Literatura Sobre La Conquista

Latin-American Literature

The Chronicles
The imperial Eye
The chronicles were at the beginning, a great account about the travels and meetings
with the Other. Occident’s objective was to build stereotypes of the Other in order
to rule them, dominate them.
The chronicles are basically a big collection of heterogeneous texts (the genre
includes diaries, letters, historical letters,geographic descriptions) that are written
between the sixteenth century and seventeenth century, which common reference is
America.
They have different genres, and different producers (like Spanish, Mestizo mixed
race, or Indians). These also establish tensions inside this corpus. That´s precisely
what we are going to see in these 3 chronicles.
One of the main goals of the chronicle is to provideinformation to the Spanish
Crown. Then the goals diversify and the chronicles can also be used to make claims
by the conquerors for their services to the Crown. On the other hand, there could
be chronicles that will be the foundation of the critical discourse of the Spanish
Conquest like and A Short Account of the destruction of the Indies by Las Casas.

Chroniclers
About the conquistadorchronicler such as is Cortés. He presupposes the skill of
writing that many didn´t have. And even though it´s hard to think about a place of
enunciation, we can think in an enunciation of the strategist”, the one who can see,
foresee, act, all this to his convenience, and also he makes use of persuasive
strategies while writing his letters, this also and enunciation of the immediacy.
Aparticular case is the one of the soldier-chronicler, who is writing form the plain,
about the more immediate difficulties, like the hunger, the thirst, the battle, the
death.
Also we have the religious-chronicler, the orders that came to America are the one
who participated in the “spiritual conquest”, and they were in charge of the
Evangelization. The enunciation of these religious-chroniclerswas moralizing and
reformist of the conquest

Hernán Cortés
●

He was born in 1485, in Medillín, Extramadura, Spain.

●

He belonged to a family of lesser nobility.

●

●

●

●

●

●

●

According to the historian Francisco López de Gómora Cortés had a noble
origin. Gómora was his friend.
At the age of 14 years. He was sent to study law at university of Salamanca, hedrops school after two years.
In 1504 he arrived in Santo Domingo, capital of the Hispaniola. He was 19 years.
The governor of Hispaniola is Diego Velázquez. In 1518 he named Cortés
Captain-General and he sent him to an expedition. With Cortés's experience as
an administrator, knowledge gained from many failed expeditions, and his
impeccable rhetoric he was able to gather six ships and 300 men,within a
month.
And in 1519 he conquers Mexico. He makes more military campaigns 1519-1526.
Then the goes back to Spain where he is named in 1529 the Marquis of the
Oxaca Valley. He spends 10 more years in America and then returns to Spain;
in 1541 he participates in the Argel campaign.
He died in 1547.

Tenochtitlán

Letters or despatches to the emperor
Charles V (1520)
Figure ofthe Conquistador
The discourse of HC is the one of the imperial eye. The account of Cortés shows us this
First Person building a “personality”: sagacious, omnipresent, clever, and machiavellian.
The figure of the conqueror was debated in the historiography. They could be seen as
Heroes or Tyrants.
David Brading a famous Mexican historian makes a link between the conquerors and the
medievalideals of a knight. They search “honor and profit”. These ideas are in El Cantar
de Myo Çid (El Poema de Myo Çid or Mio Cid, literally The Song of my Cid ). Based on a
true story.

Irving Leonard in his book “The books of the conqueror” says that the
conqueror responded to three goals: gold, glory, and the gospel.
1) The gold answers to the expenses of the war. The gold is aim and motive...