Creole Patriotism and the Colonial Archive

doi:10.1017/9781009314008.016

Chapter 12 - Creole Patriotism and the Colonial Archive

Francisco de Florencia and the Early Florida Frontier

from Part III - Transgressing

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 August 2025

Jason Dyck

Edited by

Kenya C. Dworkin y Méndez and

Elisa Sampson Vera Tudela

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Kenya C. Dworkin y Méndez: Affiliation:
Carnegie Mellon University
Elisa Sampson Vera Tudela: Affiliation:
King's College London

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Summary

Although several scholars have expanded their selection criteria when editing anthologies of Latinx literature, they rarely include writings by colonial Creoles. Focusing on Francisco de Florencia (1620–1695), this chapter argues that his 1694 provincial chronicle of the Jesuits in New Spain deserves to be studied with other colonial texts that have been described as “symbolic precursors” to Latinx writings. Unlike other Spanish explorers and missionaries who traveled to the Spanish Borderlands, Florencia was born there; his hometown was Saint Augustine, he lived most of his life in Mexico City, and he spent almost a decade in southern Europe representing his religious province. Florencia’s frontier crossings offer early modern examples of border crossings, themes that emerge in the ways he deals with transnational experiences and influences, questions of belonging, and a sense of space. Even though sacred (or ecclesiastical) history is often overlooked in studies of Latinx literature, an analysis of the ways in which Florencia engages with earlier Spanish accounts of the Jesuit missions in La Florida is a unique window onto Creole identities in the early modern Spanish world.

Keywords

Sacred history ecclesiastical history Florida Saint Augustine Jesuits Francisco de Florencia frontier borderlands Creole patriotism Creole creolism criolloismo criollo Latinx literature archives

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Type: Chapter
Information: Latinx Literature in Transition, 1444–1886 , pp. 271 - 292

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009314008.016 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2025

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