At the close of the eighteenth century Nicholas Masson de Morvilliers raised a hubbub in Europe by asking these two questions in the Encyclopédie Méthodique: “Mais que doit-on a I’Espagne? Et depuis deux siecles, depuis quatre, depuis six, qu’a-t-elle fait pour l’Europe?”

At the end of a century of positivistic philosophy and at the beginning of the industrial era this was a very logical question. It is true that Spain did not invent the locomotive, the telegraph, the telephone nor the modern frigidaire; but in the realm of human and eternal values could a more idiotic question have been asked? The metaphysics of Suarez, the international law of Victoria, the great theologians of the Council of Trent, Cano and Soto, had no value whatsoever for this Positivistic century; nor did the fact that Spain had produced one of the most human and original theatres with Lope de Vega, Calderón, Tirso de Molina and Alarcón; the greatest novel in the modern sense of the word, Don Quijote;the most profound satirist of all Europe, Quevedo; the outstanding moralist of the seventeenth century, Lorenzo Gracian; and above all these a school of mystics in Saint Teresa of Avila, Saint John of the Cross, Fray Luis de León and Juan de los Angeles, which has never been equaled. Even if Mr. Masson de Morvilliers could not see the importance of these contributions it is difficult to comprehend how he could ignore the transcendental fact that Spain had broken the columns of Hercules and had spread Mediterranean culture through the countries lying on the other side of the Atlantic and on the remotest shores of the Pacific.

The New World had hardly begun to fire the imagination of the Old before the Sons of Saint Francis, filled with a burning desire to spread the faith in the unknown lands in fulfillment of the biblical injunction “Go ye into the whole world and teach all nations” began their ceaseless peregrinations across two continents, from distant Canada and the forbidding Northwest to Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia in South America. In our own United States, dotting the land from Georgia to San Francisco, we find today the imposing ruins of Spanish missions built by their loving hands, their fervent faith, and their unequaled zeal.

The novel Sab by Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda may be considered one of the outstanding products of her early Cuban environment. The work was begun in 1836 or earlier (while the author was traveling with her family to Spain), completed by 1838, and first published in 1841. In order to prepare the way for a favorable reception of the novel in her native land, as well as on the continent, la Avellaneda submitted the first ten chapters in 1839 to a “compatriota” residing in Sevilla:

In this era of Pan American enthusiasm, a more intimate knowledge of the careers of those statesmen whom the several countries hold in esteem should assist many who desire a truer understanding of our southern neighbors. Out of the welter of Latin American politics a few characters have emerged who are comparatively well known in English-speaking countries. But far more recognition than is generally accorded him is due to one who has evoked from his countrymen as well as from foreigners the most conflicting evaluations—Gabriel Garcia Moreno of Ecuador.

The same year (1565) in which the territory north of the Holy Gospel Province was made a separate Province, the Central American countries were separated from the Yucatan Province and organized into a new Province, that of the Most Holy Name. Ten years later, the latter was further divided, and the province of St. George was erected including Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. Honduras, which was made a Custody of St. George Province in 1587, was subsequently reunited with the Guatemala Province.

The enormous native state which Cortés overthrew August 13, 1521, is commonly called the Aztec Empire. This is true more of the English literature than of the Spanish, which sometimes prefers the half-correct “Imperio de los Mexicanos”. The writer has no quarrel with the word “Empire”, which has been questioned from time to time, but he does have with the word “Aztec” used in this connection. This originates, apparently, with Clavijero and was diffused by Prescott, a mere hundred years ago. The latter speaks initially of “the ancient Mexicans, or Aztecs as they were called” and after that uses “Aztec Empire” incessantly. This nomenclature, vulgarized through such dross as Bancroft, has swamped everything else. Nevertheless, neither Cortés nor Bernal Díaz nor Tápia, all actors in the Conquest, ever so much as mention the word “Aztec”, much less say “we conquered the Aztec Empire”. Nor does Sahagun in his encyclopedic work use the term “Aztec Empire”, nor does Motolinía. If it appears in any of these works, or anywhere among the first generation of conquerors and settlers, it is so subordinately mentioned that it has escaped the writer. Below we shall see what its conquerors did call the Empire they overthrew.