SOURCE: Introduction to Castaways: The Narrative of Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, edited by Enrique Pupo-Walker and translated by Frances M. López-Morillas, University of California Press, 1993, pp. xv-xxx; 139-40.

[In the following introduction to a 1993 translation of the Relación, Pupo-Walker links the literary qualities of Cabeza de Vaca's narrative with medieval romances and adventure stories, and suggests that the chronicle has had a profound impact on modern Latin American fiction.]

Governor Pánfilo de Narváez's expedition that set out on “the seventeenth of June in the year fifteen hundred and twenty-seven” consisted of five ships, and crews totaling about six hundred men. After sailing from Sanlúcar de Barrameda the ships made a stop in the Canaries and went on for almost three months until, in mid-August, they reached Hispaniola. On this island they replenished their supplies and Narváez attempted without success to recruit additional crew members. From Hispaniola they went to Cuba, where they spent the winter of 1527-1528 but experienced setbacks (chs. I and II). In Santiago de Cuba and in the town of Trinidad they gradually acquired the provisions that the expedition needed to continue on its way. The costs, it may be remarked in passing, were borne by Narváez and the wealthy Spaniard Vasco Porcallo de Figueroa, who was then living in Cuba and who, years later, joined Hernando de Soto's expedition. During the months that the expedition spent in Cuba, a hurricane caused fifty deaths and considerable losses of animals and stores, as well as sinking two ships. Cabeza de Vaca stayed with some of the crews in the Bay of Jagua at the entrance of Cienfuegos, while Narváez stayed in the Bay of Santa Cruz (chs. I and II). As Núñez confirms, they at last set foot in Florida on 14 April 1528, in a coastal area near Tampa Bay, perhaps very near Boca Ciega.¹

Following a dispute between Núñez and Narváez (ch. IV), a party of about three hundred men led by Narváez struck into the peninsula, briefly marching east and later north, on a route parallel to the Florida coast; these were regions abounding in swamps, poisonous snakes, and harsh and noxious vegetation. Narváez had left a hundred men with the ships, which in their turn were to sail along the coast and eventually make possible a meeting of the two groups. But these crews, guided by an inexperienced pilot, lost contact with the land party in a matter of days. In the end the ships returned to New Spain, giving up Narváez's group for lost. By the time this group reached the northernmost part of Florida, near the present-day city of Tallahassee, it had been diminished by exhaustion, illness, and the often savage battles with Indians (chs. V-IX). Very near a village occupied by Apalachee Indians, which they called Aute, the survivors of the expedition decided on the remarkable expedient of constructing boats in which to sail westward, following the coast that was their only guide; as they thought, the route would take them to already explored and conquered regions of New Spain. When the boats had been built (ch. IX), after terrible sacrifices, they embarked; but bad weather, hunger, thirst, and the strong currents of the Mississippi River (ch. X) caused the five boats of the expedition's survivors to drift helplessly. By the autumn of 1528, Núñez and some of his companions were left defenseless and destitute among groups of Karankawa Indians who lived on these coasts, now part of eastern Texas; perhaps they did not imagine that in this desolate region they would spend years of slavery and indescribable suffering. In the end, of the three hundred men who had landed in Florida four would survive: Andrés Dorantes, Alonso del Castillo Maldonado, the Moroccan slave Estebanico, and Núñez. The possibility exists that a Greek named Teodoro survived by joining tribes in that region. Other information, collected years later by Hernando de Soto's men, suggested that Teodoro was sacrificed by the Indians.

After long delays and detours Núñez and his companions journeyed toward the west, pausing at times with clans and tribes of Coahuiltecs, Jumanos, Opatas, and Pimas, among other Indians. In their long pilgrimage Núñez and his companions had to survive under conditions of desperate need. Among those tribes they functioned more than once as medicine men or shamans. Always traveling westward, and later toward the south, Cabeza de Vaca and his companions finally met a group of Spanish soldiers (ch. XXXIII) who were laying siege to native communities in northern New Spain. The long-desired encounter took place after eight years of wandering through deserts and inhospitable regions, amid severe climatological conditions, in nakedness and total lack of protection. But he tells us little about the joy and rejoicing that resulted from the meeting. Núñez and his companions at last reached the village of Culiacán on 1 April 1536. Castillo, Dorantes, and Estebanico stayed in New Spain. Estebanico was killed some time later, after joining the ill-planned expedition guided by Friar Marcos de Niza, when de Niza—encouraged by the viceroy, Antonio de Mendoza—was seeking the mythical Seven Cities of Cibola.

