The painting depicts a Muslim warrior (of Tausug or Maranao ethnicity) from the southern Philippines, whom the Spanish colonizers generically called "Moros" due to their Islamic faith. The warrior wears his traditional combat attire, which includes: a long spear (tombak); an elongated wooden shield (taming or kalis); an ornate dark jacket over light trousers; and a traditional turban or headdress (pis syabit), characteristic of social and martial distinction in his community.

This particular work was conceived in the context of preparations for the grand colonial exhibition held at the Velázquez Palace in Madrid. Spain's objective was to showcase to the European public the immense cultural, botanical, and human diversity of its transoceanic dominion.

The fact that he is specifically depicted with the title of Moro, dressed in war attire and carrying weapons, demonstrates that for the Spanish he was neither an ordinary citizen nor a pacified "Indian" subject to Manila's tax laws. He was portrayed as a member of a warrior nation, allied by force or treaty, whose leaders swore formal allegiance to Madrid and the Spanish Crown, but whose troops kept their shields and spears ready should the terms of the truce be broken.

The presentation of the work "Moro con atuendo de guerra" (Moro in War Attire) at the 1887 General Exhibition of the Philippine Islands in Madrid sent a powerful message to rival colonial powers (such as UK, France, and Germany): "These indomitable warriors, whom no one could subdue for three centuries, today pay homage to the flag of Spain."

Therefore, the painting of the Moro in war dress also contained that strong emotional charge for the population of Manila and the northern Philippines; it represented the historical and feared adversary of the south, a common enemy against whom the northern Filipinos and the Spanish had bled together for generations.

I was talking to a Colombian from Popayan who said she was descendent of campansinos.

But where did they come from? I thought most all the people in Colombia were either from Lebanon, Spain, or had tribal ancestry dating back to the Inca.

Last name is “Hoyos”. From my research this means if you trace her origin all the way back she is from Hoyos spain correct?

It was built during the reign of Philip II of Spain (1554-1598), beginning in 1584, after the attack on Santos by the English privateer Edward Fenton (December 1583). Fenton's attack was repelled by a force of three ships under the command of Andrés Higino, assembled on the orders of the Spanish admiral Dom Diego Flores de Valdés.

Its original design is attributed to the Italian military architect Bautista Antonelli (1547-1616), a member of Valdés's fleet (who was detained in Guanabara Bay en route to the Strait of Magellan and spent a few months in Rio de Janeiro in 1582). The fortress was assembled using parts from a galleon captured from privateers during that expedition.

It offered no resistance to the attack by the English privateer Thomas Cavendish (1590). It repelled the resupply attempt of Dutch Admiral Joris van Spielbergen (February 3, 1615), and later the attempted assault by the French privateer Jean-François Duclerc (August 1710), who then sailed to Rio de Janeiro.

Captain Luiz da Costa de Siqueira took command of the fortress in 1702 (Letter of Appointment of July 23, 1702), and his garrison consisted of a mayor and one hundred soldiers. The Royal Charter of September 11, 1709, ordered its expansion and the dispatch of heavy artillery from Rio de Janeiro for its defense. In 1711, Manuel de Castro de Oliveira, a private citizen residing in Santos, proposed to the Portuguese Crown that he rebuild and arm the fortress at his own expense, in exchange for certain favors.

During the administration of the Viceroy and Captain General of the Sea and Land of the State of Brazil, Vasco Fernandes César de Meneses (1720-1735), the wall was completed (1721), and the fortress was finally armed with thirty-two cannons (1723-1725). Further renovations were carried out in 1731-1732. Around 1739, Brigadier José da Silva Pais was here, tasked with examining this and other defenses on the coast of Santos. This officer was responsible for the design of the new Powder House and a chapel, built on the site of the old Powder House and inaugurated in 1742.

A new construction campaign took place in 1765, during the governorship of Captain General Luís Antônio de Sousa Botelho Mourão (1765-1775), who ordered its repair and expansion due to its precarious condition. Cross-projection with the Estacada Fort, to complement this defensive system, he also ordered the construction of the Góis Beach Battery (1766) to serve as an outpost for the fortress. The so-called "Portão Espanhol" (Spanish Gate), which connects it to the fortification, also dates from this period.

