Nueva York (1613-1945)
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Nueva York (1613-1945) Large Print Exhibition Text Labels English PLEASE RETURN WHEN YOU ARE FINISHED 2 Nueva York (1613-1945) Today's "Nueva York," the city's massive and diverse constellation of Spanish-speaking residents, is a relatively recent phenomenon. It began with the surge of new arrivals from Puerto Rico in the 1940s, and expanded in size and composition over roughly the last half century. But long before that, around the time of the American Revolution, a stream of Spanish-speaking immigrants began trickling into the city. Over the 19th and 20th centuries, that stream evolved into an ample river, fed by a network of Latin American and Spanish tributaries. And then, after World War II, it widened out into a mighty delta. Contemporary Nueva York thus has deep roots in the city—a history not of decades but of centuries. Yet the city's relationship with the Spanish-speaking world goes back even farther than the Revolution, back to its very beginnings. And the interactions among Spain, Latin America, and New York had a much bigger influence on shaping the wider city's development than is generally realized. They left a major mark on contemporary New York's commercial, cultural, manufacturing, and financial arrangements. Nueva York (1613-1945) brings these two story lines together for the first time. 3 Gallery 1: Empires and Revolutions: 1613–1825 Labels begin with painting of King Philip IV and continue clockwise through the gallery King Philip IV and the Spanish Empire From 1621 to 1665, Philip IV ruled over an empire that stretched from Spain to the Philippines. This powerful monarch chose his kingdom’s greatest artist for his court painter. In 1623, Diego Velázquez painted one of the first of many images of Philip, capturing the king as a young man with smooth, unlined skin, so unlike the war- and time-worn monarch who appears in the famous 1644 portrait in The Frick Collection (New York) or in the artist’s masterpiece, the 1656 Las Meninas in the Prado. Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (Spain, 1599– 1660), Portrait of King Philip IV , 1623–24. Oil on canvas. Meadows Museum, SMU, Dallas, Algur H. Meadows Collection, MM.67.23. Dutch New Amsterdam vs. the Spanish Empire In the 1620s, New Amsterdam (soon to be New York) was a tiny Dutch village with an excellent harbor in the colony of New Netherland. The Dutch West India Company—a militarized private corporation—founded the port to trade in furs, pelts, and lumber. But New Amsterdam was also meant to serve as a base against Spain’s vast empire in the western hemisphere. The Dutch hated the Spanish, to whose monarch they were subject, and had long been in revolt. In 1647, to bolster their North American outpost, the Dutch West India Company transferred Peter Stuyvesant up to New Amsterdam from its Caribbean base of operations in 4 Curaçao. Stuyvesant, who had assaulted the Spanish-held island of St. Martin (losing his leg in the process), now assumed the formal title, “Director-General of New Netherland, Curaçao, Bonaire, and Aruba.” Next label: on the end of the gallery dividing wall New York's First Spanish-speaking Resident In 1613, a Dutch ship left ashore here a man they called Jan Rodrigues, described as "a mulatto born in St. Domingo." He was given a musket, a sword, some knives, and eighty hatchets, probably for trading with the Indians, and was still here when the Dutch returned the following year. And so it was that a Spanish-speaking Afro- Caribbean became the first known non-native resident of New York City. Jan Rodrigues vanished from recorded history in 1614, but scholars are trying to track him down. Could he be the Juan Rodrigues who married Ana Gonsales in 1591? Or the Joan Rodrigues accused by Spain in 1605 of illegally trading with the Dutch? The hunt for answers has begun. Indian axe , 17th century. New-York Historical Society, Gift of R.W.G. Vail, 1946.71. Juan Rodrigues, Ana Gonsales, Libro de Matrimonios , May 27, 1591. Archivo Diocesano de Santo Domingo. Courtesy of CUNY Dominican Studies Institute. Juan Rodrigues and ten others accused of smuggling, 1605. Archivo General de Indias, Seville. Courtesy of CUNY Dominican Studies Institute Next label: on the wall nearest the gallery entrance 5 Spanish Treasure and Dutch Privateers Using forced Indian and African labor, Spain extracted fabulous wealth from silver mines throughout Spanish America, particularly at Potosí’s “El Cerro Rico” (Rich Mountain) in present-day Bolivia. Spanish ships ferried the silver to Havana, Cuba for transfer to heavily guarded fleets, which departed for Spain twice a year. The Dutch West India Company raided the convoys rather than assault Spanish strongholds like Mexico and Peru. In 1628, Admiral Piet Hein scored a celebrated victory, intercepting the treasure fleet before it left Cuba with twelve million guilders worth of silver and other goods. Among the booty was cochineal—the most brilliant and