Núñez, with other ideas in mind, began his return journey to Spain from Veracruz on 10 April 1537 and disembarked in Lisbon on 9 August 1537. Cabeza de Vaca lived in Spain from his return until 2 December 1540. In that same year, after appearing before Charles V, Núñez signed on 18 March the agreements that would impel him toward another American adventure; but this time he went to the regions of Río de la Plata in command of three ships, and with the important ranks of adelantado and governor.²

Available information suggests that Cabeza de Vaca spent the twenty-eight months of his residence in Spain editing his already amplified Relación (also called the Naufragios); it was published in Zamora in 1542. He returned to these preoccupations years later in the prologue to the Valladolid edition of 1555; in that text (which appears in this edition) Cabeza de Vaca tells us, with studied humility, that since neither his

advice nor [his] best efforts sufficed to win what we had gone to accomplish in Your Majesty's service, and because God permitted, for our sins, that of all the fleets that have gone to these lands, none found themselves in such great dangers or had such a miserable and disastrous end, no opportunity was afforded me to perform more service than this, which is to bring Your Majesty an account of what I learned and saw in ten years [1527-1537] during which I wandered lost and naked through many and very strange lands … that may in some wise be of service to Your Majesty.

At the time he was writing, Núñez must also have been concentrating his efforts on the arduous negotiations and preparations required by his expedition to Río de la Plata. Though the first edition of his text was published after he had gone to South America, we may imagine that the book had some acceptance among the limited circle of readers who acquired such a small edition. Today we know that the famous historians Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo and Francisco López de Gómara read it. We may suppose that it reached the hands of other chroniclers and officials who wrote on such subjects and who traveled to the New World. Among them must have been Father Bartolomé de Las Casas, who was always well aware of everything pertaining to the indigenous populations of America.

In his detailed and enthusiastic biography of Núñez, Morris Bishop describes the jubilant return of the conquistador to Jerez de la Frontera and alludes to contemporary rumors about the fabulous things that Cabeza de Vaca had experienced.³ Perhaps the most remarkable thing about his brief stay in Spain is that, when he returned to the Peninsula, Núñez showed an almost immediate interest in going back to the same jungles and deserts where he had suffered so many calamities. Scarcely had he landed in Lisbon than he must have learned that the Crown had appointed Hernando de Soto governor of Cuba and of all the region between Cape Fear (now part of North Carolina) and the river of Las Palmas, in New Spain. Quite simply, it was a territory about half the size of Europe. The appointment must have caused resentment in Núñez, and perhaps for that reason Hernando de Soto was unable to persuade him to accompany him on the adventure. Despite this, and much to Cabeza de Vaca's displeasure, two cousins of his—Baltasar Gallegos and Cristóbal de Espínola—joined de Soto, even though they were aware that Núñez was opposed to their going.⁴ In only a few years, the Spain that Núñez had known in his early youth had become a society that was planning enormous imperial projects of conquest and colonization, projects involving powerful and adventure-hungry groups with overweening ambitions. Morris Bishop observes, when he reconstructs some features of this society, that Núñez must have felt alien to such a context, which in many ways seemed to him puzzling and excessively conflictive; it was a society in which so many men struggled—for good reasons or bad—to attain privileges, riches, and above all the eternally desired prerogatives of power.

We may assume that during this interval of residence in the Peninsula Núñez became connected with the large brotherhood of travelers, chroniclers, and officials who exchanged information about America as they made their complicated claims. Years later, in the carefully composed prologue to his Comentarios (edited by the scribe Pedro Hernández), Núñez was to explain, with veiled rhetorical ambiguity, the mission of rescue that the Crown had entrusted to him in 1540, which would be carried out in the remote areas now occupied by Paraguay.