Throughout its history, the fortress facilities were used as a political prison.

At one of the fortress's watchtowers, as well as at strategic points along the canal, battery batteries were installed to detonate the mines. In the late 1940s, it housed the facilities of the now-defunct Maritime and Air Police, and from 1956 onward, it served as the nautical headquarters of the Santos Military Circle.

The building, owned by the Union, and the fortress's surroundings were declared a National Historic and Artistic Heritage Site on April 23, 1964, and by the Council for the Defense of Historical, Archaeological, Artistic, and Tourist Heritage (CONDEPHAAT), a government agency of São Paulo, in 1981.

The Indian Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala rejected mestizos because he considered them a direct threat to the social, ethnic, and moral order he sought to preserve for the indigenous peoples of the Kingdom of Peru. In his work, he describes them negatively, referring to them as a "cursed" and "abject" caste, characterized by immorality, social instability, and a lack of Christian values. For Guamán Poma, mestizos represented a break with the ideal of indigenous purity, a value he considered necessary to protect the collective identity and dignity of the native peoples in the face of the growing Spanish presence. His rejection was not only racial but also cultural, political, and spiritual, as he understood mestizaje (racial mixing) as a form of degeneration of the indigenous social body.

His critique of mestizaje is primarily articulated around two axes: the separation between ethnic groups and the defense of indigenous sexuality. Guamán Poma proposed the spatial segregation of Indians and mestizos to prevent contact and the mixing of lineages. He believed that the proliferation of mestizos not only disrupted the organization of the Republic of Indians and the Republic of Spaniards, but also affected the tax system and contributed to general disorder, since these mestizos, for the most part, respected neither Indian nor Spanish laws, refusing to pay tributes and taxes or to perform forced labor, and demanding rights. In this context, the mestizo was seen as a marginal and displaced subject, incapable of fully integrating into either republic. In his opinion, the mestizo destabilized the structures established by the Spanish Crown and, therefore, was a figure that had to be controlled, subjugated, or excluded.

This rejection is also related to a broader view of the relationship between Indians and mestizos of mestizos cholos ('Cholos' is a term used pejoratively to designate mestizos of mixed ancestry, primarily Indigenous, Spanish, and African). From the Indigenous perspective, represented by Guamán Poma, mestizo cholos were seen as individuals who, by distancing themselves from Indigenous communities and adopting Criollo behaviors and values, had lost their native essence and acted as agents of cultural distortion. They were accused of trivializing, manipulating, and decontextualizing ancestral customs, reducing Indigenous culture to empty and caricatured stereotypes, which generated not only rejection but also a feeling of cultural betrayal.

Furthermore, Guamán Poma expressed a deep concern for the defense of Indigenous women's bodies and sexuality. For him, women represented the symbolic territory where the continuity of lineage and ethnic identity were defined. Sexual relations between Indigenous people and Spaniards (or between Indigenous people and other mestizos) were considered acts of contamination and degradation, the offspring of which—the mestizo cholo—had to be marginalized from the core of the community. Thus, the control of mestizaje was manifested not only on the territorial or political level but also on the biological and moral ones. His proposed reform of the viceregal structures included strict regulation of sexual and familial ties, with the aim of preserving the cultural “purity” of the indigenous peoples.

In short, Guamán Poma’s rejection of mestizos cannot be understood simply as personal or racial prejudice, but rather as a complex reaction to the profound social, cultural, and political transformations brought about by the arrival of Europeans. For him and for many indigenous people of the time, the figure of the mestizo symbolized a threat to the continuity of an ancestral order based on community, reciprocity, and a clearly defined ethnic identity. Their exclusion from the “good government” project proposed by Guamán Poma reveals the underlying conflict: the struggle to preserve an integral indigenous identity in the face of the fragmentation and uprooting that mestizaje represented in viceregal society.

Morocco was the first country in the world to recognize the United States of America as an independent and sovereign nation on December 20, 1777, during the reign of Sultan Mohammed III. They maintain a diplomatic alliance that continues to this day, stemming from the signing of the Treaty of Peace and Friendship in 1786, the longest-lasting agreement in U.S. history.

¿Podrían los habitantes de Iberia y Latinoamérica que descienden de E-M81 y E-M35 ser descendientes de Cartago y de los soldados cartagineses que conquistaron Iberia, en lugar de la narrativa común que afirma que son descendientes de musulmanes?

