Polemic of Privilege: Cabeza de Vaca’s 1542 Relación and Mota Padilla’s 1742 Historia, Capítulo XV

Discursive studies of different Spanish conquerors’ accounts—as well of a particular narrative—offer ways by which one can discern social/cultural layers of the Spanish conquering enterprise and how later representations of the past are remembered. For instance, Rolena Adorno argues the “polemics of possession”—the taking “of the American lands, their resources, and most of all, their peoples”—are central to Spanish American literature.[1] Ralph Bauer submits that the “differences in literary and generic evolutions in various places must be understood in terms of their distinct socio-historical developments.”[2] The imposition of Spanish imperial foreign rule on the Americas leads to neo-feudal elite and Crown narratives of privilege that respond to each other through an assumed common subordinating context and utterances. They develop contentiously during the conquest endeavor and persist in the colonial process.[3] The claim to privilege is at the core of this ongoing narrative contestion and negotiation process, which proceeds into the economically shifting 1700s.

This article is part of a longer continuing project of investigation, which examines the narrative methods the Spanish conquerors imposed and developed in their imperial endeavor. In previous work, I focused exclusively on Cabeza de Vaca’s 1542 La Relación to address his contested evolving eyewitness experience, captivity account, and attempt to validate his royal service.[4] This article expands the examination of the continuing discursive struggle—within the Spanish Empire—by pairing Cabeza de Vaca’s 1542 La Relación with Capítulo XV in Mota Padilla’s 1742 Historia. The goal is to deepen the understanding of the contestation for privilege.

I focus on the polemic of privilege in the Spanish Empire that occurs in two slightly dissimilar discursive social/cultural textual constructs: Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s 1542 La Relación que dio Álvar Núñez Cabeça de Vaca de lo acaescido en las Indias… and in Capítulo XV (relating the supposed entrada of Pedro Almendes Chirinos) in Matías de la Mota Padilla’s 1742 Historia de la Conquista de la Provincia de la Nueva Galicia.[5] Though two centuries separate the narratives, Capítulo XV ’s succinct account of Cabeza de Vaca’s La Relación reveals the continuing discursive struggle between the neo-feudal elite and the Spanish Crown. This situation is possible because neither significant monologic discourse dominates completely in the Spanish imperial context. Instead, in this context, two significant discourses (an emperor-centered and a neo-feudal one) operate simultaneously within some accepted unified, established rules and doctrines. Two slightly different superaddressees advance discursive social/cultural textual constructs that systematize narrative meaning in favor of each group. Their superaddressees—respectively arising in La Relación and in Capítulo XV—function, conflict, and interact within a fluid evolving social/economic process.[6]

In La Relación, through an evolving eyewitness captivity account, Cabeza de Vaca attempts to validate his royal service and promote an emperor-centered authority. On the other hand, Capítulo XV in Mota Padilla’s work recasts the Cabeza de Vaca account into one justifying neo-feudal privilege in general. The Dorantes figure in Capítulo XV (part of a 1700s regional history)—like La Relación’s textual Cabeza de Vaca—encapsulates a particular body of claims to privilege. Within the developing conquering/colonial context, the neo-feudal elite attempts to legitimize a conquering past in order to insure their continued political/economic exclusive rights. Understanding the superaddressees in the Chirinos account (Capítulo XV) in Mota Padilla’s Historia and Cabeza de Vaca’s La Relación assists in discerning the polemic about who holds privilege, as based on interpretations about the conquest experience, which have social, political, economic consequences.

My comparative discursive study of Capítulo XV in Mota Padilla’s 1742 Historia with significant aspects of Cabeza de Vaca’s 1542 La Relación looks into the polemic about who holds privilege, which is rooted in the Spanish conquest endeavor. I utilize Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of the superaddressee, who—though not physically present in a dialogue—is taken to be the participant holding the authentic and unifying view of things, subordinating all to its contextual definition (all existence exists in it and for it).[7] The paper consists of three sections: narrative background, economic context, and textual analysis.

Part One

In April 1527, the Pámfilo de Narváez Expedition (1527-1536) sets out to conquer land and people in the Americas. Cabeza de Vaca as treasurer of the Expedition represents the Spanish Crown’s economic/political interests, which conflict with those of Governor Narváez’s, and in La Relación their clash confirms the delineation of two different types of cristianos.[8] Cabeza de Vaca and Andrés Dorantes are among the 300 armed men who enter inland into Florida in 1528 but end up unable to reconnect with the ships.[9] Consequently, the stranded men construct barges on which they launch themselves into the sea. They end up shipwrecked somewhere on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico in present-day northern Mexico or the state of Texas, U.S.A. From there, Cabeza de Vaca, along with three companions (Dorantes, Castillo, and Estevanico the African slave), journeys inland westward, trying to reach tierra cristiana.[10] The castaways finally encounter a Spanish slave raiding party in 1536 near the Sinaloa River close to the Pacific Ocean.

