Georges Baudot has written a lengthy book (554 pages) which bears a beautiful and suggestive title: Utopia and History in Mexico. In publishing this work, he seems to have had two very clear purposes in mind. The first is to fill an enormous gap since “strange as it may seem, the authentic sources for most of our knowledge about pre-Columbian civilization in central Mexico have never been studied.” (p. ix) The second, is to demonstrate the grandeur of the Franciscan work in the sixteenth century, impelled by millenarian fervor.

With respect to the manner in which Baudot fulfills his first and commendable purpose, there is nothing more to be said after the two articles Dr. Edmundo O'Gorman has published in Historia Mexicana. With regard to the second, I must admit that the reading of the book provoked in me, in almost equal measures, amazement and envy. I will explain. It amazes me (and not just a little) that an author who confronts what is for me, at least, such a difficult topic as Franciscan millenarianism can establish the antecedents of this tendency in only twenty pages (71-90) and utilize for it only a single biblical citation (p. 78, note 14: Revelations XX:4-6). Envy presents itself after concluding that such frugality must be due to the vast culture of the French public to whom the work is addressed.

THE elite of seventeenth century Caracas manifests characteristics which can be related to the colonial nature of the society. Under conditions of imperialism centers of economic and political power are far removed from the local community. The elite in this situation must serve a dual role—it must face inward to master and develop the economic and political resources of the colony and at the same time it must face outward to exchange these resources with the metropole on which it is dependent. In an examination of the colonial society as a whole it appears that the elite is one monolithic group of men performing both these functions. But a study of the internal operation and structure of colonial elites may produce a schema of multiple character types—patrons, brokers and clients. In an environment which favors the operation of patron-clientelism as described in my previous article, “Patrons, Clients and Kin in Seventeenth Century Caracas,” the dual role of the colonial elite may distinguish patrons and brokers. Patrons may control the resources to which the community gives value while brokers transfer the valued resources which they do not control between the local dependency and the imperial system.