Book review - El Norte: an epic and timely history of Hispanic North America
El Norte: The Epic and Forgotten Story of Hispanic North America; by Carrie Gibson
Reviewed by Charles Kaiser
Reviewed by Charles Kaiser
These 437 pages are an
important correction to centuries of American history which have mostly
neglected the vital role of Spanish pioneers (and Native Americans) in favor of
settlers from England, Ireland and Scotland. As the author quotes Walt Whitman,
Americans long ago tacitly abandoned themselves “to the notion that our United
States have been fashioned from the British Islands … which is a great mistake
… “To that composite
American identity of the future, Spanish character will supply some of the most
needed parts.” This book proves
Whitman’s prescience in a hundred ways: the history of Hispanics in the US is
indeed “not a separate history of outsiders or interlopers, but one that is
central to how the United States has developed”.
The first surprise is
the role of Spain in the revolutionary war. In Paris in December 1776, Benjamin
Franklin met in secret with the Count of Aranda, quickly convincing him Spain
needed to side with the Americans. Ships leaving New England already called at
Spanish ports such as Bilbao and Cádiz to purchase cod and flour. Soon their
holds were also bulging with millions of reales’ worth of bullets, gunpowder, bombs,
rifles and tents. Three years later, the Spanish governor in New Orleans,
Bernardo de Gálvez, sent 1,300 men to attack British outposts in west Florida.
Of course, Gibson’s
narrative begins much earlier, when the Spanish began their forays into the New
World. The author reminds us that the indigenous urban culture of what is
now Mexico was
much more advanced than anything the conquistadors left behind in Europe. Tenochtitlan (on the
site of Mexico City) had a population of 150,000, “far larger than any European
city”. Hernán Cortés arrived there in 1519 and reported to the crown he could
“not describe one-hundredth of all the things which could be mentioned”,
including a market where “more than 60,000 people come each day to buy and
sell, and where every kind of merchandise … is found: provisions as well as …
ornaments of gold and silver, lead, brass, copper, tin stones, shells bones and
feathers”.
When he met Emperor Moctezuma, Cortés was taken to a “vast compound
of palaces, apartments, libraries, warehouses, and even a zoo”. With the typical
solicitude of the invader, Cortés soon kidnapped Moctezuma. But he was forced
to retreat in 1520, after a battle that killed 400 Spaniards and thousands of
Tlaxcala soldiers. A year later, Cortés returned. A plague in the Valley of
Mexico would eventually kill millions. The capital fell.
Gibson paints an
extremely broad canvas over eight centuries, from early Spanish colonies in
Florida and the founding of Louisiana to the battle between the US and Mexico
over Texas and Hispanic settlements in California. She reminds us of the
immense diversity of Native American culture before the arrival of all
Europeans. There were probably 300,000 Native Americans in Alta California
before the Spanish arrived, and they spoke “roughly 90 languages under the
umbrella of seven broader linguistic families”.
The natives offered
resistance. In 1772, a priest in San Diego wrote that Spanish troops “deserve
to be hanged on account of the continuous outrages which they are committing in
seizing and raping the women”. Three years later, 600 natives attacked the mission
with “so many arrows that you could not possibly count them”. The mission
burned but it was rebuilt five years later, and by 1823 there were 21 such
sites up and down the California coast, “almost all of them concerned with the
conversion and subsequent labor of the Indians”. Los Angeles and San José de
Guadalupe, on the southern edge of San Francisco, were established for civilian
settlement.
Gibson also reminds us
of the racism which has underpinned the Mexican-American relationship for at
least 200 years. “Whiteness in the United States,” she writes,
“became bound up with the idea of manifest destiny and providence, that the
Anglo-Protestants were somehow chosen to spread themselves across the
continent.” In 1847, during the Mexican-American war, the American Review said:
“Mexico was poor, distracted, in anarchy and almost in ruins” and asked: “What
could she do … to impede the march of our greatness?
“We are Anglo-Saxon
Americans; it was our ‘destiny’ to possess and to rule this continent … We were
a chosen people, and this was our allotted inheritance, and we must drive out
all other nations.”
This point of view
persists. In the 2000s, the
historian Samuel Huntington wrote that “America was created by … settlers
who were overwhelmingly white, British and Protestant” - and therefore the
arrival of Hispanics in large numbers remained a direct threat. Huntington
denigrated such immigrants as people with “dual nationalities and dual
loyalties”, because of their Spanish language and Catholic religion.
Of course no recent
public figure has done more to stoke such prejudices than our current
president. Gibson’s sprawling work makes a major contribution by reminding us
of the falseness of Donald Trump’s xenophobic narrative. Her rich account
leaves no doubt that America is a vastly more interesting place because of the
millions of Hispanic immigrants who have been arriving on our shores for more
than 600 years.
