Conquest Of New Spain Research Articles

Amber Brian, Bradley Benton, Peter B. Villella and Pablo García Loaeza, translators and editors. History of the Chichimeca Nation: Don Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl’s Seventeenth-Century Chronicle of Ancient Mexico

Amber Brian, Bradley Benton, Peter B. Villella and Pablo García Loaeza, translators and editors. <i>History of the Chichimeca Nation: Don Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl’s Seventeenth-Century Chronicle of Ancient Mexico</i>

Una escena de traducción en América Latina: “Las dos orillas” de Carlos Fuentes

In his short story “The two shores” the Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes (The Orange Tree, 1993) fictionalizes language contact. In this apocryphal rewriting of the chronicle of Bernal Díaz del Castillo, The True History of the Conquest of New Spain, the author puts translation on the centre stage by focusing on the ambiguous relations between the two top interpreters of Spanish con queror Hernán Cortés: Jerónimo de Aguilar and La Malinche. Besides, translation is also the genetic source of the story since it is itself an adaptation of an existing chronicle. In Fuentes’s version, Aguilar consciously distorts Cortés ’s words in order to reveal the con queror’s true intentions and to demonstrate his solidarity with the indigenous populations, the Aztecs and the Mayas. The story can be read as a reflection on the complex loyalties of translators and on lan guage ’s colonizing potential. It reconsiders the function of translation, which is presented as performative speech act rather than as a purely reproductive form of transfer. According to Fuentes, translation is an activity that is caught in a double bind as it harbors a potential for disruption and betrayal as well as for subversion.

Armamento y tributo indígena: una aportación a la Historia de la Conquista desde los documentos jurídico-administrativos

El armamento usado por los españoles es uno de los grandes temas pendientes para alcanzar una visión más completa y dinámica de la Conquista de la Nueva España. Aunque existen algunos estudios que abordan el tema su enfoque historiográfico se restringe al uso de códices y crónicas para su descripción. En este sentido, la obra de Silvio Zavala y el lugar que ocupó el tributo indígena en el abastecimiento del armamento resulta especialmente vigente para hacer un abordaje que permita un paradigma complementario del importante fenómeno rumbo a su V Centenario.

The Native Conquistador. Alva Ixtlilxochitl's Account of the Conquest of New Spain ‐ edited by Brian, Amber, Benton, Bradley and García Loaeza, Pablo

The Native Conquistador. Alva Ixtlilxochitl's Account of the Conquest of New Spain ‐ edited by Brian, Amber, Benton, Bradley and García Loaeza, Pablo

The Conquest Era - The Native Conquistador: Alva Ixtlilxochitl's Account of the Conquest of New Spain. Edited and translated by Amber Brian , Bradley Benton , and Pablo García Loaeza . University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015. Pp. xv, 129. Illustrations. $24.95 paper.

The Conquest Era - The Native Conquistador: Alva Ixtlilxochitl's Account of the Conquest of New Spain. Edited and translated by Amber Brian , Bradley Benton , and Pablo García Loaeza . University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015. Pp. xv, 129. Illustrations. $24.95 paper.

The Native Conquistador: Alva Ixtlilxochitl's Account of the Conquest of New Spain

The Native Conquistador: Alva Ixtlilxochitl's Account of the Conquest of New Spain

The Native conquistador: Alva Ixtlilxochitl's account of the conquest of New Spain

The Native conquistador: Alva Ixtlilxochitl's account of the conquest of New Spain

The True History of The Conquest of New Spain ‐ by Díaz del Castillo, Bernal

The True History of The Conquest of New Spain ‐ by Díaz del Castillo, Bernal

The History of the Conquest of New Spain by Bernal Díaz del Castillo. DAVID CARRASCO (ed.): Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2008.

