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Images of Conquest: Europe and Latin American Identity

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Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Modern European Literature ((PMEL))

Abstract

Latin American views of Europe are as diverse as the 20 republics themselves. From a sense of common origins and shared identity with Europeans to feelings of hostility and alienation towards the continent that conquered and dominated them, Latin American writers reflect the ethnic and political composition of their countries. But a common theme for lands with a high indigenous or mixed population, such as Mexico and the Andean republics, is the lasting psychological and cultural effects of the European conquest in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In the present essay, these effects are explored through a study of Angelina Yupanki, Marquesa de la conquista (Angelina Yupanqui, Marquise of the Conquest, 1992) by the Bolivian author Néstor Taboada Terán.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Martínez, Hernán Cortés (Mexico: UNAM/FCE, 1990), p. 834. In this essay all translations into English are mine.

  2. 2.

    Adoum, ‘El proceso de emancipación no ha concluido …’, in Heinz Dieterich Steffan, ed., La interminable Conquista: Emancipación e identidad de América Latina 14921992 (Mexico: Joaquín Mortiz/Planeta, 1990), p. 259.

  3. 3.

    See ibid., p. 258.

  4. 4.

    Martínez, Hernán Cortés, p. 832.

  5. 5.

    Ibid., p. 833.

  6. 6.

    Clearly, the status of his ideas was further enhanced by the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1990.

  7. 7.

    Paz, El laberinto de la soledad (Mexico City: Cuadernos Americanos, 1950), pp. 76–8.

  8. 8.

    Ibid., p. 76.

  9. 9.

    Ibid., p. 78.

  10. 10.

    Ibid., p. 78.

  11. 11.

    For studies of the preoccupation with the Conquest in popular culture, such as indigenous dance, see Nathan Wachtel, The Vision of the Vanquished: The Spanish Conquest of Peru through Indian Eyes 15301570 (1976) and William Rowe and Vivian Schelling, Memory and Modernity: Popular Culture in Latin America (1991).

  12. 12.

    Néstor Taboada Terán, Angelina Yupanki, Marquesa de la conquista (Barcelona: Apóstrofe, 1992), p. 154. Hereafter, page references will be given in parentheses in the text.

  13. 13.

    The key authority on Taboada is Keith Richards. I owe my interest in Taboada and my awareness of this novel to his critical studies of the work prior to Angelina (see, for example, Richards, ‘Sexuality and Death: Cultural Synthesis and the Grotesque in Néstor Taboada de Terán’s Manchay Puytu’, Journal of Hispanic Research, Vol. 3 (1994–5), pp. 376–96).

  14. 14.

    According to sources such as William Prescott, Pizarro was never married (see Prescott, The Conquest of Peru, new edn (1847; London: Richard Bentley, 1850), II, 345). Taboada’s text insists on the marriage, but describes it as being performed in private (see Taboada Terán, Angelina Yupanki, p. 154).

  15. 15.

    See, for example, Taboada Terán, Angelina Yupanki, pp. 156, 158.

  16. 16.

    See ibid., pp. 145–50, 241.

  17. 17.

    The blurb on the back cover of the book appears to name Juan de Betanzos as the narrator, but this notion must be regarded as a simplification.

  18. 18.

    Prescott, Conquest of Peru, II, 131.

  19. 19.

    Bhabha, Location of Culture, p. 109. The material in this essay was first published in a slightly different form in Peter Beardsell, Europe and Latin America: Returning the Gaze (2000).

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Beardsell, P. (2016). Images of Conquest: Europe and Latin American Identity. In: Hammond, A. (eds) The Novel and Europe. Palgrave Studies in Modern European Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52627-4_6

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