ABSTRACT
The phenomenal creation of what came to be known as Spanish America was the result of diverse ethnic, cultural, and racial groups working together under often adverse and even antagonistic circumstances to build a New World, different totally from any other place the world had seen previously. The spilled blood, the broken backbone, and the torn muscle of all the groups contributed to the ultimate marvel of that mammoth undertaking. The Iberian Peninsula, whence those first European adventurers came, was a place deprived of a host of otherwise favorable conditions during the sixteenth century that would have made life quite agreeable and full of bright promise for most inhabitants there. Iberia was aloof from all major currents of European thought; living in a kind of cultural isolation would more properly describe the character of the Iberians at that time.