Cabeza de Vaca and Dorantes become business partners for a collaborative conquering project, aiming to present a joint petition (1537) to the emperor requesting “compensation for their services in the form of future commissions,” specifically “the rights to conquer and settle Florida.”[11] In 1537, Cabeza de Vaca leaves for Spain and reaches the port of Lisbon on August 9, 1537. Dorantes, however, is not able to accompany him nor afterwards to join Cabeza de Vaca in Spain. By the time Cabeza de Vaca arrives to the court at Valladolid in 1537, though, he learns that Hernando de Soto has been awarded the contract to “conquer and settle the lands that extend from the Río de las Palmas to the Florida Cape”.[12] Upon learning Dorantes did not return to Spain, New Spain Viceroy Mendoza sends him a letter proposing that Dorantes command an expedition to northern Mexico. Dorantes goes to México-Tenochtitlán and considers the Viceroy’s offer, which he declines.[13] He marries the widow María de la Torre, becoming an encomendero.[14]

Before the imperial enterprise in the Americas and then during its process, several levels of contested discourse exist between Spanish elites (e,g., feudal lords and monarchs attempt to affirm their authority). Although these discourses operate simultaneously within a somewhat unified established economic/political context, their contentious interaction indicates much fluidity. Two hundred years after Cabeza de Vaca’s 1542 La Relación, its account in Capítulo XV in Mota Padilla’s Historia becomes another discursive arena in which the neo-feudal elite of New Spain confront the Spanish Crown.

Cabeza de Vaca accounts and narratives influenced by his work exist that promote and reveal political/social and ideological perspectives, e.g., the following. Joint Report (1537) of Cabeza de Vaca, Dorantes, and Castillo about the failed Narváez Expedition.[15] In 1542, Cabeza de Vaca publishes La Relación in Zamora, Spain, which concerns the failed Pámfilo de Narváez Expedition (1527-1536). Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo’s (1478–1557) account of the Narváez Expedition draws on the Joint Report.[16] After reading the 1542 narrative, Oviedo adds to his earlier six-chapter Narváez Expedition account. Cabeza de Vaca’s re-conceptualized La Relación is published in 1555. Bartolomé de las Casa utilizes Cabeza de Vaca’s work to support his discourse of pacification.

Importantly, the 1700s, regional histories that employ Cabeza de Vaca’s account disclose and expose the dispute about privilege between the Spanish elites and the Crown. Notably, those regional histories utilizing La Relación emphasize the castaways evangelizing role. For Antonio Ardoino, marqués de Sorito, this is essential for his polemical treatise Examen apologético de la histórica narración de los naufragios, peregrinaciones i milagros de Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Baca en las tierras de la Florida, i del Nuevo México… (1736), which refutes Honorio Philopone’s denial of Cabeza de Vaca’s miracles in his narrative. As the basis of his historical accuracy, Ardoino refers to an Antonio de Herrera narrative, which is supposed to buttress his account, which sets expected Christianizing discursive conventions. He defends Cabeza de Vaca’s veracity and “attempts to plot” deeds in the “geographic locations and politics of La Florida and Nuevo México” as well as complains about the misrepresentations concocted by the enemies of the Spanish glories.[17] The contestation reveals a fractured imperial perspective.

Lawyer, vice regal official from Guadalajara, and priest Matías de la Mota Padilla (1688-1766) writes Historia de la Conquista de la Provincia de la Nueva Galicia (1742). For Capítulo XV in Historia, he draws from Fray Antonio Tello’s Crónica miscelánea de la sancta provincia de Xalisco (written 1650-1653). Capítulo XV purports to narrate the “entrada de D. Pedro Almendes Chirinos” exhorting the cristiano castaways’ evangelizing, miracles, and their praiseworthy lives. The account is part of the Historia’s political history promotion—in conjunction with a spiritual one—of the province.[18] In Capítulo XV, a Dorantes-centered castaway narrative validates neo-feudal preferential rights through historical references to a prior authoritative past discourse, implying an unbroken line of deserved reward. Within the context of 1700s regional histories, the castaways of La Relación become founders and civilizers of regions, for they are committed Christian conquerors, who fulfill miracles ordained by God.[19]

Mota Padilla claims to draw on “archival” research to sustain a discursive orientation for the regional elite, which brings to question the issue of the means of verifying “raw materials” of as evidence.[20] His utilization of “archival” sources results—not in recounting the lives of ordinary people—but in advancing the perspective of a Spanish imperial religious/cultural harmony based on the ethical nature of the cristiano enterprise. The documentary framework reinforces the neo-feudal superaddressee’s conditions and constrains about legitimacy.

