Imperialism and the Origins of Mexican Culture by Colin M. MacLachlan. Harvard University Press, 340 pp., $35.00
Painting in Latin America, 1550–1820 edited by Luisa Elena Alcala and Jonathan Brown. Yale University Press, 477 pp., $75.00
1. On August 10, 1519, five ships, under the command of Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese captain in Spanish service, set out from Seville on an epic voyage that would end on September 6, 1522, when the Victoria, with eighteen survivors on board, limped back into Seville, having circumnavigated the globe. Meanwhile a Spanish adventurer, Hernan Cortes, after disembarking in April 1519 on the Mexican coast with a small band of Spaniards, overthrew the “empire” of its Mexica overlord, Montezuma II, with the help of large numbers of indigenous allies, and laid the foundations of…
