Detail of a printed book shows text in French.
Detail of a printed book shows text in French on the title page reading "Letter aux espagnols américains."
Detail of a printed book shows text in French.

Lettre aux Espagnols-Américains

Juan Pablo Vizcardo y Guzman
1799

This text, supposedly published in Philadelphia, takes a vicious swipe at the colonial government of Spanish America, from a Creole self-fashioned in the image of Washington and Franklin in North America. The prose is searing: “As we travel through these sad lands from one end to the other, everywhere we find the same desolation, everywhere an avarice that is as unbounded as it is insatiable, everywhere the most abominable traffic of injustice and inhumanity on the part of the blood-sucking minions of the government meant to oppress us.” The JCB published a facsimile of this book in 2002.

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