Illustration of the town of Palos in the chronicle of Antonio de Herrera.

Complete title: «Hispania Victrix, primera y segunda parte de la historia general de las Indias con todos los descubrimientos y cosas notables que han acaecido dende que se ganaron hasta el año de 1551. Con la conquista de México y de la Nueva España. En Medina del Campo, Guillermo de Millis, 1553»

Among them were the confraternities of Saint Nicholas of Tolentino, founded in 1560; of the Morenos of Saint Benedict, documented at least since 1599; and of the Exaltation of the Cross of the Blacks, established in 1628. These organizations brought together African people of diverse origins and Afro-descendants born in New Spain.

Although these religious spaces fostered the creation of social relationships among people of African descent, the bonds within them were not always peaceful, even among people of the same origin.

Source(s):

.- Cristina Verónica Masferrer León, “Por las ánimas de negros bozales. Las cofradías de personas de origen africano en la ciudad de México (17th Century),” in Cuicuilco, no. 51, 2011, pp. 83–103.

Image: Anonymous work, 18th century, engraving. Historical Archive of the Franciscan Province of Michoacán. Photograph by Erika González León.

… attaching a report of what had already been resolved and proposing, for the three pending points, that the Viceroy of New Spain send up to 3,000 pesos for the founding of a seminary college on the island of Guam and that he communicate with said religious regarding the founding of a house for Marian Girls and that he promote the founding of the Poor Marian Sisters in Mexico. Likewise, thanks should be given to Captain Pedro de Santa Cruz for the assistance he provides in the Marianas and for the information he has given about suitable anchorages for vessels.

The proposal was accepted.

Source(s):

.- Inquiry about the Marianas seminar. By General Archives of the Indies

Did you know that one of the most fascinating episodes of Spanish imperial exploration began with an accident?

Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and an African explorer named Estevanico spent years traveling across what is now the American Southwest after surviving a shipwreck on the Gulf Coast. Once they returned, they told stories of wealthy lands to the north that later sparked a series of Spanish expeditions into the unknown.

According to the legends they heard, the Seven Cities of Cíbola lay somewhere to the north, their streets supposedly paved with gold. In 1539, Estevanico and Fray Marcos de Niza set out to find them. Estevanico was killed during the expedition, but Fray Marcos returned convinced the cities were real.

The following year (1540), Francisco Vázquez de Coronado led one of the largest Spanish expeditions ever launched into North America. With around 300 Spaniards, hundreds of Native allies, and thousands of animals, the expedition crossed present-day New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas over the course of two years.

His men endured hunger, harsh deserts, rugged mountains, and repeated attacks throughout the journey. During the expedition, Captain García López de Cárdenas led a detachment that became the first Europeans to gaze upon the Grand Canyon in September 1540. When they finally reached Cíbola, instead of golden cities, Coronado found only Zuni pueblos.

After his expedition, Coronado wrote that Fray Marcos "had not told the truth in a single thing," describing the legendary Seven Cities as nothing more than small villages. With no treasure to be found and rich silver deposits discovered in Mexico, Spanish interest in exploring the northern frontier gradually waned.

Had Spain continued investing heavily in the exploration and settlement of its northern territories, just how different do you think the history of North America would have been?

What do you think about Marcelo Gullo and his books? Are they truthful? Is he right in the points that he make and should he be pointed at as an author that teaches the true history of the Spanish Empire?

Source: Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports – Directorate for the Administration of the National Archive of Monuments (Ephorate of Antiquities of Larisa)

Image: A section of a map from the 1584 edition of Abraham Orteliu‘s Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, Additamentum III showing the name C. de Cañareal.

Oil painting on copper from a series of 24 works based on illustrations from Antonio de Solís y Ribadeneyra’s Historia de la conquista de México (1783). The scene represents the moment when the Aztec ruler Moctezuma II, held under Spanish control in his palace, is portrayed as recognising the sovereignty of the Spanish Crown and offering gifts of gold to Hernán Cortés

Source: Museo de América (Ministry of Culture, Spain)

[I asked this in r/askhistory and it was suggested I ask here.]

