Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca: a schizoid colonial ethnographer.

One of the most amazing chronicles of the Spanish Conquest that appeared in the early days of the American colonization is the 1542 Relación (Account) of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca. The Account narrates the failed expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez to Mexico, his shipwreck and the eight years Cabeza de Vaca spent walking through the southern United States. Taken by the indigenous tribes, the survivors of the shipwreck had to live as slaves, shamans and transporters of goods between the tribes. At the end of this tribulation, Álvar Núñez commented on this experience to the King of Spain in the Account. This narration has been regularly proclaimed as proIndian in response to the famous Black Legend. The friendly interaction between Indians and Spaniards has been considered as the epitome of a true encounter between the two worlds. Nonetheless, the Account has an underside that confronts any attempt to read Cabeza de Vaca’s experience as an innocent story. Through the voice of a divided self, his Account represents a colonial ethnographic work that constantly converts the other into an object, and constrains her/him to silence. Such an insight into Cabeza de Vaca’s narrative allows a new interrogation of theethnographic work and the silenced other. Bringing the example of Vine Deloria Jr., we will hear the voice of the Indians and their claims as a counterpart of the colonial ethnographic eye and discuss the possibility of grasping the difference along with understanding the alterity.

Born in Jerez de la Frontera, Spain, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca was a member of a famous family of commandants and administrators in Spain. His birth date is still debated by scholars who propose different years between 1485 and 1492 (Adorno & Pautz 343, vol 1). His grandfather was Pedro de Vera, the conqueror of Canarias in 1488, whose recognition helped Álvar Núñez to obtain a variety military services like the appointment to four dukes of Medina Sidonia (1503 to 1527), Italy (1511 to 1513), and Castile (1520 to 1521). Later, Cabeza de Vaca was assigned as treasurer of Pánphilo de Narváez’s Expedition in 1527. Narváez was appointed governor of Río de las Palmas and Florida. Depictured by father Las Casas as a brutal murderer of Indians, Narváez was searching for bigger glory than his rival, Hernán Cortés, in what he thought it would be “another Mexico”: the lands of the northern New Spain. Nonetheless, the expedition was a huge failure. Consecutive shipwrecks ended with the life of the entire crew except for Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Alonso del Castillo Maldonado, Andrés Dorantes de Carranza, and Estevanico, an Arabic-speaking native of Azemmour, usually called the black. The four castaways walked from the Malhado (Galveston, Texas) in 1535, passing the Sierra Madre Oriental, crossing the Grand River, and arriving in Culiacán in May 1536.(1) After a short stop in Tenochtitlán, Mexico from July 1536 to the spring of 1537, he embarked from Veracruz and arrived to Spain in August of the same year. Álvar Núñez accepted the governorship of Rio de la Plata in 1537 from the King but only in 1540 the contract was set. From 1541 to 1545, he lived a tremendous misadventure during the expedition to Río de la Plata and Asunción. According to Adorno and Pautz:

Given the situation of previous conquest and settlement in the province of Río de la Plata, he was subject to a rude awakening regarding local affairs. The interpretations of his leadership there would distill into two major positions: accusations against him for the arrogance of his rule (vis-à-vis the settlers’ previously established patterns of economic exploitation) versus his own claims of attempting to enforce royal laws and decrees established for better governance in the Indies. (388, vol 1)

A riot in Asunción caused the imprisonment of Cabeza de Vaca in December 1544, and he was sent to Spain where he spent two months in Madrid’s jail facing several charges. After a long trial, in 1551 he was found guilty and condemned. (Adorno & Pautz 398, vol 1) The last days of Álvar Núñez were dedicated to the writings of the Relación y comentarios in 1555. Álvar Núñez was probably buried in Santo Domingo el Real in Jerez de la Frontera, where his grandfather, Pedro de Vera was also interred.