As we will see, the task entrusted to him gave Núñez governing authority over all the immense region between southern Peru and the areas now occupied by Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay. He explained the mission in these terms:

Later, the Supreme Majesty having deigned to continue His marvelous favor to me, He caused the emperor, your grandfather, to send me in the twenty-first year of his reign with a fleet to Río Paraná (which Solís calls Río de la Plata), to help people and continue the discovery of Don Pedro de Mendoza (who they said was a native of Guadix). In which I experienced very great dangers and hardships, as Your Highness will very particularly see in these Commentaries.⁵

A large part of the abundant documentation on Spanish colonization in the region of Río de la Plata indicates that the project of territorial expansion had degenerated into opportunistic struggles that caused violent confrontations between natives and Spaniards. The scanty information possessed by the Crown, in the first half of the sixteenth century, suggested a need for drastic solutions. In view of his vast experience in the Indies and his knowledge of different American cultures, Núñez must have presented himself to the Crown as exactly the right person to carry out the task of correction and reparation. Thus, in the articles drawn up on 18 March 1540,⁶ Charles V granted to Cabeza de Vaca the governorship of Río de la Plata with the same prerogatives and territories that the Crown had previously accorded to Pedro de Mendoza. He also received the titles of Adelantado, Governor, Captain-General, and Officer of the Peace in those possessions, including the island of Santa Catalina, which today is part of Brazil. But even in those days of unaccustomed glory, Núñez encountered obstacles that anticipated the difficulties that were to pursue him, with cruel tenacity, to the end of his life. At the last moment, when all was ready for his departure, the Ayola family (with connections to the previous governor of Paraguay) attempted to lodge before the Council of the Indies an appeal blocking Núñez's appointment as governor; fortunately, direct intervention by the Crown sufficed to eliminate this obstacle. A royal warrant unhesitatingly ordered the House of Trade to assist Núñez in everything necessary for the voyage.⁷ As rapidly as possible Cabeza de Vaca, then about forty-eight years of age, equipped three ships. His chief pilot was Antonio López, and the crews included a Flemish drummer and a number of Negro and Indian slaves, one of them a native of New Spain. Once again Cabeza de Vaca left his wife in Spain; apparently she always tolerated his prolonged absences.

In the late autumn of 1540 preparations for the long voyage were at last finished; but unforeseen delays occurred. It was not until the end of November that the ships began their descent of the Guadalquivir toward Sanlúcar. Scarcely had they emerged into the Atlantic than a spell of bad weather forced them to seek hasty refuge in Cádiz Bay, from which they succeeded in leaving for the Canaries on 2 December of that year. Once more Núñez was setting out for the New World from Andalusian soil, except that this time he was assuming greater responsibilities, and his position involved debts far beyond his economic means.⁸

The voyage took four months, including a short stopover in the Canaries. They landed on the island of Santa Catalina on 29 March 1541, and from there—after a long rest period—undertook the overland march to Asunción. Very soon Núñez learned of the murder of Juan de Ayola, the governor who had preceded him. These events convinced Cabeza de Vaca that he needed to attempt without delay to rescue the Spaniards who were thus left without official protection (Comentarios, ch. 1). After marching for more than five hundred miles, the contingent reached Asunción on 11 March 1542. In the course of that mountainous and difficult journey, the group led by Cabeza de Vaca was the first to see some spectacular landscapes, including the dramatic falls of the Iguaçú River. After presenting his credentials, Cabeza de Vaca tried to correct abuses that had been committed against the Indians and attempted to restore order among the Spaniards, obliging them among other measures to pay the taxes required by the Crown. Measures of this kind ran counter to the economic interests of a remote and quarrelsome colony and immediately caused disaffection and aggressive opposition on the part of many residents. The opposition was led by Domingo Martínez de Irala, who had been serving as interim governor. But the lengthy and interesting reports of Ulrico Schmidel, a German, as well as those of Ruy Díaz de Guzmán, suggest that Cabeza de Vaca lacked political acumen as well as the ability to carry out administrative and planning duties. According to Schmidel, his inept attempts at exploration gradually led him to repeated confrontations with Indians and Spaniards alike. Our information about these matters suggests insistently that Núñez placed more trust in individual action than in joint and institutionalized activity.⁹

