‘Yo quisiera esto más claro, e más larga claridad en ello’.

* Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general y natural de las Indias, ed. & estudio preliminar de Juan Pérez de Tudela Bueso, BAE 117–121, 5 vols (Madrid: Atlas, 1959), IV, 318. All subsequent in-text references are to this edition.

Reconstruction: Historiographical Misrepresentations of Africans and Native Americans, and the Law

Abstract

The article uses Esteban Dorantes, Juan Garrido, Fernández de Oviedo, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, and the work of Rolena Adorno to describe and examine how and why representations and misrepresentations of Africans and Native Americans in primary documentary sources are inscribed into modern secondary sources and the modern historical record. It then sets that historiographical study within parallel and complimentary (post-)modern theoretical and legal contexts associated with Derrida, Deconstruction, theories of International Law, and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples to argue for state support for recording the historical memory of indigenous and displaced peoples.

Key words:

• Esteban Dorantes
• Juan Garrido
• Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo
• Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca
• Rolena Adorno
• Spanish colonial history
• African and Native American history

Notes

* Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general y natural de las Indias, ed. & estudio preliminar de Juan Pérez de Tudela Bueso, BAE 117–121, 5 vols (Madrid: Atlas, 1959), IV, 318. All subsequent in-text references are to this edition.

1 Richard R. Wright, ‘Negro Companions of the Spanish Explorers’, American Anthropologist, New Series, 4:2 (1902), 217–28 (p. 228).

2 Robert T. C. Goodwin, Crossing the Continent, 1527–1540: The Story of the First Great African Explorer of the American South (New York: HarperCollins, 2008).

3 Roberto Nodal, ‘Estebanillo: pionero negro en la conquistad de América’, Revista de Historia de América, 89 (1980), 49–55.

4 Nodal published a number of works related to African populations in the New World that must now be treated with considerable caution: ‘El sincretismo afro-cátolico en Cuba y Brasil’, Revista de Estudios Ibero-Americanos, 5:2 (1979), 207–18; ‘ “Strangers in a New Land”: Palo Mayombe and African-Cuban Religious Tradition in the Diaspora’, Dissertation Abstracts International: The Humanities and Sciences, 62:11 (2002); ‘Black Presence in the Canary Islands (Spain),’ Journal of Black Studies, 12:1 (1981), 83–90; ‘The Black Man in Cuban Society: From Colonial Times to the Revolution’, Journal of Black Studies, 16:3 (1986), 251–67; a handful of works on Santería; a book on the Cuban Presence in Africa (Milwaukee: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1980); co-authored with Rolando A. Alúm, The Afro-Hispanic Abakuá: A Study of Linguistic Pidginization (Milwaukee: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1982); Special Research Report: Social Evolution and Development of the Afro-Cuban Drum (Milwaukee: Dept of Afro-American Studies, Univ. of Wisconsin, 1979); Afro-Brazilian Literature: A Tentative Bibliography (Milwaukee: Dept of Afro-American Studies, Univ. of Wisconsin, 1973).

5 Dominick LaCapra, History in Transit: Experience, Identity, Critical Theory (Ithaca/London: Cornell U. P., 2004), 22.

6 By way of example, see Colección de Documentos para la Historia de la Formación Social de Hispanoamérica: 1493–1810, ed. Richard Konetzke, 3 vols (Madrid, CSIC, 1953–1962). For black violence against Indians, see: 1:584 refs Archivo General de Indias (AGI): Guatemala 386, L.2; 1:321 refs Lima 567, L.7, ff.81 & 426; 1:422 refs Lima 578, L.2, f.21; 1:513 & 527 refs Indiferente 427, L.30, ff.295 & 322. For general rowdiness: 1:213 refs Archivo Histórico de Nacional de Madrid (AHN): Cedulario de Ayala, vol. 35, f 26^v, n^o 37 and vol. 36, f.243^v., n^o 229; 1:566 refs AGI: Lima 570, L.14, f.323^v. For taxation of blacks: 1:482 refs AGI: Indiferente 427 L.30, f.248; and 1:502 refs AHN: Cedulario de Ayala, vol. 107, f.321, n^o 7, tit. 5, ley 3.