The Account of 1542 came to existence both as an informative account of the events in Narváez’s expedition and a service to the King. Firstly, it was necessary to narrate the episodes of any expedition during the first years of the Spanish Conquest as it was stipulated by the codes of the Spanish legislation. Thus, the information about the places and their faunas, mineral richness, geography and population, was necessary for any colonial enterprise. Along with the narration, minerals and spices were brought by the conquerors in support of the account. Nonetheless, in the case of Álvar Núñez, the unsuccessful expedition did not bring any material richness to the Spanish crown. Therefore, it was necessary to offer “another kind of richness”. However, Cabeza de Vaca was available to give another kind of reward to the King:an ethnographic bounty. As Cabeza de Vaca affirms:

no me quedó lugar para hazer más servicio deste, que es traer a Vuestra Magestad relación de lo que en nueve años por muchas y muy estrañas tierras que anduve perdido y en cueros, pudiesse saber y ver, ansí en el sitio de las tierras y provincias y distancia dellas, como en los mantenimientos y animales que en ellas se crían, y las diversas costumbres de muchas y muy bárbaras naciones con quien converse y viví, y todas las otras particularidades que pude alcanzar y conocer que dello en alguna manera Vuestra Magestad será servido. Porque aunque la esperanza que de salir entre ellos tuve siempre fue muy poca, el cuidado y diligencia siempre fue muy grande de tener particular memoria de otodo, para que si en algún tiempo Dios nuestro Señor quisiesse traerme adonde agora estoy, pudiesse dar testigo de mi voluntad y servir a Vuestra Magestad como la relación dello es aviso, a mi parecer no liviano, para los que en su nombre fueren a conquistar aquellas tierras; y juntamente traerlos a conoscimiento de la verdadera fe y verdadero Señor y servicio de Vuestra Magestad […] a la qual supplico la resciba en nombre del servicio, pues éste solo es el que un hombre que salió desnudo pudo sacar consigo (18-20, italics mine)

The similarities between the experience of the ethnographer and Cabeza de Vaca allow the reader to establish an interpretation of the Account as an ethnographicwork. As James Clifford explains, the principal aim of the modern ethnographer is to get at the heart of other human societies through “participant observation” that involves: analytic techniques and modes of scientific explanation; use of native language of the society; observational power to “ensemble characteristic behaviors, ceremonies and gestures susceptible to recording and explanation by trained onlooker”; theoretical abstraction that help the ethnographer to grasp the core of the observed society; the focus on particular institutions;  the experience of a short term research activity. Although Álvar Núñez lacks any scientific methodology to observe as in the case of the ethnographer, the castaway accomplishes the considerable requirements of the fieldworker. Firstly, Cabeza de Vaca lived for several years within different tribes of the northern Mexico and the Southern United States (Han, Deaguanes, Quevenes, Avavares, Susolas, Cuthalchuches, Maliacones, Arbadaos). Because of the several years spent living between those tribes, the castaway had to learn more than six different languages: “porque aunque sabíamos más de seis lenguas, no nos podíamos en todas partes aprovechar dellas, porque hallamos más de mil.”(Núñez Cabeza de Vaca 232) Digging into Han’s society, he comments on different elements of their society like their weapons, food habits, family and marriage system, funeral rites, myths, war rules, language, religion, etc. Furthermore, it is acceptable to argue that Cabeza de Vaca could be a harbinger of the “participant observation” that Clifford mentions as an essential element of any ethnographic work. The experience of the castaway with other cultures, and his laterwritings for the king as a gift of knowledge about the new lands, could be similar to any coeval ethnographic effort. The “participant observation” implicated in the narration of Cabeza de Vaca allows us to explore the Account in a new ethnographic dimension. With a new kind of voice, Cabeza de Vaca emerges as a medium between both cultures capable of reading and interpreting the other’s culture.

