Inventing the "Other": in the Old World and the New: Self-Representation and Representations of Others in Columbus's Second Voyage

Readings

Cecil Jane, ed. The Four Voyages of Columbus. New York, 1988, pp. 20-113. (Includes Chanca's description of Columbus's Second Voyage and Columbus's Memorandum to the Catholic Kings These two texts will be discussed in class.)

Bernal D¡az del Castillo. The Conquest of New Spain. New YorK: Penguin, 1963.

Hern n Cortes. Letters from Mexico. Trans and ed. Anthony Pagden. Yale: New Haven, 1986. (Above all the "tercera carta-relacion.)

SUMMARY

I. Towards a concept of the "Other."

a) The "Other" in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe.

b) The Making of Persecuting Societies: Jews, Gypsies, Lepers and Women. R.I. Moore, Ginzburg and Nirenberg.

c) Religion, Economy, Society.-The growth of the Nation State.

d) Inquisition and The Hammer of Witches.

II. Fifteenth-Century Iberia

a) Christian, Jews, Conversos and Moors

b) The legacy of 1492: Inquisition and exile.

III. The Caribbean, 1492-1493: The Encounter of Two Worlds.

a) Ambivalent visions: The first voyage.

b) The natural man and the Cannibals.

c) Otherness and slavery.

IV. The Valley of Mexico, 1517-21.

a) The Mexica: Bernal D¡az's vision.

b) The final days: "unnatural cruelty."

V. Native Cultures in and around the Valley of Mexico.

Olmec (Zapotec) (c. 1200 BC - 900 BC) mother culture of Mayan civilization. Sites at Oaxaca, San Lorenzo (Veracruz), La Venta.

Maya: Pre-Classical Period (2000 BC to AD 250) village farming.

Classical, 250-900 AD, monuments, cities

Post-Classical, c.900 to 1519

Sites: Izapa (early on Pacific coast), Kaminaljuy£, Tikal, Cop n, Pomona, Campeche, Tabasco, Piedras Negras, Bonampak, Palenque, Hormiguero, Chich‚n-Itz , Kun .

Toltec (Nahua-speaking, 648 AD -1050s), Chichimec (1170s).

Sites: Tula, Chich‚n-Itz , Teotihuacan, Palenque. Aztec (Mexica), reached Tula 1196, established Tenochtitlan, 1325.

mid-XIVth c. under Moctezuma I expanded to the Gulf of Mexico coastline.

VI. Spain in 1517.-The inheritance of Charles I (V) Casa de Contrataci¢n or Council of the Indies By 1516, Spaniards had discovered Bay of Honduras, Gulf of Dari‚n, the coast of South America to the River of La Plata, N£¤ez de Balboa had seen the Pacific, Caribbean islands explored and conquered, Sebastian Cabot had sailed the coast of Labrador (1497).

repartimientos and encomiendas

Las Casas and Montesinos

Diego de Vel zquez conquest of Cuba.

In 1517, Hern ndez de Cordoba landed (by mistake) in Yucat n, cape Catoche.

1518, Juan de Grijalba (Vel zquez's nephew) reached Cozumel, the coast of Yucat n, sacrifice temple at San Juan de Ulloa.

Hern n Cort‚s (1485-1547)

To Salamanca at 14, to the New World at 19 (1504)

In Hispaniola 1504-11

In Cuba 1511-19, marriage to Catalina Xu rez.

To Mexico, 1519.