In one of the six essays accompanyingthis re-edition of Bernal Díaz del Castillo's famous "diary" of theSpanish Conquest of New Spain, which is devoted to the theme of humansacrifice, David Carrasco concludes:The purpose of this essay is not tojustify Aztec ritual killing or condemn the Spaniards for their violence orlack of understanding. Rather, by beginning with Díaz del Castillo's point ofview as an outsider and harsh critic of Aztec rituals, we move to indigenouswords, practices, and perspectives to see through the Spanish account into somedimensions of what the Aztecs and Maya believed they were doing. (465)

Realismo, detalle y experiencia: acerca de la Historia verdadera de Bernal Díaz del Castillo

The past and the different ways in which it is represented in Latin american early chronicles of the conquest of Mexico has been a central issue in Latin american colonial studies in the last few decades. The ambivalent limit between fiction and history, the way in which these chronicles pronounce themselves, The different discursive traditions that constitute each plot are crucial. In this context, the T r u e histor y of the conquest of new spain by Bernal Diaz del Castillo emerges as a paradigmatic case, especially regarding the way in which it is enunciated, the polemics that constitute its plot, the constant reference to the “true history” it is supposed to tell. due to these dimensions, this chronicle has been characterized often as “realistic”. the question we seek to answer in this article is: what do we really mean when we say that the True history … is a “realistic” text?

¡¿Y si Hernán Cortés fuera el padre de la patria?! A propósito del libro Crónica de la Eternidad. ¿Quién escribió la historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España?

¡¿Y si Hernán Cortés fuera el padre de la patria?! A propósito del libro Crónica de la Eternidad. ¿Quién escribió la historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España?

El estatuto del personaje Francisco del Puerto en dos novelas argentinas

Las novelas de Juan José Saer El entenado (1983), que fue publicada por vez primera en la colección “Los mundos posibles”, dirigida por Ricardo Piglia, y de Gonzalo Enrique Marí El grumete Francisco del Puerto (2003) pueden inscribirse diacrónicamente en ese “macrotexto” que bien pudiera tener su inicio en El mar dulce (1927) de Roberto Payró, y en el que el final abierto de esta última, a juicio de Rosa María Grillo: “Permite ver a Francisco del Puerto como ‘fecundador’: cualquiera que sea su suerte, quedarse con los indígenas o volver a España, su figura se presta al mito fundacional y es funcional al designio argentino de aquellos años de reafirmar su pertenencia a la ‘estirpe secular’, ‘blanca’, católica y latina” (Grillo, 2006: 29; Grillo, 2004) Más allá de la existencia de Francisco del Puerto, apenas comprobada (Romano Thuesen, 1995: 43-44 y Grandis, 1994: 425) y de la aventura vital del sujeto histórico, integrante de la fracasada expedición del navegante Juan Díaz de Solís, “a quien se disputaban dos coronas” (Vergés, 1992: 34), el grumete vendría a ser, descontextualizando un verso del poeta argentino Arnaldo Calveyra, amigo de Saer, “un hombre inventado”. Este texto analiza la presencia del mito y sus funciones en esta relación intertextual.

The History of the Conquest of New Spain – By Bernal Díaz del Castillo. Edited by Davíd Carrasco

The History of the Conquest of New Spain – By Bernal Díaz del Castillo. Edited by Davíd Carrasco