Finalmente nunca se pudo acabar con los indios creer que éramos de losotros cristianos, y con mucho trabajo e importunación los hezimos bolver a sus casas y les mandamos que se assegurassen y assentassen sus pueblos y sembrassen y labrassen la tierra, que de estar despoblada estava ya muy llena de monte, la qual sin duda es la major de quantas en estas Indias ay y más fértil y abundosa de mantenimientos […] La gente della es muy bien acondicionada. Sirven a los cristianos los que son amigos de muy buena voluntad. Son muy dispuestos, mucho más que los de México. (Núñez Cabeza de Vaca 250-252, italics mine)

The binary division inscribed in the majority of the Spanish colonial encounters- the relation between an I (Christians) and the Other (Indians)- is questioned by a third subject emerging as We from the Account. In this passage, there are three subjectivities clearly placed in the narration. First, there is a We, a pronoun that represents Álvar Núñez and the other three castaways, and two Theythat refer to the Indians (ellos, los Indios) or the Christians (ellos, los cristianos).(2)Then, the question arises: Why Álvar Núñez did not refer himself as a Christian? Because he knows that nine years changed him, it is difficult for him to project a subjectivity that does not represent him entirely. For Tzvetan Todorov, this triad represents Cabeza de Vaca in the medium position:

En el plano de la acción, de la asimilación con del otro o de la identificación con él, Cabeza de Vaca también alcanza un punto neutro, no porque fuera indiferente a las dos culturas, sino porque las había vivido ambas desde el interior; de repente, a su alrededor, no había más que ‘ellos’; sin volverse indio, Cabeza de Vaca ya no era totalmente español. Su experiencia simboliza y anuncia la del exiliado moderno, el cual personifica a su vez una tendencia propia de nuestra sociedad: ese ser que ha perdido su patria sin adquirir otra, que vive en la doble exterioridad. (258)

It is possible to find another interpretation from Todorov’s. Perhaps, this Wedoes not mean that he is another subject completely different from the Christian or Indians. Rather, he could still be a Christian because his epistemological way of conceiving the world emanate from the Eurocentric world of the XVI century though he does has an advantage over the other Christians: he has lived with the others in their world. Álvar Núñez, therefore, could be referring to a certain authority when he uses the We as the only source authorized to read, interpret and inform about the Indians to the Christians, a new position of observation of the other. The We, therefore, is the way in which Cabeza de Vaca represents his ethnographic authority.(3)

Cabeza de Vaca’s imperial eye and observational powers follow the same lines of Marcel Griaule’s ethnographic work. According to Clifford, the French ethnographer proposes incessant work in order to grasp the essence of the other’ssociety according to the program of the fieldworker and to find the truth provoked by ethnography and not by the other. For Griaule, the ethnographer has to portray the society of the other in reference to Western science and philosophy (Clifford 88). The ethnographer is, therefore, a huge eye from the Western civilization authorized to observe and interpret the other. Finally, the ethnographer arises as the authorized source who knows what is good for the other. The ethnographic work, as a document establishing the authorized knowledge about the other, emerges as the source for any politics of dialogue with the other. It is through the voice of the ethnographers that one authorized to talk about the other and for the other. As Vine Deloria exemplifies about an archeologist excavation on American Indian remaines, the institutions sponsoring those excavations thought that they were giving a help to the American Indians by rescuing and exhibiting their tradition. Nonetheless, for the AIM (the American Indian Movement) that kind of help was pointless. As Deloria remarks about one of the diggings in Minnesota:

None of the whites could understand that they were not helping Indians to preserve their culture by digging up the remains of a village that had existed in the 1500’s. Daniel Dalton, assistant AIM program director, said that if the situation were reversed and Indians were digging up the site of a white colonial settlement, all hell would have broken loose. (11)

In reference to Spivak’s essay “Can the subaltern speak?”, in the case of Griaule’s ethnographic work, it is not necessary to hear the voice of the otherbecause the ethnographer is the voice authorized to speak for them. As Clifford mentions: “there is an enormous gap in all histories of fieldwork: “the indigenous ‘side’ of the story.” (59) Returning to the Account of Álvar Núñez, the other’s voice is also forgotten. Rather than allowing the other to speak from itself, Cabeza de Vaca is imposing his interpretation of the Indians. Indubitably, he spent several years with the Indians without imposing his faith, robbing their minerals, or abusing their women, or at least that is what he narrates. Nonetheless, his narration still belongs to acolonial effort, as the direct order that he received: “every time you write to us [the Emperor’s administration] and send us gold, or even when not sending it, you are to make a particular account of all our gold and goods held in your power, so that we may be informed of everything (f36r)” (Adorno and Pautz 374, vol. 1). The othermust be silenced and the New World must be seen through the imperial eye.

