The Conquistadors: A Very Short Introduction by Fernandez-Armesto Felipe & Restall Matthew

The Conquistadors: A Very Short Introduction by Fernandez-Armesto Felipe & Restall Matthew

Author:Fernandez-Armesto, Felipe & Restall, Matthew [Fernandez-Armesto, Felipe]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2012-02-22T16:00:00+00:00


To pass as a conquistador, Catalina de Erauso had to act out the conquistador stereotype to a degree that parodied it; the conquistador par excellence. Trouble finds Erauso wherever she goes (or he goes, as Erauso is always in drag); games of cards and casual conversations regularly turn into duels and street fights, and as the body count mounts, Erauso’s signature phrase “and down he went” becomes a black comic cue for the reader to chuckle. Although it is not always clear if other women have seen through Erauso’s disguise, her encounters with them—playful, noncommittal, vaguely contemptuous—tend to confirm her identity as a manly conquistador. Finally, in Erauso’s memoir indigenous warriors are seldom given individual identities; like the unfortunate defenders of homelands in the accounts of Cortés, Díaz, Alvarado, and Las Casas, natives are massacred with a brutal, dismissive bravado:

Meanwhile, the Indians returned to the village more than ten thousand strong. We fell at them again with such spirit, and butchered so many of them, that blood ran like a river across the plaza, and we chased them to the Dorado River, and beyond, slaughtering all the way.



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