However, scholars note that Mota Padilla’s regional history of Provincia de la Nueva Galicia is not always correct. For instance, his Coronado information contains some errors, and he accesses different accounts about the expedition that produce questionable statements.[21] Confusion occurs with the connection of Motolinia’s account of two friars—as separate from Fray Marcos de Niza’s excursion—discovering the “large province called Tzibola”.[22] Supposedly, one of the friars, Juan de Olmeda, sends a report about Tzibola (e.g., informing that the people “wore clothes” and “had houses of many stories”) that reaches Fray Niza. This report presumably reaches viceroy Mendoza.[23]

Mota Padilla’s source for Capítulo XV is Fray Antonio Tello’s Crónica miscelánea de la sancta provincia de Xalisco, chronicles he wrote sometime around 1650. Tello (1567-1653) appears to base his narrative on a report from Jorge Robledo, a captain in Diego de Guzmán’s 1533 expedition, whose contents he identifies with those of the Lope de Samaniego reconnaissance to the Río Petatlán (1531) and merges it with the 1536 appearance of the survivors of the Narváez expedition.[24] In addition, he identifies Pedro Almendes Chirinos instead of Lope de Samaniego as leading the expedition, dates it 1532, and grafts “the Cabeza de Vaca party’s return in 1536 onto the Diego de Guzman expedition of 1533”.[25]

In the Dorantes-centered Capítulo XV, a succinct account of Cabeza de Vaca’s narrative appears as a memory of earned privilege that justifies a reinstatement of a neo-feudal conqueror’s history in the public discourse. In this version, the neo-feudal superaddressee, as Ultimate Arbiter, bolsters the group’s strategic interests through ritual utterances of conquest, which rhetorically activate the group’s strategic interests, which is mirrored in the fiscal fragmentation and fiscal payments that “rely on bilateral private contracts between each elite and the Crown”.[26]

Capítulo XV’s Dorantes-centered discourse indirectly but importantly consists of an aspect designed to mystify or obscure essential realties about the nature of political and economic power: oppression and injustice, such as the brutal nature of the conquest and the burden on those who make privilege possible.[27] This is so because the narrative continues the neo-feudal conqueror’s demand for the rights based on the merits of service in the past. Through an authority based on antecedents officially confirmed by the Crown, Capítulo XV’s discourse privileges a conqueror’s claims to merit and prestige that legitimize hereditary rights of his descendants.[28] The Dorantes in the Chapter, like Cabeza de Vaca in La Relación, confirms the approved superaddressee dual mission of bringing cristiano/Hispanic civilization and faith to the other.[29] Consequently, Andrés Dorantes as redeemer is a significant symbol of encomendero rights and privileges because the imperial superaddressee in that account presents a divinely ordained history of loyalty and commitment to empire and cristiano values validated by miracles. This allows neo-feudal elite (and their personal and kingship allies) to rhetorically resistance the Monarch’s threats to their regional domination.[30] The appropriation of Cabeza de Vaca’s narrative permits an encomendero-founded elite to project into the past an assumed present legitimacy.

Part Two

To understand the reinterpretation that occurs in Capítulo XV of Cabeza de Vaca’s castaway narrative La Relación, one has to be aware of the economic shift that occurs in the Spanish empire. The tensions between the Crown and the neo-feudal encomenderos—and then later with their political/economic descendants—go back to the beginning of the conquest of the Americas. For instance, the Crown takes action against the encomiendas of Hernán Cortés supporters.[31] After attending the 1550 Valladolid perpetuity debate, Bernal Díaz del Castillo writes his Historia verdadera, in which he defends the merit-based conqueror’s rights to just compensation as one of the true conquerors (verdaderos conquistadores) who subdues for His Majesty and inculcates the natives with the holy doctrine.[32] His neo-feudal Ultimate Witness (superaddressee) emphasizes a sacred memory as source and claim to power and privilege, allowing the neo-feudal elite and allies to challenge centralizing Crown imperially assertions.[33]

After 1700 in New Spain, with the Spanish Monarchy pushing to replace mercantilism with a liberal economy, both mercantilist and liberal economic/political forces fuel the contested emperor-centered and neo-feudal elite perspectives.[34] The neo-feudal elite accepts a hierarchy of privilege (some groups of people get more than others do in the system). However, in their discursive contestation, they utilize the empire’s status quo discourse legitimate their privileged social status.