Along this function of the Account, there is another concern in Cabeza de Vaca. Some scholars, like Tzvetan Todorov, argue that between Álvar Núñez and father Las Casas, there are plenty similarities. Although father Las Casas never learned any Indian languages or lived through an experience like Cabeza de Vaca’s, both have similar agendas of encountering with the other. Indeed, each one defends a good treatment of the Indians and their necessary instruction in the Christian doctrine. Nonetheless, the shared project still fails in a fundamental idea: because they sympathize with the Indians and they were talking on behalf them, Cabeza de Vaca and father Las Casas thought that they knew what was good for the Indians. As Daniel Castro points out, Las Casas tried to understand the Indians through his paradigm of knowledge without caring about the other’s voice and, at the end, it was a nicer form of colonialism. According to Clifford, Michel Griaule enacts a similar approach to the other as Las Casas:

In the early fifties Griaule presents himself as someone who knows Africa and who knows too what is good for Africa. Ethnographic understanding is critical in a changing colonial context: it permits one to “select those moral values which are of merit and should be preserved,” to “decide what institutions and what systems of thought should be preserved and propagated in Black Africa.” (88)

Cabeza de Vaca believed that he knew how to treat Indians according to his experience, which was the authorized voice. Although Álvar Núñez’s new way of dealing with Indians reached the level of colonialism, he was nicer to the Indians than the treatment of the previous settlement. Because none of the older colonists wanted to lose their privileges, Cabeza de Vaca was accused and sent to jail. As Adorno and Pautz explain: “Villalobos further charged that Cabeza de Vaca prohibited- to all but himself and his servants- any trading activity with the Indians […] raising his own coat of arms in place of the king’s; proclaiming himself king; declaring, ‘I am the prince and master in this land!’ ” (396 vol. 1)

Two conclusions arise from Cabeza de Vaca’s Account. The narrative of Álvar Núñez presents a monological voice that elaborates the entire story and does not dialogue with the other’s voice. Considering Mikhail Bakhtin’s theoryof polyphonictext, Clifford proposes that ethnographic work should allow those voices silenced speak for themselves. Then, for Clifford:

The words of the ethnographic writing, then, cannot be constructed as monological, as the authoritative statement about, or interpretation of, an abstracted, textualized reality. The language of ethnography is shot through with other subjectivities and specific contextual overtones, for all language, in Bakhtin’s view, is a ‘concrete heteroglot conception of the world.” (42) (4)

Secondly, the imperial eye of Cabeza de Vaca resembles a clear objectification of the other, who is not recognized as a person. The discussion between Ginés de Sepúlveda and father Las Casas about the question whether the Indians were or not human beings with the same self-governance as the Europeans is a clear probe of the feeling about the other not as a person but an object of observance and dominance. As Nelson Maldonado explains, the relation with the otherhas always involved a series of phenomenological problems. If we follow the critique of Levinas, the Husserl’s phenomenological reduction is not able to establish a real relation with the other and liberate the solipsism of the ego. As Maldonado-Torres argues, two solutions to Husserl’s idea arise with the new conceptions of phenomenology by Emmanuel Levinas and Jean Paul Sartre:

Perhaps the main difference between Sartre and Levinas is that while Sartre raises the problem of the Other in terms of the dialectics of recognition between two subjects whose most basic character is to be free and embodied, Levinas appropriates and radicalizes Husserl’s own genetic phenomenology and argues that the contact between the self and the other precedes the very formation of the self as a free subject […] The Other is not only that by virtue of whom I become aware of my objectivity, as Sartre insightfully points out; the Other is also to whom I am called to serve. (173-174)

Enrique Dussel also establishes a different option in the relation with theother. While for Husserl, Levinas and Sartre the relation with the other is trans-ontological, Dussel understands that the relation with the colonized is sub-ontological. As Maldonado-Torres explains: “The sub-alter is not the Other qua Other, not even the alter ego- the Other like myself- but that ‘other’ that is no-Other; it is not the irreplaceable and loved, or the replaceable and respected other, but the eliminable Other. It is the object of indifference and hate.” (182)

