La Respuesta de Sor Juana

I found Sor Juana to be one of our more challenging readings, but also one of the most enjoyable. The fact that the entire letter is a charade and her many tongue-in-cheek phrases made me smile. As I read I was comparing her rhetorical style with the other authors that we’ve read. The tendency to exaggerate reminded me of De las Casas, but whereas his hyperbolic language was used to emphasize the gravity of his subject, Sor Juana uses it to emphasize the absurdity of this exchange between herself and the bishop, such as when she refers to his “doctisima, discretisima, santisima y amorosisima carta.” There is so much irony in the letter, such as when her references to herself as lowly and simple contrast with the rhetorical sophistication and learned references she uses to write it. Cabeza de Vaca and De las Casas were only concerned with language insofar as Spanish ignorance of indigenous languages meant less successful survival in and governance of the Americas. Garcilaso de la Vega was more concerned with language itself, with the importance of the written word to the history of a people, and the importance of good translation between the indigenous languages and Spanish. Sor Juana, however, is the first author to really play with language, to explore its possibilities of saying one thing and meaning something entirely different.

Overview

The texts that we have read so far show an interesting progression of literature on Latin America; who its authors are, who they write for, what their narrative tactics are, how they conceptualize Latin America, and what the goals of their writing are. Both Cabeza de Vaca and de las Casas addressed their work to the Spanish King. Cabeza de Vaca arguably wrote for the selfish reason of proving his worth to the King by showing his successful evangelization of indigenous people and acquisition of knowledge about the Americas, and his text was successful in that he was commissioned by the King to go on further voyages. De las Casas was deeply disturbed by the treatment of indigenous people by the Spaniards and, risking being considered a traitor to his country, publicly exposed these abuses and appealed to the King to intervene. I am not sure to what extent Spanish colonial policy may have changed as a result of his works. Garcilaso de la Vega wrote to preserve the history of his people, being half indigenous, as well as to provide an account of Spanish corruption in Peru. Only is the latter author conscious of what others have said before him, citing them and praising their work, he is not a groundbreaker but a contributor to a growing body of knowledge on Latin America that was open to all learned people.

I think the most interesting way to compare these authors is through their relationship with imperialism; none of them are military men, government officials, or businessmen looking how to strategically oppress, govern, and extract wealth from the Americas, nor are they detached anthropologists with no political agenda. This is where the concept of hegemony comes in that we talked about in class. These men all sought to govern Latin America through words not arms. Cabeza de Vaca and de Las Casas were proponents of evangelization and that the indigenous people submit themselves willingly to Spanish rule, they wanted to learn the indigenous languages and build churches, and Garcilaso de la Vega praises the Inca government as the model of a civilizing empire, all while attempting to replace the Inca oral tradition with the European written one.

Writing Comentarios Reales

Something that has interested me throughout reading Comentarios Reales is the way it written and how Garcilaso de la Vega understands his role as an author. Despite constantly drawing from the oral histories that he heard in his childhood and the Inca communities he spoke with to write the first half of the book, he has nothing but disdain for this manner of preserving history. According to Garcilaso de la Vega, it was “la desdicha de nuestra patria” that despite their complex and important history and their great cultural and scientific achievements, “porque no tuvieron letras, no dejaron memoria de sus grandres hazanas.” Instead, their history was entrusted to the “flaca y miserable ensenanza de palabra de padres a hijos,” and thereby disappeared.

The goal of Garcilaso de la Vega is to preserve that history, by employing the European practice and style of book writing. As we have noted in class, he calls upon the works of other European authors and cites them very specifically. He is very methodical in his writing, such as in the passage where he describes the racial categories of the “hombre americano.” In the second half of the book, Garcilaso de la Vega moves away from a more distanced anthropological examination of the Inca Empire, ranging from foodstuffs to architecture, to a more involved and story-like account of the Spaniards in Peru. The detail with which Garcilaso de la Vega records the names and ranks of the people involved, the exact sequence of events and direct quotations, proves the point he is making, which is without written language, great quantities of detail become lost over time and only the most salient features of history remain.

In one interesting passage, Garcilaso de la Vega muses about those who commit historic acts and those who record those acts, saying “no se cuales dellos hicieron mas, si los de las armas o los de las plumas.” For him, his role is just as important as those people whose concerted efforts produce great empires, for without authors the achievements of these empires turn to dust.

“antes destruida que conocida”

Comentarios reales is turning out to be an interesting read and there were a variety of themes that caught my interest. Last class it was mentioned how the “discovery” of the Americas profoundly affected the European worldview. In the first chapter Garcilaso de la Vega gives us a glimpse into what were supremely important philosophical, scientific and religious debates at the time. For example, Garcilaso de la Vega shows that “en contra de lo que de esta Tórrida Zona los filósofos dijeron, que no imaginaron jamás que en ella pudiese haber nieve,” there is in fact snow in the Andean countries, and the hot regions of the torrid zone are not uninhabitable as commonly believed. In trying to revise what is known about the New World, Garcilaso de la Vega appeals to both the scientist (with direct observation: “yo nací en la Tórrida Zona … y me crecí en ella hasta los veinte años”) and the theologian (using Bible-based logic: “no es de imaginar, cuanto más creer, que partes tan grandes del mundo las hiciese Dios inútiles”).

At many times throughout the text Garcilaso de la Vega laments that many Spaniards reporting back from the Americas have got it all wrong for not knowing indigenous languages and not thoroughly understanding their culture(s); this continent and its people were “antes destruida que conocida.” Garcilaso de la Vega must be one of the first to raise the issue of who is to write authoritative account of the indigenous people. Who has legitimacy? According to Garcilaso de la Vega: “será mejor que se sepa por las propias palabras que los Incas lo cuentan, que no por la de otros autores extraños”. He repeats how he, due to being born and raised in Peru, is the legitimate one to tell these stories, and in many cases he collected information from Incan communities themselves. This is a stage further in the transition between Europeans writing about Latin America for other Europeans, to Latin Americans recording their experiences for their own literary creation and historical records. The perspectives of someone who was more of an “insider” of Latin American culture are very interesting, such as his appraisal of the Incan government, which indirectly compares this “benevolent imperialism” with the violent and exploitative Spanish one.