Galleons from the “Mouth of Hell”: Empire and Religion in Seventeenth Century Acapulco

Abstract

Abstract Scholarship on the Spanish galleon trade has tended to ignore both the importance of religion and the significance of the port of Acapulco. This paper will seek to offset each shortcoming by offering a glimpse into the religious life of Acapulco during the seventeenth century. This glimpse will aim to establish the spatial linkages between religion and economy in the port by (1) identifying the sacred places, practices, and missions of the city, and (2) illustrating how they were intimately related to the galleon trade. Though Acapulco occupied a paradoxical space within the broader Spain’s imperial vision, its unique spiritual cartography continued to be dictated by the aims of that vision. The port provides a unique case study by which to understand the complex and often-contradictory relationship between urbanity, trade, and religiosity in the Spanish empire. It illustrates that the economic and religious structures needed to create heavenly spaces in Spanish colonial holdings also produced unintended byproducts, places where religion and economics merged to produce more unexpected outcomes. Acapulco never became the envisioned heavenly city; yet, throughout the seventeenth century, it continued to demonstrate that economics and religion remained integrally connected.