Like so many others, Núñez was seduced by the fabulous promises offered by legends about priceless treasures; he organized a well-equipped expedition to discover those places of prodigious riches. But the sacrifices involved in a journey through trackless jungles caused resentment and illness, and Núñez at last decided to return to Asunción. There, weakened by long bouts of fever, Cabeza de Vaca began to lose control of his recently acquired governorship. His illness provided the vacuum of authority his enemies needed; in particular, Martínez de Irala and his supporters used it to foment a rebellion against Cabeza de Vaca's inconsistent leadership. Though a number of colonists fought the rebels' actions, on 25 April 1544 Martínez de Irala and his supporters took the governor prisoner. Perhaps to mute the protests among the Indians and Cabeza de Vaca's junior officials, Martínez de Irala decided to send the governor to Spain in a caravel that was returning to the Peninsula. With various accusations leveled against him, Cabeza de Vaca was held prisoner along with his scribe Pedro Hernández and others, placed in irons, and confined to a small and dark space on the ship. But apparently their confinement on board was short.

Apart from the inconvenience of these restrictions, the return trip to Spain added another paradoxical incident to Cabeza de Vaca's ill-starred life. Enrique de Gandía tells us that during the crossing the caravel in which Cabeza de Vaca was traveling encountered a fierce storm off the coast of Brazil; some of the officers on board, among them Alonso Cabrera and García Venegas, interpreted the bad weather as divine retaliation for the injustices committed against Núñez, who was after all the legitimate representative of the Crown. De Gandía states that the governor and his companions were set free and that the accusations against him were denied. Thanks to this fortunate occurrence Núñez was released, and the storm immediately began to abate. Though these events—influenced by legend, as I suspect—seemed favorable, we shall see that Cabeza de Vaca's misfortunes began again when he landed in Spain about 15 August 1545.

Cabeza de Vaca visited Seville and Jerez and in the same year presented before the Council of the Indies documents that attempted to refute many of his enemies' allegations. As was to be expected, the pardon issued on board ship was not recognized in Castile.¹⁰ Núñez soon had to appear before the always unpredictable council, on 20 January 1546, to hear the numerous accusations from those who had usurped his command. He was accused, among other things, of robberies in the Canaries and Cabo Verde on his way to South America. The documents alleged that Núñez had not allowed his crew to trade with the Indians and that he had abandoned thirteen of his men on the way to Asunción. Documents in the possession of Marcelo Villalobos, the prosecutor, also described a long series of abuses that Núñez had supposedly committed against both Spaniards and natives. Still worse, he was accused of substituting his own coat of arms for the symbols of the Crown and of not allowing the other officers in his suite to communicate with peninsular authorities.¹¹ As if to emphasize the difficulties Cabeza de Vaca now faced, his economic situation grew difficult because of the debts that he had contracted in order to equip his expedition. A Spaniard who had met him in Asunción declared that the governor “owned not a real's worth in those realms.” Cabeza de Vaca himself confessed in February 1546 that “he was poor and lost and bankrupt, he and his relatives alike.”¹²

Early in 1546 when the suits against Núñez began, he was not permitted to use witnesses living in Spain. This frivolous restriction drew the noose still tighter and hints at the negative bias of the tribunals that were to judge him. The appointment of Villalobos as the prosecutor responsible for the suits against Núñez appeared to be a fortunate coincidence, for Villalobos, like Núñez, was a native of Jerez. But in the end this same prosecutor demanded large indemnities from Cabeza de Vaca, thus allowing his accusers to appear as the injured parties. Villalobos also demanded a fine of 100,000 ducats, which Núñez had to pay to the Crown. In view of this and other petitions, in March 1546 the Council of the Indies ordered the arrest and imprisonment of Cabeza de Vaca in Madrid. Very shortly later, in April of that same year, he was granted provisional freedom and allowed to live in lodgings in Madrid. In a more generous vein, the council granted Núñez three years to prepare his defense, directed by his lawyer Alonso de San Juan. But the defense and litigation lasted more than five years.

Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo—who around 1547 met Núñez in Madrid, Seville, or Valladolid—tells us that he was “impoverished and prematurely aged.”¹³ It is almost certain that Fernández de Oviedo interviewed him to obtain additional information that he needed for his unfinished Historia general y natural de las Indias. But meanwhile the process of accusations and claims that Núñez had to face was becoming increasingly broader and more complicated. The documents necessary to reach a final verdict continued to accumulate, even into 1547. Examination of the documents suggests an increasing disinclination toward Cabeza de Vaca on the part of the courts. Finally, on 18 March 1551, in Valladolid, the Council of the Indies announced its sentence.

Cabeza de Vaca was stripped in perpetuity of the important titles he had been granted in 1540. He was also barred on pain of death from returning to the Indies and was condemned to exile and forced labor in Africa (Algiers). Moreover, persons living in Asunción who had claims against him as injured parties could now demand heavy financial compensation from him. Cabeza de Vaca immediately appealed this decision and abjectly begged the council not to restrict his freedom; when he did so, he alleged that he had funds barely sufficient to cover his most elementary needs.¹⁴

This pathetic petition did not fundamentally change the council's decision, though it did lift the much-feared sentence of exile to Algiers. Unfortunately the ban on a return to the New World, which Cabeza de Vaca may have desired, continued in force. As we review the sequence of these events we never cease to marvel at Núñez's tenacity, even in the midst of these recurring vicissitudes. In answer to his petition, on 25 November 1551 the council decided to review once more the suit that had been brought against him. But in spite of this, and as in the previous case, severe restrictions were imposed on him. Neither he nor his representatives could have access to the documents that had served as a basis for the trial and that contained a list of all the accusations and allegations against him. Amid these and other misfortunes Núñez—perhaps following the advice of Fernández de Oviedo—decided to bring out an edition of both his Relación and his Comentarios; it was published in Valladolid in 1555.

In the face of so many misfortunes, we can assume that Cabeza de Vaca dedicated a good part of his last energies to rewriting his manuscripts and perhaps to reading works about the New World that complemented those labors, works he could no doubt obtain in Valladolid, where he spent his last years. Cabeza de Vaca must have felt trapped in an enigmatic web of events and manipulations that seemed always to end in defeat. During those years of lonely and poverty-stricken old age his health failed for the first time. On 15 September 1556 the king granted him a small pension in the amount of 12,000 maravedises, a sum that Núñez requested to alleviate his poverty and enable him to seek medical attention. Enrique de Gandía and other scholars believe that Núñez died in Valladolid between 1556 and 1559, as a result of the illness alluded to in the warrant of 15 September 1556. We might well share this opinion, especially if we look at a little-known document, the Verdadera relación de lo que sucedió al governador Jaime Rasquisa by Alonso Gómez de Santaya, written after 1560. In it he tells us conclusively that Cabeza de Vaca “died in Valladolid, a very poor gentleman.”¹⁵ Among the many fictional accounts that continue to circulate are those asserting that Núñez obtained important posts at the end of his life and that he died amid honors and recognition. No matter how unpleasant it is to recognize the fact, the truth is quite otherwise. What does appear to be true is that Cabeza de Vaca, like Bernal Díaz del Castillo, the Inca Garcilaso, and other celebrated individuals of the time, eventually regarded his writings as the only possibility for genuine personal and historical justification. But what he could not foresee was that his brief Relación would hold a prominent place among the narratives recounting the discovery of the New World.¹⁶ Nor could Cabeza de Vaca guess that the misfortunes awaiting him in the New World would in the end give him a deeper knowledge of himself and his gifts of leadership. If we read him with care, we may also conclude that the long series of misfortunes that he experienced on the arid plains of North America considerably refined his capacity for thought. His meditations on the deceits contained in “men's thoughts” (ch. XXXIV) confirm this enrichment of his inner life. I suspect that such inner discoveries often sustained Núñez when everything seemed to contradict his desires. And when he began his astonishing return to New Spain, the hope to disclose the failures of Pánfilo de Narváez's expedition must have motivated him.

