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Article: Mercantilism and cultural difference in Cabeza de Vaca's Relacion.
- Article from:
- Early American Literature
- Article date:
- March 22, 2005
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 University of North Carolina Press. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The story of the failed conquest that led to his eventual captivity by the Native Americans of southern Texas and northern Florida, Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca's Relacion (1) has long held a unique position in the literary annals of sixteenth-century Spain. Singled out for its unusually realistic and sympathetic descriptions of indigenous life, the Relacion has been hailed by scholars as a kind of counternarrative to the stories of brute force and the claims of cultural superiority that characterize the Spanish colonial period and the literary genres of its chroniclers. Beatriz Pastor, for example, argues that La Relacion is "a discourse of failure" that "subvert[s] the ...