Cicero in the Land of Coatlicue: Renaissance Humanism in Colonial Mexico

In the final quarter of the eighteenth century, Diego José Abad, a Mexican Jesuit scholar and poet, wrote a fierce defense of the abilities of creole Spaniards and other inhabitants of the Americas. His Dissertatio took on pseudo-scientific Enlightenment authors Cornelius De Pauw and Georges-Louis Leclerc Buffon, who posited that nothing originating in the Americas could be fully or properly developed due to the poor climate there. Abad retorted that the climate in the Americas was so nice as to be conducive to genius and concluded: "wherever we men are born, we are made of the same clay."

This appeal to an essential humanity, and the fact that it was written in Latin, make an interesting point of entry for a discussion of Mexican Humanism. In what local tradition of Humanism, if any, did Abad's Dissertatio find itself? Why write such a work in Latin at a time when the majority of publications were being printed in vernacular languages? In this talk, I will briefly discuss the historical interest in and character of Humanism in Mexico. Then, I will examine evidence of Humanist influence in Mexican visual culture through architecture and artworks dating from the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. Why is it important to consider Mexican artwork under the rubric of Humanism? For too long, the study of Colonial Mexican art has vacillated between simplistic dialectics--religious/secular, fine/decorative, and cosmopolitan/vernacular. By considering broader philosophical currents, we may breech some of these divisions and gain a more nuanced understanding of cultural production.