The Relación has been said more than once to lack the refined writing style that we praise in the pages of López de Gómara, Antonio de Guevara, or the Inca Garcilaso. I believe that even a superficial reader can observe in Cabeza de Vaca's work detailed descriptions that remind us of the somber tones of medieval chronicles (for example, in chs. II and VII). Moreover, we will see that the construction of the narrative process often allows the interference of the fortuitous, of the many ambiguities that shade our interpretation of what really happened. But these peculiarities of the writing do not diminish the narrative's considerable importance. It is worth remembering that Núñez's tale begins without a textual frame of reference, and that it often assumes the difficult task of describing not only the unknown but also the doubts and uneasiness of a narrator who had shared the most primitive and brutal forms of human existence.

The chapter sequences of the Relación form five segments differentiated by their content and expositive rhythm. The first of these are the two chapters that recount the departure from Sanlúcar on 17 June 1527 and the arrival in Hispaniola and Cuba, as well as the expedition's prolonged stay on the latter island. The second part (end of ch. II to ch. VII) concentrates on events beginning with the landing in Florida and the sally made by Narváez's expedition to the village of Aute, in the northern part of the peninsula. In these chapters the forward dynamic and future plans of the conquering venture begin to fade. Working against an inhospitable environment, between the present-day cities of Tallahassee and Apalachicola, the Spaniards built boats to escape the brutal conditions around them and the almost constant fights with Indians. Once the boats or rafts were ready, they sailed westward in the direction of New Spain, hugging the coast, until a desperate series of shipwrecks scattered the company. In the third segment of the narrative (from ch. VII to ch. XV) the writer begins to relate the misfortunes suffered by the Spaniards on the Isle of Ill Fortune (Galveston Island). From there on, and now in a different tone, the narrative often becomes introspective and imprecise, perhaps because it reflects the long cycle of humiliations and isolation endured by the last four survivors of the expedition. This fourth stage of the narrative, the longest and most complex, concludes with ch. XXXIII. In the last five chapters—which constitute the fifth narrative segment—Cabeza de Vaca and his companions at last detect the welcome presence of Spanish troops operating in northern New Spain. The last portion ends the Naufragios; prominent in this last section are the two final chapters, for they recount the arrival of the survivors in New Spain, the unexpected prophecies of the Moorish woman of Hornachos, and also Núñez's slightly fictionalized return to Castile.

In its primary form, Cabeza de Vaca's text hews to the rhetorical precepts that governed the preparation of relaciones. But its paradoxical and extremely varied content goes far beyond the usual expositive scheme of the relación. The skillful prologue contains a rather broad range of clichés and formulas that reminds us of different types of literary creations, as well as rhetorical codifications harking back to classical texts. Among others is the familiar laudatio to the monarch, a rhetorically institutionalized characterization of the king as the model of justice and faith. No less trite is the allusion to Fate as the basis of all doubtful endeavors. And an affectedly humble description of Núñez's writing reflects the formulas known in rhetoric as mediocritas mea and excusatio propter infirmitatem. We also observe that the language of the prologue corresponds to the familiar rhetorical propositions stated by one who brings “news never heard before.” El libro de Aleixandre (1252), along with many later texts, begins with this well known rhetorical device.

Cabeza de Vaca's narrative is shaped by the autobiographical imperative to write history out of personal experience, a narrative projection that often reappears in important reports or histories of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Like all narrative springing in part from an autobiographical aim, the past that is being recounted becomes more and more the narrator's past. Even without conscious intent, this type of writing frequently leads to a problematical rhetorical confluence between the historical individual and the narrator's imaginative view of himself.