durable red dye available to weavers and painters. Coveted by Europeans, cochineal yielded 17 th -century Spain more revenue than all other New World products besides silver. Piet Hein , ca. 1629. Engraving. John Carter Brown Library at Brown University. Panel, 17th century. Lent by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund and Director's Discretionary Fund, 1984 (1984.301a). Silver bar, ca. 1522–35. Courtesy of The American Numismatic Society. Competition for Cochineal Pre-Hispanic peoples nurtured cochineal insects on prickly pear cactus, then extracted a crimson dye from the dried and crushed remains of the females. Spanish conquistadores quickly discovered cochineal’s value, and by the mid-1500s, Spanish ships were carting home 6 enormous quantities of the dried insects packed in leather bags. Since the cochineal insect could not be cultivated in Europe, Spain’s rivals now had another reason for seeking to seize Spanish possessions. In his treatise of 1777, Mexican scientist and patriot José Antonio de Alzate y Ramírez celebrated local expertise with cochineal. Spain may have claimed Mexico for itself, but Alzate’s text claimed cochineal for Mexico. José Antonio de Alzate y Ramírez, Gaceta de literatura de México: por, Socio Correspondiente de la Real Academia de las Ciencias de París, del Real Jardín Botánico de Madrid, y de la Sociedad Bascongada , 1792. On loan from The Hispanic Society of America, New York. Cochineal: Crimson Gold Ground into paint and infused into dye, cochineal produced the scarlets and crimsons that painters and master dyers used to create sumptuous art, clothing, and furnishings. Vibrant reds signified power and prestige in Renaissance Europe. And it was cochineal that put the red into the “red coats” worn by the British military. José Antonio de Alzate y Ramí rez (1737–99), Memoria sobre la naturaleza, cultivo, y beneficio de la grana , 1777. Reproduction. Edward E. Ayer Manuscript Collection, The Newberry Library, Chicago. Alonzo Sánchez Coello (Spain, 1531/32–1588), Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia and Magdalena Ruiz . Reproduction. Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain. Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY. Map: The Atlantic World 1664; Selected Trade Routes Between the Old and New World 7 In 1664, when Britain seized New Amsterdam from the Dutch and renamed it New York, Spain and Portugal dominated the New World. Their conquests, dating back to the days of Columbus, had left them in command of vast territories, whose riches they extracted with slave labor and shipped in heavily guarded fleets. Other Europeans had established only a few hemispheric footholds, in North American port towns and on Caribbean islands. These infant empires, busy establishing their own New World trade routes, also profited from selling goods and slaves to Spanish and Portuguese colonists, and preying upon the treasure ships headed to Spain. British New York vs. the Spanish Empire In 1664, the British took New Amsterdam from the Dutch and renamed it New York. The city thus became part of a new would-be empire. Like the Dutch, the English sought to expand at the expense of the Spanish. Like the Dutch, the English were Protestants, and for most of their reign repressed Catholicism in New York. Like the Dutch, who had fought to liberate themselves from Spanish rule, the English developed a cultural antipathy to Spain, branding their rivals as barbarous, despotic, and cruel. And colonial New Yorkers, like colonial Nieuw Amsterdammers, absorbed the medley of Dutch and British fears and prejudices about the Spanish that became known as the “Black Legend.” The Black Legend Dutch and English animosity for the Spanish was stoked by indictments of Spain’s New World conquests, such as the Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1552), written by Spanish priest Bartolomé de las Casas. 8 Spain’s enemies translated and circulated the las Casas text—newly illustrated with horrific images by Theodor de Bry—and also distributed inflammatory engravings depicting Spanish cruelty to the Dutch. This helped foster a conviction that Spaniards were more violent than other people, creating the “Black Legend” that would dominate attitudes to Spain for centuries. Franz Hogenberg. “The Spanish Fury at Antwerp,” [1576], in Jan Evertszoon Cloppenburch, "Le miroir de la cruelle, & horrible tyrannie espagnole perpetree au Pays Bas ...," 1620. Reproduction. Hyde Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University. Bartolomé de las Casas, Regionum Indicarum per Hispanos olim devastatarum accuratissima descrptio: insertis figuris æneis ad vivum fabrefactis . Heidelbergae: typis Guilielmi VValteri acad. typogr. A.S., 1664. Reproductions. New-York Historical Society. New York and the Imperial Wars In 1741, with British troops off fighting the Spanish in the War of Jenkins’ Ear (1739-48), white New Yorkers uncovered a supposed slave conspiracy to seize the town for the Spanish crown.