Indian Captivity in Spanish America: Frontier Narratives. By Fernando Opere, trans. Gustavo Pellon. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008. xxxiv, 289 pp. Cloth, $59.50, ISBN 978-0-8139-2586-8. Paper, $22.50, ISBN 978-0-8139-2587-5.)

Abstract

From its beginnings in the seventeenth century, the captivity narrative had a long run as a staple of English American literature and served a variety of cultural aims. Moreover, it engaged and helped shape notions of the “frontier,” one of the most potent cultural myths of Anglo-America. In Latin America, by contrast, the captivity genre typically has been ignored, and the concept of the frontier never assumed mythic qualities around which to forge colonial or national visions. Indian Captivity in Spanish America is an important “first step” (p. x) in giving voice to the thousands of Hispanic captives who lived among indigenous peoples; through this reclamation effort the author also brings to light the dynamics of various frontiers of Spanish America. Working as both a literary scholar and a historian, Fernando Operé ranges widely in his search for Spanish American literature pertaining to captivity on the frontier—from sixteenth-century Florida to the borderlands of Comanchería and the hinterlands of Chile and Argentina in the colonial era and nineteenth century to the southern fringes of Venezuela in modern times. Operé is at his best when examining and analyzing the literature and historical dynamics of the frontiers of the Southern Cone. The paucity of contemporary formal literature forces the author to draw on archival documents and specialized secondary works to describe the experiences of captives held by indigenous groups. He does a good job of periodizing the phases of frontier conflict and contextualizing the literature he examines. Indian raids and Spanish counterraids reshaped the economies and cultures of these zones of conflict, and central to these events were Spanishspeaking captives, whose experiences in native society varied widely, from existing precariously as marginalized drudges to being fully incorporated as wives, mothers, artisans, interpreters, and scribes. Despite (or maybe due to) the transformative potential of the frontier, government authorities and cultural elites rarely showed interest in the stories of captives and only in ways that suited their larger aims.