Collecting Souls for God

As in the first half of the book, it is clear that de las Casas feels genuinely and deeply saddened, also angered and sickened, by the destruction he witnesses in the Americas. He drives this point home by using multiple adjectives to create a stark contrast between the diabolic Spaniards and the virtuous indigenous people, and between the plentiful lands before the Spaniards arrive and after they lay waste to them. He also effectively switches between surmising the actions of the Spaniards in a particular territory, giving a sense of the scale of their cruelty, and giving specific examples, which show the intensity of their cruelty. Some of these specific examples are truly horrific. One image that struck me in particular was in this sentence: “fuera un navio sin aguja y sin carta de marear, guiandose solamente por el rastro de los indios que quedaban en la mar echados del navio muertos” (60).

However, given that de las Casas was a friar, there are many times when he is much more concerned with the spiritual implications of the murder of indigenous people than the worldly suffering it causes. For example, de las Casas clearly disapproves of the Spaniards forcing the indigenous people to dive for pearls, whereby they die from shark bites and the cold, but what really upsets him is that “mueren sin fe y sin sacramentos” and that the Spaniards ignore “los preceptos divinos del amor de Dios y del projimo” (61). Between the unevangelized indigenous people and the diabolic Spaniards the New World is turning out to be one unholy mess.

In fact, what arguably irritates de las Casas the most is that his non-friar countrymen are interfering with his job, which is to go to the New World and collect the souls of indigenous people for God before their mortal bodies perish and their souls are lost forever to Lucifer. You can tell how deeply irked de las Casas is when he describes how the indigenous people want to embrace God, but get angry at the friars when they discover the duplicitous nature of the other Spaniards, who are supposedly Christians (51-52). Another time the Spaniards enslave a group of indigenous people by exploiting the trust that the friars had developed with them, which causes the remaining indigenous people to want to kill the friars (57-58). This book is an appeal to the Spanish king to set things straight in his American colonies; as well as wanting the suffering of indigenous people to end, de las Casas is essentially saying: “Get these incompetent military men out of here and let me get on with my job!”

"Si solamente conocieran a Dios"

I found it interesting to read Bartolome de las Casas right after Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca because we're starting to get a better impression of the various currents of thought on the role of Spain in the New World that were circulating amongst learned people of the time. As we found out, Cabeza de Vaca was an opportunist and a chameleon, he was able to become integrated in indigenous society when his survival depended on it, but also to step back into his European role of colonizer and evangelizer. His position on the treatment of indigenous people is ambiguous; he speaks disapprovingly of the destructive Spaniards, but he seems to be talking from the position of a would-be governor more than a humanitarian, that is, he disapproves of their ineffective governing strategy more than the poor treatment of the indigenous people. For de las Casas, on the other hand, it is clear that the suffering of the indigenous people at the hands of his countrymen pains him deeply.

In this indictment of the cruel and lawless behavior of the Spaniards, de las Casas frequently makes strong accusations such as "abominables y crueles hombres bestiales" (30). Such accusations are of course justified given the list of sadistic practices that he witnessed, but few people would have said them so boldly. de las Casas shows the absurdity of an imperial venture that is allegedly made to bring God and good governance to the people of the New World and ends up slaughtering them. He points out the hypocrisy of "los que se llaman cristianos " who commit such crimes in God's name (49). However, de las Casas never goes so far as to say that the Spanish should never have come to the New World or that they have no place there. Quite the opposite, de las Casas considered the indigenous people "muy capaces y dociles para toda buena doctrina, aptisimos para recibir nuestra santa fe catolica" (15). According to de las Casas the indigenous people deserve humane treatment, but the idea that they have a right to autonomy or cultural sovereignty is clearly far from his mind.

Médico versus Cura

The second half of Naufragios provokes some interesting questions about the real events that underlie this narrative. Firstly - what caused all the indigenous people to be sick and what cured them? Starting in the second half of the book, as Cabeza de Vaca and crew journey onwards, every village they stumble upon is full of sick and dying people. We discover later that other Spaniards have been marauding about in the region; could the indigenous people be sick from a disease newly introduced to the Americas by these Spaniards?

However, what is baffling about this situation is that the indigenous people seem to be cured out of nowhere, what Cabeza de Vaca claims is divine intervention. For example, the indigenous people brought them “cinco enfermos que estaban tollidos y muy malos” and after a prayer session “todos amanecieron tan buenos y sanos, y se fueron tan recios como si nunca hubieran tenido mal ninguno” (156). Does anyone have any guesses as to what is actually going on here? Cabeza de Vaca calls his compatriots “médicos” and himself “cura” – they appear more like the latter than the former – but if so what is curing the indigenous people and why do they flock to the Spaniards with their sick and children? (158). Cabeza de Vaca was known to be over-imaginative in the first half of the book, but is he just inventing miracles to seem more in touch with God?

