SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE. For more than 30o years after its discovery Hispanic America was cultur ally as well as politically an Iberian colony. The conquistadores and the missionaries who accompanied them wrote the first Hispanic-American literature in the letters and reports which they sent back to Spain and Portugal telling of their victories with sword and cross. Longer accounts of the conquest like the Sumario de la natural y general historia de las Indias (1526) by Gonzalo Hernandez de Oviedo y Valdes (1478-1557) and La conquista de Mexico y de la nueva Espana (5552) by Francisco Lopez de Gomara (1511-77?) soon followed. The oppressed In dians found a champion in Fray Bartolome de las Casas 1566), whose Brevisima relation de la destruction de las Indias appeared in 1552, but no one of their own blood rose to tell their story until the Inca, Garcilaso de la Vega (154o-1616), pub lished his Comentarios reales (Pt. I. 1609, Pt. II. 1616) and Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl (1568-1648) his Historia Chi chimeca more than a century after the invasion. The colonizing missionaries, notably Padre Jose de Anchieta (153o-97), in Brazil, also produced grammars and lexicons of the Indian lan guages, as well as sermons and hymns.
Before the end of the 16th century Mexico and Lima had be come centres of intellectual activity. A printing press was set up in Mexico in 1539 and charters for a university were granted both cities in 1551. The extent to which letters were cultivated at the viceregal courts may be inferred from the fact that in a contest held at Mexico in 1585 more than 30o poets took part. In colonial poetry, as in that of Europe, Ariosto's influence was dominant throughout the latter half of the century, but the epic, Arauco domado (Lima, 1594) by the Chilean Pedro de Ofia (b. c. 1560) and the long descriptive poem, Grandeza mexicana (Mex ico, 1604) by Bernardo de Balbuena (1568-1627), first bishop of Porto Rico, was constructed on native American themes.
The cult of GOngora, which in the following century superseded that of the Italians, called forth the first important piece of liter ary criticism in America, the Apologetico en favor de D. Luis de GOngora (Lima, 1694) by Juan de Espinosa Medrano, as well as the lyrics and prose selections of the anthology, Ramillete de varias fibres poeticas (1675), collected by Jacinto de Evia (b.
1636), the Mzisica do parnaso of Manoel Botelho de Oliveira (1636-1711) and the poems of Gregorio de Mattos Guerra (1637– 92). While the Mexican-born Juan Ruiz de Alarcon (c. 1580 1639)—generally counted among the great dramatists of Spain— is comparatively free from the affectations of this school, the mystical poems of his compatriot, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (1651-95), plainly show its influence.
In the barren i8th century, except for the epic on national themes, represented in Mexico by the Hernandia (1755) of Fran cisco Ruiz de Leon and in Brazil by Jose Basilio da Gamma's Uruguay (1769) and Jose de Santa Rita Durao's Caramuru (1781), only the long Latin georgic, Rusticatio mexicana, by the Guatemalan Jesuit, Rafael Landivar (I 73 ), the bucolic poems of the Mexican Manuel de Navarrete (1768-1809) and the writings of the group of scientists at Bogota led by Jose Celestino Mutis and Francisco Jose Caldas de serve mention. From this group of Colombian scientists came some of the first martyrs of Spanish-American independence. In Colombia, too, were first printed translations of the prohibited political pamphlets of the French Revolution. These were dis seminated throughout the colonies and together with the writings of men like Jose Joaquin de Lizardi (1774-1827), who criticized Spanish misrule in his journal, El pensador mexicano, and in El periquillo sarniento, the first real American novel, encouraged the colonists to throw off the Spanish yoke.
In all parts of Hispanic-America the revolutionary victories called forth patriotic verse. La victoria de Junin. Canto a Bolivar by Jose Joaquin Olmedo (1784-1847), of Ecuador, was the most successful of these occasional poems. Among the other distin guished poets who wrote in the cause of liberty were Jose Maria Heredia of Cuba, best known for his Himno del des terrado and his ode to Niagara, Jose Fernandez Madrid (1784 1830) and Luis Vargas Tejado of Colombia, Juan Cruz Varela (1794-1839) of Argentina, Jose Bonifacio de Andrade e Silva (1763-1838) of Brazil, and Andres Bello (1781-1865) of Venezuela. Bello, who was to become later one of Spanish Amer ica's greatest scholars, is, however, not remembered for his politi cal verse but for his Silva a la agricultura de la zona torrida.