“The Deathless Narrative of His Achievements”: The Veneration of the Spanish Imperial Past in the US Colonial Experience

This paper explores the connections that have existed between influential Americans and Spain’s imperial legacy, in both the metropole and the periphery of the American Empire, since the early portion of the nineteenth century. Rather than suddenly emerging at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, this paper will argue that influential Americans acculturated the Spanish imperial narrative throughout the nineteenth century, and continued to do so in the periphery of the American Empire during the early decades of the twentieth century. Through the monumentalization and veneration of Spanish explorers, such as Ferdinand Magellan and his “deathless narrative;” members of Spain’s royal family; religious figures; and former colonial officials; agents of the American Empire attempted to justify their imperial desires by using Spain’s imperial past as the foundation for the American historical narrative. In response to American efforts to validate the existence of their empire, the colonial inhabitants of the American Empire also borrowed from Spain’s imperial past; in an attempt to justify their agency by establishing an inter-Hispanic cultural bond with their former colonial overseers.