For Cabeza de Vaca’s experience, there is another possibility of I-Otherconfiguration. Perhaps, the simple situation of being a castaway, the anguish of being in a different world, naked, far away from his culture, and hopeless of returning to his home enacted a divided self in the Spaniard whose ontological insecurity makes to conceive the other as an object rather than a person. According to R.D. Laing in his book The Divided Self; an existential study in sanity and madness, a divided self could appear within the experience of being captive:

It is well known that temporary states of dissociation of the self from the body occur in normal people. In general, one can say that it is a response that appears to be available to most people who find themselves enclosed within a threatening experience from which there is no physical escape. Prisoners in concentration camps tried to feel that way, for the camp offered no possible way out either spatially or at the end of a period of time. The only way out was by a psychical withdrawal ‘into’ one’s self and ‘out of’ the body […] The body may go on acting in an outwardly normal way, nut inwardly it is felt to be acting on its own, automatically. (82-83)

As Laing affirms, a divided self is a self who has an ontological insecuritybased on a fear of being converted into a thing by the other. Thus, this self lives in an insecure world. As a way of fighting this ontological insecurity, the subject splits his body from his self and creates two different self: an unembodied self (inner self) and a false-self system. In this configuration: “Such a divorce of self from body deprives the unembodied self from direct participation in any aspect of the life of the world, which is mediated exclusively through the body’s perceptions, feelings and movements (expressions, gestures, actions, etc.).” (Laing 71) Thus, the divided selfsecures him/herself from being petrified: “The schizoid individual depersonalizes his relation with himself. That is to say, he turns the living spontaneity of his being into something dead and lifeless by inspecting it. This he does to other as well, and fears their doing it to him (petrification).” (Laing 120) With a structure that serves as a barrier from the unsecure world -the false-self system- the unembodied self relates him/herself with fantasies and imagos acquired from the irregular relation between the false-self system and the world. As Laing suggests: “The self can relate itself with immediacy to an object which is an object of its own imagination or memory but not a real person.”(91) In the case of Álvar Núñez, his captivity affected him until reaching his self. During the nine years between the Indian tribes, he had to develop a false-self system to survive the confinement.(5)

For Cabeza de Vaca, it was necessary to overcome the fact that he was completely naked at the mercy to the savage world. As he portrays in the Accountafter the last shipwreck: “Los que quedamos escapados [estábamos] desnudos como nascimos y [habíamos] perdido todo lo que traíamos. Y aunque todo valía poco, para entonces valía mucho.” (96-98) Frequently, this nudity has been interpreted as the new birth of the Spaniard Cabeza de Vaca as Indian which remains the baptism ceremony. However, another interpretation of the nakedness is possible. Considering the birth of a divided self is more accurate if there is an exterior camouflage arising from the castaway and not a change of his subjectivity. Indeed, the new body – the naked body- will be a protection against the others who will see him not as a threat but as similar. Thus, it is this exteriority -the camouflage of Indian- that interacts with the Indians and protects his unembodied self. As the false-self system, the embodied self gets contact with the world while the unembodied self lives within fantasies andimagos. For example, his work as a shaman during his captivity shows perfectly theduality of the divided self between a body (and false-self system) and a unembodied self. While he is performing for the tribe (acting as a shaman), he is expressing hisunembodied self through two movements: the reference to our Lord, who is the Christian God, and his breath as something from inside of his self. As he explains in one of his healings:

Y ansí quando yo llegué, hallé el indio los ojos bueltos y sin ningún pulso, y con todas las señales de muerto; y a mí ansí me pareció y lo mismo dixo Dorantes. Yo le quite una estera que tenía encima con que estava cubierto. Y lo mejor que pude, supliqué a nuestro Señor fuese servido de dar salud a aquél y a todos los otros que della tenía necesidad. E después de santiguado soplado muchas vezes, me traxeron su arco y me lo dieron y una serie de tunas molidas (162, italics mine)