Both Cabeza de Vaca’s La Relación and Capítulo XV in Mota Padilla’s Historia do not come about in a vacuum but develop in changing imperial social/political circumstances.[35] Just as Cabeza de Vaca’s La Relación responds to “the geo-political interests of the imperial state,” so does Capítulo XV’s discourse reacts to Bourbon political pressure.[36] The structure of power revolves around two distinct constructions of legitimate governance. One is the discourse of power structure relationships set in an encomendero/conqueror past. Another is the imperial institutions with their discourse and imperial dictates.

The regional elite groups have an ambiguous relationship with the Crown: e.g., resenting the royally appointed officials and depending on colonial authorities to uphold their privileges.[37] For instance, in 1626, the colonial elite resist the Crown’s pressure (through the establishment of a Union of Arms) to centralize the fragmented financial and military situation. However, by 1763, some members of the elite comply with the Crown’s centralization of the financial and military structure.[38] Within an undetermined imperial context, the different neo-feudal elite and emperor-centered orientations and definitions of legitimacy reveal no genuine dialogue advances and no new consensus arises.[39]

The neo-feudal elite of New Spain reacts to the threats from the Crown to their privilege by borrowing from earlier social/political dealings that emphasize the conqueror’s history.[40] This is accentuated during the liberal phase of Spanish colonialism (between 1700 and 1808) when “Bourbon political reforms weakened the direct political influence of older elite families”; however, “they did not fundamentally shift the political system to one in which neutral bureaucrats carried out policy autonomously from dominant socioeconomic interests”.[41] In New Spain, by “the end of the seventeenth century, an elite group of merchants and estate-owning settlers” exist, who “forged under Hapsburg colonialism” become an obstacle for the Bourbon political reforms, for their colonial concerns outweigh the Crown’s interests.[42] The syncretic paradoxical existence of both a “commercial economic organization and feudal/paternalistic social organization” leads to the dialogic tensions among elite groups trying to shape the meaning of legitimacy.[43]

In 1742, the neo-feudal elite of New Spain continues to negotiate with and oppose the Crown, which is attempting to centralize the fragmented fiscal situation and military funding.[44] For the New Spain regional elites, their superaddressee framework confirms their right to the closely intertwine wealth and state power. The perspective will not allow the memory of the true conqueror to fade, declaring a nostalgic patron-client relationship between servant and lord. The rejoinders of the New Spain regional elites, (that carry elements of different voices) seek to convince the other party that their claims are proper in order to consolidate their privilege, thus ending the exchange.[45] The Dorantes-centered Capítulo XV (with its rejoinders that announce and assume the inevitable outcome of neo-feudal elite privilege) sets the rationale for their formation, operation, and perpetuation of privilege.

The evolving social/political process involves the Spanish elite first gaining the right to exploit labor for the Crown through the encomienda system and then acquiring the right to own land and control labor through the hacienda system.[46] Nevertheless, with the increase in population after 1650 that continues into the 1700s and free-wage labor policies in New Spain, conflicting power/privilege tensions arise, e.g., over land ownership titles and labor access interests.[47]

The neo-feudal elite’s political/economic order and system of governance is multi-faceted. Early on in New Spain, the social integration among the elite develops. For instance, they purchase “regimentos” (town-council seats) from the Crown, forming large privately owned estates (part of the rise of the hacendados in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) and use Church loans for urban and landed investments. They arrange marriages between children of families holding extensive encomiendas and other land holdings, take “abandon” native lands and partner with locally oriented merchants.[48] Even as the encomienda as an institution declines, the encomendero families (and later their political/economic descendants) continue to build a multidimensional economic and political base for themselves, with the aim of retaining their position.[49] In the case of hacendados, “[r]ecruitment from other economic groups” is “a continuous process” for external sources of capital, e.g., creating a symbiotic relationship between the mining and agricultural sectors.[50] These actions extend the neo-feudal elite’s holdings and consolidates local powerful families.

In the 1700s, the contradictory economic relationships in New Spain affect the discursive deployment and comprehensibility of both neo-feudal and emperor-centered superaddressees utterances. For example, as Van Young notes, in eighteenth century Mexico “[h]aciendas were businesses, markets did work, indebted peons owed an average of only two months’ wages and were not fixed to the land. Nevertheless, Guadalajara in the eighteenth century was not a model of frictionless free-market economic competition. Old institutions, customary rights, legal ambiguities, caste status, and occasional government meddling all had a hand in shaping the premodern agrarian economy of this important region”.[51] The emperor-centered and neo-feudal economic/political contested dialogic tensions are arise from mixed economic forces that open the door to various, complex, and uncertainty situations.