7 Cincuenta años de Inquisición en el tribunal de Cartagena de Indias, 1610–1660, ed. Anna María Splendiani, José Enrique Sánchez Bohórquez & Emma Cecilia Luque de Salazar, 4 vols (Santafé de Bogotá: Centro Editorial Javeriano, Instituto Columbiano de Cultura Hispánica, 1997).

8 Kathryn Joy McKnight, ‘ “En su tierra lo aprendió”: An African Curandero's Defense before the Cartagena Inquisition’, Colonial Latin American Review, 12:1 (2003), 63–84.

9 Mathew Restall, ‘Black Conquistadors: Armed Africans in Early Spanish America’, The Americas, 57:2 (2000), 171–205; and his Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest (New York: Oxford U. P., 2003), 44–63. Peter Gerhard mentions two others in ‘A Black Conquistador in Mexico’, Hispanic American Historical Review, 58:3 (1978), 451–59.

10 For Garrido, see Gerhard, ‘A Black Conquistador’; and especially Ricardo E. Alegría's biography: Juan Garrido: el conquistador negro en las Antillas, Florida, México y California (San Juan de Puerto Rico: Centro de Estudios Avanzados de Puerto Rico y el Caribe, 1990); also Restall ‘Black Conquistadors’.

11 AGI: México 203, N.19, 1532, Información: Juan González Ponce de León; and AGI: México 97, Información: Pedro Sánchez Nieto, 20/3/1551.

12 AGI: México 204, N.3.

13 Francisco A. de Icaza, Diccionario autobiográfico de conquistadores y pobladores de Nueva España, 2 vols (Madrid: T.I., 1923), I, 98, n^o 169, quoted and commented on by Alegría, Juan Garrido, 9–10 & 139–40; quoted in English by Gerhard, ‘Black Conquistadors’, 452.

14 Actas del Cabildo de la Ciudad de México (1524–1889) (México D.F.: T.I. 1889); and see Gerhard, ‘A Black Conquistador’.

15 Gerhard, ‘A Black Conquistador’, 455, who refers to Pierre Chaunu, L'Amérique et les Amériques (Paris: Colin, 1964), 86.

16 Joaquín García Icazbalceta, Colección de documentos para la historia de México, 2 vols (México D.F.: Antigua Liberería, 1858–1866), II, 592–93 and Gil González Dávila, Teatro eclesiástico de la primitiva iglesia de las Indias occidentales […], 2 vols (Madrid, 1645–1658), I, 8.

17 AGI: Indiferente 423, L.20, 550^r; also see 528^v.

18 AGI: Justicia 1173, N.5.

19 See note 5 above.

20 R. T. C. Goodwin, ‘Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and the Textual Travels of an American Miracle’, Tesserae: Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies, 14:1 (2008), 1–12.

21 R. T. C. Goodwin, ‘ “De lo que sucedió a los demás que entraron en Indias”: Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and the Other Survivors of Pánfilo Narváez's Expedition’, BSS, 84:2 (2007), 147–73 (pp. 160–61).

22 Rolena Adorno, The Polemics of Possession in Spanish American Narrative (New Haven/London: Yale U. P., 2007), 4.

23 Adorno, The Polemics of Posession, 276 & xvii.

24 Rolena Adorno, ‘The Negotiation of Fear in Cabeza de Vaca's Naufragios’, Representations, 33 (1991), 163–99 (p. 191).

25 Adorno, ‘The Negotiation of Fear’, 163.

26 Adorno, ‘The Negotiation of Fear’, 164.

27 Adorno, The Polemics of Possession, 97–98.

28 I quote, here and elsewhere, from the edition of Relación in Rolena Adorno and Charles Patrick Pautz, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca: His Account, His Life, and the Expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez, 3 vols (Lincoln, NE/London: Univ. of Nebrask Press, 1999), I, 112–16 ff. 25^v–26^v (in Volume I they transcribe the first edition of La relación que dió Álvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca […] Zamora, 1542).

