An intriguing notion that runs counter to most standard comparisons of the British and the Spanish: that they were more similar than you think. In fact, that the English were so like the Spaniards the Atlantic was "Iberianized." Cañizares-Esguerra believes that the Spanish justified their American conquests by creating a "satanic epic" (a phrase used so often it becomes pedantic and annoying), demonizing the Indians and the wilderness. He then says the English did the same thing. The problem is, the "Spanish" tend to all be the religious, and the English is almost always the Puritans. Instead of a conscious copying or "Iberianization," it seems instead that Cañizares-Esguerra is merely underlining a common Christian and Western process of "otherization," making the unknown demonic or evil. All in all, a nifty, wordy book that misses the mark. ( )

This is an excellent 15 page article. Unfortunately it is a 200 page book. It makes the point that both Puritans and Conquistadors used the same sort of crusading rhetoric, portraying the Americas as a battle against Satan's minions. The English begin by portraying the Spanish as Satanic, but switched to the Native Americans as they became the bigger enemy. The larger point of the book is that the history of colonization should be examined as whole rather than broken into Latin America and the area that would become the United States.

The author claims that the book is a response to Huntington's "Who Are We?" which claims that America is fundamentally Anglo, an identity that is threatened by the recent illegal immigration from Mexico. This response fails at a number of levels. First, he takes the Puritans as an example of North American colonization even while he acknowledges that they were not typical of the majority of colonists. Second, his focus is largely on literature and rhetoric, without making any comparison of the structures, motivations and goals of colonization. Third, people actually read Huntington, which is at least interesting even if it is a xenophobic diatribe. The book is painful to read. If he wanted a good response to Huntington, he should have written a letter to the editor. ( )