Consequently, elite groups use “selective contextualization” as means to present “relevant interpretations” of a neo-feudal perspective.[52] For instance, the neo-feudal superaddressee assumptions of privilege fit the notions that hacienda ownership was stable and its ownership unchanging, evoking the sense of an eternal and God-given property right. However, this hides the important point that landed families come to depend on “low-wage and indebted workers with little mobility” and that many properties, especially before 1760, did change ownership.[53] Consequently, for instance, when the Crown introduces an intendancy system, which in part “limits lending to native peoples,” the landed elite reacts against it, for this undermines their “workers’ dependency [and] subordination” to their “paternalism, clientelism, and low wages”.[54]

Although the Crown pressures the neo-feudal elite—who after the 1780s changes by a degree their narrative interpretation when the Crown is able to align the “main corporate elites” with “benefits from the public good” in the areas of fiscal contributions and military protection, the tension persist.[55] The Spanish Monarchy’s major problem stems from its setting “new institutions and actors without removing the preexisting ones”.[56] Consequently, New Spain experiences the contentious amalgam of Habsburg and Bourbon “contradictory heritages” that the dissimilar dominant superaddressees in Cabeza de Vaca’s 1542 La Relación and in Capítulo XV in Mota Padilla’s 1742 Historia reflect.[57]

Influenced by extra-textual elements, La Relación and 1742 Capítulo XV develop their significantly dissimilar arguments concerning who has privilege by alluding to a lineage of succession, continuation, and a valid history.[58] As a historical document, Capítulo XV reorients Cabeza de Vaca’s story to buttress neo-feudal privilege and counter a disruption of exclusive benefits.[59] The economic mix—with divergent aims—allows the neo-feudal elite—struggling for legitimacy—to utilize accepted imperial rhetoric and endow it with different meanings that dependent on the economic/political relationships the group espouses within the imperial sphere.[60]

Part Three

The superaddressee of a relación furnishes a set of shared dialogic symbols and references within an ideological framework, within which a person can derive a sense of purpose and worth. Significantly, a member of a group, who demands privilege within the Spanish Empire, requires not just a rank marker but knowledge of the guiding narrative that confirms the status of the person. In the Chirinos narrative—which is based on Cabeza de Vaca’s account—the utterances buttress a conquest history and memory that relates the encomienda rights and privileges of the past to the 1700s, confirming legitimacy.

Though separated from one another in both place and time, Cabeza de Vaca 1542 La Relación and Chirinos account in Mota Padilla’s 1742 Historia contain a dialogic relationship based on common ground, e.g., narratively agreeing that the social structure is a result of a cristiano mission cosmology.[61] Both La Relación and Capítulo XV set their main character within the order and continuity of their particular superaddressee, manifesting loyalty and affirming their conquest approach is the most useful to His Majesty. Each superaddressee insists on a meaningful cristiano-based identity that supports a civil/religious hierarchy whose rejoinders affirm the social bonds that exist between groups and individuals participating in empire building. However, each narrative attempts to make one Ultimate Witness the default dominant reference, one that establishes and cultivates the belief in its exclusive legitimacy, affecting the nature of obedience and the means of exercising authority.[62] This raises the important point that privilege depends on the need to institutionalize the sanctioned perspective of an authoritative addressee.[63]

This discursive situation opens opportunities for the neo-feudal elite to resist losing their gains by utilizing the accepted imperial language (e.g., Dios, su/vuestra magestad, señal de la cruz, peregrino, cristiano) to buttress their positions.[64] Common terms in use among the different elite factions present the illusion of a dialogue in process that is exploring and negotiating differences. In fact, a divergence occurs as the neo-feudal elite uses the official language to argue the group has fiscal privileges as part of their fulfillment of duties. The refracted utilization of a term, such as Majestad, clearly “serves two speakers at the same time” while expressing “simultaneously two different intentions”.[65]

The superaddressees of Cabeza de Vaca’s 1542 La Relación and Capítulo XV in Mota Padilla’s 1742 Historia construct history on suppose evidential primary texts, which set the record straight and uphold the cristiano mission with its normative sociopolitical order. The veracity of official history involves expected discursive structural conventions, e.g., book or chapter titles. The long titles of La Relación and Capítulo XV are in themselves important factors in cuing narrative expectations via orientations and conventions. The title of Capítulo XV (“Entrada de D. Pedro Almedes Chirinos hasta el río Yaquiní, adentlante de Sinaloa, y hallan a Dorantes y compañeros…”) signals an official report whose serious narrative voice espouses authenticity by presenting the Chirinos narrative as part of a chain of valid transmitters: an account with well-grounded sources. The title sets the expectation of Dorantes as an “authoritative guide for the reader” who will instruct one on what is and how history is remembered.[66]