The History of the Conquest of New Spain

For a work that is so widely read, cited, and used in the classroom — arguably canonical to Latin American history — it is perhaps surprising that there are not more English-language editions in print of The True History of the Conquest of New Spain by Bernal Díaz del Castillo. One reason may be that the Penguin edition, first published in 1963, is so well known and there are so many copies available for just a few dollars. Another may be that the 1908 translation by Alfred P. Maudslay has stood the test of time; it is elegant and accurate, hardly in need of a replacement. A third reason may be that most scholars tempted by the challenge to create a new edition of Díaz’s book surely realize that what is needed is a comprehensive edition, not an abridged edition but a translation of the entire manuscript, complete with introductory essays and notes reflecting the century of Spanish conquest scholarship published since Maudslay.Davíd Carrasco clearly understands all this and responds in this excellent new edition: it costs a little more than a used Penguin but is nonetheless an affordable, attractive paperback. Rather than attempting to replace Maudslay’s translation, Carrasco has simply used it, adding new introductory material. Recognizing the problems built into prior abridgements, Carrasco has made his own well-considered selection from the larger Díaz text.Four features of this edition recommend it for the classroom; I recently used it as a required reading in class and found that all four of these features contributed to its success. The first is Maudslay’s translation, already praised. The second is Carrasco’s 15-page introduction that succinctly, provocatively, and rather brilliantly places The True History into its historiographical context. Carrasco explains the problems that have stemmed from previous abridgements. By cutting Díaz’s narrative off at the fall of Tenochtitlán in 1521 (the original book covers events from 1514 to 1568), prior editions have misled a half-century of readers into seeing the Spanish conquest as over sooner than it really was and Díaz’s account as more triumphalist than it really was. Carrasco cannot take his edition beyond the 1520s and still keep it short enough for classroom usage, but the post-1521 material that he includes amounts to almost a fifth of his whole edition.Third, eight brief essays following the text are designed to guide and stimulate classroom discussion and aid students in crafting book reports or course papers. Rolena Adorno’s essay complements Carrasco’s introduction effectively, providing an intelligent and accessible summary of who Díaz was and how his book is not a “true history” (as Díaz titled it) but an artful work of “polemical argumentation” (p. 394). Adorno’s essay is adapted from her recent book The Polemics of Possession in Spanish American Narrative; similarly Sandra Messinger Cypess here adapts a chapter from her 1991 book La Malinche in Mexican Literature from History to Myth. Five of the essays are by Carrasco, each deftly analyzing a moment or theme in Díaz’s text — from the issues surrounding “human sacrifice” to Cortés cutting a cross into a ceiba tree. There is also an essay by Karen Vieira Powers.Fourth, a relatively minor feature, but one that students in my class much appreciated, is the inclusion of five maps from Maudslay’s original edition with new captions by Carrasco. The editor is to be commended on the thought that has gone into this volume, as is the press for its care in production. All instructors who would use Bernal Díaz in the classroom should seriously consider adopting this fine new edition.

The History of the Conquest of New Spain

The History of the Conquest of New Spain

The history of the conquest of New Spain

History of the Conquest of New by Bernal Diaz del Castillo, a new abridgement of Diaz del Castillo's classic Historia verdadera de la conquista de Nueva Espana, offers a unique contribution to our understanding of the political and religious forces that drove the great cultural encounter between Spain and the Americas known as the 'conquest of Mexico.' Besides containing important passages, scenes, and events excluded from other abridgements, this edition includes eight useful interpretive essays that address indigenous religions and cultural practices, sexuality during the early colonial period, the roles of women in indigenous cultures, and analysis of the political and economic purposes behind Diaz del Castillo's narrative.A series of maps illuminate the routes of the conquistadors, the organization of indigenous settlements, the struggle for the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, as well as the disastrous Spanish journey to Honduras. The information compiled for this volume offers increased accessibility to the original text, places it in a wider social and narrative context, and encourages further learning, research, and understanding.

