Writing and Power in the Conquest of America

Abstract

The Andean and Mesoamerican communication systems, predominantly oral, did not lend themselves to supraregional intellectual exchange. Whereas Europeans had by 1500 accumulated and manipulated considerable experience of the diversity of the then known world's cultures, largely as a result of the spatial and temporal mobility of written documents, the pre-Hispanic societies had to be content with experiences that were relatively regional and, except in Mesoamerica, restricted in time. Exaggerating somewhat, one might say that whereas Europeans could to some extent imagine the functioning of non-Western societies, partly because of their reading of Herodotus, Marco Polo, and the chroniclers of the 15th-century African expeditions, the indigenous inhabitants of the continent discovered by Columbus had to depend at first on classifying the intruders in terms of the mythic idea of the return of some divinity. From this it should be evident that the introduction of writing transformed the American system of communication. With the alphabet came not only experience of a boundless world previously unknown but, above all, an exercise of power that was not only administrative and conservative but also prospective, exploratory, and expansionist. Imbued with the universality of Christianity and its scriptures, Europeans had prepared themselves for the conquest of new worlds before actually being sure they existed. The scripture and its corollaries (theological-philosophical-grammatical systems) granted them the right to pursue an expansionist practice. In societies with an official notational system, written documents represent power: local or regional power in Hispanic America, universalizing power for the Christian empire. Undoubtedly the technical characteristics of the alphabet favored these ambitions. European writing, through its capacity