The theme of spiritual conquest in Capítulo XV parallels that in Cabeza de Vaca’s La Relación, which—as part of an assumed self-filling prophecy of a Christian chronology—works towards the second coming of Christ as the Catholic universal empire unfolds. As an agent of a divine plan, Dorantes thanks Dios for His mercy, accepting the charges imposed by “providencia divina” on him just like Cabeza de Vaca who commits himself to His mercy (misericordia) and blessings (merçedes).[67] They utter their submission to the cristiano imperial superaddressee and demonstrate it through their missionary cultural activity of converting the conquered to Christianity (associating duty and loyalty to deserved reward).[68]

In Capítulo XV, the castaways initiate history by divinely fulfilling the conversion of passive, silent subjects devoid of cristiano and Hispanic values (which the cristianos grant them) and by settling them. Alluding to neo-feudal merit, the Chapter evokes “providencia divina” (God's intervention in the world) and the regret of the loss of the old spirit (“aquel espíritu que tuvieron”).[69] The neo-feudal superaddressee braces a hierarchical order that establishes and holds a cristiano harmonious society as opposed to one that abandons the evangelical mission. The neo-feudal elite inscribe or reinscribe a history of regional founders and civilizers, who support imperial expansion and control, extoll the cristiano sacred mission of a universal empire as the basis for a true, righteous community, and assume as self-evident the status of chosen people.[70]

The neo-feudal superaddressee entails a narrative sense of place charged with a conquest history, presenting a significant recollection of the feats (hazañas) of His Majesty’s vassals (vasallos) and a testimony that proves merit (probanza), because captains and soldiers (capitanes y soldados) give their blood for Church and Catholic Monarchs.[71] Such utterances create and maintain group allegiance and bestow an argument for holding a powerful moral position that justifies their clinging to a range of non-market transactions, e.g., political offices and labor tribute.

Capítulo XV is framed by a superaddressee who allows the nostalgic projection of a harmonious society based on the hierarchical order of feudalism and the religious faith of Roman Catholicism. At a certain level, this particular version of the tale of the cristiano castaways comes across as a heuristic device, but one that does not address the complexity of issues created by the conquest. Nevertheless, this approach projects the 1700s neo-feudal elite’s attempt not to replace the system but, instead, to restart political/economic forces with their chances of success restored.

Both terms, peregrino (pilgrim) in Capítulo XV and físico (healer) in La Relación, display characters who are tested and face various forms of obstruction and delay as they carry out the supposedly inevitable cristiano conquest. Dorantes and Cabeza de Vaca survive by proving their ingenuity, physical courage, honor, faith, and loyalty, emerging as particularly politically accentuated and molded dominant characters. Peregrino and físico represent narrative stability, each image enhancing and intensifying the accounts’ recreation of the Christian public space.[72] Cabeza de Vaca’s físico, though, articulates an anti-neo-feudal conqueror position.[73]

In Capítulo XV, the peregrino Dorantes (as a symbolic ancestor) acts out a discursive spiritual/authoritative conquest, for he is the true cristiano, and as such, the basis for legitimacy and privilege established through a self-authenticating narrative. In the Chapter, “peregrino” Dorantes endures the hardship and fate of a hero, while he himself remains essentially unchanged, making clear that God is leading him on a religious journey.[74] The Dorantes-centered Capítulo XV presents a peregrino who is the basis for rights based on a heroic or ancestral distant past and turns Cabeza de Vaca into a silent and marginal character.[75]

The Chapter’s narrator proclaims the need of a whole volume (un volumen) to speak of the castaways’ miraculous accomplishments. He points out their preaching to the barbarians (bárbaros), which leaves them receptive to Christianization (la predicación evangélica).[76] This narrator indicates he hopes that the evangelizing spirit (espíritu que tuvieron)—with which Dorantes and his companions imbued the uncultured people of the Nueva-España y Galicia provinces—would return to the Spaniards.[77] Consequently, the peregrinatio vitae narrative explains the trials and actions of Dorantes as divinely directed and inevitable foundation events.[78]

The testimony concerning the healing practices Dorantes and his fellow castaways as miraculous establish and cultivate the belief in neo-feudal legitimacy within the imperial context.[79] For instance, the peregrino Dorantes confronts a situation in which many natives are dying from an illness (contagio). When one afflicted native, who Dorantes needs, is in very sick, he calls out for Dios to save his life (clamó á Dios for su vida). He places his hand where the indigenous man felt the pain and made the sign of the cross (señal de la cruz), restoring this health and implying a Lazarus-like event.[80] In La Relación, Cabeza de Vaca performs as a físico (healer) with hands on and sign of the cross (los santiguamos) and prayer (Pater Noster, Ave María), he is the one who operates on a native of who he later hears has comes back to life.[81]