André Thevet's ‘true’ portrait of Moctezuma and its European legacy

André Thevet's ‘true’ portrait of Moctezuma and its European legacy

Books Received for Review

BOOKS RECEIVED FOR REVIEW Books currently available for review, The Latin Americanist as of 27 May 2009 Bruce Dean Willis Book Review Editor, TLA University of Tulsa bruce-dean-willis@utulsa.edu Ameringer, Charles D. 2009. The Socialist Impulse: Latin America in the Twentieth Century. UP of Florida. Arnold, Denise Y. and Christine A. Hastorf. 2008. Heads of State: Icons, Power, and Politics in the Ancient and Modern Andes. Left Coast Press. Baker, Geoffrey. 2008. Imposing Harmony: Music and Society in Colonial Cuzco. Duke UP. Bain, Mervyn J. 2008. Russian-Cuban Relations since 1992: Continuing Camaraderie in a Post-Soviet World. Lexington Books. Barmeyer, Niels. 2009. Developing Zapatista Autonomy: Conflict and NGO Involvement in Rebel Chiapas. U New Mexico P. Breton, Andre. 2008. Martinique: Snake Charmer. Trans David W. Seaman. U Texas P. Buchenau, Jurgen and William H. Beezley, eds. 2009. State Governors in the Mexican Revolution, 1910–1952: Portraits in Conflict, Courage, and Corruption. Rowman & Littlefield. Buck-Morss, Susan. 2009. Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History. U Pittsburgh P. Carter, Thomas F. 2008. The Quality of Home Runs: The Passion, Politics, and Language of Cuban Baseball. Duke UP. Clancy, Flora Simmons. 2009. The Monuments of Piedras Negras, An Ancient Mayan City. U New Mexico P. Cohen, Daria. 2008. Demystifying the Female Body in Hispanic Male Authors, 1880–1920. Edwin Mellen. Crabtree, John, and Laurence Whitehead, eds. 2008. Unresolved Tensions: Bolivia Past and Present. U Pittsburgh P. del Rı́o, Vicente and William Siembieda, eds. 2009. Contemporary Urbanism in Brazil: Beyond Brası́lia. UP of Florida. Dı́az del Castillo, Bernal. The History of the Conquest of New Spain. Trans. David Carrasco. U New Mexico P. Dodson, Jualynne E. 2008. Sacred Spaces and Religious Traditions in Oriente Cuba. U New Mexico P. Domı́nguez, Jorge I., and Michael Shifter, eds. 2008. Constructing Democratic Governance in Latin America. 3rd . ed. Johns Hopkins UP. C 2009 Southeastern Council on Latin American Studies and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 107 The Latin Americanist, June 2009 Donahue-Wallace, Kelly. 2008. Art and Architecture of Viceregal Latin America , 1521–1821. U New Mexico P. Duke, Dawn. 2008. Literary Passion, Ideological Commitment: Toward a Legacy of Afro-Cuban and Afro-Brazilian Women Writers. Bucknell UP. Dwyer, John J. 2008. The Agrarian Dispute: The Expropriation of AmericanOwned Rural Land in Postrevolutionary Mexico. Duke UP. Edmonds-Poli, Emily and David A. Shirk. 2009. Contemporary Mexican Politics. Rowman & Littlefield. Escobar, Arturo. 2008. Territories of Difference: place, movements, life, redes. Duke UP. Faingold, Eduardo. 2008. Emigrar después del exilio: De Argentina a Israel. Ediciones Al Margen. Fischer, Brodwyn. 2008. A Poverty of Rights: Citizenship and Inequality in Twentieth-Century Rio de Janeiro. Stanford UP. Fisher, Andrew B. and Matthew D. O’Hara, eds. 2009. Imperial Subjects: Race and Identity in Colonial Latin America. Duke UP. Fuente, Alejandro de la. 2008. Havana and the Atlantic in the Sixteenth Century . U North Carolina P. Funes Monzote, Reinaldo. 2008. From Rainforest to Cane Field in Cuba: An Environmental History since 1492. Trans. Alex Martin. U North Carolina P. Garcés, Elena. 2008. Colombian Women: The Struggle out of Silence. Lexington Books. Goodale, Mark. 2009. Dilemmas of Modernity: Bolivian Encounter with Law and Liberalism. Stanford UP. Gootenberg, Paul. 2008. Andean Cocaine: The Making of a Global Drug. U North Carolina P. Gotkowitz, Laura. 2008. A Revolution for Our Rights: Indigenous Struggles for Land and Justice in Bolivia, 1880–1952. Duke UP. Gould, Jeffrey L. and Aldo Lauria-Santiago. 2008. To Rise in Darkness : Revolution, Repression, and Memory in El Salvador: 1920–1932. Duke UP. Gray, Alexander, and Antoni Kapcia. 2008. The Changing Dynamic of Cuban Civil Society. UP Florida. Guy, Donna J. 2009. Women Build the Welfare State: Performing Charity and Creating Rights in Argentina, 1880–1955. Duke UP. Hagedorn, Dan. 2008. Conquistadors of the Sky: A History of Aviation in Latin America. UP of Florida. Harris, Richard L. and Jorge Nef. 2008. Capital, Power, and Inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean. New Edition. Rowman & Littlefield. Hearn, Adrian H. 2008. Cuba: Religion, Social Capital, and Development. Duke UP. Herschfield, Joanne. 2008. Imagining la Chica Moderna: Women, Nation, and Visual Culture in Mexico, 1917–1936. Duke UP. Joseph, Gilbert M. and Daniela Spenser, eds. 2008. In...