29 Adorno & Pautz, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, II, 195 & II, 284; Goodwin, Crossing the Continent, 245.

30 Robert A. Rickliss, ‘Cabeza de Vaca's Observations of Native American Lifeways: Correspondences in the Archeological Record of the Texas Coast’, <http://www.txstate.edu/cssw/research-and-public-programs/cdvresources/windows/ricklis.html> (accessed 22 June 2013); Robert A. Ricklis, The Karankawa Indians of Texas: An Ecological Study of Cultural Tradition and Change (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1996); W. W. Newcomb, Jr, The Indians of Texas: From Prehistoric to Modern Times (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 2002 [1^st ed. 1961]).

31 Adorno, ‘The Negotiation of Fear’, 171.

32 Adorno, ‘The Negotiation of Fear’, 169.

33 Adorno, ‘The Negotiation of Fear’, 166.

34 I am grateful to Robert Williams Jr for this verbal communication.

35 Adorno, ‘The Negotiation of Fear’, 178.

36 Adorno, ‘The Negotiation of Fear’, 179.

37 Adorno, ‘The Negotiation of Fear’, 179.

38 Adorno, ‘The Negotiation of Fear’, 179.

39 Adorno, ‘The Negotiation of Fear’, 179.

40 Adorno, ‘The Negotiation of Fear’, 179–80.

41 Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Naufragios, ed. Juan Francisco Maura (Madrid: Cátedra, 2001), 181, n. 83, and Juan Francisco Maura, El gran burlador de América: Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (Valencia: Parnaseo-Lemir, 2008), <parnaseo.uv.es/lemir/Textos/Maura.pdf> (accessed 30 October 2013).

42 Adorno, ‘The Negotiation of Fear’, 179–80.

43 Adorno & Pautz, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, I, 232, f.55^v.

44 Adorno & Pautz, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, II, 299.

45 Adorno & Pautz, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, II, 299.

46 Jacques Derrida, ‘Force of Law: The “Mystical Foundation of Authority” ’, in Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, ed. Drucilla Cornell et al. (London/New York: Routledge, 1992), 3–67; see droit v. justice, pp. 8–9; avenir, p. 23; quotation p. 9. He refers to Stanley Fish, Barbara Hernstein Smith, Crucilla Cornell, Sam Weber.

47 Derrida, ‘Force of Law’, 19.

48 Derrida, ‘Force of Law’, 28.

49 E.g. Antoon de Baets, ‘The Impact of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on the Study of History’, History and Theory, 48:1 (2009), 20–43; and his ‘A Declaration of the Responsibilities of Present Generations toward Past Generations’, History and Theory, 43 (2004), 130–64; Natives and Academics: Researching and Writing about American Indians, ed. Devon A. Mihesuah (Lincoln, NE/London: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1998).

50 Baets, ‘The Impact of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights’, 37–38.

51 Robert A. Williams Jr, Like a Loaded Weapon: The Reconquest Court, Indian Rights, and the Legal History of Racism in America (Minneapolis/London: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2005).

52 S. James Anaya, Indigenous Peoples in International Law, 2^nd ed. (Oxford/New York: Oxford U. P., 2004), 107.

53 Baets, ‘The Impact of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights’, 155.

54 Anaya, Indigenous Peoples in International Law, 139.

55 <http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/DRIPS_en.pdf> (accessed 2 February 2014); also see Anaya, Indigenous Peoples in International Law, 150.

56 Anaya, Indigenous Peoples in International Law, 150.

57 ‘The poet may recount or sing of things, not as they were, but as they should have been; and the historian must write them, not as they should have been, but as they were, neither adding nor subtracting anything from the truth’ (Aristotle, Poetics, Part IV; Cervantes, Don Quixote, Part II [1615], Chapter 3).