Velázquez in Purgatory: the works and days of a scientist in California

Abstract

While the Creole scientist, Velázquez de León, was pursuing the projects of a visitor from Malaga, José de Gálvez, he absented himself from the University of Mexico and spent two years in the distant peninsula of California. The study of this little-known episode in his life shows us the diversity and complexity of social relations in one of the most remote places in the colony. Velázquez failed in his attempts to improve local mining and in his efforts as right-hand man to the visitor, but he wrote several very interesting descriptions and helped to measure the Transit of Venus from his residence in Santa Ana. His fondness for cards, parties and women will help to show the human side of a figure who is too often typecast in laboratories, chapels and respectable learned institutions.