Name: Rosa Martinez

Title: Trapped in the Imagination of Our European Colonizers: From Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca (1542) to Gaspar Perez de Villagra (1610) to Captain John Smith (1624)

Abstract: Years after they wandered about the harsh lands of the New World – Cabeza de Vaca roaming about the Southwest, Villagra marching into the deserts of New Mexico, and Smith navigating about and around the Chesapeake Bay – each returned to Europe and temporarily retired his sword to pick up the pen and record their own version and vision of America and its peoples. But when they sat down to write about the queer-reality they saw and the diverse people whom they encountered, these soldiers-turned-writers were no longer “reasoning citizens” of the Old World, for the unimaginable had marked their minds and awakened them to a heightened sense of being, feeling, and connecting with Others. Of particular interest in Naufragios (1542), the Historia de la Nueva Mexico (1610), and The General History of Virginia (1624), and, the focus of my presentation, is how these texts similarly speak for, think about, and represent Natives. Indeed, “[t]hey” – the Natives in which each encountered – “have a voice and role only within the history made by their Spanish [and English] masters” (David Quint in Epic and Empire); however, there is something to say about the moments when, for instance, Cabeza de Vaca relinquishes his Spanish identity, as well as his colonial one, to protect Natives from fellow Spanish colonizers, or how about when Villagra and Smith celebrate Native youths as peacemakers – the young daughter of Chief Powhatan, Pocahontas, and the almost twenty-year-old Zutancalpo, the son of Ácoma leader Zutacapan. What does it mean to history to say that these colonizers – even if they are merely imagining Native voices for literary purposes– incorporated into their versions and visions of America and its peoples an anti-colonial protest? Indeed, “[t]he result of transforming the heard into the seen is an illusion of knowledge” (Bruce R. Smith in “Mouthpieces”). But even illusions may carry loyalty and responsibility. Of course, we should approach these texts with caution and look at the manipulation of historical figures into fictive characters for narrative structure or (historical) argument, but also, we should look for where in the text – if anywhere – are there moments when our European colonizer dares to sympathize with the colonized.

 

Rosa A. Martinez is a second year Ph.D. student in English at U.C. Berkeley. She received two BAs in English & Women's Studies and an MA in English at Chico State. That thesis is entitled, "Melville and His Moby-Dick: Searching for Originality in Feminist Waters" (2007). Her studies at Berkeley include comparative analysis of early American colonial literature in English and Spanish, nautical texts across time and cultures, Melville Studies, ethnic literatures, and life writings and contemporary queer autobiographies. She has published reviews in the Journal of Lesbian Studies, and is currently writing an autobiography of growing up queer in Northern California.