Americanismos en la "Crónica de la Nueva España" de Francisco Cervantes de Salazar

Abstract

Francisco Cervantes de Salazar was born in Toledo around 1518 and diedin Mexico in 1575. He was one of the first humanists who went to the NewWorld, around the year of 1550. His life, therefore, was divided into two parts,the first in Spain, and the second in the recently conquered Mexico. The reasonswhy he travelled to Mexico to have a whole new life, are still not very clear, butthe fact remains that he was an exceptional man in the society of New Spain, asociety that was still trying to recover from the open wounds of the conquest. Hewas a humanist and a scholar, one of the few of his kind, in a city that was beingreconstructed from its ruins. Soon he became the rector of the University ofMexico, which had just been created a few months before.He was a very religious man, but also very ambitious. He studied Theologyand later tried vainly to promote himself to a new position in the church of NewSpain. Some letters said that he even tried to become a bishop, but the fact isthat he never got a main role in the hierarchy. We have some testimonies thatprove that he had some good friends who protected him, but he also hadrelentless enemies who wanted to destroy his hopes.We have divided our work into several chapters that seek to present acomplete portrayal of the humanist, and then we proceed to study his main workknown as Crónica de la Nueva España...