Forgotten Conquests: Rereading New World History from the Margins

217 Pages·2001·44.756 MB·English

by  Gustavo Verdesio

Forgotten Conquests
Rereading New World History
from the Margins
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Forgotten
Conquests
Rereading
New World History
from the Margins
Gustavo Verdesio
TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS
PHILADELPHIA
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Temple University Press, Philadelphia 19122
Copyright © 2001 by Temple University
All rights reserved
Published 2001
Printed in the United States of America
e
The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the
American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39-48-I984·
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Verdesio, Gustavo.
[La invenci6n del Uruguay. English]
Forgotten conquests: rereading New World history from the margins /
Gustavo Verdesio.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-56639-833-9 Icloth : alk. paper)-ISBN 1-56639-834-7 Ipbk. :
alk. paper)
I. Uruguay-Discovery and exploration-Historiography. 2. Uru
guay-Description and travel-Historiography. 3. Uruguay-His tory
To I8ro-Historiography. 4. Indians of South America-Uruguay
First contact with Europeans. 5. Uruguay-In literature. 6. Indians
in literature. I. Title.
F2723.V47I3 2001
985.5 '007' 2-dc2I 00-04I193
Based on a Spanish language edition published in 1996 by the former
Graffiti Publishers, Uruguay.
FRONTISPIECE. This Jesuit map shows the territory on the northern shore
of the River Plate as a land surrounded by two enormous rivers: the Parana
and the Uruguay. This kind of visual misrepresentation finds its correlate
in the chronicles of the colonial period that describe the region and its
inhabitants. From Paulo di Forlani, La descrittioni di tutto i1 Peru IRome:
156[1]). Reproduced with permission of William L. Clements Library, Uni
versity of Michigan.
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In Memoriam:
Emilio Verdesio, Sr.
Ernesto Verdesio, Sr.
Juan Carlos Casco
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Contents
Preface ix
INTRODUCTION I
I. THE ENTRANCE TO HISTORICAL TIME 14
2. YEARS OF DISAPPOINTMENT, OR
THE LONG EUROPEAN SIESTA 39
3· THE PACIFIC PENETRATION 59
4. EMPIRES IN CONFLICT 72
5· THE ENCYCLOPEDIAS 93
6. THE TENTATIVE GAZE OF THE TRAVELER 110
CONCLUSION: THE TERRITORY AS THE STAGE
FOR THE DRAMA OF DIFFERENCE 145
Notes 163
Bibliography I 8 5
Index 201
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Preface
This volume studies texts that for the most part have not received the atten
tion of scholars in the field of Latin American colonial studies.l It also stud
ies canonical texts by Antonio de Herrera, Pedro Martir de Angleria (Peter Mar
tyr), Father Bartolome de Las Casas, and others that have been read and
analyzed countless times, but attends to passages that have been neglected or
forgotten by most scholars in that field of studies-those dealing with the ter
ritory on the northern shore of the River Plate. As a response to this state of
affairs, I am proposing not only a reading of non-canonical texts, but a new
reading of those canonical texts that focuses on the forgotten fragments in
order to attempt a recovery of the history of the discourses and actions pro
duced on and about that lump of land.
As I have stated, many of the texts that deal with the lands on the north
ern shore of the River Plate are not part of the corpus (and even less of the
canon) of Latin American colonial studies. The reason for this omission can
be found in a tendency in our discipline to fall victim to what could be called
the predominance of the three cultures (Inca, Maya, and Aztec), which pre
vents scholars from focusing their research agendas on Amerindian peoples
who did not organize their social lives around a state or an empire-two struc
tures that resemble those developed by Western culture and, for that reason,
seem to be easier to understand than other indigenous forms of social orga
nization. These other forms (tribal, nomadic, and a long etcetera) are precisely
the ones practiced by the majority of indigenous groups that populated the
Americas at the time of the colonial encounter. If we limit our research to
studying what took place in the lands dominated by Aztecs, Incas, and Mayas,
and if we do not make sense of the territories occupied by other native groups,
our understanding of the colonial encounter will be incomplete. Even worse,
it will become a distortion of history.
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