The battle between Good and Evil in Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo’s "Historia general y natural de las Indias"

Abstract

For Oviedo, America was the Promised Land, the Edenic Garden, but also the Demon Empire. His Historia General y Natural de las Indias, so comprehensive thorough, and so moral, represented the clash of these two scenarios; the struggle waged in the New World between the forces of Good and Evil, both protagonists in their voluminous chronicle. Faced with an exultant nature –symbol of innocence, abundance and divinity–, hunger, plagues, diseases, natural adversities, all capital sins and countless diabolical forces danced for his Historia, like an apocalyptic parade, distressing the reader. From Book XXIX, on the cruelties of Pedrarias Davila and his minions, and called «infernal»; and of the discouraging Book L, on «Infortunios y naufragios», this article focuses on the sufferings of conquered and conquerors, on the way in which Oviedo prosecuted these actants and on how he narrated his tragic avatars on Indian lands.