Carlos Fuentes's "The Two Shores": Between Counterfactualism and Cultural Allegory

CARLOS Fuentes's short story Two Shores was written in 1991 and published in The Orange Tree in 1992. The Fifth Centennial of the Spanish arrival to the Americas compelled many Hispanophone intellectuals at the end of the 20th century to reinterrogate critically the significance of this event. In consonance with the discursive politics of postmodernism (see Hutcheon 66), such reinterrogation paid attention not only to its negative effects, but also showed an interest in recovering the voices and discourse of all those who were traditionally marginalized from or oppressed by historical and political processes. The clearest sign of this interest - far beyond the anthropological - for the marginal individual who had been victimized by established power structures in the Latin American nations, was the Nobel Foundation award of the 1992 Peace Prize to a Maya-Quiche woman named Rigoberta Menchu. In this intellectual context, Two Shores represents Fuentes's own contribution to revising the significance and impact of the Spanish arrival to the Americas. Fuentes's marginal narrator is a talking dead man, a sort of Derridean revenant who casts a doubt over the conceptual foundations of the discourse of the present and to whom the reader owes a hospitable welcome as a way of doing justice to the voices that have disappeared from the historical record (Derrida 175). But this narrator is, remarkably enough, not a voice representative of the victims of the genocide, but a Spaniard. Having been captive among the Mayas, Jeronimo de Aguilar has become an acculturated subject, a traitor to the Spanish imperialistic project, and a self-appointed secret champion of the voices silenced by Neither dead nor alive, neither Spanish nor Maya, rooted neither in the present nor in the past, and yet showing all these traits partially, Aguilar manifests the liminal, borderline condition of what Homi Bhabha calls the freak social and cultural displacements that epitomize contemporary literature (12). Through this freak, post-mortem voice of the transculturated Jeronimo de Aguilar, Two Shores illustrates the dialectical conflict at the fictional foundation of post-Columbine culture. The story's representation of the conquest of New Spain in a reverse narrative order portrays the birth of modern Mexico in terms of the clash between the Spanish invading force and the Mesoamerican tribes. Thus, the act of the modern nation is represented as an inherently traumatic event: Europa le ha aranado el rostro para siempre a este Nuevo Mundo que, bien visto, es mas viejo que el europeo (14) Dominick LaCapra defines foundational as that extreme event, real or imaginary that, paradoxically, may turn into the basis of an individual or collective identity (57). LaCapra adds that this trauma may generate an identity-based communion between subjects and enable the vindication of history with a transformative finality over oppressions and abuses in the present: Insofar as [the trauma] fixates one obsessively on old grievances or dubious dynamics and even induces a compulsive reenactment of them, it may also function to undermine the need to come to terms with the past in a manner that constructively engages existential, social, and political demands and possibilities of a current situation. (58) Chapter 0 narrates the alternative possibility of an indigenous American invasion of the Iberian Peninsula. The invasion, aiming to edificar el templo de las cuatro religiones, inscrito con el verbo de Cristo, Mahoma, Abraham y Quetzalcoatl (62) (to edify the temple of the four religions, inscribed with the word of Christ, Muhammad, Abraham, and Quetzalcoatl) has been diversely commented with an emphasis on the perception of alternative history. Alfred MacAdam sees the story as a consolation, a sort of transitory refuge from facts, (440), and Gonzalo Celorio perceives in it a tragically futile attempt to rewrite historical dialog that contrasts with an Aztec cosmology in which history is predetermined (294). …

Tanto puede el ejemplo de los mayores: The Self-Conscious Practice of Missionary History in New Spain

When fray Jeronimo de Mendieta turned, at the end of the sixteenth century, to the discovery and conquest of New Spain in his Historia eclesiastica indiana, he was careful to insist that the milita...