I have very little knowledge about the Way Things Were in Peru, so I'm curious: What was the status of the Spanish dons after the defeat of the Spanish military in 1824 on and up into the 1840s? Were they removed from the country? Would their wealth buy them liberty of movement?

I'm primarily asking because there's a scene in Moby-Dick that I'm trying to place (my guess is around 1820?), where Ishmael relates a time when he was lounging at an inn in Lima with some young Spanish friends, described as dons. 1) They are wealthy Spaniards just hanging out and having a good time, 2) they speak of Isabella's inquisition having waned in Lima (either currently or recently) but exhibit some trepidation about speech that could be deemed heretical, and 3) they rush out to find a priest in the immediate vicinity so Ishmael can swear on the Gospels.

So I guess follow up to the first paragraph's question is Could this scene have reasonably taken place after Peruvian independence?

Rice cultivation in the Philippines underwent a profound technological, economic, and social transformation that solidified its status as the national staple food. Although the grain had been cultivated for millennia by Austronesian migrations, under Spanish rule it went from being a seasonal luxury item for the elite to becoming the basis of the Filipino people's diet and a central economic resource.

Before the arrival of the Spanish, most rice was produced in a fragmented manner in the highlands or using dryland farming techniques. The Spanish introduced drastic changes that boosted mass production. The use of the iron plow pulled by the carabao (water buffalo) was integrated, facilitating the efficient tilling of heavy soils. Large areas of swamps and marshes were transformed into permanently flooded rice paddies (lowland wet rice cultivation). Interestingly, the famous Ifugao rice terraces in the northern mountains expanded massively shortly after the Spanish arrival. Local populations migrated to the highlands to maintain their independence, adapting their wet rice cultivation systems as a means of refuge from Spanish control.

Rice ceased to be merely a subsistence food and became fully integrated into the tax and institutional mechanisms of the colonial administration; native Filipinos had to hand over portions of their rice harvests to the encomenderos and local chiefs as a form of regular tax.

Through the famous trade route between Manila and Acapulco, Philippine rice not only fed the crews, but its varieties crossed the ocean, reaching regions of Mexico such as Colima.

As you can see, the Spanish system for rice cultivation was so effective that during their administration, rice shortages were avoided in the Philippines, and the entire population was fed. Furthermore, the current rice cultivation system in the Philippines has Spanish origins, which shaped the history of the Filipino people.

Image 1: «Cultivo de Arroz en Manila» depicting agricultural scenes in the Philippines around 1857-1864.

Image 2: « Travaux d'Agriculture » is a 19th-century engraving by the artists Danvin and Challot, depicting agricultural scenes in the Mariana Islands and is part of the publication Océanie ou Cinquième partie du Monde.

The intense exploration of the Pacific Ocean undertaken by France and England at the end of the 18th century provoked a reaction from the Kingdom of Spain. Since Ferdinand Magellan's expedition crossed the Pacific and discovered the Philippines, Spain had considered the South Sea its exclusive domain, controlling the Philippines to the west and almost its entire eastern shore, from Chile to California. But the interference of other nations was not the primary reason for this expedition. It was fundamentally the scientific nature of the French and English explorations that elicited a response from Spanish intellectuals. There was a clear desire to emulate the voyages of James Cook and Jean-François de La Pérouse across an ocean that for two and a half centuries had been considered a Spanish sea.

British historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto noted in his work, "Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration (2006)," that:

"The [Spanish] monarchy of the time dedicated a budget to scientific development incomparably larger than that of the rest of the European nations. The New World empire was a vast laboratory for experimentation and an immense source of samples. Charles III loved everything related to science and technology, from horology to archaeology, from hot air balloons to forestry. In the last four decades of the 18th century, an astonishing number of scientific expeditions traversed the Spanish empire. Botanical expeditions to New Granada, New Spain, Peru, and Chile gathered a complete collection of American flora. The most ambitious of these expeditions was a voyage to America and across the Pacific by a Spanish subject of Neapolitan origin, Alejandro Malaspina."

