Samuel de Champlain and his description of Mexico City (1599-1601)
UNAM-Canada
Speakers:
Dra. Alicia Mayer (director of UNAM-Canada)
Dr. Jean-Luc Pilon (retired archaeologist and curator at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Québec)
Moderator:
Gerardo Familiar (historian, Université du Quebec)
Photograph: published in Samuel de Champlain, Les voyages du sieur de Champlain, Paris, chez Jean Berjon (1613).
Towards the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth, Mexico City was already a recognized metropolis and its reputation was well earned as an environment that rivaled Venice. The most beautiful descriptions of the capital of the Viceroyalty of New Spain sprout from the pen of poets such as Francisco Cervantes de Salazar, Bernardo de Balbuena, Antonio de Saavedra y Guzmán, and others. Its prestige attracted the avid attention of Spain's contending nations, particularly France and England, that were eager to expand in the New World and establish permanent colonies that would contribute with abundant gains and riches. In 1599, a young French globetrotter, Samuel de Champlain, who would become a learned sailor, discoverer, cartographer and historian, as well as one of the founders of Canada, stated that he had made a voyage to Mexico City and, later, referred in his Brief Discourse a slight relation of the urban complex and its surroundings. In the present dialogue, historians Jean-Luc Pilon and Alicia Mayer review on the narrative of the supposed voyage, on Champlain's description of the capital and compare those images to those of other writers.
Alicia Mayer
Alicia Mayer completed her Bachelor's, Master's and Ph.D. in History at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
She holds the position of full-time Senior researcher at the Historical Research Institute at UNAM. She is currently the Director of the branch of UNAM in Canada, since 2017.
Her research interests are oriented to the History of ideas, Colonial historiography, Comparative historiography (Europe and America in modern times) and European and Amerindian relationships XVIth-XVIII centuries. She is the author of four books on topics related to these studies. She has participated in multiple interdisciplinary research projects and has organized academic meetings and lectures in Mexico, Spain, the United States, Canada, France, Brazil, Israel, Germany
Dra. Alicia Mayer, (director of UNAM-Canada)
He retired in July 2018 after more than 33 years as an archaeologist and curator at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Québec. His research has been carried out across Canada's northern regions, in Tierra del Fuego and the First World War battlefields of northern France. Dr. Pilon has especially prized the opportunities that his employment offered him to travel through regions far removed from modern developments and to experience the land as it has been for thousands of years.
He has also spent significant research efforts in the Ottawa Valley where the museum and his own hometown are located. During these investigations he has often benefited from the extensive writings of Samuel de Champlain to gain insights into the Indigenous people Champlain was encountering and describing in the beginning of the 17th century.
Jean-Luc Pilon
Dr. Jean-Luc Pilon (retired archaeologist and curator at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Québec)
Gerardo Familiar Ferrer holds a Master’s Degree in Mesoamerican Studies from the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). His research interests include cultural and religious aspects in Mesoamerica, with a particular interest towards the Gulf Coast traditions. He recently completed a Master’s Degree in Museum Studies from UQO, (Université du Québec en Outaouais) conducting a study of the Mesoamerican collection at the Canadian Museum of History. He teaches at UNAM-Canada since 2009 where he has also curated several exhibitions.
Gerardo Familiar
Gerardo Familiar (historian, Université du Quebec)