While the naked Álvar Núñez is interacting with the world, the unembodied Álvar Núñez is presenting us a world created from the imagos in the Account. According to Laing, when the false-self system assumes a position in the world: “The unembodied self, as onlooker at all the body does, engages in nothing directly. Its function comes to be observation, control and criticism vis-à-vis what the body is experiencing and doing, and those operations which are usually spoken of as purely ‘mental’.” (71) In relation with Cabeza de Vaca, there is the false–self system- thenaked Álvar Núñez- interacting with the other, and a unembodied self– the Spaniard Cabeza de Vaca- dealing with sparks of the external reality. Moreover, the unembodied self processes what is living the false–self system by petrifying the external reality. In other words, because the unembodied self is always converting the exterior into an object, there is no possibility of recognizing the other as a person and not as an object. In the case of Cabeza de Vaca, it is this unembodied self that considers the other as an object and not as an alter-ego like the ethnographer who constructs the image of the other as an object rather than a person.(6) Through adivided self, therefore, it is impossible to grasp a true encounter with the other because the subject petrifies the other instead of opening his perception to the other as a person. Furthermore, Cabeza de Vaca projects the world of the other, his ethnography of the tribes, like the images and fantasies that he had in his mind.

After five hundred years, Vine Deloria’s book titled God is Red appears as a necessary response from the Indian voice to certain conceptions about them constructed by the West. In other words, Deloria’s voice is the “Indian side of the story”, as Clifford claims. For the Indian thinker, the West created an image of the Indian that was far from being real. An entire Indian movement confronted what Western thought should be an Indian with what an Indians understood by themselves. As Deloria affirms: “In 1968, the inherent schizophrenia of the Indian image split and finally divided into modern Indians and the Indians of America- those ghostly figures that America loved and cherished.”(28) It is possible, then, to read Deloria’s statement like Cabeza de Vaca’s approach to the Indians: a schizophrenic eye that split what Indians really are and what the Western people thinks Indians are. Moreover, Deloria denounces the Western conception based on their image about the Indians, started to establish how Indians should be. As in the case of Álvar Núñez and Griaule, the ethnographic eye attempted to affirm what was good for the Indians. As Deloria vehemently suggests: “What we dealt with for the major portion of a decade was not American Indians, but the American conception of what Indians should be.” (33)

For Deloria, there is a key element to finally understanding the colonial relation between the I and the other in the case of American Indians. Perhaps, any attempt to relate with an other tradition must attempt to recognize that there are inevitable differences in the way that communities conceive the world, existence and beings. For example, Deloria’s book suggests that Western thought and religion affirm their principles in time while the Indians support their thought in space. The idea of destiny and paradise in a temporal line, as Christiany has preached, confronts the Indian idea of space and its centrality in their conception of religion and life. According to Deloria: “The same ideology that sparked the Crusade, the Age of Exploration, the Age of Imperialism, and the recent crusade against Communism all involve the affirmation that time is peculiarly related to the destiny of the people of Western Europe. And later, of course, the United States.” (62) On the contrary, the Indian tradition focuses on space rather than time: “The structure of their religious tradition is taken directly from the world around them, from their relationship with other forms of life. Context is therefore all- important for both practice and the understanding of reality.” (65) Time and space, as Kant says in his Critique of Pure Reason, are the necessary elements for any construction of knowledge. Nevertheless, the critique of Deloria points out the particular inclination of the West to the first element: time. As Deloria suggests: “The recognition that there is no homogeneous sense of time shared by all societies must certainly become apparent to us if it not already clear. We must, therefore, create a new understanding of universal planetary history.” (64) The critique of Deloria, furthermore, localizes a problem of simultaneity in Kant’s conception of time.(7) The fact that there are not simultaneous times, in the Western thought, leads to the self to consider his/her time as the only one. Contrary, the idea of space, and its simultaneity, allows thinking the difference in the world in terms of different and simultaneous spaces. As Deloria affirms:

To recognize or admit difference, even among the species of life, does not require then that human beings create forces to forge to gain a sense of unity and homogeneity. To exist in a creation means that living is more than tolerance for other life forms- its recognition that in differences there is the strength of creation and that this strength is a deliberate desire of the creator. (88)