The redeemer Dorantes, in Capítulo XV, appeals to the entitlement discourse of loyalty and commitment to empire and cristiano values. This is not new, for Cabeza de Vaca develops this same discursive appeal but with an emperor-centered aim.[82] However, Dorantes as focus in Capítulo XV shifts the discursive orientation away from an emperor-centered one, making Dorantes a legitimacy-embodying hero, who as a meaningful whole connects people to a place.[83] The substitution of Dorantes, as the savior/conqueror in the Chirinos account for La Relación’s Cabeza de Vaca, serves as a basis for a neo-feudal attempt to countermand the emperor-centered oriented discourse through Dorantes’ prominent place in history, which legitimizes the neo-feudal elite social status and confirms their right to privilege. Cabeza de Vaca and Dorantes—as significant textual protagonists of the shipwreck experience accounts—are crucial for larger social/political arguments. Capítulo XV and La Relación highlight them as redeemers, especially when the castaways are within reach of and then reunite with fellow cristianos.

For Cabeza de Vaca and his fellow castaways in La Relación, while seeking to reach the tierra cristiana, they run into an indio wearing “al cuello (…) una huevilleta de talabarte de espada y en ella cosida un clavo de herrar”.[84] They ask the native about the objects, who informs them that some bearded men like them (barvas comom nosotros) brought them. The castaways realize they are close enough to finally connect with fellow cristianos, and they thank “Dios nuestro Señor” very much for the news.[85]

The narrator of Capítulo XV is an eyewitness to history informed by a cristiano/Hispanic religious and moral outlook, who declares Dorantes the redeemer, for he takes the castaways out of captivity (redimió de su cautiverio).[86] There comes the moment when the castaways find signs of cristianos (the slave hunters): the native who wears a buckle/horseshoe nail (evillata de talabarte de espada y atado aá ella, un clavo de herrar).[87] Afterwards, in the Dorantes–centered account, when the castaways find the place where the cristianos on horseback had been, they find a very high cross and the ground trampled with traces of horseshoes. They give thanks to Dios for the signs that confirm the miracle and His divine intervention in getting them out of that labyrinth (laberinto).[88]

However, in La Relación, just as the castaways are within reach of a Spanish slave raiding party in 1536 near the Sinaloa River close to the Pacific Ocean, Cabeza de Vaca cannot get Castillo and Dorantes to go with him in trying to connect with them. Instead, they hesitate to re-join with their imperial comrades. They express, at least at that moment, that the attempt is not to their liking (A ellos se les hizo de mal esto) and they are too tired from the hardship (escusándose por el cansançio y trabajo). Cabeza de Vaca does not accept any of this, for they are younger and healthier than him (major que yo por ser más rezios y más moços).[89] Cabeza de Vaca proceeds with el negro and 11 natives in going after the cristianos in the area. When Cabeza de Vaca and his group reach the slave hunting horsemen, their reaction to the encounter is stunned silence (tan atónitos) as they stare at him for a long time, for they do not recognize Cabeza de Vaca as one of them.[90]

Cabeza de Vaca enters into a heated argument with those Spaniards, who reject his claim to authority—labeling him not a true cristiano/conqueror—and seek to enslave the natives who accompany him.[91] Defending his position as that of the emperor’s—and drawing in the attending natives as witnesses—Cabeza de Vaca angrily opposes their enslavement, arguing that the good-willed indios will serve the cristianos.[92] However, the Spaniard Zebreros misleads (engaña) and detaches Cabeza de Vaca from the natives, who the Zebreros cristianos then enslave. These Spaniards, as well, continue assaulting the native communities (despoblados y quemados).[93]

In Capítulo XV, the castaway Dorantes takes decisive action, commands the natives, and with the Lord’s guidance finds the way out of the labyrinth.[94] He appears to be the only cristiano castaway leading a large number of natives straight to the horse riding cristianos. Dorantes’ joyous reunion with the Spanish horsemen leaves the cristianos speechless (de gozo ya no asertaban á hablarse) and all in tears (lágrimas). The narrative template establishes Dorantes as pilgrim evangelizer (pedicación evangélica), who accepts his cristiano commitments to the imperial mission and expects a just reward involving privilege.[95] The narrator and Dorantes do not criticize the horsemen as Cabeza de Vaca does in his narrative. Instead, the account makes Pámfilo de Narváez indirectly responsible for the ill will the natives have against the cristianos.[96]

The La Relación and Capítulo XV superaddressees promote cristiano/Hispanic “jurisdiction” of territories, confirming and authorizing the cristiano’s right to evaluate, hold power, and dominate.[97] Capítulo XV places much stress on the chronological legitimacy of history based on settlement of an area, utilizing a narrative voice that articulates a neo-feudal elite collective memory of achievement and offers hope that the Spaniards will return to the pilgrim spirit (“aquel espíritu”) and not just enter an area, then abandon it.[98] The narrator mentions Hernando de Soto as exemplifying the desertion of the evangelical and settlement mission.