If we try to offer an all-embracing description of the Relación, we must remember that in this text, as in every narrative with a partially autobiographical aspect, what is written not only sets down the events but also describes both directly and implicitly the production of what is narrated. This fact makes obvious the surreptitious self-reference of the writing in the Relación. The narrative took shape in a series of successive rewritings—beginning in 1527 and ending about 1554—in which the last version refers as much to the shape of the previous text as to the sequence of events described; this process introduces a gradual and inevitable dispersion of signifieds, as is characteristic of textual creations that display a process of successive narrative broadenings. And furthermore, this process affords great flexibility in the ordering of arguments, the structuring of what is recounted, and the choice of what is narrated. So as not to judge him arbitrarily, we must insist on the fact that Núñez's famous text illustrates a careful series of rewritings that apparently never achieved a final formulation. Expressed in other terms, the Relación has retained a sense of provisionality, almost of a first draft, which paradoxically brings us closer to its fundamental nature. In its problematized and inconclusive structure, not in its story of marine disaster, we find the most striking examples of anguish that the text has to offer. By describing it in these terms, I emphasize that we must read the last two chapters, embellished by the appearance of pirates and the astonishing prophecy of a seeress of Hornachos, with greater imaginative latitude, especially if we link it to clichés that enjoyed much literary popularity at the time in Mediterranean fiction.

Within this broader perspective, if the misfortunes endured by Narváez's expedition had been foretold by the seeress of Hornachos, we could read Núñez's Relación, first of all, as an example of prophetic discourse; this possibility clearly expands the text's imaginary dimension but also casts doubt on its historical content. These later twists in the narrative introduce clearly literary themes and motifs into the text. Through the seeress of Hornachos, the prophetic action so popular in Renaissance literature enters the picture. Moreover, there are battles with pirates, incidents that immediately bring to mind a vast Mediterranean narrative built around similar adventures that we recognize as a legacy of the Byzantine novel, always so fond of describing adventures connected with shipwrecks and rescues. We also know that the seeress of Hornachos herself is one of a long line that links her to Spain and the Camacha described by Cervantes in his “Coloquio de los perros” and links her to America and the Negro wise woman Juana García; this last is a figure who appears in Juan Rodríguez Freyle's Carnero (1937) and recalls the famous procuress in Fernando de Rojas's Celestina (1499). With these observations in mind, we easily comprehend why Cabeza de Vaca's Relación has in its turn inspired several fictional works. Among the most recent is The New Argonautica (1928) by Walter Brooks Henderson, as well as two works by John U. Terrell, Journey into Darkness (1962) and Estevanico the Black (1968). Of greater imaginative scope is Oakley Hall's novel The Children of the Sun (1983), also based on the adventures of Cabeza de Vaca. El largo atardecer del Caminante (1992) by Abel Posee is another novel based on the life of Cabeza de Vaca.

Because the text edited here often undertakes the primal task of naming the unknown, its naming action links Cabeza de Vaca's Relación to myth as well as to powerful imaginative writings represented today by Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude (1966) and Mario Vargas Llosa's War of the End of the World (1981). But by bringing up these comparisons I do not suggest that we view the Relación as a primary precursor of modern Latin American fiction today. We can state, however, that the narrative organization of Cabeza de Vaca's text displays a considerable imaginative content, as corroborated by recent readings of the Relación. … I believe that the fertile variety of its components is the quality that allows us to describe Núñez's text today as seminal to the Hispanoamerican narrative tradition.

Notes

1. Some details of the landing are contained in the study by A. H. Phinney, “Narváez and De Soto: Their Landing Places and the Town of Espíritu Santo,” Florida Historical Quarterly 3 (1925): 15-21. No definite landing place has been located.

2. Morris Bishop, The Odyssey of Cabeza de Vaca (1933; Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1971), 161. Núñez and his companions reached the capital of New Spain on 23 July 1536. It is not clear why they delayed so long in traveling from Culiacán to the viceregal capital. The historian Henry H. Wagner suggested—though without conclusive documentation—that Dorantes returned to Spain (“Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca: Relación,” in The Spanish Southwest [Berkeley: J. J. Gillick, 1924], 13).