Christianity really comes to the fore in the second half of Naufragios. The first mission of these men was to conquer and govern, which was shattered by natural forces and they became preoccupied with survival, but then they pick up evangelization as their new mission. This is initially linked to the supposed medical attention provided by Cabeza de Vaca and the others; as he reports, the indigenous people “nos venían a buscar para que los curásemos y santiguásemos sus hijos” (158). Later, Cabeza de Vaca and crew stop “curing” the sick and focus on evangelizing the apparently willing indigenous people, “porque dolientes y sanos, todos querían ir santiguados” (195). They explain about God to various indigenous communities through the dubious language of “señas” and are convinced that “todos los dejáramos cristianos”(196). The apparent evangelization of the indigenous people is the great legacy of Cabeza de Vaca in the Americas.

Cabeza de Vaca reports to the king: “Dios nuestro Señor por su infinita misericordia, quiera que en los días de Vuestra Majestad y debajo de vuestro poder y señorío, estas gentes vengan a ser verdaderamente y con entera voluntad sujetas al verdadero Señor” (213). Of course in the chapters preceding this statement he makes himself out to be the all-important conduit between the indigenous people and the God they have now allegedly accepted. In the final chapters you can imagine the beginnings of religious syncretism, in this case the blending of indigenous and Christian beliefs, you can picture the Spaniards feeling very pleased that they convinced the indigenous people that there is a God in heaven when they already believed this but in a different form. How interesting that on the same page Cabeza de Vaca describes the saving of their souls he describes in passing six Spaniards who "traían quinientos indos hecho esclavos" and sees absolutely no problem with this (213).

Violent Storms and Stones for Dinner

In the first half of Naufragios, Cabeza de Vaca makes many intriguing statements about the people and environment he observes in Latin America. A topic that fascinates me is how people represent natural environments that are not their own, how seemingly objective descriptions of nature have moral undertones, and how judgments made on the nature of a place blur into judgments of the people who live there.

Cabeza de Vaca expresses awe, terror, and frustration in his encounters with the natural world in Latin America. Repeatedly he mentions the destructive power of the climate and the staggering size of the environment. Storms happen frequently and forcefully; when a storm hits the port in Cuba, “todas las casas e iglesias se cayeron, y era necesario que anduviésemos siete u ocho hombres abrazados unos con otros para podernos amparar que el viento no nos llevase” (79). Cabeza de Vaca often mentions the immense trees which have fallen and constantly hinder their path (94, 96). Nature in Latin America is depicted very unlike nature in Europe by Cabeza de Vaca and his contemporaries, it is not pleasantly picturesque and dominated by humankind, but is haphazard and destructive. One could go so far to say it is inherently evil. Cabeza de Vaca describes how anything could happen in “tierra tan extraña y tan mala” and on one occasion, as the footnotes so helpfully point out, he chooses to say that the vipers “matan” instead of merely saying that they are venomous, suggesting malicious intent (103, 144).

Cabeza de Vaca paints the people he encounters with the same brush – they have exaggerated features, are unpredictably dangerous, and have bizarre habits. In one odd passage describing the indigenous people he has seen, he states: “como son tan crecidos de cuerpo y andan desnudos, desde lejos parecen gigantes.” It is hard to say exactly what Cabeza de Vaca was seeing in this moment, but later he reports seeing other indigenous people “no tan grandes como los que atrás dejamos” perhaps indicating that he had finally got his imagination under control (100, 144). Cabeza de Vaca likes to speculate, however, such as in his description of the indigenous diet. As well as roots and grubs, he believes that “si en aquella tierra hubiese piedras que comerían” (144). What would the people back in “civilized” Spanish society think of that?

These descriptions have their purposes of course. It must be established that Latin America is an inherently strange and wild place in order to justify the civilizing mission. Furthermore, such colonial reports back to the king needed to have selling points for further expeditions, thus Cabeza de Vaca stresses that the land is “pobre de gente” and that “sería tierra muy fructífera si fuese labrada y habitada de gente de razón” – how ideal for Spanish colonization! (98, 149)

Introducción

Hola a todos. Me llamo Serena. Soy Canadiense pero no estoy hecha para soportar los inviernos pésimos de este país, entonces tengo planes de migrar al sur lo más pronto posible. Estoy haciendo un double major en español y geografía. Soy la chica más guapa de mi pueblo.