The neo-feudal superaddressee permits discursive elaboration and containment, implying that neo-feudal opponents fail to interpret the correct meaning and implications of the conquest enterprise. The peregrino orientation assumes indigenous acquiescence and reinforces the relational connections that definitely establish a “we” and a “them” dichotomy. In addition, the peregrino anchors the neo-feudal conquerors’ authority in the language of the empire, which provides a constraint on the emperor’s discursive power, forcing to the forefront neo-feudal narrative conventions. Dorantes’ work for the emperor testifies as being fundamental to converting the natives to Catholicism, and by implication a task done by the encomendero.[99] In Capítulo XV, a Dorantes-centered account presents a nostalgic history that supposedly attests to a harmonious society held together by a neo-feudal hierarchical order and the Roman Catholic religion, verifying that God willed the conquest whose deputized conquerors bring light into the darkness and whose descendants continue to protect the realm.

In Capítulo XV, the substitution of Andrés Dorantes for Cabeza de Vaca is part of the polemical struggle over who holds the authoritative collective memories. The Chapter discursively validates a neo-feudal elite superaddressee, articulating spiritual kinship and deserved merit (wealth and title for service). The Dorantes character consecrates the perpetuation of social/political interests of successive generations of claimants. As noted, “the desire [by Mota Padilla] to record the history of his native province and to perpetuate the deeds of its discoverers and founders—among whom a number of Mota Padilla’s ancestors had taken first rank—furnish a strong motive for such a work”.[100]

Conclusion

Two centuries separate Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s 1542 La Relación and Capítulo XV in Matías de la Mota Padilla’s 1742 Historia; nevertheless, a study of superaddressees discerns their continuing struggle—within the Spanish empire—over interpretations about the meaning of social, political, economic privileges, which goes back to the Spanish conquest endeavor. Spanish imperial institutional, economic, ideological, and political determinants come into play in the complex struggle over privilege. The discourse ascribed to Cabeza de Vaca’s La Relación and Capítulo XV in Mota Padilla’s work cannot be understood apart from the political/economic networks of social relationships. For instance, the empire building policies occur in conjunction with a discursive process whose sets of narrative and thematic conventions sustain the political order and its associations.

Bauer acknowledges La Relación as a “meta-historical allegory”, which applies to Capítulo XV as well.[101] Both narratives face the continuing challenge of what Adorno calls the “goal of credibility”.[102] Cabeza de Vaca’s 1542 La Relación and Capítulo XV in Mota Padilla’s 1742 Historia argue for a Hispanic/cristiano privilege within an imperial setting based on the right to conquer, but their separate superaddressee orientations diverge.[103] La Relación argues for an emperor-centered authority while the Almendes Chirinos account (Capítulo XV) justifies neo-feudal privilege: both narratives construct ideological bridges between their past and present.[104] The compressed Chirinos account of Cabeza de Vaca’s La Relación presents a neo-feudal alternate document containing episodes considered founding events. Capítulo XV’s superaddressee underpins the notion that God willed the conquest and deputized the conquerors’ descendants to protect the realm and enjoy their privilege.[105] Consequently, a historical account arises that assumes custodianship of an ensemble of images, characters, and narrative pattern, creating an enclosed world charged with symbolism. Emphasizing the peregrino instead of the físico, the Chirinos account actively affirms the duty and merit of the conqueror, who as trailblazer brings light into the darkness. Dorantes as peregrino represents an inspired past useful in justifying, promoting, and strengthening the cohesiveness and affinity of the privileged neo-feudal elite community, which emphasizes empire as a loose confederation. (What is obvious is the absence of a voice for the oppressed, e.g., the conquered indigenous population.)

Mota Padilla’s 1742 Historia—as a collection and interpretation of documents—reinforces the neo-feudal elite’s right and authority to speak and write history. Capítulo XV becomes a verifying source that acknowledges and authenticates the local history with Dorantes contributing to the regional imaginary, highlighting an originating remote past that transforms and reconfigures the regional historical memory.[106] The Chapter’s peregrino image conveys a fixed set of utterances (e.g., conquest, duty, conversion, merit), connecting the 1700s neo-feudal elite to an encomendero merited right to wealth and power, thus preserving a privileged relationship across time and space. Consequently, a history of the cristiano castaways in which Dorantes is the focus does not represent the past per se but reveals how a past is remembered. The narrative chain of utterances link the 1500s to Mota Padilla’s time period within the framework of the supporting Ultimate Witness and Judge (superaddressee), providing a basis for demanding from the Crown fulfillment of privilege as well as criticizing attempts to take it away.[107] This neo-feudal narrative approach guides and orders the 1700s world, seeking to present a sacred historical solution to the growing threat of losing privilege.

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Notes

Author notes