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Historia de la Nueva México, 1610
Mar. 23rd, 2012 04:50 pmSo after a suggestion that I do a search to the text of the manuscript I found two weeks ago, I found an exact match (AND A TRANSLATION!) on Google Books. It is Historia de la Nueva México, 1610 an epic poem by Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá about the settlement of New Mexico. And! Folks who grew up in New Mexico probably know this better than other people in the US, since it is drilled into our heads in school, but New Mexico was settled before Virginia, which was settled before New England. As such, it is not surprising that Historia de la Nueva México, 1610 predates John Smith's History of Virginia by 14 years. But given that it is such an old piece of literature that is probably well known to not a small group of historians, why was it sitting in our filing cabinets, unbound? And in Spanish, lacking a translation?
Well, the Google Books result that I linked to gives some clue. It was translated and edited by Miguel Encinias, Alfred Rodriguez, and Joseph P. Sanchez and published in 1992 by the University of New Mexico Press. Now the LAII was certainly around back then, Alfred is still affiliated with UNM as a Professor Emeritus at Spanish and Portuguese, and Joseph Sanchez is the director of the Spanish Colonial Center at the University, but Miguel Encinas is not connected to the University and none of the three had any relation to the LAII that the professor I asked about it could recall. In fact, that was the year LAII had gotten in trouble with the New Mexico Legislature because people were accusing LAII about not giving a damn about Hispanic culture in New Mexico and only paying attention to the rest of Latin America, if I recall my strolls through the filing system correctly.
I think LAII proved that notion wrong via a letter writing campaign.
We did absorb the local administration of ISTEC, but the file coming from there makes less sense than it coming from us. They are more a science and tech thing.
Anyhow, we had a typed up rough draft of Cantos II through VII of a total of 34 Cantos of Historia de la Nueva México, 1610, a cleaned up (typewritten) draft of Cantos I through VII, and probably both appendices, without attribution, without translation, and put in a folder that was mislabeled and misspelled. None of the editors/translators had any tight bonds to LAII.
WHUT.
Well, the Google Books result that I linked to gives some clue. It was translated and edited by Miguel Encinias, Alfred Rodriguez, and Joseph P. Sanchez and published in 1992 by the University of New Mexico Press. Now the LAII was certainly around back then, Alfred is still affiliated with UNM as a Professor Emeritus at Spanish and Portuguese, and Joseph Sanchez is the director of the Spanish Colonial Center at the University, but Miguel Encinas is not connected to the University and none of the three had any relation to the LAII that the professor I asked about it could recall. In fact, that was the year LAII had gotten in trouble with the New Mexico Legislature because people were accusing LAII about not giving a damn about Hispanic culture in New Mexico and only paying attention to the rest of Latin America, if I recall my strolls through the filing system correctly.
I think LAII proved that notion wrong via a letter writing campaign.
We did absorb the local administration of ISTEC, but the file coming from there makes less sense than it coming from us. They are more a science and tech thing.
Anyhow, we had a typed up rough draft of Cantos II through VII of a total of 34 Cantos of Historia de la Nueva México, 1610, a cleaned up (typewritten) draft of Cantos I through VII, and probably both appendices, without attribution, without translation, and put in a folder that was mislabeled and misspelled. None of the editors/translators had any tight bonds to LAII.
WHUT.
