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Fernando Cervantes, Politics and Reform in Spain and Viceregal Mexico: The Life and Thought of Juan de Palafox (1600–1659), The English Historical Review, Volume CXXI, Issue 490, February 2006, Pages 218–220, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/cej022
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Politics and Reform in Spain and Viceregal Mexico: The Life and Thought of Juan de Palafox (1600–1659). By CAYETANAÁLVAREZ DE TOLEDO (Oxford: Clarendon P., 2004; pp. xviii + 336. £55).
JUAN DE PALAFOX is one of the most intriguing and paradoxical figures of the Hispanic world in the seventeenth century. Aragonese by birth and a close collaborator of the Count-Duke of Olivares in the crucial reforming years between the late 1620s and the early 1640s, he would eventually be appointed visitor-general of the viceroyalty of New Spain (Mexico) in 1639. This decision came in the wake of a number of attempts by Olivares to bring the American viceroyalties more effectively under central control and into the Union of Arms. The consequent rise in taxes and government intervention had given rise to some alarming incidents of social unrest, notably the revolt against viceroy Gelves in the 1620s.
Olivares' choice of official to deal with the crisis is itself intriguing, for Palafox had been openly critical of the heavy-handed policies favoured by the Count-Duke. There is no doubt, however, that Palafox was genuinely committed to the strengthening of royal authority in America and that he saw his role as visitor-general as central in this endeavour. A key point made by Álvarez de Toledo is that, despite Palafox's loyalty to the Crown, his vision of the structure and workings of the monarchy was destined to clash with the policies and priorities of Olivares and his circle. Take, for instance, Palafox's early initiative to reform the Indian parishes, still predominantly under mendicant control but afflicted by the decline in moral standards that characterised many of the religious orders in the seventeenth century. In just a few months, Palafox achieved a feat that made clear the lengths to which he was prepared to go to implement the principle that all cathedrals had an incontestable claim to demand the payment of tithes. All the same, Álvarez de Toledo shows that the common tendency to see here evidence that Palafox saw himself primarily as an instrument of state intervention is fundamentally mistaken. In fact, Palafox angled his policy specifically in support of the Creoles (American-born Spaniards), presenting himself as their ally in a common endeavour to break the monopoly over land and indigenous labour enjoyed by the (predominantly peninsular) mendicants. Thus, the key factor in Palafox's dispute with the mendicants and, later, a number of Jesuits (but by no means—as is often assumed—the majority of them) lies primarily in his opposition to privileges claimed by closed communities with political and economic independence.