Transculturacion

Discuss the issue of transculturation in at least two texts studied this term

The following essay will explore the theme of transculturation within Abel Posse’s ‘El largo atardecer del caminante’ and Carlos Fuentes’s ‘Las dos orillas’. In order to give an in depth analysis of how transculturation is ascribed within the two texts, this essay will focus on the following topics; Jerónimo deAguilar and his dual Spanish-Mayan identity and Cabeza de Vaca’s Amerindian identity. During the first part of the essay it will be argued that through a dual-identity technique, Fuentes is able to question the uncertainty of whether Jerónimo’s loyalties were tied to his maternal Spanish nation or to his adopted Mayan homeland, thus raising the issue on whether he was or was not fully transculturated.Subsequently the second part of the essay will discuss how Abel Posse’s fictional account allows a further possibility into the study of how far the boundaries of transculturation were pushed in order to prove Cabeza de Vaca’s transculturation during and much after his expedition. It is to note that throughout the remainder of the essay Cabeza de Vaca will be referred to as CDV and Jerónimo deAguilar will be either noted as Jerónimo, Aguilar or subsequently both.
As stated prior it is Posse’s dual-identity technique that allows the reader to question whether Aguilar was truly for or against the conquest of the Mayan people. This is an important question to ask, as it has been stated numerously throughout time that Aguilar was in fact a hero who by acting ‘as Cortés’s indispensableaide, came to symbolize the reintegrated captive, loyal to his culture, his church, and the Spanish crown’ thus alluding to an impossible transculturation as he was very much in tune with his Spanish identity. This is consequently completely tarnished within several chapters of Las dos orillas as a very ambiguous and un-Spanish Jerónimo is rendered which in turn raises a formidable transcultural issueleaving the reader with a sense of intrigue to the ‘other’ Jerónimo, the transculturated version or as Octavio Paz quite aptly puts it ‘(me intriga) no tanto el ‘carácter nacional’ como lo que oculta ese carácter: aquello que esta detrás de la mascara’. This ‘mascara’ has become the heroic Christian like aspect, that has become so accustomed to Jerónimo de Aguilar’s persona, but as Octavio Pazstates, it is under such a mask that one must look, thus giving way to the first issue being scrutinized within this essay; the Spanish-Mayan identity within Jerónimo.
This identity is made apparent throughout the narrative as he is in constantly oscillating from Spanish to Mayan, but it is his Mayan identification that is important to argue as it is the way in which Fuentes is able to portray atransculturated Jerónimo, much in contrast to the heroic one stated prior. We see this ‘other’ side to his identity through his unremitting praise he offers to his Yucatan homeland and for the Aztec culture as a whole. These praises can be first seen at the start of the book where Jerónimo contrasts the overwhelming size of the Aztec capital in comparison to the cities of Spain; ‘Vi el aguaquemada de la laguna sobre la cual se asentó Gran Tenochtitlan, dos veces más grande que Córdoba’. With this quote Fuentes is setting the foundations to a not so conquistador image of Aguilar which is later heightened in the proceeding quote, ‘los rostros han perdido para siempre su belleza oscura, su perfil perfecto: Europa le ha arañado para siempre el rostro a este Nuevo Mundo’. By lamenting thedestruction and proclaiming that ‘Europa le ha arañado’, Fuentes is implying that Jerónimo does not form part of this ‘Europa’, and that he mourns the destruction as if he himself was one of the indigenous inhabitants. As the text continues yet another glorification to Tenochtitlán comes into play, but what makes this one different to the above is his questioning of the Christian authority ‘las...