The conception of time, a key element for any knowledge in Western thought, is a barrier for any attempt to dialogue with the Indian tradition. Nonetheless, an awareness of such difference is vital if a dialogue between both traditions is presented. Rather than a petrifaction of the other as the ethnographic eye of thedivided Álvar Núñez or any construction of the other different only from the perspective of my tradition, it is necessary to know, firstly, the rules of my tradition, and later, their different tradition from their perspective. Under this configuration of perspective, the alterity can be embraced without uncovering it with western categories of thought and its Eurocentric perspective. Along this idea, it is necessary to understand that there are differences, and those differences are not related with a measuring of beings. As Geoge Canguilhem and Paula Caplan already noticed, the modern subject has comprehended the world as divided between normality and abnormality, and the modern categories of thought have been the measure stick to calculate the world. Nonetheless, the world is there without any measure a priori. It is the modern subject who has engaged in the task of elucidating what is normal, below, above, beyond, etc. Furthermore, an awareness of the alterity– and its observance without the constraining of modern categories of thought that refuse the difference– it is possible.

Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, therefore, is in debt with a history that has not been told. The history of the Indians that joined Cabeza de Vaca during his long trip remains silenced, without a voice. As Enrique Dussel argues, it is necessary to see through the eyes of the Indians and re-Account the history of the conquest of America:

Cambiar la piel como la serpiente, pero no la perversa serpiente traicionera que tentaba a Adam en Mesopotamia, sino la “serpiente emplumada”, la Divina Dualidad (Quetzalcóatl), que “cambia su piel” para crecer. ¡Cambiemos la piel! Adoptemos ahora “metódicamente” la del indio, del africano esclavo, del mestizo humillado, del campesino empobrecido, del obrero explotado, del marginal apiñado por millones miserables de las ciudades latinoamericanas. Tomemos como propio los “ojos” del pueblo oprimido, desde “los de abajo”- como expresaba Azuela en su conocida novela-. No es el ego cogito sino el cogitatum (pero un “pensado” que también “pensaba”… aunque Descartes o Husserl lo ignoraran): era un cogitatum, pero antes aún era el Otro como subjetividad “distinta” (no meramente “diferente” como para los Post-modernos). Reconstruyamos entonces las “figuras” de su proceso. (121-122)

 

Notes
1. Álvar Núñez spent almost seven years in the Malhado waiting for the best moment to initiate his travel to New Spain.

2. Emile Benveniste in his Problems of General Linguistics formulates the relation between the personal pronoun, deixis and subjectivity. Here, I am referring to the formal apparatus of enunciation.

3. On ethnographic authority and its different models, see James Clifford 23-24.

4. One of the first ethnographers who uses the polyphonic procedure of ethnographic writing is the Cuban writer Lydia Cabrera. In her study on Afro-Cuban tradition in 1954,El Monte, she incorporates the voice of her sources in her book that seems to have more than ten different authors.

5. The duality in the ethnographer already was commented by Clifford in his chapter “On ethnographic self-fashioning: Conrad and Malinowski. As Clifford mentions about both authors: “Both Heart of Darkness and the Diary appear to portray the crisis of an identity- a struggle at the limits of Western civilization against the threat of moral dissolution. Indeed, this struggle, and the need for a personal restraint, is a common place of colonial literature.” (98) As a manner of rescuing the self for such disintegration, writing appears as the only way for Malinowski to overcome this difficulty.

6. For Enrique Dussel, the other was constituted as dominated before any appreciation as a person: “En Descartes o Husserl el ego cogitum construye al Otro (en este caso colonial) como cogitatum, pero antes el ego conquiro lo constituyó como “conquistado” (dominatum).” (175) After the impossibility of conquering the other through violence (ego dominatum), Cabeza de Vaca enacted another possibility of encounter with the otherthat, nonetheless, continued dominating the other as an object through a colonial eye.

7. According to Kant: “different times are not simultaneous, but successive (just as different spaces are not successive, but simultaneous.” (179)

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