Spanish American Enlightenment

The ideas of the Spanish Enlightenment, which emphasized reason, science, practicality, clarity rather than obscurantism, and secularism, were transmitted from France to the New World in the eighteenth century, following the establishment of the Bourbon monarchy in Spain. In Spanish America, the ideas of the Enlightenment affected educated elites in major urban centers, especially Mexico City, Lima, and Guatemala, where there were universities founded in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In these centers of learning, American-born Spanish intellectuals were already participants in intellectual and scientific discourse, with Spanish American universities increasingly anti-scholastic and opposed to “untested authority” even before the Spanish Bourbons came to power. The best studied is the University of San Carlos Guatemala, founded in 1676.

History

In Spanish America just as in Spain, the Enlightenment had some aspects of anticlericalism, but many priests were in favor of science and scientific thinking and were practitioners themselves. Some clergy were proponents of the Enlightenment as well as independence. Enlightenment texts circulating in Spanish America have been linked to the intellectual underpinnings of Spanish American independence.

Works by Enlightenment philosophers were owned and read in Spanish America, despite restrictions on the book trade and their inclusion on the Inquisition’s list of forbidden books . The Jesuits were instrumental introducing new trends in philosophy to Spanish America, and following their expulsion in 1767, the Franciscans continued exploring this line of thought. Spanish American secular clergy owned such works, including Mexican priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, whose free-thinking lost him his position as rector of the seminary of San Nicolás and he was sent to the small parish of Dolores.