1700 (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2006), pp. 168-72.
118. J. Cañizares-Esguerra, Puritan conquistadors, pp. 155-74. Cañizares-Esguerra's observations implicitly cast doubt on Buarque de Holanda's claim that negative portrayals of the New World as an 'anti-paradise' never became established as a coherent discourse that challenged the 'innumerable Edenic visions' of the Americas.
119. See Buarque de Holanda, Visión del paraíso, p. 22.
120. Contained in vol. II of León Pinelo, El paraíso.
121. Ledezma, 'El paraíso', pp. 41-2.
122. The significance of medieval ideas of an eastern paradise in shaping early modern European visions of the New World is also acknowledged by Buarque de Holanda, Visión del paraíso, pp. 44-5.
123. Since late antiquity, Europeans envisioned the East Indies as a realm of extraordinary wealth, wonder and fertility. These notions, however, attained their fullest and most affirmative expression in the late Middle Ages.
124. See L. Daston and K. Park, Wonders and the order of nature, 1150-1750 (New York, Zone Books, 2001), pp. 25-39.
125. For discussion of León Pinelo's sources, see Ledezma, 'El paraíso', pp. 39-44.
126. See W. Ralegh, The discoverie of the large, rich and bewtiful empire of Guiana, transcribed, annotated and introduced by N.L. Whitehead (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1997), p. 178.
127. See C. de Acuña, Nuevo descubrimiento del gran río de las Amazonas (Madrid, 1641), folios 15v-16 and 37v-38.
128. J. Dangler, Making difference in medieval and early modern Iberia (Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), p. 22.
129. Delumeau, History of paradise, p. 86.
130. Daston and Park argue that late medieval fascination with 'the strange races of and species of Asia and Africa' did not reflect European anxieties: on the contrary, 'The wonders of the East had overwhelmingly positive associations; liberating precisely on account of their geographical marginality. they were viewed with a relatively benign and benevolent eye'.
131. Like León Pinelo, medieval writers drew heavily on Pliny, whose work 'was permeated by an aesthetic and a sensibility that stressed the variety and diversity of nature'.
132. See Daston and Park, Wonders, p. 34.
133. León Pinelo, El paraíso, vol. II, p. 68.
134. In an earlier section of the treatise, however, León Pinelo cites reports of India that describe 'very extensive lands but so full of snakes and serpents that they are impenetrable as far as China' in order to demonstrate that not all parts of India were suitable locations for paradise.
135. See Pinelo, El paraíso, vol. I, p. 380. In this instance, his vision of a land that teems with snakes recalls 'pestilential' visions of the tropical regions that negatively associate them with the ubiquitous presence of noxious and threatening reptiles, amphibians and insects.
136. Ibid., vol. II, pp. 78-9.
137. W. Raleigh, The history of the world in five books (London, 1687), p. 36.
138. León Pinelo, El paraíso, vol. II, p. 76.
139. Ibid., vol. I, p. 389.
140. Ibid., vol. II, p. 67.
141. Bauer and Mazzotti, 'Introduction: creole subjects', p. 10. On the ambivalence of criollos in Spanish America.
142. see also Mazzotti, 'El Dorado'.
143. and Mazzotti, 'Creole agencies'.
144. For detailed discussions of the growing rivalries between Spaniards and Spanish Americans and the emergence of criollo consciousness in Peru and also Mexico see D.A. Brading, The first America: the Spanish monarchy, creole patriots, and the Liberal state, 1492-1867 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991).
145. Lavallé, Las promesas ambiguas.
146. Mazzotti, 'El Dorado' and Mazzotti, 'Creole agencies'. For a comparative survey of emerging Euroamerican consciousness in the colonial worlds of Spanish, Portuguese and British America, see the collection of essays in Bauer and Mazzotti, Creole subjects.
147. Mazzotti, 'Creole agencies', pp. 101-2.
148. See chapter four in Cañizares-Esguerra, Nature, empire, and nation.
149. Mazzotti, 'El Dorado'.
150. Cited in Mazzotti, 'El Dorado', p. 390.
151. Cañizares-Esguerra, Nature, empire, and nation.
152. A. de la Calancha, Corónica moralizada del orden de San Augustín en el Perú: con sucesos egenplares vistos en esta monarquía (Barcelona, 1638), p. 68.
153. Mazzotti, 'El Dorado', p. 387-90.
154. See also Mazzotti, 'Creole agencies', p. 90.
155. León Pinelo, El paraíso, vol. I, chapters 14-18.
156. See e.g. Livingstone, 'Race, space, and moral climatology'.
157. León Pinelo, vol. II, p. 525. Here he suggests that differences in skin colour and hair type between equatorial Africans and native inhabitants of the New World tropics may partly be explained by climatic differences.
158. Ibid., p. 6.
159. Ibid., vol. II, p. 3.
160. Ibid., vol. I, pp. 141-4; 278 and 287-90.
161. Ibid., vol. II, p. 5. The 16th century Spanish physician Juan de Cárdenas made a similar point.
162. See J. de Cárdenas, Problemas, y secretos maravillosos de las Indias (Valladolid, Editorial Maxtor, 2003 [1591]), p. 2.
163. León Pinelo, El paraíso, vol. II, p. 5. León Pinelo makes a similar point in a short text that was published a few years after he completed Paraíso en el Nuevo Mundo.
164. See A. de León Pinelo, Política de las grandezas y govierno del svpremo y real Consejo de las Indias (Madrid, 1658), folios 2-2v.
165. See, for example, Calancha, Corónica moralizada.
166. and B. de Salinas y Córdova, Memorial de las historias del nuevo mundo Pirú (Lima, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, 1957 [1630]).
167. See Mazzotti, 'El Dorado', p. 391.
168. A. de León Pinelo, El Gran Canciller de Indias (Seville, Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos, 1953 [ca. 1625]), pp. 41-2.
169. León Pinelo, El Gran Canciller, 43-4. The 'significant works' to which León Pinelo refers included plans for a complete geographical description of the New World. It appears, however, that this work was never produced.
170. Lohmann Villena, in his introduction to El Gran Canciller (see p. cxxxvii), notes that a document detailing over one hundred primary sources which León Pinelo intended to use for the description is contained in the Biblioteca Nacional de España.
171. This desire is stated much more clearly in a later publication. See León Pinelo, Política, folios 19v-20v. León Pinelo was first nominated for the position in 1641, but the post was given to another candidate.
172. See pp. 64-7 in Toribio Medina's introduction to A. León Pinelo, Discurso sobre la importancia.
173. See, for example, Pratt's discussion of 19th century European explorers' accounts of Africa as well as of the European 'capitalist vanguard' who sought commercial opportunities in the newly independent republics of Latin America. Pratt, Imperial eyes, chapters 3 and 7.
174. Driver, 'Imagining the tropics', pp. 13-14.
175. See e.g. Driver, '"Imagining the tropics"; the essays in Driver and Martins', Tropical visions.
176. and Bowd and Clayton, 'Tropicality, Orientalism and French colonialism'.