Alfonso Reyes, 1942
This text is excerpted from “El presagio de América,” the first chapter (part 20) of Última Tule, by Mexican writer and diplomat Alfonso Reyes (1889–1959). Reyes published the book in 1942 [(Mexico City: Imprenta Universitaria)], three years after returning to Mexico having completed nearly three decades of diplomatic assignments in Europe and Latin America which originally began with a forced exile. This excerpt is concerned specifically with debunking some of the misconceptions about the naming of America that were generated by the historiography of its conquest. Reyes’s reflections on the “christening” of America thus are derived from his extensive thinking on the meaning of America; among his writings on this subject are the essays “Notas sobre la inteligencia americana” (1937) and “Posición de América” (1942), in which he presents a cultural synthesis of Old World and Native American values and contributions. This excerpt is from Alfonso Reyes’s Obras Completas [“El presagio de América,” Última Tule in Obras Completas, vol. XI (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1960), 11–62, 55–56].
IT SEEMS TO BE THE WILL OF THE MYTHOLOGICAL SPIRIT presiding over the Discovery that the very name of America should be the result of refraction.1 In the little-known city of Saint-Dié, lost in the French Vosges, a small society of scholars who were both humanists and printers came together at the beginning of the sixteenth century. The founder of that small workshop was Gauthier Lud; he introduced the printing press and installed it in the home of his nephew Nicholas. Martin Waldseemüller, from Freiburg, became the copyeditor (or castigator) of the press, as well as an eminent collaborator. The congenial poet Mathias Ringmann, known as “Philesius” to his friends, also became an associate. He had come to know the Veronese architect Giovanni Giocondo and would die at an early age. In addition to them, there was Jean Basin, a rhetorician who had written a manual on the art of writing letters.
The century’s preoccupation with matters of geography could not help but make its way to Saint-Dié; these scholars would turn to the books of Ptolemy, believing them to be a sound foundation, before venturing to read the accounts of the latest discoveries. One day the Gymnasium of the Vosges decided to publish Ptolemy’s Introduction to Geography, followed by the four voyages recounted by [Amerigo] Vespucci: from Honduras to Florida or Georgia following the Mexican coastline; from São Roque to Venezuela by way of the Brazilian coast; from São Roque to the Rio de la Plata by the same coast that reaches to Antarctica and twists toward Africa; and the unsuccessful route to the Moluccas through South America. Waldseemüller took charge of the printing and added to it some complementary letters, as well as a foreword/dedication to the Emperor Maximilian [I], which he signed with the pseudonym “Martinus Hylacomylus.”
The work Cosmographiæ introductio was published in 1507. It met with success because it spread the news of a Terra Firma different from the one that Columbus had made known. Columbus had in fact traveled through the Antilles, affirming under oath that his Juana Island (Cuba) was indeed Terra Firma. He had not arrived at the continental conception of the Terra Firma that he had in fact reached. It should be noted that the geographic identity encompassing both the Antilles and the American continent is a relatively modern scientific notion [that came about] after the initial concept of the Discovery.
Vespucci appears in the work published by the Saint-Dié scholars; he is the first to give an account of the countries whose natural attributes were beginning to attract everyone’s attention. He spoke of paradisiacal lands that seemed to bring the Prophets’ dreams to life. He described singular customs which by themselves alone offered both relief and hope to the intellectual ruts of an exhausted Europe. The word hamaca [hammock] appeared for the first time. The publishers noted certain places described by Ptolemy that coincided with recent findings. And in two chapters of the work they used phrases such as the following: “To this new part of the Earth we may give the name America, in memory of the bold man who visited it.” According to the text, the name was to be applied not to Columbus’s archipelago, but to the Terra Firma explored—or at the very least described and “interpreted”—by Vespucci.
The authors of the great Cambridge History2 suggest, perhaps because of their elegance of style, the name was bestowed half in jest, half in earnest. In other words, it was not given much importance. Waldseemüller himself seems to have completely forgotten about it in a map he published six years later: that is to say, when everyone was calling the New World “America” except for the key person responsible for the name. Either way, Vespucci died without taking credit for the name or perhaps without even having taken any notice of it. In general, it can be said that the sixteenth century accepted the casual christening by the Saint-Dié scholars. The backlash began in the seventeenth century and made Vespucci’s name infamous—an attitude made evident over the following centuries in works by [Pierre] Bayle, Voltaire, and others. Nevertheless, little by little the name America became more widespread, mainly due to the interest generated by these accounts as well as because of their literary appeal, and despite the reasonable objections posed by Michel Servet and the angry protestations that began with Friar Bartolomé de Las Casas. These men of letters have reason to be proud of this success, which owes much to an intrinsic, artistic power and to the widespread appeal of these well-told narratives. It does not matter whether they are considered the authentic works of Vespucci or the writings of others that happen to be littered with errors, as a recent theory by [Alberto] Magnaghi proposes. The whole undertaking was extremely well apportioned. Some dreamed of the New World, others happened upon it; some explored and surveyed it, others christened it; some conquered it, others colonized it and reduced it to a European civilization; some declared it independent. We hope that others will bring it happiness.
1
Here we are rejecting the hypothesis—curious and risky as it may be—that the name of “America” stems from an indigenous source and that it came from that region where El Dorado was supposed to have been discovered. With regard to other excesses in reference to the name “America,” see A[ntônio] L[eôncio] Pereira Ferraz, Américo Vespucio e o nome de América [Amerigo Vespucci and the Name of America] (Rio de Janeiro: Imprensa Nacional, 1941).
2
The Cambridge History of Latin America, Volume I, Colonial Latin America (1500–1750), ed. Lesley Bethel (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1984).—Ed.