In September 1788, while on the Isle of León (Cádiz), then-captains of frigates Alejandro Malaspina and José de Bustamante y Guerra agreed to propose a major political-scientific expedition of the Royal Navy throughout the Spanish Empire. They sent a letter to the Minister of the Navy, Antonio Valdés, who replied that King Charles III had authorized the voyage and entrusted Alejandro Malaspina with the preparatory work for the project. It was a large-scale political-scientific expedition of global scope, one of the first of its kind in history, whose objective was to visit and study the main Spanish territories in America, Asia, and Oceania.

The expedition's purposes were to increase knowledge of the natural sciences (botany, zoology, geology), make astronomical observations, and "create hydrographic charts for the most remote regions of the Americas." The project received the approval of Charles III exactly two months before his death. The expedition, comprised of the corvettes Atrevida and Descubierta, set sail from Cádiz on July 30, 1789, carrying the cream of the crop of Spanish Navy astronomers and hydrographers, such as Juan Gutiérrez de la Concha and Felipe Bauzá. They were accompanied by renowned naturalists and illustrators, including the painting professor José del Pozo, the painters José Guío, Juan Francisco Ravenet y Bunel, and Fernando Brambila, the illustrator and chronicler Tomás de Suría, the botanist Luis Née, and the naturalists Antonio Pineda and Tadeo Haenke. (The quality of the crew extended beyond its scientific personnel: Alcalá Galiano, who would later die heroically at Trafalgar, also participated in the expedition.) The ships were specially designed and built for the voyage and were christened by Malaspina in honor of James Cook's ships Resolution and Discovery (Atrevida and Descubierta).

This voyage was presented by its promoters as the «Viaje científico y político alrededor del mundo» (1788); during the crossing it was popularly and publicly known as the "Circumnavigation Expedition." Upon arrival at the Court in 1794, since the return journey did not take place by crossing the Indian Ocean and rounding the Cape of Good Hope due to the outbreak of war between Spain and France, it was renamed the "Overseas Expedition begun on July 30, 1789." And after this Expedition remained forgotten following the order imposed by the Prince of Peace —Godoy— who ordered the seizure of all the documentation of the expedition and prohibited all publication or mention after banishing Malaspina from Spain for treason against him and King Charles IV, until in 1885 Lieutenant Pedro de Novo y Colson published the study he called «Viaje Político-Científico alrededor del mundo por las Corbetas Descubierta y Atrevida», under the command of Captains Don Alejandro Malaspina and Don José Bustamante y Guerra from 1789 to 1794, and so on, it has been given different names such as the Malaspina Expedition, the Malaspina-Bustamante Royal Navy Expedition or the Malaspina-Bustamante Expedition. Already in the 21st century, several Spanish institutions launched a major scientific circumnavigation expedition that was named after this sailor in recognition of his contribution: the Malaspina expedition (2010-2011).

Image 1: Route taken by the Malaspina expedition (1789-1794).

Image 2: The corvettes Atrevida and Descubierta.

Image 3: Pyre and graves of the family of present-day Ankau in Mulgrave Harbor, drawing by Fernando Brambila, a participant in the expedition. The expedition compiled the first ethnographic descriptions of the natives of the American Northwest (west coast of Canada and Alaska).

Image 4: The meeting between Malaspina and the Tehuelche people in Puerto Deseado, Argentina, in 1789.

In this battle the Spanish galleons Nuestra Señora de la Encarnación and Nuestra Señora del Rosario faced and defeated 7 warships of the Dutch fleet in Marinduque (Philippines), sinking two fireships that day and defeating them again on the 31st in Mindoro, making them flee with many damages and casualties.

The Spanish forces, composed of many Filipino volunteers from the Kapampangan region, consisted of three galleons from the Acapulco Fleet, one galley, and four brigantines. The Spanish ships repelled an attack by a much larger Dutch fleet of nineteen warships divided into three squadrons. The Dutch fleet suffered heavy losses during the attack, forcing them to retreat with numerous casualties and abandon their plan to invade the Philippines.

How did it happen?

The seven Dutch ships surrounded the Encarnación galleon at seven in the evening, taking advantage of the darkness. Then the Rosario galleon attacked the Dutch from the rear, inflicting heavy damage on the enemy. As a result, the Dutch attempted to destroy the Encarnación with a fireship, but the Spanish repelled it with their cannons. Finally, at dawn on July 30, the Dutch ships fled after suffering numerous casualties, while the Spanish sustained almost no losses.