José-Juan López-Portillo. “Another Jerusalem”

Based on his doctoral thesis, the main argument in José-Juan López-Portillo’s “Another Jerusalem”: Political Legitimacy and Courtly Government in the Kingdom of New Spain (1535–1568) is that the source for royal legitimacy in Habsburg New Spain rested in the enfranchisement of its inhabitants, mediated at the court of the viceroys in Mexico City. This model of relatively autonomous politics, resting on principal citizens and viceregal preponderance, was constructed between 1535 and 1568 mainly by viceroys Antonio de Mendoza and Luis de Velasco. The type of government that replaced the conquerors’ project of becoming rulers, as heirs to the native imperial lords subjected to the Spanish Crown’s authority, lasted until the beginning of the eighteenth century. King Charles V, distrustful after the recent Comunero Revolt in the Iberian Peninsula, decided to put the loyal noblemen of his court in charge of the new territories. Against his wishes, that decision brought the emergence of a patrimonial government that the implementation of the New Laws could not radically alter. Court patronage developed together with a set of ideals that emphasized nobility, personal service, justice, religious conversion, and the perception of New Spain as an especially virtuous kingdom, or—as missionary and chronicler Motolinía would put it—“another Jerusalem” (quoted on 1). López-Portillo’s assertion relies upon the assembly of an exhaustive bibliography on the topic that includes chronicles and unpublished documents related to viceroys and outstanding central Mexico Spaniards and Indians from the Archivo General de Indias, in Seville, and the Archivo General de la Nación, in Mexico City. All these materials make it possible for the author to identify behaviors and deduce cultural horizons. Method does not receive any significant treatment.

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