ABSTRACT

Gómez Pérez wrote a number of letters to the king relating what had been happening, what he had achieved and what he struggled to do, but during the whole time he was in the Philippines he did not receive a single letter from Spain. The reason is simple enough: all but two of the ships setting out from Acapulco failed to arrive and the ones that did manage to get to the Philippines had no letter from the king. 1 And although, technically, the Philippines came under the Viceroy of Nueva España, Gómez Pérez had nothing of significance from him either. This chapter will summarize this one-sided correspondence.