THE DEEP SPANISH ROOTS OF AMERICA

Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Our America: A Hispanic History of the United States (New York: Norton, 2014) ("The  purpose of this book, in short, is to show that there are other US histories than the standard Anglo narrative: in particular, a Spanish history, rolling from south to north and intersecting with the story of the Anglo frontier, provides me with  a narrative yarn, and I thread other histories across and through it. I rotate the usual picture, so that instead or looking at the making of the United Stats from the east, we see what it looks like form the south, with Anglo-America injected or intruded into a Hispanic-accented account. The effect, I hope, is that, instead of the history of blacks, Native Americans, and later migrants becoming add-ons to an anglocentric story, they become equipollent strands in a complex fabric." Id. at xviii. "In consequence of their equivocal recall of British's influence on the western hemisphere, Americans do not like--or, for the most of the recent past, have not liked--to think of the United States as originating in imperialism. The standard myth has sidelined not only the role of Spaniards in founding America but also of English imperialists." Id. at 81."Myths are the motor of history. Facts that happen are often powerless to affect behavior. People act on the basis of falsehoods they believe." Id. at 84. "An old Spanish gypsy curse is, 'May you have lawsuits and win them,' because the costs of victory in litigation are morally and, often, financially ruinous." Id. at 128. "Historically well-educated people in the United States--admittedly, a very small minority--can remember the Alamo with respect for the victors and the Maine with sympathy for the vanquished." Id. at 241. Also, see Julio Ortega, Remapping the Territory," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 1/19/2014.).