3. Bishop, Odyssey, 169.

4. Ibid., 169-70. In these pages Bishop documents the known action of de Soto in asking Núñez to go with him.

5. I quote from Manuel Serrano y Sanz's edition of the Relación (Colección de libros y documentos referentes a la historia de América [Madrid: Librería General de Victoriano Suárez, 1906], 5:148).

6. Ibid., 23:8-23.

7. Bishop, Odyssey, 189.

8. It is estimated that Núñez invested about 14,000 ducats in the expedition. He left behind a debt of 5,000 ducats, a large sum in view of his assets (Serrano y Sanz, ed., Colección, 2:112, 147).

9. See Ulrico Schmidel, Derrotero y viaje al Río de la Plata y Paraguay, ed. R. Quevedo (Asunción: Biblioteca Paraguaya, 1983), 99-116; see also the report of Ruy Díaz de Guzmán, Anales del descubrimiento, población y conquista del Río de la Plata, ed. E. de Gandía (Buenos Aires: Librería Huemul, 1974).

10. On 7 December 1545 Cabeza de Vaca presented to the Council of the Indies the documents with which he intended to demolish the accusations of Irala and others; those documents place more emphasis on the calamities he suffered than on factual refutation.

11. Bishop, Odyssey, 279.

12. Enrique de Gandía, “Aventuras desconocidas de Alvar Núñez en Italia y en España,” in De la Torre de Oro a las Indias (Buenos Aires: Ediciones L. J. Rosso, 1931), 121. Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo also tells us that “they took him as a prisoner to the court, where, weary and poverty-stricken, he continues his suits against his rivals, and it is very pitiful to hear him and learn what he suffered in the Indies” (Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general y natural de las Indias, ed. Juan Pérez de Tudela [Madrid: B.A.E., 1959], 2:190, 371). The same complaints about calamitous experiences are echoed by Núñez's scribe, Pedro Hernández, who says in his Comentarios, “And after having held him prisoner and confined to the court for eight years, they released him and he departed; and because of some suits that were brought against him they stripped him of his governorship … without having recompensed him for the large sums of money that he spent in the service he performed, of going to aid and discover” (Comentarios [Madrid: Taurus, 1969], ch. 84).

13. Fernández de Oviedo, Historia general, 2:271. Thomas Buckingham Smith reproduced—in translation—documents, petitions, and allegations taken from the Archive of the Indies, as well as from other sources that deal with Núñez's unsuccessful appearances before the Council of the Indies (Relation of Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca [New York: J. Munsell, 1871], 231-35.

14. Buckingham Smith, Relation, 231-33. See also a royal warrant of 8 April 1573 located by de Gandía, which authorized Pedro Hernández “to return to New Spain … and to take a mestizo son of his, without giving information” (de Gandía, “Aventuras,” 124).

15. De Gandía, “Aventuras,” 123. His study reproduces documents that shed light on the circumstances in which Cabeza de Vaca died.

16. Our present knowledge of the seventeenth-century book market in Spain does not allow us to describe the success attained by Cabeza de Vaca's Relación as “enormous” (as Roberto Ferrando does in his recent edition of the Naufragios [Madrid: Historia 16, 1984], 14). Printed books about America had an average audience that included a small minority of educated people and those officials interested in very specific aspects of the texts in question; however, over the course of centuries Núñez's narrative achieved considerable international circulation. On the making and marketing of books in the sixteenth century see Konrad Haebler, The Early Printers of Spain and Portugal (London: Chiswick Press, 1896-1897); and on the printing of books in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries see Clive Griffin, The Crombergers of Seville: The History of a Printing and Merchant Dynasty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). See also Antonello Gerbi, La naturaleza de las Indias Nuevas (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura, 1975), 265-306; 445-64. The large amount of documentation on New World historiography that Gerbi amassed focuses on the work of Fernández de Oviedo.